[kingu]

JPL’s known for some pretty hair brained ideas, that have a tenancy to not only be thinking outside the box, but actually work as well. Am I surprised that the skycrane worked? No. Or the parachute? No.

Am I dumbfounded in awe at being able to hit the all time smallest bullseye? Absolutely. Yeah, the rest of the stuff was cool, relaying stuff through satellites, taking pictures of Curiosity after parachute deployment - all pretty nifty. But even hurling a smart bullet to hit their injection window of just a few miles across while travelling over 12,000 miles an hour? That's over 3 miles a second.

Miss that, it doesn't matter what whizbang stuff you've got stowed away, it will be doing a bang up impression of the Beagle.

Now, if only they could get that stupid NASA sign off of my Caltech/JPL.

[af_vet_rr]

JPL’s known for some pretty hair brained ideas, that have a tenancy to not only be thinking outside the box, but actually work as well. Am I surprised that the skycrane worked? No. Or the parachute? No.

The first time I heard about the whole thing, I thought they were nuts. Then I heard about the reasoning behind the sky crane and it made a lot of sense. They need to explain their reasoning a little more clearly here and there.

And to their credit, they held back and added an extra year or two of testing, realizing their limits.