Earth Sky Stars » NASA

Is Ending NASA’s Constellation Program a Bad Move?

Bill Clugston — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:06:06 +0000

Probably not, IMHO. Doing a manned spaceflight program on the cheap was a bad idea. Shifting money from NASA’s unmanned science program to fund this bad idea was even worse.

Many former astronauts believed that Constellation was an accident waiting to happen. Instead of recycling old ideas and hardware let’s do the research and engineering required for a successful space program.

Obama did the right thing by killing a poorly conceived program.

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A Major Setback in Global Warming Science – OCO Launch Fails

Bill Clugston — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Bad news, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) failed to reach orbit last Tuesday. Apparently, a protective fairing failed to separate from the spacecraft and prevented the OCO from reaching orbit. The OCO would have allowed scientists to “fine tune” their climate models by finding carbon sources and sinks that are not currently understood. A big loss for our understanding of the Earth’s climate.

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Global Energy Balance Explained

Bill Clugston — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:51:44 +0000

NASA’s Earth Observatory site has great article on how the Earth’s energy balance works. This topic is central to understanding global climate change, so if you really want to understand global warming, read this article. Without the blanket of air that surrounds us this planet this would be a very cold place to live. Interestingly, even with an atmosphere, without carbon dioxide it would still be a cold planet ( around 10 to 0 degrees average). A little carbon dioxide is a good thing, too much and you have a planet like Venus with an 800 degree surface temperature!

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