Slashdot Mirror

This isn't the first evidence they have found of water on mars, see this article

NASA did not "find water" years ago... or ever!

Lies! Definitive proof of water on Mars.

You might be referring to something similar to what NASA' helping to fund. I agree, it's pretty cool. Also we don't have to be overabout the Jehovah's witnesses anymore.

it's hard for me to say what might be appealing to a girl specifically. But relative to age range, I would suggest some stuff like:

1. the Madeline L'Engle "Wrinkle in Time" books

2. The Chronicles of Narnia

3. Some of the more sci-fi'ish "Choose Your Own Adventure" books

4. Any of the Tom Swift / Tom Swift Jr. adventures

5. The Mad Scientists Club

6. Any of the Doctor Who novelisations.

7. and while not exactly sci-fi, how about some of the "The Three Investigators" stories?

I really enjoy daylight unaided sightings of venus; it just feels amazing to me to see a planet in broad daylight. The funny thing is that after you find it, if you look away, and then look back, you can't miss it! A good empheris is helpful to narrow the search to a small part of the sky. This one at JPL is my favorite.

What was interesting to me was this diagram:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1681/

In JPL's warm-spot modelling for Enceladus there is an undersurface ocean heated by one of the two now-familiar forces of tidal heating or radiological decay heating (though the former seems more likely).

So the statement goes: "where there is liquid water, there could be life". Do we have another Europa on our hands here?

I only know of a record-setting balloon flight on Antartica, I found it back here, but possibly we're talking about the same mission. I know that gas seeping is a problem, helium molecules being that small, and 100 days is already a lot. If you need longer duration, refilling seems to be your only option. Maybe you can replace/add a tether with a light-weight tube that refills it from the ground. The good news is that getting helium up is not a big problem :-). But I'm not that sure that it solves the cost problem.

Forgot to post the link where I got the 0.27% number from: Global warming--a closer look at the numbers

The suits don't "leak." They're designed to vent gas. If you don't vent gas, you can't have a flow of gas at a constant pressure. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.g ov/19730064704_1973064704.pdf

Wow, I totally missed that article.

OK, so, from the article:

Lunar dust, being a compound of silicon as is quartz, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous.

So it _has_ silicon in it, and it's probably chemically similar to quartz. After a little google work, I turned up This presentation that outlines the stuff a little. It appears to be mostly silicon monoxide--similar in composition to silica, but not chemically the same. But, hell, just looking at those particles, they look "sharp edged," and it's not really a chemical effect in the lungs anyhow--that's why it's not "toxic," there's no chemical action in the lungs, just a physical one.

Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt suffered hay fever due to all the moon dust floating around in the lunar module.

You might be right. But there's some evidence that humanity is not completely responsible.

Today, an estimated 5.6 gigatons of carbon are released into the atmosphere each year due to fossil fuel burning. Burning of tropical forests contributes another 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year; or, about 30 percent of the total.

I actually read both articles in question and nowhere does it say that moondust is toxic. It does however say that Martian dust can be toxic in the second article. Here are the relevant quotes:

Quartz, the main cause of silicosis, is not chemically poisonous: "You could eat it and not get sick ...
Lunar dust, being a compound of silicon as is quartz, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous. ...
Martian dust could be even worse. It's not only a mechanical irritant but also perhaps a chemical poison. Mars is red because its surface is largely composed of iron oxide (rust) and oxides of other minerals. Some scientists suspect that the dusty soil on Mars may be such a strong oxidizer that it burns any organic compound such as plastics, rubber or human skin as viciously as undiluted lye or laundry bleach.

"If you get Martian soil on your skin, it will leave burn marks," believes University of Colorado engineering professor Stein Sture, who studies granular materials like Moon- and Mars-dirt for NASA. Because no soil samples have ever been returned from Mars, "we don't know for sure how strong it is, but it could be pretty vicious."

Moreover, according to data from the Pathfinder mission, Martian dust may also contain trace amounts of toxic metals, including arsenic and hexavalent chromium--a carcinogenic toxic waste featured in the docudrama movie Erin Brockovich (Universal Studios, 2000). That was a surprising finding of a 2002 National Research Council report called Safe on Mars: Precursor Measurements Necessary to Support Human Operations on the Martian Surface.

The Apollo 17 landing film is truly great to watch; the excitement in the astronauts voices shows what it really means for man to land on the moon:

Landing at Taurus-Littrow

On the same NASA site, there's an article about the toxicity of moondust. It appears that because of its small particle size (10 microns), the moondust gets embedded into lungs, just like quartz used to do in the old mining days, causing silicosis.
The astronauts did inhale some of the moondust, with effects similar to a hay fever.
Not only that, but the dust is statically charged because of the Sun and lack of humidity, so it will stick to just about anything, causing abrasion.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/22apr_dont inhale.htm
There are plans to build a "microwave lunar lawn mower" that will melt the dust into something useful and stop it from bouncing.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/09nov_lawn mower.htm

On the same NASA site, there's an article about the toxicity of moondust. It appears that because of its small particle size (10 microns), the moondust gets embedded into lungs, just like quartz used to do in the old mining days, causing silicosis.
The astronauts did inhale some of the moondust, with effects similar to a hay fever.
Not only that, but the dust is statically charged because of the Sun and lack of humidity, so it will stick to just about anything, causing abrasion.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/22apr_dont inhale.htm
There are plans to build a "microwave lunar lawn mower" that will melt the dust into something useful and stop it from bouncing.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/09nov_lawn mower.htm

the delicate balance that existed before we began adding our share.

That delicate balance never existed. Earth has been heating up for thousands of years.

Sulphates? CO2 levels are pretty much uniform over the entire planet. Here is the temperature record for the oldest continually operating weather station in Australia:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_ station.py?id=501947030000&data_set=1&num_neighbor s=1

Now that's global warming!

You're a bit off on your timescales. The southern icecap on Mars is melting because it is spring there:

From NASA:

Like Earth, Mars has seasons that cause its polar caps to wax and wane. "It's late spring at the south pole of Mars," says planetary scientist Dave Smith of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "The polar cap is receding because the springtime sun is shining on it."

Similarly, the warming on Pluto is also apparently seasonal (though its seasons are long, of course). From Space.com:

Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.

When scientists worry about global warming on earth, they're not just griping about the arrival of spring!

Actually, the GRiD Compass was in space before ever there was a Macintosh Portable:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computer s/Ch4-6.html

1983

William

Aerogel is an incredible substance made 99.8% air. It's a super insulator (my words). Loosely speaking,it's like Jello in a solid form with the water replaced with air.

Hot water on demand would require a smaller amount of surface area for the chamber, thus less aerogel needed..a cost improvement. Google aerogel--I see some recent articles in the google 'News' tab as well.

Nasa/JPL offers a description here:
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/aerogel.html

It seems that every time I hear about the Webb Telescope, newbie /.ers keep referring to it as the "replacement" for the Hubble Telescope, and I cringe. It is not.

Ha! Those NASA n00bs bought it too:

"The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will take the place of the Hubble Space Telescope at the end of this decade."

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/FastFacts/

I wish people would stop stereotyping all people from Alabama as redneck, uneducated, slackjaw hicks. I am a male in my mid-20s, a democrat, have a college degree in both computer science and mathematics from the University of Alabama (currently #104 of the 1400 in the most widely referenced list. I live in Huntsville, a city of more than 160,000 residents speaking over 100 languages, home of Redstone Arsenal, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and the 2nd largest research park in the United States (4th in the world). I work for NASA at MSFC making an upper-middleclass living, live in the suburb of Providence and drive an Audi, not a tractor. I don't follow any type of sports, run FreeBSD on one of the many computers at home, listen to music on my iPod while getting my MMORPG fix via EDGE on my widescreen Powerbook while drinking overpriced coffee.

Are there people in the state that fit your stereotypical remarks? You bet. Can you honestly say that there are no people in your state that you are embarassed by? Of course you can't. So the next time you make your uninformed, stereotypical remarks - remember the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

Recently, the DIRBE instrument on the COBE satellite confirmed earlier IRAS observations of a dust ring following the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The existence of this ring is closely related to the Trojan points, but the story is complicated by the effects of radiation pressure on the dust grains. The Lagrange Points

Not with this camera, as X-Rays are hardly ever focussed (they don't bend easily!). Here is an image of a rare and expensive X-ray focussing mirror. You have to use grazing incidence for it to work.

Medical X-ray photographies are simply taken by placing film (or these days a digital detector) behind the body and lighting with X-rays. No focussing is involved.

- the temperature is extremely cold, and thermal stresses could crack electronic solder joints and/or ruin components

- the batteries find it tough going at low temperatures

- the silicon solar cells degrade over time, losing efficiency

- an unknown amount of dust collects on the cells, how much and how long can you drive it? One of the surprises is that there are "dust devils" on Mars; some of these have actualy blown over the rovers and cleaned much dust off the solar cells! See the link for an amazing time-lapse movie of such winds caught by the rover cameras!

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/me r_main.html

Bottom line: when you have thousands of parts in a harsh environment, you just don't know. They built them tough but light, and thought they had a good chance of exceeding 90 days. Thankfully, luck has been on JPL's side, and they're still going! What a success story.

At almost the same time the rovers landed, a European probe was also to land. It was never heard from again, and presumably crashed.

"A while ago there was some research into giant tinfoil equipped satellites which could redirect sunlight onto the earth during darkness."

Indeed. Here's one plan that would only have cost a couple of billion dollars a time:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.g ov/19790076663_1979076663.pdf

Actually makes this EU boondoggle look cheap!

Sure, you got it quite right. A computer that's useful for a scientist has tools that can find the eigenvectors of a matrix, calculate the positions of planets in the solar system, solve the Navier-Stokes equation to plot the shock waves around a supersonic wing. Exactly the kind of problems which are so easy to solve using Microsoft Windows...

In the case of Columbia, it's listed right on the systems page.

I don't agree with it either, but basically the only two options for hubble are, 1. a manned mission. 2. throw it away.

There's still work being done towards a robotic mission.

And they keep claiming there isn't life on Mars...

Pfft...
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/spotlight/images/3d01h. jpg

for GIF: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _c3.gif

or JPEG: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _c3.mpg

Sorry about that.

for GIF: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _c3.gif

or JPEG: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _c3.mpg

Sorry about that.

Thanks, these are fantastic, and this animated one is awe inspiring! http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _eit_304small.gif

Some of the best images of the sun's daily activity are to be found at SOHO's site, http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/. I check it daily.

If you choose "the sun now" and then the MPEG or animated gif of the LASCO C3 (full res is best - and I'm so sorry SOHO for doing this to you!!!) you can watch as a comet makes a close approach to the sun today. Happens every few days. Sometimes they make it out the back, but most get eaten up. We'll see with this one.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/spotlight/3d01.html

NASA provides a guide for those with Photoshop, to make red / blue stereo images like you see on their website.

If anyone wants to convert the steps in the link to The Gimp 2.2, I'd be very greatful. I get stuck on about step 5 when I paste the 2 colour image into the other grey one and don't get the shaddowy red blue image that needs adjusting.

Check out the mission website. Cool stuff.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/latestimages.h tml

Here is a link to ALL of the different Sun Pictures in all sorts of wavelengths and formats:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/

Yes, those are Live and RealTime Shots

Enjoy!

PS - and yes, that is a NEW set of sunspots getting ready to cross the sun!

I think the point here is that the Universe is the whole closed system...where'd it get it's energy from?!?

Gee, I have no idea.

This is an old idea from 1994.
Alcubierre, M. "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel within General Relativity," Classical and Quantum Gravity, 11(5), L73-77 (1994).

Description: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/id eachev.html#alcub

"only commercial vehicle that can launch two mainstream telecommunications satellite payloads on the same mission."

The shuttle once launched 3 geosynchonous satellites in a single mission. This is not a big deal. I am surprised the moderators found it news worthy.

Here's the word on human vacuum exposure from NASA themselves. You can likely survive two minutes or so of hard vacuum exposure without serious injury; after that, you start getting busy with that whole dying thing.

Terrestrial bacteria were found to have survived for three years of lunar exposure. Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad who retrieved the camera from which these bacteria were cultured thinks this discovery is the, "most significant thing that we ever found," in the entire Apollo program.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep 98_1.htm

Just for fun, I did some math:

If there are 1 trillion people in the world and each of them is assigned 1 trillion new IPv6 addresses every day, it will take over 931 billion years to use up all of the possible addresses.

        3.4 x 10^38 / (10^12 x 10^12 x 365) = 9.315 x 10^11

By comparison, the sun might swallow the Earth in 4 to 5 billion years.

$400,000,000 just to launch this thing into a geosynchronous transfer orbit (not counting construction costs). I assume the fuel to move it isn't included in the 20 ton estimate either (since it will burn off on the way) so that would need to be lifted as well.

To be fair, though, NASA spends (or used to spend) an average of $450,000,000 per Space Shuttle mission. If it were shown to be feasible and potentially useful, that sort of cost doesn't seem completely out of proportion. More expensive, certainly, but probably not by several orders of magnitude if it were done well.

"This happened in the aeronoughtics (ugh that is spelt bad) industry in the US"

I'm glad you brought that up. I think most people today, and until recently myself included, believe that the problems with the patent system in the United States is something of a new phenomena. This couldn't be further from the truth.

I think there were good intents when the system was first thought up, at least I hope there were, but looking back through history the system has been detrimental to the advancement of the United States as an economic force around the world. And I have two cases as proof.

As you had stated, the United States greatly lagged behind Europe when Aeronautics were in their infancy and in large part this was due to patents. Anyone who doubts this only has to study the history of the NACA and they will discover that this government organization was instrumental in setting up the MAA in 1917 because of "a virtual deadlock in aircraft construction because of patent infringement suits". The efforts of the United States government also included spending tax dollars to purchase patents so as to institute cross licensing that was necessary to spur the aeronautics industry.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Timeline /1915-19.html

So this case makes it appear that the patent system actually does the opposite of what most people are taught its purpose is. But is this the only case? No. Going back even further you will find one George Selden, a New York patent attorney who filed a patent for the road engine, a.k.a. automobile, in 1879. After the patent was granted in 1895 he didn't setup a business making cars based on his new patent, he instead setup an extortion shop which charged each of the car manufacturers a licensing fee to use his patented technology. This guy never built a single car to sell, he just filed a patent and then started charging those who actually did build cars. I suspect this guy never even invented anything automotive but rather just took notice of what others were doing and realized there would be an industry. Henry Ford refused to pay the extortion fee and had to fight this guy in court for 7 years! Selden's company was forced to build a car to prove the patent was valid but they could not build a working car so the patent was thrown out.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsse ldona.htm

So it appears to me that the patent system may have never worked as advertised from the beginning. Instead of having a system which spurs on industry we have a system which enables bickering among patent holders thus holding back progress and phonies who leech off industries and could never actually produce a real product if their life depended on it.

I don't have any replacement solutions to offer myself, I'm just ranting, but I'm not so sure that we wouldn't be better off with no patent system at all.

burnin

20 tons just isn't that big.

The space shuttle masses over 10 metric tons at liftoff itself with its tanks (and for our purposes, metric tons and 2000 pound tons are interchangeable). The shuttle itself is 2 tons and is capable of delivering payloads of up to 25 metric tons.

So a loaded shuttle with enough fuel to take it out of LEO would be good enough - and this spacecraft would be a lot less sophisticated than the shuttle.

Also, given the low thrust requirements for "towing," this could be a good application for the ion drive, which is high efficiency / ultra low thrust.

Possibly, but you can bet Worldwind will have the images, and do something sensible with them.

The spacecraft design with the angled rockets is wasteful, but if you are getting the fuel from the asteroid, the fuel is effectively unlimited. But: if you are getting fuel from the asteroid, you should be able to keep the spacecraft attached to the asteroid by the "hoover"ing effect of sucking up the raw material you are ejecting to the sides!! - a force far, far more potent than gravity would be.

Alternatives: You could focus mirrors one side of the asteroid and take advantage of the outgassing...

Or you could (my preference) just mine the asteroid down to nothing long before impact...

After all, covering that 400 million dollar launch cost would be a lot easier if we just shipped a few billion dollars worth of materials back to LEO!

You don't even need to go that far. NASA has pictures. Behold his noodly appendage!