I agree. I am an optimistic person, but sometimes it is difficult - and a positive note like yours is welcome.

Jan

You're very welcome, Jan.
It's important we not lose hope in these dark times.

And It's not pie-in-the-sky, either.
The human spirit IS indomitable. And truth She discovered will indeed set us free.

Philosophically, I agree that tax money should not go to NASA...but of all the extraneous agencies and uses to which my money is put, this is the one I least begrudge.

Jan

Thank you, Zero.

Jan

It won't be useless when your looking for a free-market society and all it costs is a Bigelow inflate-a-pod to add to the growing assembly.

How quickly would we shrug when Atlantis opens it's doors 300 miles straight up.

The future IS ours. We just live in the transition times.

But we do have a great reason for funding NASA, didn't you know? We have to use NASA to prop up anthropogenic climate change arguments and as a basis for Muslim outreach!

[/sarcasm]

Good one!

kids still learn about the planets? . I thought that they were now
directed to learn about the stars instead -- the Kardashians,
the Aljazeeras, the Sheens and the Alinskys. -- j
.

haaar-de-haar!!! -- j
.

I agree, but it will take a long time because there will need to be a cost-effective reason for going to space.

Right now, any destination in space is like Antarctica -- except it's even more expensive, farther, AND more useless to go there.

Mixed feelings about projects like this. On the one hand it's a lot of tax money (ie OUR money) being spent, and there might be better ways to spend it (like paying down the debt).

On the other hand, I think the long-term survival of the human race is going to involve moving off this one rock, and eventually out of the solar system. If we last that long.

I wish the private space companies were showing more potential. I'd really like to see the moon and Mars colonized privately, but private companies operate on payback, and it's a lot of money to invest for a long period of time before that is even possible.

This may be a case of "if the government doesn't do it, it won't get done". Then we have to decide if we really want it bad enough.

It's inevitable. The first ships to the new world were state financed. Later came settlers on private ships. The same will happen again.

I'm an OBJ so I don't support NASA as a gov't agency, but as far as extorted funds go, these aren't the most wasted. Oh, and the numbers I've seen say $700-some-odd million - not billions.

Did you see my previous post - it was a while back...
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...

Thank God NASA didn't put the fuel source for this out for bid and insisted on using only Pluto brand Plutonium!

It was getting too easy for kids to learn, so they had to change it to make something about common core different. Like new math.

You know you can alway go to the mission team's own page to get the latest news : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/new...

Interesting and totally cool. One thing that needs to be resolved is whether or not Pluto is a "captured" entity or not.

It seems it lost it's planetary status recently because of it's unusual orbit suggesting it was not part of the evolved solar system. And yet, they are saying it is 4.5 billion years old, essentially that of earth and the solar system at 4.6 billion. How do they even know its age, if it might not be part of the original solar system?

My wife used to work in the Planetary Division of the USGS at Flagstaff, Az drawing airbrushed maps of quadrangles on Mars, and Jupiter's moons from the Voyager data. It was great attending some of the talks on the evolving thinking of planetary geology and origins. I can just hear them now going at it with all this new data.

It's a gradual process, but I think space exploration will become more privatized and less socialized as time goes on. Space tourism and asteroid mining will lead the way.

No, but it sure was. I don't get the purpose of down grading it in the first place.

Have you seen the t-shirt:
"When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet?"
I just love that!

A mildly interesting bit of science, but I don't see that it's anywhere near being worth extorting billions of dollars from taxpayers to pay for it.

A step into the cold ocean of space, and new wonders are apparent. This is one of the reasons for humanity's existence.

Shared this article on FB. If they're going to yank my money away, I feel good knowing this is being done with it. I just wish that these guys were doing this privately.

Pluto and its largest moon Charon can be regarded as a double planet system that orbit the barycenter which lies outside the surfaces of both bodies. They also appear to be rotationally locked in that the same face of each constantly faces the other body. This is significant from the perspective of heating by tidal force friction. An example is the Earth Moon system. The moon is rotationally locked but the Earth is not this results in tidal heating of the Earth but not the Moon. Pluto's other satellites are not massive enough to cause significant heating so the source of heat remains a mystery. It may be due to radio isotope decay deep in the planet but that remains to be seen.

Ever since I was a school boy back during the 50s, I've always wondered what Pluto actually looked like.
Now I have lived to see it!
Ice mountains? How cool!
Oops, that pun was not intended. LOL!