I think Mike might be on to something with using his cunning pointing-corrected images. I may try that at some point.

Doug

Multiple MER's is a subject that's been done to death here and elsewhere. The bottom line is that while MER has been fantastic, the number of sites you can land with this system is very very small and very very limited and it's a highly inefficient way of getting a very small payload onto the ground. Because of that, MER's heritage should be in systems, not the entire vehicle.

If MSL works - you've got many orders of magnitude more Mars that can be accessed, and then it does make some sense to think about reusing MSL or indeed just its decent stage to deliver payloads.

Doug

Oh - I know they had to be very big for the mission - but these things always catch me by suprise. The day I first (and infact last) saw a spacecraft up close, it was a comms sat at Asrium in Stevenage. Until then I'd thought all spacecraft were about the size of my sofa - then I saw this gold-clad box the size of a whole room and realised I had things a bit wrong

Doug

That was a technical decision. The solar power situation was preferential for the rovers in '04 - and the MRO payload needed longer for development.

I do see what you're saying - and I would rate an orbiter as less sexy than a lander - BUT - if you consider the actual public attention to Spirit and Opportunity - it trends to near zero exponentially. from the day that first big colour picture is released.

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=mars+ro...ly_img&sa=N

i.e. the public didn't really care that it was going to move. Wheels are cool - but a pretty picture is possibly enough. A slight spike with Victoria, but that's about it. I think the sexy-rating is a valid point - but I think it only counts if a mission is sexy 'enough'. Any lander is sexy enough if it works - wheels or not. An orbiter that can take cool pictures is sexy enough. Taking all the Discovery program missions into consideration for example - I would say that only Genesis and Kepler lack an ammount of 'wow' that can get the public attention.

Infact - the more I think about it - the wow factor is little more than a level of undertanding so that people can go "Oh - I get it

Doug

or "Cool- we've got four landers, they've only got a rover"

or "So we just blew €1B on that rover and it crashed"

or "Thanks to the insightfull and accurate reporting by the mainstream media, I understand the science value in four small landers as help toward our understanding of global meterology and the potential for interesting results from seismic study, furthermore they offer an ideal engineering testbed for technologies to land future, more expensive payloads on the surface. On reflection, as a man in the street I understand that a Netlander type mission of multiple small probes offers a more sensible option as our second mission to Mars and is a more robust pathway looking forward in Europes own planetary science programme"

If a mission doesn't come across as Sexy - you don't abandon it - you explain why it IS Sexy. Now yes - Rovers are sexier than landers - but 1 failed rover isn't very sexy at all. Two working landers out of four is. The public reaction to Phoenix will be interesting in this regard.

Doug

Previously some people have wondered if you might be able to morph between Navcam OpNav frames to make a more seamless movie.

I was doubtfull - but I had a go using Morph Age on OSX all the same

Morph Movie (2.5mb)

I'm still doubtfull

Doug

Yup. That would be my plan. Consider the viking spacecraft - now take the lander mass, split it four ways...and you're done. >130kg per lander. Double the B2 spec. It would take an Ariane V to loft it - but it's very doable and systematically, preferable to Exomars imho.

Doug

Stu didn't say it wasn't going to be expensive. He said it would go over budget. Such projects always do.

My personal take is that Exomars is too bold for a first landing. We need to scale back - do the Netlander type mission (4 small landers) with a delivering orbiter this time around (€600-800M would be a sensible figure for that) - and the delivering orbiter can then be a relay for a rover 4 years later. Not only that - but 4 chances to land on Mars. OK - so it's the same hardware every time but as long as you have that MER flexibility in deplyment times etc - then you can learn from the first lander for the follow ons.

Then, 4 years later - when you know how to land on Mars, do Exomars.

Doug

http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=32158

Wow...VERY big arrays

This thread will be useless without pics. You have your assignment. Do it

Doug

Pete = Legend Damn nice chap as well. Google for me + pete lawrence on Google and you'll see we go back about 6 years

Doug

No one actually asked - but seriously - as if we'd mind

Doug

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegaller...eature_828.html

Full circle really

Thought I should start a thread on this - Analyst sent me a PM a few weeks ago criticising my decision to limit political debate here and making the same comment he makes here - that without MER, UMSF would be dead. I thought it appropriate to share some statistics and explain that UMSF is not just MER, comment on the current level of activity and the decisions that possibly mould this activity.

In April there were 1966 posts. A small number maybe. Certainly smaller than the average of Nov 05 to Nov 06 (3-5,000). I've spoken to some other forum admins and they share the same pattern - long time period variation. We had a big peak after MRO arrived and Opportunity arrived at Victoria Crater. There will be one when Phoenix arrives.

Is UMSF getting quieter. Yes. Is that a bad thing? Well - from the admin perspective, no. Easier to mange! Trying to keep up with a forum of >4000 posts a month was too much. I've also seen a downturn in MER discussions in other places. The missions themselves have got quieter. We're not rushing to Victoria or climbing Husband hill. Personally, I'm not keeping up with MER as much or as well as I did a year ago - I just can't.

Does this mean I should have allowed political debate as Analyst tells me I should? No. I will not allow that to infect this place as it does others. You can see the damage it does there and even the overly heated debates that happened here. Want to discuss politics there are PLENTY of other places to do that. This is a small subject area, a small group of people, cliquey even. I'm not going to prostitute the focus and standards of UMSF just to make it busier. I've made some very difficult decisions regarding some members at UMSF in the past - and the only regret I've had with ANY of them, is that I didn't take the action more quickly (and yes - that includes Bruce).

Will UMSF be dead and burried once MER is gone? No. Not even slightly.

Comet Missions 458,000 topic views
Titan 337,000 topic views
Icy Moons 328,000 topic views
Past and Future 270,000 topic views
New Horizons 266,000 topic views

Cumulatively - those subjects have attracted 500,000 more views than Spirit. Add the tech-general and imagery section you're at the same level as Opportunity.

Of the 7.7 million topic views that have happened in the history of UMSF - less than half are within the scope of MER. Suggesting that UMSF would be dead if MER vanished tomorrow is simply not true. But if the admin team vanished tomorrow and a free-for-all followed, the political debate that Analyst wants in this place - UMSF would be dead within a month. Of the 1000+ members here, only 10 have any idea what it takes to run this place. Checking registrations, checking for spam, editing posts with bad quoting, taking big images out of posts and making them links, taking backups of the 400 MB SQL DB and the 2.5 gig of attachments.

Someone once asked here how much time I spent running this place, and jokingly - I said "Oh thousands" to which they replied that that was impossible. I've just done the maths. Since Jan 04 - I would say that I have spent about 3000 hours doing all the things I mentioned - and others ( such as getting ad's that mean UMSF is just about paying for itself ). And you know what - even with people telling me I'm doing it all wrong (and thankfully I get a lot more people telling me I'm doing it right as well) I do not begrudge a single second of it - not a single second. I don't think the admin team do either.

Doug

I completely agree. I have asked punkboi to stop posting the images directly and to post links the the KSC image info page instead.

Doug

Unfortunately, the Bradford scope is very very limited. Flats/Darks/Bias - not available.

If I could get some clear skies at New Mexico, hopefully I should get some much better pictures with them

Sorry - which forum is this again?
Unmanned Spaceflight.com > Mars & Missions > MER > Opportunity > The drive back to Duck Bay

Not going to start moving posts - but discussins about Spirit should happen in the Spirit section.

Doug

The member has had his account suspended for 7 days for using UMSF to spam members. If anyone else has recieved any PM's from the guy (he's not used UMSF to send emails according to our logs) then I will not hesitate to close his account.

There is nothing more suspicious than that - the page itself is relevant to UMSF, and safe. It's not some hack attempt - it's just a very misplaced opinion of how to promote a website. Moronic, not malicous.

Doug

Well then it'd be the qualification tests for the motors for SS1


Doug

This has to be the WORST place to put your office chair and table.


http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=32149

Where on earth (pun not intended) do you find this stuff Brilliant images!

Doug

That's the one I'm using - it's great.

I got a cluster cam view of Lovejoy last night as well...so that makes two...which is an animation

Wow - I've just gone back and read the first reply I made to the Kodak Moment 'RFP' from last year - and it was something similar - glad to see I wasn't entirely wrong about the atmospheric effects

Doug

That's a classic dust spec.

Yeah - it's the little green fuzz. The really dark feint green dognut is, I think, an optical artifact from the lens.

Doug