Damn right it has - should have seen the email I sent

Doug

Not sure if it really adds anything - but worth a go anyway.

Doug

Non-pool specific stuff I'm moving to here...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...=3409&st=30

ODug

Best thing I could find to overlay it one of these...

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA00752.jpg

(anim gif attached)

Doug

Not full res by the way....I downsized it about 50%

Doug

Tim - do you mean this one
http://www.solarviews.com/raw/path/path019.jpg

Perhaps it is infact local topography that makes matching the two so hard?

Doug

I've tried putting the new topo map over the top of the pool 'sheet'....tried the HiRISE image on the sheet, and the overhead projections from the Pathfinder era just don't match up very well at all.

I always said I'd take just the numbers from the HiRISE imagery and consider the image on the Pool image to just be a 'guide' and not an actual reference..... but it's much harder than I expected to match them up.

Every overlay I've done has put it with Mizar JUST ahead of Rakhir.

If you look at the background image from the Pool itself - (which we said we wouldn't) Mizar got it bloody SPOT ON with Rakhir 2nd, SL 3rd.

I think Mizar gets it - Rakhir very very closely second.
Doug

Well - from tomorrow it's visible in SOHO images - that's probably all the clue you need. Northern Hemispheriques are probably out of luck...perhaps tomorrow AM, and MAAAyyyybe tomorrow night, but I doubt it.

Doug

Twin peaks is suprisingly a bit "hmm - where'd all those features go?"

Doug

Some sort of software/commanding problem caused...

A bad attitude which heated up the battery radiator which caused...

Battery failure which caused...

Loss of vehicle, as I understand it so far.

5 landers..V1, V2, MPF, MERA, MERB - all used radar.

Doug

To Plutonian distances - McNaught is several years behind NH - quite something really.

Doug

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?rec=902773

Cool trajectory diagram showing why it's being so elusive.

Doug

New Horizons launched on Jan 19th 2006 and will fly past Jupiter on Feb 28th.

Comet McNaught pass the orbit of Jupiter about 10 days after the NH Launch - and will be on the way back out, crossing the orbit of Venus when NH makes it's closest approach to Jupiter.

I don't think there's much chance of a competative race on the way back out again though

Doug

Ahh - the Independant wouldn't let this one go probably without telling us how many theatres it could build...

I jest - all the press coverage to date has been comparatively positive to the idea.

Doug

By my best estimate - Sojourner is estimated to be at...

1,-6...ish...

Rounding to .25 metres....

Mizarkey 1.5m
Rahkir 1.75m
Nix 2.0m
SL 2.5m
AM 3.0m
AlexB 3.5m
ME 3.5m
Tuvas 4.25m
James 5m

Nico the only person with a pin that got bent by Sojourner

Kudos to Mizar and Rahkir.....both damned close

The image is a bit of a mess - a combo of lots of different photoshop layers - but I'm open to interpretation at this stage - it's certainly between Mizar and Rahkir - that's for sure.

Doug

The Fens...wow - not far from here really.


Doug

Had a damn good look - but there are too many buildings, streetlights, and , well, too much crap for me to see it here. Not a chance sadly.

Doug

Took about 7 days when I ordered stuff before....

If you order stuff and get it - can you let me have a picture of it so I know how good they ACTUALLY look

Doug

Oh - I've seen pdf's and ppt's showing Mars balloons that heat up in the morning - expand, take off - drift for the day then settle down again as it cools in the evening and have an analogy to 'drag chains' to park up overnight to do overnight obs of some sort.

Doug

I've changed the topic of the thread - you wrote it as if such a vehicle were already planned, not as if you were posing a question.

As for choppers on Mars.....I find it very hard to imagine them working....you've going to need such large blades, such high rotation, and such a small payload to get it off the ground. A balloon would make MUCH MUCH more sense to achieve the same thing and be much simpler to boot.

Doug

Found a dodgy VRML of a Russian lander - appeared essentially the same as Beagle 2 and I was so unsure as to its accuracy, I took it out again.

MPL - again, we don't know what sort of state it is on the surface so not much point in putting it on there.

Doug

Had a soviet lander in the mix previously based on a VRML I found - appeared very similar to Bealge in most respects ( i.e. not visible )

MPL - I would add it (some VRML is out there) , but there would be little point as it is not expected to be particularly intact on the surface.

Doug

I like SSTL - met some of their guys in Valencia. They actually put a commercial off the shelf hard drive on a satellite and it works great - they just built a hard housing for it so it felt 'at home'. Far cheaper than coming up with that sort of storage capacity in solid state space qualified....quite cunning.. Of course, it could always crash etc.

And I must admit - I do like the romantic notion of another venture to gather support, much like Beagle 2 did, for space exploration in general in the UK

But I don't see this one coming to fruition - even if for only £100M ( which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't much). The problem is, you can't spend £100M in this country without the Guardian telling you how many hospital wards it would build, the Mail telling you how many more police it could train and the Express telling you how many illegal immigrants it could return home.

Doug

It's the identifiable and non-identifiable bounce marks highlighted in photoshop from a mixture of seing them in the image, and the plots of data we've seen.

Doug