[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Six days to go until Enceladus flyby ( E2? ) at 175 km

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Ms. Lakdawalla has indeed -- understandably -- hit the ceiling about my accusation. Another conversation I've just had with Dr. Spilker confirms that the key erroneous statement "So the vents are not the source of the E Ring" was indeed made to Ms. Lakdawalla, in just those words, by Dr. Spilker herself, because it was the tentative very early conclusion of the Cassini science team themselves (which they have now completely changed their minds about, on what would seem to be the obvious grounds that Saturn's other moons aren't throwing off E Rings of their own).

So Ms. Lakdawalla concocted exactly nothing; the error was entirely one by her source. My profound apologies to her. (Also, my embarrassed apologies for managing to misspell her name twice in a row. You'd think that someone whose name is misspelled as often as mine is would be a bit more sensitive to that point as well.)

[john_s]

Can I just say how impressed I've been with Emily Lakdawalla's coverage of Cassini on the Planetary Society Web site?

[elakdawalla]

Can I just say how impressed I've been with Emily Lakdawalla's coverage of Cassini on the Planetary Society Web site?

Aw, shucks. Thanks, everyone. It's a labor of love.

Thank you, Mr. Moomaw, for being willing to retract your statement publicly.

And don't be hard on Linda Spilker, everyone, she deserves a lot of credit. When she was talking to me it was still relatively soon after the flyby. Linda may be the Deputy Project Scientist but Cassini has an ENORMOUS science team involving twelve different instruments, and it takes a long time for the team -- even someone as involved as she is -- to synthesize what all of the myriad different data sets are telling you. I'm happy she was willing to talk with me and express her own excitement about what were then very premature and uncertain conclusions, rather than sitting and waiting and waiting to talk about anything until all the "i"s were dotted and "t"s crossed. Of course the story changes over time -- that's what the scientific process is about. It's exciting to be able to watch the story unfolding.

Linda told me today that part of the confusion is because the CDA team were confused about the implications of their own data right after the flyby (something about the timing of the observations or something, I'm not quite sure about the details). She also told me there's a CDA release coming out shortly that should clear some of this up, but that it's being held up because NASA HQ doesn't want to confuse the press with more than one story at a time, and the Shuttle trumped everything. That's a tale of woe I've heard before from many missions. I wish NASA would give us more credit, and respect that we can handle more than one story at a time!

Emily

[dvandorn]

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, Emily. But we have to face the fact that we live in the world of the sound bite, the news cycle, and the MTV attention span.

Those of us who enjoy news of planetary exploration generally have longer-than-average attention spans and an ability to retain interest in a subject for longer than a single news cycle. But, more and more, I've come to the conclusion that we're the exceptions. Of course, we have resources like this forum with which to supplement what the organized media offer, and without it I think most of us would be going slowly insane...

As for my own two cents -- I'm glad to have both you and Bruce as contributors to this forum. I know that, even though you both write for special-interest publications, you have to keep your professional work at a certain level. Whereas here, y'all can get as detailed and as esoteric as you want, and anyone who wants any further background to help them understand just asks for clarification. It's refreshing and vastly more satisfying (to me and, I suspect, to a lot of the people here) than any other newsgroup, chat group, forum or single publication could hope to be.



-the other Doug