So, assuming it is scaled correctly in that cap, it could mean the Traveler shrunk, which isn't so far-fetched.

Spheres being a hard thing to get a handle on, IF the traveler has a radius of 469 miles, that would put the surface area of the sphere as larger than all but 6 countries on earth. The Traveler would have a surface area of 2.76 million miles with AUtralia having 2.97 million and India having 1.27 million.
Top ten countries by area.

How do you know my hair isn't already grey? ;)

Edit: The volume of the Traveler would be enough to hold the entirety of earth's oceans with room to spare, according to Wolfram Alpha.

Finally, one of the neatest things was watching Humanity launch outward after The Traveler came and orbited Earth. This is the beginning of our Golden Age! Also note the little symbols surrounding Earth. Could be important...

That's all I've got for now. Exciting stuff. I can't wait to play! :)

My first thought was "The traveler is floating way higher than I thought it was".

I tossed it in an image edit and here is what I got:

59 pixel radius from earth center to what I assume is the surface.
Earth avg radius is 3956.5 miles.
That gives us 67 miles per pixel. we get an "Above surface" distance of 1542 miles.
For reference, the International Space Station orbits between 205 and 270 miles from earth's surface, and geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles.

But at this point you're thinking "Well, distance between objects is not to scale". And I would agree. The other sphere in the image I assume to be the moon, and without even measuring we can see that it is way too close to earth. So either
A) That's not a moon
B) Orbit distance is not to scale.

But let's look at it a different way. If the distance is not accurate maybe the relative size of the objects is? Sure enough, the dark medium sphere is the perfect size relative to the earth to be the moon. The only conclusion size-wise that we can draw from this is the size of the Traveler, which would be a radius of 469 miles.

Did we know the size of the traveler before this? Or have a good guess from some source?

It landed on Mars first. I forget where it was said, but there was something confirming that not too terribly long ago. (I really should keep a log of all the interesting things I hear!)

This Was It, No? A DBO video no less.

It landed on Mars first. I forget where it was said, but there was something confirming that not too terribly long ago. (I really should keep a log of all the interesting things I hear!)

I believe that was in the animated intro they were showing in the "ronut" where the "Music of the Spheres" was revealed. Can't remember which expo that was.

(I really should keep a log of all the interesting things I hear!)

You're our Loftus here. Get on with the work!

Obviously.

:p

On a serious note, I've just realized. We had to land on Mars to scout the Traveler. AKA, we didn't have colonies on Mars. AKA, very near future.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether it landed on earth first and then relocated to Mars and we followed; or did it show up on Mars first and then we saw the beginning of the Golden Age once we reached it, after which it retreated to Earth once all our other worlds had been wiped out?

By the dubs, I'm going to take a second to plug John C. Wright's novel The Golden Age. Because it is mindbending and a lot of fun, if silly in some places. But it describes a golden age for mankind much in the same way I think is implied in Destiny's story.

~m

It landed on Mars first. I forget where it was said, but there was something confirming that not too terribly long ago. (I really should keep a log of all the interesting things I hear!)

If anything given the two new trailers and what we think we know of the solar system and golden age, I think The Traveler arrived in system and started terraforming outer planets. We probably noticed SOMETHING of this with radar and telescopes and sent a team to see what was going on when we saw it "land" on Mars. From there the trailers show it departing Mars and stopping at Venus before coming to orbit Earth. Only after it's at Earth do we see all the "lines of exploration" launch outward.

The video shown onstage at E3 literally said "Present Day"

True, but I didn't expect it to be closer to literal than not.

Obviously.

:p

On a serious note, I've just realized. We had to land on Mars to scout the Traveler. AKA, we didn't have colonies on Mars. AKA, very near future.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether it landed on earth first and then relocated to Mars and we followed; or did it show up on Mars first and then we saw the beginning of the Golden Age once we reached it, after which it retreated to Earth once all our other worlds had been wiped out?

By the dubs, I'm going to take a second to plug John C. Wright's novel The Golden Age. Because it is mindbending and a lot of fun, if silly in some places. But it describes a golden age for mankind much in the same way I think is implied in Destiny's story.

~m

:p

On a serious note, I've just realized. We had to land on Mars to scout the Traveler. AKA, we didn't have colonies on Mars. AKA, very near future.

Where CH stands for Charon.

And in this case, well...

Charon does make change, I guess...AMIRITE?!

Maybe a stretch, but I'm sticking to it.

~m

I totally missed the Alpha patch on the astro/cosmo/taiko-nauts. Good catch!

And agreed about rain on mars. Goosebumps every time. :)

My favorite trailer is the Jason Jones Destiny summation. (As usual, many of these images are clickable thumbnails, don't be shy!)

We start with a spacecraft of some kind approaching a new, "space exploration" Bungie logo.

If you watch closely, there's a bit of "computer distortion" and a few interesting bits of text pop up:

That's "CH05 EXPEDITION MODE" "VIDEO FEED ON" and "NUMBER OF PERSONNEL: 03" if those are hard to make out.

Moving on we get some amazingly beautiful sci-fact-like imagery:

There's all sorts of detail in this sequence. Like where the entry vehicle is still using little thrusters to keep orriented as it slams down into Mars' atmosphere:

Or the very Mars Curiosity-like dropping away of the heat shield.

Or the rocket powered touch down. Note the aditional rockets above the landing legs. This lander is built capable of launching a smaller piece back home, similar to the landers on the Apollo missions!

From there we see our first three Legends:

I can't imagine that it's a coincidence that these three are arrayed very much like we see Guardian fire teams in all of Destiny's marketing material. And look! They're all carrying guns!

Just what did we think we would find on Mars? Presumably we detected massive changes and this spherical "ship" settling down into the atmosphere, we have the telescopes and orbiters and radar to do that today. Did we send these explorers with guns on the thought that we should not leave our people unable to defend themselves if they came across hostile aliens? Would we really send people with guns on a real mission like this? Or maybe it's all marketing related tied back to the three person fire team allusion?

These legends are pretty awesome looking, but a couple of things stood out to me. First, while we only get a good full look at two of them, they are clearly designated for different roles by patches on their suits:
and
Flight and... power or engineering or something?

There was one other interesting patch that seemed to be on all three of them:

Hmm... that looks familiar. Oh yeah:

So what have our exploration Legends found? That's right! The Traveler:

Nice to see it largely undamaged. Largely, because look there in middle right:

That's not a perfectly smooth surface there. If I had to wager, I'd guess that The Traveler has seen combat before!

Next comes the most powerful part of this entire trailer for me. Rain on Mars. To the best of my knowledge it does not rain on Mars, which is why this:
and this and this:
Are so exciting to me!

It's so simple a concept, but so powerful if you're even slightly into real life space exploration. The perfect balance of epic fiction with The Traveler and real space exploration with the very realistic looking human spacecraft and explorers. THIS is what Destiny is all about! :)

And I'll leave off there... others can poke through and stream and record and comment on gameplay a lot better than I can. Before I go though, there were a couple of neat things I saw in the New Beginnings trailer:

First, the wolf themed breastplate armor was named

Yes, the Crest of the Alpha Wolf... except Alpha Lupi was also the website and presumably the star that the community received signals from in order to gain our very first glimpse into Destiny.

That it has shown up again is interesting... and possibly significant.

The trailer also shows the Director interface including The Reef and some of the planets we can visit, but it also shows the curious symbol of Vanguard:

Do we know what this is yet? Or are some of Destiny's features still a mystery to us?

I did think it was a lot of fun to get some more hints of FTL travel in the Destiny universe, with the approach to Mars, not the mention the load screen for traveling to Crucible locations:

Those ships look fantastic by the way!

Maybe my favorite shot though was this:

It's one of the few good ones where we really get to see how big The Traveler is in relation to Earth. (I don't suppose anybody can pinpoint it's location based on this image? I'm still curious where The City really is!)

Finally, one of the neatest things was watching Humanity launch outward after The Traveler came and orbited Earth. This is the beginning of our Golden Age! Also note the little symbols surrounding Earth. Could be important...

That's all I've got for now. Exciting stuff. I can't wait to play! :)