You misunderstand sir--

I dont hate america. I hate what america has become, and where it is going. America is no longer a place of ideals. It no longer is a place where liberty and freedom are real things, bought and paid for with blood.

America today is a place where you work more than 9 hours a day, every day if possible, with more than half the population either in jail, or having previously been in jail, where you live in inescapable debt to a tiny fraction of the population-- who makes all the rules, and enforce those rules with corrupt courts, secret courts, wiht literal bribery in government, and where you dont really have any real say in the matter. (and if you try, you can find yourself being subjected to extraordinary rendition, and tortured.) It is also the place where big corporations hold more political voice than the general public, where double standards where big money is at stake is the norm, and where all this bullshit is hand waved away with an outright lie that "America is Number One!"

This country gets more and more like North Korea every day.

I'm sorry, but when exactly will you realize that patriotism and jingoism are not the same thing at all? A patriot stands up for what is good and wholesome about his country-- the things he loves about it-- in the face of those things that seek to destroy and undermine those things

I suppose if you love the fact that america is the single most militaristic and self-serving nation on the planet, armed with nukes, and lacking any practical sense to not fuck the world up on short sighted and insane political and military pissing matches, and that it loves its own power so much that it does not even trust its own citizens, and feels it has to spy on, and secretly punish internal dissent in shamelessly illegal ways, Then I suppose the current US is something that you could feel genuine patriotism for.

As for me, I prefer the way the US was 30 years ago-- or even further back yet.

America and americans can look out for american interests, and be proud of their home and nationality, without having to resort to international briggandry, and domestic thuggery.

America and americans can be proud, without "Being Number One!!"-- Like, having an actually rich culture, or having a real, genuine reputation for being a good place to live.

But the lie is so much easier to live, isn't it?

Given a sufficiently large distance between two discrete points in the universe, the rate of hubble expansion between those points can exceed C.

http://www.universetoday.com/1...

You can think of it this way:

You have a ruler-- You can only move along the ruler at at most, 100 units per second. (we will use this as an analogue for going C) However, for every second, for every 1000 units distance on the ruler, a new unit of distance magically appears. If you have a distance between 2 points that is sufficiently large, (In this case, in excess of 1,000,000 units) more than 100 units will be introduced every second, which is faster than your maximum rate of traversal-- So you will NEVER reach the target-- it receedes faster than you can get to it.

http://www.universetoday.com/1...

It has been my observation that the people who have blistering hatred for Snowden, are the kinds of people who totally embrace jingoism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

They see any kind of "restriction" on government's ability to secure "advantage" and "interest" as allowing "The terrorists to win" (or whatever is the current buzz phrase), As such, they view actions like snowden's as being completely un-american, because he undermined the interests of an american intelligence agency, who was collecting abhorrent amounts of information about everyone and everything--presumably to secure american interests, over foriegn interests. These are the same kinds of people that would support creation of a literal planet-killing super weapon, just to secure american military dominance, and would think nothing of it.

People that chug the jingo-laid come in all colors, all races, all creeds, and all genders: Liberal, Libertarian, Fiscal conservative, raging pinko, and gun toting whacko alike. The unifying feature is that they have bought into the "America is NUMBER ONE!!!!eleveltyone!" mantra.

Seeing that supporting "American interests" without question or hesitation is leading to somethig that is not the america they were promised, with real proof, and real scnadals, with real consequences (FOR THEM), is about the only way to get through to them, short of having them experience the stazi first hand, up close and brutal.

The bullshit needs to stop, and an anti-jingoism movement needs to sweep this country.

Yes, actually they HAVE.

Tardigrades in space:
http://www.newscientist.com/ar...

Algae in space:
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-a...

Yes. I Do. Quoted below, with emphasis, because you apparently cannot read.

Also, dune migration and wind blown particle accumulation is one of those things, like waves in a large ocean, that is very difficult to model. This is why data from the actual target environment is actually needed, and why I suggested it. The total theoretical energy is indeed calculable by formula using known data, which I nodded to when I asserted that the low atmospheric pressure posed a significant obstacle, but data collected from the other parts I mentioned, specifically in relation to the particle erosion behaviors for fixed mast objects designed to redicrect airflow, would still be of very significant value.

Now kindly stop being an asshole.

Who said anything about the first being an experiment?

The experiments you proposed (in a test lab, and in LEO) have already been conducted, which is why I suggested THOSE PARTICULAR ORGANISMS. At this point, the only remaining experiment to see if those organisms could indeed survive in that environment is to send them to that environment and see. However, I did not really intend it as an experiment, I intended it as a precolony groundwork initiative. As I said, a simplistic biosphere could be created, which would radically assist a fledgling colony site.

AND, as I stated initially, it is also the kind of thing that would make the international planetary society come out of their skins, because it would contaminate the purity of mars irrevocably. (then again, MarsONE in general would do that also.)

As for the latter, There's a reason we are still sending spectrometers and chemistry labs to mars. We can simulate the albedo and density of martian regolith, and to a limited extent, we can also simulate the mean bulk chemical constituents, but that does not mean that the regolith simulants produced in a lab will have the same engineering properties of real martial regolith. Such things as the shape of the particles, the reactivity of saline particles in the regolith, and interactions with seasonal dry ice formations on wind diverting surfaces all pose significant engineering challenges to long-term constructions on Mars, which you have so blithely hand-swept away as being answerable with simple models. Here's a hint, we have known about waves and wave mechanics for years, but we still build and use wave tanks, and still do tests in oceans for experimental ocean craft. Theoretical models only can give you what is permissible by the model's constraints. REAL science is conducted against REALITY, not models.

The kinds of payloads I would like to see delivered to mars are exactly the kind that the international planetary society would come out of their skins over.

Waterbears, antarctic algea, and things of that nature.

Those are lifeforms that could concievably survive indefinatly on mars. (waterbears can live, totally exposed, in the vacuum of space.-- Antarctic algeal forms are able to live in extremely saline conditions just within the first few millimeters of moist rocks, in blisteringly cold temperatures, and engage in active photosynthesis. Together, it is concievable for a highly simplistic, but stable biosphere to be cultivated/initiated on mars.)

http://antarcticfacts.weebly.c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

In terms of scientific aparatus-- I would be interested in seeing how stationary wind turbines fare on the red planet. There is no surface vegitation of any kind to restrict or stop basically constant howling winds there, however the low atmospheric pressure may mean that while the wind is blowing with gusto, it packs little "punch". As far as I know, there is little data on the total energy yeild of wind energy on mars-- For a colony, wind energy would present a very attractive option over solar, which would be significantly less total energy per cubic meter than what is attainable on earth, especially when one considers the inefficiency of solar to begin with. Data on how much energy is reasonably able to be extracted, so that ideally sized generation systems can be designed, and data on rates of wind blown particle erosion on those devices would be of considerable value.

One burst from one location in the sky, then weeks or months later, another burst from another location in the sky. I don't think a pattern recognition algorithm is going to help you much.

1. I'm not interested in being brow beaten by some fool more interested in winning an argument then in addressing the argument.

If you're going to keep attempting an ad hominem then I'm going to simply not talk to you. And then what will you have accomplished? ...you're going to get asinine...

Jeez, pot meet kettle.

To top it off, he addressed your points quite well and it appears that it's you that seems intent upon winning an argument with your long-winded reply, which, of course, doesn't specifically and concretely address the issues raised by the person you're replying to.

Funding to reproduce coming from same institution? So they'll have half the money for original research then. And the suckers tasked with the reproduction won't be advancing their own careers under the Publish (original, ground breaking work) Or Perish model used today.

Like it was stated, in a fairly appropriate analogy, reproducing others' work is akin to re-writing a new software project - in software dev, it's a losing game.

In science it's important, but like in software dev, the boss isn't interested. And while the result may be beneficial, it's hard to convince people that it's a rewarding career move to play catch-up to others' work.

Having said all that, I think we all agree that reproducibility is important -- question is, how to go about it as the current system kinda disfavours it in all but the most important projects.

We need to implement specific, concrete changes -- having grad students do some of that is a good idea, but not sure if it'll completely solve the issue.

But laymen will at least understand what has and has not be verified. That is important. Science cannot be something only scientists understand any more then the law can be something only lawyers understand.

Laymen will never understand cutting edge science (unless they're quite keen on the topic at hand - a miniscule minority), and any layman that thinks they understand the law as well as lawyers generally get their arses handed to them should they attempt pro se representation.

Specialization in complex fields is natural.

This also includes the coastline and international airports. So, maybe the interior of Alaska is free.