I watched the live feed from NASA. Yes, I'm a geek as well, and think that type of project is incredibly cool.
The way they landed the rover on the planet is remarkable. The future of NASA was riding on it working, and it did. I'm really happy for them. It's always good when ridiculously smart people make something amazing work.
Talk about having a good job..
3 comments:
I watched that too last night. Was pretty remarkable. It's a shame we don't quite have the technology to just live feed that shit. Would have been sweet to see a First Person view from the craft itself as it went through the descent stages.
It was funny how they were going through so many checks and such as though anyone was actually doing anything. The robot was on auto pilot for the entire descent.
It amazes me the amount of planning and engineering and simulations that had to have gone on prior to sending the craft off on its journey. To calculate everything down to every possible adjustment that the craft would have to be able to make is just astonishing. Not to mention the how the craft was able to adjust on its own using radar after the heat shield was removed... it's mind blowing.
When it was expelling the rest of it's fuel and teetered off course, they were all, yup, that's what we expected it to do, see it's correcting now... Just fascinating.
I'm a little worse for wear today, having stayed up until 2am to watch all that, but it was well worth it. :)
Pretty cool shit.
Watched while I was at the office, used that real time simulation java app they had running as well so i could keep up with the phases of the landing.
What I find amusing is Sky Crane. Undoubtedly an amazing feat of engineering however the raw concept of the thing reads like something I would have made up as an 8 year old playing with Lego.
The should build a space station orbiting Mars, and then use it to deploy materials down to the surface to make a habitable facility.
They could drop stuff with parachutes and have robots go pick it up and build the thing.
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