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And aren't there lots of sources of organic molecules that don't involve life?

Don't be silly. Vitalism is alive and well.

Right now the only way known to move the Earth would involve repeated close flybys with an asteroid which would by its nature be very slow. Something that would need to be started soon in a geological sense.
I don't think tides would be too much of a problem if Mars was orbiting at maybe 3 times the distance of the Moon or whatever distance would be roughly equal gravitationally to the Moon.
Of course we would probably have to move the Moon as well to make the orbital mechanics simpler depending on how far the Moon has moved away from the Earth due to tidal friction.
Article on moving the Earth, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/earth_move_010207.html
Also this is interesting, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/death_of_earth_000224.html

Right now the only way known to move the Earth would involve repeated close flybys with an asteroid which would by its nature be very slow. Something that would need to be started soon in a geological sense.
I don't think tides would be too much of a problem if Mars was orbiting at maybe 3 times the distance of the Moon or whatever distance would be roughly equal gravitationally to the Moon.
Of course we would probably have to move the Moon as well to make the orbital mechanics simpler depending on how far the Moon has moved away from the Earth due to tidal friction.
Article on moving the Earth, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/earth_move_010207.html
Also this is interesting, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/death_of_earth_000224.html

Depending on what the scope is you might just be best off with the normal jazz; the moon, planets, galaxies in the local group.

6, 4 and 3 are kind of young but if you're interested in this as well you might want to consider joining your local amateur astronomy association. You'd get a lot more input as to what's good to find for the backyard astronomer, some access to better scopes and you'd probably learn a great deal about astronomy with it. Space.com's NightSky is also a good resource for things that people can see without hardcore equipment and it's kept up to date. I also recommend people with a basic interest in astronomy to subscribe to the AstronomyCast podcast. It's highly informative and a step above any of the crap you find on Discovery or The Science Channel.

The nice thing about astronomy is that there are a ton of resources for all levels of interest, resources and abilities. It's probably the cheapest science you can learn on your own because of the vast number of resources available. Not to mention that it touches on so many other areas of science. It's really a great intersection of scientific disciplines that just about everyone can appreciate. There aren't many other fields of science you can say that for.

But if the goal is to send people to space sustainably and for the long term, then NASA should be doing things like building and testing space stations that can spin and thus create artificial "gravity", and have decent radiation shielding. The long term goal should be creating space colonies, in _space_. Colonies where future generations of humans can live and reproduce. Thus the target would be developing technologies that would make it possible.

Not working on sending people to Mars or the Moon. Getting to the moon has already been done.

Getting people stuck on other gravity wells in the Solar System is silly and expensive. And talks of expensive, rushed (because of poor shielding and other issues), potentially one way trips to Mars are even more ridiculous.

What's so great about living on the Moon or Mars? It's not like they are human friendly places. What can you get from Mars or Moon that you can't get from asteroids?

There are plenty of asteroids to mine out there. Asteroids have a lot of water:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050907_ceres_planet.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/08/more-water-out-there-ice-found-on-asteroid/

You might even be able to hollow out an asteroid and turn it into a space station.

Just because we're living on a decent planet doesn't mean that getting stuck on other gravity wells should be our goal. We should only get stuck in one if it's as good as Earth (or almost as good). And the other planets and moons in the Solar System are far from meeting that mark.

... we're missing critical information in the report. The keep mentioning "levels of methane" but they don't tell us what these levels are

The usual sources quote about 10 parts per billion of Methane in the atmosphere. Michael Mumma of Goddard Space Flight Center, with earthbound telescopes, says he's detected up to 200 parts per billion near the equator. Recent observations suggest that the methane is released in plumes, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane [space.com].

The models were coded using assumptions, and we are talking about a chaotic system that is difficult to predict 7 days in advance let alone 70 years. In fact many of these models are based on models of ocean currents recently shown to be wrong. Not that anyone seems to care.

Then, of course, is the question of other factors that might be understated. Solar activity increased in the past 50 years too, but now we have had 18 months and that activity has vanished. Temperatures have historically increased and decreased with the increase and decrease of solar activity. It is an accepted factor in global warming, but looking at Mars and Jupiter it is strange how much extraterrestrial climate change is happening at exactly the same time. Maybe they have underestimated the Sun's importance.

My problem is this: "Climate change" is no longer a real science. The one thing that the hacked emails proved is that Climate Change has become far too political to be called a science. You don't need stolen emails to prove that proponents of the current climate change theory are doing what they can to stifle debate. When the debate is gone, there is no science.

I am willing to admit when I am wrong, but it is not time for that yet. Solar activity may be approaching a minimum, and if it does, it will prove me right or wrong. But I am sure-- damned sure --that if global temperatures fall with the solar activity, a good many of the current scientists echoing the conventional wisdom will adjust their models to prove that they were right all along.

Consider how little funding the Plasma Cosmologists have gotten, in comparison to the huge amount of money that has gone to astrophysicists who tell us that the universe is almost entirely invisible and virtually undetectable.

You mean except for the fact that dark matter was observed 8 years ago? Oh yeah and here too. Yeah other than these examples and others that can be shown that it's invisible and undetectable. *yawn*

This is like the medieval Catholic church funding mathematicians to produce increasingly elegant papers on epicycles while ignoring the research of heliocentrists. I, for one, would like to see the government out of science and Natural Philosophy returned to the realm of dilettantes and other assorted rabble who actually base their theories on observed data instead of mathematical conjecture.

Except for those people you berate against have their mathematical "conjecture" backed up by observed data.

China has been leaching the west dry. They have their money fixed against the American dollar and it is designed to take down all of the western nations. Even here, China will only use this technology to improve their forthcoming multiple military only space station. China treats the west in the same fashion that USSR did in 1946-1955; as a place to steal from.

Hopefully, Obama is smarter than to do this.

A printed map? Don't they know that this is already obsolete?

Can't we get this electronically on a Tom Tom, so we can find our way home?

Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/here-we-go-again-with-the-spss/

You don't seem to realize that there's more than one way to launch a payload. Here's a /. article from 2006, for instance, that discusses ballistic launches: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/03/1732258.

The gist is, if you can pack things to withstand 2,000 Gs of acceleration, you can launch an object into orbit using just electricity. Once the cargo reaches apogee, you need to adjust the orbit to one that won't re-intercept the atmosphere, but that only take a small solid fuel thruster. Here's one that is very cheap to make: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/091021-tw-alice-rocket.html

Some items to note:

• The rocket [nationalgeographic.com] was the tallest [space.com] (and possibly most expensive, at $450 million) suborbital rocket ever assembled, consisting of a solid rocket motor from the Space Shuttle and an Atlas V avionics system, with a non-functional upper stage put on top.
• The Ares I-X has roughly the same shape (but different internal components) compared to NASA's planned medium-lift Ares I, which is scheduled to be completed after 2017 with an estimated cost of $1-$2 billion per launch. A lot of people have been calling this a flight test of the Ares I, but considering how drastically different the Ares I would be in flight, it's really quite a stretch, and it also unfortunately doesn't address any of the biggest potential problems with the Ares I (5-segment booster vibration properties, launch abort survivability, etc.). If anything, it's more similar to a full-size wind tunnel test.
• Even though the fate of the Ares I itself (and the overall future direction [thespacereview.com] of NASA spaceflight) is uncertain, the >700 sensors on the Ares I-X should provide data useful for validating computer models [spaceflightnow.com] used by NASA."
• For all its faults, it's still worth noting that this is somewhat of an accomplishment for NASA, as its the first new launch vehicle design they've attempted to launch in 30 years, after a long string of failed designs (X-30, X-33, X-34, National Launch System, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane). Actually, now that I think about it, the DC-X [wikipedia.org] successfully launched, although I suppose that was constructed by McDonnell Douglas for the DOD before it was transferred to (and canceled by) NASA. Of course, one could still ask why NASA is trying to internally design a new vehicle when the private sector has a much better track record over the past 30 years of bringing new launch vehicle designs into service, but I imagine it's still been a learning experience for NASA. Hopefully they'll learn the right lessons from it, whatever those are.

(I largely copied this from a comment I made yesterday, but it still seems pertinent)

Some items to note:

• The rocket is the tallest (and possibly most expensive, at $450 million) suborbital rocket ever assembled, consisting of a solid rocket motor from the Space Shuttle and an Atlas V avionics system, with a non-functional upper stage put on top.
• The Ares I-X has roughly the same shape (but different internal components) compared to NASA's planned medium-lift Ares I, which is scheduled to be completed after 2017 with an estimated cost of $1-$2 billion per launch. A lot of people have been calling this a flight test of the Ares I, but considering how drastically different the Ares I would be in flight, it's really quite a stretch. If anything, it's more similar to a full-size wind tunnel test.
• Even though the fate of the Ares I itself (and the overall future direction of NASA spaceflight) is uncertain, the >700 sensors on the Ares I-X should provide data useful for validating computer models used by NASA."
• For all its faults, it's still worth noting that this is somewhat of an accomplishment for NASA, as its the first new launch vehicle design they've attempted to launch in 30 years, after a long string of failed designs (X-30, X-33, X-34, National Launch System, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane). Actually, now that I think about it, the DC-X successfully launched, although I suppose that was constructed by McDonnell Douglas for the DOD before it was transferred to (and canceled by) NASA. Of course, one could still ask why NASA is trying to internally design a new vehicle when the private sector has a much better track record over the past 30 years of bringing new launch vehicle designs into service, but I imagine it's still been a learning experience for NASA. Hopefully they'll learn the right lessons from it, whatever those are.

I got my data from Wikipedia which cited a February 4 2007 report from Florida Today as it's source.

As for the moon and mars, NASA's budget for 1992 when Clinton took office was $13.961 billion dollars. When Clinton left office and Bush took over, NASA's budget was $13.428 billion. That's an overall decrease of 533 million in eight years. In 2005 when Bush proposed the moon-mars mission, NASA's budget was $15.602 billion or $1.641 billion more then when Clinton took office and $2.174 billion more from when Clinton left office.

Bush initially purposed a 880 million dollar increase in NASA's budget to cope with the moon-mars missions (planning and development at this stage). Congress slashed that and actually cut NASA's funding by 477 million. However, by the end of Bush's term, NASA funding had increased again to $17.318 billion. This is also when certain parts of the moon-mars plans started coming together and needed funding. It also addressed a few funding lapses in other areas. That's $1.716 billion more then 2005 when Bush purposed the moon-mars goals. It's a $3.890 billion difference from when Clinton left and Bush took office.

If you can call that extra 1.716 billion dollars a budget cut, then I not sure what to say to you. I mean with increased costs and all, it could be worse, they could have left with less money then they came in under Bush with. That's what happened with Clinton in office and as it stands now, they are almost 4 billion ahead.

Point taken on my selection of STS missions showing DoD involvement with NASA. I believe I underscored that extensively because your initial comment was that "NASA doesn't do military".

I'm sorry, but my comment was a response to your statement that NASA should be reformed by moving military missions to the military. Congratulations. This was done. It was done decades ago.

With that issue clarified, I'd now like to draw your important attention to this:

http://www.space.com/news/050810_dod_launcher.html

Let me summarize this for you:

1. The White House mandated that the Department of Defense must coordinate with NASA on new vehicles.
2. The NASA response was that they'll continue to buy expendable launch vehicles from the same launch providers they buy them from now, except if any new providers come up, they may buy from them.
3. The Department of Defense said "the Pentagon will consider using NASA's proposed heavy-lift launcher for any future military missions that might require such a powerful rocket."

That's it: the Pentagon will "consider" using the new launch vehicle.

Point taken on my selection of STS missions showing DoD involvement with NASA. I believe I underscored that extensively because your initial comment was that "NASA doesn't do military". I may have hit the same nail repeatedly, but I'm hoping we can agree that NASA has a history of doing DoD dirty work.

With that issue clarified, I'd now like to draw your important attention to this:

http://www.space.com/news/050810_dod_launcher.html

"WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Defense has signed off on NASA's plan to use major space shuttle components as the basis for separate vehicles that will launch the agency's new crew transport and 100-ton loads of Moon-bound cargo.

The U.S. Space Transportation Policy issued by the White House in January requires NASA to coordinate its future launch vehicle plans with the Pentagon and submit a joint recommendation to the president on the nation's next heavy-lift rocket."

My argument the entire time was a broad stroke of NASA involved in DoD work. I understand that the STS program is nearing termination.

Please read the conclusion of that article;

"The letter further noted that new commercially developed launchers, should they become available, will be allowed to compete for such missions.

NASA and the Pentagon, according to the letter, have agreed to complete a joint cost benefit analysis in the coming months of phasing out Boeing's Delta 2 rocket in favor of the EELV. Although the Air Force has largely moved on to the EELV, the smaller Delta 2 remains NASA's workhorse for launching medium-sized science satellites and interplanetary probes.

Also according to the letter, the Pentagon will consider using NASA's proposed heavy-lift launcher for any future military missions that might require such a powerful rocket. But it is unlikely, the letter says, that the Pentagon would endorse a shuttle-derived vehicle as an EELV back-up "due to the significant risk, reliability, and cost of modifications required to [Defense Department] satellites and infrastructure.""

Okay, so not only is the DoD in bed with NASA, as they have been, but they are drawing plans to use more NASA hardware and infrastructure to do what they do best - put things in orbit and beyond. Given, I spent all of 3 minutes searching Yahoo! with "nasa department of defense space missions", so I could probably generate more current fodder if I needed to. Just trying to bring my definition of "now" in line with yours ;)

My original post, now some 5+ posts back, was an initiative to reposition NASA as an administrator of space operations, both civilian and military, and return military operations to their respective branches. Procedurally it would managed by Joint Chiefs of Staff (and what does the military use for a space vehicle anyway except rockets) with Congressional oversight, and turn civilian space operations over to the highest domestic corporate bidders. NASA keeps it tenantship in manned fixed orbit platforms like the ISS and ueses its decades-long library of experience to mentor and manage the fledgling commercial space industry.

As I speak, I still need clarification on whether or not NASA is still playing space monkey to DoD tasking, because if what I read above (from August 2005) is still valid, it appears that they are.

That was DOD's. NASA provided the launch vehicle, and the crew, but it is NOT a manned military space. Basically, all they did was retrieve a sat, and they have launched others. They were doing nothing more than simply transporting sats.

OTH, a manned military space system would be the MOL had we launched it in the 60's or one of the many Chinese Manned Space stations system that are scheduled to start launch in 2010.

For private spaceflight, this is a big deal, if this pans out NASA might come a nocking for ISS trips since Japan can move Cargo

NASA already has a contract with Space-X and Orbital Sciences to move cargo to the ISS. No need to go knocking on IOS' or Japan's door.

Apparently, the launch was successful: Liftoff occured at 2:01 a.m. local time, and the spacecraft proceeded into orbit without incident.

Space.com Reports on the Launch

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sfn-htv1-countdown-status.html

The causes of the X-33 program failure are the subject of considerable debate. Here are several good sources of information. You can see that the program received criticism from the GAO, and other sources. I've seen several references to the DoD effort to fund the flight test program, and that request being over-ruled by the Bush administration. I can't recall if these sources below include that claim or not, but you can probably find one or more if you use Google.

excellent X-33 overview
X-33 VentureStar what really happened?
New Mission for Lockheed Spaceplane?
X-33 and NASA's Proposed 2001-2005 Space Launch Initiative
GAO: SPACE TRANSPORTATION Status of the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
GAO: SPACE TRANSPORTATION Progress of the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
NASA Defends Itself Against X-33 Critique

I am not sure about fuels (nuclear fuels), but the rest looks promising.

Uranium has been found on moon: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090629-uranium-moon.html

The only way I could see it working is if NASA built the spam-can and designed it to be compatible with multiple launchers (e.g. Delta, Atlas, Falcon etc) so they could easily switch from one to the other for each launch.

Yes, I'm fairly certain that's the way they're planning on doing it: purchasing the services of a commercial capsule like the SpaceX Dragon, Orion Lite, Excalibur Almaz which can be launched on the currently-existing commercial rockets you mentioned. This minimizes development costs, insures that you're using a rocket which has been well-tested with unmanned launches, and lets you easily switch to a different launcher if one of them has problems.

Nice submission, although here's a few more details from my own submission:

Excalibur Almaz has come out of stealth mode and unveiled their reusable spacecraft capable of carrying a crew of three and/or cargo to orbit for up to a week. According to VP (and former NASA astronaut) Leroy Chiao, the spacecraft are designed to be launched on a variety of rockets, and are modernized versions of vehicles developed and flight-tested for the Soviet Union's military space station program (the company has also purchased some of the space stations for potential future use). EA plans to begin flight tests in 2012, with revenue flights starting in 2013. The company will likely be competing with the SpaceX Dragon and Bigelow Aerospace's recently-announced "Orion Lite" for a chunk of the emerging commercial orbital transportation market.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the original Soviet Almaz space station carried a rapid-fire cannon and performed a successful test-firing on a target satellite. I'm assuming the space stations which Excalibur Almaz bought don't have the cannons anymore. :(

Since there is specifically zero atmosphere, the only dust you're going to get on the rover is something directly applying it via ballistic trajectory. That's pretty easy to prevent with simply placement slightly away from drive paths. A wind driven environment will *always* have more dust flying around than the moon. there isn't any atmosphere to push it so it just sits until something imparts energy to it.

That's an impressive and very persuasive bit of reasoning with only the minor flaw that it's entirely wrong from beginning to end. The fact is lunar dust is very pervasive, fine, and troublesome. Here's an article about it.

Realistically, an aircraft mounted rail gun might serve just as well and be far less complex to deal with (absent the effects on the aircraft of the massive magnetic impulse).

That is almost CERTAINLY coming. However, what I find interesting is that few ppl are taking note of the fact that the mirrors are designed to aim at 90 degrees and CAN point straight overhead. From 50K feet, this laser will be able to take out sats or even a number of military space stations holding kinetic weapons of their own..

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

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

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

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

Some items of interest regarding both scenarios:

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

I've been waiting for this (acoustically contained/pumped fusion). Its just one more way to add energy, create confinement and maintain resonance. And whats with Sonoluminescence anyways? The whole tokamak thing seemed a little ill conceived when I heard how difficult it is to keep the vacuum from being poisoned and energy from leaking away from the desired chain reaction.

Btw sound waves are observed>/a> on the surface of the sun.

about the size of the Pacific Ocean, according to one astronomer's estimates.

Not to mention that some people are even shelling out extra millions (about 68 million in this case) just to NOT use SpaceX.

http://www.space.com/news/090713-busmon-spacex-customer.html

Except that they launch from a latitude not far south of Houston. If LBJ could've moved it to Corpus Christi, I'm sure he would have.

Still, the Cape is a nicely convenient bump, and all that water around the area probably had a lot to recommend it in terms of keeping the Ruskies out back in the '60s.

And there's another thing about all that water, and it's a factor that had a lot to do with the choice of Cape Canaveral: plenty of space to have a crash in without worrying about rockets and debris coming down on houses, schools, other sorts of buildings and ... well, anything with people, really.

Shuttle bumped again tonight. They're going right past Tuesday (weather down this way tomorrow is expected to be worse than it was today) and aim for a launch at 18:03:10 Eastern time on Wednesday (2203 GMT).

Actually there are 2 more, sort of. There are 2 private space stations built by Bigelow, that have not ever been occupied (they were test vehicles). There are plans for a much larger 3 module permanent station. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080509-bigelow-genesis1-milestone.html

But there is some good news. Remember Atlantis' stuck knob? They managed to pull it out by hand a while back.

All these data centers failed at roughly the same time as the sunspots returned, but that's just a coincidence, right?

Although comets may have initiated seeding of life and the foundry of everything from water to minerals .. there has been proof that water is abundant in space and maybe have just been absorbed into the atmosphere on earth and generated that way, over time rain would have brought the water molecules to the surface.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/milkyway_water_010412.html

Space.com brings word of a team using new evidence is suggesting that the mysterious 1908 event in Tunguska was a comet despite a team two years ago arguing it was an asteroid. The comet theory does explain the odd phenomenon of the night skies being lit up for several nights following the event all across Europe--about 3,000 miles away. Researchers believe this points to a comet because when the space shuttles launched today pass through the atmosphere they cause or improve the formation of noctilucent clouds. These clouds are so high up (55 miles) they are only made of ice particles and they are only visible at night which gives researchers reason to draw the conclusion that the 300 metric tons of water vapor that the shuttle pumps into the Earth's thermosphere must likely indicate that the thing that hit was loaded with water or ice. This would make it a comet and not an asteroid. This--of course--raises new upper-atmosphere physics problems for the Tunguska event but explains the strange phenomenon over the skies of the world following it. You may remember analysis of Lake Cheko last year in an effort to better understand what happened.

Well, if every comet that hit earth dropped off a little bit of water--even in the form of noctilucent clouds ... it'd take a while but is it really so far fetch to think that ultimately all our water and atmosphere are extra-terrestrial? Probably unlikely but over a long enough time, who knows?

Not from the Rover, but here's a pic from the old MGS craft:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_from_mars_030522.html

Even more impressive (to me, at least) is this snap from Voyager:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/top10_images_010925-11.html

Not from the Rover, but here's a pic from the old MGS craft:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_from_mars_030522.html

Even more impressive (to me, at least) is this snap from Voyager:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/top10_images_010925-11.html

If you are saying, "That's negligible", you are only proving the point that our rationalization for using these alternative energies does not consider the effects on a grand scale. Driving from my house to work also has a negligible environmental effect. Or if I burn my trash, it doesn't have a single noticeable affect on the environment. You start to notice the affect when your system of energy collection and use starts to scale. Instead of debating which energy to use, we should be debating which consequence we can live with and address why we are so hungry for power and is it all really needed?

Here is a short list of just some of the power systems at our disposal and just some of the environmental consequences of a fully scaled system.

Oil: Increased atmospheric carbon in the form of CO and CO2. Finite supply.
Coal: Increased atmospheric carbon in the form of CO and CO2. Finite supply.
HydroElectric: Environmental effects to the ecosystems displaced. Finite viable locations.
Nuclear: Radioactive byproducts in the from collection, usage, and waste is not tolerated by biological systems.
Hydrogen Power: Inefficiencies may damage ozone and have unpredictable atmospheric consequences.
Wind Power: Damage to environment including birds. Large scale deployments will affect weather patterns.
Solar Power: Damage to environment including plants. Effects on convection in atmosphere.

Even if you talk about collecting energy outside the whole environmental system and just 'beaming' it to earth, there is STILL a cost to the fact that you consumed it here and you added some energy to the system that wouldn't normally be here.

Personal conservation is by far the best system of all. It is a system that is agreeable to tree-huggers, Muslims, Christians, poets, and philosophers alike. The only ones who don't like that concept are the despoilers who seek to get gain at the expense of something they wrongly feel that they 'own'.

I absolutely love the artist's concept, but I sincerely doubt it will look much like that by the time the engineers and builders get finished with it. It doesn't look very cost effective.

Midday and different angle of spaceport concept art

The Artist Concept of the spaceport is really quite stunning.

you know who else was adamantly against tethering?

NASA?

The launch has been delayed since Endeavor wasn't able to launch on Saturday as planned. Endeavor is currently slated to launch tomorrow to ISS and a new date hasn't been picked for this mission.
Story here

Not friction... sorry, just being pedantic.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/top5_myths_020903-5.html

In college, I wrote a web browser. It was fully functional and supported everything that IE supported at that time. My professor was amazed. Not only because I was able to implement such a complicated thing in VB, but also in that I was able to do it over the weekend.

I got an A, but I never told anyone the secret. Now, years after I graduated, I can divulge my methods. Or, should I say *heh heh heh* Microsoft's methods. I simply reused Microsoft's IE COM component and wrapped it in a slick VB shell. Code reuse, not only at the code level, but at the binary level!

So in the real world, it also makes sense to reuse technology and existing parts rather than rebuild them from scratch. Especially so for space-based things that require huge investment per kilogram just to get them up there. And by reusing older parts, we can standardize on the interfaces and create Lego-like systems that can easily work together instead of needing custom parts every time.

The only thing I really worry about is all that Russian fungus.
http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungus_000727.html

They can do this since 2006. I think the astronauts have been actually doing things on every space shuttle mission so far but it is cool to have that capability for whatever reason it might be needed. I don't know at what point building a bunch of sophisticated robots becomes cheaper then sending people (safety requirements and all that) but I think employing and training people is cheaper at the moment and will be for quite a while yet for certain things. There are roles for both.

The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability.

Yes, the Shuttle does have autolanding capability. This was added after the loss of Columbia to cover exactly the scenario you postulate.
 
In the even of an autolanding, the primary recovery site is White Sand NM, with Edwards AFB as backup. They'll use a landing trajectory that minimizes the number of people underneath the landing path.

In 2004, thieves did the same thing in Malta, and stole a $5M Moon Rock

"The problem the thieves have is what to do with it," Joseph Richard Gutheinz, a retired NASA agent who helped recover the Honduras rock, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "They can try to sell it to private collectors or if they're sufficiently dumb, at an auction house."

While I'm no expert on astronomy or the like, Space.com reported that the universe was 156 billion light years wide. For a universe that is less than 14 billion years old, this means that space itself has expanded more than 11 light years per year.

And that's where my understanding of things sort of fall apart, but I imagine that it's a bit like walking on a moving sidewalk. Relatively to space (the side walk) I'm only traveling at x, but space drags me along at a higher speed than that.