• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

In about 8 months I will know...

What are the holes for!? Locking the wheels in place for transit?
So cool. You should/must be proud.
 
:thumbup

I keep thinking of Howard Wolowitz. :laughing

[youtube]PrX3EmdKtRc[/youtube]
 
What will the new Mars rover find???

-ancient-aliens.jpg
 
serazin said:
The holes spell out JPL in Morse code....
Click to expand...

They sure do. :thumbup NASA didn't catch that until it was WAY to late to do anything about it. The wheels needs an asymmetry anyway. Without a way to be absolutely sure the wheels was rotating, diagnosing a problem during the mission would be difficult. Also during tests they found that dirt would accumulate inside the wheel if there was no way for it to fall out. Hence the holes. Those smart guys, and at least one woman who was a lead engineer, at JPL get the credit for the easter egg.

Thanks for the props guys. I gotta say I feel so incredibly lucky to have been able to work on this project. In 8 months time if this all goes well I will stand up on my soapbox a bit more and share my thoughts about the space program. For now I am really pulling for this to go right. So many good people poured their hearts into it with the hopes of building something special for all of mankind to benefit from. Fingers crossed we all get to learn something new!
 
Bump, I found a cool vid that shows some of what the good people at JPL go through to make this happen.

[youtube]57A8Vwt1GrY[/youtube]
 
Super freakin' cool... and a local guy of all things. You don't actually work on this stuff on our side of the hill do you Mike? Congrats and I look forward to hearing about the success in 8 months. :thumbup
 
fraz said:
Super freakin' cool... and a local guy of all things. You don't actually work on this stuff on our side of the hill do you Mike? Congrats and I look forward to hearing about the success in 8 months. :thumbup
Click to expand...

Thank you. Those parts were made at a shop in Scotts Valley. I'm now working in a shop in Campbell.
 
That's really impressive, and it seems like the landing technologies have really progressed since that other mars lander which basically came crashing down surrounded by big beach balls.
 
Really exciting!!! Congrats! I'll just go back to work here at the paper clip factory and dream.
 
I went to work at a shop (Next Intent, SLO), that were just finishing up the wheels for the last rover when I started there, very cool stuff.
 
I have/had a hub puller that was used on the lunar rover - in my previous life I worked with a bunch of guys that did guidance for the Apollo missions - they ended up at Delco Systems in Santa Barbara. When I was there we built all the Guidance Control systems for the Delta and Titan launch platforms that put a bunch of this stuff in orbit. Got to spend time at Vandenberg going thru the Shuttle launch site. Still gives me goosebumps!

Very interesting work, and we did a lot of cool things at that facility. Building something that goes into space is extremely cool, but the reams of paperwork (yea I'm old) that are generated by just one assembly is mind numbing.

I'll bet you spent some serious hours on those parts.

Good for you Mike95!
 
oobus said:
Very interesting work, and we did a lot of cool things at that facility. Building something that goes into space is extremely cool, but the reams of paperwork (yea I'm old) that are generated by just one assembly is mind numbing.
Click to expand...

so is aerospace, it's still paper based, with computer assist.
 
Inspirational indeed. I just deleted all the neg crap that the last stats brought fourth in honor of holding tenuously to the idea of positive progress.
Old Tech + New Tech :hail
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top