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Falcon Heavy will be able to put kilos into orbit. The entire space station is listed at 419,455 k. So this thing could throw the entire space station up in just 8 launches. (including mass only, ignoring physical size limitations) AND Falcon Heavy will be the cheapest $/lbs rate of all time, at less than $1000/pound as compared to the shuttle's over $8000 per pound. It might have been able to do it for less than it cost to do a single shuttle mission.

Two spacecraft orbit the Sun in the same path as the Earth, one leading and one following. Each uses a disc to block direct light but capture incredible images of solar events and weather. Stereo A and B. Audacious? No. Science? Si, mon. From NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

[...] send robots out to explore other planets, and let real science move on.

What's sad is that you figure that the robots are doing "real science."

Remember that "real science" is pretty boring to most people. The conclusions are interesting but the actual study, hypotheses, testing--y'know, that whole "scientific method" stuff--is pretty damn dull unless it's something you're specifically interested and knowledgeable about. There is plenty of "real science" happening on ISS but since most of us don't understand it, we poo-poo it. Heck, just look at the information returned on the last Dragon capsule. Boring shit, right?

The robots, as you imply, are doing exploration, which is a bit more exciting. "What's over the next hill?" is a far more exciting question than "Why is that hill there?" The first one is exploration. The second one is "real science."

NASA's Earth Observing System produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.

Nope, what's new is ignoring all the observations to further a political agenda.

From NASA's inspector general

After NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, the Russian Soyuz became the only vehicle capable of transporting crew to the ISS. Between 2006 and 2008, NASA purchased one seat per year. Beginning in 2009, NASA started purchasing six seats per year. The price per seat has increased over the years from $22 million in 2006, to $25 million in 2010, to $28 million in the first half of 2011. During the second half of 2011, the price per seat jumped to $43 million.4 The price has continued to increase. For example, the price of purchased seats for launches in 2014 and 2015 are $55.6 million and $60 million, respectively. In April 2013, NASA signed another deal with Russia valued at $424 million for six additional seats to carry NASA astronauts to the Station during 2016 through June 2017, and the price per seat has increased to $71 million.

NASA's Earth Observing System produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.

It's great for NASA that Kepler will continue operating in the ecliptic plane, where the newly discovered exoplanets might also see the Earth transit the Sun!

The bad news behind the headline is that Kepler's second life will be "community driven", which is a polite way of saying there is essentially no funding for science, just operations. The Senior Review Panel report (pdf) notes:

"The operation of the nation's space borne observatories is so severely impacted by the current funding climate in Washington that ... American pre-eminence in the study of the Universe from space is threatened to the point of irreparable damage if additional funds cannot be found to fill the projected funding gaps."

The response from NASA (pdf) acknowledges:

"The Kepler mission extension is approved for FY 2015-FY 2016 for K2 operations at a 10-percent reduction from the requested level; the full request cannot be accommodated within the constrained budget conditions."

If you love what Kepler has done, you can help support some of the scientists behind the discoveries through their Non-profit Adopt a Star program.

It's great for NASA that Kepler will continue operating in the ecliptic plane, where the newly discovered exoplanets might also see the Earth transit the Sun!

The bad news behind the headline is that Kepler's second life will be "community driven", which is a polite way of saying there is essentially no funding for science, just operations. The Senior Review Panel report (pdf) notes:

"The operation of the nation's space borne observatories is so severely impacted by the current funding climate in Washington that ... American pre-eminence in the study of the Universe from space is threatened to the point of irreparable damage if additional funds cannot be found to fill the projected funding gaps."

The response from NASA (pdf) acknowledges:

"The Kepler mission extension is approved for FY 2015-FY 2016 for K2 operations at a 10-percent reduction from the requested level; the full request cannot be accommodated within the constrained budget conditions."

If you love what Kepler has done, you can help support some of the scientists behind the discoveries through their Non-profit Adopt a Star program.

There are two other contributing factors I can think of, the density of air is lower at 30,000 feet (it's roughly 2.5 times less dense) and the aircraft is moving through that fluid at a far greater speed than a sub moves through water, meaning there is a much greater volume of air to absorb heat.

Don't forget lobster eyes, very cool design - lots of square mirror boxes. They are even planning an x-ray analog of them at Nasa
And the lowly scallop has a very nice set up to about 100 reflectors 1 mm in size.

Remember when the existence of black holes was still hotly debated, back in the '70's? Observations on an very small object with a mass of more than 1.4 solar masses (the theoretical upper limit for neutron stars) resulted in a general acceptance that it was a black hole,

1.4 Msun is the maximum mass of a white dwarf not a neutron star.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
It's therefore basically the _minimum_ mass of a neutron star.

To show that something is a black hole you have to show that it's more than
the theoretical maximum mass of a neutron star which is higher. That's not very well determined but is something like 3 Msun.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/d...

You often see JPL listed as being a 'NASA Center', but if you look at the JPL website, it says 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' followed by 'California Instutite of Technology' (but next to the NASA meatball logo, and in the nasa.gov domain).

I've heard some people joke that if an orbital insertion is successful, then it's "CalTech's JPL" and when something goes wrong, it's "NASA's JPL". Can you explain exactly what the relationship is between the three entities?

The thing is: it isn't clear at all. There is no consensus, only a lot of media hype. It may not be a conspiracy, but it is certainly not PC to doubt - what's the latest term? - "climate disruption.

Here's the abstract from an article in the NASA archives that shows Antarctic ice mass increasing during the same period. Somehow the alarmists don't cite this one...

Which view is correct? Hard to say - I'm no climate expert - but I certainly do have the feeling that coverage of the issue in the mainstream media is driven more by politics than by science.

The thing is: it isn't clear at all. There is no consensus. Here's the abstract from an article in the NASA archives that shows Antarctic ice mass increasing during the same period. Somehow the alarmists don't cite this one...

Good point. I just mentioned it because Antarctic ice extent was one of the measurements that was used for scaremongering in the past.

If we want to talk about actual ocean rice, then we need to look at the NASA data. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...

NASA says that the mean sea level has been rising at the rate of 3.2 mm per year trend since 1993. At that rate, it will take 952 years before the ocean rises 10 feet. So, if you decide to hang out on the beach for the rest of your life, be prepared to lift your beer a few inches.

Also, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Funny, Cool, and Educational. How can you do better than that? Correlation does not equal causation: http://tylervigen.com [Lonny Eachus]

Important note, folks: the preceding tweet shows exactly what Climate Alarmists do to scare you. Yes, really. http://tylervigen.com [Lonny Eachus]

Don't forget to point out THIS. Alarmists have made a very big habit out of taking anything that might correlate to increase in CO2 and call it "proof". That's just nonsense. A positive correlation does not imply cause. Period. It can only suggest, and often not even that. [Jane Q. Public]

@JunkScience @SteveSGoddard Like this. It’s almost too good. http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=2719 [Lonny Eachus]

HERE is another example, and HERE is another. Look! Correlation of 0.99! Obviously, golf causes consumption of cheese, and pets cause football. [Jane Q. Public]

$$ spent, spectator sports (US) vs $$ spent, pets (US) Correlation: 0.997203 Obviously, pets cause football. http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=8 [Lonny Eachus]

Jane Q. Public and Lonny Eachus wrongly imply that NASA and dozens of scientific organizations display total ignorance of science.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.g...

Obviously since this data was taken during a time period where the planet both WARMED and CO2 increased, we should pump even more CO2 into our biosphere. CO2 is a plant fertilizer!

Actually an infinite universe does not contradict the Big Bang theory.
One explanation with a handy diagram (authored by an astrophysicist) http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wri...
Another more comprehensive answer is here https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...
And something from NASA for shiggles http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/univ...

I'm certain there are plenty of other discussions of the topic. AFIK we are not yet certain that the universe is('nt) infinite, we don't even know its shape, but it is possible for it to be infinite.

Currently observational evidence points to an extremely flat universe (as flat as we can measure as yet), implying its size is tremendously larger than the Hubble Volume and allowing for an infinite universe (but obviously doesn't require it).

The Universe is NOT infinite. It is unimaginably, astronomically ginormous, but decidedly finite. If it was infinite, the Big Bang theory couldn't work.

That is not correct. The preponderance of data are consistent with an infinite flat universe and there is nothing about an infinite flat universe that is inconsistent with big bang cosmology.

See, for example:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/unive...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

If SpaceX wants to develop a reusable rocket that's their business. If they expect NASA or other countries to pay for it they will have to play by another set of rules.

Who said NASA even paid a dime for the reusable Falcon 9 program? So far as I can see, everything that SpaceX has done with this is internal funding alone and certainly isn't a part of any NASA program.

The only NASA funded reusable spacecraft program under development that I'm aware of is Project Morpheus. That is a damn cool project too, but has absolutely nothing at all to do with SpaceX but rather Armadillo Aerospace instead. There is of course the Space Shuttle, but this whole topic post has comparisons between the Falcon 9 and the Space Shuttle ad nauseum. The DC-X program is perhaps a little closer to what SpaceX is doing, but SpaceX never received funding from DC-X as well.

In other words, I sure hope you are willing to let SpaceX foot their own bill as you are claiming.

Maybe. Coal emits a ridiculous amount of radiation... Also, according to the Torch report, 60k people died from Chernobyl, which is a tragedy, but a drop in the bucket compared to coal.

"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...

Official NASA site - has video as well as current position.

Grey for me right now, which presumably means the ISS is out of signal. Perhaps better in 15 mins when it passes over Japan..

There's also the original NASA ISS livestream: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia...

Because "phantomfive" says so? No, really not. We can measure it directly these days, you know.

Because "phantomfive" says so? No, really not. We can measure it directly these days, you know.

He also promotes using nuclear energy as part of the solution.

Well, it is.

As much as we would all really love solar and wind to scale to a level necessary for global needs that is not going to happen with current technology. Its many decades off. Lots of science and engineering are needed to get solar there. We need something to bridge the gap between today and that future date where solar scales.

If not nuclear then its natural gas, oil and coal.

Even environmentalists are starting to realize this, including a co-founder of GreenPeace.
"Moore says that his views have changed since founding Greenpeace, and he now believes that using nuclear energy can help counteract catastrophic climate change from burning fossil fuels. Says Moore, "The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles." Moore also cites reports from the Clean Air Council that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. "Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2 emissions annually," says Moore. "Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely." Moore points out that the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. He predicts that advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future. According to Moore, British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, also believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Concerns about past accidents in the nuclear industry were also mentioned, as he claims the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as example, calling it "an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up". He also recognized the difficulty of dealing with nuclear waste."
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Gr...

Regarding nuclear waste from current reactors. 4th generation reactors can use this waste as fuel. And the waste from 4th gen is short lived. Hundred of years rather than tens of thousands.
http://www.ga.com/energy-multi...

NASA also thinks nuclear has greatly improved the environment.
"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...

NASA flies them as research planes: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ar...

...Radio is slower than light even in a vacuum...

It takes about 5 seconds of googling to disprove this statement.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/emspectrum.html

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/c120/emwave.html

"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...

"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...

Space-X was funded by NASA to develop Falcon-9. Elon Musk stated that they "would have" developed it anyway, with profits from Falcon-1, but Falcon-1 was not profitable. This is not controversial; it is a matter of record. I'm not sure why you think it wasn't.
Falcon 9 was funded by a space-act agreement signed in 2008, "Commercial Orbital Services Demonstration." http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jo...
At that point Falcon 9 did not exist; it was not yet even designed. The contract states:

"The purpose of this Agreement is to conduct initial development and demonstration phase of the commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) Project. Under this Agreement, Space X will receive milestone payments from NASA to develop and demonstrate vehicles, systems, and operations needed for Space X to perform earth to orbital space flight demonstration

(followed by list of capabilities required).

Notice the wording. They are contracted to develop the vehicle, and the payments under this design and development contract were made as the vehicle went through design process, with payments for successful design reviews. (A separate contract, commercial resupply, paid for the actual supply flights to the station.)

Again: this is not controversial. It is well known to anybody who was actually paying attention at the time to the boring details of who is paying. Jeff Foust at Space Review, for example, wrote:
http://www.thespacereview.com/...

"the two companies funded by NASA to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX... COTS, for NASA, has been a good thing: for an agency investment of about $800 million, it supported the development of two new launch vehicles, Antares and Falcon 9, and two cargo spacecraft, Cygnus and Dragon."

It does work, with some caveats. I was about to post that it wouldn't, and then remembered the first shuttle payload I worked on : http://istd.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo... which transferred helium between to dewars without pumps in a microgravity enuvronment. It's been a couple of decades, and I wasn't on the principal investigators team (I was carrier support), so I don't remember the details of how the transfer worked.

Not to overly criticrise your analogy, but I prefer nonfiction to fiction in my decision-making process.

This is a good analysis of NASA. It's a good oldie, but people should read it more often.

I would note that it was valid then, when it was written, it was valid when Columbia fell apart, and it is valid now.

And it is an EXCELLENT reason why Nasa shouldn't be messing with asteroid capture. Fortunately, it is more likely that our country will be glowing embers, than that NASA will see this accomplished. And I view that glowing embers bit as a negative, brought about by similar egos by similar wackos in OTHER government offices (including Putin's Russia).

But yes, I am very glad that other problems are likely to make this problem a moot point.

Thank you for making some sense today.

Although it is easy to prove that the Earth is older than 6,000 years I don't think we actually know how old the universe is. There is a new estimate that came out in 2013 so many people may not be aware of it. Before 2013 we estimated "that the Big Bang occurred between 12 and 14 billion years ago." that's uncertainty of over %16? Doesn't sound very confident to me. The good news is that the new measurement lands in the middle of the old estimate which is encouraging.

NASA says:
"How does WMAP data enable us to determine the age of the universe is 13.77 billion years, with an uncertainty of only 0.4%? The key to this is that by knowing the composition of matter and energy density in the universe, we can use Einstein's General Relativity to compute how fast the universe has been expanding in the past. "

Unfortunately, Einstein's General Relativity is not a bulletproof model and these estimates will have to be revised as our understanding of physics changes.

From my layman understanding; I think it's safe to say that the universe is at least 13 billion years old but it could be much older. It's the best guess we have.

SOURCE:
http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/univ...

The sun will do it for us. What happens to humans when all nuclear plants either shut down or explodes?

Leaving out that there is no way to protect what is essentially a massive antenna some several hundred thousand miles long, we'd have bigger problems.

Many antennas, each miles to hundreds of miles long, is hardly the same thing as a single antenna hundreds of thousands of miles long. You have 100,000 km of blood vessels great and tiny packed inside your body, but you don't drag around a train 100,000 km long when you move about.

The article of your first reference doesn't say there is "no way to protect"; it says forward looking measures can indeed be taken to mitigate the havoc. Your second reference talks about EMP from nuclear bursts concentrated within tiny time spans. The most damaging pulse effect E1 is over within one microsecond. E2 lasts up to one second, but is basically only damaging to structures already devastated by E1. E3 lasts several minutes and is the part to which which geomagnetic storms bear some resemblance. But the latter last hours, so they are nowhere near as concentrated.

The P in EMP stands for "pulse". A geomagnetic storm has qualities nothing like a pulse.

Leaving out that there is no way to protect what is essentially a massive antenna some several hundred thousand miles long, we'd have bigger problems.

Because back in the 70s, NASA was landing rovers the size of SUVs on Mars

Viking landers

And had orbiters around Saturn

Pioneer 11

And a mission to Pluto.

Voyager 1 could have been aimed on to Pluto, but exploration of Titan and the rings of Saturn was a primary scientific objective. This caused the trajectory to be diverted upward out of the ecliptic plane such that no further planetary encounters were possible for Voyager 1.

(JPL Voyager FAQ)

And probes in interstellar space

No, but let's not forget that the probes that are in interstellar space now were launched in the 1970s. The next comparable probe (New Horizons) wasn't launched until 2006. Quite a gap, no?

So, is NASA currently paying a nearly 3x premium to SpaceX just to get their technology off the ground or what? Not that I object to such long-term thinking, quite the opposite in fact, but I could swear the SpaceX contract was marketed as a cost-saving maneuver.

It says here that it currently costs $10,000 to get a pound of payload into orbit, but from TFA SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 launches, and if the current ~5000 pound payload is typical that works out to ~$27,000 per pound. ... .

That $10,000 number does not include the price of the spacecraft/satellite (that you are trying to put into orbit). The $10,000/lb refers to the scenario where the spacecraft/satellite is the payload. NASA never sent anything to the ISS for $10,000 per pound, as missions to the ISS require a spacecraft to contain the actual cargo. The shuttle supposedly used to cost around $20,000/lb to deliver cargo to the ISS even though it use "reusable" (really it was refurbishable.)

Furthermore, the $10,000/lb is just to get something into orbit. SpaceX also returns cargo from the ISS back to Earth. So for the money NASA gets a launch vehicle and a spacecraft capable of carrying cargo to and from the ISS. All at a lower price than anyone else can offer. It really is a deal, and they really are not paying 3x the "going rate." As a matter of fact, the closest competition is Orbital Sciences and the are more expensive and can't return cargo to Earth. SpaceX is the only company that can do that for more small amounts of cargo.

It says here that it currently costs $10,000 to get a pound of payload into orbit, but from TFA SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 launches, and if the current ~5000 pound payload is typical that works out to ~$27,000 per pound.

Uh, Dragon alone is nearly 10,000 pounds, plus fuel and cargo. You can't just throw a stack of frozen pizzas into orbit and have the astronauts grab them as the space station goes by.

If I remember correctly, the shuttle could deliver about 30,000 pounds to the space station for about $1,500,000,000. So even only taking account of the actual cargo mass, this is still significantly cheaper.

So, is NASA currently paying a nearly 3x premium to SpaceX just to get their technology off the ground or what? Not that I object to such long-term thinking, quite the opposite in fact, but I could swear the SpaceX contract was marketed as a cost-saving maneuver.

It says here that it currently costs $10,000 to get a pound of payload into orbit, but from TFA SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 launches, and if the current ~5000 pound payload is typical that works out to ~$27,000 per pound. Granted, assuming SpaceX perfects the reusable F9 that stands to potentially reduce launch costs 5 to 20-fold, easily making it one of the cheapest options available, even assuming that the current contract strictly covers launch costs and profit and without any R&D budget. But it's hardly a cost-saving maneuver in the short term.

Also, gotta love the phrasing in the summary "In another win for the company, as the L.A. Times reports, SpaceX also has launched a re-supply mission to the ISS." As though completing the mission that's actually paying the bills was just an added bonus.

That was his point, don't you think?
Wasting 30 seconds searching would have given you http://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/s..., or http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model... or http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/S... ... and many, many more.

Funny thing, the code, the data, the explanations, everything has been avalable for years, and yet so many of the public believe they're not. I wonder why that is?

It's like there was this massive political campaign against science. Of which you just became part of. Congratulations!

Case in point, the NASA shuttle avionics system. CMMI level 5 certified software development program, track record of 2 Sev-1 defects per year during development.

Timeline Analysis and Lessons Learned (see page 7/slide 6) You'll find that there were hundreds of unknown latent Sev-1 defects (potentially causing loss of payload and human life) and even ~150 defects 15 years after the program started.

The question isn't whether your team is capable or willing to fix the issue, you must acknowledge that there is nearly 100% certainty that there are unknown vulnerabilities in any software you write. The question goes back to whether a bug bounty program will ever cross the inflection point of a ROI chart.

Yes, Iapetus was photographed by Voyager 2 in 1981 (link to NASA image with metadata listed), and I would suspect that there were earth based images taken well before that (but none that would show any detail).

Who would have expected a summary on Slashdot to be carelessly wrong about something factual and easily verified?

Pluto has 5 moons now (latest one discovered in 2012): http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/pl...

Considering this is a non-problem to start with, we'd absolutely be doing more harm than good. This was the most brutal winter I've seen in over 20 years. It seems like every other day I was plowing more global warming off my driveway and we just got another 5" of global warming last night that I had to shovel off my walk.

Why do so many people confuse weather with climate?

Because they are related... And all the yahoos who stared talking about "Global Warning" messed up when they picked the terms they used. Plus Al Gore's movie was horrible....

Considering this is a non-problem to start with, we'd absolutely be doing more harm than good. This was the most brutal winter I've seen in over 20 years. It seems like every other day I was plowing more global warming off my driveway and we just got another 5" of global warming last night that I had to shovel off my walk.

Why do so many people confuse weather with climate?

some reason that link is back to /. try this one, http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/O...

I would think this is a waste considering they have Project Morpheus http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa... and also both SpaceX https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and Armadillo https://www.youtube.com/watch?... already have landers capable of this.