http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://ntrs.nasa.gov/

Yup - down.

MRD = MIPLRAD Radiometrically-corrected RDR calibrated to absolute radiance units, specific to archived datasets only

FINISHED

http://www.dougellison.com/?p=82

Not perfect - but it's about the best I can do.

Open an envelope, crack a mint in half. Same thing.

I'm seing differences in colour between pointings. Does the ImageJ PDS reader use the offset and scaling like img2png ?

Plus the unusual extra that you don't have in the typical corporate situation. The ISIL, maintaining two TB rovers, liasing with other missions for UHF relay etc, science teams (outside that number of people figure)

Just 50 people at $200k a head. Plus $5m DSn. Plus $5m for the 'only in MER land' extras. $20m.

I don't honestly think it could be done cheaper without compromising mission safety or productivity significantly.

One pertinent tweet from Scott last night



I still think MER at $20M is CHEAP.

Doing an updated 2009 version of my Columbia Hills DEM. Bit of a bug in the first render, but should be finished tomorrow night.

Just got a new Core i7 860 CPU. My Q6600 has been retired to status of render node. New rig does these frames in about 35 seconds. Old rig in about 60 seconds - so I've nearly trebled my rendering power

Take a trip to JPL. If you're lucky Scott or Paolo or someone can show you around. I've seen it, and Cornell as well. It's a lot of people, a lot LESS than it was, but still a lot of people, a lot of offices, a lot of stuff going on. Remember the rows of desks during the early MER ops, Steve and Justin with the images on two monitors - that whole room is still used, day in day out. There's multiple sequencing rooms, theres instrument teams, there's the ISIL. Multiple daily teleconfs between JPL, Cornell, and host institutions of other participating scientists and engineers. The not insignificant effort in PDS releases. Training, IT support, security, oh the damn security, PAO, the servers for the jpg's. Hell - they've spent more on sand, grit, dirt, clay etc than a small building firm.

If it were a business, I can very easily imagine an 8 digit annual turnover.

For comparison - Cassini's 2 years extension is $80m per year.

It wasn't an especially considered or ambiguous statement you made toDoug, so forgive me for taking it at face value - ignoring the attack word - you still described the DSN as "the real funding-drain of any and all deep space missions".

My very rough estimation demonstrates, I hope, that this isn't true.

As for multi-spacecraft on one dish, it's called Multiple Spacecraft Per Aperture - it's all over google in various places. We mentioned it here in '06.

Pah - 93kft. 100+ is where the fun starts

Lots of teams now doing this. The Cambridge boys almost had a launch this w'end - but they needed a bit more dev time on their 2.0 avionics board.

This statement is what has offended people. The statement that DSN time was 'astronomical' and should be 'attacked'. I would like to see some numbers to establish if indeed the charges are 'astronomical' before making such a bold statement. Wouldn't you? It's quite a bold claim.

If wanting some numbers and evidence before claiming something needs to be attacked for being astronomical means I'm a fanboy - then I am a fanboy.

Let's try and make an estimation. Looking at the MER Analyst notebook - you can see MER schedules. Sol 1798B, for example.




The HGA starts at 11:09 - and including beep, it must be finished by 11:50. The same pattern is on all sols I can found where uplink was done. Let's round up to an hour.

1hr DSN pass + 45min setup and 15min setdown (that's a req in the docs) is 2 hrs of DSN time. Twice a day. 4 hrs per day.

AF = $1057 * ( 1 * (0.9 + 14/10) ) =, I think, $2431 / hr.

So - I get about $3.55M / year.

I'm not even accounting for the fact that the DSN can now operate multiple spacecraft from one dish at the same time - thus the costs can be shared across multiple missions in some way. Furthermore, for some significant swathes of MER ops - they don't uplink daily - especially during very low power periods. But let's ignore that - and stick with the $3.55M / year.

If the figure I've heard of around $20M/year for MER ops is true - then about 17% of MER costs would be required for 1 x 1hr uplink, per rover, per day.

The costing of downlink is going to be far more complex as it's tied in to Odyssey DSN fees. When Dan and I were at the DSN - it was the 70m dish that was Mars pointed (which costs 4x as much ). BUT - a 15 min UHF pass might generate 30-60 mins of MODY downlink budget. So perhaps it's fair to basically double that $3.55M / year figure for the MER share of downlink as a ballpark estimation. That basically comes out to DSN being 1/3rd of the alleged MER budget at, what I would classify, a worst case rough estimation.

Now - is that astronomical - does it need attacking? I don't think so.

Hands up if you do.

To be fair - the calculations for DSN time are from published documents from the DSN itself, not Wikipedia.

That's exactly what I've been thinking as well.

The majority of uplink is still done directly to the HGA from the DSN however.

We've already covered that comment Phil. Spaceflightnow, as with all the media, are taking that statement (which is no less or more true today than the day she got stuck) and running with it. It's what all the media have done.

The star patttern isn't there for fun though, it's where the wheels were bolted down onto the lander deck for launch, cruise and landing.

We are.

If you REALLY want to do MER accounting - then good luck figuring out the DSN costs for MER based on MODY relay.

The only two things I could think of were the ESOC blogging team from recent flybys, and the VMC guys for turning it back on. In all of ESA, that's the only good outreach I could think of.

They don't fund Spirit. They fund MER. As long as one rover is active, the project should be OK getting funding.

Because I'm a total genius who basically FORGOT to send cards in time for Spirit's 3rd - so I rushed it and didn't take pictures before I sent them. They had big fluffy blue monsters on them

Bingo. That's three. I'll be in touch after the w'end

Actually - it needs me + 3 EU people.

That's two - need one more

http://www.europlanet-eu.org/demo/index.ph...3&Itemid=41

I'm thinking that the ESOC MEX team for turning the VMC back on deserve a nomination. Anyone fellow Europeans want to come in on it and co-sign it?

Nope - but UMSF, as ever, sent Birthday Cards to Cornell and JPL.

All these tracks remind me of the time up near Larrys Lookout where we did the U-Turn and ended up with three sets of near parallel tracks