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I thought one of that devices explicit experimental purposes was to intentionally use relatively commodity hardware, still NASA-fied but not nearly as much as u

I thought one of that devices explicit experimental purposes was to intentionally use relatively commodity hardware, still NASA-fied but not nearly as much as usual, and see how far you can actually get with something relatively cheap and almost off-the-shelf. That's why it runs linux for instance. So an ordinary phone camera (relatively, relative to other nasa hardware) would be expected and deliberate. So it never had a goal to last as long as possible, it had a goal to see how long it lasts when you don't sink 100 million into every screw. I thought anyway.

johnwalkr 2y ago
That's correct. It's easy, especially in retrospect, to brainstorm every possible feature to make something like this more reliable, but it doesn't take much extra mass, power or development time to end up as a cancelled project. This project very deliberately a different approach under the premise that taking risks, learning, and being cheap enough to try again next time can yield a good result compared to the typical aerospace approach of trying to mitigate and test against every possible risk. It's especially justified in this case because ingenuity probably could not be designed to all the typical requirements and still fly.