It's a simple point of money spent, not the rest of the situation.
Can you place a value on what scientific discoveries will be made through the NASA landing?
FOR SCIENCE! A Thread about Curiosity Rover and Nasa and only about the Curiosity Rover and Nasa
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Can you place a value on what scientific discoveries will be made through the NASA landing?
Explore Mars : http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/explore/curiosity/
Necronic
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The problem is that the olympics bring in money incredibly fast. Like, within the same time frame that the money is being spent. Also the value of it is very direct and measurable. Ticket sales, licensing deals, etc. Even indirect value, like how much money a foreigner spends in country overall while going to the olympics, is pretty measurable. It's not unrealistic for the Olympic games to actually bring a monetary profit to the country hosting it. That could never be said about the Nasa mission.
The value of the NASA mission is far more ephemeral. Not that it isn't a priceless project. Just saying that the chart linked is very misleading.
I've heard that 1984 Los Angeles was the last Olympics to turn a profit. My guess on that, is most of the venues from 1932 survived. Also being a town the size of LA they had enough sports complexes to host the games with out all the construction.
Necronic
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We also spent more on the federal highway system.
I actually just read an article on that. Apparently the Olympics were so expensive that there was only one city willing to do it: LA. And they had really major stipulations like refusing to build stadiums and severely limiting public funding.
Beijing also turned a profit on the games, if you're willing to believe them.
The only reason I believe the LA games made money, is because a friend received a check for the volunteer work he did.
Necronic
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Here's the article. Interesting read.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/are-the-olympics-profitable.html
http://news.discovery.com/tech/are-the-olympics-profitable.html
Dave
Staff member
By the way, I've had a couple of reports that this was more suited to the Olympics thread than the science thread. But at the same time it is a comparison of science vs. sport so it does kinda fit. So for now I'm allowing it to stay as it shows the priorities our government has. Note I didn't say the American public, because I think we've seen that there is still great interest in the space program.
Ultra-high Res pictures are now coming in. Panoramic view being contructed : http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia16051_figure_1_raw_smaller-full.jpg
For those interested, Obama called up JPL this morning : http://www.space.com/17071-obama-calls-nasa-mars-rover-landing-team.html
Close up view of the ground... doesn't look like Mars a whole lot does it? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00003/mcam/0003ML0000082000E1_DXXX.jpg
Every Mars Mission we've launched... or attempted to : http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars_15001.gif
For those interested, Obama called up JPL this morning : http://www.space.com/17071-obama-calls-nasa-mars-rover-landing-team.html
Close up view of the ground... doesn't look like Mars a whole lot does it? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00003/mcam/0003ML0000082000E1_DXXX.jpg
Every Mars Mission we've launched... or attempted to : http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars_15001.gif
GasBandit
Staff member
People need to unclench.
-reads title, posts different type of science news anyway-
Old news at that, but the more I read about the Kepler system the more amazed I am we think we're the only life in the Universe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8937466/Nasa-discovers-new-Earth-Kepler-22b.html
Old news at that, but the more I read about the Kepler system the more amazed I am we think we're the only life in the Universe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8937466/Nasa-discovers-new-Earth-Kepler-22b.html
Sometimes when I read about some of these planetary discoveries, I feel that the scientists are talking out their collective asses. Because we see a slight twinkle and wobble in a pinhole of a star, we extrapolate that the planet has water, mild temperatures and the actual size of the planet.
Dave
Staff member
I wonder if someone from the Canis Major galaxy is checking out Earth's twinklebobble. Aw yeah!
The twinklebobble allows us to estimate/calculate what kind of mass, size and orbit a planet would need to have to cause it.
Changes in the spectrum of radiation of the star at the same time as the twinklebobble give some indication as to what elements are possibly on the planet (hence "it has water"). We can't/don't know if it's actually habitable (hence "if it has land"). "Mild temperatures" is a bit of an asspull; the average temperature is supposedly 22°C (which is about 7°C warmer than Earth, so even if it was pretty much a mirror image otherwise it'd be mostly covered in zones too hot for comfortable human life), but that doesn't say much about conditions there. It's perfectly possible that it's an ocean-covered planet, wrecked with 150+ kph winds all year long, and far too warm for us to survive.
That aside, there's some serious bad-science-I-think-it-works-that-way-cause-I-read-Wikipedia going on in the comments there. Size =/= mass =/= gravity on surface =/= gravitic force.
Dave
Staff member
Update!!!
Mars rover finds something "Earthshaking".
They won't say what it is because they want to double & triple check their measurements before announcing. Could it be...evidence of microscopic life?
Mars rover finds something "Earthshaking".
They won't say what it is because they want to double & triple check their measurements before announcing. Could it be...evidence of microscopic life?
They found John Carter.
They did this with the Mar meteorite sample too. It's bloody annoying.
It is like the local news, "There is something that's killing you, IN YOUR KITCHEN RIGHT NOW, tune in at eleven to find out what."
fade
Staff member
I see what you're saying, but you fill up your tank everyday with gas from crude oil that was discovered with nothing more than a slight variation in a sound wave. From that, I can tell you how deep, how big, how wide, (sometimes) how profitable an oil reservoir is.
Curiosity celebrates it's first year on Martian soil! And it sung "Happy Birthday" to itself on mars. No word as to whether anyone was listening, or whether the RIAA has jurisdiction over Mars and if NASA paid royalties for the use of the copyrighted tune.
1. We can land a 2 ton (1,814kg) car sized object on mars gently as you please. Engineers who monitored the landing were alarmed that the spacecraft landed slightly more gently than expected, and after a year of study concluded that there is a gravity anomoly in the area, and next time they will have to taken into account gravitational maps of Mars.
2. Evidence of the building blocks necessary for life as we know it exists, suggesting that Mars could have supported life at one point in its past.
3. The carpet doesn't match the drapes. While Mars is a redhead, one need only drill a little into the surface to expose its gray interior.
4. The atmosphere, currently thin and inhospitable, was about 100 times more dense than Earth's several billion years ago.
5. Instruments collected radiation info during the trip to Mars, and found even in a shielded spacecraft astronauts would be exposed to too much radiation during the trip. They are going to have to shorten the trip, or increase the shielding, probably both, before we can consider manned missions to Mars
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/innovation/mars-curiosity-anniversary/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
Five things we learned since this time last year:
1. We can land a 2 ton (1,814kg) car sized object on mars gently as you please. Engineers who monitored the landing were alarmed that the spacecraft landed slightly more gently than expected, and after a year of study concluded that there is a gravity anomoly in the area, and next time they will have to taken into account gravitational maps of Mars.
2. Evidence of the building blocks necessary for life as we know it exists, suggesting that Mars could have supported life at one point in its past.
3. The carpet doesn't match the drapes. While Mars is a redhead, one need only drill a little into the surface to expose its gray interior.
4. The atmosphere, currently thin and inhospitable, was about 100 times more dense than Earth's several billion years ago.
5. Instruments collected radiation info during the trip to Mars, and found even in a shielded spacecraft astronauts would be exposed to too much radiation during the trip. They are going to have to shorten the trip, or increase the shielding, probably both, before we can consider manned missions to Mars
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/innovation/mars-curiosity-anniversary/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
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