NASA

rainy-j wrote:

Wow. That's a lot of money that wasn't used to feed starving children. I'm impressed
*poofs out of thread in a poof of smoke*

nice ninja skills!

Purdue has a moon rock. its not very special, looks like gravel. as for stem cells not sure how i feel about that that yet. the whole idea seems kind of elitist i think. it's such a limited resource that i doubt id be able to really help more than just a chosen few with an Scrooge McDuck pool of money.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

NASA mission controllers say there is a 95% chance that the Kepler spacecraft will lift off from Cape Canaveral tonight at 10:49 p.m. EST.
The spectacular night launch will propel Kepler on a mission to find Earth-like planets around other stars.

Hey all you kids hanging out in Florida - We should be able to see the glow when it lifts off!!

If you are in St Augustine, look south - you are almost close enough to hear the engines and feel the heat. Those down in Pompano should look due north, you should be able to see the launch and the firey glow in the sky after liftoff.

see nasa's at the point we're they dont need billions of dollars to operate, there modernized right now. whats the point of updating what you have and never using it, just keep updating. use it now, update later. perhaps down the road after afew of there projects are complete they can get a bigger budget and reupdate.

to do, is not to spend. and to spend is not to do.

use what they have now..makes since to me, waiting is whats killing them

nickyno wrote:

see nasa's at the point we're they dont need billions of dollars to operate, there modernized right now. whats the point of updating what you have and never using it, just keep updating. use it now, update later. perhaps down the road after afew of there projects are complete they can get a bigger budget and reupdate.

to do, is not to spend. and to spend is not to do.

use what they have now..makes since to me, waiting is whats killing them

They aren't modernized right now, they have the space shuttle that in less than a year will be retired(long overdue) and then they will no longer have a space ship. They just spent millions and millions of dollars building the ISS, and now they won't even be able to get to it. They're going to have to wait 5 years before they have a space ship again, at the earliest. They are loosing the science race in my humble opinion.

This shit's EXPENSIVE!!!! A fighter jet costs something like 25 million, I can't imagine how much the space shuttle costs. Plus fuel. Plus salaries for well trained, hard working, deserving, workers. They definitely need more than $1 billion to keep up their research. But we're in tough times and NASA might have to try to find other sources for a year or two or else try to find some other things to research if we can't afford to send a person into space for a bit.

a stealth bomber costs over a billion so i can't imagine a space ship.

i read they just launched a ship thats mission is to find earth like planets.

pintsogin wrote:

a stealth bomber costs over a billion so i can't imagine a space ship.

i read they just launched a ship thats mission is to find earth like planets.

i was trying hard and the only number i can find is it cost 6.7 billion dollars per space shuttle, that was in 1971 though, so significantly more, but do keep in mind that they've lasted almost 40 years.

Also, each mission costs somewhere between $450 million and $1.5 billion dollars, it's expensive shit.

Pocket change.

ya i was thinking of picking one up the other day, i decided to buy a small african nation instead... no biggy

And another shuttle launch is getting ready to light up the night sky - this Wednesday. (Did anyone else see the rocket launch last weekend?)

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/index.html

At 9:20 p.m. Wednesday, March 11th the space shuttle Discovery lifts off from Cape Canaveral.

The weather should be clear, the crew has arrived, and final preparations have begun for this mission.

The STS-119 mission will deliver to the International Space Station the final set of solar arrays needed to complete the station's complement of electricity-generating solar panels, and through them support the station's expanded crew of six in 2009.

"More crew means that we'll have to run more life support equipment, more crew support equipment – toilet facilities, water processing equipment and all of that stuff," said Kwatsi Alibaruho, the lead space station flight director for the mission. "We'll have to run more of all of that, so we need additional power."

one of these days i'm going to have to make my way down there and watch a space ship take off, i think a night takeoff would look soooo cool

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1105#comic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158347.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158519.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8154004.stm

StoolPigeon wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158347.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158519.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8154004.stm

Those were some very cool articles. I liked Neil Armstrong's speach that he gave. I also really like the line from the first article "However, I'm unapologetic in my belief that the primary reason we should go back to the Moon is because, as humans, it's what we do. We explore, we investigate and ultimately, we establish a foothold." because I agree so strongly with it.
I want to use that moon lander simulator!

According to Nasa, they have hope to find 150 inhabitable planets by 2013. fuck the what?

That would be cool. I get how they determine the size of a planet, but how they determine whether it's inhabitable or not? That I'd like to learn. I'm tempted to e-mail my physics teacher about that.

Also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8163008.stm
The voice was really annoying, but it was interesting, and the images were awesome

ska_sean wrote:

we know more about space than our ocean... we shouldnt give them more money, we know a lot we can take a break from it.

I read an article in popular science today talking about that actually. Did you know that NASA gets 200 times the funding that the ocean version of NASA(I can't think of what they're called off the top of my head) does. That's total bullshit. I think the ocean can provide more tangible results, however studies on the ocean are so underfunded that it's almost impossible to do anything with it. I don't want to see NASA's budget degraded, but it's ocean counterpart is in need of a severe boost.

StoolPigeon wrote:

That would be cool. I get how they determine the size of a planet, but how they determine whether it's inhabitable or not? That I'd like to learn. I'm tempted to e-mail my physics teacher about that.

Also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8163008.stm
The voice was really annoying, but it was interesting, and the images were awesome

Traces/signs of wataaah

They have instruments that tell them whether it's a Class M planet or not. Spock is good with those kinds of machines.

But seriously, I don't know how they would decide. Most likely Oxygen supply is number one.

Well, yeah, but how they determine the amount of oxygen and whatnot is what I don't get.

StoolPigeon wrote:

Well, yeah, but how they determine the amount of oxygen and whatnot is what I don't get.

Size and distance from the sun/size of the sun are the big things they look for actually. Which in my mind is dumb because life can pop up in a volcanoe or in antarctica(granted it's just microbial), so why does it need to be heated at the same rate as earth is. I don't think they can tell how much oxygen is on the planet though, seeing as how they can barely tell the planet is there. I'm not a scientist thogh, so i could be really quite wrong.

They look for liquid particles, whether frozen or not. We know water is H2O, so if the planet hosts water, it hosts oxygen as well.

The space shuttle just had it's last scheduled midnight takeoff. I just love the look of these.

I have this NASA channel on my TV and all it is is a real-time camera showing you what the people at NASA's headquarters are doing. So you watch them sit there and work basically, but it's awesome. If I could start my life over again I would be a smart person and major in astrophysics or some shit.