[X] My Assistant

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

Just a reminder that the press briefing is tomorrow (November 30, 2005) at 10:00 am ET / 7:00 am PT and will be shown live on NASA TV:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/nov/H...s_Briefing.html

[tedstryk]

Just a reminder that the press briefing is tomorrow (November 30, 2005) at 10:00 am ET / 7:00 am PT and will be shown live on NASA TV:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/nov/H...s_Briefing.html

Some major discoveries will be announced, including:

Titan has an atmosphere
The Hellas and Argyre basins on Mars are of impact origin.
Mars has large volcanos in the Tharsis region.
Mars has two moons.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Oh, there's no question that most of the blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of ESA -- Southwood would have looked like a moron to deny it, and as Mike Caplinger says they also screwed up the Doppler business on the receiver. (Thank God they caught THAT in early rehearsals -- I'm just waiting for the public reaction when an expensive outer Solar System probe spends years getting to its destination and then fails at the last second, as so many inner System missions have.)

But they are hardly the only ones griping about ITAR -- "Phoenix" project scientist Deborah Bass waxes almost apoplectic about it on her blogsite ( http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/features/we...eborah_bass.php , 6-17-05 and 9-15-05 entries).

[mcaplinger]

But they are hardly the only ones griping about ITAR...

Bruce, I'm not disputing that ITAR is a pain in the ass, but then so is international cooperation in general. Just scheduling telecons with Europe is a huge pain. For that matter, even the East Coast is a pain.

All I'm saying is that the notion that the Cassini problems were caused by ITAR is simply not supported by fact.