THERE IS NO LACK OF COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS YOU TROLL

Do the maths yourself - 1024 x 1024 x 12 x 3. Thats the number of bits in a single colour frame.

A 360 degree panorama has 22 x 4 of those.

Thats 3321 Mbits of data. Even using a harsh 12:1 compresion - thats 276 Mbits of data - excluding housekeeping and engineering datat hat would go along with it. Now do the maths on the twice daily UHF passes that can, on average, do between 60 and 120 Mbits. It took Spirit a fortnight to send back the Hill panorama. Go do the maths yourself - find out how big these data sets are - find out the power limitations on Spirit at the moment, or the poor communications that Opportunity had in End. Crater, or the lack of DSN passes for MER because of the dozens of other missions requiring its attention

Yes - technology has moved on since pathfinder - and MER is a golden demonstration of that fact. Infact -pathfinders IMP camera had a field of view of just a little less than Pancam - but it's resolution was a 16th of that of Pancam

You want an improvement in technology - you've got it.

Mars Pathfinder
256 x 256 = 2.3 Mbits per single uncompressed colour frame

MER
37.7 Mbits per single uncompressed colour frame

Thats sixteen times as much data - for a single frame. And, whilst pathfinder managed to transmit a full panorama in its 90ish sols - roughtly 202 Mbits uncompressed - the MER's have, between them, managed 11 and a half ( two of which we are yet to see) for a total of 38,152 Mbits. That's just the colour frames that go to make the panoramas. There's also probably a similar volume again of data for smaller Pancam mosaics and navcam panoramas. Not to mention the HUGE ammount of spectroscopic data provided by Mini TES, the Mossbauer and the APXS.

So - in terms of colour imaging capacity - the MER's have sent back 188 times as much data as Pathfinder. Not an order of magnitude more ( which would be astonishing ) but more than TWO orders of magnitude more than MPF.

I think, for a mission built in 3 years, starting only 4 years after Pathfinder - that's an ASTONISHING achievment.

You want progress? MER has, for approx $900M ( I'm adding to the typical estimate to allow for the extended mission funding ) - given - to date - 668 sols of landed operations. That's $1.35M/sol

Pathfinder gave 86 sols of landed operations for $265M - thats $3.08M/sol - more than twice as much as MER. Infact - if you classify Pathfinder as R'n'D for MER ( which is a joke - as next to no systems were Pathfinder heritage by the time MER was finished ) - then MER - at a total cose of $1.165B comes out at $1.74M/sol - still less tan 57% the cost of Pathfinder on its own.

So - on a cost by mars-day basis - MER is cheaper, more productive, massively more caperble, has produced more science, more data, more imagery, more spectra, more definitive results more often - and - lest we forget - is continuing to do so right now - with some estimates putting Opportunity out to 500, 600+ sols. We could hit 1000 sols of surface operations that would put the cost/sol factor of MER way out at less than a third of Pathfinder.

I'm sorry - if you can find criticism with the achievments of MER given the limitations of power, volume, weight, data bandwidth and time - then you are nothing but a complete and utter idiot.

Doug