Curiosity just touches down and the NASA haters out in force!!!

Hi All

I decided to put this thread up after reading the first few pages of the main Curiosity Lander thread.

People are making UNEDUCATED comments re the quality of the first pics, now if they actually bothered to look into the mission before making their half assed remarks they wouldn't need to.

The haz cams were the first cameras on line not the main instruments so for all the naysayers with NO CLUE about it here are some facts.

One Mastcam camera head has a 100 mm focal length, f/10 lens. This provides the capability to obtain images with a scale of 7.4 centimeters per pixel at 1 km distance, and about 150 microns per pixel at 2 meters distance. The camera’s square field of view covers 5.1° over 1200 by 1200 pixels on the instrument’s 1600 by 1200 CCD. The other Mastcam camera head has a 34 mm focal length, f/8 lens. The camera’s 15° square field of view covers 1200 by 1200 pixels on a 1600 by 1200 CCD detector. The camera can obtain 450 microns per pixel images at 2 meters distance and 22 centimeters per pixel at 1 kilometer distance.

More info here

www.msss.com...

Now for all the people making comments about there 8 MP camera phones your challenge is take a picture of an object thats 7.4 cm at a distance of 1000mtrs and post the pic.

When these pictures come in you will be MORE THAN HAPPY!!!!

reply to post by wmd_2008


wouldn't bother with the ignorant they cant even be bothered to google anything. what hope is there for them?

The truly ignorant are always in a rush to make the most noise, to make the mindless accusations, conspiracies, it happens every time.

Because every "NASA hater" is just an ignorant, uneducated redneck who doesn't understand the value of science, huh?


Funny how leftists love to result to personal attacks instead of justifying the funding of unconstitutional, bloated, bureaucratic government agencies through the taxpayer. My question for you people is this: If you really think this is so important to you, why can't you come together and raise $2.5 billion and fund this in the name of science? Oh, that's because you people typically want someone else (namely the taxpayer) to pay for it. Another project that will only benefit a few academic elitists in the long run and will bring no change to the life of the Average Joe (the taxpayer).

NASA hate is perfectly justified and the agency should have been completely privatized decades ago.

People are making UNEDUCATED comments re the quality of the first pics, now if they actually bothered to look into the mission before making their half assed remarks they wouldn't need to.

So NASA haters are actually those who don't have detailed facts on mission cameras.

NASA isn't what it use to be. For the billions spent on Mars, can we at least get a new potato chip or something from the research.

At least put your rants in the proper damn subforum, or am I missing the value of your calling out to the "NASA haters"?

reply to post by wmd_2008


I have no clue about the quality of pictures, or any conspiracies going on behind the scenes. I dont really care about NASA dog and pony show and the distraction of landing robots on a big barren rock millions of miles away.

I cant be arsed with it; there are billions of people on this planet, let me emphasize, THIS PLANET, that are living in squalor, oppression, and misery, and people think I should be all happy go lucky and give humanity a big pat on the back because "we" sent a robot to a big rock and it didnt explode when it arrived.

Forgive me if I do not indulge in the ego wank fest that is the "zomg 'we' r soooooo awesome" attitude that always seem to pervade these technological "achievements" threads.

Wake me up when "we" start doing something that actually has a meaningful, positive impact on the lives HERE, on THIS PLANET.

reply to post by roadgravel

So NASA haters are actually those who don't have detailed facts on mission cameras.

its more they don't have any facts on anything.

reply to post by wmd_2008


Uneducated???
Better than 40 years ago nasa rouched down on the moon.
Between now and then the best we have is a robot and some pictures??
I don't care if the data comes back with a perfect 3d diagram of the complete Martian surface, we should have colonies in outer space by now.
Where did all of the wasted time and money go?
If that makes me uneducated well...

Originally posted by yeti101
reply to post by roadgravel

 

So NASA haters are actually those who don't have detailed facts on mission cameras.

its more they don't have any facts on anything.

This kind of fantastic generalisations really make you sound very intelligent

reply to post by g146541


And my flying cars!

Wait? What? they're called airplanes?

Oh, then never mind.

Originally posted by TDawgRex
reply to post by g146541

 

And my flying cars!

Wait? What? they're called airplanes?

Oh, then never mind.

Yeah right???
Ones that fold into a briefcase, or instant meals in a pill, just put on a plate and hydrate!
So many things could have been a byproduct of space travel.
What did we get?
Faster rockets and bigger warheads at discount prices...

NASA used to give the public new inventions from research so as to help keep people behind them and funded.

Funding doesn't work like that any more, it would seem. I imagine soon the politicians will not want any more of THEIR MONEY spent on NASA. The MIC should be able to replace then soon also.

reply to post by Diablos


Wow. Even a NASA thread somehow becomes a political diatribe? Sometimes this community amazes me. The real world isn't quite as simple as left/right, MAC/PC, Democrats/Republicans, gay/straight, coke/pepsi, AM/FM and the like. Perhaps if more people could wrap their pointy little heads around that we would have half a fighting chance at getting ourselves out of the mess in which we currently find ourselves. But alas...

Yea the amount of stupidity and careless neglect for even a simple google search on the mars lander threads (and many other topics) is mind boggling. People ask dumb, simple questions over and over when the entire thread is addressing those exact questions. The most popular one seems to be about the quality of the photos, that one has been answered over and over again on just about every page of every thread I've read yet people still come out of the woodwork posting the same question, sometimes in the very next freaking post.

Not just new members too, people with 15k posts are neglecting to read ANYTHING at all. It's sickening to see people so damn stupid on ats, this is not the first time a lander has went to mars and its not the first time this process has happened.

For god sakes people... READ! Stop blindly injecting your uninformed opinions. It really pisses me off and makes me want to go elsewhere to discuss the rover so I don't have to wade through a sea of idiocy just to find someone with an interesting post.

And then there's political trolls and stuff like this:

Originally posted by CaticusMaximus

 

I have no clue about the quality of pictures, or any conspiracies going on behind the scenes. I dont really care about NASA dog and pony show and the distraction of landing robots on a big barren rock millions of miles away.

Has no clue, doesn't care but still inclined to post. Well I DO care, so go post somewhere about something else you do care about, otherwise you are just trolling. You would figure people would stay away from something they aren't interested in and refrain from making irrelevant, obstructive posts. I bet 80% of the posts on ATS are from people who could give a damn about what they are writing about on the internet and are completely ignorant of it. Their opinions are basically internet pollution.

It's got so bad I even see a few moderators making anti-this or anti-that, pointless bias threads I guess in some attempt to mold opinions on this website.

Part of that is due to people at ATS claiming fact about all kinds of things posted here. Most stuff is a fantasy.

Simple fact is that there were people yacking about camera quality, they're not uneducated since they understand what is a quality picture and what is not, they are just punchdrunk. Google aside, the media has been at pains to describe the sequence of events at touchdown and before, no hi-resolution pictures until the camera mast is raised in a few days. When you think of the things that could have gone wrong in this project, and at practically every moment during the descent and even after touchdown, I think NASA should be given credit for this one, it is some achievement. Nice one!

reply to post by Diablos


Did you just seriously say that the exploration of science (namely aeronautics, space flight and cosmology) have no benefit to the american public!!!!

Wow. Ok. Not even for the human species? No body except bill nye the science guy, deceased carl sagan and maybe some dweeb from JPL who dreams of the next interplanetary contraption to get answers to life's mysteries benefits from what NASA is trying to do.

Have a little pride in humanities literally stellar accomplishments. I'm sure it will be no less impressive when chimps or dolphins start building spacecraft all by themselves. Wow. Nothing impresses people anymore?

Originally posted by g146541
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Uneducated???

Better than 40 years ago nasa rouched down on the moon.
Between now and then the best we have is a robot and some pictures??
I don't care if the data comes back with a perfect 3d diagram of the complete Martian surface, we should have colonies in outer space by now.
. [color=gold] Where did all of the wasted time and money go?
If that makes me uneducated well...

All that time and money went to social programs
and feel-good tax-and-spend politics because
"we have billions of people here on earth" < as one snarky poster stated proudly earlier >
and let me ask you
does the world have that broken look to you?
and is this what happens when you KILL PEOPLES DREAMS!

I felt good for the first time in 11 years,
last night,
and I was almost brought to tears of joy when
I finally FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE got to see the math nerds in the victory circle.

The magnitude of stress and focus that was released in that control room
the second they had confirmation of landing,
and then to get a non garbled, intelligible image exactly 14 minutes later,
was...
it was...

pure euphoria.


The first moon landing happened WITHIN the life span of my great grandmother.
She remembered the wright brothers,
and before she passed at 96 I got to talk with her about the moon landing.

It is not easy to be America,
but we got this country by the grace of God
and went straight to the moon.

Sure,
we have partying and celebrating for the last three generations,
but we're sobering up,
and we're getting back to work.

You wana quit being a whiner
and actually help these billions of people?
Space is a big goddamn place,
and has room for tons of dreams.


Mike Grouchy

reply to post by mikegrouchy


I agree with you over the euphoria, I don't agree about "where the money went" America and also other countries, have been embroiled in shady viscious wars, and shady viscious monopolisation over the last 40 odd years, turning much of the inhabited world into no-go zones, that story is still ongoing, and the money is still outgoing. Enjoy the euphoria, the rest is another story.