From: spamhere@dev.null.retro.com   
      
   marky@ottawa.com (Mark Rejhon) writes:   
      
   > With the Opportunity Rover landing today, NASA (JPL) has   
   > successfully landed 3 spacecraft on Mars using airbag technology,   
   > that makes it a 100% success rate.   
      
   A sample of 3 does not make any useful statistics.   
      
   > Do you think the floodgates will open for future Mars landers   
   > using airbag technology on more interesting locales (near mesas,   
   > volcanoes, valleys, etc)   
      
   Foodgates?  No.   
   Mars missions will remain at a trickle for the foreseeable future.   
      
   If you want to land something bigger then the current rovers you'll   
   probably have to go for rocket powered descent because airbag systems   
   don't scale that well.  Going down into valleys would reduce available   
   solar power and limit communications, so you won't see that for a   
   while.  Maybe once we have a network of Mars comms satellites and   
   nuclear powered rovers...   
      
   --   
   Manfred Bartz   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)