[X] My Assistant

[slinted]

This isn't really a Spirit only topic, but since she has been on Mars a bit longer, I'll give her the honor of this thread.

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/rovingmars/

January 27 release

[djellison]

That was YOUR voice for Mer A? Wow - you knew before anyone else that Spirit was alive basically.

I'd have been tempted to do this....

FD "MGS MOC - Flight"
You "Go ahead flight"
FD "Do you see anything yet"
You "Nope - not a thing. Nothing, bugger all"
FD "OK, Keep us posted"

Just to keep the suspense up a bit longer, then 5 minutes later

You "Flight MGS MOC"
FD "Go Ahead MGS MOC
You "I've got like, a quarter of a meg of stuff here from that thingie of yours, do you want me to put it on a data stick, or email you or something?"



Doug

[Shaka]

You "I've got like, a quarter of a meg of stuff here from that thingie of yours, do you want me to put it on a data stick, or email you or something?"



Doug

HAR! HAR! HAR! HAR! HAR! HAR! HAR! har!
Dougie, me darlin', y' may be "Member No. 1". Y' may be "The Administrator". But, God luv ya, y'can let yer hair down too. We all treasure that!

[Bob Shaw]

HAR!  HAR!  HAR!  HAR!  HAR!  HAR! HAR! har!
Dougie, me darlin', y' may be "Member No. 1".  Y' may be "The Administrator". But, God luv ya, y'can let yer hair down too.  We all treasure  that!

Doug:

Luxury. We'd have had to use semaphore...

(etc)

Being first to confirm the MER landing is a helluva thing for a CV, though! Pity it turned into a Buzz Aldrin moment (he was actually the first person to speak from the surface of the Moon, not Neil Armstrong, when he gave a brief status check upon landing - before 'Tranquility Base here...').

Bob Shaw

[djellison]

g, when he gave a brief status check upon landing - before 'Tranquility Base here...').

From memory here....and I'll get it wrong I'm sure

"OK Engine stopped, ACA out of detent ,Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in."

It's SOMETHING like that. Whenever you see a clip on TV, they go "OK Engine Stop, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed" andin my brain, I drop in the lines they 'missed'

Doug

[chris]

From memory here....and I'll get it wrong I'm sure

"OK Engine stopped, ACA out of detent ,Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in."

It's SOMETHING like that. Whenever you see a clip on TV, they go "OK Engine Stop, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed" andin my brain, I drop in the lines they 'missed'

Doug

Very good Doug! The Lunar Surface Journal gives us:

102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
102:45:43 Armstrong (on-board): Shutdown
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
102:45:57 Duke: We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong (on-board): Engine arm is off. (Pause) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

[ElkGroveDan]

Very good Doug! The Lunar Surface Journal gives us:

102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
102:45:43 Armstrong (on-board): Shutdown
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
102:45:57 Duke: We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong (on-board): Engine arm is off. (Pause) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

Good points both of you. I remember hearing the question on a game show "What was the first word spoken from the surface of the moon?" The answer was given as "Houston". But clearly poor old oft-forgotten Buzz Aldrin gets the nod here with the word "contact."

[djellison]

"What was the first word spoken from the surface of the moon?"  The answer was given as "Houston".

Excitingly, it's 'OK'


MC - fear not - your moment of fame is available to download....

http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000100/

09:28

Flight : MGS MOC this if Flight on MER A Ops
MGS MOC : Go ahead flight
Flight : Can you give me a current status please
MGS MOC : We're not quite yet able to say how much data volume we're getting, stand by and I will let you know ASAP



13:14
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC (with more than a little noticeable excitement)
Flight : Go MGS MOC
MGS MOC : I have some indication of greater than 240 kilobytes of MR data at this point which may be indicitive of reception after landing...we'll have to wait about another 4 minutes to get this data back down

16:43
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC I have positive confirmation of more than 240 kilobytes of MR data (Planetary society then go wild - THEY know what it means)

18:10
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC
Flight : Go MGS MOC
MGS MOC : I have 16 frames in lock, we see it in lock earliest is 04:24:57, latest is at 04:28:57 which is considerably after the expected landing time (translate as....why are you not going nuts, I've got data from your rover right here) I'm still waiting for the second chunk of data, standby

At this point we give Wayne Lee a slap for calling you Mike Malin

21:01 the "It's THERE..it's THERE" LGA beep - and they finally figure the spacecraft is OK - MGS MOC thinks "for god's sake -I was telling you that 5 minutes ago!!"



Doug

[mcaplinger]

MC - fear not - your moment of fame is available to download....

Wow, thanks Doug! And thanks also for including the time indices so I didn't have to listen to all of the commentary. (sorry Donna)

Frankly, what I said seems clearer than I remember it being -- I'm not sure why the JPL people continued to be in suspense as much as they did.

It's funny, we had NASA TV on in San Diego but with the volume turned down, and Wayne Lee's commentary wasn't on the voice loop we were on, so we really didn't have much sense of what the mood was at JPL. After they got the tones back the loop went nuts, so much so that I couldn't get a word in edgewise to indicate that we were pushing the UHF data back to JPL -- hence my "I assume you see your data" after it had come up on their screens.

If I had heard him, I would have asked the flight director to tell Wayne Lee I wasn't Malin...

I did get a call about a half hour after this point saying that our processing software had incorrectly time-tagged the EDL data, so I was in the office for a few hours after that making sure the next MGS pass would have good time tags. (It turned out the problem was due to the non-standard way we were processing the EDL data so as to tell how much we were getting in as close to real-time as possible.)