NASA
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Neil deGrasse Tyson blasts Congress for not supporting science
Hayden Planetarium director and former slice of astrophysicist beefcake Neil deGrasse Tyson has some choice words for Congress about its priorities. He's talking about space exploration, which is his particular deal, but the same arguments apply to cleantech and renewable energy innovation.
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NASA will clean up contaminated soil with salad dressing
There's an upside to the end of the space shuttle program: Now that the shuttle has been grounded, NASA can turn its attention to acres of contaminated soil and groundwater, the result of chemical spills from shuttle launches. And they're doing it in a novel way: with an oil-based emulsion that's made of corn and looks like dressing. The technique was first designed in scribbles on the back of a napkin, perhaps after eating a salad.
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NASA's zero-power gadget turns urine into Capri Sun
Here's the big innovation that will be accompanying the space shuttle on its final launch this Friday: A zero-energy still that converts urine into a sweet, drinkable liquid. Still want to be an astronaut when you grow up?
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If the sun goes into 'hibernation,’ it won’t stop global warming
Climate change skeptics are ecstatic over an analysis that says by 2020, we might enter a period of low solar activity, which they spin as a mini ice age
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Climate change satellite goes out in blaze of ‘Glory’
Photo: NASANASA’s Glory satellite was supposed to measure both solar radiation and the Earth’s capacity to retain it in the course of global warming. Instead, it died trying. The satellite’s launch platform, a “Taurus XL” rocket that is every bit as janky as its namesake automobile (3 duds out of 9 launches, so far), failed […]
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Why space travel should remain a spectator sport
Space shuttle Discovery at its final launch, looking awesome and polluting like crazyPhoto: NASA Yesterday’s final launch of the space shuttle Discovery provided some amazing images, and probably made a few of us look wistfully at the sky and think of space panoramas (or in my case space poop and space laundry, because I just […]
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The Climate Post: Obama’s new budget would make Big Oil pay for clean energy
The president gives a preview of his budget in his weekly address.Republicans are vowing to fight President Obama’s newly released budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Among other things, the new budget includes a few significant changes to spending on climate and energy research. In the energy sector, it calls for slashing tax breaks and loopholes for fossil […]
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House Republican budget cuts would strangle innovation
This article was cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union on Jan. 25, 2011, waved the green flag for innovation and competition in the cleantech sector. He proposed a number of programs to speed the development and manufacturing of domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors to help […]
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We need to start cleaning up space pollution
Image: European Space AgencyIt’s not just the Earth we’re junking up. There’s also a ton of man-made space-crud in orbit around the planet. Efforts to keep track of it are falling short — there are an estimated 600,000 pieces of stuff bigger than a centimeter in diameter, and fewer than 20,000 can be tracked — […]