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Huygens Probe Lands on Titan
WillDraven writes "CNN, NASA and the ESA are reporting that the Huygens space probe has entered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan after traveling 2.2 billion miles. Pictures from the moon's surface should be available sometime this afternoon" according to the NASA TV schedule. What we know so far is that Huygens landed successfully and sent at least the carrier signal from the surface to Cassini for 90+ minutes, more than expected, and that Cassini has successfully repointed at the Earth and begun relaying the data it received, beginning with test packets. Huygens now sits on Titan, silent forever, while we wait to see whether or how much valuable data Cassini obtained and can send back. Update: 01/14 17:20 GMT by M : So far: they report zero lost packets in the transmission, but one of the two independent data-collection systems is apparently giving some problems. Update: 01/14 21:40 GMT by J : The news is pretty much all good: a very successful mission. Expect to see many photos within hours, but for now apparently only three have been released. Ice blocks or rolling stones -- let the debates begin!
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger. Many men and women died (yes, tragically) in those eras exploring the great unknown. But without their sacrifice, we would never have been able to accomplish what we have (please no "settling the new world = genocide" lectures).
Apollo 1, The Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia's losses were all tragic. And I am NOT saying that their loss should be shrugged off as "eh, someone had to die to explore space." What I am saying is that we as humans needed to grow and explore space, much as the Europeans needed to grow and explore beyond their continent. When there was a tragic event in colonial exploration (Jamestown), those people learned from their mistake and tried again and usually succeeded. When we fail today, we usually cower up and shut down all exploration for a half-decade or so.
Hell, look at how these stupid hippies tried to stop Cassini from ever occuring. They were so afraid of the 0.001% chance of Cassini crashing into Earth (which itself had a fraction of a percent chance of actually contaminating the planet with any plutonium) that they wanted the entire mission shut down.
Scared people like this, afraid to take chances are what almost kept us from everything glorious we're learning today and everything we will learn from Cassini tomorrow. And most scary, these people and all others who are afraid of taking chances have kept us from learning from all the cancelled missions and missions that will never be in the future because it's always "better safe than sorry" to them.
The first entrepreneurs able to get into space efficiently have a large supply of trophies and memorabilia available for salvaging!
I hope that the homesteaders on Earth's moon have the integrity to set up a barrier around the Apollo 11 landing site, that is one patch of tracks in the dust and debris that I would consider sacred.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Sorry for the periods,
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Projects like this drive technology and that makes the quality of life on this planet better. Sure there may be a more efficient way to spend this money, but the space program is not a waste. Space age technologies are applied to agriculture, climatology and energy production. All things third world countries can use improvements on.
Besides, just try and tell me how the people of Indonesia would be better off without Velcro and Tang?
-dynamo
Try again. There are two reasons space exploration stagnated: war and money. We had great plans once, but between tax cuts and lack of commercial reason to explore there just isn't money to move quickly.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
A couple of questions here. I'm sure you're aware that plutonium is highly radioactive and among the most lethal toxic substances known to man. Lets agree that it's bad stuff to let loose in the environment. So the question is one of risk mittigation and management. Are the scientific gains from launching RTG powered probes throughout the solar system worth the risk of plutonium contamination due to a launch disaster? Launch failures occurr pretty regularly, so we know that regular use of RTG technology in space probes will mean environmental contamination at some point. So how bad would one failure be? How about two? Five? Good questions worth debating. Or do you argue that only "stupid hippies" concern themselves with risk management?
Please note that risking the lives of a space capsule full of men, who take on that risk willingly, is quite different from risking civilians without their knowledge or consent. --M
The designers of these probes and landers are really outdoing themselves. Look at the two landers on Mars that are WELL past their guaranteed time. I wonder if they purposely make them work well beyond their guaranteed time just to 'show off' or something.
Everything has failsafes. For instance, suppose you're powering down the runway in a Boeing 777, just about fast enough to take off, and the nose of the plane starts to lift.
Suddenly, the right engine fails. There isn't enough runway left for the plane to safely slow down and stop. Oh god, you're going to die, right?
Nope, the plane is built to be able to take off even if an engine fails. So under normal circumstances, the plane actually has far more power than it needs, because it's designed to continue to function safely even when severely compromised. The designers aren't "showing off", they're building in intelligent failsafes.
It's the same deal with spaceships, only far moreso because it's been years since the probe has had a mechanic available to look at it. It has to work, even millions of miles away from home in incredibly hostile conditions and years since its last tune up.
So the designers build redundancy and failsafes into everything. The spacecraft should be able to handle the failure of a number of systems and be able to keep right on ticking, although of course it may suffer reduced capability as a result.
In the case of Huygens, it has more batteries than it needed to carry out its mission. Batteries can fail, or not perform as efficiently as they were expected to. So you slap an extra one in, just in case. Apparently the batteries all performed well, so the probe ended up surviving significantly longer than it was "supposed to".
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
While your explanation is surely correct, one cannot ignore Fort Knox's point either. As the astronauts in _The Right Stuff_ observed, space exploration is fueled by money - political money. And the NASA-type dudes got burned early on by over-promising. So yes, I think they do build in a fairly large margin, then under-promise and over-deliver. Customers are always happier when you do that, particuarly politicians who only have an attention span of 3 news cycles (72 hours).
sPh
Admittedly there has been no case of spacecraft trying to slingshot but hitting the planet instead. Therefore the risk seems reasonably low. I still think the proper cautious approach is to use other planets for the slingshots until we know that RTG containment actually works at those speeds.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I am so pissed off right now I can hardly speak!
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?