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So, I was working at mission control in support of CM-2.  From time to time, we'd get these telemetry windows where we could download data (when they had openings and weren't using the bandwidth for something else).  Every time there was even a 5-minute opening, I was grabbing the window and downloading data from our systems.  I got every last (literal) bit of data down.

So you were directly in mission control?

And you worked there when Columbia had it's tragic disintegration? How well did you know Cane?

Man, it must've been awful being in mission control at that time, only seeing how it happened, without the ability to help once control was lost.

At one point, the project manager poked fun at me for being so zealous about gettinga all the data, reminding me that the hard drive would come back down with the Shuttle.  I said, "Well, you just never know what can happen."

Well you sure had a sixth sense there.

Just a couple courses, in which I did very well.  It's according to simple and fundamental law of physics (entropy) that ...

1) gas/air pressure cannot exists without there being a container AND
2) a pressurized atmosphere cannot exist adjacent to an (almost infinite) vacuum

Those are very basic conclusions deriving directly from entropy.

But it's just based on me saying it.  There's a (science) Ph.D. Flat Earther who asserts the same thing.

This kind of "argument" betrays desperation, the constant ad hominem attacks and ridicule.

1) we could make the distinction of atmospheric pressure there, but that's semantics. Once we establish gravity, and we measure the atmospheric pressure gradient (which I hope you'll agree on), it is evident that at the altitude where you'd probably put a container, there is a hard vacuum.

Simple observations like sending up a balloon and seeing the blue (air/atmosphere) fade to this blackness which is commonly called space is good empirical evidence of the pressure gradient fading from 14.7psi at sea level to almost nothing, even better than what we call an ultra-high vacuum.

1) we could make the distinction of atmospheric pressure there, but that's semantics. Once we establish gravity, and we measure the atmospheric pressure gradient (which I hope you'll agree on), it is evident that at the altitude where you'd probably put a container, there is a hard vacuum.

Simple observations like sending up a balloon and seeing the blue (air/atmosphere) fade to this blackness which is commonly called space is good empirical evidence of the pressure gradient fading from 14.7psi at sea level to almost nothing, even better than what we call an ultra-high vacuum.

Indeed the pressure gradient is a curious question, regardless of the model.  If there's no vacuum of space, and a container, it's explainable by the denser molecules moving down toward the earth and then less dense ones moving upward.  We find the same conditions in the ocean, where the pressure increases as you go lower.  There was even one under-ocean "lake" discovered that consisted of an extremely dense pool of salt water.  Pressure decreases as you move higher.  Then above the oceans you have the far less dense atmosphere.  Question then is what's above the atmosphere.  Traditional science holds there's a vacuum.

"Gravity" would have to hold everything down and resist the force of an infinite vacuum, which I simply can't comprehend.  I've seen vacuum experiments where you had a bowl of water on the bottom with air around it, and then a vacuum at the top.  When the vacuum was "turned on", not only did the air evaculate the chamber, but the water evaporated, turned into gas, and then also evacuated the chamber ... gravity notwithstanding.  So in a sense there was a pressure gradient already.  It be interesting if within a chamber, on a small scale, we could recreate a simulation of the pressure gradient we have in our atmosphere and then give it a shot.  I'm very skeptical that gravity can overcome an infinite vaccuum.