I'll say this -- that is the best vertical stratigraphy I've seen in any MER-wheel trench, whether it was a deliberate trenching operation or just a wheel track. It really pins down the depth of the light-colored layer, doesn't it?

Of course, that doesn't tell us anything about the extent or other dimensions of the light-colored bed.

I'm wondering if we might not be seeing dired-up puddle locations in these tiny "lenses" of bright soil. It's hard to tell, since we have no real way of identifiying the lateral extent and shape of the patches. But we all know that water puddles in uneven terrain, and these spots could be where the last standing water in the Gusev area dried up, leaving behind salt patches. Since that's been billions of years ago, the patches have been mixed a bit and covered over, so it's not easy to prove or disprove such a notion...

-the other Doug

I can imagine that, during the Great Age of Exploration, an elderly monarch might have had reservations financing and sending off great voyages of exploration, with no certainty he/she would be alive when the expeditions returned...

-the other Doug

Easy for you to say -- as of right now, assuming NH gets off before the Jupiter-assist window closes, I will be 59 years old when it gets to Pluto. If we slip past early February and have to take one of the direct-to-Pluto trajectories, I'll be 64 or 65 when NH arrives.

Not that I'm being morbidly concerned about my own lifespan, but when you start talking about the range between 59 and 65, especially in white American males, you're looking at the age range during which a majority of us die.

I *really* want to see NH encounter Pluto. My odds of seeing it are *greatly* enhanced if it takes 9 and not 15 years to get there...

-the other Doug

Ooops -- it suddenly occurs to me that he might have said that on the Discovery Science Channel special, "Passport to Pluto." I'll have to check that...

The context was that Alan was asked how long we could use Jupiter for a gravity assist. He said that the overall launch window for using Jupiter has been open for about two and a half years, but that it closes -- for good, as far as we're concerned -- on February 5th. He had a look on his face that spoke the unspoken addendum "and we managed to piss away almost the entire window!"

-the other Doug

Interesting -- I heard Alan Stern say, in the 1/15 press briefing, that the last launch opportunity that allows a Jupiter gravity assist was the February 5th window.

They're re-running that press conference on NASA-TV every few hours... maybe someone can check me and tell me if my memory has suddenly developed terminal CRAFT?

-the other Doug

There is a very large weather front traveling across the eastern United States. In a very unusual weather pattern for mid-January, there are scattered severe thunderstorms battering the U.S. east coast from New England all the way down to the Carolinas and Georgia.

Believe me, APL wasn't the only place that lost power as these storms passed through.

And I wouldn't guarantee that the weather will improve -- the storms are powered, as storms always are, by the temperature and pressure differential between two colliding air masses. The air pushing these storms eastward along the American continent is frigid, and much of the country has had high temperature swings, from one day to the next, of more than 20 degrees C.

-the other Doug

Don't get mne wrong, I give great kudos to Rutan and company for winning the X Prize. But it seems to me they've been feted as if they swam across the English Channel, when all they really did was wade five feet away from the shore and then came running back.

The last time I was ever able to force myself to watch the Fox News Channel was during the flight of SS1, and one of their pundits sat there and proclaimed, "Why the heck do we need NASA? They spend billions of dollars and incinerate their pilots, and here these fine Americans have done the same thing for pennies on the NASA dollar."

The guy's ignorance was extremely offensive to me, and at that point I stopped even being *close* to thinking of SS1 as a spacecraft. It certainly doesn't come anywhere close to having the abilities that even a Mercury spacecraft had.

Ergo, any vehicle that has *at its maximum performance* the ability to pop up *just* above someone's arbitrary line that demarcates "space" is not, again IMHO, a spacecraft. Of any sort.

Oh, and by the way, Max Faget didn't design the manhole cover that was thrown "into space" by a nuclear explosion, either. If y'all insist on calling SS1 a spacecraft, then I'll assume that it's a "spacecraft" in the same sense that the manhole cover was a spacecraft...

-the other Doug

That was exactly the point I was going to make. I don't think the voids in the rock's surfaces are from gas bubbles, I think they're from clasts falling out of what is either a sedimentary conglomerate, an ashflow tuff or a breccia. The rock looks sort of bristly or bumpy, as if the rock face is made primarily of clasts that have no yet been de-socketed.

I see a lot of examples of this kind of rock in the referenced image. There are two other easily identifiable types of rock in the image -- the dense, very fine-grained basalts (which look bluish in this not-exactly-true-color image, and tend to form ventifacts) and what appears to be a less dense, more frothy, vesicular basalt that shows a lot of swiss-cheese-like holes. But these seem to be far different from the conglomerate rocks in the image, with a glassier-looking patina and without the little pebble-sized clasts sticking out of the rock face.

-the other Doug

Not true. The February 5th launch date is the very last date on which a Jupiter-assist trajectory can be achieved. The dates past Feb. 5 are for direct-to-Pluto trajectories without any gravity assist from Jupiter. Or from any other body, for that matter.

That's the reason the arrival dates shift so dramatically after Feb. 5. But it's awfully impressive that the Atlas V can place NH on a solar-system-escape trajectory, intersecting Pluto's orbit, without *any* help from a gravity assist!

-the other Doug

That's why they call them (the best of them, anyway) "steely-eyed missile men."

But, to tell the truth, after it's all over, they go out and tilt back a few beers, themselves...

-the other Doug

This isn't really a full-fledged pun war. It's more of a Minnie-war.

*ducks faster than you can scrub a launch attempt*

-the other Doug

Hmmm... Dyna-Soar and CRV never flew. Metal was never even bent on flight vehicles.

As for the much-vaunted SpaceShip One, and the X-15 for that matter, those are *aircraft* with the capability of popping up into the extreme upper atmosphere. For five minutes. Or so. Not, IMHO, spacecraft. To me, a spacecraft must be able to handle the atmospheric heating from deceleration from orbital velocities. Or, it must be designed not to ever operate in an atmosphere at all.

-the other Doug

OK, what's the launch window for tomorrow? I know, the weathre doesn't look all that good, but...

-the other Doug

No - go, redline monitor fault, scrub for today.

-the other Doug

We're counting... *fingers crossed*...

C'mon, wind goddess -- blow just a little more gently!

-the other Doug

I just want it to get moving -- I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon (I need to get some work done on my right knee) at 21:00 Zulu, and this is going to be cutting it a little close...

-the other Doug

They're now going for the very end of the launch window.

-the other Doug

Poll finished, ANOTHER new T-0 at 20:23 Zulu, all factors acceptable *including* upper-level winds.

-the other Doug

New T-0 20:05 Zulu.. No reason given.

-the other Doug

New T-0 19:50 Zulu.

-the other Doug

New T-0 coming, DSN has a problem...

-the other Doug

Go quickly, count resumes in five minutes (if it resumes at all)...

-the other Doug

The tension in this room is palpable, gentlemen...

-the other Doug

Unfortunately, the DVR isn't connectable to my computer, and I have no stand-alone DVD recorder, so I have no way to port it to the PC for uploading...

-the other Doug

That looks like it supports my plume theory!

-the other Doug