Britain joins the space race!!!!............

[red indian]

.....stop laughing Tronny its true, we launch our first ever mars probe tonight and it is due to touch down near christmas. No fancy dan tasteless names for our space vehicles either, none of your Apollo,s or Challengers for us matey, just not very British somehow, so we have called it "Beagle Two"......jolly good show too, dont you know!!!

 

[venray]

Brits in space....now we ARE in trouble....😉 Well at least maybe their camera equipment will work properly.....


Ven

 

[red indian]

It has a unique propulsion system.......

........its powered by means of the entire British Tennis Team for the Davis Cup. They are simply fed one by one in to an enormous incinerator.

 

[venray]

You can read the story here......

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100...ish-led space mission ready to reach for Mars

Another story and a picture of the craft here....

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/06/02/mars.race/

Congrats to our British counterparts and best wishes for a safe journey. Hopefully we can work together to put a man up there some day and take a really good look around...


Ven

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Good Luck!!!!! Hopefully you'll do better than NASA's "Faster, Cheaper, Safer" or something like that strategy.

 

[grippedchimp]

Metinks that shut Tron up. Have been seeing the Beagle Two around the TV quite a bit over the past few months. Hopefully, it will be a success!

 

[red indian]

To Mars on a shoe string................

.........we had a two part documentary over the last couple of days on the whole Beagle project, and it was so funny to compare it to all the documentaries I have seen going back to the seventies about the NASA space programme in all its pomp and majesty, and then you compare it to footage of a typical bonkers brit guy making a mass spectrometer in his bedroom while the music to "633 Squadron" is playing in the back ground.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

We do tend to dramatize everything. Was the documentary on BBC? Cause I'd like to see it, and if it was on BBC, it might be on Discovery soon.

 

[red indian]

Yes mate........

.....it was on BBC 2 last night and the night before, not sure how long it will be before its on discovery.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Dang waiting. You British do make some of the best programing, if I do say so myself. I get soooo tired of the American "Processed Program," churned out with thousands of imitators all the time. Oh well. I'll watch with interest when it getts here. I just hope this mission doesnt fail like so many of the others. You know, out of the 33 missions to Mars so far, 22 failed. Make it safely, Beagle 2.

 

[Newcastle Uni]

Yes, this is quite an interesting story! Although it would be nice to believe that we have finally entered the space race we should probably put things into perspective. This is but one part of a larger ESA mission and the craft propelling the probe is russian. Beagle 2 is named after Beagle presumably, which was the ship that Darwin sailed around the world with all those years ago. This is probably more of a success for the open university than for britain. How many other universities can boast single-handedly creating a probe that may yet prove to find the first tangible signs of life on Mars? Good luck to Beagle 2 and the team behind the project. May they have success. Of course i have not especially followed this project and i may be incorrect on all counts.

 

[Oddjob0226]

Sounds great, Red! Welcome to the 1960s!

I LOVE that joke on Saturday Night Live.....

Actually, I like hearing about Mars being explored, it's always facinated me.

 

[BigJim]

Contrary to poular belief and hope, I am not being tied up and inserted into the module for launch. I know this will upset many of you, but que sera sera. 😛

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Don't be so sure of that...... *Psst, he's on to us, better speed up the operation.*

 

[red indian]

Cant say i am comfortable......

....with BJ,s revelations about having things "inserted" in to his "module" what is he trying to tell us?

 

[BigJim]

Okay, I'm as British as they come and even I'm not THAT sick minded Indy! You sure you ain't got a bit of Texan in ya?