New Mars Forums
You are not logged in.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Announcement
#51 Re: Unmanned probes » Beagle 3? - Whats your view? » 2004-05-07 03:03:21
Beagle2 was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was underfunded, rushed, and not properly tested.
[snip]
What was lost was the potential for science. Beagle2 cost 60-80 million euros! Can you imagine how that money could have been spent? Perhaps on some mission that actually had a chance of success. We have not been "lucky" with Spirit and Opportunity, other than opportunity's hole-in-one landing. The MER rovers have been a success because we did everything in our power to make them a success, and gave the project a proper budget to achieve our goals. You can't do Mars science on a shoestring. It just a waste of money.
I hope Pillanger does not get his way. He clearly has no idea how to manage a space probe project, or estimate the costs involved in designing and testing such complex hardware. This is not an attack on our British friends, or the ESA, but on the stupid "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy the beagle2 was designed under. You can choose one of them, maybe two. But you can't have all three. Remember all those probes we lost in the 90's when Dan Goldin was around?
I hope the 100 million euros, or whatever Pillinger claims it will cost to build the beagle3, will be spent on something else.
While I broadly agree with you about Pillinger and Beagle 2, let's have some perspective here. If we're going to blame Goldin for MCO and MPL shouldn't we also give him credit for the MERs as well? After all it was he who gave the go-ahead for them. In fact it was also him, IIRC, who found the money for *two* (when NASA might otherwise have only sent one; just as there will probably be only one MSL in 2009, thereby once again having NASA putting all its martian eggs in one geewhiz basket).
As for "all those probes we lost in the 90's"...well, perhaps somebody has a better memory than I do but while I remember 4 Mars probes being lost in the 1990s one of those was the billion-dollar Mars Observer whose loss provoked Goldin to try the "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy in the first place while a second was the Russian Mars 96 one.
Do we blame Goldin for them too?
That still leaves the MCO and the MPL, of course, but to claim they put the "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy in a bad light is a selective use of the evidence. The truth is just as America's innings on Mars probes is not as bad as everybody seems to think it is--it only LOOKs bad if you insist on counting all the Soviet/Russian losses too (Russia, and the Soviets before them, have had plain awful luck with Mars probes)--so the score on "faster, better, cheaper" only looks bad if you conveniently forget about such *other* "faster, better, cheaper" NASA missions as Lunar Prospector, Stardust, NEAR, Genesis, and MGS. (And I guess Mars Pathfinder comes under that heading too.)
In any case, as I understand the basis of the rationale of "faster, better cheaper": it was better to lose one or two small, cheap missions (whose loss can be made up by flying a replacement fairly quickly), than to lose a large and expensive one whose replacement may not be flown for a decade or more.
Basically it all comes down to a question of money. You're certainly right to point out the perils and pitfalls of rushing and underfunding of "faster, better, cheaper", but what alternative do you propose? If the politicians will not provide *all* the funding necessary to do a mission properly then those who decide whether to send such missions or not will have to make do with less; and making do with less means you either cut costs per mission or you cut missions. Cutting costs leads to blunders slipping past. Cutting missions means you don't go at all; or you find yourself in competition with other projects and their supporters, each out making a claim on the same limited pot of money.
So what do you do? If you had an opportunity to do a Mars mission and you know or guessed that to decide not to do it would mean no other opportunities to do one for maybe the next decade, like Pillinger, would you give up and abandon the mission just because the powers-that-be would not give you enough funding?
The tragedy of Beagle 2 is not that Pillinger made the effort he did but that the British government was too penny-pinching to give him the funding necessary to do it properly. That he did not have funding, however, is not an argument against making the attempt. From Pillinger's point of view it was probably a case of better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all.
The same goes to MCO and MPL. Had they *not* failed NASA and Congress would still be trying to pinch pennies on Mars missions. Those two failures drove home the kind of lesson which, in turn, allowed the MERs to succeed.
#52 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *6* - continue on from thread "5" » 2004-05-04 19:21:45
Interesting pic http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opport … 1.JPG]here.
![http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opport … 1.JPG]here](http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportunity/pancam/2004-04-30/1P135733804EFF1400P2284L7M1.JPG]here){kind=link}
That almost looks like a "pool" of dust judging from the way those sand ripplies vanish at its edge and the rocks peep above its surface. (A Martian version of quicksand maybe?)
=====
Stephen
#53 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *5* - Let's start with new NASA conference! » 2004-04-23 01:23:19
Is it my imagination or is the JPL team getting a little tardy posting images to its "raw images" site? (Eg they've now got a pair of Sol 107 images for Spirit posted on the front page of their Mars rover site but the "raw images" site seems to be stuck at Sol 105.)
=====
Stephen
#54 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *5* - Let's start with new NASA conference! » 2004-04-13 03:20:22
Cassioli wrote:
Why the hell do they delete the real sky and replace it with "flat red"?!?
If you view the larger version of the image the skyline does seem to have what in the movie business would be called a "matte-line".
But that said, you are aware, Cassioli, that the image is not a true colour one anyway but an "enhanced false-color" version in which the "colors have been exaggerated to enhance the differences between cleaner and dustier rocks, and lighter and darker soils". (I'm quoting from the image's [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 0408a.html]associate blurb on the JPL rover site.)
My guess is that JPL not much care what the sky looked like. It was the ground and its rocks they were more interested in. (And maybe the enhancing process also did things to the Martian sky which made the image less photogenic or less comprehensible.)
=====
Stephen
#55 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity*4* - continue here » 2004-03-21 18:40:32
It would be a very silly thing to do...
Granted.
On the other hand, it has happened before. IIRC, the lunar ALSEPs were shut down before their use-by date was reached to try to save money. (And didn't the same thing happen to the Viking landers?)
=====
Stephen
#56 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity survival - Could they srvive to Mars winter? » 2004-03-09 01:04:08
I read that Spirit and Opportunity will eventually stop working due to two factors:
1) Dust covering their solar panels
2) Sun maximum elevation decreasing while Mars winter approachesCan these problems be solved in any way?
Probably not from Earth.
But didn't I read somewhere that when they built the MERs the engineers gave the MERs a greater degree of insulation than they might otherwise have done? (And as a result for a time some were worried that the rovers might get too warm!)
#57 Re: Unmanned probes » Interstellar Probe » 2004-02-20 08:49:29
Define "any time soon". It's unlikely to launch for at least another decade (albeit I notice one page suggesting it could set out as early as 2010).
For a whole lot more info, check out:
[http://interstellar.jpl.nasa.gov]http://interstellar.jpl.nasa.gov
=====
Stephen
#58 Re: Unmanned probes » Huygens Titan Descent » 2004-02-19 13:27:29
How long the Cassini mothership can keep it in view is also a factor. Apparently had gone all the way down on the main parachute would have taken too long, so after it has slowed to a respectable velocity the main parachute will be cut loose and a smaller one deployed.
"The main parachute is sized to pull the Descent Module safely out of the front shield. It is jettisoned after 15 minutes to avoid a protracted descent and a smaller 3.03 meter diameter parachute is deployed. The descent will last between 2 hours and 2 hours 30 minutes."
([http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/huygens-mission.cfm]http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/h … ssion.cfm)
=====
Stephen
#59 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-11 05:34:31
I just had an awful thought. What if the Hematite is just a very thin layer on the top of the Meridiani area and it came from an eruption or impact of a small area and was just recently deposited? Then what we thought was possibly a large area of water may actually be a much smaller area. Ugh!
Didn't the Mini-TES find Hematite in Opportunity's crater--except where its airbags had bounced on the way in? That would seem to imply a thin layer of the stuff.
=====
Stephen
#60 Re: Unmanned probes » Any Plans For Neptune and Uranus? » 2004-02-04 01:51:45
Anyone know of any concepts or plans for probes out to Uranus and Neptune? I'd love to see something other than just the Pioneer/Voyager flybys. Is the Icy Moons Orbiter a one shot deal, or a first of many ion and fission powered craft?
There is nothing definite in the works AFAIK. However, NASA's wishlist of future missions does include a Neptune orbiter among them.
Check out:
[http://bees.jpl.nasa.gov/BEES2000/e_nil … tation.pdf]http://bees.jpl.nasa.gov/BEES2000/e_nil … tation.pdf
#61 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Express (MEX) - ESA orbiter » 2004-01-31 22:56:36
ESA's Mars Express orbiter captured an image of Spirit's landing site about a week ago. The image shows the exact location of Spirit is awash in a shade of green. Don't believe me? Look at the image for yourself.
[http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … ctid=34531]http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … ctid=34531
The current _New Scientist_ issue (p19) adds a curious twist to that pic.
"Although there are standard red, green, and blue (RGB) filters onboard that can produce a fair approximation of 'true' colour, there have hardly been used. Instead most of the colour images displayed so far have been taken through green, blue, and infrared filters (IR-GB). When the infrared gets rendered as red, the results are pretty close to true, but with some glaring exceptions. Blue and green, in particular, just don't come out right."
This, it seems, was all right because "[a]s far as we know, those colours don't exist anywhere on the surface of Mars".
"If they did, we would have noticed them in the few images that have been produced using a normal red filter."
Bearing that Mars Express pic in mind perhaps a new more might be in order! 
=====
Stephen
#62 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-01-29 21:14:13
Where is that 'leaf-like' thing supposed to be, on the dirt at Spirit's feet? Won't it be a scrap of something off the lander?
Sorry, I should have mentioned that it's at Opportunity's site. (Among the images for Sol 2.)
=====
Stephen
#63 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-01-29 01:20:50
Now what on earth (er, Mars) do you suppose that leaf-like thing is? (Not to mention all that speckled stuff.)
=====
Stephen
#64 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-01-28 21:28:42
I see that Spirit has recovered enough to send back its first pic in a week.
=====
Stephen
#65 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity 2 - Continued from original thread » 2004-01-25 19:45:26
Those who have been speculating on the "magic carpet" at the Spirit site (and now perhaps Opportunity's also) might want to check out p6 of the current issue of New Scientist magazine where one possible explanation has been floated: that if the stuff is indeed mud the water responsible could consist of brines. That is, intensely salty water.
As the article goes on to point out, that would be consistent both with Gusev having once been a lake (as the lake dried out any salts in the water would become more and more concentrated) and with the findings from Odyssey of a small proportion of subsurface water being present even at some equatorial latitudes. While subsurface ice has usually been invoked to explain the Odyssey finding, as the article points out brines could explain it also.
(It also points out that it would also cause problems for the usual explanation of the Viking lander results testing for signs of life: that exotic superoxides were responsible.)
=====
Stephen
#66 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » A Martian Bill of Rights - A list of Right put out for discussion. » 2004-01-16 09:56:31
Everyone has the right to practice the profession of their choice without regard to whether or not they hold any license, certification, or specific education. Of course, everyone has the right not to patronize or employ a person because they lack such license, certification, or education.
This is just nuts. The whole purpose of certification is to ensure that whatever building you happen to be in right now won't collapse on you. Or to take an example from the Soviet Union, that hotels don't come with hot water on one half of the hotel and cold water on the other. Also people need protection from HMOs from sending them to quacks.
Indeed! I would be intrigued to know what the rationale was for encouraging the practice of brain surgery, building construction, and electrical repairs other such things by those who might well know next-to-nothing about such things.
To make matters worse, this utterly bizarre "right" not only protects the incompetent from paying compensation, it also seems to protect those who would try to deliberately deceive others--by (in effect) protecting them from prosecution.
Of course, everyone has the right not to patronize or employ a person because they lack such license, certification, or education.
Caveat Empor rules! However, just how the average person is to be expected to be able to tell who is skilled and who is not is unclear, given that this same right would also seem to protect the fraudsters' right to use phoney certificates, licences, and outright lies to enhance the deception!
(It also has other possibilities. Can banking be classed as a profession? If so, would this right allow someone to set up a bank on Monday, take deposits from the suckers until Friday, then close up shop and keep the loot? :-)
#67 Re: Meta New Mars » Search and New Posts working » 2002-06-18 14:31:26
Toccota@Juno.com
#68 Re: Meta New Mars » Search and New Posts working » 2002-06-18 14:30:39
a word is not really a thing as much as it is an operation or verb pertaining to another word in a sentence. Mass is known by its effect on other things or words or music in logical theory. is that true or did i just make it up? I want a job that pays $0.00 an hour but lets you eat small amounts of vegetables fruits etc. research experimentation documentation logic & stuff. Anybody know where to find this & how the hell will i get there?