Anyone seen a lost Beagle.

[The PIT]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3347991.stm

Looks like a few more millions gone west. The next one will be called St Benard and will hopefully sniff out it's lost partner.

[THE_Editor]

lol

[gt40]

Here I was thinking I'd be the first to post 'The Beagle has Landed'

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by gt40
Here I was thinking I'd be the first to post 'The Beagle has Landed'

I'm sure it landed, at least some parts of it.

let's hope they manage to establish contact later.

mfg
wulfman

[ayoub_ibrahim]

next possible contact in a couple of hours!
me hopes that beagle2 is ok.

[The PIT]

It's gone walkies.

[Dilitante1]

If they dont start landing succesfully out there how will anyone use spare parts to escape from the surface? (Mission to Mars/Red Planet reference)

OR will they send a garbage recovery mission so we dont get cited for dumping in a public space

[gt40]

A galiant effort regardless of the outcome.
My hat is off to the British.

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by gt40
A galiant effort regardless of the outcome.
My hat is off to the British.

erm. no.
that was a european effort, not a british one.

mfg
wulfman

[gt40]

You can correct me If I am wrong, but I understood the Beagle 2 to be a British project, with the Mars Express an effort by the European Space Agency.
Considering the track record of trying to land a device on the surface of Mars, I believe this to be the most difficult part of the mission.
I do by no means try to diminish the effort of all those involved.

[Technoid]

3 out of 30?!?!?
Marvin the Martian must be there and using them as target practise

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by gt40
[B]You can correct me If I am wrong, but I understood the Beagle 2 to be a British project, with the Mars Express an effort by the European Space Agency.

my fault - I remembered correctly that most of the funding for BEAGLE came directly from the ESA, but: "Design of the landing spacecraft led by a British Consortium of Universities, research support teams and Industry,..."

mfg
wulfman

[drslump]

You mean that useless piece of crap I found this morning in my garden was supossed to have landed on mars!!!

I guess it's not as useless as I thought it was, I might try and sell it to some jacko on eBay

[Jon P. Inghram]

LMAO!

Mars just isn't a good target for economical landers, the air is thin enough that unless you bring lots of fuel to perform a controled landing you pretty much have to land at the lowest elevation locations to allow enough time to decelerate during entry and for enough air density to make a parachute work well enough to keep your speed low enough for whatever final landing device you happen to be using, be it bags or thrusters.

[Dr Mordrid]

The landing wasn't to need a lot of fuel. It was supposed to be a beachball landing like used with the NASA Sojourner probe.

The 'chute just drops the package and it bounces along on huge air bags until it stops. The air bags deflate then the craft opens its petals to expose the solar panels & experimental packages.

It's an interesting technique with one inherent problem; what happens if sharp rocks (no shortage of those on Mars) deflate more than one of the bags while it still has a lot of "bounce"?

Oops.....

Dr. Mordrid