Slashdot Mirror

I trust them

Don't ;-). From this article :

Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth.

"Several years ago we showed that any finite universe in which light had time to 'wrap around' since the Big Bang would have the same pattern of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations around pairs of circles," Cornish explained. They looked for the most likely patterns that would be evident in a CMB map generated by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

They didn't find those patterns.

"if you walk to the edge of the universe", well, if I got it right, you would have to walk faster than the speed of light in the first place.

Explanation here.

Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born, Cornish suggests. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today," he said. "Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years."

But I suggest you to read the whole page (no, I'm not new here, thanks for not asking)

SPACE.com has an explanation for why those numbers aren't what one would think:

The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.

But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, when theorists believe it all sprang forth from an infinitely dense point in a Big Bang.

"All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe," explains Neil Cornish, an astrophysicist at Montana State University. "Think of it like compound interest."

Need a visual? Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born, Cornish suggests. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today," he said. "Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years."

All the pieces add up to 78 billion-light-years. The light has not traveled that far, but "the starting point of a photon reaching us today after travelling for 13.7 billion years is now 78 billion light-years away," Cornish said. That would be the radius of the universe, and twice that -- 156 billion light-years -- is the diameter. That's based on a view going 90 percent of the way back in time, so it might be slightly larger.

Basically, a light-year is a lot longer than it was back in the time when the universe was young. You can travel faster than the speed of light if space-time is distorted. You just can't travel faster than light in "normal" space.

(And no, I'm not a physicist, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. YMMV (literally, in this case!))

Has the speed of light changed at some point?

Here's the memo - summary: Yes. The speed of light in a vaccuum has changed as the universe grew up.

If the universe is 15.8 billion years old, then shouldn't the universe be 31.6 billion light years across?

As well as a constant C, you are also assuming that the universe grew evenly in every direction. I don't know whether that is true.

(from: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_mond ay_040524.html)

This article generated quite a few e-mails from readers who were perplexed or flat out could not believe the universe was just 13.7 billion years old yet 158 billion light-years wide. That suggests the speed of light has been exceeded, they argue. So SPACE.com asked Neil Cornish to explain further. Here is his response:

"The problem is that funny things happen in general relativity which appear to violate special relativity (nothing traveling faster than the speed of light and all that).

"Let's go back to Hubble's observation that distant galaxies appear to be moving away from us, and the more distant the galaxy, the faster it appears to move away. The constant of proportionality in that relationship is known as Hubble's constant.

"One seemingly paradoxical consequence of Hubble's observation is that galaxies sufficiently far away will be receding from us at a velocity faster than the speed of light. This distance is called the Hubble radius, and is commonly referred to as the horizon in analogy with a black hole horizon.

"In terms of special relativity, Hubble's law appears to be a paradox. But in general relativity we interpret the apparent recession as being due to space expanding (the old raisins in a rising fruit loaf analogy). The galaxies themselves are not moving through space (at least not very much), but the space itself is growing so they appear to be moving apart. There is nothing in special or general relativity to prevent this apparent velocity from exceeding the speed of light. No faster-than-light signals can be sent via this mechanism, and it does not lead to any paradoxes.

"Indeed, the WMAP data [on cosmic microwave background radiation] contain strong evidence that the very early universe underwent a period of accelerated expansion in which the distance been two points increased so quickly that light could not outrace the expansion so there was a true horizon -- in precise analogy with a black hole horizon. Indeed, the fluctuations we see in the CMB are thought to be generated by a process that is closely analogous to Hawking radiation from black holes.

"Even more amazing is the picture that emerges when you combine the WMAP data with [supernova] observations, which imply that the universe has started inflating again. If this is true, we have started to move away from the distant galaxies at a rate that is increasing, and in the future we will not be able to see as many galaxies as they will appear to be moving away from us faster than the speed of light (due to the expansion of space), so their light will not be able to reach us."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_mechani cs_0303018.html

"Wake me up when Japanese industrialists figure out something they can do on the moon and want to send robots there or something."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_0006 30.html

Not totally practical, but it's there if you want a blue sky reason to invest the capital. Most of the early work would be an excuse to get the japanese government to fund some R&D, later investment can be scaled depending on developments on h3 reactors and other practical returns. With its energy needs and aging population Japan needs some revenue that has a high return on labor. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Wow! It looks like it will be crowded on the moon with all of these bases:Japan, Russia, China. But lets face it folks. The only credible plans for lunar exploration are coming out of the USA. The rest are just angling to hitch a ride.

Wow! It looks like it will be crowded on the moon with all of these bases:Japan, Russia, China. But lets face it folks. The only credible plans for lunar exploration are coming out of the USA. The rest are just angling to hitch a ride.

Wow! It looks like it will be crowded on the moon with all of these bases:Japan, Russia, China. But lets face it folks. The only credible plans for lunar exploration are coming out of the USA. The rest are just angling to hitch a ride.

I've been waiting for this for several years now:

Paul Allen's Vulcan FlipStart

Development of the FlipStart seems to have flagged a bit since this website hasn't changed appreciably in over 2 years. What the heck has Paul Allen been working on that could be more important than what I want!?

sounds unlikely though.

Does it? There is some debate going on about how constant the Constants of the Universe really were in the past, so the GP might actually be on to something...

Same here, but Pegasus hit orbit. Smaller loads, but not a warhead too. Almost redacted the spaceship one flight for the same reason as you. I left it in as it seems to be the way 'private' spacecraft seem to be headed. May prove to be wrong, but VTOL is not the only game in town.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/pegasus_launc h_020205.html

The white dwarf in RS Ophiuchi is near this critical limit now, but it will still probably need hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate the final bit of mass, scientists say.

Dare to try "extreme reentry", just you and a suit and a chute

It sounds like you think you're kidding, but you're not. There were serious proposals for one-man emergency reentry systems that had little more than a heat shield and a prayer.

The project manager said "You wouldn't want to try something like this unless there was no way at all of landing in the disabled spaceship and the astronaut just had to bail out in space," but I'll bet there are more than a few cliffjumping skydiving whitewater-rafting types who would want to do it just for the thrill.

Actually, if I recall correctly, the designs for the Saturn V's are lost.

You don't recall correctly.

i wonder if they are aware of this HUUUUGE 19 mile wide impact crator nearby ;)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_big_c rater.html

i mean this crater is sooo damn big that it wasnt even noticed till it was seen by satalites

theres on in europe like that too
its sooooo damn huge, an entire town is built in it, and an entire cathedral was built using a special rock that only forms from extreeeme compression and no one even knew it was a crater until some scientists realized the cathedral was built from that rock

when they are tooo big its hard to notice

like when you capture a lizard and it escapes and crawls onto the back of your arm, and thinks its safe cause it cant see your face ;)

your so big compared to him that it doesnt even realize its still on you ;)

It is not at this time believed that the shuttle can be landed without a human pilot for the simple reason that the autopilot is not good enough to land on a runway.

Well, that's just wrong.

This mission is actually the first where the shuttle can be landed remotely, as reported here. Basically a cable was built that allows the ground to actuate some functions that orginally the crew had to do switch throws for.

What is interesting about the cable is that (if I recall correctly) it only cost a couple hundred thousand to fabricate, which is all that was keeping the orbiter from being able to land unmanned. The orbiter autopilot is quite capable of landing automatically as long as the crew drops the landing gear, and has been since the first flight in 1981.

I've flown in the motion based simulators the crew uses for training (I work for NASA), and have witnessed the autopilot land the orbiter. In fact, even when the thing isn't engaged it's providing the cues on the HUD for the pilot to follow down to the runway. The orbiter is surprisingly easy to land because of all of this help.

For some reason, the capability of the orbiter to do this was little known. It's not that surprising, though. Aircraft have been able to land themselves for some time. The crew typically lands the orbiter because it reduces failure modes and they are better able to cope with malfunctions.

Come on media people, this isn't hard to figure out..

This is A Shield
This is A Point Defense System using a gun.
Skyguard (or THEL as the Israelis call it) is A Point Defense System using a High Energy Laser.

It may only be semantics, but that makes it no less irritating..

Perhaps no one is ever more tired of the "Thug Gangsta" lifestyle than the people who are sterotyped as such. By that, I mean minorities including blacks, hispanics, and asians.

These minorities as well most white people are starting to realized that the idea of the "Thug Gangsta" lifestyle is a mediocre fabrication by a bunch of marketing agents from some rich, predominately white, part of some major city along the coast.

Secondly, what is more sillier and ignorant looking than a buch of suburban white guys dressing up as poor black people and talking all sorts of slang? All the bullsh*t advertising and media that makes it look popular.

Sometimes whatever is popular is not as cool as people say it is.

As another poster said, not everything rotates in the same direction. The danger of orbital debris is pretty well known and is a problem that is hard to anticipate because a lot of the things up there are small and dark.

Cellular collapsing walls are all well and good, but what happens when you hit a wrench, or some other larger piece of debris? Here's some of those fancy scientifical things we all love so much:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050305_shuttl e_debris.html
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/archive s/D/archnas2398.html

I seem to recall from my childhood (3-2-1 Contact magazine? National Geographic?) a picture of an orbital vehicle windshield (viewport) with a pretty deep crater inflicted by a paint chip. Alas, google fails me for now.

About 2.5 hours from now, the module will phone home and we will get a better sense of how the module is doing. Here are some additional resources...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5173388.stm
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060712_genesi s-1_launch.html
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace

"No manned launch vehicle is more reliable than the shuttle. 114 out of 115 successful launches. 113 out of 114 successful re-entries."

The shuttle is extremely impressive, and nothing even compares in its combination of reliability, manned launch, and impressive cargo capacity, but to state that 'no manned launch vehicle is more reliable' is debatable: Soyuz, the craft that picked up the slack to ferry up the crews when the shuttle was grounded, has a pretty impressive track record itself.

100 manned flights, no astronaut died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_programme

And: "The only blemish on the record: A 1983 incident in which a fire at the pad forced the cosmonauts to fire their emergency escape rocket and blast free of the area before the Soyuz exploded"

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/soyuz_launch_ 021029.html

While I'm always up for an opportunity to bolster my sense of baseless, nationalistic superiority, NASA's had some strings of bad luck, too.

The Loss of Mars Observer. Oops.
Whatever Happened to the Mars Polar Lander? Double Oops.
NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss. Durh...

Space exploration -- even just putting stuff into orbit -- is a risky proposition at the best of times. Any agency pushing the envelope of what they've done before is bound to have some failures, but this is sometimes the price you pay for eventual success.

there are a few worthwhile things there
http://www.space.com/adastra/060209_adastra_mining .html

Just to clear this up, no, the Saturn V plans are on microfiche at Marshall Space Center, there are plenty of records elsewhere, and the Johnson Space Center's Saturn V display is all of what could have been launchable components. The main problem is finding companies to manufacture 1960's spec components, as well as launchpads, etc. having been converted for use with the Space Shuttle.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five _000313.html

Damn! I hope it never has to be used (of course); but that would be one hell of a thing to watch. The article also talks about a tile patching/repair system.

So if the engineer says no, and the safety officer says no then who is saying yes? Whose opinion could be more important than these two people?

In that vein, I wonder if they have prepared a speech for the president in case something goes horribly wrong. Apparently they had such a speech for the Apollo 11 mission, just in case.

I would imagine Karl Rove is careful enough not to make the president wing it if he has to address the nation after such an event. God help us if that happens.

From space.com

"In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does."

Note that he doesn't claim that changes in the Sun's energy output have caused most of the observed global warming, just that such changes could explain global warming.

BTW. To all you Yanks reading this - I think you guys made the greatest achievement of the human race, to date, happen. The reasons aren't important - you should be very proud.

It was not Americans. Even if they like to point out the exelence of Armstrong or Kennedy, the real innovation and work was done by German people. Let's see how space.com puts it in its articleRemembering Wernher von Braun's German Rocket Team:

Walter Jacobi, one of the few remaining German technicians whose genius helped put American astronauts on the moon, is frail now. At 84, he doesn't move as quickly as he used to.

But sitting recently in the lobby of a space museum, his eyes sparkled when asked about the legacy of the team of 119 scientists, led by Wernher von Braun, who arrived in this north Alabama city a half-century ago and turned its cotton fields into a landmark of space exploration, including the first moon landing in 1969.

``I don't know how to describe it, it's a tremendous achievement, you know?'' he said. ``We always knew we could do it.''

Their number now down to about a dozen, the German team's accomplishments are indisputable: Manned space flight, including lunar landings, the space shuttle and the international space station -- all the direct result of their work developing rockets in the United States following World War II.

But to some that legacy is marred by the group's initial work creating V-2 rockets for the German military with the help of thousands of concentration camp laborers under the Nazi boot.

CME prediction *may* also be useful to virology. The frequencies of CMEs vary with sunspot cycle (~11 year period). Moreover, solar radiation has biological impact as well and sunspot cycles (and thus, CMEs) have been strongly corelated with flu epidemics and pandemics: 1918 Spanish Flu, 1957-58 Asian Flu, etc.

The idea is as straightforward as radiation inducing viral mutation. We are currently at the low point in the cycle. The current, highly pathogenic H5N1 (a subtype/mutation of the Influenza A virus) and SARS both coincided with most recent peak in sunspot activity (mid 1998-2003).

If we are on the brink of a pandemic as several virologists suggest, there is a good likelihood that predicting CMEs could help in anticipating viral mutation vectors. A stockpile of engineered viral subtypes and mutations could thus be used to engineer vaccines preventatively. Every little bit helps, right?

So CME prediction may be useful if you assume that interfering with pandemics is a Good Thing. It might not be... who am I to judge? All the same, I'm looking to survive the next pandemic. I'd rather not die from drowning in my own fluids or other some such fun.

Then again, if the flu Came From Outer Space! then I suppose the usefulness of CME prediction remains with telecoms and power companies.

Here is another link that may be worthy of checking:

Space.com article.

And the original statement from Space Telescope Science Institute (this was edited out by the editor...not that I mind being edited, btw):

STScI Anomaly Report

the 10560x10560 format will probably get professional digital camera users drooling.

The space shuttles have flown a combined total of 420 million miles (see here: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/sts9 2_longhaul_sidebar2.html, and I'm adding in a rough guesstimate of flights up until the most recent fatal disaster) and have suffered a total of 14 fatalities, for one fatality every 30 million miles. In 1994 alone, US cars travelled a combined total of 1.793 billion miles (somebody actually tracks this: your tax dollars at work http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/rtecs/chapter3.html ). If cars were as "safe" as the shuttle were, you would assume about 60 traffic accidents would happen per year.

However, this is really stacking the deck in the shuttle's favor. If you want to be technical about it, my bicycle hurtled hundreds of thousands of miles through space on my morning commute this morning... relative to the position of the sun. Granted, relative to the position of my house the displacement was only about two miles. Almost all of the mileage wracked up by the shuttle was it coasting around orbiting, when the only thing it had to accomplish was "don't spontaneously explode or have every life support system fail at once". If you want to compare times when the shuttle was actually under directed movement (and a realistic likelihood of danger), which would be essentially limited to lift-off and flying back to earth with some very minor positional adjustments once you're in orbit, the shuttle is many millions of times more dangerous than a car. Some back of the envelope math: the trip to orbit is about 200 miles, the trip down the same, and we'll be VERY generous and say the shuttle travels another 100 miles once its up there in positioning changes and whatnot. Thats a total of 500 miles per trip. There have also been 114 shuttle missions over the course of the space program. Thats one death per 4,000 miles. If cars were that much of a deathtrap we'd expect about 450,000 traffic fatalities in 1994. There were about 43,000 last year.

Bonus points: if you charge the deaths to alcohol instead of cars (hey, the cars would have been perfectly safe if the guy hadn't been driving drunk -- thats like charging a passenger airplane for fatalities if it gets hit with a missile), roughly half of the car fatalities vanish. Presumably the shuttle program does not have an alcohol problem.

• Challenger - Blown up
• Columbia - Blown up
• Enterprise - Stripped for parts and now a museum piece
• Endeavour - Still undergoing testing to possibly be ready for flight late this year
• Discovery - That's the one they're leaving in

From space.com:

Two senior NASA managers - chief engineer Chris Scolese and Bryan O'Conner, the associate administrator of Safety and Mission Assurance - did have concerns over the potential risk of foam debris posed by a number of insulated ice frost ramps along Discovery's external tank, NASA officials said.

About 34 foam-covered ice frost ramps line the shuttle fuel tank, insulating brackets that connect a cable tray and pressurization line.

"From their particular discipline, they felt they wanted their statement to be No-Go," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations said. "But they do not object to us flying and they understand the reasons and the rationale that we laid out in the review for flight."

Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.

Translation: "The wheels are starting to fall off the 'global warming' bandwagon, so I'm going to switch positions and claim that ANY CLIMATE CHANGE WHATSOEVER is evidence for human-created 'global warming'."

Just pathetic.

Hint: there used to be a mile-thick layer of ice right where I'm sitting. What happened? Did the Neanderthals start driving SUVs? How do you explain similar "global warming" that's occuring on Mars, Jupiter and even Pluto? Some top-secret "neocon plot"?

Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.

Translation: "The wheels are starting to fall off the 'global warming' bandwagon, so I'm going to switch positions and claim that ANY CLIMATE CHANGE WHATSOEVER is evidence for human-created 'global warming'."

Just pathetic.

Hint: there used to be a mile-thick layer of ice right where I'm sitting. What happened? Did the Neanderthals start driving SUVs? How do you explain similar "global warming" that's occuring on Mars, Jupiter and even Pluto? Some top-secret "neocon plot"?

Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.

Translation: "The wheels are starting to fall off the 'global warming' bandwagon, so I'm going to switch positions and claim that ANY CLIMATE CHANGE WHATSOEVER is evidence for human-created 'global warming'."

Just pathetic.

Hint: there used to be a mile-thick layer of ice right where I'm sitting. What happened? Did the Neanderthals start driving SUVs? How do you explain similar "global warming" that's occuring on Mars, Jupiter and even Pluto? Some top-secret "neocon plot"?

I would also point out that it appears that a similar bout of global warming is taking place on Mars. Here's just one article on the topic, hopefully from a fairly neutral source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html

Last I checked there weren't any humans zipping about the Martian countryside in SUVs. If both Mars and Earth are undergoing global warming, it stands to reason that the root cause is *not* human-derived but most likely from a single common factor. One such proposed common cause is what appears to be an increase in the energy output of our sun (it's called a 'variable' star for a reason).

This doesn't preclude an acceleration of the process here on Earth due to human efforts, of course. But if people can't even get the cause right, whose to say they can possibly propose a likely, viable solution - if one even exists? It may very well be that our only option is to simply adapt, as we have always done.

Max

> You can send them to school, but you can't make them pay attention.

I could say much the same about your post. I'm not blustering (I might have been sugar-crashing, though?), mine are economic arguments not emotional and it's a Slashdot post: I'm not going to analyze the entire situation in a sub-subthread. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, part of it can be viewed in this discussion:

http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=bu sinesstech&Number=503952&page=2&view=collapsed&sb= 5&o=0&fpart=

The materials are already there, on Mars and the asteroids. Water is one of the more abundant materials in the Solar System, after silicate. Plants and animals breed, increasing their poputlations. You only need to start with a few "seeds", biologically. Manufacturing and industry will come from developments in the new places. We will grow new habitats and live off local resources. I'm not talking about terraforming but building millions of custom-purpose cities across the system, each based around small brine seas and intense biologics.

I have no personal interest in other star systems, the physics to get there are daunting. My goal is to help gain our foothold, commercially. Sol has enough material available to support trillions of people and other animals. Space really does offer an unlimited future - we can turn Earth into a living jewel by moving industry upstairs. Beamed power, manufacturing and refining, even grain production can take advantage of space, and it's not GPS that I'm talking about. Don't talk about superstitions unless you understand my view.

Josh

a bunch of atheists. having said that, I completely disagree with the stance of today's fundamentalists on this kind of thing...and I'm both a scientist AND a fierce believer in God myself (Perish the thought! Heresy!) But science and religion don't _have_ to clash. They just do because either side is made of human beings with pride and pigheadedness too much to see that the other side might actually have some truth going on. Combine the two and you'll come closer to truth than you would otherwise.

Cases in point:
Science is always looking for the outer limits of the universe...a point in time of its evolution where everything looks new through Hubble. But they just keep finding out that galaxies that are supposed to be new are in fact quite old. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/age_universe _030103.html

What the heck is dark energy? Not that I don't believe in it because the data really is compelling. Have you seen the descriptions in the press? "Scientists know dark matter exists, but they've never seen it...only claiming to have seen its effects on other objects." How is that any different than the statement "Religionists know that God exists, but they've never seen him...only claiming to have seen God's effects on other people." Sounds like God to me, at least so far.

On the other hand, religions don't help themselves when they misappropriate time vs. events. We know the dinosaurs lived, and millions of years ago to boot. Why do they insist that God made the earth in six literal 24 hour days? The original Hebrew of the Old Testament doesn't even come close to supporting such a notion. It really translates more like "six creative periods". Who knows how many billions of years (if time is even something God concerns Himself with at all...seems more of an obsession of mankind) these creative periods were divided into?

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/2/11/11
http://www.state.nd.us/ndgs/Newsletter/NL01W/PDF/c limateW01.pdf/
http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscien ce/global_warming_001110_wg.html

Ah yes, the hard headed realist who advocates a magical space elevator.

Which does very little good for me as I'm right now down here and not up there. Bringing down such things is not easy (can't build your reentry vehicles in space for quite a while) and simply dropping them down would incur even more costs. You can't easily process it in space either. In addition you'd need to overcome the political and technological hurdles of getting a rock that close to earth. Keep in mind that bringing things up would cost around $100 to $200/lb not counting the cost of your investment

I feel like I am talking to myself here. The cost of bringing things up would be much lower with a tower launch, thats the entire point. The whole. Entire. Point. Bringing them down would be the easiest part. Since you don't have to haul up massive engines and drop them again, you can be more flexible in your re-entry vehicle design. Gravity, meet glider. Or even a big balloon.

Quite a few, all of them far away and we don't know that much about them.

Now I know you're trolling. Educate yourself, young man. FTFA:
Another example of wealth can be found on an asteroid called Amun, the smallest metallic asteroid of several dozen known. According to Lewis, Amun contains roughly 30 times as much metal as the entire amount of metals mined and processed over the history of humanity... University of Arizonas Lewis adds that many of these asteroids are relatively inexpensive to reach because they have orbits that are remarkably accessible from Earth.

That would make that one asteroid worth several times the GDP of the US. Seeing any ROI yet?

Not near future and possible on earth as well. You'd need to bring all those materials close which is not feasible in the near future. Then you'd need to again bring the processed goods back down.

No, you wouldn't need to bring it close. You could just saw it up where it is, even process it on the spot and float ingots gently back to earth orbit. Where will you get power for all this? There's a large star right nearby there... As for not near future possible, its already being done.. Anything else you'd like to share with us?

Personally I wouldn't want a new brain and barring that I'll be dead anyway... This could also be more easily done on Earth.

Bleh. Who cares if it doesn't suit you. And I can see many advantages to keeping it in orbit, not least of which is fast deployment in medical emergencies.

Trillions in costs probably, you'd need to figure out new mining methods and manufacturing methods or build complex structures to use earth based ones. Not to mention the general costs of designing things for space.

More figures pulled out of your ass. The only thing stopping us getting into space and taking advantage of it is the cost to orbit. Thats it, nothing else.

Yeah, how about a few which aren't so far in the future as to be worthless due to unpredictability of scientific advance. Someone has been reading way too much sci-fi. In essence your idea is not profitable for at least the next 40 years, so you have no ROI right now.

Blah. If you want an ROI right now, go deal some heroin. This whole operation could be up and running in fifteen years, with a little elbow grease. In more serious business, long term investments with massive potential returns regularily draw companies to the trough. In fact any company without a fifteen year plan shouldn't be in business in the first place.

The question then becomes where do you get the raw materials from and where do they stuff the garbage. Unless they send all their garbage back up into space (See previous numbers for how many flights you'd need per year) Earth would become one giant garbage dump very quickly.

Remember that extremely low cost to orbit I was talking about? Good man.

There might be methods whereby you wouldn't need to carry the fuel with you, for example with a space elevator. However, just what advantages would a space elevator offer over a tower launch? (I've used parts of this post before, but I have since refined my ideas). I contacted a man responsible for a similar idea a while back, the skyramp (warning: hideous javascript menu may break firefox), Carlton Meyer, and had a dialogue in which he pointed me to a tower launch archive.

The ideas I see bandied about there are similar to what I had in mind, which would be essentially an 11km tall tower (think pylons rather than skyscrapers, based at sea), with evacuated airless launch tubes, using nuclear reactors to power a maglev or pulley system to accelerate vessels to escape velocity. These would then emerge above the end of the troposphere, with it's associated weather and air pressure, and have little to no fuel needed to match the earth's gravity, meaning you could do a lot more while you were up there. At a reasonable acceleration (5 to 7 g's) you would be in geostationary orbit. From there you could build a fully system wide ship or ships, as its much easier to escape the planet's gravity from GEO than from the surface.

Not only would this enable multiple launches daily, it is, unlike the space elevator, readily achievable with today's technology, and financially viable as well. Given NASA had an annual budget of $16.2 billion for 2005, and a nuclear power plant costs a cool billion to build, give or take, we could have this up and running in a few years.

to be honest, any scientist who disagrees, no matter how respectably, is at risk of losing his or her job.

No one ever links our warmig to this.

Seems to me that this is a case where people may be overlooking a very important non-human cause to global warming. Of course, that doesn't win you any funding now does it?

I'm as green as you get. I believe we need to reduce emmissions as sharply as we can, but I believe in real reasons like the health of humans and wildlife.

Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be effected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun (it's been getting hotter) and I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this? Besides, how can you explain the recent same climate changes on Jupitor and Mars. I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.

...examination of raw test data and performance of independent tests of some flight components by the government insight team were defined by NASA project management to be "out-of-scope."
...
In DART's case, the lack of adequate risk management contributed to a zero- fault tolerant design and inadequate testing that resulted in an insufficient collision avoidance system, among other things....

...examination of raw test data and performance of independent tests of some flight components by the government insight team were defined by NASA project management to be "out-of-scope."
...
In DART's case, the lack of adequate risk management contributed to a zero- fault tolerant design and inadequate testing that resulted in an insufficient collision avoidance system, among other things....