After http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1666&view=findpost&p=26884 about not advertising this place too much for fear of loons, I wondered just how people had come across this place.
I joined up on the very first day after http://groups.google.com.au/group/sci.space.history/browse_thread/thread/67613ff3bdd2a8fe/ in one of the premier kook hangouts: sci.space.history. Luckly it must have pretty much slipped under the radar being new and all, I wouldn't recomend doing that again!
Just curious...
James
I found it through the list of links on volcanopele's now-defunct Titan Today blog. --Emily
I originally found this site by googling "iapetus, equatorial, ridge, cassini" or some variation on that, last January.
I have lurked here very sporadically, and have lost track of this site repeatedly due to some computer problems at my end. I have posted quite a bit else where, under a different handle. In the unlikely event anyone cares, it would not be hard to figure out my interests, outer solar system objects and their histories, and space probes.
Have felt constrained at other sites (S/N thing) so am checking in here more often.
Impressive site. Hopefully I wont drive you all crazy.
Better animatroids here, too.
Someone put a link to the mer.rlproject.com down at space.com, a long time ago
I was looking for Huygens images better than just released official ones... starting from a italian astronomy forum and going through an amateur/forum-member site (I do not rimember who
).
I'm worried too for a trolls invasion (the mentioned forum now has this problem) but on the other hand we are probably missing important contribute from many people who do not knows this place!
I was langushing in the Usenet desert, gulping down the few drops of real info that occasionally dripped into alt.sci.planetary, when dvandorn posted a message about Spirit imaging a dust devil back in March. He was very careful not to mention the rlproject URL, as to avoid a flood of Usenet crazies, but someone else posted it anyway. This place was exactly what I was looking for - thanks for the rescue
If I recall properly, I got an e-mail from Alex Blackwell, letting me know there was a new forum that could be an alternative for those of us who were tired of the signal-to-noise ratio out on Usenet.
I think I joined in the first few days the forum was in existence. I made a few posts, then got distracted... and ran across the bookmark again some months later. I've been pretty steadily active ever since.
-the other Doug
one word: Slashdot.
I heard about it over at Mark Carey's forum. People would mention it 'the other mars forum' without giving the url. It took some googling to find it.
I first learned of this foum on the #space channel on IRC. Actually, I think it was on one of its precursor channels, probably #maestro, which is now defunct. Links to the forum were/are sometimes posted there, since some similar topics are discussed.
I was looking for information about the MERs, more than I could get from the news, and with more commentary and interpretation than I could get from the JPL website. I saw a notice about what was then mer.rlproject.com posted in one of the sci.space groups on Usenet; when I checked it out, I was immediately hooked. I think I have checked for the latest news from Mars, and later from Saturn, almost every day since some time in February 2004. My Life On Mars.
Via Mark Carey. When I noted that Bruce Moomaw was actively participating here I stopped looking any further.
Peter
I stumbled upon mer.rplproject ways back when.... I think it had something to do with http://www.badastronomy.com/'s bulletin board (r.i.p.), though my memories are overshadowed by the wealth of imagery this forum has yielded.....
I now visit here daily... it's got the prime real estate position on my Safari Bookmarks Bar... right next to http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Via the #maestro channel.
Googling for what was happening with Oppy and Spirit. I first found just a poor thread with two or three posts, letting me think that this forum was not vey interesting. But after abandoning "another" forum, I explored this one and found interesting stuff.
Searching for "Victoria crater" on Google
I also came from SDC after TheChemist posted that link most likely.
Can't quite remember, time looks about right ![]()
I pretty much stay around here, going back to SDC for shuttle related stuff and CEV etc.
Some very good discussions there, IMHO, with regard to those, espeicially return to flight things.
I was already viewing Exploratorium and considered the official Mars rover page was to slow to bring news and description of what I was seeing. So I googled too, but lurked for quite some time - think I did so without having registred at first.
I followed a link from the following spacedaily article who brought me to this amazing forum.
Robot From Earth Climbs Mountain On Mars
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-05zzzp.html
Since that day, I spend some time every day reading the new posts, and posting a few.
Chris already used the right term : addiction.
Rakhir
Google for me. I was running searches on planetary science and one of the hits brought me here.
I had been following the Rovers for several months on my own when I found the Mark Carey board. I learned of the mer.rplproject from that board, joined here October 2004 and the rest is history. I'm here to stay.
--Bill
Googling for MARS FORUM... Find Mark Carey's "MARS FORUM" and I was happy for a while...
There I find a link (or somebody mention "Unmaned spaceflight") so I dicided to look for it... It was THE BEST FIND EVER!!!
This is THE BEST ASTRONOMY FORUM that I know of...
Since then I'm comming here almost every day. I only regret that my english is not that good so it's much more dificult for me to write post's...
Thank you for making it this good!!!
Tomislav Bandin...
I used to just take what was dished out at the NASA MER web page, and the occasional article on Space.com, as I had done with Pathfinder and MGS. Man I loved those early televised MER press conferences, then my cable company dropped NASA TV and for a while I was able to get the press conference streams on CSPAN's web site. But then CSPAN quit saving the streams. I even have a friend who worked on data security at JPL who used to forward me email updates, but then my friend got sick and had to go on longterm disability.
I seem to recall that the information and details just dried up after Oppy left Endurance. Out of frustration one day (while they still had heatshield photos up on the MER web page after two weeks) I did a Google search using terms like Vostok and "etched terrain" hoping to find some article I may have missed. That's when I found the Mars Exploration Rover Forum. I even recall telling my wife (who has little interest in all of this). "Wow. I struck gold here."
I discovered this forum by the link: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-05zk.html
After that, I found it a very good site to start to learn anything related to manned and unmanned spacecrafts and am start to listen to the most complicated things about the astronomy. Besides, I found the people from Forum to be very educated and friendly.
Rodolfo
I also found it through the same SpaceDaily link.
tty
I also learned about this site from spacedayly.com when they cited unmanned spacefliht as a source for the news that Opportunity has stucked in the sands and that was the first information about that. Since then - that was back in april - I visit every day the forum. I do not feel myself enough competent (my professional activity is very very far from the science) to participate in the discussion, but I appreciate the level and have spent many hours enjoying the readings. It's simply great!
I could be wrong, but I think I followed a not-quite-link posted on the Yahoo! Space Model Group (which likewise suffers fools rarely!). It's been a pleasure to follow the discussions here, and to sometimes contribute when my limited knowledge maps onto the subjects in hand - oh, and as for the glorious, hand-crafted images...
Bob Shaw
google: mars forum, found a bunch of them, started visiting the yellow forum and UMSF daily but quickly found interest here and frustration over there. Although it depends of course on who you're talking to.
why? One day I wanted to know if there were more MER-maniacs like me and immediately found what I was looking for.
Nico
I am a refugee from Space.com land... I saw someone who posted a link here and followed it. I have to saw this is one of the best (if not the best) space message boards out there!
I came from one of those 'anomoly' Yahoo groups whose members are sometimes quite lucid. I had been of the mind that there was more than we'd been told about Mars. The rovers have shown quite clearly that Mars is a dusty desert planet. If there is life, it is probably clinging to tiny niches and very lowly evolved.
Once I got on this forum I never looked back. The level of professionalism and intelligence is miles above the other sites.
I remember my first day of cruising the images and I was hooked. Used to be I could keep up with all of the posts daily...ha! now there are so many people posting and so many topics..I have to concentrate on my main interests..Saturn and Mars.
Keep up all the good work everyone, I hope to contribute where I can (I especially like to make the animated GIFs of Saturns moons passing each other).
Eric P / MizarKey
P. S. Proud to be 'Member 45'.
I really can't remember... but it must have been a round-about route via Google.
Phil
Hello, new here. A former online friend gave me the link. Looks great, will read and post when able.
I came after TheChemist invited me (we knew each other from space.com forums)
Slashdot ran an article today called "Fountains of Enceladus." In a response, "Eccentric Anomoly" wrote Since Cassini is so slow in releasing results to the general public, you may be interested in this discussion (including some neat image processing) by amateur astronomers: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showt opic=1729 [unmannedspaceflight.com] This site usually get a jump on the official Cassini channels of about a week.
I followed the link and liked it so well here I modded him up. :-)
--Greg
I stumbled in last May... not sure how I found it, but I was messing around with other forums at the time, and I think getting directed over from Space.com is the most likely possibility. Been checking every day since. But as a teenager with no image processing skills, I don't have much to contribute. I'm just here to find out new and interesting things more quickly than you can anywhere else online.
Someone (I believe Nick Hoffman) posted the link to mer.rlproject.com at habitablezone.com. I remember this vividly because Oppy had just arrived at Endurance and there was some good discussion going on here. I was also a regular at space.com. I've been guilty of mentioning the site a couple of times over at space.com but was definitely not the first one!
Can't remember
I think I got here via a link on the new mars forum, when the rovers just landed
I had been emailing Emily Lakdawalla with The Planetary Society. And she gave me the UMSF site.
I am a meteorologist. But after a BS and one semester of grad school, I succumbed to the siren call of the business world. For almost 30 years I have been a TV weathercaster. I'm afraid to think about how much math and physics I have forgotten over the years. I used to dream of participating in the exploration of Mars and the rest of the solar system. It had to stay a dream. But now I participate vicariously through this forum. And I congratulate and heartily thank all of you more educated and experienced members, whose contributions make this forum such a joy. I'm here every day.
By the way, for those of you who are members of The Planetary Society, there is a new forum there. It is just in the very beginning stages. But it too will hopefully grow and become useful... but of course it will never replace this forum!
David Finfrock
I found it through the lunatic Mars forum.
I found it via a small, private planetary science discussion board that I was (and am) a part of. It was a forum that has become very walled off to keep out the kooks. I have always been impressed by Unmannedspaceflight's ability to stay so open and yet keep itself from being inundated by kooks.
actually in my quest for knowlege about all things space, i've never crossed this path. it was an innocuous question about my granite countertop containing iron (the string was granite and metal, how its not supposed to have it), but mine does and its attracting and repelling magnets all over the place, pretty cool anyway.
i'm a regular gal. i promise not to be "kooky". thank you all for getting me to "think" again...
mar
I first found this site last year through the link on Doug's name in the Mark Carey Mars forum. Course back then this site was a quiet little place with only a handful of posters... and that other forum was bursting with activity... a year later things seem to have reversed themselves....
Daniel
Flattering though it is - I dont want this to turn into a forum-v-forum match ![]()
The MK forum serves it's purpose, and is a home for a certain type of discussion. I'm actually glad it exists.
Doug
Realistically forums of both sorts must exist..
I don't remember how I found out about this forum. I'm 28, and I vaguely remember hearing about Pathfinder, and Galileo, but didn't pay any particular attention to our space comings and goings until the MERs. I paid more attention than most, mind you, but that doesn't seem to be very hard..
Like many I am glad this site exists. Forums of the 'other' sort certainly have their place, but a little injection of logic feels good too.
Believe it or not, I wasn't looking for pretty Mars pictures, though I'm glad I found them. I was actually duplicating the search for Pioneer pictures that Ted Stryk did in the "Historic Images" topic!
I had just re-read the old "Pioneer Odyssey" book from the library. I wanted more technical information on the original imager and pictures, and googling "imaging photopolarparimeter" (or however you spell it) & "pioneer" landed straight into that topic's discussion on this forum. Your professional efforts at tracking that down gave me the answer, if not the answer I wanted.
Been lost in this forum ever since.
(I had looked at Mars raws before, but usually only thru a simple amateur album of pseudo-color at:
http://areo.info/mer/
Hadn't looked again in a while.)
I know so much less than all of you in graphics processing that there's not much I can contribute myself, but you certainly have a fan! (Hey Ted, when can we see
Pioneer Ganymede and Saturn's rings, all that you found left? But again, I don't
have anything to give in return...)
John D.
Space Daily via the Google news summary. I think it was when Oppy's wheel jammed, and Space Daily gave Doug Ellison's "[superlative]" forum credit for the scoop. Doug, do you remember the superlative that Space Daily used? I have been racking my brain to remember . . . and BTW, where are the member bios?
By lurking another space-related forum!
Luckily, I found a link to the MER forums a little over a year ago via the MarkCarey Forum and re-googling. I found that forum via Google since there wasn't enough at NASA or JPL websites to quench my thirst for info. and that forum was OK for the first few months (with lots of talent) after landing , but quickly degenerated.
UMSF has been exhilirating and addicting, eventually leading to the "Spirits Soar" cover on AWST. We intentionally left UMSF out of the credits for AWST and APOD
Lots of people joined around the same time last winter (2005/2006) and doubled the membership from ca. 100 to ca. 200
It would be interesting to see a graph of members vs. month joined
Doug, eternal thanks for your creation and keeping the lunacy under control
And the prize for "resurrecting the most ancient thread" goes to......
I was alerted to this place by a passing reference in a post on www. hab it able zone. com (back in 2005) whilst searching for better Cassini-Huygens discussions. Haven't been back there since.
Each to their own, but I find this place much more easily navigable, less ego-driven, and it has a refreshing lack of Kookery and charlatinism. I for one would really miss the forum if it ever disappeared, or succumbed to conspiracist nonsense.
It's been so long now that I really don't remember! UMSF was already all over Google in 2005, so must have been surfing for MER or Cassini stuff...oh, wait, got it.
I was originally going to do my thesis on some vaguely-defined topic in spacecraft systems engineering, and IIRC I followed a search result here...and never left!
I can't remember how and why I started the place, or how and why I came up with the UMSF URL....it's very strange.
DOug
I was reading Wikipedia's article on New Horizons one day, and it had a link to http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=675 (advertised as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Horizons&oldid=17807495). I followed it, saw Alan Stern himself taking part in the discussion, went "Wha-?!", and that was basically it.
via the
forum...
Doug that's because You almost have 7777 posts
Yeah -- the bloke just likes to hear the sound of his own bloody voice...
Seriously, Doug, I can recall just how fed up you (and many of us) were becoming with the discussions taking place on Usenet and on the couple of other fora out there (like the infamous "yellow" forum). My understanding was that you created this place 'cause you were sick of the crazies.
I mean... when you have to spend half of your energy explaining to someone that no, Mars did not see its molten core solidified due to its oceans streaming into Valles Marineris and "putting out" the core -- well, that ends up being less than enjoyable. Right?
-the other Doug
I think UMSF's strength derives from a basic civility amongst its contributors, and the willingness of those with doctorates, BSc's and PHd's to share their insights with the rest of us dunces (enthusiastic amateurs).
People are here because they have sought out this kind of environment - I suspect quite a few of us are refugees from other space forum sites, who got heartily fed-up with the point-scoring and egotistical banter.
The image manipulation skills here are truly world-class (Ugordan, jamescanvin, exploitcorporations, tedstryk et al - too many to mention) and all shared with a commendable generosity.
Perhaps Doug should institute the UMSF Oscars - the best image produced each month on these pages (with due recognition of the organisations and hardware which captured them of course)
Congratulations to the moderators, great to be a part of this era....
Jase
nahh - awards would always mean somebody not winning, and in some ways - we're all winners, or the winner is exploration itself.
Doug
I found this wonderful spot courtesy of centsworthII, who pointed me here when I was making a post at space.com yearning for a rover update. The integrity of discourse is so high on UMSF. To help keep it that way, I try really hard to keep from posting unless I absolutely have to!
Cheers, and many thanks to the mods
Brad Ellis
I found the link on Emily's blog 614 Sols ago.
I think it was John Spencer who pointed me here - thanks John!
I also found this link via another spaceflight-related website (a good one, though) when searching for more info on MGS's silence just about a year ago. I was a happy lurker until one day an article was released (and I can no longer remember what it was about now) that I was surprised wasn't being discussed here yet. So I went through the registration process so I could start a thread on it and sure enough, while I was doing all that, someone posted the article.
But I certainly have no regrets. Even though I don't have much to add to a discussion normally, this is such a great place and it's so wonderful to read what the experts (and fellow enthusiasts) have to say about all of these audacious missions we've dared to embark on.
I'm not really sure how i found the mer.rlproject.com forum, but i'm glad i did ! Opportunity was still approaching Endurance Crater...
The funny thing, at least for me, is that i soon realized that i already saw Djellison's alias somewhere else (the RSC forum) where we shared the same passion for Formula One, present and past, real or virtual
I joined after I saw Doug's suggestion on Usenet - I think in sci.space.policy - that he was thinking of starting a Mer forum, and would anyone be interested?
I've been here for over four years now, and I'm still a newbie.
-- Martin
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