PSP, It's coming... Options

[mchan]

Keyboard flakiness from spills _usually_ go away after sitting a day. If you have to use it again quickly, passing a hair dryer back and forth for about 5 minutes may speed up the process. Some folks use compressed air, but that risks blowing droplets further inside the keyboard enclosure which is not good especially if it is a laptop.

[Pavel]

My old G3 Blue and White Mac is "neptune". I also had a PC called "mimas" because it had apparent traces of physical abuse by the previous owner. If I ever lay my hands on a rust covered computer, it will be "mars". As long as it boots, of course.

[tuvas]

Back to the subject, here's another thought, taken from the HiRISE website.

Stereo image pairs will be acquired over the highest-priority locations with a vertical precision of better than 25 cm per pixel.

So, where do you think we will have stero images, maybe even stero color images? Just curious as to your thoughts.

[Nix]

Columbia Hills would be great tuvas.. .it also might help Spirit in her current condition to drive back safely up Home Plate and towards the rougher terrain south in the hill-complex.

Nico

[tuvas]

Columbia Hills would be great tuvas.. .it also might help Spirit in her current condition to drive back safely up Home Plate and towards the rougher terrain south in the hill-complex.

Nico

Is that the goal of Spirit now? The way I see it, Spirit's dying slowly, it won't be too long before it's gone... But, I have little doubt that there will be a picture taken of Spirit soon, perhaps in Stereo.

[helvick]

The way I see it, Spirit's dying slowly, it won't be too long before it's gone...

Oooh - Them's fightin' words.. She's not the healthiest it must be said but her power levels are rising and all it will take iss one good cleaning event and she should be strong enough to last another year.

[climber]

Oh YES, Sir !

[nprev]

Gotta side with Helvick, here...we need to respect superstition's eerie power over electromechanical devices & speak no evil about our babies!

For example, every time a US Air Force aircraft is launched, the crew chief makes a point of always touching the plane one last time (usually a rub like patting a dog). Silly, yes...but if you don't do it, you feel uncomfortable till that plane's safely back on the ground!

[tuvas]

Gotta side with Helvick, here...we need to respect superstition's eerie power over electromechanical devices & speak no evil about our babies!

For example, every time a US Air Force aircraft is launched, the crew chief makes a point of always touching the plane one last time (usually a rub like patting a dog). Silly, yes...but if you don't do it, you feel uncomfortable till that plane's safely back on the ground!

LOL, don't take it personally... Spirit's got some more time, but of the two rovers, she's dying alot faster... And she's limping. Still, she might get somewhere, I really don't know...

[jamescanvin]

Last time I counted Oppy was the one with more things wrong (shoulder joint and steering actuator vs just a wheel motor). Although none of these are a threat to the mission so don't have anything to do with them 'dying'. Granted Spirits wheel problem is more of a disability at this stage, but I have no doubt that she can still make significant progress this summer.
Power levels are on the rise too, so far from dying I think Spirit is starting to 'come back to life'. And as others have said all we need is one good cleaning event - which given the summer atmospheric activity we saw last year is not unlikely - and Spirit will be in great health.

Dying is a strong word - and a totally inappropiate one for either rover at this stage in my opinion.

James

[edstrick]

Spirit's in better shape, except for the wheel, but she should climb McCool hill to get in position for cleaning events, and that may only be possible to a limited extent. If she gets to Korolev or those other outcrops on McCool hill, that might be good places to angle <literally!> for a cleaning. Unfortunately, Gusev's an intrinsically dustier place than Meridiani, and the sheltered hollow of the hills is likely a bad place to wait for a dust cleaning event.

[Stu]

Isn't it great how we're so defensive of our brave rovers? Any insults or harsh words and gloves are being thrown on the ground or slapped across a cad's face so fast you can almost hear a sonic boom. And they say chivalry is dead...

Seriously, "dying" is waaaaaaaaaaay too strong, come on. You could say both rovers were "dying" from the second they emerged from their cocoons, as Mars' cosmic rays, radiation, alternating extremes of temperature and dust started to assault them.

Lots of life left in our brave gals yet.

[centsworth_II]

It's anyone's guess as to which rover will outlast the other. As far as power goes, either is one cleaning event away from leapfrogging the other. As far as mechanical/electrical, either could be struck a fatal blow at any time. There will be no winner or loser in longevity, only the bereaved and the surviving.

[tuvas]

Wow, you guys are really big rover fans... They really have been remarkable, but you guys are going to have to face it, there's an increasing chance every day that there'll be a catastrophic failure. Spirit is already limping, Opportunity has it's problems... If you get really lucky, they might survive until Phoenix lands, but I doubt much longer than that. I'd be surprised if they survive till the end of next year even... But, well, I suppose we'd better get a big back on track (This topic seems to get shifted a bit...)

[Stu]

I'm not sure you "get" our devotion to these rovers tuvas, to be honest. We're all well aware that either could die any day, that they're living on borrowed time, they're one wheel turn away from chirruping their last and tumbling over into the martian sand like R2D2, and we're not kidding ourselves that they're immortal. But many of us here have been following these missions since they were approved. We've followed the rovers' construction, watched their launches live on tiny RealPlayer screens on our monitors, followed their progress week by week and month by month until they arrived, then sat up all night anxiously waiting to hear that they'd landed safely after their long journey. We waited then for the first pictures to appear, and cheered, or cried, when they did. Yes, cried, I actually did that, I'm not ashamed to admit. Then, with the rovers safely down and working, for the past 3 years almost, we've started or ended or broken up our day - or all three - by going online to look at the latest pictures from Oppy and Spirit. We've mentally walked beside them on their epic journeys, accompanying Spirit towards then up and then down the Columbia Hills again... and keeping Opportunity company as she paced impatiently around Eagle then emerged onto the Great Plain and took off for Endurance and then Victoria...

... which sounds like an obsession, perhaps, and perhaps it is, but I don't care. These rovers aren't just machines to us tuvas - okay, well to me - they're much more than that. I hate using the cliche attached to so many things now, but the rovers really have been "The People's Rovers". They're our eyes on Mars, they let us wander its surface, they show us things we've only dared to dream of before. They've made Mars a real place again, a place we can imagine our grandchildren or great grandchildren walking and living on. They've not just ground into rocks they've burrowed into our lives and our consciousness. They've inspired us to spend hours creating panoramas, mosaics, poems and images. They've made people scattered across the world into a community with shared values, ambitions and dreams. They've changed our lives, in many ways, and it's not an overstatement saying that.

And as gorgeous as their pictures are, Cassini, Galileo, Hubble, MGS or any other probe you could name hasd not done that and I doubt any future probe will have as big an impact either, not ever MSL, because this is the first mission to Mars - or any planet - that people like us have been personally and actively involved in, and have been encouraged to become involved in by the people behind it, you see?

So, don't be quite so cynical or amused by our devotion to them. They matter to us, to our vision of the future, and it will be a tough day when the first one dies, and an even tougher one when its partner does.