that's why mission is not to ask "is there life?" Because if answer is no, then we ain't going back for another 20 years because that is exactly what happened with Viking (ok maybe I'm stretching it). But then I feel the same way, the next big thing is even a bigger rover. I've read stories of the "Mars Mafia" to keep the money rolling to JPL by continuing easy missions (but talk to people that worked on Curiosity and they'll tell you it is ***NOT*** easy). Now for a mission of big leap is a Europa lander and submarine (imagine it taking pictures of the little fishies if any).

yes, this same argument was made back in 1944 when NASA was NACA, billions were millions, and a completely different enemy.

But the real issue in Launius's article is NACA did not consider importance of the jet engine.
http://launiusr.wordpress.com/...

"...the public, when surveyed, thinks that NASA gets something like a quarter to a third of the US budget. Perhaps we should show the world what we could accomplish if we really had that level of funding?"

No. We need to educate the public what percentage of federal budget is spent on NASA. We first need to show the brutal truth of what's going on, and those who closely follow space activities have shown misinformation among themselves (not that it is all their fault, it seems federal policies are delibrietly made confusing).

Some years ago I purchase Premeire, it was a turkey. Resolution gets squashed and saved files like 720x480 are immensely large size to a point impractical. I heard these days Avid is the top program. Regarding gripes about FCP I bought a program last year and it sure doesn't perform like pre-Apple version. It may be easier to use but I find it will not import many video formats (I heard previous versions did). Then latest problem is audio is stripped when I import AVI files. Nobody seems to know how to deal with this, occassionally someone posts a useless tip like go to this menu selection that doesn't exist on my system.

If I was a predator and a clam lights up with those horrible 1970s fashions of bright clashing colors of polyester material, yuck that would turn me off very quickly.

Do you have to replace that blender frequently? There was a time when a blender would has forever, I still have my mom's Oster. A book called "High Cost of Cheap Fashion" besides clothes mentioned someone had a reading light for years but it finally burned out. So went a bought another (hey they're cheap) but the light didn't last very long. Then realizing these cheap lights actually cost more as having to buy a few instead of one over a certain time.

FYI, NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project explores and documents the feasibility, benefits and technical risk of vehicle concepts and enabling technologies to reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. http://www.aeronautics.nasa.go...

It's not like we provide financial assistance and loans to NK, so what kind of sanctions? I assume the tagline "you-can-have-cuba's-old-digs" as this country's policies changed for Cuba.

I believe he has funded various efforts to bring clean drinking water in deficit areas in Africa. Many civil wars, famine, etc. usually began when someone ruined the water supply. On the other hand, Branson has armies of accountants and lawyers moving monies from one country to another to avoid paying more taxes.

H1B visa issues?

Other than that, this U2/UFO thing has been kicking around for years. When first reading the headline, I'm thinking why did the CIA have say "it was us" (like why ruin a good story with facts)?

but then I read "in the next thousand years" so I figure I don't have to immediately plan a trip to that portion of the planet real soon.

Other than that, it would be interesting event unless there's tons of radioactive particles or a gamma ray burst (can may be nasty).

And to think last time of a visible supernova was when Europeans spend all their time doing religious reading and writing, and Chinese did very little documentation (or if they did it got lost in bureaucracy of those dynasties).

this kind of stuff posted that distracts from engaging comments on a subject that needs discussion i.e. where all the christmas stuff comes from.

I say the human eye does see more than 24 fps, pan your head back and forth, no blurring like you get panning a camera. OK so I haven't RTFA but I recently read/search info on framerates. From what I gather 24 fps came about from movies particularly when the talkies became standard for motion pictures. What they settled on enough fps to have smooth action and matching audio but not too much as film is/was very expensive. But each frame is shown twice (refresh rate in the movie theatres is 48 Hz). I read 24 fps is needed so brain perceives as smooth motion but need to show each one twice to remove flicker effect. Those 16mm and silent films were less fps but not as cinema quality of major motion pictures.

Anyone have comments or corrections, jump in as many times I feel as if I'm still trying to figure out what and why of fps and refresh rates.

Then television came along, first 60 fps seems good (match with powerline freq) but too much bandwidth so they make it 30 fps but to reduce flicker, they did interlace. Framerate has smooth motion and interlace does the refresh rate like motion picture showing each frame twice. Then color TV comes along but as OTA bandwidth was fixed, they reduce framerate a little to 29.97 to insert chroma signal.

Then computers came along, why not use same CRTs as TV sets, so their framerate was 29.97 (but many simply rounded off to 30 when writing or talking about framerates). Then the flatscreens (VGA monitors) came along but used 29.97 to be compatible with existing computers, but refresh rate is 60 Hz to not have flicker effect. Gamers wanted higher framerates so 60 fps but I think it really is 59.94 fps.

I did some different FPS exercises with a CRT monitor and a Canon EOS camera. I set Canon to 30 fps (actually it is 29.97) and connected the video output to the monitor. I panned camera back and forth including viewing monitor. I did the same with Canon at 24 fps, there was noticable blurring or choppy on monitor when I panned camera back and forth. Viewing monitor with camera I can see those rolling bars like you see in the movies with TV set in background (aha, so that's what the 24/30 fps mismatch is). I set camera to 60 fps (actually 59.94), it seemed smoother view when panning back and forth though monitor is fixed 30 fps.

For many people, so what. However, I was looking at various cameras and spec sheets list framerates of 23.97, 24, 29.97, 30, 59.94, 60.... what's with all these variations? I don't think a camera can be set to exactly 30. Or is it sales and marketing people insists on lots more numbers for the spec sheets?

I must say: you posted exactly what I think of voicemail systems. I ***don't*** care about more options, I just wanna leave a message!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

unlike a few Shuttle cockpit shots. Or previously few seconds clip from a Gemini re-entry that's replayed zillion times like the Saturn interstage separation between first and second stages. My question has Elon released any such footage?