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News Briefs 12-06-2008

Let’s get jiggy with it…

Many thanks, Rick & Kat

Quote of the Day:

“Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate conservative. You are trying to hold back movement in an infinitely changing universe. The verb to be does make idiots of us all.”

Frank Herbert

    1. Oh yes
      I’m crazy for Herbert. Right now I’m reading ‘Children of Dune’; its kind of tough because I need to reread almost every paragraph in order to really understand what the man is trying to convey with his images and philosophical diatribes, but it’s certainly worth it 🙂

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

  1. Shake and Bake
    If you wanted to have time to check the results before releasing to the general public as to what was seen by baking the Martian soil, or to have time to fabricate results in case they didn’t jive with current dogma, what would you do to stall? Just a rhetorical question mind you . . . .

    1. Oooooh
      I like the way your twisted, conspirational mind works ASM; almost as paranoid as myself 😉

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

    2. Shake and Bake
      [quote=AncientSkyMan]If you wanted to have time to check the results before releasing to the general public as to what was seen by baking the Martian soil, or to have time to fabricate results in case they didn’t jive with current dogma, what would you do to stall? Just a rhetorical question mind you . . . .[/quote]

      Funny, this is EXACTLY the first thought that crossed my mind when I read the news about “problems” with the sampling 🙂

      Something doesn’t add up with the “clump” version of their story. Can scoop up and “sprinkle” the second scooping? yeah right…

      1. life or no life
        Suppose there is life there, or precursors of life.

        Then we really have to go check this our, but the green people
        will say we have to be real careful. So this will slow things down.

        Suppose there is evidence that no life could ever have been there. Then, from the Green point of view, what is the reason to go there? Just dead rocks.

        And even worse, we could contaminate the dead rocks, and overwhelm the putative (go look it up) life that might, have been there, in spite of all the evidence.

        —-
        if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)

        it’s not how fast you go, it’s who gets there first

        1. Huh?
          [quote=earthling]Suppose there is life there, or precursors of life.

          Then we really have to go check this our, but the green people
          will say we have to be real careful. So this will slow things down.
          [/quote]

          Green people? Are you talking about martians here? 😛

          BTW I was going to add to the newsbrief a link to the story of sen. McCain, who is apparently aiming to win the geek vote by claiming that a)He’s a Bradbury fan, and b)He would like to send a man to Mars.

          Mars is, after all, a RED planet 😉
          —–
          It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
          It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

          Red Pill Junkie

        2. life or no life
          The idea of contamination is not new. Same applies to Europa. Where is the line between exploration/knowledge vs nothing, so to speak? Did Columbus contaminate the “New World” with rats for the sake of exploration? So many animals were introduced all around the world, destroying ecosystems, yet we’ve survived the calamity, at least until now. What is the threshold that says yes or no to space exploration? Take pictures from orbit? Take ground samples? Colonize for resources? What happens when we run out here? Do we, the human race, modify/contaminate another ecosystem/planet to support the future of humankind? Or do we just wait until we’ve exhausted all resources here then pooofff! we’re gone? Do we explore for knowledge? Resources? Life? Expansion? I guess there are as many different opinions as there are people on these types of questions. Tree huggers will prone going back to living in caves, socialists will want to strip mars for social housing, capitalists will want it for profit, etc, etc, etc…

          Cheers

          1. dead rocks
            At what point do dead rocks have a divine right to be dead rocks?

            —-
            if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)

            it’s not how fast you go, it’s who gets there first

          2. dead rocks
            Fair enough question, earthling… But what about the microbial life probably present there? Do we contaminate it? Do we send lichen see if it grows? I’m a firm believer of life on Mars and Europa, but at the same time a stronger believer of the need for space exploration/exploitation. Ah, decisions, decisions… 🙂

          3. Well…
            I still remember all the fuzz created by the NASA scientists 10 years ago when they appeared on TV and claimed they had evidence of a martian meteorite with fossil microorganisms; and there are several serious scientists who believe there was some “crospollination” of life between Mars & Earth millions of years ago.

            So, we would only be returning the favor 🙂

            Besides, quantum mechanics show us that by merely observing an object, we are unavoidably altering it; so we have already changed Mars forever by now.

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          4. Europa
            With respect to Europa, we should do 2 things:

            1 – check if there is life there, and then
            2s – if there is life, study how it is different or similar to ours, or

            2b – if therre is no life, we sould put life there

            either way, we would gain a lot of knowledge

            —-
            if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)

            it’s not how fast you go, it’s who gets there first

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