Forum Logos Options

[Astro0]

Not yet. I still have every one one of them on the harddrive and backup drive though.
Been a bit busy recently because of some Mars thingy.

[elakdawalla]

Astro0, I just noticed the ghost of Spirit in the current banner and had a sad. She's still missed!

[Astro0]

Ah, but did you also spot Phoenix and Vikings 1&2 in the same banner.

They're all just over those far hills!

Perhaps Phil-o-Vision can pick them out.


Yes, there they are

[elakdawalla]

Someone on Twitter (astronomer Alex Parker) just HAD to point out that if Spirit is incorporeal, so should Sojourner be. Unless it's a zombie Sojourner. Interesting thought.

[Astro0]

Hmm, we know that the Pathfinder mother station stopped working, but no one knows if Sojourner gave up the ghost! Just sayin'

[nprev]

All hail Zombie Sojourner!!!

Yeah, I had a sad too for Spirit, Astro0. But, wow, your work just knocks my eyes out, every time. Good thing I keep a spare set in my chest compartment...

[akuo]

LOL at Phil-o-vision and Zombie Sojourner. I can imagine her still roaming the Ares Vallis for CPU brains.

Also mention of the far away hills brought to mind Twin Peaks and how we would never even try to get there. How have the scales of the distances and ambitions changed.

[Astro0]

For the record...


About time we gave a nod to the Deep Space Network for getting us all that lovely data we've enjoyed for so many years.
Where would all those missions be without them

(lost in space is the answer by the way!)

[RoverDriver]

I second your salute to the DSN stations. I don't know where *I* would be without them but surely all the BUDs of SoCal would have been horded and assembled by JPL to talk to our probes. Sort of like a VLABUD (very large array of big ugly dishes) ;-)

Paolo

[Ron Hobbs]

Glad to see the tribute to Mariner 2, the one that started it all.

[Explorer1]

Yes, it looks very nice; though technically it all began with the Luna probes in the late 1950s. A trip to the Moon counts as 'unmanned spaceflight'!

[nprev]

Mariner 2 was the first successful interplanetary mission. Who said anything about it being the first successful UMSF?

That would be Sputnik I, if you want to be completely pedantic about it.

[Explorer1]

True, and with all those 50 year commemorations on the first couple pages of the thread, they're represented well.

[PDP8E]

Thanks Astro0, for the Mariner 2 logo... it made me remember...

I remember the newspapers describing the launch in the summer of '62. My Dad (a WWII Big-Red-One vet and ham radio guy) would always make sure we read the 'space' articles. We would sit around the kitchen table after dinner, and since we all couldn't read it at the same time, one of us (5 kids) would be tasked to read 'the interesting news' out loud (as Dad called it). That night, the interesting news was that "we where actually going to Venus!".

Then later in that winter, I remember that we were reading about what Mariner 2 had found. The big news was that the surface was scorching! No life there, we all concluded. (no images either, that would have to wait for Mariner 10, I think)

Its kind of quaint (in this fast paced internet age) how we depended upon the newspapers back then for our 'real time' space info. Our huge kitchen table was the center of our life. We had a 5x3 blackboard on one wall of the kitchen, with chalk and erasers so that any one of us could explain or develop a problem or just draw. It was where we shared meals, read the papers, did our homework, debated everything, and learned about the world...and all the while Dad's old Hallicrafters SB-40 radio was always on, softly audible from its shelf in the "pantry/Ham Radio Shack" off the kitchen, tuned to WBZ news.

Those 50 years have really zipped by...
I miss Dad, he would have loved the news from all the space craft 'out there' today.

[Astro0]

A slightly more traditional banner to follow on from today's temporary version