> My understanding of the ESA press conferences is that half
> the imaging data is permanently LOST.
> The only thing the radio telescopes will be
> recovering is the wind data that was being uplinked on the
> UNlistened to channel. The Huygens carrier was extremely stable
> and so radio interferometry from multiple dishes will allow
> a reconstruction of the flight path and thereby the winds.
>
> It is unfortunate that they didn't uplink all the images
> over BOTH channels. If you scan the EAS web site they have
> 37 pages of raw images with 1000% redundancy. Each image
> appears at least 10 times, although this may be more the
> result of Cassini resending the data to ensure complete
> reception. There may be 300 images, but they're of the
> same thing, over and over and over.


Time after time after time this sort of thing makes the case for 
manned presence in space on leading edge missions to the maximum 
extent possible. Much more expensive, certainly. Much more demanding 
of resources, certainly. Much more liable to produce tragedy rather 
than just disaster. certainly. Much less likely to have really really 
really silly things happend that blow the mission. Certainly. Much 
much much more capable in optimising and maximising information 
collection and processing. You bet.

"Hey Jim, the rovers stuck against a rock, again. Walk over and give 
it a kick, will you"
Sure, but why don't I just spend a few hours picking up a few hundred 
potential samples and examine them and keep the most promising ones? 
And I can split open ones which look interesting, and I'll get some 
chemical assays done on the promising ones tonight - then we won't 
have to wait 5 months for it do a small part of the same thing?"

"Hey Sam, there's no signal on channel 2 - can you check the receiver 
please?"

"Houston, we have a problem" "Now, where's my duct tape ...".

"Are you SURE about those thruster figures? They look suspiciously 
high to me. Y' sure they were converted correctly - I'm surely not 
risking my life without quadruple checking all the data. Lets do 
another simulator run - after all, we've still got another 3 months to 
go."

"The high gain antenna's jammed. Again. Looks like you get to do an 
EVA after all."

"Out of focus / broken / bent / too big/small/ ...? Guess we better 
get busy asap ..."

Challenge: Run an autonomous vehicle Barstow to Vegas with well 
defined route markers and conditions. Successful entrants - none. Got 
more than a mile - one. Year 2004. Now try it with 10 year olds on 
trail bikes.




        RM


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist