I'd go with that....but on at least one occasion the major cleaning event happened at night.

Doug

Can someone else take this one

Doug

We got the first full filter panorama of the mission, and found THE best evidence for morphology indicative of running water at all. Without that 'caution' - we would not have had either. Frustrating...yes.

Just wondering - how would you propose we investigate Victoria dragging an IDD that's snapped off because we've been a touch more bold?

When it comes to the IDD, I would exercise extreme caution wherever possible. We HAVE to have it intact when we get to Victoria or the journey for the past 500 sols will have been little more than a sight seing tour.

I'll commit the crime of using days not sols - but it will make sense. Sat, Sun and Mon were scheduled, as we all know, all on Friday. The longevity of this mission is sustainable only by using 5 day weeks. So Tuesday is the first possible day when they can command a sequence in the knowledge of the IDD problem.

"If the IDD is unusable"...they don't know yet. Do you? They will hopefully find out in the next 24 hrs. They have scheduled diagnostics at the first possible Opportunity.
"And/or drop the MB onto the wheel scuf "...the last IDD sequence they commanded didn't work. They need to find out why. It may be that we've lost another winding on that motor. It may be that they just had a current limit set too low. We don't know enough at this point to make any decision on what is the next best step.

They're troubleshooting at the first POSSIBLE opportunity, there has been no "Sitting here" - it's just how the scheduling and the IDD fault clashed badly. We've lost 3 sols. That's it. They're being as bold given the timing, as it is humanly possible to do - commanding IDD motion on the very first sol they could after discovering the problem. They could have run some static diagnostics...but they're actually moving a broken arm at the first possible chance. They couldn't BE more bold.

A reality check : the initial MER design specification cited that they would loose 1 sol out of every 3 due to sequencing, communication or other technical issues.

There's conclusion jumping and unjustified criticism in buckets in this thread.

Doug

The point is - Coal took millions of years to form, and the CO2 that was pulled out of the atmosphere to make the trees that then became the coal was pulled out millions and millions of years ago. You can't really call it a fair trade, producing CO2 today that was pulled out the atmosphere millions of years ago.

However - with biofuel, you get the CO2 being pulled out by a plant today, and then put back into the air by the burning process in 4 months time. It's a 'contemporary' trade.

Doug

A lot of that could be duplicates because often stuff is doubled or trebbled up on the DB - but there's no doubt that that's plenty of diagnostic imageyr

Doug

Nope. Very very unlikely. I can't imagine ever starting this place without that decision to put the images online being made. Go look at the really early threads - the very genesis of this forum was somewhere for me to put my early colour images and mosaics.

Topic 3 ( the first actual content topic ) was a colour image I did from the raw data
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3

Hmm - tempting though it is... £880's worth of flights puts it into the catagory 'prohibatively expensive'
Doug

Occasionally you get some obs getting put through to the archive fairly quickly - but most of it is in the usual 6 - 12 month data delay process.

Doug

Done to every Imax facility within the UK....and all said "no". However the Science Museum in London do now list it as starting ' in the Autumn ' - but when phoned, would not give a firm date.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/imax/coming_soon.asp


Doug

I'd go with block colours to be honest, grey, black and white.

You're not going to achieve what I think you are are you....animated rover following the path of the actual rover within a terrain model?

With the data in this lot - http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...ty.aspx?rover=2 - you could actually animate the rover itself

Doug

I to don't really care if Pluto is or isn't a planet...but I DO care when the definition they've come up with is so flawed and counterintuitive.

Doug

He even said that there is every chance we will find something the size of Mars or even Earth..but we'll have to call it a dwarf planet.

That's just astonishingly short sighted.

Doug

It's not VERY accurate, but it's there or there abouts..

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/257762

Doug

Just thinking out loud here...a Day of Year counter would be a really nice addon to the main MMB app, to the right of the 'automatic update' check box... Because it's a right royal pain in the ass remembering where that website is that I found to convert date to DOY everytime I go looking in the UHF relay schedule

Doug

Have you ever tried to get a pet to stay still enough to take two pictures before it moves

http://www.rlproject.com/suzi/

Doug

Imagine an enormous dusty warehouse.

If one massive industrial vacuum went through the middle...it would end up dustier than an army of tiny dust-buster vacs

Doug

The best part...literally seconds after we finished tapping down a nice flat surface...Suzi the forum cat decided taht she needed to test the concrete and put a perfect set of paw prints around the edge of it

Doug

The ultimate forum backup has been made

I've been planning a shed that is also an office for about 12 months - but 9 days ago my neigbour helped me set up the wooden shuttering so that this weekend just gone, we could pour a concrete base for it.

Now - you can't just set to work with the mixer and get on with it can you...oh no....you have to do two things

1. Bury stuff

2. Write things in the concrete

So -as these pictures will show - a backup of the forum was taken - burnt to DVD - tucked away in a case, in a bag, and burried under the concrete just about where the door of the shed will be - and the UMSF logo badly drawn on top of the spot. Also, In the far corner of the concrete where it will stick out a bit from the shed base, I also wrote DHLLL and the logo - that's Me, Helen, Lee (the neigbour) Lorren (his little girl who helped...a bit...she's on the 'pluto is a planet' side of the fence) and Lorraine, (Mrs the neigbour). i.e. everyone who was involved in sorting out the foundations for UMSF HQ

I'm still finding concrete in my hair!!

Shed will go up in the next couple of weeks, but it will probably be after I get back from Valencia before I can sort out the inside of the shed and fit it out with a proper floor, walls and office 'stuff'

Anyway - the DVD should be fairly safe for a few years under 4 inches of concrete!

Doug

We CAN...we just don't want to

You guys are a bunch of panic merchants. We don't know what, if anything, is wrong - and we're already at the "THEY CAN'T STAY HERE FOR WEEKS" phase. Seriously seriously seriously guys.....stop the panic and criticism of things that havn't even happened yet.

Doug

Of course, arriving at Victoria dragging a broken IDD that was ripped off whilst driving with it deployed would be just wonderfull

The sun is rising, the power situation is good, we never looked at tha annulus around Endurance with the IDD....there isn't THAT much of a rush to be honest. If we spend a week, two weeks here ( and we are all speculating far beyond what is healthy in that respect ) then we arrive at Victoria with a couple of weeks more improvement in Whrs

Personally - I think as long as we get to the edge of Victoria with a pan taken and downlinked before solar conjunction, then everything is on target for a sensible Victoria strategy decision during conjunction.

2 or 3 days of IDD trouble and it's like 4 wheels just fell off. Relax people...relax

Doug

We know the IDD to be a bit of a troublemaker, so I wouldn't worry.

Doug

So I assume he, like most, is not not happy with the current definition, particularly it's clean neigbourhood clause which is not succinct, not easily understood by the public and fundamentally without precision.

Doug

Might be in one of these ?
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/

Doug

The timing w.r.t. seing Atlantis and her ET shortly after launch from the UK are good - there's two visible ISS passes that evening, with STS chasing down one of them obviously.

If it's clear - I've got a nice Sony DV cam from work and I'm going to try and film the flyover.

Doug

Turning around with one broken steering actuator is something of a ballet.



Doug