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A comment on NASA Mars Mission Faces Setback After Heat Shield Cracks Under Pressure. Parent comment

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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