Ok, after watching the video on Space.com, I’m not too confident this is going to work out.
It is like trying to land a bullet in space on a banana running at full speed without bruising the skin.
I hope they did some extensive testing for that 2.5 billion dollars.
Well, they certainly did the testing/simulations, but it is very complicated sequence of operations, almost seems Rube Goldberg or overly ambitious science fiction. Lots of individual probabilities for failures and those are multiplicative.
One is tempted to say they should have gone simple. But then the Russians, who have an excellent reputation for straightforward, no-frills engineering in air force applications, have a very poor record on Mars missions.
So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see whether NASA can pull it off. It will be a real kick if they do and another national deflator if they don’t.
Personally, if it were up to me, I probably would have gone with about three small and simple rovers in a single payload which would separate and land independently (using airbags, etc.). But I hope the NASA approach succeeds.
“Ok, after watching the video on Space.com, I’m not too confident this is going to work out.
It is like trying to land a bullet in space on a banana running at full speed without bruising the skin.”
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Not to worry—they had some VERY COMPETENT conservative/Republican engineers and IT programmer/developers involved in the nitty-gritty details. So it has a reasonable chance of succeeding.
And, if it does succeed, big time props will be due for all involved. I guess NASA doesn’t yet have ALL of its staff and contractors dedicated to promoting belief in the global warming cult and increasing Muslim self-esteem.
Yep, they are really not sure that it will work . . . Maybe a billion dollar trash pile on Mars . . . sumthun from America.
The Martians will see the mess, get real mad that we are throwing our trash in their front yard . . .
and voila! Mars attacks!
It landed. So what do you think now?