[olePigeon]

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,26...w=wn_tophead_1

Was out for about 10 years getting space stuff. Then the parachutes malfunctioned on reentry and it crashed. They have a video of it. They might be able to get most of the samples out of it cuz the probe looks to still be in one piece, even after a plumit from outer space.

[Macfreak7]

10 years? It was launched in 2001.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Macfreak7:
10 years? It was launched in 2001.

Oops, thought I read that it had been out for a decade. Oh well, it still crashed.

[Komisar]

That stinks all that work for nothing... hope they can recover the data from it though!

[ManOfSteal]

Terrorism!

[nredman]

that sucks, i like the space program and all but sometimes i just think its a big waste of money, i guess you have the good and bad times.

[ink]

Oh man, that sucks. All the way to the sun and back, only to crash in Utah.

[Beewee]

3 years wasted, wow, I bet NASA is pissed...how much money did this cost?

[faragbre967]

At least that never happened during the Apollo or Mercury missions. It would have been, dare I say, sticky.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by faragbre967:
At least that never happened during the Apollo or Mercury missions. It would have been, dare I say, sticky.

No, but three astronauts were killed during a launch-pad capsule fire in 1967. Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee RIP.

The Genesis mission cost $260 million.

[CharlesS]

Shouldn't have made the thing out of protomatter.

[Mediaman_12]

Hows about this for Irony.
There was a load of British involvement in the 'science' on this mission. The lead UK scientist was non other than Colin Pillinger. The same guy who was the lead scientist on the ill fated Beagle 2 mission.
He was on TV today Saying how it almost seamed like he was watching the fate of Beagle 2, which did use (well it didn't 'use' because it failed) a similar landing system.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Wow, there goes 3 years and 250 million. Shame. NASA seems to have quite a run of bad luck.

[TheBadgerHunter]

Its just a little dirty, its still good its still good.

[Mister Elf]

Originally posted by Beewee:
3 years wasted, wow, I bet NASA is pissed...how much money did this cost?

Forget NASA, remember that US taxpayers have to foot the bill for all of NASA's many failures.

[Zimphire]

Actually NASA's accomplishments outweigh it's failures by far.

NASA has helped mankind in many ways.

But people only hear the bad because it sells.

[TheBadgerHunter]

Originally posted by Mister Elf:
Forget NASA, remember that US taxpayers have to foot the bill for all of NASA's many failures.

You do know that they'll spend "your" tax dollars however they want? That they aren't "your" tax dollars so you really have no reason to complain?

I don' know. When we stop trying to do great things we have no chance of achieving great things. Failure is par for the course when you're on a frontier.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Actually NASA's accomplishments outweigh it's failures by far.

NASA has helped mankind in many ways.

But people only hear the bad because it sells.

People don't hear only the bad. It's just that the bad is so spectacular, because it invariably involves hundreds to thousands of man-years and eight- to ten-figure losses.

This might be a good time to remember that the Mars Rovers are currently at, what, three or four times their expected lifespan? They're starting to get flaky, but they're still useful.

-s*

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
This might be a good time to remember that the Mars Rovers are currently at, what, three or four times their expected lifespan? They're starting to get flaky, but they're still useful.

-s*

Yeah. Those little rovers have more than paid for themselves. That's the type of NASA I like to see.

Sucks about the Beagle, though. I would've really liked to see Mars rocks up close.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by faragbre967:
At least that never happened during the Apollo or Mercury missions. It would have been, dare I say, sticky.

It has happened to a manned spacecraft. The Soyuz 1 spacecraft crashed with one cosmonaut on board when its parachute didn't deploy.

After the thirteenth orbit Komarov spoke again with mission control and he was instructed to fire the retro-rockets on seventeenth orbit. The launch of Beregovoy was cancelled - now it was time to try to get Komarov home.
After de-orbit burn Komarov hardly piloted his craft to a landing site. He survived the reentry but not the terrible impact with ground when parachute failed to deploy making the ship crash at more than 500 km/h. Retro-rockets exploded on impact and a fire engulfed what remained of the Soyuz descent module.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally posted by manofsteal:
Terrorism!

Are we invading the sun, next?

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Actually NASA's accomplishments outweigh it's failures by far.

NASA has helped mankind in many ways.

But people only hear the bad because it sells.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

One of the best! Too bad that there was more press about the crash today then the fact that we could get a small robotic probe to Saturn.

[Eriamjh]

Bring on the conspiracies that MASA planned the crash, there was no chute to depoloy, they just took the $260 million and spent it on cocaine, cars, DVDs, etc.


Kinda neat it just went "plop" into the ground without a giant crater.

Apparently, this thing was so delicate they wanted to pluck it out of the air with a helicopter before it even touched down using the chute. I doubt those delicate collection plates will have survived the impact.

[Rain]

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
Apparently, this thing was so delicate they wanted to pluck it out of the air with a helicopter before it even touched down using the chute. I doubt those delicate collection plates will have survived the impact.

I thought it was to prevent contamination by Earth's atmosphere?

I've been looking forward to the return of Genesis for a couple of weeks. Pity it malfunctioned

[Luca Rescigno]

I like how there are a lot of people talking about how NASA is a huge waste of money, blah blah blah, when this frigging SPACE PROBE IN SPACE cost $260 million to launch, perform its mission, and return. Seriously, $260 million is enough for, like, one fighter jet. Think about it. One fighter jet vs. a precision scientific instrument launched into space that then returns to earth. Yeah, national defense is very important, but people tend to exaggerate how much money certain space missions cost. They want to cut NASA's budget but there's very little left to cut.