[CamperBob2]

I'm honestly feeling a bit petulant towards NASA for failing to include the mountain in their initial panoramas[1] -- they've missed 80% of the drama in that landscape!

It's very frustrating. It's as if NASA/JPL either don't know or don't care where their funding comes from, or how to get the stereotypical "man on the street" interested in what they're doing.

Hey, dumbasses: just before you launch something like this, put the best $1000 digital camera currently being manufactured on it. If the camera doesn't survive because it's not rated for use on Mars or whatever, fine. If it does, then that $1000 is going to pay for itself a million times over in firing up the public's imagination and garnering subsequent political support.

You know what? I'll bet James Cameron would help you out for free.

[nkoren]

The cameras they have on Curiosity are just fine, considering the bandwidth that they've got available to them. The problem, in this case, is simply that they didn't point them at the most interesting thing in the area!

[jonursenbach]

Problem is all the testing that is necessary to do to ensure that that $1000 camera works at all isn't possible to do before they launch.

[CamperBob2]

Sorry, not buying it. That might be a good reason to fly a camera that's one year behind the commercial state of the art, but not 10 years as seems to be the usual practice.

This stuff matters, whether NASA likes it or not.