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Ok, lets look at the first three papers on NASA's site that I run into:

Novel Composite Membrane for Space Life Supporting System

Novel manufacturing process for unique mixed carbide refractory composites

Novel Tunable Dye Laser for Lidar Detection

I hate when people gripe about generalized "academics" just because they're not familiar with the topic being discussed. Yes, there *are* things to criticize about peer review, and which some people (such as Sokal) have abused amusingly. But such broad sweeping generalizations are grossly unfair to the academic community as a whole. If you had to explain every single word that you used, your wordcount would go up a hundredfold. Applied sciences deal with many concepts that simply cannot be summed up concisely.

What word would you use to replace "lidar"? Do you want the author of the last paper to have to write out "holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals" each time instead of HPDLC? Should the second author have to define STTR when the work is being done as part of a SSTR project? Do they need to explain what a "hafnium/silicon based carbide composite" is for people unfamiliar with some of those words? What about "microporous aminosilicate membrane"?

Technical terminology isn't used to try and sound impressive (99% of the time). It is used because it is the right terminology.

Ok, lets look at the first three papers on NASA's site that I run into:

Novel Composite Membrane for Space Life Supporting System

Novel manufacturing process for unique mixed carbide refractory composites

Novel Tunable Dye Laser for Lidar Detection

I hate when people gripe about generalized "academics" just because they're not familiar with the topic being discussed. Yes, there *are* things to criticize about peer review, and which some people (such as Sokal) have abused amusingly. But such broad sweeping generalizations are grossly unfair to the academic community as a whole. If you had to explain every single word that you used, your wordcount would go up a hundredfold. Applied sciences deal with many concepts that simply cannot be summed up concisely.

What word would you use to replace "lidar"? Do you want the author of the last paper to have to write out "holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals" each time instead of HPDLC? Should the second author have to define STTR when the work is being done as part of a SSTR project? Do they need to explain what a "hafnium/silicon based carbide composite" is for people unfamiliar with some of those words? What about "microporous aminosilicate membrane"?

Technical terminology isn't used to try and sound impressive (99% of the time). It is used because it is the right terminology.

Well, there's little room for *wild* speculation, as any speculation as to the physical causes of redshift must correspond to mountains of previous data and theory on the topic. Speculate all you want, just be prepared for others more acquainted with the science to tell you where you're off track. And I have no idea where you get the notion that I "pooh-pooh" redshift. It was observed with a value of 3.3%. What's the disagreement? Redshift *is* an effect, not a cause. I just don't follow you.

Clearly you know everything there is to possibly know about astronomy.

Now that's just snarky. You're better than that.

I don't have your email, but if you're still interested, here is the link to the initial observational announcement with the 3.3% reshift cited from the observations: Announcement
and here's a link to the Astronomy Picture of the Day with photos of the relevant portion of the sky, as well as many related links:
APOD discussion

Well, there's little room for *wild* speculation, as any speculation as to the physical causes of redshift must correspond to mountains of previous data and theory on the topic. Speculate all you want, just be prepared for others more acquainted with the science to tell you where you're off track. And I have no idea where you get the notion that I "pooh-pooh" redshift. It was observed with a value of 3.3%. What's the disagreement? Redshift *is* an effect, not a cause. I just don't follow you.

Clearly you know everything there is to possibly know about astronomy.

Now that's just snarky. You're better than that.

I don't have your email, but if you're still interested, here is the link to the initial observational announcement with the 3.3% reshift cited from the observations: Announcement
and here's a link to the Astronomy Picture of the Day with photos of the relevant portion of the sky, as well as many related links:
APOD discussion

Veteran wrote:

Business men claim that there is a lack of engineering talent grown here in the U.S. What they really mean is that there is a lack of U.S. engineers who are willing to work 60 hours a week for coolie wages - which is why they hire foreign engineers, programmers etc.

Too true. Some businessmen realize that these kind of conditions drive off talented people. Some do not. The ones who do not are the ones doing real harm to technical fields and the country in general.

Veteran also wrote:

Technical people get very little respect in the U.S. Last week's Battlestar Galactica - where an engineering officer was promoted to command showed the way that the "people people" view technical people: "they only know how to deal with machines", "its all about the people - don't forget that" Of course "people people" are not technical people for the very simple reason that they can't be. The technical people who go into management tend to be technical incompetents who couldn't cut it where they were.

While there is some truth in this statement, I didn't see the same episode in the same way. People tell me I have both technical and people skills. Yes, today that's not as common as I (and others) think it should be.

I viewed the Pegasus commander not as someone with high technical skills and poor people skills but more as some addicted to tight control of people and completely inflexible. That's a recipe for disaster in a leader. He didn't listen to people. He wanted everyone held to his beliefs. He thought even nontechnical people would perform better if they were held to rigid codes of conduct.

For a real world example of what I'm talking about, I suggest a rereading (or initial reading if you haven't already done so) of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report. That report severely criticizes NASA for not listening to staff. Listening is a people skill, not a technical skill. I've heard current NASA Adminstrator Griffin expound on the need for people in his organization to listen. He did this is a public forum, by the way. I don't know what happens behind the scenes.

Interestingly enough, some of the best technical people I know also demonstrate a people side. You'd be surprised, for example, how many of us dabble in some sort of art (writing, acting, photography, etc.) as a hobby.

According to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which, IIRC, is the most recent measuring of the Hubble Constant, the value for the Hubble Constant is 71 ± 4 km/s/Mpc. This would give the universe an age of 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years.

Other findings of WMAP include the makeup of the universe as 4% matter, 23% dark matter, and 73% dark energy, and a flat geometry for the universe.

Best estimates for the age of our solar system are currently about 4.6 billion years. Life ostensibly started very quickly, on a cosmological timeline. IIRC, earliest evidence of life points to around 3.5 billion years ago.

But your point about it being a lot more recent on a cosmological scale are correct.

Keck and the other scopes on Mauna Kea will, though, sometimes try to sneak a peek at a "high-priority" target like this, if they can find the time in their busy schedules.

Oh, along with Rochester Astronomy, a couple other cool sources for announcements of newly found supernovae and such are the IAU Circulars (subscription required) and Astronomer's Telegram. For gamma ray bursts, check out NASA's Gamma ray bursts Coordinates Network, too.

See http://oodt.jpl.nasa.gov/better-web-app.mov

Don't you mean it's been 30 years since NASA's moon landing hoax? ;-)

Of human lead disposal, the vast majority, over 90%, is car battries. Solder is only a fraction of the remaining fraction. Eliminating lead solder, while keeping lead car battries, is like saving power by turning off a table lamp, while leaving your windows open and AC on.

But it gets worse. The non-lead solders are predominantly tin. This has two major disadvantages over lead based solders:

1) Higher melting point. Means more components get fried and more joints don't form properly in creation, leading to more stuff for the junk heap.

2) Tin whiskers. For some reason, tin solders have little tiny tin cyrstals grow on them. Should that growth touch another lead, you get a short and thus a blown component. They happen even if you put a coating on the board. Given how close joints are these days on ICs, this is a bigger problem than it was in the past. NASA has info on it http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/

Really, this is not only a solution to a non-issue, it just makes things worse over all.

Just in the order that caught my eye...

"[...] Hmmm, the Russians used Progress to dump Mir trash? Dayam, I'm either a chump, or some aspect of the ISS trash needed the Shuttle to handle."

You're a chump, but we love you anyway... :^)

Here's a NASA article. Scroll down to "Who takes out the trash?" You'll like the line about how, when the Shuttle leaves ISS, it "becomes the world's most expensive trash hauler." But read the next paragraph.

That said, there are different sorts of trash. For example, if you look at this article, you'll note that things like coffee cups end up in the Progress. But things like broken exercise equipment end up waiting for the Shuttle.

"My understanding of why the ISS was limited to two people was the garbage problem, or else we could have had a third ISS crewmember doing the useful microgravity experiments you talk about."

Garbage is probably part of it. But it has more to do with consumables like air and water. Less people means fewer resupply missions necessary. Of course, fewer resupply missions means fewer Progress drones to get rid of garbage in.

Better link, from the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.

The original legendary Omega Speedmaster -- the watch chosen to go to the moon. Big deal? Note that they strapped it on the outside of their spacesuits, exposed to the airless, dusty lunar environment, as can be seen on Pete Conrad's left wrist. A bit pricey, though.

You work on the shuttles, and you don't even know how to spell the name of one of them? (It is called the Endeavour.)

No wonder the things keep blowing up.

"Face it, the only significant mission of the US space shuttle program is the same as the TV show Quark; haul garbage from the ISS."

Right.

Oh, and to take up the solar panels and equipment to attach them, U.S. Node 2, various EXPRESS palettes, Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules, and various labs from other countries, as well as crew rotation.

Sounds like some pretty significant chunks of material to me.

Neil Murphy Dismisses the notion on a nonphyiscal solar sair right off hand. "We use aluminized plastics and nanotubes. You really do have to have a physical sail. Magnetic fields interact, but not in the same way." What about Robert?

Magnetic sails proposed by Robert Zubrin can be seen in the middle of this NASA page. So is it or is it not feasible?

Perhaps Mr Murphy has time invested in physical sail research...

Me? I just wanna be a fry cook on Venus.

Let it go.

Just as the Shuttle has its EOL planned and is being phased out and a replacement system is in the works, so does the Hubble.

Its called the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), and is in the works:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/FastFacts/
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/FAQ.html#FAQ_0004

Its time to acquaint yourself with the future and planned obsolescence (not to mention NASA planning). Considering we are still in the nascent era of human spaceflight and exploration, its about time you supposed scientific rationalists started being more rational (and informed), and less emotional in regards to moving past early stage efforts.

Let it go.

Let it go.

Just as the Shuttle has its EOL planned and is being phased out and a replacement system is in the works, so does the Hubble.

Its called the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), and is in the works:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/FastFacts/
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/FAQ.html#FAQ_0004

Its time to acquaint yourself with the future and planned obsolescence (not to mention NASA planning). Considering we are still in the nascent era of human spaceflight and exploration, its about time you supposed scientific rationalists started being more rational (and informed), and less emotional in regards to moving past early stage efforts.

Let it go.

My girlfriend claims anti-gravity rooms exist because "They used one to film that movie!"

Anti-gravity rooms DO exist... they're called airplanes in free fall. (Well, not really free fall, they use parabolic flight paths that simulate free fall, but you get the idea.)

And yes, the KC-135 was used to film many of the microgravity scenes in "that movie," Apollo 13... Ron Howard had Command Module and Lunar Module sets built in the planes, and could film 35 seconds of weightlessness at a time. There was a rumor for a while that the Wachowski Brothers wanted to use the KC-135 to film some weightless kung-fu action for The Matrix: Reloaded, but they decided instead to use computer generated effects.

The nickname "Vomit Comet" comes from the fact that participants experience 1.8g while the plane bottoms out at the bottom of each parabola and 0g at the top of each parabola; continual fluctuation between 0g and 1.8g every 65 seconds results in some really funky gastric sensations.

I believe they plan on replacing the Shuttle with the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle). Which they claim will have the best technologies from the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. There is a moon landing targeted for 2018.

Crew Exploration Vehicle

Are you worried that melting glaciers may raise ocean levels, inundating coastlines and triggering massive damage?

Fear Not! NASA scientists have discovered a glacier that is not only not melting, but actually growing!

It is, of course, the glaciation on Mt. St. Helens. It had been blown away a few years ago, but it is now growing back!!!

So Panic Not! All we need to do is detonate a few thousand volcanos in Greenland, Siberia and Antarctica: problem solved!

Mayan deforestation: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Maya/

Easter Island deforestation: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=16861

Mayan deforestation: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Maya/

Easter Island deforestation: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=16861

Here or here, a very nice article on the project, "Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter have a new list, called HabCat: A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems." (2003) Interview included.

Interesting that starting with the Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars and skipping all with major problems for life ("cataclysmic, eruptive, pulsating, rotating, or X-ray stars", low metal content systems, rotating too fast or too much UV or bad size or composition), left 1 star in 6 still potential life bearers.

Wiki on HabCat and Turnbull. The Turnbull page has a link to a PDF, which is a very interesting scientific paper about how the list of habitable stars was made.

Wiki article on the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which uses Turnbull's list of 5000 candidates within a 100 light year radius. List of Top 100 candidates. Note 18 Scorpii at 46 light years is number 62 in the list, and 37 Geminorum is not listed.

The highest ranked 2 candidates in that list are just 4 ly away from Earth, at Rigil Kentaurus, and then Tau Ceti at 12 ly. There is one at 3 ly and some others at 19, 20, 24 ly too.

Allen Telescope Array

Turnbull's top 10 list includes 51 Pegasus, where in 1995 Swiss astronomers spotted the first planet outside our solar system, a Jupiter-like giant.

Others include 18 Sco in the Scorpio constellation, which is very similar to our own sun; epsilon Indi A, a star one-tenth as bright as the sun; and alpha Centauri B, part of the closest solar system to our own.

Energy on the moon will be *expensive* as heck

Er? What makes the idea of a ridiculously large solar array on the moon so far fetched?

Yah, okay, producing the silicon solar panels we have on Earth might be a bit farfetched, but there's a proposal in at NASA to develop in-situ thin-film solar cells. Even without that, though, it's fairly simple to make mirror surfaces out of lunar soil.

I especially don't agree with the blanket statement that energy won't be available. Electricity might require some work, but heat shouldn't be too hard with the Sun out for half a month at a time.

Lets eliminate aluminum from the picture right now...But just to make it more obvious that this won't happen, aluminum refining involves cryolite.

In... the Hall process. There are other processes (subchloride, Toth process, and high temperature electrolysis) which are possible. In the reference below, they recommended the electrolysis, as you did, but it's not the only one.

(for example, I can't even imagine titanium refining on the surface)

NASA can.

Is there a reason you're deriding ideas like these? The idea of a self-replicating lunar base has been around since 1980, when it was proposed (and turned down).

I agree the most important factor is developing a large power infrastructure - but I fail to see how direct solar (for heating) and photovoltaics (for electricity) wouldn't suffice.

Energy on the moon will be *expensive* as heck

Er? What makes the idea of a ridiculously large solar array on the moon so far fetched?

Yah, okay, producing the silicon solar panels we have on Earth might be a bit farfetched, but there's a proposal in at NASA to develop in-situ thin-film solar cells. Even without that, though, it's fairly simple to make mirror surfaces out of lunar soil.

I especially don't agree with the blanket statement that energy won't be available. Electricity might require some work, but heat shouldn't be too hard with the Sun out for half a month at a time.

Lets eliminate aluminum from the picture right now...But just to make it more obvious that this won't happen, aluminum refining involves cryolite.

In... the Hall process. There are other processes (subchloride, Toth process, and high temperature electrolysis) which are possible. In the reference below, they recommended the electrolysis, as you did, but it's not the only one.

(for example, I can't even imagine titanium refining on the surface)

NASA can.

Is there a reason you're deriding ideas like these? The idea of a self-replicating lunar base has been around since 1980, when it was proposed (and turned down).

I agree the most important factor is developing a large power infrastructure - but I fail to see how direct solar (for heating) and photovoltaics (for electricity) wouldn't suffice.

What about Water Hyacinths? Epcot and NASA have been doing research for over 30 years on using the Hyacinth for water filtration and later for fueling furnaces for electrical generators (the Hyacinth used to filter the water gives off large amounts of methane as it decomposes).

The cable will be "grounded" to the... well... ground. The NASA experiment wasn't grounded - it was just hanging out of the ship; also not grounded.

The charge isn't generated by atmospheric friction, but rather by a electrically-conductive wire passing through a magnetic field; i.e., orbiting shuttle dragging long stretch of wire through the planet's magnetic field.

The Space Tether Experiment

I don't have many of the citations with me, and it seems the NASA sites have apparently taken down some of the initial research reports, so I'm doing this mostly from memory...

A good place to start would be here.

To sum it up, you take a cable, send it to geosynch orbit, and start spooling one end of the cable down towards Earth, while spooling the other end into space. As long as the center of gravity stays at GEO, the whole structure 'hangs' in orbit. It never has to touch the ground.

If the cable is severed, the portion close to the ground will fall to the Earth, wrapping around the equator. The upper portion will float out into space. Now, by retracting the end of the cable past GEO, the space-bound portion can keep its center of mass in GEO, and not float away. The lower portion can be slowed, cushioned, or even caught (one estimate I saw put the weight of the entire cable at 9.2 tons if constructed of nanotubes... even if that's off by an order of magnitude, a good helicopter or blimp could probably hold the thing up, or at least slow it down 'till a fix is done.)

At the GEO point, you put a station. From here, you can easily shuttle out for anything in orbit... the far end of the cable can use its speed as a very efficient launch mechanism... think about a giant slingshot, flinging supplies at distant outposts.

Although it's not going to be fast travel (even with a mag-lev system for a climber, you'd still be looking at a couple of days to orbit), it is efficient. Right now, cost is between $20,000 and $60,000 per pound to orbit aboard most rockets. Estimates for the space elevator drop that to about $100 per pound to orbit... and that's the initial costs. NASA seems to think that the cost would eventually drop to around $10 per pound to orbit. And that's LEO or GEO...

My personal view is: screw Mars, screw going back to the moon. Our next Apollo program/Manhattan project should be the space elevator. If the scientific community rallied around building this thing, and had the funding we gave those other projects, we'd have this thing figured out and built in a couple of decades... Then the moonbases and Mars outposts and everything become easy and sustainable. Worried about radiation on the trip? At $100/lb you can afford to send up water, or lead, or whatever for shielding... doing that on a rocket is not really possible. People may have stopped laughing at the idea, but they're still not really taking it seriously yet.

Although these events were separated by about 57 years (approximately 2 Saturnian years) there is yet no explanation why they apparently follow a cycle -- occurring when it is summer in Saturn's northern hemisphere.

Deep Space 1's "ion drive" is a plasma drive. Perhaps what you're thinking of would be more like Hall thrusters, MHD thrusters, Pulsed Plasma Thusters, or VASIMR. All of which exist and have been tested to some degree in vacuum chambers and some of which have actually flown. They were not necessarily invented by NASA, but then neither was velcro, Tang, or kevlar, but those things are all still useful.

Deep Space 1's "ion drive" is a plasma drive. Perhaps what you're thinking of would be more like Hall thrusters, MHD thrusters, Pulsed Plasma Thusters, or VASIMR. All of which exist and have been tested to some degree in vacuum chambers and some of which have actually flown. They were not necessarily invented by NASA, but then neither was velcro, Tang, or kevlar, but those things are all still useful.

Dark Matter exists, and in my opinion it is here for good. The attempts to come up with alternative theories of gravity are quite noble, but they only work on certain scales, and the proponents of these theories sometimes neglect examples that invalidate their theory. It would be quite elegant to be able to account for dark matter via a modification of gravity alone, but I am afraid that it will not be possible.

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter is the "bullet cluster of galaxies" discovered by Maxim Markevitch and collaborators. Their 2004 peer reviewed article shows a small cluster of galaxies passing through much more massive one. As the cluster passes through, its gas is stripped, but the dark matter stays behind, detected via weak gravitational lensing. This effect is impossible to reproduce using alternative theories of gravity, because there is a visible separation between the total mass peak and the observable mass peak.

There are dozens of other peer-reviewed articles that argue against these alternative theories of gravity. What about the cosmic microwave background? The CMB is one of the underpinnings of modern cosmology and basically made the big bang the widely accepted theory that it is today. This recent analysis of the CMB show that the kind of alternative gravity proposed here is strongly disfavored by the CMB spectrum, and that it would imply too high a neutrino mass.

I challenge you to look through the literature for yourself. Here is a list of papers discussing modified newtonian gravity and its derivatives... You will find that yes, these alternative theories do work quite well at describing the rotation curves of galaxies, as TFA suggest. But on larger scales, such as in cluster of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background, they seem to fail convincingly.

Here's the bigger picture

They are sedimentary layers of some kind -- either volcanically deposited (e.g., like an ash fall) or sediment deposited by fluids (air or water). Once they get the instruments up against the outcrop and get some composition data, it should help narrow the possibilities.

The structure looks somewhat like the sediments that have been observed by Opportunity at Meridiani, sans "blueberries" (hematite concretions), though one possible blueberry has turned up (e.g., the far left of this image), and there might be more upon closer examination. There are examples of what appears to be cross bedding (cross-cutting laminations indicating ripples or dunes in cross section -- some are visible in the above image), and there are broader vertical composition variations, judging by variations in bedding character and colour.

The cross bedding is especially important, because although there have been examples reported at the Opportunity sites, they aren't 100% convincing. The ones here already look unambiguous. Furthermore, the geometry of cross beds is specific to the current/wave regime and the nature of the fluid carrying the sediment. They can still occur in volcanic settings, but either way, they can provide quite a bit of information about the process responsible.

I'm going way out on a ledge here, but ... damn, those cross beds look rather similar to something geologists on Earth call "hummocky cross stratification" (or HCS for short). It is characteristic of combined flow -- oscillatory and unidirectional -- which is in turn characteristic of storm waves in oceans or large lakes, though the process by which HCS forms is not very well understood. The crossbeds don't look particularly aeolian (wind-deposited).

Unfortunately, I suspect such an interpretation would be much more debatable on Mars. I'm not sure what effect lower gravity and different atmospheric density has on the types of cross bedding that forms. I think there is some experimental and computational modelling for Martian conditions, but I'm not familiar with it.

Still, the deposit certainly isn't a lava flow.

My guess: it is a sedimentary deposit, and I'm also guessing it is stratigraphically above what is found on most of the Gusev plain. It might represent a relict that used to fill much of the basin and lapped onto the Columbia Hills, but has been eroded away over most of the surrounding area. If so, "Home Plate" might be the "lake deposits" people were expecting to find at Gusev from the start.

For a geologist this outcrop is very exciting stuff. And to think that if the rovers only met their standard 90-day lifetime, we would never have seen it!

I'm not a geologist either, althoug I have been following the discussion at Unmanned Spaceflight. There are as many hypotheses as hypothesizers. When you have that many thin layers with significant cross-lamination, then it seems to me to point to deposition by wind or water. It can't just be slabs of lava. Of course, everyone is hoping that water will be the answer.

In some of the images from late last week, there appears to be a spherule, not unlike the ones foundon the other side of the planet by Opportunity. The ones Opportunity found are mostly made of hematite and are thought to be associated with liquid water.

They didnt write all their own software, they used NASA World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ as well (satellite / aerial imagery viewer).

The satellite imagery & topographic maps are the user navigating NASA World Wind. Way cool.

fixed link

Both are. Here's a good article from Nasa about the problem: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/sc ales.html/

But hopefully this new discovery changes all that.

Yes. Everything in the universe has been set in motion from the moment of the Big Bang.

Me, you, your dog, my cat are all moving very quickly in the universe.

(Unfortunately, we only see but a snapshot of it before we are gone.)

All of this is theoretically measurable so whether or not the Universe unfolded, turned itself inside out from the previous Big Crunch or was created by the Breath of God, it really doesn't matter.

The Universe is measurable and predictable. (Except for that Dark Matter stuff)

Check out: Cassini http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimed ia/Cassini_Multimedia_Collection(Search_Agent)_arc hive_1.html

The Cassini program, from the ground up, is a nice example of practical "theoretical" physics at work.

The author should stop chasing Schrodinger's cat. Time Travel? Only into the Future. And its always a one way trip. Moving without "moving" ? Someones been into getting into the the spice again.

There's an interesting post over on Clark Lindsay's RLV and Space Transport News, part of which I've pasted below:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid =894

* Florida Today points out that "In the past three years, Congress has given the [Shuttle] program $13 billion, and all that money has resulted in just two flights". Sword of Damocles: NASA must safely launch the space shuttles this year, or the program wont survive - Florida Today - Feb.5.06.

To put that into perspective:

* Elon Musk has spent about $100M so far on developing the line of SpaceX Falcon launchers. The first Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for 2007. He hasn't said how much more money it will take to reach that launch but I doubt it could be more than another $100M.

* Kistler says it needs a few hundred million dollars to finish its fully reusable two stage K-1 vehicle.

* T/Space said it can build a CEV system capable of taking crews and cargo to the ISS for around $500M.

* LockMart once promised to build the VentureStar for $6B. If they had a 100% overrun that would still be less than $13B.

While you are pointing to a great website, I think this page,
http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/index.html
is a better starting place. Your is directly to the LROC, which is an instrument on LRO. This link will take you directly to the mission overview, from which you can find info on all the instruments and such.

On a personal note I am glad to see slashdot pick up this story, since I was at the preliminary design review for LRO today.

I don't suppose there's any online sites for predicting a pass over a given location?
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/Amateur.ht ml

Like I'm going to buy that. If they could fake the whole dog and pony show in the 60's do they really think we're so guallible as to beleive they can't doctor a few images? Like NASA doesn't have photoshop.

From the LROC site http://cps.earth.northwestern.edu/LROC/summary.htm l

"All the data collected from the LROC will be transferred to the Planetary Data Systems (PDS). In all, about 62 terabytes (TB) of data will be sent to PDS from the data collected by LROC including the raw images in the original spacecraft viewing orientation (NASA Level-0) and radiometrically processed images (NASA Level-1) of the entire image collection. In addition, geometrically processed images (NASA Level-1C) from a subset of the image collection and uncontrolled mosaics from a subset of the image collection will also be transferred to the PDS."

The PDS ( http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ ) "archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions..."
You can download data from many past missions from the PDS.

Who said anything about men? The Soviets safely landed seven probes of the Luna series, and a whole lot more... uh... impacted destructively. Details can be found on NASA's web site here:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarus sr.html

I was actually quite amazed at how well some of the materials actually worked that were used during the Apollo mission. My boss said that a this tape that I was using was actually used on the lander. It is called kapton tape. I stared at it and then realzed how easy it would be for someone to think that it's utterly useless. Anyone not in my position (consistently chucking copious amounts of it into UV chambers without it degrading for a week) would think of it being stupid yellow tape. For people who think I'm making it up: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12 /a12.landmovie.html That yellow stuff is the tape I use. Then again the freaking moon hoax idiots think the lunder lander was held together by this stuff.

You can get the details of the spacecraft from Goddard Space Flight Center.

Government agencies are not allowed to hold copyrights. If the images belonged to a third party that NASA contracted out to, then you might have an issue. Fortuanetly, it's usually NASA's mission to get those photos, so they belong to NASA even if NASA contract for the space vehicle to be built by someone else.

NASA's page on the subject.