BUT - were we not told that it was going to cost about as much, growing a bit for inflation, as their current budget? I think we'd all have gone "huh" if GW had stood up there and gone "Scrap Shuttle, Back to Moon, $20B a year"

Manned Spaceflight is important long term, I share SS's desire to see Bootprints in this wheeltracks. I'm just not sure how we need to progress right now. ISS has to be finished to maintain any relationship between NASA and JAXA & ESA. You cant expect them to be involved in any future manned spaceflight programs if they get screwed over with the ISS. So that means we need STS to finish ISS which could easily be another 8 years. And with current funding, you cant expect to develop anything new while STS still flies. So we'll end up with a finished ISS and no way of getting to it except Soyuz whilst the SRB launchers + CEV is developed and that's going to be no less, imho, than 5 years. So we're talking > 2019 for CEV first flight. Then another 5 years for the lunar vehicle so perhaps 2024 for the lunar return.

Let's face it - this isnt the '60's any more. Developing a new spacecraft requires 25,000 middle managers, 14.5 miles of paperwork and wastes SOOoo much time.

ARhghg - I dont know what the hell they're going to do once the governmental bigwigs stop laughing at that budget graph. Why say 4x if it's not their best guess? Surely they know it'll just get thrown back in their faces. So what are they trying to do? Are they lying and infact it'll only cost, say, 1.5x, or are they genuine about that figure?

Doug

I get the BAA Journal ( www.britastro.org ) and TPS's publication, and that's it.

Doug

I love the two Nova programs, the first was my favorite, it covered the development and testing and just a few days after landing. The 'chute tests, airbag tests, Steve worrying about having Mini-TES being shock tested. It was a cracking insight into the development of it all. The Comet-Impact program I saw about DI didnt really capture things the same way, but it was quite good, particularly figuring out how to do the solar arrays.

Dan did some great anims for the first of the two MER Nova programs showing them squishing MER into the pathfinder sized lander, very funny

I'm looking forward to the MER Imax hugely, just the V.O. for the Trailer, and to be honest with most trailers that come out of Hollywood, make me cringe. We dealt with a V.O. artist for a project at work, he was a Brit but his 'reel' had some hillarious hollywood like VO's in it - had us in stitches

Doug

I've already asked question 1 (without response) and already proposed #2

Doug

I'm sure Steve will update us once we're under way again.

Doug

If all else fails, just use rawid or http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/merweb/merweb.pl

i.e.
Sol A: 710.5
Sol B: 690.0



Doug

711 is a driving sol

Doug

Oh - traverse maps are a given. Obviosuly, I cant start until, basically, the rovers die

Full Moon has fold outs I dont intend in doing more than about 120 degrees in a single panorama. I dont like the full 360's, they dont make sense layed out infront of you. I'd rather do 3 x 120 degrees than one 360

Doug

It's been doing so since it was formed. That's its job.

But it takes all the studies to find out exactly how to do these things instead of speculating about them. They cant spend money doing anything more than the formative speculation until they get a nod to go ahead and do it. Those studies take time, and it's not till you've done them that you can go "right - this is the cost"

There's no way in hell it's going to get the goahead now. A 4x increase in NASA budget isnt going to happen. The public will not support it. If they DO - I will be utterly utterly astonished.

Clearly NASA were not given the chance to find out exactly how much this program is going to cost before GWB signed them up for it, because if they had, if they'd have said "Sure, but it'll cots 4x what you give us now" then GWB would never had signed them up for it .....would he?

Problem is - what CAN Nasa do on it's current budget? It can retire off the shuttle, just about, but it has to be replaced with something, and it cant do that without spending a lot of money, money it doesnt have whilst the shuttle still exists.

On reflection, it's sort of obvious. It takes all it's current money to run the Shuttle, so how in hells name were they ever going to develop something to replace it, whilst still flying STS? This isnt the huge-budget-Apollo days when Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft were all developed within a decade. Nasa does not have the money, and looking at how much they honestly think it's going to cost them, they're not GOING to have the money to co-develop new vehicles, whilst retiring STS at the same time. STS has to go first, and thus we'll get a big gap.

So this poses the question.... what now?

The entire situation is more up in the air now that it's ever been.

Doug

Problem is, Bush went "Lets go back to the moon and stuff" and NASA went "OK". then 2 years later go "Right - it's going to cost 4 x more than you're willing to give us"

What they SHOULD have done is say "you're getting X...what can you do with it?"

Magnificent Desolation was reasonably tasteful, some cringing moments, but on the whole made up for by spectacular imagery.

I just hope that MER is done justice.

Doug

Well - IMAX resolution is, last I heard approx 5616 x 4096 pixels - so a full Pancam 3-frame-tall-postcard can be had in shot with room to spare - but it would still be 4 screens across

Doug

Really hard to get the colours matched up for some reason - just couldnt get it all quite right, but it's spectacular none the less

2005's done and dusted... wasnt it fantastic?

Huygens, DI, Continued brilliance from MER and Casini, MRO on it's way, Hayabusa, just a fantastic year.

On a personal note, I started giving talks, and have given 8, and am speaking twice at the BAA this coming year, and again in York - and they've been really well recieved, I've loved doing them.

And as for this place

493 new members, 1344 new topics with 30,266 posts, that have been viewed 1978236 times. It's quite simply awesome.

May the new year bring you well stitched mosaics, easy colour matching, good flybys, great launches, happy landings and everything you wish for you and yours

Doug

LOL - that MB nose-print reminds me of a licorice allsport - the pink and blue speckled ones ( http://www.thorpfruit.com/images/licorice_allsorts.JPG - the pink speckled one toward the top right )

Doug

The L1 is sans filter, and gives a chance to compare surface properties when comapred to sans-filter (i think) MOC etc.

Doug

Lulu looks very interesting, but two shortcomings so far...

1) They dont do colour in a hardback
2) They wont do the international marketing package for a any colour book.

If they did those...and borderless printing...I'd do it in a second

Doug

The Trailer made me cringe, the voice over was shocking

The imagery should be good though


Doug

That Halo is due to the extreme stretching of the images when they get put online, without being flat-fielded.

And the different panoramas have done lots of things. THe First, a normal L257R2 is just colour + stereo. the L246 is for Photometry and the L1 is photometry to compare with Orbital imagery. The R457 (I think) is near Infra Red for geology.

The Photometry ones are done multiple times at different times of day to establish the properties of the ground.

They're actually done, I think, 2 full pancam pans ( Colour and Geology ) - several colums for colour photometry, and a couple of single frame high pans with L1 for orbital photometry.

Doug

Mossbauer and APXS will answer those questions, but it'll be some time before we see them obviously

Doug

I think it's a 9 x 2, not a 6 x 3 I was close though

Doug

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KCP2731L1M1.JPG

as he said....

Doug

"708 p2267.05 72 0 0 72 2 146 pancam_El_Dorado_pan_L257R2"

I presume that's a 6 x 3 - just what the doctor ordered

MI images of the MB noseprint followed by an APXS integration on 709

Depending on the length of the APXS integ ( perhaps overnight? ) 710 could be a leaving-el-dorado day


Doug

Cute I remember an animation by Dan Maas (I'm sure it was one of Dans) that showed little flapping robots collecting samples - they were wonderfull.

Doug

I've not read that any Delta II's have blown up recently. iirc, the Delta II after MerB was SIRTF, and that was fine.

Are you thinking of a Delta II back in '97 I think, the one after the MPF launch?

Doug