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If you check here, you'll see that due to where they are (north pole of moon on a crater rim) they have almost constant access to sunlight.

If I'm on the north pole of any tidally locked body, and (this is crucial) the normal of the plane of orbit of that body is perpendicular to the sun... then the north and south poles of that body will have almost constant access.

Here's how. If the north pole has none of the rest of the body to shade it, then from the point of view of the observer, the sun will always be halfway on the horizon. In other words, the sun will be half-hidden all of the time, sitting on the horizon and "going around" the body. So if I build a building on the north pole, then the upper floors will see the whole sun. If we add some reflective screens that will rotate and point at the sun, then we've got an increase in how much sunlight will hit our target (garden, photoelectric, or whatever).

Also keep in mind - there's no atmosphere to weaken the amount of sunlight. So even if the sun seems to be on the horizon, the light per square meter (measured with a normal pointing straight at the sun) will be considerably stronger. Instead of a satellite with lots of solar cells, consider a solar concentraing cell (those referred to in the link are already in space) inside an airspace connected to the base. Whatever sunlight isn't converted to electricity is converted to heat. All you have to do is pump cool water past the cell to keep it cool enough, and you can then capture the heat from the water.

So it's an environment with plenty of energy available (once tapped), lots of rock-based nutrients for plants, and a slow speed for landing (relative ground speed for landing is at a minimum at the poles). A perfect place to start hollowing out the inside of the moon for an even more secure moon base. Here's hoping they put one at each pole.

You read that article http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/white_hole_030917.html too eh?

I am talking about sending a rover, like the Mars rover, to the moon. This would be a small payload and you would be going a short distance. A space shuttle is totally unnecessary, because there aren't any people.
You don't have to develop a new launch system, because the point of the mission is just get a rover-like machine to transmit data from the moon.

I think that you have made your point about the cost being larger than $5 million, but $500M is just an extravagant number. The launch system is the most expensive part of the whole operation, and it is covered by less than 1/4 of $500M. If the Mars mission was $265M total, even in 1996, and a present-day delta II launch is $120M, it is conceivable that a mission could be carried out for less than $500M.
This is all assuming that you did it in $USD. A Russian, Chinese or European operation would have entirely different numbers, any of which might compare more favorably to the 1996 Mars mission.

That's just crazy.

You don't need to submerge the craft, which would require too much water, and a place to put it in. (The ocean won't work.) All you gotta do is put the water IN the spacecraft and watch for the water to spray OUT! The ship contains the water, and you only need enough to fill up the ship.

You can even use dowsing rods to find where it's coming out.

The prime candidates being referenced in the study are only about 60 light years away (from space.com), and only between 10 and 200 million years old. In comparison, our sun is around 4.5 billion years old, so for an alien civillization to see our solar system in a similar stage of evolution, they'd be looking from about 75 million times as far away. Keep in mind we can't even see these nearby proto-planets ourselves...just evidence in the thickness of the star's accretion discs.

If they can see that far, they'd have already seen so much of this happening that our solar system wouldn't stand out as remotely interesting. And of course, they'd be seeing it 4.5 billion years before intelligent life arose, so they wouldn't get any thrill from spotting an extra-galactic neighbor, either.

The study, detailed in the Oct. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal, also found the comet tail acted as a source of electrons for the solar wind.

The solar wind consists of charged atoms that are missing most of their electrons, but Ulysses found that solar wind particles passing through the comet's atmosphere could regain some of those electrons. The particles exhibit a different charge when they do this, which SWICS can detect.

Both findings are a surprise to scientists. Thomas Zurbuchen, a study team member at the University of Michigan (U-M), likened Ulysses' pass through the comet tail to putting your hand in the waters of Lake Michigan and pulling out a fish.

The abstract wrote:
Recent studies suggest that flux-tube-like structures may exist in the solar wind. In this scenario, the solar wind plasma are confined in many individual flux tubes and plasma in these flux tubes move independently from each other. Within each flux tubes, the (MHD) turbulence is due to the local non-linear dynamics. Across the boundaries between adjacent flux tubes, however, the (MHD) turbulence receives another contribution from the sudden change of magnetic field directions between different flux tubes. Thus the solar wind turbulence will naturally be of multiscale and intermittent. In this paper, using the procedure we developed in [1], we analyze magnetic field data obtained from Ulysses spacecraft in both fast and slow solar wind, at various radii and latitudes. Our results show flux tubes exist in both the fast and the slow solar wind. ©2007 American Institute of Physics

There are massive advances being made in recognising faces -- i.e. combine Facebook or Flickr with a tagged photo of someone, and you could then find them on the street in New York in the Google picture. That's why people have the right not to be photographed and have their image broadcast.

Actually, there is almost no drag in a supersonic submarine. They plan to use a concept called Supercavitation.

Great. Now we have to worry about deadly moon microbes in the pet food and toys.

Or, toddlers getting silicosis.

For the people to be the Gov't and by extension NASA would actually require a system where everybody had access to information and a share of the decisions that were made. Even if you ignore that and say that the current system is enough to make the People the Gov't - well the gov't has still consistently lied, deprioritized, and mismanaged monies and power given to it by the people.

I'm talking about promises to invest in space research that result in massive clawbacks of NASA programs, I'm talking about more then the past 7 years but a more the 30 year history of this following the Apollo program.

Nothing there? Well, there's a lot more up there then here, as much as the Earth is the centre of our universe, it's a very small centre. Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, metals, all out there in comets, asteroids, moons and even planets, and these are the basic products of our industry. Free unlimited energy, it's out there too, in the form of solar energy that could be used to power our world. Life? Crazy, but I really hope we aren't the only ones around and there really is only one way to find out. Room, yeah they call it space for a reason, it's got lots of room, which we can use for manufacturing and science that is impractical or not safe to conduct on Earth. This is from the ground looking up, imagine the possibilities that could be envisioned if we actually were up there.

No the point of the Article isn't that space is useless, it's instead that other people are going to be using space while the US stays on the sidelines, and in my mind I blame the Team Management, not the Fans.

These were mentioned here in April, and also in June, as mentioned on slashdot in this article.

These were mentioned here in April, and also in June, as mentioned on slashdot in this article.

See Here

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Actually, I don't think the vision requirement is an age thing. I read an article a while back that said older astronauts may be preferable because older people seem to handle radiation exposure better than younger people do. I couldn't find the original article I read but you can find something similar here. This article says:

Those radiation limits vary with age and gender. For 30-year-old astronauts, the maximum allowable mission length for a female is set at 54 days and reaches 91 days for male spaceflyers, the report stated. By age 55, the total days in space max out at 159 days for female astronauts and 268 days for their male counterparts.

You seriously should, if returning Mars samples or exploring water flow on Mars are on your priority list.

Space exploration is probably the greatest interdisciplinary field that we can pursue. Nearly every field will be essential to some part of it.

I thought it was pretty good for a 12 word sentence fragment. Oh well shoot the messenger, and change the message content. The original post was the layman's version.

A few more references are:
Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium-3 as the perfect fuel source. @ http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html
Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source, in a nutshell. @ http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html
HELIUM-3 FUSION ENERGY: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE BY 2050 AD @ http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/helium.htm

(If you need anymore, do your own research I am confused.)

And so is the lucky camera.

News story a few days ago:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070905_tw_ lucky_camera.html

Ion drives are used... http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive04/panamsata rch_082404.html May not be very reliable though !

I wondered whether a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) would have been a good choice. The batteries used weigh 7.15 kg to deliver about 100 W (1). RTGs in development to deliver about the same power weigh 34 kg and 2). These RTGs are being developed for the next generation rover, the Mars Science Laboratory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rove r#Power_and_electronic_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laborato ry#Power_source

WAIT. Eventually a Martian dust-devil will pass over a rover, and after this "cleaning event" occurs, THEN is the time to start significant operations again.

V2's RTG is putting out about 300W ATM

http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=mi ssions&Number=415278&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o= 0&fpart=

Another piece: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070402_mm_ma rs_caves.html

Here's an article with some counter-points to this theory.

People who go outside a submerged submarine have to wear a protection suit in a hostile enviroment.

A completely different ind of environment. In case you hadn't noticed, water is a little thin on the ground on Mars. Mars is not short of cold, and with some atmosphere you don't have to have a whole pressure suit - easy to approximate here on earth.

They wouldn't last 2 seconds on mars, thats what.

You are just really unable to grasp the point of these tests, aren't you? You simply can't fathom that operating tools and machinery in a suit of approximately the same level of mobility and flexibility could have any value. Thank god you don't work for NASA or nothing would get done.

Mars pressure is about 1/100th that of earth. It might not be a vacuum but the pressure is so negligable that as far as the human body is concerned it might as well. Ergo they'd have to wear full pressure suits with all the issues that entails (such as joint manouverability).

Since you don't seem to grasp what they are using for suits, have a look at an earlier prototype here

In 1/3G equipment would not necessarily behave the same.

What does that even mean? It's not like weightlessness where you have to be anchored to use a wrench. Define the implications more clearly than a vague fear that tools will become worthless through some magical Martian effect.

Because the costs are so high (100s of billions of dollars)

I see your problem now, you are woefully ignorant of how little it actually costs to reach Mars if you don't spend like the government. Read "Mars Direct" and get back to us all with critiques of those costs.

I just hope we don't embarass ourselves by flushing the global economy down the toilet, just to find ourselves in a warmer climate due to solar effects that we could not stop no matter how hard we tried.

Facts are hard to ignore. Like http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_snow_011206-1.html and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article17 20024.ece. Dust storms caused by winds caused by increased solar heating are the reason on Mars. But Mars is also further away from the sun and gets less solar radiation. If Mars gets enough extra radiation to rise 0.5C, the Earth is getting about 16 times as much. (It is about half the distance from the sun, r-squared rule says four times as much. It is about twice the diameter, again, r-squared says four times as much. four times four, sixteen. About.) Thank goodness for the high heat capacity of water, huh?

I'm happy to hear that the crew is not in serious danger, but it's still past time that we replace the shuttle, which was a poor compromise from the start, with something SnApPiEr.

Kill for fun and profit?

There is sound in space. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_mond ay_030922.html

Another probe had a microphone that heard the dull roar of the solar wind.

When something explodes it usually gives off large amounts of gas. Of course if you're a reasonable distance from the explosion, it's like lightning and thunder, you'll see the explosion first, then get hit by the blast. I seem to recall 2010: Odyssey Two getting this right when Jupiter ignites.

Agreed. Warp-like effect has been studied in theoretical physics, and has even been considered by the US military.

Rockets can carry larger payloads than the Shuttle. The new Delta can carry over 50K pounds, about the same as the Space Shuttle. Compare that to the Saturn V's 106,000 pounds.

So no, the Hubble could have been launched on another platform. As for the repair, that could have been done with the original shuttle design, as they certainly didn't carry a 50K payload for repairs.

I'm quoting from this Space.com article, which is Mary Glenn quoting Alan Shepard. I don't have a source for this, but when I was at Space Camp I was told it was Shepard who said this - and c'mon, Space Camp has to be on top of this, right?

I think the Russians are making more cargo deliveries also. Without a pilot, besides. At this point, I would also consider their way of doing it more efficient, and reliable. Their space truck is a Chevy. Ours is a Ford. For people, they use a compact. If it wasn't for them, we probably would have had to abandon the space station a long time ago.

Covered? The "coverage" consists of:

• the claim that no meteorite remain from Tunguska has ever been found (proof by bold assertion)
• a comment that the writer couldn't find the foundation's website. Gee, I wonder if the writer was searching for websites in Russian?
• mockery and sarcasm as soon as the subject of aliens arises. After all, scientists know that aliens can't be visisting the earth, because the Fermi Paradox says so.

I don't think that's particularly good coverage

Anyway, here is a 2004 story from what looks to be a reputable science website on the discovery of the meteorite, with photo

• Both Viking landers were nuclear powered (RTGs).
• So are both of the rovers, to a certain extent. Both rovers contain slugs of plutonium which keep the electronics boxes warm and reduce the amount of solar power needed for heating.
• Viking 2 lasted 1281 sols and died when its batteries failed. Although the RTGs would have produced usable power for another ten years, the power levels were too low for 70s electronics. So the RTGs would slowly charge the batteries then the batteries would power up the lander for short durations.
• Viking 1 lasted 2245 sols and lost contact with Earth when a bad command was sent which instructed Viking to point its antenna in a different direction (sort of like typing "shutdown -h now" on the command line of a remote server, there's no recovery short of a house-call).

but on the whole, the Shuttle is safer now than it has ever been;

NASA looks to me like an outfit that will keep launching these "beaters" until they HAVE to stop (after the next accident anyone can see is coming).

Ah right, like the spaceplane that congress keeps cutting the funding for?

Foam coming off the tank because of improper application; deficiencies in the materials used; degradation during its transport to the Cape; the loading of supercold fuels; and the violent ride to space. Florida Today reported earlier this year that foam came off the tank on at least 71 flights to date, but NASA did not consider the resulting damage to the heat shield a safety issue.

Requirements and specifications not being followed in testing and manufacturing of the external tank.

Loss of institutional knowledge and experience at NASA and the Michoud plant because of "lots of old-timers retiring or taking buyouts" as the shuttle program reduced its workforce throughout the latter half of the 1990s.

NASA's limited insight into changes vendors had made with materials used in making the tanks.

Environmental requirements requiring removal of freon from the process for spraying the foam insulation onto the tank. NASA has said that the freon-free application method resulted in foam that initially did not adhere to the tank as well, but changes were later made to strengthen the bond of the environmentally friendly foam.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /spacesuit_innovations_050126.html

Here's some:

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=44
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/07 0308-asteroids_2.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117854.700 -will-we-catch-a-falling-star-there-are-many-aster oids-outthere-in-space-and-the-chances-are-that-so oner-or-later-one-will-head-forearth-but-no-one-kn ows-what-to-do-if-we-find-ourselves-on-collision-c ourse.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/fl_side2_020 901.html
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.cfm?id=79899200 2
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/415367.html
http://www.sciencebits.com/PlanesAndMeteorites

Not sure how your lottery analogy applies. The nasa article sums up your logical fallacy: "The perception of risk from impacts is smaller than for being killed in a plane crash because planes crash at a steady rate with (relatively) few deaths per event, whereas lethal impacts are rare but kill a lot of people. At the very least, the potential consequences of impact are large enough to cause concern."

You know, Alec Guinness is on official record as saying that the original Star Wars trilogy was the biggest load of crap he ever did.

I still love his work in the movies, though.

"A glass CD loaded with literary, visual and audio science fiction works about the red planet was strapped to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. said Friday."
    :
"Inlcluded in the works are H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds,"..." http://www.space.com/news/070804_phoenix_spacelibr ary.html

Now THAT'S just going to give the Martian ideas... and they'll probably get their vaccinations before invading this time. Bad enough that we put road maps to Earth on Pioneer and Voyager - not to mention pointing out the most dangerous native species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque). Now we've gone and given them invasion plans as well!

"Darn these annoying Earthlings!"

You know what? When I first read your post I thought you must be a freaking whacko nutjob who needed to be protected from the terrible secret of space.

Then, I did some Googling just to see if there actually was any information on SPS.

Whaaaa? TONS. Oops. I was completely wrong about your post. Thanks for an enlightening comment and please let me apologize for almost chucking you in the virtual loonie bin.

Yep, a marketing stunt that coincides with the Saturn 5 restored to former glory.

Besides, the blueprints seem to be stored away, quote:""The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart.""

CC.

The best "current guess" is 1 in 76

Actual performance is 1 in 56. Either one is a LOT more realistic than what NASA originally claimed before the Challenger disaster, which was 1 in 100,000. That was even more ridiculous than those million-hour MTBF estimates for hard disks, when you consider that a million-hour MTBF drive that fails after 10,000 hours is off by 2 orders of magnitude, but NASA was off by more than 4 orders of magnitude.

1 in 56 ... that's a heck of a lot less than 1 in 100,000.

Then there's stupidity like this

Ranging in diameter from 19 to 40 inches, the tanks have lightweight titanium or steel shells wrapped with the same type of fabric used to make bulletproof vests -- Kevlar -- or carbon graphite. They hold helium and nitrogen gas at extremely high pressures (up to 4,600 pounds per square inch) and are extraordinarily dangerous.

"You certainly wouldn't want a 4-foot-diameter helium bottle that's pressurized to about 4,000 psia to burst on you," Hale said. "That would be a bad thing."

A tank rupture on the ground could lead to a fire or explosion that could injure or kill workers in the launch pad area. A failure in flight could lead to the loss of a shuttle and the astronauts inside.

Built for NASA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the copper-colored spheres were designed, developed, manufactured and tested for 10 years of shuttle fleet operations.

The NASA records show that proper engineering analyses were done in 1988 to certify the tanks for an additional decade of use. But no subsequent recertification was done in 1998 when the agency's extended warranty expired.

NASA engineers raised questions about the tanks, which are named Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessels, as the agency was struggling to return the shuttle fleet to service after the 2003 Columbia accident.

The aerospace industry already had expressed concern about the structural integrity of similar tanks on satellites and aircraft, and the agency's newly anointed NASA Engineering and Safety Center took up the cause in 2004.

The safety center's engineers concluded the orbiter tanks are much more likely to fail than NASA previously thought.

Past NASA analyses assumed the tanks would leak before they burst. New studies and tests show that they would explode before they leaked, increasing the hazard considerably.

In other words, the shuttles fly with parts that are at almost 300% of their original design lifespan, that are over their "recertified" 20-year lifespan by almost 50%, and, if they fail, can kill.

This is the "new NASA?" Sounds like the NASA of the 80's and '90s to me. Too bad the "Old NASA" of the '60s is no more. Odds now are about 1 in 3 that we'll see another disaster before STS-132 completes the mission series.

"We have reason to believe that Al Qaeda operatives have established a secret base in the caves of Mars. ... "

We'd be landing troops next month.

"The worst-case scenario is that enough dust in the sky decreases solar energy to the point that we have to shut down too many things to save power," Lemmon said. "The rovers keep their battery alive by keeping their electronics alive."

http://www.space.com/news/070705_dusty_rovers.html

However, the article also mentions the cold breaking solder joints:
John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., explained that a dead rover battery could allow cold temperature to maim Opportunity's electronics.

"It's like leaving your laptop out in an Antarctic winter," Callas said. "Soldered joints in the electronics can contract due to thermal contraction. If a rover gets too cold, something essential will fail." Callas explained the situation is unprecedented, so the team isn't certain how much more light-blocking dust the rovers-especially Opportunity-can take.

Preliminary data suggested that the spacecraft hit Mars at a relatively slow velocity -- some two to three times the force of gravity. The airbag system is designed to sustain a 40 g's collision with Mars.

The catalog would help researchers understand how galaxies form and interact.

"At some level, what we learn about these galaxies could tell us something quite fundamental about cosmology and particle physics,'' Nichol said.

• If Spirit and Opportunity do incur damage from the current dust storm, it will be because they are already on the margin of their ability to function anyway in terms of power, McKay said. Originally designed for only a three-month mission, the plucky rovers have continued operating for an astonishing three years. Aged as they are and despite concern from rover mission officials, McKay is optimistic the rovers will survive this latest ordeal.

  The rovers are "way past their warranty date," McKay said. "It could be that under the low power condition of the dust storm, they may have some breakdowns that can't be repaired but I actually would be surprised, especially since they both just survived the winter. This should be a piece of cake for them."