Fingers Crossed for Beagle

Adam_Trask writes "Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers. Beagle 2 has been carried to the vicinity of Mars by the Mars Express mothership, and released successfully to go its own way for the final leg of the journey."

Comments

Nitpicking

[geeber]

Adam_Trask didn't write that summary. Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online science editor did, and Adam_Trask just lifted the sentences out of the article. Shouldn't the poster make that clear?

Wow

[The One KEA]

If this probe does manage to survive, then it will be a testament to the skill and abilities of the engineers and managers who helped build it. Hopefully, its success will inspire the bean counters to be a little freer in their funding in the future ;)

Re:Wow

[capt.Hij]

If it succeeds then this will be taken as an affirmation that cheaper can work. Unfortunately, some will think of it as cheaper is better.

Re:Wow

[digitalsushi]

cheaper IS better. more sponsors will get interested as it becomes more realistic to be involved. lots of little projects guarentee more successes than single large projects. its like raiding your drives, or not putting all your eggs in one basket.

Re:Wow

[JWW]

No better is better.

When you say cheaper is better the first thing that pops into my head in this case is....

"This week on Junkyard Wars, we'll give TWO teams TEN hours to see if they can bodge together a Martian Probe!!"

MOD ABUSE ALERT

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the 2nd post redundant?

I don't think giving the Brits kudos for their effort is redundant in comparison with the 1st post, a GNAA post.

Stupid mods.

Oh boy

[Kenneth Stephen]

Then there are the airbags. If anything goes wrong the engineers suspect it will be them. They failed their first tests and had to be designed and built without a full testing regime.

The bags werent fully tested? Havent they heard of Murphy's law?

No offense

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the British people; they are friendly, clever, well spoken, and generally well thought out.

That said, most everything they build is always missing one key ingredient. Maybe poor interface, maybe a critical technical componenet is under-engineered.

I hope it succeeds, but I have a funny feeling about this one.

Of course, I believe the two NASA probes will put two huge craters in the surface; we used to be a decent engineering nation. Now we forget critical pieces of spacecraft design. Our record in the past few years is apalling.

Go figure... The Hubble.... oops, we didn't check the f*cking thing would *work* before we sent it up. The last Mars probe "well, sh*t, metric, imperial what's the difference". The Shuttle "Lets design a complicated brick that if it gets a tiny nick, it burns up on reentry".

Re:No offense

[mhw25]

> I love the British people; they are friendly, clever, well spoken, and generally well thought out. That said, most everything they build is always missing one key ingredient. Maybe poor interface, maybe a critical technical componenet is under-engineered.

Well, the magnificient stations and bridges that Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed/built for the Great Western Railway stood the test of time, retaining both their functionality and beauty. And if you forget the open topped tour buses of London and take a walking tour along the Thames and you'll see how so many of the graceful Victorian bridges still stands despite them not being designed to carry modern multi axled heavy vehicles.

Most British engineering today tends to be rather less assuming but mostly works. The North Sea petroleum industry is one example. The tube is a bit shite at times but you have to consider the lack of investment it had to endure for decades.

Perhaps the greatest reason why British engineering failed to produce some spectacular sucsesses to match their illustrious predecessors is the brain drain - most of the best engineering students left to work in the city for the banking and financial institutions.

At the end of the day you can't blame entire nations, be it British, American, or anyone else for mistakes made by individuals/teams, especially given the cost constraints and management meddlings.

Refreshing pessimism (or objectivity?)

[Delirium Tremens]

It's refreshing to read some space odyssee report that is not full of state propaganda and overblown optimism. After reading the article, I felt like that we were probably going to lose Beagle, but also, I actually felt really excited about the mission. I care. Good journalism and insider reporting! Thank you, BBC.

Atmosphere issues

[manganese4]

I would assume the difference between entering a nitrogen atmosphere vs a carbon dioxide atmosphere is the larger heat capacity of CO2? Alternatively, it could be a result of greater drag due to the larger mass of CO2 and the ability of CO2 to deform more readily than N2 and thus increasing its effective coefficient of friction.

Beagel 2 unlikely to boast future british missions

[flyingdisc]

If beagel makes it and returns data it will be a fantastic achievement. To event attempt to do this on this budget is staggering. In real contrast to NASA and even ESA space missions. If it works there is alot to be proud of.

It's unlikely to do much to boast the british space industry. There is little space funding outside british funding of ESA and ESA only contracts out to companies/universities for an equivalent sum as that nation put in. There doesn't look like the UK is prepared to change it's space funding arrangements (too much of research funding is tied up on the ground based observatory stuff) and so the british space industry is unlikely to benifit. This coupled with the increased protectionism in NASA will limit any boast British space projects might get.

Re:If it is really as bad as...

[TrueBuckeye]

I didn't see the article, with the exception of the heat shield and the redesign of the parachute, as talking about any shortcomings of the Beagle design, but rather the inherent difficulties and challenges of trying to get anything to Mars intact. NASA has used the same airbag technique before on Mars, so that is accurate. I LOVE the fact that the EU, Japan and China are really starting their own space explorations. While the U.S. seems to see that puting dollars into space is a waste, the people are even more worried about being seen as second in anything, so their success is going to push our program into hopefully doing something other than retooling the space shuttles.

Re:Xmas?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the other holiday, the one without Jesus Christ involved.

Re:No kidding

[Moofie]

The thing is, I can almost reconstruct what the engineers actually told this journalist from his overwrought, overdramatized story.

The people who built this thing are smarter and more numerous than the person who's telling us about it. Keep that in mind.

Re:No kidding

[Moofie]

The way the article read to me, the engineers said

"Engineering is complicated, and difficult. There are lots of things that can go wrong. We did the very, very best we could to make sure we covered all our bases, but if something WERE to go wrong, odds are, it would be here."

The journo spun that to mean that "These people are just throwin' the bones. Who knows if this thing is going to work?"

I don't have any particular insight into this project, but my strong suspicion is that there's less drama than this writer might want to imply.