Lots of X refing eh Time to close the board to unregistered members then

Well - will be soon, getting some good stats now
http://www.rlproject.com/globat/webstats/

If I have a day that hits 500mb/day - i'll flick the switch on unregistered members

Thanks for the kind words - much appreciated.

Sometimes I just can NOT be bothered to put a label onto an image, make a thumbnail - upload it and post a new thread - but words of encouragement like that help a great deal

Doug

This ties in with the suggestion that Beagle 2's slightly pointier heatshield ( 60 degrees instead of 70 degrees of the rovers and pathfinder ) - would cause the altitude at which the parachute would deploy to be too low.

It was scarey enough with the Rovers, deploying a mile too low

They took the design for B2s heatshield from Huygens - but of course, Hugyens is enterting the MUCH thicker Titan atmosphere ( 1.5 x earth - so approx 150 times mars)

The heatshield design itself was ok -it just had to low a Cd

Suggestions of pictures of bits of lander on the ground from MOC - if they show them at the public thing tonight - I'll be posting them tomorrow

Doug

Doug

Certainly an olption I'd have thought. Bolt the entire PAW onto MSL

Anyone going tomorrow?

Doug

tried to anaglyph this, but it just doesnt work - I think because we're looking too 'down' onto the subject matter, instead of along at it an angle like a usual pancam stereo pair

Actually - they do line up properly - but only at the bottom. A slightly dodgy navcam imaging sequence I think.

There was a nice pancam panorama done, I'll post something later - it's just a pity that the usual L7 pancam images dont show the tracks quite as well.

Doug

Glorious technicolour in an L2, L5, L7 flavour - all multiplied by L7 and mid-grey-scale levelled off the marberrys




Doug

I've been to the dead sea, and it just looks like it's full of Icebergs. Nothing like rock at all - it's just salt.

Doug

Theres a few sets of amazingly grainy images at the moment. They just never come out right whatever you do.

Doug

Oh - I'm fairly sure they will. They'll want to spend a few days going "umm, errr, do we wanna drive into that?"

Anyway - a full 22 x 3 frame, 4 filter pancam panorama at 12:1 is only 184 Mbits. Thats one Odyssey pass now they're using 256 kbit/sec

Doug

The Exploratorium is a little better - but still bloody terrible

Doug

If anyone spots the lander in the pancam 360 they're slowly doing, let me know as I REALLY want to do a new colour pancam shot of that if and when it comes down

Odd really - we go 100 million miles to mars, and the thing I want to see is the 300kg of metal we took with us

Doug

Nahh - it's just a black rock covered in typical mars dust.

Clear the dust off with brushing or ratting, and you see the dark rock underneath



Doug

Unlikely to get any funding - certainly not as much as say, £10m.

It's something of a disgrace imho. This Country is about 20% the size of the US, and whilst the US Space budget is approx $15b a year, the UK space budget ( which, proportionally should be about $3billion) - is infact, $100m. 0.6% the size of the US budget, from a population 20% the size.

Anyhoo - what I'd like to see is a US/ESA colaboration for the '07 time frame to include a Relay orbiter (including optical comms testing) which carries perhaps 2 Beagle " 2.1's" - perhaps of 100kg all up weight instead of the very harsh 60kg set by Esa

I dont believe there is anything wrong with the Beagle design itself, but it's EDL hardware could be more robust - and that is where the mass should be spent ( and perhaps a more able battery )

I am sure that a relay facility could be built of around 800kg including fuel - which could (on an eliptical orbit) deploy multilple landers after orbit insertion. A 1000kg payload to mars is within the ability of Soyuz or Delta II Heavy.

And - as learnt with MPL - we MUST have EDL telemetry, be it via an orbiter, or DTE. Without it - we can learn nothing from the failures of spacecraft arriving at mars.

Doug

Quite a good article - nothing will shut up a conspiracist, but for the confused, it explains things nicely

DOug

Yeah - the heatshield has to be a target really doesnt it? It's dug a big hole, then is sticking up quite a lot to where it bounced to

Doug

Well - of course, Phoenix is just the 2001 lander with the rover ripped off an a different instrument bolted on.

After Rover-mania -it' will be a very dissapointing mission for the public. No roving, image quality not as good.

GOod science all the same though

Doug

Thanks

Of course, we never know what is over the next hill as it were - but I'd be very confident of a future MSR mission visiting the Challenger station - there is too much to be learnt from that outcrop.

Of course, the far side of the Eastern Crater seems to have a quite ENORMOUS outcrop, that will dwaft the current one, and the rover. Will be the most stunning sight I am sure

Doug

Yeah - it doesnt align them too well - the humphry one is so different at the focal point that it doesnt work as well at all

My Photoshop efforts ( and it only takes 20 seconds ) - and most of the time, I add a tag to each image - so I'm loading photoshop anyway. Plus - I have an action that will save to web, then save the thumbnail to web also.

Other people have tried these with mars images in the past.

Similar success to the cross-eye technique.

Some people go "wow" others go "huh?"

I fall in the "huh?" catagory. They do nothing for me.

Oh - and that image is created from 3 frames - not a stero pair

Doug

Yeah -it works nicely - although you'll instantly have shouts of "arhg - he's tinting images red to follow the nasa conspiracy"



Doug

Almost as many things as I can do in photoshop already

Doug

Hee hee - I am SUCH a spaz

You we all set to be able to upload images, that bit was fine

Just the maximum attachment size was - ahem - zero kb

Changed it to 2 meg - but try and keep it at a reasonable size. If I see a sky-rocket of bandwidth because people are using here as a file dump to post links to on other forums etc, then I'll turn on the old registered members only visibility

Doug