I, my ever-helpful co-admins, and several members have all noticed that UMSF has begun to get a little bit 'noisy' recently. Its #1 quality is often cited as being the signal-to-noise ratio, and in the last few months, this has suffered to a certain extent. This post is an attempt to explain how and why I think it's happened, and the rules that we are now putting in place and some action that we are taking/will take to attempt to return UMSF to the prior level of discourse.

UMSF started life, as some of you will know, as a much smaller, MER-specific forum, and over time grew to include Cassini, and then essentially everything it covers today. Relaunching as UMSF just over 12 months ago saw the beginning of a more popular forum, and as more people have begun posting, the quality of discussion has, to an extent, suffered. For more than a year, I've been expecting it - it's part of a forum's growth pattern and is often the point at which a forum is made or broken. UMSF has always done well by having an informal, silent but understood agreement between its members which up until the 500-or-so membership level worked beautifully, but as more people have joined, has broken down considerably. As a result these rules are now going to have to be formalised and enforced - forcefully and rapidly. Some of them may alienate some members, some may be seen as an attempt to 'censor' or 'silence' certain trains of thought and, to be brutally honest, in some cases that is not altogether untrue. UMSF exists for the discussion of UMSF...that's the reality of it. If you want to talk about something else, go elsewhere.

1. Acceptable Subject Matter
- 1.1 The clue is in the name of the forum. If what you are posting is not related either to Unmanned Spaceflight, or a directly related matter, it may be deleted without notice.
- 1.2 Politics - the discussion of policy is acceptable, the distribution of money within agencies is a valid and reasonable subject - however this is different to political debate. Discussion of politicians, political parties, various topics of the moment (Iraq, Terrorism) are all very much off topic and posts that include them will be removed.
- 1.3 Astrobiology - Discussion relating to biological instrumentation past or proposed is acceptable. i.e. Viking instrumentation yes - Martian Meteorites - no. This may meet objection, but again - there are other places for this sort of discussion, take it there.
- 1.4 Manned Spaceflight - changes will soon be made to the Manned Spaceflight forum - bottom line, it's fundamentally off topic to this forum, and in combination with 1.2 it is one of the primary sources of arguments and 'ranting'. Most people agree that Shuttle/ISS is a monetary hog - we do NOT need to see it mentioned every other post. This forum does not exist as a platform to be anti-manned spaceflight (despite the title) - do not use it as one.
- 1.5 Conspiracy theories and pseudo-science are totally unacceptable.
- 1.6 Other guidelines may be added as and when they become necessary.

2. Acceptable Behaviour
- 2.1 Every post must remain respectful of the opinion of others, even if contrary to your own.
- 2.2 Posts should make a contribution. Think - does what I am about to post add anything to the discussion. If the answer is no - should you really be posting it?
- 2.3 Before asking a question or starting a thread for which there might be something similar already in existence, have a brief look for a similar thread, or use the forum search tool to search for it first.
- 2.4 Don't rant. If you have a point to make...make it and move on. Do not litter your every post making the same point again and again. If you want somewhere to vent - get yourself a blog. (P.S., this place is a forum or discussion group - NOT a blog...sorry, just a personal rant there, I wont mention it again...see )
- 2.5 Arguments. If an argument between two people begins, take it to email or private message - we don't want to see your fights in the forum.

3. Posting etiquette
- 3.1 Formatting - do not use excessive formatting. It looks messy and childish. Use it only when it is necessary to make your message clear (such as my MRO MOI time line thread).
- 3.2 Images - do not post an image 'in line' (i.e. one that will load when someone views that thread) if it is more than 100kb. This is to maintain the sanity of those who still use slower connections.
- 3.3 Attached images - do not attach an image to a thread that is freely viewable on a server elsewhere - simply link to it.
- 3.4 Scientific papers are always a useful and valuable resource, but many forum members are not fortunate enough to have subscription access to the various bodies that manage them. If you post a link to a paper which will require a log in, say so in the post (i.e. http://dngsdgsadgdsg/asdgdsa.pdf (requires login) ) - to save people without access finding out the hard way. Only post links to papers directly relevant to a discussion and that fit the rules of section 1
- 3.5 Quoting. If you're replying to a post - you don't need to quote it in full, or indeed at all if it's the first reply to that post. It simply litters threads and makes them harder to scroll through. Also, avoid quoting images, it causes the same problem.

That's all for now - but they will evolve and change with time as the need arises - they are a sensible start however. These rules wont be exercised retroactively - what has been posted is done. These rules apply from now and will be enforced without warning.

I've had a struggle with my own conscience about this entire issue - how to address the problem without seeming to be a censor or overly draconian. But at the end of the day, to maintain the high quality this place enjoys, rules are now clearly required. If you object to them, if you find them contrary to your own standards, then perhaps UMSF is not the place for you and you should consider joining other discussion forums instead.

A few members (two) will be getting temporary suspensions with a request to either post within these new guidelines, or leave. A further two have or are about to have a repeated request to change their posting behaviour or, again, leave (they may or may not elect to respond to this thread, but they can't magically remove the damage that they have done over the past few months). This course of action will be deployed more rapidly in the future to maintain standards.

No one here could question my admiration of MER PI Steve Squyres, and last April he was kind enough to send me a brief note about UMSF which made me very very proud of what the place had become - "Both the discourse and the image work are at an impressively high level," he said.

We all need to think a little before pressing 'post new topic' or 'post reply' to make sure that Steve's kind words remain true and UMSF maintains its healthy reputation, high quality of content, and good-natured debate and discussion.

I hope none of this upsets the long-standing, well-respected members of UMSF, the people who are the foundation upon which the reputation and content of this place stand. I often find myself in awe of some people's contributions, and it is because of the content which so often amazes me that I must take this action to keep its home a happy one.

In closing, I wish to thank my co-admins, whose input into making this change in policy has been so valuable, for their ever-helpful opinions and support - Guys, I couldnt do it without you. They are the 'directors' of this place, and I am forever grateful for their help and advice. However, we need people at a step below that - moderators - to help deploy these new rules. If you are a member of more than 6 months, with several hundred posts to your name and might be able to take on the task of looking after a little bit of UMSF, let me know. It's a thankless job, but you get two perks - access to the Administrators forum (the 'board room' for the directors), and if you would like one, an @unmannedspaceflight.com email address.

This has been a big long post, and well done for getting to the end of it - and I hope that it will begin a refocus of UMSF to give it the big long future it deserves.

Doug

I do

Doug

I have a different way to do the MER maths...

150,000 images
$900M

$6000 per image.

Some people pay more than that for a bad piece of art work

Doug

Sojourner was $25m over and above Pathfinder iirc, which at 84 sols as well, is $297k/sol - but would have been approx $3.5m/sol over it's nominal 7 day mission

Doug

Good point - I'd totally forgotten to factor them in

Doug

I believe it's something like $900 including extensions.

That means, for 1580 sols (the total of the two) - it's about $580k/sol

Nominally, it would have been about $800m for 180 sols, $4.4M/sol

Pathfinder at $280M for 84 sols was about $3.3m/sol (nominally, 30 sols, so just about $10m/sol)

Viking, in total, with the estimated $3B tag today, would have been 1280 + 2244 sols = $851k/sol

MER Remains a bargin

I seem to remember that they were expecting, thru technical or other problems, to lose one sol in three.

Doug

I think the instrument scans in 'stripes' - and it looks as if there are three stripes in that image. Due to motion of the spacecraft I suppose, the three stripes don't quite line up properly. The MCS website is at TPS, might be worth emailing them and asking about it.

Doug

Point 1 is mute - channel A was lost. (and it was a few seconds, not six minutes - and it was the SAME data being sent, just X seconds apart, so your point isn't valid anyway)


Doug

They are unstowing it, but not deploying it.

The article is wrong though...
"Opportunity -- which has kept its IDD stowed since leaving Erebus" - not true, they've just not deployed it to do science.

Doug

We see bigger and more frequent dunes now than we did before hitting Purgatory - and lest we forget we had a near purgatory event on the north rim of erebus that was saved only by the rovers use of visidom.

The rover has a good ammount of power. You balance the eagerness to get to victoria with the risk of getting stuck - and daily drives of 30, 40, 50m are more than adequate to get the job done without putting the vehicle at unnecessary risk.

Doug

Indeed - so commanding activities that could get us very stuck really isn't a good idea is it?

Doug

And it'll get even colder for longer if 'gunning it' creates a purgatory situation instead of saving us from one.

Doug

We're not after the sun - we just want to know the order the images were taken in. That's all.


Doug

You don't know the order of the images - so you don't know what the evidence is. You're so desperate to find an out-of-the-ordinary situation where ever possible that you're jumping to conclusions.I don't see a single image that is clearly the heatshield - not a single one. At best there is a "it might be"

How about, before jumping to such extraordinary conclusions that are so off-nominal that they WOULD have said something about it, we wait for the PDS release of the imaging, accelerometer and other data this summer? Then we can look at the best possible quality of images, in the right order, combined with accelerometer data and have a sensible, valid debate about this? Until then, it's nothing more than idle speculation. There is nothing that is unambiguous yet.

Doug

Well - 20m isnt that much less than 34 which is the smaller ( but much more common ) DSN asset - and they DO get Voyager data pulled out of the signal on an almost daily basis.

Granted - the later is about 3x the area Lot's of amaeturs getting in on the amateur DSN scene -it's quite remarkable.

Doug

Oo - I'll give that a go.

Obviously - I've been playing "hunt the VST" for lots of interesting targets. I'm learning a few lessons

Pancam targetted observations don't tend to be done to wedges.
Pancam Panorama's are OK at Eagle, and the first two tiers on most pans - but aroudn Endurance they're useless - I hoped to make a 3d something of Endurance, but it looks fairly futile at this stage.
Anything over LOD2 is basically, a shameless, pointless Polygon whore that serves no real purpose

Doug

Anyone got the most recent BAA journal....you might recognise a name in one of the meeting reviews

Doug

Wow - that was quick - top stuff - the Fits addition is going to be very cool w.r.t. NEAR stuff

Doug

Quick thought - you mentioned some time ago that the option to pull the headers out as a text file - did you ever do that? Not a biggie, but it would be quite usefull now I'm trying to orient terrain wedges

Doug

We don't know which order those images go on. Ed's right - we need to have them in the right order to try and make a call on that.

Doug

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/fram.wmv (1meg) Another bit of fun

That viewer that's supposed to load PFB's still wont load them. I'd like to see it load any PFB actually - as they're such an odd format

Doug

Can someone put this into PHP


I believe the stack overflow is due to attempting to put 80,000 bottles onto a single wall. Either youv'e got to have the Great Wall of China involved, or we're going to have a stack overflow

Doug

Just as an aditional note - and you can probably see this in the two screeneis I posted earlier - I'm getting quite a few missing poly in the translation. Some have their normals facing the wrong way - (and infact about 1 in 3 meshes has all it's face normals facing the wrong way ) - but some are just empty. However, looking at the same VST's within the context of a performer file - there are no missing polygons at all.

Doug

Personally - I think it's quite good, that test image was fairly sharp - good detail - good SNR - I certainly think MC's caution is valid however, and I don't think we'll be getting a genuine 25cm/pixel at any point - but I certainly think 50cm/pixel x-track and down track will be doable. After a few months with the science orbit, they'll probably find the combination of binning etc that returns the most science per bit, and my personal guess is that it will be 2 x 2 binning for the outer 8 x red channels, with no binning for the central 2 nIR, R and BG channels

Doug

But MOC saw it weeks before that, from a topographically adventagous position (i.e. orbit)

Doug