I wonder if there's a public repository of the kernel source deployed on the helicopter. I'd love to see if any of the code I've contributed just flew on Mars
First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
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Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#92It's cool. And surprising to me how young the team is. Contrast to the other videos I've seen of NASA "mission control" form the 60s etc. Something transformational for me seeing this group of super young people achieve so much. Inspiring and hopeful and more :)
The average age of mission control during the Apollo missions was around 26...
People looked older then, IMO. They smoked, had neat haircuts, and wore shirts and ties to work.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#93The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It took about 7.3 billion years for the Earth to be formed. Then it took roughly 4.48 billion years for the first Hominins to wander on the planet. They evolved for almost 5.998 million years. Then they had small civilizations in the past 0.002 million years. They started flying in the past 0.0001 million years. 0.00005 million years later they landed on the moon. Almost 0.0000…
and then .00015 million years after they died out by the billions and reverted back to the stone age due to the pollution they emitted.
Pretty low faith that all that ingenuity will save us?
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
and then .00015 million years after they died out by the billions and reverted back to the stone age due to the pollution they emitted.
Pretty low faith that all that ingenuity will save us?
it certainly could if that genius was focused on the looming problem.
But instead of trying to prevent disaster, most of the world's ingenuity is squandered on trying to squeeze another buck out of the world.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#95Is it too optimistic to hope that flights will keep the solar panels clean and Ingenuity could follow the rover some months.
Thermally, the helicopter cannot keep itself warm through winter due to decreasing solar power generation. Over the next few months, as the solar generation goes down leading into winter, the energy available for flight (rather than survival) will decrease and go negative at some point.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#96It made me so sad seeing them cheering and clapping, but not getting up and hugging each other :( So much happiness without the ability to vent it. Such a historical moment.
It made me sad too. All these brilliant minds working for so long and accomplishing so much... Just for a clap and cheer, yet tommorow they have to do it all again in the rat race. Yet cryptokings are basking in glory for a lifetime.
They didn't do it "for a clap and a cheer." They did it because they were inspired to add to humanity's millenia-long advance of scientific progress.
And I'd argue that cryptokings may be basking in money for a lifetime -- if they cash out at a good time and diversify their holdings. But the only people glorifying them are cryptoking-wannabes.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#97Roughly the start of success from the livestream: https://youtu.be/p1KolyCqICI?t=2265 Video (of the video from Perseverance): https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1384099167832735748 (Better version from the livestream in child comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26861334 )
Can't wait until the SpaceX's Starship land the next gen Mars Helicopter that might be 10-20x bigger in 2-4 years.
Battery-powered helicopter designs don't really scale on Mars any better than they do here on Earth. At higher vehicle masses, you'd need larger/heavier motors to get the larger/heavier blades turning as quickly as they'd need to (and in much lighter air than we have here).
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowing spacex, they will deck that thing out with 4K video even if it means dropping a few satellites into Martian orbit to act as relays. My understanding is that video requires power to transcode and compress, and power is a scarce resource. This is especially true on ingenuity, which is powered by six 18650 batteries. And most of that power is dumped into just keeping it warm enough to function, not into actually…
Wouldn't transcoding the video still produce the same amount of heat?
Not that much as it will no doubt be hardware accelerated.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#99It made me so sad seeing them cheering and clapping, but not getting up and hugging each other :( So much happiness without the ability to vent it. Such a historical moment.
Funny. When I watched that sequence, I was thinking the opposite. That the length of the clapping and cheering would be "too much" for me. I imagined myself being in that room. I probably would have beed very happy, smiling and showing a "thumbs up" sign or something. But I would not clap or cheer. And I certainly would not want to be hugged by some scientist next to me :) How do other engineers here on HN feel about…
It's something that became pretty clear to me over the past year - if you don't get excited by this kind of physical contact you're probably a little different from others.
That's OK. I not only don't celebrate that way, it'd make me uncomfortable even for a peer I like to hug me out of excitement. It's not what I want but it's what other people want and it seems to be the norm.
You may end up learning that this may hold you back professionally at some point unless you can stay in a role that doesn't value social signaling, as these behaviors are basically expected, and not performing them will get you excluded, unless you find a way to surround yourself with people who have shared views on this sort of thing, which is really hard to find out because it's implied.
At least that's what I've been thinking this past year of isolation where I have been very happy to not feel obliged to do the social things everyone else so desperately wants to go out and do together.
I'm on the lookout for backcountry camping trips I can do once things are "back to normal" so I can continue my isolation while everyone is at restaurants and parties.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#100I wonder if there's a public repository of the kernel source deployed on the helicopter. I'd love to see if any of the code I've contributed just flew on Mars
Check out this Github list of all repos included in the helicopter:
https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-yo...