Because one lunar night is fourteen Earth days long. That's one good reason, anyway.
Of course most of NASA's planned human exploration of the Moon would probably be nearer one of the poles to facilitate better solar power options - but they're not perfect.
It's much more complicated than your home furnishing project.
NASA can't simply apply funds from elsewhere it its budget; that money is already spoken for, and appropriated by Congress for other projects. In other words, there is no way, within the law, to take money from another project to fix this problem; additional funding or reprogramming actions are required, both of which take time. Even in Washington, $80M is a big issue. As it should be.
SDI aka Star Wars was a program of BMDO, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Pretty much chopped during the "peace dividend" years, but you're right -- it's been re-cast as MDA, the Missile Defense Agency, spending about $10 Billion in tax dollars a year, since Bush took up occupation of the White House.
As a reference point, that's almost the budget of NASA. Lots of money, and not much success to show for it.
That's the problem with secrecy. It is necessary to protect reasonable covert action, but undispensible at covering up incompetence.
It's a federal offense to classify something (or over-classify something) in order to cover up incompetence, avoid potential embarrassment, etc. One would hope there's sufficient oversight of the intel agencies by the other three branches of government (the Legislative, the Judicial, the Cheney) so that abuses of that type are caught... but then one would probably be rather naive.
Let's not go thinking Scandinavia is Utopia just yet. Sweden's got rather high unemployment, and a dirty little not-so-secret is that a large part of their economy is, in fact, driven by the arms industry... and one might say Sweden is even more indiscriminate than the U.S. in terms of who they'll sell weapons to.
Your larger point, of course, is that the U.S. isn't just "powerful," but - at least recently - seems to be looking for an excuse to demonstrate its "power" (resulting in, ironically, some proof of the lack thereof...)
There are scientific instruments, including imagers, that essentially do this (grating spectrometers, fourier transform spectrometers) but they're complex, costly, and require lots of processing (for instance, to convert from the time domain back into the frequency domain). The job is essentially easier to do when the data's still photons, as it were. Right now, anyway. And, the advantages of such a system might not be as applicable in a consumer application (where oversaturated color is more important) than they would in a scientific one (where chromatic accuracy is more important).
The filter's not transparent either (if it was you wouldn't need a filter, right?)
It's transparent in optical wavelengths. The sensor still has some sensitivity in IR that needs to be filtered out.
Let's say it's a series of tubes, not a single 500 foot pole (and not a big truck). If I try to send an internet through the tubes, is it instantaneous, or does it get stuck behind the enormous amounts of other material?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they were really talking about the K-Car?
ISS is not designed to survive outside the Van Allen belt - just one reason this wouldn't work at all.
moon rover, 1971?
Because one lunar night is fourteen Earth days long. That's one good reason, anyway. Of course most of NASA's planned human exploration of the Moon would probably be nearer one of the poles to facilitate better solar power options - but they're not perfect.
It's much more complicated than your home furnishing project. NASA can't simply apply funds from elsewhere it its budget; that money is already spoken for, and appropriated by Congress for other projects. In other words, there is no way, within the law, to take money from another project to fix this problem; additional funding or reprogramming actions are required, both of which take time. Even in Washington, $80M is a big issue. As it should be.
Since when is keeping pace with inflation considered a budget increase?
SDI aka Star Wars was a program of BMDO, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Pretty much chopped during the "peace dividend" years, but you're right -- it's been re-cast as MDA, the Missile Defense Agency, spending about $10 Billion in tax dollars a year, since Bush took up occupation of the White House. As a reference point, that's almost the budget of NASA. Lots of money, and not much success to show for it.
Let's not go thinking Scandinavia is Utopia just yet. Sweden's got rather high unemployment, and a dirty little not-so-secret is that a large part of their economy is, in fact, driven by the arms industry... and one might say Sweden is even more indiscriminate than the U.S. in terms of who they'll sell weapons to. Your larger point, of course, is that the U.S. isn't just "powerful," but - at least recently - seems to be looking for an excuse to demonstrate its "power" (resulting in, ironically, some proof of the lack thereof...)
There are scientific instruments, including imagers, that essentially do this (grating spectrometers, fourier transform spectrometers) but they're complex, costly, and require lots of processing (for instance, to convert from the time domain back into the frequency domain). The job is essentially easier to do when the data's still photons, as it were. Right now, anyway. And, the advantages of such a system might not be as applicable in a consumer application (where oversaturated color is more important) than they would in a scientific one (where chromatic accuracy is more important).
The filter's not transparent either (if it was you wouldn't need a filter, right?) It's transparent in optical wavelengths. The sensor still has some sensitivity in IR that needs to be filtered out.
Let's say it's a series of tubes, not a single 500 foot pole (and not a big truck). If I try to send an internet through the tubes, is it instantaneous, or does it get stuck behind the enormous amounts of other material?