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Comment: Re:Parenting skills? (Score 2, Insightful) 184

by CecilPL (#33884212) Attached to: Apple Awarded Anti-Sexting Patent

When I was 5 I leaped off the couch headfirst onto a pile of cushions. Except I underestimated my strength and flew right over the cushions, headfirst into the corner of a solid oak liquor cabinet.

It hurt like crazy but you know what? Agony is inescapable in life, and you have to learn how to deal with it through experience.

Two stitches later I had learned a pretty valuable lesson.

Comment: Re:maybe it's time to enlist the Japanese (Score 1) 118

by CecilPL (#32579350) Attached to: Mars May Have Been 1/3 Ocean

But Mars has gravity that is around a third that of Earth. That's a lot. So a sampling robot would need to land on Mars and then return fighting against the large Martian gravity well. It would probably need to carry its fuel with it which means it would need to have a lot of mass to start with and which would make a safe landing even more difficult. We'll probably have successful sample-return from Mars before a human mission their but the technical difficulty with even a sample-return mission is immense.

It's not really that much. Delta-V from the surface of Mars to Earth return trajectory is ~8km/sec, which is about double the delta-V from the lunar surface to Earth orbit. Consider the size of the Apollo lander - and that had people in it!
