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They do, for people they care about.

Eugene Shoemaker wound up with some of his ashes on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which eventually flown into the moon. He was the guy who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which eventually smacked into Jupiter.

See: Lunar spacecraft carries ashes, special tribute to Shoemaker

I've thought of this too, it was also discussed here:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/011030a.html

The face on mars was just a freak of low-resolution photography, couldn't the same sort of human error be responsible here?

No. The hexagon is huge. See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimed ia/pia09185.html

This reminds me of technology that has been under study for over a decade (and about a century for Sabatier) for generating chemical feedstocks on Earth and fuel on Mars. Granted, that just moves the carbon around, but this proposal even mentions carbon dioxide sequestration.

This new process (or method) may cut out one step of the process, making the process simpler and easier for Mars and Earth alike!

We are currently developing technologies which allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light.

if you create a probe with an ion drive and send it off in the next 10 years we could be looking at surveys of the planet in question by 2070.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong but according to http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/ionpropfaq.html, ion drives only deliver 10x the efficiency of chemical rockets. So to reach 0.6c, wouldn't an ion drive require more propellant than exists in the universe?

Here are some sounds of Jovian "radio storms":

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ sbursts.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ lbursts.htm

And my favorite: a University of Washington professor used temperature variations in the cosmic background radiation to create the "sound of the Big Bang." This allows us to hear the first 760 thousand years of the universe. Of course the frequencies are boosted because the actual Big Bang frequencies are far too low to be heard by humans. Amazing stuff.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound.html

Here are some sounds of Jovian "radio storms":

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ sbursts.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ lbursts.htm

And my favorite: a University of Washington professor used temperature variations in the cosmic background radiation to create the "sound of the Big Bang." This allows us to hear the first 760 thousand years of the universe. Of course the frequencies are boosted because the actual Big Bang frequencies are far too low to be heard by humans. Amazing stuff.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound.html

If bill gates walks into a bar with 20 people in it the mean is suddenly $2bn. Very clever, but it's a spurious example. In any population, if you pick the highest number and add it to your sample, you get a skewed sample. What you miss is that the chance of Bill Gates walking into that bar is 1 in 200 million.

The point of the example was to illustrate the effect on the arithmetical (or mean) average in an extreme scenario so that the effect is visibly and clearly pronounced. It is a technique used just about everywhere in science. The probability of such an extreme scenario occuring is not a factor in the demonstration as long as the principle demonstrated is applicable to the whole range of the values in the problem domain.

Such illustrations involve comparing the size of Earth to that of a grape and Saturn to an orange. Which in your genius view must be completely invalid because the odds of Earth turning into a grape are, shall we say, rather remote, right?!

Secondly - average can means either arithmetic mean, or median.

Not in common usage outside science. Vast majority of the population (who even have a clue as to what an average is) will understand "average" to be the mean, arithmetical average. It is in this context in which politicians, journalists and many Slashdot users employ the term. Since this is the common usage and the original GP did not provide any other information, it is safe to assume he meant the mean instead of the median.

Based on your own argument I'd guess the average the GP was referring to ($1009) was a median ...

Of course! Clearly your opinion is naturally overriding what people do in the real world. How else? Based on a lovingly hand-crafted strawman standing in place of my argument no less. Burning too.

Hence it's a stupid example, although has been used by Nassim Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot so you're in good company.

Let me see here ... a method of illustrating a mathematical problem on which Benoit Mandelbrot and Random Slashdot Doofus #574715 named Dilaudid disagree ... who could be right? Well, one is a world renowned mathematician responsible for discovering fractals and the other .... err ... well ... a Random Slashdot Doofus! Hmm ... this is a tough one.

I normally try not to use arguments to authority but this contrast is just too bizarre. You could try to improve your position by standing on a steet corner wering a billboard with "Benoit Mandelbrot Is WRONG!" on it ("Bill's never seen an inside of a BAR!!!" on the back).

Btw, that Wikipedia link was posted in this thread a day before you decided to grace us with your presence.

For some reason the article and summary only mention that Gravity Probe B was trying to measure was "minuscule" however, I at least find the actual quantity to be FAR more impressive than some journalist calling it small. Anyway want to know the precession?

Frame Dragging Effect (has NEVER before been measured): 1.1x10^-5 degrees per YEAR
Geodetic Effect: 1.8x10^-3 degrees per YEAR

Clearly then, these were not merely "minuscule" shifts...the potential for error is great.

More information can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb/index.html

Here are pictures of Isabel:
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/goes/030913.isabel.g if
http://www.enterprisemission.com/hurricane1.htm
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/16.jpg

here is Ivan:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/30.jpg

and here is Jean:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/jeannani2.gif

Read about it all here.

Not a lack of thermal model (such things DO exist for most spacecraft), and they DO spend quite a lot of time in both modeling and test (thermal balance) where they shine artificial sunlight on the spacecraft in a vacuum chamber while it's operating to verify that the model works. http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/martianchronicle/martia nchron7/mgs.html

In fact, because MGS used aerobraking, which heats the spacecraft during the dips into the atmosphere, I'll bet the thermal model for MGS is better than most.

But, the previous poster is right..ultimately it's a budget issue.. if you designed the spacecraft to handle every eventuality, it would be too heavy to launch. if you did ground analysis for every conceivable situation, there aren't enough engineers in the world to finish the job before the "every two years" launch opportunity. At some point, you rely on judgement.. hordes of people in reviews shooting at your design, and you figure you've covered 99.9% of the stuff... time to ship and shoot.

let's also remember that this puppy has been going for >10 years, which means it was designed 15 years ago... Call it 1990. Somehow I don't think the thermal design engineers at Martin Marietta and JPL were rookies using Excel for the first time, and I suspect that they are fully capable of understanding how to numerically solve partial differential equations, and the limitations of those numerical methods. They can also solve them analytically.. my gosh, with a slide rule, even.

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/martianchronicle/martia nchron2/marschro29.html

FWIW, C++ is hardly necessary.. This kind of thing is really the domain of good old FORTRAN. Good optimizing compilers, well validated numerical codes, etc.

Not a lack of thermal model (such things DO exist for most spacecraft), and they DO spend quite a lot of time in both modeling and test (thermal balance) where they shine artificial sunlight on the spacecraft in a vacuum chamber while it's operating to verify that the model works. http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/martianchronicle/martia nchron7/mgs.html

In fact, because MGS used aerobraking, which heats the spacecraft during the dips into the atmosphere, I'll bet the thermal model for MGS is better than most.

But, the previous poster is right..ultimately it's a budget issue.. if you designed the spacecraft to handle every eventuality, it would be too heavy to launch. if you did ground analysis for every conceivable situation, there aren't enough engineers in the world to finish the job before the "every two years" launch opportunity. At some point, you rely on judgement.. hordes of people in reviews shooting at your design, and you figure you've covered 99.9% of the stuff... time to ship and shoot.

let's also remember that this puppy has been going for >10 years, which means it was designed 15 years ago... Call it 1990. Somehow I don't think the thermal design engineers at Martin Marietta and JPL were rookies using Excel for the first time, and I suspect that they are fully capable of understanding how to numerically solve partial differential equations, and the limitations of those numerical methods. They can also solve them analytically.. my gosh, with a slide rule, even.

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/martianchronicle/martia nchron2/marschro29.html

FWIW, C++ is hardly necessary.. This kind of thing is really the domain of good old FORTRAN. Good optimizing compilers, well validated numerical codes, etc.

Thanks for the link. The report is only three pages long and very interesting to read. The cause (quoted below) is really stunning, I wonder what's the probability of this sequence of event to happen.

The LM team performed a fault analysis to determine the cause of the spacecraft anomaly. An LM spacecraft engineer ultimately determined that the likely cause of the anomaly was an incorrect parameter upload that had occurred 5 months earlier (June 2006). A direct memory command to update the HGA's positioning for contingency operations was mistakenly written to the wrong memory address in the spacecraft's onboard computer. This resulted in the corruption of two independent parameters and had dire consequences for the spacecraft. The first parameter error caused one solar array to be driven against its hard stop, leading the MGS fault-protection system to incorrectly believe it had a stuck gimbal, causing MGS to enter contingency mode. Upon entry into contingency mode, the spacecraft's orientation was such that one of the batteries was directly exposed to the sun. This caused the battery to overheat which in turn gave a false indication of an overcharged battery and led to the premature termination of battery charging on each subsequent orbit. Even though the remaining battery continued to be charged, it was not being charged sufficiently to support the full electrical load, which was normally supported by both batteries. The end result was that both batteries were depleted, probably within 12 hours. The second parameter error caused the HGA to point away from the Earth when the spacecraft was, in fact, properly oriented to communicate to Earth. Communication from the spacecraft to the ground was therefore impossible, and the unsafe thermal and power situation could not be identified by the MGS's ground controllers.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1996-062A

I realize this was dirt cheap by space mission standards. A laptop encrusted with diamonds which costs $80,000 is dirt cheap by laptop-encrusted-with-diamonds standards. That *doesn't make it worth the money*. I know we waste far more than $40 million a year on many things -- and, logically, every one of them except one can be justified by "We waste more money on another program, don't cut *my* hobby horse!"

Its interesting that you draw the distinction between subsidies/entitlements and science, since NASA is a fairly naked subsidy directly to defense contractors, who make all of the really expensive bits. I'm all for giving Lockheed Martin money when its required, but lets be honest and get ourselves something which blows up in a suitably impressive manner when we do, OK? Similarly, I might even be persuaded that the US federal government should fund science projects -- great, then *fund science*! Don't blow $160 million just to accelerate a tin can out of the atmosphere to get a few close up pictures of rocks. $160 million could fund an awful lot of real science down here, much of which would produce actual results (or, alternatively, you could fund research gazing into the Clear Blue Sky, which is *still* cheap when you do it somewhere in atmosphere).

The preliminary official report is availiable from here. The summary conclusions are:

* A modification to a spacecraft parameter, intended to update the High Gain Antenna's (HGA) pointing direction used for contingency operations, was mistakenly written to the incorrect spacecraft memory address in June 2006. The incorrect memory load resulted in the following unintended actions:
** Disabled the solar array positioning limits.
** Corrupted the HGA's pointing direction used during contingency operations.
* A command sent to MGS on November 2, 2006 caused the solar array to attempt to exceed its hardware constraint, which led the onboard fault protection system to place the spacecraft in a somewhat unusual contingency orientation.
* The spacecraft contingency orientation with respect to the sun caused one of the batteries to overheat.
* The spacecraft's power management software misinterpreted the battery over temperature as a battery overcharge and terminated its charge current.
* The spacecraft could not sufficiently recharge the remaining battery to support the electrical loads on a continuing basis.
* Spacecraft signals and all functions were determined to be lost within five to six orbits (ten-twelve hours) preventing further attempts to correct the situation.
* Due to loss of power, the spacecraft is assumed to be lost and all recovery operations ceased on January 28, 2007.

E.g., if you want to know how fast a rocket reaches the moon, you don't need to know the exact shape or colour of the rocket

True enough for moon rockets, but for some simulations -- like projecting whether a given asteroid (1950 DA for example), the colour does matter if you're project the orbit to see if it hits Earth in 800 or so years. Over such long time intervals the difference in sunlight pressure (and a couple of related effects) on a light vs dark surface will affect the trajectory.

The same effects have an affect on the rocket too, of course, but as you point out, on that scale they're not important.

and you don't even need rain. These solar panels have never been washed or rained on, and they've been working just fine for over 3 years.

http://marsnet.jpl.nasa.gov/

Well... there is this from 2005: http://www.gcn.com/print/24_21/36507-1.html [gcn.com]

NASA has been investigating using TCP/IP for communications with satellite since at least 2000 ... http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/OMNIconce pt.pdf [nasa.gov]

and it was going so well that http://www.military-information-technology.com/art icle.cfm?DocID=998 [military-i...nology.com]

Not that new based on a quick google.

As you elude to, the energy of a flywheel is (to a good approximation): $1/2 I \omega^2$ where I is the moment of inertia (not the mass) and omega the angular speed. The mass can be surprisingly low, if it's all concentrated away from the axis of rotation. With modern materials and engineering one can obtain very high angular speeds.

At NASA it's mostly security requirements, and to a degree commercialization efforts (basically using research results to start/assist a company, many examples exist) that prevent them from being opened:

http://ipp.nasa.gov/

There are however still a number of projects that are being open sourced, or would like to go down this path.

NASA CoLab is a broader project than just the Second Life facility... See http://colab.arc.nasa.gov/

There are a whole lot of NASA Open-source projects. For example, see http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/ and http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/ .

Going back some time, all software developed for the US government, including NASA, had to be released for free in source form unless specially exempted (i.e. for military or strategic reasons.) At some point, this government-wide requirement went away -- I'm not sure when or why. If anyone remembers, please speak up.

There are a whole lot of NASA Open-source projects. For example, see http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/ and http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/ .

Going back some time, all software developed for the US government, including NASA, had to be released for free in source form unless specially exempted (i.e. for military or strategic reasons.) At some point, this government-wide requirement went away -- I'm not sure when or why. If anyone remembers, please speak up.

How so? The models presented by some AGW groups wildly overstate both the rise in sea level and the rise in temperature due to increased CO2. For example, the IPCC model for temperature predicted that from 1979 to 1998, temps would go up by 0.8 degree C; in fact, they FELL by 0.2 degrees. Here's a link:

Seriously, look at this graph (from NASA) of global mean temperature anomaly (the same graph in the other link but with a longer time frame). Tell me with a straight face that they are not blatantly cherry-picking their data. Also, that link of your does not support the assertation that the IPCC made any such claim.
link

It is always easier to minimize the accountability for one's actions by shifting the focus to something else. So, we face a dramatically warming sun AND a greenhouse to make the most of the extra energy. Sounds like a good time to start cutting back on the greenhouse. Or, maybe, we just wait for the sun to cool off. Yeah, that sounds like a plan! I even ran across stories that the climate is known to shift quickly now and again. So, maybe this is just one of those quick change periods. If we wait a decade or so, it might fix itself. Yeah, that sounds like a plan!

The news came out on how much money the presidential candidates raised, as if that were a measure of fitness. Let's see how many candidates take money from the anti-global-warming interests, how many jump on the media bandwagon of sound bite ignorance, and how many vote against controls on lobbyists, PACs, and other big money influences on our government. I have little confidence that we will be able to do anything about global warming because anything we do now will be reflected only decades from now. My mind may change if some politicians step up to the first step, which is to control lobbyists and special interests and start paying attention to the interests of the people.

Action now costs money and effort and pays off in decades. Procrastination pays off immediately. Guess which we will choose.

Both are correct.

Were are at the low point of the 11-year sunspot cycle.

The 1000-year peak is measured over the average of the last 11 years, so the fast cycle is evened out.

I'm having trouble spoting those spots (pun :P)

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/

Well, this for starters:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/

Whether you agree with Lindzen or his skeptics, one thing you must conclude from the article is that global climate is still not understood well enough for anyone to make accurate predictions of what will happen in 1 year, 10 years, 100 years. It is clear from the article that the role of clouds (which is only one component of many in climate change) is still being seriously debated, for instance.

And those predictions are always based on models which includes assumptions about how different components of climate change interact.

It's much easier to believe information about Mars because the readings are extremely accurate and only come from modern instruments, and we know there is no human influence on temperature. There are no politics in looking at 6 years of temperature data and saying "Yep, it's warmer!". Most people agree the Earth is warmer now as well. The Earth temperature record has problems because when and where and with what instrument you take the measurement are all important and have changed over the years. This is a legitimate debate.

Here's an explanation from NASA. In shorter version, how fast the sunspots cycle in and out of the Sun's surface determines how big they get.

So the article says that the sunspots have reached 1000-year peak, but the NASA article says that sunspots are at the minimum right now (Solar Minimum). Which one is correct?

The number of sunspots, right now, appears to be... well, zilch. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/

Here's some more pre-troll reading.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/806ffb24a5f27 010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/2.html

The Worst Jobs in Science
Pain, Tedium, Danger, Disgust, Humiliation--It's all just part of the average workday for the (often proud, more often smelly) members of our third annual honor roll of the Worst Jobs in Science

By John Galvin | October 2005

9. NASA Ballerina
Her dance partner is a supersensitive Robot

Give him an "A" for effort. Earlier this year NASA robot scientist Vladimir Lumelsky unveiled a revolutionary "skin" that will allow robots to sense the presence of astronauts and to move out of the way so that nobody gets hurt. Lumelsky's skin is being developed to assist in NASA's future space-exploration plans--trips that will rely heavily on robots. The current skin uses 1,000 infrared sensors to detect moving objects and then relays the data to the robot's "brain," which instantly signals the robot to skedaddle. Lumelsky envisions future skins with tens of thousands of infrared sensors able to withstand the extreme heat, cold and radiation of space travel. It's serious science, and Lumelsky, being a serious man, gave nary a thought to the fact that his prototype robot bears a striking resemblance to a giant phallus.

For the 'bot's public debut he hired a leotard-clad ballerina to dance with it (see for yourself:www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/mpeg/115084m ain_ballerina.mpeg). "It takes two to tango," Lumelsky e-mailed us, somewhat exasperated. "The astronaut must be able to turn his back to the robot and expect it to act adequately, like a dance partner. Our system does this; no other such systems exist.

"We humans are completely unprepared to see a machine behave (literally) like an animal," he added. "As with everything else in our culture, it wears off quickly, but it takes your breath away when seeing it for the first time." We'll say!

No worries, now it's time for the hatch opening on NASA TV!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

By way of contrast, I thought I would spice things up a bit with a few links to actual data.

Nasa, via a program called the ASRS, maintains a database of all aviation "safety occurrences" since the 40's - this is online and somewhat searchable. Good architecture in action. :)

http://aviation-safety.net/database/

A report about "safety incidents" related to the use of Portable Electronic Devices (PED's) based on their data was released a while ago.

http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/report_sets/ped.pdf

This seems to be the result of a search; it includes everything from frightening incidents with malfunctioning instrumentation that have been associated with PEDs, to "1st class passenger won't turn off his cell phone" reports. But in the end it's clear that there are some worrying issues with PED interference - or at least the waters are muddied enough that I wouldn't expect relaxation of PED use restrictions to be entirely safe without costly equipment upgrades and testing.

And why, really, should this money be spent? So your call doesn't have to wait a few hours?

But TFA does make one critical point - if planes are fragile enough for consumer devices to interfere with them, this isn't about passenger convenience - this is a major security problem. Plane electronics do need to be properly shielded, or it's a matter of time before someone begins deliberately attempting to exploit the vulnerability. The debate about whether cell phones should be allowed in flight in general is less interesting to me, personally.

For those curious, there have been some more determined efforts to explore the problem by more professional trade journalists:

http://www.issues.org/19.2/strauss.htm
http://www.popularaviation.com/ListNewsArticleDtl. asp?id=80

TFA says:

Also: If real testing were done, and the nature of the problem fully understood, it would become obvious that airplanes could be designed or retrofitted with shielding and communications systems that would enable safe calling through all phases of flight. But that would cost money.

Real testing has been done. Unintended emissions from the phone have been identified as the culprit, not a deficiency in the navigation equipment. The aircraft's receivers are doing exactly what they are supposed to, responding to signals of certain frequencies arriving at the antenna. Once the phone pollutes the spectrum with spurious signals, nothing can protect the receiver. The shielding and filtering must be applied at the problem, which is the phone. Since the competitive consumer phone market demands the lowest possible cost, once a phone meets the minimum legal requirements they won't add another dime of product cost for further interference control.

Intereference does not occur every time, but when it does occur there has been a demonstrable cause and effect relationship. Start with this NASA case study(long pdf warning).

In July 2003, it was reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that a cellular phone when turned on simultaneously interfered with three different aircraft GPS receivers, causing complete signal loss. The three GPS receivers were using three separate antennas, and were installed on a small aircraft. The phone was on, however, calls were not made during the incidents and subsequent tests. [emphasis added]

In an email message to the FAA, the company who owned the airplane reported the subsequent tests taken to prove a clear and convincing direct relationship between the phone being in ON-mode, and interference with the three onboard GPS systems. The company verified several times, in multiple flights over different days, that the interference problem could be recreated reliably in the air by having the phone turned on. The interference disappeared when the phone was turned off or covered behind a metal object, and re-appeared when turned on or brought into the open again. In addition, the company conducted tests at two different places to ensure that it was not dependent on location, and were able to reproduce the interference effects at both. The interference occurred when the plane was in the air, but not on the ground. Tests using other phones did not create interference problems on the same aircraft and systems.

Then consider this article from Spectrum. On page 3:

Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings. Clearly, the cause of the problem is that the FCC issues RF emission standards for consumer electronics, conferring only minimally with the FAA and with no formal consideration of the implications of those standards for the aircraft environment. For its part, the FAA relies on the airlines to initiate safety plans and, like other government agencies, defers to the FCC on questions of electromagnetic radiation.

And from page 4:

All in all, we found 125 entries in the ASRS [Aviation Safety Reporting System] database that reported PED interference. Of these, 77 were considered highly correlated, based on the description of observed PED use and interference occurrence.[emphasis added] The reports included cases of critical aircraft systems such as navigation and throttle settings being affected. Based on the random sample entries from 1995 to 2001, we estimate that the average number of reported interference events might be as high as 23 per year.

It's no conspiracy, and no urban lege

This is nothing new. The ill fated STS-107 carried a complete CANDOS pacage offering a wealth of IP protocols. In fact UoSat-12 back in May of 2000 ran an ftp server. The only thing new here is IPV6. IPV4 has been in space for a long time. You an find more about this at our website http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Thank you,
your NASA team

Daily:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ I like to start every day with the Astronomy Picture of the Day
http://www.woot.com/ and the daily Woot.
http://www.slashdot.org/ Then I'll visit Slashdot about 30 times each day,
http://www.techbargains.com/ and I'm surprised more people didn't list Techbargains. I can't stay off this site.
http://www.ytmnd.com/ Finally, I'll spend countless hours each day viewing stupid YTMNDs.

Few times a week:
http://www.apple.com/trailers Movie trailers, keeps you up to date on what's coming out.
http://www.thepbf.com/ The Perry Bible Fellowship = best.
http://www.theonion.com/ The Onion
http://www.thinkgeek.com/ and Thinkgeek, of course.

Mix in the usual bbc, npr, cnn, espn, newegg, email, etc, and that's my rotation. Really, I'm surprised I didn't see more techbargains in these replies. That should be a staple in every rotation.

I wouldn't take that real climate site as dry fact. It has a purpose of pushing anthropological global warming and is set up to discount anything else. here is another site that purports to be neutral but seems to be more in the denier side of things. According to NASA the tools to measure the solar radiance from satellites aren't accurate enough to properly display the variances thought to be in the solar cycles as well as the spots and such. In other words, the known margin of error in the measurements are thought to be greater then the differences in the sun's output.

But that was suppose to have changed in 2003 when the source satellite was put into orbit. As a matter of fact, It is data from this that sparked the recent 30% adjustment to solar factors in determining climate models. Both links you pointed to are dated before this information becomes available. I understand the reasoning behind this though. The Real Climate site does the same thing in linking to older outdated articles to rebuke newer submissions and when that fails, they find a link to Exxon or some big oil for reasons to discount the information. I just read a bunch of on these new reading but cannot find the links or the articles anymore. There is a Russian who thinks they are so different then the old data, that he claims we will start seeing the temp go down in another 10-15 years.

But don't just take my word for it, Ask all the people who have reported receiving death threats and had their jobs placed in jeopardy for saying something against the anthropological global warming model. And lets not forget the weather channel chick who wanted to kick every weather reporter out of their club if they made a statement that the current weather anomalies was because of something else and not global warming.

You will find people on both sides pushing their views. This isn't the problem. The problem is the demonetization of anyone who disagrees. I'm sure you will find few people who object when you cannot object without fear of losing your job or life. Hitler, Saddam, Stalin and other dictators had a lot of support from the people but it didn't make them any more correct in what they did.

Odds are, you're right about the frequency, especially initially. Keep in mind, though, that these "rocket guys" won't just drive in, do their thing, and leave. You'll have full-time employees, stuff to be stored, things manufactured on site, and all the infrastructure to make it happen. Have you looked at the Kennedy space center's org chart? That's a lot of people and there hasn't been a launch for quite awhile.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?mode=classic
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/

Also, (most) people are smart enough to move when their land floods or dries out. The entire population of a geographic area doesn't have to die, most will relocate and/or adapt, as we've always done.

By all estimates I've seen, we're safe from Eta Carinae going nova. See e.g. Earth likely spared from one form of cosmic doom (NASA), which says that a supernova would need to be within 26 light years of Earth to cause significant damage.

Thanks, you just showed me my new background image. I do like to change it up every so often; normally I go http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ and browse the archive until something strikes my fancy.

Anyone ever hear of Clickworkers? I guess I don't see the difference.

http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top

Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.

Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.

After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.

Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=59498
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/Mars99/docs/library/scien ce/climate_history/polar_caps1.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/mission_overview.ht ml
http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/timeline1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/themes/display.cf m?Item=polarice
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plan etary.chem.tufts.edu/MarsPolarCap.jpg&imgrefurl=ht tp://planetary.chem.tufts.edu/chronos.html&h=225&w =290&sz=10&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=TYj58QRSbsjd4M :&tbnh=89&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar %2Bice%2Bhistory%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. cosmiclight.com/imagegalleries/images/space/mars-p olarcap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cosmiclight.com/i magegalleries/mars.htm&h=359&w=600&sz=16&hl=en&sta rt=9&um=1&tbnid=gBBAUkXCr9kpWM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&p rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar%2Bice%2Bhistory%26s vnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
NASA's and the Hubble Space Telescope images spanning from October 1996 until March 1997, show the viritable felting of Mar's polar ice cap, in just 6 months... Such an event would have been utterly devastating on our planet, making the Tsunami seem like a needle in a haystack in comparison.

Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.

Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.

After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.

Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=59498
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/Mars99/docs/library/scien ce/climate_history/polar_caps1.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/mission_overview.ht ml
http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/timeline1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/themes/display.cf m?Item=polarice
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plan etary.chem.tufts.edu/MarsPolarCap.jpg&imgrefurl=ht tp://planetary.chem.tufts.edu/chronos.html&h=225&w =290&sz=10&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=TYj58QRSbsjd4M :&tbnh=89&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar %2Bice%2Bhistory%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. cosmiclight.com/imagegalleries/images/space/mars-p olarcap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cosmiclight.com/i magegalleries/mars.htm&h=359&w=600&sz=16&hl=en&sta rt=9&um=1&tbnid=gBBAUkXCr9kpWM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&p rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar%2Bice%2Bhistory%26s vnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
NASA's and the Hubble Space Telescope images spanning from October 1996 until March 1997, show the viritable felting of Mar's polar ice cap, in just 6 months... Such an event would have been utterly devastating on our planet, making the Tsunami seem like a needle in a haystack in comparison.