• TheOneCurly
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    291 year ago

    I would think manned missions would be slightly less prone to this type of issue. Having a person with a brain and hands next to the machinery means that minor issues that are impossible to solve from millions of miles away become trivial (ie. a connector comes loose: just put it back in, dust on the solar panel: wipe it off). It has its own set of dangers of course, but autonomous rover issues don’t necessarily translate 1:1 with manned missions.

    • 567PrimeMover
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      71 year ago

      Makes me think of that one mission (I think it was to Venus?) Where the camera’s lens cap happened to land so that it obstructed a soil probe. So many dumb things like that that can just totally screw up an unmanned mission

    • chaogomu
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      41 year ago

      The issue with a manned mission to the moon is still going to be dust. Moon dust is sharp and jagged due to the complete lack of weathering.

      It was actually a huge problem for the Apollo missions.

      One of the major hurdles of figuring out how to do a longer lunar mission is figuring out how to handle the dust. It can completely compromise the joints and seals of a standard space suit in about a dozen hours.