MARS...Let's Go!

[Mini_B]

MARTIANS have WMD and the US must seize the planet and implement a governing body for the protection of mankind. MARTIAN resistment can be expected...planet earth will be on high alert for the next light year. Anyone caught in a flying saucer without their seatbelt will be fined.

[AssKissinger]

MARS FOR KIDSHit It Girls

[Taro Toporific]

... all night dancing under the moon chanting, "HEAD SEX and WELFARE CHECKS" so wigged-out ...

OK! If you have QuickTime VR these are the ULTIMATE pix to get "wigged-out" on.

First fullscreen High Resolution QTVR from Mars
http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen3/f2_mars.html
Click in image hold your mouse button down and drag all the way around - Zoom in with SHIFT... Zoom out with CTRL

[ramchop]

Nasa

SPIRIT UPDATE:
After a Sunday drive, the rover arrived at the rock Adirondack where it will pause to find out what the rock is made of. The rocks Sashimi and Sushi weren't chosen because they didn't have good surfaces for grinding.

Sashimi and Sushi

[Taro Toporific]

Nasa

...The rocks Sashimi and Sushi weren't chosen because they didn't have good surfaces for grinding.

Sashimi and Sushi

"Sashimi" looks like shark fin and "Sushi" is most definitely an Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL.

[Caustic Saint]

"Sashimi" looks like shark fin and "Sushi" is most definitely an Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL.

A who to the what roll?

Come across the sea to the real west side and have some kimbap.

[Taro Toporific]

"Sashimi" looks like shark fin and "Sushi" is most definitely an Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL.

A who to the what roll?

Come across the sea to the real west side and have some kimbap.

As many a FG has "discovered" in the States while trying to order in Japanese, most sushi shops in the States are owned by Korean and Taiwanese. I take it that the Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL is actually a kimbap.

[Caustic Saint]

"Sashimi" looks like shark fin and "Sushi" is most definitely an Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL.

A who to the what roll?

Come across the sea to the real west side and have some kimbap.

As many a FG has "discovered" in the States while trying to order in Japanese, most sushi shops in the States are owned by Korean and Taiwanese. I take it that the Avocado CALIFORNIA ROLL is actually a kimbap.

It's a variation on it, I'm sure. But to confuse things even further, what the Japanese call onigiri



is called "triangle kimbap" in Korea.

[Taro Toporific]

Nasa
SPIRIT UPDATE...

NASA Unable to Communicate with Mars RoverJan 22, 1:05 PM (ET)
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) -NASA scientists said on Thursday they had lost contact with the robot rover Spirit on Mars and were unsure what had caused the problem.
Spirit project manager Pete Theisinger told a news briefing that there was a "very serious anomaly" in communications with the six-wheeled craft, which landed on Mars on Jan. 3 on a planned three-month mission to explore the geologic history of the planet.

[Dood_Mon_Dang_]

The last image sent from the rover:

[kurohinge1]

The last image sent from the rover ... (pic)

Great work !

I suspect that they just need to change the batteries in the remote ...



or you guys could be right ...

[Dood_Mon_Dang_]

Linky

Apparently it's working again. Or so sez Mr. Science Guy...

[ramchop]

BBC

Methane lives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be being constantly replenished.

There are two possible ways to do this. Either active volcanoes, but none have yet been found on Mars, or microbes.

[NeoNecroNomiCron]

Correction 3 ways: Martian cows farting.

[ramchop]

Correction 3 ways: Martian cows farting.

Cows farting = microbes

[AssKissinger]

Not only are they not making any plans to go to Mars but they need 16 years to get back to the moon.

Under Bush's plan, a robotic space probe could go to the moon as early as 2008, but no Americans are expected to travel there before 2020.

That's not a typo.


I predict that China will put the first person on Mars.

[kurohinge1]

... I predict that China will put the first person on Mars.

Maybe they already have ...

[AssKissinger]

TANEGASHIMA, Japan - Fifteen months after a liftoff ended in a spectacular fireball, a Japanese rocket roared off its launchpad and placed a satellite in orbit Saturday, putting Japan back in the race with rival China to become Asia's leading space power.

Give me a fucking break. China put a man in space. I know satellites are important for technological advances on earth but ultimately space is about human exploration.

Q: How man people has Europe (besides the cool ass Russians) put into space?

A: Zero

[AssKissinger]

Japanese officials say they are not in a space race with China. But in a major policy switch, a government panel last year recommended that Japan begin studying the possibility of establishing its own manned space program.

Now that's what seperates the men from the boys.

[dimwit]

TANEGASHIMA — A domestically made H-2A rocket with a new multifunctional transport satellite was launched successfully from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on Saturday

When I first read the story I thought it said 'malfunctional' rather than 'multifunctional' such are my expectations of the Japanese Space Program.

[Mulboyne]

The Space Agency has the bit between its teeth now
Channelnewsasia: Confidence restored, Japan aims for station on the moon in 2025
Japan's space agency, fresh from its first satellite launch since a 2003 failure, aims to put a manned station on the moon in 2025 and to set up a satellite disaster alert system. "We will include it as one of the future goals in our new long-term vision, which we are going to submit with the government's Space Activity Commission by the end of March," said an official with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
By 2015, the space agency also wants to establish a system that would transmit disaster information via satellites to mobile telephones on Earth, he said. "We are still compiling our long-term vision. There are many things we want to include," said the official, asking not to be named.

[AssKissinger]

Oh Japan wants to control the moon

TOKYO - Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a manned space shuttle within the next 20 years, a newspaper report said Monday.


Japan's space agency, JAXA, is drawing up plans to develop a robot to conduct probes on the moon by 2015, then begin constructing a solar-powered manned research base on the planet and design a reusable manned space vessel like the U.S. space shuttle by 2025, the Mainichi Shimbun said

On the planet? Anybody got any idea what the Hell they're talking about?

[Kuang_Grade]

While I'm sure that plenty of people at the space agency are dreaming up various "Plan Z"s (the original anti-Gamera plan), surely the must know by now that support by the female youth market could be vital for any concrete support for their bigger plans. Fashionable space race inspired clothing could result in higher funding for space programs.

Sylvia Anderson designed many of the outfits for Century 21 productions, including such memorable outfits as this very anime friendly moongirl uniform.



And it seems that there are already some J appreciation of these outfits

[Crambo]

[Ketou]

Could be a translation mistake.

[Captain Japan]

I was casually talking to my boss (in the construction biz) a few years ago about what market the company might turn to next in looking for business. "The moon," he laughed, "there's nothing else left."

He laughed but he wasn't joking in that the government is running out of places in which to hire (and ridiculously overpay in what are really just hopeless and neverending subsidies) Japanese construction companies to pour concrete.

The dark side of Japanese life
Taipei Times review of Dogs and Demons

The country's worst problem, Kerr believes, is government-subsidized construction. That there is a reason for this -- private gain for well-placed individuals -- doesn't need saying. This is why concrete has become a national obsession. While the Japanese continue to believe they revere nature and hold the land itself to be sacred, rivers throughout the country have been forced into ugly concrete beds, and there are even plans to lay concrete on the moon. "It won't be easy, but it is possible," said the general manager of one of Japan's largest companies' space systems division in 1996. "It won't be cheap to produce small amounts of concrete on the moon, but if we make large amounts of concrete, it will be very cheap."

I don't think the project will ever get off the ground (sort of like the Maglev) but it will indeed waste boatloads of cash and create jobs. That's all this is ever really about.

[kurohinge1]

There will be some OH & S issues before they get a solar radiation deflector working ...

Lunar Shields: Radiation Protection for Moon-Based Astronauts

A team of researchers is looking to the moon to develop the tools future astronauts may need to ward off potentially life-threatening levels of space radiation.

Currently mid-way through their NASA-funded study, the researchers are working to determine whether a set of electrically charged shield spheres atop 40-meter masts could deflect radiation from a populated moonbase.

If it proves possible, such a radiation-proof screen - called an electrostatic shield - could protect astronauts from the long-lasting, and possibly fatal, radiation hazards of spaceflight beyond the Earth's magnetic field ... more

[Buraku]

But A Shuttle To Where?

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=44ECD8AD-8E98-4FF1-8242-4BF21D157975

The agency remains hemmed in by inadequate budgets and public indifference bordering on boredom over the program. These limitations raise serious doubts over the chances of achieving the lofty goals announced by the Bush administration of returning astronauts to the moon by the year 2015, followed by visits to Mars. These tasks are far beyond the reach of both the technology and the current rate of investment in NASA's manned space program.

[AssKissinger]

Nice link.

I was wondering if there was something I didn't understand about this mission because why aren't more journalists saying the same thing. The American and Japanese media are making such a fuss about this you'd think they were at least moving forwards and not backwards. I'll probably have to read a book on it to really understand why NASA can't do now what it could do thirty years ago. Btw, I think blowing up that comet was gay.

[kurohinge1]

There's at least 3 major problems they need to overcome before they can get us to Mars:

1. Radiation
2. The adverse effects of zero gravity on human bodies; and
3. Bad TV reception (it's a long way to Mars)