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Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
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(How's the design for the '09 ice-rink game coming?) |
Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
All the news outlets have it all wrong. Word on the street is that when Spirit and Opportunity do finally reach their useful end of life for NASA (currently projected to be about the year 2017) then NASA is going to auction off the controls to Spirit and Opportunity separately on Ebay. Anyone know what a good used Mars Rover goes for these days? I hear they are in pretty decent shape for the number of miles they have on them but it's not like you can "kick the tires" so it is a bit of a gamble. I just hate to bid too much. You know, they will be pretty well used by then and all the good exploration spots will have already been taken by NASA and all. Dave, have you thought about putting a reasonable "Buy-It-Now" on them? Say maybe 10,000 Krispy Kreme donuts. Of course, I would depreciate that by 1,000 KK for every additional year you keep wearing them out.
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Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
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Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
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I have learned to avoid giving the AP too much credibility. I've been part of, or have had inside knowledge of, several "newsworthy" events that got mangled to the point of unrecognizability by the Associated Press. Don't try to defend them by saying that they just pick up stories from other sources -- I've seen how they edit those stories, leave out important context, juxtapose things to make people seem to say the thing which is not, and occasionally add a word or two of invented detail just to make it more attention-getting. On top of many primary sources failing to get the details perfectly correct, this makes a lot of what goes through AP unreliable enough that I can't trust any of it. [/RANT] |
Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
Well, I usually give slashdot minor credibility. Then again, www.physorg.com also had this story and I really like that site since it's all about sci/tech and is usually accurate. I guess we'll have to see.
I wish the "controls" for the rovers could go up on eBay. Too bad they're all just transmitted lines of presimulated code... |
Re: Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?
Here's a wild thought -
As a fundraiser, NASA creates a web portal through which the highest bidders on eBay can issue supervisory commands to the rovers and watch via the Web as they are executed. "I wanna write my name in the Martian landscape with a rover's wheels." OK, $10,000,000 and we'll make that happen. :p |
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