Mars Rover Opportunity Turns 8 151
New submitter el borak writes
"Never mind all the talk about the revival of the American auto industry. What may be the greatest car the U.S. has ever built is currently a tidy 78 million miles (125m km) away from this world — resting on the edge of Endeavour crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. It was on January 25, 2004 that the rover Opportunity bounced down on Mars for a mission designed to last a minimum of three months and a maximum of just a year or two."
Re:Slashdot won't report this (Score:0, Informative)
Slashdot is intentionally not providing you full tech news coverage because it caters to a specific demographic of emotionally-invested users who are more likely to generate repeat page views.
You are right, we really don't give a shit so shut the fuck up and go away.
There is no reason to post a story about it considering all your stupid fucking copy paste trolls IN EACH AND EVERY FUCKING THREAD YOU FUCKING RETARD!
Thank you and fuck off.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
Practically all of it, since I don't buy horribly-made cheap crap.
Pay for quality, get quality. Simple.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Still, we had a visitor to our local Astronomy club explain the one oversight which may ultimately doom Opportunity - dust build up on the Solar Panels. Next probe will probably have a little robotic arm and brush to sweep itself off now and then.
This wasn't an oversight, it was well understood that this would happen. They've gotten lucky that dust devils have cleaned the panels a few times.
The next Mars rover is nuclear powered. There are no attempts at any kind of dust cleaning device- it would be far too heavy and fragile to be worth bothering with.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Makes you wonder, when people say we can't do that for consumer vehicles, eh? Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
You could, it just costs more. That said, most US made vehicles will run 100K miles with minimal supervision. My 12 year old GMC truck has really been quite reliable and could well run another 10 years. I'm part owner of a 40 year old plane that could fly for another 40 years.
Not everything is an iPad.
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:4, Informative)
5) Your an idiot. Your 'an idiot' wrote your post.
I'd like to make a helpful suggestion. When you are chiding someone for being wrong (and, he was), it's incumbent upon you to be right. That means grammar, too.
"Your" is possessive. "You're" is a contraction of "you are."