Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the congrats-from-the-news-nerds-to-the-nasa-nerds dept.
tvh2k writes "CNN reports that both the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity are now both fully functional. Working on opposite sides of the red planet, they have begun analyzing rock and soil samples."
Ah, but the Vikings only had a very small power requirement. The only things electricity were needed for were the intruments. The rovers need to move under their own power. Futhermore solar panels are cheaper and simpler and lighter.
At lastly, since they only have enough money to pay people to run them for a couple months, why design a rover to last years?
-- Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Re:Very good news
by
Cosmonut
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
NASA/JPL learned their lesson when the Mars Polar Lander disappeared. Most Mars probes up until then had actually consisted of two spacecraft (the Mariner series and Viking 1/2) simply for redundancy; if your launch failed or the spacecraft blew up (Mars Observer, anyone?) there was a complete second set of spacecraft hardware available.
With two rovers that redundancy is back, and at the same time you can target them into two different landing zones on Mars, doubling your data sampling if they both survive.
Congrats to NASA - robust programming
by
192939495969798999
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
That is a herculean programming effort -- it's not like you can go up there and push "reset" on the robots when something doesn't work. NASA continually pushes the limits of computers to make these projects work within budget, and I look forward to the public release of some new tools and data from the rocks! I hope for their sake, we find a fossil or something like that -- no more budget problems for NASA...or would there be?
Props to NASA
by
smittyoneeach
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Pretty easy for the armchair engineers to opine, but I wonder if all non-trivial projects simply paraphrase Clausewitz to read "No non-trivial project survives contact with reality".
Props to these guys for having a design that allows remote repair in the event of the unforseeable.
-- Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Why the hell not? Just remember, those fourth graders will one day be adults. Adults that are going to have influence, one way or another. Perhaps the child in question, inspired by this, will go on to be an astronaut?
While the great scientists of old (and young) have their place, we have to think of the future, too.
Master/slave would have less than one quarter the reliability, and cooperation doesn't work if one is going haywire (as did Spirit).
Different frequencies is good, but if they are close together and picked up the the same transponder (a likely scenario), a difference in amplititude could mess up the auto gain control and you'd lose the quiet one. A difference in amplitude could be caused by a number of reasons - poor aim, weak transmitter batteries, haywire transmit power setting, or a special max-power emergency reach-home mode. If the transmitters are frequency-agile (by design or accident), then they could still accidently transmit on the same frequency.
Physical seperation is your best bet if you want signifcant bandwidth and want the most flexibility to recover from a variety of failure modes.
It vindicates "them"
by
FreeUser
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
people who don't seem to have read anything by George Orwell?
"They" have almost certainly read and understood George Orwell only too well. "They're" simply counting on relatively few of the unwashed masses having read George Orwell, or to have comprehended it if they have.
Given current political events in the United States, and the persistent popularity of its president among said unwashed masses despite his appalling history in office thus far, "they" seem to be quite correct in this assumption.
What difference does it make if you and I snicker at the Orwellian names our space missions are routinely given, or the pithy propoganda that accompanies every "3...2...1...ignition" sequence (the "of [whatever] in another [whatever] for [whatever]" that always gets tagged on to the countdown these days), so long as 9 out of 10 vegitative Americans take it seriously, and more than half of America is vegatative?
To summarize: "TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST, 9/11, 9/11, God Bless America"
Re:Very good news
by
argStyopa
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
principle of government procurement: why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price
I'd mod this -1, ignorant. Generally with advanced projects like this the cost is hardly 1=N, 2=2N. The first one might cost a ton, but the second one, being a simple duplication of parts and methods developed for the first, is far, far cheaper (sometimes as much as an order of magnitude).
But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a pointless swipe at The Government?
Slashdot Mirror
The problems the rovers have had have cut into thier research time - due to the dust build up on thier respective solar panels.
Nasa, next time take a lessen from the past and harness the power of the atom - the Viking probes lasted for years.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
NASA/JPL learned their lesson when the Mars Polar Lander disappeared. Most Mars probes up until then had actually consisted of two spacecraft (the Mariner series and Viking 1/2) simply for redundancy; if your launch failed or the spacecraft blew up (Mars Observer, anyone?) there was a complete second set of spacecraft hardware available. With two rovers that redundancy is back, and at the same time you can target them into two different landing zones on Mars, doubling your data sampling if they both survive.
That is a herculean programming effort -- it's not like you can go up there and push "reset" on the robots when something doesn't work. NASA continually pushes the limits of computers to make these projects work within budget, and I look forward to the public release of some new tools and data from the rocks! I hope for their sake, we find a fossil or something like that -- no more budget problems for NASA...or would there be?
stuff |
Pretty easy for the armchair engineers to opine, but I wonder if all non-trivial projects simply paraphrase Clausewitz to read "No non-trivial project survives contact with reality".
Props to these guys for having a design that allows remote repair in the event of the unforseeable.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Why the hell not? Just remember, those fourth graders will one day be adults. Adults that are going to have influence, one way or another. Perhaps the child in question, inspired by this, will go on to be an astronaut?
While the great scientists of old (and young) have their place, we have to think of the future, too.
Master/slave would have less than one quarter the reliability, and cooperation doesn't work if one is going haywire (as did Spirit).
Different frequencies is good, but if they are close together and picked up the the same transponder (a likely scenario), a difference in amplititude could mess up the auto gain control and you'd lose the quiet one. A difference in amplitude could be caused by a number of reasons - poor aim, weak transmitter batteries, haywire transmit power setting, or a special max-power emergency reach-home mode. If the transmitters are frequency-agile (by design or accident), then they could still accidently transmit on the same frequency.
Physical seperation is your best bet if you want signifcant bandwidth and want the most flexibility to recover from a variety of failure modes.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
people who don't seem to have read anything by George Orwell?
"They" have almost certainly read and understood George Orwell only too well. "They're" simply counting on relatively few of the unwashed masses having read George Orwell, or to have comprehended it if they have.
Given current political events in the United States, and the persistent popularity of its president among said unwashed masses despite his appalling history in office thus far, "they" seem to be quite correct in this assumption.
What difference does it make if you and I snicker at the Orwellian names our space missions are routinely given, or the pithy propoganda that accompanies every "3...2...1...ignition" sequence (the "of [whatever] in another [whatever] for [whatever]" that always gets tagged on to the countdown these days), so long as 9 out of 10 vegitative Americans take it seriously, and more than half of America is vegatative?
To summarize: "TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST, 9/11, 9/11, God Bless America"
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
principle of government procurement: why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price
I'd mod this -1, ignorant.
Generally with advanced projects like this the cost is hardly 1=N, 2=2N.
The first one might cost a ton, but the second one, being a simple duplication of parts and methods developed for the first, is far, far cheaper (sometimes as much as an order of magnitude).
But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a pointless swipe at The Government?
-Styopa