Mars Rovers: 6 years

[BUTCH1]

I find the concept of the rover to be pretty awesome. It's like an adult version of a toy remote control with a camera, and it's on the moon! Guessing it has quite a lot of various sensors and stuff to get other data. Really this is probably the best way possible to study different planets/spacial bodies without having to send someone who is stuck out there for long.

I definably say they send more, maybe they could get a couple on mars and if they can launch satellites in the proper orbits they could maybe even cover other planets though think going beyond would get very challenging due to how far they'd have to send signals. The moon is the closest thing to us and think there is actually like a 12 minute lag for any command sent / data received.

More like a 1.25 second lag, radio signals travel at the speed of light (186K miles/second) and the moon is 250K miles away..

 

[TechBoyJK]

We should fine tune the design after everything we learned in the past 6 years, and send 1,000 to the moon in different spots, 1,000 to mars, and 1,000 to Titan.

 

[Jeff7]

We should fine tune the design after everything we learned in the past 6 years, and send 1,000 to the moon in different spots, 1,000 to mars, and 1,000 to Titan.

1) No (significant) atmosphere on the Moon = parachute fail = high speed impact
2) 1000 to Mars - sure, except the Deep Space Network couldn't handle the amount of data. Maybe send them in pairs, and make sure each one includes a winch.
3) Titan is damn cold, and gets very little sunlight

For a Titan rover, they could probably use water and mercury to build the thing's main structure.

 

[MrMatt]

Great to see them still going. I like when these threads pop up

 

[Jeffg010]

1) No (significant) atmosphere on the Moon = parachute fail = high speed impact
2) 1000 to Mars - sure, except the Deep Space Network couldn't handle the amount of data. Maybe send them in pairs, and make sure each one includes a winch.
3) Titan is damn cold, and gets very little sunlight

For a Titan rover, they could probably use water and mercury to build the thing's main structure.

I though the last rover was encased in a giant plastic ball and it bounced around until it stopped, that not work on the moon?

 

[Aharami]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spirit.png

That said we'll eventually colonize Mars and pick it up, at which point Spirit will live on in a museum somewhere. So the story has a happy ending of sorts.

and if we never end up leaving our planet, and if some catastrophic event wipes us all out, the rovers will be forever lasting proof that we tried; that we reached out as far as we could; that we wanted to know what's out there.

 

[keird]

and if we never end up leaving our planet, and if some catastrophic event wipes us all out, the rovers will be forever lasting proof that we tried; that we reached out as far as we could; that we wanted to know what's out there.

And then some highly intelligent, space faring race can put it in a de-motivational poster with "fail" and everyone within a parsec will respond, "lulz".

 

[ussfletcher]

I find the concept of the rover to be pretty awesome. It's like an adult version of a toy remote control with a camera, and it's on the moon! Guessing it has quite a lot of various sensors and stuff to get other data. Really this is probably the best way possible to study different planets/spacial bodies without having to send someone who is stuck out there for long.

I definably say they send more, maybe they could get a couple on mars and if they can launch satellites in the proper orbits they could maybe even cover other planets though think going beyond would get very challenging due to how far they'd have to send signals. The moon is the closest thing to us and think there is actually like a 12 minute lag for any command sent / data received.

Yeah, actually it has cameras that track the horizon and some collision detection, so its more of an adult semi-autonomous remote control car with stereoscopic vision

You guys might also be interested in ATHLETE, a hexapod monstrosity.. its pretty huge in person
http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/systems/system.cfm?System=11

I'll add some pictures to this thread a little later.

 

[Evadman]

I though the last rover was encased in a giant plastic ball and it bounced around until it stopped, that not work on the moon?

It was slowed by drag chutes and retro rockets too. Drag chutes will not function without an atmosphere.

Oh, and for everyone complaining about something or other on how the rover broke, remember, it was designed to operate for 90 days ONLY. It actually functioned BETTER when the Mars equivalent of a tornado hit it. You complainers just want to look at what went bad (it broke) and not the good (it worked for 73 times the designed lifespan, and is still working). That would be equivalent to your car working great for 730 years instead of 10. Let me know when you find another piece of equipment that lasts 73 times its defined lifespan.

 

[keird]

Yeah, actually it has cameras that track the horizon and some collision detection, so its more of an adult semi-autonomous remote control car with stereoscopic vision

You guys might also be interested in ATHLETE, a hexapod monstrosity.. its pretty huge in person
http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/systems/system.cfm?System=11

I'll add some pictures to this thread a little later.

I'd be more apt to name it the Tea Bagger.

 

[keird]

It was slowed by drag chutes and retro rockets too. Drag chutes will not function without an atmosphere.

Oh, and for everyone complaining about something or other on how the rover broke, remember, it was designed to operate for 90 days ONLY. It actually functioned BETTER when the Mars equivalent of a tornado hit it. You complainers just want to look at what went bad (it broke) and not the good (it worked for 73 times the designed lifespan, and is still working). That would be equivalent to your car working great for 730 years instead of 10. Let me know when you find another piece of equipment that lasts 73 times its defined lifespan.

Have you been Rick Rolled yet?

 

[Fear No Evil]

Its too bad that Obama can find money for all the bankers of the world, but can't put some decent money into NASA.

 

[Red Squirrel]

More like a 1.25 second lag, radio signals travel at the speed of light (186K miles/second) and the moon is 250K miles away..

I might be getting confused with something else then, I recall a mission where they did mention a very big delay, in minutes. Actually did they send one to mars too? Might of been that one.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Its too bad that Obama can find money for all the bankers of the world, but can't put some decent money into NASA.

I'm a space nut. But I think that if it's necessary to pause Nasa for 10 years to help rebuild our economy, etc. then I say it's the right thing to do. Nasa can pause for 10 years while private companies push forward. When Nasa resumes, they can borrow ideas from the private companies.

(this is an absurd, pretty much uneducated guesstimation about a problem that isn't even clear to me)

 

[DrPizza]

If you've read my comments in any of the threads about human missions, you'll see that I've always been anti-human, pro-robot. No reason to send up people. Robots can do everything we can do, better, longer, and cheaper.

 

[Fear No Evil]

I'm a space nut. But I think that if it's necessary to pause Nasa for 10 years to help rebuild our economy, etc. then I say it's the right thing to do. Nasa can pause for 10 years while private companies push forward. When Nasa resumes, they can borrow ideas from the private companies.

(this is an absurd, pretty much uneducated guesstimation about a problem that isn't even clear to me)

If you truly are a space nut, you would realize that the amount of money NASA spends is next to nothing compared to whats being spent on the 'stimulus' etc. Why not fund NASA to stimulate high-tech jobs? Also, as a space nut, are you willing to oursource all of our non-military launches to Russia? How sad is that that we need to have the Russians put people up into space for us. Its a disgrace to this Administration that he allows this to happen with the amount of money he is spending.

 

[Jeff7]

It was slowed by drag chutes and retro rockets too. Drag chutes will not function without an atmosphere.

Exactly.
Parachutes a very weight- and cost-efficient way of slowing something down. Instead of a complex retro-rocket system with a large load of fuel, you just pop out a nice piece of fabric with some string, and wait.
I know that it arrived at Mars at some crazy speed of thousands of mph, but the chute can slow it to a few hundred.
Googling some stats...Source.

Several minutes before landing, the spacecraft begins to enter the outer fringes of the atmosphere about 125 km. (80 mi.) above the surface. Spin stabilized at 2 rpm, and traveling at 7.5 km/sec, the vehicle enters the atmosphere at a shallow 14.8 deg angle.
...
The martian atmosphere slows the vehicle from 7.5 km/sec to only 400 m/sec (900 mph).

7500m/sec to 400m/sec, thanks to a simple parachute. To do that with rockets, first, you'd need a lot of fuel. More fuel = more spacecraft momentum = need even more fuel to help slow down all that fuel.
And you need expensive, bulky rockets to do that.
The decent rockets used in the backshell of the Mars Exploration Rovers were simple one-shot solid rockets. They fired at the right time, and they could then burn as long as they wanted to - as soon a the lander sensed that it had come to a stop in midair, it cut the lines tying it to the backshell; from there, it bounced to a stop while the backshell flew off and crashed.
Mars Exploration Rover EDL video.


(And hell, here's the Phoenix EDL too, though I was listening to it live as they broadcast it, so at least I thought that was neat. )

I'm a space nut. But I think that if it's necessary to pause Nasa for 10 years to help rebuild our economy, etc. then I say it's the right thing to do. Nasa can pause for 10 years while private companies push forward. When Nasa resumes, they can borrow ideas from the private companies.

(this is an absurd, pretty much uneducated guesstimation about a problem that isn't even clear to me)

Baaaaad precedent to set. Otherwise every time a bird craps on a Congressman's car, they'll want to cut NASA's budget to pay to get it cleaned off, or to just buy a new car.
And let's say you "pause" it for 10 years. Now you've got a lot of scientists and engineers who've just had their paychecks "paused" too. Unless you're planning on putting them in stasis until NASA's budget is restored, they're going to be looking for work. Oops, unemployment just went up a bit.
"Hi, do you want to try a Value Meal today, and did I mention I used to work at NASA, and god I hate my life now."

If you've read my comments in any of the threads about human missions, you'll see that I've always been anti-human, pro-robot. No reason to send up people. Robots can do everything we can do, better, longer, and cheaper.

And yet some people seem to oppose sexbots.




(Oh what the hell, MSL's landing thing is cool too.)

 

[Aharami]

Its too bad that Obama can find money for all the bankers of the world, but can't put some decent money into NASA.

my sentiments exactly

 

[BUTCH1]

I might be getting confused with something else then, I recall a mission where they did mention a very big delay, in minutes. Actually did they send one to mars too? Might of been that one.

Depends on how far away the spacecraft is, Voyager1 launched in 1977 is now in the process of exiting our solar system, radio transmissions take 30 HOURS round trip. Think about that for a sec., if we had a vessel capable of the speed of light the trip out would be 15 hours long...wow..

 

[PowerEngineer]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fear No Evil
Its too bad that Obama can find money for all the bankers of the world, but can't put some decent money into NASA.

my sentiments exactly

How amusing to suggest that Obama is somehow culpable for the low level of NASA funding (or the need to bail out the banking system for that matter...). I'll ascribe it to P&N leakage.

The only way it makes sense to send humans to Mars is if they intend to stay permanently, which I'd like to see in my lifetime. Until then, it's robotic missions only (IMHO).

 

[ussfletcher]

So here are the pictures that I took at JPL (With my cell phone)


This picture is of the clean room where the assembly of MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) was underway, towards the center you can see the upper portion of the entry stage.


This is a model of MSL, it is quite large.


Another view


This is the lab where they were trying to free Spirit. They must camouflage horizontal lines in the room so that it doesn't get confused.


This is part of ATHLETE, I think this is a 1/2 scale model for testing, and its still pretty big.

 

[rockyct]

Depends on how far away the spacecraft is, Voyager1 launched in 1977 is now in the process of exiting our solar system, radio transmissions take 30 HOURS round trip. Think about that for a sec., if we had a vessel capable of the speed of light the trip out would be 15 hours long...wow..

It would only take 15 hours in reference to Earth's time. On the ship, it could be 20 minutes if you were going close enough to the speed of light.

 

[FelixDeCat]

So here are the pictures that I took at JPL (With my cell phone)


This picture is of the clean room where the assembly of MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) was underway, towards the center you can see the upper portion of the entry stage.

Thanks for taking the time to capture these images and post them here. It was a learning experience.

 

[Modelworks]

Depends on how far away the spacecraft is, Voyager1 launched in 1977 is now in the process of exiting our solar system, radio transmissions take 30 HOURS round trip. Think about that for a sec., if we had a vessel capable of the speed of light the trip out would be 15 hours long...wow..

Voyager1 has done so well. I'm a real fan of it. Its hardware is crude by todays standards , uses wire to record data then rewinds the wire and plays it back like a tape, and to last for so long and still work is just amazing. Some of the primary systems have failed but it still sends back data on the secondary.
Last report:
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/weekly-reports/index.htm

 

[BUTCH1]

It would only take 15 hours in reference to Earth's time. On the ship, it could be 20 minutes if you were going close enough to the speed of light.

I think it would take 15 hours but much more time will elapse on earth, not sure about this though..