http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19327286

How in the hell did this beat out the Titan mission?

8/22/2012 1:04:52 AM

only thing I can think of its the logistics of sending something to titan to actually land. thats a lot of orbits to deal with. but yes, I would think that would be way more cooler and important than another mission to mars

8/22/2012 1:09:07 AM

I mean fuck, we've been on mars for like 40 years. What happened to progress?

8/22/2012 5:59:24 AM

"Get your ass to Mars."

Mahz.

8/22/2012 6:36:17 AM

Even though probes have been landing on Mars since the 70s there is still tons of information about that planet that we don't know. Although sending something to Titan would be cooler, it would be exponentially more expensive and more difficult. There are so many additional things that could go wrong. A bigger satellite dish would be needed just to send info back to Earth and if the calibration was wrong by even a few degrees it would make the probe useless. If we had a larger infrastructure of satellites around Mars and Jupiter (and some of their moons), it would make it easier but it would still take a lot of work.

On top of that, the delay in information received from Mars is about 14 mins, from Saturn it would probably be about 1.5 hours. This means that robotics and artificial intelligence would have to essentially be at the peak of human knowledge.

8/22/2012 9:59:06 AM

why "peak of human knowledge"? i assume any transmission/response time longer than the blink of an eye in relay is going to be enough for a rock to slide onto the rover or a hidden ditch to appear in the middle of a traverse path.

how is 15 minutes so much better than 1.5 hours? (relative to space robots)

and holy CRAP 1.5 HOURS? thats a long ass way dawg

[Edited on August 22, 2012 at 10:26 AM. Reason : ads]

8/22/2012 10:25:29 AM

I don't think they can push that probe into the surface as far as they think they can.


[Edited on August 22, 2012 at 10:30 AM. Reason : It depends on the size of the probe. The probe depicted is very large.]

8/22/2012 10:29:47 AM

Just for the time of mission in general. Say the rover is roving along and it gets stuck in some loose rocks or soil or something. With a 14 minute delay they could probably exercise some maneuvers and get it free in under an hour. With a 1.5 hour delay that could take days to fix.

Or if it is roving along and a giant rock wall is visible up ahead, even with 14 minutes you could probably stop it in time before it hits it or falls off a cliff or something. With 1.5 hour delays the rover has already hit it by the time you see it.

8/22/2012 10:44:49 AM

With that logic, might as well just expore the deep ocean since there is a lot to learn about that. Also, lets go back to the moon since we don't know everything there is about the moon. Screw pushing the limits. Nasa's always been about taking the easy way out and going deeper into things that have already been done several times already.

8/22/2012 10:51:47 AM

^^ Current rovers like Curiosity are smart enough to deal with that stuff on their own without human intervention.

8/22/2012 12:20:10 PM

^^You're preaching to the choir here, man. Tell that to the politicians who run and fund NASA. If it were up to me, NASA would be exploring Titan and other things in the solar system.

8/22/2012 12:59:38 PM