[Pun]

LINK

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – A rocket carrying a NASA satellite crashed near Antarctica after a failed launch early Tuesday, ending a $280 million mission to track global warming from space.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off just before 2 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. But minutes later, a cover protecting the satellite during launch failed to separate from the rocket, a preliminary investigation found.

The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into a polar orbit some 400 miles high to track carbon dioxide emissions. The project was nine years in the making, and the mission was supposed to last two years.

Scientists currently depend on 282 land-based stations — and scattered instrumented aircraft flights — to monitor carbon dioxide at low altitudes.

"Certainly for the science community it's a huge disappointment," said John Brunschwyler, Taurus project manager for Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the rocket and satellite. "It's taken so long to get here."

The rocket landed in the ocean near Antarctica. A group of environment ministers from more than a dozen countries met on the southern continent this week to get the latest science on global warming.

NASA said it will convene a team of experts to investigate the loss of the satellite.

The observatory was NASA's first satellite dedicated to monitoring carbon dioxide on a global scale. Measurements collected from the $280 million mission were expected to improve climate models and help researchers determine where the greenhouse gas originates and how much is being absorbed by forests and oceans.

Last month, Japan successfully launched the world's first satellite to monitor global warming emissions.

Carbon dioxide is the leading greenhouse gas and its buildup helps trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the planet. Carbon dioxide emissions rose 3 percent worldwide from 2006 to 2007, according to international science agencies.

[Mikey]

I read the thing fucked up... I didn't know it CAME BACK TO EARTH!

[Habs]

Global warming isn't rocket science! Or is it?

I find it ironic that a satellite design to help track global warming crashes in one of the place most affected by global warming. Think they will send a team of navy seals to pic up the radioactive stuff in it?

[Lucky]

I ask, for the 100th time in my life... What the fuck is the purpose of NASA? Did we really need to spend $280M to research global warming even if it hadn't broken? Would it have been any less of a waste of time and money? Can't you just throw that $280M at the changes that you know are recommended ANYWAY because they're just smarter on paper?

This board has a bunch of Sci Fi and science nerds so you guys seem like the target group to defend NASA. Seriously... why the fuck does it even exist?

[creepy]

Because it will be worth it in the year 2112 when we finally are able to put people on other planets so the poor and minorties cAn can finish fucking this world up. Of course, we might not make it that long, seeing how the world is going now. It's a waste of money now, but will be worth it in the future. Or so they assume.

I know you asked for a Sci-Fi nerds insight, and I'm neither. My apologies, Lucky.

[Lucky]

Its concurred to you that you're actually the only person amused by your stupid racist act and that a much more well liked poster wore thin with it awhile ago?

No? Sorry.

[GoVols]

TANG.

That is a good enough reason for me for NASA to exist.

NASA has become ultra-politicized which has led to crap like this. I don't think the idea of NASA is bad, but when politicians take it over, it can only lead to stupidity.

[creepy]

Feb 24, 2009 17:47:58 GMT -5 Lucky said:

Its concurred to you that you're actually the only person amused by your stupid racist act and that a much more well liked poster wore thin with it awhile ago?

No? Sorry.

Actually, that wasn't the racism shtick. I can just see that happening, All the rich people get the new worlds and the people who can't afford the trip get to stay down here.


You don't think that's the way it would happen? Oh, sorry. Land for everybody!

[The Jewish Cunthead]

Does this mean you guys won't vote for Apollo 13 in the showdown?

[Lucky]

Feb 24, 2009 17:55:21 GMT -5 GoVols said:

TANG.

That is a good enough reason for me for NASA to exist.

NASA has become ultra-politicized which has led to crap like this. I don't think the idea of NASA is bad, but when politicians take it over, it can only lead to stupidity.

See, I DO think the idea of NASA is bad. I mean, I'm all for intellectual curiosity and man's history of exploration but once it starts costing a LOT of money shouldn't it take a back seat to more important things? If our country was a utopia where everyone was happy I'd be all for NASA. But as long as we have serious moral and political problems shouldn't extra curricular like NASA take a back seat?

I mean, come on. We're not fucking finding anything in space that will help us any time soon. NASA seems to exist for 3 reasons.

1) Its some silly idealistic notion that keeps people happy and ignoring real problems.

2) Nerds freak out when a satellite finds evidence of the possibility of evidence of the portability of life a LONG ASS TIME AGO on another rock. And by life we mean a plant or something, not civilizations of advanced creatures.

3) Scientists spend an ungodly amount of money to do experiments in space that I assume they could do on Earth using slight modifications on the equipment NASA uses to train and prepare for space.

Maybe I'm missing it. Maybe I'm missing the REAL and remotely plausible purpose for NASA. Maybe I'm just ignorant to the tons of scientific advancements its made that have helped society and could not have been achieved without space travel. But if I am I want to be clued into it. Because intellectual curiosity shouldn't be worth $17 billion a year unless its yielding results.

And Wiki doesn't have any easy to locate list of "Shit that came from NASA over 50 years and a crazy amount of money."

[GoVols]

Lucky, I agree with pretty much all you're saying. I think there is a place for NASA and most of it deals with the military, cuz I sure as hell want to be the ones with the most knowledge of space if and when we get to the point of space weaponry.

But NASA has been politicized to the point that a huge percentage of its budget focuses on global warming. The head of NASA is an Al Gore buddy and leading proponent of man made global warming. You probably know my views on global warming and I don't want to start of "yes it is, no it isn't" debate here, but why has this become the realm of NASA? Study climates all you want, but NASA has become a front for the global warming crowd and it has ruined the organization over the past decade or so.

My two cents.

[Habs]

OK, I'll defend NASA just for the fuck of it (and for the fact that when I was a kid, I wanted to go to space).

Let me just say that NASA, like many other organisation (UN comes to mind) is an old institution that didn't age well and would need a MAJOR overhaul. Now that being said.


NASA IS THE SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s the reason personal computer are so small today, the reason plastics are so wide spread, the reason we have Velcro and a bunch of other cool stuff that we take for granted (like the zero gravity flushing toilet!) But the real reason behind NASA is funding the research to put nuclear warheads in Moscow from anywhere in the world. It's way more population friendly to say that you are in a race to put someone on the moon and bring it back then to say we want to be the first to be able to nuke those commie bastard from half way across the world. Rocket = Ballistic Missile. That is the sole reason NASA got the get go. Now afterwards, spy satellite were the new thing, so you needed rocket to bring that stuff up there, but it also had to be kept super secret, what better cover than NASA? They say this satellite that crashed cost $280M, maybe the thing costs $100M, the rest of the budget is really for something else, military based and ultra secret.

“Now micro computer are the result of NASA, this Habs guy is talking out of his ass”, you are 80% correct, since I talk out of my ass 80% of the time, but putting stuff in space, is expensive, and the #1 cost factor is weight. Now those of you that have seen Apollo 13 have to understand, they did all that with a computer that has the power of a calculator, and not a scientific one, but rather those that you would find on your wrist watch in the late 80, and the thing took the space of an entire room. Trying to keep the weight down is why research was made to make the computer smaller and smaller.
Velcro was invented to keep things from flying around. Why not push button you ask, because of the risk of a spark, which in an oxygen rich environment is not the best of things.
Also, the US spent million on developing a pen that would work in 0 gravity. How much did the Soviet spend for the same thing you ask? The huge amount of $0, they used a pencil!

Now I don’t expect to change Lucky’s mind with my argument, but someone had to try.

[Pun]

Lucky, here is the reason NASA exists.

(CNN) -- As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.

Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.

[creepy]

Also, if a meteor comes crashing toward earth, we have a chance to send oil drillers up in space to drill into the meteor and explode the thing from the inside. Can't do that w/o NASA.

[Batman]

I'm really annoyed that Heinlein's article "Spinoff" isn't on the webs anywhere. It expands very nicely on habs and vols argument that the scientific advances that have come out of NASA have more than justified its minuscule budget--even to those who don't give a damn about their primary mission of discovery.

"Minuscule?" Yes. As in ludicrously tiny compared to the federal budget as a whole. (And imho when considering the importance of their mission.) link to Discover Magazine

I know that a lot of people have a hard time grasping large numbers. Our puny brains, so recently evolved, don’t have a concrete example of a million, or a billion. We have a hard time past about 150!

So it doesn’t surprise me that the U.S. budget is difficult to comprehend, totaling $2.7 trillion. Still, I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that the average American thinks that NASA gets 1/4 of the U.S. total budget:

Americans in general have no idea what NASA’s "cost" is. In fact, most members of the public have no idea how much any government agency’s budget is. What we do know — and have recently documented — is that the public perception of NASA’s budget is grossly inflated relative to actual dollars. In a just-completed study, we asked respondents what percentage of the national budget is allocated to NASA … NASA’s allocation, on average, was estimated to be approximately 24% of the national budget (the NASA allocation in 2007 was approximately 0.58% of the budget.)

A lot of people think NASA is a waste of time and money, and maybe this is why; they have a grossly overinflated idea of how much NASA spends. When NASA loses a $150 million probe, that’s a lot of real money, but hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend as a nation (and remember, we spend $11 million per hour in Iraq).

I’ve written about this before, on what NASA does with its paltry percentage. NASA faces a clear issue here: they do an incredible amount of work and exploration with a small amount of money. People think that they don’t do very much at all and spend vast amounts of money. All NASA needs to do is educate the public on their real budget. Once it’s put into perspective, really made clear, I bet public support for NASA would go way up.

To be sure, a huge amount of NASA’s budget is wasted (I am not a big supporter of the space station or the Shuttle because of cost and mission, though I do not deny how cool they are), and that is a priority. But at the same time, if they could get the public to truly understand how little of the national budget they get, they might be able to actually get them to rally behind a real project, like getting back to the Moon, or building even better probes to the planets, moon, comets, and asteroids in our solar system — not to mention building bigger and more sensitive telescopes that can see the Universe across the electromagnetic spectrum.

I remember hearing a talk by a Hubble scientist years ago, and he said that if you download two or three Hubble images and use them to decorate your office or as a desktop wallpaper, you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of the telescope. I think he made a really good point. Exploration, science, understanding, beauty: the price on these is small, and it’s even smaller than most people think!

[Lucky]

I only read your quote so I apologize if the article expands on it. I promise I'll take the time to read it later. I'm just one of those who has some kind of block about reading a quote vs clicking a link and reading its source.

But it seems like just an argument meant to distract. Money is money. Whether MORE money is being spent elsewhere doesn't change it. And if we're talking about "waste" then it really doesn't matter. $280M is a sizeable amount of money. That its a small percentage of the national budget doesn't change that. IF (and I'm just saying for the sake of argument) we agree that the probe to track carbon dioxide emissions was a waste of time and money all along than that's $280M that could be devoted to something more worthwhile. $17 billion may be a fraction of $2.7 trillion but its still a huge amount of money.

The argument should NOT be "what's the biggest waste" or "how much of the budget is it." It should be if its worth what it costs. Period. "Its not 1/4 of the budget" just sounds like a strawman to me. Attack a spin on the argument, tear it apart, and then distract from the real question. Is it worth it?

Velcro and zero gravity pens? Hey, I'll be the first to say velcro can be handy but if its one of the big tangible results of NASA than I think that proves my case that the payout isn't worth the cost. "NASA is cool." Spaceships and cool toys. I already knew that. I know that tech and science geeks get off on satellite video and weird toys. I was a kid in the '80s when velcro, Tang, and anti gravity pens showed up. But that shit sure as hell ain't worth it.

Now are military uses worth it? In theory, perhaps. I can buy NASA's purpose during the big Cold War space race. But practically how much application is left? Computers are smaller/cheaper because of NASA? Ok. I'm inclined to believe that this could have happened all on its own but ok. But then I feel like we're talking about a weird idea. NASA doing all sorts of shit and rather then yielding results from that stuff, handing us the tools they used and saying "Hey, this is better than what you have."

I'm not asking for the demolition of NASA. If it has REAL practical purposes - scientific, military, or otherwise - then by all means, keep it going. But if the purpose of missions to the moon or proves to Mars is "exploration" and "discovery"... well, then fuck. We have bigger issues. Don't we? And I don't think some mildly useful tool coming from the experiment justifies that, nor the fact that its not the most expensive thing Washington is spending money on.

[Habs]

How about this, by having NASA do what they do, they come up with new problems (technical and scientific) that need new solutions. Just like in Apollo 13 when they have the round stuff that needs to fit into square stuff with very limited supplies. What I'm trying to say is that NASA is a place where big brains can do what they are good at, solving complex problems. Just this make the human race develop. I know it's not the greatest argument in the world, but we need a place/projects where these guys can do that type of thinking. Like the Manhattan Project. But I agree that NASA needs an overhaul.

[Lucky]

And again, I'm ok with the basic philosophy. I'm ok with intellectual curiosity. With man's desire for exploration. With letting "big brains" play in a workshop so they can make use of their brains. I'd even buy into the notion that its a necessary thing for the overall benefit of mankind because staying complacent is bad. But there's realistically gotta be a line where the cost outweighs the benefit. And I can't help but feel that line falls short of $17.3 billion a year.

And like I've said, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe $17.3 billion is just right. Maybe if so I would assume there's a basic bit of book keeping available to show that. And if there isn't, then quite frankly there should be. Because that's my point. NASA FEELS to me like an uncapped project where the expenditure is justified by vague philosophical notions. And while I may agree that "we need a place where big brains can do what they're good at" if you don't set limits on that and don't evaluate what they're doing then you just open the door for uncontrollable spending.

And when the nation runs huge deficits and is entering a depression than MAYBE "a place where big brains can do what they're good at" is a luxury the nation can't afford. Because I'd bet money that the human race's development as a species isn't going to get fucked over by a 5-10 year break. But a couple of hundred billion dollars MIGHT help America in the short term.

[GoVols]

Lucky, if I may try to clarify what I think you're saying...NASA doesn't have clearly defined goals. It seems that you would be ok with NASA if you knew what it was they were doing, rather than just this big blank check of "discovery."

It's kind of like what I said earlier. NASA has been able to use the blank check to do whhatever they want, using the cloak of scientific discovery as a shield from public scrutiny. Now I see it as a way to politicize the agency. Others may see it differently. When the goal was to get to the moon and every available resource was thrown at that project, it was more defined and more palatable to the public. But when it becomes what it is now, it's difficult to justify that amount of money for something that seems more hypothetical than anything.

[Tommy]

Mar 1, 2009 13:59:07 GMT -5 Lucky said:

And again, I'm ok with the basic philosophy. I'm ok with intellectual curiosity. With man's desire for exploration. With letting "big brains" play in a workshop so they can make use of their brains. I'd even buy into the notion that its a necessary thing for the overall benefit of mankind because staying complacent is bad. But there's realistically gotta be a line where the cost outweighs the benefit. And I can't help but feel that line falls short of $17.3 billion a year.

And like I've said, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe $17.3 billion is just right. Maybe if so I would assume there's a basic bit of book keeping available to show that. And if there isn't, then quite frankly there should be. Because that's my point. NASA FEELS to me like an uncapped project where the expenditure is justified by vague philosophical notions. And while I may agree that "we need a place where big brains can do what they're good at" if you don't set limits on that and don't evaluate what they're doing then you just open the door for uncontrollable spending.

And when the nation runs huge deficits and is entering a depression than MAYBE "a place where big brains can do what they're good at" is a luxury the nation can't afford. Because I'd bet money that the human race's development as a species isn't going to get fucked over by a 5-10 year break. But a couple of hundred billion dollars MIGHT help America in the short term.

A couple hundred billion dollars won't help shit right now. Regardless, that's not NASA's budget. It's about $17b. If you factor in inflation, that number has been SLASHED since the Regan Administration. In other words, it costs a hell of a lot less now than it has in the past.

Your line earlier in the thread "We have more pressing social and economic pressures on Earth right now". It SOUNDS right, but shouldn't that be the EXACT reason to be looking for alternate planets to move to? As over-population nears the tipping point, it's clear that short of genocide there has to be another solution.

NASA has brought us Velcro, sure. It's also brought us Super Glue, the Microcomputer, and GPS. It's made Live TV Worldwide possible. It's made "tape delay" obselete. It's made cell phones possible. It's made Modern Meterology so accurate that they can tell you when it's going to snow at your house, and tell within and inch how much you're going to get. How many lives have been saved by Weather Satellites alone?

And if you're a warmonger like Vols, the end of the Cold War, capturing Saddam Hussein, both thanks to Spy Satellites.

Your ROI when it comes to NASA is a hell of a lot more than the $11 million and hour you're spending in Iraq alone, a more worthless waste of time I don't think this country has ever seen. The soldiers are brave as fuck and have to be respected and honored as such; but there's no mission other than "don't get killed". The country is no safer, and the region is MORE unstable than it was before.

In bad economic times, it's easy to rail on a department like NASA, but NASA has made this country money long-term through innovation and discovery. All you have to do is sit back and think about it.

[Pun]

Yet another reason NASA exists:

(CNN) -- Calling it a mission that may fundamentally change humanity's view of itself, NASA on Friday prepared to launch a telescope that will search our corner of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets.

The Kepler spacecraft is scheduled to blast into space on top of a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida just before 11 p.m. ET.

"This is a historical mission. It's not just a science mission," NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler said during a pre-launch news conference.

"It really attacks some very basic human questions that have been part of our genetic code since that first man or woman looked up in the sky and asked the question: Are we alone?"

Kepler contains a special telescope that will stare at 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years as it trails Earth's orbit around the Sun.

The spacecraft will look for tiny dips in a star's brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front of it -- an event called a transit.

The instrument is so precise that it can register changes in brightness of 20 parts per million in stars that are thousands of light years away.

"Being able to make that kind of a sensitive measurement over a very large number of stars was extremely challenging," Kepler project manager James Fanson said.

"So we're very proud of the vehicle we have built. This is a crowning achievement for NASA and a monumental step in our search for other worlds around other stars."

Are we alone?

The $600 million mission is named after Johannes Kepler, a 17th-century German astronomer who was the first to correctly explain planetary motion. His discoveries combined with modern technology may soon help to answer whether we are alone in the universe or whether Earth-like worlds inhabited by some type of life are common.

"We won't find E.T., but we might find E.T.'s home," said William Borucki, science principal investigator for the Kepler mission.

About 330 "exoplanets" -- those circling sun-like stars outside the solar system -- have been discovered since the first was confirmed in 1995.

Most are gas giants like Jupiter, but some have been classified as "super earths," or worlds several times the mass of our planet, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution who serves on the Kepler Science Council. They are too hot to support life, he added, calling them "steam worlds."

Europe's COROT space telescope caused a stir last month when it spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice that of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.

Scientists have marveled how strange some of the alien worlds are.

"The density of these planets has been astounding," Borucki said. "We're finding planets that float like a piece of foam on water, [with] very, very low densities. We're finding some planets where the densities are heavier than that of lead."

The Kepler telescope, however, is seeking something much more familiar: Earth-like planets with rocky surfaces, orbiting in their stars' habitable, or "Goldilocks," zones -- not too hot or too cold, but just right for liquid water to exist. Watch a NASA scientist explain where life could exist »

Quest for a 'pale blue dot'

Once Kepler spots a planet, scientists will be able to calculate its size, mass, orbital period, distance from star and surface temperature, Boss said. He called the mission a "step one" that will tell astronomers how hard it is to find nearby habitable worlds.

"Once we know how many there really are ... then NASA will be able to build space telescopes that can actually go out and take a picture of that nearby 'Earth' and measure the elements and compounds in its atmosphere of the planet and give us some hint as to whether or not it's got life," Boss said.

Boss believes that there may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy. He said scientists should know by 2013 -- the end of Kepler's mission -- whether life in the universe could be widespread.

The 20-year goal is to someday take a picture of a pale blue dot orbiting a nearby star, said Debra Fischer, an astronomy professor at San Francisco State University, during a NASA news conference.

Boss called it a potentially unprecedented time of discovery for scientists.

"Sometimes, people call this the golden age of astronomy. I think it's more like the platinum age of astronomy. It's beyond gold," Boss said.

[Attitude Adjuster]

This is totally Evan Longria's fault.