Interesting article. Buzz Aldrin had to fill out an expense report and a customs form when he came back from the moon. He recently posted copies. Article Here Kinda interesting....
That has been mentioned (long ago) in some book, the title of which escapes me. Grumman submitted a towing bill to North American for hauling the Apollo 13 CM home....
The way I heard that was the bill was for the man hours spent on the CO2 filter mods and other support calculations and such that no one had ever made before. Remember, the contractors were representative in all these rooms.
Article on the towing bill - with images... I am very fond of he last item on the invoice and will be using it professionally... http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/space-centers/kennedy-space-center/the-apollo-13-invoice/ I suppose that given the delays in the LM by Grumman, they (wisely) refrained from billing for any actual time, content that their craft had saved the day and A13.....
Umm, are you kidding? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Prospector The PI is Alan Binder. He's a "planetary scientist," NASA-speak for an astronomer who studies solar system objects. That's just one example. There are dozens of missions, each with its staff of astronomers. Oh, and here's a picture of the "back side" from some other nonexistent astronomers working on LRO: You posted this to the wrong thread.
Jumping from anomalies to aliens is not a rational thought process. That vertical line in the image I posted is not real, for instance. So, do you have any more gems for us, or should we just be happy that a few hundred of my colleagues don't exist?
We observe planets on a regular basis. Most recently, we observed an occultation of Pluto. Saturn and Titan are frequent targets.
No, but the purposes of the observations are quite different between astronomers and geologists/planetary scientists. ...and both will think this is pretty freakin' cool! http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/08/05/watch-the-moon-transit-the-earth/
If you want to draw a distinction, go ahead. Most of us in the field don't give a rat's posterior whether Pluto is a "planet" or not. Or Ceres or Titan, for that matter. It's a poorly understood rocky ball with an atmosphere. You can call it whatever you want, but we'll study it anyway. And, for your edification, IAU calls it a dwarf planet. And astronomers deal regularly with an army of "minor planets," most of them asteroids.
My tongue was firmly in cheek when I wrote that comment As someone who's seen Pluto with my own eyes when it was still a planet, in my opinion it should still be one!
