Re: How are Spirit and Opportunty able to operate for so long?

>When you bought your computer it probably had
>a one year guarantee. How surprised will you
>be if it is still working after five years?

Very surprised, if my computer happened to be millions of miles away
working in a hostile environment with extreme temperatures and powered
by solar panels being slowly covered with dust. :)

But I thought the original 90 days of operation was their estimate, not
a "warranty" made for liability purposes. You'll agree that the rovers
are performing well beyond their expectations, and I was just wondering
why I couldn't find an explanation of how they did it, like

"Hey, Mars isn't as dusty as we thought!"
or
"Hey, we forgot to take into account the lower gravity on Mars when
estimating the energy requirements."
or
"Okay, we just didn't want to look like idiots if the whole thing broke
down in the first hundred days."

.

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