Lost contact with the Mars Rover

[cphilip]

Well the latest news on this is this seems now to be a software problem but one that can be fixed!

And the second Rover has landed successfully and has brodcasted back pictures.

[1stdeadeye]

This image just in:



Figures.....

[Warewolf50]

Originally posted by 1stdeadeye
This image just in:



Figures.....

ypu people make me laugh

[Butterfingers]

Kinda off topic but did you know the RAD 6000 CPU on the mars rover does 35 million operations per second.... at a cost of about 50 million a peice...

Where the latest AMD Athlon XP 2.6 ghz does over 7 BILLION operations per second... This is around 2000 times faster than the RAD 6000.... for a small fraction of the cost.

somthing smells fishy....

[RingOfScale]

lol the guy bottom of page 1 had the best pic ... and if ya guys didnt get it, ya need to get rip out some old (1995 or so?) RTS games ... *cough* starcraft *cough*

[WicKeD_WaYz]

how long does it take to send/recieve information back and forth from the rover?

[dansim]

Originally posted by Butterfingers
Kinda off topic but did you know the RAD 6000 CPU on the mars rover does 35 million operations per second.... at a cost of about 50 million a peice...

Where the latest AMD Athlon XP 2.6 ghz does over 7 BILLION operations per second... This is around 2000 times faster than the RAD 6000.... for a small fraction of the cost.

somthing smells fishy....

now take that amd and fire it 300 million miles into space on a distant planet, make it run on solar power, and have it broadcast data back to earth, while drilling,driving,measuring,ect not so fast or cheap now is it?

[impostal22]

Originally posted by RingOfScale
lol the guy bottom of page 1 had the best pic ... and if ya guys didnt get it, ya need to get rip out some old (1995 or so?) RTS games ... *cough* starcraft *cough*

what pic are you talking about?

[cphilip]

If there is a McDonalds there you know its gotta be IN A Walmart!

[Butterfingers]

Originally posted by dansim


now take that amd and fire it 300 million miles into space on a distant planet, make it run on solar power, and have it broadcast data back to earth, while drilling,driving,measuring,ect not so fast or cheap now is it?

ehh details... just encase it in foam rubber and cast some lead around it...

Surpsingly the Intel Pentium M takes less power than the rad6000 Its still about 2000 times faster....

Im pretty sure they could have paid Intel to radiation harden the thing for 50 million dollars. After all the Rad 6000 is based on the IBM R6000 RISC chip.

To answer other questions:

The signal takes about 9 minutes to reach earth at the speed of light... Mars is about 9 light minutes away.... Its far....

[1stdeadeye]

Originally posted by cphilip
If there is a McDonalds there you know its gotta be IN A Walmart!

There is one in the Walmart near my folks in Germantown, MD.

[p8ntball1016]

in manville nj, the wal mart has a mcdonalds in it. outside, in the same shopping center, there is a mcdonalds. kinda dumb if you ask me.

[impostal22]

Originally posted by Butterfingers


ehh details... just encase it in foam rubber and cast some lead around it...

Surpsingly the Intel Pentium M takes less power than the rad6000 Its still about 2000 times faster....

Im pretty sure they could have paid Intel to radiation harden the thing for 50 million dollars. After all the Rad 6000 is based on the IBM R6000 RISC chip.

To answer other questions:

The signal takes about 9 minutes to reach earth at the speed of light... Mars is about 9 light minutes away.... Its far....

the signals are being transmitted via light? somehow i have a hard time believing that...and there's no way it's 9 light minutes away, considering the sun is 8.33 light minutes away.

[mcveighr]

The planets aren't in perfect alignment. And yes the signals are going the speed of light.

[Butterfingers]

yeah all electromagnetic radiation (ie)radio waves travel at the speed of light.