Kevin Colby: News, culture, political blog

I wish America had more days like this now. Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body. Apollo 11 achieved its primary mission - to perform a manned lunar landing and return the mission safely to Earth - and paved the way for the Apollo lunar landing missions to follow.

Click here for more information on Apollo 11.

The Shuttle program is scheduled for mandatory retirement in 2010. The program has been criticized for failing to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues.

The total cost of the Shuttle program has been $145 billion as of early 2005 , and is estimated to be $174 billion when the Shuttle retires in 2010. NASA’s budget for 2005 allocated 30%, or $5 billion, to Space Shuttle operations; this was decreased in 2006 to a request of $4.3 billion.

The retirement of the Shuttle program will make way for the Constellation program. The Constellation program is supposed to take man back to the Moon. Until then, the loss of jobs is going to definitely affect economy surrounding KSC.

NASA previously projected that as many as 6,400 Kennedy Space Center contractor workers might lose their jobs as a result of the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the transition to the new Constellation program. The recent projection for job loss is 3000-4000. To make things worse, President Bush has underfunded and has shown no support for NASA space missions. Because of this, our country will now face a 5 year gap during which we will have laid off U.S. space workers and must rely on the Russians and Chinese to get our astronauts to the International Space Station, which we have invested so much in building. The gap will likely lead to both Russia and China further advancing themselves in space exploration. The U.S. will have a considerable setback with launching only unmanned missions into space.

For more information on the Space Shuttle. Link.

According to the Paris based International Energy Agency, the world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades. They say we need to build roughly 1,400 nuclear power plants and expand wind power in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. It is also estimated that in 2050 we could have an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees and that these temperatures could start affecting living species on this planet, causing droughts and possibly swamping other area. Unfortunately the sun tells us that this is a lie.

More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.s have signed a petition rejecting that “global warming” is caused by human production of greenhouse gases. The scientists have also claimed that ‘Mr. Gore’s movie has claims no informed expert endorses’. Take that you liberal goons. I’m going to give you the facts about Earth and global warming

The Earth is 4.54 Billion years old, life formed on Earth about 1 billion years later. Earth is located in a solar system with millions of other solar systems forming the Milky Way Galaxy. In the middle of our solar system is a star you may be familiar with called the Sun. Let’s start by talking about the beginnings of the Earth.

The Earth has gone through many phases in the past 2 billion years. When Earth was first created, there was virtually almost no dry land, but during the past 2 billion years, the total size of land mass has nearly doubled. During the last several hundred million years the surface had continued to reshape itself. The Earth was a very volatile planet in its early stages, as land masses were constantly shifting, forming super continents, then shifting again and then eventually forming the world we know today.

Since 1960 they have discovered that there was severe glacial action between 750 and 580 million years which covered much of the planet in a sheet of ice which this is actually considered the first ice age. Scientists have termed this period “Snowball Earth”, and is of particular interest because it preceded the rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals around 530 million years ago, as evidenced by the fossil record, which they call the cambrian explosion.

Following that period, there have been five mass extinctions. The last extinction event occurred 65 million years ago, which we all learned in school how a meteorite collision triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared small animals such as mammals. This meteorite collision had caused another ice age which was present about 40 million years ago and then another ice age formed about 3 million years ago. Here is the most important point, THE POLAR REGIONS HAVE SINCE UNDERGONE CYCLES OF GLACIATION AND THAW, repeating every 40-100,000 years. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. Sounds similar to what’s going on today, doesn’t it? Well keep reading because it gets better.

The future of the planet is closely tied to that of the Sun. As a result of the steady accumulation of helium ash at the Sun’s core, the star’s total luminosity will slowly increase. The luminosity of the Sun will increase by 10 percent over the next 1.1 billion years and by 40% over the next 3.5 billion years. Climate models indicate that the rise in radiation reaching the Earth is likely to have really lethal consequences, including the possible loss of the planet’s oceans. Which means it’s getting warmer and as it gets warmer, the biosphere (air, land, surface rocks, and water, within which life occurs) will start to slowly change. Now please, don’t be scared, the really bad stuff doesn’t happen for a several hundred million years.

In 900 million years, the Earth’s increasing surface temperature will accelerate the inorganic CO2 cycle, which will kill all plant life on the planet. The lack of plant life will result in the loss of oxygen in the atmosphere, so animal life will become extinct within several million more years. Not only that but the internal cooling of Earth would result in the disappearance of the atmosphere and oceans. After another billion years, surface water will have completely disappeared and the average global temperature will reach 70°C.

But don’t you people worry, the Earth still has 500 million years left in her to effectively support life.

Finally, this is pretty much the end of everything where the Sun starts destroying the solar system. The Sun, as part of its evolution, will expand to a red giant in about 5 Billion years. They predict that the Sun will expand out to about 250 times its present size. Earth’s fate is less clear. As a red giant, the Sun will lose roughly 30% of its mass, so, without tidal effects, the Earth will be in an orbit from the Sun when the star reaches it maximum size. Earth is thought to escape being enveloped by the expanded Sun’s outer atmosphere, but by that point, most or all of life should be destroyed due to the close proximity of the Sun. But there is a possibility that Earth’s orbit could decay due to tidal effects and gravitational pull, causing it to be engulfed by the Red Giant.

Here is a website that tells you the true story about Co2 emissions and the effects of it on the atmosphere. Link.

Here are some great stories to read:

31,000 scientists reject global warming agenda. Story.
$45 Trillion needed to stop global warming. Story.

If you ever seen a picture of Jupiter, you have seen the giant red spot which is a storm that has wind speeds of 300 mph. Well in February 2006 scientists discovered a smaller red spot on the planet and just recently have discovered a third spot. While astronomers still don’t exactly understand why Jupiter’s red spots are red, they do think the appearance of the two new red spots provides evidence for climate change on the Solar System’s largest planet. So I am guessing that the people of Jupiter need to stop using those gas guzzling, pollution distributing SUV’s. While we are at it, we mine as well blame “W” for this one too.