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Rovers May Survive Martian Winter
yokem_55 writes "According to this article on Yahoo News, Mars rover engineers are beginning to consider the possibility that the rovers may be able to survive the oncoming Martian winter in a hibernation mode, and then return to activity when spring returns to the red planet. The article ends with a quote from Steve Squires speculating that, 'we're looking at the final demise of these vehicles perhaps as late as the onset of our second winter on Mars.'"
It is utterly inhumane to send them to Mars without building a hut for it to hibernate through the winter.
Dude! it is a robot!
IT FUCKING FLEW THROUGH MILLIONS OF MILES OF SPACE.
They're NASA, you're just some chump behind a computer.
Lets just hope they park them somewhere out of the worst of the weather. Oh, and that they remembered to pack the jump leads.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
As a system admin/engineer/operater etc etc, the wait for something to come up again, and seeing something like the following is a nice and satisfying feeling:
.......
Rover>ping -t mars_rover
Pinging mars_rover with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.2: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.2: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.2: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.2:
Packets: Sent = 9, Received = 4, Lost = 5 (55% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 6ms, Average = 3ms
Well, I hope _somebody_ remembered to pack the snow chains...?
You know it doesn't sound half as funny as it did 20 years ago, stuck in an overladen Volvo estate halfway up a French mountain with night closing in.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
I always wanted to play with a teleguided car too, when I was little.
Damn *%$!%& Santa never brought one.....sob...
should have wings so they can fly south in the winter and then back again in spring.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Hey tell Nasa that to survice the winters on mars they only have to get some guy to go into the mountain where the alien machine is placed. But your hand on some funny looking device with a hand holder thing. once your hand goes in the hand holder thing the machine will melt all the stored ice and create an atmosphere.
Duh!!
You would think they would have seen "Total Recall" already, what have they been doing?
I wonder if the Martians will think they're some kind of strange tortoise, and put them away in a cardboard box?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
When I read this, the first thing to pop into my mind was the theme song from Gilligan's Island: "A three hour tour..."
-?-
LaForge gets some wise but unwanted advice from Scotty. Scotty: Do ye mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now, and they want it their way. But the secret is to give only what they need, not what they want! LaForge: Yeah, well I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour. Scotty: And how long would it really take? LaForge: An hour! Scotty: Oh, ye didn't tell him how long it would really take, did ye? LaForge: Well, of course I did. Scotty: Oh, laddie, ye've got a lot to learn if ye want people to think of ye as a miracle worker! --Relics
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Are they fully comp, or third-party only? If the latter, do NASA know something we don't!?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
A few weeks back the guys over at Car Talk had a call from a guy who wanted some advice on how to properly prepare his vehicle for winter.
They asked him what type of car it was, he said it was a kit car. "How much did the kit cost?" they asked. "Oh, about 450 million dollars." replied the caller.
Yes, an engineer from JPL was calling to get some tongue-in-cheek advice on what to do to keep the rovers safe over the martian winter.
It was pretty cool.
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
Winter, not-so-winter, spring, not-so-spring, summer, not-so-summer, autumn, damn-cold-here-time.
"Sir! We have lost contact with the probes!"
"Oh no! The mission is in jeopardy! Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted!"
"But there is some good news, sir."
"Really? What?"
"We saved a bunch of money on the insurance by switching to Geico!"
=Smidge=
They will survive by eating beagle...
Should know that underscores are forbidden in hostnames...
As much as you'd like to say this, the links you later provide make ABSOLUTELY no reference to NASA taking out insurance. NASA's probably "self insured" as in they handle such a large portion of space launches etc, that it makes no sense to get third party insurance.
Furthermore, your oh so cunning plan argument falls even FURTHER apart when you take into account that these sorts of policies are for launches, which are the points at which they are most likely to fail. If the launch goes off well then the insurance policy is over, regardless of whether or not they advertise their mission as being 1 month, or 1 year.
Also, they could always just insure it for 1 month, IF you were right anyways, which you're not.
Finally, the insurance policies are for businesses who want to make a profit and must exhibit some measure of prudence.
If you really want to be such an ass to that other person who responded to you, you should at least be able to back up some of the mindless, pointy-haired boss bullshit that you want to spout out. Saying things like I'm smart don't go very far anywhere, particularly when followed by idiotic statements that you can't back up.
You know you've got a good marketing campaign when everyone is writing the contents of the ads for you.