Starbucks to go instant?

Excuse me if I am wrong, but isnt the whole Coffee experience the picking of fine Coffee, the Roasting, the Grinding, the Brewing, just an over all atmosphere? Well look what these choads are doing. Starbucks Instant Seriously, could you get any closer to being Folgers? We wonder why they are closing down Starbucks stores faster than Shit through a Goose? Well I never did, to me they couldnt close fast enough. Regardless, just throw in the towel already. No need to further make a joke of what you once were. The Chocolate Coffee Smoothee outlet that built on every corner.

Starbucks will profit from instant coffee
Posted Sep 29 2009, 05:47 AM by Douglas McIntyre Rating: Filed under: Starbucks, 24/7 Wall St.
Starbucks (SBUX) has been talking about its foray into the instant coffee business, and its product, “VIA Ready-Brew,” finally launches in the U.S. and Canada today.

According to the company, VIA "is made with a proprietary, U.S. patent-pending microgrind technology to preserve the coffee’s taste, quality and freshness.” Chief executive Howard Schultz sees the launch as a way to get the firm into the $21 billion instant coffee business using its brand power as leverage (see video below).

It may not matter if VIA is “better” than the coffee that Starbucks sells in its stores, since that will be a subjective decision on the part of consumers. What will matter is that the margins on the instant product are probably very high, at $2.95 for a three pack.

Bing: Read more about Starbucks' VIA
That will help Starbucks keep the momentum that cost cuts and slightly improving sales have given to its share price, which, at above $20, is more than double its 52-week low.

VIA is a financial breakthrough because it allows Starbucks to attack a market much larger than the coffee house business and because the product does not rely on a system of relatively expensive stores with relatively expensive employees for its sales. Starbucks annual revenue is just above $10 billion, and its growth has stalled. The odds that people will flock back to its stores in droves given the relatively high costs of its drinks and food are relatively low, even if the recession is ending.

VIA is Starbucks path to improved sales and profitability, and, in the final analysis, the introduction of the product carries almost no risk.

NASA keeps proving my point!

People say I am a conspiracy Theorist because I say there is no proof man was ever on the moon. I never said man didnt go, I just said they can't prove man did, with the facts that stack against it ever happening. They call me crazy for saying we should of sent Mars Rovers to the Moon. Who is crazy now? People say there is nothing more to learn about the Moon? Really? Well guess what?

Space.com

It's Official: Water Found on the Moon
By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
posted: 23 September 2009
06:17 pm ET


This story was updated at 10:49 p.m. EDT.

Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said.

"If the water molecules are as mobile as we think they are — even a fraction of them — they provide a mechanism for getting water to those permanently shadowed craters," said planetary geologist Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island, who led one of the three studies in Science on the lunar find, in a statement. "This opens a whole new avenue [of lunar research], but we have to understand the physics of it to utilize it."

Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.

Apollo turns up dry

When Apollo astronauts returned from the moon 40 years ago, they brought back several samples of lunar rocks.

The moon rocks were analyzed for signs of water bound to minerals present in the rocks; while trace amounts of water were detected, these were assumed to be contamination from Earth, because the containers the rocks came back in had leaked.

"The isotopes of oxygen that exist on the moon are the same as those that exist on Earth, so it was difficult if not impossible to tell the difference between water from the moon and water from Earth," said Larry Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who is a member of one of the NASA-built instrument teams for India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite and has studied the moon since the Apollo missions.

While scientists continued to suspect that water ice deposits could be found in the coldest spots of south pole craters that never saw sunlight, the consensus became that the rest of the moon was bone dry.

But new observations of the lunar surface made with Chandrayaan-1, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and NASA's Deep Impact probe, are calling that consensus into question, with multiple detections of the spectral signal of either water or the hydroxyl group (an oxygen and hydrogen chemically bonded).

Three spacecraft

Chandrayaan-1, India's first-ever moon probe, was aimed at mapping the lunar surface and determining its mineral composition (the orbiter's mission ended 14 months prematurely in August after an abrupt malfunction). While the probe was still active, its NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen — the telltale sign of either water or hydroxyl.

Because M3 can only penetrate the top few millimeters of lunar regolith, the newly observed water seems to be at or near the lunar surface. M3's observations also showed that the water signal got stronger toward the polar regions. Pieters is the lead investigator for the M3 instrument on Chandrayaan-1.

Cassini, which passed by the moon in 1999 on its way to Saturn, provides confirmation of this signal with its own slightly stronger detection of the water/hydroxyl signal. The water would have to be absorbed or trapped in the glass and minerals at the lunar surface, wrote Roger Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey in the study detailing Cassini's findings.

The Cassini data shows a global distribution of the water signal, though it also appears stronger near the poles (and low in the lunar maria).

Finally, the Deep Impact spacecraft, as part of its extended EPOXI mission and at the request of the M3 team, made infrared detections of water and hydroxyl as part of a calibration exercise during several close approaches of the Earth-Moon system en route to its planned flyby of comet 103P/Hartley 2 in November 2010.

Deep Impact detected the signal at all latitudes above 10 degrees N, though once again, the poles showed the strongest signals. With its multiple passes, Deep Impact was able to observe the same regions at different times of the lunar day. At noon, when the sun's rays were strongest, the water feature was lowest, while in the morning, the feature was stronger.

"The Deep Impact observations of the Moon not only unequivocally confirm the presence of [water/hydroxyl] on the lunar surface, but also reveal that the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day," the authors wrote in their study.

The findings of all three spacecraft "provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of hydroxyl or water," said Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii in an opinion essay accompanying the three studies. Lucey was not involved in any of the missions.

The new data "prompt a critical reexamination of the notion that the moon is dry. It is not," Lucey wrote.

Where the water comes from

Combined, the findings show that not only is the moon hydrated, the process that makes it so is a dynamic one that is driven by the daily changes in solar radiation hitting any given spot on the surface.

The sun might also have something to do with how the water got there.

There are potentially two types of water on the moon: that brought from outside sources, such as water-bearing comets striking the surface, or that that originates on the moon.

This second, endogenic, source is thought to possibly come from the interaction of the solar wind with moon rocks and soils.

The rocks and regolith that make up the lunar surface are about 45 percent oxygen (combined with other elements as mostly silicate minerals). The solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the sun — are mostly protons, or positively charged hydrogen atoms.

If the charged hydrogens, which are traveling at one-third the speed of light, hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, Taylor, the M3 team member suspects. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form.

The various study researchers also suggest that the daily dehydration and rehydration of the trace water across the surface could lead to the migration of hydroxyl and hydrogen towards the poles where it can accumulate in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions.

Spirit rover stuck in Martian soil:

NASA
by Staff Writers
Los Angeles (AFP) May 12, 2009
NASA's Spirit rover, which has been exploring Mars for evidence of water, has gotten stuck, perhaps inextricably, in the soft Martian soil, said officials from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously," JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, said Monday.

NASA said a team of engineers and scientists temporarily has suspended driving Spirit while assessing ways to free the rover, and are planning simulation tests using a test rover.

"It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again. Meanwhile, we are using Spirit's scientific instruments to learn more about the physical properties of the soil that is giving us trouble," Callas said.

Five wheels that are still functioning on the six-wheel rover are sunk about halfway into the ground, rendering Spirit immobile. The sixth wheel stopped working about three years ago, space officials said.

Spirit and Opportunity launched toward Mars in 2003 seeking answers about the history of water on the Red Planet, and have operated more than five years longer than their originally-planned three-month mission.

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I saw this Article months ago, but it has since resurfaced since NASA is still trying to figure out how to get this thing out of the sand. Many things run through my mind from the "Walmart Engineer" to the question of 'why didnt you test this thing on the Moon or some place cheaper in the first place?'

A Walmart Engineer is someone from Arkansas or any place down south of the Mason Dixon line. They are the same people who make Mud Boggers, Sand Racers,Racing Lawn Mowers, you name it. If it moves and can be modified, they have done it and raced it. If you can put bigger tires on it they have done that too. One of these guys would be a perfect candidate for working at NASA.

We have been to the Moon 'allegedly'. Why not spend millions of dollars on the devil you know, and perfect the technology rather than spend billions on the one you dont. Are you kidding me? If the technology craps out on the Moon, well hey, we have already been there, so we could potentially go back up there and either fix it, or pick it up and bring it back home right?

Seems sensless to me, but what the heck Im already categorized as a "Conspiracy Theorist". Thats what people are called when they ask sensical questions of people who should know the answer and dont.