One complicated landing!

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.

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 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. 😡

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.

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