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)."

Comments

Why the Viking mission was accepted

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Check out the babe testing that computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, hairdos miniaturized along with the computers.

very short article

[Artifex]

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.

Not the first

[jfoust]

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.

Full text available on-line

[starsong]

The article's annoyingly short, but the book it references (On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet. 1958-1978) is available for free download via the web. The Top Ten problems list is in chapter 8.

You can find a huge selection of other NASA-related books (including charts, diagrams and pictures) here.

Biology platform was not tested!

[SysKoll]

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! -:)

-- SysKoll