That was great, Jim! Thanks for posting that.

what a lonely place...

Kind of amazing having seen many terrains out west here much like this.

But awesome video, just wish we could see humans on Mars before I die.

Thanks for sharing, breathtaking images!



I hope not, we would find ways to mess it up :-/

Cheers,
Slug

Just waiting for the conspiracy theorists pointing out walls, humanoid figures and abandoned engines and technology.

Just discovered this one last month, hilarious!

https://www.triplem.com.au/story/fl...flat-accidentally-prove-its-round-129953

Because as stated in the video that these are made from stitched together images it automatically makes them CGI in their opinions.

The "informal place names" annoys me. American tax dollars sent these spacecraft to Mars and we don't even get final say in naming what is found there, instead names have to be submitted to the "International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature". Same thing happened with the Moon, many of the places on the Moon that were named by Apollo astronauts (for navigational purposes etc.) are now named something else because some faceless bureaucrat didn't like their naming convention or in some cases taking decades to formalize the names Apollo astronauts came up with (Mount Marilyn, named after Apollo 8/13 Jim Lovells wife, was only formally recognized in the last ten years or so).

Elon Musk / SpaceX is still aiming at 2024...

Which might be a bit overly ambitious, but I wouldn't bet against him and certainly not against the next opportunity (per orbital mechanics) in 2026.

Oh and the first flight of Starship could come in the next week - ten days!

That was a great video... a detailed look at another planet. 'Fascinating!'

Ayup, 2024 might be optimistic. Of course, if you don't try, you don't get.

Honestly, I would not put it past them to send an unmanned one in 2022, possibly as a fuel factory, in preparation for an anticipated 2024 manned mission.

It is my understanding that that IS the plan, unmanned Starships would be sent 26 months ahead of a crewed flight.

you do know nasa doctored space images since the 90s right? i remember there was a documentary where they had the guy talking over a pristine image of the moon, but the release pic was blurry and with dots smudged out. why ? i dont know.......but they do...

Sure, and we never went to the moon and the world is for sure flat!
Everything good we think happened in human history was made up by some guy, right?

I hope Musk does it, he and his cohorts have done some amazing things so far....or have they??

Darned that broken magnetosphere.

We may never terraform Mars, but some bubble colonies on there will be pretty cool.

I've long said if we were going to be serious about terraforming Mars we ought to be dropping spores, seeds, fungi, whatever, and see if somehow something takes.

Then if we're REAL lucky maybe in a few million years some sort of ecosystem might develop.

Assuming we don't destroy ourselves we do have a few hundred million years left of a survivable Earth.

Not billions like some think, our countdown is around 500 million years...

A serious ecosystem likely won't develop due to atmospheric deterioration from the solar wind.

The "building" of a viable (or at least semi-viable) atmosphere would be one of the main reasons for having an ecosystem in the first place.

It would never be like Earth's, but maybe a lot more human friendly than the current atmosphere.

Mars already has an atmosphere that isn't going anywhere soon, so if it had a "boost" I imagine (at least in theory) it could be improved on...

Obviously I'm only touching on one tiny aspect of the challenges there though....