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DART Succumbs to Fuel Problems
qw0ntum writes "The AP reports that NASA's experimental DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) spacecraft mission ended early when the craft's onboard computers detected a fuel-system problem. The craft, which was entirely computer-controlled, came within 300 feet of its target rendezvous target, a Pentagon satelite, before detecting the problem. Despite the failure, mission leaders 'called the mission a partial success because it demonstrated that an entirely computer-controlled craft could find a satellite in space.'"
The most important part of the mission was accomplished. This sounds hard to believe since the mission it was supposed to perform appeared to be simple: go up, find a satellite, fly around it a couple of times, and then go away. What most news sites fail to mention is that DART was designed to find the satellite without ground or space support. Just GPS.
The proving that GPS alone could allow spacecraft to navigate in space was the most important part of the mission. This part was accomplished. The precision GPS navigation towards the end of the mission was not accomplished. This is a pity, but not nearly as significant as the initial GPS navigation performed. It would be nice for this technology to be proved in the future, but it is not reasonable to believe that any normal rendevous in space in the near future would be done without communication between spacecraft. I don't think it is worth the money currently to put another DART into space for just this task. If DART failed altogether, I would say yes, but since it proved the most important part of its mission, couple the precision GPS navigation onto another research craft.
That's not fair to the Russians. They had a working system and were testing a new video system which would have been cheaper to operate, had it worked out. If they'd stuck with the original system everything would have been fine.
In the future, if a successful DART 2 mission occurs, it may be possible to launch a spacecraft and forget about it until it docks or performs its mission (like a computer program). This could reduce costs for automated spacecraft (logisitics costs).
I don't see how that can actually work out. The people you have standing around at launch aren't there to guide the spacecraft. You could hire one retired porn star for that. All those guys are there in case something goes wrong. You'll still need them even if the computer controlls the flight, for the same reason.
Russia decided to cheap it out and try a manual method instead. Then, they decided to perform the test with a crew that had already been in orbit for months, and whose training was questionable. Then, they made things worse by not outfitting the Progress with visual aids, and by not outfitting MIR with proper hardware (windows, cameras, viewing aids, rangefinding aids etc..), and by conducting a shitty approach against a bad background.
Just a few weeks ago, Russia announced they had set up a factory to produce KURS computers in Russia, from Russian components. (Their native TORU system having proved problematical.)
Funny, if I screw up at work and cost my company 100 million dollars, I will be fired and quite possibly find it hard to ever work in the industry again.
When NASA scientists do it and waste 100 million dollars of taxpayer money that could be spent solving REAL problems here on earth, we just laugh it off and use the newspeak-esque term "limited success".
When NASA crashed a probe into mars because they forgot to convert units from metric to imperial, *why* did the scientists get to keep their jobs like nothing happened?
I think what bothers the public at large is that there is absolutely no accountability. I sure wish I had a job like that, where I could screw up in breaktaking magnitude and not have to answer for it to anybody.