Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September Options

[djellison]

As previously reported, there's a great lineup of speakers at the BAA out of London meeting on September 3rd - including MER Principle Investigator Steve Squyres.

Steve has kindly offered some of his time so that we can meet up and do a Q'n'A based on questions submitted by you lot.

Obviously - there will be loads and loads of questions you want to ask and only so much time in which to ask them - however - I'll do what I can to pick as many of the best as I can squeeze in in the time available.

There will be a write up here, obviously, and I will try and record it as an MP3 and post that here as well.

Steve's book 'Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet' is published next week - and a signed copy will be winging its way to the person submitting the best question! *

If you have questions you want me to pitch to Steve, then drop me an email to doug@rlproject.com with the subject SS Q&A

As a heads up - please take note of the other speakers at the BAA meeting - and if you have specific questions you'd like asked of them - I'll do my best to try and get them in after their presentations at the meeting. The last two ( Profs Greeley and Muller ) are on the Sunday and the Friday respectively, but I will be trying to get down to those presentations as well - but no promises.

-Prof. Carolyn Porco, Principal investigator, Cassini imaging system
-Prof. John Zarnecki, Principal investigator, Huygens surface science
-Prof. Mike A'Hearn, Principal Investigator, Deep Impact,
-Prof. Ron Greeley, Scientist on several planetary missions, Chairman of NASA & NAS Mars exploration panel
-Prof. Jan-Peter Muller, Scientist on Mars Express hi-resolution camera team, University College London.

Doug
* 'best' to be picked by SS and myself on the day

[ustrax]

Right - time's up - I need a couple of days to sort thru all the questions I've had via email ( like I asked ) and here ( like I didnt )


Doug

Hey Doug...
Isn't there the chance of, on Saturday, on the so awaited Q&A, you being aside a computer tuned on the forum?...
That would be for us, poor exiled ones to say Hello! and Thank you! to Steve...
Humm, guess that will be asking to much...
And what about an autograph for me? Pleeease...
You could then send it to me by mail...Pleeeeease...
Humm, guess that will be considered already an abuse...

...Please?...

[paxdan]

Hey Doug...
Isn't there the chance of, on Saturday, on the so awaited Q&A, you being aside a computer tuned on the forum?...
That would be for us, poor exiled ones to say Hello! and Thank you! to Steve...
Humm, guess that will be asking to much...
And what about an autograph for me? Pleeease...
You could then send it to me by mail...Pleeeeease...
Humm, guess that will be considered already an abuse...
...Please?...

Yeah doug, you could give him a thank-you card that has a list of all the people from this board who wanna say thanks.

Just a card with the unmannedspaceflight logo on the front and a list of names inside... nothing complicated....

or frame one of your nice pans (just a small 10x8 inch print in a simple frame) with the names listed over it of all the people from USF who wanna say thanks..

[djellison]

I doubt I'll have t'internet access whilst in Cambridge - I'm certainly not counting on it. The end result's going to be an MP3 of the q'n'a with Steve, and an article for Space Daily.

If I'm allowed, I'll record his (and everyone elses) talks at the conferences, but at lower quality ( Mini Disc recorder with a brilliant little microphone )

The names thing is something I did for Beagle 2 when I just had a little Beagle 2 Yahoo group. I did a Christmas Card the day before landing - and delivered it on Christmas eve....and we never heard from the lander again. So clearly, it was all my fault because I cursed the whole thing.

Problem with some sort of pressie is that he's got to carry it all around with him, and back to the US on a plane.

Dont worry - he knows about you lot and how greatful you are - one of the things I'm going to talk about is the paradigm shift created by putting the raw imagery out there daily, who thought of it, how it works, what it's achieved etc etc - BUT...if you want submit to a list, then I've made a new email address

thankyousteve@gmail.com

Put your real name, your forum name, and a single line of thanks - send it to that address , and I'll see if I can sort something out before heading off on Friday. No promises, but I'll see what I can do.

Cut-off for that is mid-day Thursday GMT. (you've got 2 days )

Doug

[ustrax]

Doug...

I've tried to send you an e-mail to that adress and I've received a failure notice...

[djellison]

Might take an hour or two to get thru the system - but it's working my end ( i.e. I can send it an email and get one back )

Try again tonight.


Doug

[jaredGalen]

I just tried it too and got this error returned to me.
It says it has given up trying to send it

CODE

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at santorini.globat.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<thankyousteve@rlproject.com>:
This address no longer accepts mail.

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <myAddress@somewhere.com>
Received: (qmail 9154 invoked from network); 30 Aug 2005 18:20:42 -0000
Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (64.233.162.204)
by santorini.globat.com with SMTP; 30 Aug 2005 18:20:42 -0000
Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id f1so745881nzc
      for <thankyousteve@rlproject.com>; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 11:20:38 -0700 (PDT)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
      s=beta; d=gmail.com;
      h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type;
      b=b1zBz1ts1CankZn5xHPcp6cwQQ1PqFmokVcUW61TLwG9px388mrY2ltEDvZ2bBnFWObgcGBAp63KD2
HVXvQ6vYCwgCAJBumukSrbBPRj9JCj57X8R2gUA6vHc+I5SmSNmD0Ka5DcN1aBoesgVVWEf66Ig20f7O
ZIoLgH+08VY=
Received: by 10.37.2.7 with SMTP id e7mr71347nzi;
      Tue, 30 Aug 2005 11:20:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.36.7.18 with HTTP; Tue, 30 Aug 2005 11:20:38 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <e4291d9905083011205ea17719@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 19:20:38 +0100
From: Edwin Costello <myAddress@somewhere.com>
To: thankyousteve@rlproject.com
Subject:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
      boundary="----=_Part_4786_21629641.1125426038724"

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
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[djellison]

Balghgh - thankyousteve@gmail.com it is then

Doug

[djellison]

Right - my list of questions is all written - it's about 4 pages long - but I've put it into a few catagories.

Pre MER

Spirit Science

Opportunity Science

Rover Tech and Rover Future

Blue Sky and the Future ( not blue sky as in the sky on mars is blue - blue sky as in imaginative thinking )

Those who def. have quesitons in at the moment are...

Me (qiute a few times ) Sunspot, Philip, Cosmicrocker, Tman, dvandorn, Cosmicrocker again, David Ellis, Ustrax, Philip again, akuo, Garybeau, Henric, DEChengst, dot.dk, GS Norgathon, George Purcell, Ron Jones, A.Spyros, SFJCody, Helvick, Avronperlmann, Mhoward, Marsman, degrlr6328, lyford, Philip again (wow, that's 3 - good questions Philip), Paxdan, remcook, and me again

Of course I dont know how much time we'll have, and I dont know how much things will change with tonights press conference - but I'll do the best I can for everybody.

Doug

[djellison]

I wracked my brain trying to think of the right sort of token....none of the mosaics or panoramas that the MER team, or us lot have made are worth it really - he'll have seen them all.

Then I remembered two things. 1) SS is looking forward to MRO so he can see his rovers again. 2) He wants Bootprints in the wheeltracks at Eagle Crater ( read the book )

So I added together all the names I got - picked my favorite one-liner, but changed it a bit, and came out with this - which is printed as a 7 x 5 in a little frame



There's also a matching, identical one, but it's the full resolution simulated imaged - like this - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/purgatory.jpg and just Simulated view of.... at the top - so if he gets bored of the MRO simulated image, he can switch to the better view


Doug

[mhoward]

That looks great, Doug! Thanks for putting that together.

[slinted]

Spectacular Doug! I think that is a great image (which I'm sure he will appreciate) to represent where we've been, and where we're going.

[dvandorn]

Much thanks, Doug! It looks fabulous, and I hope Steve puts it up in his office... I'm glad he knows just how much his "kids" have done for us all.



-the other Doug

[jaredGalen]

Brilliant Doug, until MRO gets into orbit and starts snapping pics I'm sure
Steve will appreciate the view from his own HiRISE "Viewport on a wall"

Thanks again for the effort you put into it.
It's great to be even a small part of this.

[djellison]

Right - I'm signing off for now - if there's any net access while I'm in Cambridge, then Myself and Nico will check in with a report on the talks we get to see, and how the Steve interview went

If you're wondering where we are...
http://www.britastro.org/news/items/2005008.html


back on sunday night

Doug

[CosmicRocker]

Nice work, as usual, Doug.
Thanks,