[HN Gopher] Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade bro...
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Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade broke off the
helicopter
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-02-26 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| isaacfrond wrote:
| If any technology could be cute, then surely this was it. I
| always got little engine that could vibes when reading news about
| it
| jtriangle wrote:
| That's what happens when you take a very cool project and back
| it with very talented PR people.
| h2odragon wrote:
| The ultimate fate of all toy helicopters.
|
| Wonder if the new "silent propeller" ring configuration shapes
| will be more durable. I recall the early Radio Shack toy helis
| had guard rings on their propellers, it helped immensely but they
| still were delicate and easy to kill.
| samstave wrote:
| Martians got nuthin on Earthlings:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq62GXEX4-U
|
| (Just curious why durability wasnt like 0. on the project RFP
| given that its a really far away deployment arena...
|
| (Also, to raise money, we should do Battle Bots on Mars. There
| should be a Twitch Rover (recall that thing from a while back
| about how many users fought over input into how it was
| driving...)
|
| EDIt:
|
| 0. Make durable.
|
| 1. Make it Fly.
|
| 2. Make it crawl, when 0=[1] and 1=[0].
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > we should do Battle Bots on Mars
|
| has there ever been a sci-fi movie about 'No-limits barred"
| competitions on uninhabitable worlds?
|
| like go ahead, make a nuclear-powered doomsday bot and fight
| them on this rock, no one is there anyway
| dkarl wrote:
| Check out _Peace on Earth_ by Stanislaw Lem.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I've got half a mind to read that book again, because
| there are some things about it that I just can't put my
| finger on...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy
| jerf wrote:
| You have to have limits or in the limit you just end up
| with "whose nuclear bomb goes off closer to the starting
| whistle" or some equivalent.
|
| Now, even if you are interested in watching that and the
| precise mechanics of how to shave those last few
| nanoseconds off the explosion interest you, it's still a
| problem for "engagement" that the ruleset converges to one
| solution.
|
| Battlebots has had several similar issues over the years
| and a common discussion on its fan sites is whether or not
| the most recent rule set (whatever it may be at the time)
| is also converging on a single solution as the only viable
| option.
|
| Real car racing has an even bigger problem with this, in
| that the racing leagues simultaneously want to project an
| image of technological innovation and how all the teams are
| brilliant geniuses advancing the field of motor sports,
| while at the same time having to deal with how boring it is
| when one team ends up winning a hugely disproportionate
| amount of the time if you really did just leave it down to
| technical acumen and the vagueries of who started with an
| engine design this year that happened to have more
| optimization room than the other engines. They dress it up
| in a lot of rules and throw a lot of smokescreen up but to
| a pretty significant degree they basically just find some
| reason to throw weight penalties on to whoever is winning
| too much.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Maybe we should put not just one, but _several_ limits,
| denominated in joules (or kilotons), splitting the
| competition into "weight classes" in terms of maximum
| energy transfer. So e.g. flyweight class could end up
| being a competition between smart subsonic bullets, while
| the middleweight class may see a nuclear bomb facing off
| against pumped x-ray laser.
|
| I'd definitely watch the heck out of it.
| h2odragon wrote:
| The production challenges seem daunting: how many
| cameramen are we prepared to lose filming the fights?
|
| "Smart camera drones" ha ha. you seen the unions around
| the entertainment industry?
| fragmede wrote:
| Raises an interesting question of who's laws apply on the
| Moon in such a case. no country has a unique ownership in
| the Moon due to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, but that
| just means no country owns the Moon. In the case of a
| camera crew back on Earth, or even on the Moon, _would_
| any union contracts apply?
| jareklupinski wrote:
| i think i got one: the winner is chosen by 'style',
| instead of simply strongest bot
|
| while competing, camera drones and internal POV cams
| stream to audiences, who can 'feedback' to the robot
|
| i don't want to go down the 'microtransaction' route, but
| maybe there's a way teams could leverage that to bide
| their style during less tense moments, before pumping it
| up when the time is right
| h2odragon wrote:
| hunger games sponsorships... pay to extend the suffering
| and the drama.
|
| that might optimize for cute but tough bunny bots that do
| a Paul Rubens in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" death scene
| every time they're hit.
| delecti wrote:
| Considering how low their stated expectations were for
| Ingenuity, I think it was more than durable enough. It's a
| huge bummer that it's grounded, but it was also a fantastic
| resounding success.
|
| Also, 0. was "get it to fly", and that required a pretty wild
| rotation speed, which probably limited their ability to make
| it much more durable.
| acdha wrote:
| Remember that people were skeptical that they could pull off
| flight at all, and they set the bar for success at 5 flights
| but delivered 72 before it crashed!
|
| The linked story about how it narrowly got there is well
| worth reading:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/before-ingenuity-
| ever-...
| fragmede wrote:
| Haven't we proven we can do "durability" and "crawl", with
| Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity lasting several years
| longer than planned? Ingenuity was only supposed to last 30
| days, but far exceeded that, even if the rotor did snap off.
|
| 0=[3+] 1=[1] 2=[2]
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Plus, no matter what you do you're still working in an
| environment where the very dust itself is an abrasive finer
| than anything found on Earth, able to work its way into every
| single part of your rotor assembly. You're basically designing
| for "how many days can we keep it working" rather than "can we
| make it Mars-proof".
| colechristensen wrote:
| To be fair, all helicopters have parts with expiration dates.
| This is just how you have to design them, a part gets this
| many operating hours and is then replaced.
| Teever wrote:
| Is the dust in Mars really that abrasive? I was under the
| impression that it isn't nearly as bad as the stuff on the
| moon where there's no at atmosphere to cause the wind erosion
| that wears the rough edges of surface material down.
| Filligree wrote:
| It's still abrasive, even if not as bad.
|
| A helicopter on the moon would have an even harder time
| working.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Perhaps we can use Moon dust to our advantage: kick a
| thick enough cloud of it, and the helicopter will have
| something to fly in.
| bigallen wrote:
| It's probably better to repurpose the energy of the kick
| than to push off what has been kicked up
| skykooler wrote:
| Especially considering there's no air for a helicopter's
| blades to act on.
| Teever wrote:
| Yes, it's dust, so it's abrasive. The question is whether
| or not it is more abrasive than Earthly dust.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| This brought back a memory of going to the mall as a young kid
| (late 90s) and seeing those toy helicopters everywhere!
| darknavi wrote:
| What a cool experiment (a Mars helicopter!). I can't wait until
| we (humanity) have "boots on the ground" there to make this sort
| of experimentation a few step changes quicker.
| acdha wrote:
| I agree having grown up on sci-fi about that but increasingly
| wonder whether we'll get enough AI to change the cost dynamics
| for sending fragile meat-bags to a harsh environment instead of
| robots. Also, I suspect climate change is going to force NASA
| to direct an increasing percentage of their work to earth, but
| I hope the symbolic potential keeps us from looking completely
| inward.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Strong enough AI, probably. Until then, light speed dictates
| that even remote robotic exploration would work better with a
| command&control facility at the scene.
| yaomtc wrote:
| How about in geosynchronous orbit? So the control facility
| doesn't have to deal with the fine particles.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That is what I expect how things will be done. High orbit
| saves you not just from the fine dust, but also all the
| Dv you'd need to land people and get them up later.
| acdha wrote:
| Oh, no argument that it'd be better in terms of quality but
| I'm wondering how it'd look from a cost perspective. Say we
| could make a self-driving rover which could handle basic
| maneuvering, avoiding / recovering from hazards and storms,
| etc. - at some point there'd be a trade off between having
| many rovers running for years for less budget than a human
| crew would need, and depending on the budget climate it
| might be better to have a cheaper option that doesn't fail
| to deliver any scientific results if a big dependency isn't
| funded.
| jorvi wrote:
| You also don't need smart rovers. You just need dumb
| rovers with a bunch of sensors and a radio, a few
| satellites and then a local command server with all the
| processing power centralized.
|
| You run an AI on that with a bunch of safeguards, and
| constant human albeit speed-of-light-delayed monitoring
| that can correct erroneous decision making.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Stop poking holes in my desperate attempt to save the
| future of manned space exploration! :(.
|
| (If we keep reasoning this way, humanity will forever be
| stuck on this ball of mud, eventually wiring our heads to
| computers, and then the closest we'll come to exploring
| the universe is browsing through pictures snapped by
| ancient probes.)
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Hope I can visit it in a museum some day.
| everyone wrote:
| The images remind of me the "fines" mentioned in KSR's Mars
| trilogy. Apparently the surface of Mars is covered in very fine
| particles 1000's of times smaller than grains of sand. Earth is
| too wet for particles like that to form. The fines would pretty
| much get anywhere, into any structure, through human cell
| membranes. We have no idea what affect they would have on earth
| biology.
| mlyle wrote:
| > We have no idea what affect they would have on earth biology.
|
| We know that lunar regolith is pretty damn bad, and that Apollo
| astronauts did not enjoy even their very short, small exposures
| much
|
| It's thought to be quite toxic both because it's abrasive and
| filled with perchlorates and chlorates (and tests with
| simulants based on samples returned have provided additional
| evidence for this). Mars soils would have largely the same
| problems.
| everyone wrote:
| I do know that one theory of how asbestos is carcinogenic is
| that it is so fine it just saws away at the actual DNA
| molecules. However asbestos works, it does seem that those
| fine nano-particles could act similarly
|
| https://youtu.be/_L1305206OA?feature=shared&t=98
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Just another problem with terraforming Mars. Instead, we should
| set Jupiter on fire and live on Europa.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You say _problem_ , true Martian hears _challenge_. Turning a
| desert into paradise probably starts with raising air
| humidity a bit.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Nano-particles are like a dirty water, but without water.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| Clay particles on Earth are that size (micron scale). Try
| disturbing the dried out surface of clay ground on a hot day
| and a fine mist goes flying everywhere. Mars dust particles are
| about the same size. They're too big to go through cell
| membranes.
| LorenDB wrote:
| o7
|
| Rest in peace, Ingenuity. (Or should I say, rest in pieces?) You
| will be missed.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| In case anyone wants to keep an eye on the ongoing stream of
| images from the rovers, Nasa has an easy API that gives you a
| JSON file describing each image for the day.
|
| https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/perseverance/...
|
| Get an API key here https://api.nasa.gov/
|
| For example, today's record for a picture of the helicopter with
| the missing blade looks like this: {
| "id":1229137, "sol":1072, "camera":{"id":48,"name":
| "SUPERCAM_RMI","rover_id":8,"full_name":"SuperCam Remote Micro
| Imager"}, "img_src":"https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-im
| ages/pub/ods/surface/sol/01072/ids/edr/browse/scam/LRE_1072_07620
| 99726_099ECM_N0501618SCAM02072_0010I9J02_1200.jpg",
| "earth_date":"2024-02-24", "rover":{"id":8,"name":"Perseve
| rance","landing_date":"2021-02-18","launch_date":"2020-07-30","st
| atus":"active","max_sol":1072,"max_date":"2024-02-24","total_phot
| os":202033,"cameras":[...]} }
| ySteeK wrote:
| Could Ingenuity fly with 3 blades or is Ingenuity too heavy for
| that?
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