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Space Science

Giving Up on Mars Polar Lander 189

Posted by Hemos from the don't-fade-away dept.
toast0 writes "NASA has stopped all attempts to communicate with the mars polar lander. Their press release is very brief, but notes that they will still attempt to find it with the Global Surveyor throughout February. " It's kinda sad really - but NASA's had lot of successes as well lately, which has been good to watch.
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Giving Up on Mars Polar Lander More

Giving Up on Mars Polar Lander

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  • Re:Some exciting failures (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Communication, review, testing and oversight cost money. They are considered "useless overhead" until something goes wrong. I work at a NASA center and the annual budget cuts have been painful. Every year, more people disappear and we have to figure out how to do more with less. As they say, "Faster, Cheaper, Better, pick two."

  • OPEN SOURCE MARS LANDER (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    nasa headquarters...

    nasa stooge #1: are you sure this will work... this is unprecedented!

    nasa stooge #2: father merrin is the best in his field. good god, man, it has to work!

    the martian surface...

    mars lander: demi... why you do this to me, demi... why?!

    the mars lander tosses about and it's antena spins a shocking 360 degrees.

    nasa headquarters

    nasa stooge #2: father merrin! you are only hope!

    father merrin: we have no time for conversation! show me to the communications device at once!
    nasa stooge #2 leads father merrin to the com station. father merrin gestures a cross and tosses some holy water on the microphone. a screeching blasts out of the speaker.

    mars lander: no! no, no, no, no! your mother sucks 286 chips in hell, merrin, you worthless slime!

    father merrin: the power of congress commands you!

    the mars lander groans

    father merrin: the power of the tax-paying public compells you!

    the mars lander churns.

    father merrin: let the almighty spirit of the challenger crew save you!

    the mars lander begins to heave violently... culminating in a powerful jet of green slime. a loud explosion is heard over the speaker... followed by static.

    father merrin begins to twitch.

    father merrin: error! vger! error! oh, i'd forgotten how much i hate space travel!

    with his last spark of consciousness, father merrin leaps out of the window, killing himself and the mars lander demon that possessed him.


    thank you.

  • "Successful space agency" is an oxymoron. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did you know that fully two thirds of all missions to Mars have ended in failure?

  • Here is a nice link (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For all you armchair travellers, travelling without moving: MOC Image Atlas [usgs.gov], ie. clickable map of Mars with resolutions at most about 1 meter/pixel. There's also a similar thing out of Viking image data, but I can't remember the link.

    It's great though, like you were in orbit a la Star Trek and scanning the surface!

  • Re:Popular Culture Fallout? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Otherwise, there will come a day when humankind is no more. It could be global thermonuclear war, it could be as a result of industrial waste products ruining the environment, or it could simply be a stray asteroid. But one way or another, it'll happen unless we spread out.

    Why do you assume the human race is worth saving? Looking at the whole lumbering, heaving, sweltering mass of stupid people... why bother? Let the whole species die, and give evolution a cleaner slate to come up with something else.
  • Such an object would burn up in Earth's atmosphere without a properly-placed heat shield. Would Mars' thinner atmosphere and lower gravity mean that things of the size of the Lander wouldn't generally burn up?

  • And of course, let's not forget Earth First! [earthfirstjournal.org].

    I don't think that human beings are destroying the planet, per say. I, personally, tend to agree with Utah Phillips when he says "The planet is not dying. The planet is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses."

    Humans aren't killing the planet, as much as specific humans are...

    Michael Chisari
  • methodology.
    It is obvious the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That is a management problem, not a staff problem.

    Open Source would have caught the units mismatch on the Mars Orbiter.
  • My science might be way off here (okay, it probably is) but I was under the impression that during an atmospheric entry, one's communications are broken off. Particularly radio. I think they call it "ionization blackout." Now somehow I think being *WAAAAAY* off in space *and* trying to transmit through that reentry noise might be a bit tricky.
  • I followed this fairly closely when they first announced the beastie was ready to make its descent onto Mars' surface. I was also very bummed when I heard they didn't hear from it after that. Now it seems it's permanently silent (as far as we're concerned, anyway). Before we start slamming NASA for the failure, we should bear in mind how many successes they've had, both lately and throughout their history. Yes, a multi-million dollar machine went AWOL on us, but compared to the other failures (Apollo 13, Challenger), this one's *cheap*. Hopefully they just learn from their mistakes, find out what was wrong, stop it from happening again, and move on. Brush it off, guys, we know you're trying :)
  • If you think the Hubble Space Telescope is some sort of failure, you don't know what you're talking about. Its initial problems were repaired, quite quickly IMHO for the task involved, and it's been a remarkably productive scientific instrument that's fully lived up to its potential. (The corrective optics were installed less than two years after launch; it's now been ten years since launch, and it's going strong. That's really not so much "downtime", especially when you consider that the telescope wasn't useless despite the figure error, and much of the early time would have been for engineering time anyhow.)

    Now when we launch SIRTF and other instruments so far away that the shuttle can't repair them, the price for technical problems will be profoundly higher.
  • I'm not sure I'm getting my value out of these tax dollers.

    Certainly not in the realm of education. :)

  • It is sad to see them give up on what was to be such a promising project. So, does anybody know if they plan to run another test of thier microprobe technology??

    And here is hoping that the mostly Republican congress (who have a very bad track record when it comes to funding for space exploration) does not try to slash the NASA budget in an attempt to garner more votes in the elections later this year. One must just love Partisan Politics, neh?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Why don't you just look at it for what it really is? Nasa spent millions of dollars on a project, and now they failed. That money could have been used to give food to people who are starving, or help build up countries that are struggling. Or something else that would help people who desperately need help right now.

    Not that I want to start a flame or something...

  • The government should cut welfare by 50% and redirect some money into nasa.

    Well, that's a legitimate opinion. Welfare spending has been reduced significantly already, though. Besides, I don't happen to believe that throwing money at NASA is going to solve anything: as long as the shuttle/station program dominates the budget, there will never be enough for planetary science.

    We have no business of feeding the children of 3rd world countries

    Not from the welfare budget. Are you one of those who (according to polls) believes that 15-20% of our budget goes to "foreign aid"? Not only was that never true, the current figure is 0.5% of the federal budget.

    We feed them and the population goes up exponentially making the problem worse.

    Actually, population growth is leveling off. Social scientists agree that modern societies with a middle class are the primary cause of the dropping birth rate. The only places where hunger is still a major problem are regions ravaged by war, in particular the Horn of Africa: Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. In any case, the vast majority of foreign aid goes not to "feeding people", but to infrastructure projects that improve economies and quality of life.

    Your perceptions seem to have been formed in the 1970s, when there was a massive drought in Saharan Africa and the West spent $billions on feeding desperate populations. Times have changed; you might want to read a newspaper one of these days. Not that I expect a troll with your credentials to do anything that might involve encountering actual facts.
    ----

  • Personally the idea of humans in space always brings to mind fish's using motor driven aquariums to try and live on land.

    Humans have done similar things for ages. It more reminds me of the modern equivalent to Igloos. Let's face it, we have left the savannah, so why stop now?

    The machines we build to explore space will be our true descendents.

    Why should the machines we build want to explore space? I think the only way we could really get space exploration moving, is to go there ourselves first. If people have firsthand experience of going to space, I believe they will feel somewhat different about what's important in the budget.

  • But, of course, this isn't just one failure....only a few short months before the Polar Lander was to land, they lost another craft when they forgot to convert between metric and english measuring systems due to a miscommunication with the teams that built the craft.

    Lately, NASA's been having some really bad luck...I think they're success rate is in the low 50's if not lower by now....Such a shame.

    Julius X
  • Why has there not been a single communications satalite set in orbit around mars? Part of the problem with this last mission was they sent an unmanned mission into a communication blind spot. So, now we have no idea what transpired which caused the failure. NASA will spend a ton of money on people time theorizing on what went wrong.

    If they invested in a group of communications satalite, it would pay off in the long run if mars is seen as a functional part of the future space program.

  • About the Shuttle, I would say that not everything is so bad, there are many scientific experiments that can only be done in zero gravity, and the shuttle provides this capability (for long enough periods of time to, say, cultivate crystals or bacteria).

    Yes, there are some projects that aren't useful or required at all (like, did we need a teacher in space? the fact that she died had a strong influence on the public opinion - not to excuse the mistakes made, ok?), but as long as NASA is a public institution it NEEDS the aproval of taxpayers to run.

    That's the important ingredient: citizens that understand science, and are willing to invest on it, with *appropiate* expectations. It would help not only NASA, but many other fields as well.

    For those who have kids: Please, get involved (REALLY involved) in their education, and make them understand the importance of research. They may not want to do research themselves, but they'll understand how it works, and how to ensure that research money is well used.

    mmhh... guess I broadened the discussion too much.

    Abwh
  • Hey Super Frosty, Kroger has a sale on tin foil this week, thought you might be interested... if you wear it around on your head, it help keeps the government sponsered mind control waves out of your skull.
  • Actually, they are using the latest technologies. Fortunately, with "Smaller, Cheaper" they didn't cram as much in as they earlier would have so they didn't lose a $1Billion device. They can still build several more to try out things...and the ones sent up now will have even better tech.
  • Picture comparisons of the face on Mars as seen by Viking and the Mars Surveyor can be found referenced on their main page (I'm too lazy to look up the URL, but it's easy to find with google). I also found the smiley face in there somewhere.

    The pseudo three dimensional Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter maps are an amazing diversion if you have the time to check them out. A great success to balance a few of the failures.
  • You're right, of course. We need to do both. If we're going to space solely to avoid living in our own poisons, then we're not looking far enough down the road to truly accomplish the goal (although we would certainly be looking further than we currently are!). Eventually we'll run out of planets!

    But, sticking around here isn't a perfect solution either. Even if we take care of the place, the sun's gonna go out, an asteroid is going to hit us, a massive volcano will erupt, or something else outside of our control will happen. While spoiling Terra and running off to some new Eden, only to spoil it and move on again, is an unenlightened policy, I believe it equally true that we can't only focus on our planet. Even with the best of care, it's not going to be able to support us forever.

    As you imply, we're best served by taking a balanced view of these issues.
  • (Young, eager MD)
    "Noooo!!! I've just got to save it..."
    (Experienced MD)
    "Give it up. It's gone. You'll have to learn to live with stuff like this"
    (Young MD)
    "Such a tragic waste.. just think of what it could have been.. why? why? .. oh god.. it's always the good ones that go .."
    etc. etc. etc.
    Anyone got any figures on how much junk they loose up there then?! ;) Just kidding, it's always a shame when science doesn't work, but then, you know what they say: if it's chemistry, it smells, if it's biology, it oozes, if it's physics, it doesn't work. C'est la vie ;)
  • I don't understand the inevitable fallback to using the space program to save mankind. Species go extinct, that's just evolution. This species has only existed a few tens of thousands of years. In another few tens of thousands our decendents as unlike us as homo erectus is to modern man.
    Personally the idea of humans in space always brings to mind fish's using motor driven aquariums to try and live on land. We're just too fragile we make too big a mess, it's not our environment. The machines we build to explore space will be our true descendents.
    It's just too bad that scientific exploration has to justified, knowledge is it's own reward. God, this a country that manages to find millions for helium reserves and subsidizing american beekeepers (we all remember how wildly fluctuating honey prices almost destroyed the economy), but the space program always gets looked at first for the budget axe because it's visible


  • Or, he scammed it from UserFriendly [userfriendly.org], which parodied those damn ads.

  • Haven't there been many reports fro credible sources working closely with NASA sugesting that such organisations like Echelon and the NSA taking over projects and intercepting transmittions to Mars? Is there a human colony? Or is there an actuall national security threat out there?
  • The correct answer was given by Black Parrot on Friday January 14, @02:01AM EST:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/13/112 5234&cid=204
  • Actually, I was listening to the thing when I heard the idistinguishable sounds of antiaircraft fire. It gave me flashbacks to many hours of "Traveler" while my lame friends were playing D&D.

  • Why would the Air Force/NSA/CIA/insert secret agency here need to have NASA have a visible blunder like that?

    Since the military has a black operations budget, they really don't need NASA's assistance. Of course, some fees can be hidden in other projects. I'm thinking $600 toilets for one.

    OTOH: perhaps everyone is so cued to previous "government waste," NASA seemed like a great place to drop $150 mil on a "failure." Sure, the failure is not readily observable to the public. Hmm.

    But then, why risk discovery with civil servents who like to yap about "innovations" and "discoveries?" That's a scientist's job.

  • I'm not going to take the time to educate you, because you're obviously not interested. If you were then you would have found no difficulty in finding important reasons for space research.

    I will say this: think of space research as a proven investment in mankind's future. Every dollar we spend today will return thousands (if not millions) of dollars sometime in the not-too-distant future. The reasons that support this claim are floating around all over the place out here in e-space and you should have no trouble finding it... if you really are interested.
  • What I find the most tragic with the crash of the MPL is the fact this little probe carried a mike to listen to the sound of Mars. I was so hyped about turning down the lights, turning off the tv, lying on my bed and listening to Martian winds in streaming Real Audio... I realise since the atmospheric pressure is lesser on Mars than on Earth, it wouldn't amount to something very exciting, but darn. Listening in to another planet is just so darn exciting.

    I hope they'll do this again on a future mission. I'm happy to see this will slow down, but not halt, the Mars program.

  • I wouldn't worry about pop culture fallout, unless NASA made the really big mistake like trying to oversell space as "Mankind's last hope" the way Walsh does above. The public has a short attention span and the next success will serve to quell the memory of the last failure, provided of course the last failure didn't kill anybody.

    The only hope for man's long-term survival is the wise use of space to preserve the Earth, our ownly true home. A lot of people fall into the fallacy of making space a frontier that's tamable in the same way our earthbound ones are.

    Fact is, that space is an inherently hostile, unhealthy place for organic life that's not going to get better. There's hard vacum, the lack of easily obtainable volatiles, hard radiation that's extremely difficult to shield against without burying yourself under a large pile of rock.

    The old pioneers went forth with the intent of settling on their own private pieces of property and living off the land. For would-be space settlers, the only thing to look forward to would be small allocted spaces living inside a glorified Mason jar. Space sounds great on paper and looks neat on the silver screen. The reality however is likely to be a lot more tedious.

    Space does have a place in our future, but it won't define our future.
  • Actually please DO forget Earth First. They're a great example of the true mindless bunch of fanatics. Remember groups like the Sierra Club or better yet the various Public Research Interest Groups like NJPIRG, student run corporations that acheive real results, streamwalking, taking names and measurements and going at the polluters where it really hurt, in their wallets, through a string of successful lawsuits.

    What we need is a Kennedy for the Environment, something I'd like the next President to think about.
  • I was wondering when the X-File idiots would start showing up. The answer is simple. If life still existed on Mars, we wouldn't need a lander to see it. What we've learned now is that life doesn't just sit on a planeteary crevice, it expands, thrives, dominates, changes it's environment or it drops dead totally. Without the presence of life, the rising Solar temperatures would have turned Earth into Venus. Venus and Mars are the two "stable" states for terrestial planets of this group. It's the moderating presence of life which in turn, keeps Earth balanced on that delicate knife edge of habitability. In short, if life existed on Mars, we'd be able to detect it's presence with any moderate sized telescope/spectroscope combination.
  • It's known that the Soviets were working on some big boosters, including one that dwarfed the Saturn 5. Then it blew, Apollo landed and the soviet drive to the Moon went out the window, and they went down the space station route, racking up lots of cosmonaut hours. Last I heard though, the prototype space shuttle was being used as an amusement ride. The history of the Russian space program is a worthwhile read and a tragic story, with rather interesting bits, such as the destruct system on Gagarin's spacecraft and how the director committed treason by telling him in advance the sequence needed to disarm it. It was tied to the retros and ground control would send up the final numbers just before deorbit. The director I forgothisname, however had faith that Gagarin wouldnt' defect and gave him the sequence so that he wouldn't have been doomed by possible radio failure.
  • I seem to recall that NASA was thinking about sending, when the technology permits, a bunch of small robots to Mars--the idea being if some of them fail or get stuck you've still got the rest. It would be cool if they allowed one of the robots to be programmed as a community Internet project! Maybe it could motor around and trace an outline of Tux in the Martian sand.
  • > open source robot a stupid waste of money

    It'd be worth the money if the robot control program worked, which is something that would be tested before sending it to Mars. :-) Going along on a mission (as just one of a group of small robots) is a further test, and also a reward for the developers. NASA spends its money on development. If a project like this ever happened, you're talking about free non-trivial development--program the microcontrollers that control the motors, get autonomous behavior as an emergent property, the whole deal. Mindstorms taken to the next level :-)
  • >You seem to not realize that military spending is one of the things that prevents a Chinese language version of Linux from being the only >version.

    Yeah, yeah, and before that it was those vicious Iranians; before that, the Godless Soviet Empire; before that, Nazi Germany, etc., etc ad infinitum.

    There's always gonna be an "enemy." You can either live your life inside a prison of your own making, afraid of your own shadow and jumping at every sound, or you can get out there, explore and live.

    Which do *you* choose?


  • You sure don't mind getting products and raw materials from those same countries. You don't mind having a little country called MEXICO underneath you where you can get cheap labour and imports. You don't mind getting your electronics from ASIA and RAW RESOURCES from BRAZIL, AFRICA etc.

    Have you ever studied GLOBAL economics. It sounds as if you got your ideas from the bottom of a CORN FLAKES packet. I do not mind debating my points at all I am currently helping a PHD research this very topic I have literally a mountain of evidence to bury you with you REDNECK fuck!!!

    Another thing about spending money how about channel money from the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL complex into NASA. You sure don't mind spending ludicrous amounts of money keeping armed occupying forces all over the world, invading anybody not keen on your own INTERNATIONALIST aims and then branding them lesser people, terrorist, commies or any other title you can think off.....................

    Remember PEARL HARBOR boy's and girls.............................

    That's right they are only other members of the world community but their not Americans!!!


  • and they threaten to take our westen coast if we don't feed their country.....

    Where did you get this little bit of lunacy from??

    I am sure it had a NSC seal and EYES ONLY written all over it. Or where did you hear it - that oft touted fount of wisdom the CONFORMIST NEWS NETWORK (CNN)

    Learn alittle about ballistics and missile technology . A good start is a physics textbook then onto the JANES MILITARY website. You will see how funny what you are saying really is!!!

    You really do not have to worry, I am sure that when your unemployment problem reaches a crescendo or when another sex scandal breaks out you can always go and invade them - ITS THE AMERICAN WAY!!!!!!!!!

  • Really should have told the Russians before they sent that successful robot lander to the moon all those many Earth's ago.

    We only seem to remember the hype about human exploration. (you guy's have a way better publicity machine anyway just ask Ted and CNN)I watched a whole interesting documentary series about how advances in robotic exploration of space has been stifled by ludicrous spending on the SPACE STATION and manned projects. Shit they still keep delaying it (those damn Russians......ha!!) Underwater research in extreme pressure has always been the domain of the robot - most advances still come from this area. I was recently working on animating a design of a new proto-type robot submersible being developed at Sydney University. They sure don't think robotic research is a waste of money neither does the Japanese and American corporation
    that fund the thing.

    A group of networked robots sharing information to achieve common goals is not a new study at all and is not considered by those in the industry to be a stupid waste of money.

    I think that sending a human into space - who needs to eat, breath, sleep, exchange bodily fluids, shit and piss to be a far bigger waste.

    Intial exploration could all be done by robots who have no need for any of these functions and could survive the rigours of space travel for much longer than a human life-time.

    It just seems somewhere in the 50's things went really wrong in the PR department and the MANNED thing has been with us ever since.....

    But then again ignorance really is bliss. I should know, being a complete ignoramus myself!!!
  • Yes, look at all the wonderful things we have in our homes thanks to space research, like the Teflon coated frying pan.

    I must have been out when they knocked on my door saying, "Thanks for chipping in, here's your frying pan."

    One thing though. If you're in outer space, wouldn't you want your eggs to stick to the pan?
  • I don't know too much about NASA and it's working/trials/tribulations etc, but from what I have heard they have experienced several large budget cuts over the course of the last few years, and have even had to use older equipment previously donated to the space museum as a result of these cuts. With what they have to work with I think they are doing a great job. They have my support 100% of the way.
  • Let me commend you on the excellent straw man attack!
  • Every piece of remote-sensing hardware that could tell you Earthlings more about the "face", or about Phobos, has disappeared mysteriously without a trace.

    Eventually you will figure it out. Heh heh.

    We will not let you see us until you visit us. Perhaps not even then. We like our privacy.

    Marklar! ~O:}

  • I'm convinced that there was never any polar lander at all. What we have here is a 150 million dollar spy sattelite in geosynchronous orbit, looking down on some "terrorists." Or an exotic weapon of some sort. Whatever. But, you can't convince me that these last two failures were really attempts at all; merely cover ups for something else.
  • Why does the United States still use the Imperial system, anyways? Metric is easier, already used by science (even in the US) and the rest of the world already uses metric (for everything).
    ...BTW... The needless use of an Imperial measurement was the cause of the first mishap.
  • The moderation system exists so that the CURRENT moderators can assign points, not just anybody who wants to. I can't think of any more abusive way to use the karma bonus point than to moderate vicariously through others. If a post deserves to be moderated up (and apparently somebody thought it did), it will be; your help isn't needed.

    If you have a useful comment, don't put a dumb title like that on it.
  • As far as the retrieval of instruments- usually it cannot be done.
    The ocean floor is littered with very expensive oceanographic
    instruments because once you're in water deeper than a few
    hundred meters there's not much you can do. In addition, not
    all instruments are tethered- free fall instruments play an
    important role, as do moored instruments, which sometimes
    sink, and even the ones on tethers occasionally decide
    they'd rather be somewhere else. Of course, if the
    missing object is a Soviet Sub, often certain gov't agencies
    are willing to fork over the dough to retrieve it. However,
    for a $100k instrument package, it's just not worth it. Remember,
    not only is it very hard to find a lost instrument, it's
    usually almost impossible to find it in the first place.

    Also remember that oceanographers deal with up to 600 atmospheres
    of pressure (as opposed to 0), in addition to being in an
    environment (like space) that is not kind to sensitive
    electronics (i.e. salt water).

    For what it's worth- the new oceanographic ships- the Atlantis and the
    Revelle- the most advanced ships in the fleet- cost ~$50 million
    each. And we haven't sunk any yet...

    As far as free time on subs, etc.- yes, the oceanographic community
    benefits greatly from this, but I guarantee that scientists that get
    free time on military subs are doing something the navy is VERY
    interested in.

    jay austin
    Center for Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
    Oregon State University

  • Like most research scientists, oceanographers are almost
    entirely funded by the government. This includes myself.
    I am currently funded by a consortium of government agencies
    including NSF (National Science foundation) the ONR (Office of
    Naval Research) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
    Administration).

    that $220 Million from the NSF represents on the order of about 50%
    of all research oceanographic funding in the United States. As I mentioned,
    we get some money from ONR (a lot less now that the cold war is over),
    from NOAA (as long as Congress doesn't abolish them),
    and to a much smaller extent, from the DOE, and local and state
    governments. In addition, Satellite technology plays a great role
    in modern oceanography, placing scatterometers, altimeters, and
    cameras in space (note that unmanned, earth-bound satellites are
    cheap compared to manned or extra-planetary work). So some
    money for oceanographic research actually comes from NASA
    (NASA has a $1.5 Billion "earth sciences" budget (FY2000)!).
    So I don't knock the contributions that they make, at least under
    some circumstances.

    As far as benefit the benefits of ocean research: the ocean is a
    tremendously important part of the earth's climate system, the
    carbon cycle, and the biosphere. Making life on earth livable
    requires a great understanding of it, as well as our space
    environment. I feel that funding it at such a low level compared to
    space sciences ($2.2 Billion) or human exploration ($5.6 Billion!)
    is very short-sighted.

  • I agree completely. Does anyone remember pathfinder!? HUGE success!

    And, really, people, you critisize NASA for making stupid mistakes. I suppose you must be perfect. Otherwise, you would know that stupid mistakes are MUCH more common than real ones. I would be much more worried if they made a real mistake.

    ------
    -Everything has a cause
    -Nothing can cause itself
    -You cannot have an infinite string of causes

  • I guess I should add that to my list of things that need money.

    However, do they get any government money? Are they (you) a government branch?

    I would be interested to see your arguements that oceanography has more potential benefit than space exploration though. Maybe for the short term, but not for the long term...

  • Sure 50% failure rate is unreal, but: Didn't one Mercury flight overshoot about 200 miles?

    Maybe. Probably. But so what? Mercury flights were not about guaranteeing exact splashdown coordinates. They were about testing a craft we built, to fly in space for the very first time(s).

    Didn't they loose another after splashdown?

    Sure, Gus Grissom's capsule (which was recovered last summer). But again, that flight was not about successful capsule recovery, it was about what we learned DURING the flight.

    You dare calling Apollo 1 a success?

    I don't recall saying that. Don't put words in my mouth. Apollo-1 was one of the 2 Apollo flights in my list (if you read it) that was not a success.

    Do you call Apollo 13 a success (although the rescue was a beautiful hack)?

    See above. I listed 2 Apollo flights as NON SUCCESSES, this was the other.

    Are you sure all shuttle flights were successful?

    I guess it depends on how you define successful. In all but one flight we got the ship up into orbit, learned something, and then successfully got the ship and crew back to fly again. Which incidentally would meet my definition of success.

    It seem that your concept of success is "nobody died during the flight". That is quite radical, don't you think so?

    Odd, I don't recall having said that.

    However, I'm sure I could get a lot of NASA flight directors to agree with me that not losing any lives, not losing the ship (in the Shuttle's case), and learning something new defines a successful mission.

  • Ummm, I read your original post a bit too fast maybe(there were so many and I read them during a break in my work). I really had the impression that you said all Apollo missions were successful, hence my reaction, for Apollo 1 accident was really sad. I apologize for being so trigger-happy.

    It's cool. I sometimes read to quickly myself and guilty of the same thing.

    What I meant was that every enterprise that is partially successful is also a partial failure. Your post, given my misreading of the Apollo thing, made the impression that the only failure you considered was Challenger's last flight. But I still think the same way: one of the Mercury series' goals must have been tuning re-entry and manned-capsule recovery (different from recovering one without doors os hatches)

    While it is true that they were practicing every aspect of the mission during Mercury, recovery was not the most important feature. THE primary objective was getting a man in space before the Russians REALLY made us look bad. Having done that they weren't too worried about hooking a cable to a capsule and hauling it onto an aircraft carrier. Compared rendezvous and docking (in space), recovery was a no brainer. Yes Grissom's capsule did sink to the bottom but that was not a recovery issue. That was a problem with the explosive bolts on the capsule hatch. Recovery went relatively fine. They actually hooked into the capsule but it filled with water and was too heavy for the copter to lift. So they had to let it go.

    Not all objectives of the Spave Shuttle program were met.

    You had better believe it they weren't! Like making space travel inexpensive! :-) They sold congress and America on this "reusable" spacecraft that was going to be cheap to refly, and we ended up getting a reusable aircraft that really ISN'T any cheaper than flying Saturn's would have been if we kept production up and got costs down. Plus we would have retained heavy-lift capability.

    There *have* been failures and NASA *learnt* something from those. And if you take them into account, it doesn't add up to .977 batting average.

    But I was never saying NASA'S batting average WAS .977. I was saying that even if you add any and all Mars (and other) probe failures you do not lower that .977 batting average that much. I was attempting to point out that their number of successes was actually quite high (thereby making your claim unlikely).

    You however did say that their average was 50% or lower.

    Don't take me wrong, I'm a great admirer of the U.S. space program.

    Then we have much in common. :-) I also admire the Russians for their space program. They did a lot of amazing things before we did.

  • Lately, NASA's been having some really bad luck...I think they're success rate is in the low 50's if not lower by now....Such a shame.

    Umm, I wouldn't say so. But I guess it depends upon how you define LATELY. I prefer to look at their entire history.

    6 Mercury flights, 6 successes.

    10 Gemini flights, 10 successes.

    12 manned Apollo flights (or tests), 10 successes.

    3 Skylab flights, 3 successes.

    We'll call it 100 shuttle flights with 99 successes.

    We'll call that 131 flights with 128 successes.

    You're telling me NASA has flown enough probes that have failed to bring that .977 batting average down below .500?

  • Cool! So instead of solving the problems downtown, you head for the suburbs (no pun intended heree) While others may call this 'evolutionary', I call that 'inability to evolve', 'inabilty to cope with self-made problems'.

    Don't get me wrong: I am amazed at what we can do and where we can go, if not stopped by our own ignorance. The sad thing is, it still seems more rewarding to search for new landfills|oil sources|solutions-for-problems-yet-to-invented (tick all that apply) than to fix what we've broken in the first place.

    This is not against NASA or ESA or whoever. But we might be better off to save the breathing air for our children than to build the evacuation spacecraft for the day we choke at our own dirt.

  • I doubt it was anything to do with the atmosphere, I mean they've landed several probes already I think they know what to expect, and the landing type wasn't new either. Right, but one possible scenario was a separation failure, which would probably mean that the heat shield wouldn't protect the Lander. My question is whether it's possible that the Lander could have left no wreckage at all.
  • No, I got it by working there, and seeing how things really -are- done at NASA. Badly, with lots of internal politics and far too much management.
  • China has a much longer history than Europe. In the last 500 years, Europeans colonized much of the world, started massive wars, and enslaved or killed millions of innocents. In the last 5000 years, the Chinese have never exerted significant military or political control outside of South East Asia. Which society has more to fear from the other?

    Don't get me wrong. I do not support the current Chinese government's position on human rights, but I see no indication that China is threat to the territory or people of the US. China may be a threat to Taiwan, Tibet and their own people but not to the people of the US.

    --
  • Here here! I completly agree. I'd moderate this up if I hadn't already posted. Humanity must go to the stars if it wants to progress. Earth is nice, but it won't last forever. We have to leave, and the sooner we start spreading out, the better off humanity will be.

    People complain that we should spend money on the present to help fight hunger and poverty. But, compared to welfare NASA's budget is tiny. And compared to PERMINANTLY obliterating human suffering, spending a few more millions on poor people doesn't look quite as hot.

    Here's to space!
    --Nick

    ps: I know I can't spell. I'm just too lazy to break out the spell checker. Bite me.
  • I risk being rated as a troll for this.
    Here goes nothing.
    Has anyone ever thought about this?

    The communication is working properly between the Mars Lander and NASA but NASA wants you to think that the mission has failed.
    Why? Maybe because research there is intended to be kept a secret.

    What if a lifeform or another extraordinary thing is discovered? How will the people on Earth react to this? Personally, I believe in the above theory but thats just my own :)

    Oh well, maybe about 10 or 20 years later we will read about a de-classified paper relating the adventures of Mars Polar Lander...
  • I wonder how Columbus would have fared with an attitude like that?
  • Ah, the joy of receiving enlightenment from those more intellectually well-equipped than oneself! Words fail me.
  • I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the key point here. If the craft that was lost had been a manned vessel, the crew would have seen that it was coming down in unsuitable terrain, and taken evasive action. We need manned missions to the planets; it's the only way to be sure. Besides, unmanned probes are all fine and dandy for the scientists, but they aren't actually getting us any closer to what should be our goal: expansion into the rest of the Solar System. Remember: expand or die.
  • Finally Humans gave up all attempts to find their piece of cosmic junk. After nearly a month of bombarding Mars with radiowaves of all frequencies and types we can finally take a good rest from them. And it is probable that we are not going to hear anything from them for the next 2-5 years. They are still breaking their heads on how their "mega-super-techological marvel" managed to get lost in our planet. And the last news is that they will try to make a whole redesign of their trashbaskets. While the next probe is scheduled in half year from now, it is highly probable that it will be delayed. We have some hope that their nature known as "beaurocracy" and the usual pedantism on budget cutting will give a chance for us to see it 5 years from now (10 Earth years)

    Anyway Mars Surveyor Productions keeps successfully to manage their probe and sending quite monotonic images back to Earth. On what concerns the fate of their new probe the government thinks to offer it to one school so that kids can play with it and to learn something about our neighbors. However this seems to meet some resistence of private groups that consider it worth to have a place in the Etnographic Museum.
  • Wrong decision for the wrong view. The fact that there is no contact is just a signal that Mars is not so simple as it seems. You see a planet that looks too much like Earth. But which is not Earth. Laws of Nature may play the same role in Mars as in Earth. However how, when and why they happened make Earth and Mars radically different. Note: going to Mars is the same way as running over a beach like field and suddenly note that they are in fact moving sands.

    This view has consquently a price. The price is high. But it is natual that it should be this way. Humans have no more than 40 years experience in Space. And if we consider their landing experience then we should consider it miserable. Try to compare it to thousands of years that humans have taken to learn about Earth.

    Now there is a problem on giving up. Yes one lows the risks. But also it lows the stakes for a lot of things. Imagine that ARPA decided to "close doors" on Internet when it possessed a few hundreds of hosts. Can you imagine what Net we would have today?

    It is a very risky venture to send probes to Space. While humans do not get serious with going to Space, this will had an extreme risk that failures may be deemed as net losses. The provincial ape still does not fill quite ok in a spacesuit. And that's the real problem. By making Space a permanent Terra Incognita ("humans out") we are just shortening the chances for evolution.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The soviets never made it to the moon, we DID.

    The measuring system you use is not relevent, as long as you can do the basic math and conversion to other systems. If you measure in inches, centimeters, or even widths of Arthus C. Clark's thumb it doesn't make any difference as long as you know that 2*2==4 and the square root of 9 is 3 and how to convert it to other systems of measure.

    Maybe if we had politicians who actually cared more about doing the work of the people than in getting re-elected we'd get the budget increases that we need for the space (and several other) program(s).

    LK
  • I'm not sure I'm getting my value out of these tax dollers.
    Were I an american, I'd be quite happy with the way NASA spent my tax dollars. As many have said, you can have any two of 'better, faster, cheaper', but even with a high failure rate, this 'shotgun' approach will yield results.

    A return to the halcyon days of a billion dollars on one mission would be foolish; what's needed now is either a continuation of the present policy (which will result in more [acceptable] failures), or a change to the Mars Direct approach, which could see us with a permanent base on Mars in 20 years for a trifling $50bn.
  • I'd love it if the talking heads would take a bit more time in explaining to people that the faster-cheaper-better missions NASA is undertaking these days allow us to have a greater incidence of failure while still spending less and learning more than on average than in the old days. Instead, the Dan Rathers of the world just talk about what a disappointment NASA has been of late.

    Face it, NASA saved all that money by firing it's public relations people. Which is fine... But without good PR they're not going to keep up even the funding they currently have.

    A lack of public confidence is, IMHO, the worst thing that could happen to NASA. With two big public failures (well, at least made out that way in the media), NASA's gonna be hurting soon.

    Don't blame the media for it, it's always been like that. The best news is bad news, from their viewpoint. Success is not shown off nearly as well as failure, so you must have a huge success rate to cope with one failure.
    ---
  • NSF ocean sciences: $220 Million-
    which is not to say Oceanography does not benefit from NASA, the military, etc, but I think the point is clear)

    I think that oceanographers tend to get more than that figure in the form of free time on equipment. A couple of people I worked with were working on installing some instruments for DUMAND in Hawaii were getting a a few weeks every year from the Navy on their submersible. From what I understand, the submersible time was around 100k a day if they had to buy it (they were working at about 3k down).

    However, I don't doubt that the geosciences are underfunded and I think its a shame.

  • Well, it and the microprobes had heat shields so there was some heating expected.

    Of course, as we send more crawlers up there eventually we'll be able to play the game "Find Polar Lander". No winner if it did completely burn up, but then we'd end up with the south polar region extremely well mapped before giving up...

  • Yeah, or alternatively they saw it coming
    and couldn't do anything and died.

    I'd rather keep sending the unmanned probes.

  • While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I think the aboive statement does put you in the "traitor to his species" category...

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • While part of me is sorry to see them closing the doors on what should have been a spectacular mission, I'm hopeful the projects failure will bring about some intelligent review.

    While Cheaper, Faster, More (or whatever the exact doctrine is) has brought about wonderful successes like Pathfinder, we've had two spectacular and still expensive failures. While the failures are still less expensive than one giant mission every six years, the results still are not encouraging.

    However, I don't think this means NASA should change the doctrine. Instead, let's find out how the system can improve without radically altering the structure of what I think is the most exciting time in NASA since the very beginnings of the shuttle program.

    So what needs watching? Obviously better communication with contractors and subcontrators. Further, it ought to be worth looking at how NASA space missions talk and review each other. Of course, I'd like that to be on the scientist rank-and-file level.

  • That would have been pretty damn expensive. Consider how much Real charges for a domestic SureStream server. And now you're looking to go interplanetary! Sheesh, that should give them a good reason to jack the rates and point to something else that's "not our problem."

    Of course, Yahoo would try to coopt the whole mess and jump to Martian Media Player.

  • And that could've failed to, like any other project, scientific or not. one COULD have done a lot of other things with the money, yes. but just because a project doesn't work, doesn't mean it is a complete failure.

    //rdj
  • Does anyone have the coordinates for the alleged "face on Mars"?

    Also: The image of "Kermit" that NASA found and published as examples of how you can find all sorts of chance images on the Martian surface?

    Didn't they find a "smiley face", too? Shades of _The Watchmen_. B-)

    With respect to "the Face on Mars": There's a whole section of the human brain given over to detecting human faces and decoding expressions - which is why we see faces in everything from electric outlets to wear spots in linoleum if they contain even traces of similarity to facial features.

  • I agree with you -- we should be developing ways to inhabit the heavans -- but this technology is still awhile away -- and if we say that "well, we are destroying the environment, so let's get the hell out of here" we are kind of taking the wrong approach to the problem. What will we do? Go to another planet and proceed to exploit the environment and resources on it? No... not the solution. We could then quite possibly find ourselves screwed yet again. If we are going to solely depend on space technology to save our arses, that would be a very bad idea. Think redundancy here, people. =) Taking that analogy further, if we don't take care of the earth, it may well crash, leaving us with nothing... and we don't have a backup yet!

    Okay, enough with the cheesy analogies. At the risk of sounding like someone who uses the shallow (if not logically unfounded) argument of "we have no business exploring space when there are starving people in China", I think that while extraterrestrial technology is important, we can't lose sight of the core problem here which is that we are destroying Earth. Rapidly. We are just evading the issue by running away to space. We have a much better chance of survival if we fix the environmental problems here at the same time as we work on tackling space; we are overrunning our planet exponentially at the moment, and if we don't do something quick I think we are going to start feeling the backlash.

    And if you think that you can't make a difference; you're wrong, you can. Here are a couple of links:

  • The fact that this message made it to the top score, albiet marked as funny, is one of the problems I think slashdot needs to address. I am supposed to believe that someone posting on slashdot just happens to be smarter than NASA? When was the last time you landed a probe on another planet? NASA has done it a good number of times.

    NASA can do things right hundreds of times with no comment, but as soon as they screw the pooch, boom, here come the smart-asses out of the wood work who believe they have all the facts and know exactly how to fix the problem.

    >You can only cut corners so far, for the mass >media's benefit.

    Is this the same mass media where you got all of your information? jeepers man!


      • |pyrexD::Say| i saw it on tv lost your mars probe
      just ask zd
    |n0::Shit|
  • I agree that it's not fair to harshly judge, and that technology should not be expected to perform correctly 100% of the time. However, you can't deny the facts that have been revealed:
    1. Remember the metric conversion screwup a while back?


    2. This most recent unfortunate event ... I find it strange that the Lockheed people knew nothing about the landing zone features, while JPL did. It seems that there is a level of miscommunication going on between these two parties.
    These 2 facts are enough to support a good amount of criticism, as they're both something that is within NASA's power to prevent.
    Of course, I'm only going by what I read in the media, which definitely is not saying much these days.

  • Costs... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17, 2000 @12:44PM (#1364163)

    Metric to English calculator - $35

    Telescope - $270

    Mars Lander - $135,000,000

    Look on the scientists' faces - priceless

  • This is sad. (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Monday January 17, 2000 @12:39PM (#1364164) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately, I can't sympathise with NASA over their loss. Miscommunication (such as neglecting to mention the presence of large canyons in the landing area) and negligence (inadequate quality control, WRT the Mars Surveyor, which led to there being inadequate information for a safe landing) were big contributing factors, IMHO.

    Now, that's not to say NASA is a bunch of incompetent twits. (Which they are, but that's another story.) However, I hope they learn from this. Quality is ESSENTIAL. Meeting Press Deadlines is NOT. That's how they lost the Challanger. You can only cut corners so far, for the mass media's benefit.

    IMHO, NASA would function a -whole- load better if they launched another el-cheapo Mars lander, this time fitting it with the entire management side of NASA. That way, NASA could claim the presence of life on Mars (though intelligence would still be in doubt), AND be free of the money-draining side of the organisation, AND be in a position to actually get some real work done, all in one go. I think it'd go over great with the public!

  • Re:This is sad. (Score:3)

    by Alexey Goldin ( 5545 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @12:44PM (#1364165)
    There are two serious reasons to respect deadlines in this business:

    1) celestial mechanics

    2) money. Paying all the staff for two more years (waiting for the next launch opportunity) is hideously expensive.

  • Re:This is sad. (Score:3)

    by Nimmy ( 5552 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @01:08PM (#1364166) Homepage
    I see your point, but I totally disagree. NASA is working on a low-low budget (both compared to what it used to be and to the size of other budgets [defense, science, welfare, etc]). They were told to do more missions with less money. AND THEY DID! A few of them failed, thats OK, we expected that. NASA expected that. NASA is STILL the worlds most sucessful space agency. If your life were analysed the way NASA was, I doubt you would be able to claim the sucess rate they do. To quote a drunk NASA techie, "allright buddy, lets see YOU go to Mars. C'mon, I'm waiting."

    No matter how you look at it, the fate of humanity rests with NASA and space exploration. I think rather than critizing every failure of NASA, people should look to the sucesses and where they a bring us as a species. NASA needs the support of the American people to be able to do its job, and the American people start with you.

    --Nick

  • Re:its their budget (Score:3)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @01:53PM (#1364167) Homepage
    We have the technology now to send a man to mars. But the government would rather blow money on things like social programs and welfare which is creating more problems than it helps.

    I would hardly say that money used to feed someone, or give them hospital care, is "blown". Aside from that, you do realize that the largest single government program is Social Security, which is paid for by your FICA taxes (not income taxes), and the next largest is defense? Entitlement ("social", "welfare") programs take up only
    Where the Federal Budget dollar goes [gpo.gov]

    The chart isn't very helpful in showing how the annual budget actually involves returning money to Social Security that was borrowed during the DEFENSE spending binge of the 1980-1995 period, but it does show how 14% is just paying interest on the national debt. We should be paying down both the Trust Fund loans and other government debts so that this crippling rate of interest can be reduced.

    Today the government is all about managing problems, not solving them. God forbid they actually solve a problem and someone is out of a job.

    I think you have a very short-sighted view of what government is actually doing, let alone what it can accomplish. Few people believe that we can "solve" poverty, for instance, but we can certainly provide a way out of poverty for those willing to make an effort.

    What does this have to do with space? In any case, dealing with a given problem (poverty, crime, the economy) usually has to be combined with other objectives (science, education, tax reduction).
    ----

  • Live by the sword, die by the sword. (Score:3)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @02:06PM (#1364168) Homepage
    In this case, the sword is popular public opinion. NASA has from the beginning of the space program invested enormous energy in achieving high approval ratings, from the micromanaging of the "straight-arrow" Gemini astronauts' lives to the Pathfinder mission. NASA is now refocusing its planetary science program on the tantalizing, but slim, possibility of finding life outside Earth (Mars, Europa ...) in the belief that only this will motivate public opinion.

    Permit me to exercise my skeptic-o-meter and suggest that raising expectations too high is a mistake. When programs and missions with other objectives get harnessed to the yoke of becoming another public relations wowzer, the science, more often than not, loses. The book The Hubble Wars provides an instructive example of how NASA's focus on an engineering success blinded it to the science needs of the mission.

    As you (JoeWalsh) suggest, NASA believes it's dependent on public support to continue with its programs. (The fact is, we could have a NASA that provided us with both planetary science and propulsion research for a fraction of the budget; it's maddeningly less-than-really-useful do-nothing projects like Shuttle and ISS that eat up the budget. Which, in a cynical way, is exactly what it was designed for.)

    Unless we're actively exploring and working toward getting people living on Mars or someplace like the asteroids or L5, you're correct -- we're putting the species at risk. When it's within our grasp! How frustrating.

    But in the end, NASA has to accept responsibility for continually going to the trough of public opinion to win support for dubious and expensive projects. When you're that dependent on the goodwill of the voters, you're going to find a day when they turn off the spigot.
    ----

  • NASA's succeses are worth a few failures (Score:3)

    by Aerowolf ( 123429 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @12:49PM (#1364169)

    The hype surrounding the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander seemed particularly nasty from where I was sitting. It truely is sad that we have lost two missions, but that will not stop NASA and those of us who are advocates for space exploration from trying. These programs are essential to our future and our childrens' and grandchildrens' future.

    Expensive as these programs are, they give us unbelievable benefits: as inspiration for people to get into math and science (how many of us does that apply to???), to show us how small a world we live on (the first picture of Earth as a globe, on which we live in a fragile shell was taken by Apollo astronauts and served to galvanize conciousness of our environment and was worth the entire cost, IMHO), to allow us to better understand our home planet (some researhers are planning for a constellation of satellites to measure extremely small land movements, perhaps leading to better earthquake prediction), and to give us our new frontier to explore and use our creative energies, on which we spend too much figuring out ways to kill each other.

    If we don't go into space and utilize the infinate resources out there, and therefor doom our decendants to an empty, resourceless world, they will look back on our day, and think to themselves, "What the heck were they thinking?!?" We have the opportunity and the means today to gain access to those resources, and I for one don't want my decendants to curse my name for my generation's failure to provide for them.

    -Aerowolf

  • About time to abandon the Red Planet (Score:3)

    by mad161 ( 137607 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @02:36PM (#1364170) Homepage
    With the current success rate, I feal that it is about time that N.A.S.A gave up on the project. The reason for no contact could be one of many things. It wouldn't however be fair to blame anyone because I very much doubt that they will either regain contact or find out what went wrong. Although the shear amount of the costs involved must come into the equation sometime.\

    I might however think back to the Venus Probes that were sent back in the 70's (I think). They were so well tested that if any problems would arise they should have all ready been thought of. From the Immence heat shielding surrounding the probe, to the high impact design that ment theat nothing went wrong and we learnt much about another planet in this uncomprehensibly small section of space.

    http://www.nasa.gov/

    or for the more sceptical of you, I recommend trying the Darkvault and look for a hint of alien involvment!

    http://www.darkvault.com

  • Re:just my opinion (Score:4)

    by Nimmy ( 5552 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @01:00PM (#1364171) Homepage
    I completly disagree. IMHO, NASA is doing a fine job. They were given a task, do what you can with this shoestring budget, and they are doing pretty well. They are still the most sucessful space agency out there. And yes, I think space exploration is critical. Not to national security or anything, but to the security of the human race. Our future is in the stars (and the children) and we would utterly amiss to abandon our future simply because there have been a few failures. And not even that many failures either. Compare NASA's success (over 50%) with that of Linux installations. Less than 50% of Linux installations work 1st time. And going to space is much harder than installing Linux.

    In short, we told them to go 'faster, cheaper' and they are. OK, so there are some failures, but when you get 10 missions the cost of one old-style mission, you can accept a few failures along the way.

    --Nick

  • Re:This is sad. (Score:4)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @01:42PM (#1364172) Homepage
    Why has there not been a single communications satalite set in orbit around mars? Part of the problem with this last mission was they sent an unmanned mission into a communication blind spot

    Wrong. The current series of Mars missions were designed to be somewhat integrated, with MGS providing mapping support and backup communications. Mars Climate Orbiter was intended to be the primary comm link with Earth, so its loss was a blow for that reason beyond just the science, but it wasn't a crippling problem because MGS could do double-duty.

    MPL's communications blackout during descent had nothing to do with MCO or MGS availability. It had to do with avoiding interference with the radar instrument it was carrying that would be active during descent. A design that would have allowed both devices to be active would have cost a great deal more, and was one of the design trade-offs ("acceptable risks") that this mission undertook.

    As it happened, since there wasn't any word from the two surface probes either, I'm of the opinion that separation failed and there wasn't even a successful descent, let alone a problem on landing.
    ----

  • Popular Culture Fallout? (Score:4)

    by JoeWalsh ( 32530 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @12:43PM (#1364173)
    My main concern with this mission's failure is what sort of fallout will there be from it in the popular culture? Will we see popular support for space missions eroded even further? If I had a dime for everytime an acquaintance has told me that it's all a waste of money . . .

    I'd love it if the talking heads would take a bit more time in explaining to people that the faster-cheaper-better missions NASA is undertaking these days allow us to have a greater incidence of failure while still spending less and learning more than on average than in the old days. Instead, the Dan Rathers of the world just talk about what a disappointment NASA has been of late.

    Sigh.

    The best hope for mankind's long-term survival is for us to spread to the stars. Failing that, we should spread to somewhere else in the solar system (perhaps in the space between planets, in totally artificial environments rather than terraformed planets). Otherwise, there will come a day when humankind is no more. It could be global thermonuclear war, it could be as a result of industrial waste products ruining the environment, or it could simply be a stray asteroid. But one way or another, it'll happen unless we spread out.

    Anyone who is against exploring space is a traitor to our species.

  • This image, and the many like it. [nasa.gov]

    When people ask "What has the space program done for us", people reply 'Tang' or 'Teflon' or 'Concentrated Orange Juice'.

    They are trivialities that distract from the true answer.

    What's the Weather going to be like tommorow ? How do you know ?

    Strange, that a country that seemed to spend half of 1999 getting hit by hurricanes and storms, suddenly forgets why they get 2 day warnings before hand. What would the Eastern seaboard be like if they got 30 minutes warning instead ? How many people would die ?

    But even weather prediction isn't the most important gift.

    When did the enviromental movement really start to get into high gear ? The Silent Spring was certainly the first widely known warning, but what is the standard image of the enviromental lobby ?

    When we started getting pictures like the above - not a vast limitless area that we can do anything we like to, but a small blue ball, hovering above the horizon of the moon, or the last crescent of the Earth taken by a space probe that is sailing into an almost infinte darkness. That's when terms like 'Small' and 'Fragile' began to be used about the Earth, which was historically regarded as the largest thing you can imagine.

    Look at any enviromental message, and you will almost always find a shot of the Earth from space. These pictures have made quite an impression on the thought processes of this race.

    And the impression is so deepy ingrained, that most people never think where they came from.

    Whatever money NASA spends, it's a bargain, for the results of their programs might just save the planet from ourselves.

  • Everybody talking about costs - WHAT COSTS? (Score:4)

    by Asparfame ( 96993 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @01:05PM (#1364175)
    NASA is really an extremely cost effective branch of the government, perhaps the most cost effective. What branch can you name that is CONSTANTLY inventing new technology to be sent to difficult to survive environments?

    NASA, and the Military.

    Now, how many BILLIONS of dollars does the military get annually as compared to NASA's hundreds of millions

    ? NASA has put people on the moon and telescopes in orbit, invented re-usable spacecraft, all for less than Bill Gates loses on a bad day in share price. I personally can't think of one government institution that's more deserving of my money.

  • Simulation of landed operations at Death Valley (Score:5)

    by stab ( 26928 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @05:35PM (#1364176) Homepage
    Hi, I'm part of the MPL team, and thought you guys might like to know that we are taking the flight-spare MPL to a secret location in Death Valley, and running a complete simulation of operations as they might have been had it landed on Mars.

    The point? To test the instruments and make sure they would have done what they are meant to, as a number will be reused in future missions (the Stereo Surface Imager in particular).

    You can follow all the images and simulations if you're interested in what actual science was being conducted, at our official site www.marspolarlander.com [marspolarlander.com]

    Cheers,
    Anil Madhavapeddy - Ground Data Systems - Outreach
    Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor

  • Re:Everybody talking about costs - WHAT COSTS? (Score:5)

    by downwell ( 89621 ) on Monday January 17, 2000 @02:12PM (#1364177)
    The answer is: the Oceanographic community. Oceanographers explore everything from the violent coastal ocean to the abyssal depths, deploying precision instruments in a high-pressure, corrosive, electromagnetically opaque environment. And they do it for a whole lot less than NASA does. And they have a much higher success rate. And it could be argued that the oceans are a whole lot more relevant to the survival of life on earth than is space.

    (for FY2000: NASA: $12.5 Billion
    NSF ocean sciences: $220 Million-
    which is not to say Oceanography does not benefit
    from NASA, the military, etc, but I think the point is clear)

    Jay Austin
    Center for Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
    Oregon State University

  • I really don't like the media's propensity (and, apparently, ours, to an extent) of judging NASA and our space program by a few failures. Sure, they get publicized more, but what about the untold missions that go off without a hitch? It's become so commonplace these days that rocket launches, and even space shuttle launches, have become just a footnote on an out-of-the-way place in the newspapers.

    I wouldn't *want* NASA to have a 100 percent success rate - that would just tell me they're hiding the failures.

    Technology, especially leading-edge technology such as this, is GOING TO FAIL occasionally. Don't read anymore into it than that. I think they're doing an admirable job, considering the resources they have available and the political climate they must work in.


    If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.

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