Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

He really is that stupid.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Mars Perseverance Live Feed

Mars Perseverance Live Feed

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This post is in: ,

Here we go….7 minutes of terror.

 

Here’s a clean feed of Mission Control:

Here’s Perseverance’s twitter feed:

 

I enjoyed following Curiosity’s twitter feed, having a soft spot for a Rover that landed on my birthday.

NASA says there’s only a 50/50 chance this landing goes as needed.  Good luck NASA, JPL and Perseverance! Let’s stick the landing!

Reader Interactions

293Comments

  3. 3.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Took me a while to figure out what the NASA page is showing me. At first I thought, “wait, touchdown is in 5 minutes?” The “Touchdown in ____” line is really about when that particular phase happens.

    And if I understand it right, what we’re seeing is when it is (simulated to be) happening in real time in Mars, but we don’t get telemetry here till 10 minutes later.

    But man, only 40% of Mars missions successfully land? Imagine the years of development that go into that, with only a 40% chance of success on your one and only field trial.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    More seriously, landing on Mars is really hard. NASA has a pretty good track record at the job, but there’s basically no room for error and they’re trying to do something that’s more difficult than Curiosity’s landing. Curiosity landed in a nice flat and empty area; Perseverance is aiming for a much more crowded-with-rocks (but scientifically more interesting) target. The big advance in landing tech between the two is that Percy can look at the terrain during the descent and alter its course a bit to find a safe(r) spot for landing.

  9. 9.

    Kent

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:But man, only 40% of Mars missions successfully land? Imagine the years of development that go into that, with only a 40% chance of success on your one and only field trial.

    Yes, and apparently every single successful Mars landing has been done by NASA.  The 8 or 9 previous successful landings?  All NASA.   No other nation’s space agency has ever made a successful Mars landing.  They have done Mars orbiters, but no successful landings.

  10. 10.

    Cermet

    The US is still the only country that has had successful landings upon Mars. The 40% number includes other countries. The US rate is far better but there have been a miss thanks to failure of a company to understand proper units … would make more fun of that but the French forgot about the doppler effect on the Titian’s mission’s secondary probe. Now that was a really big screw up.

  12. 12.

    Ken

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yeah, I was going to say I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to work on something for a decade and then see it made meaningless in just a few minutes.

    But I work in software, so I know exactly what it’s like, except in my case it’s some executive deciding to cancel a product.

  14. 14.

    cope

    This is gonna be fun.  If I recall, when I watched the coverage of Curiosity doing it’s seven minutes thing, it was well past midnight here in EST.  I won’t tune in for a while yet because it will be lots of talking heads talking.  I’m going for the shear drama of it all.

  17. 17.

    PaulWartenberg

    So the library where I work had the internet go down – one-half of the county is affected – and I’m only getting through here using my phone as a temporary hotspot.

    I just want to tell you good luck, we’re all counting on you.

  20. 20.

    Martin

    The US is about to land a nuclear powered SUV on another planet, and folks in Texas are on the edge of reenacting the Donner party.

    We have the capability to be great, we simply choose to not be.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @Cermet: The units error was on Mars Climate Orbiter, which as the name suggests was not a lander. Mars Polar Lander was a failure, though I don’t think the root cause was ever identified.

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    @dmsilev:   Percy!

    Listening to the audio feed:  reminds me of how much teamwork goes into a mission such as this.

    @Martin:   Yup.  Space Age or Donner Party.  You decide. Uh, Texas …  may we have a word.  When your power grid is up again …

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    For people listening to the Mission Control feed, “EDL” is Entry/Descent/Landing, i.e. the technical term for the whole “seven minutes of terror” thing.

  34. 34.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Mars Polar Lander was a failure, though I don’t think the root cause was ever identified.

    Watergirl, suggested site feature:  A button any commenter can press to insert the meme GIF of “I’m not saying it was aliens… But it was aliens.”

  35. 35.

    Gin & Tonic

    @schrodingers_cat: Today is also the 7th anniversary of the culmination of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, when Yanukovych’s goons slaughtered peaceful protesters in the street.

  36. 36.

    cope

    I just started playing with it but NASA has a live based-on-current-telemetry computer simulation of the landing from Perserverance’s point of view.  I have that open in one tab and the clean feed TaMara linked to in another.  The website is eyes.nasa.gov.  Check it out.

    ETA:  It also include running written commentary about current and upcoming stages of the landing.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    I’ve sometimes wondered, why are the control rooms laid out that way? The arcs of the desks are reversed from the usual configuration, as you’d see in a classroom, auditorium, etc.  Is it because the leaders are sitting at the back, so have a line-of-sight to any of the stations?

  39. 39.

    dm

    @MattF:  And here’s another explanation.. It was much more than just a units error (in fact, there’s a good chance that the units error could have been caught had NASA management been a little more careful). The units error showed up in course-corrections along the way to Mars not acting the way they should. If they’d sought the root cause of that discrepancy….

  40. 40.

    Kent

    @Ken: That would be my guess.   Makes it easier for the big wigs and leaders to stand in the back and see everyone’s station and screen.  But they are all still pointed in the same direction so everyone in the room can see the big screens in front.

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    I’m wondering if “Percy” will have to fight for equitable cable coverage with the FledCruz landing.  Suspect more than a few enterprising reporters might have made it out to the airport to capture photos of that weasel on final approach.

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    @Elizabelle: Maybe United Airlines can arrange to lower Ted down to the ground using a sky crane. Synergy!

    Bonus points for “accidentally” dropping him the last fifty or so feet.

  44. 44.

    No One of Consequence

    Jackals, forgive me a potential mis-post. I am desperately looking for an old video I saw years ago online, but cannot seem to locate it. I would imagine one of you fine subversives have viewed it before:

    Does anyone remember, probably around 1998 or thereabouts, a video of a (thinking London) british one-man theatre production about the history of oil. A guy was peddling a bicycle for generating current for the lights, the presenter was very humorous, there was some black and white movie footage, about how THE PARTY’S OVER. (was a repeat line)

    Described how WWI was largely about the modernization of naval forces to oil-based propulsion from coal boilers, and the Orient Express and Iran/Iraq, and a bunch of other stuff.

    One line of dialogue has the presenter describing something like ” a game of Dandy-raquetball”, and about how no score is kept but the loser is the first person to perspire. Something like … “Aha, a bead of sweat on your upper lip good sir.” … “Nay, ’tis but a sequin from your mother’s breast…”

    Was totally worth watching, but I have lost the name of it, and my GoogleFu is weak. Too weak to uncover. Is there a stalwart here who might come to my aid? Or someone who viewed it and remembers?

    Thank you, and I swear I am not crazy…

    NOoC

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    Also may have something to do with more effective heat dissipation from when everything was CRTs and multitudinous other tubes.

  51. 51.

    VeniceRiley

    Estimated landing time is 3:55pm EST , 12:55 Pacific.
    Oh, and not open thread, but my work just offered vax slots to our over 65 family members in the county. And I immediately called my brother… he said he doesn’t think so. *HEADDESK

  52. 52.

    Dahlia

    @No One of Consequence: I think that was Rob Newman, a British comedian who collaborates with David Baddiel.

    I vaguely remember watching that

     

    Wikipedia says it was titled “Apocalypso Now” but the television version was called “A History of Oil” broadcast in 2006.

  58. 58.

    M31

    @TaMara (HFG): I read about the renovation of the original Apollo 11 control room where they moved some cabinets and the carpet underneath was light tan as opposed to the dark brown of the rest of the room.

  60. 60.

    satby

    @VeniceRiley:  I just talked one guy into getting the vaccine by pointing out that other countries will probably require it for travel, like a yellow fever vaccine certificate. He had covid, so he felt like he could skip it, now he’s going to get it.

  61. 61.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @VeniceRiley: my work just offered vax slots

    Showing my age? My first reaction to reading that phrase was “your employer still uses VAX mini computers? And getting time on the VAX is somehow a valuable thing?”

    It took a full couple seconds to process the whole sentence and realize “vax” was short for “vaccine”.

    I’m sorry about your brother. I’m not sure what I would do, but it would certainly involve restrictions on in-person contact, with explanations for why.

  63. 63.

    karen marie

    @dmsilev:  His wife is a VP at Goldman Sachs but she’s incapable of navigating an airport and hotel check-in without help from him? If that’s true, then he’ll be flying back to Cancun to check her out of the hotel and get her onto the plane to return.

    Despite her employment, I don’t have trouble believing that she needs his help getting to Mexico and back because she proved how stupid she is when she married him.

  65. 65.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @karen marie: I’m pretty sure the tweet that said “the next announcement from Cruz will be that he was just making sure they got there safely” was snark. I’m surprised so many people seem to be treating it as if it came from Cruz. Are we used to politicians making press statements about what they’re going to say in a press statement later?

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    A friend of a friend works for a company that makes parts for the transmitter for the probe. Oddly enough a separate company apparently works on parts for the receiver.

    I suppose that they can’t have visitors and guests at JPL because of social distancing, etc.

     

    ETA: I guess they do have a viewing area at the Kennedy Center

  71. 71.

    Bob7094

    @Ken: 

    I used to work for a satellite manufacturer, and we sometimes built ground control systems for customers. One summer back in the ’80s a few of us visited various controls rooms to learn what worked well for other people. The conclusion? We didn’t learn much.

    One interesting visit was to the 4000th Aerospace Support Group at Offut AFB, where they did the daily operations for polar orbiting weather satellites. They had stations arranged in triangle shaped three man consoles where each person could look over the top and make eye contact with the others. This was alleged to be very important. Also, the enlisted airmen who did the actual typing at the keyboard were deemed to be flight crew, entitling them to wear a scarf with their uniform. This was said to be good for morale. Also interesting: signs all over saying “use of deadly force authorized.”

    When I supported the Mars Observer launch at JPL, we just sat in cubicles with a workstation and speaker phone. No eye contact with anyone possible. I never saw the control room there, never saw a room with giant displays on the walls.

  72. 72.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @karen marie: ​
    I was going to ask if he has in fact made a statement. Elsewhere on the intertubes I see this:
    “With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon.”

    So he may in fact be trying that line of defense.

    Here’s the tweet. What it says is “attributable to Ted Cruz.” No idea what the provenance is or if this one is real.

  80. 80.

    germy

    Who had the most authentically Republican response to millions of Texans losing power and freezing?

    1. Gov. Abbott blaming the Green New Deal.

    2. Ted Cruz flying to Cancun.

    3. Rick Perry saying that given a choice, Texans would rather freeze to death than have gov’t regs. pic.twitter.com/05K0V6l7cD

    — Moe Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) February 18, 2021

  84. 84.

    Kent

    @germy: Don’t forget the mayor of Colorado city who went on a FB tirade about how everyone needs to fend for themselves.  Because fuckit, the government is not there for YOU.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @germy: Somewhat unfair to Perry, who didn’t say “freeze to death”, just that they’d rather do without power for three days. Which admittedly works out to the same thing in some cases.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA

    Remember that going around over half a century ago. Also this:

    “All I had time for was a California breakfast.”

    “What’s a California breakfast?”

    “A glass of orange juice and a cigarette.”

  88. 88.

    stinger

    Thank you, NASA, for timing this for the middle of the afternoon where I live instead of, like, 3:00 am!

  89. 89.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I’m still trying to figure out whether when they talk about what’s happening “now”, it really happened 10 minutes ago. I think that’s the case. They’re reporting what they hear from the spacecraft, which is delayed. So when they say atmosphere entry in (now 7:16), it already happened.

  93. 93.

    Jeffro

    @Kent: 

    Because fuckit, the government is not there for YOU.

    I know, right? THE NERVE! The nerve to think that government should do governmental-type things…unless I need governmental-type things done for me, of course…

  97. 97.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Perseverance has begun powered decent = 7 minutes of hell til touchdown

  99. 99.

    raven

    Perseverance was the name of the place we used to go in Negril in the 70’s. Low budget run by a great family, Jules and Dolly Jordan. One day I was getting going on overproof and peppermint patties and Mr Jordan said “draw your brakes mon, dis is not New Yark City”!

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    @germy: 

    Rick Perry saying that given a choice, Texans would rather freeze to death than have gov’t regs

    Death Cult getting exactly what they want.

  115. 115.

    Ken

    Hooray!  Now everyone in those control rooms, wash your hands and use sanitizer.

    So, now that we have a nuclear-powered, laser-armed SUV on Mars, what do we do?  (“Same thing we do every night, Pinky….”)

  122. 122.

    dmsilev

    And …done. Now the fun part begins. We should get preliminary images soon, but it will take several days of checkouts before the thing does any roving.

  131. 131.

    trollhattan

    Look at that. All the stuff that can go wrong and it worked, anyway. Good job, folks!

    Did not expect to see images this quickly.

  132. 132.

    Jeffro

    It’s not a perfect fit, but it seems like a good time to go play “What It Means” by the DBTs…

  138. 138.

    Elizabelle

    LOL.  Schooley calling it the “Nerd Super Bowl.”

    ETA:  These folks deserve that title.  The “Nerd Prom” poseurs were pretenders.

  147. 147.

    hitchhiker

    feels utterly cathartic, which I don’t pretend to understand.

    maybe just the joy of seeing something fucking WORK the way it’s supposed to?

    in any case, wow. wow.

    and, I can’t be the only one so happy to see women/POC on that team … my early memories of NASA projects include rows of white guys in ties.

  153. 153.

    Ken

    @TaMara (HFG): I must admit, my initial reaction to the touchdown photos is the same as I have for sonograms. The parents-to-be are so excited, but all I see is a grayish blur…

  159. 159.

    germy

    Who will be the first person to photoshop Ted Cruz rolling his suitcase on the surface of Mars?

    It’s probably already been done.

  161. 161.

    Ken

    @germy: Google says 5 rovers, source is NASA. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance.

    Course that’s only counting the human-built ones.

  163. 163.

    dmsilev

    @germy: Two in operation (Curiosity is still going strong, or at least still going, 9 years later, and now Perseverance), and three dead ones (Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity). One pending (the Chinese mission currently in Mars orbit will be attempting a landing in May; there’s a small rover as part of that).

  164. 164.

    The Dangerman

    We can land on Mars but not keep the lights on in Texas. There is a lesson here. For Mars, the Engineers are in control and tell the Non Engineers to go suck eggs as necessary.

  168. 168.

    germy

    @Ken:

    Only five?

    It feels like there should be more.  I remember seeing photos from the surface of Mars back in 1976.

    And then, around 2003 or so, I remember a 360º panorama on my computer; I look all around the Martian landscape and zoom in and out.

    There was one rover I remember that exceeded its expected lifespan.  It came back to life after a windstorm blew the dust off its solar panels, and NASA got some bonus activity.  Early or mid-2000s?

  171. 171.

    M31

    @germy: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and now this one. Only Curiosity is still driving around.

    Spirit and Opportunity were the ones that had a scheduled mission of 90 days and ended up lasting for years, the little troopers

  172. 172.

    dmsilev

    @germy: You asked specifically about rovers. There are more stationary landers. Viking 1 and 2 from the mid 70s are what you are remembering.

  173. 173.

    NotMax

    To be overheard in a low murmur in mission control room when the leaves of the lander unpeel:

    “Holy crap. So that’s where my missing phone is.”

    :)

  174. 174.

    Brachiator

    Loved this little tidbit from the BBC News coverage

    The camera lenses are still dusty from the landing, according to scientists.

  182. 182.

    M31

    @germy: there were some ‘landers’ — the 5 were rovers that could move around

    Yes, it was Spirit and Opportunity that had the unexpected long lives, a lot due to winds cleaning off the solar panels. They landed in 2004 and Opportunity was working until 2018, which is amazing.

  183. 183.

    Kattails

    I was in tears waiting for touchdown, now cracked a glass of wine to celebrate.  I wasn’t really even aware that this was happening but checked into BJ, so thank you so much for running this! Made my day, week even. Yes, thrilled to see so many women in the control room. The woman who was doing the landing countdown/air speed/height was so awesomely cool, barely a quaver in her voice.

    I needed this. People all over the globe working together. Brilliant work and thinking.  Biggest payload; largest parachute–think what that thing had to endure.

  188. 188.

    Martin

    @germy: Five, plus a yet to be tested helicopter. Sojourner, Opportunity, Spirit, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Only 2 are still operational. Sojourner only lasted a few weeks. Spirit was supposed to only last 90 days but lasted 6 years (Earth). Opportunity was also supposed to last only 90 days but lasted 15 years (Earth).

    Curiosity and Perseverance are nuclear rather than solar powered, so they should have an easier time reaching long durations than the solar powered other rovers. Curiosity had a planned mission duration of 2 years (Earth) but should be able to go 14 off of the power source, though the rover has taken a bit of damage. Perseverance was designed to avoid some of these problems.

    China will try and land a 6th in May/June timeframe.

  190. 190.

    germy

    I wonder if we’ll discover signs of life this time.

     

    I think there’s a better chance elsewhere, on one of the moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn.

  192. 192.

    dmsilev

    @Kattails:

    Biggest payload; largest parachute–think what that thing had to endure.

    I saw a talk recently by one of the JPL senior engineers on the landing sequence, and he had plenty of video of what I will call less-than-optimal parachute tests. Took a lot of work to get those right.

  193. 193.

    The Dangerman

    Since Bill is right behind me at 165, yes, 164 is from a Boelter Hall person. Massive bias involved here.

    Go Bruins.

  196. 196.

    NotMax

    Oops (good thing I’m not employed at NASA). Fix.

    @Benw

    Curiosity still doin’ stuff after nearly 1½ dog years, IIRC.

  197. 197.

    Brachiator

    @hitchhiker:

    and, I can’t be the only one so happy to see women/POC on that team … my early memories of NASA projects include rows of white guys in ties.

    And of course now we know that NASA has always included women, especially women of color. Often in critical rows. It’s just that they were not in the front rows.

    I love this tidbit about human calculator Katherine Johnson:

    Before John Glenn flew Friendship 7 in 1962, becoming the first American to orbit Earth, he asked Johnson to double-check the math of the “new electronic” computations. “But when he got ready to go, he said, ‘Call her. And if she says the computer is right, I’ll take it,’ ” she recalled.

  198. 198.

    germy

    @Kattails:  I needed this. People all over the globe working together. Brilliant work and thinking.

    Like the International Space Station.

    All that cooperation.  Wonderful to see.

    I didn’t like “Space Force” because I see it as a militarization of space. We should be beyond that stuff up there.

  205. 205.

    Brachiator

    @Baud: ​
     

    Did they forget to install the wipers?

    Ya know, I wonder if they have something to deal with this?
    Maybe something to spray air to clean the lens. A wiper might just smudge dust.

  206. 206.

    No One of Consequence

    @Dahlia: And everyone else: THANK YOU! So appreciative. A colleague had never watched, and I was telling them it was well worth their time. Fantastic stuff. Thanks again!

    NOoC

  209. 209.

    Spanky

    @Brachiator:

    Maybe something to spray air to clean the lens. A wiper might just smudge dust.

    The rover stands up and shakes itself like a dog. True fact.

  210. 210.

    Kattails

    @germy: Agreed about the “Space Force” thing. Could He Who We Are Done with ever do anything that didn’t feel like bullying?

  213. 213.

    Martin

    @hitchhiker: I’ll note that if you go to JPL open house, it’s really, really apparent that they’ve put as many women and POC as possible in speaking/leadership roles and the white guys in ties are giving directions – and everyone is totally good with this.

    It’s a fun day. Got to see Perseverance just before it was finished construction. They also have the duplicate rovers out to see and they drive them around a bit.

  218. 218.

    Elizabelle

    Loved the twitter photo of that little wide eyed dog doll in the JPL control room.  Holding a Hot Wheels and a coffee mug.  Sitting at the EDL Operation Lead station.

  223. 223.

    Kattails

    Also,  I loved the idea of the “heartbeat” tone, as the narrator recited it a couple of times during the scariest moments of entry–“She thinks she’s OK”. I’m enough of an animist to thoroughly enjoy that.

  228. 228.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Random thought that just occurred to me: How is it Trump didn’t manage to hollow out NASA, or put some crony in charge who spent half the Mars budget redecorating his office and diverting the other half to Jared Kushner- operated shell companies?

  229. 229.

    Another Scott

    @Van Buren: I’m mildly curious why the big logo on the wall said “MARS 2020”. But not enough to fret about it.

    Congratulations to JPL and everyone involved. Well done!

    I wonder if the Chinese lander/rover will be broadcast live as well. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  237. 237.

    Jeffro

    MSNBC reporting – maybe? – that Cruz will not run for re-election in 2024?

    I guess he knows that his Saturday return ticket won’t be something he can spin away.  Wonder if his daughters asking him ‘yesterday’ was actually more like ‘back in November’ too.

    Gotta go check this out…

  240. 240.

    Fair Economist

    @germy:]

    I wonder if we’ll discover signs of life this time.

    I think there’s a better chance elsewhere, on one of the moons of Jupiter and/or Saturn.

    Are you referring to Enceladus’s internal ocean, which has complex organic molecules, detected by Cassini because geysers shoot them into space? That is a heck of a promising environment for life. Even without knowing the internal conditions, it’s virtually certain that something on Earth *could* live there (energy + water + organics) and something already there is the simplest explanation for what Cassini found.

  243. 243.

    Ken

    @Jeffro: Wonder if his daughters asking him ‘yesterday’ was actually more like ‘back in November’ too.

    Easy enough to check, if someone can find when the tickets were bought.  But can you imagine the price of those tickets if they were bought 24 hours before the flight, during the snow emergency?

  246. 246.

    Ken

    It just occurred to me, I wonder if Randall Munroe at XKCD had two comics prepped for tomorrow, a la “SUPERMAN LIVES” / “SUPERMAN DEAD”?  Because it’s nearly certain that the Friday cartoon will be about Perseverance.

  247. 247.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:

    It always bugged me that super-advanced civilization would build their super-advanced ship around their interplanetary junk discovery, and yet never mastered Windex and paper towel technology.

  248. 248.

    Leto

    MSNBC reporting that Cruz staffers booked his return flight this morning at 6am; his original return flight was scheduled for Saturday. Wondering why we couldn’t nominate him to be the on-site Mars Rover operator/maintainer.

  250. 250.

    Alison Rose

    @jnfr: Right?? Like…I’m still so blown away by the fact that we just got to see PICTURES of the surface of MARS. I mean, I know it’s not the first time or anything, but every time feels like the first time all over again.

  251. 251.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: What’s Ted going to do, get a real job?

    Run for President, I expect. Which if he follows (cough) recent Republican trends, would not be a “real job”.

  252. 252.

    Alison Rose

    @trollhattan: “Hello Fox News watchers, and welcome to the first episode of CRUZ CONTROL, your new nightly source for Deep State investigation updates, exposés of Democrat attacks on the baby Jesus, and neck beard grooming tips.”

  254. 254.

    Jeffro

    @Leto: he’ll throw them under the bus next…”I told them I was only flying down there and back in order to get my family to Cancun and then come STRAIGHT BACK to HEROICALLY fight this cold spell!”

    yah right, Ted,

  258. 258.

    Jeffro

    @Alison Rose: I think Cruz and Carlson should co-host a show to see who can be the biggest douche, updated nightly.

    Go for it, guys!  We’ll call it “Sneer-Off”, or something.

  263. 263.

    PAM Dirac

    • @Brachiator: The dust covers aren’t even off. They only had abt 90 sec after landing to download images before the orbiter lost signal, so they just wanted thumbnail confirmation that the sky was up and the ground was down. There might be some dust cover off pictures later tonight and of course the real pictures will come when the mast is deployed.
  266. 266.

    sab

    Childhood memories from central Florida 1960s. We had TV in classroom for centralized state science and Spanish.

    I lived in Daytona, nearish to Cape Canaveral. Many of my classmates’ fathers were NASA engineers.

    We watched the takeoff on TV. Then we rushed out onto the playground and watched it go by like a tiny speck of rocket. The stages dropped off, one by one.

    I vividly remember Alan Shepards’ trip.

  268. 268.

    dmsilev

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: T****’s NASA Director, Jim Bridenstine, was surprisingly good, especially given that he was a GOP Congressman prior to that appointment. I guess, just by accident, T**** managed to pick at least one non-catastrophic person.

  269. 269.

    sab

    @sab: I also remember that Cheryl Rofer has reminded us that her generation of women scientists and engineers were completely shut out unless you were women of color passed off as computation freaks.

  271. 271.

    Jeffro

    @Ken: I’ve got a better idea, hear me out: how about if I just break the pool cue over their empty noggins?

    Nah, then it’s on me.  Better for the two of them to flail around for our entertainment.  ;)

  276. 276.

    karen marie

    @Immanentize:   I just finished work, and I’ve been going through the thread to find out what’s up with Perseverance, and I thought – wow! okay!  first pic!

     

    Fucking Ted Cruz.

  278. 278.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    Yes, and apparently every single successful Mars landing has been done by NASA. The 8 or 9 previous successful landings? All NASA. No other nation’s space agency has ever made a successful Mars landing. They have done Mars orbiters, but no successful landings.

    NASA also had this little failure:

    NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched

    Gotta get the math right.

  283. 283.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:
    Decent statement; wish Biden (or staff) had left out the second “American” (the first is in NASA) since it’s a bit nationalistic.

  286. 286.

    Miss Bianca

    @dmsilev: Oh, that actually made me sniffly. I’ve always had a fatal tendency to anthropomorphize machines

    ETA: Plus, anything, living or machine, that gets Lost in Space gets me. Still traumatized about Laika after all these years.

  287. 287.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Bill Arnold:

    Decent statement; wish Biden (or staff) had left out the second “American” (the first is in NASA) since it’s a bit nationalistic.

    NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There’s no “American” in the acronym.

  288. 288.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MattF: Carl Sagan used to say that the Viking landers’ lack of roving capability frustrated him because he could always imagine there was a “Martian giraffe” hiding just over the next hill where the lander couldn’t see it. These days we have both long-duration rovers and much higher-resolution orbital coverage, so we know nothing that spectacular is in the offing. But rovers do help give us a sense of more than what’s visible in one tiny spot.

  289. 289.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Brachiator: Worth mentioning that on the Mars Climate Orbiter it was Lockheed Martin engineers who decided to use US foot pound seconds instead of the metric newton seconds that NASA had specified.

    Rather than blaming Lockheed Martin for a bone headed stuff up, NASA blamed their own guys for not catching the error.

    Before the loss of the craft, the error in navigation that had resulted was noted by low level NASA personnel, but was ignored as they had not used the correct forms to express their concerns.

  290. 290.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: Aside from the lander/rover distinction, it’s also worth mentioning that there was a huge time gap in successful Mars landers between Viking 1/2 (landed 1976) and Mars Pathfinder (1997, carried the Sojourner mini-rover).

    I remember Pathfinder being almost an Apollo 11 for the Web, the moment that a group of NASA Web people first had to struggle with the new medium being the main conduit for information of worldwide interest about a breaking space event. The Viking program was a sort of expensive one-off that didn’t lead to a sustained Mars exploration program, whereas Mars Pathfinder was true to its name–the technologies it pioneered were used in missions descending from it.

  293. 293.

    ljdramone

    @Another Scott: I’m mildly curious why the big logo on the wall said “MARS 2020”. But not enough to fret about it.

    That’s NASA’s overall name for the mission that took the Perseverance rover to Mars.  The spacecraft was launched 7 months ago, on July 30th 2020.

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