Hacker News Reader

Comment by baldfat | Hacker News Reader

I never thought I would live to actually see the day. Seemed like everything just slowed down on that front for two decades and now it seems almost to soon.

View on HN

To be clear, this particular mission is an unmanned mission, which of course has done many times before. But it would be the heaviest payload ever landed on Mars, and would pave the way for future manned missions.

No way they will be able to plan, make, and test any interesting instruments if they start now. With the proposed time line it is guaranteed to be a pure put trash on Mars mission.

It's trash on Mars but hopefully data for spaceX and Nasa

With a nod to the BBC's Ashes to Ashes and no trace of any reliability guarantees, http://ptscientist.com/ might be willing to "fire up the quattro" on realative short notice.

(Would be a shame if contemporary car brand rivalry was a bigger hindrance to cooperation in space exploration than cold war rivalry was in the days of the Apollo/Soyuz docking)

I wouldn't bet on that. What they're building is a vehicle that conveys things to Mars. If that massive problem is being handled, entities like NASA are free to focus on what they want to put on Mars. If SpaceX is just ferrying NASA's shit, I'd bet we'll see more than trash inside Red Dragon.

Not for the first launch we won't. They might get something a cut over an rc car with an iphone taped to the top, but with the time line suggested there is no way to slap together something that will do anything new: the trip will be purely to show the trip can be done, and not contribute very much for science.

I guess we'll see.

Who said they are starting now? SpaceX was founded for the purpose of getting to Mars.

Yeah, but "science" is not something they put in the name of their departments.

Nor will you find something like a "planetary protection engineer" among their open positions.

Though they will comply with Planetary Protection under space treaty.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/725367703045730304

Regardless, just landing "trash on Mars" would be a pretty damn big accomplishment for SpaceX, and what I meant by "paving the way" for future missions.

And yeah, as aerovistae said, there may be other organizations like NASA who have instruments already ready or nearly ready to go.

I bet they could put a Hydrogen/Oxygen recovery system in it, though. So that, 2 years later, the arrive Mars-landers have fuel for a return trip.

Was JCSAT a pure "put trash on a boat" mission?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com