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Christopher

Christopher

Portland, OR
November 2002

SEP 08, 2004 11:32 AM

Ouch.

Still, it reminds me a bit of the Mercury and Apollo missions where they had to reconnect the LEM to the Command Module.

From the Earth to the Moon: [During a NASA briefing.]
Chris Kraft : Rendezvous: two spacecraft meeting up in orbit. Want to have fun? Come over to my house. You stand in the back yard, I'll stand in the front, you throw a tennis ball over my roof and I'll try to hit it with a rock as it comes sailing over. That's what we're going to have to do.

thelost

thelost

United Kingdom
June 2004

SEP 08, 2004 11:35 AM


not good, on the other hand perhaps the samples are ok. here's hoping.

[Edited on Sep 08, 2004 11:36AM]

laparka

laparka

Simi Valley, CA
OLD SKOOL

SEP 08, 2004 11:35 AM

it crashed into the desert.

laparka

laparka

Simi Valley, CA
OLD SKOOL
Trucker_Fiction

Trucker_Fiction

Normal, IL
December 2003

SEP 08, 2004 12:51 PM

Max16Characters said:

Randomly said:
wow. it's like the superbowl for nasa fans.
wonder who's gonna win?
tongue


I'd say the ground won. But sinse it only happened a few minutes ago i can't find a story to link to.





here you go:

AceTracer

acetracer

Hollywood, FL
January 2004

SEP 08, 2004 01:01 PM

They were doing it to practice techniques they might use in the case of an asteroid flinging to earth, or so I read. I saw this story on ABC SciTech but as usual was too lazy to write it up.

Makes you feel confident in their abilities to prevent an apocalyptic event don't it? ooo aaa

[Edited on Sep 08, 2004 by AceTracer]

royaljack

royaljack

Brooklyn, NY
OLD SKOOL

SEP 08, 2004 01:33 PM

sync said:

not good, on the other hand perhaps the samples are ok. here's hoping.




Well, if the samples did not survive, that still looks cool!

Neyrissa

Neyrissa

SUICIDEGIRL

United Kingdom

SEP 08, 2004 01:54 PM

Boy, am I glad I'm not one of those pilots! I'd be up all night shitting myself...urgh...

Hope I can see it on TV here!

August_Mobius

August_Mobius

Canada
November 2002

SEP 08, 2004 02:23 PM

The damn thing crashed, just wonderful.
Oh well, time for dinner.

[Edited on Sep 08, 2004 2:25PM]

Oracle

Oracle

Courtenay, BC
September 2003

SEP 08, 2004 02:31 PM

Vixen said:
Boy, am I glad I'm not one of those pilots! I'd be up all night shitting myself...urgh...

Hope I can see it on TV here!




I'm glad I'm not the guy who packed the chutes...

but really it would be a major bummer if the samples were destroyed...

X

X

Lansing, MI
February 2003

SEP 08, 2004 03:51 PM

is it my imagination or does NASA fuck up way to often. It seems like the trip to the moon was the last great mission that dident end teribely wrong. Wasent all this new technology and computer modeling suposed to illiminate stupid mistakes like this.

Coliwali

Coliwali

I'm lost
February 2003

SEP 08, 2004 04:04 PM

X said:
is it my imagination or does NASA fuck up way to often. It seems like the trip to the moon was the last great mission that dident end teribely wrong. Wasent all this new technology and computer modeling suposed to illiminate stupid mistakes like this.



Fuck up often, when compared with whom?

baudot

baudot

Oakland, CA
February 2004

SEP 08, 2004 04:35 PM

X said:
is it my imagination or does NASA fuck up way to often. It seems like the trip to the moon was the last great mission that dident end teribely wrong. Wasent all this new technology and computer modeling suposed to illiminate stupid mistakes like this.


NASA faces engineering challenges like none other. I haven't researched this mission specifically, but let me sketch a similar case: the mars rovers. OK, first off, these things have been running for months without supervision. You know how long the average mobile autonomous robot runs without supervision? A few hours, in most cases, before something crashes or something unexpected happens. You know how hard it is to expect the kind of things that will happen someplace no one has ever been to, where the atmosphere and gravity are fundamentally different, etc.? Now let's talk about the circuitry. First off, temperatures on Mars get low enough that not all the components will function. (Yeah, I know, opposite the usual problem for computers.) They actually keep the computers inside a heated, insultaed chamber in the rover. Now, these computers, the ones that run the AI that has to cope with rocky martian terrain and keep the rover from flipping over or getting stuck some other way. They're top of the line, best money can buy systems, right? Well, sort of. Consider that in the thinner martian atmosphere, background radiation is MUCH more of a problem. If you were sending a robot into a radioactive environment on earth, you'd just coat the entire logic system in lead, and consider yourself safe from having any of your bits flipped. For a space mission, that solution won't fly. The fastest processor NASA has to work with that's radiation hardened is about on par with an 80386. (i.e. 1992 level systems, a couple hundred times slower than a chip you could buy today.) Lastly, remember that a rolling robot is NOT a desktop system. It gets shaken, bumped, and bounced, hundreds of times a day. If a cable comes loose, if a chip pops off a board, you cannot plug it back in. It is on Mars. You are not. It is gone.

And yet, some of these rovers are STILL WORKING after months. It's fucking amazing they ever worked at all. I can only imagine that flying a probe next to a GIANT CONTINUOUS HYDROGEN BOMB EXPLOSION, skimming a little off the top, and returning it safely back to earth was a more challenging problem yet.



I loved this quote from the write up:

Whether there will be enough science left inside remains to be seen.

Don't you just hate it when all the science leaks out?

poptard

poptard

United Kingdom
November 2003

SEP 08, 2004 04:45 PM

i head teh samples are comnaminated, (or could be) as the shuttle is cracked open

sixblueten

sixblueten

Healdsburg, CA
July 2004

SEP 08, 2004 06:42 PM

Baudot went to bat for NASA beautifully. NASA does an amazing, amazing job. I, for one, am in favor of doubling NASA's budget, effective immediately.

katharine

katharine

Canterbury, NH
August 2004

SEP 08, 2004 07:19 PM

wow.. that sounded like it was going to be sooo epic.. and then SMACK,, what a buzz killllllll

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