So What Happened to the Pictures from Opportunity???

jonathan wrote:
|Are we to receive one or two out of focus pics a day
|from now on?

How many days has it been now, 80 Sols or what? It is
an amazing success story so far!

|Now that the Opportunity mission is becoming the most
|interesting the data from Nasa just stops cold.

hmmmmmm

|What are they hiding?

Like it's hide-and-go-seek?

|It should be clear Nasa wishes to end this mission with a certain
|'spin', the hint of life, and no more. To maximize the ability to
|fund a sample return mission.

It would be a LOT less expensive if we started forging materials
directly from the Lunar surface if we want to explore Mars properly.

|If they attempt to do so they don't deserve a next mission.

All things in due time, but first we should establish a very firm
presence on the Moon:

Moon Exploration is the more Pressing Need.

Phase 1) Deployment of Lunar Seismometers
$50 million x 1 trip (one way) = 100 million
Phase 2) Polar Orbital Mission
$25 million x 2 trips (one way) = 100 million
Phase 3) Darkside Foundry Project
$20 million x 5 trips (one way) = 100 million

There you have it, a really cheap unmanned construction of a lunar
foundry for somewhere around $300 million dollars, well within the
budget of the US without asking for any assistance from any other
country.

__Notes__
1 We should first deploy a handful of Lunar Seismometers
(communications beacons) around the Moon in anticipation of the eventual
crashes of the two lunar polar orbiters (see below).
2 Two lunar polar orbiters loaded to the gill with broadband
spectral detectors complete with radar imaging equipment. No need for
landing gear, just keep them in a sufficiently high orbit until they
can't maintain their orbits any longer, at which point a final burn
causes them to strike the Moon's surface at a fairly high velocity;
the impacts are detected by the previously deployed seismometers. This
will tell us more about the Moon's interior than the previous trips ever
have.
3 The Darkside Foundry Project isn't really going to be dark except
for 2 weeks out of every 4 weeks. But we deploy it on the side of the
Moon that faces away from the Earth so that neurotic environmentalists
don't start rioting every time we find ourselves shipping building
supplies up there. As for building supplies, the first three trips up
there are just to set up huge solar energy panels that unfold themselves
over an area of a few square kilometers - remember what I just said
about neurotic environmentalists, that is why the Foundry is built on the
Darkside of the Moon - and once the power starts getting generated on
the cheap - even if it is only for a couple weeks out of a month -
the rest of the development can come along a whole lot faster than
you (or any neurotic environmentalist) can shake a stick at it.