NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover

[hidetheelephants]

NMNeil said:

MartG said:

NASA has been planning manned Mars missions since the mid-1960 and has got precisely nowhere - that's nearly 60 years of effort with nothing to show but a lot of very nice artist's impressions, and design studies which someone once described as 'the most expensive science fiction on the planet'

SpaceX has gone from nothing to test flying a spacecraft capable of reaching Mars with a crew in less than a third of that time.

Now tell me again which approach is working ?

NASA's was founded in 1958 with a budget of $89 million.
The 2021 budget is now $23.3 billion.

The NHS budget in 1949 was less than £400m, 2019-20 it was not far from quarter of a trillion. I like numbers; by my reckoning the NHS should have colonised Venus by now.

[Eric Mc]

NMNeil said:

NASA's was founded in 1958 with a budget of $89 million.
The 2021 budget is now $23.3 billion.

At it's peak funding (1966) NASA was allocated 5% of the US Federal Budget.

Today it gets 0.5% of the Federal Budget.

[eharding]

hidetheelephants said:

NMNeil said:

MartG said:

NASA has been planning manned Mars missions since the mid-1960 and has got precisely nowhere - that's nearly 60 years of effort with nothing to show but a lot of very nice artist's impressions, and design studies which someone once described as 'the most expensive science fiction on the planet'

SpaceX has gone from nothing to test flying a spacecraft capable of reaching Mars with a crew in less than a third of that time.

Now tell me again which approach is working ?

NASA's was founded in 1958 with a budget of $89 million.
The 2021 budget is now $23.3 billion.

The NHS budget in 1949 was less than £400m, 2019-20 it was not far from quarter of a trillion. I like numbers; by my reckoning the NHS should have colonised Venus by now.

They have, although the incumbents took umbrage and turned the first colonists into tempura-coated deep-fried snacks, but after those initial difficulties an understanding was established and HMG has had exchange programme with the Venusian Mekon Administration for years - where do you think Dominic Cummings came from?

[hidetheelephants]

eharding said:

They have, although the incumbents took umbrage and turned the first colonists into tempura-coated deep-fried snacks, but after those initial difficulties an understanding was established and HMG has had exchange programme with the Venusian Mekon Administration for years - where do you think Dominic Cummings came from?

[Beati Dogu]

More still images from the surface:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqFn7_UA3Gw


Here's a look at the Mars helicopter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM

[AW111]

eharding said:

They have, although the incumbents took umbrage and turned the first colonists into tempura-coated deep-fried snacks, but after those initial difficulties an understanding was established and HMG has had exchange programme with the Venusian Mekon Administration for years - where do you think Dominic Cummings came from?

I sincerely hope they sent him home when his time was up.

[CraigyMc]

CraigyMc said:

Blackpuddin said:

If you equate space travel with tourism then of course you're right – but it's not tourism, is it.

Says who?

I expect someone to go to Mars for a giggle and come back alive before I die of old age.

There are already rich space tourists going through training and then going to the ISS and back just for fun. Ruscosmos will take you up and bring you back for $42m.

Doesn't take much invention to see that extended to trips around the moon, or even eventually to Mars.

The first ones will obviously be "for all of mankind", though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56261574

[Smiljan]

That's an ambitious timeline for sure.

2 years from exploding belly flops to successful voyage around the moon and landing back on earth.

[Leithen]

Has Perseverance moved yet?

[Skyrocket21]

Beati Dogu said:

More still images from the surface:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqFn7_UA3Gw


Here's a look at the Mars helicopter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM

The helicopter video is like the ultimate guy and girl in a shed, just on a much grander scale, it must a lot of fun designing and engineering these concepts and watching that happen over many years.

[Smiljan]

Leithen said:

Has Perseverance moved yet?

Not yet

https://mars.nasa.gov/maps/location/?mission=M20

[Fundoreen]

Leithen said:

Has Perseverance moved yet?

Nobody can remember the long wifi password they set.

[eharding]

Fundoreen said:

Leithen said:

Has Perseverance moved yet?

Nobody can remember the long wifi password they set.

JPL have remembered that the password was encoded in the design of the patterns on the parachute, but the chaps at Heathcotes didn't know this and put their own Easter Egg "I've got a brand new combine harvester" message in there instead.

Musk has offered to pop out there and press the WPS button on the back of the lander.

Boeing have offered to <Segmentation violation - core dumped>

[NRS]

It's been fun at work - we have a lot of geologists in our company (including me) who have been discussing on one of the internal Yammer groups the pictures so far, and comparing them to features on different places on earth, as well as differences due to for example the different gravity.

[Beati Dogu]

I bet. Be funny if they ran into a limestone outcrop.

i sure hope the helicopter is successful. It’ll be able to get some landscape photographs that would be impossible from the rover.

[CraigyMc]

NRS said:

It's been fun at work - we have a lot of geologists in our company (including me) who have been discussing on one of the internal Yammer groups the pictures so far, and comparing them to features on different places on earth, as well as differences due to for example the different gravity.

Are they looking for hydrocarbon reserves?

[NRS]

CraigyMc said:

Are they looking for hydrocarbon reserves?

Not on Mars! This is just people being geeks during work time, But normally yes (or how to get the stuff out safely and economically). Seems at least one of them has had some brief communication with some of the NASA geologists:

"They think the bed rock is igneous (preliminary interpretation), but this is still being discussed as to why the vuggy nature (vesicular basalt, or purely differential wind erosion etc). [Vuggy natured means lots of holes!]. They assume there is no quartz present to abrade the rock. In a few of the zoomed in fresher images at the lander site you can see rusty looking crystals, which might tie with Olivine? (as also suggested by the hyperspectral mapping) - so that might be what is preferentially eroded out."

The interesting thing with olivine would be that it breaks down into a clay with water. Once it's a clay it's much weaker, and would explain why it gets weathered away first. Olivine is common in the earth's mantle, but not in the crust.

[Eric Mc]

It's common on the moon too, isn't it?

[NRS]

Yes, I think it's common in the interiors of rocky planets in general. I understand the stuff on the moon is associated with places material from the mantle will be brought to the surface - igneous rocks and impact craters. But it's been quite a few years since I did any planetary geology.

This is one of the photos that look really interesting to me - probably something sedimentary given the layering:

[CraigyMc]

NRS said:

CraigyMc said:

Are they looking for hydrocarbon reserves?

Not on Mars! This is just people being geeks during work time, But normally yes (or how to get the stuff out safely and economically). Seems at least one of them has had some brief communication with some of the NASA geologists:

"They think the bed rock is igneous (preliminary interpretation), but this is still being discussed as to why the vuggy nature (vesicular basalt, or purely differential wind erosion etc). [Vuggy natured means lots of holes!]. They assume there is no quartz present to abrade the rock. In a few of the zoomed in fresher images at the lander site you can see rusty looking crystals, which might tie with Olivine? (as also suggested by the hyperspectral mapping) - so that might be what is preferentially eroded out."

The interesting thing with olivine would be that it breaks down into a clay with water. Once it's a clay it's much weaker, and would explain why it gets weathered away first. Olivine is common in the earth's mantle, but not in the crust.

I was joking
I used to do data storage systems for PGS and others in the science/technical industries (weather forecasting, CFD, that type of thing).
It's the nature of the industry to go looking for hydrocarbons in awkward places

I half expect perseverance to be dragging a sonar array behind it.