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Dandibear t1_jdp3efs wrote

Still blows my mind that this is pretty good quality video from another planet.

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sniadekg t1_jdpscl4 wrote

And to be honest if I weren’t told it’s Mars I’d just assume it’s some desert on Earth :D

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_Face t1_jdtbw8w wrote

Mars in 100% inhabited by robots controlled by aliens on another planet.

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Shasarr t1_jdqws03 wrote

Better then most videos from earth! Yea i look at you dashcams!

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CarAtunk817 t1_jdowwgq wrote

JPL been trying to break this thing for like a year now. These latest flights are high, long, and fast.

What an amazing feat of engineering. Quickly becoming my favorite space probe of all time. Ridiculous.

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collegefurtrader t1_jdp16je wrote

And it’s basically a goof, an experiment. Built with cheap consumer hardware.

Exceeded expectations is an understatement.

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Graybie t1_jdp7q00 wrote

I would be a little more clear than that. It used consumer grade hardware for certain components. Key avionics are still radiation hardened and as far as I know, things like the blades, landing legs, and chassis are all custom. The motors were technically off-the-shelf (maxon DCX), but were modified and customized. The thing cost $80,000,000 to design and build.

https://thenewstack.io/how-the-first-helicopter-on-mars-uses-off-the-shelf-hardware-and-linux/

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221missile t1_jdqj5yg wrote

It’s more expensive per pound than the B-2 spirit, an aircraft that literally costs more than its weight in gold.

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dingo1018 t1_jdsdjgb wrote

But the whole thing weighs about as much as a very poorly sparrow.

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Grogosh t1_jdp2ll3 wrote

They are collecting data on what you can do with a helicopter drone on mars.

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KINGMARKOXIV t1_jdrxd98 wrote

not much, considering the atmosphere is... thin... very thin at that

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StrangeTangerine1525 t1_jdtjt3s wrote

I don’t think they would have sent this technolgoy demosntration if they thought flight on Mars was a dead end lol. Despite the air being less than 1/50 the density of air on Earth Mars has lower gravity and heavier air molecules at least helping to partially offset the disadvantage of the thin air. Aerial surveillance is a powerful tool for Mars exploration and could be used to explore large regions on the surface and to sample the atmosphere.

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Conscious_Stick8344 t1_jdp45i3 wrote

What’s so sad is that humanity’s accomplishing amazing feats like this, and it has only a handful of up-votes and comments.

Meanwhile, human nature is on full display everywhere and we’re drawn to it like moths to the flame.

Keep plodding ever forward, NASA and JPL! We still applaud you and admire your astounding accomplishments — especially when they’re on other worlds.

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EcchiOli t1_jdqzv4i wrote

I try really hard to tell myself there are changes, only they are too gradual to notice.

Some centuries ago, it was perfectly acceptable to slaughter indiscriminately and to brand people with different beliefs or body appearance as non-human.
Not anymore.

Just a century ago, half of mankind (women) were essentially public property and beating them, deciding what to do with them, was the norm almost everywhere.
It's now becoming a minority.

Things suck real hard. But, morally speaking, they used to suck even more although it's hard to realize.

All I can hope is that we haven't capped how far we, as a species, can morally progress (because, fuck, there's so much more potential progress it's like we have just started moving past the starting line). But that'll be for our grandchildren's grandchildren to observe :-/

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Conscious_Stick8344 t1_jdr2ieh wrote

I couldn’t agree more!

And, being a constant student of history myself, I’ve seen how we’ve taken a constant “two steps forward, one step back” approach to progress. Of course, that’s generally speaking; we’ve made great, irreversible progress in some areas, and not so much in others. If anything, your comment reminds me of two quotes.

One is by documentarian Ken Burns. He said that one of the lessons he learned about history is not that it repeats itself, but that “human nature never changes.” I’d add to that that it’s cyclical in nature, where one generation starts forgetting the lessons learned in the previous ones, even though it instinctively builds on its accomplishments. Hence, we keep moving forward despite our ignorance of past lessons learned. That gives me hope, even though it’s a constant struggle to ensure we move forward with time. (And maybe that’s our lot in the universe; if we buck time and try to turn the clock back, we always pay a price for the friction we cause.)

The second quote is from Carl Sagan himself, and the comment stands on its own:

“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.” — Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

So, in closing, I think it’s up to people like us who applaud progress, understand human nature, and do our moral best to educate and enlighten those around us to the mystery and beauty of our planet as well as the universe. And we do it by supporting scientists and sources like these, popularizing it as we go, to ensure we don’t keep turning on ourselves and using technology only to destroy.

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NoSoupForYouRuskie t1_jdr8bou wrote

You are correct. Alot of people won't start caring about space again for like another 5 years I'm bettin.

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GraveSlayer726 t1_jdq0t14 wrote

Mars looks so…. Earth like, it’s weird, kind of eerie, like I don’t know why but I never imagined mars having such an almost blue sky, always though it would be red or orange, well I mean it looks kind of orange but still

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NonAbelianFrog t1_jdwi39c wrote

It shows that not all of the planet is red - this bit's more of a dusty brown, as is much of the footage I've seen.

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bookers555 t1_jdrfgvc wrote

It depends on how much dust there is nearby and the time of day, but sometimes it can kinda look blueish. Normally it ranges around white, grey and brown.

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-439f6d2ff0d3ec015a5ab5b184fef365

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StrangeTangerine1525 t1_jds57sz wrote

The only time Mars has a blue sky is when the image is in false color in order for scientists to see how rocks would look like in Earthlike lighting. Mars atmosphere always has at least some high altitude dust in it that makes the atmosphere at the very least a kind of light tan. On average the atmosphere is very dusty though so it tends to look almost the color of rust.

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HolyGig t1_jdpccwj wrote

That's a great video. I wish they had a way to do a tracking shot with the mast camera

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JediMindTrek t1_jdqvw7q wrote

Ingenuity deserves a spot in the Smithsonian should we ever recover the little dude!

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Artful_Dodger29 t1_jdrmmu3 wrote

Most people can’t grasp the enormity of an accomplishment like this. It’s just too big. In fact there are some who resent what this suggests about their plodding lives on earth. But the vast majority are in awe and wonder and it helps to elevate us all

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verdi83 t1_jdq2vcs wrote

Sorry I am a noob in space exploration, but if this is on Mars, isn't that drone operated with several minutes delay? How do the operators adjust to this?

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Qrkchrm t1_jdq5adm wrote

They don't, it's largely autonomous.

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bookers555 t1_jdrfc4p wrote

Nothing controlled remotely in space is operated via direct input like if it was an RC car.

In this case they introduce commands that basically tell it "fly up X meters, go forward X meters, land, shut down engine".

Spacecraft function in a similar way, and in certain situations they can also act automatically.

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Delta_Hammer t1_jdr0knz wrote

Lol, beyond the warranty. If it breaks is the insurance company going to deliver a replacement to Mars?

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Triple516 t1_jds6yq2 wrote

We all just need to take a second and really let it sink in that we built a rocket that sent a robot to mars, that robot then dropped another little robot, that can FLY around. Sounds like science fiction.

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MattC1977 t1_jdrwwvw wrote

So how does this helicopter differ than a similar helicopter that would be used in Earth? With Mars’ thinner atmosphere I would imagine that some alterations would need to be made to sustain lift.

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StrangeTangerine1525 t1_jds5v9p wrote

A: The blades have to spin around 2500 rpm in order for it lift off. B: the blades are very wide for a 1.8 kg drone, in order to increase lift. Bonus fact: In 2027 NASA is sending a 400 kg quadcopter to Saturn's Moon Titan, in order to study prebiotic chemistry and the worlds potential habitability. Titan is perhaps the best world for powered flight, with its comparatively low gravity (1/7th of Earth) and dense atmosphere (4x denser than Earth's).

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SuperNewk t1_jdsekzi wrote

One coming out of your house on mars and seeing that thing fly around ?

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bodizzlyfoshizzly t1_jdsypnx wrote

That is so cool! I wonder if 👽s tinker around with it to keep running? 🤔 🪛 🖥

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Unable-Category-7978 t1_jdt2q2e wrote

Watching a good quality video of humans flying a helicopter on another planet....that's pretty fucking wild considering we only learned how to fly a century ago.

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Many-Engineer-556 t1_jdwmith wrote

I can't believe I'm watching a video recorded on another planet than ours.
Mind blowing

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