The Space Thread!

It seems Saturn farted...

Rare, enormous gas storm detected on Saturn

NASA says the Cassini spacecraft recorded the aftermath of a massive storm on Saturn that let out an "unprecedented belch of energy."
Not only was the size of the storm unusual, but what the storm was made of left scientists puzzled.
The source of the cosmic burp, which rapidly changed the atmosphere's temperature, was ethylene gas, an odorless, colorless gas that has rarely been observed on Saturn, NASA said.
"This temperature spike is so extreme it's almost unbelievable," said Brigette Hesman, the study's lead author who works at Goddard. "To get a temperature change of the same scale on Earth, you'd be going from the depths of winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the height of summer in the Mojave Desert," Hesman said in a statement released by NASA.

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And don't forget to take whatever results we obtain and pack it full of C4 and blow it up after we're done. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!
 
This time it has to be for all the marbles. Permanently inhabited moon base? That's a good idea.
It shouldn't even be an entirely US project this... Not for taking credit away from NASA, just the costs of it should be shared by all mankind, and we'd maybe start getting some common goals as a civilization rather than keep squabbling over this pale blue dot which is the earth.
 
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Cooperation is good but so is competition. If we didn't want to beat the Soviets we might have yet to even attempt going to the moon...
 
Competition with whom? There's no Soviet Union now, the Chinese are not space bound at least yet... the only competition I can see happening is private sector vs public funded.
 
Competition with whom? There's no Soviet Union now, the Chinese are not space bound at least yet... the only competition I can see happening is private sector vs public funded.

The Chinese are space bound. They have a manned space program, and they plan a permanent space station by 2020 and then a moon trip. India is also ramping up their efforts in manned flight.
 
So they're gonna do what the rest of the world has been doing for 40 years maybe in 8 years from now, while we're talking of a race for a lunar base? It doesn't seem like serious competition.
 
So they're gonna do what the rest of the world has been doing for 40 years maybe in 8 years from now, while we're talking of a race for a lunar base? It doesn't seem like serious competition.

Only two countries currently have their own manned space programs, Russia and China. Anyone else is dependent on other nations to put humans into space. With the US, they are the only three countries to launch people into space. The US and Russia are the only countries to build Space Stations (yes the ISS was an international effort, but it was US led and wouldn't have been possible without US involvement). So no, these aren't things "the rest have the world has been doing for 40 years".

China may be behind in total achievements, but they are currently more capable than the US in that they can actually put people into space right now and they are set to have a more capable human space program than the US for years to come. At the soonest, the US will be doing it's next Moon shot about the same time as the Chinese. That sounds like a race to me.
 
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