MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

"having worked for NASA, i am quite positive that they are not in this project for science, they in it for media attention & figurative dick enlargment. "

You don't know jack.

"BTW, an interesting report i read a few years ago suggested that the likely time period for a civilisation (not sure we have reached this stage yet) to go from colonizing it's 1st adjacent star to finishing off colonizing it's whole galaxy is about 5000 years."

Who the fuck cares? If you think someone is interested in your report you read, go tell your mama. God I'm sick of naysayers like yourself.

Lem out.

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

This is because there is no room left up there for them

regards, Oz

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

We will die much earlier. Growing civilisation needs more and more energy. We would be empty of earth's natural deposits.

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

hey! this night I had a wonderful dream!

i came on board orbital station of a new generation - totally new technology! it looked like a middle-sized factory clumped with stuff and antennas. but the special thing was "the living module" - a separate "shuttle" - an open construction of floor and curved pipes railings to hold on with our hands. so we got on it, there were the 2 cosmonauts who were explaining me how my future home functions.

we had to hold steady for the pipes - the shuttle was now hurled outwards in space. wow, the feeling is like a rollercoaster! they explained to me we are going into elliptic orbit around the station so that the gravitation of earth and sun is cancelled and we dont fall out of the module (its a dream, ok? ).

the earth was near - taking up about an 8th of the sky. i felt the danger with my skin - microgravity could slowly attract us out of the module if it didnt circle around that quickly.

apparently the air stayed with us too, heh-heh. the shuttle went all the ellipse and whirled back past the orbital station - under special towered coils -thay were giving us the acceleration. The next lap we didnt have to hold anymore - all forces were now countered by our movement so we were in total weighlessness (well, we were in space anyway, but this is a dream ok?). we could also wander outside the floor - there was air flying around with the module.

I understood the orbital station was in fact an interplanetary ship that would go outwards in space. with proper corrections of our tiny orbits we wouldnt feel the acceleration at all.

........wheeeeeeeeeze........... we went around the bottomside of the station almost touching a few towers - like an X-fighter past a Star-Destroyer.

the cosmonaut was explaining me that in this quickly rotating system of ours gold changes its properties. you could mould it with hands like clay. This was somehow connected with wigs and a bald man, heh

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... huh its a flying dream!
i can control the orbit parameters from my laptop! now there is the NetscapeNet downloading with ...wow! 1000 Ebits/s! The ExplorerNet is very slow outside the station LAN!

I downloaded an Iron Goblin for less than a second! Apparently the metal stuff from Earth dowloads on very high speed. But organic is clogging the connection.

Ok, now the goblin populated the small clayish (or maybe sandy?) planet.

Indeed, looks like we have also a small planet with about 2 meters of atmosphere and a tree on it (leafless though ). It is part of the mission scientific experiments programme and maybe for crew relaxation. There is gravitation on it, so the goblin was standing very firmly on the yellowish ground, thick with small craters.

He was probably thinking about building a Foundry.

My father told me to take care of the planet (because he knows about computers just enough to make a lot of troubles, which I have to correct afterwards).

But I hate to install software, tweak drivers, etc. So I was doing something else and when I came back - there was Virdjiniia - a colleague from the theater - on the laptop. She had downloaded a few more Orcs and set their Hero Characteristics. I remember looking at the properties of one iron goblin she named Bobomil - she wanted them to sound like Tolkien names (hm, Bobomil? well, this is a dream, ok?).
She was now wondering wether to d/l a Flower Pub or a Fairy City Hall for our planette. They had very sweet colorful icons about 200x300 - lain with flowers, birdies and bluesky.

PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-...

my roommate`s chinese alarm clock!
I lift my head to look at my chinese alarm clock - its still dark - God, it is 6oc!

PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-PIUU-...

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! SWITCH OFF THAT SHIT! I speak. He hears not. He is sleeping. Finally the landlord tumbles out of his room and turns on the lights. "Ha-ha-ha, Itzo is again going up early? Ho-ho-ho. Wake up! Wake up! Tra-la-la" - hidden in his big dirty white-yellowish beard he looks like Santa Claus...

FUCKING BASTARD, HOW COULD YOU CUT MY BEAUTIFUL DREAM!!!!!!

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Last night, I dreamt of this new intern here at the office. A blonde "petite", with nice legs, tight shirts and jeans, a round bum and small yet firm and perky breasts. I dreamt we were at a company get-together and drank a bit to much, so she asked me to come with her and then we..... *PWAAAAAAAAAAAP! PWAAAAAAAAAP! PWAAAAAAAAP!*

DAMNED! DAAAAAAAAAAMNED!

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

http://esa.capcave.com/esa/marsexpress/

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Formation flying in space by ESA:

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

gro what had u taken before u had that great dream? Calea zacatechichi (Dreamherb)?

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Within twenty years commercial space travel will be the norm, along with tourism in space (for the rich, probably similar in cost to taking a luxury cruise).

Within 50 years there will be a permenant space station on the mmon (probably owned by China). I can't remember exactly but I think it was China said it will have someone on the moon within 5 years.

Once the moonbase is setup then space travel will really take off, mainly because the moon has a huge source of He3 (which isn't available on earth) and the poles of the moon consist mainly of Ice (Ice = Oxygen + water + Hydrogen) (FYI, Japan has already dveloped a 50 person space shuttle for commercial use and are planning to feul it with He3).

Also with the moon having 1/6 of earth gravity it becomes much more efficient to use this as a base in which to construct and launch new spacecraft.

They are also looking at lots of different propolsion systems for spacecraft including Nuclear fusion, zero point energy (one for the physicist's amongst us) warp drive (strange but true) etc..........



Mal

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

zero point energy ? what is it ? never heard about something like this (maybe it's called diferently in portuguese)

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

I don't understand it.

http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/zeropointenergy-11.24.00.htm


Malin

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Some teories claims that vaccum isn't empty. Every moment there 'born' a pair nuclid antynuclid (for example electron and positon). They are anihilating, producing two fotons. Those fotons produce electron and positon and so on... If you can use only one nuclid, you can have energy from vaccum. Bot this is theory only.
Nowe we are testing ion propulsion systems.

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

WTG Swiss engineers too since they produces nearly all the electronic parts of European/Americans probes and satellites

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Just a little tehory to explain how little is our planet and how little is his life as the life of all our galaxy.
Everybody know what's the Big Bang, a incredible huge mass wich explode when it reach his stage of instability.
What has been studied since the telescope exists is the movement of the galaxies and what has been decovered is that all galaxy are decreasing theyr expansion speed, that's mean in a far far far future (quite far from the end of our sun too) galaxyes will be attracted newly in an single point (theory that the masses are attracted) anything will be pulverizzed again and a new big bang will be produced (other theory on infinites big bangs).

So humanity can fly to any other planet or galaxy they want...the result will be the same..

after to have examined with attention all those theories i ask myself why i'm still working and paying the taxes

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

vacuum energy is natural corollary from the Heisenberg principle, so its not "some theories". furthermore - its been tested in practice - the so called Casimir effect - AFAIK when you have 2 plates so close to each other that the particles with wave shorter than that distance are considerably less in number. Since only they can exist in that space - think of waves on shorter and longer string with fixed endpoints (in coordinate not perpendicular to plates the inside and outside are similar - so we can look at it as one-dimensional) - there appears a pressure from the greater number of particles on the outside.

is it clear?

this pressure (very strong attraction between the plates) IS energy. but utilizing it is totally different stuff.
leppers suggestion for separating particles from anti-particles is probably impossible at all (not even in theoretical experiment) since anti-matter does not react differently to any of the physical forces.

******

it is not yet clear if the universe will collapse back or expand forever since the measurements of universe mass are quite close to the separatrisse and the margin of error so far crosses over it. besides IMHO in astrophysics there are still way too many suppositions and fundamental theory may change in future.

but this really does not matter.
end of life is obvious corollary from unability to reduce entropy in a closed system. That is - if any system is not totally static, the energy present in it will be transforming into less organized form. Life itself is sustaining on that process of conversion of energy (or more accuratelly - it IS the process, just like anything interesting that is happening around us), so when you ultimately arrive at least organized state (total randomness) even the most advanced forms of it (say atom-mind ) will have to cease.

Of course, we suppose here that Universe is closed system - there is no "outside" from where energy may come from = energy cant appear from nothing. which seems not to be true in view of the vacuum stuff above. this is a problem yet to be tackled. quantum mechanics so far has turned upside-down many "macro"-concepts - this will be just another one. But I suspect that 1. the energy we gain, say, by Casimir effect comes from another part of the Universe (since another obvious corollary from Heisenberg principle is that a particle is taking up the volume of the entire universe)
2. the form of energy will be that unstructured unusable kind.


Disclaimer: Im not a physicist, most of the stuff Ive read in popular books, so there may be alot of things Ive present wrongly.

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

Anyone else here remember Space 1999 with Moonbase Alpha.

If so what were there spaceships called?


That is one program I wish Sci-Fi channel would re-run.

Mal

 

Re: MER-A "Spirit" has landed!

oho, so they have advanced further. the article isnt very good though - just mentions different effects and theories without thorougher explanation.