New holiday destination with free alcohol!

Titan has lakes of alcohol nicely chilled.
Where's the tonic and slice of lemon when you need them.

What a fantastic achievement to land on that moon!

 

Bloody amazing it was still working when it got there. Anyone worked
out the per hour cost? Was funny watching the press conference. Loads
of excited scientist and board journo types, the latter usuall having a
fag outside.

Lovely piccies though.

 

For those interested:

http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html

 

"... still working .. " I had to read that twice as I thought you meant
the moon and not the lander.

indeed.

 

So, where were they really aiming for?

 

Bloody marvellous.

 

If this had been a Septic mission, I'd have said Baghdad and they were
seven months too late and the wrong map reference. But as it's
European....

 

Piggy backed on a NASA probe though didn't it?

 

Blimey, I thought they were just sending mathematical data back not
pictures. Mind you as I've just realised they'd have sent that as
mathematical data I'll just shut up and go wibbleflip.

While we've got people who know in the thread, daughter was asking how
long it would take to get a manned spacecraft to mars and I said I
thought it was about 2 years the last time I heard any news
speculation about it. Anyone got an interest in this area who can
point me at something interesting so I don't have to wade through
google searches?

 

Oh well, they've got to aim straight once in a while, I s'pose

 

http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEM85Q71Y3E_index_0.html

Quality!!

 

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Aurora/ESA9LZPV16D_0.html

Is our home grown effort in that direction.

 

Going to mars

Cool, with a bit of luck I'll still be around in 2025.

 

They lost 50%, one of the transmission channels died, instead of 750
images they only got 380 and lost a data channel to do with the
atmosphere. Does not detract from a wonderful achievement.

Yes, it only had enough battery power for a maximum possibility of 7
hours transmission. So it died while on the dark side.

 

I was watching the TV coverage earlier and they were saying about a mismatch
between the transmitter and receiver frequencies, detected some time after
launch, in what must have been an "oh f**k" moment.

The fix that came up with was to have the obitar fly so fast and low that
the doppler shift exactly matched the correction required - amazing, and it
worked.

Doppler Shift (google for a better explanation) is the compression and
expansion of a wave as the source comes towards you or leaves; liston next
time you're passed by an ambulance.

 

Dave Emerson wrote:

You should have heard some of the possible solutions to that problem.
One was to fly Cassini straight down with Huygens. Understandably NASA
wasnt keen on that idea.

It still amazed me that they discovered a possible loss of lock *after*
launch, but, hey, its space, no one said its easy.

 

A brief description:

It all depends on when and how much money you want to spend on it.

When:

There are ideal times when the Earth is in close proximity with Mars.
Earth needs 365 days to get around the sun while Mars takes 687 so the
two pass each other about every 26 months (I think). Plus the two obits
are elliptical so the cleaver bit is to get the furthest part of Earth's
orbit from the Sun (its aphelion) to line up with the closest part of
Mars' orbit to the Sun (its perihelion) this happen at its best every
70,000 years or so and we had one a couple of years ago. So *when* is
still approximately every 26 months.

How much money depends on how and how fast you want to get there.

Atomic powered rockets developed in the 70s and abandoned soon after
could do a constant acceleration to the half way point and a constant
deceleration there after. Use aero-braking to scrub off a little extra
speed to save time and you could get there in say under three months.

Use chemical rockets the same as the Apollo block 2 vehicle that put man
on the moon but with modern electronics to save weight and you would
take a bit more than 6 months. You would also need two or three of them.
One to get there one to get back and one for a lander and victuals for
while you were there.

Another idea is to send a vehicle ahead to orbit with an automatic
lander that spent a year processing the atmosphere and sub terrain water
into oxygen and hydrogen to support the team who turn up later and to
provide them with fuel (the heavy stuff in any mission) to use to come
home and a habitat to live in both for this and further missions This
would enable a high power light weight vehicle to get there in 6 months
or less.

All the above is a long as a piece of string. The more money you throw
at it the shorter the time. The years spent getting to Mars with landers
is because it was done on the cheap and used earth and other inner
planets to add to the velocity to reach Mars orbit. But using Venus to
slow you down on the way home *is* a good idea.

This will give you what they are currently thinking of:

http://advlifesupport.jsc.nasa.gov/documents/JSC39502_(Ref-Mis)_Draft-991
2.doc

HTH.

 

Boosting at 1G all the way (flipover at 1/2 distance and decelerate at
1G of course) - I think it takes 6-8 weeks assuming that Mars is on the
same side of the sun as us..

Of course we can't do it that way at the moment so the point is moot.
But the ion drives that they are developing would cut the journey time
dramatically from the 2-3 years that it takes at the moment (somewhere
in the order of 6 months each way? I can't remember).

Phil

 

Still transmitting I believe (Cheryl works at NERC so she gets to read
all the good stuff).

Phil

 

I recall them saying the batteries lasted longer than they expected,
but it was still very dead after 7 hours.
--
Please add "imo" to above post.
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