NASA's "Green" Lander Crashes and Burns

Not everything in space exploration can go 100% flawless. Shit does happen, but this will be another example cited by people who say NASA is 100% useless.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Not everything in space exploration can go 100% flawless. Shit does happen, but this will be another example cited by people who say NASA is 100% useless.
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The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
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You wouldn't last half a second at NASA. They'd laugh you out of there. Don't talk about things you could never understand.
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
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Science is trial and error. No way to find out until you actually do it. No way to find out if this thing was built and designed right until its put on the pad and tested. Apparently something wasnt designed or worked right which leads to a better design in the next one.
 
wabbitseason said:
You wouldn't last half a second at NASA. They'd laugh you out of there. Don't talk about things you could never understand.
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Yes I work at a place that has do something to survive and 'shit happens' would get you shown the door.. You might survive one maybe two if you had an awesome track record, but you would have a fraction of the responsibility for a long time. Just like most real jobs. We obviously need to bid this shit out to private contractor if you have have any connection to it.
 
I'd be happy as hell if this was the extent of our failures and we never had another Apollo 1, Challenger, or Columbia. It will happen, of course, but it is much better if those chances are potentially reduced by things going wrong with unmanned prototypes.
 
jpm100 said:
Yes I work at a place that has do something to survive and 'shit happens' would get you shown the door.. You might survive one maybe two if you had an awesome track record, but you would have a fraction of the responsibility for a long time. Just like most real jobs. We obviously need to bid this shit out to private contractor if you have have any connection to it.
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In case you haven't noticed, there is an SUV sized rover on the surface of another planet that uses satellites in that planets orbit to relay information to a spec in the sky millions of miles away. I would call that an accomplishment and getting something done.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Science is trial and error. No way to find out until you actually do it. No way to find out if this thing was built and designed right until its put on the pad and tested. Apparently something wasnt designed or worked right which leads to a better design in the next one.
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which is why I said could. Of course others flew off the handle. If this was a pure engine test, you could be right. If there was any other equipment onboard, they obvious weren't proving out the flight systems.. They assumed it worked.
 
Hey, i know I must be some kind of genius or something, but I took 3 seconds to look at other related videos and saw that there were earlier tether tests and whatnot.

My massive brain took this information and computationalized that something probably went wrong that they weren't expecting and that these guys at NASA weren't intending on just "blowing some shit up".

p.s. jpm you're making a few too many assumptions. Also private contracting would kill all the secret funding going to our X-COM agency. duh
 
I guess this is why it's still in the testing phase :p

But seriously, it's hard to see this as a failure. This is what testing is for. When it comes to space exploration, if there is no one dead, it's pretty much a success :D
 
Even a failure teaches us something. And I'm sure the rocket scientists will figure it out. I just wonder why they didn't have that sucker tethered to a crane so it couldn't do what it did. In the other videos of this lander it was always tethered.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Science is trial and error. No way to find out until you actually do it. No way to find out if this thing was built and designed right until its put on the pad and tested. Apparently something wasnt designed or worked right which leads to a better design in the next one.
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Yup, it is pretty much trial and error. That's all science really is. We wouldn't have stuff out of science like dynamite, vaccines, X-rays, and computers even. (And, less than ideal stuff out of science like nuclear weapons.)

Some things in science happen on accident but others require extensive testing-- both success and failure. Scientific method is a good way to put it.

For example, the "skycrane" idea used to land Curiosity on Mars didn't happen overnight. It took several years to figure out an effective landing system to put that 1 ton rover on Mars. Viking-style landers wouldn't cut it and would be prohibitively large (and expensive). Airbag deployment like with Pathfinder would damage Curiosity. Apollo-style landers would be too large and unbalanced in rough terrain. They went with an unconventional lander that's never been done before and tested it in simulation after simulation. They got proof that it works and works flawlessly when Curiosity landed. But, their job isn't done yet. According to this morning's news conference, the EDL (entry, descent, and landing) team is going to pore over every byte of data received during the EDL sequence over the next several months. And, they will use that data for future projects now that they know their system works.

The "Morpheus" lander, on the other hand, is designed to be a cost-effective, unmanned lander using just methane as the propellant. It is different from the skycrane lander which used both a tether system and 8 thrusters fueled by hydrazine. They're looking to use it to send objects to-and-from low earth orbit (LEO) to the Moon or Mars. With the amount of methane released by the ISS (International Space Station), they hope to maybe use the ISS as a fueling station. Someday it could be used to ferry supplies from LEO to Mars or the Moon to supply future astronauts living and working there.

It was successful during take off while tethered to a crane yesterday, and today wasn't successful while untethered. The team behind Morpheus will obviously look over the data and see what went wrong. Maybe the weight was unbalanced or the thruster pointed the wrong way, who knows? But, a lander that doesn't require hydrazine, which is very toxic to both humans and the environment, and hydrogen which is very combustible if exposed to an oxidizer, is a very lucrative prospect to consider.

It's just one failed test, so don't dismiss them just yet. It will take time to get things right. This isn't going to be used right away.

Everyone should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

It's something to consider first before complaining we're wasting money on NASA or when there's another failure during testing announced.
 
jpm100 said:
Yes I work at a place that has do something to survive and 'shit happens' would get you shown the door..
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You're under the misapprehension that crashing test vehicles is a terrible thing for NASA engineers to be doing. That isn't necessarily so.
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
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This was a prototype, NASA had problems about as bad with the Original Moon lander, the Apollo LEM, prototypes that crash are nothing new, the Air Force and Private contractors who made jet fighter aircraft in the 50's/60's would have crashes too, thankfully this one had no one aboard Her...

So try and be more understanding as this is a part of development, one has to learn how to fly all over again at NASA as the original Apollo LEM's blueprints were destroyed when the shuttle came along, so blaming NASA for this is wrong and misguided.
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
Click to expand...

It must be nice to work somewhere that your job is easy enough to not worry about what kinda shit can happen when 4,000 different systems, each designed by the lowest bidder, and paid for with a shoe-string budget, have to operate together to near perfection and do things no one has ever done before.
 
wonderfield said:
NASA has a shoestring budget?
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Well compared to other departments, I'd say yes. America doesn't value it's own ideas like it used to and would rather outsource to "poorer" countries. Funding for the Space Program contradicts this philosophy as it requires actual man hours from scientists here and that isn't cheap. It almost seems that yearly NASA's budget shrinks and coincidentally we also hear how America isn't innovating like it did from the Industrial Age until the 1990's.

I wonder why. :rolleyes:
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that this could be "another" example.

Must be nice to work in a workplace where 'shit happens' is consider an excuse no matter how often 'shit happens'.
Click to expand...

Only a moron like you would make a statement like this. This is why preliminary testing on concepts and ideas like the lander are needed. This was a test case. Something went wrong. Now they will go over the data and correct. Way to be clueless.
 
cageymaru said:
Well compared to other departments, I'd say yes. America doesn't value it's own ideas like it used to and would rather outsource to "poorer" countries. Funding for the Space Program contradicts this philosophy as it requires actual man hours from scientists here and that isn't cheap. It almost seems that yearly NASA's budget shrinks and coincidentally we also hear how America isn't innovating like it did from the Industrial Age until the 1990's.

I wonder why. :rolleyes:
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Coupled with the fact with the fact we "import" our scientists and engineers. It's been a trend the past few years, and you can read it on other sites, that a lot of new engineers and scientists are coming from outside the US. As American-built as Curiosity rover was, there is a good portion of the team that built it that came from Europe and other parts of the world. A few pieces of the equipment on the rover were built in places like Spain.

There was a comment or criticism by someone a few years ago that stated that we, the US, has stopped innovating or discovering new things. Add to our current educational system problems, we aren't setting standards high enough like we used to. Some, well many, blame stuff like "No Child Left Behind" laws where we put the standard of education too low and put too much emphasis on standardized testing.

The country isn't pushing for innovation as much as it used to, isn't pushing our students hard enough, isn't fostering and encouraging students to do great things anymore. You can argue with other educators who think there is nothing wrong with our education system but when you realize that less and less high school students are attending and graduating college, you know something is wrong there. Part of it is the rising cost of college tuition but the other half is that we're not pushing our students hard enough. Most college students according to a study a few years ago are foreign students, not Americans.

That's a sad fact to even think about.

Let's face it: Everyone is different and every person learns at different paces and have different ways of learning. Thanks to things like "No Child Left Behind," we've "equalized education" to the point everyone is treated the same regardless of their intellect and capabilities and their talent. Not every parent can afford to put their child in a private school or live in neighborhoods where the public school system gets a higher funding than lower income neighborhoods.

That's another thing that's wrong with our education system-- funding is lopsided as well as underfunded depending on what neighborhood or city you live in. A higher income city/neighborhood will get more funding than a lower income area because of the differences in property taxes. Property taxes, depending on your state and how it is done, determines how much funding your school gets. That is something I didn't know until a few years ago.

We've put more money into the second Iraq war based on nothing but lies and found no WMDs or any terrorists related to 9/11 than we have spent on NASA and our own education system combined. Depending on where you read it, the US has spent between $800 million to $2 billion dollars A DAY in Iraq whereas we've spent spent $2.5 billion on Curiosity rover and Mars Science Laboratory program alone.

It is something terribly wrong with this country.

This is good reading by the way:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-should-adopt-higher-science-education-standards

I found that article on /r/science on Reddit.

Best comments so far:
lxlqlxl 666 points 1 day ago (858|192)

Higher standards are not the solution, the system needs to have some significant changes. We are using a production line educational system, that just doesn't work that well any more.

--------------------

One last thing, yes it would be helpful to focus on other things, other than just the educational system, but most are societal based, and will not change without a significant catalyst. We need to make being smart, or intelligent something to work toward, or at least not seen as a negative. The current educational system does nothing to stop that. It is a peer driven social nightmare for the most part. People worrying more about how their ass looks in a pair of jeans than knowing the material. Notice I said, knowing the material, not cramming for a test. If you know the material, there is no need to cram. People are cramming, or doing what they can to pass the tests, while not actually taking in the material.
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grande_hohner 110 points 1 day ago (139|29)

Former teacher here, the teaching methodologies of 30-50 years ago (that raised up many, many, phenomenal thinkiners) are not necessarily invalid and useless - they just don't work as well with the youth of today. There are a multitude of reasons, among which are media/entertainment, parenting, and prevalent social attitudes. There are many problems, focusing on the education system alone is near useless - but many find the prospect of dealing with the other inputs a little less than appealing.
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spencerharmon 3 points 1 day ago (3|0)

We really need to reduce the number of students given to a teacher and allow those students to have direction in their own education. In our educational culture, we have the concept of "cramming," or memorizing a large volume concepts immediately before a test for the purpose of inflating a score. We accept this behavior as a trade for spending effort to actually comprehend a concept; we reward it with diplomas and degrees. The onus, however, is not on the student to ensure their own comprehension, but on the education system to stop preventing it.
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Another is to look up John Stossel's "Stupid in America" which I watched several years ago on ABC.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338#.UCWEgZ3E-1k

http://townhall.com/columnists/john...mportant_for_a_government_monopoly/page/full/

I remember in one episode where John Stossel took a standardized test from the US and showed it to some European students. These were tests that a lot of American students FAIL at yet were considered "easy" and "not hard" to European students.

Again, something is wrong there.

Also, many teachers, but not all of them, are also at fault with our current system. We need to embrace and award the teachers that push our students to better themselves, to learn, and to go farther. Most of the teachers I have done taxes for have actually personally told me that they look forward to their $80,000 a year pension. (And, yes, that is a standard pension payout for California teachers. I have not seen anything higher or lower than that.) Of the five teachers I've done taxes for, ONLY ONE was happy teaching and didn't care much he earned. The pension he said was just an extra perk because he had other investments to help retirement. The other four didn't talk about how much they liked teaching, it was just another paycheck for them. He was actually saddened he was retiring. I know people, teachers, need to earn money but students should come first.

And, above all, education starts at home. Parents are the first teachers a child will ever get. Many children in broken families or foster or adoptive families may not get that luxury but regardless who the parents are, they need to realize they are the first educators a child will have.
 
The difference between trial and error at NASA vs working at a bank or wherever the hell you work is that NASA is inventing something here, and you just work your job doing the same shit you do every day. It's pretty easy to say "you would get fired around here if you screwed up like that!" Thats because your screwup is not expected, since you have been trained what to do, like the monkey you are. NASA is doing things nobody has ever done before, so there are going to be a few mistakes.
 
I would imagine that is one of the most expensive fail youtube videos out there. :p

Though I think people are missing the point. There will be lot of investigations, possibly recorded data analysis etc and perhaps they will learn something from this. It's not a 100% failure.
 
It's funny really! Most people don't understand all the tech involved and what actually comes out of failure.

You tards typing on your Pc all negative comments. This would not even be possible without the Space Program and what we have done in the past!

Thank You Obama!
 
Wasn't it said it only cost $7. per person in the US to land the recent Mars Rover?
Some people have no clue.
 
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