>I was rather surprised that they got a long way into the
>project before they tested the airbags - I'd have thought
>they would have calculated the strength needed first, so
>the test would have been just a confirmation, not likely
>to produce a catastrophic failure.

That is the way it should happen. however with the current "build it faster
better cheaper" thinking, then things are done in a much more parallel way
than in the past, and often such testing does not get done until far too
late into the program to do a sensible design change.

>the impression was that they did a "build it and see", but I
>could be wrong.  As for "never testing" the new airbags, I'm
>amazed if that's what happened.  The chances of failure in use,
>given the originals' failure, should have been sounding alarm
>bells along the lines of "don't go", but I suppose time and
>the availability of a launch meant that they had to go, even
>at the risk of losing the craft.  A great shame, anyway.

I do not know how much beating the Americans to the planet was part of this,
but the launch window must have been fairly small anyway because of the
orientation between the planets. As to the "never testing the fix", well
that is just what I heard by the by. If true then it certainly should have
been causing concern.

>I wonder if there are any orbiting craft that can photograph
>the landing site with enough resolution to find it?

I had pondered this as well, but judging from the pictures from the newest
American one, the marks it would make on the planet are minimal. remember
that Beagle2 is only about a metre diameter anyway, and assuming that the
first hit was enough to burst an airbag so it did not bounce, it would still
have been falling relatively slowly on a parachute before the 'chute was
released for the last bit of freefall and bounce, so the 'chute does not get
caught up in it as it bounces. Hence it would not hit too hard, but probably
hard enough to jam the thing from opening, or possibly it did fall into a
cleft they have since identified.

>I see you're at Rutherford Appleton - was anyone there involved?

I was not personally involved, but various guys were involved in the thermal
analysis and environmental testing. We have a 3 metre diameter by 9 meter
long chamber that was used for doing the Lander tests. Required having the
chamber filled with CO2 at about 0.1 atmospheres IIRC, and a fan to produce
suitable winds of something like 10mph while it went through operational
tests.

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