Well, in the overhead MOC image, the floor of Beagle appears dark. That's rather common in MOC overhead images of craters, and often doesn't translate to anything like the same albedo difference when seen from the surface. But it usually does suggest a dust fill in the bottom of the crater. And on Mars, when a crater has some dust fill, it usually displays drift/ripple morphologies.

However, since this is a relatively young crater, there is also the possibility that it started out with a blocky floor. If it's young enough that there is still a decent block population on the floor, then the dust fill might be in an aerodynamically complex position in which only very small ripples, and not a coherent ripple field, would be created.

It will be interesting to see exactly what lies in the bottom of this hole...

-the other Doug

It looks like a masonry crater to me -- laid fieldstone made in the shape of a crater.

The smooth interior sort of floors me (pardon the pun). This evaporite is one of the most erodable materials we've seen anywhere, it erodes down to smooth, flat paving stones quite easily. The interior surface and rim crest all appear to be made of evaporite blocks which have been eroded smooth, but the ejecta apron around Beagle retains blocks of the stuff that are still almost craggy. I'm also taken aback at how the evaporite blocks and the darker "matrix" into which the blocks are set seem to have been sculpted as a piece, and do not appear to have eroded at differing rates. That darker matrix must have friability similar to the evaporite.

It also appears that the Beagle impact occurred into a substrate that was already substantially jumbled by the Victoria impact. In other words, Beagle exhumes the highly shocked and jumbled Victoria ejecta. Which would imply that the Victoria ejecta blanket is fairly deep, here -- at least as deep as Beagle -- and that it underlies the etched terrain immediately surrounding the currently-visible ejecta apron. I'd have to think that if Beagle impacted into a substrate that retained stratigraphic layering, we wouldn't be seeing such a jumble of fieldstone-like blocks making up the raised rim. We'd be seeing something that looked more like Eagle or Endurance.

I wonder if the dynamics of the impact exhumed the ejecta blanket and, as the fireball expanded from the impact point, then smoothed the very friable evaporite into the very smooth walls we observe? That would mean that the interior of Beagle was never rocky, was smooth from the very start. Which could mean it's a quite young crater, indeed.

-the other Doug

I picked up my geologic education on-the-fly, so I could understand what was going on in re the Apollo expeditions to the Moon. I wanted to understand what the Moon was made of, and how it came to be, and found that I needed something of an education in geology to do so. So, I read a lot of books and came out of it with a pretty decent understanding of the basics. (Because I'm self-taught, though, I do have gaps in my knowledge, and I appreciate y'all's patience when I ask to be filled in on some point I had missed.)

-the other Doug

Well -- not quite there yet. I thought we decided that the "official" arrival sol at a given crater was the sol on which the pancam can see down to the center-bottom of the crater floor...

-the other Doug

Well, what are the best models for Hadley cell formation on Titan, under current seasonal conditions? Perhaps the streak over Xanadu defines the northernmost edge of a cell which converges with other cells at the south pole?

I would expect to see clouds forming at the peripheries of such circulation cells -- perhaps this is what is happening on Titan.

-the other Doug

Thank you, Alex -- that was a very well-written article. It organized and presented my own views on the matter more effectively than I have managed, thus far.

We need more rational reporting like this in the world today.

-the other Doug

I'm sure there are factors in every launch vehicle/spacecraft combination which affect the overall cost of each.

On the one hand, the launch vehicle builder has to adapt its vehicle to a given mission's needs. The Delta II flew in several different configurations, with differing numbers of SRBs and differing size/Isp of SRBs. The Atlas V that launched MRO used no SRBs, and oozed majestically off its pad, while the same basic vehicle, with five SRBs attached, took off with New Horizons like the proverbial bat out of Hell.

These differences in configurations affect cost quite a bit. And it seems to me that American launch vehicles have gotten more alternate-configuration-happy than some other countries' launchers -- ESA and the Russians seem to fly vehicles with fewer available configurations, so their costs are a little easier to estimate.

That might be why it's hard to pin down how much the use of a given American launch vehicle actually costs. The costs vary enough, from one config to the next and from one customer to the next, that the best you can probably hope for is a range, and maybe a set of weighted averages.

-the other Doug

In re the Verne vs. Wells debate, I believe Verne got in the last word rather eloquently. I'm sure I'm paraphrasing this a bit, but Verne said, "I can show gun cotton to Mr. Wells, and demonstrate its use. Until such time as Mr. Wells can do the same with Cavorite, I shall not withdraw my objection."



-the other Doug

I think it's important to note that private industry *did* build most of the spacecraft and launch vehicles that the U.S. has deployed over the past 50 years. NASA, DoD or some other federal agency (like, for example, NOAA) were the customers who purchased the spacecraft and launch vehicles, and used them.

The difference between the existing paradigm and the one the SFF seems to be urging is that the federal government has provided these private-industry contractors with detailed specifications for these vehicles (a "we design them, you build them" approach), and has also provided high-level program management. But the manufacture and detailed, day-to-day project management has, in most cases, been done by private industry.

I think this made more sense in the 1960s, when a man like Max Faget and his band of engineering wizards were capable of designing pretty much every manned spacecraft we ever thought we'd need. But the bureaucracy has overwhelmed the engineering ethos at NASA, and I will grant you that perhaps it's time to distribute the responsibilities for the design work out to the industries who have been making the vehicles all along.

Actually, the one area in which this has *not* been the case has been in planetary probes. JPL (with the aid of a number of subcontractors) has actually built a majority of America's lunar and planetary probes, along with a number of other spacecraft. More recently, other NASA centers (such as the APL) have gotten into the act, as well. Building unmanned exploratory spacecraft seems to be something that NASA does best -- at least, I've seen no hue and cry that private industry ought to co-opt that portion of NASA's portfolio...

I know it betrays my rather liberal political leanings, but I truly believe that there are some things that governments can do better than private industry -- and that there are many things that *only* governments can do, since private industry (at least in a capitalist society) will only ever do things that have short-term profit potential. Some things really *need* to be done that only have long-term profit potential (or none whatsoever, at least economically), and only governments can do those things effectively. (Heck, only governments will ever even *try* to do those things.)

At least, that's my $.02 on the subject...

-the other Doug

On the right side of the polar projection, the ripples grow onto the top of the hillock. On the left side, the hillock overlays the ripples.

I'm beginning to think that the area where the hillock overlays the ripples shows the hillock material having crumbled and slumped onto the adjacent ripple-covered ground. But, look closely -- the large-granule "lag" from the hillock has flowed down the side of the ripples. It definitely sits atop the ripples.

-the other Doug

There are several novels and novellas which are really crying out to be made into films or TV series these days. I'd say that Anderson's Flandry novels would make a good allegory to current world affairs, as would a little Heinlein piece entitled "If This Goes On..."

-the other Doug

Fabulous, fabulous VR panoramas! Thank you, thank you, thank you!



-the other Doug

The rock in question, in the MI images, looks like it has microclasts. It seems to have more than one type of material in it, and yet it all seems to be about equally resistant to erosion.

I think, quite possibly, what we have here is a pebble ground out of a piece of impact melt. Such melt often contains microclasts of material swept up with the melt sheet.

Now, whether it's melt from the Victoria impact, or the Beagle impact, or even a farther-reaching impact, this is the kind of thing I'd expect to see in impact melts on Mars.

-the other Doug

Since I never voted in the first poll -- put me down for 912...

-the other Doug

Heck -- I can't even tell you how it differs from *any* main-stream media coverage of, well, anything...

-the other Doug

This is what David Brin calls, very eloquently, "energetic arm-waving." You reach a point in extrapolating science that all you really end up doing is waving your arms energetically through the air... You can make it sound like real science, but it's not based on anything that can even be remotely extrapolated from current theory. (I will say that Brin does this quite well in his novels.)

-the other Doug

I've seen the thing before, and watched through it again last night. It's not very good, gets some facts a little bit wrong, and spins a lot of the real facts to make things appear a lot more sensational than they really were.

For example, they discussed the crew seeing one of their SLA panels on the first night out, and wondering what it was. Aldrin talked about seing it, described what it looked like, etc. But at the end of that segment, the narrator intoned, "The exact identity of the object was never determined for certain. So, the crew had company from a UFO as they went on to the Moon."

Fact is, the object they saw was identified as almost definitely being a SLA panel. They even showed film of the same phenomenon that they said was shot on a different mission -- and on that mission, it, too, was ID'd as a SLA panel.

The object was identified as "most probably" a SLA panel, and the writers on this show glommed on to the fact that it was not identified "without question" to plug the UNidentified label on it, thus making it (technically) a UFO. They never even mentioned that it was identified as "most likely" a SLA panel -- that would have made their claim to UFOs following Apollo 11 sound like what they are, a bunch of b.s.

There were other rather severe exaggerations -- claims that the Apollo escape tower could not have saved a crew from an exploding Saturn V, claims that the "light flash" phenomenon was potentially deadly, claims that the program alarms on descent caused the LM to veer wildly and go far off course (that last was illustrated by the portion of the descent film from the planned yaw-around, trying to enhance an untrue claim with a falsely-sequenced and labeled film clip)... I could go on and on.

It wasn't well done, it was poorly written and poorly researched... but it had a lot of nice footage. Nick was right, it was better with mute button ON.

-the other Doug

Yeah, when you look at the lines in detail, it appears that there may have been upwelling along the thicker portions.

These do look more like cracks than rays, don't they? They are emplaced radially, and would seem to have been caused by some type of impact at the center of the radia. You'd think the surface would only do that if it were a fairly thin layer of ice floating on a liquid ocean, wouldn't you?

-the other Doug

I think, perhaps, that the boundary between the more-cratered region (to the left in the image that started up this thread) and the less-cratered region looks to be solely defined by the distribution of a given-sized crater. This sized crater makes up several parallel arcs of crater chains, which defines the boundary.

If the less-cratered area was a resurfaced area, you would expect the boundary to show partially overlain or partially disrupted/destroyed craters. It does not. The crater chains that define the boundary are chains of whole craters, which aren't deformed or overlain by the less-cratered terrain.

I tihnk the crater chains are being caused by endogenous forces which manifest on the other side of Tethys as a chasm, and which manifest here as crater chains.

Yep -- I'm saying these might well be endogenic, like diatremes, and aren't impact features...

-the other Doug

We should feel lucky that there was a TV camera on board at all. There was considerable resistance to having a TV camera aboard the lander on the first landing, mostly from the Crew Systems Division people but also from a variety of mission planners. Their argument was that we were trying this very difficult operation for the very first time, and anything that wasn't absolutely essential to the mission of just landing, grabbing a few rocks and getting back into orbit was a complication that could spell disaster somehow. (In fact, there was seriously strong pressure for the first lunar EVA to be a one-person EVA, without using a PLSS but simply piping air, water and comm/electrical lines to the moonwalker via an umbilical.)

The question of carrying the TV camera finally came to a head in early 1969, at which time Deke Slayton (representing the astronauts) and the various officials of CSD sat down with MSC management and argued against it. Finally, Chris Kraft and Bob Gilruth got together and informed their various sub-managers that it was *incomprehensible* not to take a TV camera and share this historic event with the world. When faced with such strong opposition to their plans to try and quietly sink the TV camera on the first landings, those arguing for its deletion were silenced, and the camera was officially included on Apollo 11.

In general, though, the astronauts tended to view the TV cameras as an unwarranted intrusion into their work, and Father Slayton argued this position on their behalf to upper management. Fortunately for us, wiser heads prevailed.

-the other Doug

Hmm -- in all three of the interior shots they have up, many, many details in the interior (which appear to be signs for businesses and things) are intentionally blurred out. Must be eight or ten places where the image has been rather crudely blurred. In all three images.

Anyone have a clue as to why?

-the other Doug

I agree -- this surface looks an awful lot like the plains outside of Eagle and Endurance. If that holds true onto the actual apron, we're home free.

-the other Doug

Oh, I agree, Phil -- the mission statement don't mean squat to the real operations of an agency. But in politics (which is what drives these kinds of things, whether we like it or not), appearance means more than substance.

This just smells to me like politicians trying to avoid embarassment in the public forum. This change (however official or unofficial, and however meaningless to the ongoing NASA EO programs) lets any number of scientifically ignorant, self-serving politicians point to the "adjusted" mission statement and say "What the heck do they have to say about it, it isn't even what they're supposed to be doing!"

Also remember, those same politicians don't give a tinker's damn whether or not what they say is truthful, as long as they can use it to sway similarly ignorant voters to vote for them.

It has nothing to do with science, or truth. It has to do with manipulating people to vote against their actual best interests. That's what I find distressing about this kind of thing happening.

Perhaps, as rational and concerned citizens, those of us who live in the U.S. should contact NASA and ask just why this has been removed from their publically-stated mission statement. Ask them if they have had their EO programs removed from their charter, who is now going to manage them, etc. Make them aware that we see through the political charade, and want NASA as an agency to respond to this kind of petty word-mincing with more than a shrug and a denial...?

My anticipation is that NASA would respond to such questions by saying that they have the same EO portfolio they always had, and that the mission statement means nothing. Which is something that can be brought up whenever a politician tries to use the statement I mentioned above...

-the other Doug

I mentioned this in the "Moving South to Victoria" thread, Gary. I see it that way, too -- but I was concerned that I was seeing the contact wrong. The fact that it looks that way to you, too, makes me feel a little better.

It really does appear that the hillock overlays the ripples, doesn't it? Question is, does the entire hillock overlay ripples, or has the hillock just crumbled and slumped on top of ripples that are, indeed, more recent than the emplacement of the main body of the hillock?

-the other Doug

Here's a somewhat off-topic question: How, exactly, would y'all preserve the Apollo 11 landing site (or, if possible, all of the Apollo landing sites) and still allow people to visit and see them?

You can set up cordons around the equipment -- the descent stage, the EASEP or ALSEP experiments, etc., and let people walk up fairly close to them. But how do you preserve the footprints in the soil?

I've thought of any number of things, from elevated plexiglass flooring laid atop the original surface, to some kind of plastic that can be applied directly onto the original surface but which does not deform the most subtle patterns in it... and each has its own (possibly insurmountable, pardon the pun) problems.

I'd hate to have to make people look at these historic sites through drop-a-quarter telescopes from a couple of km away. But I think you have to preserve the footprints and such. So, what are y'all's ideas?

-the other Doug