NASA: New Mars Rover By 2020 79
coondoggie writes "Looking to build on the great success and popularity of its current Mars Science Laboratory mission, NASA today announced plans to explore the red planet further, including launching another sophisticated robot rover by 2020 and widely expanding other Mars scientific projects. The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover — which will mirror the technology employed with the current Curiosity rover — will advance the science priorities of the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey (the report from the community and team of scientists that help NASA prioritize space missions) and further the research needed to send humans to the planet sometime around 2030, NASA said."
Penny Wise and Pound Foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest Government expenses are Medicare and the interest on the current debt - a lot of that debt is because of two very expensive useless wars. We could eliminate NASA completely and it would have a negligible effect on the US budget.
Then there's the social costs which Neil DeGrasse Tyson has explained better than I ever could.
Yeah, yeah yeah - Taxed Enough Already - blah blah blah. And I'm a tax and spend dreamer who still remembers when we, the US, sent people to the Moon and little kids wanted to be astronauts and not stupid things like: Wall Street parasites, ball players, hip hop stars or some other type of entertainer.
NASA should send these to Mars instead ... (Score:2)
Please refer to http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/12/05/0122249/in-the-world-of-big-stuff-the-us-still-rules [slashdot.org]
Instead of sending rovers, NASA could have gotten Komatsu or Caterpillar to build some really useful "built-in-America" stuffs to send to Mars for heavy lifting jobs.
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Your last sentence really hit me. Too bad you're AC.
Indeed, left and right alike, US and Europe alike, nowadays I find our governments have a terrible trend to consider any job equivalent to any other one.
Just hours ago here in Europe the French gov.t considers renouncing taxing Amazon.com, because OK they overtly cheat on offshored benefits, but in compensation they promiss "creating hundreds of jobs" by... relocating here a dispatch centre.
France destiny is now in parcel dispatching, and certainly the dis
Neil deGrasse Tyson says (Score:3)
http://www.space.com/15310-nasa-budget-future-space-exploration.html [space.com]
http://thechrissanchez.com/journal/2012/3/11/the-reality-of-american-space-exploration-why-we-should-imme.htm [thechrissanchez.com]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense [slate.com]
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Sure, we got some science from it, but are we as far into space as we were before the Space Shuttles? No. In fact we've regressed. We would have been much better off ignoring Congress and continuing to build exploratory vehicles rather than taxis to low orbit.
Part of the problem was that the Air Force got to define too many requirements that ended up bloating the shuttle design and then the Air Force decided to continue using expendable launchers instead.
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You realize that NASA has averaged only about $18b/yr for the last 56 years -- in current dollars, right? In more than half a century, they haven't even crossed the trillion dollar mark -- a thing we've done with the "war on terror" many times over. It accounts for something like 0.008% of the budget. While I'm all for needless small things getting cut (and big ones), the return on the trivial amount spent is massive and responsible for much of our economic and technological advancement of the last forty ye
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Just to clarify, 2020 is only eight years from now.
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a thing we've done with the "war on terror" many times over.
And don't forget the Quixhotic war on drugs too. Scrapping that would have a double whammy improvement. Not only would about $40bn/year be saved in police and prison costs but also probably $10-20bn woulb be raised in additional taxes.
Scrapping the war on drugs would probably pay for NASA 3 times over and might go someway to moving the USA from the world #1 position in terms of number of incarcerated people.
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I really hate when people take that "Why build one when you can build two for twice the price" quote from the film adaptation of Contact and try to be clever by quoting it as if it had any bearing on reality. In the real world, the per-unit cost of building multiples of the same thing in parallel costs considerably less than building a one-off.
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Re:Economies of scale (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more cost effective if they make it to their destination. Keep in mind we are still at the "will it explode?" and "if it doesn't explode, will it avoid crashing?" and "if it doesn't crash, will it keep working?" part of the technology. So if the Mars rover works out, that's great, and in fact is a valuable enough confirmation to justify trying to do something similar again.
But it's really better right now to have each rover be a stepping stone to the next. The sort of answers Curiosity gives us will tell us the sort of questions we want to design the next rover to resolve.
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And how far apart are those existing vehicles? What's between them? How hard is the terrain to navigate? Are the components of one system compatible with another? It's cheaper and much more viable to just send fresh units, targeted for specific purposes and specific locations.
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It's more cost effective if they make it to their destination. Keep in mind we are still at the "will it explode?" and "if it doesn't explode, will it avoid crashing?" and "if it doesn't crash, will it keep working?"
Look at the track record. [thethinkerblog.com]
Its not half as bad as you make it out to be.
All those that end in a Black Dot are failures.
Anything ending in a gray dot was meant to be a Orbiter.
Those with white dots are landers.
The success rate is getting better, (and the lines are getting blue-er.) Since 2000, almost every launch has succeeded.
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It's more cost effective if they make it to their destination. Keep in mind we are still at the "will it explode?" and "if it doesn't explode, will it avoid crashing?" and "if it doesn't crash, will it keep working?" part of the technology. So if the Mars rover works out, that's great, and in fact is a valuable enough confirmation to justify trying to do something similar again.
An observation which supports the original posters observations about economies of scale. A second MSL mission would have far less program risk than a new design precisely because these issues have been worked on.
It's also worth noting that NASA really is launching a second MSL here. They're reusing the chassis, landing system, etc. They're being forced by budget cuts to use these economies of scale which they have repeatedly ignored in the past.
But it's really better right now to have each rover be a stepping stone to the next. The sort of answers Curiosity gives us will tell us the sort of questions we want to design the next rover to resolve.
Please keep in mind that people don't live forever. As it s
Re:Economies of scale or Speed? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be more cost effective if they launched multiple vehicles at at time instead of just one? Perhaps NASA could work with other nations by building more rovers and letting them launch their own. If it's going to be in the name of science, why not?
With all the self driving technology we have now, (and will have by 2020), why not make it faster, and give it a capability to cover 20 or 50 miles a day or some such.
The rovers we've sent really don't have the capability out of sight of their landing zone. That makes picking landing sites a huge challenge.
With a slightly taller vehicle with a wider stance (bigger wheels) you could probably cover most of the martian terrain at substantial speed, totally autonomously.
It could map as it went, and pick up soi
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TFA talks about paving the way to a future manned mission so I assume that the capability of sending big and massive things to Mars has is a goal in itself.
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They used to do that a lot. Mariner 3 and 4 to Mars in 1965 -- Mariner 3 failed but Mariner 4 was a success. Mariner 6 and 7 to Mars in 1969 -- both successes. Mariner 8 and 9 to Mars in 1971 -- Mariner 8 failed, Mariner 9 succeeded. Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter. Voyager 1 and 2. Viking 1 and 2. It used to be almost standard procedure and saved a few missions where one of the pair failed, usually on launch. Cassini to Saturn was supposed to have a fraternal twin on a comet/asteroid mission, CRAF, bu
Look as much as I like Mars (Score:5, Interesting)
Mars is nice guys but lets go a place a little more interesting with our unmanned probes, like one of the interesting moons around our solar systems Gas giants.
Lets send a manned mission to Mars, and send our robots places that have a higher chance of yielding some really interesting data. Data that even use armchair geeks can get excited about.
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I expect more remote control toys to Mars, nothing to any other planet, and no men to anywhere (except maybe back to the moon) for the rest of my life time. As a country, the US stopped giving a shit a very long time ago.
Re:Look as much as I like Mars (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. general public has never cared about space exploration; the public has only cared about beating someone else. Want to get a team of U.S. astronauts on Mars by 2019? Convince the Chinese government to announce to the world that they intend to land humans on Mars by 2020.
I guarantee you that if the Chinese said they planned to establish permanent settlements on Mars in ten years, the U.S. government would move Heaven and Earth to get us there sooner, and they would succeed. Getting to Mars is easy. Convincing the bureaucrats that it is more important than building their little war machines to blow up countries with oil is hard.
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That's an excellent point. It works for getting us into military actions overseas and would definitely work for space exploration.
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As a country, the US stopped giving a shit a very long time ago.
Really? So why is there so much blue lines on this graffic, and why do ALL the successful landers have blue lines?
http://thethinkerblog.com/images/missions_to_mars.jpg [thethinkerblog.com]
Re:Look as much as I like Mars (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with the interesting moons like Callisto and Europa is that the liquid water oceans are dozens or hundreds of miles below the surface. Sure we might be able to sniff some pretty interesting stuff from ejected water, but the big finds on these moons are going to have to wait for future generations of equipment that can drill through kilometers of ice.
Mars is a reasonably good testing ground for this kind of tech. Not only is it an interesting body with a unique geology and a history that to a point wasn't so different from Earth's and at least a moderate candidate for some kind of life, but it is also considerably closer than Jupiter or Saturn. It serves as a great test bed for the kinds of probes we will likely end up sending to other bodies in the solar system.
I look at the Mars rovers as the best possible test bed for these new technologies, not only in building rugged mechanical systems that can survive intense temperature differentials, dust storms and climactic changes and even hard radiation, but also in the software. I expect with some of the major advances we're seeing in neural net development that by 2020 not only will the next rover be a more sophisticated machine, but it's brain will be considerably smarter too.
When you really think about it, NASA's Mars program is leading the way in highly sophisticated semi-autonomous probes. In a generation, we'll probably be able to launch the grandchildren of Curiosity to places like Titan and give them a far wider range of tools to explore.
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I always figured that a Europa mission wouldn't drill its way down and bring material back to the surface, but rather would have its science instrumentation in a pod that would melt its way down. The lander would be a base station on the surface, mostly for communication, and the probe would use an RTG to gradually melt its way down, paying out a tether cable behind it.
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Sorry, but while your rudimentary concept is reasonable, one practicality stops it: at a certain point, the ice around the tether is going to freeze up, stopping the descent of the probe, which will end up hanging in its own little bubble of hot water. Now, studying that bubble might have some value, as we would probably find residue from whatever is in the ocean (if there's fish, we might find the up-welled bones and scales, for instance). Better to figure out some wireless communication technology that
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I would settle for taking the interim step of just building some shit on the moon. Preferably not M.A.D. nukes.
Launch is eight years away (Score:1)
And I'm already worried about the landing.
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According to NASA, the landing system used for Curiosity was still not enough like a Wile E Coyote cartoon. Apparently the new landing system will involve a giant slingshot, a red boxing glove on a spring, an anvil, and several sticks of dynamite. The landing itself will be referred to as the 'seven minutes of hilarity' and will end with a perfectly rover-shaped hole being cut into the martian surface.
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...followed by a little robotic arm which extends from the hole, holding a sign that says, "Ouch!"
Do we need more Mars rovers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think we pretty much established that there's nothing but rocks on Mars. [theonion.com]
Yes the rover flight and landing are marvels of engineering. There's no denying that. But can't we go somewhere new?
In all seriousness, I feel like geologists have taken over NASA and these rovers are their way of bringing fame and power to the discipline of studying rocks.
Let's take the first steps to go drilling into a subsurface ocean instead, shall we not?
Except for the other findings (Score:1)
Just rocks, along with water ice, CO2 ice, permafrost, and most and more hints of past liquid water. And dust devils. Also, far more detail about the formation and evolution of Mars (geologists do a bit more than say "that's a rock", they say "that's a rock from x years ago that was formed at y pressure and z temperature and its existence implies that processes a, b and c happened on this planet").
Though I disagree that there's nothing but rocks on Mars, I agree it would be more interesting to send probes
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Just spread a rumor that dust devil nation is hiding weapons of mass destruction, and mankind will set foot on (heavily bombed by that time) surface of Mars in just a few years.
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> And dust devils.
Note to NASA: Please include a video camera and microphone on a future rover. It would be interesting to experience the sounds of Mars - well, as much as the thin atmosphere would allow. Is it practical? It's as practical as anything else the rover does on a rock which at its absolute closest to us is about 34 million miles away from us, and which we will never set foot on because we do not fund NASA well enough. It would also be interesting to see temperature and wind speed posts o
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you have to be absolutely damned certain that there's no local life to screw up.
Well, no you don't actually. We may want to, or choose to, but we don't have to. It's more likely that we'd find life there and use that as an argument in favor of moving there. If Mars is shown to support any kind of life, it will radically change the way we as a culture view our place in the universe, and likely touch off some sort of mass effort to spread ourselves around, alien bacteria, lichens, ichthyoids, and the rest be damned. It'll be Manifest Destiny all over again.
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Welcome to the real world of science - it's not a video game, and it's nothing like Star Trek or the Discovery Channel would have you believe. It's deadly fucking dull and repetitive. It barely makes for decent writing and doesn't make decent TV at all.
But, it's how we (as a species) learn things. If you can figure out a better way, your name will be celebrated through the ages.
If you insist that we have to keep trying new and shiny things just to keep you excited, you're part of the problem, not part of
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It's deadly fucking dull and repetitive.
Bullshit. It's the most interesting thing there is.
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It's deadly fucking dull and repetitive. It barely makes for decent writing and doesn't make decent TV at all.
Which is why the space scientist is the cheapest part of a space science mission. People really love that deadly dullness and work cheap to get it.
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Which is why some astronomers join garage bans and play gigs [bbc.co.uk] to pay for the doctorate in the field they're passionate about. ;)
What I want to know is (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want to know is.. when are they going to send a rover or lander which can test for biology? Like the viking landers from the 70s.. since then they've completely avoided sending any biology experiments to mars... despite finding water and other organic chemicals?
And yes, as someone else pointed out, why not make use of economics of scale and make multiple identical rovers and send them to multiple different places on the planet? It worked for Spirit and Opportunity, and instead of wasting so much money designing and building a new rover from scratch every time, build a more modular one and send many of them... even 1 every few years if 2 at once is too expensive. Modular so different experiences can be swapped in or out thus creating slightly different configurations or upgraded models ?
Why design and build from scratch every time and not just design a reliable base model, a lot like the Soyuz, and just slowly evolve it over time or fly it in slightly different configurations? I know a Soyuz capsule is nothing like a mars rover, but a soyuz capsule is human rated and still cheaper than a freaking rover. The same concepts could be applied.
Re:What I want to know is (Score:5, Informative)
Because when it comes to rovers the technology is already advancing at such a rate that by the time they are flight certified and ready to go they look like a model T Ford in comparison to the stuff being played with in the development labs.
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You don't get much economy of scale until you're building them practically on an assembly line - which doesn't make much sense considering that you need to incorporate the science and engineering lessons learned into subsequent models. Those changes eat up most of any possible savings unless you're churning them out in the double digits ann
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> You don't get much economy of scale until you're building them practically on an assembly line - which doesn't make much sense considering that you need to incorporate the science and engineering lessons learned into subsequent models. Those changes eat up most of any possible savings unless you're churning them out in the double digits annually.
Which we do not want to do, considering how quickly technology is advancing. I'd rather the little funding we do provide NASA go into the latest and greatest
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If current technology allows them to include suitable test equipment right ON the rovers themselves, it seems silly to work around a premise of collecting samples with one missions device, and then working out a means of sending a SECOND device to not only be able to escape Mars' gravity well but also re-enter the earths atmosphere, land, get collected, and be secured by the mission planners to THEN do tests on. OR only slightly better, send a secondary lab rover designed to retrieve the samples and be able to perform tests on them there with the potential of failure of either device pooching the entirety of both mission segments.
I would call the idea of two probes, one to collect samples and one to ship them to Earth, a brilliant, well-thought division of labor. Testing Mars samples on Earth will be a huge advance in science and worth the complexity and risk of this mission. Please keep in mind that one can make multiple copies of both sorts of probes and resend either one, if it fails.
Enough rovers (Score:2)
economics (Score:2)
Let's remember that this second mission is sort of a freebie.
Certainly they have a COMPLETE second mockup of the rover at NASA for troubleshooting, and *often* they have a third unit because in the development stage building a third is almost cost free (generally multiple copies of each component are made as backups, if they're never used you have essentially a full third device waiting in parts bins).
So aside from the launch costs, the equipment is PROBABLY already paid for.
Further, it's not a bad idea to
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Um, I got ahold of the new rover plans... (Score:2)
. ~ Ah, yes, well, when we did that "big reveal" this week, we didn't reveal everything. Loose lips and all that.
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