[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Spirit Restored to Health

From: David Freeman <dfreeman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:19 2004
Message-ID: <401DF1C7.9000100_at_fascination.com>

Dear Doug;
I know the answers to all of your questions but if I told you, I'd have
to kill you.

My tax dollars too bud,
Dave F.

MexicoDoug_at_aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 2/1/2004 11:47:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>
>> Many of the deleted files were left over from the seven-month flight
>> from Florida to Mars.
>
>
>
> "...seven-month flight from Florida..." That really has a cozy sound
> to it! Things haven't changed much since Intro to Remote Sensing
> class by my favorite electrical engineering professor. My calculator
> died in the middle of a Simpson's Rule of a black body radiation
> integral ... for all the incredibly commendable foresight at JPL,
> we're still all students sometime, I guess.
>
> What type of operating system or machine language environment is being
> used? How many megabytes is the total flash memory's capacity? The
> other memory's capacity ... how large is that? Inquiring minds would
> love to know. How does the Rover communication bit rate compare with
> a vainilla DSL line? Can this one be pinned on Bill Gates III or
> Linus or Larry Ellison? How did JPL forget to do its housekeeping on
> the computer ... or ... never test the memory limits (? no way !! ?)
> ... or ... what sort of contingency might have been missed? NASA !!
> ... please should tell whatever it can, certainly done incredible
> things for the world, but no one is perfect and a teflon image wrong -
> it is counterculture to continuous improvement and transparency.
>
> Computer memory problems! NASA seems so much more down to Earth.
> That's a good thing, in my opinion since it's not too serious, so
> thankfully, to the reactive software troubleshooters ... no real
> lasting harm seems been done (except for waiting for the system to
> come on line and not being productive) and most of the normal world
> can now relate. So please tell us what really happened ... And I
> thank the heavens that the system is back up again. Hope the Martian
> Rovers aren't like all the Earth PC's I've had, they never seems to be
> the same after the first system crash, even after a complete reformat
> / reload. That usually worked with Dr. Smith's Mechanical Friend, the
> Bubble Headed Booby on Lost in Space (The B9 Robot). With all due
> respect ... and I mean ALL ... if everything continues well, this
> might be quite humorous to some to imagine the Rover repeatedly
> rebooting on the surface of Mars, the Martians that were watching that
> sight probably think we're a real friendly bunch now too. My very
> very best wishes !! (And if anything goes wrong, strike any humor ...
> this message is only to relieve some of the stress caused by the
> memory problems ... assuming they are overcome decisively).
> Saludos
> Doug Dawn
> Mexico
Received on Mon 02 Feb 2004 01:44:23 AM PST