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kleinbl00  ·  1560 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: NASA's Mars Lander 'Mole' Is Digging Again as Marsquake Mystery Baffles Scientists

'97 if I recall correctly. Thing is? It's newtonian physics. You would literally assign this as an undergraduate engineering problem. If you have the mass of the hammer, the area of the piton, the coefficient of the point and the coefficient of the cylinder you can calculate whether it would work. Better yet, arrange the equation as a function of static/dynamic coefficients of friction and solve for maximum coefficient of friction for it to work, then compare with existing measurements. Nothing here is beyond good old fashioned quadratic equations.

Imagine if the CIA had a self-burying contact mic. How ubiquitous would that thing be? What about a device that could pull its own data cable? The level of specialization here should be available at Home Depot.

I don't see how it survived basic feasibility. Either I am missing something major and obvious or this thing wasn't so much "designed" as "hoped" into existence.