I quite like the idea of a rover dying by basically setting itself on fire in a fit of rage

Personally, I hope for the day where I can see images of one of these rovers sat on the surface wherever it ended its mission

Doug

It's quite easy




same with test

The pictures will do all the defense the book could need. Truth be told, the title ( which I quite like ) and the sub title ( which I'm not too sure about ) don't actually matter one iota....one shouldn't gauge the quality of the content of the publication by inspecting it's jacket.....I'm sure there's a catchphrase about that....

Doug

I must admit - the Mac Book Pro is very VERY enticing....what's the score w.r.t. pan software on OS X, particularly given the intel switch?

Even just with the sound turned off it's awesome actually....just a "remember THIS.....cool eh?.....now...what about THIS ONE....ha haa....and then we took THIS ONE.....funky n'est ce pas?"

Doug

Ahhhh - this fence is comfy

Doug

Part of me thinks I should go for a dual core S939 CPU, because top end ddr ram is so much cheaper than ddr2 and I have 2gb of it that I could split to begin with...still not quite decided really

I'm thinking of starting at 2 ( really fast DDR2 can be £100 a gig or more ) and then seing if another 2 might make sense at a later date

Doug

Thinking out loud here...project 'SHOFFICE' kicks off in July - the Shed that will turn into my little office and official UMSF HQ....

Come early winter, I'll be upgrading my PC, as I need more power for the bigger mosaics I'm working on...

Currently my two machiens are..

3.2G P4, 2048Mb DDR3200, WD Raptor 72Gb System disk, and then various 7200RPM SATA and IDE drives for other purposes, and a 19" tft ( 1280 x 1024 )

My laptop's a 1.83 Ghz Centrino thing with 2048Mb of DDR2 and a 100gb 7200 RPM drive, with a 1920 x 1200 17" screen.

My plans will probably be for a mid-range Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB DDR2, the 72Gb Raptor as the system disk, but a pair of 500 GB Segates in mirrored Raid as the main storage for 'live' projects, with hopefully, one of those cunning two drive NAS's again in mirrored raid for archived data etc. My current desktop machine will then become a little slave in the corner, doing things like forum backups at 2am when my ISP isn't counting the bandwidth etc

I was lusting after the 30" Apple and Dell displays - but realisticly they're a bit too pricey - so I'll probably stretch to the 24" Dell 2407 display, possibly with the 19" tft as a second screen....not sure yet though.

Storage is the real pain though - becasue obviously, every ounce has to be replicated for backup, but buy using a Raid array, one eliminates a single-drive-failure nightmare arrising.

Anyway - thought I'd open up a thread to do comparisons...perhaps we could even set up a PTGUI project as an UMSF system benchmark?

Doug

Is that a bitrate + not much DSN time symptom?

I can't blame you - one of the Discovery mission AO librarys had the rough cost of DSN time....ouch!

Doug

Probably best to just browse your way through this lot - some of which have obvious anaglyph names

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/

Doug

Well - this is the place to start for the official stuff
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/3d/

These are probably my favorites for Oppy
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-B305R1_br2.jpg

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-B118R1_br2.jpg

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-B058R1_br2.jpg

And for Spirit
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-A259R1_br2.jpg

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-A204R1_br2.jpg

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...-A627R1_br2.jpg

the larger versions are all available in that top link

If you find some of my bright yellow ones that you want to use - go ahead - and if you want to switch them to look like normal anaglyphs - just load them in photoshop, and copy the green channel into the blue channel

Doug

THEN SEND ME A TRACERT AND I'LL FWD IT TO THE HOSTING GUYS

If you can't help me..I can't help you.

Good call Alan.


Doug

LOL - MM's got you well trained

Doug

Given that one wheel no longer steers - you have to credit the rover drivers job here...excellent navigation in terrain that must offer huge variations in potential wheel slip.

Doug

Oh - it's always going to be a judgement call based on personal taste...obviously I'm a big MER fan - I wasn't alive to experience Viking first hand, and I'm not trying to take anything away from their huge achievments - and I was just really getting online for Pathfinder, and loved that a huge ammount.

But I think Pancam is something a bit different - mainly because of the size of the pipe is had to send stuff back - they've been able to go "that'll look nice" and compose things from time to time...that first mosaic from Husband hill for example - http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...valley_new.html - or some of the sunset mosaics etc...they've been sequenced with an knowledge that they were making something stunning. Mobility helps as well.

MOC get's the same treatment

Take this - http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/05/31/ - stunning. Infact so is just about every single MOC image ever taken to be honest. BUT....I'd call that an image...

THESE, however...
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/06/23/
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/10_12_...98_olympus_rel/

THEY..are photographs

Now - to be honest, it's a fairly pointless differentiation, and it's objective, and differently so from person to person...but hey....a pretty picture's a pretty picture

Doug

Thinking about it - they could have done this with something 1/10th the size with Flash

Doug

Well - Viking 1 and 2 and Pathfinder took pictures...and Sojourner moved and took pictures - but I don't think the title 'photographer' is appropriate for them or their teams. The imagery taken was to document things, to study engineering issues.

I think Jim nails it quite well in the extract..
http://www.postcardsfrommarsbook.com/excerpt.html

Those of us taking photographs with the Mars rovers, on the other hand, have had the luxury of much more time devoted to picture taking, much more bandwidth for sending pictures back to Earth, and better resolution of our cameras compared with that of any previous Mars missions. These advantages have allowed us to not just acquire images, but to take photographs.

I think that's a fair judgement. I think Phoenix may just tip into the 'Photographs' catagory depending on how creative the SSI team get with their kit . Without doubt, MSL and Exomars will be taking photographs.

Look at a Hazcam image of IDD work. That's an image. An amazing image, and inspiring image, a great image...but an image.

Look at the sunset image from near Larrys Lookout. THAT...is a photograph

Doug

That...is GENIUS...seriously - I scheduled my last major holiday at a period when I knew there wouldn't be too much MER activity

Doug

reads much like the testbed they put together for Beagle 2 here in Leicester.

Doug

Blugh - well - go to the home page, click on 'team' and it's the second one down.

Doug

http://ciclops.org/team/abbey_20xc2.jpg

PI on extreme right I believe.

Doug

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2878

(totally unrealted to attachment limits - and indeed, Don is the sort of guy whereby if he reached the limit - I'd increase it )

Doug

Not sure what's going on. The images all remain safe within the uploads folder, so they are certainly not 'gone'.

I'm going to check up with variaous support forums etc, see if anyone knows of a symptom like this. Very strange indeed.

Doug