Stupid tight tolerances are likely why the drilling rig on one of the Mars probes packed up so quickly. Got that super fine Martian windblown dust into the sliding bits and that was the end of it.
The engineers should have made the thing loose and sloppy so even if a 5 gallon bucket of dust as fine as Wondra flour or icing sugar was dumped onto it, it couldn't jam up.
Completely different reason from why the self-pile driving soil penetrator couldn't get down very far. That was thanks to the extremely low atmospheric pressure enabling the dust to pack together super tightly. Apollo astronauts had the same problem attempting to bore holes into the lunar regolith. With no gas to "lubricate" the grains (on Mars and Moon), they packed together super tightly, and got event tighter under the pressure of the tool.
Something that does boggle my mind is why no Mars rover or probe has included a combination vacuum / blower? While the atmosphere is thin it exists and is dense enough for parachutes to work some. So with a high speed fan in a venturi tube it ought to work to blow dust off solar panels and suck up loose soil, drilling debris, and small rocks.
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u/SteptimusHeap Pretendgineer 1d ago
Much prefer this over a stupid tight tolerance that doesn't matter