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Cutting edge is always buggy, full stop. If you're sending millions of dollars worth of technology into space for 10 years, you want to be more than reasonably
by eric_h 12y ago
Cutting edge is always buggy, full stop.
If you're sending millions of dollars worth of technology into space for 10 years, you want to be more than reasonably sure it will still work when it gets where it's going.
That is simply not something you can be reasonably sure of with "cutting edge" technology.
- unclebucknasty 12y agoWell, I didn't literally mean cutting edge as in first one ever made. I just meant best reliable technology of the time, which 10 years ago was certainly much better than what we are seeing.
- eric_h 12y agobest reliable technology capable of withstanding 10 years in ~ absolute zero while being bombarded with radiation? I'm pretty sure they would still need technology that was "best reliable tech" many years before the launch (and had been tested in space).
- unclebucknasty 12y agoI think you may be overestimating the complexity of hardening. It's something we do very well. Consider Hubble, manned missions, and also the probes that have journeyed much farther out than Earth's orbit. Hard to imagine that simply upping the image resolution would pose a major hurdle in that arena. BTW, the solar panels upon which Rosetta relied to make the journey were pretty cutting edge. And Rosetta is the first mission to go beyond the asteroid belt relying only on solar power. Had they failed, the entire mission would have failed.
- unclebucknasty 12y agoMore specifically, I should say underestimating our ability to harden. Feel free to downvote this.