Ahem.

Politics people - stop dancing with the rules.

Did someone say 'new feature' ?

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=437613384&size=l

Doug

I've always liked the name Chris - but getting mine changed, by deedpoll, would be an un-necessary expense.

Doug

the 'straight' between HP and Mitchelltree Ridge looks like a dual carriageway now

Doug

Yes he is - hence why I copied this into the Yahoo group and he's emailed me back to say he's read it.

Doug

Supposedly it's going to be a DVD release - I've seen it listed ( as well as the soundtrack on CD ) but not yet released.

Would be an ideal candidate for a WMVHD release imho.

Doug

It's going to take a lot more than one observation. It's going to take a campaign of observations across all of Homeplate.

Doug

An I would refer people to The Planetary Societies S.O.S (Save our Science) campaign -
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/sos/

You Ryanair slut Top stuff.

As for the Scot-ash contingent - I've ping the Lifeboat Yahoo group to see if Bob can make it.

Nico - no excuses - get your Belgian arse on the Eurostar.

D

Some stalls, some lost uplinks - it's all in the updates on the JPL site.

Doug

Bloody good idea.

Helen's said she wants to come as well, so there can be something of a Mars widows get together at the same time

Hopefully within a few days I'll know a few more details - then I would say yes, booking will probably make sense. If we get enough numbers, perhaps we can do a bulk booking (minimum would probably be 10)

Doug

Oh - same freq, same patch of sky - that's always going to be a nightmare situation that no ammount of ground equip will fix - but I seem to remember the MGS issue causing some lost Cassini downlinks - if you had a big array, you could say "right, half to track MGS, and the half for Cassini" - you drop the data rate a bit, but some is better than none - it gives you options.

Doug

Phoenix IS the spares cupboard Magellan did well on spares - and Stardust used some optics from Voyager.

Anyway - I digress - MGS's demise certainly stole DSN time from elsewhere, it's only right that missions that have the most need get the most attention.

Hopefully the money will soon be found to do a large array of modest sized dishes for the DSN so that in such a case, the array could be sliced up appropriately to get some sort of coverage for the safe mode AND keep in touch with other missions at the same time.

Doug

Jim - Ugordan... if you're going to have a bitch fight - do it elsewhere.

7 posts deleted.


Doug

MRO's a real spares-thief... MOI was done using engines taken from the orig. 2001 lander

Doug

Right, British UMSFers..

Roving Mars starts at the Birmingham Think Tank Imax theatre next weekend...but hold your horses
http://www.imax.ac/schedule.htm

1200, 1515 and 1830 are the showings.

Anyone fancy a get-together on April 21st? I can't make any promises, but it should be more than your usual showing - and it's on 3 times in the one day. Think Tank is about 3/4 mile from Birmingham New Street (I will travel by train from Leicester and I would aim to get there before the first of the three showings on the day - about 11ish

Once I know more details, I'll let you know

Doug

A linear piece wouldn't be unusual either - probably formed down the side of an exposed pipe and fell off when rattled hard enough.

Doug

That is genius. Need to flip the zoom slider 180 degrees to match google though

Love the way it brings so much data together, fantastic.

Doug

Bits of 'white', I've seen in LOADS of upper stage vids - usually bits of ice falling off when the engine gimbals. As with that shuttle mission a year or so ago, a piece of ice can really look like something else in Zero G. With the engine gimbaling so hard, it wouldn't be suprising to have ice getting rattled off the top of the stage toward the 'end' of the sequence I guess. As the situation evolved, the 'wobble' got worse, the engine gimbaling got worse in reponse (and of course, the two looped one another ) and as a results the stage was getting more of a battering around and thus more ice debris would be normal I would have thought.

Doug

I wish DougSat is still a pipe dream.

Quite agree - but if I had a cheap mission that was cash limited to the point of launching on a cheap Falcon in Q1-08, or not launching at all...I'd go for the Falcon.

Doug

The glow on the Kestrel engine was very similar to the glow - in colour and texture, to that on a Delta II second stage - I didn't see anything there I would consider unusual, and indeed upper stage nozzles seem to be very flexible - certainly the Delta II upper stage engine wobbles around quite a lot.

Sloshing sounds like a very convincing scenario. Hopefully Elon will continue his applaudable record of reporting events quite regularly and honestly and we'll soon know what actually happened.

Doug