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I have not made any claims as to whether it is happening or not. Just looking for data, that's it. Now I have read that Greenland was once green, yet personally have seen very little if any climate change during my short stay here while being very active outdoors including farming the land.

Well then here you go. Data on greenland icesheet melting.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...

This leads me to think while climate change certainly does happen man is not accelerating the process much if at all.

Your lack of knowledge leads to a faulty conclusion so what you think doesnt matter here.

Your "overwhelming evidence" gets destroyed regularly

no it doesnt

so trying to figure out if it all comes from Al Gore or if anyone else is conducting any independent research.

Nearly every climate scientist in the world has come to the same conclusion after and while pursuing their own research.

Wait until you guys get around to studying Pangaea, your heads will explode! And yes you are afraid. Afraid of being wrong. Science is never settled kiddo.

Actually yes, science is settled. Especially as far as ignorant morons like you are concerned.
That's a bullshit statement spouted by the ignorant to cover their ignorance.

Science is rarely overturned. Rather it's simply refined, with rough edges smoothed out.
Einstein didn't overturn Newton, he refined his theories.
Similarly quantum doesn't overturn Einstein but has refined his contributions.

2000 years ago the Greeks proved the Earth was round (and given that math and geometry has existed longer even they probably weren't the first). Then we proved that the Earth is in fact -NOT- a sphere, but a spheroid: it bulges in the middle due to its spin. Now, with GPS and gravity sensors, we've even improved on that, able to calculate local distortions in gravity and "trueness" to expected dimensions. The best example being that "sea level" isn't a constant value of elevation, varying by significant amounts around the globe thanks ot various factors as currents, temperature, salinity, etc.

But there is a difference between refinement, and disproving.

Temps have gone up.
The ocean is warmer.
CO causes radiative forcing.
These are facts observed to be true, and are settled.

The mountain of evidence is in global warmings favor.
In order to "unsettle" that, you would need an ever bigger mountain of evidence.

Unfortunately for you, that evidence doesn't exist, which is why "it's settled".

Here's a few actual facts for you.

http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...

Spend a few minutes reading all the info. You seem to need to learn quite a bit more on what's actually happening.

I do not see compelling evidence that slashing CO2 is a good course

The ocean hates you.

http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...

"Ocean acidification
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year."

But this seems the worst info to me:
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-...
"Data from NASA's Grace satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. The continent of Antarctica has been losing about 147 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2003, while the Greenland ice sheet has been losing an estimated 258 billion metric tons per year. "

Approaching half a trillion tons of ice *per year* being melted seems an astounding amount.

I do not see compelling evidence that slashing CO2 is a good course

The ocean hates you.

http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...

"Ocean acidification
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year."

But this seems the worst info to me:
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-...
"Data from NASA's Grace satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. The continent of Antarctica has been losing about 147 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2003, while the Greenland ice sheet has been losing an estimated 258 billion metric tons per year. "

Approaching half a trillion tons of ice *per year* being melted seems an astounding amount.

I think you picked #2.

http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...

"personally have seen very little if any climate change during my short stay here while being very active outdoors including farming the land." Well that settles it folks! Briniel stepped outside and everything seemed alright. We can all go home now and keep burning that oil and pumping out that CO2. Oh wait, I just found this. Well nuts......sorry Briniel. It seems a few people traveled a bit further from their land and discovered that things aren't so cozy and calm. http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...

There was a great talk on C-SPAN by Bill Ingalls, the NASA photographer. He took a great photo of one of the blessings by an Orthodox priest: https://www.nasa.gov/content/a...

Video is here

.

And there is precisely zero evidence that the engineers ever objected to continuing to fly despite these ongoing failures.

he had refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concerns.
- admittedly this is buried in the first sentence of the article

Engineer Who Opposed Challenger Launch Offers Personal Look at Tragedy

Then you are poking fun at NASA and the USGS, who have been monitoring Alaskan glaciers and how their melting relates to the increase in earthquakes. I don't know why you're talking about Greenland and Antarctica, and conveniently forget to mention the Himalayan glaciers which have been receding for years and years.

My fav:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/imag...

The single most mind blowing photo for me? Hubble eXtreme Deep Field http://www.nasa.gov/images/con...

Too bad the picture was photobombed by Milky Way attention whoring stars.

I love the Hubble, love the pictures and the data, seriously one of the best investment we have made up there.

The single most mind blowing photo for me?
Hubble eXtreme Deep Field
http://www.nasa.gov/images/con...

Plenty Hubble photos are far more beautiful, but the sheer scale of it, the light of other times.

Some signs are pretty obvious; you don't need experts:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03...

> Back when I was working on lasers for power beaming

Short or long haul? Down or up?

We looked at lasers for space-to-Earth power beaming, but it's less practical than you might think-- heat rejection gets to be a serious problem. Most of the practical applications were Earth-to-space or space-to-space power beaming.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...
http://proceedings.spiedigital...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10...
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.js...

Desalination is a plausible solution for water for consumer use--that is, urban and suburban locations.

It is not a very plausible solution for agricultural use-- too expensive. Do you realize that those people take the water and just dump it on the ground?

*(well, some of the suburban people just spray it on the ground, too. But they spray millions and millions of gallons on lawns. Sounds like a lot... but agriculture uses trillions of gallons.)

Water rights are complicated. Since the rule is, whoever grabbed it first owns the rights to the water, the people who own it aren't necessarily the ones who use it most responsibly. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Agriculture is 80% of California's water use (although only 1.5% of California's economy) The big problem is almonds. Who would have thought that such a niche foodstuff would drive agricultural water? https://www.bostonglobe.com/bu...

Trillions? Yep: http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

In terms of rockets. there's a trade off between fuel efficiency per kg and thrust per kg (similar to power versus energy for batteries).

So where does the technology fit on this Ragone chart?

I wish people, including the official NASA press release would quit using this misleading terminology.

A spacecraft only needs fuel to "fight gravity" when changing orbits. In this case, although Mercury doesn't have much of an atmosphere, it does have one, and that's what's dragging the spacecraft down.

The only thing you can remotely call a "day" on the ISS is about 90 minutes long.

The astronauts are on a 24-hour work/sleep cycle. It may not have anything to do with sunrises and sunsets anymore (1), but is there any reason other than extreme pedantism to not call that cycle a day?

1: other than the sunrises and sunsets over the control centers in Houston and Moscow.

Meanwhile, the tea drinkers have been sitting back all of these years laughing at the coffee complaints... Plus, the tea guys get to drink theirs with chopsticks...

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/f...

I'm willing to bet that the coffee guys finally got fed up which is why the espresso machine... (grin)

Lightning rods.

Yes, I've mentioned this before-- if there are bacteria on Mars, they will be extreme halophiles.
http://online.liebertpub.com/d...
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.js...

you were speeding by no small margin.

At 100,000 km/s, nobody will notice... (math)

It's amazing how much more water there was in parts of California in the relatively recent past, much lost outside of any extreme drought events.
Owens lake was used to fuel development in the Los Angeles area, especially the San Fernando Valley about 100 years ago.
Tulare lake is now gone, yet during the wetter years in the 1800's was as large as 900 square miles.
There's actually a tale of sunken treasure from a gold shipment lost in a storm.
http://www.tularecountylibrary...
http://www.workmansbooks.com/c...

I found a late 1850's newspaper report originating from Fort Yuma of a cinnabar (mercury ore) discovery near the junction of the Mojave and Colorado rivers. (Although dangerous, mercury was commonly used for extracting gold since that readily dissolves into it) The thing is, the mojave river isn't shown reaching the Colorado in later times. There were conflicting reports of the reach of the Mojave in the era, but whatever the recent water source had been, it certainly isn't there now. Here's a pdf of some of the study done of the mojave and ancient lakes. It looks like water at high levels about 7000 years ago went beyond a spillway causing erosion the led to water not being held. It seems that it isn't just climate shifts, but the keeping of water from the wetter periods that is behind some of the major changes seen in California.

The California land around Tulare lake was once treated as worthless because of it flooding, and was sold for a dollar an acre.
Well great job on getting rid of that troublesome water guys. The area was once so rich in animal and plant life that for a very long period it had one of the highest population densities of North American native (Indian) populations. Although about a third of the west coast natives had already been killed off by the combination of violence and exposure to European diseases, things got much worse after the mid 1850's. The gold rush drove much of the change, but climate played a role also. There was already a drought by the end of the 1850's. Santa Barbara saw a 133 degree heat burst of 133 degrees three solar rotations before the Carrington storm. Much of the Santa Barbara beef was culled to to limited grass in the drought. The southern part of the state saw some rain (and the death of Bernardo Yorba on his rancho by the Santa Ana river near what's now Yorba Linda near Anaheim) related to the San Diego Hurricane of 1958, the storm went back out to sea before getting to Santa Barbara. Even with the great California flood of early 1862, which silting in the lagoon at Santa Barbara, the drought was severe in 1863 and 1864. That caused the collapse of some of the rancho operation near Santa Barbara, leading to some land becoming available for sale to outsiders. The combination of drought, an extreme 1861-62 winter, and cattle eating what little the Indians grew led to problems when Indians working with ranches near the Owens Valley didn't get paid and stole cattle for food. That led to the Owens Valley Indian War of 1864. Fort Independence, seen as the town of Independence. The U.S. military found that going out and killing anything that the Indians might eat was the most effective way to drive them to submission. The population was largely killed off, less than 40 inhabit the current reservation in the area. In retrospect, as with the plight of some of the struggling farmers in Syria, climate variation had a major impact on what unfolded.

Here's a PDF of some ancient information on the Mojave river/lake and related areas.

http://quest.nasa.gov/projects...

The 1859 Santa Barbara heat burst event was not just a variation of the local "sundowner" winds causing compressive warming from sinking air in coastal canyons. The even peaked ju

Actually, the article gave all metric primary measurements, and English in parentheses for enough of them for the metric-impaired to understand the scale.

"...about 10 by 10 centimeters (4 by 4 inches) across and 2 centimeters thick"

So apparently, it was the OP who took the queue from NASA.

the NASA Aqua has on board a radiometer that measures the upward microwave radiation from molecules in the Earth's lower troposphere. these radiometers are calibrated against both an on-board platinum wire thermometer and the Cosmic Microwave Background. From these readings the temperature of the air can be calculated.

Data are available as global, hemispheric, zonal, and gridded averages. The global average covers 97-98% of the earth's surface, excluding only latitudes above +85 degrees, below -85 degrees and, in the cases of TLT and TMT, some areas with land above 1500 m altitude. The hemispheric averages are over the northern and southern hemispheres 0 to +/-85 degrees. The gridded data provide an almost global temperature map
UAH satellite temperature dataset Geographic coverage

Propulsion-only automated flight control systems have already been demonstrated and are expected to be integrated into next-generation commercial aircraft.

Cool. I've been proposing this for years.
http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa....
http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa....

Cool. I've been proposing this for years.
http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa....
http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa....

First, emissions per capita is a waste of a measurement. The vast majority of Emissions are NOT tied to ppl. They are tied to GDP. Basically, oil based vehicles combined with coal based electricity is where our emissions come from. What is the majority of vehicles used for? Moving ppl/cargo for business, not personal use. Likewise, where does the majority of electricity go? To Business.

Secondly, America's emissions are ALREADY BELOW WHAT WE HAD IN 1995. IOW, we have have been leading it. However, America is not even CLOSE to the high emissions. CHina is.
When you look at this map and see the MASSIVE AMOUNTS of CO2 from China, you should get a sense of how bad things are, and how foolish ppl like you are.

Third, you seem to want to put words in my mouth that I never said or even thought. I fully support a CO2 tax. In fact, I believe that ALL NATIONS need to be smart about this and put on a tax. Interestingly, America is the one major nation that can force ALL OTHER NATIONS ALONG VIA A SMART TAX:
1) all data should be based on REAL numbers, not the made up shit that your silly groups do based on ASSUMPTIONS and NUMBERS FROM GOV. So, we should take OCO2 data and show the CO2 that flows INTO and OUT of a region (basically nations/states). This would show us how much real CO2 is occurring.
2) we need a SMART normalization. Normalizing based on per capita is stupid and foolish. Instead, it should be emissions per $GDP (real $, not PPP). This is because emissions are tied to GDP, not ppl.
3) finally, we tax all goods at a high level. However, the good can be registered and told where the parts (including the final assembly) are from. The WORST part is the % of tax that is applied.

So, lets say that a good is manufactured in say Sweden. It has one of the LOWEST emissions / $GDP. As such, it would have NO TAX. OTOH, if a part comes from China, it would have a 100% of that tax on the good. However, lets say that the worst part comes from say Massachusetts (an American state). Since their emissions per GDP is below average (closer to sweden than to the rest of America, which is average), it would leave a tax of maybe 33-40% of the full rate.
What that does is reward those that bring down their emissions, while punishing those that continue to raise theirs. This is the ONLY way that we can solve this.

Until ppl like you realize that FACTS can not be denied and that science is real, emissions will continue. And I will blame ppl like you, instead of the far right wingers, since you acknowledge the science of AGW, but then turn around and totally ignore the facts associated with it.

On the contrary. When you factor in the launch costs, it doesn't make sense to use low grade materials to save a tiny bit of money. Instead, solar panels in space use the best materials available for highest possible efficiency for a given mass and/or volume.

I think you haven't worked on space systems. I worked on a Satellite in the 1980's which went up on the shuttle.

(1) You never launch anything "cutting edge"

(2) Top end solar cells have the same problem as unshielded top end microelectronics

(3) You have to "build heavy" in order to survive the launch without damage

(4) You have to hang them out in space where they *will* be smacked by micrometeorites

Basically, you build the best you can with 6-8 year old "proven" technology, and then you expect that it will be an addition 3-4 years out of date by the time it makes orbit.

The designs we've done for satellite systems all assume multijunction Gallium Arsenide photovoltaic cells; for SPS, we've relaxed that, and made up for efficiency with surface area. It's a launch vs. repair vs. energy density trade-off (this is why Hubble used Silicon photovoltaic cells).

See:

http://www.boeing.com/boeing/h...

See also this paper from the NASA Glenn Research Center, SERT (Space Solar Power Exploratory Research and Technology) program team:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...

If you think that a single 4m object in lunar orbit will be "in the path" of future moon missions in any meaningful way, then you have a disturbing misapprehension regarding the physical scale of outer space.

NASA estimates that there are over half a million objects in earth orbit that are >1cm in size, and we manage to routinely successfully operate there in a much smaller area of space.

Sure, it would have happened later, but at least we'd get some kind of direct benefit from it, instead of a bunch of museum pieces that no one remembers how to reconstruct, and Tang.

You think Tang was the only benefit of the US space program?

http://www.sac.edu/academicpro...

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...

If there hadn't been a space program, Richard Branson would still be selling vinyl records and Elon Musk would be a mediocre video game developer.

How stupid people are to think that business profits are the only way to measure benefit to society. How small-minded and provincial. And all because of reading Ayn Rand's poorly-written fantasy novels when they're freshmen.

Thanks.

I was going to say "This was submitted by startswithabang, which means it's a link to medium.com, perhaps the most terribly designed site on the net - I'm not clicking it - does anyone have the real link?", but you saved me the trouble.

The original, full-res image is available for download here.

I expect that as long as we are setting rockets on their ass and blasting them into space, it would not be "rocket science" to design a launch facility that is adaptable to different vehicles and sizes. Re-inventing the wheel is expensive.

Warning - I am an inveterate Rocket slut......

The difference between different Rockets is astounding. My post isn't trying to contradict - I have some fun examples to enjoy

Freedom 7 Mercury launchL

http://voyagerslog.blogspot.co... Alomost unbelievably single. A retaining ring, and a pivoted gantry.

This is almost shocking. There was a tower and elevator that owuld pull away before launch - probably because those early ones were so explodey. But this is darn simple. And we were learning as we went at the same time.

Gemini program. The rocket was more powerful, and thrust effects were getting getting to be a problem, they could wreck a rocket.

Here is a cool photo I'd not seen before - a time exposure photo of Gemini 10 put in place and launched - Love it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Back to the launchpad itself, now you'll see it is built up some. I'll note that this was a repurposed launch pad, having been used for Titan II rockets. It was abandoned at the end of the Gemini program. The larger thrust required thrust deflectors to avoid damage to both the Pad and rocket. http://www.honeysucklecreek.ne...

Then we move onto the Saturn 1, but lett's ski ahead to the Saturn V.

This was one serious big sumbitch rocket. The days of taking a little rocket out horizontally were gone, replaced with the vertical transport. The sizes were so different that in addition to handling the amount of thrust, everything was bigger.

Which brings us to Launch complex 39 Of Apollo and Shuttle fame.

Now we can repurpose things if needed. The pads are large enough to handle Saturn V's, so they could be modified for shuttle use, and at present 39A is being modified for Spacex Falcon Rockets, and 39B launchpad is going to be used for SLS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

That's the long version with pictures. The tl;dr version is that the early launch pads were rendered useless as the Rocket power grew, and building new pads was happening whaile th eold ones were in use. Even getting the Rocket for the Apollo-Soyuz mission gusseted up required changes The Saturn 5 Rocket was just too much oomph to send a stripped down Apollo to low earth orbit, the pads that were used for the Saturn 5 launchpad were used because the Pads normally used for that Rocket were not operational any longer, so they strapped on a Saturn 1-B with what was called a milkstool. The photo shows the concept.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/ga...

Hey look - someone figured out some actual display methods! http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedi...

The technology to move humans interplanetary distances does not exist and people are not even seriously working on it.

NASA and SpaceX are seriously working on it, but right now it's all still in early stages and planning to piggy-back on other technologies that are closer to being realized (Orion/SLS, Dragon/Falcon Heavy).

References? Because NASA is not seriously working on it. They have this but no real funding at the moment. They are half assed working on it. Plus they won't consider it for 20 years, so I call bullshit on mars one doing it 10 years out in anything resembling a safe manner.

All of the fools in this thread mentioning "meteorite bombardment" have not the foggiest. Moonquakes are a lot more powerful and a lot deeper than the faint tremors that would be caused by surface impacts.

But that's no surprise that people aren't interested in moonquakes or never heard of them before, even if they're lunar scientists. Even NASA didn't want to acknowledge their existence at first.

But look at them, now: http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

The truth is that nobody is sure what causes the most powerful moonquakes.

The low gravity of Moon would allow the elderly (and other infirm) to remain mobile for many years after they would've become wheelchair-bound on Earth.

In order to enjoy 0.3 g on the Moon, you need to suffer 3+g for a good ten minutes leaving Earth. I'm not sure that the elderly or infirm will stand for that.

The Saturn V's actually were one of the slowest-accelerating human-rated craft to ever launch, and they hit a peak of 40 m/s^2, about 4 g, at MECO 1:
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj...

8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Why did Earth’s surface temperature stop rising in the past decade?

"Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has been close to zero."
"Since 2000, temperatures have been warmer than average, but they did not increase significantly." Data courtesy of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...

A hypothesis that the heat was sequestered in the ocean abyss was proven incorrect by NASA in October of 2014 - "the cold waters of Earth's deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005", according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have stopped in 1998. It started in 1978. But there really has been no warming this century.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...

"97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Dr. Michael K. Oliver

Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide stalled in 2014
http://www.iea.org/newsroomand...

Sea ice is increasing
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

OP is less aware of the science than Cruz is. How is that even possible?

The point here is no scientific organization should have to even remotely pander to such nonsense that has fuck-all to do with space exploration.

Welcome to the real world. There's no point to lecturing me on what scientific organizations should and shouldn't do. Pandering to such nonsense is a common burden on scientific organizations all over the world.

Even yawning costs taxpayer money.

NASA blows a lot more than yawning money on what it does inefficiently and ineffectively. For example, the SLS is in itself a complete waste. That's more than yawning money right there.

How about ignore altogether, and remove those who think otherwise.

Ok, who should be removed? I don't see anyone who actually believes Muslim outreach is that important. And this opens us up to a slippery slope where we fire everyone whose beliefs aren't entirely in line with the missions of the various organizations that they happen to be a part of. Just in NASA, we have a bunch of people in the unmanned space program who would have beliefs in conflict with NASA's manned space activities (namely that they think manned space flight is no better than near useless and shouldn't be a priority of NASA).

Otherwise, hints of even suggested priorities open up lawsuits against NASA for not focusing on "muslim outreach" as if that was ever in their fucking charter.

I see several problems with that assertion. First, hints aren't legally binding. Second, there's already a NASA charter, but it's not legally binding either. What's actually legally binding are the year to year spending allocations passed by Congress, with some modest contribution from annual authorizations.

Congress didn't authorize and fund Muslim outreach as a core NASA goal. And even if they did, they could completely reverse themselves the next year without consequence.

Third, nobody has standing to sue NASA because it isn't following its charter. And even if they did, they still have to get around NASA's sovereign immunity. Congress has granted a variety of exceptions to the federal government's sovereign immunity, but you can bet good money that they didn't grant any exemptions for reinterpreting the will of Congress in court.

No, the left just know how to read, so they know that the first objective of NASA is " The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space."

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html#POLICY

AFAIK what he's pointing out is that NASA was chartered to explore space

Oh, yeah?

The National Aeronautics and Space Act

SUBCHAPTER I--SHORT TITLE, DECLARATION OF POLICY, AND DEFINITIONS

Sec. 20102. Congressional declaration of policy and purpose

(d) Objectives of Aeronautical and Space Activities.--The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

        (1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

When not governed by focused adults NASA evolves in to a "big science" clearing house; the "funder of last resort" for all things "science." In part this is because the agencies these projects should inhabit are huge lawyer farms with zero engineering capability and an active aversion for such. Allowing NOAA/USGS to fob these projects onto NASA only fosters this anti-pattern.

You see this pattern in other agencies as well. One learns from Madoff transcripts that the only actual mathematician the SEC involved in the investigation was a part-time adjunct professor — whom the lawyers studiously ignored. Same thing during the Toyota SUA hearings; the NTSB lawyers couldn't name an actual automotive engineer in their employ or cite even an approximate figure for how many they might employ. I still don't know if they employ any. All I know is that when they needed answers they called NASA....

Where overlap is inherent NASA can be contracted, but most of what Earth Science actually needs from space (satellite design, launch services, big data, etc.) is available at lower cost from commercial providers — approximately the same providers that launch satellite TV systems.

The climate fear mongers will never accept this. The truth is they covet the "NASA says..." credential. NASA is still perceived as a neutral agent, despite the best efforts of Hanson et al., so NASA generated science isn't as easily dismissed as agenda driven science from inherently agenda driven agencies.

The opening of that very Act:

To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes.

The organization is supposed to be primarily about flight, to the extent they study the atmosphere it is in relation as to the effect of flight on vehicles...

Climate change and studying the relations of the entire atmosphere is not "phenomena" (like auroras). It is not extra-ordinary; it is ordinary.

"Drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of Earth." http://www.nasa.gov/sites/defa...

Where are they going to go when they get to orbit? The ISS won't be there after 2020 or so

I think you meant 2024?

Bigelow is a lot of hot air.

Here's your first lot of hot air :-), already having been packaged for delivery to the ISS, probably in September.

The Russian ISS-remnant will be serviced by Soyuz.

What "ISS remnant"? There most likely won't be any such "remnant". Russians don't have money to even finish their planned modules and to launch them, much less to refurbish an already expired set of modules in orbit. Zarya will be 30 years old by 2024, but it is American property now. Zvezda's structural frame dates back to 1985! It will be almost 40 years old by 2024... Nauka - which hasn't even launched yet! - is as old as Zarya, and they already have had to repair it at least once. Alas, they don't have money, even for those repairs... It was supposed to have launched in 2007(!). It now seems that it could launch in 2017...provided that before that date, they manage to replace its major propulsion system that's already out of warranty. If it doesn't happen, I won't be surprised.

BTW, I found it supremely amusing that despite your incessant Shuttle eulogies, you don't even for a second doubt the Russians' ability to build and maintain a new space station even if they don't have any of your precious Shuttles with a robotic arm, airlock, and your beloved camping toilet to do it. :-p

The Dragon alone can't build an ISS Mark 2 or even a Mars Expeditionary vehicle

Why would a Dragon need to "build" anything? What's wrong with you? You seem to have this fixed idea that every manned vehicle needs to contain everything conceivable that you could possibly bolt onto it. That has never been the case.

A Falcon Heavy could launch such an unmanned microstation but they cost a lot of bucks so having it recoverable to be refurbished and reused would be a good idea.

First, if something weighs fifty tons, it's not a "microstation" in anyone's book, especially if it will use modern technology. Tiangong-1 is a "microstation". BA-330 or anything similar...not so much. Second, it could easily be reused without being hauled down to Earth's surface and back every time. Salyuts had no problem with this mode of operation. Plus, your "recovering" and relaunching would cost a lot of bucks, too. So you propose to replace wasting a lot of bucks with wasting a different lot of bucks. How is that reasonable?

A heatshield re-entry system to splashdown on something that large would be cumbersome so tiles or another lightweight heat protection system on a lifting-body or winged vehicle would be preferable, like the X-37 or the new ESA re-entry testbed article flown recently on a Vega. Thus is the Shuttle reinvented, better and shinier than before with the lessons of the past learned.

Your obsession with reentry vehicles of all kinds and sizes continues. Go see a psychologist or a psychiatrist to help you with that problem. I'm apparently an inadequate counselor on these matters.

I'd think that hydrogen is somewhat uneconomical for launch vehicles also because it generally gets used in upper stages, so you need more different pieces of launch pad infrastructure, and all-importantly, at least two types of engines. The fact that some other companies are not "little startups" still doesn't protect them from the effect of economies of scale. (And if you want to suggest unifying on hydrogen, check out the boondoggle named "Delta IV".) Look at how hideously expensive the RL-10 has ended up due to restricted production, and rejoice in the wisdom of Falcon 9 designers (which, besides unifying propulsion, gave them a landing level of thrust achievable in the first stage almost for free).

It also doesn't help much that when hydrogen does get used in launch vehicles, those upper stages are optimized for high energy missions and therefore end up on average more expensive (because they're built to be super-lightweight) even if all you want is to get some standardized payload to LEO. I'd really reserve hydrogen for the future, purely in-space vehicles, especially the large ones (with presumably improved volume/mass ratio for the hydrogen tanks that wouldn't involve exorbitant costs to achieve in smaller tanks, giving hydrolox better economies of scale). And even that only after some important technological progress - besides vastly improved Isp of up to almost 500 s, the lower pumping pressures and potentially much greater engine lifetime could come in really handy.

To sum it up, perhaps we're not doing those missions yet where hydrogen would actually be decisively beneficial from the economy point of view. Anywhere up to LEO, hydrocarbons win, especially with good engines, and even direct launch to GTO probably isn't a sufficient excuse.

Nasa's report says "Suggets". The evidence is good as we have suspected for many years, but can these popsci article writers can't even be bothered to check the sources and just make up stuff.

I am sure when IFLS picks this up, they will report that not only is there an ocean but life is confirmed too.

Currently going. You may have to wait a bit more to get the answer, though. Not sure slashdot's gonna still be around at that time.