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Mars Soil Frustrates Phoenix Again
Tablizer writes "The Phoenix Mars lander has been frustrated yet again by Mars's odd soil. The wet nature of the soil they are targeting appears to have made it get stuck in the scoop rather than drop into the oven. Past problems with similarly clumpy soil may have damaged the lander because the vibrator had to be used longer than it was designed for, resulting in a short circuit."
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tl;dr fuck off with your politics, i block sigs for a reason
It's not interesting it's embarrassing. It's like they didn't test this thing at all. Did they even try scooping dirt up before dropping 420 million to send this contraption to mars.
AND, what's up with no redundancy on the ONE major component, the soil oven.
I think it's a waste of 400+ million dollars. Just to continue to theorize there could be life on Mars.
We are no closer to proving it and it's not likely going to be as easy as sending a probe and getting a couple scoops of dirt.
If they are serious about archeology on Mars.. it should be fairly obvious either they need to send humans are make MUCH better robots.
It seems to me badly design and unable to do even the most basic functions such as dig and load the oven.
The only thing going for it, is the landing site they picked which happened to be right on an ice sheet or such.
Knowing Mars might be have a frozen tundra like layer, especially where they landed, they should have tested it against hard tundra conditions.
You can see their design sucks, it can barely dig AND they nearly ruined it shaking the thing around to break up the sample.
So .. it can't dig... it can't break up the sample.. it can't get the sample in the oven.
It's a damn arm with a camera on it that cost 400 million.
AND you know, no matter what NASA says.. masses of people will reject any suggestion of life on other planets. .. especially DUMB ASS AMERICANS.
So, people who believe in the statistic certainly of life on other planets will be in the same place, albeit slightly more excited about the idea of Mars exploration, while people zealously reject life can exist anywhere but earth will continue to say.. see I told you so.
DAMN Nasa... spend some time and GET A CLUE.
The shuttle, ISS, the Mars polar lander, 3 dead astronaut crews ... and for what. What return are we getting on these missions ? We should have orbiters around every planet in the solar system streaming data to us and more rovers, but the obsession with proving beyond any doubt there is water on Mars is a waste of money.
I think most real scientists knew their was water on Mars, it's still interesting, but is it really 400 million interesting in a time when the US is heavily in debt.
It is one of the few fields we still dominate, but we need to prioritize and really get a plan together.
The moon base is another giant waste of money with no practical use and TONS upon TONS of upkeep costs. We haven't even found a use for ISS and now we need a moon base.
I'm up for a base on Mars because it likely has water and other fuel sources along with a lot of geological data that will definitely push several fields. But, then again in 30 years we might just be able to send robots to do all that and return with samples.
It wouldn't be so bad if Mars just had earth like gravity, but there is no getting around the fact that living in 1/3 gravity for extended times and then returning to earth is not healthy. The moon will be much worse. However, it's close compared to Mars. How much would constantly picking up and dropping people off to Mars cost ?
It would be pretty cool if we could leave them there for years and they could have the tools to expand and develop their colony, but it's almost certainly bad for your heart, bones and muscles to stay in low gravity and return to earth.
Will these people spend the rest of their lives on Mars ? Take your family.. start a new... Condo's on Mars.
It's not really a practical idea when you break it down. Unmanned missions are so much cheaper and constantly able to do more and more. We should stick with what works and let the EU, Russia and China go waste their money playing Buck Rogers.
We need better drones, better satellites and to actually engineer some of this high level theoretical science we have so someday space exploration is actually cost effective. A good start is designing a cheaper rocket or launch pl