Well, I was being facetious, but I don't think te fallacy is mine. To call an entity a "baby" it needs to haave the attribute of a baby, which a single cell or even a blastocyst does not. It contains in its DNA part of the recipe for making a baby, but this is not a baby.
Hmm... well I've seen lots of babies, and not one of them was a single cell. To call an ovum with a skin cell nucleus in it (or even a blastocyst) a "baby" is a logical leap I cannot join you on.
We're doing an RTG mission with NO battery. How? Careful budgeting, and really fast circuit breakers. Anything goes significantly over current rating for more than a few milliseconds, it goes OFF. That's much easier than coming up with a really long life battery and paying for the mass and complexity.
They're not redundant. They're studying two completely different parts of Mars. The mission success criteria, as I understand them, are for two rovers. The only was you could meaningfully say they were redundant is if they had the same or similar landing sites.
They do test the rover in a sandbox, and very agressively at that. The problem they had was with the cruise files - unrelated to the fact that therover is on the ground. Cruise is 7 months, and the activities there are fairly low risk, so they didn't get the testbed for 7 months uninterrupted to test this.
I guess I'm not too impressed with armchair hindsight.
Hey, you can qualify a hard drive for space use, let me know. So far, no one's done it AFAIK. Some of the issues:
Vaccuum. I don't think there's any hard drive that will work in a vacuum.
Radiation
EMI/EMC, including Magnetic cleanliness
Temperature range. Standard range is -34 deg C to +71, although that's usually negotiable. The less hardware you have to baby, the better.
the cost of a qualification program
Reliability and life.
6. I figure my design would add probably about 60 pounds to the design. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I think that can be accounted for when fueling the rocket.
60 pounds is a hell of a lot. Mass is always tight, and there is no easy fix by "fueling the rocket." Would that there were!
Meters away isn't necessary if you do the thermal design right. This spacecraft for example, will hold its RTG fairly close. We're not talking about a huge amount of heat, and thermal isolation isn't risky technology.
I'm confident that the waste heat from an RTG is anything but a showstopper - it would be especially beneficial in the cold Martian nights.
What they got was some very nice P.R. and recruitment material. they'd like their talented kids to stayin Virginaia, instead of heading up to M.I.T. or Princeton or wherever.
Well, we landed one little rover on Mars before, and it was mainly a technology demonstration mission, paving the way for the two rovers on Mars now. The science on the current mission is front and center, and a lot more profound. If we hope to go fossil hunting on Mars, we need a much better idea of where to look (or even if there's any point).
And your views are read and appreciated. some of the best people I've ever worked with were quite young - the energy and fresh outlook brought to the work can easily outweigh experience in many cases.
Not a very original insight. I certainly wouldn't buy one. However, RTFA - there is a market at that price level, and Apple wasn't quite reaching it with the 15 GB iPod. This market apparently doesn't have a use for 15 GB. We could fill up three 40 GB iPods, but I suppose (I hope) we're not typical.
It looks like it's corectly place itself in safe mode, and the problem may be entirely fixable. My bet is that they'll be doing science again by one week from today.
Thank you - although I don't think praying will help, your post was a relief fomr all those witless wags who think recycling jokes about the Mars Defense System is funny.
I'd just as soon you didn't bring dinosaurs back, thank you. They eat all the plants and pets and make a huge mess.
Evidence for lots of liquid water in the past open up the possibility that life may have evolved once on Mars. Perhaps it even thrived. Closely studying this evidence can also give us a better idea of where to look for fossils. Since this will be expensive and difficult, you want a lot of evidence pointing to the most probable sites.
If you have to ask why we would want to know about the history of life on another planet, then you're not going to get it. The only absolute necessity is oblivion.
Water vapor? I know the pressure's low, but I would expect ice instead. Ice crystals are known to be in the atmosphere.
Also, the Odyssey measurements are pretty much in the first meter or so of surface, IIRC. There is a lot of hydrogen down there, and it;s pretty much got to be in water (Methane or Ammonia are too volatile at those temperatures). that would mean ice, or possibly sandy brines.
It doesn' appear that the soil cohesion is purely elecrostatic, but I think it will take a lot more data to rule anything out.
The Water's been found - it's most likely in the form of ice, and it's all over the planet. The question Spirit is trying to answer is was there once a lot of LIQUID water on Mars, and if so how long ago, and for how long a duration? Gusev Crater was almost certainly a lake once.
Scientists are people too. The names they give the rocks are just convenient labels that facilitate discussion. It's a lot easier to say "Adirondack" than to quote a range and bearing. I doubt the PR people have much to do with it.
I think RTGs are the likely power source for future rovers, including future lunar robots. This will give them much extended range and lifetime, but it will add quite a bit of cost - getting those things approved for launch is a complex and involved process, and then you have to pay people to put them together and fuel them.
Note: RTGs are NOT nuclear reactors. They just get hot as their fuel decays and generate electricity thermoelectrically.
Loss of control or failure of an engine to ignite is much more likely cause of launch vehicle failure than a sudden explosion. When they lose control, they are blown up by a range safety officer on the ground. Missions carrying RTGs have to fly with Flight Termination Systems designed to destruct the payload and upper stage(s) so as to protect the RTG from fragments. It gets a nice clean fall into the ocean, which it designed to survive.
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Well, I was being facetious, but I don't think te fallacy is mine. To call an entity a "baby" it needs to haave the attribute of a baby, which a single cell or even a blastocyst does not. It contains in its DNA part of the recipe for making a baby, but this is not a baby.
Hmm... well I've seen lots of babies, and not one of them was a single cell. To call an ovum with a skin cell nucleus in it (or even a blastocyst) a "baby" is a logical leap I cannot join you on.
Maybe you should run for Governor of Texas.
We're doing an RTG mission with NO battery. How? Careful budgeting, and really fast circuit breakers. Anything goes significantly over current rating for more than a few milliseconds, it goes OFF. That's much easier than coming up with a really long life battery and paying for the mass and complexity.
They're not redundant. They're studying two completely different parts of Mars. The mission success criteria, as I understand them, are for two rovers. The only was you could meaningfully say they were redundant is if they had the same or similar landing sites.
Except that Beagel wasn't a rover - just a lander. And it did completely different science.
They do test the rover in a sandbox, and very agressively at that. The problem they had was with the cruise files - unrelated to the fact that therover is on the ground. Cruise is 7 months, and the activities there are fairly low risk, so they didn't get the testbed for 7 months uninterrupted to test this.
I guess I'm not too impressed with armchair hindsight.
Hey, you can qualify a hard drive for space use, let me know. So far, no one's done it AFAIK. Some of the issues:
60 pounds is a hell of a lot. Mass is always tight, and there is no easy fix by "fueling the rocket." Would that there were!
Meters away isn't necessary if you do the thermal design right. This spacecraft for example, will hold its RTG fairly close. We're not talking about a huge amount of heat, and thermal isolation isn't risky technology.
I'm confident that the waste heat from an RTG is anything but a showstopper - it would be especially beneficial in the cold Martian nights.
Yeah, that's a reported bug. Same thing on Mozilla. Sorry, but don''t have the bug number handy.
What they got was some very nice P.R. and recruitment material. they'd like their talented kids to stayin Virginaia, instead of heading up to M.I.T. or Princeton or wherever.
Well, we landed one little rover on Mars before, and it was mainly a technology demonstration mission, paving the way for the two rovers on Mars now. The science on the current mission is front and center, and a lot more profound. If we hope to go fossil hunting on Mars, we need a much better idea of where to look (or even if there's any point).
And your views are read and appreciated. some of the best people I've ever worked with were quite young - the energy and fresh outlook brought to the work can easily outweigh experience in many cases.
And let's not feed the trolls.
Not a very original insight. I certainly wouldn't buy one. However, RTFA - there is a market at that price level, and Apple wasn't quite reaching it with the 15 GB iPod. This market apparently doesn't have a use for 15 GB. We could fill up three 40 GB iPods, but I suppose (I hope) we're not typical.
It looks like it's corectly place itself in safe mode, and the problem may be entirely fixable. My bet is that they'll be doing science again by one week from today.
100% lame and tired.
You got any literature on that? I think we do have this technology - it's called "shielding."
Thank you - although I don't think praying will help, your post was a relief fomr all those witless wags who think recycling jokes about the Mars Defense System is funny.
The rationale given was:
I'd just as soon you didn't bring dinosaurs back, thank you. They eat all the plants and pets and make a huge mess.
Evidence for lots of liquid water in the past open up the possibility that life may have evolved once on Mars. Perhaps it even thrived. Closely studying this evidence can also give us a better idea of where to look for fossils. Since this will be expensive and difficult, you want a lot of evidence pointing to the most probable sites.
If you have to ask why we would want to know about the history of life on another planet, then you're not going to get it. The only absolute necessity is oblivion.
Water vapor? I know the pressure's low, but I would expect ice instead. Ice crystals are known to be in the atmosphere.
Also, the Odyssey measurements are pretty much in the first meter or so of surface, IIRC. There is a lot of hydrogen down there, and it;s pretty much got to be in water (Methane or Ammonia are too volatile at those temperatures). that would mean ice, or possibly sandy brines.
It doesn' appear that the soil cohesion is purely elecrostatic, but I think it will take a lot more data to rule anything out.
Yes, it was a much lighter (and better instrumented) touch than the airbags or the wheels.
The Water's been found - it's most likely in the form of ice, and it's all over the planet. The question Spirit is trying to answer is was there once a lot of LIQUID water on Mars, and if so how long ago, and for how long a duration? Gusev Crater was almost certainly a lake once.
Scientists are people too. The names they give the rocks are just convenient labels that facilitate discussion. It's a lot easier to say "Adirondack" than to quote a range and bearing. I doubt the PR people have much to do with it.
I think RTGs are the likely power source for future rovers, including future lunar robots. This will give them much extended range and lifetime, but it will add quite a bit of cost - getting those things approved for launch is a complex and involved process, and then you have to pay people to put them together and fuel them.
Note: RTGs are NOT nuclear reactors. They just get hot as their fuel decays and generate electricity thermoelectrically.
Loss of control or failure of an engine to ignite is much more likely cause of launch vehicle failure than a sudden explosion. When they lose control, they are blown up by a range safety officer on the ground. Missions carrying RTGs have to fly with Flight Termination Systems designed to destruct the payload and upper stage(s) so as to protect the RTG from fragments. It gets a nice clean fall into the ocean, which it designed to survive.