SS Open University lecture Options

[Stu]

I can't, but I'm sure some members will like to view this... (scroll down for the lecture link)

Steve Squyres lecture

Would love to hear an mp3 file of it but there isn't one. Oh well, enjoy!

[stewjack]

Edited to reflect the fact that I got a chance to download and listen to the full lecture audio

There is a podcast of the lecture available.

If you have followed the MER missions from the beginning you will find much of this material repetitive. However, although I have listened to every news conference, it still had some stuff that was new to me. New comments about Victoria's geology.

The mp3 file is a 20 MB download and the lecture is about 90 minutes long.

Right Click to Download MP3
http://stadium.open.ac.uk/berrill/mp3/CEPS...mber%202006.mp3

http://tinyurl.com/yx69pv

Jack

If both of those links fail try following this link.
http://tinyurl.com/ybwm5y
.

[Stu]

If that fails try following this link.

http://tinyurl.com/ybwm5y

You are a STAR, thank you! I only had a few mins to check out the page before dashing out, so you saved me a lot of time. Appreciate it!

[CosmicRocker]

This is an amazing lecture from Steve Squyres, with a huge amount of technical detail. Thank you so much, stu, for mentioning it. It is difficult to follow it in all detail without seeing the slides. Has anyone found them? The first link you gave isn't working for me, now. Are the slides from this lecture available? Hehe, so apparently Eagle Crater did partially earn its name from a par 3 hole in one.

Ninety minutes of SS getting down and dirty on some serious MER geology! It's mesmerizing. I know we have the sleuths here who can find the imagery that goes with this lecture. I am not having any luck tonight, but I hope we can find the slides. Come one, people. I am desperate to see the slides that accompany this audio. This lecture has fascinating stuff for everyone. So, where are the carbonates? What about the crennulated shape of Victoria... There is so much here...

[djellison]

Well - there's the QT movie that includes all the slides...but actual slides at full res...no.

Doug

[RJG]

Well - there's the QT movie that includes all the slides...but actual slides at full res...no.

I grabbed a copy of the mp3 immediately I heard about it but didn't realise that there was also a QT of the lecture.

Am I right in assuming that the QT should be found at http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.p...;whichevent=914 ?

Despite repeated attempts I find that the server times out on all of these links -including the direct link to the mp3.

Is anyone else having more luck? Is there an alternative source of the QT?

Regards
Rob

[djellison]

The whole domain has been dead for me today.,

Doug

[DEChengst]

It's dead for me too. Does anyone have the .mp3 for me so I can host it for the rest of us ?

[hendric]

I've got to hand it to Steve and Colin. Colin was very apologetic for his comments on the rovers, even saying he has become a complete advocate for rovers. And Steve, not once during his whole lecture, says "Neener neener."

BTW, is there a way to download and save the stream? When I try to do it, it just gives me a 4kb file.

[DEChengst]

Here it is:

http://paranoid.dechengst.nl/mars/CEPSAR%2...mber%202006.mp3

My upload is only 1 Mbit/sec so getting it may be a bit slow

[CosmicRocker]

Good man, DEChengst. That was quick. I am sure there are a lot of people who will want to grab that file.

I wish I had realized there was a QT of it. So far, it seems the whole darn domain is down. I managed to find a link pointing to the site ( http://cepsar.open.ac.uk/ ), so I sent an email to the webmaster and the contacts about the problem and asking if the slides could be made available.

If I missed something, and the QT is still available somewhere, would someone please point that out?

hendric: I don't remember the story about the rover comments Colin was apologetic about. Could you summarize the story in a few words?

[Stu]

hendric: I don't remember the story about the rover comments Colin was apologetic about. Could you summarize the story in a few words?

As I remember it...

Basically, in the run-up to that amazing Christmas of 2003, with Beagle and the MERs screaming towards Mars like an invasion fleet from Earth, Beagle 2's Colin Pillinger - well-known for not exactly being the personification of tact and subtlety, but a great guy who has a fire in his belly for Mars and almost single-handedly got the Beagle mission designed, funded and built, fighting off threats to it from all sides along the way - got rather p'd off with constant comparisons between his "Plucky little Beagle" and the two great hulking clanking American rovers. Much of the media seemed to think that the MERs were also going to look for life, and that US and UK 'boffins' were in a race to find life on Mars. During one interview someone asked Colin The Question about if he thought the MERs would find life on Mars just once too often, and he replied "They're not going to look for life, they're going sightseeing".

Talk about poking fate in the eye with a sharp stick.

Of course, we all know how it turned out. Beagle 2 detached from Mars Observer and descended to Mars... then who knows what happened. Many of us Mars enthusiasts here in the UK spent all Christmas Day and much of the next few days checking every TV news, every radio news, Ceefax and teletext and every website we could find hoping to hear good news, but it never came, and by the time Spirit and Oppy boinged to their perfect landings in Gusev and Meridiani a month or so later, Beagle's mission was just a memory in the media, who took more pleasure in describing the mission's financial failings and behind-the-scenes political squabbling than the great achievement it represented. Many people who had scrabbled to be associated with it as it approached Mars now ran away from it so fast there were sonic booms, it was quite shameful, and I'm sure Colin P remains quite hurt and bitter about it today. Just my opinion tho.

So, going back to your question, why the apology? Well, when Beagle failed to bark home, Steve S - who would have been pretty much forgiven for picking up the phone and laughing into it, after what CP had said - was the first to call CP and commiserate with him and encourage him not to give up hope. And later, when Spirit and Oppy drove off their landing platforms and onto the martian surface Steve didn't crow once about how Beagle had failed and his rovers had succeeded, he didn't once make a quip about "sightseeing"... Instead, what did he do? he named Beagle Crater partly in honour of the Beagle probe. Just one reason why I respect and admire the man so much.

Here's a Squyres snippet from a press conference given on the morning after Spirit's landing:

"One last thing. I got a congratulatory call from Beagle 2 Colin Pillinger. They're still holding out hope of contacting Beagle 2. I haven't given up on Beagle 2. I told him that "a whole bunch of people on this side of the Atlantic are rooting for you."

That's class, you know?

...so at the start of the OU lecture you hear a very sheepish but also very genuinely moved CP introducing Steve to the audience, and apologising for his comments.

Not exactly "a few words" hendric, sorry!

[helvick]

For those who are interested it seems to be back online again and it is an absolute must see for any MER fan.
Direct link again

[CosmicRocker]

That's great news. What would be excellent at this point would be for someone who owns QT Pro or some stream capture software to save that stream as a file that someone could host. That would allow those of us limited to a dial-up connection to see the good version of the video. Is there anyone who could help out with that?

The word I got today was that the lecture contained some information that has not yet been published, and for that reason the slides are not going to be made available. I completely understand the reasons for that. If non-peer-reviewed ideas escape into the wild, they can take on a life of their own and come back to haunt the scientists later. So, now I will stop wasting my time looking for them and get on with trying to figure out which of the things he mentioned are new ideas.

edited to add: Thanks for the explanation, Stu. I am replaying it, and now realized that I originally skipped over the introductions where Colin graciously and eloquently explained the situation. It clearly wasn't intended to be an insult.

[imipak]

That's great news. What would be excellent at this point would be for someone who owns QT Pro or some stream capture software to save that stream as a file that someone could host. That would allow those of us limited to a dial-up connection to see the good version of the video. Is there anyone who could help out with that?

I'm trying. I've managed to get URLs from the .mov files, but it seems my mad telnet skillz and some guessing that RTSP == HTTP in disguise weren't enough:

CODE

GET lts-av/berrill_replays/2006_11_07_cepsar/2006_11_07_cepsar_33k_h.mov RTSP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Server: QTSS/4.0
Connection: Close
Content-Type: video/quicktime
Content-Length: 104

rtsptext
rtsp://194.66.147.105:80lts-av/berrill_replays/2006_11_07_cepsar/2006_11_07_cepsar_33k_h.mov

invalid password
Connection closed by foreign host.

...and I thought I was being so clever... edit: after a brief struggle I admit temporary defeat; I can't even play the stream, let alone rip it