We have even figured out aviation on mars so thats kinda cool :D
Comment on we are creators
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoFifty years later we have reached mars with drones and created space probes to expand our knowledge of space.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Mirshe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No no, it’s cooler than that. We tried out aviation on Mars to make sure we figured out how to do aviation on Titan.
happydoors@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Goddamn that’s so fucking cool
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Ngl I’m fucking stoked about the potential exploration of the Jovian moons
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Incidentally, that mission was one of those surprising successes. The drone they sent was really barebones so it could tag along on another mission. Nobody expected it to work all that well. It ended up working incredibly well and got used far beyond its planned mission until its rotor blades broke.
Now the team gets to build a real one.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Yeah its a great story. I watched the Veritasium vid about it and its so much cooler when you hear the backstory. www.youtube.com/watch?v=20vUNgRdB4o
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I’m not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
SpaceX had a brilliant track record for safety with their novel reusable rocket boosters. Even the first couple of Starship prototypes were incredibly successful, massively exceeding mission goals.
Unfortunately Musk seems to have entirely lost the sauce and is killing all of his companies, diving into conspiracy nonsense while finding an incredibly unpopular election campaign, hitting the federal government and tanking the economy by single handedly raising the national unemployment rate through expensive and unnecessary layoffs. And during that same time Starship has become incredibly unreliable with prototypes not only failing to reach orbit but even exploding on the pad before attempting liftoff.
Meanwhile competitors are popping up around the world trying to recreate SpaceX’s falcon rocket boosters, and many are starting to achieve success. Musk could have owned space but instead gestures wildly at everything and nothing in particular
Musk should have stepped down from all of his companies about 5-10 years ago and let them continue on without him. Maybe he’d run a funky tiny/manufactured home startup to try to “disrupt housing” or an online healthcare startup to try to “disrupt healthcare” or maybe he’d be running a drone startup to “disrupt warfare” or maybe he’d just sale off into the sunset impregnating as many women as he can convince to carry his kids while shitposting away on twitter
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The Falcon series would be very limited for a moon mission. The Saturn V could get 47 metric tons into a trans lunar injection. Falcon 9 can get about 27 metric tons into GTO–not even to TLI (which isn’t even listed in public information I could find, though one random Reddit post claims 3 metric tons). The Apollo lander was 17 metric tons, and it could take two people and a rover for a little tour on the surface. We can maybe shave some of that weight off with a new design, but probably not by half or anything really significant like that.
If we want to go back to the moon, it should be for more than taking pictures and picking up some rocks. You may not even be able to do that with a Falcon rocket.
NASA doesn’t exactly rely on Starship for this, though. SLS does technically exist. It’s just expensive, took far too long to build, and should probably be written off. Bezos might have something coming up, but who knows. Still relying on another space billionaire either way.
nuko147@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Actually the rate of major mission launches and new “firsts” was highest in the late 60s/70s, slowed significantly in the 80s/early 90s, and resumed at a moderate and consistent pace from the mid-90s until today (although today missions became far more complex and focused on detailed science rather than just achieving things).
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
We need some kind of automated workshop on Mars. Send a boatload of refined materials up there and a small autofactory that can craft marginally useful gear and replacement parts.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
First, we need an autofactory. This is not a minor step.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
We need a hardened autofactory, capable of self-repair and or serious fault tolerance.
Power, protection, temperature stability, something capable of 3d printing without a lot of finish work. How cool would it be to print a new wheel for a rover and install it? Imagine rovers being delivered batteries and solar panels by mini helis…
It’s sci-fi for now, but not impossible.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s absolutely possible, quite likely now. It would probably be too big a project to do anywhere but earth and maybe the moon right now. But the doors it would open if completed…
floo@retrolemmy.com 3 weeks ago
Actually, we first reached Mars with the Viking series of probes in 1976. Then there was a whole lot of time where we didn’t do anything before we started again with Mars in the 90s.
torres@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Damn those Vikings, they’re always first