Slashdot Mirror

1. EHT (Extended Heim Theory) allows to easily calculate particle masses using only some physical constants. You can check this Heim Mass Calculator: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~spony/HeimMassFormula/HeimCalculator
2. Succesful prediction of masses of neutrinos.
3. Prediction of Heim-Lorentz force which most likely is being observed in ESA experiments performed by Dr. Martin Tajmar. During these experiments artificial gravity is being created.
   • ESA news about Tajmar experiments http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html and some other news.
   • M.Tajmar recent papper which references EHT (Droscher&Hausner): http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
   • Theoretical explanation of Tajmar Gravito-Magnetic experiments by Droscher&Hausner: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/LauncherSymPaper2007-0-42JHCorrected22April.pdf
     This paper also contains proposal of modified experiment which will allow to verify if EHT is true and also allow to build very effective propulsion engine for spaceships. See this article: http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200
4. Reasonable explanation why CMB Cold Spot appears to be cold without mumbling about Dark Matter/Dark Energy, thanks to Heim's corrected gravitional law.
5. EHT explains why it appears that there is not enough mass observable in the Universe without using Dark Matter concept.
6. EHT most likely explains weird effects measured during Gravity Probe B experiment, see: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/FieldPropulsion.pdf.
   These effects are in agreement with Martin Tajmar findings, see: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
7. Droscher&Hausner paper about space propulsion based on Heim theory http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2004-3700-a4.pdf was awarded by AIAA in 2004.

#4 Belfast homeopathy results

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

...

-13 things that do not make sense

...

History

The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 around two propositions: one, all doctors should have a "suitable education" and two, a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." [1] In the days of its founding AMA was much more open--at its conferences and in its publications--about its real goal: building a government-enforced monopoly for the purpose of dramatically increasing physician incomes. It eventually succeeded, becoming the most formidable labor union on the face of the earth.

AMA's initial drive to increase physician incomes was motivated by increasing competition from homeopaths (AMA allopaths use treatments--usually synthetic--that produce effects different from the diseases being treated while homeopaths use treatments--usually natural--that produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated). This competition did serious damage to the incomes of AMA allopaths. In the year before AMA's founding, the New York Journal of Medicine stated that competition with homeopathy caused "a large pecuniary loss" to allopaths. [2] In the same issue, the dean of the school of medicine at the University of Michigan railed against competition because it made treating sickness "arduous and un-remunerative." [3]

Apart from reversing rapidly declining incomes, allopaths also wanted to rescue their public reputations, which quite reasonably suffered given their proficiency in killing patients through such crude practices as bloodletting ("exsanguination") or mercury injections (poisoning). A few allopaths desired adulation normally reserved for star athletes and actors. The Massachusetts Medical Society opined in 1848 that physicians should be "looked upon by the mass of mankind with a veneration almost superstitious." [4] ...

-100 Years of Medical Robbery

Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors.

This is not the first time that the shuttle programme has been faced with the year-end rollover problem. On a Hubble servicing mission in 1999, the year of the overblown Y2K computer scare, the shuttle landed on 27 December (see Fuel fault delays space repair). To make sure the shuttle got back on the ground before 31 December, mission managers decided to drop one of the four planned spacewalks.

Yup. If you're in Albuquerque's west side (near the Rio Grande) and looking west, this panorama looks a fair bit like the volcanoes atop the west mesa. cool. it was such a different place than Wisconsin that to this midwestern boy, living there was almost like being on Mars.

::insert family drama of years ago:: ;-)

that said, i visit and climb the volcanoes as often as i can, which is not nearly enough.

That's their design for the shuttles successor.

Forbes??? Here's a much better article.

Do you link New Scientist when you have a story about finance?

The story I linked has two big photos of the hole, as well as a much better writup, more details, and far fewer ads.

Sheesh.... Hope your day gets better, Zonk.

... you could probably design the loop on an incline, say up the side of a mountain ...

Brilliant! Stand the whole thing up vertically inside a mountain. Dig it out of nice, solid granite. The mass of a mountain would surely withstand the large g-forces such a thing would generate. Plus, you could have multiple launch tunnels for when the projectile leaves the ring; to the East and West, for instance. Keeping the launch ramp on the same plane as the ring would also avoid any issues with a change in the centrifugal force vector as a projectile transitions from the ring to the launch ramp as depicted in the artist's conceptual drawing.

What? Its not like the government doesn't have any experience digging tunnels in mountains...

But an addtional advantage to a ring is that it gives you basically a 360 circle of choice for launch directions. A linear accelerator gives you basically two.

But an addtional advantage to a ring is that it gives you basically a 360 circle of choice for launch directions. A linear accelerator gives you basically two.

Ain't no one going to read this reply two days after the original post, but cosmic radiation is very much a concern even just going to Mars. I've read a number of articles in reputable science magazines that say so. Here's one from New Scientist.

The only way out of this dilemma is to look for phenomenon that goes beyond our current understanding of physics. One possibility is the new model (of physics) developed by Burkhard Heim. He postulated additional dimensions beyond the 4 known ones: 3 spatial dimensions plus time. Using these additional dimensions, he rewrote general relativity in a quantum framework.

From this model, Heim developed a theory that enabled physicists to accurately calculate the masses of the fundamental particles. Unfortunately, this theory is the only part (of his work) that has been peer-reviewed in a journal.

Is the rest of his theory true? If it is true, it would have incredible ramifications. It means that we can build a hyperdrive to power a spacecraft to mars in about 3 hours. The hyperdrive would shove the spacecraft into a strange place which is outside of our standard universe of 4 dimensions; in that strange place, the speed of light is much faster than that in our universe. The hyperdrive would then push the spacecraft along one of those additional dimensions (beyond the basic 4 dimensions), powering the spacecraft towards Mars along that other worldly dimension.

The American military thinks that Heim's model is valid and is actually attempting to build a prototype of the hyperdrive.

The great accomplishment of late-twentieth-century cosmology was putting together a complete inventory of the universe. We can tell a story that fits all the known data, in which ordinary matter (every particle ever detected in any experiment) constitutes only about 5% of the energy of the universe, with 25% being dark matter and 70% being dark energy. The challenge for early-twentyfirst-century cosmology will actually be to understand the nature of these mysterious dark components. A beautiful new result illuminating (if you will) the dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 is an important step in this direction. (Heres the press release, and an article in the Chandra Chronicles.)

A prerequisite to understanding the dark sector is to make sure we are on the right track. Can we be sure that we havent been fooled into believing in dark matter and dark energy? After all, we only infer their existence from detecting their gravitational fields; stronger-than-expected gravity in galaxies and clusters leads us to posit dark matter, while the acceleration of the universe (and the overall geometry of space) leads us to posit dark energy. Could it perhaps be that gravity is modified on the enormous distance scales characteristic of these phenomena? Einsteins general theory of relativity does a great job of accounting for the behavior of gravity in the Solar System and astrophysical systems like the binary pulsar, but might it be breaking down over larger distances?

A departure from general relativity on very large scales isnt what one would expect on general principles. In most physical theories that we know and love, modifications are expected to arise on small scales (higher energies), while larger scales should behave themselves. But, we have to keep an open mind in principle, its absolutely possible that gravity could be modified, and its worth taking seriously.

Furthermore, it would be really cool. Personally, I would prefer to explain cosmological dynamics using modified gravity instead of dark matter and dark energy, just because it would tell us something qualitatively different about how physics works. (And Vera Rubin agrees.) We would all love to out-Einstein Einstein by coming up with a better theory of gravity. But our job isnt to express preferences, its to suggest hypotheses and then go out and test them.

The problem is, how do you test an idea as vague as modifying general relativity? You can imagine testing specific proposals for how gravity should be modified, like Milgroms MOND, but in more general terms we might worry that any observations could be explained by some modification of gravity.

But its not quite so bad there are reasonable features that any respectable modification of general relativity ought to have. Specifically, we expect that the gravitational force should point in the direction of its source, not off at some bizarrely skewed angle. So if we imagine doing away with dark matter, we can safely predict that gravity always be pointing in the direction of the ordinary matter. Thats interesting but not immediately helpful, since its natural to expect that the ordinary matter and dark matter cluster in the same locations; even if there is dark matter, its no surprise to find the gravitational field pointing toward the visible matter as well.

What we really want is to ta

When President Kennedy pledged that Washington would put an American on the moon, the pledge captured our imagination. We Americans would do something that had never been done in the past. Further, putting an American on the moon was not an incremental advance in technology but was a huge leap that faced a high risk of failure.

NASA should go back to its adventurous roots by devoting 25% of its budget to exotic, high-risk projects. The remaining 75% would go to run-of-the-mill projects.

NASA, not the American military, should be splurging money on building a prototype of a hyperdrive, enabling faster-than-light travel. Even if the prototype does not work, it would significantly facilitate the breakthroughs that will be necessary for a successful hyperdrive,.

• Planet: A round thing orbiting a star. More precisely, according to the draft definition: "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."
• Pluton: A planet orbiting beyond Neptune, taking more than 200 Earth years to circle the Sun. So far, it would include Pluto; Pluto's former moon, Charon; and "Xena" (2003 UB313).
• Satellite: Anything orbiting a planet, as long as the mutual centre of gravity does not fall outside the planet. Includes several bodies much larger than many planets, such as Jupiter's moon Ganymede (diameter: 5262 kilometres).
• Small solar system body: Anything orbiting the Sun that's not a planet or a satellite. Most asteroids and comets would be SSSBs. Currently called minor planets.

Unofficial categories of planet:

• Dwarf planet: A planet smaller than Mercury (diameter: 4879 kilometres), which is the smallest uncontested planet. Would include the former asteroid Ceres; Pluto; Charon; and Xena.
• Giant planet: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
• Classical planet: The four giant planets plus the familiar four rocky, terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars.

Current news, eh? Seems there are a lot of sites reporting on that. CNN (or any general-audience media) would not be my first choice for accurate reporting of hard science.

I'd recommend going to a science-specific magazine, or even a direct source.

And in any case, even the CNN article still doesn't say what you claim. For starters, there's nothing in there remotely close to "they're finding less than 1/25th of what they're expecting".

Hey, Scientists can lose fingers too! (Click "enlarge image" on the pic of the guy holding the sphere).

virtualy no one who thinks that "arbitrarily toss in the first KBO" makes a reasonable definition for planet

Scarily, in 2005-10 "A narrow majority of 11 [of the IAU's working group] members favoured deeming anything larger than 2000 kilometres a planet.". Pretty arbitry, tho 2003 UB313 would be allowed to join Pluto.

The eminently better definitions: "any object in orbit round the Sun whose shape is stable due to its own gravity" and/or "any object in orbit round the Sun that is dominant in its immediate neighborbood" received only 8 and 6 votes (approval voting) respectively. What I was trying to say in my post is that this desicion seems to be based on making school kids in the USA happy and crap about identifying with a misfit planet, instead of, logical thinking (I think, option 3).

The "more information" I was talking about was about Ceres being a planet, but loosing that status under option 3; being applied to Pluto, the other KBOs being that more info. What is or isn't a planet isn't as important as the fact that "tradition" is an idiotic reason for defining what a planet is. I think tradition is fine for defining what gods or souls are tho - for people who haven't figured out how good the scientific method is.

As for "evolution, anthropogenic climate change", I was being sarcastic and that in the same way that flat-earthers/IDers/ACC-deniers think "theory" is just any old idea; "planet" for them could be something that includes Pluto, but ignores new KBOs or Oort cloud objects that are several times bigger, on the ecliptic, and in it's own empty orbit. Because, well, Pluto has always been a planet, and they don't wanna learn about no new planets.

As it seems closing tags is beyond people here is the correct link for those who can't be bothered going through the rigmarole of copy & paste.

Here's a fixed link for those that would rather make fun of an error than help fix it.

That black holes do not, in some way, posess a magnetic field seems to be a debatable subject.

One of the articles, http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9050/, concerns the effiency of black holes and has a representative picture of jets moving away from the black hole. The captions reads:

Jets of high-speed particles may be powered by magnetic fields and either the rotation of matter swirling around a black hole, the spin of the black hole itself, or both (Image: NASA/CXC/M Weiss).

Quasars are certainly misunderstood objects. They appear to be very far away. No one can really conclude what these distances are. Strictly basing an assumption on redshifts is not, for me, conclusive.

When a star forms, there is a point before "ignition" where there appears to be nothing. We can see these globules in many photographs of nebulae. According to theory, anywhere that you see what looks to be a perfect cirlce of black is a candidate for star formation.

Now, quasars are theorized to be precursors to galaxies. Why is it not possible that we are observing the same effect on a huge scale? The matter in the center of the quasar is simply reaching the critical point and in the end we have a galaxy with a core that is burning brightly and outer arms that would be the equivalent to the planets orbiting our sun?

For a good example of what this would look like, anyone can take a look at a picture of M104-the Sombrero Galaxy. Of course, there are many other spiral galaxies that one can observe, as well. The point is, the universe is very fractal in nature. We can compare the classical view of an atom to that of the solar system. Why can we not simply extend this to a view of a galaxy?

The event horizon is something that any object with mass has, as well. Of course, not on the same scale as a black hole, yet, come to close to the sun and you are doomed. A comet slammed in to Jupiter and disappeared. It will never be seen again. Our moon is stuck to the earth. Without adding energy to the system, the moon will always be a part of the system. The event orizon of a black hole is important because light cannot ever leave the system once inside this critical boundary. That does not mean that other systems possess no event horizon.

Also, there is a lot of evidence for black holes in binary stellar systems. I don't see how these MECO's offer an alternative eplanation for events that we observe vitually in our backyard. The quasars are too far away to readily observe and coem to any conclusion (if the distances are correct).

The reason that it is so "easy" to accept the concept of a black hole is simply the fact that as the diameter of a body decreases while retaining mass, there is no choice but to have the system collapse to a singularity--given enough mass. If there is not enough "critical" mass, we end up with neutron stars, dwarves, etc.... What happens inside the black hole is anyone's guess.

We are pretty certain it has liquid lakes, but it may
have caves as well.

We know so little about our solar system.

Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.

You might benefit from consideration of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Paradigm Shift, and all that.

People don't pick holes in "scientific understanding". The holes exist, and people just point them out. There is no accepted "theory of everything" yet, and there are many observations that don't make sense when looked at from a materialist overview.

There are good "psychics" and not-so-good "psychics". If you happen to cross paths with a good one, you might have your own paradigm shift. :)

Hubble can see items of 50 metres size in UV wavelength on the moon's surface. Seems it's resolving power is related to the wavelength of the "light" it is using, same as in photolithography used in producing nanometre scale details on semiconductors. http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn7 880

Who knows.. It looks like they took their pictures with a camera phone, meanwhile I hear they pee manually, so it seems they're all over the map technology wise.

Nice to see my old shop teacher on New Scientist.. recognizable from the missing ring finger tip, of course. Keep up the good work Mr. Daly!

Nice to see my old shop teacher on New Scientist.. recognizable from the missing ring finger tip, of course. Keep up the good work Mr. Daly!

I got black text on a mostly black background. Sheesh! The printable page reads a lot better.

Flyboy 8v)

And there would be no rescue for Discovery. Even though the orbiter has rudimentary remote control capabilities, like a giant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, NASA will not attempt to land it under remote control.

Remote control
That is because unlike a military UAV, the orbiter does not have nose-cone video camera that would allow a pilot on the ground to steer it to a landing. Relying on onboard approach equipment would also be too risky - any damage the shuttle had already endured might impair its ability to be controlled remotely. The fact that it might also shed debris means NASA could not risk flying it over populated areas.

"Although there is a limited capability to try and fly the shuttle to a landing under remote control, it's not a very fault-tolerant procedure," says Dick Richards, deputy shuttle programme manager at Boeing, which builds the orbiters, and a former astronaut. "So the plan would be to de-orbit Discovery."

In this process, the orbiter would be jettisoned from the ISS and allowed to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. But such a loss would probably mean the end of the entire shuttle programme, says NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

...from a far less clueless source.

Here is an illustration of the phenomenon.

-mcgrew

...from a far less clueless source.

Here is an illustration of the phenomenon.

-mcgrew

There's an upper limit on what can be seen from Earth's surface. Alas, we will need space-based telescopes to find other Earths. I suppose we could find Jupiter-sized planets with lifesigns on them. Given that terrestrial life might have needed a solid surface to evolve on, I'm not sure how likely that is. Then again, it's a big galaxy, and even the weird and unlikely has to happen someplace.

Remember that NASA funds a lot of basic research in Earth and space science. Resetting NASA's priorities in this way represents a shift in funding, away from science and to aerospace industry. To me, this seems short sighted. Most of the recent successes (robotic Mars rovers, Stardust, microwave background anisotropy measurements) come from the science portion of the budget, and not from the manned program, which is more what I'd called the "vast sinkhole for funds."

Although NASA budget is increasing overall, science is getting squeezed out. Quoting a recent New Scientist Space article:

The $16.8 billion budget request, announced in February, includes $5.3 billion for science in 2007. But it calls for $3.1 billion in cuts to science programmes by 2010, compared to projections made in the 2006 budget request.

A shockingly large fraction of this shrinking budget (30%-50%) is already committed to just one project, the James Webb Space Telescope. Smaller projects, the source of much innovation and knowledge, are being considered for cancelation or slated for "indefinite postponement." For this and other reasons, the 2007 budget request was roundly criticized by the National Research Council, mentioned in the above article.

In my opinion, from a cost/benefit/risk point of view, it is foolish to divert money from science projects with modest costs, strong research returns, and low risk (for failure and to life and limb) to expensive projects with perhaps marginal research returns and much higher risk.

Is one manned moon mission (estimate $100 billion) worth 200 mid-sized science missions (at 500 million each)? Even if my numbers are a bit off, my thinking says no.

A much better article on this subject can be found at New Scientist. (via digg).

'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant

Two pictures and a movie here!

-mcgrew (you're welcome. MRC="papers";)

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
 
...

What you're asking is not stupid, but where you're asking it might be. It's highly doubtful that anyone here on Slashdot knows anything more about Heim theory than what the Wikipedia tells us. It's obscure and mostly understood by German speaking physics doctorates. (I challenge you small handful of physics experts on Slashdot who might have actually read his math and understood it to prove me wrong.) Fortunately, Germany is part of the ESA.

However, from what I've read on "teh intarweb" from laymen speculators about Heim theory, his theory does supposedly predict that a rotating magnetic field would have a gravitational effect.

Another physicist, Dröscher, has taken his theory further to say that in a similar setup -- a rotating ring above a superconducting coil -- could theoretically lift a 150-ton spaceship with a magnetic field of "only" 25 Tesla. He also claims that this might allow "hyperspace" travel where the speed of light changes, so I -- in my layman's knowledge of physics -- put Dröscher in the crank science box. You can read more about it in this New Scientist article. Take it with a good-sized chunk of rock salt.

Hi, everyone. I wrote one of the original news releases about this planet discovery, so I'm very interested in the discussion of whether the "super-Earth" is exciting news or not. When I first found out about the planet (I work at Ohio State University; one of our astronomers heads the team that identified it) I knew I had to write a news release (I mean, this is a new planet!) but I also had to wonder how much of a splash the story would make in the media.

Some 170 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the last decade, so there's already been a lot of news coverage. But it's easy to forget that before a decade ago, scientists had no real evidence of what other solar systems are like. This planet is unusual in that it's terrestrial, and its solar system doesn't seem to have any giant gas planets like Jupiter. So the find expands our ideas about what kinds of solar systems are out there, and it also suggests that we're getting closer to our goal of finding other Earth-mass planets.

There's more information in the Ohio State news release, and the one written by my colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. There are also lots of other news stories out there right now, most notably by New Scientist, National Geographic, and Space.com.

Pam Gorder

The most intriguing fallout from this idea has to do with the strength of the vacuum energy inside the dark energy star. This energy is related to the star's size, and for a star as big as our universe the calculated vacuum energy inside its shell matches the value of dark energy seen in the universe today. "It's like we are living inside a giant dark energy star," Chapline says. There is, of course, no explanation yet for how a universe-sized star could come into being.

-l

-l

p.s., ... "a controversial new study argues". ;)

Read this in New Scientist over the weekend. Link here (but you need to be a subscriber)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892541 1.100
Very interesting article, with several possible explanations.

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/friendly/signs _20060302_friendly.html

It is indeed very interesting.

More interesting is the idea that "alien" life might originate on Earth. Modern techniques involve culturing and DNA analysis that assume standard DNA in an organism: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Viruses can have RNA, but they're not considered alive (that's another argument for another day).

There are other nucleic acids and other nucleic acid pairs. There might even be molecules that could polymerize and act as hereditary subunits. Such life wouldn't have to come from space. Standard theory taught that several kinds of life might have come from the prebiotic soup, but only one survived.

We now know that's not exactly true. There are a few organisms that don't use the exact standard DNA code. The mitochondria in your cells are a perfect example, although they're no longer free-living independent organisms.

What else is out there? The possibility that there is a parallel and intertwined ecosystem is becoming a hot topic in biology.

Rains of frogs, seaweed, sand, and other things aren't uncommon. A rain of non-standard bacteria isn't beyond possibility. Of course, neither is a government experiment on deploying biological weapons, although 50 tons is a lot, whether English or Metric. A foul-up in the biochemistry or some weird damage to the DNA is still more likely. But wouldn't it be fun if it turned out to be Earthlife that's alien?

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892541 1.100

Very interesting article, with several possible explanations.

The most plausible, to my mind, is the mammalian red blood cells. They seem to be the right shape, and have no DNA (like the particles).

As they said in the NS article, the question really remains is - if they are mamallian red blood cells, how did the clouds get seeded with them int he first place?

There's a slightly less alarming article on New Scientist, where the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program suggests that this risk posed by this asteroid is likely to be significantly less than 1/1000:
"The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero."

Slightly more disturbing is his second comment:
"We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an object that we don't know about."

Everyone believing it will fly on schedule, please stand on your head.

The first mission:
Mission name: ST9 (Space Tech 9)
Tentative launch date: 2010-2011

Then we have more:
Mission name: Heliostorm
Tentative launch date: 2016-2020
Mission name: SPI (Solar Polar Imager)
Tentative launch daMission name: Interstellar Probe
Tentative launch date: 2031-2035

These are science. As we all know, the US gubmint don't hold with that science stuff. And does anyone out there believe that NASA have any clue what they'll be doing five years from now, let alone 25-30?

Remember the two year delay on the James Web Space Telescope (successor to Hubble) announced back in November? That's nothing. In addition to the congressional criticism of the no-science budget, we have things like:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/channel/human-spa ceflight/dn8689-nasa-to-divert-cash-from-science-i nto-shuttle.html
(Feb. 7) Wherein we learn that the Terrestrial Planet Finder has been delayed indefinitely, and more, such as "The budget announcement was "extraordinarily depressing", says Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, a non-profit organisation in Pasadena, California, US, which promotes solar system exploration. "I would almost describe it as 'anti-science NASA' now, with these kinds of deep cuts." Seven missions, or areas of research, or listed as cancelled or postponed. Of the postponed, all but one is indefinitely.

The Planetary Society has a statement here:
(Feb. 16)
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/space_a dvocacy/budget_statement.html
with gems like, "The Bush Administration's proposed 5-year budget for NASA, just submitted to Congress, is an attack on science. The proposed budget directs three billion dollars (over five years) away from robotic exploration of the solar system to continue to operate the shuttle. Last year the Administrator said, "not one thin dime" would be so directed. Now we learn it is 30 billion dimes."

and

"In addition, a devastating 15% cut to science research funding -- including likely cuts to some approved 2006 research programs -- is being applied across all Earth and space science disciplines, and 50% is being cut from astrobiology research! This attack on basic science ironically comes at a time when the President announced in his State of the Union speech his intention "to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years." Apparently the physical sciences do not include either Earth or space sciences."

If you think the much advertised "Vision for Space" is really going to get us back on the moon, then to Mars, you may be in for a surprise as well. Yes there's been all the talk about the new heavy lift and crew exploration vehicles. Even methane engines, so we can 'live off the land'. Guess again, and see:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_Moon_Program _The_NASA_Administrator_Is_Really_Planing_For.html
(Feb. 14). No methane engines, the Crew Exploration Vehicle diameter has been resized to five meters (can now be lifted by existing hardware), which the authors suggest was done to put the Crew Launch Vehicle on the chopping block. The Cargo Delivery Vehicle is gone, so we can't send control gyros to ISS after the shuttles retire in 2010. "This implies that the ISS won't be there at that time - or at least that NASA will not be supporting it."

So far, most popular reporting implies that science is being scrapped for Shuttle/ISS. That would be bad news, after the "not one thin di

Well, that's an interesting little tidbit buried in the other article from a week or so ago, about what specifically was getting cut - reallocation of funding to manned missions means (if the Shuttle can be safe and get the job done) Hubble gets another servicing mission.

I know that'll make a lot of people's desktop backgrounds happy.

Unfortunately, the relatively small amount of money they were planning on spending on the Keck Outriggers got cut. Now, I'm biased since I work at Keck occasionally, but one big difference between Keck (which NASA JPL runs along with UCal and CalTech) and, say, a space station or solar-system probe is that most people never will never get to actually see the solar-system probe - or, for that matter, any of the other things that got cut - up close.

Anybody* is free to fly over to Hawaii, catch a flight to Hilo or Kona, rent a Jeep, drive to the top of Mauna Kea, and walk right into Keck's visitor gallery, and even into part of one of the telescope domes, from 10-4 any weekday. Kinda helps remind people that NASA isn't all just stuff that's millions of miles away.

* Offer limited to people who are not on the no-fly list, who can afford airfare and car rental, and who have a valid driver's license. Void where prohibited by law. We assume no responsibility for any damages caused by your inability to breathe or function properly at 13700 feet MSL. Give me a yell if you're coming, okay?

Actually, helping to make the US a world 'superpower' is what NASA is for.

Delayed indefinitely - the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), a mission to detect and study Earth-like planets

Delayed by about three years - the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), designed to map stars with unprecedented accuracy and search for planets slightly larger than Earth will now launch no earlier than 2015

Cancelled - four to six 1.8-metre "outrigger" telescopes designed to bolster the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes in Hawaii. The outriggers would have searched for planets and imaged newborn stars

Delayed indefinitely - the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 2.5-metre infrared telescope built into a Boeing 747 plane, will be put under "review" because it is behind schedule. It has been given no funding for the foreseeable future

Delayed indefinitely - NASA's cosmology programme, "Beyond Einstein", is under review. Two of its missions - LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), to search for ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, and Constellation-X, to study black holes - will be delayed indefinitely

Cancelled/Delayed indefinitely - Mars research has been cut by $243.3 million to $700.2 million. This reflects the cancellation or indefinite postponement of missions such as the Mars Sample Return Mission and the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

Cut - solar system research, largely in astrobiology, has been cut by $96.5 million to $273.6 million

All this to pay for a shuttle system already slated for retirement, a Space Station with no clear mission, a return to the moon, which will be fun but little more than a stunt, and a manned mission to Mars which is not going to happen, not in the foreseeable future. How does this help to make the US a world 'superpower'? (Never mind whether that in itself is a good idea.)

Did the Mars Rovers do nothing for America's standing? Did anyone notice the enormous amount of attention that was paid (at least in Europe) to the return of the Stardust mission? Right now, nobody can be in much doubt about how powerful the US is - the doubt is all about how wise.

Actually what I submitted was something entirely different: I highlighted Griiffin's comment that "NASA's human spaceflight programme ... had served to define the US as a world 'superpower."' (As if that were what NASA is for!) I wished to emphasise that this focus on human spaceflight was at the expense of real science, and quoted Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, who said: "I would almost describe it as 'anti-science NASA' now". My point was that NASA is sacrificing substance for style - or politics for science.

Maybe Zonk works for NASA, or the US Government - certainly he spun the story in a way that would make Scott McLellan proud. It's one thing for /. editors to edit submissions, but if they're going to wholly distort my meaning I'd rather they took my name off the story, thanks all the same.

Griffin defended the agency's 2007 budget proposal, announced on 6 February, at a hearing before the US House of Representatives' science committee. The $16.8 billion budget includes $5.3 billion for science in 2007 but calls for $3.1 billion in cuts to science programmes by 2010 compared to projections made in the 2006 budget request.

Despite all the sybolism associated with sending people out into space, it's just not worth cancelling so many science programs. This related story details exactly what they're planning on cutting and states that from 2008 to 2011 science spending will increase by just 1% each year (is that even enough to keep up with inflation?). Is it really that important to send people back to the moon or to Mars?

The robotic lifters measured five feet, six inches and climbed to a height of more than 1500 feet, surpassing its last test record by more than 500 feet.