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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.
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
Why has there not been a single communications satalite set in orbit around mars? Part of the problem with this last mission was they sent an unmanned mission into a communication blind spot
Wrong. The current series of Mars missions were designed to be somewhat integrated, with MGS providing mapping support and backup communications. Mars Climate Orbiter was intended to be the primary comm link with Earth, so its loss was a blow for that reason beyond just the science, but it wasn't a crippling problem because MGS could do double-duty.
MPL's communications blackout during descent had nothing to do with MCO or MGS availability. It had to do with avoiding interference with the radar instrument it was carrying that would be active during descent. A design that would have allowed both devices to be active would have cost a great deal more, and was one of the design trade-offs ("acceptable risks") that this mission undertook.
As it happened, since there wasn't any word from the two surface probes either, I'm of the opinion that separation failed and there wasn't even a successful descent, let alone a problem on landing.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
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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