Mars Landers - Opportunity, Bedrock, Aerosmith?

Iphtashu Fitz writes "As was reported last week, the first Mars rover Spirit had some communications problems that the folks at the JPL have finally managed to trace to problems with its flash memory. Reuters is reporting that Opportunity seems to be having some power-related problems, too. It appears a faulty thermostat is turning a heater on overnight without being told to do so. While NASA isn't concerned about the rover overheating, they're exploring the long-term effects of continued power drain on the second rover." The article also notes: "The first three-dimensional, panoramic images beamed back from Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock" - there's now a color version of the same image. Finally, lightwaveman points to the Spaceflight Now status page regarding new priorities for the Mars mission: "The airing of today's Mars rover news conference is being delayed on NASA TV to show the band Aerosmith touring International Space Station Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center."

Comments

heaters..

[fjordboy]

After the last couple weeks of living in constant cold and snow here in the northeast I think I have a little insight on the Opportunity issue - I'd randomly turn on the heat if I was on mars too! It's cold!

Re:heaters..

[Rallion]

I sympathize with a fellow resident of the area which I now refer to as Freezing Hell.

On the 14th, Spirit was warmer than the people in my hometown.

Re:heaters..

[dragin33]

We have two rovers on mars sending back pictures and data. That's more than the other, what, 30 atempts did. Lay off.

Re:heaters..

[ryanw]

We have two rovers on mars sending back pictures and data. That's more than the other, what, 30 atempts did. Lay off.

Ya, layoff! When we start the 'spice trading' we'll be in the money.. relax..

Re:heaters..

[vsprintf]

I sympathize with a fellow resident of the area which I now refer to as Freezing Hell.

It was -17 degrees F this morning, so I put on a long-sleeved shirt instead of short-sleeved before going to work. That's normal for January here. We wonder about you whiners on the coast. :)

Re:heaters..

[argStyopa]

Think that's depressing? Daily high temps at both landing sites (0 deg C) exceed the forecasted daily highs here (Northern MN, USA) by a dozen degrees or more.

Unfortunately, here such temps are no big deal.
Why am I living here again? :)

Re:heaters..

[NewtonsUrge!]

why is it that early posts always get rated highly even when they're idiotic? Guess we will never know

Re:heaters..

[Rallion]

I was dealing with comparable temps that day, yes. Of course, the fact that the narrow walkways between buildings did a damn fine job up upping the windspeed to hurricane-levels (Yeah, I'm pretty sure I mean that literally, watching the smaller people get tossed around like ragdolls is hilarious) made it much worse, and something like -60 with the windchill. And you've managed to make me remember what that was like, in all it's horror. Damn you.

Re:heaters..

[Rasta Prefect]

Think that's depressing? Daily high temps at both landing sites (0 deg C) exceed the forecasted daily highs here (Northern MN, USA) by a dozen degrees or more.

I hear you. I'm in Grand Forks ND and our predicted high for today is in the -20 range. As a side note, my 9 year old Ford Taurus still starts, without plugging in the block heater. (If you don't know what a black heater is, you've never lived anywhere that gets really cold in the winter).

Shame

[iswm]

These rovers are sending back some really beautiful pictures. It's a shame NASA seems to be having so much trouble with them.

Re:Shame

[ttldkns]

After being launched into space, experiencing many Gs, travelling hundereds of thousands of miles to fall onto a big rock, bounce around and then to be controlled from earth... I think its a wonder they both work at all.
Kudos to NASA for doing so well

Re:Shame

[BTWR]

NASA seems to be having so much trouble with them

I can't think of a single mission in which everything was sucessful:

-Hubble had it's famous initial "disaster."
-Galileo had it's near-catastrophic antenae failure (which made the mission produce like 10% of the intended science/pictures).
-The Voyager Probes had various instruments which conked out before Neptune (granted the mission was only engineered to work for Jupiter and Saturn)
-Mars Express's Lander has presumably failed (but it's primary mission appears to have already found some evidence of it's main goal - finding water)
-The Soviet Venera Probes each had problems (one mission in particular returned no pictures due to an unremoved lens cap!)
-Pathfinder, like Spirit, had periods of breached-communications (including a much-longer delay in communcating with Earth after touching down on the surface).

Yet each of the above missions were HUGE sucesses in their own regard. NASA (and ESA and USSR) all has problems with them, but they were all very much redeemed themselves. It's like having a kid who turns out to be a hero firefigher/scientist or something. Just cuz he/she had a few temper tantrums doesn't mean that they're a failure. Look at the big picture...

Re:Shame

[BTWR]

your courage is atrocious, you anonymous "coward"

Re:Shame

[blockhouse]

No kidding. Hope NASA will have some better way planned of landing *people* on Mars, unless those brave pioneers don't mind being converted to thick 'n' chunky salsa by the voyage.

Re:Shame

[Tablizer]

The Soviet Venera Probes each had problems (one mission in particular returned no pictures due to an unremoved lens cap!)

Or the one where there was a giant thumb in the way?

Re:Shame

[woohoodonuts]

And then there was the whole HAL 9000 thing...

Re:Shame

[Tablizer]

(one mission in particular returned no pictures due to an unremoved lens cap!)

I did a web-search on this, and got a lot of different stories, some of them probably false.

One source claims that somebody gave a "remove before launch" tag to a dignitary visiting the lab as a suvineer, and so they forgot to remove a temporary lens cover before launch.

Another says that the lens cap melted after landing (Venus surface is 900 degrees F.) making it incapable of being ejected, creating a blury goo that at first they mistook for weird atmospheric clouds before they realized the melting problem fogged the lens.

Another says that the lens cap fell in front of the soil sampling arm's path, ruining the soil exam. In one photo you can see something below the arm, so this may have some merit.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom is attrocious, please shave her ass!

Opportunity got really lucky

[Unregistered]

if we could have picked any landing site on mars, it would be Opportunity's. An examination of bedrock will tell us much more about mars than analyzing rocks that may have come from space. Also, is Opportunity set up to look for life?

btw, Firebird on OSX says the color image contains errors. Anyone else having that happen?

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

The microscopic imager ought to be able to pick up fossilized stuff if there's any in the bedrock, I guess. But I think the rovers are more designed to find evidence of water than life...

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla 1.5 on Windows XP displays it just fine.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[iminplaya]

"An examination of bedrock will tell us..."
that Fred and Wilma are grand parents now. Turns out Gazoo is the father.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[snake_dad]

Opportunity and Spirit are mainly set up to find out about the mineralogy, and their task is to try to establish once and for all that liquid water was once abundant on Mars.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Hits_B]

An examination of bedrock will tell us much more about mars than analyzing rocks that may have come from space.
Having played geologist for a number of years now, I can say that the bedrock looks like wind deposits to me. The crossbeds that are present look similar to crossbeds you can observe in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah or a number of other formations in the Colorado Plateau. Unless there are some scientific instruments I am unaware of they will not be able to conclusively determine whether the bedrock is water- or wind-deposited based simply on mineralogy.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Feyr]

based on my (admittedly) very limited knowledge of geology, i think the type of erosion give some pretty good clues on that subject. IIRC wind and water erode the rocks differently.... but then i could be completly wrong too, it's been an age and a half

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Great Gazoo" sucks.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[dellis78741]

And today they explained that Opportunity actually rolled around in the crater like a dice tossed into a bowl. Made a figure eight before settling down. That explains a few of those 'imprints' that were off at odd angles. So while the odds of landing in a crater are supposedly incredibly low, once a bouncing rover intersects one its' odds of staying in the crater go up dramatically.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[linoleo]

if we could have picked any landing site on mars, it would be Opportunity's.

Actually, if we could pick *any* landing site, there are *a lot* more interesting ones on Mars to choose from. You have to decode Nasa-speak - what they're really saying is: "to be on the safe side, we always land in very flat regions, which tend to be (geologically speaking) rather boring. We are thrilled to have stumbled upon a flat region that looks *different* from all the other flat regions we've landed in before."

In other words, we've graduated from Kansas to Oklahoma. The Rockies, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Rift Valley, Himalaya, etc. of Mars are still waiting for us to develop more robust landers and capable all-terrain robots. Check out ESA's first Mars Express images for a taste of some more dramatic scenery. Can't wait till we get a rover into *that*!

- nic

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAH! Lets land one on the frickin face!

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[uberdave]

One of the Mars orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor) did extensive spectrographic mapping of the minerals on the surface of Mars. Opportunity has landed in an area that is apparently rich in hematite. Seven of the eight ways this hematite can be formed involve the presence of water. Opportunity will be used to determine if the hematite was water based or volcanically based. Some details here

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[jonman_d]

I was watching NASA TV last night, and the curreny thinking is that the bedrock was not formed by wind deposits. They're currently hypothosizing water or volcanic means of creation.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[altairmaine]

As it turns out, mineralogy may be a perfectly adequate way of determining mode of deposition. Sediment deposited by water will likely exhibit a whole series of chemical alterations characteristic of water-lain sediment. The first mineral indicator that occurs to me would be clay - it forms in contact with water, and is too fine-grained to be effectively deposited by wind. Clay has a distinctive x-ray diffraction pattern, and would probably show up uniquely on the spectrometers.

Additionally, aeolian (wind-lain) sediments have very characteristic grain shapes - they are unusually rounded and generally uniform in size. Sediments deposited underwater have greater variation in both size and shape. If the rover is equipped with high resolution cameras for imaging mineral grains, it should be able to make out the difference.

Should the rover be able to get up close and take decent pictures of the rocks, it should not be too hard to come to a final conclusion as to their origin. Cross-bedding as seen in the pictures can come from a wide variety of geological phenomenon, and it is too early to draw conclusions.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Those pictures are faked - they are based on actual terrain but have been projected in 3D and then recolored and reshaded to create this almost watercolor-like effect.

Look at Mars Odyssey images for realistic images of Mars terrain. Hopefully the ESA will turn down the Photoshop filters on upcoming releases.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[cheekyboy]

imagine if they drive around and find a 50ft skelton fossil of some wierd shark/fish looking dinasour, that would really be NEWS that would stun NASA. They they would have to say, DAMN yeah there was life here.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[catfry]

To the best of my knowledge, the colours are true. All pics from the HRSC on Mars Express are (except when they are going to post pics with data only from the super resolution channel, which will all be in black/white), but there is a possibility that the calibration of the camera is not yet precise (Lots, if not all of the released material was taken for calibration purposes) So there may be some 'biases' in the pictures, but not intentionally.

As for the 3d, the camera uses a very smart method to get both forward, downward, and backwards imaging of a given pixel and this is sufficient to create a computer generated picture of the landscape from almost any angle. The pictures are not projections of imaging onto altitude data from other satellites or something of the sort. The shading is as the camera saw it.

(I am not afilliated with the people who built the camera, I am just an interested onlooker. Info in this post may be inaccurate, but is, to the best of my knowledge, not. Try this page for a brief intro to the camera).

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post suggests that the images released by the ESA look like what an observer would see if they were in orbit around Mars.

This is very hard to believe, as the images have all the traits of heavily-manipulated photos. Shading is biased, colors are over saturated and highlights have a unnatural glow. None of these features are visible in photos from the other cameras that have been in Mars orbit.

Some of the ESA images have been clearly reprojected in 3D (all the images which aren't from a perspective directly overhead). So the question isn't if they reproject at all, but how much do they reproject.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[catfry]

I will not argue with you about the possible degree of manipulation of the images, since arguments in such a discussion will be based on perceptions rather than clearcut facts, and I do not wish to get involved in a discussion of that type. Besides, I have no real experience with the sight of a planet when in orbit as I work neither for NASA or Rosaviakosmos :).

As to the visual differences to other cameras, the only argument i can come up with is that the HRSC is a colour camera. I would just imagine that would make some sort of a difference but my knowledge is limited.

Now the question of wether some of the MEX images have been "reprojected in 3D" is not really a question, as you said, and i did not argue with that, the only thing we disagree on is the wording; I thought that reprojection meant that a flat 2D image was 'painted' onto a 3d topographic map, as has been done with images from some of the US probes. When MEX collects data, it not only records the colour of the pixel, but also determines the 3D position of the pixel, and from these data, one can generate computerized images from several different angles of the surface.

Re:Opportunity got really lucky

[Cujo]

Yeah, that's a reported bug. Same thing on Mozilla. Sorry, but don''t have the bug number handy.

Rock This Way

[Skyshadow]

I wonder if any of the NASA dweebs tried to get Liv's number from her dad...

Seriously though, it's been a pretty good week for NASA so far, with Opportunity landing safely and Spirit slowly coming back to health.

My question is: When they locate a fix for Spirit, will they apply it to Opportunity as well? Are the two really identical, and if so wouldn't Opportunity run the risk of the same sort of major nervous breakdown that Spirit had? Or do they plan on leaving well enough alone?

Re:Rock This Way

[kcornia]

My understanding is they've already made some changes in the way Opportunity uses its flash memory, in an attempt to NOT recreate the problem they're seeing with Spirit. Something about dumping data instead of writing it there unless its crucial.

I'll try to dig up a link.

Re:Rock This Way

[Iphtashu Fitz]

My question is: When they locate a fix for Spirit, will they apply it to Opportunity as well?

According to the Reuters article one of the theories that NASA is investigating is the possibility that a solar flare could have damaged Spirit during "a vulnerable point during its communications with Earth." If that's the case then there's probably not much they can do to prevent it from happening again. If, however, another theory like the machine overloading itself with datafiles, turns out to be the true culprit then they probably could patch both rovers.

Re:Rock This Way

[zcat_NZ]

From the last article I read, the problem with Spirit involves having too many files in flash. So the fix involves deleting old files when they no longer need them.

They're also deleting files off Opportunity as soon as they've been transmitted and/or are no longer required, so it hopefully won't develop the same problem.

Re:Rock This Way

[kcornia]

Here's what I found with a quick google news search.

Changes to memory usage

The latest theory on Spirit's difficulties involves an overloading of engineering and science data files in the flash memory. The memory had not been purged of files accumulated during Spirit's near seven-month journey from Earth.

The recovery plan includes a culling of the files and a change in the operating strategy for Spirit as well as Opportunity that will more closely monitor the file content.

Bold is mine

Re:Rock This Way

[Kenneth Stephen]

That depends on the nature of the problem doesnt it? If the problem was caused by a dust storm blowing a rock onto Spirit (just a silly example - dont take it literally), there wouldnt be anything to fix on Opportunity, right? Actually, the question you asked was asked by a journalist during one of the NASA briefings, and the answer was something along the lines of "..it depends on the root cause of the problem....". And if its a hardware failure, there might not be a software fix anyway (even though there might be a procedural fix to avoid causing the hardware failure).

Re:Rock This Way

[mrseigen]

I heard that they flash the rovers when they're on final approach so I would assume Opportunity is running with the latest version of its software, probably patched up from Spirit.

Re:Rock This Way

[FatAlb3rt]

here's a quick pic of them outside building 30...

Re:Rock This Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh. I met her once at a screening event. She even shook my hand and smiled. Only sad thing is that the person who introduced me got my name wrong so she kept calling me "Juan". Well, that's not true. The extent of her conversation was, "Hello, Juan. Good to meet you." She's probably pretty sad now, since she didn't get a chance to ask me for my number and those horrible men rushed her away before she had a chance to give me hers. It's too bad that she got my name wrong. The poor girl has probably searched through every phone book and tried calling thousands of people trying to get in touch with me.

(Liv Tyler looks even better in real life. :P)

Re:Rock This Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Details on the filesystem problem are also at New Scientist.

Re:Rock This Way

[wombatmobile]

I wonder if any of the NASA dweebs tried to get Liv's number from her dad...

i doubt it. she is from venus.

Re:Rock This Way

[Illbay]

FWIW, in case anyone missed it the reason Aerosmith's in town here (Houston) is the Super Bowl.

Re:Rock This Way

[Amorpheus_MMS]

>then they probably could patch both rovers

Would that be the first patch that leaves earth?

Re:Rock This Way

[dellis78741]

I bet the people at Wind River, whose VxWorks OS runs the rovers, are sweating blood right now. Their home page currently has a Spirit panorama with the title "Mars 360. Not another OS in sight". Now, if we lose one or both of the rovers due to a file handling deficiency in their software, they're going to have a lot of egg on their face.

Re:Rock This Way

[cheekyboy]

Even so, you would think NASA would delete the file it already has transfered, i mean are they that stupid why keep lame files on the rover, when you already have a copy, dont they do

'file get xyz.data'
'file del xyz.data' the next day after it has transfered

Also do they have a duplicate copy of the rover software in a sim locally so that they can give it the same data the rover has/ same instructions etc... and compare that to the one up there? Surely I would have a local virtualrover with the same flash data in it or file dir setup and tell it the same commands the mars rover has.

Maybe nasa should get out more, or do they think the rover has a 120gig HD in it?

Re:Rock This Way

[ColaMan]

no, voyager's code has been rewritten and updated several times in the last twenty years

Re:Rock This Way

[dellis78741]

Yeah, they do have a clone of the two rovers in their lab and they have already been able to duplicate on it the 'fle jam' that brought Spirit to a halt. I suspect that the 'files' they are talking about are all very small files (but now large in number), log entries and that sort of thing. The image data they pull in each day through the cameras would have to be deleted pretty quick as 256 Mb of flash RAM won't hold too many days worth of picture taking (though, like digital cameras, the rovers probably store image data in some 'raw' format that takes up less space than a TIFF).

Re:Rock This Way

[riffraff]

Couldn't get any of their autographs or anything. They apparently were shooting a video in/around the big vacuum chamber, which is only a 100ft away from my office, and that half the of the building was locked down with security and locked doors and everything. I watched a little bit through a window, but that's about it.

Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I've discouvered what happened to the Spirit lander... This picture explains everything.

What is more old and tired?

[Viking5150]

What is more old and tired? Aerosmith or the Space Shuttle fleet?

Re:What is more old and tired?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can only hop that upon attempting another tour that aerosmith will explode.

Re:What is more old and tired?

[NanoGator]

"What is more old and tired? Aerosmith or the Space Shuttle fleet?"

C.) Bruce Willis

Never mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it now.

um... yeah

[bersl2]

The airing of today's Mars rover news conference is being delayed on NASA TV to show the band Aerosmith touring International Space Station Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

What, Bruce Willis wasn't there?

My gentoo laptop thanks JPL...

[ColonelPanic]

... for yet another great desktop background image.

Reason enough for space exploration, IMO.

Re:My gentoo laptop thanks JPL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, the panoramas are perfect for my dual-head system!

You won't believe how difficult it is to get wallpapers for this thing. Only true art can be sized to 2560x960. Many, many thanks, JPL!

Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS. I love the robots to death, but we don't need to send them in our stead.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[glinden]

• If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off.

Not so sure about that. Send people up there and, if the thermostat incorrectly activates (Opportunity) or a software error causes the entire system to shut down (Spirit), people die. Manned space exploration is expensive and dangerous.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[forand]

Why do we need to go there at all? So we can turn off switches that fail on the stuff we bring there to do actual work cause it is too harsh for people to do? I would like it if someone could give a real scientific or at least monetary reason to send people to mars.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[karnal]

Yea, but the opportunity doesn't have scissors to cut the lines to the heater.

Granted, might get a little tingle splicing them back together to turn the heat back on, but I'm sure there would be other accomodations in case of a heater / thermostat failure (i.e. have 2 of them?) if humans were on the surface....

If the entire system shut down, since humans are on the spot (most likely engineers and scientists) they'd probably be able to hack something together. A little more difficult (not impossible) from this distance to a robot.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[iabervon]

Sure, someone could turn it off if they were there. Then they'd freeze to death when it actually did get cold. For that matter, NASA could probably do that now, from Earth.

Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others. Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards. Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the thermostat incorrectly activates because a martian caveman is poking the rover with an ice stick?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a hard enough time just getting to space and back in one piece using conventional rocketry. We're decades away from harnessing nuclear power for space flight.

~The Coward

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

All of NASA's deaths so far have been on Earth, not in space.
With nukes it wouldn't be so expensive.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ThomasFlip]

There is more to going to Mars then just using nuclear power. ie producing rocket fuel on mars, finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G, finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity, bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months, creating a suitable living environment etc... Robots are suitable for now because they don't require any of the things I have just mentioned, and they can still pull off most of the science a Human can. You think we have problems with robots, wait till humans go there.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[blockhouse]

I would like it if someone could give a real scientific or at least monetary reason to send people to mars.

As if science and money are the ultimate ends of the human experience. They're not.

You could just as easily have asked what the scientific or monetary reasons were for Marco Polo to go to Asia, da Gama to go around the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus to go to America, or Magellan to sail around the world. Or what the scientific or monetary reasons for NASA to put men on the moon 40 years ago. While each voyage had scientific and/or monetary justifications, they only became clear in retrospect and were in any event secondary to the experience and the human achievement.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ljavelin]

Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS.

Um, or, we could put a couple temp probes on the thing and let the computer control the heater. That'll save about $983 billion or more from your plan.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ryanw]

someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL

Uh, are you serious? So there's no other way to successfully land on mars besides parachuting, inflating airbags, and bouncing to a complete stop? Talk about someone taking the phrase "stop, drop, and roll" to the next level. Common.... I'm sure we've all played Moon Lander? What happend to all those skills from the early 80s?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[PopCulture]

haha...

every single example you pointed out did, infact, did have monetary reasons... mostly for new (cheaper) trade routes. Columbus never set out for america, he discovered it by accident. Why do you think native Americans are called "Indians"?

+1 insightful? mods on crack...

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[cranos]

Um with regards to Marco Polo and Columbus, money was THE driving force behind their explorations. Marco Polo wanted to tap into the exotic goods that he could bring back to Europe from Asia and Columbus was trying to find a quicker route to the East Indies so the spice trade could move faster.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ryanw]

While each voyage had scientific and/or monetary justifications, they only became clear in retrospect and were in any event secondary to the experience and the human achievement.

Thats a good point. I think there are several things in life that people are drivin to do for unknown reasons except for the fact that they're going into the unknown. It's easy to look back and see that it was a necessary step to get to where we are now, but the one doing the initial feat is typically called crazy and/or stupid. But fast forward a few decades or centuries and that person has lead the way for millions. Another example is Joan Rivers. Do you really want to know what she would look like in 20 years had she not had all that plastic surgery? She'd be on our TVs whether she had done it or not...

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ryanw]

All of NASA's deaths so far have been on Earth, not in space.
With nukes it wouldn't be so expensive.

Wouldn't be so expensive to what? Blow people up on earth?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymovs Coward]

With humans, you not only have to get them there in one piece, you have to bring them back in one piece. It's a whole other problem.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there cum in your eyes? Where'd you get that 983 billion number? Stop smoking cock d00d.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[myowntrueself]

"As if science and money are the ultimate ends of the human experience. They're not."

How positively un*american*! You terrorist!

yeah yeah troll yeah ;)

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others.

They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry because of backlash from environmentalists. After all, how dare NASA send up a few pounds of plutonium on space craft. Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!

Right.

Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards.]

It's called a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR), which is a advanced NERVA style engine. NERVA was completed in the '60s, but cold war fears of nuclear power killed the project. Over the past decade, NASA has had the GCNR under quiet development for use in space propulsion. What most people don't realize (an intentional oversight by NASA) is that GCNRs can produce more thrust than a chemical rocket, but at a much higher Isp. Even the completed NERVA technology had 4 times the lifting power of today's Space Shuttle.

The really beautiful part about GCNR, is that it could potentially breath gases like O2 and CO2 as fuel. That means that we could easily create space planes that work on Earth *and* Mars. Wouldn't it be nice to fly into Mars' atmosphere instead of falling? (Do a search for "Project Pluto". It wasn't the cleanest plane ever, but it did work.)

Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.

Bull. These rovers don't even have a tenth the amount of power, resources, propulsion, and ability that can be accomplished with today's technology.

We have the technology already. We just need to stop putzing around and *use* nuclear power.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Are we? I could have sworn that we figured out nuclear engines back in the 60s. In fact, I do believe we even fired a 75,000 pounds of thrust engine with 1000 Isp.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[cmacb]

I think NASA would LOVE at this point to find life, or some evidence of earlier life on Mars (or anywhere for that matter) to spur people's imaginations and help fund future activities. I've argued for months with a friend of mine who is a former worker on the Apollo program. His thinking is that we need to get on with interstellar travel in some form to eventually allow mankind to escape from Earth. Going to the moon, or Mars, establishing permanent bases on those are just baby steps as compared with what we would need to visit even the closest star.

I get so tired of hearing people whine that we should be feeding the starving people on Earth before traveling to other planets. Some things are not simple economic trade-offs. A family might have to choose between buying a new TV or a new heater for the house, but they don't choose between buying a new heater and voting, reading a book or countless other activities that might benefit them. We HAVE the ability to feed everyone, educate everyone right now, with or without an active space program. Space research as well as other "optional" scientific activities spins off many benefits to all of us.

However, I don't expect us to find life elsewhere in our solar system, and I'm not too optimistic that mankind will ever develop interstellar travel. I'd rather just look at space travel (such as it is) as just another way to understand the universe we are in. Learning about the geology of Mars may help us understand the early geology of Earth. That knowledge may help us understand the nature of things such as "global warming" or how, in general, our presence on Earth can affect, for better or worse out climate. We can mine aluminum from the moon, iron from Mars and all sorts of other things that might be usefull for thousands of years, even if we never discover life anywhere else. But one thing is for sure, if we abandon space exploration and any other scientific activity not related to agriculture and medicine there will be a whole lot of discoveries that we miss, and we will never know WHAT we missed by not making them.

Our high tech science fiction movie craze may have raised our expectations so high that the reality of what we can actually do will disappoint everyone. Hopefully this will not be the case though.

Wow, while I was typing this Slashdot went down. Totally. Not sure I've ever seen that happen. Has someone Slashdotted Slashdot?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

"I love the robots to death"

Tch! Asimov should've said something about that too...

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[F'Nok]

Don't be daft! Even if we HAD enough fuel it's not possible yet.

It'd take three YEARS for a MANNED probe to reach Mars, the longest a human has even been in space is 400 odd days!

There are severe issues in space, the 0g causes muscles to break down, and calcium to be reabsorbed, weaking strength and bones. When they arrived on Mars, they would not be able to stand up without help, and there is no one there to rehabilitate them.

Not to mention the raised radiation in space. If there is a solar flare on the way to Mars (three years, VERY likely) then the radiation strike will destroy the immune system of all crew and provide a lethal dose! Though contained T-cell supplements can help them recover from this, the strain it would cause would cause many of the crew to die anyway.

If we sent 20 people, 10 might make it, and when they got there, they would have no way back, and be unable to sustain themselves. It's stupid.

Before criticising others because they explore before risking lives, actually read about it. All of this information is FREELY available and easy to find.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[FleaPlus]

I dunno... I really don't see much of a point in temporarily putting humans in a place just so they can sit around while scientific instruments do their work, then leave. In all the historical examples you described, if the explorers had access to robots and were confronted by the same expected cost/benefit ratios that are found in space exploration, I suspect they'd go with the robots.

Of course, if they were actually going there for colonization, that would be a very different story.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[beefneck9]

I think that the problems with Spirit and Opportunity might show we need to take it at a cautios pace before sending folks out there. Its been pointed out that these rovers took 10's of G's just to get there and land, and thats gotta be rough. Most pilots and astronauts to this point have seen about 10G's worst case, and for very short periods of time.

One of the largest concerns about space travel is radiation exposure. Once you enter the Van Allen Belts, which lie outside the protection of Earth's magnetic fields, you risk becoming a slow-cooked turkey. The only way to prevent this is to shield, and the best gamma shielding is lead, whereas the best for the particles seems to be lots of free hydrogen, as found in water and polyethylene. All of this is a lot of weight, and well, that all costs money. Lots. NASA has all of this in mind, no doubt.

Now, the most ominous problem with sending us isn't all of the things we can think of, but more those we cannot. God forbid we end up on Mars and find something cannot be fixed. Lets get the tech up to acceptable risks, and if we can get a robot to work for more than a couple weeks without going down, we're on the right track. Finding out your computer is unstable and is incapable of running/monitoring your REACTOR is not cool.

Keep up the good work, NASA! You guys are fighting the good fight, and most of us realize its not if, but when.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G

Nuclear rockets can power a large enough craft to spin. Or alternatively, some engines could produce light gravity via constant acceleration.

finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity

Found it. GCNR technology is mostly developed. NERVA technology already is developed.

bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months,

That's actually the least of our problems. We've had a lot of experience with long missions thanks to submarines and carriers.

creating a suitable living environment etc

Probes can't solve this. Engineers can. Mars has *some* atomosphere to where we can build shelters. Something like a strong tarp to make a livable "balloon" would be an example solution.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

We should be ready to colonize. As a result, the first experiment I want to see on Mars is growing corn. If we can grow corn, we can live there.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ajagci]

You could just as easily have asked what the scientific or monetary reasons were for Marco Polo to go to Asia, da Gama to go around the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus to go to America, or Magellan to sail around the world.

Yes, one could easily have asked that, and one did ask that. And those kinds of expeditions fall into two categories: those that were financed because the people putting in the money hoped to make a decent return (the usual case), and those who put in money because they had too much of it and wanted to do something fun with it.

Or what the scientific or monetary reasons for NASA to put men on the moon 40 years ago.

None whatsoever. The moon landing was a useless, overly expensive PR stunt in America's arms race with the Soviets.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[pohl]

The term "EDL" stands for Entry, Descent, and Landing. It is a generic term, and does not necessarily imply specific system features, such as bouncing airbags.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Don't be daft! Even if we HAD enough fuel it's not possible yet.

It'd take three YEARS for a MANNED probe to reach Mars, the longest a human has even been in space is 400 odd days!

Dude, say it with me: N U C L E A R

Isp of 1000-5000 (NERVA is 1000, GCNR is 3000-5000) so fuel is very well conserved. (Craft like Orion have an even higher Isp.) Since we can get more thrust on less fuel, we can get there in months instead of years.

There are severe issues in space, the 0g causes muscles to break down, and calcium to be reabsorbed, weaking strength and bones. When they arrived on Mars, they would not be able to stand up without help, and there is no one there to rehabilitate them.

N U C L E A R

You can propel a craft large enough to spin, or alternatively build a ship that uses acceleration to produce light gravity.


Not to mention the raised radiation in space. If there is a solar flare on the way to Mars (three years, VERY likely) then the radiation strike will destroy the immune system of all crew and provide a lethal dose! Though contained T-cell supplements can help them recover from this, the strain it would cause would cause many of the crew to die anyway.

N U C L E A R

6-8 months. Not 3 years.


If we sent 20 people, 10 might make it, and when they got there, they would have no way back, and be unable to sustain themselves. It's stupid.

N U C L E A R

GCNR and NERVA can "breath" a variety of gases. That includes hyrdrogen and oxygen. Both can be cracked from water. The later from CO2. All you need is a power source. Something like (say it with me now):

N U C L E A R


Before criticising others because they explore before risking lives, actually read about it. All of this information is FREELY available and easy to find.

And so is everything I'm saying. This is far from the first time I've said this. Yet I've still only managed to reach a small percentage of people. I'm working on it tho. :-)

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[i.r.id10t]

Or accept that it is one way trip. Send some properly qualified volunteers, who know full well that it is most likely one way. Pay 'em before hand, too, so they can enjoy it.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[homer_ca]

For one thing, they didn't have robots, computers, cameras and radio in the 15th century.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

NOW HEAR THIS:

Slashdot poster AKAImBatman has boldly declared that if corn can be grown on Mars, that humans can survive there. No need to research this issue further, lets just start sending cord up there to plant.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

you are so damn retarded. you have no idea what you are talking about, but you are trying to sound like an expert. Well guess what- we can see through your shit. Shut the hell up before you make it worse for yourself.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ndinsil]

Efficiency is one such reason. Robot probes are cheaper in magnitude, but especially for Mars where communication lag is such a problem, having muscles and brains on-site can be tremendously helpful. Spirit and Opportunity are being used very cautiously, taking days to stand up, cut umbilicals, drive off, park for days during a debugging session hampered by narrow communication windows and store-and-forward data transfer. In constrast, astronauts on the Lunar landers were out the door and setting up instruments, taking samples, et cetera comparatively right away. In the end, although it costs more in dollars and risk to put people up there, they can get more and better data faster and more reliably.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[jBabel]

No, just old and tired

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Joey7F]

Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!

This is another EXCITING program in the pipeline for NASA. Cassini-Huygens (Huygens being the probe) will reach Saturn July 1st of this year. Then next winter Huygens will separate and land on Titan. I didn't see on NASA's site if there will be a camera attached to Titan or not... That would be cool to see Saturn in the night sky! (See, being relative, if my astronomy serves me correctly, it is a very murky planet.

--Joey

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ncc74656]

I would like it if someone could give a real scientific or at least monetary reason to send people to mars.

Oh, I don't know...because it's there, perhaps? That's always been a good reason to seek out terra incognita in the past.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[blockhouse]

Marco Polo wanted to tap into the exotic goods that he could bring back to Europe from Asia and Columbus was trying to find a quicker route to the East Indies so the spice trade could move faster.

That's what you may have been taught in school, but it was not actually the case. While improved trade between Asia and Europe was a happy coincidental result of Marco Polo's journey, it was not the primary cause. Marco Polo traveled to Asia in search of a legendary Christian kingdom, the land of Prestor John. He would then enlist their military support against the onslaught of the heathen Muslims.

He didn't find Prestor John's kingdom, but the improved Asia-Europe trade his journey spurred gave the European economy the kick in the shorts it needed to get out of the post-High Middle Ages doldrums, and that was probably just as effective at stemming the Muslim threat.

Yeah, I didn't know that either until I took an honors course in the history of apocalyptic cults at Virginia Tech.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Finally! I've been waiting for my first victim... err... student, I mean.

Yes, just what we need: two out of three Mars landers crashing, only this time with lots of highly radioactive materials on board.

Okay, time for a thought experiment. Let's assume worst case scenario of two chemical rockets crashing versus two nuclear rockets crashing.

When the two chemical rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander.

When the two nuclear rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander. Except in this case, the fuel is radioactive. Which means...

err...

What? Hmm... Seems to mean, nothing. It's not going to produce a nuclear blast (which no one would care about), it's not going to kill a bunch of inhabitants, it's not even going to increase the background radiation by much. (Mars already gets quite a dose.)

Spare us your sarcasm. By your reasoning, smoking isn't dangerous either; I mean, we see people smoke every day and you don't see them fall over dead, do you? And people drive in cars all the time without problems, so obviously--by your reasoning--driving cars must be risk free. Give me a break.

Nothing is without risk. However, plutonium is a relatively safe substance. It gives off alpha rays which can be shielded with a piece of paper. You can hold it in your hand and find it warm to the touch. You can even digest it (yes, this has happened) and it will usually pass through your system without harm. The only time it's dangerous is when it's inhaled. And the only time that's a serious danger is when you're machining the stuff. It's so heavy, that it won't stay in the air very long. In fact, NASA burnt up an RTG in the atmosphere without any ill effects to anyone.

When they realized that the public was a little upset at the idea, they later started packing the RTGs in cases that could survive orbital reentry. To date, NASA has dropped two of them out of the sky. Both were intact, and one was even reused! So in reality, that little RTG is safer than driving a car, smoking, or probably even throwing a battery into a fire.

Thankfully, people like you don't run our space program.

You're so sure about that. Then why was NERVA created? Why is GCNR being developed? Why is JIMO going to Jupiter with a fully loaded Nuclear Reactor? NASA's only problem is the FUD surrounding nuclear power. I'm just doing my part to clear that out of the way.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ncc74656]

Or what the scientific or monetary reasons for NASA to put men on the moon 40 years ago.

None whatsoever. The moon landing was a useless, overly expensive PR stunt in America's arms race with the Soviets.

"Useless?" The computer you're using to post to /. most likely would still fill a decent-sized room (or at least a refrigerator-sized box) if the Apollo project hadn't forced us to figure out a way to make a computer fit into a shoebox instead. That's just one counterexample...there are many more.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[senatorpjt]

I'm sure you could find five people who would be willing to take a one-way trip. I would.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry {snip}

The Rovers do use RTGs; for heat:

Like the Sojourner rover, Spirit and Opportunity will use radioisotope heater units inside the rover electronics box in order to keep the rover battery and electronics warm and operational during the extremely cold martian nighttime.

text

original PDF

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

The Rovers do use RTGs; for heat:

But not for power. They're able to slip in a few grams of plutonium because no one's going to notice (or really care). But when you're talking 2.5 pounds of plutonium per 75 Watts, people start envisioning rockets raining death. It's a sad state of affairs really. Had the rovers used RTGs for power, their power sources would have outlived the other components by a half-century or better.

BTW, the heating units are not RTGs. They don't generate any electricity. Instead, they're just radioisotopes with shielding. Those few grams wouldn't do much to warm you here on earth, but out on Mars they can spell the difference between a working rover and a frozen rover.

Thanks for the link. I'll try to keep that handy. :-)

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Slashdot poster AKAImBatman has boldly declared that if corn can be grown on Mars, that humans can survive there. No need to research this issue further, lets just start sending cord up there to plant.

My dear Mr. Coward. Research all you want, but corn is probably our best chance for growing food stuffs. Let's take an inventory of what we need:

Power: Check. Nuclear Reactors would work well.
Air: Check. Can be cracked from CO2, or cracked from water.
Water: Check. We know it exists at both poles, possibly even as a permafrost.
Shelter: Check. We can engineer structures or dig caves.

So what do we do about food? Well, we have to grow something. Corn has been shown to be a robust plant that can grow under a variety of conditions. It can be eaten straight, prepared as meal, used as flour for bread, and given to cattle for feed.

So, what do we need to grow corn? Well we need various nutrients in the soil. So far, soil analysis says that Nitrates and Microbes are the missing factors. Both can be introduced to the soil.

Corn needs CO2. No problem there. We just need to keep the corn under a pressurized bubble. An inflatable tarp will do. No need for a fancy dome. Some oxygen will be needed, but we already have ways of providing for that.

So what do you think I'm missing here? Do you think we should grow potatoes first? Or carrots? None of those put an end to the world hunger that existed in the middle ages. Corn did. All the early American settlers lived off of corn. And if it was good enough for them, why can't it be good enough for us?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[zerocool^]

Yeah, I've never been one of the "Nuclear Anything Is Bad" crowd - I'm fully behind things like nuclear power plants - but, and correct me if I'm wrong, the current plan for a nuke-propelled mars craft goes something like this:

Take cardboard christmas wrapping paper tube.
Duck tape steel plate to one end.
Place stick of dynamite below steel plate.
Pray.
Ignite.

Except on bigger scale.

That kind of frightens me, to be perfectly honest. I really think we need to rethink this.

~Will

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Hey, I am not in principle opposed to nuclear power to be deployed as means of propulsion but there are some things that need to be looked into first. The most important one of course is how to stop a Challenger like spectacular blow-up of the ship due to whatever reason from dispersing the fuel over large area during takeoff from Earth and thus causing major economical/envriomental and possibly international disaster. I have no clue what is involved but unless someone is able to come up with a viable and convincing safety plan, no voting public will let their politicos allow this sort of thing.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ryanw]

HAHAHA... that is great..

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Aglassis]

There is no current plans for a nuclear propelled Mars spacecraft. There is a plan for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). This spacecraft will use a nuclear reactor coupled with an ion engine. The nuclear reactor assembly makes electricity and the ion engine uses it to propel the spacecraft with the scarce propellant that it brings with the spacecraft. Note that this is very much unlike the direct nuclear propulsion idea of using a propellant in the nuclear reactor as coolant and venting it to space after it is heated by the reactor. This second idea will produce alot of thrust for a very short time (as propellant is rapidly depleted) compared to the ion engine producing little thrust but for a very long time.

Since neither idea requires that the nuclear reactor ever start up prior to enterring space, there will be very little radioactive fission products in the reactor core. What this means is that the only really radioactive item in the core at launch (the stuff that can go into the atmosphere if the launch fails) is uranium. Since uranium has a long half life (7e8 years for U-235, and greater than 1e9 years for U-238), the cooresponding radioactivity will be that much less.

Note that JIMO will be the second US nuclear reactor placed in space (the first in 1965).

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[FatAlb3rt]

they already have... :)

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Well thats all fine and dandy for sealed, air-tight, low power electricity generating units. I guess they could be made to surivive serious impacts although I would have some doubts after how many re-inforced black boxes fair in airliner crashes and we are talking possibly much lesser speeds of impact there. What the poster above was talking about is full scale nuclear engines/reactors! I would think the issues here would be much more complex and difficult than what is essentially an armored, welded-shut bank safe with plutonium in it.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Aglassis]

You said: "I think that the problems with Spirit and Opportunity might show we need to take it at a cautios pace before sending folks out there. Its been pointed out that these rovers took 10's of G's just to get there and land, and thats gotta be rough. Most pilots and astronauts to this point have seen about 10G's worst case, and for very short periods of time."

Your comparison is not valid because you are assuming that the same design requirements apply to a manned mission and an unmanned mission, and that the same implementation will be used. You realize that the first shots we took at the moon were unmanned machines with a camera that rammed the surface of the moon. You could make the argument that humans couldn't take the 1000s of G's of force imparted when colliding with the surface of the Moon. Of course, this is missing the point that a manned spacecraft that will land on the Moon (or Mars) will be of different design than a robotic mission.

You also said "One of the largest concerns about space travel is radiation exposure."

There are only 3 things you can do about radiation: time/distance/shielding. You can minimize the time of the exposure by flying a fast rocket. Since the primary source of radiation in the Solar System is the Sun, you can't really get far enough away to make it safe for the distance aspect. Finally you can beef up your shielding. It should be noted that if your rocket is long and faces away from the Sun with the persons in the cone of the rocket, you will have a significant amount of shielding just from the rocket materials (at least from the Sun). This would require orientating the rocket to face away from the Sun after all of your thrust for a particular stage of the mission has been imparted.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Radon Knight]

> Manned space exploration is expensive and dangerous.

Erm, so was exploring the ocean. Magellen didn't have too easy of a time of it and Captain Cook met a rather unsavory end.

Exploration *is* dangerous. But, without meaning to sound too much like Indiana Jones, people will always be willing to risk it for fortune and glory.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ajagci]

Seems to mean, nothing. It's not going to produce a nuclear blast (which no one would care about), it's not going to kill a bunch of inhabitants, it's not even going to increase the background radiation by much. (Mars already gets quite a dose.)

Why do you think I give a damn about the human explorers? The fallout is going to mess up scientific experiments, whether or not there is a chain reaction. The fact that you put several hundred of pounds of meat and bacteria on board, which may also get scattered across the landscape if the crash is milder, is far worse than the radioactivity. And if they happen to make a smooth landing and actually walk around, that's no better.

In fact, NASA burnt up an RTG in the atmosphere without any ill effects to anyone.

Now, harm to people on earth, that is something to worry about. They don't have a choice. You seem to live by the out-of-sight-out-of-mind philosophy. It doesn't matter if your release of radioactivity is known to kill, say, 100 people statistically because, hey, nobody can ever track it down.

Then why was NERVA created? Why is GCNR being developed? Why is JIMO going to Jupiter with a fully loaded Nuclear Reactor?

So far, nobody has tried to land a nuclear reactor on a planet that we are actually interested in. And, yes, people pushing nuclear technology obviously manage to get funding for something at some point but that doesn't mean it makes sense or it will make it into a project when all is said and done.

NASA's only problem is the FUD surrounding nuclear power. I'm just doing my part to clear that out of the way.

By doing what? By proposing to add the certainty and disaster of biological contamination to the risk and inconvenience of nuclear contamination? By just ignoring risks to people where deaths can't be attributed to individuals?

Manned exploration of Mars is a collossal waste of money and would constitute a scientific disaster. And nuclear propulsion is both unnecessary for Mars exploration and has some unnecessary additional risks.

As for JIMO, it is completely different technology and doesn't involve people (although if you volunteer, maybe we can encase you in plastic and leave you in orbit without too much risk to the mission). Whether JIMO will happen still needs to be seen. With JIMO, the issues are more political anyway: Europe and Asia may not want the US putting fission reactors in space.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear.... don't you swear at me!

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Eivind]

Thing is, manned missions cost a large multiple more than unmanned ones, probably two orders of magnitude more or so. Because of the need for bigger payloads, better safety, and not the least, a return fligth.

So while I agree with you that a manned mission has it's place, saving money ain't it. It's sorta self-defeating to use a $5 billion mission to solve a problem in a $50 million mission if you see what I mean. Thing is, you could send, refine, improve and resend several dozen probes of various types, and it'd still be hell of a lot cheaper than putting one or more persons on mars.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[cheekyboy]

question is, why did NASA put up damn airforce pilots there, and only on the last mission did nasa finaly put a real Scientist on the moon after great complaints from the scientific community, i mean whats the point of sending Jocks to the moon.

"Hey dude, look a rock man. This is awesome bill", "Right on Ted, *does the gittar move*"

What a waste in terms of who went there, christs.

Im not saying Buzz/Neil were stupid f00ls, but they hardly were geologists/uber cool scientists, they just went up there and took orders from control.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[cheekyboy]

Maybe area51 is already testing them....

check this photo

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesF/NJ22Jan04aurora2. jp g

mach36 here we come, and a glowing white ship.

Maybe nasa will 'magically' invent these new technologies that have existed for years.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[cheekyboy]

You anti nuclear power greenies are a waste of money.

Go stop your local COAL power plant (which puts more radiation out there than an nuke plant)

Check history, a few broken arrows happened, even live nuke warheards crashed and some of them even intact, even the ones which split open and the plutonium dispearsed, it was still safer later, no nuke power plant will EVER explode, it takes a carefull reaction and controlled release of nutrons to sustain a real nuke event. Its like a perfect mix of uranium 238/239 Pu aswell with insulators etc... too complex to describe, but go research it, its DAMN hard to do to make a real BIG BOOM, otherwise it would fizzle into a small PUFF perhaps 1/100th of a real nuke size.

re: other guy
Now plutonium as a safe substance to eat? well maybe today, or next month, but that same piece will decay, and the left over bits or new matter will then decay to something else which will give up badass gamma rays after 9 years. Heres a link to 1/2 lifes of many atoms - http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/Tbl2RadProp.pdf

Heres a complete breakdown detail on the decay of U238 , dont wear it as a pendant mind you.

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/rup.html#user ie s

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

So, judging from your sig, you support Saddam's decision not to go to exile? You bastard!

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[CreatureComfort]

Not if the people you send are anyone from my daily cube hell. Those women are never warm enough.

Actually I think I may have just hit on the reason for Opportunity's failure. It's a woman and feels cold even when the house is at 80 degrees F.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

There are a lot more ideas for Nuclear powered craft than Orion. NERVA and GCNR engines are Nuclear Thermal Engines. i.e. They heat up gasses such as hydrogen until they reach a plasma state. At that point, the matter is in such an excited state that it is exhausted at high speeds, thus providing thrust.

Nuclear Electric Engines are basically Ion drives powered by a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear Salt Rockets contain a highly fissible Uranium salt solution. It's normally stored within a tank that prevents fission, then is pumped to an exhaust port where it is allowed to fission and produce thrust. This is a little safer than Orion since it deals with a controlled burn like chemical rockets, instead of trying to ride a big ass explosion.

More Info on Space Propulsion

That kind of frightens me, to be perfectly honest. I really think we need to rethink this.

I could just see the early discussions about rockets: "Let me get this straight. You want to burn gunpowder through a hollow tube? And someone's going to ride this thing? That sounds a bit scary to me."

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Now plutonium as a safe substance to eat? well maybe today, or next month, but that same piece will decay, and the left over bits or new matter will then decay to something else which will give up badass gamma rays after 9 years.

It's "safe" to eat, because your body can't digest it. It just passes through and give you the radioactive shits. My favorite link on the subject is the most infuriating to environmentalists.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, a nuclear engine is more difficult to protect against. However, that's why NASA launches over the ocean. The Space Shuttle already burns all kinds of fuels that are highly toxic to breath. Not to mention the variety of dangerous chemicals used in its construction. The trick is that by launching over the ocean, an engine failure will result in it dropping into an area uninhabited by humans. Once in the ocean, it will either stay in one piece and decay over the next few years to a half-century, or it will get so dispersed as to not cause any significant increase in the background radiation.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[beefneck9]

I understand your point.

Interplanetary travel for the rovers still took more than a year, and this was with as light and as efficient as we could make them. Even still, their path to Mars still was far from a straight line--this is not a pool shot here, but a complex problem requiring timing, anticipation, and a path that would make your argument about flying directly away from the sun. We also would need protection from other sources, as the cosmic background radiation and emmisions from other stars and phenomena are by no means negligible. Also, the faster the rocket, the more fuel or heavier the engine has to be to make that happen. There is a huge tradeoff, and soon the mission becomes too expensive to happen. Faster Rockets tehmselves impart more G's to the passengers, and not only does a faster and longer burning rocket not exist yet, but it will take a lot more time and money to make a reality.

Say we do get there, now comes the landing. Gravity's effect on the Moon is half that of the effect on Mars (which is 1/3rd that of Earth's). This not increases the comlexity of landing softly, and there is a huge problem with the atmosphere. Reentry can be tough to pull off, even here, where we have weather satellites and personal experience. The design of reentry vehicles is art and science, and the slightest error has tragic consequences (Columbia). And to design a vehicle capable not only of reentry into Mars but here as well, now it must be doubly robust and have two very different aerodynamic situations to be prepared for.

I also see the point about time/distance/ shielding. But as we are not dealing with a mere point source here, we are dealing with many sources, we ae asking humans to both increase their exposure time and not markedly improve their distance while removing their best shielding--Earth. The amount of shielding to make a difference will cost a load even if you only care about the Sun and fly directly away. They say it takes an ounce of gold to launch and ounce of lead, and you are talking $10k per pound last I heard just to get out into low earth orbit (LEO), and this was for satellites, not a man (supposedly lower standards). Breaking out of Earth's pull and getting to Mars would be a few magnitudes higher--and you need a lot of weight out there. The Shuttles benefit from their proximity to Earth for protection from a great deal of the radiation, their relatively short flight distance and fuel demand (compared to interplanetary travel) and their need to only cary 7 folks for short periods of time (2 weeks). Yet they still wiegh a ton.

These rovers are not just a toy, but a means for scientists to learn about Mars without killing people. We can learn its history and makeup, and most importantly, perfect some of our theories about how to best make the trip ourselves. They ARE a platform to test technologies that we will someday use, and to ignore their issues and problems is reckless. Lets give NASA a chance to get the bugs out and get the math right. These are some of the most passionate dreamers when it comes to space travel, and until they tell us they are fully ready to go, we probably aren't.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[default luser]

So what do you think I'm missing here?

Nitrogen.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

So what do you think I'm missing here?

Nitrogen.

Nitrates == Nitrogen

As I said, Nitrates would have to be introduced to the soil. I'm still wondering if microbes wouldn't be able to extract nitrates from deeper soils, but we don't yet have a soil analysis that would support that idea.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I can just see that! A hi-altitude explosion over the ocean + wind from the east... Seriously, if something goes wrong with that thing, the point of greatest stress, and thus the most likely source of a catastrofic failure with something like a nuclear engine is at the very core of the reactor!. So we are talking a spectactular hi-altitude BOOM with lots and lots of fine radio-active particles and nice glo-clowd with fallout marching in unpredictable weather controlled direction. Even if you try to launch with wind blowing east, these things can float for days as the Chernobyl excercise proved conclusively. You would have to do much better then that before you could avoid screaming mobs storming the NASA gates before any attempt at launching something like that.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

A hi-altitude explosion over the ocean + wind from the east... Seriously, if something goes wrong with that thing, the point of greatest stress, and thus the most likely source of a catastrofic failure with something like a nuclear engine is at the very core of the reactor!. So we are talking a spectactular hi-altitude BOOM with lots and lots of fine radio-active particles and nice glo-clowd with fallout marching in unpredictable weather controlled direction.

You watch way too much Sci-Fi. A Nuclear engine can't go "boom". Some older style reactors could because they were under pressure (a boiler explosion). A GCNR rocket is already melted (actually gaseous) so it can't melt down and it's designed to exhaust the various gasses that are kept under pressure (otherwise it wouldn't go anywhere). The worst case from the engine is that containment is breeched and the back of the rocket melts off.

Even if you try to launch with wind blowing east, these things can float for days as the Chernobyl excercise proved conclusively.

No, it hasn't. Winds did carry some of the radioisotopes, but the largest problem was not radiation, or people breathing the stuff. The biggest problem was radioactive iodine in the well water. The radio-iodine replaced the normal iodine in newborns. About 14 people have died from thyroid cancer to date (thats all the post Chernobyl deaths BTW), the rest were treated. Thankfully, this problem doesn't occur anywhere else. In the US, we've been fortifying our salt with iodine for 50+ years to prevent this very problem. If you have enough normal iodine in your system, your body will ignore the radioactive stuff.

BTW, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not glowing in the dark right now. In fact, they were rebuilt shortly after they were bombed. I understand your name is "IgnoramusMaximus", but a little research would go a long way toward learning about how little damage nuclear power has actually done.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[default luser]

I'm not saying you're missing it, I'm saying Mars is missing it.

There are no direct indications that Mars has much in the way of nitrates, and you're certainly not going to find much in the air.

What are you going to do, haul it over there in tankers?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

What are you going to do, haul it over there in tankers?

Something like that, yeah. Any colonization effort would have to get some supplies from Earth (at least initially). Most plans call for a small fleet of automated cargo ships. Later on, nitrates could possibly be mined from asteroids.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

AKAImBatman, man, you really do believe that nuclear power is something that Granma should have in her backyard to power the garden sprinklers and so that her cat has a nice place on top of the reactor to warm itself..

You clearly havent spoken to anyone who lived anywhere near Chernobyl as I have. Hundreds of square kilometers around the place are unhabitable and the amount of birth defects in the area along the path of the fallout occured ALL THE WAY TO FRIGGING BRITAIN!

As to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as I recall the entire city's top soil was removed and the human sufferring for decades after the fact is so documented that I find it preposterous that you would be so dismissive of it.

Even if nuclear power indeed did "little damage" as you claim, "litte" is a very relative term and I sincerely doubt that the general public holds your point of view on these matters. And I dont want to be offensive but you are starting to sound like a completely uncritical nuclear power nut who would let himself be irradiated and go "Look ma! Nothing happened to me!" and then die painfully out of press camera range.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Way to make your case. You linked to an article with the following conclusion:

In its review of studies conducted both in areas close to the accident and those further away, UNSCEAR (2000) concluded that no increase in adverse pregnancy outcome could be linked to radiation exposures from the Chernobyl accident.

Next time try reading farther than the setup of the article.

I happen to have a link of my own. Chernobyl wasn't the prettiest picture, but it wasn't as bad as many claim or would like to think. Most people want to project the horror of a nuclear blast on Chernobyl. That's just ridiculous. Chernobyl was no worse than any other industrial accident. Chemical spills here in the US have done more damage and killed more people than that!

Oh, and the evacuation and topsoil removal were safety precautions. The study I linked to points out that Norway has a higher natural background radiation level than Chernobyl does today.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Chemical spills here in the US have done more damage and killed more people than that!

You still dont understand the issue. If the nuclear powered rocket presents a danger that connects in minds of the public to anything like a chemical spill your project is doomed. Radiation is particularly insideous because it presents great psychological impact of being an invisible and undetectable by human senses killer. The public does not trust the government or its agencies with something like that in fear that they would lie to them about the presence or levels of radiation. You are dealing not only with dangers of radiation (which are clearly there) but the problem of credibility where some scientists (and that was the reason I pointed to that article although it was being "debunked") have opinions that go contrary to the official government or nuclear lobby's assessments. So any proponent of nuclear engines must prove the safety of the system beyond any doubt of any Joe Sixpak's and Jane Doe's.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

And that is why I'm out here posting. Joe and Jane Public think "atomic blast, radiation, and mutants that glow in the dark" when they hear the word "nuclear". I'm trying to change that. Slashdot may not be the best place to start, but it does address a large number of intelligent people who work in fields other than nuclear physics. And on occasion, a physicist or two will drop by to help. If I can change middle-class thinking, than the thinking of extremists won't matter.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I see that but you are going about it the wrong way. You are trying to persuade me that the effects of a nuclear engine explosion (I dont mean meltdown just some sort of mechanical failure in the chamber where all those hi-preassure propellant energy transfers occur) are not going to be much of a health hazard. I was pointing out that even if so, the argument is difficult to prove and the general public, myself included will remain doubtful and will choose to err on the side of caution. Ergo no nuclear engines will fly. What you must do is to show that there is a way to make absolutely sure that the engine is incapable of dispersing nuclear material even after exploding. That means fancy engineering or use of such engines only in interplanetary space. But trying to discount the effects of a potential disaster is a completely ineffective strategy in this case.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

I do that as well. Usually I tell people that the whole thing would be engineered like RTGs. A couple of RTGs have dropped into the ocean, all intact. One was even reused. I explain how modern reactors can't blow up. I even explain how a nuclear engine is already in melt-down mode so it can't possibly enter a "prompt-critical" stage.

It's when some people get pushier (as with yourself) that I have to explain that it isn't as dangerous as they think. You'd be surprised how many people say, "But let's assume the one in a billion trillion chance that the RTG container fails". I even had one guy claim that a failed RTG would destroy the entire planet! He quickly backed off saying that it was a hyperbole for his argument. Suffice it to say, he got skewered by many more people than myself. And some weren't as nice as I am.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[ajagci]

It's "safe" to eat, because your body can't digest it. It just passes through and give you the radioactive shits. My favorite link on the subject is the most infuriating to environmentalists.

There is nothing "infuriating" about that link--it is just bogus, stupid, and irrelevant.

Yes, bulk Plutonium (grains to chunks) is relatively inert as long as it isn't close to critical. As such, it is pretty harmless. You may well be able to swallow pellets and get away with it.

But Plutonium powder combusts spontaneously in air and the resulting fine particles are quite harmful when inhaled. In the environment, Plutonium may also form various salts that may then be more readily absorbed and stored in tissues. And once it's in the body, either as fine particles or as salts, Plutonium is a serious radiological poison.

And if you release it into the environment, it decays into a lot of radioactive junk that you don't want to have around either.

So, again, the fact that chunks of pure, fresh, metallic Plutonium may be fairly inert tells you nothing about the dangers resulting from a release during an accident. And it is also completely irrelevant to the question of whether you want to scatter it all over Mars in an accident, where the concern is scientific, not safety.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Usually I tell people that the whole thing would be engineered like RTGs.

I understand I am being difficult to convince but I find that very hard to swallow. RTGs can be made as sealed armored units and there is not much going on inside then low-yeld nuclear decay in a solid state material. RTG container could fail if driven with sufficient force into some solid object but one could set up the course so in that case as you indicated it hits the ocean. Nuclear engine on the other hand is in a state where very high velocity, very high energy mechanical events are going on as the propellant is being transfered and accellerated through it. Thus if something goes wrong with the propellant path (for example some disruption in flow resulting in the propellant flow developing unstable characteristics and cavitating into the side of the reactor) the whole thing will BLOW! And since the reactor is already in the melt-down state the hot and very highly radioactive fuel will be just perfect to disperse with maximum impact. We are talking orders of magnitude differences in difficulties of design between RTGs and engines.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Nuclear engine on the other hand is in a state where very high velocity, very high energy mechanical events are going on as the propellant is being transfered and accellerated through it.

Actually, there's very little mechanical effect going on inside the engine. The fuel is pumped by the turbo-pumps and pressured out the other end. In between, it gets heated to a plasma state. The worst case scenario is that the nuclear fuel or plasma loses magnetic containment and melts through the materials of the rocket. There's nowhere in the engine for enough pressure to build up for an explosion.

And since the reactor is already in the melt-down state the hot and very highly radioactive fuel will be just perfect to disperse with maximum impact.

To be precise, it's hot gas/plasma. If fully dispersed, it won't add a significant amount of uranium to the surface of the Earth. In fact, the background radiation levels wouldn't even change. (Coal plants put out more radioactive uranium in one day than exists in the engines.) The most likely design is something along the lines of an engine that would be built so that if containment were lost, the gasses would come in contact with a black box container (say, a depleted uranium shell that itself is surrounded by lead) and would cool before penetrating its container. Once the black box hits water, the gases will have no chance of maintaining a hot enough state to eat through the container.

BTW, take a look for at your current disposition for a moment. You've stopped yelling, stopped complaining about things glowing in the dark, and are finally focused on how to make the engines safe. Persistence changes people's minds more than anything else. (Or maybe I read Green Eggs and Ham to my kids one too many times.) ;-)

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

...If fully dispersed, it won't add a significant amount of uranium to the surface of the Earth.

Ha, while that is true for the Earth as a whole, it might add politically significant amount of uranium isotopes to some dude's backyard in Florida and that counts 100x more than all the output of coal plants combined globally.

...The most likely design is...

I must admit that from what you are describing the engine would look completely different from what I have seen in some old magazines, it must be some completely new concept, if you have some links to sites (with pretty diagrams for ignoramuses) I would appreciate.

As to me yelling, I appologise, I thought I was being wittingly humorous pointing out how your point of view would be received by, for instance, some local media reporter.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Ha, while that is true for the Earth as a whole, it might add politically significant amount of uranium isotopes to some dude's backyard in Florida and that counts 100x more than all the output of coal plants combined globally.

Did you know that uranium is one of the most common substances on Earth? You probably already have some in your backyard. Raining some from an engine would NOT increase it by that much. It certainly wouldn't kill you in the time it takes for the nuclear energy commission to clean up your neighborhood.

Did you know that old style X-Ray machines would give you up to 10 REMs of X-Ray radiaition per X-Ray? Modern digital machines give off only about 10-100 millrems, but if you are older than 15 you may have had an X-Ray from an older machine.

You'll note BTW, that it did not instantly kill you or cause your skin to melt. In fact, doctors considered it quite safe as long as they made sure not to give you too many X-Rays.

When it comes to nuclear power, the real dangerous stuff is the heart of a very large reactor. Older reactor designs would keep hundreds of pounds of material under pressure so that they could produce large amounts of power. In the case of a melt-down and boiler explosion, a lot of hard radiation would be exposed to people near by. (And I mean people within about half a mile. Radiation falls off at the same rate as light, so give it just a little distance you won't get any more than you would from your CRT.)

Here's the upside about the "hard stuff". It doesn't last. In order to be energetic enough to kill someone, it has to have a very short half-life. Within an hour, a reactor's core has already lost much of its most potent stuff. Within a few days it may even be safe enough to approach. Within a month they could cement over it and forget it existed.

I should probably mention that modern reactors can't have a boiler explosion like Chernobyl. Those designs were deemed unsafe long before the incident, and were decommisioned here in the US. Chernobyl OTOH, was built with *decreased* safety precautions because the Russians thought they were unnecessary. Contrast that to Three Mile Island which shut down exactly as it was supposed to.

Some interesting statistics for you. Currently, there are ~500 nuclear reactors in the world, plus the 50+ used by US Navy Vessels (8 on the Enterprise alone, 2 on a standard Nimitz carrier, and 1-2 on each nuclear sub), plus about 550 research reactors operating worldwide. Nuclear reactors are well understood things at this point.

I must admit that from what you are describing the engine would look completely different from what I have seen in some old magazines, it must be some completely new concept, if you have some links to sites (with pretty diagrams for ignoramuses) I would appreciate.

Wikipedia explanation of various proulsion methods

NERVA and GCNR engine descriptions

You're probably thinking of NERVA engines. NERVA engines would melt off the back of a rocket and drop from the sky like a rock (a very heavy rock) if they were to melt-down (although they run pretty close to melt-down normally). Gas Core Nuclear Rockets (GCNR) use a uranium plasma vapour for heating the propellant. This is in many ways easier to contain in an emergency than a tradiational nuclear pile.

BTW, I should probably point out some of the safety features of nuclear rockets. For one, they have more power, so they can be built of more traditional and well understood materials. Many chemical rockets go for exotic composites to keep weight down. The other advantage is that the fuel is what cools the engine. In the case of a runaway nuclear reaction, the turbopumps can deliver more fuel to cool the reactor

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Thanks for the links.

Well your argument is good to explain a possiblity of dying from immediate exposure but what about long-term carcinogenic and other health risks. You understand that those will be more of a fear then immediate exposure. Look at asbestos and the havoc that wreaks.

You probably already have some in your backyard. Raining some from an engine would NOT increase it by that much. It certainly wouldn't kill you in the time it takes for the nuclear energy commission to clean up your neighborhood..

For a guy so well educated in the technology you surely have funny concept of human psychology. Lemme translate your statement for you this way:

------

.... Studio anchor: And now to Joe Sensation our correspondent at the site of the nuclear disaster...

*camera cuts to a dude dressed up in something reminescent of 19th century diving suit with huge gas mask filter, scuba diving tank who holds his mike with a pair of pincers*

Joe (muffled through the gas mask): Indeed George, it is a place of chaos and panic...

*camera pans to some other dude in hazmat suit carrying a crying toddler and back to the reporter*

George: We are so proud of you risking your life for the good of the nation..

Joe: (with false modesty) I am merely doing my duty, it is these poor souls, these unfortunate Americans who are paying the price for the monstrous, God-defying ambitions of these so called scientists..

George (with disguist): Madmen is more like it..

Joe (sternly): In the last hour I heard much less generous names for them...

*camera pans to some tanker truck spraying everything in sight with foamy liquid*

George (with deeply concerned voice): This must be devastating for the residents!

Joe: The costs will be enormous, they are talking of digging up the soil, the real estate market is in a tailspin. Fortunately help is on the way, the Governor has declared state emergency, the few FEMA staff who did not resist the call-up order are arriving and the legal experts at Litigious Ambulance Chasers Inc have offered their services to the citizens......

---
6 months later
----

*At a back of a seedy motel in Houston (the only thing the new re-organized NASA could afford for the press conference), an upset scientist waving a report to the 3 half-dozing reporters in the audience*

Professor: And as we were saying all along there were only no more then 2 grams of actual nuclear material deposited in the entire state!..."

------

On another note the GNCR concept escapes me, it looks like the propellant is injected into a swirl of super hot uranium gas and then ejected along with portions of the gas via the venturi... isnt this producing a continuous stream of radioactive material out the back of the rocket?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

.
Well your argument is good to explain a possiblity of dying from immediate exposure but what about long-term carcinogenic and other health risks.

Here's what most people don't realize: If you don't get cancer from radiation within a few months, it probably isn't the radiation! Your body is quite used to radiation. The Sun is spewing it out every day. While the Earth's radiation belts stop most of it, there's a significant amount of radiation that hits the Earth. (If there was none, the Earth would get pretty cold.)

Much of that radiation that passes through humans actually misses entirely. i.e. It passes through your body without hitting anything. Of course, some of it does strike. Alpha and Beta particles will simply bounce off your skin. Gamma and Xray radiation is what will usually penetrate. Most of the radiation will collide with something unimportant (e.g. water) But a small remainder may be lucky enough to hit your DNA.

When your body is healthy, it will usually notice the errors in the DNA and correct them. Otherwise you'd get cancer before you were even born! However, if you are lacking certain enzymes, or too many DNA molecules have been changed (as would happen if you were exposed to say 1000+ REM) then you may get cancer.

Now, radiation damage does take your body time to repair. As a result, you should be careful about constant exposure to high radiation. Constantly exposing yourself would cause more damage before your body is finished fixing the old damage.

And that is why radiation early in life won't kill you later in life. If you get cancer at a later date, it probably is from all the radioactive uranium put out by Coal plants. Alternatively, you may have too many radioisotope particles in your system. There's a relatively high amount of Sr-90 and other radioisotopes in the environment from nuclear bomb testing. Or perhaps your cancer has nothing to do with radiation at all, and is instead caused by an error in your body while transcribing your DNA.

For a guy so well educated in the technology you surely have funny concept of human psychology. Lemme translate your statement for you this way:

Your little story is why Failure Is Not An Option(TM). NASA launches toward the ocean so that anything that blows up doesn't land on populated areas (wind or no). My comments are not meant to make people feel better if rocket ships do land on their home (although it would be nice if they did feel better), but rather make them feel better about nuclear technology in the here and now.

On another note the GNCR concept escapes me, it looks like the propellant is injected into a swirl of super hot uranium gas and then ejected along with portions of the gas via the venturi... isnt this producing a continuous stream of radioactive material out the back of the rocket?

If you look at the picture, you'll notice that the uranium plasma is kept in those middle oval areas, while the hydrogen in pumped around them in the outer tubes. Basically, the hydrogen will loop around the core once or twice, and become plasma on the way. By the time it reaches the exhaust, the hydrogen is as energetic as it's going to get.

Now, how do they manage containment? Well, they actually use something called a "nuclear light bulb". Instead of explaining what that is, I'm going to direct you here:

http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_liberty_ship7.htm

Make sure you read the next page as well. That's where the nuclear light bulb itself is explained. You might even want to read the whole article. It's a fascinating look at how nuclear propulsion can change space travel forever. :-)

P.S. I see that the evil Offtopic/Underrated mods have shown up. All my recent posts have suddenly been modded down, even though they're no longer on the front page. I wonder when they'll figure out that trying to reduce my Karma with abusive moderation is pointless.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

And that is why radiation early in life won't kill you later in life.

I am not sure if the medical estabilishment agrees with you on this one. What about all those warnings against sun-tanning? Virtually all the dermathologists are jumping up and down waving arms about how sun-tanning (exposure to UV radiation but it would be the same kind of principle) can lead to skin cancer later on in life (they are talking 40 years of age and later). Also should there ever be a release of some tiney particles of a few thousand atoms each of radioactive material which then would get into food/air/whatnot and get absorbed into the body and sit in one spot irradiating a small area of it, there is your continuous exposure scenario.

NASA launches toward the ocean so that anything that blows up doesn't land on populated areas..

Lets assume for the moment that it is possible to do so, that would then preclude using the engines for anything similiar to the Space Shuttle, a vehicle that returns to Earth and lands within the US.

I read the entire article and it explains well the advantages of a nuclear rocket but it does glosses over (as most enthusiasts tend to do) some inherent issues like the fact that the sillica shield around the bulb can just explosively fail (because it is under pressure from inside and outside and is in fact that "mechanical" stress point I was eluding to earlier) and no amount of "scram" devices will help that one. Also the article is being dissmissive about our negative past nuclear history and talks about 1950-60s with nostalgy as some sort of glory days. Huge amounts of abuses and wild risks that governments back then took are so damning and well entrenched in our collective minds that it does the proponent's cause more damage bringing those dark days up then pretending they never existed.

My personal feeling (that has not changed much during this discussion I am afraid) is that nuclear powered engines will be (at least in reasonable future) only feasible in 2 cases:

1.Interplanetary use whereby they get transported to orbit in "off" state as cargo with all the fuel locked down safely and ignited far away from Earth, thus reducing vastly their usefulness and totally eliminating their advantages as Earth-to-orbit propulsion means

2. By the governemts of countries like China with their neo-feudal political systems who consider potential deaths of thousands from any number of half-baked large scale space program failures (not neccarilly nuclear) a cheap price for the achievement of the ambitions of world domination by their egomaniacal Lords and Masters.

I think any use of universally deployed nuclear rocketry as you would like to see it is dependant on developement of some sort of system where noone (especially die hard skeptics) can fathom a way for nuclear material to get out of the system. Fusion would probably be something along the line as long as the by-products of hydrogen fusing into helium or some such are not radioactive.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

I am not sure if the medical estabilishment agrees with you on this one. What about all those warnings against sun-tanning? Virtually all the dermathologists are jumping up and down waving arms about how sun-tanning (exposure to UV radiation but it would be the same kind of principle) can lead to skin cancer later on in life (they are talking 40 years of age and later).

The simple answer is that they don't know why the skin doesn't seem to fully repair the damage. There are however some theories.

Also should there ever be a release of some tiney particles of a few thousand atoms each of radioactive material which then would get into food/air/whatnot and get absorbed into the body and sit in one spot irradiating a small area of it, there is your continuous exposure scenario.

As I said, there is already radioisotope particles in the environment and most likely in your body. However, the small amount of isotope is not sufficient to guarantee any sort of ill effects. Only large doses of 1000 or more REM per year will do that.

e inherent issues like the fact that the sillica shield around the bulb can just explosively fail (because it is under pressure from inside and outside and is in fact that "mechanical" stress point I was eluding to earlier) and no amount of "scram" devices will help that one.

You can't get any more force out of an explosion like that than the structural materials are designed to handle.

Here's how I understand the engine. (I may get something wrong here, but I'll try to be as correct as possible.) The silica shield is thin like a light bulb. It's purpose is not to maintain gases under extreme pressure, but to maintain separation between the hydrogen and the uranium. The uranium itself is kept spinning in a vortex to reduce the amount of pressure on the silica. The uranium is hot enough to eat through most materials, so it wouldn't be advisable for the materials to be in constant physical contact.

Here's what I see happening in a situation where the uranium vortex failed and pressure were applied to the silica: The silica would quickly break (not much force there) and the uranium would splatter against the outer walls of the engine. The heat from the plasma will start to eat through whatever shell it's contained in, but it will cool quickly, and the materials will act as a moderator to stop the reaction. The hydrogen may continue pumping, but it would suddenly fail to become plasma. Since hydrogen cannot become radioactive via fission (only tritium via fusion) it presents no health risk.

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The simple answer is that they don't know why the skin doesn't seem to fully repair the damage

That maybe so, but it does not in any way reduce the power of their message, I venture to guess that an opinion of a friendly MD around the corner carries far more weight with average citizen than what you can put forward no matter how scientific. You have your work cut out for you. I think we will get "clean" (as in no possiblity of radioactive pollutants) nuclear engines invented sooner then you will manage to convince enough people to use the ones you describe.

The uranium itself is kept spinning in a vortex to reduce the amount of pressure on the silica.

The way I understood, the mechanics of such a vortex would actually produce pressure on the sillica, not only due to pressure of the gas itself but of centrifugal force caused by the vortex. If you read the article you pointed me to, the guy there is talking about a system whereby a portion of the hydrogen is redirected to flow over the sillica in effort to cool it and more to the point: "equalize pressures".

The silica would quickly break (not much force there) and the uranium would splatter against the outer walls of the engine.

Not exactly, what would actually happen is that the whole mess: uranium fluoride, bits of sillica, hydrogen fuel and possibly some pellets from the emergency "scram shotgun" would be ejected through the venturi since for a brief period of time the engine would continue to function with the hydrogen propellant already inside and still expanding due to the residual heat. So you would end up with essentially all the uranium fluoride (described even in that article as "nasty stuff") outside of the engine as a nice cloud of higly radioactive (although no longer plasma) gas. Now imagine this happening during early stages of takeoff from Cape Canaveral or during final stages of power descent towards the landing pad somewhere in the US and the resulting hysteria among citizenry would make you regret you ever heard the world "nuclear".

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

You have your work cut out for you. I think we will get "clean" (as in no possiblity of radioactive pollutants) nuclear engines invented sooner then you will manage to convince enough people to use the ones you describe.

Perhaps. Doesn't stop me from trying tho. Even if we can get nuclear rockets in space, it would be a big step forward.

The way I understood, the mechanics of such a vortex would actually produce pressure on the sillica, not only due to pressure of the gas itself but of centrifugal force caused by the vortex. If you read the article you pointed me to, the guy there is talking about a system whereby a portion of the hydrogen is redirected to flow over the sillica in effort to cool it and more to the point: "equalize pressures".

Exactly the point. By maintaining equal pressure inside and out, the net pressure on the bulb is close to zero. Much like a kids balloon which would pop if not for the air pressure on the outside.

Not exactly, what would actually happen is that the whole mess: uranium fluoride, bits of sillica, hydrogen fuel and possibly some pellets from the emergency "scram shotgun" would be ejected through the venturi since for a brief period of time the engine would continue to function with the hydrogen propellant already inside and still expanding due to the residual heat.

Alright, you've got me. My opinion is that little to no materials would get ejected. However, the real problem here is that discussions on the subject are acedemic. The reason is that a production style engine has not yet been constructed (or even designed). Until someone gets the go ahead to build these engines outside of a labratory, there can be no discussion on how safe they are. After an engineer has a go at making the engine safe, then maybe we can revisit the issue. Unfortunately, that leaves us with a chiken and egg problem. How can we develop a safe design if no one will let us experiment with scale engines?

Re:Said it before, I'll say it again

[IgnoramusMaximus]

How can we develop a safe design if no one will let us experiment with scale engines?

I dont see a problem here really, NASA has some sealed facility under construction for testing of nuclear propulsion and I doubt that a lot of panic could be produced by an underground facility in the middle of Nevada desert. Even though I dont believe that current designs are feasible for general purpose use due to all those reasons we discussed (even though many of them are strictly political) I would be the last one to propose halting research. Even if clean engines do not emerge from the process, I am sure there might be some unexpected insights into some other systems and that alone is good enough to continue reasonable (but not wasteful defense contractor style pork) research levels.

Spaceflightnow charges for nasa footage?

[ayeco]

I'm assuming that the Quicktimes that you can download at spaceflightnow is coming from nasa feeds. What's up with charging for nasa footage? Don't they get that free? (they might be capturing it and hosting it, but still).

Re:Spaceflightnow charges for nasa footage?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, they knew they would be on the front page of slashdot every other day. Maybe thats why!

I recognize this from Star Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

That "rock" is obviously an ancient fossilized krayt dragon! Star Wars is real! Obviously it was imported from Tatooine long ago by the people of Alderaan, some time before their world was reduced to an asteroid belt. A galaxy far far away, my foot. It happened right in our own backyard!

Re:I recognize this from Star Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously with rock outcrops like that no one is saying it but I am sure a few people have in the back of their minds that this is exactly the kind of terrain a possible fossil might be found. While I think the chances are it won't by like 10 zillion to 1, think if they roll on over there and spot a snail fossil.

While some might not consider that a big deal, it would in my opinion would be the biggest news story of our lifetimes.

Desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

You know they're getting desperate once Aerosmith has been hired to thrill the masses. Next time maybe they'll get "TV's James Taylor"*

*=obSimpsonsRef

yabba me gidder, pants are mine!

[Anonymous Coward]

woo! a bunch of creepy old men touring the ISS MC, might as well keep it rollin' next week with the rolling stones!

Oh, Sure, Like I Believe That...

[ackthpt]

Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock" - there's now a color version of the same image

Yeah, right, that's really Tatooine, if you look closely you can see Luke's uncle's 'farm'. in the distance. I'm pretty sure there some sand people messing with these rovers. At least when the rovers burn out the Jawas will be able to clean things up.

Obviously they didn't launch rockets to put those there, they used the same hyperspace portal that George Lucas uses.

Re:Oh, Sure, Like I Believe That...

[NeuroManson]

"Obviously they didn't launch rockets to put those there, they used the same hyperspace portal that George Lucas uses."

You mean the same place where Lucas gets his scripts?

No, wait, that was his ass. He'd need a tube of KY the size of a super star destroyer to pass something like a Mars probe.

Re:Oh, Sure, Like I Believe That...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, wait, that was his ass. He'd need a tube of KY the size of a super star destroyer to pass something like a Mars probe.
I don't see why, the Goatse man would have no problem.

Re:Oh, Sure, Like I Believe That...

[KlomDark]

Maybe the Goatse man IS George Lucas

Lightwaveman

[NanoGator]

The story says it was submitted by 'lightwaveman'. Lightwave was the app used to do the neato rover video we've seen on TV. Just curious if that guy had any relation to that project or if he just happens to be a fellow lightwaver. If he's the former, you all would probably find the making of that animation interesting, if he'd be willing to talk about it.

about the colorized bedrock image

[circletimessquare]

has a better multi-monitor wallpaper image ever been discovered?

thank you nasa ;-)

Re:about the colorized bedrock image

[C. Alan]

You think the wall paper is cool, try the screen saver. It starts with both screens running identical info, but after a while, each screen has different quotes and images. Very cool.

looks like bones and scales to me

[kin_korn_karn]

That's no bedrock, it's the first martian dinosaur fossil!

Re:looks like bones and scales to me

[ballpoint]

I was thinking just the same thing...

Re:solar power

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the world did this ignorant post get modded +1? The Rovers DO have solar panels on top of them.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/spacecra ft_surf ace_rover.html

The problem is most likely that they can't recharge the onboard batteries enough during the day to make up for the heater sapping energy.

Re:Aerosmith?

[ackthpt]

Is this a reference to the album "Rocks" or something?

They probably only got in because Steve told them he's "Arwen's" dad. Otherwise those geeks probably wouldn't have a clue who these fossils are.

There's always Mars

[spun]

Bad economy, war in Iraq, dodgy dossiers, terrorists on the loose, no WMDs, Gov. Schwarzenegger (I live in California...), rising national debt, companies fleeing offshore in droves, corporate scandals, high unemployement. I'm depressed.

Then there's Mars. Drama, excitement, scientific adventure: I feel proud of our messed up little species. Stuck somewhere between monkeys and angels, we manage to pull off some cool stunts once in a while. Go Team!

Re:There's always Mars

[ehiris]

Then there's Mars. Drama, excitement, scientific adventure

Or as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 a Space Odyssey: "After ten thousand years, man at last found something as exciting as war."

Re:There's always Mars

[spun]

Oh, that is a GREAT quote! That's just how I feel.

Re:There's always Mars

[goon america]

The Apollo moon landings, one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind, were made possible only through completely childish nationalistic competition. One of the ironies of being human, I guess.

Re:There's always Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad economy, war in Iraq, dodgy dossiers, terrorists on the loose, no WMDs, Gov. Schwarzenegger (I live in California...), rising national debt, companies fleeing offshore in droves, corporate scandals, high unemployement. I'm depressed.

Must be an election year. Things are getting a little thick in here.

Re:There's always Mars

[spun]

It wasn't MEANT to be that politically biased, just a list of gripes to contrast to the wholesome goodness of space exploration. Guess my lefty leanings shine through though, eh?

Why no, Senator, I'm NOT a member of the communist party... :-P

I'm an equal opportunity wingnut. ;-)

VOTE FOR uh, hmmm, uhm, that is to say, AT LEAST VOTE

Re:There's always Mars

[ajagci]

A cold, dusty, rocky place that's hard to get to. Probably completly dry and lifeless. Now, why is that exciting again?

I'm all for sending probes and making sure that it's as dull as it seems. But, please, let's not lose perspective.

Re:There's always Mars

[shadowbearer]

Not yet. Well, the population did; but the politicians seem to be a bit behind.

SB

Re:There's always Mars

[LittleGuy]

Or as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 a Space Odyssey: "After ten thousand years, man at last found something as exciting as war."

He overlooked the existence of bubblewrap.

Re:Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate

[Anonymous Coward]

discouvered? What, are you british or something?

Bedding plane

[Party_Pack]

Interestingly there seems to be some sort of horizontal feature that in a terrestrial rock could very well be stratification, which would make it a sedimentary rock. I would guess that it's more likely some sort of weathering effect. Although you do quite often see this sort of effect in dykes. Very interesting :)

Re:Bedding plane

[Anonymous Coward]

Although you do quite often see this sort of effect in dykes. I think those are referred to as "stretch marks".

Re:Bedding plane

[cindy]

Actually, I was thinking that it looks like some of the rock outcroppings I've seen in Yosemite. Or at least how they would look after being plastered by a meteor and then sand blasted for a million years. Just because a rock has layers doesn't mean it's sedimentary. My money is on it being volcanic.

Re:Bedding plane

[Quelain]

Yep, definitely looks like sedimentary rocks to me. It's unlikely that the stratification would be weathering I think, it looks a lot like rocks which were once sand bars or sand dunes.

The interesting weathering effect there is the way that it has split into squarish blocks, which is usually a sign of 'unloading'. That is, overlying rock layers have been eroded away, reducing the pressure on the lower layers. Given that the lower layers were slightly compressed under that weight, they fracture into cubical blocks when the pressure is removed. Safety glass basically works the same way.

(IANAG)

Re:Bedding plane

[Party_Pack]

Just because a rock has layers doesn't mean it's sedimentary.

I agree entirely the chances of what seems to be a cemented sedimentary rock forming on Mars would change my whole opinion of the planet. The cementation alone would require the introduction of fluid medium and the cement itself whether that is calcium based such as a lime, or siliceous such as you find in a chert. For the cracking to have formed through the release of overlaying pressure would require there to have been more layers above and then for it to have been either exposed through erosion of thrust up from some tectonic force. Both of which are more than possible on a harsh planet like mars but the fact that the layer would have needed to be buried so deep in the first place I find unlikely.

More likely the regular box shaped cracks are the product of contraction during cooling. These cracks are then exploited by chemical and or mechanical erosion, probably Aeolian in nature. The banding is likely caused by minor lithological separation during intrusion of the dyke. As the hot magma touches the cooler 'country' rock it starts to solidify on the outside at the contacts and preferentially drags some mineral crystals that are starting to form. Really interesting stuff.

Re:Bedding plane

[Anonymous Coward]

id like to see some dykes on a bedding plane...

hu huh huh he said dyke.

Re:Bedding plane

[forgetful]

Looks a lot like banded rhyolite from a pyroclastic flow (think big volcano doom cloud like on TV). The layers of superheated ash weld together as they pile up. We have similar outcrops all over south Idaho. In some canyons, you see individual volcanic layers piled 300 feet vertically without a major seam; just band upon band. The blocks on Mars appear different, though. Here the rhyolite tends to be more angular, but it is much younger than Mars. But I'm no geologist--just a geek that has spent a lot of time in the backcountry staring at rocks. I'm hoping for water borne sediments, too.

Re:Bedding plane

[Party_Pack]

I agree it does look like rhyolite but not necessarily from a Nuee Ardente, intrusive aphanitic, felsic rocks such as rhyolites whether in the form of a dyke or a sill can form banding. But without at least a hand specimen we will only ever be speculating ;(

Really good call though for an amateur :-) I'm not sure if Mars is a silica rich planet like earth. Without silica it would be unlikely for quartz to form, and without quartz; no rhyolite...

Re:Bedding plane

[cellaboy]

This image is intriguing, the outcrop's stratification & cross-bedding strikes (no pun intended) me as an almost perfect example of some of the same formations you can see on the Pennine moorland in Northern England. That was the first thing I thought before I followed through and thought about this being on Mars ... then I nearly did follow through :-) All these Pennine grits and sandstones (100's of meters of deposits) were formed by serious amounts of water over a relatively short peroid of time. I'm not sure about the pavement effect or the weathering process that can form it but I have seen it locally, England that is :-)

Game over man!

[NanoGator]

Am I the only one that can see a face in every one of those rocks?

Re:Game over man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Put down the pipe man!

Priorities...

[raz2]

"While NASA isn't concerned about the rover overheating, they're exploring the long-term effects of continued power drain on the second rover."

They are probably also investigating the JPL plant mystery. Mysteriously, water being poured into vases disappears within a matter of hours, if not minutes! The NASA is filing the case as "astonishing" and "a potential breakthrough in human civilisation", and has made a multi-million-dollar case out of this. Priorities...

They just got a little confused...

[el-spectre]

They heard that Liv's dad knew about digging space rocks or somesuch thing...

Re:They just got a little confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note for geeks: Just because you are smart, doesn't mean you have to be a dick...

... but if you're smart enough, you can get away with it...

Re:They just got a little confused...

[el-spectre]

If you're smart enough to get away with it, people won't realize that you're being a jerk :)

Bravo Opportunity... an inspiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

To boldly go where no robot has gone before...

Re:Bravo Opportunity... an inspiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh my lord

Weyhey a homage to goatse.cx!!!....I guess

Re:Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Yeh, spell-check is my friend. But oviously I forgot...

Re:Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate

[ski2die]

Where is the obligatory "All your rover are belong to us"?

Thats not bedrock

[sysopd]

Look at the far right of the panorama... Thats not bedrock, thats the spinal column of an enormous alien life form that walked mars ages ago!

Giant Face on Mars

[plams]

I think those bed rocks look like a burried dinasaur. Maybe they'll find pyramids on mars, too!

Go Nuke -

[jzarling]

Weren't the Viking probes powered by some sort of plutonium or uranium / ceramic batteries - they lasted for years.
If NASA is concerned about dust build up on the panels don't use them.
If they are concerned about dust on the camera lenses perhaps they could lease the "on car" camera technology from CART or NASCAR.
As for Aerosmith - they even less to do with science (unless your a chemist) than they do with football. - They and all the popstars f'up my Monday Night Football Intros, and now they delay delay NASA TV, Im gonna pirate thier latest album just to delete it.

Re:Go Nuke -

[BTWR]

they wanted to plutonium. there was a brief flirting with that idea. One of my profs is a mission leader for the MERs and one word for why it didn't get made (simplified and more humorous, but it's the truth):

Hippies.

Re:Go Nuke -

[geekoid]

exactly why they should team with anoterh country.
We can build everything, the other country only needs to launch the atomic bits up.

Re:Go Nuke -

[Anonymous Coward]

Im gonna pirate thier latest album just to delete it

HAHAHA! call of the day.

yeah, sure it's bedrock...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The first three-dimensional, panoramic images beamed back from Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock"

yeah sure -- that's what THEY want you to believe. but i'm sure the guy at The Enterprise Mission will expose these lies for what they are, and clear up the evidence to show us that it's REALLY an ancient fossil of the alien race that used to inhabit mars and is responsible for seeding the earth with life...

</sarcasm>

Color Photo?

[ShawnDoc]

Is there a color photo somewhere? The link in the story only points to a B&W photo with a red filter put on it.

Re:Color Photo?

[elendel]

Insightful? I say Funny.

As has been discussed on /. previous, the cameras on the lander are strictly black and white - colors are gained by (wait for it) using filters!

Re:Color Photo?

[Anonymous Coward]

How else would they get color? Magic?!

They have to use filters

OT,but someone has to make the [NO CARRIER] joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wonder what happened in the final moments of Beagl=20 ]} } } }&..}=3Dr}'}"}[NO CARRIER]

Quicktime VR?

[nobodyman]

Has anyone made any quicktime VR's of these panorama shots? I figured that would be inevitable.

Re:Quicktime VR?

[RetroGeek]

Not quicktime, but the main page has Flash.

if beagle

[relrelrel]

Had landed in Opportunity's position, it would have been far more fascinating.

Beagle2 is the most technically advanced out of the 3, and can analyse materials and send the results back to earth, so you could effectively get proof of life (or be it, 'beyond most doubt') on mars within a couple days of it landing.

Very sad it didn't work out.

Re:if beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Having Beagle2 back would be wonderful.

sigh.....

Re:if beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

But look at the place, hardly no rocks, just bedrock and that powdery soil.. had beagle 2 landed there it would be a mess of smashed metal from the explosive impact

Maybe next time they'll let nasa supply the lander

(did you know they only tested the landing system ONCE on earth and it FAILED??!)

Re:if beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. What I don't understand is why they put so much time on the onboard instruments of Beagle, but totally neglected the landing procedure. Jesuz Christ.

I'm offended!

[aiken_d]

As a representative of the League of the Perpetually Offended, I would like to express outrage over all of this heat speech.

Harumph
-b

Re:I'm offended!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by your ideas, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

the layers are like a centimeter thick

[Elusive_Cure]

Quoting from the aarticle : One of the wonderful things about this though is when you look at this and you realize the scale of it you get a sense of how thin those layers are. I mean the layers are like a centimeter thick. These are very, very small layers and that really puts some constraints on what it could be. These aren't lava flows. These are something we've never seen on Mars before.

This sounds to me like polarised particles composing thin layers of crust_like soil...ive seen something similar back in a ferrous (up on a mountain) village in greece...

Message from Opportunity...just in (1 of 5040)

[djupedal]

The original message was received at Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:53 -0500
from neomail03.traderonline.com [10.222.132.7]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

(reason: 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown)

----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to neomail01.traderonline.com.:
RCPT To: ... User unknown
550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
Reporting-MTA: dns; neomail02.traderonline.com
Received-From-MTA: DNS; neomail03.traderonline.com
Arrival-Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:53 -0500

Final-Recipient: RFC822; Opportunity@nasa.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; neomail01.traderonline.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:54 -0500

From: Opportunity@nasa.com
Date: January 28, 2004 2:52:34 PM PST
To: earth@nasa.com
Subject: Hello

The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.

Re:Message from Opportunity...just in (1 of 5040)

[djupedal]

You don't?

You checked your inbox lately? Do you know what 'spam' is?

Re:Message from Opportunity...just in (1 of 5040)

[rogerdr]

I think the body of the message has been translated as "Rocks, dust, and no chicks? This place is boring as hell. Who fed me that last drink? Somebody get me the f%@& out of here!

"Mars" in Rover photos actually Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Squint at the latest Opportunity picture and you can just make out the Denny's sign.

Re: "Mars" in Rover photos actually Nevada

[Black Parrot]

> Squint at the latest Opportunity picture and you can just make out the Denny's sign.

The sign's a fake too -- due to budget cuts, they're simulating the Nevada set in India.

Two out of two isn't bad

[infolib]

- so how about reusing the Spirit/Opportunity platform for further robotic missions to Mars? They seem to work (somewhat) and the remaining problems will probably be ironed out. Has the time come for commodity Mars probes?

What's all you space geeks saying? Is there something we would really miss by using slightly modified versions of these landers that would justify development costs? Or is the question moot since Bush wants manned missions anyway?

Re:Two out of two isn't bad

[dellis78741]

The delivery system is essentially the same as used on the 1997 Pathfinder mission. Same cubic space, though some modifications to account for the greater weight. As for the rovers, I agree that they should try to standardize on a basic platform. Over time they could improve the instruments, power system, and onboard computer but the chassis could stay the same, reducing development and production costs.

the stuff

[relrelrel]

on the ground of that image is just fragmented bones of a dinosaur-like creation many years ago.

Memories....

[Rallion]

That picture does a ridiculously good job of reminding me of one of the Roger Wilco games, making me feel nostalgic and mising my younger days. I am now depressed, for they are gone forever.

Fuck you, NASA, you ruined my life.

Re:Memories....

[dafoomie]

Yeah, that looks like Kerona from Space Quest 1. Now we know what happened to Beagle 2, Roger Wilco must have picked it up and traded it in at Robots B We. Or he thought it was another death probe and dropped a giant bone on it.

Is it me?

[BTWR]

Or is the press just dying for some bad news? I mean, everyone knows the news saying "You report the one house on fire, no one reports the 10,000 that didn't burn today" (or something like that).

For the media, bad news is good news (storywise). Here we have unprecidented sucesses of the MERs (and Mars Express - within DAYS of working it has found evidence of it's top mission objective), and now there's all this press about the "failures."

Or has NASA been "asking for it," as they keep saying how "amazingly perfect" things are going, setting themselves up for scrutiny when they fail? My opinion: no, but what about you?

Re:Is it me?

[AndroidCat]

Plus every conspiracy kook gets their 15 minutes. (And not just on Slashdot.)

Re:Is it me?

[timeOday]

Well, one rover is incapacitated completely. The other has problems that may (but hopefully not) be a major problem. "Perfect" would be if both rovers had been successfully deployed and functioned as planned. That's not what happened.

I certainly hope Spirit can be rehabilitated; that in itself would be a triumph. On the other hand, ith the Rover's lifespan of 90 days or so, each day on Mars costs several million dollars. Each nonfunctional day makes the mission a day shorter and that much less successful.

I'm sure you're not suggesting that these things shouldn't be reported, so what's the problem?

Re:Is it me?

[Gogo Dodo]

The press is dying for bad news because bad news sells, unfortuantely. Watch your local news: the lead story is usually some murder, robbery, criminal act. It's never "happy" news.

Re:Is it me?

[DashEvil]

Today's news, channel 11.

---

10,000 houses were reported to be perfectly fine.
6,000,000 people were NOT killed today.
See your kid today? Don't worry, chances are Micheal Jackson DID NOT molest him due to media attention, although close sources are admitting that he has been watching an awful lot of rugrats with his pants off lately.

I can hear the envirowackos now!

[leftie_hater]

"Opportunity is contributing to global warming on Mars!"

Re:I can hear the envirowackos now!

[RetroGeek]

You are correct.

Re:I can hear the envirowackos now!

[elpapacito]

How exactly are they ? They're both running on solar panels.

Re:I can hear the envirowackos now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Americans. Not satisfied with causing global warming on Earth, you have to do it on Mars too.

Now the Beagle explorer is much more environmentally friendly. :)

Still it's a good thing there don't seem to be a million species on Mars. That's how many species non-American scientists believe will be wiped out on earth over the next 50 years by global warming.

Re:I can hear the envirowackos now!

[Ktulu_03]

Is there a reason why we can't land a rover at the polar ice caps to look in the ice for bacteria? It seems that (since life on earth can exist in the ice) that there's a chance microbes could live in the martian ice.

Re:I can hear the envirowackos now!

[RetroGeek]

AFAIK we need to land within a very narrow band around the equator for the solar panels. There is not enough light reaching the surface outside that band to power the rovers.

that thermostat may be conscious

[bhny]

there are actually some serious philisophical debates over whether thermostats are conscious

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/notes/lloyd-c om ments.html

Interesting

[loconet]

That outcrop of rocks does look intersting, but also familiar. Ealier verions of these?

Armageddon

[sik0fewl]

Has anybody seen the movie Armageddon?

Is this supposed to be some sort of sick joke? Let's just hope this doesn't mean the world is coming near its end.

Re:Armageddon

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anybody seen the movie Armageddon?

No.

Already being re-used

[shadowj]

so how about reusing the Spirit/Opportunity platform for further robotic missions to Mars?

The Spirit/Opportunity landing system is heavily based on the Pathfinder/Sojourner design. The parachute and airbags had to be beefed up to deal with the additional weight, and some other modifications were made based on what was learned the first time around, but it's basically the same. I understand that squeezing the much larger Spirit and Opportunity into the lander was not easy, which is why the probes arrive folded up like elaborate origami.

NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted then?

[CrackedButter]

I just downloaded a 4 meg image, they never heard of us or something?

Link need reg

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't get to the link:
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/New s/0,,2- 13-1443_1475118,00.html

can I use someone else's registration?

ok maybe it's just me

[shaitand]

But is anyone else looking at this pictures and thinking to themselves "damn I know it's nasa and a different world an all but pretty much ALL of the pictures look like they've been rendered in bryce and such".

Re:ok maybe it's just me

[Anonymous Coward]

no its just you.

Re:ok maybe it's just me

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe taken from the old Sci-fi films.

Re:First Post

[nertz_oi]

no no.

what you have is negative karma.

uh oh.... :-(

Nasa Covering up Martian Presence

[ryanw]

Notice on this website of the actual raw footage from the most recent panoramic picture from opportunity.
See the pictures that have large squares missing? Well, Nasa is taking out the spots where martians get in the frame. They really don't want to start mass hysteria. Can ya' blame em?

OK. I still don't understand.

[guibaby]

Could somebody please explain to me once again, loudly and slowly, why the sky and the out croppings are red.

Re:OK. I still don't understand.

[John Meacham]

mars has lots of iron oxide. the same thing as rusty iron, which is red. a lot of it is in the form of very very fine dust, much finer than you would find on earth and it gets blown into the air, making the sky red too.

Sedimentary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or do those rock formations look distinctly sedimentary? That may be the most interesting result from this mission so far...

I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[geekoid]

If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.

We need to set up an infrastructure before we send people.

I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order:
1)relay communication
2)track objects on the planet
3)Pictures.

we should also send a few big units full of supplies.

Then we should send people who Also have enough supplies to get there and back.
They should rotate supplies as new missions land

We should do experiments on building shelters from native materials.

That could mean caves, mines and/or adobe huts made from local materials.

Mars is really far away(yes you can quote me ;) and we need to think really big and long term.

I would also like to send 4 or five teams of 6, each about a month apart.

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.

And how many nuclear craft are currently flying? The correct answer is ZERO. Not because it isn't a good idea, but because of FUD surrounding nuclear technology. NASA can't even send up a few pounds of plutonium as a passive power source without everyone claiming we're all going to die.


I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order:
1)relay communication
2)track objects on the planet
3)Pictures.

Agreed. RTGs can keep satellites running for a long time (50 plus years). Ion engines can give them longer station keeping abilities. Nuclear engines can boost them there in a short time. We just need to develop these technologies instead of shelving them.

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

dude u r freakin retarded pls dont post anymore

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[Eivind]

Well, plutonium in space is perfectly safe. The tricky thing is the launch.

Plutonium is dangerous stuff. Best estimates is that inhalation or consumption of 0.08 mg is sufficient that half of the people who do so will die (mostly form cancer) within a decade.

Thus, your, for example, 5 pounds of plutnium is sufficient to kill around 30 milion people, if all of it ended up inside human bodies.

That is offcourse patently absurd, in practice even if the rocket where to catastrophically explode shortly after take-off, the large majority of the plutnoium would end up somewhere else than in human bodies.

I agree people sometimes overreact. But I still think it's wise to be somewhat careful with putting a substance capable of killing millions of people on the top of a hundreds of tons of highly explosive rocket-fuel. Yes 5 pounds of plutonium exploded over Florida would be more likely to kill thousands than millions, but so did 9/11, and you see what big a deal that was.

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Yes 5 pounds of plutonium exploded over Florida would be more likely to kill thousands than millions, but so did 9/11, and you see what big a deal that was.


Actually, it would be likely to kill far fewer. Plutonium doesn't float very well. Even Chernobyl has so far claimed only 14 lives from thyroid cancer (radioactive Iodine). Plutonium was not one of the biggest concerns. Oh, and a simple explosion isn't enough force to aerosolize plutonium. Russia even burned up some plutonium over Canada and the smallest piece was the size of a grain of sand. Granted, I wouldn't want to get hit on the head with it, but breathing it wasn't a problem.

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[Eivind]

Still, I take it you agree there's good reasons to be a little careful with strapping pounds of plutonium to the top of hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive rocket-fuel.

I don't think we really disagree that much. I agree that sometimes the environmental knee-jerk types go overboard. But I hope you also agree that sometimes the "Everything is Safe" types underestimate dangers which in the end turn out not to be so imaginary afterall.

Re:I've Said it before, and I'll say it again

[AKAImBatman]

Still, I take it you agree there's good reasons to be a little careful with strapping pounds of plutonium to the top of hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive rocket-fuel.

Of course. Anything will power deserves respect. I'm simply trying to point out that nuclear power is not somthing that should be singled out as world destroying. Most people think that being anywhere near plutonium will kill them all and mutate their children for 7 generations. The real truth is that it's no more dangerous than the chemicals in your cell phone/laptop/car battery. You treat battery acid with respect. Plutonium should be treated with the same respect.

Good scientific reason...

[Goonie]

While others can point to the romantic reasons for crewed missions (points I agree with, by the way), there are IMO good scientific reasons to send crewed missions.

Basically, a human crew, even with the disadvantage of space suits, could work a lot faster, cover a lot more territory, and try a far greater variety of scientific techniques than any robot probe, or large set of robot probes, could do.

Mag Suit

[sadler121]

Couldn't a suit be invitied that would completly line the suit with elctro-magnets? The suit would fit snuggly around the person. The ship would then be constructed with some kinda of electro magnatic field generator that could be controled by the computer to simulate gravity, accept, instead of using the weakest fource in the universe you would use one of the stronger forces. Of course the computers would have to be heavaly sheidled to keep you from erasing your HD, and other little nasty things like that. But if such a method could be worked out, the suit could stave off the problem of discreasing muscle mass on a long, "deep space" voyage. Just a thought...

I have a better idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

George W. Bush on Mars in 2004!

Bad Keyboard..

[flat235]

Tech 1: OK.. lets format it now..

Tech 2: Right - here goes..

Spirit Rover: Please choose filesystem:

1.) FAT16

2.) CLEVER_NASA_FS

Tech 1: Bah.. my "2" key is broken..

Tech 2: Cut and paste a "2" character from a website or something maybe?

Tech 1: To hell with it - it's never gonna get to Mars anyway..

Spirit Rover: FORMAT COMPLETE

We're already there

[Anonymous Coward]

We're already there man. How much more are 'we' there if we send a human? There's billions of us here on the planet, so whether we send a presence as a small fleet of robots or a small fleet of humans, 'we're' no more or less 'there'.

Playing Geology?

[toxic666]

You can't differnetiate the mineralogy of a wind-deposited from a water-deposited rock? Umm, might want to try playing a new game. Or, take some sophomore geology courses. Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, Petrology and Mineralogy and Crystallography would be a good start.

Granted, the source minerals are a little different on Mars, but the instrumentation will tell us what they are in detail. But any competent geologist can make that determination by the Junior year in school.

Open Source the Rover Code ?

[ntsucks]

Why doesn't NASA Open Source this rover code? Not for the outside world to contribute to the development, but for review. The collective intelligence of the open source community could certainly provide productive and insightful reviews. Perhaps problems such as file management could be avoided. At the very least the open souce community would be able to document weak points in the design that could be improved or avoided in production use.

Its not like this is proprietary, for-profit code. I helped paid for it. Its for the good of all mankind.

If nothing else, I would love the chance to learn something from NASA. The rover code might be as beautiful as the images coming back (or not!).

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[dellis78741]

VxWorks, the software from Wind River used to run the Rovers, is proprietary commercial code. You want it, you pay them.

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what I've seen of it, it's nasty, layers on layers of functions. It's like dealing with NT device drivers. You have to go through a maze of API's to get to the hardware.

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they had a situation where the cached directory files in memory got corrupted due to an excess number of files. IMHO the fact that they don't have a fixed number or fixed set of files on the system is a design flaw. If I were to have reviewed the design I would have pointed this out as a weakness (prone to problems) and objected to it.

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[DerekLyons]

Why doesn't NASA Open Source this rover code? Not for the outside world to contribute to the development, but for review. The collective intelligence of the open source community could certainly provide productive and insightful reviews.

Why? Because it's unlikely that the open source community will provide much in the way of useful commentary. They don't have simulators to run the code on. And I find it unlikely that they will spend the months needed to understand a complex, tightly integrated, and utterly specialized set of code.

Perhaps problems such as file management could be avoided.

Probably not. The problems are caused because the real rovers have done something the test rovers haven't... They've run for months on end, whereas the test rovers and computers are frequently rebooted to reset for a new test sequence.

At the very least the open souce community would be able to document weak points in the design that could be improved or avoided in production use.

Maybe, maybe not. For the reasons I list above, I doubt the open source community will educate themselves deeply enough on the design to actually be useful. (O.K., one or two uber-geeks might, but that would be it. And, like often happens on open source fora like Slashdot, the few useful comments would be buried among the noise.)

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[Anonymous Coward]

its a learning tool. sure we may not provide anything useful but who said we had to ? NASA developed teh code with our tax dollars, they might as well give it back to us.

Re:Open Source the Rover Code ?

[OriginalArlen]

No. As is now well-known the rovers are running Wind River vxWorks, a commercial, proprietary, closed source environment. True, you helped pay for it (I guess you're an American who still pays what stands in for taxes over there) but you bought a closed commerical product. You don't get to see the source any mpore than you would expect to get a Windows source CD in the XP shrinkwrap.

This may be only my opinion

[Crypto Gnome]

But personally I think we need to revisit that thead which goes

NASA is pink-ing out the skies so that we can't see futur-istic (to our eyes) Martian City-Scapes off in the distance

Much as I hate to whine about the quality of reporting here on The Slash.

This is *really* getting to be the site for

• NASA released more photos => New Article
• SCO released more unbelievale crapola => New Article
• Micosoft published 'independant researching' touting Microsoft => New Article

EVEN when they're DUPLICATE POSTINGS (at least once imediately following each other).

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[the frizz]

No they're not.

I work at Speedera who is delivering their content and NASA TV. At 6pm EST when slashdot posted this story the traffic increased only about 100Mbps. Articles posted on AOL, MSN and Yahoo home pages increase the traffic much more. The NASA TV live stream when Opportunity landed was 4 Gbps. There are lots of other sources that are bigger than the slashdot effect.

See the press release for more details on the traffic and our SpeedRank index for historical performance and availabilty of NASA's site.

Re:Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate

[RetroGeek]

This picture explains everything.

There are aliens on Mars!

If they were FROM Mars, they would'nt need helmets, doncha see

Not my favorite OS

[Uncle Barnard's Star]

One thing's for sure. The won't be any software flame wars over which crappy OS is running the Mars show. Hint: it's from neither Washington (state) nor Finland.

Does that look organized to anyone else?

[Oz0ne]

From a distance, at a glance, all those slabs of bedrock there look like a row of building foundations, a little map sort of.

Yay Martians!

Re:Does that look organized to anyone else?

[rogerdr]

I've been keeping tabs on an ongoing archaeological dig in Luxor, Egypt and the odd thoughts HAVE crossed my mind...

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[CrackedButter]

Thanks, thats a real informative post.

Which filesystem...

[dvd_tude]

... do they use on the rovers? Anyone know?

Re:Let's hope the new rover doesn't meet this fate

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Yes, but what if they live underground ?

HAHA SLASHDOTTED - MOD THIS KARMA WHORE DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

What's so fucking funny about this? We see about 4 of these whenever someone posts a link and you's rate them +5 funny. Bloody narcissistic nerds, get a friggin life.

New Product

[Spleen]

Today Novell announced a new product. Zenworks for Rovers. ZFR will provide NASA's Rover hardware with filesystem policies to manage flash memory, and power consumption policies to avoid powerups during off business hours.

cn=spirit, ou=rovers, ou=mars, o=space
cn=opportunity, ou=rovers, ou=mars, o=space

Powered by E-Directory.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you know the apollo moon landings were faked.

Strange formation...

[oaklybonn]

I wonder if I'm the first idiot to notice that in the "Full Color" picture, it looks an awful lot like a dinosaur skeleton, (rib cage, head.)

Its on the far right hand side of the image, moving to the left, you see the "tail", "ribcage" and "head" as you scan to the left.

Of course, I'm still not as big an idiot as these guys.

Interested in more Live NASA Coverage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on some discussions in the Maestro IRC channel,
I started a petition suggesting that NASA provide more
coverage from JPL Mission Control.

If you would like to read and possibly sign the petition, please see:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mercov/petition.html

It's really not that bad

[Flavio]

Jennifer Trosper said that Spirit should be up in a couple of weeks, and it's quite probable that it will be fully functional.

Steve Squyres mentioned a few times that during planning NASA estimated that 1 in every 3 days would be lost due to technical issues. Therefore, the time wasted isn't that big a deal, specially since no days were lost beforehand with Spirit (and none so far with Opportunity).

Also, 90 days is the design's minimal requirement (or as Squyres said, "when the warranty expires"). Due to the many safety margins used to design all subsystems, the actual lifespan is estimated to exceed that considerably.

Jurassic Park 5?

[telstar]

"The first three-dimensional, panoramic images beamed back from Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock"

• Is it just me, or does that exposed bedrock look like a giant T-Rex fossil?

Re:Jurassic Park 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just you, but umm.. can i get some of that amazing crack you're smoking?

i want to know, what distro are they using on mars

[kraksmoka]

come on, i'm sure there's some less than anonymous *nix variant running these rovers. are they using ssh or telnet? what other custom tools are going on in there? surely somebody knows! do tell, this is your time to gloat over your favorite distro!

The Spirit is willing but the Flash is weak

[Anonymous Coward]

old joke?

Stupid Question Language is the Best!

[smittyoneeach]

SELECT right( band_name, 5 )
FROM tbl_band
WHERE band_name = 'Aerosmith';

-1 offtopic, but fun

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'net doesnt revolve around slashdot. There are maybe 25k pear shaped losers reading slashdot worldwide. Just because geekylinuxstuffthatcoolpeopledontcareabout.com can't handle a link from slashdot doesn't mean that you actually have any real power. Start worrying about your hygene or getting up the courage to say hi to a female instead of NASA's bandwidth. Loser.

ZZzzZZzz

[slittle]

He obviously wasn't talking about the movie...

Re:ZZzzZZzz

[ehiris]

Blame Kubrick for making you fall asleep at the movie. The book is a lot better in that sense. The movie just has nice images for its time. It took me at least 20 attempts to sits through the whole movie without falling asleep. And when I did sit through it, it was on a Sunday at noon after I had 3 expresso shots.

I call BS show me your facts

[codepunk]

Three years where did you get that figure from??? Tell me again what date spirit and opportunity where launched, I thought so just talking out your ass.

Re:I call BS show me your facts

[F'Nok]

First of all, those craft did not have to support life, nor have ALL THE EQUIPMENT OR FOOD needed to do so. Do you know how much more that would increase the mass of the space craft? How about shielding for ambient radiation? Which, still will not fully protect from a solor flare burst unless it's quite thick. And then the craft is so large and heavy that the quantity of fuel required to reach those speeds is FAR greater, thus, the craft must go slower.

That's ONE reason why three years.

How about the fact that the g forces created when accelerating to approx 20,000 kph would KILL any humans on board? Robot don't have that problem, so they can get there much faster!

Let's say we accelerate at the speed of 5g's. Let's do the math...

Who do you know that will survive over 3 minutes of 5g's? Oh, wait a sec, I forgot to factor in the turbulance generated which would mash your organs in the process.
That's assuming you have the fuel to do so, that you can protect the crew, that you can feed them, exercise them, support them etc...
No, nuclear propulsion is NOWHERE NEAR sophisticated enough to do this, why do you think they use HYDROGEN!? What do you think happens in a rocket? Perfect sailing? You think a reactor will run perfectly fine while it's being shaken around by acceleration and turbulance?

SPINNING craft? How much larger do you want them?
We cannot build craft of such size, because to take advantage of centrifugal force in that use you nede a good distance between the centre and the rim. Otherwise the crew feel ill (due to the misperception of the inner ear). Not to mention the force variance actually across the body!

With current technology it is NOT POSSIBLE to SAFELY send people to Mars. It'll be done soon enough (10-15 years perhaps) but right now, you are very wrong.

Re:I call BS show me your facts

[AKAImBatman]

Do you know how much more that would increase the mass of the space craft?

Yes. Does 6 million pounds sound large enough for you? How about 8 million tons? It's possible to launch 6 million pounds with a GCNR craft. Once in LEO, the same engines can give even better performance (since they don't have to work against air resistance). Orion (this needs quite a bit of development) could give us an 8 million TON craft for space travel. Even if you go with NERVA, you have 2-4 times the thrust of today's engines. GCNR gives you 6-20 times the thrust.

How about the fact that the g forces created when accelerating to approx 20,000 kph would KILL any humans on board? Robot don't have that problem, so they can get there much faster!

Let's say we accelerate at the speed of 5g's. Let's do the math...

Why on Earth (sorry, space) would you want to accelerate at 5Gs? Constant acceleration at 1/4 G would be sufficient to get to Mars in months. No need to light off a firecracker under your ass.

No, nuclear propulsion is NOWHERE NEAR sophisticated enough to do this, why do you think they use HYDROGEN!?

This makes no sense. They use Hydrogen because it's a very common gas, with a lot of energy to expend. GCNR and NERVA can actually use quite a few other types of fuels (e.g. oxygen, xenon, nitrogen, etc.). There's research going on to find which fuel is the most efficient.

The more exotic propulsions don't even bother with hydrogen. Nuclear Salt Rockets use a Uranium salt water solution as propellant. Orion uses atomic bombs. (Okay, so if they used H-Bombs, they would have to use some hydrogen.)

What do you think happens in a rocket? Perfect sailing? You think a reactor will run perfectly fine while it's being shaken around by acceleration and turbulance?

Are we talking launch or space travel? In the former, the reactor is going to have to be built to withstand vibrations. This is nothing new. Carriers and submarines already have to take precautions against the reactors being shaken. In the later, there's no vibration, because there's no turbulence. No air, remember? And the engines are a bit more sophisticated. The gases are heated until they become plasma, then are exhausted out the rear at a high velocity. Most of the plasma will stay in containment, so there really isn't much vibration produced by this method.
(I'm assuming GCNR or NERVA. Orion and Nuclear Salt will vibrate plenty, but they have no reactors to speak of.)

SPINNING craft? How much larger do you want them?

I'll take "6 million pounds or larger" for 300, Alex.

With current technology it is NOT POSSIBLE to SAFELY send people to Mars. It'll be done soon enough (10-15 years perhaps) but right now, you are very wrong.

Anyone who's done the research, knows that we have the technology. The greatest thing holding us back, is the fear of nuclear power. There's no other method to produce megawatts of power from tens of pounds of fuel. Nuclear can do it, we just have to embrace it.

We have the engines to make it possible. What more do you want?

I guess they forgot to cron logrotate

[codepunk]

Booo haa haa haa haaa...

I found an article about GCNR development

[WormholeFiend]

http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_gen_legacy.htm

contains quite a few interesting photos and illustrations too

Brutal Honesty here

[Anonymous Coward]

" Why doesn't NASA Open Source this rover code? Not for the outside world to contribute to the development, but for review"

You won't like this answer...

Because unless you're intimately involved with the project, there's little you can do. You're not experienced enough with the Rover to tell what is wrong.

But more significantly, if they asked every chubby cheeked geek to check out the code, there may be one in a million that's right. But that means they have 999,999 other things that aren't right, and they have no way to tell which is the correct fix.

So while I think your spirit is admirable, I think you're whistling dixie on this one.

Don't argue with him

[Anonymous Coward]

He think's he's saving the earth.

You'd be better off saving your breath and typing and saving it for a conversation with a human.

Monetary Reason? Trade

[DoubleReed]

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't those explorers (or their backers) pimpin it with the big $$$ from trade?

Mod me down immediately!

[graveyardduckx]

Does this mean there's a "Love in a Space Elevator" single coming?

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to work on the NASA TV feed. Connections to NASA TV have not been good during peak times. Starts off great, dies after about 10 seconds.

America needs more scientists/engineers

[Pod_Bay_Doors]

Surprise, surprise...another Mars mission which will likely end in failure. Our colleges are just cranking out too many worthless Humanities and Computer Science majors. Knowledge of Java programming and Shakespearean plays won't put American astronauts on the Moon. We need to start producing more physicists/engineers, and FAST. If we don't get our act together, Chinese taikonauts will be eating sushi on Olympus Mons while the dying Theocratic States of America struggles to launch its last working rockets into low-Earth orbit.

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[CrackedButter]

You sterotype me but don't know me but base your whole perception of me on a few words i typed... yeah.

Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the

[cheekyboy]

Maybe your ISP is crapola, even outside usa, 12000miles away, I still got a decent 'signal' and constant 150kbps viewing.

Stop using AOL.

Here's a coupon

[Cappy Red]

This is redeemable for exactly one imagination and one half sense of adventure, or one sense of adventure and one half of an imagination. Those of us who think this kind of thing is cool apologize for the veiled and unveiled flame, and hope you will enjoy whichever combination you choose.

Exchangable cash value for this coupon is one hundredth of a cent($0.0001)

*honk*

heheh - will .info registrar suppress this too?

[RomColonel]

At least we now know what happened to Beagle 2. Poor Martian! "Bidibidibi...[thunk]...mrfmrfmrf If landing a probe (if not an anal probe) on Mars appears such a problematic procedure...are we really ready to start risking human lives trying land on the red (or not so red) planet. I wonder if the Bush administration or NASA have considered that whatever lands also has to be able to take off again afterwards. Air Filled condoms will not be a sufficient method of landing and, er...re-entry.

Tripulated mission to Mars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea!...

But...

What if...

The people of Mars don't want to be "visited"?

bigger next time

[WormholeFiend]

let's send a nuclear powered SUV-sized rover!

what i would like to see

[madpierre]

A joint ESA/NASA Martian lander/rover mission.

The Beagles science payload could be modified to work
with a NASA designed lander/rover. It would be a pity
to waste all the R&D that went into the design of the
Beagle instrumentation and NASA would probably have a
better chance of safely landing the kit on Mars.

If that happened...

[DrMorpheus]

...I'd wet my pants with joy. I think I wouldn't be alone, either.