SCI/TECH: Genesis Probe Crashes To Earth

Wow that wasn't a very impressive back-up plan! Even when you go skydiving you have a secondary parachute LOL Where was the one for it? With all the money they spend u think they night have covered the parachute not opening!!!!

I dont know Flinx the last Mars mission was pretty impressive. When you consider Russia has never even landed a probe on mars that didnt get destroyed on the way down. Europes Beagle one didnt fair any better. Nasa landed not one but two probes at just about the same time and they both worked.

The problem is contamination, if there is a crack into a 'wafer' I believe it was called, then the whole wafer is completely useless, because you dont know which particles are extra-terristorial and which arent.
You can make reasonable guesses, but you cant be sure.
The product of this will probably be alot of speculation on the particles they do find in there, whether they are ET or not, and in the end, if there is anything surprising, skeptics will just say it was a contimination from the surrounding desert...

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I dont know Flinx the last Mars mission was pretty impressive. When you consider Russia has never even landed a probe on mars that didnt get destroyed on the way down. Europes Beagle one didnt fair any better. Nasa landed not one but two probes at just about the same time and they both worked.

Lets not forget the REASONS why... NASA's failed Mars Express (I think it was called? Or Mars Explorer) was because some scientists used imperial measurements, some used metric, and when it all came together, there was a clash.. Pretty basic mistake.
Beagle PROBABLY failed because of 'chute failure, which isnt too stupid, considering that it's just flown hundreds of millions of miles through space, being bombarded by radiation and solar particles...
Russian probes, well, I cant really comment, dont know much about the situation, but, I do believe Russia hasnt made an attempt in the last decade or more, and they were trying to land probes before America could, so I would assume the main errors were in calculation of the density of the atmosphere, or poor selection of landing sites due to the satellite resolutions, etc.

ummm....you all do realize that if the contents inside the probe is contamininated, so isn't the environment around the impact zone....hope there wasn't any alien viruses or anything......

By contaminated, I mean the ET particles inside the spacecraft being intermixed with T (terroristial) particles from the surrounding environment

Originally posted by dawnstar
ummm....you all do realize that if the contents inside the probe is contamininated, so isn't the environment around the impact zone....hope there wasn't any alien viruses or anything......

I watched the mnovie Andromeda Strain a couple of nights ago for the first time Yeah I hope there isnt any alien viruses either that would not be good.

Originally posted by Murcielago

Nasa needs to learn a little thing called a BACK UP PLAN! So if the chute failed to be deployed then they could have it land on a big air bag on the ground or 4 helicopters could be holding a giant net to catch it in.

A neat idea but not very practical.

The entry point for a probe like this is amazingly accurate, but not as accurate as people assume it should be. To put things in perspective, the Apollo capsules returning from the Moon had an entry vector that was summed up like so: If the moon was on one side of a football field, and the earth was on the other end of a football field, you would have to throw a baseball from one end of the field to the other: your target being the edge of a sheet of paper on the other side of the field.

I'm sure the probe had about the same target to aim at. What this means is they have no idea where exactly the probe will land - that's why they either land in the ocean or in large unpopulated areas such as a desert. Sure, it's going to come down in "this area" if everything goes right, but "this area" is more or less the size of Kansas.

Perhaps it was a joke. But, if not I ask: Can there be an alien virus? We are always searching for intelegent life, but are we actually aware of any nonintellegent (stupid) life that might need to exist for a virus to be. Forgive me if there is and I just don't know. I would think that radiation would be our only fear. It might suck, but it is not alive.

Originally posted by ipeachey
Perhaps it was a joke. But, if not I ask: Can there be an alien virus? We are always searching for intelegent life, but are we actually aware of any nonintellegent (stupid) life that might need to exist for a virus to be. Forgive me if there is and I just don't know. I would think that radiation would be our only fear. It might suck, but it is not alive.

Well... some sources have tossed around the idea that various diseases have indeed come from space, with comets being the delivery agent in some cases, (Plague, SARS, etc.) and there is some abstract evidence to support the theory, so who knows.

[edit on 8-9-2004 by CatHerder]

I used to believe that life started on earth when a comet/metior slammed into the earth bearing the first signs of life. I am no longer an evolutionist, the idea of such is outrageous. So, I don't know how I feel about ET viruses. I had better not over think it.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I dont know Flinx the last Mars mission was pretty impressive. When you consider Russia has never even landed a probe on mars that didnt get destroyed on the way down. Europes Beagle one didnt fair any better. Nasa landed not one but two probes at just about the same time and they both worked.

Yeah those two probes were surprisingly successful, but I found something about them to piss me off nevertheless.

All those probes did were roll around and look at rocks. Interesting geology isn't why we're really interested in Mars. How much effort would it have been for them to attach an instrument to Spirit and Opportunity that searches for life? Beagle 2 had one. Does NASA even care about finding life on Mars? All that money and time and they don't try to answer the most important question about Mars.

At least the ESA tries to find life, even if their crappy probes fail. NASA found evidence of water....wow. Why not go one step farther and actually search for life? This being a conspiracy board, we already know the answer, but the question still needs to be asked.

Originally posted by Flinx

Yeah those two probes were surprisingly successful, but I found something about them to piss me off nevertheless.

All those probes did were roll around and look at rocks. Interesting geology isn't why we're really interested in Mars. How much effort would it have been for them to attach an instrument to Spirit and Opportunity that searches for life? Beagle 2 had one. Does NASA even care about finding life on Mars? All that money and time and they don't try to answer the most important question about Mars.

At least the ESA tries to find life, even if their crappy probes fail. NASA found evidence of water....wow. Why not go one step farther and actually search for life? This being a conspiracy board, we already know the answer, but the question still needs to be asked.

Very true I think we need a probe that will drill some distance under Mars to find anything. If life is there I think it will be under ground pockets of water.

I think Beagle one was going to dig under ground even though it was only going to go down like 6 inches.

Im disappointed that a europa mission is not at the top of everyones list of places to go right now. Go there and actually dig through the Ice not just land on it. Thats were I think the most interesting stuff is in our solar system. Nasa has plans for a nuclear heat drill that will cut through the ice and then release a small robotic sub into Europas ocean. But those plans are not anytime soon.

I say forget about Mars for now and lets see what is swimming in Europas oceans right now.

The capsule was designed to be able to survive such a landing. Until the spacecraft is transported to a "clean room" in Utah, NASA will not know the condition of the science samples, solar particles that were captured by Genesis and stored in the capsule."

I am not optimistic. The whole idea of snatching it out of the air was that even a parachute landing was too rough. Impact without a parachute? That's not a "landing;" that's a crash.

Originally posted by ipeachey
"hurdled back to Earth at thousands of miles per hour???? "

I doubt it, considering terminal velocity and all.
I believe it hit the ground at under 100 mph.
The flipping and flopping of the sat never let it achieve very much speed.

Well, anything re-entering the Earth's atmosphere would have to be going thousands of miles an hour... especially something that had just returned from as far out as a lagrange point. There is simply no such thing as a 'slow' reentry...

...which brings up an interesting question. If it hit at 190mph... that means that the aeroshell, alone, was able to slow it down significantly. I assume that the saucer shape was what kept the craft at that speed on the way down.

That's pretty damn impressive... and I wonder why ALL spacecraft are not constructed with a saucer shape.

I think the reason that some (including me) get frustrated with NASA dropping the ball so often is as simple as the fact that we've shown in the past that we are capable of much more than this. The biggest problem is funding for NASA. If more funds were dedicated to space exploration, and if all space capable nations worked together (more so than they do now) then we'd be much further along than we are now. Also, I think that the privatizaton of space travel will also bring us back on schedule. Our advances in space exploration over the past few decades just don't seem to compare to the incredible advances in technology that we've made.

And if The U.S. DOES actually have a few "UFOs", then I imagine that we're not the only ones. Why would anyone put any real money into an already obsolete space program if everyone's sitting on a big secret like that? lol

Originally posted by cimmerius

The capsule was designed to be able to survive such a landing. Until the spacecraft is transported to a "clean room" in Utah, NASA will not know the condition of the science samples, solar particles that were captured by Genesis and stored in the capsule."

I am not optimistic. The whole idea of snatching it out of the air was that even a parachute landing was too rough. Impact without a parachute? That's not a "landing;" that's a crash.

I have no idea where they would get the idea that catching the thing out of the air is more practical than using a parachute or impact bags, or both. Sounds like Nasa has to remember "Keep it simple, stupid."

At least we're still sure that gravity is operational.

msnbc.msn.com...

The spacecraft fired its thrusters for 50 minutes Monday, changing its speed slightly.

�It was a textbook maneuver,� said Ed Hirst, the Genesis mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

If by textbook maneuver, they mean the new textbook that NASA is using consisting of abundant failures, then yes, I agree. Wonder if this caused any problems?

edition.cnn.com...

This is now running on CNN main page. Quite a coincidince with this, and the Genesis crash.

Also stumbled on this on google earlier tonight

www.aliendave.com...

I am starting to get freaked...

Originally posted by taibunsuu

Originally posted by cimmerius

The capsule was designed to be able to survive such a landing. Until the spacecraft is transported to a "clean room" in Utah, NASA will not know the condition of the science samples, solar particles that were captured by Genesis and stored in the capsule."

I am not optimistic. The whole idea of snatching it out of the air was that even a parachute landing was too rough. Impact without a parachute? That's not a "landing;" that's a crash.

I have no idea where they would get the idea that catching the thing out of the air is more practical than using a parachute or impact bags, or both. Sounds like Nasa has to remember "Keep it simple, stupid."

At least we're still sure that gravity is operational.

I don't think some of you guys actually read or click on links provided to you in these forums...

It HAD a parachute. The idea was to catch the parachute (which would be falling at a casual 10mph) with a hook from a helicopter. The only problem was the PARACHUTE did not open. The helicopter recovery plan ("...we've had over 11 mid-air retreivals with 100% success rate.") had no bearing on the recovery - the explosive bolts to release the drone chute and main chute failed to ignite.

By the way - bold red text is a link in these forums...

[edit on 9-9-2004 by CatHerder]