Kryten

24,000lb (10.7 tons) to GTO with centaur.

As it's a NASA launch, it'll be on NASA TV.

Those images are the heavily retouched version, which started all this nonsense about it being a classic 'flying saucer'. We know exactly what it is-it's paint. The image in the OP is from the original negative; nothing more than a fuzzy blob.

To add to the above, the 'battle' took place when invasion paranoia on the west coast was in full swing, a day after a Japanese submarine had shelled a Californian oil installation. Reports that the sub had shone 'signal lights' at the shore were widely circulated, fueling rumours about impending major attacks and Japanese-American fifth columnists.

It looks like a small cloud, to be honest. Also fits perfectly with the observed behaviour.

SS1 could barely reach space as it was, and there's a good chance SS2 actually can't, at least with the current engine.

Dawn OpNavs are quite far apart; the last was on March 1st and, as far as I can tell, they're still working to the schedule here, meaning the next is/was sometime today.

It's not over the 'dark side', it's over the actual dark side; we aren't receiving images because they aren't being taken. We're in full contact with the spacecraft, we're just not burdening the DSN with data that we know will not include useful or interesting.

Ultimately all processes lead to everything being the same temperature; that's the basic principle of thermodynamics. Trying to reverse it is trying to reverse entropy.

Nothing can 'produce energy from heat', only extract energy from the movement of heat along a differential.

This one includes hyperspace and subspace. Methinks Mr. John St. Clair watches just a tad too much bad sci-fi. EDIT: and it turns out hyperspace is useable for remote viewing , with which the inventor was able to communicate with apparently anglophone telepathic insectile space aliens.

It's partly an engineering feat, partly because it's the easiest way to get early material from the earth-moon system, and the solar system in general; helps with a whole bunch of geological and astrophysical issues. A sample from the south polar basin would probably be most useful scientifically (and both the US and Russia are working towards that), but it's unclear if it's on the cards-mostly because the moon program so far has been run by engineers under the PLA (like the crewed program) rather than scientists. There has been talk of putting it under control of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but as far as I know there's no timeframe for that.

Apollo samples were from a small number of areas spread over a relatively small portion of the moon; all on the nearside near the equator. They also were exposed to the atmosphere inside the LM, rendering measurements of e.g. water content unreliable or useless.

'More or less' is important. It would only be impossible if it was exactly on the plane.

Because it's clockwise seen from above the ecliptic, i.e. the north pole of the solar system as a whole.

The north pole is the one which the planet rotates counterclockwise relative to, the same as Earth's north pole.

Do we have a cost for Polyus/Skif? It certainly did not look cheap.

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission is due for launch in 2017, and should be well into construction by now, but I haven't been able to find any photos.

There's X-37, and maybe a few others depending on what sites you read.

Aaand, we now have an analysis strongly supporting Brontosaurus as a valid genus. Nostalgics rejoice.

For commonality.

It's mostly just a combination of size and distance; it's either far larger or far closer than anything else you'd see in the night sky.

Genetics isn't magic-all it ultimately is code for proteins or functional RNA, and there are limits to what either of those can do.

The potential would have been clear-the USAF and navy had stated reconnaissance satellite programmes before Sputnik was even launched. They knew about the R-7 and it's capabilities as a missile before then-there had been public announcements.

Some homoeopathic medications have been found to contain real medicine, sold under false pretences, and other have very low dilution (1/10 in some cases) and so are potentially dangerous.