The thing is - we spend km's crossing seemingly very similar dunes, and then it's not like we have any near misses, any high-slip situations...just suddenly - BANG - a big dune that tries to swallow the damn thing whole.

How can you plan around that? Is every dune south of here going to be like that - or is this just a one off, or the beginning of a pattern of more 'sinkable' dunes which we just happened to luck into one of after missing them for a while.

It's asked so many questions all of a sudden and I dont think we have the answers. It would be interesting to see if the seemingly now healthy Mini TES has made day long temp-profiles of the dunes in the area to see if some dunes are 'fluffier' than others. This might let us identify islands of fluffiness, or perhaps just safe routes between a whole swathe of dangerous dunes that lie ahead.

/me sarcasm
I think if anyone else posts a "they should have put a...." w.r.t. MER hardware (usually solar panel wipers, a winch, a video camera, a colour camera, rockets, or balloons) - my reply will be "they should have put a brain in your head, but sometimes there just isnt room for these things"

;)

Doug