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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

My gast has rarely been so flabbered.

    I'm not quite sure Oppy's up to it but I'm impressed with NASA's chutzpah in trying for it. Go little rover,go!!!
                       :up:   

*"My gast has rarely been so flabbered." 

:laugh:  That's a clever twist on an old phrase.

Thanks, Doug, for the map, info (distance/travel time), etc.

Expectations have been so wonderfully exceeded by the MERs thus far (understatement).  ::fingers crossed for trek to Victoria Crater::  (Cautious optimism)

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

djellison

Member

From: Leicester,UK

Registered: 2004-08-31

Posts: 113

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Thing with the MER's is that they're very labour intensive in terms of planning and commanding.  There's still a team of > 100 running these things. 

You want to mass produce them - thats cool - it'll bring down the startup cost (something like $250-300m each currently - down to perhaps $80-100m a pop if you get a production line going)  - but they're not autonomous enough to be mass deployable. You cant make people cheaper - and the more rovers you have - the more people you need to commadn them, the more DSN assets you need to transmit and recieve from them etc.

To cover the 5k down to Victoria is going to take hundreds of commands - thousands of man-hours in the loop to command them. A truely intelligent rover could be commanded just once - to head 4.9k south - and do so totally un-commanded. THAT - would be a vehicle worth mass producing - as you could land them anywhere safe - and command them to drive to places of interest essentially un-attended. Of course - you then monitor the data they send back for targets of interest en-route and command stop-offs in the usual manour - but as I see it - the MER's are a HUGE step forward in technology - but there's a huge step to go before similar assets become a senisble vehicle to mass-deploy on the surface.

I'd suggest that somewhere between the MER and the MSL platform is a middle ground of medium range rovers in the 200-300kg range, probably RTG powered - that could cover 10's of KM's in a month - transmit more like 300 - 500 Mbits on a daily basis - and have enough on board processing power to maintain a rapid rate of progress across the surface whilst performing a high level of autonomous hazard avoidance and long range targetting. 

Doug

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

That was what I had in mind...

Keep the 'chassis' (is that English? I mean the purely mechanical construction, suspension etc)

and upgrade the electronics etc. They already did a software-upgrade to make em more 'independent,' so must be possible to go further that way... switch out the solar stuff with an RTG for Luna etc...

Keep the body, gut it, upgrade the 'brains,' add some more sensors and upgrade the energy system, whenever something more powerful reaches maturity...

djellison

Member

From: Leicester,UK

Registered: 2004-08-31

Posts: 113

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Keep the 'chassis' (is that English? I mean the purely mechanical construction, suspension etc)

Be sure to upgrade the motors Dont want to be on 5 wheel drive after 3km 

Doug

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Yes Rik, 'chassis' is the right English word.   :up:

    Your marvellous command of English, colloquial English included, is quite remarkable and I certainly envy your skills in the linguistics department.
    Well done!
                               

    As for Opportunity's upcoming trek to Victoria crater, I'm with Cindy in hoping they turn up a nice big fossil sea-shell or some such. What a rush that would be!
                                           

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

On Djellison's site, ObsessedWithWorlds has found the hires pic of Victoria!

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?show … 49&hl=]MER forum

atomoid

Member

From: Santa Cruz, CA

Registered: 2004-02-13

Posts: 252

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Looking at thathttp://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/full_jpg_non_map/R14/R1400021.jpg] beautiful full size hi-rez image showing Victoria and Endurance. Endurance crater is a bit less than halfway down, to the left you can see the lander base as a white speck sitting in Eagle crater, the backshell, etc. truly an eagle's-eye view!

the caption on the http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15 … .html]main page shows it was released 9/27/04 but the phot was acquired on 2/1/04 so this is probably the same image as was used in the old release showing the rover several feet away from the lander at the first bedrock site in Eagle. I was hoping for something newer showing Oppy's tracks much like was done for Spirit recently. guess well have to wait.

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"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

djellison

Member

From: Leicester,UK

Registered: 2004-08-31

Posts: 113

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

My image at http://mer.rlproject.com/end_vic_4m.jpg … vic_4m.jpg has been updated to include any and all MOC imagery I can find.

This covers an area of 2.6 x 7.3 km

Doug

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r … 249]Spirit has a steering problem...

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r … 249]Spirit has a steering problem...

*To disable those two brakes or not to disable...nice little dilemma.  ???

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,433

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

It seems like spirit has been the rover with all the wheel problems, why is that?

djellison

Member

From: Leicester,UK

Registered: 2004-08-31

Posts: 113

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

It seems like spirit has been the rover with all the wheel problems, why is that?

It's driven 3 x further than Opportunity - over considerably rougher ground.

I'd say the wheels on Spirit have done 6 x as much work as those on Opportunity

Doug

Josh Cryer

Moderator

Registered: 2001-09-29

Posts: 3,830

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Very good point, Doug. Spirit has certainly been a trooper. I hope they get it sorted before sleepy time.

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Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,433

Re: Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Bump So I can find this topic later to fix the issues to make it readable....