September 2005 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

beautiful meteor
by Thomas Sevcik 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

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Incoming!
by diveboss＠xmission.com 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

NASA Science News for September 3, 2004 On September 8th, a daylight fireball will streak across the western United States. It's Genesis, returning samples of the Sun to Earth. FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/03sep_genesisreentry.htm?list1153573

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 31, Issue 5
by diveboss＠xmission.com 04 Oct '05

04 Oct '05

You don't know the nights I cry myself to sleep worrying about the Prison population... Though I would be willing to stand guard for a while with a sawed off shotgun, to give a corrections officer a break. Quoting James Cobb <james(a)cobb.name>: >> Please visit www.prisonfellowship.org for special coverage of >> Prison Fellowship's efforts to help those who are suffering.

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Webcasts for Tuesday early morning (2:51am) annular eclipse
by Canopus56 30 Sep '05

30 Sep '05

Although Monday's annular eclipse will not be visible from Utah (10/3/2005 at approx. 8:51pm UTC, MDT Tuesday Morning at 2:51AM), several links to live webcasts are available at the NASA eclipse page: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEmono/ASE2005/ASE2005.html The Univ. of North Dakota color webcast from Spain looks promising - http://sems1.cs.und.edu/~sems/Spain05/index.html - as does the Univ. of Madrid's broadcast - http://eclipse2005.sim.ucm.es/obs_ucm/eclipse_anular05/eclipse_anular05.html All the live web broadcasts seem to be concentrated in Spain - which may create weather limitations. Weather satellite images for Madrid can be found at - http://www.inm.es/web/infmet/satel/meteose.html The annular portion of the eclipse lasts about 4 minutes. So, if you insominically inclined, mark your calendars. - Canopus56(Kurt) __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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Riding A Ribbon To Space
by Patrick Wiggins 30 Sep '05

30 Sep '05

A fun way to get to space. Boy, and talk about the ultimate BASE jump platform... Was it Arthur Clarke that first came up with the idea of a space elevator? http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-05zzzo.html Patrick

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Re: Boots on the ground
by Chuck Hards 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

I disagree with you, Daniel. Humans have a habit of poisoning their environments and killing each other. Unless we suddenly gain a whole lot of wisdom and dump a whole lot of ancestral competitive baggage, long-term survival dictates that we simply must become a multi-world species...in the truly long-term, even multi-system. Perhaps in the very short-term, robot explorers can be used effectively, especially where costs are prohibitively high or transit times inordinately long. But risk is part of the human experience and only invertebrates hide in the shadows their entire lives. There are numerous deaths in automobiles and commercial aircraft, yet these conveyances are not damned outright because for the most part we have integrated them into our society and accept the risk, which is actually fairly small on the individual scale. The same will one day happen for manned spaceflight. The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us will go to the stars. Or, to borrow a phrase I'm sure you've heard, to "Boldy Go Where No Man Has Gone Before". ;) > From: daniel turner <outwest112(a)yahoo.com> > I hate to admit it, but I agree with Mike Carnes on > this one. I would further add that what has really > happened is that manned space flight is an idea > whose > time is past. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Boots on the ground
by Michael Carnes 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

>I think if the history of Mercury/Apollo is examined dispassionately, >one discovers that the failed Vienna Summit, failed Bay of Pigs That's a thoughtful analysis, Jim. I think that, as with most large endeavors, motives were mixed all around. I believe you're quite correct on the political basis. Kennedy and the politicians of the day were sending a global message to the Roosskies (thanks, Slim Pickens) and hoping for technological advancement. Otherwise, they'd have never funded it. But I don't know if the people at NASA were thinking much about that. I think they were focused on the basic goal of getting there safely and back. Sure, the Russians were the boogeymen under everbody's bed, and NASA folk weren't immune to that. But I doubt that the politics were a key factor in the minds of the people who actually did the work. When the politicians thought the goal had been reached, they dropped it like a handful of snakes. That was a bitter disappointment to those who thought the moon was only the start of a process, rather than the termination.

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Re: Boots on the ground
by James Cobb 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

Joe wrote: > President Kennedy had his finger on something deep and vital when > he said we will go to the moon because it is a difficult challenge. > -- Joe I think if the history of Mercury/Apollo is examined dispassionately, one discovers that the failed Vienna Summit, failed Bay of Pigs invasion, perhaps the construction of the Berlin Wall, and having campaigned on a bogus "missile gap" platform were more important in setting Kennedy's goal of manned exploration of the Moon than any of the bold, noble-sounding sentiments or any "instinct to explore" that are so often cited. We were behind in a very visible and potentially nation-threatening technology, and wanted a goal far enough out that we thought we could be the first. "We choose to go to the Moon because it is difficult"--yeah, difficult enough that the Russkies couldn't just coast to that goal ahead of us based on their then current lead. The Chinese, a nation either in breath-taking ascent among the nations of the world, or on the edge of a precipice--it's hard to determine which--are now making noise about going to the moon. It will be interesting to watch how the US responds to that. I recall Johnson saying he would not like to sleep at night under the light of a communist moon... Jim

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Humor
by Patrick Wiggins 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

Lots of serious stuff here lately. I enjoy serious but Scott's cartoon reminded me that I also like a good laugh now and then. To that end: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blfunnypics.htm Patrick

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RE: [Utah-astronomy] boots on the ground. (was Quite an admission fromNASA head).
by Dale Hooper 29 Sep '05

29 Sep '05

Hi Daniel, I think your arguments are 100% correct - today. But, I think one of the major reasons this is so is because of lack of infrastructure for manned spaceflight. We have 45 years of unmanned infrastructure where we have built on past successes and hopefully learned from past failures. With manned spaceflight we don't have much of that infrastructure. We've been in LEO for the past 35 years. If we had followed up Apollo with the originally intended Apollo applications we might very well have humans on Mars right now. So, we might have a scenario where we say - lets examine a rock 600 meters from here. 1) It would take Spirit or Opportunity two days to get there, I don't know how long to grind on it, and then awhile to examine it, etc. 2) Or send an astronaut on an EVA, he walks over and picks it up, etc. An example of this is HST servicing. Obviously we have some shuttle problems now - but we've been able to do it in the past. We train astronauts, send them up with the gear and they perform the upgrades. They are able to adjust quickly to problems they encounter. Now look at the unmanned side of this problem - NASA has said it would take several years to create a robotic craft to do this and then it would be doubtful that it would succeed on the first attempt. It's also doubtful that it would be able to implement all of the upgrades in the way the human can. So, I'm not saying that you are wrong - but where we have equal infrastructure I think human exploration can be part of the answer. However, I think it is true that robotics will always be what we use to expand our horizons. I.e. I think manned & unmanned have their place. Clear skies, Dale. > -----Original Message----- > Subject: [Utah-astronomy] boots on the ground. (was Quite an admission > fromNASA head). > > I hate to admit it, but I agree with Mike Carnes on > this one. I would further add that what has really > happened is that manned space flight is an idea whose > time is past. > > Consider the state of technology when JFK made his "go > to the moon" speech. At that time a computer was the > size of a refrigerator. That's just the CPU. Random > access memory was done with tiny magnets and a > kilobyte was considered a lot, a megabyte was > undreamed of. Since then we have had integrated > circuits and decades of Moore's Law racing along at > the speed of compound interest. We can now make > really smart machines and we don't have to send people > into harms way to do what we want done. Consider how > much more advanced the Spirit and Opportunity rovers > are compared to Pathfinder rover of a decade ago and > the Viking Landers of three decades ago. We have > gotten a whole lot better and we aren't through > improving yet. > > We should also consider that for commercial use, there > is nothing really out there beyond the geo-synchronous > orbit. Scientific research is nice but we don't need > people to do it. The cold war reasons for sending man > into space are no longer valid and we are left with > circular arguments about how we need manned space > flight in order to study the effects of space flight > on human beings. The current and near future > prospects for space tourism are not much more than a > scaled version of skydiving. > > This is not a popular notion but other explorers have > managed to figure it out. Some one went to great > expense to transport a marine biologist to the deep > ocean floor to study life at the thermal vents. The > commander of the submersible noticed that the > biologist was refusing to look out the window because > the view was much better at the monitor for the camera > on the extension arm. The obvious question was, "Why > am I risking both our lives down here?" Now we use > robot submersibles with cameras. The pilot and > biologists are safe and warm on the surface ship. > > What are keeping manned space flight going are the > Boomers (my generation) who have grown up with the > promise that we would be going into space. But that > was a promise made when our technology was weak and > the dangers weren't fully appreciated. > > To use a cliché against this old idea I would have to > say, "It's dead Jim" > > Clear Skies > DT

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