Re: Lost in Space


uray wrote:
I suspect they will be provided with multiple communication options with
enough redundancy that if they all failed there would be little chance of
the ship remaining habitable.

One exception would be loss of attitude control.

Consider the Mars Observer back in 1992. This unmanned probe abruptly
stopped communicating. There was a plan to point Hubble at Mars to
take a look. Although Hubble could not see the probe, it would be able
to see the glare as the probe fired up its engines to slide into Mars
orbit. Unfortunately Mars was too close to the Sun at the time, so
Hubble didn't get the chance. However, if there was a loss of attitude
control (which is exactly what we think happened to the Mars Observer),
then an engine firing would not have been possible.

A more likely answer is that if we ever send a manned craft to a
deep-space target, it would likely be preceded by lots of unmanned
craft. Look at Mars for example. When we finally get there, we will
have a full orbital communications network, a Martian GPS and the
astronauts will be tipping over old rovers. Thus if we lose
communication with the astronauts, we'd be able to look for them using
robotic assets already in place.

.

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