OT: The US mars lander

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** No - that just makes you another wanker.

Discover something previously unknown and the game changes. Awfully hard to do that these days without the resources of a big lab.

AFAIK, the high efficiency blue LED was the last really big one in electronics. Changed the whole lighting industry.

** Get your hand off it ....

...... Phil

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** Absolutely, Ms Foster just said the words convincingly.

Another sentiment I liked from the movie was:

" If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space. "

...... Phil

Phil Allison wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Yes. It was during her bid for funding.

"we are not alone" Was that the X-files? Actually I think that Einstein even said it or was one of the first to do so. I liked the small handfull of sand with the sparkles in it.

And the fact that there are more stars than there are grains of sand on our planet. That alone is a very hard to fathom number.

Interestingly, the notion that the whole universe is inhabited dates back a very long way, and it was an understood thing up to the early modern period. It was called the "principle of plenitude".

C. S. Lewis's "The Discarded Image" is an excellent read on that point among many others.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

Most space grade alloys would probably survive well enough. I expect if anyone ever finds then the plaques on the Voyagers will still be recognisable at almost any age provided that they survive.

I doubt if the record will be playable though!

Micrometeorite impacts will eventually abrade things away preferentially on the forward side.

Their main problem on arrival will be adjusting to gravity again.

8 rads/year is lower than the long term wartime emergency dose so it would be life shortening but not enough for radiation sickness. Unless they were very unlucky and a CME struck Mars or their ship directly.

Doing it during solar maximum would be a very bad idea.

Possibility to swap experience, knowledge and technologies once we figure out a means of communication.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown