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Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


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Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


--

Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


--

Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


--

Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


--

Well, it took ages, but I found a series of UV measurements. It's from a satellite, so presumably that cuts out the effect of clouds, pollution, etc.

Global UV on the 10th
Global UV on the 11th
Global UV on the 12th
Global UV on the 13th
Global UV on the 14th
Global UV on the 15th (well, it'll be there tomorrow (Saturday))

Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.

I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.

And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!


--

I was looking all over trying to find a really good link that i had read about flywheel stored energy systems. I am sorry I couldn't find it. To sumarize it was about some engineer who was out to make stored energy systems for cars based upon the use of a bunch of flywheels. I am really surprised that nobody else mentioned flywheels as the /. community is usually so up on science and new tech. for the curious here is an article at NASA's site about thier research on it. And here is some really good info on a hideously designed site. If someone finds the link i was talking about with the slick looking cars on flywheel systems please post it! Thanks :)

You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.

You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.

In the interim we have managed to scrape together enough Pu-238 to meet NASA's needs by using the remaining stock from the cold war days and by purchasing it from Russia. Improvements in the efficiency of the RTG's have reduced the requirements for Pu-238. The recent Casini mission, however, required nearly 35 kg.

There are proposals on the table to produce Pu-238 in Department of Energy research and test reactors. Analysis has shown that they can produce up to 5 kg per year which NASA states is sufficient for future mission. Another alternative that is currently being considered it the restart of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) for isotope production, including Pu-238. DOE is expected to make a decision on FFTF in the near future. It's also possible to produce Pu-238 in commercial power reactors, but there is little support for this.

I sincerely hope that problems in procuring Pu-238 do not impact future NASA missions.

Temperature is also an issue - in the range I just mentioned, temperature ranged from -230F at the top to 306F at the bottom.

Pressure is also an issue for balloons - and the pressure ranged from .5 bar at the top, to 21 bar at the bottom. That's 21 times Earth atmospheric pressure.

Not being a balloonist, I don't know if you can construct a balloon that would be functional in these circumstances, but the environment would certainly be extreme.
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Look at the F-16 and the fly-by-wire system...

Let's not forget that befor the *official* "Falcon" nickname, test pilotes refered to it as "lawn-dart" (100% true).

Systems based on interia and gyroscopes have been in use on commercial aircraft from the very beginning.

True, yet their calibration must be done in an extremly precise way. Their has been numerous reports of inertial aviation computer going of course, just because some ground crew were refulling the plane when the system was calibrated. That is also why inertail navigation is constantly rechecked against onboard star mapers.
My point beeing that, trying to calibrate such a thing on earth is already quite a problem, now just try and do the same on a planet we know very little about, a couple of million of miles away.

I'm really the first to say that we should put more funding into space exploration and Fundamental research. I'm sure, we can all imagine the 'commercial' spinoffs making an AI that can fly a chopper on some planet that's got a LAG of over an hour.

But I think that there is one thing that was not mentioned in the article, and that is the amount (or actually the lack) of data we have on Titan.
Look at the huge amount of trial and error testing that had to be done to get to valid helicopter design here no earth, where we can measure almost every variable that compose the complex notion of flying a rotating wing design. Even the prototype helicopter from Carnegie Mellon, uses technology that has been designed from, and for earth specs. BTW if you want to check out Carnegie Mellon's helicopter project, here is a link

If you want to have a look at a complex AI piloting an acutal spaceship, you can go and checkout the DeepSpace 1 prob. Which among other things is a real test bed for a lot of NASA's technology.

Murphy(c).

Too true. At a fraction of the cost of most national welfare or medical programs, we find out more about how the universe works, and get awesome technological spin-offs. And if eye-candy can help provide that, all the better. Scientists traditionally are weak on promoting the benefits of technology, but we should be able to provide lowest-common-denominator type material for the masses.

As for the benefits, let's see: satellites (communication, weather forecasting, environmental work, GPS), and quartz watches to name a few. For an economists persepctive, try a 43% rate of return on investments in Nasa up to 1975 (not sure if they mean cumulative, annual, or compounded annual. At 43%, who really cares).

It would be nice to generate excitement in science, and help drive more young people into a science-based career (as well as having more science jobs out there). Exploring the limits of our solar system and reaching into space are a great way of doing this.

Darren

Nasa's press release is here. It basically states that the launch was successful and that for the next few weeks they will be testing the module before they let Zvezda dock itself with the rest of ISS.

Nasa's press release is here. It basically states that the launch was successful and that for the next few weeks they will be testing the module before they let Zvezda dock itself with the rest of ISS.

NASA Administrator Dan Goldin looked like some sort of plantation owner...

Funny you should mention that, because the photo of STS-106 astronauts Wilcutt and Altman on the Shuttle update page looks like an outtake from "Strange Brew" or some similar lowbrow buddy flick. [STS-106, launching in Sept, will install Zvezda on the ISS]

Suddenly I'm struck by the remarkable resemblance between NASA's antics and SCTV. The lost Mars missions, and all the rest would fit perfectly into a "Second City Space Administration" with Daniel Goldin as "Guy Caballero".

In fact, that wouldn't be a bad revenue stream. SNL is still raking in the bucks, even though it's longer in the tooth than John Glenn. SCASA could never be nearly as tired. [This revenue model has been a natural, but overlooked, option since the second season of Miami Vice, when the budget per episode was more than the annual budget of the real Miami police unit it was -loosely- based on]

Innovation, man! To heck with this insistence on dignity! An irreverent comedy could get the memes and the dinero (as in bucks, not Robert) rolling.

don't moderate up, google's everybody's friend

It's not exactly charity, but the most fulfilling computer-related not-for-profit work I've done is to create a simple web page on stars and constellations. It started as a hobby, but it turned into a service when I put my email address on the page. For a while I was answering up to 50 email questions per week, mainly from students and curious adults. It had some ego-boo too (I was referenced in a textbook, and my pages are often linked from Astro Pic of the Day) but the best part is the gratitude I get from people whose questions I answered.

Lately, I've had to remove my email address from the page while I am finishing up my thesis (and to avoid spam), but I hope to get back to it soon.

If you have a particular area of knowledge or passion, share it with others online. It's rewarding in both you and your readers. A particular area that seems to be in BIG demand is online lesson plans for elementary school teachers. I used to get constant requests for such tools.

"Mass Fraction" means you're lucky to get a couple of percent productive payload because you're using a newtonian reaction drive. Unfortunately that's all we know how to do at the moment. But it means you throw 95% of yourself away to get to mars, and then 95% of what's left away to get back.

Clearly the corolory here is you have to start with a lot of stuff, and that's what makes space expensive.

The fault isn't with government or big business, it's with our current state of ignorance of useful physics. What NASA needs to do is more of what it's doing a tiny bit of right now, and that's finance radical new propulsion concepts.

Check out NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program.

Yeah, sure it sounds like star-trek, but remember that landing on the moon sounded exactly like the most fanciful science fiction only a few decades before. Get over reaction drive limitations, and then we're going places! . Keep throwing yourself away to go somewhere, and you're staying firmly at home.

Here's a link: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/offic e/pao/History/x-33/dc-xa.htm I can't find any of the movies online anymore, but they are probably hiding somewhere.

Anway, here are some links:

• Heat Island Group
• The Use of NOAA AVHRR Data for Assessment of the Urban Heat Island Effect
• The Urban Environment
• Cities Are Heat Islands

disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan. picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. ev en if th e parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.

In particular, it has a link to this site, which tells all about solar sailing. It has an introduction section with "Solar Sailing 101". It should explain your questions.

I dunno... Here at least we are learning to communicate with animals, which have a great deal more wisdom than people tend to give them credit for.

You want a shithole siphoning piles of money? Try this one.

(a) Fusion don't work yet.

That's as may be, but NASA has said that fusion reactions are actually a bit easier to start and maintain at cooler temperatures with Helium-3, and that its rarity on Earth is what's kept scientists from considering it as a viable source of fuel. We may not be putting "Mr. Fusion" boxes on our cars within the next five years, but the technology may be a couple of steps closer this way. Check out this NASA webpage on Helium-3 energy production, which outlines the possibility of building a commercial H3 fusion reactor in 20 years time.

b) The shuttle can't go to the moon and back.

Yeah, that's right! Neither can a 1946 Ford. That's why we wouldn't be going to the moon in one, let alone go back. We've got 20 years until we'll really need the stuff, and by then, things like NASA's X-33 RLV program will be just the thing we need for a job like this.

So you see? There is hope for humanity, after all!

/* Steve */

(a) Fusion don't work yet.

That's as may be, but NASA has said that fusion reactions are actually a bit easier to start and maintain at cooler temperatures with Helium-3, and that its rarity on Earth is what's kept scientists from considering it as a viable source of fuel. We may not be putting "Mr. Fusion" boxes on our cars within the next five years, but the technology may be a couple of steps closer this way. Check out this NASA webpage on Helium-3 energy production, which outlines the possibility of building a commercial H3 fusion reactor in 20 years time.

b) The shuttle can't go to the moon and back.

Yeah, that's right! Neither can a 1946 Ford. That's why we wouldn't be going to the moon in one, let alone go back. We've got 20 years until we'll really need the stuff, and by then, things like NASA's X-33 RLV program will be just the thing we need for a job like this.

So you see? There is hope for humanity, after all!

/* Steve */

Thirty years later, there hasn't been much progress. Chemical rockets are still too weak, nuclear propulsion doesn't get much attention, and none of the other propulsion concepts are even close to working. That's where we are today - stuck.

Thirty years later, there hasn't been much progress. Chemical rockets are still too weak, nuclear propulsion doesn't get much attention, and none of the other propulsion concepts are even close to working. That's where we are today - stuck.

I find /. Science/Space news strange at times, they post things like this which is far from news, but my note on the first high-resolution imaging to GRB host galaxies which is truly great stuff, was rejected.

I find /. Science/Space news strange at times, they post things like this which is far from news, but my note on the first high-resolution imaging to GRB host galaxies which is truly great stuff, was rejected.

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
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The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
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The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

The problem is, in 10,000 people won't know what to make of it.
___

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Actually, according to this sciam article, they already located one gamma ray burst....

Also possibly of interest is yesterdays astronomy picture of the day.

I just got an e-mail from NASA that sort of retracts the news from BBC. I believe this more than BBC. The press release can be found at:

NASA Today/A>

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

I just got an e-mail from NASA that sort of retracts the news from BBC. I believe this more than BBC. The press release can be found at:

NASA Today/A>

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

If there is something about panspermia - and there probably is - we have already contaminated half the System, in typical Earth fashion :-)

Think about it: If a piece of rock from Mars can travel to Antarctica, what prevents a hunk of our continental crust, filled with bacteria - which are very good at surviving in harsh climates - from impacting on Mars? Bacteria have been around for some 100 million years, more than enough time for the occasional dinosaur - killer comet whose impact offers a ride out of the gravity well.

I for one would not be surprised to find some E. coli look-alikes on Mars (I don't know about the possibility of low - energy trajecories to places in the Outer System, though)

A unique USAF space vehicle is the ASAT (Air-Launched Anti-Satellite Missile). Unlike the other vehicles on display here, this device can be used to destroy orbiting satellites that threaten the U.S.

The Space Test Program spacecraft P78-1 was launched on February 24, 1979 and continued operating until September 13, 1985, when it was shot down in orbit during an Air Force ASAT test.

DSN = the Nasa Deep Space Network, and it's the reason why 3rd parties don't take over deep space satalites when they're done. If there were other installation similar to these facilities (a compeating interest in another country, perhaps) then your plan makes sence. It is the eyes and ears of people here on earth and without it, the satelites would just be another rock in space.
___

See this link to read how microbes survived on the moon after a lunar missions.

Jeff

I've read all 3 Mars books through twice, and didn't get bored at all. I now feel like I know the geography of Mars better than that of the Earth. Antarctica was good too, but Robinson didn't dwell on Mars analogies. The Dry Valleys sound like a fairly close analogue to Mars, except for the atmospheric pressure, which makes all the difference.