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2009 Or 2011 ?, 1 or 2 ?
Rakhir
post Dec 4 2005, 08:24 AM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 4 2005, 01:41 AM)
I honestly don't understand why the French are so barmy on this subject.
*


It is just one of the many electoral tactics to win over some types of voters.
Others could say that jobs should be given in priority to native people, or anything else like that.

Anyway, english words are regularly integrated in oral and written french, whatever some people in the government could tell.

Sorry, a little off MSL topic. smile.gif
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Dec 4 2005, 08:45 AM
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QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 4 2005, 07:54 AM)
I'm TOLD (don't know for sure if it's true but I would NOT be surprised) that Esperanto is no longer the most widely spoken artificial language.  That record now goes to... Klingon!
*


Let's hope the French never have to embrace Klingon culture and start talking about the virtues of Blood Wine.
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Guest_exobioquest_*
post Dec 4 2005, 08:41 PM
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QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 4 2005, 01:54 AM)
I'm TOLD (don't know for sure if it's true but I would NOT be surprised) that Esperanto is no longer the most widely spoken artificial language.  That record now goes to... Klingon!
*


trekkies should be shot for sport! mad.gif

mcaplinger,

So it should not come to 50kg then? That’s a relief. So basically what your saying is that MastCam is finicky enough as is and integrating the direct to earth antenna would put so much strain on the system that reinforcing all the systems to handle the weight and work correctly would not be economical in weight savings and/or money?
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RNeuhaus
post Dec 5 2005, 10:05 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 3 2005, 06:41 PM)
"60 Minutes" did a marvelous piece a few years ago on the increasingly desperate efforts of the French government to keep the language pure of the vile English pollution -- including an angry debate between two advocates of the idea which ended with one of them yelling "Shut up!" at the other in English.  I honestly don't understand why the French are so barmy on this subject.
*

Sure, I did have hard time in speaking English in France, specially in Paris since nobody want to listen to English unless French spoken. So I had to speak with hands! Svp un Cafe. (Please a coffee). Svp deux billets de souterrain (Please two subway tickets)... I suspect they understand but they didn't want to listen so.

Rodolfo
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RNeuhaus
post Dec 5 2005, 10:15 PM
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QUOTE (exobioquest @ Dec 4 2005, 03:41 PM)
trekkies should be shot for sport! mad.gif

mcaplinger,

So it should not come to 50kg then? That’s a relief. So basically what your saying is that MastCam is finicky enough as is and integrating the direct to earth antenna would put so much strain on the system that reinforcing all the systems to handle the weight and work correctly would not be economical in weight savings and/or money?
*

As my memory does not fail, an previous post, a study that the price to send one kilogram to Mars varies according to the weight of rover. The average price would be around US$600,000. The bigger is the rover, likes ones of MSL with over than 700 kilograms in Earth, taking the advantage of scale economy, the price would drop to around US$ 200,000 per kilogram.



Rodolfo

Attached File  MER_C_2219.pdf ( 75.79K ) Number of downloads: 486
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GravityWaves
post Mar 25 2006, 05:58 PM
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QUOTE (Marcel @ May 20 2005, 08:42 AM) *



the Zubrinites and Manned-fans think it will get a few cutbacks
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/th...id=1835&start=1
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph...1219855c31d6f30
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 25 2006, 10:00 PM
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During the November COMPLEX meeting, the NASA spokespeople were still swearing on their sainted mothers' graves (assuming any of them have sainted mothers) that MSL will fly in its full form in 2009 -- and that, in fact, they were bleeding money out of the rest of the Mars program to make sure this happens. The new cuts in the Mars program are HUGE -- they amount to over $2 billion over the next 5 years -- but they all involve cancellation of the Telesat Orbiter and Bush's proposed "Human Precursor" missions (whose rationale was always extremely shaky), and the delay of sample return into the mid-2020s.

We are also never again going to see two US Mars missions -- however small one of them may be -- launched in the same window, except perhaps for the pair of scaled-down "Midrovers" being considered for the 2016 opportunity if they don't go for a single bigger MSL follow-up instead. (That means that the current plan calls for only one more Mars Scout after 2011, in the 2018 window.)
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Mariner9
post Mar 26 2006, 06:13 AM
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Well, while I would certainly be happy to see more dual launches, like the Mars 96 and 98, and MER, even getting 1 launch every 26 months is still fantastic when compared to a launch to Jupiter every 16-20 years, a launch to Venus every 15, launches to Mercury 30 years apart, .... and so on.

And when you consider the kinds of instrumentation we are flying now, compared to the hardware in the 60s and 70s, we are still in a very incredible period of exploration of the Red Planet.

For the last ten years as I've watched the Mars Exploration program evolve, it has always been in the back of my mind that nothing lasts forever. The day will probably arrive when the focus changes to a new target, or planetary missions get so rare that you can't have a single objet get this kind of attention.

So I just cherish each mission as it gets approved and cheer each time one arrives at it's target. Looks like MSL is a almost a done deal. Mars Scout 2011 looks like it's going to proceed to the selection phase. And from the sounds of things, the 2013 mission is in hot debate in the backrooms of JPL and NASA headquarters.

Things could be a lot worse.
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gpurcell
post Mar 26 2006, 02:42 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 25 2006, 10:00 PM) *
We are also never again going to see two US Mars missions -- however small one of them may be -- launched in the same window, except perhaps for the pair of scaled-down "Midrovers" being considered for the 2016 opportunity if they don't go for a single bigger MSL follow-up instead. (That means that the current plan calls for only one more Mars Scout after 2011, in the 2018 window.)


The story quoted above is from May 2005.

Bruce, the Earth-side logisitics for handling TWO MSLs at the same time would be amazing. JPL was really stretched with the two MER rovers; MSL will be much more demanding (simply because it can do so much more).

Beyond 2011, who can really say what will happen. A great deal will rest on the new Administration and the priorities they place in the budget.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 26 2006, 11:02 PM
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There never seems to have been any serious discussion of trying to run two MSLs at one time (which would be, as you say, insanely difficult). What I was talking about was that, up until late last year, they WERE talking about sometimes launching a Mars Scout in the same window as another bigger mission and running those two missions simultaneously. In fact, when Bush's "Mars Human Precursor" program was still around, they were talking briefly about flying THREE missions simultaneously in 2013. All that's gone.

I should also add that the concept of flying two "Midrovers" simultaneously is also very, very tentative at this point -- there hasn't even been any serious study yet as to whether rovers that size could really do the kind of surface studies they want in order to extend MSL's search for actual organic traces on Mars, let alone whether they could run two of them simultaneously (or would want to, given the fact that the MER project came pretty close to driving the staff of JPL into a collective nervous breakdown).
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mcaplinger
post Mar 26 2006, 11:19 PM
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QUOTE (gpurcell @ Mar 26 2006, 06:42 AM) *
Bruce, the Earth-side logisitics for handling TWO MSLs at the same time would be amazing.

Oh, I don't know. It depends on what you're trying to do, and how you're doing it (level of automation, etc.) The JPL way has always seemed a bit labor-intensive to me.

That said, they don't enough money for two MSLs, so that's not going to happen regardless of anything else.


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Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Mar 26 2006, 11:31 PM
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QUOTE (mcaplinger @ Mar 26 2006, 11:19 PM) *
Oh, I don't know. It depends on what you're trying to do, and how you're doing it (level of automation, etc.) The JPL way has always seemed a bit labor-intensive to me.

In my opinion, the operational constraint for the MERs requiring a separation between the two landing sites of at least 37 degrees of of surface arc undoubtedly complicated the issue by requiring two control teams operating in alternating shifts, resulting in hurried science planning, tired people operating on "Mars time," etc. Note the "37 degrees" constraint was driven primarily by telecom relay from Mars Odyssey since the orbiter can only relay data to and from one rover at a time. In order to optimize orbital relay telecom, the landing sites had to separated enough so that the orbiter "saw" only one rover on any given pass.

I imagine the near-term telecom infrastructure might be able to support simulataneous operations and, as you note, automation could alleviate the load. Of course, increased automation could lead to a decrease in jobs at JPL, which might not go over too well with the workforce.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 27 2006, 02:51 AM
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It's not so much that they don't have money for "two MSLs" -- they just don't have enough money to launch them within 2 years (or even 4 years) of each other. The exact nature of the 2016 mission is wide open, except that it will be the followup to MSL -- it could be two smaller Midrovers, or the more advanced MSL followup "Astrobiology Field Lab" rover, or a second MSL to a different location, or a stationary "Deep Drill" lander to carry out analyses similar to MSL's on material drilled up from several dozen meters down. All this depends on what MSL finds -- and, of course, on money.

In fact, since the biggest purpose of MSL is to locate a place on Mars with enough traces of organic compounds that it would be a good site for a sample return mission, if the first MSL does find such compounds they might not fly a followup at all, but just save the money for the sample-return mission to the same place (which might thus fly 2 years earlier than currently planned). In fact, there's a large minority block in MEPAG who would like to fly the Network Mission instead in 2016 (it's currently set for 2020).
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