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Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47469071 |
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On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 4:59:22 PM UTC-8, RichA wrote:
Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47469071 Maybe hit an alien skull, hard as diamond? |
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On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 16:59:19 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote: Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47469071 First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. If you knew anything about engineering, you'd know about design tradeoffs and cost/benefit analyses. |
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RichA:
Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. Chris L Peterson: First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. Has it occurred to you that what the probe hit was not a rock at all, but RichA's "brain," frozen and fossilized these billions of years? -- I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that you will say in your entire life. usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm |
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On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 4:59:22 PM UTC-8, RichA wrote:
Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47469071 From your own link, which you apparently did not read with full comprehension... "... But the presence of hidden rocks was always a possibility, and even expected." \Paul A |
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On Thursday, 7 March 2019 17:49:50 UTC-5, Davoud wrote:
RichA: Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. Chris L Peterson: First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. Has it occurred to you that what the probe hit was not a rock at all, but RichA's "brain," frozen and fossilized these billions of years? I'm not one the with a $$$$$$ probe that's stuck. Whatsamatter? Would adding some COST to the thing to make it work more flexibly have taken away money from the ISS?? |
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On Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 7:22:04 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote:
First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. If you knew anything about engineering, you'd know about design tradeoffs and cost/benefit analyses. A naive person such as myself - and such as any number of Congressmen - would have thought that given that it costs billions of dollars to send a probe to Mars, and if drilling beneath the Martian surface was an important part of that probe's science mission, then any extra cost to make "the probe retractable and repositionable" would have been not merely well worth it, but imperative. Now, if that probe instead was simply a *minor* part of the probe, tacked on at the last minute, then that it wouldn't have the volume or weight budget to do anything but drill once wherever it's stuck *would* be reasonable. I don't know which is the case, so I'm not prepared to castigate NASA at this point - but I'm not prepared to exonerate them either. John Savard |
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On Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 12:53:01 AM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 7:22:04 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote: First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. If you knew anything about engineering, you'd know about design tradeoffs and cost/benefit analyses. A naive person such as myself - and such as any number of Congressmen - would have thought that given that it costs billions of dollars to send a probe to Mars, and if drilling beneath the Martian surface was an important part of that probe's science mission, then any extra cost to make "the probe retractable and repositionable" would have been not merely well worth it, but imperative. Now, if that probe instead was simply a *minor* part of the probe, tacked on at the last minute, then that it wouldn't have the volume or weight budget to do anything but drill once wherever it's stuck *would* be reasonable. I don't know which is the case, so I'm not prepared to castigate NASA at this point - but I'm not prepared to exonerate them either. Having read the article, I see the situation is not as bad as all that. 1) Apparently the probe's design is such that it has a good chance of pushing this second rock it has encountered out of the way given plenty of hammering time, and so this may be attempted later. 2) The probe is only meant to measure the subsurface temperature of Mars; it isn't intended to pick up a core sample for a sample return mission or something else of similarly critical importance. 3) It has already penetrated to a sufficient depth that it can perform the temperature measurements needed for at least the earlier parts of the experiment for which it was designed. Thus I am now quite prepared to accept that the limitations of the probe are reasonable as a cost-benefit tradeoff. John Savard |
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On Fri, 8 Mar 2019 23:52:58 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote: On Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 7:22:04 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote: First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. If you knew anything about engineering, you'd know about design tradeoffs and cost/benefit analyses. A naive person such as myself - and such as any number of Congressmen - would have thought that given that it costs billions of dollars to send a probe to Mars, and if drilling beneath the Martian surface was an important part of that probe's science mission, then any extra cost to make "the probe retractable and repositionable" would have been not merely well worth it, but imperative. It is precisely the sort of thing that could make the entire mission impossible, by adding significant cost and complexity to the design, making it unfeasible to include other instruments, or making everything less reliable. A change like that would impact almost every system on the lander. (InSight is part of the Discovery program, which funds relatively inexpensive missions. The InSight budget is $830 million. A heavier, more power hungry, retractable probe- which would need to operate on a completely different principle than the simple impact probe now in use- could easily have killed the entire program. It might never have been funded at all given a higher budget or greater opportunity for mechanical failure.) |
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On Fri, 8 Mar 2019 17:22:23 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote: On Thursday, 7 March 2019 17:49:50 UTC-5, Davoud wrote: RichA: Ever dig in soil and hit a rock? Seems NASA didn't expect it. Pretty stupid. Chris L Peterson: First of all, NASA didn't design this probe. Second, it was entirely expected that the probe could hit something that would slow it down or that it couldn't get through. Making the probe retractable and repositionable was not a practical option. Has it occurred to you that what the probe hit was not a rock at all, but RichA's "brain," frozen and fossilized these billions of years? I'm not one the with a $$$$$$ probe that's stuck. Whatsamatter? Would adding some COST to the thing to make it work more flexibly have taken away money from the ISS?? Adding another 100 million or so would price the entire mission out of the Discover Program. It wouldn't even have happened. |
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