[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Rob Manning and I swopped emails last night - and we think it might make sense to pool all the questions people have about MSL (and specifically MSL's EDL ) into one thread - and then answer as many as make sense either via a Q'n'A in the style of the previous ones I've done with Steve and Jim - or via Rob's typing fingers.

It'll be a few weeks till we sort this out - but submit-away until then

Doug

[PhilHorzempa]

Rob,

There is a thread here at UMSF discussing possible names for MSL. I know
that you have no control over the naming of MSL (isn't that a shame?), and
that someone over in NASA HQ will decide. Here are my questions -

1. Can you let us at UMSF know who that bureaucrat is and how we
can contact him/her?

2. Do you have any favorite name, or names, for MSL?

3. Is there a "pet" name for MSL at JPL?

4. Have you heard other names suggested by JPL engineers?


I know that these are not technical questions, but I still think that they are important.
Names go a long way in helping the public identify with a mission.
Imagine if, instead of Stardust, the comet mission was named Flypaper-1.

Also, I am tired of the "let the school kids name the mission" trend.
I would rather have the project team name the project.
If that isn't allowed, how about opening up a naming program on the Internet,
open to Everyone, including adults and school kids. If you get a million suggestions,
then count your blessings in that amount of public interest. If that happens, pick
a thousand out randomly, have someone read all of those, and pick 10 finalists.
Then let the American Idol crowd vote for their favorite.

Another Phil

[mcaplinger]

2. Do you have any favorite name, or names, for MSL?

3. Is there a "pet" name for MSL at JPL?

4. Have you heard other names suggested by JPL engineers?

I can't speak for Rob or anybody at JPL, but I have never, ever heard any name for the vehicle other than MSL. JPL has never been big on "pretty names" for spacecraft: witness Mariner 9, Viking 2, etc. It's only been fairly recently that names started being used (Galileo and Magellan were the first I recall, obviously when you only have one spacecraft per mission type you can't use a number) and even then, those programs were often referred to as Jupiter Orbiter/Probe and Venus Radar Mapper, respectively. I will always think of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander as the Mars Surveyor 1998 Orbiter and Lander; the names (pretty lame in that case) usually come very late in the process. There are plenty of people who still call Spirit and Opportunity MER-A and MER-B (or MER-2 and MER-1

Sometimes the assembly techs have pet names for spacecraft, but they're not always printable :-)

[Stephen]

There are plenty of people who still call Spirit and Opportunity MER-A and MER-B (or MER-2 and MER-1

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that lame as they may be, and despite being wary of them initially myself, I've kinda grown comfortable with the names "Spirit" and "Opportunity", just as most seem to have grown comfortable with other names for other NASA spacecraft--like "Hubble", "Sojourner", "Magellan" and "Voyager" (the last, BTW, if memory serves, started out in life being called "Mariner Jupiter/Saturn" before being renamed; I wonder how many diehards at NASA or JPL still call them that?

In some senses "Spirit" and "Opportunity" even, bizarrely, reflect the rovers' respective fates (with "Opportunity" have more than its fair share of luck--eg its hole-in--one in Eagle Crater--and Spirit of pluck).

But that said others have not gone down so well. Does anybody--except maybe NASA's PR office--habitually refer to the Mars Pathfinder lander as the "Carl Sagan Memorial Station"? Or the Viking 1 lander as the "Thomas A. Mutch Memorial Station"?

For that matter who would refer to certain (other) pieces of MER hardware as the "Columbia Memorial Station" or the "Challenger Memorial Station"?

I guess in the end it all comes down to what we feel most comfortable with, have grown used to, or find trips most easily off the tongue.

======
Stephen

[dvandorn]

"Voyager" ... BTW, if memory serves, started out in life being called "Mariner Jupiter/Saturn" before being renamed; I wonder how many diehards at NASA or JPL still call them that?

I may be misremembering, but I have this vagrant memory that, at one point, they were referred to by the mission name Mariner Outer Planets Explorer. I also have a vagrant memory that they were renamed quickly after that, since no one wanted to fly a MOPE...

-the other Doug