Gut feeling... |
Gut feeling... |
May 22 2008, 08:15 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
Something I have not posted online before...
Back in 2003, as four spacecraft approached Mars, I wrote down on a piece of paper my guess (based on nothing more than public information & gut feeling) at what each craft's chance of success (either at landing or orbital insertion) might be. My guesses were: Nozomi: 15% Beagle 2: 20% MER A: 60% MER B: 60% Mars Express: 85% In 2005 I guessed that MRO had a 90% chance of success Now, in 2008, I'm going to put a figure on Phoenix. That figure is: 55% What do you think? Too low? Too high? |
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May 25 2008, 03:18 AM
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#2
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 2 Joined: 16-May 08 Member No.: 4113 |
I would like to point out that we try to learn from our failures.
When we lost a mission due to parts failures we improved our parts screening procedures. Navigation failures have lead to more precise nav techniques. Even the silly mistake that caused the MCO failure ("What d'ya mean there were no units in the file?!?") has lead to increased rigor in interface definitions. That being said, I have every confidence that if we do have a problem on Sunday evening, it will be something new and completely unexpected. The devils you know can be held at bay. It is the devil you don't know is the one that will bite you. The greatest threat to safe landing IMHO is uneven terrain. We are designed to accommodate a 16-degree slope. But we are still coming in without any obstacle avoidance. That risk is mitigated by careful site selection. The boulder distribution analysis puts the probability of an un-safe lander tilt on landing somewhere around 1%. Here is an interesting factoid. MCO lead to basically one lesson learned; Keep your units straight (sounds like we re-learned a high-school physics lesson, but let's not go there...). But MPL, by virtue of not revealing true root cause, has yielded more than a dozen lessons. And chief among them is; Leave the radio on all the way down (plasma black-out not withstanding). I find it strange that lack of root cause would make MPL a far better teaching tool. |
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