cough ahem

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pic=1730&st=15#

See .mov attachments ( x3 )

And nope, sorry, I'm not making .avi's of them, I'm sticking to QT from now on, it works beautifully There's bound to be a copy of QT on the cover of a PC mag etc. It's worth it, H264 ( or whatever it's called ) it's astonishingly good.

Jason - you've got it easy, I had to walk all the way upstairs to use Quicktime Pro, as I made the imagery down here ( points at living room sofa ) and the movie up there (points ALL the way up the stairs to the office )

On reflection, mind you, I think I'd rather have your seat

For those that dont want quicktime, have a look for Quicktime Alternative ( and real alternative ) both freeware options instead of QT or Realplayer. Not sure if they have the H264 codec in there, but there must be another option somewhere.

Doug

See thread entitled 'To El Dorado'

Doug

Valencia could make a lot of sense guys - lets look at it a little closer.

Doug

Some nice sequences of WA imagery that give a good sense of being somewhere real.

You need the latest Quicktime to view these, they come out MUCH smaller than any Anim Gif I've found.

Doug

And a random filter merge of some WA's in the VIMS style

Doug

The colour one, as I thought, terrible

It's something to fudge the between-filter-motion of a martian sunset movie at 20s intervals, but if you see a proper movie of this looking nice, then Jason's spent a thousand hours in Photoshop

Doug

Have you seen the R,B,G sequence...

It flicks filter to filter, but you get the idea...I'll TRY to do the colour version, but it all moves so quickly it'll be a mess.

Doug

Yup - all it's doing is putting an echo of the dark area into the middle, and an echo of the light area outside it. It's certainly not producing any real features.

Doug

It would be very nice, but is barely possible using highly expensive sat links as used by pro-broadcasters.

A webcast MIGHT be plausable, but what might make some real sense would perhaps be just an audio webcast, and people presentations available to download before the event. (would also cost a lot less as well)

Let's concentrate on when, where, how, who - before figuring out the fancy extras. The 'last resort' imho would be to video all the presentations, with an HDTV Camera if possible, and distribute a WMV-HD DVD.

Doug

What I thought was fairly mundane terrain is looking a little more interesting...

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/guest/.../S02-01184m.gif

Look at all the boulders at top left - it's a 50cm CPROTO image.

Doug

I thought it was my job to be the wise ass


Doug

Tenerife would be cool, Mt Teide is an awesome visit, but part of me thinks that ESOC or Madrid would be a really really worthwhile thing to try and sort out.

Doug

by all means come up with US venues, but it'll be for '07, not '06. Debate it all you want, but that's the call I have made. Call it selfish, call it inverse nimby, but if we're going to have an UMSF conference, then I'm sure as hell going to be at the first one

the US can have the second one, and our American members can go to the cool stuff that the US already has

Doug

I know I know I know I know but the first conference IS going to be in Europe. End of story. You dont need to come up with a cool site, you already have ALL the cool sites basically. But the first one IS going to be in Europe, because I'm not going to have an UMSF conference happen that I cant get to, and I can't be sure that I'll be able to get to the US in '06. Simple as that.

The US already has TPS meetings, MOST of the DPS conferences etc etc etc - you get all the good stuff. Europe has next to nothing.

Hell, come '07, we'll know what we're doing and it'll be a better conference for having had a warm up over here 12 months earlier. If it turns into something annual, then we can hop, year by year, across the pond and back to keep it fair for everyone. But it's going to START here.

Doug

BINGO.

I'd LOVE a huge, 500 delegate, Pasadena based gig with Steve, Jim, Tim Parker, Mike Malin, etc etc - but there's no point aiming that high first time around. Let's do something modest, realistic.

For ultimate modesty, I'd have it here in Leicester - and people could visit the National Space Centre ( www.spacecentre.co.uk ) - but that's a bit to "my back yard" perhaps.

Central Europe would make a lot of sense, somewhere where Easyjet and Ryanair fly to/from is a must as that makes it open to everybody.

Doug

I'm not going to have the very first UMSF conference be something I can't be sure of getting to - the US for the first one is just a bit too much commitment in terms of travel and finance. Lets do something modest, proof-of-concept like in the EU in '06 first, see if the whole thing works.

Europe for the first gig, then the US as a follow up in '07 / '08 - and a tie in with TPS would be a very cunning idea Doug has spoken.

It might make sense to have it near ESOC (can you do visits there?) , Madrid or something else big and space-like to have a 'day 3' trip out. The primary issue is finding an appropriate venue. That's something I can do here in the UK, but not something that's too easy - so suggestions would be welcome, then we have to figure out the £/$ of the whole thing.

Doug

We are...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1906

It's the next stop.

Doug

3.5km - 2.17 miles, they're not that different

Doug

Helen says that mine was dispatched the very same day she ordered it. So close to Christmas that's amazing. I expect they'll be off over Christmas New/Year, but they'll be able to sort you out in the new year.

I'm quite tempted to actually go nuts on mine, do lots of things to it, like paint some of the cabling at the base of the PMA, ditto the HGA gimble, and perhaps chrome up the wheels a little. Is any else wondering where their Left Pancam is by the way? Mine's seemingly missing

Doug

Got mine today It's very cool - pity it doesnt quite fold up, but it's an excellent model (particularly given the price ) - I really like it - I may adorn the WEB with some gold foil I have from a box of biscuits I have, and put something a little better on the back of the HGA

Doug

Reading Levy's book about Shoemaker - they mention the crater being 1.2km across (so a walk around it is about 3.5km )

Doug

Barringer's only about 1.5k across iirc, whereas Victoria is only 700ish M across

The scale is certainly right for the ballpark figures I've seen

Doug

I had a look at it in Photoshop and it is actually bleached out there, there's nothing to be had.

Doug

I think it's quite obvious that NASA isnt going to get a 400% budget hike, so this report will probably just highlight the fact that yes, we could go back to the moon etc, but if you want to do it it's going to cost a LOT of money.

Doug

I'll boil it down to the essentials. We're not having something that I cant guarentee being able to make it to. A 3 or 4 day break to Europe is something I can slip into whatever's going on at work. But a week+ in the US just isnt.

I agree - something in CA, or FL, or even Ithaca would be fan-bloody-TAstic, BUT, let's do something a little more modest first time around, see if it's a feasable exercise (such things cost quite a bit of money to do) , find out how to do this sort of thing...THEN...all book holidays for '07 (like, August '07 for the Phoenix launch ) and have something bigger in the US.