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The Last 10 Days In The Space Shuttle's Bunker?, Atlantis apparently to be scrapped in 2008
mchan
post Feb 27 2006, 07:09 AM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Feb 26 2006, 01:41 AM) *
That was NEVER what this place was intended for. I'm having very serious thoughts at removing the political, observational and manned subforums as it is.

Doug

I don't take Bruce's posts as rants. Strongly opinionated, yes. I very seldomly join in the debates, but Ihey do bring up thought provoking points, and I do learn from them. Manned spaceflight and politics, directly or indirectly, for better or for worse, do have an impact upon unmanned spaceflight. While we enjoy the fruits of the ongoing missions and the discussions on the forthcoming (or not) missions, we should not be unaware of external influences upon them.

I understand the point of this forum is the exchange of technical and scientific information in an informal setting. Coming from 15 years of experience with Usenet, this forum is remarkably civil, and a joy to read. I have noted times when posts have been heated, and I think you have applied just the right control in keeping folks at an even temper. This IS more work for you as a moderator, and I thank you for your efforts.
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_*
post Feb 27 2006, 08:36 AM
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Doug,

I would like to back mchan's last post, about what he says on the forum.

And, about the topics, of course, on this forum it is clearly unmanned spaceflight. And, as the forum owner, you have the full right to define the exact topic and its boundaries. But spaceflight don't emerge from nothing, there are political, economic, human, aesthetics, philosophical implications around, which constrain it on one hand, and which give it its meaning and purpose on the other hand. So it would be a pity not to allow discutions on politics, philosophy, etc, so long as it is about their implications on spaceflight.

You perhaps noted that I most often reply to threads like the Intelligent Design or SETI. The basic reason is that they are though-provoking and hope-conveying topics. Of course they are a bit far from spaceflight, but without such "more philosophical" discutions your forum would be globally less interesting. If you now feel regrets about having allowed such discutions about ID, please don't let start such discutions in the future. But It would be a pity.

Consider that the discutions on ID or SETI remained remarkably civil and focused, despites these topics are prone to hateful fights and stubborn opinions. So I think that if such topics are to start in the future, you can allow them. Cautiously, but not a priori remove them.
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helvick
post Feb 27 2006, 06:13 PM
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QUOTE (mchan @ Feb 27 2006, 07:09 AM) *
I understand the point of this forum is the exchange of technical and scientific information in an informal setting. Coming from 15 years of experience with Usenet, this forum is remarkably civil, and a joy to read. I have noted times when posts have been heated, and I think you have applied just the right control in keeping folks at an even temper. This IS more work for you as a moderator, and I thank you for your efforts.


I whole heartedly agree with this.

Doug - there is a fine line in figuring out what to allow and what not but for what it's worth I think discussions like this are very beneficial provided all parties know that you will come down hard if folks cross the line.

I've really found the discussion in this thread worthwhile. I don't know how much moderating you've had to do on it but from where I'm reading the end result is a useful contribution by all to this board.
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djellison
post Feb 27 2006, 08:39 PM
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The discussions about ID or SETI may be civil and focused, but I remain very uneasy with their existance here, and the sort of traffic they might attract. Civil or not, they're highly OT for what this place is intended. On that basis - you could have a debate about cricket here, because hey - it's civil. Yeah - but totally outside the remit of what this place is about.

95% of the moderation that has to be done here, has to be done in the manned and off topic forums, and that says a lot.

I don't want to close them down - but I may well do at some point in the future, at the moment they are 'ok' - but little more.

I know more than ANYONE here what the 'fine line' is - I've drawn it for two years with more than a little success. But if the more off topic sections begin to take more of my time, I wont moderate them, I'll just cull them - it's a matter of balance. If other sections suffer because the off topic forums are taking too much time, then there's no decision to be made - they're gone.

Doug
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 1 2006, 11:53 PM
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OK, acceptable. I can always go rant elsewhere... biggrin.gif

P.S.: I'm going to get you for making me use one of those smiley faces.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Mar 18 2006, 12:50 AM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Feb 24 2006, 08:54 PM) *
On this subject: I've just finished plowing through as many of the new LPSC and EGU abstracts as I can without endangering my already precarious mental health, and one of the most dramatic revelations I've found in them is Brett Gladman's new LPSC abstract ( http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2165.pdf ) showing that one of my most cherished beliefs about astrobiological research may be totally wrong. I've been claiming for years that the discovery of life on Europa would actually be far more important scientifically than the discovery of life on Mars, because Martian life might very well have evolved on Earth and just been transferred to Mars via meteorite (or vice versa!); whereas Europan life, if we find it, must have evolved separately and would thus prove that life had evolved twice in the same solar system -- thus proving that life must indeed be common in the Universe, instead of just evolving on one world in this particular solar system by extremely long-shot luck and then getting meteor-mailed to a second world in the same system.

Well, sir: Gladman and Luke Dones have just finished their long-promised study of the frequencey with which Earth meteoroids may get transferred all the way to Europa -- and it turns out that hundreds of meteoroids from Earth have probably hit Europa during its history. Admittedly they all hit at very high speed -- 20-30 km/sec -- since Europa (unlike Mars) has no atmosphere to brake them; and that impact speed alone will greatly reduce the chances that any one of them could deliver living Earth germs to Europa. But the possibility really does exist, and so the importance of finding Europan life has just been perceptibly reduced -- if we find it, we can NOT eliminate the possibility that it came from our own world (or that both terrestrial and Europan life both originally came from Mars!)

As much as I hate reviving this thread, Mark Peplow has a news@Nature.com story on this.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 18 2006, 03:45 AM
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Yeah, I saw that, and was cranking up to comment on it. I will do so, however, in some part of the "Titan" section.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 21 2006, 04:45 AM
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Jeff Bell has for some time been confidently predicting that Mike Griffin (who undeniably hates the Shuttle personally) will soon execute a Machiavellian scheme to get rid of it -- which will have to be done one step at a time in order to whittle away gradually at its political support (and to give all those Congressmen who made fools of themselves by funding it for decades better political cover to get rid of it gradually and quietly).

I don't know how accurate he is in saying that Griffin CAN do this; but yesterday another of the predictions he made to me some time ago came to pass. NASA, which had already announced that the Shuttle's main engine will not be used after all on the second stage of the small CEV launcher (a new version of the Saturn 5's J-2 engine will be used instead), is now saying that SSMEs may very well not be used on the first stage of the big Heavy Lift Booster either -- they may be replaced by the same RS-68 engines used on the first stage of Delta 4, since those are designed to be expendable and are thus cheaper to manufacture than the reusable SSMEs (which would never actually have been reused on either the HLV or the CEV launcher):
http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_060320.html

This would, of course, allow a shutdown very soon of the production line for the Shuttle's SSMEs. But the article says that there are some genuine technical stumbling blocks -- and Bell himself says that one reason for the RS-68's low cost is that most of its parts are currently being made by Russian workers who are as atrociously underpaid for their skills as the inhabitants of Termite Terrace were during the golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons.
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The Messenger
post Mar 21 2006, 09:08 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 20 2006, 09:45 PM) *
Jeff Bell has for some time been confidently predicting that Mike Griffin (who undeniably hates the Shuttle personally) will soon execute a Machiavellian scheme to get rid of it -- which will have to be done one step at a time in order to whittle away gradually at its political support (and to give all those Congressmen who made fools of themselves by funding it for decades better political cover to get rid of it gradually and quietly).

This is one of many reasons all the pan banging over the shut down of scientific missions should be carefully orchestrated. Space funding is controlled by members of congress who have wedged into the fray to protect their base constituency. Whether or not Griffin's goal is to pull the plug on the shuttle and ISS sooner-than-announced, he is already facing a 'i will not take one penny from science to fund...' credibility gap.

On the bright side, have you watched the NASA channel lately? It may just be an accident, but I have caught a lot less ISS bonzola, and a few more good science & engineering documentaries lately.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 21 2006, 10:41 PM
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Well, my God, that's because at this point the only thing they're doing with the Station is throwing golf balls and used spacesuits out of it. (That, and trying to keep the life support system from falling apart.)
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