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This same video has been on the JPL Mars website for over a year.

For those criticising the seemingly complex landing method, JPL took a broad look at a lot of possible technologies. The Mars Exploration Rover and Pathfinder method of using airbags was downright out. The MER's were bigger than Pathfinder and at the limits of what such a system could handle. JPL also had a bear of a time figuring out how to fold the rovers up inside the relatively small volume of the airbags. They actually had to improve that method beyond what the Pathfinder mission demonstrated because its performance in high wind scenarios was marginal. Yet the MSL weighs over four times as much (1875 lbs versus 408 lbs) and is about twice the linear dimensions.

A conventional touchdown like the Viking landers, and more recently Phoenix used was possible, but increased the total mass and complexity as it requires a platform capable of supporting the rover, cushioning the touchdown, protecting it from debris kicked up by the thrusters, and accomodating rover deployment on the surface. Incidentally, the MER's also had such a platform, which weighed 80% more than the rovers themselves (but did include the airbags which helped save fuel mass and keep the EDL process simple). The dry weight of the sky crane for the MSL is actually slightly less than the rover itself.

The skycrane concept keeps the exhaust plume of the braking rockets well above the ground, so it will not stir up significant debris. It also allows the rover to deploy its wheels (see the video) in mid air, when they're unloaded, instead of having to stand up against the 850 kg mass of the rover. The MER deployment actually comprised several dozen individual events and took several days after touchdown.

It may look unstable, but the center of gravity of the rover lies far below the skycrane. The skycrane itself is able to control its orientation using the thrusters, which I believe have heritage to the Viking program, so their reliability is proven. Touchdown speed control is also tested on the Vikings and Pathfinder.

So it seems hokey, but it's actually pretty well thought out. They aren't messing around with a mission this big, and there's good potential for re-using not only the rover design (Mars Astrobiology Field Lab ~2016), but also the re-entry system, including scaling it up for larger payloads.

Not exactly. It is radioisotope power but it is not nuclear power in the sense that there is a reaction going on. The simple decay gives off heat. As I recall it's not that much, either. Something on the order of 110 watts. Still, it's much better than relying on solar panels. Here's a nice page of fact sheets for the mission.

I think Evolution is an undeniable fact, and it's also a little obvious, we are hairless monkeys with bigger brains. The Big Bang too I believe could have happened, and when I say "could" that's because I can't be sure about something that happened 13 billion years ago, but it sure makes more sense than God creating things out of nowhere.

But I also believe there's a God, and by God I don't mean "an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky" (borrowing some of Carl Sagan's words), but an immensely higher consciousness. The existence of that God does not go against Evolution. The laws of nature applies to everything, everywhere: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080517.html

That's my opinion, based on scientific facts and personal/philosophical beliefs.

Actually, astronauts have reported after spacewalks that their space suits collect a semi-metallic, sweet smell to them after they return to the shuttle/vehicle. Of course, depending upon the nature of the spacewalk, this could have been a collection of fine particles from welding and repairing a satellite, or exhaust that collected to the exterior of the shuttle during launch. Here's a link to NASA.gov with an astronaut's recounting of smelling 'space residue' http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp6/spacechronicles4.html

If the universe is smaller than its Schwarzschild radius, it should collapse into a singularity. It hasn't, so it apparently isn't.

As mentioned here, the concept of a Schwarzschild radius is one limiting case of Einstein's equations of general relativity. It is a useful concept with various rules-of-thumb, but one must be careful in applying it to all situations. In particular, the approximation breaks down, and a full treatment using the equations of general relativity is instead necessary, for "extreme" situations (like inside a black hole, during the big bang, when applied to the entire universe, etc.).

More specifically (this site seems to explain it somewhat), the "Schwarzschild black hole" is just one solution to the equations of general relativity--it is a limiting case for nominally static matter (that is also non-rotating, spherically symmetric). Other solutions are required in other cases (e.g. the Kerr solution for rotating black holes). The Schwarzschild solution doesn't apply to dynamic systems (e.g. rapidly expanding matter). In particular the big bang and subsequent expansion of the universe represent a different solution to the equations of GR. This solution provides for a roughly flat space but massive expansion (hence highly curved spacetime, as one would expect for such high mass-density). Our best understanding suggests that inflation occurred (where space was expanding faster than the speed of light, although light/energy/matter/information was still constrained by c).

In my previous post I was just pointing out that the expected size for the Schwarzschild radius is very large. However that is based on a naive application of the usual rules-of-thumb. The big bang, if you will, is extreme enough that it requires a more careful treatment. Moreover, our best data right now suggests that the universe is roughly flat and infinite (and thus with infinite or at least extremely large mass), meaning that there is probably no meaningful way to apply the "Schwarzschild radius" concept to it.

Disclaimer: I'm not a cosmologist. Hopefully I didn't make a mistake.

Also here (same image) with some background info: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/press/16613-animated.html

This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars.

On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be "out-of-phase" with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence. Preliminary analysis of the images taken right before and after the passing of this possible dust devil indicates winds from the west at 7 meters per second. The image taken during the possible dust devil shows 11 meters per second wind from the south.

These images were taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) on the 136th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 12, 2008). Phoenix's telltale is part of the Canadian Space Agency's meteorological package on the lander.

The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

Feel free to discuss this article in the forum... or chat...

What I want to know, is how did the universe expand beyond its own swartzchild radius?

It didn't.

To compute the Schwarzschild radius of the universe, we need to know its mass. Recent measurements suggest that the universe is flat, and so may have infinite mass. However at a minimum we can count up the mass within the observable universe. The observable stars in the universe have a mass of ~2*10^52, but they are overwhelmed by dark matter, which brings the total mass within our observation volume to ~4*10^53 kg. So the Schwarzschild radius for the universe is:

r = (2*G*m)/(c^2) = 2*(6.7E-11 m^3kg^-1s^-2)*(4E53 kg)/(3E8 m/s)^2 = 6E26 m = 60 billion light-years.

Since the observable universe is ~46 billion light-years in radius, this means that the Schwarzschild radius of the universe is bigger than what we consider to be "the universe." In other words, we are well within the Schwarzschild radius, leading some people to describe the universe itself as a massive black hole that we are actually inside of.

The universe probably has a mass larger than what we can observe, making the radius even larger than the above estimate. If the universe truly has infinite mass, then the radius is infinite. In other words, the universe may not have a Schwarzschild radius at all.

This is also a decent description.

Actually you could easily do this on the Norwegian Svalbard islands. Not only does it have Arctic conditions, reliable power supplies and high-speed fiber connections to main land Norway/Europe. But it's also a special status island group where citizens of any nation are free to live and work. Being part of Norway it's under a stable, free and democratic government.

Because of it's position close to the North Pole it's heavily used as a satellite communications site by NASA, JAXA and the European Space Agency.

There's even a University there.

Svalbard Satellite station (SvalSat) was established in 1997 and the rapid expansion of the ground station is changing this perspective. SvalSat is recognized, not only as the northernmost, but also the best-located ground station in the world. The extreme northern location on the Svalbard archipelago, at 78Â13' N, gives SvalSat its unique and favourable position. The satellite coverage at this latitude holds unique opportunities and SvalSat is the only commercial ground station in the world able to provide all-orbit-support (14 of 14 orbits) to owners and operators of polar orbiting satellites.

I'm curious, I presume somebody knows this.

I don't work on hubble but I know something about this stuff and I'll try and answer your questions directly

Do they have several mock ups?

Yes, for hubble there are several mock-ups, from ones that are fairly low fidelity that are used by the software developers (maintainers) for code/debug/test to a very high fidelity full scale electrical and mechanical mock-up of the aft end of the vehicle called the VEST, when the astronauts practice the repair tasks on dry land before they move to the pool at JSC to learn to do them in a simulated 0g environment.

A complete computer model of the whole thing, emulated right down to hardware and software?

When HST was built we were still doing spacecraft control simulations on hybrid analog/digital computers. For all missions in the last 20 years or so there are computer models of all the control modes built using products like matlab/simulink long before any metal is cut. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a matlab (or similar) model of hubble now as the hybrid computer is long gone. In fact, I'm almost positive, as I don't see any way they could have come up with the 2 gyro science controller otherwise.

How are reboot/reprogram sequences like this handled/practiced/tested?

Not to be a wise guy, but reboot and reprogramming are handled very carefully. This is why switching to a backup system is going to take 2 weeks, most of which were used for analysis and a formal review before the decision to swap to the B side was made. It probably takes 5 minutes to send the actual commands to switch to the B side of the data formatter, but they will double, triple or quadruple check everything as they go thru the process. Remember, they are switching to hardware that hasn't been used since 1990. They expect it to take about 40 hours to switch to the B side and plan to be done by Friday.

Even at design stage I imagine failure modes are extensively analyzed and multiple redundancy built in.

There are failure modes and effects analysis done at each design step. Before launch there would have been a peer review of the final failure detection and correction design.

A lot of the NASA standards are available to the public. If you go to http://standards.nasa.gov/ and click on the public button it takes you to the listing of them.

Look, a beautiful sunspot is going on today: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_284/512/

no it won't protect your eyes.

Welder's glass of the right type will indeed protect your eyes, as will a few other types of filters. This site has good information.

The Sun is not the face of God. It is very bright and can damage your eyes, but sufficient filtering will reduce the brightness and allow direct viewing.

When we had an annular eclipse in, IIRC, 1994, I stacked a whole bunch of sunglasses together and took a quick look, with no damage.

I am by no means an expert, much less an advanced knowledgeable person when it comes to this stuff, I just find it interesting and hope some of you will as well.

I read an article over a year ago about how they could not get good measurements of solar flares because the instruments were not good enough and to get some measurements you needed at least two observation points some distance apart. (probably related to measuring gamma rays) It is my understanding that the earth finally has the right kinds of instruments up there to get very accurate measurements of the sun, solar flares and etc.... I searched around and have provided a few links. I believe you will really like the Youtube video, very cool. Enjoy!

The Solar/SMO was planned for 2003 and was finally launched on February 7, 2008. It is designed to measure solar radiation with wavelenghts from 200 nanometers - 100 micrometers. This covers the near-ultraviolet, visible and infrared areas of the spectrum. Here is NASA on Solar / SMO.

Hinode launched in September 2006 has a three year mission to explore the magnetic fields of the sun. Specifically the investigates the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its corona. A consortium including Japan, US, UK and Norway worked together to measure the effects of "magnetic fields thought to be the source of solar flares" Three instruments are used, they are the SOT (Solar Optical Telescope, the X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). The first images were captured on October 28.

HESSI renamed RHESSI launched on February 5, 2002, captures solar flares, X-rays and gamma ray flashes. Prior to the launch of RHESSI, we only had the GOES spacecraft which only measured X-ray flux and to classify the size of solar flares. YouTube on HESSI / RHESSI; A solar flare video - no sound. Here is a great video that shows the various instruments in action, one right after the other. From 10/18/03 through 11/07/03; AR 10486 & AR 10488.

From the Wiki,

The most powerful flare of the last 500 years is believed to have occurred in September 1859: it was seen by British astronomer Richard Carrington and left a trace in Greenland ice in the form of nitrates and beryllium-10, which allow its strength to be measured today (New Scientist, 2005).

Prior to the above launches, the Ulysees was pretty much it for measuring from space, before Ulysses there was only observations from the ground.

Ulysses (17 year mission) - was equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Launched in 10/6/90 through 7/1/08; through "through triangulation (or, more specifically, multilateration). Each spacecraft has a gamma-ray detector, with readouts noted in tiny fractions of a second. By comparing the arrival times of gamma showers with the separations of the spacecraft, a location can be determined, for follow-up with other telescopes. Because gamma rays travel at the speed of light, wide separations are needed." Additional discoveries: Additional discoveries: [15] 1) Ulysses discovered that the Sun's magnetic field interacts with the Solar system in a more complex fashion than previously believed. 2) Ulysses discovered that dust coming into the solar system from deep space was 30 times more abundant than previously expected.

I am by no means an expert, much less an advanced knowledgeable person when it comes to this stuff, I just find it interesting and hope some of you will as well.

I read an article over a year ago about how they could not get good measurements of solar flares because the instruments were not good enough and to get some measurements you needed at least two observation points some distance apart. (probably related to measuring gamma rays) It is my understanding that the earth finally has the right kinds of instruments up there to get very accurate measurements of the sun, solar flares and etc.... I searched around and have provided a few links. I believe you will really like the Youtube video, very cool. Enjoy!

The Solar/SMO was planned for 2003 and was finally launched on February 7, 2008. It is designed to measure solar radiation with wavelenghts from 200 nanometers - 100 micrometers. This covers the near-ultraviolet, visible and infrared areas of the spectrum. Here is NASA on Solar / SMO.

Hinode launched in September 2006 has a three year mission to explore the magnetic fields of the sun. Specifically the investigates the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its corona. A consortium including Japan, US, UK and Norway worked together to measure the effects of "magnetic fields thought to be the source of solar flares" Three instruments are used, they are the SOT (Solar Optical Telescope, the X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). The first images were captured on October 28.

HESSI renamed RHESSI launched on February 5, 2002, captures solar flares, X-rays and gamma ray flashes. Prior to the launch of RHESSI, we only had the GOES spacecraft which only measured X-ray flux and to classify the size of solar flares. YouTube on HESSI / RHESSI; A solar flare video - no sound. Here is a great video that shows the various instruments in action, one right after the other. From 10/18/03 through 11/07/03; AR 10486 & AR 10488.

From the Wiki,

The most powerful flare of the last 500 years is believed to have occurred in September 1859: it was seen by British astronomer Richard Carrington and left a trace in Greenland ice in the form of nitrates and beryllium-10, which allow its strength to be measured today (New Scientist, 2005).

Prior to the above launches, the Ulysees was pretty much it for measuring from space, before Ulysses there was only observations from the ground.

Ulysses (17 year mission) - was equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Launched in 10/6/90 through 7/1/08; through "through triangulation (or, more specifically, multilateration). Each spacecraft has a gamma-ray detector, with readouts noted in tiny fractions of a second. By comparing the arrival times of gamma showers with the separations of the spacecraft, a location can be determined, for follow-up with other telescopes. Because gamma rays travel at the speed of light, wide separations are needed." Additional discoveries: Additional discoveries: [15] 1) Ulysses discovered that the Sun's magnetic field interacts with the Solar system in a more complex fashion than previously believed. 2) Ulysses discovered that dust coming into the solar system from deep space was 30 times more abundant than previously expected.

so I cynically give this article an honorary (-1) for over-sensationalized adjectives. "Monstrous", "massive", "hundreds of times stronger than storms on earth" - (I say in good humor) - isn't Saturn A SUPER-HUGE GAS GIANT OVER 763 TIMES THE VOLUME OF EARTH? So, yes, IT HAS BIG WEATHER. I certainly DO appreciate the exploration & research, it's just that I don't think anyone's impressed with the "monstrous storms" characterization anymore; maybe the Science Channel has desensitized us to scale superlatives. Also, get off my lawn! :-D http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn&Display=Facts&System=Metric

Certainly, but the original poster wanted images of cities. 1D lines, though very useful, don't really catch the attention of people who want to see something like this.

Ditto with radio images. Extremely useful, but probably not what the poster was hoping for.

In fact, astronauts have reported seeing 'atmospheric' effects at sunrise and sunset on the moon because of the amount of dust hovering above the surface.

A quick search of the ASRS Database (the database of US aviation incident reporting) shows hundreds of instances of people (aviation employees who are totally unaware of the scientific method) blaming all sorts of issues on passenger electronic devices. Every time there is anything that has gone wrong, plus they are able to find a random electronic device on, it must be the fault of the device. I suggest that you can *always* find some electronic device that is on.

Communication won't be a problem when using a polar orbit. But apparently this is more difficult than it sounds:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/30nov_highorbit.htm

As I understand it, the moon's gravitational pull works against the earth's and the two are in a sort of balance that determines the distance of the moon's orbit, or something.

Yes, but the mass of the object is irrelevant. Very approximately, an orbit is where the outward force due to centrifugal force[*] is equal to the inward force due to gravity; both these terms scale linearly with mass, so if you increase the mass of one, the other increases proportionately and the balance remains.

(This is why the space shuttle and the space station can be in the same orbit a few metres apart, despite being different sizes.)

Also, in general the human race is nowhere near able to do any kind of cosmic engineering, deliberate or otherwise. Even if we bent all our resources to it, we wouldn't even be able to significantly resculpt the surface of our own planet, let alone another one.

[*] To pedants: yes, I know.

(BTW, the moon already is lopsided. The same tides that pull water around on Earth pulls the rock around on the moon. The near side of the moon is significantly larger than the far side. Interesting factoid: the moon is so irregular that setting up a stable orbit around it is really hard.)

Please all, remember that the total NASA budget - that is manned and robotic exploration - is 0.1% of the current military budget. Even with overspending and tardiness. It's hard to build these spacecraft. NASA is involved in more than 70 ongoing projects, most of which are focused on Earth science. Think what we could find and use if the budget was just 0.2%. My humble advice is to get involved, volunteer to learn about earth and space science, volunteer in schools and inform your families and friends of NASA activities. Make part of your life's work to keep our children and grandchildren smart, curious, and away from the rubbish fed to them by the media, their games and their temptations. David DelMonte http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/ambassador/

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news160.html

Confirmation has been received that the asteroid impact fireball occurred at the predicted time and place. The energy recorded was estimated to be 0.9 to 1.0 kT of TNT and the time of detection was 02:45:45 on October 7 (Greenwich Standard Time). More details on this detection will be forthcoming. An additional confirmation was apparently reported by a KLM airliner (see: (http://www.spaceweather.com). As reported by Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario, Canada), a preliminary examination of infrasound stations nearest to the predicted impact point shows that at least one station recorded the event. These measurements are consistent with the predicted time and place of the atmospheric impact and indicate an estimated energy of 1.1 - 2.1 kT of TNT.

Just in case anyone's still checking all the way down here...

Not to mention that Jim Hansen, the famous climatologist who first pointed out to the US Congress that AGW (rapid greenhouse warming of the global climate) had become evident in the instrumental record back in 1988, works for NASA. And ISTR there are one or two satellites that have helped with understanding earth's climate.

You can't patch in space.

Um, yes, http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/rtf/tps/repairapp.pdf yes you can. (PDF)

Small Asteroid Predicted to Cause Brilliant Fireball over Northern Sudan

A very small, few-meter sized asteroid, designated 2008 TC3, was found Monday morning by the Catalina Sky Survey from their observatory near Tucson Arizona. Preliminary orbital computations by the Minor Planet Center suggested an atmospheric entry of this object within a day of discovery. JPL confirmed that an atmospheric impact will very likely occur during early morning twilight over northern Sudan, north-eastern Africa, at 2:46 UT Tuesday morning. The fireball, which could be brilliant, will travel west to east (from azimuth = 281 degrees) at a relative atmospheric impact velocity of 12.8 km/s and arrive at a very low angle (19 degrees) to the local horizon. It is very unlikely that any sizable fragments will survive passage through the Earth's atmosphere.

Objects of this size would be expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere every few months on average but this is the first time such an event has been predicted ahead of time.

Moving around in space is all about changing your velocity. There are a number of ways to effect that change - gravitational slingshot, aerobraking, big sails, thrusters ... Each has advantages and disadvantages. For example, direct thrust may provide the most direct path to your objective, but the fuel requirement may be impractical. The mission designers have chosen a method of getting MESSENGER (about 1000kg of payload) to it's objective with enough fuel on-board to perform it's mission. Many variables have been considered - launch vehicle requirements, time to arrival, duration of mission, required consumables, etc. It's a horribly complex optimization.

The most efficient time/location to make orbital adjustments is apogee or perigee. If you enter into a highly eliptical orbit and wish to circularize at a much lower altitude using only a fractional-Newton thruster, yeah, it'll take a while. MESSENGER has a 650N main thruster, but only about 600kg of propellant. That equates to "not a lot" of thruster time. The main engine has a Specific Impulse (Isp) of 318 seconds. On Earth, you'd get about 318 seconds (5+ minutes) of operation. That gravitational element doesn't really apply out in space, so the available thrust-time will be longer. The NASA PDF indicates that the final orbital insertion burn will consume 30% of the propellant, and will last about 14 minutes. Extrapolating, that indicates that MESSENGER has about 42 minutes of propellant on board.

There's also a nice explanation of the orbital maneuvers on the JHUAPL website, and also a nice PDF showing the orbital insertion cost plots.

Moving around in space is all about changing your velocity. There are a number of ways to effect that change - gravitational slingshot, aerobraking, big sails, thrusters ... Each has advantages and disadvantages. For example, direct thrust may provide the most direct path to your objective, but the fuel requirement may be impractical. The mission designers have chosen a method of getting MESSENGER (about 1000kg of payload) to it's objective with enough fuel on-board to perform it's mission. Many variables have been considered - launch vehicle requirements, time to arrival, duration of mission, required consumables, etc. It's a horribly complex optimization.

The most efficient time/location to make orbital adjustments is apogee or perigee. If you enter into a highly eliptical orbit and wish to circularize at a much lower altitude using only a fractional-Newton thruster, yeah, it'll take a while. MESSENGER has a 650N main thruster, but only about 600kg of propellant. That equates to "not a lot" of thruster time. The main engine has a Specific Impulse (Isp) of 318 seconds. On Earth, you'd get about 318 seconds (5+ minutes) of operation. That gravitational element doesn't really apply out in space, so the available thrust-time will be longer. The NASA PDF indicates that the final orbital insertion burn will consume 30% of the propellant, and will last about 14 minutes. Extrapolating, that indicates that MESSENGER has about 42 minutes of propellant on board.

There's also a nice explanation of the orbital maneuvers on the JHUAPL website, and also a nice PDF showing the orbital insertion cost plots.

If one of the astronauts wants to play chess by mail, that's fine.

They actually did a game over the summer between Mission Control and Chamitoff, which ended with MCC resigning on 8-13: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition17/chess_chamitoff.html.

Regarding the PR stunt, yes, it is one because it's try to draw lot's of attention, but so is every outreach program run by any kind of organization.

Part of NASA's mission, to quote Michael Griffin, is that "NASA is in the inspiration business." (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29218) That in itself is PR.

Space exploration needs to be on the forefront of science, along with things like the LHC, etc. Our country is on a decline on the science, technology, and innovation front. Our government has let it go by the wayside (see http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29133 specifically for the space program), and too much of Generation Y is ignoring science, going into "soft" fields (preaching to the choir).

Like I said, NASA needs to inspire more young children to get into science and technology. If what it takes is a "PR stunt" like this, then so be it. Sure, NASA benefits from it, but the real beneficiaries, if it works out right, are the children, and by extension, future society.

I don't get what you're trying to accomplish. I'm not talking about TSI. As far as I know, no one is talking about TSI except you just now.

Svensmark has a nice hypothesis, that fits extremely well with the historical record, and is testable. (And tests are, as far a I know, on their way)

Oh, and yes, they were indeed quite strong. If we use sun spots as the proxy, the solar cycles in the second half of the 20th century were actually the strongest combined in several hundred years (since measurements began).

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/solarcycleupdate/ssn_yearlyNew2_strip3.jpg

Please post here the measured atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures for that period in the 1940s that you mentioned.

Temperatures are here. For CO2, direct measurements didn't start until the late 1950s. You can see those here. Earlier than that, you have to look at ice cores (which also extend later than that, although nobody uses them for times when instrumental data is available). You can see those here.

If nobody can provide the data, I'm going to assume that this global warming stuff is all just alarmism, and not actually objective science at all.

That is a pretty silly statement. How paranoid do you have to be to believe that we don't even have data on global warming? It just shows how polarized the skeptics have become.

Somehow I don't think so, but maybe the US wouldn't have made it to the moon by the end of the 60's, but would have eventually gotten there. Maybe the Soviets would have gotten there first, who knows?

NASA knows. The Soviets did get there first.

Luna 1 Launched 02 Jan 1959 Lunar Flyby
Luna 2 Launched 12 Sep 1959 Impacted Moon 14 Sep 1959 at ~07:30:00 UT Latitude 29.10 N, Longitude 0.00 - Palus Putredinis
Luna 3 Launched 04 Oct 1959 Lunar Flyby
Luna 4 Launched 02 Apr 1963 Lunar Flyby
Luna 5 Launched 09 May 1965 Impacted Moon - Sea of Clouds
Luna 6 Launched 08 Jun 1965 Attempted Lander - Missed Moon
Luna 7 Launched 04 Oct 1965 Lunar Impact - Sea of Storms
Luna 8 Launched 03 Dec 1965 Lunar Impact - Sea of Storms
Luna 9 Launched 31 Jan 1966 Landed on Moon 03 Feb 1966 at 18:44:52 UT Latitude 7.08 N, Longitude 295.63 E - Oceanus Procellarum
Luna 10 Launched 31 Mar 1966 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 11 Launched 24 Aug 1966 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 12 Launched 22 Oct 1966 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 13 Launched 21 Dec 1966 Landed on Moon 24 Dec 1966 at 18:01:00 UT Latitude 18.87 N, 297.95 E - Oceanus Procellarum
Luna 14 Launched 7 Apr 1968 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 15 Launched 13 Jul 1969 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 16 Launched 12 Sep 1970 Landed on Moon 20 Sep 1970 at 05:18:00 UT Latitude 0.68 S, Longitude 56.30 E - Mare Fecunditatis Lunar Sample Return
Luna 17 Launched 10 Nov 1970 Landed on Moon 17 Nov 1970 at 03:47:00 UT Latitude 38.28 N, Longitude 325.00 E - Mare Imbrium Lunar Rover - Lunokhod 1
Luna 18 Launched 02 Sep 1971 Lunar Impact Latitude 3.57 N, Longitude 50.50 E - Mare Fecunditatis
Luna 19 Launched 28 Sep 1971 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 20 Launched 14 Feb 1972 Landed on Moon 21 Feb 1972 at 19:19:00 UT Latitude 3.57 N, Longitude 56.50 E - Mare Fecunditatis Lunar Sample Return to Earth 25 Feb 1972
Luna 21 Launched 08 Jan 1973 Landed on Moon 15 Jan 1973 at 23:35:00 UT
Latitude 25.85 N, Longitude 30.45 E - LeMonnier Crater Lunar Rover - Lunokhod 2
Luna 22 Launched 02 Jun 1974 Lunar Orbiter
Luna 23 Launched 28 Oct 1974 Lunar Lander - Mare Crisium
Luna 24 Launched 14 Aug 1976 Landed on Moon 18 Aug 1976 at 02:00:00 UT Latitude 12.75 N, Longitude 62.20 E - Mare Crisium Lunar Sample Return
The Zond Series
Zond 3 Launched 18 July 1965 Lunar Flyby
Zond 4 Launched 2 Mar 1968 Lunar Test Flight
Zond 5 Launched 15 Sep 1968 Circumlunar Returned to Earth 21 Sep 1968
Zond 6 Launched 10 Nov 1968 Circumlunar Returned to Earth 17 Nov 1968
Zond 7 Launched 07 Aug 1969 Circumlunar Returned to Earth 14 Aug 1969
Zond 8 Launched 20 Oct 1970 Circumlunar Returned to Earth 27 Oct 1970

Climatologist James Annan has a whole series of blog posts debunking Pielke's claims, e.g. here and here, here, etc. The short answer is that given the large amount of interannual noise present in the data, the 2.5 C "best estimate" trend is consistent with the observed trend, i.e. you can't say with statistical confidence whether the discrepancy is due to statistical fluctuations in weather or is something real in the underlying climate system. Pielke also makes the common mistake of pretending that the model predictions don't have any uncertainty and that you can "falsify" them based on a single best-guess trend. Actually, now that I look at it, he also used the projected 100-year warming rate, ignoring the fact that the warming rate is lower at the beginning of the projection period and higher at the end; this method will overstate the near-term warming projected.

For an actual published comparison of IPCC model projections to observations, try here. (Interestingly, they too ignore model uncertainty except for climate sensitivity uncertainty, although that is the largest uncertainty.)

The warmest global temperature on record was not 80 years ago. You're probably getting confused with continental U.S. temperatures, where 1998 and 1934 were statistical ties.

Global temperatures
U.S. temperatures

The warmest global temperature on record was not 80 years ago. You're probably getting confused with continental U.S. temperatures, where 1998 and 1934 were statistical ties.

Global temperatures
U.S. temperatures

Without a strong magnetic field, the solar wind will strip away the atmosphere over time. Lighter elements especially, will be stripped away rapidly.

NASA seems to think that over 1/3 of Mars atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds over the years.

Also, Venus is experiencing the same.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html

Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?
A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.

Also, in case other readers aren't sure what I'm referring to:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/spacex_9enginefire.html

August 1, 2008 - Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX ) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early.

At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines . Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States.

âoeThis was the most difficult milestone in development of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and it also constitutes a significant achievement in US space vehicle development. Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission,â said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. âoeMuch like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine competitors.â

âoeWe made a major advancement from the previous five engine test by adding four new Merlin engines at once,â said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. âoeAll phases of integration went smoothly and we were elated to see all nine engines working perfectly in concert.â

You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)

Oh, the irony of a device on Mars transmitting terrabits of data.

Yeah ... especially since it's spelled terabits.

Oh...

The injector nozzles convert the fluid to droplets.

maybe it's time for you to change nickname to "state the obvious"

and then to look here:
http://ndeaa.jpl.nasa.gov/nasa-nde/medical/fog.htm

and then here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)

Oh, the irony of a device on Mars transmitting terrabits of data.

You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/
There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)

They could have gotten it down to 99 kb, but the damn webmaster insisted on a Flash animation.

You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/
There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)

And on http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/sc_telecomm.html it gives a different figure, but that is static data, while on the first page it looks as if it is dynamic information.

The spacecraft has already provided more than 50 Terabits -- that's 50 million million bits. To put it another way, that's more than all the data transmitted by all previous JPL spacecraft put together!

You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/
There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)

And on http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/sc_telecomm.html it gives a different figure, but that is static data, while on the first page it looks as if it is dynamic information.

The spacecraft has already provided more than 50 Terabits -- that's 50 million million bits. To put it another way, that's more than all the data transmitted by all previous JPL spacecraft put together!

Longer than that. It only has LOS with earth for 16 hours a day and uses 10 to 11 of those hours for data transmittal.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/spacecraft/communication.html

I was somewhat disappointed that the NASA page discusses the data in terms of how many CDs they would fill; however, at least they didn't try to tell me how many football fields would be required to lay the CDs edge-to-edge.

Lots of the models are open. There's a nice site at: http://modelingguru.nasa.gov/

You know, a lot of the climate and weather prediction models are open source. You can download the source code if you want, and run it on your own PC if you have certain compilers. Some links for you for your own perusal: Community Climate Model NASA GISS Model Weather Research and Forecasting Model Regional Atmospheric Modeling System As long as you have access to a Linux/Unix machine, you can get these models yourself. If you want to contribute, you can do so. Just know that you probably need to have taken graduate level courses in numerical methods and actually get the physical terms in the model to make changes that mean something. Science in this case is rather open. People can easily download these models and make changes to improve it if they needed to (or to test sensitivity, etc).

NASA's research is available to the public, both in scientific publications and via NASA FOIA. NASA is helping SpaceX specifically -- NASA granted them an IDIQ contract worth up to US$1 billion. What more did you have in mind?

[Disclosure: I do IT at NASA as a contractor. However, the above is based on publicly available information. I speak for myself, not for NASA.]

NASA's research is available to the public, both in scientific publications and via NASA FOIA. NASA is helping SpaceX specifically -- NASA granted them an IDIQ contract worth up to US$1 billion. What more did you have in mind?

[Disclosure: I do IT at NASA as a contractor. However, the above is based on publicly available information. I speak for myself, not for NASA.]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070516.html

Also, a LOX fitting is a lot more like replacing a leaky fuel pump than a leaky water pump. LOX is liquid oxygen. Spray it on a drop of grease and it will explode.

Nothing burns without oxygen, in a pure oxygen environment nearly anything will burn. After the Apolli 1 tragedy, NASA changed their procedures quite a bit.

Rust is burned steel.