Slashdot Mirror

Here you go: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020628.html

China has flown into space twice in 4 years. They won't launch another manned mission until 2008. All with Soyuz technology they bought from the Russians.Indeed, China's program seems moribund.

If you want to take note of a vigorous non-US Japan lunar program, look at Japan. They are already is already beating China to the moon with the very advanced Selene mission. I think Japan will be Asia's space success story. Why so downbeat on NASA's moon plans? The ISS commitments are being kept. The shuttle assembly flights are damned impressive. Why should they fail in the lunar mission? The Ares space architecture seems right. Other nations have certainly proposed nothing better.

• No, 1998 was not the hottest year, it was the second hottest - 1934 just barely edged it out. 2006 was fourth hottest and 1999 was sixth.
• Of the past 20 years, 17 of them are in the top 30 hottest.
• There hasn't been a negative 5-year temperature mean since 1984.

Here is a response I wrote the last time someone brought up the Card article:

Point 1: He starts with Mann and Santer and their 1998 "hockey stick" paper. Now, having not done paleoclimate research myself, I'm not going to spend a long time defending the paper. But I don't have to. There have been half a dozen independent analyses or more using different sets of paleo data that come up with very similar results. And that National Academy of Sciences stepped in to do an analysis of all these reconstructions, and published their results last year (http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309102251 ). Their conclusion? "No reconstruction shows temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period as large as the last few decades of the 20th century". Because of the difficulty of estimating global mean temperatures 1000 years ago, the NAS study declined to assert more than a 70% chance that the last few decades were the very warmest of the millennium, and that is was only "plausible" that they are the warmest of the past 2000 years.

My conclusion: Yeah. Figuring out how warm it was 1000 years ago is hard. But the experts all seem to think it is pretty likely that we are seeing warmth unprecedented in 1000 years, possibly 2000, and it is just getting warmer. Plus, this 1000 year old data isn't fundamental to our theory or our estimates of how bad things will be in 100 years.

Point 2: "Global warming vs. Climate change": First: the reason that the wording has changed is because we're worried about more than just increased in global average surface temperature, but also in changes in precipitation patterns, hurricanes, droughts, variability, etc. So climate change was more inclusive.

2nd: If temperatures fall for three years, that doesn't really mean much. There is noise in the system. El Nino years are warm. Years after massive volcanoes like Pinatubo in 1992 are cool. This displays fundamental ignorance of statistics. If you are looking for trends in noisy data, you use running averages. Otherwise... shoot, it is colder this week than it was last week in Boston. I guess summer is over already, and it is just going to keep getting colder. Sheesh! The number of times this sort of reasoning has been repeated is ridiculous. So called "warming stopped in 1998" arguments are all over the net, even though any climate scientist in 1998 would have told you it was an anomalously warm year because of a very strong El Nino event that moves heat out of the Pacific and into the atmosphere temporarily.

3rd: And it isn't even true that temperatures have been falling for 3 years! The last 12 months have been the warmest 12 months on record! See the GISS temperature record. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts .txt

4th: The Alarmists (at least the scientists) usually talk about 2100, not 2010 or 2020, and have been doing so for the past 20 years. And indeed, in the past twenty years average temperatures have gone up by 0.4 degrees C. That may not sound large but... 6 degrees C is the difference between an Ice Age and today.

5th: The models do quite a good job at replicating the large patterns of the past century. See the Fourth Assessment Summary for Policymakers released in February. It has a nice graph of "temperatures for each continent in data and from models using: natural forcings, human forcings, or all forcings". www.ipcc.ch

6th: Who is everyone? Why, ocean experts, atmospheric dynamicists, atmospheric chemists, modelers, paleoclimate people, ecologists: they each have their own area, and in each area, the fingerprints of climate change are clearly visible, and those who does interdisciplinary work (like me) can draw all the results together and see a ridiculously clear picture (given how complex the climate is, there is a surprising amount of evidence).

7th: Card says: "Even the IPCC, which was so heavily biased in favor of

I have to flame you twice for your stupidity.

2006, according to TFD (the fucking data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt ), was warmer than 2005. Therefore, # of hurricanes doesnt seem coorolate well with average global temps, now does it?

Why? ask a meterologist. (look for things like: favorible wind conditions, atmospheric highs/lows, and luck).

I cant believe you were modded up for this stupid logic.

Have you checked the actual data? It's at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt , btw. Have you looked at the trends in that data? 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record - by a fraction. BFD. Anyone who looks to single points of data to talk about trends is an idiot - this goes in both directions. You need to look at the TRENDS to analyze TRENDS. And the trends are still there - it's just their absolute values that are little lower than initially thought. In other words, things aren't as bad as we thought they were, but they're still getting worse.

That's the main point that slashdotters do not seem to be getting right now, it's not like all the global warming theory went bananas.

All you guys, do yourself a favour and plot NASA's corrected data in your favourite plotting program and then compare to other data (be mindful of the Y scale). The years around 1940 were unusually warm in the US, but the year with the highest 5-year average temperature is 2000.

Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter launches in 2008. And NASA's mapped the moon before. Like Clementine (SDI/NASA).

Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter launches in 2008. And NASA's mapped the moon before. Like Clementine (SDI/NASA).

Take a look at the NASA GISS PLOT of the new data; it's quite informative: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D_lrg .gif

The full page of graphs put out by NASA is here. The problematic graph in question is "Annual Mean Temperature Change in the United States", the second graph from the bottom. Many of the other graphs show recent temperature increase globally, as you suggest, though the US graph is no longer so clear.

Read the story above, which links to revised data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt

Initially, one one think that oh, we are not going to have a warming trend, or there is a conspiracy theory, or....

Import the data (ignore the column "5-year_Mean"; you can generate your own)

Use the Excel feature of "Trend Line", and look which direction it's going. (All trend lines show the same thing. And most important: Note the RATE that it's changing!

Can you not read? NASA has looked at it and immediately adjusted their figures crediting this "blog poster" guy with the find? That's in the fucking article nimrod. Why the hell you get modded up for a first grade reading level is beyond me. Here is the link you numbskull http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
notice it comes from nasa? How about read first, comment later, huh?

Personally, I think climate change is real, quite real, unmistakably so, but not to the man-made extent that they want us to completely alter our economies, that to me looks like the more serious political agenda. I think we need to reduce air pollution for obvious health reasons, and we need to develop alternative transportation fuels and means of electrical production to get away from the asshole ripoff price gouging energy cartels (yes, even the holy nuclear power energy assholes, they price gouge as well), but as to the climate change, it's way more the sun and other cycles right now. The cyclical nature appears to be much higher than these academic goofballs want to admit,. and YES, the scare mongers have an agenda, two of them, and it is easy to see, like in the news biz, if it bleeds it leads. Sensationalism sells. Scary predictions lead to more cash grants to keep studying it, and there is a real political faction inside the "scientific community" that seeks to use man made global climate change theory to push for a global government system and NEW FUCKING TAXES. The goofball paid off scientists on the far right want to keep exxon rolling in the dough and keep their military adventures going-lot of money in weapons research, who cares about slow brown folks anyway, that's their viewpoint, and, the goofball scientists on the far left want some sort of weird global socialist system with "carbon credits" and new taxes and so forth and a lot more layers of bureaucracy. I say bah and a hearty double fuck you to both those extreme points of view, and say kudos to the guy who found the y2k data bug that should have been fixed years ago. Garbage in-garbage out! Now I am wondering how many other climate models have been run using those erroneous figures and data sets? How about that huge UN study?

Nope, this story has legs. It's OK to be skeptical, but these are some simple facts, the bug appears to be real, and nasa are some serious jerks for having closed source software in the first place. Anything being done with tax money needs to be open source, or we get problems, blackbox voting software to skewed climate data. Open it up! Stop the coverups, whether the coverups are malicious or just to keep from getting embarrassed over shoddy work.

The old numbers are cached here:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:vskwzroreeQJ: data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt+http:/ /data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt&hl=en &ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

and the new numbers are here:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt

The difference looks more like 18% to me.

It goes from .8 to .66 C for the most recent 5 year period.

Interestingly, if you look at the parent directory of the referenced "corrected" data, you get a much different picture.

Sure, the blogger did find a Y2K anomaly, but this doesn't discredit global warming the least; it just shows that the US isn't warming quite like the rest of the world.

• Human Exposure to Vacuum, Geoffrey A. Landis
  
• Human Body in a Vacuum, NASA's Ask an Astrophysicist
  
• Effects of unprotected exposure to space on Wikipedia
  

You can't forget about the extreme cold. Space is a very, very cold place. One might think frostbite could be an issue.

For anyone who finds space.com as annoying as I do, here is the link to the original story at NASA's Spitzer site.

Here's some:

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=44
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/07 0308-asteroids_2.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117854.700 -will-we-catch-a-falling-star-there-are-many-aster oids-outthere-in-space-and-the-chances-are-that-so oner-or-later-one-will-head-forearth-but-no-one-kn ows-what-to-do-if-we-find-ourselves-on-collision-c ourse.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/fl_side2_020 901.html
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.cfm?id=79899200 2
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/415367.html
http://www.sciencebits.com/PlanesAndMeteorites

Not sure how your lottery analogy applies. The nasa article sums up your logical fallacy: "The perception of risk from impacts is smaller than for being killed in a plane crash because planes crash at a steady rate with (relatively) few deaths per event, whereas lethal impacts are rare but kill a lot of people. At the very least, the potential consequences of impact are large enough to cause concern."

Even if the asteriod misses it's supposed to back in our general vicinity around 2038, so it would probably be prudent to keep an eye on it.

Nooo, the scale of the analogy does not matter

Umm... what? Due specifically to errors in scale, your analogy made incorrect assumptions about the density of our two galaxies. The densities *absolutely* matter, as that dictates the chance of a collision. The fact is that galaxies are, on average, surprisingly sparse (go back and re-read my analogy, then think about it for a second), and as such, the odds of a collision between any two objects is exceedingly remote.

Oh, and by balance I mean, our orbit in the solar system. We are kept in place by the single gravity field of our sun.

I suspect you'd need a fairly large amount of mass passing near the solar system in order for this to be a danger. Yeah, it's probably possible, but again, given the density of the objects involved, it seems unlikely.

Local bubble

The Local Bubble, an area of the galaxy that our solar system currently occupies, where the local ISM is particularly thin. We'll be exiting the local bubble in about 10,000 years (though I've seen some estimates put it at more like 20-50,000).

Looks like its going to be close to Venus sometime April 24th 2016 that'd prolly make more of a mess than it would hitting earth.
But the really cool thing is on June 14, 2060 when this
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=99942;orb=1
shows Venus and Apophis so close that the dots overlap
That'll be fun to watch (assuming nasa's java applet is accurate and that I'm not blind in 2060) :)

Yeah, I would imagine that developing a powerplant specifically for use in space would be a bit different from designing one for large-scale electrical generation on Earth. For one thing, making it light and compact would be much more important if they're going to use it in space. For another thing, they need to make sure that it would work properly in zero gee -- not a trivial concern, as anyone who has used a space toilet can attest to :-). Anyway, it looks like they have changed the project a bit. For one thing, they're talking about developing a reactor for use on Mars.

Might want to tell that to the folks that have been there. They seem to believe the following:

Lunar Atmosphere

Diurnal temperature range: >100 K to <400 K (roughly -250 F to +250 F)
Total mass of atmosphere: ~25,000 kg
Surface pressure (night): 3 x 10-15 bar (2 x 10-12 torr)
Abundance at surface: 2 x 105 particles/cm3
Estimated Composition (particles per cubic cm):
Helium 4 (4He) - 40,000 ; Neon 20 (20Ne) - 40,000 ; Hydrogen (H2) - 35,000 Argon 40 (40Ar) - 30,000 ; Neon 22 (22Ne) - 5,000 ; Argon 36 (36Ar) - 2,000 Methane - 1000 ; Ammonia - 1000 ; Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 1000 Trace Oxygen (O+), Aluminum (Al+), Silicon (Si+)
Possible Phosphorus (P+), Sodium (Na+), Magnesium (Mg+)

Composition of the tenuous lunar atmosphere is poorly known and variable, these are estimates of the upper limits of the nighttime ambient atmosphere composition. Daytime levels were difficult to measure due to heating and outgassing of Apollo surface experiments.

RealClimate is about as objective as Al Gore.

You, like Al Gore, are entitled to your own opinion. But you, like Al Gore, are not entitled to your own set of facts. Gore uses facts. You rely on disingenuous asshatery. Oh, and RealClimate is run by real climate scientists, as opposed to those bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry.

Antarctic ice is increasing

Because warmer air carries more moisture. The ice isn't increasing because the air is getting cooler, it's getting thicker because there is more precipitation. Which you would of course know if you'd read the link, but too many facts in one day and your head might explode.

and all the ice cores there show a current cooling trend

Bullshit.

because the only places on the earth with significant recent warming are in Alaska, Canada and Russia

Bullshit. In Montana, the state next to mine, they've had more 100 degree days since 2000 than they did in the entire previous century.

Averaging all the earth's temperatures together to find a warming trend and then blaming that trend for occurrences taking place where it's not warming is either grossly ignorant or grossly deceitful.

Bullshit. Taking an average disguises the true impact of climate change, which is having the greatest impact at the polls.

Okay... then you global warming fundamentalists are the new Spanish Inquisition. And you should all move to the himalayas so you can escape the impending global flood.

If we are wrong, some oil companies might not rake in 10 billion next quarter. If we are wrong, consumers will save money through reduced energy use. If you are wrong, there will be hundreds of millions of refugees across the planet, coastal cities will be completely flooded, thousands of species will become extinct and farmland will turn into swamp or desert. I'll make do with a reduced BP Amoco stock price and a reduced energy bill at the end of the month, and you can buy a canoe and try not to drown. Deal?

I realize someone mentioned apolloarchive, but Nasa also has an incredible amount of Apollo material online.

Almost everything you want to know about the mission op's is here.

The Apollo 11 landing from 11 minutes out is amazing, including the 1202's. But I have to admit, the one that sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it is Apollo 17. Cernan & Schmitt's reaction after the pitchover when they see the landing zone is better than anything you've ever seen in a movie, ever.

I realize someone mentioned apolloarchive, but Nasa also has an incredible amount of Apollo material online.

Almost everything you want to know about the mission op's is here.

The Apollo 11 landing from 11 minutes out is amazing, including the 1202's. But I have to admit, the one that sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it is Apollo 17. Cernan & Schmitt's reaction after the pitchover when they see the landing zone is better than anything you've ever seen in a movie, ever.

I realize someone mentioned apolloarchive, but Nasa also has an incredible amount of Apollo material online.

Almost everything you want to know about the mission op's is here.

The Apollo 11 landing from 11 minutes out is amazing, including the 1202's. But I have to admit, the one that sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it is Apollo 17. Cernan & Schmitt's reaction after the pitchover when they see the landing zone is better than anything you've ever seen in a movie, ever.

NIX is still online: NIX Home I can only speculate about the difference between NIX and AIA, but I suspect that NIX only has images that have been cataloged up to now, not necessarily every Apollo image on film. AIA is supposed to scan all the stills, eventually. Maybe AIA will share the results with NIX?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/13jun_luna rsporadic.htm

I wonder they're going to remove the working examples of Saturn V [pdf] rockets that seem to populate the landscape.
Oh, never mind, they moved Marshall space flight center to Kenya
WTF?

I wonder they're going to remove the working examples of Saturn V [pdf] rockets that seem to populate the landscape.
Oh, never mind, they moved Marshall space flight center to Kenya
WTF?

I wonder they're going to remove the working examples of Saturn V [pdf] rockets that seem to populate the landscape.
Oh, never mind, they moved Marshall space flight center to Kenya
WTF?

I wonder they're going to remove the working examples of Saturn V [pdf] rockets that seem to populate the landscape.
Oh, never mind, they moved Marshall space flight center to Kenya
WTF?

The more I read the ALSJ the more respect I have for the hardware. The Apollo CM would have survived both shuttle disasters. The Apollo 13 incident resulted in a more mature spacecraft with more redundancy. A similar incident on a shuttle would probably have killed the crew immediately. Building the system out of small modules meant that the architecture could accommodate expanded modules. Apollo serviced the lunar program, skylab and apollo-soyuz.

I just wish NASA had looked into an economical launcher to support it after the supply of Saturn Vs ran out.

No argument from me on that front.

Too bad they forgot to take down the Saturn V Flight Manual from their own site, huh?

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.g ov/19750063889_1975063889.pdf

Just because they take manual control, doesn't mean they have to. I worked on the shuttle GN&C software. Software for landing the shuttle already existed before i joined that team --- except lowering the landing gear --- years and years ago. It just has never been fully tested, but it was tested down to 125 feet. Here's a few links: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10518 and here http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/release/1992/1- 92.htm

Heck, I wrote code that makes all the landings soft and almost perfect since around 1992. I don't recall when it flew the first time. There's usually a 1 or more delay from when code is finished and it makes a first flight. Why was that needed? The astronauts were blowing tires on landing, especially with payloads, so software was designed to prevent that.

Astronauts drinking? You bet. They get lots of practice and everyone I've met knew when to stop and knew their limits. I can imagine they might get drunk only among close friends and family. They know they are being watched, always.

Reading the text of the actual report here the phrase used by the report is "preflight" alcohol use and "flight safety". It's not specific to a shuttle mission.

Keep in mind that astronauts do most of their "flying" in T-38's (two seaters that are often likened to "astronaut taxis"). It's quite possible that the specific incidents revolve around T-38 use. The image of an astronaut strapping into the shuttle after violating alcohol policy (which is much tighter on aircraft than cars) is almost unbelievable. It is not as much of a stretch to image someone who closed down a bar on Cocoa Beach the night before being tossed into the back seat of a T-38 at 8 AM to get them home with a sober pilot up front. Of course, this is still a safety risk (what if you have to eject?) and a violation of policy. There would be fewer people around that would notice as well since now you are talking about a couple of astronauts and maybe some airfield guys instead of the entire world watching.

I'm not saying that was what happened, but probably there has not been enough detail released to make a real judgment on what really went on (other than the local on-scene leadership overruled objections by flight surgeons and other astronauts on safety, which is I believe was the point the report was trying to get to).

And they also have ruled out any connection with the mis-spelling of Uranus as found in this page. One would hope that a space agency, of all institutions, would know how to spell the name of a planet. At least, they didn't post any photos of this lovely planet on there... yet.

While I agree with you that you need to accept some mistakes, NASA's bureaucracy has not been faultless. I encourage you to read Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster.

Sample quote:

Engineers at Rocketdyne, the manufacturer, estimate the total probability [of mission failure] as 1/10,000. Engineers at Marshal estimate it as 1/300, while NASA management, to whom these engineers report, claims it is 1/100,000. An independent engineer consulting for NASA thought 1 or 2 per 100 a reasonable estimate.

Who cares? Out of a $2.4 trillion budget, less than 0.8% is spent on the entire space program! and the results can't really be judged until well after the event. I mean, Who would have thought how important the Transistor or Velcro would have been at the time?
The space program causes creativity and innovation in ways that can rarely be predicted.
Some examples from NASA are found
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
and from another page
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
The benefits to society are immeasurable, from Baby food, to running shoes, to breast cancer detection to wind shear protection to, Well my Internet connect is a satellite connect today...

The issue I have with NASA is they are still political and the thought of a $450 Billion mars mission in ludicrous and entirely politically motivated. 4Frontiers (http://www.4frontierscorp.com/) has a plan for an entire Martian settlement, complete with labs and manufacturing facilities, sleeping 42 (including some remote habitats.) for a loose estimate of a quarter of that politically driven $450! And this is using tech that is pretty close to current or easily extrapolatable from current tech!

Having said that, the settlement plans count pretty heavily on the probes sent by NASA and ESA...

In any case, we could build a settlement, a nearly self sustaining colony, for less that six month of Combat Ops in Iraq (and soon Iran) - And we'll probably be done sooner...

I know this is too late to get modded, I just hope someone reads it!

If you need a good way to stick a CD to your dashboard, sandwich it between Legos.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/n/001/2N1 26468357EDN0000P1502L0M1.JPG

Do a blow up on the circular object on the panel, left and down from center.

We send a person to walk around on the moon, but it's impossible to shoot down a missile? Tell me another one.

No, it's simply impossible, with current technology, or anything we are likely to develop in the near future, to reliably shoot down a high enough percentage of incoming MIRVs on polar trajectories to make a massive nuclear attack survivable without an unworkable ratio of interceptors to targets. You see, a missile is what we call rather small (a few dozen meters in length, a few meters in diameter) and moves very, very fast and very, very unpredictably, while the moon is what we call very, very big (3.5 million meters across), and while it is also very, very fast, it's movement is also very, very predictable.

Objectivity on climate change is not an instance of it.

"Objectivity is whatever I say it is!"

That and Doom-Through-Impending-CO2-Poisoning are examples of people, whether politicians or scientists, trying to gain political advantage through bastardized science.

Not CO2 poisoning, but "greenhouse effect" warming: our ideas about global climate change are largely informed by our studies of the Venusian atmosphere in the 1960s, and global warming was predicted long before evidence of temperature increases were actually measured (just as the depletion of the ozone layer was predicted long before the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered). The funny thing is that all the arguments against global climate change appear to be coming from a specific ideological position, while many of the arguments in favor of global climate change are coming from different ideological positions (and the "science" in opposition is mostly a matter of saving the phenomena, i.e., multiplying entities in an attempt to find benign explanations for observed phenomena, and attacking opposing positions not on their science, but on their supposed ideological motivations; the only rational argument I've seen against global climate change is the questioning of the "hockey stick" graph, and that merely holds force against predictions of the rate of climate change, not its existence).

So NASA is full of shit. They don't know what they're talking about. Got it! Thanks for clearing that up for me.

What about landing in a massive dust storm? Now naturally, I see there are problems, but perhaps they are worth contending with. The advantage, is that the atmosphere will be full of relatively heavy particles to transfer momentum to. The disadvantages I see are the super-sonic sandblasting effect on the heat shield and the difficulty in navigating to your desired location. Since we don't know exactly what the dust is like on mars overcoming the sand-blast effect may be difficult. However, I think the navigation could perhaps be manageable given that the MERs are still able to gather some solar energy during one of the largest dust storm witnessed to date navigation by satellite should be possible.

Any thoughts?
 
Here's a reference to the dust storm I wrote about: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportuni ty/20070703a.html