Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/25/nasa-fixed-a-mars-probe-by-hit.html
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The “shovel technic” is widely known for it’s success in many fields across the spectrum.
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Oh, That’s a BFH, big fu@king hammer…
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“Emergency Fixing Procedure #1”
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I usually think “well I’m no rocket scientist” before hitting things with a hammer in desperation.
Maybe I’ve been wrong.
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I feel like if your design document for an extraterrestrial probe describes a critical power and communications junction as “delicate,” maybe reconsider shoring things up.
Big giant brained rocket scientists and mad vision to bring a shovel to Mars.
Genius.
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In more technical percussive maintenance situations, sometimes it can work if you drop the faulty part onto a hard surface - but only from a height of precisely pi inches.
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Oh, I’ve seen that go wrong a few times.
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Best to round down…
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I beg to differ. THIS is a hammer. Jump to 2:54.
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They should also have included a roll of duct tape on the probe, and some sort of device that can apply it.
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We call that a “swing wrench” in these parts
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The mole isn’t fixed. The shovel has pushed it down a bit but it can’t push the mole below surface level… In the past the mole has seemed to be more likely to vibrate itself out of the ground, than in to the ground, No doubt NASA will try packing soil around it but personally I think the original concept was too dependent on gravity, moisture and soil properties.
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My grampa called a shovel a “short boom excavator.”
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“A junior knows it needs to be hit, a journeyman knows where, a master knows how hard”
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Just one more of the long NASA tradition of using kludges to fix complex problems.
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Give a bunch of adults (who are actually doing what they wanted to do when they were kids) a really expensive device on another planet that can be used as a hammer - and everything is a nail…
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