I'm actually quite excited about this. About two years ago, my (dad's) cousin Varoujan, whom you might remember from FNPL, took us on a tour of JPL. We got to put our names on a list that would be included on the Mars Lander.
In addition to not giving a shit about when people in New York go to sleep. NASA must consider a laundry list of things before launching. But I'm sure you were already aware of that.
This video is a couple of days old, but still very good in describing all that went into it and how enormous and difficult the landing procedure is really:
Growing up, my friend's dad was a pilot for United and formerly in the Air Force during Vietnam. He had a plaque by the computer with the second saying from the following image:
You kids. Try flying copters in BF3's ancestor, Desert Combat. They were coded from plane code, with the motive force just directed upward, so there was only three options; fly upward, free-fall, and propel yourself into the ground. The controls were about as wack as you'd expect, so most DC servers were just filled with people diving their copters nosefirst into the ground over and over and preventing the people who actually knew how to use them from flying them.
You kids. Try flying copters in BF3's ancestor, Desert Combat. They were coded from plane code, with the motive force just directed upward, so there was only three options; fly upward, free-fall, and propel yourself into the ground. The controls were about as wack as you'd expect, so most DC servers were just filled with people diving their copters nosefirst into the ground over and over and preventing the people who actually knew how to use them from flying them.
Pretty sure I wasn't talking about Video Game helicopters, sketch.
You kids. Try flying copters in BF3's ancestor, Desert Combat. They were coded from plane code, with the motive force just directed upward, so there was only three options; fly upward, free-fall, and propel yourself into the ground. The controls were about as wack as you'd expect, so most DC servers were just filled with people diving their copters nosefirst into the ground over and over and preventing the people who actually knew how to use them from flying them.
LOL Go play DCS Black Shark and then come talk to me.
I like the implications of this sort of technology to be used for automatic driving and for medical applications, but I can also see this being used for military type applications. Regardless, cool.
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I'm actually quite excited about this. About two years ago, my (dad's) cousin Varoujan, whom you might remember from FNPL, took us on a tour of JPL. We got to put our names on a list that would be included on the Mars Lander.
My name is going to be on MARS.
Google+ Hangout
NASA Social
I am watching the Google+ Hangout one, it is more interesting at the moment.
and the papers from the Atlas and CMS collaborations are also up.
Oh, and note that the video is very wrong on what the Continuum Hypothesis is.
Amusingly, though, you can still see evidence of the old, incorrect version if you hover over 6:20 in the seek bar.
This shows the startup and some combat.