Mars Rover Spirit has been delayed due to 'hiccup'

The Mars rover has developed some minor problems that will probably delay the start of its trek across the rust-colored landscape to prospect rocks and soil, scientists said Wednesday.

It could be at least a week before the problems are fixed, said Art Thompson, tactical uplink lead on the mission.

An entire week to get the thing going. Makes you wonder exactly what king of hiccup this may be.

story.news.yahoo.com.../ap/20040107/ap_on_sc/mars_rover_105

maybe it's my overactive imagination again

But isn't that strange?????

Betcha they found something, that they are gonna concentrate on investigating and just don't want us to know. When they are done with their little investigation, they will show us the regular martian rocks again and blame it on technical difficulties

of course we can't argue, because we don't know any better.

Nice find, Black Jackal-

And now the theories will begin....I does make me wonder as to what is really being seen- this mission went flawlessly-

Why is there a planned manned mission coming up to mars, via nuclear ship- as supposedly will be announced in the next state of the union address, (according to the LA Times) ?

Sounds as if a coverup or withholding of information is possibly occuring.

yeah they need a week to hide the stuff from us and try to figure out a permanent fix so we don't notice.

maybe they need to hire all the off work photoshop guys they can find asap?

Well, i know technical problems are pretty common when you fling something halfway across the solar system. So I'd set the probablity for that actualy being the case very high.

Also if NASA found anything that exciting (such as water rich soil or even some form of life) while they may want to keep the lid on it for a few days, i highly doubt it would be kept secret in the long term. Mostly becuase with something like that the scientist couldn't hold it in all that long.

Now the question is, if they do bump into good evidence of life (the lander isn't equipped to generate proof, just goo evidence, at least microbial life) then what will they do? My bet is hold it in for a few hour for confermation of data then have a press release that is conservative as to the evidence. One can't claim proof of alien life with out some VERY good evidence, and even then many won't believe it.

I see it like this:

if a martian animal walked by this thing,

they would hide it from us then tell us that they found bacteria in the soil!

the world would rejoice!

if a martian walked by this thing,

they would not tell us but then they would announce that they found a plant of some kind growning...

the world would do high-fives in mid-air and everyone would be so happy!

If a martian ufo flew by they would...

Originally posted by Journey
Nice find, Black Jackal-

And now the theories will begin....I does make me wonder as to what is really being seen- this mission went flawlessly-

Why is there a planned manned mission coming up to mars, via nuclear ship- as supposedly will be announced in the next state of the union address, (according to the LA Times) ?

Sounds as if a coverup or withholding of information is possibly occuring.

Can you show us the article where it mentions a manned flight to mars? I haven't heard that and I'd like to read the article.

I can easily imagine a form of fungus living mars. SOme of those images even look like we might have spores all over the airbags.

I realy dont think theyll hide life, but looking at the nasa sts videos !!

I was thinking they were having some proublems becouse it seamed like they were bringing in the pics kinda slow...

Its proubly a software or link proublem iethere way there going to have to tell us.

The Spirit delay gives engineers time to further retract portions of the now-deflated air bags that cushioned the golf cart-sized rover's landing. Two pieces of the air bag partially block the ramp that mission members want the rover to follow.

"As soon as we get that air bag out of the way, we're good to go," said Arthur Amador, mission manager for Spirit's fifth martian day on the surface.

3 Days to remove the airbags????!?!?!?!?!?!?

Something else has to be going on. First it was trouble with an Antena that needed to be repaired now its the airbags in the way. I want to know what is really going on.

story.news.yahoo.com.../ap/20040108/ap_on_sc/mars_rover




[Edited on 8-1-2004 by BlackJackal]

Originally posted by worldwatcher
maybe it's my overactive imagination again

It is.

I think they're just being extremely cautious. It would be one hell of a shame to fall at the last hurdle, they're probably worried about how secure that ground looks.

Say it was mud, it wouldn't do much good if we found out by the rover sinking in it.
Then we'd have to wait more years to send another and find out how this can be.

thanks for clearing that up for me.

now can you recommend a decent pychiatrist who specializes in cases of overactive imaginations

I think that having spent half a billion dollars and knowing that NASA is going to look pretty bad if this fails, they are being about as careful as they can be.

i really have no opinion either way about this but just a thought...
supose, for just a second, that there actually is a technical problem no aliens nothing out of the ordinary. yes there have been billions of dollars spent and failure wouldnt look to good now maybe they are just being cautious. i would be.
but on 2nd thought if they did find something saying it was a tech problem would give them time to figure out what to do and what they found. although a situation like that should already be thought of to keep the sheep at bay.

Didn't anyone see "Contact"? Did you see how the Govt took over the operation? (sorry I watched it recently on tv again)

Well.. NASA is a govt run program, if they found something, of course they would make up a bogus story to buy time, (technical difficulties would be the easiest and most plausible excuse) while they analyze, study and determine if whatever they find... is something they want us to know or not.

I mean if there was some significant alien discovery that challenges science, religions etc, etc, how would the people handle it...I think this is the biggest reason why you won't ever hear of any alien discoveries unless they show up live t.v. somewhere and it becomes unavoidable.

don't mean to dispute the intentions of the actual scientists who work in NASA but we all know that it is the Government who has full control of what can be disclosed.