Starship Asterisk*

ddagemini wrote:White Object, White Thingy, Reflection (not). A future geologist, walking around on Mars, finding these pieces would place them in a bag labeled "Trash from the Past". You would think NASA would try to minimize the trash and contamination it spreads around. We may live their someday.

Researchers call for rethinking efforts to prevent interplanetary contamination-Two Washington State University researchers say environmental restrictions have become unnecessarily restrictive and expensive—on Mars. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, astrobiologists Alberto Fairén of Cornell University and Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University say the NASA Office of Planetary Protection's "detailed and expensive" efforts to keep Earth microorganisms off Mars are making missions to search for life on the red planet "unviable." The researchers claim "the protocols and policies of Planetary Protection are unnecessarily restricting Mars exploration and need to be revised." The Office of Planetary Protection is like an interplanetary Environmental Protection Agency, with a mission "to minimize the biological contamination that may result from exploring the solar system."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-rethinking ... n.html#jCp

ddagemini wrote:White Object, White Thingy, Reflection (not). A future geologist, walking around on Mars, finding these pieces would place them in a bag labeled "Trash from the Past". You would think NASA would try to minimize the trash and contamination it spreads around. We may live their someday.

Bird_Man wrote:Viewing the image well zoomed in I came across these lines of dots. Are they laser shots from Curiosity or are alien bugs popping up to view Curiosity?
The red rectangle indicates the area shown in the closeup.
[img][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7358/9152 ... 2637a2.jpg[/img]
Screen Shot 2013-06-27 at 10.00.11 AM by Keith's Photos 2012, on Flickr[/img]
[img][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7405/9152 ... 762183.jpg[/img]
Screen Shot 2013-06-27 at 9.57.26 AM by Keith's Photos 2012, on Flickr[/img]

I don't know why I cannot get the images to display, but the links will take you to them.

stephen63 wrote:This link has the various thingies labeled.
http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/interac ... 8&view=cyl

geckzilla wrote:
That's not very interesting.

They have to get there, slowly go insane, and send us troubling messages before going silent.

Then we get to argue here over what exactly transpired.

• Why wait that long

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak wrote:
<<Lisa Marie Nowak (born May 10, 1963) is a former American naval flight officer and NASA astronaut. Nowak flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-121 mission in July 2006, where she was responsible for operating the robotic arms of the shuttle and the International Space Station.

Nowak married Richard T. Nowak and they have a son born in 1992 and twin daughters born in 2001. Immediately following astronaut William Oefelein's divorce, he and Nowak became involved. Their affair lasted two years, with Oefelein beginning to break it off gradually near the end of 2006. It was during this time that Oefelein started a relationship with U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman.

Nowak gained international attention on February 5, 2007, when she was arrested in Orlando, Florida, and subsequently charged with the attempted kidnapping of said Colleen Shipman. Nowak pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery. There was widespread reaction to Nowak's arrest with concerns expressed about NASA's astronaut selection and screening process and planned 30-month missions to Mars. Nowak remained a Navy Captain until August 2010, when a naval board of inquiry voted unanimously to reduce Nowak in rank to Commander and to discharge her from the Navy under other than honorable conditions.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_crunch wrote:
<<Cap'n Crunch is a product line of sweetened corn and oat breakfast cereals introduced in 1963 by the Quaker Oats Company. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article, the cereal's cartoon mascot, Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch, was born "on Crunch Island in the Sea of Milk – a magical place with talking trees, crazy creatures and a whole mountain (Mt. Crunchmore) made out of Cap’n Crunch cereal.” The mascot wears a "Napoleon-style" hat, leading to speculation that he may be French. In 2013, sources reported that the 3 stripes on the mascot's uniform indicate a rank of Commander and not Captain. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Navy had no record of Crunch and that NCIS was investigating him for impersonating a naval officer.>>

geckzilla wrote:That's not very interesting. They have to get there, slowly go insane, and send us troubling messages before going silent. Then we get to argue here over what exactly transpired.

BMAONE23 wrote:Possibly even Landing

rstevenson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:... I wonder what will kill the first humans to set foot on Mars?

A small mistake. There's no forgiveness in the environment, and no EMS to call for help.

Rob

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:
I wonder what will kill the first humans to set foot on Mars? The environment itself?

If the ISS is any example, it will be something mundane like a backed up toilet.

Although, given how long these people are going to be together,
I wouldn't remove murder from the list of possibilities.

geckzilla wrote:I wonder what will kill the first humans to set foot on Mars? The environment itself?

geckzilla wrote:... I wonder what will kill the first humans to set foot on Mars?

geckzilla wrote:I might be alone with this opinion but as amazing as Curiosity is, the photographs we see from it are visually boring. Dust-covered rocks and more dust-covered rocks. They're nice to look at now and then but it's no Cassini. I wonder what will kill the first humans to set foot on Mars? The environment itself? Or will they go stir-crazy in their habitats with nothing outside but the bleak Martian landscape? Maybe we should only send geologists. Rock collection might keep them going for a long time.

fryegazer2 wrote:When I was "looking around" with the interactive viewer, I came upon a number of similar looking items that were in the same general area. They were different than other objects in the photo. Meaning I could not tell if they were rocks or something else. One of a couple unique characteristics is that they are all green and seem to be the same size. Maybe they are photographic reflections or something else created by the editing process. To find them, I went and clicked on the Cylindrical Viewer box titled Raw Color (the second box to the right on the bottom ). From there, you will notice the metal from Curiosity to the left and a rock in the foreground to the right. Then I began magnifying and scanning the hill in the distance. I noticed a small darkened spot. I then magnified as much as possible and saw a green colored object. Since it was so far away, I could not recognize any features other than it's basic shape. This was interesting, but what really caught my attention was the fact that after scanning the hill more, I found at least two others objects on the hill that look pretty much exactly like the first one I saw. After scanning around the entire photo for a while, I did not find any more of the objects in other areas. Does anybody know what they are? Are they an artificial image produced by effects from the camera or editing? Your input is valued. Thanks.