Phoenix Lander discovers dirt on Mars

what? mars > me ? whats that mean? of course it is, its a freakin planet. I was downgraded last year to a cloud of dust :mad:
It means that discovery of things on the red planet, and general awesome space stuff in general, is more important than silly government handouts.
 
There seems to be a update at the end.

The next major NASA mission will be the Jupiter Zeus Flyer, a $798 million mission to confirm that there is gas on Jupiter.
 
The Genesis rock was a fairly big find, and was only made possible by manned exploration missions.

If this mission could confirm the presence of ice on Mars, that would suggest liquid water did once flow on the surface - and could again in the forseeable future.
 
The Genesis rock was a fairly big find, and was only made possible by manned exploration missions.

If this mission could confirm the presence of ice on Mars, that would suggest liquid water did once flow on the surface - and could again in the forseeable future.

According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 Billion in 1969 Dollars (or approximately $135 Billion in 2005 Dollars

thats a wikipedia thingy

seems like a very expensive rock to me... ...was it worth it?
 
okay dudeoid, tell me one awesome space discovery of recent times... venus closer to the sun maybe :-P
THE HEXAGON ON SATURN!
saturn_npole.jpg
 
Yeah, we should sit back and allow other world powers to explore and colonize the next New World.

Meanwhile, we should do more coddling of the underproducers in our own nation.

Good plan!
 
Yeah, we should sit back and allow other world powers to explore and colonize the next New World.

Meanwhile, we should do more coddling of the underproducers in our own nation.

Good plan!

Indeed :lol:

Who cares about pushing the frontier of human achievement and discovery, we have bums on welfare that need to keep up the payments on their new flatscreen tv.
 
According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 Billion in 1969 Dollars (or approximately $135 Billion in 2005 Dollars

thats a wikipedia thingy

seems like a very expensive rock to me... ...was it worth it?

Considering how much MORE the economy benefited beyond that, you bet your ass it was worth it. Estimates of economic benefit 7x greater than the government outlays. Space exploration is good all the way around. Besides, I for one am damned glad I do not go to bed by the light of a communist moon.
 
. .. .. .. . social projects, if we were going to invest the money sunk in the mars program into something, we might as well put into deep ocean research, that kind of money could cause an explosion in our knowledge of it, and would probably be more useful to man.
 
agreed, there are parts of our own world we know terrifyingly little about. that is something that should be remedied as well. we came out of the cave, we learned how to use fire, stuff happened... a lot of it, actually... then somebody discovered that the world was not flat, people tried to kill themselves by trying to fly, *beep* beep*, guy walks on the moon. that is not the end of the story. well, if it is it's quite a good story but it just does not seem finished; unless you pick the ending where man walks back out of that cave or hands the torch to the cockroaches.

I believe that there are 2 dominant traits in the human race: exploration (by science, art, exploration, heck, throw in spirituality in there if you want to) and expansion. Why Mars or a colony on the moon or unexplored places of our own world? Because it is the next step. Nevermind the time-frame, though it might actually become an issue, it is next on the agenda. It is what we do and for all we know there is nobody else who could do it.
 
Yeah, we should sit back and allow other world powers to explore and colonize the next New World.

Meanwhile, we should do more coddling of the underproducers in our own nation.

Good plan!

Define any world we know of that is a viable colonization site.

Underproducers are caused by the capitalist system and play a vital, if unrecognised role in the system. Few unemployed choose the option.

Indeed :lol:

Who cares about pushing the frontier of human achievement and discovery, we have bums on welfare that need to keep up the payments on their new flatscreen tv.

Since we're into one line answers, people can be poor and own a television.

Considering how much MORE the economy benefited beyond that, you bet your ass it was worth it. Estimates of economic benefit 7x greater than the government outlays. Space exploration is good all the way around. Besides, I for one am damned glad I do not go to bed by the light of a communist moon.


Oh really 7x. Prove it ! Teflon sales have topped 322 billion dollars? Really. (teflon was invented before apollo anyway)

@perfection: nice pic of the hexagon thingy. very freaky-deaky
 
One day we might actually want to populate these planets, as either a way to deal with overpopulation on our planet, resource extraction on Mars, as a stepping stone towards further space exploration and the evolution of civilization, or simply as an insurance policy should anything go horribly wrong on Earth (a VERY good idea, really).

We need to expertise and knowledge from these early missions to take on those future missions. I would argue that the insurance reason alone is enough to justify this.

Plus, the knowledge gained from exploring other planets should help us to understand our own, and perhaps solve some of the more fundamental questions of biology, climatology, and geology.

Then, there's always the outside chance of finding organisms on other planets, which would be a major step in biology. What if we found an alternative to DNA? Completely different structures for life? New medicines, new genes? The possibilities are about as endless as the universe.

I'm more than willing to spend $20 a year for that...
 
One day we might actually want to populate these planets, as either a way to deal with overpopulation on our planet, resource extraction on Mars, as a stepping stone towards further space exploration and the evolution of civilization, or simply as an insurance policy should anything go horribly wrong on Earth (a VERY good idea, really).

I dont agree. Firstly, there are no means of interstellar travel. I like Star Trek et al , I do , but think about it, warp travel is a long way away (all warp drive ideas are just speculation) and is a distant goal, actually distinct from spending shed loads of money on current space preojects.

Additionally, I think that money would be better spent on addressign our problems on earth, rather than chasing a pipe dream. After all this is what we have now. Any colony on Moon or Mars will not survive very long, in the same way that science research centers in Antartica could nor survive without the outside world.
 
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