MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
icarusinbound
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by icarusinbound »

DeeJay wrote:
I am "highjacking" this post because I'd like to post this link to a Yahoo article from today on Curiosity which was accompanied by a very curious photograph (to me).

Does NASA actually send up high-tech photographic equipment into space with its entrails opened to Martian dust particles? Not to mention all the heat of blast off, friction, cold and whatever I can't even imagine. Look at all the wires and the internal nuts and bolts!
Image
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... t-plastic/

This is extremely strange, and I'm about to say something that's counter-intuitive. What I'm seeing is the application of very old-school style electronic wiring loom assembly techniques. There looks to be waxed-cotton binding cord hand-tied around the cabling....this is extremely retro. The apparent cable insulation reminds me of aerospace standards circa 1980, it looks like a combination of kapton and teflon, feeding servos. This would never usually be visible: even in a prototype production, some form of physical cowling would be provided- and if it was going have to contend with heat/cold/dust/some kind of weather/drops, the whole concept of it being left revealed is utter madness. And what the blazes is that platted danish pastry of cabling in the bottom-left??
DeeJay wrote:I sent this to a friend who said that the reason NASA didn't worry about the "aesthetics" of the thing, is that all the wiring is secure and that their main worry is weight. Well. I'm not an engineer but if I were going out dune bashing, which I have done many times, I surely would protect my prized camera from sand and sun. Even airlines are worried about weight and yet they protect their in-flight meals with light-weight metallic coverings.
Precisely. There's an inexplicable lack of the protective carbon fibre panels you'd expect to be there.
DeeJay wrote:Perhaps you may think this trivial but I cannot look at the picture with this article and believe that it is real, i.e. realtime on Mars.
Indeed. And why did they come up with all this content.....
Curiosity Rover Identifies Mysterious Bright Object As Plastic wrote:NASA’s Curiosity rover took time out of its busy scooping and vibrating schedule on Oct. 9 to inspect a mysterious bright object that it spotted in the sand near its wheels the day before. Engineers have identified the bright bit as “shred of plastic material, likely benign.”

“Yeah so last night was crazy. When we spotted the object near the rover, we had to quickly come up with a totally new plan,” tweeted Keri Bean, a meteorologist on the rover team, on Oct. 8.
What...this is what we see in the yellow circle, as a semi-micrograph??

Image
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wired ... osity.jpeg

Why has the surface of Mars now assumed the consistency of what looks like painted cement rendering?? What geological process has produced such tiny rounded/spaced-out pebbles?
Terence.drew
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Terence.drew »

icarusinbound wrote:
Image
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wired ... osity.jpeg

Why has the surface of Mars now assumed the consistency of what looks like painted cement rendering?? What geological process has produced such tiny rounded/spaced-out pebbles?
Indeed icarusinbound. The question must be asked also - what geological processes on Mars produce penises just lazing about (c.f.apollo 11 eejits and their logbooks):

Image
http://www.space.com/17518-mars-rover-c ... hotos.html

Also what geological and photoshopic forces produce nice miniature pyramids -Curiosity Rover's Rock Named Jake Matijevic:

Image

We may even have a 'joke' of sorts ...( I stress 'may' ha)

Image
The Lincoln penny (supposedly used here to calibrate some auld shite and spattered with authentic mars dust) from 1909 is famous for him facing right-ways when the norm appears to be facing left, and the large initials VDB of the guy who made it, Victor David Brenner, on the reverse.

http://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/2009/ ... _penny.php

Flip Lincoln to face left and his profile fits neatly into the rock formation left of penis. We then have 'dick head'.
ImageImage

Bad boy Lincoln.
Images are from this s(h)ite: http://www.space.com/17518-mars-rover-c ... hotos.html
fbenario
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by fbenario »

DeeJay wrote:I am "highjacking" this post because I'd like to post this link to a Yahoo article from today on Curiosity which was accompanied by a very curious photograph (to me).

http://news.yahoo.com/curiosity-rover-s ... y%3Dlatest

I apologize for not getting the tech part on how to imbed but please have a look at the photograph.
There is NO 'bright object' on the surface (besides the silly NASA vehicle), or any other image, to see when I clicked on that link. Why'd you tell us all to look at it? What gives?

And hijacking is the correct spelling.
hoi.polloi
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Read the post. They wanted us to look at it for the doubtful wiring it exposes.
Heiwa
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Heiwa »

Image
Plenty of exposed wires on the Mars Rover … only protected by a heat shield when arriving at 5 900 m/s, etc, etc.
fbenario
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by fbenario »

hoi.polloi wrote:Read the post. They wanted us to look at it for the doubtful wiring it exposes.
When I looked at where the arrow below was directing our attention, I certainly didn't think I was looking at any exposed part of a man-made object.
rusty
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by rusty »

Hi everyone,

I've been following pretty much all of this long thread, because I've been largely skeptical about this latest NASA "effort" like all of their previous ones. When I read about the
"landing phase" in the newspaper I was intuitively thinking "bullshit".

Some of the members here voiced claims that we should be able to "prove" that this whole thing is impossible by performing some simple calculations. Dmitry quite correctly stated that you'd need to solve some differential equations to achieve this. However, there is an alternative solution, and it's called discrete approximation. It means simulating a dynamic physical process by calculating little "linear" steps.

Out of curiosity (pun intended), I thought it should be possible to write a relatively simple program that performs such a discrete approximation for the assumed descent phase of the rover landing capsule in the martian atmosphere, calculating air friction and the resulting loss in energy and velocity in little steps, 1 meter for each step.

I assume that the results won't please most of you too much (nor did they please me in the first place), but I think it's necessary to face the truth in order to avoid barking up the wrong tree. The truth is, that this landing phase is absolutely possible - IN THEORY! Even in a very thin atmosphere of only 125km height the "air" friction at high speeds is so strong, that you'll get to slow down almost every object sufficiently before it even gets close to ground level. Of course this strongly depends on the mass and shape of the object, but for the landing capsule this is more than plausible - IF you somehow manage to fly this damn thing to Mars, which I still consider quite an effort, even if all the models of the solar system and its planets are correct.

I'm still VERY skeptical about that last step with the UNTESTED "hovering platform". Also, I have serious doubts that all the models of the planets and their atmospheres are much more than science fiction. BUT - as I said - if you accept all these factors as given, the descent phase as such is not a big problem. OK, you won't be able to calculate the resulting landing place too precisely, even IF you somehow manage to precisely hit the targeted "entry point" to the atmosphere, but hey, a hundred kilometers east or west, who cares?

The one open question that remains is how the massive amount of energy caused by air friction can be handled by the capsule. However, it's important to understand, that probably only a small fraction of this energy is directly converted to heat. Most of it is simply transferred to "air" movement. Also, by keeping the angle as flat as possible you can - IN THEORY - avoid too much friction in a short time, because the atmosphere only slowly gets thicker as you dive down.

OK, here is a text file with details of my algorithm, the results and some further explanations. I'd appreciate if some of you could take a look at it and correct possible errors:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 6817021867
(don't get confused by all that commas used as decimal points in the results... ;)

Here is a graph (Excel) that shows the descent trajectory of the capsule using my approximation:
Image

Feel free to comment!

rusty
Heiwa
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Heiwa »

@ rusty
Evidently the resistance of a body moving in a gas depends on two parameters – the shape of the object and the area of the object. The shape causes turbulence and the area in contact with the gas causes friction. Both are then functions of the velocity of the object and the density of the gas and the strength of gravity.
In either case (brake) forces develop that are acting on the object and you must be certain that the object is strong enough to absorb these forces. It is like an airplane landing. No big deal. But airplanes do not use heat shields.
The forces acting on the object/air produce/absorb energy that becomes heat. The turbulent air is heated up and the area used for braking – the heat shield for a spaceship entering a planet with an atmosphere – is getting very hot.
It seems the MSL module could brake twice as fast in the Mars atmosphere as the Apollo 11 in the Earth atmosphere. See http://www.cluesforum.info/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p2376150 .
The forces acting on the MSL at re-entry must have been twice as big as the forces acting on Apollo 11.
In your model could you please indicate the total force and the relation between friction and turbulence forces during the various stages of the descent? It seems most deceleration in your model takes place at high altitude, while NASA/JPL suggests it happens all the way down, etc.
Fred54
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Fred54 »

Rusty read my posts on the heat shield those "simple" calculations tell me that if the heat shield weighs 500 pounds then the specific heat of PICA has to be in excess of 900 times that of water. If the heat shield's specific heat is close to that of carbon then it must weigh almost 1400 tons this is not negotiable. See if you can even find the value of the specific heat for the shield. It should be a fundamental physical property of the material which very strangely does not appear everywhere I searched.
rusty
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by rusty »

Heiwa wrote: The forces acting on the MSL at re-entry must have been twice as big as the forces acting on Apollo 11.
In your model could you please indicate the total force and the relation between friction and turbulence forces during the various stages of the descent? It seems most deceleration in your model takes place at high altitude, while NASA/JPL suggests it happens all the way down, etc.
The only force I can calculate is the deceleration force. It is reasonable to assume that further turbulence forces are at work.
See this file for updated calculations including the current force and the average energy loss per second (since the last time/line).
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 8827877512
The maximum force using my original model is about 430 kN - I think that's quite impressive, but is it absolutely impossible to sustain for the MSL?

If you use a steeper entry angle, deceleration is faster, the horizontal distance far shorter and the forces much higher. The file also contains the modeling for an entry angle of 31 degrees at approximately the same entry speed. The maximum force is about 1265 kN and here's the trajectory (km units this time):

Image

I guess that if you're playing around with the parameters for long enough you could possibly find a model which is somewhere close to what NASA suggests. However, I think that the "air" density needs to be even less than I assumed.

With regard to Apollo 11 I can't comment on that and I don't understand what kind of proof we could derive from comparing two fake events.

@Fred54
Certainly a good point to consider. I'll look up your post to see which kind of "simple calculations" you made. As already stated, all I can tell from my model is the total amount of energy converted during the descent stages, but I don't know how much of that energy will be converted to heat in the MSL. Do you have any idea how this could be calculated?

rusty
Heiwa
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Heiwa »

Thanks for table. Here is a short version of your table between 0 and 239.6 seconds when speed is reduced from 5907.7 to 250.4 m/s in a Mars atmosphere with density 0 to 0.077 (units? kg/m3 ? Too high).

1. Time (s): 0.0 HDistance (km): 0.0 Speed (m/s): 5907.6 Angle: 2.9 Altitude (km): 125.0 Energy (MJ): 64041.5 Density: 0.000 Force (kN): 0.0
2. Time (s): 30.6 HDistance (km): 144.4 Speed (m/s): 3139.5 Angle: 4.1 Altitude (km): 116.5 Energy (MJ): 18086.5 Density: 0.014 Force (kN): 334.5 EnergyLoss (MJ/s): 1169.3
3. Time (s): 59.0 HDistance (km): 206.3 Speed (m/s): 1501.6 Angle: 6.4 Altitude (km): 111.2 Energy (MJ): 4137.4 Density: 0.022 Force (kN): 124.8 EnergyLoss (MJ/s): 211.8
4. Time (s): 92.4 HDistance (km): 242.3 Speed (m/s): 797.9 Angle: 11.7 Altitude (km): 105.8 Energy (MJ): 1168.4 Density: 0.031 Force (kN): 49.0 EnergyLoss (MJ/s): 42.8
5. Time (s): 122.8 HDistance (km): 261.2 Speed (m/s): 523.5 Angle: 19.6 Altitude (km): 100.6 Energy (MJ): 502.9 Density: 0.039 Force (kN): 26.7 EnergyLoss (MJ/s): 14.0
6. Time (s): 239.6 HDistance (km): 291.1 Speed (m/s): 250.4 Angle: 63.3 Altitude (km): 76.6 Energy (MJ): 115.0 Density: 0.077 Force (kN): 12.1 EnergyLoss (MJ/s): 0.8

Anyway – speed is reduced 5907.6 – 291.1 = 5616.5 m/s due to alleged friction and turbulence in very thin atmosphere in 239.6 seconds, i.e. average decelerations is 5616.5/239.6 = 23.44 m/s², which is very impressive.

Even more impressive is the speed reduction in the first 30.6 seconds, i.e. 5907.6-3139.5 = 2768.1 m/s at altitude 125 - 116.5 km (density 0 - 0.014 ??) and a mean deceleration of 2768.1/30.6 = 90.46 m/s² due to a break force 334.5 kN that probably will crush or rip the MSL into pieces if it were ever applied. But where does the force come from? Turbulence? Friction? There is no atmosphere to talk about!

Imagine if normal airplanes could stop like that when landing in 100 times denser Earth air? :rolleyes:

I have a feeling your table needs working on. :unsure:
rusty
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by rusty »

Yeah, right, the table needs working on ;)

The unit of air density is kg/m3 as you suspected. On earth, density is about 1.2 - so I assumed a "much thinner" atmosphere on Mars to be at 0.2 - just a wild guess, of course.

But as it turns out, I was wrong to assume that air density increases in a linear way, as I suspected. It's rather logarithmic, at least on earth (looked it up one more time in wickedpedia).

Using a log scale for air density leads to a more evenly distributed descent, with respect to force and energy loss. Still the maximum force is at about 186kN.

So, here are the new corrected tables:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 7250553798

Here's the trajectory for the "flat angle" approach:
Image

rusty
rusty
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by rusty »

Same table rendered in 10km-steps:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 2128087528

Here's the trajectory in a more proportionate graph:

Image

rusty
Heiwa
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Heiwa »

Heiwa wrote:Even more impressive is the speed reduction in the first 30.6 seconds, i.e. 5907.6-3139.5 = 2768.1 m/s at altitude 125 - 116.5 km (density 0 - 0.014 ??) and a mean deceleration of 2768.1/30.6 = 90.46 m/s² due to a break force 334.5 kN that probably will crush or rip the MSL into pieces if it were ever applied. But where does the force come from? Turbulence? Friction? There is no atmosphere to talk about!
The atmosphere brake force depends on friction (related to space ship area (heat shield + other areas) in contact with atmosphere molecules) and turbulence (related to shape of space ship causing movements of atmosphere molecules around it).
So if the break force was 334.5 kN after 30.6 seconds - how much was due to friction and how much due to turbulence? Any idea? :rolleyes:
NASA/JPL must have done model or full scale tests in a wind tunnel to establish resistance forces, but I do not know about a wind tunnel providing 5907.6 m/s winds ... of different densities (and pressures). So how could NASA/JPL know the resistance forces of the MSL? Computer analysis? :lol: Any ideas? :rolleyes:

It would appear Mars atmosphere is mainly carbondioxide with pressure 10 hPa at ground and not very healthy to breath (compared to a nice Earth atmosphere of oxygene/nitrogene with pressure 1000 hPa at ground) .
Fred54
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Re: MARS & the Curiosity Rover - NASA's latest hoax

Unread post by Fred54 »

Here is the martian atmosphere profile.
Image
When Heiwa always says it is very thin I always think he is being too generous in his description.

And I just figured out how to find the url to go to a specific post.
My energy calculations for the heat shield load http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f= ... 1#p2375101
My search for the specific heat of PICA and the usefulness of a SWAG when you don't have a known value http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f= ... 5#p2375175
And another SWAG related to the heat shield http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f= ... 6#p2375326
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