It's about IBEX.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...547&hl=ibex

Check the PHX twitter feed - they're going to wait till the sun is higher - lots of nice power - and try then.

The only logical way to tackle it is compromise. Study science if there's some to be done - otherwise, drive.

That's what we're doing.

Moaning that we're not going quick enough, or not stopping enough is inappropriate and pointless.

A series of barely funny but fairly inappropriate posts have been culled.

Good point.

We don't know what form it's in. It may be in a form that's hard to liberate. Furthermore - hydrogen on its own, isn't that useful* It's incredibly light so it's not much of a burden for space flight (consider the Mars Direct ISRU numbers). You tend to need something heavy (oxygen) to do something with it. If it's vast swathes of actual ice down there - then we have rocket fuel, air and water for future crews. If it's just hydrogen, you've still got to take 7/8ths the mass with you.

* apart from filling balloons - but that's not too useful on the moon

You can see for yourself on ET's route maps - I would suggest W or SW for another 250-500 metres, before heading south for quite a while before making the turn East.

That it's not even in the Navcam drive direction mosaic would infer one of two things. They drove in the wrong direction (unlikely) or they don't intend to visit it (more likely) and drove this way for the pavement texture it offers for a few hundred metres. Although there are some big dunes about 150-250m ahead that I'm looking forward to seeing a route around.

He was playing devils advocate. If LCROSS turns out dry - then the logical conclusion is to find some other means to explain the Hydrogen reading. The illogical conclusion that may well play out from supporters of the ice hypothesis is that it hit the wrong place and is not a negative. Paul's take on LCROSS is one I share.

This direction is the one I would have driven, meteorite or no meteorite. It's onto the nearest large expanse of exposed rock - best for driving

I've dabbled with Terragen, but not much. It would save a LOT of rendering time to pre-render a nice sky like that in Terragen, then map that to a sky hemisphere in 3ds max rather than using Dreamscape. Do you have a save file for that Terragen render as a starting point (or a list of parameters)

Priority is mentioned in one of the old Pancam-updates-with-Jim-Bell I did years ago

Pri = Priority, i.e. how important the images are and thus what order they'll come down the pipe.

Going to write the application this thursday and share it here before the weekend, and then specify what I need from you

D

The live coverage I heard on Radio 5 Live here in the UK was bordering on cringeworthy. The women presenter was dismissive, demanding and to be honest, offensive to the on-air expert.

That first image is surprisingly (and pleasingly) similar to what Dreamscape ( a terrain and sky plugin for 3ds max) produces when I'm rendering my HiRISE DEM flyovers.

Then why did they put out figures? 350 tons, 6 miles high, 30 miles across, 10-12 inch telescopes.

Which leads to dissapointment when..
spaceflightnow.com

The media (apart from using the word bomb a lot) seemed to accurately retell the story that LCROSS told them in press releases etc.

It will be scientifically interesting to find out how or why the predictions were so very different to reality.

When we get some - then we can start a new thread. This was (and continues to be) an as-it-happened discussion thread. When the science comes out (and we were told it is 2 weeks away) then we can have a new thread for it.

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Nothing wrong with LCROSS. Something quite clearly wrong with the expectations put out there before it happened.

Emily, as ever, says the right things, in the right way :
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002157/

Here - a less positive commentary on events
http://jesseknoll.com/blog/?p=270

Some posts have been removed from this thread, as they contained links to and images from data that should not yet have been in the public domain.

Angry? Certainly not.

A bit disappointed with the early results? The lack of an obvious plume from even the very best ground based observatories? I think so.

Couldn't agree more with the sentiment though - this really IS what science is about. If we got exactly what we expected, then would we really learn anything anyway

Where is the 350 ton, 6 mile high, 30+ mile wide plume they predicted that would have been very very obvious from all the great observatory pictures?

What has occurred is not what was predicted. Negativity, from that standpoint is, to a certain extent, justified.

I didn't see the thing live - I was away from TV and Internet. Just got some WiFi, looking at all the pics and vids - and before I even visited UMSF, I said "Hmm - I wonder if anyone else will be saying 'is that it'" an indeed they are.

It's certainly not helped by a scientists with this attitude:

"Will you know if you saw water by this afternoon?" Colaprete: "I probably will but I'm not gonna tell you."

The value is in the science - and that science is yet to be done. BUT - what was seen was not what was forecast by that science team.

Would it be shorter to write a list of Saturnian moons that DON'T have associated dust rings? And would the same not be true of...er...anywhere with moons?