Hand on heart - I've been keeping it ready for today so I can read it in chunks while waiting for videos to render out for a work project - and it's bloody good. I'm out of the loop with Titan in a major way - it's orange, it's fuzzy, it's probably sticky - that's about it. This piece is pitched perfectly at the enthusiast who needs the Titan 101. Almost reminds me of the kids news show Newsround...not the kids bit, but the way it explains the indepth facts, whilst educating enough on the go to put them in context. Not easy.

Nicely done

"Plotting updates on
its location on a wall-chart map of Titan could become
a daily activity in schools"

You KNOW that's Tesheiners job, right? Purveyor of virtual pins+strings.

Doug

There are records of ancient people using meteoritic material in tools etc - they were highly prized as they didn't know how to make their own metal at the time. Makes a LOAD more sense to me. Little fragments wouldn't be travelling at high speed. They'd loose all their energy really quickly. (consider the old penny-from-tall-building myth - which is indeed a myth)

The chance of a fragment small enough to make those marks, travelling fast enough to make those marks, and 'hot' enough to scortch them...sorry - I find that very hard to believe
Doug

And meanwhile :
http://chrislintott.net/2007/12/11/stfcs-plans/
http://www.scitech.ac.uk/About/Strat/Counc...FC_DelPlan.aspx

Seems odd to be proposing a lunar mission when big cuts are underway.

Doug

Have your read the article at the start of this thread? When a fuel cell is used, you get water. With the solar power you re-split the water and refill your fuel tanks.

"Nothing goes in and nothing comes out, other than electrical power and waste heat. The hydrogen, oxygen and product water inside are simply recycled over and over again."

Doug

Ditto OSX + Safari and/or Camino - great talk by Ray.

I assume the D is for Danger?



Doug

And when it's dark?

Ditto - I can't find that on the HiSite... two versions of that first 'hole' - sure - but not that one Phil has cited.

Doug

I was being sarcastic. Such a mission is already in work - Juno.

Doug

I think you might be thinking of the UHF transmission from Spirit to MGS, which MGS-MOC ( i.e. Mike C ) was trying to tell the control room had picked up a long enough signal to be certain of a happy landing...but they didn't listen.

Doug

There's the ESTRACK dishes at Cebreros and New Norcia that could assist - but they'll probably be on-call for MEX for the Phoenix EDL relay.

Doug

One could even imagine a New Frontiers scale Jupiter orbiter - maybe go for huge solar arrays instead of RTG. It should fit I'd have thought.


Oops.

This is what I like about the Titan Explorer proposal - it splits into international components beautifully. NASA can't afford all of it? Fine - ESA does the lander, JAXA does the balloon - let's go. It's not quite that simple - but it's a princple that worked with C-H, and it saved C-H from cancellation (if you read 'The Titans of Saturn') because of a mutual responsibility once you split a mission like that.

Doug

Aghgh - I hate headlines that use something that MIGHT happen, as fact.

Doug

Given it's now 1800ish on 1381 - this'll be down in about 24-36 hours.

So a 400km x 400km search box. 160,000 sqkm

That's only 2500+ HiRISE images - what's the problem.



Doug

You want ULTIMATE stupidity.

Premiere 6.5 - just over 5 years old...great product.

No version since has been able to do batch rendering ( which is a SERIOUS problem ) nor has any version since allowed you to change the settings of a project once started. It's gone BACKWARDS. Sometimes I use Adobe as a swear word at work. Don't be such an Adobe. That's a load of Adobe. What the Adobe is that. Or just, 'Oh ADOBE!'

I mean - that's worse than 3ds Max - which during my time using it has gone from 2.5, to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 2008...and to be honest - I've not noticed any significant change from edition to edition. But at least it's not gone BACKWARDS!!!!

Doug

I was thinking exactly the same thing - there's a bit of evidence of winds on this site - the little dune at the bottom, the exposed rocks....Spirit might get some good treatment here...fingers crossed

Doug

$850m was that figure - I just added the $50m as an estimate of the extensions to make $900m

Doug

You know something, comparing to the area around the based of the PCMA etc - I think you're right.

The only issue there though, is that the wires right along the first cell to the right of the calib target should be white if clean, and where the deck is brown - they're whitey brown - where the deck is black ( suggestive of clean by this thinking ) the wires are black.

Doug

I was nervous as well. In reality, It takes about 12 seconds to get used to it, 12 minutes to figure out 99% you'll ever need to know. This is how quickly I switched: I found a program to backup email into a format that OSX Mail could import - dumped my desktop/my documents/MMB Library to a backup drive, and put my Dell laptop to one side and cranked open the Macbook- fully expecting to return to the Dell to do something I couldn't figure out on my Mac for weeks if not months to come.

I kept the Dell for 3 months before putting in a blank HDD, reinstalling windows and putting it on Ebay. The is the only time I used it since I'd turned on my Macbook. I was amazed. I know where to go to set networking settings, sort out printers, do the power options for sleeping. I can do partitions, formatting. Installing stuff is just drag...drop. Done. Uninstalling..drag...drop...done. It's not perfect, nothing with silicon in it can be ( err...you know what I mean ) - but having thought I would need a time to adjust to emigrating...I just didn't.

And EVERY time I give a talk on MER etc - someone will ask "How did you do that ...that's not powerpoint is it?"

Doug

Given that it shares the same parts basically as my Macbook - what I can say is that a Mac Mini will run MMB beautifully.

Doug

damn sharp view isn't it - lovely stuff

Doug

I was in that exact camp about 12 months ago Dan. Suffice it to say, my work PC - a Quad Core 2.4 Ghz machine on XP is slower to 'get stuff done' than my dual 1.83 Ghz Macbook. OSX is a much snappier experience than XP - and in itself, is like some bizarre witchcraft upgrade. I still want a PC as my desktop ( 3ds max, older versions of After Effects etc) - but for writing things, emails, web, calender etc -my Mac is a far nicer experience. It's not perfect, but I love it.



Doug

At Apple's prices? They want £90 to upgrade it from 1 to 2 gig. 2 gig of ram for a Mac Mini, brand new, from Crucial, is £35.24. Given that Crucial sell 1gb for £18.79 - the delta cost of a retail part is £16.45 - and Apple want to charge more than 500% of that.

I love my Macbook, but I find it very hard to like Apple as a company.

Doug