MAIN ARTICLE: The Politics of Space.
Page 2: Meteoroid Bombardment May Have Made Earth More Habitable
Poll Results: Yesterday's poll was the weekly tracking poll and support still remains as strong as last week. Scroll down for the results, click subscribe for more space news.
Star Trek: In the News. DVD Review: The Best Of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Yesterday's Comments: "China is going to own Mars too - It's bad enough that they own America" - Fish Out of Water
Today's Poll: Funding "time out" for NASA - Good or Bad for Space Exploration?
THE POLITCS OF SPACE:
Something a little different today. Jeff Foust's "Space Politics" was just that yesterday. I had mentioned, in passing, the other day about a hold on human space flight funding. I didn't say much because it had been rumors and speculation and nothing definiative. Well it is now official.
House appropriators call a "time-out" on exploration spending
"The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a markup of their fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill on Thursday morning. (Because of a typo it originally appeared on their web site that they would be meeting at 9 pm, rather than 9 am; in any case the markup session wasn’t webcast.)
[skip - there is a table that shows NASA future funding with this hold in place.]
The biggest change is that Exploration is cut significantly, from $3.96 billion in the President’s request to $3.29 billion in the markup. In an accompanying statement, subcommittee chairman Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) says that uncertainty about NASA’s future exploration direction is the reason for this temporary "time-out" in spending:"
--end quote--
This is either just that, a hold until President Obama's Augustine Panel finishes it's work and gives it recommendations on staying the course or changing directions. It is also, according to some, a sign that Obama will be gutting human space flight.
The article gives a run down, but the real story is in the comments section. Most people believe the big fight is just between humans versus robots for space but if you delve into those comments you will see there is a major debate going on within the human spaceflight community as well and how to proceed.
PAGE 2:
Meteoroid Bombardment May Have Made Earth More Habitable
"Large bombardments of meteoroids approximately four billion years ago could have helped to make the early Earth and Mars more habitable for life by modifying their atmospheres, suggests the results of a new study.
When a meteoroid from space enters a planet’s atmosphere, extreme heat causes some of the minerals and organic matter on its outer crust to be released as water and carbon dioxide (as a meteor burning up in the atmosphere) before it breaks up and hits the ground (and becomes a meteorite).
Researchers suggest the delivery of this water could have made Earth’s and Mars’ atmospheres wetter. The release of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could have trapped more energy from sunlight to make Earth and Mars warm enough to sustain liquid oceans.
In the new study, researchers from Imperial College London analysed the remaining mineral and organic content of fifteen fragments of ancient meteorites that had crashed around the world to see how much water vapour and carbon dioxide they would release when subjected to very high temperatures like those that they would experience upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere."
--end quote--
POLL RESULTS:
One of my favorite collections from Next Gen is the best of Q, every episode he was in across all of Star Trek but it starts with NG.
DVD Review: The Best Of Star Trek: The Next Generation
"With the release of the new Star Trek film, there was bound to be a rash of releases of the stuff that went before. And, well, why not? With over four decades of material to choose from, all of those who hadn't gone before will likely want to catch up.
The Best Of Star Trek: The Next Generation, also known as Star Trek: TNG, contains three episodes (one of them in two parts) of what the producers say are the best of the original series. For those who are not familiar with much more than the new movie, from a timeline point of view, this series takes place at a point after the movie you saw, and 80 years after the original series. In our timeline, this series ran from 1987 to 1994.
The DVD comes with four episodes from the Next Generation series, but only three storylines. The episodes do not follow in their original release order so I have made note of both the air date and their sequential order.
"The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I & II" is truly a classic from Star Trek: TNG and in fact, while it can be debated if it is the best of the series, it shows what made this series so great. Not only is it a two-part episode that could make it as a small feature film, but it was one of those ultimate cliffhangers that spanned across two seasons.
The episodes presented here are classified as episode #74 which first aired on June 18, 1990, and #75 which aired on September 24, 1990. Along with being great entertainment these episodes added to the modern pop culture the phrases "Resistance is futile" and "You will be assimilated.""
--end quote--
YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS:
"K, Th, U, O, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe No platinum yet, but the elements above have been mapped by Selene (japanese probe) It was the first spacecraft with Gamma-Ray Spectrometer" - Gwen12
"Mars is getting busy although activity at the Moon has only recently picked up - there was a time a couple of years ago when there were more spacecraft at Mars than at the Moon... and with the longevity of Spirit ad Opportunity this might even still be true.
Does anyone else hate the name "Curiosity" for the MSL?" - Joffan
"On the poll - The motto during the Apollo programs was "waste money, not time". That combined with the need to invent it all as they went along made for some truly staggering waste. I'm afraid Apollo was a one off event and I can't see it happening again, excluding of course a giant meteor strike or alien invasion
We should be able to do a lot more with the current budget. If they want a raise we need to see some evidence of performance, or at the very least some effort in that direction." -
xgy2
"Good for China! The still Communist state might just get us off our complacent asses. At least, I believe given spaces military importance and our paranoid leadership we only get a small piece of the picture (Nasa). With China going (with Russian transportation?) & with us giving the Russians a billion for rides to the I.S.S. we will have to keep step for apperance sake." - Broken
TODAY'S POLL:
I would like to get a feel from the space junkies here. Was halting the funding for space exploration a good idea until the Augustine Panel gives it's recommendations or should the funding stay in place so Congress doesn't shovel it off for something else and then NASA will be behind the eight ball again when the funding is needed.
Read other NASA and Space diaries on DKOS.
