Kerbin Dallas Multipass

On one hand we have ASAT weapons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon Note the relatively recent proof-of-concept missions by China and USA. On the other hand whe have the Kessler syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome We know from the cold war that things occasionally got pretty hot. For example when the Russians shot down a US U2 spyplane. There were numerous incidents of airspace provocations between the superpowers, sometimes causing a certain trigger happiness with tragic results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 It appears that countries do not wish to be spied on from above by their enemy in a cold war situation. Let's just hypothetically assume that we see tensions rise between two space powers sometime in the next decade or two. Do you think we will see ASAT skirmishes? Why am I asking this? The general public and the media did not take much notice of the most recent missions listed in the wiki article. I don't think anyone is aware of the Kessler syndrome and nobody really wants to know the mid-term effects of an ASAT skirmish. Blowing up several dozens of satellites might render manned and unmanned spaceflight in certain orbits impossible or terribly expensive - For generations. It would throw our communication/navigation networks back to where they were in the late 70s. But ask any John Doe on the street and he'll be in favor of blowing up **** at no cost of human lives.

@Starwaster NASA can be blamed. Absolutely true without a doubt. Not helpful though.

A delay of the launch would have probably done the trick. Yes they obviously underestimated the risk of cold O-rings. I guess several departments can be blamed. Nobody acted recklessly but the whole shuttle program was daring. Expectations were however that it had to work like a commuter bus.

You may want to google the Cadillac World Thorium Fuel (WTF) Concept Car.

They only started logging fireball sightings in 2005 it seems

NASA down to 3% of workforce, NSA not affected (link) The search for intelligence on planet earth has priority it seems:)

nasa.gov is a big site and therefore needs an admin (-team), not just hosting. If all your admins are temporarily fired you might have nobody to shut down the site even if you wanted to (like a hacker attack as someone suggested). Could be that the guy who opens the gate for the employees is not coming to work anymore because of the shutdown, or the building insurance wouldnt pay if the janitor is not on duty for more than 24h... just making this up ofcourse.

Hm yea interesting. jpl.nasa.gov shows: but the site is still online. Not sure how to interpret the difference between this and the NASA main site. Could be that the JPL site is run by a subcontractor. Or JPL got someone doing admin jobs who is excempted from the shutdown

I have seen two posts about the subject being locked for violation of forum rules, so all posters please keep it as unpolitical as possible. I do hope the forum mods understand that this is political headline news but is also affecting NASA, spaceflight and science, hence on-topic.

Political discussions are against forum rules, but perhaps we can talk about the consequences of the fiscal shutdown for NASA and Spaceflight in general.

Darmstadtium. Because of the silly name. Funfact: First they wanted to call it Wixhausium (Wix sounds like the german verb for masturbating)

Awesome thread:) Having fun here.

See also http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49778-Other-life-in-the-Solar-system and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49266-Where-in-the-solar-system-would-you-like-to-see-a-sample-returned-from-most In the latter I also voted for Enceladus:) EDIT: Oh you asked why: Yes we know there must be large amounts of liquid water. Do we know that about any other celestial body except earth? We know there's an water ice cover and hot water below, so it sounds very likely that there might be nice and temperate warm water zones. Conditions might be similar or even more habitable than what we find on earth around black smokers at the bottom of the ocean.

@lajoswinkler I'm very uneducated when it comes to chemistry. What does that mean? What numbers would we get if we ran the same procedure on sahara sand or moondust?

Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24213830 This idea sounds a bit like the result of Jebediah Kerman and Scott Manley getting drunk on windscreen wiper fluid: The hopper uses atmospheric CO2 and a super hot radioactive source to propel the hopper over the surface of Mars. Doing 900m leaps. Comments?

Its actually round about 35 liters per m³

Think they said 6h till docking

Please tell me they're all fine

I hope all frogs at the launch site are safe and sound

T minus 10 minutes and counting

Thanks for letting us know! We do need to find some better way of communicating time I think.

Wouldnt it be more practical to just remove the C from the CO2 and just breathe the O2?

Neptune is english for Neptunus just like Jupiter for Iuppiter or Mercury for Mercurius. It has nothing to do with vocative case. In german its Neptun, Jupiter, Merkur.

Hubble ultra deep field I'm sure you have all seen this, but I find it mindblowing every time I see it. Shows a portion of the sky smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm square of paper held at 1 meter away, the light of some of the 10 000 galaxies in the picture took 13.2 billion years to travel.

@K^2p Hm. Nice speech. Nah, sorry, you are falling for wishful thinking here instead of being rational. It would obviously tell us A TON if we found traces of past or present life on these bodies. Your reasoning is that of a gambler. If we find life in the most unlikely spots we hit jackpot. True, but is that a reasonable approach?