NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks Under Pressure

Re:NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks ... by geuis on Friday April 27, 2018 @02:53PM (#16943271)

Space is hard. Goes to show they have thorough and extensive testing and caught this now rather than losing the mission in 2020.

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Re:NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks ... by mattnewton on Friday April 27, 2018 @03:14PM (#16943480)

Definitely this. Better to lose a shield prototype than a fancy rover you already spent millions to hurl into space.

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Re:NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks ... by mattashii on Friday April 27, 2018 @03:37PM (#16943657)

The article isn't 100% clear on this, but to me it reads that the actual heat shield that they were going to use in the mission broke (not a prototype). Which is still much better than the alternative (losing a multi-billion dollar project in Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly)

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Re:NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks ... by duskwuff on Friday April 27, 2018 @07:45PM (#16945293)

Yep. Much better for the heat shield to break in a test chamber on Earth and have to be rebuilt, than for it to break during Mars atmospheric reentry and end the mission.

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Re:NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks ... by AnimalMuppet on Friday April 27, 2018 @04:06PM (#16943869)

Space is hard.

Things get broke.

Your mission still

Must not choke.

Burma Shave

(H/T to the RhymeZone rhyming dictionary...)

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