"ahh" wrote in message
...
I just though of another example and have to share it. During the Spirit
landing they mention during landing how rockets were fired to keep the
craft
out of a crater. I think I recall them mentioning they wouldn't want it
to
go in the crater. However with Opportunity it landed in a crater and they
call it a "hole in one" :-D Maybe they programmed the flight computers in
reverse on Opportunity :-) Reminds me of the old joke saying "I planned
it
that way"

I think you mean Pee Wee Herman when he went over the handlebars of his bike
and said: "I meant to do that!"

Seriously, all the self-congratulation and constant proclamations that they
are the smartest people in the universe is getting really smarmy. It
accounts for about half of any press briefing. Maybe it's a JPL thing--the
manned types don't seem to act that way. One guy said that the discovery of
bedrock will rank with the discovery of volcanoes on Io, or geysers on
Titan.

Meanwhile, the glitch on Spirit has not increased their resolve to actually
*do* anything with all this expensive hardware that could fail at any time.
Spirit will now gaze at its navel for another *three weeks*. Might as well
give it a chance to fail completely? On the other side of Mars, Theisinger
says that, sure, Opportunity has a clear path off and no hi-gain antenna
problems like Spirit, but it won't leave its nest for two weeks, just as
before. Not even an allowance for a learning curve! There seems to be no
equation where a decision to keep a Rover on ice costs anything. They have
however noted that the solar panels are degrading every day at the expected
rate. Well, that's a science experiment of sorts I guess.

Just think of all the stuff that had to work in succession during the
landing process where they didn't have the option to exercise their
anal-retentiveness. If the engineers could have theoretically frozen the
entry, descent and landing at any time to obsess over details--maybe make a
one week study of wind conditions or something--they surely would not have
landed yet.