Slashdot Mirror

Here is a higher resolution version of the map: http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/oco2/p...

I live in an orange area of the US, and it's not the "corn belt" either, but the Appalachians.

We all know that the orange area is in Florida and not the Appalachians.

Here is a higher resolution version of the map:
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/oco2/p...

I live in an orange area of the US, and it's not the "corn belt" either, but the Appalachians.

What on earth do you mean by "toy grade"?

If you mean FDM, then it would be quite hilarious to refer to a Stratasys for example as "toy grade". Either that or you can afford much better toys than me.

The thing that actually went up there also does not look like "toy grade" either:

http://www.nasa.gov/content/in...

That link didn't work for me, but this one does.

My bad, I thought you wrote "inverse-square" the second time. The irradiance depends on the latitude and declination as well as the distance from the sun - I found this site with detailed formulae. Basically in addition to the inverse-square factor is a sinusodial factor for the angle and a logarithmic factor for the atmospheric absorption, but it turns out the inverse-square part really is dominant for the average values at the top of the atmosphere, just like your intution. These data also support that.

They might not be referring to top-of-atmosphere values, though, so there's no way to tell if they're actually mistaken without knowing what atmospheric heights they're comparing. The atmospheric effect is surprisingly large even on Mars, where the attenuation is at least 1.2-fold and as high as 150-fold during a storm (from the Viking data from the first link).

Wow, you're right!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

Only small engines can be tested currently at stennis (luckily? that's all we have in the inventory). Firing off an F-1 would break a lot of things.

As far is always having been pork, NASA OIG criticized the decision made to build a new stand rather than modifying either of *two* underutilized facilities: http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/rep... The bottom line is that the decision was made without public discussion with all of the stakeholders and was always at high risk of being late and over budget due to the lousy decision making at NASA. (Don't blame all of this on Congress.) Interestingly, the initial cost estimate for A-3 was $390M, but Stennis talked that down to $173M to make it more attractive.

So no, there's very little chance that this will turn out to be great in the end, or that we won't end up paying for modifications to A-3 which would be similar to the modifications needed to use one of the existing facilities for a future engine (except that those could have been modified without an intervening $350M capital expediture). And it's very likely that when the time comes, it will look better on paper to build a new stand than to reuse A-3.

So yes, always pork.

I don't get your complaint. Are you really expecting Elon Musk to personally hire every American into one of his companies?

Also, there aren't more astronauts in the NASA astronaut corps currently. A total in the entire history from the original Mercury 7 astronauts to right now is 339 candidates have "received their wings" to be certified as astronauts, and not all of them have even been into space. The current number is 43, and likely to go down in the near future.

On the other hand, this is 300 new jobs for the people of central Texas, and I think they don't mind high paying industrial jobs that bring in money from outside of the immediate area, unlike new jobs that come from Wal-Mart of a Subway restaurant opening up. This is on top of other substantial moves that the companies of Elon Musk have been doing to hire literally thousands of new workers in the past couple of years.

If only more entrepreneurs had this kind of vision to do something really unique and original.

The Salon article is wrong although the fault may be that of the interviewee. Bob Reiss asked Hansen what the view from his office would look like if his worst-case scenario from the paper he'd published not long before the interview were to come to pass.
That would have been the Scenario A from the 1988 "Global Climate Change as Forecast by GISS 3D Model" - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs...

That scenario as described in the paper, assumes a CO2 doubling by 2030 but states that Scenario B's assumption of said doubling by 2060 is more likely.

Reiss details the conversation in a couple of his books but only named 2001's The Coming Storm when he corrected what he'd told to Salon, who never updated the online article.
Either way, there's still quite some time before Hansen's prediction can be definitively shown to have been wrong

There isn't a place on Earth not hit by an impactor from space.

In fact, its computers and its processors are 12 years old

They word it like NASA is dumpster diving for its flight computers these days. The CPU may be from what was new 12 years ago, but I seriously doubt the physical unit is actually 12 years old.

It's also hardened against radiation. I would be willing to bet that any processor in these systems will still be functional long after most newfangled home CPUs are long dead. These flight computers will be remain functional in an extremely harsh environment longer than any home CPU would last. Even with how pampered home processors are in comparison.

If those old computers were any good, then the Voyagers would still be working.
Oh wait ...
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Correction: It's called "Sagittarius A*" And NASA does not qualify it using terms such as "might be a black hole" or "theorised to be a black hole." They simply call it a "supermassive black hole"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

And of course your little - how would you call it - PROPAGANDA blog makes big claims I'll counter with mine:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/cern-cloud-proves-cosmic-rays-causing-global-warming.htm

CERN scientist Jasper Kirkby, about his recent cosmic ray experiment:

"At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step"

But what about now? Well, instead of a "warming hiatus", according to the Gospel of Svensmark we should actually see massive cooling: Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech.

Was 2009 anywhere near the coldest year since the 1959? No? Then we can just forget about including Cosmic Voodoo Rays in any climate models if we want them to be acceptable to you.

I'll just wait for the Mars Sample Return Project to saturate the market, thereby lowering the price.

Beyond helping the military test ICBM designs, what did NASA do that could help destroy the world? Any NASA mission or for that matter any USAF mission to redirect an asteroid would be detected months before it could cause any damage.

Or are you talking the Office of Planetary Protection? They are far more concerned about containing life here on the Earth than trying to do something that deliberately causes damage.

The NASA article is a government work and not subject to copyright, so I can save you from doing any clicking whatsoever:

The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.

Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.

This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 2 miles (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.

The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa.

The NASA article is a government work and not subject to copyright, so I can save you from doing any clicking whatsoever:

The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.

Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.

This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 2 miles (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.

The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa.

The NASA article is a government work and not subject to copyright, so I can save you from doing any clicking whatsoever:

The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.

Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.

This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 2 miles (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.

The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa.

TFA in the summary doesn't have any useful information and no additional links. The only thing I can find on NASA's website is an announcement back in June that eighteen studies were funded. Has something happened recently?

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/n...

Wait, wait!! Let me do this Slashdot style, and find the worst possible source for the material... Here's a Gizmodo link which references the RedOrbit article which links to JPL:

http://gizmodo.com/europa-rema...

Can it get worse? You bet! Let's go deeper into the brown web... a vast sea of crappy auto-generated content.

http://mobilitybeat.com/gizmod...

I'm sorry, you're full of shit and don't have a clue what you're talking about. When you disagree with NASA and CERN and the fossil record you better be able to also drop an SUV on mars from a rocket powered skycrane and hold all the worlds antimatter.

The IPCC has not been right about anything, ever, and if you don't think 75% error is meaningful then 2+2=7 is for you.

You wouldn't happen to be the recipient of a climate grant would you?

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
"'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding."

Oh fuck. The F word. F-f-f-f-f-uding.

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

"Warming" -> http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mu...
http://opinion.financialpost.c...
http://www.populartechnology.n...
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/...
http://www.climatechangedispat...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...

If you have some other explanations of all these or proof of a warming world this might be a good time to drag it out.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/...

This is the full resolution image as a JPEG. More details on this page, including a link to the TIFF version. Bonus: a heck of a lot less overhead to display versus that badly optimized redorbit.com page.

Thanks for that. Much better.

This is the full resolution image as a JPEG. More details on this page, including a link to the TIFF version. Bonus: a heck of a lot less overhead to display versus that badly optimized redorbit.com page.

Thanks for that. Much better.

This is the full resolution image as a JPEG. More details on this page, including a link to the TIFF version. Bonus: a heck of a lot less overhead to display versus that badly optimized redorbit.com page.

This is the full resolution image as a JPEG. More details on this page, including a link to the TIFF version. Bonus: a heck of a lot less overhead to display versus that badly optimized redorbit.com page.

That hottest year in 1998

According to NASA, the years 2005, 2007, and 2010 were hotter. On the 5-year average, all the years 1999-2011 were hotter than 1998. Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...

Except, well, back in 1999, 1938 was significantly hotter than 1998.

Amazing how 1938 has gotten cooler in the past 15 years, three quarters of a century after 1938 happened.

That hottest year in 1998

According to NASA, the years 2005, 2007, and 2010 were hotter. On the 5-year average, all the years 1999-2011 were hotter than 1998. Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...

The second result on google for "microgravity reactions" is this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
The first is this one which is far less useful:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

There's a current experiment on the ISS along those lines that was mentioned in the mainstream press a couple of months back but I can't seem to track down a link. The biochemist interviewed was of the opinion that we have no idea how many reactions are influenced by gravity and was surprised to find so many so quickly.

And because President Kennedy died in 1963 (before he could completely back away from the commitment)...

Do you have any evidence that he intended to do that, or are you just looking for an excuse to blame everything on LBJ and Nixon?

It's fairly well known among space historians, though like much of the factual matters surrounding the space program it's practically unknown by the fanboys. Anyhow, a tape containing a discussion between Kennedy and Webb was released a few years back where Kennedy voices his doubts. In 1963 he proposed a joint mission with the Soviets, which has also long been interpreted as a backing away from his original commitment. The Space Review also has a two part story shedding some light on the issue.

And no, I blame nothing on Nixon - after the Congressional budget cuts of '65-'67, Apollo was already essentially cancelled. Nixon inherited a program already running short of funds and operating mostly on momentum and force a habit - and Congress disinclined to change that. He didn't kill Apollo, he just stood by while a patient already in a deep coma and dependent on machines for every bodily function simply slipped away.

How long it lasts is dictated by nuclear physics (the half life of Pu-238.)

The decay in power output is only partly due to the half-life of the nuclear fuel. An effect of roughly equal magnitude is the degradation of the thermocouple junctions themselves. For instance, each Voyager spacecraft's RTG had about 470 W electrical output at launch in the 1970s. As of 2008, about one half of a half-life later, the electrical output had declined to about 285 W. I'm sure that the thermal output of the RTGs is following the half life of Pu-238 just as one would expect, but the useful life is limited by other considerations.

Conversion efficiency. Just because a lump of coal burns with say 500W, doesn't mean you can actually recover 500W of electricity. It's just not going to happen. Since you obviously don't know anything about RTGs or even power, here's some info. NASA claims its most advanced model of RTG carries 4.8 kilograms of plutonium. It puts out about 110W of electricity. That's an efficiency of about 4.6%. Philae's solar panels were projected to produce 32 watts in direct sunlight at 3AU. Oh yeah, and those 110W RTGs are about the size of a person, and weigh 45 kilograms, the thing is freaking huge. It would be scraping by with tiny amount of power for an RTG on Philae. You'd end up needing batteries anyways.

I'm ordinarily a nuclear fanboy, but I have enough grounding in reality to realize RTGs aren't some holy grail of spacecraft power. Shocker, I know, but KSP isn't an accurate model of space travel.

President Obama has indeed forsworn the moon, and he's the one who tells NASA how to pick targets. In http://www.nasa.gov/news/media... he says "Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach -- and operate at -- a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does."

He's the first successful Presidential candidate I've voted for, and I've been voting for one or another of their opponents since 1968, but I was very disappointed with this President's unfocused long-term strategy of finding different balls of matter to plant flags on... once.

Orbiting a few satellites around the Moon is laudable, but they can't be realistically compared to a project like Apollo or a major follow-on like a permanent or semi-permanent Moon base.

I don't pretend to be a climate scientist, so I have to go off of charts and information they provide. I also didn't jump on a bandwagon, I read arguments by both sides and studies.

In the end, there was a paper where something like 97% of scientists in the climate sciences field agree in climate change/global warming including the biggest naysayer that most republicans were using as a reference for a long time. The major flaw in the 97% study I believe was that about 75% of them assumed humans were at fault as part of their study, but you've still got 22% vs 3% or less with no pre-assumptions. If you don't believe them, here is a simple NASA chart showing carbon dioxide levels for the past 650000 years. That shows greenhouse gasses up a lot in a short period of time. It could be caused by emissions, chopping down rainforests, or whatever combo, but the bottom line is carbon dioxide is at the highest level in 650000 years and it happened in a short period of time. The earth takes a long time to warm and cool - we may not notice the effects of this for 20000 years or more and we may be able to fix it in the meantime and never see change.

But if you are like my brother, you will deny any climate results older than 10000 years because the devil put them there. As I said, there always will be naysayers.

There is a US satellite orbiting the Moon right now, another whose mission just ended, and yet another one 2 years ago.

No, we have not foresworn the Moon.

There is a US satellite orbiting the Moon right now, another whose mission just ended, and yet another one 2 years ago.

No, we have not foresworn the Moon.

Moon missions have attempted core samples in the past. Apollo 17 conducted a "deep drill", with a theoretical maximum of 3 meters. The greatest depth of any retrieved sample was 292cm. The drilling process also heated the samples, which could affect the results of analysis performed on them.
Source

Um ... so then what was STEREO? (launched in 2006)

There are pictures of them stacked together

It was even launched from a Boeing Delta II, so they can't claim it was their first conjoined launch. (which caused major launch delays ... due to the Boeing strike, then the batteries in the second stage being de-certified ... then once the strike was over, the Air Force kept cutting in line for launch pads)

Disclaimer : I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center. which operates the STEREO Science Center.

The same is true for the Van Allen Probes (formerly RBSP): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...

Perhaps this is just the first time that Boeing has stacked two satellites?

Yet, according to NASA studies, the ocean hasn't warmed recently, either.

Um ... so then what was STEREO? (launched in 2006)

There are pictures of them stacked together

It was even launched from a Boeing Delta II, so they can't claim it was their first conjoined launch. (which caused major launch delays ... due to the Boeing strike, then the batteries in the second stage being de-certified ... then once the strike was over, the Air Force kept cutting in line for launch pads)

Disclaimer : I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center. which operates the STEREO Science Center.

More importantly - For all you know, koan works for the Mars Rover program, and has a legitimate right to mock the ESA's lack of foresight.

No, he doesn't, ya blithering fool! If koan actually worked for the Mars Rover program he would understand just how technically difficult this comet rendezvous actually was. Both the science and the engineering aspects of this mission were truly ground-breaking. Apart from the fact that the batteries on the lander are about to give out, this mission went about as well as anyone could have hoped for. Hell, even with the batteries about to give out, this mission was a spectacular success! Seriously, the people criticising this mission come across as a bunch of know-nothing teenagers. Do you know how many probes sent to Mars ended in failure? Venus? Space exploration is high risk. But it's OK, kid. With a bit more age will come some perspective.

The report they are drawing their findings from found no wrongdoing on Google's part:

"We found that Ames officials accurately reported H211’s relationship with the Center to DLA-Energy but DLA-Energy believed H211 was performing only NASA-related missions and therefore was entitled to fuel at the cost-plus-surcharge rate. We found that a misunderstanding between Ames and DLA-Energy personnel rather than intentional misconduct led to H211 receiving the discounted fuel rate for flights that had no NASA-related mission." (emphasis mine).

So more like buying gas from a gas station which had accidentally listed the wholesale price than siphoning gas from a friend.

There's about as much chance of that happening as you revising your theory when it doesn't match observations: practically none.

I'm wondering what Talbott and Thornhill have been reading, or perhaps I should say what they have been smoking, because their description of the observations does not match the ESA's. It has lots of water and a dust trail, and while there has been some unexpected magnetic activity, there isn't some electrical bogeyman waiting to jump out at the lander — and it's not like the scientists involved aren't paying attention to such things. Apparently in order to believe in EU not only do you need to ignore a century's worth of physics (including Einstein), you also have to ignore current observations and make up your own. This is beyond intellectually dishonest and far into flat-earth crackpot territory.

You know. I tried to write a calm, and sensible reply to this poisoned barb you have thrown at me, and I just couldn't do it.

Let's just say that you are simply wrong on a good many of your points.

Here are just a few of them:

1) You make the mistake in asserting that people leaving earth as political asylum seekers would be doing so without something already being there. Even the puritans didnt leave england en-mass until AFTER the colonies in north america were fully settled and productive. --What you are are failing to grasp, is that there would not be such a place to go, if nobody makes the damned colony; The puritans would never have left england, because the colonists never would have preceded them. Did all the irish people fleeing ireland after the potato fammine come with metric fucktons of food and other things? No-- they sold themselves into indentured servitude to come here, with just the clothes on their backs. Why? because there was a means of producing food over here already.

There is nothing inconsistent with wishing to create a colony, with the intention of permitting political asylum once it is able to accept such persons. Granting asylum is a great way to get desperately needed genetic variability and skill diversity for such a project once it is ready to accept such people. The notion that the colony would be built by political refugees when they have no money or resources with which to do it is a strawman of your own construction-- Good thing it isnt what I advocated! Beat that strawman all you want, his stuffing coming out does not impact my position in the slightest.

2) You make the implicit assumption that no industrial capacity or food production would ever be possible on-site at mars. This is a very laughable position to take, so laughable in fact, I wonder from what body of information you produced it from. Data from multiple rovers at very diverse areas on the martian surface has revealed very useful and valuable minerals. Not terribly useful here on earth mind-- we have water, nitrogen and oxygen in copious abundance-- But for martian colonists, those minerals would be more valuable than gold. Do you have any idea how much water is chemically stored in gypsum? Here's a hint-- Gypsum has the chemical formula CaSO4(2 H2O) It's a hydrated sulfate mineral. For every mole of gypsum, 2 moles of water can be produced. The process to do so? Heat it up to about 500 degrees F, and catch the vapor that comes out. Is gypsum a common soil mineral on mars? Apparently so-- Nasa's rovers have found very large veins of the shit.

In fact, There are entire expanses of sand dunes made of gypsum sand in the northern hemisphere of mars.

To quote the linked page:

Observations from orbit had detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. The origin of that windblown gypsum is, however, uncertain.

"It is a mystery where gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, however, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars."

Somehow I don't think getting sufficient water will be a problem for a martian colony. Harvesting that dune field alone would produce enough water to supply a massive colony site.

Know what else the rovers found? Ammonium salts at rock nest. The linked paper does give the caveat that the sample could be evolved methane and not reduced nitrogen, and suggests further study with the laser spectrometer. However, the gas form of nitrogen i

You know. I tried to write a calm, and sensible reply to this poisoned barb you have thrown at me, and I just couldn't do it.

Let's just say that you are simply wrong on a good many of your points.

Here are just a few of them:

1) You make the mistake in asserting that people leaving earth as political asylum seekers would be doing so without something already being there. Even the puritans didnt leave england en-mass until AFTER the colonies in north america were fully settled and productive. --What you are are failing to grasp, is that there would not be such a place to go, if nobody makes the damned colony; The puritans would never have left england, because the colonists never would have preceded them. Did all the irish people fleeing ireland after the potato fammine come with metric fucktons of food and other things? No-- they sold themselves into indentured servitude to come here, with just the clothes on their backs. Why? because there was a means of producing food over here already.

There is nothing inconsistent with wishing to create a colony, with the intention of permitting political asylum once it is able to accept such persons. Granting asylum is a great way to get desperately needed genetic variability and skill diversity for such a project once it is ready to accept such people. The notion that the colony would be built by political refugees when they have no money or resources with which to do it is a strawman of your own construction-- Good thing it isnt what I advocated! Beat that strawman all you want, his stuffing coming out does not impact my position in the slightest.

2) You make the implicit assumption that no industrial capacity or food production would ever be possible on-site at mars. This is a very laughable position to take, so laughable in fact, I wonder from what body of information you produced it from. Data from multiple rovers at very diverse areas on the martian surface has revealed very useful and valuable minerals. Not terribly useful here on earth mind-- we have water, nitrogen and oxygen in copious abundance-- But for martian colonists, those minerals would be more valuable than gold. Do you have any idea how much water is chemically stored in gypsum? Here's a hint-- Gypsum has the chemical formula CaSO4(2 H2O) It's a hydrated sulfate mineral. For every mole of gypsum, 2 moles of water can be produced. The process to do so? Heat it up to about 500 degrees F, and catch the vapor that comes out. Is gypsum a common soil mineral on mars? Apparently so-- Nasa's rovers have found very large veins of the shit.

In fact, There are entire expanses of sand dunes made of gypsum sand in the northern hemisphere of mars.

To quote the linked page:

Observations from orbit had detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. The origin of that windblown gypsum is, however, uncertain.

"It is a mystery where gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, however, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars."

Somehow I don't think getting sufficient water will be a problem for a martian colony. Harvesting that dune field alone would produce enough water to supply a massive colony site.

Know what else the rovers found? Ammonium salts at rock nest. The linked paper does give the caveat that the sample could be evolved methane and not reduced nitrogen, and suggests further study with the laser spectrometer. However, the gas form of nitrogen i

Not exactly. I mean this http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dr...
Wing warping is more like twisting the airfoil while the MAW actually changes the airfoil.

Why is formal logic not mandatory in grades 9 through 13 ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...

""Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Nasa Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data"

When a 150 year melt cycle is "right on time" scientists question how this can happen in a warming world.

Hansen may have had something to do with the headline of this article "Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt"

Technically it's correct, there were no satellites 150 years ago. ut an unprecedented cyclical event?

Mr. Hansen left NASA shortly after this - he's the guy that complained the government was muzzling scientists. Personally I think he's clinically insane. Turns out he and the other tat were paid by a company owned by a company that Al Gore ownss to raise a fuss. As a liberal i'm appalled and no longer have faith in the Democratic party (not an uncommon sentiment, and fear not I have less faith in the mean spirited party of thugs formetly kown as th GOP) and fuckit I may move to Scotland or Norway. Their governments are not perfect but atleast they'r not for sale.

Why is formal logic not mandatory in grades 9 through 13 ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...

""Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Nasa Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data"

When a 150 year melt cycle is "right on time" scientists question how this can happen in a warming world.

Hansen may have had something to do with the headline of this article "Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt"

Technically it's correct, there were no satellites 150 years ago. ut an unprecedented cyclical event?

Mr. Hansen left NASA shortly after this - he's the guy that complained the government was muzzling scientists. Personally I think he's clinically insane. Turns out he and the other tat were paid by a company owned by a company that Al Gore ownss to raise a fuss. As a liberal i'm appalled and no longer have faith in the Democratic party (not an uncommon sentiment, and fear not I have less faith in the mean spirited party of thugs formetly kown as th GOP) and fuckit I may move to Scotland or Norway. Their governments are not perfect but atleast they'r not for sale.

Nope, read up on the Iridium system, which already exists. You don't need satellite tracking, you can use an omnidirectional antenna to communicate with low earth orbit. You just need more power.

That said, Iridium ping times are horrible, but that's more a function of 1980s technology than the speed of light or information theory.

'Was the universe born spinning?' http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar... "The universe was born spinning and continues to do so around a preferred axis" Our Universe spins around a preferred axis because it is a larger version of a galactic polar jet. 'Mysterious Cosmic 'Dark Flow' Tracked Deeper into Universe' http://www.nasa.gov/centers/go... "The clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward Centaurus/Hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain. Evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from Earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow. "We detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot state as strongly as we'd like whether the clusters are coming or going," Kashlinsky said." The clusters are headed along this path because our Universe is a larger version of a polar jet. It's not the Big Bang; it's the Big Ongoing. Dark energy is dark matter continuously emitted into the Universal jet.

where they could remain for a period of time gathering astronomical data

eye roll

I'm not sure I understand your sarcasm. It sounds like they are basically trying to come up with the next generation of the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. High altitude astronomy produces ground-breaking results. Do you have some sort of objection to investment in basic science research?

or watching environmental changes on the ground.

double eye roll

You're not one of those guys who thinks that global warming is some sort of liberal conspiracy, are you? Again, this is about basic research. Why would you object to that? Perhaps you could explain a bit more about your thinking on this?