6 ms·

While we speculate, I'm just marveled that we can get an image of that clarity and crispness _from Mars_.

IceDane 5y ago
It's absolutely nuts that I can be viewing a high definition picture from another planet with my morning coffee. Sometimes I wish we didn't lose our sense of awe so quickly. Every technological miracle we create quickly becomes a normal part of "every day life" so to speak.
- gonzo41 5y ago
  I was buying my morning coffee today and the person in front of me paid with their watch. Things are pretty amazing, you just got to keep looking for it.
  - IndrekR 5y ago
    I am still amazed that going out and buying a morning coffee is a thing (that can seriously compete with home-brewing it).
    - JackFr 5y ago
      On Saturday morning I go and buy a cup of coffee and sit outside the shop and read the newspaper (physical paper) and watch people walk by. It’s really one of the pleasures of my week. (I then go home a brew a pot for me and my wife - who prefers to sleep in on Saturdays.)
      - sbarre 5y ago
        That sounds wonderful. It's still bitterly cold where I am in the world these days, and I look forward to also doing that in a few months. :-)
        borepop 5y ago
        There's nowhere left near me at all that sells the New York Times, which was the paper I liked to read in physical form. Used to be a fun weekend ritual to pick up the Sunday edition from the coffee shop down the street and sit around reading things and doing the crossword, but I can't find it anymore. I'm not sure if it was covid that killed off the distribution or just the economics of print.
        booleandilemma 5y ago
        Anthony-G 5y ago
        Making those assumptions about IndrekR isn’t very fair. Like him/her, I brew my own coffee (using locally purchased beans) but I go out of my way to support local businesses. I haven’t bought anything from Amazon since 2010 and the only online purchases I’ve made in the last three years were FFP masks (I couldn’t find a local chemists who stocked them for some strange reason), RAM chips and an SSD drive (the local PC shops are gone). Having said that, I regretted paying €20 for a bicycle chain from a local bike shop (who weren’t particularly pleasant to deal with) when I could have purchased the same chain from an online retailer for €5.
        contingencies 5y ago
        Almost certainly the latter. The economics of distribution are extremely harsh. Fixed cost per site per day has to be covered by all parties and a profit. Say it costs USD$30 for a van stop at a place, idle the vehicle, unload the goods, and pay the driver then you need to sell a whole lotta newspapers to break even. The solution, if you enjoy print as I do, is to purchase longer term periodicals. Weekly news magazines are good. The New Yorker, Economist, etc. Smiles from China where we have no such options.
    - fs111 5y ago
      I think people believe that you need complex/expensive equipment for good coffee, but that's not true. Get yourself a grinder and a chemex and be happy!
      - aljgz 5y ago
        I think the prevalence of people buying morning coffee is a more complex phenomenon. In Malaysia, you would see people complaining if their Nasi Lemak costed more than RM 5, but the same person would happily pay RM 15 for coffee. It appeared that there was a norm at play, that Nasi Lemak belongs to Malaysian streets and should be cheap, while coffee is a western thing and it's normal to be expensive. For some others, queuing up, the micro-interactions, and drinking while walking to the office (or even back to their home office) seems to be a morning ritual. I could see myself in this group if I did not prefer my own blend and brew.
        wrycoder 5y ago
        Kopi Luwak with your Nasi Lemak, then?
        toastal 5y ago
        Pour-over, single-origin coffee costs about 120฿ in Thailand, 3× street food as well. Cafés are often used for setting for social media photos as much as the coffee itself and they are popular—especially right after lunch. But with coffee being grown in the North coffee itself isn’t seen as “Western”, and the older styles using robusta beans—like กาแฟโบราณ, โอเลี้ยง, etc.—are still sold for 20–30฿ from street carts, while the arabica espresso options with an ‘experience’ to it costs way more.
      - teitoklien 5y ago
        Chemex usually is a bit harder to get a nice cup of coffee consistently from, A V60 pourover is usually much more better ( and easier to clean and less chances of breaking too ) For me atleast V60 usually provides consistently better coffee then a chemex brewed one and is also less effort.
    - flyinglizard 5y ago
      It's a fun ritual. I go with my wife to get a coffee in the morning twice or three times a week. I pay with my watch, and we sometimes talk about astronomy.
- iszomer 5y ago
  I imagine with tons of post-processing back on Earth. Compare and contrast the Eagle Nebula from it's raw form enhanced with "false colors".
- colechristensen 5y ago
  One of the things motivating such progress is our ability to normalize everything. It’s sweet how the simplest things bring babies joy, but we wouldn’t accomplish all that much if jingling keys fascinated us our whole lives.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  I'm looking forward to the first "reality tv" shows produced on other planets (including the moon). You can probably fund a moon colony just on tourism and entertainment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
thanatos519 5y ago
It's also worth noting that this image was taken _yesterday_.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I wonder what the data-rate is like (or rather, I'm too lazy to look it up myself). The image is 1010K which with a 14.4 Kbit/s connection would take ~10 minutes to download from Mars. 1 KBit/s would take ~2.5 hours.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gets 500 to 4000 kbps when the planet isn’t in the way. https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    NASA's Mars rovers use several orbital probes to relay communications back to Earth. They do have radios that can talk directly to Earth up to 32kbps but primarily use the relays. The UHF uplink to the Mars Recon Orbiter is up to 2Mbps and it's visible to the rover for about eight minutes a day. The orbiter's uplink to Earth is can hit up to 6Mbps. The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have a fair amount of on-board storage (for an interplanetary probe). So they can spool a lot of data and then send a batch to the orbiters and then go about their next tasks. The orbiters also have a lot of storage (for interplanetary probes) and can themselves spool a lot of data until they're in a transmit window to Earth.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      With only an eight minute window, wouldn’t that make the effective bandwidth be 10kbps?
      - giantrobot 5y ago
        The Mars rovers aren't doing OnlyFans livestreams. They've got science data to upload and can empty their spool in the time the orbiters are in range. They also have their direct uplinks to Earth at up to 32kbps for control and telemetry.
somenameforme 5y ago
While I agree it's amazing and inspiring, I'd also emphasize that we have pictures [1] and even sounds [2] from the surface of Venus and it's 91 atmospheres of surface pressure alongside 900F degree surface temperature. Those are from 40+ years ago. 20 years before that, we'd never sent a single object into space. And so if you asked people from that time first consuming that media what they imagine the world (in terms of space) would look like 40 years later, us looking at somewhat higher resolution pictures from Mars would sound skeptical to the point of absurdity. [1] - https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-surface-ever https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-... [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jZDW53U8qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jZDW53U8qQ
- dkasper 5y ago
  Yeah, except now the pictures are beamed on demand to a magic box in our pockets.
  - retrac 5y ago
    Well, it wasn't exactly on demand, but appropriately enough the first handheld television was released in 1982, forty years ago. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Sony_watchman_fd210.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Sony_wat...
    - thih9 5y ago
      Perhaps “on demand” is relative; perhaps tomorrow’s platforms will have AIs that will generate relevant content for you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > And so if you asked people from that time first consuming that media what they imagine the world (in terms of space) would look like 40 years later, us looking at somewhat higher resolution pictures from Mars would sound skeptical to the point of absurdity. As such a person, I do in fact concur. We really expected a moon colony fairly soon, and by now, a thriving colony on Mars. We were wildly naïve about how hard it was. To have a self-sustaining colony on Mars, you would have to re-invent every single piece of technology we use on Earth to work in an environment of complete scarcity.

It's absolutely nuts that I can be viewing a high definition picture from another planet with my morning coffee. Sometimes I wish we didn't lose our sense of awe so quickly. Every technological miracle we create quickly becomes a normal part of "every day life" so to speak.

gonzo41 5y ago
I was buying my morning coffee today and the person in front of me paid with their watch. Things are pretty amazing, you just got to keep looking for it.
- IndrekR 5y ago
  I am still amazed that going out and buying a morning coffee is a thing (that can seriously compete with home-brewing it).
  - JackFr 5y ago
    On Saturday morning I go and buy a cup of coffee and sit outside the shop and read the newspaper (physical paper) and watch people walk by. It’s really one of the pleasures of my week. (I then go home a brew a pot for me and my wife - who prefers to sleep in on Saturdays.)
    - sbarre 5y ago
      That sounds wonderful. It's still bitterly cold where I am in the world these days, and I look forward to also doing that in a few months. :-)
      - borepop 5y ago
        There's nowhere left near me at all that sells the New York Times, which was the paper I liked to read in physical form. Used to be a fun weekend ritual to pick up the Sunday edition from the coffee shop down the street and sit around reading things and doing the crossword, but I can't find it anymore. I'm not sure if it was covid that killed off the distribution or just the economics of print.
        booleandilemma 5y ago
        Anthony-G 5y ago
        Making those assumptions about IndrekR isn’t very fair. Like him/her, I brew my own coffee (using locally purchased beans) but I go out of my way to support local businesses. I haven’t bought anything from Amazon since 2010 and the only online purchases I’ve made in the last three years were FFP masks (I couldn’t find a local chemists who stocked them for some strange reason), RAM chips and an SSD drive (the local PC shops are gone). Having said that, I regretted paying €20 for a bicycle chain from a local bike shop (who weren’t particularly pleasant to deal with) when I could have purchased the same chain from an online retailer for €5.
        contingencies 5y ago
        Almost certainly the latter. The economics of distribution are extremely harsh. Fixed cost per site per day has to be covered by all parties and a profit. Say it costs USD$30 for a van stop at a place, idle the vehicle, unload the goods, and pay the driver then you need to sell a whole lotta newspapers to break even. The solution, if you enjoy print as I do, is to purchase longer term periodicals. Weekly news magazines are good. The New Yorker, Economist, etc. Smiles from China where we have no such options.
  - fs111 5y ago
    I think people believe that you need complex/expensive equipment for good coffee, but that's not true. Get yourself a grinder and a chemex and be happy!
    - aljgz 5y ago
      I think the prevalence of people buying morning coffee is a more complex phenomenon. In Malaysia, you would see people complaining if their Nasi Lemak costed more than RM 5, but the same person would happily pay RM 15 for coffee. It appeared that there was a norm at play, that Nasi Lemak belongs to Malaysian streets and should be cheap, while coffee is a western thing and it's normal to be expensive. For some others, queuing up, the micro-interactions, and drinking while walking to the office (or even back to their home office) seems to be a morning ritual. I could see myself in this group if I did not prefer my own blend and brew.
      - wrycoder 5y ago
        Kopi Luwak with your Nasi Lemak, then?
      - toastal 5y ago
        Pour-over, single-origin coffee costs about 120฿ in Thailand, 3× street food as well. Cafés are often used for setting for social media photos as much as the coffee itself and they are popular—especially right after lunch. But with coffee being grown in the North coffee itself isn’t seen as “Western”, and the older styles using robusta beans—like กาแฟโบราณ, โอเลี้ยง, etc.—are still sold for 20–30฿ from street carts, while the arabica espresso options with an ‘experience’ to it costs way more.
    - teitoklien 5y ago
      Chemex usually is a bit harder to get a nice cup of coffee consistently from, A V60 pourover is usually much more better ( and easier to clean and less chances of breaking too ) For me atleast V60 usually provides consistently better coffee then a chemex brewed one and is also less effort.
  - flyinglizard 5y ago
    It's a fun ritual. I go with my wife to get a coffee in the morning twice or three times a week. I pay with my watch, and we sometimes talk about astronomy.
iszomer 5y ago
I imagine with tons of post-processing back on Earth. Compare and contrast the Eagle Nebula from it's raw form enhanced with "false colors".
colechristensen 5y ago
One of the things motivating such progress is our ability to normalize everything. It’s sweet how the simplest things bring babies joy, but we wouldn’t accomplish all that much if jingling keys fascinated us our whole lives.
beamatronic 5y ago
I'm looking forward to the first "reality tv" shows produced on other planets (including the moon). You can probably fund a moon colony just on tourism and entertainment.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

thanatos519 5y ago

It's also worth noting that this image was taken _yesterday_.

capableweb 5y ago
I wonder what the data-rate is like (or rather, I'm too lazy to look it up myself). The image is 1010K which with a 14.4 Kbit/s connection would take ~10 minutes to download from Mars. 1 KBit/s would take ~2.5 hours.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gets 500 to 4000 kbps when the planet isn’t in the way. https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/
- giantrobot 5y ago
  NASA's Mars rovers use several orbital probes to relay communications back to Earth. They do have radios that can talk directly to Earth up to 32kbps but primarily use the relays. The UHF uplink to the Mars Recon Orbiter is up to 2Mbps and it's visible to the rover for about eight minutes a day. The orbiter's uplink to Earth is can hit up to 6Mbps. The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have a fair amount of on-board storage (for an interplanetary probe). So they can spool a lot of data and then send a batch to the orbiters and then go about their next tasks. The orbiters also have a lot of storage (for interplanetary probes) and can themselves spool a lot of data until they're in a transmit window to Earth.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    With only an eight minute window, wouldn’t that make the effective bandwidth be 10kbps?
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      The Mars rovers aren't doing OnlyFans livestreams. They've got science data to upload and can empty their spool in the time the orbiters are in range. They also have their direct uplinks to Earth at up to 32kbps for control and telemetry.

somenameforme 5y ago

While I agree it's amazing and inspiring, I'd also emphasize that we have pictures [1] and even sounds [2] from the surface of Venus and it's 91 atmospheres of surface pressure alongside 900F degree surface temperature. Those are from 40+ years ago. 20 years before that, we'd never sent a single object into space. And so if you asked people from that time first consuming that media what they imagine the world (in terms of space) would look like 40 years later, us looking at somewhat higher resolution pictures from Mars would sound skeptical to the point of absurdity. [1] - https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-surface-ever https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-... [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jZDW53U8qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jZDW53U8qQ

dkasper 5y ago
Yeah, except now the pictures are beamed on demand to a magic box in our pockets.
- retrac 5y ago
  Well, it wasn't exactly on demand, but appropriately enough the first handheld television was released in 1982, forty years ago. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Sony_watchman_fd210.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Sony_wat...
  - thih9 5y ago
    Perhaps “on demand” is relative; perhaps tomorrow’s platforms will have AIs that will generate relevant content for you.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TomSwirly 5y ago
> And so if you asked people from that time first consuming that media what they imagine the world (in terms of space) would look like 40 years later, us looking at somewhat higher resolution pictures from Mars would sound skeptical to the point of absurdity. As such a person, I do in fact concur. We really expected a moon colony fairly soon, and by now, a thriving colony on Mars. We were wildly naïve about how hard it was. To have a self-sustaining colony on Mars, you would have to re-invent every single piece of technology we use on Earth to work in an environment of complete scarcity.