Comments on: Mars Rover Spirit Shows Signs of Age, Including Senior Moments

By: Paul Cheung

Paul Cheung — Tue, 10 May 2011 12:28:46 +0000

It is nice to know I am not the only one to get senior moments. Anyway I found an old email from an ex-colleague, whose hobby and interests were in military tanks. We met when we both worked for a local govenment depart. He in End-User-Acceptance testing and myself in IT Software Defects resolution. Reading through the email once again it dawns on me that there a lot of the technology used to designed battle tanks, such as caterpiller tanks tracks and slopping armour that with modern lightweight materials and meta-materials could be adapted for off world exploration as could the wheel designs used in the first world war to move and support heavy cannons in differing hostile battlefields

By: Steven Carter

Steven Carter — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:25:07 +0000

Its remarkable that these two pieces of engineering and computer programming are still viable. It tells us that when engineers, computer programmers and supporting staff put their combined talents together with a clear goal they can solve problems not even imagined when the Rovers initially landed on Mars over 5 years ago. If we can achieve this level of success working on two mechanisms located millions of miles away we can surely do the same here when it comes to the economy, energy and health care. Perhaps we need to use a similar model to that which NASA uses to tackle the multiple problems presented to them by the Rovers to solve our problems here.