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Mars and the History of Antacids
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's retrospective today on the 1976 Mars Viking mission describes the first probe to orbit another planet, and the first biology experiments based on soil sampling. Program managers maintained a dynamic 'worry list', which included a 1970's computer that opened like a wireframe book. The all-important biology experiments could not be tested prior to launch, then lightning struck the probe components (at Kennedy's Explosive Safe Area Building)."
That is not very lucky. I wonder what the chances of that happening are! can't be very big chances. I wonder though if they where being literal when they said lighting struck it?
NASA managers found a way to convince the goverment to fund this mission: they told Bush that the martians are developing weapons of mass destruction. They have reliable intelligence: a complete report from secret agent Herbert G. Wells.
I read the article and didn't see TUMS mentioned anywhere.
The coolest voice ever.
http://www.astrobio.net/articles/images/computer_t est.jpg
Thankfully, hairdos miniaturized along with the computers.
Or was that the most inocherent article write-up I've ever seen? I could just be really tired so I'm sending this question out to the bots.
Nothing meatier than the summary in the body of it, either.
History of antacids? Whatever. There's nothing especially finger-biting or stomach-churning mentioned in the text, except for a picture of a woman sticking "magnetic wires" "the size of a human hair" into an early computer with circuit boards that swing down - the "wireframe book," apparently.
I'd have loved to have read about how difficult it was to keep materials from being contaminated with dust (shed skin flakes), etc., before launch, or how they decided to shield the circuitry from radiation, and what kinds of weight tradeoffs came up, etc.
But the huge "problems list" section, which takes roughly a third of the article, actually doesn't detail problems, but just things like how the list was made, and how nobody would get in trouble for adding things to the list, and other yay-team filler.
Overall, the whole thing reads like a one-sheet poster for a cheap hands-on museum display. Very disappointing.
Get off my launchpad!
Beware the Giant Hairballs of Mars!
or does that picture remind you of one of the possible unpleseant results of nausea?
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
This comes from the "printer-friendly version" - URL given again at the end. No editing or reformatting, except to remove the dotted lines that Slashdot rejected as "junk characters":
The 1976 Mars Viking mission involved the first probe to orbit another planet, and the first biology experiments based on soil sampling. Program managers maintained a dynamic 'worry list', which included a 1970's computer that opened like a wireframe book.
Mars: History of Antacids
The milestone launch of NASA's latest Mars mission--called Spirit-- provides the impetus to revisit the remarkable journey of the earliest martian missions. Excerpts from the lively debates that took place prior to the 1976 Viking missions give immediacy and perspective on both the rewards and challenges that the Red Planet offers. In this and forthcoming issues, Astrobiology Magazine is pleased to commemorate the descriptions offered in the words of then mission contemporaries. NASA historians have compiled these notes in their five-hundred page edition of: On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet. 1958-1978 (NASA HQ SP-4212).
The Problems List
Project Manager Jim Martin began the Viking Top Ten Problems list in the spring of 1970 to give visibility to problems that could possibly affect the launch dates.
The robotic arm of the Viking 2 Lander extends to collect a sample of soil for analysis. Click to enlarge.
Credit:NASA.
Viking project directive no. 7, issued 4 October 1971, codified the concept: "It is the policy of the Viking Project Office that major problems will be clearly identified and immediately receive special management attention by the establishment of Top Ten problems list."
To qualify for this dubious distinction, the problem had to be one that seriously affected "the successful attainment of established scientific and/or technical requirements, and/or the meeting of critical project milestones, and/or the compliance with project fiscal constraints."
Anyone associated with the Viking project could identify a potential priority problem by defining the exact nature of the difficulty and forming a plan and schedule for solving it. When Martin made an addition to his list, a person in the appropriate organization was charged with solving the problem, and someone in the Viking Project Office monitored his progress. Weekly status reports were datafaxed from the field to Langley.
At Martin Marietta, William G. Purdy, vice president and general manager of the Denver Division-through Albert J. Kullas and later Walter Lowrie, his project directors-sent weekly status bulletins on the lander's top problems, since that system seemed to have the greatest number of difficult components and subsystems.
In the spring of 1972, Martin told Cortright he hoped the supervisors of employees who had one of their tasks assigned to the top 10 list would not be penalized. Martin, not wanting a stigma attached to identification of a problem, was concerned that at Martin Marietta assignment of a problem might "automatically be considered as a mark of poor performance" when promotions or raises were given. Generally, the nature of the crucial problems was so complex that punishing one individual would not solve the problem.
As with the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer and the biology instrument, the novelty of the technological task was often the source of the trouble. Some problems seemed to stay on the manager's worry list forever. Others made repeat performances.
White patches of frost on the ground are visible behind the Viking 2 Lander. Click to enlarge.Credit: NASA.
The first flight-model computer was delivered to Martin Marietta in April 1974, nine months late according to the original schedule.
Faith, Testing Fate
Continuous monitoring of the subcontractor's troubles was rewarded, however, in late 1974 when the computers were finally ready for delivery. On 15 January, Jim Martin received the following message from Walt Lowrie at Martin Marietta:
"Oh
The "author" is clearly going for the slashdot story obfuscation award.
Either that or someone has written a slashdot story submission bot that posts the same article over and over using slightly different language each time. A bot which apparently needs some major tweaking.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
The article claims that Viking "involved the first probe to orbit another planet", but this is incorrect. Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars in November 1971, just days ahead of the USSR's Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecraft. There was also Mars 5 in early 1974 and Venera 9 and Venera 10, two Soviet Venus orbiters, in late 1975.
I wonder if that lady is making the first laptop or "notebook" computer.
Table-ized A.I.
Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the term "memory pages" now doesn't it?
Especially as those "hair thin wires" are being threaded through the donut-shaped magnetic cores that made up the computer's RAM. (one donut per bit! Ain't core-memory fun?)
Progress is the process of making yesterday's innovations obsolete.?
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
There's a really good reason for this "anonymous reader" to stay anonymous.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Why do they leave us in the dark? Were they able to get the orbiter and lander to sucessfully mate in captivity? Did they have twins? Where are they now?
You can find a huge selection of other NASA-related books (including charts, diagrams and pictures) here.
Its that very contrution technique shown in those pictures why memory is sometimes refered to as 'pages'.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
The one really interesting item in this otherwise mundane article is the revelation that the biology experiment platform was delivered too late to be adequately tested.
This gives a new credibility to the scientists that are challenging the results of the Viking lander biological experiments. Basically, we cannot even be sure these instruments were performing as designed.
So if the ESA and NASA probes send results that contradict Viking's in some way, nobody should be surprised.
Little green men haven't been ruled out yet! -:)
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Maybe the lighning strike is the reason that the data about life were inconclusive. Either there is life but Voyager decided to hide it from us, or Voyager was detecting its own newly alive self. I learned about this stuff from a documentary movie called "Short Circuit."
This space available.
the viking became sentient and remanmed itself voyager after watching the star trek motion picture
No wonder the space program costs so much! We've got Micheal Jackson doing the dirty work!
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse