Laugh it up.
Now settle down and have a read:
The new images, from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, provide insight into some of the most enigmatic weather in the solar system, researchers said today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
"The cloud features range from small to large, from dim and diffuse to sharp and bright, from rapidly evolving systems to stable features that last for years," said Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center.
A large storm in the southern hemisphere seesaws over 5 degrees of latitude during several years. "It's weird behavior that hasn't been recognized before on Uranus," Sromovsky said. "It's similar to what's been seen on Neptune, although there the oscillation is much more rapid. Sromovsky added that it's not surprising to see cloud features drifting in latitude, but models don't predict the movement. "We don't know what makes it keep coming back to its starting point," he said.
The pictures also reveal a long, narrow complex of cloud features that is probably the largest group of atmospheric features ever seen on the planet. Spotted in the northern hemisphere, the 18,000-mile-long complex of clouds dissipated completely over the span of a month.
"These more dynamic systems seem to develop at northern latitudes apparently using up energy and dissipating relatively rapidly," Sromovsky said.
It's amazing how you say 'Uranus' and you get laughs.
Good Idea, Bad Plan
Here's an article about mining on the moon. The idea is of course to utilise resources on the places where we go. As you may well know, we have argued that the moon ain't much of a place to be going to do this stuff.
...Hmmm...Renewed support for space resources has been unearthed in large measure by the "Exploration Vision" announced by President George W. Bush last February. Indeed, space resource proposals are now being considered by NASA 's Human and Robotic Technology Program.
"There is a range of possibilities for use of space resources in exploration strategy," even before people are dispatched back to the Moon and off to Mars, said Mike Duke, Director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space (CCACS)at the Colorado School of Mines. NASA, however, has yet to adopt ISRU in blueprinting that strategy, perhaps not willing at this point to take some assumptions・some leaps of faith," he suggested.
"There is a feeling that something is finally going to happen. Much of this feeling stems from President Bush's exploration initiative, which specifically calls for the use of extraterrestrial resources," noted G. Jeffrey Taylor, a professor of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawai'i in Honolulu and chair of the workshop's scientific program.
I dunno. Seems to me that we have to concede (again) that the current US President is for space exploration and therefore good for our cause.
Well, no skin off my nose to do so. Props to Dubya on that account.
For US$50 million Bucks You Can Buy...
Another Space Competition.
Rules are set for the new competition with Bigelow Aerospeace Prize money worth US $50million.
Anyone who wants to follow in the shoes of Burt Rutan and win the next big space prize will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.
While the first flight must demonstrate only the ability to carry five crew members, the winner will have to take at least five people up on the second flight. And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.
Those are just some of the rules that govern who wins the $50 million "America's Space Prize," an effort by Bigelow Aerospace, of North Las Vegas, Nevada, to spur the development of space tourism in low Earth orbit. No more than 20 percent of the spacecraft's hardware can be expendable. It must also demonstrate the ability to dock with Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space habitat and be able to stay docked in orbit for up to six months.
A key ambition of the Bigelow Aerospace cash reward is to break the monopoly on crew transport to space currently held by Russia's Soyuz spacecraft. "This is trying to be an alternative to the bad situation that our country is in with Soyuz," in terms of International Space Station operations, said Robert Bigelow, head of Bigelow Aerospace in an exclusive interview with SPACE.com and Space News.
Yeah. The Soyuz thing is bad... :)
Why don't they come out and say it flat out: it's the Space Shuttle that is bad. If it weren't so, we wouldn't be relying on old Soyuz to support the ISS.
Oh well. It's good news all the same.
- Art Neuro
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