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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."
Hip hip - Horray!
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
.. as a WWI veteran flying on his doghouse to Mars.
I personally think this must be one of the nicest Xmas presents in a while. And hopefully this one won't go awry and actually produce the results everyone in the community hopes for.
Anyone else thinking about 'London, The Beagle has landed'..
Mad.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Available here.
This is Tranquility Base...the Beagle has landed!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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?
Download my free songs!
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 ;)
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
"When Beagle gets to the surface its power is almost spent and it must immediately open up and expose its solar panels to the sunlight to charge its batteries and run its systems. Too much of a delay and it will die."
:)
Sounds sortoff like the ipod. After a year in space the battery doesn't hold much of a charge.
"Beagle survives on the energy from its solar panels and has no way to clean them if they get dirty because of, say, a dust storm."
Havn't they considering using windshield wipers. They come as standard equipment on all cars but I guess on space probes they are an optional extra that wasn't purchased
-?-
How long before we can expect such technology in our cars? Such cars would just bounce back in a collision. Not to mention the potentials for bouncing airplanes!
Perhaps the best science book I've ever read is A Traveler's Guide to Mars. This book is full of the latest imagery from various mapping missions, and the author (well known planetary scientist William K. Hartmann) tells you, in clear enjoyable prose, basically everything we know about Mars and how it has been figured out. It turns out that Mars is way more interesting (and wet) than you probably expect. If you plan on following the Beagle 2 mission and the two NASA rovers that follow next month, then this is the book to have.
G.
The bags werent fully tested? Havent they heard of Murphy's law?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
The article is full of gloom and doom. It makes it sound like there's no chance at all that it will succeed. I hope it's not as bad as all that. I think they're just trying to keep everybody's hopes from getting too high. Well, my hopes are high anyway. And whatever happens, watching this story unfold will be much more fun than watching some stupid parade with giant inflatable balloon cartoons.
i don't like my old sig.
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.
I didn't know Ford made spacecraft!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
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.
Think of the environmental impact to outer space with all of that oil leaking from the British spacecraft.
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.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Anyone else getting tripped up by the author's choice of referring to the nose cone as one word?
nose cone
nosecone.
nosecone?
WTF?
no secone? No Habla!
nosec one?
Oh! Nose cone! Sheesh!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
"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".
I'd agree with you on Hubble -- that was just stupidity. Regarding the metric/imperial -- who the fuck knows how that happened? But that's not bad engineering, that's bad project planning. As for the Shuttle, bear two things in mind: 1.) a crack in the leading edge of the wing is not a nick, and 2.) you're also looking at a design that's almost 30 years old.
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It gets energized by laying in the sun, just like the dog in the comic, so I think its a good match.
This sig was generated by a barrel of trained kittens for SeXy_Red (550409).
As an artist, I'm especially interested in the artistic ambitions of the Beagle 2 mission. They plan to play a song by Blur for the Martians and use a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the spectrometers. Seems to be a well-rounded adventure.
Oh wait, that was another flying beagle.
In terms of expectations/cost factor the Beagle/Mars Express is perhaps the most ambitious one, therefore the high emphasis on what could go wrong in the Beeb article. A kind of be hopeful but keep your fingers crossed thingy.
The name beagle doesn't exactly inspire much confidence.
Pit Bull, Bull Dog or Rodesian Ridgeback would have had a better chance of surviving.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
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.
I'm guessing from your comment that you've made an in-depth analysis of every British engineering project since the Wall of Hadrian, analyzed their flaws, and developed a report. That's important scholarship, there.
"The British" don't have a cultural blindspot to engineering any more than the Jews have a love for money.
Any patterns you see are the same you'd see with hindsight in any nation's engineering projects.
It carries no passengers.
It has no propulsion system
It's not even airtight.
Instead of "spacecraft", wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a "box"?
Yes, I'd be happy to see a probe that manages to land on Mars for once. :-) It's sad to see those crashing probes. Even better would be if it not only landed, but also found something interesting while looking for life to create some hype! Would be good for NASA et al. as well. :-/
:-P
:-)
Oh, you missed a failed probe too:
NASA's Mars Polar Lander May Have Landed Safely
Not that I really want to bash anyone for their failed probes. When you think about it, it's awesome they have even got probes to land over there. However, I could personally have been without things like mixed up distance units.
And it's not only NASA that makes these kind of mistakes. Read and weep:
"When the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 blew up less than a minute
into its maiden mission several months ago, it was revealed that the
disaster was created by a software bug -- a program that tried to push a
64-bit number into a 16-bit space. About $7 billion was written off in
that single disastrous explosion."
The reason for this? They accidentally uploaded the Ariane 4 software to the Ariane 5 before launch. Needless to say, the rockets didn't work exactly the same.
This math bug caused both the primary and backup computers to hang.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I needed the picture to figure it out. Getting old I guess. Damn kid journalists making up new words. Why when I was there age we had only 1 word and we liked it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Aurora roadmap:
More information: ESA or Spacedaily.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
"Bagel 2"
Ouch!
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
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.
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.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
If I'm to believe the article, then all odds
are against a successful mission. Why not lower
the objectives a little, and pass on the landing
attempt?
The article makes it appear to be a doomed
mission.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
How much weight would have to be launched into space before it has a noticeable effect on earth?
Are there any theories on this?
IIRC the hubble debacle wasn't all that stupid. The mirror was tested thoroughly, it was the testing apparatus that was screwed - and even that was only down to a fleck of paint under one of the bolts holding the thing in place. I wouldn't bet my house on it though, I'm probably wrong. A costly mistake nonetheless.
I think you'll find the missing ingredient is money...
Quote of the week:
Interviewer: "What happens if you find life on Mars?"
Prof.Colin Pillinger: "I'll find it a lot easier to get funding for the next mission"
Boring Old Fart (40, married, 3 kids...er no...make that 49, married, 3 grown up kids...it's been a long time)
08:20Zulu December 25th.
Happy to help.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
Timothy approved a much more informative summary article Yesterday, in the Science section, here, detailing all the issues encountered before landing.
They didn't use the Ariane 4 software by accident. They intentionally re-used the software (presumably with some constants changed) and tried to save money by omitting thorough re-testing.
See section 2.1 of the report on the Ariane 5 failure for a full explanation of how it happened.
That said, most everything they build is always missing one key ingredient. Maybe poor interface, maybe a critical technical componenet is under-engineered.
No offense taken. The problem is that since the 1980s, every engineering decision in the UK comes under a potential veto from accountants who it seems (according to management consultants) have such a powerful understanding of every subject under the sun that they are capable of making decisions based on instinct alone.
The end result is that you get things like a parchute regiment that carries 400lb of kit per man yet has parachute's made of toilet paper because the specified grade of nylon was 1p(1.5c) a sq. yard more expensive.
Hence the expression "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer and to make a right fucking mess that sinks a project completely requires an accountant".
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
They were basically told 'hey, want to send a probe? it's got to be ready next week and weigh less than X kg' so they had to rush it.
See the official History
OK, so they had 5 1/2 years from 'hang on lads, I've got an idea' to launch date - but NASA usually take a lot longer than that to design, develop and test probes.
So they're taking a gamble, on the basis that it's better to try and fail than never try. And if it works, it'll be fantastic.
Mark
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You are both almost right :-)
The National Space Science Centre, Leicester, UK hosts the Lander Operations Control Centre (LOCC). The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK hosts the Lander Operations Planning Centre (LOPC). And Darmstadt, Germany is the location of the Mars Express Mission Control, which handles the spacecraft which was carrying Beagle 2 until a few days ago, and which will be used (along with NASA's Mars Odyssey) to communicate with the lander.
More info from sunny Leicester. (Actually, it's raining here right now.)
I've never visited the NSSC, although I only live about 2 miles away from it. (It looks like a giant condom.) Sounds like Christmas would be a good time to get over there.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
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.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
Absolutely.
I ran into a woman at an airport last week who was an English teacher. We chatted, compared kids, that sort of things, had the "where have you been ? what have you been doing ?" conversation, and I was bitching about the appalling lack of imagination of the engineers I had been working with in Egypt. She then said "Imagination ? Oh an engineer doesn't need imagination. Its all about punching numbers into computers" I restrained myself, but pointed out that there was quite a lot more to it than that.
Its a complete cultural blindspot. C.P. Snow explored our national attitudes to science in his 1950's book "Two cultures". Little has changed, except we now make less than half of the stuff we made even by 1979 standards.
Steve
Tony Blair: "I have extremely good news to report from Mars this afternoon. Our probe to Mars has found Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction."
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.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Don't they know some Yemeni men own Mars? This is old news, but three men from Yemen sued NASA for tresspassing as documented in this 1997 CNN story. According to the article these individuals have a 3000 year old claim on the red planet. What they do not realize is that my past life regressionist told me in a past life more than 5000 thousand years ago aliens gave Mars to me. Therefore, their claims are null and void.
"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."
Never has Churchill been so abused by such poor parodies.