{"id":8785,"date":"2006-02-04T20:45:18","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T20:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streettech.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8785"},"modified":"2006-02-04T20:45:18","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T20:45:18","slug":"roving-mars-the-imax-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/?p=8785","title":{"rendered":"Roving Mars – The IMAX Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I went with friends last night to catch the new IMAX film, “Roving Mars<\/a>.” Wow, what a ride! <\/p>\n

The film’s based on the book, “Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet,” by Steve Squyers, and presents the dual missions of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers<\/a>, which were launched in June and July of 2003. It combines interviews with mission scientists, scenes from the the trip to Mars, and the fascinating discoveries that the rovers have been beaming back to us during their unexpectedly long lives. <\/p>\n

From the triumphs and setbacks during the mission’s development, to launch and arrival, to sweeping Martian panoramas, to the incredible machinic origami of the rovers, there’s so much exquisite geekery to savor here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My most common criticism of IMAX films has been that they’re simply not long enough, and Roving Mars is no exception, at just 40 minutes. However, it’s an awesome two-thirds of an hour, and really makes excellent use of IMAX’s immersive format. The part presenting the Delta II rocket launch<\/a> and trajectory insertion stages are more intense than what I remember from “Apollo 13.” The sequence of events that take place in Stage 3<\/a> are particularly cool to watch. After Stage 2, the spacecraft still doesn’t have enough velocity to escape Earth’s orbit, so a 90-second rocket motor burn boosts its velocity from 19,500 to 25,000 mph. Just prior to this burn, additional small rocket motors spin the Mer spacecraft up to 70 rpm to stabilize its trajectory. After the burn, two weights on tethers are released to fly out like the arms of a ballerina, and slow the spin to 12 rpm before they’re both cut loose to fly off perpependicular to the trajectory. Woah! Watching this on the enormous IMAX screen really blew me away. Yeah, you get the bogus “sound in space” we’re all annoyed by in film portrayals (except Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), but my friends and I decided that we’d pretend the microphone was recording from inside the spacecraft. Heh. But the real value of this film is the sense of awe and admiration you get for the scientists and engineers that overcame great challenges and obstacles to succeed with these missions. This is geek heroism at its best. If you’re sick to death of being bombarded by evidence of widespread human stupidity and backwardness, go see Roving Mars. It reminded me of just how much we’re capable of when we’re at our best. *Insanely* inspiring. Just go see this. Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}