What? No talk about the Mars Rover?

[dogscoff]

Over this side of the pond, we are a bit gutted that our very own British Beagle 2, which landed (or was meant to) on Christmas Day, has disappeared off the face of the planet. They are going to try and contact it again over the next week, but if it does not get in contact by 14 Jan, all bets are off (apparently) - is it the intervention of little green men or just bloody bad luck??

Yeah I know, I would love to have seen it succeed if only to see the guy running the Beagle2 project catapulted to international fame. You know the one, he looks like he should be into organic gardening, real ale and steam engines rather than space-robotics. He's got utterly insane facial hair and a broad west country accent (alroight tharr moi luvvlies?) and I was really looking forward to the look on america's face when he suddenly appeared all over international news. I'm pretty sure that guy would need subtitles on US telly.

Seriously though, how is this rover so different from that one that landed a few years back? That sent back images very similar (to my eyes) to the ones we are seeing now.

EDIT: A Beagle2 press conference to announce the results of the latest contact attempt to be held in about 2 hours... http://www.beagle2.com/news/index.htm

[ January 07, 2004, 11:44: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Loser]

This rover is much, much bigger. Much bigger.

It also does new and different things.

[Cipher7071]

I missed the PBS show Last night, but I did see the one on Saturday. It's true that these rovers weigh 50% more the Last ones. The big problem that they had to overcome was that they had to fit them into the same sized capsules, which meant they had to figure out how to fold them up for transport, and unfold them on landing. They had to rework both the airbag and the parachute designs. So far, it looks as though it worked.

[Atrocities]

I just heard on the news that the images, the color ones, are fantastic. Big smiles.

[Growltigger]

[quote]Originally posted by dogscoff:
[QB]

alroight tharr moi luvvlies?

What worries me is that they will get photo's of Wurzel's wrecked spaceship, with a small martian standing there with a ray gun saying "Geetttt Orrrfffff Moii Lannnnndd Yeww Wazoks"

What is wrong with organic gardening and real ale? Guilty on both counts m'lord. And I have no facial hair, infact I have no hair on my head anywhere (except up the nose and in my ears I suppose)

Reality check - Wurzel becomes Captain on the next series of Enterprise, "alroight yewww klingon bahhhhstaahhds, preepair too foir that ol' muck spreader, roight"

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Cipher7071:
I missed the PBS show Last night, but I did see the one on Saturday. It's true that these rovers weigh 50% more the Last ones. The big problem that they had to overcome was that they had to fit them into the same sized capsules, which meant they had to figure out how to fold them up for transport, and unfold them on landing. They had to rework both the airbag and the parachute designs. So far, it looks as though it worked.

Don't worry - the Nova show on Saturday was the same as the one on Tuesday except they showed a single colour photograph.

[dogscoff]

OK, so it's bigger than the Last lander, but how is it better?