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Actually, the most expensive simulator has gravity force feedback.

where they reported an anomaly two days ago.

In Tycho?
I know ; I'll RTFA now.)

The mission has a blog (with feed) where they reported an anomaly two days ago.

The mission has a blog (with feed) where they reported an anomaly two days ago.

Why is it that we haven't built datacenters in places with natural cooling. gives a new meaning to the phrase, sent to siberia.
I know I am not the only one with this obvious Idea.

Actually, forecast prediction has increased dramatically in the last 10 years based on the data from satellites nearer the Sun such as ACE and SOHO. Based on the solar information, ground-based and near Earth measurements have provided scientists (and engineers) the ability to combat potential events that could damage satellites (such as communication or GPS) or ground electrical systems. Based on observations of the Sun, we can give a forecast of as much as 3 days in advance with reasonable accuracy. Unexpected events do happen but overall, forecasting space weather is much easier than local tropospheric weather.

This is wrong. The GOES satellites are geo-synchronous, meaning they remain at continuous location with respect to the Earth. This also means that they are not in polar orbits. These satellites are similar to the LANL satellites but occupy the western hemisphere. You may be thinking of the DMSP satellites.

GOES is useful at measuring the magnetic fields. It does not, however, measure the ionospheric particles such as is done with the SuperDARN coherent scatter radars or the EISCAT or PFISR incoherent scatter radars. The group at the University of Saskatchewan has also received money to build a new radar which is scheduled to be built on the NE corner of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. It will be their 5th radar.

As another poster pointed out, the dip that you refer to is still above the temperature for the entire preceding 100 years and is smaller than several other dips that occurred in that period. There are several reasons that 'climate change' is preferred over 'global warming':

And the projected global temperature at the end of the century is still below that during the Medieval Warm Period. Or was that the result of "anthropogenic global warming", too?

Yeah and you can just ignore the FACT that the North Atlantic is melting because it is some NASA plot!

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/arcticice_decline.html

And you ignore the fact that the ice is at a greater level today than it was a year ago.

From August 1 to 17, Arctic sea ice extent declined at an average rate of 54,000 square kilometers (21,000 square miles) per day. This decline was slower than the same period in 2008, when it was 91,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) per day, and for the same period in 2007, when ice extent declined at a rate of 84,000 square kilometers (32,000 square miles) per day. The recent rate of ice loss has slowed considerably compared to most of July. Arctic sea ice extent is now greater than the same day in 2008.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

• When some people hear Global Warming they think 'I wouldn't mind warmer weather, this sounds good.'
• A lot of people seem to only hear the 'warming' part and ignore the 'global' part, as in 'it's been cold here, therefore global warming must be wrong.'
• The climate is a chaotic system, and once it swings away from one equilibrium point it's very difficult to predict exactly where it will land. With most models, the difference between conditions that will end in desertification for a region are very close to those that will end with glaciation. Neither of these is particularly good for humans, but the difference is like balancing a coin its edge and then flicking it. It's difficult to predict which side it will land on, but it's pretty easy to predict that it won't land on the edge.

Having read some of the posts in this discussion, I'm starting to think chaos theory should be taught in high schools, although I'd have thought that the typical Slashdot reader would have at least a basic grounding in the subject.

Do you mean the slight dip in average global temperatures? As you can clearly see in he graph, there have been several such "unexplained" declines in the last 100 years, but the overall trend is painfully obvious.

However, the Russian system -- with its corruption and massive budget cuts (afte 1991) in government-funded research and development -- has hampered Russians scientists and engineers in their effort to produce breakthrough technology. NASA's collaboration with the Russian scientific community (and possible NASA funding for it) will help the Russians to achieve what they can not achieve in their own system.

If only President Dmitry Medvedev and Dictator Vladimir Putin created a Western society (with its intellectual freedom and clean government) in Russia and generously funded government research and development, then the Russians would likely dominate the winners of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and of the Fields Medals in mathematics.

One important difference - the contractors actually work while the GS-14s (and other grades) spend their time arguing with each other, taking breaks and long lunches, and changing their minds every five minutes.

I'd rather work directly for a military officer in some godforsaken FOB in Durkadurkastan than a civilian GS in a safe, comfortable office in CONUS.

Actually, the big move right now is to fixed price contracts. The Government found out that most of their COTR's are incapable of managing contracts.

It seems like your experience was with the DoD civil servants, and what you state may or may not be accurate. Well this article is about NASA, not the DoD. From my own experience as a former co-op student at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, your characterization is just falt-out wrong if applied to the civil servants at NASA. I worked with engineers that designed avionics and other electronic systems for both manned and unmanned projects, for example their work included the control system for an experimental automatic docking system as well as the electronics for the Environmental Control and Life-Support System (ECLSS). In my experience, they (the NASA personnel) worked just as hard and effectively as anyone I've since worked with in the private sector.

One important difference - the contractors actually work while the GS-14s (and other grades) spend their time arguing with each other, taking breaks and long lunches, and changing their minds every five minutes.

I'd rather work directly for a military officer in some godforsaken FOB in Durkadurkastan than a civilian GS in a safe, comfortable office in CONUS.

Actually, the big move right now is to fixed price contracts. The Government found out that most of their COTR's are incapable of managing contracts.

It seems like your experience was with the DoD civil servants, and what you state may or may not be accurate. Well this article is about NASA, not the DoD. From my own experience as a former co-op student at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, your characterization is just falt-out wrong if applied to the civil servants at NASA. I worked with engineers that designed avionics and other electronic systems for both manned and unmanned projects, for example their work included the control system for an experimental automatic docking system as well as the electronics for the Environmental Control and Life-Support System (ECLSS). In my experience, they (the NASA personnel) worked just as hard and effectively as anyone I've since worked with in the private sector.

One important difference - the contractors actually work while the GS-14s (and other grades) spend their time arguing with each other, taking breaks and long lunches, and changing their minds every five minutes.

I'd rather work directly for a military officer in some godforsaken FOB in Durkadurkastan than a civilian GS in a safe, comfortable office in CONUS.

Actually, the big move right now is to fixed price contracts. The Government found out that most of their COTR's are incapable of managing contracts.

It seems like your experience was with the DoD civil servants, and what you state may or may not be accurate. Well this article is about NASA, not the DoD. From my own experience as a former co-op student at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, your characterization is just falt-out wrong if applied to the civil servants at NASA. I worked with engineers that designed avionics and other electronic systems for both manned and unmanned projects, for example their work included the control system for an experimental automatic docking system as well as the electronics for the Environmental Control and Life-Support System (ECLSS). In my experience, they (the NASA personnel) worked just as hard and effectively as anyone I've since worked with in the private sector.

Ok, they find the asteroid... and then what? I hate to break this to you, but Armageddeon was a work of fiction. (Shocking, I know.) We don't have anything that can land on an asteroid and do anything about it-- and we probably wouldn't have time to build one after we detected the sucker.

Sure, if you detected an earth-impacting asteroid a few days beforehand you'd be screwed, but if you detect one several years beforehand you have quite a few options, ranging from splashing some paint on one side of the asteroid (so sunlight has an asymmetric effect on the trajectory) to using nuclear rockets.

Two years? Are you writing from 2006? If so, what's it like living in a solar system with nine planets?

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/

"The whole reason they're doing this is so they have multiple competing vendors for services, instead of just a single monopolistic contractor."

Yikes - I thought the US military had pervasive dual-sourcing policies already, but maybe NASA not so much. At least as of 1998, it seems like much of the Shuttle was single-sourced. Probably still is?

http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY98/executive_summaries/ig-98-030es.htm

Please see the LISA mission:

http://lisa.nasa.gov/

LISA can be thought of as a giant Michelson interferometer in space. The spacecraft separation sets the range of GW frequencies LISA can observe (from 0.03 milliHertz to above 0.1 Hertz).

You might kick some up, but unless the stuff is given a decent ballistic velocity it won't go anywhere. Can't exactly hang around in the air, right?

Actually, you couldn't be more wrong.

The dust particles get a charge off the solar wind and sunlight itself, then repel one another. Result: Dust hanging about in the air (well, mainly lack of air actually).

NASA is years away from building, lofting and installing anything that requires miles of tubing.

That's not true. They've got a website don't they?

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT/RT2002/5000/5490thieme.html

As I pointed out, the BWB would have multiple doors in the leading edge. From some of the studies that Boeing did, it had the craft turned sideways at the terminal (kind of like a frisbee) and uses the current ramps. But even assuming that it requires a re-design, so what? As I pointed out, the airports have re-designed for a-380 for heavy use airports and then slow entry/exits for those that chose to not re-design.

I re-read what I wrote, and I meant to say 1/3 to 1/2 LESS fuel, which is still significant. It is estimated that in the near term a blended wing body aircraft could see increased fuel conservation of 33 percent as compared to that of currently available aircraft. MD internal study said by using composites (the study was from a decade ago) that fuel savings would be 50%.

Boeing is opposed to doing the BWB. BUT the Boeing engineers as well as NASA are fully in favor of it and pushing it. It is almost certain that the first version of this will be a military version followed by a civilian cargo version.

Oh, and the maker, Fisher Pen, did in fact sell NASA AND the russians plenty of pens.

NASA paid $6 each.

A true American entrepreneur, Paul Fisher tackled the problem and solved it, and seems to have done so just to be able to say he did. No doubt he made a bundle selling the civilian version (identical to the NASA version, BTW).

Oh, and the Russians are alleged to have been using GREASE pencils in space. Close...

Oh geeze, I knew I shouldn't have waited to submit a story on this, as the Guardian article linked is pretty crappy, which isn't a surprise considering how opposed the Guardian usually is to manned spaceflight in general. It doesn't even list the options the Committee is presenting to the White House. Here's some better sources:

The actual presentations from the meeting: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/meetings/08_12_meeting.html
http://www.space.com/news/090812-nasa-spaceflight-options-refined.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081302244.html
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/08/13/show-exploration-the-money/

Basically, the Augustine Committee concluded that you can't do too much with the $10B budget spaceflight currently has, but a number of interesting options open up if you increase that by $3B. Basically, there's two main types of scenarios which have been outlined:

• Lunar focus: Similar to the current plan, focusing on lunar exploration and settlement with a mind towards future Mars exploration
• Deep space: Exploration of Lagrange points, near-earth asteroids, and Phobos, with an emphasis on building the in-space infrastructure which will make it easier to explore the Moon and Mars

Some items of interest regarding both scenarios:

• Most of the scenarios don't include the Ares I, which suggests that the problem-ridden program is quite likely to be cancelled
• Just about all the scenarios will have a big boost to commercial spaceflight to low-earth orbit, with the goal of making commercial providers the primary way to get to LEO by 2016
• Most of the scenarios place an emphasis on in-orbit refueling, which is something the previous administration avoided for some fairly dodgy reasons. Refueling is a major enabler when it comes to spaceflight, and helps you do a lot more with existing boosters. It also provides a market for promoting the growth and cost-efficiency of new rockets.
• Most of the options include restoring technology development funding at NASA, which was largely scrapped to help pay for the Ares I development

What the panel is going to tell Obama is that the entire budget from the shuttle should, as it winds down, be transferred entirely within the manned space office directly to 'exploration', which consists of Constellation and 'advanced capabilities.

In essence, they are about to tell Obama that he should continue to award the budgets and increases already asked for, for specifically what they've asked for them for, continuing on through 2013. That is already reflected in the budget and proposals, as is their request to transfer shuttle funding to Constellation.

Look at the budget and proposal numbers from
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/210020main_NASA_FY09_Budget_Estimates_Summary.pdf
for "Exploration (Constellation systems)" and "Space Operations (Space Shuttle)". As the shuttle winds down, Constellation winds up. It's already there, it has already been asked for, Obama already knows about this. The panel is merely repeating NASA's requests.

There is hardly anything newsworthy here, certainly nothing to run around with your hair on fire as Guardian appears to enjoy instigating by leading the pack. I'm not sure who started this screamfest, but it's spread all over the web with no one doing the little research as was done here in order to find out if the noise to noisier ratio is justified. Had they done so (and maybe they have) I suspect they'd ignore it and print this expose' of nothing what so ever in exactly the same manner anyway.

The other claim in the article, the reference to the Near Earth Object program, MailOnline reported previously and similarly slanted backwards. The claim that NASA says can't track all the rocks is a misstatement of "NASA needs more funding for more scopes/projects as the numbers grow", and the claim that NASA is alone in doing this is falsified by a visit to the NASA/JPL NEO web site that shows the seven NEO programs, one of the Australian, one of them Japanese, and one an international consortium. Thus, the second part echoes the first in that it's media initiated awfulism based on the entirely mundane politics of having an 'independent panel' created by the agency that wants what it said it wants, say the same thing.

The panel itself may even make cautionary and emphatic noises. The fact remains that the numbers, produced before the panel was even announced, already show NASA's budgets, projections and requests to cover exactly the programs which are being singled out for needing that money. They're just trying to prevent the NASA budget from being gutted and the money transferred to the health care program or any of the other programs grabbing at anything that might move.

Why exactly are we going to the moon again?

Uhhhh-- You're not from around here, are you? The non-geek answer is here. The geek-trying-to-not-be answer is here. And the real geek answer is... well, anything modded +5 on this thread that isn't "Funny".

Why exactly are we going to the moon again?

Uhhhh-- You're not from around here, are you? The non-geek answer is here. The geek-trying-to-not-be answer is here. And the real geek answer is... well, anything modded +5 on this thread that isn't "Funny".

BBC News is reporting that astronomers have discovered the first planet that orbits in the opposite direction to the spin of its star.

Um, except for Venus, Uranus and Pluto anyway. If you count Pluto as a planet.

I looked at the first one. It actually shows the opposite of what you are saying. According to that graph the mean for polar sea ice is dropping, and recent years have been worse than less recent years.

The third one is from NOAA statistics you say. But it is only one month (August, unless I am mistaken?), compared against a mean of the previous years. That shows August 2008 was cooler, on average in most areas (and in others, quite neutral), to the mean global temperature of the previous decade. If you look at this data for 2008, it shows the opposite of what you're trying to show http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/ . And here's one of the NOAA saying that 2008 was one of the warmest years on record: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20081216_climatestats.html .

The second link you provided has been much better refuted than I could do on khayman80's blog. (Look up his links about water vapour).

Three that I have enjoyed are:
Marshal Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
The Atomic Museum, Albuquerque, NM
The Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, KS
There are many more possibilities. Most large government labs, such as Fermilab have tours and/or a visitor center. Most large universities have museums. These are often small but sometimes excellent and some have not been "dumbed down" like some of the larger public museums.

Earth cooled a degree last year ...

As I've explained, ENSO events are irrelevant to the long term climate.

Satellite images show arctic ice cap growing the last three years ...

In the same link as above, I referenced this paper titled "Arctic sea ice decline: faster than forecast."

... lack of sunspots is pointing to a scary minimum.

Again in the same link, I explain that this means the Sun is unusually dim, which (if anything) would tend to cool the Earth slightly.

The CO2 increase contributes to less than a than 1/2 of a percent increase in green house gasses ...

As I explain in the fifth paragraph of that article, CO2 has jumped 26% above the highest value it's reached in the last 650,000 years. And this staggering increase occurred in the span of several decades due to human emissions, which is 35x faster than at any point in the last 400,000 years.

... (do not exclude the largest green house gas, water vapor)

As I've explained, water vapor reaches equilibrium in a matter of weeks, so we can't change its concentration except by changing Earth's average temperature. Water vapor is also not present in the top level of the atmosphere where the greenhouse effect is most important. CO2, on the other hand, is well-mixed even to the highest level of the atmosphere, and it stays in the atmosphere for many decades which is why it's so dangerous.

The Farmer's Almanac? Balderdash! My trick knee can predict the climate more accurately than anyone.

Seriously, though. Look at NASA's data. The "cooling" you've seen since 1998 has happened several times before. 1900, 1915, 1940, 1960, etc. At every such point you could claim we're cooling, but years later it would be apparent that we're not. Besides, by your standard, every momentary upturn of the temperature would mean we're warming, and you can see there has been times like that in the last century.

Take a good, long look at the overall trend and put your Almanac in the outhouse, where it belongs.

Check out NASA's CLARAty reusable (open-source) robotics framework http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov/man/overview/index.php Why reinvent the wheel. Who knows maybe your work developing this code will help send robots to other planets.

Approximately 14,600.

"Besides, we're talking about Science here, not "Biblical Creationism" as such. The idea that the Earth was created in 6 literal days replete with "faith-challenging" dino fossils and other fairy tales is the story that Evolutionists spread as Intelligent Design dogma. It shows a very big gap in their knowledge of the ID field which is quite a bit less dogmatic about the 6 day theory and much more in tune with mainstream scientific method."

Well, you'll have to excuse the critics for the confusion, because everybody knows that since at least the 1960s there has been an effort on the part of "biblical creationists", as you call them, to claim the 6 literal days story is scientific, and the only reason some creationists fell back to "intelligent design" recently was that most people recognized the original version of "scientific" creationism is a farce. This switcheroo was so obvious that an early draft of one of the books on the subject ("Of Pandas and People") had all references to creationism purged and replaced with "intelligent design", even though the arguments had not significantly changed. Even with that knowledge, most critics of "intelligent design" do know that it is different from "biblical creationism" -- intelligent design has been carefully laundered of the obviously biblical parts. It isn't the same thing. That's the whole point of it.

Other than those rhetorical benefits, "intelligent design" brings nothing new to the table. It's Paley's watch argument all over again, reassembled with bits of more modern evidence to appear as if it was new, but the rationale is the same. As you say, plenty of scientists have religious views, but the great majority aren't confused enough to think that their personal religious beliefs or "intelligent design" are scientific. Unfortunately the intelligent design folks are confusing their religious philosophy with the scientific process.

"What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts. Why are clam fossils at the top of very young mountains?"

This is a good example of a real puzzle -- back in the 1800s. There is no big mystery about why clam fossils and other marine fossils are found at the top of young mountains, just like it is no mystery that land plant fossils and land animal footprints are sometimes found kilometres below sea level. Tectonics is happening right now. Plenty of mountains are experiencing uplift currently, plenty of sedimentary basins are subsiding. It's directly measurable with GPS, VLBI, and other techniques. I don't know what ID brings to the question, and even 100 years ago, before plate tectonics was understood, geologists had a pretty good idea that the surface of the Earth was not static. They hypothesized that the crust of the Earth rose and fell as a result of great forces, pushing up mountain ranges and opening oceans, even if they did not know at the time what process drove those forces. Sea level has also risen and fallen on the order of +-250m or so too.

So, what does ID explain about geological processes? That God designed a tectonically active planet that is not static and is moving around today? Is the Hand of God moving fossils and continents around? Or what?

Scientists reexamine the facts surrounding these issues all the time, so, what new idea does ID bring to the process? Please, don't suggest it has something to do with a global flood. That idea has been falsified for close to 200 years in the legitimate scientific realm. There is no time in Earth history when the geological evidence is consistent with the whole Earth being immersed. Geologists knew this even in the 1800s, and that's why they abandoned the idea. For scientific hypotheses, suggesting a global flood occurred is on par with suggesting the Earth is flat. So, what else have you got?

Without decent pictures this story will not go far beyond the science pages. A graph showing distribution of elements isn't the most attention-grabbing shot I can think of.

That's why the media industry uses 'artist's illustrations' (like this), along with other existing images and resources, such as the telescope and a video of its launch.

Except it.. uh... does.

Yes, Kepler is in an unusual orbit. It's not orbiting Earth, it's orbiting the Sun, although it's designed to stay close to the Earth over its mission lifetime. But it is only receiving partial protection by the Earth's magnetosphere. It's possible that it will be more vulnerable to single event upsets (SEUs) as time goes on.

The accepted submission on this story was pretty good, although here's the one I wrote up, which has a few more relevant links. In particular, the first link, to an article by Alan Boyle on MSNBC, is probably the best summary of this I've seen so far:

NASA Begins Commercial Crew Initiative

NASA is using an initial $50M to 'stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities.' NASA originally planned to use $150M, which was blocked by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) until it was largely redirected to the ~$35B Ares rocket program based at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO) will reward multiple competitive contracts, with the goals of promoting job growth, lowering the cost of spaceflight, and helping reduce the post-Shuttle gap in US human spaceflight capability.

"NASAâ(TM)s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program is applying Recovery Act funds to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities. These efforts are intended to foster entrepreneurial activity leading to job growth in engineering, analysis, design, and research, and to economic growth as capabilities for new markets are created. By developing commercial crew service providers, NASA may be able to reduce the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability. All ARRA funded activities must comply with its provisions and will conclude no later than September 30, 2010."

This is yet another Stupid NASA Trick. Are they serious? At this level of funding, which wouldn't even pay for the airlock on the Orion capsule, a private contractor is going to "bridge the gap" that NASA created? If NASA hadn't killed promising R&D programs like the X-33 (VentureStar), we would already have replaced the Shuttle with a system which reduced flight costs substantially, improved safety and reliability, has shorter turn-around times, and can fly more often. Which, by the way, is what is needed to help stimulate a growing space economy. It all depends on reduced cost of, and increased reliability of access to orbit. Constellation isn't going to provide that. COTS, (and this new bit, given a new name to keep 'em guessing) are funded at levels so low as to guarantee NASA will never face competition from the private companies which win these bids. This is not a joke, it's a charade.

If the objective were to create a private market for access to space, NASA could do this easily. All they need to do is announce that they will buy payload to LEO delivery services from the private market, at market rates. Right now market rates for a single launch of a modest payload are higher than the total size of this program.

NASA probably spent more than this on artwork and publicity for Contellation / Orion / Aeries.

NASA discovers light from the sun, and no atmosphere on the moon.

Could the summary be any more vacuous? It could have been a bit more explanatory about the nature of the satellite. (i.e. to find water on the moon - source: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/mission.htm)

The earth's orbit is an ellipse, with the sun at one of the two focal points. WHAT IS AT THE OTHER FOCAL POINT?

Foci of Earth's Elliptical Orbit

Please be gentle, mods. I'm just trying to help someone out. :)

You can view this image and many other interesting photos at the Astronomy Picture of the Day website. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090805.html

If you want to argue that science doesn't concern itself with putting boots on Mars, fine, lots stop funding space science and get back to funding space engineering.

Hear! Hear!

Any human being can understand these words: "the human race has set foot on a different planet". I look forward to the changes that will take longer to understand: what it will mean to the world pscyhe to know that we have demonstrated the possibility of escape, to know that there is a new world to explore, a new adventure to be had, etc. The re-colonization of the Americas by europeans co-incided with the beginning of the greatest leaps forward in technology, prosperity, and freedom (as long as you weren't brown at the time...) in world history. I am looking forward to seeing what shape the "discovery" of Mars will have on all of us.

While I think the inspiration of space exploration is overplayed, it is still worth noting that simple, big goals like that are easy to grasp. Clarity is something missing from current space efforts. In comparison, for the ISS, somewhere there's a relative concise list of goals for the ISS:

Goals and Objectives. Goals of the International Space Station (ISS) are to establish a permanent habitable residence and laboratory for science and research, and to maintain and support a human crew at this facility. Purposes of the ISS are to expand our experience in living and working in space, encourage and enable commercial development of space, and provide the capability for humans to perform unique long duration space-based research in cell and developmental biology, plant biology, human physiology, fluid physics, combustion science, materials science and fundamental physics. The ISS, part way in its construction, is already providing a unique platform for making observations of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, the sun, and other astronomical objects. The experience and results obtained from using the ISS will guide the future direction of human exploration of space, back to the Moon and on to Mars and beyond.

The ISS is the largest and most complex international scientific project in history. The completed station by about 2010 will have a mass of about 1,040,000 lbs. (470 metric tons). It will measure 356 ft (109 m) across and 290 ft (88 m) long, with almost an acre of solar panels to provide up to 110 kilowatts power to six state-of-the-art laboratories. Led by the United States, the ISS draws upon the scientific and technological resources of 16 nations: Canada, Japan, Russia, 11 nations of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Brazil.

but in practice it boils down to "We're building the most expensive human building ever; it'll finish in 2011 maybe; we have six people living in it now; we're trying out some neat technology; and we have about a hundred little science projects going on every six months." There's a bunch of possible little stories, but nothing major.

The public is very cold on science for science's sake, you have to have photo ops.

To be fair, manned exploration is not a good bargain science-wise. The life-support and safety costs outweigh any advantage of human presence. Science-wise, remote probes are much cheaper (and the return cool photos).
     

It's been mentioned here in the past, but what would combine the awe and excitement of a 'stunt', along with the progress of science, would be to establish a manned space station/city. It can be fairly near the Earth at first...

you're in luck! We got one. In orbit now. You can see it yourself

(That was, of course, Wehrner von Braun's view, too)

Hopefully people will realize how important the space program is, but something tells me that it won't be soon, and it won't be until we get something inspiring. Deep space voyages, while important, won't inspire anyone. Landing on the Moon or Mars? That will.

The biggest impediment to that PR vision is keeping the spam in the can alive to both land on the surface of Mars, in particular, and return to earth. Looking over the historical evidence, http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/log/, it does not give a sense that we have a good handle on how to manage risk associated with unmanned science missions to Mars, let alone a manned missions which will require much more complexity. About half of all missions to Mars that have been attempted have failed. Killing people en route or crashing people on the surface of Mars does absolutely no good, and will likely yield the opposite of the desired PR outcome. I, for one, would like to see much better accounting for, and management of, the risk associated with both current unmanned Mars missions before attempting a simple PR stunt involving people. Science for the sake of science has it's place, and one is risk mitigation. And since everyone knows the moon is made of cheese http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/granddayout/, so there is no need to go back there :)

Lift.

The problem is down mass. The shuttle has it, no other vehicle does, and the station was designed to require it.

Honest question: How many times has that down-mass capability actually been used? I don't know of any time the "bring broken ISS equipment back to the ground" scenario you describe ever occurred, although I might just be unaware.

Actually, it has been used on several occasions. Explicitly for the ISS, there have been the Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules designed by the Italian government and flown on the Space Shuttle named for Italian scientists (and for NASA the Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles) Leonardo, Raffaello, and Donatello. These were modules that were docked to the ISS, and on occasion have been swapped out and had the modules brought back to the Earth in the shuttle.... essentially using the Space Shuttle as a trash hauler. Yes, there have been some scientific research products that have been brought back to the Earth in these modules, and broken down research racks and other items that have value in and of themselves for research purposes, but a great deal of what was stuffed in these modules for shipment back to the ground included things like old clothing, used food trays, paperwork for projects that have been completed (like checklists and installation manuals), and packaging materials for all of the equipment that has been installed.

In addition to these modules that have been returned to the Earth on several occasions, there have been several satellites which have been captured and stowed into the shuttle cargo bay as well... including one satellite where NASA got a check from Lloyds of London for ship salvage when the satellite was repaired and sent back up into space on a later mission and redeployed.

Another research experiment using the down-mass haulage capability was a research project that tested how various metals and materials functioned in a Low-Earth Orbit environment for an extended period of time (it was in space for about 10 years) which was put into space by one shuttle mission and it was retrieved a decade later by a subsequent mission. Simply put, this was one research project that simply could not have been done at all without the down-mass capability of the shuttle.

All this said, and in spite of having the Shuttle being used for this unique capability that no other spacecraft possesses, it is not used nearly as often as it could be nor is the loss of this capability mentioned in design analysis of proposed vehicles in the future. Only the Shuttle can take large and bulky items as large as a semi-truck trailer (aka as big as the Hubble Telescope) and bring those items safely back to the ground without those items requiring a re-entry system of their own. I'll admit that the Buran spacecraft also had this capability, but that vehicle never really made it into space either.