August 6th, 2012
This NASA video about Curiosity’s landing sequence. Sample hotness:
* The unique problem of Mars’ really thin atmosphere.
* A supersonic parachute.
* Sky crane.
Bonus: To add to the degree of difficulty, the NASA number jockeys also positioned another satellite and worked a camera on a timer to capture the exact moment Curiosity deployed. As the kids say, hotttt.
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Neat video.
I think any fair-minded person, though, can’t help but notice just how white & male an endeavor this whole thing has been. I mean, sure, in that video they had a hispanic guy and an indian woman to token things up but other than that it was all white & asian men. And that’s the promo video, the shots of the control room have looked like Mitt Romney’s fraternity reunion.
All of which is, of course, not even to mention the plain fact that this whole “mars lander mission” does absolutely *nothing* to advance NASA’s primary purpose of outreach to Muslim nations.
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I can just picture the next release from Wired’s “Titans of Business” airport-shop publishing imprint:
“Consider That A Divorce: What Old-Media NBC & Disney Can Learn from NASA’s Twitter Division”
Galley Friend J.E. August 6, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Phenomenal that we saw the landing closer to real-time than Michael Phelps getting out of the pool.