The Mars Curiosity thread

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[Rum]

I've seen this in bits but never all at once. Amazing what they managed to do.

BUT..no sound in space please!

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I've seen this in bits but never all at once. Amazing what they managed to do.

BUT..no sound in space please!

It carries with it a field of air for sound waves to travel through. Also no external cameras in space, but it makes it a lot more interesting the way it is now

[Dries van Tonder]

lifeonmars.jpg (14.98 KiB) Viewed 431 times

[Dries van Tonder]

brace.jpg (25.45 KiB) Viewed 429 times

[klr]

Curiosity is on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity

[Twoflower]

Maybe it was because I was really tired, but this cracked me up

Curiosity Rover ‏@MarsCuriosity
I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL

[Wumbologist]

Still say it could have been done with airbags cheaper and less risky. They should have skidded it on the upper atmosphere to slow it down and then used airbags. Just because base jumping works 90% of the time doesn't mean it is smart.

I'm amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life

In an interstellar burst
I am back to save the universe

[Atheist-Lite]

Still say it could have been done with airbags cheaper and less risky. They should have skidded it on the upper atmosphere to slow it down and then used airbags. Just because base jumping works 90% of the time doesn't mean it is smart.

I'm amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life

In an interstellar burst
I am back to save the universe

It makes me doubt whether they actually landed. It seems implausible given the lack of airbags.

[Wumbologist]

I'm amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life

In an interstellar burst
I am back to save the universe

It makes me doubt whether they actually landed. It seems implausible given the lack of airbags.

Karma police, arrest this man.

[klr]

[mistermack]

Still say it could have been done with airbags cheaper and less risky. They should have skidded it on the upper atmosphere to slow it down and then used airbags. Just because base jumping works 90% of the time doesn't mean it is smart.

They definitely made full use of the atmosphere to slow the craft. They "skidded" until it was slow enough to deploy the parachute, and then used a huge parachute to reduce the speed as much as possible.
But there is a limit on Mars to how slow you can fall.
The atmosphere is virtually non-existent, compared to that of Earth. Even with a HUGE parachute, a one-ton vehicle is going to fall far too fast.
The damage from falling increases exponentially with weight. Babies and cats often survive falls from high-rise apartments, whereas adults are often killed when they fall from a first-floor window.
The difference between 200 kg, and 1,000 kg falling with airbags is vast.

What happens is that as you increase the weight, you would increase the impact speed, because of the practical size-limit of a parachute. Also, a heavier vehicle would have to be made much more robust, to survive the landing. That increases the weight still more, which increases the speed, and demands still more robustness. It's a vicious ever increasing circle.

There has to be a cut-off weight, that becomes impractical to land by air-bag. It's likely that the sort of weight that WAS feasible just wouldn't make a worthwhile mission.

Landing softly means that they can include more delicate equipment, a much bigger payload, and is also an excellent rehearsal for landing a human safely.
They have now proved that they can land a man safely on Mars. That could sway the funding decisions of the politicians in years to come.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Still say it could have been done with airbags cheaper and less risky. They should have skidded it on the upper atmosphere to slow it down and then used airbags. Just because base jumping works 90% of the time doesn't mean it is smart.

They definitely made full use of the atmosphere to slow the craft. They "skidded" until it was slow enough to deploy the parachute, and then used a huge parachute to reduce the speed as much as possible.
But there is a limit on Mars to how slow you can fall.
The atmosphere is virtually non-existent, compared to that of Earth. Even with a HUGE parachute, a one-ton vehicle is going to fall far too fast.
The damage from falling increases exponentially with weight. Babies and cats often survive falls from high-rise apartments, whereas adults are often killed when they fall from a first-floor window.
The difference between 200 kg, and 1,000 kg falling with airbags is vast.

What happens is that as you increase the weight, you would increase the impact speed, because of the practical size-limit of a parachute. Also, a heavier vehicle would have to be made much more robust, to survive the landing. That increases the weight still more, which increases the speed, and demands still more robustness. It's a vicious ever increasing circle.

There has to be a cut-off weight, that becomes impractical to land by air-bag. It's likely that the sort of weight that WAS feasible just wouldn't make a worthwhile mission.

Landing softly means that they can include more delicate equipment, a much bigger payload, and is also an excellent rehearsal for landing a human safely.
They have now proved that they can land a man safely on Mars. That could sway the funding decisions of the politicians in years to come.

Fortunately, the small size and mass of Mars (compared to the Earth) more than offsets the sparse atmosphere when it comes to making the landing possible. The surface gravity is just over 1/3 of Earth's, so things weigh 1/3 as much. On an Earth sized planet with a similarly rarified atmosphere, it would be dead metal, not to mention deeply buried, by now.

[FBM]

Real video (composite of stills) of the landing on the NASA website: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogal ... =149974611