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."

Comments

Maybe it's our solutions?

[blankinthefill]

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"!

Re:Maybe it's our solutions?

[TowerTwo]

I never considered MARS or anywhere else, MOON or otherwise as easy. Before the 'New World' was found how many explorers and and their kin died.

All astronaughts know, the moment they step into a craft of any kind may be their last, their families do too. It's why Christa Maculafs backup said the next day after the Challenger disaster, I would go up tomorrow if asked, we know and she knew the risks of space travel.

The exploration of the world is now the exploration of the universe. There will be the next James Town on Mars and others.

This is the price and reward or exploration.

Steven

Re:Maybe it's our solutions?

[matzim]

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 [sic] stressful for delicate equipment.

Consider the following:

• These probes are traveling to Mars at (least) 19,300 km/hr.
• It needs to travel that fast to get out of Earth's gravitational field and orbit.
• The only economically feasible way to slow down a craft going that speed is aerobraking.
• You need to be in a planet's atmosphere to aerobrake.
• Mars' atmosphere is (at most) a few hundred kilometers thick.
• Anything going that fast isn't going to have a long time to slow down.

Thus the problem is unavoidable-- you must go from 19,300 km/hr to 0 km/hr in a matter of minutes. If you can think of a method to do that that's less "stressful" than NASA's, we're all eager to hear it.

Re:Maybe it's our solutions?

[kippy]

Agreed. Of course getting to Mars is hard. Getting into low earth orbit was hard. Sailing across an ocean was hard. Adapting to a colder environment when migrating from Africa was hard. I hope that defeatist attitudes aren't widespread in govenrment and NASA about getting to Mars.

There will be risks, engineering chalanges, and deaths but this is already the case with NASA. Think Apollo. The fact is, pusing the envelope of human civilization will never be "easy".

Re:Maybe it's our solutions?

[Zordak]

way to[o] stressful for delicate equipment.

The cheap electronics you buy at Radio Shack are delicate. Instruments used in space applications are not delicate. Much of what it can survive would kill you.

Mars Express still on target.

[perly-king-69]

The European Mars Express is still on course for a Christmas Day encounter with Mars.

Re:Mars Express still on target.

[Peter Millerchip]

My understanding of the article is that of all the missions that have ever been launched to Mars since the start of space travel in the 50's, around 66% of them have failed.

I don't think it means that there were three specific missions, and two of these have failed - I just think it means the overall ratio of failures has been fairly high, which means that getting to the surface of Mars safely seems to be a hard problem at the moment.

Top 10 Reasons Mars is Difficult

[AtariAmarok]

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.

Re:Top 10 Reasons Mars is Difficult

[kalidasa]

-1. 545 months a year - you've GOT to be kidding me?
-2. Whaddya mean, less than 2 days a month.
-3. Whaddya mean, those are both the LONG month?

difficulties

[mOoZik]

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.

And it doesn't help if idiots on Earth submit values in Imperial when the craft needs Metric, or vice versa. :D

Re:difficulties

[whome]

The article mentions various technical reasons why Mars is hard, but Mars missions actually have a far worse success record than missions to any other location in space. NASA people joke (or used to joke) that Mars was protected from intruding spacecraft by the "Great Galactic Ghoul."

I have my own theory about why Mars has such a bad record. Although Mars is the closest planet to the Earth, it is in one respect the most inaccessible . Mars has the least frequent launch window of any major object in the Solar System, it coming around only once every 26 months. This means that any engineer who reports that one section is not quite ready to go, or could use more testing, becomes responsible for a delay of almost 2 1/2 years. Obviously, there are considerable career and institutional reasons not to do so.

This factor will have to be dealt with carefully on an institutional level if a manned Mars mission is attempted, or astronauts will certainly die.

NASA obesity

[gnalre]

What's inside the airbag weighs 453 kilograms (half a ton)

Maybe thats what NASA has been doing wrong

Beagle 2 weighs 33.2 Kg

Time will tell...

the REAL problem with Mars...

[Tumbleweed]

...is those Martian "evil-doers" that keep shooting down our spacecraft. It's time to assemble another Coalition of the Willing(tm)!

Re:idjits working in English units

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

Re:idjits working in English units

[linoleo]

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

It seems to me

[falcon5768]

that the list reads like the same list they had for moon landing, except we where both

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.