A Dumb MER question

Scott Lowther wrote:

Oh boo-hoo. So which is it: do we have the technology to put an air
compressor on a Mars over, or not? We have not done this yet, so your
arguement, based on recent posts by *you*, would be that we do not have
that technology. Thus my previous post would be in complete agreement
with your position on this matter.

We haven't demonstrated that we do, but I'd expect it wouldn't
be that hard. Some development would be required. I would be
concerned about filtering dust, the lifetime of the air filters,
the lubricants used in the compressor, cooling the motor, and operating
the unit in extreme cold.

I would not be willing to say we had this technology until
it had been demonstrated.

Paul

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

I would not be willing to say we had this technology until
it had been demonstrated.

Then you DO agree with the following:
---
Then again, how
difficult would it have been to have brought along an air compressor
to blow the dust off?

Oh, come now. You've read Dietz... we don't have that kind of
technology.
---

Since you agreed with me... "your wit continues to inform us of the
quality of both your arguments and your character" would thus imply that
you either think very highly of my arguement/character, or very
poorly... and thus you think very poorly of your *own* character.

Do not accuse someone else of having poor arguements or character when
they espouse YOUR arguements.



--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
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Scott Lowther wrote:
Paul F. Dietz wrote:


I would not be willing to say we had this technology until
it had been demonstrated.


Then you DO agree with the following:
---

Then again, how
difficult would it have been to have brought along an air compressor
to blow the dust off?


Oh, come now. You've read Dietz... we don't have that kind of
technology.
---

Since you agreed with me... "your wit continues to inform us of the
quality of both your arguments and your character" would thus imply that
you either think very highly of my arguement/character, or very
poorly... and thus you think very poorly of your *own* character.

Do not accuse someone else of having poor arguements or character when
they espouse YOUR arguements.


You wrote (with great implied sarcasm) the 'Oh, come now...'
statement.

I *agree* with that statement. The wit I was criticizing was
your sarcasm.

And, in fact, we don't have that technology in a form that
the rover designers were willing to use. Maybe it was mass
budget, maybe it was safety concerns (unwillingness to store
too much compressed gas) or maybe it was one of the several
issues I mentioned. Spacecraft designers don't like to pioneer
too many new things.

Paul

Scott Lowther wrote:

We HAVE the technology to do a great many things in space. But, they
cost too much, weigh too much, scare the wrong set of protestors. But
that is NOT the same thing as "We don't have it."

The fact remains that the technology that is available did not satisfy
the needs of the customer. If one is willing to drop that constraint,
then many supposed technologies become available. They don't even have
to be reliable, or even workable.

Paul

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
A windscreen wiper?
Could be a really bad idea if the Martian dust is as abrasive as lunar dust.

...It might not be, considering that it does get blown around by the
Martian air, unlike the soil on the airless Moon.

Possibly not, but nobody's sure. There is also thought to be a strong
possibility that the particles are small and the adhesion to the surface
fairly strong, in which case a wiper just won't work (although a brush
might perhaps do better).

Then again, how
difficult would it have been to have brought along an air compressor
to blow the dust off?

In the thin air, it probably requires fairly high gas velocities, not
trivial to achieve.

Last I heard (a paper by Geoff Landis, I think), electrostatic dust
removal was considered probably the best bet.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

You wrote (with great implied sarcasm)

You choose to read what you choose to read.

And, in fact, we don't have that technology in a form that
the rover designers were willing to use.

HA! There, now THAT is a reasonable statement, much more so than your
previous blanket statements. The world ISN'T as black-white, is-ain't as
your "We don't" nonsense.

We HAVE the technology to do a great many things in space. But, they
cost too much, weigh too much, scare the wrong set of protestors. But
that is NOT the same thing as "We don't have it."

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

Scott Lowther wrote:

We HAVE the technology to do a great many things in space. But, they
cost too much, weigh too much, scare the wrong set of protestors. But
that is NOT the same thing as "We don't have it."

The fact remains that the technology that is available did not satisfy
the needs of the customer. If one is willing to drop that constraint,
then many supposed technologies become available.

Yes. The technologies are, again, extant. And, as I've repeatedly
pointed out, mods would be advisable. But the technologies are extant,
and can be used as-is if you're willing to be non-optimised.

Your previous reply "We don't" to the claim that "we have the technology
in hand to do a good start at it" was, at best, not accurate. Many
things in life and engineering do not need to be completely or even
approximately optimized to be damned useful. The mindset that all things
DO need to be perfectly optimized has led to a NASA that can't do a
damend thing without thousands of man-hours spent poring over Powerpoint
presentations, and, in the end, spending lots of money and building
nothing.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
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gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Your previous reply "We don't" to the claim that "we have the technology
in hand to do a good start at it" was, at best, not accurate.

I disagree with this statement. To not rehash the previous argument,
I will offer up another one.

'Settlement' implies the ability of a community to exist and sustain
itself. This need not necessarily imply they can be completely self-sufficient,
(although for the purpose described at the beginning of the other
thread it might have to be) but it does imply that they be able to be
economically self-sustaining.

This implies they must be sufficiently productive that each person can (on
average) produce enough value to pay for all the equipment and supplies
they need.

We are *not* close to being able to do that. Anything we build now would
be a pitiful imitation of a sustainable settlement. Maybe that would be
a step toward better technologies that would make the settlement more
sustainable, but perhaps the technology has to move in other directions
to make the goal achievable (Dyson suggests focusing on biotechnology, for
example, with space settlement beginning in about 50 years.)

I consider the ultimate goal sufficiently far away that a linear
approach is probably not the right one.

Paul

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

'Settlement' implies the ability of a community to exist and sustain
itself. This need not necessarily imply they can be completely self-sufficient,
(although for the purpose described at the beginning of the other
thread it might have to be) but it does imply that they be able to be
economically self-sustaining.

This implies they must be sufficiently productive that each person can (on
average) produce enough value to pay for all the equipment and supplies
they need.

We are *not* close to being able to do that. Anything we build now would
be a pitiful imitation of a sustainable settlement.

Nobody is suggesting that with what we have now we could make a fully
self-sufficient, happy little colony. What is suggested is that we could
make "a good start at it."


While historical analogies are dubious at best as far as space
settlement... consider North America. First european settlers were the
Vikings. They made, to all accounts, "a good start at it," and were only
driven away because of conflict with the Skraelings and the Little Ice
Age. However... they made "a good start at it" with the technology they
had. Had the Injuns not been there (and, as far as I'm aware, there
aren't Injun-analogs on the Moon or Mars), it's entirely possible that a
Viking society would have been awaiting Cortez... even though Viking
tech was considerably less advanced than 16th-century Spanish tech. In
the end, North American Vikings faield not because their technology
wasn't up to it, but because their colonization infrastructure wasn't up
to it. It was too long of a journey for people so poor.

And of course, North America was settled considerably earlier by the
Injuns themselves, with technology vastly lesser than what even the
Vikings had. In their case, they *did* have the requisite
infrastructu enough bodies simply swarmed across the land bridge.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
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In article ,
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy... _facility.org says...
On Sun, 4 Jan 2004 18:53:58 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:
In article ,
.spade. wrote:
A windscreen wiper?
Could be a really bad idea if the Martian dust is as abrasive as lunar dust.
...It might not be, considering that it does get blown around by the
Martian air, unlike the soil on the airless Moon. Then again, how
difficult would it have been to have brought along an air compressor
to blow the dust off?

Or use a trick that is common on the little video cameras strapped to
race cars for TV coverage of car races: a spool of clear plastic that
unwinds in front of the lens. Given the extraordinary contortions of the
MER rovers, a little motor to wind away the dirty plastic, pulling clean
plastic over the lens should be trivial.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins