Dr. Tony Phillips, author Steve Roy, Media Relations Ron Koczor, NASA official Roberta L. Gross, NASA Inspector General Gentlemen and Madam Gross, Your release on Martian radiation hazards http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast01may_1.htm?list58745 has just arrived in my mail box. I am both delighted and dismayed. Kudos on pointing out the radiation hazard that future visitors will face, placing the blame on the solar wind and Mars's lack of a magnetic field to shield it from that wind, and the resulting virtual lack of an atmosphere on Mars. Non-kudos (raspberries?) on letting your Martian Weather Reporter predict that a solar flare that morning has resulted in a radiation hazard that afternoon. The CME would take several Earth days to reach Mars. Newton covered that concept in his Principia Mathematica (which see). And since a Mars day is roughly the same as an Earth day, you're still off by at least a few days. Superloud, sloppy, raucous raspberries on your description of Marie, the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment en route to Mars now via Odyssey. You describe it as less than 12 inches in length and weighing 7.3 pounds. Meanwhile, tracking Marie down via the links you provided, I find on http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/mission/instruments.html the words, MARIE The Mars Radiation Environment Experiment weighs 3.3 kilograms (7.3 pounds) and uses 7 watts of power. It measures 29.4 centimeters (11.6 inches) by 23.2 centimeters (9.1 inches) by 10.8 centimeters (4.3 inches). We Lowcountry Charlestonians have some elementary school children down here that can help you with the metric system (SI) if you're still having trouble with it in the Mars programs. They know that 1 cm is about the width of a child's finger. That would make Marie about as long as the width of 30 kids' fingers. And they know that a liter of water weighs about 1 kg. So they can tell that Marie weighs a bit more than a 3 L bottle of Coca Cola. Not only that, they can estimate that Marie's power needs are about 1/10 that of a 75 W light bulb. (And yes, they know the symbols cm, kg, and W.) Just imagine what our big kids know! Or did you "dumb this down" just for the benefit of us slow-witted Americans? What good does it do to teach our children how to use metric units if NASA's public materials are published in non-SI units? Are you trying to give the impression that NASA does its science these days in inches and pounds? Please read the NASA IG's recent report on this. Who's side are you on, anyway? Are you trying to lower our educational standards in this country? James R. Frysinger -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
