Re: Did Lunokhod-2 Turn Turtle on the Moon?

From: Ami Silberman (silber_at_mitre.org)
Date: 06/17/04 

Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:42:33 -0400

"Tamas Feher" <etomcat@freemail.hu> wrote in message
news:cargug$k39$1@proxy.interware.hu...
> >The rover's lid would have to be closed to keep it from freezing
> >during the night. When the team closed the lid, they dumped the
> >lunar grime on the radiator, which was supposed to get rid of
> >excess heat during the day. "We put on this radiator the best
> >insulator - lunar soil," Basilevsky laments.
>
> Why no backup (redundancy) for the radiator? There were 8 wheels with
> remote-controller disconnect, spare radio antennas, redundant (three) TV
> cameras, automatic safety brakes, etc installed. Why a single point of
> failure with a single heat radiator in the Lunokhod? At the very least
> they could have installed a flask of compressed air for blowing or add
> some kind of screenwiper with brushes to the radiator?

Probably because they didn't envision a failure mode which would affect the
radiator, and that engineering in a backup would have broken the weight
limits. Also, adding redundancy through physical structures introduces new
points of failure.