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Each roving day as the last.
Beyond the horizon, beyond the border, roving until the last Sol, through lands of wonder, towards unexpected goals. Each roving day as the last.

Beyond the Columbia Hills, island in a sea of basalt, towards the East, lays Terre de Salvaesche, Land of Salvation, where Parzival reached the Grail’s Castle and found the answer for his Quest. Impossible quest…Incredible quest!
Towards a Kingdom where forests of mesas and knobs rule, where, from the North, the hills of Thira announce their protection, glowing in dark red under Mars’ dusk, where sand tides fustigates its beaches, where boulders align along paths that lead no where.
Land of Salvation! Home of the Grail! Receptacle of Answers!
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The Land of Salvation…how valuable is it in scientific terms?
Aren’t we seing there, far in the horizon, signs of a past where glaciers imposed they’re presence on Gusev crater? Aren’t we seing there signs of an ancient, majestic, ice kingdom retreating? Aren’t we seing the reliques of a battle between the fiery lava and a mighty frozen kingdom?
This special cookie of yours sees…and dreams, a time where glaciers and volcanoes coexisted, where gentle waves, reflecting a dim sun, danced a silent tune on the surface of kettle lakes.

Just close your eyes for a second, imagine yourself standing in the plains, contemplating that enticing, unknown, territory, imagine, the sound, the light and the landscape in front of you, imagine your inquiring march, dustful step after dustful step, getting closer and closer to the Land’s walls…

The rovers are our eyes on Mars we read…I want to see myself standing in the plains, contemplating that enticing, unknown, territory.
Just close your eyes for a second, for the time you which, and imagine, the sound, the light and the landscape, in front of you.

You, Counts of Engineering, Barons of Algorithms, Dukes of Geology, fan the flames of the bonfire with your words of Impossibility!
Give me distances! Give me the cold truth about the Spirit! But give me also what could we earn from this quest...

An aging, crippled rover, a too vast desert to cross…
An aging, crippled rover, is for now dreaming, listening to a distant murmur in the mute vastness of Gusev:…”Ride, boldly ride”…

Land of Salvation, unreachable they say…

Recommended reading: Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival
Recommended soundtrack: Richard Wagner's Parsifal

I think that the hilly area at the south end of the Columbia Hills is another bit of the same material you are looking at here... and it might still be reachable.

Phil

Son of Magellan, we hear.

Ultreya, my friend...the horizon is not there to be reached, merely approached asymptotically again and again and again...

Shaka...give me charts and beacons to misplace!

Phil, it might be similar, but isn't at a considerably lower level?
My interpretation is that in the area South of Thira there would be the chance of finding a ground of a different nature than this basalt floor we have found roving towards the Columbia Hills.
A question, ngunn made reference to this already, take a look at this image, in the NE corner of it lays a curious feature, like a big mesa with a pit all around...what can that be?

nprev...the drums echoe in the distance...

That's no "pit"; that's an abyss!

A noble goal, I vote yea (knowing full well I don't actually have a vote).

Where would you target initially, and how long a journey given the reduced mobility and those pesky immobile winter months? Want to throw in a route map with winter havens? SS will need these details for his proposal.

I propose we rename it the Land of Salivation.

BrianL, this is, I have notion of it, a goal that when compared with Oppy's trek towards Endeavour makes of this one a stroll in the park...but hey! What we're aiming here is to find the grail, and that has never been an easy quest, doable, quest...
Thinking with no limits of time and a Spirit of surprising us even more on its longevity, after reaching the Promised Land in the Columbia Hills and do what has to be done there and finding a way out there seems to be a couple of straits that could deliver us back to the plains, now where to?
And with what goals?
-the rover could study the line dividing the plains unite from the Promised Land one;
-Head towards the small Eldorado,huumm...let me think about an appropriate name for it...got it! Ys!
Compare with the big brother to the north;
-Head SE towards the crater close to the foot of hill, it looks like it has some sort of promontories, thing we haven't seen yet at Gusev;
-Then, from this image, I would head towards the crater right above the big one marking the halfway between Columbia and Salvation;
-Then, obviously the big one...
-Full speed (may full speed mean what it can mean for Spirit) towards the East, passing betweem the two craters and then...;
...we're at Salvaesche's shores! Mission accomplished!
Simple...ain't it?

I'll draw the line tomorrow...now my head hurts...

With five wheel drive?

Doug, I believe I didn't expressed myself correctly, I meant to say that it was Oppy's trek that could be considered a stroll...not Spirit's...
Yes...I am aware...even so...total madness...

And, while in delirium, I'm sure a software improvement will make things work out just fine...

The Spirit rover is crying...

Asking a dying rover to take such a trek is, asking an ant to circumnavigate a city... backwards while dragging it's messed up leg in the dirt the whole way. I think this will kill our ailing rover.

Easy Doug, don't take it literally. Deep breaths...

Sometimes what kills me is that the journeys of the rovers ARE epic...but so few people know of it. So many people are suprised when I tell them that the MERs are alive & well; they just can't believe it.

Out they go, though, out they go. Our hearts & minds ride with them; surely no one can deny it. When the history of our time is written, they'll get one hell of a lot more than an honorable mention. Their voyages might well mark the very moment when we perceived at a gut level that we can be a multiplanet species...and, more importantly, that we need to be.

I know what you mean. I've put my thoughts on this subject here.

Here's the line...utter craziness...in a straight line it's a 25 kms trek approximately...
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Thanks Rui to believe in this new "endeavour" and share it with us.
With this last map, it's now much easier to understand where we're going.
Seriously, my take would be, once we've finished with HP surroundings (Von Braun, etc...) let's take the same decision taken for Oppy after Victoria's exploration has been completed: pedal to the metal, even if the metal is a bit torned here are will slow us down.

climber, I didn't say I believed in it...
It would be a truly incredible, amazing, unbelievable, achievement for Spirit...
Our role is to, as before, dream with the "what if", and the rover is in a bad condition, thinking about 5kms at a time helps me aiming towards the Land of Salvation without with the optimism levels high.

We'll see if we return to this thread in years to come...

Excellent essay, Stu; you nailed it perfectly!

I was going to suggest that it might be more productive to suggest a more attainable long term goal for this crippled rover, rather than to discuss another quixotic adventure. But now that I see the mapped route going first to the Promised Land, I'm on board for the adventure.

Negotiating the Promised Land will probably be the most challenging part of such a traverse.

The Promised Land looks really tempting, and wasn't it the near term goal for Spirit, before the crippled wheel, was to drive a few hundred meters past Von Braun (Pitcher's Mound) to the south, where the hummocky Chaotic Terrain begins? It seems like that might yet be an attainable goal.

I'd also be happy to find the antithesis to El Dorado: a place where wind scours the surface and hopefully act as a car wash; maybe some slopes on McCool hill are attainable? Oberth seems to resemble a smaller version of Homeplate, so maybe it would be worth investigating too?

The Land of Salvation seems like a dream: Spirit has only managed a mere 7km, most of those clocked back in the days of burning watts and 6 wheels.
Is this where ustrax shows up in a dark suit and says something threatening, like, "I find your lack of faith... disturbing."

I thought it was decided that Spirit won't be climbing any more hills with five wheels? In Ustrax's lunatic[1] yet visionary context view, the wind-scoured plains to the south-east look tantalisingly close. If a second dead wheel means no more roving (anyone know for sure?), that would mean no more north-facing slopes for winter, and thus probably a dead rover, absent a cleaning event. So, it seems to me that ideally, after von Braun, Spirit should head towards a location where the solar panels can be kept as dust-free as possible, as long as possible. And hey, if Salvation happens to lie in the same general direction... everyone's happy!

[1] ...I mean that in a good way, of course. I still love it

How about this for a hypothesis? The area south of Thyra is the old crater floor material, covered by lava flows further west where Spirit first landed... and various small areas near the Columbia Hills are patches of that material sticking up through the lavas, just a bit too high to be covered. They include areas near the crater SW of the hills, the 'Promised Land' at the southern end of the hills - AND the rough terrain in the valley we are in now. In other words... we have already been to the Promised Land, and to the Land of Salvation - in fact we're in it now.

Phil

So Phil...where to?
What do you consider to be the most valuable scientific targets for Spirit in the long term? To stay among the hills sniffing here and there?

I would look at von Braun and Goddard. Then across to Korolev if possible, to look at the circular patch of bright material (being exhumed from under the hills?) in that area. Then I would drive along the lower slopes of the hills to look at the contact with plains materials half way along, and finally, to the Promised Land to test my hypothesis.

Phil

No no no...I was speaking after that...
I have never thought about leaving all that work behind, I too want to see all those targets you mentioned visited, I am just thinking about the impossible possibilities...

After all that, where too Phil? Where to guys?

I think the big crater along your path is a worthwhile long term goal. That alone would probably take a couple of years to get to, even after they finish up with TPL (I do wish JPL would come up with another name for that area). If the slope is at all reasonable, I would send Spirit in, even with the likelihood of it being a one way trip. We've been up, might as well see what down is like (just as I would send Oppy hill-climbing when/if she reaches Endeavour).

Brian

The opinions expressed herein are not based on knowledge or even rational thought processes and should be viewed accordingly.

Aw, c'mon ustrax, don't sell yourself short...

On to Ma'adim Vallis!

Kelly

Kelly...I believe it is not the first occasion during this mission that I read that sentence...
Little by little...who knows?

And this in from the Mars colony...

A crowd estimated at around 1000 was on hand at Ma'adim Vallis today to welcome the arrival of the intrepid rover Spirit, launched decades ago. Blind without any cameras, with one working wheel dragging it slowly along as the now famous Repeat Ad Infinitum drive command sent just before contact was lost executed in its memory banks, the rover rolled into the throng until its progress was halted by a sushi cart. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, Colony Constable Ellison presented the rover with a ticket for driving without a license, and failure to maintain the posted minimum speed.