<![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> @low_brass: And the cost overruns are probably huge. With a smaller rover, they could reuse the proven airbag design.

It doesn't make the skycrane any less cool, but given the budget crunch that will hit NASA over the next few years, it'll be lucky to fly at all.

Gopherit

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> @Gambeson: For the reasons I stated above. If you have ever worked on a mission (and not as the scientists who develop new instruments), you'd understand from where my frustration comes. Recreating the wheel slows down the science return and the number of missions we can have for the costs.

Gopherit

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> @icelight: The truth is, the main reason to increase the Rover's size is not to accommodate the number of instruments, but to carry the RTGs (and electronics shielding needed because of the RTGs) they plan to use to power the beast. Given the occasional difficulties the current rovers had with their mass causing them to bog down in Martian fines, it's a hell of an added expenditure /risk to use RTGs on a mission to Mars, where solar has proven itself. It's piss-poor planning and horribly cost inefficient to create individual probes/rovers/instruments for each mission. Strangely enough, NASA and JPL engineers seem to agree, since there's be lots of talk about to using this latest design as the basis for all future rovers. Given that RTGs are unreasonably expensive, not particularly mobile and unnecessary for inner-solar system exploration, they could have stopped at the proven Pathfinder design and worked within those constraints for future missions.

Before you start to put words in my mouth again, no I am not advocating using stock instruments for every mission. There are times (the HiRISE camera on the MRO being a good example) where there is strong justification for the expenditure on a new instrument given the increased science return. Where I get frustrated is in the creation of new, but not necessarily better, spectrometers, magnetometers, radar instruments, etc, where previous designs worked within mission specs. Why reinvent the wheel? Makes as much sense as delivering a specially modified car to each person who buys one. You can, but the costs go through the roof. There have been a couple of times in recent memory where off the shelf instruments have been used (the GRS on the recent Mars missions and Galileo's NIMS/Cassini's VIMS come to mind), but not nearly often enough. Reusing designs worked well for Pioneer, Mariner, Viking, and Voyager, but somewhere in the last 30 years, NASA got away from that kind of engineering, and managed to give ammunition to the nuts who feel NASA wastes money.

As long as we continue to spend on the order of $200-$300 million or more per
mission to Mars in the R&D of instruments/integrating new systems/unproven landing mechanisms alone, missions will continue to occur only once every 3-5 years. You certainly won't save any money on the rockets to send the beasts up or on mission support once the mission starts.

Gopherit

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> I can't stop. staring. at. that. chute. just...wow.

cmg

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> I was building my own little ROVs back when Pathfinder was going.

I'll always feel a strong connection to these little bots and the people who make and operate them.

The chute is beautiful and the new rover looks like another in a line of awesome machines.

strider_mt2k

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> That parachute is pretty neat, but I wish there was a picture of the final stage in this rover's descent: the skycrane. It's a rocket powered device that hovers over the Martian surface and lowers the rover on a cable, like a crane lowering a payload. Unfortunately, this is still in heavy development (or so says my friend who works at JPL). I found a computer modeled image though:

[marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov]

More info on the mission's landing process: [marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov]

low_brass

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> Thank you icelight. It's not like trips to Mars have become an everyday occurence quite yet. Spirit and Opportunity started in 2003. Pathfinder in '96.

Gambeson

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> @Gopherit: You do realize that's completely senseless, don't you? It would be like the telling Columbus "Until you work out a regular ferry route between here and the Caribbean to transport all the tourists, we're never going to let you sail." First, the rovers do have a huge ammount of herritage in their design. The reason you can't see that is because they're designed to do completely different things. (You would probably want someone trying to fly around the world non-stop to use a Cessna 172.) This rover is many times bigger than any that has been sent before, and it needs to be that way in order to accomplish its goals. It wouldn't be physically possible, or at least would require far, far more in the way of development costs, to miniaturize every component in order to be able to fit it onto a Surveyor or Pathfinder size chassis. And then, if you only send out one or two probes a decade, does it really make sense to have a common design that would need to stretch for decades? Of course not; new technologies come into play way, way too often for that to be possible. Could more commonality be used? Perhaps, but then people complain about a lack of innovation, or "just going back" like they do with the Orion capsule.

icelight

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> Gotta love NASA. That rover looks completely different from the previous rover designs. In true NASA form, they are redesigning a rover from tip to tail.....with all of the R&D costs associated. Until NASA starts standardizing instruments and components for probes instead of the current design philosophy of making stuff from scratch, the costs of building probes will always be prohibitively high.

Not like I'm not going to look at the data from the mission, though.

Gopherit

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mars Rover Needs A Mega-chute]]> Nice tag! science porn indeed.

Log1c

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