US Martian nuke-truck launches without a hitch, but...

It's a pity that it couldn't have grabbed Fobos-Grunt by the scruff of its neck and taken it along.

I can only conclude that the writer of this article is rather less than whole-heartedly in favour of space exploration. The headline and introduction might have been couched to make it clear that the mission itself is not at risk, rather than attracting the reader's attention with the intimation of a possible complete mission failure. And the jibe at Fobos-Grunt is simply mean-spirited. Can you not see that their success is the world's success, their failure the world's loss? Any Russian harbouring distrust or fear of the West reading this piece could be forgiven for considering their opinion confirmed. You are doing no one but yourself any favours with this onanistic little piece.

Disgusting

This supposed IT angle news story was obviously just an excuse for the prurient editors at the Reg to publish pictures of naked rocket engines.

International rocketry - a sign of our advances

I find it interesting and optimistic that the launch vehicle was an 'American' Atlas, powered by a 'Russian' rocket engine. Even better, this level of cooperation among nations is no longer news. No doubt there were components large and small built by companies in many countries. Who could have imagined 20 or 30 years ago, that such a thing could be built? Despite all the doom-and-gloom that pervades (and will probably always pervade) the media about how terrible things are, we have come a long way. My favorite throw-away line: "Progress occurs."

What type of Mini Cooper?

The traditional awesome Cooper or the god-awful BMW Cooper which is larger than most small cars I'm surprised they can call it a Mini?

(Seriously, those things are bigger than my K11 Nissan Micra!)

Fobos-Grunt repair mission

Just a thought, but how hard would it be to set up a Soyuz launch with NASA's robot astronaut + equipment and spare batteries, with enough fuel to get to the F-G, do the repairs then detach from F-G and head for the ISS.

Remote initialise the engines on F-G once docked to the ISS to take F-G into lunar orbit and voila.

One somewhat salvaged mission with a spectacular success for NASA.

Ought to be doable, the engines on the Soyuz have more than enough endurance and they can add an extra resupply to the ISS for good measure.

AC/DC

Yay!!!!!

Extreme engineering....

Would have been nice to have two on the way. Time to share knowledge and people as well as bits and pieces.

£24.7 million insurance for the Russian one.. That's $38.2 million dollars.

Let's see. Kent and his bunch of wankers at Phorm have burned $189.2 million dollars to date achieving fuck all. No... seriously. At least Russia got it off the launch pad and into orbit. Kent can't even get it up.... repeatedly.

$189.2M/$38.2M

That's 5 Mars missions!!!11*@*!!!!

Makes you wonder what else Institutional Investors are burning your PensionCash™ on when they could be funding Mars missions.

Awesome

Awesome article. Thanks!

Faster than Light Travel ...... Imagine it, and IT Delivers Virtually Live Picture Streams

Hi. How very encouraging that Man has finally appeared to take account that

Mars is a novel and noble and easily nobbled Nobel and virulent environment with digital binary control protocols to master navigate/caress conscientiously. And as for hostiles, IT is a silent grave.

ESA are remarkably silent on Roscosmos and NASA funding successes for currency spending excesses on fiat engine regeneration with highly radioactive fuelled systems, although perhaps the Mini Cooper component is their sterling stealth pay lode.

Congratulations MSL ...... The drinks are on us with an open bar whenever you arrive, spent and alive and ready to jive and rumble, rock and roll ..... http://youtu.be/neoUi4poCXI

And Noordwijk would wish it be known that they would not endorse or encourage any of their sort of actions from the marital home, because of the insane risks inherent in space travel and celestial body exploration probing discoveries with curious tools.

Standard units

What's with all this "feet, metres, pounds of thrust" malarky? No one on the Reg can understand a word of what you mean! Please rephrase using standard units, ta.

Metres or Miles?

"...each about 5 feet in diameter and 67 feet long...

...which brought the total vehicle height to about 197 feets, was encased in a two-piece fairing 5 meters in diameter. ... powered by a svelte 370-pound ..."

Could we have that in bushells, pecks, hogsheads and furlongs, please?

Interesting article, though.

But even better is when...

The beast lands on Mars sometime in August. Hopefully it will be as advertised and the first pictures will be wonderful.

If my connection comes through, I may just be there at JPL when it happens. Maybe the six wheeled SUV can do a wheelie, who knows.