Mars expidition¶
If this is really working , this is almost as spectacular than the first warp-flight at April 5th, 2063.
At August 5th 2012, Curiosity is supposed to land on Mars. Yet, that next-door neighbor you haven’t really payed attention to lately. Personally I think sending a probes to Mars is boring, but necessary. Why we haven’t sent humans there I don’t understand. It costs nothing compared to the finances that have been shoved around lately and is much cooler.
Anyway, if you should come up with a high spectacular way of landing a rover you’d probably need to involve flying at night, through clouds and three times around the planet or something. I’m looking forward to see the result on coming Sunday/Monday and will be surprised if it’s not working as planned.
A nuclear powered Robot,
over 1.635AU away,
protected with a heat-shield,
then dangling under the biggest and toughest parachute ever build,
hovering about the planet on Rocket-engines,
and letting it down on a crane while still hovering…
… what could possibly go wrong?
There a two nice clips to sum up what they are planning to do: Seven Minutes of Terror and shorter explanation from James T. Kirk.
Links:
Update 2012-08-06:
Yes, they’ve made it.