Some of you will, hopefully, have seen the uStream broadcasts we did over landing night at www.marslive.co.uk and http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mars-live

On Saturday night at 2200BST ( 2100 UT, 1700 Eastern, 1400 Pacific...I think ) I'm going to do the Mars 'half' of a talk I've given at a fair few astronomy societies in the UK - called Cosmic Casualty. It's the story from Mars Observer to Phoenix - and whilst almost everyone here will, I'm sure, know just about everything I'll say, some of you might enjoy it all the same. Stu will be moderating the chat, and questions can go in to blog@marslive.co.uk with the question in the subject of the email.

See you there - hopefuly Camtwist should let me have slides + doug on screen at the same time, what I'll try and do is put a PDF of the slides up for download before hand so that people can ride along at full res.

Cool. I'll try to be there.

Not sure I will be able to watch live, but I am looking forward to the slides!

I've pushed it 'right' 15 minutes, so we can watch the shuttle launch to MECO, get a drink, go to the bathroom, and then get on with it

Doug

Doug - you might want to move it even further right... if the sky's clear and the shuttle launches on time, it (and the ET) will be visible roughly between 22:20 and 22:24 from the UK.

Looking forward to the talk!

Lets call it 2230 - I've spent 8 years trying to see an STS+ET combo after launch and have still not done it.

Doug

Going live in a minute or two.

That was fun - nice to have a few UMSFers in there. I'd duplicate Emilys question about the best time to do these - when's best ( w'ends only for me )

Doug

Yeah, that was a ball! Thanks!

BTW, whatever you did to the audio about halfway through was the right thing to do; heard you perfectly from then on.

Well - I was trying to be clever and use a wireless mic from work. But it died - and I switch to my Macbook Pro's internal Mic thereafter

Doug

A fortunate death...couldn't hear a damn thing before. All hail the MacMike!

Doug,

Very interesting talk.

Couple of observations...

1. Before your audio gave up completely and descended into motor boating, the frequency response was pretty poor with very little treble. This probably accounted for the complaints about it being 'faint'. Audio after you changed microphone was better, though we then had a little bit of background noise.

2. I noticed that the layout of many of your slides had a box top left and one bottom right, ie a top-left to bottom-right 'flow'. Perhaps you could put your picture in picture in the bottom left of the main image. Pretty sure that would obscure less of the detail of the majority of slides. Otherwise, could you toggle the P-in-P on and off according to slide content? (Difficult to do whilst talking, of course!)

...and great news on the trip to Cornell!

Rob

For those that missed it, Doug's talk was very good indeed. He actually gave that talk up here in kendal to my astronomy society last year, and it went down really well here too, lots of fascinating facts and figures about various failures in space missions. A lot of new-to-me stuff.

Good support from UMSF for Doug's first solo broadcast... numbers never dropped below 15 viewers... and consequently (because UMSFers are, by nature, very respectful and good people) everyone was really well behaved, and my Moderator's trigger finger didn't even have to twitch as I waited to kick someone off the site for being lewd or inappropriate.

Okay, so the sound quality did suffer at one point, when a mad chainsaw-wielding lunatic, driving a tractor and towing a motorboat, interrupted the broadcast, and some of the visuals were hidden behind Doug's head, but there were many highlights, not the least of which was the opportunity for us all to enjoy a "Cribs" style glimpse into The Shed.

My personal highlight - which no-one else picked up on, and I honestly couldn't comment on for laughing - was when Doug asked, in absolute innocence, "Can you see my mouse?"

Thankfully for everyone viewing, only Doug's head was visible above his desk, so the answer was NO...

Er, what Stu said

It was an excellent talk, and despite Doug's disclaimer that very little would be new to UMSFers, there was loads of stuff that I either didn't know before, or had forgotten. I think everyone who watched ended up knowing a little more at the end than they did at the start... the Q&A was especially interesting.

The discussion of ESA stuff was especially inspiring, I actually woke up this morning with a some random ideas bouncing around my head. I'm going to write the first couple of letters today -- I don't have any illusion that either the Select Committee or my MP will read it, smack their palms against foreheads and exclaim "Why, it's all so clear, now that imipak's spelled it out - quick! Get me the number of the head of the ESA, goddammit, we've got to get this sorted out!" -- but it'll help with rehearsing arguments and rhetorical approaches... as well as making me feel a little better for venting ) . Anyway I've have a LOT of other ideas, some of which might actually be useful.

Alas, openesa.org is taken...

Remember - writing to your MP about space may kill him.

Fact.

i looked on your uStream page but couldn't see a record of it. has the talk been archived somewhere else?

I didn't record it - I'm going to re-do it to record it later today. Given the sound problems, I'm glad

Doug

Doug, are you going to re-broadcast live or just record it for later posting? I'd like to see the first part again; since the audio was jacked, I missed most of what you said.

I can re-broadcast it at the same time with no change to what's required so sure. 1400BST ( 35 mins from now )

Cool! We'll verify your audio then as well.

EDIT: Who did that nice placeholder Phoenix graphic for you on the channel?

It's the Phoenix graphic that AstroO made for the UMSF banner

I thought so... ...Glen is amazingly talented!