Sex in space is more complicated than you might think.
A couple of years ago I had an idea for a quasi-non-fiction book in the tradition of the Zombie Survival Guide. Not as creative or as fun. Okay, less creative but more fun. It would be Sex in Space: A Manual for Tourists, written as if it were a few decades in the future and honeymooners could vacation at a space hotel. Inside would be dos and don'ts, guides to which lubes would pose the fewest problems, instructions for how to use various gear in space to keep you and your partner together, etiquette for threesomes (common among dolphins/whales in the ocean who face problems with rebounding away), etc. I was sort of excited about the idea for the book for a while, and then discovered someone else had been as well. There was already a book Sex in Space.
Well, that dampened my enthusiasm. Laura Woodmansee's book has some strengths, but isn't as fun as mine would have been in my not so humble opinion. There's some overlap with ideas I had, and one part just has to be seen to be appreciated. She has a section about the "space kama sutra" that she illustrates with naked action figures "Buck" and "Barbarella" that includes one photo of a dolphin helping out in a threesome and another of one bondage rig. She also describes toys and apparatuses to strap people together using Velcro. Give her big creativity points for all that. She also has a short section on "sexy science fiction" where sex in space in science fiction is discussed.
So I'm not planning to write my version any more as a lot of items would be redundant, but as a science fiction writer who does write stories set in space and who teaches other writers about the space environment, I'm always interesting in learning more about sex in space. Purely research you see.
Woodmansee cannot absolutely confirm the claims that there has been sex in space, both on the part of Americans and Russians, that some others have made. If true, I'm sure it was for research, too. Dedication to science and knowledge, that sort of thing.
In the final days of Mir, there apparently was a porn movie planned to raise money. The plot involved sending up a woman to seduce a reluctant cosmonaut into leaving the station. It never got off the ground, unfortunately, which would have allowed some, ahem, hard data to be obtained about the particulars of sex in space.
What did get off the ground was the Uranus Experiment, as in "I'm not an astronaut but I will send a probe to a Uranus" as seen on t-shirts in my closet. Yeah, that "Uranus." In the late 1990s a porn movie (actually an entire trilogy) was shot using NASA's "vomit comet" which is a plane flying parabolic trajectories that allows several minutes of freefall at a time. The weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13 were shot on the vomit comet, but no sex scenes. There was a different case for the Uranus Experiment. Or so I'm told. Google your own link to DVDs which can be found at sale prices (and should be deductible if you're a science fiction writer like myself, assuming I'm not too embarrassed to show my accountant the receipt). Woodmansee missed this movie in her book, unfortunately. Anyone seen it willing to admit it and weigh in on weightless sex? Or at least the acting?
And I can't decide if it would be better or worse than sex on Earth. More memorable maybe, but more problematic. And who wants to get hit by stray floaters of any sort?
I'm a stickler for getting the scientific details right in my novels, so I have no choice but to do the research. My readers demand it of me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. With Velcro.
It has really only been in the last five years or so that 2dF and Sloan Digital Sky Survey have let us establish, quantitatively, large scale structure on cosmologically significant size scales. The calculations get much more complicated to solve when homogeneity cannot be assumed, and I think most astronomers felt that the effects would not be this large. The truth is that most people working in the field do simply assume homogeniety, although perhaps not any longer.
Chandra works in X-rays, Spizter at mid-infrared wavelengths. Hubble does science that they can't, and vice versa. Plus, there is multiwavelength science that can only be done when all three are used together (e.g., studying supernova remnants, quasar spectral energy distributions, etc.).
Spitzer? No, not at all on that topic. Hubble has been critical in understanding the acclerating expansion since it's the only telescope that can find the high-redshift supernovas to see how the expansion rate has changed over a large timespan.
It's kind of lame to be arguring about which major result in astronomy is "more signficant" than another. It depends on your own evaluation criteria and interests. COBE did a great job on one very important question. Hubble has done a great job on hundreds of other very important questions. I'd give the win to Hubble, but regard COBE results as a major discovery. It's also to be remembered that Nobel prizes have their own biases and one of them is that they are only for discoveries.
Are you criticizing me, or yourself? Because you did it first, you'd admit, if you have intellectual integrity of any sort. Do you get my point now, or are you going out of your way to be "kind" because you believe I shouldn't be criticized for holding a different belief than you? Are you your own exception to your rule?
Or do you make special rules for superstitions that can't be supported? I at least made a case.
"God does not play dice."
And you realize that Einstein, when he wrote this, did not mean a Christian god, or anything like a diety at all, right? He believed in the "god" of Spinoza and used the term to describe a sensible universe built of physical laws. At best he was a deist, but not a creationist by any means. All creationists, in the scientific contexts, are idiots. As would be bankers who promoted monopoly money, or historians, who based their history on episodes of Dr. Who, or mathmaticians who decided that feelings should replace numbers. It's just dumb, dumb, dumb to promote non-science as science and to respect anyone who does so seriously, whether it's creationism or the sun made of molten gold.
The world would be a much better place if people chose to be kinder to each other, even when their views differ, and even when they think that their neighbor is acting in a stupid way.
Not a good fraction of the time. If your neighbor piles up garbage in his yard because he thinks it will repell disease, you shouldn't be quiet about it. If your neighbor ignores you and convinces others to do the same, you shouldn't be quiet or kind about it. If your neighbor then runs for office and campaigns on a platform of "more garbage, less disease" you shouldn't be quiet or kind about it, and should in fact make as big of a stink as is necessary to match theirs. Because we live in a society of rules, both formal and informal, we have an obligation to speak out when our neighbors act in stupid ways. It affects us, directly and indirectly, all the time. We should be kind about it when possible, but when the stupidity gets out of control I don't think we should put politeness at the top of our priority list.
I find it's sometimes ruder to your other neighbors, in the long run, to be too kind.
"For example, there's not really an experiment that can be set up to support the Big Bang theory--yet it is taught in science."
False. The Big Bang is accepted because it is extremely well supported by experiment/observation. There are many, many tough tests that the theory has passed. For instance, there seems to be an age of the oldest stars consistent with the age of the universe predicted by the big bang. The theory also predicts the existence of microwave background radiation, which was discovered. The theory predicts the hydrogren should be very abundant, with about 25% helium, and other elements very rare, also confirmed. There's a precise prediction about how temperature decreases with time, and that is verified observationally. Ad infinitum. The big bang is one of the best supported theories in science.
There are some things we still have to learn (e.g., what is dark matter/energy), but that the universe was much denser and hotter in the distant past and of finite age, that's gold. And that's the big bang theory. We don't have a prime cause, but think of the big bang theory as the equivalent to evolution. It says nothing about the prime cause (abiogenesis in the evolutionary analogy), but everything about how things have gone since then.
You're guilty of the standard "Republican War on Science" meme that says we shouldn't do anything unless we're absolutely sure, and have iron-clad proof of a problem and its solution. If you were 99% sure a loaded gun was pointed at you, would you do something about it? How about 90%? 60%? For most sane people, there's a breakpoint far short of 100%, and you must understand that science -- our single best way of generating new and reliable knoweldge -- almost always falls short of 100%. Now, there's plenty of room for policy debate, and determining the best steps to take from an economic and social cost benefit analysis, but to ignore good science with a vast consensus because it isn't 100% is just foolish. Good policy should always be constructed with our current best understanding, not with wishful thinking (on either side), or the requirement of iron-clad proof. Proof is a very poor standard to use with respect to science, because it's rarely available, even when the science is very reliable.
Here's the problem. NASA has a budget measured in billions, yes, and it has seen steady small increases in recent years. The problem is that NASA has been asked to do 50% more things with a 5% budget increase, and the mandate is for manned efforts to return to the moon and Mars. NASA does has been slashing budgets for space science. Those of us who value NASA's support of space science are crying about the budget because it has been cut year after year. You might as well ask what's the problem with the US budget every year when so much income comes in? Anytime your needs outstrip your income, you have a budget problem, no matter the absolute number on that income.
But primarily just in the optical part of the spectrum at ridiculous levels. The Earth is brighter at radio wavelengths, for instance. It's also important to realize that from the moon you could use telescopes in the lunar daytime since there is no atmosphere to scatter the sunlight, as long as you didn't look very close to the sun (basically same limitation as with space telescopes like Hubble).
Wouldn't God just simply have the power to make you believe? If you didn't, or had doubts, not god. All that free will stuff seems like rationalizations to explain why skeptics exists, and why real miracles (not the faces on grilled cheese crap) are not regular occurances.
You don't seem to know much about the big bang, so I'm going to slam you a bit so you get a bit better educated.
The Big Bang theory, like evolution, is not an origin theory, but a description of events stretching back into the past that has many testable predictions. For instance, the background radiation temperatue (measured at about 2.73 K) should increase with redshift like T to the (1+z) power. This was first tested in the 1990s via high-redshift absorption line ratios dependent on temperature. And you know what? The high-redshift universe (in the past due to the finite speed of light) seems to have a background temperture proportional to (1+z)! The early universe should have also been denser, and there's evidence for that. Etc., etc.
And you're just plain ignorant to make a point about these experiments not "proving" the Big Bang. What scientific theory is "proven?" Any of them? You're using an anti-science strawman to even make this point. Give me a friggin' break, okay? No religious concept anywhere ever has ever been proven to be right, ever. It isn't like scientists are claiming theories are proven. Apparently only critics of science in general make this a point.
You're just wasting space here. Believe what you want, buy don't think for a second what you believe should be taught anywhere as science if it isn't supportable by experiment. And picking on science for not being proven is just weak and part of the standard creationist wedge strategy. You're not fooling anyone here.
The Big Bang is currently in great shape and in its fundamentals has no serious challengers. It's as solid and clear as any theory out there. The universe very much appears to be denser and hotter in the past in a very predictable way back as far as our physics/astronomy permits us to probe. It's a much better and much more likely correct idea about the universe's past than any that you might have.
Why don't you go snipe on angels dancing on pinheads or something like that?
That comment doesn't even make sense?! "having flamewars in the uncertainty bands?" Eh?
I read plenty of scientific journals, and I usually referee 3-5 papers a year. I need to get back to writing that many. Be specific about your complaints, or just stop with the useless generalizations criticizing things you don't understand.
If your point is that scientists argue about uncertainties, yeah, sure. That just undermines your original point that they ignore them, doesn't it? Which is it? Ignore them, or care about them and have an intellectual exchange to determine how to best estimate them? You act like it's impossible to make any measurements worth anything at all, and, if you do, reach any conclusions from them. Science isn't guessing.
Engineering isn't science, and the OP is dead on. I have degrees in engineering and physics, and the differences are crystal clear. One isn't better than the other, but engineers certainly do take all the physics on faith. They just want answers that work, and while they care about uncertaintities, they care about them LESS than scientists. Engineers grossly overdesign on the assumption that the uncertainties are uncertain and they want margins of safety. But engineering isn't about understanding why or how anything happens -- it's just about using accepted scientific knowledge to solve a well-bounded problem.
And to make the claim that scientists ignore or underplay uncertainty is insulting and shows your ignorance. We usually spend more time estimating the uncertainties than we do getting the answer in the first place. I've seen many a student ripped to pieces over missing or incorrect error bars. And just because an answer has an associated uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean the answer is very uncertain. That's a common tactic of the anti-intellectual, along the lines of how something is "just a theory."
To the extent its true, it's a damn good thing for scientists to not dwell on the anomaly. Most of the times it's bad data, or secondary or tertiary effects to be ignored, if the primary effect is to be characterized and understood. Outliers can be important to study on their own, and are often useful for identifying what the secondary or tertiary effects are, but to pretend that every aberation must be understood to see the underlying pattern is ridiculous and clearly wrong in many, many examples.
Journalists covering science, now, there's a good place to attack. They often misunderstand and regurgitate crap, and less-informed readers blame the scientists. Jounralists need to be better trained to cover their specific topics. It's sad that fewer and fewer news outlets can afford to retain specialized journalists. There are a handful (e.g., New York Times, Science News) that know their science well enough to characterize it fairly.
Yes, excellent points. There are no confirmed plans for an ultraviolet telescope after Hubble (one that can take spectra anyway) so this is a big issue. At least to astronomers.
No you don't. We've already got a "replacement" scheduled to go up (although it will be better in some ways, it won't duplicate everything Hubble can do). The thing is, the replacement, the James Webb Telescope, won't go up before 2012, and Hubble is the only available optical space telescope until then. Let it die, you lose optical space-based observations until 2012 at the earliest.
There's zero chance to build and launch a duplicate Hubble on the timescale of a repair mission plus a few years.
Dark matter theories gets tested all the time. We just don't know exactly WHAT the stuff is yet. For instance, dark matter was originally hypothesized to understand why velocities were so high but galaxies and galaxy clusters didn't fly apart. Later studies of the microwave background radiation and light element abundances show that baryonic matter only contributes a small fraction of the total matter density, consisent with the earlier velocity studies. There are many other pieces of evidence also in line with dark matter existing, and we even KNOW one form already: neutrinos. Neutrinos don't contribute the majority of the mass, apparently, but the fact they oscillate flavors suggest they do have a mass. Dark matter isn't the best tested theory in all of science, but it's been tested repeatedly.
You're wrong. There is a date. Last fall a Hubble mission was put on the NASA calendar for, I believe, April 2007. I'm not sure it's going to happen myself just yet -- there are still some hurdles to jump -- but your information is way out of date. I was invited to serve on the review panel for new science proposals this year and declined, but I should get the inside scoop from a friend who is serving in March.
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Sex in space is more complicated than you might think.
A couple of years ago I had an idea for a quasi-non-fiction book in the tradition of the Zombie Survival Guide. Not as creative or as fun. Okay, less creative but more fun. It would be Sex in Space: A Manual for Tourists, written as if it were a few decades in the future and honeymooners could vacation at a space hotel. Inside would be dos and don'ts, guides to which lubes would pose the fewest problems, instructions for how to use various gear in space to keep you and your partner together, etiquette for threesomes (common among dolphins/whales in the ocean who face problems with rebounding away), etc. I was sort of excited about the idea for the book for a while, and then discovered someone else had been as well. There was already a book Sex in Space.
Well, that dampened my enthusiasm. Laura Woodmansee's book has some strengths, but isn't as fun as mine would have been in my not so humble opinion. There's some overlap with ideas I had, and one part just has to be seen to be appreciated. She has a section about the "space kama sutra" that she illustrates with naked action figures "Buck" and "Barbarella" that includes one photo of a dolphin helping out in a threesome and another of one bondage rig. She also describes toys and apparatuses to strap people together using Velcro. Give her big creativity points for all that. She also has a short section on "sexy science fiction" where sex in space in science fiction is discussed.
So I'm not planning to write my version any more as a lot of items would be redundant, but as a science fiction writer who does write stories set in space and who teaches other writers about the space environment, I'm always interesting in learning more about sex in space. Purely research you see.
Woodmansee cannot absolutely confirm the claims that there has been sex in space, both on the part of Americans and Russians, that some others have made. If true, I'm sure it was for research, too. Dedication to science and knowledge, that sort of thing.
In the final days of Mir, there apparently was a porn movie planned to raise money. The plot involved sending up a woman to seduce a reluctant cosmonaut into leaving the station. It never got off the ground, unfortunately, which would have allowed some, ahem, hard data to be obtained about the particulars of sex in space.
What did get off the ground was the Uranus Experiment, as in "I'm not an astronaut but I will send a probe to a Uranus" as seen on t-shirts in my closet. Yeah, that "Uranus." In the late 1990s a porn movie (actually an entire trilogy) was shot using NASA's "vomit comet" which is a plane flying parabolic trajectories that allows several minutes of freefall at a time. The weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13 were shot on the vomit comet, but no sex scenes. There was a different case for the Uranus Experiment. Or so I'm told. Google your own link to DVDs which can be found at sale prices (and should be deductible if you're a science fiction writer like myself, assuming I'm not too embarrassed to show my accountant the receipt). Woodmansee missed this movie in her book, unfortunately. Anyone seen it willing to admit it and weigh in on weightless sex? Or at least the acting?
And I can't decide if it would be better or worse than sex on Earth. More memorable maybe, but more problematic. And who wants to get hit by stray floaters of any sort?
I'm a stickler for getting the scientific details right in my novels, so I have no choice but to do the research. My readers demand it of me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. With Velcro.
It has really only been in the last five years or so that 2dF and Sloan Digital Sky Survey have let us establish, quantitatively, large scale structure on cosmologically significant size scales. The calculations get much more complicated to solve when homogeneity cannot be assumed, and I think most astronomers felt that the effects would not be this large. The truth is that most people working in the field do simply assume homogeniety, although perhaps not any longer.
STIS = Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
PI is principal investigator
COS is Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
WFC3 is Wide Field Camera 3
Chandra works in X-rays, Spizter at mid-infrared wavelengths. Hubble does science that they can't, and vice versa. Plus, there is multiwavelength science that can only be done when all three are used together (e.g., studying supernova remnants, quasar spectral energy distributions, etc.).
Spitzer? No, not at all on that topic. Hubble has been critical in understanding the acclerating expansion since it's the only telescope that can find the high-redshift supernovas to see how the expansion rate has changed over a large timespan.
It's kind of lame to be arguring about which major result in astronomy is "more signficant" than another. It depends on your own evaluation criteria and interests. COBE did a great job on one very important question. Hubble has done a great job on hundreds of other very important questions. I'd give the win to Hubble, but regard COBE results as a major discovery. It's also to be remembered that Nobel prizes have their own biases and one of them is that they are only for discoveries.
Are you criticizing me, or yourself? Because you did it first, you'd admit, if you have intellectual integrity of any sort. Do you get my point now, or are you going out of your way to be "kind" because you believe I shouldn't be criticized for holding a different belief than you? Are you your own exception to your rule?
Or do you make special rules for superstitions that can't be supported? I at least made a case.
And you realize that Einstein, when he wrote this, did not mean a Christian god, or anything like a diety at all, right? He believed in the "god" of Spinoza and used the term to describe a sensible universe built of physical laws. At best he was a deist, but not a creationist by any means. All creationists, in the scientific contexts, are idiots. As would be bankers who promoted monopoly money, or historians, who based their history on episodes of Dr. Who, or mathmaticians who decided that feelings should replace numbers. It's just dumb, dumb, dumb to promote non-science as science and to respect anyone who does so seriously, whether it's creationism or the sun made of molten gold.
Not a good fraction of the time. If your neighbor piles up garbage in his yard because he thinks it will repell disease, you shouldn't be quiet about it. If your neighbor ignores you and convinces others to do the same, you shouldn't be quiet or kind about it. If your neighbor then runs for office and campaigns on a platform of "more garbage, less disease" you shouldn't be quiet or kind about it, and should in fact make as big of a stink as is necessary to match theirs. Because we live in a society of rules, both formal and informal, we have an obligation to speak out when our neighbors act in stupid ways. It affects us, directly and indirectly, all the time. We should be kind about it when possible, but when the stupidity gets out of control I don't think we should put politeness at the top of our priority list.
I find it's sometimes ruder to your other neighbors, in the long run, to be too kind.
False. The Big Bang is accepted because it is extremely well supported by experiment/observation. There are many, many tough tests that the theory has passed. For instance, there seems to be an age of the oldest stars consistent with the age of the universe predicted by the big bang. The theory also predicts the existence of microwave background radiation, which was discovered. The theory predicts the hydrogren should be very abundant, with about 25% helium, and other elements very rare, also confirmed. There's a precise prediction about how temperature decreases with time, and that is verified observationally. Ad infinitum. The big bang is one of the best supported theories in science.
There are some things we still have to learn (e.g., what is dark matter/energy), but that the universe was much denser and hotter in the distant past and of finite age, that's gold. And that's the big bang theory. We don't have a prime cause, but think of the big bang theory as the equivalent to evolution. It says nothing about the prime cause (abiogenesis in the evolutionary analogy), but everything about how things have gone since then.
Just trying to correct some misconceptions here.
You're guilty of the standard "Republican War on Science" meme that says we shouldn't do anything unless we're absolutely sure, and have iron-clad proof of a problem and its solution. If you were 99% sure a loaded gun was pointed at you, would you do something about it? How about 90%? 60%? For most sane people, there's a breakpoint far short of 100%, and you must understand that science -- our single best way of generating new and reliable knoweldge -- almost always falls short of 100%. Now, there's plenty of room for policy debate, and determining the best steps to take from an economic and social cost benefit analysis, but to ignore good science with a vast consensus because it isn't 100% is just foolish. Good policy should always be constructed with our current best understanding, not with wishful thinking (on either side), or the requirement of iron-clad proof. Proof is a very poor standard to use with respect to science, because it's rarely available, even when the science is very reliable.
While I'd like to see manned efforts in space continue, the way it's currently happening is at the expense of space science.
I myself believe that the Hubble Space Telescope and similar missions have quite a bit of sizzle, too.
Here's the problem. NASA has a budget measured in billions, yes, and it has seen steady small increases in recent years. The problem is that NASA has been asked to do 50% more things with a 5% budget increase, and the mandate is for manned efforts to return to the moon and Mars. NASA does has been slashing budgets for space science. Those of us who value NASA's support of space science are crying about the budget because it has been cut year after year. You might as well ask what's the problem with the US budget every year when so much income comes in? Anytime your needs outstrip your income, you have a budget problem, no matter the absolute number on that income.
But primarily just in the optical part of the spectrum at ridiculous levels. The Earth is brighter at radio wavelengths, for instance. It's also important to realize that from the moon you could use telescopes in the lunar daytime since there is no atmosphere to scatter the sunlight, as long as you didn't look very close to the sun (basically same limitation as with space telescopes like Hubble).
I read an article recently, and moondust also smells like gunpowder. No one so far has figured out why. Weird.
Wouldn't God just simply have the power to make you believe? If you didn't, or had doubts, not god. All that free will stuff seems like rationalizations to explain why skeptics exists, and why real miracles (not the faces on grilled cheese crap) are not regular occurances.
I don't think you exist. So there.
You don't seem to know much about the big bang, so I'm going to slam you a bit so you get a bit better educated. The Big Bang theory, like evolution, is not an origin theory, but a description of events stretching back into the past that has many testable predictions. For instance, the background radiation temperatue (measured at about 2.73 K) should increase with redshift like T to the (1+z) power. This was first tested in the 1990s via high-redshift absorption line ratios dependent on temperature. And you know what? The high-redshift universe (in the past due to the finite speed of light) seems to have a background temperture proportional to (1+z)! The early universe should have also been denser, and there's evidence for that. Etc., etc. And you're just plain ignorant to make a point about these experiments not "proving" the Big Bang. What scientific theory is "proven?" Any of them? You're using an anti-science strawman to even make this point. Give me a friggin' break, okay? No religious concept anywhere ever has ever been proven to be right, ever. It isn't like scientists are claiming theories are proven. Apparently only critics of science in general make this a point. You're just wasting space here. Believe what you want, buy don't think for a second what you believe should be taught anywhere as science if it isn't supportable by experiment. And picking on science for not being proven is just weak and part of the standard creationist wedge strategy. You're not fooling anyone here. The Big Bang is currently in great shape and in its fundamentals has no serious challengers. It's as solid and clear as any theory out there. The universe very much appears to be denser and hotter in the past in a very predictable way back as far as our physics/astronomy permits us to probe. It's a much better and much more likely correct idea about the universe's past than any that you might have. Why don't you go snipe on angels dancing on pinheads or something like that?
That comment doesn't even make sense?! "having flamewars in the uncertainty bands?" Eh?
I read plenty of scientific journals, and I usually referee 3-5 papers a year. I need to get back to writing that many. Be specific about your complaints, or just stop with the useless generalizations criticizing things you don't understand.
If your point is that scientists argue about uncertainties, yeah, sure. That just undermines your original point that they ignore them, doesn't it? Which is it? Ignore them, or care about them and have an intellectual exchange to determine how to best estimate them? You act like it's impossible to make any measurements worth anything at all, and, if you do, reach any conclusions from them. Science isn't guessing.
Engineering isn't science, and the OP is dead on. I have degrees in engineering and physics, and the differences are crystal clear. One isn't better than the other, but engineers certainly do take all the physics on faith. They just want answers that work, and while they care about uncertaintities, they care about them LESS than scientists. Engineers grossly overdesign on the assumption that the uncertainties are uncertain and they want margins of safety. But engineering isn't about understanding why or how anything happens -- it's just about using accepted scientific knowledge to solve a well-bounded problem.
And to make the claim that scientists ignore or underplay uncertainty is insulting and shows your ignorance. We usually spend more time estimating the uncertainties than we do getting the answer in the first place. I've seen many a student ripped to pieces over missing or incorrect error bars. And just because an answer has an associated uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean the answer is very uncertain. That's a common tactic of the anti-intellectual, along the lines of how something is "just a theory."
To the extent its true, it's a damn good thing for scientists to not dwell on the anomaly. Most of the times it's bad data, or secondary or tertiary effects to be ignored, if the primary effect is to be characterized and understood. Outliers can be important to study on their own, and are often useful for identifying what the secondary or tertiary effects are, but to pretend that every aberation must be understood to see the underlying pattern is ridiculous and clearly wrong in many, many examples.
Journalists covering science, now, there's a good place to attack. They often misunderstand and regurgitate crap, and less-informed readers blame the scientists. Jounralists need to be better trained to cover their specific topics. It's sad that fewer and fewer news outlets can afford to retain specialized journalists. There are a handful (e.g., New York Times, Science News) that know their science well enough to characterize it fairly.
Yes, excellent points. There are no confirmed plans for an ultraviolet telescope after Hubble (one that can take spectra anyway) so this is a big issue. At least to astronomers.
I agree. Giant fireball in the sky is something I can call an explosion with a clear conscience, and I usually nitpick the hell out of things.
No you don't. We've already got a "replacement" scheduled to go up (although it will be better in some ways, it won't duplicate everything Hubble can do). The thing is, the replacement, the James Webb Telescope, won't go up before 2012, and Hubble is the only available optical space telescope until then. Let it die, you lose optical space-based observations until 2012 at the earliest.
There's zero chance to build and launch a duplicate Hubble on the timescale of a repair mission plus a few years.
Dark matter theories gets tested all the time. We just don't know exactly WHAT the stuff is yet. For instance, dark matter was originally hypothesized to understand why velocities were so high but galaxies and galaxy clusters didn't fly apart. Later studies of the microwave background radiation and light element abundances show that baryonic matter only contributes a small fraction of the total matter density, consisent with the earlier velocity studies. There are many other pieces of evidence also in line with dark matter existing, and we even KNOW one form already: neutrinos. Neutrinos don't contribute the majority of the mass, apparently, but the fact they oscillate flavors suggest they do have a mass. Dark matter isn't the best tested theory in all of science, but it's been tested repeatedly.
You're wrong. There is a date. Last fall a Hubble mission was put on the NASA calendar for, I believe, April 2007. I'm not sure it's going to happen myself just yet -- there are still some hurdles to jump -- but your information is way out of date. I was invited to serve on the review panel for new science proposals this year and declined, but I should get the inside scoop from a friend who is serving in March.
Most X-ray satellites allocate time by the kilosecond. I just got awarded 60 ksec on Chandra recently, for instance.