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Mars Rover Opportunity Still Stuck In a Dune
Maddog Batty writes "The mars rover Opportunity, which has been stuck in a sand dune since the end of April, is still going nowhere after wheel spinning attempts were made to free the probe. It did manage to move a very short distance as can be seen in the difference between these two images. Before this attempt the NASA JPL team were playing in their own sandpit trying to replicate the conditions on Mars. (older coverage)"
All those things are things that are to be expected.
Just because a story contains the word "still" doesn't mean it's not news. If the president's plane still hasn't arrived, that's worth reporting. I don't know about you, but this is, to me and the people reading over my shoulder, the most interesting stories on the front page today.
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The problem is that every pound probably costs an extra $10 million.
Alternatively, we can send up another rover. It's way cheaper than getting a human being all the way to Mars alive. And we don't have to worry about bringing it back.
So yeah, when you say that "the 2 things holding us back are price and safety," those aren't two little things. They're the whole ball game. For the price of sending a human to Mars we could send scores, perhaps hundreds, of rovers, with zero risk to human life. No, we don't learn as much, but it means that when we do finally send humans they go fully prepared.
I think the soil should be moist in order to get firmer when cool (mostly due to condensation I imagine).
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