Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Won't the 2009 mission already have its relaying network intact?

re: Won't the 2009 mission already have its relaying network intact?
Dave — (archived)

Even with a network, your cell phone still couldn't work on mars... lets list some of the problems.

1) Radiation would kill your cell phone / camera
2) Extreme low temperatures would prevent the electronics from working
3) Low pressure might be a problem for some parts
4) If some how the electronics did work, cooling might be a problem... heat wont conduct away nearly as well in the Martian atmosphere.
5) Power consumption is a much bigger concern

...and probably others that I can't think of

Not to mention that the cameras used on MPF, MER and MSL and really calibrated scientific instruments with many more available wavelengths.

What this all means is that all the stuff is one-offs... which means they are very expensive for two reasons 1) You can't spread the engineering costs out over millions of products. 2) You can't mass produce, which is how you really get the production costs down.

I'll give another example.... do some research and look at how much an auto company like GM spends on developing a brand new type of car.... Its something on the order of a couple billion dollars before the first car is even built and sold. I consider the MERs to be much more radical then a typical new car, and they cost a lot less to design.... And they even had to pay for a couple of rockets within there $820 million budget.

Its not a big deal for cars because that couple billion in R&D gets divided into a million production cars, so its only $2000 per car that goes to engineering.

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