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How Do You Land a Nuke-Powered Mini-Cooper On Mars?
tcd004 writes "Miles O'Brien narrates this video simulation of NASA's next Mars shot, which promises to out-gun all previous efforts. The Mini Cooper-sized Mars Science Laboratory, which is now named Curiosity, will crawl the Martian surface under steam from a nuclear powerplant — but it's a gentle giant compared to its predecessors. Recent theories have emerged that previous attempts at identifying organic compounds in Martian soil may have actually cooked away any signs of life-giving elements. Curiosity will go to great pains to avoid scorching the Earth ... erm ... Mars."
Yo dawg we herd you liked mini coopers so we put a mini cooper on yo mars planet.
>gentile giant
What, it's an uncircumcised, nuclear powered Mini Cooper?
As opposed to what, "Semitic Softie"?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
+1 for the great headline!
Otherwise, I'll state the obvious: Carefully!
Personally, I don't think the space lab's religion is any of our business.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Very carefully?
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
This is a good plan. I saw that one movie, the Italian Job, I know how sturdy Mini coopers can be. I'm sure they can handle the harsh environment of mars.
It's always fun when you misread titles like this and end up with:
Not that I have any idea just how a land-powered vehicle would work, but the imagery was intriguing.
One wonders how much BMW paid to have "the Mini Cooper" used to describe this thing... :)
"It's" is a conraction. It means "it is."
Please note that saying
"...but it is a gentile giant compared to it is predecessors."
makes no fucking sense.
I always thought "landing" was over-rated. Give it a parachute and external airbags then just crash it into Mars and be done with it...
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
How many Volkswagens equal one Mini-Cooper?
rj
When can I get one? This solves all the foreign oil and global warming problems with current automobiles.
Also how do I fill it up, or does it come with a full tank that lasts 10 years?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
NUKE IT FROM ORBIT!!!
DAMNIT!
I was expecting an Irish Starfleet Engineer.
Use DS9's tractor beam?
and a parachute. After laning, have it drive 10 Kilometers from the landing sight to get away from the effects of rocket assisted landing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_KXgFpguE0
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those who don't know, Miles O'Brien is also the name of the transporter chief on ST:TNG and Chief of Operations for DS9. I clicked the link really hoping that they paid the actor to narrate this. Oh well. :-(
How do we stop submitters from using questions for headlines?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
---
Space Craft Feed @ Feed Distiller
Isn't it terrible that they privatized the space industry? /sarcasm
I want one! Here, on Earth... It can even be bigger in size than a mini-Cooper — so as to be able to accommodate passengers and cargo. But, on the other hand, it does not need to be so sturdy as to survive a landing on Mars — only the reactor needs to be protected so as to not explode upon falling into Grand Canyon.
Will I ever have one? Ok, if not me, maybe, it can be produced in an 18-wheeler form-factor? No? A rail-road locomotive?
Talk about eliminating dependency on (foreign) oil!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I don't know why they claim it is a "Gentle Giant". It's got a nuclear powered LASER used for remotely zapping targets of interest to determine their composition!
I mean, how would you like it if a giant robot dropped out of the sky and started shooting frikking laser beams at you! ;)
Absolutely terrifying animations of the Skycrane EDL architecture : http://www.youtube.com/results?aq=f&search_query=MSL+skycrane&search_type=&hl=en-GB&gl=GB&oq= Skycrane's intended as =the= standard EDL system for all future Mars landers. Frankly MSL scares the crap out of me, because there's only one shot at getting it right, and so much riding on it. Apart from anything else it's the last Mars lander planned for the next decade, apart from the vapourware joint JPL/ESA dual-rovers nonsense supposedly pencilled in for 2016. IMHO that'll never make it past the Powerpoint stage. If MSL lands perfectly it should last years, certainly longer than the astonishingly long-lived MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity. If it fails - that's it until the 2020s.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
What do you expect - ask a stupid question ...
We all migrated from Mars. The ecology went south, so we moved to Mars. It was a giant meteorite, not man's pollution.
This is why there are two creation stories in Genesis! It also explains why we used to have such great tech to build the pyramids.
[/sacarsm]
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Who was disappointed not to see Colm Meaney? Yeah, me too.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
That has to be the most generic faced news reader of all time.
It will be a miracle if they make this work, the points at which it can fail during landing makes it almost insane.
-1 is for flame bait and trolls, not because you disagree with someone.
How do yo edit title but not fix obvious spelling error?
It's bad enough to see this horrible title on my RSS feed twice, but you couldn't even fix the error the second time.
With a delay of two and a half years. Some in the Bush and Obama administrations were ready to cancel this.
I would suggest the best way to land a nuclear powered Cooper Mini on Mars be done with a nuclear powered sling shot! Worked for me!
Why bother
Carefully.
....It's the only way to be sure
Actually, I'd like to see somebody do a skycrane entrance in a Mini Cooper on Earth. Maybe in the next James Bond?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't know about the rest of you, but as soon as I read "...crawl the Martian surface under steam from a nuclear powerplant..." my first thought was Steampunk! We're gonna send a steampunk probe to Mars!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
...now we're going to nuke Mars?!
I'm not sure, but we'll need to make one much bigger than the regular 58 grams size.
his hers tits
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
This based on the video:
1. The same wheel/traction design as Spirit
2. A rover that weighs 3x more than Spirit
3. The unknown Sedimentology of mars
Anyone else see what is wrong with this picture....
Instead of sending a single, big, expensive unit, shouldn't we increase our chances and areas of exploration by sending dozens if not hundreds of smaller, cheaper units?
If the landing of that Mini-Cooper goes wrong, we lose the only unit. If the landing of 300 small units goes wrong, we still have a chance that some units may still be intact on landing not to mention that less mass equals less impact force. And even if all goes well, we can explore a lot more area with 300 small units than with a single big unit.
Leave the launcher in orbit, have the units communicate with it (less energy and smaller antenna required) and have the launcher/orbiter communicate with earth.
I'm sure NASA has thought about that scenario, so where's the flaw in that idea since they're not doing it?
The linked newscientist article requires a subscription to actually see it in full. No way. Forget it.
...sort of.
This just reminds me of the time popular UK show Top Gear tried to make a space shuttle out of a Reliant Robin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4WzWFKQ20
The Italian Job meets Total Recall? Interesante!
Step 1: Get your damn units straightened out ahead of time.
Following that, the rest should be a piece of cake.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Is a mini-cooper some kind of SUV? Are we exporting global warming to Mars?
By the way, what type of nuclear engine are they using. Maybe something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion
Scroll down to the picture of the two engines parked by the parking lot. They actually built a hanger for the plane that these things were going to power. It is now a very large office building.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Very Carefully!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
...or they could just have shown a picture.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This bodes ill for any Martian Felines, for we all know about Felines and Curiosity....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Give it a parachute and external airbags then just crash it into Mars and be done with it...
"Crashes" would be right. MSL is too heavy for airbag landing, I'm afraid.
We had real problems with the airbag system for even the MER, and MSL is twice as large in all dimensions.
It's that cube-square thing-- "a horse splashes". (--Haldane)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Sigh, not again. Points for the car analogy, but the Cooper is a European car, thus a metric analogy. Please pick a more suitable English equivalent for NASA, lest we see a repeat of the Mars Climate Orbiter...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
i don't get the search for life mania, seems to be like all the mars and lunar explorations are all about some hypothetical bacteria that may or may not exist far away from us in red/gray dust. what does it really matter if there any any lifeforms out there, as long as they are not intelligent its not going to change anything, few biologists get to poke at it for a while and that will be all. and we sure as hell are not going to find any green men wandering around at our galactic backyard any time soon. there are more important things to accomplish with space exploration, like: moonbases, empires, deathstars.... we need to make space profitable, cheaper, easier. cheaper initial costs, less maintenance, shorter rerun times for out orbital vehicles. Earth is not going to last forever, for the looks of in not very long at all even, humanity needs to be able to escape this confinement or we will destroy ourselves sooner or later(probably sooner)
Where exactly do you pick up a nuclear powered Mini Cooper? I when to the BMW dealership and they didn't have any in stock. I hope it gets good MPG. I wonder how long your tank can last for. I want mine turbo charged with rims.
*ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT* *ALERT*
Earth Intentions Finally Revealed.
Our spies on the watery blue-green third planet have intercepted secret transmissions between the Simian inhabitants' space agency and their woeful oppressed subjects that reveal new plans to attack our beloved world.
This new device will be a behemoth, equipped with a powerful laser and a fission powerplant, so it is clearly a craft of war.
However, there is no need to allow your flagellum to swell; our agents-in-place are preparing to once again to deploy an array of tactics all have which been successfully used to sabotage earlier Human missions. This vessel too will either pass into deep space or crash harmlessly into some meaningless, uninhabited zone of Mars. (We remind all ONCE AGAIN that the impact of the last Earth-invasion-craft into the nesting home of our political opponents was entirely an accident, and we will endeavor to avoid a repeat of that regrettable incident.)
At this point there is no cause for alarm, no need to slither for your lives. Cover your egg sacs as usual, and excrete soothing pheremones to your swarming younglings. Know that we, your beloved and compassionate Ruler, have this crisis well in tentacle.
NOTE: It is doubly important that we make sure to keep the canal covers in place. The effort to destroy the reputation of an Earth astronomer in this century would exceed our available resources.
Olypus Mons News: FAIR AND BALANCED.
A Rupert Murdoch Company.
-Styopa
I hope there are no cats on Mars...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What ever happened to the Volkswagen Beetle (VwB) unit of measurement? Has NASA replaced the VwB with the MINI Cooper (mC) as it's official unit of measurement?
The subject makes it sound like the Top Gear team has taken control of NASA... perhaps Obama should consider it? I can certainly see The Stig as a new ace test pilot.
Parent post is underrated -> Funny
The Viking landers in 1976 established that the atmosphere on Mars is 95.3% CO2.
-- Terry
how do we stop submitters?
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- aqk
F U
stop!
how?
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- aqk
F U
If I see "nuclear powered" as description of RTG once, just once more... no, I will sadly NOT snap. But someone woulda thought that tech-savy site would not give that dumb title.
What modern Obelix would say today? Of course, "Those crazy Americans!".