Congress wants to cut JWST

On 7/8/2011 12:20 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
There certainly _is_ a national rationale to have the James Webb Space
Telescope. Advancing scientific knowledge is imperative for human
survival.

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?
You could make an argument for a really high resolution system to image
the planets, moons, and asteroids of the solar system, or image planets
orbiting nearby stars as worthwhile, but even HST has proved inferior
and obsolete to what can be seen with today's ground-based telescopes.
Things like OWL would not only beat JWST by a mile, but be far cheaper
to build, and far easier to update or do maintenance on - particularly
with the Shuttle going into retirement.

Pat

On 7/8/2011 12:22 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
If you believe in Fred Hoyle's theories - YES! Maybe you were lucky enoough
to miss those books.

There's oil we can steal on Mars? :-D

I say we send the Nostromo to Titan. :-)
In the movie, it actually looked like they had landed there, cloudy
atmosphere, cold, and ringed planet in the sky.
I'd still would like to know how they could get that whole giant
refinery complex up to over the speed of light.
Starfleet didn't have a finger on that type of technology, even if
maximum warp speed for the whole works was pretty low.

Pat

On Jul 8, 8:12*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 7/8/2011 12:20 AM, Val Kraut wrote:

There certainly _is_ a national rationale to have the James Webb Space
Telescope. Advancing scientific knowledge is imperative for human
survival.

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?
You could make an argument for a really high resolution system to image
the planets, moons, and asteroids of the solar system, or image planets
orbiting nearby stars as worthwhile, but even HST has proved inferior
and obsolete to what can be seen with today's ground-based telescopes.
Things like OWL would not only beat JWST by a mile, but be far cheaper
to build, and far easier to update or do maintenance on - particularly
with the Shuttle going into retirement.

Pat

when SS medicare etc are being cut JWST, ISS. and most things space
look like wasting money to average american.

worse congress is so un functional theres no consensus for change just
a ton of posturing......

On 7/8/2011 4:30 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
I say we send the Nostromo to Titan. :-)
In the movie, it actually looked like they had landed there, cloudy
atmosphere, cold, and ringed planet in the sky.
I'd still would like to know how they could get that whole giant
refinery complex up to over the speed of light.
Starfleet didn't have a finger on that type of technology, even if
maximum warp speed for the whole works was pretty low.

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo

Pat

On Jul 8, 6:12*am, Pat Flannery wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.

We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.

John Savard

On Jul 8, 1:48*am, Pat Flannery wrote:

There's oil we can steal on Mars?

No, but it's far enough away we should be able to hide from the
terrorists there.

Use solar energy to make hydrogen (and oxygen!) from the permafrost,
use the hydrogen to make fuel from the carbon-dioxide atmosphere, and
if it is necessary for some purposes to burn stuff for mobile energy
instead of using electricity, it will be possible on Mars.

However, carrying liquid oxygen around is as awkward as carrying
hydrogen around, so I don't think they'll be driving SUVs on Mars.

John Savard

No, but it's far enough away we should be able to hide from the
terrorists there.

Probably Not! - The politically correct folks will assure the terrorists
have equal free access, maybe even grants to develop explosives from local
materials.

On Jul 7, 4:05*pm, "Jonathan" wrote:
"Brad Guth" wrote in message

...
On Jul 6, 8:41 pm, "Jonathan" wrote:

"Brad Guth" wrote in message
....

On Jul 6, 5:03 pm, "Jonathan" wrote:

*If you want to see really stinky politics, Florida
has to be at near the top of the list. Sometimes
I just can't believe what they get away with.

http://groups.google.com/group/googl...t/topics?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/guth-usenet/topics?hl=en
http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”
That's true. *Florida is a rogue nation of GOP/ZNR rednecks.

And come to think of it, the following train of events *show
the depths of political and economic depravity of South Florida
in particular.

The Everglades in South Florida created a limited amount
of land for new construction. And that shortage started
a quick escalation of home prices. As it heated up, all kinds
of crooked ideas for mortgages sprang up. People started
'day trading' mortgages down here. It spread and got out of
control. Leading to perhaps the greatest economic blunder
of all time. The massive rescue bill of the banking and
mortgage industries.

Which resulted in the collapse of the stock market. A long
national recession, and world-wide *depression follows, *that'll
probably last another five years *or so.

Really, in all honesty, the US should invade ...South Florida
if we wish to maintain peace and prosperity for all.

s

I and others would have to agree, because Florida has gone totally off-
the-hook rogue on us, not that Arizona and a few other states are far
behind.

http://groups.google.com/group/googl...t/topics?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/guth-usenet/topics?hl=en
http://www.wanttoknow.info/
http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

Le 11-07-08 08:37, Pat Flannery a écrit :
On 7/8/2011 4:30 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
I say we send the Nostromo to Titan. :-)
In the movie, it actually looked like they had landed there, cloudy
atmosphere, cold, and ringed planet in the sky.
I'd still would like to know how they could get that whole giant
refinery complex up to over the speed of light.
Starfleet didn't have a finger on that type of technology, even if
maximum warp speed for the whole works was pretty low.

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo


I don't know about Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect, but Sulaco
and Nostromo aren't Japanese.

Nostromo isn't just not a Japanese word like it isn't an English word.
To a Japanese Nostromo is an unpronounceable string of letters, like
wrzktouiis would be to someone English. As you probably know the
Japanese use ideograms to write, those ideograms are called kanji and
are originally from China. But because the Chinese writing system isn't
suitable to write Japanese, they need other symbols, kana. The kanji, do
not indicate pronunciation, they indicate a meaning. For instance ä¸*
means inside, in Japanese it is pronounced naka. A guy from China will
recognise the symbol ä¸* and know what it means, but probably won't know
that it is pronounced naka in Japanese. On the other hand, the kana are
somewhat like letters, they don't indicate a meaning, they indicate a
sound. So, even though this isn't the proper way to write inside in
Japanese, if you write �� someone from Japan will be able to read
this, the first symbol reads na and the second reads ka. If you would
want to write Nostromo using kana, you can't do it, there are no kana
for that because the sounds are not pronounceable. Except for the n and
a few special cases, they don't pronounce consonants without a vowel.
That is why I used only two kana to write naka. They don't write n then
a, they have a symbol for na, and another symbol for ka, but no symbol
for k. A k without a vowel after is unpronounceable. Beer was brought to
Japan by people speaking english, so beer is called ビル, pronounced
something like birou, they added the ou at the end because r without a
vowel is unpronounceable (in fact r isn't pronounceable at all even with
a vowel after, but they have syllables with a sound somewhere between a
r and an l, I can't pronounce that sound. But if you pronounce it as
rou, they think you have a funny accent but they understand, if you
pronounce it as lou they also think you have a funny accent and also
understand, how this can be, since for us l and r are quite different, I
don't know but that is the way it is.)

Sulaco is not a Japanese word, it would be pronounceable, but the proper
way to write the k sound in romanji (writting with our letters) is with
the letter k. So if it was a Japanese name it would be written Sulako.


Alain Fournier

Fred J. McCall wrote :
wrote:

On Jul 8, 6:12 am, Pat wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.


Not bloody likely. 'How the Universe works' is not a local
phenomenon, nor one we can get to. Atoms are everywhere.


We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.


And nothing coming out of a telescope will make more of either.

Maybe you were being sarcastic or maybe you haven't heard of Kepler,
Tycho Brahe, Newton and the Newtonian law of gravity. Not found by
looking in a microscope, the telescope was more useful.

Ditho for Henri Poincaré and relativity. Observations of the orbit of
Mercury were important for that.

For making energy, General Relativity from Einstein, specially the
E=mc^2 part (or if you prefere the complete formula,
E^2 = m^2c^4 + (pc)^2). Again, it is the observations on the orbit of
Mercury that were quite important in finding that.

As Quadibloc said it would be good to understand dark matter and dark
energy.


Alain Fournier