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Ingenuity Delayed
A couple of months ago NASA’s Perseverance rover arrived on Mars. On the exploration vehicle was a small helicopter, the Ingenuity, intended to fly above the surface of the red planet and take photographs and other measurements. Ingenuity performed a rotor spin test this week, and an alert triggered by the craft’s on-board software has prompted NASA to delay the planned launch date for the tiny four-pound flying machine until sometime next week, or perhaps later.
I feel for the people who build these things. I write robotics and automation software, and I’m familiar with the stress accompanying every demonstration of a new automated system. I’m not a flashy programmer nor a particularly fast one, but I do write rock-solid software that does, in almost every instance, precisely what I intended it to do (though whether or not I understood the requirements correctly is another question). Even so, I’ve had my share of embarrassing failures during product demonstrations over four decades of software development, so much so that I never approach a software rollout without at least a little anxiety.
To NASA’s credit, their software quality standards and procedures are astoundingly mature. But Ingenuity is currently 15 light-minutes away from Earth: it will take off, fly about, take its pictures, and (we hope) land successfully all within a minute — and we won’t know what happened until a quarter of an hour later. Or perhaps never, depending on how it goes.
I made a decision many years ago not to write software for life-critical applications. I simply don’t want the stress. While many of the machines I program are capable of seriously injuring someone, I’ve always relied on the presence of hardware interlocks and physical barriers to prevent my software from crushing, cutting, or otherwise mangling an operator. The most recent machine for which I provided both software and electronics actually features a circular razorblade spinning at 5,000 RPM attached to the end of a pneumatically operated arm: it has a legitimately menacing aspect about it. But, again, hardware safety relays and multiple interlocks prevent anyone from getting close to the whirring knife while its motor is still powered and its arm still enabled.
I get to test my software and am often present when it’s put into production. The creators of the Ingenuity have undoubtedly tested to the best that NASA’s ample budget and their project time constraints allowed. But I will be very surprised if any of the developers sleep soundly the night before the machine flies — and I’m sure that, when it does, its programmers will experience the longest 15 minutes of their lives.
Here’s hoping to a continuation of a so-far successful mission.
Published in Technology
We did sand casting in metal shop in intermediate school as well! Acetylene torches, spot welders, spray guns, ozone hole-punching solvents…I don’t like to think of 1978-79 as the dark ages, but…
Drone rotors already spin very fast. With less air resistance they could spin even faster, but I suspect that making the blades bigger is most of it.
9th Grade metal shop had those things, but I’d transferred to a different school for 9th grade and the new school had ELECTRONICS!!!
Compared to the feat of getting an automated space craft to fly to Mars and land like it did flying a drone around on Mars seems trivial. I have a friend who owns a drone that he bought for a few hundred dollars that will do what is being asked of Ingenuity autonomously with no problem, albeit here on earth.
There is no question that it can be done. The question is whether they do it on the first try.
The time lag does seem to be a different issue though. At worst, anyone on Earth could take manual control of a drone very quickly if it was needed. Such as a sudden change in wind. Not so on Mars.
Veritasium did a video on it two years ago.
Yes, it is a remarkable accomplishment.
As I listened today to the flagship podcast, the Royals episode, I thought of this event. Someone, Peter or John, asked why people persist in the belief that they can re-engineer society if they’re only smart enough, despite all the evidence of history. The answer I think is hubris, and it’s hubris born of accomplishments like this one.
It takes enormous technical expertise, enormous cleverness, to do with these people have done. But for all of that, it is easier to flit about the tenuous atmosphere of Mars than it is to keep a black kid alive on the streets of Chicago. We can manage the technical complexity. We can do it through sheer force of will and deliberate application of logic. But culture is hard, and most of what we do when we apply our minds to it is break things. People are part of all the hard problems. Science is easy.
Science is easy.
Our gaudy accomplishments help us forget that truth.
Another part of it is that the left, especially, wants to see humans as just another animal, or even just another kind of machine. Which is also why “Data is a Person” etc, and other such nonsense.