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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Fox News column got some email response, which regurgitated the standard conventional “wisdom.”

Stephanie Crowe writes:

You make a point that if pilots were not needed Fed Ex would not be using them. I think that there are a few issues that keep pilots flying Fed Ex Planes. a) liability risk, b) unions, and c) pre and post flight taxiing.

Well, no. The primary reason is that the FAA requires it, and if you ask Fred Smith, I think that he would himself be leery of roboticizing his aircraft, regardless of what the union thinks.

I will agree somewhat with (a). To the degree that liability risk is there, it’s because it’s a real risk. There’s no evidence that a totally-automated aircraft would be safer, from a third-party standpoint, than the current system. There may be some time in the future in which that becomes the case, but it isn’t even in sight right now.

For NASA the liability risk is small as all flights are over water.

This is irrelevant because a) the proposed vehicle will not (necessarily) be operated by NASA (and if it is, it’s unlikely that it will operate much more cheaply than Shuttle, so there’s no point in spending billions of dollars developing it), and b) there’s no reason to suppose that it will only operate over water. Finally, this argument utterly ignores the fact that reliability is very important in a reusable vehicle, regardless of what’s happening on the ground below–these things will be expensive. Anything that can enhance it (including the use of human pilots) will be employed.

There is however a considerable “union” pressure from the astronaut corps to keep piloting crafts (I am reminded of a scene from “The Right Stuff” where the engineers are calling the vessel a capsule and the test subject are calling it a space craft). Taxing has never been an issue with space going craft. Unmanned rocket payloads have always had automated flight paths and the current Space Shuttle is effectively automated during launch. People are foolish (as a group) and like to see a person “in control” regardless of his actual authority.

Even if such a desire is “foolish,” the desire remains, and so will the pilot, if the vehicle is to be used as anything other than a Shuttle replacement. If it’s to be used only as that, then it’s a huge waste of money.

I agree that using a man safe certified system for ferrying cargo is foolish and I am glad it was stopped for whatever the reason. I have always though that there should be a three level certification process for space systems something maybe like this:

Shuttle is not a “man safe certified system.”

Man certified – capable of carrying human cargo (probability of failure 0.999999 or 6-9’s, although the current STS only has a demonstrated probability of failure of 0.99 or 2 9’s).
high value certified – capable of carrying high value instrumentation
(3-9’s)
low value certified – capable of carrying low value instrumentation,
fuel, food, …. (2-9’s)

Again, all of your “certification levels” (which currently don’t exist in any form, other than man rating, which is irrelevant to the current discussion–see this post which is the full-length version of my Fox News column, and expands greatly on this very subject), totally ignore the value of a reusable space transport itself. Hint: think hull insurance.

Robert Engberg writes:

I beg to differ with the notion in your article “Look Ma, no pilot” that a piloted vehicle would lower the cost and be more reliable than an unpiloted one. Ariane 5 is curently the most cost effective launch vehicle to place a satellite in LEO. It is entirely automated.

Note that he brings up an entirely irrelevant example. Ariane V is an expendable launch system. Putting a pilot in it would either increase costs tremendously, or it would be an oxymoron, unless the pilot were a kamikaze type. It doesn’t bring anything back, so it’s nonsense to talk about piloting it. The fact that it’s the most effective (that’s only because its development was subsidized largely by the French government) doesn’t make it good in any absolute sense. The reason that SLI exists is to, ostensibly, dramatically reduce the cost of access to orbit, and eventually put things like Ariane out of business.

As were every scientific space probes to all the planets in our solar system.

Again, this example has zero relevancy, for the same reasons. It was unaffordable to put people on those probes (though we’d have no doubt learned much more if we had). The argument isn’t that automation can’t be done, if essential–it’s that it’s not the best way to operate a reusable transportation system.

And with the exception of docking, lowering the landing gear, and deploying the drag chute, the space shuttle can launch and land automatically.

Yes, it can. And the Shuttle costs half a billion dollars per flight. I’m not arguing that we can’t build a fully-automated space transport. I’m simply arguing that this is not the road to low cost, as his examples demonstrate much more eloquently than I could.

Even the cash strapped Russians had an automated launch and landing of their version of a space shuttle back in 1988. No cosmonauts.

That’s because they made the mistake, taking NASA’s lead, of building an all-up system with no incremental flight testing. Again, cash-strapped or not, the system was ultimately unaffordable. That suggests that they may have made a bad design decision in building such a thing in the first place (which was largely a copy of the Shuttle).

With astronauts and pilots, they of course require training, salaries, etc. not to mention the added complexity of environmental, control, and life support systems to the launch vehicle. The automated GNC technology for launching and landing spacecraft has been around for decades.

These are not significant expenses in the context of the total program. And the automated GN&C technology for taking off and landing aircraft has been around for decades as well. But for some reason, those philistines and luddites at the FAA and the airlines still insist on putting pilots in the cockpit. The airliner industry is extremely mature, but they still think pilots are important. But you argue that in a new type of vehicle (a reusable space transport), never successfully built before, that we can do without them. What’s wrong with this picture?

As such, the reasons for having a manned (sorry, “crewed”) launch vehicle are more political and psychological than technical and economical. Who would have really cared if a lunar probe had landed on the moon?

More irrelevancy. We’re not talking about humans as payloads–we’re talking about humans as pilots of vehicles that you want to get back, routinely and reliably.

(Actually, it already had by the time Neil Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface.) As for Fed Ex wanting automatic planes, well, Fed Ex is not in the risky, expensive business of developing commercial aircraft. Most commercial aircraft business is to airlines, which carry passengers, and not many passengers would want to fly in planes with no human pilot.

Yes, and they will want that even more in something as unfamiliar as a space transport.

Even flight attendants were originally put in planes by airlines to attract more male bread-winner passengers, since if they saw young women flying in planes, they reasoned that it must be pretty safe.

Yes, and much the same thing will happen to sell space passenger travel.

Earth to orbit flight is one of those things that for now is barely possible.

Nonsense. It’s routine. The only thing that’s difficult is doing it affordably, because very little effort has gone into developing markets large enough to make that possible.

The main challenges are finding a suitable energy and propulsion system and developing suitable materials that can survive such extreme changes in aerodynamic loads and temperature.

No, the main challenges are overcoming stale Cold-War notions like the ones above, and raising the financing for a viable commercial vehicle. And my prediction is that when this occurs, it will be piloted. The technology is the easy part.

Some of the Palestinians have had it with Arafat. The Israeli campaign may have finally tilled the soil for something better.

“It is not a question of challenging Arafat’s leadership. It is a question of telling him that the PA cannot be run the way it has been up to now. If we are to have national institutions, they must be run professionally. If there is to be armed resistance, it must be against soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories. We must stop all attacks against civilians in Israel. And if we are to have peace with Israel, we must convey the message that our struggle is not against its existence as a state. We accept its existence. It is against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This we will never accept.” Will Arafat heed her message? “I hope so,” she says…

But as he trawled around Ramallah on Thursday, Arafat was surrounded by the same cronies and signalled the same conflicting messages: now vowing “peace with the Israelis”, now promising “1,000 martyrs to liberate Jerusalem”. And everywhere he flashed V-for-victory salutes.

“Lord spare any more such victories,” said a former Palestinian negotiator. “We really don’t need any more victory celebrations. We need the wisdom of the defeated.”

This commentator seems to live in an alternate reality when it comes to the Second Amendment.

The frightening thing, to me, is his job description:

Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is Editorial Director of CBSNews.com based in Washington.

Nope, no bias there…

Steyn hilariously points out the simplistic and idiotic inability of the press and politicians, particularly in Europe (but in the US, too) to tell their “right wingers” apart.

A reader tipped me off to this latest bit of insanity from Bezerkely.

The English R1A reading and comprehension course, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,” states in its course description that “conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections”?a violation of the university’s Faculty Code of Conduct.

According to the course description, the class “takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination.”

I have some suggestions to further flesh out the curriculum.

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of White Aryan Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of white people in America to fight for their own self-determination. Liberal thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructor: David Duke

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Native American Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of the aboriginal peoples in America to fight for their own self-determination. Cowboy thinkers, and Custer and John Wayne apologists are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructer: Russell Means

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Feminine Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of the non-conservative women in America to fight for their own self-determination. Misogynists, male chauvinist pigs, and rapists (i.e., all heterosexual men) are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructer: Catherine McKinnon

I’ve got a comments section–feel free to come up with your own.

[Saturday morning update]

The Angry Clam blog at Berkely is all over this story.

Today’s Salon has a very interesting article about the possible future of blogging by Steven Johnson.

Professor Volokh has a nice little piece in today’s Journal defending the Justice Department’s defense of the Second Amendment. I take issue with one of his points, however.

And the right, if firmly accepted by the courts, may actually facilitate the enactment of modest gun controls. Today, many proposals, such as gun registration, are opposed largely because of a quite reasonable fear that they’ll lead to D.C.-like gun prohibition.

While this may be true for “modest gun controls” in general, I don’t think that it will have much effect in terms of resistance to registration. Even with a formally-recognized right to own guns, many will still view registration as a potential prelude to a rapid and preemptive confiscation, because any government that contemplates consfiscating guns is likely to be indifferent to Constitutional concerns.

If one’s view of the right to bear arms is as a last line of defense against tyranny, then allowing the government to know who has all the guns and where they are weakens that defensive posture considerably.

For those who say that registering guns is no different than registering cars, there is no right to drive in the Constitution. A compromise might be a requirement to register guns that are going to be actually carried in day-to-day activities (just as a car that is going to be driven on the public highways has to carry a registration), but that necessarily doesn’t imply a requirement to register all guns that are purchased or owned. When owning unregistered guns is a crime, only criminals will have unregistered guns…