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Well LRO is the first phase of RLEP, the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program. The next phase after LRO (IIRC) is a robotic lander.

Mohttp://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/

AFAIK NASA generally doesn't copyright any of the images or data from their missions(Hubble might be an exception though, atleast for the first year). More info here.

OK, here's a couple of facts backing his speech.

    Antactic ice IS increasing."

    Banning DDT DID kill people.

   

    My take is that Crichton's already made freaking millions, doesn't need the money that bad, he's actually a pretty conscientious guy, and yes, his fiction does suck. But this is a legitimate cause with plenty of facts to back itr. Try actually searching/reading with an open mind past what politically driven figures have to say, what Greenpeace/World Watch wants you to think. Realize we're in a 35 year cooling period, that the Pleistocene carbon dioxide levels mirrored TODAY without any bad, evil, evil humans meddling with the global climate.

"Misrepresentation" is a pretty harsh word. There's a decent description of the Big Bang on NASA's website at http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html. Do you think this is a misrepresentation?

Going back to the moon is a technology testbed - to prove and test the technologies to get man to Mars (and beyond).

Just like the early rocket launches built up to Apollo, current projects test the technologies we will be using in the future. Ion drives and such.

Just having a quick browse through http://exploration.nasa.gov/ shows the stuff they want to develop - for unmanned and then manned flight.

Quite true and the post you repled to erroneously implies that the planes would be used on the Moon. I think that's just an error because airplanes have, however, been proposed for use on Mars. See:

ARES - A Proposed Mars Scout Mission

Most of the problems with atmospheric distortion can now be overcome with Earth-based telescopes, particularly Large Array Telescopes. One remaining problem seems to be eliminating vibration of the telescopes themselves due to wind and even wandering livestock.

Oh, and the Hubble's software won't let it be pointed anywhere near the Moon (or Sun, or Earth) without closing the "lens cap" (sun shield), so as to avoid burning out extremely sensitive instruments.

Splitting hairs here on an informative post, but it can be pointed at the moon. They recently started doing a few lunar observations with Hubble, as reported here.

The resolution isn't great enough to see Apollo artifacts, however.

Money. Plan and simple. It takes money to put satellites in orbit around the moon and to image it. Ground based systems that have the kind of resolution you want are busy looking at long distance objects. They can't focus on something as close as the moon. Why build a telescope that can only look at the moon?

That said, NASA does have a satellite about to launch that will produce amazing high res pictures and topographical data of the moon in preperation of landers looking for ice and other goodies on the moon.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=LUNARRO

Someone remind me why we're spending billions to go to the moon again? Is there any real reason other than a presidential mandate? Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of the space program.. bigger, better, faster, and more -- but what's the point in targetting a barren rock covered in very static, highly abrasive, and possibly toxic dust? Previous expeditions have suffered mechanical failures, seal leaks, etc. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there's the little issue of all the craters. More specifically, the lack of atmosphere that contributed to their formation. The (common?) estimate of 70-150 impacts per year would seem to ignore the 1,400 to 10,000 impacts per hour during Leonid meteor storms. While any lunar landing expedition would almost certainly avoid such periods, it doesn't bode well for any sort of permanent outpost which, again, makes me wonder what's the point of going back to the moon.

Someone remind me why we're spending billions to go to the moon again? Is there any real reason other than a presidential mandate? Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of the space program.. bigger, better, faster, and more -- but what's the point in targetting a barren rock covered in very static, highly abrasive, and possibly toxic dust? Previous expeditions have suffered mechanical failures, seal leaks, etc. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there's the little issue of all the craters. More specifically, the lack of atmosphere that contributed to their formation. The (common?) estimate of 70-150 impacts per year would seem to ignore the 1,400 to 10,000 impacts per hour during Leonid meteor storms. While any lunar landing expedition would almost certainly avoid such periods, it doesn't bode well for any sort of permanent outpost which, again, makes me wonder what's the point of going back to the moon.

Someone remind me why we're spending billions to go to the moon again? Is there any real reason other than a presidential mandate? Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of the space program.. bigger, better, faster, and more -- but what's the point in targetting a barren rock covered in very static, highly abrasive, and possibly toxic dust? Previous expeditions have suffered mechanical failures, seal leaks, etc. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there's the little issue of all the craters. More specifically, the lack of atmosphere that contributed to their formation. The (common?) estimate of 70-150 impacts per year would seem to ignore the 1,400 to 10,000 impacts per hour during Leonid meteor storms. While any lunar landing expedition would almost certainly avoid such periods, it doesn't bode well for any sort of permanent outpost which, again, makes me wonder what's the point of going back to the moon.

It is my opinion that a program that eats so much of a country's research budget for so little immediate benefit should be examined. I am merely questioning why the US is willing to spend so much getting to the moon yet is unwilling to devote money and effort to reducing their contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Little benefit. Such as: pacemakers, scratch-resistant lenses, nitinol for dental braces, improved fire-retardant materials, composites, teflon, smoke detectors, battery-powered tools, "memory" metals, shock-absorbent footwear, improved cell culturing, implantable heart pumps, improved diagnostic aids, electric cars, emmisions controls, etc?

Feel free to browse the NASA Spinoff Database to understand where all of that money goes. The funds invested in space technology repay themselves at least a hundred-fold in my opinion. If we weren't so short-sighted we would be investing (publicly and privately) at least 10 times what we do now.

The problem is getting the CO2 uptake down to the sea bottom. A iron enrichment experiment was done recently. Search for the SOLAS SERIES experiment in the Pacific Ocean. They succeeded in enhancing phytoplankton growth, but AFAIK the production didn't sink to the bottom.

The Apollo lunar surface journal is the official record of everything which happened on the moon during the apollo program. It is very detailed. I have plucked it on to my palm pilot and I read it when I have free time.

Pete Conrad was the commander of the Apollo 12 mission and he is (alas was) a real character. Mike Collins (CM pilot on Apollo 11) said in his book that Conrad was the only astronaut who exactly fitted the public perception of "Buck Rogers" astronauts.

Neil Armstrong almost ran out of fuel for his landing. He got distracted by the engineering (not his job) and then lost right of the ground during final approach. He was the first, but some would say not the best.

Conrad got to the landing site early with loads of fuel. He flew a circuit over the landing area, checking out several possible places to set the LM down. This being his only opportunity to fly an LM he found time for a couple of very radical turns at low altitude, nearly turning the LM on its side, throwing it around like he was in an airshow. Then he picked his spot. Hovered for a nice dramatic pause, and plonked the spacecraft right down on the exact edge of surveyor crater.

The quote is from a point in one of the two EVA's on that flight where Conrad was in a lot of pain from a badly fitting pressure suit, but still kept his focus and managed the occasional joke.

Al Bean pauses and checks his suit pressure. He says he felt a change in suit pressure

Conrad: I thought you were going to go off like a ballon there Al!

The thing is, the man had style.

Read up on the "urban heat sink effect" of large cities. For every 1 mile radius of city, the core temperature rises up by 1 degree centigrade. So the core temperature for a large city can actually be 10 degrees higher than in the suburbs. And urban development causes rainwater to run off 10 times faster than if it were being soaked up by natural vegetation. This has the effect of disrupting local weather patterns to the extent that a city can actually created a rainfall shadow; an area downwind of the central core which has an artificially higher rainfall (which might not be too bad unless it's acid rain). NASA have more details.

The effect of solar panels is negligible compared to what we have already done.

I'd recommend keeping it civil, thoughtful, polite, on topic, etc., and leaving the vitriol on Slashdot, where it belongs. ;-)

I found this to be a be angrymaking. I think it'd be a good idea to think about this a while before sending a well thought out letter to Mr. Deutsch about democracy, censorship, science, etc. I also think it might be helpful if I am not the only one sharing my opinion with Mr. Deutsch.

george.deutsch-1@nasa.gov
from http://science.hq.nasa.gov/press/contacts.html

Warning: I do not know for sure if this is the same George Deutsch as in the articles, but it does seem likely.

The exact statement from the NASA administrator is available on NASA's website:

http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_scien ce.html

The observation of comets was that they had very little ice on the surface, but a good deal of water was kicked up by the impact (thus, it was probably not more than a couple of metres below the surface).
from this CBC article it appears that finding any ice on the surface was actually a mild surprise for scientists. This NASA mission update also indicates a powdered iceball construction of the comet.

Big Bang is an hypothesis, and a wrong one, too. I've seen four different groups point out four different ways in which the hypothesis is unquestionably refuted. The least subtle that I can recall is the BigBangNeverHappened crew, but they're only one of many. They're not religious whackos, either.

My personal favourite refutation is this image, of a highly redshifted (z=2.11) quasar sitting between us and an opaque galaxy (NGC 7319, part of Stephan's Quintet, z=0.0225), but many others prefer the Blazar 3C 345, an object which is changing shape, if current astrophysics is correct, at roughly seven times the speed of light. However, there's no reason to fight, 'coz there's plenty of other "anomalous" objects to go around.

Notice that the NGC 7319 shot is from Hubble and hosted by JPL; this is not a backyard job or some random Russian with a unique idea, and 3C 345 is from the VLBA and hosted by Boston University.

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

The UCLA paleobiologist in question, Dr. J. William Schopf, has already dealt directly with the ALH84001 Mars meteorite controversy:

In "Cradle of Life," Schopf recounts his involvement in evaluating the evidence for life on Mars, and the events that led to the life on Mars NASA press conference. NASA administrators asked him in January 1995 to assess what geologists at the Johnson Spacecraft Center (JSC) in Houston believed might be microfossils in a chunk of a meteorite thought to have come from Mars. The focus was on tiny, orange pancake-shaped globules of carbonate material. The scientists thought these globules might be Martian "protozoans," but Schopf's analysis showed that their guess was wrong.

"Many of the objects merged one into another in a totally nonbiologic way," Schopf says. "Their overall size range also did not fit biology, and they lacked any of the telltale features—pores, tubules, wall layers, spines, chambers, internal structures—that earmark tiny protozoan shells. In addition, the 'lifelike' traits they did possess could be explained by ordinary inorganic processes.

"I raised these points with the JSC scientists. They seemed to agree. I thought the matter was closed. But more than a year later, at the August 1996 news conference, the same little pancakes were again proffered as evidence of Martian life, this time of bacteria rather than protozoans. Evidently the scientists' minds were set—the facts hadn't changed, only the meaning attached to them."

Several weeks before the press conference, NASA again asked Schopf to evaluate the findings. He studied the evidence three times, and was not impressed.

"Crucial questions had not been asked," he writes. "Articles published earlier and critically relevant to the authors' contentions had been ignored. More plausible ways to explain the findings were given short shrift. The claim of 'evidence for primitive life on early Mars' seemed overblown, ill-conceived."

At the press conference, the JSC scientists presented their findings with the aid of "high-tech cartoon videos," says Schopf, who spoke after them.

"I was wearing my best suit—the one I got married in—looking at hundreds of reporters who wanted me to say there was life on Mars," he says. "I had no doubt my words would prove unwelcome. On a scale of one to 10, I gave each piece of their evidence a score. Some, such as the suggested Mars source of the meteorite, I ranked high. But the evidence for life was weak; I gave it a two. A number of scientists later called me to task for being too generous. One Nobel laureate said I should have ranked the evidence zero!

"This attempt failed to find life at Mars. That does not mean Mars contained no life—just that these scientists didn't find any."

How do respected scientists, from Scheuchzer and Beringer to the JSC team, Make such blunders? One answer, Schopf says, is that scientists have the same "strengths, fears and foibles as everyone" and are not so different from our neighbors. They have great successes and, sometimes, great failures. Mostly, "Cradle of Life" addresses one of science's great successes.

Perhaps Dr. Schopf's newer techniques will also be applied to ALH84001 and th

and BTW if you read this NASA press release it says that the SuitSat idea was "Russian Brainstorm" to do something with all the old Soviet spacesuits laying around (I assume as a money making venture) this does not have much of a conspiracy theory feel to it IMHO, but I guess one could say that "In Soviet Russia the Spacesuit wears You !!"

Oh, wow!

Interesting idea, but unfortunately, you don't quite seem to have grasped the relative velocities involved, and what they mean in terms of impact energy. The (brilliantly successful) Mars rovers used robust construction and airbags to survive an impact at 12 miles per hour (i.e. the equivalent of a low-speed car collision) (see here for more)

Deep Impact hit a comet at 10.2km/s (or about, what, 6 miles per second?) releasing energy equivalent to 4.8tons of TNT - somehow, I don't there there's much you can do to protect a lander from the equivalent of being loaded into the middle of a truck-load of detonating explosives...

A slow delta-V rendezvous is what you need, and that's gonna be awfully hard to achieve, given the high (10km/s+) speeds of average comets.

Oh, wow!

Interesting idea, but unfortunately, you don't quite seem to have grasped the relative velocities involved, and what they mean in terms of impact energy. The (brilliantly successful) Mars rovers used robust construction and airbags to survive an impact at 12 miles per hour (i.e. the equivalent of a low-speed car collision) (see here for more)

Deep Impact hit a comet at 10.2km/s (or about, what, 6 miles per second?) releasing energy equivalent to 4.8tons of TNT - somehow, I don't there there's much you can do to protect a lander from the equivalent of being loaded into the middle of a truck-load of detonating explosives...

A slow delta-V rendezvous is what you need, and that's gonna be awfully hard to achieve, given the high (10km/s+) speeds of average comets.

*cough*

If not, I would argue that we don't need it right now. NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR.

Yeah we have track Russian Movements so we send satellites past pluto! You forget that pure science can be extremely expensive. Somethings don't have immediate benefits and profit. It is unlikely one could ever raise the kind of money needed from corporations. They tend to be short sighted and expect returns immediately. You can't get a company to bet it's future on sending a rocket into deep space to see try to understand why previous rockets aren't where they were projected to be. A company could care less about unexplained spacecraft acceleration.

Pure science might not deliver for a hundred years. Benjamin Franklin studied electricity look how long it too before Edison, Tesla, Marconi came along and made practical use of it. And how much longer it took before the internet. A company wouldn't have had the forsight. Government has played a large part in aeronautics, electronics, communication and medicine. Many government discoveries were capitalized by companies and then sold back to the very same government agencies.

What's with all these complaints coming against google?

telecommunications companies do not like its plan for free internet phone calls

Well, duh, google is doing things better and cheaper, no one likes competition, everyone not employed by AT&T should welcome VoiP

book publishers and newspapers have filed a lawsuit to try to prevent it from digitising library materials

This is more valid. Google is starting to tread some murky waters with copyrights.

governments are worried about its satellite-imaging service Google Earth

Google does NOT own any satellites. Google just aggregates free satellite imagery and provides a great interface. Nasa did the same thing. Go check out Nasa Worldwind.

and privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent.

To be honest, I actually don't know much about how google handles the desktop stuff. However, are people seriosuly bitching that google made an e-mail client. Following that logic, hotmail and yahoo are making it easier for hackers and government agencies to gather information on me. Hell, I better run out now and buy my own email server to keep inside my house in a locked vault. IIRC, there was one search engine that didn't roll over to the DOJ.... *cough*

Good point. This got me to thinking, and my best memories of the subject kept telling me that this was still true. Let's see.

According to NASA's web site, the crew for Expedition 12 consists of:

William McArthur, Commander (retired US Army Colonel)
Valery Tokarev, Flight Engineer 1 and Soyuz Commander (Russian Air Force Colonel)

How about STS-121?

Steve Lindsey, Commander (US Air Force Colonel)
Mark Kelly, Pilot (US Navy Commander)
Mike Fossum, Mission Specialist (US Air Force Reserves Colonel)
Lisa Nowak, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)
Stephanie Wilson, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Piers Sellers, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Thomas Reiter, Mission Specialist (some military aircraft background, otherwise affiliated with the European Space Agency)

STS-115?

Brent Jett, Commander (US Navy Captain)
Chris Ferguson, Pilot (US Navy Captain)
Joe Tanner, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Dan Burbank, Mission Specialist (US Coast Guard Commander (and remember, USCG is military))
Steve MacLean, Mission Specialist (Canadian Space Agency)
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)

I'd say that firms up a military/NASA connection.

Good point. This got me to thinking, and my best memories of the subject kept telling me that this was still true. Let's see.

According to NASA's web site, the crew for Expedition 12 consists of:

William McArthur, Commander (retired US Army Colonel)
Valery Tokarev, Flight Engineer 1 and Soyuz Commander (Russian Air Force Colonel)

How about STS-121?

Steve Lindsey, Commander (US Air Force Colonel)
Mark Kelly, Pilot (US Navy Commander)
Mike Fossum, Mission Specialist (US Air Force Reserves Colonel)
Lisa Nowak, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)
Stephanie Wilson, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Piers Sellers, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Thomas Reiter, Mission Specialist (some military aircraft background, otherwise affiliated with the European Space Agency)

STS-115?

Brent Jett, Commander (US Navy Captain)
Chris Ferguson, Pilot (US Navy Captain)
Joe Tanner, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Dan Burbank, Mission Specialist (US Coast Guard Commander (and remember, USCG is military))
Steve MacLean, Mission Specialist (Canadian Space Agency)
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)

I'd say that firms up a military/NASA connection.

Good point. This got me to thinking, and my best memories of the subject kept telling me that this was still true. Let's see.

According to NASA's web site, the crew for Expedition 12 consists of:

William McArthur, Commander (retired US Army Colonel)
Valery Tokarev, Flight Engineer 1 and Soyuz Commander (Russian Air Force Colonel)

How about STS-121?

Steve Lindsey, Commander (US Air Force Colonel)
Mark Kelly, Pilot (US Navy Commander)
Mike Fossum, Mission Specialist (US Air Force Reserves Colonel)
Lisa Nowak, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)
Stephanie Wilson, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Piers Sellers, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Thomas Reiter, Mission Specialist (some military aircraft background, otherwise affiliated with the European Space Agency)

STS-115?

Brent Jett, Commander (US Navy Captain)
Chris Ferguson, Pilot (US Navy Captain)
Joe Tanner, Mission Specialist (NASA)
Dan Burbank, Mission Specialist (US Coast Guard Commander (and remember, USCG is military))
Steve MacLean, Mission Specialist (Canadian Space Agency)
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Mission Specialist (US Navy Commander)

I'd say that firms up a military/NASA connection.

What you describe won't work. Your satellite would orbit Earth once a day, backwards.

What you are looking for is to position your satellite at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point (hard-core space geeks will gripe that it should be orbiting L1, but let's keep it simple). That's much further away than geo-sync, so you won't get very good views of specific targets on Earth.

However you'll get one heck of a good view of the whole Earth. That's what Triana was suposed to do. A webcam for our planet, streaming live 24h/day. Unfortunately Triana was Al Gore's pet project. The spacecraft was designed, built and tested when the Democrats were in power. Then George Bush 'won' the election. Out of spite, Triana was ordered removed from the launch schedule. Due to politics, it is quietly rusting in a storage container.

BTW, the launch which Triana was scheduled to ride was STS 107, Columbia's final flight.

From this site:.

Log entry from pilot: "Autoland carried out. The aircraft landed very firmly and well to left of centerline. Most unsatisfactory."

Engineer's entry: "Autoland not fitted to this aircraft..." (May 1983, #47)

And even then, the James Webb is optimized for IR observations and doesn't completely overlap the observable spectrum available on the Hubble, which include UV. The two compliment each other.

From the James Web Space Telescope site What kind of detectors will JWST have?
JWST will have two types of detectors: visible and near-infrared arrays with 2,048 x 2,048 pixels, and mid-infrared arrays with about 1,024 x 1,024 pixels

From The Advanced Camera for Surveys site: It consists of three electronic cameras and a complement of filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared (1200 - 10,000 angstroms).

"two of the APUs caught fire on another flight (I seem to remember they actually exploded after the landing)"

Ah, they did:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/columbia/anomaly/STS9 .pdf

I forgot the dodgy brakes and the numerous computer failures, which could also have been bad news in different circumstances.

http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_bio.h tml

He's not only the author of the book I'm currently using for my undergraduate Spacecraft Systems course, but he's also got way more degrees than anyone should have. From the bio:

"Griffin received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Aerospace Science from Catholic University of America; a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland; a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California; a master's degree in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Business Administration from Loyola College; and a master's degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University."

I still wouldn't say he's overqualified for the job. The NASA admin -should- be one of the country's smart people.

Orlando Sentinel: Whats the status of a Hubble [Space Telescope] servicing mission on the shuttle?

Griffin: If the shuttle performs as we expect in May, we will have the data that we need to go forward now with completion of the station. And as Ive said, if all that turns out positively, we will do a Hubble mission.

    Here is a NASA link which also shows our climate becoming warmer/leaving a colder period. http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/cli mchng.html

    The referenced chart and that one do not show the rapid heating which you show. But such heating is normal as in the period 300k to 400k years ago. According to the records you show on your chart, a rapidly heating period is normal. Blaming this on CO2 is not correlated. Of course, if it is we may know too lately. Probably the deforestation is the reason CO2 levels are going up. The normal florishing of flora in a warmer period did not occur.

    According to your chart one would interpolate to the left a trend similar to the others and, thus, a cooling period.

You have to give the global warming people some credit for somehow advancing their theory as fact and proclaiming such horrendous future consequences to it to get so much attention and funding. However, just as it was a consensus once that Earth was the center of the universe this may be just as wrong and the establishment has just as much a backlash to those who are skeptical of their assertion.

I think that there is consensus that there has been a slight warming (0.6 +/- 0.2 C in the past century; 0.1 C/decade over the last 30 years) but there is not a consensus of the cause, there is not a consensus that it will continue and there is not a consensus that it is serious enough for humanity ecologically and economically to put the kind of resouces that some are calling for in the order of Trillions of dollars. There certainly are many things that we are more sure of and affect us more that we can and should be focusing on instead of this.

There is a theory that the warming trend is about to reverse itself and is more tied to Pacific Decadal Oscillation than to C02 emissions. (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL01519 1.shtml). There are also a theory that the warming is caused more from water vapor than CO2 and that reducing CO2 emissions will have a negligable effect on it. (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/iris. html).

There is not enough certainty here for humanity to do the things that are being called for and I believe that reducing CO2 emissions to the levels and extent called for will have a disasterous effect on many of the world's economies. For example, this was a report prepared on the costs for Denmark to meet Kyoto standard(http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Defaul t.aspx?ID=101). When you are talking those kind of consequences and costs there better be a more definite understanding and more dire consequences than less than a degree temperature change in 100 years and a theory that points to only one main cause seems a bit simplistic anyway in an ecosystem as complicated as ours. I think our energy and money is better spent on cleaning up other kinds of pollution and fixing helping with some of humanities social problems and human suffering - many things will have a much more real and substantial impact in our lives and well-being.

How much is hype and BS encouraged by the mass, liberal media? How much is hype on the other side by the oil companies? Fear and panic sells!

You should visit this site: http://www.junkscience.com/
Some of the graphs are very interesting -- http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/warming_by_de sign.htm
which shows that if you include ALL the recorded data, some areas are getting cooler, but the graphs you typically see: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/csci/ show an increase.

You should read Crichton's book State of Fear -- it will make you really think about this in a new light: http://www.crichton-official.com/
You might actually begin to take a critical view of what you read in the press.

Also, you should read http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm -- what are they really measuring -- how are they cooking the numbers to mislead you (about most everything). Remember, bad press sells.... Death sells.... CNN had great ratings during the Gulf War. Many more watched the news following 9/11 and Katrina. Death and destruction and fear sell.

Is global warming real? There are many indicators that it is. But there are those that show some places are colder and that overall it is actually getting colder. We need more accurate data, more research, and more CRITICAL thinking, not mass fear and suppression -- ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ISSUE.

It's not only greenhouse gases, but also the effects of soot that appear to be modulating the climate: http://search.nasa.gov/nasasearch/search/search.js p?nasaInclude=soot&x=0&y=0

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.

The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...

Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.

The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...

Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.

The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...

Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.

The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...