[X] My Assistant

[stewjack]

The latest Riding with Robots podcast is featuring an interview with the Rover mission manager Byron Jones. He drops some hints about Opportunities future plans.

Riding with Robots podcasts combine an audio file with a automated slide show. It uses the m4a file format. This podcast requires the QuickTime video player because it downloads an m4a file. Unless you are certain that you can play m4a files - skip it.

Link to a 12 mb m4a file of podcast 16 "Interview with Byron Jones"

http://web.mac.com/bdunford/iWeb/Riding_wi...cast/rwr16c.m4a

Enjoy Jack

[djellison]

Bingo. If it took 22 months driving along the dunes to cover 6km - it's going to be 40-50-60 months to get anywhere near it - and we KNOW that drive motors fail on these things. Fancy dune-surfing with only 5 wheel drive? You're going nowhere if that happens in the typical Meridiani dune field - especially when you have to cross all the dunes instead of riding between them. The software doesn't let the rover fly - it simply lets it know when it's getting stuck. And it would get stuck....a LOT...and it also makes driving quite slow.

Heading toward Big crater, across very navigation unfriendly terrrain, with the likely outcome being a stuck rover in the middle of absolutely nowhere....that would be quite irrational. Lets see how we do with Victoria ( and we're talking multiple years imho ) - if we still have mobility once we're done with VIctoria ( and it may only be limited mobility by that time ) - then the safe option is to revisit and study more closely the terrain we know to contain good science but didn't have the time to visit previously.

But all this is pure conjectue - personally, I believe our days will end at Victoria - and I don't mid that one bit.