oh no! Mars beagle, no contact!

Oh my gosh! What an awesome and WEIRD theory!

sub-crustal tidal waves!

It would reek havoc, wouldn't it?!?

Thanks for sharing that!

I have read several times that the orbits of the successful orbiters do have minor fluctuations. The probes that make it to Mars orbit I beleive make it at a normal gravity time when the mass of Mars is evenly distributed and gravity acts as it normally should for the most part.

Phobos cricles Mars every 7.7 hours or roughly 3 times a day. Deimos does so within 35 hours which is incredible rates. This alone is not much info but if you take the idea that both moons are captured asteroids then the speed of the moons seems a little strange.

If you take the example of spinning around with a hold on a rope and at the other end you have tied a brick. You start spinning and pull the brick in closer to you and your spinning and the bricks rotation will increase. Now push it out further than it was to begin with and you will slow back down a little. If you were to continue this cycle of pushing out the brick and pulling it in you would achieve a net speed gain. So is the same with the gravity pull of Mars pushing and pulling on Phobos and Deimos.

Also Phobos has a massively degrading oribit and is doomed to crash into Mars. Phobos is snugging up to the red planet at a rate of 6 feet every 50 or 100 years, I forget exactly which one. Phobos will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or be sheared by the gravity and become a ring.

[Edited on 26-12-2003 by BlackJackal]

Val,
Here's the first article I came across on a quick search that dealt with the metric system story. It's by James Oberg:
www.msnbc.msn.com...

Right now, as I understand it, Oberg is having a feud of sorts with NASA management... But it should be pointed out that, in the past, he used to be a major debunker of all tales that connected NASA with conspiratorial UFO stories... So, I think that he's credible.

The article details some of the problems NASA has had with its recent probes, also.


Personally, I believe that the Beagle 2 was doomed more by finances and inexperience than by outright incompetence or anything related to ETs... And, like I said before, I don't think the 'aliens' are knocking these things down with death rays... However, I still don't see how it's impossible for an intelligence agency to conduct sabotage missions in foreign countries. Yes, different populations may react differently to news of ET life... But that doesn't mean that those in charge of populations that may have a negative reaction will not try to stop the flow of such information, should it become known. In short, the government of Country X doesn't have to be involved in the loss of Country X's probe... Country Y could have sabotaged it before leaving the pad.

Finally got to read the link, OIMD.

I agree that shortage of funds, manpower, etc. (which stems from bad management and bureacracy) is what has caused most of the NASA disasters.

BUT, this article bears a lot of evidence to why I have a fairly strong negative opinion of Oberg. He spins way too much...and it always seems to be in a manner of negative toward NASA.

Look at the following from that article:

"This is exactly what doomed another probe, the Mars Climate Orbiter, which also disappeared just as it arrived at Mars, also in 1999. NASA later released the story that the probe was lost because some low-level workers mixed up English and metric units for rocket thrust. This became a big public joke, and deflected attention from the true cause.

Blaming the foul-up in units was a misrepresentation: To save money, NASA had deleted staffing levels to double-check work, assuming instead that all the workers would make no mistakes. And when the error led to noticeable navigational errors during the flight, the team didn�t have the resources to investigate the clues. Rather than discover what was behind the worrisome indicators, they chose to assume everything was all right � and the probe crashed into Mars. "

Okay, **I** realize what Oberg is trying to say - he's saying that the reason the Climater Orbiter was lost was due to bad management decisions and lack of review of code. BUT, why did he say it in a manner that would lead the reader to believe that the unit error DIDN'T happen.

That's so much bad karma from him. The unit error DID happen, it is "the error" that "led to noticeable navigational errors during the flight" he refers to. The decision to NOT review the code, which would have found this blatant error is the foundational cause of losing the Orbiter. But he didn't have to play BS semantics this way and write this article in a manner that leads the public to believe that NASA was lying about the unit error.

I'm going to reserve any judgment on what went wrong with Beagle. Back when we put a man in space, and a man on the moon, we were novists as well...and we did okay. So, I'm not ready to call the failure due to them being new at this. But I am very anxious to find out what did lose this valuable mission.



[Edited on 26-12-2003 by Valhall]

I dont know about any aliens or such but it sure seems like too high a rate of failure to me, SOMETHING must be causing it. I personaly think that there is simple lifeforms on mars now or at least was in the past. An advanced Martian ecosystem would be easy to see you could do it with a large telescope you wouldnt even need a probe. Now an underground alien base would be a different story altogather......

I am unsure what the problem is but I fairly am sure that there is a problem

Man...At its MINImum, the distance between earth and Mars is 55,746,199 km. Sometimes I lose my way to the supermarket, so I can understand... Or maybe it's careening off course and is now a worthless ball of chips and foil hurdling through space...either way its very disappointing I must say
--Kris

Maybe it hit an asteroid?

Erm Beagle isnt NASA funded - its a shoestring Brit operation. FWIW - the package delivered by PPARC was built with economy in mind - no multiple redundancy - so it was a one hit at best. There is no conspiracy here - just a throw of the dice - that may pay off or not. To say that these people wasted a lot of time developing this vehicle to have it is actually very sad - and I feel for them -

/RANT ON we in the UK arnt used to the millions thee US is prepared to throw into space. These are scientists who have spent more years than the average ATS poster collectively has spent in school working on a project that was the culmination of their lifes work - and was probably thwarted by an inability of NASA to accept the input of another nation till the last second /RANT OFF

Theres no conspiracy here - just simple problems - maybe Beagle is dead - but the next 17 days will tell.

I never thought Beagle would reach the surface intact, simply because i dont think that landing a probe using airbags on an unknown surface was going to succeed.

I doubt this is any kind of conspiracy, simply that the budget lead them (ESA) to landing the thing in a very dangerous manner which had a huge chance of failure. The orbiter is OK, and if they are going to take detailed pics of Cydonia it is the orbiter that will do it so that wont be compromised.

Mars has a high failure rate, that is true...but i think it has to do with the fact that many of the failures are landers which are more susceptible to failure and also just coincidence that its been Mars missions that have failed. I dont think that any space agency currently has enough credibility to suggest that a failure would be unusual, even a string of failures.

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
accidents happen. yea, ill give you that much. but this is just one in a string of failed probes to mars. we were able to send probes successfully to the outer reaches of this solar system 20 years ago. today, they smash into planets. yea, i believe that one.

Today's medicines are more advanced than they have ever been, but yet, we still have no cure for the common cold. Althought we have gone to the outer reaches of the solar system, does not mean we are error-proof and not prone to accidents. Everything is destructible and able to malfunction, regardless of how expensive it was to create. The Concorde cost 34 billion to produce, but yet, it still malfunctioned and even crashed in July of 2000. Once again, just because an object is costly, does not make it error-proof.

So many probes have crashed onto Mars, and if something was there that would scare us, I believe we would not have gone back so many times. No two planets are alike, so just because we probe planets further away than Mars, does not mean Mars is a piece of cake...

Originally posted by NewYorker
www.cnn.com...

"British scientists have failed in their latest attempt to make contact with the Beagle 2 probe which was to have landed on Mars on Christmas Day.

The lack of a signal is a blow for the European Space Agency which is making its attempt to land a craft on the Red Planet."

Why do so many probes malfunction or get destroyed when reaching Mars? This has happened too many times to be mere coincidence! It's as if...someone or something does not want us really examining the Martian terrain. Hmmm.....

Maybe they should have sent an Airedale instead LOL
sorry couldnt resist

i was actually genuinly dissapointed about the beagle thing. apparently if the best chance of contact they have will be later this week some time. after that they can be pretty sure they wont get contact.

they spent 6 years workin on that project - i really feel sorry for them

and it was british.... failed at something once again! we're used to it.... we're growin to enjoy it. (apart from rugby. *points at the ozzies and laughs*)

'Theres something wrong thats for sure. Didnt america get the rover down on mars a little while back? aybe that triggered some sort of device or defense that is preventing any further landings. When i finish work, i'll go get stoned, and see if i cant cook up some wild theory about his...

A more logical, and skeptical, way to put this is, because of what Mars is made up of. I know for a fact that the Galileo satellite was lost when it tried to enter Jupiter's atmosphere. It topped off at around 30,000 mph before scientists lost all contact with it. Why? Because of the intense pressure and heat combined crushed the satellite. Maybe this is what is happening on Mars? There might be some unknown gas or heat that is causing all of these satellites and probes to go down..

-wD