BACK TO THE LUNAR FUTURE?

Is this week's revelation that water ice is more prevalent on the moon than scientists expected a "game-changer" for future spaceflight, as some experts think? Actually, the rules of the game for going beyond Earth orbit haven't changlatest findings could bring new attention to options in the old playbooks.

       The publication of three studies in Science about ice on the moon, plus yet another study about buried water ice on Mars, comes at an interesting time. More than five years after the White House set a goal of sending humans back to the moon by 2020, an independent panel chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine is wrapping up a full report that takes a second look at all the options for human spaceflight. (A summary report was sent to the White House earlier this month.)

       At the same time, NASA is on the verge of taking two significant steps in its renewed moon effort: On Oct. 9, the LCROSS probe is due to slam into a crater near the lunar south pole, a dark pit that could contain usable reservoirs of ice. Later next month, the space agency will go ahead with a test launch of its prototype Ares I-X moon rocket.

       For all these reasons, the back-to-the-moon plan - which was turning into a case of "been there, done that 40 years ago" - is starting to look sexy again.

"If we have water, we have the core elements needed to support life," Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, said in a statement issued after the latest moon-ice reports. "H2O is a magic formula: We can drink it, raise crops with it, or even break it down for oxygen to breathe. We can even recombine the hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket propellant. Confirming the widespread existence of moonwater means we have a nearby oasis in space around which we can build the true human communities beyond Earth. There will be flowers on the moon in our lifetimes."

          One unorthodox extraction technique calls for "nuking" the moon with microwaves from lunar orbit, which would turn embedded ice into water vapor. The water would be collected when it refreezes at the surface.

NASA is working on other methods for pulling resources out of lunar soil, and next month, teams will vie for prizes in a contest for moon-digging robots.
Schemes for processing materials from the moon have been kicking around for decades, as illustrated by this concept from 1978. Maybe it's time to blend those 30-year-old dreams with some 21st-century innovation. Developing new technologies for water extraction would fit right in with a step-by-step "flexible path" to deep space - an option that got a sympathetic hearing from Greason and his fellow panel members.
       "The whole question of 'do we do this, or that, or the other thing' is a false choice," he said. "The only question is, 'What order do you do these things in?'"

Taiwan's chip makers still face dangers: analysts

File photo shows a man looking at a display showing dynamic random access memory boards. Taiwan's chip makers, powerful drivers of growth on the island, may have survived their worst crisis ever, but lacklustre sales and new rivals still

make these risky times.

SAVE THE"EARTH" FORM THE "GLOBAL WARMING"

           The Earth as an ecosystem is changing, attributable in great part to the effects of globalization and man. More carbon dioxide is now in the atmosphere than has been in the past 650,000 years. This carbon stays in the atmosphere, acts like a warm blanket, and holds in the heat — hence the name ‘global warming.’The reason we exist on this planet is because the earth naturally traps just enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the temperature within a very narrow range - this creates the conditions that give us breathable air, clean water, and the weather we depend on to survive.
     Human beings have begun to tip that balance. We've overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses from our cars and factories and power plants. If we don't start fixing the problem now, we’re in for devastating changes to our environment. We will experience extreme temperatures, rises in sea levels, and storms of unimaginable destructive fury. Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace.

          The massive ice sheets in the Arctic are melting at alarming rates. This is causing the oceans to rise. That’s how big these ice sheets are! Most of the world’s population lives on or near the coasts. Rising ocean levels, an estimated six feet over the next 100 years or sooner, will cause massive devastation and economic catastrophe to population centers

Malaria. Dengue Fever. Encephalitis. These names are not usually heard in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices in the United States. But if we don’t act to curb global warming, they will be. As temperatures rise, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people in their wake. Doctors at the Harvard Medical School have linked recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, hantavirus and other diseases directly to climate change.

Malaria. Dengue Fever. Encephalitis. These names are not usually heard in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices in the United States. But if we don’t act to curb global warming, they will be. As temperatures rise, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people in their wake. Doctors at the Harvard Medical School have linked recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, hantavirus and other diseases directly to climate change.

                 SAVE THE"EARTH" FORM THE "GLOBAL WARMING"!

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

     A false-color far-infrared composite image of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. The image consists of 11,000 separate exposures taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope's Multiband Imaging Photometer at 24 microns. The image is dominated by emission from hot cosmic dust; this is the sharpest image ever taken of this component of the interstellar medium in another galaxy. This is in dramatic contrast to the more-familiar view at visible wavelengths, which is dominated by starlight.

Mass weddings mark 'eternal' 09/09/09

  Mass weddings mark 'eternal' 09/09/09
Beijing: Tens of thousands of Chinese couples rushed to tie the knot across the country to mark Wednesday's special date 09/09/09, hoping that the "triple 9 day" will bring them luck and eternal love.

In Beijing alone, 18,979 couples stood in long queues to register for marriage Wednesday, setting a one-day record in six decades. The figure was many times the daily average and exceeded the previous record of 15,646 seen Aug 8, 2008, a "triple 8 day" when the 29th Olympic Games opened in Beijing.

                 At the marriage register office in the city's Chaoyang district, clerks

working and issuing marriage certificate

midnight Tuesday to cope with the surge of marriage applications.Similar scenes were also seen in many other cities as well. In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, more than 6,000 couples applied to the city's 24 marriage register offices, and the figure was about 3,000 for the eastern city of Nanjing, according to local authorities.

       In some cities, many couples and their families had to queue outside the marriage register offices from Tuesday afternoon. Authorities in different cities had to increase staff, work long hours and open more offices to cope.
What a good day it is! We are very lucky that we got married today. The auspicious number stands for our eternal love," said a young man Zhang Peng with his girlfriend at a register office in Gaoxin district in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
       "We came here yesterday (Tuesday) to see the location of the register office, hoping to get the certificate sooner today (Wednesday)," he said.