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It's been done: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html

I will match your imagine of Chinese pollution with pollution of East Coast USA.

Does your conclusion that "They're killing themselves, just to enrich our few and their few - no one has to emit that level of pollution to manufacture goods." still apply in this case?

Not yet: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1036/

They're killing themselves, just to enrich our few and their few - no one has to emit that level of pollution to manufacture goods. Luckily for the wealthy in all countries, huge piles of cash make you immune to pollution.

I guess.

Where do you get the $1-2 billion per launch figure? That seems insanely expensive. NASA's number for average shuttle launch cost is $450 million. The cost to build Endeavor was $1.7 billion. You're saying a simple launch of Ares I could amount to more than the expense of constructing a Shuttle?

Would it be harder to take something like an Atlas 5 (that's got literally hundreds of flights under its belt) and modify it for human space flight then to build a completely new rocket (granted taking bits from lots of different rockets)?

It's technically more straightforward and easier, but politically about an order of magnitude more difficult. Using commercial vehicles like the Atlas V is covered in section 5.3.3 of the report. They estimated 3-5 years for a provider to achieve orbital crew capability. They also estimated a cost of $300 million - $1.5 billion per provider, so if they had contracts with three competing providers initially and one of them droppped out, that would be a total cost to NASA of $2-$2.5 billion. For comparison, NASA's current estimated development cost for Ares I+Orion is $35-$45 billion.

Of course, the liftoff was NASA's Image of the Day (full sized image linked). The Image of the Day page is here. Two more images of the day of the Aries:

Ares I-X at the Launch Pad
Building the Aries

There are sure to be more pictures of Aries the rest of the week. That site has some amazing photos.

Of course, the liftoff was NASA's Image of the Day (full sized image linked). The Image of the Day page is here. Two more images of the day of the Aries:

Ares I-X at the Launch Pad
Building the Aries

There are sure to be more pictures of Aries the rest of the week. That site has some amazing photos.

Of course, the liftoff was NASA's Image of the Day (full sized image linked). The Image of the Day page is here. Two more images of the day of the Aries:

Ares I-X at the Launch Pad
Building the Aries

There are sure to be more pictures of Aries the rest of the week. That site has some amazing photos.

Of course, the liftoff was NASA's Image of the Day (full sized image linked). The Image of the Day page is here. Two more images of the day of the Aries:

Ares I-X at the Launch Pad
Building the Aries

There are sure to be more pictures of Aries the rest of the week. That site has some amazing photos.

Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done ... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?

Actually, the Augustine Report (see section 6.2.4) found that even if you gave NASA an unconstrained budget, the earliest the Ares I could be available is late 2016. Although budget was a contributing factor, more important is that the Ares I is an inherently screwy and problematic design, especially when you consider that commercial rockets already exist which can perform the job after some minor upgrades.

according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Constellation_missions the next mission is Ares 1-Y, in 2013, a full first stage, a real second stage, testing high altitude abort.

Actually, even prior to the Augustine Committee's report (which suggests using commercial crew instead of the Ares I for most of its options), NASA was already planning to delete the Ares I-Y launch to try to speed up the Ares I development schedule. Also, the table (with NASA-provided figures) in general should be taken with a large grain of salt -- even though NASA's public estimate is that the first Ares I launch will be in 2014, the independent assessment by the Augustine Committee estimated that due to the developmental problems NASA has had (some of them inherent to the design), the Ares I likely wouldn't actually be able to launch until 2017-2019.

Moron.

1, 2, 3

watch the launch

So czarangelus sez:

"Wank, wank, wank!"

Such ideological purity!

"The scientific triumphalism NASA represents is just modern day bread-and-circuses aimed at the Intelligentsia."

Sorry, I meant to write, "Such ideological masturbation!"

"Where is the government getting the money to waste on the stupid foolishness that is space exploration at a time like this?"

The general revenues of the United States. That's where. And such a minuscule fraction , at that. Barely US$18 billion.

How much American treasure and blood was spent on Chimpy McCokespoon's Excellent "See how big my dick is!" Adventure in Iraq?

Wank all you want, just don't do it where we can see it.

kthnxbai!

I'd say something scathing and then list all the things the space program has benefited humanity and your daily life with but luckily NASA still has enough time to explain it all nicely without being condescending like I would have been:

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html

Also... They have a particular section about helping humanity in general with feeding the world:

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home/formankind.html

I'd say something scathing and then list all the things the space program has benefited humanity and your daily life with but luckily NASA still has enough time to explain it all nicely without being condescending like I would have been:

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html

Also... They have a particular section about helping humanity in general with feeding the world:

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home/formankind.html

The space shuttle's solids have a small amount of thrust vector control.

I hate it when people like you pull the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately schtick. Listen, just because you can't think of anything doesn't mean there isn't useful science coming out of NASA EVERY DAY.

There's useful science coming out of most universities EVERY DAY. And the budget for those is usually one to three orders of magnitude cheaper than what NASA spends directly on the International Space Station.

You should look at the NASA Spinoff page. http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

The problem with claims like this is that we do not consider either whether NASA make a significant contribution, the opportunity cost of the NASA funding, nor whether the spinoff would have happened anyway.

NASA is pushing the state of the art in materials, robotics, communications, structural engineering, environment and many others. Things that have real-world impact on our lives today. It's not just Tang and Velcro.

So is any university with decent materials engineering research.

The ISS, despite all it's flaws and short comings, gives us lessons every day in how to survive and thrive in the harshest of all environments. It will give us the technology and know-how to do longer range and longer duration missions than were ever before possible.

Yea, yea, yea. And we could have that with a MIR-sized (and priced) vehicle.

The single rebuttal to all this is that the science on the ISS is both too expensive and comes from funds that could fund equivalent science research for orders of magnitude less.

I have a modest proposal. Give me a hundred billion dollars. I'll make sure there are spinoffs, science every day, and people living in the harsh reaches of space. Then I'll squander the other 90% of the funds. We both win. You get your science and I get 90 billion dollars.

Nothing would speed our journey to becoming a has-been superpower faster than the cessation of government funding for scientific research. Especially critical is government funding of pure research: that is, research that has no immediate and obvious commercial benefit. Even if you think that space exploration/research is a luxury you should argue for doing as much of it as possible to keep our science on the cutting (leading) edge.

Of course, if you think that space is a luxury with no benefit then you are, simply, either woefully underinformed or an idiot. Weather satellites, NASA's projects have directly led to the creation of dozens of industries that have revolutionized the world. http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/spinoff.html

Science is what catapulted us to being the dominate superpower. Applied science is money today, pure science is money tomorrow. We can't afford to cut any of it.

Audio feed (Real) : http://www.nasa.gov/ram/55643main_NASATV_Audio_Only.ram

I am hard-pressed to think of any great advances in knowledge that were not already known from by the time the cruddy but long-surviving MIR burned up in the atmosphere.
I hate it when people like you pull the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately schtick. Listen, just because you can't think of anything doesn't mean there isn't useful science coming out of NASA EVERY DAY.

You should look at the NASA Spinoff page. http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

NASA is pushing the state of the art in materials, robotics, communications, structural engineering, environment and many others. Things that have real-world impact on our lives today. It's not just Tang and Velcro.

The ISS, despite all it's flaws and short comings, gives us lessons every day in how to survive and thrive in the harshest of all environments. It will give us the technology and know-how to do longer range and longer duration missions than were ever before possible.

NasaTV Feeds at different resolutions:
100k/s, 320/240
200k/s, 320/240
500k/s, 480x360(I think)
1200k/s, 640/480
All Windows Media format

Real media format
Quicktime

Launch data

NasaTV Feeds at different resolutions:
100k/s, 320/240
200k/s, 320/240
500k/s, 480x360(I think)
1200k/s, 640/480
All Windows Media format

Real media format
Quicktime

Launch data

NasaTV Feeds at different resolutions:
100k/s, 320/240
200k/s, 320/240
500k/s, 480x360(I think)
1200k/s, 640/480
All Windows Media format

Real media format
Quicktime

Launch data

On a totally unrelated note, NASA will try launching its new ARES X-1 rocket tomorrow.

SHARAD uses 15-25 MHz radar, or wavelengths from 10 - 20 meters.

Sorry for the mathematical typo. It doesn't change the conclusion, though. You have to use longish wavelengths as generally a radio wave won't penetrate more than a few dozen wavelengths into a planetary surface.

Also, in some ways the Moon is great for low orbiting satellites - these can have quite low orbits (it's a vacuum). Thanks to the "mascons" under the Mare the gravity field is non-spherical enough, however, that objects in low orbits typically won't last for long unless they have fuel to maneuver. The Apollo 16 subsatellite, for example, only lasted for 35 days before hitting the lunar surface.

Very low frequency radar could do this, such as the SHARAD radar used to map the subsurface water ice on Mars.

This will not be as easy as it might seem - SHARAD uses 15-25 MHz radar, or wavelengths from 1-3 meters. A 10 meter diameter tunnel (a fairly large lava tube) would only be a few wavelengths across, and thus would be hard to see.

Apollo 17 orbited a 60 meter wavelength radar system, but I don't think that this had either the surface coverage or the resolution to realistically see lava tubes.

With this finding, I expect some nation will find the money to orbit a suitable radar around the moon to hunt for more tubes.

To everyone posting to say that "It should be a website!1!!": It is a website, of course -- or rather, all this info is already available on NASA's website. NASA has a fabulous web presence, and has for a long time. The iPhone app just makes selected information available in a nice form-factor for mobile. Could this have been done as WAP pages, so Blackberry/Android/whatever users could see it? I guess, sure, but it wouldn't be as nice as the iPhone app. It's an experiment, guys. Not wasteful, not elitist. Lighten the hell up.

NASA Press Release: 'Making NASA more accessible to the public is a high priority for the agency,' said Gale Allen, director of Strategic Integration and Management for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. 'Tools like this allow us to provide users easy access to NASA information and progress at a fast pace.' Apple Insider: 'New study shows iPhone users to be in a class by themselves'.

Heh, there are approximately 19,000 bits of junk *larger* than 10cm in orbit at present, with most of that being in LEO. I don't see all that "burning up" all that quickly.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40173
I don't think they can track things smaller than 10cm (about 4 inches). Even something 1 inch across is going to hurt when travelling at 17,000 mph. This is already a massive problem despite the vast scale of space.

For some reason the link for the Augustine Report seems to be going to a download for Windows 7 (Huh?!?), so here's the actual link (mirror).

Here's the main report findings from the PDF:

Summary of Principal Findings

The Committee summarizes its principal findings below. Additional findings are included in the body of the report.

The right mission and the right size: NASA's budget should match its mission and goals. Further, NASA should be given the ability to shape its organization and infrastructure accordingly, while maintaining facilities deemed to be of national importance.

International partnerships: The U.S. can lead a bold new international effort in the human exploration of space. If international partners are actively engaged, including on the "critical path" to success, there could be substantial benefits to foreign relations and more overall resources could become available to the human spaceflight program.

Short-term Space Shuttle planning: The remaining Shuttle manifest should be flown in a safe and prudent manner without undue schedule pressure. This manifest will likely extend operation into the second quarter of FY 2011. It is important to budget for this likelihood.

The human-spaceflight gap: Under current conditions, the gap in U.S. ability to launch astronauts into space will stretch to at least seven years. The Committee did not identify any credible approach employing new capabilities that could shorten the gap to less than six years. The only way to significantly close the gap is to extend the life of the Shuttle Program.

Extending the International Space Station: The return on investment to both the United States and our international partners would be significantly enhanced by an extension of the life of the ISS. A decision not to extend its operation would significantly impair U.S. ability to develop and lead future international spaceflight partnerships.

Heavy lift: A heavy-lift launch capability to low-Earth orbit, combined with the ability to inject heavy payloads away from the Earth, is beneficial to exploration. It will also be useful to the national security space and scientific communities. The Committee reviewed: the Ares family of launchers; Shuttle-derived vehicles; and launchers derived from the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle family. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, trading capability, life-cycle costs, maturity, operational complexity and the "way of doing business" within the program and NASA.

Commercial launch of crew to low-Earth orbit: Commercial services to deliver crew to low-Earth orbit are within reach. While this presents some risk, it could provide an earlier capability at lower initial and life-cycle costs than government could achieve. A new competition with adequate incentives to perform this service should be open to all U.S. aerospace companies. This would allow NASA to focus on more challenging roles, including human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit based on the continued development of the current or modified Orion spacecraft.

Technology development for exploration and commercial space: Investment in a well-designed and adequately funded space technology program is critical to enable progress in exploration. Exploration strategies can proceed more readily and economically if the requisite technology has been developed in advance. This investment will also benefit robotic exploration, the U.S. commercial space industry, the academic community and other U.S. government users.

Pathways to Mars: Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration of the inner solar system; but it is not the best first destination. Visiting the "Moon First" and following the "Flexible Path" are both viable exploration strategies. The two are not necessarily mutual

The Real link is here:
Final Report

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but ain't VASIMIR developed private company, not by NASA? Sure, NASA is working together with Ad Astra Rocket Company, but does NASA really deserve all the fame?

This started as a NASA project, at the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center.

Dr Franklin R. Chang Diaz (the other former astronaut involved, and not mantioned in this Canada-centric article) took the project to private industry in 2005

One of those images shows how perpendicular this ribbon is to the galactic field lines. Suppose the bottom left end of the ribbon is "north" on the solar magnetic field, and the top left of the picture is "north" on the galactic field. Then assume that without the galactic magnetic field, that "north" pole of the solar field would naturally be pointing bottom right (parallel to the galactic field, but reversed in polarity).
Couldn't the galactic field be pulling the solar field towards the galactic fields polarity ? And the fact it isn't totally successful, could explain part of the protective effect of the solar field - the heliosphere ?

This could be why we might be seeing an aurora type field line effect on solar scale.

Alternatively, if we assume that the solar field is polarised to the galactic field, could the ribbon just be the area directly between the north and south poles where magnetism cancels out - ENF = the neutral zone ?

On a Mollweide projection, a great circle shows up as some kind of sine curve, not as a straight line. I think they're actually drawing the plane we're discussing as a thin red line on this other picture.

We've already been given a warning:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030630.html

Any further attempts will result in the Mother of All BSOD's, and there's no F8.
     

I spent a lot of time on this project, writing a lot of neural net simulations, supervised and unsupervised learning, back-prop, Hopfield nets, reproducing a lot of Terry Sejnowski's and Grossman's work, taking trips over to Caltech to see what David Van Essen and his crew were doing with their analysis of the visual cortex of Monkey brains, trying to understand how "wetware" neural nets can so quickly identify features in a visual field, resolve 3D information from left-right pairs, and the like. For the most part, all of the neural net models were really programmable dynamical systems, and the big trick was to find ways (steepest descent, simulated annealing, lagrangian analysis) of computing a set of synaptic parameters whose response minimizes an error function. That, and figuring out the "right" error function and training sets (assuming you are doing supervised learning).

Bottom line was, not much came of all this, beyond a few research grants and published papers. The one thing that we do know now is, real biological neural networks do not learn by backward-error propagation. If they did, the learning would be so slow that we would all still be no smarter than trilobites if that. Most learning does appear to be "connectionist" and is stored in the synaptic connections between nodes, and that those connections are strengthened when the nodes that they connect often fire simultaneously. There is some evidence now of "grandmother cells" which are hypothetical cells that fire when, e.g. your grandmother comes into the room. But other than that, most of the real magic of biological vision appears to be in the pre-processing stages of the retinal signals, which are hardcoded layer upon layer of edge-detectors, color mapping, and some really amazing slicing, dicing and discrete FFT transforms of the orginal data into small enough and simple enough pieces that the cognitive part of the brain can make sense of the information.

It's pretty easy to train a small back-prop net to "spot" a silhouette of a cat and distinguish it from a triangle and a doughnut. It is not so easy to write a network simulation that can pick out a small cat in a busy urban scene, curled up beneath a dumpster, batting at a mouse....

To do that, you need a dog.

I have seen something similar on http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html some time ago. Not sure if they fit in the same family.
The link is http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071230.html (thanks to the search engine)

And a bonus picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090121.html

I have seen something similar on http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html some time ago. Not sure if they fit in the same family.
The link is http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071230.html (thanks to the search engine)

And a bonus picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090121.html

I have seen something similar on http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html some time ago. Not sure if they fit in the same family.
The link is http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071230.html (thanks to the search engine)

And a bonus picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090121.html

Well, in theory they should have been able to reproduce the process on a different FPGA, resulting in a different "optimal" adder which may be more or less optimal. Since it seemed to rely on self-interference caused by imperfections in the chip, you'd just have to evolve on other chips until you found a similarly optimal solution. The reason it was only interesting but not useful is that an FPGA is a lot bigger than an actual adder circuit. It took the whole FPGA to evolve the minimal adder and trying to simplify something that specific (and probably relying on exact distances and input voltages to produce the desired output) would be essentially impossible. Thus trying to evolve individual circuits by that method which undercut theoretical optimum designs would require far more waste, far less space and cost efficiency and far more power.

A more appropriate use of GA would be to develop actual silicon in a full simulator much the same as that evolved antenna project NASA backed. If you could come up with a design that always worked as long as fabrication succeeded, that's much more productive and far more efficient.

That the story is true there's little reason to doubt. Ever since that guy in 1997 evolved a 64x64 speech recognition chip on an FPGA using GA, people have been going batshit trying to take advantage of the magic of GA. The odds are good that an optimal solution will arise on a chip which turns out to be specific to that chip. I imagine if you used a GA to evolve something specific to those faulty Pentium chips that it would fail to operate properly on a machine with a non-broken ALU.

Whether it had anything to do with my instructor's company, on the other hand, I don't know.

It might be worth pointing to the mission site or project site at NASA.

It might be worth pointing to the mission site or project site at NASA.

I just wonder why is it cheaper now, compared to 10-20 years ago? Or why is it cheaper for a private company?

One of the big things to keep in mind is that as a government institution, NASA is severely limited in how it's able to restructure its workforce towards its goals. This wasn't an issue back in the Apollo days, when NASA was in a massive growth spurt and could hire the best and brightest to achieve its goals. Nowadays, an absurdly high percentage of the NASA workforce is middle management, and since they're civil servants NASA can't just let them go and hire new people. Also, NASA has the additional constraint that the people it does hire have to be distributed amongst key congressional districts.

It's interesting to note that in the congressional debates about NASA, the key item of the debate hasn't been NASA's scientific mission or technological impact, but the impact on the existing number of jobs. NASA has ~10,000 Shuttle workers (many in the electoral battleground state of Florida), and any plan which seeks to make things more efficient by cutting back on the number of workers needed is going to face a massive uphill battle in Congress.

One proposal I really like, but has faced massive congressional resistance in the past, would be to turn NASA Centers into Federally Funded Research Development Centers, the model used by JPL and the Department of Energy's national labs, which are able to do competitive hiring. Of course, see what happened to the 2004 Aldrige Report which suggested this (see page 23); it was heavily battled by Congress and pushed basically into oblivion.

Hydrogen + Oxygen + Heat = Water Something tells me that at 2.7 Kelvin it wouldn't take much for water to condense on any surface it found.

The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.

If you mean the link to the NASA TV page doesn't support Linux, viewing the source shows URLs for the video streams.

All the video streams worked for me after saving the file provided by the URL, and opening it with VLC.

Channels

*Public Channel
Live Events, Mission Coverage
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram
http://www.nasa.gov/qtl/151335main_NASA_TV_QT.qtl

*Media Channel
Video file, other resources
http://www.nasa.gov/145590main_Digital_Media.asx

*Education Channel
For students and teachers
http://www.nasa.gov/145588main_Digital_Edu.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/145589main_Digital_Edu.ram

*Live Space Station Video
Earth Views and More (Details)
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

*Mission Audio
(may be silent at times)
http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx

The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.

If you mean the link to the NASA TV page doesn't support Linux, viewing the source shows URLs for the video streams.

All the video streams worked for me after saving the file provided by the URL, and opening it with VLC.

Channels

*Public Channel
Live Events, Mission Coverage
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram
http://www.nasa.gov/qtl/151335main_NASA_TV_QT.qtl

*Media Channel
Video file, other resources
http://www.nasa.gov/145590main_Digital_Media.asx

*Education Channel
For students and teachers
http://www.nasa.gov/145588main_Digital_Edu.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/145589main_Digital_Edu.ram

*Live Space Station Video
Earth Views and More (Details)
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

*Mission Audio
(may be silent at times)
http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx

The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.

If you mean the link to the NASA TV page doesn't support Linux, viewing the source shows URLs for the video streams.

All the video streams worked for me after saving the file provided by the URL, and opening it with VLC.

Channels

*Public Channel
Live Events, Mission Coverage
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram
http://www.nasa.gov/qtl/151335main_NASA_TV_QT.qtl

*Media Channel
Video file, other resources
http://www.nasa.gov/145590main_Digital_Media.asx

*Education Channel
For students and teachers
http://www.nasa.gov/145588main_Digital_Edu.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/145589main_Digital_Edu.ram

*Live Space Station Video
Earth Views and More (Details)
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

*Mission Audio
(may be silent at times)
http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx

The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.

If you mean the link to the NASA TV page doesn't support Linux, viewing the source shows URLs for the video streams.

All the video streams worked for me after saving the file provided by the URL, and opening it with VLC.

Channels

*Public Channel
Live Events, Mission Coverage
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram
http://www.nasa.gov/qtl/151335main_NASA_TV_QT.qtl

*Media Channel
Video file, other resources
http://www.nasa.gov/145590main_Digital_Media.asx

*Education Channel
For students and teachers
http://www.nasa.gov/145588main_Digital_Edu.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/145589main_Digital_Edu.ram

*Live Space Station Video
Earth Views and More (Details)
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

*Mission Audio
(may be silent at times)
http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx

The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.

If you mean the link to the NASA TV page doesn't support Linux, viewing the source shows URLs for the video streams.

All the video streams worked for me after saving the file provided by the URL, and opening it with VLC.

Channels

*Public Channel
Live Events, Mission Coverage
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram
http://www.nasa.gov/qtl/151335main_NASA_TV_QT.qtl

*Media Channel
Video file, other resources
http://www.nasa.gov/145590main_Digital_Media.asx

*Education Channel
For students and teachers
http://www.nasa.gov/145588main_Digital_Edu.asx
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/145589main_Digital_Edu.ram

*Live Space Station Video
Earth Views and More (Details)
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

*Mission Audio
(may be silent at times)
http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx