4 ms·

Interesting note, as of today, the US is the first country to have successful spacecraft missions visit all of the classical planets. There is one big exceptio

Interesting note, as of today, the US is the first country to have successful spacecraft missions visit all of the classical planets. There is one big exception, of course: the Soviet Union was the first to have a spacecraft visit Earth, with Spunink. This category is completely arbitrary, especially given that Pluto is now considered a minor planet. Still, it's an achievement of note. Mercury - 1974, Mariner 10 Venus --- 1962, Mariner 2 Earth --- 1957, Sputnik 1 Mars* --- 1965, Mariner 4 Jupiter - 1973, Pioneer 10 Saturn -- 1979, Pioneer 11 Uranus -- 1986, Voyager 2 Neptune - 1989, Voyager 2 Pluto --- 2015, New Horizons * The Soviet Union launched several probes to Mars before the US did, but those probes failed. This may be true of other planets as well. edit: formatting

kohanz 11y ago
Not to shoot the messenger, but it annoys me when these things are viewed through the lens of artificial divisions such as nations. I understand that space exploration has been used as a tool to further many political machines, but it seems silly to me, especially when staring at a picture as beautiful as this from a distance that makes Earth seem so small, to think about the people living on this planet as anything other than humans, rather than citizens of different countries. It just feels divisive where it should really feel uniting. (Kumbaya!) I really hope we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone. edit: To be fair, I am really heartened when I see how international the teams that do work in the space station generally are. We've come a long way.
- tgcordell 11y ago
  Competition breeds innovation. Yes, we are one planet and one species, but our species is Human and we have an innate nature to compete!
  - dalke 11y ago
    Competition may breed innovation, but surely it's not the truism you suggest. Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not lead to useful innovation - http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-internal-markets-nourish-innovation-the-case-of-sears/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inter... (It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.) Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate. Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi... for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness. Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.
    - stox 11y ago
      There is such a thing as constructive competition vs destructive competition. Sadly, some do not know the difference.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense of national identity. I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-a-country/ http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...
      - dalke 11y ago
        There was no ancient Greece nation. I suspect you mean it as a placeholder for the Hellenic era, or perhaps the kingdom Macedonia. But as to the issue, I recently listened to a lecture about the process of deciding what the European nations would be after the First World War. The different nations had wildly different ideas of how to decide what was their national territory and people. The people of Alsace speak German, but the French said (and I paraphrase) "look at their love of wine and joie de vivre - they are French, but were forced to speak German". Or of a farmer in central Europe, when asked "what are you?" answered "farmer", and then "where are you from?" brought the name of the local town. When asked more insistently, he said "Catholic". The concept of nation made no sense to him. The concept of nationhood is quite complicated. Is Scotland a nation? India during the British Empire? It's more complicated than I want to get into. But in the context of the tgcordell comment, which tries to connect species imperatives with national competition, I mean to point out that the concept of 'nation' is too new to really have an evolutionary component. (And if it does, it's built on cooperation.) I don't deny that proxy conflict can be healthy, though proxy conflict in Korea wasn't all that healthy for those involved. Is it possible to determine the healthy conflict beforehand, or is it something that's mostly done after the fact?
  - istvan__ 11y ago
    Would you mind explaining to me what sort of competition was the Chinese empire facing when they invented the compass? Just want to point out the fallacy in your logic.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Your rebuttal would be valid if the OP had said "all innovation is bred by competition."
- ringshall 11y ago
  I agree with you in the sense that space exploration is at its core a human, not national, achievement. National divisions are silly when seen in the context of the vastness of space. In a similar vein, I think Gene Roddenberry was right in thinking that true elimination of national boundaries will come after we meet sentient aliens for the first time - with an alien to compare ourselves against, we all see our common humanity much more clearly. We're partway there. As you say, there is cooperation on the Space Station. Cooperation between the various space agencies on missions from telescopes to probes is commonplace. Look at Cassini: a NASA probe with a ESA lander. The Curiosity rover has a Russian instrument on it. But we haven't reached the point yet where nationalism is no longer a part of the drive behind space exploration or other 'big-science' projects. I see competition for scientific glory as a healthy and productive form of competition, so I don't think we should completely shy away from it. It's akin to rival schools competing for academic glory - a kind of tribalism that results in achievements which benefit all.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Right, cuz competition sucks and never did no good for nobody, man! Would we have ever gotten to the Moon at all if it weren't for the competition between the USA and the USSR?
  - nightcracker 11y ago
    Yes.
disconcision 11y ago
this is a pedantic correction, but 'classical planets' has a specific meaning, being the 7 planets known in antiquity, e.g. to the babylonians. so technically the feat you describe was accomplished by 1979!
biot 11y ago
The Russians had some amazing firsts with Venus, depending on how you define "visit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera "Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). The entire series could be considered highly successful."
- aunty_helen 11y ago
  They were also first to test the characteristics of a lens cap on another planet in one of their most infamous science experiments.
  - duskwuff 11y ago
    In an infamous series of science experiments, no less: * One of the two cameras on Venera 9 failed to function because the lens cap didn't come off properly. * Ditto for Venera 10. * Venera 11 broke the trend by having lens caps fail to come off of BOTH cameras. * Venera 12... same thing. * Venera 13, ironically, broke the curse. The lens caps came off properly, and both cameras functioned. * Venera 14 had both cameras function as well. However, it had a unique new problem: the lens cap landed directly under the lander's soil probe, and it ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap.
    - kijin 11y ago
      Holy crap. I hope the guy who designed those lens caps didn't get exiled to Siberia or something.
ytdht 11y ago
do you mean Sputnik?
- ringshall 11y ago
  Yes, not sure how that typo happened. Got it right the second time, though :)

kohanz 11y ago

Not to shoot the messenger, but it annoys me when these things are viewed through the lens of artificial divisions such as nations. I understand that space exploration has been used as a tool to further many political machines, but it seems silly to me, especially when staring at a picture as beautiful as this from a distance that makes Earth seem so small, to think about the people living on this planet as anything other than humans, rather than citizens of different countries. It just feels divisive where it should really feel uniting. (Kumbaya!) I really hope we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone. edit: To be fair, I am really heartened when I see how international the teams that do work in the space station generally are. We've come a long way.

tgcordell 11y ago
Competition breeds innovation. Yes, we are one planet and one species, but our species is Human and we have an innate nature to compete!
- dalke 11y ago
  Competition may breed innovation, but surely it's not the truism you suggest. Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not lead to useful innovation - http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-internal-markets-nourish-innovation-the-case-of-sears/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inter... (It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.) Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate. Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi... for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness. Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.
  - stox 11y ago
    There is such a thing as constructive competition vs destructive competition. Sadly, some do not know the difference.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense of national identity. I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-a-country/ http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...
    - dalke 11y ago
      There was no ancient Greece nation. I suspect you mean it as a placeholder for the Hellenic era, or perhaps the kingdom Macedonia. But as to the issue, I recently listened to a lecture about the process of deciding what the European nations would be after the First World War. The different nations had wildly different ideas of how to decide what was their national territory and people. The people of Alsace speak German, but the French said (and I paraphrase) "look at their love of wine and joie de vivre - they are French, but were forced to speak German". Or of a farmer in central Europe, when asked "what are you?" answered "farmer", and then "where are you from?" brought the name of the local town. When asked more insistently, he said "Catholic". The concept of nation made no sense to him. The concept of nationhood is quite complicated. Is Scotland a nation? India during the British Empire? It's more complicated than I want to get into. But in the context of the tgcordell comment, which tries to connect species imperatives with national competition, I mean to point out that the concept of 'nation' is too new to really have an evolutionary component. (And if it does, it's built on cooperation.) I don't deny that proxy conflict can be healthy, though proxy conflict in Korea wasn't all that healthy for those involved. Is it possible to determine the healthy conflict beforehand, or is it something that's mostly done after the fact?
- istvan__ 11y ago
  Would you mind explaining to me what sort of competition was the Chinese empire facing when they invented the compass? Just want to point out the fallacy in your logic.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Your rebuttal would be valid if the OP had said "all innovation is bred by competition."
ringshall 11y ago
I agree with you in the sense that space exploration is at its core a human, not national, achievement. National divisions are silly when seen in the context of the vastness of space. In a similar vein, I think Gene Roddenberry was right in thinking that true elimination of national boundaries will come after we meet sentient aliens for the first time - with an alien to compare ourselves against, we all see our common humanity much more clearly. We're partway there. As you say, there is cooperation on the Space Station. Cooperation between the various space agencies on missions from telescopes to probes is commonplace. Look at Cassini: a NASA probe with a ESA lander. The Curiosity rover has a Russian instrument on it. But we haven't reached the point yet where nationalism is no longer a part of the drive behind space exploration or other 'big-science' projects. I see competition for scientific glory as a healthy and productive form of competition, so I don't think we should completely shy away from it. It's akin to rival schools competing for academic glory - a kind of tribalism that results in achievements which benefit all.
moron4hire 11y ago
Right, cuz competition sucks and never did no good for nobody, man! Would we have ever gotten to the Moon at all if it weren't for the competition between the USA and the USSR?
- nightcracker 11y ago
  Yes.

disconcision 11y ago

this is a pedantic correction, but 'classical planets' has a specific meaning, being the 7 planets known in antiquity, e.g. to the babylonians. so technically the feat you describe was accomplished by 1979!

biot 11y ago

The Russians had some amazing firsts with Venus, depending on how you define "visit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera "Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). The entire series could be considered highly successful."

aunty_helen 11y ago
They were also first to test the characteristics of a lens cap on another planet in one of their most infamous science experiments.
- duskwuff 11y ago
  In an infamous series of science experiments, no less: * One of the two cameras on Venera 9 failed to function because the lens cap didn't come off properly. * Ditto for Venera 10. * Venera 11 broke the trend by having lens caps fail to come off of BOTH cameras. * Venera 12... same thing. * Venera 13, ironically, broke the curse. The lens caps came off properly, and both cameras functioned. * Venera 14 had both cameras function as well. However, it had a unique new problem: the lens cap landed directly under the lander's soil probe, and it ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap.
  - kijin 11y ago
    Holy crap. I hope the guy who designed those lens caps didn't get exiled to Siberia or something.

ytdht 11y ago

do you mean Sputnik?

ringshall 11y ago
Yes, not sure how that typo happened. Got it right the second time, though :)