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They would likely be flying above the clouds, if possible, so rain would not matter much, except for avoiding the major storms. The flight characteristics are likely similar to the http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-034-DFRC.html Pathfinder but with battery technology and materials improvements they will do better than the 14-15 hours aloft of pathfinder. Their nighttime flight was limited to 2-5 hours, likely due to the battery technology of the day. The trade off with this plane is that it also has to carry a passenger which likely more that makes up for the lighter batteries available today.

This represents the first solar-powered flights ever. Not the plane in this article.

I guess we've forgotten:

• Sunrise II - November 4, 1974
• Gossamer Penguin - May 18, 1980 (solar powered flight), August 7, 1980 (solar-powered public demo)
• Solar Challenger - July 7, 1981 (cross-Channel flight)
• Pathfinder - September 11, 1995 (reached record altitude of 50,500ft); April (or sometime later, article doesn't say) 1997 (set new record for both prop and solar powered planes with altitude of 71,530ft)
• Pathfinder-Plus - August 6, 1998 (set new altitude record for prop and solar plane: 80,201 ft)

From the article:

After seven years in the making, the Solar Impulse made its first real flight this morning from an airbase in Switzerland. The solar-powered plane got up to 5,500 ft in altitude and performed test maneuvers in order to see if the plane handled as well as simulations predicted.

Really? And this is impressive how? Seven years to reinvent existing technology? Puh-lease.

You can buy tickets to see the launch from the NASA causeway, which is the closest publicly-accessible viewing site. See http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/space-shuttle-launch-viewing-tickets.aspx. For the previous couple of launches, these sold out in minutes. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html lists some off-site viewing locations.
Personally, I think it's totally worth it.

Well, can't really come up with any sources of solar weather that don't have something to do with a government, government agency or enterprise that has government funding so...

Well, this little bit of solar weather isn't because its suddenly an active decade, its just a couple solar farts of CME and energy hitting the Earth.

The sunspots and activity is coming back up and they aren't sure why or how, which isn't unusual because no one is really sure how it all works. I can link and you can ignore it because it is from SOHO which is an implement of NASA and ESA, so Feds and EU together, oh noes.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2010_03_15/

And Space Weather shows the sunspot and SOHO shows the CMEs, not like its something the government is saying and there is no evidence of it happening.

http://spaceweather.com/
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/

And Space Weather shows the sunspot and SOHO shows the CMEs, not like its something the government is saying and there is no evidence of it happening.

http://spaceweather.com/
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/

Currently 380 ppm, and climbing, versus 280 ppm for millions of years.

Dude no, not even close.

http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2002-051.html

I thought so too, so I looked into it. Apparently this was the case in the early days of the program, and is still mostly the case for pilot astronauts. "At least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. Flight test experience is highly desirable." [1] (In practice, they all seem to be test pilots). This is not a requirement for Mission Specialist Astronauts.

I also suggest browsing some of the astronaut bios from the last couple batches. Of the last five pilot astronauts candidates, all five are former military test pilots. Among the twelve Mission Specialists selected during the same period, there is only one that I can confirm as a test pilot. At least four have a military background, and at least three were pilots before entering the program. At least two others were flight surgeons; this may well mean that they qualified as pilots

Really, though, they're all very well qualified in their respective fields. They may lose their jobs, sure, but I doubt they'll have trouble finding others.

Sorry for long answer. Forgot to write a reply right away.

You can look at early IPCC publications (from 1990). For example. Hansens's paper gives pretty good predictions which are statistically significant by now:

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf

My point is that science is a variation of what is called "Byzantine game theory". Mixed in with the earnest scientists are scientists who for whatever reason aren't generating earnest science. The proper Byzantine game has players who are deliberately deceptive. I use the term more loosely. Those defecting scientists could be, as my example implies, deliberately falsifying data. Or they could merely be heavily biased (which I think is the current problem, key parts of the science like past estimates of temperature are owned by heavily biased sources).

Then there is the problem of heavy dependency. For example, it doesn't make much sense to speak of thousands of papers concluding that the Earth is the warmest its ever been (as some have done) in hundreds of thousands of years, when the fact is that these estimates apparently come from four sources, the CRU, in the US NASA's GISS and the NOAA, and as I gather, some group in Japan. That apparently is it, no matter how many papers are published on the matter.

Two of those groups, the CRU and the GISS had in the recent past leaders who demonstrated heavy bias (Phil Jones who used to be head of the CRU and James Hensen who is current head of the GISS) and recently issued papers with a very aggressive take on climate (a CRU paper in the Fall of last year claimed a 6C rise in temperature by the end of this century, the GISS issued a paper that claims (less than three months into 2010) that 2010 will be "nearly certain" to be the warmest year since the GISS started collecting data.

This dependency is insidious. For example, while I was reading up on how the "hockey stick" was corrected (a paper by Michael Mann and Phil Jones around 2000, CRU-sourced research), I noticed in the previous link two things. First, the original people (plus some other authors) are claiming that their original work worked in a 2005 paper. The "independent confirmation" cited there however turns out to use the 2005 paper. So we have a hidden dependence on the same people who came up with the hockey stick mistake in the first place. This doesn't mean any of the work is incorrect or that the link above is the definitive study of corrections to the original Mann and Jones work. But it is a warning sign in my view. The science is not as sound as it should be and it is confusing serious scientists in the field.

. . . we pour gallons of chlorine into the water cycle through laundry bleach, swimming pools, and municipal water. We couldn't let just anyone make freon . . .

You are ignoring the facts. The chlorine in bleach, pools, and municipal water is chemically active and will combine with bacteria etc., rarely making it into the upper atmosphere where the ozone layer is. Refrigerants are designed to be stable, and the chlorine does make it into the stratosphere where it acts as a catalyst that destroys ozone molecules over and over again. Eventually it gets incorporated into a stable molecule and/or rains out.

"The contention of skeptics is that since the 'raw' data and the methodology for the normalization are not clearly known in some cases, this brings the data into question."

Bullshit. Data filtering procedures are clearly documented in MANY papers. They are not controversial at all.

The most commonly used model is here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ . Reimplementations and other models exist as well. Go on and play with this one, for example: http://code.google.com/p/ccc-gistemp/

I believe NASA is the government agency that handles "incidents" in the aviation world.

NASA administrates the Aviation Safety Reporting System.

This is nothing more than a compilation and reporting system. NASA doesn't investigate "incidents". They just compile and report the data in aggregate.

The original reports are confidential. Pilots are encouraged to file them, and fines and penalties are even waived for unintentional violations of aviation statutes and regulations, if the pilot files an ASRS report.

Of Feynman's passing, Feynman's main contribution was to explain that engineers knew of the problem, but the management misunderstood the seriousness of the problem. In fact, Feynman speculated that he was fed the all of the information from a whistleblower via General Kutyna.

This may be the biggest issue for finding out what really happened. Someone really needs to seek out the disgruntled whistleblower inside of Toyota that knows what the real problem is and feels good about feeding it to someone with enough stature who can "discover" the problem. I doubt anyone at NASA-Langly has that level of independence that a Toyota whistle blower will trust them to not be political. And then you have the language problem and the fact that the most of the real NASA engineers are actually sub-contractors.

It would probably be better to send this problem to Argonne or Sandia, than NASA. But even if you chose NASA, it would have probably been better to pick NASA-IV&V (which specializes in mission critical software and was setup after the challenger disaster) instead of NASA-Langly (based in virgnina near all the pork barrel politicians in DC). This just smells of politics and that's why they may never get to the real answer (maybe they don't want to)...

What is truly ironic here is that NASA regularly summons external panels to fix their problems.

What is truly ironic here is that NASA regularly summons external panels to fix their problems.

Take a look at this page on NASA's website: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=3919 If it is a hoax, then NASA is going all-out.

Oops! Sorry folks, messed up the URL: Here's the picture.

Hell, they did it to the moon already, why not Mars too, amirite?

It makes me sad the state of our local space exploration.

I suspect you aren't paying much attention to space exploration. Does having two working rovers on Mars for the past several years, a mission to Titan, a probe soon orbit Mercury, more probes sent to Jupiter, multiple orbiters currently circling Mars, multiple different space telescopes, a probe currently en-route to Pluto, and a slew of other missions listed here "make you sad"?

If it does, I suspect you don't understand what space exploration is about.

The US SR-71 Blackbird was a spacecraft too. Could our Rockets and probes be just dust on the real picture of space flight?

It reminds me of NASA's Nanosail-D

It downright sucks, they take all the fun out of a spectacular field.

Have you ever watched NASA TV? Only the United States Government could take the most exciting topic ever -- space exploration -- and turn it into television programming so dry and boring, it makes you want to gouge your eyes out.

It makes me sad the state of our local space exploration.

I suspect you aren't paying much attention to space exploration. Does having two working rovers on Mars for the past several years, a mission to Titan, a probe soon orbit Mercury, more probes sent to Jupiter, multiple orbiters currently circling Mars, multiple different space telescopes, a probe currently en-route to Pluto, and a slew of other missions listed here "make you sad"?

If it does, I suspect you don't understand what space exploration is about.

Global temperatures have not been falling since 1998! They just haven't risen quite as fast as they did in the 1990s. There is a graph of the global temperature anomaly from 1880 through 2009 here.

The urban heat island effect is well understood and accounted for. A recent study [PDF] that used the surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited stations showed that the poorly sited stations actually introduced a slight cooling trend in the data (but not enough to change the overall warming trend).

Universally is a strong word. Any evidence for global warming comes with the same amount of evidence against it.

In this article we have people claiming its Global warming causing it, which is said without proof once again...but if we listen to Dr Mörner who has studied ocean levels for 40 years...there is no measurable increase in sea level, and he is an expert in his field...not one person who wrote the Nobel winning report was an expert in sea-level change and yet they make all sorts of claims on being experts on that..

Here is a nice list of everything global warming "causes" as said by the media and scientists:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

If you want to discuss more: lets discuss NASA data being stacked:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

As you can tell station data has gone down in last few years, and if you plot it against temperature rise, you get a very obvious trend:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf

That tells the story of how bad the NASA datasets are which are one of the main data-sets used in AGW Debate..or we can just get it straight from NASA/..

James Hansen’s colleague Reto Ruedy told the USA Today weather editor:

“My recommendation to you is to continue using CRU data for the global mean [temperatures]. “What we do is accurate enough” — left unspoken: for government work — “[but] we have no intention to compete with either of the other two organizations in what they do best.”

So in other words the NASA data is worse then the data that was doctored purposely by CRU

There is a debate whether you want to bury your head in the sand or not, because the data does not point to ONE thing causing current warming, assuming there is warming considering how much of the data is suspect currently....

And even assuming today's trend is warming, there is debate on the ocean causing a majority of it... Or solar cycles...the science of the climate is far from settled, we have just now scratched the surface...

"Turning Leonardo into a permanent module will take some work, said NASA Payload Manager Joe Delai. "Once it returns from this flight we will beef up the external shield and change things internally to become a permanent module. It will be about a four month process to get it ready."

Thats why it will be re-launched in September this year. And when it is relaunched and made a permanent module it will become their 'man cave'.

Permanent: means it lasts until ISS de-orbit in 2016. Yup, idiocy still planned. See: (In glorious PowerPoint)

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/386764main_09-15-09_Human_Spaceflight_Testimony.pdf

http://titan04.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/378555main_02-Sally_Charts_v11.ppt

Or just search via Google: for iss +"de-orbit" site:nasa.gov

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iss+%22de-orbit%22+site%3Anasa.gov

"Turning Leonardo into a permanent module will take some work, said NASA Payload Manager Joe Delai. "Once it returns from this flight we will beef up the external shield and change things internally to become a permanent module. It will be about a four month process to get it ready."

Thats why it will be re-launched in September this year. And when it is relaunched and made a permanent module it will become their 'man cave'.

Permanent: means it lasts until ISS de-orbit in 2016. Yup, idiocy still planned. See: (In glorious PowerPoint)

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/386764main_09-15-09_Human_Spaceflight_Testimony.pdf

http://titan04.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/378555main_02-Sally_Charts_v11.ppt

Or just search via Google: for iss +"de-orbit" site:nasa.gov

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iss+%22de-orbit%22+site%3Anasa.gov

I mean... whats the big deal here that NASA would care?

It has its own high altitide balloon program - where they do real science - for weeks at a time - not just cool pictures for a few hours...

http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/balloon/
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/

I mean... whats the big deal here that NASA would care?

It has its own high altitide balloon program - where they do real science - for weeks at a time - not just cool pictures for a few hours...

http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/balloon/
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/

Only thing is that's a myth.
Previously, Russia used grease pencils, and NASA used mechanical pencils that were more expensive than the pens that Fisher pen co. developed with their own money. Russia also ended up using the Fisher pens
http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html

Who was it? Someone from the cafeteria? It seems like NASA engineers should not be surprised by the idea of using balloons to loft instruments.

http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/balloon/

If the agency wanted to take equivalent pictures, I am sure someone there could figure out how to do it with less than millions of dollars and a rocket.

Yeah, of course NASA is too stupid to think of using balloons.

Another one is going to Mars next year apparently - the Mars Science Laboratory

You can even put your name on it.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/overview/index.cfm

Uhhh.. the article provides no references.. so I don't know where Nancy Atkinson is getting this information from.

As far as I'm aware, Robonaut 2 isn't even functional yet, let alone ready for flight testing. Did the writer just make this up?

Leaving aside the obvious sexist overtones of the article, it's almost entirely a rehash of last year's news that the Leonardo MPLM will be modified to be left permanently attached to the station when it flies on STS-133, becoming the Permanent Multi-Purpose Module.

What is it about humanoid robots that makes people report bullshit?

Umm... Google purchase EarthViewer 3D from Keyhole, Inc. and renamed it Google Earth in 2005.

NASA released World Wind in 2004.

And World Wind existed before Google Earth...
As one bonus, World Wind does not limit the size of your local imagery cache; you can assign as many gigabytes as you want. World Wind (Windows version) and a selection of cache packs (Landsat and SRTM) can be downloaded from http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22world%20wind%22, while the Java version can be downloaded from http://builds.worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.asp

Since Wikipedia is down round these parts, here's the actual site:

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/

ESA = European Space Agency
http://www.esa.int/

CSA = Canadian Space Agency
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/default.asp

JAXA = Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(ooops)
http://www.jaxa.jp/

Tons more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_agency

Some may wonder what need there is for a third body at all - Triton wanders too close to Neptune, it gets captured, right?

The reason is conservation of energy: as Triton wanders near Neptune, it falls into Neptune's gravity well and accelerates, so it is going too fast to remain in orbit. Triton at infinity has more energy than Triton in orbit, so to get captured it has to lose energy, and that energy has to go somewhere.

With a few exceptions, three body interactions (e.g. Neptune, Superearth, Triton) are chaotic, and often end with one of the bodies being expelled and the remaining two left in orbit. The lightest body is the most likely to be expelled. This scenario has Superearth being expelled rather than Triton, which is somewhat unlikely but not impossible. (It is too long since I studied this for me to quantify 'most likely to be expelled'.)

It really doesn't seem to me that you need Superearth to explain Triton. The third body could very easily have been a normal Neptunian moon, which is now unobserved somewhere in the Oort cloud or expelled from the solar system entirely. (Could it be Pluto? This was thought of and rejected a long time ago.)

Disclaimer: All these comments are on the basis of reading the New Scientist summary, not the real paper.

I think the bottom line is the electrical grid is in serious need of upgrading, it's fragile, there is no redundancy and there is no real security either physical or in the control systems. It's fallen down twice in the North East US and fallen hard, once in 1965 and then again even bigger in 2003. Obama campaigned on some renewable energy planks, which will be blue smoke and mirrors without infra-structure upgrades to the grid. Right now the way things are what a software attack doesn't do, a physical attack will and what that doesn't do the next big CME with a negative z component will.
Shooting the messenger doesn't change the message.

you gotta love conspiracy theories surrounding the US moon landings.

For those, still not sure, check out these pics from the Harsh Mistress herself, look for example at Apollo 14 photos, there are footstep trails visible. Ain't it cool?

Here.

APOD has a good description and picture (well, computer-generated visualization) of dust:

By studying how dust absorbs, emits, and reflects light, astronomers do know that interstellar dust is much different than the cell and lint based dust found around a typical house. Interstellar dust grains are composed mostly of carbon, silicon, and oxygen and are usually less than about 1/1000 of a millimeter across. Recent work indicates that most dust grains are not spherical. The above picture shows the result of a fractal adhesion model for dust grains involving random conglomerates of spherical compounds of different properties, here artificially highlighted by different colors.

(from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap961119.html)

Note that Constellation wasn't axed because it was "lackluster". It was axed because it was the previous President's program.

Incorrect. It was cancelled because, as the independent review by the aerospace experts on the Augustine Committee found, Constellation offered "little or no apparent value" despite the tens/hundreds of billions of dollars which would be spent on it through 2030.

That, and Constellation would have been unable to accomplish even ONE of the objectives set forth in Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space_exploration2.pdf

The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
* Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond;
* Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
* Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
* Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Note that Constellation wasn't axed because it was "lackluster". It was axed because it was the previous President's program.

Incorrect. It was cancelled because, as the independent review by the aerospace experts on the Augustine Committee found, Constellation offered "little or no apparent value" despite the tens/hundreds of billions of dollars which would be spent on it through 2030.

That, and Constellation would have been unable to accomplish even ONE of the objectives set forth in Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space_exploration2.pdf

The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
* Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond;
* Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
* Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
* Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

It seems like there can't have been that many generations of suns before the formation of our planet.

The sun is a third generation star:

The sun is a relatively young star, a member of a generation of stars known as Population I stars. An older generation of stars is called Population II. There may have existed an earlier generation, called Population III. However, no members of this generation are known. The remainder of this section refers to three generations of stars.
The three generations differ in their content of chemical elements heavier than helium. First-generation stars have the lowest percentage of these elements, and second-generation stars have a higher percentage. The sun and other third-generation stars have the highest percentage of elements heavier than helium.
The percentages differ in this way because first- and second-generation stars that "died" passed along their heavier elements. Many of these stars produced successively heavier elements by means of fusion in and near their cores. The heaviest elements were created when the most massive stars exploded as supernovae. Supernovae enrich the clouds of gas and dust from which other stars form. Other sources of enrichment are planetary nebulae, the cast-off outer layers of less massive stars.

NASA Sun Worldbook

Only thing I could find was the implied difference in polar launch vs. normal launch - http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/sts/launch.html

Normal launch payload: 55,000 lbs
Polar: 17,000 lbs ...that's at launch, of course.
Pretty clear why they didn't waste shuttles lifting polar-orbitting cargoes.

I asked about it elsewhere, and it's probably just an air data boom, often used on test aircraft. Here's an image of one on the Space Shuttle:

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/luceneweb/fullimage.jsp?searchpage=true&keywords=enterprise&textsearch=Go&hitsperpage=30&pageno=2&photoId=S77-28140

Actually, it is an air data boom used in atmospheric testing. I have been following the X-37B too and I do not recall ever seeing mention about a re-entry ablative spike a.k.a an aerospike. The following is from http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=5364.msg560226;topicseen#new discussing your post: Re: X-37 to fly on a Atlas V in 2010 Reply #472 on: 03/14/2010 08:30 PM I came across the following slashdot comment about the X-37 having an "ablative spike" (which seems to be in the WK2 photos). Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1582228&cid=31473292 Logged Jim Night Gator Full Member ***** Offline Posts: 3869 Location: Cape Canaveral Spaceport Re: X-37 to fly on a Atlas V in 2010 Reply #473 on: 03/14/2010 09:03 PM Quote from: neilh on 03/14/2010 08:30 PM I came across the following slashdot comment about the X-37 having an "ablative spike" (which seems to be in the WK2 photos). Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past? There is no such thing on X-37. It is just some B S by someone incorrect Does the shuttle have one? Yes it did, it is a air data boom. Very common on new aircraft configs undergoing flight test. http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/luceneweb/fullimage.jsp?searchpage=true&keywords=enterprise&textsearch=Go&hitsperpage=30&pageno=2&photoId=S77-28140

Better go look at the budget. Obama's budget *increases* NASA spending while removing its most visible mission. Basically, he plans on creating the next Lockheed or Boeing at taxpayer expense.

Quite the opposite, actually. The current Constellation program favors cost-plus non-competitive contracts, while the new plan uses fixed-price commercial contracts with multiple companies competing and developing in parallel, with companies only getting paid for meeting milestones. For example, a number of companies are currently under "CCDev" contracts for developing commercial crew vehicles and technologies, and only get paid the full amount if they meet all of their milestones by the end of 2010. You can read more about this in the budget documents:

http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf