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  • Duane Brocious April 7, 2011 at 8:34am

    Wake  me up when they get a boot print in the red dust.

  • Matt Darley April 7, 2011 at 2:08am
    Unfortunately, airbag systems don't scale particularly well to payloads of this size and mass. Besides, powered descent and landing isn't exactly new...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program
  • Duane Brocious April 6, 2011 at 10:12pm

    The airbag system worked fine. If it works, don't fix it.

    NASA gets ridiculous at times IMHO. There are many more important things for NASA to spend our money on, like improving heat-tile glue and the thermal range of O-rings. : (

  • Moderator
    Mark Harrison April 6, 2011 at 3:33pm
    All kidding aside, are there any existing vectored thrust quads currently?  It seems the control principles would be similar to helicopter-like quads, right?
  • Ken McEwan April 6, 2011 at 2:51pm
    NASA's successes far outweigh their failures. A lot of the current consumer electronics we use are a result of NASA research. What trash we leave on Mars is minute compared to what we have in Geostationary orbit around earth.
  • Paul Marsh April 6, 2011 at 2:33pm

    I guess NASA has gone Hollywood--sound in space.  I wonder why they did that?  Is it necessary to keep the attention of the masses?

    (If you didn't watch the video, they play sounds of rockets firing, stages separating, etc. all in outer space.)

  • Jack Crossfire April 6, 2011 at 2:21pm
    When it 1st came out, almost 10 years ago, we thought it would never work.  Now, maybe it'll work, if it's ever funded to completion.  John Carmack has had hovering rockets for 10 years, using GPS.  Maybe if they use video & somehow see through the rocket exhaust, it'll work.  They never said how it would be tested.
  • Moderator
    Mark Harrison April 6, 2011 at 2:07pm
    @Joe, not the thing with wheels, the thing flying in the air! ;-)
  • Joe Bloeski April 6, 2011 at 12:59pm

    Not very quad like, my car has four wheels so it must be a "quad" too. 

     

    The whole project seems overy complex and wasteful think of all the trash that is being dropped on the martian surface, heat shields, parachutes, shell, rocket quad etc.. .  If any one step fails the rover is going to get smashed and add to the trash total.  The original mars rover concept of the airbags seems much simpler and has less to go wrong.  All that trash needs a rocket to push it so that adds to the launch cost and increases the travel time to Mars.  NASA has had too many failures they need to keep things simple and light to have more successes.

  • Alex McEwan April 6, 2011 at 12:39pm

    Thats one large quad have you seen the size of Curiosity

     

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