Category Archives: Politics

May 31, 2014 · 23:32

Can A Billionaire Do What NASA Can’t?

Two nights ago SpaceX had a big, flashy show to unveil their “Dragon V2” spacecraft. It was a great show, which you can see here.

In brief, Dragon V2 will be the crewed version of the current Dragon spacecraft. Dragon just finished its third commercial mission, ferrying supplies to the International Space Station and returning other materials back safely to Earth. The return part is what’s critical to the ISS right now since it’s starting to generate a significant volume of experimental materials that need to get back down in one piece. There are also broken equipment which need to brought back down to figure out why they broke, as well as other equipment which is to be refurbished and sent back up as a spare in the future.

None of this was a big deal before July, 2011. The space shuttle could bring back just about anything. Until of course, the fully functional space shuttle program was shut down and all four orbiters stripped and put into museums. (Breathe… Breathe…)

Since then, ISS has been supplied by the uncrewed Russian Progress spacecraft, the European Space Agency’s ATV spacecraft, the Japanese Space Agency’s HTV spacecraft, SpaceX’s Dragon, and Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft. (Yeah, I say “spacecraft” a lot because that’s what they are and that’s uber cool, plus, I like saying “spacecraft”!)

But Progress, ATV, HTV, and Cygnus all burn up and are destroyed on re-entry. Only Dragon is designed to return safely.

Dragon has obviously been a step on the path to a crewed orbital spacecraft, albeit a very important and highly functional step. A lot of revolutionary systems, developed by a private company instead of NASA, have been tested, implemented, and continue to be improved as Dragon missions continue.

The Falcon 9 rocket that launched the last Dragon mission was equipped with landing legs on its first stage. As the next test, SpaceX tried to “soft land” it in the ocean. If it had failed, it would have made a big splash instead of a big hole. It didn’t fail, and with a couple more tests upcoming, SpaceX hopes to be flying the first stage back to a controlled, soft landing on land, where it can be reused, drastically reducing launch costs.

The crewed Dragon V2 will not only be able to carry a crew of up to seven to orbit (and the ISS), but on re-entry it won’t just splash down into the ocean and get recovered by a fleet of ships. That’s expensive. Instead, it will come down on land, at a planned place, with the precision of a helicopter. It will have parachutes as an emergency backup, but its primary landing system will be rockets.

Re-usable rocket stages. Spacecraft that come back and land on a dime in a pillar of fire the way Robert Heinlein said that they should!  

That’s pretty good stuff.

In the demo of the Dragon V2 , the interior looks more like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey than what we normally see from NASA. Part of that is almost certainly showmanship. The interior of the spacecraft looks huge and empty with just seven seats and a control panel that folds down in front of the pilots. I suspect that in reality all of that empty space will be about 75% full with lockers, equipment, computers, systems, hardware, storage, and so on. But it’s still extremely amazing.

And the Dragon V2 is also designed to be re-usable, quickly and cheaply.

When will Dragon V2 fly? Good question. No one’s talking about that.

But here’s some totally uninformed, off the wall, coming straight out of thin air speculation for you:

  • We’ve got a problem with the Russians and it may affect our ability to get our astronauts to ISS
  • Congress and NASA have talked about using Dragon V2 as a crew vehicle to get astronauts to ISS, but they don’t think it will be ready until late 2017 at the earliest.
  • The Orion capsule being funded by Congress and developed by NASA isn’t scheduled for its first crewed mission until something like 2020? 2021? When will the STS rocket be ready to carry it?

Gee, sounds like someone needs to get their act together and put it in gear. 2017? 2020? What ever happened to “Failure is not an option?”

What if SpaceX can get Dragon V2 ready for crewed flights, say, by mid to late 2015?

What if Congress and NASA still wants to do more testing, more certification, more benchmarking, more foot dragging?

What’s to prevent SpaceX from launching one or two Dragon V2s as test flights at their own expense? Say in late 2015 or maybe early 2016?

If those test flights go well and Congress is still having hearings and NASA is still doing paperwork, what’s to prevent SpaceX from launching a Dragon V2 with a crew of test pilots who happen to be SpaceX employees rather than NASA astronauts? Say in mid to late 2016, a full year or more before Orion is ready.

If NASA and Congress still won’t get with the program, what’s to prevent SpaceX from setting up a program of regular launches of crewed Dragon V2s on their own? The couldn’t go to the ISS, that’s government property, they can’t even get close. (“Goose, I’m going to buzz the tower…”) Where else could they go other than round and round in low Earth orbit in a relatively small spacecraft?

Isn’t there a guy who has built his own, private space station? (There is, his name is Robert Bigelow.) Doesn’t he want to build a space station that’s both a commercial research facility and an orbital hotel/resort? (He does, and Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas has flight-ready hardware already built.) Hasn’t he actually already launched two successful test modules? (He has, in 2006 and 2007.) Doesn’t he have a contract to have a module that’s going to be attached to the ISS? (He does.) Doesn’t he have contracts with SpaceX to launch that BEAM module to ISS, and at least preliminary arrangements to launch his private space space station modules on a SpaceX Heavy and then launch private astronauts to that private space station on SpaceX Falcon 9s? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it — they do.)

As an individual who’s very unhappy with not having an American crewed spacecraft in almost three years and who is extremely angry and disappointed that Congress and NASA have no plans to have one for at least another three (or more!) years, I’m excited about the possibility of seeing a couple of private American companies possibly bypassing all of the BS and bureaucracy and simply doing the job, as much as two or more years before NASA.

Let’s hope that Congress doesn’t do anything stupid, like start throwing unnecessary and unwarranted regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles in their way.

The Congress-NASA team has had their chance, and they’ve kinda dropped the ball. And then kicked it backwards away from the goal. And then kicked it out of bounds and lost it down a sewer…

Time to let another team give it a try.

 

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Filed under Politics, Space

May 25, 2014 · 23:08

Seoul (Part Seven)

In May, 2012 I went to Asia on the “Three-Countries-Three-Weeks-Three-Kids” tour. The first stop on this once-in-a-lifetime trip was Shanghai, followed by Seoul. Day One in Seoul, we made our way to the Gyeongokgung Palace museum with all of its attendant palace buildings from various eras. On Day Two, following a somber morning looking at  the War History Museum, we went to a baseball game. 

Day Three in South Korea was an all-day trip out of Seoul to what is apparently the biggest tourist attraction in the country, the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) meeting rooms at Panmunjeom.

Seoul is a busy, crowded, bustling, modern city of eleven million people. Thirty-five miles away is a very large North Korean army that is poised every day to attack, held back only by the very large armies of South Korea and the United States. It’s easy to forget that as a tourist, but the South Koreans have it in the backs of their minds constantly. Remember, the Korean War did not end in 1953, only a truce was signed. It’s a truce that’s held (more or less) for 61 years, but it’s still only a truce.

IMG_0450_smallAs a tourist, you can’t just rent a car and go up to the DMZ. Access is severely restricted and while there are several tour companies that can take you there, reserve a spot well in advance. You’ll meet up early (we were there at 7AM-ish, I think) and get bused to the DMZ. I got a kick out of the frills and beads decorating the bus’ interior. This wasn’t Greyhound or Trailways!

IMG_0465_smallFollowing the Han River as it flows toward the Yellow Sea to the northwest, there are bridges every mile or so.

IMG_0469_smallBut just a few miles outside of the city, the banks are now lined with razor wire and there are barriers set up across the river to catch anything coming upstream. In the past there have been instances where small groups of North Korean soldiers have tried to come up the river to make trouble. It’s very much an armed border.

IMG_0482_smallThe road finally takes you to where the other side of the river is no longer South Korea, but North Korea. (There are guard towers all along the river as well.) This was our first glimpse across the border.

IMG_0492_smallOnce you reach the site where the negotiations were held in 1953, you see the blue huts that were built then and still stand today. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can wear and warnings about how you can act. Once you get to this point you are probably being filmed by the North Koreans on the other side. If you’ve got a provocative slogan on your T-shirt, or you’re wearing something skimpy, or if you generally act like an idiot, you may be the star of the next North Korean propaganda documentary, proving to the North Korean people how decadent the Western world is.

IMG_0493_smallYou can see a concrete curb running between buildings, halfway down from each end. That’s the border. There are always three North Korean soldiers on guard here and three US/South Korean Joint Forces troops watching them. You may safely assume that everyone involved has instantaneous access to a lot of firepower and all of those guns are loaded and locked.

There are places to be a goofy tourist, places to be respectful as a tourist, and then there’s this place, the ultimate “No Bullshit” zone. Step over that line and you create an international incident and it will be months or years before you get out of that North Korean jail cell, if you get out. There are no jokes here, no fooling around, no “yeah, right, they don’t really mean that.” Yeah, they do. People get killed here.

Many of those who have gotten killed have been North Korean soldiers, trying to defect to the South. We were told that’s why the two in the middle, just barely on their side of the border, face each other, and the third one faces the building behind them. Their primary purpose isn’t to prevent an attack by our soldiers. They’re there with shoot-to-kill orders if the other guy or any North Korean tourists try to defect. It happens, and yes, they do shoot them dead right there. (It’s something that happens every few years, not every few days — but you never know if today’s the day for the next one.)

IMG_0507_smallThis is the really huge tourist center on the North Korean side with all of the security cameras and soldiers with binoculars and cameras on the top. It also has groups of North Korean tourists, visiting pretty much the same way we were. We can only assume that these were very carefully selected, highly trusted citizens and Party members who were judged to be low risks for defection.

I’m betting their screening process is stricter than ours was.

IMG_0509_smallSometimes, not all of the time, but sometimes you’re allowed to go into the main negotiations room, the center of the three blue buildings. On the right of this picture is South Korea, on the left is North Korea. In this room and only in this room you are allowed to step foot into North Korean territory. The border runs right down the middle of the table.

IMG_0512_smallOnce you step across into the North Korean side inside the negotiating room, you can look out the window and see the North Korean soldiers.

This was a creepy, tense place. The odds of anything disastrous (like the start of World War III, or even an attempted defector being gunned down before your eyes) is pretty low — but they’re most certainly non-zero by a lot more than you’re used to on a daily basis. Our side or their side, these are people you do NOT want to screw with.

It was sort of like being at the zoo or a wild animal park, with deadly snakes and large predators (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) wandering around loose, all with no glass or cages between you and them. You’re told that they’re quiet and well-fed, but you’re also given a long list of things to avoid doing so that they don’t get pissed off and start striking and killing.

It wasn’t hard to stay focused here. You might not have been in a location or circumstance where you could die in the next minute — but you could see it from here.

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Filed under Photography, Politics, Travel

May 12, 2014 · 22:47

Canadian Conspiracy Uncovered

I’ll have to be quick here, because I may need to go into hiding. I’ve uncovered a massive cybersquatting conspiracy by the Canadian government and as soon as this posts I’ll no doubt have to go deep, deep underground to avoid their retaliation. No more trips to the beach for me, I’m sure there will be squads of trained polar bears and orca lurking just offshore with massive advanced technology weapons, just waiting for me to show my face so they can fricassee it with a laser or cruise missile.

The truth came to me while watching the Angels play in Toronto today, while the Boston Bruins were in Montreal tonight. In all of that advertising on the outfield walls and dasher boards, hidden in plain sight, are the clues.

All of the Canadian web addresses end in “.ca”.

Uh-huh! You see where I’m going here, right? They want us to think that it stands for “Canada,” but it doesn’t!

There are these whack jobs here in California that are always trying to split the state up into five or seven or eleventeen parts, knowing that will never actually happen because it would totally screw up the numbers of senators and representatives in Congress and electoral votes for President and shift the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans and with all of the fruits and nuts out here it would probably bring the Libertarians or the Green party to power and that would totally destabilize the entire world government balance of power, so how are they ever going to get it passed by the very same self-serving politicians who would be in danger of having their oxen gored?

Then there are these other groups that want California to declare independence and break away from the United States. I believe that these whackadoodles are being funded by the Canadian equivalent of the CIA or NSA (the CCIA or CNSA?) in order to get California to actually try to separate from the union.

Once California becomes an independent country, our very first and highest priority, of course, will be to establish our unique national identity. With Silicon Valley here and most every Californian practically having cell phones and tablets and Google Glass surgically attached and in use 24/7/365 (especially when they’re driving!), one of the primary symbols of California nationalism will be to switch all of our websites over to our very own third-level domain identifier, which will naturally be…wait for it… “.ca”!!

Then the Canadians will have us right where they want us. They’ll have the “.ca” domain and we’ll be obsessed with getting it as a matter of natural pride. We won’t be able to go to war with them to get it (Oregon and Washington are in the way, duh!) so we’ll have to negotiate.

The Canadian government will use this disgraceful cyberextortion to suck trillions of dollars in ransom out of the coffers of our budding Left Coast democracy. Oh, they’ll call it an “internet domain transfer fee” or something, but we’ll know what it really is!

Now that this nefarious plot has been exposed, tell the Canadian President that we won’t stand for it! (Wait, what? “Prime Minister?” Whatever!)

If they won’t call off this attack where they’re using the purloined symbol of our soon-to-be nationalistic jingoism, then we’ll have no choice but to carry out a preemptive overthrow of their government! We’ll put Rob Ford in charge of the Great White North and see how he negotiates. I’m betting he can be persuaded to see it our way!

Down With Canadian Cybersquatting!

 

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Filed under Computers, Farce, Politics

April 21, 2014 · 20:42

Social Media ‘Bots

The New York Times today had an article in their Bits Blog about how some folks, craving fame and notoriety in social media circles such as Twitter and Facebook, can for a very small price buy thousands of followers who will retweet, like, favorite, and hashtag your every selfie and TMI update.

For whatever reason, a lot of people (the article mentions celebrities as an example) think that their worth is determined by how big that number is underneath “Followers,” enough so that they don’t mind paying to “cheat.” (“Pardon me, while I whip this out!”)

Now, no doubt about it, since I started this blog almost a year ago, I’ve been pleased to see the number of “subscribers” going up steadily. (We’re at 140 currently.) I enjoy writing and ranting and posting and there’s a certain satisfaction to knowing that people out there are reading and (occasionally) commenting.

There might sometimes be days when I look with a certain envy at the readership numbers for John Scalzi’s “Whatever” or Chuck Wendig’s “TerribleMinds,” especially since I admire those sites and in many ways learned about doing what I do here by reading there before WLTSTF got started.

But I’m not an idiot. (There will be a brief pause while the obligatory snarky comments are made.) I know that sites like “Whatever” and “TerribleMinds” (and thousands of others) are where they are today because of years and years of work and sweat. I’ve been doing this for less than a year.

So while I hope to someday to have my golden words and purple prose and riotous rants followed by thousands or even tens of thousands (tell your friends!), I’m quite happy with being fairly sure that about 99% of you are real humans, not social media bots that I bought. (I’ll let you all figure out who the 1.4 followers are who are software instead of wetware.)

As for those who feel the need to be followed by “thousands” even when they know that they’re really followed by dozens, I’m here to tell you that you need to get a little bit of help and a much tighter grip on reality. The number of social media followers you have really is not any sort of true measure of your worth.

Even if it were (and, again, it’s not), if the headcount of our Twitter or blog followers were truly a valid measure of our societal status, would you want to be the guy or gal who gets caught padding your stats with purchased bot accounts? Do you not realize how easy it is to determine which followers are bots and which are real? Just google “Test for fake Twitter followers” and see how many sites pop up!

I’m reminded of something that happened at my first Worldcon, 1978’s Iguanacon in Phoenix. Harlan Ellison was the Guest of Honor, the ERA Amendment was a huge political battle of the day, Arizona was a non-ratified state, and science fiction fandom was in an uproar accusing uber-liberal Harlan of being a hypocrite. A couple of particularly vocal, strident, and obnoxious fans had been publishing (and I do mean “publishing,” this was all pre-Internet) all kinds of screeds, in part to try to “make a name for themselves” in fandom. (Then again, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.)

I love fandom, I really do. Everyone should go to a con or ninety-nine, let your hair down, get a hall costume, go filking until breakfast, get a book signed by your favorite author, and so on. But — it’s just fandom.

It’s at best a few thousand people in “true fandom” (whatever the hell that is) and maybe a couple hundred thousand if you throw in everyone who goes to the various ComicCons and so on. It’s fun, it’s an escape, it’s silly — but it’s just fandom. It’s not curing cancer, winning a Pulitzer, solving climate change, landing on Mars, or making first contact with extraterrestrials.

As Harlan put it so eloquently, trying to “make a name for yourself” in fandom is like trying to be “the best leper in the colony.” (I love that phrase!)

I cherish every subscriber to this blog, every follower on Twitter, all of my friends and family on FaceBook. But that’s because you’re all real and I love to communicate with you. It would not stoke my ego to see four or five digit numbers of followers when I would know that 99% of them were fake. If that’s what floats your boat — I can recommend a very good therapist.

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Filed under Fandom, Politics, Science Fiction

April 4, 2014 · 22:20

A Thousand Days

Yesterday marked a thousand days since July 8, 2011, the day the final mission of the Space Shuttle program launched.

There’s no doubt in my mind that mothballing the Space Shuttle fleet when we did was a colossal error. A thousand days later, that opinion has only grown stronger.

Shutting down the shuttle program has meant that US, European, and Japanese astronauts have all had to ride to and from the International Space Station on Russian rockets, paying through the nose for the privilege. Note that I don’t blame the Russians at all for increasing what they charge. We foolishly handed them a monopoly — they’re just doing any monopolist would or should do.

I won’t argue that the shuttle program needed to be shut down due to how much it cost.

I would argue that it shouldn’t have cost nearly as much as it did. I would argue that from the beginning, the program was never bold enough. It was a program run by bureaucrats and politicians, not astronauts and engineers. For an example of what people outside of NASA were proposing, look at some of the early proposals from David Brin and others for taking the shuttle’s external tanks to orbit and using them to build a much bigger (and earlier) space station than ISS. But I’ll save those arguments for another time, it’s just a lot of “coulda, woulda, shoulda” now.

Reality check — in the early 2000’s the shuttle was expensive and had safety issues. Instead of addressing or fixing those issues, President Bush (the second one) decided that the program would be shut down as soon as construction on ISS was finished. That was the situation that President Obama inherited, and while he could have changed direction, he’s actually made it worse.

If you believe that a human space program is a useless waste of money, I hope that you’ve stopped reading and moved on by this point. I’m of the opposite mind, believing that it’s a critical part of our future if our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren are to survive. I also believe that NASA’s budget, which is a fraction of 1% of the federal budget, should be doubled or tripled or more, immediately if not sooner. (I don’t remember the exact figure, but the ballpark figure is that the interest on the national debt for a few hours is more than NASA’s budget for the entire year.)

That goes for the unmanned planetary exploration as well. We should be sending orbiters, landers, rovers, flyers, and swimmers to Titan, Enceladus, and Europa. But that’s a rant for another day as well.

So, having spent thirteen years and something like $150 billion to build an incredible space station and having it finally ready to start doing full-time scientific research, our big vision, our big plan, the course our “leadership” set was…

…to shut down the only way we had to get there, other than buying a limited number of Soyuz seats from the Russians.

Now that relations with the Russians are turning sour, plenty of folks at NASA and in Congress are noticing that the only way our next crew gets up there is on a Russian rocket, and the only way the current crew on orbit gets down is in a Russian Soyuz capsule landing in Russia. They are all saying that it won’t be a problem, they’re not worried, the problems we have with the Russians will never get so bad that they refuse to take our astronauts up.

Yeah, probably. We hope. God help us if they’re wrong.

But of course, a thousand days ago, the successor to the shuttle must have been on the drawing boards and ready to go any day, right? Otherwise, that was a decision that absolutely defies any kind of logic or common sense. It would have been almost criminally shortsighted. Right?

Currently, the US successor to the shuttle is Orion and the SLS. “SLS” stands for “Space Launch System,” a heavy-lift vehicle designed to take us past low Earth orbit. It’s more commonly referred to as the “Senate Launch System” because politicians with NASA jobs in their home districts and states are the ones who keep insisting on SLS being built, when the program is turning into an incredibly expensive dead end. It’s also referred to as “The Rocket To Nowhere.”

It would be a fantastic vehicle, a worthy follow-up to the Saturn V — if it were ready now, if it cost a quarter or a tenth of what it does, if it could be launched four or five or six times a year.  But it’s not ready now, nor was it ready a thousand days ago. The first test launch (non-crewed) is currently scheduled for 2017, three years from now, far more than another thousand days from now, almost 2,500 days from the final Space Shuttle launch.

I only wish those figures were typos.

It gets better. Assuming the first test flight goes well, the second flight, which will carry a crew, is scheduled for 2021.

2021. If there aren’t any problems. If there aren’t any funding issues or cuts. If there’s isn’t another ninety degree change in course.

Four full years after the first test flight, they’re (maybe) going to have the second test flight.

When we were learning to go to moon in the 1960’s, through Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, figuring out how to build rockets from scratch (yes, it was rocket science) we were launching as many as five or six manned missions per year, even on brand new rockets. Now, with over fifty years of experience, we’re hopeful that maybe we’ll be able to launch once every four years.

Can you tell that I’m less than impressed?

Then there’s Orion, the space vehicle that SLS will launch into deep space. It will carry up to seven astronauts to low Earth orbit, like to the ISS, or four astronauts on long (several weeks) trips beyond the moon to an asteroid or other target. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not a huge leap forward, it’s actually a huge leap backwards. It’s an oversize Apollo capsule, upgraded with better computers and digital displays instead of 1960’s computers that were a thousand times less powerful than your average smart phone.

Fine. Form follows function. It will get the job done. Was it ready a thousand days ago? Nope, not even close. But unlike the SLS, the first Orion (non-crewed) test launch is actually scheduled for later this year, although the smart money says it will slip into 2015.

So, next year we’ll be able to take an Orion capsule and launch it to ISS on one of our existing rockets, like a Delta or Atlas, right? We’ve launched hundreds and hundreds of those, we’ve got factories building dozens and hundreds more to come. Right?

Nope. As far as I can tell, the Orion will only be able to be launched on the SLS. Originally President Bush had proposed the Constellation program, which included Orion and a family of rockets called Ares. An Ares I could take an Orion to low earth orbit, an Ares V could take one to the moon or beyond.

But the Constellation program was killed by President Obama, and he came pretty close to shutting down NASA’s human space program completely. You don’t have a human space program if you don’t have any crewed spacecraft or any rockets to launch them. Some compromises with Congress led to the Orion being kept, the SLS put on the drawing boards to carry it to some very unspecific “asteroid missions” in the very unspecific “sometime in someone else’s Administration” time frame in which to do it.

Now can you tell that I’m not impressed?

Our salvation at this point lies with the private sector and companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Xcor, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are currently sending non-crewed cargo vehicles to ISS.

SpaceX is well along the way to building and testing a crewed vehicle, with abort system tests scheduled for later this year and in 2015. If all goes well, it might be possible for the first crewed Dragon flight to be in late 2015. Boeing is also working on a private, crewed capsule, the CTS-100, which will launch on an upgraded Delta IV or Atlas V rocket.

Late 2015 or early 2016 is an awful lot sooner than 2021. Can you tell that I’m impressed?

Back to the original point.

A thousand days ago, the last Space Shuttle flight took off. With absolutely nothing anywhere near being flight-ready to follow it. That’s got to be one of the greatest failures of vision and leadership in our country’s history.

It’s not like we don’t go through the exact same process with other government programs. So the shuttle was expensive and getting outdated? In an analogous situation, the military periodically has fighters, tanks, and ships that are outdated and getting too expensive to maintain. What do we do then?

We loved the F-14 fighters (Top Gun!), but they got replaced by the F-16, which in turn is being replaced with the F-18, which in turn will be phased out for the F-35 in the next decade or so.

BUT… We didn’t scrap the F-14s until the F-16s were in service and flying. We won’t scrap the F-18s until the F-35s are in service and flying. The programs will overlap and compliment each other for decades.

The older conventional-fuel aircraft carriers were outdated? They were replaced by the nuclear powered ones, which in turn are now being replaced by the next generation of aircraft carriers. Guess what? We didn’t scrap one generation until it had served side by side for decades with the next generation of ships.

Tanks? Ditto. Submarines? Ditto. Cargo planes? Jeeps? Destroyers and guided missile frigates? Guns? Bombs? Artillery? You get the picture.

But not spacecraft! We took all four shuttles, all four of which were flying like champions, all four of which were perfectly functional and capable, and even though we knew that there was nothing to replace them for at least six or seven (or twelve, or fifteen) years…we gutted them and put them into museums.

Strike one. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.

And let’s look at that analogy with military vehicles in another way. Do we make one single type of airplane? Nope, we have fighters, cargo planes, refueling planes, attack helicopters, troop carrying helicopters, tank killers, scout planes, bombers — an array different vehicles for different jobs.

Do we have one kind of Navy ship? Nope, we have aircraft carriers, destroyers, guided missile frigates, cargo ships, fuel ships, small attack submarines, big ballistic missile launching submarines…

So why are we building one and only one kind of rocket?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have crew-rated rockets in a range of sizes and capabilities? Smaller ones for putting spacecraft in low Earth orbit, bigger ones for putting big payloads (like space station pieces) into low earth orbit, even bigger ones for sending crews and ships to the moon and beyond? For that matter, why don’t we also have orbital craft that are never designed to land or come down to Earth, but act permanently in space as tugs, fuel depots, shuttles between the Earth and Moon, shuttles from the lunar surface to lunar orbit, shuttles from Earth orbit to the L5 and L4 points, shuttles between Earth and Mars…

Strike two. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.

I’m rooting hard for SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Sierra Nevada. We need some success and some innovation and we need it soon. As important as I believe human space flight to be, it’s been proven to be too important to leave to the bureaucrats and politicians.

The last thousand days have proven that.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Politics, Space

March 25, 2014 · 22:37

Odds & Sods For Tuesday, March 25th

Item The First: On the second episode of the new “Cosmos” series, Neil deGrasse Tyson opened the lesson on evolution by talking about how humans had artificially bred dogs from wolves. In talking about this, he pointed out that we have bred for cuteness in addition to breeding for utility. When The Long-Suffering Dog sits in “The Desk Cave” (she loves it under there when I’m working), I’m wondering if we can breed for dogs that fart less? And can we please do it quickly?

Item The Second: Again we’ve gotten so blase about manned spaceflight. I tuned in on NASA-TV tonight at 19:25 expecting a show to start at 19:30 with live coverage of the Expedition 39/40 crew docking with the International Space Station. Instead I saw that they were already live and a lot of folks were huddled in groups around Mission Control. This is never good.

As we now thing we know, there was just a problem with the third delta-V burn needed to match orbits with ISS, so the burn was cancelled and that meant an abort of the “express” six-hour rendezvous flight plan. The failure scenario o the six-hour flight plan is the old, tired-and-true two-day flight plan. Everyone’s fine, the launch was flawless, there’s no indication that it’s anything other than some sort of software error.

But it was startling how quickly my brain went into “Apollo 1,” “Apollo 13,” “Challenger,” “Columbia” mode.

Item The Third: My Twitter feed is full of comments tonight from planetary scientists and the like (@elakdawalla, @PlanetDr, @Alex_Parker, @RonBaalke) about a news article that’s been released early. I guess there’s a major announcement coming out tomorrow from ESO. I’m assuming they’re talking about the European Southern Observatory instead of the Elder Scrolls Online, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, a couple of media places have released the embargoed story early. A part of the response, a new Twitter hashtag has been born, and it’s pretty funny. Check out #ESOrumors to see what I’m talking about. For example, @mcnees said “Hey no biggie, and totally just out of curiosity, but exactly how many nuclear missiles do we have?” @danielg1905 suggested, “Stronomers: ‘We’re not saying it was aliens . . . but it was aliens.”

Item The Fourth: Speaking of “Cosmos,” it has upset a number of fundamentalist groups that claim that Fox owes them “equal time” to talk about “intelligent design” if “Cosmos” is going to give a “one-sided” view of the arguments on evolution. A few thoughts:

  • This isn’t a political campaign, you have no right to “equal time.”
  • Hypothetically and parenthetically, if you were to win “equal time,” would you in turn be forced to give “equal time” to scientists and rational thinkers as part of every television program put on by some megachurch evangelist (i.e., blackmailing for dollars)?
  • Get over the “evolution is just a theory” argument! All it does is prove that you have no idea what the definition of “theory” means in a scientific discussion. Evolution is a “theory” the same way that gravity is and radioactive decay is. If you still don’t believe or understand, go jump off of a tall cooling tower into the core of a nuclear power plant. Enlightenment will await.
  • Not only are you not entitled to “equal time,” neither are the Flat Earth Society, the Ptolemaic fundamentalists who still believe in epicycles, the Mayan fundamentalists who believe that human sacrifice appeases the sun gods, or the Hindu fundamentalists who think that the Earth is carried around the sun on the back of a giant turtle. It doesn’t matter how big of a turtle they find. (Although, to be fair, if they could find a turtle the size of Saturn or Jupiter, I would be happy to accept at least the possibility that their theory was relevant. But can you imagine how much lettuce that turtle would eat?)

Item The Fifth: It’s so neat that our space program has taught all of us space cadets how to spell “r-e-n-d-e-z-v-o-u-s”. Is that a great spinoff, or what?

Item The Sixth: Someone the other day wanted to draw me into a political argument, and it was an argument, not a discussion. I wasn’t taking the bait, but after being pressed a bit I put it this way: “I hate all politicians these days. I don’t trust a single one of them, either party, local, county, state, or federal. On a scale of one to ten, I hate the Democrats about a twelve. You just think I’m a ‘liberal’ because I hate the Republicans about a thirteen.”

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Filed under Astronomy, Dogs, Odds & Sods, Politics, Space

February 22, 2014 · 21:53

A Few Questions re: Arizona AB-1062

As you may have heard, the Arizona Senate has passed a bill, AB 1062, which is being referred to by its supporters as a “religious freedom” bill. It would allow any individual or company in Arizona legal protections from discrimination lawsuits if they were to refuse service to someone when that person or business owner believes that providing such services would violate their religious beliefs.

Several other states have tried to pass similar bills recently (such as Kansas) but so far none have passed. It’s not clear at this time if Arizona Governor Jan Brewer will sign the bill. It’s also not clear that the law would stand up to any kind of legal challenge if it were signed into law.

On the flip side, there are twenty-one states which specifically forbid anyone denying services due to someone’s sexual orientation. This has been part of the motivation for Arizona to try to push for this law. They are concerned that some hypothetical baker in Arizona would be forced by law to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage when the baker’s religious beliefs are strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. In their opinion, this would violate the baker’s rights to freedom of religion. (This is also why these types of laws are referred to as “no cake for gays” laws.)

The measure has been strongly promoted by two conservative groups, the Center for Arizona Policy and Defending Freedom Alliance. (Please note, the online stories from the various news services have links to these organizations — I very, very deliberately do not. If you really, really want to go to their web page, google it.) It has also received strong support from the Arizona Catholic Conference. (I have never in my life been so happy to be a “recovering” Catholic.)

Of course, there are many Arizona groups opposing the bill, including business leaders who are concerned that it will send the message that Arizona is bigoted. They’re correct — it will send that message, because, well, Arizona is being bigoted.

Many have also pointed out that most businesses in Arizona (and every other state) are so in need of customers that they can’t afford to turn down anyone, regardless of what the customer does in the privacy of their own bedroom. That would be my first assumption, but I guess their God does a better job of taking care of their business for them because they’re turning down customers in His name than my God does. (Should I be urging my God to get on the ball and stop being a slacker in that regard?)

While the proponents of the bill are very good at wrapping themselves in the flag and the Bible in order to argue that this law is good for us and proposed out of their love of fundamental American freedom (otherwise known as “hypocritically lying through their teeth”), I have to wonder if their law goes far enough. After all, if you’re going to go on record, repeatedly, as a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, hate-filled, pinheads, why stop with anti-gay legislation?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is Muslim, he could refuse to make a cake for a Bar Mitzvah?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is white, he could refuse to make a cake for a Martin Luther King Day celebration? (After all, Arizona refused to recognize MLK Day for five years or so, and only relented when a significant boycott got established and it became obvious that the state wasn’t going to get the Super Bowl or NCAA Championship game if they didn’t relent? Fundamental principles are critical and the basis of our moral foundations — right up to the point where billions of dollars are involved. Then, as Winston Churchill said…)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an N’Sync fan, he could refuse to make a cake for a Backstreet Boys reunion rave?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a nudist, he could refuse to make a cake for customers wearing clothes?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a pacifist, he could refuse to make a cake for an NRA member?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is member of the Flat Earth Society, he could refuse to make a cake for astronaut Mark Kelly’s birthday? (Extra points if you “get” this one!)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an Arizona Wildcat, he could refuse to make a cake for a Arizona State Sun Devil tailgate party? After all, if we’re going to support hatred, let’s start at home!

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a misogynist, he could refuse to make a cake for a bachelorette party?

Finally, why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker has an IQ bigger than his shoe size, he could refuse to make a cake for a member of the Arizona Senate because they’re freakin’ idiots?

Curious minds want to know.

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics

February 11, 2014 · 22:51

Extremes

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about extremes in human nature. It’s a theme that you see regularly here and there, in all genres of fiction. In particular, I see it a lot in science fiction.

On the one hand, we can create fine art in all forms. Mozart’s 40th, Beethoven’s 5th, and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon.” “The Godfather” movies, “Bridge On The River Kwai”, and “Field Of Dreams.” Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir. Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens.

On the other hand, we can destroy more horribly and thoroughly than any plague of locust. Gallipoli. Gettysburg. Dresden.

On the one hand, we can build great cities and buildings. New York, Paris, Shanghai. St. Peter’s Basilica, the Great Pyramid of Giza, Burj Khalifa.

On the other hand, we can abuse and misuse our talents and create monsters. Chernobyl. Love Canal. Climate change.

On the one hand, we can perform incredible acts of bravery and kindness. Mother Theresa. Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela.

On the other hand, we can inflict horrible acts of cruelty and hatred. Adolf Hitler. Idi Amin. Pol Pot.

On the one hand, we can do incredible things to better the lives of everyone. Medicine. Education. Communications.

On the other hand, we can treat our fellow humans as if they were nothing. Slavery. Bigotry and repression. The Holocaust.

On the one hand, we can create and discover and invent unbelievable things. Gutenberg. Edison. Apollo 11.

On the other hand, we can turn our backs on reality and let our darkest fears take us. Jonestown. The Manson family. Suicide bombers.

You get the picture.

Without darkness, how can we know what light is? Without sorrow, how can we savor joy? Without hatred, how would we learn to value love?

How can we as a culture, as a society, as a species be so amazing, awesome, and incredibly fantastic, while at the same time being so hateful, despicable, and disgusting?

More importantly, how can we as individuals maintain balance and reconcile this duality, both within ourselves and in the world as a whole? When the news and the comments section of just about any internet article make you think there are no redeeming values to humanity, how can you remember that each of us can love and be loved? When the horrors of the world threaten to blind you, how can you remember to look at all of the beauty in the world?

In science fiction, these extremes and this dichotomy is often shown in how an alien species might judge mankind. For example, in “The Fifth Element,” Leeloo is almost overwhelmed by human’s propensity for war and destruction and must find love to see if it’s enough to balance out the horror. At the end of Heinlein’s “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel,” Kip and the Mother Thing must defend humanity in a galactic court judging whether or not humans are too dangerous to be allowed to live. In the “Star Trek” adaptation of Fredric Brown’s “Arena”, Kirk and the Gorn fight to the death to see which species will survive, but Kirk’s refusal to kill the Gorn when he can shows that humans have “potential.” The character of Q is a recurring force in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, judging mankind and weighing the opposing aspects of good and evil in our actions and nature.

With all of that in mind, what’s been on my mind has been whether or not this range of extremes is a good thing or a bad thing if and/or when we ever encounter another, superior alien race, or even a full-blown galactic civilization. (I’m not getting into the whole Fermi Paradox thing right now.)

Will we be judged as too extreme, too unpredictable, and therefore too dangerous or immature as a species?

Or will these extremes and fundamental dichotomies be judged to be a great strength, giving us flexibility, strength, and adaptability? “With great power…” and all of that.

I wish that I had an answer. I just know that now, I seem to be surfing the highs some days and being beaten by the lows on others.

“Balance” is not the same as “average.” I don’t know if the world’s getting more extreme, or if it’s just my perception of it.

Finally, while my knee-jerk reaction on the “down” days is to wish for less amplitude with higher lows and lower highs, I hesitate to voice that wish too loudly since it would also mean a world with less exhilarating and spectacular peaks.

I don’t know which scares me more, thinking that I’ll never find an answer, or fearing that I will find it but will then not be able to hang onto it or share it with others.

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Filed under Art, Music, Politics, Science Fiction

November 22, 2013 · 16:45

I Was At Home, In The Basement

As so many people are doing today, I’ve been remembering where I was fifty years ago, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

I was seven, in second grade in a Catholic school in Kansas City, Kansas. For some reason, possibly a cold or some other ailment, I was at home. My father was at work, my next younger brother would have been at school, my oldest sister would have been at kindergarten. Four other siblings would have been in the house, the youngest only six months old, and my mother was in one of those rare moments when she wasn’t pregnant. (I’m the oldest of eight kids, the last one born in September, 1964.)

I was alone in the basement that my father had converted to a family room. The laundry room was also down there. I remember my mother coming down the stairs off and on to check on me, but I have no recollection of any of my siblings around. This may have been in part because I was sick and we were trying to limit the plague’s spread through the family (a futile effort, I’m sure). The other factor in isolating me was that I was supposed to be studying.

As a good Catholic boy, I was studying my doctrine lessons for an upcoming religious test of some sort. I’m pretty sure I had gotten First Communion in first grade, so by the middle of second grade I was probably studying for a Confirmation test. The television on for some reason, possibly for my mother to watch, since I was supposed to be studying and I didn’t watch daytime programming.

As everyone says, “I’ll never forget”. I’ll never forget sitting on the couch in that basement rec room, studying, when they broke in with a special bulletin. My mother was upstairs at the time and I remember running to get her to tell her about it. She came back downstairs and for the rest of the day we watched the grainy black & white images that we’ve all seen so many times. Walter Cronkite, the frantic live reports, conflicting news, finally the word that the president was dead, and the news that LBJ had been sworn in. I remember the funeral coverage. I remember watching live as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th.

As part of the news coverage for today, NPR has a great audio clip (here) of radio communications between Air Force One, the Situation Room in Washington, and a plane (Aircraft 972) which was two hours out of Honolulu on its way to Japan. That plane carried Secretary of State Dean Rusk along with five other members of Kennedy’s Cabinet, so one can understand the concern for that plane and its passengers. If the assassination of the president was part of an attempted coup or other attack on our government by foreign agents, that plane would obviously be a target. It’s fascinating to listen to these recordings, hearing these men trying to do their jobs and figure out what to do on the fly in the middle of an enormous crisis.

It’s one of those moments. I’ll never forget.

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Filed under Paul, Politics

October 16, 2013 · 18:47

It’s A Long Way To Irvine

About seventy-two miles each way, to be exact. At rush hour, through the teeth of the 101/405 interchange and up over the hill through the Sepulveda Pass construction zone. My first thought was that the “fun” value for the experience could definitely use some improvements. At least I had some good tunes to sooth my brain. (“Return Of The King” soundtrack. Tasty!)

The writer’s group made it all worth while. I think this may be a very good thing, as long as the commute doesn’t get too onerous.

But it does make for a long day, with lots of other stuff to get caught up on once I get home. And I should eat, I guess. As well as keeping an eye on the government to make sure they don’t do something even more stupid. Or, at the least, know about it when they do. (Eternal optimism can be a real pain in the ass some times.)

So have a before & after pair of pictures:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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Filed under Flowers, Photography, Politics, Writing