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Why Mars May Be Difficult
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "dramatic article leading up to the three Mars probes for December/January at NASA's JPL (also hosted at Ames) on Mars risks: Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. After 300 million miles of deep space, 'One colleague describes the entry, descent and landing as six minutes of terror,' says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office.
Descending at 1,000 miles per hour, with only 100 seconds left at the altitude that a commercial airliner typically flies -- things need to happen in a hurry. Doesn't mention solar flares, electronics shielding, signal snags or budget tightening. The previous account listed the top 10 reasons Mars was hard in 1976."
After reading that, and seeing conceptual pictures of how these "landings" occur, I think that what makes Mars "hard" is our solutions to landing problems, and maybe even transportation. I don't know what we could do about transportation, but the landings are obviously way to stressful for delicate equipment. There has to be a better way to do it, because a landing like the one described would destroy almost anything! I don't think, therefore, that Mars itself is hard. I think it's how we access Mars that's "hard"!
The European Mars Express is still on course for a Christmas Day encounter with Mars.
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This sig is inoffensive.
Uh, the problem was that the contractors did it in metric, and not imperial.
Besides England uses metric not imperial these days.
10. "Damn cell phone won't work up here!"
9. Mars needs women. Stay home, Joe.
8. It's the Red Planet. Capitalist running-dog lackey not welcome.
7. Ever since I saw that awful movie that had Arnold with the bug-eyes, I just can't look at the place again.
6. The hassle of Martian businesses having to change 24/7 on their promotional material to 25/7.
5. Disney owns it already, why bother.
4. When you get a hole in the housing module, you can't go to Wal-Mart for ductape.
3. SCC got their first, just in case a mars mission tried to use Linux.
2. They don't take American Express.
1. Val Kilmer's rabid robot dog is still running loose, last time I heard.
0. "Angry Red Planet"? Forget it, I have too much stress already.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Space travel is a cruel mistress. There are so many factors in complicated missions like these that any success is closer to a statistical anomaly than achievement, figuratively speaking. During launch, the payload can be stressed to a breaking point, and many satellites have died this way. Even though there are measures in place to minimize these, there is still a probability that in the long run, something may become disabled as a result. Furthermore, there is a tremendous amount of radiation outside of our comfort zone, not to mention stray particles roaming empty space. When traveling at those speeds, in excess of 10,000 MPH, even a grain of sand can spell doom or at least have damaging effects. Then comes the delicate process of landing the thing, which further pounds the payload with extreme G forces, heat, and vibration. Couple this with a 20 minutes latency of communication, and you end up with an expensive toy at the mercy of computers and sensors.
:D
And it doesn't help if idiots on Earth submit values in Imperial when the craft needs Metric, or vice versa.
A blog like any other.
Please, no more lame references to the MCO loss! this was NOT because people didn't know that Newtons and Pounds aren't the same thing, but because two different organizations use the different units, and the software interface between them didn't do the conversion.
Helium balloons want to be free.
"got their first" > "got THERE first"
Maybe thats what NASA has been doing wrong
Beagle 2 weighs 33.2 Kg
Time will tell...
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
...is those Martian "evil-doers" that keep shooting down our spacecraft. It's time to assemble another Coalition of the Willing(tm)!
Besides England uses metric not imperial these days.
Speak for yourself.. I'm English, 6'4" tall, weigh 13st, and drive miles to work each day.
Metres? Kilos? Kilometres? Pshaw, I can't be bothered to use them or figure out what they're worth in "real units", despite the best efforts of the BBC pro-metric propaganda unit..
Like I said, mod this up it's FUNNY! LAugh!
Agreed...
My "7 inch schlong" sounds so much more manly than my "14.5 centemeter prick".
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Another reason is that getting to Mars is hard. Well we didn't go to the moon because it was easy did we?
My "7 inch schlong" sounds so much more manly than my "14.5 centemeter prick".
Agreed...
especially since 14.5 cm is less than 6 inches.
- nic
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
A) pushed to do a moon landing
B) came up with much better solutions than the quacks running nasa came up with (and I mean the clueless managers, cause im sure there are much better ways to land that the managers nixed cause of cost.)
What it boils down to though is that the additude in Nasa now has to change before we do anything about going to mars. Its not the same one as was around durring the 60's Nasa has become bloated and stagnant. Truth be told, I almost hope the chineese do it first, because at least they get the point of space exploration now.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
We need self-healing technologies.
They don't come from space. We need to make them here.
We can test them in a variety of environments, cheaply.
If we, the collective humanity, can stop wasting money making faltering attempts at greatness and just set reasonable goals (sustainable deep-ocean habitats,sustainable polar habitats, better/safer/reliable energy) and create the technologies necessary to make them happen _here_ we will flourish anywhere.
Until then, it's all hand-waving and one-upmanship nationalistic stupidity.
I'd rather see a handful of "Burt Rutans" than a hundred NASA's.
Not only would it be more efficient, but with the lack of red-tape/buckpassing/budget-crap something like "progress" might actually take place.
Personally, I think the governments of the world are scared to death of people getting out of their reach. Governments, like any entity, don't like to lose their source of wealth and power and they absolutely hate competition.
I'm probably repeating myself here. That's ok. Everyone who frequents slashdot understands the value of repetition (esp. the editors).
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I don't AC on political forums, of course I don't read them for the technology info either. I like to post, but I make an effort not to flame people for just being from a particular country, or religion. Don't blame me if you like to piss in your own bath water.
A temple is a place were Jewish people go to pray. The places that have been burning all over Europe again. I am not Jewish, but I don't like what's happening. Clearly nationlism is on the rise in Europe. In another post you say the totalianism can be a good thing, that is very very scary to those of us who love freedom.
I'm English 6'1 weigh 18st and travel in miles... but when I get to work its metric all the way
Its strange for me I emote in imperial and work in metric
The definition of Totalitarianism means "complete control" of every aspect of society (religion, education, business, etc), they leave little for anyone but their henchmen. I think that you mean "dictator". Augustus Ceaser was from what I know fairly enlightened, Julius Ceaser might have done a couple of decent things for balance, but the vast majority of dictators sucked. Of course, there are some dictators who have the best intrest of the people at heart, but they are rare and even if they are ok then what comes after them is usually trouble.
A favorite saying by mild bigots in this country: "Blacks are some of my best friends". I don't really want to go back through your post, but I got the feeling that you were, maybe I just assumed that because you are European, you are against Israel's right to exist, most of you seem to be. Was I way over generalizing, yes, perhaps I was even bringing in a different argument. perhaps I was even making an over-generalized inflamatory political statement. But a "man with no eyes" can't tell the difference.
shouldn't be the cause of much distress these days unless they cut corners somewhere. Stuff designed in the 1980s has no problem handling these situations. One way to remedy the situation is an autonomous reboot of the affected processor.
Uh, the problem was that the contractors did it in metric, and not imperial.
No, the problem was that the contractors used imperial while NASA works in Internation Units.
In fact, its not just NASA, its almost the entire world.
I still can't believe the U.S. chickened out of the switch. Canada and Mexico didn't!
And BTW:
How much do you weight in meters?
How many centimeters does it take for water to boil?
Its the International Unit System, not the Metric System...
You can't take the sky from me...
After searching for 10 mins on google, I can't find anything to back up my claims, but....
I thought what had happened was that the (imperial) contractors had converted their answers to metric, and passed that to the other team. The other team assumed the answers were in imperial, and converted _again_.
Or something.
(so I agree with you btw)
Inches, centimeteres, Bah! I measure mine in furlongs and I do it for fortnights!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
THANK YOU!
Didn't someone, back when I was young, say something like: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard"?
Space is hard. Making unsupported and unwarranted allegations about the incompetance of NASA managers is easy.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A one out of three success rate is- to be brutally honest- just a little pathetic. The moon probes back in the fifties and sixties had a much higher success rate. This is of course due to the shorter distance, lower delta v, and all that. But unless there's a higher success rate, it wouldnt really be feasible for a government to send people up there. Because of all those unreasonable demands of the astronauts (keep us alive, send us back to Earth, et cetera) a Mars mission would be prohibitively expensive... and there isn't the same political impetus from the olden days. Although if another space race develops against China, there may eventually be more interest.