Free Republic

A major review last week of servicing the Hubble Space Telescope has led NASA officials to a "deorbit only" position. That’s an outcome from an intensive preliminary design review held last week at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. That appraisal involved volumes of technical data, with over 200 experts from NASA and aerospace industry contractor teams attending. The assessment backs an earlier decision by the White House to scuttle the Hubble. A robotically-controlled liquid-fueled motor would eventually be docked to the telescope. Once ignited, the engine would push the huge observatory into a controlled nose-dive into...

Delegates Seek Ways to Confront Warming By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent November 28, 2004, 4:20 PM EST The ice is melting and the heat is on for international delegates assembling in Buenos Aires next week to find new ways to confront global warming under the 194-nation treaty on climate change. The treaty's Kyoto Protocol, requiring initial cuts in "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2012, finally comes into force in February, seven years after it was negotiated. Next, European governments want the annual treaty conference -- Dec. 6-17 in the Argentine capital -- to get down to talks on steps...

Seattle Doctor Specializes In Near-Death Experiences The NBC 10 Investigators tracked down a doctor in Seattle whose research may come closer to anyone else to answering the question, is there life after death? Dr. Melvin Morse is a pediatrician who used to think that people who were interested in near-death experiences just wanted to be on television talk shows. But something happened to one of his patients that changed his opinion. Now he believes the evidence points to something after life. Most scientists will explain that near-death experiences are caused by the lack of oxygen in the brain in the...

<p>Gov. Gray Davis and legislators show few signs of coming to grips with the state's budget crisis. Indeed, they cannot even agree on the size of the deficit, much less reach accord on the combination of new taxes and spending cuts that will be required to close it.</p>