Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

A grand claim indeed. But only "should"?? "More" is bad enough.

O'Malley pledges aerospace boost
New panel would focus on increasing contracting opportunities with NASA
by Lindsey Robbins | Staff Writer

Maryland is already home to some of the nation's top aerospace players. Gov. Martin O'Malley wants to strengthen the state's prominence in the industry even further.

A week after NASA completed repairs to its Hubble Space Telescope, whose daily orbital operations are managed by the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, O'Malley on Tuesday announced plans to bolster Maryland's aerospace industry as the state has already done for life sciences.

Speaking before the Maryland Space Business Roundtable in Greenbelt, O'Malley (D) proposed forming a Federal Facilities Advisory Panel through the state Department of Business and Economic Development. The panel's particular focus would be on aerospace opportunities, to harness the potential of the 50 federal installations in Maryland. He is also planning a Maryland Federal Facilities Summit.

"It's clear that we have the tools, base and competitive skills to be a leader," O'Malley said, referring to the state's space industry as an "unsung hero."

"The thing about aerospace is that it touches every piece of our lives," said Katy Herr, vice president of marketing and communications for satellite systems provider Integral Systems in Columbia. "We believe Governor O'Malley's proposal is a win-win for the industry, government customers and national security."

Herr said Maryland's support of the aerospace industry was a major factor in the company's decision to remain in the state when it needed to expand this year. Integral employs 250 people and has been in the state for more than 15 years. It recently moved from Lanham.

"Maryland is ready to take the next step," she said.

Maryland hosts 16 of the nation's top 25 aerospace companies, with about $1.6 billion annually flowing from NASA-related business, O'Malley said. Private-sector space industry companies in Maryland include Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences, Science Applications International Corp., General Dynamics, Hughes Network Systems and Honeywell. Lockheed Martin and Hughes have headquarters in Maryland, in Bethesda and Germantown, respectively.

"In these challenging economic times, we must do more than ever to nurture this vital sector of Maryland's economy while supporting the critical, often life-saving missions of our federal and military partners," said DBED Secretary Christian S. Johansson in a statement. "I look forward to working in partnership with the Federal Facilities Task Force to build on the innovation and uniqueness of our federal facilities and help strengthen their economic value to our region."

Lockheed Martin employs more than 146,000 worldwide, supporting Goddard and working on a broad range of science and space exploration programs for civil government customers.

"We applaud the governor's leadership and commitment to science, technology, engineering and math education, and enhancing Maryland's role in keeping America strong and pre-eminent in space," said Steve Tatum, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin.

"The governor's support adds to the Maryland [congressional] delegation's interest in the industry," said Barron Beneski, spokesman for Orbital Sciences, whose Technical Services Division in Greenbelt supports the Hubble mission. Orbital helped develop the shuttle-based carrying vessels that housed the instruments and tools needed for the recent mission.

Orbital's Technical Services Division employs 150 people and is the Dulles, Va., company's third-largest division.

Honeywell Technology Solutions of Columbia provided equipment that reduces vibrations on the Hubble, allowing it to take clearer pictures, said spokesman Bill Reavis. The Arizona company's Columbia location employs 800.

O'Malley said he hopes to use the new advisory board to grow Maryland's professional services in the aerospace field, make Maryland a leader in climate control and carbon emission research, and make Maryland into the national hub for orbital satellite repair.

Maryland ranks first in hourly wages paid to aerospace engineers and third in number of engineers, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics review of 36 states. The state ranks fifth among 24 states in hourly wages and ninth in number of employees when it comes to aerospace operations technicians.

Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles has 10,830 employees in Maryland, with its Electronic Systems Sector based in Linthicum.

O'Malley is also pushing for doubling NASA's budget as it relates to Earth science and monitoring global warming.

This increased attention to aerospace also comes after the Goddard Space Flight Center, which develops new technology to study the Earth and elsewhere in the universe, entered into an agreement last week with the Maryland Science, Exploration and Education Center to create a new education center.

"We welcome the governor's genuine interest in the health of this important business sector in Maryland. [Goddard] stands ready to continue our leadership role with our academic and industry partners," Goddard director Rob Strain said at the Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon.

O'Malley said the state is already using resources to nurture its aerospace environment, including its educational institutions, its minority business population, its industry giants' interest in aiding homegrown small businesses and its skilled work force. He also said the roundtable, which was involved in fighting to keep Goddard in Maryland, will provide an "excellent" model for the state's efforts.

"This is about where we're going and how we hope to get there," O'Malley said, encouraging input from all interests.

The Maryland Space Business Roundtable is a nonprofit that encourages the growth and development of aerospace-related business in the state. It comprises representatives of major corporations in the region.

This is why we fly
Hubble repair mission showcases the value of the manned space program
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
May 25, 2009, 6:52PM

The billion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope boasts astounding accomplishments. For nearly two decades, this window to the universe has peered back millions of years in time to produce stunning photographs of stars, nebulae and galaxies whose light took eons to reach the Earth.

But the Hubble, launched with a flawed lens and fuzzy vision, would have been remembered as a colossal blunder had not the brave men and women of NASA been prepared to fly into space to install corrective optics.

For those who continue to question the necessity for a human role in the exploration of space, the marvelous achievements this past week of physicist, astronomer and astronaut John Grunsfeld and his shuttle Atlantis crew mates provide an inspiring answer.

In five grueling spacewalks to revive the aging Hubble, the astronauts demonstrated why human hands and minds in orbit remain indispensable.

The spacewalking mechanics, encumbered by bulky gloves and spacesuits, successfully pulled off unprecedentedly complex repairs. Nearly 37 hours of maintenance, installation and rehab work on the telescope not only restored the universe-piercing gaze of Hubble, but expanded its capabilities to probe even further into the mysteries of the cosmos.

Grunsfeld, who has visited the Hubble three times on repair assignments (including eight spacewalks), applied the last human touch to a project that has been the culmination of his multi-discipline career.

The telescope is expected to function with enhanced capabilities for at least five more years before it is decommissioned and guided by a robot craft in a fiery descent to the Pacific Ocean.

As the Obama administration evaluates the future of NASA’s manned space program, the final mission to Hubble echoes the experiences of earthbound explorers over the ages: Machines can assist humans, but not replace them.

That’s a message that Houstonian and former shuttle commander Charles F. Bolden Jr. " named on Saturday by President Obama to be the next NASA administrator " will be well qualified to deliver upon assuming his new post.

Takes onion from trouser pocket.

Science is just not your game LW. Face up to it.

We need to keep humans in space, as well as continue unmanned missions. I don't see any way we should go to one or other exclusively.

I think more experimentation is in order, like sending trolls into space with enough oxygen to last about an hour.

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
- Andre Malraux

I can't understand you saying that LW. You would be on the first flight.

Don't imagine that declaring others to be trolls means you are not one or that they are. It's too easy. Isn't the whole point of space exploration is that it is not easy.

I think you have swooned in too much scented cotton wool.

And Spendious would know, seeing how much time he spends in space

He should stay out there but he keeps coming down to A2K for a breath of fresh air. That would be okay except for the beer farts accompanying his brain farts. No wonder I need scented cotton wool -- to overcome the stench.

I'll have you know LW that a good brain fart is almost as satisfying as a good beer fart when it seeps slowly out of the bedclothes. Cocktail farts are pathetic.

Only the impatient accelerate them with subtle knee movements.

When I turn to scientific theory on man's evolution I think there is evdence of this transformation , however I can't give credit to a science being the reason for creation . I look at it this way , if you will imagine say a room that was completely dark and then someone turned the light on , that is a single change brought about by the act of someone or something . Now relate this to the fact that nothing would have ever been if someone hadn't created it , then the obvious question is the egg ot the chicken .

Why do you think nature can't create it?

It's a preposterous metaphor that is meaningless -- the Universe was a "dark room" with a "light switch?" Was it AC or DC? There is a "someone" or "something" who turned on the switch and then a chicken laid an egg, instead of an egg layed a chicken (unless there is a rooster named egg)? Science didn't create anything (at least anything that profoundly elemental as where did all this come from), science is continuing to discover how the Universe came to be by natural, not supernatural, causes and how life on this particular planet came to be by natural, not supernatural causes.

The term nature refer's to a composition of element's , I have considered . But I always end up back at square one and that is the fact that in order for there to be any form of matter or molecule or atom or or any single thing to bring about life or to exist in the first place then it must of been created by someone or some thing , It stand's out that nothing could have ever been unless at first there had been something involved , I can relate this theory to say ones own actions for example to plant a tree , that action by the individual installed the tree in the soil it was then the act that brought about a change for the tree , had one not planted it it would still be in an unplanted state you see i refer to the dark room and someone turn on the light , I dont have a ssignificant religion but it appears nothing would have ever existed unless it had been produced . then relate this to how well things are designed in our world in the human body for example .

The human body!!!!????

What about 52" wide-screen 20/20 final under floodlights in Mumbai with a pile of six-packs and the wives chuntering in the dining room about spermicidal jelly aroma.

Could that have been an accident?

I have discovered a legal case with a similarity to Dover.

It is the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover for obscenity at the Old Bailey in 1959.

I have recently re-read the book with a much more cool indifference than I had first time many years ago.

The book's message is now quite plain to me. But the trial focussed on other matters because the main message, like at Dover, was impossible to expose for very obvious reasons. The not guilty verdict resulting was due to the shift away from that main message, which was, and still is, obscene technically, towards a mere usage of words which were common currency up and down the land and which hardly shocked a soul in like manner to that of blood clotting in chiclids.

There are other examples of that sort of thing throughout all the history of human societies.

At the Old Bailey the prosecution was emasculated and at Dover it was the defence.

The basis for "life" as we see it has evolved from the elements already in existence. That some of us must assign a creator to all "this" doesn't really answer the ultimate question "who created the creator?"

There is thus far no evidence of any creator; only that there are many galaxies with planets and stars. How they all came into being may never be answered by humans. There may be other life forms on other planets; we still haven't discovered them.

Scientists tell us there must be water for life to exist. We really don't know that.

We do. You need water to make beer and there's no life without beer.

This is just one link to hundreds of articles and studies, one of them by NASA, that strongly suggests life can survive without water, or at least the seed of life.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/meteor_sugar_011219.html

More current, this article appeared in a UK publication


Did life need asteroid bombardment?

BY KEITH COOPER

ASTRONOMY NOW

Posted: 22 May, 2009

A period 3.9 billion years ago when Earth was peppered with impacts by large asteroids may have created an environment in which primitive life could take hold, rather than destroying that life. This is the bold new claim by astrobiologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.

Wham! Did life get a helping hand by asteroids crashing into Earth?



Image: Don Davis/NASA.

What we know today as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) hit all the inner planets around 700 million years after the Solar System formed. The Moon and Mercury still bear the scars from this frightful time when fire and rock rained down from the heavens on a regular basis. Nobody is sure what caused the LHB, but the outward migration of the giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn may have been enough to disturb the orbits of various comets and asteroids, slinging them in our direction.

Regardless of the cause, it had been thought that the LHB had sterilised Earth’s surface. The astrobiologists, Oleg Abramov and Stephen Mojzsis, accept that microbial life on the surface may have been forced from the surface by the repeated bombardment, which lasted up to 200 million years. However, their simulations of the Earth’s crust show that the pressure of the impacts will have created a vast network of cracks and hydrothermal vents underneath the ground, the perfect habitats for simple microbial life to hide in. Even if life was not yet present, these cracks and vents will have become home to the first life forms at some point.


“Even under the most extreme conditions we imposed on our model, the bombardment could not have sterilised Earth completely,” says Abramov. “Our results are in line with the scientific consensus that hyperthermophilic, or ‘heat-loving’, microbes could have been the earliest life forms on Earth, or survivors from an even more ancient biosphere."

Abramov and Mojzsis’ research is published in the 21 May issue of the journal Nature.

That's a "sweet" story, but I'd like to see more evidence about sugars, proteins, and asteroids that brought them to earth.

Also, more evidence about where earth's water supply came from. Which came first? Clouds or water from asteroids? Sorta makes Noah's flood puny by comparison.