[PLUG-TALK] Mars lander Curiousity, OMSI Sunday Night Aug 5

[Ronald Chmara]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Russell Senior
<russell at personaltelco.net> wrote:
>>>>>> "Ronald" == Ronald Chmara <ronabop at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Keith> The landing is one of the most elaborate kludges I've ever
> Keith> seen.  It will be a miracle if it works.
>
> Ronald> They lost me at the "sky-crane" portion of the landing. Too
> Ronald> many points of untested technology, let alone autonomous
> Ronald> untested technology.
>
> Is it really untested?  I mean, I'd test the crap out of that
> (obviously not under mars atmosphere/gravity) before I actually tried
> to rely on it.

Yeah, that's kind of my point. I'm guessing they could test
atmospheric rocket burn by creating a chamber with the right
atmosphere mix, but gravity.... sucks. If they over-calculate, they
stay too high before the fuel burns out, too low, and we've burnt
millions (billions?) on making a new crater in the surface of mars.
And that's just the rocket portion of the sky-crane idea, let alone
the deployment issues.

-Ronabop