"Consider Voyager. Still costing the taxpayers money after all these years. If you threaten to turn it off; you could hear the anguished screams all the way to the edge of the solar system."
What a fArking troll. The absolute pittance that the Voyager program costs (a few million a year) is so far below the background it's not worth discussing, no wonder it was posted AC. One debate on the floor costs more than an entire years worth of funding. Just cancel the debate and boom... Voyager is free for the year.
We actually see eye to eye on most points. I agree with everything you said about the weather. I do understand that it's a complicated business to get into. That was kind of my point in the initial comment is that even with all of the observables and real-time measurements we still do a lousy job of it (IMHO).
But as far as climate modeling goes we don't have all the observables. With a weather model we can test the model right away. Whoops, we were wrong, back to the drawing board. With the kind of modeling I do same thing.... Wrong again, next...
No such luck with climate modeling. We simply cannot test the model for obvious reasons. Your example on the Gulf stream is a good one. The models tell us that if the stream goes away we will have frozen balls. But it's just a model, we have no observables, no way to test it. What if a new stream emurges, one that we have never seen before, not even thought about before. I cant justify this will happen yet nobody can prove it wont because we really have no idea.
This is the exact reason why it's so interesting to study other planets. It gives us a chance to use our models on a different system and hopefully improve what we have. Take for instance Jupiter. The "red eye" has been there for at least 400 years right. I would claim that the eye is part of the jovian climate (it's not a transient event). We really do not understand how this happens yet. Who is to say that Earth wont develop a "blue/white eye" some day that would completely alter the climate for a thousand years? The only thing the modelers could say is "well our models were right but we could not have ever seen that one coming".
I do not think that it's "pointless". In fact I'm an enthusiastic supporter of all scientific research, yes even cow farts. The post today on the entire universe simulations for example. Many replies to that post were of the form... but we don't even understand blank yet, how can we etc.... Any they are exactly right. But I still support the attempt as if we wait until we know everything before we start to model it then advancement comes to a halt. Models of the weather, the climate, solar events, or the universe do not scare me. What does scare me is a government that decides to stop funding of the climate because they don't like the results that are coming out, or will not allow stem cell research because of some religious bias. That's what scares me.
"In other words you work on models that predict short term Solar weather, Solar weather is influenced by the sunspot cycle (Solar Climate). Would you say that the intensity, location and timing of an individual sunspot is easier to predict than the 11yr cycle maxima and minima? "
The 11/22 year cycle is not a model, it's not a prediction. It is an observation. We have absolutely no idea why there is an 11/22 year cycle. If all of a sudden the rotation of the planet went from 24 hours to 30 hours (I'm staying away from another weather analogy because I can tell it's a hot button with you) we would have a very good prediction of when the Sun would "come up". If all of a sudden the sunspot cycle went from 11 years to 17 years we would be freaking clueless. There is obviously a lot of work by a lot of people trying to understand the solar dynamo and probably a lot of other theories that I have never heard of, but to say we have a solar-climate-model is just as silly as saying we have an earth-climate-model (sure they are out there but they both need a lot of improvement == "um suck").
"No peer-reviewed literature doubts that the climate record is showing an alarmingly rapid warming of the planet since the early 1950's"
Then you haven't read George-W-Bush-Science-Reviews lately.... Just joking. I'm a liberal atheist.... But seriously I'm missing your point. I don't doubt that the planet is warming. I do agree with what I have seen in the literature on the subject. Just because I think that the current climate models "um suck" does not mean I disagree with the current observations that the temperature seems to be going up. Just take a look at all of the different posts on this topic right here on/. There is obviously a lot of different points of view (i.e. the models suck - and in the professional forums there is every bit as much disagreement on the cause).
"I have a BSc(CS) and have worked with countless Phd's for over 15yrs, does that qualify?"
They you have heard them fight. Scientists love to fight. Hell, half the fun of being a scientist is to fight with your colleagues on whose model is right and wrong and for what reasons. From the matrix... "you don't know a man until you have fought him". If you prefer to sugar-coat reality to match your romantic views of what science should be then fine. I prefer to knock-heads with everyone who challenges my models, even though I know my models suck and so do theirs, because after the bleeding stops I hope we have gained some ground.
"OTOH: I accept there are many serious limitations to the various models (although you have failed to point one out yet)."
Relationship between the 11/22 year solar cycle and the Earth's climate? Relationship between the solar wind and the Earth's climate? Relationship between coronal mass ejections and the Earth's climate?
There are probably many papers (peer-reviewed) that discuss these points but as far as I know the scientific community has not accepted these as anything else but "currently under debate == speculation == um sucks".
My Company (~5k) uses SCO. XP is on my desktop and each and every morning I dutifully SSH to my linux box to do my real work. Of course all of my X is handled by SCO's vision/Xvision. I don't like it but I don't make the rules.
First things first. I never said that Weather = Climate. Of course it doesn't. The point is that predicting the weather should be a lot easier than predicting the climate as weather is here and now (i.e. days or weeks) while climate is obviously a long term problem.
Second point.
I work with models that predict the eruption of solar events and the subsequent energetic particles that make their way to Earth. There are a lot of smart people working on this problem. And you know what... the models "um suck". That's right, I am criticizing my own models. The scientific community has some models that work very well while that vast majority have a long way to go.
"I don't hear anyone refuting physicists, chemists, etc, with such well thought out arguments as "um suck""
No? I guess your in a tizzy over the choice of words here? If I had said "leave a lot to be desired" would that be better? How about "not very accurate" "huge error bars" etc... I defend "um sucks" as a/. idiom for the above.
If you don't think that physicists challenge each others models, get in very heated arguments over them, use disparaging vocabulary while discussing them, then you don't spend much time around scientists.
Anyone who actually does climate modeling want to stand up and tell us how great these models are, how close to accurate they are, etc... I doubt there will be many takers here.
I guess you support the first-rule-about-climate-models-is-we-don't-talk-b ad-about-climate-models point of view. It's not a "pathological aversion", it's about accepting the current state and limitations of the models.
If I were to review that paper I would have a lot of questions for the author (similar to AC reply) and that is kind of the point. Other than challenge the author for such statements as: "It would be a redundant exercise to assess the statistical significance of this distinct result". I've read my fare share of papers and I've seldom seen such a useless statement. Why not just do a quick test and publish the results? OK, perhaps I'm nitpicking. But when I look at Fig 1. I really don't get the point. I'm not saying the author is wrong, I'm just saying that the author should be a bit more quantitative and certainly more clear in his presentation of the data.
Fig. 6 just blew my mind. Showing a temporal relationship between the aa-index and "global land air and sea surface temperature anomalies". First of all perhaps I missed what "global... anomalies" means. But regardless this figure shows one curve leading the other by 10 years (1890-1900), a local min and a local max coincident (1880), then one curve that lagged before leads by 10+ years (1940-1950), and this is attributed to "stored and accumulated in the climate system by processes taking years. Oceans are a candidate because of their thermal inertia". If it's "stored in the oceans" then why does one curve lag then lead? Can the oceans predict the solar activity 10+ years before it happens? In addition the author (and perhaps references) are claiming that solar eruptions have some significant effect on the temperature? of the Earths oceans but not the local (outside with my thermometer) temperature? I don't quite understand the thermodynamics of that argument (did I miss something?)
I'll admit I'm being a n00b here as solar-climate correlations is not my field, I'm more of a solar particle/EM emissions guy, and just a curious bystander on this topic.
"You can't teach about the Earth's weather without starting with solar weather."
All nice words but "show me the beef". I do Solar and Heliospheric physics for a living and I don't claim to know everything that has been published on the topic of solar-climate relationships. However I've never been to a conference/workshop nor read an article where someone in the field has stated they have "nailed it". Don't get me wrong, nothing would "blow my skirt up" more than being able to prove a direct relationship between the earths climate and sunspot number/ solar wind velocity/ solar wind density/ solar wind temperature/ the proton to He ratio/ the fluence of SEP events/ or even the solar cycle in general. References are welcome to improve my education.
And just to fill in where your professor left off, the topic of space weather has very little if anything to do with the Earths climate/weather. Space weather as currently defined is about the radiation environment and associated magnetospheric indices. It's purpose is to give some type of warning or measurement of just how intense the radiation currently is and what it is expect to be over the next few days/hours. It also attempts to predict the arrival of the CME (-Bz) and it's associated effects. It's used by folks concerned with power grids, GPS accuracy, telecommunications, spacecraft managers, etc... It's not used (to my knowledge) by anyone predicting if I can break out my grill tomorrow.
We cant even predict the weather without real-time pictures, to say nothing of climate prediction. However I do agree with your main point. I've never quite understood the sunspot-climate relationship. As everyone knows the Sun works on an 11 year cycle (or 22 year for you purists). The number of sunspots goes up and down like clockwork, yet I have not seen any study that shows an 11 or 22 year cycle in temperature. Perhaps they are out there and I haven't seen them? Perhaps it takes more than the few years of low sunspot numbers during solar minimum to cause an effect of the climate? If anyone has credible references on this I would like to see them.
A similar thing happed to me recently. I was on my way on a business trip where I had to do a presentation using powerpoint. I was on the airplane cleaning off my laptop trying to free up a little disk space. I have no idea what I did but somehow I totally hosed my MS office app. Thank god I had OO installed. Worked like a charm. Three cheers for OO.
Re:I need to find a new primary news source.
on
Space Weather Warning
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually it was pretty clear that a CME was coming. When a CME is large enough and fast enough it will drive a shock and these shocks accelerate energetic particles. We have spacecraft that detect these particles well ahead of the approaching CME. It was very clear only a few hours after the flare that the CME (or part of it) was heading this way.
If you go to:
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/ace/EPAM_7d.html
You can see the low energy ions (the lower panel) and the electrons (upper panel). The initial burst of particles near the end of day 13 was followed by a steady increase in intensity that continued right up until the CME driven shock passed the spacecraft.
There are many pictures that are taken at a lot of frequencies from a number of different platforms. SOHO takes awsome pictures of the Sun that the human eye cannot see. Kids could care less what frequency of light creates the immage. If a pic is cool then a pic is cool.
Pretty soon we will hear all about how the kids-these-days have figured out that when the anus of the snail is properly licked it will induce a fantastic high.... Thus this new technology will be banned by the department of homeland security.
As a person who has taught a few college level courses I can state that I could care less if students pay attention in class. I know some people like to make attending class the do-all but IMHO class is only one of the available devices that one can use to get the job done. If my students don't want to show up for class that's fine with me. I don't really care if they ever show up, other than on test day. If you can attain the knowledge without my assistance then great, if you need me then all do my best. Either way if a student can perform on test day they get an A, no questions asked.
That's the problem. I did pay attention in class. I do understand that I have only a few options from the "gigaevel" sources available to me ( I use COMCAST and I am un-happy about a great many things...). While It's nice to sit around getting an erection about free-WiFi let's remind ourselves that we live in a for-profit society.
Don't get me wrong.... I would love to just plug in to this free WiFi ISP that is available to us all.
I would also love to get:
television suited to my desires
Music without DRM
Co's. that provide linux drivers for their hardware.
While the free-WiFi fantasy land may actually happen in a few places (for a while) I don't think that it will become the dominant ISP any time soon. And that's sad because I think it's a great idea.
Um.. No your FUD..ing Vonage is not an ISP. Verizon is an ISP and also does VOIP. So you switched to Vonage for your VOIP but who is your ISP now??? There are only so many ISP's available in many places. We could choose from COMCAST who we all know is evil.?. now verison is evil.?. What are we left with now??? AOL? I hope not.
Yea... Unite... down with COMCAST.. down with Verizon... down with XXYYZZ... Oh wait...no one is left. Well I guess I can still get access through supermarket AOL disks.
Holly shit. I've never spent anywhere near that kind of change. Sure I get a failed device here and there but would I spend 4K on 1 freaking device... no way. I can build like 8 systems for that price... and they all kick ass.
I low-price-Newegg all my buys. I accept that 1 in 10 will fail in 2 years... so I'm out like 50 bucks. Anyone who spends serious change on 1 device deserves to get... well you know...
Yea, but APL will loose when these programs are cut.../voyager/ulysses/geotail/etc...
"that money could be used to keep all of the other spacecraft that are being considered for termination operating for a few years"
Yea, In a perfect world that would be exactly where the extra money went but we both know that given the current NASA vision this extra cash would be dumped into our grand new boondoggle--exploration.
Slashdot Mirror
"Interesting, but I'm usually weary of the desks whose lasers are aimed squarely at my balls."
Mod Parent up!!! Funny
"Consider Voyager. Still costing the taxpayers money after all these years. If you threaten to turn it off; you could hear the anguished screams all the way to the edge of the solar system."
What a fArking troll. The absolute pittance that the Voyager program costs (a few million a year) is so far below the background it's not worth discussing, no wonder it was posted AC. One debate on the floor costs more than an entire years worth of funding. Just cancel the debate and boom... Voyager is free for the year.
We actually see eye to eye on most points. I agree with everything you said about the weather. I do understand that it's a complicated business to get into. That was kind of my point in the initial comment is that even with all of the observables and real-time measurements we still do a lousy job of it (IMHO).
But as far as climate modeling goes we don't have all the observables. With a weather model we can test the model right away. Whoops, we were wrong, back to the drawing board. With the kind of modeling I do same thing.... Wrong again, next...
No such luck with climate modeling. We simply cannot test the model for obvious reasons. Your example on the Gulf stream is a good one. The models tell us that if the stream goes away we will have frozen balls. But it's just a model, we have no observables, no way to test it. What if a new stream emurges, one that we have never seen before, not even thought about before. I cant justify this will happen yet nobody can prove it wont because we really have no idea.
This is the exact reason why it's so interesting to study other planets. It gives us a chance to use our models on a different system and hopefully improve what we have. Take for instance Jupiter. The "red eye" has been there for at least 400 years right. I would claim that the eye is part of the jovian climate (it's not a transient event). We really do not understand how this happens yet. Who is to say that Earth wont develop a "blue/white eye" some day that would completely alter the climate for a thousand years? The only thing the modelers could say is "well our models were right but we could not have ever seen that one coming".
I do not think that it's "pointless". In fact I'm an enthusiastic supporter of all scientific research, yes even cow farts. The post today on the entire universe simulations for example. Many replies to that post were of the form... but we don't even understand blank yet, how can we etc.... Any they are exactly right. But I still support the attempt as if we wait until we know everything before we start to model it then advancement comes to a halt. Models of the weather, the climate, solar events, or the universe do not scare me. What does scare me is a government that decides to stop funding of the climate because they don't like the results that are coming out, or will not allow stem cell research because of some religious bias. That's what scares me.
" Climate is much easier to predict than weather"
/. There is obviously a lot of different points of view (i.e. the models suck - and in the professional forums there is every bit as much disagreement on the cause).
Ok, I don't buy it but I'll follow your chain...
"In other words you work on models that predict short term Solar weather, Solar weather is influenced by the sunspot cycle (Solar Climate). Would you say that the intensity, location and timing of an individual sunspot is easier to predict than the 11yr cycle maxima and minima? "
The 11/22 year cycle is not a model, it's not a prediction. It is an observation. We have absolutely no idea why there is an 11/22 year cycle. If all of a sudden the rotation of the planet went from 24 hours to 30 hours (I'm staying away from another weather analogy because I can tell it's a hot button with you) we would have a very good prediction of when the Sun would "come up". If all of a sudden the sunspot cycle went from 11 years to 17 years we would be freaking clueless. There is obviously a lot of work by a lot of people trying to understand the solar dynamo and probably a lot of other theories that I have never heard of, but to say we have a solar-climate-model is just as silly as saying we have an earth-climate-model (sure they are out there but they both need a lot of improvement == "um suck").
"No peer-reviewed literature doubts that the climate record is showing an alarmingly rapid warming of the planet since the early 1950's"
Then you haven't read George-W-Bush-Science-Reviews lately.... Just joking. I'm a liberal atheist.... But seriously I'm missing your point. I don't doubt that the planet is warming. I do agree with what I have seen in the literature on the subject. Just because I think that the current climate models "um suck" does not mean I disagree with the current observations that the temperature seems to be going up. Just take a look at all of the different posts on this topic right here on
"I have a BSc(CS) and have worked with countless Phd's for over 15yrs, does that qualify?"
They you have heard them fight. Scientists love to fight. Hell, half the fun of being a scientist is to fight with your colleagues on whose model is right and wrong and for what reasons. From the matrix... "you don't know a man until you have fought him". If you prefer to sugar-coat reality to match your romantic views of what science should be then fine. I prefer to knock-heads with everyone who challenges my models, even though I know my models suck and so do theirs, because after the bleeding stops I hope we have gained some ground.
"OTOH: I accept there are many serious limitations to the various models (although you have failed to point one out yet)."
Relationship between the 11/22 year solar cycle and the Earth's climate?
Relationship between the solar wind and the Earth's climate?
Relationship between coronal mass ejections and the Earth's climate?
There are probably many papers (peer-reviewed) that discuss these points but as far as I know the scientific community has not accepted these as anything else but "currently under debate == speculation == um sucks".
My Company (~5k) uses SCO. XP is on my desktop and each and every morning I dutifully SSH to my linux box to do my real work. Of course all of my X is handled by SCO's vision/Xvision. I don't like it but I don't make the rules.
What a typical defensive position.
/. idiom for the above.
b ad-about-climate-models point of view. It's not a "pathological aversion", it's about accepting the current state and limitations of the models.
First things first. I never said that Weather = Climate. Of course it doesn't. The point is that predicting the weather should be a lot easier than predicting the climate as weather is here and now (i.e. days or weeks) while climate is obviously a long term problem.
Second point.
I work with models that predict the eruption of solar events and the subsequent energetic particles that make their way to Earth. There are a lot of smart people working on this problem. And you know what... the models "um suck". That's right, I am criticizing my own models. The scientific community has some models that work very well while that vast majority have a long way to go.
"I don't hear anyone refuting physicists, chemists, etc, with such well thought out arguments as "um suck""
No? I guess your in a tizzy over the choice of words here? If I had said "leave a lot to be desired" would that be better? How about "not very accurate" "huge error bars" etc...
I defend "um sucks" as a
If you don't think that physicists challenge each others models, get in very heated arguments over them, use disparaging vocabulary while discussing them, then you don't spend much time around scientists.
Anyone who actually does climate modeling want to stand up and tell us how great these models are, how close to accurate they are, etc... I doubt there will be many takers here.
I guess you support the first-rule-about-climate-models-is-we-don't-talk-
That was a great read. Thanks for the post.
If I were to review that paper I would have a lot of questions for the author (similar to AC reply) and that is kind of the point. Other than challenge the author for such statements as: "It would be a redundant exercise to assess the statistical significance of this distinct result". I've read my fare share of papers and I've seldom seen such a useless statement. Why not just do a quick test and publish the results? OK, perhaps I'm nitpicking. But when I look at Fig 1. I really don't get the point. I'm not saying the author is wrong, I'm just saying that the author should be a bit more quantitative and certainly more clear in his presentation of the data.
Fig. 6 just blew my mind. Showing a temporal relationship between the aa-index and "global land air and sea surface temperature anomalies". First of all perhaps I missed what "global... anomalies" means. But regardless this figure shows one curve leading the other by 10 years (1890-1900), a local min and a local max coincident (1880), then one curve that lagged before leads by 10+ years (1940-1950), and this is attributed to "stored and accumulated in the climate system by processes taking years. Oceans are a candidate because of their thermal inertia". If it's "stored in the oceans" then why does one curve lag then lead? Can the oceans predict the solar activity 10+ years before it happens? In addition the author (and perhaps references) are claiming that solar eruptions have some significant effect on the temperature? of the Earths oceans but not the local (outside with my thermometer) temperature? I don't quite understand the thermodynamics of that argument (did I miss something?)
I'll admit I'm being a n00b here as solar-climate correlations is not my field, I'm more of a solar particle/EM emissions guy, and just a curious bystander on this topic.
"You can't teach about the Earth's weather without starting with solar weather."
All nice words but "show me the beef". I do Solar and Heliospheric physics for a living and I don't claim to know everything that has been published on the topic of solar-climate relationships. However I've never been to a conference/workshop nor read an article where someone in the field has stated they have "nailed it". Don't get me wrong, nothing would "blow my skirt up" more than being able to prove a direct relationship between the earths climate and sunspot number/ solar wind velocity/ solar wind density/ solar wind temperature/ the proton to He ratio/ the fluence of SEP events/ or even the solar cycle in general. References are welcome to improve my education.
And just to fill in where your professor left off, the topic of space weather has very little if anything to do with the Earths climate/weather. Space weather as currently defined is about the radiation environment and associated magnetospheric indices. It's purpose is to give some type of warning or measurement of just how intense the radiation currently is and what it is expect to be over the next few days/hours. It also attempts to predict the arrival of the CME (-Bz) and it's associated effects. It's used by folks concerned with power grids, GPS accuracy, telecommunications, spacecraft managers, etc... It's not used (to my knowledge) by anyone predicting if I can break out my grill tomorrow.
"the best-predicting climate models" ... um suck.
We cant even predict the weather without real-time pictures, to say nothing of climate prediction. However I do agree with your main point. I've never quite understood the sunspot-climate relationship. As everyone knows the Sun works on an 11 year cycle (or 22 year for you purists). The number of sunspots goes up and down like clockwork, yet I have not seen any study that shows an 11 or 22 year cycle in temperature. Perhaps they are out there and I haven't seen them? Perhaps it takes more than the few years of low sunspot numbers during solar minimum to cause an effect of the climate? If anyone has credible references on this I would like to see them.
A similar thing happed to me recently. I was on my way on a business trip where I had to do a presentation using powerpoint. I was on the airplane cleaning off my laptop trying to free up a little disk space. I have no idea what I did but somehow I totally hosed my MS office app. Thank god I had OO installed. Worked like a charm. Three cheers for OO.
Actually it was pretty clear that a CME was coming. When a CME is large enough and fast enough it will drive a shock and these shocks accelerate energetic particles. We have spacecraft that detect these particles well ahead of the approaching CME. It was very clear only a few hours after the flare that the CME (or part of it) was heading this way.
If you go to:
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/ace/EPAM_7d.html
You can see the low energy ions (the lower panel) and the electrons (upper panel).
The initial burst of particles near the end of day 13 was followed by a steady increase in intensity that continued right up until the CME driven shock passed the spacecraft.
Exactly and MOD PARENT UP!!!
There are many pictures that are taken at a lot of frequencies from a number of different platforms. SOHO takes awsome pictures of the Sun that the human eye cannot see. Kids could care less what frequency of light creates the immage. If a pic is cool then a pic is cool.
Pretty soon we will hear all about how the kids-these-days have figured out that when the anus of the snail is properly licked it will induce a fantastic high.... Thus this new technology will be banned by the department of homeland security.
We know exactly what would happen because we have already done it. http://www.phy6.org/Education/whtrap1.html
We track solar events in the GHz frequency range all of the time
l
l #R ADIO
http://sunbase.nict.go.jp/solar/denpa/index.htm
or
http://www.ips.gov.au/Main.php?CatID=5
Lots more can be found at
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IAUWGdoc.htm
Wont these events cause interference? Or is the intensity from the solar events just too low?
We are off-topic now but who cares...
As a person who has taught a few college level courses I can state that I could care less if students pay attention in class. I know some people like to make attending class the do-all but IMHO class is only one of the available devices that one can use to get the job done. If my students don't want to show up for class that's fine with me. I don't really care if they ever show up, other than on test day. If you can attain the knowledge without my assistance then great, if you need me then all do my best. Either way if a student can perform on test day they get an A, no questions asked.
That's the problem. I did pay attention in class. I do understand that I have only a few options from the "gigaevel" sources available to me ( I use COMCAST and I am un-happy about a great many things...). While It's nice to sit around getting an erection about free-WiFi let's remind ourselves that we live in a for-profit society.
Don't get me wrong.... I would love to just plug in to this free WiFi ISP that is available to us all.
I would also love to get:
television suited to my desires
Music without DRM
Co's. that provide linux drivers for their hardware.
While the free-WiFi fantasy land may actually happen in a few places (for a while) I don't think that it will become the dominant ISP any time soon. And that's sad because I think it's a great idea.
Um.. No your FUD..ing Vonage is not an ISP. Verizon is an ISP and also does VOIP. So you switched to Vonage for your VOIP but who is your ISP now??? There are only so many ISP's available in many places. We could choose from COMCAST who we all know is evil.?. now verison is evil.?. What are we left with now??? AOL? I hope not.
Yea... Unite... down with COMCAST.. down with Verizon... down with XXYYZZ... Oh wait...no one is left. Well I guess I can still get access through supermarket AOL disks.
Pardon me!!! 4K here, 2K there...MOD PARENT UP???
Holly shit. I've never spent anywhere near that kind of change. Sure I get a failed device here and there but would I spend 4K on 1 freaking device... no way. I can build like 8 systems for that price... and they all kick ass.
I low-price-Newegg all my buys. I accept that 1 in 10 will fail in 2 years... so I'm out like 50 bucks. Anyone who spends serious change on 1 device deserves to get... well you know...
NO
Yea, but APL will loose when these programs are cut.../voyager/ulysses/geotail/etc...
"that money could be used to keep all of the other spacecraft that are being considered for termination operating for a few years"
Yea, In a perfect world that would be exactly where the extra money went but we both know that given the current NASA vision this extra cash would be dumped into our grand new boondoggle--exploration.
Nope, you can crash your probes all on your own with out having to blame it on conversion issues.
"Maybe we've already been to Mars"
Mod parent up as Funny
"or at least orbited it"
My bad... Mod parent up as Troll.
Screw your patent... I want to buy the rights to your girlfriend!!!