Getting to 'Big Crater', A little premature speculation Options

[Ant103]

This thread remember me an other thread I made a time ago
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2327

[ustrax]

So, "UMSF" will be OK : it's a city under 100,000

aka the proud and glorious Geeksville!

[ElkGroveDan]

the IAU convention for naming craters on Mars would be named after a city on Earth with a population under 100,000.

Well "Elk Grove" is out as of about 2 years ago. I once lived in Bozeman, MT though. That has a nice ring to it. I'll start my naming campaign as soon as we are finished with Victoria.

[imipak]

Mad, mad, mad... you're all completely mad. I love it!

Looking at the large-scale image I thought: those knife-sharp rim hills would look sensational from the north with a low light angle, at dawn or sunset. Hmmm... I wonder how wide that ridgeline really is?

Now... imagine - if you dare - the view from the top of Priam...

[tim53]

So...Victoria shouldn't bear a city's name?

It doesn't.


...you guys know that, don't you?

-Tim.

[Jeff7]

And I was hesitating on starting talking about this...

Beyond!:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustr...ondvictoria.jpg



EDITED: And for what I'm seing that 'Big Crater' doesn't have a name...yet...

Time to start a poll for the arrival at Big Crater. Let's see, I'll give maybe 400 sols to Victoria if we hurry. So that'll be somewhere around Sol 1350 for departure. It took almost 900 Sols to explore Endurance and then get to Victoria, minus some time at Purgatory. Assuming 1 stopoff at MiniEndurance, and only 100 Sols there.....let me see here.

Leave Sol 1350. Drive days, lots of drive days. No science. 400 days to get to MiniEndurance, Sol 1750. 100 Sols of exploration. 1850. Another 400 to get to Big Crater. 2250.
Add in times for getting stuck, and more time for science stops that really should be made. Maybe push Sol 2500. Plus possible wheel problems similar to Spirit's, Sol 3000.

While I'd love to see it happen, I think that that's pushing it a little.

[slinted]

It's based on a THEMIS mosaic I found on the forums, can't remember who made it but thanks whoever you are!

You're welcome
Here's the original mosaic, if anyone else wants to play with it.

[climber]

Time to start a poll for the arrival at Big Crater. Let's see, I'll give maybe 400 sols to Victoria if we hurry. So that'll be somewhere around Sol 1350 for departure. It took almost 900 Sols to explore Endurance and then get to Victoria, minus some time at Purgatory. Assuming 1 stopoff at MiniEndurance, and only 100 Sols there.....let me see here.

Leave Sol 1350. Drive days, lots of drive days. No science. 400 days to get to MiniEndurance, Sol 1750. 100 Sols of exploration. 1850. Another 400 to get to Big Crater. 2250.
Add in times for getting stuck, and more time for science stops that really should be made. Maybe push Sol 2500. Plus possible wheel problems similar to Spirit's, Sol 3000.

While I'd love to see it happen, I think that that's pushing it a little.

What'll be the definition of arrival then ? The crater is so big!
Anyway, by Sol 3000, MSL will be already there

[climber]

You're welcome
Here's the original mosaic, if anyone else wants to play with it.

Whao!
If Endurance is the crater on the uper left and VC on the South of it (in this case I can also see Erebus) we've already have roved half the distance it'll take to get to the first descent big hill.
I just realise it's just NOT impossible
May be one day Oppy will just do what Spirit did : climb a Hill. Umbelievable!!!!

[djellison]

we've already have roved half the distance it'll take to get to the first descent big hill.

We've covered just under half the distance to the endurance scale crater between here and 'Big Crater' - in terms of getting to Big Crater - we've covered abotu 30% of the distance required.

Doug

[jamescanvin]

Tempting ain't it?...

Troy will be ours!
And we got the only horse that fits for the journey...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/troy.jpg

Man...I'm dizzy...

Nice diagram Ustrax, a shame it's fiction!

For two reasons - First, most of those features can't be seen in the original images - they are artifacts of Nico's processing. I can only see B, C & F

Here are some 5x vertical + contrast/brightness of the raw 943 pancams:



Second, The headings to those features are all wrong, here are the headings of the edges of the three features marked on the themis image.




As you can see B & C are the "Twin Peaks" on the north rim of the crater that we have been able to see for a while. As in my earlier work, the only thing in the direction of "F" is the far rim - It's a long way, but nowhere near as far as the Gusev rim is from Spirit so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to see that far.

As we've found with the MOC images, sometimes the headings don't quite line up over large distances - I've marked (in light blue) the bit of the rim just offset from the derived heading that looks higher and what I consider to be the best candidate for "F"

James

[MahFL]

Can anyone tell if the rim is higher than the Columbia Hills ?

[jamescanvin]

If you look at the image I posted back here - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=66855

It's hard to read - but it looks like some of the far rim peaks could be 150+m above the surrounding plains so yes, bigger than the Columbia hills. (And maybe 600-700m above the crater floor!)

[clt510]

As you can see B & C are the "Twin Peaks" on the north rim of the crater that we have been able to see for a while. As in my earlier work, the only thing in the direction of "F" is the far rim - It's a long way, but nowhere near as far as the Gusev rim is from Spirit so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to see that far.

Are you trying to start another near-rim far-rim argument?

[djellison]

Oh we've got to stop this I'm getting excited about the sort of view we could have from there - and that's bad because I really can't imagine us getting there, realistically.

Doug