Thread: "live coverage"
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Old January 27th 04, 01:45 AM
bob
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when the delay is long enough to allow comment on the fact that the event
has already happened, is the limit we came up with. This only happens in
space travel.

in 97, and in the 70's the story was framed by "the probe has already
reached mars, we are now just waiting to see what happened". While one other
in this thread said he heard it mentioned this year, clearly it was not
emphasized in the same way it was previously (at least 4 of us who watched
both landings missed any mention of it), and mission control reported it ("t
minus 10 to atmosphere entry" when in fact what was ten seconds away were
the signals indicating atmospheric entry, opportunity was already on the
ground by that point.)

you are preaching to the choir on the relativistic realities. our interest
was in what seemed like a conscious organizational decision, and what it
indicated about public relations.
bob


"Mick Hyde ntlworld.com" mickhyde@remove wrote in message
...
I don't quite know what you line of thought is here, in an exact sense of
the word, is anything 'live'?
Even seeing someone walking across the other side of the road, the time

that
it takes for the light to meet your eye has a time lag ... although very
small.
There is no way that you can compensate for the speed of light, therefore
the events on Mars are 'unfolding' in a form of real time.

How else can it be presented?

Mick.

"bob" wrote in message
om...
There is a discussion going on in a space oriented web log group about

the
"live" coverage of the mars landing.

The point was, that unlike all previous missions we could remember, the
people at JPL/NASA were acting as if the landing confirmation signals

they
were watching represented a live right now event, never mentioning, as
everyone seemed to on pathfinder/viking et al that in fact the event had


actually happened 10 minutes before, and this was just the first news we

had
of what had happened.

We all agree it was more exciting this way, and even went to the
metaphysical that in relativistic terms, "now" is defined by the speed

of
light, and this caveat is nothing more than a de-energizing footnote.

however: the fact that it was not mentioned on any of the coverage we

saw
suggested that the decision was made as policy to view incoming signals

as
live for the sake of the public event.

Does anyone here know if this is in fact true, or did anyone here hear
NASA/JPL mention the 10 minute lag

Bob