[HN Gopher] NASA's Perseverance rover sends stunning images
___________________________________________________________________
NASA's Perseverance rover sends stunning images
Author : astdb
Score : 929 points
Date : 2021-03-03 02:09 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Stunning? Boring is the truth. They look as haphazard and
| unconsidered shots of earthly, unremarkable, landscape.
|
| NASA needs artists and poetic photographers to capture
| inspiration on Mars if they want to snare the hearts of the
| public. What a waste of fortunes if they cannot do that.
|
| If only the images were as great as the feat and engineering
| itself.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| Dude, it's a scientific experiment, not a fucking Instagram
| shoot
| malwarebytess wrote:
| That's not what this is. I didn't impugn the project did I? I
| criticized the public relations blitz and a falsely
| descriptive title on the BBC. Don't pretend public outreach
| isn't part of the plan here.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| What qualifies as "stunning" in your book if not photos of
| another world?
| bregma wrote:
| Mars exploration is first and foremost a human experience.
| Dry observation and engineering wet dreams are OK for a few
| elite but what we're looking at here is a legacy for all
| humankind. It should be treated that way, and that includes
| emotional interpretations.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| The bottom of this page says: "All images copyright Nasa/JPL-
| Caltech"
|
| But I thought all works created by the US federal government are
| public domain and not protected by copyright?
|
| Famously the "Blue Marble" photo is not under copyright and
| reproduced all over the place:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| That's probably just a mistake from the BBC. The original
| source [1] just says "image credit" NASA/JPL-Caltech, not
| copyright.
|
| [1] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've come to expect news/media copyright mistakes to fail on
| the side of copyright interests - and not the public's.
| miguelmota wrote:
| If anyone is curious about the technology powering the
| Perseverance rover, there's this great video on YouTube
| explaining the incredible engineering behind it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqqaW8DCc-I
| whatever1 wrote:
| Anyone has insights on how data in such volumes can be
| transferred from Mars to Earth in the absence of a direct link?
| Do the intermediate nodes have gigabytes of available storage to
| emit data to the next available node once it becomes visible ?
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Vint Cerf has been working with NASA for over a decade on a
| design for interplanetary internet. I work at Google and he
| shared a story about how the earlier rovers had radios that
| were overheating at higher bandwidth transmissions. A smart
| engineer noted that they had an X band radio on the rover and
| still had one in an orbiter around Mars. The rover could
| transmit at 128mbps over xband to the orbitter, which in turn
| had large antennas to transmit back to earth at 128mbps. I
| assume Perseverance supports more bandwidth but it may be
| limited by whatever equipment we have in orbit around Mars.
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/vint-cerfs-plan-for-building-...
| dekhn wrote:
| See https://www.quantamagazine.org/vint-cerfs-plan-for-
| building-an-internet-in-space-20201021/ for some details on
| projects related to this. IIRC it's store and forward.
| electriclove wrote:
| Perseverance sends the data to various orbiters (satellites
| already in orbit around Mars) during overflights (time windows
| when the orbiter is in range of the rover) and those orbiters
| then send (relay) the data to Earth via the Deep Space Network
| (satellite dishes on Earth).
| raynr wrote:
| From my layman's understanding, it's relayed via the orbiters.
|
| There are a few orbiters around Mars. NASA appears to have an
| arrangement with the ESA to upload data from the rovers to the
| ESA's orbiters, depending on whose orbiters are within line of
| sight at any given time. Then the orbiter sends the information
| back to Earth, which are received by NASA's Deep Space Network
|
| During the time when line of sight between Earth and Mars is
| blocked by Sol, there isn't any communication.
|
| May interest you:
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| It never ceases to impress me that we have the ability to do
| this sort of stuff. A couple thousand years ago, the height
| of technology was shooting something from a few hundred
| metres away with a bow and arrow, now we are landing machines
| on another planet and transmitting data back and forth
| through the solar system. Incredible.
| mattmanser wrote:
| A couple of thousand years ago is the peak of the Romans,
| so you're way off on your 'height' of technology at that
| time.
|
| Using bows and arrows as an example when you've got wonders
| of pretty advanced engineering like the Parthenon, plus
| they also had ballistae, chariots and catapults, so not the
| peak at all.
|
| Not only that, but even the bows were more advanced,
| composite bows much more powerful than simple ones made of
| wood.
| [deleted]
| bloak wrote:
| The most complex machine of the Roman era was perhaps a
| water organ. (I would guess that for long historical
| periods the most complex machines were keyboard-
| controlled musical instruments.)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Oh see you did it now - opened up a vacuum about ancient
| tech.
|
| I'll start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
| Bluestein wrote:
| (The question as to how - and why or why not - we could
| go from the Aeolipile to full blown steam engines, I've
| always found fascinating ...
|
| ... what other things / proceses / materials / frame of
| mind made the steam engine possible vs. this.
|
| What made for an industrial revolution in the 1800's vs.
| the 1st century AD).-
| rmu09 wrote:
| One thing that severly hampered the romans was their
| number system.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Makes sense that it would ...
| mstade wrote:
| Great link, thanks for sharing! This has the makings of
| an excellent thread - please do continue sharing cool
| stuff!! :o)
| vkou wrote:
| A couple of thousand years ago, humans built massive
| engineering projects, including the Pyramids, massive
| irrigation and earthwork systems, and tunnels, and bridges,
| domesticated wild animals, produced metals - including
| steel - out nothing but wood, water, and low grade ore,
| etc, etc.
|
| They did not have internal combustion engines, or
| electricity, or the ability to machine parts to high
| tolerances, but ancient engineers cared deeply about
| efficiently transforming mechanical energy from one form to
| another.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Incredible for me, too. The power of building the
| civilization, one generation after another, and of working
| together, sharing the knowledge.
| DrBazza wrote:
| But according to Ancient Aliens, the large stone Pyramids
| were built by aliens, but the TV cameras recording the
| show's hosts, with CCDs, and likely 10nm chips inside,
| were built by humans.
|
| In all seriousness, it's impressive what knowledge
| sharing and cooperation achieves.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It is highly unlikely that the cameras being used to
| produce Ancient Aliens are CCDs unless they are also
| using ancient camera tech. Most likely, the camera's
| image sensors are CMOS. 3 chip CCDs reached their
| pinnacle as 90s/early 00s tech. CCDs can only sense one
| color, so they put three of them behind an RGB splitter.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| [Ancient Aliens] Ah but the cameras and chips are only
| possible -because- the aliens built the pyramids and
| inspired humans technologically and a mere 4450 years
| later, voila! CCDs and computer chips!
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Well, given the fact that we still know relatively little
| about most of the observable universe (dark matter &
| energy), I don't think you can completely rule out the
| several unlikely hypotheses. For example, that earlier
| civilizations instead of electricity used a completely
| different form of energy - and that basically directed
| their development into a completely different direction,
| not leaving many material artefacts. I don't believe this
| actually happened, but a part of me knows that I can't be
| 100% sure it didn't.
| pkaye wrote:
| They added dedicated storage in the rover itself to store phots
| and videos. So for example they can compress the video files
| before transmitting. I've hear they use ffmpeg for this
| purpose. There are 4 orbiting satellites that can relay any
| data sent to it.
| akg_67 wrote:
| Reddit had AMA with engineers from this mission, IIRC last
| week. They provided good info on different aspects including
| how they were able to get video over low bandwith connection,
| including various mission site link for more info. You might
| want to check out AMA for your question.
|
| Edit: added following links
|
| This Q&A about storage
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist...
|
| These Q&A about data rate
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist...
|
| This Q&A about RTG (operational life)
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist...
| asaddhamani wrote:
| Do you have a link to this AMA?
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientis
| t...
| eCa wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist.
| ..
| jdmichal wrote:
| Others have posted links to the Reddit thread overall, but I
| think this is the specific question being referred to:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist.
| ..
|
| EDIT: Apparently the rover has an antenna that can directly
| communicate with Earth at 10 bits per second! That's
| obviously not useful for pictures or anything, but it's an
| amazing capability for emergency comms.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Very low bandwidth, very low power, very long distance
| comms are really cool. The limiting factor tends to be the
| clock frequency precision - if you have precise enough
| clocks at both ends, there isn't anywhere in the universe
| you couldn't communicate with, as long as you're happy to
| go slow enough.
| comboy wrote:
| > there isn't anywhere in the universe you couldn't
| communicate with
|
| Right, assuming you are emitting infinite amount of
| photons, there are no obstructions, black holes and you
| ignore universe expansion and GR which can make your
| precise enough clocks go out of sync.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| "Precise enough clocks" includes handling GR and other
| non-destructive effects along the whole light path I
| assume. :)
| Bluestein wrote:
| That's one big ask :)
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| > emitting infinite amount of photons
|
| I think that the double slit experiment shows that this
| isn't an issue... Since we are summing with all other
| noise in the universe, it doesn't matter exactly _which_
| photons came from my transmitter, if any at all, but the
| total count will still (probabilistically) reflect the
| the we 're after...
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Given self-clocking signalling[1] exists, why is clock
| frequency precision the limiting factor?
|
| I would imagine signal-to-noise would be the limiting
| factor, ie how strong is your transmitter and how
| sensitive is your receiver.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-clocking_signal
| tremon wrote:
| Noise, by definition, doesn't have a qualifying
| characteristic. It just means "all signals we're not
| interested in". That means your ability to filter out
| noise is strongly dependent on having pre-existing
| knowledge about the shape of the signal you're interested
| in.
|
| Self-clocking signals are useful when the ambient noise
| level is low with respect to the signal, but if your
| signal is just "these two droplets in an ocean" you will
| not be able to filter out enough of the signal to detect
| the edges of the original signal.
|
| Having a very reliable clock frequency means you can
| apply a very exact filter to lock on to the signal you
| want, thereby making the transmission less sensitive to
| interference from other radio signals. Just having a
| sensitive receiver isn't enough, because a sensitive
| receiver will also pick up more of the other radio
| signals.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Wrong clock, gotcha. For some reason I didn't think of
| the carrier signal generator when I read the word
| "clock".
|
| It all makes sense now, thanks!
| londons_explore wrote:
| It is possible to send a signal _weaker_ than the noise
| floor. The maximum information you can send is defined by
| shannon 's channel capacity formula, which clearly says a
| signal can be weaker than the noise.
|
| If you use a self-clocking signal, then effectively the
| information you are sending consists of both the clock
| timings _and_ the information you 're really trying to
| send. If your channel capacity is very low, you will find
| there is no channel capacity for even the clocking
| information, let alone the information you really want to
| send.
| billfruit wrote:
| Any sound clips released as of now? I heard they had a microphone
| on board unlike so many of the probes till now.
| daverobbins1 wrote:
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/sounds/
| billfruit wrote:
| Actually they sound some what underwhelming.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Wholly cow. In that 2nd photo, the rover looks like it just
| missed landing on a ridgeline.
|
| ref:https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/58BB/production/.
| ..
| hyyypr wrote:
| iirc the "landing crane" was doing autonomous live analysis of
| the terrain and making the necessary last minute adjustments to
| avoid problematic areas.
| kesava wrote:
| It was actually the rover itself doing those calculations
| with it's set of radars and controlling the sky crane thru
| the umbilical cords.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Up to date image collection on the nasa site for anyone that
| cares: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| We're seeing Martian robot selfies. Neat.
| lovezone wrote:
| Nice
| DorianSinDeep wrote:
| I think people who don't care for long term investments like this
| are afraid of the idea that the world will go on without them
| just as well as it is now. They believe in their fear that some
| catastrophy bigger than their own death must be coming or what
| was the point of their life at all? The world was fine before you
| and it will be fine after you. Endeavours like these are the only
| worthwhile contributions we have to make towards the future.
| michelb wrote:
| I think most people who are not a fan of space programmes would
| like to have spent that money/effort on humanitarian and socio-
| economic problems first. I say why not both? Just reduce
| military spending.
| asasidh wrote:
| "The Perseverance rover has initial funding to operate for one
| Mars year, roughly two Earth years."
|
| So wire the rover money after 2 years ? no wonder Elon is into
| Bitcoin
| mojomark wrote:
| What are the "dark spot anomalies" that appear to be floating in
| the air in some images (1, 2)? Dust on the camera lens? I've
| never looked at any rover images so I assume someone knows.
|
| Also, whay are the images fairly low resolution compared to a
| phones camera. Does it have to do with image data transmission
| error?
|
| Finally (then I'll shut up), when do we get to see the stereo
| images? I want to see these on my Vive.
|
| 1.) https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-
| images/NLE_000...
|
| 2.) https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-
| images/SI0_001...
| intrasight wrote:
| Same question. Where are the stereo images?
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| My wild guess would be dust on the lens. Quickly looking at
| related images shows black spots present at the same locations
| relatively to the image's frame.
| berkes wrote:
| Looking at closeups of the Rover, I cannot help but think: are
| those screws, nuts and bolts? And if so, why? Why carry the
| weight or decreased stiffness of or by the notches, slits,
| threads etc. that makes screws be screwable. To a place where no-
| one ever will unscrew them?
| carabiner wrote:
| Because you'd need higher weight in wall thicknesses if using
| weaker 3D printed aluminum instead of aluminum sheet, bar stock
| etc. Which actually has a coherent grain.
| vasco wrote:
| I predict that the chances of someone ever unscrewing them are
| higher than not. Just not super soon.
|
| Plus during development its useful, and why would you change
| the platform you test when deploying to live?
| berkes wrote:
| My thoughts as well: the benefits during development outweigh
| any downsides during transport and deployment.
|
| My other thought is that I simply saw it wrong and there are
| no screws in the rover, just things that look like screws,
| nuts or bolts.
| bregma wrote:
| The chances of someone unscrewing on Mars are a million to
| one they said.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I'd be amazed if we could build a single-use unibody rover but
| even so I suppose those bolts and nuts give some needed
| flexibility when landing and moving.
|
| Any structural engineer around?
| teleforce wrote:
| This is a video presenting ten milestone images that revealed
| what we've learned about Mars after decades of exploration prior
| to the landing of Perseverance [1]. It's nice to see the
| evolution of image resolutions of the Red Planet.
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1eFMzO3iPc
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Similar, a gf capturing the evolution of our knowledge of Puto
| in somewhat less than a century:
| https://i0.wp.com/www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/fu...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Great. Sometimes it feels like there's little progress made
| in space exploration. But such a compilation is a good
| reminder that - yes, maybe it's a bit too slow for the
| impatient, but progress is being made, and it shows.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That period during the New Horizons mission where _every
| new image_ represented a major advance in our quantum of
| knowledge of Pluto was absolutely remarkable.
|
| The situation with Mars is different: the planet's close
| enough for reasonably good telescopic investigation from
| Earth, we've had landers on the planet for 50 years (the
| Soviet Mars 2 lander beat Viking by 5 years), high-
| resolution orbiters for ... nearly as long? And since 1996,
| rovers, which have transected paths of varying lengths
| exploring specific regions of the plant. We've got a very
| strong overview (something still not complete for Pluto ---
| New Horizons got detailed close views of only about 60% of
| the surface), and several very-high-detail pictures.
|
| Astronomical time and distance are both huge relative to
| human scale. That we (or our robot agents) can cross the
| solar system in a decade or two is remarkable. A few months
| to Mars is nothing. The Earth was once as large or far
| larger (to us).
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| The photos are stunning!
|
| Scratching head why one would like to live on Mars ?
| snicker7 wrote:
| Any good desktop wallpapers out of this?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Curiosity took pretty nice pictures that you can very easily
| turn into wallpapers.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/curiositys-1-8-billion-pixel...
|
| Take the second one from that page, for instance, zoom in, and
| just take a screenshot and use it as your wallpaper.
| nsturtz wrote:
| That is so cool :)
| itbeho wrote:
| "And we made it to Mars! I stepped out of the lander and took a
| look around. It turns out the place is just a bunch of rusty
| looking rocks. No hot green chicks, no angry little green men. I
| guess I was kind of hoping there would have been someone here to
| shoot it out with, or at least make out with."
|
| _- From the unpublished short fiction of itbeho_
|
| Seriously though, this is fantastic. Imagine being a kid today,
| seeing these images and being inspired to help get us there in
| person, hopefully in the near future.
| novaRom wrote:
| Are you serious? First Vikings landed there 50 years ago. Kids
| of 70th and 80th did seeing first images, there were many
| colorful books about solar system. It's pitty how badly slow is
| space exploration of last decades. No wonder everyone and its
| dog are now so excited about this mission.
| jerkstate wrote:
| I remember a recent article on HN about being able to receive
| signals from Tianwen-1 with a homemade satellite dish - is it
| possible to receive these pictures over radio with the right
| equipment, or do they come down encrypted?
| azernik wrote:
| Data comes from Perseverance through two channels:
|
| * A low-bandwidth direct link to Earth (160bps-800bps depending
| on receiver dish- no, that's not a typo)
|
| * A high-bandwidth link to orbiting satellites, which then
| forward traffic to Earth (~2Mbps for the rover->orbit hop,
| anywhere from 0.5-4Mbps for the orbit->Earth) .
|
| I strongly suspect that the low-bandwidth telemetry signals -
| equivalent to the homemade reception from satellites I've heard
| of - are sent in the clear. Bandwidth is just too precious to
| waste.
|
| I would not be surprised either way for the image data - on the
| one hand, computing power is relatively scarce, while on the
| other hand it already has to go through a compression pipeline.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spacecraft/rover/communication/
| ddevault wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the Tianwen-1 amateur signal reception
| was (1) shortly after launch, and (2) using a 20 meter dish.
| Receiving the downlink from a deep space object requires much
| more sophisticated technology than most amateurs have access
| to, both to track the object, and to listen hard enough.
|
| That being said, I doubt that the transmissions are encrypted.
| Hell, I bet some amateurs with a very powerful transmitter
| might be able to transmit a software update and take control of
| the rover.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1337/
| soheil wrote:
| I would think encryption would slow down the transmission rate.
| So most likely are sent in the clear
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I'm not saying they are encrypted but I thought that
| encryption is a close cousin to compression - that it
| generally doesn't add overhead.
| snickms wrote:
| This mission is an incredible achievement. The images are as
| advertised (stunning) and I'm sure all the sciences - and even
| art - will benefit from the data.
|
| What I find a little sad is that we seem incapable of doing this
| without leaving a particularly human signature wherever we go.
|
| We arrived on Mars with jets of pollution
| https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25672/black-and-white-smoke-...
| followed by the dumping of the two pieces of trash required to
| enable the landing.
|
| For all the data we have gained, we have lost a pristine planet -
| which makes me wonder if we are doing this at the right time.
| kbelder wrote:
| We're disturbing all those pristine impact craters.
| ozim wrote:
| I have an opposite view of this.
|
| Cosmos and Mars, Sun whatever else was there long before us an
| will be still there long after us. From cosmic point of view
| humanity does not matter much.
|
| From that 1000ft view humans and whatever we built is natural
| and not different than colony of ants. We are just sand grains
| that will be crushed when next big asteroid comes by.
|
| Having pristine planet like Mars has no value besides human
| point of view "I want". Let alone planets are not pristine they
| are bombarded with space trash like asteroids all the time :)
|
| Why do we use such anthropocentric view? It makes any
| difference if there is parachute on Mars? Pollution? Well we
| defined pollution because it is something we want to get rid of
| because it makes us sick. There is much more bad things for
| humans in space than you can count.
| snickms wrote:
| What if in the future we could examine the contents of a
| particular rock from space? Have instruments sensitive enough
| to detect the remnants of Vogon breath from their visit
| millions of years ago?
|
| A pristine planet has value beyond 'I want this' IMO - it is
| an opportunity to perform experiments in an almost perfectly
| isolated test tube.
|
| As a human, I also find it beautiful. As you say though, this
| is an anthropocentric view.
| bogwog wrote:
| That "jets of pollution" is the equivalent of a fart in the
| wind
| endoelenar58 wrote:
| Curious, whether rover survives to the return sample mission.
| milofeynman wrote:
| How close was the rover to its intended landing spot?
| jcims wrote:
| Nailed it - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/avoiding-hazards-
| at-jezero-c...
|
| (A little more complicated than that of course. If I understand
| correctly, anything in blue was a candidate landing spot that
| it was free to select from. I'm pretty sure the header image is
| an artistic crop :) )
| sp332 wrote:
| It was almost that good. It had a five-mile-wide ellipse to
| search, and found a spot close to the middle. https://science
| .sciencemag.org/content/sci/371/6532/870/F1.l... If you have
| a Science magazine subscription, the image is from this
| article: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6532/870?
| rss=1/sh...
| Cogito wrote:
| It landed quite close to the centre of its landing ellipse,
| which was significantly smaller than the landing zones of
| previous missions.
|
| Perhaps most impressive is the success of the terrain relative
| navigation. During descent a specific landing site was chosen,
| after going through atmospheric entry. That site had to be
| reachable based on where they ended up after entry, needed to
| be safe to land in, and should land as close as reasonable to
| scientifically interesting sites. The system chose a pixel from
| the initial images taken during descent, and the final landing
| was within 5m of that spot.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Stupid question, but where is Perseverance's energy source?
|
| Answer: Plutonium
|
| It powers a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.
|
| The plutonium decays at a few % per year, so that means it should
| be able to bring Elon a sandwich when he lands.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/electrical-p...
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| a glowing green sandwich covered in red sand. But seriously,
| this stuff is powering those voyager probes 40 years later.
| Which makes me ask: why do we have to send there technologies
| 10 billion miles away to make them work? Why can't my fridge be
| powered this way?
| neolog wrote:
| I'd be interested in a real answer to this if any nuclear
| engineers are around
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Not a nuclear engineer, but we covered this in my third
| semester of physics at University. The short answer is
| there isn't any engineering reason why you can't do this.
| The "real" reason is that there is liability here that
| nobody knows how to deal with. If the unit became damaged
| and its shielding failed it could sit there and kill people
| who came near it for years (for example).
|
| I got to talk to one of the engineers who worked on
| KRUSTY[1] a 10kW nuclear reactor. This combined with some
| batteries for peak load could run pretty much any house for
| a couple of decades. (they talk about several houses in the
| article but realistically the peak load of a single house
| when the oven, refrigerator/freezer compressor, and central
| AC are running is a bit north of 10kW. I would seriously
| consider a way off grid ranch house if I could have one of
| these to power it :-)
|
| [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-
| mars/a20127140/n...
| ttul wrote:
| Plus the 90kW of waste heat would keep you very warm.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| So true, of course if I lived in a place where it snowed
| I would put water pipes under the sidewalks and driveway
| and recirculate water through them and a heat exchanger
| near the reactor. Voila, no more shoveling snow!
| burnte wrote:
| RTGs get hot, that's the point of them, actually. Too hot
| for use in a small area like your fridge. On a space probe
| or rover on a cold planet, the waste heat is useful in
| keeping things somewhat warm. On earth, not so much.
|
| RTGs are also large, too large to power a fridge given the
| power draw for a fridge. There were microRTGs used in some
| pacemakers, but the long term safety concerns were never
| overcome.
|
| The decay rate is high enough that you'd need to augment or
| refuel your house every handful of years. Halflife of 87
| years, 25% energy loss in 40ish, 10% loss in just over a
| decade, etc.
|
| Also, they've got little plutonium pellets in them, which
| is both expensive and dangerous.
| oso2k wrote:
| Many advocate for the use of Thorium instead.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Surely it would be a horrible idea to distribute radioactive
| materials to the general population.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| King-Aaron wrote:
| Aside from the high cost of a consumer grade plutonium RTG,
| and the size constraint issues with putting one in the base
| of a fridge, or the health risks with having a reactor in
| your house under your food, one reason might be to prevent
| people exploding them.
| [deleted]
| shkkmo wrote:
| The 8 figure price tag for a RTG makes consumer use
| uneconomical.
| extrapickles wrote:
| The reason for that high of a price tag is that the
| engineering costs are spread over a very few units. If they
| made 100,000 of them, the costs would be much closer to the
| materials cost.
| adrianN wrote:
| So only six figures for fridge? Sounds like a good deal.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > the costs would be much closer to the materials cost
|
| Which is? Not cheap. And it's not like you can buy in any
| corner store.
|
| And no, while an "economy of scale" would make it
| cheaper, it doesn't mean it would be cheap.
| extrapickles wrote:
| I never said they would be affordable even in qty 100k.
|
| I would think the major use for them beyond space probes
| would be providing last resort backup power/heat for life
| support on outside earth orbit space habitats/crewed
| vehicles as the cost will still be at least $500/watt.
| oso2k wrote:
| More than likely, 99% of that cost is the container and the
| apparatus to make use of its energy. [0][1]
|
| [0] https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-most-expensive-
| element-606...).
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-
| planetary-sci....
| Balgair wrote:
| Plutonium-238 can only be made via Uranium-238. Per the
| Seaborg process, you must bombard U-238 with deuterons to
| get Neptunium-238, which then further decays into Pu-238.
| The Pu-238 then decays into U-234 with a half life of ~88
| years. U-234 has a half life of ~200,000 years, btw.
|
| It is _very unlikely_ that the production of Pu-238 would
| cost less to produce than the container and the apparatus
| that harvests the energy.
|
| Let alone the issues with the waste products of U-234
| hanging about in the kitchen or basement. If you think
| climate change is bad as is, add in what people will do
| when faced with surplus uranium waste removal costs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238
| mLuby wrote:
| Back in the 60's, people thought everything would be nuclear-
| powered; atomic cars, planes, trains, houses, etc. But like
| with building-sized computers, we've chosen a different path
| through the tech tree.
|
| There were terrestrial exceptions though, like "the Beta-M is
| a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) that was used
| in Soviet-era lighthouses and beacons."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M
|
| But people happened across them and got radiation poisoning,
| so imagine that happening a lot more often if they were
| powering all manner of home appliance. Also a lot more dirty
| bombs.
| idlewords wrote:
| The Russians tried powering a bunch of remote stuff with
| plutonium batteries during the Soviet era. It did not end
| well, and cleaning those up has been an ordeal. Pu-238 was
| also used in pacemakers. The basic problem is just that
| plutonium is toxic as hell.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, US has been employing RTGs to power all kinds of
| stuff too, it's not just Russians which did. But yes,
| actually collecting and decommissioning them after the
| collapse of the Soviet Union has been an ordeal.
| bregma wrote:
| More accurately, plutonium is as toxic as lead. It's also a
| bit more radioactive than lead.
| sgt wrote:
| No no.. My grandfather from Irkutsk oblast had plutonium
| heart, and he live to long ripe age of 45! Almost unheard
| of in Soviet union.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Not plutonium, strontium
| vharuck wrote:
| Smoke detectors rely on a circuit powered by atomic fission
| ionizing the air. It isn't their power source (they still
| need batteries), but it is a safe way to get continuous
| electricity.
|
| https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
| sheets/s...
|
| There's probably a way to get a little more power out of it
| without being too dangerous. But then we'd have ordinary
| citizens buying things over-the-counter that could be abused
| in bulk. And I don't see any hassle being worth an extra free
| outlet or not replacing batteries.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What's powering Voyager is a plutonium pile. Pretty sure you
| don't want that in your fridge. 10 billion miles from me?
| Sure, knock yourself out. 10 feet from me? _No way._
| nitrogen wrote:
| AKA "Not In My Back Yard."
|
| So the question stands and extends to include this: "why
| not?"
| f-word wrote:
| There's a TON of power generation alternatives that look
| much better both from the "trying to not give you a lot
| of cancer" standpoint _and_ the "efficiency is something
| we care about" standpoint. Most RTGs make about 3 to 6%
| efficiency, while a random Amazon 100w solar panel will
| give you 15/22% without most of the risks.
|
| The main reason this are used vs (or sometimes along!)
| other technologies is that they function rather happily
| in super crappy conditions we don't -unless some world-
| ending event happens soonish- usually have on Earth.
| perardi wrote:
| People are probably going to answer "safety".
|
| But it's also hideously expensive. Plutonium is,
| apparently, one of the safer ways to build these things,
| because it is easy to shield, and the power density is
| good. But plutonium, as it's not naturally occurring, is
| stratospherically expensive.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric
| _ge...
| watersb wrote:
| The first nuclear bombs cost billions of dollars each.
|
| I wish I could say that's a good thing. But no, after the
| first of them, nuclear weapons seem to have justified
| their own existence, no matter the cost.
|
| I would rather see remaining weapons material repurposed
| as deep-space power sources. If that were to solve
| problems.
|
| Anyhow, Perseverance makes me happy.
| Alghranokk wrote:
| > I would rather see remaining weapons material
| repurposed as deep-space power sources. If that were to
| solve problems.
|
| Unfortunately this is not possible, nuclear weapons make
| use of pu-239, which has properties that does not make it
| a useable RTG fuel.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The first nuclear bombs cost billions of dollars each.
|
| No, at least union's ones were priced at around
| $100000-$120000 a pop in materials.
|
| Giant amount of money back in seventies union for an
| individual, enough to live on for a lifetime.
| Balgair wrote:
| Additionally, the decay product of Pu-238 is U-234.
| Though a relatively 'safe' alpha emitter, it's half-life
| is ~200,000 years.
|
| Note: With alpha emitters, it's 'safe' if it's outside
| your body, your skin can absorb it. But once you eat or
| inhale it, you get the full blast right into the quickest
| dividing cells in your body.
| neuronic wrote:
| To add to the other posts: nuclear weapons proliferation
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's a lot of waste heat put out by RTG. The one
| powering Perseverance has an output of about 110W but
| thermocouples have about 5% efficiency so there's ~1900W
| of heat you have to deal with. For a fridge the running
| power can be almost double that it's just completely
| silly on Earth except for odd places like the lighthouses
| along Russia's northern coast where there was no way to
| get a grid connection, not enough sun for solar, and
| suppling diesel constantly was impractical.
| leijurv wrote:
| Nuclear reactors are better and have economies of scale,
| it doesn't make much sense to everyone have their own.
| ddingus wrote:
| Risk?
|
| That is my basic opposition. Happy to be flexible on
| energy in almost every way. Cost, type, uptime...
|
| But error with nuclear tech tends to endure for a very
| long time. Fukushima will be raising ocean radiation for
| a long time, just one example.
|
| These are many lifetime events. Some minor, or
| recoverable, some profound.
|
| Given we can reasonably run the fridge on solar, and
| other tech, that risk does not seem to make sense to a
| lot of people.
|
| Doesn't to me.
|
| Now, that said I am not ideologically opposed. Other tech
| could very seriously improve risk profile. Maybe it
| becomes worth it.
|
| Then again, the fridge in my RV can run on a small flame,
| or a very low current source. And no moving parts!
|
| So, we could make fridges differently too. Make
| tradeoffs.
| antientropic wrote:
| > Fukushima will be raising ocean radiation for a long
| time, just one example.
|
| Will it? The ocean is very, very big. Contaminated water
| from Fukushima is a literal drop in a bucket.
| ip26 wrote:
| It's not actually a reactor. The plutonium is just emitting
| radiation, as plutonium will do, and you harness some of
| the natural heat energy with thermocouples. There's no
| explosion risk, although you would certainly need
| trustworthy shielding.
| khuey wrote:
| The radiation emitted by plutonium 238, which is what's
| found inside RTGs, is easily shielded by essentially any
| solid material.
|
| The real reason you don't want an RTG powering your fridge
| is that it costs on the order of one million dollars per
| watt.
| imhoguy wrote:
| And recycling en masse would be nightmare. We got anough
| hassle with R* gases.
| waheoo wrote:
| Economies of scale would surely change that though?
| briga wrote:
| Plutonium is fairly rare, so I'm not sure it could be
| scaled up easily, even if there was a demand for it. Not
| to mention we probably don't want the raw material for
| nuclear bombs to be inside easily accessible home
| appliances...
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| To some extent, but plutonium is relatively rare. Because
| it's radioactive an it decays, there isn't that much in
| nature. You can make some as a byproduct of uranium
| fission reactors, but again, I believe collecting and
| refining it takes a lot of energy... You could always
| cover your roof in solar panels. They could potentially
| last 40 years, and the cost is anywhere between 10K to
| 20K installed. It's relatively affordable amortized over
| a 30-year mortgage, and considering it produces usable
| power.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Plutonium was generated in reactors in the US but those
| were all shut down by the late 80s. It's not an easy
| thing to just mine or make more of there were whole
| reactors basically dedicated to just what we have left
| today. In fact we're kind of running out of the stuff for
| scientific missions, NASA only has enough for one RTG
| left according to reports.
|
| https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html
|
| https://mjosefweber.medium.com/nasa-needs-plutonium-
| ea3bbaad...
| khuey wrote:
| The situation for Pu-238 production has improved since
| that was written https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-produced-
| plutonium-238-help-p...
| simcop2387 wrote:
| Not really, it's all artificially produced and would
| require generation of lots of power (it comes from
| reactors) to produce it at scale. The only times we used
| to do it at any reasonable scale was for nuclear weapons.
| It's also restricted by treaty because of this.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| I was thinking it would be fun to buy some uranium 238
| (you can have up to ~7kg of it without a license). Then I
| tried ddg'ing what it would cost to dispose of. I
| couldn't find an answer, so I decided buying uranium
| wasn't a good idea.
|
| It's hard enough getting rid of an old lead-cell battery.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I do wonder what it takes to end up on a watch list and
| assumed attempting to get plutonium or even discussing an
| attempt would be a guarantee.
|
| I went searching and this website on watch lists appears
| to be real, whilst also seeming like a joke.
|
| "Since there are many reasons why a traveler may seek
| redress, DHS TRIP works with the TSC, as appropriate,
| when an inquiry appears to be related to the watchlist.
|
| The TSC does not accept redress inquiries directly from
| the public. Instead, members of the public should contact
| the relevant screening agency with their questions or
| concerns about screening."
|
| https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-
| structure/national-...
| avereveard wrote:
| They're also quite massive, and radiate a lot of waste
| heat.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > easily shielded by essentially any solid material
|
| If that shield fails for any reason, including tampering,
| you're looking at the radiological contamination and
| likely deaths of everyone nearby at the very least.
| khuey wrote:
| Alpha sources outside the human body are of little health
| concern. You'd have to break it open and eat the
| plutonium inside for it to be a serious risk.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > You'd have to break it open and eat the plutonium
| inside for it to be a serious risk.
|
| Yes. Sounds like something a child would do.
| snet0 wrote:
| Yes, just like how children regularly eat kitchen knives.
| serf wrote:
| aside from the fact that 'breaking open a refrigerator'
| doesn't remotely sound like something a child would ever
| do to me, let's assume the worst and the child somehow
| opens up a refrigerator.
|
| a conventional fridge has electric motors/pumps , live
| a/c wiring, and gas under pressure. It's not radiation-
| spilling-everywhere unsafe, but it's not really safe for
| the kid, either.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That refrigerator is discarded. It ends up in a
| scrapyard. Someone comes, sees the shielded capsule
| containing radioactive material and harvests the lead.
| The remains are eventually sold to someone else and it
| ends up in that person's home where children are likely
| to become fascinated by it or even eat it.
|
| Everyone who went near this thing is likely to become ill
| _at the very least_.
| adrianN wrote:
| Plutonium dust is very dangerous and you don't want to be
| around the decay products either. Plutonium also likes to
| catch fire.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| How familiar are you with the human species? There have
| been several notable accidents where humans have cracked
| open medical machines and decay powered lighthouses to
| exactly this effect. Imagine if you started whacking
| plutonium in consumer products!
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > How familiar are you with the human species? There have
| been several notable accidents where humans have cracked
| open medical machines and decay powered lighthouses to
| exactly this effect. Imagine if you started whacking
| plutonium in consumer products!
|
| People already dope silicone bands and fabric (including
| underwear!) with Thorium and sell them as "negative ion"
| "wellness" products. Some are still available to buy on
| Amazon.
|
| Because there's nothing like "wellness" than exposing
| your gonads to ionising radiation!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > There have been several notable accidents where humans
| have cracked open medical machines and decay powered
| lighthouses
|
| Indeed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
|
| A caesium-137 radioactivity source was left behind and
| eventually stolen. The thieves successfully dismantled it
| despite sustaining severe injuries in the process,
| exposing the radioactive material contained in the
| shielded capsule. They were fascinated by the strange
| light emitted by it.
|
| Eventually it was sold to a scrapyard. The owner also
| became fascinated with the blue glow. He brought the
| thing home to show everyone. He distributed parts of the
| material to friends and family. Eventually sold it to
| another scrapyard but not before his brother took some of
| the beautiful radioactive dust and smeared it on the
| concrete floor. Where his daughter sat and ate a
| contaminated sandwich. She also applied he powder on her
| own body.
|
| The only reason this unfortunate chain of events stopped
| is the scrapyard owner's wife noticed everyone was
| getting sick and notified the authorities. She died later
| along with the girl. Attempts to bury the child also led
| to a riot. Scrapyard workers also died attempting to
| extract the lead from the radiation shielding component.
| avar wrote:
| > the scrapyard owner's wife noticed everyone was getting
| sick and notified the authorities[...]
|
| The Wikipedia article and the Portuguese source it links
| to seems ambiguous on the matter of whether it was
| because she notified the authorities, or because a
| visiting scientist thought to use radiation detectors on
| other people reporting to the hospital a day after her
| notification.
| no-s wrote:
| let's not forget that nation-state(s) (maybe singular,
| but not certain) have weaponized Polonium[1], and also
| the ubiquity of americium-241[2] which could be used
| similarly...Outside the human body but readily available
| for inimical ends...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_detector
| fnord77 wrote:
| or breathe particles. grind it up into a fine powder and
| you have a nasty dirty bomb
| rapsey wrote:
| That plutonium would end up in scrap heaps. Cointainers
| would break open and people would pretty much spread it
| everywhere from there.
| yread wrote:
| Plutonium is also highly (chemically) toxic.
| jb775 wrote:
| Because if you can power a fridge this way, you can power an
| automobile this way. They won't let this happen.
|
| The current power structures in the world (petrodollar, etc)
| and world economy as a whole (massive employment within oil
| industry and throughout supply chains catering to oil
| industry) are too intertwined with the oil industry to allow
| _any_ other technologies to swiftly disrupt that.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Are you really asking why we can't power your fridge with
| plutonium?
| junon wrote:
| Do you have an answer that isn't speculation or something
| you concluded from a breezy stroll over to Wikipedia?
|
| Stop mocking questions. It solves nothing.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Fair enough. I probably should have dialed down the
| snark.
|
| I suppose if we're looking for a Randall Munroe / "What
| If?" style explanation of why powering consumer equipment
| with plutonium is a bad idea, then it was the right
| question to ask.
| btilly wrote:
| Each Mars Rover uses 5 kilograms of plutonium 238.
| (Plutonium 239 is the one that is used in nuclear bombs.)
|
| Per https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-mars-rover-will-be-
| powered... we currently have a lab dedicated to producing
| it, and it makes 3.5 pounds per year.
|
| Per https://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/141931325/the-
| plutonium-probl... the cost of getting the lab restarted
| was a bit shy of $100 million. And once running fully it
| costs millions of dollars to run.
|
| At those cost points it would be cheaper to deliver you a
| brand new fridge each month for the next 20 years than to
| deliver you a single fridge using plutonium to run
| without external electricity for the same 20 years. Not
| to mention that the plutonium itself is toxic.
| junon wrote:
| Thanks for the info, interesting.
|
| Though FWIW I was more commenting on the mocking of a
| legitimate question. Not everyone has the same background
| as everyone else. There are no stupid questions.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I come to HN because yes, people are really asking and
| really answering. It's currently the best forum on the
| internet for this reason.
| mzg wrote:
| Not sure about you, but I was promised fusion-powered
| DeLoreans by now.
| justinator wrote:
| You don't have the Mr. Fusion upgrade? Run that sucker on
| trash. Had it since 2015.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I was promised that by at least 1985, plutonium would be
| available in every corner drugstore.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| You know I was about to say something about how your fridge
| draws so much more power than these probes, but actually I
| just googled it and they're pretty close. Today I learned.
|
| (I don't know how much power the probes actually _use_ , but
| anyway the wattage of the RTG itself is pretty close to the
| steady state power consumption of a fridge.)
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Why can 't my fridge be powered this way_
|
| The MMRTG is a cylinder 25" in diameter and 26" high, it's
| going to seriously impact space in your 'fridge. Plus it
| weighs nearly 100 lbs.
|
| It outputs around 100W of power, which might be enough for a
| small refrigerator, but it also emits around 2000W of thermal
| energy, so your kitchen's going to get a little warm
| (probably a good thing in the winter, not so much in summer).
|
| Though probably the biggest drawback is the cost -- the MMRTG
| costs around $100M to manufacture. The US Department of
| Energy makes the plutonium for it.
| m4rtink wrote:
| There are more efficient Stirling Engine based RTGs in
| prototype phase that would be a much better fit for your
| fridge as they could run the compressor directly. And also
| add a nice nuclear-steampunk flair to the whole thing. :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And, if you somehow manage to procure one to power your
| fridge _and_ complete all the necessary paperwork for it to
| be legal, you 'll be on the radar of pretty much every
| single three and four-letter agency in your country.
|
| Not just the obvious ones (checking if you aren't selling
| plutonium or making a dirty bomb), but also health agencies
| (what if it leaks and someone eats it?), environmental
| agencies (what if it leaks and gets into groundwater?),
| child protective services (are you really storing nuclear
| material in reach of children?!), drug enforcement (are
| these parties near your "glo fridge" legal and above
| board?)...
|
| On the bright side, as the joke goes, being on the radar of
| government agencies is a good way to deter criminals from
| robbing your house.
| lostlogin wrote:
| According to the below, The Perseverance could potentially
| give you a dose of 210 milligram in an accident. That's not
| as much as I'd have thought, though would make getting the
| milk from the nuclear fridge a little hazardous.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/electrical-
| p...
| cosmonaughty wrote:
| Galen Windsor and his colleagues worked elbow deep in
| plutonium and uranium for years. None of them ever got
| sick. There are some old Galen Windsor videos on YouTube.
| He traveled around the country eating uranium in front of
| his students and audience. The EPA of his day had hissy
| fits. Great stuff!
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Eating unprocessed uranium order that isn't giving off
| very much radiation is a bit different. It just passes
| out of his body without bioaccumulating.
|
| Source for the claim he worked around plutonium "elbow
| deep" please.
| souprock wrote:
| We used to power pacemakers this way. There might still be a
| person with plutonium inside.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _All images copyright Nasa /JPL-Caltech_
|
| Question: Aren't those pictures actually in the public domain as
| they were produced by US government's agencies?
| idlewords wrote:
| I get how exciting this is for planetary scientists, but the last
| few robotic missions have really driven home that Mars is kind of
| an armpit. Here's to sending rovers somewhere with cooler
| visuals. I will stay up all night to see what the Io Lander can
| send home before it falls into a volcano.
| wayanon wrote:
| Not kidding someone could add filters to the images to see
| different aspects of the view.
| idlewords wrote:
| Cat filter would make headlines
| Nelkins wrote:
| I hope we start terraforming Mars in my lifetime.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I hope we figure out how to terraform Earth first
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| All ya'll complaining that you can take better pictures with your
| iPhones than Percy can on Mars, please read this:
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/cameras/
|
| These are ENGINEERING cameras for taking incredibly precise
| measurements. Not for populating an Instagram page.
| centimeter wrote:
| > SuperCam fires a laser at mineral targets that are beyond the
| reach of the rover's robotic arm, and then analyzes the
| vaporized rock to reveal its elemental composition. Like the
| ChemCam on rover Curiosity, SuperCam fires laser pulses at
| pinpoint areas smaller than 1 millimeter from more than 20 feet
| (about 7 meters) away.
|
| Holy shit, that rocks.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| Pun intended?
| cco wrote:
| If they didn't include at least one Instagram ready camera, the
| team majorly misstepped on the "secure funding by inspiring a
| generation" part of NASA's mission.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| Go show a kid the EDL video, and then try to say that again
| with a straight face
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Such cameras won't survive the trip through interplanetary
| space and operate on a planet without a magnetic field.
| duxup wrote:
| Is there a single good official site to get Perseverance media
| from?
| uomo wrote:
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ Would be
| the best place to get images/videos from Perseverance.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I want to see that little helicopter fly! I scoured the site
| and as yet can't find any images of it, when I thought they
| were going to take mutual selfies -- heli of the rover and
| vice versa.
| azernik wrote:
| The helicopter hasn't flown yet - they put it down on the
| ground, and they're going to run it through a lot of remote
| checks before flying it. IIRC it's gonna be a month or two
| before first flight.
| electriclove wrote:
| I don't believe they have put it on the ground yet.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Thank you for this! Do you know of a source on the net
| for a simple timeline of when X will happen?
| almyk wrote:
| This is not a timeline, but it states the objectives of
| the helicopter and contains a check list of them.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
| azernik wrote:
| The ground controllers themselves don't know precisely. I
| suspect they'll have more precise timelines in the last
| week before flight, but that's just a wild guess on my
| part.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I would think with the wind and sand storms that it'd be
| dangerous leaving it exposed for a month before you even
| get to use it. Does the rover park on top of it during
| storms for minimal protection?
| azernik wrote:
| Right after landing, Perseverance put Ingenuity down on
| the ground and drove off to give some separation.
|
| The winds and sand aren't mechanically very strong - the
| Martian atmosphere isn't dense enough to transmit much
| force even at high wind speeds. The only real dangers are
| obscuring the sun (important because Ingenuity runs on
| solar power) and getting dust in all kinds of places. But
| the landing site is pretty low latitude, and it's early
| in northern hemisphere spring right now, so power
| shouldn't be a problem.
|
| Mars isn't quite as dead as the Moon, but still - you
| would be surprised how well things are preserved on dead
| rocks. As long as you can withstand the radiation and the
| cold, of course.
| gokhan wrote:
| I don't think Perseverance moved since landing, and
| Ingenuity should be still inside the rover.
| danaliv wrote:
| A 60 mph wind on Mars has an aerodynamic drag force
| equivalent to a 5 mph breeze on Earth.
| WalterSobchak wrote:
| Also, InSight: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-
| images/
| [deleted]
| hanniabu wrote:
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
| Shared404 wrote:
| This is the link I came to the thread looking for.
|
| Many thanks.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| they don't look all that stunning to me.
| tiahura wrote:
| Thanks for having the courage to make this comment. While
| beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it's not like these are
| mind bending technicolor panoramas. They look like every other
| picture of Mars we've seen since the first pictures of Mars
| decades ago. At some point someone needs to ask why we're
| spending billions on more pictures of Mars and answering deep
| questions like "Is Mars soil 36.7 or 36.8% silicon?"
| NL807 wrote:
| Why? Because missions like these contribute to our
| understanding of extraterrestrial worlds, like Mars. The data
| collected will help with future space travel and potential
| settlement.
| bsder wrote:
| The "science" mostly isn't in the images.
|
| Images, however, are the easiest thing for the lay public to
| grasp.
| dimator wrote:
| Images I would argue serve an invaluable purpose: inspiring
| the public and the next generation of space explorers.
| perardi wrote:
| This project will cost $2.8 billion...over the 10-year life
| of the project.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020
|
| In government terms? That is nothing. We'll burn that much on
| defective F-35 fighters in a year.
|
| And we are not "just" assessing the mineral content of the
| soil--not even close.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/science/
|
| _(If you're that offended by the cost, I will Venmo you the
| 0.1 cents per year this is taking out of your tax bill.)_
| medium_burrito wrote:
| You triggered the fuck out of me. The saving grace of the
| Joint Strike Jobs program is that maybe 1% of the people
| learned what to do next time.
| perardi wrote:
| Yes yes, I know, it's trite to point out that boondoggle
| of a project.
|
| Except...NASA apparently spent all of $80 million on a
| helicopter that will work on Mars. One has to wonder what
| the military-industrial complex could accomplish with a
| bit of financial discipline and oversight.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The NASA helicopter had to work _at all_ on Mars. It 's
| amazing that they succeeded. But it didn't have to
| survive in an environment with Martian SAM sites, or even
| rifle fire from the ground.
|
| That is, the military requirements are much more intense
| than we often realize.
| evilos wrote:
| Surviving rifle fire has been a solved problem since
| like, the bronze age. Add more metal. Getting to and
| landing on another planet (intact and functional) on the
| other hand, is probably like 3 orders of magnitude higher
| in difficulty.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Inquiring minds would love to know about a practical
| solution. You can add more material, but that's extra
| bulk and weight. I think we can agree that a mountain is
| bullet proof, but that's not really practical.
|
| Also, rifles are really good at shooting through shit.
| We're talking rifles from 1890s. People don't realize
| that a bullet from a rifle punches through steel plate
| (and then buy steel body armour like the plebs they are).
| Modern ar15/ak rifles are wusses by comparison- we traded
| big badass bullets for smaller ones that are lighter and
| easier to carry.
|
| More awesome weapons like the rpg-7 basically create a
| stream of molten metal that goes right through armored
| vehicles. Or you use depleted uranium or tungsten, which
| get more dense as they heat up from friction of punching
| through things.
|
| In the near future we'll have even more badass things
| like railguns that will go through meters of
| steel/ceramic/admantium.
|
| So yeah, that mountain may not save you. Meanwhile, mars
| will be the same.
| maximente wrote:
| great: i'm thrilled that the RPG-7, a weapon that is over
| half a century old, is so awesome. let's cancel all US
| variants of this tried and true beast and send the money
| directly to NASA: win-win all around, except by those
| developing unneeded RPG-7 improvements.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Might as well farm that one out to the Pashtuns too -
| they seemed to be doing OK with the 1890s rifle copying
| in the 1980s
| evilos wrote:
| Not really sure how this relates, but ok.
|
| The vast majority of combat causalities are from
| explosive fragmentation anyways.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| The whole get 10+ prototypes from various places, stick
| them in a big ass vacuum chamber, and try to make them
| fly was interesting. Turns out a torque rotor doesn't
| work there.
|
| With $80m, the military industrial complex would figure
| out that pink and yellow don't work well for urban
| camouflage.
| abledon wrote:
| yer dopamine circuits are fried brah! Take a tech detox for 2
| weeks
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What do you want before you'll call it "stunning"? Beaches with
| women in bikinis? Those are stunning for the amount of detail
| they show of the surface of another planet.
| m463 wrote:
| Are you saying women are from mars? I thought they were from
| venus.
|
| Here are the images:
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| Oh wow I didn't realise that was a thing, that's amazing.
| Thanks
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Microbes in bikinis, please
| ncmncm wrote:
| I think this is the first probe _ever_ to have a microscope
| on board.
|
| Seemed kinda dumb to be looking for evidence of life
| without one. But there was a time when it was a big uphill
| battle even to get a camera on board: "no scientific
| value". That mistake was not repeated. Pictures always have
| surprises.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| LOL. Not sure why you're being downvoted - microbes with or
| without bikinis would _definitely_ be stunning.
| known wrote:
| Mars surface looks pretty much like Earth surface :)
| arethuza wrote:
| Wait until we get images of cliffs of Echus Chasma, the crater
| of Pavonis Mons or the view over Valles Marineris....
|
| Edit: I know Perseverance isn't going to those places, but
| something/someone will eventually....
| novaRom wrote:
| Like Venus as well. IMO Venus is more interesting destination
| because it's more active and diverse, with Earth like gravity,
| but high temp and pressure is the reason we don't land there,
| Mars is just simpler to explore with current tech.
| suyash wrote:
| Can someone explain, is this how Mars would look to us with naked
| eye or this is an artistic/digital interpretation?
| CharlesW wrote:
| My understanding is that these are how they'd look with the
| naked eye. There's a color calibration target on the rover.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25619/mastcam-z-looks-at-its...
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Does anyone know what type of data compression is being used to
| transmit these images? There's been huge progress since the last
| rover.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > There's been huge progress since the last rover.
|
| One thing that changed in the last 8 years is that there are
| now two new orbiters around Mars (MAVEN and ExoMars TGO), which
| can retrieve data from the rovers faster, cache it and send it
| to Earth faster.
| NL807 wrote:
| I'm speculating here, but I think these images are transmitted
| in some kind of raw format, or close to it, making them more
| resilient to data corruption. Compressed images will incur
| greater data loss when compressed, compared to raw images where
| you might lose a few image blocks at a time.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They compress them but transmit with forward error
| correction. They do have the ability to retransmit if the
| images are too damaged.
|
| Totally uncompressed images are not a very efficient way to
| transmit images if you want to ensure they're scientifically
| accurate.
| kadoban wrote:
| Naively, I'd doubt that. There are all kinds of error
| correcting codes to deal with that and you'd end up with a
| substantial increase in effective bandwidth (with the
| compression). There may be error correction built in to the
| protocol itself already.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Compression can also include backup/padding/parity data to
| correct for errors and transmission losses.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They use the same kind of compression as the last mission. JP2,
| I believe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
|
| I'm not sure that data compression has progressed that much
| since Curiosity in 2012 or Insight in 2018. There have been
| some formats that have improved compression at the expense of
| large amounts of memory or processing power, but neither of
| those are abundant on a rad-hardened processor. Neither is
| electricity. Neither are the toolchains to process such images
| very widespread or as well understood.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Any idea how much storage it has? I would think it'd have to
| be TBs to store all these images, logs, and other data for
| years while making sure they have enough memory so that
| they're not limited and if the rover stays there for longer
| than intended.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Why would it need to continue to store things after
| successful receipt on Earth?
| leephillips wrote:
| Very off-site backup.
| azernik wrote:
| Once it's been sent to Earth, they drop it. Curiosity's
| main computer had a flash drive of 2GB, and each of the big
| cameras had an 8GB flash drive on board. I doubt
| Perseverance is much changed from that; the main computer
| is IIRC a spare part from the Curiosity production.
|
| Rad-hardened computer hardware is expensive and bulky. You
| don't add storage or processing power that you don't
| absolutely need.
|
| See https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/blog/how-to-store-data-
| on-mars and
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/
| walrus01 wrote:
| One of the obvious constraints is that for science reasons
| they transmit each image in a lossless format, so we're up
| against the limits of what a lossless image compressor can
| do.
|
| If there were a future mission's requirement to send back
| lossy images first, and CPU power was significant, something
| like AVIF or JPEG-XL would likely be a candidate.
|
| https://netflixtechblog.com/avif-for-next-generation-
| image-c...
|
| ICER appears to be what they're using now for lossless:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICER
| mleonhard wrote:
| According to the graph on p.42, the 20 MHz CPU compresses
| at a rate of about 20us/pixel. So the 1024x1024 images take
| about 20 seconds each to compress.
|
| There are 2,000 "normal" sized images on the website [0].
| If each of these was 1024x1024, they took 11 hours to
| compress. So Perseverance spends about 7% of its CPU time
| on image compression.
|
| [0] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
| topkeks wrote:
| AVIF has a lossless mode, which is quite a lot better than
| PNG for example.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Thanks for that. Yes, they do both lossless and lossy
| compression. I think sometimes they may send the lossy
| image (especially if for a navigation or engineering
| camera) and request a lossless image if there's something
| particularly interesting.
| ptstomp wrote:
| I can't find references to JPEG 2000 on this report:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9
|
| Are they being re-encoded into regular JPG files when being
| shown online?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Look for "JP2". It is used for other spacecraft that are
| part of the Mars fleet.
| idiocrat wrote:
| All the extraterrestrial expansion, dream of Men to conquer
| Space, star track enterprise! I'm pessimistic that we will ever
| leave our solar system, and if so in 1000 years, I do not care.
|
| Hopefully people learn how tiny our bubble is and protect our
| environment more. The Martian environment looks so boring -- as a
| replacement for polluted Earth. (We will pollute Mars faster than
| Earth).
|
| I'm living at the ocean, trying to keep my vicinity free of
| garbage. Today I pulled out pair of trousers and some plastic
| bands out out water. Sometimes I'm having fights with my elderly
| village neighbors, who are burning household trash (paper, wood)
| on the ocean shore. I take their garbage out their hands and
| carry it to my home, later drive to the garbage processing
| center.
| moltar wrote:
| I admire your efforts to clean. But unfortunately it's
| pointless. There are entire million and billion population
| countries that treat oceans as waste baskets, simply because
| they don't know better.
|
| I've talked to fishermen in rural Thailand and they don't have
| waste collection. So they take their trash every day and just
| dump it in the middle of the ocean somewhere. They didn't
| understand why that was a problem when I discussed it with
| them.
| 0x003 wrote:
| One person doing something in the face of billions of others
| is the entire opposite of pointless. Giving up because you're
| one person and you can't magically transform the entire world
| is cynical, a cop-out and completely misunderstands the
| nature of the problem.
|
| The world won't change overnight, it won't immediately flip
| from the actions of one individual, or two, or even 1
| thousand or 1 million. But that doesn't mean the action is
| pointless.
|
| Change requires momentum, momentum requires the actions of an
| individual diligently living the change they want to see and
| sharing it with others. That sort of change builds slowly,
| often imperceptibly. But before you know it things begin
| _actually_ changing. So no, this binary attitude of "You
| can't change everything by your actions so you may as well do
| nothing" is such an apathetic, cynical cop-out and I hate
| seeing it spouted everytime you see someone do something
| positive. As an idea it literally does nothing but harm and
| it has no value in being said.
| daave wrote:
| It's not pointless, but I do think it's reasonable to
| question whether this is the _best_ thing one can do to
| have an impact.
|
| Could the time spent taking the neighbors trash away be
| spent doing something even more impactful?
|
| Is the interaction with these neighbors caring and
| educative, or antagonistic? In the latter case they're
| unlikely to emulate it or pass on the idea to others.
| 0x003 wrote:
| It's not about doing the _best_ thing, it 's about doing
| _something_. You don 't have to perfectly efficient, just
| take simple actions that reflect the change you want to
| see. We all have limited time and energy, if you see
| something positive you can do you shouldn't dismiss the
| idea of doing it just because you could sell all your
| belongings and become an eco-warrior and be maximally
| efficient in pursuing a positive development. Don't do
| nothing because you could be doing more. Just do what you
| can.
|
| Do something good and do it consistently.
| solipsism wrote:
| Why though, if you're not going to make a difference? Why
| bother?
|
| The reality is that the reason we do these things is to
| make ourselves feel better. Ah, yes, my daily shot of
| endorphins from recycling. Ah yes, my bumper sticker
| makes sure everyone knows I'm one of the good ones -- my
| social standing is safe.
|
| This philosophy is why middle class first world kids pay
| thousands of dollars to go on missionary trips to build a
| single well in a far away village. Yes, you got dirty
| with the natives and _did something_.
|
| I think it's all hollow. If you aren't making a real
| impact -- actually moving the needle -- you are doing
| nothing. It's just a vanity.
|
| I believe in donating money to causes that have high
| impact. Given my skillset, I'm confident that's by far
| the best thing I can do. And aside from that, I don't
| sweat the small stuff. I have a keurig. Yep you heard
| right. Also donated enough to save a few lives from
| malaria. Exactly one of those facts about myself made any
| difference at all to the world.
| 0x003 wrote:
| > The reality is that the reason we do these things is to
| make ourselves feel better. Ah, yes, my daily shot of
| endorphins from recycling. Ah yes, my bumper sticker
| makes sure everyone knows I'm one of the good ones -- my
| social standing is safe
|
| Speak for yourself my friend. The idea that people only
| make changes, even little ones entirely out of self
| service is extraordinarily cynical and a very negative
| and sad view of the world.
|
| Sometimes people just do good things, because they want
| to improve some minor aspect of our world, or make
| someone elses (or somethings) day a little bit nicer.
| Sometimes people do this entirely without the desire to
| praise themselves or be praised by someone else.
|
| It still exists, but by it's nature you don't often see
| it. And if you don't believe it exists, even when you do
| catch a glimpse of it you wouldn't notice or care.
|
| > I think it's all hollow. If you aren't making a real
| impact -- actually moving the needle -- you are doing
| nothing. It's just a vanity.
|
| Say on my walk to and from work every day I pick up one
| single piece of litter and quietly put it in the bin. I
| do this every day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That's
| 500 pieces of litter. Every day those little actions
| aren't moving the needle at all, but at the end of the
| year I've actually managed to make a tiny little nudge to
| my environment around me. Say I tell my friend and they
| decide to do the same thing, now it's 1000 pieces of
| litter. They tell 2 of their friends, now it's 2000
| pieces of litter. Then I decide to make it 2 pieces of
| litter, and I tell my friend and they pass it on. Now
| it's 4000 pieces. They start telling their friends. And
| so on and so on. The individual action barely nudges any
| needle, but just because you don't see it doesn't mean it
| isn't moving some needle even slightly. You just don't
| have strong enough vision.
|
| > I believe in donating money to causes that have high
| impact. Given my skillset, I'm confident that's by far
| the best thing I can do. And aside from that, I don't
| sweat the small stuff. I have a keurig. Yep you heard
| right. Also donated enough to save a few lives from
| malaria. Exactly one of those facts about myself made any
| difference at all to the world.
|
| You don't exist in a vacuum, and my whole point of all my
| comments is that individual action drives collective
| change. One person making minor adjustments on it's own
| is nothing, but if many of those singular people decide
| to make changes it can lead to amazing things. You can
| choose to make whatever change you please, I'm glad you
| believe in some action. But let me ask you, what change
| do you think you're making by stomping on the idea that
| multiple little changes can lead to positive effects? Why
| expend the energy if it's pointless anyway?
|
| Things can be better, and people should try and make as
| many little positive changes as they can to the world. No
| person is smart enough, or has enough foresight or
| knowledge to be able to predict what that may lead to in
| the future, and personally I choose to be optimistic
| because why waste my life believing that anything better
| is a futile mission?
| solipsism wrote:
| _The idea that people only make changes, even little ones
| entirely out of self service is extraordinarily cynical
| and a very negative and sad view of the world._
|
| You keep saying that. It's subjective, and it's not an
| argument. George Bernard Shaw said, _The power of
| accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those
| who have not got it._
|
| _Say I tell my friend and they decide to do the same
| thing, now it 's 1000 pieces of litter. They tell 2 of
| their friends, now it's 2000 pieces of litter. Then I
| decide to make it 2 pieces of litter, and I tell my
| friend and they pass it on. Now it's 4000 pieces. They
| start telling their friend_
|
| Well that's imaginative but it seems highly unlikely.
| After all, if everyone is so highly primed to change in
| this way, and all it takes is one person to spark the
| fire... chances are enormously likely it would have
| happened already, and it would have happened without you
| needing to spark it.
|
| This idea that you're at the center of a movement to
| change the world is just more subconscious ego feeding.
| If you want to be at the center of a movement that
| changes the world... it's going to take a lot of hard
| work.
|
| _what change do you think you 're making by stomping on
| the idea that multiple little changes can lead to
| positive effects_
|
| Humans enjoy conversation, and some of them enjoy trying
| to figure out truth from fiction. No more, no less.
|
| _personally I choose to be optimistic because why waste
| my life_
|
| Whatever floats your boat. We "cynics" are enjoying the
| ride as much as anyone. We just think we're doing it in a
| clear-eyed way.
| 0x003 wrote:
| > George Bernard Shaw said, The power of accurate
| observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have
| not got it.
|
| I think you should double check to make sure your
| "accurate observation" and "clear eyed" thinking is not
| tainted by your own biases. It's very easy to consider
| ones own view the accurate one without ironing out the
| biases learnt or inherent to you.
|
| > Well that's imaginative but it seems highly unlikely.
| After all, if everyone is so highly primed to change in
| this way, and all it takes is one person to spark the
| fire... chances are enormously likely it would have
| happened already, and it would have happened without you
| needing to spark it.
|
| They have. Millions of times in fact! Human history is
| always changing and growing from little things and big
| things too. The world of today looks drastically
| different to that of 30 years ago, or 90 years ago or 500
| years ago!
|
| > This idea that you're at the center of a movement to
| change the world is just more subconscious ego feeding.
| If you want to be at the center of a movement that
| changes the world... it's going to take a lot of hard
| work.
|
| It's not about being the center of a movement to change
| the world, and the fact you keep jumping back to that
| shows that you don't understand what I'm saying. You look
| at it in that lens because you want to, but it's just
| about doing minor good things for it's own purpose. A
| simple autotelic action. It's honestly that simple, but
| the end result of a lot of people making that simple
| choice _is_ a changed world. It 's not about feeding ego
| at all. It's also not about building a movement, at least
| not directly. It's about convincing those around you of
| the value of doing something small that improves things
| even insignificantly because combined they have massive
| impact.
|
| Enjoy your "clear-eyed view" of the world, I know you've
| convinced yourself you're 100% correct.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| One rural fisherman's garbage production doesn't scale,
| though. A company owned by a handful of people can put out
| more pollution than that of millions of rural fishermen.
| jcims wrote:
| My imagination has a pretty big range for 'rural Thailand',
| do they have a safe way to dispose of it inland? Subsistence
| folks, to the extent that it might apply here, get a pass
| from me.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The issue is that 90% of the plastic in the ocean is dumped
| from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa where the waste disposal
| system consists of driving a truck up to a river and
| dumping the trash in. Of the remaining 10%, it comes from
| Latin American nations that do the same thing.
|
| Meanwhile western people see these masses of trash and
| plastic in the ocean and conclude the rational response is
| to ban straws in the western nations that do have effective
| waste disposal systems that don't consist of transporting
| said waste to the ocean and dumping it.
|
| So the question is whether the outrage about ocean
| pollution is harnessed towards effectively addressing the
| problem or whether it is dissipated in the heat of
| pointless kabuki rituals that we do to absolve ourselves of
| guilt, even as the trash in the oceans piles up every time
| someone in the third world throws something away.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| A lot of those effective waste disposal systems in the
| West, particularly for recycling, consist of paying Asian
| and African companies to take away the waste, so it can
| then be dumped in their countries/oceans or get
| "recycled" in places like this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
| Invictus0 wrote:
| From your own source:
|
| > While numerous international press reports have made
| reference to allegations that the majority of exports to
| Ghana are dumped, research by the US International Trade
| Commission found little evidence of unprocessed e-waste
| being shipped to Africa from the United States,[9] a
| finding corroborated by the Massachusetts Institute of
| Technology, Memorial University, Arizona State
| University, UNEP, and other research.[10] In 2013, the
| original source of the allegation blaming foreign dumping
| for the material found in Agbogbloshie recanted, or
| rather stated it had never made the claim that 80% of US
| e-waste is exported.[11]
| rsj_hn wrote:
| No, that is not a waste disposal system, it's how tech
| companies and other companies that sell gadgets fool
| their eco customers into thinking they are "recycling"
| something that cannot in principle be safely recycled. It
| is yet another example of going through a kabuki ritual
| rather than effectively dealing with the problem.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| It's not only recycling. Currently, in my area of Poland
| there are gangs which bring toxic industrial waste from
| Western Europe in large quantities and just dump them
| wherever, while collecting the fee from industrial
| clients for properly disposing of them. This is a very
| recent trend, that was, from what I've read, started by
| China no longer importing European waste. You can only
| imagine how often "disposing of" such waste in China
| consisted of dumping it into a forest or pouring into
| ground or a river.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Agreed, but weren't you claiming earlier that poor
| countries are responsible for 100% of the plastic waste
| problem?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I think that's a good approximation. The volume of
| computer parts or used phones isn't significant compared
| to the total volume of waste produced domestically in
| these nations. But it's a separate tragedy that companies
| like Apple can pay partners to "recycle" stuff that ends
| up in a landfill in Nigeria somewhere, or manually
| stripped of copper and other parts by people working in
| unsafe conditions.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| Plastic recycling done in Asia is the result of
| incredibly cheap return shipping as most containers come
| back empty.
|
| People who get outraged about it don't understand that
| due to cheaper wages and energy costs, plus the need for
| raw feedstock in the manufacturing countries it's
| actually a really decent system. It's a closed loop where
| plastic goods are produced in Asia and recyclable plastic
| returns on the same ship, it gets processed and keeps raw
| material prices low for continued use in manufacturing
| for export again. It doesn't just get shipped there and
| thrown in a river.
|
| The real problem, especially in South East Asia is very
| much cultural, many assumed that societies would become
| more environmentally friendly as they got richer but that
| is not the case, they are polluting more than ever. It's
| incredibly common to see people throw rubbish on the
| ground despite being right next to a bin. Nearly every
| waterway is horrendously polluted with plastic consumer
| products.
|
| It's an externality that the rest of the world must bear.
| The other poster here is on the money, nearly all of it
| comes from a few catchments.
|
| Half the plastic in the ocean comes from 5 countries, all
| are in Asia.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/asia-s-plastic-
| proble...
| Clewza313 wrote:
| That's the theory. However, in practice plastic recycling
| waste is contaminated & worthless, so much so that a
| number of Asian countries including China and Malaysia
| have banned imports.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| What's the waste stream looking like? Like can we trace how
| this trash originates and why it's not ending up where it
| should? If poor areas with weak government services _are_
| the problem, then that's a problem, no?
| neolog wrote:
| What could they do with the waste instead, if they don't have
| collection?
| jpindar wrote:
| In parts of the US that don't have garbage collection,
| people are expected to either take it to a dump or bury it
| on their own land.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Honestly burning it just might be better. Without doing any
| calculations my intuitions tell me it would be minuscule on
| the global scale and the benefit of that garbage not going
| into the ocean would outweigh the added air pollution.
| blondie9x wrote:
| If one million people make a little effort the impact will be
| huge. Dont't be pessimistic. Lead by example. The simplified,
| minimalist, sustainable living style is contagious because it
| is as we are meant to actually live. In balance with the
| energy of the planet we depend upon and are part of.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| The only solution is the spread of information and education.
| That's the only thing that will help. We must reach all people
| and present them with the evidence on environmental
| degradation. The planet is ours to protect and cherish, and I'm
| confident this is an achievable goal if we act fast. By
| advocating for access to internet and education at global
| scale! Starting with our homes.
| mLuby wrote:
| "One person's trash is another's treasure."
|
| The other solution is make it more _profitable_ to collect
| and sell your garbage than to dispose of it. Which means it
| has to be worth it for a business to collect your trash from
| you. Better recycling and distribution technologies can
| enable this.
|
| I dream of the day when businesses fight for the privilege of
| hauling away your trash. Maybe delivery drones could bring
| back garbage to make their return trips less, uh, _wasteful._
| runarberg wrote:
| nah. We've been waiting for businesses to step up their
| game for over 30 years now. I don't see it happening in the
| next thirty years coming. A more realistic scenario is for
| governments to build the infrastructure required to recycle
| and reuse our trash and, better yet, regulate how trash is
| produced and punish it's existence.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| This. Fuck that. Anyone under 65 can agree with me. It's
| us and our kids and their kids for the next 50-100 years
| that will pay. Time for us to take the reigns. These fat
| cows had their chance. We'll build a garden.
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| They don't need to "step up their game", they are plenty
| efficient at minmaxing the economic game. If anything the
| government and thus the people need to step up their game
| to change the incentives.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Profit has been a deprecated concept. Technology we have
| today can automate Maslow's hierarchy of needs for all at
| global scale.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Maslow. You mean the guy who took babies ape away from
| their mother ?
| sytelus wrote:
| Most people are unable to realize distances in space. Humans
| are simply not designed to travel in space. For a space ship
| that can be self-sustaining in every way and capable of multi-
| year travel, it has to be almost like a city. Even when you get
| to planets, they are even less hospitable than Mars. I think
| future life forms which will colonize other planets will be
| machines, not humans.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I think future life forms which will colonize other planets
| will be machines, not humans.
|
| Tardigrades seem like likely candidates, too.
| nostromo wrote:
| Most people also don't realize how slow the speed of light is
| in relation to the size of the universe and the distance
| between stars. It's quite easy for a person to look at two
| galaxies in a telescope that will never be able to even
| observe each other's existence, let alone visit one another.
|
| People often argue that we'll find a way to travel faster
| than light -- which is curious given how rarely people argue
| that we'll find a way to travel backwards in time.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > We will pollute Mars faster than Earth
|
| I don't see how this is possible. At most, Mars might have
| small, organized colonies someday. Earth has billions of
| people.
| gtm1260 wrote:
| Stupid question maybe but like is there a reason the picture
| quality seems worse than a decent dslr photo? I'm so curious what
| that photo would look like, taken with an everyday camera,
| without the bizarre 'scientific' look of these shots.
| antmldr wrote:
| Scott Manley recently did a pretty good ELI5 on the topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wah1DbFVFiY
| dmix wrote:
| It takes 15min but this plus the comment section on CMOS
| (can't link directly) is excellent. The other comment about
| being made a decade ago is also relevant and accurate. They
| will certainly be better next time with evolutions in camera
| tech thanks to smartphones.
|
| TLDR worth a listen
| pkaye wrote:
| In some interviews with the mast cam engineers, they say they
| can capture higher resolution images later on. Maybe they were
| reducing the image size to get then transmitted quicker.
| cosmonaughty wrote:
| The video has to be grainy. Otherwise it's much easier to see
| that it's fake.
| dmix wrote:
| My question is why was the "sound of Mars" release only 18
| seconds long?
|
| Why not record hours of what it sounds like to be on another
| planet? Even the sound recordings from decades ago on (I think
| Titan) was only a short creepy clip.
|
| I understand it's mostly going to be wind and interspliced with
| the robots sounds but I still don't get how we don't have hours
| of Mars already.
| athul7744 wrote:
| Perseverance is the first rover with microphones on Mars.
| This is why we don't have audios from prior missions.
| m4rtink wrote:
| IIRC the Mars Insight mission was able to reconstruct the
| sounds of wind in Mars from signals picked up by their
| super sensitive seismometter.
| nkoren wrote:
| _Working_ microphones. They 've sent microphones
| previously, which have either failed or been on missions
| that crashed.
| cosmonaughty wrote:
| With atmospheric pressure less than 1% of Earth's, there
| would be virtually no sound. Sound travels as vibrations
| between air molecules. If you're hearing sound on Mars then
| you're not on Mars.
|
| With 100x thinner air, the air molecules would not even be
| close enough to forward such vibrations. You wouldn't be able
| to hear a gunshot a few feet away.
|
| The fact that NASA would provide any sound at all just
| demonstrates this is all a staged fakery, being done here on
| earth with a bit of augmented virtual reality to spice up the
| film. Since sound doesn't travel in 1% atmosphere the way it
| does in real earth atmosphere, you should hear virtually
| nothing.
|
| This whole affair is a Hollywood sci-fi production being sold
| to you as science. You want so deeply for it to be real that
| cognitive dissonance and Dunning Kreuger will likely cause
| you to have a visceral reaction to my remarks. That's OK.
| histriosum wrote:
| My guess would be bandwidth. Every bit of bandwidth is
| precious, so they probably dont have the spare budget to send
| long audio files without obvious scientific value...
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, but you could record few minutes of sound in the same
| amount of data taken by one high res photo. I think the
| good question is why 18 seconds specifically.
| simonh wrote:
| It's just 18 seconds so far. I doubt they sent the
| microphone just so they could use it once, but then I
| doubt sending hours of audio was at the top of the
| priority list for the first few days of the mission.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Maybe after they complete their primary and secondary
| mission objectives, they'll find spare time and compute to
| stream a couple hours of Martian ambience. Does NASA have a
| suggestion box for after hours / extended program
| experiments?
| zaik wrote:
| I doubt a NASA suggestion box open to the internet will
| be very fruitful.
| dmurray wrote:
| I for one look forward to Rover McRoverface in the 2022
| launch window.
| bregma wrote:
| Marvin McMarsface is to take a close-up look at the Face
| On Mars in 2023 and then implant an Illudium Q-36
| Explosive Space Modulator to eliminate Mars because it
| obstructs our view of Venus.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > I doubt a NASA suggestion box open to the internet will
| be very fruitful.
|
| The two resectful and fun comments between 'this' comment
| and your comment.
|
| I can imagine a Tumblr/Reddit re-post would be more fun,
| but-yes-not for the NASA suggestion box. They would have
| 1 diamond idea every 100k unusable ones.
|
| I can imagine every gaming company would LOVE to have the
| original Mars sound in their games (e.g. "No Man's Sky").
| C4stor wrote:
| In a world where the sounds of sports on TV is not even
| the true sound of what's happening in the stadium because
| it's boring, I highly doubt they would pay a single penny
| for what would probably be a highly disappointing wind-
| like monotonous sound.
| carapace wrote:
| One of the most beautiful and haunting things I've ever heard
| was a tape cassette that had EM signals recorded by Voyager
| transposed into human-audible sound domain somehow. It was
| like whale song of space.
| dmix wrote:
| I found it here (there's a series on other planets/moons as
| well in the recommendations):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIAZWb9_si4
|
| And Cassini flying into Saturn
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWHLCHv4PiI
|
| I wonder what it sounds like to leave the atomosphere now
| too, I guess this is as close as we can get in the near
| future. Even with probes going 15km/s.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Is it simply dusty/hazy?
|
| Some of the fuzzy photos remind me of the Sahara Desert when
| there was a little wind.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Dusty. Gives the sky a dull reddish color. Also makes Martian
| sunsets blue.
| phonethrowaway wrote:
| speculation, but it's probably compressed before transmission
| to earth... for obvious reasons.
| [deleted]
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It would surprise me if they used lossy compression. However
| I once read about a space probe using a custom image
| compression and transmission format which does not require
| 100% data integrity for proper decoding. So if the
| transmission is cut off after 60% NASA will still be able to
| view whatever they received. I assume such methods are still
| applied.
| Balgair wrote:
| Generally, these cameras are many years out of date. They don't
| load up the rovers with the latest gear from today, but with
| the latest gear from when the design review process was closed.
| I don't know when that was for Perseverance, but it would not
| surprise me if that was a decade ago. The cameras are also not
| specifically designed for image capture, but for scientific
| study. In that they take images at a wider range of wavelengths
| than what humans can see. It's a subtle difference, but an
| important one. Additionally, the cameras' chips are not what we
| have commercially. They are designed to withstand the vacuum,
| the solar radiation on the long transit, and for use on the
| Martian surface for many years. You can't swap them out, ever.
| As such, they are much more 'rugged', which may effect image
| quality as well.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Yep, that's the same reason why it runs on a PowerPC750 chip.
| They cost $200k+ for under 200Mhz on a 150-250 nm process,
| but can withstand up to 1,000,000 rads of radiation and
| function within extreme temperature ranges for decades. They
| have been proven to work in the harshest environments on
| prior missions, and the risk of an unproven processor is
| giant; a CPU failure could jeopardize the mission just as
| much as a crash landing. Design constrains are so very
| different when you shoot something 140M miles away!
| wiz21c wrote:
| Could you explain why such a processor is 1000x more
| expensive than a non-rugged one ? I mean, considering the
| future of earth, I'd certainly welcome a processor that
| could withstand a lifespan of decades (including the harsh
| "I'm going to unsolder it to put it in another device"
| environment).
| pja wrote:
| IIRC it's a custom process using wide-bandgap silicon
| (part of the whole rad-hardening thing) that no-one else
| needs or wants, so you have to pay the full costs of a
| fab run for a relatively small number of chips. Hence the
| cost per chip is huge.
| ben_w wrote:
| From this list, I assume the isotopic purity is the
| biggest contribution to the price, though I expect
| relative lack of mass production doesn't help:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Specs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Part of it is low demand, so you don't benefit from
| economies of scale. Also the customers buying this type
| of equipment are able to bear such costs. They aren't
| gonna haggle over $100k on a critical component to a $3B
| mission.
| dylan604 wrote:
| a $100k here, a $100k there, suddenly, we're talking real
| money.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Oh we're talking real money. JPL will destroy 78
| production grade parachutes to find all the ways they can
| break. There is tremendous energy poured into eliminating
| risk, because launch is so expensive. As it becomes
| cheaper, perhaps these measures won't be as necessary.
| derekp7 wrote:
| With Spacex being able to launch a car out beyond the
| orbit of Mars, is their current capability being
| considered for future JPL missions? Or is everything
| waiting on Starship?
| moftz wrote:
| The low demand definitely leads to higher prices but the
| other aspect is all of the additional testing involved
| for every chip. There's standard testing at every level
| of the manufacturing process and there will be further
| environmental testing at the package level. They will
| even run radiation tests on the wafer to characterize any
| quirks.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Hopefully as more space & deep space stuff gets going
| there will be more demand and the unit cost will go down
| thanks to economies of scale. Or alternatively ways of
| computing are tried and found viable (massive shielding,
| standardized massive redundancy, etc.).
| wiml wrote:
| For radiation-hardened semiconductors sometimes you use
| specialized processes like silicon-on-insulator. Even if
| you're using a more conventional process, you're probably
| using specialized upset-resistant gate designs and
| layout. And even your gate-level or HDL-level design
| might have changes to make it possible to detect and
| recover from some kinds of bitflips. It really affects
| the whole technology stack.
| velvetz wrote:
| Maybe a stupid question, but couldn't they put there
| something "cutting-edge" next to the existing system? Then
| if that fails then whatever, the rest of the system is
| still functional as expected, but at least they know that
| in the future what they would need to change to be able to
| use the new technologies in that environment. Although I
| can imagine that even the smallest weight increase could
| cause issues, so probably that's the reason.
| pkaye wrote:
| I know the camera image compression happens on a x86
| processor. Not sure if it is rad hardened. It would be
| okay if the processor is not doing critical work and can
| be power cycled due to a rare SEU failure. Also the same
| with the helicopter uses a mobile phone processor.
|
| Also some of the components are not rated for long term
| use. The microphones they installed will probably fail
| due to extreme temperature cycling. The helicopter is
| expected to last only 4 uses and anything beyond that is
| a bonus.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Ingenuity (the Mars helicopter) has a much more modern
| processor that isn't particularly radiation hardened, and
| instead just restarts within milliseconds on any fault
| (fast enough to recover if it happens in flight). If
| Ingenuity does well I wouldn't be surprised to see a
| similar design in a future rover.
| grishka wrote:
| They did this exact thing with the helicopter -- it's
| using a Snapdragon SoC that runs Linux.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Scott Manley mentioned in one of his recent videos about
| Perserverance that they have an FPGA on board the rad
| hardened PPC main cpu can offload tasks to, such computer
| vision based navigation during landing.
|
| Not sure what the long term plan is for that hardware - I
| guess they can just do stuff more slowly on the main CPU
| if it gets fried by radiation. Or maybe being an FPGA the
| can just isolate the radiation affected regions over time
| and use the rest ?
| reilly3000 wrote:
| You got me curious and I found a product listing with a
| rather amazing explanation of what they're doing for
| radiation-proofing.
|
| Radiation Performance
|
| > RTG4 FPGAs are immune to radiation-induced changes in
| configuration, due to the robustness of the flash cells
| used to connect and configure logic resources and routing
| tracks. No background scrubbing or reconfiguration of the
| FPGA is needed in order to mitigate changes in
| configuration due to radiation effects. Data errors, due
| to radiation, are mitigated by hardwired SEU resistant
| flip-flops in the logic cells and in the mathblocks.
| Single Error Correct Double Error Detect (SECDED)
| protection is optional for the embedded SRAM (LSRAM and
| uSRAM) and the DDR memory controllers. This means that if
| a one-bit error is detected, it will be corrected. Errors
| of more than one bit are detected only and not corrected.
| SECDED error signals are brought to the FPGA fabric to
| allow the user to monitor the status of these protected
| internal memories.
|
| https://www.microsemi.com/product-directory/rad-tolerant-
| fpg...
| m4rtink wrote:
| Wow, a rad hard FPGA! Now that's something I didn't
| expect - thanks for digging this up! :)
| josho wrote:
| But now you've added weight and need to remove something
| else.
|
| As a tangent, I remember a talk from Grady Booch where he
| put software cost in terms of mass that needed to be
| added to your rocket. So every new feature cost weight by
| requiring more chips and more fuel.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Especially since hardware is generally designed for speed
| and performance instead of reliability. Didn't NASA use a
| lot of 486es for a long time for this same reason?
|
| But yeah. It's not a problem if a CPU gets buggy or dies in
| a datacenter with 10K similar ones, because of redundancy
| and a completely different approach to software workloads
| nowadays. I mean a lot of production systems barely even
| care what CPU they run on.
|
| And ~200 Mhz is still powerful enough for a LOT of
| applications.
| darkr wrote:
| > Didn't NASA use a lot of 486es for a long time for this
| same reason?
|
| They were also using Amigas until ~2006 for various
| duties, including launch control.
| soheil wrote:
| Nasa's image gallery UI is such a pain to use, I wish someone
| would upload these into a more user friendly photo viewer tool.
| hanniabu wrote:
| What's difficult about it?
| asdff wrote:
| Multiple clicks to get to the full resolution image. 50
| thumbnails able to be viewed at a time, many uninteresting to
| lay people (solid gray screen, dozens of repeated images of
| of a portion of the rover itself, etc), for the monumental
| task of sifting through the 6407 images the rover has
| transmitted so far in mere days. Wholly unusable in a few
| months I imagine.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Maybe over the weekend if I can carve out a few hours I'll
| put together an open source site and share here.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| The site isn't great, no. But the reason there's so many
| repeated images is because NASA doesn't want to be accused
| of hiding anything.
|
| If they're taking photos for calibration, we get those,
| just like if they're taking stunning panoramas.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| And to a science agency, I don't think their top priority
| is selecting the best 4k wallpaper for easy download.
|
| I honestly don't mind government sites, they are usually
| thoroughly boring and very conservative with their
| design, which means that even old people like my dad can
| click around and use it. I think that's a good thing.
| kgrimes2 wrote:
| That being said, there are NASA sites that are more
| curated, like https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/beta
| raphaelj wrote:
| The high resolution, 360 panoramic view, of the landing site is
| also stunning:
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8873/nasas-perseverance-rover-giv...
| cosmonaughty wrote:
| The picture labeled "wind carved rock" is interesting. If the
| atmospheric pressure is 610 pascals or 0.088 psi (less than 1%)
| earth pressure, how could any wind be powerful enough to carve a
| rock? Does the wind blow 600-1200 mph on Mars?
|
| Don't answer as the question is rhetorical.
|
| Air pressure that thin would require winds several hundred MPH
| just to kick up fine dust particles, well before we get to
| erosion of rock.
|
| With such low air pressure a human would barely feel a 300 MPH
| wind gust. In that low air pressure a parachute would be useless
| unless it is 2000 feet in diameter.
|
| A rocket would need 100x the thrust to get the same acceleration
| or deceleration, as per Newton's law, 100x less resistance means
| an object in motion plummeting toward the surface would tend to
| remain plummeting. Remember why they tell you meteors meet
| resistance and burn up entering Earth's atmosphere? The reverse
| would be true of a object plummeting through atmosphere of only
| 610 pascals. 100x more thrust would be necessary to slow the
| descent to compensate for the lack of atmosphere and the density
| differential.
|
| Did NASA think of any of the actual physics before they served
| you this fake Mars landing cartoon? You're hackers. You know how
| to do math. This is 8th grade physics to see the scam being
| served up here as scientific exploration.
|
| I suppose if grifters had a 70 million dollar per week budget
| they might be tempted to produce what was paid for, even if they
| had to fake it.
|
| Everything shown to you in these Mars landing videos is
| consistent with parachuting into Earth's atmosphere, not an
| atmosphere 100x thinner. That parachute would drop almost as fast
| as a rocket. Remember the falling feather and cannonball in a
| vacuum analogy?
|
| You're being played. NASA is just a division of Hollywood. Yes,
| the world is that messed up. And yes the military industrial
| complex is that shady.
|
| Enjoy your cartoons!
| king_magic wrote:
| Mars once had a much thicker atmosphere.
| enlyth wrote:
| 10/10 satire
| wiz21c wrote:
| yeah, but as someone not educated in those matters, could
| someone compare the "fake" computations from the comment to
| real ones ? So we could see how wrong they are...
| danparsonson wrote:
| I don't have figures for you, but some food for thought -
| a) 'wind-carved' rocks are not really carved by the wind
| itself but by particles carried on the wind, and Mars is
| regularly subject to large dust storms (see
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-
| of... - sorry it's a NASA link, hopefully everyone can see
| through the grifting, or whatever), b) the vast timescales
| involved - who knows how many hundreds of thousands of
| years that rock has been sitting there, slowly weathering
| away?
| cosmonaughty wrote:
| Perfect example of Dunning Kreuger! To answer your question
| you could get a physics textbook. The numbers I provided
| you are the official numbers. 610 pascals, or 0.088% earth
| pressure. A stuffed bear with a normal parachute would hit
| the ground at terminal velocity with only 600 pascals of
| air buoyancy.
| [deleted]
| BooneJS wrote:
| I love seeing cables neatly routed and even evidence of cable
| lacing in 2021. Dying art.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-03 23:02 UTC)