Comments on: 8 years into it, Opportunity still operating on Mars.

By: podrock

podrock — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:05:22 +0000

Amazing! I hope Oppy holds out through the winter ’cause there’s a whole lotta rocks that need looking at in Endeavour Crater.

I always hated getting to really interesting stuff at the end of a traverse. The pack would already be full of samples, the feet yearned for the boots to be off, only to be faced with an outcrop that deserves a whole day of study.

Oppy approaches “beer:thirty”, the symbolic end of the field day. Spirit has already gone to bed and a well earned rest.

As an aside, I found The HabitableZone a week after Oppy landed, while searching for more information and a desire to bring my observations to the conversation.

Eight years.

And now there is a new extraterrestrial robot field geologist on the way to the red planet. With even better toys. I can’t wait!

Will Oppy last long enough that there are again two geologist rovers on Mars?

By: bowser

bowser — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:15:48 +0000

The first thing they’d do is look for subsidies and tax breaks, taking a lesson from the free market farmers. For the launching facility they would have received tax breaks and subsidies from the local area. Same as for building the rocket and lander. The US government would have a “National Prestige Strategic Subsidy”, funding projects which enhanced the US in the view of the world. It would be created to help companies who were spending their own money for the glory of the US, thereby saving tax money. Endless press reports would point out the private enterprise aspect of this venture. Just turn the capitalists loose.

Even before the attempt, they would have sold the name. “Mars” would have become “Monsanto”. Then it would have sold the launcher name, the lander name. It would have had the official beer, the official scotch, the official PC, the official tablet. And so on. The sides of the rocket would be painted with the logos of larger companies, such as Nike, GoDaddy, Xerox, Coca Cola.

After landing pictures of the landscape, analyses of the minerals, all that stuff would be bundled and sold to the highest bidders. Anyone writing about the possibility of life on Monsanto would be sued, as “Monsanto” would be copyrighted, trademarked.
It would have sold the seats for the launch, the TV rights for the launch, the TV rights for interviews with the people on the lander while on the journey.

A truly resourceful entrepreneur could come up with more ideas. After all, that’s the genius of free market capitalism.

By: ER

ER — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:56:08 +0000

I wonder how a privatized, free enterprise space program would have justified this expenditure. Maybe they would have sold tickets, or put it on cable TV?

Or maybe they could have sold advertising time on it, like the Super Bowl.

By: alcaray

alcaray — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:07:28 +0000

Got our money’s worth.