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We know that humans have slightly increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere

Actually, we don't. We do not have an accurate record of what 'normal' CO2 levels are, so we cannot even say *if* CO2 levels have increased.

Actually we do. While it is true that we don't know exactly what normal levels of CO2 are, we have some pretty strong evidence that we're about as high or more likely even higher than it has been in the last 1/2 million years. Even ignoring that, we can still detect the influence that humans have made on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Where the evidence? Look at the cosmic rays. They are continually produding C13 and C14 at the edge of our atmosphere. This carbon also gets mixed into the carbon cycle, going in and out of available sinks. Lets just assume for now that fossil fuels were created several millions of years ago. The C13 locked in at that time has all but disappeared because C13 decays relatively quickly. So what happens if the to the relative amount of C13 in CO2 as we burn up C13-depleted fossil fuel. Bingo. Less C13 in the atmosphere. Set against any changes in the cosmic ray background, it's a done deal. It has been measured, and it is a simple undeniable fact that humans burning fossil fuels are increasingly responsible for at least part of the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Here's a nice carbon cycle explanation for anyone who's interested http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/LIVING_OCEAN/ TEACHER4.html] A google will throw up lot's of information about C13 and C14. (The latter can also used as evidence to bolster the measurements.)

The New Millennium Mission's first Earth Observing (EO1) satellite was launched in 2000 as a platform for testing new technologies and strategies for improving missions while reducing cost and development time.

Some atmospheric measurements don't show warming, or even show cooling.

However (see this Nasa page) Earth-surface and near-surface measurements do show warming. As we live on or very near the earth's surface, this is the imporant point to notice.

The graphs you point at is somewhat selective in its choice of data.

Diamond has long held a special unattainable allure, not only because of its unparalleled hardness, Youngs modulus, dielectric properties and thermal conductivity (hold a big diamond in your hand and it will feel cold as it draws heat quickly - hence the moniker "ice"), but because of the possibility of making semiconductors from it.

IIRC, it has a really interesting wide band gap, but that two big practical problems exist:

1. growing layers of diamond that are sufficiently defect-free. Last I heard, even the best CVD process seems to put down polycrystalline diamond layers.
2. n doping is difficult to do well for diamond.

If these barriers could be surmounted, diamond devices would become a more widespread and useful technology.

Is it just me, or does this art-work seem like Chicago Mob on Mars? Contrast with this.

hmm, space elevators...
http://flightprojects.msfc.nasa.gov/fd02_elev.html

That would be a sweet amusement ride.

SATS Link: http://sats.larc.nasa.gov/main.html

In a 26-month period, one mission to Mars can be launched, while 13 missions could be flown to the Moon during the same period. The rate of buildup of infrastructure mass on the lunar surface is about 80% greater than the rate on the martian surface. nasa.gov

A moon base would be useful as a proving ground for Mars mission technology, sort of a as a technological stepping stone.

As for it being a gravity well, that's not a bad thing: currently we assemble space shuttles on the ground, where contracted workers don't need to spacewalk as part of their construction routine. A moon base would provide a similar working environment for the construction laborers needed to build a ship capable of sustaining interplanetary flight. After all, a 26 month long mission can't be accomplished by 3 astronauts in a Pinto.

If you built it on the moon, you could eliminate a lot of bulk necessary for atmospheric entry/exit. No tiles. No wings. More design options. More windows for space tourists. (back to the topic ;)

Yes, a single Mars mission would be more economical as a sling-shot journey. But, we can assume more than one mission would be necessary in order to gain any worthwhile scientific understanding of the red planet.

A Moon base could expedite multiple missions by providing training/living facilities, valuable extraterrestrial storage space(for fuel, oxygen, supplies), and a sixth of the gravity. Also, the possibilities for non-Mars related missions associated with a Moon base are awesome: larger, further reaching telescopes, hydrogen propellent via polar lunar ice, communications relay via microsatellites... For more info: some NASA site.

On a full tangent, current technology is not feasible for multiple missions to Mars: it is obvious that we need to use more efficient long-distance propulsion systems. Let me know what you find...

Yes, a single Mars mission would be more economical as a sling-shot journey. But, we can assume more than one mission would be necessary in order to gain any worthwhile scientific understanding of the red planet.

A Moon base could expedite multiple missions by providing training/living facilities, valuable extraterrestrial storage space(for fuel, oxygen, supplies), and a sixth of the gravity. Also, the possibilities for non-Mars related missions associated with a Moon base are awesome: larger, further reaching telescopes, hydrogen propellent via polar lunar ice, communications relay via microsatellites... For more info: some NASA site.

On a full tangent, current technology is not feasible for multiple missions to Mars: it is obvious that we need to use more efficient long-distance propulsion systems. Let me know what you find...

You, and others, keep saying this, but this is inaccurate. The average solar energy striking the earth's surface is around 1000W/m2.

I'm afraid that it is your figures that are inaccurate. Punch your location and a date into NASA's Insolation Database, and you'll get exact figures for how much energy hits the ground. In North America, you're only going to get about half of what you state.

solar car people work on 1000W/m2 in their calculations.

No wonder their cars never work. :-P

The 200w/sq. m is based on monocrystalline silicon PV. This is the cheapest but also almost the least efficient PV...

The real advantage here is that the efficiency of hydrogen as the energy storage is much greater than the efficiency of chemical batteries.

Solar losses on a clear day amount to about 1/4, so your ~1350 watts at the top of the atmosphere becomes about 1000 watts at the surface (normal to the incoming sunlight). The numbers I get for 47 degrees N, 90 W and July 1 claim ~482 W/m^2 average over the day (that's AVERAGE). If 75% of that reaches the surface, that's ~360 W/m^2; at 15% conversion efficiency, you'd get 54 W/m^2 * 24 hr/day = ~1.3 KWH/m^2/day. At 340 WH/mile (EPRI's number for energy required to run an electric car) you'd get about 3.8 miles per day out of each square meter of collector. If you can use something like the ballistic-electron scheme to boost efficiency to 50%, that becomes 4.3 KWH/m^2/day and 12.7 miles/m^2/day; at that rate, 3 square meters of collector on the car could power the average daily commute with energy left over. Food for thought.

First point is that 200 W/m is what you get after the 20% efficiency of the cells. There's on average approx 1kW/m insolation.

Another poster just gave me this link. Feel free to look up the w/m^2 in your local area. Even on the best days, it probably does not exceed 500 watts.

200 watts was an all-around average before PV conversion. The approximate maximum without atmospheric losses is 1.3kw/m^2 at 1au. That's all the Earth gets and there ain't no more.

Second point is that electrolysis can be 98% - 99% efficient depending on the rate you want to do it at and the cell design.

Do you have a link for this? I did a search and found them to be ~50% efficient. There was some talk of specialized versions that could do 85%, but I didn't see anything about 98% efficiency.

Third point is that current generation Li-ion batteries can have a higher energy density than hydrogen at 150bar, approx 405Wh/l. PolyPlus have a Li-S battery demonstrating 420Wh/l.

I did not know that. Thank you. :-)

Just by looking at the pictures taken by Spirit's Front Hazard Camera at 14:23:00 UTC and 14:32:06 UTC today (look here to decode the image time from its name) you can see the rover has moved!!

As of this writing I could'nt find any statement from NASA or from the Rovers' official site indicating whether or not this particular problem is resolved. Nevertheless I hope all is well with Spirit and this was nothing but a simple glitch.

Just by looking at the pictures taken by Spirit's Front Hazard Camera at 14:23:00 UTC and 14:32:06 UTC today (look here to decode the image time from its name) you can see the rover has moved!!

As of this writing I could'nt find any statement from NASA or from the Rovers' official site indicating whether or not this particular problem is resolved. Nevertheless I hope all is well with Spirit and this was nothing but a simple glitch.

Just by looking at the pictures taken by Spirit's Front Hazard Camera at 14:23:00 UTC and 14:32:06 UTC today (look here to decode the image time from its name) you can see the rover has moved!!

As of this writing I could'nt find any statement from NASA or from the Rovers' official site indicating whether or not this particular problem is resolved. Nevertheless I hope all is well with Spirit and this was nothing but a simple glitch.

Just by looking at the pictures taken by Spirit's Front Hazard Camera at 14:23:00 UTC and 14:32:06 UTC today (look here to decode the image time from its name) you can see the rover has moved!!

As of this writing I could'nt find any statement from NASA or from the Rovers' official site indicating whether or not this particular problem is resolved. Nevertheless I hope all is well with Spirit and this was nothing but a simple glitch.

Once again, replying to myself. "like in Minnesota" should have been "live in Minnesota."

This site is of interest:

NASA insolation at specified location. Just enter your latitude and longitude and the year, and you'll get day-by-day watts/square meter figures.

here.

So, have they predicted when California is going to fall into the ocean?

Cycon, M.F., Jr., "Dual Input Actuator for Fluidic Backup Flight Control", WA-8B, AICE Joint Automatic Control Conference, Vol. 1, Charlottesville, VA, June 17-19, 1981

You must be refering to the X-15. Here's a blurb on its costs:

Given the magnitude of its objectives, as well as the vehicle's sheer complexity, the total development time of five years from project approval to first powered flight (and two years from construction start) is quite impressive. The estimated costs of the program appear similarly modest, particularly when compared to the space-related projects that followed. The program's total cost, including development and eight years of operations are usually estimated at $300 million in 1969 dollars. Each flight is estimated to have cost $600,000. [24]

[footnote for 24]

24. See "Comparing the X-15 and Space Shuttle Programs." It is important to keep in mind, however, that although these figures appear nominal by the standards of the current space program, they were far in excess of the program's original estimates. The issue of X-15 cost overruns will be discussed further below.

So X-15 cost $300 million in 1969 dollars while Spaceship One cost $25 million and has already earned $10 million in prize money and is licensed to the Virgin Group (and could be worth up to $21.4 million over the next 15 years). Let's not forget merchandizing.

Oh, I think you misunderstood. My "or" was meant to be an "exclusive or". In my opinion this event is shifting the control of space flight from the government to large corporations. Personally, I'd rather have governments in control than large corporations. At least I can vote for the government.

Ok, that makes more sense. I don't see why government should be better. Just because I can vote and have a little power doesn't mean that I get more benefit. After all, I can purchase shares in a corporation if I wish to get a similar level of power, right?

And how does this make my life any better? I get my Nintendo games 25 hours earlier? Again, the benefit is to the rich, the ones who can afford to pay for this. Because there's no way this type of travel is going to be cheaper than the 20-30 hour method.

Hypothetical example. You need a new kidney and are currently living on machine (highly unpleasant from what I hear). Someone in India who happens to be compatible with you dies in a car accident. Within six hours, one of those kidneys is in you.

It's not a need (until we destroy the earth). It's a luxury.

Ok, so it's a "luxury". What does that mean? It means that you don't need those people in space. I on the other hand see it as a need because I consider space development crucial to the long term survival of the human race, which I consider a very important need. Those rich people are going to create an economy in space which will eventually pull humanity into space. I accept that it's not as important to you. That works for me.

Well, my thought was that this was true because the Earth's resources are not infinite. But, if we really can come up with cheap, safe transportation into space, then we could probably get enough resources from space to outweigh this. Nuclear power plants on the moon, anyone? Solar panels at the least...

You see some of the advantages of space. Earth's resources are finite, space resources are still finite but a bunch of orders of magnitude larger. There's more energy, more matter, and a lot more space in space. Plus, pollution of the kind on Earth just isn't a problem in space. Littering will be the worst kind of pollution and because it will have a direct economic impact, it will be addressed. On Earth, if I pollute, it's not

In fact I would rather have my speedo analogue as well (it takes less time for human brain to read an analogue dial compared to a digital number).

Well, what do you know. NASA has already done this research! The bubbles all stay distributed throughout the drink, BUT an even bigger problem is that the bubbles go all the way through the astronaut's entire digestive system, because they don't "float" to the top of their stomach like they do when there is gravity!

Here: http://science.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html They are not that far from a docking event... SP --- Wants the 50 Million Prize

The Hubble Space Telescope Project. This is an excellent guide to the 'scope and instrumentation on board the Hubble.

NAME: Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr. (Colonel, USAF, Ret.)

NASA Astronaut (former)

PERSONAL DATA: Born March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. His hobbies include treasure hunting, archeology, racing, flying, skiing, boating, hunting and fishing.

EDUCATION: Attended primary and secondary schools in Shawnee, Oklahoma and Murray, Kentucky; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1956; recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Oklahoma City University in 1967.

ORGANIZATIONS: The Society of Experimental Test Pilots, The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, The American Astronautical Society, The Blue Lodge Masons, The York Rite Masons, The Scottish Rite Masons, The Royal Order of Jesters, The Sojourners, The Rotary Club, The Daedalians, The Confederate Air Force, The Boy Scouts of America, The Girl Scouts of America.

SPECIAL HONORS: The Air Force Legion of Merit, The Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, The Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross Cluster, The NASA Exceptional Service Medal, The NASA Distinguished Service Medal, USAF Command Astronaut Wings, The Collier Trophy, The Harmon Trophy, The Scottish Rite 33, The York Rite Knight of the Purple Cross, The DeMolay Legion of Honor, The John F. Kennedy Trophy, The Ivan E. Kincheloe Trophy, The Air Force Association Trophy, The Primus Trophy, The John Montgomery Trophy, The General Thomas E. White Trophy, The Association of Aviation Writers Award, The University of Hawaii Regents Medal, The Columbus Medal, The Silver Antelope, The Sport Fishing Society of Spain Award.

EXPERIENCE: Cooper, an Air Force Colonel, received an Army commission after completing three years of schooling at the University of Hawaii. He transferred his commission to the Air Force and was placed on active duty by that service in 1949 and given flight training.

His next assignment was with the 86th Fighter Bomber Group in Munich, Germany, where he flew F-84s and F-86s for four years. While in Munich, he also attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland night school.

He returned to the United States and, after two years of study at AFIT, received his degree. He then reported to the Air Force Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and, upon graduating in 1957, was assigned as an aeronautical engineer and test pilot in the Performance Engineering Branch of the Flight Test Division at Edwards. His responsibilities there included the flight testing of experimental fighter aircraft.

He has logged more than 7,000 hours flying time--4,000 hours in jet aircraft. He has flown all types of Commercial and General aviation airplane and helicopters.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Colonel Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959.

On May 15-16, 1963, he piloted the "Faith 7" spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission which concluded the operational phase of Project Mercury. During the 34 hours and 20 minutes of flight, Faith 7 attained an apogee of 166 statue miles and a speed of 17,546 miles per hour and traveled 546,167 statue miles.

Cooper served as command pilot of the 8-day 120-revolution Gemini 5 mission which began on August 21, 1965. It was on this flight that he and pilot Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3,312,993 miles in an elapsed time of 190 hours and 56 minutes. Cooper also became the first man to make a second orbital flight and thus won for the United States the lead in man-hours in space by accumulating a total of 225 hours and 15 minutes.

He served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12 and as backup commander for Apollo X.

Colonel Cooper has logged 222 hours in space.

He retired from the Air Force and NASA in 1970.

According to NASA he was the first astronaut to make two orbital flights.

how the hell are they going to lift into space a pin big enough to poke a 30-foot hole. Where are they even going to *find* a pin that big?

Here's your big needle.

Assuming that 1 kW-h costs about $0.10 and that you could just put in the exact amount of energy needed to make up 1 gram of matter:

e=mc^2
e=(kg/1000) x 9x10^16
e=9x10^13 J

1 kW-h = 3.6x10^6 J
cost = $1/(3.6x10^7 J)

price = e x cost
price = $2.5 x 10^6

So 1 gram of antimatter costs about $2.5 million of energy. This is not including the costs of the equipment needed to make it, inefficiencies in its production, or any other concerns such as storage costs. In reality the cost of 1 gram of antimatter is probably in the $100 billion range per milligram, according to NASA. This means that the real price is around $10 trillion per gram.

ah... that's why they killed X-38 because they are planning to build a better one with the parts sitting on the shelf... Now there can't be more than two people permanently living on ISS because Earth lack the rescue system. Clever work Nasa, keep up the good work.

I've seen a lot of posts that alternate between "NASA/Gov't sucks and could never do this on such a shoestring budget" and "SpaceShipOne didn't even come close to accomplishing what NASA has done." That's all well and good, but you have to consider a few things...

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

First off, let's get the technical issues straight. SS1 did not achieve orbit of any sort, and would require MASSIVE modifications to do so. It is not comparable with the Shuttle program or anything larger (lunar missions, planetary missions, etc.). While it does use a pretty slick hybrid engine, it's still a chemical engine at heart, and thus is not this raving new technology that will send us to the stars.

Technical issues aside, let's give credit where credit is due. The most comparable thing that NASA has done is X-15, which was designed for hypersonic research, and still to this very moment holds the suborbital speed record. To be more explicit, X-15 was designed for speed 40 years ago, and SS1 was designed for height. Both now hold their respective records. Further, while the costs were high, let's not compare them without taking into account the real differences here. This page says that X-15 cost about $300 M total, which divides to about $600 k per flight. As of right now, SS1 has had 5 rocket flights for roughly $30 M total, which means that, until they fly some more, SS1 costs $600k per flight, the same as X-15. At best it is on par with NASA, except that NASA did this stuff 40 YEARS ago, without standing on the shoulders of any prior research.

Moreover, it is wrong to denigrate the contributions of the very skilled engineers and very brave test pilots of X-15 just because they were government. They lived and died paving the way for private industry to follow. It would be equally wrong, for example, if something went wrong today and Brian Benni died, for NASA to mock the SS1 team and say "See, stupid private industry, you can't do what we do."

Now, for the flipside, SS1 deserves a LOT of credit for finally picking up the ball and possibly bringing the space industry to private citizens. I imagine a lot of people are doing cost/benefit/risk calculations to see if this business is a worthy venture, and that's good. If a suborbital "big roller coaster" industry develops it'll be good for everyone. (Maybe those darn flat-earthers will finally go away). While NASA's achievements are profoundly great, they do not cascade down in a visible way to everyday people. In this sense, SS1 has succeeded greatly where NASA has failed. Further, if it proves to be profitable, SS1 will have marked the beginning of the suborbital tourism industry.

However, the ORBITAL tourism industry is a BIG difference, and while it might have started us on the path, SS1 has not directly contributed to that in any way (no new technologies regarding propulsion or reentry, etc.) Further and finally, it is important to realize that SS1 is a marketing achievement, not a technological one. If NASA had wanted to start a space tourism industry a long time ago, it could have.

Bottom line, give credit where credit is due (to both SS1 and NASA), and don't denigrate the contributions of either. Both have very brave pilots and skilled engineers, and both are necessary to conquer space travel. You need one side that's willing to forge ahead by dumping money in without regard to expected profits, and you need the other to turn that research into something we can all use. Cheers for both.

So generating antimatter directly using current methods would be extremely expensive. More importantly, given how much energy it "contains" (via matter-antimatter annihilation), and assuming you need even MORE energy to generate it, the energy requirements would be prohibitive at best and simply unavailable at worst.

But what about harvesting antimatter? Isn't it present in cosmic rays and radiation? A large electromagnetic bubble could be used to filter out antiprotons and slow it down until it is united with positrons in a trap and stored. Since you're working in a hard vacuum, containment is less of an issue and your fields and machinery do not need to be sealed tight. It's just a variation of a bussard ramscoop. Of course it would have to be very large.

Generating antimatter requires massive amounts of energy. So why not go to the most naturally energetic object around - the Sun? Either make a factory designed to operate in close proximity to the sun and use the energy to make antimatter directly, or attempt to capture the naturally generated antimatter from the sun in some fashion. I am not an expert, but I presume at least some of the solar wind and certainly some of the solar atmosphere is composed of antimatter.

"Of course Rutan didn't perform any of the fundamental research that lead to the first manned flights, so his efforts are piggy-backing on those of NASA. What a bullshit comparison."

So presumably, future NASA efforts will be comparably priced?

Of course, NASA spends $5,800,000,000 per year on spaceflight, so I expect it's 200 times as exciting as the X-Prize project.

If you really want to know the answer, compare
This: http://7427466391.com/
and This:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/gifcity/ e.2mil

One 'clue' was that google decided to raise $2,718,281,828 for their IPO...

First Ever South Atlantic Hurricane Hits Brazil. (March of 2004)

South American Glaciers Melting Faster, Changing Sea Level.

Alaskan Glaciers Melting Faster.

desertification in China.

desertification in Africa.

Heck, even the rest of the solar system is acting funny. Remember the. . .

Blue Band on Jupiter this past March of 2004?

and

the Huge X-class solar flares of last year?

Interestingly, the evidence of past hurricanes categorized by decade suggests that there have been big hurricanes to make US landfall before. Indeed, the worst decade, from 1950-1959 saw a total of nine storms between category 3 and 4, (though none of category 5) during that ten year period. Sure. But we've just had four in just one summer. Nobody can say that this is par for any course.

Now, I am not claiming that this has anything to do with global warming. But anybody who tells me that everything is normal probably swore up and down that The Phantom Menace was a good film for a whole year after it came out.

-FL

I agree no one ever seems to want to look for any other cause other then those damb evil americans and their cars!! What about natural causes like ooo say a warming solar cycle, increased sunspot activity, maybe even that band of super heated helium atoms we are currently passing through? It is most likly a large combination of events that is driving this.

BTW I'm all for clean air and water simply for the sake of clean air and water. Heck I even went as far as putting cats on my 1967 Pontiac GTO and before you accuse me of driving a evil gas guzzler just think of all the energy I saved by recycling a car rather then buying a new one that wasted all that energy being manufactured.

And you electric vehicle assholes, where do you think your pollution is going. It's being made at those big electric power plants like Navajo in Arizona and YOU ARE CLOUDING MY GRAND CANYON and CHOKING the poor Native Americans with you F^CKING POLLUTION!!

It describes what could happen were CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to increase by 1% annually. I don't know whether this is actually the current trend.

1% annual increase of CO2 has indeed been the trend over the past 40 years.

It took me 15 secs to find that link via google. Maybe you should have spent these to avoid humiliating yourself...

Haiti was grazed by a tropical storm (not strong enough to be called a hurricane) and around 2000 people have died with another 100000 or so left homeless and starving

A lot of this has to do with the rampant deforestation in Haiti. Notice that the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island, did not suffer nearly as badly, as it still has much of its forest remaining. There's a picture where you can pretty clearly see the border of Haiti and the DR -- DR is green, and Haiti is not.

miniscule amounts of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere

Since the industrial age has begun, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from around 280ppmv to 380ppmv. You can argue about the effects of that carbon dioxide, but this does not strike me as a "miniscule" change; we've modified the carbon dioxide in the entire planet's atmosphere by almost a third!

The fact that humans can have such a drastic effect on an entire planet is pretty amazing.

We plan to allow the UV/ozone/oxygen balance to reach equilibrium by not destroying it any more with pollution. That means letting volcanic CFCs consume the excess ozone that might otherwise poison us or something else in our energy/food chain. We evolved to live in a balanced environment that flucuates within a window kept stable by overlapping natural cycles. When we change that balance, that environment, too quickly, by boosting one of the cycles to the detriment of another, we are no longer as fit to survive in the new environment. In related news, we also plan to allow various species to reproduce before hunting them to extinction, so we can continue to eat them.

Please explain your plan to stop volcanos from erupting and spreading CFCs into the air.

TIA!

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020304volcano. html

Google for south pole related stories.

Last time, it turned out to be complicated, though solvable: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-60/ch -7.html/ "... The X-15's maximum altitude was extended to 354 200 feet, but not until after much trial and error..." "... though the tail surface provides stability in pitch and yaw, no purely aerodynamic means has been found to achieve roll stability, since the airflow remains symmetrical about the axis of rotation. The coupling between roll and yaw becomes more severe as vertical-tail size increases, and it has presented a multitude of problems to designers of high-speed aircraft. "The solution to the stability-and-control analysis is the development of an adequate mathematical model. But such an analysis also requires a mathematical model for the pilot..." Fascinating account there of how the roll problem was addressed with the earlier rocket-planes.

We got to the moon. And back. Multiple times.
We sent probes to Mars. And Venus. And beyond. And some of them still work.
We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.
We built several working space vehicles.
We space-walked.
We build a space station. And then we built another one.
We chased comets. And sent the collected materials back.
We've populated our solar system with several probes that have performed beyond expectation.
We have Tang.
We have titanium hips, golf clubs, glass frames, laptops, and spyplanes.

There are many, many, more places where our investment into NASA has benefitted us enormously.

Collapse of the Kolka Glacier

This story appeared on Slashdot a while back. It mentions the use of near-infra red light to actually stimulate the healing of retinal cells. NASA has more information about it on their website as well. Here is a quote from the New Scientist article mentioned in the Slashdot story...

The US Defense Advance Research Projects Agency is funding research into the method and hopes to use it to treat people whose eyes are damaged by lasers. A number of US military personnel, including a helicopter pilot over Bosnia in 1998, have suffered laser eye injuries.

It seems to be very pertinent to the situations of the Delta pilot and Canadian Navy helicopter pilot in the current story. Some companies make devices using this technology for medical purposes.

This story appeared on Slashdot a while back. It mentions the use of near-infra red light to actually stimulate the healing of retinal cells. NASA has more information about it on their website as well. Here is a quote from the New Scientist article mentioned in the Slashdot story...

The US Defense Advance Research Projects Agency is funding research into the method and hopes to use it to treat people whose eyes are damaged by lasers. A number of US military personnel, including a helicopter pilot over Bosnia in 1998, have suffered laser eye injuries.

It seems to be very pertinent to the situations of the Delta pilot and Canadian Navy helicopter pilot in the current story. Some companies make devices using this technology for medical purposes.

Not necessarily tunnels, though. Some lines run in urban areas, others are cut through or next to sheer cliffs (like highways), some pass through industrial centers. While oversize loads are sometiimes carried on railroads, they are relatively rare. But the SRBs may well be one of those loads.

Here are some of the few photos of the SRB transports that I've been able to find:

RailPictures.Net Photo Union Pacific Railroad EMD SD9043MAC

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

Notice that the shrouds are wider than the width of the flatcars they cover.

Not necessarily tunnels, though. Some lines run in urban areas, others are cut through or next to sheer cliffs (like highways), some pass through industrial centers. While oversize loads are sometiimes carried on railroads, they are relatively rare. But the SRBs may well be one of those loads.

Here are some of the few photos of the SRB transports that I've been able to find:

RailPictures.Net Photo Union Pacific Railroad EMD SD9043MAC

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

Notice that the shrouds are wider than the width of the flatcars they cover.

Not necessarily tunnels, though. Some lines run in urban areas, others are cut through or next to sheer cliffs (like highways), some pass through industrial centers. While oversize loads are sometiimes carried on railroads, they are relatively rare. But the SRBs may well be one of those loads.

Here are some of the few photos of the SRB transports that I've been able to find:

RailPictures.Net Photo Union Pacific Railroad EMD SD9043MAC

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

NASA/Kennedy Space Center Multimedia Gallery

Notice that the shrouds are wider than the width of the flatcars they cover.