Quicksand Fans

Forgive me if this has been previously discussed. I was just over at NASA.gov and read an article about NASA's Martian rover Spirit being stuck in a 'sand trap' since April.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009 ... ?list23528

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That's too bad. Guess something had to happen to them sooner or later. Considering they were designed to last 3 months and made it 5 years I'd say the mission was a success. Wish my car would last 20 times it's designed service life.

This is coming to you from a closet uber-space and astronomy-geek.

Monday has been slated as the day for trying to drive Mars rover Spirit out of it's sandy parking space. Spirit, near as can be estimated, drove over a twenty-six foot wide depression filled with a talcum powder like sand and covered with a hard crust. In classic quicksand fashion it appeared safe until it was too late. We'll know by Tuesday if the effort to free it was successful. If not it would be the end of Spirit's travels and probably it's existence when winter returns to that area of Mars.

NASA's next rover, Curiosity slated for launch in 2011, will be substantially larger and nuclear powered so such areas should pose less of a problem.

I'm sure we can all draw familiar human parallels to this. Maybe JPL will develop a "quicksand detector" of sorts for future missions. Think of the spin-off applications here on Earth.

In response to the "quicksand detector" idea, what we REALLY need is a large supply of hand-held quicksand detectors, all of which are completely defective.

Fred588 wrote:In response to the "quicksand detector" idea, what we REALLY need is a large supply of hand-held quicksand detectors, all of which are completely defective.

Actually, if we had such detectors, it would save us a heck of a lot of time in finding good spots for fun!

I seem to recall something similar happening to an earlier probe sent to Mars; it was supposed to land on the polar icecap. As anyone who has ever watched "Thunderbirds" knows, rocketships land tailfirst with a lot of hot gases emitting from their exhausts; consequently the probe vanished on touchdown, leading the guys at Mission Control to conclude ruefully that their design had a basic flaw; the ships landing jet had melted the ice and the ship had "sunk in its own hole"!

Duncan Edwards wrote:NASA's next rover, Curiosity slated for launch in 2011, will be substantially larger and nuclear powered so such areas should pose less of a problem.

Nice, I hadn't heard about that. About time they tried exploring with something bigger then an RC car. Plus with mini nuke plant running the thing they won't have to worry about dust getting all over the solar panels. They really should put it on treads too to prevent something like this from happening again.

QuicksandMania wrote:Actually, if we had such detectors, it would save us a heck of a lot of time in finding good spots for fun!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Anybody checked Radio Shack? Maybe Apple needs a new product idea?

Mynock wrote:

Duncan Edwards wrote:NASA's next rover, Curiosity slated for launch in 2011, will be substantially larger and nuclear powered so such areas should pose less of a problem.

Nice, I hadn't heard about that. About time they tried exploring with something bigger then an RC car. Plus with mini nuke plant running the thing they won't have to worry about dust getting all over the solar panels. They really should put it on treads too to prevent something like this from happening again.

Guess the one drawback with tank tracks is if one came off... there would be no one but the Martian AAA to come out and retread the track onto the vehicle... if it presented a valid membership card.