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

[lyricnonsense.livejournal.com]

Phoenix's safe landing had me breathing a huge sigh of relief. So glad everything seems to be checking out, and I can't wait for the science to get interesting. :-)

Now if we can only get over this silly notion of sending people there soon...

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Phoenix's safe landing had me breathing a huge sigh of relief. So glad everything seems to be checking out, and I can't wait for the science to get interesting. :-)

I had managed to lose track of this mission, but it was so cool to turn on the news as I was falling asleep last night and hear the lander was down and communicating properly with home. I admit to leaving the real science to the scientists on this one -- I just ooh and ahh over the pictures, being a humanities type.

Now if we can only get over this silly notion of sending people there soon...

Waaaaait a minute -- that's not silly! It's just impractical! (Speaking here as someone who, given the chance to go to another planet, would take the ticket without a second thought. It's the romance of the thing. Setting foot on other planets is epic. Which is not a reason to send people when machines are cheaper and more efficient ... but still ... someday ... )

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I was reading those articles the other day and just couldn't believe - a 50/50 chance. 50/50! That blows my mind. They used the phrase "7 minutes of terror" and... good lord, I think I'd be terrified since I'd launched the thing, not just trying to land it.

I have to admit, I'm really intrigued by talks of sending people there, but I also think that it won't happen anytime soon. We still have a long way to go to understand not just the physiological effects of zero g on the body but the huge amounts of radiation one is exposed to in space - I heard on a tv show one time that... either one night or one week was the same as six months natural exposure here on earth. (Um... I've been reading ahead in case I get into the xray program next fall. When you consider the idea of being constantly exposed to that much radiation for years at a time, you have to really wonder the effect it has on the lifespan.)

(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...)

[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."

[lyricnonsense.livejournal.com]

*laugh* This is (hopefully) going to be my life's work, so the problem of keeping people alive on this sort of trip makes me cringe. I'm all for sending people there, but given the amount of money the government is willing to spend (not a lot) and how soon they want it to happen (too soon). If we're going to do it, I want it done right, not pieced together with what amounts to old Apollo museum pieces.

Also, to jump in on artemisrae's point about the irradiation problem, the space station is in low earth orbit, ~200 miles from the surface of the earth. At that point, they're still under Van Allen radiation belt(s), so the amount of radiation they're actually experiencing is fairly low. The only people who have experienced the levels of radiation expected on a trip to Mars are the Apollo astronauts, and while they've experienced a higher rate of glaucoma than the average population, the sample size isn't big enough to make a call.

And I'll stop lecturing now. *runs off*