MSL reasons for delay |
MSL reasons for delay |
Mar 4 2009, 03:33 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2542 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
I wanted to make sure that everyone interested sees Adrian Brown's articles at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 and http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1318/1 about the technical and budgetary problems with MSL that led to the launch slip. While I can't claim to be privy to the budgetary and political issues at the mission level, the technical discussion seems like a fair summary of the situation as I understand it, at least as good a one as can be gathered from public sources.
People in other forums have complained about errors in these articles, but without giving specific examples or providing any factual basis for their objections. I don't find that very useful. If there are real flaws in this account, I'd be quite interested to know what they are. p.s. I guess we need to change the name of this subforum. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Mar 4 2009, 03:41 PM
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#2
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Thanks for linking to these Mike - they're very good, and quite thorough. What has this done to the Mastcam delivery date? I'm going to make the bold assumption that there's not a chance in hell of the zoom being reinstated.
And that's a good point about the sub-forum name Phoenix needs to get stuffed into past missions as well. |
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Mar 5 2009, 08:16 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 656 Joined: 20-April 05 From: League City, Texas Member No.: 285 |
...there's not a chance in hell of the zoom being reinstated. I'm a bit confused about the zoom. I had thought that it had been definitively canceled, but I gathered from the Technical article that it may have been complete in December. I have mixed feelings about the zoom capability -- as I've stated before, I don't trust the mechanism not to lock-up once on Mars, though I appreciate the benefit of being able to get both telephoto and wide angle views from the same camera. In retrospect they might simply have placed a dedicated third camera with fixed telephoto capability centered between a pair of stereo wide angle cams on the mast head with rather less trouble and similar capabilities as the dual zoom system. |
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Mar 6 2009, 04:23 PM
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#4
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 1 Joined: 5-December 08 Member No.: 4504 |
"In retrospect they might simply have placed a dedicated third camera with fixed telephoto capability centered between a pair of stereo wide angle cams on the mast head with rather less trouble and similar capabilities as the dual zoom system."
There are no unused MSSS camera interfaces in the MSL rover. If you want to lobby for an additional camera mention there are three unused engineering camera interfaces. |
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