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Giving Up on Mars Polar Lander
toast0 writes "NASA has stopped all attempts to communicate with the mars polar lander. Their press release is very brief, but notes that they will still attempt to find it with the Global Surveyor throughout February. " It's kinda sad really - but NASA's had lot of successes as well lately, which has been good to watch.
Metric to English calculator - $35
Telescope - $270
Mars Lander - $135,000,000
Look on the scientists' faces - priceless
Now, that's not to say NASA is a bunch of incompetent twits. (Which they are, but that's another story.) However, I hope they learn from this. Quality is ESSENTIAL. Meeting Press Deadlines is NOT. That's how they lost the Challanger. You can only cut corners so far, for the mass media's benefit.
IMHO, NASA would function a -whole- load better if they launched another el-cheapo Mars lander, this time fitting it with the entire management side of NASA. That way, NASA could claim the presence of life on Mars (though intelligence would still be in doubt), AND be free of the money-draining side of the organisation, AND be in a position to actually get some real work done, all in one go. I think it'd go over great with the public!
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)
We have the technology now to send a man to mars. But the government would rather blow money on things like social programs and welfare which is creating more problems than it helps.
I would hardly say that money used to feed someone, or give them hospital care, is "blown". Aside from that, you do realize that the largest single government program is Social Security, which is paid for by your FICA taxes (not income taxes), and the next largest is defense? Entitlement ("social", "welfare") programs take up only
Where the Federal Budget dollar goes
The chart isn't very helpful in showing how the annual budget actually involves returning money to Social Security that was borrowed during the DEFENSE spending binge of the 1980-1995 period, but it does show how 14% is just paying interest on the national debt. We should be paying down both the Trust Fund loans and other government debts so that this crippling rate of interest can be reduced.
Today the government is all about managing problems, not solving them. God forbid they actually solve a problem and someone is out of a job.
I think you have a very short-sighted view of what government is actually doing, let alone what it can accomplish. Few people believe that we can "solve" poverty, for instance, but we can certainly provide a way out of poverty for those willing to make an effort.
What does this have to do with space? In any case, dealing with a given problem (poverty, crime, the economy) usually has to be combined with other objectives (science, education, tax reduction).
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
In this case, the sword is popular public opinion. NASA has from the beginning of the space program invested enormous energy in achieving high approval ratings, from the micromanaging of the "straight-arrow" Gemini astronauts' lives to the Pathfinder mission. NASA is now refocusing its planetary science program on the tantalizing, but slim, possibility of finding life outside Earth (Mars, Europa ...) in the belief that only this will motivate public opinion.
Permit me to exercise my skeptic-o-meter and suggest that raising expectations too high is a mistake. When programs and missions with other objectives get harnessed to the yoke of becoming another public relations wowzer, the science, more often than not, loses. The book The Hubble Wars provides an instructive example of how NASA's focus on an engineering success blinded it to the science needs of the mission.
As you (JoeWalsh) suggest, NASA believes it's dependent on public support to continue with its programs. (The fact is, we could have a NASA that provided us with both planetary science and propulsion research for a fraction of the budget; it's maddeningly less-than-really-useful do-nothing projects like Shuttle and ISS that eat up the budget. Which, in a cynical way, is exactly what it was designed for.)
Unless we're actively exploring and working toward getting people living on Mars or someplace like the asteroids or L5, you're correct -- we're putting the species at risk. When it's within our grasp! How frustrating.
But in the end, NASA has to accept responsibility for continually going to the trough of public opinion to win support for dubious and expensive projects. When you're that dependent on the goodwill of the voters, you're going to find a day when they turn off the spigot.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The hype surrounding the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander seemed particularly nasty from where I was sitting. It truely is sad that we have lost two missions, but that will not stop NASA and those of us who are advocates for space exploration from trying. These programs are essential to our future and our childrens' and grandchildrens' future.
Expensive as these programs are, they give us unbelievable benefits: as inspiration for people to get into math and science (how many of us does that apply to???), to show us how small a world we live on (the first picture of Earth as a globe, on which we live in a fragile shell was taken by Apollo astronauts and served to galvanize conciousness of our environment and was worth the entire cost, IMHO), to allow us to better understand our home planet (some researhers are planning for a constellation of satellites to measure extremely small land movements, perhaps leading to better earthquake prediction), and to give us our new frontier to explore and use our creative energies, on which we spend too much figuring out ways to kill each other.
If we don't go into space and utilize the infinate resources out there, and therefor doom our decendants to an empty, resourceless world, they will look back on our day, and think to themselves, "What the heck were they thinking?!?" We have the opportunity and the means today to gain access to those resources, and I for one don't want my decendants to curse my name for my generation's failure to provide for them.
-Aerowolf
With the current success rate, I feal that it is about time that N.A.S.A gave up on the project. The reason for no contact could be one of many things. It wouldn't however be fair to blame anyone because I very much doubt that they will either regain contact or find out what went wrong. Although the shear amount of the costs involved must come into the equation sometime.\
I might however think back to the Venus Probes that were sent back in the 70's (I think). They were so well tested that if any problems would arise they should have all ready been thought of. From the Immence heat shielding surrounding the probe, to the high impact design that ment theat nothing went wrong and we learnt much about another planet in this uncomprehensibly small section of space.
http://www.nasa.gov/
or for the more sceptical of you, I recommend trying the Darkvault and look for a hint of alien involvment!
http://www.darkvault.com
The Well Known Fat Bloke
I completly disagree. IMHO, NASA is doing a fine job. They were given a task, do what you can with this shoestring budget, and they are doing pretty well. They are still the most sucessful space agency out there. And yes, I think space exploration is critical. Not to national security or anything, but to the security of the human race. Our future is in the stars (and the children) and we would utterly amiss to abandon our future simply because there have been a few failures. And not even that many failures either. Compare NASA's success (over 50%) with that of Linux installations. Less than 50% of Linux installations work 1st time. And going to space is much harder than installing Linux.
In short, we told them to go 'faster, cheaper' and they are. OK, so there are some failures, but when you get 10 missions the cost of one old-style mission, you can accept a few failures along the way.
--Nick
My main concern with this mission's failure is what sort of fallout will there be from it in the popular culture? Will we see popular support for space missions eroded even further? If I had a dime for everytime an acquaintance has told me that it's all a waste of money . . .
I'd love it if the talking heads would take a bit more time in explaining to people that the faster-cheaper-better missions NASA is undertaking these days allow us to have a greater incidence of failure while still spending less and learning more than on average than in the old days. Instead, the Dan Rathers of the world just talk about what a disappointment NASA has been of late.
Sigh.
The best hope for mankind's long-term survival is for us to spread to the stars. Failing that, we should spread to somewhere else in the solar system (perhaps in the space between planets, in totally artificial environments rather than terraformed planets). Otherwise, there will come a day when humankind is no more. It could be global thermonuclear war, it could be as a result of industrial waste products ruining the environment, or it could simply be a stray asteroid. But one way or another, it'll happen unless we spread out.
Anyone who is against exploring space is a traitor to our species.
When people ask "What has the space program done for us", people reply 'Tang' or 'Teflon' or 'Concentrated Orange Juice'.
They are trivialities that distract from the true answer.
What's the Weather going to be like tommorow ? How do you know ?
Strange, that a country that seemed to spend half of 1999 getting hit by hurricanes and storms, suddenly forgets why they get 2 day warnings before hand. What would the Eastern seaboard be like if they got 30 minutes warning instead ? How many people would die ?
But even weather prediction isn't the most important gift.
When did the enviromental movement really start to get into high gear ? The Silent Spring was certainly the first widely known warning, but what is the standard image of the enviromental lobby ?
When we started getting pictures like the above - not a vast limitless area that we can do anything we like to, but a small blue ball, hovering above the horizon of the moon, or the last crescent of the Earth taken by a space probe that is sailing into an almost infinte darkness. That's when terms like 'Small' and 'Fragile' began to be used about the Earth, which was historically regarded as the largest thing you can imagine.
Look at any enviromental message, and you will almost always find a shot of the Earth from space. These pictures have made quite an impression on the thought processes of this race.
And the impression is so deepy ingrained, that most people never think where they came from.
Whatever money NASA spends, it's a bargain, for the results of their programs might just save the planet from ourselves.
NASA, and the Military.
Now, how many BILLIONS of dollars does the military get annually as compared to NASA's hundreds of millions
? NASA has put people on the moon and telescopes in orbit, invented re-usable spacecraft, all for less than Bill Gates loses on a bad day in share price. I personally can't think of one government institution that's more deserving of my money.
There's no reason for a sig here.
Hi, I'm part of the MPL team, and thought you guys might like to know that we are taking the flight-spare MPL to a secret location in Death Valley, and running a complete simulation of operations as they might have been had it landed on Mars.
The point? To test the instruments and make sure they would have done what they are meant to, as a number will be reused in future missions (the Stereo Surface Imager in particular).
You can follow all the images and simulations if you're interested in what actual science was being conducted, at our official site www.marspolarlander.com
Cheers,
Anil Madhavapeddy - Ground Data Systems - Outreach
Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor
I really don't like the media's propensity (and, apparently, ours, to an extent) of judging NASA and our space program by a few failures. Sure, they get publicized more, but what about the untold missions that go off without a hitch? It's become so commonplace these days that rocket launches, and even space shuttle launches, have become just a footnote on an out-of-the-way place in the newspapers.
I wouldn't *want* NASA to have a 100 percent success rate - that would just tell me they're hiding the failures.
Technology, especially leading-edge technology such as this, is GOING TO FAIL occasionally. Don't read anymore into it than that. I think they're doing an admirable job, considering the resources they have available and the political climate they must work in.
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