

NASA's Mars rover finds key traces of water - owlmusic
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/2011/12/10/nasas-mars-rover-finds-key-traces-of-water-40094623/

======
hammerdr
This is an incredible achievement.

The "key traces of water" is awe inspiring in itself. However, what is more
impressive is that Opportunity is still chugging along 7 years longer than
predicted and making these discoveries. Unfortunately, NASA is pretty bad at
displaying successes and explaining why it is important.

The press release:
[http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20111207a.h...](http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20111207a.html)

~~~
jerrya
I used to kid people that Spirit and Opportunity's longevity were themselves a
problem.

They were built in an era of faster, better, cheaper and at the beginning of
that time, the theory was that it was better to have more spacecraft even if
some failed than to build expensive too big to tail projects that consumed the
entire budgets.

That Spirit and Opportunity went far beyond their 90 day requirements was a
indication of overengineering, and wouldn't it have been better to have had
20, or 40 Spirits and Opportunities launched, even if 1/2 of them failed?

(Now their longevity could be, not because of gross over-engineering but
because the minimum engineering required to bring them to 90 - 120 days
naturally makes a 5-10 year lifespan easy....)

We seem to have since gone back to wanting huge, too big, we're too afraid to
let them fail projects.

I haven't followed it closely, but I am saddened that apparently Curiosity is
a one off, and not part of a dual, triple, twenty member fleet. It could also
be that I am just unaware of NASA's planned follow on to Curiosity.

~~~
Retric
The problem with faster better cheaper is programs are cut until just before
they become irrelevant. If you want to send 20 identical robots someone is
going to come along and say, what's the harm if we only send 1/2 that. But
they will do the same thing if you only want to send 10. Sending 2 is vary
defensible because 'you want some redundancy' but funding is not appropriated
based on bang for the buck.

PS: ITER is a great example of this. Initially the goal was to test a full
scale power plant with turbines etc. But, they kept cutting until it was
exactly on the threshold between useful and toy without generating any power
whatsoever.

------
nyellin
Can someone in the know please comment on the prospects for bacterial life on
Mars?

I know nothing about biology or astronomy, but the case for life on Mars seems
extremely good. I'm basing this on:

* Repeated offhand comments by Neil deGrasse Tyson (admittedly not a scientific source)

* Articles in popular newspapers about "Mars Farts" (I haven't read any scientific publications on the topic)

* Relatively recent (2009) reports about AL84001 (again, as understood by a layman)

What are the accepted scientific opinions about those last two items?

~~~
cynest
> astrology

Astronomy is the correct word here. Astrology is horoscopes and the like.

~~~
nyellin
Whoops, fixed that. Thanks.

