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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

...and other places. Viewing parties across the country in fact.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/impact/event_index.html

If water on the moon is so difficult to get to that one has to throw a satellite at the surface at 5600 mph, how likely is it that man will be able to inhabit the moon?

Never mind the issues of building vacuum-sealed living quarters and getting mining equipment to the moon and the current low-power density of the solar energy generation mechanism most likely to be used on the moon, how would you get water up there if you have to send a satellite the mass of a full-sized SUV to dig a hole as deep as the length of a football field?

It raises the question of why we're spending any time at all on the moon. It can't be lived on, it's unlikely to harbor life, its geology has already been explored. Someone tell me what the point is...

If water on the moon is so difficult to get to that one has to throw a satellite at the surface at 5600 mph, how likely is it that man will be able to inhabit the moon?

Never mind the issues of building vacuum-sealed living quarters and getting mining equipment to the moon and the current low-power density of the solar energy generation mechanism most likely to be used on the moon, how would you get water up there if you have to send a satellite the mass of a full-sized SUV to dig a hole as deep as the length of a football field?

It raises the question of why we're spending any time at all on the moon. It can't be lived on, it's unlikely to harbor life, its geology has already been explored. Someone tell me what the point is...

There's also a separate NASA mission site with some easier to understand info.

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

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

Real media format
Quicktime
For those of you who need to watch it in absolute realtime, I've found that all the yahoo feeds (windows media) whilst being the best video quality are generally about 1-2 minutes behind realtime. Realmedia is normally about 5-10 seconds behind realtime.

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

Real media format
Quicktime
For those of you who need to watch it in absolute realtime, I've found that all the yahoo feeds (windows media) whilst being the best video quality are generally about 1-2 minutes behind realtime. Realmedia is normally about 5-10 seconds behind realtime.

NASA have set up a webpage for the LCROSS Observation Campaign: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation.htm

By the way, it is at 11.30 UTC for those who don't know how far their timezone is from EDT.

Apophis had been downgraded to 4 chances in a million from 22 chances in a million. This new figure is clearly wrong, because it has 6 chances to impact between 2036 and 2103 (see http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html ). Perhaps this means the actual metric is 6 chances per 1.5 million.

Also of note in the upgraded data is the second of the 2068 near misses, having a 0.00 Earth radius distance. This is likely a statistical artifact caused by the fact that a near miss is a hit (a miss is a miss or it isn't; something that comes close but doesn't hit is a near hit).

Since the distance is zero but the impact probability is 1.1e-07, they have almost certainly determined that it will pass by (and/or impact) almost perfectly edge on. Due to its size being equivalent to 2.5 football fields, and a football field being a 2 dimensional rectangle with no thickness, an edge on impact would have little effect, keeping all 510 megatons of impact energy confined within an area of 270 by 0.000... meters, ie. no area at all. Thus, the impact will have absolutely no effect unless you happen to be standing over that 270 by zero meter line when it comes down on you, or worse, up at you after having passed through the Earth (a zero thickness should be able to pass through the planet like a neutrino).

Hopefully we will also get updated figures on 2007 VK184. It has a 340 in 1 million chance of impact. It gets 4 attempts between 2048 and 2057. Four chances in 9 years gives it 2.25 million years to have its one million attempts, in which time it will only hit Earth 340 times, or once every 2417095.5882352941176470588235294 days. This was calculated with due attention paid to leap years, though it is uncertain at the time of publication whether the frequent legislating of time standards by the US will result in the figure being in standard leap years or daylight savings leap years.

Just to add a minor point of confusion, in case it has been so far missed: the question has been raised regarding the actual size of these objects, as 'football field' is ambiguous, there being two different kinds of 'football' using different size fields. The answer is that it doesn't matter. NASA has already proven themselves to be above and beyond the need for conversion factors, and so they need not differentiate between metric and non-metric football. In their usual excessively polite manner, Canada has repeatedly not pointed out that they too have 'football' similar to the US kind, but with yet another differently sized field. Their reticence is somewhat practical when one considers that fewer people watch Canadian football than watch curling, and nobody outside Canada watches that.

There are three objects with higher probability of impact on the list, two of them much larger than Apophis (270 m diameter). Their diameters are 560 m and 780 m.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

Scroll down to "Objects not recently observed"

According to NASA, it is 1 in 135,000 and diameter is 0.270 km
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

The image on TFA gives the impression that it is way larger than 20km and the summary claims that is is 200 yard = 0.182 km. And the text claims that it is four-in-a million aka 1 in 250.000.

I've seen this argument about a thousand times on slashdot. I'll cut to the end:

The moisture on your skin would evaporate due to the lack of atmosphere. This in turn would quickly cool your skin. In addition, your lungs would be completely depleted of all oxygen. Most likely, you would suffocate before being able to freeze, but freezing would come soon after.

The moisture on your skin would evaporate, and it would cool your body down. The question is by how much. People have been minimally exposed to vacuums before, and freezing didn't seem to be an issue (and apparently you'd feel the moisture on your tongue boiling more than the moisture in the rest of your skin).

This is all I could find on the subject with a quick google search, and I don't claim it's sufficiently authoritative to settle the question, but I'll leave it up to you to support your position with better sources if you care to: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

That is of course, entirely correct. According to NASA, they were "Named alphabetically in the order they were discovered...."

Well, there's also this ... if I'm reading the description correctly, it's the Spitzer infrared picture, with an enhanced inset plus an inset photo of Saturn taken by the Hubble.

NASA posted a great composite shot a few years ago showing the full moon and the Andromeda galaxy at the same angular scale.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Moon over Andromeda.

This diffuse ring is likely the source of the "two-faced" Iapetus - the leading side of Iapetus is blackened by the ring much like a car windshield can be blackened by running into insects. The material is presumably coming from Phoebe, another moon of Saturn, probably from impacts on that body.

I suspect that this is not the whole story, however. The particles in the ring are thought to be very small - but the dark splotches are hundreds of meters across. The ring may be braided (some of the others are), so that it can deliver a blast of particles, like a hose, on certain spots, but even that is not enough. Phoebe and the new ring are in retrograde orbits, thus collisions of this material with the prograde Iapetus will be "head-on" and fairly energetic, about 5 km / sec. So, it's not just that dark sticky stuff is plopping down onto the surface - the velocities are too high. It may be that a reaction with the surface, heating followed by the formation of something like black tar, is responsible for what we are seeing. If the current slow state of space exploration continues to hold it will probably be decades or more before we find out for sure.

This diffuse ring is likely the source of the "two-faced" Iapetus - the leading side of Iapetus is blackened by the ring much like a car windshield can be blackened by running into insects. The material is presumably coming from Phoebe, another moon of Saturn, probably from impacts on that body.

I suspect that this is not the whole story, however. The particles in the ring are thought to be very small - but the dark splotches are hundreds of meters across. The ring may be braided (some of the others are), so that it can deliver a blast of particles, like a hose, on certain spots, but even that is not enough. Phoebe and the new ring are in retrograde orbits, thus collisions of this material with the prograde Iapetus will be "head-on" and fairly energetic, about 5 km / sec. So, it's not just that dark sticky stuff is plopping down onto the surface - the velocities are too high. It may be that a reaction with the surface, heating followed by the formation of something like black tar, is responsible for what we are seeing. If the current slow state of space exploration continues to hold it will probably be decades or more before we find out for sure.

For the last decade there has been no global warming, at all, while producing more CO2 than ever. During that decade we have taken measurements with the goal of testing global warming, and found none.

The have uncovered _global cooling_.

In this decade so far, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, were all warmer than any year in the 1990s except for 1998 (due to its extreme El Nino event), so that statement is an outright lie. 2009 is predicted to be around the 4th hottest year on record based on temperatures so far.

Here's a good image, graph and explaination of the state of the climate at the end of 2008 from NASA:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36699

For the last decade there has been no global warming, at all, while producing more CO2 than ever. During that decade we have taken measurements with the goal of testing global warming, and found none. These measurements are taken from all over the world, and are the most accurate and analyzable (for sources of error, etc.) that we have or will have. The have uncovered _global cooling_.

Scientifically, this _necessarily_ throws global warming into serious doubt. The assertion that global warming exists cannot be made without correcting the errors in the old GW model to properly align with our current observations. The idea that some old temperature logs made with an uncalibrated thermometer by someone without a particular interest in accuracy could overshadow careful modern measurements is a sick joke.

The real deniers at this point are the ones that insist that global warming is a fact.

You believe that these NASA statistics that show over a century of (increasingly fast) global warming are error in calibration?

In science you have observations and make hypothesis and theories based on them but global warming is neither a hypothesis or a theory. It is very observable fact in itself!

Be skeptic of whether it was caused by humans or not if you want to but don't try to come up with bullshit about global cooling or such. It's sad that you have been modded +4 by the "skeptics" who don't - as usual - pay attention to whether the "facts" in your post were true or not.

You can create steam using a radiothermal nuclear generator

That's original, I've never heard such a suggestion before. However I believe I never have because it would work. How much thrust could you possibly get out of steaming out water?

And ok, sure, if you've got as much energy as you want then why not. Although if you have as much energy as you want then instead of doing something completely retarded like carrying an impossibly huge ice cube through space you could use an engine that's powered by a RTG, like a ion thruster.

Having imagination is good but that would be a plus if you knew what you're talking about so you'd know why what you proposed is dumb as fuck.

gravity tractors

lol, oh I see, so your solution is to the problem of moving an impossibly huge block of ice is to move another impossibly huge block of whatever towards the huge block of ice. Yeah, that should work. Alternatively you could try reading less science fiction and more scientific articles, and get a grip on that thing called feasibility.

You can sit there with a hectare of solar panels

Yeah, again, that's oh so very feasible. Here, get a clue. If you still don't get why I'm pointing you to this, it's to show you why saying "fuck it, let's just send a square mile of solar panels up there" is a dumb idea.

I liked the methane blast engine and its sound by XCOR Aerospace way more... http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/images/methaneblast/testfiring.wmv

http://www.fedjobs.com/pay/pay.html

GS 12 starts at $59383.
GS 14 starts at $83445.
If you were in San Francisco at GS 14, then you'd make $112108 at step 1. A little explanation about the steps and advancement: http://ohcm.gsfc.nasa.gov/pay/gs.htm

Reminds me of water on Mars.

i don't know for sure,
but i'm assuming that the solad wind shields us from some degree of cosmic rays.
[ah - yep]

the article summary is pretty bad, IMO.
it gives the impression that the number of cosmic rays out there is more,
when in fact it's just that the solar system's shielding is cyclic,
and we happen to be in an extra-low minimum.

Here are some links I found to papers describing the software used.

FWIW I am also intrigued about what is happening at this planet. I could imagine:
- tremendous storms at the twilight zone, perhaps mixing in elements from the cold side, or maybe just spreading ash worldwide?
- With the solar winds above and heat from below, it might be like a fluidized bed reactor with all kinds of things being created - all kinds of compounds. Falling gems indeed!
- Solar wind buffeting the silica and other things in the atmosphere, could perhaps create spongy material, aerogels, glassy wings that whirl toward ground like maple seeds.
- life possible? Maybe somewhere in the world..

Okay. Use of the MAGMA software is described briefly in Fractional Vaporization of Hot Earth-like Exoplanets and a description of the algorithms and data used in the program are provided in
L. Schaefer and B. Fegley. A Thermodynamic Model of High Temperature Lava Vaporization on Io, Icarus, 169, 216-241.

Note that according to the abstract of Schaefer and Fegley's Vaporization of High Temperature Magmas on Io "Galileo NIMS observations indicate magmas with temperatures of 1700-2100K on Io. Vaporization of rock-forming oxides should occur at such temperatures. "

Also Exploring the Environment of Volcanoes gives for Earth: 2000 degrees C: Iron-Rich Rock (i.e. still rock even while under tremendous pressure 500 miles underground), and 5000 degrees C: liquid iron
  (2900 miles underground).

You may also be interested in Heavy Metal Frost on Venus
  and an overview of some of their research here.

There is another program called CONDOR that Fegley and Lodders made, which is described on their site. (See condor2.html for algorithm info.) This program is for gaseous atmospheres.

Yes, I know it's the height of transhumanist hubris. But news like this make me wonder if now is the time to start thinking about causing rather than preventing climate change. I mean, whether we like it or not, with or without us, the climate will change. We have proof of this from Ant/arctic core samples and other sources that point to prehistoric changes in the Earth's atmosphere. It was warmer during the time of the dinosaurs and colder during the reign of the mammoths. Maybe it's time to start testing those orbital solar reflectors or beefing up our Near Earth Asteroid Tracking efforts?

Interestingly, people have used GPS to measure temperatures in the Earth's atmosphere. The idea is to precisely measure the Doppler shift of the GPS satellite signal. This is modified by the refraction of radio waves through the atmosphere. Atmospheric refraction is governed by the density of air, which in turn depends on its temperature. Thus, radio occultation measurements can be used to infer (a convolved integral of) the air temperature along the line-of-sight. Many such measurements can be used to extract spatial and temporal structure, and also infer information about atmospheric pressure and water vapor content.

Here is one early paper, and a review. This system is gaining increasing attention and may one day be a competitive alternative to existing ground- and satellite-based observation systems.

Irfanview pissed all over it. I have the 229.5MB radar map of Venus ( http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA03167.jpg / http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA03167.tif ) on a 2m wide poster on my bedroom wall - printed using irfanview, a borderless photo printer and LOTS of ink. And half a roll of cellotape. There are larger images on the JPL Photojournal website (one runs to nearly a Gig) but inkets are bloody expensive to run.

Irfanview pissed all over it. I have the 229.5MB radar map of Venus ( http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA03167.jpg / http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA03167.tif ) on a 2m wide poster on my bedroom wall - printed using irfanview, a borderless photo printer and LOTS of ink. And half a roll of cellotape. There are larger images on the JPL Photojournal website (one runs to nearly a Gig) but inkets are bloody expensive to run.

NASA contracts almost all of their work out to private companies, you know. A few probes are built by NASA labs (JPL in particular), but mostly the spacecraft are bid out to industry, and the launch services are also bid out to industry.

And a step further: JPL itself is staffed 100% by contractors. It's an FFRDC -- Federally Funded Research and Development Center. See the JPL welcome page and look for "FFRDC".

It's absolutely ridiculous to see this picture from septermber 26th http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a copy of it on their website too. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html

if that's full size i got one that's bigger.

I found even better ones.. a staggering 26000x26000! I can't find an image viewer that displays them properly without crashing X.. even feh won't take it

This image was also he asronomy picture of the day for Sept 26th

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html

I thought the same thing. This isn't a particularly impressive resolution for such a large subject. Check out the kind of detail we get of the earth: 21600 by 10800 pixels!

The NASA Earth Observation site has measurements of the ice coverage at the north pole. While their text speaks of massive ice loss and continuing doom, the actual graph they provide of the data shows that while the minimum ice cover is less than the average of a decade ago, there is actually more minimum ice cover than last year, and last year had more cover than the year before. Why do they not mention this at all ? Maybe the point is to mislead?

Yes, 2008 and 2009 had smaller ice extent minima than 2007. But the point is that climate models had previously predicted larger ice extent minima than were observed in 2007. So the last several years tend to confirm that the previous measurements were due to short-term weather variability rather than a flaw in the climate models.

If they were to publish the proper figures for 1979 to 2000 instead of just a vague average, we could maybe see whether there is a regular fluctuation, instead of guessing that the decline has been constant.

Ask, and you shall receive. No serious scientist is actually "guessing" that the decline has been constant, and no climate model that I'm aware of makes that prediction. Short term variability is expected, but the data shows a clear downward trend over the last 30 years.

The NASA Earth Observation site has measurements of the ice coverage at the north pole. While their text speaks of massive ice loss and continuing doom, the actual graph they provide of the data shows that while the minimum ice cover is less than the average of a decade ago, there is actually more minimum ice cover than last year, and last year had more cover than the year before. Why do they not mention this at all ? Maybe the point is to mislead ? Sure they say "Though sea ice didn't melt as much in 2009 as it did in the previous two years ..." - that is wilfully seeing the pot as half empty. If they were to publish the proper figures for 1979 to 2000 instead of just a vague average, we could maybe see whether there is a regular fluctuation, instead of guessing that the decline has been constant. It's disingenuous and wrong.

For all we know, the year 2000 figures could be at the top of their average band. Alternatively, if it's at the bottom of that band, then it would appear that we are only at most a year away from having minimum levels back at 2000 levels. Surely that would be good ? But the crappy presentation and weasel wording make it impossible to judge. They even order the data labels the wrong way so that 2009 appears lower than 2007.

Yes I know this ice isn't that which is responsible for inundation, but I thought it was worth the rant anyway.

Of course there was always someone claiming it wasn't water but some other molecule also bearing hydrogen... or something else. I doubt the deniers will stop until someone actually goes there and takes a sample. Then again that does not stop the wackos who claim the Moon landing was faked either...

I'm not sure that's really dogma. Sure, it's not widely accepted that there is life on Mars, and a number of people think it's unlikely, but there's quite a lot of fairly open discussion about the possibility.

I'm not sure that's really dogma. Sure, it's not widely accepted that there is life on Mars, and a number of people think it's unlikely, but there's quite a lot of fairly open discussion about the possibility.

The scan works by looking for the OH bond, as I recall, which resonates on a particular frequency. I may be talking nonsense now, because it's a few years since I looked at this tech, but it basically works on the same principle as your microwave oven. That emits microwaves that cause the OH bonds to resonate, exciting the molecules and generating heat. This works by causing the OH bonds to resonate (in exactly the same way) and then picking up the IR that they emit as they return to their non-excited state. All that it can conclusively say is that there are molecules containing OH bonds present, but the simplest molecule containing this bond is water and so it's very probable that they've found water. Even if they haven't, they've found something that can be turned into water relatively easily, given sufficient power (e.g. a lunar solar array).

You're pretty much right on. Every molecular bond has several resonant energies for different types of vibrational modes, and a primary way of finding what you have in a sample is irradiating it and measuring at which frequencies it's absorbing energy. The MMM is specifically designed to detect in the range where hydroxy absorption would be detected, unlike previous moon mappers. (Why? I wonder. It seems like that'd be a basic thing they'd want to detect, and my memory of IR spectrometers and spectrophotometers is that it's a massive peak across a wide range of wavelengths.) Anyway, they're detecting sunlight reflected from the surface and measuring the areas in which there has been a lot of absorption to detect what's down there, if I read their description correctly.

As a side-note, it is (on paper) possible to tell something about what's adjacent to a molecular bond, to distinguish between (in this case) water and sugar, both of which have -OH bonds, because the stuff adjacent will change the frequency at which the bond you're looking at vibrates by adding or removing a bit of electron density from it. However, in the particular case of the -OH bond, as I recall, it's such a broad peak that it's not very informative.

First, you are aware that the solar output (Solar Constant) has been measured since the 1970's ? There is no need to look at distant worlds to see if it is changing - it varies around at about the 0.1 % level.

Second, I would not put any weight on observations of any body we have not observed for more than one orbit - and that includes Pluto and (for climate) Titan. These are not simple bodies.

The general cause of Pluto's warming is well known - a highly elliptical orbit, and it's near (just past) perigee, where it outgases Methane into the atmosphere. That's one of the motivations behind Pluto Express (to get there while there is still a bigger atmosphere). It is staying warm past perigee, but we have no idea if that is normal or not. Similarly, Titan is passing through the equinox (just as we are here on Earth), and that is causing seasonal change. We know that's happening; we have no idea if what we are seeing is normal or not.

Jupiter is so different from the Earth or Mars that I wouldn't use it as an analogy for anything terrestrial, good or bad. (For example, it generates more heat internally than it gets from the Sun.) Having said that, I had not heard of any warming reported there, so a link would be welcomed.

Is there a reason that NASA still needs to be a Government operation?

Yes, lack of large, immediate, pay-off. NASA still does a lot of basic R&D, in both aspects of areospace (i.e. the "areo" part or aviation science and technology, as well as the space part), but while such R&D almost always pays-off in the long-run, it could be decades before an actual profit is possible. In the short-term NASA's work does create a significant number of new products but most of the final development work is handled by private companies that either use information or license the technology. Theoretically, NASA could do the final developmental work necessary to make viable products, though it would be a huge distraction the organization's main goals. Yet, unless it focused on product development it would never make enough money to fund human exploration beyond LEO, and probably couldn't even fund it's current activities.

The only way I could see a privatized NASA continue to have a similar focus on science and exploration would be as a private not-for-profit organization, and without government funds it would have to rely heavily on sponsorship of wealth individuals, with or without donations from the general public. So unless all the wealth people you mentioned, and perhaps include Warren Buffet for good measure, decide that they believe human exploration of the solar system is so important they are willing to invest billions of dollars in it without much hope of any profits in the next few decades, I don't see the privately-owned route being any better.

Is there a reason that NASA still needs to be a Government operation?

Yes, lack of large, immediate, pay-off. NASA still does a lot of basic R&D, in both aspects of areospace (i.e. the "areo" part or aviation science and technology, as well as the space part), but while such R&D almost always pays-off in the long-run, it could be decades before an actual profit is possible. In the short-term NASA's work does create a significant number of new products but most of the final development work is handled by private companies that either use information or license the technology. Theoretically, NASA could do the final developmental work necessary to make viable products, though it would be a huge distraction the organization's main goals. Yet, unless it focused on product development it would never make enough money to fund human exploration beyond LEO, and probably couldn't even fund it's current activities.

The only way I could see a privatized NASA continue to have a similar focus on science and exploration would be as a private not-for-profit organization, and without government funds it would have to rely heavily on sponsorship of wealth individuals, with or without donations from the general public. So unless all the wealth people you mentioned, and perhaps include Warren Buffet for good measure, decide that they believe human exploration of the solar system is so important they are willing to invest billions of dollars in it without much hope of any profits in the next few decades, I don't see the privately-owned route being any better.

That's extremely unfair. The shuttle hasn't lived up to it's original billing (cheap, reusable) or flown as many flights as was envisioned but to claim it's nothing more than a giant PR program is rather dismissive of everything that it has accomplished. No shuttle == no hubble repair mission == no hubble for the last 15 years.

Shuttle operations in the 1990's cost about $3 billion per year. The cost at launch of the HST was about $1.5 billion. Shuttle HST repair missions were spectacular PR, but they were ridiculously cost-ineffective if you are using them to justify the existence of the entire program. For the price of shuttle operations, we could (very conservatively speaking) have launched 40 HSTs between 1990 and 2010.

We're already making use of the Lagrange points that from the basis for this. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sits at L2 more than 1,000,000Km away and the successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope is going there too. This earlier article has a few more details on the science; Why future astronauts may be sent to 'gravity holes'.

We're already making use of the Lagrange points that from the basis for this. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sits at L2 more than 1,000,000Km away and the successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope is going there too. This earlier article has a few more details on the science; Why future astronauts may be sent to 'gravity holes'.