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It's the extended mission (to 2016) that may be cut short. The primary mission is already over, in 2012.

They still have 2 reaction wheels, and also thrusters, and a fair amount of fuel. In the press release there was a discussion of options, which "are likely to include steps to attempt to recover wheel functionality and to investigate the utility of a hybrid mode, using both wheels and thrusters."

My guess is that, if they cannot recover pointed mode, they will put the spacecraft in a slow roll, which (if it is slow enough) would be good enough to detect hot Jupiters, but not Earth-like planets.

"Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats," explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER's principal investigator. "When the upper atmosphere (or 'thermosphere') heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space."

Face it. The current state of science is pretty pathetic. Yes, we should be concerned. And yes, we should study the issues in an attempt to make better policy. But right now, we don't know enough upon which to base potentially damaging economic policy. So if someone says, "Lets find a way to discourage CO2 production", I'm fine with that. So long as the plan can be reversed should it prove to have been based on bad science.

When I hear "Panic! Do something now!" and that something involves irreversible legislation or treaties, I call bullshit. Someone is trying to pull another spotted owl scam and shove something through the courts to serve their own agenda.

It's not too hard to spot the ISS going overhead when the conditions are right - it's like a fairly bright star going at a fair speed across the sky. It's visible for just minutes at a time - it's sufficiently close to the Earth that you'd definitely need a hefty world-wide network to communicate directly.

(NASA ISS sightings site here.)

This is late, I know, but for the record IceCube (the most sensitive neutrino telescope) has announced that it did not see any neutrinos from this GRB,

This is why having humans onboard beats robotics. An event like this on an unmanned craft could be crippling. With humans onboard, it was quickly found and fixed.

Though it is only a question of time before robotics will be dexterous and smart enough to go out and replace a broken module like what just happened. In the meantime, Humans +1 | Robots +0.

Just ignore the prejudice in those comments, "beats robotics", "unmanned craft", "smart enough". :-(
It's Okay, Robonaut2, I still love you.

It wasn't in the wiki, but Jah-Wren Ryel posted this link above that seemed to have an ok explanation of their methodology.

> So this seems like a silly place to consider as a steady-state CO standard.

If you lived on the volcano, you'd know better. Wind direction is very consistent and it is precisely because the volcano is so large that contamination is rare - it only comes out of the vents and those are few and far between.

How do scientists know that Mauna Loa's volcanic emissions don't affect the carbon dioxide data collected there?

Regional Climate Change != Global climate change.

Global Surface Temperature Trends

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/

Sounds exactly like the data between 1960 and 1978! And nothing has changed since then! The temperature has stayed exactly the same! Oh, wait.

Graphs of natural phenomena are rarely linear. This is true for global temperature... this graph of average global temperatures, however, very clearly shows a trend. Picking small sections of data (portions of a graph) whilst ignoring the rest to try and make a point is scientifically dishonest at best (and wrong/completely inaccurate at worst).

Depends... if the place warms up enough before it starts cooling down, too much of the oceans will evaporate, and water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas so it will just keep getting hotter.

As water vapor becomes more prevalent it will begin to reflect more than it traps, so the net effect of massive cloud cover is going to be cooling, not runaway heating...

Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Clouds/ "The overall effect of all clouds together is that the Earth's surface is cooler than it would be if the atmosphere had no clouds."

If the temperature increases then the air can support a larger amount of water vapor without the humidity increasing, so it doesn't necessarily follow that there will be an increase in cloud cover.

I think that's just BBC mis-interpreting "Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI" as a copyright claim, in clear ignorance of 17 U.S.C. Section 105 (Copyright Act):

Generally, United States government works (works prepared by officers and employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties) are not protected by copyright in the U.S. (17 U.S.C. [Section] 105) and may be used without obtaining permission from NASA.

(*Yeah, Slashdot doesn't accept the ampersand entity code or the unicode character for the "section" mark. The 20th Century called. They wish to thank Slashdot for their continued support of last millennium's encoding standards.)

Anyway, I have this funny feeling BBC assumes copyright everywhere. (Suddenly, copyrights! Thousands of them!) I suspect they'd give themselves a hyperventilating panic attack if someone submitted some Public Domain material for them to display... "OMG, whose copyright is this!??!"

Oh you're so adorable. Keep chomping away at the sci-fi. "robonaut"! So Cute!

robonaut is a real thing.

What's more surprising is that is isn't a normal occurence given the amount of crap floating around up there.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40173

Today's NASA post is relevant
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"So, put a big sun shade and block the sun", you might say... well that's easier said than done

That's how Herschel worked actually.

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

See how it looks and where the solar panels are? That's why the Helium lasted as long as it did. It only had to cool it a little (electronic heat from detector, and some radiation).

Next-gen telescope that is a much larger version of Herschel, though it will not look in far infrared is James Webb. And it has multi-layered shield.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

If it were easy, anybody could do it, and it'd already be underway. Good summary of the issues. I think robotic dexterity is probably sufficient for the mission, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Hand and Robonaut2 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/robonaut.html The real challenge is software, the light lag at L2 would make realtime teleoperation infeasible. Darpa has teams working on recovery robots for terrestrial uses. I'm all for launching big mirrors also, but this one has already paid the energy cost of getting out of LEO. I think there are substantial savings here, especially if we use existing assets and pair the tug + robot at the ISS. The big issue that I can see is political. The JWST is already slated to be positioned at L2 and they won't want industrial debris floating around. May have to tug the Herschel out of range before recovering the good bits. An ion drive can do that, slowly.

According to NASA it will still last just three years.

"The instrument utilizes a multi-stage cooling system that will maintain the ultra-low temperature of the calorimeter array for more than 3 years in space."

Given the large amount of statistical analysis from testing results and the large amount of theoretical analysis, I'd be mightily surprised to find that computers were not used for this.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/ch4.htm#110

provides a bit of background.

For much of the testing and engineering fixes, it was largely slipsticks and blackboards, per some of the anecdotal personal remembrances found by search, and a lot of brain-box "sweat" from the wealth of practical engineers who worked on them.

I work on a NASA mission that studies tropical storms and attempts to understand their structure so they can be detected/avoided earlier. If it wasn't for the Global Hawk drones we use, pilots would be in danger from flying over the storms and flights would be much shorter (~8hr vs 24+hr) limiting the amount of science that can be done. Here's an article about the first year of three's results: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/missions/hs3/news/hs3-nadine.html

Scientists use uranium and plutonium in experiments. That doesn't mean they should be available to the general public.

I work on a NASA mission that studies tropical storms and attempts to understand their structure so they can be detected/avoided earlier. If it wasn't for the Global Hawk drones we use, pilots would be in danger from flying over the storms and flights would be much shorter (~8hr vs 24+hr) limiting the amount of science that can be done. Here's an article about the first year of three's results: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/missions/hs3/news/hs3-nadine.html

When I read the "100%" I had to go to TFA and read the whole thing ...

The Nasa article ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-144 ) says " ... with almost 100-percent efficiency " but the submit uses the hyperbole "... it uses 100 percent of all the available hydrogen to supply the protostars, leaving no waste ."

Imagine if it were as efficient as Slashdot:
The SlashStar Galaxy would recycle things so efficiently that it wouldn't need to produce any light of its own -- feeding only from the energy of other nearby systems. It would sometimes appear to have two of the same starticles in the same region, not due to gravitational lensing, but due to not caring enough about how it looks enough to even notice it had already processed the same material earlier. Every entity responsible for the formation of the SlashStar Galaxy itself would be either an invisible blacktroll of negativity or a nebulous "dark matter" hidden in its shadowy basements. Any direct observation would be near worthless without extensive research to discern what the measurements actually meant, but spending time on such a thing would be frowned upon -- Merely seeing what system it passed in front of next being the prime interest of the scientific community. Though you could not observe the individual components that make up the SlashStar Galaxy, you could measure their collective effect on their surroundings: Occasionally the maelstrom of minutia would align in a catastrophic conjunction causing a great funnel of forces that eject great streams of individual energetic particles, obliterating any unfortunate system in its path -- The SlashStar effect.

The SlashStar Galaxy: Dark energy from Nerds, Stuff made of strange matter.

When I read the "100%" I had to go to TFA and read the whole thing ...

The Nasa article ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-144 ) says " ... with almost 100-percent efficiency " but the submit uses the hyperbole "... it uses 100 percent of all the available hydrogen to supply the protostars, leaving no waste ."

Old military electronics always had wires laced (maybe they still do this, haven't been into any new equipment).

It's laced with a heavy waxed cloth, similar to extra wide tooth floss.

It's not just the military, and it's not dead. NASA still secure much/ most of the cabling on spacecraft using "lacing" (as our ITs call it on this side of the pond). Hmmm ; searching for the pages I saw not-long ago ... the knots (this article has been re-used several times, including by the Planetary Society, who at least cite their sources), there is a detailed NASA standard available here.

Different ITs (instrumentation technicians) I've worked with have had different styles. Some would lace ; some would use hundreds of (sefl-extinguishing) plastic tie-wraps. Generally I found that the lacing was neater, and more flexible. But most ITs didn't have the skill or training to use it (I'd struggle to follow that NASA spec ; but I'm not an IT.)

Someone mentioned aircraft mechanics damaging wiring that should be laced, by using tie-wraps. The NASA spec covers this : "9.6.2 Plastic straps are usually installed by tooling. Tooling shall be tension-controlled to meet the strap-tightening requirements previously stated (Requirement)." Which is exactly what my better ITs (not coincidentally, the lacing ones) have always specified too. Not that most of our staff paid the slightest attention, and since a tie-wrap torque-setting tool could cost several days pay, few of our managers would wear the cost of the tools for the field staff.

According to NASA it has yet to be determined what causes the bone degradation. The damage is also not "irreparable", though bone mass is not fully recovered. From the link:

The exact mechanism that causes the loss of calcium in microgravity is unknown. Many scientists believe that microgravity somehow causes bone to break down at a much faster rate than it is built up. However, the exact trigger for this rate change has not been found. Researchers are currently pursuing multiple lines of research, including hormone level, diet, and exercise, in order to determine exactly what causes -- and may control or prevent -- osteoporosis during space flight.

On Earth we see the same thing happen from time to time (my mother used to have it). Bones suddenly become weak to the point of breaking at the faintest impact. Doctor's orders were to drink lots of milk and other high-calcium foodstuffs, and it apparently went away to a degree that she was declared "cured". If (the lack of) gravity was the sole cause, we would not see this on Earth.

Congrats to orbital, even though launching a new rocket assembled from parts built by Russians by a company that is already working in the space business for many years seems a small accomplishment compared to what SpaceX pulled off. As is common on a first flight, the main payload is an instrumented dead weight. The coolest thing about this mission is IMO some small cubesats they launched as secondary payloads. These are some super cheap phonesats built by NASA, which are powered by a Nexus One or Nexus S. Data packets that could be received via amateur radio should hopefully appear here soon.

Also:
http://phonesat.org/packets.php

http://open.nasa.gov/plan/phonesat/

More details at both. I'm thinking it'll be fun to catch some of the packets as they fly by.

Our solar system resides in an area of our galaxy called the "Local Bubble", roughly a few hundred lightyears across. This region is very empty compared to the average interstellar medium in the galaxy, as a result of a large number of supernovae that blew out a sort of cavity in our interstellar neck of the woods long ago. In actual structure it's more of an irregular "Local Chimney" going right through the galactic disc rather than a spherical bubble.

As a result, pinning the cause of TFA's observations to a single supernova is not all that simple, as supernovae were very common in the Sun's general neighborhood in our galactic past..

Here's a nice graphic of the larger features in and around our local bubble. It's a fascinating subject if you enjoy understanding our location in a galactic context.

SPICE was a combination of earlier programs...

Right. Specifically, what I said was "SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation")."

So, you think they didn't use computers to solve numerical problems in 60s? Problems related to design? Is this what you are claiming?

The article said that the F-1 engines were not designed with computerized design aids. That is correct. CAD was just being developed-- in fact, it used to be called "Computer Assisted Drafting", long before it became a design tool-- and was not being used at MSFC back then.
http://www.cadbuilt.com/cad-drafting.html

I don't think you have much of a memory of what engineering was like in the 1960s. You might try some of these:
http://history.nasa.gov/monograph45.pdf
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/saturn_apollo/documents/F-1_Engine.pdf

SPICE was a combination of earlier programs...

Right. Specifically, what I said was "SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation")."

So, you think they didn't use computers to solve numerical problems in 60s? Problems related to design? Is this what you are claiming?

The article said that the F-1 engines were not designed with computerized design aids. That is correct. CAD was just being developed-- in fact, it used to be called "Computer Assisted Drafting", long before it became a design tool-- and was not being used at MSFC back then.
http://www.cadbuilt.com/cad-drafting.html

I don't think you have much of a memory of what engineering was like in the 1960s. You might try some of these:
http://history.nasa.gov/monograph45.pdf
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/saturn_apollo/documents/F-1_Engine.pdf

So they were able to use computers in the spacecraft to crunch numbers, just not on the Earth?

http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch1-2.html

http://history.nasa.gov/computers/contents.html

But adding a few numbers together to help along a design, that never happened? The military was happily using computers to help design parts for the B-58, but NASA was running around with crates of envelopes from Staples?

So they were able to use computers in the spacecraft to crunch numbers, just not on the Earth?

http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch1-2.html

http://history.nasa.gov/computers/contents.html

But adding a few numbers together to help along a design, that never happened? The military was happily using computers to help design parts for the B-58, but NASA was running around with crates of envelopes from Staples?

in case you're wondering its the kind of ion drive Deep Space 1 (NSTAR) , progressing technology but not some crazy new thing.

Actually, Deep-Space 1 was an ion engine-- specifically, an electrostatic ion thruster.

Solar Electric Propulsion for asteroid missions-- at least the ones I've been involved in analyzing-- tends to be Hall thrusters (aka "Stationary Plasma Thrusters"), which are higher thrust and use energy more efficiently (in terms of less energy per unit of impulse), but aren't as fuel efficient (in terms of more propellant per unit impulse). Some people call Hall thrusters a form of ion engine (after all, the exhaust is plasma, which is ionized), but it's a different kind of thing from classic ion engines.

http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://htx.pppl.gov/ht.html

That's what I figured it was. I'm somewhat disappointed NASA decided to hype it up with green terms. Solar! Electric!

"Electric propulsion" is a generic word for any sort of rocket engine in which the reaction mass is given energy from electricity (rather than, say, chemical energy). There are a whole array of different technologies to do this, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.

Solar electric propulsion narrows that down to specify that the power source is solar. This is in contrast to, say, Nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) in which a nuclear reactor is the power source, or conceptually beamed-power electric propulsion, in which the power comes from a laser or microwave beam. A SEP system is very different from a NEP, but actually, a SEP using an ion engine looks a lot like SEP using, say, a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (although the details will be different).

I'm sorry if you think that the term "Solar Electric Propulsion" is green. From my point of view, it's simply descriptive.

Magnetically shielded Hall Thrusters, infused with badass: http://gcd.larc.nasa.gov/2013/03/magnetic-shielding-of-walls-from-the-unmagnetized-ion-beam-in-a-hall-thruster/

The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.

These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.

Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov

The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.

These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.

Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov

The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.

These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.

Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov

This is a youtube video with history of discoveries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJsUDcSc6hE , http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/ - has more up to date info. There are two projects to find almost all asteroids in comining decades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-STARRS Pan STARRS already works to some degree see http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/ again, Those projects, which work now, are in process of upgrade http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2117062/Nasa-boosts-funds-telescope-team-hunting-dangerous-asteroids.html and then there will be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Terrestrial-impact_Last_Alert_System Europeans too have project to deploy some telescopes http://belissima.aob.rs/Conf2012/Milani_2012.pdf and Russians think of this too. There are also satellites which look for asteroids like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Surveillance_Satellite there are pending projects in Europe http://www.dlr.de/fa/Portaldata/17/Resources/dokumente/abt_17/projekte/Handout_Asteroid_Finder.pdf ( I think it can be resumed later ) and in Russia. There are consents http://b612foundation.org/sentinelmission/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Camera of satellites with infrared telescopes. combined we have: we know almost all big asteroids > 1 km ( 95% now ) , so probability the Earth is hit hard is less, than, say 30 years ago - because we know 95% of big asteroids are already do not hit us in near future ( btw asteroid which caused dino extintion was several km wide, we know maybe 99.9% of all such asteroids now). Currently we have quite a high rate of discovery ( which will be much bigger in 2020s due to planned big asteroid hunting telescopes ) so in 30 years - we have only unknown asteroids few meters wide ( similar to than in Chelyabinsk ), we could be faster if mentioned satellites are launched and they work as expected. But even if we keep just today's rate of discovery the worst we could unexpectedly get - is a destruction of a city, in 30 years even with the current rate ( given planned improvements though ) of discovery we will have very low probability to have even this unexpected event.

This is a youtube video with history of discoveries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJsUDcSc6hE , http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/ - has more up to date info. There are two projects to find almost all asteroids in comining decades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-STARRS Pan STARRS already works to some degree see http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/ again, Those projects, which work now, are in process of upgrade http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2117062/Nasa-boosts-funds-telescope-team-hunting-dangerous-asteroids.html and then there will be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Terrestrial-impact_Last_Alert_System Europeans too have project to deploy some telescopes http://belissima.aob.rs/Conf2012/Milani_2012.pdf and Russians think of this too. There are also satellites which look for asteroids like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Surveillance_Satellite there are pending projects in Europe http://www.dlr.de/fa/Portaldata/17/Resources/dokumente/abt_17/projekte/Handout_Asteroid_Finder.pdf ( I think it can be resumed later ) and in Russia. There are consents http://b612foundation.org/sentinelmission/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Camera of satellites with infrared telescopes. combined we have: we know almost all big asteroids > 1 km ( 95% now ) , so probability the Earth is hit hard is less, than, say 30 years ago - because we know 95% of big asteroids are already do not hit us in near future ( btw asteroid which caused dino extintion was several km wide, we know maybe 99.9% of all such asteroids now). Currently we have quite a high rate of discovery ( which will be much bigger in 2020s due to planned big asteroid hunting telescopes ) so in 30 years - we have only unknown asteroids few meters wide ( similar to than in Chelyabinsk ), we could be faster if mentioned satellites are launched and they work as expected. But even if we keep just today's rate of discovery the worst we could unexpectedly get - is a destruction of a city, in 30 years even with the current rate ( given planned improvements though ) of discovery we will have very low probability to have even this unexpected event.

Dwyer hopes his sensor aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, will provide more data."

The "sensor" referred to in the article appears to be the main instrument on board the Fermi spacecraft: the not very imaginatively named Large Area Telescope,
or LAT. This was developed by a very large international team, including NASA and the DoE in the US. However, Dwyer, as far as I know, was not
a member of this large team. (And I don't think the article or Dwyer actually claim this.)
The data obtained from the LAT are made public as soon as possible, usually within much less than 24 hours,
after being obtained. Anyone in the world is free to download and analyze these data.
http://www-glast.stanford.edu/
http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/
The Fermi satellite also carries the GBM - gamma-ray burst monitor, which has provided the majority of the results on gamma-rays
from lightning. The data from this instrument are also immediately public.
http://gammaray.msfc.nasa.gov/gbm/

Dwyer hopes his sensor aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, will provide more data."

The "sensor" referred to in the article appears to be the main instrument on board the Fermi spacecraft: the not very imaginatively named Large Area Telescope,
or LAT. This was developed by a very large international team, including NASA and the DoE in the US. However, Dwyer, as far as I know, was not
a member of this large team. (And I don't think the article or Dwyer actually claim this.)
The data obtained from the LAT are made public as soon as possible, usually within much less than 24 hours,
after being obtained. Anyone in the world is free to download and analyze these data.
http://www-glast.stanford.edu/
http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/
The Fermi satellite also carries the GBM - gamma-ray burst monitor, which has provided the majority of the results on gamma-rays
from lightning. The data from this instrument are also immediately public.
http://gammaray.msfc.nasa.gov/gbm/

TESS was competing w/ another exoplanet survey instrument:
http://finesse.jpl.nasa.gov/

Roughly the same amount of money, same launch date, different people working on it.

Good luck to the TESS team, too bad it wasn't FINESSE.

" Yet he still heads NASA"

Nope, he's a retired army man

He is the current Administrator of NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/summer/home/bolden-soi-quote.html

Fox News would be proud of you.

You are a fucking retard. Whenever you, and the likes of you, encounter someone who dislikes Obama, it's the old "product of Faux News" slam. It's ridiculous by now... I'm sure it makes you feel better to spout such trite idiotic lines, but any thinking individual can see that you are simply an unthinking fucking retard.

Obama said it:

... I just have to say pretty bluntly here: Weâ(TM)ve been there before. Buzz has been there. Thereâ(TM)s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe itâ(TM)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.

1st time ever I agree with Obama, there is no reason for government to spend money on a manned Moon mission. Of-course I would just dismantle all government programs, but that's a different story.

You can see my sig for a pretty good reason why USA cannot afford anything like the Moon program probably for a very very very long time.

Infinite density = zero size and something with zero size no longer exists. If something has a presence in spacetime it will have some form of dimension. You can't have "something" that isn't actually there.

Correct. the singularity is not an object, just a point in space.

Hydrogen has the opposite problem that if you don't drive, you lose power. It leaks. Through a half inch of solid steel.

According to Nasa, hydrogen will leak through microscopic pores in welds. But that is not the same as leaking directly through cast steel, and storage tanks can be cast as a single piece, without welds. Or a welded tank could have an additional layer of another material, such as aluminum, on the interior surface.

The container needs a hole in it to get the hydrogen in and out. It will leak through the connection to the plumbing.

That being said, casing the container as a single piece is a very very good idea.

Hydrogen has the opposite problem that if you don't drive, you lose power. It leaks. Through a half inch of solid steel.

According to Nasa, hydrogen will leak through microscopic pores in welds. But that is not the same as leaking directly through cast steel, and storage tanks can be cast as a single piece, without welds. Or a welded tank could have an additional layer of another material, such as aluminum, on the interior surface.

You do realize that the SRB bands were completely redesigned following Challenger? Not just add a third O ring and be done?

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/images/srb_mod_compare_3.jpg

A retainer band around the pins, longer pins, changing the mating feature (Clevis and Tang) from a U to more an S to further prevent gases from escaping. And joint heaters for cold weather.

The airline industry has a much better safety record than the nuclear power industry.They can tout the millions of people they don't kill each year because they intentionally work on safety. The nuclear industry argument is much the same argument that NASA used to launch Challenger. Just because it hasn't blown up yet means it's safe. We still haven't come up with a solution to deal with the tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel sitting in cooling pools at nuclear power plants all over the US. Sure can pretend that clean up of Fukushima and Chernobyl won't take decades if not centuries and will be off limits to human habitation for the same amount of time. But are you aware of all the nuclear accidents, military and civilian? Not to mention the worst nuclear contamination in US and Mexican history involving the recall of thousands of tons of contaminated steel. But you guys keep fucking that radioactive chicken.