ESA loses Mars lander - drunk driving eurotrash

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/europe/mars-schiaparelli-lander-esa-lost/index.html

(CNN)The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed the Schiaparelli spacecraft, which was expected to land on Mars on Wednesday, has been lost.

During a press conference on Thursday, scientists said that Schiaparelli stopped transmitting around 50 seconds before the expected landing.
The agency suspects something went wrong when the parachute was jettisoned: "The ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete," it said in a statement.
ESA's Director General, Jan Wörner, said Schiaparelli's primary role was to test whether they could successfully land a probe on Mars.
"Recording the data during the descent was part of that, and it is important we can learn what happened, in order to prepare for the future," Wörner said.

David Parker, ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration said it's what they wanted from a test.
"We have data coming back that allows us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur," he said.
The probe was equipped with nine thrusters that were due to be activated for the last 30 seconds to help cushion the landing. But while they were confirmed to have been briefly activated, the agency believes they switched off sooner than expected.
The anxious wait
Scientists with ESA were anxiously waiting for news from Schiaparelli yesterday.
After a high-speed, fiery descent through the Martian atmosphere, scientists at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, did not get a signal back from the 1,272 pound (577 kilogram) probe.

 

[polonium]

I didn't say free, I said "A free market" which is entirely different

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Wasn't there that one probe to Mars that was lost around 1999 because of a confusion over metric vs English?

"A free market"

That's what I meant.

 

[Sanshain]

750 million dollars to search for space farts.

 

[Chan the Wizard]

It blew up? Was it piloted by Muslims?

 

[Ravenor]

Wasn't there that one probe to Mars that was lost around 1999 because of a confusion over metric vs English?


That's what I meant.

Yep the beagle, the UK isn't good at space but we're willing get to give it a try especially if we can do it in our garden shed I'm not joking when I say that the beagle was built mostly in a uni professors garden shead.

 

[JU 199]

the UK isn't good at space but we're willing get to give it a try especially if we can do it in our garden shed I'm not joking when I say that the beagle was built mostly in a uni professors garden shead.

That's such a British thing to do.

 

[Ravenor]

That's such a British thing to do.

It's almost like Britishnes distilled into its most pure form.

 

[lolwut]

It's almost like Britishnes distilled into its most pure form.

Austin Powers?

 

[Male Idiot]

First Obama scraps the space shuttle program, now the Eu follows suit in derping it up. This is depressing.

We should totally rather start launching migrants onto Venus and see if they can colonise it. Without any terraforming, of course.

Also, the US lost a spaceprobe once because its stupid manufacturers use the retarded system, and NASA used metrics, so they got the weight/thrust ratio wrong and the craft fell back to the Earth.

 

[AnOminous]

First Obama scraps the space shuttle program, now the Eu follows suit in derping it up. This is depressing.

That is a crock of shit. The retirement of the Space Shuttle was discussed ever since shortly after the Columbia disaster and the retirement had been planned since at least 2000.

The Shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the Space Shuttle — after nearly 30 years of duty — will be retired from service.

— President George W. Bush
January 14, 2004

 

[Male Idiot]

That is a crock of shit. The retirement of the Space Shuttle was discussed ever since shortly after the Columbia disaster and the retirement had been planned since at least 2000.

The Shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the Space Shuttle — after nearly 30 years of duty — will be retired from service.

— President George W. Bush
January 14, 2004

Well that rather just puts Bush in the foul too. Honestly I don't care which party they belong to, but the President should be helping to get NASA ever closer to casual spaceflight.

 

[AnOminous]

Well that rather just puts Bush in the foul too. Honestly I don't care which party they belong to, but the President should be helping to get NASA ever closer to casual spaceflight.

It wasn't Bush's fault, either. It was basically decided by NASA that the fundamental flaws in the Shuttle design were unfixable and that continuing down that development path had no good end to it. Bush just went along with the consensus.

 

[GabeRegan]

The problem isn't so much that the Space Shuttle was decommissioned, that was decided well before Obama took office. The problem was that we had a designated successor program (Orion I believe) but NASA was forced to cut the program after Obama slashed their budget. The original plan was to have a successor system in place within a year or two of the shuttle being decommissioned, but Obama went and fucked that up.

 

[AlanRickmanIsDead]

The problem isn't so much that the Space Shuttle was decommissioned, that was decided well before Obama took office. The problem was that we had a designated successor program (Orion I believe) but NASA was forced to cut the program after Obama slashed their budget. The original plan was to have a successor system in place within a year or two of the shuttle being decommissioned, but Obama went and fucked that up.

Obama privatized many aspects of the space program. I don't see why cutting federal spending and letting private industry carry the torch is a bad thing.

 

[GabeRegan]

Letting private companies get involved in the space program is good, and is what the pioneers of the program originally wanted way back in the 60s and 70s. But let's not pretend this was Obama's plan when he cut NASA's budget, several senior NASA administrators past and present criticized him for killing our manned space program.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I heard a rumor among fairly conservative people that Obama wanted NASA to be all about "Muslim outreach" and Earth studies.

 

[glass_houses]

I heard a rumor among fairly conservative people that Obama wanted NASA to be all about "Muslim outreach" and Earth studies.

That makes no fucking sense. You can't just convert a massive scientific research and technology organisation into a community centre. Absolutely NASA can be disbanded and the funding can be reallocated, but the cost and logistics of outright conversion is impossible to calculate. Do the world a favour, next time you see those people, rip out their respective reproductive organs. The gene pool is for swimming in, not for pissing in.

 

[Male Idiot]

If they scrapped it for a successor program, I would not make a single reeeee about it.

 

[AnOminous]

The problem isn't so much that the Space Shuttle was decommissioned, that was decided well before Obama took office. The problem was that we had a designated successor program (Orion I believe) but NASA was forced to cut the program after Obama slashed their budget. The original plan was to have a successor system in place within a year or two of the shuttle being decommissioned, but Obama went and fucked that up.

When Congress won't pass a budget over a certain size and won't budge on it, shit is going to get slashed.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

They WANTED it to fucking crash and blow up?

That's some Baghdad Bob shit right there.

They wanted to test the entry and landing capabilities used in the Schiaparelli Probe, which they did. Schiaparelli itself was a glorified weather station with a rather limited operation time of roughly a week before running out of power. So yeah, while the thing lithobraking isn't exactly something to be happy about, it's not a devastating blow to ESA and their space programm either. The Orbiter (which is the meat of this mission) was successfully put into orbit and will be able to do the intended research later on.

Again: Shitsucks that the landing mechanism was a failure and that's nothing to be proud of, but when you put it into perspective, the probe they lost simply wasn't that important.

FYI:
It cost them 750 million dollars for this to burn up on Mars.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/european-space-probe-lands-on-mars-schiaparelli-lander/

Is that the cost for the lander itself or the entire mission?
Be that as it may, Mars apparently is a very tricky Planet to land on. The atmosphere is dense enough to severely fuck over probes that go in too steep or go too low during aerobraking, but it's not dense enough to cushion the descent.

First Obama scraps the space shuttle program, now the Eu follows suit in derping it up. This is depressing.

ESA managed to land on an Asteroid several times (with equippement that wasn't designed to do that, to boot) and has the most distant lander in the solar system. Fucking up a landing on Mars is nothing to be proud of, but it's not like ESA doesn't have a remarkable track record nonetheless.