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Mars Failures: Bad luck or Bad Programs?
HobbySpacer writes "One European mission is on its way to Mars and two US landers will soon launch. They face tough odds for success. Of 34 Mars missions since the start of the space age, 20 have failed. This article looks at why Mars is so hard. It reports, for example, that a former manager on the Mars Pathfinder project believes that "Software is the number one problem". He says that since the mid-70s "software hasnâ(TM)t gone anywhere. There isnâ(TM)t a project that gets their software done."" Or maybe it has to do with being an incredible distance, on an inhumane climate. Either or.
You know, 1/10th of something rather than 1/4. Damn engineers can't figure out the conversion between metric and standard!
Fundamentalism stops a thinking mind.
I think it's hard to get to Mars because it's far away and it it's in SPACE! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out! Well on second though....
I'm fairly certian it's sabatoge on the part of the Martians.
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
I really hope this explains why there isn't a manned mission. =)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
That explains why it's so hard? :-)
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The motivation for achieving Mars is much less than the moon. The reason for this is because there was extreme speculation that the Moon was made of green cheese. Mars is already assumed to have red dust on it. For a society that gorges itself on Big Macs and Cheese Fries this is hardly a worthwhile goal. And as a programmer myself I understand the need to work on projects that will benefit the community as a whole, not on one that will invade a dirt planet.
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
Oooh, stories like this make me SO ANGRY.
âoeThe limiting factor in Mars sample return is mass,â he said. âoeDirect return [of samples] from Mars right now exceeds the cost envelope and performance envelope of the available launch vehicles and upper stages.â
The first samples returned should have mystical properties ascribed to them and then sold on EBay. This should generate enough revenue to substantially increase the size of the "cost envelope"...
cheers
(I got engaged last night) =)
Also who are they employing to write their software? Rocket scientists or coders. In my experience domain expertise counts for very little when it comes to writting rock solid code.
Hmmm... Rock solid code and solid rockets - not interchangeable.
Hell, I'd hate to see a coder build rockets. They'd all have NCC1701 written down the side, or be a mile long...
Marvin The Martian's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator...
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
When I can get paid $4 million a year just to show up to work every day for 4 hours, 6 months a year, get paid another $5 million just to say that I use XXX brand compilor (or reclining chair), get paid by a university to attend there just because they need a new star Perl Debugger (the last one graduated last year, and the backup got carpal tunnel), then I'll stop messing things up like that.
as simple as
10 REM my Martian exploration program
20 GOTO MARS
Then after 3 months you are then shot into a planet and stopped by a parachute and then some air bags. The entire time literally thrown into the surface.
And all this with the safety and security, of the lowest bidder.
I dunno, you tell ME why these missions have a high failure rate. Could it be there is no humans on board therefore not as much care is taken to insure the safe delievery of these machines? Could it be the fact that they are designed not to go to mars, but to go to mars as cheaply as possible. Could it be that no one really has a whole lot of information so a lot about mars is (pun intended) hit or miss?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
"Software is not math"
everything is math my friend, even you will one day be expressed as an equation
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach
~Idarubicin
As my father always said, "Garbage in, gospel out."
But it's gotten much prettier!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Java moves the bugs from the application level to the JVM level - freeing the programmer to make slower code.
Venus, like the woman she is, is a real bitch and a half.
Thick sulfuric acid atmosphere?
Gigantic storms?
Temperatures that will melt aluminium?
Ahh, I need to stop. I'm getting flashbacks of my ex-gf.
Of course Mars is hard, it is in space and anytime you put a candy bar in space, it shall become hard. Now drop that bad boy in some hot oil and you have a confectionary treat...now...what is the chance of taking fry daddies with the probes to warm Mars up a bit? Rambling is good!
But in the article:
That was just too perfect.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I think there's something wrong with that statement in regards to anything that's going to be exploring the unknown.
Their Mission Statement: "To boldly go where no man has gone before, and anticipate absolutely everything."
Table-ized A.I.