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Re: [Fwd: starship-design: HIGHLY OPTIMIZED TOLERANCE]
Steve VanDevender wrote:
>
> KellySt@aol.com writes:
> > >I don't have the figures to back this up, but I would think even at the
> > >orbit of Mars there would still be enough solar radiation for solar power,
> > >perhaps not much beyond that.
> >
> > I remember it was geting to be a serious problem with the recent Mars probes.
> > Thats why the Rovers and such died so rapidly. The old nuclear Mars probes
> > kept going for years. The new ones only lasted a couple weeks.
>
> The Sojourner rover was still operating when the lander stopped
> communicating after 80-some days of operation. The original mission
> plan assumed that the lander would operate for only 30 days and the
> rover only 7. Both used solar power to recharge batteries to allow some
> overnight operations; while there's no definitive evidence to say
> exactly why the lander failed, electronics failure due to thermal
> cycling or battery failure after so many daily charge/discharge cycles
> are possibilities. However, it was possible to operate both the lander
> and the rover from solar power alone without any battery support at all,
> and I believe the rover operated that way later in the mission.
I thought the problem, is was that batteries and other equipment,
since it was only ment for 30 days, could not survive the real cold
after 80 days. Also a design flaw in the software may also have been
a factor.
The Lagging edge of technology:
http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/woodelf/index.html