A design problem in Curiosity’s drill makes it a threat for shorting out the electronics of the entire rover at some point in the future.
Oy. A design problem in Curiosity’s drill makes it a threat to short out the electronics of the entire rover at some point in the future.
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Oy. A design problem in Curiosity’s drill makes it a threat to short out the electronics of the entire rover at some point in the future.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
What, did NASA assign a couple of interns to design the power bus? I can see the advantages of using a percussive drill as opposed to a rotary one (fewer worries about keeping the bit sharp, more flexibility, more robust design), but the tradeoff is increased vibration at the drill mount. For $2.5 billion (that’s billion with a ‘b’), one might reasonably expect that the design engineers would include ways to electrically isolate the drill mount from the rover (circuit breakers, perhaps?).
And that sounds like what they did, but only on an ad hoc basis. The spokesman in the video sounds like someone who knows they cut corners, and now that it might bite them in the rear, has to BS their way through it. This reminds me of the problems with the Hubble mirror and Space Shuttle tiles. And then there was the loss of a Mars craft because someone got English and Metric units mixed up. NASA has had stupendous successes, but they’ve also had phenomenal screw-ups. I realize that what they do is often on the cutting edge, but there appear to be systemic problems in project management and execution that decades of experience aren’t addressing.
With a hundred years of drill design to draw from they went their own way again and bucked it up.