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Mars Curiousity Thread -- Minute to Minute Tracking

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mike said:
Credit has to go to george takei's facebook page where i saw this this morning
Click to expand...

Following George Takei's facebook page? LIKE (years ago i visited the boulevard in L.A with the stars on the pavement. i took one photo from the whole lot. who? DeForest Kelly - the doc in original star trek)
 
goggsmackay said:
Following George Takei's facebook page? LIKE (years ago i visited the boulevard in L.A with the stars on the pavement. i took one photo from the whole lot. who? DeForest Kelly - the doc in original star trek)
Click to expand...

When I first moved to los angeles, george was on the board of directors for the county public transport/bus service..absolutely true story...I wonder who he used as references, the federation?
 
goggsmackay said:
So he joined that board after his Star Trek fame?
Click to expand...

".... In 1972, Takei was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and in 1973 he ran for the City Council in Los Angeles, losing by just 1,647 votes. He served
ten years on the Southern California Rapid Transit District as it was planning and building L.A.'s rail system.

From George Takei

I heard him say several times including on "wait wait don't tell me" he was/is a self-proclaimed rapid transit geek
 
goggsmackay said:
Following George Takei's facebook page? LIKE (years ago i visited the boulevard in L.A with the stars on the pavement. i took one photo from the whole lot. who? DeForest Kelly - the doc in original star trek)
Click to expand...

"... Takei talks about the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Star Trek. He starts with a story about something that
happened the day before Star Trek VI opened in theatres. The TOS cast was at the (Grauman's) Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to ONLY write their names in cement. DeForest Kelley somehow
left out the "s" in his name, and got
back down to fix it, under the blinding lights of flashbulbs. Takei notes he is the only native Angeleno in the group; decides to just go for it and sink his hand into the cement, even though they told him not to. Shatner hurried
to do the same, and the rest of the
cast followed, with Nimoy doing so
with his hand in the Vulcan salute..."

From ontd_startrek: George Takei's autobiography
 
d03627d0-9442-14fa.jpg



b.t.w. Mars, Saturn and Spica are forming an almost perfect pyramid in the southwestern sky

Observe Mars near Saturn and Spica as Curiosity rover lands - National Astronomy | Examiner.com

No doubt hoagland will try to make an issue of that.
 
So this thing ( Curiosity Lander/Rover ) is supposed to have special high resolution cameras designed with James Cameron's help and yet most of the pictures I'm seeing are blurry or B&W. Also, it supposedly started taking pictures as it was on its way down after the heat shield separation, but we haven't seen any of those either. And where did the sky crane go? I haven't seen anything about it landing so what did it do? Just fly away and crash? That seems unlikely because it was sophisiticated enough to hover and lower the lander to the surface perfectly. So it obviously has the controls required for precision flight ... so where did it go? And why do we always get these crap photos? Where's Hoagland to get his rant in when you need him?
 
I think the B&W phots were just early lo-res ones requiring little bandwidth. Better phots are to come I think.
The sky crane supposedly dropped curiosity and then blasted up and away to get away from it. I imagine it was a use+dispose piece of kit like The Eagle in Apollo.
JPL website no doubt has all the details?
 
NASA's practice of rationing out specifics regarding current info is always frustrating. That being said, the "big boys" presumably think the red planet yet holds paradigm changing secrets. Tremendous resources have been allocated for the Curiosity mission. Reading over a list of Curiosity's instrumentation leaves me scratching my head. But you don't need a Phd in physics to see this craft is scientifically loaded for bear.

USI--I'm not an expert. But I don't much think JPL cares where the sky crane crashed as long as it was not on the rover. But yes--I expected more and better video by now as well.
 
boomerang said:
NASA's practice of rationing out specifics regarding current info is always frustrating. That being said, the "big boys" presumably think the red planet yet holds paradigm changing secrets. Tremendous resources have been allocated for the Curiosity mission. Reading over a list of Curiosity's instrumentation leaves me scratching my head. But you don't need a Phd in physics to see this craft is scientifically loaded for bear.

USI--I'm not an expert. But I don't much think JPL cares where the sky crane crashed as long as it was not on the rover. But yes--I expected more and better video by now as well.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any statements that say it the sky crane was actually designed to crash or any videos ( even animations ) that show it crashing. Besides why would they want to crash it when it's capable of such precision flight and carrying its own cameras? For all we know it's actually a whole separate flying probe that is doing some kind of secret work. Come on people where's that spirit of conspiracy! I'm going to question this until we get something more definitive.
 
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