Air Bag Blocks Spirit's Path 95
cosog writes "bad news everyone: 'Two sections of the air bags used to cushion Spirit during the landing phase are obstructing the vehicle's path.'. Fortunately scientists have a solution for it: 'We'll lift up the left petal of the lander, retract the airbag, then let the petal back down[...]'. This means that: 'The earliest the six-wheeled Spirit rover will get rolling is Jan. 14, about three days later than originally planned, NASA said'."
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:5, Informative)
This "thrown free" bullshit cracks me up every time.
A previous poster has already addressed the reality of landing. Now, before we even get there: what about the construction of your car makes you think that you'll be "thrown free" if broadsided by a train? Let's look at a passenger-side impact, since you'd be dead in either case if hit from the driver's side. In fact, even if hit from the passenger side, your chances are slim.
At impact, the train will continue towards you, through your car. Your car will gain velocity in the direction of the train. If you're "thrown" anywhere, you'll be thrown towards the front of the train as it plows through and accelerates your car, and that's only because you remained at rest since you weren't attached to the car.
Your new relative velocity to the car/train system means that your unrestrained torso will be thrown over the center console (assuming you're not in a truck), allowing your head to meet the passenger side of your car as it's crushed inwards by the impact. Game over.
With the seatbelt on, you remain (relatively) planted in your seat. You might injure your neck, as your head doesn't have lateral restraints, but the entire right side of the car is available to absorb the energy of the collision without your body being present. If you're in a car with side curtain airbags, so much the better. You will then slowly come to a halt as the train stops.
The "being plowed along" part is not really the variable affected by seat belt use. You will be plowed along whether you're wearing a seat belt or not; there is no way the impact of the train would "throw you free" in a side collision. If your car disintegrates and is mowed over by the train during the ensuing slowdown, you'll die either way. Seat belt use will, however, affect what happens to your body during impact.
I would challenge any advocate of the "thrown free" argument to explain a single situation in which a body could be "thrown free" from a car in a way that would result in less injury than remaining restrained in the vehicle, even ignoring the hazard from landings.
Rear-end collision? You gain relative velocity towards your seat, no problem.
Side collision? Detailed as above - you gain relative velocity towards whatever hits you, not some magical boost away from it and out the (open? do you ride everywhere with your windows open for safety?) window to "safety."
Front collision? Hey, you might indeed be "thrown free", but there's going to be unpleasant encounters first: steering wheel vs. torso, and head vs. windshield. Airbags and or seatbelts prevent or lesson the impact of both of these encounters. People smarter than you designed and throughly tested these systems.
Those rare collisions in which the car flips are the only kind that might result in you being thrown free, and even in these cases the odds of you being better off outside the vehicle are slim (as in the case below of the half-in/half-out person).
If you're riding without your airbag and seatbelt because you know the risks and accept them because your prefer to be comfortable, fine. But don't go around telling people that they're better off. If you're riding w/o a seatbelt or airbag you're much more likely to get in a garden-variety head-on collision and shatter your skull on the windshield than you are to be flipped and safely thrown free.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Mind you, I'm not really a proponent of this theory, but my wife is (which annoys me to no end...). The only situation that she has ever given to me in which it would be better to be thrown out of a car is one in which the person is thrown out
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1, Offtopic)
My grandfather drove off a bridge, and was able to escape because he wasn't belted.
However, I'm not a proponent of the "thrown free" method either. The fact remains that, although belts and airbags can cause a worse issue in some conditions, in many many more conditions they diminish your injury. Your wife should visit an ER sometime, or talk to an insurance adjuster.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Give it time.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:2, Informative)
CARS DON'T EXPLODE!
If you've ever seen a car on fire (which happens all the time), it is obviously a very dangerous situation, but it ain't no bomb. People get this idea from movies, to the point where they never reflect upon the plausibility of the whole thing.
The only way I can think of for a car to explode is for the fuel tank to be completely demolished during a crash in such a way that none of the fuel ignites. Then, the fuel Whoooshes out into the air and achieves a good fuel/ai
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
1.
Not entirely true. Can't do the physics but from p
Solomon's Wisdom (Score:4, Funny)
Trains don't kill people, physics kills people.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Darwin's Law (Score:2)
Re:Darwin's Law (Score:1)
Indeed, some of the idiots even object to fastening their belts when sitting behind someone - like I fancy a human sized projectile trying to get between me and the roof in a head on.
I mean how selfish can you get, fine, if you don't care about your own life go and jump of a cliff, but don't come up with lame excuses about it being better to be thrown clear when you can end up killing someone else on the way past.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
While I agree that in most cases a seatbelt will save your life.I did know some people who hit a rock and ended up upside down in a creek. They died due to their seatbelts holding them upside down with their heads in the water.
Whether they would
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:2)
I've studies aspects of automobile safetey, and in particular those related to motor racing. This doesn't make me an expert, but:
The chances of being thrown out of the window of a vehicle during an accident without injury are so slim they are e
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:2, Interesting)
You wouldn't be thrown "free to safety". You'd much more likely be thrown to your death. Being thrown from a vehicle by a collision is usually fatal.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:2, Funny)
Either you're using the wrong tense of "to know," or you're really gullible.
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
From experience attending crash scenes I have never seen this. The crash, assuming it happened, must have been in an open car without rollbars but then generally if it was that old it wouldn't have seat belts.
From extensive studies in Australia the facts are clear. Seatbelts save many more lives than being unrestrained.
Just a few google responces to "seatbelts safety australia"
Death-defying designs for car safety [science.org.au]
Seatbelts [science.org.au]
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
Re:Air bags are safety hazards (Score:1)
I told them... (Score:5, Funny)
...the robots with the flamethrowers always make it though the maze faster.
But 'no', they said. 'Flamethrowers weigh too much', they said. That's what happens when you replace all the visionaries with bean counters.
Re:I told them... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I told them... (Score:2, Informative)
You bean counter!
Re:I told them... (Score:3, Funny)
I prefer to think outside the box. Mars has CO2. Plants use CO2 to make O2. So I'd just include a few plant seeds (selected for ability to grow in mars like conditions) and plant them. That way if I need a flame thrower I nkow there is O2 around to use it, and I didn't have to bring it.
Re:I told them... (Score:2)
(ignoring the airbag of course and just thinking of the usual usage of a flamethrower)
Re:I told them... (Score:1)
Call me old fashioned, but isn't that to light marching bands and ostrich farms on fire? Going back to my 1997 video game playing days...
Re:I told them... (Score:1)
Re:I told them... (Score:1)
1. Small shovel
2. Sharp edge (on shovel)
3. Brush to clean dust off solar panels
4. Small camera to help point "hand"
5. Flashlight for night work
Re:I told them... (Score:1)
"Now then now then, what do we have 'ere ?"
"suuuuure you're gathering rock samples .. thats what they all say"
Are we sure... (Score:4, Funny)
Rover can use another ramp (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
I reckon they're just playing it safe.
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
They've checked all their systems and everything's green, right? Send the command to fire the explosive straps keeping the thing and place and stand it up already! They only have a guaranteed 30 days to go out and take pictures, so let's start as soon as possible!
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:5, Insightful)
Being stuck in an airbag. Getting anything entangled around the wheels. Sitting betweent rocks that are too large, all problems that would be trivial to solve -- if someone could go there and untangle the thing.
As it is, a single wrong command can make the probe immobile for life. The mission cost 820$ million.
I think you'd also be a little bit more careful about pushing buttons if you knew that pushing the wrong one *once* could waste $820 million and strand a major part of the science people have worked hard for a decade to land on Mars.
There's no real down-side to being *too* careful. 3 days more or less on the lander is unimportant. They can always extend the mission in the other end if there's still more interesting stuff to do. (planned is 90 days of exploration)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:3, Interesting)
You can disagree all you want. Fact is the people at NASA spent thousands of man-hours studying this, odds are their judgement is better than yours.
You also seem to be unaware of how much testing this thing went trough. It's been driven for thousands of tests in terrain as much like the ones they expect on mars as possible.
Storms are ext
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:2, Insightful)
Call me a revolutionary... (Score:2)
Re:Call me a revolutionary... (Score:1)
Fans, huh? You know how good fans are at blowing dust out of your computer case? they're even worse when you're dealing with an atmosphere 1/100 as dense as Earth's.
Believe me. These engineers have spent WAY more time and brain power thinking about how to make this mission fail-safe than you have. If there were easy solutions, they'd have used them.
Re:Call me a revolutionary... (Score:2)
No.
Actually, they're quite good at sucking dust in... through the CD drive, mostly.
Maybe.
Yes, they are good. No, they are not infallible.
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
If the main ramp is blocked, have the thing turn around and go down another ramp. I understand that it's a more complicated procedure, but they've done it before, right? Why take days to try and remove the air bag, more days to try and decide what to do, and then more days to actually do it? I don't understand why they didn't just say, ok the main pat
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:4, Interesting)
The mission has plenty of time and the way behind the rover is a little less large than the way in the front.
It's better to take 3 days checking everything and trying to clear the best way than rushing and losing the rover.
And also remember that during these 3 days they can still continue scientific experiments thanks to the cameras.
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:5, Funny)
TV ratings. Better to build up suspense first.
Re:Rover ain't gettin' off tha pad (Score:2)
Re:Rover ain't gettin' off tha pad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Rover can use another ramp (Score:1)
Because that's what they tested it with. This is not robot wars where if the rover trips on an antenna and tips over some guy can walk into the ring and set it upright again. The alternate ramp has to be conceived, modeled, tested and proved, then re-proved, before the management should sign off on the plan.
Otherwise we can kiss $400M and several years goodbye.
Oh yea, the JPL du
previous air bag difficulty (Score:4, Informative)
Info here [planetary.org] fourth paragraph
Re:previous air bag difficulty (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah well, this is honestly the type of technical problem I like to see when watching this. It sure beats the alternatives.
Re:previous air bag difficulty (Score:2)
It seems that the UK has co-opted all the crochity "When I was your age...!" space exploration jokes.
"When I was your age, we didn't have any of that fancy-shmancy technology on our probes. Wheels... hah! Back in my day we stayed where we landed and we liked it!"
Re:previous air bag difficulty (Score:3, Informative)
Any landing you can drive away from... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every system is working as designed, so there won't be much to worry about. I believe they could likely solve that problem. And they still have days to test the rover before they could roll it off anyway, so even if lifting the panel doesn't work, maybe by the time they tested the system and agreed on where to go, the airbag would have deflated enough on its own in the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere. Drive off another ramp, if it comes to that. The rover has six wheels and was designed to worked even if the landing site didn't turn out to be as flat as it is.
It seems that despite those gorgeous panaromic pictures they have got, the boffins haven't decided on where to go. Perhaps this little inconvenince will give them a few extra days to come to a hopefully good decision.
because de spite... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it may be "because" of those images. I've seen a bit or two of the press conferences and it always looks like the scientists are frothing at the mouth with eagerness to explore one feature or another. Or perhaps one feature and another and another and another .....
Deciding where to go first can't be easy.
Rename Spirit! (Score:3, Funny)
Air Bag Blocks Spirit's Path. Hah.
We should rename Spirit to Dolly. Or maybe Pamela.
I'm disapponted (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the article was going to be about some wacked out church claiming to have scientific proof that you don't get to go to heaven if you die in an airbag-equipped car.
Crummy mars robot spoiling my fun.
Triv
Whew! (Score:1)
Thank goodness I'm not the only one!
Mod parent up! I can now stop reading this thread.
-zack
Update on Situation (Score:4, Informative)
flowering rovers (Score:1)
Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
about the whole airbag safety discussion going on (Score:1)