Okay, so there's only a few days till the landing, and I'm just curious, where will you all be? Just trying to keep a similar sounding thread to it's original purpose, that's all.

I am planning as of now to be at the LPL event at the University of Arizona. It should be interesting. I can only be there for about the hour around the landing time, but that's alright.

I'll be sat in my living room here in Kendal, in "Computer Corner", from around 9pm right through until 4ish next morning, basically monitoring everything. Inbetween I am probably going to be doing a few "slots" on the phone with my local BBC radio station, Radio Cumbria, updating listeners on what's happening/happened, and there's a chance I might be on Radio 5 Live too, but haven't heard back from them about that. Luckily I'm off work all day Monday so I'll be able to follow post-landing events and coverage too.

So, if anyone else is having a "Phoenix Marathon" you know there'll be at least one other person here to keep you company!

Unrestless as I'm feeling I won't be capable of staying in one single place...

but home...mostly...I still don't know if I'll head to the office to wait for the post landing press conference...

Guys...100 Hours to Mars in 29 minutes!!!

EDITED: Have you seen my new header?...

I will probably at the Sonnet building on the U of A campus. Or at the event in the Kuiper building.

As luck would have it, flying from Ontario to Vancouver, BC that morning, and with uncertain access to the internet over the critical period. Still, I'll be on the West Coast, and that's good in itself.

Phil

I'll be in my living room with NASA-TV running on my TV (I've got a great cable system, and I don't say that just because I work for them) and UMSF running on my computer. I'm hopeful we'll have the UMSF chat room running so we can exchange info and emotions.

-the other Doug

I've got a terrible confession to make. I'll be asleep. I'll turn on the BBC news in the morning.

That's a stance I can totally appreciate. 'Wake me up when it's over' is perhaps the most sensible option.

I'll be in Patrick Moore's dining room bouncing off the walls probably.

Doug

We won't let you do that

Sittin' at home, TV on CNN probably because I don't get NASA TV, the (terrible swear word describing cable company removed)s, one hand on the computer monitoring all the sites, two hamds typing in the UMSF chat, one hand holding a beer, one hand holding a stogie, and one hand popping peanuts into my mouth. (I'm having the extra hands installed on Friday; this is LA, after all, capital of unnecessary surgeries!)

I'll be making the 4 hour trip to the next town, which happens to be the Canberra DSN station (well, 45 mins out of Canberra). Hope to catch the landing there, but if I run late, I'll be watching it from a friends house in Canberra on the way to the DSN and go to the DSN for the first image.

On that note, can anybody tape / record the NASA TV stream (media stream preferred)?

Daniel

Does the Live Chat link work? When I click it in either Firefox or IE, I get the message 'Sorry, some required files are missing, if you intended to view a topic, it's possible that it's been moved or deleted. Please go back and try again.'

At a wedding banquet for a relative where I will probably get weird looks by sneaking off to the bar and tipping the bartender to change the channel to CNN. I would probably get dirty looks if I had a mobile internet device.

For Americans who don't get NASA TV but do have decent cable, the Science Channel will be carrying live coverage from 7 to 9 ET, with Jim Garvin commentating.

And if you're stuck at a function without TV, try the Twitter feed -- have it send text messages to your celly.

Y'all know where I'll be

--Emily

No.

Drat -- I've enjoyed the live chat function here when we've followed things like shuttle launches, Ariane launches, planetary probe launches... I was hoping we could do the same thing this weekend.

Any way the function might be active by then?

-the other Doug

I've got a flight on monday at 7am which is about 5 hours after landing. I'll have to leave home 3 hours after landing, hopefully after the first image(s) are down.
So, here is what I'm trying to do.
I've started since this week-end to go to bed earlier each day so I hope to be able to wake up 3 hours before landing after a decent sleep. I'll sleep again during transportation and hopefully not too much during my one week meeting!
I'll be home watching the landing using as many links as possible, UMSF & Nasa-TV & Emily's blog from the web been the 3 priorities, and YES, Rui, I'll watch SpacEurope too
Nice pressure feelings are building up here

Same place I was when Opportunity landed, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It's much more fun to do one of these events with many people around.

I will be at JPL, assuming the role of a journalist. I have been there for every Mars landing except Viking 2.

Don

No. We had it for a while, but it was essentially, crap and rather unreliable and rather expensive. I'd suggest #space on irc.freenode. I wont have the time to monitor a chat room as well as everything else - someone else can do it

Doug

I too will probably be sleeping.... Need my sleep! Will try and wake up early though to catch up on UMSF.

As I said here, I will be zzzzzzzzz and will follow the whole EDL not in ERT (Earth Received Time) or SET (Spacecraft Event Time) but in LMABT (Late Morning After Breakfast Time).

I'll be at home eating peanuts until 6 am (western Europe) watching NTV and the websites posted here. It's gonna be an allnighter

Thinking ahead about how it'll be here on UMSF - will there be a single main EDL topic so I can keep refreshing the same page? Shame about the lack of chat, IRC it is then. Hmmm... I'm gonna need a bigger monitor!

Incidentally I hacked up an ugly scrap of perl to drop the current landing countdown in my mail sigs, and a version that does a running on-screen (well, in-terminal) countdown - PM me if anyone'd like the source.



I'm following the excellent example of nprev regarding beer (Old Hooky for me... REAL beer!) and peanuts - I'm wondering about shelling out for a proper Monte Cristo and possibly a half-bottle of something fizzy and French as well... I don't want to tempt the ghoul, but I'm sure a noodly appendage will stretch forth unto Mars and poke it in the eye. Did someone say something about "excitement"? I'll get excited once we have an image of successful panel and arm deployment; until then it's just - "ph33r"...

Right on, IM! (BTW, I do believe that you are the first person in the world to use the phrase "excellent example" with respect to any aspect of my behavior... )

I will be watching on the PC at home as we don't have nasa TV on cable.

Having no cable (choice, not geography), as soon as the four wee ones are trundled off to bed (thinking we may go for short or no naps Sunday to help getting to bed by ~7PM EDT) I'll be glued to all the usual internet sites and praying that the NASA TV streams remain usable!

Thankfully my wife is just enough of a nerd to understand my love of mars and spaceflight that I don't anticipate toooo many sideways looks!


-- Pertinax

Good idea, or things are going to get very messy and muxed up. How about starting a dedicated EDL thread when NASA TV coverage actually starts, so we're all chatting in the same place?

Agreed. I will start a thread closer to the time.

An EDL thread
and then a new First comms pass thread as well.

Doug

Not to try and offend any tea-totallers or professionally sober members we may have, but Nick's discussion of beer leads me to think of how I may use The Brew this Sunday.

I happen to have three-quarters of a case of Foster's in my kitchen. Assuming Phoenix lands safely, I will likely have one or two in celebration (and to wash down my peanuts). If it's not as good of a day as we all hope, I'll probably have several of them to savor the numbing effect...

-the other Doug

Thanks! Proof that in the long run, even the most improbable events become possible...



Oh, I'm sorry to hear that; I feel your pain. Can't you get hold of any beer? Never mind, you'll find a use for it one day. Why, when we were without mains water for ten days during the great July 2007 Gloucester floods, it would have been perfect for flushing...

I was just reflecting that the only similar experience to the major set-pieces like landings or significant flybys are... election results! (No, wait, come back!) I've a secret double life as an armchair politics fan, and the election night party is an essential part of the fun. Usually you know in advance whether it's going to be a celebration or a wake, but I've had enough nights of unexpected highs and lows over the last thirty years of it to have picked up one useful thing about champagne: it's better for crying into than beer *)

Actually, the Foster's we get in the U.S. is brewed in Canada by the same people who brew LaBatt's Blue. I doubt it bears much similarity, other than in packaging, to what's available down under.

Beers vary not as much by brand name as by where in the world they are brewed, I think. For example, when I visited England 11 years ago I fell in love with Caffrey's Irish Ale. I've found something with the same name here in the States, but nothing with the same flavor.

-the other Doug

And this makes it better?

Thankfully, I have several gallons of fine homebrewed ale on tap should I feel the need Sunday night to celebrate/drown my sorrows.

Brian

Not a long time ago (!) I realized this was not my fault is national soccer or rugby teams were losing, my prefered athletes didn't win races, rockets failed at launch and landings were not successful.
So I'm gona drink Champagne during Phoenix landing (and peanuts, just in case... )

'Not eating peanuts is not an option!!!!'

Well, I can't afford champagne enough for this....which makes this post an excellent opportunity to solicit donations for the "Buy Nick Enough Beer to Help Him Survive EDL" drive!!!

I'm thinkin' about sixteen cases would do it. Please send money, gold or negotiable internal organs to PO Box e exp (pi)(i), New New York, 1001110101011.

I'll be sitting right in front of my monitor, probably with a glass of beer in my hand and of course, eating peanuts

I will be in dublin, ireland, visiting friends, borrowing their computer sunday evening....

I'll have as many computers going as I can find - I may even dig out my old windows '98 dinosaur.

I haven't heard anyone mention NASA's solar system simulator. You can configure it to show Mars from the viewpoint of Phoenix. For me it's thrilling to sit with Phoenix and watch as the disc of Mars grows and grows as we approach landing! (The current angular diameter of Mars would also be a nice addition to dmuller's simulation.)

Currently Mars takes up about 3/4 of a degree, 50% larger than our moon appears to us:
Click to view attachment
(With my monitor/seating distance, the 20 degree field of view in this image matches what I actually see, so this is how big Mars actually appears to Phoenix!)

Pop these up in separate tabs in Firefox (be kind to JPL - give the poor server a second or two between requests!), then Ctrl+PgUp along the row... hey presto, poor-man's animated GIF! View of Mars from Phoenix, all times UTC:

midnight, Saturday 25th
9am, Saturday
Noon, Saturday
6pm, Saturday
9pm, Saturday
midnight, Sunday
3am, Sunday
6am, Sunday
9am, Sunday
Noon, Sunday
3pm, Sunday
6pm, Sunday
7pm, Sunday
8pm, Sunday
9pm, Sunday
10pm, Sunday
10:30pm, Sunday
11:00pm, Sunday

The view of Mars as seen from Phoenix gets very blurry once you hit around 23:00 UTC on 25 May. Remember that the Solar System Simulator uses spacecraft event time, and please do not use it beyond 23:32:00 on landing day as Phoenix is shown to bounce off (or fly through Mars) and back into outer space! This is at 23:45 spacecraft event time: http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...=1&showsc=1


Unfortunately it's too late now to add, but I'll gladly include it for other missions once I get around coding them. BTW, what's the formula?


I always wondered what settings to use to make it appear as seen by someone sitting on Phoenix. My knowledge of optics is really zero, I might just as well be theoretically blind

Daniel

Announcement for those following the Phoenix Real-Time Simulation at http://www.dmuller.net/phoenix
Just in case anything goes wrong with the server, there is a backup / mirror site of the script at http://www.dmuller.com/phoenix
Enjoy watching the landing! Daniel

I will probably be sleeping when the EDL starts (East African Time 2am), But I guess I can spare a whole hour just for Phoenix. I hope however my almost insignificant alarm can wake me up in the middle of the night. My choice of drink will probably be strong coffee from the slopes of Kilimanjaro

God speed to Phoenix.....

Well if you drive to an event somewhere, just remember NOT to

• drive your car at a 13 degree angle after you pass the first speed restriction
• open the boot and think the parachute at the back of your car will slow you down in time for the second speed restiction
• open your fuel hatch after coming to a complete stop to vent helium
• call 1-800-ODYSSEY to tell your folks that you have arrived
• stay at the event after it is over because this is not a sample return mission

You may laugh at me, but during sleep I was dreaming of parachutes, engine firings and so on

I had a dream 2 days ago I was looking at first images that looked strangely like Spirit landing site.

Indeed Peanuts are a must:
There is a tradition at JPL to eat "good luck peanuts" before critical mission events, such as orbital insertions or landings. As the story goes, after the Ranger program had experienced failure after failure during the 1960s, the first succesful mission of the Ranger program landed on the Moon while a JPL staffer was munching on peanuts. The staff jokingly decided that the peanuts must have been a good luck charm and the tradition persists today.

Hmmm, we could all play a Phoenix Drinking - or Peanut Eating - game... you know, like people do when watching TV series, and mark off each cliche with a drink... (i.e. a Battlestar Galactica drinking game might include taking a drink every time one of the following happens: Baltar looks at the sky and asks "Why me?"... Starbuck punches a superior officer... Adama growls at Lee "You're still my son..."... someone says "Frak"... etc)

For Phoenix, a drink or peanut could be taken every time one of the following happens / is seen...

Before Landing

* A Stars and Stripes shirt is spotted in Mission Control
* A Phoenix shirt is spotted in Mission Control
* A mini Stars and Stripes flag is spotted at a console
* A bag or jar of peanuts on a console
* Someone eating peanuts
* A celebrity is seen in Mission Control
* A politician is seen in Mission Control
* A senior NASA official is spotted in Mission Control
* The NASA TV commentator says - unnecessarily - "Things are very tense here..."
* The NASA TV camera zooms in on a model of Phoenix sitting on someone's desk or console
* The NASA TV camera zooms in on a countdown clock

Waiting for Confirmation of Landing

* Someone is spotted with their face in their hands
* Someone is spotted with a hand nervously grabbing at their hair
* Someone is spotted chewing on a pencil (pen acceptable)

After Landing

* Someone leaps up with both fists shaking
* The first "bear hug"
* The first "High Five"
* A politician is spotted looking desperately for someone to congratulate on-camera
* The first person crying (no point allowed for seeing yourself reflected in your monitor!)
* Peanuts flying through the air

Any other suggestions..?

I don't know, Stu... With that many drink mark events you listed... well, let's just say some of us have work to get to the next morning!

Doesn't have to be an alcoholic drink... anything to join in the fun!

Let's see:

Before Landing

* The commentator uses the phrase "seven minutes of terror"
* The EDL video is replayed (or segments thereof)
* The commentator quotes the initial entry velocity

All I got, but with yours it should be enough to leave us all pretty full and/or pretty zonked by the end of it! I may have to go to rehab after this event...