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Fortunately they have redundant machines. I suspect they'll figure it out. It does sound funny that they wouldn't just have thrown a few more SSDs on there, bu

Fortunately they have redundant machines. I suspect they'll figure it out. It does sound funny that they wouldn't just have thrown a few more SSDs on there, but then again this is a space probe. When my SSD fails I get mad because I'm forced to waste three whole hours traveling to the Apple Store for warranty service. Curiosity's Apple Store is a bit farther away. Their storage has to be radiation-hardened, guaranteed to last through the mission, have minimum weight, consume minimum power, avoid overheating under extremely weird environmental conditions… It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things.

nitrogen 14y ago
It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things. This is why I really like the idea of sending vast numbers of lightweight probes built with consumer- and/or industrial-grade components. If some of them fail completely, it doesn't matter too much, because there are a dozen others on the same mission.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  That was the idea behind the NASA's "Faster better cheaper" experiment. But it didn't work out much The problem is that you need a lot more confidence than making something and hoping it works. Of course NASA would save a lot of money (and face) if they went 100% metric, still...
- javajosh 14y ago
  That may become feasible when launch costs decrease. But when it costs $10k a pound to get stuff into orbit (and probably much more to get it to Mars) it pays to be conservative about the payload.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I hate to be the bearer of good news, but launch costs these days is more like $4k/lb. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301
    - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
      Why are Soviet and Chinese rockets half as cheap to launch per pound than comparable American and European rockets? What are they trading off?
      - luriel 14y ago
        Somewhat surprisingly and quite sadly, they are mostly trading off bureaucracy.
    - javajosh 14y ago
      That reference states that it's about $4k for low earth orbit, $10k for higher orbit (geosynchronous transfer orbit). So the cost to get a pound to Mars is certainly >$10k.
- kristoffer 14y ago
  Most commercial/industrial/military grade components will break permanently after a short while (weeks) due to charge deposit from impacting ions, or from ion induced short circuit. They will also malfunction regularly because of soft errors caused by the radiation (this could at least be solved with different types of redundancy).
- Sharlin 14y ago
  That's all well and good until you want to get some real science done. The kinds of instruments carried by Curiosity are expensive and their science output cannot really be achieved by a number of cheaper alternatives. Quantity does not always compensate for quality. Besides, in that kind of an environment it doesn't really matter how many probes you send if the electronics aren't massively rad-hardened--every one of them is pretty much guaranteed to fail sooner rather than later.

nitrogen 14y ago

It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things. This is why I really like the idea of sending vast numbers of lightweight probes built with consumer- and/or industrial-grade components. If some of them fail completely, it doesn't matter too much, because there are a dozen others on the same mission.

raverbashing 14y ago
That was the idea behind the NASA's "Faster better cheaper" experiment. But it didn't work out much The problem is that you need a lot more confidence than making something and hoping it works. Of course NASA would save a lot of money (and face) if they went 100% metric, still...
javajosh 14y ago
That may become feasible when launch costs decrease. But when it costs $10k a pound to get stuff into orbit (and probably much more to get it to Mars) it pays to be conservative about the payload.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I hate to be the bearer of good news, but launch costs these days is more like $4k/lb. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301
  - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
    Why are Soviet and Chinese rockets half as cheap to launch per pound than comparable American and European rockets? What are they trading off?
    - luriel 14y ago
      Somewhat surprisingly and quite sadly, they are mostly trading off bureaucracy.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    That reference states that it's about $4k for low earth orbit, $10k for higher orbit (geosynchronous transfer orbit). So the cost to get a pound to Mars is certainly >$10k.
kristoffer 14y ago
Most commercial/industrial/military grade components will break permanently after a short while (weeks) due to charge deposit from impacting ions, or from ion induced short circuit. They will also malfunction regularly because of soft errors caused by the radiation (this could at least be solved with different types of redundancy).
Sharlin 14y ago
That's all well and good until you want to get some real science done. The kinds of instruments carried by Curiosity are expensive and their science output cannot really be achieved by a number of cheaper alternatives. Quantity does not always compensate for quality. Besides, in that kind of an environment it doesn't really matter how many probes you send if the electronics aren't massively rad-hardened--every one of them is pretty much guaranteed to fail sooner rather than later.