"With our current capability, NASA would struggle to keep a crew alive for six months on the White House lawn, let alone for years in a Martian yurt.
The technology program required to close this gap would be remarkably circular, with no benefits outside the field of applied zero gravity zookeeping. The web of Rube Goldberg devices that recycles floating animal waste on the space station has already cost twice its weight in gold..."
Fresh down from Ingenuity's 51st flight, it photographed all of Belva Crater with the rover on the rim of it. Rover tracks are also visible. At the time the photo was taken, Perseverance was around 180 meters (590 feet) from Ingenuity. Some EDL landing debris is also visible on the bottom portion of the image. This is likely some MLI (Mylar) blanket insulation from the descent stage.
Now that I have a new home on solarsystem.social, here's a new #introduction!
I am a #planetary scientist working at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (#IPGP) in France. My research uses the #gravity field, #topography, and #MagneticField of the planets to decipher their internal structure and geologic evolution. My favorite terrestrial body is the #Moon, but I also work with #Mercury, #Venus, and #Mars. Soon I will need to learn about #Psyche and the icy satellites of #Jupiter!
Visibility plot from estimated landing 51, together with ground profile along the line-of-sight.
Despite the ~220m distance, #Perseverance received the last image when #Ingenuity had landed; the new location of the #MarsHelicopter is more than 4m below the local horizon created by what I believe is Mount Julian, which is blocking the view
If I were a few years, err... decades, younger I'd be eager to do a PhD on UHF Land Mobile Radio propagation on #Mars 🤓 😍
"Elon Musk is without doubt the most succesful confidence trickster in all human history. Basically the L. Ron Hubbard of our day - only he's somehow managed to convince even the US government that sci-fi gobbledygook fantasies are worth investing in. He could choose to use his vast wealth to develop negative emissions tech, and help to save our existing biosphere. But he won't."
Why is this reported here as if it’s a sane idea? I couldn’t believe it when, a few weeks ago, we had dinner with friends and it turned out they thought Musk was great and that trying to live on #Mars was a good idea!! We have the most beautiful, beautiful planet 🌏 you can imagine right here, and then people think Mars (desolate, hostile, millions of m away) is better. It is just CRAZY stupid fantasy
Mission: ESA Mars Express
Instrument: HRSC
Orbit: 16638
Time: 2017-02-19
Created processing data from: https://archives.esac.esa.int
Product IDs:
HG638_0000_RE3.IMG
HG638_0000_GR3.IMG
HG638_0000_BL3.IMG
New location estimate for #Perseverance, about 110m to the north, very close to the rim of Belva Crater. Site number changed to 39, meaning there may be close proximity science, maybe a sample?
The map shows a guesstimated path with an intermediate stop. The green area is the field-of-view of the NAVCAM image used for the #localization.
Mission: #ESA#MarsExpress
Instrument: HRSC
Orbit: 17444
Time: 2017-10-12
Product IDs:
HH444_0000_RE3 Used as Red Filter
HH444_0000_GR3 Used as Green Filter
HH444_0000_BL3 Used as Blue Filter
Anyone reading Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" or any part of it quickly realizes that while the novels are full of technical details, there are very few maps and those that exist are very coarse.
Localization of the Transverse Highway crossing Valles Marineris, from #KimStanleyRobinson's #RedMars; the annotations are from the description of John Boone's drive from Argyre through Melas Chasma to Underhill and then Echus Overlook.
The fourth image shows some traces of the fallen Space Elevator carbon fiber cable, as described in reports received during that sol.
Localization of the Transverse Highway, crossing Valles Marineris, from #KimStanleyRobinson's #RedMars; the annotations are from the description of John Boone's drive from Argyre through Melas Chasma to Underhill and then Echus Overlook.
The fourth image shows some traces of the fallen Space Elevator carbon fiber cable, as described in reports received during that sol, near the end of the novel.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Mar 17, 2023 - Day 76 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 82
Game: M.A.R.S.
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Nov 21, 2021
Library Date: Nov 21, 2021
Unplayed: 481d (1y3m24d)
Playtime: 21m
M.A.R.S. is a free-to-play third person cover-shooter. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
This is a game with gameplay that feels like it came straight from the early 2010's... which is a problem for a game that was released in 2021.
A cover shooter in a world where Gears of War, The Division, and Outriders exist, has to bring something to the table in terms of gameplay that other cover shooters don't offer.
Technically, they've done that. Poorly animated characters, sluggish movement, and utterly woeful voice acting, is definitely something I haven't seen in the other cover shooters I've played, particularly all at the same time.
Some games are so bad they're entertaining; The developers of M.A.R.S. seem to have taken one look at the mountain of mediocrity, and decided to set up base camp about three feet up.