The liftoff was impressive - first Atlas V I've seen (on video unfortunately). The Centaur burn was perfect and separation of the vehicle was within 100th of a second of plan. So on August 6th we'll find out how it all works out. Keep your fingers crossed.

Holy cow! Science fiction is here.

That truly is one complicated landing procedure. I hope it works, too.

And just think, that little lander, at 2 1/2 billion is only half the cost of a nuclear carrier. Seems like a bargain to me. (Excuse me if I come across cynical, I probably read too much) We will see if we got a good thing in August.

I guess I was a bit shocked at the price tag as well.... nearly double Hubble (and we can't run up there and fix or upgrade like we could for Hubble). Much of this mission is devoted to discerning if there ever was life on Mars. A very large part of me couldn't care less if there ever was life on Mars - or anywhere else in the cosmos, for that matter. I can't remember who said it, but I'll paraphrase here - 'if there is other life out there, then that is awesome. If we are alone in the universe? Then that is awesome.'

I sure hope someone armed the altimeter 😀

I wonder how they deploy the chute(s)? Is it compressed gas or explosive? Or a big cocked spring that sits that way for 93,000,000 miles?
Was it the lowest bidder that made the e-matches? Is there redundacy? Is there a guarantee and we get our 2 1/2 billion back if it fails to work as promised. Or is the replacement cost of the Atlas V included? So many questions, so few answers. I do hope it works, but I am failing to see the value in this. What if there was life on Mars that no longer exists, what does that mean? And if there is existing life, what does that mean? How evolved is this life form? What does it do to the pucker factor? (And being very cynical today, what are the political implications of this? Is this to help us evolve into a one unified world government?)

And how does this fit into possible snow in the forecast for next Saturday with a high in the 30's and strong winds fit in to the mix. Now I am really cynical. No flying again. I may have to go to the farmland next door and fly a "G" today. 😡

A little dif. than the bouncy ball thing last time! 😉

If it doesn't work, you can blame me for part of that.

When I was working on the Mars Exploration Rovers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I got frustrated with how inefficient the airbag system was, in terms of $ and mass to get a small payload to the Mars surface. Previously I had worked on the Mars Polar Lander here in Denver (which evolved later into the Phoenix lander) and a study of terminal descent systems for a Mars Sample Return mission. It turns out that propulsive terminal descent is great for getting the landing velocity down, which saves a lot of mass on structures and energy absorption systems, but it's tough to deliver a rover with one. If the rover is on top of the system, then you need some kind of elaborate ramps or crane to get it off, and it gets top-heavy. Or if you try to put the propulsion system directly into the lander, it gets heavy and hurts the driving capabilities too much. There are some other difficulties with flying a prop system all the way to the ground, including soil excavation and landing detection/engine shutoff.

One day the idea come to me of lowering the rover straight to the ground from a propulsive descent stage. I took it to my boss, Rob Manning, who told me that the people who were working on the follow-on project after MER had considered that, but the idea didn't really take hold. Apparently I convinced him of the advantages, and it turned into the sky crane concept. I probably wasn't the first to come up with it, and I didn't contribute to the real implementation, but I think I gave it the right nudge at the right time.

Unlike airbags, which don't scale up well (Pathfinder was about the biggest payload you would want to deliver that way), the sky crane has the potential to become the standard way to deliver just about anything to the Mars surface, including human habitat modules, etc.

Now I just feel silly about my angst over how to anchor my recovery system. 😛

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Now, now, now; don't get your knickers in a wad. I agree with your sentiments. I grew up in Houston and I have seen the space program up close and personal. I have two cousins that work at MSC. One in astronaut training and she spends have her life in Russia training cosmonauts and astraonauts; the other in advanced propulsion system design. I am uninformed, so I do not know the reasons for why we needed to spend so much money on the search for life on a foreign/alien/ another planet. Sure it most closely resembles earth of the planets. I also deeply believe in GOD and know how unique the earth is and it's placement in the solar system and the size of our sun/star versus other stars make this a very unique place. Yet if one is to question priorities, and I am sure this decison to build this probe was made a decade or more back, during other administrations; the question might have been, should we not find something to duplicate and/or replace the shuttle? Seems that money could have gone a ways towards that end. Of course, I am admitting that I am a Monday morning arm-chair quarterback. I am also grateful for a successful launch of a beautiful rocket. These kinds of things are possibly not going to happen as often given the current politics. Those professional rocketeers did a great job, and just think, we are only two levells below them. Or for some in the club, only one level away. Model, highpower, amatuer, and professional.

As far as the landing system, if you can remember Rube Goldberg, it was complicated, it was difficult, and it wss funny, but it worked. My apologies for my cynicism from the day before. I am just concerned about our nation and it's future. 😕

Hey Guys,

Wow, is right! Thats very impressive, if you can dream it, Adrain and NASA can build it. I've been looking at upgradeing my computer, would you beleive they are upto 3 billion transistors on a 32 nano-meter chip-set, 😯 . and do you think the guys at Bell Labs, could see that coming? yeah, i never understood why NASA budget was so low compared to military budget. I would think, the group for Growing our future would get a much better percentage, there i go thinking again 😳

I have a study report from 1971 on the benefits of the space program and budgetary concerns. When the report was written those 4 decades ago, it was determined that the filter down in the economy worked out to be $125 for every dollar that was spent on the space program. It might be similar for a war. There was even talk back then of President Kennedy trying to do the same thing as a war without having one when he presented his speech that started the space race back in 1961 and the goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. I remember back in 1972 of getting an engineering notebook which contained a photograph of the eye of the eagle on a U.S. quarter coin and inside the eye was an integrated circuit. We were still writing computer code in Fortran and Cobal. Then the languages start flowing, so many to learn. Still using punch cards and IBM card sorters. I had Frederick Post slide rules for doing calculations and as an employee of Texas Instruments at the time where I worked my way through school as a machinist, getting the employee discount price of $150 for the 4 function data-math calculator which was bigger than my Droid X. WOW

Gosh, 3Dogs, I thought it was $.50 of every dollar and borrowing was now greater than the GDP, but I might be wrong. I too favor a balanced budget as you know, but I prefer that we start with entitlements for balancing the budget, and maybe some government programs or administrations (Part of the alphabet soup, EPA, OSHA DEA, BATFE, etc.) and we the people take care of the people in our own communities ourselves instead of allowing the governments to do it. Buy the way, what are you drinking and can I join you at the campfire for the discussion? 🙂

Getting back to the original topic....

Adrian: I appreciate your perspective and insight on this mission. It's interesting to hear about the pros & cons of the various approaches.

But, even speaking as an aerospace engineer -- wow, is that a complicated landing sequence!!!!! And, it's made vastly more complex by a) the need for 100% autonomy due to the light-time delay, and b) the impossibility of full-up testing due to the different gravity & atmospheres on Earth vs. Mars.

It seems to me that even an "old-style" lander (in the vein of Viking, or Apollo), though still complex, has the big upside of being basically a single system once the heat shield comes off. This sequence has so many different kinds of events, each based on so many different sensors and timed sequences....each requiring (I assume) redundant components....

Particularly in the very risk-averse climate that NASA and the rest of the industry operate in, I'm surprised that this landing approach was approved. Was the weight penalty of an "old-style" lander really that severe? I would think that the descent stage needs to carry nearly the same amount of fuel whether it hovers 60' above ground for a minute or so and then flies away vs. actually landing.