Science/Environment NASA Mars rover landing

[Tasmaniac]

Interesting article in The Age, about the plutonium battery.

It's plutonium 238, out of weapons grade Plutonium (P 239) producing reactors. The only place they source it from. The yanks have shut down their reactor, so the stuff in Rover is from the Russians. Bought by NASA.

Lethal if you ingest it or touch it, but the radiation can't penetrate a sheet of paper. Good for 10 year or more as a battery.

The article also mentioned that there were severe negative environmental consequences from the waste from these weapons reactors. Nasty stuff.

 

[Tasmaniac]

I

How long before the radiation kills this thing?

It won't, the radiation can't pentrate a sheet of paper.

 

[rayven]

Please don't taint science with the filth of politics and economics.

Science taints politics and economics with its filth. American missile companies once liked the cold war tensions because it meant more money for them to play with space shit..

Just sayin..

It won't, the radiation can't pentrate a sheet of paper.

I aint talking about the radiation from the americans robot, I'm talking about what happens to all mechanical things when in a high radiation enviroment, like mars is reported to be..

 

[Tasmaniac]

I aint talking about the radiation from the americans robot, I'm talking about what happens to all mechanical things when in a high radiation enviroment, like mars is reported to be..

Voyager is still going okay, as are the satellites around Earth which still have fuel, so I'm pretty sure it won't be a problem. Huge problem for humans though.

 

[rayven]

Does this thing Hollywood and NASA put on mars have a geiger counter?

 

[Ghossein]

NASA spend billions on sending a radio controlled car to Mars to drive around? How many people are starving again?

The mars rover costed $7 per US citizen. If they're seriously this annoyed about it, donate $7 to charity.

But you're right. Instead of expanding humanity, broadening our knowledge about the universe, paving the way for future exploration into space, so that Earth isn't our only home, ending serious problems like over-population, food scarcity, water scarcity, and of course, a plan B incase man-made climate change tips over the edge and has serious environmental effects (which it is on track for). I'm assuming you live in a house, with a TV, internet connection, a computer, a stove, an oven, a microwave, lights, and electricity. Did you ever stop to think about how science has impacted your life? How all these inventions weren't just bought with money, but represent the innovation and ideas by physicist and engineers?

When our children look back at our era they won't say "why did they spend 0.4% of tax dollars on a space centre?", they'll say "whoa, you saw them when they first sent rovers to mars?!".

Think twice before you say science is a waste of time.

 

[rayven]

So science says we should rely on them to fix the problems they created with the same mindset that created them?

. , broadening our knowledge about the universe, paving the way for future exploration into space, so that Earth isn't our only home, ending serious problems like over-population, food scarcity, water scarcity, and of course, a plan B incase man-made climate change tips over the edge and has serious environmental effects (which it is on track for).

Good thinking 99!

 

[Ghossein]

So science says we should rely on them to fix the problems they created with the same mindset that created them?

that made absolutely no sense. why are you so anti-science? what did science ever do to you? (beside double your life expectancy).

 

[Ghossein]

Science taints politics and economics with its filth. American missile companies once liked the cold war tensions because it meant more money for them to play with space shit..

I aint talking about the radiation from the americans robot, I'm talking about what happens to all mechanical things when in a high radiation enviroment, like mars is reported to be..

do we give a s*** about the cold war?

 

[rayven]

t why are you so anti-science? .

I am not anti science, I am just asking questions of peoples view who think its divine, when its far from that.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Science taints politics and economics with its filth. American missile companies once liked the cold war tensions because it meant more money for them to play with space shit..

Just sayin..

Utter frog shit.

Scientific research doesn't fund itself out of thin air and then set nefarious agendas.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

So science says we should rely on them to fix the problems they created with the same mindset that created them?



Good thinking 99!

Science isn't an entity, it is a process.

You also seem to confuse the concepts of science, technology and R&D in the corporate sphere.

Technology can be a product of science. People are fallible. Fallible people, often in the political or corporate spheres, misuse technology or co-op scientists/science as a process for unethical or immoral ends. Often though, the morality of these actions is only determined with the benefit of hindsight, prescribing meaning or linking causal chains of events, that would have been unknowable to participants.

If you are really set on prescribing blame to "science", not the process, but as a cumulative retroactively existing continuum, then I think "science" and scientists collective efforts are far into the positive side of the ledger.

 

[Upton Sinclair]

I'm talking about what happens to all mechanical things when in a high radiation enviroment, like mars is reported to be..

Yeah! Stupid science. Spending all of those billions of dollars and not even thinking of something so obvious. Morons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening

I am not anti science, I am just asking questions of peoples view who think its divine, when its far from that.

I see what you're doing there

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JAQing_off

 

[Ghossein]

I am not anti science, I am just asking questions of peoples view who think its divine, when its far from that.

why is it humans are able to create amazing things and monkeys still live in trees?

i'll give you a hint, it's not politics or the economy.

you're probably that typical school kid who cruised through science with the "when am i going to need this in the real world?" mentality.

 

[bomberfan11]

So science says we should rely on them to fix the problems they created with the same mindset that created them?



Good thinking 99!

so your saying we should not progress and just die out is that what you want?

 

[Pie eyed]

I am not anti science, I am just asking questions of peoples view who think its divine, when its far from that.

The ramblings of an ignoramus?
Are you pissed?

I honestly thought you had a better grasp of reality.

(maybe your 10 year old has hijacked your BF account.. )

 

[Fire Storm]

Ah......the scientific advances of man. Driving quadzillions on driving a glorified jet hopper around on Mars. NASA needs more funding? Bahahahahahahaha.


How about more funding for schools so we don't get more dipsticks like you guys?

 

[hayes]

Ah......the scientific advances of man. Driving quadzillions on driving a glorified jet hopper around on Mars. NASA needs more funding? Bahahahahahahaha.


How about more funding for schools so we don't get more dipsticks like you guys?

Maybe the funding for that could come from the 20 billion dollars a year that's spent on air conditioning for the troops in Afghanistan.

 

[rayven]

I honestly thought you had a better grasp of reality.

Is it in November when NASA comes under the command of the Pentagon? Pentagon is war machine, military.

I see that a registry has been formed by the Americans to monitor the thousands of nationals who were under the path of the Fukishima cloud and record there health for the rest of there life. Some peoples grasp of reality over that issue is questionable, and not over politics.

I would like to draw a cartoon if i had the skills, I rekon it would be a really good one.
You'd have a drone hovering over a hole in the ground in a village, you'd have the religous looking dood holding back distraught women while the politician hands over cash to the guy in a suit and he hands over some of that to the guy in the white overcoat with his magnifying glass studying the hole in the ground from his bomb he designed. He's wondering how he could make it bigger with his profits ,while the guy in the suit works out how much of his share he can lend out. The law says 90%, but he rekons investing it the back into the scientist could be the go to circumnavigate that law and make more money.

 

[Ghossein]

Is it in November when NASA comes under the command of the Pentagon? Pentagon is war machine, military.

I see that a registry has been formed by the Americans to monitor the thousands of nationals who were under the path of the Fukishima cloud and record there health for the rest of there life. Some peoples grasp of reality over that issue is questionable, and not over politics.

I would like to draw a cartoon if i had the skills, I rekon it would be a really good one.
You'd have a drone hovering over a hole in the ground in a village, you'd have the religous looking dood holding back distraught women while the politician hands over cash to the guy in a suit and he hands over some of that to the guy in the white overcoat with his magnifying glass studying the hole in the ground from his bomb he designed. He's wondering how he could make it bigger with his profits ,while the guy in the suit works out how much of his share he can lend out. The law says 90%, but he rekons investing it the back into the scientist could be the go to circumnavigate that law and make more money.

good for you! want me to get you some crayons so you can get started on your drawing?

you realise there's more to science than bomb development, right? pick up any single item in your house and there's a 99.9% chance science helped make that.

all the smart people with high IQ's often become scientists, I don't understand why people like you with this highly political mindset which moves humanity no where think they have an equal opinion to them.

a small minority of scientists are hired to make bombs, yes, but do you really thing we're the ones that drop them?

they're recording their health in order to help learn of the effects of nuclear weapons on peoples healths. nuclear weapons which were dropped by politicians. the results recorded by the scientists will help more people realise that nuclear weapons need to be banned. that's the difference between politics and science.

i suppose you don't believe in evolution or the big bang either?

 

[Ghossein]

nasa lovers would love this:

 

[Upton Sinclair]

<snip>

People like NASA when they're studying other planets, not so much when studying this planet, sadly.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

rayven

Put your cue in the rack on this one.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

It doesn't look as if there's any recent traces of critters on our red neighbour:

Life on Mars? Non-Detection of Methane Suggests No Modern-Day Microbes

NASA’s Curiosity rover has sniffed the Martian atmosphere for methane and, so far, turned up empty. The much-anticipated measurement strikes a blow to the hope that previous hints of methane could have been an indication of life on Mars.



Methane, made of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms, is one of the simplest organic compounds. On Earth, 90 to 95 percent of methane in the atmosphere comes from biological activity, mainly methanogenic bacteria and cow farts. Geological activity such as water-rock interactions could have also produced the methane, which would also have overturned astronomers’ view that Mars is geologically dead in the modern age. Curiosity’s latest measurements seem to refute both ideas.

“So far we have no definitive detection of methane,” said chemist Chris Webster, instrument lead on Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laser spectrometer, during at NASA press conference today. SAM is like the rover’s “nose,” able to test the Martian atmosphere and determine what chemicals are present.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ocialmedia&utm_campaign=wiredscienceclickthru

Initial atmospheric analysis:

 

[ApplecrossWC]

It doesn't look as if there's any recent traces of critters on our red neighbour:

Yet another fantastic waste of money. Thanks Obama!