Slashdot Mirror

Apologies for commenting on my own post. Just a random pick from the list, an experiment done back in the day, Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG).

Some exerpts:

Zeolites, which are mineral crystals of aluminosilicates, have a rigid crystalline structure with a network of interconnected tunnels and cages that is similar to a honeycomb. A sort of mineral sponge, zeolites have the ability to absorb and release liquids and gases such as petroleum or hydrogen while remaining as hard as rock.

...

Results from the samples mixed on ISS suggest that the Lewis acid catalytic sites are altered in microgravity, as indicated by lower catalytic activity in the MPV probe reaction compared to Earth-grown zeolite. This further suggests that the control of fluid dynamics during crystallization may be important in making better industrial catalysts. Although space-grown zeolites had the same particle morphology and identical surface framework as zeolites grown on Earth, the average zeolite size of the space-grown crystals was 10% larger than crystals grown on Earth (Akata et al. 2004).

Larger zeolite crystals allow researchers to better define the structure and understand how they work, with a goal of producing improved crystals on Earth. Improved zeolites may have applications in storing hydrogen fuel, reduction of hazardous byproducts from chemical processing, and more efficient techniques for petroleum processing.

So just tacking a random pick of the huge experiment list, something called ZCG, I found that there are substantial results. These people just need to get the public interested with this stuff by communicating it more efficiently. "The science we do might lower gas prices and also contribute to hydrogen car research".

The ISS is the most amazing laboratory ever built. Vast amounts of awesome science is done on it. Thing is, NASA is so completely inept at communicating this to the public that even space geeks, like myself, have no idea what the hell they do up there.

Your post got me wondering.. I had no idea either. A little google search gave me this interesting list.

the incremental cost for a shuttle launch is ~$60M.

NASA says the cost per shuttle launch is $450 million.

You do mean former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, right? You know, where it says "CHAIRMAN", it lists his name and everything.

Secondly, they haven't presented any options, yet. The report isn't done. This article pretty clearly states some of the constraints under which they've working, but some Slashdot Editing Magic(TM) has turned the panel's statement that ~"NASA needs a bigger budget and slightly longer timeframe to fly the flights already on schedule now" into what you see at the top of your browser.

The Shuttle/ISS subcommittee headed by Dr Sally Ride has presented three options:

1. Do nothing, let the shuttle stop flying at the end of 2010 and let the station be de-orbited at the end of 2016.
2. Fly 1 more mission, and still de-orbit the station at the end of 2016.
3. Extend station operations through to the end of 2020 and fly more shuttle missions to support it.

The options explain how to do it, what funding will be required, and the consequences on other programs.

The President and the new NASA Administrator will take these options and decide which to implement, depending on what funding they can get from Congress.

The committee is not chartered with making any recommendations, and the options are not final until the report is released, around Aug 31.

You can give your opinions to the committee via the website: http://hsf.nasa.gov/

How ironic. You accuse me of stupidity while, apparently, not understanding the term "mean global temperature".

Imagine the solar output doubles. What do you figure will happen to the mean global temperature? Assume it halves. What will happen? In what way is that not a correlation?

We've had satellites studying the sun for decades.

Indeed, and guess what: we have found strong variations in UV output http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/sola/1998/00000177/00000001/00134956?crawler=true. The shorter the wavelength, the more extreme the variations.

The variations are definitely correlated to the solar cycle which is not surprising: coronal conditions are strongly influenced by the entangled magnetic field loops pinned to sunspots since the charged particles in the corona track those loops on account of the Lorentz force. And it is known that the sunspot number rises and falls as to sun goes through the solar cycle maximum and minimum. However, the current cycle has an anomalously low number of sunspots and an extended minimum.

To get some idea as to what fraction of the short wavelength flux stems from the corona, have a look at the following images: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/images/

Let's stop arguing and look at the data. Specifically, let us look at global temperature (note that we can see tabular data as well as the plots).

One thing that is plotted in these graphs is a running 5-year average, which helps separate the general trend from the local noise. Not surprisingly, this 5-year average tends to be a lot less volatile than each year, and we see points appearing above and below this line.

You with me so far?

Now, let's look closely at the temperature data. When you look at these points, 1998 was, quite frankly, an outlier. In a long series of points, it was much higher than the 5 year average, and most of the years since 1998 (excluding 2005 and 2007), were cooler. So, yeah, you can make the statement that the average temperature is cooler than in 1998.

Let's look a bit closer at the 5 year average. Since 1998, this value has gone up almost every year since 1998. The one exception is 2006, which is still higher than 1998.

Thus, we don't see a "10 years of cooling". We see that 10 years ago, we had an abnormally warm year and that over 10 years, the 5-year average has continued to rise.

Let's stop arguing and look at the data. Specifically, let us look at global temperature (note that we can see tabular data as well as the plots).

One thing that is plotted in these graphs is a running 5-year average, which helps separate the general trend from the local noise. Not surprisingly, this 5-year average tends to be a lot less volatile than each year, and we see points appearing above and below this line.

You with me so far?

Now, let's look closely at the temperature data. When you look at these points, 1998 was, quite frankly, an outlier. In a long series of points, it was much higher than the 5 year average, and most of the years since 1998 (excluding 2005 and 2007), were cooler. So, yeah, you can make the statement that the average temperature is cooler than in 1998.

Let's look a bit closer at the 5 year average. Since 1998, this value has gone up almost every year since 1998. The one exception is 2006, which is still higher than 1998.

Thus, we don't see a "10 years of cooling". We see that 10 years ago, we had an abnormally warm year and that over 10 years, the 5-year average has continued to rise.

How on earth did your post get modded as Informative? You link to a site that says "The Sun's energy output has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978'. That is completely untrue, the sun's energy output varies daily, and the sun goes through 11 year cycles in which it's overall output increases or decreases. Try this article. Or this one. Or just google it yourself!. In fact, one of the articles you link to disputes the other! Maybe you should try reading a few other sources than New Scientist, as there are mountains of evidence that would suggest the science isn't as nearly as conclusive as the IPCC backers would like you to believe.

1998 was indeed the warmest year...

Actually, the warmest year was 2005. 1998 is tied for second with 2007. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt

..has caused me much hilarity, given that there was little man made CO2 pre- 1940's and at least half of the warming of the 20th century occurred then, and that post 1998 there has been no warming (cooling indeed, according to the satellite record) at all, despite increasing CO2.

Wrong.

• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt (NASA sat. data)
• http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png (same data plotted on graph)

1900 (-.19 C) to 1940 (.07 C) difference of .26 C
1940 (.07 C ) to 2008 (.53 C) difference of .46 C
Seems like a lot less than half, maybe you are the one who is not letting the facts bother their opinions?

From June, 2003:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030615.html .... note the last sentence.
6 years.

Sometimes it takes main stream media a while to catch on.

Note that this APOD entry has further links to US Navy research on the topic.

Actually no it doesn't disagree with him at all. There is less surface area (extent) but considerably more volume which has more than compensated for the extent reduction. The total volume of the ice pack has increased not decreased.

It's like playing wack-a-mole with you guys. Thining Now go back to Rush for your next excuse. Or just admit you don't really care how much evidence there is, you have moral ideological reasons for this silliness.

I have been also looking at reports and studies from both sides, interestingly I do find many times the reports have contradictory evidence. Good example would be sun radiation increase myth, which if you look few actual measurement sites is in fact at it's lowest, not highest.

Couple examples:
http://acrim.com/Index.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

I know NASA is not nearly as credible as:

http://www.federaljack.com/2009/06/06/nasa-study-acknowledges-solar-cycle-not-man-responsible-for-warming-of-the-planet/

Besides if you look into the IPCC report (full report page 39) from 2007 the solar radiation increase from the average is accounted for. Unfortunately many of these aspects that affect climate are considered to have med/low level of scientific understanding on how the phenomena works, mostly measurements back up the fact that something is potentially going on in that area. When the "global warming is HOAX" sites receive any bit of information that they feel is beneficial in debunking the global warming story they immediately jump on it and create a report that explains everything, end of story. What I really like about IPCC report is that the whole report is full of uncertainties and highlights areas that needs to be researched more. I like that kind of openness in the face of extremely complex phenomena that is mostly observed as well as modeled with rough approximations so far, work is in progress to fine tune those estimates but it takes time. There are also some areas where level of scientific understanding is high, one of those areas is CO2. Ultimately the result of the IPCC report is that likelihood that human is causing climate change that is irreversible is very high and according to current known facts reducing green house gases is the most effective way to counter that.

We can barely predict tomorrow's weather with any degree of accuracy (in some areas even that's stretching it), but we are supposed to believe any scientist that claims to have GLOBAL weather licked?

Weather is not climate.

Trying to predict the weather is a LOT more difficult than predicting climate. Predicting the weather compared to climate is like predicting the output of a Random Number Generator over the next 14 iterations compared to the output of a RNG over the next 1000 or more.

Over 14 iterations the RNG (assuming 0-1 range), the average is likely to vary significantly from 0.5 and predicting which side of 0.5 it will fall is impossible, but over 1000 iterations, it will be very close to 0.5.

GISS source code is available here. The data and results are also available if you poke around.

I am not about to buy into the fossile-fuel-funded arguments that global warming "isn't real"...it's very real, as anyone living in the northern lattitudes can trivially see. Even in London it's obvious that insects and plantlife that never used to thrive this far north now do.

Hmm. A quick look at some raw NASA GISS data shows there's nothing unusual about recent temperatures in England.

Maybe you'd be interested in my recent blog post on the scientific case for and against climate change. I assure you I'm not receiving a penny from anyone for this. In fact, it's probably in my professional interest to prove global warming IS happening, since much of my research funding is dependent on it.

Let's see, we're supposed to spend literally trillions of dollars to fix global warming, yet we can't see the raw data the hysteria is based on?

WTF!?!?!

This is a big problem, and in the science community in general (not just climate scientists!). The data is safeguarded for some length of time while the researcher(s) publish their findings, personal gain, or simply because the research itself was a very expensive process and the institution wants to "get its money's worth". I work at a climate research center and we've actually had to take hard copies of data and run them through an OCR program like ABBYY because the original scientist wouldn't send us digital versions of the data or even processed maps.

Along the same lines, when is the source code used for the climate models going to be published and thoroughly reviewed?

If AGW is in fact true, it can withstand the scrutiny.

But it is:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_source2.html
http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/code4x3.html
http://www.caps.ou.edu/ARPS/
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/PolarMet/pwrf.html

and someone made a nice list of models used in the recent IPCC report and if source code is available here:
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=667

Actually, the dramatic changes in the northern latitudes compared to the southern ones is likely due to locally produced aerosols. Black carbon particulate from coal and oil absorb solar radiation. It's a good example of how we shouldn't only focus on carbon dioxide when thinking about climate changes, and that not everything we experience is because of a 'global' effect. Here's a writeup of the study.

Is it just me or does the tear look a little like an anus... Does this mean that Jupiter just got tore a new one?

If we could find a source of rocket fuel that isn't at the bottom of a major gravity well, I would say go there first, but in the meantime visiting and eventually moving NEO would be the highest priority for me.

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

What Is A Near-Earth Object (NEO)?

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighborhood. Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Why Study Asteroids? ... The asteroids that are potentially the most hazardous because they can closely approach the Earth are also the objects that could be most easily exploited for raw materials. These raw materials could be used in developing the space structures and in generating the rocket fuel that will be required to explore and colonize our solar system in the twenty-first century. By closely investigating the compositions of asteroids, intelligent choices can be made as to which ones offer the richest supplies of raw materials. It has been estimated that the mineral wealth resident in the belt of asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter would be equivalent to about 100 billion dollars for every person on Earth today.

Why Study Comets? ... As with asteroids, comets are both a potential threat and a potential resource for the colonization of the solar system in the twenty first century. Whereas asteroids are rich in the mineral raw materials required to build structures in space, the comets are rich resources for the water and carbon-based molecules necessary to sustain life. In addition, an abundant supply of cometary water ice can provide copious quantities of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the two primary ingredients in rocket fuel. One day soon, comets may serve as fueling stations for interplanetary spacecraft.

I'm still hoping one of these private companies will give the paraffin (candle wax) rockets a try:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/28jan_envirorocket.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2003/03images/paraffin/paraffin.html

I assume these rockets still still have some serious engineering kinks to be worked out, but it would be incredibly slick if they could make it work.

I'm still hoping one of these private companies will give the paraffin (candle wax) rockets a try:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/28jan_envirorocket.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2003/03images/paraffin/paraffin.html

I assume these rockets still still have some serious engineering kinks to be worked out, but it would be incredibly slick if they could make it work.

Here's a page with photos of the eclipse from March 26, 2009: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/ISS_eclipse_03292006.html

No. Actually, the longest of the century: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsaros/SEsaros136.html

Even tho it's early in the century, it might well be the longest eclipse of the century. I imagine that the calculations to predict eclipses and their duration would be relatively straightforward by modern standards. You probably wouldn't even need to take relativity into account.

They're posted here:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Then you'll see that Mercury's main focus was putting a man in space. Apollo's main focus was putting a man on the moon and getting him safely home (There were to be 20 Apollo missions, the goal was achieved in 11, the moon base was an extension of the Apollo mission. The Mars mission would be a different series of missions than Apollo. Apollo's mission objectives can be found on NASA's website but the specifics are usually garnered from other books, like any of those written by the astronauts -- such as Gene Cernan's Last Man on the Moon.

I've always enjoyed astronomy pictures and documentaries, with the usual videos of zoom-outs from Earth level (or even microscopic levels) way out to 'the universe', videos of comparisons of our sun to other known stars in our galaxy, etc. I've even smiled and felt humbled at the pictures of Earth from the Moon that the astronauts on the moon brought back, and the picture of the tiny blue dot as seen in a picture of a backlit Saturn... ...but none of them have impressed me as much as July 14th's APOD;
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090714.html
( view full image)
Maybe it's because of the moon providing sense of scale, maybe it's because it's just a regular ol' picture taken from Earth and the realization that - if you look closely enough - you can see not only a planet (oh look.. a very bright 'star') but -the moons orbiting it-... I don't know what, specifically, but more than any other astronomy picture I've seen, it's given me the actual sense that we are in a planetary system far less abstract than the usual graphics. /anon

According to http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_11_30th.html the Apollo 11 flag was knocked over.

While they're at it, it would be awesome to deploy a few more seismometers...

Moonquakes are pretty damn cool from a seismological perspective. Beyond that, some of the ones recorded by Apollo-installed seismometers were >Mw 5. Big enough to be damaging.

The moon isn't tectonically active, of course, but it is seismically active, and the data recorded in the 70's indicates that the moon's lithosphere is a very different beast compared to earth's. At any rate, it would produce some extremely neat data!

Just to be pedantic, it was actually the Commander (Armstrong) who actually flew the LM to the surface, not the misnomered LMP, who mainly monitored things and called out warnings and readings. So if anyone said P66 (which the transcript doesn't indicate literally happened), it was more likely the Commander, who would've entered the program. The transcript has Armstrong saying "I'm going to..." when he goes into P66.

You might hear P66 twice. Once when the commander asks for it, then a second time when the LMP enters the verb and echoes the new mode verbally to the CDR. Often though the LMP got to be able to read the CDRs mind about this. The last couple of minutes of the landing were heavily drilled.

It doesn't surprise me that its not in the apollo 11 transcript. I was talking generally about all the flights. The breakdown in the division of responsibility between Armstrong and Aldrin has been discussed many times. The CDR had his attention in the cockpit because of the executive overflow problems (1202) in the PNGS. Consequently he let the LM get too low before he designated a good landing site and wasted fuel finding a smooth spot.

But as the other poster said. The commander flys the vehicle and the LM pilot drives the computer. Communication between them is verbal which is why you hear the modes being called out.

The Apollo 17 ALSJ is a good read. You can hear how the crew were continually hazing their rookie scientist Harrison Schmitt. At one point during the landing he calls out to Cernan that the descent rate is ...um.... a little bit too fast.

Not powerful in any meaningful sense. Just incredibly robust and failure tolerant.

Some might remember the 1202 alarm when the LEM commander had to take over manual control and land the LEM because, according to the mainstream press, the computer crashed.

Well, it turns out it was not quite that simple. Human error led to the computer reaching a PLANNED restart point. This restart was essentially instant, dumping tasks it could not handle due to missing data, and picking up where it left off.

Aldrin, due to the closeness of the landing decided to take over manually as he had trained to do hundreds of times in the simulator.

But the computer did not fail, it restarted, as programmed, and was back on line long before he even got his hand off the switch.

  http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.1201-pa.html

While the article was good, many people will want likely want to read NASA's online book about computers in space travel, covering computers back in the Gemini program through to the space shuttle and unmanned probes. Fascinating stuff:

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

Just to be pedantic, it was actually the Commander (Armstrong) who actually flew the LM to the surface, not the misnomered LMP, who mainly monitored things and called out warnings and readings. So if anyone said P66 (which the transcript doesn't indicate literally happened), it was more likely the Commander, who would've entered the program. The transcript has Armstrong saying "I'm going to..." when he goes into P66.

This is an Apollo DSKY BTW. A Classic command would have been

[VERB]66[PRO]

Which loosely translated means give me manual control, I need to land this sucker. If you watch the descent movies you will hear "P66" being called out by the LMP a few minutes before landing. Interesting to note that the 6 is right beside PRO. I wonder if there is a bit of clever UI design in that.

That's interesting. Care to cite your out-gassing?

See what a few minutes of Googling turned up:
Catalogue of Comet Discoveries
Near-Earth Asteroid Discovery Statistics

Um.

You can download the source to NASA's "closed source, closed algorithm" right here.

And yeah, switching to the UAH time series doesn't make global warming go away either (and this while you're at it).

Maybe you should try reading something about the climate other than what skeptic blogs tell you to believe.

Unfortunately it's still having issues

Sure, why let cold, hard numbers get in the way of your irrational anti-intellectual ideology? By those numbers, the average increase relative to the base value over 2000-2008 was about one and a half times the amount of 1999. And 2009 is shaping up to be yet another fine top 10 year (just like 2008 was, despite the decent-sized drop).

Or if it stops being true. This graph shows the data from 1880. While it does look like the last 8 or so years have been a down-tick, that's only relative to the local maxima. Not saying this proves global warming as man made, but it certainly makes the argument that we are cooling look a little obtuse.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=2003060314877

APOD story

Fortunately it seems like this is a problem that *could be corrected* fairly easily -- with, say, a propulsion mechanism on the escape capsule, just enough to give enough delta-V that it would clear the debris cloud in time to deploy the parachutes.

From what I understand, the Orion capsule's launch escape system already has a jettison motor, but it's not enough to take it out of range of the flaming debris. Increasing the range of the motor isn't an option, because the capsule is already too heavy for the Ares I and they can't add even more weight to it.

Even though rockets like DIRECT's and the Ares V would have the "field of flaming solid rocket propellant debris" problem, my impression is that they have a big enough margin that you'd be able to have a launch escape system that could escape the debris cloud.

OK, I'm standing on the Moon, in my suit, plenty of Air, Water, and Food. Ok, I've got to MacGyver my way out of this problem. What can I send back, or "make" and send back so that I can keep getting more Air, Water, and Food till I'm self sufficient? NASA used deep penetrating radar about 10 years ago, why can't NASA use it on the Moon? Why can't we use ISS as a platform to build stuff to go to the Moon?

Relevant (and interesting) article: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06nov_loworbit.htm

I imagine it may have been a little bit more tense. (From: http://history.nasa.gov/ap16fj/a16summary.htm)
(They had other issues before this excerpt too):
"The descent propulsion system throttle down occurred on time, and at 2200 metres the LM pitched forward into its landing attitude. At this point it became clear that Orion would land approximately 600 metres north and 400 metres west of its target, unless corrective action was taken. Using the guidance computer, John Young redesignated the landing target, effectively telling the landing computer to offset where it was guiding the spacecraft to land. Despite this, it became clear that Orion was going to end up slightly north-west of its intended location. At about 140 metres above the Moon, Charlie Duke saw the shadow of the Lunar Module appear on the surface. As Orion descended below 60 metres, John Young yawed the spacecraft right, allowing him to see the shadow also. This then allowed both the crew to estimate their altitude above the surface and their descent rate. John Young flew the LM slowly forward as the lunar module descent rate reduced from eleven to five feet per second. As a LM descended below 25 metres, small traces of dust were blown across the surface by the engine. This increased as the LM descended to surface but John Young was still able to see craters and small boulders on the surface despite this. Orion landed at ( time), only 270 metres north and 60 metres west of its original target. Charlie Duke greeted their success with an exuberant "Wow! Wild man! Look at that!". John Young was more laconic - "Well, we don't have to walk far to pick up rocks, Houston. We're among them!" "

Come on NASA; we have now come to accept that the good 11 footage has been destroyed forever - don't deprive us of 12 too!

In an ideal world, I suppose, 386BSD would have been managed better and there would be no forks.

In your "ideal world" I suspect we would all be rather less well off.

I've never understood the appeal of one-size-fits all. Why is it the premise of so many off-the-cuff comments in every venue of discussion?

So far as I can see, it accomplishes two things: makes it easy to criticize others for not getting along, and relieves the commentator of having to learn or understand systems theory, which is subtle and difficult. If only the whales had not split off from the carnivorous ungulates, evolution, in the ideal world, would have accomplished so much more. Put into a real context, the idea barely parses.

Within the prokaryote kingdom, there is a great deal of horizontal gene transfer. Within the BSD clade, there is a great deal of horizontal transfer (of ideas and code) whenever the need arises.

horizontal gene transfer

The most profound fork is probably the GPL from the long-standing conventions of public domain, which the BSD license more nearly mimics.

I don't see much difference between the scope of source code and the scope of human interpersonal relationships. In an ideal world, we would all be better off if either A) all information was private, or B) all information was public. Turns out, some people have information they don't wish to share (for a list of reasons which includes every human motivation) so the GPL lacks universal appeal. Turns out, some people have information which they don't wish other people not to share, so neither does the BSD license have universal appeal.

Having the two license camps puts a crimp on horizontal transfer, but it hasn't caused the world to stop turning. Is it fundamentally a bad thing to implement an idea twice, beginning from two different sets of premises? Only if your goal is world domination. For maximizing insight, diversity rocks.

I could continue, but I'm sure the choir has already figured this out, and the sinners are set in their ways.

At the end of the day, fork has become a term of social derision founded upon a monolithic Garden of Eden which never existed, and wouldn't have been a paradise even if it had.

If the only reason to fork is that two parties can't get along (X, libc are possibilities, but I don't know enough of the story) then forking is a mite unseemly, much like a failed marriage. Do open source communities fork more often than any other walk of life? I suspect not. And no, I'm not counting whiner attrition, where one or two guys copy a code base into their own tree, make a dozen patches, and are never heard from again. Does IBM fork every time a deadbeat is fired or quits?

Many of these projects have accomplished things through volunteer collaboration that twenty years ago few would have believed possible, yet they are mostly criticized in retrospect for the occasional loud public spat prior to a parting of ways, by people who are deeply in touch with their inner primate.

Those of us in the results oriented camp are less inclined to praise the false nirvana of pretending to agree when you really don't.

For an interesting comparison, consider the disputes over the years within NASA over the "smaller, faster, cheaper" engineering meme.

Small Is Beautiful, But Big Is Necessary

I suspect smaller, faster, cheaper might work, but it won't ever be NASA who consistently pulls this off. NASA is what you get when an agency never forks. Ideal leaves a lot to be desired.

Replying to your post to create a new sub-thread, hope you don't mind as I think it involves similar research...

Often when I look at digital photos taken at a camera's maximum megapixel range, or even scans of negatives, or random pictures on the interwebs, I find them to be rather blurry; not necessarily out-of-focus, but simply 'soft'.

Essentially.. there's more information being used to store the image 'as is' than there is casually useful* information -in- the image.

Does anybody know of software, or algorithms, to figure out how much casually useful information is in a picture, and at what size (dimensions) that picture would optimally be stored?

* by 'casually useful' I mean this... take today's APOD image:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090716.html ( view full - sparing their bandwidth by not linking to it, though I'm sure they have plenty )
That image to me, the casual user, looks blurry. Ever single pixel within it (and beyond from the original) is probably very important to the scientists; being able to run some algorithms on it to get every last bit of information from it. But when I look at it, I see the smallest 'feature' in it as being maybe 3-4 pixels across, let's say 4. So if I downsize it to 25% of the full size image, it looks perfectly sharp to me without any significant (to me, the casual user) loss of information. /anon

Well, here is a NASA discussion of the thing:

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast08sep97_1.htm

It indicates that a powered tether could indeed counteract much of the atmospheric drag (apparently if varies throughout the year and the tether they discuss is not sized such that it would be enough all of the time).