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"Samples were intentionally saved for a time when technology and instrumentation had advanced to the point that we could maximize the scientific return on these unique samples," said NASA's Ryan Zeigler, Apollo sample curator and manager of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office in Houston. But such investigations require careful planning and execution by a consortium of experts with experience in handling and analyzing lunar samples... "Given the recent renewed interest in the moon, and specifically about the volatile budget of lunar regolith, these sealed samples likely contain information that would be important in the design of future lunar missions," Zeigler...

Harrison Schmitt, a former NASA astronaut who was chosen by Gov. Susana Martinez to head up the state's Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, has withdrawn his nomination after a squabble with the Senate Rules Committee over background checks.

The chasm between Apollo and the Gulf President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly! The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the...

January 08, 2009 Inconvenient Astronaut: NASA Moonwalker Joins Skeptics Despite Gore's Claim Skeptics Believe Moon Landing was 'Staged' Gore’s frequent comparison of global warming skeptics to people who "believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona" was delivered a major blow when Moonwalker and Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist Jack Schmitt who flew on the Apollo 17 mission declared he was a skeptic. “The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities,” Schmitt said. See: Astronaut...

Excerpt: "As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a "consensus" that humans are causing global warming in when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. "Consensus", as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the "global warming scare" is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making..."