It’s amazing that, with all of the world’s technology, simply landing on the moon is still such a difficult task.
And people expect us to colonize other worlds? When is that going to even begin? I have absolutely no faith in a manned Moon mission at this point, let alone a manned Mars mission.
I would think manned missions would be slightly less prone to this type of issue. Having a person with a brain and hands next to the machinery means that minor issues that are impossible to solve from millions of miles away become trivial (ie. a connector comes loose: just put it back in, dust on the solar panel: wipe it off). It has its own set of dangers of course, but autonomous rover issues don’t necessarily translate 1:1 with manned missions.
Makes me think of that one mission (I think it was to Venus?) Where the camera's lens cap happened to land so that it obstructed a soil probe. So many dumb things like that that can just totally screw up an unmanned mission
The issue with a manned mission to the moon is still going to be dust. Moon dust is sharp and jagged due to the complete lack of weathering.
It was actually a huge problem for the Apollo missions.
One of the major hurdles of figuring out how to do a longer lunar mission is figuring out how to handle the dust. It can completely compromise the joints and seals of a standard space suit in about a dozen hours.
we’ve made iphones, yet the specifics of hurling an object thousands of miles away into space and having every little detail go right eluded us the first time we tried after a 50 something year hiatus. Curious. Let us abandon space altogether.
The beautiful and terrible thing about humans is no matter how dumb something may seem to such an educated mind as yourself, someone else’s dream is to make it a reality.
I’m not grasping how flying a helicopter on Mars takes the same sort of technology, software and control as landing a probe on Mars. But feel free to explain why they’re the same.
The point that you appear to be trying to make, is that it’s really difficult to successfully land probes on the Moon and Mars, and therefore have little faith in human missions to either.
I countered with the fact that NASA was able to fly a land based probe, and something as delicate as a helicopter on Mars, intact. That’s how good the landing was. That’s how good the entire mission has been so far. A rather solid counterpoint to your pessimistic viewpoint.
You seem to be under the impression that I’m touting flying a helicopter probe on Mars as equivalent to launching a probe. That’s a you problem, unrelated to my point.
I’m not grasping how flying a helicopter on Mars takes the same sort of technology, software and control as landing a probe on Mars. But feel free to explain why they’re the same.
Are you really unable to talk to me without being needlessly rude?
Mars does indeed have an atmosphere, which would be a requirement to generate lift with the propeller blades.
My point is that delivering something as delicate as a helicopter drone intact and functional on another planet is rather impressive, as far as space exploration goes.
@FlyingSquid@throws_lemy Most technology, especially computer and software technology, needs constant maintenance, repair, and bug fixing by skilled experts. It's hard to do that when the hardware cannot be accessed directly.
The state of software reliability should tell you everything you need to know about the difficulties of building and deploying complex/complicated systems.
At present, there's nothing valuable enough there to justify the enormous cost of a permanent settlement on another generally uninhabitable planet. It would either need to be for scientific purposes or intended as a long-term stepping stone to more distant destinations, either of which would operate at great financial loss and risk.
Unless we discover unobtanium in space it's a hard sell to leave the planet we're evolved to survive on and live somewhere there's no indigenous edible food, accessible water, or breathable atmosphere.
Their space program is generally regarded as fairly good to my understanding, they just operate on lower budgets.
In any case, wasn’t this mission only designed to last a couple weeks on the surface anyway? I could’ve sworn I remember reading that the probe wasn’t designed to survive the temperatures the moon reaches at night, and their attempts to recontact it were more or less a “it’s done it’s mission already, but if it happens to survive anyway, it’s an added bonus, so might as well check” sorta deal.
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