No Human achievement comes close to Apollo 11

"TheHondaBro" (wwaveform) 04/07/2017 at 01:15 • Filed to: None

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But this is up there. Look, I know this isn’t new, but the fact that we can control a robot from millions of miles away on a distant planet and take pictures from it is still fucking incredible.

Look at that. That’s Mars. That isn’t Earth. That is an actual picture of the surface of Mars. And leave it to Humans to build a robot that can take selfies on a distant planet.

This is Mars.

atfsgeoff > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 01:19

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“It’s not a miracle. We just decided to go.”

Axial > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 01:20

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Y’know, looking at that picture...Battlezone got it pretty much bang-on:

ttyymmnn > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 01:31

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When Charles Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget in 1927, 150,000 people turned out to salute the feat. Our modern society, with its cell phones and instant access to the world, has forgotten the wonder that is involved with major achievements. We should be awed by the Mars rovers, yet we are distracted by Kardashians doing Pepsi commercials (and cruise missiles). We have lost the ability to be amazed by the things that are truly amazing.

Viggen > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 01:33

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To make it even more amazing, Opportunity has been on Mars for 13 years now, and is still conducting exploration.

DipodomysDeserti > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 01:37

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Leave it to humans to build a robot that can take selfies on a distant planet while we still poison our own water, air and land.

DipodomysDeserti > ttyymmnn 04/07/2017 at 01:38

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Meh. Imagine if these engineers put their brain power and effort towards finding a way to live sustainably on our own planet. Mars is their Kim Kardashwhogivesafuck.

TheHondaBro > ttyymmnn 04/07/2017 at 01:40

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I’m glad to be living in a time where humanity is capable of such achievement. I wasn’t around for Apollo 11 and that stings. I want to witness the achievement that made a warring planet stand still for one night.

You’re right. More people need to stop and smell the roses. Stop looking at a family whose only claim to fame is a murdering football player. Pay attention to what makes humanity great.

facw > Axial 04/07/2017 at 01:58

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The original was a little less accurate:

facw > Viggen 04/07/2017 at 01:59

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Amazing, or terrifying...

facw > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 02:05

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Meanwhile Opportunity is like “look at that newbie who can’t even go a few years without wrecking their wheels”

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 02:30

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Don’t believe that photo:

BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 04:26

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It is absolutely amazing. If you don’t have a subscription, I highly recommend getting New Scientist. It’s packed full of things that just blow your mind with the sheer capability of human ingenuity, yet most of the time go uncelebrated beyond a small circle.

f86sabre > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 08:43

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What excites me is that, little by little, these pictures that NASA and ESA delivers makes these real places. Not science fiction, not legend, but real. When something is real it becomes obtainable. People start thinking, “I could go there”.

Dione from Cassini

Pluto from New Horizons

Mercury

Mars

ttyymmnn > DipodomysDeserti 04/07/2017 at 08:53

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When people get pulled over for speeding, they’ll often say to the cop, “Shouldn’t you be out catching burglars or something?” But it’s that cop’s job on that day to catch speeders. It’s the same in the science world. These guys are working on finding us a home when we irrevocably fuck up this awesome planet, while at the same time, there are others who are working hard to keep us from irrevocably fucking it up in the first place.

DipodomysDeserti > ttyymmnn 04/07/2017 at 09:21

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Much like in the scientific community, some cops get paid to bring in revenue, and some get paid to perform a job which benefits society.

If we can’t even keep from fucking up a place we’ve evolved for the last hundred thousand or so years to live in, then there’s no hope for our species on Mars. Certain humans have this delusion that our species is immortal. It isn’t. This gene of discovery has lead humanity to accomplish amazing things. It has also lead us to accomplish terrible things. A certain group of us started on a path of destruction long ago and we are still on it today. Ask the remnants of any Native American tribe if it is a good thing that this same vein of humanity is thinking about spreading to a New World (a New New World, if you will). Humanity has been looking for salvation for the last 10,000 years. Gods, science, new worlds... Many of us still haven’t figured out that in nature, there is no salvation. Nothing is saved, it is merely recycled.

Happy Friday!

PS9 > DipodomysDeserti 04/07/2017 at 09:54

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The resources of the Earth are very great, but not infinite. The great powers that have shaped the cosmos continue to this day, in the form of terrible calamities that we have been sparred from so far, but this will not be so forever. Our success as a species is as vast and far reaching as it is fragile and small. Our grasp of this single mote of dust in an endless sea of stars is miles wide, but only an inch deep, and can be pryed away as easily as the skin off an orange.

A great investment has been placed in us by the cosmos. Whether by design, or by fortune it matters not. Should we fail to protect this investment, to realize the fullness of our potential, then what follows is a grand and terrible waste. Our ancestors overcame a planet hostile to human beings; ancient predators, land masses and the oceans, other beings like the Neanderthal, and an ice age. They did so because, even if they could not articulate it, they knew the truth; we had already come too far to stop and we must continue. So it was for them who risked life and limb to see a human hand touch ever land mass on the earth, and so to it is for us, who have come to see our descendants see the stars with their own eyes, and touch alien worlds with their own hands.

DipodomysDeserti > PS9 04/07/2017 at 10:30

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Should we fail to protect this investment, to realize the fullness of our potential, then what follows is a grand and terrible waste.

What a base and unimaginative view of life. Sounds like a CEO’s view of the meaning of life.

PS9 > DipodomysDeserti 04/07/2017 at 11:32

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Your view of life and humanity is far more base than mine. Where I see the grandness of all that has come before to bring us to where we are, you see nothing. In the curiosity project on mars, I see the beginnings of our first steps into the cosmos. I see the start of the necessary and worthwhile journey into the stars that may end with human beings populating the milky way, while you - somehow - see only a distraction on par with a reality TV star.

Do you really not think the information gathered by sending and successfully landing a continuing mission on another planet will not be useful for future missions to Mars and other places? Do you really not see the link between Curiosity and all of scientific and robotic technological advancement up to this point and how it continues beyond? Yet it is I according to you who lacks ‘imagination’! How do Kim Kardashian’s exploits compare even a little bit to any of that?

A certain group of us started on a path of destruction long ago and we are still on it today. Ask the remnants of any Native American tribe if it is a good thing that this same vein of humanity is thinking about spreading to a New World (a New New World, if you will).

Here is the difference between you and I. Where I see the human capacity to be terrible to other humans as part of the whole, you see all that there is. It is true that the expansion of our species has been paid for with blood, sacrifice and suffering, just as true is the reality of what it means for a living thing to grow; those are the prices that must be paid for it.

It would be a better world, obviously, if kindness, love for one another, acceptance, tolerance and justice took the place of hatred, violence, greed, intolerance and injustice. But if those things were a given for us, then civilization would not be 12,000 year old project in progress. That world you want where no one walks the path of destruction must be built by someone who can benefit from the mistakes of the past. The wasting of ourselves is not an ending to that path; you cannot ‘destroy’ destruction. A violent solution only continues it.

DipodomysDeserti > PS9 04/07/2017 at 14:09

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The main difference is that you seem to lift humanity and civilization up on a pedestal. I simply do not. All the advancements you mention have been undertaken at the expense of the very thing that birthed us and sustains us. We’ve raped our mother so as to lift ourselves up, and we foolishly think we’ll be able to escape the consequences. 12k years doesn’t even register in the scheme of our universe. We’ve found bacteria that have been living for 40,000 times longer since the invention of civilization. Humanity will disappear just like every single life form in the history of our world. Arrogance is the only thing that makes people think otherwise. Our less scientific ancestors were much more intelligent in this regard.

wafflesnfalafel > DipodomysDeserti 04/07/2017 at 18:03

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I believe we have, we just don’t like it...

DipodomysDeserti > wafflesnfalafel 04/07/2017 at 18:08

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Very true.

wafflesnfalafel > TheHondaBro 04/07/2017 at 18:47

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Making a rocket powerful enough and controllable enough to launch something off the earth? Bad a$$.

Orbit insertion onto another planet from 20,000 mph? Bad a$$

Dropping a crawly thing to on the surface of another planet in one piece? Bad a$$.

Crawly thing taking selfie on said other planet and sending it back to earth? MF bad a$$.