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The Beagle has landed

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by road-dog

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But no transmission home. So does anybody else think that there is some unknown force that is killing our probes?

I wonder at what point does space exploration end and interplanetary littering begin.

If there is sentient life there under the surface, what kind of impression are we giving them as neighbors in the solar system?

Should we send a manned mission if we cannot get a better success record with the unmanned program?

9 replies

by jardinier

to send the space shuttle on a junk collecting mission, say once a year? I would be guessing that the junk could also be a potential hazard to one of our own functioning satellites?

And what would our neighbours think? Possibly that the space junk is some kind of protection or filter to discourage aliens from approaching too closely?

Personally I believe that there is a strong likelihood that we have been visited in the past, as in "chariots of the God's" etc. I also consider that the two largest pyramids could not possibly have been designed or constructed by the knowledge and technology possessed by humans at that time.

by oz_media

The technology and human capabilities that seem to have been lost someewhere in our evolution.

Can you imagine how advanced we'd be if we had increased our own intelligence proportionately with time?

I won't even go into the reasons for my beliefs but this is a theory that, should it have received as much attention as biblical study, may have actually been proven right or wrong.

As for picking up space crap, we are told that it all eventually 'decompses' over time but it has caused major problems with OUR space exploration already.

Regarding manned missions, well obviously if we can't get some metal there, perhaps we're best not sending people there although, given the chance, I'd like to choose a crew or two for the trip.

Who knows, perhaps some higher intelligence (If you are humble enough to not think we are the most INTELLIGENT life form in the universe)may have even been trying to study OUR solar system and they've intercepted the signals from Mars.

They probably think we live in horrible conditions and look like Mechano toys with tracks.

We could build a manned shuttle to mars on a clean up mission and have them carry garbage bags and tongs; Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, G.W.Bush, Martha Stewart, Michael Flatley for starteres, with a second crew close behind.

by hal 9000

Ever get built we just might stand a chance to send a manned mission to Mars but in the mean time we are sought of stuck with the little machines and since we are only guessing what they will encounter on descent it all remains guess work and there is little hope of finding out what really happened to the last of many robots that have been sent there. Perhaps the athmosphere isn't as dence as thought so the braking system didn't work as planed and it burried itself in the ground, lots of posibilities but very few answeres and until we ger several sucessfull unmanned missions under our belt there is no reason to send man there as we wouldn't know what to expect and even if they could descend safely.

While I hope that things will work out for this mission even if it doesn't it is all knolledge which will eventually build up to a stage where a sucessful mission/s will be performed and then we will be able to send humans there to have a look around. But what I would like to know is did the thing work before it was deployed in its descent to the Martian Surface?

Maybe its just me but I think they are leaving far too much to chance in these missions in an attempt to save a few dollars and as a result they are wasting far more money than they would have if they had done the job properly in the first place.

Or then again maybe the battery in the mobile phone fell out on impact or they forgot to pay their phone bill.

by richard.s

In the UK, the BBC has just repeated the hysterical Sci-Fi radio series "Space Force."

In this, the brave explorers reach Mars and are promptly kidnapped by the ancient Egyptian residents of a Martian pyramid.

Perhaps Beagle 2 has met a similar fate?

by generalist

We might get a better success record if we launched missions from low Earth orbit, aka LEO.

The technique of designing deep space missions so that the entire package survives launch from the Earth's surface has some serious flaws in it. You have to design the package so that it handles high G for the first fifteen minutes or so and then converts to zero G for the rest of the trip. Experience has shown that the stress of the launch can damage a mission very early on.

If exploration probes were made out of highly modular components that could be assembled in a construction oriented space station, they could be pretested before launch. Better still, they could have a greater number of redundant systems on board because there would be fewer volume problems to consider since you wouldn't have to pack the probes in a very confined space for launch.

Imagine sending a space shuttle sized probe with multiple landers and multiple mother ship modules on board. If one part fails you have lots of backups.

Now the modular parts will have to be designed to handle the launch from Earth to LEO. But they could be put in well designed shipping containers that would be used as construction material for other projects.

by road-dog

Imagine what the news would say if we were on the receiving end of such a visit. A large spacecraft enters orbit and then starts bombarding the surface of the planet with inscrutible devices.

Would this be interpreted as aggression?

Your assertion has promise. I would make the mothership have a good visual, thermal, and radar package that would track the probes through entry and landing. Failed landers would be replaced after landing problems were compensated for by controlling angle and descent speed.

The orbiting mothership could also drop probes on targets of interest such as storms and geologic oddities.

by jardinier

Perhaps it would be be possible to install a "black box" flight recorder, self powered and virtually indestructable.
It would have the capacity to transmit during and after the landing.

It could transmit sounds like "crunch" or "glug" to identify the type of surface material which had arrested its descent.

We might also learn some basic Martian language as the inhabitants gleefully got stuck into their unexpected feast.

by hal 9000

Ever made contact or if it is just a pile of junk on the Martian surface now?

Seems that all media coverage has ceased here.

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