The video is awesome and seems like science fiction. If they can pull it off, then I'll be impressed.
What exactly makes this landing seem riskier than previous Mars landings? It seems like the overall trend is that we're getting better at stuff like this. I'd be curious to see the video you're talking about though.
Holy shit, just watched the computer animated video and it's no wonder you don't feel good about the odds. There is a hell of a lot that can go wrong in all of those various stages of landing.
The rocket hover part is definitely the riskiest part, but holy fuck it looks cool. I wish they'd sent a camera crew or something ahead of time to film it, regardless of whether it's successful or a catastrophe.
It looks mad, and I have a feeling of dread about it emotionally, but logically each step is being taken because it is the most reliable option. The atmospheric re-entry (actually I guess that is just entry) is standard, albeit with a smaller target they need to hit. The rockets to slow the descent are a big risk factor, but there is plenty of experience with that sort of thing. Even the Viking landers used powered descent for soft landings. So it's essentially just a case of the lifter "landing" a few feet above the ground, then powering up its engines to get clear of the rover. Space engineering is complicated and risky stuff, especially when it's all happening 13 light minutes away. There is always a chance of failure, but if it happens I don't think it will be due to the nature of the landing sequence.
All good. That was a modern engineering marvel. Hell of a machine. Couldn't be happier. Well, maybe I could if I found out the $2.5B funding came out of entitlements.
Now that it's on Mars, it'll be interesting to see what it uncovers. Will it find chemical traces of organic materials, and even evidence of biological processes going on in Mars' past? There are certain things we won't be able to find (fossil evidence, or even evidence of living organisms still on the planet) until we go up there ourselves with still more sophisticated gear. That may take anything from 10 to 25 more years to accomplish. But we may learn enough in the next year or two to know if it's a search likely to pay off.
Lots and lots of geology and chemistry, lots of people jumping to conclusions and some bad and good theories, and our understanding increased by a seriously big margin. Thats my bet
