The story is not the flare itself, it is the sensory system which spotted it. They've been developing these activity sensors for years, and now it is starting to give results.

This is the space version of Hurricane tracking technology. While not every tropical wave that comes off of africa becomes another Katrina, we need to watch all of them for the one which does.

Best thing to ever happen, IKAROS is designed to handle much larger X-grade events. A c-grade will just give it a serious push.

Nothing valuable in as far as a natural resource? Dude, have you ever even looked at your typical Nickel-Iron asteroid? Even a small one (1km across) has more base metal than the worlds mines output in a year. Just... floating.... there. We have found Asteroids with heavy Gold and Platinum content as well, one of which was evaluated with a worth of 14 Trillion, that with a T, dollars of *just* Platinum.

The SNC Dream Chaser is further along than both.

Initial proposal had one launch every 2 weeks, and used the Saturn V as the main booster, to eventually be replaced with a flyback Saturn V. Politics came in, cut the size of the fleet from the original 24 to 6, and one of those has never even been flown into space. Then other Politicians came in and canned the lifting booster of Saturn V, giving that contract to the ATK company and its solid rocket boosters, with the Challenger the result of that. The USAF then came in and nixed the metal heat shield by blocking the access for the titanium the shuttle needed, requiring replacement with the lighter ceramic tiles to compensate for the heavier core structure weight, with Columbia being the result of that.

The Shuttle has done well considering.

Correct, the problem being management-driven vs engineer driven engineering. Now, the proposed design from the Senate is the Engineers design, the very design that they proposed in 1978, 1990, 2006... in short, every single time that this has come up, they keep pushing the same design and management keeps nixing it. Now, we are getting the heavy lift we should have had since the get-go.

Ares was a boondoggle design forced on the engineers by management trying to maximize political paydirt. It was unworkable, unsafe, and inherently unflyable. It would not be fully functional until 2025, as first tier development on many components necessary had not yet even begun. The Ares launchers caused crippling compromises to Orion, sacrificing such features as two crew, part of the service life, ground landing, and reuse.

It helps to understand what Ares began as, and what they became. When originally proposed, there were 4 launchers written up, Ares I, III, IV and V. Ares I was a 4 segment SRB right off of the shuttle with an air-start version of the Shuttles RS-25 for upper stage. Ares III and IV were quick-develop using 3 and 4 RS-25, respectively, mounted to the bottom of the shuttles main fuel tank. Ares V was a 5 engine which also required stretching the shuttles main tank. Management decided on skipping the III and IV first-stage development (called LV 25 and 26 at the time) and pushing forward with Ares I and V. Then, someone decided on a need for a re-startable engine for the Ares I, the RS-25 is not restartable (as it was, to make it air-startable was difficult but not impossible, but to restart them is impossible due to the design). So, they needed the J-2S, but the J-2S off of Ares V was not strong enough, so new engine development, J-2X plus replace the shuttles SRB with new SRB which were 25% larger. But J-2X cost too much, and Ares V needed 2 of them, so they killed one, which then made Ares V not work, so scrapped the RS-25 there and replace with even larger Solid boosters, new engine again, and the Delta IV's RS-68. But the RS-68 has a critical problem of not handling too much heat (the two solid boosters produce TONS of BTU's) and would blow up mid-flight, requiring a new RS-68B model to solve that issue.....

And even now, it still cannot do its job.

Your signature is incorrect. If it were true, NASA's budget would be more than tripled.

The Space Shuttle as proposed by NASA was engineer driven. Nixon canned it for the frankenrocket we know today.

Did you know that one of the Shuttle proposals, the one NASA was pushing, planned to utilize the existing Saturn V? They were working with Boeing on a flyback Saturn V first stage, which would have dramatically reduced the cost to flight for both the lunar missions as well as the space station/shuttle missions. They also were in late development of a Saturn II, which was just the Saturn V 2nd and 3rd stages used as a launcher on their own. Commodity design, the expensive component (1st stage) made reusable to reduce the cost, upper stage made reusable with the shuttle for LEO, or capsule for BEO. What they had planned was truly magnificent.

And it was canned so Nixon could carry Utah.

There is a third, that Constellation was a failure due to engineering issues from the get-go without a huge budget-up. But that the mission can be done on the budget that we do have.

That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands. It has already passed through qualifications, all of the components exist now (unlike Constellation which was all-new) and we can have it flying within 36 months according to the engineers as well as the contractors involved. And that is the conservative estimate.

http://www.directlauncher.com/

You do realize that $6 billion is *if* they splash the ISS and cancel the shuttle, and even then we are looking at not being ready until 2025.

are you absolutely *sure* that 15 years without manned access to space is a good move?

Oh, I am a DIRECT fanboy, no arguments there. I was only countering his argument that with the Shuttles retirement, that we have no access to space.

Seattles Museum of Flight would also make sense, as Boeing assisted in the manufacturing of the Shuttles systems for many years.

Industries which fight their own customers are doomed to failure. If I, as Mr Big Movie Company, found that my movie xyz was being downloaded by 123 # of people, I'd be finding out a way to get my product to them in an easily accessable and profitable manner, yes? Scan the downloads to let the pirates do my market research for me before I put a product on Hulu or Youtube, and generate the revenue stream. Once available there, the majority of the "pirates" vanish, watching it happily on websites, and the revenue stream is maintained.

I do not say movie piracy is good, or any copyright infingement is, but in todays day and age if you think you can stop the flow of information you are in for a real shock. However, you can tap that flow of information to serve your needs.