Actually, since Spirit hit the hills, the rocks are vastly different then those out on the plains. And Opportunity has just recently reached a strata that is newer and has -no- 'blueberries' in it at all (though they are in the wind-blown dunes).
Actually, the 2009 rover is planned to be nuclear. Much bigger than the current rovers and able to survive 2 Martian years (about 5 Earth years). Was kinda iffy whether they could proceed with that one but that now seems to be certain now with the presidential directive to go to Mars (and the moon).
Actually, it's predecessor was actively used in the combat theatre in Iraq:
"The first ship of this class to be used by the Navy, HSV 1 Joint Venture, proved its military mettle during Operation Iraqi Freedom as a forward staging platform for Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism and SEAL (SEa, Air, Land) teams in the shallow waters of Umm Qasr, Iraq. The Navy hopes to build upon lessons learned from Swift and its predecessor, and eventually use the information to create a new class of Littoral Combat Ships."
btw, noting the 'Thats-a-Lot-of-Steel-Dept' header on the thread, the boat chassis is largely fiberglass. It's not built to take incoming ordance of any sort. But it will move a platoon-size group, incl. all their equipment, to anywhere in the world accessible by water, in a hurry.
The ships are made by a New Zealand company which makes catamaran ferrys for use in that part of the world. Keeps cost down. I'm sure in the next year or so the navy will want to build one from scratch at 100 times the cost.
I think they will announce both that the bedrock originated in a watery environment and that there is water in liquid form right now in the soil under the Rovers' wheels (in the form of brine). That white 'frost' we have often been seeing in the tracks the Rovers make will turn out to be water that got squeezed out of the soil (and immediately froze).
I think its' safe to say that the approach to programming that the rover programmers use has little in common with that of some large software companies. "Getting it out the door" (ie, launch it within the possible window) involves a firmer deadline than any MS programmer -ever- faced. They actually uploaded a new version of the driving software while the rovers were enroute to Mars.
The updates include improved driving software, something that only evolves after some hands-on time on Mars itself. The patch to strangle the errant heater is pretty drastic - it shuts down some primary circuits including the internal clock, which has the -side- effect of cutting off power to the heater overnight. The rover will wake up the next day only when it starts to get some sunlight on its' solar cells - not by an alarm clock as it does now. The heater will still run once the rover wakes up the next day.
The tricky part here was that the 'hardware connectivity' depended on 'software functionality'. Try maintaining machine a block away if the commnication link requires both ends to point a satellite dish at an orbiting satellite and that pointing relied of software functioning correctly.
Re:Opportunity costs too high
on
Brine on Mars?
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· Score: 1
"You may not be able to tell which is Mars and which is meteor after it hits."
Especially if it is an 'Armageddon' size rock...heh
Seriously, though, I suspect that the cost of sending a 'tug' to the asteroid belt and retrieving an asteroid and putting it on a collision course with Mars would be both more expensive and more difficult than launching a heavy load from earth.
I'm not sure examining heatshield or backshell impact sites will be much more useful that digging with the rovers. They didn't penetrate any bedrock and added a variety of foreign matter to the location (the backshell/parachute especially). What NASA needs is a crater the size of the one that Opportunity is now in, but freshly made so that the interior bedrock can be examined without trying to factor out what 1,000's or millions of years of UV exposure has done to it. RATing helps now but that is a poor 2nd to haing a fresh crater carved out.
The project is a goner long ago. Getting the article removed is simply an attempt to cover his tracks before he launches another scheme to vacuum up investor money. He doesn't want some future journalist to dig this up when he's doing a new song-and-dance for the monied crowd.
Re:Better way to dig
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yeah, we've crashed a few things there but I seriously doubt any of them made much of an impact. Look at the scarring from Spirits' heat shield. Probably didn't penetrate even 1/2 a meter at best. Plus, crashed probes (ones that weren't intended to crash) scatter all sorts of elements on the spot and nearby, contaminating the site - the airbags from the current rovers are a good example. A pure heavy ore with perhaps a heat shield of something more resistant to friction would be easier to factor out of any site examinations.
Re:Opportunity costs too high
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 1
Whether we throw 500 lbs of lead or electronics at Mars is irrelevant. The object is scientific discovery and if thumping Mars with a 500 lb steel rock creates a greater opportunity for scientific research and discovery then sending a rover to scratch on the surface then that's what we should do.
1) Putting the lander in orbit 1st allows us time to more precisely target a landing site. Fuel expended, yeah, but we do it with the orbiters there now.
2) I would expect the next round of rovers to be able to roam farter and faster. I think it will be feasible to put a rover down within a couple of miles of the earth-initiated crated and then drive to it.
=====
Re: cratering Mars
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I suspect that snagging a suitable astroid and lugging it to Mars is much more complicated and expensive then sending something from here. The rovers themselves weigh over 400 lbs (on Earth) so sending a 500lb chunk of metal is no big deal. I'm sure some scientist could quickly calculate how big and what shape such a thing would need to be to maximize results in such an experiment.
Better way to dig
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Rather than having the rovers scratch the surface or look at billion year old craters what they should do is send a large lump of heavy metal (say, 500 lbs) to Mars and, with it protected by a heat shield, slam it into the surface like an meteorite. Not having to account for parachute wind drift they could be pretty accurate with such a targeted blow and the result would be a small -fresh- crater. The crater could be observed by sensors in orbit and a rover landed in the vicinity shortly thereafter. Both the man-made meteorite and the rover could be sent together and initially orbited so as to allow time for a precise hit and accurate rover reentry.
Actually, it was made clear during the Q&A at IDF that the instruction set would be compatible with the AMD64 instruction set that AMD pioneered and which Microsoft has already built a 64-bit version of Windows around. Intel will undoubtedly have some 'additional' instructions included, making theirs a superset of AMD64 but the main point is that you will be able to buy one version of 64-bit Windows and install it on either an AMD or Intel-based machine. Now its' just a matter of timing. I would not expect MS to do the full release of their 64-bit Windows until Intel has the matching hardware in the pipeline, curtailing AMD's current lead in that market segment.
Actually, Spirit backed up a bit on its' own the other day when it reached the 'Stone Council' formation. It's AI decided that it was a bit too close to some obstacles.
Those extra extensions need only be used in a few key apps, not Windows itself, to allow Intel to introduce their new hardware with some Powerpoint presentation graphs showing how their implementation of x86-64 beats the competition into the dust. Never mind that 98% of the apps out there either won't use them or wouldn't gain from doing so anyway.
The thing that annoys me the most is that Intel has guessed wrong badly twice in trying to drive the market deeper into their corner(RAMBUS, Itanium) and AMD has guessed right both times (DDR, X86-64) and all the time Intel cranks out a profit every quarter and AMD come's up for air for a couple of quarters every other year. If Intel were going against an equal-sized adversary they'd be chapter 11 some years ago for making such mistakes.
Well, in fact, they -haven't- released it...just a still-buggy demo version. You can be pretty sure that a full production version will come out -very- close to the point in time when Intel has full production hardware in the channel. So on the one hand MS tells AMD "Yeah, we'll write a version of Windows for your new chip" and then turns around and tells Intel "You need to join this party but we'll give you a break and sit on it until your are ready so the other guy doesn't get too much of a head start".
A couple of 'windshield wipers', used once a month, would probably be sufficient to keep the solar cells in good working order. Since they're both near the equator I would imagine that the sun never gets too low at any point in the martian year. Warm critical electronics to extend their life and that just leaves the problem of making a battery that can take enough charge/discharge cycles in that environment.
I suspect that including a nuclear powerplant would exceed the delivery systems' weight capacity.
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Actually, since Spirit hit the hills, the rocks are vastly different then those out on the plains. And Opportunity has just recently reached a strata that is newer and has -no- 'blueberries' in it at all (though they are in the wind-blown dunes).
Actually, the 2009 rover is planned to be nuclear. Much bigger than the current rovers and able to survive 2 Martian years (about 5 Earth years). Was kinda iffy whether they could proceed with that one but that now seems to be certain now with the presidential directive to go to Mars (and the moon).
"The first ship of this class to be used by the Navy, HSV 1 Joint Venture, proved its military mettle during Operation Iraqi Freedom as a forward staging platform for Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism and SEAL (SEa, Air, Land) teams in the shallow waters of Umm Qasr, Iraq. The Navy hopes to build upon lessons learned from Swift and its predecessor, and eventually use the information to create a new class of Littoral Combat Ships."
Some other links:
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?stor y_id=9671
http://www.cmwc.navy.mil/HSV%202%20SWIFT.htm
http://www.msc.navy.mil/sealift/2004/January/swi ft.htm
http://www.dod.mil/news/Apr2004/n04022004_200404 025.html
btw, noting the 'Thats-a-Lot-of-Steel-Dept' header on the thread, the boat chassis is largely fiberglass. It's not built to take incoming ordance of any sort. But it will move a platoon-size group, incl. all their equipment, to anywhere in the world accessible by water, in a hurry.
The ships are made by a New Zealand company which makes catamaran ferrys for use in that part of the world. Keeps cost down. I'm sure in the next year or so the navy will want to build one from scratch at 100 times the cost.
I think they will announce both that the bedrock originated in a watery environment and that there is water in liquid form right now in the soil under the Rovers' wheels (in the form of brine). That white 'frost' we have often been seeing in the tracks the Rovers make will turn out to be water that got squeezed out of the soil (and immediately froze).
I think its' safe to say that the approach to programming that the rover programmers use has little in common with that of some large software companies. "Getting it out the door" (ie, launch it within the possible window) involves a firmer deadline than any MS programmer -ever- faced. They actually uploaded a new version of the driving software while the rovers were enroute to Mars.
The updates include improved driving software, something that only evolves after some hands-on time on Mars itself. The patch to strangle the errant heater is pretty drastic - it shuts down some primary circuits including the internal clock, which has the -side- effect of cutting off power to the heater overnight. The rover will wake up the next day only when it starts to get some sunlight on its' solar cells - not by an alarm clock as it does now. The heater will still run once the rover wakes up the next day.
The tricky part here was that the 'hardware connectivity' depended on 'software functionality'. Try maintaining machine a block away if the commnication link requires both ends to point a satellite dish at an orbiting satellite and that pointing relied of software functioning correctly.
"You may not be able to tell which is Mars and which is meteor after it hits." Especially if it is an 'Armageddon' size rock...heh Seriously, though, I suspect that the cost of sending a 'tug' to the asteroid belt and retrieving an asteroid and putting it on a collision course with Mars would be both more expensive and more difficult than launching a heavy load from earth.
I'm not sure examining heatshield or backshell impact sites will be much more useful that digging with the rovers. They didn't penetrate any bedrock and added a variety of foreign matter to the location (the backshell/parachute especially). What NASA needs is a crater the size of the one that Opportunity is now in, but freshly made so that the interior bedrock can be examined without trying to factor out what 1,000's or millions of years of UV exposure has done to it. RATing helps now but that is a poor 2nd to haing a fresh crater carved out.
The project is a goner long ago. Getting the article removed is simply an attempt to cover his tracks before he launches another scheme to vacuum up investor money. He doesn't want some future journalist to dig this up when he's doing a new song-and-dance for the monied crowd.
Yeah, we've crashed a few things there but I seriously doubt any of them made much of an impact. Look at the scarring from Spirits' heat shield. Probably didn't penetrate even 1/2 a meter at best. Plus, crashed probes (ones that weren't intended to crash) scatter all sorts of elements on the spot and nearby, contaminating the site - the airbags from the current rovers are a good example. A pure heavy ore with perhaps a heat shield of something more resistant to friction would be easier to factor out of any site examinations.
Whether we throw 500 lbs of lead or electronics at Mars is irrelevant. The object is scientific discovery and if thumping Mars with a 500 lb steel rock creates a greater opportunity for scientific research and discovery then sending a rover to scratch on the surface then that's what we should do.
1) Putting the lander in orbit 1st allows us time to more precisely target a landing site. Fuel expended, yeah, but we do it with the orbiters there now. 2) I would expect the next round of rovers to be able to roam farter and faster. I think it will be feasible to put a rover down within a couple of miles of the earth-initiated crated and then drive to it. =====
I suspect that snagging a suitable astroid and lugging it to Mars is much more complicated and expensive then sending something from here. The rovers themselves weigh over 400 lbs (on Earth) so sending a 500lb chunk of metal is no big deal. I'm sure some scientist could quickly calculate how big and what shape such a thing would need to be to maximize results in such an experiment.
Rather than having the rovers scratch the surface or look at billion year old craters what they should do is send a large lump of heavy metal (say, 500 lbs) to Mars and, with it protected by a heat shield, slam it into the surface like an meteorite. Not having to account for parachute wind drift they could be pretty accurate with such a targeted blow and the result would be a small -fresh- crater. The crater could be observed by sensors in orbit and a rover landed in the vicinity shortly thereafter. Both the man-made meteorite and the rover could be sent together and initially orbited so as to allow time for a precise hit and accurate rover reentry.
Actually, it was made clear during the Q&A at IDF that the instruction set would be compatible with the AMD64 instruction set that AMD pioneered and which Microsoft has already built a 64-bit version of Windows around. Intel will undoubtedly have some 'additional' instructions included, making theirs a superset of AMD64 but the main point is that you will be able to buy one version of 64-bit Windows and install it on either an AMD or Intel-based machine. Now its' just a matter of timing. I would not expect MS to do the full release of their 64-bit Windows until Intel has the matching hardware in the pipeline, curtailing AMD's current lead in that market segment.
Actually, Spirit backed up a bit on its' own the other day when it reached the 'Stone Council' formation. It's AI decided that it was a bit too close to some obstacles.
When will Mars pass behind the sun and we lose all communication with it for a few weeks? Could happen while the Rovers are still functional...
Those extra extensions need only be used in a few key apps, not Windows itself, to allow Intel to introduce their new hardware with some Powerpoint presentation graphs showing how their implementation of x86-64 beats the competition into the dust. Never mind that 98% of the apps out there either won't use them or wouldn't gain from doing so anyway.
The thing that annoys me the most is that Intel has guessed wrong badly twice in trying to drive the market deeper into their corner(RAMBUS, Itanium) and AMD has guessed right both times (DDR, X86-64) and all the time Intel cranks out a profit every quarter and AMD come's up for air for a couple of quarters every other year. If Intel were going against an equal-sized adversary they'd be chapter 11 some years ago for making such mistakes.
Well, in fact, they -haven't- released it...just a still-buggy demo version. You can be pretty sure that a full production version will come out -very- close to the point in time when Intel has full production hardware in the channel. So on the one hand MS tells AMD "Yeah, we'll write a version of Windows for your new chip" and then turns around and tells Intel "You need to join this party but we'll give you a break and sit on it until your are ready so the other guy doesn't get too much of a head start".
A couple of 'windshield wipers', used once a month, would probably be sufficient to keep the solar cells in good working order. Since they're both near the equator I would imagine that the sun never gets too low at any point in the martian year. Warm critical electronics to extend their life and that just leaves the problem of making a battery that can take enough charge/discharge cycles in that environment. I suspect that including a nuclear powerplant would exceed the delivery systems' weight capacity. .
As far as support goes, I suspect that Wind River is providing NASA with 24/7 on-the-spot support from their very best people.