[X] My Assistant

[tuvas]

Okay, so there's only a few days till the landing, and I'm just curious, where will you all be? Just trying to keep a similar sounding thread to it's original purpose, that's all.

I am planning as of now to be at the LPL event at the University of Arizona. It should be interesting. I can only be there for about the hour around the landing time, but that's alright.

[dvandorn]

Drat -- I've enjoyed the live chat function here when we've followed things like shuttle launches, Ariane launches, planetary probe launches... I was hoping we could do the same thing this weekend.

Any way the function might be active by then?

-the other Doug

[climber]

I've got a flight on monday at 7am which is about 5 hours after landing. I'll have to leave home 3 hours after landing, hopefully after the first image(s) are down.
So, here is what I'm trying to do.
I've started since this week-end to go to bed earlier each day so I hope to be able to wake up 3 hours before landing after a decent sleep. I'll sleep again during transportation and hopefully not too much during my one week meeting!
I'll be home watching the landing using as many links as possible, UMSF & Nasa-TV & Emily's blog from the web been the 3 priorities, and YES, Rui, I'll watch SpacEurope too
Nice pressure feelings are building up here

[kwan3217]

Same place I was when Opportunity landed, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It's much more fun to do one of these events with many people around.

[DDAVIS]

I will be at JPL, assuming the role of a journalist. I have been there for every Mars landing except Viking 2.

Don

[djellison]

Does the Live Chat link work?

No. We had it for a while, but it was essentially, crap and rather unreliable and rather expensive. I'd suggest #space on irc.freenode. I wont have the time to monitor a chat room as well as everything else - someone else can do it

Doug

[remcook]

I too will probably be sleeping.... Need my sleep! Will try and wake up early though to catch up on UMSF.

[Tesheiner]

As I said here, I will be zzzzzzzzz and will follow the whole EDL not in ERT (Earth Received Time) or SET (Spacecraft Event Time) but in LMABT (Late Morning After Breakfast Time).

[Skyrunner]

I'll be at home eating peanuts until 6 am (western Europe) watching NTV and the websites posted here. It's gonna be an allnighter

[imipak]

Thinking ahead about how it'll be here on UMSF - will there be a single main EDL topic so I can keep refreshing the same page? Shame about the lack of chat, IRC it is then. Hmmm... I'm gonna need a bigger monitor!

Incidentally I hacked up an ugly scrap of perl to drop the current landing countdown in my mail sigs, and a version that does a running on-screen (well, in-terminal) countdown - PM me if anyone'd like the source.

CODE

$ ./edl.pl
Phoenix lands in: 3 days, 11:53:19
^c

I'm following the excellent example of nprev regarding beer (Old Hooky for me... REAL beer!) and peanuts - I'm wondering about shelling out for a proper Monte Cristo and possibly a half-bottle of something fizzy and French as well... I don't want to tempt the ghoul, but I'm sure a noodly appendage will stretch forth unto Mars and poke it in the eye. Did someone say something about "excitement"? I'll get excited once we have an image of successful panel and arm deployment; until then it's just - "ph33r"...

[nprev]

Right on, IM! (BTW, I do believe that you are the first person in the world to use the phrase "excellent example" with respect to any aspect of my behavior... )

[MahFL]

I will be watching on the PC at home as we don't have nasa TV on cable.

[Pertinax]

Having no cable (choice, not geography), as soon as the four wee ones are trundled off to bed (thinking we may go for short or no naps Sunday to help getting to bed by ~7PM EDT) I'll be glued to all the usual internet sites and praying that the NASA TV streams remain usable!

Thankfully my wife is just enough of a nerd to understand my love of mars and spaceflight that I don't anticipate toooo many sideways looks!


-- Pertinax

[Stu]

Thinking ahead about how it'll be here on UMSF - will there be a single main EDL topic so I can keep refreshing the same page?

Good idea, or things are going to get very messy and muxed up. How about starting a dedicated EDL thread when NASA TV coverage actually starts, so we're all chatting in the same place?

[djellison]

Agreed. I will start a thread closer to the time.

An EDL thread
and then a new First comms pass thread as well.

Doug

[dvandorn]

Not to try and offend any tea-totallers or professionally sober members we may have, but Nick's discussion of beer leads me to think of how I may use The Brew this Sunday.

I happen to have three-quarters of a case of Foster's in my kitchen. Assuming Phoenix lands safely, I will likely have one or two in celebration (and to wash down my peanuts). If it's not as good of a day as we all hope, I'll probably have several of them to savor the numbing effect...

-the other Doug