Now that is funny. I remember the rage-storm over first-post posts and how much effort was put in by the editors to get rid of them. Thanks for the chuckle.:)
Notice that those posting their memories have UID's under 10000. You could probably filter out anyone who even knows that Kermit exists by their UID's alone. And yes my UID is in the 20k's but only because I forgot to get a/. account the first day.
Well considering that the MER's are only designed to last 3-6 months at best due to the fact that they are solar powered, I doubt that its going to have enough time to find the Beagle.
That does bring up an interesting point, why go through all the effort to land these wonderful robots on Mars if they are only going to last for half a year at most.
Here's a clue: slap some nuclear (or as Homer would say "nucular") power plants on them and they would last for years. The Vikings both went for about 4 years if I recall.
a) the shuttle is in a different inclination orbit that would be difficult if not impossible to reach from the Russian launch site.
b) each soyuz only holds 3 people, therefore you
would need to launch four of them to save the
7 person crew (each soyuz would need a pilot, so that takes up one of the slots)
c) there probably weren't docking modules to connect the spacecraft available, and certainly not in orbit on columbia
d) you are an idiot
Aerobraking only works in the upper atmosphere and requires you to remain in orbit. Basically you incrementally lower your closest approach by dipping into the atmosphere, as you stated, however, at some point you cease to be "in orbit" and just reenter. That point is still about 100 km up, so the reentry stresses and heat would not be much different from a nominal shuttle entry and would have likely destroyed the vehicle anyway.
One of those geeks was Dan Goldin, current director of NASA. The other was Charles Elachi the current director of JPL. Go figure. Reminded me of Revenge of the Nerds.
Actually the 40 bps is just the carrier signal that they use to keep a lock on the spacecraft.
The 40bps comes through the low gain omnidirectional antenna. Once they are back on the high gain antenna, the signal rate goes back
up. After the spacecraft is out of danger and back into normal operations the rate is switched back to something like 28,800 bps. Pretty good rate for communicating across 100 million miles.
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Now that is funny. I remember the rage-storm over first-post posts and how much effort was put in by the editors to get rid of them. Thanks for the chuckle. :)
Notice that those posting their memories have UID's under 10000. You could probably filter out anyone who even knows that Kermit exists by their UID's alone. /. account the first day.
And yes my UID is in the 20k's but only because I forgot to get a
The frog is dead. Long live the frog.
The right to keep and arm bears
....... (sounds of crickets) ........
Well considering that the MER's are only designed to last 3-6 months at best due to the fact that they are solar powered, I doubt that its going to have enough time to find the Beagle.
That does bring up an interesting point, why go through all the effort to land these wonderful robots on Mars if they are only going to last for half a year at most.
Here's a clue: slap some nuclear (or as Homer would say "nucular") power plants on them and they would last for years. The Vikings both went for about 4 years if I recall.
a) the shuttle is in a different inclination orbit that would be difficult if not impossible to reach from the Russian launch site. b) each soyuz only holds 3 people, therefore you would need to launch four of them to save the 7 person crew (each soyuz would need a pilot, so that takes up one of the slots) c) there probably weren't docking modules to connect the spacecraft available, and certainly not in orbit on columbia d) you are an idiot
Aerobraking only works in the upper atmosphere and requires you to remain in orbit. Basically you incrementally lower your closest approach by dipping into the atmosphere, as you stated, however, at some point you cease to be "in orbit" and just reenter. That point is still about 100 km up, so the reentry stresses and heat would not be much different from a nominal shuttle entry and would have likely destroyed the vehicle anyway.
One of those geeks was Dan Goldin, current director of NASA. The other was Charles Elachi the current director of JPL. Go figure. Reminded me of Revenge of the Nerds.
Actually the 40 bps is just the carrier signal that they use to keep a lock on the spacecraft.
The 40bps comes through the low gain omnidirectional antenna. Once they are back on the high gain antenna, the signal rate goes back
up. After the spacecraft is out of danger and back into normal operations the rate is switched back to something like 28,800 bps. Pretty good rate for communicating across 100 million miles.