Whenever I hear about them doing cool new things with the various space probes and rovers I can't help but think the situation was along the lines of "now that we're done with the core mission stuff and Sauron's gaze has averted (i.e. management has a new shiny to care about) we can really play cowboy putting it through its paces".
More generous reading of the entire sentence would be that the usable life of the mmrtg is increased by improving the energy efficiency of the rover. The mmrtg power output is constantly decreasing, and so it is reasonable to say that the mmrtg reaches end of life when the power output is not enough to operate the rover. So that cutoff point depends on the power demands of the rover.
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that statement. Reducing the minimum power required will obviously prolong the life of a system that has a monotonically decaying power supply.
The problem with being nitpicky is that fixating on isolated/arbitrary details often just means missing the bigger picture in a way that's even more incorrect. Good for "gotchas", but not intellectually productive.
Yeah, sloppy writing. They're maximizing how quickly they can complete tasks by multi-tasking and enter sleep mode sooner, reducing recharge time and reducing the amount of energy wasted on systems that are in active standby. They rediscovered race to idle.
I think "rediscovered" is a bit dismissive. Upgrading software on a computer whose capabilities are akin to the state-of-the-art in the late 1990s and is 12-13 light minutes away is non-trivial. Also, no pressure because losing contact means the end of a whole team. I'm pretty sure they know a lot of things they could do but don't because the risk/reward ratio is too high... all without "rediscovering" it.
> Providing ample power for the rovers’ many science instruments, MMRTGs are known for their longevity (the twin Voyager spacecraft have relied on RTGs since 1977). But as the plutonium decays over time, it takes longer to recharge Curiosity’s batteries, leaving less energy for science each day.
Over the next year, Curiosity and other exploration programs will most likely be shut down as a waste of taxpayer money.
The administration has proposed a 50% cut to NASA's budget for the next fiscal year, but Congress pushed back and it looks like it'll "only" be a ~25% cut. Still a total bloodbath.
It's incredibly sad that we're seeing the dismantling of American science by leaders who have no understanding nor respect for it. The damage being done to our country right now is incalculable.
I'm sick of people blaming leaders. The people voted for this. The entire country is in a bad place, we are not being held hostage by our elected leaders, we created this monster through our actions and inactions.
Some Republican voters are still doing mental gymnastics and saying the Democrats should've done something to stop the Republicans, or it's their own fault for not having a better candiate, or other such things themselves.
The whole system / society is broken by people and leaders who refuse to take responsibility, on both sides of the aisle. And it's intentional.
I bet a lot of republicans wish democrats had fielded a better candidate so that their primary field would have had to demonstrate that they could beat the democrat. Instead it was a doddering old man who originally was only there to make Obama seem more conservative. Democrats have been useless and ineffective for a couple of decades now and that has in no small part helped the republican party turn towards the fascism of idiots.
I'm a democrat and I blame my own party more than republicans for the situation we're in. You can't just phone it in for decades and expect to win because you're so sure you're right. The republic needs to be and has needed to be actively defended and the people who were supposed to be doing that have been cowards.
> For example, Curiosity’s radio regularly sends data and images to a passing orbiter, which relays them to Earth. Could the rover talk to an orbiter while driving, moving its robotic arm, or snapping images?
Love the imagery this conjures.
One man band Curiosity, patting its head and rubbing its stomach at the same time!
I hope one day Curiosity will be an exhibit in one of the first Martian exploration museums established on the red planet. The rover can stand proudly in warm, cozy structure after decades of research on the brutal surface.
This was also a plot point used much before The Martian; in the 2000 Val Kilmer film Red Planet- stranded astronauts make their way to the spot where Pathfinder's 'Sojourner' rover rests, in order to pull it's radio and use it to communicate an SOS with the orbiting station.
It's been a long time since I've seen that (widely panned as not-very-good) movie, but I feel I remember a line about the little rover using an 'off the shelf computer modem' - this is actually true, the little rover communicated back to the Pathfinder base station with a straight up off-the-shelf RS232 9600bps wireless transparent modem link. [0] [1] I remember that detail as it showed that, even though the movie itself was... uhhh... interesting, science-wise, it clearly had someone in an advisory role that knew something about real JPL hardware on Mars at the time.
One of the most curious aspects of the internet is how it creates the illusion of providing insight into public opinion. There is a strong desire to understand not only what is happening in the world but also how people are responding to it. In the absence of more reliable indicators, we tend to rely on whatever signals the internet offers. Even when, as internet- and media-saavy technologists, we know very well how personal behavior is distorted by anonymity, the desire for attention and clout, and the lack of accountability. Why do we all (and I include myself) so easily and often forget this simple truth, and fall into the trap of believing the world population consists mostly of the ignorant and malicious people that haunt public comment sections?
I used to think social media algorithms created a distorted view of public opinion on the Internet.
Now I know that even without engagement-maximizing algorithms or anonymity, most content on the Internet is still from self-selecting outliers. You don't walk down the street and listen to whoever shouts at you the loudest to gauge public opinion, so why care about Internet commenters (including me or you) when statistically normal people are "lurkers" who read and move on?
> Why do we all (and I include myself) so easily and often forget this simple truth, and fall into the trap of believing the world population consists mostly of the ignorant and malicious people that haunt public comment sections?
Because we've had millions of years to evolve our social instincts, and not even a single generation to adapt to the current state of public comment sections? In real life, where there aren't the same sampling biases, it makes perfect sense to believe the perspectives that are repeated by peers (as honest indicators of public opinion, if not at face value).
Also because there are major profit incentives for social media companies to make people think they're important fora for public discourse.
I think for-profit social media should probably be viewed as adversarial attackers. Their incentives are not aligned with what we need for healthy relationships and discussions. But even if you remove the profit incentive, it's still a new environment that we lack natural immunity to.
This is half the answer, though we'd also need those indicators to be plentiful and compelling.
> we know very well how personal behavior is distorted
This points to the other half: humans are irrational by default. We tend to believe what we "experience" - see, hear, etc. - even if we know it's a lie. Have you seen those videos of people in VR glasses panicking as if they're about to die because they've just fallen off a virtual cliff?
Consider also the Illusory Consensus Effect: mere repetition of information increases the estimates of group members that other group members believe or already know that information. Logically redundant, rhetorically effective.
We're apes with a souped up prefrontal cortex - critical thinking is expensive so applied selectively (see Tversky and Kahneman, System 1 vs System 2 thinking).
If only there was some kind of major indicator of overall public sentiment, conducted nationally, say every four years, which might allow one to draw conclusions about the portion of the population who is either ignorant or malicious. Surely the data would show the vast majority of my countrymen are rational, thoughtful people.
Great point. The internet is both a skewed reflection of us AND it influences us. Similar to the well-known reflexivity of legacy media but much greater scale and shorter time-frame. To bolster your point even further, I'd say that no human can bifurcate their life, their thoughts, their values, as "real" versus "online". It's just too hard, so they inevitably converge - giving lie to the constant refrain that it's "just trolling" or "just online bullying" etc.
It seems the internet has profound structural issues that undermine the forces that traditionally retarded and punished ignorance and malice. If it's true that society will inexorably evolve in the direction of the internet, and if we are all helpless to stop, or even slow, this evolution, then we are well and truly fucked.
You know who's won every single selection in modern history? "None of the above." Even in the 2020 election where millions of mystery people suddenly appeared, only 155 million people voted with a voting age population of some 256 million. Some of those 101 million (the delta between voters and 'abstainers') couldn't vote, but most could.
And that, to me, indicates rather widespread rationality. Because elections are a facade. Do you want to vote for somebody who struggles to complete a single coherent sentence and has a grand vision of 'I'm quite fond of power', or for a narcissistic entertainer? Either of which who will agree on most things that people themselves disagree with, like injecting ourselves into endless conflicts around the world because the MIC needs that dough. No thanks. I'm quite happy with my 'none of the above.'
So the conclusion I'd draw is that there's two rather radical sides constantly flinging poo at each other and pretending this moment is the most important moment ever, always, while everybody else looks on from behind the glass amused at a bunch of monkeys covered in poo which, come to think of it, also works as a fine metaphor for internet discussions.
I care about consequences, not about feeling smarter than other people. I care about policies, not candidates. In particular I believe that policies like “Defund the NSF” are bad, actually.
That's a great example. NSF funding (as of 2023) is < $10 billion. So the money spent shipping weapons to Ukraine could have funded it for decades. The money spent on Iraq or Afghanistan could have funded it for centuries. But in modern politics we simply accept that politicians will endlessly blow money like this, and we then content ourselves with fighting over the table scraps that are left over for whatever our pet interests happen to be, while framing those scraps as representing the most important existential crises to have ever existed.
Don't you see how comically dysfunctional this is? If you took the amount of money we spend and actually optimized it for outcomes, the possibilities are unimaginable. But we simply are incapable of electing the sort of people who could do this, because succeeding in politics is mostly just legal corruption (and illegal, but hey that's what pardons are meant for!) on a massive scale where everybody wants their bellies buttered to the point that suddenly government receipts of $5+ trillion dollars, $14k+ for every single man/woman/child, is literally not enough to maintain the basic operation of government. All the while our 'public servants' somehow get filthy rich in office. It's just lol.
Whenever I hear about them doing cool new things with the various space probes and rovers I can't help but think the situation was along the lines of "now that we're done with the core mission stuff and Sauron's gaze has averted (i.e. management has a new shiny to care about) we can really play cowboy putting it through its paces".
I would not discard this is oft where a lot - if not most of the actual discovery happens ...
... pushing the envelope.-
It's a little bit nitpicky, but I really wish technical people wouldn't generalize incorrectly:
"...maximizing the life of the MMRTG for more science and exploration down the road"
Will the MMRTG's plutonium decay more slowly if more electricity is used? No. So where's the value in generalizing poorly?
More generous reading of the entire sentence would be that the usable life of the mmrtg is increased by improving the energy efficiency of the rover. The mmrtg power output is constantly decreasing, and so it is reasonable to say that the mmrtg reaches end of life when the power output is not enough to operate the rover. So that cutoff point depends on the power demands of the rover.
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that statement. Reducing the minimum power required will obviously prolong the life of a system that has a monotonically decaying power supply.
The problem with being nitpicky is that fixating on isolated/arbitrary details often just means missing the bigger picture in a way that's even more incorrect. Good for "gotchas", but not intellectually productive.
Yeah, sloppy writing. They're maximizing how quickly they can complete tasks by multi-tasking and enter sleep mode sooner, reducing recharge time and reducing the amount of energy wasted on systems that are in active standby. They rediscovered race to idle.
I think "rediscovered" is a bit dismissive. Upgrading software on a computer whose capabilities are akin to the state-of-the-art in the late 1990s and is 12-13 light minutes away is non-trivial. Also, no pressure because losing contact means the end of a whole team. I'm pretty sure they know a lot of things they could do but don't because the risk/reward ratio is too high... all without "rediscovering" it.
>I really wish technical people wouldn't generalize incorrectly
I really wish technical people from other fields wouldn't come in and nitpick so much when the meaning is obvious.
>Will the MMRTG's plutonium decay more slowly if more electricity is used?
Nobody would think this is what they meant.
From the article:
> Providing ample power for the rovers’ many science instruments, MMRTGs are known for their longevity (the twin Voyager spacecraft have relied on RTGs since 1977). But as the plutonium decays over time, it takes longer to recharge Curiosity’s batteries, leaving less energy for science each day.
>maximizing the life
Getting the most out of its life. Doing more science per time remaining. It reads fine to me.
Good point-
I guess in a way less overall consumption might prolong life? (heat, wear on the electronics ...)
It could be that it prolongs the useful life by reducing the power needs such that it can be used for longer
This - we want the poor lonely thing to make it at least until we get there ourselves :)
Over the next year, Curiosity and other exploration programs will most likely be shut down as a waste of taxpayer money.
The administration has proposed a 50% cut to NASA's budget for the next fiscal year, but Congress pushed back and it looks like it'll "only" be a ~25% cut. Still a total bloodbath.
It's incredibly sad that we're seeing the dismantling of American science by leaders who have no understanding nor respect for it. The damage being done to our country right now is incalculable.
I'm sick of people blaming leaders. The people voted for this. The entire country is in a bad place, we are not being held hostage by our elected leaders, we created this monster through our actions and inactions.
Some Republican voters are still doing mental gymnastics and saying the Democrats should've done something to stop the Republicans, or it's their own fault for not having a better candiate, or other such things themselves.
The whole system / society is broken by people and leaders who refuse to take responsibility, on both sides of the aisle. And it's intentional.
I bet a lot of republicans wish democrats had fielded a better candidate so that their primary field would have had to demonstrate that they could beat the democrat. Instead it was a doddering old man who originally was only there to make Obama seem more conservative. Democrats have been useless and ineffective for a couple of decades now and that has in no small part helped the republican party turn towards the fascism of idiots.
I'm a democrat and I blame my own party more than republicans for the situation we're in. You can't just phone it in for decades and expect to win because you're so sure you're right. The republic needs to be and has needed to be actively defended and the people who were supposed to be doing that have been cowards.
> For example, Curiosity’s radio regularly sends data and images to a passing orbiter, which relays them to Earth. Could the rover talk to an orbiter while driving, moving its robotic arm, or snapping images?
Love the imagery this conjures.
One man band Curiosity, patting its head and rubbing its stomach at the same time!
Go Curiosity!
I hope one day Curiosity will be an exhibit in one of the first Martian exploration museums established on the red planet. The rover can stand proudly in warm, cozy structure after decades of research on the brutal surface.
The happy ending: https://imgur.com/he-did-good-job-VbKV9DF
Damn you for making my eyes well up
What was that movie (one of many I am sure) ...
... were our imperiled heroes save their 'hinds by locating and jerryrigging a defunct piece of hardware that was left behind from a previous mission?
I think that's The Martian, where the Pathfinder is used as a communication device.
Bingo.-
This was also a plot point used much before The Martian; in the 2000 Val Kilmer film Red Planet- stranded astronauts make their way to the spot where Pathfinder's 'Sojourner' rover rests, in order to pull it's radio and use it to communicate an SOS with the orbiting station.
It's been a long time since I've seen that (widely panned as not-very-good) movie, but I feel I remember a line about the little rover using an 'off the shelf computer modem' - this is actually true, the little rover communicated back to the Pathfinder base station with a straight up off-the-shelf RS232 9600bps wireless transparent modem link. [0] [1] I remember that detail as it showed that, even though the movie itself was... uhhh... interesting, science-wise, it clearly had someone in an advisory role that knew something about real JPL hardware on Mars at the time.
[0] https://urgentcomm.com/public-safety/data-communications-fro...
[1] http://www.iki.rssi.ru/mpfmirror/rovercom/itworks.html#rover...
I watched that as a kid and absolutely loved it. Not sure what warranted the bad reviews.
It’s very sci-fi but felt “grounded”.
[dead]
It also has this gem of a line:
This is it. That moment they told us in high school where one day, algebra would save our lives.
> Val Kilmer film Red Planet-
Actually this is the one I was thinking of ...
... the one were the guy ludicrously jumps between orbiting crafts at the last minute, and, thus, makes it back to Earth.-
Gotta say I found it entertaining.-
When images of Mars are shown on social media, there always is a flood of 'Devon island, Canada' comments, so depressing!
One of the most curious aspects of the internet is how it creates the illusion of providing insight into public opinion. There is a strong desire to understand not only what is happening in the world but also how people are responding to it. In the absence of more reliable indicators, we tend to rely on whatever signals the internet offers. Even when, as internet- and media-saavy technologists, we know very well how personal behavior is distorted by anonymity, the desire for attention and clout, and the lack of accountability. Why do we all (and I include myself) so easily and often forget this simple truth, and fall into the trap of believing the world population consists mostly of the ignorant and malicious people that haunt public comment sections?
I used to think social media algorithms created a distorted view of public opinion on the Internet.
Now I know that even without engagement-maximizing algorithms or anonymity, most content on the Internet is still from self-selecting outliers. You don't walk down the street and listen to whoever shouts at you the loudest to gauge public opinion, so why care about Internet commenters (including me or you) when statistically normal people are "lurkers" who read and move on?
> Why do we all (and I include myself) so easily and often forget this simple truth, and fall into the trap of believing the world population consists mostly of the ignorant and malicious people that haunt public comment sections?
Because we've had millions of years to evolve our social instincts, and not even a single generation to adapt to the current state of public comment sections? In real life, where there aren't the same sampling biases, it makes perfect sense to believe the perspectives that are repeated by peers (as honest indicators of public opinion, if not at face value).
Also because there are major profit incentives for social media companies to make people think they're important fora for public discourse.
I think for-profit social media should probably be viewed as adversarial attackers. Their incentives are not aligned with what we need for healthy relationships and discussions. But even if you remove the profit incentive, it's still a new environment that we lack natural immunity to.
> think for-profit social media should probably be viewed as adversarial attackers
They are. Their incentives are almost diametrically opposed to those of sane, rational, balanced, content individuals.-
> sane, rational, balanced individuals
Where do you find these unicorns?
The unicorn's natural habitat is grasslands
https://news.ycombinator.com
I kinda get what you did there. Seconded.-
4chan? (!)
> I think for-profit social media should probably be viewed as adversarial attackers. define social media.
(Australia is trying ...
... We'll see where that goes.-
> In the absence of more reliable indicators
This is half the answer, though we'd also need those indicators to be plentiful and compelling.
> we know very well how personal behavior is distorted
This points to the other half: humans are irrational by default. We tend to believe what we "experience" - see, hear, etc. - even if we know it's a lie. Have you seen those videos of people in VR glasses panicking as if they're about to die because they've just fallen off a virtual cliff?
Consider also the Illusory Consensus Effect: mere repetition of information increases the estimates of group members that other group members believe or already know that information. Logically redundant, rhetorically effective.
We're apes with a souped up prefrontal cortex - critical thinking is expensive so applied selectively (see Tversky and Kahneman, System 1 vs System 2 thinking).
If only there was some kind of major indicator of overall public sentiment, conducted nationally, say every four years, which might allow one to draw conclusions about the portion of the population who is either ignorant or malicious. Surely the data would show the vast majority of my countrymen are rational, thoughtful people.
Great point. The internet is both a skewed reflection of us AND it influences us. Similar to the well-known reflexivity of legacy media but much greater scale and shorter time-frame. To bolster your point even further, I'd say that no human can bifurcate their life, their thoughts, their values, as "real" versus "online". It's just too hard, so they inevitably converge - giving lie to the constant refrain that it's "just trolling" or "just online bullying" etc.
It seems the internet has profound structural issues that undermine the forces that traditionally retarded and punished ignorance and malice. If it's true that society will inexorably evolve in the direction of the internet, and if we are all helpless to stop, or even slow, this evolution, then we are well and truly fucked.
sorry but what forces "traditionally retarded and punished ignorance and malice"? very wordy but not much substance to what you write
There is much more personally impactful shame and alienation associated with being a loud idiot and/or jerk IRL.
You know who's won every single selection in modern history? "None of the above." Even in the 2020 election where millions of mystery people suddenly appeared, only 155 million people voted with a voting age population of some 256 million. Some of those 101 million (the delta between voters and 'abstainers') couldn't vote, but most could.
And that, to me, indicates rather widespread rationality. Because elections are a facade. Do you want to vote for somebody who struggles to complete a single coherent sentence and has a grand vision of 'I'm quite fond of power', or for a narcissistic entertainer? Either of which who will agree on most things that people themselves disagree with, like injecting ourselves into endless conflicts around the world because the MIC needs that dough. No thanks. I'm quite happy with my 'none of the above.'
So the conclusion I'd draw is that there's two rather radical sides constantly flinging poo at each other and pretending this moment is the most important moment ever, always, while everybody else looks on from behind the glass amused at a bunch of monkeys covered in poo which, come to think of it, also works as a fine metaphor for internet discussions.
I care about consequences, not about feeling smarter than other people. I care about policies, not candidates. In particular I believe that policies like “Defund the NSF” are bad, actually.
That's a great example. NSF funding (as of 2023) is < $10 billion. So the money spent shipping weapons to Ukraine could have funded it for decades. The money spent on Iraq or Afghanistan could have funded it for centuries. But in modern politics we simply accept that politicians will endlessly blow money like this, and we then content ourselves with fighting over the table scraps that are left over for whatever our pet interests happen to be, while framing those scraps as representing the most important existential crises to have ever existed.
Don't you see how comically dysfunctional this is? If you took the amount of money we spend and actually optimized it for outcomes, the possibilities are unimaginable. But we simply are incapable of electing the sort of people who could do this, because succeeding in politics is mostly just legal corruption (and illegal, but hey that's what pardons are meant for!) on a massive scale where everybody wants their bellies buttered to the point that suddenly government receipts of $5+ trillion dollars, $14k+ for every single man/woman/child, is literally not enough to maintain the basic operation of government. All the while our 'public servants' somehow get filthy rich in office. It's just lol.
> Even in the 2020 election where millions of mystery people suddenly appeared
Registered voters voted. Sad to see this ignorance here on HN.
That makes Devon Island, Canada sound really cool, though.
Does anyone consider the possibiity that this site and content are neither NASA nor JPL? The URL is suspicious and certificate is not trusted.
Update: It's actually my Safari Browser which is giving me this message. Works fine on google.
It's JPL's site, under NASA.gov. It's legitimate, and the certificate works for me.