The NASA LANDER HAS MADE IT!!!

[pchang]

Unpredictable

Space exploration provide large, but very unpredictable benefits to human kind. The initial benefits may seem small, but they have a way of cascading and going off in many seemingly different directions.

The initial efforts to develop sub-orbital rockets really spurred the development of computers and integrated circuits. Would we have had them without the money spend on this (I do count this as part of space research)? Maybe, but if so, it would certainly have happened later and on a smaller initial scale.

In addition to the obvious benefits like Velcro and Tang, there are much more serious insights gained into human health.

[Whoha]

theres some 30 thousand patents based directly off of Nasa research since 1958.

http://tech-transfer.larc.nasa.gov/patents/LicensingNASAPatents.html

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Whoha
theres some 30 thousand patents based directly off of Nasa research since 1958.

http://tech-transfer.larc.nasa.gov/p...SAPatents.html

Naaaaaaahhhh, let's divy up the NASA budget so everyone can get their allotted turnip for the year. That'd be so much more gratifying...

[DanS]

There are some pretty cool spectrometer readings coming out...

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040109a.html

[TCO]

That curve gives me a chubby, Dan.

[DanS]

Knew it would.

[Odin]

That color photo is WOW!!! That HAS to be a lake bed, I am sure of it! Because of the lack of big boulders it really looks like a terran desert. Those black rocks are basalt, right?

[Space05us]

so is this where I get to gloat that longer, harder, and more expensive really does work? Or should I praise the Beagal or was it Bagel?

[Seeker]

Why is the mini-TES graph so 'spikey'? It's got much more exaggerated peaks and valleys.

[Spiffor]

Gosh, I love this pic Space. I can't wait to be there!

[Space05us]

Spiffor, they have a gallery set up too.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/images.html

edit: well over 500 raw images

[Odin]

WOW! Space's pic is the clearest photo of the martian surface I have ever seen! OVER 500 IMAGES!?!

[Whoha]

not just water, but also 2 carbonates(which are created by life/water processes).

[Odin]

Originally posted by Whoha
not just water, but also 2 carbonates(which are created by life/water processes).

If we find large deposits of calcium carbonate that probably means that there was most likely once photosynthetic microbes that made carbonate shells, like diatom algae here on earth. You need plakton for large carbonate deposits like the white cliffs of Dover, in southern England. That data makes me hopeful. I'll be pleasently suprised if we find evidence of life of protozoan complexity, not just bacteria-like.

[DanS]

Why is the mini-TES graph so 'spikey'? It's got much more exaggerated peaks and valleys.

Right. That's how a spectrometer works. Each spike represents a different substance being sensed. So what the spectrometer is looking at several substances.

TCO could explain more.