Will Rovers Outlast Lavery's Shirt???

[Joe Johnson]

Slashdot.org has a new and interesting post concering the Mars Rovers.

The bottom line I suppose is that Dave Lavery will get to wear his "My other Cars are on Mars" shirt for another year and a half or so. While the rovers are starting to show signs of wear and tear, I suppose Lavery's shirt has lost a bit of its starch by now too.

Spirit, Opportunity, or Dave's Shirt? Which will outlast the other? ;-)

In any case I'd say it was a pretty good bit of work for a set of robots that had a design life that I think was only 6 months -- if they make it 18 more months, that would be almost 6X the design life.

Nice Job NASA...

Joe J.

[whakojacko]

i guess dave will need to get another shirt. Maybe a hawaiian one?

[Daniel Brim]

At the Southern California Regional, Dave said that there was a 20% chance that they'd lose a rover in the martian winter of 2008 and an 80% chance that they'd lose one in the winter of 2012. That is simply amazing! Way to go NASA!

I've never owned a shirt for 8 years, mainly because that is half of my life

-Daniel

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Slashdot

Spirit has a smudged camera lens, a heavily used rock abrasion tool, and has previously struggled with intermittent steering issues."

Well, then, surely Spirit will outlast both Opportunity and Dave's shirt. After all, Dave's FIRST experience has to tell him that if the vision system isn't working, and your main method of scoring doesn't work, then you play defense. And those that play defense seem to build for defense.

Then again, I can't say for sure. I'll bet NASA does one sweet T-shirt.

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by whakojacko

i guess dave will need to get another shirt. Maybe a hawaiian one?

Dave already HAS a Hawaiian shirt.....

[JoeXIII'007]

This is great news, but it is also starting to get a little wierd. NASA has gotten approval for more funding for the rovers, though one has a 'smudged' camera lens and the other has a broken spectrometer. Why does this make me think NASA's made contact with alien life forms...
NASA: Hello
Alien_clark: Hello. Oooh, what's this
NASA: DON'T TOUCH THAT!
Alien_clark: Hey fellas, I see an eye in this thingamagig
Alien_bob: Hmmm... it looks totally advanced, like something we've never seen
All aliens: ooooohhhhh... ahhhhhh...
NASA: ...

Just a theory, .
Nonetheless, the rovers should outlast Dave's shirt.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

The bottom line I suppose is that Dave Lavery will get to wear his "My other Cars are on Mars" shirt for another year and a half or so. While the rovers are starting to show signs of wear and tear, I suppose Lavery's shirt has lost a bit of its starch by now too.

Spirit, Opportunity, or Dave's Shirt? Which will outlast the other? ;-)

Assuming we can get Opportunity out of the little sand pit she is currently exploring (see this story), both rovers are likely to survive for quite a while more. Of course, we have to stop using them as dune buggies first.

-dave

[billbo911]

Dave,
Sorry to see your Rover past it's axles in what looks like talcum powder. That is going to be real "fun" getting out of.

HEY!!! New Idea for FRC games

Who can get unstuck from the "muck" (or whatever else they can scheme up) the fastest and most innovative way!

I can't comment on the shirt, I'm new to this world of wonder and don't seem to have the inside knowledge needed. How about posting a Pic.

Good luck to NASA on a successful extraction!

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Assuming we can get Opportunity out of the little sand pit she is currently exploring (see this story), both rovers are likely to survive for quite a while more. Of course, we have to stop using them as dune buggies first.

-dave

If you can't get out, I think you are going to learn more about that little sand pit than you ever wanted to.

Wetzel

[Daniel Brim]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Assuming we can get Opportunity out of the little sand pit she is currently exploring (see this story), both rovers are likely to survive for quite a while more. Of course, we have to stop using them as dune buggies first.

-dave

Well... all is well... score one for opportunity!

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8098155/

[Jeremiah Johnson]

I think the aliens didn't want you looking in their windows anymore so they dumped it in the dune... but unbenounced to them... Dave's smart and NASA knows how to get unstuck.

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally Posted by Budda648

I think the aliens didn't want you looking in their windows anymore so they dumped it in the dune... but unbenounced to them... Dave's smart and NASA knows how to get unstuck.

Actually, the mars rovers ARE the aliens (from a martian's perspective).

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Budda648

but unbenounced to them... Dave's smart and NASA knows how to get unstuck.

Dave's smart? That's unbenounced to me as well...

Wetzel

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Erin Rapacki

Actually, the mars rovers ARE the aliens (from a martian's perspective).

Well... I don't know about that. In every cheesy (aren't they all cheesy?) sci-fi flick I have seen, aliens have hovered gently down to the ground (or crashed) with their ships and then came out of their space ships, and not bounced a few miles over earth, and then opened up into itself being an alien...
Would you say the rovers crash landed on Mars? I think not, cause they still work fine. Or maybe that is how they were designed, to mimic martian UFOs tendency of crash landing and surviving. If that were real that is..

Maybe it's my love of the cheesy sci-fi movies, but I would call the rovers more UFOs than aliens. Although, now they are more of a URO type dealio = Unidentified Roving/Roaming Objects. (from a martian's perspective of course.)

Although, I never did see an alien movie where the aliens have some cool little vehicles that they cruise along earth with, unless they were "manned - I use that term lightly" vehicles and they flew, like Independence day and all them mini UFOs that came out of the mother ship...

I hope the engineers at NASA at least put in a Buddy Lee doll in the drivers seat of the Rovers so that the Martians could at least see what our race sort of kinda looks like. I would rather them do some probes on a Buddy Lee doll, than use their crash landing specialty space ships to come get me in the middle of the night..



Well, maybe Buddy Lee is a bad example as to what humans look like.... But so far, the Rovers have idealized Buddy Lee's motto (or should I say more accurately, The Lee Jeans Company's motto); "bet you cant bust em" by lasting as long as they have.


Wow.. and that was a totally random rant if I ever saw one. What do you expect from a 3am post?

<Goes off to find Independence Day on VHS>

edit: Wow.. totally spooky Buddy Lee Mars Rover connection.
Same company who made Buddy Lee dolls for Lee Jeans commercials, made a rover for another commercial.

[IMDWalrus]

I do believe that that's the first time I've seen Buddy Lee mentioned on CD.

And chances are good that it's going to be the last one too...

The success of the rovers so far has definitely made up for some of the other NASA projects that haven't worked out so well. It really is a shame, though, that people keep bringing up the failures (like the conversion incident) instead of the missions that have worked.

I wonder how many people know that the rovers are still out there, running and collecting data?