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posted by martyb on Sunday April 11 2021, @10:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-things-come-to-those-who-wait dept.

Straight from NASA we have word of a delay in the first flight of Ingenuity on Mars.

Mars Helicopter Flight Delayed To No Earlier Than April 14 - Nasa Mars:

Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's first experimental flight to no earlier than April 14.

During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a "watchdog" timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from 'Pre-Flight' to 'Flight' mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned.

The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue. Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test.

NASA has a web site devoted to Ingenuity.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:25AM (21 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:25AM (#1136191)

    Maybe because the atmosphere is too thin for it to fly? It is simple math to calculate the lift and centrifugal forces on the blades. What material are these supersonic helicopter blades made out of? What kind of solar cell can power these supersonic blades?

    Gravity advantage: 3,74/9,81 (m/s)  = 2,6
    Pressure disadvantage: 610/101325 (pascal) = 0,006

    Mars helicopter
    1,8kg, two 4-foot-long (1.2- meter-long) rotor system that spins up to 2400 revolutions per minute

    Earth T-Rex 500 RC helicopter
    Weight: 1,7kg
    Rotor diameter: 960mm
    2500 revolutions per minute

    Weight is almost the same, so ignore. Now calculate:
    Lift reduction on Mars = 2,6 * 0,006 * rotor surface area
    1/(0,0156) = 64

    Rotor surface area has to be 64 times greater om Mars,  but is instead   (1200*2)/960 = 2,5 times greater

    Impossible
    Prove me wrong

  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 12 2021, @12:37AM (11 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday April 12 2021, @12:37AM (#1136198)

    Prove me wrong

    I'll just wait until Wednesday (Thursday my time).

    It seems weird that you think NASA would spend all the time and effort to design and build it, then send the thing all the way to Mars without checking any of that.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:52AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:52AM (#1136202)

      The LatinX engineers might have used pounds instead of kilograms.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:54AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:54AM (#1136203)

        LatinY engineers, you ignint racist pig.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:23AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:23AM (#1136229)

      You are supposed to attempt thinking about it yourself to find a flaw in the reasoning. Not just boringly default to argument from authority.

      Nullius in verbal.

      • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 12 2021, @09:26PM (2 children)

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday April 12 2021, @09:26PM (#1136681)

        Arguing with flat-earthers is pointless because they refuse to accept the most fundamental bits of reality.

        • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @11:37PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @11:37PM (#1136744)

          A bit like Socialists in that respect.

    • (Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Monday April 12 2021, @04:41AM (4 children)

      by Socrastotle (13446) on Monday April 12 2021, @04:41AM (#1136255) Journal

      A lot of the failures NASA has had over the past ~3 decades have been incredibly simple things.

      The most ridiculous was the Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org]. This was a $300 million project sent to Mars. NASA software was using metrics units. Lockheed Martin software was using imperial units. Apparently nobody bothered to check at any point to ensure that the two software systems would create reasonable results. So when it got to Mars and the two systems ended up communicating, the results were nonsensical, and it crashed.

      And things have only gotten worse at NASA, fast, over the past couple of decades. The James Webb space telescope is going to be a state of art telescope that will replace Hubble and provide an unprecedented look into the cosmos. The launch date is set for 2007. Yeah... Development on it began in 1996 with an estimated cost of $500 million. 25 years and $10 billion dollars later, it's still unfinished and on the ground.

      Keep in mind that in the 60s we went from literally zero knowledge of space flight, to putting a man on the Moon, in ~7 years. And the entire budget we spent on the Apollo program worked out to about $12 billion a year, inflation adjusted. That's half of NASA's modern budget. It's so incredibly frustrating. We should long since be a space faring civilization, and I do have some hope if not optimism that SpaceX may still take us where we need to go. But at this rate - if SpaceX does not succeed, it looks like the future of space, which in my opinion is the future of humanity, could very well end up belonging to China.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:41PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:41PM (#1136406)

        Its funny what changing the "central mission" of a program every 4-8 years will do to a place...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:46PM (#1136549)

          It's also funny what happens when most of your budget is earmarked by Congress for 'preferred suppliers' whose only value is in their regular campaign contributions.

        • (Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Monday April 12 2021, @05:48PM

          by Socrastotle (13446) on Monday April 12 2021, @05:48PM (#1136552) Journal

          This is the reason I mention the Apollo program. It went from nothing to man on the moon in 7 years, with half the yearly budget (inflation adjusted) of modern NASA. There's something much more systemic going on at NASA.

          That's not to say I don't agree that the constant cancel/rebrand/restart every ~8 years is a problem. It's likely working in tandem, but I do believe that if we had the talent at NASA they had in the 60s - they could be achieving some rather remarkable things, instead of spending their efforts trying to hype the launch of a toy drone.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:19PM (#1136527)

        People mistakenly cite the MCO failure as some statement about the superiority of metric over imperial, but you very correctly point out that it had nothing to do with units and everything to do with a systems engineering failure. Somewhere there was a Systems Requirement Document and interface documents (software and hardware). And systems integration and test (I&T) would have been set up to test every interface, both software and hardware. Whatever that reason was that let this slip through, there should have been some SE heads that rolled.

        I feel your general space/NASA frustration because the Apollo program was still running when I was a kid, but you also need to put a good chunk of the blame on all us citizens, not just NASA. Apollo was exciting, captivating, it was a race! Everyone was excited because they like races, especially for something really amazing that has never been done before. But once it was done? Meh, "been there, done that." They weren't even televising the launch of Apollo 13 and the public moved on until the oxygen tank blew, then it became a story! Human intrigue, danger, will they make it or will they not?? All exciting stuff, but very tangential to anything to do with space. That of course ended with a happy ending and then public stopped caring. Apollo-Soyuz was kind of neat, but they killed it after 17 because nobody cared (they would have killed it after 16, but 17 was all ready to go and most of the costs sunk).

        If you want broad public support, you'll need to give the populace a reason to care. Bouncing around collecting rocks isn't that sexy. There will be a lot of interest when the first attempts to Mars are made, but it will turn out the same way. I'm not quite sure what it will be like when people go back to the Moon. First one will be milked for all it is worth (live interviews on the morning news shows, etc.), but I don't see public interest in it for the long haul because frankly, real life isn't as sexy as what you can do on a green screen.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 12 2021, @02:40AM (4 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday April 12 2021, @02:40AM (#1136234) Journal

    Yeah, NASA just wasting tax money, throwing a toy on Mars without even doing the science and engineering to figure out if it would work! What a bunch of maroons! If only you had gotten to them before they spent all that tax money! We could have has a SpaceX explosion, instead, for less money!

    (Noticing of late, as with our assymptomatic COVID-19 idiot in another thread, that we need a big, flashing, probably colorized, SARCASM sign. )

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:47AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:47AM (#1136237)

      Another boring person that can't think for themselves.

      You all failing science class.

      • (Score: 2) by Anti-aristarchus on Monday April 12 2021, @08:37AM (2 children)

        by Anti-aristarchus (14390) on Monday April 12 2021, @08:37AM (#1136290) Journal

        Wonderful example of the Dunning-Kroeger syndrome, in its natural environment! Notice how everyone is an idiot, except for our fine specimen here. Shame that such brilliance is laid to waste some few posts below. Like Khan, shows a marked tendency to 2-dimensional thinking.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:47PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:47PM (#1136339)

          They are idiots because they can't figure out the basic errors in logic found in this comment I copied from elsewhere, instead they immediately fall back to argument from authority.

          BORING.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @08:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @08:51PM (#1136658)

            Yo Mama! There's your authority, kiddo! Now get off our Martian take-off pad!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:10AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:10AM (#1136249)

    Why are you taking your area ratios as the ratio of the lengths? What are the rotor widths?

    The lift equation of the rotors should go as the air density times the velocity squared of the rotor times the area, so if you are taking ratios, you need to ratio those. I'll accept your pressure ratio, but not your area ratio. And if you look at v-squared, the ratio of that will go as the square of the ratio of the radiuses, so (1200 / 480)^2 = 6.25. So now to make them equal, we need 0.006 x 6.25 x (A1/A2) =1, so A1/A2 needs to be about 26. But, as you noted, the lengths are 2.5 times longer on the Mars RC, now we're down to the widths of the rotors need to be about 10x wider.

    Remarkably, can't find specifics on the rotor design. Just lots of fluff pieces, but you can have pretty wide blades on those counter rotating designs, so I'm not sure what your big objection is.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:54PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:54PM (#1136343)

      Is it the area of the actual blades that matters or the area that is covered by the rotor disk?

      This uses the rotor disk. No blade is going to have area of 50 m^2:

      The planform area of the rotor disk is 50 meters squared (A).

      https://sciencing.com/calculate-lift-rotor-blades-7680704.html [sciencing.com]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:49PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:49PM (#1136553)

        Rotor disk area is what matters for any rotary blade system, be it helicopter or windmill. For fixed wings it is wingspan×airspeed.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @07:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @07:02PM (#1136602)

          Does that refer to the circle traced out by the blades as they spin? Or the actual physical surface area of the blades.

          If the latter, how can it be 50 m^2 for a normal helicopter?