This is an under-appreciated point, especially with regards to HDCP, where the HD alliance is run by a group of content producers who have collaborated to effectively force all content producers to use their system. Consumers won't buy hardware unless it plays existing content, and manufacturers can't make hardware that plays HDCP-protected content unless they meet all of the HDCP requirements, which means no one can't effectively support non-HDCP HD content, which means other HD content producers have to work within that license-encumbered system. It's not a total lock-in, but there are unreasonable negative effects on the consumer in addition to producers, such as the analog sunset, that has made it contractually impossible to fully support some common older formats like component video.

If he disrupted servers used by NASA to provide data to their employees, it could easily reach that. For example, the Planetary Data System servers are the normal point of access for thousands of researchers around the country working with raw data from NASA space probes. Take that off line for a day and you've disrupted quite a lot of work. Similar if you take down a technical data server that suppliers need to access detailed requirements or coordinated design data like CAD models of a system a supplier needs to make a subsystem interface with.

He actually has a PhD in civil engineering (transportation emphasis) from the Iran University of Science and Technology. I'm not sure if he ever actually worked in the field. His biography lists some administrative positions, then he taught for a while, was appointed a provincial governor, and eventually mayor of Tehran. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I first learned Ahmadinejad was a civil engineer. After all, I know quite a few uncivil civil engineers.

You're probably the first person I've run into who can describe what's going on in such images well enough to convince me that you understand it. I was going to try to explain it myself until I saw your post. The comparison of local contrast to proper brightness mapping is much more concise than anything I would have come up with.

I see nothing dysfunctional about this.

They don't want to release the data they spent the last several years developing a system to collect until they have a chance to study it and write the first papers from it. In the meantime, there's nothing preventing them from talking in general terms about the sorts of things they're finding. Saying there appears to be 400 earth-sized candidates isn't going to allow anyone to beat them to getting credit for analyzing the data.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Spain uses about 276 billion kW-hr per year. According to Wikipedia, wind in Spain generated 36 billion kW-hr in 2009, which is growing at around 10% per year.

That's 13%, which although I don't read Spanish competently, I think is what your link says. It's still one of the highest shares of any nation, but definitely not 41%.

I'm sure you got that 41% number from a recent story about during a time of unusually strong winds and the low demand period at night, wind made up 41% of the generation for a couple hours.

Spain can handle this because huge regional overcapacity like the Pacific NW does, they don't have a large fraction generated by dams that are required by the EPA to keep flow rate through the turbines at minimum levels for salmon protection, and around half of their generating capacity is from natural gas, which can quickly adjust output to meet changes in supply or demand.

At the same time, they pay on average about twice what we do in the US, partially because wind and gas are expensive.

You're right! Secret arrests are great! At least, for governments that do no evil. The US Constitution however protects the accused by mandating citizens names released to keep the police honest and accountable.

Ahh...good thought, but not the case here.

This area isn't chilled down until fuel loading begins, and I believe that is just done by sending LH2, or possibly a brief helium purge, through at low volumes for a while...I think only 30 minutes. Then they just pumping it in at full volume until its full. I guess that's slow enough that thermal stresses aren't an issue, and contraction is dealt with in the design. The main concern is boiloff, but the thermal mass of the fuel is far greater than that of the tank, and the fuel is kept topped off until just a few seconds before launch. At the time when fueling begins, there's no access to the external tank, so I know for certain that no retorquing is done then.

Maybe it has something to do with cooldown times for components exposed to liquid hydrogen at -423 F.

According to a Mission Management Team memo (not officially published, but there happen to be a couple outlets good at getting details), it's torquing issue. Here's the specific quote I was referencing:

In the reinstallation of the flight seal, there is a 30 hour retorque requirement, that pushes us to a Monday launch. The team is looking to examine if there is some wiggle room in the 30 hr torque requirement, then we could potentially get a Sunday launch attempt.

Cooldown is part of the overall filling process and done during the countdown at T-6 hours. It lasts about two hours.

This mission was originally supposed to launch February 12. I know, because I bought tickets to go see it, and I ended up missing (KSC still makes for a great vacation though).

They got within a week or two of launch, and decided they still weren't happy with the analysis that had been conducted for troubleshooting an issue with the propellant lines that cropped up during Endeavor's STS-126 launch. A valve on a secondary fuel handling line had failed, and while it didn't appear to affect that flight there was concern that it would either result in metal particles from the valve causing issues downstream, or lead to excess hydrogen venting that could cause a fire. They spent the last month testing and quantifying the probability of these concerns, and figuring out additional safeguards to implement for this flight, since making new valves would be an additional two months.

The next possible launch window is about 23:30 after this one, but apparently the expected resolution for the leak is a multi-day process. The launch is now scheduled for no-earlier-than Mar 15 (19:43 EDT), but Mar 16 (19:21 EDT) sounds likely. As I understand it, re-installing the ground support hydrogen line on external tank requires a 30 hour waiting period before applying the final torque to allow the seals to compress...a typical factor when working with torque specs on plastic components. That 30 hours is on top of the time to demate and remate the hydrogen line, do leak checks, and reset to the proper point in the countdown.

Anyway, because they're working against a launch window before the next Soyuz launches to the station, they're losing at least one mission day, and if it slips to the 16th, they'll be losing another day, plus one EVA. That will mean they can get the last solar array installed, but not fully hooked up. I'm not sure if that EVA would be handed off to a future shuttle mission, or if it could be fit into the station crew's schedule. If the launch happens after Mar. 16, they'll have to wait until after the Soyuz mission.

There's a briefing going on regarding all this right now on NASA TV.

In a polar orbit like OCO would have been in, the satellite would regularly cover the entire earth's surface. The rovers had an expected range of a few hundred meters. Even the amazing dozen kilometers they've covered over their extended missions leaves each still within the major geological features they landed in.

The insurance policy of having a second rover for moderate (not minimal) cost was one factor. I think it increased the costs by about 25%, and put considerable extra strain on the team to get the second unit built in time for the launch window. Launch cost alone was an extra 10% or so.

The other factor was that a second rover allowed them to conduct similar studies of a much different location on Mars, giving the scientists good comparisons of very different geographies. It turned out to be a good thing, too. Opportunity, which landed second, has arguably accomplished much more than Spirit, in large part due to its location. That's not to say that Spirit hasn't also been extremely successful, but Opportunity has tended to steal the spotlight since day 1.

A second copy of OCO would have been producing nearly identical data as the first. Given that this mission was already under pressure just from politics, spending extra money to build a complete spare was unlikely.

However, NASA still has the design work done. We'll have to see if they decide to build a replacement, or simply settle for data from the related Japanese Greenhouse Gasses Observing Satellite launched last month.