This happened on Tue Jan 4 08:18:44 PST 2005. Go to Google and type (no quotation marks):

"mer heatshield"

The search results in order are:

www.habitablezone.com/space/messages/362770.html
www.habitablezone.com/space/messages/362784.html
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/
.....

Note that Nick Hoffman at the Habiatablezone scored twice ***before*** the JPL MER main website.

Now again on Google type the name of the MER thermal protection material (no quotation marks):

"SLA 561V"

The search results in order are:

www.habitablezone.com/space/messages/362793.html
www.habitablezone.com/space/messages/360988.html
www.vki.ac.be/event/euroavia/slides/lab1num2.pdf
.....

The website www.vki.ac.be is the world renown von Karman Institute and an appropriate website for discussing SLA 561V.

According to Google, the Habitablezone Space Exploration forum has an "extreme" level of impact on the Internet. It actually beats JPL on interplanetary heatshield related discussion.

We know that MSM journalists have lifted text verbatum from the
Habitablezone and used it for mainstream articles. More disturbing, I have seen people who I think(?) are NASA and/or aerospace industry high level managers make posts at the Habitablezone and on occasion do little flame duels with a village idiot. The scenario is the village idiot slanders a big shot in another Internet forum and then the big shot follows the idiot using Google back to the Habitablezone to flame him. This is NOT good! Some of these guys could terminate an aerospace engineer's career with a single telephone call.

The very good news:

By making intelligent posts at the Habitablezone Space Exploration forum, we can create an impact on where space exploration is going.

The bad news:

We have to be responsible! What we have is an EXTREMELY VALUABLE RESOURCE and potentally very dangerous. We must be careful about sensitive information. Also, we need to keep the trolls, lunatics and village idiots on a short leash. Convince the losers to post in other forums where they are harmless, e.g. Current Events and Flames. There are lots of space exploration groups on the Internet. Almost none of them are tracked by Google because they have too many screwballs and flame wars. When a troll or screwball appears in the Space Exploration forum, we need to promptly tell him to shut up and toss him out the back door. This must be done with minimal flames.

Gary