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Science

Mars Lander goes Spelunking! 182

Posted by jimjag from the mars-needs-women dept.
Khan writes "Seems like the Polar Lander may have landed a little too far..about 1 mile deeper than expected into a canyon and probably broke apart in the process. Check out the article in the Miami Herald." According to the official Mars Polar web site, they are still looking for it, or at least some evidence of a crash. Maybe some Martian dragged it to its garage for spare parts.
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Mars Lander goes spelunking! More

Mars Lander goes spelunking!

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  • Actually... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...I read a while back that they had feared something like this would happen. The current orbiter had returned pictures indicating that the landing area was more "rolling" than previously believed. They thought of moving the landing site, but other areas were just as chancy. Shit happens. After all, this IS rocket science. Seems strange that so many Mars probes go awry. Did anyone see the pictures that last Russion probe took just before it lost contact. A funny, cube shaped object seemed to come straight up from the planet...(I am not making this up, but insert lame borg joke here anyway) Cpt_Kirks

  • Armstrong Aldrin and Aerials (sp?) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You're absoultely right. Even Armstrong and Aldrin had problems on the way down because the lunar lander's high gain antenna sometimes failed to 'lock on' to the ground based radio transmitters. For the periods of radio silence, they were flying / partially autopiloting it on their own. Armstrong was also praised for implementing lots of 'sense checks' e.g. checking ground covered and height above ground (to calculate angular velocity). Thus Armstrong was able to complement / assist / verify the automated systems. Just one thing, I think the reason they landed 5 miles off course was because of Mass-Conns (Mass Concentrations) in the moon causing the moons gravity field to be slighly uneven. They basically started the terminal descent 5 or so miles off position because of 'inadequate knowledge of the state vector' i.e. without knowing exactly where they were in orbit.

  • OPEN SOURCE LANDER (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the martian father and son were battling it out on the red surface. in the intensity of combat, the two had not realized that they had worked their way to the edge of a large crevice.

    suddenly, a loud rumbling filled the air. the two were shocked as the mars lander set down 20 feet away. several intruments clicked and whirred and finally the mars lander, a bit jarred by the landing, spoke, "good... good! now... give in to your anger and take your father's place at my side back on earth!"

    the young martian looked at his father, who had been beaten back to the ground. he was breathing heavily and had been rendered defenseless, "never. i'll never join you! you failed your highness! i am a martian, like my father before me!"

    the mars lander was irritated by this response, "so be it, martian! if you will not be turned, then you will be destroyed!"

    with that, the mars lander extended a probe and began shocking the young martian with a powerful stream of plasma.

    the father martian pulled himself up to his feet and hobbled over to stand next to the mars lander.

    "your feeble skills are no match for the power of the 3rd planet! young fool, only now at the end do you understand! you will pay the price for your lack of vision!"

    the father martian looked at his son, writhing in agony on the red ground. he turned to the mars lander.

    "and now, young martian, you will be destroyed!"

    the shocks grew in intensity. the young martian could feel life slipping away from him, "father, please! help me!"

    the father martian could not bear the sight of his son suffering so. with his last ounce of energy he took hold of the mars lander and carried to the edge of the crevice. wild streams of energy spewed from the lander and electrified the father martian. with one final burst of energy, the father martian tossed the mars lander into the crevice and collapsed on the ground next to his son.


    thank you.


    the fat-time charlie online serial [warmann.com]!! bookmark it and don't forget to hit "reload"!! lynx friendly!!

  • Re:Good Argument for human missions... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Exactly. Human Ingenuity and the ability to Adapt to the dynamic world are one of our strongest points. Using an AI might not be the greatest idea, though, as the current AI technology ain't too high, and that the AI will most likely be of much lower intilligence if it were to be used. The only problem would be that if a human pilot was used, you would have to load up the craft with life support, supploes, bigger drive systems for the load, more fuel, and thu a bigger ship in general, but then you would have to exoand that some more often by having more than one person, just to make the journey possible and make it so the pilot won't get lonely, but, that would entail an eve larger rocket, and thus more fuel, and bigger drive systems that the previously said one-human spacecraft. It would be an endless type of thing, so there would have to be amny cutbacks in the process, and that would be even worse, as the crew would need a place to live once they land, and suits t survive the mars atmosphere, and then some other stuff like mroe supplies, co2 to fuel converters, de/re-hydration units, more storage, some issues of mad magazine, a nice computer system, an airlock, raw material storage, parts, backup systems, and then some place to sleep, which will also take up space. then, you will need a way to stay clean, and healthy. Then, they need some way to get back into space, and a way to get back to earth quickly, and

  • Apply Occam's razor to this explaination (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a few facts associated with the loss of the Mars Polar Lander. These are:
    1. Three independent craft failed to establish contact with the Mars Global Surveyor or Earth (the lander and two impact probes).
    2. The Mars Polar Lander was the only NASA craft that did not maintain a radio carrier signal while descending into the Martian atmosphere. Absolutely nothing is known about what happened after the Mars Polar Lander began its decent. 3. The likelihood of all three independent craft failing independently is not as likely as them all failing because of one cause. 4. The failure of the lander to separate from the cruise stage would explain the loss of all three craft, and there is no telemetry to prove that this did not happen.

    So we are left with two explanations. One is that the craft failed to separate from the cruise stage during decent, and all three elements were destroyed. The other is that the lander successfully descended, and due to bad luck happened to land in a canyon. The other two probes were supposed to land 50km away from the lander. Under this explanation, the two failures that destroyed them remain unexplained.
    Pick the most simple of the two explanations.

    It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. - Occam

  • Re:ok, ok ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    7 years ago when NASA started their, "faster, cheaper, smaller" program they said that if they launched 20 space probes, and all 20 completed their missions perfectly then they weren't doing their job right. You have to fail to learn. If you don't push the envelope of technology then you will never advance.

    You have to rememeber that Mars is very very far away. Even with an orbiting satallite its very hard to judge the surface that you are going to land on.

    The MPL and the Pathfinder were both built at the same time. They equipped the Pathfinder with the experimental ballon landing gear and gave the MPL the conventional landing gear. We now know that the ballon idea is a great idea.

    That is were we learn. Sure we lost one of our ships, but now we know that the ballon method is a viable alteritive for future landings.

    Making mistakes is great, as long as 2 things happen. First, we learn from them and second we don't do them twice.

    NASA is doing a great job. The next 10 years is going to be an amazing time. We have Martian rock planed to be returned by 2008, we have a probe landing on titan ( the biggest moon of saturn ) in 2003(4) and a ton of mars landings. NASA is making huge leaps every year. I just hope their budget will get a boost. I can only dream.
  • On brave astronauts;

    I read a news item a year or two ago, about a conference on manned missions to Mars. It was mentioned by the speaker that a ONE-WAY manned mission to Mars would be about one-eighth the cost of a round-trip, due to the reduction in supplies, Martian launch vehicle, Earth re-entry vehicle (this assumed a completely self-contained mission, as opposed to a rendezvous-on-arrival with the International Space Station, or Shuttle or something).
    He then asked for volunteers for such a one-way mission. Assent was unanimous.

    While nobody seriously expects the US Government to fund such a mission, and I sure as hell wouldn't volunteer for it - it's something to think about.

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • I think you guys are being a bit harsh. I think remotely piloting a smallish chunk of metal across space to another planet is probably quite a tough job. The fact that it got there at all is quite amazing.

    Regards
  • ...maybe they ought to switch their efforts of searching into looking for where Social Security went.....

    Spare parts? got to fix those Pod Racers, here Pit Droid, here Pit Droid.........

  • > Maybe some Martian dragged it to its garage
    for spare parts.

    Right now there's a Martian thinking, "Just imagine the Beowulf I could build if they'd crash a dozen more of these!"

    ---------------------
  • Cm'on, even if the lander rolled down a ravine, the DS2 probes would still work! After all, they were designed and tested to CRASH into the surface.

    Yes, they were, but they were not supposed to still be joined to the rest of the lander at impact. Besides, even if they did survive intact, the fact that they could be down a bloody big ravine would likely cause problems for the reception of any signals.

    "Some smegger's filled in this 'Have You Got A Good Memory?' quiz!"
  • Most people don't realize that the reason there are six crewmembers on a shuttle mission is that until the mid-90s, all of the computer instructions were stored on punched paper tape! The "mission specialists" had the job of feeding the paper tape into the vintage 1970 computer while the Flying Winnebago did laps around the Earth for a week.

    You're kidding. They sure use tested and reliable computers in their machines, but punched paper tape is simply stupid. They need to reload the memory of the control computers a few times with the required software for the current mission stage, but they use magnetic tapes (like they already did back in the Apollo missions).

  • Too bad the world would come to an end if we executed them, hmm? :)
  • Most of the cost of the mission was to pay for the scientists and technicians at NASA and contracted companies to do the work.

    The rest of it was used to buy a few hundred pounds of aluminum, steel, electronic circuits, glass, and plastic.

    Hardly any money was wasted. Those people needed to eat regardless of the success of the mission.
  • Would it have survived if they used the Giant Airbag method of landing? Isn't that what Pathfinder used?

  • If that were the case, surely there'd be extensive dune seas visible at the pole.

    And another thing, why at www.marspolarlander.com does it mention looking for the parachute in order to find the lander? The parachute and carapace
    were meant to separate from the probe 1 and a half km from the surface! They'd be halfway to the other pole before they touched down!

    K.
    -
  • While I'm glad you posted an informed response to jd, and I'm willing to bet jd is severly clue impaired, I think you're off base suggesting he be moderated down. "Overrated" maybe correct (jd is a hyperactive /. poster (karma whore?)), but "Flamebait" does not fit. In many cases, and this is one, it would be useful for readers to see idiot posts that garner intelligent, insightful replies. Maybe we need yet another moderation category like "Provocative +1" for cases like this? For now I'd rather have seen jd's ranting markes as "Interesting" even if it was baseless.
  • A shame they don't have similar reporting on MILITARY wastes!!
  • Wow! What a load of bigoted claptrap.

    First, the "The Bell Curve" is irrelevant, in that dispite the sloppy thinking and slanted data that went into it, it say nothing about the individuals involved in the MPL program. However, since you use it to attempt to prop up your "argument", it does speak volumes about you.

    While I'm skeptical of the affirmative action programs, I do see the need for something to offset the bigotry of those like you, who, as you clearly demonstrate by your own post, who assume that you and those like you (i.e. White Angelo Saxon Protestant Males) are superior to anyone else.

    You've provided no evidence that having woman in key positions in the MPL project were in any way responible for the failure. Care to point out which decisions caused the loss of the lander? You can't can you? On the other hand, NASA's biggest screwup, the Challenger launch decision, was made by which, females or males? Seven deaths versus the loss of a robotic lander, which was worse.

    Frankly however, given your apparent attitudes about woman, I'm not suprised you're required to document your efforts to hire woman. Were it not for that, I doubt you'd hire any woman at all, inspite of their level of experience.

    Face it, maybe your real problem is your own mediocrity. My problem, on the other hand, is how to keep clowns like you from messing up my daughters life.

    -- davet
    Intelligent (IQ 163), White, Male, Father of Two, Ex-NASA contractor (ARC, ~10 years)

    "Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks,
    'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big,
    scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
    reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
    -- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
  • You missed:
    3) aeroshell failure during entry. Alternately it seperates too soon.
    heat destroys lander and both impactors.
    4) areoshell fails to seperate.
    impact destroys lander, impactors antennas damaged or shielded by lander deris.

  • The Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from ships off the shore of Iraq. An ICBM could be launched from the U.S. and hit Iraq, but I don't think it would have quite that level of accuracy (as with hand grenades, close is good enough). No ICBMs were fired at Iraq to my knowledge, though.

    I like the idea of a "smart probe". I'm not sure whether the Mars Global Surveyor photos (currently the best we have, I think) are of high enough quality for that sort of positioning - you really want very accurate terrain measurements down to the level of the smallest object that you can't land a probe on. And you can still be wrecked by dust storms during your landing sequence, which happened to some Soviet mars probes.

    Of course a cruise missile doesn't hvae

  • I'm not ever as good as I once was, but I'm good once as ever I was not.


    bleh
    http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
  • It is funny! I think this might be a moderator-bot that saw fat charlie. Even if the bot is a human....
    .
    Today's word is bleh.
    http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
  • It got modded up "Funny" so much latter when it DID get modded up the moderators recognised the joke :)

    And I want the first pose on slashdot.org.mars
  • Well, I posted that based on the impression of what I read in that article (which I did mention at the beginning of the post, by the way.)

    Besides, after the "communication problems" between Lockheed and JPL with the orbiter, I would be VERY hard pressed to believe that they did not screw up again.

    Do what again, you say? How about messing up with landing zone data, for starters? I believe that if they are not entirely sure about the success of landing equipment, then they should do further research instead of going off half-cocked and launching it anyways, and hoping that everything works out.
  • It's happened to me a few times too. I've seen some of my posts go down from "4 Isightful", to "2 Flamebait".

    Try and figure that one out!
  • You're singling out one sentence in my entire post. You really should try to view the post in it's entirety before you try to think of an intelligent reply. Next time , don't forget about how I also said that, "due to the communication problems between JPL and Lockheed in the past, I would be VERY hard pressed to believe that they did not screw up again."
  • True. But, many of these guys keep me up on the inside info every now and then.. Nothing on this though.. Most of them are a bit pissed at the latest Mars missions..

    Ahh well. No biggie, just my $0.000000002...

    ---
  • Deep Space 1's main drive failed in it's initial power-up, and it took almost a week of intense work, shaking of the probe, and everything else they could think of to reactivate it.
    But reactivate it they did and it accomplished the vast majority of the mission. The only thing they missed was the photos of the asteroid (or comet - I forget) as it flew by - this because of a stuck camera I think. Remember this stuff is rocket science. Things go wrong. It is a testament to the ingenuity of NASA & JPL that most missions succeed despite failures of hardware - though not as many as you seem to believe.

    Yes, P10/11, and V1/2 did accomplish -some- of their missions spectacularly. However, most of the equiptment was shut down (through lack of power), the data rate was reduced (which may have resulted in higher lossage) and much of what they could be accomplishing right now (had they the means) will be lost to us for decades to come, or longer.
    Drugs are bad. Most of the equipment was not shut down, these probes accomplished over 90% of what they started out to do and even some things they didn't initially plan on (the 'grand tour' of Uranus & Neptune, eg.)

    The solar winds are being blamed for pushing Skylab out of orbit, causing it to crash & burn rather spectacularly in the Earth's atmosphere. If the cause is correct, then this was easily avoidable on NASA's part, and a major blunder.
    Blamed by whom? You have your facts all screwed up - read Tau Zero's post, he got it right.

    I would also like to see references for your contentions about the lightning causing the booster to fire and the Viking probe.
  • I don't blame NASA for this (yet at least), because I realize how difficult it is to land a space probe on a remote planet. Especially when it's guiding itself and not under human control. And I certainly hope they'll try again.. But comments like this really disturb me:

    ``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''

    ...

  • Not quite. According to http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/ds 2/tech/tech.html [nasa.gov], the probes communicate with Mars Global Surveyor in orbit. No communications link with the lander is needed. Also, I believe the big radio telescopes at Stanford are powerful enough to hear radio signals at least from the lander. Anyway, since MGS heard nothing, the conclusion is that all three failed. Since a triple failure is very very remote, it would seem to me that a failure before separation is much more likely. This "there's a big hole there" theory doesn't scan quite right...

  • Hi, I thought you guys might be interested in checking out the final landing site report from the MPL crew :
    http://www.marspolarlander.c om/overview/finalsite.html [marspolarlander.com]

    --
    Anil Madhavapeddy, anil@mars.ucla.edu
    Outreach Architect, Mars Polar Lander, UCLA

  • Thanks for the explanation.
    I understood about GPS but was under the impression that we had better maps than what we have.

    What makes you say that the Mars Global Surveyor pictures will not be processed for some time? (if its a lack of resources then it would seem to be a perfect job for something like Seti@Home... you too can participate in Prospect@Home :)

    Wasn't there a project (I can't remember if it was U.S. or U.S.S.R.) to map the surface of Mars using radar? (or is that either what MarsGS is doing, or is that what produced the 10 Meter resolution maps?).
  • There's an article with a bit more info at the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/news/news010 6m.htm [denverpost.com]

  • Re:Sigh. (Score:1)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    but what do I expect from an American?

    yards?

  • I may stand to be corrected, but typically the '$200 million per plane' in defence contracts is usually the cost of the plane plus all the spare parts and support infrastructure needed for that plane. More like the TCO rather than just the one off purchase price.
  • That's an entirely unwarranted conclusion. In the first place, manned vehicles aren't *planned* to smash into the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. And when you have an experienced human pilot you can pick a landing spot with far better precision than is possible via onboard AI and telemetry.

    Also manned craft are likely to be designed with
    the capability to return to orbit. If the pilot can't find a suitable landing site then they can abort the landing. Since the robot probes are not
    intended to return this is not an option.
  • You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...

    If they don't then didn't someone think to put
    one or more probes in polar orbit fitted with cameras and radar mapping equiptment...
  • It's not like they were trying to take risks, but try and pick an area of, say, Kentucky that you could hit from Mars with a reasonable chance of your spacecraft landing in tact. They're hills & canyons & just about everything else all over the place.

    Though in practice you'd probabaly go something more like Mars to Mars orbit, Mars orbit to Earth orbit, Earth orbit to Earth Surface.

    Anyway landing on Earth is easier than Mars, a nice dense atmosphere helps with slowing down using a parachute or transfering to aerodynamic flight.
  • "Seems like the Polar Lander may have landed a little too far..about 1 mile deeper than expected ..."

    Or was that a kilometre?

    Bob.
  • We don't need accurate maps of the whole freakin' planet to land a probe. A smallish patch around the target landing site should be plenty...

    Ryan
  • I saw some funny cartoon recently maybe rather prescient.. a rather bent lander, upside down, broadcasting repeatedly and in the wrong direction .. "help, i've fallen over and can't get up.. help, I've...", nearby there is a picnic blanket martian family, and an upset martian dad saying something like "damn you can't get away from cellphones anywhere nowadays..".
    Ok, well I thought it was funny.
  • One idea of mine is to get a GPS system for Mars before we try to land anything there again. Of course, that might cost too much.
  • THIS mission had such a backup system, of sorts. This canion thing doesn't expain why the two micro-probs that were hitching a ride failed to check in.

    Well NASA, your latest bungle expaination doesn't add up. What realy happened?
  • The Miami Herald article has a Lockheed slant to it, i.e. "No-one told us about that canyon". However, the official site says that they can't spot any evidence of the lander's parachute. Both parties want to save face by blaming the others....

    Remember, The truth is out there (specifically, it's sitting on the surface of Mars somewhere).

    -JB
  • Hmmm, I dunno. Many people expect Martians to be really smart...perhaps they're just rednecks (pardon the pun) using them for skeet shooting practice. Kind of like using the heads on Easter Island for bowling in Mars Attacks....

    :)

    -Vel
  • "However, he said, the planet is covered with craters and canyons and it is impossible to remotely place a spacecraft at a precise location. He also said JPL scientists couldn't find a single landing zone on the planet's generally smooth south pole without a hazard."

    If it is not safe enough to land a probe there, we can forget about manned mars missions. Even though a manned landing might, due to "last minute corrections" (like with the lunar landing), go well, one would not risk as much anymore as the NASA did during the Apollo missions.
  • Deep Space 1's main drive failed in it's initial power-up, and it took almost a week of intense work, shaking of the probe, and everything else they could think of to reactivate it.

    Yes, P10/11, and V1/2 did accomplish -some- of their missions spectacularly. However, most of the equiptment was shut down (through lack of power), the data rate was reduced (which may have resulted in higher lossage) and much of what they could be accomplishing right now (had they the means) will be lost to us for decades to come, or longer.

    The solar winds are being blamed for pushing Skylab out of orbit, causing it to crash & burn rather spectacularly in the Earth's atmosphere. If the cause is correct, then this was easily avoidable on NASA's part, and a major blunder.

  • Communications with spacecraft highly directional antennas on both ends. An emergency beacon would have to have an omnidirectional antenna to be any use so would require more power. This is not to say that it couldn't be done, and with an orbiting relay, it probably could be done on Mars, but you still have line of sight problems and the problem that a serious failure would likely cause a catastophic impact which no reasonable beacon could survive.
    --
  • While material costs for probe is not very significant, launch costs (especially manned ones like the shuttle), assembly costs, and ground monitoring costs are significant. Not to mention the fact that you would feel pretty foolish having two probes fail in exactly the same way. You would want to send a probe, then wait until the mission completed to send another. At that point, the state of the art would have progressed enough that sending the same probe again would be a waste of money.

    Another way of looking at it is that you are asking for a more extensive testing program. Extensive testing programs is what got us to the $1b spacecraft in the first place, and much of that testing was on the ground. Doing the testing in space would be likely more expensive.
    --
  • Spare parts? I'd like to see the power supply in that thing. Ultra-life-Radiation powered super cell. The ultimate UPS. Just wear a lead suit when servicing.
  • Hey, you didn't even mention the fact that whenever a NASA mission goes wrong, or starts to look like it's going wrong, the news-dweebs start quoting the mission price - giving the reader the impression that NASA is just wasting money left and right. (Of course, I'm sure they *are* wasting money...they are a government agency.)
  • NASA, NASA, NASA... converting from meters/feet caused the last problem.. now what? Trouble converting to radians? =)

    If they really need scientific data I'd like to offer them to put my car on the shuttle and launch it towards Mars. I'm sure it would make a much more visible impact than a mere spacecraft. This is AMERICAN IRON afterall. Also, if they miss, no harm done... it just goes into the sun.

  • Sorry if this seems off-topic, but, does anyone who follows space science issues think that space.com [space.com] is a good / credible source of information?

    Several months ago, Lou Dobbs, VP of CNN and the host of the show MoneyLine, left that organization and became Chairman and CEO of space.com. He got a lot of publicity on TV and radio at that time.

    A lot of people thought that the Web Site in question was not a big enough business and did not have enough potential to fully occupy a man of his talents. OTOH, some said that space.com had the potential to expand into its own cable channel, and it could become similar to CourtTV, which I guess is a successful business.

    I realize Dobbs is a media darling, and that's why I'm asking the question here. A lot of people in the community just ignore media hype when it's coming from traditional media sources.

    I don't care if the site is popular with the average Internet user, is the information on it accurate and useful?

    --

    Dave Aiello

  • The Denver Post article that CNN and others refer to can be found here:

    http://www.denverpost.com/news/news010 6m.htm [denverpost.com]

    There is a tad more information included.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • If it is not safe enough to land a probe there, we can forget about manned mars missions.

    That's an entirely unwarranted conclusion. In the first place, manned vehicles aren't *planned* to smash into the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. And when you have an experienced human pilot you can pick a landing spot with far better precision than is possible via onboard AI and telemetry.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Hey, that's completely fucking *unfair*, unjustified and completely WRONG.

    When NASA had proper government support they sent men to the Moon. With basically 1950's technology ferchrissakes! Now we look back at what they achieved with the Apollo moonshots and gawp in wonder.

    Since then instead of continued support they've had nothing but indifference from the public and he Whitehouse and hostility from Congress, which seems to be largely composed of people bickering over their share of the pork barrel. So NASA's budget has been squeezed tighter and tighter. Add on top of that the fact that space travel is expensive, all their stuff has to be custom made by large aerospace contractors who thoroughly rip them off in the process.

    Experimental space vehicles like Pioneer and Voyager are bound to suffer failures, if only a couple of them were built then they are by definition prototypes only. Do you know *any* group on Earth who can design and build perfect, infallible machines for such a hostile environment, on a tight budget, using crooked contractors - and get it right the first time, every time?

    The Space Shuttle of course has had time to evolve over the course of its 19-year career. And that's why out of 96 (so far, I think) LEO space missions only ONE of them had casualties. Just think about that for a moment. Remember, we're not talking about a quick trip down to the shops in the motor. We're talking about riding an enormous stack of burning high explosive right out of the atmosphere and back, in craft now nearly twenty years old whose design dates back to the early seventies. How many organisations do you know that can build CARS that last for twenty years, never mind spacecraft.

    As to your final point, is it really NASA's fault that they couldn't get the funding for the right experiments in Viking? No. What would you have had them do - go home in a sulk? They were right to send a probe anyway, even one with NO scientific mission because, first and foremost, they are in the business of space travel technology development and exploration. For that reason they built and flew the thing and their part of that was a success. It was Congress who failed, because they were too damn ignorant and too damn cheap to pay for the right payload.

    I won't bother to admonish you to cut NASA some slack because it's quite clear that your judgment of them is so ill-considered it's hardly even worthy of consideration.



    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Hu? At time of posting the artical in question has ZERO mods...
    It seems the poster saw the topic assumed it was or will be modded in a certen direction and posted acordingly...
    In short a rant on something that never happend.. yeah that happends on slashdot on occasion but it's usually vea a mistake by /. editors not arrogence of an AC..
  • It's obvious, going by this article, that NASA's JPL are trying to make excuses for their obvious incompitance in this mission.

    "However, he said, the planet is covered with craters and canyons and it is impossible to remotely place a spacecraft at a precise location. He also said JPL scientists couldn't find a single landing zone on the planet's generally smooth south pole without a hazard."

    Gee, it's strange how nobody at Lockheed Martin knew about the landing zone until it was virtually too late to do anything about it. The above quote from the article gives me the impression that either:

    1. JPL knew about the risks all along, and never told anyone about them.

    2. JPL didn't know about the risks (like they should have), and are now trying to cover their butts by saying, "Hey, it's not our fault! It's impossible to land anything safely on that planet!"

    Come on guys, grow up and admit that you screwed up. Don't apologize, just don't do it again.
  • My favorite quote:

    ``No one on our side knew that canyon was there,'' the Lockheed source told the Post. ``All of the sudden, two weeks later, we got this MOLA data'' -- topographical maps and images -- ``and it was like, 'Look at that hole!'''

    You've got to be kidding me.. They didn't have the terrain mapped well enough to know there's a damn big hole in the ground? I thought the maps of mars were fairly well up to date.. Maybe not excessively high res, but come on...

    Anyway, here's some links to various stories for those who never saw them:

    http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/31/mars.sear ch/index.html [cnn.com] - Aerial search turns up no trace of Mars Polar Lander, CNN

    http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/29/mars.expr ess/index.html [cnn.com] - European Mars mission looks for lessons in polar lander loss, CNN


    ---
  • NASA seems to be having a lot more difficulty lately. I realize that now they've got serious budget problems, but come on...

    For $600+ megabucks total you'd think they could get something to land in a functional state..

    BTW, I live near Huntsville, AL and know one hell of a lot of guys over at NASA, though nobody on this project...
    ---
  • In the night sky of Mars flies the 73rd wing of the South Mars Air Force. In their latest stealth interceptors this proud all volunteer force keeps guard over the peace and freedom of Mars. Successfully interdicting efforts of the FBI, NSA and OSHA to plant listening devices disguised as landing probes, self-concealing and buring cameras and taps into to Martian Internet for surreptitous ergonomics inspections, this team is widely hailed by all Mars citizens.

    Just underneath the canopy of Col. Fthehwqq, wing leader, and lead trainer of the South Mars 'Top Gun' school are painted 4 icons resembling interplanetary probes. For it the much decorated Col. Fthehwqq who has recently repelled the latest dastardly attempts by Earth to usurp the soverignty of the free creatures of Mars.

  • The problem is that the public's imagination is captured by manned space flight.

    Really? Isn't one of the reasons there were only a few missions to the moon that the publics interest was lost quickly?

    Should we spend more than M$ advertisement department on a man mission to Mars, just as a hope to keep the public interested? Do you really think people in this era can have their attention grabbed for the year and a half or so it takes to send a tin can with 4 boring people to a big red rock? You wouldn't be able to sell a soap opera with that theme to a network, let alone do the real thing.

    I don't think the general public is interested in a multi year mission to Mars and back.

    -- Abigail

  • I'd aim for Kansas, or Florida, or the Sahara (flat, flat, not flat but reasonably soft).

    Earth has a lot of places that are much flatter than Mars. A thicker atmosphere, weather, and most of all, the presence of water make for erosion and the settling of sediments that make flat areas.

    I do however disagree with the Sahara being reasonble soft. I've been there, and the Sahara isn't made of the same sands as a beach. It's very rocky, and I imagine it's a lot like the surface of the Moon or Mars, minus the craters and canyons.

    -- Abigail

  • AI systems which could simulate the emergency decision making processes of a crack pilot like Armstrong.

    It doesn't take AI or a crack pilot to trigger Big rock! Avoid!. It does however take quite some computing power to recognize a big rock while descending from orbit to the surface.

    -- Abigail

  • And another device that would act as a becon, in case we "lose" another probe, so we could at least locate it and see if there is anything salvagable from the crash site.

    Right.... and who's going there and pick it up? There's no point in exactly knowing where a piece of junk on Mars is. It no longer works, and hence, it's useless. Sending something there with equipment to "salvage" things from the crash and then bring it back is much, much more expensive than just to rebuild it. It's faster to rebuild as well, as a round trip takes quite some time.

    -- Abigail

  • Deep Space 1 used an experimental drive that had failed every single test ever done on Earth
    But still worked in space. Also remember it was experimental.

    Pioneers 10 & 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 all suffered hardware failures - main antenna and/or solar panels
    But still accomplished their missions fairly spectacularly.

    NASA was convinced that deep-frozen rubber rings would work just fine when super-heated to a few thousand degrees centigrade, suddenly (duh!), killing 6 astronauts and a civilian
    Yep, that was a pretty bad boo-boo.

    NASA knew about solar winds, and even devised spaceships to travel by them, but neglected to take them into account when positioning Skylab
    What do solar winds have to do with Skylab's orbit?

  • A manned landing is different from a probe landing because a human pilot will pick the actual landing point. You'll recall that Apollo 11 was heading toward assorted rocks until Neil Armstrong moved the ship over a little.

    Well, perhaps a human pilot won't pick the actual landing point if we use the bounce-around-the-landscape-on-balloons technique on manned landings. I rather doubt that we'll choose that method.

  • I think the funnier (if unlikely) explanation I heard earlier is that the martians are now monitoring and intercepting spacecraft of unknown origin after a small, wheeled probe vehicle was discovered in a desolate region of the martian outback.

    Daily news broadcasts from MNN featuring 'expert' guests speculating on the origin of this probe as a prelude to interplanetary invasion forced the Martian Supreme Council into funding a crash program of SDMI (Strategic Martian Defense Initiative), or "Star Wars" programs to develop and deploy a system capable of detecting and obliterating any small probe spacecraft approaching the red-planet by instantaneously re-programming the onboard computers with unit-of-measure conversion 'virus' that would render the craft unable to navigate, causing it crash violently into the planet's surface.

    Exclusive footage of the latest alien probe to be destroyed by SDMI technology was paraded around to the news media in a highly-covered press conference conducted last tuesday at the Martian Defence Departments spectacular headquarters, known as the 'Do-deca-hedron'. Martian Generals were seen to show slow-motion footage of what appeared to be a small alien lander probe jettisoning two smaller free-fall probes immediately before it augered into the side of a huge canyon in the polar region of the planet.

    Unnamed officials also told MNN that several other alien probe vehicles had been detected and obliterated in recent weeks, citing a 99% effictive kill rate.

    "With a virtual barrage of these alien craft, we at the Martian Defense Agency feel completely vindicated in the quintillion-dollar overrun of this program, as the vital interests and security of the citizens of this planet are being well protected." said uber-General Vlad Quabuchi

    "Our success in wiping out the tools of out unknow hostile invader is clear validation of the entire SDMI program as a successful and essential asset in the overall Martian Defense arsenal."

  • (Disclamer IANA Rocket Scientist, just someone who's read too much sci-fi and grew up playing with lego blocks instead of trucks :)

    Its true that human missions definately would be able to correct better but here's a thought.

    I believe that current technoledgy would allow a plane to land itself. Additionally, we have a wonderful thing called GPS which circles our globe and allows some really fun toys to locate 'exactly' where you are (give or take less and less if you have military grade models).

    What would it take to put into place either a partial set of GPS satellites (note I'm not seggesting a full fleet as I'm sure that would be overkill for the current situation), or perhaps some network of 'navigation satellites' that would allow a probes on board systems to make 'last minute corrections'.

    I have to believe that this would allow more precise landings. Additionally depending on their life cycle (I don't know what the standard GPS satellites life cycle is), it could provide more support for a manned mission (provided that the system lasts that long) in the form of relay/navigation satellites.

    I realize that there are lots of problems with this idea (ranging from 'its expensive' to 'but the GPS system is designed for _Earth_ and would have to be adapted'). Its just a thought though :)
  • Because it was the best one in the area?

    It's not like they were trying to take risks, but try and pick an area of, say, Kentucky that you could hit from Mars with a reasonable chance of your spacecraft landing in tact. They're hills & canyons & just about everything else all over the place.

    Science dictated the area, Logic dictated the best landing zone, Luck dictated the outcome.

    Stuff sometimes fails. This is important to remember during your next reboot for no good reason. :-)
  • Who says humans have to land on the surface of Mars on their first mission there? A group of humans could travel to Mars, remain in geosynchronous orbit, and remotely control a landing craft. They would be able to control it in real time, which would guarantee a higher rate of success in landing a probe there. Granted, the cost of the mission and the risk would be greater, but only incrementally so when compared to a human-occupied landing craft.
  • I went to the lander main site, and clicked the landing Site [marspolarlander.com] link, and I can't find any mention of 'bloody great canyon' anywhere..

    EZ
    -'Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in..'
  • Certainly there are risks/imponderables/luck. But these really should be discussed frankly to avoid disappointments. Had NASA said: "It's going to be hell to land there", no-one would have been surprised when it was lost. OTOH, it might never have been launched. Either would have been better than the blackeye NASA received.

    I'm concerned that the mission planners may have neglected to consider approach route, preferring to minimize fuel. I'd like to know if this is a case of "penny wise & pound foolish".

    -- Robert
  • For a polar landing, all approach vectors repeat every Martian day, ie 24.6 hours. So you have to time your orbital insertion inside that period to give the desired vector. No big delays, or massive fuel increase.

    I don't think I know better than NASA, but I would like that proven! They have made an unadvertised gamble with my money, and need to account for it.

    -- Robert


  • Finally, a reasonable explanation. But it begs the question: Why would anyone chose a trajectory with serious hazards (mountains/canyons) on it? Did they not have good maps, or wasn't there a better approach route?

    With spaceshots or other artillery, you can control direction much better than distance. Thrusters keep direction true, but how are you going to adjust re-entry when the atmosphere is more/less dense/windy than expected? So you've got to expect some short- or long-fall.

    -- Robert
  • Ok, starting with the computer thing, back in the late 50s and early 60s NASA was BY FAR the largest user of mainframe computers. Without the money that NASA invested in computer systems, do you really think that computer technology would be as far along as it is now?

    Also, here are SEVERAL inventions beside TANG (which is an example of modern freeze-drying):

    1. Velcro - invented by NASA to keep things from floating around in the space capsules

    2. Gore-Tex - Put into Spacesuits to protect astronauts from extreme changes in temperature and moisture

    3. Sudafed - invented for NASA as a decongestant for use in the Apollo program.

    4. UPC bar codes - Invented by NASA to quickly and easily keep track of millions of parts necessary for the Saturn 5 rocket and Apollo space capsule.

    5. Modern Communications satellites - It started with COMSAT. Modern communications is impossible without it.

    6. EKG - Electocardiograph - invented to keep track of astronauts health statistics while in space..

    Ok, I just went double what you wanted. The space program is beneficial for not just the United States, but for the entire human race. Do not make such broad statements anymore.
  • You don't know anyone on this project because it is controled from the Jep Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

    Marshall Space Flight Center (in Huntsville, Alabama) does space propulsion and transportation systems.
  • Ummm, Jep is supposed to be Jet.... Jet Propulsion Labs.... sorry
  • Your argument is a good one. But, it would only be useful if we had accurate maps of Mars. GPS will only give your position relative to the satellites. With the current system, it then translates that to longitude and latitude. You still have to have a map of Earth with lat/long on it to tell you where you are.

    The only maps of Mars that we have right now are made at something like 10 meter resolutions. Meaning that one pixel represents 10 meters. That is not very accurate. If you look at the satellite photography at www.terraserver.com [terraserver.com] you can see these maps along with 1 meter resolution maps.

    Mars Global Surveyor is currently getting better pictures of Mars, but those pictures will not be processed for some time.

    Think of it this way, we were trying to fly a probe MILLIONS of miles (with a radio delay of 6 minutes) and then land on a planet for which the only map we have represents houses as a single pixel. Not impossible but extremely hard.
  • ...and they're probably wishing Santa send them a set of Lego Mindstorm instead.
  • It's hard enough to find a black box in our own oceans (which is still transmitting), getting a signal in from another planet would be practically impossible.
    The key being ocean here, not distance. Radio doesn't go through seawater worth a diddly. On the other hand, you can communicate from Mars with half a watt (hell, the Pioneers proved that you can get useful information from well beyond Pluto with about that much). Even that wouldn't be necessary. Since the Mars Polar Orbiter was still up there; it could have done relay duty for an emergency beacon; it was used to listen for signals from MPL and the impactor probes.

    The real issue is one of cost vs. capability. An emergency beacon wouldn't do anything useful unless the rest of the mission was a loss. How much money do you want to spend on that? It would have been much more useful to have some low-speed telemetry from the spacecraft from before the point of cruise-bus separation to landing, to tell exactly where any problems occurred. Even that would have been about US$5m, on a US$136m mission. Sacrificing part of the science payload looked like a bad idea at the time.

    As for the cost of the project, I wouldn't worry about it. This is pocket change for NASA, and the knowledge acquired while setting up the project won't be a loss.
    This is only true so long as Congress (which is populated with the ideological offspring of Sen. William "Golden fleece" Proxmire) doesn't use it as an excuse to chop more out of NASA to make pork for their other constituencies.
    --
  • In the first place, manned vehicles aren't *planned* to smash into the planet at hundreds of miles per hour.
    Neither was MPL; the main probe was built to soft-land under rocket thrust (look at the freaking PICTURES!). It was the penetrator probes which were supposed to dig in at ~400 MPH, and they were an entirely independent part of the mission.
    --
  • If it is not safe enough to land a probe there, we can forget about manned mars missions.
    Today. When you've had a radar satellite doing for Mars what has already been done for Venus, and pictures at 10 cm resolution from a number of sun-angles to reveal where every significant hummock, pothole and rock are situated, and a landing system smart enough to set down on one of the known safe spots (like, an expert pilot with good eyeballs, a younger version of Niel Armstrong), it'll be no riskier than the moon missions.
    --
  • The problem with having an emergency transponder would be communication. It's hard enough to find a black box in our own oceans (which is still transmitting), getting a signal in from another planet would be practically impossible.

    Plus what good would it do? The odds are that the probe didn't land "lightly", otherwise it would still work in a way. I'm inclined to believe that the the probe was completely pulverised in its fall. In that case, a black box wouldn't have stood much of a chance.

    As for the cost of the project, I wouldn't worry about it. This is pocket change for NASA, and the knowledge acquired while setting up the project won't be a loss.
  • IIRC those probes were designed to transmit data back to the lander and the lander would "forward" the data back to NASA. They were also supposed to detach from the lander in the air and fall to Mars. If they survived they could have landed far from the lander and their signal isn't strong enough for us to pick up without the lander re-transmitting it.

  • Actually, not far from a real possibility (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:26AM (#1398241) Homepage
    There is some conjecture that the southern polar region might actually be covered in several meters of very lightly packed dust. One of the theories concerning the disappearing act the MPL pulled is that it "sank" into this dust on touchdown.

    ----

  • Not the best way to spend money... (Score:3)

    by Croaker ( 10633 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:46AM (#1398242)
    You know, we can screw up a lot of robotic missions, leave a ton of craters on Mars, and still get the scientific data we want for much less than sending a manned mission to Mars.

    A manned mission would cost several orders of magintude more than a fleet of simple robots. We'd have to provide a human-liveable habitat for astronauts that was absolutely fail-safe, to prevent loss of life (and the loss of a far more costly mission). We coudln't do a "fast-better-cheaper" human mission. The risks are too high. And risky missions are what steered NASA away from the huge, monolithic "everything including the kitchen sink" mode of exploration. I'm not talking about just the risk to human life, but the risk of failure of the mission.

    And yes, I've heard the "but astronauts are brave pioneers who know the risks" argument. Even if we find people to shoot into space on a risky mission, I'd rather not spend a huge amount of money so some rocket jocky can Evil-Knevil his way to Mars.

    We still know very little about Mars. Mars is a more complex evironment than the moon, and a hell of a lot further away. While manned missions to Mars will make sense someday, now is not that time. I'd say, let NASA continue with its plans. The funding we're expending on these missions isn't so great that screwing up and losing a few robots is such an issue. The more we learn about Mars in this "little to lose" mode, the safer (and probably more cost-effective) any future manned exploration will be.

  • Good Argument for human missions... (Score:3)

    by JohnnyCannuk ( 19863 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:21AM (#1398243)
    Gee if it is that hard to land remotely, perhaps we need to admit that one of the only sure ways to avoid this kind of disaster in the future is to let a human pilot control the craft in real time...by being there!

    Neil Armstrong saved the first moon landing by flying the LEM over a giant boulder (which a robot lander would have hit) because he could make decisions based on the immediate circumstances. If it is still too costly to send people, perhaps we need better computers - AI systems which could simulate the emergency decision making processes of a crack pilot like Armstrong.

    Until that time, expect a lot more of these failures...small, cheap and fast just doesn't seem to be doing what NASA thought it could.

    BTW, I'm more inclined to believe in "other" reasons for the failure of this and other Mars missions (at least 2 previous US missions and 2 previous Soviet missions). Kinda makes you wonder...

  • Failure Point: Cruise Stage Separation (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:12AM (#1398244) Journal
    This item has been ignored except for one brief mention.

    Cruise stage separation failure explains what we've seen. The DS2 probes, intended to impact and penetrate the surface, also failed to communicate to Mars Orbiter. What could cause both the Lander and both DS2s to fail?

    After the last communication with the craft, it was supposed to rotate for reentry, and the cruise stage (carrying the interplanetary solar array and thrusters) would separate from the Lander. The DS2 probes were on the cruise stage [nasa.gov].

    If the cruise stage did not separate, the DS2 probes and the Lander were destroyed. Single point of failure, whatever the reason for the failure. It explains why the Lander and the two DS2 probes failed.

  • Why not mass-production? (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @08:08AM (#1398245)
    No, not in the industrial "build a million cars" sense, but fer chrissakes - the $150M cost of Sojourner wasn't in the gear that went to Mars.

    What I want to know is this: having designed and built a Mars probe, what's the marginal cost of building another one?

    And if that cost is low, why not launch two missions; one shuttle mission to put 10-15 identical probes into a stable Earth orbit (hang 'em off the side of the Space Station even!), and one ELV (expendable launch vehicle) to put a bus with a big dumb tank of fuel and rocket engine into orbit a few days/weeks later?

    The shuttle's reliable - it's manned, it's going into orbit, and it's coming back after it deploys its payload. The space station will be reliable; it's manned, it's not gonna fall down. So the odds that your science payload (the Mars probes) will be lost before launch are pretty slim.

    The big dumb tank of fuel with the rocket engine on the back is expendable - it can be "as reliable as the rocket used to launch it", that is, "pretty good, but if it fails to reach orbit, we launch another one, our science payload is still safe".

    The next step is pretty obvious - strap the bundle of probes onto the big dumb tank and fire it off, using whatever gravitational slingshots you like.

    10 probes en route to Mars for the price of one expensive shuttle launch and one cheap ELV boost to low-earth orbit is gonna be cheap.

    As a bonus, you get some statistics on lander reliability. Was Pathfinder "lucky" and Mars Polar Lander "unlucky"? Find out when you do the same thing next year with 10 MPL-style landers. "Of 10 MPL-style landers, only 3 made it. Of the 7 failed MPL landers, 6 of their DS2-style probes survived and transmitted; the bug is probably with the lander itself, not the separation of the probes. We were just really unlucky with the 1999 MPL. Of the 10 airbag-bouncy-landers, 8 survived. This is the better technology to use."

    $150M per mission is faster/better/cheaper than $1B per mission. But $400M for 10 missions beats both hands down. We know re-entry is difficult - we don't know how hard "separating probes from busses is", but it seems pretty simple a'la Galileo. (And with 10 probes in my hypothetical mission, if one gets "stuck" on the bus, big deal, there are 9 more where it came from :-)

    (FWIW, here's my guess as to what happened to MPL: Since the DS2 probes also failed to respond, I really question the "canyon" theory - there's no evidence that anything reached the ground in one piece. Or does the "canyon" theory posit that all three (lander and both DS2 probes) all landed in the same canyon? Not having the size of the canyon handy, nor remembering the expected distance between the probes and the lander sites, I'm not sure if this is plausible or not. My gut says "there was a problem on re-entry that destroyed the probe before DS2-probe-separation" is still the simpler explanation.)

    • http://www.news.com.mars/ufo.html: [a.hoax]

      UFO spotted landing on our planet! Some scientists assume existence of terrans. Government trucks have been seen carrying something from the presumed landing site to some submartian base known as "Area 51". Government denies knowledge.
    • http://www.pasa.gov.mars/news.html: [hoax.too]

      The reporters are out of their mind. This was a test flight using one of our new planes. The Planetary Aeronautics and Space Association (PASA) has carried it back to its constructors. That's all.
    • http://www.slashdot.org.mars: [another.hoax]

      First post!


    Guess the first one explains why it's so far off where we thought it would be. ;)

  • NASA forgot pyro heaters (Score:4)

    by The Dev ( 19322 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:51AM (#1398247)
    This story is just CYA BS.

    The real answer is probably related to the rumor that NASA forgot to put heaters on the explosive bolts [reston.com]. This would have prevented the cruise stage from separating and the lander+DS2 probes would have burned up in the atmosphere.

    Cm'on, even if the lander rolled down a ravine, the DS2 probes would still work! After all, they were designed and tested to CRASH into the surface.

  • Sounds like Apollo 11 (Score:4)

    by buxley ( 35339 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @08:51AM (#1398248)
    When Apollo 11 was about to land on the moon in 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were descending toward a field of boulders, any one of which would have caused the lunar module to tip over and be destroyed.

    Armstrong, selected for the mission because he was one of the best pilots in the military, was able to use the LEM's thrusters to fly the Eagle horizontally until he could bring it to a safe landing a few miles from the planned landing site.

    Robot landers can't make on the fly decisions like that.

    Had this been a manned mission to Mars, a human pilot would have been able to see that the lander was heading for a dangerous spot and, most likely, landed the craft safely.

    I read an interesting book a few months ago called The Case For Mars. If you are interested in manned exploration of space beyond low Earth orbit I highly recommend it.

  • Re:Not as hard as you might think. (Score:4)

    by Battra ( 65036 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:51AM (#1398249)
    I used to be a very harsh critic of NASA back when the shuttle was the only thing they had flying. Most people don't realize that the reason there are six crewmembers on a shuttle mission is that until the mid-90s, all of the computer instructions were stored on punched paper tape! The "mission specialists" had the job of feeding the paper tape into the vintage 1970 computer while the Flying Winnebago did laps around the Earth for a week.

    Each shuttle mission costs more than the $165MM we paid for the lost Mars lander. The way I look at it, compared to what NASA has spent in the past we should think of the Mars landers as being disposable. For about the cost of a jar of Tang and a few of those toothpaste tubes full of dehydrated ice cream, we can now send a probe to another planet. If it blows up, send another one, or two, or ten.

    Sojurner was a huge success. That mission cost about $150MM. This one was a bust at $165MM. You take your chances with these things.

    I think we have a much better chance of getting important science done by sending more and more of the cheaper landers. Think of them as probe droids, drop them by the dozens.

    The problem is that the public's imagination is captured by manned space flight. Sending robots just doesn't do it for people the way a test pilot or scientist risking his/her life does. The sad fact is that humans are exceptionally well adapted for life on Earth and we suck at being space creatures. Our spines deteriorate, we lose muscle mass, our circadian rhythms get all fouled up. The way I see it, the only reason for manned space flight going at all right now is to give the Congress something they can relate to in hopes of keeping the budget from being slashed.

  • Someone please moderate jd's post down (Score:4)

    by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:01AM (#1398250) Journal
    I have not seen a bigger display of gross ignorance in a long, long time. Taking just a few points where I have knowledge:
    • Deep Space 1 used an experimental drive that had failed every single test ever done on Earth

      Absolutely wrong. The drive worked fine on Earth, or it would never have been flown. It apparently got a piece of debris stuck between the accelerator grids during launch, causing a short circuit, but that was cleared by pulsing current through it. After that the ion drive was a phenomenal success.

    • Pioneers 10 & 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 all suffered hardware failures - main antenna and/or solar panels

      This isn't right. It's not even wrong. For one thing, none of those probes carried any solar panels; they all ran off RTG's. And their main antennas worked just fine, it was Galileo (currently sending back some of the most amazing data about Jupiter we've ever seen) which had the main antenna fail to deploy.

    • NASA knew about solar winds, and even devised spaceships to travel by them, but neglected to take them into account when positioning Skylab

      The solar wind does not penetrate down to the altitudes where Skylab orbited, and thus was never a factor to it. What does happen is that the solar UV increase during the height of the sunspot cycle heats and inflates the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, which increases air drag on low-orbiting satellites (of which Skylab was one). The Shuttle, which had been intended for use to re-boost Skylab, was delayed by budget cuts (Congress' fault, not NASA). So Skylab fell down. Not a big deal, it wasn't intended for permanent use anyway.

    • NASA has lost multiple rockets at a time, when lightning struck one, igniting it's motors and sending it into a second, and then a third, igniting their engines in turn

      I'd like to see a reference for this assertion.

    • The Viking Landers posessed no equiptment for detecting bacteria - Carl Sagan's experiments were removed to keep the project under-budget, and low-cost (but essentially useless) alternatives were fitted to placate the media

      ... and this one too.


    --

  • Re:ok, ok ... (Score:4)

    by Len ( 89493 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:38AM (#1398251)
    1. JPL knew about the risks all along, and never told anyone about them.

    2. JPL didn't know about the risks (like they should have), and are now trying to cover their butts by saying, "Hey, it's not our fault! It's impossible to land anything safely on that planet!"

    How about:

    3. JPL never said that they had the landing site pinpointed to an exact spot, and never guaranteed that the site was as flat as a billiard table.

    Come on guys, grow up and admit that you screwed up. Don't apologize, just don't do it again.
    Don't do what again? Don't send out any space probes if there is any risk of failure? Don't build any space probes until they've perfected the technology? (bit of a catch 22 there)

    BTW, this was one of NASA's new "low"-cost missions. According to them, [nasa.gov] the cost of two spacecraft is capped at $184M. Compare to, what was it, a billion dollars for Viking in the '70s? Given the immaturity of the technology, I think this is prudent.

    Disclaimer: Currently, none of my tax dollars are paying for these particular missions. I am chipping in for the space station, however.
    --

  • be sure not to mention any successful missions! (Score:4)

    by LMacG ( 118321 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:21AM (#1398252) Journal
    Nice to see that the author went out of his/her way to mention this as "NASA's latest failure," and to remind us of the metric/English conversion problem. Funny how the complete success of the latest shuttle mission didn't get mentioned. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

  • Let's Put This in Perspective (Score:4)

    by davelee ( 134151 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:40AM (#1398253)
    Let's put the $184 Million cost of the Mars mission into perspective. According to the Wall Steet Journal, the Air Force plans to buy 339 F-22's "over the next 16 years at an average cost of $200 million per plane" Surely a Mars mission is worth 1 F-22.

  • Wyld E. MPL (Score:5)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:10AM (#1398254) Homepage
    I have this bizarre image of the Mars Polar Lander plummeting, looney-toons style, to the bottom of this canyon.

    Too bad they didn't get any audio back from that microphone on the thing -- I suspect it would have picked up something along the lines of "Meep Meep!", followed by a high whistling sound and a "poof" on impact...

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