Beagle ... alas

In article , (Nicholas
Fitzpatrick) wrote:

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:

...The only thing I can say about this apparent failure is that I
honestly hope this is a hard slap in the face to Europe as a whole to
wake them up to the fact that "Faster/Better/Cheaper" does not work,
and they need to quit being ****ing cheap and SPEND WHAT'S REQUIRED!

My memory fails me ... but wasn't faster/better/cheaper some
kind of American slogan? Ford? GM? Some crap manufacturer, wasn't
it?

I think it may have been the outfit that built the Space Shuttle, from the
country that couldn't build a spaceplane with a crew escape system and one
of whose Mars mission teams couldn't remember the difference between
English and Metric units.

In that context, I suggest certain folks stop slagging the Europeans,
British and French. It looks really bad, really petty, really classless.

--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 13:46:22 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

And hurl it into the crater of Olympus Mons....yes, there is a distinct
pagan south seas island feel to the concept. And Beagle was a virgin, in
that the design was not screwed around with much.

....Of course, you kids realize that to date, only one Beagle has had a
successful mission in space?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
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In article , OM wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 13:46:22 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

And hurl it into the crater of Olympus Mons....yes, there is a distinct
pagan south seas island feel to the concept. And Beagle was a virgin, in
that the design was not screwed around with much.

...Of course, you kids realize that to date, only one Beagle has had a
successful mission in space?

But said Beagle has contributed to many, many others...

--
-Andrew Gray

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 16:47:41 GMT, "Vincent D. DeSimone"
wrote:


Yes, FBC does not work. Spend the proper amount of money on missions
and TEST, TEST, TEST. When you are done testing, then test some more.
Then test a little more, and then test some more for the hell of it.

FBC works just fine. There is no contradiction between FBC and adequate
testing.

(And it's not like slower/worse/costlier has a conspicuously better track
record, especially at Mars...)

I agree with your response, but there have been too many examples brought up
in this newsgroup, as well as the news feeds, that FBC is just plain flawed.
My belief that the opinion voiced earlier this year that you can get get two
of these options by only sacrificing the third, is the way to go. It was
called "FBC: Pick 2". I like to rhyme it by saying "FBC: 2 Out Of 3".

Henry's mentioned this before but its more like

Faster
Better
Cheaper
Same old way of doing things

Pick 3.

There are plenty of projects that have been successfully completed
Faster, Better and Cheaper.

Mars Pathfinder, Clementine, DC-X ect.

The problem was when it became the "new" mantra, and suddenly
everything had to be FBC. As if saying Faster, Better, Cheaper makes
it do, it requires new ways of doing things, different management
structures, different ways of testing things, and the acceptance of a
higher rate of failure. However you make up for the failures with more
projects.

Kelly McDonald

On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 08:30:17 -0500, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:

THe first words will be: "I'm not dead yet! I'm feeling much better."

I'd've thought they would be, "Only a flesh wound," but I see your
point.

On 25 Dec 2003 22:05:34 -0800, (Mark Herring)
wrote:

And there are those who are serious about sending manned missions to
Mars.

I'm all for doing it when the technology is reliable but one for three
would be looking pretty grim with a graveyard in solar orbit. Out of
the six Apollo missions that made it to the lunar surface, wanna give
odds that we would have continued if twelve astros had died in the
process?

First return to the Moon, THEN Mars.


I agree -- use Mars as the proving ground for spacecrafts habitats.
Remember, a crew that goes to mars just can't hop in its ship and
return like Apollo did, but has to wait for the planets to reallign --
30 to 100 days for a "short duration" mission (although this requires
a massive course correction either going out or comming back, so
that's where you see talk about a flyby of Venus on the return, to get
a gravity assist), 500 days for a "long duration" mission. Also have
the crew stocked with spair parts and a couple of crew members who are
dedicated flight enigneers -- they fix what's broke.

On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 03:16:46 -0600, OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:

..... "Faster/Better/Cheaper" does not work ....

Yes, it does; it has. Pathfinder was an excellent example a few years
back, as was NEAR and the lunar oribiter whose name escapes me.

Has it worked all the time? No. But it has worked.

"Mike Flugennock" wrote in message
...
It looks really bad, really petty, really classless.

In short- it looks *French*.
--
If you have had problems with Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC),
please contact shredder at bellsouth dot net. There may be a class-action
lawsuit
in the works.

but everybody seems to forget that. ESA has never subscribed to
the Faster-Better-Cheaper theorem.

From the ESA website:

"The ESA project is also the start of an innovative way of developing building
blocks for cheaper assembly of future European space missions. The spacecraft
has been built and launched in record time and at a much lower cost than
previous, similar missions into outer space."
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33° 27' 59" N, 117° 05' 53" W

Michael Gallagher wrote:

Also have
the crew stocked with spair parts and a couple of crew members who are
dedicated flight enigneers -- they fix what's broke.

Maintaining a ship in flight is *far* more complex than that.

D.
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