True, this was not the heaviest Shuttle to launch. If I'm remembering correctly, the heaviest stack at liftoff wasn't even an ISS msission -- that honor goes to the flight that launched Hubble. Again, IIRC.

However, um... I thought the Shuttle stack generated a total of about 6.5 million lbs of thrust (or whateve the heck that is in Newtons) at liftoff, roughly 2.5 million per SRB and a total of 1.5 million for the three SSMEs. The Saturn V developed a design spec of 7.5 million, and with the F-1 engines uprated slightly (higher fuel and oxidizer flows) for the J missions, could be made to generate 7.7 million.

A difference of 20,000 or 30,000 lbs payload weight would, I would think, have a perceptible impact on the initial climb rate, though. Remember, we're not talking using 6.5 million lbs of thrust to lift just that payload -- the Shuttle stack itself at liftoff, without payload, weighs something on the order of 6 million lbs. It's the overage between the thrust and the liftoff weight that determines rate of climb. The Saturn V weighed more than 7 million lbs at liftoff, the overage of thrust to weight was less than you get with the Shuttle, hence the slower climb-off.

-the other Doug

I have no idea if this contributed to the pad damage, but I thought it quite noticeable that Discovery's rise off the pad was significantly slower than I'm used to seeing for a shuttle. I attributed it to the weight of Kibo, which IIRC is one of the heaviest payloads the shuttle has ever carried.

Could a fractional increase in the time it took for the stack to clear the pad have added enough stress to the flame diversion pits and the entire pad structure that damage you wouldn't have seen after a "regular" launch was caused by this one?

The flame trench, after all, has stood up to eleven Saturn V launches and countless (nearing 100) shuttle launches. Is it merely age and wear that finally got to it this time, I wonder, or a slightly more stressful launch sequence?

-the other Doug

If this was the scoop-and-dump, the scoop leaks.

Here's an image of the lander deck from the RAC at 11:12 local time:



And here's an image from 12:38 local time:



Note the small pile of soil sitting just inside the wiring bundle in the second image. In both images, the foreground reflective surface is the side of the scoop.

All subsequent images of this portion of the lander deck show this little pile of soil.

-the other Doug

Here is an observation that I will note I haven't seen here yet.

Recall that this area sees complete cover by dry ice every winter. Since we don't know what the deposition process was for the water ice, is it at least possible that there may be dry ice pockets within the water ice permafrost layer?

If so, a very small pocket of dry ice (or a few of them) could explain things like the rounded hole that appears to have been blasted out of the ice beneath the thruster bells.

Dry ice wil indeed sublimate very fast, almost explosively, in the current temperatures and pressures, no? We see it sublimating explosively and creating "dirt geysers" during springtime, which is colder than what we're seeing now.

So, if there are nuggets of CO2 ice buried in the permafrost, what further manifestations ought we be looking for (other than the possibility of Phoenix taking an unplanned-for hop)?

-the other Doug

Could be ancient duricrust, buried under a more recent dust/soil layer.

Could be pavement-flattened rocks of the type we see in Meridiani, again underlying a more recent dust/soil layer.

No. What am I thinking?

It's ice. It just looks *obviously* like ice. Maybe not a perfect layer of water ice, but at the very least a good, solid permafrost layer.

Looks like we'll need to burr some of that out, doesn't it? Looks really, really hard to me.

BTW -- is there a danger of significant sublimation of exposed water ice at these pressures and temperatures? I'd hate to see the cleared permafrost layer under the lander sublimate out into a nice little Phoenix-gobbling sinkhole...

-the other Doug

Do you hear that huffing, chuffing sound? See those locomotives pulling all those tank cars?

That's the Gravy Train, boys... best not let it pull out without you!



-the other Doug

Exactly -- there is a difference between making documentaries (fictional or otherwise) and making dramatic presentations.

Drama requires, well -- drama. There must be a hero and an antagonist, at least in structure. There must be danger, and resolution.

Telling the story of a mission where the probes stay well away from danger and learn less would be, well... boring. From the point of view of a dramatist, anyway.

Why do you think the writers of Apollo 13 introduced all sorts of antagonism amongst the crew that never, ever occurred? Because they wanted to heighten the drama. Now, as far as I'm concerned, some stories, like those of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, really don't need to have their tension and drama heightened artificially, as is demonstrated by the incredibly well-done writing on the HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon." However, it takes a real tour-de-force to bring out the subtle drama in real-life events. You can't expect your run-of-the-mill Discovery Channel knock-off to put that much effort into the script -- they rely solely on flashy special effects to satisfy their niche audience.

Sigh.

-the other Doug

I know, life has just been busy. I have a backlog of topics to address there, and I'm hoping to get quite a lot done there in the next few weeks.

It's not abandoned -- just left to lie fallow for a little while...

-the other Doug

I always calculate it out from the equation that one degree C equals 1.8 degrees F.

-the other Doug

Yep -- except that was Pete Conrad yelling, not Al Bean.

-the other Doug

I suppose my first reaction is to ask how respected the Guardian is in terms of truth vs sensationalism. I find it hard to believe that Pillinger made some of the factual misstatements in the article. And if there are factual liberties being taken, perhaps the Guradian is taking liberties with other things, as well.

That said, assuming this piece is Pillinger's own and not a sensational re-write run under his name, I have to say that I find his overall tone not only bitter, but perilously close to plain old self-pity whining. The big message I got out of it was "It's not only a shame that my instruments have not yet landed on Mars, it's criminal that anyone would land anything except my instruments. I am the *only* person capable of answering all questions about life on Mars, and I demand to be recognized for it immediately!"

Am I overreacting? Or do any of you also take away that message from the article?

-the other Doug

I'll second that, Dan.

Now Rob, don't get all overcome by modesty when we call you one of our heroes. Just promise that, when one or the other of us comes into town and you happen to have an evening free, you'll let us take you out for a beer.

-the other Doug

You know, Nick, I think the difference between NASA and ESA has to do with the types of people who run each.

NASA is predominated by engineers, with scientists sort of riding their coat-tails. Now, we all know engineers -- at heart, they tend to be geeks. They work on spacecraft because they thing they're cool things to work on. They send probes to Mars because it's really, really neat to build something with your own mind and hands and send it off to another planet.

Now, when a geek does something really cool, he or she will make noise and shout and point and say "Hey, look what I did! Isn't that really, really cool???"

Add to that the political fiat laid down by the Kennedy administration in the early days of NASA that, to counterpoint the "free world's" space program to the secrecy-ridden Soviet program, all American space flights (manned and unmanned) must be conducted in the open gaze of world scrutiny. Nothing must be held back; everyone must see that, unlike the Soviets, we smarted and learned from our failures and shared our successes with the world.

Compare this to ESA, which came into being at the close of the Cold War. Its managers tend to be politicians and bureaucrats, rather than engineers. They hold press conferences not to say "Hey, look what we did!" but to say "Aren't we to be congratulated for being so clever? Here, let us congratulate ourselves."

And, perhaps more importantly, once a probe is in flight, ESA program operations seem to be taken over from the engineers by the scientists.

The ESA scientists, as far as I can see, mostly seem to be university-sponsored researchers whose lives are ruled by the publish-or-perish, keep-your-research-hidden, never-share-your-data culture that seems to be more intense in Europe than here in the U.S.

Now, if you're a scientist whose career path is dictated by the number of years you can stretch out a funding source (and the number of papers you can publish in journals whose circulation is counted in the low hundreds) and you're given control over the release of data from a planetary probe, just how do you think you're going to react to calls to share your precious data with the heathen world at large? Not only with the geeks who want to see it because it's cool, but to your rivals and competitors, who might publish before you? Whose competition might force you to analyze your data and publish your results in a timely manner, rather than string it along to perpetutate a process that gives you a little job security?

I cannot state that I know for certain that the ESA scientists and managers are being motivated by the forces I describe here -- but as a theory, it explains the observed facts, and is consistent with facts that are well known.

I guess the real solution is to agitate to get the geeks to take over ESA...

-the other Doug

Let me make a couple of things clear, please.

First, I didn't intend to chase Jon off or anything like that. All I was trying to do was to point up the difference between NASA's outreach and ESA's, which in this case is almost transparently obvious.

Second, I wasn't trying to continue any kind of jihad against ESA. From my perspective, I saw the absolutely fabulous images from MRO, was reminded that ESA had stated they were going to try and capture Phoenix during the high-heating entry phase, and thought to ask if anyone had heard anything about the attempt. But then, in the middle of asking, it occurred to me that if this event goes like most other ESA outreach opportunities, we'll not see anything for many months and if/when we do its importance, primacy, etc., will be overstated. Upon realizing this, I sort of realized that my question was on the order of what we Americans refer to as "urinating in the wind" (well, OK, we use a slightly more vulgar verb). That, from past experience, I already knew the answer -- and that the answer is just not really acceptable.

I don't know about any of you, but I have spent some time trying to help raise teen-aged children. When you set expectations with a child, you're very likely to see delaying tactics and heartfelt arguments that they *mean* to meet those expectations, that they *plan* to meet them, and that the parents should act as if the expectations have been met when they frankly haven't even been worked towards in any significant way.

That's how I feel about ESA PR. It's past time for accepting poor half-efforts and promises, or letting them blind us to the actual behavior patterns that we see on a continuing basis. So, to respond to Jon directly, no -- I don't feel my comments were childish. I feel I am commenting on what comes down to childish behavior on ESA's part.

I watch as many ESA PR events as I can, and I have to tell you, it gets almost sickening to see a group of administrators and politicians standing on a stage and complimenting each other in glowing terms, while almost defiantly refusing to pass along data or images. Perhaps they are correct in their assessment that the ESA taxpayer, to whom they are directly beholden, cares only to hear the self-congratulations and see the backslapping (though I doubt it). But to me, it's almost insulting that ESA feels the backslapping is the most important thing to show the world.

Doug's absolutely right -- it is downright shameful that Rui, in his spare time and with amateur equipment, can engineer a far better outreach program than ESA seems interested in mounting. And as long as ESA's efforts are shameful in their lack of scope and support, I truly feel it's right and proper to continue to call them out on it.

-the other Doug

This can be contrasted to the following image taken by Dave Scott from the slope of Hadley Delta with the 500mm lens:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/AS15-84-11324HR.jpg

Granted, this image is a little harder to use in picking out individual craters and landmarks, but it sure puts the landing site in true perspective, doesn't it?

BTW -- that huge hill beyond the LM isn't the side of Hadley Rille, it's Pluton Crater with the smaller Icarus Crater beyond, the North Complex of domes topped by large craters that just might have been calderas. Problems with the drill, of course, cut short the third EVA and canceled planned sampling stops up along those impressively rocky rims.

-the other Doug

Excellent thread, Ian! One minor nit, here -- I don't know where you got the overlay on the second image above, but it has a factual error in it. It labels the south rim of North Triplet as the south rim of Doublet. Doublet lies west of the ALSEP site, which is itself west of the LM. Doublet is off frame to the left.

But this is a truly fun thread. Thanks for starting it!

-the other Doug

Any word as to whether or not MEX got an image of Phoenix during the fireball phase?

Wait, don't tell me, let me guess -- ESA will hold on to the pics for about six months and then release them, trumpeting how their spacecraft took the *only extant anywhere* images of another spacecraft landing on another world...?

After all, gotta give a little time for everyone to forget about the MRO pic, or their little lie... er, I mean, their PR effort, won't go over as well... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

MPL carried a disk with names, I know -- my name was one of them. But looking back at the time frame, I'd be more inclined to think it was a CD and not a DVD. Or it might even have been a little pack with microfilm in it... but my admittedly imperfect memory is telling me it was a CD.

Whatever happened to MPL, the names on it reached Mars, one way or another. They may not ever be readable, they may be embedded on shattered shards of a disk. But they're there.

-the other Doug

I would imagine that vehicle attitude information was recorded -- Phoenix sported an inertial measurement unit, which used an inertial platform to align itself to a stable matrix. With such a platform, it's very easy to record attitude information. The only thing I would not be surprised at is that the sampling rate of the attitude excursions may not be high enough to give a really good idea of the vehicle motions.

-the other Doug

Since I've heard two different sets of landing co-ordinates, one of which is something like 10km from the other, I'd like to get Phoenix located on the surface first, before speculating on connections between MRO images and any feature seen anywhere in the surface images.

The surface is pretty homogenous over most scales, it appears, so I bet you could find "evidence" for cross-connections between features in MRO pics and things seen in the surface pics for just about anywhere in the surrounding 100 square km... In other words, I think it's premature to start identifying things in MRO pics until we have an MRO pic that clearly contains the lander.

-the other Doug

Agreed on the issue of weathering parachutes, there, Sunspot. We know what the weathered Viking, MPF and MER 'chutes look like, but we've not seen one that was encased in dry ice for months and then "thawed" out.

-the other Doug

You beat me to that by about a minute there, Dan. She looked tired but happy.

-the other Doug

Yep -- just loaded up that solar panel image in a quick-and-dirty tool that let me boost the brightness, and sure enough, a little field of pebbles appeared in the background.

-the other Doug

Might just be my tired old eyes, LOL... I looked hard and saw nothing in the background.

Ought to load it up in something that lets me tweak up brightness and contrast.

-the other Doug

The last press briefing of the day, which I had thought was scheduled for 4:30am UT, seems to have been moved back up to 4am UT (9pm PDT, 11pm my time, CDT, and 12 midnight EDT). About eight minutes from now.

-the other Doug