I am offended! All of this money should have been spent on Creation Science research so we can all learn what sinners we are and in need of sending more money to preacher-millionaires! So Sayeth Ken Hovind. :)
The thing that impresses me the most about this, outside of the sheer nervous-energy geekery of WE LANDED ON MARS AND TOOK VIDEOS OF IT!! is that there’s no mystery about it all. Every single step was guided by research and learning that we humans have diligently built up over many years–nay, many generations–and carefully collected into a body of truly useful knowledge that enables us to reliably place this lander on an entirely different planet and (materials failures aside) to do so with a relatively high degree of certainty. Even getting the thing to Mars is not mysterious or unusually difficult. It’s been likened to “throwing a baseball in Seattle at a target in Dallas and hitting it dead on the bullseye”, but that’s not correct: we human engineers are far too aware of the magnifying effects of dynamic errors, and so we design the thing to be able to course-correct the whole way there. There was an entire NASA team whose only job was to take control of the ship after insertion into earth-orbit and to fly it to Mars orbit, where control was handed off to the landing team. If it were as easy as just throwing a ball, that flight team wouldn’t be necessary, but there they were, spending months watching the telemetry and guiding the little ship to its destination. It’s all so mundane at some level, and yet all so fantastic and amazing.
My father was a radio engineer in the 1950’s, and he helped created some of the body of antenna theory that we today consider to be basic stuff–but at the time it was brand new, cutting-edge research. He used to talk about the older engineers marveling at what he and the other “transistor hot-shots” were able to do, and he was rightly proud of it. In his later years, as a digital design engineer at Hewlett Packard, he himself marveled at the ingenuity of the new generation of engineers and the information processing techniques that they used. Today I am now approaching his age as he was then, and things like these NASA flight teams are tickling my sense of marvel. If you’d have told me in 1985 that I’d be watching video of Mars landings on a global information network (in between watching cute cat videos, of course) I’d have told you that you had been watching too many episodes of The Jetsons.
That’s a great video. I am awestruck that human beings can do such things. I was equally awestruck when we had the 50 years anniversary of the moon landing. However bad our age in many ways, that is one extraordinary things.
Also the historical moment – the ground control staff in masks and fist and elbow bumping instead of hugging or slapping each other on the back.
KB Player, one of the things that shocked me when I was in my Ph.D. program (in science) was how many of the students believed we should not be sending out space probes, putting men on the moon, etc. (None of the profs felt this way, or if they did, kept their opinion to themselves.) They believed we should put all money into feeding poor people – which is odd, since they were environmental scientists, and this would mean we couldn’t do any environmental work, either.
I tried to convince them that basic science is definitely worth doing, and also that we have enough money floating around the world to feed the people, we just need to find a way to get it out of Swiss banks and hedge funds and the like and into more useful pursuits. They listened about as well as TAs listen when you say girls don’t have penises.
This is my first viewing of anything to do with the landing on Mars, and it is awe-inspiring. Thank you!
Isn’t it though?
I am offended! All of this money should have been spent on Creation Science research so we can all learn what sinners we are and in need of sending more money to preacher-millionaires! So Sayeth Ken Hovind. :)
The thing that impresses me the most about this, outside of the sheer nervous-energy geekery of WE LANDED ON MARS AND TOOK VIDEOS OF IT!! is that there’s no mystery about it all. Every single step was guided by research and learning that we humans have diligently built up over many years–nay, many generations–and carefully collected into a body of truly useful knowledge that enables us to reliably place this lander on an entirely different planet and (materials failures aside) to do so with a relatively high degree of certainty. Even getting the thing to Mars is not mysterious or unusually difficult. It’s been likened to “throwing a baseball in Seattle at a target in Dallas and hitting it dead on the bullseye”, but that’s not correct: we human engineers are far too aware of the magnifying effects of dynamic errors, and so we design the thing to be able to course-correct the whole way there. There was an entire NASA team whose only job was to take control of the ship after insertion into earth-orbit and to fly it to Mars orbit, where control was handed off to the landing team. If it were as easy as just throwing a ball, that flight team wouldn’t be necessary, but there they were, spending months watching the telemetry and guiding the little ship to its destination. It’s all so mundane at some level, and yet all so fantastic and amazing.
My father was a radio engineer in the 1950’s, and he helped created some of the body of antenna theory that we today consider to be basic stuff–but at the time it was brand new, cutting-edge research. He used to talk about the older engineers marveling at what he and the other “transistor hot-shots” were able to do, and he was rightly proud of it. In his later years, as a digital design engineer at Hewlett Packard, he himself marveled at the ingenuity of the new generation of engineers and the information processing techniques that they used. Today I am now approaching his age as he was then, and things like these NASA flight teams are tickling my sense of marvel. If you’d have told me in 1985 that I’d be watching video of Mars landings on a global information network (in between watching cute cat videos, of course) I’d have told you that you had been watching too many episodes of The Jetsons.
But here we are!
That’s a great video. I am awestruck that human beings can do such things. I was equally awestruck when we had the 50 years anniversary of the moon landing. However bad our age in many ways, that is one extraordinary things.
Also the historical moment – the ground control staff in masks and fist and elbow bumping instead of hugging or slapping each other on the back.
KB Player, one of the things that shocked me when I was in my Ph.D. program (in science) was how many of the students believed we should not be sending out space probes, putting men on the moon, etc. (None of the profs felt this way, or if they did, kept their opinion to themselves.) They believed we should put all money into feeding poor people – which is odd, since they were environmental scientists, and this would mean we couldn’t do any environmental work, either.
I tried to convince them that basic science is definitely worth doing, and also that we have enough money floating around the world to feed the people, we just need to find a way to get it out of Swiss banks and hedge funds and the like and into more useful pursuits. They listened about as well as TAs listen when you say girls don’t have penises.