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Space Science Technology

Why Mars May Be Difficult 57

Posted by timothy from the or-rather-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "dramatic article leading up to the three Mars probes for December/January at NASA's JPL (also hosted at Ames) on Mars risks: Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. After 300 million miles of deep space, 'One colleague describes the entry, descent and landing as six minutes of terror,' says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office. Descending at 1,000 miles per hour, with only 100 seconds left at the altitude that a commercial airliner typically flies -- things need to happen in a hurry. Doesn't mention solar flares, electronics shielding, signal snags or budget tightening. The previous account listed the top 10 reasons Mars was hard in 1976."
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Why Mars May Be Difficult More

Why Mars May Be Difficult

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  • Maybe it's our solutions? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blankinthefill ( 665181 ) <blachancNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:16PM (#7618893) Journal
    After reading that, and seeing conceptual pictures of how these "landings" occur, I think that what makes Mars "hard" is our solutions to landing problems, and maybe even transportation. I don't know what we could do about transportation, but the landings are obviously way to stressful for delicate equipment. There has to be a better way to do it, because a landing like the one described would destroy almost anything! I don't think, therefore, that Mars itself is hard. I think it's how we access Mars that's "hard"!

    • Re:Maybe it's our solutions? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TowerTwo ( 237512 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:42PM (#7619771)
      I never considered MARS or anywhere else, MOON or otherwise as easy. Before the 'New World' was found how many explorers and and their kin died.

      All astronaughts know, the moment they step into a craft of any kind may be their last, their families do too. It's why Christa Maculafs backup said the next day after the Challenger disaster, I would go up tomorrow if asked, we know and she knew the risks of space travel.

      The exploration of the world is now the exploration of the universe. There will be the next James Town on Mars and others.

      This is the price and reward or exploration.

      Steven

    • Re:Maybe it's our solutions? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by matzim ( 468452 ) <mdz4c&virginia,edu> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:28PM (#7620868) Homepage
      After reading that, and seeing conceptual pictures of how these "landings" occur, I think that what makes Mars "hard" is our solutions to landing problems, and maybe even transportation. I don't know what we could do about transportation, but the landings are obviously way to [sic] stressful for delicate equipment.

      Consider the following:

      • These probes are traveling to Mars at (least) 19,300 km/hr.
      • It needs to travel that fast to get out of Earth's gravitational field and orbit.
      • The only economically feasible way to slow down a craft going that speed is aerobraking.
      • You need to be in a planet's atmosphere to aerobrake.
      • Mars' atmosphere is (at most) a few hundred kilometers thick.
      • Anything going that fast isn't going to have a long time to slow down.

      Thus the problem is unavoidable-- you must go from 19,300 km/hr to 0 km/hr in a matter of minutes. If you can think of a method to do that that's less "stressful" than NASA's, we're all eager to hear it.

      • Phisics 101...
        "It needs to travel that fast to get out of Earth's grav-field" simply means that it needs that much speed initially to get out of it at almost zero speed... duh.
        Coming closer to Mars will accelerate the craft (obviously) back to higher speeds.
        And now, take into account extra thrust on route.

        So, actually, it's the time we are willing to wait until the probes reach Mars that's setting the tempo (and the various other things like thruster power, fuel reserves, etc)

        There ARE ways to do this "so
      • Quick review - back in 1969, three guys landed on the Moon. They had the same escape velocity that a Mars mission would, and they had *no* aerobraking. Flipping the ship round and using the main rocket for braking worked just fine, and no Apollo mission crashed on landing. On the plus side, gravity was a lot less, but the main problem here seems to be the approach speed rather than gravity. So maybe the issue is the solution chosen, not the mission itself.

        Re aerobraking, there's no law that says you ha

    • Re:Maybe it's our solutions? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kippy ( 416183 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:31PM (#7620902)
      Agreed. Of course getting to Mars is hard. Getting into low earth orbit was hard. Sailing across an ocean was hard. Adapting to a colder environment when migrating from Africa was hard. I hope that defeatist attitudes aren't widespread in govenrment and NASA about getting to Mars.

      There will be risks, engineering chalanges, and deaths but this is already the case with NASA. Think Apollo. The fact is, pusing the envelope of human civilization will never be "easy".

      • hope that defeatist attitudes aren't widespread in govenrment and NASA about getting to Mars

        OK, but look at source of these articles NASA. An organization that, these days, is about protecting bureaucratic empires, not about exploration. What NASA would love is for actual space operations to be suspended for a few decades, yet have unlimited funding for conducting "studies" and "risk assessments".

        These days, the NASA behemoth is the world's biggest obstacle to space exploration. The sooner it's dismantl
    • way to[o] stressful for delicate equipment.
      The cheap electronics you buy at Radio Shack are delicate. Instruments used in space applications are not delicate. Much of what it can survive would kill you.

  • Mars Express still on target. (Score:3, Informative)

    by perly-king-69 ( 580000 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:20PM (#7618925)
    The European Mars Express is still on course [bbc.co.uk] for a Christmas Day encounter with Mars.
    • Perhaps I am stupid, or I just don't understand certain nuances of english language.
      I RTFA, and I am in doubt.
      It says 2 out of 3 mission failed.
      But 2 out of 3 missions since whenever we started or 2 out of the three 3 currently on route? The latter would leave the european one still working, the first would leave us with 1 (US) dead, two (US and EU) on route. And wasn't there also 1 (japanese) craft about wich I don't know the current status?
      TFA also described the landing sequence of one of the pods
      • My understanding of the article is that of all the missions that have ever been launched to Mars since the start of space travel in the 50's, around 66% of them have failed.

        I don't think it means that there were three specific missions, and two of these have failed - I just think it means the overall ratio of failures has been fairly high, which means that getting to the surface of Mars safely seems to be a hard problem at the moment.

    • Re:Mars Express still on target. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It has just sent pictures of Mars back.

      Pictures From UK's Beagle 2 [ananova.com]

  • Top 10 Reasons Mars is Difficult (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:36PM (#7619114)
    10. "Damn cell phone won't work up here!"
    9. Mars needs women. Stay home, Joe.
    8. It's the Red Planet. Capitalist running-dog lackey not welcome.
    7. Ever since I saw that awful movie that had Arnold with the bug-eyes, I just can't look at the place again.
    6. The hassle of Martian businesses having to change 24/7 on their promotional material to 25/7.
    5. Disney owns it already, why bother.
    4. When you get a hole in the housing module, you can't go to Wal-Mart for ductape.
    3. SCC got their first, just in case a mars mission tried to use Linux.
    2. They don't take American Express.
    1. Val Kilmer's rabid robot dog is still running loose, last time I heard.
    0. "Angry Red Planet"? Forget it, I have too much stress already.

  • difficulties (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:36PM (#7619116) Homepage
    Space travel is a cruel mistress. There are so many factors in complicated missions like these that any success is closer to a statistical anomaly than achievement, figuratively speaking. During launch, the payload can be stressed to a breaking point, and many satellites have died this way. Even though there are measures in place to minimize these, there is still a probability that in the long run, something may become disabled as a result. Furthermore, there is a tremendous amount of radiation outside of our comfort zone, not to mention stray particles roaming empty space. When traveling at those speeds, in excess of 10,000 MPH, even a grain of sand can spell doom or at least have damaging effects. Then comes the delicate process of landing the thing, which further pounds the payload with extreme G forces, heat, and vibration. Couple this with a 20 minutes latency of communication, and you end up with an expensive toy at the mercy of computers and sensors.

    And it doesn't help if idiots on Earth submit values in Imperial when the craft needs Metric, or vice versa. :D

    • Re:difficulties (Score:4, Interesting)

      by whome ( 122077 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:01PM (#7619948)
      The article mentions various technical reasons why Mars is hard, but Mars missions actually have a far worse success record than missions to any other location in space. NASA people joke (or used to joke) that Mars was protected from intruding spacecraft by the "Great Galactic Ghoul."

      I have my own theory about why Mars has such a bad record. Although Mars is the closest planet to the Earth, it is in one respect the most inaccessible . Mars has the least frequent launch window of any major object in the Solar System, it coming around only once every 26 months. This means that any engineer who reports that one section is not quite ready to go, or could use more testing, becomes responsible for a delay of almost 2 1/2 years. Obviously, there are considerable career and institutional reasons not to do so.

      This factor will have to be dealt with carefully on an institutional level if a manned Mars mission is attempted, or astronauts will certainly die.

  • NASA obesity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gnalre ( 323830 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:52PM (#7619291)
    What's inside the airbag weighs 453 kilograms (half a ton)


    Maybe thats what NASA has been doing wrong

    Beagle 2 weighs 33.2 Kg

    Time will tell...

  • the REAL problem with Mars... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:08PM (#7619433)
    ...is those Martian "evil-doers" that keep shooting down our spacecraft. It's time to assemble another Coalition of the Willing(tm)!
  • Another reason is that getting to Mars is hard. Well we didn't go to the moon because it was easy did we?
    • "We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.." sound familiar? Sounds like a good reason for doing things like going to Mars, to me..

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:36PM (#7620952)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You've forgotten about the large number of unmanned spacecraft that missed the Moon entirely or underwent catastrophic disassembly (splat) on the surface of the Moon.

      Space is hard. Making unsupported and unwarranted allegations about the incompetance of NASA managers is easy.

  • our tech sux (Score:2, Insightful)

    by demo9orgon ( 156675 )
    We need self-healing technologies.
    They don't come from space. We need to make them here.
    We can test them in a variety of environments, cheaply.

    If we, the collective humanity, can stop wasting money making faltering attempts at greatness and just set reasonable goals (sustainable deep-ocean habitats,sustainable polar habitats, better/safer/reliable energy) and create the technologies necessary to make them happen _here_ we will flourish anywhere.

    Until then, it's all hand-waving and one-upmanship nationalis
    • Personally, I think the governments of the world are scared to death of people getting out of their reach. Governments, like any entity, don't like to lose their source of wealth and power and they absolutely hate competition.

      Ever tried to "opt-out" of the tax/public services system ? You cannot, you're tossed in jail. Ever tried to do away from the government's money monopoly ? Same result. Many people tried to create their own countries, so far only one managed to do it (Major Bates with the Sealand Pri
  • shouldn't be the cause of much distress these days unless they cut corners somewhere. Stuff designed in the 1980s has no problem handling these situations. One way to remedy the situation is an autonomous reboot of the affected processor.
  • A one out of three success rate is- to be brutally honest- just a little pathetic. The moon probes back in the fifties and sixties had a much higher success rate. This is of course due to the shorter distance, lower delta v, and all that. But unless there's a higher success rate, it wouldnt really be feasible for a government to send people up there. Because of all those unreasonable demands of the astronauts (keep us alive, send us back to Earth, et cetera) a Mars mission would be prohibitively expensive..

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