Shortage of Mars Headlines

(Greg Kuperberg) wrote in
:

Actually, a mass spectrometer is a device that measures a spectrum
of molecular or atomic mass.

You also shouldn't confuse mass spec with mass general. That's a
hospital in Boston.

Son, I have an MS from MIT, so don't tell me what a mass spectrometer is.
The journalist who said Spirit had it was simply wrong. Mass General is
where I had my knee operated on, Mass Ave. is how you get to Harvard, and
Mass Pike is the site of the "Big Dig."

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote in
:

With critical anomalies, daring and innovation are requirements. Of
course, no lives are at stake here.

I'm not sure that any daring is required. Either the boot-up sequence can
recieve a re-program command, before it checks for electrical faults, or it
can't. In the first case it can be fixed by bypassing the mirror's fault
check subroutine, and in the second case it can't, making it dead, dead,
dead.

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote in
:

The point of the post was to indicate that mass spectrometers are not
necessarily 'huge machines', they are getting smaller and more
sophisticated every year, and will eventually be standard equipment on
planetary landers, flybys and penetrators.

I was actually wondering about this.

It can certainly get a lot
more sophisticated than the suite of spectroscopy instruments
available on MER.

That's how they kept costs under $800 million. We aren't getting much for
our money, are we?

For instance, 2 step laser mass spectroscopy was used on ALH80001.

What was that one?

January 24, 2004

John Schutkeker wrote:

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote in
:

With critical anomalies, daring and innovation are requirements. Of
course, no lives are at stake here.

I'm not sure that any daring is required. Either the boot-up sequence can
recieve a re-program command, before it checks for electrical faults, or it
can't. In the first case it can be fixed by bypassing the mirror's fault
check subroutine, and in the second case it can't, making it dead, dead,
dead.

Daring always helps in exploration and science, otherwise it's just
incremental, and we have plenty of that to go around. What we want are
breakthroughs. As an example, Mars Express has a penetrating radar, that should
help settle a few outstanding issues. I'm sick and tired of this White Mars
crap. Mars was/is glaciated with very impure glacial plates, that aren't
dynamic in the ordinary terrestrial sort of way. That's fairly obvious from the
imagery, regardless of what Squyres has to say about how science works. That
makes Mars a whole different kind of beast. We desperately need to get some
spectroscopy on some of the oddball smaller bits of rock.

Another example, if it was a power conditioning short (which it isn't)
rendering most of the motors inoperative, it would be nice to at least downlink
the Adirondack spectroscopy results before the thing dies. I haven't seen
today's press conference, but apparently they will be able to do some memory
workarounds, and most of the power subsystems seem intact.

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net

"John Schutkeker" wrote in message
...
(Gary W. Swearingen) wrote in
:

I'd like to see some blogs or informal articles by project personnel,
but
I suspect that there's a gag order preventing that.

Gag orders can only be issued by a court. NASA is part of the executive
branch.

Eerr, yes and no.

An employer can make confidentiality part of their employment contract.
There's things about my company I can't discuss in public. That's
effectively a gag order.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:16:02 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Gag orders can only be issued by a court. NASA is part of the executive
branch.

Eerr, yes and no.

An employer can make confidentiality part of their employment contract.
There's things about my company I can't discuss in public. That's
effectively a gag order.

Err, yes and no.

Companies can restrict your speech just because they feel like it.
The government can't; that pesky First Amendment means that they have
to have a reason to keep a civil servant (or military member, come to
think of it) from discussing things publicly.

They can't even keep the civil servants from identifying themselves as
civil servants, although they can keep folks from claiming to speak
for the government or the agency. If the material isn't classified or
otherwise formally restricted, the troops can say whatever they want
without fear of official retribution. And they'll have a nice case
for grieving unofficial retribution.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:16:02 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Gag orders can only be issued by a court. NASA is part of the
executive
branch.

Eerr, yes and no.

An employer can make confidentiality part of their employment contract.
There's things about my company I can't discuss in public. That's
effectively a gag order.

Err, yes and no.

Companies can restrict your speech just because they feel like it.
The government can't; that pesky First Amendment means that they have
to have a reason to keep a civil servant (or military member, come to
think of it) from discussing things publicly.

They can't even keep the civil servants from identifying themselves as
civil servants, although they can keep folks from claiming to speak
for the government or the agency. If the material isn't classified or
otherwise formally restricted, the troops can say whatever they want
without fear of official retribution. And they'll have a nice case
for grieving unofficial retribution.

Umm, Mary, that's really basically saying the same thing. I.e. if I apply
for a job with classification, I'm agreeing to have my rights restricted.
And as you're state, a civil servant can't necessarily speak on behalf of
their agency.

When it comes down to it, it's basically the same thing.



Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

John Schutkeker writes:

The journalist who said Spirit had it was simply wrong. Mass General is
where I had my knee operated on, Mass Ave. is how you get to Harvard, and
Mass Pike is the site of the "Big Dig."

Bad memories of the Mass Aggression of Boston drivers come flowing back...

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 05:06:15 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:16:02 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Gag orders can only be issued by a court. NASA is part of the
executive
branch.

Eerr, yes and no.

An employer can make confidentiality part of their employment contract.
There's things about my company I can't discuss in public. That's
effectively a gag order.

Err, yes and no.

Companies can restrict your speech just because they feel like it.
The government can't; that pesky First Amendment means that they have
to have a reason to keep a civil servant (or military member, come to
think of it) from discussing things publicly.

They can't even keep the civil servants from identifying themselves as
civil servants, although they can keep folks from claiming to speak
for the government or the agency. If the material isn't classified or
otherwise formally restricted, the troops can say whatever they want
without fear of official retribution. And they'll have a nice case
for grieving unofficial retribution.

Umm, Mary, that's really basically saying the same thing. I.e. if I apply
for a job with classification, I'm agreeing to have my rights restricted.
And as you're state, a civil servant can't necessarily speak on behalf of
their agency.

Not on behalf, but certainly about. Your company can prohibit you
from even mentioning anything as minor as that you work there, should
it wish. The government can't do that without going through the hoops
of classifying or otherwise limiting distribution, processes which
require justification. The default is unclassified and unlimited

Of course, just because the government couldn't stop me from talking
didn't mean that I had to tell all. But that decision is mine alone
and not the government's.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

(Gary W. Swearingen) wrote in
:

Bad memories of the Mass Aggression of Boston drivers come flowing
back...

If you think Boston drivers are bad, you should see New york drivers.