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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Spirit _ Recent Comments From Steve Squyres

Posted by: CosmicRocker Aug 14 2005, 06:45 AM

I attended Steve Squyres’ book signing in Houston Thursday. He gave an excellent presentation on the rovers and he did it in his usually energetic and stimulating style. While much of it covered things that fans like us already know, he also showed images from the most recent sols and said a little about recent interpretations. I didn’t take notes, but I did write up some of the more interesting tidbits I remembered after I came home. Here they are in a bullet list format.


Steve said that their recent interpretations of the origins of Methuselah and Voltaire leaned more toward creation from impact events, rather than volcanic processes.

He said they hoped to make the summit of Husband Hill in the next couple of weeks.

He also said that Spirit's panels were cranking out 900 watt-hours. I know that sounds high, but I’m sure that’s what I heard.

He showed an amazing animation that I had not seen previously, demonstrating the rover's rocker-bogie suspension driving over a simulated corrugated surface similar to the dunes of Meridiani. It was very cool, and I wish I could find it online.

He also showed that humorous video of a rover putting the RAT up to the face of a rock and grinding. All of a sudden, the teeth bite into the rock and the rover spins wildly around the arm, and throws a wheel into the air. I have been told that animation was created by Dan Maas. It was very well done.

Most of the science instruments are in good shape. He mentioned the miniTES that was acting up and then repaired itself, but the only serious problem with an instrument at the moment is the RAT on Spirit. Its diamond blades are shot...no more grinding for it, but it can still brush. They did something like 15 grinds on the mostly very hard rocks in Gusev crater, but it was only designed to do a few grinds.

I was able to ask him a couple of questions. I was about to ask what they learned from the rovers that would change the design of the MSL, but someone asked a very similar question first. Someone asked "If you had to do it over again, what would be different about the rovers?"
He mentioned two things that I remember.
1. He wanted nuclear power. smile.gif
2. He wanted the ability to analyze for more things, like organic molecules.
I'm sure he would have gone into more details if the audience was more technically oriented.

I asked him two questions. My first question was, “If you are able to make it to the summit of Husband Hill and take a monster panorama, where do you go next?” He said they didn't know exactly, but they would definitely head south. He mentioned there were some layered rocks on the south side that they might want to take a look at. I assume those are the ones near the base of the south side of the hill. He said they might move down from the summit, toward the south a bit, and then take a south-facing panorama. I assume they want to go down to the south a bit to get a better view of the area close to the base of the hill, where those layered outcrops are.

My second question was, “What do you expect to find with Opportunity, now that you are entering the etched terrain? I wanted to know what he thought it would look like and what kind of science he expected to do in an environment where the rocks were exposed on the surface, rather than in the walls of a crater. By this time I felt as if I was pushing my luck, asking too much, while others still had questions. I wasn’t able to ask all that I wanted to know, but he said they were happy to learn that the etched terrain had a lot of rock, and not a lot of light-colored, rover-trapping dunes. But of course, we already knew that from his updates and the imagery. He said the amount of time they would spend in the etched terrain would depend on how much new science they could do.

He did say Victoria will be next, and if the etched terrain offers little new science, they will head directly toward Victoria Crater. I think Steve said Victoria had 40 meter tall outcrops.

Oh, one more interesting thing. CSPAN was there, recording the event. So, Steve Squyres’ presentation may be broadcast on that channel, and might possibly be turned into a realmedia stream at their web site.

Sorry for the length of this post, but it seemed there was a lot that others would find interesting. I hope I presented it accurately.

Posted by: general Aug 14 2005, 07:03 AM

Spinning Rover:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov

Posted by: Nirgal Aug 14 2005, 10:05 AM

Thanks a lot for the detailed report, CosmicRocker !

I especially like the following part:

QUOTE
He said the amount of time they would spend in the etched terrain would depend on how much new science they could do.

He did say Victoria will be next, and if the etched terrain offers little new science, they will head directly toward Victoria Crater. I think Steve said Victoria had 40 meter tall outcrops.


IMHO this would be the best strategy to maximise the scientific use of the remaing Rover lifetime smile.gif

Posted by: Cugel Aug 14 2005, 11:35 AM

As the mythbusters would say: "Does the fun ever stop?"

Posted by: centsworth_II Aug 14 2005, 02:16 PM

Great report, thanks. I can't wait for that south-facing pan!

Posted by: djellison Aug 14 2005, 03:45 PM

"When will the fun EVER stop


.. am I missing an eye brow"

smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: helvick Aug 14 2005, 08:45 PM

QUOTE (CosmicRocker @ Aug 14 2005, 07:45 AM)
He also said that Spirit's panels were cranking out 900 watt-hours.  I know that sounds high, but I’m sure that’s what I heard.
*


Excellent news - that's about 200 watts more than my extrapolation from the last confirmed spirit value. Some of that's due to the favourable orientation but clearly the dust cleaning martians have been keeping up the good work. smile.gif

Posted by: Bob Shaw Aug 14 2005, 08:51 PM

QUOTE (helvick @ Aug 14 2005, 09:45 PM)
Excellent news - that's about 200 watts more than my extrapolation from the last confirmed spirit value. Some of that's due to the favourable orientation but clearly the dust cleaning martians have been keeping up the good work.  smile.gif
*


What does the 200W extra do for the projected Rover death graph?

Posted by: helvick Aug 14 2005, 09:30 PM

QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Aug 14 2005, 09:51 PM)
What does the 200W extra do for the projected Rover death graph?
*


Well if all other things remain equal the Solar Panel output drops to 280 on sol 988 with the minimum of 275 watts reached on Sol 1030. Prior to this my estimate was that Spirit would drop to 280 watts on Sol 829, with a minimum of 216 reached on Sol 1020.

The "all other things being equal" is a big if but it's excellent news none the less.

 

Posted by: aldo12xu Aug 15 2005, 01:20 AM

Wow, that's amazing, helvick, we're looking at the rovers carrying on at least into June 2006, if the current trend is maintained smile.gif

Posted by: babakm Aug 15 2005, 02:46 AM

One factor that has to be considered is the increasing altitude of Spirit over the plains. With such a thin atmosphere, there has to be a sharp drop-off in dust content even at the top of martian hills. If this is a factor, it makes the thought of decending down the South side of the hill going into winter a more daunting one.

Posted by: Jeff7 Aug 15 2005, 04:37 AM

QUOTE (general @ Aug 14 2005, 02:03 AM)
Spinning Rover:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov
*


Thanks for the link. smile.gif


The power output, 900W - what is the rated output of those solar cells? Like, what were they at when the rovers first deployed them? That's just crazy that it's this high again.



And thank you of course to Cosmic Rocker for the update. Did you see anyone there with a videocamera? biggrin.gif

Posted by: CosmicRocker Aug 15 2005, 05:18 AM

QUOTE (Jeff7 @ Aug 14 2005, 10:37 PM)
...Did you see anyone there with a videocamera?  biggrin.gif
*

Only CSPAN.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Aug 15 2005, 08:09 AM

QUOTE (babakm @ Aug 15 2005, 03:46 AM)
One factor that has to be considered is the increasing altitude of Spirit over the plains.  With such a thin atmosphere, there has to be a sharp drop-off in dust content even at the top of martian hills.  If this is a factor, it makes the thought of decending down the South side of the hill going into winter a more daunting one.
*


Somehow, I don't think so. The pressure difference on Mars between 'sea level' and any given altitude is proportionally LESS than on Earth, and the Columbia Hills are actually very low. And Martian dust - the thin, light stuff - gets *very* high (remember the proposed sample return mission which was going to pick up dust during an aerobraking pass and return directly to earth?).

For all that MER is a brilliant success, it's in many ways not so much a Rover as a fixed lander that can, er, move. A human being would be at the top of the hills before the first morning was half over... ...we're not exactly in the Himalayas, so need not be particularly worried about the terrors of the mountains!

Posted by: centsworth_II Aug 15 2005, 12:49 PM

QUOTE (aldo12xu @ Aug 14 2005, 08:20 PM)
Wow, that's amazing, helvick, we're looking at the rovers carrying on at least into June 2006, if the current trend is maintained smile.gif
*


From page 187 of Squyres' book, Roving Mars:
"If we launched in 2005, we'd arrive at Mars when the planet was far from the sun and when it was almost as far away from Earth as it ever gets. Solar power would be bad, and communication to Earth would be awful. The mission was so bad in 2005 that it wasn't clear that it made sense to fly it at all."

It would be amazing if the rovers lasted into spring of 2006 when the mission prognosis for that time was so bad, even for a freshly delivered rover. To think that at least one of the rovers may end up doing just that boggles the mind!

Posted by: helvick Aug 15 2005, 01:48 PM

QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Aug 15 2005, 09:09 AM)
For all that MER is a brilliant success, it's in many ways not so much a Rover as a fixed lander that can, er, move. A human being would be at the top of the hills before the first morning was half over... ...we're not exactly in the Himalayas, so need not be particularly worried about the terrors of the mountains!
*


All very true but this does emphasize how delicate and potentially fragile the little beasties are.

I wouldn't ignore the risk that there are significant variations in the dust environments on a small scale though. We saw that simply having Opportunity inside Endurance during the worst of winter kept it much healthier than Spirit and that situation changed dramatically once it came out of Endurance. I don't think altitude per se has anything to do with it - it seems to me that the localised behavior of the atmosphere at ground level is entirely dependant on the shape of the terrain. It would not surprise me at all to find that the other side of the hill was a deep dust drift that could cause Spirit lots of problems.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Aug 15 2005, 03:38 PM

QUOTE (CosmicRocker @ Aug 14 2005, 01:45 AM)
Sorry for the length of this post, but it seemed there was a lot that others would find interesting.  I hope I presented it accurately.
*

No sorry please, I would say to you "Many thanks", I am very pleased to hear from you.

Rodolfo

Posted by: RNeuhaus Aug 15 2005, 03:45 PM

QUOTE (babakm @ Aug 14 2005, 09:46 PM)
One factor that has to be considered is the increasing altitude of Spirit over the plains.  With such a thin atmosphere, there has to be a sharp drop-off in dust content even at the top of martian hills.  If this is a factor, it makes the thought of decending down the South side of the hill going into winter a more daunting one.
*

Yes, indeed I agree it. The higher land, there is less dust, less sand, more rocks, and more winds...

I think, the other good factor to build up the solar power is that Spirit spent almost all the time facing on the north side where the sun incidence is closer to 90 degree.

Rodolfo

Posted by: Deimos Aug 15 2005, 03:53 PM

QUOTE (babakm @ Aug 15 2005, 02:46 AM)
One factor that has to be considered is the increasing altitude of Spirit over the plains.  With such a thin atmosphere, there has to be a sharp drop-off in dust content even at the top of martian hills. 
*


Nope. The published (and conference abstract) observations have dust well mixed to 10 or 20 km, with some dust at more than 40 km. The dust size seems to get a bit smaller up high, but it's there.

There's a simple (or just simplistic) way to guess at this. Visibility is to optical depth 4 or so. If there are 10 optical depths of dust between you and a crater, you cannot see it. If there is only one, you can. Since optical depth straight up from the rovers is about 1 or so, that means whatever the dust scale height is, you can barely make out features about 4 times further away. So, if you can see 60 km, the dust scale height is 15 km; if the dust scale heght is 100 m (providing optical depth is 1-ish), then you can see <1 km.

The numbers are all rough, but the basic idea is that the dust cannot be confined low where it is between Spirit and hills visible to Spirit. +-100m means +-1% (ish) dust, not large percentage changes.

Posted by: babakm Aug 15 2005, 05:15 PM

QUOTE (Deimos @ Aug 15 2005, 03:53 PM)
Nope. The published (and conference abstract) observations have dust well mixed to 10 or 20 km, with some dust at more than 40 km. The dust size seems to get a bit smaller up high, but it's there.


Did a bit of research on the subject and according to the latest research I could find (Forget et. al., 1999), the dust distribution in the lower atmosphere is indeed pretty uniform. Couldn't find anything concrete on particle size by altitude except that the stuff in the upper atmosphere is mostly of the 1-2 micron variety. I could still have a point, but I'll defer on this one for now. smile.gif

Posted by: Bob Shaw Aug 15 2005, 07:12 PM

QUOTE (babakm @ Aug 15 2005, 06:15 PM)
Did a bit of research on the subject and indeed, according to the latest research I could find (Forget et al), the dust distribution in the lower atmosphere is pretty uniform.  Couldn't find anything concrete on particle size by altitude except that the stuff in the upper atmosphere is mostly of the 1-2 micron variety.  I could still have a point, but I'll defer on this one for now. smile.gif
*


That stuff ain't 'dust' - it's practically *smoke*!

Posted by: Bill Harris Aug 15 2005, 08:07 PM

QUOTE
That stuff ain't 'dust' - it's practically *smoke*!


I don't know how Stoke's Law applies in a very thin, very cold atmosphere, but I'd suspect that the dust is various oxides of iron and silica ground down to molecular levels. It would take millennia to settle. I suspect that there are a lot of larger particles near to the ground that are made airborne by the wind and more larger particles within centimeter saltating away.

With no water vapor and clouds the dust in the atmosphere is not washed out as it is on Earth.

--Bill

Posted by: edstrick Aug 16 2005, 12:14 PM

Viking's landers and orbiters both observed the half-life <sort of> of dust in the atmosphere is a few weeks. Once the two great 1977 dust storms stopped raising dust and it got fairly uniformly mixed, there was a very nice exponential decay in observed dust levels. I'd have to dig out old xeroxes of articles to get hard numbers, but they got some very high quality science from the data. Dust smaller than the 1 to 2 microns of typical suspended dust may be present, but more likely as composite dust particles, instead of single grains.

Posted by: babakm Aug 16 2005, 12:40 PM

A 1999 report with relevant data/theories on the subject http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr/mars/publi/jgr99_mcd.pdf. Look at Table 3 (pressure) and Figure 3 (dust). They both imply pretty uniform dust levels in the altitudes that we're talking about. I'd love to see the "ground truth" results from the MER/MEX join observations.

Posted by: helvick Aug 17 2005, 01:48 PM

QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Aug 15 2005, 01:49 PM)
From page 187 of Squyres' book, Roving Mars:
"If we launched in 2005, we'd arrive at Mars when the planet was far from the sun and when it was almost as far away from Earth as it ever gets. Solar power would be bad, and communication to Earth would be awful.  The mission was so bad in 2005 that it wasn't clear that it made sense to fly it at all."

It would be amazing if the rovers lasted into spring of 2006 when the mission prognosis for that time was so bad, even for a freshly delivered rover. To think that at least one of the rovers may end up doing just that boggles the mind!
*


The 2003 launch window meant landing in Jan 04, that had insolation levels for the 90 Sol primary mission at levels that would produce ~840 Watt hours on average (ignoring varying tau, dust loss etc). Light time went from ~ 9 minutes at the start to 16minutes at the end.

For the 2005 Launch window (the one MRO used and assuming a 7 month flight time) insolation would have produced about ~720 watt hours on average during the primary mission and light time would have increased from 12 to 19 minutes over the 90 Sols.

Posted by: chokai Aug 19 2005, 06:58 PM

I saw SteveS yesterday in Seattle. I can highly recommend going to see him if ya get the chance. The book is great (stayed up all night reading it when I got it) and his presentation on the rovers is filled all sorts of great tidbits, and you always get new tidbits from him every time from what I heard about the one at Microsoft later that day. Showed some great stuff including some amazing dustdevil footage I had not seen yet. He mentioned the IMAX movie and seemed to indicate he was involved at least somehow, but I was unable to ask him about his involvement in that film as he was running out the door to get to his next engagement.

A few good jokes too showed the sense of humor Steve has that we've all come to appreciate. I personally enjoyed his comparison of the Rovers to Magellans expedition. Where Magellan started out with 200 men and only 18 survivors finished. And SteveS observed that he is going to finish his mission with the 18 surviving grad students.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Aug 20 2005, 04:08 AM

How fortunate. It sounds as if you were able to catch him in two different shows on the same day. (or perhaps you heard about the the one at MS second hand.) Anyway, did he have anyting interesting to say about the most recent sols? unsure.gif

Posted by: chokai Aug 20 2005, 06:59 AM

I only caught him at one presentations. Heard about the other one through friends who work at the Evil Empire that just had a few little differences, different factoids and the like. He did not say much beyond the recent sols that was not covered in his recent post. Fully expects to take "the mother of all panoramas" from the top of Husband Hill, I would say he is very confident in the ability to summit. He reiterated that they expect to summit and then drive down the other side, no indication to any planning changes. He didn't have much to say about Oppy.

I do regret not getting to ask him about any new conclusions about the state of Spirit's RAT though, given the pictures they took a few weeks ago on sol 565.

And Steve did show a video made of the dust devils recorded by spirit on Sol 568 that is very impressive. (It's Friday I had time to surf this evening, and find the originals.)

Posted by: djf Aug 24 2005, 02:50 PM

Here's a recently posted http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1445148.htm from an Australian radio show called "The World Today" with Steve as a guest.

Not too much new, but he mentions his initial reaction to the first navcams from the top. The transcript gets the spelling of his surname incorrect, but the interview itself is fairly good for a general audience show. Eleanor Hall is apparently ABC's answer to NPR's Terry Gross. ;)

QUOTE
STEVE SQUIRES: We expected them to last at least 90 days. Today is day 583 of our 90-day mission to Mars and they're still going strong. In fact, Spirit just today, arrived at the summit of a mountain that we had been climbing on Mars for the past year – I just saw the pictures from the summit about 10 minutes before we began this interview.

ELEANOR HALL: And how exciting were they? 

STEVE SQUIRES: Oh, it was fabulous. Good heavens! Spectacular views in all directions - we've only taken some low-resolution black and white pictures so far, but we're going to take the mother of all panoramas from this spot. It's going to be absolutely amazing.

Posted by: djellison Aug 24 2005, 02:51 PM

QUOTE (djf @ Aug 24 2005, 02:50 PM)
  The transcript gets the spelling of his surname incorrect,


I was spelling it as Squires for 15 months before figuring it was Squyres smile.gif

Hopefully I'll be skipping over most of those sorts of questions - straight down to the good stuff smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: Jeff7 Aug 24 2005, 08:46 PM

"The mother of all panoramas."
pancam.gif biggrin.gif

Hopefully the air will clear enough to see Gusev's walls.

Posted by: brianc Aug 26 2005, 03:54 PM

A very pleasant if lowbrow interview with Steve Squires on ABC Queensland by someone who sounds suspiciously like Rolf Harris

http://www.abc.net.au/queensland/stories/s1446615.htm

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 11 2005, 03:00 AM

In the first post of this topic, I mentioned that CSPAN recorded Steve Squyres' presentation in Houston. I had been watching CSPAN's schedule, but apparently missed it when it aired on September 6th on Book TV. I learned that CSPAN has two separate video searches, one for the free on-line stuff, and another for videos of shows that can be purchased. This explains why it will not be found using the video search on the main cspan.org page.

It can be found using the video search at the CSPAN store. A search there for "mars rover" finds about 50 events recorded by CSPAN going all the way back to Pathfinder.

http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?zenid=12e5908f57f3d0d025bb7a6f41c5ff5c&main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&video_cat=SELECT+A+CATEGORY&video_policy=SELECT+A+POLICY&video_keyword=SELECT+A+KEYWORD&simple=mars+rover

Unfortunately, they did not record all of the MER events. I'm trying to convince myself it is worth $45 US for a DVD of a presentation that I attended. The other MER events are $29.95.

Posted by: Cugel Sep 16 2005, 08:33 AM

http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

Steve is back home! And leading the troops once more.

Posted by: Marcel Sep 16 2005, 09:41 AM

I can imagine so well how frustrating it must be to suddently loose control (glitch of oppy) over the computer status and no clue whatsoever about what triggered it. Especially with the Spirit rebooting sequence still fresh in mind. I hope they'll find out all about it.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 16 2005, 11:03 AM

QUOTE (brianc @ Aug 26 2005, 04:54 PM)
A very pleasant if lowbrow interview with Steve Squires on ABC Queensland by someone who sounds suspiciously like  Rolf Harris

http://www.abc.net.au/queensland/stories/s1446615.htm
*


BrianC:

On the subject of Home Plate, I wonder if SS was asked if he could tell what it is, yet?

Bob Shaw

Posted by: edstrick Sep 16 2005, 11:30 AM

They may have some clues from the pan-cam 11 band spectra. Apparently, MiniTES capabilities are severely degraded at that distance because of atmosphere interference.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 16 2005, 11:32 AM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 16 2005, 12:30 PM)
They may have some clues from the pan-cam 11 band spectra.  Apparently, MiniTES capabilities are severely degraded at that distance because of atmosphere interference.
*


Edstrick:

Whoosh!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Redstone Sep 18 2005, 04:01 AM

Squyres is going to be on BookTV on C-SPAN2 tomorrow (Sunday 18th) at 9:30 am Eastern Time. (1330 GMT, 2:30 pm BST).

Schedule and details at: http://www.booktv.org/schedule/

C-SPAN can be watched streaming at http://www.c-span.org/. Click on the links near the bottom center of the homepage.

I think this is a replay of the Houston presentation, but it could be something new. According to Yahoo TV, this is the first time it's aired. But they aren't so reliable.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 18 2005, 07:01 AM

Thank you, Redstone! I'm sure happy I noticed your post before going to bed. I had decided not to buy the DVD from CSPAN for $45, but now I can record it. I appreciate your mentioning that. smile.gif

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 18 2005, 07:54 AM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 16 2005, 05:30 AM)
They may have some clues from the pan-cam 11 band spectra.  ...
*

It takes a lot of effort to extract very crude spectra from the raw images we have access to, but I really thought I could take a shot at that today. The unknown exposure times really skew the points, but I hoped I might get lucky. My mother-in-law's 80th birthday party really messed up my plans.

Early in the mission I created several spectra of some blueberries using averaged pancam luminance values of selected berries. The best I could guess from them at the time was that certain iron oxides and sulfates were more consistent with the "spectra" I was seeing than other more igneous or vocanic iron minerals. When the calibrated data was finally presented in a press conference I was able to see the similarities and the significant differences between my 11 point data sets and theirs.

In spite of those problems, it might not be fruitless to attempt something similar with the many pancams of Home Plate. Maybe tomorow...

Posted by: edstrick Sep 18 2005, 10:35 AM

What I don't have access to now and would love to have is software that could do "Principal Component Analysis" of Images. It does statistical analysis of cross correlations in image sets and generates a series of component images. The first component is the one with the greatest correlation of all images combined, the second is perpendicular to the first in n-image statistics space and has the greatest remaining correlation after the first is eliminated, the third is perpendicular to the first two and so on. It can really help squeeze the "unusual" items out of a highly correlated dataset (for example, the infrared channels). Results are hard to interpret spectrally, but they really help pick out what's different.

Posted by: djellison Sep 18 2005, 02:42 PM

QUOTE (CosmicRocker @ Aug 14 2005, 06:45 AM)
I asked him two questions. 
*



Indeed you did - just saw it on Cspan2 smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: Redstone Sep 18 2005, 02:54 PM

I just watched it too. Great presentation. Steve looks older on C-SPAN than he does on NASA TV.

With this talk and Doug's interview, do I still need to buy the book? wink.gif Maybe I can hold out until the paperback comes out. smile.gif

I loved the comment about getting stuck in Purgatory: "If you want to get the attention of NASA Headquarters..." I can just imagine the "parents" at HQ worrying about what the kids at JPL are doing with the family car. biggrin.gif

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 18 2005, 06:30 PM

I'm glad both of you were able to watch that replay of his talk. He was informative, but also very entertaining. Another comment about Purgatory dune that I enjoyed came after he described the extensive extrication tests they performed in the test bed. He said something like, "After weeks of work we finally discovered the optimal technique to get the rover out...Put it in reverse, and gun it." The entire audience roared with laughter.

Doug: What you probably couldn't see in the Q&A session was that the white shirt I was wearing was my UMSF golf shirt, which had fortuitously arrived from CafePress that very day. I tried to turn the logo toward the camera a couple of times, but I was too far away for it to be visible.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 18 2005, 07:14 PM

edstrick: That would be interesting to try. I have been amazed many times by some of the powerful multivariate statistical techniques, and even did some PCA analysis of large well log datasets. But I must admit I really didn't understand the details of how it worked. I had to enlist the help of the company statistician, who tried to educate me. I got lost somewhere in multi-dimensional eigenvector space, and had a devil of a time finding my way home again. laugh.gif

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