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Well - firstly I go to the admin CP - check for new registrations that need approving and approve or deny as appropriate. Then I check in with the admin sub-forum to check if anything's going on there. Then I check the forums gmail account to see if anyone's moaning about anything. Then I go back to the Admin CP and take an SQL backup, and fix whatever someone's emailed about...

oh, and then I click view new posts

Doug

I think this new data takes it from 'possibly water' to 'don't know'

Doug

You're right Mike - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4626

Meanwhile - how much of what we're reading about is spin, and how much of it is actual cuts. If you limit a project (and in this case I use the term to describe an instrument) budget to add additional margin, then surely you're doing a cut - because the point of margin is to get things finished. And which ever way you butter it - the loss of MARDI is a cut. We can pretend that HiRISE renders it redundent - but even as just an EPO tool, it would be gold dust. Can you imagine any news station in the world not showing it time after time?

I'm still trying to understand how this all comes together - and I can see Alan's problem with budgets - but I do worry that this may well be a pound-foolish situation. Bad analogy - you don't buy the best motherboard, the best hard drive, the best case, the best graphics card and amazing PSU and a Blu-Ray drive....and then fit a £30 CPU and drive a 14" CRT with it.

Doug

a home for some moved posts

So where are the salts?

Doug

Here's to a nice TCM... it'll be interesting to see the figures of how small the burn is compared to how large a targetting change it produces.

Dooug

Didn't stop Mike and Piers You've got to want to do it badly enough - that's all. Very very few actually do. We all SAY we'd do anything...but actually...I wouldn't...I wouldn't emigrate and get US citizenship to do it. Some people would. They're the ones who want it badly enough.

Doug

They got it - CRISM of the MGS gullies.

http://crism.jhuapl.edu/gallery/featuredIm...amp;image_id=95

It's looking like dust slides.

Doug

$1.5B is low-end Flagship class. That's a lot of buck.

Doug

http://spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php
Same sort of performance as the full Delta IV/Atlas V range.

Not quite $50m a pop - but the discovery program library puts the price of 5-9 tons to LEO at $148m. Space X are hoping for $55m for the bottom of that range - $90m for up to 11 tons.

Doug

The paper cited above actually discusses the plane change issue.

Doug

Note I didn't say 'Falcon 9 CAN...' or 'Falcon 9 IS' or 'Falcon 9 Will, without fail, definitely'...I said 'Perhaps Falcon 9 will'. Not a statement of current performance, but an expectation of future performance. Indeed - Falcon 9 and Delta II do have similar performance figures. Fact. What they don't have is similar proven performance.

Personally, I really really think that this being a forum - semantics should be left at the door

Doug

That may be true - to be honest, it would take a Uranus orbiter to find out. One thing that IS for sure, is that while it may be a lot of bang per buck...it'll also be a lot of buck.

Doug

See 3 posts above yours.

Doug

I can see something like the MSL decent stage design - put the fuel and the engines on top - working for 'hab' sized modules. You don't need huge fuel tanks - it's the last 1km that's the problem. Balutes, supersonic parachutes, lifting bodies...all could make landing on Mars a lot easier....but realisitcally...if you had to design a planet to be hard to land on, it'd look like Mars - so 'easier' is a relative measure - it's still damn hard.

Doug

I'm almost growing to like the slightly low-contrast romantic haze the dust has brought to the 'picture'

Doug

I don't think anyone was suggesting MSL go on an F9 (MSL is already designed to fly on an Atlas V) - the F9 was mentioned as a possible replacement in the future for missions that would otherwise have flown on a Delta II.

Doug

I thought Camino was obscure

Doug

http://spacex.com/updates.php#Falcon9Update081507
"A few months ago, we completed serial number 1 of the first stage primary structure assembly of Falcon 9."
...
" We delivered the first engine bay assembly to Texas and installed it into the structural test stand above"

Can't say I even noticed the difference - I usually open attachments in their own tabs anyway - and there's not a thing I can do about it even if I hated it There are things I can change - there are things I can't. That's in the can't category. If I had a PHP/SQL guru on the admin team ( and this isn't the first time I've asked for help in that regard) perhaps we could work something out.

Not quite sure - but Spirit was steam-powered at the time, and everything was in black and white...and worked in a coal mine.

Doug

I think Neptune and Uranus orbiters are going to require a jump in technology before they become viable as anything other than a big flagship (and I don't think anyone would argue that we don't have enough on our plate in terms of targets for flagship missions already).

Aerocapture, NEP (or a large SEP for inner solar system accell), deep space flight tests Ka band - perhaps with a deployable HGA etc etc. All these things would make orbiters beyond Saturn a lot more achievable I think. Of course, we all want massive spacecraft to go everywhere, tomorrow...but we have to be realistic.

Doug

Perhaps the Falcon 9 will be able to step in for that scale of launch - it has a similar performance to that of the Delta II.

Doug

Whilst orbital mechanics dictate that sending Cassini elsewhere is possible...it's not practically feasable, nor is it the best use of Cassini as a priceless scientific resource. It doesn't matter how long Cassini lasts - there will always be things for it to study in the environment for which its instruments were designed.

Doug