Transterrestrial Musings

July 30, 2008
To The Moon, Alice

One of the nice things about having a blog is that you can self publish. This is the original piece that I submitted to Popular Mechanics, which inspired them to ask for a "revision" which they then edited to what was actually published. I thought that readers here might appreciate it.

Location, location, location.

Those are the proverbial three rules of real estate. They aren't restricted to terrestrial transactions--location matters a lot, sometimes a lot more, in space.

Recently, Michael Benson, a guest columnist at the Washington Post, proposed that the problem with the International Space Station is that it is in the wrong place. He proposes that it be refitted as an interplanetary spaceship.

It's a novel proposal, and he's in good company--a lot of people are thinking about what to do with the ISS after 2015, for which there is currently no official US policy. The foreign partners and other stakeholders recently met to discuss the issue, though if this particular option was discussed, there is no mention of it in the reporting, or the joint statement they provided after the meeting. There's probably a good reason for that.

Mr. Benson is clearly earnest, but the concept is not as well thought out as he seems to think. The ISS is designed for operations in low earth orbit (LEO), but that is a unique environment, and had trips beyond that been its intended use, both the requirements and the design would have looked very different.

What does NASA think?

I called Mike Curie, in the NASA Public Affairs Office for the ISS, to get the official agency response. It was predictable, concise, and (in my opinion) correct: "We welcome and share Mr. Benson's enthusiasm for the space station program, but the proposal is not feasible."

He suggested that I talk to Tom Jones, four-time Shuttle astronaut (and Pop Mechanics space consultant) for further elaboration, so I did.

The idea has several problems," he told me. "If you do it with chemical propellant, the structure won't be able to take those high thrust levels, particularly the fragile solar panels that were designed for zero gee. Also, the Station isn't designed to operate for long periods of time without resupply of things like food, water, and spare parts for maintenance. You'd have to develop a duplicate interplanetary system just to deliver the supplies and rotate the crew."

"Once out in deep space, the ISS doesn't have the radiation shielding it would need for either lunar operations, or even traversing through the Van Allen belts, particularly if you did it slowly with a low-thrust system, as he suggests."

"The Station is also overdesigned for an interplanetary mission in some ways. It's a laboratory facility designed to rely on frequent resupply and contact with Earth. This is not an operational space vehicle. It's more of a technology test bed, to learn how to do things in space, and take advantage of the near-Earth space environment. It's really better and more cost effective to keep it here and use it for what it was designed."

In fairness, Mr. Benson attempted to anticipate these objections:

It's easy to predict what skeptics both inside and outside NASA will say to this idea. They'll point out that the new Constellation program is already supposed to have at least the beginnings of interplanetary ability. They'll say that the ISS needs to be resupplied too frequently for long missions. They'll worry about the amount of propellant needed to push the ISS's 1,040,000 pounds anywhere -- not to mention bringing them all back.

There are good answers to all these objections.

Well, he has answers, but they don't seem to be very good ones. One wonders if he actually ran any numbers.

How much propellant would it take? Well, to leave LEO and go almost anywhere else, you need to have escape velocity. In orbit, that means adding about forty percent to your current speed of twenty-five thousand ft/sec, or about ten thousand ft/sec. The station weighs on the order of a million pounds. Assuming that you could provide the necessary thrust without snapping off the solar arrays, using liquid oxygen/hydrogen (the most efficient practical propellant combination we have today at a generous specific impulse (I_sp) of 480 seconds (not far from theoretical), it would take almost as much propellant as the payload (over 900,000 lbs).

Now that's not necessarily a lot--it would be a couple dozen launches of, say, a Delta IV, which might cost a few billion dollars. But the problem is that all that does is get the ISS out of earth orbit. It doesn't have any way to park in orbit when it gets to the moon or Mars, or even an asteroid encounter. To do that it needs (in Mr. Benson's words) a "drive system and steerage module" (whatever that means) which he hand waves off as "technicalities."

You also need propellant. A lot of it.

That means that we not only have to accelerate the ISS itself out of LEO, but also all of the propellant that it will need at its destination as well, which would likely be many hundreds of thousands of more pounds. So we have to recalculate our escape, and now we need, say, a million pounds of propellant to send with the station to its destination, and another two million to blast the whole lot out of earth orbit. So now we're up to many billions of dollars for the propellant delivery to LEO, even ignoring the "technicalities."

Ah, you say, but he suggested using low-thrust high-I_sp ion-propulsion systems, which will require much less propellant.

So he did, but he didn't consider the radiation problem, as Tom Jones noted. You'd fry the crew and the electronics, including solar panels, in short order, even if you're lucky enough not to be hit by a solar flare in all that time.

Considering all the other factors he explained, clearly, the ISS is built for LEO, and it should stay in LEO.

But that raises another question. Is it in the right LEO?

The ISS is in a 52-degree inclination orbit. This location was chosen in 1991, when it was decided to bring the Russians into the program, using some of their modules as the core of the station. At the time (and now) their primary launch site was Baikonur, and that was the lowest inclination to which they could launch from that location. The Shuttle pays a high payload penalty to reach that orbit (the original space station plan was to have it at 28.5 degrees, the same as the Cape's latitude, so they could get there with a due-east launch and maximum payload). In fact, every vehicle that goes to the ISS would deliver more payload if it were in a lower inclination. With Russian plans to start launching Soyuz out of the Arianespace launch site in Kourou, near the equator, they will have the capability to get to almost any inclination, so the old Baikonur constraint will be gone.

It might be worth doing a trade study to see if its inclination could be lowered, using ion propulsion, over a period of months or years, as I suggested several years ago. This would avoid the radiation problems of sending it out of LEO by this technique, because the whole trip would remain in LEO, and in fact the radiation reduces with the inclination. This would not only save money on resupply costs (or rather, provide more payload for the same amount of money, because the cost of the flights is fixed, while their payload can vary), but also perhaps put it in a more desirable location to serve as a way station to beyond LEO. It would also put it to use as the test bed that Tom Jones pointed out that it truly is, proving out long-duration ion thrusters that might allow future vehicles to operate more effectively.

So it might be time to consider a move to a better neighborhood--just not one quite as out of this world as Mr. Benson suggests.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:31 PM

Speaking Of General Zod

At least one will be saved from the coming carbon apocalypse:

Al Gore--or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al--placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly.

"There is nothing left now but to ensure that my infant son does not meet the same fate as the rest of my doomed race," Gore said. "I will send him to a new planet, where he will, I hope, be raised by simple but kindly country folk and grow up to be a hero and protector to his adopted home."

Hope the poles aren't so warm there that he can't build an arctic fortress of pomposity.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:17 PM

Debut Of The Rocket Racer

Alan Boyle has the story of yesterday's demo in Oshkosh.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:48 AM

July 29, 2008
The People Of Berlin

...have spoken.

I particularly liked the Che comparison, and the hope that the messiah will make Americans less "superficial."

[Update a few minutes later]

Is Obama channelling General Zod?

I am General Zod! Listen to me, people of the Earth! Today I bring a New Order to your planet! One which shall last until the end of time!

Each of you... each man, each woman, each child - all will march proudly together in this New Order! Your lands, your homes, your possessions, your very lives... All of this and more you will gladly give to me!

There is no longer a need for separate nations in this world, no need for petty squabbles between one group and another. All of you will work together, strive, produce, and sacrifice together - and all for a common goal!

Michelle and Barack will make the humans of planet Earth work, and shed their cynicism.

Actually, Michelle can have my cynicism when she pries it from my cold, dead cynical typing fingers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:56 PM

LA Quake

A 5.8 in the Chino Hills. Hope our house in Redondo Beach is all right. I suspect it is--it's about forty miles away. I just hope it's not a foreshock of something bigger.

[Update a few minutes later]

Let me be the first to say that it's Bush's fault. Or some fault out there...

And I expect Al Gore to blame global warming any minute.

[Update at 3:35 PM EDT]

Now I'm hearing that it's been downgraded to a 5.4.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:05 PM

Whither ISS?

I have a new piece up over at Popular Mechanics on the future of the space station.

Also, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Space Act, creating NASA.

[2 PM Update]

Here's another rollout story at PM, with a lot of pics. It's the current front page of the on-line version, along with my ISS story.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:23 AM

The Era Of Carbon Craziness

Is it almost over? Let's hope so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:30 AM

Watch Where You're Going

Randall Parker, on the newest dangerous addiction:

The texters would be less dangerous to themselves and others if they didn't have to look down to see the screen. What is needed: Head Up Display Glasses tied to a cell phone. Then one could look ahead and see the text mixed in with sidewalk or whatever else is in front of you.

It's all part of a larger problem as we become a multi-tasking society.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AM

Potemkin Rocket Test

More on the "flight test" of Ares 1-X, which seems to be mostly for show. Though if it's as risky as indicated here, it may be a more spectacular performance than they count on.

Unfortunately, the same folks who think a flight dynamics test of a four segment SRB with a different propellant, old-style grain design, and inert (that is to say, non-sloshing and stiff) upper pieces is a good idea also thought they could grab a bunch of used equipment (Atlas avionics software, Peacekeeper hardware, etc.), chewing gum, and duct tape (perhaps FEMA is helping the minions) and use it to demonstrate how something "like" ARES-1X might get off the ground after "the gap" has widened to its furthest extent.

And, like all of the shortcuts the Emperor's minions have taken to date, this approach, too, is soon to come back and bite them. The list of critical components going into ARES-1X that are either beyond shelf life or being put to work in an environment for which they were not intended is astounding. And the risks that are being accepted, because of schedule and budget pressures, are equally marvelous.

Hey, it's OK. That's what waivers are for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 AM

SS2 Delay

Jeff Foust talked to Burt Rutan at yesterday's rollout.

Rutan confirmed that the investigation was causing "a lot" of design changes for SS2. "We have not worked on SpaceShipTwo in a year," he said, "because there's a possibility that the propulsion system would be markedly different and we'd be building things that we would have to scrap."

So they've essentially lost a year due to the accident. I wonder if they'll finally switch over to a liquid system? It would save them quite a bit in ops costs, I'd think.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here's more on the subject from Rob Coppinger, who interviewed Burt.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:33 AM

The Arabization Of Macedonia

A report from Michael Totten.

It's a shame that we can't wave a wand and make oil worthless. Perhaps the only other solution is to take it away from them. There's something wrong with a system that gives people so much wealth who have done absolutely nothing to earn it or create it, and use it to subvert the rest of the world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:08 AM

July 28, 2008
Paranoia

I agree that nukes aren't necessarily the best way to deal with asteroids, but the notion that NASA is promoting them in order to justify nuclear weapons in space is more than a little nutty.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:58 AM

Today, The WK2 Rollout

Tomorrow, the first demonstration of the rocket racer, in Oshkosh. There's a picture of the taxi test on the front page of the site, but it's not likely to be there for long.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:42 AM

The Surge That Should Worry Obama

The one within the Democrat Party:

...if the opposition to Obama reaches the match point and ignites, Obama could be embarrassed in Denver. After Clinton suspended her campaign, Obama thought he had a green light to run roughshod over her supporters. That has proven to be a mistaken view. Clinton supporters want to be heard in Denver. I was surprised a couple of weeks ago to see an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune demanding that Clinton's name be placed in nomination.

My guess is that a very strenuous effort is going to be made to place Clinton's name in nomination in Denver, forcing Obama into a roll-call vote.

I continue to think that people who believe that Hillary! has given up on the nomination are fooling themselves. I think that it's going to be a hot time in the old town of Denver.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:29 AM

Some Questions For Senator Obama

...that no reporter is likely to ask:

Does Obama believe equal treatment is inherently divisive? What benefits does Sen. Obama believe have been derived throughout history by allowing states to discriminate on the basis of race? Does he favor repeal of California's Prop. 209 and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AM

It's OK To Laugh At Obama

So writes Byron York:

Television comedy writers fretted that audiences didn't want to hear anything even slightly negative about the Democratic nominee. The political press corps went nuts over a satirical New Yorker cover that wasn't even directed at Obama.

And this was about a man who made up his own pretend presidential seal and motto, Vero Possumus; a man who, upon securing the Democratic nomination, said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"; a man who has on a number of occasions seemed to forget that he is not, or at least not yet, the President of the United States, who has misstated the number of states in his own country, who has forgotten on which committees he serves in the U.S. Senate. Professional comedians -- and their audiences -- couldn't find anything funny about any of that?

The fact that the press corps doesn't seem to be able to recognize Senator Obama for the pompous buffoon that he is, is the biggest indicator how deep in the tank they are for him.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:33 AM

The Unveiling

White Knight Two will be rolled out for the general public today in Mojave. Scaled Employees had a private rollout yesterday.

[Late morning update]

Clark Lindsey has the Virgin press release.

I don't understand why they say that this is environmentally friendly. Compared to what? If they're still going with the hybrid, it presumably burns rubber, and has CO₂ as a combustion by-product. What's so friendly about that, compared to, say, LOX/kerosene? Just marketing hype, I guess.

[Update mid afternoon]

Clark Lindsey has a lot more links.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 AM

Smart Robotic Space Explorers

This is the future of space exploration. Which is why we have to stop talking about "exploration" as a justification for humans in space.

[Update in the evening]

Commenter Paul Dietz recommends >Saturn's Children as a relevant book on the subject. If it's like most of Stross' work, it's hard to go wrong.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:08 AM

July 27, 2008
Slow Weekend

Yesterday morning, a dump truck lived up to its name and deposited dozens of bags of mulch (malaleuca--I know you were dying to know), top soil, potting soil and sod in the yard, in a large high-entropy pile. We are still dealing with the aftermath of this event (which was not only planned, but cost us a few hundred bucks). Also, I'm working on a piece for Popular Mechanics on the fate of ISS after Shuttle.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:23 PM

Compound Interest

Some interesting thoughts on the insane notion of banning it to save the planet. Also, comments about law students' economic literacy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:08 AM

July 25, 2008
Was Barbie Wrong?

Girls have caught up with boys at math.

Does this vindicate all of the mature, liberated women who had to hie to their fainting couches at Larry Summers' comments a few years ago?

Not really. He never said that boys were better, on average, than girls. His comment was that there was a much higher standard deviation for boys, which was why there were more brilliant mathematicians among them (it also means that there are more innumerates among them). This was posited as a possible explanation for the disparity in math PhDs and faculty between men and women, a conservative proposition for which he was hounded from the presidency of Harvard (though it was really just the last straw, and excuse).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:17 PM

Israeli Thoughts On The Messiah Visit

From Carolyn Glick:

I generally try to stay as far away as I possibly can from people who say they can make oceans recede. Our paths didn't cross. In fact, I managed to be out of the country on Wednesday.

...Obama acts like a European leader in his treatment of Israel. On the one hand, he professes this profound respect for Israel and the Jews, and goes on and on about how our security is important to him. On the other hand, he espouses policies that undermine Israeli security and threaten its survival, and demands that the Jewish state become the only state that turns its other cheek towards our enemies as they try to kill us. This is the same sort of message that we hear from all Europeans leaders. And it is tiresome and insulting.

Beyond that, Obama is in a unique situation because of the adulation he enjoys from the U.S. and Western media. The media is willing to ignore all of the substantive contradictions inherent in his policy pronouncements and to base their support for him on a quasi-religious faith. I don't remember this ever happening before in an American election -- at least not to the same extent. It is an interesting sociological phenomenon that is worthy of academic research. On a political level, it makes debate very difficult since Obama is treated more as a symbol than a politician. And it is hard to debate a symbol.

How long before this bubble pops? Robert Bidinotto thinks it may have already started.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:53 PM

Comments Hygiene

I've banned a moronic anonymous commenter that seems to have nothing of value to contribute, and is so illiterate that it can't even manage to spell my last name right. Just in case anyone was wondering. I grow less tolerant of such juvenile nonsense as time goes on. If the creature persists somehow, I'll just delete the posts as well (probably should anyway).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:20 AM

The Runaway Ego Of Barack Obama

The presidency as therapy?

That was a big problem with Bill Clinton.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:24 AM

The Fat Fight Continues

John Tierney has the latest:

What we have to keep in mind here is that nutrition is a science (or at least should be) and science is about generating hypotheses, making predictions from our hypotheses, and then seeing if they hold true. The relevant hypothesis here -- i.e., what we've believed for the past 30-odd years -- is that saturated fat causes heart disease by elevating either total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol, specifically. So our prediction is that the diet with the higher saturated fat content will have a relatively deleterious effect on cholesterol. We do the test; we repeat it a half dozen times in different populations. Each time it fails to confirm our prediction. So maybe the hypothesis is wrong. That seems like a reasonable conclusion. No one is proving anything here -- as some of your respondents like to decry -- we're just looking at the evidence and trying to decide which hypotheses it supports and which it tends to refute.

...These latest trials just happen to be the best data we have on the long-term effects of saturated fat in the diet, and the best data we have says that more saturated fat is better than less. It may be true that if we lowered saturated fat further -- say to 7 % of all calories as the American Heart Association is now recommending -- or total fat down to 10 percent, as Dean Ornish argues, or raised saturated fat to 20 percent of calories, as Keys did, that we'd see a different result, but that's just another hypothesis. The trials haven't been done to test it. It's also hard to imagine why a small decrease in saturated fat would be deleterious, but a larger decrease would be beneficial.

I think that what the nutrition industry and the FDA have done over the past decades with their pseudoscience war on dietary fat borders on the criminal. I'm pretty much convinced at this point that the biggest culprit in both our health and weight is starch and refined sugars, and that the FDA "food pyramid" has been, and remains (despite recent improvements) quackery, not science.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AM

He Brought Light Unto The World

Gerard Baker finally sees the light himself:

As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And the polar bears rejoiced.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:39 AM

Unmitigated Risks

Ares 1 marches (or staggers) on:

Thrust Oscillation is specifically named in relation to end of the first stage burn of Ares I-X, which requires mitigation - proposed to be in the form of high strength fasteners.

"Preliminary results show lower axial loads and higher lateral loads during thrust oscillation at the end of the FS (First Stage) burn (T+120sec). Proposed mitigation (high strength fasteners in impacted hardware) in work, needs to be presented at ERB (Engineering Review Board).

Afraid it will shake apart? Use bigger screws!

I love this, too.

While beefing up the structure is a mitigation for the hardware, Ares I-X's components are also in the TO firing line, with the most concerning element referencing the Flight Termination System (FTS) - which may require a range waiver due to the potential TO could exceed the components certification, and the threat of vibrating them out of action.

"Requirement - Range Safety: multiple waivers. Lack of dual S&A device. Lack of initiation of LSC at both ends. Lack of "CRD Self-test" capability. Minimum separation of FTS components," added the presentation.

We may massage the thing so hard that we won't be able to blow up the vehicle if something goes wrong (e.g., it starts blasting toward the VAB). Can we have a waiver, please?

NASA's unending ability to waive itself from its own requirements is one of the reasons that the notion of "human rating" is nonsensical.

[Early evening update]

Link to NASA Space Flight was bad before. It's fixed now. I'm kind of surprised that it took all day for someone to point it out. Just more evidence that most people don't follow the links, at least if I post significant excerpts and/or commentary on them.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Rob Coppinger has Ares 1, then and now. That upper stage has really grown. I also hadn't realized that it had a common bulkhead for the tanks. Well, at least it's not hypergolic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:09 AM

Sad Anniversary

Clark notes that tomorrow will be a time of remembrance in Mojave.

And one year later, they still don't seem to know for sure what happened. And we haven't heard what's going on with SpaceShipTwo propulsion development, though it won't fly before late next year (at least two years behind the original schedule, with some of that slippage no doubt due to last year's incident).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:00 AM

Thank Gore

Heh:

...thank Gore that the ice is melting just as we need the oil. It's like divine Providence at work.

This from someone who worked on his 1988 presidential campaign.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:44 AM

We Are The World

Lileks reviews Obama's empty speechifying in Berlin. It's not a pretty sight:

He also called for an end to nuclear weapons. (This was also Reagan's dream, but he had a different way of going about it.) Of course, this isn't going to happen, but it sounds nice. Who wouldn't want a world in which everyone decommissions the nukes, and Iran says "wait, what? We thought these were cool. Well, then, we'll give them up. Geez, next thing you'll tell us, Izod shirts with popped collars are out." We will never poke the Genie back in the bottle, and Obama knows this. But the words loft well on the breath of the assembled. The problem, however, is that he didn't just set forth ideas humanity would be wise to make manifest - he made them moral imperatives that must be done now, because the THIS IS THE MOMENT, and NOW IS THE MOMENT THAT THIS IS, and the moment to come in a few moments is also the moment, but it's a few moments past the previous moment, which was also now. THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Darfur. Fine. What? THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Burmese dissidents. Fine. What?

Nothing will be done about either; they are, unfortunately, matters inconsequential to the general order of things. This is not to say that they are not obscene, or horrific, or more evidence of human perfidy both general and specific, but just as the world summed the strength to turn away from Rwanda and Cambodia, it will manage to struggle with the daunting task of doing nothing about Darfur or Burma. The drone of a jet engine outside your window, bearing you to another international conference, does an admirable job of masking the sound of a machete striking bone down below.

As always, read the whole thing.

[Update a while later]

I have to also say that the unexplained image of the Magritte painting in response to the Obama campaign claim that the campaign speech was not a campaign speech was brilliant. One of the things that's great about Lileks is that he respects his readers' intelligence.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 AM

July 24, 2008
Manning Submarines

...with women.

Somehow, it reminds me of this classic Martin Mull (and Steve Martin) sea shanty.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:45 PM

Fact Checking Al Gore

It's a busy job, but someone has to do it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:08 PM

Not This Again

The "rocks have rights" crowd are worried again about vandalizing space:

Edward O Wilson has suggested that biophilia, our appreciation of Earth's biosphere, is a by-product of evolving in this environment. If he's right, we might find we don't care about other worlds in the same way. This raises the alarming prospect of rapacious lunar mining altering the view from Earth.

Maybe our biophilia will kick in here: after all, our view of the Moon is one of Earth's natural vistas. Surely we can agree that we don't want that changed? It is an awesome thing to look up and remember that human footprints once marked the Moon's surface. It's quite another to imagine the moon looking like an abandoned quarry.

No, we can't agree. Note that this was in the context of a discussion on "eco issues" on the moon.

Here's the "eco issue" on the moon (and in the rest of the universe, as far as we know right now). There is no "eco" there. There is also no "bio" for our "biophilia" to kick in about. Ecology and biology are about life, something that exists only on earth. It's one thing to want to preserve an ecosystem, but when one simply wants to preserve the entire universe in its current "pristine" state, there's something unsettling and misanthropic going on.

Why is it all right for a meteroid to slam into the lunar surface and leave a crater (which has happened billions of times throughout history, and continues today) which is how the moon got to look the way it is, but a pit for mining is verboten? Would he object to seeing the lights of a lunar city up there? Does he have any idea how far away it is and how much mining one would have to do to see it from earth, even with a telescope?

What is this worship of entropy? What is this loathing of humanity? What is this apparent loathing of life itself?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:47 AM

Double Speak

Jim Lindgren on compulsory volunteerism. This is the kind of thing that we're in for in an Obama administration. It's the new New Deal. As some commenters note, I wonder if we get to wear arm bands.

[Mid-morning update]

Princess Obama?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AM

July 23, 2008
Is Obama A Fibber?

Or does he just not know what committees he's on? And not on?

And which is worse? Not to mention his inability to keep his story straight about Jerusalem.

Get the man a teleprompter, quick!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:27 PM

We're Still Alive, Somehow

So far. Ron Bailey wraps up the end-of-the-world conference. I hadn't previously heard the Yeltsin nuclear football story. It makes one wonder how many other close calls we've had.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:42 PM

Test Post

I've been having trouble with MT getting it to publish a post. I want to see if this will force it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:30 AM

Can Women Be Explorers?

Of course they can, despite this misreading of my exploration piece on Monday. History is replete with them, though there are far fewer of them than men (more now, with more opportunities for them). For instance, the "mountain men" who explored much of the west were, pretty much to a...man, men.

I recently received an email from someone who made an analogy between what I wrote and saying that a "white" boy could be an explorer as long as the school system didn't "blacken" him. I find the analogy completely spurious. Briefly, race is not gender.

This was my point, and one that will no doubt set off a crowd of angry blank slaters who think that gender is purely a social construct charging up the hill to my mansion with pitchforks and torches.

There are such things as masculine and feminine traits. All people have some of both--they are androgynous to one degree or another. We define the two by noting that most men are (by definition) more masculine, and most women are more feminine, and viva la difference. So things that most men do, and few women do, are called masculine, and vice versa for feminine (and of course there is a wide range of things that are neither). When men cook, garden, sew, etc., (as I do, though I don't sew much) they are indulging in their feminine side, and when women explore, go shooting, chainsaw trees, drive Indy cars (among other things) they are being sort of manly. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with either doing either. There's plenty of femininity to Danica Patrick, from what I can see.

There are a number of evolutionary psychological reasons to think that an urge for exploration is more of a male trait, and the Economist piece gives one more. If such an urge is an attention-deficit issue, it's indisputable that (at least as it's currently diagnosed) the preponderance of occurrence of it is in boys. At least, it is they who are being medicated the most for it in the schools. There may be some girls who are being similarly abused who would also be good explorers, but girls can be good explorers even when they act like girls in the classroom, because it's a lot easier for them to act like girls in the classroom (even if they have some male characteristics) because they are, well...girls. They still learn, but aren't having their exploratory urges browbeaten out of them. So to the degree that we are inhibiting budding explorers with a misguided educational system which defines good behavior as feminized behavior, the boys are taking the brunt of it. I could have, when referring to the future Neil Armstrong, said "her," instead of "him," but it would have seemed a little strained in political correctness, not because Neil was a man, but because not that many girls are being diagnosed ADHD and getting Ritalin.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:49 AM

Obamamania

Victor Davis Hanson:

The distinction again is that Obama appeals to the gullible and puerile as a sort of James Dean candidate. And thus he is not to be cross-examined, but instead free to shun interviews and clarifications, and prone to avoid reporters who might be less than adulatory -- the normal stuff that so irritates the supposedly sensitive press that has now gone brain-dead.

What is fascinating about the tingly-leg press is that they are exhibiting the very symptoms of arrested development and star-struck immaturity that they always accuse America in toto of suffering. The usual critique of the elite media is that we are a nation of mindless followers, who go from one fad to another, and value looks, youth, and pizzazz over substance.

But the current spectacle suggests something worse -- that the press who claims they know better and are more sophisticated are, in fact, far more infantile than most Americans, and essentially Access Hollywood, People Magazine, and the National Enquirer dressed up with network logos and NY-DC bylines.

I think that's been clear since Katie Couric was given the anchor at the CBS Evening News.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:27 AM

Somebody Had To Do It

Charlie Rangel has filed an ethics complaint against himself.

Will he lead the investigation, as well?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AM

An Interesting New Technology

Paper transistors.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

The Cause Of The Ares 1 Problem

Well, actually there are multiple causes, but this is one of them. The launch escape system is very heavy. And it's heavier than it needs to be because of the inherent inefficiency of the engines resulting from the cant outward (necessary to avoid blasting the capsule with the exhaust). Note that each opposed pair are fighting each other with the horizontal components of their thrust, contributing nothing whatsoever to the mission. This is called a cosine loss because the effective amount of vertical thrust is the total thrust times the cosine of the angle they're canted at. Since the lost thrust is the sine of the angle, you need more thrust overall (and hence a heavier engine) to compensate, making a bad problem worse.

People have considered putting the escape motor underneath the capsule for this reason (I think that Mike Griffin even drew a napkin sketch of it--we looked at it in OSP as well), but that complicates jettisoning, since it goes between the capsule and the service module. That would mean that you'd have to carry it all the way to orbit on each mission, and then separate, jettison, and redock with the SM, which carries performance and safety risks in itself. Or if it goes under the service module, then the motor has to be a lot bigger, and then you have to do a CM/SM separation after motor burnout but before rotation for entry. So they stuck with the Apollo tractor configuration, in which the capsule is pulled away in an abort.

The other solution, which would give them a ton (actually, literally tons) of margin would be to get rid of the damned thing. It's only there as a backup in case something goes wrong with the launch vehicle, and then only if specific things go wrong (for instance, a loss of thrust wouldn't require it). The weight and design is driven by the extreme case in which the upper stage is exploding beneath you and you have to try to outrun the flying debris. This is an extremely unlikely failure mode, but politically, they have to have the system there, because no one wants to take the chance that they'll have to testify before Congress that they killed astronauts because they didn't have it. With it, the estimate is a one in five hundred chance of losing a crew. Without it, it's much higher (though there are no doubt many astronauts who would accept the risk regardless, since they're already doing so now on the Shuttle).

Also, as Jon Goff has pointed out in the past, they're putting a lot of effort into safety during ascent, when this is actually one of the lesser hazards of a total lunar mission.

But that's the way that politics drives a government space program, and why it is so horrifically expensive.

[Update a while later]

It just occurs to me that the other case where you need it is an on-pad, or shortly-after-liftoff abort, when there is insufficient altitude for safe chute deployment.

But the thing to keep in mind is that it made a lot more sense in Apollo, because in the early sixties, "our rockets always blew up." The technology is much more mature now, and the failure modes for which it would be needed are much less likely, even in an expendable.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 AM

The New Blacklist

Maybe in an Obama administration, the House will set up a Pro-American Activity Committee, and properly investigate these subversives out in Hollywood:

David Horowitz, another Hollywood conservative and founder of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture, said the group is serving a good purpose but he worries its members won't be aggressive enough.

"There's a kind of ... intellectual terror in this town. People are terrorized; they're afraid to say what they think. So what Gary is doing to provide aid and comfort to its victims is admirable, and I applaud him for it," he said. "But my concern is it's not going to be much more than that."

They told me that if George Bush was elected, that brave artists would live in fear of losing their livelihoods for their freedom of expression. They were right!

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the National Rifle Association?"

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AM

Rocket Racing Meets Fashion

Over at Alan Boyle's place. I think that this is a very encouraging development.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:41 AM

The Stupidest Ruling In History

This probably isn't it, but in the immortal words of Marlon Brando, it has to be "a contendah." Particularly at the level of the court from which it was excreted. Of course, the real problem is the ADA, which opened the doors to such nonsense.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:25 AM

Filet Of Keillor

Lileks practices his fine art on his fellow Minnesota scribe, once again:

",,,I want to see my man excited by the prospect of victory and not shrink from it as so many Democrats do. They've read too many books about heroic dissenters and it makes them nervous about being in too big a crowd."

I have no idea what he's talking about. Seriously. Perhaps in Pasedena there's some alternate-universe Barnes and Noble where the shelves are stacked high with books praising the administration and shouting the myriad & infinite glories of America the Perfect, but I was at B&L today and there was a table six feet long heaped with books about how we're screwed and broke and lied to and misled and all the other merry sentiments that abound in the land these days. I don't think any of the authors are worried about selling too many books, and ending up in too big a crowd. If he's saying that the Modern Brave Soul automatically questions his principles if they're accepted by the masses - the loutish, stupid, cat-strangling masses - then he seems to have missed that portion of the internet that practices Heroic Dissent on a daily basis. Or maybe he spends all day reading the Daily Kos and wonders why these people are so timid and gunshy.

Let's keep going with that crowd idea:

"The huge crowds that Barack draws are stunned by the fact that someone like him, with that interesting name, is - hang on now - a mainstream candidate for President of the United States, and that he is, on close examination, One of Us."

That's the line that pinged out at me, and made me file away the column for future fiskery. One of us. Never mind the gabba-gabba-hey connotations, or the "mainstream" line - I'd love to hear a Woebegon ep in which Rev. Wright brings his race-based rhetoric to a small Lutheran church. ("Think twice about who you put your arm around, Senator McCain," the Scout cautioned in another column, back in the olden times when associations were relevant..) No, by "one of us" Keillor, I suspect, means the "us" of the smart set, the people who read the New Yorker even if one out 52 covers offends, the people who went to college for real instead of floating by with frat-boy grins, the people who protested the war instead of fighting it, the people who grapple, you know, with issues, seriously, and express a certain soulful anguish at the complexity of it all, and file away the details about zoning disputes with neighbors to be worked into a novel six years hence, when the whole incident has ripened into a metaphor.

Lots more where that came from.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:18 AM

July 22, 2008
On The Radio

Sorry for the short notice, but I'd forgotten myself. I and my partner in crime in our July 20th space ceremony will be on the radio in half an hour, at The Space Show.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:37 PM

Just A Rant

And probably a futile one, and one that I've even probably kvetched about before. But when did top posting become the norm for email? Was it Microsoft and AOL's fault?

And is there anything that can be done at this point? In many extended discussions, I feel like I'm driving on the wrong side of the road in my own country.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:14 PM

Rolling My Eyes

...at Keith's brief "review" of my exploration piece:

The author of this article makes some odd, borderline misogynist, and mostly unsupportable claims (mixed with some valid points) as he rambles along trying to explain why people do or not explore. "Empirically obvious"? - Where's the data to support this?

Where the support for the claim that it is "misogynist," "borderline" or otherwise? Is he claiming that Cristina Hoff Sommers is misogynist?

What is "odd" about my claims?

And as for the data to support my claim, I provided it in the piece. Things for which there is an "innate human urge" are done by most, if not all humans. Most people don't explore.

[Update a few minutes later]

One of the commenters over there gets it:

I didn't see anything misogynist in Simberg's piece - he's just pointing out a potential cost of browbeating and drugging boys into behaving more like girls in school.

Exactly. If my piece was (mis)interpreted to imply that women cannot or should not be explorers, that's absurd, and I would hope obviously so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:54 PM

The Living Constitution

Is Barack Obama too young to be president?

Sure seems that way to me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:44 AM

The New Area 51

Here's a nice piece on Mojave at Popular Mechanics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:33 AM

Good News On The Life Extension Front

From Instapundit.

I think that this stuff is going to sneak up on us, and the political establishment is going to not have any idea how to respond to it. But it will be a disaster for social security in its current form, as well as pension plans, though a boon for those of us who have never counted on it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:10 AM

An Alternate History

...for Senator Obama.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AM

The Problem With Ares

Henry Spencer (whose wisdom is finally becoming available on the web, apparently) explains:

An experienced designer with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept, that a shuttle SRB was simply too small as a first stage for a rocket carrying the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft. There were several ways to handle the situation, but in my opinion the best was to just forget about Ares I entirely: build Ares V, or something like it, right away and use it for all the launches.

With a big launcher, there would be plenty of margin for weight overruns in development. Using the big launcher for Earth-orbit missions would obviously permit much heavier payloads there. Moreover, the lunar missions would get greater margins too, because they'd be done with two big launches rather than a big one and a little one, so they could weigh almost twice as much.

There is also an important pragmatic issue: the biggest threat to NASA's return to the Moon is the possibility that Congress will delay or cancel development funding for Ares V. Doing Ares V right away, and using it for the Earth-orbit missions as well as the ones to the Moon, would have ensured that this crucial element of NASA's plans actually gets built.

Of course, better yet would have been a focus on in-space infrastructure, drawing on ISS assembly experience, to allow us to use existing launchers. That would have also freed up money for earlier development of injection stages and landers, and made lunar missions much more of a fait accompli by now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:48 AM

July 21, 2008
Baseball History In The Making?

Assuming that this is correct, the biggest shut out in history is 22-0. Detroit is currently leading the Royals 18-0 in the top of the eighth, with men on second and third, and two out.

[Update a couple minutes later]

They got one more run to end the inning. Going into the bottom of the eighth, it's 19-0. They scored ten runs in that inning. Three more in the ninth ties the record, and four breaks it. It could happen. Their bats seem pretty hot tonight, and Kansas City is deep into its bullpen. The Tigers just brought in Dolsi to preserve the shut out.

[Update a couple minutes later]

They blew it by relieving Miner. Dolsi let in a run on a wild pitch.

Dang.

[One more update]

Wow, they really blew it. The Royals got four runs in the bottom of the eighth off Dolsi and Lopez. Of course, once they lost the shut out, it didn't really matter. But people are going to be asking for a long time why Leland relieved out a pitcher who was pitching a three-hit shut out, with one who had an equivalent ERA.

[Update on Tuesday morning]

I guess I'd misread the box score. Miner had been replaced the inning before, before it looked like there was a history-making shut out to preserve.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:17 PM

Polar Bears

...are delicious.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

And Get It Right This Time

The New York Times sends John McCain's op ed back for a rewrite.

Words fail.

Can we call them biased yet?

And just what does he means when he'd like to see McCain's piece "mirror" Obama? Does he mean that as in a reverse counterpoint? Or does he mean (as in servers) an exact copy?

Thoughts from Rick Moran, as the Times continues, unwittingly, to write its own obituary.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:09 PM

Nuclear Phobia

Time to end it. It's a technology we need in space, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:48 AM

I Feel Much Safer Now

If true, this has to be a Secret Service nightmare:

According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas...

Hey, maybe Obama could also get Khaddafi's female ninja bodyguards to help out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:31 AM

Man Versus Nature

A few horrifyingly hilarious tales. Don't miss the exploding whales.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:51 AM

Lust Is Blind

Is anyone surprised by this?

Research involving a group of male students found that their levels of the hormone testosterone increased to the same extent whether they were talking to a young woman they found attractive - or to one they didn't fancy much at all.

After 300 seconds alone in the same room as a woman they had never met before, and in some cases did not find particularly attractive, the men's testosterone levels of the hormone had shot up by an average of around eight per cent.

It reminds me of the wisdom of Billy Crystal's character, Harry:

Sally: You're saying I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I'm saying is they all want to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive.
Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail them, too.

Science imitates art.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AM

"Research, Not Mitigation"

This (to me) amazing report on the status of the thrust-oscillation problem just has me shaking my head. If accurate, they don't even understand enough about it yet to know which weight-increasing kludge may mitigate it, and by how much. And the vaunted Ares 1-X "test" next year won't provide them with the information they need:

I see no discussion of the new failure modes that could be introduced by the addition of these systems, or their effects on first-stage reliability (which was supposedly the big feature of this approach). For example, if the active system has a failure (and I suspect that a failure of just one of the engines would be a failure, due to asymmetries), the vehicle will get shaken apart. It seems to be single point (unless they can still reach the oscillation-reduction goal with single engine out).

And now they're going to put shock absorbers into the couches to further isolate the crew, which implies that the Orion itself is going to sustain a lot more rockin' and rollin' than the current requirement stipulates. Which in turn implies a heavier vehicle to handle the accelerations and stress.

No one will consider the possibility, apparently, that this is an unclosable design, though such things happen in real life, once one gets outside of Powerpoint world.

With the July status of the engineering efforts showing the issue to be an across the board high "RED" risk to Ares I's development, the mitigation process is likely to continue until at least the end of the decade.

So months more, and billions more, without knowing whether or not the road they're on is a dead end.

[Update a few minutes later]

More depressing news (again, assuming accuracy) here.

[Another update]

The Chinese seem to be having problems, too:

China's English language state owned television channel CCTV9 has revealed the fact that on its past two manned missons the astronauts have experienced physical discomfort from the vibration of the rocket on its ascent

The tv news segment goes on to report that the rocket's chief designer says that changes to the "frequencies" of the engines and the "electrical circuits" have been made to try to eliminate this vibration problem.

Whatever that means. I wonder if it's POGO? And just how much "physical discomfort" was there? Not enough to end the missions, or the crews, apparently.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:32 AM

Fraud Detection

The (modern) difference between science and the humanities.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:25 AM

Do We Have An Urge To Explore?

I explore the proposition, over at The Space Review today. Also, editor Jeff Foust has a good writeup on a recent panel discussion on the prospects for government and private spaceflight.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:58 AM

The Age-Old Debate Continues

Was Gotham City New York, or Chicago?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:43 AM

July 20, 2008
"'The Godfather' Of Superhero Movies"

That's the briefest review of the new Batman flick that I've seen.

I'll probably wait untll the DVD. I'm not that big a fan of dark movies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:13 PM

"Snarkyboy" Persists

In a follow-up to the original Orion worship post:

The Saturn V, the biggest thing we've ever launched (just go with me here) weighed in at 6,699,000 lbs, or 3,350 tons, and managed to put a measly 100,000 lbs (50 tons) into lunar orbit.
So lets pretend we want to build a classic L5 space colony. How big does it have to be?

Sorry, but we're not going to "go with you there."

This is an inappropriate methodology, and the assumptions here are completely nonsensical. The problem has nothing to do with scaling Saturn Vs, and no one in their right mind ever thought that a "classic L5 space colony" would be built completely out of materials launched from the planet.

There is no good reason that we can't have launch costs of less than a hundred dollars a pound with chemical rockets, and give rides to millions of pounds of passengers and cargo. All that is needed is to make the investment into space transports, and set multiple teams of engineers loose on the problem, something that we have not done to date.

The cargo would be used to bootstrap production facilities for extraterrestrial resources, with high-value/pound payloads (i.e., electronics) coming up from earth. We do not need Orion to build space colonies. We need a lot of other things, but not that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:48 PM

Now That's Intelligence

Did the Mossad help free the Columbian hostages?

Vanguardia's Tel Aviv correspondent said the Mossad operation consisted of two agents unknown to each other separately infiltrating FARC.
The pair managed to penetrate the Marxist guerrilla group so effectively that they ultimately controlled what FARC did or didn't know, the Catalan newspaper said.

All the more reason, of course, for the left to hate the "Zionists."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:33 PM

I'll Try To Restrain Myself

The FDA says to not eat lobster guts:

Health officials for years have advised against eating the tomalley, the lobster liver some regard as a delicacy. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated its advisory Friday, however, after some lobster livers tested positive for high levels of toxins caused by large blooms of red tide algae.

No problemo for me. I'll stick with the meat, as I always have.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:44 AM

Ich Bin Ein Dummkopf

Obama's three hundred foreign policy advisors apparently weren't enough. His new choice of location for his German sermon from the mount, to win over valuable electoral votes of the German people, seems to have backfired as badly as the attempt to emulate Kennedy and Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate:

Andreas Schockenhoff, deputy leader of the conservative bloc in Parliament, said Sunday that the choice of the Victory Column, also known as the Golden Angel, was an "unhappy symbol" since it represented so much of Germany's militaristic past.

Rainer Brüderle, deputy leader of the opposition Free Democrats, said Obama's advisers had little idea of the historical significance of the Victory Column. "It was the symbol of German superiority over Denmark, Austria and France," Brüderle told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

The monument was built in 1864 to commemorate Prussia's victory over Denmark. When it was inaugurated, Prussia had defeated Austria during the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

The column has been originally located near the Reichstag, now the Bundestag, or German Parliament, which is close to the Brandenburg Gate. But Adolf Hitler relocated it about two kilometers, or one mile, toward the western part of the city to the Grosser Stern, or Great Star.

Too bad Leni Riefenstahl isn't around any more to film the event for him. Then later, he could reenact his grandfather's liberation of Auschwitz.

Maybe if he gets a couple hundred more advisors, he can find one with a clue. I've never seen anyone have so much trouble getting good help. It must be tough being a messiah.

I do have to say, though, that watching this kind of thing for four years would be entertaining. I just wish that he wouldn't be in charge of anything important during the show.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:28 AM

An Effective Alzheimers Treatment?

Let's hope so. Alzheimers is, to me, one of the worst diseases, because it steals not just your body, but your mind, to the point that you're essentially dead while the empty husk metabolizes on. If it's actually possible to reverse the progress of the disease, that's huge news. But I wonder if in doing so, you've still lost some irretrievable memories? And if so, who are you?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:15 AM

Hello, Dolly

We've had four named storms already, and it's not August yet (and a good chance for one or two more before it is). That may mean a busy season. I just hope that southeast Florida isn't in the bore sights. We've gotten off easy the last two years.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AM

Space Elevators

Alan Boyle has a report from this weekend's conference on them. It's unfortunate that it conflicted with NewSpace 2008, in the other Washington. But there are only so many weekends in a year.

[Update a few minutes later]

Alan's report is great, but there sure is an appalling level of ignorance in the comments.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:30 AM

Brandenburggate

Some thoughts from a German on Obama's grandiosity:

...apart from questions of sensitivity and protocol, the proposal was also politically short-sighted. A German government cannot and will not intervene in foreign power struggles. It is simply a matter of political common sense for democratic countries to refrain from getting involved in the elections of other countries. This is a matter of respect, but also of calculated self-interest. Since you never know who will win, it is more advisable to stay neutral. As consequence, the German government cannot show preference to Obama: whatever Obama is permitted, McCain must also be permitted. Even before becoming American President, Obama has thus managed to embarrass one of his most important allies. Hardly an intelligent move. But he evidently does not think in terms of the long-term categories of real politics, but rather in terms of the short-term effects of political spectacle.

Yup. It's very hard to take him seriously.

He's not a "lighworker." He's a lightweight.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 AM

If We Can Put A Man On The Moon...

...why can't we kick the fossil fuel habit? Well, we can, but not the way we put a man on the moon, and certainly not within a decade. On the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first landing, I explain.

[Afternoon update]

It's interesting to note that the original landing was on a Sunday as well. I don't know how many of the anniversaries have fallen on a Sunday, but I would guess five or so. It's not too late to plan to commemorate the event with a ceremony at dinner tonight, with friends and family. Also, a collection of remembrances here. If you're old enough to remember it yourself, you might want to add one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:38 AM

Has The Oil Bubble Burst?

Maybe. These were clearly unsustainable prices--the only question was how long it would take them to drop. And what do you know? The market works:

Gas may be getting just a bit cheaper, but major changes in how Americans live and drive are already in motion.

Car buyers have been fleeing to more fuel-efficient models. U.S. sales of pickups and sport utility vehicles are down nearly 18 percent this year through June, while sales of small cars are up more than 10 percent.

While slashing production of more-profitable trucks and SUVs, automakers have been scurrying to build their most fuel-efficient models faster.

Toyota Motor Corp., which hasn't been able to keep up with demand for its 46-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, said last week it will start producing the Prius in the U.S. and suspend truck and SUV production to meet changing consumer demands.

Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. also have announced plans to increase small car production, and GM has said 18 of the 19 vehicles it is launching between now and 2010 are cars or crossovers.

And what do you know, they didn't do it because their intellectual superiors in Congress passed a law making them. They did it because gas was four bucks a gallon. Maybe people aren't the stupid sheep that technocrats think they are.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 AM

It Came From Outer Space

Ron Bailey has more from the end-of-the-world conference, on the risks of asteroids, comets, and gamma-ray bursters. As he notes, comets are the biggest problem, because we might not see them until it's too late. That's why we have to have an infrastructure in space that can rapidly respond.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:14 AM

July 19, 2008
NewSpace 2008 Wrap Up

Clark Lindsey is leaving the conference before the end, but he has a lot more summaries of the sessions, many of which looked quite interesting. As before, just keep scrolling. I assume that some time next week, he'll pull together the individual posts on a single page with permalinks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:03 PM

Netroots And Space

Chris Bowers: on why "progressives" should support space programs. There's a lot of typical mythology in the comments section about NASA and the military, and spin-off. We would have had PCs without Apollo, honest. We needed microchips for the missiles, which was at least as big a driver.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:04 PM

The APS Plot Thickens

The heretic Lord Monckton has a request today of the president of the American Physical Society:

The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC's viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur's findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council's decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and, tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?

It will be interesting to see the response.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:40 AM

Constructing Sovereignty

...on the high seas. Though he doesn't discuss it explicitly, Chris Borgen makes another case for why we need to get off the planet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:35 AM

Panacea

One of the more annoying things that I find in commentary on space policy is the assumption that there is One True Way to get off the planet, and that working on anything else (particularly chemical rockets) is a waste of time and money. Often it's space elevators, but here's another case in point: an Orion fan (the original Orion, not the current Apollo crew module on steroids):

Nuclear power is still the only thing that's going to allow us to get large amounts of mass into Earth orbit and beyond. Nothing else has enough specific impulse to do the job.

While nuclear-pulse propulsion may be an interesting technology for in-space transportation, where the radiation level is pretty high to start with, it was never going to be used for earth-to-orbit transportation. One does not have to be a luddite to believe this. I'm all in favor of getting access to orbit as low cost as possible, as soon as possible, but I think that the notion of using Orion for this is nuts (and not just for the radiation and atmospheric contamination issues--consider the EMP...). I highly respect Professor Dyson and Jerry Pournelle as well, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some major technical issues in getting such a system practical and operational. If such a system is ever built and tested, it will be built and tested in space, after we've come up with other ways of getting large amounts of mass into orbit, affordably. And I'm quite confident that if and when we do this, it will (at least initially) be with chemical rockets.

Part of the misunderstanding is revealed in the second sentence. The assumption is made that the reason costs of getting into space are high is due to performance, and particularly a specific performance parameter--specific impulse. For those unaware, this is basically a measure of a rocket's fuel economy. The higher the I_sp, the less propellant is required to provide a given amount of thrust over a given time period.

But there is no equation in vehicle design or operations that correlates cost with I_sp. If I_sp were the problem, one would expect propellant costs to be a high percentage of launch costs. But they're not. Typically, propellant costs are on the order of a percent of the total launch costs. Yes, requiring fewer pounds of propellant means that the vehicle can be smaller, which reduces manufacturing and operations costs, but it still doesn't account for the high costs.

Chemical rockets are perfectly adequate for affordable launch--their specific impulse is not a problem. As an example of why there's a lot more to rocket science than I_sp, consider that some of the more promising concepts (LOX/hydrocarbon) actually have lower specific impulse than so-called "high performance" propellants (LOX/LH₂). Why? Because liquid hydrogen is so fluffy (the opposite of "dense") that the tank sizes get large, increasing vehicle dry mass and atmospheric drag. For instance, the Shuttle external tank carries six pounds of LOX for each pound of hydrogen, but the LOX is all carried in a little tank at the top, and most of the ET that you see contains liquid hydrogen.

As I've noted many times before, there are two key elements to affordable launch using chemical rockets. Fly a lot, and don't throw the vehicle away. Despite the mythology about the Shuttle, we've never actually done this in a program. It seems unlikely that NASA ever will, but fortunately, private enterprise is finally stepping up to the plate.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:01 AM

July 18, 2008
The End Of The World

Ron Bailey reports.

Well, OK, it's just a conference on the subject. Which isn't as interesting, but a lot less scary.

[Saturday morning update]

We have met the enemy, and he is us:

"All of the biggest risks, the existential risks are seen to be anthropogenic, that is, they originate from human beings."

All the more reason to get some eggs into baskets other than this one. Also, the rise (again) of the neo-Malthusians. It's hard to keep them down for long, even though so far, they've predicted about five out of the last zero world overpopulation crises.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:49 PM

NewSpace 2008 Blogging

It looks like Clark Lindsey now has an internet connection, and he's got a lot of posts up with descriptions of the sessions yesterday and today. There are permalinks, but a bunch of them, so for now, just keep scrolling.

So far, I don't see a lot of news coming out of the conference, other than the CATS Coalition announcement.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:24 PM

Who Does He Think He Is?

Charles Krauthammer, on Senator Obama's overinflated self regard:

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work I a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

I suspect that the American people are going to get pretty tired of this as it goes on for another three months, and not be looking forward to four years of it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:21 AM

Don't You Just Hate It

...when your dad robs the pizza parlor where you work?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:12 AM

Is John McCain A Complete Economic Idiot?

Sometimes it seems like it:

In front of a roomful of 500 General Motors employees -- of all places -- John McCain paraded his radical Green credentials this morning. McCain embraced California's lawsuit against the EPA demanding that states be allowed to set their own auto mileage standards.

"I guess at the end of the day, I support the states being able to do that," he said at the town hall meeting at GM's Technical Center in Warren, Mich.

California's policy is strongly opposed by the auto industry because of the nightmare patchwork of regulatory standards such a proposal would set. The industry prefers national standards -- a position that McCain had supported until this morning. McCain's flip-flop on the issue (assuming he meant what he said, and his campaign doesn't quickly move to correct the gaffe) would put him at odds with the Bush administration and longstanding Republican policy.

No way he has a prayer of winning Michigan (and probably not Ohio, either) if he persists in this stupidity. And it's not going to give him California, either.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:04 AM

Three Hundred?

Jennifer Rubin wonders why Senator Obama has so many foreign policy advisors. And why he still gets such lousy advice. Be sure to follow the link to Kondracke's piece, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 AM

Down With Darwinism

I agree with Olivia Judson--we should get rid of it:

Darwin was an amazing man, and the principal founder of evolutionary biology. But his was the first major statement on the subject, not the last. Calling evolutionary biology "Darwinism," and evolution by natural selection "Darwinian" evolution, is like calling aeronautical engineering "Wrightism," and fixed-wing aircraft "Wrightian" planes, after those pioneers of fixed-wing flight, the Wright brothers. The best tribute we could give Darwin is to call him the founder -- and leave it at that. Plenty of people in history have had an -ism named after them. Only a handful can claim truly to have given birth to an entire field of modern science.

[Via LGF]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AM

July 17, 2008
Power Corrupts

Lord Acton seems to have gotten it right:

...when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department's response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks.

Garvin is accused of saying, "If something happens, either we can respond really fast or we could respond really slow. I've been coming here for years and I've been getting whatever I want. I'm the difference between you getting a two-minute response time, if you needed a little help, or a 15 minutes response time."

Some have more resistance than others, but this should be cautionary for people who want bigger government. Unfortunately, it's the new problem we have in Iraq, now that the war seems to be over.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 PM

An Interview With Elon Musk

"I wasn't born in America - but I got here as fast as I could."

That's an American.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:24 PM

Another Nail In The Coffin

...of the low-fat diet myth:

Although participants actually decreased their total daily calories consumed by a similar amount, net weight loss from the low-fat diet after two years was only 6.5 lbs. (2.9 kg) compared to 10 lbs. (4.4 kg) on the Mediterranean diet, and 10.3 lbs. (4.7 kg) on the low-carbohydrate diet. "These weight reduction rates are comparable to results from physician-prescribed weight loss medications," explains Dr. Iris Shai, the lead researcher.

The low-fat diet reduced the total cholesterol to HDL ratio by only 12 percent, while the low-carbohydrate diet improved the same ratio by 20 percent. Lipids improved the most in the low-carbohydrate, with a 20% increase in the HDL ("good") cholesterol and, 14% decrease in triglycerides. In all three diets, inflammatory and liver function biomarkers was equally improved. However, among diabetic participants, the standard low-fat diet actually increased the fasting glucose levels by 12mg/dL, while the Mediterranean diet induced a decrease in fasting glucose levels by 33mg/dL.

I've blogged about this before, but I continue to be amazed and frustrated at the ongoing ignorance in the medical and dietetic community about this. They persist in thinking that it is a simple thermodynamics problem--all calories are equal--and will not accept the notion that what we eat can affect our metabolism (how fast we burn energy, and how much it influences how we burn body fat).

It's why I pay no attention to either physicians, or nutritionists (or the FDA), when it comes to dietary advice. As Glenn says, it's fortunate that I also like a Mediterranean diet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:34 PM

NewSpace 2008

Clark Lindsey apparently had trouble getting an internet connection until now, but he's started blogging the conference. Which I could have attended.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:09 PM

Thanks, Joe!

Is Senator Biden a secret operative for John McCain?

Biden's letter brought attention to the fact that Obama did not attend two of those three hearings -- and for the third, on March 8, 2007, Obama only asked one question, one unrelated to Afghanistan.

Don't worry. Unlike Jake Tapper, most of the press won't mention it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:05 PM

A Faux Pas

Defined, of course, as a politician accidentally blurting out the truth.

Shocked, shocked I was to read that Sen. Boxer, in complaints about possible Democratic defections on the question of opening up California waters for drilling to help alleviate the nation's energy crunch, complained "This is our ethanol!"

Of course, Senator Boxer, being one of the dimmest bulbs in the upper house (quite an achievement, considering the competition), has no idea how revealing her comment is.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:51 AM

A New Toy For Rich People

A submersible speedboat that can dive to twelve hundred feet. If there's a market for this, at a few million a pop, I'll bet that XCOR will be able so sell a few Lynx's to private owners.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:24 AM

A Democratic Year?

Susan Estrich is worried about Obama's chances. All of his supporters should be.

I'll be eagerly watching Fox on election night to see if she shows up hammered, like she did when Kerry lost in '04.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:45 AM

Change!

Who said he wasn't funny? Here are a bunch of Obama light-bulb jokes.

[Update a while later]

And now, knock-knock jokes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

Asymmetry

Some follow-up thoughts on Lileks' bleat today. If people aren't aware, this is what Kuntar did, as described by the remaining family member, the wife and mother:

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

But the next part is the most tragic, and it illustrates the point I made the other day with regard to shouting out to the universe:

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

In any event, had an Israeli, soldier or civilian, deliberately shot an Arab parent to death in front of his young child, and then smashed in her skull with a rifle butt, in front of eyewitnesses, he would have been arrested, tried, and probably sentenced to life in prison, by the Israeli government. He would have also been condemned by Israeli society as a vicious monster. In contrast, this bloodthirsty psychopath was welcomed as a hero in Lebanon.

As long as this asymmetry of attitude toward wanton and deliberate murder, and worship of death and those who brutally bring it persists in the Arab world, there will be no peace in the Middle East, regardless of how much we appease them, even if we allow them their only true goal, which is the destruction of the state of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. As someone once said, Arabia has always had bloody borders.

[Update in the afternoon]

"Bodies' abuse made ID difficult."

Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that "the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at that."

What is he complaining about? It's not like they had women's panties on their heads, or a Torah was flushed down a toilet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:58 AM

What Happened To The Consensus?

The American Physical Society admits that a significant number of its membership are heretics:

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors."

Have the deniers arrested, tried and punished. They must confess their sins.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:38 AM

Rewriting History

Rick Moran, on the Obama campaign's counterfactuals. It's hard to imagine the press letting a Republican get away with this kind of thing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AM

The Science Of Batman

How plausible is he? Alan Boyle has done some research.

I agree that the getting-knocked-out-all-the-time thing is a problem. But no more so for Bruce Wayne than almost every teevee detective I watched when I was young. It seems like Mannix or Jim Rockford should have been sitting around drooling with all of the concussions they took almost every episode.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 AM

The Land Of Inversion

Lileks is on a roll today:

I heard more interviews with learned politicians informing me that "drilling for oil" will not affect anything, least of all the quantity of oil. We must apparently wait until 2015, when a magic engine that runs on unicorn flatulence is invented. I have to ask: why is anyone investing in unicorn flatulence today, when it won't make any difference for several years? The answer's simple: the engine will Appear at the chosen moment, borne from the clouds by starlings, but only if we have repented of our foul ways, and the last of the sinners has left the cul-de-sac to reside in a home located a sustainable distance from his or her place of employment. When the last suburban outlying development is empty, when the homes of whose size we disapprove has been abandoned, when the last citizen has been gathered unto the bosom of the urban center, where his profligate ways are sneered upon and the measure of his yard shall be no greater than the standard lot size decreed in 1902, then shall the magic engine appear. Until then, the wind and the sun will bear us onward.

Honestly, it's like FDR coming into power promising "bold, persistent experimentation - except for any sort of government involvement in the economy. That's off the table."

No, in the Land of Inversion, we've decided to do things that run completely counter to human nature - at least to the nature we perceive in our domestic opponents. Don't give an inch to your domestic foes; they'll read it as weakness! To everyone else, though, it's olive branches strewn like ticker-tape at an astronaut parade. In Israel, for example, this horrible prisoner swap - child-killer exchanged for murdered soldiers. The fellow is welcomed home as a hero by Hezbollah and Lebanon's Prime Minister and President, because in the Land of Inversion, heads of state clear their calendar when child-killers breathe the sweet air of freedom again. It's all relative, really. One man's child-killer is another man's freedom fighter, and if you point out that the "another man" is a Jew-hating idiot fanatic who'd be proud to blow up the Holocaust Museum in DC and take out a busload of Iowa tourists, you're ignoring the significant impact this exchange had on the Climate of Trust that will lead to peace. I mean, it's not like the entire cabinet turned out to meet the guy. In the delicate calculations of the region, that counts for something.

There are some tart words about the Archbishop of Canterbury as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:01 AM

July 16, 2008
Defending Milton Friedman

...against leftist idiots. This always seemed like a strange thesis to me:

Perhaps even more bizarrely, a few people in the comments are citing China as an example of how capitalism undermined democracy. Apparently I missed the section in history class where we covered the vibrant democracy that existed in China prior to pro-market reforms. Because in the history I learned, the openness and transparency required to support the market reforms have enabled what little movement towards liberalization China has had.

I think that a lot stronger case can be made that democracy undermines capitalism than the reverse. Once people get the ability to vote to take wealth from one and give to another, capitalism, which consists of voluntary exchange, is severely weakened and diminished.

Not to imply, of course, that either thesis is an argument against either democracy or capitalism.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:10 AM

A Pioneer, Not Forgotten

Here's the obit at the WaPo for Len Cormier.

As a staffer with the Academy in 1957, Mr. Cormier was in attendance at the International Geophysical Year proceedings when the Soviets surprised the world with the launch of Sputnik.

The event made a tremendous impression on him, his family said. He decided then to pursue better access to space through affordable, reusable space vehicles.

He was an early visionary. Others will have to pick up his torch now.

Fortunately, a lot of other people now recognize the need:

The National Coalition for CATS, working with leading figures across the space community, will collaborate over the next twelve weeks to develop a "National Declaration for Cheap and reliable Access to Space (CATS)." The CEOs of non-profit and for-profit companies will be invited to sign the Declaration, and will deliver this declaration to the next President of the U.S. after the November election.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend NewSpace, which starts tomorrow in Washington, and where this will be announced, due to financial constraints. It will be the first conference I've missed in a while.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AM

Not That It's The Only Reason

But I agree with Instapundit that it's a good one:

Obama is humorless, and full of himself. That would make him a great target for satire, except that his followers take the position that any mockery or criticism is racist. The prospect of four years of that sort of thing is the best reason I can think of not to vote for him.

I don't think that the Obama worshipers have any sense of what a turn-off he is to the rest of us.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:57 AM

Thirty-Nine Years Ago

On July 16th, 1969, the largest rocket ever built thundered off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, delivering three men and the equipment and supplies they would need to land two of them on the moon and return the three of them safely to earth, fulfilling the national goal declared eight years earlier. The anniversary of the landing is this coming Sunday.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

The Finance Crisis

Explained, by Iowahawk:

I know what you're saying -- "who invited the fat chick to the Twister party?" Certainly, all of us (with the possible exception of Randy) wish she wasn't here. But it's important to remember that fat chicks are often an important source of party supplies, and we must take the good with the bad. In the same way, Fannie Mae supplies the critical financial weed and beer to keep our national economic party going.

The numbers are complex, but let me boil it down for the economic layperson. Fannie Mae is a government company type thing that has a large pile of money, which I will call "A". The first thing it does is create $20 million bonuses for high performance executives like Franklin Raines, James Johnson and Jamie Gorelick, which I will call "B." Next, it allocates an amount "C" to lobbyists to make sure important Congressmen always get a thoughtful holiday card from Fannie Mae. After subtracting B and C from A, they are left with D, which is lent to homebuyers. These homebuyers then pay back the amount E, which, when subtracted from D, leaves F, the amount Congress has to come up with. In order to keep this important financial system humming along at peak efficiency, it is necessary that you, the taxpayer, are F'ed.

RTWT, and save the Dave!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AM

July 15, 2008
I Agree With Tigerhawk

I would love an Obama presidency with a Republican-controlled Congress.

Unfortunately, that's not a choice realistically on offer. The best we'll probably be able to do, absent some political earthquake, is a McCain in the White House, with Dems continuing to misrule the Hill. That's not a good thing, but it's better than the donkeys running the whole show (despite the fact that McCain isn't much of a Republican, either).

On the other hand, a Democrat monopoly on power would have salutary effects on the elections in 2010. But I fear the SCOTUS replacements that would almost certainly ensue in the interim, which are much harder to undo. That's really the bottom line to want to keep Obama out of the White House.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 PM

NASA Employee Bleg

Can anyone at the agency go on the record (with PAO permission) and tell me why they think that sending ISS to the moon is a bad idea? I'm working on a piece (I think it's a bad idea, myself, and have some better ones). Email me at the upper-left email.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 PM

Revealing

Life is rough in Michelle Obama's America, in which all six hundred bucks buys is a pair of ear rings. As for the fresh fruit, she can't afford a refrigerator for the mansion?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:33 PM

More Fear Mongering

Mike Griffin again disquisites on the Yellow Peril.

Well, actually he doesn't. Here's all he says (unless there's some elaboration to which the BBC is privy, but we are not):

Speaking to the BBC News website during a visit to London, Dr Griffin said: "Certainly it is possible that if China wants to put people on the Moon, and if it wishes to do so before the United States, it certainly can. As a matter of technical capability, it absolutely can."

What does that mean? If he means that if China made it as much of a priority as we did during Apollo, and if we continue on our own disastrous plans, that they could reverse engineer what we did and put some Taikonauts on the moon before NASA lands astronauts, sure.

But how likely is that? And even if it happened, what's the big deal? We were first on the moon, they were second. Big whoop. There's no way on their current technological trajectory to do it in any sustainable way, and even if they did, there's nothing they could realistically do there that would constitute a threat to us, either in terms of national security, or our own ability to do things there on our own pace.

My take?

It is extremely unlikely--the Chinese are not fools. They know how much it will cost to do a manned lunar mission, and it's not a high priority, particularly when their economy is potentially a house of cards (something not made better by the current energy prices, which will result in either a curtailing of their fuel subsidies, or a decline in economic growth, or both). If and when they are serious about going to the moon, it will be quite obvious, and we'll have plenty of time to do something about it if we think that it's actually a problem.

But Mike apparently thinks that he'll have a better chance of getting increased funding for Apollo on Steroids if he can frighten uninformed people about the Chinese taking over the moon.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:19 PM

New Space Blog

The X-Prize Foundation has started one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:05 AM

Down The Memory Hole

Airbrushing Obama's web site.

Hey, he said he was about change!

As Glenn notes, this could be a hint of how an Obama administration would behave.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:59 AM

July 14, 2008
It's No Excuse

You know, we lowly, benighted citizens are always told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well, considering the size of the federal code, and that of all the states in which we live, and occasionally move to, often on short notice, how does one justify this?

It's not just about the ability for citizens to take pictures of police officers in public places (though that's important too; see: King, Rodney). It's about the officer's behavior -- specifically his attempt to bully this man into compliance with an illegal demand, using his power as an officer of the law in the service of his personal pique, at the expense of the citizenry that he is supposed to "serve and protect." It is absolutely, totally and completely unacceptable for police officers to use the authority conferred by their badges to violate people's rights in this manner, and society needs to send that message loud and clear.

Should ignorance of the law be an excuse for this man? Call me crazy, but it seems to me that those enforcing the law should be much more responsible for knowing it than those who are being oppressed by ignorance of it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 PM

Empirical Evidence At The Nanoscale

This is pretty damned cool:

Chan said the experiment shows that it is not possible to simply add the force on the constituent solid parts of the plate -- in this case, the tines -- to arrive at the total force. Rather, he said, "the force actually depends on the geometry of the object."

"Until now, no significant or nontrivial corrections to the Casimir force due to boundary conditions have been observed experimentally," wrote Lamoreaux, now at Yale University, in a commentary accompanying publication of the paper.

I don't know what it means for the singularity, but molecular manufacturing seems to be moving along nicely. Tony Snow's death was sobering for me, because we were very close to the same age. Fortunately, I don't have the genetic time bomb that he did, though my family's heart history is worrisome. All I can do is do what I can do, and hope that things will come along.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:13 PM

I'm Not Sure I Want To Know

How do you cut off your own head with a chainsaw? You've got to think that he bypassed some safety features...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:20 PM

I'm Shocked

Orion, already overweight, just got heavier:

"Preliminary estimates show that if this 30-40% [turbulence] heating augmentation heating is applied to the aerothermodynamic database the heat shield mass may increase up to 20%," says an internal NASA report obtained by Flightglobal.

I wonder if, instead of using an ablator, a tile system would be lighter? It would be more maintenance intensive (particularly with water landings), but it wouldn't be as bad as the Shuttle, because many of the tiles would be symmetrical and more mass producible. We were never really allowed to do this trade in Phase B at Northrop Grumman--NASA just told us they were going to supply the TPS.

I'm actually quite surprised at this--I would have thought that they'd have modeling an ablative shield down to a science by now. Apollo was way overdesigned, because they didn't have any experience or good analytical tools to indicate how much shielding they needed. If you look at the heat shield on an Apollo capsule, you can see that it is just slightly charred, with most of it unburned; it could have done a couple more missions without refurbishment or replacement. But based on that experience, we should have been able to predict the optimal weight of an ablator designed to come back from the moon pretty well, and years ago. How did this come up just before PDR?

Anyway, now they have unexpected weight growth in the program at the same time that they have weight and performance problems with the Ares 1. And apparently there are budget problems at LM, as well, if this report is true:

The ORION contractor is overrunning. The minions are out of money. Where can 20-30% more funds be dredged up to cover this miscarriage? You guessed it...the little man.

The minions have let the contractor off the hook for meeting its small business obligations this year. The same obligations that were bid as part of the winning proposal, ostensibly offering a better package than the opposing team, are now null and void. As a result, some of those little companies will start disappearing, lacking jobs and income.

They seem to be achieving the trifecta--failing on performance, schedule and budget. It's a program manager's nightmare.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some further thoughts over at Gravity Loss:

What will the payload landed on the moon be? What propellants are used? What is the Altair's or Orion's mass? And work back from there to TLI mass and ultimately to launch from Earth, all with generous margins. And it has seemed that a certain cycle has formed. First a solution on Ares I is based on some logic linking it to Shuttle hardware, infrastructure or Ares V with common elements, which should save a lot of money and time and keep the workforce etc etc. Somewhat later, rumors about a severe performance shortfall on either launcher start circulating. Then after a while NASA announces a new configuration where the commonality is disrupted. And again forward we go.

Unfortunately, the concepts seemed to be driven more by politics than engineering. That was often the case in Apollo, too. The Manned Spaceflight Center could have remained at Langley, but there were political reasons to move it to Texas. Marshall didn't have to be in Huntsville--they could have moved the rocket team at Redstone to somewhere else (e.g., the Cape, whose location really was driven by geography and not politics). But there were two differences in Apollo. It had essentially unlimited budget, and its success was politically important. Neither applies to the VSE, yet NASA, by Mike Griffin's own admission when he announced the architecture, not only chose to do Apollo over again, but to do it "on steroids."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:28 PM

Resume Padding

Jennifer Rubin makes a pretty good point:

Obama claims that experience is not as important as "judgment" or "change." By manufacturing or existing accomplishments, however, he suggests that he does not buy his own pitch.

Rather, his repeated attempts to bolster his resume indicate that he may be nervous about his non-existent record of achievement. Not trusting that voters will buy his disparagement of experience, Obama is now resorting to a common, but risking tactic of under-qualified job-seekers: fudge the resume.

Resume fraud carries grave risks. If the employer finds out you are lying, you are unlikely to get the job, even if the competition is weak. And for Obama, who is already belaboring under an avalanche of tough press about his many policy flip-flops, he hardly needs another storyline which sheds doubt on his credibility and character.

I think that it's things like this that are the reason the polls now seem to be even, even with the media love affair continuing.

[Update a while later]

Victor Davis Hanson lists some of Senator Obama's other problems:

Obama has a poor grasp of history, geography, American culture, and common sense -- whether the number or location of states in the Union, basic facts about WWII or where Arabic is spoken, or his sociological take on Pennsylvania, etc. His advisors realize this, and are playing 4th-quarter defense by keeping him out of ex tempore, non tele-prompted hope and change venues, where his shallowness can manifest itself in astonishing ways.

I was just listening to NPR in the car, and Terry Gross was interviewing Ryan Lizza on Fresh Air. He just had a long piece in the New Yorker about Obama's Chicago history. He was talking about the Rezko housing project problems, and he said that Obama didn't seem to be involved in the corruption, that the worst you could say about him was that exercised bad judgment.

Well, that in itself is saying something pretty bad, given that his claim to the presidency is that, while he may not have as much experience as his opponents, he has good judgment. But was his Rezko involvement good judgment? Was his attending a bigoted church for twenty years good judgment? Was it good judgment to pre-declare the surge a failure before it even began? So now it's hard to make a case for either his experience or his judgment.

I know that the Senator believes that to know him is to love him, but I think he may find out that as the campaign actually engages after the conventions, the more people learn about him, the less inclined they'll be to make him the next commander-in-chief.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:50 AM

How Much Did He Raise?

Did the Obama campaign have a bad June? Geraghty asks:

Is it possible that Obama's decision to forsake public financing was a mistake? Between the Denver convention running low on funds, Hillary's demands for help in retiring her debt, the RNC outraising the DNC five to one, and a steady decline in Obama's donations month-to-month (a tough economy hitting Obama's small donors? The buzz and hype have passed?), is Obama the candidate with the campaign that has to watch its pennies?

It will be deliciously ironic if, after having flipped on the issue, and turning down federal campaign bucks, Obama ends up without enough funds.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:23 AM

Good Move

The president has lifted the executive order banning offshore drilling.

This puts Congress in a political fix. He's calling on them to lift the Congressional ban now, but that would require Congressional action. They can simply ignore it (though at their political peril). The neat thing is that they can't ignore the issue forever. There is a default position not to their liking. It will expire at the end of September anyway (as it does every fiscal year) and will have to be renewed with a Congressional vote. Usually, this is uncontroversial, but not this year. We'll see if they're willing to do it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:35 AM

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Al Gore thinks (or at least thought at one time, and there's no reason to think that he's changed his opinion) that Rousseau is worth quoting.

You know, if I were going back in history and assassinating someone to prevent great harm to the world, my first choice would not be Hitler. It would be Jean Jacques Rousseau, the father of totalitarianism in all its forms. Though probably someone else would have come up with his vile notions independently.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Somehow, this seems related. An excellent essay on Obama's charisma, and messianic campaign.

The danger of Obama's charismatic healer-redeemer fable lies in the hubris it encourages, the belief that gifted politicians can engender a selfless communitarian solidarity. Such a renovation of our national life would require not only a change in constitutional structure--the current system having been geared to conflict by the Founders, who believed that the clash of private interests helps preserve liberty--but also a change in human nature. Obama's conviction that it is possible to create a beautiful politics, one in which Americans will selflessly pursue a shared vision of the common good, recalls the belief that Dostoyevsky attributed to the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionists: that, come the revolution, "all men will become righteous in one instant." The perfection would begin.

The Founders were Lockean. Obama seems more an heir of Rousseau, though perhaps an unwitting one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AM

More TSA Stupidity

When people ask me if there's anything I don't like about the Bush administration, while there are many things, this is close to the top of the list:

"It's serrated." He is talking about the little row of teeth along the edge. Truth be told, the knife in question, which I've had for years, is actually smaller and less sharp than the knives currently handed out by my airline to its first- and business-class customers. You'd be hard-pressed to cut a slice of toast with it.

"Oh, come on. It is not."

"What do you call these?" He runs his finger along the minuscule serrations.

"Those ... but ... they ... it ..."

"No serrated knives. You can't take this."

"But sir, how can it not be allowed when it's the same knife they give you on the plane!"

"Those are the rules."

"That's impossible. Can I please speak to a supervisor?"

"I am the supervisor."

Admittedly, it's a job that's probably hard to find smart help for. What person with a brain would want to do that all day?

Anyway, as the author points out, and has been obvious for years, ever since 911, it's security theater. Unfortunately, too many people fall for it, and actually believe that it makes them safer. Just one more reason that flying sux, and why the industry is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AM

Energy Versus Space?

Jeff Foust wonders if new government energy initiatives will crowd out space budgets.

Maybe. His piece reminds me of an idea I've had for an essay on why energy independence isn't like landing a man on the moon.

In fact, I had a related comment over at Space Politics this morning, in response to a comment from someone named...Someone...that cost-plus contracts are a proven means of success in space:

I know alt.spacers see cost-plus as some sort of ultimate evil. But recognize its been successful in the past, from the Saturn V to the Pegasus. And the X-33 would likely have been finished and test flown if NASA had used its traditional cost-plus approach instead of the fixed price model they used. If NASA had funded the X-33/VentureStar under the same procurement model as the Shuttle it would be flying today.

To which I responded:

But recognize its been successful in the past, from the Saturn V to the Pegasus.

Only if by "successful," you mean it eventually results in very expensive working hardware. Not to mention that Pegasus was not developed on a cost-plus contract.

And the X-33 would likely have been finished and test flown if NASA had used its traditional cost-plus approach instead of the fixed price model they used.

Perhaps. At a cost to the taxpayer of billions. And probably a radically different vehicle than the one originally proposed.

If NASA had funded the X-33/VentureStar under the same procurement model as the Shuttle it would be flying today.

Perhaps. And likely just as big an economic disaster (and perhaps safety one as well) as the Shuttle.

We don't like that form of procurement because historically, in terms of affordable access to space, it has repeatedly been proven not to work.

Anyway, I do need to write that essay. We're not going to get energy independence from government crash programs (though prizes may be useful).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AM

Telling It Like It Is

Ezra Levant says that Congress should put Canada on the human rights watch list. I wonder if that would get Ottawa's attention?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:30 AM

July 13, 2008
Roomba Hacking

We haven't been using the Roomba for a while, because Patricia loves the new Dyson. But it excels at vacuuming under the bed, so we tried it for that today. It ran for about five minutes, and died.

I put it back on the charger, and it charged quickly. Too quickly, I fear. I think that the batteries have seen their last.

I was looking on line to see how much replacements are, and found a site that describes how to replace the Roomba batteries with standard sub-C NiMH batteries, with much more capacity than the factory original (four hours on a charge). I may give it a try.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:53 PM

You Want Transitional Fossils?

Carl Zimmer has the story.

A graduate student at the University of Chicago named Matt Friedman was starting to research his dissertation on the diversity of teleosts. While paging through a book on fish fossils, he noticed a 50-million year old specimen called Amphistium. Like many fish fossils, this one only showed the bones from one side of the animal. It was generally agreed that Amphistium belonged to some ordinary group of teleosts, although biologists argued over which one. But Friedman saw something different. To him it looked like a flounder.

[Via LGF]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:59 PM

One Week To Plan

Next Sunday will be the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first human footsteps on another world. As I do every year, I'd like to remind my readers of a ceremony that I and some friends came up with to celebrate it. If you think that this was an important event, worthy of solemn commemoration, gather some friends to do so next Sunday night, and have a nice dinner after reading the ceremony.

Oh, and coincidentally, Friday was the twenty-ninth anniversary of the fall of Skylab. James Lileks has some thoughts. Next year, it will be the fortieth, and thirtieth anniversaries, respectively, of the two events. It was ironic that our first space station came plunging into the atmosphere almost exactly a decade after the height of our space triumphs in the sixties. The seventies really sucked.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:37 AM

July 12, 2008
True Credit Card Interest Rates

I had to extend a recent business trip and came back a few days later than I intended. I sat down to pay bills and it was the day after one of my credit cards had a payment due. I was hit with a $39 late fee, a $9.95 epay fee, and interest retroactively was jacked up to 21%. All together, I was hit with a charge of 1.27% of my balance for being one day late. That works out to an annual yield of 10,000%. Nice for them. Makes one consider supporting regulation.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:46 PM

Don't Shout

David Brin has a warning for irresponsible astronomers.

When in danger, most people in a group recognize the responsibility to be quiet, and not give themselves away to an enemy by making noise, sometimes to the point that a crying baby will be stifled, and even suffocated. I think that this is a similar case where people should be enjoined, by force if necessary, because we cannot know the consequences. I see very little potential benefit to this, and a great deal of risk. The apparent insularity of the SETI folks cannot continue--we are all on this planet, not just them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AM

Another Great Newsman Gone

Condolences to friends, family and colleagues of Tony Snow. I wonder if major television news people die in threes as well? Unlike Russert, this wasn't as unexpected--he had been fighting the cancer for a long time, and his mother died of it. But I hadn't been aware that he was near the end.

[Update in the evening]

Mark Steyn has a short tribute (not to imply that many others don't, and I suspect that he'll have a longer one in due time). This is a very interesting point politically:

He had a rare temperament in today's politics, and the Administration might have been spared the vicissitudes of these last five years had he become press secretary earlier.
Yes, of the many failings of George W. Bush, one of them is loyalty to previous staff. Scott McClellan was completely out of his element as WH spokesman, yet he was allowed to blunder through during many of the worst years of the administration. Things might have gone much differently had Tony Snow been brought in earlier. He would have challenged much of the nonsense that the press was putting forward much earlier, without looking like a deer in the headlights. It just shows how important perception can be.

[Update a while later]

Here's an encomium from Rick Moran.

It's very hard to come up with anything negative about Tony Snow, though I'm sure that one or two of my regular commenters will make the attempt in the service of their vile political agendas. I hope that I'm wrong.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:19 AM

July 11, 2008
Resurrect The Space Council

That's what Ferris Valyn wants Barack Obama to do.

It's good advice for John McCain, too. I don't think that it will have any political effect on the election if he does it now, though. Space simply isn't a voting issue for very many people.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:31 PM

Al Qality

Iowahawk has gotten a hold of the latest hirabi recruitment brochure:

As you have possibly heard by now, Team Satan and their subsidiary Iraqi Security Forces have made several key market acquisitions in the last few months. In order to meet Q3 Return-on-Mayhem targets and maximize stakeholder value, we need to refocus our client-facing resource model. As we are currently seeking a 17th round of venture funding, budgets are extremely tight, and this will require reducing our internal work team payroll load through adaptive right-sizing on a go-forward basis. Accounting estimates indicate that much of this will be achieved via natural attrition and Apache Hellfire missiles. Still, in order to achieve costing targets, we will need to engage in involuntary outboarding.

The Communications department will be most directly effected by this initiative, as we continue transitioning of our day-to-day public relations efforts to low-cost offshore service providers like Huffington Post, DailyKos, and Democratic Underground.

Hey, you get what you pay for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PM

To Mark Steyn Fans

If you're near an EIB station, he's subbing for Rush today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:27 AM

A New Toy

Can we do word substitutions in php by passing a variable to the URL?

Yes, we can!

This works, too, and it even fits within the box.

Have fun in comments.

[Via the non-liberal non-fascist]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:53 AM

Potemkin Rocket

Some ruminations on the upcoming Ares 1-X test.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

Too Young To Be President

Some thoughts on Barack Obama's junior moments.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:19 AM

It's The Assumptions, Stupid

Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on NASA's latest attempt to justify Ares, including the usual red herring about "man rating" (a phrase that I would purge from the vocabulary, had I the power).

...the initial conditions are the real problem. Griffin insisted on absolutely minimizing in-space assembly and avoiding unproven technologies such as propellant depots, even when such technology is close at hand and would tremendously expand space access capabilities for less money. These requirements lead to big and heavy throwaway payloads for the lunar exploration architecture.

I don't know who the maligners of small vehicles are that she refers to in the article but I remember that there was a lot of bias within NASA towards a Shuttle replacement, i.e., a vehicle with similar crew and cargo capability. I've always thought the Shuttle was far too big for a first generation attempt at an RLV. Starting small, learning what works and doesn't work, and growing vehicles over time seems like the sensible development path.

Of course, today I don't think NASA should develop vehicles at all. Instead it should do R&D on leading edge technology the way NACA did for aviation and DARPA does today for general aerospace technology. Let Lockheed-Martin, SpaceX, etc. battle to offer the cheapest space access services.

And he is correct, Shuttle was never man rated. Which is one of the reasons why it's disingenuous to claim that the Ares first stage is man rated because it was a Shuttle component (particularly since, with the additional segment, it's become a new motor completely).

I'm a little confused, though, by his citing me, when the link goes to Jon Goff. I think that I have in fact pointed to Mike Griffin's flip flop on the issue, but it's not in any of Clark's links in the piece.

[Update early afternoon]

This was the last time I commented on the man-rating canard, a couple months ago.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:45 AM

July 10, 2008
Now This Has Potential

We can capture a powerful greenhouse gas and store energy at the same time. Just imagine pastures full of this.

It has squirrel undies beat hands down. Errr...so to speak.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:10 PM

Job Bleg

I've been running my trap lines with my contacts, but I might as well see if any of my readers know of anything. The blog doesn't pay the bills, and I'm kind of at the end of my financial tether, so if anyone is aware of any jobs out there in the industry, I'd appreciate a tip. I can relocate, but my preference would be either the Denver area or southern California, due to existing housing.

[Update a while later]

For those interested, a brief version of my resume can be found at my personal web site. I'm looking for work in space systems engineering and management, preferably manned space. I could also do temp work, though that's kind of hard for the big companies under the FAR, unless I come in through a job shop, which skims a lot in overhead for no value added.

[Friday afternoon update]

For those suggesting that I try to make a living writing columns, I'm already doing that as much as I can. There's no way that it will pay my bills, even if I did it full time. It just doesn't pay that well. I have to be earning on the order of several tens of dollars an hour to keep ahead of them. The only place I can do that is in the space industry.

I do appreciate all the kind thoughts, though.

[Friday evening update]

Several have commented that I should put a tip jar up. I've had one up for years. Unfortunately, it's not Paypal but Amazon, but I think that you can use any form of payment with it. Is it not appearing in the upper left corner?

Not that I'm asking for handouts, but the thought is appreciated.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:08 PM

Glenn Reynolds Discusses Space Law

Over at Res Communis.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:00 PM

What Would The Media Reaction Be?

...if, say, a white man expressed the desire to castrate a black man? Particularly the first black man to be a major-party presidential nominee?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 AM

Good Point

I've often made this argument, but never as concisely:

The Right believes in biology, but not in evolution; the Left believes in evolution, but not in biology.

It's a little oversimplified (as is any statement about the "Right" or the "Left"), but a good generalization. Of course, when it comes to sexual orientation, the Right doesn't believe in biology, either. But I think that the Left is much more prone to a belief in the Blank Slate myth.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:09 AM

Economic Idiocy

The Dems are finally starting to come to their senses about energy production, but not quite:

One idea floated by Reid would require that whatever oil is drilled in newly opened areas would need to be sold in the United States.

This is pure, unadulterated economic ignorance. Senator Reid, go to the board and write one hundred times, "OIL IS FUNGIBLE." WTF difference does it make where the oil is sold? The important thing is to get it on the market. If we are pulling new oil off the north slope, it might make sense to ship it to Japan, improving our balance of trade with them, and relieving them of the cost of shipping it all the way from the Persian Gulf. It might in fact make sense to simply ship new oil from the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf refineries, but that should be a market decision, not an arbitrary and idiotic political one. "Energy independence" is an economic myth.

And then, we have this:

Democrats also want any compromise plan to include investments in clean and renewable energies, a crackdown on oil speculators and proof that the oil and gas companies are fully utilizing land that is already leased for exploration.

What does a "crackdown on oil speculators" mean? It's called a futures market, and a lot of people play. It serves a function of reducing risk for many in the industry. "Speculation" is simply a dirty word for "investment." This new scheme where people can buy gasoline ahead of time at a fixed price? That's speculation, folks.

And this:

"If they were showing in good faith that they were drilling on some of the 68 million acres they have now, it might change some of our attitudes," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

So, in order to get access to leases with high potential, they have to waste their money drilling on leases with low potential? Brilliant.

The only way to change the attitudes of people like this is Economics 101. And I doubt if even that would help.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:44 AM

What Do They Want?

A rainbow hole? An African-American hole?

This is as ignorant and stupid as the complaints about the use of the word "niggardly."

Actually, now that I think about it, it's also as dumb as complaints about my proper use of the word "fascist." A subject on which Jonah Goldberg has some further thoughts today:

People say fascism means brutality, therefore liberalism isn't remotely fascist. It works as a debater's trick, and it's certainly a source of real opposition to some of my arguments, but it doesn't work as an actual argument in the true sense of the word.

One can use the same "argument" about Communism. "Communism is about brutality. Liberals aren't brutal. Therefore liberalism has nothing to do with Communism." The only difference here is that for reasons discussed at length in this space and in my book, the man in the street doesn't equate Communism with brutality to the same extent he equates fascism with brutality, even though Communism is just as brutal as Fascism. I think that's a problem that needs to be combated rather than surrendered to.

I simply don't think the woeful state of popular ignorance should be considered a powerful argument against the accuracy of historical truth.

Nope. As he says, if that makes the job harder, so be it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:57 AM

Chomskyism

Eric Raymond coins a useful word.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:30 AM

The Next NASA Administrator?

Ferris Valyn has some candidates. Most of them seem implausible to me. The only ones that I can imagine are at all realistic are Patti Grace Smith, Lori Garver and Pete Worden (the latter would certainly shake things up, which is one reason that he almost certainly won't get the job). Certainly Hansen has nothing in his resume that would qualify him--he's a scientist.

Of course, much depends on who the next president is. One likely name not on the list, assuming that McCain wins: Craig Steidle.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 AM

July 09, 2008
Hope

...and change. It looks like John McCain may have come to his senses, and dropped cap and trade. Let's just hope that he doesn't attempt to revive it after he wins.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:16 PM

The New Space Race

There's a piece over at the WaPo today by Marc Kaufman that lays out pretty well the problems that we face in civil space policy, though I think that the international competition aspects are overstated. The pace of all these other activities remains almost as glacial as our own, and until someone develops a transportation breakthrough (and by that I mean a high-flight-rate reusable system, not warp drive or space elevators) none of it presents a serious threat to us. But it points out that the policy apparatus, as I always says, doesn't view space as very important. The beginning of the article, and first two pages, are all about budget constraints, and I was wondering if he would ever get around to mentioning ITAR. Toward the end of the piece, finally, he did. In terms of our losing our dominance in commercial space, this is the number one reasons. It's really been a disaster, and a bi-partisan one.

It's a little out of date, since it mentions that Mike Griffin claims that additional funding could accelerate Constellation by two years, to 2013, because Griffin's own program manager now says that it probably wouldn't.

I disagree with Mike Griffin's comment here:

"We spent many tens of billions of dollars during the Apollo era to purchase a commanding lead in space over all nations on Earth," said NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, who said his agency's budget is down by 20 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 1992.

"We've been living off the fruit of that purchase for 40 years and have not . . . chosen to invest at a level that would preserve that commanding lead."

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on human spaceflight over the past four decades, more than enough to have developed a robust transportation and in-space infrastructure that would have kept us well in the lead. The problem was not how much was spent, but in how it was spent. Jobs were more important than progress. That sadly remains the case today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AM

And People Say That Things Aren't Improving

It's a wondrous age in which we live in (to paraphrase Paul McCartney), that has underpants for squirrels.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:16 AM

Hey, Mount Shasta!

Get with the program!

"When people look at glaciers around the world, the majority of them are shrinking," said Slawek Tulaczyk, an assistant professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led a team studying Shasta's glaciers. "These glaciers seem to be benefiting from the warming ocean."

Except the ocean seems to be cooling, at least lately.

One of the signs of a conspiracy theorist is that every bit of evidence, even counterevidence, is spun to support the theory.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:01 AM

Space Power Relay

Clark Lindsey has some space-related thoughts in response to T. Boone Pickens' solar energy proposal:

...one major hurdle, among several, with the plan would be the need to build more long distance electric power transmission lines to reach the more populated and more industrialized areas. This will be difficult since people all along the routes will fight having the lines and towers in their backyards.

Occasionally in discussions of Space Based Solar Power, the topic of microwave relay satellites comes up as a way to move power around. For example, in this paper, Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite (2004) Geoffrey Landis talks about using relay sats for distributing power to different parts of the globe from a single Solarsat. So it should be similarly possible for relay satellites to move power from the Midwest to where it's needed.

Yes, this is one of the "tiers" that Peter Glaser proposed in the development of powersats when he first came up with the idea forty (geez, has it really been that long?) years ago. He envisioned that before energy was produced in space, it might be relayed from energy-rich areas that didn't have local demand (such as a large dam in Venezuela or Brazil). He envisioned such relays as passive microwave reflectors, which are currently a major structural challenge in terms of keeping the surface the right shape within a fraction of a wavelength. But at least at GEO, they wouldn't have to move much.

Rather than giant relay sats in GEO, it might be preferable to place a constellation of relatively small ones in LEO since this would allow the beams to be much more narrow. Perhaps the switching techniques developed for Iridium/Globalstar could be built upon. Smaller beams might also lessen NIMBY resistance to transmitter/receiving sites.

Perhaps, but now you have high slew rates on the reflectors, which makes for even more of a challenge. An active phased array system can be steered electronically as it switches from rectenna to rectenna as it orbits. A reflector has to rapidly move the entire structure while maintaining its shape. The higher the orbit the better in this regard, because it won't have to slew as fast. Also, it would make LEO pretty crowded. A medium orbit (a couple kilocklicks) would probably be better, both because it would require slower motion, and would allow more ground rectennas to be seen at a time, while not cluttering up LEO. The slewing problem could be ameliorated by going to an active system, but that means that the satellite must now not only receive and convert the power, but reconvert and rebeam it to the ground, with all the attendant efficiency issues.

Anyway, I suspect that, regardless of size, NIMBY resistance to rectennas will dwarf that of resistance to transmission lines and towers, given that it's a devil they don't know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 AM

More Happy Talk

From Jeff Hanley:

Hanley stated his belief that Orion 2's Initial Operational Capability (IOC) test flight to the ISS will "remain" on track for March, 2015 - although the ongoing PMR (Program Management Review) budget review shows the first ISS crew rotation (Orion 4) will take place one year later (March, 2016).

How in the world can someone believe that a program with as many uncertainties--technical, political, budgetary--as this one has can be "on track" for a date seven years out? Particularly considering this:

No specific references are made to ongoing problems that face the Constellation program, such as Thrust Oscillation, mass and performance concerns, etc. Noting only 'key technical challenges' - whilst citing the workforce's 'hard work and dedication' as key to a successful resolution.

OK, so they don't even know if there is a solution within the constraints of the program, let alone what it is, yet he thinks they're on track to a 2015 IOC? Sometimes "hard work" and "dedication" aren't enough. Unfortunately, when one manages cost-plus contracts, it's easy to fall into a Marxist "labor theory of value" mode of thinking.

This would be more credible if he would at least caveat it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hanley says that more money won't close the gap. That's probably right, short of an Apollo-like crash program. You can't get a baby in a month by putting nine women on the job. Some things just take a certain amount of time.

People who complain about this program's schedule forget that Apollo had essentially an unlimited budget, in terms of hitting the schedule. More money could have been poured into it, but it probably would have been wasted, in terms of getting men on the moon any sooner. NASA is not in that position today--they are budget constrained, yet they're taking exactly the same economically unsustainable approach that got us to the moon the first time, and not developing affordable or routine spaceflight capabilities.

Which is something to consider in terms of looking for asteroids. It's not sufficient to find them--we have to find them soon enough to be able to do something about it:

Smaller rocks matter, too. Perhaps nowhere is that so evident as in central Siberia, where 100 years ago last week, something -- presumably a meteoroid, most experts say -- streaked across the sky and exploded at an estimated height of 28,000 feet with a force equivalent to 185 Hiroshima bombs, leveling some 800 square miles of forest. Simulations by the Sandia National Laboratories showed that object could have been just 90 feet across.

Which is why we have to develop the spacefaring capability now, and not wait until we spot something, at which point it may be too late to do so. And unfortunately, Constellation in its current planned form is not what we need for that job.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:17 AM

July 08, 2008
Clarification

Iowahawk has found a draft of an Obama speech explaining the refinement of his positions:

Let me be crystal clear: if elected president, my first act will be to call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. I have always been consistent and forthright in this position, and I want to reassure my supporters that my recent statement backtracking from it was just some bullshit my staff came up with to tack to the center for the general election. To win this election, it will be critical to appeal to the dwindling but stubborn group of idiots who cling to fantasies of American "victory" in this tragic disaster. It's an unfortunate part of the complicated game of presidential politics, but let's face it: I can't stop this war if I'm not in the White House. However, you should know by now that whatever I may say from now until November, once elected I will immediately pull the rug from these gullible pro-war rubes.

Or will I? As is obvious to all but the most deluded HuffPo retard, the surge in Iraq has produced dramatic improvements in security throughout Iraq, and the roots of a stable pro-American democracy. We have the terrorists on the run, and it would obviously be crazy for us to pull our troops from the region just as we are on the verge of victory. And it is equally obvious that everything I said in the previous paragraph was designed to placate the naive hipster moonbats I brilliantly exploited to destroy the Clintons. (You're welcome.) Now that the nomination is in the bag, I am finally free to stake out my genuine pro-victory Iraq position, and have a good laugh while the dKos morons screech like a bunch of apoplectic howler monkeys. Let's face it: at the rate I'm heading right on national security, I'll be raining nukes on Tehran by February.

Well, that should settle the issue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 AM

Lileks On Keillor

James takes on, once again, his fellow Minnesota scribe:

Mr. Keillor feels he has done okay in the last eight years but has a hot collar and ground-up teeth thinking about what the Current Occupant has done to the country the little girl will inherit. He's mad about spending - I'm with him there, although a bit perplexed to find Keillor coming down on the side of spending less - and he doesn't approve of the war. It ruined his Rockwell moment.

Being unable to watch a kid play baseball because you are mad at George Bush does not necessarily mean you are a better person or a person more attuned to truth and the future.It might mean, at best, you are a person who writes run-on sentences stringing together predictable assertions; at worst, it might mean you're anhedonic, and looking for scapegoats. I look at my daughter and consider her future, and I see possibility and peril as well. But that's up to us, and while I'm sure Mr. Keillor anticipates the day where he is legally required to pay the taxes he heretofore feels he is morally required to pay, we can do fine without him. We've done fine without his money so far, and I think we can keep that up. Unless he's been paying in at the pre-tax-cut level, of course. In which case: hats off! A principled man is rare in any era.

You know, I actually greatly enjoy Keillor's books, but when you let him loose on an editorial page, he seems to go completely nuts. Bush derangement is a very real thing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:14 AM

Rules For Thee

...not for me:

The lavish dining arrangements - disclosed by the Japanese Government which is hosting the summit in Hokkaido - come amid growing concern over rising food prices triggered by a shortage of many basic necessities.

On the flight to the summit, Mr Brown urged Britons to cut food waste as part of a global drive to help avert the food crisis.

Maybe they could start by cutting the PM's rations.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:53 AM

July 07, 2008
In His Own Words

That's not the Barack Obama that I knew:

In one excerpt from the audio book that Hewitt played on his show in March, Obama alters his voice to mimic Wright's and repeats passages from a sermon decrying a society "where white folks' greed runs a world in need." Later Obama says of Wright's preaching, "I found the tears running down my cheeks."

If the Dems don't think that this will be powerful stuff this fall, they're deluding themselves.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time. They actually thought that Senator Kerry's war record was a feature, rather than a bug.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:18 PM

War And Indecision

I think that this is a legitimate criticism of George Bush and his management style, though it's unclear how much the problem is of Bush's vacillation, and how much is guerrilla warfare within the bureaucracy. But even for the latter, I fault Bush for doing too little about it, starting with leaving George Tenet in place. While I never had high hopes for his administration, I was disappointed nonetheless (particularly by Cheney, for whom I did have higher hopes). About the best that can be said is that he was still far better than either of his opponents would have been.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:08 PM

Congratulations

To Tyson Homosexual.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:52 PM

It's Like They're Trying To Sell Jonah's Book

Jim Geraghty:

So, the recent news out of the Obama camp is that they're planning a huge rally with thousands of people in a stadium, want to create a mandatory youth corps for national service, and are thinking about a big dramatic speech in Berlin.

Ein Volk, Ein Reich...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:21 PM

That's How I'd Have To Do It

Get drunk and vote for McCain.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:04 AM

Thomas Disch

B-Chan has some thoughts on the ending of his life.

I never read much by him, but by all accounts, he did seem to be an unhappy man. I'm sure that being a homosexual in the fifties and sixties didn't help. In any event, if there's a better place, here's hoping he's there now.