TheMadCap

I agree. Take for example Dupont's stance toward the "pseudo-science" in the CFC scare. THey were not about to spend millions of dollars to worry about some invisible gases floating around destroying other invisible gases. They accused the scientists of using "scare-tactics". It is the same thing here too...

I admit a touch of frustration on that point as well. It would help if more people were educated about the subject, instead of just writing this problem off as "pseudo-science"....

Wacka is right in much of what he posted. The Earth IS warming, and as I also pointed out, the debate is how much is human behavior influencing the problem. Pick up any science book from the mid 1990's on, that will give you enough sources for this fact. It is true that the US is the biggest consumer of resources, but I think the China either has, or will very soon, pass us in fossil fuel consumption, and from that, greenhouse gas emmisions. As far as I know, Mexico has not stopped producing CFCs either. RTB makes another excellent point. We are at least making an effort, a small one, to curtail some forms of pollution. Lets' not turn this into a yea-Bush or a boo-Bush thread, there is enough blame to go around politically on this issue...

You make many good points here. However, I am not so sure about your second paragraph. Scientists have known for quite a long time that CO2 absorbs in the infrared. I think you may be refering to effect of greenhouse gases and global warming on the Conveyor and Thermohaline Circulation. I shall elaborate further at a later time....

I have to make a few points here. First of all, it is a FACT that hydrocarbon combustion, ie, burning gasoline in machine engines, contributes CO2 to the atmposhere. It is a FACT that CO2 absorbs light in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, corresponding to heat. It is a FACT that CO2 emmisions from anthropogenic sources have peaked in the last 50 years. It is a FACT that scientists have shown that the atmosphere of the Earth in the past contained large amounts of CO2, and that the resulting climate at that time period was quite tropical. However, there is to date no direct evidence that the rising average temperature of the Earth the last few decades is due to our input of greenhouse gases, or if the Earth is going through one of its periodic temperature flucuations. Anyone who claims otherwise is not being entirely truthfull. We do know that increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere will in time contribute to increased temps. So it makes sense that we would try to curtail our input by using more fuel efficient processes. This we have done to a small degree, but it is countries like China who are the largest, or will soon be the largest offenders of these policies. As far as I know, they still have no limitations on CFCs, either in use or production. Now back to the thread topic, I may be missing something but the article I got when I clicked the link was about a cancelled fourth spacewalk. No environmental damage stuff anywhere. Besides, I don't think anyone can rightly say that the see evidence of global warming from space. And I also believe that it makes no sense to blame one political party over another. Both have made mistakes on legislation of this type in the past, and are likely to do so in the future. There was much debate and name-calling about the CFCs being responsible for ozone depletion and I am sure no one here is foolish enough to believe that this is "pseudo-science". In fact, the names Rowland, Molina and Crutzen should be known by every school-age child in the world, in my humble opinion....

To be honest, I don't think I ever liked TT.

That show is hilarious! Stewart rags on everyone, no one is immune...

NPR and every so often I will view USAtoday's page...

Sweet! Can't wait to take a trip to DC....

LABILLZ, you beat me to it. I think you should rank the dumbest quotes for our viewing pleasure...

And that's Allen's fault why? Perhaps a bit unsportsmanlike, but not against the rules. It's not like the guy went over there and hung out waiting to hear the call. I think Weis is an idiot for calling a play when the other team is within listening distance. And while we are at it, what about the 1st down in SB XXXVIII in the first half that wasn't even close! NOT EVEN CLOSE! Just give it to them. The biggest sham "dynasty" in history. Three wins by the skin of your teeth is no dynasty. P.S. Yes, I know about the obvious make-up call on the fumble by Muhammad on the next possession. That doesn't change the fact that the refs, in the superbowl mind you, blew an easy call. Most curious don't you think....

I thought for sure one of those Pats trolls would show up by now to call us all a bunch of sore losers, bitter, obsessed witht the past, etc. Any I forgot?

Anybody see one where Discovery flattens the bird?

Because Thikol makes them in the middle of nowhere, utah...

You know, I read a joke somewhere about how the space shuttle was designed due to the specifications of a horse's arse, I'll have to dig it up... Ok, I found it: http://www.succulent-plant.com/ephemera01.html Imperial Rome and the Space Shuttle There's always a reason, and the smallest most unimagined thing could be that reason. At least it's a good story. The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Now the twist to the story... When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass... But Yet, so TRUE! I have quoted a historical study by NASA below: The director of NASA-Marshall, Eberhard Rees, had expressed hope that the shuttle would use a liquid booster, because that would provide more work for his center. Although he had been deeply involved with liquid rockets since the wartime V-2 effort, he now would have to change with the times. The Shuttle would use two 156-inch boosters, which were as large as could travel on American railroads. ref: Loftus et al., Evolution, p. 26; Astronautics & Aeronautics, January 1974, p. 72

BF is gone? Because of the pickle juice thing?

and further, if we have no goal to achieve, what 's the point????

According to NPR this morning, Discovery was hit by 26 pieces of debris larger than 1.5". The astronauts will be asked to take about three hours this morning evaluating the orbiter for damage...

It appears that our forces grow in number every day. It will not be long before the panda ninjas assemble an army large enough for an assult upon the humans... http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/19...nancy.watch.ap/

Until Discovery is on the ground in one piece with all hands accounted for, I'm not taking anything N-ASS-A says to heart. They said that with Columbia last time too, remember? "Oh yeah, a piece of foam hit the shuttle. No big deal, it's just foam, I'm sure it will be fine".

Man, the decent was quick on this thread....

I found this on yahoo just a few minutes ago... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050728/ap_on_...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl "The grounding of the space shuttle program following NASA's problems with insulating foam raised fears of layoffs at the Louisiana plant where the foam is applied. The plant supplies about 2,000 jobs, many of them high-paying, in an economically depressed area of New Orleans. "It's very depressing. We're concerned about our jobs, our livelihoods," said Mike Berger, an inspector for the foam application process who has worked at the Michoud Assembly Facility since 1980." So now we are supposed to feel sorry that thier incompetence may lead to thier high-paying jobs being taken away? These are the same folks who knew thier product was THE cause of seven people being killed, and did nothing to fix the problem, and thus came within a few seconds of destroying Discovery. I am SICK of NASA's "oh well, maybe nothing bad will happen" attitude toward manned flight. I remind you that Michoud has been promised the contract for the crew cabin on the CEV by head @ssclown Mike Griffen. Unreal...

You are partially correct. It is true that the freon foam had less debris strikes than the new "PC-foam", but there was still danger of damage. THe real problem is in the design of the whole launch system. OF course, the biggest fear of the engineers is one that has not happened yet, a SSME failure, which would cause a Challanger-like situation...

I want to clear something up before we get any further on in the discussion. What Rutan did with SSO is completely different than what NASA does with the shuttle. SSO was never designed to reach orbit, could never reach orbit, and never will with the current design. That craft was designed to do one thing, take a person (or three) to an altitude of 60 km. It is INFINITELY harder to achieve true orbit. What people don't realize is that launches are governed by what is called the rocket equation. Simply put, the greater your mass, and the higher you wish to go, the amount of energy (fuel) is not defined by a linear relationship, it is EXPONENTIAL. SSO would have needed about 200-300x the amount of fuel to achieve a ground speed of Mach 25 to reach and STAY in orbit. THe mass of the craft would have been so large it would not have fit on a 747. Rutan's ship was impressive in that it was a somewhat privately funded and designed ship, and that is commendable. But that toy rocket burned every drop of fuel to reach it's intended orbit (about half way to true orbit) at about Mach 5 at which point it basically ran out of gas and fell back to Earth. The shuttlecock design helped increase drag and let it safely glide back to a landing, but if you tried that at orbital velocity, the craft would vaporize al la Columbia, not to mention it had essentially no heat shielding. THe goal of the X-Prize was therefore not to put another player in the orbital launch capability game, it was to achieve a given set of requirements. It was a first step, perhaps in time the private sector will take another....