Roving Mars (imax!) Trailer Options

[slinted]

This isn't really a Spirit only topic, but since she has been on Mars a bit longer, I'll give her the honor of this thread.

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/rovingmars/

January 27 release

[elakdawalla]

I got to go see a screening of Roving Mars last night and just posted a review in my blog. The short version: cool film, definitely see it if you can, the animations have been lovingly re-updated to place the rovers in 3D environments based on rover imagery. But in the end I was disappointed by how little actual Mars imagery they used and how much of it was animation, and they failed to tell much of the story of the sagas of both rovers after they landed in the narration. Still, it is well worth going to see it on the IMAX screen. I loved the super-close-up shots of the rovers being built as much as I loved the scenes from Mars. Bill Harris and his pals over in the 1/4 Scale Rover Project thread will want to watch that part of the movie again and again!

--Emily

[mcaplinger]

I got to go see a screening of Roving Mars last night and just posted a review in my blog. 

From your blog:

"They spent several minutes building up the tension that surrounded Spirit's landing, and the horrible 10 minutes of silence that followed it."

I don't suppose they left in any of the voice traffic from MSSS (call sign "MGS MOC") reporting during that period (in admittedly cryptic terms) that we had enough data from the UHF pass that the rover had to have survived the landing? I feel a bit cheated out of my place in history by JPL's failure to understand what I was saying, and I've never seen a transcript or heard a recording that included that traffic. Oh well

[elakdawalla]

I don't suppose they left in any of the voice traffic from MSSS (call sign "MGS MOC") reporting during that period (in admittedly cryptic terms) that we had enough data from the UHF pass that the rover had to have survived the landing?  I feel a bit cheated out of my place in history by JPL's failure to understand what I was saying, and I've never seen a transcript or heard a recording that included that traffic.  Oh well 

Not that I remember; I believe that most of the voice traffic during that period was Wayne Lee but I could be wrong about that. You're not the only one who is feeling cheated right now. I feel like none of the science team except Steve got any love from this movie. There wasn't a single shot from inside either the Science Assessment or SOWG areas of building 264.

Thanks for mentioning that "MGS MOC" voice traffic though -- I had completely forgotten about it, but you jogged my memory. I remember thinking, "What the heck does that mean? Is it time to celebrate now?"

--Emily

[mcaplinger]

Thanks for mentioning that "MGS MOC" voice traffic though -- I had completely forgotten about it, but you jogged my memory.  I remember thinking, "What the heck does that mean?  Is it time to celebrate now?"

Yeah, sorry about that. For the MER-B landing we tried to pre-script our report for more clarity, but they got the tones quickly so it didn't matter. I don't think many of the MER people understood how the MGS link was going to tell them and on what timescale.

Aviation Week got it mostly right, but identified me as Mike Malin. Grrr.

"At 8:44 p.m. Michael Malin of MGS reported that the satellite had received more than 240 kilobytes of UHF data--so much data that most of it must have come from the surface. But from the anxious looks on controllers' faces it appeared no one heard him. Malin made more increasingly positive reports over the next several minutes that also seemed to fall on deaf ears."