• Mars Rover Curiosity Sends First Full-Color Panorama of Its New Martian Home
    154 replies, posted
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37179070]Am I the only one who's surprised how much Mars actually looks like Earth? The panorama looks surprisingly a lot like parts of the American Southwest.[/QUOTE] short of some truly insane and extremely unlikely geometries, pretty much all the planets we're going to be seeing will bear a passing resemblance to Earth; planets may differ greatly, but dirt is far from exclusive to ours. even Titan looks pretty similar to Mars, but there's more rocks and a piss-yellow filter all over everything.
I always thought this was the coolest picture from the surface of Mars, I'm surprised nobody posted this yet. [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/MarsSunsetCut.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;37175636]As much as I love humanity, we really do plague this earth.[/QUOTE] There's (probably) no life on Mars to fuck up, so what's the problem? [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=JeanLuc761;37178049]Not a panorama, but here's a new shot from Curiosity (obviously unfinished false color) [t]http://i.imgur.com/baZOH.jpg[/t][/QUOTE] Either the perspectives messed up, curiosity is huge, or those mountains are really tiny
[QUOTE=RobbL;37181320]Either the perspectives messed up, curiosity is huge, or those mountains are really tiny[/QUOTE] I'm not sure which camera was used to take that photo, but a wide angle lens would produce that effect. MAHLI has an 18.3 mm to 21.3 mm focal length, and the Medium Angle MASTCAM is 34mm, so they could both probably produce an effect like that.
Here's another recent photo that just got sent back! Damn look at those suns. [img]http://englishteacherman.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/binarysunset2.jpg[/img]
Damn. You know, we've been able to take pictures of another planets/the moon for what, over 40 years now?, so we kind of take it for granted now, but I saw that photo and it just hit me. I could grab a camera and take a photo of similar quality right now. The only difference is that that photo was taken by a robot. On another planet. Really makes you feel insignificant compared to the rest of the universe, hell, compared to the rest of the Solar System. I wonder if people are ever going to land on Mars. Or will we all be wiped out in some kind of a catastrophe and the rovers will be the only remaining proof that the humanity ever existed, other then some rubble on Earth?
I find it hard to believe there isn't even microscopic organisms on the planet.
mars is dirty
[QUOTE=Mr_Razzums;37182157]I find it hard to believe there isn't even microscopic organisms on the planet.[/QUOTE] Radiation and lack of water is a bitch that way. Realistically, Mars could be like any other chunk of rock out there with no signs of life at any point in history. Alternatively, we could come across a bed of fossilized creatures. We honestly don't know.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;37183640]Radiation and lack of water is a bitch that way. Realistically, Mars could be like any other chunk of rock out there with no signs of life at any point in history. Alternatively, we could come across a bed of fossilized creatures. We honestly don't know.[/QUOTE] Finding fossils on Mars would prolly be a pretty solid spark for guaranteed manned missions.
I like to see fossils there.
[QUOTE=fritzel;37183875]I like to see fossils there.[/QUOTE] Who wouldn't? It would be the biggest discovery humanity has ever made. Any proof that we're not alone out here would be deeply reassuring to me.
[QUOTE=OvB;37178609]It looked into things like soil composition and light requirements. Also Bees. Lot's of bees.[/QUOTE] But then man would have to defend itself from rampaging hordes of mutated Martian Bees
Honestly, I hope they find some kind of valuable fuel or ore or [I]something[/I] on Mars. Think about it, that would get more governments and businesses interested, which means that NASA would get much more funding (right now NASA's funding is almost laughably small, compared to things such as the defense budget). If that happened, we might see people and even colonies on the planet within our lifetimes.
Really fucking cool. Its so surreal, how it looks so similar to some places on Earth. Yet its a completely different planet. Insane. As awesome as it is, I have no idea why everyone is popping boners for Curiosity so hard. Is it cool? Hell yeah. But we've had rovers on Mars before. And they took pictures too, you know. This isn't a first.
[QUOTE=DTkach;37186232]Really fucking cool. Its so surreal, how it looks so similar to some places on Earth. Yet its a completely different planet. Insane. As awesome as it is, I have no idea why everyone is popping boners for Curiosity so hard. Is it cool? Hell yeah. But we've had rovers on Mars before. And they took pictures too, you know. This isn't a first.[/QUOTE] Curiosity is the largest and most advanced rover that we've sent off-world, and they landed it using a technique that had never been tried before. When it's fully activated, Curiosity should give us better images and videos than we've ever seen from Mars, as well as more accurate and detailed samples of the environment.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;37186262]Curiosity is the largest and most advanced rover that we've sent off-world, and they landed it using a technique that had never been tried before. When it's fully activated, Curiosity should give us better images and videos than we've ever seen from Mars, as well as more accurate and detailed samples of the environment.[/QUOTE] Not to forget the laser that can vaporize and analyze rocks from 20 feet away. The only similarity between Curiosity and the other rovers we've landed on Mars is they all have 6 wheels.
[QUOTE=DTkach;37186232]Really fucking cool. Its so surreal, how it looks so similar to some places on Earth. Yet its a completely different planet. Insane. As awesome as it is, I have no idea why everyone is popping boners for Curiosity so hard. Is it cool? Hell yeah. But we've had rovers on Mars before. And they took pictures too, you know. This isn't a first.[/QUOTE] Curiosity has lots of firsts. [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=OvB;37186296]Not to forget the laser that can vaporize and analyze rocks from 20 feet away. The only similarity between Curiosity and the other rovers we've landed on Mars is they all have 6 wheels.[/QUOTE] It's like some alien monster-machine. Just imagine, what if some alien race sent an autonomous robot to Earth that shoots a powerful vaporizing laser at things. Wouldn't seem all that friendly :v: [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] Like, it's THE thing every sci-fi alien robot ever had. A goddamn laser gun.
I don't get why people think mars colonization is a bad thing. It's like 1492 but we don't have the opportunity to commit genocide. Even if we end up with some kind of awful coporate dictatorship like in thisispain's nightmares, [B]that's a perfectly acceptable price to pay.[/B] Humans have survived worse, the oppression is guaranteed to end in a finite amount of time, and it would be impossible for the entire human race to be wiped out by an asteroid impact or some other planetary-scale catastrophe. The worst that could happen is a massive loss of genetic diversity, which would suck but it wouldn't be a deathknell.
Let's colonize that shit
[QUOTE=LarparNar;37186362] It's like some alien monster-machine. Just imagine, what if some alien race sent an autonomous robot to Earth that shoots a powerful vaporizing laser at things. Wouldn't seem all that friendly :v: Like, it's THE thing every sci-fi alien robot ever had. A goddamn laser gun.[/QUOTE] Every time I see the background image for the rover's twitter I keep imagining it driving around JPL and vaporizing everything in its path. [t]http://i.imgur.com/muAUP.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE=thisispain;37175683]you can be poetic about it from a distance maybe the occasional tour more than that and you're just going to ruin it for everyone[/QUOTE] Shut up you complete and utter moron. Humanity is beautiful and complex, and even if it has destroyed life, its made up for it in so many ways. There is nothing to ruin on mars. Literally nothing. How can sending a man to mars hurt it? Even a full city on the planet wouldn't destroy anything. The planet is a wasteland, its a beautiful wasteland. Even if you cover it with cities there will still be lovely landscapes.
[QUOTE=LarparNar;37186362]Curiosity has lots of firsts. [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] It's like some alien monster-machine. Just imagine, what if some alien race sent an autonomous robot to Earth that shoots a powerful vaporizing laser at things. Wouldn't seem all that friendly :v: [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] Like, it's THE thing every sci-fi alien robot ever had. A goddamn laser gun.[/QUOTE] It needs a speaker that yells out [i]"DESTROY ALL MARTIANS"[/i] all day long. [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] What if we accidentally vaporize the only last living bacterium on mars with that thing. We will have become the monsters we created in scifi alien invasion movies.
[QUOTE=OvB;37186687]It needs a speaker that yells out [i]"DESTROY ALL MARTIANS"[/i] all day long. [editline]11th August 2012[/editline] What if we accidentally vaporize the only last living bacterium on mars with that thing. We will have become the monsters we created in scifi alien invasion movies.[/QUOTE] The bacteria be avenged, we'll all get a cold.
[QUOTE=BMCHa;37186637]Every time I see the background image for the rover's twitter I keep imagining it driving around JPL and vaporizing everything in its path. [t]http://i.imgur.com/muAUP.jpg[/t][/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/U2a1E.jpg[/img] In reality martians are real but just live in tiny microscopic civilizations. We've been invading and terrorizing them for decades and now we sent a super weapon. Their screams of fear are audible all around mars but since we never put a microphone on a rover their pleas fall on deaf ears.
When I get to Mars I'm gonna grow tobacco and introduce smallpox.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;37186744]When I get to Mars I'm gonna grow tobacco and introduce smallpox.[/QUOTE] Hey you know what. It just hit me, we could use Mars to mass produce produce once earth's food supply get's too short for the population. I'm not sure how good the soil is for crops, and the lack of water would need addressing, but maybe a few hundred years in the future it will be a possibility.
The hi-res version is up (kind of). Not all the images have been sent yet so there are a few black spots in the middle. The full JPEG is ~9MB, so I'll just link the page. [url]http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16051[/url]
[QUOTE=OvB;37186739][img]http://i.imgur.com/U2a1E.jpg[/img] In reality martians are real but just live in tiny microscopic civilizations. We've been invading and terrorizing them for decades and now we sent a super weapon. Their screams of fear are audible all around mars but since we never put a microphone on a rover their pleas fall on deaf ears.[/QUOTE] What's that from? Looks like CoC I'd like to see a microphone taken to Mars in order to hear the wind
[QUOTE=yazrak;37186960]What's that from? Looks like CoC I'd like to see a microphone taken to Mars in order to hear the wind[/QUOTE] Supreme Commander.
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