Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary

StartsWithABang writes: This past weekend, the Philae lander reawakened after seven dormant months, the best outcome that mission scientists could've hoped for with the way the mission unfolded. But the first probe to softly land on a comet ever would never have needed to hibernate at all if we had simply built it with the nuclear power capabilities it should've had. The seven months of lost data were completely unnecessary, and resulted solely from the world's nuclear fears.

Comments

Nuclear Power Fears

[ZeroWaiteState]

People will stop fearing nuclear power when world leader stop making irresponsible remarks about nuking people when they are upset. Until then, anything with a rocket stage and a nuclear device in the payload will be taboo.

Re:If it was political, that is sad

[oh_my_080980980]

It wasn't. This is a troll piece. People need to stopped be suckered by ass-holes and doe some god damn research before continuing the troll machine.

Re:This is an Opinion/Editorial piece

[MozeeToby]

Worse, it's not even informed opinion. You can't just "slap an RTG" on a probe and hope for the best. There are engineering, cost, and benefits considerations to make.

I really feel like people forget that the lander was an afterthought. The primary science of the mission was and is being performed by the Rosetta spacecraft. It was a "nice to have" that everyone was thrilled to see work as well as it did but wasn't critical for the success of the mission. Furthermore, it performed the vast majority if it's planned science activities during the 60 hour battery period after initial landing.

Yes, obviously, probes and landers can and do outperform their initial program goals. But treating the lander like a failure when it was anything but is dishonest. Using it as a soapbox to push your agenda (whether it's one I agree with or not) is insulting to the 2000+ people who worked to make the mission the fabulous success that it is and was.

Re:Obligatory reading

[fermion]

this is an engineering problem, and incompetent people should have nothing to say about it. One of the primary ways that we can identify incompetence is when someone say if we would have done this then the problem would have been solved. Engineering problems are complex, especially in space travel, and there is no way to know that, for example, a nuclear power source designed for a soft landing would have survived a hard landing. That is, in fact, the engineering problem on which the mistake was made after all.

To answer this specific engineering problem, plutonium is simply too dangerous and costly to use in space. The reason is that plutonium is actually very safe to humans except when breathed in as small particles, such as what might be generated when a launch vehicles catastrophically explodes on launch. In this case, the small particles will tend to be inhaled by animals, pass through the lungs, and pretty permanently become part of the body. The plutonium will then go though the 24,000 half life, which means over the lifespan of the contaminated human almost no Pu will decay. It will radiate and cause health issue for a lifetime.

Again, this is an engineering problem with very smart people working it. All engineering problem result in an engineering solution, and an engineering solution is always a compromise between competing factors, some technical, some emotional.

In hind sight it is always easy to poo poo an engineering solution. People who do nothing but push paper, like the readers or forbes, are the most likely candidate is simply say 'why did we do this'. They can ask that question because they have never created a practical device in their lives, therefore never have been part of the engineering process and therefore have never understood that the result is always a less than perfect but usually quite acceptable solution.

While the nuclear power proponents want us to believe that nuclear power is the solution to everything, history tells us otherwise. Even though nuclear power is very mature technology, there is little private funding for it. In the US Nuclear power plants are not being build because bankers know there is no profit in it, and government should no more subsidize a nuclear power plant than a coal fired plant. Both are mature enough to stand on their own.

Nuclear power cannot stand on it's own because it cannot generate enough profit. For instance, BP generates enough profits so that when the Deep Horizon rig failed it could cover the 13 billion dollar clean up. Fukushima is going to cost 10 times that much to clean up. Who is going to pay for that. They taxpayer. The US taxpayer for contamination that reaches US land and water. It is true that the readers of Forbes loves to make profits at taxpayer expense, but I don't think that it is a good idea. It is only free if you are not the one impacted.