>> ^Confucius:

>> ^A10anis:
>> ^Deano:
C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!

A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...

NASA/Space/Mars program is intensely connected to public opinion. Better images, higher resolution etc.... more support more money. NASA should drop some scientific equipment and get some higher resolution images (that sir is what we call looking at the long-term game). Why do you think they release these images?


Oh, ok, lets drop the science to allow higher resolution. Stfu you idiot.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^A10anis:
>> ^Deano:
C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!

A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...

From Mechwarrior to the movie Aliens, the idea of a dropship is old hat. Hardly "radical".


Be quiet, your ignorance in citing a film, as opposed to the reality of such an achievement, is insulting to the genius of these men and woman.

>> ^A10anis:

>> ^Deano:
C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!

A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...


From Mechwarrior to the movie Aliens, the idea of a dropship is old hat. Hardly "radical".

>> ^A10anis:

>> ^Deano:
C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!

A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...


NASA/Space/Mars program is intensely connected to public opinion. Better images, higher resolution etc.... more support more money. NASA should drop some scientific equipment and get some higher resolution images (that sir is what we call looking at the long-term game). Why do you think they release these images?

Your video, Curiosity's Descent footage, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

720p full-color 10fps is coming from the mast cam soon. That's the duck's nuts of Mars video.>> ^A10anis:

>> ^Deano:
C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!

A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...

>> ^Deano:

C'mon NASA, 1080p, full screen!


A perfect landing using radically new technology, and you are complaining about the resolution!? Jeez, no pleasing some people...

Music reminds me of playing Descent 2.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Yep, that's what I'm suggesting. Though I guess by the way you've framed your questions you think I'm insane. The success rate of the balloon method is not bad. And getting two rovers down from a single launch is also something that's been successful. I don't think it's that unreasonable to consider that two rovers like Spirit and Opportunity could carry complementary gear, meet up and connect.

You're right that we don't send landers to Mars very often - that's why it's important to build on successful technologies with a proven track record of success to maximise our chances.

Thanks for the link - I've reviewed a lot of this stuff too though I appreciate more information even if it is delivered with a heavy dose of condescension.

Egos and personalities involved in science? Why would I ever think that - everything we do or say or write comes from a completely rational base right?

>> ^Fletch:

@dag

Why wouldn't you try and improve on that method instead of going with a completely, untested extremely complicated new method? I suspect personalities and nerd egos are involved.

Are humans supposed to bounce across the surface in a balloon when/if we ever send a manned mission? Do you think that success or failure of this landing precludes learning anything from it? We don't get to send landers to Mars very often, so the opportunity for testing new procedures and techniques has to be taken when it can. Every little thing is done for a reason. If you think it's the result of "personalities and nerd egos", there are hundreds of books, TV specials, and documentaries out there that detail just about everything NASA has ever done, from inception to success or failure, as well as the people and personalities involved, that I think will change your mind. Here's a good place to start. Great book.

I understand that the sheer size of this rover (small car) makes it too big for a single bouncing-ball drop, but why not then, do two and let them come together and connect on landing?

Assuming you are serious...
The success rate of Mars missions is not good. On top of that are budget and launch window considerations. Are you really suggesting that TWO separate pieces be launched, have them both fly 150 million miles to Mars, enter orbit, BOTH successfully land (and land close enough they can find each other), find each other, and then connect somehow to make one rover just so they can use ballons? Really? Talk about complicated... It would take an incredibly huge nerd ego to even ATTEMPT to sell that idea. Even a single launch with two pieces on board would rely on the success of two completely separate and complicated landings and a meet-up before the rover mission could even begin. This also means the weight of each half of the rover would have to be reduced so two separate landing systems can be included. Less room for instruments. Less science. Anyhoo, this system is not so different from the previous rovers. They weren't just dropped from a parachute. The atmosphere is too thin for a parachute alone. RAD (rocket assisted descent) motors brought the rovers to a near dead stop about 50 feet above the surface and they were released. This landing also calls for more precision, as the landing zone is much more specific.

@dag

Why wouldn't you try and improve on that method instead of going with a completely, untested extremely complicated new method? I suspect personalities and nerd egos are involved.

Are humans supposed to bounce across the surface in a balloon when/if we ever send a manned mission? Do you think that success or failure of this landing precludes learning anything from it? We don't get to send landers to Mars very often, so the opportunity for testing new procedures and techniques has to be taken when it can. Every little thing is done for a reason. If you think it's the result of "personalities and nerd egos", there are hundreds of books, TV specials, and documentaries out there that detail just about everything NASA has ever done, from inception to success or failure, as well as the people and personalities involved, that I think will change your mind. Here's a good place to start. Great book.

I understand that the sheer size of this rover (small car) makes it too big for a single bouncing-ball drop, but why not then, do two and let them come together and connect on landing?

Assuming you are serious...

The success rate of Mars missions is not good. On top of that are budget and launch window considerations. Are you really suggesting that TWO separate pieces be launched, have them both fly 150 million miles to Mars, enter orbit, BOTH successfully land (and land close enough they can find each other), find each other, and then connect somehow to make one rover just so they can use ballons? Really? Talk about complicated... It would take an incredibly huge nerd ego to even ATTEMPT to sell that idea. Even a single launch with two pieces on board would rely on the success of two completely separate and complicated landings and a meet-up before the rover mission could even begin. This also means the weight of each half of the rover would have to be reduced so two separate landing systems can be included. Less room for instruments. Less science. Anyhoo, this system is not so different from the previous rovers. They weren't just dropped from a parachute. The atmosphere is too thin for a parachute alone. RAD (rocket assisted descent) motors brought the rovers to a near dead stop about 50 feet above the surface and they were released. This landing also calls for more precision, as the landing zone is much more specific.

Just a few decades ago, most scientists thought the idea of asteroids crashing to Earth to be ludicrous. Today, this same idea isan accepted fact. Not only do asteroids fall to Earth, but more are being discovered every day. Yesterday, one of these newly-discovered asteroids just buzzed Earth. Coincidentally, this comes just days after NASA said that thenear-Earth asteroid population was larger than previously thought.

Monday, asteroid 2012KP24, which is about 69 feet across, came within about 32,000 miles ofEarth, well within the Moon’s orbit. Yesterday, asteroid 2012KT42 came within a mere 9,000 miles of Earth. In a fact thatmay be especially disconcerting tosome, the time span between discovery and close approach for the second asteroid was only a day! Talk about next to no warning.

Now for the good news: the asteroids were small and even if either were to collide with the Earth, they may not even have been large enough to survive the descent through the atmosphere,burning up in a spectacular fireball instead. Still, though, the fact that an asteroid can sneak up on us out of space with only afew days notice is the troubling part of this whole situation.

It is a perfectly logical idea that an asteroid could, one day, destroy life as we know it on Earth. The good news is that scientists are busy developing plans to avert doomsday. The problem is this: in these doomsday prevention plans, the time frame for a response is typically, at the least, months, notdays. With only a couple of days notice and with current technology, it would probably be impossible to do anything to save the planet and our civilization.

Read more: http://scienceray.com/astronomy/pair-of-asteroids-justbuzzed-earth/#ixzz1yT02pGAK (watch for pop-up ads)

I got hooked on Vice ever since watching Shane Smith doing coverage on North Korean labor camps in Russia (http://www.vice.com/vice-news/north-korean-labor-camps-full-length). This guy always seemed to know what was going on and what kind of games the people were trying to play on him, despite him coming from a non-native culture. I've never seen a Westerner fully understand the intricate socio-political games the locals play except for Shane Smith (http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3).

Not even Lisa Ling, who is of Asian descent, was able to fully grasp what the North Koreans were thinking or behaving a certain way when in front of a camera. The documentary she did on North Korea really lacked fundamental understanding of North Korean life and focused on sensationalist stuff. It was really disgusting (http://youtu.be/A_268_pBvPs). Shane on the other hand focuses more on how power and economy works in the given environment. He sees the situation from multiple angles, identifies where the motive is coming from, rather than just taking in everything as fact (which most of young Vice correspondents does), then starts playing the game with the locals. The man really is intelligent.


I've read a NYTimes article about Shane Smith some time ago wanting to be a playboy millionaire like Tom Freston lol (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/fashion/19upclose.html?pagewanted=all)

Also there's a whole Vice episode about the company and Shane Smith's background. I'm watching it right now (http://www.vice.com/spike-spends-saturday-with/shane-smith-part-1)

In reply to this comment by geo321:
They go out of their way to do edgy topics though. I think you're right a bunch of the docs I've watched from them have gone nowhere. Like they gave an ambitious person a camera and said "Go!" . But more than not they do good docs. My biggest problem with Vice is their site is shit and they haven't figured out how they want to distribute their content online. They DCMA other people posting their stuff pretty quickly but don't post their own stuff themselves in a good way if at all. I heard the owner himself say his website is shit. The new youtube channel isn't very good either. My impression is that he doesn't care, but maybe it's just him becoming a billionaire and the documentary side of his empire not being a priority.

It doesn't follow, though. The evidence that proves micro-evolution does not prove universal common descent. The evidence for micro-evolution would be evidence for macro-evolution if it could also prove UCD. It is one thing to say species change, or even that they can change into other species. It is quite a different thing to say that all species evolved from a common ancestor. That goes far beyond what you can prove scientifically.

This also is not about drawing an imaginary line about how much change can occur; it has to do with the amount of information in the genome. For bacteria to man evolution, a significant amount of information has to be added to the genome. The information in the bacteria genome, no matter how you shuffle it around, will never produce anything more significantly complex than itself. So then the question is, how does this information get added to the genome? Many people at this point will say "mutations!", but the problem with that is, we have never seen a mutation give rise to an increase in functional complexity. If they do, they are so compartively rare as to completely invalidate evolution as a theory. There simply wouldn't be enough time to account for the millions of changes required.


As the main mechanism for adding information into the genome, you would think that there would be clear evidence to support its actually happening..but you would be wrong:



So these are a few reasons why I do not buy into the evolutionary paradigm. The way it is presented to the public is as a proven fact, but when you start analysing the data and not just listening to the conclusions, you find a giant mess with no clear answers. You also find a chorus of true believers who just know its true and interpret all of the data through the conclusion. They see everything through those glasses and thus that is the way everything looks to them.
In reply to this comment by GenjiKilpatrick:
How do you reconcile accepting the science that substantiates micro-evolution.. but disregarding the SAME SCIENCE that substantiates macro-evolution.

It's sorta like if I said: "I accept the evidence for the divinity of Jesus. But I refuse to accept that Yahweh exists"

If it follows that: Divinty of Jesus = Divinity of Yahweh.

Then it must follow that: Evidence of Micro-evolution = Evidence of Macro-evolution.

How do you reconcile this without talking in circles?

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.