[X] My Assistant

[Nix]

google: mars forum, found a bunch of them, started visiting the yellow forum and UMSF daily but quickly found interest here and frustration over there. Although it depends of course on who you're talking to.

why? One day I wanted to know if there were more MER-maniacs like me and immediately found what I was looking for.

Nico

[Chmee]

I am a refugee from Space.com land... I saw someone who posted a link here and followed it. I have to saw this is one of the best (if not the best) space message boards out there!

[MizarKey]

I came from one of those 'anomoly' Yahoo groups whose members are sometimes quite lucid. I had been of the mind that there was more than we'd been told about Mars. The rovers have shown quite clearly that Mars is a dusty desert planet. If there is life, it is probably clinging to tiny niches and very lowly evolved.
Once I got on this forum I never looked back. The level of professionalism and intelligence is miles above the other sites.

I remember my first day of cruising the images and I was hooked. Used to be I could keep up with all of the posts daily...ha! now there are so many people posting and so many topics..I have to concentrate on my main interests..Saturn and Mars.

Keep up all the good work everyone, I hope to contribute where I can (I especially like to make the animated GIFs of Saturns moons passing each other).

Eric P / MizarKey

P. S. Proud to be 'Member 45'.

[Phil Stooke]

I really can't remember... but it must have been a round-about route via Google.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

I came from one of those 'anomoly' Yahoo groups whose members are sometimes quite lucid.  I had been of the mind that there was more than we'd been told about Mars.  The rovers have shown quite clearly that Mars is a dusty desert planet.  If there is life, it is probably clinging to tiny niches and very lowly evolved.

Eric:

Slightly OT, but...

...I think we're exposing a macro-biological prejudice if we start talking about life 'clinging' or being 'lowly' - if an organism fits it's demonstrably harsh niche so well that it has out-lived all it's competitors, and shows no sign of dying out, then it's both highly evolved *and8 at the top of the tree! The human race should do so well!

Just because something is slime doesn't mean that it ain't top dog - our own planet appears to have a far larger and stable sub-surface ecosystem of 'lowly' organisms than that with which we big bugs on the surface are familiar!

And who's measuring relative success...

Bob Shaw

[ugordan]

I found it through the list of links on volcanopele's now-defunct Titan Today blog.  --Emily

[AOL]
Me too!
[/AOL]

[Omega]

Hello, new here. A former online friend gave me the link. Looks great, will read and post when able.

[silylene]

I came after TheChemist invited me (we knew each other from space.com forums)

[Greg Hullender]

Slashdot ran an article today called "Fountains of Enceladus." In a response, "Eccentric Anomoly" wrote Since Cassini is so slow in releasing results to the general public, you may be interested in this discussion (including some neat image processing) by amateur astronomers: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showt opic=1729 [unmannedspaceflight.com] This site usually get a jump on the official Cassini channels of about a week.

I followed the link and liked it so well here I modded him up. :-)

--Greg

[Patteroast]

I stumbled in last May... not sure how I found it, but I was messing around with other forums at the time, and I think getting directed over from Space.com is the most likely possibility. Been checking every day since. But as a teenager with no image processing skills, I don't have much to contribute. I'm just here to find out new and interesting things more quickly than you can anywhere else online.

[imran]

Someone (I believe Nick Hoffman) posted the link to mer.rlproject.com at habitablezone.com. I remember this vividly because Oppy had just arrived at Endurance and there was some good discussion going on here. I was also a regular at space.com. I've been guilty of mentioning the site a couple of times over at space.com but was definitely not the first one!

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Can't remember

[remcook]

I think I got here via a link on the new mars forum, when the rovers just landed

[DFinfrock]

I had been emailing Emily Lakdawalla with The Planetary Society. And she gave me the UMSF site.

I am a meteorologist. But after a BS and one semester of grad school, I succumbed to the siren call of the business world. For almost 30 years I have been a TV weathercaster. I'm afraid to think about how much math and physics I have forgotten over the years. I used to dream of participating in the exploration of Mars and the rest of the solar system. It had to stay a dream. But now I participate vicariously through this forum. And I congratulate and heartily thank all of you more educated and experienced members, whose contributions make this forum such a joy. I'm here every day.

By the way, for those of you who are members of The Planetary Society, there is a new forum there. It is just in the very beginning stages. But it too will hopefully grow and become useful... but of course it will never replace this forum!

David Finfrock

[um3k]

I found it through the lunatic Mars forum.