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Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

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Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#471

Post by sjy »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #361
cdelsolar wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we are very screwed if they find life on Mars. It means life is incredibly common and thus the Great Filter theory is true and we only have a few years left as a species most likely.

I find it extremely hard to believe you could kill every human being on earth at this point. We’ve reached critical mass, we aren’t going anywhere. When we had that few thousand individuals population bottleneck in the past was when it was dicey. What sort of event could kill every human and end our species? I can only think of planet-wide extinction events like massive asteroid impacts that sterilized the whole eart…

There have been at least five mass extinction events in the last 500 million years. The most recent one wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, after they had dominated the earth for 100 million years. Tool-using apes with language have been around for less than 5 million. I think it’s far too early to say we’ll survive the next extinction event, or even make it that far before diverging into new species.

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#473

Post by 29athrowaway »

Some shower thought: Mars is outside all jurisdictions. Crime on Mars is not possible at the moment. There are no governments on Mars. Meaning, no taxes either.

Mars may become some sort of tax haven, and companies will move their HQs to Mars to avoid taxes. But then, you won't be able to receive correspondence on Mars.

Then, extradition from Mars would be so expensive it would not be even feasible.

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#474

Post by shazmosushi »

Daho0n wrote: post #252
tristanb wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're wrong. That video is a bunch of crud

And I'm sure you believe that US and foreign competitors of SpaceX who says the same thing are just spewing PR, right? It was a random video. The message is not wrong. Being snippy doesn't change facts.

The Thunderf00t video is wrong, see my video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36o4UrS9OS4

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#475

Post by shazmosushi »

Daho0n wrote: post #194
erulabs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, you're not wrong at all, but just to add a little bit of clarity the space shuttle was never as reusable as was hoped - it wound up costing a huge amount of time and money to retrofit the shuttle again before each launch. Reusable and Re-usability are different things :P As far as I know no solid state boosters were ever re-used (how would that work?) - but then again SpaceX doesn't re-use solid state boost…

It doesn't really matter much because a look at the actual numbers shows that SpaceX charge more than the cost of launching the exact same payload would have cost using the shuttle. Besides the reusability point is disingenuous when talking cost since SpaceX's cost have actually gone up per (re)launch, not down. So yes, it is more complex than quippy internet back and forth suggests. Here is a video that explains it…

Because you've posted a link containing a lot of misinformation multiple times in this thread, I am posting this video correcting the misinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36o4UrS9OS4

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#476

Post by mattmanser »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #437
jonathanstrange wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native speaker but the problem I have with it is that it has the wrong numerus. Although I have done so in papers recently, because it seems to be a trend, sentences like "If a person chose option B, they were categorized as a cautious assessor" seem ungrammatical to me. (In this case it's easy to reformulate the sentence in plural and simpler, but that's not always the case and I hope you get the point.)

If the person is hypothetical or not fleshed-out and without a gender, like your example, they is fine and I don't even notice. But if the person is known, the use of they catches me off guard every time. I recently read a book by Brandon Sanderson that had aliens on another planet with a different gender system, so Sanderson just used they to refer to those aliens even though the characters were obviously either fem…

Ann Leckie has written a great sci-fi series, Ancillary Justice/Ancillary Sword/Ancillary Mercy, where the main character assumes everyone is a she and keeps referring to them as that all the way through (though it becomes fairly obvious to the reader which are hes and shes).

I found it actually fairly annoying at first, but quickly got over it because it is related to the plot. Same for Sanderson, I've read all his books and am not even sure now which one you're talking about!

Sometimes we need a nudge to notice the unconscious bias around us, and it's often uncomfortable.

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#477

Post by frosted-flakes »

mattmanser wrote: post #476
frosted-flakes wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the person is hypothetical or not fleshed-out and without a gender, like your example, they is fine and I don't even notice. But if the person is known, the use of they catches me off guard every time. I recently read a book by Brandon Sanderson that had aliens on another planet with a different gender system, so Sanderson just used they to refer to those aliens even though the characters were obviously either fem…

Ann Leckie has written a great sci-fi series, Ancillary Justice/Ancillary Sword/Ancillary Mercy, where the main character assumes everyone is a she and keeps referring to them as that all the way through (though it becomes fairly obvious to the reader which are hes and shes). I found it actually fairly annoying at first, but quickly got over it because it is related to the plot. Same for Sanderson, I've read all his…

It was Starsight (Skyward series, book 2). The diones are apparently genderless or have unknown genders, and reproduce by merging into a single being for a while so they can "try out" the adult version of the kid they're going to have. If they don't like the kid they can reject that version and try again (eugenics), otherwise the actual kid is born from an egg or something.

The whole genderless thing was completely irrelevant to the plot—the diones could have been male or female and little else would have changed. It's not that it made me uncomfortable, but it was an unnecessary distraction.

Anyway, the book was a 2/5 because it threw almost everything from book 1 away, had way too many characters and places, ended on a serious cliffhanger, and the fictional science was extremely far-fetched. Meanwhile, book 1 was fantastic (a full 1/1 in my opinion) was focused on a small cast of characters on a small set, had great character development, and resolved nicely.

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#478

Post by rhodozelia »

azernik wrote: post #259
twic wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cruise Mass Balance Devices They put those in to make the probe seem higher-quality. They got the idea from Beats headphones.

We were doing that at Meraki back in the early 2010s (it turned out they were also useful as a heat sink and, because the metal was exposed to air, a radiator). Pretty sure Meraki got the idea from some Apple product or other.

Nortel and it’s predeccessors bell northern telecom used to put weights in the handsets so they had a nice feel to them.

Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

#479

Post by Hextinium »

Evidlo wrote: post #450
onion2k wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do say things like 1.25mm, which is 1/8th of 1 cm. Presumably someone who uses Imperial would say 5/128th inches if they wanted to describe something that's equivalent to 1mm?

Most likely they would use mils/thou. 25mils ~ 1mm Or 1/16in as others have said.

40 mils ~ 1 mm

1000 mils / 25.4 mm = 39.3

This simple fact still seems wrong to me somehow.

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