Some links to tide you over while John works out technical issues with his work computer and I at least pretend to get something done in the lab:
* Wal-Mart has a wine label coming out soon, but they haven’t announced a label name yet. Which came up most often in customer surveys? Gay Orbit has the scoop.
* Highlights from the great Franklin-Bush debate.
* Rooftop ads have become popular since the advent of Google Earth, but this one strikes me as a bad idea.
* A new explanation for those embarrassing early morning passes at the mailman.
Have at it.
Krista
Oh dear, that rooftop ad does seem unfortunate. Where is that? We have Google Earth at home, and I want to take a peek at it later.
demimondian
Now this is a fascinating decision. The conservatives argued that, yes, regulating how morphine is used is a legitimate federal interest, and the liberals argued that the Congress hadn’t meant to give that power to the attorney general. Sounds like they’re both right…and the correct majority won.
srv
Actually, it’s a great idea. You can find every Target in your area visually via Google (assuming they’ll update satellite shots every year). Not like anyone is going to bomb them.
srv
Oh, NASA Administrator tells astronomy crowd to expect crumbs as manned programs are going to take all the money:
Astronomers Lower Expectations
So instead of NASA finding earth-like planets in the next 15 years, the Euros will have to do it for us.
demimondian
Somebody please tell me why we’re still chasing Shrub’s Mars Folly? Yes, manned space flight is massively cool, but it’s not a useful government expense. (Ob disc: my grandfather first computed the light curve of Betelgeuse, so I have a bit of a bias.)
Ancient Purple
“Brokeback Mountain” took top honors last night at the Golden Globes. This is great news for its trek to the Oscars. This is simply a fantastic film and deserves the praise it is getting.
Also, any film that makes the wacko religious right squirm gets bonus points in my book.
Lines
Demi:
the man wants a legacy, thats seems to be the thing pushing most of his decisions. Its an ego-centric plan that ignores the reality of the situation, and that is that manned flight to Mars is dangerous even though we’ve proved that its feasable. Move on, maybe try to get a Junior High library named after you.
Pb
I’m all for going to Mars, but I think we should start by terraforming it first. Maybe as part of the war on terra…
Lines
What would be proven by a manned mission to mars, bitches? We’ve shown that we can hit a planet multiple times over, we’ve proven we can land on it and survive. The new Pluto mission will show that the INEEL engine technology is feasable and safe. So now what? Prove that we can send some young astronauts to Mars, bitches and bring them home safe?
Mars, bitches. Mars.
Ignore the curtain with the man behind it, please.
Sojourner
You already have the answer to your question.
It’s a way for Shrub to prove his science manliness. Or so he thinks.
demimondian
No, INEEL was Clinton’s driving force.
demimondian
And in a year, will he be saying that he really doesn’t care where Mars is, either?
jack
I was hoping for an interesting ‘debate’ between Bush and Franklin. Even if it was coming from Kos. I should have known better. Next time, maybe someone should remind them that a debate requires questions. Comparing random statements doesn’t lead anywhere.
And I always laugh at the short-sighted individuals who scoff at manned spaceflight. Particularly the retards that point out that by spending money on manned spaceflight instead of astronomy Europe will have to discover earthlike worlds for us–since they’re(apparently) concentrating on astronomy.
Here’s a question, how do we get to those earth-like worlds without manned spaceflight?
demimondian
Umm…we don’t. Whether we have manned spaceflight or not, we don’t ever reach those planets.
But, hey, don’t let the facts of interstellar travel get in your way. We don’t really care where the starts are, do we?
The Other Steve
I don’t have a problem with a manned mission to Mars.
As long as Bush is on the first ship.
Lines
evidently jack is far ahead of the rest of the scientific community, already having located an “earth like planet” to head out to.
Tell me, Jack, how will a manned mission to Mars, bitches, ever increase our knowledge of interstellar travel? Will we suddenly discover statis sleep? What it will do is destroy 2 astronauts at the cost of billions with little gain. The moon is a similar target, is more feasable for colonization (mining, science), and would produce faster and more reliable results for study. Why is Mars important? Besides, it has ghosts.
jack
That’s right Demimondian. The facts said that the world was flat once. And that men couldn’t fly. And that men couldn’t go into space. And that men couldn’t walk on the moon.
Yep. Facts.
Some of us look up at night. Some of us understand that we are not the holders of all the knowledge in the universe, that there are things wie will learn and discover that will make this age look primitive by comparison.
Try it sometime, Demi.
Pb
Lines, obviously we should go to Mars first because of its secret underground bases, to say nothing of the alien artifacts. Oh, and don’t forget the 17,000 metric tons of Martian gold they took out…
Seriously, though, terraforming Mars is a good idea, long term–much better than just sending astronauts there to play tag with it just because we can.
Pb
‘Facts’. You can prove anything with ‘facts’…
demimondian
Jack…do please tell me where the nearest earthlike planet is. And then, when you do that, tell me why we’d want to colonize Venus?
Lines
Because thats where all the women are, Demi
demimondian
Yeah. I know. Things like “11.7 light years to the nearest sunlike star”. And “two to four billion years to raise the oxygen level in the atmosphere high enough to support life outside of the ocean.”
Don’t bother me with facts. They’re not interesting…I want Mars, biatches!
demimondian
Is that a fact?
Pb
I thought there were Amazon Women on the Moon…
Krista
Lines – I’m trying to figure out how to accurately type out that “wanh – wanh – WAAAAAAAAH” Sesame Street-like sound that should come after what you just said.
Lines
You know, famous book? Men are from …
And Krista, can you explain? I hate to ask, but I really think I want to get the point of your joke
Pb
Lines,
also, badump-bump-ching!
(thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week…)
demimondian
_Men are from Seven Habits of Highly Successful People_? What does that have to do with Venus?
jack
What we know today is not what we’ll know tomorrow. As we learn more avenues open to us. That is a fact.
Oddly enough, 11.7 lightyears to the nearest sunlike star is not a fact. It’s an approximation. The second ‘fact’ given is hyperbole–what ocean on what planet? Unless you’re talking about Earth–in which case it’s still not a fact, it is a theory, based on observed evidence.
You all crush dreams so easily. Happily would you wallow in your sty, gazing out through the murk at a universe you deny to yourselves.
Fortunately, you cannot deny it to me.
Krista
Yes, Lines. We know.
That sound was often made on Sesame Street when someone would make a particularly corny, yet funny joke. Like in the classic Ernie and Bert “Banana In My Ear” skit.
Lines
Oh, the trumpet sound, now I know what you mean, thanks :)
And thank you for reminding me of my childhood again, I loved that skit.
Krista
Me too. Good times…in front of the tv in my footie pyjamas and pigtails, with my favorite doll by my side, checking out what Grover was up to. I have to admit that Cookie Monster’s googly eyes scared the hell out of me until I was about 5, though.
Phillip J. Birmingham
One thing to note: that Target store is in Rosemont, Illinois, and is the closest one to O’Hare International Airport. I suspect that this accident of geography had more to do with the roof painting than Google Earth.
srv
Given that I worked on the Shuttle program, I think I’ve earned the right, DougJ.
What would instill in humanity a desire for interstellar flight more:
1) Apollo Redux (mars isn’t really going to happen, even under this current program)
2) Terrestrial Planet Finder spectrographs identify earth-sized, habitable planets with oxygen/nitrogen/CO2 atmospheres?
demimondian
Hush, Lines. Part of the fishing game is that sock puppet and I fight it out without anybody acknowledging that the S.P. is, or might be, or bears any resemblance to, a mathematician who once attended Harvard College.
demimondian
Phooey — I typed wrong there. Not “Lines”, “srv”.
demimondian
Oh, Jack, how poetic:
You caught me! I’m a reality-based thug, that’s all I am, squashing the dreams of the innocent few under the iron boot heel of “facts”. Next thing you know, I’ll be pretending that…who knows…the Earth is more than 5000 years old.
What a thought!
demimondian
Actually, srv, I suspect that from a sensors point of view, I’d really rather build my O2/N3/CO2 spectrograph on the surface of the Moon than I would on a space station. Lunar observatories would get all the benefits of Hubble and Chandra without being unmanned.
(And, hey, wouldn’t you want to do an observing session on the far side of the moon with no sun and no earth to worry about? How about helioscopy without an atmosphere? Oooh, baby…)
jack
Ah, Demi, how droll. And deft!
You avoid my poiunting out things that had been taken as ‘facts’ that were proved wrong–and yet you use a variation in your post–at one time, the Biblical account was ‘fact’.
It has been since proven wrong. As have other ‘facts’ that I use in my illustration. Why is that so irrelevent to you? Do you clutch so tightly at what we know now that the idea that things could change frightens you?
You sound like those people who still live on a 5000 year old Earth.
And srv, working on the shuttle program earns you no ‘rights’–particularly if you, as someone who has worked to make manned spaceflight a reality(taking your claim at face value), are against it. Perhaps that’s part of the problem–employing people who don’t believe in what they are doing isn’t a good way to get ahead.
What would instill a desire for interstellar flight in humanity? Being able to go to space. Being able to get out there. That would do it.
Your questions? How about both? Weren’t the whiners prattling about how, while we’re seeking ways to put men in space, Europe is looking for Earth-like worlds? A simple division of labor! Who coulda thunk it? There you have both tasks raised in your questions already being performed.
We’ll build the car, and they’ll make the roadmap. Together we can have the stars. Doesn’t sound too bad to me.
But, of course, Demi says we’ll never get the stars–I take it you agree? Then why not invest in intrasystem manned flight? If you’re so sure we can’t get to the stars then the worlds that might be found are valuable only as scientific reasearch subjects. Whereas the solar system is somplace we could go.
srv
Oh, I’m not up on the latest techniques. I must learn to adapt.
Well, I quit the program rather than work on ISS, so I’m not voting that way. Since I’m sure the astronmers are biased (I’ve never seen a lunar-based TPF proposal), what are the technical trade offs between a deep-space TPF and a lunar-based one?
Given it’ll cost ~100B to get to the point of setting up a TPF on the moon, my vote is for real science over public works projects.
demimondian
Yup, you know, it’s just not a fact that there’s a certain upper bound on the parallax of a certain star, which provides a hard lower bound on the distance to that star. Nope, not a fact at all.
And, hey, the whole “relativity” thing, that Einstein shit? Nah, Mercury’s orbit doesn’t precess.
And evolution…it’s just a theory.
srv
That would be trivial, if we weren’t flushing money down the hole in the ME.
Jack, maybe you can explain this one to us:
Hiem Quantum Theory for Space Propulsion Physics
jack
Demi, I’ve met few people as thick as you.
You seem obsessed with behaving as if I’m holding to some outmoded view–the very action you are engaged in, whilst I, on the other hand am constantly pointing out that we don’t know everything, that our abilities will grow as our knowledge and understanding does.
Einstein was a physicist, not a priest, he would accept new input. Unlike you, apparently.
demimondian
The big tradeoff is thermal and graviational warping of the Compton scatterer/mirror. In space, you have thermal warping, of course, but the total thermal mass of the sensor is finite, and so you can compensate for radiant input efficiently.
On a planetoid, you have a huge thermal mass right next to your collecter array, so you have to deal with the heat in a different way. And, of course, since you aren’t in orbit, you have to worry about gravitational distortion of the collector. That’s a far smaller issue on the Moon than it is on Earth, but, hey, it’s still real.
demimondian
Why, thank you! I’m trying to lose weight anyway.
But you’re right about Einstein, you know. He had such an open mind about quantum mechanics, after all. It’s purely an illusion that he spent the last thirty years of his life trying to build a theory which explained the photoelectric effect away.
Lines
it sure seems like jack has latched onto the idea that going to Mars is somehow going to open up some vast frontier and life will never be the same again. However, he hasn’t explained how travelling to Mars is any different than travelling to the moon. He also assumes that a 25 year project is somehow going to get people more interested in space travel and programs. Maybe he ignores the reality that, even given the beautiful panoramics and the flyby atmospheric captures that have occurred in the past 2 years, people in general just don’t give a damn about space. Those beautiful panoramics of the Mars horizon you have on your ceiling, jack? No one gives a damn except a small percentage of our population. The romantic pull of space died for the general citizens of this country shortly have the last gunfighter.
Lines
ooops, have = after
Lines
Reporter: “Mr. President, how are you going to continue to defend your administration and its decision to spy on American citizens without going through the FISA courts?”
Bush: “Have I told you about my plan to drill for oil on Mars, bitches?”
demimondian
Lines says:
You know, I don’t think that’s even close to true. Look at the furore about Spaceship One, for instance, and about the X Prize in general. It sure seems like the romance is still there…I just don’t see a lot of value in throwing people up into space to do high school physics experiments except as PR.
skip
Bush’s Mars plan, like so many of his quasi-visionary initiatives, is timed far enough into the future that he won’t be paying for it (in any and all senses of the word).
And by the time THIS war is payed for, M-theory (aka String) will be packed away on the shelf with Phlogiston and Elan Vitale.
Like Whitehead said. “Science is mere experience arranged in the most economical order to this point.”
Lines
Demi, some of that romance still exists in pockets of space-extremism where they pay attention to everything happening in and out of NASA. I think thats great, but if you were to stop and ask Joe Blow on the street about the X Prize or who Burt Rutan is, they would look at you like you’re crazy. Even the Mars Rover news was page 13’d after a couple weeks. It was a momentary flash in the pan for America, no one gives a damn anymore.
I’m not gleeful about that in the least. I just want public monies to be spent on projects that will show greater gains in shorter amounts of time. The days of being able to go to space for “feel good in your country” effects are so yesterday and worn out. There lacks novelty to so many. A manned Mars trip might gain public support at first, but the timeline for such an expedition is so long that most attention spans just couldn’t even imagine it.
The Other Steve
Gotta agree with demimondian.
I think going to Mars is a worthy endeavor. Much more worthy than to be used as a cheap prop by a President worried about his approval ratings plummeting below 30%.
srv
I wonder where all this anti-intellectualism and anti-science is going to lead us. 10 Commandments on the Moon?
demimondian
The Moon is flat, though — which side would they go on?
Lines
I’m not proposing anti-intellectualism nor anti-science. I’m proposing that we build up knowledge in these areas in ways that will benefit mankind now. So far I see little gain in either area in a trip to Mars, and no one here has given me a shred of evidence that a trip to Mars would do anything for mankind, other than waste money and harm a few astronauts for the remaining years of their life.
Tell me, what would be gained from a Mars trip that couldn’t be done with another trip to the moon at a tenth or less of the cost? Another footprint in the dust of a planet?
If you want to do something that hasn’t been done, figure out how to travel to the bottom of the ocean caverns. Fund science in energy generation that doesn’t require finite consumables. How many people can be saved by providing medicines and researching new ones?
demimondian
Lines…srv is on your side of the debate.
Let’s be clear: I’d love to send men to Mars. (Hell, FDDD was heartbroken as a child when she discovered that her eyesight would preclude her from going into space.) I just don’t think it’s a good use of money any more. In this case, the Chinese said “we’re sending a man to the Moon”, and Bush responded “Yeah, and we’re sending a man to Mars.”
What are we going to learn by sending someone to Mars? If we’re going to spend the money, let’s send a rover to Ceres. Now THAT would be mondo cool!
srv
I was just commenting on the state of affairs.
Well, we need those congressional districts and we need a few heroes. How about a War on Space?
I think Griffiths statement is pretty much a GFY to the science crowd.
The Other Steve
Are you kidding? If it works, Bush’s approval rating will go back up to 38%!
That’s gotta count for something!
Frank
Wierd. No one here has said what I think is the obvious reason for the Mars plan. Since all the major outlays will happen after Bush leaves office it is currently just an excuse to end most of what we are doing in space, and hand money over to favored contractors. When the Mars program gets cancelled a few years down the road Bush hopes to avoid the blame for being the one responsible for destroying the US space program.