Back to Basics

Everybody knows that the people at NASA are and have always been among the world’s foremost experts on the Mayans (as a matter of fact, some of Neil Armstrong’s ancestors on his mother’s side were from Calakmul). Whenever I have a question about the Mayans, I know that NASA is the first on my list of people to call for answers:

If there’s one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it’s NASA.

The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place on Dec. 21, 2012.

The myth might have originated with the Mayan calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

“Who’s the first agency you would call?” he said. “You’re going to call NASA.”

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have “embraced it so much” they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do “everything in our power” to set the facts straight.

That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a web page Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.

It also involved a video titled, “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday.” Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.

The Mayan calendar may be about to end, but the Moron calendar is eternal.

To answer the question of NASA callers, tomorrow will go something like this: We’ll hear The Great Gig in the Sky start playing through some Bose speakers blaring from the heavens, and then… blammo:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw

The death of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, takes place in the shadow of the death of the space program. Last year Armstrong had called the dismantling of the space program under Obama, leaving behind a shadow space agency: “embarrassing and unacceptable“.

Armstrong had proposed not only future investments, but along with other astronauts had sensibly proposed retaining the space shuttle program until they were ready, instead of scrapping the shuttle program and distributing viable shuttles to museums. Armstrong was critical of the Bolden regime at NASA that had stripped the space agency of its best people and its ability to conduct manned space exploration or even reach the International Space Station without begging passage on Soviet Soyuz tubs.

“The reality that there is no flight requirement for a NASA pilot-astronaut for the foreseeable future is obvious and painful to all who have, justifiably, taken great pride in NASA’s wondrous space flight achievements during the past half century,” Armstrong concluded his testimony. “In space fight, we are in the process of exhausting alternatives. I am hopeful that, in the near future, we will be doing the right thing.”

If we ever do get around to doing the right thing, in space or on the ground, Neil Armstrong will not be around to see it. The famously reclusive astronaut passed away after being drawn out to make a final bid at reviving the space program. His final contribution may be that he joined the many voices warning of the decline of America. His final legacy may be determined by whether the American people choose to listen to some of his final words.

Neil Armstrong was born in 1930, the year that a young researcher watching the sky over Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. By 2006, it was decided that Pluto was no longer a planet. By 2016 we may decided that Neil Armstrong never really walked on the moon and that walking on the moon is an assault on the lunar ecology.

Two years ago, Charles Bolden, the incompetent Obama appointee who has implemented his mission of killing America’s space program, declared that the agency’s chief goal was outreach to the Muslim world. This was not his original idea.

While visiting Egypt, Bolden told Al-Jazeera that Obama had given him three missions. “One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering,”

Space exploration was not on the list for a reason. Michael Griffin, Bolden’s predecessor, who had done much to rebuild NASA, only to have his work ruined by Obama’s affirmative action appointees, Charles Bolden and Lori Garver, said of those comments, “NASA … represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity. If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful. If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell…

NASA is riding a wave of excitement following the awesome landing of Curiosity millions of miles away on Mars. More locally, the agency is trying to make their machines “greener” just in case there’s an extraterrestrial equivalent of Ed Begley, Jr. living in the Omega Centauri galaxy we’ll need to impress someday.

With that goal in mind, here’s a little background on the Morpheus lander:

So far NASA has spent $7 million on the Morpheus program, but that includes parts for a still-to-be-built second lander.

Morpheus is a prototype for a cheap, environmentally friendly planetary lander. Thursday was the first time it had been tested untethered in a free flight. It had performed 19 flights at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it was designed and made, and one more in Florida, but it was always tethered to a crane, Dean said.

The testing moved from Texas to Florida last week and Morpheus had a successful tether test on Friday. NASA had planned to run tests for three months. The plan was for flights over a specially created field designed to mimic the surface of the moon, with boulders, rocks, slopes and craters.

The lander was built mostly with low-cost, off-the-shelf materials. It was an attempt by NASA to use cheaper, more readily available and environmentally friendly rocket fuel. The space agency was considering it as a potential lander for places like the moon or an asteroid, figuring it would carry a human-like robot or small rover.

The first untethered test flight of the “green” lander was yesterday. Roll tape, and tell Gore to go sell a few extra carbon credits to make up for this (epic green kaboomage at 1:56):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvlG2JtMts

Earlier prototypes of “green” landers were basically Chevy Volts with algae-fueled rockets strapped to them, and that didn’t go very well either.

Perhaps because Mars can be seen with the naked eye and is “close” to Earth there has long been a fascination with the fourth planet from the Sun. Earth is the third and the largest of the solar system’s four terrestrial planets. Mars has no life and Earth is teeming with it. Lucky us.

So why did the U.S. which is bleeding billions in all directions and weighed down by some $15 trillion in debt just spend $2.5 billion to send the “Curiousity” lander there to devote at least two years or more exploring Mars’ surface? The short answer is because we can.

The longer answer dates back to the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union when a space program was the perfect cover for the development of missiles that could be used to blow each other to smithereens.

There was little practical value in sending men to the Moon beyond the breakthroughs in missile technology that made it happen. There have been no more manned missions there in forty years; probably because there is no other good reason to go there.

Nations, like men, often do things for the prestige involved and to demonstrate their superiority in some respect. What struck me most about the August 6th Mars mission was the way, on August 7th, the story had fallen off, not just the front page of newspapers, but virtually all media coverage, televised and print.

Most of the story focused on the NASA scientists who had burst into shouts of joy and hugs all around. Theirs was, indeed, an engineering triumph. The effort involved a nine-month voyage of 352 million miles. Meanwhile, however, our space shuttles were retired in 2010 and, if we want to visit the space station, we have to pay a lordly sum to the Russians for a ride.

Having been to the Moon, there is even less reason to send men to Mars. The standard reply about such missions is that it expands man’s knowledge of our neighboring planet, but Mars is currently the object of five spacecraft, three in orbit and two on the surface, including a couple of inert landers and rovers. It is, like all other planets in our galaxy a very inhospitable place.

Aside from being a planet, Mars is essentially just a big rock.

Is there water on Mars? No. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars, but it does have two permanent polar ice caps that appear to be made of water though geologists have concluded liquid water may have existed because of the presence of two minerals, hermatite and geotite, both of which sometime form in water.

Our galaxy is one of what has been estimated to be more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Galaxies are a collection of star systems and clusters, along with interstellar clouds. In between exists something scientists have dubbed “dark matter”, but it is likely it is just space; lots and lots of space.

Other than accumulating more knowledge about Mars, I fail to see any reason to be spending billions on space missions.

Just last month, NASA supporters and scientists resorted to bake sales and carwash fund-raisers to make up for robotic planetary exploration program funds slashed by President Obama. Flashback:

Scientists are trading telescopes for aprons this week to sell Milky Way cupcakes, Saturn cake, and chocolate chip Opportunity cookies in an effort to salvage U.S. planetary science projects.

The 2013 budget proposal submitted by the Obama administration earlier this year would cut funding for NASA‘s planetary science projects by about $300 million. While Congress is still deliberating over the federal budget, groups of scientists are planning a series of demonstrations — in the form of bake sales, car washes and other events — for Saturday (June 9) to plead their case.

Though planet-studying spacecraft usually cost millions, or even billions, of dollars, every penny helps. That’s the reasoning behind the Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale to be held by University of Central Florida students and professors who hope to sway lawmakers into providing more money for studying the solar system. It is one of nearly 20 planned demonstrations for Saturday at sites across the country, organizers said.

“We’re not asking for more of the pie, we’re asking for less of a bite out of the pie,” Laura Seward, a graduate student at the university who organized the event, said in a statement. “A strong robotic planetary exploration program is essential for a strong human planetary exploration program.”

Late tonight, the world watched and cheered as NASA oversaw the landing of the lab robot rover Curiosity on Mars. We’ve got comprehensive social media coverage of the event at Twitchy in case you missed the live landing.

The White House was quick to put out a statement:

“Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history.

The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.

Tonight’s success, delivered by NASA, parallels our major steps forward towards a vision for a new partnership with American companies to send American astronauts into space on American spacecraft. That partnership will save taxpayer dollars while allowing NASA to do what it has always done best – push the very boundaries of human knowledge. And tonight’s success reminds us that our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth – depends on continuing to invest wisely in the innovation, technology, and basic research that has always made our economy the envy of the world.

A Facebook commenter summed up the football-spiking spectacle: “Obama cuts NASA funding and now takes credit for investing in it. SMH [Shaking my head]”

Also: If Obama now an advocate of privatizing federal space programs to save taxpayer dollars, why does he attack and demonize government reformers who are looking for market-based solutions on health care?

***

Just a reminder: When the Mars mission was President George W. Bush’s initiative, it was trashed and mocked…

How can the same Presidential proclamation to go to Mars get completely different media reactions? Well if one comes from that pompous George W.

What? You were sleeping last night instead of tuning in with the rest of the world’s space/science fans to the livestream of the NASA/JPL Mars landing of rover Curiosity?! Have no fear: Twitchy provided comprehensive live social media coverage of the event.

More importantly (for the ladies…and a few men), Twitchy Team diagnosed the late-night outbreak of NASA Mohawk Guy Fever. Bobak Ferdowsi, the flight director of the Mars mission, captured the Twitter world’s attention with his “Stars and Stripes” mohawk — an in-house tradition.

Get your fill of the now Internet-famous space celebrity here.

As many fans joked throughout the night’s Curiosity twitter stream, it’s a good thing NBC wasn’t in charge of tape-delaying the Mars Landing 9 hours later in tomorrow’s prime time and forcing us all to sit through unbearable commentary from Bob Costas or Seth Meyers.

Small favors…

(This article is dedicated to Colonel Woody Spring, Army Colonel, NASA astronaut and decorated war hero whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this year..)
The good news is that Atlantis came down safely last week. The very bad news is that has now brought to a close the space shuttle program after thirty wonderful and productive years. The Kennedy “space” legacy has ended where so many of America’s conquests and accomplishments have ended, in the very capably destructive hands of Obama. The irony of all that surrounds this dark moment needs to be discussed at some length..

The shuttle program is the unfortunate end to the Kennedy space program. Kennedy, along with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, might have been the LAST of the liberals who actually believed in America’s greatness. Yet another “historic” benchmark for this rudderless administration.. Kennedy’s words about the frontier of “space” demanded excellence and achievement and the nation rallied around the whole concept. Every young boy wanted to be an astronaut. Under Obama and the liberals, these heroes will be relegated to the history books.. Unfortunately, liberals will be the ones writing these history books so the information encased within the pages will be anything but truthful..

How interesting it is to note that literally any time that Obama has been squealing before an assemblage of public school simpletons, he has been praising the laudable ideas of both “science” and “education”. On the surface, these are certainly both goals that the American educational system should be firmly focused upon. However glancing just beneath the surface as you should whenever you deal with the left, one finds a picture that due to liberal meddling into the American educational system has become dystrophic and dysfunctional..

For example, on April 27th, 2009, “Obama redoubles push to improve science education”. (ScienceNews dot org) On November 29, 2009, Obama kicked off his “Educate to Innovate” program which allegedly “highlights science education”.. (Boston dot com) And in what has to be my favorite of the hundreds of Obama nonsense “talks” about “science”, “Obama calls for historic commitment to science” (LiveScience dot com).. One has to wonder, with all of this emphasis upon “science” and Obama’s alleged desire to “save jobs”, why with his shameful inaction has he allowed thousands of “science” jobs to just disappear? Should the nation believe Obama’s words or his actions? It seems silly to ask, doesn’t it?

It is important to note that the “science” that Obama and the liberals are always squawking about is NOT the genuine “science” that has come from such honorable places NASA and the like, it is the politically driven drivel (and with the liberals, the personally ECONOMIC driven) “science” of “globaloney warming” or any of their so-called “green jobs initiatives” that produce about as many actual “jobs” as they do “scientific breakthroughs”.. (NONE..) The liberals enthusiastic embrace of the idiocy of “globaloney warming” is about as senseless as an astronomer being pushed aside so that the “science” of astrology can be endorsed..

Who is the “scientist” who has been at the forefront of the “globaloney warming”/climate change/whatever we want to call it today nonsense? Liberal ballonatic Al Gore.. That fact should actually end any further logical discussion of the matter..

History was made 42 years ago today, as Apollo 11 touched down on the surface of the moon. It’s also my son’s 16th birthday, which means that my car insurance will very soon cost about as much as a moon shot, so I think that’s a fitting tribute.

Out of all of the moon landing video, animations and footage of various news anchors covering the touch-down, one of my favorite pieces of tape is simply the view from a small window in the Eagle.

Here’s about ten minutes worth of video and audio leading up to the landing. To this day I get chills when they still haven’t landed and somebody from Mission Control reminds them that they have “30 seconds” of fuel left before plunging to the surface. They landed with just a few seconds worth of fuel remaining — no pressure:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BvbD-1qZtc

Last Wednesday marked the fiftieth anniversary of a monumental crossroads in America’s history; a moment in which the nation, in the face of a seemingly invincible enemy, collected its resolve to remain a world leader that would be subservient to no one. The “mainstream” media, so saturated in its anti-American mindset, felt little compulsion to even mention the anniversary of this event. A resolution no less significant to the course of the nation than was the Monroe Doctrine in the early nineteenth century, apparently matters little to the liberal mouthpieces who would far prefer to demagogue imagined Republican attacks against Medicare.

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, addressing a joint session of Congress, issued this stunning challenge: “I believe that this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space; and none would be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

Amidst the brief and deceptive calm that ensued between American involvement in Korea and Vietnam, it might have seemed reasonable to fixate on the nation’s domestic concerns. But Kennedy was well aware of the burgeoning threat of an aggressive Soviet Union obsessed with world conquest and the forcible conversion of humanity to its Marxist ideology. In the tumultuous month preceding his address to the Congress, America had been subjected to the double humiliation of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the dramatic news that the Soviets had successfully sent a human passenger into space and recovered him safely after a complete orbit of the earth.

America desperately needed this boost of both its technological capability and its world standing. Believing in the greatness of these United States, Kennedy gambled that public commitment to such an undertaking would bring the talents and resources of the entire nation into service of his goal, and having done so, could indeed succeed in making it reality. The effort would ultimately be a defining battle in the Cold War, with no less than the very survival of America at stake.

Eight years and two months later, standing on the moon’s surface and speaking to then President Richard Nixon via Oval Office telephone, Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong talked of the mission’s significance to “men of peace of all nations, and with interest and curiosity, and with a vision for the future.”  Not mentioned by Armstrong was that this event spelled the beginning of the end of Soviet technological dominance on the world stage. And while it took nearly another two decades, and the combined knock out punch of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to bring the Soviets down for the count, that day in July of 1969 proved America had risen to Kennedy’s challenge and would not accept technological conquest.