Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nmaro Makari]

[Louella Dougans]

some stuff makes for reading

like the deep space network of radio antennae being unmaintained, not having been serviced for years, and unlikely to be anytime soon.

[Ken]

I have a Mars hangover this morning.

I almost passed out at work twice today.  So worth it.

MRO caught a picture of MSL during descent.

That is an incredible image.

[orange]

some stuff makes for reading

like the deep space network of radio antennae being unmaintained, not having been serviced for years, and unlikely to be anytime soon.

It is a matter of priorities for those nations providing the funding.  Maintaining 3 70 m Antennas and associated "smaller" Antennas (34m being small) is not a priority for most people, their Representatives cannot connect the dots on how it benefits their district.

The US Congress is cutting NASA's Outreach & Education budget.

It is pushing a rocket program that few believe will survive budget cuts and that lacks the funding for payloads that actually use its capabilities, SLS*.  It is hamstringing the Commercial Crew Development program, a program that will provide the US with not 1, but at least 2 Human Launch Vehicles for less total funds than a year of SLS.

The President has cut Planetary Science funding, and it is in the fight in Congress.

*I used the pejorative in the url.

At the end of the day, NASA gets 0.5% of the Federal Budget or 0.1% of the GDP/year or ~1/4 the cost of the DoD's Overseas Operations.   If you are an American, call your Congressman and tell them that the Space Program matters to you, such that even in a rough economy it should have its budget increased!  Every dollar spent on the Space Program is spent on Earth and is returned to the economy, provides jobs, etc!  If you are a European, figure out how much funding you provide ESA (Mars Express) and talk to your representatives and ask if there is more your country could be doing to push the frontiers of space.

As others have pointed out elsewhere, a vibrant forward leaning Exploration Program provides the advances in technology and challenges only one other human activity provides - war.

[Seriphyn]

Okay, to the uninitiated (not that I don't love spaceflight, just wake me up when we make colonies), but what makes this rover different from preceding ones?

[Ken]

Primarily, it's size, power supply, and method of delivery.  The earlier rovers were much smaller, had solar power, and used airbags or legged landers to safely reach the surface.  This thing weighs one ton, has a nuclear generator, and came down using powered flight (retrorockets) and a sky crane.

And with all that added complexity, it still completed the Earth-Mars transit more or less flawlessly.

Edit: Size also means larger payload.  Curiosity has ten times the mass of scientific instruments than the previous generation of rovers.

[orange]

But here's the coolest (and, admittedly, most speculative) thing I can see in the images. In both of the rear hazcam images taken just after landing, there is a strange shape on the horizon. It is not there in the later view. It is there in both left and right eye views. It is something that was there just after landing, and is not anymore. My hypothesis is that we may be seeing the cloud marking the crash site of the descent stage. Others on unmannedspaceflight.com have proposed the same. It seems crazy that we should see that, but I can't think of any other explanation for a puff-shaped thing on the horizon seen right after landing and not later. Which makes me laugh, because I've always given Doug Ellison a hard time for not including that detail in his otherwise excellent animation showing the landing. (Which he responds to by asking me if I'm crazy to think that NASA will show themselves blowing things up on Mars.) Looking forward to asking the mission people what they think about this.

*image is a link to the blog

Okay, to the uninitiated (not that I don't love spaceflight, just wake me up when we make colonies), but what makes this rover different from preceding ones?

I will start with a picture.



Curiosity is big, it comes in at about 1-ton.  This is because it can do a lot more.  Where previous rovers looked at rocks & dirt (using a variety of different tools), Curiosity is able to take small samples and actually put them through its on board lab.  It is the difference between a geologist having a hammer and his own eyes and having a field lab to use to get more information about the chemistry of the materials.

Curiosity is powered by a Plutonium Radio Thermoelectric Generator, the previous 3 rovers were all solar powered.  This is important because it means that Curiosity can operate year-round, not just during the summer.  Spirit/Opportunity would setup "camp" on an equator facing slope during the winter (not being able to do this is what resulted in Spirit's shutdown) to keep their heaters running and batteries alive through the very cold Martian winter.  All of our Mars surface science in the past decade has been "summer" science, making it hard to gain a clear understanding of the impact of the seasons on the Martian environment.

The big deal last night was the EDL profile, a big change from the previous 3 missions.  Those three missions came down in triangular prisms surrounded by airbags. 



Curiosity is just too big to land using the airbag technique.  That technique also lacks precision.



None of the other landers have had the precision that MSL had.  This let the team choose sites driven not by vehicle safety, but by science.

And lastly Mount Sharp from a Hazcam

[Ken]

And lastly Mount Sharp from a Hazcam

[orange]

MRO not only grabbed MSL under chute, but it may have also got the the separated heat shield.  (Taken from Phil Plait, aka Bad Astronomier)



If you are wanting to see what all is flying around our solar system, Eyes On the Solar System from NASA is a fun way to do it (Java applet)

[Seriphyn]

Thanks very much for that informative reply, Dex, you got me singlehandedly excited through that!

Here's hoping China can provoke the US (or anyone else for that matter) into another Space Race, and back into dreaming about the future as we did in the 50s/60s

[orange]

Thanks very much for that informative reply, Dex, you got me singlehandedly excited through that!

Here's hoping China can provoke the US (or anyone else for that matter) into another Space Race, and back into dreaming about the future as we did in the 50s/60s

I think it would be better to avoid racing.

Races have "finish lines," whether they are defined at the beginning of the race or not.  When JFK defined the "finish line" as landing men on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s, he changed the parameters for the engineers.  Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about it constantly. (Warning: you may find yourself watching video after video of Dr. Tyson.)

A big part of being a Space Exploration, Development, and Colonization advocate is to convince others there are reasons other than fear to dare mighty things.   When we dare mighty things, whole industries are created, children grow up wanting to do the impossible, and when we turn yesterday's science fiction into everyday life.  A Race, it ends, and you stop daring mighty things.

No, there has to be another driver.  We, humanity, must embrace our manifest destiny and leave the cradle and win the Solar System for future generations.

Edit:
The last 2 1/2 minutes of Curiosity's descent in 297 images.

[Ken]

We, humanity, must embrace our manifest destiny and leave the cradle and win the Solar System for future generations.

http://youtu.be/QzntZLHcYy0

[Ashlar Maidstone]

I was on pins n needles till earlier Monday morning when I checked the news headlines and saw that Curiosity landed safely. Robotic exploration for the time to be is actually cheap compared to sending man beyond the moon, I saw where 100billion I think would be required to send six people to Mars, compared to 2.5 billion for this mission to pull off like it did at a great start.

[orange]

I was on pins n needles till earlier Monday morning when I checked the news headlines and saw that Curiosity landed safely. Robotic exploration for the time to be is actually cheap compared to sending man beyond the moon, I saw where 100billion I think would be required to send six people to Mars, compared to 2.5 billion for this mission to pull off like it did at a great start.

It is all in the architecture pursued.   A lot of those estimates make a big assumption - you build everything from scratch for the Mars mission and do not reuse technology you have on hand.

To illustrate - Mars Direct vs Mars Semi-Direct (a variation on Mars Direct)

Mars Direct utilizes a Heavy Lift Vehicle, like the previously mentioned Senate... I mean Space Launch System, to conduct all of its launches.  The first launch of the program is an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle, followed 26 months later by the first manned mission in a Habitat Module.  Depending on whether it is a "Flags & Footprints" or actual outpost building program, you might also launch a second ERV with the Habitat Module for the following mission.  Basically 1 HLV per year.

SLS's current timeline is 1 launch every 2 years at a program cost of $41B for the first 4 launches (which for a Shuttle-derived rocket makes very little sense - Shuttle's launched 4/year)!  (Unit cost is $1.6B)  So for two missions, the rockets average $10B each, or 20% of the cost and you haven't even bought other hardware, like the ERV or Habitat Module!

By contrast, lets replace every HLV with 2 Falcon Heavies ($125 Million) and a Falcon 9 (with DragonRider so ~$140M) (or Mars Semi-Direct).   Instead of launching direct from Cape Canaveral to Mars, we apply the lessons of the ISS, Mir, and Salyut programs and do some minor LEO assembly (maybe some Mars surface assembly too).  Now, the program's launch cost is $390 million/year and its Earth infrastructure cost is shared with other SpaceX customers.

I think $100 Billion is a high guess and based on the cost of the ISS ($150B).  Part of the ISS cost was the $1.4-1.5B per Shuttle Launch with 36 Shuttle Launches (or $54B dollars).

Politics in Spoiler
[spoiler]Many of us in the space engineering/advocacy community consider the SLS to be a jobs program.  The program's major backers are Representatives and Senators whose districts and states would lose some jobs and Federal programs when the Shuttle was retired and Constellation canceled.   Among the engineering community, even those who back a HLV are concerned about the piss-poor launch schedule and the relative ease with which it can be canceled despite Billions being spent on it each year.

The President can easily call out SLS as a jobs program and place the responsibility for it squarely on the shoulders of its predominantly Republican backers.

That is not to say it lacks Republican opposition and the Democrats haven't exactly pushed back on it.[/spoiler]

Edit: Photo.



Edit 2: Another image



My understanding is that the Rover will avoid the Skycrane since it had remaining fuel on-board when it crashed.

[Z.Sinraali]

https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity