A Deep Space Primer 118
phil reed writes "With the latest Mars missions still in the news, people might be curious about what it takes to actually run a deep space mission: how a spacecraft is designed, how the communications are handled, what kind of project management is in place to make it all work. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a primer online that gives broad general coverage of all aspects of putting a satellite into orbit and how to manage it once it's there. Fascinating reading, with lots of links to more detail."
Its Mind Boggling (Score:2, Insightful)
JPL (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice to see. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its Mind Boggling (Score:5, Insightful)
The objective of these missions is to learn more about mars.. if we were just interplanetary joyriding, then, yes, I'd want the rover back -- but that's not the case here.
Besides, the rovers are only a small portion of the cost of the mission - even if we could magically get these back for free, it would be worth the effort to build new rovers that incorporate the things learned on previous missions and provide new and different capabilities.
Long-feedback cycles and good design (Score:5, Insightful)
A former boss and engineer had a great story about his early job experience designing circuits for a guided missile. He showed his first circuit design to the boss and the boss noted all the little adjustable pots in the circuit. The boss simply said, "Are you going to fly with that missile to tweak all the pots?"
Although simulations, testing, and prototyping are great, truely great engineering just works because it was designed correctly from the beginning to just work.
Re:Its Mind Boggling (Score:5, Insightful)
Misleading title... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Voyager missions come the closest, but still remain fairly near home, on any meaningful interstellar scale.
The linked article discusses interplanetary exploration. Quite a bit of a difference.
Re:how the communications are handled (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheaper future vs. the vicious cycle of cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely! I look forward to a range of advancements such as lower cost access to space (personal fav is a space elevator), truely routine manned space operations, and better adaptive/autonomous robotic systems.
Yet I fear that the foreseeable future (next 20 years at least) will be dominated by rare and expensive space projects in which every lauch counts and every EVA-hour is carefully scripted and rehearsed.
Its a vicious loop, really. Because space is expensive, space projects are very carefully planned and executed. And because space projects are so carefully planned and executed, they are expensive.
Re:Long-feedback cycles and good design (Score:5, Insightful)
To use an even simpler exmple, what if one burns 2.00000 moles of hydrogn and 1.00000 moles of oxygen, how much water is produced? If you answer that question based on what you learned in freshman chemistry you'd be wrong. In the real world, reactions never go to 100%, reagents aren't pure, and other chemicals besides water (like hydrogen peroxide) would be produced. And the ONLY way to know how much water would be produced under given conditions would be to actually do it. And then, you'd find for repeated experiments the amount wouldn't quite be the same!
And finally, I'd point out that when systems fail aboard a Mars rover, they're very much back the realm of hacking, tweaking and fiddling.
Re:I agree but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
to take one sentence...
They should dwell on it, and their responsibilities as Citezens of the US. If the more than 200 million citezens, of the most powerful nation-state currently in existence, ever felt squeamish about the loss of 500 lives, there would be a LOT more wars, a lot more killing and a lot more misery. Or would you rather have Saddam still murdering and starving his people ?
There's so much trouble that could have easily been solved if that energy was put to more urgent matters
in short, my answer to your first sentence
The human condition is the need to explore.
"Deep"? (Score:3, Insightful)