[X] My Assistant

[GregM]

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[djellison]

There's a comprimise to be made between physical progress, and stop offs to do science. Sadly - as time goes on, those stop offs have to grow. A good mossbauer spec is now a 4 day exercise for instance.

However - I still think that the science has to be done and done properly. Everything needs context.

When they got to endurance crater - they didnt just do IDD work at the top, and the bottom, and interpolate between...they stopped all the way down doing rat hole after rat hole to read a history of the rocks infront of them - otherwise it would be like reading a history of the 20th Century as "Wright brothers built plane, Concorde was scrapped" - quite a bit happened in between

The same should still be true now imho - corners should not be cut simply to reach an arbritrary goal. Once we've 'done' this region properly - then we move on, as we did across the floor of Gusev getting to West Spur - it took only 60 sols of driving. The floor of gusev had been well characerised, they knew what it was all about - so foot to the floor and find something new at the hills.

To do the same at the Columbia hills now would be wrong. We've not characterised the whole lot yet - there's still more to be done. Once it's done though - I agree, the conecpt of a goal and a target date might be usefull to get across to something new. It depends, however, on what there is on 'the other side' of Husband Hill - that's the killed. we just dont know what we're going to find in the Ultreya region. To stand where we are now and specify a date for a distant target would be wrong, we dont know what targets there are between here and there. We knew it was all the same from Bonneville to Cahokia. Ditto Endurance to Vostok. Those were foot-to-the-floor situations. This isnt, as we dont know what lies ahead....


yet


Doug