Posted on 06/07/2008 9:48:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin
ping
Yeah, like making it to Blockbuster before closing time but forgetting to bring the DVDs you need to return.
Sigh...I wouldn’t be surprised.
Perhaps Mr. Davis knows the answer to that.
spaceflightnow.com
An image beamed back to Earth from the Phoenix Mars lander early Saturday shows the platform’s robotic arm has dumped a load of dirt near the opening of a tiny high-temperature oven, but a sensor inside the instrument did not detect any soil traveling through the narrow portal.
This particular lander has no capability to ‘move’ anywhere.
“Yeah, like making it to Blockbuster before closing time but forgetting to bring the DVDs you need to return.”
Are you serious? They have 7 other test units plus all of the other items they have. This is like sending a complicated scientific experiment 100 millions miles and realizing there is a minor glitch based on information you learned after arrival.
Thanks for clarifying that — soil, it is then.
No, like driving your car across the country by remote control and missing the slot in the return by 1/4" the first time you try. So you'll try again in a while.
Why are you and some of the other folks on here so negative about an amazing feat of technology? I wonder if Michelle Obama was ever proud of NASA.
Did you happen to notice that was a quote from another poster. Thats what the “” meant.
I agree with you as you should know from my posts on this thread.
Sorry. I realized that at the time, but sent it to the wrong person. I guess I was a bit foggy after getting home after a long day of driving.
So it's the soil's fault.
Okie dokie.
It's on pads, not wheels; it can't 'drive' anywhere.
i seems ignorant to me as well for people to criticize this effort as if its driving down to blockbuster.
No, it's not the soil's fault, it's just a fact. It is clear they have a method for dealing with this. The whole point is no one has every seen this soil, so it could range from powder, to sandy, to gravel, to clay, and mixes of these. This stuff happens to clump together, so it isn't as simple as it were loose sand. (If I dug a chunk of my beautiful, black topsoil out and put it on a screen, very little would fall through since it is a bit damp. If I jiggle the screen, it will start to break down and some will come through.) If it had been sandy, it would have gone through the screen. Since it is clumpy, they have a vibration system that will jiggle it around and grind off some find bits that will fall through the screen.
It's kind of like hiring a contractor to give an estimate over the phone for digging out a basement. He can't do that. He has to come find out what is under the surface. Soft dirt? Sand? Clay? Shale? Solid rock? The difference is that he can drill and test it easily. NASA has a slight disadvantage being tens of million of miles away. Why are so many people trying to make them out as stupid guys who never imagined that the soil might be stiff and have no solution to the problem?
Remember the Mars rover that got stuck last year? They unstuck it. Remember those same rovers that were intended for a short mission? They far surpassed that due to superior American engineering. Do they make mistakes? Yes. Do they do things no one else has done? All the time.
We get pissed when the left criticizes our military for every little incident or mistake, but some people want to jump all over NASA before the experiment is even finished. NASA has played an important part in our national defense. They are on our side. Any country in the world would gladly trade their space program with ours just as they would trade their military.
Let's give them a bit of time to complete the process they planned before we jump all over them. Some people here are sounding like Harry Damn Reid. "The surge failed. We've lost the war in Iraq." "Well, the dirt didn't go through the screen on day one. So, the mission is a failure. All is lost." I'm not USMC, but I was in the Army in the early 70s and never left the US. My part was small but it burns me no end when people jump on the military or trash our country or burn our flag. NASA is a tiny piece of that flag, just as each of us is. Until they are taken over by the muzzl'ems, I'm glad they're on my team.
Any vibration tool without a "jackhammer" setting is useless.
If they vibrate the thing, it will wear off enough grains (1 millimeter or less) to go through the screen. They don’t need to pulverize the stuff. If they did, they would have built in a crusher.
Do you really think they didn’t try this thing out on as many different kinds of soil as they could find? Do you think they didn’t consult soil experts to see what they thought?
If it was a private venture ... no problem. But if it was another taxpayer funded boondoggle I can see this almost one billion dollar investment far better spent on something like the Veterans Administration for our wounded troops.
Scooping dirt with a fancy erector set ain't my idea of money well spent ... especially tax payer money.
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