Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity Roll Out on Mars at 12 AM PST 1-31-2004 (LIVE THREAD)

Jet Propulsion Laboratory ^ | 1-30-04 | NASA JPL

[bonesmccoy]

The roll off of Opportunity from the lander pad at Meridiani Planum will occur at midnight tonight.

JPL NASA will be carried live on NASA TV.

JPL reports a 12 AM PST "Opportunity egree live coverage"

4 AM PST : Opportunity egress briefing

[LibWhacker]

Thanks . . . Looks like the whole gang is here!

Hi, Professional Engineer!

[RadioAstronomer]

:-)

[NormsRevenge]

The system I worked on in the Marines was the trailer bound version of the shipboard version of an antiquated form of computer that was nothing but rows and rows of small circuit boards with lots of caps and resistors, etc, and miles of wire wrapped posts on the back .

It was actually kind of fun to work on.. and when it broke and we couldn't fix it fast enough, we got to go to the philippines one time for a week to use a navy ships system to do our job batches of data processing. The actual work time was short so we had lots of time to study the bars of Olongapo and research beers in tropical environemnts and their effects on marines and sailors in mixed settings. 8-}

The things we did for our country.

[LibWhacker]

Thanks . . . Never heard of that filter trick. I'll have to try it some time, lol.

[NormsRevenge]

That chart had "Pigeonite" on it. hmmm?

[RadioAstronomer]

What a computer! WOW! On the F-4 Phantom, the target intercept computer was an analog computer that used servos, resolvers, integrators etc. :-) Not one IC.

[NormsRevenge]

Those darn analogs worked.. amazingly enough.

[ArmstedFragg]

My field, video editing, had a similar progression. Made the first computerized edits from a teletype terminal. That whole CRT thing sounded pretty futuristic at the time.....

[RadioAstronomer]

They sure did! Did you ever see the math for one calculation on one of those? Wowser. I saw one that almost filled an entire page.

[NormsRevenge]

Cool lecture on the rock formations in the immediate area.

[RadioAstronomer]

Made the first computerized edits from a teletype terminal.

Way cool! Those were the days!

I do miss the huge rooms of "big iron" with the spinning tape drives and core stacks. :-)

[RadioAstronomer]

yuppers

[NormsRevenge]

No, never got into that... but understand the complexity involved.

I would have preferred flying an F4, to tell ya the truth. :-}

Alas, I was around a lot of avionics black boxes and such... mostly used in helis and c130s

[bonesmccoy]

non linear video editing is a hoot compared to the old analog ways that you had to run.

[Professional Engineer]

Hiya LibWhacker. I'm totally caught up in the spectroscopy discussion. Part of my field deals with light and perception by the human eye. This is cool stuff.

[NormsRevenge]

lol.. tape transports and core memory.. the main box for our cpu had a 64K core memory array... what a beast.

[bonesmccoy]

A bit different than basic training :)

[RadioAstronomer]

I started working with F4's many moons ago when I was in the Air Force. (LOL getting old). One of the guys I worked with on the Magellan had many combat missions in Vietnam in F4s.

[NormsRevenge]

Oh Yes,, much different,, we never had beer in basic.:-}

[RadioAstronomer]

lol.. tape transports and core memory.. the main box for our cpu had a 64K core memory array... what a beast.

So cool! :-)