Monday grumbles

The project proposal I'm trying to put together suffered a blow... the drill provider says that they can't make the mass and cost requirements, they can do 3x one or the other. I could accept the mass -- it is a prototype -- but then it is too heavy for the rover chassis I was trying to marry it to. Heavier rovers exist, but also cost too much. So I may have to just propose an integrated drilling package on a stationary platform, evaluated in different analog environments. Rebalancing these issues and putting together a proposal team has kept me preoccupied for most of the past week or so.

Except for a 2-day CRUX telecon last week, which went fine... except that the project manager at the Army Cold Regions Research Lab in NH wants my presentation redone so that all of the graphics will show up on a lowest-end Windows box. No QuickTime, no TIFF images... like I really have time to downgrade my charts for his archive. Still, I can't politically afford to rile-up the new project manager, not with CRUX about to shrink 50%...

On top of everything else, I'm headed to Atlanta for a quick 2-day trip Tue-Wed this week, to meet regarding DAME diagnostics and for a student's Ph.D. proposal.

more project press

On the Discovery Channel website, there's a video on some of the MARTE work that we've done in Rio Tinto: http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=10/25/2005

Click on the video link for "A Siesta on Mars".

Mostly drill-focused, and I'm not in it, but good images...