More Satellites to Explore Clouds' Most Intimate Secrets

You Nork Slimes ^ | April 20, 2006 WASHINGTON, April 19 | WARREN E. LEARY

[raygun]

The two NASA satellites, to be launched on Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard the same Boeing Delta II rocket, is to join three spacecraft already surveying the planet for a detailed study of the interlocking factors that affect Earth's climate.

This constellation of satellites in a string 4,400 miles long will loop around the poles at an altitude of 438 miles measuring the interactions of the air, water and surface with the Sun's energy as they drive near-term weather and longer-term climate changes.

The newest additions are the CloudSat, which will profile cloud formations with radar more than 1,000 times more sensitive than typical weather radar, and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations, or Calipso, spacecraft.

[raygun]

Space-dudes ping.

[Hunble]

measuring the interactions of the air, water and surface with the Sun's energy

Maybe, just maybe, NASA will actually obtain some valid scientific data because of this.

Question: Is the Sun a variable star? And if so, how has it's variability influenced the temperatures on Earth?

[raygun]

Maybe, just maybe, NASA will actually obtain some valid scientific data because of this

I don't know about that, dude, sounds way too political to me. I read the article several times, and given the source, I still can't find the 'Bush did it' spin. Of course I'm not the sharpest of drawers in the knife either (so what's glaringly obvious to you probably isn't to me).

That being said: the Sun is a variable star (I'll get confirmation on that from 'Solar Marty' from the Warren Astronomy Club confirm/deny that (The Sun is what he specializes in).

There was a guy (named Kim) in the club some time back who's job it was to make glass plate photographs. He wasn't an astronomer, but he was a star-geek-dude who did astronomer grunt-work back in the day (nowadays its different - they don't make glass plates - but there still are astronmer-geek-grunt-types). The club was bequethed 10's of thousands of slides of astro-pix taken by some guy. I never did get involved in any of that (although I wish I had the time & money to do so). Nobody knew what he had, none of it was catalogued...

[neverdem]

[raygun]

I heard they scrapped this fly-by-night notion in the last minute (good riddance - we've real probems needing dealing with).

E.g., why in the * won't anybody slant drill into oil reserves under Lake Michigan? I really want to know the answer to that. Don't anybody give me crap about Jenny Grandstand (she's a throwaway doll).

Don't anybody give me crap about trashing the planet. I've been to the gas fields, and have seen what the oil companies have done to the areas they laid pipe to.

If there's any insanity to be seen, its on the account of the liberals. Liberalism is a mental illness.