Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheel Damage 'Accelerated' 157
astroengine writes "Despite the assurances that the holes seen in Mars rover Curiosity's wheels were just a part of the mission, there seems to be increasing concern for the wheels' worsening condition after the one-ton robot rolled over some craggy terrain. In an upcoming drive, rover drivers will monitor the six wheels over some smooth terrain to assess their condition. "We want to take a full inventory of the condition of the wheels," said Jim Erickson, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'Dents and holes were anticipated, but the amount of wear appears to have accelerated in the past month or so.' Although the wheels are designed to sustain significant damage without impairing driving activities, the monitoring of the situation is essential for future planning."
NASA is an ugly place for a grading curve. (Score:2, Insightful)
As A poor young man driving a $500 '73 Ford Pickup, I remember carefully monitoring oil consumption, water level, and tread wear on the five dollar maypops I could afford to put on my baby's feet.
It is common knowledge that NASA has one initial too many for the Brobdingnagian budget, but I was poor as two Mongolian goat herders.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, let's just toss out a few instruments and batteries so we can have wheels that last 5 instead of 3 times the planned driving distance.
Gotta love armchair engineers.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know weight is important and all, but .75mm of aluminium? Really? Maybe they should have less scientists over there at NASA and more people with common sense who can raise their eyebrows.
Yes, every time something goes wrong, let us point out how "stoopid" those scientists are in hindsight and claim that the "common sense" solution would have worked. Of course, it couldn't be that the people there did a lot of simulations, analysis, and decided that 0.75mm was a reasonable (not perfect - nothing is black and white) thickness and the disadvantage of thicker wheels was outweighed by the advantages of thinner wheels.
Yes, the designers took a risk - that is their job. To clearly assess the tradeoffs and come up with a good design that trades off risk and performance at an acceptable level. Something doesn't work out as you expect? Use that knowledge in the next iteration. At one extreme you have a lot of equipment with no wheels, and the other extreme you have just wheels, no equipment. You want to do the designer's job? Go ahead, show me what your "common-sense" analysis of the tradeoffs are - what equipment would you cut for thicker wheels, and back it up with a detailed discussion on how the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
And tends towards brittleness and is a PITA to machine.
I'm rather sure the nice folks at JPL thought this one through.