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Posted: |
Jul 30, 2020 - 7:33 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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I didn't know about the stowage of "lucky peanuts," too! A peanut a day helps you, ply, drill and relay.
One of the really important hardware problems regarding Curiosity is the amount of wear and tear sustained by the undercarriage.
Not being terribly clued up about all the pros and cons of a robotic mission, such as the six-wheeled wonders to which we have borne witness, I kind of wonder why maybe NASA did not send the rover to one of the broad rimmed shorelines separating the Martian hemispheric dichotomy, especially as this mission is geared up to search for something weird called, "life?" It is all very well to say the stated objective of the mission is to search for life, but what kind of "life," especially when the proximity of water is concerned? I'm assuming they're assuming carbon-based units, with the lowest common denominator of DNA to convey the blueprint.
I suppose it is all a matter of compromise. It's still probably not feasible to venture too far north or south of Mars' physical equator?
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Posted: |
Jul 30, 2020 - 9:12 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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I didn't know about the stowage of "lucky peanuts," too! A peanut a day helps you, ply, drill and relay.
One of the really important hardware problems regarding Curiosity is the amount of wear and tear sustained by the undercarriage.
Not being terribly clued up about all the pros and cons of a robotic mission, such as the six-wheeled wonders to which we have borne witness, I kind of wonder why maybe NASA did not send the rover to one of the broad rimmed shorelines separating the Martian hemispheric dichotomy, especially as this mission is geared up to search for something weird called, "life?" It is all very well to say the stated objective of the mission is to search for life, but what kind of "life," especially when the proximity of water is concerned? I'm assuming they're assuming carbon-based units, with the lowest common denominator of DNA to convey the blueprint.
I suppose it is all a matter of compromise. It's still probably not feasible to venture too far north or south of Mars' physical equator?
Curiosity Rover is exploring Gale Crater known to once harbor a lake. Its working its way up the sides. I don't know where the proposed waterline lies. Since they are following the water its safe to say they are looking for life or past life "as we know it".
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Posted: |
Jul 31, 2020 - 12:54 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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Personally, I am biased about the physical mechanism by which life, as immortalised by Jurassic Park, "finds a way."
Many scientists vaguely announce that life's "template" may inhabit a chamelion-like assortment of physical vehicles of potential form. The bottom line is that some kind of physical "mesh" needs to act as the blueprint in a tiny micro-folded space-maximisation way that encapsulates the unique "genetic" form of the species to which it points. This can then employ, in the case of the evolutionary process on Earth, biological machinery to amplify what is condensed down in DNA, via protein synthesis, the amplified macroscopic entities that we actually are. There is no way that we can abstract out how Mother Nature actually effects this mechanism, other than by rote research. In other words, Mars being so conveniently close by means there are "unwritten" connotations NASA is absently hooking into, to lead the general unsophisticated audience following their lead, that whatever "micro-organisms" must be "down there somewhere" in/on that planet are automatically being "hacked" as in some way being Earth-like. This is nothing more than a generic assumption which is pretty vague. All of life on Earth employs the same physical process to get the job done, which is why I myself assume that life elsewhere would follow the same pattern, because at the end of the day, you need certain sized planets with all the right resources to occupy that "Goldilocks" zone in the correct spatio-temporal zone with respect to a parent star.
There is a concensus that on Earth, life could have begun in the deep oceans where black smokers provide the thermal energy (with tons of water pressure bearing down) source in order to drive the accepted physical processes of biological life. If this is so, plate tectonics are required as a basis upon which to literally grind life out into the physical environment. But, plate tectonics are not a feature of Mars because it is too small for plate tectonics to actually occur. So how could life therefore arise on Mars even if it once had a plentiful ocean?
Now that Enceladus has been found to basically resemble a pressurized "aquarium tank" encased in ice, the intense gravitational energy provided by the proximity of Saturn is thought to drive the heat source necessary for the potential development of its own natural equivalent of black smokers, yet, the hook by which a tiny moon with nowhere near the mass of Earth is automatically assumed to be able to internally drive the same life-generating mechanisms found on the planet we inhabit is being connoted by NASA with Earth without any really substantiated justification for doing so.
They fail to point out the critical differences that exist which determine why life exists proximally here on Earth that mean it can't be incorporated elsewhere because the physical differences that abound are actually sufficient justification to rule out the possibility of life being elsewhere in the first place.
In other words, there is the vaguest molehill of accompanying "supporting evidence" that formal organisations like NASA use to bait taxpayers with a lobby on which to provide funding and resources to drive the investigations that result in "space exploration projects." Like everyone else, NASA requires a form of propaganda to justify the acquistion of expensive means to carry out their end of the business. I don't blame them. However, they don't need to convince the likes of me that going out just to take a look needs some justification of the outlay in expense it takes to follow particular leads. It basically remains true that if you don't seek, you won't find. That is a good enough carrot for me.
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Posted: |
Jul 31, 2020 - 8:10 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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My wordage was a bit strong, but nicely put, Sol. Then again, I did say it's worth going just to go and whatever turns up, turns up.
All the eggs, though, are (sort of) in one basket. Right now the most obvious candidates for possible worlds harboring 'living substance' other than Earth are 1) Mars and jointly, 2) Europa and Enceladus, the pressure cookers of our back 'garden.' Of these latter two, I'm guessing Europa has the better chance than Enceladus. In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001" series of stories the idea of Europa being a candidate for 'life' was already on the cards. Ironically, the original saga had Discovery going to Saturn, but the VFX for the movie at the time couldn't quite pull off believable imagery of the rings, so they went to Jupiter instead.
LC, the two concept space art illustrators that immediately come to mind are Chesley Bonestell and Robert T. McCall. Both RIP.
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