Yup - but the design spec for instrumentation would have been the primary mission - and the PFS just about managed it

Doug

Well - I buy mine from...

http://www.imago3d.co.uk

I have about 100 I use for my talks..

Red/Cyan Anaglyph Card Glasses Pack of 100 White.
£41.11 inc V.A.T.

For a big purchase like that, I'd just go and buy them from wherever you can get them.

I'll have a look at it. Might be impossible given the sort of minimum volume people would require for such things ( i.e. 2000+ )

If I could get plain ones, and put nice labels on the side - it'd be a bit cheep and cheerful, but feasable on small volume - perhaps a limited edition of 100 pairs

Doug

If I had some unmannedspaceflight.com ones made up, with the logo and the url on them - would people buy them?

Doug

Seems like you cant have both - but I'll have a look into it.

Doug

Nice to see images that show that Mars is alive.

I'd imagine the next 6 months of MOC imagery will be on the MSSS website fairly soon - they tend to tie these things in

Doug

Looks like a long with sunglasses on ( L8 ) to get a good noise readout for calibration and pancam health checks.

Doug

Well - the cameras are 30cm apart, and always will be.

The best you can do is to overlap the images differently - by co-registering at different points. The human eye does automatic 'toe in' of the eyes so they both point directly at the point of interest. The only thing you can do to help with analgyphs in that regard is to co-register the images at what would be considered the point of interest.

Doug

Would you have finished it if we'd come round and hit you on the head with a stick?



I SERIOUSLY hope we can eventually have some sort of post MER conference/get together.

Doug

Rebranded as 'Junk Yard Wars' for the US market

Doug

It's a big processor hog for the server, that much I know. I'll have alook, see how much of a hog it really is.

Doug

(edit - actually, it WAS turned on - but unbeknown to me, you have to turn on a setting called 'show attached images' before the 'show attached images as thumbnails' will work )

Opps - yup - it's GM1M2/r^2 - I knew that, just didnt have my maths hat on before breakfast

If I was feeling brave - I'd calculate the actual gravitational attraction between asteroind and spacecraft.

Doug

You can already do it Richard -you can add attachments upto 1mb to any post - but I'm not going further than that and making some form of file library - that's not what this place is for.


Doug

I think it would take more fuel to maintain a station keeping posititon at 5km, because gravity decreases with r^2 - so going to 5km would increase the gravitational attraction ( however small ) by 8x

I'm sure they'll do lots of observations from closer in - but it's like a field geologist. Find high ground and look around first...THEN tackle the target.

Doug

BINGO

Bush stood there and said that this is a Journey, not a race, but then stipulated dates for things to happen, thus turning it into a race. That's my problem with it.

Going to the Moon in the 2020's using launch hardwarehardware that was designed in the 1970's just isnt good enough. Throwing away 6 SSME's every time isnt really a great start. Dont rush it thru using Shuttle hardware. Take your time, develop something new, something that will - long term - save money.

I want to see people back on the moon, I want to see people going to mars - I really do. But he said that Hundreds of people have been working for months on this plan - and to be honest, it would have taken a school kid about half an hour using a 'STS for dummies' and 'Eye-Spy Apollo Hardware'

I dont know what the right way to do this is - but what we have here is the space equivilant of Scrap Heap challenge - and it seems like some sort of last Hurrah before canning the whole exercise alltogether.

Doug

Just listened to Griffin's announcement, and basically, it ammounts to

"The president said we've got to do this thing, and this is about all we've got to do it with, so here it is...yeah, I know it looks like Apollo, but hey - The president said we've got to do it so there it is"

Doug

Dione + 1 + rings at end

Doug

I've paid for Columbus to be put into Orbit. I'd like it to get there please. I imagine the Japanese public would feel the same about Kibo.

Retire the shuttle as soon as feasable - yes.

Retire it before
a ) Having a replacement US means of crew access to space
and
b ) Completing obligations to the international partners of the ISS

No.

Doug

Pah - let the buggers listen to the Q'n'A and hear it when they get about 42 minutes in

seriously...
Quite agree - it's my favorite part of the Q'n'A and typifies why I respect the guy and appreciate his efforts so much - and it contrasts to other missions and agencies very well indeed. If I can find somewhere sensible for it to live, I'll put it there.

Doug

Michael,

I totally understand your decision - MMB is an astonishing piece of work, and you should take the time to sit back, enjoy it, and feel proud that something you made has been enjoyed so very much by so many people. The adding of the Panorama mode literally re-defined my enjoyment of MER imagery - and everyone I've shown it to - without fail - has gasped at the 'put you there' feel.

Hopefully - come that sad day when both rovers are finished - you will be able to package together all the calibrated imagery - from Pancam and Navcam - and have a product worth selling - because you deserve rich rewards for you work!!

Doug

One of my very favorite Mars books that one..infact, I quote from it when doing talks about MER - the press chap who when he saw the first image from Viking said something like "well that looks like the place where they made me leave my car"

Bloody good author is Bill, and slowly, I'm 'learning' Mars with that book in particular.


I wasnt trying to start some sort of mass hate-mailing here - literally just people expressing thanks for Jason doing what he has done, and sadness that it is ended. No finger pointing, no anger, just thanks.

Steve Squyres
"This is a daily process of discovery and exploration, and it just had such potential like you said as a soap opera and we realised that there was enormous potential for just putting the images out in real time, and you know, if you're in the UK and I'm in Ithaca NY, as long as the scripts are running well and are updating quickly, and often they dont but we try our best, if you're awake and I'm asleep, you get to see pictures from Mars before I do and I think that's great and I hope that other projects of the future will do the same thing."


Doug

It'll take less fuel to hover at 20km that it would at say, 5km

Doug

Such a pity that the inginuity of the Russian plans of the time were not enabled with the cash that was available to US efforts.

Energia is what we need today - a flexible, part re-useable heavy lift vehicle.

The idea of 'fly back' boosters was touted, but never fully developed, as liquid fueled alternatives for the Shuttle's SRBs...and if it had gone into production, would have lead to the LV for the CEV being a liquid fueled vehicle

What we have here - is an Apollo-with-Shuttle-leftovers. The devil will ofcourse be in the detail. The ability to land 4 people on the surface is an improvement obviously.

It seems that the gauntlet has been thrown down by GWB, and instead of developing a series of innovative, money saving, new ideas to achieve his goals - the plan is simply to do whatever they can to do it quick enough. If it's a journey and not a race - then we should be packing properly before we go...if you see what I mean.

Doug

Cameras on Cubesat - interesting .doc
http://ncube.no/documents/Camera_Payload_Report.doc

Doug

There's a difference between sharing techniques, and sharing results.

The MER imagery/tech subforum has always been about the former - and the later gets done in the appropriate rover subforum

Doug