Originally published at: Incredible image of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars | Boing Boing
…
11 Likes
Awesome.
4 Likes
Why Mars mission team members go nuts when they have a successful landing:(excerpt): They call it the “seven minutes of terror,” which doesn’t do justice to the weeks of anxiety, troubleshooting, second-guessing, sleepless nights - the mental cataloguing of all that could go wrong and all that must go exactly right. One cataloger is Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for NASA’s Perseverance rover mission. He has a simple way of describing what the space agency expects him and his fellow engineers to do: “Land a car on Mars.”
6 Likes
That’s some early prog there!
3 Likes
It’s 1979 (though timeless in the manner of all Hawkwind releases) is that early? I mean, that’s like the time when Punk ruled the earth isn’t it? Admittedly, as the Wind first blew back in 1969 (nice), they cover a pretty board range of genres of space rock. 
3 Likes
!!!? See below
Hawkwind started in 69/70 (or thereabouts?); I only know that because of my (just short of) obsession with The Nice some years back. I began looking at prog groups from that time and Hawkwind popped up, although I never went any further than noting their place in the genre. Any particular album/song to recommend?
1 Like
I’m happy to have lived long enough to see, live, a human walk on the moon and the same humans put a robot army on Mars.
4 Likes
In the midst of the strife in Myanmar, JPL’s project manager behind the mars helicopter is a brilliant Burmese engineer MiMi Aung, who had earned her masters and joined JPL at the age of 22 and has been with them since 1990. Her mother was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in Burma.
10 Likes
pond scum in the particular… ring any bells
Unfortunately, I’m not a Hawkwind scholar; having got in to them through friends who are bigger fans. Having said that, I do enjoy their tunes; especially when they go full Spinal Tap. For me, they’ve always been the background sound to playing cards and the Traveller RPG. 
Having said that, I guess that favourite tracks, without vanishing in to the blackhole of their sprawling discography, would include…
Quark, Strangeness and Charm has a bunch of outstanding tracks, though I do have a softspot for…
Though the intro to this track is rather silly, it did teach me how to pronounce, “Melniboné”
Of course, due to their long and fraught history, some of my favourite “Hawkwind” tracks aren’t even from the actual band.
2 Likes
Anyone on Twitter looking to dilute the general toxicity of that place, following Perseverance has brightened my feed considerably!
5 Likes
My grandfather remembered seeing the Wright Brother’s flight on a newsreel in 1909, and saw the whole Apollo programme too. Not bad, that.
5 Likes
O. M. G. I have no name for their target audience. It’s a hoot, though!
1 Like
And his great-great-great son went on to be the Captain of the Starship Enterprise.
3 Likes
I see what U did there…
That would be fun, but I don’t think my children are going to oblige with the requisite descendant(s). Plus humans are a bit brief and squishy for going to the stars IMHO. But we will see.
3 Likes
even scott manley got over excited
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
