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Mars Rovers on New Missions
mycro writes "According to CNN, the Mars rovers are on a brand new mission. Because the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers are in such great condition and 'keep going and going', NASA will be using them for a longer period of time to study water, rocks, and formations on Mars." An anonymous reader writes "Today NASA has given its Opportunity rover a green light to enter the steep Endurance crater. Looking at deeper martian bedrock layers is considered now a rich enough science payoff to weigh favorably against the real chance that the rover cannot get back out of the crater."
Also every action the rovers take place them in danger, so there's risk associated with every day of their existance - if they get stuck, it's not like there's anyone there to pull them off a rock or turn them back over.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
The solar panels get covered with dust, and NASA has investigated solutions to stop that even using windshield washer type things and what not... all the solutions turned out to be worthless, impractical, and a waste of weight... NASA likes to equip multiple backup systems and they simply can't with that. Ultimately the solar panel cannot collect enough power and the battery dies... Mars isn't exactly a very nice enviroment to work in either... dust storms that last for days or longer...
Home robotics kits couldn't do nearly anything these guys do... We would have to send HUNDREDs of home robotics kits to even get close to the results of a couple of our rovers... The failure rate would be higher on those kits too...
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
From the pictures in the link it doesn't look that difficult to get a rover into - I think the main problem is traction when trying to get it out.
According to NASA they're aluminium wheels and their main purpose looks like it was to absorb the shock and go over rocks than get the traction required to climb back out of a crater.
I'd imagine they have quite a bit of weight behind them too...
You must be kidding. With all those ships moving around, do you think oceans are nice and clean? The bottom is full of muck, dead animals, plants and lots of junk. Check this Guardian article about what's happening to Titanic because of all the rubbish.
Just think of all the children that could have been fed with this $400 million. :( Or all the landmines that could be removed. Instead, we get playtoys for stupid white men. Micheal Moore needs to do his next expose on "science".
Why do these comments always come up when NASA's budget is neglible compared to others? In the big picture, NASA's funding has given them a hard time to find things already, since the government need the money for military funding. Oops, weren't you just argumenting against these things?
The Federal Pie Chart
NASA gets in total $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2004. Compare that to the billions in the pie chart above.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
a) the thing blows up in launch before you get it out into space. = some shit on the bottom of a sea bed somewhere (yes I know there is little risk of it going into the atmosphere.)
They're in really, really tough boxes. If your booster explodes, you comb through the debris, find the RTG still intact in its box, and recycle it --- they're expensive. (This has actually happened.)
b) you get nuclear waste "stuck" somewhere on top of a rock.
It's in a really, really tough box. It's not going anywhere and it won't leak.
c) you use a shortcut with nuclear fuel. Sure it might be better "now" but in principle running things of solar is damned fine engineering. Not only that, but any tech advancements that are made for space (remember the public is paying for all your little space toys, while people starve no less) can filter down to people everywhere.
I'm sorry, this paragraph makes no sense. RTGs are made of nuclear fuel, that's how they work. Yes, solar panels are good engineering, but RTGs are far more suitable for solving the job at hand. Yes, the public is paying, but space exploration is a pathetically tiny amount of money compared to what's spent on welfare or the armed forces, and the extra knowledge gained by extending the lifespan of the probe probably outweighs the (tiny) extra expense. Yes, technology trickles down, but solar panels are fundamentally only useful for certain specialised tasks on Earth, and they're approaching the theoretical maximum efficiency anyway; there are a lot of tasks for which RTGs --- even on Earth --- would be really handy. And there isn't any research being done into those because people think 'nuclear' rhymes with 'evil'.
I'm afraid everything you've said indicates that you've bought into the anti-nuclear propaganda. Try doing some research and getting an opinion of your own.
This has been discussed to death. The people working on these rovers are very smart, and they surely thought of this idea. Wiper blades imply a hefty wiper-blade subsystem, meaning less weight available to devote to other subsystems. Moreover, the solar cells are merely the first system likely to fail; find a way to keep them alive indefinitely, and you find something else that will die (such as the rechargeable batteries) in short order.
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