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ExoMars
Guest_Analyst_*
post Jun 13 2006, 01:49 PM
Post #46





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I am from Europe, but this article is cheap talk, and some bullshit.

QUOTE
"The Beagle was really advanced in comparison to most of the stuff NASA is doing. This will be more advanced. This will be the most advanced thing to land on Mars, ..."

[...]

Spirit and Opportunity have been slowly scouting Mars since landing in early 2004.

"They have done maybe 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in total," Healy said. (The actual total, according to NASA, is 14.86 kilometers, or 9.23 miles.) "The rover here (Bridget) will have done that within four to six months at the most. It's got to go to 10 sites that are up to one kilometer (0.6 miles) apart.

"It won't be commanded on the ground. It will get there quicker and spend more time searching using its sophisticated technology... It will bring back more information."


Well, Beagle MAY have been advanced UNTIL EDL. I remember the talk in 2003: NASA will do driving and pictures, we will do real science. And I wondered how they put all these instruments into Beagle. They cut other corners.

Have they ever heard something about MSL? What is special if in 2011 you are better than two rovers launched in 2003? I still don't see them putting all the instruments, including the drill, into a rover the size of MER.

If their budget is 700m euros and 150m euros are for the rover INCLUDING some kind of autonav (quite cheap compared to MER), then 550m euros are for the orbiter, the EDL system and the launcher? A Soyuz is too small for a lander AND an orbiter: Two launches or an Ariane 5?

I believe it if it's on the pad.

Analyst
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ljk4-1
post Jun 13 2006, 01:59 PM
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QUOTE (ustrax @ Jun 13 2006, 09:07 AM) *
Bridget?!? smile.gif


British scientists are apparently very lonely. wink.gif

To quote from the article:

"They have done maybe 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in total," Healy said. (The actual total, according to NASA, is 14.86 kilometers, or 9.23 miles.) "The rover here (Bridget) will have done that within four to six months at the most. It's got to go to 10 sites that are up to one kilometer (0.6 miles) apart."

To echo Analyst, of course a rover one decade from the time of the MERs is
likely going to do better. But I am not impressed that it will do things faster.
It's the quality of the data I care about. If you want faster and better (but
not cheaper), send humans.


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indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

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djellison
post Jun 13 2006, 02:05 PM
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QUOTE (Analyst @ Jun 13 2006, 02:49 PM) *
I believe it if it's on the pad.


MPL and Beagle 2 made it to the pad....it's the hard stop at the other end that's the real challenge smile.gif


Doug
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Guest_Analyst_*
post Jun 13 2006, 02:31 PM
Post #49





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Good point.
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Redstone
post Jun 13 2006, 02:33 PM
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Haven't seen this posted yet, so...

You can download a 3 minute .avi video of Briget in action.

Download

Now if only JPL would let us see the MSL video. rolleyes.gif
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ustrax
post Jun 13 2006, 02:48 PM
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Bridget: (origin: Gaelic.) Brighid, "fiery dart." The name of the muse who was believed to preside over poetry in pagan times, in Ireland. Brighid, in the Gaelic, also signifies a hostage, a pledge of security.

It will be well fitted when she's speeding through the martian landscape... smile.gif


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RNeuhaus
post Jun 13 2006, 03:58 PM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jun 13 2006, 08:59 AM) *
"They have done maybe 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in total," Healy said. (The actual total, according to NASA, is 14.86 kilometers, or 9.23 miles.) "The rover here (Bridget) will have done that within four to six months at the most. It's got to go to 10 sites that are up to one kilometer (0.6 miles) apart."

To echo Analyst, of course a rover one decade from the time of the MERs is
likely going to do better. But I am not impressed that it will do things faster.
It's the quality of the data I care about. If you want faster and better (but
not cheaper), send humans.

These improvement will depend upon to a much improved microprocessor. The vital brain to direct as fast, as smart and as efficiently all Mars' operations.

That part, MER is lacking that much power since it depends very much from Earth remote commanding.

The know most powerful microprocessor that is going to send along with MSL: RAD 750, alike to IBM/Motorola PowerPC 750 dated on the year 1998 which is still very much lagged to our present technology. (Third Generation and now the latest ones is of 5 Generation with 8.125 times faster).

Maybe, one of the most noticeable bottleneck of the space exploration advancement is the radiation-hardened process done by the BAE Systems, isn't?

Rodolfo
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Guest_DonPMitchell_*
post Jun 13 2006, 04:35 PM
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Space programs are fundamentally competative, which is probably a good thing. International competition has always been a bigger source of passion for space exploration than the politically-correct theory of international cooperation.

That said, the Amercians and Russians generally played by the rule that you get to brag only after you accomplish something. I'm not impressed by Chinese dictators saying they will build Moon bases. I'm not impressed by computer graphics images of spaceships that haven't been built yet. And I question whether a Mars lander is more advanced than anything NASA ever did, after it hits the planet like a bug against a windshield on the freeway.
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Bob Shaw
post Jun 13 2006, 05:54 PM
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QUOTE (Redstone @ Jun 13 2006, 03:33 PM) *
Haven't seen this posted yet, so...

You can download a 3 minute .avi video of Briget in action.

Download

Now if only JPL would let us see the MSL video. rolleyes.gif


No. Briget will end up as a crazy cat lady, hiding Martian cats away in the safety of her (fur-free) crater...

Sabrina would have been a better name, especially if powered by an RTG, but those fules know NOTHING about atomms.

Bob Shaw (Form IIIe)


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helvick
post Jun 13 2006, 09:30 PM
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QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jun 13 2006, 04:58 PM) *
The know most powerful microprocessor that is going to send along with MSL: RAD 750, alike to IBM/Motorola PowerPC 750 dated on the year 1998 which is still very much lagged to our present technology. (Third Generation and now the latest ones is of 5 Generation with 8.125 times faster).

You are right that the RAD-750 represents the best current hardware that is rated for missions like these but it's worth pointing out that the RAD-750 is closer to 20x slower than current generation hardware (whether x86, Power, ARM, Niagra (SPARC) or Cell). More importantly the MIPs( or FIPS)\watt numbers for some of the current gen hardware beats the RAD-750 by almost 200x. The latest 1Ghz ULV Core Duo has an average power consumpton of 0.75watt. Benchmarking comparisons are hard when the CPU architectures are as different as the Power architecture of the RAD-750 and the x86 Core Duo are but the former is rated at ~240 VAX Mips while the 1 Ghz ULV Core Duo is about equivalent to a 2Ghz P4 which is ~4500 VAX Mips. That's just shy of 20x the processing capability while eating 7.5% of the power.

It's also worth pointing out that the RAD-750 has about 20x the performance per watt of the RAD6000 that the MER's use (22 Mips peak @ 20 Watts) which makes the MER on board compute capability about 4000x worse than the current "state of the art" here on earth. For me that just shows how extremely hard space exploration actually is.
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RNeuhaus
post Jun 13 2006, 09:53 PM
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Helvick, Your comments are for Amen! Much improvement. If the MSL or ExoMars would have had it, it would be a good Mars soldier!

I think that the radiation-hardening process is a very long, expensive and complicated process. I don't know about its process but I suspect that this process takes again the same process as the original but with others material. I will try to find more information about this process since I think it is one of that is causing a BIG TECHNOLOGICAL LAGGING for any sophisticated space explorations.

Rodolfo
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djellison
post Jun 13 2006, 09:58 PM
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Of course, with custom realtime OS's - the processing overheads for your average spacecraft are only a fraction of those for the OS's used by those 'mainstream' processors. I've not actually heard of computing performance being a limiting factor for spacecraft - but I may have missed such reports.

Doug
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helvick
post Jun 13 2006, 10:29 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Jun 13 2006, 10:58 PM) *
. I've not actually heard of computing performance being a limiting factor for spacecraft - but I may have missed such reports.

For most spacecraft they aren't but the power consumption of the RAD6000 on the MER's is a significant percentage of the daily power budget. The numbers that I have gleaned from the various web sources are not necessarily reliable but they seem to broadly agree that the "processing" consumes about ~30% of the power budget on average and more than that for compute intensive activities like VISODM. A standard VISODM "step" is around 75cm of drive (15 seconds) followed by 2-3 minutes of computing. I think that the drive motors consume around 30W but even if they consume 100W at full tilt and the analysis only take 2 minutes then a VISODM drive segment consumes 50% more power on computing than it does on actual motion.
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lyford
post Jun 14 2006, 12:04 AM
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Did someone say RAD 750 User Manuals?

And much more....

EDIT _ DOH! The links to the manuals are broken, but the other stuff is still neat.


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"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!" Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test
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monitorlizard
post Jun 14 2006, 01:43 AM
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I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to computers, but if the RAD-750 doesn't provide all the processing power you want for MSL or ExoMars, can't you put more than one aboard a rover, each RAD-750
controlling different functions on the rover?
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