Slashdot Mirror
Still No Contact from Beagle 2
Many of you have submitted this, so this will be a condensing of the relevant information. WebfishUK writes: "The BBC has just released this story which announces the failure of the latest and possibly best chance to contact the British built Mars probe, Beagle 2. Given that Mars Express was designed to communicate with Beagle (unlike the earlier attempts with NASA's Mars Odyssey), this may indicate that something catastrophic has happened to Beagle 2." From Bromrrrrr: "[The]
ESA is reporting that the Mars Express, which everybody was hoping would be able to get through to the poor lost puppy, has failed its first attempt. 'We have not lost hope yet to contact Beagle 2, but we also know that it has landed on an unforgiving planet,' said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science." and I-R-Baboon adds: "The Mars Express mothership from the EU passed 350 km over the intended landing site of the Beagle 2 hearing only silence. Although nothing was heard, hope has not been given up yet, as scientists will keep trying until February, with more passovers of the Beagle 2's landing site on January 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, and 14th." Additional updates can be obtained from the Beagle 2 homepage as well as from the ESA's homepage for the Mars Express. Here's hoping that the lander is only down, and not out.
...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.
I've been crossing my eyes at Nasa's Mars photos for half an hour and I still can't see a beagle!
sup
w00t go U.S.A.! First to the moon, first outside the solar system, first to discover life on mars.
The US succeeded where the EU did not
So do they just give up, or hope Spirit can eventually find it and give it a doggie biscuit?
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Damn, those martians shot down another one of our probes!
They have much better aim than, say, Saddam Hussein's SCUD missle launchers!
Hey, maybe Saddam hid his better weapons of mass destruction ON MARS!!!!!!!!!!!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Haw-haw!
why dont they include some sort of near-indestructible beacon that will send a signal in case of crash, so that orbiting probes can locate and photograph the crash site??
unlike the earlier attempts with NASA's Opportunity
That would be the Mars Odyssey, not Opportunity.
Their rover turned out to be a dog.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
But it's down... and won't get up again. Let's just rejoice over the spirit pictures.... It is something, even if it wans't funded by our tax euros.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Retrieving the black box is going to be a *bitch* :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
How far away is the US probe from the beagle landing site? Could they send their own little explorer over to check out what happened?
The 'Beagle 2' finally sent the first pictures and an explaination why it didn't sent earlier click here.
There will be lots of posts here about how America is better than Europe at spaceflight and these will quickly get modded down.
Yet posts on other topics (e.g., foreign policy) about how Europe is better than America always get modded up.
Can someone explain this to me?
Well I hope the Brits have finally learned. We are way better than them at most everything, including their own sports (soccer) that we dont even try hard at, and sending shit to Mars. The only thing more laughable would be France trying to do something innovative or adventurous. Silly little French.
So much for the Europeans "Beating" the US to mars..... (by -40 years I might add)
Maybe the Rover can track the Beagle. Would it be able to do things like nudging or flipping the Beagle? Maybe it landed upside down, or on a slope.
The solarpanels might generate energy after some handeling. But can the Rover do that?
-- (:> jms cs.vu.nl (_) --"---
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jihadi_31337
The linux hacker
And on the way they can cruise by the flag the Apollo astronauts planted!
The Year of Our Lord 2003 was a particularly bad year for the "B"s,
- Bob Hope
- Buddy Ebsen
- Buddy Hackett
- Barry White
- Beagle 2
- BSD
This honored list of dead is but a small token of adieu from the many fans of the deceased.These dead were truly some important icons in their day. They will be missed.
Do they know if it even got to mars?
mod parent down. look at previous beagle articles, and you'll see this comment there.
"we also know that it has landed on an unforgiving planet,' said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science"
Damnit, didn't he see Red Planet in time?!
He's dead, Jim!
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3376343.stm
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Huge ambition packed into such a small volume (73kg) and the only test-landing failed miserably.
:-( We are all in this together, remember ? Anyone still there ?
Well, you never learn until you've tried and failed. Perhaps next time.
What I do find disappointing is the first post above though. I'm obviously disappointed for us Brits that our first Mars probe has died a death, but I'm elated the US managed to get theirs to work perfectly. Pity the feelings aren't reciprocal
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Although beagle failed, I would like to commend the ESA for attempting the mission on a shoe-string budget. Landing on Mars is no easy task as we have found through a few, shall we say mishaps. Also, let us not forget that Beagle 2 was only part of the mission. I do believe that Mars Express is operating as expected. So all and all, for a first mission on a tight budget and small timeframe, I think the ESA put on a good show and encourage them in their efforts to explore the universe.
A customer enters a pet shop.
Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The owner does not respond.)
C: 'Ello, Miss?
Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
C: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
O: We're closin' for lunch.
C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Beagle what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the British Brown...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
O: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
C: Look, matey, I know a dead Beagle when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable craft, the British Brown, idn'it, ay? Beautiful airbags!
C: The airbags don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
O: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
C: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up!
(shouting at the device)
'Ello, Mister Polly Beagle! I've got a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you if you show...(owner hits the antenna)
O: There, he moved!
C: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the antenna!
O: I never!!
C: Yes, you did!
O: I never, never did anything...
C: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!!
Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!
(Takes Beagle out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
C: Now that's what I call a dead Beagle.
O: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
C: STUNNED?!?
O: British Browns stun easily, major.
C: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That Beagle is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged orbit.
O: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.
C: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?
The US will launch a nuclear missile to destroy everything in the area to keep the Beagle from falling into enemy hands.
Maybe he just ran in circles chasing until he was so dizzy that he just fell of Mars
MonkeysKickAss
Including a few instrument packages
Can't any of the various orbiting probes (like the Mars Express for instance) take pictures of the area in which Beagle 2 was supposed to have landed?
Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Now I know why Spirit's Inventory included a Niner-Lima.
The pro-US-Europeans failed (the UK). The nonpro-US-Europeans had success (the mothership Mars-Express is working fine). Well...
Time for the rescue mission. This is the perfect opportunity to launch mankind's first Mission to Mars.
I mean, who wants to be the one responsible for leaving a beagle on Mars? Can you just imagine the commercials?
"Lost: Puppy on Red Planet. Will accept offers to build a multi-billion dollar spacecraft to retrieve him. Answers to the name Beagle. Please help him come home with your donation."
I'm telling you, if people fall for Nigerian and Viagra schemes, we can get them to finance this thing within 10 years. Maybe less, if we also target the people who buy penis enhancement pills.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
to be sure the Beagle dosent fall in enemy hands.
The pictures from the latest NASA probe confirm that Mars is a planetary corpse. If it did have life, it was a few billion years ago and not relevant for our future.
Time to move on to greener pastures or in Solar System terms Europa
I'd be real pissed at you earthlings dumping all your cruddy robots on my planet.
Mars is *not* a landfill!
Ruining our ecosystem with your trash!
Death to earth!
Where's the ka-boom?
Beagle2 is about the size of a bicycle wheel, it weights 60kg. NASA's six-wheeled robot is the size of a golf buggy and weights about 8 times more.
Beagle was built at a cost of around 45m, whereas NASA spent 512m.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
...but we also know that it has landed on an unforgiving planet
Well now there's the problem -- next time we should just go to a forgiving planet instead. What were we thinking?
sadly the most likely failure mode is beagle 2 strewn in little pieces across the martian landscape. key systems in the lander went untested before launch, I guess they're tested now. :P
First of all, I am also sad to hear these news. Although the Beagle 2 wasn't primarly an ESA project, so the ESA itself should hopefully not be hurt too much, it is still a very unfortunate loss with all the high tech equipment on the B2, and a loss hurting particulary much for the UK. If successful, it could have broken new ground as the by far most advanced spacecraft launched, being partially privately funded.
However, the lesson I think should be learnt is that in space, one often needs to be lucky for success as many factors plays a role. Even with a perfect craft, especially if you're trying to land on another planet. And if you are pushing this much needed luck to the extremes with such major time constraints, that you don't even have time to perform further tests on a failing airbag mechanism, fires a multi-million dollar craft into outer space while crossing your fingers and hoping it will work when landing on Mars, you will need an ENORMOUS amount of luck for success.
I think it was unfortunately a much higher chance of failure for the Beagle 2 than a success because of the time and budget constraints.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
forgive my ignorance here but, since mars is "as close as it will be for many years" can't we try to locate it using a telescope or something?
By his relentless quotation of Monty Python to prop up his own lack of imagination!
Nasa Rover Missions : 400 Million a Piece
1 succesfully landed
2nd in route
Beagle / Mars Express : 345 Million
1 beagle missing In Action
Mars Express working and in orbit
Guess Research and Development Costs is actualy WORTHWHILE
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Anyone? TIA!
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
The airbags weren't properly tested and I'd bet the farm that is what made this mission fail. Beagle2 is in a millions pieces, imho.
They can't find the Beagle 2, but any word on Waldo or Osama? And I remember a statistic that 80% of computer problems are people forgeting to plug it in; so do you think they forgot the batteries or something? ALSO, Beagles have been traditionally hunting dogs; could they perhaps use Beagle 2 to 'find' the other probes?
the parachute at least. probably the airbags, possibly the parachute lines, and the heat shield.
Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead!
The Soviet Union did indeed want to go to the moon.
It was supposed to touch down in a certain area. A few minutes after it was supposed to touch down, they noticed a big, smoking crater. They're trying to figure out of the two are related.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I mean, do you think they intentionally build the signalling system to self-destruct on a crash landing, or what ?
There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission, and you want to put in armoured (read: heavy) modules for when it all goes wrong ?
What purpose would this serve ? So we can now get a photo where the 6 white pixels (and I'm being *very* generous with the resolving power of the orbital cameras) are the lander. Whoosh. What now ? And to do that, we leave out the gas spectrometer, perhaps ?
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I think userfriendly said it best.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Coming after the Columbia space shuttle disaster and the loss of two Mars missions in 1999.
What's with you people and your Beagle jokes. Why haven't people realized yet (After we've been talking about this for weeks) that the MER landing sites are very far away from Beagle and that nothing would be gained anyway from visiting the "crash" site. I still see /.ers think Beagle was a US venture or don't realize that MER is an international effort (Although NASA paid for most of it.)
./ posters were informed... but I guess I am new here.
I thought
Beyond Beagle
Meanwhile, UK science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who was at a Beagle news conference in North London on Monday, gave the strongest indication yet that the British Government would help fund the European Space Agency's (Esa) Aurora programme.
"We need to be working with Esa to ensure that, in some form, there is a Beagle 3 that takes forward this technology. I very much hope that the Aurora programme which is currently being developed by Esa will take forward this kind of exploration."
The Aurora programme is Esa's bold vision to land probes, and perhaps eventually, astronauts on the Red Planet.
From here.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
and I'm guessing you all know enough not to confuse metric and English units... Our space program hasn't exactly had a lot of success lately, so perhaps people get a little rowdy when something actually does go right - either that or someone's been reading too many articles about the righteousness of our foreign policy in Neocon Weekly.
Considering the failure rate of space missions and the difficulty of correcting mistakes, I'm suprised that anyone actually goes into space.
I've come to talk with you again.
no comment.
Thats the thing I really don't get about /.
Everyone who defends the case/decision gets modded "informative" and "insightfull"
Anyone opposed is a troll,flamebait or 0
Is it that an evil corporation got reamed unfairly?
It was the Mars Express inability to hold little more than 60kg that meant Beagle2 had to meet incredibly tough design rules to even get it on Mars Express.
BBC:
"The main constraint was mass - the mothership, Mars Express, could spare only 60 kg for its interplanetary passenger.
That meant a compromise between scientific kit and landing gear. Retro-rockets were not an option. Nor was a transmitter that could have sent radio signals to Earth to give feedback on the landing.
Spirit had both of these, lending high drama to its plunge through the Martian atmosphere. "
Maybe more of an overall failure of ESA's Mars Express than Beagle2's build failure?
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Not Safe For Work!
Well, I mean, unless you're on windows. Then I guess it's just redundant.
Those damn Europeans don't wanna use Duracell.
Don't they watch our commercials??
The robot you are trying to talk to is not available, maybe it is in an area out of reaching range, didn't pay it's bill or got eaten by an intergalactic being.
Thanks for using BT Telecom..
should change their method of contact.
"Here Boy! Here Boy!", does not seem to be working anymore.
Sig it.
They named the new crater Beagle II.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/1 9/138212&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
"Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration."
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!
We need to tell the martians to stay away from the Toxic Witch's Brew!!
It is official; NASA confirms: *Beagle 2 is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already discouraged and defeated European community when NASA confirmed that Beagle 2 has dropped yet again after Beagle 1 showed to be a miserable failure as well. Coming on the heels of a recent Gallop survey which plainly states that Britain and Europe as a whole has lost the peoples confidence in their ability to innovate and make progress, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The European space program is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent International Standardized Aerospace Aptitude Test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *Beagle 2's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Beagle 2 faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Beagle 2 because *Beagle 2 is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Beagle 2. As many of us are already aware, *Beagle 2 continues to lose contact. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The British Space Program is the most endangered European Space Prgram of them all, having lost 93% of its core engineers. The sudden and unpleasant disapprovals of long time British visionaries Tony Blair and Princess Diana only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The British Space Program is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
French Space Program leader Jacques states that there are 24 Space Program Engineers. How many German Space Engineers are there? Let's see. The number of French Space Engineers versus German Space Engineers completed space projects is roughly in ratio of 4 to 1. Therefore there are about 23/4 = 6 German Space Engineers. Italian Space Engineers are about half of the volume of German Space Engineers. Therefore there are about 3 Italian Space Engineers. A recent article put British Space Program at about 80 percent of the European Aerospace Industry development. Therefore there are (24+6+3)*4 = 134 British Space Engineers. This is consistent with the number of failed British Space prgrams to date.
Due to the troubles of the European Union, abysmal technological and warfare innovations, and so on, the Beagle 2 has lost all contact with Earth and was shadowed over by the Spirit of the American Aeronautical Space Program. Now Beagle 2 is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that The *British Space Program has steadily declined in consumer confidence. The *British Space Program is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If The *British Space Program is to survive at all it will be among sci-fi dilettante dabblers. The *British Space Program continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, The British Space Program is dead.
Fact: Beagle 2 is dying
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
Beagle-2 then was in free-flight, from December 19th til December 25th. Thats 6 days of free flight with no way to really track Beagle-2 nor do anything about it if it were found to be off-course.
Usually a space probe is tracked via the radio signals that are sent to Earth. Speed and location are usually derived from measuring the Doppler effect on the radio singls. I haven't read anything to date about any methods the ESA was able to use after December 19th to verify that Beagle-2 was in the correct position for landing and all. I kept reading stuff saying that "Beagle-2 and Mars Express are now XXX kilometers away from each other", but I'm not sure how they deduced this other than calculating it based on the path and inclination that Beagle-2 *should have* been on. What if it started in an unexpected slow spin after release? What if its angle of attack was over the engineering limit?
Feel free to correct my knowledge if I am off-base here. I'm interested to know if/how ESA was able to contact Beagle-2 between Dec 19th and Dec 25th when it was in free flight.
Contrast that to the Spirit mission at 800mil. USD.
Europe thought they had a better angle on better, faster, cheaper. Thanks to the US and now Europe's attempts along these lines, we at least have a better idea of what is probably "too cheap for Mars".
Alas....EU will send Fire Hydrant as head stone.
And by landed on we mean crashed into.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Teh funnay!
Shouldn't Henry Rollins be hosting coverage of this long distance robot war?
Its true. It is true indeed.
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
I'd like to commend the Martian defense personnel. They did an excellent job taking out Beagle 2, but it's too bad they were too "partied out" to get Spirit. Better luck to them next time!
hey!
I admit it.
I (and my neocon buddies) work at a secret US Military base on Mars and I shoot down anything that comes near it.
Probes that fall on the other side of the planet are allowed to live.
buried beneath little white crosses,from two fucking wars in the 20th century I am aware of our "friendship".
And how did your family spend the second war?
Grandmas enthusiastically on their knees and legs spread wide for Nazi soldiers?Grandpas tripping over each other to point out where the Jews were hiding?
Nice fucking job you did with your former colony in IndoChina fortunately my family returned safely from that one.
To: ESA
From: Martian Empire
Subject: Beagle 2, et al.
All your rovers are belong to us!
I would like to point out that one's bucks/euro's can go to something else then a governemental sponsored space-effort. For those that care, they can privately sponsor space-exploration with the planetary society, for instance. They are the only non-commercial, non-governmental origanisation that actually give a shot at spacetravel, that I know of.
http://www.planetary.org/
...while playing a round of golf. Or hiking in a crater. Or retrieving a poorly aimed frisbee. Pausing, they'll see some badly eroded pile of something shiny, walk over to look at it closer, recall a paragraph from their early astrophysics lessons, and radio back to the colony base "Hey Rosco, wasn't it somewhere around here that Beagle2 was lost? Back in '03? Well it's not lost anymore."
Yes, I'm talking about humans on Mars, being casual and knocking about the place, kicking over rocks on a lazy day, sometime in my lifetime. It could be my son or daughter grown up. Or your own, or even yourself if you are young now. Keep that in mind today, it helps to take the edge off this sort of temporary setback.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Good show? I didn't even see the fireworks!
mars express to beagle2
..
mars express to beagle2
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ten, Nine, Eight
mars express to beagle2
Seven, Six, Five
Commencing countdown, engines on
Four, Three, Two, One, Lift off
Check ignition and may God's love be with you
mars express to beagle2
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do
mars express to beagle2
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear us, Beagle 2 ?
Can you hear us, Beagle 2 ?
Can you hear us, Beagle 2 ?
Can you.... "Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above Mars"
Planet earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do."
Sung to David Bowie's Major Tom.
Go blow Howard DEAN you Commie Faggot!
Beagle2 was only 'the lander' of Mars Express.
On the website we can read:
The Mars Express Orbiter will:
image the entire surface at high resolution (10 m/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 m/pixel)
produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 m resolution
map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation
determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometres
determine the effect of the atmosphere on the surface
determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind
All of that sounds really cool.
Iraq: war to save the U
... some martian has silenced Beagle with a large mallet.
I bet it was playing Blur in cheap on-hold music style (think greensleeves). That would drive anyone crazy.
The base station of the US pathefinder was photographed by the high resolution orbiter. It only filled a few pixels, so you had to stretch your imagination to believe the black and white pixels matche the orientation of the airbags and base respectively.
I think there was a weak attempt to locate the failed 1999 lander's parachute photographically. The high resolution camera can only see miniscule parts of the surface.
Strange day when the now 2 week old fact that Beagle 2 was a failure is still considered news to /. editors, but the successful Spirit probes impending rover deployment gets no mention, nor does the new high resolution stereograms.
It's not life as we know it.
Only the Brits could claim to hear silence.
A) refers to the failed Mars Explorer mission, where a lot of money and effort was wasted because someone forgot to check that the units in the design were written in English units rather than in metric (or vice versa). It wasn't exactly the high point in American space exploration (although it isn't the low point either). I think it happened in 1998.
well, the ESA did save a lot of money on their car insurance by switching to Geico!
*ducks*
I got Shotgun!
melikesaystuff mystufisay realthoughts melikecokeisrealthing me wundarwhy orl wirldhate youesay? americunts heroes of arrogunce! usa numbr onne!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! youuessay! yooessay! youesay!
But wait 800-1000 years, by then the Red Planet may have been terraformed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It just makes me sad
There is no crying in space exploration.
On Mars, no one can hear you sniffle.
When Haley's comet comes back were going to all be slaughtered by zombies that live in a giant umbrella. Mostly because of horney americans, and impotent british.
The scope of this mission is larger than for beagle is it not? Also it is 800 million for both Spirit AND Opportunity. If we find water and if we find there was/is life on mars, it will have been worth it and then some. Bill Nye the science guy defended the missions with a great analogy.
Paraphrased Question: "Isn't that a lot of money that could go to better use?"
Paraphrased Answer: "Not really, if you go to a fancy coffee store you will have spent your contribution towards the mission"
I am a Republican, and as such I am selective about which government programs I endorse. This is one though for two reasons.
One, privately there is little incentive to perform this type of science. Two research for these missions goes to help our military develop the next generation of equipment.
A third less obvious (or less tangible) reason is to inspire a generation of kids to dream about the prospects of a future in science or engineering. If kids want to be astronauts instead of athletes, you will have most fail, but those that want to be astronauts will at least have a path laid for higher education.
--Joey
Here's a link for one of the upcoming missions for Spirit.
link
... it is only that you guys take it to fanatical extremes.
Excesses are generally bad on my book.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
1. Recover bodies from first Manned Mars Mission. .
2. Recover Beagle 2
3. Recover other failed Mars probe missions. .
4. Science
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
mars is high risk. they should have known better by now. there are enough data points to show they made they wrong decision even before they launched ...
The budget was not the only constraint - the Beagle probe was built in a staggeringly quick space of time.
Wouldn't it be ironic if it landed in four feet of water and shorted out :0
Maybe the batteries just fell.
Oh, man, I'm feeling cruel tonight... 8-D
http://deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2004_01_04_542 1.php
Nice Marmot
Don't send a worthless piece of European dog shit to do a man's job. Whether it's Mars, Iraq, the Soviet Union, Hitler, whatever the hell have you: All Europeans are as worthless as the French pussies who are stinking up that woebegone continent.
Attention all You're-a-Pee'ins: Just commit mass suicide NOW and let the adults who are actually RUNNING this planet go on about without all the annoying CARPING.
If the beagle had succeded and spirit had failed what would the Euroopeans be saying?
I speak from complete ignorance and wishful thinking, but wouldn't it be possible to calculate the general area where the lander may have fallen and take pictures from orbit? Maybe the resolution of the cameras is not enough though... and the orbiters have probably better things to do than look for the Beagle2 like this.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Why does this /. headline remind me of the old SNL Weekend Update headline (repeated weekly), "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead"?
I'll bet they didn't look close enough at problems on the orbiter, in that the beagle is communicating perfectly with the orbiter but the orbiter only sends home "no communication with beagle yet".
Wouldn't that be a nasty software glitch. I would place money on it though if they were to see it the end as to what the real problem is.
The victim of lame slashdot humor. It never had a chance.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
While the dye you mention is probably a joke, having a radioactive liquid that would spill on a catastrophic crash would be released. The dye would obviously not be visible at all, but we do have the technology to track radiation from quite a ways away...
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
... was the "It isn't enough that I succeed: Someone else must fail" kind of mentality that underscored the IRC messages from JPL.
If someone goes around shouting "We No.1, We No 1!", and they really are number one, fine. They're a bit OTT and demonstrative, but still, fine.
It's when someone, anyone, goes around shouting "We No. 1 - you shit!", that patience wears a bit thin.
Best,
T&K.
Political language
hahahaha!
Damn, those martians shot down another one of our probes!
Perhaps someday a martian will stumble across it, fix it, make it intelligent, and Bagel will come back to us searching for its Creator.
Bouston, this is Bission Bontrol: The Beagle has etcetera...
"Yes, I'm talking about humans on Mars, being casual and knocking about the place, kicking over rocks on a lazy day, sometime in my lifetime. It could be my son or daughter grown up."
Well, of course, it's the logical next place to colonize. All those cheaply-built colonies we tossed up on the moon in the 1970s are starting to show their age, and spacefare to the Lagrange-point stations is at an all time low, so anyone can afford to go! Pack the kids into your nuclear-powered flying cars and get to the local spaceport today, the martian homesteading rush is about to begin.
0 1 - just my two bits
So you're saying they're smart enough to figure out 9/10th's of the mission correct and missed that little piece.
Hey, it happens to the smartest guys.
Not me, of course, but people like you.
"There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission"
there *was*
obviously you cant go back in time to retrofit a beacon on Beagle 2.
is the next beagle mission going to have a 73kg weight limit?
Anybody remember when all the Mars missions were supposedly being "sabotaged" (read: stopped working) several decades ago, and NASA jokingly blamed it on the "Great Galactic Ghoul?"
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
hearing onlysilence
Although silence is "the loudest sound", you can't hear it.
Might the submitter be a Simon & Garfunkle fan?
The difference and analytical engines wew design by a Brit in the UK. The Z3 was German and the bombes and in particular, Colossus for code cracking were British, albeit the bombes had some Polish input. The first commercial electronic computer was built by a British company as was the first virtual memory computer. Essentially it wasn't until the superior buying power of major corporations and the US government spurred development over in the US. The European market was very fragmented then and without a large single domestic market, they fell behind.
You will find out that almost all EU countries contribute a much larger share of non-military foreign aid to the rest of the world. Although the military contributions are smaller, the social programmes make up for this. Unhappy people and unstable countries make poor neighbours and an effective recruiting ground for terrorists.
Also you will find that unlike the US, the EU countries have been paying their share of the UN. The US has in the past refused to pay and they are only doing so now by renegotiating their contributions downwards.
Some older Russians may distrust Germans, but the younger ones aren't bothered. The Germans had a history of working with the Russians dating back to Peter the Great. There was a large contingent of Russians of German ethnic origin (mostly descendents of farmers invited by Catherine the Great), although many have taken up their right to relocate to Germany. Catherine herself was born in Darmstadt, Germany.
It's probly just hung up in Martian Customs. The poor ole' Beagle might be undergoing a cavety search this very moment.
Have a flare of some kind that spews out BLUE/GREEN smoke/crap that lands on the surface and stays there for years. and it about 100 feet long too, like powdered colored crap. use 4 of them in a cross config so you can work out where it is.
Total weight, 1kg max.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Time to build 50 of the damn beagles and launch them at once 73 * 50 = 3600kg, easily launched on a Titan5 or Ariane5. Sure it might cost $120m to launch, and be hard to fit 50 landers in one bigass probe, but hey, it would be the best result ever! with 20-50 locations being rovered at the same time.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
It's a matter of too much too soon.
Give it a few years. The aliens will make their big poo-bah appearance soon enough. (They're already practically oozing out around the edges as it is!) Then the fan will really take a hit, all veils will burn away, etc.
Personally, I think it'll be a challenge just to stay alive for the next five-eight years to see all this stuff go down. --What with the draft, economic collapses and military lock-downs coming, disease-cities becoming death traps with road blocks to prevent you from leaving, and such. Among other things.
It's true that the future isn't set, but not enough people are working to act in favor of their future selves. (There really is a ton of things you can do. Stop eating all the amazing poisons put in your food, for a start. Clear your head. Soy is one such example, containing toxins which prevent mineral and protien uptake in your body. It's also filled with plant-based eostrogen, (yes guys, that would be 'Female Growth Hormones'. Why do you think Asians are so small? Hint: it's not the exuse you've been sold.) And best of all, soy has managed to creep into practically every foodstuff on the market. Look it up.)
But really. . . At this point I've more or less given up on humanity as a whole. Mars probes be damned. Anybody who does enough digging will know more or less what is being seen on the red planet but not shared.
Though, it's nice to see that so few people are calling me nuts these days. When I was warning everybody about this stuff back in 2001, the cat calls were just harsh.
Fear is Food, so don't get spooked. Grow a spine, look reality dead on, and you'll win.
-FL
Bravely navigate the endless black depths of space to a new and strange planet. Then crash.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
- The fact that you now have some drone browsing some red planet's surface and others don't
or
- The fact that meanwhile you feel unearthly superiority over other earthlings and write about it to /. the FBI is browsing all your accounts and financial data without informing you - and it's perfectly legal. And much, much more.
I just wonder if I really should feel that sad about all this Beagle ping timeout thing..
I live a common life, therefore i prioritize
-el
Looks like they found the problem:
crash image
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Hardly suprising your probe is bigger and heavier!
I reckon it was smashed to bits on landing. The Beagle 2 team had problems when testing one of the landing bags at a vacuum facility in the US; basically, the bags burst, and the team realised that they had to use a lower pressure and compromise on a few other items to save on weight. One compromise too far I think.
My web domain.
Hi,
since Mars Express - which I'd consider to be the most important part of the project - is working perfectly, there will be a stereo-camera with a resolution of 2m (Meters) orbiting the planet.
This might be enough to see what happened to the poor little doggie.
There are a lot of great instruments aboard Mars Express, you can find all the information about them on The ESA Site
k2r
Would be nice, of course, but that kind of money will be daaaamn hard to come by these days.
Maybe one day, but probably not before we have a big-ass camera on the orbit to point out truely safe landing sites and maybe even few human operators on that side of the solar system orchestrating the thing.
Well, maybe the Chinese can get anyone else to crap their pants and kick-start western space exploration again...
It's more subtle than your 101. Defining Fascism narrowly as a political belief misses some defining features: directing public opinion and support by playing up to people's nationalist passions and prejudices (demagoguery).
This is exactly what a European sees in Bush. See how easily the US gov't has been able to manipulate public opinion and get support by bashing the French in the Iraq question rather than addressing the actual issues. He's ridden roughshod over democratic principles in domestic policy and is detaining civilian prisoners without access to a lawyer in Guantanamo, all in the name of "national security".
You must realise that European history is really about nationalism and the hurt that has caused. People look at lessons from their own history when they interpret the present. Some Europeans look at America today and see the mistakes from their past: nationalism, jingoism, demagoguery, imperialism, colonialism, crusades, concentration camps and war. Europeans are very cautious, pessimistic and critical because of these lessons. They teach us that things are rarely simple, clear cut or 100% certain and that there is always another side to the story.
Nothing wrong with being patriotic or being proud of your country as such. However, there's the issue of "we're best" being very close to "I'm better than you" and the implications that has. Jingoism and racism are the darker side of nationalism.
Nationalism is a good motivator, but it can be dangerous as a political tool. It's also not a very clever way of dealing with people from other countries on a personal level when you have an attitude that says "we're better than you." Things work much smoother on all levels when you try to be respectful of their right to be who they are.
I'm sure most Americans act in good faith. What were the lessons for the US from its history, for example WWII? How do they affect American thinking?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I think Illiad has the best way of putting it: here
42 + 1 = 42
Why are you thinking competition is the best and only way to solve problems.
There are a lot of projects out there which are based on cooperation and these projects are very successful. So for instance the gnome project, or kde or the linux-kernel. Some people think there is some sort of competition going on between gnome and kde. But this is just an illusion. As both teams are cooperating on may levels also, they follow different paradigmas.
When I look on the mars missons from NASA and ESA.
Both oragnisations work together. Not to mention the various national space agencies like the DLR of instance, which build one of the spectrometers mounted on Spirit and Odysse.
But these are not the only shared missions. So have a look at the ISS, or that earth-cartography-project. They used an european and and us radar (with different jobs to achive) to get a new heightfield from earth.
SO you can see cooperation is a good thing. In some cases. Because people could be motivated to do great things sometimes just without a "race".
Whereas democrats want to raise taxes on the parents of future scientists so that they can't afford to send their kids to universities. At the same time they redirect that tax money to welfare families so somebody can learn to bounce a ball better and get into the NBA. Our priorities are fucked up.
Yeah, the Beagle landed in a crater alright...
The one it made itself when the rentry systems failed.
Like maybe the Beagle was made by British Leyland & just can't cope with wet weather unless a rubber glove is tied arround it's dizzy, I mean its electronics, & it rained on launch day.
Bahahaha! Ahahaha!
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
Try spirit.nasa.gov!
Pinging spirit.nasa.gov with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from spirit.nasa.gov bytes =32 time<100ms TTL=128
Reply from spirit.nasa.gov bytes =32 time<100ms TTL=128
Reply from spirit.nasa.gov bytes =32 time<100ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for spirit.nasa.gov: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Color photos = YES
-A
Anyone who has owned a Beagle will tell you what a bad idea it was to name the probe "Beagle". Beagles don't come when called and they get on the trail of a critter and will walk 25 miles.
I only wish you could have sent my beagle to mars instead of the probe...
-- $G
Moral of the story for moderators: I you think something I've posted is off-topic, then do some research or ask a grown-up before moderating it down.
I sympathize with our Euro friends, and am one American who wishes them all well.
But don't understand how a beacon could cost 2.5 kilos? All it would have to be is a pager-like device attached to the batteries, which pings until shut up by other (functioning) circuitry. It could even ping low if neighbor circuitry is dead; medium if it's upside-down; high, if it sees light. Hell, I could have made them one matchbox-size. I'm sure they were concentrating on science devices.
Although, since the cause is really martians carrying the probes into their caves, it wouldn't have helped. (sigh)
Campaign finance reform is national security.
Whereas democrats want to raise taxes on the parents of future scientists so that they can't afford to send their kids to universities. At the same time they redirect that tax money to welfare families so somebody can learn to bounce a ball better and get into the NBA. Our priorities are fucked up.
I wouldn't go THAT far, but there is some truth to what you are saying. Getting kids interested in science and engineering will likely provide them with higher salaries so that America and continue its fantastic tradition of a very large middle class.
--Joey
I wasn't certain if I had it right, and I didn't. Thank you
I don't know either, just repeating what the head of the project said in one of his briefings.
karma capped
... of people who can point fingers at space failures and say "I could to that better".
;)
You know, like most of Slashdot
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson