Cool pictures - I guess those are spare Cosmos 1 'sails' behind?

Doug

My take on it is - it might be a real picture, and if it is - then this might be what it saw - but we don't really know if it was a proper picture or if it actually saw anything.

Doug

For the member who decided to private message me suggesting I am being fundamentally biased by allowing this 'political' discussion to occur, whilst not liking alternative threads such as SETI or alternative physics...

ITAR directly relates to unmanned spaceflight ( Huygens and Phoenix in particular, and opportunities for future international cooperation in general ) - those other subjects do not. I thought it worth putting this on record in the appropriate thread.

Doug

I struggle to imagine that the physical hardware carried over from Mars '01 to Phoenix is actually that much of a saving to the budget - particularly given the huge ammount of testing and review it's undergone. The savings to be had if you build-from-print for another similar lander would probably mean it's doable under a scout budget given any leasons learnt from the Phoenix mission - Of course, would you want to give a 'yes' to another '01 platform mission without seing Phoenix work first?

'01 lander with a microrover....it's the APEX mission all over again.

Doug

LOL - I've seen the same program here in the UK - no blurring at all.

Doug

Given the derivation of the new HLV from the Shuttles ET - that seems a little premature doesnt it?

Doug

Found the source of my tender-to-endurance-brain-fart...

The crater just north of the 'speed record' drive is called James Caird - and that WAS one of tenders to the Endurance, the one in which Shackleton et.al. set out to get help for the rest of the crew.

For those that have not - get, beg, steel, buy, borrow a copy of Channel 4's dramatisation of 'Shackleton' with Ken "3 hour long Hamlet" Brannagh...excellent all round

Doug

Err - that IS an anaglyph.

Doug

The alternative is to have it done in 4 columns at a time - and then the join between the 'batches' is bad

Doug

Pluto was a special case - the atmosphere is a ticking bomb waiting to go bye bye - we needed to get there by X to have a good chance of investigating it before it froze out.

I agree that Enc and Eur can 'wait' as it were. But only for financial reasons (i.e. we can't afford them at the moment) however - there is no need or requirement for the new heavy LV for those missions. If what you're building busts an Atlas V Heavy, Delta IV Heavy or any other LV mass budget, then you need to be more creative with your mission - slingshots, ion prop - whatever it takes.

Doug

Doug

Problem with DIMES was that they downsampled it quite a lot, so the actual res wasn't any better than follow on MOC data. It was still interesting though. MARDI on Phoenix will be very very interesting.

I wonder why they didn't keep the full res DIMES image on board - would have been usefull - but I supose given the motion of the entry 'complex' - it would probably have been blured to the point of matching the downsampled res anyway.

Doug

I'll get Helen to take a picture of me infront of some posters I'm putting up at the BAA conference this weekend, then someone can annotate appropriately

Doug

My favorites are still Humphrey and the Berry Bowl..but after reading Stu's short stories, I don't want to have them in my office anymore - it would be wrong somehow. But a nice replica of the an MER rock would be funky wouldnt it

Doug

OK, now I KNOW you're having a laugh....



Doug

Great Britain should be in there somewhere Fantastic boat.

Doug

VEX isn't under ITAR though - ITAR is a US regulatory issue.

However - there is some pleasently and surprisingly candid comments on ITAR by Deborah Bass on her web log
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/features/we...eborah_bass.php

ITAR has been a thorn in our side for a long time, and it continues to hinder our work. We are doing our best to carefully get work done being mindful of the issues, but it is a struggle. Once again, the issue came up with regards to our software tools. The MET team doesn't know whether some weird restriction will pop up long after we've designed much of the whole system, so they don't know whether to design a system that is really integrated with the rest of the Ops Team, or whether they should build a system that can stand alone. Right now they are carrying both options. But it gets expensive to continue to work two parallel designs. At some point, we're going to have to commit to one or the other. The safest approach is to just do the stand-alone system. But the more desired and efficient approach is to have the MET team integrated into the whole design just as the other instrument teams are. It is frustrating.
The MET team reasonably asked when they might get a "drop dead" date by which the decision would be made regarding which path to go down. We're investigating that.

Also, the MET team is not allowed access to commands that interface directly with the lander. This means they actually don't have access to the MET_ON and MET_OFF commands! Because those are the ones that interact directly with the lander! I find this remarkable--they can send all of the internal-to-MET commands, but if the instrument isn't powered on, we could lose a whole measurement!! So I'm trying to figure out who is responsible for turning on and off the MET instrument and who will build those commands each sol when we use the MET. Some of the restrictions end up being a little silly!

I'm in danger of kicking myself out of my own forum for saying this - but ITAR seems to be one of those batches of legislation that do nothing to combat what they're designed to, and plenty of hindrance of innocent people's good work. On the one hand we have the administration asking for international cooperation within the VSE, and on the other - evidence that such cooperation is being hindered by complex legislation.

Doug

Quite right - not quite sure where I got the tender idea into my head.

Doug

Common missconceptions require frequent correction.

I can see how and why it started - but the relation between cleaning and dust devils is simply that summer has stronger winds, and the summer also has more DD's. The connection is also furthered by the fact that we were in a topographically adventagous place during the summer.

Doug

Of course, a 750M wide crater is 2.3km around - given that one would hope to drive perhaps 10-30m from the rim, a 'lap' of Victoria could be as much 2.4, 2.5 km. That's a lot more driving to be asking of a tired little rover. I'd be happier with a quarter-lap of the crater to produce a high resolution DEM of the crater for planning, and then entry somewhere on the Northern rim around late spring

Doug

All the craters at Meridiani are named after vessels of exploration.

Fram was a tender to the Endurance. Some of them are spacecraft vessels ( Eagle, Viking, Voyager, Vostok )

Doug

It's OK Bob - I'll take this one...

Dust Devils did not clean Spirit.



Doug

But of course, c/a with pluto and c/a with charon will likely not be c/a with the new small moons.

Doug

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/01/24/

Doug

Unfortunately on the size, volume, mass, power, money, development budgets of anything short of a space shuttle, it just doesnt make a lot of sense, and is basically impossible.

For example - you'd have to ask "OK - do I want 6 instruments on VEX, or 2, plus an arm to make sure they deploy" or "an extra 50kg of hyrdazine for a great extended mission for 5 instruments, or a system that might or might not guarentee 6 instruments for 5 years less time"

Doug

The payload reminds me (in terms of design) of a network of baby comms sats that were launched via Pegasus some time ago.

Doug