Transterrestrial Musings

May 31, 2002
More On "Intelligent Design"

Oh, my gosh. I'd thought, even hoped, that I'd put the evolution thing to rest, at least for a week or two.

But I got an email from Susannah Cornett, whose blog I've admired from afar for a while, and like many others, been meaning to provide a link to (he said, as he dangled a preposition).

She followed it up with an actual (I think identical) post, titled, just so we know from where she's coming (avoiding yet another dangle...), MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF TEACHING EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS.

Oh, my.

This was exactly what I was attempting (apparently in vain) to avoid.

But since it was apparently not possible, let me respond, point by point, with all the respect due her.

[Note this post is a follow up of a series of which the most previous one is here.

I've read with interest your commentary about evolution vs creationism (I prefer the term "intelligent design"). One of your major objections to the teaching or adherence to a theory of intelligent design is that it limits scientific exploration.

Yes.

You also see it as a weakness of faith, a fairly harsh assessment.

Perhaps. Think of it as tough love.

While I do agree that blind adherence to a theory can limit a search for truth, and a weak faith breeds fear, I think you are showing your own bias in your discussion, as well as not fully addressing the moral implications of an unchallenged presentation of evolutionary theory.

I'm not claiming that evolution shouldn't be challenged. I'm claiming that it shouldn't be challenged as science, or that if it is, it should be challenged by a scientific alternative. Intelligent design is not science, for reasons already stated numerous times, in numerous ways, by both myself and Professor Volokh. Frankly, I'm frustrated that you and others don't see or care to make the distinction.

As long as intelligent design is a valid theory - which I think Volokh argued eloquently is the case - then refusing to consider it as an option is biased and unscientific.

Let's back up the horses right here. What does "valid" mean?

Many people take the word "valid" to having some connotation of truth, or certitude. Certainly, neither Eugene (or I) intended to imply that. If we call it a valid theory, it only means one that might be true. But valid theories are not necessarily scientific theories. Science only seeks "truth" within the boundaries of the scientific method. Theories that cannot be evaluated in that context do not belong in science classes. Without repeating all of the arguments of the previous posts, I will simply state that ID is excluded from that category. To understand why, go read those posts.

It's a theory of origin, not a theory of escapism. While it is inappropriate for someone to say, "Well, it's that way because God made it that way" and thus refuse to explore a question further, it is just as inappropriate to say, "Because eventually this explanation might lead to an irresolvable question, we're going to refuse to accept that this could be the answer even though it fits the facts".

The problem is not about what happens eventually. The problem is that, immediately, as soon as we say "God (or someone) did it," we've left the realm of scientific inquiry, and there's no way back except to say "Whoops, sorry, we didn't mean that. God didn't do it, or at least, we can't know that he did." It is simply an utterly useless theory (from a scientific standpoint), because it can't be tested, falsified or disproved.

You say:

It is the fact that it [intelligent design] is not disprovable (i.e., falsifiable) that puts it outside the realm of science. It's not simply an uninteresting theory--it is a useless copout (again, purely from a scientific perspective).

Yes, that's exactly what I say.

Is general evolution in its full manifestation provable?

No. That's where we seem to be talking past each other. No scientific theory is provable. What makes scientific theories interesting and useful is the fact that they're disprovable. ID is not.

It's not replicable, we don't have historic accounts; it will never be more than an extrapolation from evidence. To assume it is to limit your explorations. Conversely, if someone developed a theory of how things should look if there was an intelligent designer, and set out to test it, would that be bad science?

No. The problem is, that there's no way to test it. If someone wants to put ID forth as a theory, they have to also describe the experiments (thought or otherwise) that would, with appropriate outcomes, show that it was false. To date, no one has done that. Instead, they simply offer a deus ex machina to explain things that they lack imagination or knowledge to understand.

The originating event is not replicable, but its manifestations might be evident.

Well, here's your challenge. What would they be? If you can't tell us, then there's no point in accepting it as a (scientific) theory. What tests would you perform, that would provide compelling insight as to whether or not we were evolved or designed?

If this scientist found, for example, that man appeared in his current form at one point in history, or other evidence that seem to point more to intelligent design than evolution, would you try to fit it into your own theory, or ignore it, because you don't see intelligent design as a valid theory?

What would constitute evidence that would point more to intelligent design than evolution? Bear in mind as you answer this, that there is an abundance of evidence that we are of lousy design, in many ways, that is much more easily explained by a random process than an intelligent designer.

"If I were to teach evolution in a school, I would state it not as 'this is what happened,' but rather, 'this is what scientists believe happened.'

Belief without proof is called "faith."

Yes, I've already made that point myself, multiple times. Belief in the scientific method is faith, in the sense that there are a number of unprovable axioms that must be accepted:

1) There is an objective reality
2) It obeys universal laws
3) Its nature can be revealed by asking questions of it in the form of experiments
4) The simplest explanation that fits the facts is the one that should be preferred

There are other tenets, but these are the main ones.

But my major objection to evolution being taught in the schools without any reference to intelligent design as an alternative is the social implications of the "religion" of evolution.

Evolution is not a religion. Science is a religion, by the broadest definition (with some of the fundamental tenets stated above), and evolution is an inevitable product of it. If you want to throw out evolution, you might as well throw out physics, chemistry, other aspects of biology, etc.

I believe that it's important to teach science. More importantly, I believe that part of teaching science is teaching that science is not a compendium of facts to be memorized, but that it is a method, a means of learning about the world.

That doesn't mean that we should teach that the only means of gaining knowlege is science (though as someone who believes in it, I definitionally believe that it is the best means of attaining knowledge).

If you want to teach intelligent design in schools, I have no objection. My only objection is that it not be taught as science, because it's not and cannot be. It's a refutation, a repudiation of science.

I've taught both introductory psychology and sociology on the college level, and in every case the texts explained both individual and social behaviors in an evolutionary context, with many attendant moral extrapolations. An example is the "fight or flight" response. I'm not saying humans don't have that response, but the evolutionary explanation given for it is an extrapolation that isn't supported.

Isn't supported by what?

The development of that response cannot be scientifically tracked or established, given that it happened prior to recorded history and is not still developing, so whence the conclusions as to why it developed? It is assumed that the extrapolation is true, which actually limits exploration rather than encouraging it - we know why it's there, so why look more deeply into its manifestations? Setting it as a trait that developed as an evolutionarily-preferred behavior gives its manifestations, in the eyes of some, an almost moral rightness.

Oh, here's your problem. No, it should never, ever be taught as a moral rightness. We cannot derive morality purely from our genetic heritage, or from science classes. That way lies disaster.

It is natural, and an evolutionarily-advantageous behavior for males to rape females. That doesn't mean that we should approve of such behavior. I've posted numerous times in the past about the danger of equating "natural" with "good" or "moral." Nature is not our friend. Or our enemy. It's just how we got here.

Anthrax is natural. Botulism is natural. Death is natural. That doesn't make them our friends.

We can't derive morality from science, or at least not from the primevil urges of our hormones. That seems to the crux of the problem--people seem to think that our ancestors, or our origin, should define our current behavior.

No.

We have to develop a morality based on what kind of society we want to have today--not one that we had in the savannah of Africa a few thousand years ago (to which, to first order, we remain physically adapted). I don't claim to know what the source of this moral order should be, but it should emphatically not be the mindlessness of our genes.

You have to go outside science to find reason to stem it in some contexts, when it would not have that moral gravitas to begin with if some evolutionists didn't present extrapolations as truth.

I have no control over what some evolutionists do or say. I don't claim that evolution is truth, except within the framework of scientific inquiry.

If you've been following the recent discussions of teen sexuality on some of the blogs, there have been a number of references to "natural" behavior, to evolutionary imperative. That is a moral conclusion arising from evolution-as-religion. It's also used as a reason behind why sexual photographs of teenagers are so desired online - we're evolutionarily hardwired to seek out the best bets for self-perpetuation, thus, youth and attractiveness, so naturally people are drawn to sexual photos of youth. I'm not saying that all the arguments using evolution in their supportive statements would be endorsed by evolutionary scientists, but it is a major source of reasoning for those taking a variety of moral and behavioral stances. It is not a value-neutral, or morality-neutral, scientific theory. It is in our society treated as fact, and many people base their behavior on its extrapolated moral tenets. At the very least, schools should separate fact from those extrapolations.

Then that's what we should fight--the notion that we should base our laws on our base animal urges--not science itself.

As for the weakness of faith that belief in intelligent design supposedly indicates, I would posit that a similar weakness of faith exists in a scientific community fearful of incorporating intelligent design in its assessment of information, at the very least as a valid theory of origin until proven otherwise. It is either a fear that intelligent design is true, or an adamant belief that general evolution is law, not theory, despite its lack of full support; in either case the scientific pursuit is polluted by bias. What avenues of exploration are closed because of a belief in evolution similar to the religious closed-mindedness you mention in association with a belief in intelligent design? Why is questioning evolution considered heresy?

Simply stated, because there's no way to test it within the scientific method.

Let me say it one more time. I can't say what truth is in any ultimate way. I can only say what is science. ID ain't science, and it never can be, because there's no way to disprove it.

My psychology and sociology students were always treated to a lecture on how what you believe about origins has an impact on what you believe about behaviors and morality today.

If that's the case, then I beg your pardon, but you were misteaching them. Perhaps it does, but it most emphatically shouldn't.

I made my own beliefs on it clear, and did not color my presentation of the class material with my own biases in the balance of the class except in asides offering an alternative extrapolation very obviously my own. I don't see how such an approach would suddenly destroy the foundations of scientific endeavor in this society, nor how intelligent design reasonably presented as an option of origin, in all its advantages, flaws and implications, would do the same. It also is not "promoting religion", if dissociated from the Bible and taught as a valid scientific option - which it is.

It is not.

Religion is about who the intelligent designer is, and different groups have different conclusions.

No, religion is about what the bedrock of our belief system is. For some (including me), an intelligent designer is not necessary.

I'm not suggesting we teach in public schools which conclusion is most likely. Just as you would say "I would state it not as 'this is what happened,' but rather, 'this is what scientists believe happened.'

But that's the point. Evolution is what scientists believe happened. If they instead falter, and simply invoke the deus ex machina, they are no longer being scientists. They may be right (there's no way to know this side of eternity) but they're no longer doing science.

And as a religious person, I'm not afraid of science in full flower, exploring every corner of the universe. I encourage it. I'm fascinated by it. Maybe there is intelligent life elsewhere, although I doubt it. I wouldn't stop scientific exploration for fear it will prove my faith wrong, nor do I deny that many aspects of evolutionary theory offer an excellent structure for scientific study. But I also don't believe evolution and faith are antithetical, or reasonably separated into "reality" vs "emotion". It is that characterization in the face of the moral implications of belief in general evolution that give rise to my desire for intelligent design to be presented in schools as an optional theory of origin.

I don't believe that they are antithetical either. Rather, they are orthogonal. ID can be presented as an optional theory of origin. Fine with me. Just don't pretend it's science. It is not, and cannot be.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:37 PM

O'Reilly Confusion

O'Reilly opened up his show with a poll that showed that while 66% of Americans thought we were winning the war in January, now only 40% do.

Not surprising to me but I think that his diagnosis was utterly wrong.

He said that it was because we a) hadn't captured Osama and b) we were still getting terrorist threats.

Those may be factors, but I think he missed the biggest one.

We have quit fighting the war.

Even if the White House and the State Department don't seem to recognize it, I think that many Americans are smart enough to know that when you tell Israel to negotiate with terrorists, and when you allow these delaying tactics in Israel and in Kashmir to put things on hold, and when you have leaks from the Pentagon saying that the brass doesn't think they can handle Iraq, and when the President says that he doesn't have a plan to invade Iraq, and there's no hint as to the urgency of changing the regime there, and when everyone except the White House can see that Riyadh is not a friend, but an enemy, it's no wonder that many think we're losing the war.

What's amazing to me is that forty percent still think we're winning it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:32 PM

Thanks Again, Congress

It's a good thing we have those "professional" federalized screeners at the airports.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:45 PM

More Bad News For Japan

Moody's has downgraded their government bonds--they're now equivalent to those of Latvia and Poland.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:10 AM

Soul Searching

The writer of this article is a brave man.

Today, as a Muslim and as an insider, I would like to hold a mirror to Islam; if the Muslim community does not like the reflection in the mirror it is not the fault of the mirror. You can call it a soul-searching of a concerned Muslim.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:29 AM

Online Uprising

Cathy Seipp has a nice (long) piece on blogging/bloggers in American Journalism Review.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:55 AM

The Sum Of All PC

Jonathan Last says that, even in the wake of September 11, Hollywood remains too PC to make real contemporary war movies, and that "The Sum Of All Fears" is a disastrous proof of his thesis.

When we can't depict terrorists as Muslims in a movie, the terrorists have won.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:48 AM

Weenies--Or Moles?

Peggy Noonan has a disturbing piece in today's Opinion Journal. It's particularly disturbing that it's coming from her.

She is asking the question seriously: was the FBI failure in 911 merely incompetence? Or something worse?

While few hold the FBI in lower esteem than I do, I have trouble believing that this was a deliberate effort to prevent the lower-level agents from thwarting the attack. Not because I believe the FBI incapable of such coverups and deliberate inaction--we saw plenty of it during the Clinton years, after Judge Sessions was fired and replaced by the more pliant Louis Freeh--but that they would do so for a foreign power (as opposed to a corrupt White House) is a new and frightening possibility.

The FBI was unable, or unwilling, to connect the dots that would have shown the pattern that resulted in the deadly attack of last fall. But now Peggy connects some dots herself, within the agency, and the picture isn't very pretty.

Any real probe will take this as an opportunity to air all of the agency's dirty laundry, going back to the Clinton years, and all the evidence tampering and obstruction that went on during that time. Because the dots from such an investigation may show the much bigger picture of government malfeasance that the kneepad press largely ignored, out its adoration for the man it put in the White House in 1992.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM

She May Have To Raise Some More Campaign Funds From The Middle East

Cynthia McKinney is in trouble in her own district.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:26 AM

Another Martyr

A brave Palestinian "freedom fighter" was shot and killed after throwing hand grenades into a nursery in a West Bank settlement. Fortunately, no one (who mattered) was injured.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 AM

Meow...

Emmett Tyrrell gives away the ugly little secret--American journalists hate each other.

If the members of the National Football League harbored as much hatred for their fellow football savages as the journalists harbor for their fellow journalists, no football game would begin without a thorough weapons search.

Is it just me, or is there much more collegiality in the blogosphere than in paid journalism?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:52 AM

May 30, 2002
Joint Strike Fighter

I don't normally deal with defense procurement issues, particularly in this detail, but Dan Hartung sends me this link to an article in the Atlantic by James Fallows on the Joint Strike Fighter. As usual from Mr. Fallows, it provides a riveting bit of history on that subject.

He wonders whether it offers any lessons for NASA.

Having read it once, I'm not sure, but I'll give it some thought. I'm not sure how applicable the approach is to NASA, given how limited its vision is for spacelift. If it could somehow be coordinated with the military needs, then there might be a chance, but it's even harder to coordinate NASA with the Pentagon than it is to get the services to agree.

But here were the things that jumped out at me from having read it.

First, it provides a nice little description of Darleen Druyun, and why she may continue to be a major player.

Second, this passage provides some interesting insight:

"There was one point [in 1999] where it was strongly urged that we terminate Lockheed and give the program to Boeing," Jacques Gansler told me recently. "Even if to do that we had to give Boeing the Lockheed Martin design to build. The skunk works had just lost cost control. The management was in terrible shape."

We get a clue from it as to one of the reasons that the X-33 program failed. Skunk Works just ain't what it used to be.

The third thing I saw was this:

At the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, under the guidance of Martin McLoughlin, the JSF's director of manufacturing, I saw a demonstration of modern manufacturing systems like the ones already in place at Boeing. The wing is formed as two great halves, and the joined halves are matched so precisely to the fuselage that they snap in. The computer industry as we know it would not exist were it not for high-speed, high-precision assembly, nor could America's car makers compete with Japan's had they not used these techniques. This is the first time these methods will be used for the military.

This, I believe, does have major implications for the space industry. The reason that companies like XCOR and Pioneer Rocketplane can contemplate building space vehicles for affordable prices is because of the revolution in computer-aided design and fabrication, that throw many of the old aerospace costing models into a cocked hat, even for limited production runs.

In any event, the article's definitely worth a read for those interested in aerospace and defense policy (including a lot of dirty laundry in the Beltway), and it may spark some further thoughts as to its applicability to our launch conundrum.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:15 PM

What She Said

Boy, if you thought that I was hard on Mr. Magaw, you should see what non-compassionate conservative Ann Coulter has to say.

...The reason Magaw decided to prohibit pilots from having guns is ? and I quote ? "they really need to be in control of that aircraft."

This is literally the stupidest thing I've heard in my entire life.

It is like saying women walking home late at night in dangerous neighborhoods shouldn't carry guns (or mace, for the gunphobic) because they "really need to be getting home." If the undersecretary for transportation security thinks we need to debate whether pilots "really need to be in control of the aircraft," someone other than him really needs to be in control of airline security...

She's not very nice to "Underperformin' Norman" either.

...Mineta recently said he was unaware of any "specific" threat against aviation.

They hate us. They're trying to kill us. They use airplanes as weapons. If Mineta doesn't talk to his boss, can't he at least read the papers?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:56 AM

Clarity

When it comes to the nature of our enemy (both abroad and at home, in the mindless federal bureaucracy), Hitchens gets it. I'm very much afraid that George W. Bush doesn't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:50 AM

Oceans Of Ice

The Fox News column is up. It's about Martian water, natch, and is basically a replay of my earlier post, updated.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:08 AM

It's Not (Non-Rocket) Science

I want to follow up with one more post on the evolution debate. I just posted this in the comment section here, but I'm prompted by a couple of recent posts by Professor Volokh on the subject.

In response to a comment by Ken Anthony that "...my faith in God is based on evidence just as surely as any pure science..." I wrote something similar to the following:

This is an oxymoronic statement. Faith cannot be based on evidence, by definition.

I have faith in the scientific method, but I can't prove it's the best way to achieve knowledge to anyone who doesn't. Unlike many who believe that the scientific method is the correct one, I admit that this belief is based on faith.

To me, the argument of evolution versus...well, other unspecified (and unscientific) explanations is not about true and false--it is just about science versus non-science. If I were to teach evolution in a school, I would state it not as "this is what happened," but rather, "this is what scientists believe happened."

In other words, I don't want to indoctrinate people what to believe--I just want to make sure that when they take a science class, that they're getting science, and not a religion dressed up as science. Whether they want to accept science is up to them.

[End response]

Now Eugene Volokh writes the following (not in response to anything on my blog):

The difficulty is that intelligent design is not at all like two plus two equals five. Intelligent design (to which, by the way, I do not subscribe) does not posit something that's clearly false (2+2=5). Rather, it posits something that may or may not be true (organisms "look like they were designed because they were designed," to quote one proponent of the intelligent design school, UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson) -- and that is in fact more plausible to many people than evolution is.

Nor can one argue that intelligent design is unproven, but evolution is proven. Evolution has not been proven in any common sense of the term -- true, it's (to my limited knowledge) more or less consistent with the evidence, but intelligent design is consistent with the evidence, too. Intelligent design, in turn, is neither proven nor disproven; it may not even be disprovable, absent some quite remarkable and uncontrovertible divine revelation.

Now one could argue that teaching intelligent design is impermissible because of the Establishment Clause; I don't want to express any judgment on that quite complex question here. One could also argue that teaching intelligent design is not pedagogically helpful: For all I know, intelligent design might be right and evolution wrong, but precisely because intelligent design rests on unfathomable mysteries, it can't really help much advance our thinking about biology. Evolution is thus the more useful hypothesis -- not because intelligent design is impossible or even unlikely (how can you measure the likelihood of something like that?), but because it's more productive of other interesting areas of investigation.

But whatever might be wrong about teaching intelligent design, it's not that intelligent design is wrong.

I agree with this, and it reiterates my point above--evolution vs creationism isn't about right or wrong--it's about science vs some other means of achieving knowledge.

But I differ with Eugene when he says: "Intelligent design, in turn, is neither proven nor disproven; it may not even be disprovable, absent some quite remarkable and uncontrovertible divine revelation."

While this statement is true, it's the crux of the matter. It is the fact that it is not disprovable (i.e., falsifiable) that puts it outside the realm of science. It's not simply an uninteresting theory--it is a useless copout (again, purely from a scientific perspective).

I don't think that Eugene and I are in any fundamental disagreement, but I just want to emphasize a little more that while creationist theories may be "true," they're simply not science, unless some experiments (whether thought or otherwise) can be performed that, given certain outcomes, would prove them false.

I repeat, the evolution debate (particularly in the public schools) shouldn't be viewed as indoctrinating children with one belief or another--it is simply about making sure that they understand the distinction between science, and other means of learning about the world.

[Update at 9:20 AM PDT]

Reader and blogger Donald Sensing points me to a related essay of his, which has an interesting, and surprising, history of the "Scopes Monkey Trial."

[Another update at 10:26 AM PDT]

It just occurs to me that "creation science" can be viewed, in fact, as a manifestion of its practioners' failure of faith.

If their faith were true, and firm, they would have no need for it to be validated by science, and they wouldn't make these attempts to hijack it and pervert it to their own ends. It strikes me as a symptom of massive insecurity in their own beliefs.

[Yet another update, at 10:37 AM PDT]

Reader "Vicki" comments:

Thank you, Mr. Simberg, for posting the links to Volokh's site and the essay. I read all 3 of Volokh's postings relating to this topic, and the essay in full. For the first time, I have hope that this debate might actually be carried out in an intelligent and thoughtful way. I get so tired of the flame wars, of being told I am insane or stupid (neither of which is true). It's very good to know that there are some people out there who see the issue as I do.

Unfortunately, the debate can tend to degenerate quickly, on both sides. Many creationists view evolutionists as godless propagandists, with the agenda of poisoning the minds of their children against their faith. Some evolutionists (particularly devout atheists), don't recognize that their own belief system is faith based, and believe that it really is an issue of right versus wrong.

I don't believe that people who believe in creationism are stupid, or mad--they just have a different belief system. The only thing that I object to (and justifiably frustrates people like Paul Orwin) is when they try to argue the issue, when they clearly don't understand evolution, and don't want to take the time to learn about it (other than, perhaps, wrongly, from creationist screeds). This isn't a matter of intelligence or sanity, but ignorance (which can fortunately be readily cured).

If one is going to critique a scientific theory, it is only polite to become educated on it (which means reading the works of its proponents--not just strawmen written by its opponents). Otherwise, it's a waste of everyone's time, by asking questions that have been answered many times, and often long ago.

[Yet one more update, at 1:25 PM PDT]

Professor Volokh has one more follow up:

...I don't think it's right to say, as Max Power does, that intelligent design is not consistent with the evidence. I am sure that some particular claims of some intelligent design theorists (likely quite a few) may be inconsistent with the evidence, just as some (though quite possibly fewer) claims of some evolutionary scientists have over time been proven inconsistent with the evidence.

But the broader claim -- which is again the heart of the debate -- that humans and other species were created at least in large part by some intelligent force is perfectly consistent with whatever evidence you might find. In fact, that's the problem: It's definitionally consistent (an intelligent and especially ominpotent creator could have created anything, no matter how consistent it might also be with an evolutionary explanation), and as a result not very helpful to biological researchers...

Just so. The problem with creation theories is not that they're inconsistent with the evidence--they are totally consistent, tautologically so, as Eugene says. The problem is that they tell us nothing useful from a scientific standpoint. In fact, there are an infinite number of theories that fit any given set of facts. I can speculate not only that all was created, but that it was created (complete with our memories of it) a minute ago, or two minutes ago. Or an hour ago. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or, as some would have it, 6000+ years ago. Each is a different theory (though they all fall into a class of theories) that fit the observable facts. They are all equally possible, and all (other than some form of naturalistic evolution) untestable.

And furthermore, they offer no hope of making predictions for the future. After all, if a creator can whimsically create a universe in whatever manner he wishes, including evidence that he didn't do it, how can we know what he'll choose tomorrow? Orrin Judd likes to make much of the fact that many evolutionary psychologists believe that free will is an illusion, but if that's the case in a naturalistic world, how much more so must it be with a whimsical creator, who can not only make us as he chooses, but unmake, and remake us on the same basis, whenever he chooses?

Of course, the argument to that is that the scriptures say that God grants us free will, which may be true, but once again, it isn't science.

Evolution, on the other hand, does allow us to make at least limited predictions, albeit much cruder ones than, say, universal gravitation. For instance, as the classic agar experiment shows, we can predict that if we repeatedly expose populations of bacteria to an antibiotic, we will eventually create strains resistant to it. Or that if you introduce a new predator into an environment, the populations there will adapt to it in some manner (though the precise manner is less predictable, exactly because it is ultimately a result of random and therefore unforeseeable changes).

In science, we have to restrict ourselves to theories that have testable consequences, and once, out of a failure of faith and imagination, we yield to the creationist temptation, we've stepped outside the bounds of what science is fundamentally all about.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AM

May 29, 2002
Records? What Records?

Gosh, to read this, you'd think that Gray Davis had something to hide in the Oracle investigation.

Nawwww, couldn't be...

Bill Simon, start measuring draperies in the governor's mansion.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:53 PM

A Severe Bleating

Just in case you don't read Lileks religiously (that is, on a daily basis), go read today's bleat. He deconstructs Dr. Seuss, and vivisects "Eric Blair."

...if you disagree with those who believe Bush masterminded 9-11, you are a fascist stooge; if you support fighting actual fascists, you are a blood-crazed warmonger. Anyway, lesson noted: avoid getting shot battling fascists. Stand aside and let them in.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:37 PM

Anti-Gun Propaganda From The WaPo

In a rear-guard effort to fend off the pending legislation to overrule idiotarian Magaw, the Washington Post managed to scrape the bottom of the barrel and come up with three pilots who are against arming pilots.

Too bad they're overwhelmingly outnumbered.

[Slapping forehead update on Thursday at 1 PM]

Geeezzz, I just reread that piece, and realized that it was by George Will. I hadn't even looked at the author the first time, or maybe I just blocked it out, because it was creating such a cognitive dissonance.

Maybe Paul Orwin is right--if Will wasn't an idiot before, he's becoming one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:20 PM

Going To The Blogs

There's a nice series of articles about blogs and bloggers over at EPN World Reporter. Be sure to follow the links at the bottom to the related articles.

[Thanks to the off-topic commenter over at Instapundit for the link tip]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:20 PM

Common Sense In California

The bill being sponsored by idiotarian LA assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg to ban the use of Indian names for sports teams died in the California legislature today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:10 PM

No Virgins For Him

An Egyptian candidate for the Darwin Award drowned trying to swim to Gaza to help out with the Intifada.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:01 PM

Why Don't They Make The Damn Thing Bigger?

John McCaslin has a column today on how the new dollar coin isn't catching on.

Why do they insist on making it so similar to a quarter? Up the size on it, and people will use it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:58 PM

"Hitler Didn't Finish The Job"

Joe Katzman over at Winds of Change has lots of new good stuff on the SFSU anti-semitism problem.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

Empty Seat?

Probably not--they'll fly a cosmonaut instead. But despite the fact that there are four candidates, there may not be a space tourist flight this fall. According to Av Week, Russia is bidding up the price. They think they undercharged Tito and Shuttleworth, and now want to get the full twenty million.

I'm having trouble understanding this. It seems to me that any price they can get above the perceived value of sending their own cosmonaut should be acceptable--they should simply accept the highest qualified bid. They don't have a lot of time to dicker over this--whoever it is has to start training Real Soon.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:27 PM

The Rest Of The Story

All of the increased airport security (and more likely, fear of irate passengers) has apparently dissuaded the Arabs (and little old swedish ladies, and six-year-old kids) from hijacking any more airplanes.

How the mighty have fallen--instead of driving an aircraft full of Jet-A into skyscrapers at six hundred miles an hour, they've been reduced to driving barges into bridges at five miles an hour.

The accident occured when Joe Dedmon, the 61-year-old pilot of a towboat pushing two barges side-by-side, apparently blacked out at the helm, said Joel Henderson, a spokesman for Magnolia Marine Transport Co., which owns the boat.

"Blacked out at the helm," eh?

Sounds mighty suspicious to me.

Do they mean "chloraformed at the helm by Islamic scuba divers"?

Hmmmmm....?

Dedmon appears to have passed out for about two minutes and was unable to steer the barges through the river channel under the bridge, Henderson said. Nobody was on hand to take the helm from him.

Well, of course not, they slipped back into the river after they diverted the barge...

[slowly extracting tongue from cheek]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:03 PM

The Blind Leading The Ignorant

John Magaw at the FAA says that pilots can't have guns--they have to "focus on flying their airplanes."

This is an ignorant statement.

Airplanes require very little focus--for the most part, they fly themselves. It's not like driving a car. The pilot is only there in case something goes wrong. One of the things that can go wrong is a hijacker attempting to break into a cockpit, and if that's happening, that's where the pilot's focus needs to be (particularly since, HELLO! MAGAW? he has a co-pilot), and he should be given every tool needed to defend that cockpit.

But of course, it's to be expected that Mr. Magaw would be ignorant of this issue--he has no experience whatsoever with aviation. He's apparently never piloted as much as a hang glider, let alone an airliner, yet he presumes to know more about the pilots' job than they do.

But of course, since one of his stints was at BATF, he probable thinks the world would be a better place if people didn't have guns (except for law enforcement types like him).

And here's the stupid statement that Mineta made when he appointed him.

"If I could have designed an individual for this job, it would have been John Magaw."

Gee, Norm, don't you think it might have been useful for him to know a little something about, well, transportation?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:36 AM

Buckle Up

Rich Lowry, over at The Corner, says that a pilot performing violent maneuvers to thwart hijackers would result in massive liability suits because it "could conceivably cause some sort of actionable injury to everyone on the plane."

Well, no. Not that I think that this is a great anti-hijacking strategy, but only the ones who are not in their seats, or who ignore the standard pre-flight instructions to wear your belt while seated, would be injured. It's rare for a belted passenger to be injured due to turbulence or sudden maneuvers in an aircraft.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:16 AM

In The Eyes Of The Law

Over in his letters section, Andrew Sullivan publishes a letter from one of his readers that makes a point that I like to harp on as well--the limited applicability of the concept of "innocent until proven guilty."

This is a legal concept, and not one that's meant to apply to discourse. It applies to the court of law, not the court of public opinion.

And not to beat up any more on the ex-football player...(ah, heck, why not? He deserves it)...just because OJ was found innocent by a jury of questionable mental acuity doesn't mean that we are required to believe him innocent. It only relieves him of a visit to prison--it doesn't entitle him to being absolved in the mind of the public, who does understand DNA, and the concept that some possibly tainted evidence doesn't entitle one to throw out the whole evidentiary baby with the dirty bathwater.

As the letter writer points out, this weird notion that everyone is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law was used to great effect by Clinton apologists to illegitimately shut down his critics. Despite all of the evidence shredding, the amnesia under oath, the lying to diaries, the friends and associates indicted and convicted, we were not supposed to criticize the Big He, because he was "presumed innocent."

To shut down speculation on Mr. Clinton's, or more recently, Mr. Condit's possible guilt because they are "presumed innocent" is to remove one of the tools by which wrongdoing is punished when the courts do not, can not or even, in some cases, should not act--public opprobrium. And to use such a tactic as a tool to quiet political opponents is, if not the last one, a refuge for a scoundrel.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:50 AM

What He Said

That rascal Reynolds has already scooped me, and written my Fox column for tomorrow (and more) at TechCentralStation.

Now I have to come up with something else. Or at least a different angle.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:31 AM

May 28, 2002
And Now, Idiots

Someday, someone is going to have to sit down and write a book about the screwups and coverups at the FBI.

And when it's all put together in one place, everyone will wonder why we don't, in P. J. O'Rourke's memorable phrase about farm policy, "just take the agency out behind the barn and kill it."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:45 PM

The Jury Is In

In a post last week, amidst a lot of discussion of evolution, Orrin Judd made the mistaken claim that evolution is not a falsifiable theory (in the Popperian sense), and that (even more bizarrely and egregiously) defenders of it thought that this strengthened it.

On a related note, he also added to his list of questions about evolution a twelfth one: What would it take to persuade me that evolution was not the best theory to explain life? What evidence, to me, would disprove it? I told him that it was a good question, and that I'd ponder it.

Well, I did ponder it, and here is my response.

First of all, the theory is certainly falsifiable (again, in the theoretical Popperian formulation). If I were coming to the problem fresh, with no data, and someone proposed the theory of evolution to me, I would ask things like:

Does all life seem to be related at some level?

Is there a mechanism by which small changes can occur in reproduction?

Does this mechanism allow beneficial changes?

Can these changes in turn be passed on to the offspring?

Is there sufficient time for such changes to result in the variety of phenotypes that we see today?

There are other questions that could be asked as well, but a "No" answer to any of the above would constitute a falsification of the theory. Thus the theory is indeed falsifiable, as any useful scientific theory must be.

The problem is not that the theory isn't falsifiable, but that people opposed to evolution imagine that the answer to some or all of the above questions is "No," and that the theory is indeed false.

But to answer Orrin's question, at this point, knowing the overwhelming nature of the existing evidentiary record, no, I can't imagine any new evidence that would change my mind at this point. Any anomalies are viewed as that, and an explanation for them is to be looked for within the prevailing theory.

And lest you think me close minded, consider an analogy. An ex-football player's wife is brutally murdered, with a friend. All of the evidence points to his guilt, including the DNA evidence. There is little/no evidence that points to anyone else's guilt. Had I been on the jury that decided that case, it would have at least hung. I might have even persuaded a different verdict, but that's unlikely, because I'm sure that the jury had members who were a) predisposed to acquit regardless of the evidence and/or b) incapable of critical thinking and logic, as evidenced by post-trial interviews with them.

But for me to believe that ex-football player innocent, I would have to accept the following (which was in fact the defense strategy):

"I know that some of the evidence looks bad for my client, but he was framed. And I can show that some of the evidence is faulty, therefore you should throw all of it out as suspect. I don't have an alternate theory as to who did the murders, but that's not my job--I'm just showing that there's insufficient evidence to prove that my client did it. Someone else did it--no one knows who--it doesn't matter. And that someone else, or some other someone else, also planted evidence to make it look like my client did it. It might be the most logical conclusion to believe that my client did it, but that would be wrong--the real conclusion is that it is a plot to confuse, and it just looks like he did it. Therefore you shouldn't believe the evidence."

Is this a compelling argument? It was to some of the jury members. And it apparently is to people who don't want to believe that life could evolve as a random, undirected process.

The only way that I could believe that OJ Simpson is innocent at this point would be for someone else to come forward, admit to the crime, and explain how he planted all of the abundant evidence that indicated Orenthal's guilt.

The equivalent for evolution, I guess, would be for God (or whoever) to reveal himself to me in some clear, unambiguous, and convincing fashion, and to tell me that he planted the evidence. At which point, of course, science goes right out the window.

But absent that, the evidence compels me to believe that OJ Simpson murdered his wife (as it did a later jury in the civil suit), and the evidence compels me to believe that evolution is as valid a theory as is universal gravitation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:21 PM

Lost In Space?

Sci Am has a short article on NASA's budgetary woes. There's nothing new here, though to people who've been reading my blog regularly. It's basically a recitation of the facts. Mostly, it just seems like a cheap excuse to use the title...

[Thanks to Mike O'Ronain for the link tip]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:54 PM

War Of Words?

The Mirror says that there's a grafitti war going on between US and British troops in Afghanistan.

I hope it's not as bad as the article makes it sound.

I found one sample a little odd, though.

"We don't have a fake monarchy, we don't have an empire, we don't obsess over stupid Royals. PS, Prince Charles is a f****** w*****, and all his sons are drug-addicted t**ts."

My best guess is that the first word is the "f" word with an "ing" at the end. I can't think of a word for the second one, except "wanker," which isn't an insult that a Yank would normally use (but a Brit would). Nor, if my guess is right for the third word, and the missing letters are "w" and "a," is that one. I wonder if someone is framing us? Or if they're using Britishisms to be more insulting?

Either way, it's dismaying and disappointing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:46 PM

Martian Ocean Announcement

Here's the official NASA press release. There's a lot more detail in it as to exactly how the ice was detected (instrumentation,etc.).

No announcement of a manned mission to Mars, though, and I don't expect one any time soon.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:32 PM

Can I Do Your Nails?

The fighting in Afghanistan is becoming unspeakably unbearable for at least some of the British troops.

It's another Monty Python moment.

"They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 AM

New Hope For Immortality

It's been argued that, regardless of biomedical advances, true immortality is impossible, simply due to thermodynamics, and the fact that the universe itself is mortal.

Some physicists have come up with a theory that this may not necessarily be so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:14 AM

May 27, 2002
False Alarm

It appears, according to NASA Watch, that my skepticism yesterday was justified.

Keith Cowing doesn't believe that NASA is going to announce a manned mission to Mars this week. He thinks that the notion that there will be is a misinterpretation of the press conference announcing the water discovery, that was mindlessly echoed among general-interest reporters who are not very, to put it gently, savvy on matters of either space science or space policy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:47 AM

Why Is This Day Different Than All Other Days?

Rabbinical scholars have been interpreting the Talmud for centuries, to provide a framework for applying its strictures to everyday situations, and guidance to rabbis who must answer questions from their congregation.

Purely theoretical questions aren't given as much priority, but they are often pondered as well, for intellectual stimulation, if for no other reason. But on the next Shuttle flight, the theoretical becomes real. An Israeli astronaut will be aboard, and he wishes to be observant. There have been Jewish astronauts before (Americans), like Judy Resnik, who was killed in the Challenger disaster, but this is the first time that an astronaut is going to attempt to "keep kosher."

So the question arises: when you're in orbit, and the sun rises and sets every hour and a half, and the stars are in view all the time--when does Sabbath begin and end?

He asked his rabbi, and the matter is under discussion.

[Thanks to Kevin McGehee for the tip.]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:40 AM

May 26, 2002
No All-Clear For Gary Yet

Now the DC police are saying that the Levy slaying was not a random attack. It was someone who knew her, or at least, someone who was stalking her.

Looks to me like Mr. Condit (or to be more precise, one of his henchmen) is still a viable candidate for murder, if not office.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:36 PM

Rotten Luck

This is called having a really bad day. A man was killed when he lost his RC plane in the sun and it hit him in the chest.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:33 PM

We've Got The Ice--Let's Have A Party!

That's apparently the NASA reaction to the news that a vast undergound ocean of ice has been discovered on Mars. There had been rumors of this last week, for anyone who's been reading Nasa Watch. I hadn't pointed it out because a) I'm not that interested in Mars and b) I didn't think that most people would find it as significant as they apparently do. I'll explain why in a minute.

Apparently, NASA is going to use this as an excuse to commit to a manned mission to the Red Planet. It will be interesting to see how much this has been coordinated with the Administration and the Hill, and what their response will be. The agency still has little credibility when it comes to managing and estimating either future, or current, costs on major programs like this. I still think that before they're given carte blanche to go to Mars, they're going to have to somehow demonstrate that they won't screw it up.

If they want to make it an international effort (as the State Department will certainly want to do), then they'll have to wrestle with their past history of such activities. There's no evidence that making ISS an international effort saved us any money, and quite a bit that it cost us, and slowed down the schedule.

And the Europeans are going to have to think long and hard before signing up to such a joint endeavor, because the US track record in terms of keeping up our end of such agreements is atrocious, including the current brouhaha about how many crew ISS is going to support. The Europeans are rightly complaining that we've gone back on our pledge to have at least seven crew available at the station.

Now, as to why I didn't (and still don't necessarily) think it's that big a deal.

One of the reasons that are being stated for its significance is that it will allow much less water to be taken along on the trip, making the flight cheaper. The other is that it dramatically improves the prospects for finding life there.

I'm not a planetary scientist, and I don't even play one on the Internet, so I'm not going to state an opinion on the latter point, other than that water is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for Life As We Know It, and while the discovery may improve the prospects for finding it, it doesn't necessarily make the probability large. And if oceans of water ice are good, oceans of water liquid should be better, but I don't see any rush by NASA to send out a manned mission to Europa (one of Jupiter's moons), which has just such an ocean under the ice layer on top.

As to it making the Mars mission easier--yes, it does, but not all that much. A manned Mars mission has many technical hurdles, and the need to carry water is the least of them. In fact, carrying water en route actually helps one of the other problems--what to do in the event of a solar storm. Radiation is a problem in general on such a long-duration deep-space mission, but if the crew were to get caught in a period of intense solar activity, it would kill them before they even reached the planet. The only real solution to the problem is extensive shielding. It turns out that water, in sufficient quantities, does a pretty good job of that, if it is carried in tanks, inside of which the crew can go as a "storm cellar."

The main benefit of finding water is that it eliminates the need to have to carry the water for the return trip on the outbound trip, which can in turn save tremendously on propellant costs.

It's also possible that the vehicles could use it as a propellant, by setting up a plant to electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen. But Zubrin's concept already exploits a different, and perhaps better, concept--using methane and oxygen generated from the Martian atmosphere. These propellants have advantages for long missions, because you don't have as much of a problem with boiloff as you do with the low-temperature liquid hydrogen, for long missions. Use of cryogenic fuel would have penalties of additional refrigeration and insulation, to keep your fuel from boiling away before you reach the destination planet.

To me, as a systems engineer, what this means is that all of the trade studies on how to do manned Mars missions have to be revisited, because one of the primary assumptions on which they're based--a lack of easily-obtainable water--has just evaporated. So everything we think we know about going to Mars may be wrong.

Finally, I'm concerned that this will become another Apollo, and that in our rush to get to Mars, we will once again neglect the real issue, which is the cost of access to low earth orbit. I hope that there will be some serious discussion to coming up with innovative ways of tackling this fundamental problem, before we design mission concepts that require us to redevelop the Saturn V.

[Thanks to Mike O'Ronain for the heads up]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 AM

May 25, 2002
My Teen Sex Two Bits

All right, all right. I'll weigh in on the teen s3x issue, since it seems to be hot topic du jour (or at least a jour or two ago).

My only comment is that the fact that it's "natural" doesn't make it good. Rape is natural, too. As is homos3xual s3x, if you're homos3xual. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with disapproving of things, even if they're natural. The fact that it's natural has no utility in determining the "should." It does mean that it will make it more difficult to repress, if that's a societal goal.

But I do agree that the debate has to be have higher resolution--to simply talk about "teen s3x," without addressing the many ages and circumstances of teens, is to wield a policy bludgeon, when what is needed is a scalpel.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:43 PM

Faltering Frogs In Space

Arianespace, the company that markets and operates the European Ariane series of expendable rockets, is going bankrupt.

The pride of the European (but primarily French) aerospace industry is hemmorhaging money so badly that it will require supplemental government funds to keep it from going under. That's not necessarily a problem, except that they can no longer maintain the pleasant fiction that it's a viable business.

Ariane had its origins in a stupid policy decision by the US in the late seventies, when we refused to launch a European satellite. From that point on, the Europeans decided that they would develop an independent launch capability, regardless of the cost. In the early 1980s, when Shuttle was still launching commercial satellites, Ariane was stealing much of the business that NASA had been counting on for Shuttle, not just with lower costs, but with better marketing, and gimmics like offering free financing for the launch (NASA insisted on payment up front, often months or years before the payload flew). Their pricing didn't have to cover amortization of the development costs--like the Concorde, these were picked up by the government, providing an illusion that it was a profitable business.

When the Challenger was destroyed, and all commercial payloads were removed from the Shuttle, as a result of all of this subsidization, Ariane became the leader in delivery of commercial geostationary satellites.

But now they have a problem. This market is limited by both current economic conditions, and issues of orbital slots and spectrum allocation, and there's a glut of supply for it, particularly since the entry of the privatized Russian program, and the Chinese Long March. It's also suffered from some embarrassing failures of its new version of the rocket, Ariane V.

Yet this is the market that NASA is prodding industry to pursue with their Space Launch Initiative. It makes no business sense, but NASA hopes that if a new space transport can handle this market, it will also have enough performance to replace Shuttle, without NASA having to make serious changes in the way they do business.

Circumstances like this simply make it more and more clear that the SLI program must be reexamined and dramatically overhauled.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:01 PM

High-Priced Bloviation

Mr. Clinton bilked the Chinese out of a quarter million dollars for a rambling, incoherent speech, according to the Guardian.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

Australian "Acadmic" Petition Update

It's over 1600 now, and much of it is classic. Someone should archive it before they pull it down out of pique.

Susan Sarandon: Oh, of course, I'm all for this petition. I am for all oppressed people everywhere. My Mexican cleaning lady is my best friend in the whole world. Well, she was until I caught her stealing the silver. I'm sure the new one will work out just fine. Mercedes, I identify with your struggle against globalization. Now please go scrub the toliet.

Neville Chamberlain: Nothing like a little appeasment to clear up the situation I always say. Hold up a piece of paper blather on about it guarenteeing "peace in our time" and voila! crazed dictators and facisists everywhere lay down their weapons and begin dancing around the maypole. Keep up the good work Aussie profs! Someday as nukes start dropping on all of Western civilization you will realize how right you are. For me it was the glorious day of 9/1/1939.....

John Docker: I am quite vexed. I thought I would become the next Noam Chomsky and fly around the world pontificating about subjects I know nothing about. I thought Susan Sarandon would invite me to her house to meet great intellectuals like Michael Moore and Ralph Nader and the lady who sings "Puff the Magic Dragon." But the petition has been ruined. I have to go back to teaching 18 year old Aussie nitwits who fall asleep during my lectures. Ghassan is under his desk, weeping bitterly.

[Update, a few minutes later]

OK, I've saved everything through sixteen hundred or so to a local drive, so at least we'll have that many if they decide to throw in the towel and pull it down.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 AM

Anniversary

Orrin Judd, (who has lots of good classic Memorial-Day poetry over at his site), emails to remind me (correctly) that today is the forty-first anniversary of Kennedy's request to Congress to initiate the Apollo program and to land men on the Moon within the decade.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AM

Bureaucratic Inertia And Holdovers

Insight magazine has an article that may provide some insight into the policy muddle at the Pentagon.

A source close to the Pentagon's policy office laments, "You have no idea how hard it is to work on the war, find extra hours to develop a forward-looking policy that tracks with the president's and SECDEF's [secretary of defense's] priorities and then try to advance it on the Hill or in the [decision-making] process, and find yourself outmanned by an opposition funded not by the leftist foundations or the congressional-opposition staff budget, but by your own policy shop's budget."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:40 AM

May 24, 2002
More Vile Swill From Fisk

I don't have time to do his latest ravings justice, but here's the link for anyone else who wants to have at him.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:37 PM

Post-Rave Review

Layne found a great article in the Los Angeles New Times about the Yuri's Night party. I had a Fox column on this subject a week or so before it occured. It gives a good insight into the space-enthusiast/fanatic subculture.

I disagree with one of the space enthusiasts quoted, though.

He's more than a little disappointed in what has happened to space exploration in the years since the heady days of Apollo. NASA, he says, fumbled the opportunity to make it an integral part of American life, and economic downturns, fuel crises and wars that rocked the home front took the attention away, maybe permanently. "The adventure has passed, in many people's minds," Walker says. "But many of us in this aerospace industry recognized that this phase would come, that the average citizen wants to see the adventure, the exploration, but the public funding isn't there."

He's wrong. The funding is there, and has been since the end of Apollo. NASA has consistently gotten many billions of taxpayer dollars every year. What's lacking is not funding, but the will to spend it in a way that would truly open up space. And as long as we continue to look to the government to sate our dreams, we will continue to be disappointed.

And of course, the reporter has to ask the (admitted) obligatory question:

No discussion of space exploration -- an inherently risky and expensive proposition -- is complete without answering the "why" question. And it can be a painful, pointed question. During Shuttleworth's flight, an interviewer asked how he justified spending $20 million on a space junket when that money could have gone to feeding starving people outside his own back door. His answer -- to demonstrate to other Africans that space was within their grasp -- must have been cold comfort to many on that famine-ravaged continent who have suffered for so long. Let's be brutally honest here: None of the Yuri's Night crew have ever gone to bed starving.

Implicit in this commentary, of course, is the false notion that a) if Mr. Shuttleworth had spent his money in some other way, that those Africans would have been better off, and b) that Africa suffers from a lack of money that's currently going to space activities, when in fact Africa suffers from malgovernance on a tragic and unimaginable scale.

It comes back to one of my earlier columns, in which I described how unknowledgable most people are of how much money is spent on space, relative to those things that some would have us fund instead. NASA's annual budget would fund the Department of Health and Human services for just a few days. So, while I wouldn't advocate this, for reasons stated above, you could double the NASA budget, taking the money from HSS to do it, and the HSS would barely even notice it. Space is not taking money from the mouths of starving kids.

But the real problem is not the amount of money being spent, but how it's being spent. And with more private players getting involved, that problem is going to be solved soon, regardless of how much or little NASA gets.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:26 PM

Remember

I wonder if Monday will be different than past Memorial Days.

For many people, so many of our national holidays seem to have become bereft of meaning other than an excuse for a three-day weekend and a beer-sodden barbecue. Post September 11, I noticed that November 11 took on a new poignancy. Will Monday do so as well?

A friend of mine once suggested that we take our holidays more seriously, by using the Jewish Sedar as a model. We should actually take time out from the consumption of barley beverages, and roasting of dead animals with sugary sauces, to tell the story of why we have the day off. For instance, for the Fourth of July, he recommended an oral reading of the Declaration of Independence.

These musings are just prelude to a link. Just in time for Memorial Day, Victor Davis Hanson writes an eloquent and personal tale of another time and place, when men were giants.

Think about reading it aloud with your family on Monday (good luck getting through it without choking or tearing up). And let us hope that the present circumstances will not require similar sacrifices on so massive a scale, and that if we do, the present generation will bear them as did our parents', and grandparents'.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

And So It Begins

Glenn points out an article at MSNBC about a group that wants to fence off the Moon from development. They apparently want to use Antarctica as a model. This is in tune with many of the people who think that mankind is too immature to colonize space.

Mr. Smith says Mr. Steiner?s proposal fails to take into consideration how proposed lunar projects such as a solar-power plant designed to help fuel earthly activities could actually help the environment back on the home planet.

Mr. Steiner counters that the same kind of solar plant could be designed to operate in the moon?s orbit, without marring the lunar surface.

Which shows that he doesn't get it. A major part of the solar power proposal is to utilize lunar resources for the construction. Putting the satellites in orbit might be a good idea for other reasons, but it doesn't change the need to develop the Moon.

?You know,? he says, ?the moon is a stunningly beautiful place, and it shouldn?t be defiled.?

It's the ANWR battle writ large--in which they want to close off development of an entire world, and there aren't even any lunar caribou.

It kind of makes me wish that I were going to the Space Development Conference this weekend, just to see the fireworks when this is proposed to the assembled.

[Update at 5PM PDT]

The Times is covering this story as well.

And I just want to clarify, I don't want to strip-mine the whole orb.

There are obviously some sites that need to be preserved--the Apollo XI and other Apollo landing sites, impact sites of some of the first Rangers, the Monolith from 2001, the B-17s and V-2 rockets that got lost and ended up there in WW II...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:29 PM

Forget Cloning

The Economist says we should be worried about neurotechnology.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:07 PM

Terrorists? Or Gas Leak?

Fox News is reporting an explosion and fire in an apartment complex in Encino, a part of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

Nothing on the web site yet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:57 AM

Dissolving The People

Anglospherian James Bennett politely, and gently fisks Chris Patten.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:47 AM

Bush Surrendering?

It's not just Scott Bell--Andrew Sullivan is worried as well.

He told the German press yesterday that there is no plan to invade on his desk. He said it almost proudly. His military leaders, in a sign of their determination to risk nothing and achieve nothing, are now leaking to the Washington Post that they have all but scotched a serious military option in Iraq.

Well, Andrew, I've already pointed out the Clintonian formulation of Bush's statement. You and I might like him to be more direct, but he didn't say no plans exist. And consider the possibility that such leaks as are being described are ummmm...disinformation. After all, is it really to our advantage to telegraph our intentions to Saddam? Only if we still hope (futilely, in my opinion) to deter him.

I'm willing to wait for a while longer. And of course, the alternative (that Andrew is justified in his pessimism, and we really aren't going into Iraq) is too depressing to contemplate...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:03 AM

Boycott Petitions!

The Oppressor From Oz points out this petition of Aussie academics favoring a boycott of Israel.

It's up to over twelve hundred signatures as I type this, and most of them are, as Tim says, err...creative.

It's hilarious. I just hope it doesn't get taken down any time soon.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:54 AM

Jonah 'Fesses Up

He finally admits, in a column, no less, that The Corner is a blog.

Can Will Warren call 'em, or what?

See that thing with lots of pages?
Index, bib, and T of C?
Writing captured for the ages?
Not a book, says Jonah G.

Look at Jonah?s bold new feature:
Commentary, jokes, and links!
What is that exotic creature?
?Not a blog,? our Jonah winks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:35 AM

New Blogger On The Block

Well, not really--I've just been lazy. For quite a while, I've been meaning to point out Scott Bell, who is a...wait for it...Christian space blogger. Cool.

He's disappointed, to put it mildly, in the President.

But I think he may be throwing in the towel a little early. Bush didn't actually say that he had no plans to invade Iraq--he just said he had no plans on his desk. A subtle distinction, and perhaps a little too Clintonian for some tastes, but it does leave some room for interpretation...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:30 AM

May 23, 2002
The Value Of Education

Professor Reynolds reminisces about the most productive time he spent in school, when he was allowed to just sit and read the encyclopedia. Yup.

I was once suspended from high school for three days.

My crime? Cutting a boring class, and instead going to the public library and reading.

I could never quite understand the rationale of punishing someone for skipping school by...suspending them from school, but that's the mentality of bureaucrats.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:43 AM

Legacy Of Zheng He (Take Two)

My new Fox column is up.

It won't be new to regular readers, though--it's about my thoughts on the Chinese space program.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:27 AM

O2B In 0G

Mr. Weidner gets it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:18 AM

May 22, 2002
I Know, I Asked For It...

I know I'm opening up not just a can, but a fifty-gallon barrel of worms, but Orrin Judd asked a number of questions about evolution on his web site. Here are my responses.

Here are some questions that make me at least question the faith of the Darwinists:

(1) If evolution is a continuous process requiring millions, billions, zillions, of tiny mutations as it progresses, why haven't we observed any of these mutations in any mammals in the thousands of years of recorded human history?

We have. In fact, we've caused them. Look at the wide variety of dog breeds, all of whom came from a common wolf stock. Chihuahuas and Great Danes have common ancestors. We've bred them for their characteristics. Most modern cattle were bred from their ancestors in the Middle East. If we were to scrupulously maintain some of them as separate, and never allow interbreeding, they'd eventually drift so far genetically that they would no longer be able to interbreed, and thus would by definition become different species. This hasn't happened because we continue to play games and interbreed them, seeking yet new breeds.

[Thursday morning update]

I mistyped. We don't (yet) cause mutations--we just select ones we like. Animal domestication is not natural selection--it's artificial selection. But the principle is the same--the organism becomes more adapted to its environment, in this case the environment of people who like certain traits in dogs.

(2) Why can't we find the fossil record that should reveal these gradual adaptations?

We can, but to the degree that there are gaps in the fossil record, it's explained mostly by the fact that very few fossils survive. There is this misunderstanding about "transition species." All species are transition species. All animals are transition animals. They are parts of a chain--they have ancestors different from them, and they'll have descendants different from them (humans may be an exception to this, since we have control over our own evolution).

(3) Once an eye becomes an eye, its helpfulness is obvious, but what is the graduated process by which the eye comes into being? Are there really distinct advantages each incremental step of the way?

Yes. A skin cell that is light sensitive is more valuable than one that's not, and is a protoeye. If its owner passes on the trait, and some of the offspring are even more light sensitive than others, they will be more successful. At some point, there may be a mutation that forms a primitive lense, in the form of some clear cells over the light-sensitive ones. It may not focus well, but it might protect the underlying cells, and thus be useful. It will then eventually evolve into a lense.

"In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is King"

(4) And how many steps would be required? If we've been in a several thousand year pause in evolution and presumably such pauses occur with some regularity, plus all the tiny steps required, plus the die-offs from catastrophic events, has there really been time enough for man to rise from a single cell?

I don't know why you claim we're in a "pause" in evolution (as far as I know, we're not--the laws of nature have not been suspended) unless you're referring to humans specifically, but ten thousand years is the blink of an eye, particularly for a species with a generation time of a couple decades. We've had hundreds of millions of years to evolve. It seems like plenty of time to me.

If humans haven't evolved much physically, it's because we've eased the pressure to do so with technology. But there are still a wide variety of human breeds (like dog breeds). Compare an Inuit to a Bushman--they are both well adapted to their environments.

(5) If we developed those eyes because they gave us certain adaptive advantages, why didn't we develop wings too or claws or whatever?

Because there are costs of doing that. We were successful the way we were, wingless and clawless. It's harder to throw a spear, or fire a gun with a clawed hand...

(6) If we arose from the same chain as primates, why is that the only chain that produced human-style consciousness? Why aren't there really smart dogs and alligators, etc. Why did those species have ceilings while we don't seem to?

We don't know for sure that it is. Cetaceans may have "human-style consciousness." But we don't know that those species have "ceilings." Just because they haven't developed sapience doesn't mean that they won't in the future. We just happened (as far as we know) to be the first. Someone had to be. Intelligence isn't necessarily an inevitable by-product of evolution. It's possibly something that we just stumbled upon. Dennett has written some very interesting books on this subject.

(7) Now that we comprehend evolution can we any longer be subject to its forces or are we by our very understanding of it become an "unnaturally selecting" species, thereby removing ourselves from the process?

As described above, we have done exactly that. And in the future we will take it one step further with nanotechnology and genetic engineering (regardless of how many laws the U.S Congress passes against it).

(8) Why isn't there intelligent life anywhere else? If there is, what's the answer to Fermi's question : where are they? And, if we're alone, mightn't we be the point of the universe, the reason it exists?

We don't know that there isn't. But it's possible that the conditions for life are exceedingly rare. Whole books have been written on this subject, including the anthropic principle. And in fact, to the degree that I have a religion, I do believe that we (that is, life) are the point of the universe.

(9) If propagation of the species is the be all and end all, why do we slaughter each other in war, genocide, etc.? Why would we have developed the power (nuclear weapons, global warming, whatever) to end all life on Earth? How can this mechanism allow us to be such a threat to ourselves?

Because evolution is blind and dumb. It has no predictive capability. There's no way for our genes to know that the features that they've developed for the purpose of propagating individuals thousands of years ago might have an emergent property of killing vast numbers of other individuals in the future.

But you're overstating the problem. We don't even have the capability to end the existence of humanity, let alone life on earth. Earth will abide, no matter how stupid we are, though it may not be a pleasant place for our descendants.

(10) What came before the Big Bang?

Who knows? Who made God?

(11) Ozzy Osbourne?

Some questions are truly beyond understanding.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:11 PM

Now It's Making More Sense

According to this op-ed on the decision to keep the pilots unarmed, the FAA guy who made the call used to be at BATF under Clinton. You know, the agency who roasted kids in Waco because they didn't want Koresh to have weapons?

With so much inertia in the bureaucracy, it almost makes you wonder what the point is of having elections. I guess it might help if the White House acted like they give a damn.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:48 AM

Dems Getting Smarter

They've finally realized that gun control is a loser as a political issue.

The hard-core gun grabbers are still whining about it though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:14 AM

Gary Condit, Your Lawyer On Line Two...

The DC police seem to have habeused a corpus in Rock Creek Park. If true, and it wasn't a murder investigation before, it sure will be now. And ex-Congressman Condit has to be suspect numero uno.

[Update 10:26 AM PDT]

Police seem to be confirming to Fox News that it's Chandra Levy's remains.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:37 AM

Uncommon Sense

I've previously expressed a hope that Tenet would be replaced--and Woolsey given his old job back. Here's why.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

Creating Barsoom

For both of the people who come here before visiting Professor Reynolds' site, he has a column on the ethics and morality of terraforming Mars (and by extension, other places) in today's TechCentralStation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:36 AM

May 21, 2002
A Moral Wasteland

Dennis Prager pulls no punches in his assessment of academia.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:58 PM

Never Mind...

To paraphrase Emily Litella, the Chinese government says that they have no near-term plans to go to the Moon. Suffice it to say, I'm not surprised.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:37 PM

Moving On Up (Part Three)

I'm really getting to be quite the international celebrity. I used to just get spam from low-level Nigerian civil servants. Now I'm getting email from the better half of Mr. Mobutu Sese-Seko Himself. Not only that, but I'm her "friend"!

We know that the whole thing is VERY IMPORTANT, because it's in ALL CAPS.

FROM:MRS. M SESE-SEKO

DEAR FRIEND,

I AM MRS. SESE-SEKO WIDOW OF LATE PRESIDENT MOBUTU SESE-SEKO OF ZAIRE, NOW KNOWN AS DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC). I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER, THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.

Once again, I am deeply touched by her confidence in someone that she's never met, particularly considering her PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.

I ESCAPED ALONG WITH MY HUSBAND AND TWO OF OUR SONS PAUL AND BASHER OUT OF DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC) TO ABIDJAN, COTE D'IVOIRE WHERE MY FAMILY AND I SETTLED, WHILE WE LATER MOVED TO SETTLED IN MORROCO WHERE MY HUSBAND LATER DIED OF CANCER DISEASE. HOWEVER DUE TO THIS SITUATION WE DECIDED TO CHANGED MOST OF MY HUSBAND'S BILLIONS OF DOLLARS DEPOSITED IN SWISS BANK AND OTHER COUNTRIES INTO OTHER FORMS OF MONEY CODED FOR SAFE PURPOSE BECAUSE THE NEW HEAD OF STATE OF (DR) MR LAURENT KABILA HAS MADE ARRANGEMENT WITH THE SWISS GOVERNMENT AND OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES TO FREEZE ALL MY LATE HUSBAND'S TREASURES DEPOSITED IN SOME EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

Yeah. Life as an ex-tyrant is rough. Especially when he has fatal cancer, and greedy relatives.

HENCE MY CHILDREN AND I DECIDED LAYING LOW IN AFRICA TO STUDY THE SITUATION TILL WHEN THINGS GETS BETTER, LIKE NOW THAT PRESIDENT KABILA IS DEAD AND THE SON TAKING OVER (JOSEPH KABILA). ONE OF MY LATE HUSBAND'S CHATEAUX IN SOUTHERN FRANCE WAS CONFISCATED BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT, AND AS SUCH I HAD TO CHANGE MY IDENTITY SO THAT MY INVESTMENT WILL NOT BE TRACED AND CONFISCATED. I HAVE DEPOSITED THE SUM OF EIHGTEEN MLLION UNITED STATE DOLLARS(US$18,000,000,00.) WITH A SECURITY COMPANY, AMSTERDAM FOR SAFEKEEPING. THE FUNDS ARE SECURITY CODED TO PREVENT THEM FROM KNOWING THE CONTENT. WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO IS TO INDICATE YOUR INTEREST THAT YOU WILL ASSIST US BY RECEIVING THE MONEY ON OUR BEHALF. ACKNOWLEDGE THIS MESSAGE, SO THAT I CAN INTRODUCE YOU TO MY SON (PAUL) WHO HAS THE OUT MODALITIES FOR THE CLAIM OF THE SAID FUNDS. I WANT YOU TO ASSIST IN INVESTING THIS MONEY, BUT I WILL NOT WANT MY IDENTITY REVEALED.

Hmmmmm.... "OUT MODALITIES."

I suspect that means, "the means of getting funds out of your bank account such that it would either be totally ineffective, or you would be too embarrassed, to report our theft to the authorities.

I WILL ALSO WANT TO BUY PROPERTIES AND STOCK IN MULTI-NATIONAL COMPANIES AND TO ENGAGE IN OTHER SAFE AND NON-SPECULATIVE INVESTMENTS. MAY I AT THIS POINT EMPHASISE THE HIGH LEVEL OF CONFIDENTIALITY, WHICH THIS BUSINESS DEMANDS, AND HOPE YOU WILL NOT BETRAY THE TRUST AND CONFIDENCE, WHICH I REPOSE IN YOU. IN CONCLUSION, IF YOU WANT TO ASSIST US , MY SON SHALL PUT YOU IN THE PICTURE OF THE BUSINESS, TELL YOU WHERE THE FUNDS ARE CURRENTLY BEING MAINTAINED AND ALSO DISCUSS OTHER MODALITIES INCLUDING REMUNERATION FOR YOUR SERVICES.

Yes, as always, your secret is safe with me. And the readers of my weblog.

FOR THIS REASON KINDLY FURNISH US YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION, THAT IS YOUR PERSONAL TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBER FOR CONFIDENTIAL PURPOSE AND ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS MAIL USING THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS.

What?! You don't want my bank account number?

BEST REGARDS,

MRS M. SESE SEKO

And my best regards to you...

[he wrote as the spam was posted to the FBI, who will ignore it, because they are too busy figuring out how to cover up their incompetence in the terrorist attacks of the last year, and the eight years of coverups in the Clinton Administration...)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:02 PM

It's Not Just The Slavery, Stupid

"Isn'tapundit" (not to be confused with the established brand, and who really needs to get more readable colors on his site) aka Tom "Dipnut" Perry, has posted a much more detailed analysis of Fukuyama's latest, in which his slam at libertarians as Simon Legrees is the least of the problems.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:44 PM

Why Fortuyn Struck A Chord

There's an interesting thread over at Free Republic, ostensibly posted by a Freeper in the Netherlands, about a group grope in a public swimming pool. The original article is in Dutch, which, while my sister lives near Hilversum, is not a language that I can translate confidently. But it's there for those who want to see the original. The commentary itself is interesting.

An excerpt from the English translation provided by the poster:

The direction of 'De Tongelreep' took stringent precautions five years ago after especially boys from immigrant descent regularly sexually assaulted girls. Most perpetrators have to undergo therapy and learn how to adapt to Dutch moral standards.

Also all other swimming pools in the Netherlands seem to have these kind of problems. "Some guests have to learn to keep their fingers to themselves, not to touch the girls. We do not tolerate this behavior", says Heesterbeek.

"...learn how to adapt to Dutch moral standards..." How quaint. I guess that means, among other things, to respect women, which is something that they've had a rough time getting their Islamic immigrants to accept. "Immigrant" in this case, I think we can safely assume, is code for "Muslim immigrant."

One person is claiming that the saying over there now is "the bullet came from the left."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:32 PM

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Drudge says that David Brock has been committed to a mental ward.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:17 PM

More Blustering From Cyclops Omar

Our favorite homeless mullah says that they're just waiting for a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles, and then they'll chase the infidels out. There was no discussion as to whether or not he was still living in his car. Maybe it's been repossessed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:12 PM

Tenet Out, Woolsey In?

If this happens, I'll know that the Administration is serious about fixing our intelligence problems.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:20 PM

Messiah Complex

Robert Musil is appropriately brutal on Senator Jim "Benedict Arnold" Jeffords' recent bout of megalomania.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:45 PM

Set Bemusement Level To "Stun"

A guy in California has actually patented a phaser that can stun from a distance. The UK defence forces are interested.

[Update at 2:57 PM PDT]

I should add, that I don't think it will work. The ability to transmit a charge through such a "tunnel" has been demonstrated, but I think that it's unlikely that it would reliably "stun" an individual. It would need a lot of power, which means a heavy battery pack, and even then, the effects on human physiology would be unpredictable. It might render him unconscious, it might kill him, it might make him mad. Life's not like the movies...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:23 PM

Libertarian Slaveholders

Do debating tactics get any more confused, sleazy and odious than this?

A slave owner in the antebellum South thought that blacks were not human beings, and he resented like hell an abolitionist telling him that he had to treat a black like a human being, and it was his principled view that that wasn't the case. And you had to fight a civil war and basically use the state to enforce the notion that all men are created equal, and that blacks were as fully human beings as whites were. So there are times that that libertarian model just doesn't work very well.

So, Fukuyama claims that libertarianism, a belief in the sovereignty of the individual, would have defended slavery? Francis, get a clue. Slavery was a failure of statism--in which laws were passed that made it legal for one man to enslave another. This was as far from libertarianism as it's possible to get.

Comments like this make it hard to take anything he says about ethics or morality, on the subject of cloning, or anything else, seriously.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

Nanny Statism

I'm not normally really big on labor actions, but I hope that the airline pilots strike over this stupidity. My only consolation is that it would probably be even worse if Gore were president.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:35 AM

Moving On Up (Part II)

Until DNS catches up over the next few days, the URL for Instapundit is here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AM

They'll Pay To Go

I've long complained that NASA's efforts to reduce costs were misdirected, because their focus was on technology (which is a problem, but not a major one) rather than new markets and financing (which is the problem). We've long known that many people would go into space if they could afford it--polls have always shown it--but NASA has steadfastly ignored this, instead always perverting every launch study they do into a replacement for the Shuttle--oversized, and underflown (the most recent example being X-33, though the SLI program shows signs of the same debilitating tendency).

They have spent (and in most cases, wasted) billions of dollars on this, when a tiny fraction of a percent of the funds that they've spent on these technology efforts could have funded some serious market polling that vehicle developers and investors could literally take to the bank.

Finally, after many years, a mere trickle of the NASA new-vehicle funding (this time out of the Space Launch Initiative) has gone toward this end, which will have value far beyond the billions previously spent on technology and system studies.

A NASA contractor, Futron, has directed Zogby International to do a poll, using funding from their market-analysis contract with NASA. Unlike previous polls, which queried the general public, this one focused on people with the actual means to go.

The unsurprising (to me) result is that rich folks are like any other--half of them want to go, and are willing to pay what it costs. Mark Shuttleworth isn't a weirdo--he's typical. Of course, the way in which the rich folks aren't like you and me is that they can afford to.

To me, this is one of the most exciting things that's happened in space in a long time (partly because I've been advocating it for many years). It will go a long way toward making investors take this market more seriously, the previous lack of which has been holding us back. The frustrating thing, of course, is that it could have been done any time over the past couple decades, had we had more visionary people running the agency.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:26 AM

More On China And Space

In a comment about my post on the Chinese space program, Mark Whittington writes:

The Chinese missed a big opportunity to became a world wide imperial power. They not only shut down Zheng's operation, but forbid all deepwater sailing, even those privately financed and run. It was a blunder of enormous consequence and I don't think that the current Chinese leadership will repeat it.

My point was not that they didn't miss an opportunity--they did. My point was the reason for that missed opportunity.

They didn't then, (and don't really now) understand the dynamism and strength of capitalism. Zheng He's missions were not for wealth creation, or even acquisition--they were for national prestige. If that's the reason that the modern dynasts go to the Moon, they will ultimately stumble as well (as we did, at least temporarily, over three decades ago).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:04 AM

May 20, 2002
Movin' On Up

Hey, Glenn's got a new look at his site.

Suggestion--make the font in the posts a little bigger--it's a little tough on us presbyopes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:34 PM

The Blind Men And The Twin Towers

The intelligence fiasco (and I think that's what it was, and it was many years in the making) that led to September 11 reminds me of the old Indian (subcontinent) tale of the blind men and the elephant.

None of them had ever seen an elephant. So each one decided to describe it to the others by feel. "An elephant is like a tree," said one, as he grasped a leg. "No, no, an elephant is like a snake," said another, feeling the long, sinuous trunk. "You're both wrong--an elephant is more like a rope than anything else," exclaimed the third, as he stroked the tail. In the National Lampoon version, they show another one, kneeling behind it in a pile of elephant digestive output, saying, "An elephant is soft, smelly and mushy..."

Mindles H. Dreck describes our government agencies in much the same state in the summer of 2001.

...different agencies of the government have been offering warnings about Al Qaeda's plans since at least 1998. Each had a different part of the picture. Of course, Al Qaeda's plans are clear in 20-20 hindsight, but it might even have been clear at the time if the CIA, the FBI and other branches of government were coordinating their information and actions. If the FBI sees suspicious middle-eastern enrollment in flight schools, can't they alert the CIA and coordinate surveillance of the students and their correspondents?

The agencies charged with protecting us have failed to think laterally, to assemble disparate bits of information and attempt to make something coherent from them. This is, in turn, a failure of leadership. Clinton and Bush both knew Osama bin Laden was planning major actions against Americans. Heck, he had already carried two off, one involving significant involvement by domestic actors. It was clear in 1993 that the mandates for the FBI and CIA must overlap. Both presidents had plenty of time not just to make plans to take OBL out, but to build better preventative intelligence. Both of them talked a much bigger game than they were willing to play. Both of them surrendered their leadership to the imperatives of entrenched bureaucracies run by archaic rules.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:04 PM

Compare And Contrast

Palestinian murders Israeli civilians. He is funded by the Palestinian Authority, and glorified in the official Palestinian press as a "martyr."

Israelis plot to murder Palestinians. They are arrested before they can carry it out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:27 PM

Steven Jay Gould, RIP

Steven Jay Gould has died.

He lived with cancer for quite a long time.

I had some major disagreements with him about aspects of evolution, and I thought that much of his supposedly scientific critiques (like the Mismeasure of Man) were colored by his lifelong Marxism, but he was a hell of a baseball fan, and a great popular science writer. I hope he rests in peace.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:39 PM

Still One Seat Left

Time is running out for a space tourist on this fall's Soyuz flight.

According to NASA Watch, rumor has it that Lance Bass' sponsorship deal with NBC has fallen through, and he's now talking to CBS. Lori Garver hasn't raised the money yet, either.

It looks like it may be premature to see sponsorship as a means of raising money for rides into space. For now, you probably still have to bring your own cash, as Tito and Shuttleworth did. If I were Lori, I wouldn't have had that gall bladder pulled until the deal was signed.

But Shuttleworth wants to do it again. Maybe he'll consider investing in some companies that can make it happen, and get him up while making some money, instead of just laying out cash for a ticket. Let me know, Mark--I have some ideas...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:31 PM

Star Wars Was No Star Wars

We're starting to see reviews of the latest Star Wars installment.

Ken Layne describes how viewing it at a tender age affected his world view.

One blogger is collecting reviews, with the comment that:

"...this movie is going to be the coming out party for blogs as chroniclers of culture. If September 11 and the subsequent War on Terrorism gave the blogger-as-political-pundit credibility, Episode II will do the same for blogger-as- cultural-commentator. Thanks to bloggers, Star Wars Episode II will have more reviews written about it than any movie that has come before it.

Jane Galt saw it, and semi-panned it, with paens to the original. She finishes her review with "...it was no Star Wars."

I'm betting that the favorable reviews are going to skew toward the younger demographic. And those who don't like it that much, but think that the original was the greatest thing since sliced beer, are going to be in their thirties. And those elderly among us just don't get it.

Jane, Ken, et al, consider that your age when first seeing the movies has something to do with your perception of them. (Well, actually, basically, Ken admitted that).

I've noticed that most of the the real Star Wars-o-philes are in your age bracket--they were kids of varying ages when the first movie came out. Those of us who were older are much less impressed by the series, including the original (probably because we saw it at a time that we were less impressionable). As I said over at The Dodd's site, "2001: A Space Odyssey" was the template, the touchstone, of superb SF for my generation.

At the risk of being heretical, when I saw Star Wars, I was disappointed, perhaps because I was looking for good SF, and instead found simply a space opera, with numerous holes in the story line, and an insufficient level of reality, consistency, and adherence to the laws of physics, even within the context of the premise.

If you were five or fifteen today, you might be as impressed with Lucas' latest, as you were at the time with his first.

Yes, yes, I know, you went back and saw it again as an adult, and still thought it was great. But you'd already been imprinted.

And to the degree that my analysis is correct, it's an example of why a clone of a person would not be a copy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:20 PM

The Legacy Of Zheng He

During the Ming Dynasty, under the leadership of the eunuch Admiral Zheng He (not to be confused with the Big He, and also spelled Cheng Ho), the Chinese had the most advanced nautical technology in the world, with ships larger than anything being built in Europe at the time.

The Admiral built over sixteen hundred multi-masted ships, and sent them out, laden with treasure, throughout the world. About a hundred years prior to the European Age of Discovery, he made several expeditions with these ships, probably reaching Europe itself. In the early 1400s, China seemed on the verge of extending a colonial empire to most of the known world at that time. Obviously, it failed to do so.

While it may not obviously be related, let me say that I've occasionally gotten emails asking me what I think about the Chinese space program.

Now, the pressure increases. In linking this story about supposed plans to extend the Middle Kingdom to Luna, complete with resource extraction, the great Instantman himself challenges me for a response.

Well, I sincerely hope that they do so. If they do, there's at least a possibility that it will shake us from our continued complacency toward serious civil space policy in this country.

And it will set up some actual precedents for determining what the Outer Space Treaty really means with regard to issues of property rights and sovereignty, which may clarify things in that regard. Actually having a recognized legal regime in place can't hurt private investment prospects, even if it's seemingly restrictive. Even a restrictive policy is probably preferable to the current uncertainty, particularly given all the other uncertainties (technical, regulatory, market) with which investors have to deal in considering space ventures.

But I don't expect it to happen soon. The Chinese don't have a great track record technologically, as the article itself points out. It's a government program, with all of the attendant problems. We got away with it with Apollo, because it was considered to be critical to the national security, and we solved many problems by simply throwing money at them.

I don't think that the Chinese have that luxury, even under a dictatorship. In addition to their technical difficulties, their economy doesn't have great prospects right now, and the temporary domestic peace bought by literally crushing the dissidents in Tiananmen Square thirteen years ago is a fragile one. The leadership knows that they continue in power only because they've brought some economic gains to the nation. If those are seen to be faltering, and they're perceived to be squandering precious resources on lunar pie in the sky, the country could be ripe for a revolt, and they know it.

The other thing that concerns me is their stated reason for doing it.

Correspondents say China's main motivation for space exploration is to raise national prestige, both at home and overseas.

The story of the Ming Dynasty is often used as a cautionary tale by space activists, as they warn us, and our government, of the dangers of a failure of vision and imagination. In this version of the story, the Chinese were on the verge of opening up the trade routes to India, and Africa, and points further east, and could have preempted the Portuguese explorations, by establishing their own beachheads and colonies decades earlier. But the Mandarin bureaucrats in the Forbidden City could see no value in these voyages and, needing resources for problems at home (building dikes and other flood control, and the like), cut off the funding for Zheng He, ordered him home, had the ships burned, and made the construction of a ship of more than three masts a capital offense. Similarly, some have argued that in essentially turning our backs on the cosmos after the rapid success of Apollo, in favor of welfare programs and pork, our own politicians have given us a similar failure of vision.

But that draws the wrong conclusion. The fact was that Zheng He's journeys were a failure. They sent out vast amounts of treasure, with which to impress the heathens, and gain tribute and the appropriate respect (just as is the goal for the current Chinese space activities). But when trade occured at all, the ships often came back with items that were perceived to be of less value than what had been sent out to the ports. The trade was not profitable. The bureaucrats were right.

The Chinese suffered a failure of expansionary will six hundred years ago, because they were doing it for the wrong reasons. And I suspect that the current leadership is similar to Zheng He in their outlook. His missions were for national prestige--not the generation of wealth. As, apparently, are the current Chinese space plans.

As was Apollo.

Space will not be settled by governments, whether Chinese, Russian, or American. It will be settled by the people who want to go, and seek their own opportunities, and dreams. Governments can help, and if the Chinese government can navigate the difficulties I describe above, and actually eventually get to the Moon, that might be one way of helping, not just the Chinese, but as the article states, all who want to go. But I suspect that there will be private activities that beat them to it, and we cannot, and should not, count on Beijing.

We will know that things are moving forward seriously in space when, in addition to remote-sensing and communications satellites, there are activities going on in space, involving humans in space, that bring more value back than is put into them. Communist goverments are not notable for their value-added activities, and I don't think that the present Beijing regime is that far removed from its predecessors, either in the Ming Dynasty, or the Mao.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:43 PM

More Lies From Mike

Our man from Davison, he of great physical, and trivial mental, girth is at it again. He's hawking his latest anti-gun propaganda (using Columbine as the backdrop) at Cannes.

Growing up in Michigan, Moore was surrounded by guns. In northern Michigan, on the opening day of deer season, over a million enthusiastic sharpshooters take to the woods. Moore was a crack shot himself.

Now he's just a crack pot.

Next, he rewrites American history.

Moore's own conclusions are bleak. "The early genesis of fear in America came from having a slave population... that grew from 700,000 to four million," he states. The Colt 6-shooter, invented in 1836, was cheap and portable, and was just what the white folk needed to "contain slavery" for the final 25 years. "It's something we're raised with in the United States ? to believe in not only the gun, but using violence to get what we want and enforce a class system, so the have-nots stay there."

This is a novel interpretation. If there was such tremendous demand for the six shooter to hold down the "nigras," why was their main recorded use prior to 1846 killing Indians in the west? Why was Colt unable to sell so few of them until he got an order from the Army during the Mexican War, that finally established the company? Surely, if this is the reason for the skyrocketing demand for handguns, wouldn't there be some evidence of large six-shooter sales in the antebellum South, instead of some of the earliest implementations of concealed carry laws in the young nation?

Mr. Moore wants us to believe that the same states that were so fearful of their slave population that they loaded up on six-shooters (when long guns were just as effective for holding down slave rebellions), also passed laws against carrying those very same weapons?

This is the Internet, Mike. We can fact-check your ass, particularly when it's as large and lardy a target as yours.

Maybe he and (hopefully-soon-to-be-ex) Professor Bellisles can get together and co-author their next work of historical fiction.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:46 PM

May 19, 2002
Spam Du Jour

Yeah, I know blogging's been light this weekend--I've been both busy and uninspired.

But Patricia got this spam that she and I thought was amusing, and worth posting.

We are desparately looking for 100 lazy people who wish to make lots of money without working.

We are not looking for people who are self-motivated.

We are not looking for people who join every 'get rich quick' scheme offered on the internet.

We are not looking for class presidents, beautiful people, career builders or even college graduates.

We don't even want union workers or trade school graduates.

We want the laziest people that exist - the guys and gals who expect to make money without lifting a finger. We want the people who stay in bed until noon. We want those of you who think that getting out of bed to go lay on the couch is an effort that is best not thought about.

If you meet these criteria, go to:

[email address snipped]

and type in the Subject Line the following words:

"I do not want to work".

In fact, if you are so lazy that typing those words in the Subject line is an effort, than don't bother. Just click on the email and we'll know that you want us to send you the domain name anyhow, because then we will be absolutely certain that you are the kind of person we want.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, we want the kind of people who DO NOT take risks. If you are the kind of person who will consider doing something that's NOT a 'sure thing', then do NOT respond. This is too easy a way to make money and there's no challenge in it.

If you can get to the website that we are going to email you, you will be able to see the first home business in history that requires no work. NONE.

By clicking on this email and then going to this website, you will be telling us that you want to make enough money that you can quit your regular job and sleep all day.

We are not looking for a commitment from you and we don't even want your money. As a matter of fact, we don't even want you to hear from us again if the idea of making lots of money without working does not interest you.

So this is the first and last email we will ever send you.

That is a promise.

So if nothing else, remember this - to make money without working for it just send an email with the following words in the subject line: "I do not want to work" to:

[email address deleted]

and we will email you back with the website that gives you information on the best of both worlds - a way to make money without having to work.

We look forward to hearing from you.

In all seriousness,

Mark

[Monday afternoon update]

Reader Dr. Clausewitz has the best surmise as to the source. He thinks it's a solicitation to join the Democratic Party.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:38 PM

May 17, 2002
Back To The Drawing Board...

A couple days ago. Microsoft released a patch for newly-discovered security holes in Internet Explorer.

It doesn't work.

Better get that new company going.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:23 AM

Escalation And Melting Snows

With all of the focus on Israel, and what Bush knew and when did he know it, the spotlight has been off of South Asia, where the danger of war, even nuclear war, remains high. Suman Palit is all over it, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 AM

May 16, 2002
Clear Lake Full Employment Bill

That should be the name of this legislation introduced by Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX). The NASA Johnson Space Center, and many of its employees, are in his district. Its official title is the "Space Exploration Act of 2002," and it will read like a dream-come-true to many space enthusiasts.

Let's dissect it: First, the statement of purpose:

To restore a vision for the United States human space flight program by instituting a series of incremental goals that will facilitate the scientific exploration of the solar system and aid in the search for life elsewhere in the universe, and for other purposes.

Note the archaic language. "Human space flight program" is a notion left over from the Cold War, and it's getting pretty long in the tooth. This legislation clearly assumes that the primary purpose for humans to be in space is "exploration," and a "search for life elsewhere in the universe." It pays lip service to "other purposes," but it's non specific, and this is the last time you'll hear about them from the drafters of the bill.

Now, to the findings:

The Congress finds the following: (1) It is in the national interest of the United States to have a vigorous, outward-looking program of space exploration, encompassing both robotic spacecraft missions and human space flight.

OK. It's not clear why this is in the national interest, or whether some means of achieving this are more in the national interest than others, but we'll go on.

(2) The United States has achieved major accomplishments in its human space flight program over the last 4 decades, including the first crewed lunar landing, the first reusable crewed Space Shuttle, and the first truly international Space Station.

If by "major accomplishments" one means that those goals were achieved, without paying any attention to how much more they cost than they should have, how effective they are, how much more could have been accomplished in space had the money been spent differently, etc., then, yeah, I guess they're major accomplishments. Considering how badly the station in particular was mismanaged, I guess the fact that there's anything flying at all is a monumental accomplishment, but I'm not sure it's one we want to emulate in any future space programs.

(3) There currently is no commitment to the accomplishment of any challenging goals in human space flight after the completion of the International Space Station.

True enough.

Of course, it's not clear to me that "challenging" is a proper criteria for goals, at least in and of itself. This is one reason that I have heartburn with people who admiringly quote Kennedy's Rice speech:

...We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...

Frankly, that's a really dumb reason to do something. Drilling a hole from Peoria to China is not, easy, but hard. That doesn't make it a good thing to throw taxpayers' money at.

(4) While a significant amount of scientific research can and should be accomplished by robotic means, a comprehensive plan of scientific exploration of the solar system and search for life beyond Earth will require both robotic spacecraft missions and human space flight to achieve its goals.

(5) Properly coordinated, the Nation's human space flight program does not compete with robotic exploration but instead complements it and provides additional capabilities for scientific research.

(6) The successful repair and servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope demonstrates the potential for the productive participation of the human space flight program in advancing the goals of scientific exploration.

All true.

(7) There have been numerous commissions and study panels over the last 30 years that have articulated goals for the future of human space flight, and additional studies to establish goals are not needed at this time.

Also true. Studies are not required to establish goals. Just some thought from first principles, which always seems to be lacking when it comes to space.

(8) While there are significant technical and programmatic hurdles to be overcome in carrying out human space flight activities beyond low Earth orbit, the main hurdle to be overcome is the lack of a national commitment to such activities.

Well, yes and no. If by that, they mean that once we make such a commitment, we will put into place new leadership and institutions to carry it out, then perhaps.

But if they mean that everything else is fine, and all that's lacking is a "national commitment," then I vehemently disagree. The current NASA cannot do it in a cost effective manner, and the same politics that motivates this bill (continued job security for various NASA centers) will ensure that such a program is as disastrous as the space station and Shuttle were.

(9) In the absence of a commitment to specific and challenging human space flight goals, programs to develop generic technological capabilities for human space flight are likely to be unfocused, inefficient, and short-lived.

Probably correct. It's certainly been the case to date.

(10) It is in the national interest of the United States to commit to a challenging set of incremental goals for the Nation's human space flight program in order to facilitate the scientific exploration of the solar system and aid in the search for life beyond Earth and to commit to the attainment of those goals.

Sorry, I'm not sold. How is it in the national interest? Why is exploration, and looking for ET important, but not the development of space? Science can't justify this (and never could).

(11) While the ultimate goal of human space flight in the inner solar system is the exploration of the planet Mars, there are other important goals for exploration of the inner solar system that will advance our scientific understanding and allow the United States to develop and demonstrate capabilities that will be needed for the scientific exploration and eventual settlement of Mars.

I don't agree that the ultimate goal of human space flight in the inner solar system is the exploration of Mars (e.g., how about finding out what resources are on the asteroids, and mining them?), but if you believe that, then the rest is true.

(12) A bold and sustained human space flight initiative of scientific exploration should contain progressively more challenging objectives, including missions to the Earth-Sun libration points, Earth-orbit crossing asteroids, the lunar surface, the satellites of Mars, and the surface of Mars.

Sounds good to me. Again, assuming that science is the only purpose--I hate to sound like a broken record, but I don't buy that assumption.

(13) A human space flight initiative with incremental goals and milestones will allow a continuing series of accomplishments to be achieved throughout the duration of the initiative, permit the "lessons learned" and capabilities acquired from previous implementation steps to be incorporated into subsequent phases of the initiative, and allow adjustments to be made to the implementation of the initiative as new opportunities or challenges arise.

Sure. Just common-sense project management.

(14) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration should develop a roadmap and implementation plan for a progressive program of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit in support of the scientific exploration of the solar system and the search for life beyond Earth.

OK, as long as that's not all they're doing.

(15) Existing and planned investments in the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and the Space Launch Initiative should be leveraged to help advance the goals of the human space flight initiative while avoiding duplication of effort.

"...avoiding duplication of effort..."

That phrase concerns me. While it sounds good (socialism always sounds good), that's really code language for granting certain agencies or centers a monopoly on certain technological areas of endeavor.

This was a disaster in the 90s, when Goldin set up the NASA "Centers of Excellence," shutting down a lot of good work at other centers, and eliminating any pressure from competition. The most egregious example of this flawed philosophy was the Clinton Administration's decision to put the Department of Defense in charge of expendable vehicles, and NASA in charge of reusables. NASA then put a single center (Marshall) in charge of the reusable vehicle effort, which in turn handed it over to a single contractor (Lockmart) to implement. The result was the X-33 program. The result of the X-33 program is a billion dollar monument to mismanagement out in the southern California desert.

We must have competition, even (maybe even especially) in government activities. Without it, the bureaucrats become complacent, and building empires takes precedence over achieving results. If this bill ever passes, I hope that the language about "duplication of effort" is stricken from it with extreme prejudice.

(16) The President should ensure that sufficient resources are provided to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and that appropriate financial management controls are in place to ensure that the implementation plan can be carried out in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Motherhood.

(17) The United States captured the imagination of the peoples of the world and inspired a generation of young people to enter careers in science and engineering when it successfully landed humans on the surface of the Moon in the years 1969 through 1972.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that that trick will work again. There are lots of other things today that capture imagination and inspire people--space is passe. And if it's just more of feeding NASA billions upon billions of dollars so that young people can watch other people go into space, then I doubt it will be much more inspiring than what we're doing now.

As long as we remain hung up on "science" and "exploration," and ignore the desire of people to go themselves, don't expect most people to get excited about it. There are lots of other vicarious activities in which they can participate that pay for themselves, without having to feed a government space agency scarce tax dollars.

(18) A bold and sustained human space exploration initiative has the potential to inspire a new generation of young people in the same way as the Apollo program did.

Maybe. But as I just said, I have my doubts.

(19) Properly constructed, a bold and sustained human space exploration initiative has the potential to engage the international community in peaceful cooperation in space.

The key words here being "properly constructed." It won't be. At best, it will be like ISS, and that was a disaster. If we want to have international cooperation for the sake of international cooperation, fine, but at least recognize that this doesn't save us any money--it dramatically increases cost, and lengthens schedules.

(20) Completion of the International Space Station with a full crew complement of 7 astronauts and robust research capabilities is essential if the United States is to carry out successfully a comprehensive initiative of scientific exploration of the solar system that involves human space flight.

That's the case only in the political sense that if NASA can't show that it can do a space station, no one can have any confidence in its ability to do anything beyond low earth orbit. If they mean that ISS will be useful to such a program of human exploration, it's nonsense. It's in entirely the wrong orbit. If we need a low orbit station to support other manned activities, we'll have to build another one, that's actually designed for that, and in the right place.

Now on to the actual goals.

SEC. 4. HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT INITIATIVE.

(a) GOALS. - The Administrator shall set the following goals for the future activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's human space flight program:

(1) Within 8 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to the L 1 and L 2 Earth-Sun libration points and back for the purposes of assembling large-scale space structures such as would be required for scientific observatories, to the Earth-Moon libration points and back, and to lunar orbit and back.

Wonder how they came up with eight years? Kennedy's "...within the decade..." had a nicer rhetorical flourish to it.

For those who don't know, the L-1 and L-2 points are two of what are called "Lagrange points," after the French mathematician Josef Lagrange, who discovered them in the process of solving what was called the "three-body problem." This problem is a classic orbital mechanics question: what happens when an object is influenced by not just one body, as is a satellite in orbit, but two (e.g., earth and Moon). (Lagrange also developed powerful new techniques for doing analysis of dynamics in general, using energy methods, rather than Newton's vector methods, which rapidly become intractable for complicated problems.)

Actually, it's more properly called the "two-and-a-half body problem" because the mass of the third object is ignored (just as the mass of a satellite is generally ignored when computing its orbit around the earth, because the earth's mass is so large in comparison that we don't have to worry about how much the satellite swings the earth back and forth as it goes around it--it's negligible).

Lagrange points are those locations in which the combined forces of the two bodies balance the orbital motion, so that the object stays in the same position relative to them. There are five of them. The two being referred to here are on a line between the two bodies. L-1 is in between them, and L-2 is outside of both of them, on the side of the smaller. For instance, the L-1 point for earth and Sun is between the earth and the Sun, and the L-2 point is farther from the earth than the Sun, but on the line connecting them.

Some scientists believe that these would be interesting places to put observatories, to study both earth and Sun. So the goal here is to develop a vehicle, designed to operate only in space, that could provide transportation of crew and cargo to those locations, as well as to the earth-Moon libration points, and to lunar orbit. Any vehicle that can get to the earth-Sun points would be easily capable of the latter, because they're much closer.

It's not a bad capability to have, but I think that they're putting the cart before the horse. More on that a little farther down.

(2) Within 10 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to and from an Earth-orbit crossing asteroid and rendezvousing with it.

OK, but I don't understand how the requirements for this differ from the first vehicle described above, other than possibly duration of the mission. That wouldn't be a design issue, per se, though, other than possibly heavier shielding, and perhaps more comfortable accomodations.

(3) Within 15 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back, as well as the development and deployment of a human-tended habitation and research facility on the lunar surface.

A vehicle designed to land on the lunar surface would be a different one than one that operates only in orbit, so this separation does make sense. Basically, what they're proposing here, after development of the orbital transfer vehicle from (1) and (2) is building a lunar base with the infrastructure to support it. You know, like my grade-school teachers told me in the sixties we'd have in the seventies...

(4) Within 20 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to and from Martian orbit, the development and deployment of a human-tended habitation and research facility on the surface of one of the moons of Mars, and the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from Martian orbit to the surface of Mars and back.

They're proposing that we develop vehicles capable of going to Mars. I think that the asteroid-mission vehicle would be capable of doing that, and the lunar-surface vehicle would lend itself to being adapted to the Mars surface mission.

They want to establish bases in Mars orbit first, on either Phobos or Deimos, the Martian moons (which are really captured asteroids--they're very similar in nature and composition).

But back to my "cart before horse" comment. There's no mention here of how we're going to get to orbit, affordably or otherwise. And if you don't know that, it's foolish to design your orbital vehicles.

Payloads tend to be designed around the capabilities of the vehicles that are going to launch them. The only large-scale exception was Apollo, in which the Saturn V was developed for the explicit purpose of launching the payload destined for the Moon.

If NASA starts designing orbital systems without knowing how they're going to get them into orbit, they're either going to end up redesigning them, or forcing requirements on the new launchers that aren't optimal. Most importantly though, there's going to be no way to estimate what this will cost unless we know the cost of getting from earth into space, which remains the dominant cost in most of what NASA does.

The next section discusses implementation.

(b) OFFICE OF EXPLORATION.

(1) ESTABLISHMENT. - The Administrator shall establish an Office of Exploration, which shall be headed by an Associate Administrator reporting directly to the Administrator.

(2) FUNCTIONS. - The Office of Exploration shall, in coordination with the Office of Space Flight, the Office of Space Science, and all other relevant Offices, be responsible for planning, budgeting, and managing activities undertaken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to accomplish the goals stated in subsection (a).

(c) IMPLEMENTATION.

(1) COMPETITIONS. - The Administrator shall establish a process for conducting competitions for innovative, cost-efficient mission concepts to accomplish each of the goals stated in subsection (a). The competitions shall be open to entities or consortia from industry, academia, nongovernmental research organizations, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Centers, and other governmental organizations. Mission concepts may include the provision of a commercial item or service sufficient to accomplish all or part of the relevant goal. Mission concepts that include international participation and cost-sharing shall be encouraged. The Administrator shall solicit proposals for the competition with respect to the goal stated in subsection (a)(1) not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall determine when it is appropriate to conduct competitions with respect to each of the other goals stated in subsection (a).

Here they at least pay lip service to competition. But they don't mean competition within the government--they're just talking about a competitive procurement.

The rest of it is just boiler plate procurement procedures. I'm not sure that this level of specificity belongs in legislation, but there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

Finally...

(e) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS. - There are authorized to be appropriated to the Administrator for carrying out this Act -

(1) $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2003; and
(2) $200,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.

So fifty million next year, and two hundred million the year after that. This is what is known as the camel's nose under the tent.

While I'm glad to see someone at least acting like they care if we do something useful in space, I think that this is doomed to failure. It's not the 1960s any more, but the thinking in the beltway doesn't seem to recognize that. It's not just a matter of setting a goal--we have to be more intelligent about how we carry it out.

As I've said before, we need to get the cost of access down before we can figure out the best way to open up the solar system, and once we do that, major government programs like this may no longer be needed--the National Geographic Society could sponsor a Mars expedition.

But if you're a congressman with a major NASA center in your district, that's not the right answer.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:02 PM

And Now For Something Completely Different

Steve at Happy Fun Pundit has a first-hand report of Norm Mineta's FAA-screener hiring process.

The stupid gits.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:26 PM

New From Campbell's Soup

Here's a link to the blood libel poster at San Francisco State. We ought to Google-bomb the Allah out of this. The administration needs to either crack down hard, or drop their speech codes. Maybe enough exposure of this will shame them into one or the other.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:21 PM

Aaaarrrggghhh

My Fox News column is up, and as I promised, it's the solar sail story. But I just noticed that I wrote:

Imagine that the sail is at an angle with respect to the sun. Some of the thrust is directed radially along its orbit...

Rather than "radially" it should have been "tangentially."

That post has been up there with that error for days. I thought you guys are supposed to be fact checking my ass! Falling down on the job again, eh?

[Update at 11:54 AM PDT]

The Fox News folks have fixed it. Down the memory hole...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:30 AM

Sweet Land Of Liberty

Mark Steyn explains the difference between Americans and, well, pretty much the rest of the world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:38 AM

Twenty-Twenty Hindsight

Everyone's playing Monday morning quarterback about the failure to pick up on the Osama hijacking threat prior to September 11. For me, there are two points here.

First, I don't blame Bush for the failure to prevent it, for reasons that I'll go into in a minute. I do blame Bush for failure to really address the incompetence afterward, and in fact to augment it, with Tom Ridge, and Norm Mineta. I continue to be frustrated with the lack of willingness to confront the issue that there was then, and continues to be now, massive incompetence and bureaucratic turf tending that is going to make it less likely that we will prevent future attacks. I am furious that George Tenet still has his job, that Mineta still has his, that no one has yet been held to account, and there's no seeming willingness to see that anyone is.

My blood boils when I continue to hear nonsense about how this simply proves that we need bigger government, and bigger budgets, instead of the reality, which is that we instead need smaller government, more focused on our security, and less so on transferring wealth from the top down, and indulging the American people in their desire to make someone else responsible for their own lives, and protecting them from their own behavior.

Was this even avoidable? In theory, yes. I wasn't really surprised when it happened. When the first plane hit, I was wondering if it was deliberate, and if so, how it could be pulled off. I ran through the possibilities in my mind, and the only one that made sense was a hijacking. When the second plane hit, the thought jelled--clearly that was what happened. Was it unthinkable? Not to me. The WTC had already been targeted by these nutballs. We had already seen a plane taken down by a suicidal pilot (in the Egypt Air case). So why not?

But in practice, it probably couldn't have been prevented, even had the dots been properly connected. We were simply culturally unable to deal with it until we had the bucket of ice water splashed in our collective face last September.

I agree with "E. Nough"s comments over at Charles Johnson's site:

...assume that the FBI had information on the exact date, time, flight number, and descriptions of suspects. So they raid all the planes, and arrest the 19 dirtbags.

...And then what? Not much, I imagine. Oh, CAIR and its ilk would be having a fit, of course, complaining to everyone, including George W., about profiling and unfair targeting of Arab-Americans. After all, just what did the FBI find? Some box cutters? Those aren't illegal on airplanes. Flight manuals? These men were all attending accredited flight schools, trying to achieve the American dream, etc. etc. So they had one-way tickets: is that a crime? Funeral shrouds? Are you honestly arresting these men for bringing white sheets onto a plane? Korans? So because these men are pious Muslims, you dare to assume...! And really, folks, come on: flying a Boeing into a skyscraper? You've been watching too many movies! Who would come up with something this complicated, when a truck bomb in a garage would do just as well?

And so on and so on. I'm sure at least half these men would have been released within a couple of days. Profiling would be discussed at length on CNN and PBS. Several specials would be made, with weeping, hijab-wearing photogenic young women, describing in perfect Midwestern English the ordeal of being singled out by airport security. American Airlines would issue an apology, and make a contribution to the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Society, with a promise of more "outreach efforts." Norman Mineta would be outraged! and put in all sorts of new restrictions designed specifically to avoid giving extra scrutiny to "people of Middle Eastern appearance." (hey! wait a second!) George W. would go on the record saying that "pro-filling" is "discriminatational" and against everything he holds dear. Clinton would tell a story of his Lebanese-American great-uncle who was once denied entry into the White House. Al Gore would talk about his years of service under Lawrence of Arabia. Pretty soon, the whole thing would be forgotten as another embarrasing example of the Latent Racism in American Society.

Until one day, another group of men board an airliner...

So, given the national mindset in place at the time, and (unfortunately, based on the continuing idiocies coming from the FAA and Ridge about guns in the cockpit and the random searches, and elimination of first-class security lines) perhaps to some degree today, it would have been tough. One thing that might have been effective, though, was the one thing that was effective that day--to change our attitude and policy toward hijacking. Flight 93 was operating under the new paradigm--the three flights before it under the old. And if Flight 93 had known even sooner, they might have been able to save the plane, and prevent the hijackers from getting into the cockpit in the first place.

I agree with Kathy Kinsley.

If there had been a public education campaign in place last summer, warning that, despite the best efforts of airport security, it wasn't perfect, and that there might be hijackings, and that cooperation with the hijackers would result in the deaths of not only the passengers, but countless more on the ground, what happened on September 11 might have been prevented.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:14 AM

May 15, 2002
Phantom Down

It's a human trait to be fascinated with disaster. That's much of the (secret) appeal of auto races and air shows.

For those ghouls who go to them with a secret hope of seeing a crash (you know who you are...), a friend passed on this sequence of the fatal crash at the Point Mugu Air Show last month.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:37 PM

Quandary

I'm having trouble deciding what to do for my Fox News column tomorrow. I actually wrote the "Counting the Swimmers" post with the intent of running it, but it would make two NASA/SLI-bashing columns in a row, and I don't want to sound like I'm in a rut, and all I can do is bitch and moan about NASA. I'm thinking of maybe running the solar sail piece instead, particularly since Layne liked it enough to link to it.

What do y'all think?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AM

Signal To Noise Ratio

Over at Andrew Sullivan's book club, where they're discussing Lomborg's book, one of the letter writers wrote the following:

I was preempted by at least two persons in what seems to be the key point of skepticism about the current global warming discourse, the extreme hubris involved in trying to forecast the long-term temperature of the earth based on primitive computer models, when we can't even forecast local weather with any certainty...

I've heard Rush Limbaugh make this argument as well--how can we predict long-term climate when we can't even forecast tomorrow's showers?

While I'm a global warming skeptic myself, and it's a seductive argument, it's wrong. I believe that the reason that we can't make long-term predictions about climate is because of the chaotic, non-linear nature and complexity of the phenomenon, but the ability to make long-term predictions is actually unrelated to our ability to make short-term ones.

To understand why (or at least to see another example of the two being unrelated), consider another similar phenomenon--the stock market. Most financial advisors will tell you to put your money into stocks, because over the long haul, they're going to go up. And if you look at the sweep of finance history, such advice would have been borne out. But that doesn't mean that they can predict what the market will do next week, or even tomorrow (if they could, they wouldn't have to make a living providing advice...)

How can they make a long-term prediction when they can't make a short-term one? Because the long-term one is not based on the short term--it is not a series of predictions adding up to a long one. While a broad trend can have a reasonable probability assigned to it from fundamental underlying causes, the various ups and downs as it gets there are subject to different, unforeseeable forces. There is "noise" in the pattern of climate, or markets, and this noise is what we experience as unexpected weather, or daily fluctuations in stock prices. And while we can extrapolate current data to derive a predicted signal, we can never predict noise with any reliability, by definition.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:17 AM

May 14, 2002
Counting The Swimmers

NASA is scrounging parts for the Shuttle on E-bay.

That is a consequence of our nation's fundamentally-flawed space policy for the past thirty years. And there is nothing in the current plans that will change it.

NASA has trouble finding spares for the Shuttle for the same reason that Shuttle is so expensive to operate--because they just barely use it.

Boeing maintains a healthy array of subcontractors to support their aircraft fleet because they sell many hundreds of them, and their customers fly them many thousands of times per year. NASA flies four Orbiters a half dozen times a year (total, not per vehicle)--in a good year.

In order to keep their subcontractors alive to build parts that are either unique to the Space Shuttle, or are obsolete, but still used on the Space Shuttle (like 8086 computer processors used in the original IBM PC in 1981), it would cost NASA many more millions of dollars per year beyond the emperor's ransom that they are already spending, and the cost per 8086 chip would be hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars per processor. Given their situation and minimal activity, it makes sense to simply find the parts used on the Internet, buy them at the bid price, and keep the system limping along.

And based on their ostensible plans for the "Shuttle replacement" from the Space Launch Initiative program, the future will be no better.

The requirements (as estimated under contract to NASA) for "the new launch system" (note that it's singular, not plural, just as the disastrous Shuttle decision was) seem to be based on (as usual) the existing market, with linear projections. They basically describe the current geostationary communications satellite market, linearly extrapolated out many years. There has been no other market data put forth (at least publically, as would be expected of a civilian government agency) as guidance to NASA's notion of the future need for launch vehicles.

The implications of this are that the new launch vehicle (singular) must be capable of delivering twenty thousand+ pounds to geostationary orbit, which means at least twice that to low earth orbit, to account for the stage and propellant to deliver it the rest of the way (i.e., it must have performance similar to the Shuttle).

In addition, since there is no market other than this and the space station market (a few Shuttle-class flights a year), and there is a limit to the GEO market due to bandwidth and slot limitations, the market for a new vehicle is...the market for the existing Shuttle, with a few more flights for the commercial launches that it must steal from the commercial launch market, and it must be sized to satisfy both those markets.

That means that the new "vehicle" (not vehicles--sorry to keep hammering the point, but I have no alternative) must be oversized like the Shuttle, and underflown like the Shuttle. And thus overpriced...like the Shuttle, because it will have too little activity to amortize its annual operating costs (like the Shuttle), let alone its development costs.

What's the point? Other than, that is, to continue full employment in northern Alabama, and the locales in which the contractors live?

It's been said that, had the builders of the Golden Gate Bridge based the demand for it on the number of swimmers between San Francisco and Marin County, it would have never been built. But that is the official position of NASA and its contractors for SLI. The market is a straight-line projection of the existing market, and no unforeseen markets shall be considered.

Such a projection ignores the following (likely) possibilities that might result from lower-cost access:

a vast increase in public space passenger travel;
routine servicing of low-orbit satellites and platforms
a huge increase in the number of flights
the potential for on-orbit assembly and fueling of stages to GEO and points beyond.

A vehicle that is designed for a market that requires forty thousand pounds to low earth orbit in a single launch will be unlikely to take advantage of these markets, because it will cost too much to develop, and it will have too few flights to amortize its development or operational costs, thus increasing its per-flight costs beyond what will be possible to generate those new markets. The underlying theme is that NASA wants a (single) Shuttle replacement that can do exactly what the Shuttle does, ignoring the fact that there may be alternate, and superior, ways of achieving NASA's true needs. The geostationary satellite market serves as a surrogate for the real agenda, allowing them to maintain the facade that it will be a "commercial" system, though this market is already more-than-adequately satisfied by the existing launchers.

Until NASA accepts that we need a new commercial space transportation industry, rather than a new launch vehicle, and that they cannot and should not attempt to predict what the markets and uses for it will be, we will remain mired in the same central-planning muck--the same five, and ten-year plans, that has been impeding our progress in space since the beginning of the Cold War.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 PM

The Truth Trickles Out

But only from the "Moonie" newspaper. The Palestinians desecrated the church and brutalized their hostages.

Don't expect to get the story from the mainstream press. It was all the Israelis' fault...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 PM

Rest In Olfactory Peace

Mike Todd, Jr., the innovator who gave us the late but unlamented Smell-O-Vision, has died.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:49 PM

The Prism Of Religion

There is an article in the Christian Science Monitor that describes the conlict of ostensibly Christian values over the Middle East situation.

To me, both are inadequate bases for judgment, to put it mildly:

"Jerusalem is suffering," says Galen Bowman of Old German Baptist Brethren Church in Belkite, Ind. "We're trying to help out. We need to support Israel" as visitors, he says, because Israel is God's way of preparing the Messiah's return.

and

"I think people [in my congregation] recognize the weight of the moral mandate is with the Palestinians, simply because they are occupied and oppressed," says the Rev. Richard Signore of Bourne, Mass. "Some lay people say it's too complex and we should leave it to the experts, but I don't accept that. To me, this really is an issue of moral imperative for a people to have self- determination."

The article summarizes the juxtaposition thusly:

Now, engaged Christians take sides largely according to one of two perspectives. One is that faithfulness equals pursuit of justice by ending Israel's occupation and settlement of Palestinian territories. The other is that being faithful means supporting Israel to honor God's prophecy as stated in Ezekiel 37:21: "I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land."

Sorry, but, from my perspective, both of these perspectives are loony.

My prism is democracy, pluralism, secular statism, and liberty. From that perspective, Israel has it all over the Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 PM

Publicity

O'Reilly is covering the San Francisco State anti-semitic riot now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:07 PM

The Power Of Drudge

Ann Coulter's new book, not out until next month, went to number one on Amazon in one day.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:05 PM

North Korean Refugee Update

Reader John Thacker has been diligently keeping up with the North Korean refugee saga.

First off, the three North Koreans that scaled the wall into the US
consulate in Shenyeng got sent to South Korea.

Good for us. (Although some reports seem to indicate that they wanted
to come to the USA rather than to S. Korea.)

No doubt...

The Japanese are lodging their protests with the Chinese, as reported Here, and here.

The Chinese are telling the Japanese to "correct their attitude," and claiming that they got permission to enter the embassy. The Japanese reply that they did not give agreement, and are demanding that China return the five refugees. (Sounds like a matter of honor now, perhaps?)

Perhaps. We'll see how cowed Japan is by China.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:28 AM

Sailing, Sailing

A long-time goal of space enthusiasts is about to reach fruition--the first solar sail is about to take flight. The really neat thing about it, to me, is that it's privately sponsored. I remember discussing this at dinner in 1982 with Rob Staehle, the JPL engineer who was planning the project that long ago as an extra-curricular activity (more recently, he was the pre-project manager for the Pluto Express mission and is now the Deputy Project Manager of the Europa mission), and it's great to see it finally happening.

To the degree that many people are aware of the concept of solar sails, they mistakenly believe, taking the nautical analogy, that they are blown by the solar wind. But solar sails, or light sails (the more generic term, because they could be powered with lasers as well as the sun) actually get their thrust from radiation pressure. The solar wind is composed of heavy, highly-energetic particles that would blow right through a sail, destroying rather than propelling it. The sail is instead impinged by photons, the components of light.

The article linked above says that the sail absorbs them, and gains their momentum, but if this occurs, it's actually less efficient. Ideally, the photons actually reflect off the sail, imparting twice the momentum that they would if they were absorbed. Thus, a well-designed sail has a mirrored surface, or at least a surface that acts as a mirror for the frequencies of light for which it's designed. Also, since the lighter the vehicle, the greater the acceleration for a given force, it's made as thin as possible while still maintaining structural integrity. Finally, since force is pressure times area, the bigger the sail, the more thrust can be attained.

Because the solar radiation pressure is so small, even for a large sail, the total force might only amount to a few pounds. But if that's the only force acting (other than gravity), it can still add up, and with continuous acceleration, get you to an outer planet faster than chemical propulsion.

One question often asked is, if the radiation pressure always acts outward from the sun, how a sailing spacecraft can come back into the solar system. Answer: like conventional sailing ships, it tacks (though the analogy is imperfect--being in a vacuum, unlike the water for a ship, there is no medium in which it travels, and it thus has no use for a keel).

Imagine that the sail is at an angle with respect to the sun. Some of the thrust is directed radially along its orbit. Add to orbital velocity, and the energy increases, and the sail heads out to the outer system. Change the angle to subtract from it, and the sail will slow, and fall back in toward the sun. Angle it out of the orbital plane, and you can slowly perform a plane change.

If we really did want to drop nuclear waste into the sun, a sail is probably the only affordable way to do it, with the additional advantage that as the star is approached, the thrust increases as the square of the distance (twice as close means four times the thrust). Unfortunately, because they're such delicate things, the sail might burn up before it had decreased its velocity sufficiently to drop all the way. So a final booster rocket might still be needed.

Here's an extremely little-known fact. Solar sails played a significant role in the conceptualization and development of nanotechnology. Back in the 1970s, a young student at MIT, enamored with space, was trying to figure out how to develop the minimum thickness for a sail. He came up with a concept for laying out an ultra-thin layer of aluminum on a wax, using a technique called vacuum-vapor deposition, in which the metal would be heated to a vapor, and sprayed on a substrate in a vacuum chamber. Afterwards, the wax would be melted away, leaving the thin aluminum foil. He reasoned that he could get a sail that was only a few atoms thick--strong and reflective enough to be a good sail (as long as it was handled properly) while providing maximum performance.

One thing led to another, and he eventually came up with other techniques for building things at atomic-level scale, and gave some serious thought to the implications of such manufacturing. He wrote a book on the subject in the mid-1980s, and eventually, in 1991, received the first doctorate in the field, having played a major role in inventing it, from MIT. His name, of course, was K. Eric Drexler.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:13 AM

Recharging Your Space Batteries

If you don't already have plans for Memorial Weekend, and you have the time/money to get to Denver, and are interested in space, you might want to consider attending the International Space Development Conference, sponsored by the National Space Society. I've been to many of these, and you'll find programming to suit every taste, from whiz-bang technologies, to recent results in space science, space law, and discussions of asteroid mining, colonization and settlement. It's probably the largest gathering of space enthusiasts you'll find during the year.

Don't miss it if you want to find out the latest in our progress to spread life into the universe.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:37 AM

Quotas Reign, Temporarily

The Sixth Circuit Court has reversed the lower-court decision, and ruled that the University of Michigan Law School can practice racial discrimination (my interpretation of the ruling). It was a narrow ruling, five to four. What's most interesting to me is not just the dissent, but the fact that some of the dissenters claim that the majority is not only wrong, but that they cheated procedurally.

I'm no lawyer, but the arguments for the majority read pretty strained to me. This is why the Dems are fighting so hard to keep Bush from putting judges on the bench. They know that the majorities for their nonsense is thin.

This one's almost certain to be appealed. It will be interesting to see if the USSC takes it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:29 AM

May 13, 2002
More Blogging In The Mainstream

Alan Boyle has set up a weblog over at MSNBC, covering space and science stuff. It's off to a good start--right out of the gate, he permalinks to Paul Hsieh, NASA Watch, me, and Jay Manifold, among others.

I notice that MSNBC has put up a disclaimer, though--they disclaim responsibility for internet links. You'd like to think that goes without saying, but unfortunately, it doesn't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:58 PM

Zero Intelligence, Continued

Here's yet another good article on the insane stupidity of zero-tolerance policies.

Between this, and the recent stories about the abysmal (and I believe deliberately-planned) ignorance of history among students, the state of our public school system is absolutely frightening. I see it as fundamentally conceptually flawed, and beyond any hope of reform.

Yet another reason for disappointment in Bush. I can only hope that the current federal education nonsense is a maneuver to set the stage for reversing things in a second term, but I see little reason to hope.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:07 AM

Oh, The Humanity

Lileks is beating up Patch Adams with a verbal truncheon. Is nothing sacred? Could it be more politically incorrect?

It's wonderful.

If you knew your doctor was a clown, you?d find another doctor. You don?t want to be given the biopsy results by someone with a flowerpot on his head. You don?t want your doctor to demonstrate the effect of chemotherapy on a tumor by sweeping up an ever-diminishing spotlight. God forbid you should wake up during the operation and see your doctor pulling yards of knotted scarves from your abdomen.

People who are clowns are telling you something and you?re a fool not to heed them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:59 AM

Weird Science

There's an article over in Wired about backyard experimentation with anti-gravity devices.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AM

Get Off The Carousel

Keith Cowing over at Spaceref (and NASA Watch), has some good thoughts this morning on how to make lemonade out of the lemon that is the International Space Station. I don't agree with it in entirety, but it's definitely worth a read.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 AM

May 12, 2002
Accessing Space

I was going to write up a report of my trip to the Space Access Conference, but my friend Leonard David has beaten me to it.

It is the belief of a corps of 21st century crusaders that getting up into space requires less of a down payment than ever before. There's been a reduction in development time and risk to build vehicles able to offer routine, cheap access to space. Lastly, it appears that a flourishing of non-traditional space markets is near at hand, Vanderbilt said. "All this seems to be converging on a spot where the business case for these ventures makes sense," he said.

Over the decades, pushing spacecraft into orbit has primarily meant taking the "disintegrating totem pole" approach, said Clapp of Pioneer Rocketplane. Critically needed are true spaceships that fly "real high, real fast, and real often," he said.

At days end, it remains the thrill of space flight that stirs the soul, Clapp added. "It's almost as if we all share this religion?this enthusiasm for doing something in space. It?s a passion that people who are very religious, I think, would understand."

Clark Lindsey at Hobby Space has a good review as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:56 PM