Slashdot Mirror

You're an equal opportunity ridiculer: the occasional "but it happened in such and such a novel" gets the same response as someone who's gone ahead and worked out the math.

Taking you seriously for a moment, the problem with your rhetorical style is that it simply appeals to people's preconceived notions without contributing anything. Aliens, nonsense! Space factories, nonsense! Interstellar probes, nonsense! Quantum computers, nonsense!

Also, your appeal to all the "hard work" the "REAL people" at NASA put in is pretty ironic. Those real people at NASA (and elsewhere) have studied all of the above, and in many cases published real, workable concepts, or, well, have done it already.

Some examples:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/proje...

You're an equal opportunity ridiculer: the occasional "but it happened in such and such a novel" gets the same response as someone who's gone ahead and worked out the math.

Taking you seriously for a moment, the problem with your rhetorical style is that it simply appeals to people's preconceived notions without contributing anything. Aliens, nonsense! Space factories, nonsense! Interstellar probes, nonsense! Quantum computers, nonsense!

Also, your appeal to all the "hard work" the "REAL people" at NASA put in is pretty ironic. Those real people at NASA (and elsewhere) have studied all of the above, and in many cases published real, workable concepts, or, well, have done it already.

Some examples:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/proje...

You're an equal opportunity ridiculer: the occasional "but it happened in such and such a novel" gets the same response as someone who's gone ahead and worked out the math.

Taking you seriously for a moment, the problem with your rhetorical style is that it simply appeals to people's preconceived notions without contributing anything. Aliens, nonsense! Space factories, nonsense! Interstellar probes, nonsense! Quantum computers, nonsense!

Also, your appeal to all the "hard work" the "REAL people" at NASA put in is pretty ironic. Those real people at NASA (and elsewhere) have studied all of the above, and in many cases published real, workable concepts, or, well, have done it already.

Some examples:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/proje...

You're an equal opportunity ridiculer: the occasional "but it happened in such and such a novel" gets the same response as someone who's gone ahead and worked out the math.

Taking you seriously for a moment, the problem with your rhetorical style is that it simply appeals to people's preconceived notions without contributing anything. Aliens, nonsense! Space factories, nonsense! Interstellar probes, nonsense! Quantum computers, nonsense!

Also, your appeal to all the "hard work" the "REAL people" at NASA put in is pretty ironic. Those real people at NASA (and elsewhere) have studied all of the above, and in many cases published real, workable concepts, or, well, have done it already.

Some examples:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_p...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/proje...

it only just got it's rings, and it's already losing them;

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/n...

the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST) is currently scheduled for March 2021. It was designed as the successor to the Hubble , and originally scheduled for launch in June 2018.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel...

How interesting, a government web site that's still working.

This would have been so much easier and cheaper to do and under multiple accelerations from 0G up to 2G on the ISS.

If they are essential since they have not been furloughed they do not since they are still employed and working.

Stop making stuff up. Its called partial unemployment and can be used whenever your income significantly decreases.

Exepcted employyes (those paid by appropriations and working but not getting paid) are generally not eligible dor unemplyemnet becasue states ofthn consider them employed and thus not eligible. See Question #3 https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/sh... Those collecting unemplyment may ahve to repay it if they get paid or the furlough days.

Fully hotified link:

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/thumbnails/image/bennushapemodel.gif

Have you ever been to the western US? Land is vacant here because no one has much use for it yet. There's plenty of unaffiliated space to build dozens more separate cities. Just a year or so ago Bill Gates bought a 40 mi^2 chunk of land to build his own "smart city" out this way.

Seriously, just look at this:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/712129main_8247975848_88635d38a1_o.jpg
Those dark areas are open land. Some of it is public land that we want to preserve, but much of it is just not yet developed.

There is a paper on that (pretty interesting):

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/A...

Voyager 2 is also at 120 AU from earth, and is said to have left our solar system. So "farout" is outside?

Voyager 2 (recently) and 1 (some time ago) are said to have left the Solar System in the meaning that they have crossed Heliopause and entered Interstellar medium - as a space where solar wind is not a dominating force, they still are, however, far withing the gravitational influence of the Sun, which reaches estimated 1ly (which is about 65700AU), where it is speculated that the spherical Oort cloud stretches out.

Voyager 2 is also at 120 AU from earth, and is said to have left our solar system. So "farout" is outside?

yes... it is indeed... farout...

Voyager 2 is also at 120 AU from earth, and is said to have left our solar system. So "farout" is outside?

Re: "Gravity may be weak, but it doesn't get shielded like the EM field is."

Many theorists and online critics today insist that there exists a theoretical limit to EM forces dictated by a concept known as Debye screening. The argument commonly goes like this ...

"The good old 'EM is 10^39 times stringer [sic] than gravity' myth. This is ignorance of both gravity and EM! Gravity is weaker but there is only one 'charge' -- it cannot be shielded. EM has two charges -- it can and is shielded. In plasma there are basically no EM forces on scales larger than a few Debye lengths. This is 10 meters in the solar wind."

Wikipedia informs us:

"In plasmas and electrolytes the Debye length (also called Debye radius), named after the Dutch physicist and physical chemist Peter Debye, is the measure of a charge carrier's net electrostatic effect in solution, and how far those electrostatic effects persist. A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius is the Debye length, with each Debye length, charges are increasingly electrically screened. Every Debyelength, the electric potential will decrease by 1/e."

The chart on that page clearly lists these limits to electromagnetism's reach, per medium:

Solar core - 10^-11 m
Tokamak - 10^-4 m
Gas discharge - 10^-4 m
Ionosphere - 10^-3 m
Magnetosphere - 10^2 m
Solar wind - 10 m
Interstellar medium - 10 m
Intergalactic medium - 10^5 m

Siggy breaks the claim down for us in terms that anybody can understand:

"Debye screening is used as an explanation by mainstream to point to why discharges won't occur in galactic scenarios. I.e. the charged particles within a plasma wouldn't be affected by an external electric field outside the Debye length/radius. This length also signifies the volumes where discharges can occur; a few meters in the solar wind and up to a hundred kilometers in intergalactic medium (still not very long distances)."

The problem with this concept is that observations have repeatedly shown us that it fails to actually constrain EM forces. Even if it has proven an accurate general guideline, the idea has repeatedly failed us as a rule or law. Treating this rule-of-thumb like a law of physics is akin to claiming that since the Earth's atmosphere is typically insulating, atmospheric lightning should not be possible. Well, the obvious problem is that you can see, yourself, that lightning happens. So, when you see reports in science articles of electric discharges, ask yourself: Has Debye screening been violated?

(1) A clearcut violation of Debye screening was witnessed in a 2005 Cassini flyby:

"Static electricity is known to play an important role on Earth's airless, dusty moon, but evidence of static charge building up on other objects in the solar system has been elusive until now. A new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini mission has revealed that, during a 2005 flyby of Saturn's moon Hyperion, the spacecraft was briefly bathed in a beam of electrons coming from the moon's electrostatically charged surface ...

Measurements made by several of Cassini's instruments during a close encounter with Hyperion on September 26, 2005, indicate that something unexpected took place in the charged particle environment around the spacecraft. Among those instruments, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) detected that the spacecraft was magnetically connected to the surface of Hyperion for

The Juno mission has already reported solar storms on Jupiter in the past, in April, and images/video of them, including some earlier stuff from November of 2017.

Not to sound like I'm undermining the idea of learning more about Jupiter, but are they just going to report this every single time Juno goes by the poles?

Moderate parent UP! Seems correct to me.

Orion Spacecraft. Quote: "... is building...".

Boeing Starliner. Quote: "... is being developed...".

Voyager 2 launch... https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel...

Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html

This artist's concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU.

Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out to the last planet. Scientific consensus, however, says the solar system goes out to the Oort Cloud, the source of the comets that swing by our sun on long time scales. Beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, the gravity of other stars begins to dominate that of the sun.

The inner edge of the main part of the Oort Cloud could be as close as 1,000 AU from our sun. The outer edge is estimated to be around 100,000 AU.

NASA's Voyager 1, humankind's most distant spacecraft, is around 125 AU. Scientists believe it entered interstellar space, or the space between stars, on Aug. 25, 2012. Much of interstellar space is actually inside our solar system. It will take about 300 years for Voyager 1 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.

Alpha Centauri is currently the closest star to our solar system. But, in 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will be closer to the star AC +79 3888 than to our own sun. AC +79 3888 is actually traveling faster toward Voyager 1 than the spacecraft is traveling toward it.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about Voyager, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html

This artist's concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU.

Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out to the last planet. Scientific consensus, however, says the solar system goes out to the Oort Cloud, the source of the comets that swing by our sun on long time scales. Beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, the gravity of other stars begins to dominate that of the sun.

The inner edge of the main part of the Oort Cloud could be as close as 1,000 AU from our sun. The outer edge is estimated to be around 100,000 AU.

NASA's Voyager 1, humankind's most distant spacecraft, is around 125 AU. Scientists believe it entered interstellar space, or the space between stars, on Aug. 25, 2012. Much of interstellar space is actually inside our solar system. It will take about 300 years for Voyager 1 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.

Alpha Centauri is currently the closest star to our solar system. But, in 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will be closer to the star AC +79 3888 than to our own sun. AC +79 3888 is actually traveling faster toward Voyager 1 than the spacecraft is traveling toward it.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about Voyager, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html

This artist's concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU.

Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out to the last planet. Scientific consensus, however, says the solar system goes out to the Oort Cloud, the source of the comets that swing by our sun on long time scales. Beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, the gravity of other stars begins to dominate that of the sun.

The inner edge of the main part of the Oort Cloud could be as close as 1,000 AU from our sun. The outer edge is estimated to be around 100,000 AU.

NASA's Voyager 1, humankind's most distant spacecraft, is around 125 AU. Scientists believe it entered interstellar space, or the space between stars, on Aug. 25, 2012. Much of interstellar space is actually inside our solar system. It will take about 300 years for Voyager 1 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.

Alpha Centauri is currently the closest star to our solar system. But, in 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will be closer to the star AC +79 3888 than to our own sun. AC +79 3888 is actually traveling faster toward Voyager 1 than the spacecraft is traveling toward it.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about Voyager, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html

Voyager 2 has an additional instrument that Voyager 1 lacked during its crossing:

The most compelling evidence of Voyager 2's exit from the heliosphere came from its onboard Plasma Science Experiment (PLS), an instrument that stopped working on Voyager 1 in 1980, long before that probe crossed the heliopause.

Re: "I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe."

Let's review the situation then:

NASA: Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere

Plasma often behaves like a gas, except that it conducts electricity and is affected by magnetic fields. On an astronomical scale, plasma is common. The Sun is composed of plasma, fire is plasma, fluorescent and neon lights contain plasma.

"99.9 percent of the Universe is made up of plasma," says Dr. Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Very little material in space is made of rock like the Earth."

Such acknowledgements are common enough that we can list out all of the references.

Big Bang proponents have left the mistaken impression that the only way to explain microwaves coming at us from all directions - the "cosmic microwave background" - is with a Big Bang. In fact, this is totally incorrect:

"High-power microwave generation on earth belongs exclusively to devices using relativistic electron beams ... A relativistic electron beam that does not produce microwave radiation is unknown. These same basic mechanisms are likely to have their natural analogs in cosmic plasmas."

Then there is the problem with the CMB temperature predictions:

[Eric Lerner] First of all, the temperature of the microwave background - basically the amount of energy - was not what the Big Bang supporters had predicted. They had predicted a much higher temperature.

[Anthony Peratt] So, it was 50 degrees Kelvin that was being compared against the 2-5 degrees Kelvin from the steady state universe. This may not sound like much, but energy density - where we measure the absolute differences - the difference is four orders of magnitude: 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 difference. So, there is an enormous difference between 50 degrees Kelvin - a rather poor indicator of what is happening in the universe - and 3 degrees Kelvin.

A universe dominated by plasmas must be a filamentary universe. This claim was originally stated by Hannes Alfven in 1963 in a text titled "Cosmical Electrodynamics". He is referring here to cosmic plasmas:

"medium-density plasma (and perhaps also low-density plasmas) seem very often to be strongly inhomogeneous, exhibiting a filamentary structure which often may be parallel to the magnetic field."

Peratt noted:

"The suggestion that the universe be filamentary and cellular was generally disregarded until the 1980s, when a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the Galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scale."

Alfven predicted it, and anybody who has taken the time to learn the plasma-based model can see that without lots of filamentation at interstellar and intergalactic scales, there can be no plasma universe. That's because plasmas tend to form into filaments when they are conducting electric currents.

Like many of Alfven's successful predictions, it was ignored:

"According to some scientists and philosophers of science, a theory is or should be judged by its ability to ma

If a photon is not moving, then it can be said to have zero rest mass. (Although this has not been verified.)

When a photon is moving, it has energy (based on its frequency or wavelength) that is equivalent to mass (E=mc^2), and has gravitational effects equivalent to that mass. Without this, then how would massive objects gravitationally bend light? How would we get an Einstein Cross ?

Remember Newton's law of universal gravitation? F = G * M1 * M2 / r^2 ? How can Force F be so demonstrably large when M1 is zero?

For that matter, remember the story of Planet Vulcan? No, not Star Trek. The real planet that wasn't. Vulcan was predicted to exist inside the orbit of Mercury. In 1915 Einstein explained how Energy & Mass produce equivalent gravitational effects which accounted for the apparent anomaly in Mercury's orbit.

> If the photons were confined in some kind of box,

Oh, like the Universe? And why confined?

According to Hansen

Nothing in that link was demonstrated as incorrect. In fact, the specific predictions (e.g. accelerated ice melting in Antarctica) have come true.

NASA says otherwise, and explicitly states that Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice.

No one is skeptical about the science behind the Earth' s climate changing.

This isn't true. You see "CO isn't a pollutant, it's plant food" across the denialosphere.

People are skeptical of the completely off-the-rails scenarios that science proposes if we don't stop the warming.

If science proposes it then theres a line of reasoning to it from evidence.

Doomsday scenarios have been sold to the public since the beginning of time, and the solutions are always the same: Give the government more money and control over your life.

This is the fearmongering that fossil fuel interests are engaging in. But some things are taxed, and freedoms don't end.

Have you ever read up on the bullshit that "scientists" predicted at the first Earth day back in the 70s? 4 billion people were supposed to die from starvation by 1985.

Have you ever read up on the theory of Relativity? Scientists predicted gravitation and time dilations precise to the limits of measurement. And the predicted gravity waves have now been observed kicking off a new era in astronomy. Have you ever read up on medical science? Vaccinations? Germ theory and antibiotics? Life expectancy at birth has increased 60% in the USA in the years 1900 to 2000.

Scientists are nothing more than political mouthpieces.

Really. You don't believe in the medical advances or technological advances that have been made.

Do you remember networking before Wi-Fi?

Remember when it was Global cooling?

A misperception. The science was at best equivocal on coming global cooling.

The ozone layer?

Yes. We got rid of CFC emissions, but the ozone hole is still very extensive. It contributes to blindness and skin cancer especially in the southern hemisphere.

Overpopulation?

Yes. The world uses about 30% more resources that it produces every year. They are being depleted, and if it crashes it will get nasty.

Global warming? Anthropogenic global warming?

Yes. It's warming.

They've literally been wrong about the consequences of this shit every time.

They really haven't.

Stfu and face the facts that humanity doesn't understand shit about this world.

This shouldn't be a source of comfort. It means that there will be impacts of climate change that no one has yet realised.

Would it be unreasonable to assume that they have been placing sensors on these spacecraft to register the various radiation levels experienced during the trip to Mars. This seems like it would be invaluable empirical data of what those anxious to get there in person will face on the trip.

This probe didn't have sensors, but that data is pretty well known. The radiation environment in deep space was measured throughout the Apollo years through Pioneers 6/7/8 were placed into Solar orbit to measure the radiation environment. Additionally, most of the deep space probes (Voyager 1/2, Pioneer 10/11, all had particle/plasma detectors on them to detect the radiation environment. So yes, there's pretty darned good data on the radiation environment of deep space.

And, more specifically, the Curiosity rover had a radiation detector specifically designed to characterize the surface radiation levels: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/miss...
which is complementary to the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which characterized the radiation above the atmosphere: https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/...

Would it be unreasonable to assume that they have been placing sensors on these spacecraft to register the various radiation levels experienced during the trip to Mars. This seems like it would be invaluable empirical data of what those anxious to get there in person will face on the trip.

This probe didn't have sensors, but that data is pretty well known. The radiation environment in deep space was measured throughout the Apollo years through Pioneers 6/7/8 were placed into Solar orbit to measure the radiation environment. Additionally, most of the deep space probes (Voyager 1/2, Pioneer 10/11, all had particle/plasma detectors on them to detect the radiation environment. So yes, there's pretty darned good data on the radiation environment of deep space.

And, more specifically, the Curiosity rover had a radiation detector specifically designed to characterize the surface radiation levels: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/miss...
which is complementary to the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which characterized the radiation above the atmosphere: https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/...

So AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming. It means the (average) warming of the (whole) globe due to human activity. The Mechanism is the expected increase in greenhouse gasses, and therefore the increase in the greenhouse effect.

So if greenhouse gasses were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.

They have been measured to be increasing.

If the greenhouse effect were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.

It has been measured to be increasing.

If the temperature of the planet were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.
br
It has been measured to be increasing

WTF are you smoking?

We have controlled the weather for 100+ years We made it warmer because we're paying for the nicer weather it causes.

When you dump iron rust into the oceans (already doing it), it creates Giant Toxic Algae Blooms, which "Climate Scientists" say, "It's proof of Climate Change"! We can stop the algae blooms by ending the "geoengineering" pork spending to the iron oar industry. We can stop the climate from being wamer by puming less steam into the air. The previous YT vid shows tons of H20 (steam) being used to create cloud cover and boost storm cells, etc. weather modifications also warm the climate since H20 is the #1 greenhouse gas, according to NASA -- But idiots worry about CO2 (plant food) because they're ignorant and blindly believe anyone with a lab coat on who's shouting scaremongering End of Days taxation schemes. Hello, McFly, we're pumping trillions of tons of HOT WATER VAPOR into the air for 100+ years using wet surface air coolers. There's your "warming". Do weather mods long enough, it's called "climate change" (which is just a cover for geoengineering).

The global increase since 1880 was a whopping .8 degrees Celcius and you're saying a drop of .56 degrees Celcius in two years is noise? In two years, 70% of the increase from the last 138 years has been wiped out and you attribute that to natural viability? Why is it when temperatures are going down it is considered natural variability but when temperatures are going up it is a human made catastrophe? Whose bias is showing?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...

Ok, sure.

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrh...

Prediction: An increase in CO2 will result in net increase in global temperatures.

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital...

There's the global temperature

https://www.climate.gov/news-f...

Only the results over overlapping timeframes are relevant. As you can see, the prediction is matched with observation and has not been falsified.

Are you satisfied? Of course not! Because this was never about facts, this was about your fears that science might contradict something important to you.

It's called a hack. Rather than fix the root problem, just work around it.

Sea levels rose 400 feet in the last 20,000 years. Pretending that climate isn't going to change is the short-sighted approach.

Some other things to consider:

o CO2 increases are greening the earth.

o Carbon powers the world's economy. Is the cost of reducing carbon emissions worse than the cost of hypothesized problems?

o We're already changing the planet in many other ways. Just look at pictures of Earth from space. Environmentalists and world-government authoritarians aren't going to be happy until we're all living under worldwide socialism (UN agenda 2030).

It's called a hack. Rather than fix the root problem, just work around it.

Sea levels rose 400 feet in the last 20,000 years. Pretending that climate isn't going to change is the short-sighted approach.

Some other things to consider:

o CO2 increases are greening the earth.

o Carbon powers the world's economy. Is the cost of reducing carbon emissions worse than the cost of hypothesized problems?

o We're already changing the planet in many other ways. Just look at pictures of Earth from space. Environmentalists and world-government authoritarians aren't going to be happy until we're all living under worldwide socialism (UN agenda 2030).

Is "controversial" how the headline writer decided to say "unfathomably stupid"? https://science.nasa.gov/scien...

NASA likes to try to force requirements on others that they don't apply to themselves. Commercial crew MUST have less than a failure rate of less than 1/270 (loss of Mission -- not necessarily loss of crew) but Shuttle could fly with an estimated chance of failure and crew loss almost 10 times worse.

That's a little unfair. The reason that commercial crew has such strict requirements is because of the shitstorm that hit NASA from every direction after the shuttle failures.

Early NASA was allowed to fail sometimes-- when John Glenn launched, nobody could guarantee that the Atlas booster would even work; it certainly had enough failures. But somewhere in the process, the public got the idea that NASA should never every fail.

CCS needs to have multiple test flights but SLS 1b will be deemed to be safe to put astronauts in on it's first flight (just like the Shuttle).

Nope. First SLS mission is EM-1, an un-astronauted test mission.

When Space-X was planning on sending a Dragon to Mars using Falcon Heavy, there were many cries from experts at Nasa that Space-X would be contaminating Mars with terrestrial microbes (leaving aside the fact that Space-X is planning on sending humans to Mars within 15 years if all goes well at which point it'll be a moot point). I'd be interested in just what precautions NASA has taken to make sure that the crushed cork CANNOT have any microbes that could contaminate Mars. Or is this yet another case where Nasa won't apply it's rules to themselves...

NASA has a very rigorous planetary protection protocol, which, yes, the Insight Lander (including the heat shield) is subject to. The heat shield is easy, actually: it can be heat sterilized. Planetary protection is much harder for the actual electronics, but, yes, it is required, and there is a separate office-- independent of the mission office-- that monitors that it is done.

NASA likes to try to force requirements on others that they don't apply to themselves. Commercial crew MUST have less than a failure rate of less than 1/270 (loss of Mission -- not necessarily loss of crew) but Shuttle could fly with an estimated chance of failure and crew loss almost 10 times worse.

That's a little unfair. The reason that commercial crew has such strict requirements is because of the shitstorm that hit NASA from every direction after the shuttle failures.

Early NASA was allowed to fail sometimes-- when John Glenn launched, nobody could guarantee that the Atlas booster would even work; it certainly had enough failures. But somewhere in the process, the public got the idea that NASA should never every fail.

CCS needs to have multiple test flights but SLS 1b will be deemed to be safe to put astronauts in on it's first flight (just like the Shuttle).

Nope. First SLS mission is EM-1, an un-astronauted test mission.

When Space-X was planning on sending a Dragon to Mars using Falcon Heavy, there were many cries from experts at Nasa that Space-X would be contaminating Mars with terrestrial microbes (leaving aside the fact that Space-X is planning on sending humans to Mars within 15 years if all goes well at which point it'll be a moot point). I'd be interested in just what precautions NASA has taken to make sure that the crushed cork CANNOT have any microbes that could contaminate Mars. Or is this yet another case where Nasa won't apply it's rules to themselves...

NASA has a very rigorous planetary protection protocol, which, yes, the Insight Lander (including the heat shield) is subject to. The heat shield is easy, actually: it can be heat sterilized. Planetary protection is much harder for the actual electronics, but, yes, it is required, and there is a separate office-- independent of the mission office-- that monitors that it is done.

NASA likes to try to force requirements on others that they don't apply to themselves. Commercial crew MUST have less than a failure rate of less than 1/270 (loss of Mission -- not necessarily loss of crew) but Shuttle could fly with an estimated chance of failure and crew loss almost 10 times worse.

That's a little unfair. The reason that commercial crew has such strict requirements is because of the shitstorm that hit NASA from every direction after the shuttle failures.

Early NASA was allowed to fail sometimes-- when John Glenn launched, nobody could guarantee that the Atlas booster would even work; it certainly had enough failures. But somewhere in the process, the public got the idea that NASA should never every fail.

CCS needs to have multiple test flights but SLS 1b will be deemed to be safe to put astronauts in on it's first flight (just like the Shuttle).

Nope. First SLS mission is EM-1, an un-astronauted test mission.

When Space-X was planning on sending a Dragon to Mars using Falcon Heavy, there were many cries from experts at Nasa that Space-X would be contaminating Mars with terrestrial microbes (leaving aside the fact that Space-X is planning on sending humans to Mars within 15 years if all goes well at which point it'll be a moot point). I'd be interested in just what precautions NASA has taken to make sure that the crushed cork CANNOT have any microbes that could contaminate Mars. Or is this yet another case where Nasa won't apply it's rules to themselves...

NASA has a very rigorous planetary protection protocol, which, yes, the Insight Lander (including the heat shield) is subject to. The heat shield is easy, actually: it can be heat sterilized. Planetary protection is much harder for the actual electronics, but, yes, it is required, and there is a separate office-- independent of the mission office-- that monitors that it is done.

Archival photo of the NASA drug enforcement team:

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/Hi...

Yes, we do miss Opportunity.

That's 1513 km/h (or 420 m/s) and 16.8 km.

According to NASA's mach speed calculator, that's Mach 1.42.

Some history for you. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/7...

May not have been NASA, but it was a Government agency that paid for it.

The program used the Bell Aircraft-built XS-1 rocket engine powered aircraft, with Yeager serving as lead pilot for the Air Force and Hoover for the NACA.

What came of that knowledge I wonder?

The research techniques used for the X-1 program became the pattern for all subsequent X-craft projects, including the X-15 experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight research built by North American Aviation. NASA conducted the X-15 project with the Air Force and the Navy between 1959 and 1968, the plane setting unofficial worldâ(TM)s speed (4,520 miles per hour or Mach 6.7) and altitude (354,200 feet) records. Similar to the X-1 under the B-29, the X-15 was carried into the air under the wing of a B-52 and after release ignited its rocket engine to begin it supersonic flight. Twelve pilots from NASA, the Air Force, the Navy and North American made 199 flights in three X-15 aircraft.

Now, what I expect that will be learned from this specific plane is how to make it economical for public use.

Or, what everything the government does with big business never makes life better for the general population?

Do you really think it would cost less to do this type of research in house by the government itself? Seriously?

This really is not true. It's so abundant in places that just scraping the surface reveals it.

Water is very common on Mars. Its just frozen. In rock-hard permafrost. And contaminated, both with salts and a number of toxic chemicals.

The magnetosphere protects the atmosphere from being blown out into space by the solar wind.

The magnetosphere shields our home planet from solar and cosmic particle radiation, as well as erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind - the constant flow of charged particles streaming off the sun. -- NASA

It does both.

The strength of the earth's gravitational field varies. If you are using a Kibble balance to calibrate your weights, how do you compensate for that? Your kilogram mass will vary from location to location.
  Google: earth gravitational field
https://earthobservatory.nasa....

As I said: The data adjustment is discussed in great detail by the Berkeley project: http://berkeleyearth.org/understanding-adjustments-temperature-data/

and if that's too much detail, try the Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/08/no-climate-conspiracy-noaa-temperature-adjustments-bring-data-closer-to-pristine

Or you can to to the GISS site: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/

Fortunately, I have them.

Space Communications Protocol Specifications
Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems
CCSDS Technical Specifications
Space Assigned Numbers Authority
Spacecraft ID list and manual
Disruption Tolerant Networking
Exploration and Space Communications at NASA
Free Space Optical Communication

Fortunately, I have them.

Space Communications Protocol Specifications
Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems
CCSDS Technical Specifications
Space Assigned Numbers Authority
Spacecraft ID list and manual
Disruption Tolerant Networking
Exploration and Space Communications at NASA
Free Space Optical Communication