They would have loved to use another airbag landing. Curiosity was simply too big, so things got rather out of hand.
It isn’t as if powered landings are new. We have been dropping things onto the moon and Mars for decades like this.
As great a Curiosity is, we forget Viking. Viking 1 & 2 landed on Mars in 1976 with a rocket poweered descent after aerobraking and parachute. Each Viking lander weighed 570kg (Curiosity is not quite double that) and Viking also used radioisotope thermal generators. The Vikings had 60 W total power, compared to Curiosity’s 120 W. Viking also brought its own orbiters along to do both more science and to relay information.
So, not to take away from how great Curiosity is - it is only about twice the size of Viking, and 37 years later. And there is only one. The big difference is of course the science Curiosity will do. The fact that it can move, and has an order of magnitude or two more science capability is where things will get amazing. But Viking totally revolutionised our understanding of Mars. Consider the level of technology back then and be amazed.
Given Viking cost about 1 billion in 1975 dollars, it was a lot more expensive than Curiosity, even if it did deliver two orbiters and two landers.
well, in the realm of amazing, consider the photograph of Curiosity’s parachute descent taken from orbit by another satellite. That photograph had to be planned back in March and if the calculations had been 1 second off, they would have missed the shot. Oh, they had to maneuver the photo satellite in it’s orbit in advance to get the shot. They nailed it.
It doesn’t qualify as interesting-I rank it as amazing.
I mentioned to a work mate that it was sort of funny to have Curiosity greeted by an orbiter and another functional rover on Mars. Not so much a final frontier as a regular work site.
My mind was blown the day I heard that a ship launching to the ISS had to be delayed to allow another ship to depart, and I realized that we has actually reached the point of having traffic jams in space.
Thank you very much for the entertaining and informative link.
The semi-transparent lens caps are so obvious when you hear about them.
But when you see the first pictures, you think, “Hey, we got better pictures from Viking!”
Well it is “cool” now. Let’s see how “cool” it is when Targoor the rock monster gets pissed from being shot by the laser and stomps Curiosity into the Martian soul.
It’s been well understood for quite some time now, I think, that Stewart and Colbert are …Srsly!.. the best and most reliable TV news sources we have any more.
(Not possible in this case, of course.)
