Posts by Stu

Stu · Unmanned probes

Did someone say "we need a poet"?

Sleeping

There she is. See her? That tiny black
Speck on the crater’s crumbling edge,
Just above the ledge where the New World
Falls away and tan becomes grey
With berries hissing and pouring into Victoria’s
Dune-rippled heart.

See that dark dot? We made that – Man,
Women and men, thousands of them,
Worker ants in white coats or ties, eyes
Fat from days without sleep, creeping
Home after dawn from their offices, factories and labs,
Whispering “Sorry…” again as they slid into bed;
Another meal or birthday party missed.

See that ink spot on the edge of the abyss?
We made this! Built it by hand in spotlight-bright
Clean rooms; we groomed, evolved apes
Bent metal against its but to our will.
Imagine that… monkey paws
That once chipped flint and ripped
Bloodied skins from spear-skewered prey
Now shape steel into wheels that rove across Mars!
Electronically embroidering silicon
Into miniature medieval tapestries
Of glorious silver and gold, they gently
Turn wrenches, tightening bolts on panels and plates late
Night after late night, weary but thrilled by
The sight of their dreams taking shape
Piece by piece by piece by piece…

No, that’s no fleck on the lens,
That’s a metal Magellan exploring
An ocean of dust, sailing o’er rust-
Coloured cobbles and stones to stand
On the edge of Victoria and, hands shaking,
Roar at the pink sky “Ultreya!!”

One day men, women and children - Mars-born,
With faces pale from lack of sun and limbs lengthened
To long-fingered branches by their world’s
Begrudged gravity - will come to this place to
Stare at Her statue and be amazed,
Imagining the day when brave Opportunity,
Caked with dust and wearied from her trek
From Purgatory and over and through
A thousand deep dunes hauled herself to the edge
Of the Bay and said “Enough… let me rest here,
With the great sky above and gnarled, gargoyle-
Cluttered cliffs on all sides; let me hide
Here, peering down into this stadium of stone.
I am Home… let me sleep… Make me travel no more…”

See that mote on Mars’ sands? There we stand,
Each of us, each martian dreamer,
Fanatic and Fool. Our hearts are Her heart,
Her dust-dried eyes our own.
A mere machine is She no longer – if she ever was –
But a ship, as noble and strong as the creaking,
Slapping-sailed craft after which the great crater was named,
Carrying our hopes in her hold as she boldly goes
Where no ape-built machine has gone before:
To the shores of an amber-hued ocean of dreams.

There she is. See her? That tiny black
Speck on the crater’s crumbling edge.

Sleeping…

Stu · Unmanned probes

While we're waiting to actually look over the edge... "Victoria"

http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/TheVe … ctoria/573

Stu · Unmanned probes

Try that again...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v509/ … mall-b.jpg

Stu · Unmanned probes

Hi guys,

Glad my make-believe image of Phobos and Deimos shining above Gusev went down well...

Here's another - the view from Meridiani on Christmas Day. From the bottom - Mercury, Venus, Jupiter - and Earth... :shock:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v509/cumbriansky/xmas-day-small-b.jpg[/img]

Stu · Unmanned probes

If anyone needs further proof of just how spoiled we are right now, take a look at these...

Enceladus 1

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … ...623.jpg

Enceladus 2

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … ...571.jpg

Mimas

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … ...562.jpg

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … ...551.jpg

See? It really IS the Death Star!!!

Seriously, how priviliged are we to be living at this time when we can just click a mouse button and see pictures like this, either hot off the press or after a couple of hours/days delay?

And people moan about being able to explore the solar system from their armchair?

Unbelievable...

And we have YEARS more Cassini images to look forward to...

Stu · Unmanned probes

Sigh...

If only we'd seen this ad sooner, would have saved us all a lot of heartache...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v509/ … .jpg]Titan camera

:;):

Stu · Not So Free Chat

Sigh...

If only we'd seen this ad sooner, would have saved us all a lot of heartache...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v509/ … jpg]camera ad

Stu · Unmanned probes

I posted this in a different thread... pasting it here cos it's been a long day and I can't be bothered typing it all in again! :;):

----------------

For pity's sake...

Don't you get it? Don't you GET it? This isn't science fiction here, tho it feels like it at times. This is real life exploration and discovery. Not everything works perfectly, as designed. Things go wrong. Things, and people, disappoint and under-achieve. Expectations - often unrealistic in the first place - are dashed and more modest, more humble realities take their place.

So the pictures aren't pin sharp. Big deal. It's not the first time. Lewis and Clark probably lost some of their sketches of flora and fauna on their epic trek across the US. Charles Darwin probably missed out on the opportunity to study universe knows how many exotic species as he explored the Galapagos. The colour camera on Apollo 12 didn't work, depriving us of spectacular images from the Moon. Mars Observer, Polar Lander and more recently Beagle 2 failed for a hatful of reasons, and we all know what we might have lost there. IT HAPPENS. It's just the way of things. The universe charges us for the wonders she shows us, and keeps some things back for herself, or at least makes us wait for them until we deserve them. It's disappointing, and frustrating, but it's life.

Some of the people being criticised here spent decades on the project. They don't owe you, or me, or anyone else, a thing. They were working on our behalf, because we're not smart or dedicated enough to do the things they do. We sit here at our screens, sipping coffee, warm and cosy, while they've spent years of their lives holed up in labs or machine shops working away all hours to get these "p*** poor pictures" for us to enjoy. They've done all this for us, so that we might understand and appreciate the universe a little bit better. They designed, built and then sent a spacecraft literally half-way across the solar system, succesfully landed it on the most inhospitable, most alien world yet seen, and it sent back pictures which are as historic as the first imags beamed back from Viking or Voyager or any of its other ancestors. Think about that.

Thanks to those "p*** poor pictures" Titan has been transformed, literally overnight. On Thursday night before going to bed I set up my telescope in my yard and aimed it at Saturn. The planet was beautiful, sublime, its rings split by the Cassini Division there before my eyes. And off to the right in the eyepiece was a pinpoint of light - Titan itself, shining there, hugging close to Saturn just as it had appeared to Huygens himself three and a half centuries earlier. When I went to bed the next night Titan wasn't a mere pinprick of light to me any more. It was a real world, a world with, we think, rivers and streams which reflect an orange, cloudy sky, shorelines lapped by slow-moving waves, tall mountains and rolling hills. A world where one day astronauts will wade out a short distance from the land and stare in awe at the sight of the alien waves of an alien sea, a billion miles from Earth, rolling gently over their boots. Think about that.

I'm British, and - okay, I'm biased, being a space nut - but personally if Huygens had only returned one single picture of the surface, and one panorama, I'd have considered my contribution (probably around £1) money well spent. What happened with the delay in releasing pictures is annoying, yeah, but when politics intrudes that's what happens. Yes, ESA could learn a lot from NASa and JPL re picture release, and they will, but c'mon, this kind of stuff is still new to us, give us a break. The guys at JPL have huge press offices, people who are good on camera, astronomical budgets... ESA just isn't geared-up for this kind of global attention. Yet. Give us time. We'll get better, you'll see.

It's not a competition, you know. It's not some media wrestling match between ESA and NASA to see who gets their pictures out fastest. This is for the good of all of us. We've waited generations to see these pictures, so a few more days wait won't kill us now, will it? Better and better images will be released, not just by ESA but by many of the unofficial imaging sources - we have one of them here on newmars, hi Doug! - and then we'll all be smiling like we were when the panoramas started rolling in from SPirit and Opportunity.

Just be patient and stop griping. This time last year Titan was just a ball of orange on a Voyager picture. This time last week it was a world with vague light and dark markings - how we saw Mars in Lowell's time. Now, Titan is a living, breathing, gurgling world we can imagine walking on and flying over. I look at those coastal scenes and can easily imagine bays, inlets and coves.

We should all feel humble and grateful. Not disappointed or angry.

-------------------------------

And as for the cost? That $3bn wasn't just for the Titan pics... you're forgetting the breathtaking images Cassini has returned of Saturn... its rings... the moons... Mimas silhouetted against the cloud tops... all the pictures of Jupiter and its moons before the probe even GOT to Saturn...

I say three cheers for Cassini, Huygens and everyone involved in it! :up:

Stu · Not So Free Chat

Ok the war is long over and I hearby issue a truce on all our behalf. But, holding back the images is not acceptable.
"Mars Express is sending back breathtaking images of Mars too."
This is true! They are spectacular. Huygens should be almost as good but they are not. Why is the difference in them so great?

Truce accepted :up:

On the question of the difference in picture quality, I think the different atmospheres of the two bodies has a LOT to do with it. After all, Mars Express is looking down through almost non-existent atmosphere, enjoying a virtually transparent view of the surface, while Huygens was peering and squinting through a dense, smoggy, foul atmosphere which blurred everything.

Ya think?

Stu · Not So Free Chat

<< JPL far exceeds Brittons caveman technology and attitude about it.UGA! UGA!UGA!. >>
<< Once you all come out of the stoneage at Stonehenge you may be able to compete with us. >>
<< it reminds me of the days when we kicked your butts out of our country for such stupidity.What were all you thinking taxing our tea and such? >>

sigh.

If there are any newcomers to New Mars reading this thread, please let me assure you that the standard of the debate is usually rather higher than this. :;):

Seriously Errorist, chill out ok? If you think back our "stoneage technology" did pretty well taking pictures of Halley's Comet (Giotto) when the US decided against sending a probe to the comet, and Mars Express is sending back breathtaking images of Mars too.

And as for kicking us out of your country, well, that's just silly. Ancient history. And a Mel Gibson version of history at that. In today's world we're one of your closest - and few remaining, let's face it - allies, so let's try and remain civilised eh? We're on the same side here.

Jeez, how can we hope to get People Out There to support going to Mars when we're blowing juvenile raspberries at each other? ???

Stu · Not So Free Chat