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Shuttle Launches Form Arctic Clouds
core plexus writes "The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that in late May, researchers reported finding that the shuttle's exhaust, 97 percent of which is water vapor, quickly migrates to the highest reaches of the atmosphere above the Arctic.
There the vapor spreads out about 50 miles high in Earth's mesosphere, just below the thermosphere, the air's highest layer, and settles to form a wispy type of cloud called noctilucent clouds.
The shuttle trails a giant plume of exhaust while rising through the atmosphere, Mike Stevens, the study's lead author, said earlier this summer on Arctic Science Journeys Radio at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"You can think of it as essentially a long garden hose that is on the order of (621 miles) long," Stevens said."
This is yet another example emphasizing the fact that every human motive, thought, and action is thereby reflected in our environment. While many 'environmentalists' will spew forth their rightful sentiments that such action-reaction describes the final, tragic fate of humanity, I have another view: While it can't go without saying that all our technology effects our environment, similarly it should be evident that what we do (as rightful animals of Earth) might very well be incorporated in a new Earthly paradigm of that which is "natural."
That ought'a help counteract all the global warming associated with it.
That's sarcasm, folks.
Maybe I should have read the article or something, but what'd they mean by "Shuttle Launches Form Arctic Clouds"? I envisioned Bespin or something. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
So does anyone know why the shuttle launches do this but not the Russian or ESA rockets?
Anyone read it as "Shuttle Launches From Artic Clouds?
Totally confused when the new Artic Cloud Energy or A.C.E. technology was no where to be found in the article!
Ultimately I think this should win the award for "Most unanticipated research" category....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Note the photographer of the last link. Some more of his pictures can be seen at www.polarimage.fi They are really cool.
Almost every Russian rocket launch from a base near the Finnish border is seen also as really beutiful clouds, similar to nocitlucents at least in appearance. The rockets are a lot smaller.
Some of my older relatives have seen noctilucents also in the 1930:s, so they are not always related to the shuttle or rockets.
One downside is that noctilucents appear in conditions favourable to ozone depletion.
Pretty... but is it pretty like a shark?
Mind you, water vapour is not the worst exhaust fume around.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
maybe they should be launching the shuttle from the desert
form v. (deprecated) similarity with a more common word causes a continuous flow of "anyone read it as" when used. Use the verb "create" instead.
But it shouldn't have been such a surprise; oxygen is ubiquitous (essential) in human experience, yet there are a lot of processes in nature which require a hypoxic or anoxic environment. Add oxygen, and they are greatly disturbed.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Wow, that "noctilucent clouds" page has a link to Webcrawler. I haven't been there since, like, 1996!
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
That site also has some nice MPEGs of said clouds, as well as other cosmic stuff like aurora and the Moon. Worth a look, and with only 21 comments so far, this /. article is probably not going to make the front page, so I think he's safe from a Slashdotting ;)
Co-operation beats competition
But if somebody is concerned about the emissions from a few Space Shuttle launches, imagine what cities full of hydrogen-powered cars would do.
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LN2 is cool!
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying