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Empty space isn't made of lunar regolith.

Lunar regolith isn't weathered like the surface debris on Earth. Consequently, it's got sharp edges. It's less like play-sand and more like crushed glass.

The astronauts reported that the stuff got into their suits between the hermetic joints, grinding into their skin. It also chewed up the lunar rovers.

There is still a fair amount of uncertainty about the exact nature of any lunar ice. True the attempt to crash the Lunar Prospector into the ice cap failed to turn up any evidence of ice, but this is not proof that ice does not exist, merely that there was not ice able to be detected in the impact debris in this one place. As always it is much more difficult to prove the absence of something than to prove its presence (WMD?), but it is still to early to say that there isn't sufficient ice on the Moon.

NASA

The winner and still champion

Does anyone know if the US system can be jammed?

Is china working on a similar system?

What I would like to know is why more research isn't being done on artificial gravity. So many of the health problems encountered in LEO gravity cound be sidestepped if you just spin the damn craft.

I would love to know why some of the effort being spent on watching things get sick in 0g isn't being directed to something as simple as spinning a glorified beer keg in orbit with some mice in it.

Check these links for more information;

• Centrifuge Accommodation Module
• Space Station Fundamental Biology Research Facility
• ISS Elements: Centrifuge Accommodation Module (CAM)

Horrors like traffic, I guess.

List of "unspeakable horrors" they must be protected from witnessing:
BMW's
Jordache jeans
Walkman radios
Fast food restaurants
Street lights
Public and residential telephones
Home electrictity
Indoor plumbing
Food

The sight of those items could be quite traumatic.

Unfortunately I'm not joking about anything on that list. I will address electricity and food in particular. Take a look at this NASA image: The Earth at night. It shows man-made light sources, effectively a combination of population density and development level. North Korea and South Korea have essentially identical enviornments, resources, and climate and similar population levels. North Korea is a black hole with an amazingly sharp line at the North/South border. No street lights, no electrictity, nothing.

North Korea has lost a signifigant fraction of it's population to starvation, roughly 1.7% of the population dying each year to starvation. That starvation is primarily because their economy is in shambles and they are diverting about 30% of their gross national product to supporting the worlds third-largest army. (China is #1 and U.S. is #2) Most countries only spend about 3% of their GNP supporting a military. That 30% level is crushing and leaves no money for roads, farming equipment, or even food.

North Korea is in the depths of paranoid isolation. They believe they need that army to prevent imminent invasion. They have stated their desire to use that army to "liberate" South Korea. Considering the 1.7% yearly starvation rate and considering the satallite photo, somehow I don't quite think South Korea has any desire for that sort of "liberation".

-

You want some of the nice nasa imagery then at Blue Marble then. They have some exteremely large earth pictures. I've downloaded the two halves a few years back, and ran into the same problem that photoshop couldn't handle imagery that large. Note: to get the BIG ones, you have to contact them, and they will give you an FTP site to snag the images off of.

Sorry, forgot one website:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarb le/

They have one thats already put together for you at (21600w x 10800h), 177.72 MB (233,280,000 pixels)

If that is not enough detail for ya, then take the Western and Eastern and stitch them yourself.
(21600w x 21600h), 245.94 MB color (true), Western Hemisphere
(21600w x 21600h), 410.41 MB color (true), Eastern Hemisphere
(933,120,000 pixels)

for something that looks like this.

Actually, the NASA scientists are all in a tizzy over twelve little pixels. If they actually got to see the whole potato, I think they'd break out the sour cream.

for something that looks like this.

Actually, the NASA scientists are all in a tizzy over twelve little pixels. If they actually got to see the whole potato, I think they'd break out the sour cream.

The Blue Marble images go up to 21,600 by 21,600 -- about 450 megapixels.

for something that looks like this.

.forsight

Here are Terrestrial Planet Finder links at:

• NASA JPL (Flash animation)
• Caltech
• Space.com

Here are Terrestrial Planet Finder links at:

• NASA JPL (Flash animation)
• Caltech
• Space.com

Still not convinced that cells in a rotating bio-reactor are a good model for cells in an in vivo micro-gravitational environment, but at least "modeled micro-graviity" makes sense now!

Actually, the whole thing is discussed on the NASA page.

My question is one of money and priorities. While they're concerned about the shear effects, which don't take place in "real" microgravity, it seems like there would be better uses for the ISS' mass budget than an experiment which can be replicated to a large extent on the ground.

On the other hand, with only two crew members, the ISS isn't doing much these days other than maintaining its attitude. I guess an experiment like this, with minimal crew attention required, is all we can hope to achieve.

I'm rooting for the Chinese space program to start a new space race... 'cause until someone finds (and deploys) a way to make real money from manned space, the only space exploration my kids will be part of is watching communications satellites fly overhead.

There's some video clips here showing the [astro|cosmo]nauts eating various unedible looking substances. There's also some shorts on the preparation of spacefood. All in all the stuff seems really noxious (we all know the freeze-dried icecream from museum stores is god-awful). I think the next ISS module should be a soul food shack. Am I the only one who wonders what the *nauts do when dinner doesn't sit well? Do you suppose Febreeze works in space?

To change the subject...
If NASA is so worried about errant crumbs perhaps they should spend a few million bucks researching a dustbuster that works in zero gravity instead of funding magnetic resonance imaging research into why their (crumb-free) tortillas taste bitter after six months on the shelf.

Because it's a picture of the space shuttle during STS-102 and not the ISS? Nice try though.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle /sts-102/html/s102e5100.html

And why would the switch above the data plate be in russian on the Space Shuttle? The URL doesn't tell the whole story. Nice try though.

Want to make your own Space Tortillas? You can find the recipe in one of the NASA Educational publications. Appendix F of Space Food and Nutrition contains the formulation (a.k.a. recipe) for Space Tortillas. The ISS Standard Menu is also included in Appendix E.

Bon appetit!
- charboy

Want to make your own Space Tortillas? You can find the recipe in one of the NASA Educational publications. Appendix F of Space Food and Nutrition contains the formulation (a.k.a. recipe) for Space Tortillas. The ISS Standard Menu is also included in Appendix E.

Bon appetit!
- charboy

For example, there is no refrigerator or freezer aboard the Station, so food must remain good for long periods at room temperature.

EX-3
ONBOARD
REFRIGERATOR

I second that. I saw the movie in the Kennedy Space Center; make sure you go to see it when you visit!

I wouldn't have thought keeping things cold was that big a challenge in space.

Temperature control is actually quite a problem so the ISS has a number of features to keep temperatures regulated. Overall, space in LEO is cold (averaging 0 F). The problem is that it is far too hot on the sunny side (250 F) and far too cold on the shady side (-250 F). Therefore the ISS is extremely well insulated to maintain an even temperature across the entire inside. But this insulation leads to other problems -- heat builds up from all the equipment. Thus, the ISS has a giant radiator to dump excess heat into space.

I guess they didn't want to mention the Enhanced Gaseous Nitrogen Dewar system, which keeps samples frozen at -321 degrees Fahrenheit...
Or perhaps the ARCTIC freezer system, with 38 liters of -20C degree cold stowage...
ISS Fact Sheets

I think you may be advocating a specific doctrine on earth development rather than defending scientific research. Scientist are now finding evidence that things can happen very "quickly", and not everything follows the slow, orderly process.

This causes problems for many people because it opens the possibility that humans might have a significant impact on the environment, or the environment might not be as long term stable as we have assumed.

I will grant one speculative possibility, and that is that climate change alters the distribution of water (and thus mass) over the earth from polar regions toward the equator, causing Earth's spin to slow and changing the interaction at the boundary between the semi-solid mantle and the liquid core. But if that were a big factor we would see magnetic field reversals coinciding with the ebb and flow of glaciation, and AFAIK that has not been observed in the geologic record. Feel free to correct me if you find evidence to the contrary.

the word 'conductivity' refers to a property of a material in respect to how it behaves in relation to electromagnetic engery, so I don't see this as being completely off the wall.

let me put you straight on some of the mechanics of optical/holographic memory. Firstly, it doesn't employ a rotating mechanism...

Your default posting score of 0 appears to have been earned justly.

Lastly, by saying that hard drives do not last long enough to be affected by events that happen in 'geological time' is an assumption. There is nothing to tell us for certain that the Earths' magnetic field will not flip tomorrow or next week, or next year. This is a real possibility within our lifetimes...

Is the Earth's magnetic field changing?

Indeed it is. It currently has a strength at the Earth's surface of 0.6 Gauss. But long term observations show that it is DECREASING at a rate of about 0.07 percent PER YEAR. This means that in 1500 years from now, it will only be about 35 percent as strong as it is today, and in 4000 years it will have a strength of practically zero.

As for your fear of people with mod points who find comments interesting...

the word 'conductivity' refers to a property of a material in respect to how it behaves in relation to electromagnetic engery, so I don't see this as being completely off the wall.

let me put you straight on some of the mechanics of optical/holographic memory. Firstly, it doesn't employ a rotating mechanism...

Your default posting score of 0 appears to have been earned justly.

Lastly, by saying that hard drives do not last long enough to be affected by events that happen in 'geological time' is an assumption. There is nothing to tell us for certain that the Earths' magnetic field will not flip tomorrow or next week, or next year. This is a real possibility within our lifetimes...

Is the Earth's magnetic field changing?

Indeed it is. It currently has a strength at the Earth's surface of 0.6 Gauss. But long term observations show that it is DECREASING at a rate of about 0.07 percent PER YEAR. This means that in 1500 years from now, it will only be about 35 percent as strong as it is today, and in 4000 years it will have a strength of practically zero.

As for your fear of people with mod points who find comments interesting...

doing some further research I found this in a NASA newsletter...
"The OIG's investigative arm conducts criminal and regulatory investigations in which NASA is a victim. Recently, we have investigated: MOON ROCKS Finally, in an ongoing investigation we seized a desk set that allegedly contained scraps of lunar material. The set, which was owned by a dealer in rare objects, had originally been given to a retiring NASA engineerin 1970. Against NASA policy, the engineer's coworkers had worked some scraps of lunar materials into the desk." Newletter HERE strange that its being acutioned, but NASA Seems to have previously confiscated it???? I know I won't be bidding...not that I could :))

Everywhere I look I see vaginas

I bet it's UTC, that's the timezone NASA uses on this cute StationLocation website...

how much are you willing to spend?

we bought an nvidia fx 5900 ultra (i think. whatever was 'high end' a month ago) about a month ago to run this software for mer ... the card was expensive as hell, but it's so damn sweet. the card was an $800 option on the dell we purchased for it. the card drives 2 dell 1901 flat panels (which i highly recommend)

This animation shows the known minor planets in the Inner Solar System presently.

This page updates regularly on newly discovered objects.
There are many more to be found. Though the risk of an impact like the one believed to have been involved is very slight.

Here's a theory... Some evidence suggests that there's a link between global climate (ocean temperatures) and solar sunspot activity. This is known to affect floods and thus crop production. If you've got a population busy harvesting crops, then they're less likely to be motivated to start wars. Unemployment and poverty have been the major factors involved in starting wars.

Another cool sun photo, of the suns corona. The short paragraph also discusses the total solar eclipse tomorrow, sorry for most of us it is southern hemisphere only.

Those who live and work in the high latitudes - such as in those few sources the US has where there is oil pay a lot of attention to sunspots. Communication disruptions are the biggest problem. Much more rare are power failures - but they have been known to bring down entire power grids. In 1986, British Columbia had a huge power failure. Not all the evidence is in about the recent East coast power outage - They still haven't determined what caused the lines to overheat in the first place - The Ohio company appears to have made mistakes - but they may also just have been trying to keep up with too much demand on the grid all day. Solar flares affect the grid in unexpected ways. That's one of the many reasons they're being watched so closely.

I've probably seen the aurora 300-400 times. It is one of the beautiful things to my eye in nature. If it's out, in my experience - it can change in 5 minutes time from close to nothing to wild. Photos don't do it justice - but this site has some movies too, that give just a slight feel of it.

The BBC article is very simplified - A fairly new technique - called "helioseismic holography" allows astronomers to actually 'look through' the sun to image the magnetic fields of very large sunspots like the present pair (they occur in pairs - corresponding to a north and south magetic pole).
This present sunspot pair is the largest we've ever measured.

The particles themselves don't really emit the light - "the electrons that cause auroras do not come directly from the Sun"

Sunspots can be seen under certain lighting conditions when the sun is rising or setting even with the naked eye.
Chinese astonomers recorded them long before they were one of the first things that we're recorded by the inventors and early users of the telescope.

Sunspots - a reduced number of them - have been correlated with cooler weather trends.

There was about a 70 year period of fairly recent time - 1645 -1715 that apparently saw no auroras - even at high latitudes - kids thought they were mythical stories by the time they appeared.

The solar flare a few weeks ago was the strongest we've ever measured, and we can expect to see more as that same pair of sunspots rotates around to face Earth.

The solar eclipse will be tomorrow - there will be some great photos that will come out in the next few days.

Those who live and work in the high latitudes - such as in those few sources the US has where there is oil pay a lot of attention to sunspots. Communication disruptions are the biggest problem. Much more rare are power failures - but they have been known to bring down entire power grids. In 1986, British Columbia had a huge power failure. Not all the evidence is in about the recent East coast power outage - They still haven't determined what caused the lines to overheat in the first place - The Ohio company appears to have made mistakes - but they may also just have been trying to keep up with too much demand on the grid all day. Solar flares affect the grid in unexpected ways. That's one of the many reasons they're being watched so closely.

I've probably seen the aurora 300-400 times. It is one of the beautiful things to my eye in nature. If it's out, in my experience - it can change in 5 minutes time from close to nothing to wild. Photos don't do it justice - but this site has some movies too, that give just a slight feel of it.

The BBC article is very simplified - A fairly new technique - called "helioseismic holography" allows astronomers to actually 'look through' the sun to image the magnetic fields of very large sunspots like the present pair (they occur in pairs - corresponding to a north and south magetic pole).
This present sunspot pair is the largest we've ever measured.

The particles themselves don't really emit the light - "the electrons that cause auroras do not come directly from the Sun"

Sunspots can be seen under certain lighting conditions when the sun is rising or setting even with the naked eye.
Chinese astonomers recorded them long before they were one of the first things that we're recorded by the inventors and early users of the telescope.

Sunspots - a reduced number of them - have been correlated with cooler weather trends.

There was about a 70 year period of fairly recent time - 1645 -1715 that apparently saw no auroras - even at high latitudes - kids thought they were mythical stories by the time they appeared.

The solar flare a few weeks ago was the strongest we've ever measured, and we can expect to see more as that same pair of sunspots rotates around to face Earth.

The solar eclipse will be tomorrow - there will be some great photos that will come out in the next few days.

couldn't find florida in here. I'm still sceptical.

the solar wind would send it right back and we'd end up with tons of radioactive plutonium in the upper atmosphere.

I think you're a bit confused: the probability for anything coming
out of the sun to hit earth is rather low (considering that the
magnetosphere is 6-10 Earth radii, ie ~5*10^4 km,
while the sun is 1.5*10^8 km, the solid-angle is quite small ...)

And just to make sure, one can always use an orbit to the sun which is
above the solar-system plane, and thats it.

No, reverse pollution is not a problem. Findig the energy to send all
the material to the sun is ...

(Ironically, the only concievable option is an Orion ... ;-) )

The research is being done at the AMES labs in Moffett field, California. Home of the climate model for Mars and Solar system modelling and numerical modelling in general. As well as some X-projects (as in X15 and X33).

NASA doesn't just send things into space anymore.

If I'm not mistaken, NASA *invented* the bewulf cluster. And it ran Linux then, too.
Clicky

NASA has already successfully tested laser powered flight.

There have been variations of this "floating" around for a long time now.

The most chersihed is to build a space station at either the L4 or L5 Lagrange Points - equidistant from both moon and Earth (and a 'gravitational trap' - sort of) - and mine the moon - from which it would be relatively easier to lift off with materials to help make the station...A long way to go for some mafic minerals...

Maybe a pit stop on a way out to further parts.

An unlikely place to actually think of a serious mining operation. Lagrange Points

A GOOD part of $2B is invested in related fields. Optics, materials, communications etc.

Hundreds of grads and undergrads who work on this project will apply their skills
in some other fields.

Millions of kids got their first interest in science from Hubble space images.

Millions of adults consider discovery channel as a good rest after work. (Hopefully :))

I will not discuss the difference of LISA from Michelson-Morley. You are not surprized that Power plant is more expensive than windmill don't you. ? :)

The board computers (two identical, one in CM and one in LM) on the apollo had 5760 logical gates and the word-size was 16 bit.
There are two interesting pages about computers in manned and unmanned spaceflight:
Computers in Spaceflight the NASA Experience
and a german page
Computer in der Raumfahrt

Couldn't help but notice that the BBC says it has a diameter of 570 km. (which probably came from some American telling them 350 miles) and the original discoverers peg it at 700 km. or 400 miles. You might think that since the BBC was handed the scoop by the NEAT team (they have a link to the BBC article), they'd agree on the size.

...is that "There is no funding available for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project".
NASA

Yes, Skylab! It was the first manned space station, and it was american!

Yep... the first space station that was meant to be manned was Salyut I... and it was Soviet. Due to technical problems in the docking the cosmonauts were unable to enter it... Skylab was the first space station that really had men inside. Two years after Salyut I.

Space trivia for kids. :)

there is a lot of truth to this parent comment.

In fact, at a meeting in Washington this past summer to debate the future of HST, one of the most interesting presentations was by the editor of Sky and Telescope. He pointed out that despite the optimistic timelines for launching new satellites, not a single one has come in on schedule, and in fact HST itself was delayed for seven years beyond the projected launch date. "few [amateur astronomers] will put any faith in NASA's claim that HST's successor will be in orbit by 2011."

And HST was built with only modestly new components. The next space telescope is now being designed with some very new technology -- including the biggest mirror ever lofted into space -- and you think there will be no delays or unforseen difficulties?

His final point was that much of the science as well as amateur community benefits and takes interest from the very existence and productivity of Hubble, and to take away a working observatory for the mere promise of one "next year" or "in 5 years" would be a big blow to astronomy.

for his report, see here