NASA Mars Rover Spirit May Move Forward By Spinning Its Wheels

coondoggie writes "As NASA celebrates its Mars rover Spirit's sixth anniversary exploring the red planet, it is hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year. On its Web site, the space agency this week noted there may indeed be such an option. That option would be spinning the wheels on the north side of Spirit, letting it dig in deeper in the Martian sand but at the same time improving the tilt of the rover's solar panels toward the Sun."

Comments

Re:Proof of the tenacity and ingenuity of humanity

[Mutatis Mutandis]

Yes, or of over-engineering...

Most modern structures are designed to have a finite life plus some safety margin. That's not just a trick to sell more cell phones and washing machines, it is normal engineering practice to get the right balance of cost. The FAA would even refuse to approve a wing design for an aircraft that did not have a predicted but finite life. If the design life is exceeded that can be regarded as a bonus, but often it is also considered a sign that the engineers made it too expensive / heavy / complicated.

I guess that a life of 2,500 days for a design goal of 90 days can be justified on the grounds that, given the cost of getting it there, a premature failure would have been a great disappointment. On the other hand, maybe we could have added some useful extra sensor to the Rover, reducing its lifespan to "only" 1,000 days but providing it with a means to avoid sand traps...

Re:liquid methane oceans...

[KiloByte]

Except we humans are made to walk on ground. We know what to do when standing on something, so such a planet is of value to us.

Bring a few guys to Mars, give them basic tools and here you go: bricks can be made from local material using 5k years old technology, then you get buildings (making them hermetic is merely tricky but not insurmountable), and it's a straight road from there.

But people stuck in a boat on (or in) an ocean of methane? I can't see any obvious way to make such an outpost expand.

Thus, getting that nautical rover of yours would be pure exploration, while a ground vehicle can pave way to getting a foothold in a quite near future.