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NASA Gets Its Marching Orders: Look Up! Look Out!
TheRealHocusLocus writes: HR 2039: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act for 2016 and 2017 (press release, full text, and as a pretty RGB bitmap) is in the House. In $18B of goodies we see things that actually resemble a space program. The ~20,000 word document is even a good read, especially the parts about decadal cadence. There is more focus on launch systems and manned exploration, also to "expand the Administration's Near-Earth Object Program to include the detection, tracking, cataloguing, and characterization of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects less than 140 meters in diameter." I find it awesome that the fate of the dinosaurs is explicitly mentioned in this bill. If it passes we will have a law with dinosaurs in it. Someone read the T-shirt. There is also a very specific six month review of NASA's "Earth science global datasets for the purpose of identifying those datasets that are useful for understanding regional changes and variability, and for informing applied science research." Could this be an emerging Earth Sciences turf war between NOAA and NASA? Lately it seems more of a National Atmospheric Space Administration. Mission creep, much?
on Capitol Hill.
Seriously. The real story with this bill is that the republicans are defunding the climate monitoring programs. It will take decades to regain the capabilities we'll lose by defunding them now. There's no turf war between NASA and NOAA, just one between republicans and science.
Nice job trying to write a summary for geeks that attempts to bury the real story.
There's no question what this is really about. When you don't like the results kill the studies.
There's a bloody dinosaur above you! And he's a perv!
"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race." -Albert Einstein
We have tolerated this insolence long enough.
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more focus on launch systems and manned exploration
Perhaps a joke for the 'robotic exploration' crew out there. A man walks into a bar. Tells the bartender "Well, it's over for MESSENGER but we're getting a lot of New Horizons data soon!" Bartender: (blank stare).
Look up some old footage of public interest in NASA during the Apollo program. NASA needs to have heroes, and they need to have something that is seen as a major accomplishment. And they need it soon. Luckily the Chinese are the new Russians.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
but SOMEONE must be studying climate intensely, be it NASA or NOAA, it's all the same to me. But trying to gut the program smells distinctly of defensive profiteers with their hands far too deep into the people's government
Hopefully this is a sign the space race is back on. Far more to do out there, then to squabble back here with, who can destroy the world the most number of times with their military, a real dead end and I mean dead end. Something is needed to drive humanity, to focus it's efforts and who is the greediest and most selfish or who can kill the most, are insanely, stupendously pointless and self destructive of society.
Making use of the resources of the solar system, is not about bringing stuff back to earth, it is about humanity expanding it's horizons further out. The difference between dwelling upon your genitals (hollywood et al) or dwelling upon your mind (NASA et al).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
From the very moment of its inception, NASA has been directed to study the atmosphere:
http://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html
"The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;"
But then, there wasn't much interest in Astronauts driving around the moon, because it interrupted soap operas and game shows on TV.
Shuttle stopped making the news a long time ago except when it was threatened with shutdown, hubble was threatened with shutdown, or one crashed. People have been in LEO fairly regularly for a long time now.
So? Isn't it about time that NASA grew up, and looked further into space? We already have NOAA. Every nation on earth has weather and climate scientists. WTF do we need NASA to study the weather? We need NASA to build big honking SPACESHIPS to move mankind into the solar system. Screw the weather, in 150 years, half of mankind won't give a small damn about weather on earth.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The "review" of NASA's programs focused on studying Earth seems more like an attempt by climate-science deniers to stifle research that doesn't confirm what they want to hear, than anything to do with a supposed "turf battle with NOAA".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"expand the Administration's Near-Earth Object Program to include the detection, tracking, cataloguing, and characterization of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects less than 140 meters in diameter."
Toe in the water for weaponization of space?
Other than that I look forward to interesting projects.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Since ther days of Apollo NASA's principle task has been the exploration of space and the development of means to travel to space. After Apollo, it's capabilities have been degrading more and more till now the US has to pay Russia to put our stuff on their "trampolines".
TIme to take away their climate toys until they get their primary mission right.
If you could stop trying to make headlines cute, that would be great.
That mission is exploratory, not studious. NASA's job is to explore the atmosphere (pretty much done) and space (barely even scratched the surface). NOAA's job is to study the ocean and atmosphere. So NASA goes and finds it, then hands it off to NOAA for detailed study. NASA is inherently concerned with "getting there", while NOAA is concerned with "what's there". If NOAA wants a better look or needs new instruments installed in an otherwise unreachable or hostile environment (space), then NASA is their go-to agency to get that job done.
NOAA's on their own for deep sea research, though. And that's stupid. Have the NASA physics geniuses build better vehicles for every environment, let NOAA's geological geniuses do the boring data mining and science from the tools the vehicles deliver. (And, yes, the "real" science part is boring compared to the part that consists of blowing things up in a controlled manner in order to eject a large amount of mass out of the Earth's gravity well. Whee!)
Any story posted by timothy is not worth reading. I clicked on this one by mistake.
[...] less than 140 meters in diameter.
Metric units? In a US government paper about NASA? One would almost get hopeful.
We have a federal agency to study dirt and rocks - the United States Geological Survey (USGS). They claim to be "a science organization that provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and usable information."
We have a federal agency to study the atmosphere and the oceans - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They claim their mission is "Science, Service, and Stewardship. To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts, To share that knowledge and information with others, and To conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources. "
BOTH claim to study the Earth and its climate. NEITHER claims to advance aviation of spaceflight or exploration beyond the Earth
We HAD an agency to study and advance aviation - the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) whose mission was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions." After Russia launched Sputnik, the US government went into panic mode and in 1958 transformed the agency into a new organization which we now have called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The 1958 law that created NASA gave it the following duties: (which I will quote directly)
"(1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;"
"(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;"
"(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies and living organisms through space;"
"(4) The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes."
"(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere."
"(6) The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defenses of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;"
"(7) Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results, thereof; and"
"(8) The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment."
NASA's study of the Earth and its atmosphere was ONLY for the purpose of advancing flight in, out of, and back into, the atmosphere. In the 1970s as the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations were messing NASA up and trying to appeal to voters they tainted NASA with eco-related tasks that actually belong at NOAA and USGS (and other agencies) and over time various entrenched interests (like the earth-sciences employees at Goddard who SHOULD apply for jobs at NOAA) have made the problem worse. NASA spent more money studying climate change in 2014 than it spent launching men into space (NASA
It's about small-government people wanting agencies to get back to the core stuff they were created to do (aeronautical research, space flight, and space exploration for NASA)
You can start whining that the GOP hates the result of climate studies when they zero-out the budgets of NOAA, the NSF, the EPA, and eliminates all those dollars being spent annually on climate studies in other government agencies and universites. Telling NASA that it has become so confused about its core mission that it is no longer effective and telling it to re-focus on its core mission is the responsible thing for the adults in the room to do; it's LONG overdue.
NASA today is so messed-up it could not even put a monkey into space for a single orbit of the Earth (something it originally managed to do 50 years ago). If the agency cannot do even the basics, it has no business diversifying into all sorts of other junk that overlaps what half a dozen other agencies are tasked with also doing.
Every nation on earth has weather and climate scientists. WTF do we need NASA to study the weather?
First of all, weather is not climate.
Second, those scientists in other nations depend on the data collected by NASA, since no one else can do it as well.
Third, the idiot currently heading the committee that plans to eviscerate the NASA earth sciences program to the tune of $300 million per year sees no problem blowing hundreds of times as much money on Cold War fighter jets. One might ask,why do we need to spend $1.5 trillion dollars on F35 strike fighters that can't turn, can't climb, run hackable software, and explode when struck by lightning or running on warm fuel?
This is not about the money at all. They just don't want anyone looking into this, period.
NASA was derived from NACA and its study of the atmosphere was to learn how to fly through it, NOT to figure out how to regulate coal companies, limit the emissions of cars, make sure the sea levels do not rise, etc. READ THE WHOLE ACT AND THE MISSION STATEMENT OF NACA.
You will note that the statement says "phenomena in the atmosphere and space" but says NOTHING about climate, pollution, icebergs, glaciers, dinosaurs, forests, river deltas, human activities, etc. The mention of the atmosphere is in the same sentence and context as "space" and includes no mention of ANY historical study of either, human impact on either, projections for the future conditions of either, or role in formulation of policy choices related to the stewardship of either (only the job of understanding the system that exists - what aerodynamics people call "the standard atmosphere")
For the first dozen years of its existence, NOBODY at NASA thought its job included climate studies. All the eco-stuff surfaced during Skylab as a political thing to engage the public in a post-moon-landing down-scaled NASA attempting to be relevant at a time when TV was airing ads with a crying indian, the book "Silent Spring" was a top seller, Bruce Dern was doing SciFi about a future with no trees left on Earth (Silent Running), and President Obama's current science advisor (Mr. Holdren) was hanging around with Paul Ehrlich scaring the public about a gloom-and-doom future and working losing a famous bet over all the scarcities he claimed were imminent. Yup, the guy helping Obama trash NASA these days was actually one of the very people who, in the 1970s, claimed that humans were going to cause a new ice age with all their emissions into the atmosphere.... something the AGW crowd now claim was just a crackpot thing that most in the sciences never pushed (READ his 1971 book "Global Ecology" and you will see that these current global warming guys were indeed the same people pushing the imminent ice age idea and it's a LIE to say it was just one magazine cover related to one obscure guy's theory.)
It's pretty clear that Republicans are seeking to get people into space so they can expand their voter base.
And you my friend --- you would look especially good in space.
Some day the boorish branding of people by (say) registered political party will be perceived negatively yet casually, as with a dismissive shake of the head. Kids are doing this today. Learn more about 'Space Madness', then sit thee dunne to watch BBC: Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets Part 1 and Part 2 Try to sort out the Republicans from the People.
There are folks who just don't understand why humans need to go into space.
We'll get there anyway.
Deal with everything that arises.
Shield to the cleverest extent possible (water, foils, magnetic fields)
Monitor cumulative dose as accurately as possible.
Get as much meaningful and fulfilling work done as you can.
Cherish and protect the planet. This means becoming Gaia's asteroid defense.
If one can be said to have a purpose, that is a fine purpose to have.
Do it for the kittens.
Then settle down to a well-deserved rest with clear conscience.
If you will die before your time, strive to die well.
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If you could stop trying to make headlines cute, that would be great.
The headline was part inspired by "It Can Happen" [Yes], a fine anthem for space exploration.
Look up - Look down
Look out - Look around
Look up - Look down
There's a crazy world outside
We're not about to lose our pride
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Republicans have been the primary Congressional force running interference for the old space industry, either by throwing money at the likes of ATK to build rockets that will never fly, or actively blocking SpaceX from competing with the established players on contracts.
While the big government contracting model can get crews into space, it does so at such an exorbitant price it's simply not worth it. SpaceX, or more precisely the discarding of legacy design and especially legacy contracting models that SpaceX represents, at least gives us a chance of a sustainable space program because it is far, far better value for money. It's also far more in alignment with professed Republican principles, as distinct from revealed preferences from observed behaviour.
A revived crewed space program under the old model will result in bugger-all flying, lots of money wasted, and will get cancelled soon enough. Why bother?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We need NASA to build big honking SPACESHIPS to move mankind into the solar system
Maybe, if we weren't wasting the earth, we could stay here.
space (barely even scratched the surface).
It's a vacuum. It's cold. There's nasty radiation. We're pretty much done.
I wonder if the the opportunity rover project will get an extra extension now, or that this very succesfull rover will be left alone, while still being functional.
So usually the complaint around here is too much politics not enough news for nerds..... so now when they strip the politics from the article and focus on the nerdy news..complaints!! Let noaa handle terrestrial and let NASA worry about space. if noaa needs nasa for something I'm sute they will launch satellites for them.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So let's just ignore the fact that the Earth is just one of the many things that are in space, and that it s the easiest thing in space we can get to. We're already here. It just doesn't count.
Also ignore that the Earth is the planet that we know the most about. So if we want to study other planets, we shouldn't study the Earth from space. There is no way that the things that we learn from Earth observation could be a baseline so that we know how to examine other thing that are in space, like say Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and it's moons, Saturn and it's moons and rings, and the same for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (planet or not).
I hope this gives the Republicans amongst you a slight clue how stupid you sound. And how much you've substituted ideology for rational thought. But I warn you, don't let your vision of the US flag over every rock and planet in the solar system go to your head. It's only a mater of time until the christian fanatic wing of the party decides that the Earth is flat, the space program is a front for the devil, and the money needs to be spent on proving that the Earth is 6000 years old.
Why is Snark Required?
What the hell is decadal cadence? Googling does not help.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
next you'll be claiming that this planet can only support a human population of between fifty and ninety million.
I mean that the only future of the human species is here on earth, where we have the best environment for survival. The chances of survival anywhere else is in the solar system is much worse than the most inhospitable place on earth, and beyond the solar system is just empty space as far as we can reach. Therefore, it would be smarter to allocate some of NASAs budget to study the earth, especially where they can use their expertise to do so from earth orbit. Studying space is interesting, but only from a scientific curiosity point of view, not as a first step to future colonization.
None of this is relevant to the amount of people that the earth can sustain. And to be honest, I have no idea. I certainly don't have any goals.
If we are not going to eventually send people into space to colonize other worlds, then there is no point in sending them to explore - and ALSO then no point in sending robots to precede them, and then also no reason to build telescopes and other probes to see what's out there to explore
Sending robots is fun. I'm curious if there's ever been life on Mars, for instance, and robots are the perfect tool to find that out. Building telescopes is also fun, because we learn interesting stuff, and some of it has relevance for the nature of matter and energy, and could lead to useful discoveries here on earth.
Colonization is best left to SF writers. It's completely unrealistic. If you care about humanity, our efforts are best spent here on earth.
We can cut all government climate science funds and leave it to commercial entities .... right???
Of course not. We can leave launching things into orbit to SpaceX because there's a lot of money to be made doing that. There's no money in climate science, so that should be a government job.
Why increase NASA's budget and use that money for climate research???? That's NOT their job!
It's their job right now. It's not interfering with anything else they do. Moving it from one government agency to another one doesn't save any money. Most likely, it would just mess things up. So why bother ?
So in summary, not a paid shill, but a dyed in the wool "climate skeptic". It got cold this winter, so much for global warming huh!
One liner portrayal of me FAIL. Since we are using an ancient threaded discussion board scarcely evolved from USENET and there is no keyword based contextual linking it takes a diligent effort to find out where someone stands on something, and why. Sometimes it is worth the effort. You have to do a lot of reading. You'd have to follow back in time to discover that I do have a position on the subject that is not as simple as you describe. Usually I just don't mention it.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
~Robert Benchley
And since your "position on the subject" is the delusional:
Temperature has not risen.
you are a dyed in the wool "climate skeptic"
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Maybe YOU can. I don't want MY descendants waiting around for the next huge ass rock to collide with the rock we are living on. I really want my descendants (notice that you can find DNA in the word?) spread over a few dozens of rocks. Maybe even some in another solar system.
I don't much care if your descendants put their heads under rocks, and stay here. That's their business.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So, the relatively less bright elder brother can continue dabbling in old science, while the brighter, younger sister forges ahead into new territory.
No matter how you cut it, we don't need NASA putzing around in the atmosphere, there is another agency already dedicated to that.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Oh, you're an astronaut ?
That might be true if this was some sort of dispassionate commentary on the bill. But it's not, it's a ringing endorsement of a highly partisan bill. Surely you see the difference.
For those who are serious, here's the Planetary Society's commentary, with a link to an indepth but nonpartisan analysis at SpacePolicyOnline. The Planetary Society is very happy with the planetary science numbers, not happy with the earth science numbers, and couldn't seem to care less about the funding for SLS/Orion.
Sigur RÃs: I didn't know that Heaven had a rock band.
I have better things to do than worry about what happens to certain DNA sequences million years in the future that are as closely related to me, as I am to a chimp in a lab. There are plenty of things to worry about that threaten me and my kids and grandkids in the next couple of decades. If we don't survive those, I won't even have any descendants left to worry about.
Colonisation is unrealistic today. The technology is decades away from practicality at least, and the expense of establishing a long-term colony is such that it may well be the single most expensive project in all of human history. Yet the prospects are so exciting - how long as it been since there was a true age of exploration? We can't plan colonisation today, but we can lay the first stones of the foundation that a future generation can build upon.
Space is actually very, very hot - the very few atoms you find floating around have a great deal of kinetic energy. If you could create a perfectly non-radiating/reflective material and leave it in space, it would eventually get hot. This doesn't happen because the density is so low: The heat transfered to an object by conduction is a negligable fraction of that lost to radiation. Also, anything with water in will freeze in seconds due to evaporative cooling: At near-vacuum, just about everything is above the boiling point.
the first stones of the foundation that a future generation can build upon.
The first stones need to be made here on the ground, because before we can even start to think about colonization, we need better propulsion and other tech. Sending a few people to Mars with current tech is like cavemen trying to get to the moon by finding bigger and bigger trees to climb, and thinking they're making progress.
The claims of temperature increasing to "highest levels on record" are not accurate. They only count records from 1976. Before that, their graphs show a flat line.
The records from before 1976 are all lower, so 2014 is still the highest on record.
mainstream view that temperature records describe a fucking hockey stick.
The fucking hockey stick is supported by the fucking data. Where's your data ?
that annoying white blob called the Sun which itself exhibits wild temperature variations of upwards of +/-1500C at the photosphere?
We can measure the total solar radiation. It's only fluctuating by tiny amounts, and since the '80s, it has actually gone down a little bit.
Sending a few people to Mars with current tech is like cavemen trying to get to the moon by finding bigger and bigger trees to climb, and thinking they're making progress.
The first ancestor to actually hold a flaming branch in hand after a lightning strike, after all the others had sensibly run away... was a total loon doing something terrifying and incomprehensible. Once it became clear that one end was on fire and the other was not, it was easy to gather the courage to pick it up and examine the fire closely. Carrying it and touching flame to dried leaves, fire-daughters are born and take on a life of their own. This is amazing stuff. Blowing on orange embers, the flame is reborn. Keep a glowing ember in a pouch with you always, and devoting your own life to ensuring that it does not go out... you become the one who carries fire, the first scientific shaman. There is a direct lineage of awe and wonder from that proto-human to that Zippo in your pocket.
The space corollary to your finding bigger trees to climb metaphor -- we can do this! -- is an tether/elevator dangling from geosynchronous orbit. Such a thing *is* achievable in our lifetime, but while fire was a great idea, not all ideas are good ideas. You have to apply technology in ways that do not create single points of failure that malicious persons can exploit with a few explosives or the push of a single button..
Solar power is a good idea. Orbital solar power is a bad idea: the entity that owns it controls the world, those who destroy it bring civilization down. Energy -- the modern ability to make fire -- should be autonomously generated in many places, in many ways. If you want it down you must campaign, invade and fight on countless fronts.
Unfortunately, most of our modern information technology infrastructure has been designed by engineers with casual disregard for autonomous operation, who even glorify single points of failure. Without a network connection to that distant city that is a prime nuclear target, that cell phone tower in your backyard is too stupid to connect local calls. On the edge of town is an empty building that used to house a telephone switch that could connect local wired phones indefinitely.
An orbital tether would be good for making space accessible, transporting loads and people. But Kim Stanley Robinson in Red Mars has shown us that a sabotaged, fallen tether could be an equatorial whiplash of terrifying proportions. And once all other transport vehicles are rendered 'obsolete' and head for the scrapyard (economics=no one's fault), this single point of failure becomes an absurd tragedy.
Even manned space exploration described in this Bill, which makes me jubilant, has a nagging anxiety with it. I fear that IF we spend too many resources for mere exploration (and even colonization) and do not place an urgent enough priority on impactor NEO/comet detection with several tested techniques for interception and vector adjustment, with a triple backup of hardware in orbit and in the asteroid belt ready to deploy quickly, our pioneers in space may one day become witnesses to our (and their own) funeral.
We are the choices we make.
Effective planetary defense means the weaponization of space, as soon as possible.
There is no such thing as a single-use technology.
We just need to deal with it. The threat of Mutual Assured Destruction is a great equalizer.
Failure to move in this direction is an evolutionary dead end.
Any ancestor who failed to wield a club fell to those who did.
Everyone now has a club. In civilized society this is also known as a "talking stick".
Welcome to the club.
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The projected defense budget for FY16 is $585 Billion, so NASA's budget of $8 Billion would be enough to keep the defense department running for 5 whole days. Just saying...
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
before you do that, try googling their actual charter and mission statement.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
8/10 trolling, I'd say. The strawman is a bit of a long shot, but it connects well with the Godwin line, and so it is likely to give you passionate replies.
entropy happens
I've read the remarks about the current climate change argument, but personally I think that needs to be under NOAA or other climate related institution. NASA needs to get back to what it was designed to do: Push the boundries of Space Exploration.
Any of the climate related satellites have a huge selection of launch capabilities, and do not need the umbrella of NASA to launch.
Sure. Until the next bill tells NOAA not to send satellites up, because they don't have "Space" in their name. Anything involving both "Space" and "Atmosphere" are to be done by private enterprise to save tax money.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
One of the best way to monitor weather at a large scale (and this data is useful for climate science) is to do it using satellites. And satellite are usually in... space.
No, it's also a thing for two sides to be outraged about and have a flame war. Thus, it's money in the bank for Dice Holdings. You really should recognize what's important in this world. Short term bottom line and minimizing any legal liability. Occasional intelligent conversation is just a way to lure in the sucker... I mean users.
I have utmost sympathy and respect for Dice Holdings, host of this forum.
Some goofball nobody in Silicon Valley can cut cheese on a smartphone and hold out a smelly app for everyone to sniff, say cutesy things in a press release, and you guys (and gal) eat it up. Or the other end of the spectrum, when tech luminaries go on about planet-sized lithium batteries that will save the planet, even the Musk can be pungent around here.
But let some poor someone even vaguely associated with Dice Holdings submit a cheerful story about tech job seeking and hiring practices, something they must know about, and the shit hits the fan. Such as the February 2013 What EMC Looks For When It's Hiring outrage. The tone of some of the comments made me feel embarrassed by association, such a wave of arrogant entitlement as infantile as Facebook users blaming the company for dirt on their screens.
It was so bad I took an anthropological interest and attempted to explain it in a nature documentary.
Slashdot Packs Miracle EMC Punching Power!
Thank you Dice for continued stewardship. What a stew it can be.
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then its earth science division should be moved to NOAA (or whatever is appropriate). I'd be fine with that. However that's not in the plan. Yes, maybe NASA wasn't the right place to study climate science (debatable), but it needs to be done somewhere; simply cutting it is not acceptable.
Moreover, this is hardly the first time a government agency has had mission creep or that multiple government agencies have overlapped. Mission creep/overlap to the tune of $300 million is absolutely nothing; that's not even the cost of three F-35 fighters. (Aside: dollars are the wrong units to measure government spending; government spending should be measured in F-35 fighters. That puts things in perspective -- especially when you realize we're buying ~2,400 F-35s.)
This is simply an attempted at killing government research into climate science -- not an attempted at reorganization.
"Low earth orbit" and "space" are not quite synonymous. Let NOAA have LEO, and NASA can go to space.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's not like NASA's manned space flight program does much better
1) We've been putting humans into low earth orbit for decades. There's not much "expansion of human knowledge" here. Well, they did study ants in space on the ISS recently...
2) ISS is old tech; there's no "improvement" to speak of. Well, they did put a new espresso machine up there recently, right?
3) Unless "development" means "making more of the same thing we already know how to make", then ISS fails again.
4) Maybe the ISS does this, but the main conclusion of the "long-range study" is that, yes, we can keep an inhabited space station in low earth orbit while spending billions of dollars!
5) The ISS does this, but it could also be done by other means at a much lower cost.
6) Nope
7) The ISS is great for this; it's the only way the US still interacts with Russia!
8) "The most effective utilization" Ha!
If you only want to focus on missions that _effectively_ and _efficiently_ fulfill NASA's charter, then a lot of stuff has to go. Since the budget for the ISS is ~$3 billion, I'd focus on that before the climate research -- which is only 1/10th the cost and does a lot more to expand human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere. Even if climate research doesn't fit with NASA's charter (debatable), then its work should be moved to another agency -- not axed.
That was fun to read. Patronizing, but fun.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Climate records from the unredacted data show an entirely different picture. We're on the rising edge of a cycle of temperature swings. The rising side of a long, 800 year cycle on top of a shorter and shallower 220-year cycle
Mathturbation. Where's your physical model.
Someone clearly forgot about the little hiccup called the Industrial Revolution
WTF?
nd that annoying white blob called the Sun which itself exhibits wild temperature variations of upwards of +/-1500C at the photosphere?
Please demonstrate a correlation between any solar parameter and the current temperature trends. Remember -- no causation without correlation.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No reason why NASA can't work together with NOAA, and they can both do LEO. Some overlap, for a trivial amount of money, for something so important, can't hurt.
If only it made sense, then it would be a perfect comment.
Ehhh. I just watched this short video again. I am mesmerized by the face of the woman in the last scene. I imagine that she's waiting for a "bus" to come along, to take her to college. Or to bring home a loved one from a years long journey. Or, maybe she's just headed to the local version of an amusement park. Or, joining classmates, then heading off to the mall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Each has different missions. Maybe those missions are repetitively redundant, but at least they each have a different perspective on the same problems.
What I am saying is, NASA has a much bigger, much more important mission that studying weather and/or climate.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Hansen made the Koch brother's King Coal game impossible. .0001% by the name of Koch.
Republicans were bought and sold by them and demand an end to Global Warming Research, lest it harm the
A little education would prevent these kinds of 'rebranding' of the actual news
Salon with the skinny on defunding NASA climate science
Spread solar, or die.
In the cartoon world, they call what I did "4th wall breaking". Referring to the reality behind the facade of the comic (or in this case, the fact that the web site we write on indeed is a business.)
Forgive me, but what I thought of during your reply was that it was a wonderful imitation of the studied serious moralizing of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. ;)
Nope, it's fully in compliance with the 2013 OMB memo on an Open Data policy. The subheading on that memo is 'Managing Information as an Asset', and there is a real lack of a comprehensive catalog of NASA's data. (note that this is *not* the same as the 2013 OSTP memo on public access to federally funded data, but they're related.)
Even with the re-design of data.nasa.gov, the content behind is is woefully incomplete. When I contacted the creator of the page years ago, he said that they just did some internet searches to find 'data', and then listed them. They were listing websites that mentioned data, not even breaking it down into missions & investigations.
Someone needs to go through and determine for every investigation from every project what data *should* be there, and figure out if it's online, if it's in a dark archive, if the PI still has it, or if it's missing. They should catalog it according to GEMS and possible DataCite (although assignment of 'creator' for the data might be something that needs to be resolved by each science community)
I had tried proposing something to the NASA IT Labs call shortly after the memo came out, but the people running it were blocking our network from being able to submit. I tried again in 2014, and they gave me an alternate way to submit, but they took weeks to get the work-around, and by then I was out of town for a meeting.
(disclaimer : if it's not obvious, I work at a NASA center)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
it's warmer during the daytime than it is at night.
You're welcome.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Getting OFF this rock is the most important thing. You're afraid of the weather. I'm afraid of that humonguous rock targeting earth, which will make weather irrelevant.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Do you know what a cadance is? Look it up. So they're talking about doing things on a decade basis. Politicians talk like this. It helps you believe that they're smart. Every little bit helps.