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Mars Express' 2nd Boom Deployment Postponed
ricshaw2k4 writes "Releasing the second MARSIS radar boom from Mars Express has been delayed after a problem with the first boom was discovered. From the BBC
"Officials said 12 out of 13 segments that comprise the first boom had deployed successfully, but segment 10 was not fully locked into place." Lets just hope segment 10 wasn't eaten by the Martians!"
Yet another chapter in our epic struggle against the disgusting inhabitants of the evil blue planet unfolded today, when it was revealed by the Council that one of the invaders' probes was observed deploying a spindly, antenna-like structure.
Hopes that the antenna would prove to be benign were quickly dashed, as our scientists determined conclusively that the antenna was designed to emit hazardous low-frequency radio waves, capable of penetrating far underground.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, stress that there was no cause for alarm:
When asked if rumours were true that the invaders' probe was actually outfitted with two of the deadly antennas, K'Breel declined to comment.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I've been to mars before...it sucked.
I TOLD THEM TO CHECK SEGMENT 10!
Sheehs, my coworkers are all slackers. I told Marco to check ALL the segments, but he winked and said, "What's the probability that segment 10 will fail if all the others are working?"
BLEH I SHOULD HAVE YOUR JOB, MARCO!
way to go, Hemos
wasn't eaten by fthe Martians
THE
So I'm a spelling nazi. Big deal! Sue me.
Lets just hope segment 10 wasn't eaten by fthe Martians!
Yeah, those fthe Martians. They're the worst kind...
I knew it wasn't my code!
We better de-thaw Sigourney Weaver and have her check it out.
I believe you needed to capitalize the F in fthe Martians, they get pretty upset if you don't.
No smoking sigs indoors.
Conspiricy-Theorist Magazine Bi-Planetary (famous for it's heretical article "Blue Planet People - Civilized Life?") ran with the headline "R-3 weaponry - the third deadly antenna the Council don't want you to know about"...
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
How do fthe Martians differ from regular Martians? Is "fthe" an acronym? Or the name of their splinter-group? (perhaps the Martian equivalent of Al-Qaeda?)
Putting "Boom" in a story about spacecraft always gets my attention.
Then I read the story. Oh, that kind of boom.
Had me going for a minute, though.
sigs, as if you care.
First Post
"Mission staff will now take the time necessary to investigate the boom situation. Foreseen outcomes include confirming that all segments of Boom 1 have been locked into place and determining how the deployment of Boom 1 may affect that of Boom 2."
In related news, Mission staff is now taking the time necessary with things they do, as opposed to the 'hunches', 'guesses' and the 'divine insight from God' methods that were used before. With boom1 not acting properly, they have a couple other forseen outcomes: 1) confirming the boom 1 never locks into place and 2) how this has no effect on the deployment of boom 2.
A new mission has been introduced to send another unmanned robot to massage segment 10 into place and then to quickly self-destruct in order not to interfere with the rest of the mission.
P.S. Boom 3 cannot be played unless you have a high-end PC with a killer graphics card.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
He was witnessed using his ACME Disintegration Pistol to knock the Boom out of whack.
Why does slashdot see fit to report minute incremental engineering progress, or lack thereof, in deploying a science instrument on a mission of average interest?
an ill wind that blows no good
And ironically, the pulled story still got a link in the rss page ;) so the rss has a link to nowhere, until it refreshes to the main page the next time...
You can have all of the mechanical engineers that you want, but in real life, nothing beats a mechanic with a hammer, who can give it a good whack in the right place.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."
They seem to have a lot of trouble with their equipment, crashes and bent atennas and all that. Makes NASA look good- which doesnt say much.
Dave, put on your spacesuit and go fix it, will you?
you had me at #!
Can't they use the second boom to knock the first boom into place? Is it just me, or does having so many segments violate the "Keep It Simple, Stupid!" rule in the first place? Every joint between segments is a point of failure, it seem like 3 would be sufficient...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I've heard it described as a "Great Galactic Ghoul" that protects Mars. At every step on the way, Mars missions have tended to be frought with problems. The Soviet program fared even worse; only about one in five Mars probes that they launched went as planned.
Some people have suggested that having humans onboard would have helped. In most cases, this is not the case. Only the Phobos probes and perhaps one Viking mission would have had a chance for humans to help the situation, since their problems were computer related. Most accidents were explosions, bad trajectories, invalid atmospheric assumptions, etc - things you don't find out about until it's too late.
In fact, one mission that was a success could have killed humans if it were to happen: Mars Global Surveyor. A solar panel was damaged (its damper arm was sheared off on launch), and dipping down into the atmosphere to brake like it was supposed to, in order to brake, would have destroyed the probe. The damage wasn't known until the first atmospheric dip, making (on an equivalent manned craft) a spacewalk for repair quite difficult if it were even possible (doubtful, given the damage, unless they brought along entire extra solar panels). NASA solved the problem by suspending aerobraking and letting the orbit circularize much more slowly - delays that humans on board would not have been able to tolerate.
It seems that there is just so many opportunities for failure en route to Mars that even if chances for a single mistake are miniscule for any given system, the overall failure rate ends up uncomfortably high. We're not going to want to skimp corners when we send people to Mars, that's for sure.
I'm you from the future! We have to finish our time machine before the Angels of Destruction find the portal!
Pat Travers did it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Re:I TOLD THEM TO CHECK SEGMENT 10!
It has been discovered that the reason is the probe tried to unfold segment 2 twice, since it was reading 10 in binary. The responsible engineer declined to comment, but was overheard saying: "I checked everything 10 times".I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I told them to use KABOOMS, not just plain old feeble booms. Bleh.
one of those Martian dudes who've been squeegeeing off the solar collectors on the rovers, to make a pit stop at the Mars Express and add a little duct tape.
Lets just hope segment 10 wasn't eaten by the Martians!
/., but I think this may win the prize.
I've read a lot of dumb things on
For today, at least.
Don't let her hear you say she's unhot ... look where it got Zuule and the alien matriarch.
Seek medical attention if your boom erection lasts longer than 4 hours.
KISS suggests that you roll the boom up against a coiled spring, and then release the coiled extender slowly through an escapement. Something like inside a tape measure, but in reverse. Use three or more of them and you can even get structural rigidity through counter-bracing.
Hey, clockwork has worked for a few hundred years, don't knock it.
On their way to MIT...doh
How do they know there is a problem in segment 10? Telescope? Are there active components inside the antenna boom?
I know, this isn't a forum for serious discussion.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
To fix this, you're going to have to go across the Base and pick up a PDA off a destroyed probe which tells you where the other probe that has the replacement boom-lock is, once you've obtained it, you'll head back and come across a large monster that was not there before, beat him and continue. Get the replacement boom and head back to the broken boom, upon reaching it, you will find that is has turned into a portal to hell, please continue...
Trouble is: we've got a probe that breaks, or people that die. Do we send up a broken probe full of dead people, see if the same effect will cause the mission to succeed? Or am I being stupid? yes, I feel this is somehow more likely. Seriously, however, the probe isn't broken yet, is it?
Q) You wrote a brainf*ck to C compiler in brainf*ck in order to compile a brainf*ck to C compiler to C? A) Actually,
Can we call it a boombox?
Where are all those comments that show that the average Shashdot reader is just plain smater then just about anyone on the Earth? And how if you were in charge it would all be easily taken care of, only you're just too busy playing Doom (or whatever) and trying to remember where you saw that really hot girl on one of those porn sites, and trying to forget what happened the last time you talked to a girl who was actually in the same room and willing to be within 4 feet of you?
Just because this is not a US government program that dosen't mean that you can't blame the US government anyway. You can always talk about how business can really do it better, since you have all that spare time living at home where you parents are picking up the cost of sheler and food, and you don't have to bother picking up your room or doing laundry. All you need to do is make sure that your parents don't walk in on you when you are looking for that web site with the hot girl (remember her?) and start yelling about getting a job. Becasue it's all the fault of those slackers at NASA. They never get it right, evern when it's the EU space program.
And if you want to know why I'm an Annonymous Coward, it's becasue I'm ashamed to be seen posing on this web site...
Do you still care? CherryOS is no more. Maui X-Treme are now busily compiling other opensource and flogging it as if they wrote it see here....