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The chemtrail people are nuts. I have some experience with them from my NASA sounding rocket days. Some sounding rocket missions do release chemicals, includin

The chemtrail people are nuts. I have some experience with them from my NASA sounding rocket days. Some sounding rocket missions do release chemicals, including lithium, into the upper atmosphere to study how high-altitude winds behave. That lithium, by the way is a different form than you'll find in psychoactive medications and a very small amount is released anyway. But many chemtrail people believe that every sounding rocket mission includes chemical releases. Some were very upset about one mission I worked, which had no releasables at all. It was an underflight calibration of the EVE instrument on SDO, so all we were doing was staring at the sun for about 10 minutes. But no, we must have been hiding something, because we were sinister and evil.

a3n 10y ago
Aside: I often wonder what might happen when someone in one group (the chemtrail people) are recruited into the other group (the rocketeers in this case), to work and help in some way. The other direction might involve a skilled researcher helping the chemtrailers to do actual research. I realize that it's probably hard to find someone from the first group who could make a contribution to the second group, and be willing to pitch in, but there must be someone. There was an article in the NYT today about Representative Mike Coffman (R) in Colorado. His district was redistricted from the conservative people who elected him before, to 20% Latino with completely different worldviews. Coffman has since changed his professed views on some issues, he says because he's worked with the new set of people. Political motivations aside, I think this is generally true. It's hard to demonize someone when you have to (get to?) look them in the eye every day and cooperate on a common goal. And it's easy to demonize a group if you avoid their company.
dingo_bat 10y ago
What's a sounding rocket?
- engi_nerd 10y ago
  Sounding is an old nautical term meaning "to measure something". You may have heard/read the expression "sound the depths", describing the process of seeing how deep the water under the keel of a sailing vessel is. That's the origin of the term. Sounding rockets are rockets launched for scientific research purposes. NASA has the most robust Sounding Rocket program, but there are others out there. Your typical NASA sounding rocket has two or three motor stages and can send a ~1000 lb payload to an altitude of about 280 miles, with about 10 minutes of time above 62 miles (the official demarcation between 99.99% of Earth's atmosphere and space). These are not orbital missions -- you go up and you come back down in the space of 20 to 30 minutes or so. Science objectives include things like observing comets, the composition of the interstellar medium, the dynamics of the Sun, trying to find direct evidence of dark matter, understanding the dynamics of the ionosphere, wind currents in the upper levels of the atmosphere, and many more. For only $1 - $6 million USD per mission, a sounding rocket is a relatively cheap way to do some science in space, and the science payoffs have been huge.

a3n 10y ago

Aside: I often wonder what might happen when someone in one group (the chemtrail people) are recruited into the other group (the rocketeers in this case), to work and help in some way. The other direction might involve a skilled researcher helping the chemtrailers to do actual research. I realize that it's probably hard to find someone from the first group who could make a contribution to the second group, and be willing to pitch in, but there must be someone. There was an article in the NYT today about Representative Mike Coffman (R) in Colorado. His district was redistricted from the conservative people who elected him before, to 20% Latino with completely different worldviews. Coffman has since changed his professed views on some issues, he says because he's worked with the new set of people. Political motivations aside, I think this is generally true. It's hard to demonize someone when you have to (get to?) look them in the eye every day and cooperate on a common goal. And it's easy to demonize a group if you avoid their company.

dingo_bat 10y ago

What's a sounding rocket?

engi_nerd 10y ago
Sounding is an old nautical term meaning "to measure something". You may have heard/read the expression "sound the depths", describing the process of seeing how deep the water under the keel of a sailing vessel is. That's the origin of the term. Sounding rockets are rockets launched for scientific research purposes. NASA has the most robust Sounding Rocket program, but there are others out there. Your typical NASA sounding rocket has two or three motor stages and can send a ~1000 lb payload to an altitude of about 280 miles, with about 10 minutes of time above 62 miles (the official demarcation between 99.99% of Earth's atmosphere and space). These are not orbital missions -- you go up and you come back down in the space of 20 to 30 minutes or so. Science objectives include things like observing comets, the composition of the interstellar medium, the dynamics of the Sun, trying to find direct evidence of dark matter, understanding the dynamics of the ionosphere, wind currents in the upper levels of the atmosphere, and many more. For only $1 - $6 million USD per mission, a sounding rocket is a relatively cheap way to do some science in space, and the science payoffs have been huge.