Personal Note: Way to go, Phoenix!

[nebroadwe]

Congratulations, Team Phoenix! I love it when a plan comes together ... especially when it's a plan that produces actual pictures of the Martian landscape, as opposed to artists' renderings. (Nothing against artists, here -- just the ZOWIE! factor of actually being there.) Here's to a successful exploration of the Ice Plains of the Red Planet. (Eat your heart out, Edgar B.)

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Huh. I hadn't heard about the irradiation problem -- I guess I just assumed, since we've been putting people up on the space station, that we had that one sorted out with building materials. But people do rotate on and off the space station in far shorter increments than a trip to Mars would take. Hmm.

Mind you, I'm still impressed by the Phoenix and its brethren, despite my Star Trekly longing to boldly go where nobody has gone before. Patrick Nielsen Hayden has a nice little sensawunda entry (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010262.html) on the Making Light blog that puts the achievement into a perspective even us Bradbury fans can appreciate.

(And can I also admit that I stared at the sentence with physiological effects in it for like five minutes? Normally I'm better at spotting effects/affects, but in this case I'm still not sure I chose the right one...)

Ah, a topic on which I can pontificate with authority. :-) You did. As a noun, "effect" is what follows a cause; "affect" is what your face and body show about your emotional state. I'll get down out of this big fancy chair now ...

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

Huh. I hadn't heard about the irradiation problem -- I guess I just assumed, since we've been putting people up on the space station, that we had that one sorted out with building materials. But people do rotate on and off the space station in far shorter increments than a trip to Mars would take. Hmm.

Well actually... (isn't this just the most cheerful thing ever?) those people we send up are kinda acting like guinea pigs? Radiation (as far as use for medicinal purpose) only been around a little over a hundred years, and it wasn't until partway into the 20th century that people were like "Oh HEY we're all getting lesions and cancer and stuff..."

We still haven't nailed down the long term effects of huge doses of radiation and a safe threshold dose - our best studies have been on the Chernobyl victims and on the atomic bomb survivors, and everytime the researchers say, "Okay, it's relatively safe for a person to receive this much radiation occupationally," they do a new study and have to consider lowering it again. Of course, I am talking about simple x-ray workers, and not... you know, being blasted into space. I'm pretty sure I'd be an astronaut, no matter the risks. (Source: my dad's old Radiation Protection text book. Ironically, considering such an important subject, the thinnest of all of his old texts.)

Ah, a topic on which I can pontificate with authority. :-) You did. As a noun, "effect" is what follows a cause; "affect" is what your face and body show about your emotional state. I'll get down out of this big fancy chair now ...

So THAT'S the official rule. I know I know it, but 90% of the time I'm going on "My head says this one is correct, but I'm not consciously sure why."