6 thoughts on “The Masten Flight”

  1. If you look at the history of VTVL rocket flight since early in the last decade, it has been a very long, slow climb dotted with accidents like Morpheus (though few as spectacular), as well as the occasional spectacular success as in Masten’s latest flight.

    If you think about what the MSL Skycrane did, it seems almost surreal. Using four outboard engines (an approach Masten abandoned because it was so difficult), it started up during free fall, slowed itself down to a hover, lowered a one-ton vehicle (weighing a little more than a third of a ton on Mars) down on cables to the surface, then flew off to a surface impact a safe distance away. And yet I can’t find a single reference to a flight test anywhere. I’d really appreciate anyone coming forth with links to any. Because it looks almost like magic right now, doing something that complex and daunting the first time out — and on another planet to boot.

  2. Just watch that on my new Google Nexus 7 tablet. Looks awesome in HD. The screen on this thing looks great. Only $200 on the Google play store.

  3. I suspect your noting the Mars weight of the rover provides the key to Earthside testing – use a test article rover that weighs 37% of what the real one weighs. Admittedly, the atmospheric interaction effects wouldn’t be comparable, but the differences would be a lot easier to compensate for than the whole gravity field issue. The fact that everything the least bit off would happen faster in real Earth gravity probably winds up being a feature, not a bug. If your lander’s digital “reflexes” are okay in 1G, they should be even better in .37G.

    That said, the MSL team had a $2.5 billion budget. Morpheus was done for what amounts to rounding error in the MSL budget. Still, Masten was running on even leaner rations and they pulled off a success. So, with respect to the taxonomy enunciated by Sen. Shelby:

    NASA professionals with bags and bags of cash (MSL) – 1
    NASA professionals on starvation rations – 0
    “Hobbyists in garages” on even less – 1

    1. “Hobbyists in garages” on even less – 1

      Umm.. that should be at least 10 by now. Armadillo and Masten have flown more VTVL flights between them than NASA ever has. Throw in Unreasonable Rocket and you’ve got fun on a bun.

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