DeeKnow’s Grotto

I'm easily pleased on the news front and there are two topics that I always get excited about. One is large-scale engineering feats, and the other is anything-related-to-space (of the outer kind). I should probably have combined the two in a career move of some sort but there's just not much call these days for space-ship builders in Hamilton.

However, today was a good day for me news wise.

The first story concerns the 2nd of NASA's Mars rovers (Opportunity) sending back its first pictures. Seems like the little fellah landed a bit off course in a puddle-like crater which NASA believe it will be able to climb out of without too much trouble. This is a good thing considering their other rover Spirit, got a little upset last week (and sounds like it may never get back to 100% of its operational capacity)

The thing that suprised me about this latest Mars news is that it only made a measerly few inches in a single column down the side of PAGE 4 in the Waikato Times today.

The other exciting news concerns another Ship, but this time one that floats thru the Oceans instead of Space. The Queen Mary 2 (QM2), the worlds largest and most expensive cruise ship, completed its maiden trans-atlantic voyage today, fortunately there wasn't an iceberg in site.

The new Queen Mary replaces poor old QE2 (Queen Elizabeth 2) which was retired after the completion of its replacement sibling. The new QM2 is 1100ft long,  has a passenger capacity of 2,620  (plus 1,250 crew) weighs in at 150,000 tons and cost us$800 million to build (the same cost incidentally as the Mars rover mission!)

The most impressive stats of course are in the engine room. This beauty has a 157,000 horsepower power-plant.  YEAH BABY ... THATS WHAT I'M TALKIN ABOUT!!!.  I'm not really you're cruising type but you've gotta be impressed by a ship of this scale.

Of course, The Sun aren't overly impressed by all this, an article on their website claims...

"passengers (were) complaining about seasickness and dodgy service"...."You were lucky if you got breakfast within an hour and a half of sitting down."

Mind you, judging by the fare cost for the journey I can't imagine there were too many Sun readers on the boat.

9:58:23 PM