Earth Day Activities

Michael Savage said it best: "Green is the new Red."

..Except that the USSR's environmental policies make the U.S. look downright ecotopian. The U.S. may have done a lot of things, but we've never deliberately drained a sea (look up the Aral Sea if you're curious). While there are probably some crypto-communists out in the more radical portions of the environmentalism movement, I would imagine they either don't know much about environmental science, or about the history of communism - or both.

I should also point out that it's not often you see "Michael Savage", "said", and "best" in the same sentence ;-D

I plan on burning a bunch of old tires!!!

hmmmmmm, Yoga-miester associations vs. SciFi/Planetary-miester associations;]

Earthquakes, Karma and Cosmic Vandalism:
America Connect Recent Earthquakes To NASA's Space Program

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/earthquakes-karma-and-cosmic-vandalism,1253191.shtml

anybody else feel like the Apollo crew are like the Return of the Jedi?

Veteran Astronauts Oppose President Obama's Planned Space Cuts

Veteran NASA astronauts gathered in Chicago to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission. Apollo 13 was so historic that it continues to captivate the imagination of people young and old.

"Why should we do something when we've already done it," he said.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Veteran-Astronauts-Oppose-President-Obamas-Planned-Space-Cuts-90953339.html

Although the CxP rocket design was a goin nowhere POS, The answer my friend, is blowin in the wind:

-Moon's interaction with earth is far more relevant to Earth Science & Atmospheric conditions than Mars or asteroids
-Unfinished business on the moon from Apollo
-the essence of asteroids/Mars is warmongering and unromantic
by the light of the silvery asteroid
by the light of the silvery Mars

The most serious threat to the Earth's environment, of course, is human overpopulation.

So the best thing we can do for the Earth is to start expanding human civilization off the planet to the Moon, Mars, and start building rotating artificial worlds using asteroid materials. There's only enough asteroid material to build artificial worlds for only a few hundred trillion people:-)

Marcel F. Williams

As an astrobiologist (well, in training, anyway), I take offense to that last comment. Sure, no one goes dancing under the light of Mars, because that would be creepy, but darn it, there might be life there!

On a more serious note, I think this demonstrates a bit of a dichotomy in the space advocacy world: there are the engineers, who view the Moon as the premier goal because of colonization and resource exploitation, and scientists, who view Mars (and, if possible, the outer satellites) as the premier goal because of the enormous scientific implications of what we might find there.

As for asteroids, eh, it's good for a test run, and once people find out how much money you could potentially make out of a floating million-ton chunk of metal ore, it could go a long way in spurring full-scale industrial development.

hmmmmmm, apparently in the Dem donor sphere, Dr. Hansen is an anti-coal, but pro-nuke advocate so I'll assume he's their biggest honcho recommending the really bad Holdren & Garver HSF advice-givers.

then, we have Alec Baldwin on an anti-nuke bender on Huffpost, who's also pro NASA with a NASA drama show pitch (fox apparently declined) that he was supposed to be chief astronaut:

http://www.greendaily.com/2008/06/12/alec-baldwin-wants-to-do-a-global-warming-tv-drama/

so, the Asteriodal-Mars plan as a cover for development of nuke power tech in space might stir up some interesting Dem donor discussions between Baldwin, Cameron, Hansen, Gore - huh?]

There are some curious negative reactions in this thread that are nothing but red-baiting.

Michael Savage is a whacko.

Commies in the environmental movement? Since when does organizing to protect the Earth (regardless of motive or data one choses to accept) make one a Marxist or whatever? Protecting the Earth is logical.

Also, The Economist ran some good info on overpopulation last year that debunks the overpopulation scare. Population is leveling off. Fertility rates are on a downward trend and human population is expected to stop expanding in this century.

I agree with spacermase. There is an interesting dichotomy in the space community. Some of us are engineering geeks interested in hardware, some are scientists that want data.

I know some space engineers that scoff and get negative about the topic of climate change. This is not logical. Governments are going to be spending money on this for a long time. They are the customer. If the customer wants to spend money on it, fine. If you don't want work on it, someone else will. :)

What you don't know about rocket operations is a lot!]

For the non-rocket-scientists like me, somebody explain that if rockets generally travel at a rate of 17-37K mph, station at around 17K mph, and an asteroid travels around 47K mph, it seems like even if there were a faster rocket and/or shuttle, actually landing on a moving target traveling that fast, with people no less just seems bizarre

Question for Yoda:

Schmitt is blasting off about Helium-3 moon mining

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/article_a9339038-4af7-11df-9b2e-001cc4c002e0.html

So, with essence of oil on the moon it's easy to believe that Bush-Cheney jumped on that one, as well as China, India, etc.

But somewhere along the way, somebody(s) manuevered the wrong people into developing the wrong rocket for CxP, so there must be a dark side to the Helium-3 thing?

Question for the political media:

From the Sunday talk shows, it was said that Democrats expect Shelby to vote for the Finance bill, which as usual-alabama might be promised the moon & back for a vote trade - (but if past holds true, there'll be some hidden chink in the concession-maybe another bad-rocket-to-nowhere?)

Shouldn't appropriations committee membership be rotated, it just isn't right.

Anybody else notice all the Boeing TV ads - like they didn't already get the tanker contract, with a spiffy new Alabama plant, by default?

It actually depends on the asteroid. Many of the NEOs have average orbital velocities (relative to the sun) around 20-25 km/s. 1866 Sisyphus is actually only 19 km/s. Earth's orbital velocity (sun relative) is about 29 km/s, so that's a relatively small difference (depending on which direction both objects are rotating, of course).

Although, yes, I will freely admit I don't know a lot about rocket operations.

While it is true the overpopulation in relation to resources is probably one of the primary reasons for human technological advancement, nearly 7 billion people is already too many. Human population growth is pushing other species on our planet rapidly into extinction. And the fact that the poorest and most ignorant people tend to increase their numbers the fastest is eroding societies around the world-- including the United States.

Marcel F. Williams

I'm curious why this event has not been covered on these pages. Maybe because the irony is just to painful?

http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/

Bill

@Marcel F. Williams:

Re: overpopulation. Marcel, although there's no question that developing space and overpopulation are both very important issues in preserving our race and way of life, you need to stop and realize that there is no practical connection between them at all.

How many people (and which ones) would you need to move off planet to ease the population pressure on Earth? Where are you going to move them to? How are you going to move all of the equipment, shelter, initial food stocks, etc., etc., etc., that they're going to need to survive?

If you consider the absolute best-case scenario for the next 50-100 years (and I'll even throw in an Enterprise-D or two), calculate the actual logistics requirements and the rate at which people can be moved off Earth, and you'll see that you can't get within 0.01% of the population growth rate.

Space and population are both extremely important to our future, but realistically, don't look to either of them to help solve the other.

I hate to put it this way, but it's the landfill scenario. There are no new places to put our garbage; we need to make less garbage (and of course, recycle everything endlessly).

Steve

end

Agree, just think of all those inspired moonbuggy kids for the last how many years, how many families might that be?

(maybe they should have held the moonbuggy competition in a swing state - like Florida or Indiana or Ohio?)

Found a well stated, most excellent analysis of the pros and cons of the asteroid thing (with a bit-o-well-deserved-Holdren mockery):

"an asteroid voyage presents considerable technical challenges that...Landing on an asteroid would also have important implications for our long-term survival. After all, if dinosaurs had been able to land on an asteroid and divert it, odds are they would still be around and all of us would still be small, furry and nocturnal."

http://pittnews.com/article/2010/04/18/kozlowski-return-moon-first

Mr. Holdren,
It's a pinky ring - it looks stupid.
If you're such a genius how come you got butter on your tie?

I'd like to see the Earth's permanent population close to or under a billion by the beginning of the 23rd century, with most of the remaining population on Earth living in the cities. Cities really don't take up that much land. In fact, the amount of land that is paved over on Earth is only about 2%. I think tourist populations visiting Earth for a few weeks or a few months from beyond the Earth might double that number.

Its farmland and grazing land that are a real threat to nature. Farmland consumes about 11% of the Earth's land mass with grazing land consuming about 25% of the Earth's land mass. About 30% of the Earth's land is still forested with much of it being heavily exploited by humans.

The remaining third of the Earth is either desert, mountains or covered in ice.

Most people are never going to permanently leave the Earth unless the places they go to are equal to or better than living on the Earth. I think large O'Neill type rotating worlds with spacious Earth-like environments will be better than living on Earth.

Marcel F. Williams