Landing on MARS....Anybody care?

I care...but we don't need no more stinking commemoratives

 

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If we're going to commemorate something, I humbly suggest the team that put those machines up there, not the machines.

Consider, for a moment, just a few of the achievements by the men and women of the Mars Exploration Program (MEP).

The landed a pair of RC cars somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000,000 miles away...by bouncing them in a cocoon of balloons no less...and proceeded to drive them hither and yon...not for the 90 days they had planned for...but for more than a decade.

When that first winter rolled around, they had no plan to handle it...the rovers should have reached the end of their life months ago. Did they write them off, grateful for what extra science they'd been able to do? Did they report to their bosses that it simply wasn't practical to try to keep them alive for the upcoming months?

They did not.

They found a way to reduce power consumption, and promptly drove the suckers to a south facing hill...where they captured just enough light to hibernate until longer days returned.

Eventually, one got stuck. Surely this was the end of its useful life, right? After all, it had lasted many years beyond its expected service time. It wasn't after all, like they could hook up a winch.

Again, the MEP team found a way. This tim they went out to their parking lot, and built a Mars analog, duplicating, as closely as they could (relying largely on their own observations over the previous years) the terrain, both in composition and features. Out of mothballs came one of the early rover models, which was promptly buried in the "Martian" terrain.

Weeks later, the team felt they had their best guess at how to free the stuck rover...so they sent the instruction up to the old girl. The command was, essentially, "gun it!"

Several hundred meters later, that very same rover would find the first inarguable evidence of water on Mars.

The other rover had her problems too...a wheel eventually locking up. Now, come on...surely THIS would end the rover's life, right? After all, the thing can't roll!

Nope. They turned it around, learned to drive backwards, and in a gloriously happy accident...just happened to dig up the first water ice ever seen on another planet...with the stuck wheel dragging through the dirt.

Somewhere in all of that, a man suggested that the next rover needed to be bigger, heavier, and badder than these two. And so, the race was on to find a way to land a small SUV on the planet's surface.

The suggestion, made in 1998, that we "dangle it from a hovering landing craft" was made...and promptly discarded as "entirely too silly".

In 2002, that same suggestion was selected as the method to be used to land Curiosity...and Rover on a Rope was born.

===========================

You know what all of these things mean?

They mean that the MEP folks get it. They get that ultimately, what makes us human is an unquenchable drive to learn more than we know now. We simply can not leave the unknown alone...we must go poke it with a stick and see what happens.

The most telling part of JFK's "man on the moon" speech was never that we would land a man there, and return him. it was that we would do so...and do the other things...because they were hard.

We don't lay down our stick because it's heavy...we get help. We don't stop poking because nothing happened...we poke harder. We don't give up after a single poke...we poke more.

The greatness of Man is that He always finds a way to learn more than He knows right now.

Yes, it's frequently difficult. Yes, there are almost always challenges. Yes, people get hurt, explorers die, equipment is lost. But we always find a way.

You want to commemorate something on a coin? Commemorate that. Commemorate the group of people that, more than any other in the last 30+ years, have reminded us of what it means to be human.

 

Actually I seriously doubt any astronaut could throw a coin hard enough even from orbit for it to reach escape velocity. Which means that it would eventually just fall back to earth and burn up.

 

The latest picture from mars!

 

Only because this is coin talk.
Here are a few quarters CALL SOMEONE WHO CARES.
As for Mars it no farther away from me than a mint 1909 s VDB penny.

 

Another latest pic :hail:

 

Incredibly sad but true.

 

That was the coolest and most optimistic thing I've read in quite a while....

 

I saw a special on the Science channel on DirecTV (love it!) that states categorically NASA's first manned mission to Mars is scheduled for the year 2025. It WILL BE a one way trip, and our first attempt at colonization. I've dreamt of the opportunity since I was a small boy, and since we were watching it I bluntly informed my girlfriend that I would go without a second thought if I meet the criteria and am accepted. That it had been a dream of mine as long as I can remember. She reminded me of the kids, and yes, it would be heartbreaking to leave them when they are 12 and 14. In the spirit of honesty I told her I'd still go. I was suprised when she only raised her eyebrows but was not upset.

I'd go. And help to create a new world!

 

+1

 

+1

 

a member of the team correlated the cost to that of a $7.50 movie for every single American. He said, "Now that's a movie I'd like to see!" Money well spent IMO. Costs way more than $7.50 to see a movie at the theater. And this 'movie' will last years!

 

I know its not what you meant by this phrase, but since you used it...

http://www.eventhorizontelescope.org/

I can hardly wait to see the first images of Sagittarius A* :high5:

 

Why thank you.

 

Just got this latest pic transmitted!
:thumb:

 

A few years ago there was talk of a NASA Coin Set from the Mint.

The planets were to be one ounce silver coins and the sun was going to be a one ounce gold coin. I was very stoked about these with that one ounce gold sun.

I forgot the year but I'm sure the Mint made something better like the Little Rock, Louis Braille or Boy Scout Commems (with a girl scout on it).

See now.....this is coin related.

 

There was a 1 hour programme on the Science Channel last night about the landing, all the technical work involved etc. It was actually very fascinating.

 

:foot-mouth: Martian coin ???

 

It was proposed for the 50th anniversary of the founding of NASA in 2008. We got the 2008 Bald Eagle and I don't believe they filled the second Commemorative program slot that year. It was proposed as early as 2005 and they kept trying to pass the NASA program each year though at least 2009 I believe but I don't think it ever made it out of committee.

 

NASA - Never A Straight Answer....