Squyres is on record saying that he thought, 120 - 140...maybe 180.

Personally - I was thinking 180, twice the life of Pathfinder just about.

900....don't be so stupid.



Doug

It's unfortuante they didn't sort out STS a few years earlier and get people back in there....but it's all history.

Time and money barely made Skylab possible in the state that it flew, let alone anything more.

Doug

It used film didn't it? Some of the instruments certainly did - and without a crew there's no way to bring it back or replace it.

Doug

It's Mini-TES that answers the question really...morphology ( according to JB ) can be a ambiguous. He's not seen the spectra yet - so it's a 'maybe'.

Doug

I think it's fair to say that those three are all different, and similarly different, and certainly it's fair to classify the third as a 'good candidate'

Doug

Get this - on a trip to Coniston a few weeks back...we went in a Solar-Diesel hybrid boat. The boat ran on an electric motor, and for about half the trip ( in fairly good sun ) it ran purely on the batterys, with the solar arrays topping them up and the diesel augmenting it when appropriate.

Doug

Yes - both orbiters do that ( it's typically 2pm for MGS, 4pm for Odyssey ) but MGS hasn't been used for MER relay for two years.

Anyhooo - attached ( because it never works when pasted into the forum ) a PDF of todays passes I'm not sure how many they actually use of these, but these are all the options.

One thing to note is that at the moment, Odyssey is only talking back down to earth at 14 and 40 kbps, so it will always take a while to get a downlink onto the ground. Late last year, it was 124 kbps..but the range is considerably larger now. 100 Mbits at 14kbps is 119 minutes. (2 hours basically)

Doug

Cough ahem Odyssey...not MGS

Doug

Until Pathfinder, 1000 sols+ was the norm

Doug

Of you go and listen to the Squyres Q'n'A ...the question was asked back in September. The rover's don't care what sol it is, but the scripts on the ground do...and they've been edited to do 4 digit sol numbers.

Doug

Cough ahem Odyssey not MGS.

MGS hasnt done MER relay ops for two years

Doug

I think the conservative strategy would be to save every ounce of power to ensure you have every Whr the overnight heaters could ask for when the sun sets. It's a risk to invest that power in using the rover late in the day to warm up the WEB. More sensible to save the power, and use it in the most efficient way of turning electricity to heat...the heaters, instead of the heat as a biproduct of other useage.

Oppy could handle deep sleep because they had enough power to really heat up the WEB by doing 'stuff' before the end of the day. They just don't have that capacity with Spirit now.

Doug

The real advance will be the electric car using fuel cells. GM have one working already that produces so much power you don't plug it into yoru house....you could plug your house into IT. Just fill it with Hydrogen at the station, and it pulls the Oxygen from the atmosphere to do the fuel-cell reaction ( not burning ) and thus you have range, zero emissions etc.

Doug

I had the angles wrong - but the point stands.. We're not looking in to VC...that big chunk of lighter terrain isn't VC - it's the terrain between here and VC. James - you've done a much better job of identifying the components.

Doug

I agree M, what Steve think's is VC...isn't - it's just different terrains in the apron area. We wont be seing VC till we're just about on it I'm afraid.

In the coloured image - Red is Victoria features, Green Victoria Apron, and Blue Beagle.

Doug

Yes - just boil it right down to a wake-up.... LGA beep.....go to sleep - nothing more.

Heaters to wheels etc will be off at the moment anyway - they only use them when driving.

Doug

For solar tilting - you want north south tilts....and this would appear to be an east west sort of tilt intead.

Doug

9am Wakeup and Tau Observation
10am HGA uplink of commands
1030am Sleep
4pm Wakeup, Tau Observation and Odyssey UHF Pass
4.30pm Sleep.


Basically - that's it. You could even skip the morning uplink and uplink via UHF in the PM Odyssey pass

Doug

Using space.jpl.nasa.gov

(attached - h264 QT movie )

23rd 24th Oct UT is the 'peak' conjuction.

Doug

Using the arm would add an extra sol into every driving decision. The way they're going now, the rover will keep driving up until the point where it's no longer safe to do so. Much more efficient surely?

Doug

One of the really close launch tower vids..if you look VERY closely...you can actually see not only the twang, but the Shuttle actually straining the bipod brackets, trying to push up. It's subtle, but it's there.

Doug

I can actually explain a route cause for that photo My uncle took the photo, and is deaf in one ear, so he always stands with his good ear to the side of the person he's talking to....which was my mum (his sister) to his right. I was talking to someone 'off shot' about my uncles camera and the sod shot a picture off before I could say "Cheese"

Doug

There's a difference.

That -49 was the temperature of the lens inside Mini TES.

The -19 is the temperature of the battery.

They're both inside the WEB, but the battery does more work, more of the time, so stays warmer for longer - it's the 'hot spot' of the entire WEB I would imagine.

Doug

No one's going to try and ban GPS in the EU. That's an idiotic notion. There's a lot of negativity, particularly from the US, about Galileo, trying to rubbish it and spreading miss-information about how you will have to pay for it.

Have some facts...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4555276.stm

Open Access This will be 'free to air' and for use by the mass market; Simple timing and positioning down to 1m



It will be free, like GPS is, for everyone who uses a handheld or car nav device. It will offer better accuracy, for a fee, for commercial useage such as engineering, surveying etc.

Doug

250 is the figure at which they'd have to do nothing but survive as I understand it.

Doug