[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I've got three talks I give for local Astro Socs and the BAA, a Spirit one, an Opportunity one ( as each rover has far more material than can ever be squeezed into an hour as it is ) and '33 Cameras' which covers Viking landers, Pathfinder, MGS, MO2K, MEX, MER and MRO from a more technical point of view...

But, I'm giving two talks to the BAA in the near future ( Oppy talk at the end of Jan in London - boiled down to 45 mins...eeek ) and then I'm talking at the Out of London Weekend a little later in the year.

Having given my Spirit talk and my Opportunity talk to the BAA at that point, and 33 Cameras to the BAA's Instruments and Imaging section, I think it's time for another talk. Something slightly more light hearted perhaps, but with a message in there, so I've come up with some ideas for what I think could be a fantastic talk in the 45 - 60 min bracket - showing some of the cock ups that have happened in the past, and the success that has occured despite these cockups. i.e. the Near trajectory, Genesis, Stardust Filter Wheel, Hubble mirror, Galileo HGA and so on and so forth - show what went wrong, why, and what was done to drag things back. I often get quite a few laughs during my talks as I try to keep them as light hearted but informative as I can ( I have suffered enough hour long talks of utter dead pan boredom to know that I never want to give one ) . I dont want to turn this into a stand up routine, but I think this talk could actually be good down to seniors at school as well ( 16-18ish ) and get people to realise the challenges and achievments of these missions. Look what NEAR managed despite totally missing it's first rendezvous with Eros, look how DS1 met Braille despite having no Star Scanner, look what Galileo did without an HGA etc etc, Look how, despite being a laughing stock, Hubble came back to glory etc etc

Whadda ya think and what do you think I should cover. I'm not too sure about covering TOTAL failures, Contour, MPL and MCO - perhaps I should, especially where there is a lesson to be learnt from it - but it'd be interesting to see what you guys think of the idea and what I might throw in there.


Doug