Mars rover Curiosity gets ready to blast its first rock NASA's nuclear Mars truck Curiosity is poised to start zapping its first rock to find out what it's made of, and is on its way to its first major science destination. First rock target for Curiosity The rover is just eight feet from a football-sized rock that's about halfway between its landing site and its first destination …
"...That rock looks a lot like a tiny pyramid..."
Just what I was thinking. Let's hope they've got a tiny Tom Baker standing by...
"The agency has nicknamed the rock "Jake Matijevic", after their colleague and surface operations systems chief engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory, who passed away last month." An agency spokesperson admitted, "We never really liked the bloke so we're going to blast the rock to smithereens!"
Never mind the "peew, peew" bit...how about that other Holywood abomination - the entirely visible laser beam in clear air/vacuum?
In dust/smoke/gas free environments there is nothing for the laser to bounce off, so the only visible aspects at the source and destination points. Yet, without fail, (in holywoodland) laser beams are seen as solid beams of colour.
And even better, in some films you can even see the beam travel. Even though it would be impossible for the human eye to detect the light in travel.
Did Charlie Bolden include a warning for all/any rock-shaped martians to take cover? If not, I guess the will.i.am broadcast should have cleared the area of any sentient life-forms.
If you were a Martian, what would you send in to check any invasive alien wild life?
Boulder-cam?
http://scienceray.com/biology/elephants-as-camera-crew
or beatle-cam
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17293563
If you stare long enough to a rock, the rock will look back into you!
We give "the Earth" a definite article because 'earth' is a word with many meanings, and so in a sentence the definite article is required to impart the gravitas - there is earth everywhere, but of the Earth, there is only one.
This isn't required with Mars - there is only one Mars (unless you got a Mars Duo) - so it is fine to say "The rover drove across Mars".
You wouldn't say "The rover drove across the London" or "The rover drove across the France". You would say "The rover drove across the UK" because 'UK' is a plural collection, but you wouldn't say "The rover drove across the England".
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Whereas if the rover trundled across some named substance of no particular or important location one does not say it trundled across the substance, but rather across substance or some substance.
To wit: the martians managed, when no one was looking, to place oil in the rover's way to make it's tyres slippery.
NASA spokesperson would say: "The rover trundled across oil and now it's tyres are very slippery", or perhaps "The rover trundled across some oil and now it's tyres are very slippery".
Spokesperson would not say "The rover trundled across the oil and now it's tyres are very slippery", as that implies NASA knows where the oil is. Further one might then ask NASA if this is the Black Oil of X Files fame and if so when will it arrive here? NASA, and indeed the entire USA gov't, are deeply commited to denying the existence of black oil.
I doubt the NASA spokesperson would say "The rover trundled across oil and now it's tyres are very slippery". However, it is very likely that the NASA spokesperson would say "The rover trundled across oil and now it's tires are very slippery", because, well, that's just what they would say at NASA.
In todays impatient 24hr rolling news world the glacial pace of the stone quarry rover will eventually drive all the sci fi dweebs mad.
They should just snap some panoramic landscape shots at different times of the day and run then through filters to look nice and alien. looking at rocks is dross when it cost billions, and anyway isn't the whole universe made of the same stuff? there is no such thing as kryptonite and all the other nonsense from comics.
"At 72 to 120-odd feet per day I say it was made to crawl."
I'd assumed that had something to do with the time it takes for commands to get to the rover. Imagine you send it the wrong way and didn't realise immediately. Doesn't it take something like 20 mins for transmissions to get to "the Mars"? *
Less chance of it flinging itself off a cliff before you can correct if it's moving at the rate of an asthmatic ant carrying some very heavy shopping.
* Sorry, Dr Ellen, I just couldn't resist! :-)
Anyone, anywhere, walking across this little pyramid in the desert would immediately presume, from the 90 degrees angles, the cut of it, etc. that it was man made. I mean cmon, just look at it!
Except that here, God, even here, in this nerd and geek dwelling, no one will actually dare say that out loud. Shame on you. Check the pictures from Mars, there's a ton of stuff that just cannot be natural. There's a geologist on facebook who started a group about it 'astro anomalies' https://www.facebook.com/groups/Secretplanets/ to document them.
History will remember how cowardly and therefore blindly we turned our minds away from the obvious truth streaming back to us in HD: Mars was inhabited.
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