5 ms·

Its an expensive CI process!! Next iteration is in 2 years! ;-)

dogma1138 10y ago
Next one needed data from this one so it might be pushed back. It's another strike, it's actually weird how much success the US had at landing on mars. The Russians have constantly failed at doing so.
- Sharlin 10y ago
  "Fortunately" the ExoMars rover was already pushed back to the next launch window in 2020 for unrelated reasons.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  > it's actually weird how much success the US had at landing on mars Meanwhile in this universe : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer
  - skykooler 10y ago
    Sure, there's been a bunch of failures. But we also landed 5 landers successfully. That's pretty successful, compared to other attempts.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    Some of it may come from a different engineering culture. There is an argument that the Russians have better launch vehicles and engines because they were willing to take a more rapid prototype approach and blow up a relatively large number of engines to get the kinks worked out. The US took a more conservative approach with fewer but more highly engineered engines that ended up being less efficient than some Russian designs. The problem is that you can't do rapid prototyping on Mars landers, each iteration is just too expensive. This is where the US approach works better. As for the ESA, I have no idea. Hopefully they got enough data out of the lander before it crashed to figure out what went wrong exactly.
    - pinewurst 10y ago
      I'm not sure I agree with that argument. At least comparing specific impulses of Proton and Soyuz vehicle engines with (older, pre-Russian engined) Delta and Atlas shows the latter are often significantly higher. That's not to say the Russians haven't done good engines but RD180 for example is derived from the Energia engines which didn't have (at least publicly) lots of trials/failures.
    - btilly 10y ago
      Well, SpaceX is taking the rapid prototyping/incremental improvement idea to a new level, and intends to land on Mars. Their first attempt or three are likely to fail. But would you care to bet on whether SpaceX or the US government will have successfully landed more spacecraft on Mars within 30 years? (Elon plans to be living there long before then.)
    - mturmon 10y ago
      Some of those failures happened during the faster, better, cheaper era at NASA, in which taking on more risk was not a deal-breaker. The pendulum has swung back. For more context, see: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/35/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/35/1
  - magicalist 10y ago
    > Meanwhile in this universe well the GP said "landing", so that disqualifies your mention of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Observer, and Deep Space 2 was carried by the Mars Polar Lander, so that really only counts as one loss. The statement was not "it's actually weird how US has only had success at landing on mars". It's still difficult to land things on another planet. The expense and the distance limit quick iteration. So...pretty successful, yeah.
ccozan 10y ago
I am pretty sure that they simulated a lot this descent. This failure means they do not have (yet ) the correct modell. Or the descent sequence has to many variables and any slight change might propagate down the computation to a larger deviation ( like the exact time to stop the thrusters - seems they stopped earlier than needed ). Or we need to load more advanced algorithms/AI software that decides and computes a local solution. At this moment, we don't really know.

Next one needed data from this one so it might be pushed back. It's another strike, it's actually weird how much success the US had at landing on mars. The Russians have constantly failed at doing so.

Sharlin 10y ago
"Fortunately" the ExoMars rover was already pushed back to the next launch window in 2020 for unrelated reasons.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
> it's actually weird how much success the US had at landing on mars Meanwhile in this universe : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer
- skykooler 10y ago
  Sure, there's been a bunch of failures. But we also landed 5 landers successfully. That's pretty successful, compared to other attempts.
- jandrese 10y ago
  Some of it may come from a different engineering culture. There is an argument that the Russians have better launch vehicles and engines because they were willing to take a more rapid prototype approach and blow up a relatively large number of engines to get the kinks worked out. The US took a more conservative approach with fewer but more highly engineered engines that ended up being less efficient than some Russian designs. The problem is that you can't do rapid prototyping on Mars landers, each iteration is just too expensive. This is where the US approach works better. As for the ESA, I have no idea. Hopefully they got enough data out of the lander before it crashed to figure out what went wrong exactly.
  - pinewurst 10y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with that argument. At least comparing specific impulses of Proton and Soyuz vehicle engines with (older, pre-Russian engined) Delta and Atlas shows the latter are often significantly higher. That's not to say the Russians haven't done good engines but RD180 for example is derived from the Energia engines which didn't have (at least publicly) lots of trials/failures.
  - btilly 10y ago
    Well, SpaceX is taking the rapid prototyping/incremental improvement idea to a new level, and intends to land on Mars. Their first attempt or three are likely to fail. But would you care to bet on whether SpaceX or the US government will have successfully landed more spacecraft on Mars within 30 years? (Elon plans to be living there long before then.)
  - mturmon 10y ago
    Some of those failures happened during the faster, better, cheaper era at NASA, in which taking on more risk was not a deal-breaker. The pendulum has swung back. For more context, see: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/35/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/35/1
- magicalist 10y ago
  > Meanwhile in this universe well the GP said "landing", so that disqualifies your mention of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Observer, and Deep Space 2 was carried by the Mars Polar Lander, so that really only counts as one loss. The statement was not "it's actually weird how US has only had success at landing on mars". It's still difficult to land things on another planet. The expense and the distance limit quick iteration. So...pretty successful, yeah.

ccozan 10y ago

I am pretty sure that they simulated a lot this descent. This failure means they do not have (yet ) the correct modell. Or the descent sequence has to many variables and any slight change might propagate down the computation to a larger deviation ( like the exact time to stop the thrusters - seems they stopped earlier than needed ). Or we need to load more advanced algorithms/AI software that decides and computes a local solution. At this moment, we don't really know.