MSL development & assembly, Until it's shipped to the Cape Options

[climber]

In case you missed it there's 9 minutes on MSL (actual hardware visible) + 5 minutes with Dr Elachi on "This week in Space" there: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/
14 minutes out of 23 regarding Unmanned, not bad.

[Drkskywxlt]

I admire their confidence. I hope it's warranted. I have no technical expertise to cast doubt on it.

If I were in their shoes, I'd have to be supremely confident to set my mission baseline at sampling so many targets. I'd rather aim lower, particularly with a never-flown before instrument and then have it overperform. Same way the MERs were only baselined for 600m and 3 months. Steve Squyres himself said in his book he thought they'd be able to go longer, but didn't want to oversell.

MOLA is not in the same class as ChemCam. MOLA had a much higher TRL when it flew with a long heritage. Although LIBS technology is well established, it has never flown in space before.

[ugordan]

I'd rather aim lower, particularly with a never-flown before instrument and then have it overperform.

The point is, what makes you think they aren't being conservative in their estimates?

I have no technical expertise to cast doubt on it.

So why do it in the first place, then?

[Drkskywxlt]

The point is, what makes you think they aren't being conservative in their estimates?

Maybe they are. Each target obviously takes time to identify, prepare the system, fire, analyze the results, possibly fire again (the first firing might be to remove dust), analyze again, and then move in closer for APXS or other instrument analysis. Some targeting apparently will be autonomous. Only so many hours in a day though.

So why do it in the first place, then?

To make conversation. I want to see if someone knows better. If no one does, we can have the conversation.