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Cutting Edge Tech Slated For Next Mars Rover
oxide7 writes "NASA is pushing the boundaries of technology as it readies its next mission to Mars, loading up its 4th Mars Rover with nearly a dozen instruments and deploying an innovative but risky landing procedure. Scientists and engineers were piecing together some of the final components to the new rover, dubbed Curiosity, on Saturday as it ramps up for a high-stakes launch in November."
wonder if there is a cat at the landing site?
From TFA: Parachute, followed by retro-rockets, then lowered by a tether.
Yes, it's new. How do they measure how risky it is?
Not so much when it gets there though, trips to Mars take a while.
Oh well, at least the opportunity comes across fairly often. When's the next window to launch a probe to the Outer Planets?
Who comes up with these names? These generic names that are alleged to be primary characteristics of the capitalist are just frickin' lame. Left out of the pool are Greed, Disparity, Externality, Exploitation... Can't we go back to using the names of famous astronomers, or other noteworthy scientists that have positively contributed to humanity's understanding of the universe? Even if their underlying motive for their accomplishment was in pursuit of financial self-interest that only had the side benefit of expanding our knowledge of the cosmos, at least, naming the spacecraft after them would be recognition and memorialization of their achievements.
Why not deliver this rover the same way the other rovers were delivered?
Piece of cake.
This is an incredible approach at landing if it works everybody involved should and would feel proud of their work.
If it fails you'll never hear about it anymore.
Galileo Spacecraft it's never publicly mentioned in relation to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter.
Yet it had a front roll seat, it watched the impacts, the fact it's high gain antenna wouldn't deploy
meant it couldn't send pictures back.
I watched one of the Mars bots do it's beach ball landings, they keep saying "still rolling" until there was obvious
problems in the faces of those involved; Once they figured the problem was due to doppler (Mars was going away from the earth)
the rolling stopped, and it had landed.
Good Luck NASA
For about 1% of what the Iraq War costs us each year, it doesn't seem all that bad.
I love the argument that the man is spending money elsewhere so it needs to be spent here too, its so circular
That's not the argument. The argument is that it's just a negligible cost compared to other costs so if you want to save money you better start elsewhere.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The money is all spent here on earth. It goes for salaries, parts, labor, design, engineering, fuel. Those who get the money spend their earnings for groceries, gas, house payments, cars, shoes and junk food. Those suppliers do the same with there earnings. They hire lawn care "engineers" , painters, babysitters, oh, and they buy all of the above as well.
Somewhere along the line money gets to the burger flippers who could never understand economics 101, who post on Slashdot that everything they are not interested in is a waste of money.
I agree. There is no life and you'd be stuck at the bottom of a gravity well with no fuel. Pretty stupid position to put yourself in.
THE NEW PLAN:
1)Go to asteroids.
2)Move asteroids to orbit of Jupiter.
3)Build space elevator to atmosphere of Jupiter using asteroids for building material.
4)Pump hydrogen to storage facilities in orbit through pipelines installed in space elevator.
5)Go anywhere you want after that because you've got fuel.
Any questions?
So the Phoenix 2 will have Firefox 9?
I think the question is more one of "What do you get for the money you've spent?"
A war sends men and material overseas and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some political or diplomatic advantage, and that has to be judged against the cost. Space research sends men and rockets into space and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some technological or scientific knowledge, and that has to be judged against the cost.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
2)Move asteroids to orbit of Jupiter.
Easy-peasey no problem!!!
3)Build space elevator to atmosphere of Jupiter using asteroids for building material.
Even easier!!
5)Go anywhere you want after that because you've got fuel.
Any questions?
Sure:
1) Where do you get all the dense mass to protect you from hard cosmic radiation?
2) How do you protect the elevator from all that crap whizzing around Jupiter?
3) What do you build the ship with?
4) How do you provision it, etc, etc, etc?
The Earth and Sun just do too much that we take for granted, and stellar distances are just too great to be practical.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
1 Ceres is pretty much made of rocket fuel, so you can skip those other steps.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
However, in February 2009, because of the late delivery of several critical components and instruments, NASA delayed the launch to a date between October and December 2011.
This delay and the additional resources required to resolve the underlying technical issues increased the Project's development costs by 86 percent, from $969 million to the current $1.8 billion, and its life-cycle costs by 56 percent, from $1.6 billion to the current $2.5 billion.
So roughly two thirds of the cost of the entire mission is in developing the technology and building one vehicle. One thing that is routinely ignored in discussions of space probes is the trade-off between cutting edge development and actual output of the space probe. For example, instead of building the Mars Science Laboratory and its gear, we could have sent around 8 Mars Expedition Rovers (the actual cost of building and launching a rover is somewhere around $300 million). You might not have gotten quite as nice a variety of scientific output for any given location as the MSL, but you'd get up to (counting the possibility of mission failures!) eight different locations and the risk per mission would be lower (since the MERs are proven tech).
My view here is that technology development has taken over the business of NASA's space science division. Yes, you do need on occasion to develop new technology in order to explore. But these missions have somewhere around two-thirds the cost of the entire mission in developing and building new, unproven technology. Then if the mission succeeds, they'll go on to more new, unproven technology rather than use the platform further.
Fifty years from now, what of this whole stream of technology development will still be useful? Will it be like NASA's atmospheric science of the past where decades down the road, some entrepreneur might come along and pick and choose from the pieces of debris (mostly reports) that remain?
From the linked article: An instrument named ChemCam will use laser pulses to vaporize thin layers of material from Martian rocks or soil targets up to 7 meters (23 feet) away.
I have this mental image of thousands of tiny terrified martians fleeing their homes after the "heat ray" vaporizes the town square.
No-one would have believed, in the first years of the 21st century, that martian affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few martians even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this planet with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.
Please tell me they have a way of getting dust off the solar panels. Every time I read about dust buildup on Spirit and Opportunity's solar panels causing problems all I could think of was why didn't they install some type of simple vibration mechanism or air jet or any number of possible solutions.
The argument is that it's just a negligible cost compared to other costs so if you want to save money you better start elsewhere.
I think we're aware of what the argument is, the other poster was just putting the argument in the proper perspective.
Well, that argument comes up because every single bloody time we spend some money on science, some dumb fuck inbred hick comes crawling out of the woods crying about how the ebil gubmint wastes the money it 'stole' from him by means of taxes. Oddly, the dumb fuck hicks never complain when said money is spent on wars against them ebil brown peoples.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
How are they going to manage if the tethering is right over a large boulder? Do they have software / radar to detect such things?
They want to explore a crater, not make a new one.
NASA engineers and 'rocket scientists' have already determined that the 5 ton rover is too heavy for that method.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Yes, what will the hydrogen react with? How could it be used as a fuel?
http://xkcd.com/695/
So...why the fuck are we still shooting rovers to Mars? Why aren't we going ourselves yet? We've seen it, sampled it, measured and tested every aspect we can...it's time to pay the rock a fucking visit, not shoot more meters and probes at it.
Pull your heads out of your asses, government, and send a fucking human being to Mars already.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
It'll be sold at Costco.
"It looks like you are trying to explore Mars. Would you like to explore Earth on Bing Maps?" - Clippy
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"1) Where do you get all the dense mass to protect you from hard cosmic radiation?
2) How do you protect the elevator from all that crap whizzing around Jupiter?
3) What do you build the ship with?
4) How do you provision it, etc, etc, etc?"
1 - Congress. It seems that the members of congress are so dense that grinding them up and using them as radiation shielding will work better than anything else we have here on the planet.
2 - pass laws making it illegal.... DUH
3 - Build it with illegal immigrants or outsource it's assembly to China or India.
4 - Provisioning is a long term plan, you obviousally dont have a degree in business management. All that matters is how things look next quarter.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But that's not the argument, Osgeld.
With a mission to mars and these "cutting edge" technologies, there's at least a chance at something good, something really good coming out of it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not so much.
Plus, there's the possibility that frontiers give a people a useful goal besides getting rich and famous. Once Americans realized that there wasn't going to be any more "going West", there seemed to set in a sad narcissism that has manifested itself in some very self-destructive behavior, privately and publicly. Having a frontier again might not be such a bad thing. And since it only costs a fraction of what the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are costing, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of human lives that are wasted - flushed down the crapper - for no reason beyond putting cash into the pockets of military contractors, having a Martian frontier, no matter how far off the benefits might be (but there will certainly be benefits) doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
When I think about buying some new tech that might be useful to me, sometimes it helps to put its expense into perspective. And that perspective is often obtained through comparison with other things I spend money on. Like a new iPad is about the same cost as 20 bottles of Bombay gin. Or a Kurzweil PC3LE7 76 Key Semi weighted action Performance Controller & Workstation Keyboard is about the same cost as a trip to Vegas (rehab and course of penicillin not included).
And in the future, I'd prefer if you didn't start a comment with "I love the argument..." when you clearly don't love the argument at all. It's not even good sarcasm, it just makes you sound small. Of course, you can do what you like, but I'm just putting you on notice that this is your first strike.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Congress. It seems that the members of congress are so dense
I thought they were full of hot air...
Anyway, great post. +5 Insightful.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The money is all spent here on earth. It goes for salaries, parts, labor, design, engineering, fuel. Those who get the money spend their earnings for groceries, gas, house payments, cars, shoes and junk food. Those suppliers do the same with there earnings. They hire lawn care "engineers" , painters, babysitters, oh, and they buy all of the above as well.
Somewhere along the line money gets to the burger flippers who could never understand economics 101, who post on Slashdot that everything they are not interested in is a waste of money.
So why not just spend it all on me and cut out those middle men? I'll hire plenty of dudes so the employment angle is covered.
From a link posted above
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/building_curiosity.html
The Girl and her essay that got it it's name.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/essay-20090527.html
Will NASA *ever* put at least one sound sensor on probes they send into atmospheric environments? If they have done it, why is it never published?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Sending humans, fucking or not, would cost 100 or 1000 times as much as this alleged waste of money.
They want to explore a crater, not make a new one.
NASA engineers and 'rocket scientists' have already determined that the 5 ton rover is too heavy for that method.
I think you misunderstand me. People fixate on Curiosity's skycrane, and think that it's new and overly complicated. It's not new. Everybody seems to forget that Spirit and Opportunity ALSO used a similar Parachute-Retrorocket-Tether system. All they seem to remember is the airbag part of it. Spirit's and Opportunity's "skycranes" brought them to a hover in mid air and then cut them loose. They had to endure a drop equivalent to jumping off of a fourth floor balcony. This is why they needed the air bags.
In contrast, Curiosity's "skycrane" is going to lower it gently to the ground, not drop it from 50 feet in the air. There's much less risk involved with Curiosity's landing than Spirit's or Opportunity's. So, given that the MERs not only survived their riskier skycrane descent, and plummet to the ground, but thrived, odds are high that Curiosity will do the same.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Space Truckers. Gotta havem. Cut rate, too, yet with year's of experience.
Launch your own racist, political or sexual joke here.
Hard to argue with that.
Yep, let the rich ones subsidize it. Gets the money into circulation, gets the unit price down.
Can't wait 'til the competition improves. The US needs something to charge it up.
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
shouldn't everything Nasa deploys have cutting edge technology on board?
Someone at NASA been watching too many Terminator and or Alien movies. It truly breaks my heart to say this but it looks like this one just might crash and burn.
Hey guys over at NASA, i hope you are reading this....here is what you need
WINDSHIELD WIPERS.....to get the crap off the solar panels when it builds up......maybe add a special weight caliper that lets you know when some stuff is getting on the panel, then use the wiper to push it off......
seriously.....
also - please send another unit that has
a) booster cables (for boosting the old one and getting back another rover)
b) a broom, to wipe off the soot off the other rovers....
c) wide range metal detector, to help find the other mars rovers on the planet...
Itself. Fusion.
With a mission to mars and these "cutting edge" technologies, there's at least a chance at something good, something really good coming out of it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not so much.
To the contrary, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have provided benefits to the US such as the weakening of Al Qaeda, state support for Al Qaeda, and the removal of a vicious dictator. In return, we have two more fairly stable democracies in the Middle East. It might not be worth the price, but that same consideration holds for a Mars rover.
Al Qaeda was never strong. In fact, there were NO Al Qaeda in Iraq before George W Bush invaded. Plus, there's zero evidence that Iraq ever was a "state sponsor" of Al Qaeda. And the removal of Saddam Hussein only served to make Iran a greater threat and by all accounts, nothing's gotten better in Iraq. They still don't have electricity to the levels they did under Saddam.
And none of those things were worth the lives lost and the money spent. How many lives do you think will be lost sending rovers to Mars? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan diminished us as a nation. Making Mars the new frontier will enhance us as a nation. We've done this kind of thing before and that's how it works. Little shitty wars make us less/Far frontiers make us more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Al Qaeda was never strong.
It was strong enough to kill three thousand people in the US. It was strong enough that it has a cushy defense contract with the Taliban. They were working on developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. You don't act merely on the basis of the present strength of the foe, but also on a realistic appraisal of their future strength.
And none of those things were worth the lives lost and the money spent. How many lives do you think will be lost sending rovers to Mars? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan diminished us as a nation.
That's your opinion (not that you have shown any understanding of what strengthens or diminishes a country in the past). But the valuation isn't shared by everyone. And like any industrial activity, lives are lost in the development and deployment of rovers to Mars.
Do you believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made us safer from Al Qaeda?
If so, we'll just have to disagree.
Do you have any evidence to support this? And not all "industrial activities" require loss of life.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made us safer from Al Qaeda?
Yes. Name an Al Qaeda attack on US soil since 9/11.
Do you have any evidence to support this? And not all "industrial activities" require loss of life.
Merely, anecdotes. Keep in mind that people work with rockets here, both building them and launching them. And they die on occasion. That's the most hazardous part of a space probe's life cycle.
"Where do you...?"
"How do you...?"
"What do you...?"
Obviously robotics plays a significant role in this scheme.
Guys, this is the brass ring. More energy than anybody could waste until the end of the universe. Its ---- just ---- right ---- there. You can see it with a pair of binoculars. We are wasting our time and money perpetuating existing energy infrastructure.
Once this unlimited energy source is productive we can do ANYTHING in our solar system. We will have the fuel to go anywhere and do anything we want.
Esso brand hydrogen - put a tiger in your spaceship's tank!
And you attribute the lack of Al Qaeda attacks on US soil since 9/11 to the war in Afghanistan?
Personally, I attribute it to the fact that God is keeping us safe just to thwart the fondest dreams of Republicans that there will be an attack during Barack Obama's presidency. It must be a great disappointment to them that Obama's been able to keep us safe when George Bush was not.
There is as much evidence for my theory of supernatural intervention than yours for the benefits of the war in Afghanistan.
Or wait, do you believe it's the war in Iraq that has kept us safe?
I'm sorry, friend, but I just can't talk to you about this subject any longer, since it's starting to depress me that there is actually an American voter who believes as you do. Until just now, I was pretty sure there were none.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm sorry, friend, but I just can't talk to you about this subject any longer, since it's starting to depress me that there is actually an American voter who believes as you do. Until just now, I was pretty sure there were none.
I'm sorry, friend, but you've never been able to talk about this subject. Instead as in several other subjects, you've been able to babble irrationally about it such as the above post. Let's consider your statements:
And you attribute the lack of Al Qaeda attacks on US soil since 9/11 to the war in Afghanistan?
[...]
Personally, I attribute it to the fact that God is keeping us safe just to thwart the fondest dreams of Republicans that there will be an attack during Barack Obama's presidency. It must be a great disappointment to them that Obama's been able to keep us safe when George Bush was not.
Let's see here. We have not just a statement but a model. Suppose there is a paramilitary, "terrorist" organization with a power base in a country which openly supports the organization. Now, overthrow the country, wipe out the organization's power base there, and then kill off most of the organization's leadership while driving the rest into hiding.
The model says this will disrupt the operation of the organization and weaken it. The mechanisms are 1) disruption of the command, control, and communication ("C3") infrastructure, 2) removal of resources the organization used to have to further its goals and operations, and 3) pushing the organization into a far more adverse climate where it is veryhazardous for both leadership and footsoldier to merely exist, much less do anything. That's why Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in the US and elsewhere have declined over the past ten years.
You say this model is just as plausible as "God did it." As much as anything you've said, this demonstrates how your ideology has deeply compromised your ability to think and argue.
1) Did you not realize that asteroids are largely "dense mass", aka 'rock'. Five meters of lunar regolith was found to be sufficient to not only guard against radiation in space, but actually provide a lower daily radiation dose than you would normally receive wandering around the surface of Earth.
2) You don't. You simply build your crawlers in such a manner that they continually rebuild the ribbon every pass.
3) An asteroid. You're already living in it, now you just have to figure out how to move it around.
4) Any deep space vehicle is going to have to be largely self-sustaining.
Not that I actually agree with his proposal, I think it's far too simplistic (and the Jupiter mining is absolutely unnecessary), but your questions show a really abysmal ignorance about the topic. Perhaps YOU take solar insolation and a self-supporting ecosystem for granted, but I assure you that the people who are really interested in space operations do not.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I assure you that the people who are really interested in space operations do not.
It's all sci fi until someone figures out (a) how to harness nuclear fusion, and (b) use it to create a VASIMIR-like engine.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1