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Not surprisingly, the global climate is also in a cooling trend.

Needs citation.
Global Temperature Land Ocean Index? -- Increasing
Global Temperature (meteorological stations)? -- Increasing.
Annual Mean Temperature Change for Three Latitude Bands? -- Slight dip for low latitudes, but mostly increasing
Annual Mean Temperature Change for Hemispheres? -- You guessed, it, increasing.
Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change? -- All positive (thus, increasing)
Annual Mean Temperature Change in the United States? -- Shocking! - also increasing!
Seasonal Mean Temperature Change? -- Don't let the dip fool you, just means it is warming less rapidly

Perhaps you heard that 2008 is the coolest year since 2000? Well that's true. 2008 has the coolest temperatures of the past 8 years. But guess what? It's the 9th warmest year on record (since 1880). I'd wait for a few more data points before claiming a global cooling trend.

Talk about inconvenient...

Indeed.

Not surprisingly, the global climate is also in a cooling trend.

Needs citation.
Global Temperature Land Ocean Index? -- Increasing
Global Temperature (meteorological stations)? -- Increasing.
Annual Mean Temperature Change for Three Latitude Bands? -- Slight dip for low latitudes, but mostly increasing
Annual Mean Temperature Change for Hemispheres? -- You guessed, it, increasing.
Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change? -- All positive (thus, increasing)
Annual Mean Temperature Change in the United States? -- Shocking! - also increasing!
Seasonal Mean Temperature Change? -- Don't let the dip fool you, just means it is warming less rapidly

Perhaps you heard that 2008 is the coolest year since 2000? Well that's true. 2008 has the coolest temperatures of the past 8 years. But guess what? It's the 9th warmest year on record (since 1880). I'd wait for a few more data points before claiming a global cooling trend.

Talk about inconvenient...

Indeed.

Except that we ARE heading into an ice age. But before that happens, the ice caps have to melt.(ice age being triggered by excessive heat).

How it works is that when the planet gets too hot, all of the ice melts and dilutes the oceans. This causes them to get much colder and stop flowing. Basically they just sit and get cold. Very quickly. The last ice age was triggered by this sort of event.

According to scientific data(look it up if you want to), the Earth would have entered a natural ice age cycle in 400-500 years. All humanity has managed to do is accelerate the process down to another 50-60 years. Once the ice in Antarctica melts, the planet will act to cool itself down.

http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/list.php
It's apparently melting very quickly now.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelii/

To quote from the linked article:
"The model accounts for both the seasonal and diurnal solar cycles in its temperature calculations."

But hey, why let facts get in the way of a complete fabrication?

Well, there's a problem with that theory.

Sunspots are at a near-historic low. See this NASA graph at http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml for a bit of an understanding. The 11yr sunspot cycle that was supposed to peak around 2012 isn't there. See http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html for speculation.

The holes may be old Osborne I's, connected via acoustically-coupled modems, that are sucking the life away from the magnetosphere. Adam Osborne would have been proud.

This looks like flight to me, sure not space flight, but flight none the less. Now Pathfinder on the other side comes much closer to a movie prop.

A bare Shuttle weighs 230,000 lbs - add in a 50,000 lb payload and the entire package comes in at 280,000 lbs.

No, according to NASA:

Atlantis is commonly refered to as OV-104, for Orbiter Vehicle-104. Empty Weight was 151,315 lbs at rollout and 171,000 lbs with main engines installed.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/atlantis.html

Discovery and Endeavour are about the same; Challenger was around 175k and Columbia was about 178k.

"The glimer of fur thing must be a reference to the sister.".

NASA confirms it!.

AFAIKT, this works great. The library plugin name isn't that obvious though - for firefox 64 bit, you need to symlink (in .mozilla/plugins directory):

libnpjp2.so -> /usr/lib64/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

My test site[s] work great.

http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/JavaSSOP.html

I concede. Didn't do my homework (i.e. 3 sec. search on Google) to find out, but I did find this page that has a long list of impressive things NASA did come up with. Though all this digresses from the point. Again, what I'm worried about is that Obama won't just "can" Griffin, but use this as a reason to pull substantial funding from the program, and possibly shut it down.

Off-topic, and the author is an idiot. The rovers' cameras do not necessarily take pictures using the standard red-green-blue colors that we perceive. Depending on what filters were used (for scientific reasons), if you want a "full color" image for humans to appreciate, you have to choose or synthesize non-RGB channels to form an RGB image. The blue tab, for example, on the color calibration target is also very bright in the infrared, so if you use an infrared image as your red channel, what should be blue appears to be pink. All of this perfectly normal and completely expected by everyone that knows how this stuff works. Stop being a silly conspiracy theorist and apply some rational thought and a tiny bit of research.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/mars_colors.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/spirit/a12_20040128.html

offtopic:

Look at the old Astronomy Picture of the Day from 1995. Like this one for example: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap950629.html

The picture is in midget form... a tiny 36 kilobytes! They probably had to make it that small to "squeeze" through the slow 28k modems of the day. The web has really grown in size since then - today's average APOD is 200 kilobytes.

There is a remnant of a naturally occurring reactor that operated in southern Africa 2 billion years ago so I suppose it is possible, however many other odd things are also possible. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap021016.html

I've not heard of this twin-black-hole theory... Any references?

As for black hole mergers, progress is being made: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/gwave.html .

And what of the 'sides' of the galaxy? Are these the two ends of the galaxy's axis, or on the disc on opposite sides? In either case, due to the symmetries involved, I don't think what you say makes any sense.

Why is this modded +5 Interesting?

Have a look here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html Regarding the gravitational wave detection, that would be for colliding black holes. The "ringing" that would result should distinguish between black holes and other high density objects. The upgraded LIGO might see these collisions.

Seems to me they should stop trying to pound that square peg into the round hole on this one and (re)build their own damn network where they control all the access points, instead of taking ours.

With an annual budget of only 0.7% of the total federal budget (roughly $16.8 billion) and working against a $3-5 billion projected shortfall for fiscal years 2006-2010, I seriously doubt they could afford it.

NASA TV is available on the web as well:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Not nearly as nice as watching it on TV (lower quality signal, etc), but far better than nothing :) Plus, that web page lets you pick which channel (Public, Media, Education) whereas cable only carries the Public channel (at least in my area). So with the webcast, you can watch events only broadcast on the others (such as a congressional hearing on the Media channel while the Public channel is live shuttle coverage, or Media channel showing a Post-MMT press briefing while Public channel is still covering an EVA, etc)

overconfident

Videos here illustrate the effects of the comet's (abnormal) very close trajectory to the sun. Collected dust is pretty much sandblasted away on a regular base.
But since it doesn't contain assembly language I don't really know what I'm talking about.

What most people, including the parent of this thread, don't understand is that NASA and other federal R&D facilities do is fuel our economy.


Many people here on /. work in the IT field. Well you can thank NASA for the Beowulf Cluster. NASA also worked with industry to make cordless drills, CAT Scans, digital thermometers, welder's goggles and thousands of other products.

Don't take my word for it.
http://www.beowulf.org/overview/history.html
http://space.about.com/od/toolsequipment/ss/apollospinoffs.htm
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/spinoff.html

Engage brain before moving mouth.

TFA doesn't say a single word on how this mission is meant to work! Looking at http://universe.nasa.gov/program/probes/jdem.html it seems it's to do with analysing the expansion rate of the universe by looking at very stable light sources. Anyone know how this helps them find the stuff?

This will be sooooo much fun.

You are slowly being cooked by solar radiation here on Earth. Cosmic radiation is even getting you right now. The reality is that the radiation problem is more of a minor hurdle. But misinformed or non-informed people fear it because Hollywood tells them to.

"Minor hurdle" sure isn't the terminology that NASA seems to be using when they speak about radiation. In fact they seem to be fond of the term "show stopper". Also according to the same article I just cited: "A 2-1/2-year trip to Mars, including six months of travel time each way, would expose an astronaut to nearly the lifetime limit of radiation allowed under NASA guidelines.".

Fact: The earth's (eroding) ozone layer protects us from a number of different types of harmful UV radiation.

Fact: Mars has no ozone layer to speak of, and has absolutely no magnetic field. In 2001 Mars Odyssey detected radiation levels 2.5 times higher than that found on the International Space Station.

DId you know the space station leaks? yet they manage. Again, "Hollywood Science" FTL.

Yes, they manage, and it helps a lot that if worse comes to worse they can always just hop the next shuttle back to good old planet earth for all the air they could ever need. No such option on a 6 month trip. On the trip you'd also have to worry about having enough supplies for repairs.

If you can;'t hack small confines for months at a time, then stay here. Believe it or not, most people who do those things do not go nuts. Some do, and Hollywood capitalizes on that very small subset. Even those who do, tend to do it alone.

I hate to break it to you chief but this issue has been given serious consideration. Just because it was mentioned by Hollywood at some point doesn't mean that it isn't a valid concern. I'm sure the folks who actually go on the first trip will be acutely aware of the dangers of crewmates losing their nerve along the way.

Mars is far less inhospitable than hard vacuum of space. It *has* and atmosphere. A dome with a diameter of a mere 50 meters would take days to weeks to deflate if you fired a 50 caliber bullet into the dome, for example. The atmosphere it does have provides magnitudes more radiation and temperature buffer than you'll find in open space. Plus it actually has resources. Open space is well, just open space.

Yes, Mars *has* an atmosphere, one which is less than 1% of the surface pressure of earth and composed of 95% carbon dioxide. As to your assertion that a 50m dome would "take days to to weeks" to deflate I'd like to see some citation on this. With such a huge difference in air pressure I am much more inclined to believe that there would be rapid, significant air loss, not to mention that the temperature (which averages between -60 and -50 degrees Celsius) would quickly affect any inhabitants and equipment within such a structure.

Seriously, the first people to go to Mars will not have a deathwish. Those types of people make missions of any kind other than suicide ones (and even some of those) a disaster waiting to happen.

Because, you know, astronauts have never been known to lose it.

Columbus couldn't take 99% of what he was going to need, and as a result had serious and fata

Guys, guys ... look ... *a great light appears* ... NASA can run two missions in parallel ! I know, it's crazy!! Rocket science!

We've been having a lot of this sort of thing lately. --Not all of them get this much notice, or accurate coverage. --There was a report of a 'plane' going down over some American town a week or so back, creating a huge aerial show and loud bang, putting the residents and authorities into a tizzy. --The only thing was that no planes were reported missing and they didn't find any wreckage.

I half suspect when we get one of the big ones that the PTB will have chutzpah to call it a terrorist nuke if they can get away with it.

A skimming of noted events for October. . .

Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their car headlights.

Reports came from residents from Carmel Valley to Salinas of a fireball shooting through the Tuesday night sky and hitting the Earth. A sheriff's deputy patrolling Carmel Valley saw it and thought enough of it to call for reinforcements.

IT appeared against the early evening sky like a flare - moments later roofs rattled and verandas shook as it crashed to earth.

[...]The Evening Telegraph has been inundated with calls and e-mails from readers who saw a strange fireball cutting a swath across the heavens[...]

For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth.

A bright light sped across the sky, followed by a loud explosion. Osborne County Sheriff Curtis Miner tells KSAL News that it was not an unidentified flying object, or anything sinister. It was a large meteor.

-FL

We got you covered.

We got you covered.

(American Scientist is much better)

The original NASA press release is at

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20081120.html

Yay, using my own link, apparently not:

http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/pdf/FS-1997-07-24-LaRC.pdf

GPS works in space. You can use standard consumer models for LEO, and there is a special receiver for HEO/geostationary.

The Lisa is the one that interests me the most. It is a multi sat interferometer using differential time calculation. My speculation is that it just might pick up more than graviton waves. The data from this project should be examined by Seti.

Having worked at NASA... I'd like to clarify. There are definitely difficulties when items are tethered, to a space suit or a vehicle while in space, however these are details which are resolved. Astronauts use an MMWS (modified mini-workstation tool stowage) caddy. This keeps tools from floating away as well as has tethers. You can see an image of the hooks used here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122027main_hooks.jpg Additionally, You can see a repair bag here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122016main_crack_repair_bag.jpg Note the loops and elastic bands. This is how tools are contained in a repair bag. The way the bag was lost was when astronaut Piper was pulling items out of the crew air lock bag. While searching the bag the tool bag (which was in side the larger bag) floated up and out and she lost control of it. It then floated away. I may have been missed when transferring items. In the video the bag lost looks like an MMWS. Which is sorta like a utility belt. Things like this happen... Fault or no fault.. BeDammit

Having worked at NASA... I'd like to clarify. There are definitely difficulties when items are tethered, to a space suit or a vehicle while in space, however these are details which are resolved. Astronauts use an MMWS (modified mini-workstation tool stowage) caddy. This keeps tools from floating away as well as has tethers. You can see an image of the hooks used here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122027main_hooks.jpg Additionally, You can see a repair bag here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122016main_crack_repair_bag.jpg Note the loops and elastic bands. This is how tools are contained in a repair bag. The way the bag was lost was when astronaut Piper was pulling items out of the crew air lock bag. While searching the bag the tool bag (which was in side the larger bag) floated up and out and she lost control of it. It then floated away. I may have been missed when transferring items. In the video the bag lost looks like an MMWS. Which is sorta like a utility belt. Things like this happen... Fault or no fault.. BeDammit

Of course the Enterprise was built on the ground....hell it hasn't even left for orbit!

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/enterprise.html

So, if the force of gravity is acting on you, and nothing else is, then you have no force applied to you? You expand my view of the ridiculous....

Yes from the point of view of an outside observer there is a force on you, but the point about gravity is that it applies equally to every part of your body at once. So, if you are in free fall and you raise your arm, there is no resistance to that motion (other than internal friction in your joints) and no force that would push against your arm that would tend to lower it again. From your point of view, you have no forces acting upon you. But this really means that there are not differences in the force between different parts of your body.

This is in contrast to the situation when you are standing on the surface of the Earth, or being accelerated in a car. In the case of standing on the surface of the earth, you feel a force on your body because, while the overall forces cancel out (so you have no overall motion), the forces are applied in different places. The gravitational force is being applied to every atom in your body equally, but the restoring force that is stopping you from falling into the center of the Earth is being applied at the point where your feet make contact with the ground. The restoring force that is stopping some other part of your body (your hand, for example) from falling into the center of the Earth is being transmitted through your feet and body to your hand. That is why it takes some effort to raise your hand - the gravity is acting directly on your hand, but the restoring force to hold your hand in the air needs to be transmitted through your arm.

If you are in free fall, then there is no difference in the force being applied to different parts of your body, and you cannot even tell that there is any force acting upon you! There is no difference between the situation where (1) you are falling under gravity towards the Earth, with no other forces acting upon you, and (2) you are in empty space with no massive objects anywhere near you. These two situations are completely equivalent, for the effects on your body.

Similarly, there is no difference, as far as the forces on your body are concerned, between standing on the surface of the earth and experiencing your weight of W=M*9.81m/s^2 and being accelerated in a rocket ship at 9.81m/s^2 and experiencing a force holding you to the floor of the spacecraft. The Equivalence Principle of relativity says that the forces on you are exactly the same in both cases.

Note that the wikipedia article has, at best, a limited understanding of the difference between weightlessness and freefall. Which are not, contrary to their assertion, synonyms.

They are not synonyms, because they are two words that have different meanings. Wikipedia does not claim that they are synonyms, by the way. But it is true that if you are in freefall then you are weightless. And the only way that is known to physics for an object with non-zero mass to become weightless is to let it free-fall.

If you refuse to believe Wikipedia, there are plenty of other references you could look at:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/free-fall-weightless-ness.htm
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/teacher_resources/weightlessness_edu.html
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/services/demos/demosc4/c4-54.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/shuttlestation/station/microgex.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4026/noord27.html

So, if the force of gravity is acting on you, and nothing else is, then you have no force applied to you? You expand my view of the ridiculous....

Yes from the point of view of an outside observer there is a force on you, but the point about gravity is that it applies equally to every part of your body at once. So, if you are in free fall and you raise your arm, there is no resistance to that motion (other than internal friction in your joints) and no force that would push against your arm that would tend to lower it again. From your point of view, you have no forces acting upon you. But this really means that there are not differences in the force between different parts of your body.

This is in contrast to the situation when you are standing on the surface of the Earth, or being accelerated in a car. In the case of standing on the surface of the earth, you feel a force on your body because, while the overall forces cancel out (so you have no overall motion), the forces are applied in different places. The gravitational force is being applied to every atom in your body equally, but the restoring force that is stopping you from falling into the center of the Earth is being applied at the point where your feet make contact with the ground. The restoring force that is stopping some other part of your body (your hand, for example) from falling into the center of the Earth is being transmitted through your feet and body to your hand. That is why it takes some effort to raise your hand - the gravity is acting directly on your hand, but the restoring force to hold your hand in the air needs to be transmitted through your arm.

If you are in free fall, then there is no difference in the force being applied to different parts of your body, and you cannot even tell that there is any force acting upon you! There is no difference between the situation where (1) you are falling under gravity towards the Earth, with no other forces acting upon you, and (2) you are in empty space with no massive objects anywhere near you. These two situations are completely equivalent, for the effects on your body.

Similarly, there is no difference, as far as the forces on your body are concerned, between standing on the surface of the earth and experiencing your weight of W=M*9.81m/s^2 and being accelerated in a rocket ship at 9.81m/s^2 and experiencing a force holding you to the floor of the spacecraft. The Equivalence Principle of relativity says that the forces on you are exactly the same in both cases.

Note that the wikipedia article has, at best, a limited understanding of the difference between weightlessness and freefall. Which are not, contrary to their assertion, synonyms.

They are not synonyms, because they are two words that have different meanings. Wikipedia does not claim that they are synonyms, by the way. But it is true that if you are in freefall then you are weightless. And the only way that is known to physics for an object with non-zero mass to become weightless is to let it free-fall.

If you refuse to believe Wikipedia, there are plenty of other references you could look at:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/free-fall-weightless-ness.htm
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/teacher_resources/weightlessness_edu.html
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/services/demos/demosc4/c4-54.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/shuttlestation/station/microgex.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4026/noord27.html

• SpiraFlex® Resistance Exercise Device
• ZipNut
• Personal Cabin Pressure Altitude Monitor and Warning System
• AiroCide TiO2
• Robotic Arms
• Fast Cooking
• waste water purification
• 360Â Camera
• Golf Clubs
• Low Vision Enhancement System

So for these several tens of billions sunk, and the "World class science facility" still not being really operational, what does it have to show for this cash and ten years ?
How much technology advancement really has happened and what scientific goals have been accomplished ?

There has been some useful stuff, but wouldnt it be nice to see it all these shortly summarized in a table with the bottomline dollar drawn under it ?

Little Boy (droped on Hiroshima) converted 600 mg of matter into energy. For the same level of explosion of an anti-matter bomb, you'd need to create 300 mg of anti-matter (since it also annilates with 300 mg of regular matter). Also note that Little Boy was several orders of magnitude smaller in yield than modern bombs.

NASA estimates using 10 mg of anti-matter to get to Mars, at a cost of $250 million to make the stuff using bleeding edge techniques available in 2006. Assuming this new technique drops that by an order of magnitude, and the price scales linearly with the amount of anti-matter you want, then it'll cost (250 / 10) * 30 = $750 million for a Little Boy equivilent.

Conclusion: anti-matter bombs are not cost effective compared to nukes, and are unlikely to ever become so, unless we find a natural source of anti-matter.

I think you mean Lithium Hydroxide. However, Lithium Hydroxide doesn't change CO2 into Oxygen, but rather into Lithium Carbonate and Water. So I don't think recycling water would have any impact on the need for Lithium Hydroxide canisters.

However, the ISS doesn't normally use Lithium Hydroxide. Instead it uses a zeolite-based filter to separate CO2, then vents the CO2 to space. More information is in this NASA article.

The ECLSS Water Recycling System (WRS), developed at the MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center), will reclaim waste waters from the Space Shuttle's fuel cells, from urine, from oral hygiene and hand washing, and by condensing humidity from the air. Without such careful recycling 40,000 pounds per year of water from Earth would be required to resupply a minimum of four crewmembers for the life of the station.

Honestly, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this was pretty damned blatant. Sorry for the lack of supporting linkage. I couldn't remember the system's acronym, and I was feeling a bit lazy.

It's common knowledge by now even amongst the general public that Vista exploded on the launch pad. At this point, the only thing this line of inquiry has to offer is to help Microsoft prevent a repeat of the last performance. If you ask me, Windows 7 will suffer many of the same problems -- namely because they are still using the monkey-horde development technique, which is get a bunch of third-world programmers in a room and churn out very lackluster code, and then keep redeveloping it until it works "good enough". Microsoft still hasn't learned that great programmers have a lot of experience outside programming, and to make the best code you need to give them the freedom to try different solutions and then listen to their feedback. From what I've seen, Microsoft is a hugely divided organization where hundreds of small teams compete to produce the most lines of code and nobody knows quite what everybody else is doing. Management constantly changes direction during the development process, to the point that a lot of work is wasted in duplication of effort and things being thrown away due to changing priorities.

Windows has reached a level of complexity that these kinds of organizational mistakes can no longer be tolerated, but Microsoft is too large and entrenched to be capable of streamlining their development process. Maybe they get rid of UAC, and the DRM, and rewrite the driver infrastructure so it sucks less; And those are all fine goals to have, but it doesn't fix the real problem -- which is that the organization made these decisions in the first place when I know their developers were screaming at them "For the love of all things good and holy in the world don't do it!"

Microsoft isn't the first to deal with this. One Mr. Richard Feynman noted similar organizational problems that led to the Challenger disaster at NASA. NASA has been trying to squelch this addendum for some time and you won't find a link to it on their main report anymore, but you can find it here http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt

Best line from your Feynman link to draw a parallel with Vista: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

For systems such as these formal verification is very important. NASA understands that and they have a pretty strong "Reliable Software Engineering" team: http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/rse/

Before rejecting math, engineering, or science perhaps she should talk to someone who works at JPL:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

I certainly enjoyed working there.

Considering the ridiculously small amount of money (by comparison) that we gave NASA to design and build two rovers that operate in a very difficult environment, with no routine maintenance, and use zero gasoline (not to forget that these things are still running well past their expected lifetime), maybe we should put NASA in charge of GM and tell their old execs where they can stick it?

I actually agree with you. NASA has a lot of value to the country that people really do not see! There's lots of factors why, and NASA shares a little bit of the blame in that PR could be done a lot better - but overall it's been a constant problem that people don't see the end product of all their government-sponsored research dollars.

There's some good sites online though, that have lists of NASA Spinoff technology:

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/index.html

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26661

I know I'm starting to sound like a shill at this point, but when you really believe in something, that's a risk you end up taking. :)

It's common knowledge by now even amongst the general public that Vista exploded on the launch pad. At this point, the only thing this line of inquiry has to offer is to help Microsoft prevent a repeat of the last performance. If you ask me, Windows 7 will suffer many of the same problems -- namely because they are still using the monkey-horde development technique, which is get a bunch of third-world programmers in a room and churn out very lackluster code, and then keep redeveloping it until it works "good enough". Microsoft still hasn't learned that great programmers have a lot of experience outside programming, and to make the best code you need to give them the freedom to try different solutions and then listen to their feedback. From what I've seen, Microsoft is a hugely divided organization where hundreds of small teams compete to produce the most lines of code and nobody knows quite what everybody else is doing. Management constantly changes direction during the development process, to the point that a lot of work is wasted in duplication of effort and things being thrown away due to changing priorities.

Windows has reached a level of complexity that these kinds of organizational mistakes can no longer be tolerated, but Microsoft is too large and entrenched to be capable of streamlining their development process. Maybe they get rid of UAC, and the DRM, and rewrite the driver infrastructure so it sucks less; And those are all fine goals to have, but it doesn't fix the real problem -- which is that the organization made these decisions in the first place when I know their developers were screaming at them "For the love of all things good and holy in the world don't do it!"

Microsoft isn't the first to deal with this. One Mr. Richard Feynman noted similar organizational problems that led to the Challenger disaster at NASA. NASA has been trying to squelch this addendum for some time and you won't find a link to it on their main report anymore, but you can find it here http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt

Just to give some sense of the scale of the problem:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03272 http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10128 - dirty solar panels.

On the other hand, the gripping hand, what it looks like probably depends on where you stand.. looks like a coalsack from somewhere I'm sure.

The diagrams are clearly missing the Alderson Point.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081114.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover and http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/

So planets look a lot like noise. They really aren't all that much different than the expected noise levels on the images. Especially on the first one from Fomalhaut.

From far enough away, yes. Yes they do. For example, here's Earth from just outside the solar system, and the basis for Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/601/PIA00452.tif (TIFF image)

That light blue pixel on the right is us. All of us. Taken from 6.4 billion kilometers away.

Deadpixel, indeed.

You have to see the orbital progression to get over the thought that it's just another speck of light noise. Here is a larger image showing the position of the planet from 2004 and 2006. Also, here is the url for the release showing the image of HR 8799 with its 3 planets.