[X] My Assistant

[MizarKey]

The original article is here -> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...MNGBNC2S9B1.DTL

"But if it isn't a barrier, then within the next week we're aiming for an old eroded crater called Erebus, and after that a huge crater called Victoria that's 900 kilometers (560 miles) across with 40 meters of exposed sedimentary rock on the walls. There's a target to look for water!"

***********************

The rest of the article was pretty good, but the thought that Victoria is 560 miles across gave me a good giggle.

[djellison]

I think it will becomer harder to justify - but not impossible. I'm sure that given a few more hundred sols they can get even more efficient at driving these things - less chains in the chain of command and so on.

This has always been my main gripe with people pitching for half a dozen MER clones - given a few hundred sols of operation, it's the running of the things that costs a fortune

But - even at $50m/year (which is about right I believe) - they are a bargin and should be used until they die.


Doug

[Jeff7]

I think it will becomer harder to justify - but not impossible. I'm sure that given a few more hundred sols they can get even more efficient at driving these things - less chains in the chain of command and so on.

This has always been my main gripe with people pitching for half a dozen MER clones - given a few hundred sols of operation, it's the running of the things that costs a fortune

But - even at $50m/year (which is about right I believe) - they are a bargin and should be used until they die.


Doug

Geez, I sure hope that you 1) don't have people working for you, and 2) don't have that attitude about your workers.
Use them until they die.
Work to death, dammit!!

Be really cool if, when the MSR's make it to Mars, they'd manage to meet up with one of their predecessors. Won't happen of course, as there's no point in examining the same place twice, but still, neat thought. Maybe it'd be funny to see Spirit absolutely covered in dust.

[dvandorn]

Be really cool if, when the MSR's make it to Mars, they'd manage to meet up with one of their predecessors. Won't happen of course, as there's no point in examining the same place twice, but still, neat thought. Maybe it'd be funny to see Spirit absolutely covered in dust.

Oh, I don't know -- if they do, indeed, delay MSL to 2011 and send two of them (as is being discussed), it might make sense to send one to Meridiani Planum. It is pretty well proven that Meridiani's landforms were shaped by standing water, and if the MSL rovers are looking for signs of past life, this would be a pretty good spot to start looking.

Also, Meridiani provides a pretty large stretch of absolutely flat "landing strip" for whatever landing system MSL ends up using. You could do worse than land near the edge of the extremely flat plains at Meridiani and drive off to more interesting-looking targets from there... If they do that, they might well land somewhere that Oppy has scoped out for them, give Oppy a once-over, and then drive off to some of the *really* interesting big craters and ejecta blankets to the south of Oppy's landing ellipse.

Whatever part of Mars they end up targeting for MSL, they're probably going to look at places that have good landing conditions closeby to interesting science targets, so the rovers can land on flat, level, relatively rock-free (if possibly boring) ground and then drive to more interesting spots.

-the other Doug