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Mars Lander goes Spelunking!
Khan writes "Seems like the Polar Lander may have landed a little too far..about 1 mile deeper than expected into a canyon and probably broke apart in the process. Check out the article in the Miami Herald." According to the official Mars Polar web site, they are still looking for it, or at least some evidence of a crash. Maybe some Martian dragged it to its garage for spare parts.
...I read a while back that they had feared something like this would happen. The current orbiter had returned pictures indicating that the landing area was more "rolling" than previously believed. They thought of moving the landing site, but other areas were just as chancy. Shit happens. After all, this IS rocket science. Seems strange that so many Mars probes go awry. Did anyone see the pictures that last Russion probe took just before it lost contact. A funny, cube shaped object seemed to come straight up from the planet...(I am not making this up, but insert lame borg joke here anyway) Cpt_Kirks
You're absoultely right. Even Armstrong and Aldrin had problems on the way down because the lunar lander's high gain antenna sometimes failed to 'lock on' to the ground based radio transmitters. For the periods of radio silence, they were flying / partially autopiloting it on their own. Armstrong was also praised for implementing lots of 'sense checks' e.g. checking ground covered and height above ground (to calculate angular velocity). Thus Armstrong was able to complement / assist / verify the automated systems. Just one thing, I think the reason they landed 5 miles off course was because of Mass-Conns (Mass Concentrations) in the moon causing the moons gravity field to be slighly uneven. They basically started the terminal descent 5 or so miles off position because of 'inadequate knowledge of the state vector' i.e. without knowing exactly where they were in orbit.
the martian father and son were battling it out on the red surface. in the intensity of combat, the two had not realized that they had worked their way to the edge of a large crevice.
suddenly, a loud rumbling filled the air. the two were shocked as the mars lander set down 20 feet away. several intruments clicked and whirred and finally the mars lander, a bit jarred by the landing, spoke, "good... good! now... give in to your anger and take your father's place at my side back on earth!"
the young martian looked at his father, who had been beaten back to the ground. he was breathing heavily and had been rendered defenseless, "never. i'll never join you! you failed your highness! i am a martian, like my father before me!"
the mars lander was irritated by this response, "so be it, martian! if you will not be turned, then you will be destroyed!"
with that, the mars lander extended a probe and began shocking the young martian with a powerful stream of plasma.
the father martian pulled himself up to his feet and hobbled over to stand next to the mars lander.
"your feeble skills are no match for the power of the 3rd planet! young fool, only now at the end do you understand! you will pay the price for your lack of vision!"
the father martian looked at his son, writhing in agony on the red ground. he turned to the mars lander.
"and now, young martian, you will be destroyed!"
the shocks grew in intensity. the young martian could feel life slipping away from him, "father, please! help me!"
the father martian could not bear the sight of his son suffering so. with his last ounce of energy he took hold of the mars lander and carried to the edge of the crevice. wild streams of energy spewed from the lander and electrified the father martian. with one final burst of energy, the father martian tossed the mars lander into the crevice and collapsed on the ground next to his son.
thank you.
the fat-time charlie online serial!! bookmark it and don't forget to hit "reload"!! lynx friendly!!
Exactly. Human Ingenuity and the ability to Adapt to the dynamic world are one of our strongest points. Using an AI might not be the greatest idea, though, as the current AI technology ain't too high, and that the AI will most likely be of much lower intilligence if it were to be used. The only problem would be that if a human pilot was used, you would have to load up the craft with life support, supploes, bigger drive systems for the load, more fuel, and thu a bigger ship in general, but then you would have to exoand that some more often by having more than one person, just to make the journey possible and make it so the pilot won't get lonely, but, that would entail an eve larger rocket, and thus more fuel, and bigger drive systems that the previously said one-human spacecraft. It would be an endless type of thing, so there would have to be amny cutbacks in the process, and that would be even worse, as the crew would need a place to live once they land, and suits t survive the mars atmosphere, and then some other stuff like mroe supplies, co2 to fuel converters, de/re-hydration units, more storage, some issues of mad magazine, a nice computer system, an airlock, raw material storage, parts, backup systems, and then some place to sleep, which will also take up space. then, you will need a way to stay clean, and healthy. Then, they need some way to get back into space, and a way to get back to earth quickly, and
1. Three independent craft failed to establish contact with the Mars Global Surveyor or Earth (the lander and two impact probes).
2. The Mars Polar Lander was the only NASA craft that did not maintain a radio carrier signal while descending into the Martian atmosphere. Absolutely nothing is known about what happened after the Mars Polar Lander began its decent. 3. The likelihood of all three independent craft failing independently is not as likely as them all failing because of one cause. 4. The failure of the lander to separate from the cruise stage would explain the loss of all three craft, and there is no telemetry to prove that this did not happen.
So we are left with two explanations. One is that the craft failed to separate from the cruise stage during decent, and all three elements were destroyed. The other is that the lander successfully descended, and due to bad luck happened to land in a canyon. The other two probes were supposed to land 50km away from the lander. Under this explanation, the two failures that destroyed them remain unexplained.
Pick the most simple of the two explanations.
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. - Occam
7 years ago when NASA started their, "faster, cheaper, smaller" program they said that if they launched 20 space probes, and all 20 completed their missions perfectly then they weren't doing their job right. You have to fail to learn. If you don't push the envelope of technology then you will never advance.
You have to rememeber that Mars is very very far away. Even with an orbiting satallite its very hard to judge the surface that you are going to land on.
The MPL and the Pathfinder were both built at the same time. They equipped the Pathfinder with the experimental ballon landing gear and gave the MPL the conventional landing gear. We now know that the ballon idea is a great idea.
That is were we learn. Sure we lost one of our ships, but now we know that the ballon method is a viable alteritive for future landings.
Making mistakes is great, as long as 2 things happen. First, we learn from them and second we don't do them twice.
NASA is doing a great job. The next 10 years is going to be an amazing time. We have Martian rock planed to be returned by 2008, we have a probe landing on titan ( the biggest moon of saturn ) in 2003(4) and a ton of mars landings. NASA is making huge leaps every year. I just hope their budget will get a boost. I can only dream.
On brave astronauts;
I read a news item a year or two ago, about a conference on manned missions to Mars. It was mentioned by the speaker that a ONE-WAY manned mission to Mars would be about one-eighth the cost of a round-trip, due to the reduction in supplies, Martian launch vehicle, Earth re-entry vehicle (this assumed a completely self-contained mission, as opposed to a rendezvous-on-arrival with the International Space Station, or Shuttle or something).
He then asked for volunteers for such a one-way mission. Assent was unanimous.
While nobody seriously expects the US Government to fund such a mission, and I sure as hell wouldn't volunteer for it - it's something to think about.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think you guys are being a bit harsh. I think remotely piloting a smallish chunk of metal across space to another planet is probably quite a tough job. The fact that it got there at all is quite amazing.
Regards
Spare parts? got to fix those Pod Racers, here Pit Droid, here Pit Droid.........
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
> Maybe some Martian dragged it to its garage
for spare parts.
Right now there's a Martian thinking, "Just imagine the Beowulf I could build if they'd crash a dozen more of these!"
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John 3:16 - God's Public License
Cm'on, even if the lander rolled down a ravine, the DS2 probes would still work! After all, they were designed and tested to CRASH into the surface.
Yes, they were, but they were not supposed to still be joined to the rest of the lander at impact. Besides, even if they did survive intact, the fact that they could be down a bloody big ravine would likely cause problems for the reception of any signals.
"Some smegger's filled in this 'Have You Got A Good Memory?' quiz!"
You're kidding. They sure use tested and reliable computers in their machines, but punched paper tape is simply stupid. They need to reload the memory of the control computers a few times with the required software for the current mission stage, but they use magnetic tapes (like they already did back in the Apollo missions).
Too bad the world would come to an end if we executed them, hmm? :)
Most of the cost of the mission was to pay for the scientists and technicians at NASA and contracted companies to do the work.
The rest of it was used to buy a few hundred pounds of aluminum, steel, electronic circuits, glass, and plastic.
Hardly any money was wasted. Those people needed to eat regardless of the success of the mission.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Would it have survived if they used the Giant Airbag method of landing? Isn't that what Pathfinder used?
If that were the case, surely there'd be extensive dune seas visible at the pole.
And another thing, why at www.marspolarlander.com does it mention looking for the parachute in order to find the lander? The parachute and carapace
were meant to separate from the probe 1 and a half km from the surface! They'd be halfway to the other pole before they touched down!
K.
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-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
While I'm glad you posted an informed response to jd, and I'm willing to bet jd is severly clue impaired, I think you're off base suggesting he be moderated down. "Overrated" maybe correct (jd is a hyperactive /. poster (karma whore?)), but "Flamebait" does not fit. In many cases, and this is one, it would be useful for readers to see idiot posts that garner intelligent, insightful replies. Maybe we need yet another moderation category like "Provocative +1" for cases like this? For now I'd rather have seen jd's ranting markes as "Interesting" even if it was baseless.
A shame they don't have similar reporting on MILITARY wastes!!
Wow! What a load of bigoted claptrap.
First, the "The Bell Curve" is irrelevant, in that dispite the sloppy thinking and slanted data that went into it, it say nothing about the individuals involved in the MPL program. However, since you use it to attempt to prop up your "argument", it does speak volumes about you.
While I'm skeptical of the affirmative action programs, I do see the need for something to offset the bigotry of those like you, who, as you clearly demonstrate by your own post, who assume that you and those like you (i.e. White Angelo Saxon Protestant Males) are superior to anyone else.
You've provided no evidence that having woman in key positions in the MPL project were in any way responible for the failure. Care to point out which decisions caused the loss of the lander? You can't can you? On the other hand, NASA's biggest screwup, the Challenger launch decision, was made by which, females or males? Seven deaths versus the loss of a robotic lander, which was worse.
Frankly however, given your apparent attitudes about woman, I'm not suprised you're required to document your efforts to hire woman. Were it not for that, I doubt you'd hire any woman at all, inspite of their level of experience.
Face it, maybe your real problem is your own mediocrity. My problem, on the other hand, is how to keep clowns like you from messing up my daughters life.
-- davet
Intelligent (IQ 163), White, Male, Father of Two, Ex-NASA contractor (ARC, ~10 years)
"Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks,
'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big,
scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
-- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
The Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from ships off the shore of Iraq. An ICBM could be launched from the U.S. and hit Iraq, but I don't think it would have quite that level of accuracy (as with hand grenades, close is good enough). No ICBMs were fired at Iraq to my knowledge, though.
I like the idea of a "smart probe". I'm not sure whether the Mars Global Surveyor photos (currently the best we have, I think) are of high enough quality for that sort of positioning - you really want very accurate terrain measurements down to the level of the smallest object that you can't land a probe on. And you can still be wrecked by dust storms during your landing sequence, which happened to some Soviet mars probes.
Of course a cruise missile doesn't hvae
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm not ever as good as I once was, but I'm good once as ever I was not.
bleh
http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
Fellowship 9/11
It got modded up "Funny" so much latter when it DID get modded up the moderators recognised the joke :)
And I want the first pose on slashdot.org.mars
I don't actually exist.
Well, I posted that based on the impression of what I read in that article (which I did mention at the beginning of the post, by the way.)
Besides, after the "communication problems" between Lockheed and JPL with the orbiter, I would be VERY hard pressed to believe that they did not screw up again.
Do what again, you say? How about messing up with landing zone data, for starters? I believe that if they are not entirely sure about the success of landing equipment, then they should do further research instead of going off half-cocked and launching it anyways, and hoping that everything works out.
It's happened to me a few times too. I've seen some of my posts go down from "4 Isightful", to "2 Flamebait".
Try and figure that one out!
You're singling out one sentence in my entire post. You really should try to view the post in it's entirety before you try to think of an intelligent reply. Next time , don't forget about how I also said that, "due to the communication problems between JPL and Lockheed in the past, I would be VERY hard pressed to believe that they did not screw up again."
True. But, many of these guys keep me up on the inside info every now and then.. Nothing on this though.. Most of them are a bit pissed at the latest Mars missions..
Ahh well. No biggie, just my $0.000000002...
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Deep Space 1's main drive failed in it's initial power-up, and it took almost a week of intense work, shaking of the probe, and everything else they could think of to reactivate it.
But reactivate it they did and it accomplished the vast majority of the mission. The only thing they missed was the photos of the asteroid (or comet - I forget) as it flew by - this because of a stuck camera I think. Remember this stuff is rocket science. Things go wrong. It is a testament to the ingenuity of NASA & JPL that most missions succeed despite failures of hardware - though not as many as you seem to believe.
Yes, P10/11, and V1/2 did accomplish -some- of their missions spectacularly. However, most of the equiptment was shut down (through lack of power), the data rate was reduced (which may have resulted in higher lossage) and much of what they could be accomplishing right now (had they the means) will be lost to us for decades to come, or longer.
Drugs are bad. Most of the equipment was not shut down, these probes accomplished over 90% of what they started out to do and even some things they didn't initially plan on (the 'grand tour' of Uranus & Neptune, eg.)
The solar winds are being blamed for pushing Skylab out of orbit, causing it to crash & burn rather spectacularly in the Earth's atmosphere. If the cause is correct, then this was easily avoidable on NASA's part, and a major blunder.
Blamed by whom? You have your facts all screwed up - read Tau Zero's post, he got it right.
I would also like to see references for your contentions about the lightning causing the booster to fire and the Viking probe.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I don't blame NASA for this (yet at least), because I realize how difficult it is to land a space probe on a remote planet. Especially when it's guiding itself and not under human control. And I certainly hope they'll try again.. But comments like this really disturb me:
``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''
...
Not quite. According to http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/ds 2/tech/tech.html, the probes communicate with Mars Global Surveyor in orbit. No communications link with the lander is needed. Also, I believe the big radio telescopes at Stanford are powerful enough to hear radio signals at least from the lander. Anyway, since MGS heard nothing, the conclusion is that all three failed. Since a triple failure is very very remote, it would seem to me that a failure before separation is much more likely. This "there's a big hole there" theory doesn't scan quite right...
http://www.marspolarlander.c om/overview/finalsite.html
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Anil Madhavapeddy, anil@mars.ucla.edu
Outreach Architect, Mars Polar Lander, UCLA
Thanks for the explanation.
:)
I understood about GPS but was under the impression that we had better maps than what we have.
What makes you say that the Mars Global Surveyor pictures will not be processed for some time? (if its a lack of resources then it would seem to be a perfect job for something like Seti@Home... you too can participate in Prospect@Home
Wasn't there a project (I can't remember if it was U.S. or U.S.S.R.) to map the surface of Mars using radar? (or is that either what MarsGS is doing, or is that what produced the 10 Meter resolution maps?).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
There's an article with a bit more info at the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/news/news010 6m.htm
but what do I expect from an American?
yards?
+&x
I may stand to be corrected, but typically the '$200 million per plane' in defence contracts is usually the cost of the plane plus all the spare parts and support infrastructure needed for that plane. More like the TCO rather than just the one off purchase price.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
That's an entirely unwarranted conclusion. In the first place, manned vehicles aren't *planned* to smash into the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. And when you have an experienced human pilot you can pick a landing spot with far better precision than is possible via onboard AI and telemetry.
Also manned craft are likely to be designed with
the capability to return to orbit. If the pilot can't find a suitable landing site then they can abort the landing. Since the robot probes are not
intended to return this is not an option.
You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...
If they don't then didn't someone think to put
one or more probes in polar orbit fitted with cameras and radar mapping equiptment...
It's not like they were trying to take risks, but try and pick an area of, say, Kentucky that you could hit from Mars with a reasonable chance of your spacecraft landing in tact. They're hills & canyons & just about everything else all over the place.
Though in practice you'd probabaly go something more like Mars to Mars orbit, Mars orbit to Earth orbit, Earth orbit to Earth Surface.
Anyway landing on Earth is easier than Mars, a nice dense atmosphere helps with slowing down using a parachute or transfering to aerodynamic flight.
"Seems like the Polar Lander may have landed a little too far..about 1 mile deeper than expected ..."
Or was that a kilometre?
Bob.
We don't need accurate maps of the whole freakin' planet to land a probe. A smallish patch around the target landing site should be plenty...
Ryan
I saw some funny cartoon recently maybe rather prescient.. a rather bent lander, upside down, broadcasting repeatedly and in the wrong direction .. "help, i've fallen over and can't get up.. help, I've...", nearby there is a picnic blanket martian family, and an upset martian dad saying something like "damn you can't get away from cellphones anywhere nowadays..".
Ok, well I thought it was funny.
One idea of mine is to get a GPS system for Mars before we try to land anything there again. Of course, that might cost too much.
Do you have ESP?
THIS mission had such a backup system, of sorts. This canion thing doesn't expain why the two micro-probs that were hitching a ride failed to check in.
Well NASA, your latest bungle expaination doesn't add up. What realy happened?
The Miami Herald article has a Lockheed slant to it, i.e. "No-one told us about that canyon". However, the official site says that they can't spot any evidence of the lander's parachute. Both parties want to save face by blaming the others....
Remember, The truth is out there (specifically, it's sitting on the surface of Mars somewhere).
-JB
Hmmm, I dunno. Many people expect Martians to be really smart...perhaps they're just rednecks (pardon the pun) using them for skeet shooting practice. Kind of like using the heads on Easter Island for bowling in Mars Attacks....
:)
-Vel
Isn't it obvious from all the recently lost space probes? The Martians are using them to build a Beowulf cluster.
"Do what again, you say? How about messing up with landing zone data, for starters? I believe that if they are not entirely sure about the success of landing equipment, then they should do further research instead of going off half-cocked and launching it anyways, and hoping that everything works out."
If NASA had to be entirely sure about anything on any space mission, nothing would ever get launched. I think most people in the space program readily agree, craft will be lost, and as sad as it is human lives as well. In parallel look back to when North America was first colonized, whole colonies died out. Exploration is a dangerous and far from sure thing, if we had to wait till we knew it was perfectly safe it would never happen.
This article appeared in the recent issue of the NASA Academy Alumni Association newsletter:
What Happened to the Mars Polar Missions?
Synopsis:
  Internal divisions within the support team at Lockhead
+ Stone age management which leaves people covering their arses
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Lost spacecraft and a failing program
Don't count out the possibility that it managed to get to the bottom of the canyon in some sort of working order. A mile of rock would probably prevent any transmission from reaching earth. There would be a very small period if everything was lined up right to receive a signal. The nine minute delay for transmission would make it almost worthless.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
We can launch a $1,000,000 missle from the US these days and land it within 10 yards of the target in Iraq. We don't make course corrections, it does.
Just implement this on the probe. Give it star maps. Let it navigate it's way there. Give it the best maps of the planet. Let it find the best location to land (specify coordinates, just let it make all the necessary correction to get there).
Test the system out on the moon. See how close to one of our flags we can land. I'll bet if done right, we could land it within a few feet of the flag.
Now all we have to do is convince them to adopt the technology.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
I know the difference between a fact and an opinion. When I am posting opinion, I click the "No Score +1 Bonus" box (as I am doing here). I do this because people reading at at a setting of +2 are probably looking for stuff that's highly informative and insightful, not just blowing off steam. Anyone with a +25 karma ought to know that too. (If some moderator believes that this post should be read by people browsing at +2, I suppose that's okay too. It makes precious little difference to me.)
I had nothing to do with jd's moderation, besides suggesting it (obviously, as I have already posted in this discussion and could not moderate here even if I wanted to). I agree with you re: "flamebait" versus "overrated", but that was none of my doing. I think the UI for the moderation system is error-prone, and it may not even have been the moderator's intent.
Maybe we need a few more -1 moderation categories, like "erroneous" or even "clueless".
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Okay, which one of you is Terrence and which is Phillip?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Isn't it just amazing what scientists can do with a million dollar project? What makes this project different from any other failure that has happened is the fact that this one was all sponsored by US citizens - what a thought!
I agree that it is a hard task to assume what the lander will do, or what it will not do once it reaches the surface, but shouldn't there be some sort of un-breakable module (or something of that nature) that plays the role of a black box, or just an emergency transponder? I don't know.. maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I think it could've been more planned.
Looking up to the sky for the second time this week,
Matthew
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sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
I remember from a previous article that there were 3 other landers that were testing a brute force touchdown on the surface (Mars Deep Space 2 I think). What happened to these guys during the experiment?
Even if the MPL crashed into a canyon, these guys should have survived since there is a terminal velocity they should have reached, thus making the distence they fell irrevelent. Heck, landing on a slope may cushion the fall somewhat...
- Sig
When do we seend LM the bill?
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Was Evel Knievel piloting this thing? :-)
But seriously, I'm NASA's biggest supporter. We'll get'em next time. And with any luck, some day very soon with humans on board.
Ignore Alien Orders
All I know is that without the space program, I couldn't have Tang for breakfast. And damnit, I need my Tang. Imagine what new kinds of freeze dried flavor sensations would come out of a manned mission to mars! Seriously though, I hear people calling for more Nasa budget cuts. I hear that the space program is no longer relevent; that no further advancements can possibly come from it. Bull. http://www.marssociety.org
I find it interesting that Lockheed Martin was the one to jump out and point out the landing site was hazardous. After all, wasn't it Lockheed that was responsible for the metric screw up? Perhaps they didn't want to be the ones to look foolish this time, and if they had the chance to say "hey, look, it wasn't us" this time around, maybe we would forget their $165 million dollar mistake. Not to say that maybe their information isn't valid or accurate, but perhaps there was more to them stating it than just to point out what might have gone wrong.
It amazes me how stupid anonymous cowards are. As of when I wrote this, THERE WAS NO MODERATION done to the parent of your post. You make a good point though. Just save the rant for when it actually happened.
OK, OK...I guess slashdotters are entitled to the truth. Actually the Mars lander put down in the middle of the compound of the advanced base set up to coordinate the invasion of Earth. The main fleet is still several years out, but will arrive soon enough the chiliasticists will view it as the return of Christ. You can recognise this as the same "God returning" scam that Cortez used on the Aztecs. However, it would not have done for the Mars lander to have sent back pictures of the "chariot of fire" being constructed for the Jesus clone to drop out of the sky on.
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knout (n) - A leather scourge used for flogging
Yeah - plus a lot of the other posts suck too! I spent a while going through the comments on the Humpday quickies and about half of them were complaints that the WuName Perl script didn't work. If you're going to post make sure you read the previous ones first otherwise you just annoy people. There - that's my $0.02 worth, or in UK money, about £0.01......
I've always wanted to know who's idea was it to send a craft with a maximum surviveable tilt tolerance of what, +/- 22 degrees(?) into an area filled with canyons? Didn't ANYBODY notice that? Not to mention the fact that in the weaker Martian gravity it's much more likley for the terrain (or mart-rain?) surfaces to have more extreme angles, thus enhancing the hazard.
I realize that this canyon area is what they were interested in, but then shouldn't this particualr craft have been designed differently?
This sounds like some pretty poor risk management to me.
TC
TangoChaz
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Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
While I agree that the there would be both increased safety and decreased cost for such a mission, I still thing that as was stated the cost increase over a completely robotic mission would be hard for NASA to handle at this point. Further more the difference in cost between manned orbit and a manned landing would not be significant.
Just to add to the comment about the GPS like system for mars. This was part of the mission for the other mars probe which crashed do to metric/english conversions.
Also I would like to, as a side note, congratulate NASA on a successful repair of the Hubble Space Telescope!
JF Miller
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Yes the two missions where cheap but 184 million for both are "massaged" numbers. They basiclly only include the cost of the spacecraft and lander alone. Things like the launch vehicle are not included in the 184 million dollar pricetag. Double that number and you will get closer to the actual cost of the missions.
Jeez, Isn't it obvious?
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
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v3rgez@hotmail.com
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It's the SHAKESPEARE, STUPID.
Great, yet another mission accomplishing nothing paid for courtesy of us. You know, since these are scientists assumed to be semi-intelligent people, you would think they could figure out the trivial stuff, such as the metric system, BEFORE they spend millions of dollars on one of these things. It's just a thought though. I know we're talking about a government agency here, and you can't expect too much from them...
They should just release the whole program under the GPL so that we can fix all of their stupid mistakes and give it back to them. It would save money and it would actually work.
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Of course, there's the smallish problem of there not being anything resembling polar ice caps in any of those places, which would be a problem for this particular mission. Maybe a flatish part of Siberia...
I refuse, on principle, to have a
If I take a trip in my car to an unfamiliar part of my home town, a trip that will cost me, oh, two bucks worth of gas, I generally check the map BEFORE I leave home, just so's I won't get lost. Now, if I'm reading that article properly, some of the folks landing that thing didn't really look at the map closely until AFTER the hardware disappeared. Not before leaving "home", not before getting to the strange part of town, and there was considerably more than two bucks worth of gas involved. I tend to think of money put into the space program as money well spent, but this is ridiculous. I say take their toys away and send them to bed with no supper.
OK, now what?
To bad the sun is in the opposite direction. But maybe in a thousand years some alien mothership will come back to earth searching for the owner of the automobile.
"The day they take Linux away from us is the day they pry it from our cold, dead fingers!"
Plus, this doesn't explain with BOTH deep space 2 microprobes also failed. More likely is some kind of atmospheric entry problem or else the cruise stage never separated.
Jim Burk
The Mars Society
P.S. For a slashdot-like Mars news site (that I happen to maintain), check out MarsNews.com
"However, he said, the planet is covered with craters and canyons and it is impossible to remotely place a spacecraft at a precise location. He also said JPL scientists couldn't find a single landing zone on the planet's generally smooth south pole without a hazard."
If it is not safe enough to land a probe there, we can forget about manned mars missions. Even though a manned landing might, due to "last minute corrections" (like with the lunar landing), go well, one would not risk as much anymore as the NASA did during the Apollo missions.
Yes, P10/11, and V1/2 did accomplish -some- of their missions spectacularly. However, most of the equiptment was shut down (through lack of power), the data rate was reduced (which may have resulted in higher lossage) and much of what they could be accomplishing right now (had they the means) will be lost to us for decades to come, or longer.
The solar winds are being blamed for pushing Skylab out of orbit, causing it to crash & burn rather spectacularly in the Earth's atmosphere. If the cause is correct, then this was easily avoidable on NASA's part, and a major blunder.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Communications with spacecraft highly directional antennas on both ends. An emergency beacon would have to have an omnidirectional antenna to be any use so would require more power. This is not to say that it couldn't be done, and with an orbiting relay, it probably could be done on Mars, but you still have line of sight problems and the problem that a serious failure would likely cause a catastophic impact which no reasonable beacon could survive.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
While material costs for probe is not very significant, launch costs (especially manned ones like the shuttle), assembly costs, and ground monitoring costs are significant. Not to mention the fact that you would feel pretty foolish having two probes fail in exactly the same way. You would want to send a probe, then wait until the mission completed to send another. At that point, the state of the art would have progressed enough that sending the same probe again would be a waste of money.
Another way of looking at it is that you are asking for a more extensive testing program. Extensive testing programs is what got us to the $1b spacecraft in the first place, and much of that testing was on the ground. Doing the testing in space would be likely more expensive.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Hey, you didn't even mention the fact that whenever a NASA mission goes wrong, or starts to look like it's going wrong, the news-dweebs start quoting the mission price - giving the reader the impression that NASA is just wasting money left and right. (Of course, I'm sure they *are* wasting money...they are a government agency.)
If they really need scientific data I'd like to offer them to put my car on the shuttle and launch it towards Mars. I'm sure it would make a much more visible impact than a mere spacecraft. This is AMERICAN IRON afterall. Also, if they miss, no harm done... it just goes into the sun.
Several months ago, Lou Dobbs, VP of CNN and the host of the show MoneyLine, left that organization and became Chairman and CEO of space.com. He got a lot of publicity on TV and radio at that time.
A lot of people thought that the Web Site in question was not a big enough business and did not have enough potential to fully occupy a man of his talents. OTOH, some said that space.com had the potential to expand into its own cable channel, and it could become similar to CourtTV, which I guess is a successful business.
I realize Dobbs is a media darling, and that's why I'm asking the question here. A lot of people in the community just ignore media hype when it's coming from traditional media sources.
I don't care if the site is popular with the average Internet user, is the information on it accurate and useful?
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
The Denver Post article that CNN and others refer to can be found here:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/news010 6m.htm
There is a tad more information included.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
If it is not safe enough to land a probe there, we can forget about manned mars missions.
That's an entirely unwarranted conclusion. In the first place, manned vehicles aren't *planned* to smash into the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. And when you have an experienced human pilot you can pick a landing spot with far better precision than is possible via onboard AI and telemetry.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Hey, that's completely fucking *unfair*, unjustified and completely WRONG.
When NASA had proper government support they sent men to the Moon. With basically 1950's technology ferchrissakes! Now we look back at what they achieved with the Apollo moonshots and gawp in wonder.
Since then instead of continued support they've had nothing but indifference from the public and he Whitehouse and hostility from Congress, which seems to be largely composed of people bickering over their share of the pork barrel. So NASA's budget has been squeezed tighter and tighter. Add on top of that the fact that space travel is expensive, all their stuff has to be custom made by large aerospace contractors who thoroughly rip them off in the process.
Experimental space vehicles like Pioneer and Voyager are bound to suffer failures, if only a couple of them were built then they are by definition prototypes only. Do you know *any* group on Earth who can design and build perfect, infallible machines for such a hostile environment, on a tight budget, using crooked contractors - and get it right the first time, every time?
The Space Shuttle of course has had time to evolve over the course of its 19-year career. And that's why out of 96 (so far, I think) LEO space missions only ONE of them had casualties. Just think about that for a moment. Remember, we're not talking about a quick trip down to the shops in the motor. We're talking about riding an enormous stack of burning high explosive right out of the atmosphere and back, in craft now nearly twenty years old whose design dates back to the early seventies. How many organisations do you know that can build CARS that last for twenty years, never mind spacecraft.
As to your final point, is it really NASA's fault that they couldn't get the funding for the right experiments in Viking? No. What would you have had them do - go home in a sulk? They were right to send a probe anyway, even one with NO scientific mission because, first and foremost, they are in the business of space travel technology development and exploration. For that reason they built and flew the thing and their part of that was a success. It was Congress who failed, because they were too damn ignorant and too damn cheap to pay for the right payload.
I won't bother to admonish you to cut NASA some slack because it's quite clear that your judgment of them is so ill-considered it's hardly even worthy of consideration.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Hu? At time of posting the artical in question has ZERO mods... /. editors not arrogence of an AC..
It seems the poster saw the topic assumed it was or will be modded in a certen direction and posted acordingly...
In short a rant on something that never happend.. yeah that happends on slashdot on occasion but it's usually vea a mistake by
I don't actually exist.
It's obvious, going by this article, that NASA's JPL are trying to make excuses for their obvious incompitance in this mission.
"However, he said, the planet is covered with craters and canyons and it is impossible to remotely place a spacecraft at a precise location. He also said JPL scientists couldn't find a single landing zone on the planet's generally smooth south pole without a hazard."
Gee, it's strange how nobody at Lockheed Martin knew about the landing zone until it was virtually too late to do anything about it. The above quote from the article gives me the impression that either:
1. JPL knew about the risks all along, and never told anyone about them.
2. JPL didn't know about the risks (like they should have), and are now trying to cover their butts by saying, "Hey, it's not our fault! It's impossible to land anything safely on that planet!"
Come on guys, grow up and admit that you screwed up. Don't apologize, just don't do it again.
My favorite quote:
r ch/index.html - Aerial search turns up no trace of Mars Polar Lander, CNN
r ess/index.html - European Mars mission looks for lessons in polar lander loss, CNN
``No one on our side knew that canyon was there,'' the Lockheed source told the Post. ``All of the sudden, two weeks later, we got this MOLA data'' -- topographical maps and images -- ``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''
You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...
Anyway, here's some links to various stories for those who never saw them:
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/31/mars.sea
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/29/mars.exp
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
NASA seems to be having a lot more difficulty lately. I realize that now they've got serious budget problems, but come on...
For $600+ megabucks total you'd think they could get something to land in a functional state..
BTW, I live near Huntsville, AL and know one hell of a lot of guys over at NASA, though nobody on this project...
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In the night sky of Mars flies the 73rd wing of the South Mars Air Force. In their latest stealth interceptors this proud all volunteer force keeps guard over the peace and freedom of Mars. Successfully interdicting efforts of the FBI, NSA and OSHA to plant listening devices disguised as landing probes, self-concealing and buring cameras and taps into to Martian Internet for surreptitous ergonomics inspections, this team is widely hailed by all Mars citizens.
Just underneath the canopy of Col. Fthehwqq, wing leader, and lead trainer of the South Mars 'Top Gun' school are painted 4 icons resembling interplanetary probes. For it the much decorated Col. Fthehwqq who has recently repelled the latest dastardly attempts by Earth to usurp the soverignty of the free creatures of Mars.
Really? Isn't one of the reasons there were only a few missions to the moon that the publics interest was lost quickly?
Should we spend more than M$ advertisement department on a man mission to Mars, just as a hope to keep the public interested? Do you really think people in this era can have their attention grabbed for the year and a half or so it takes to send a tin can with 4 boring people to a big red rock? You wouldn't be able to sell a soap opera with that theme to a network, let alone do the real thing.
I don't think the general public is interested in a multi year mission to Mars and back.
-- Abigail
Earth has a lot of places that are much flatter than Mars. A thicker atmosphere, weather, and most of all, the presence of water make for erosion and the settling of sediments that make flat areas.
I do however disagree with the Sahara being reasonble soft. I've been there, and the Sahara isn't made of the same sands as a beach. It's very rocky, and I imagine it's a lot like the surface of the Moon or Mars, minus the craters and canyons.
-- Abigail
It doesn't take AI or a crack pilot to trigger Big rock! Avoid!. It does however take quite some computing power to recognize a big rock while descending from orbit to the surface.
-- Abigail
Deep Space 1 used an experimental drive that had failed every single test ever done on Earth
But still worked in space. Also remember it was experimental.
Pioneers 10 & 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 all suffered hardware failures - main antenna and/or solar panels
But still accomplished their missions fairly spectacularly.
NASA was convinced that deep-frozen rubber rings would work just fine when super-heated to a few thousand degrees centigrade, suddenly (duh!), killing 6 astronauts and a civilian
Yep, that was a pretty bad boo-boo.
NASA knew about solar winds, and even devised spaceships to travel by them, but neglected to take them into account when positioning Skylab
What do solar winds have to do with Skylab's orbit?
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Well, perhaps a human pilot won't pick the actual landing point if we use the bounce-around-the-landscape-on-balloons technique on manned landings. I rather doubt that we'll choose that method.
I think the funnier (if unlikely) explanation I heard earlier is that the martians are now monitoring and intercepting spacecraft of unknown origin after a small, wheeled probe vehicle was discovered in a desolate region of the martian outback.
Daily news broadcasts from MNN featuring 'expert' guests speculating on the origin of this probe as a prelude to interplanetary invasion forced the Martian Supreme Council into funding a crash program of SDMI (Strategic Martian Defense Initiative), or "Star Wars" programs to develop and deploy a system capable of detecting and obliterating any small probe spacecraft approaching the red-planet by instantaneously re-programming the onboard computers with unit-of-measure conversion 'virus' that would render the craft unable to navigate, causing it crash violently into the planet's surface.
Exclusive footage of the latest alien probe to be destroyed by SDMI technology was paraded around to the news media in a highly-covered press conference conducted last tuesday at the Martian Defence Departments spectacular headquarters, known as the 'Do-deca-hedron'. Martian Generals were seen to show slow-motion footage of what appeared to be a small alien lander probe jettisoning two smaller free-fall probes immediately before it augered into the side of a huge canyon in the polar region of the planet.
Unnamed officials also told MNN that several other alien probe vehicles had been detected and obliterated in recent weeks, citing a 99% effictive kill rate.
"With a virtual barrage of these alien craft, we at the Martian Defense Agency feel completely vindicated in the quintillion-dollar overrun of this program, as the vital interests and security of the citizens of this planet are being well protected." said uber-General Vlad Quabuchi
"Our success in wiping out the tools of out unknow hostile invader is clear validation of the entire SDMI program as a successful and essential asset in the overall Martian Defense arsenal."
(Disclamer IANA Rocket Scientist, just someone who's read too much sci-fi and grew up playing with lego blocks instead of trucks :)
:)
Its true that human missions definately would be able to correct better but here's a thought.
I believe that current technoledgy would allow a plane to land itself. Additionally, we have a wonderful thing called GPS which circles our globe and allows some really fun toys to locate 'exactly' where you are (give or take less and less if you have military grade models).
What would it take to put into place either a partial set of GPS satellites (note I'm not seggesting a full fleet as I'm sure that would be overkill for the current situation), or perhaps some network of 'navigation satellites' that would allow a probes on board systems to make 'last minute corrections'.
I have to believe that this would allow more precise landings. Additionally depending on their life cycle (I don't know what the standard GPS satellites life cycle is), it could provide more support for a manned mission (provided that the system lasts that long) in the form of relay/navigation satellites.
I realize that there are lots of problems with this idea (ranging from 'its expensive' to 'but the GPS system is designed for _Earth_ and would have to be adapted'). Its just a thought though
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Because it was the best one in the area?
:-)
It's not like they were trying to take risks, but try and pick an area of, say, Kentucky that you could hit from Mars with a reasonable chance of your spacecraft landing in tact. They're hills & canyons & just about everything else all over the place.
Science dictated the area, Logic dictated the best landing zone, Luck dictated the outcome.
Stuff sometimes fails. This is important to remember during your next reboot for no good reason.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Who says humans have to land on the surface of Mars on their first mission there? A group of humans could travel to Mars, remain in geosynchronous orbit, and remotely control a landing craft. They would be able to control it in real time, which would guarantee a higher rate of success in landing a probe there. Granted, the cost of the mission and the risk would be greater, but only incrementally so when compared to a human-occupied landing craft.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
I went to the lander main site, and clicked the landing Site link, and I can't find any mention of 'bloody great canyon' anywhere..
EZ
-'Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in..'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Certainly there are risks/imponderables/luck. But these really should be discussed frankly to avoid disappointments. Had NASA said: "It's going to be hell to land there", no-one would have been surprised when it was lost. OTOH, it might never have been launched. Either would have been better than the blackeye NASA received.
I'm concerned that the mission planners may have neglected to consider approach route, preferring to minimize fuel. I'd like to know if this is a case of "penny wise & pound foolish".
-- Robert
For a polar landing, all approach vectors repeat every Martian day, ie 24.6 hours. So you have to time your orbital insertion inside that period to give the desired vector. No big delays, or massive fuel increase.
I don't think I know better than NASA, but I would like that proven! They have made an unadvertised gamble with my money, and need to account for it.
-- Robert
Finally, a reasonable explanation. But it begs the question: Why would anyone chose a trajectory with serious hazards (mountains/canyons) on it? Did they not have good maps, or wasn't there a better approach route?
With spaceshots or other artillery, you can control direction much better than distance. Thrusters keep direction true, but how are you going to adjust re-entry when the atmosphere is more/less dense/windy than expected? So you've got to expect some short- or long-fall.
-- Robert
Your argument is a good one. But, it would only be useful if we had accurate maps of Mars. GPS will only give your position relative to the satellites. With the current system, it then translates that to longitude and latitude. You still have to have a map of Earth with lat/long on it to tell you where you are.
The only maps of Mars that we have right now are made at something like 10 meter resolutions. Meaning that one pixel represents 10 meters. That is not very accurate. If you look at the satellite photography at www.terraserver.com you can see these maps along with 1 meter resolution maps.
Mars Global Surveyor is currently getting better pictures of Mars, but those pictures will not be processed for some time.
Think of it this way, we were trying to fly a probe MILLIONS of miles (with a radio delay of 6 minutes) and then land on a planet for which the only map we have represents houses as a single pixel. Not impossible but extremely hard.
...and they're probably wishing Santa send them a set of Lego Mindstorm instead.
The real issue is one of cost vs. capability. An emergency beacon wouldn't do anything useful unless the rest of the mission was a loss. How much money do you want to spend on that? It would have been much more useful to have some low-speed telemetry from the spacecraft from before the point of cruise-bus separation to landing, to tell exactly where any problems occurred. Even that would have been about US$5m, on a US$136m mission. Sacrificing part of the science payload looked like a bad idea at the time.
This is only true so long as Congress (which is populated with the ideological offspring of Sen. William "Golden fleece" Proxmire) doesn't use it as an excuse to chop more out of NASA to make pork for their other constituencies.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
You know, we can screw up a lot of robotic missions, leave a ton of craters on Mars, and still get the scientific data we want for much less than sending a manned mission to Mars.
A manned mission would cost several orders of magintude more than a fleet of simple robots. We'd have to provide a human-liveable habitat for astronauts that was absolutely fail-safe, to prevent loss of life (and the loss of a far more costly mission). We coudln't do a "fast-better-cheaper" human mission. The risks are too high. And risky missions are what steered NASA away from the huge, monolithic "everything including the kitchen sink" mode of exploration. I'm not talking about just the risk to human life, but the risk of failure of the mission.
And yes, I've heard the "but astronauts are brave pioneers who know the risks" argument. Even if we find people to shoot into space on a risky mission, I'd rather not spend a huge amount of money so some rocket jocky can Evil-Knevil his way to Mars.
We still know very little about Mars. Mars is a more complex evironment than the moon, and a hell of a lot further away. While manned missions to Mars will make sense someday, now is not that time. I'd say, let NASA continue with its plans. The funding we're expending on these missions isn't so great that screwing up and losing a few robots is such an issue. The more we learn about Mars in this "little to lose" mode, the safer (and probably more cost-effective) any future manned exploration will be.
Gee if it is that hard to land remotely, perhaps we need to admit that one of the only sure ways to avoid this kind of disaster in the future is to let a human pilot control the craft in real time...by being there!
Neil Armstrong saved the first moon landing by flying the LEM over a giant boulder (which a robot lander would have hit) because he could make decisions based on the immediate circumstances. If it is still too costly to send people, perhaps we need better computers - AI systems which could simulate the emergency decision making processes of a crack pilot like Armstrong.
Until that time, expect a lot more of these failures...small, cheap and fast just doesn't seem to be doing what NASA thought it could.
BTW, I'm more inclined to believe in "other" reasons for the failure of this and other Mars missions (at least 2 previous US missions and 2 previous Soviet missions). Kinda makes you wonder...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Cruise stage separation failure explains what we've seen. The DS2 probes, intended to impact and penetrate the surface, also failed to communicate to Mars Orbiter. What could cause both the Lander and both DS2s to fail?
After the last communication with the craft, it was supposed to rotate for reentry, and the cruise stage (carrying the interplanetary solar array and thrusters) would separate from the Lander. The DS2 probes were on the cruise stage.
If the cruise stage did not separate, the DS2 probes and the Lander were destroyed. Single point of failure, whatever the reason for the failure. It explains why the Lander and the two DS2 probes failed.
What I want to know is this: having designed and built a Mars probe, what's the marginal cost of building another one?
And if that cost is low, why not launch two missions; one shuttle mission to put 10-15 identical probes into a stable Earth orbit (hang 'em off the side of the Space Station even!), and one ELV (expendable launch vehicle) to put a bus with a big dumb tank of fuel and rocket engine into orbit a few days/weeks later?
The shuttle's reliable - it's manned, it's going into orbit, and it's coming back after it deploys its payload. The space station will be reliable; it's manned, it's not gonna fall down. So the odds that your science payload (the Mars probes) will be lost before launch are pretty slim.
The big dumb tank of fuel with the rocket engine on the back is expendable - it can be "as reliable as the rocket used to launch it", that is, "pretty good, but if it fails to reach orbit, we launch another one, our science payload is still safe".
The next step is pretty obvious - strap the bundle of probes onto the big dumb tank and fire it off, using whatever gravitational slingshots you like.
10 probes en route to Mars for the price of one expensive shuttle launch and one cheap ELV boost to low-earth orbit is gonna be cheap.
As a bonus, you get some statistics on lander reliability. Was Pathfinder "lucky" and Mars Polar Lander "unlucky"? Find out when you do the same thing next year with 10 MPL-style landers. "Of 10 MPL-style landers, only 3 made it. Of the 7 failed MPL landers, 6 of their DS2-style probes survived and transmitted; the bug is probably with the lander itself, not the separation of the probes. We were just really unlucky with the 1999 MPL. Of the 10 airbag-bouncy-landers, 8 survived. This is the better technology to use."
$150M per mission is faster/better/cheaper than $1B per mission. But $400M for 10 missions beats both hands down. We know re-entry is difficult - we don't know how hard "separating probes from busses is", but it seems pretty simple a'la Galileo. (And with 10 probes in my hypothetical mission, if one gets "stuck" on the bus, big deal, there are 9 more where it came from :-)
(FWIW, here's my guess as to what happened to MPL: Since the DS2 probes also failed to respond, I really question the "canyon" theory - there's no evidence that anything reached the ground in one piece. Or does the "canyon" theory posit that all three (lander and both DS2 probes) all landed in the same canyon? Not having the size of the canyon handy, nor remembering the expected distance between the probes and the lander sites, I'm not sure if this is plausible or not. My gut says "there was a problem on re-entry that destroyed the probe before DS2-probe-separation" is still the simpler explanation.)
UFO spotted landing on our planet! Some scientists assume existence of terrans. Government trucks have been seen carrying something from the presumed landing site to some submartian base known as "Area 51". Government denies knowledge.
The reporters are out of their mind. This was a test flight using one of our new planes. The Planetary Aeronautics and Space Association (PASA) has carried it back to its constructors. That's all.
First post!
Guess the first one explains why it's so far off where we thought it would be.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
This story is just CYA BS.
The real answer is probably related to the rumor that NASA forgot to put heaters on the explosive bolts. This would have prevented the cruise stage from separating and the lander+DS2 probes would have burned up in the atmosphere.
Cm'on, even if the lander rolled down a ravine, the DS2 probes would still work! After all, they were designed and tested to CRASH into the surface.
Armstrong, selected for the mission because he was one of the best pilots in the military, was able to use the LEM's thrusters to fly the Eagle horizontally until he could bring it to a safe landing a few miles from the planned landing site.
Robot landers can't make on the fly decisions like that.
Had this been a manned mission to Mars, a human pilot would have been able to see that the lander was heading for a dangerous spot and, most likely, landed the craft safely.
I read an interesting book a few months ago called The Case For Mars. If you are interested in manned exploration of space beyond low Earth orbit I highly recommend it.
Absolutely wrong. The drive worked fine on Earth, or it would never have been flown. It apparently got a piece of debris stuck between the accelerator grids during launch, causing a short circuit, but that was cleared by pulsing current through it. After that the ion drive was a phenomenal success.
This isn't right. It's not even wrong. For one thing, none of those probes carried any solar panels; they all ran off RTG's. And their main antennas worked just fine, it was Galileo (currently sending back some of the most amazing data about Jupiter we've ever seen) which had the main antenna fail to deploy.
The solar wind does not penetrate down to the altitudes where Skylab orbited, and thus was never a factor to it. What does happen is that the solar UV increase during the height of the sunspot cycle heats and inflates the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, which increases air drag on low-orbiting satellites (of which Skylab was one). The Shuttle, which had been intended for use to re-boost Skylab, was delayed by budget cuts (Congress' fault, not NASA). So Skylab fell down. Not a big deal, it wasn't intended for permanent use anyway.
I'd like to see a reference for this assertion.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Nice to see that the author went out of his/her way to mention this as "NASA's latest failure," and to remind us of the metric/English conversion problem. Funny how the complete success of the latest shuttle mission didn't get mentioned. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Let's put the $184 Million cost of the Mars mission into perspective. According to the Wall Steet Journal, the Air Force plans to buy 339 F-22's "over the next 16 years at an average cost of $200 million per plane" Surely a Mars mission is worth 1 F-22.
Too bad they didn't get any audio back from that microphone on the thing -- I suspect it would have picked up something along the lines of "Meep Meep!", followed by a high whistling sound and a "poof" on impact...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.