What happened to the Cornell page with Steve Squyres's updates?
I'm forwarded to a ballet Website.

http://athena.cornell.edu/

No, SS hasn't taken on another opportunity (no pun intended)...

It seems to be a mixup of the DNS records. The other athena1 server is still there and functioning:

http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

That's priceless - I love it

Doug

That sounds like the classic case of the early CD pressing that was supposed to be (and was labled, packaged and shipped as) "Lawrence Welk" (music for the geriatric set), but actually was "The Sex Pistols". I understand it's quite collectible now... like miss-struck coins.

Only problem is that they still play Feb 5th performance everyday...
As long as they keep going with Cinderela, it's OK for me. I'll hate to see "Swan's lake", rigth now.

Steve is aware and will sort of when he get's a chance, and he's v.v.v.busy at the moment, but will try and get an update done as soon as he can.

Doug

Perhaps with NASA's science budget woes, the team is looking for funding possibilities with the NEA?
Of course, this has been attempted before with the famous Murder in the Cathedral production by Buzz Aldrin's Mercury Players, which unfortunately ended with an abort in the third act.

Unfortunately Spirit can't pirouette like she used to, though it is nice to see Oppy doing Grand Jetés once more.

MARS EXPLORERS - SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY (The Science Show, 1/04/06)

When NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity in
2005, their designers expected them to last for 90 days - they are still
going 792 days - and counting.

Dr Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the science instruments on the
rovers, attributes their longevity to good hardware and good luck. Dr Squyres
speaks about future missions to Mars and other prospective NASA projects.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1604852.htm

Is there any special reason for the absence of words there or the work
just won't permit you to have time to update it?


'Just the workload. It's summertime, when people on the team take their
family vacations. For those of us who are not on vacation, that means many
extra hours of flight operations each week to keep the rovers busy. Add to
that the many papers that we're trying to get written, and it just doesn't
leave much time for anything else.

Having said that, I realize that there are many people who would like to
see me do a better job of providing updates. If I'm able to find the time,
I promise I will.

Cheers, SS'

Personally, I'm just grateful that he takes time to write ANYTHING at ANY time. After all the guy has done, and with everything else he has on his plate, surely we can't expect him to write a pseudo-blog too?

Thanks, Ustrax, for the latest from the Steverino Hotline. Glad you're keeping him on his toes.
Of course the last update was mid-winter, so I don't know if summer vacation is the whole story. Always glad to know papers are in the pipeline. Maybe you should have asked him when and where we'll see the paper on Home Plate. (I'm not suggesting you email him right back! ) I'd rather see the paper than the update, if it's an either/or situation.

I think that publications like Squyres updates are very interesting for science popularizing. They are not a science paper, they may be even speculative (not tested hypothesis) but they are in a style which makes them much more available for the general public. So it is important to continue them.

In general scientists don't publish themselves for the general public, or only into specialized science reviews (for popularizing, but they require that the reader is interested in them). So we can only encourage Squyres to continue, and all other scientists to take example.

Yes Stu...I replied Mr. Squyres something like that...

...updates are not an obligation for you, you do them because you care about people who care about the mission and we are thankful for that. I believe that the MER mission (and Cassini also), and you, personally, have marked a new ground in space exploration by providing a constant flow of information for the public. That's priceless. And it is a way of sowing seeds into the future.'

Well said, Ustrax.
Maybe you're not crazy after all!

Hey! I read that!


Edited: But be sure that I'm really crazy...

Personally I see it as a duty of Steve or someone on the team to give us all some thoughts and maybe conclusions on what they are finding up there. And I don't like having to wait and pay for it twice (american tax payer here) in the form of a book. I see them as servants to the public and not like Kings waiting for their edicts to be handed down.....

I understand some of the frustration BillyMER feels: Like spoiled children, the more we get the more we want. But it is a bit uncomfortable to read such a harsh tone directed at the trail-blazing MER PR program which is a gold standard for others to aspire to.

Let me add to those expressing their appreciation for all the outreach SS and others on the MER team have done. Please continue to feed us tidbits (and more!) from behind the scenes.

We get the weekly JPL updates, and 500+ images a week, and a database of MER images, and regularly posted mosaics and animations and route maps.

I think any 'duty' is being MORE than fullfilled by all concerned.

Truth be told BillyMER, I think your attitude toward those who have been putting in obscene hours for 29 straight months, is bang out of order.

You want to know how bad it could actually be....look at MEX. MER is a burst floodgate of regular and insightful information in comparison.

Doug

I'm sorry if I come off seeming harsh,maybe I am but there's only like one side represented here (the politically correct one) so much that one can get just frustrated I could burst :-) the updates,mosaics are fine but I would like to hear more from the top.

I wish some of those obscene hours would fall on the weekends more if you know what I mean ;-)

As an American taxpayer, I agree with Doug. We're getting what we paid for and then some. I don't begrudge Steve writing a book about his personal experiences in his free time.

Many of these guys spend a lifetime living from grant-to-grant in pursuit of knowledge. It's an admirable sacrifice but it's one reason why I opted out of that career path after college. If a guy like Steve strikes success from his lifelong accumulation of experiences, well more power to him. I hope he earns every dime he can get his hands on, and I thank him for his contributions here (even if we do have to get them via Portugal.)

In a word....BALLS. Clearly you've never read anything about ESA in this forum

If you read what Steve has said - he wants to do more...but simply does not have the time. I've done my bit to help out with the Pancam updates ( Jim was in the same situation, he doesn't have the time to sit down and write something, and the podcastey type solution was one of my ideas )

I think we get plenty - we get more than we can consider to be 'expected' - it would be ace if Steve could do a bit more, but it's firmly in the 'bonus' catagory.

Doug

Almost all NASA-funded PIs go way beyond what they are actually contractually required to do in terms of education/public outreach (E/PO). You should be lucky that most of them don't merely adhere to the letter of their accepted proposals and, for example, just provide a minimum of E/PO, deliver calibrated data to the PDS, publish in peer-reviewed science journals, and conduct occasional press releases.

I understand what BillyMER intended to say: seing the imperfections of the MER public relation programs (like no Squyre updates yet about Homeplate) he feels frustrated. But he is not aware that nearby everywhere else it is much worse (and I don't speak for my own country, France, where it is a tradition for scientists to consider the general public as far too dumb to understand anything to their higher sapience, and for the journalists to consider that anyway nobody is interested in science).

In fact I cannot tell any other science exploration or experience where all the images are available to the general public, with informed comments on what they mean! (except the ESA Huygens site, where the raw images and results are available, but they were at a frustrating slow rate).

I think it is a very good thing, and many people will feel interested.

How to do better? in such a way that any major program would have a public relation person, a scientist understanding what is going on, working with the other scientists and technicians, but with enough time scheduled to make a serious public information work without having to take on his personnal free time. Yet another budget line? yes, another one, but globally if people are informed of science discoveries and science stakes, they will be interested, they will better support science, and at a moment or another this will appear as a larger science budget, much more than re-paying the PR effort .


Another more subtle but very important point in Squyre-style information, is that it is presented in a public-friendly way. Few people understand what means a basalt with more titanium and less calcium, and most will simply discard such data. But saying that a given basalt is more maturated through a magma chamber, or that it comes from a different mantellic reservoir, this is understandable by everybody.

I am not complaining but how can this be...Last update was issued on February 5...much to early for summer vacations...what happened in the meantime?
I really miss those updates...

I miss them - but I'm not going to mouth of as if we're owed them, because that's just not the case.

Doug

Likewise - these were a gift to folks like us and very much appreciated by me as such. Rather than complaining I would point to these and all of the other outreach efforts made by Steve as an outstanding example that I'd love to see followed by others.

I honestly can't believe anyone can give SS anything but praise and thanks for his reports, it's ridiculous. We are so spoiled these days!! Just pause a minute to think back to the Bad Old Days... the days when we had to wait two to three MONTHS to see "the latest pictures from Mars" (usually badly printed and spoiled by being split between two stapled pages) in National Geographic, Astronomy or Sky and Telescope, instead of having them available online, to download in all their mega-crisp multi-Mb glory, for free, mere days or even hours after they're taken; when the only reports we had were badly-written pieces by totally uninterested hack reporters, regurgitated NASA press releases instead of personal "blogs" and mission websites written by the engineers, technicians and operators themselves; when we had absolutely no personal involvement in the missions, no opportunities to correspond with the people behind it, and absolutely no hope in hell of making our own new and improved images out of NASA's own pictures. Hands up anyone who seriously wants to go back to those "Good Old Days"?

Thought not.

So let me check I've got this straight... we have a globally-renowned and -respected planetary scientist, responsible for securing the funding of and then designing, building, launching and then operating what are arguably the two most succesful unmanned probes in the history of space exploration, who travels the world to publicise and promote planetary exploration and science, who allows us to join in the MER mission by virtually-live downloads of the images taken by Spirit and Oppy, who helped produce a stunning (or so I've heard!!! ) IMAX film which is the closet any of us will probably ever come to stepping on Mars ourselves, who shared the experience of mounting a mission to Mars with us in a book... who selflessly writes to some of us here personally... and he's being criticised, not for not writing ANYTHING about the mission online as it continues, but for not writing ENOUGH about it..?

Um...

I only hope others follow his example when MSL and Phoenix land.

Ditto!

Reditto!

Edited: 'But I also got the sense that Ultreya had become something of a symbol of hope for future exploration for you and for others in the Internet community.'

Don't you remember this words?
Let's hope future discoverers will all be like Steve.

Richard is dead on with this, it would be ideal if there were an 'Emily' assigned to each mission to give daily or weekly blogs from behind the scenes. Where that was their only assignment - to pass information to the public.

The MER team, and SS especially, deserve our thanks and gratitiude for providing as much as they do, as many have pointed out here...if only all space missions provided this much.

When Spirit and Oppy finally take their last image I say we get Steve S drunk so we can hear anecdotes all night!

I volunteer for MSL! me me me me me me me me!!!!!!!

(not changing my name to Emily tho... lovely name that it is... )

Stu:

It could be done within other areas of scientific endeavour, such as the paleontological investigations near you, at Haworth - it could even be turned into a (rather mannered) novel. Do you think anyone out there is using the nom-de-blog 'Emily Brontesaurus' yet?

(An old Jim White joke, not mine. Honest!)

Bob Shaw

GROOOOOOOOOAN

Hang your head in shame - in shame I say!!!!

After 3 pages or arguments, ustrax's summary said it all.
BUT
What Steve has done and is still doing, even if it's THE source, is greatly "improved" by THIS forum. Thanks to you All and specialy to our DJ

Call me crazy...I like it...

Tomorrow, that man will be connected to one of the historical portuguese sentences:
'Giving new worlds to the world'
The rest is plain talk...

never mind

I would say that, as human beings, curious of the universe, we have the RIGHT to know what is taking place in space operations, about what is found. As we are tax payers too, scientists owe us some account of what they do.

But I agree with you, Doug, that I shall not complain of Steve Squyre, who do his best to bring us infos.

So I come back to my previous post, and say that, in every significant science team, there should be one of the scientists with time allowed to do public information, without having to take on his personal free time.

I've a remark I already posted a long time ago. I was in Hawaii in january and discovered reading a newspaper that Steve was giving a conference in Honolulu... the very day I was leaving. Knowing it earlier, I'd have certainly push back my flight one day later. My question is, is there anybody here in the forum that could know about Steve (or other members of the team) conference planning even worldwide? Can we open up an "alert trait" for this ?

of course,especially when there is a press room just down the hallway from where they work and not to mention a entire tv network at their disposal .If I remember correctly Steve would often apologize for his updates being late,he seemed at the time to realize the importance of doing so but now I have to wonder....If he doesn't have time then delegate to someone else.


I don't know,has anyone heard if he's writing another book for this summer ? I would hope that's not the case for no free time on his part.I don't think that's the appropriate or ethical way to get the info out that has already been paid for.

BillyMER:

No. Good luck to him with his book-writing, and all the rest of the MER guys, too..

And anything else which any of the MER team and it's associates on other missions can do to spread the word about their work.

As Doug said earlier, if you want to look at how bad things *might* have been then just go look at some ESA public outreach, and weep.

Bob Shaw

Billy - if you took the time to look at all the things Steve has taken the time to do (you've done that right? you've seen the lectures he's done that are online, you've watched all the press conferences, the radio show appearences etc etc...I assume you've consumed and calculated every single iota of outreach he's done to establish that he's not doing enough) , such as the hour long interview we conducted last autumn...you would hear his comments regarding another book.

I've met him only once. He gave a lecture to the BAA in Cambridge last year that the BAA president described as the best lecture he had ever seen. Steve had crossed 15 time zones in 5 days to be there - he was Spirit SOWG chair three days before - flew to Washington for a press conference, then flew to the UK for the DPS meeting. The guy should have done the lecture and then retired to his hotel for a well deserved break before the busy DPS week thereafter. The guy had industial strength jet lag and a HUGE week of presentations and science meetings ahead of him - and he was as relaxed, friendly, interesting, exciting as anyone could possibly be. He'd cleared the entire evening to have a chat with me so that we could share as much MER info as possible via the MP3 and writeup that I did.

Just because it's a governmental operation, it does not render every member of that team your own info-slave.

Personally - your suggestion that they should somehow be banned from writing books about it, your general attitude about them stinks NO mission has had the outreach efforts of MER. NO team has worked THIS LONG and THIS HARD to get information out to the public...MER has TOTALLY REDEFINED what a mission can do in terms of outreach and education.and you STILL have complaints. I have words I'd like to use, but I'd end up banning myself for using them. You should start showing them some damn respect.

Doug

(PS - a further critical post from BillyMER, despite a suspension for an utterly disrespectful attitude in the past, combined with a clear lack of understand or acknowledgement of the work the MER team have done has resulted in him being removed from the forum. Criticism toward those who do not pull their weight is justified and welcome. A total lack of respect and unjustified criticism, despite being asked to refrain, is not)

Doug,

you are right.

The whole MER team deserves our thanks for what they have done until now.

jvandriel

What I find most strange is criticism of writing a Book. Roving Mars and Jim's forthcoming title will both do enormous things to outline the achievments of MER second only to the Imax movie in terms of outreach ability.

Doug

What's the problem with writing a book? Many scientists do this, and they were alway welcome.

The only problem would come in very special cases, if they publish copirighted data, classified, or that the labo intend to publish first. But this seldom happens.


A book is a very good mean to publish science data, present it in a complete way, with explanations and all, that everyone can read and understand while taking one's time to do so.

I got Roving Mars for christmas last year. Even though I've been following these rovers since sol 1, I loved Steve's inside view and I got excited all over again. This has been by far the most exciting mission and most accessible mission ever. It was mentioned in an earlier post, but look at the Viking missions...all you got was a monthly update in Sky & Telescope. MEX and SMART-1 are both examples of limited public outreach, parcelling out the data in spoonfuls..tremendous data yeah, but spoonfuls! I know they will release more data once the scientist get to go through it.
Enough rambling...MER team ROCKS!

I got a book last year, too. I've nearly finished colouring it in (I only get one crayon a day, and have to sign it back in every night Due To Reasons).

I wonder when Phil Stooke's Magic Opal comes out?

Bob Shaw

I hope that Steve Squyres IS keeping a diary and writing passages for a new book while the experiences are fresh to him. Roving Mars was great but a LOT has gone on since then that I want to read about in the sort of in-depth form that only a book can provide. How someone can profess to have an appetite for a behind the scenes look at a mission and yet deplore the writing of a book that delivers just that is beyond me!

QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Jun 30 2006, 08:07 PM)

How someone can profess to have an appetite for a behind the scenes look at a mission and yet deplore the writing of a book that delivers just that is beyond me!

I fully agree! What about style and pleasure to read? What about having a book in hand ?
I was in the US for 5 days just after the book was released. I tried like mad to get one. I even left the meeting room where I was supposed to meet, borrow a rental car I was not supposed to drive from a collegue and finaly get one the very last day I was there. I NEED TO FEEL I'M PART OF THE MISSION... and the book just gave me that. Thanks M. Steve. I understand that you're not supposed to write a following one but update the following prints of the orriginal instead. Please keep one for me!

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/08/29/2646.aspx