Fantastic that they pulled this off – I thought it was way too complicated to succeed!
John Holdren during an interview on NASA TV this morning said that no other country had ever landed on another planet. With his supposed background in astronautics he should know better.
Yeah I was surprised their Rube Goldberg landing scheme actually worked. This could have turned out into an expensive mess. Then again I didn’t have much faith in the airbag landing scheme which was used in earlier missions either.
AFAIK the Russians are the only ones to have actually landed a probe on Venus with the Venera series. Even if their Mars missions seem to fail more often than not. Last time I counted Venus was still a planet.
This could have turned out into an expensive mess.
It’s still very expensive, just not a mess. Even if i admire their initial engineering triumph, $2.5B is a lot of money that didn’t go to other worthwhile advancements in space.
What a retarded thing to say.
This is a massive achievement, and you’re bitching about where else the money could have gotten spent?
Ok, sure. We could have put 2.5 billion towards exploring the Jovian moons. That is definitely worthwhile.
But wait. We haven’t truly explored Neptune or Uranus in much detail, compared to Mars, Jupiter and even Saturn. Best not throw that money down the drain then, and invest it there.
This is science. You need to be patient, not act like a child who rants ambiguously about what should have been done after the fact.
Eric says:
John Holdren during an interview on NASA TV this morning said that no other country had ever landed on another planet.
I caught that too. Embarrassing that our top science advisor is just flat wrong on his facts. Can’t say I’m surprised based on his prior poor performances.
The link doesn’t work for me.
I too, was amazed at Curiosity for much the same reason as Eric. I believe the words “cockamamie plan” crossed my mind when I looked over the mission profile. So I think double congratulations are in order. (BTW, the facebook link appears broken)
Good read on the Chik-Fil-A brouhaha. That kind imbecilic behavious just boggles me – what’s the encore? Going to go yell at an elderly Wal-Mart greeter for his part in destroying american business diversity and economic health?
“People wonder about throwing money at Mars, [but] no money was spent on Mars,” said Webster. “There are no ATMs up there. All the money was spent here on Earth.”
Curiosity isn’t going to be depositing dollar bills at an ATM on Mars? “People wondered” about that? Which people? Why doesn’t CNN interview one of them?
It was probably Biden.
It was fun to watch the live stream of a room of people pretending that they were doing something other than watching.
Pretty amazing though and just goes to show landing humans on Mars is harder than how it is portrayed by space cadets.
Who the AP celebrates as the “head of the landing team”, Adam Steltzner, holds a PhD (Engineeering Physics) from a public university. This one, here in Madison, WI.
Dr. Steltzner is a well rounded guy, not only holding an advanced degree but contributing to a successful landing through his engineering skills in multiple disciplines (aerodynamics, structures, dynamics, and quality assurance). He also taught me much of what I know about keeping a 15 year-old+ car on the road, about the aging of elastomeric suspension parts, and how I have learned to “embrace the clunk.”
The valuelessness of what we do here is a theme on the Libertarian/Conservative/Right Blogosphere, and on this site.
“The valuelessness of what we do here is a theme on the Libertarian/Conservative/Right Blogosphere, and on this site.”
Sorry, valuelessness? Just because space isn’t important to the average imbecile voter doesn’t mean that it isn’t important to folks who hang out on this blog. We just recognize that it isn’t “important” to most people, regardless of their political leanings. Don’t try to pin it on the Right.
You can question the validity of spending 2.5B on the program, but I think that if you want guided entry and a landed payload of a ton, the choice of the sky crane was not crazy. The configuration(s) of the vehicle until it got to 20meters is pretty much fixed. Aeroshell, parachute, powered descent… at that point the only decision is what is the landed configuration, its hard to imagine that landing gear, and some kind of disembarkation ramp could be lighter than 20m of Kevlar cord. Any other configuration would have had more mass, thus less delivered payload. Any other configuration would have had more significant chemical and sensor contamination issues, just look at the contamination on the haz cam before ejecting the clear cover. Imagine that the descent motors were 20meters closer and the blasting that a vehicle on the bottom of the lander would have taken…..
Suppose that that lander stayed attached and the rover crawled out from under it. How much structural mass would be needed to support the lander while rover crawled out, is this really lighter than 20M of kevlar cable? Clearly the attachments and cables joining the rover to the lander would have to be cut at some point, so its not like that added a failure mode…. I think that if the trapeze dynamics are well understood it was a really elegant solution to the landing gear problem, just don’t have any landing gear…..
Not disagreeing with you, Paul – your points in favor of the design are good ones and I appreciate the analysis – thanks for that. Obviously it worked perfectly, but on first glance it looks overly complicated.
Now, as the fellow said last night, “… let’s see where Curiosity take us.”
I noticed that Charlie Bolden and James Holdren gave their speeches. One of them mentioned the success Obama’s space program and then in the next few sentences he used the word “Gutsy”. I was like, “there is that word again.” I mean, are they really trying to imply that landing a rover on Mars is on the same level as taking out Osama Bin Laden?
Fantastic that they pulled this off – I thought it was way too complicated to succeed!
John Holdren during an interview on NASA TV this morning said that no other country had ever landed on another planet. With his supposed background in astronautics he should know better.
Yeah I was surprised their Rube Goldberg landing scheme actually worked. This could have turned out into an expensive mess. Then again I didn’t have much faith in the airbag landing scheme which was used in earlier missions either.
AFAIK the Russians are the only ones to have actually landed a probe on Venus with the Venera series. Even if their Mars missions seem to fail more often than not. Last time I counted Venus was still a planet.
This could have turned out into an expensive mess.
It’s still very expensive, just not a mess. Even if i admire their initial engineering triumph, $2.5B is a lot of money that didn’t go to other worthwhile advancements in space.
What a retarded thing to say.
This is a massive achievement, and you’re bitching about where else the money could have gotten spent?
Ok, sure. We could have put 2.5 billion towards exploring the Jovian moons. That is definitely worthwhile.
But wait. We haven’t truly explored Neptune or Uranus in much detail, compared to Mars, Jupiter and even Saturn. Best not throw that money down the drain then, and invest it there.
This is science. You need to be patient, not act like a child who rants ambiguously about what should have been done after the fact.
Eric says:
John Holdren during an interview on NASA TV this morning said that no other country had ever landed on another planet.
I caught that too. Embarrassing that our top science advisor is just flat wrong on his facts. Can’t say I’m surprised based on his prior poor performances.
The link doesn’t work for me.
I too, was amazed at Curiosity for much the same reason as Eric. I believe the words “cockamamie plan” crossed my mind when I looked over the mission profile. So I think double congratulations are in order. (BTW, the facebook link appears broken)
Good read on the Chik-Fil-A brouhaha. That kind imbecilic behavious just boggles me – what’s the encore? Going to go yell at an elderly Wal-Mart greeter for his part in destroying american business diversity and economic health?
And the strawman marches on:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/06/news/companies/mars-curiosity-jobs/index.htm
“People wonder about throwing money at Mars, [but] no money was spent on Mars,” said Webster. “There are no ATMs up there. All the money was spent here on Earth.”
Curiosity isn’t going to be depositing dollar bills at an ATM on Mars? “People wondered” about that? Which people? Why doesn’t CNN interview one of them?
It was probably Biden.
It was fun to watch the live stream of a room of people pretending that they were doing something other than watching.
Pretty amazing though and just goes to show landing humans on Mars is harder than how it is portrayed by space cadets.
Who the AP celebrates as the “head of the landing team”, Adam Steltzner, holds a PhD (Engineeering Physics) from a public university. This one, here in Madison, WI.
Dr. Steltzner is a well rounded guy, not only holding an advanced degree but contributing to a successful landing through his engineering skills in multiple disciplines (aerodynamics, structures, dynamics, and quality assurance). He also taught me much of what I know about keeping a 15 year-old+ car on the road, about the aging of elastomeric suspension parts, and how I have learned to “embrace the clunk.”
The valuelessness of what we do here is a theme on the Libertarian/Conservative/Right Blogosphere, and on this site.
Sorry, valuelessness? Just because space isn’t important to the average
imbecilevoter doesn’t mean that it isn’t important to folks who hang out on this blog. We just recognize that it isn’t “important” to most people, regardless of their political leanings. Don’t try to pin it on the Right.You can question the validity of spending 2.5B on the program, but I think that if you want guided entry and a landed payload of a ton, the choice of the sky crane was not crazy. The configuration(s) of the vehicle until it got to 20meters is pretty much fixed. Aeroshell, parachute, powered descent… at that point the only decision is what is the landed configuration, its hard to imagine that landing gear, and some kind of disembarkation ramp could be lighter than 20m of Kevlar cord. Any other configuration would have had more mass, thus less delivered payload. Any other configuration would have had more significant chemical and sensor contamination issues, just look at the contamination on the haz cam before ejecting the clear cover. Imagine that the descent motors were 20meters closer and the blasting that a vehicle on the bottom of the lander would have taken…..
Suppose that that lander stayed attached and the rover crawled out from under it. How much structural mass would be needed to support the lander while rover crawled out, is this really lighter than 20M of kevlar cable? Clearly the attachments and cables joining the rover to the lander would have to be cut at some point, so its not like that added a failure mode…. I think that if the trapeze dynamics are well understood it was a really elegant solution to the landing gear problem, just don’t have any landing gear…..
Not disagreeing with you, Paul – your points in favor of the design are good ones and I appreciate the analysis – thanks for that. Obviously it worked perfectly, but on first glance it looks overly complicated.
Now, as the fellow said last night, “… let’s see where Curiosity take us.”
I noticed that Charlie Bolden and James Holdren gave their speeches. One of them mentioned the success Obama’s space program and then in the next few sentences he used the word “Gutsy”. I was like, “there is that word again.” I mean, are they really trying to imply that landing a rover on Mars is on the same level as taking out Osama Bin Laden?