Mars Landing

[Jedd]

I read in the paper today that skeptics of the original moon landing are now saying that the landing of NASA's new rover, "Spirit," is also a fake. Apparently the Mars landscape looks like the Arizona desert, and some simple modifications on PhotoShop could produce the footage NASA claims to be the Mars landscape. Many are even upset that they didn't do a better job with the fake. What do you guys think? Btw I voted the top one.

[DarkerLine]

2nd to top. If they really wanted to they could fake it, but there's no real reason for them to do it (or if there is we know nothing about it).

[yugniht]

I say give me a break. I'm not suprised it's the same people. Face it, we landed on mars, and took actual photographs. This conspiricy shit has grown old. I saw a show on the discovery channel that disproved all the claims that conspiricy theorists said about JFK. This sounds like something just to make headlines and sell papers.

"wow, it LOOKS like the arizona desert, after all, nothing resemble anything else, it must be a fake! Conspiracy! <points finger>" =/

[DarkerLine]

Well, there have always been people wanting to prove space travel a fake since 1957. There are even people who say that nothing was ever actually sent up in space, that it is all made up by the government whose only goal is to waste billions of dollars making fake shuttles and pretending to launch them.

[shadowing]

I think it's a conspiracy. the rover landed to kidnap aliens and use them to create a death ray.

[Alan]

Anyone who thinks that shuttles have not been sent into space is a loon. How would we have astronaughts for ham radios to talk to? How would communication be possible across the world?

[AlienCC]

Throughout the experience of my life I have learned that All good things come with opposition. With that knowledge I am now inclined to believe they must have really landed on Mars. But beside the point of that, who really cares. We should be more focused on solving our small problems (hunger, hate, etc.) before we try time travel, extended exploration and such in space.

--AlienCC

[shadowing]

Why do you even care AlienCC? Is it because you used to live on Mars? Anyway, it's a conspiracy.

[AlienCC]

[Arcane Wizard]

"Probably, why would they fake it?" and "Who cares?" but I only voted the first.

Besides, everybody knows we only got the technology to travel in space from the monkeys:

[tr1p1ea]

HHmm... i dont think that the mars landing was fake ... because there was no reason to fake it ... i mean there was no 'race' this time ... ?

As far as the looner one goes ... well i dont know. It isnt a matter of us not having the technology ... but the fact that the US wanted to beat Russia SO BAD!!!!

Meh ... who cares anyway .

[NETWizz]

I am sure it was real; I saw a TV show on all that went into building it.

Millions were spent figuring out how to fold it, how to make the pyros work, making the parachute work in low air pressure, figuring out how the rocket will slow its decent, figureing out how the airbags work...

What I do not understand is why they landed it on the 2nd and yestederday just got around to driving it off the pad. Also, how does it contact earth. I mean to broadcast a signal from mars to earth would take extrordinary amounts of power. Do we have a satellite in Mars' orbit? i cannot imagine broadcasting directly.

Mars is closer to the sun, so the solar pannels probably work a little bit better than they do on earth, but still, it would take many thousands of watts of power. To make that, they would probably have to charge batteries when they got there.

I don't know how long the lander was in space, but I am certian it lost a lot of battery power through self discharge before it got there.

Supposenly, NASA only has an attempt to send something to Mars every 2 years do to the orbit of Earth and Mars being closer or something.

They were in such a rush, they did not even write much of the computer software to land it and make the rover work! While it was on its way to Mars, NASA programmers had to finish the software and debug it on Earth, then they had to trasnmitt the landing software and rover control software too.

Obviouly, they are better than Microsoft because the landing software worked perfectly!

[62 52 53 53]

Well, first they had to make sure it was all working properly and move part of the big balloon thing out of the way, and then they had to chect that the lighting was correct in thier big plot of land in the Arizona Desert, and then they had to get rid of all those communist spy satalites that would take pictures and let people know that spaceflight is impossible. Although how they got those communist satalites up there is beyond me...

Ok, so the second comma to the smilie is a joke, but the rest of this isn't.

[b__]

[DarkerLine]

[Jedd]

[shadowing]

O.K. I'll admit it is real. Anyway, are what are they searching for, death rays?

[Jedd]

The San Jose Mercury News. They weren't agreeing with the conspiracy, quite the contrary. They attacked the people who strongly beleved in it who were posting in online forums (woah, I could turn this into a ghost story). They even went as far as to critisize the people in those forums of discussing the probability of parralel lines converging. I'd say just leave them alone.

[JesusFreak]

Question to all of you:

If space is some where close to 98% hydrogen, then when the flames come out of a rocket in space, why doesn't the hydrogen burn, or if i sent a hydrogen bomb nito space, will everything die? (a hydrogen bomb, will split a hydrogen atom, creating energy, and causing more hydrogen atoms to split, in a continus cycle until there is no more hydrogen.)

[Jedd]

98% of MATTER in the universe, not space. Most of space is just that, empty space. Also, hydrogen, when you see it burn, is a reaction between oxygen and hydrogen. There is no oxygen (well, very little) in space, so it doesn't blow up. As for the hydrogen bomb, that involves splitting an atom, which does not occur in a normal explosion. Setting off a hydrogen bomb in space would cause matter to fly in every direction in a huge explosion (just like on Earth). We haven't ever tested one in space, so who knows, maybe it would cause a chain reaction to end the universe. Of course they said that about antimatter, but it turned out to be false (since we are still here).