Hi Gary -

Okay. I understand that this ballistic technology is the same thing used in weapons systems for the delivery of nuclear explosives. I can understand not giving Vernadsky Institute a heads up in the way back when, many years ago; I can't understand how the Hydrodynamics Institutute blew it, but then Mars atmospheric models were way off in those days...

Your employer sent you to that conference where the Beagle entry team presented their study. The assumption here is that the Beagle entry team member was actually looking for feedback, and not simply checking out the restaurants and hotels in a strange city.

You asked a question to see if they had done their homework, and from their reply came to the immediate conclusion that they had not - or at least had not done it to US levels.

At this point you could have given him and them a heads up, but you did not. Maybe the process was too far along, so that a new entry shell could not have been fabricated, but that still leaves entry angle adjustments (ballistic path adjustments), which most likely could have been changed, even at a very late date...

I don't know if this could have improved their odds to the point of mission success (after all, the Beagle lander was so small that the boulders on Mars surface could have prevented it from functioning), but as you point out, a couple hundred meters in parachute deployment is often the difference between success and failure... And prehaps a couple of comments from you along with a couple of e-mails might have made all the difference...

I guess what I'm driving at here, Gary, is that the bottom line is "Did you handle yourself at that conference in the best way that you could have?"

Oh well... at least no one died... and it looks like you have plenty of company on this one, specifically the other people who were also sent to the conference...

Merry Christmas,
ep