When they get paid to do it, by doing engineering, probably JPL/Ames or similar in colab with industry.

It's a huge challenge - no doubt whatsoever, but I don't really get your point. Where's the cadre of experts for a Titan balloon? Where's the cadre of experts for anything...that we've not actually done yet? The answer.... you get that talent and knowledge by doing it. There's barely the money to build and fly MSL. Given that politics is a banned discussion from this forum - what do you want to talk about.

You didn't say 'There simply is no community of people who have experience building miniature launch vehicles of the exact scope and specification that will be required for MAV'.

We wont have...until we've built an MAV. I'm not going to get into an argument about this ( although it seem you really want one ) - but it's chicken and egg. We didn't have Mars EDL experts till after Viking. We wont have MAV experts till after MSR. Someone needs to write a very big cheque, and the problem will thus be solved. Thats all there is to it.


Doug

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_missile_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-48_Skybolt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-140_ATACMS

There is a large community who've been building vehicles of an approximately similar performance envelope for some time.


Furthermore

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2001/release_2001_153.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.js...5737.pdf?temp=x
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/...000004/art00148
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Aurora/SEMRW7A5QCE_0.html - especially http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/Aurora/e...AV_complete.pdf
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/385428.html

That's from the first page of putting 'mars ascent vehicle' into google.


Doug

Oh hell.

The first one really DOES look like a heart beat wiggle, going backwards. The second one is more like ventricular fibrillation.


Doug

Reorienting for atmospheric science during ingress and egress from occultation?

That ESA animation has been doing the rounds for years - I would read exactly nothing into it, especially when Europe is far more likely to build the return-leg orbiting component.

Doug

Dell 2407 (now the 2408) 24" LCD is great - and can be found for a good price on Ebay. There are cheaper 24" screens out there, but they're not very good at all - and there are significantly more expensive screens out there ( from NEC, LaCie etc ) but for all but the keenest eye - they're not worth it. I have the 2407-WFP HC for my desktop machine...soon to be joined by an identical one to replace my current 2nd screen, a 19" hitachi. If you have room, and money, the Dell 3007 (or 3008)...you've guessed it - are 30" - 2560 x 1600 resolution - just awesome.

Hardware wise, RAM is king. I have an Intel Q6600 that is running at 3Ghz ( instead of the stock 2.4 Ghz) - which makes for fast processing - and it's astonishingly cheap now, for the power you get. I use Win XP 64 bit, and have 8 gb of ram. Photoshop can't use it (it can use 4, iirc) - but 3ds max can . A GeForce 8800GT makes the odd racing game trot along nicely as well.

For a zippy system disk, I would recommend the Western Digital Raptor ( now Veloci-raptor ) drives for windows + apps, and then a bigger cheaper normal SATA drive for 'stuff'.

And a MacBook Pro for giving talks, doing email, calender, surfing, forum admin, bits of photoshop, MMB....and looking cool.

I got to hold a 3d rapid-prototyped model of Eros a few weeks ago - suddenly it made much more sense as a 3d object in my head. Sadly, rapid prorotyping isn't cheap.

You get cold at night anyway

Camera in shadow, means rover in shadow, means a big hit on Whrs.

The recent 4.30pm dusk panorama though, is an example of what can happen to help.

Doug

Certainly not my doing....I did ban one person who trolled, got kicked, came back, trolled again, so got banned.

Ahh - hold on - James banned him as well - perhaps the 'double' ban trickled to the next person on the list. (the troll began with a T iirc)

Not sure how to 'undo' that though.

Eek - sorry

Doug

Today I filmed three more laparoscopic procedures. Gall bladder removal, Adrenal gland biopsy and a Spleen removal. The last was especially gory - good job I'm not squeamish ....I ended up with some on my boots - the finishing of a spleen removal is especially bloody.

Good fun though ( for me as a video documentarian, rather than the patient )

I'm going to propose a laparoscopic atlas project to my boss - taking slow pans with the laparoscope to produce mosaics. It could be very cool.

Doug

I guess so - it's probably the only 'known ' surface of the lander that isn't covered in bloody magnets

Doug

I had to ask as well... it's a ceramic blank that they can call on to hack into with the arm rasp, and do a tega run on to establish an independent 'blank' for organics etc.

Doug

Most browsers can't view a tif, and I can't imagine any reason to attach a tif over a gif or jpg or png, thus tif's are not in the list of approved attachments ( a narrow list of file extensions that dictate what can and can not be attached)

Doug

Crime 1. Not sequencing a normal RGB sequence during that phase in between the long exposures for dust obs.
Crime 2. Not releasing whatever they did take, either for press release at the time, or via the PDS to date.

But let's not have that debate again - the E2 flyby was quite well 'blogged' - and I expect the Steins flyby will be as well. If I hadn't taken all my time off for Europlanet and IAC - I'd be asking to visit ESOC during the flyby.

Doug

7 posts on the pros and cons of transcribing 'uh's' deleted

1) Nothing to do with Tega
2) Nothing to do with UMSF
3) Everything to do with needing to get out more.

And I'm just as guilty as the other 6 posts.

It's just really low priority. Sunfinding Pancam images or autonav Navcam frames don't really matter - but if the bandwidth is there, then why not.

Doug

BBC's The Sky at Night did a great job - sent Chris Lintott out to Tuscon for a day or two and had a brilliant half hour program on BBC4 just now.

I noticed something in the background of an interview....



Notice anything cool? A nice big print out of an early chunk of the Peter Pan in there.

But it's not the NASA version - http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/...AAM2_newer.html - see, no black borders.

It's this one - http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008...1bc-6-pointings

It's JC's mosaic on the wall at PHX HQ.

Like an art insurance specialist - it's all about the border A flick comparison for added 'Bloody hell, you're right'

There you go James - that's twice you've been on the Sky at Night now

Reading http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...m/2008-07-07/... scanning... found 410 new images.

Yeah - that oughtadoit


Doug

The blockage is free, but there;s a backlog we're missing. Hopefully it will filter thru.

Welcome to my world.


Doug

Bear in mind, the JPG's from the JPL/Exploratorium site are uncalibrated - this rather lengthy issue explains how and why that means something
http://web.archive.org/web/20070702193715/...marscolors.html

Doug

John's right - we're now post-equinox, science is, slowly, back on the agenda...time for a new Martian Spring, and a new thread

Can you work for 90 long days straight without a break without making a big mistake?

I know I can't.

5 weeks in, having a weekend, isn't a bad idea. It's not like the lander is going to sit idle. We're at the real beginning of the 'meat' of the mission. A few days break, come back refreshed, into top-gear for the good stuff in the weeks to come.

Doug