Obviously something worth investigating, however, the temperatures for BA 38 were -70 C = -94 F, which is decidedly more chilly than the -58 F for the ariana flight.

You mean this data?

Mann 1998/9

On the other hand, if you meant every email Mann sent in the past 10 years, go jump in a lake. We don't even get president's personal correspondence and notes until after they die! Why should it be any different for scientists?

I think you may be asking for the impossible. Well maybe not. I think that your question needs more details. The following information would be useful:

• What you are mounting on the equatorial mount? Is it a telescope or a camera? How big of a telescope?
• What are you trying to photograph

If you are trying to photograph deep sky objects through a mid sized telescope, I don't think you will find a mount in your budget range, unless you can get one used off of ebay or some such. The tabletop equatorial mount might be appropriate if you're just doing the sky. However, for a telescope, just the motors for a good equatorial drive will set you back $100 or more....

If you are only trying to photograph planets or the moon, you won't need any tracking ability to get spectacular photographs.

Actually, Lithium is one of the least abundant elements in the universe, at least in terms of elements that don't decay radioactively. Quoth wikipedia:

Though very light in atomic weight, lithium is less common in the solar system than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements.

The lack of lithium in the universe is one of the great unsolved mysteries in astronomy.

Oops, I wasn't looking carefully... the minimum cost for true bluewater broadband is $1500/month.....

Marine satellite broadband. It ain't cheap (cheapest plan is $400/month), but seeing how much they're spending on the rest of this boondoggle, it should be affordable for them....

Actually, they still sell logic chips and miscellaneous electronic components, albeit fairly well-hidden in the back of the store. I had a last minute idea for a project for a summer camp group I was leading last week and was able to pick up all the components I needed from RadioShack. Admittedly, the selection isn't what it used to be, but it's still there when you have a sudden pressing need for resistors, LEDs, transistors and capacitors....

Who knows what this "rebranding" will do for that section of the store....

This is not a new idea. Actually, this idea has been thought about before and dismissed. The researchers referenced propose using millisecond radio pulsars for navigation. This is a poor idea from an engineering standpoint because it requires having a large collecting area of radio dishes in order to get an apporpriate signal level.

A better idea, which is currently being researched, and was suggested four years ago (at least the earliest I recall it being mentioned) was using x-ray pulsars, which require much smaller collecting area. See for example this thesis on the subject.