Potpourri, Petroleum, and Prognostication CXXXV

Smallish pile of stuff this evening, but the weather outside is iffy and I've got new clothes to wash, so let's get to it, shall we?

I've got a few things about the ongoing situation in the Gulf of Mexico. First, from (and by) D2: a powerful essay about the short- and long-term impacts of the gusher. Dede and I agree on practically zilch when it comes to politics (except for the need for civility and informed debate); but when it comes to the ocean, she knows her stuff. If she says it's catastrophic, I believe her. And we also both agree on the need for cleaner energy sources (I favor nuclear and space-based solar power). Not sure I'm 100% behind a ban on offshore drilling, but she's also provided a link petitioning the President to do so. The Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE) directed me to a site that chronicles how this whole mess got started. And I'm repeating this one because it still bears thinking about and because it might be worth a few thousand dollars to whoever comes up with a solution...Dar has added a crowdsourcing opportunity on Science for Citizens looking for methods of mitigating this mess, as well as a blog about this issue. Put your thinking caps on!

Not to say this guy is overexposed, but jeez, Buzz. First Dancing with the Stars, now wrestling?

Speaking of space-based solar power, here's a link to The Futures Channel's stories on space stuff, including Ares and SBSP.

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This one has been sitting in my blog folder for awhile, so I'll just put it out there to clear the deck. It's a forwarded email from Father Dan on trends to watch for in the future. My comments in bold.

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.


The last time I went to the USPS for anything was probably the cheerless office in the basement of Building 4200 at Marshall Space Flight Center. Before that, it was a few years ago when I needed a passport photo done. It looked awful, as such things usually do, but the jerk running the camera wouldn't allow one do-over and made it quite clear that I could take it or leave it. Nice attitude. At least the folks at the UPS Store make an effort at being nice.

2. The Cheque. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

There are a few things I still write checks for, including rent, church offerings, and some bills. Not all companies or organizations take cash or automatic bill paying. (I'm trying to imagine churches passing around a debit card reader, and the mind reels!)
3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

Despite several attempts, my former newspaper reporter buddy Martin has yet to convince me that "serious" journalism will die once all dead-tree newspapers have died. I've tried several times to subscribe to a regular newspaper--and once even subscribed to the Wall Street Journal on my Kindle--all to no avail. The amount of time I spent actually reading the darn things never justified the expenditure involved. At least with the WSJ, I didn't have a pile of inky paper piling up by my door. I just don't have the time. I get quite a good fill of news from other sources, thanks.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

The death of the dead-tree book might hurt quite a bit more than the newspaper. After all, I actually read those. I read more books in a year than newspapers (at least one a month). Books never need recharging, the work when the power goes out, and unless you drop it in a puddle or set it on fire, the words will still be there on the page if you come back to it weeks or months later. They won't get deleted if someone's server is having a bad day.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they're always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

Gave up my land line in 2004 because I couldn't afford a cell phone and a land line at Northern Virginia prices. The only downside to cell phones is that if someone calls you, they expect you to answer, no matter what. It's like the machines have conditioned us to their needs, not vice versa. There are two ways for privacy freaks like me to avoid this problem:

1. Leave the d@mned thing at home.
2. Turn the d@mned thing off.

I have done both.
6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit.
I'm not sure I agree with this one 100 percent. YouTube and MySpace have both allowed bands to reach unprecedently large audiences simply by putting their stuff out there. One thing I've noticed with my iPhone in particular, however, is that the multi-song album might die off pretty soon. Let's face it: you've got to be a serious fan of the artist before you'll take the time and money to buy every song of theirs; otherwise, if you're like most of middle America, you'll download the songs of theirs that you like...most likely what's played on the radio, right? And what iTunes won't do, satellite radio will. I think this essay is right: conglomerates will eventually do themselves in. However, another casualty of satellite radio would be local radio, which I'd find unfortunate; unlike my local newspaper, I do pay attention to local radio stations.

7. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, rab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
I've heard about this phenomenon, and don't really have a problem with it. Google and Amazon are not "resident" on my PC unless I download their toolbars, and Google updates their software daily. This is better than the irregular "patches" you have to download from Microsoft, and problems, while more widespread, are more likely to get addressed in real time, unlike, say, Vista, which took months of customer complaints before it was finally replaced. That said, if the server does go down, you're hosed on your ability to get anything done. The only "comfort" you have is that there will be several million people all in the same boat, including your customer(s).

8. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

The specific example they cite--localized purchasing--is a tradeoff: convenience vs. privacy of one's transactions. One good reason to get off of Facebook is that they're making it increasingly difficult for you to opt out of their relentless marketing database. My biggest gripe is with the cell phone (see above), and there are still ways around that...at least until they mandate that chip in your head.

All we will have that can't be changed are memories.

From reading this, one might assume I'm not terribly sentimental or nostalgic about the items above, and one would assume correctly. There are some cultural trends I'm watching very closely that fill me with dismay, and these might be restrained or abetted by the technologies we develop. But technology is not neutral. Neither is education. We will need both if we're going to improve the state of our world. For the moment, it's the only one we've got.

Potpourri CVI

I got this extended note from the Moon Society, which deserves reading. While Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin might be a little overexposed, he's a very smart man, and his thoughts on space exploration deserve some attention.

Group: The Moon Society
Subject: Moon Society Endorses Aldrin's Proposal for a Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation
Buzz Aldrin published a proposal for a public/private/international plan to open the Moon for exploration and development in the Huffington Post

http://digg.com/d3176tD

Below are key excerpts:

• “I propose instead America call the world to the Moon. In a new global effort to use the Moon to establish a global space consortium with a lunar surface facility as its epicenter, “
• “... competition, in an Apollo-style race back to the Moon, would be a fruitless exercise in national hubris whose rewards, if we “won”again, would prove fleeting”
• “I am proposing a different way back to the Moon: international collaboration. “
• “... the goal of creating a new public-private partnership todevelop the Moon. I call it the Lunar Infrastructure DevelopmentCorporation (LIDC). The purpose of the LIDC would be to enable thenations of the Earth to join together and return to the Moon as an international cooperative venture. The LIDC will pool the financial,technical and human resources of its member nations to build the lunar communication, navigation and transportation systems needed for human exploration of the Moon. It would be a public/private global partnership to make the Moon accessible to all humanity. The LIDC will build the communication and navigation satellites needed by future lunar travelers, develop fuel depots using lunar LOX – perhaps derived from the recently discovered lunar water-and construct habitats that will shelter space travelers while on the surface. It will enable a sustainable human presence on the Moon that will be accessible to all the nations on Earth."
• “Unlike the International Space Station (ISS), which is governed by complex treaties, the LIDC will have the same flexibility as an NGO in working with different nations and private entities to finance build and operate the facilities and equipment needed for lunar exploration. “
• “To do so [i.e., honoring the astronauts of the Apollo Era Missions] doesn’t require rerunning a long-ago Cold War race in which America plays the role of a space-going Colonial power.

Moon Society Officers and Directors, who collectively make up the Management Committee gave the Moon Society's official endorsement. The email vote was unanimous.

As Ben Nault, Director from Tucson, put it: “Probably the main reason the ISS is still "alive" and supported by Congress is that it is part of a number of international agreements. Backing out of these agreement would have financial, political and diplomatic repercussions on the US. Therefore, having an international component helps large complex programs survive the transition to different administrations and different congressional moods. The international angle gives long-term "sustainability" to the Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation.

“In asking for Committee member support, we pointed out significant similarities with our own proposal, also strongly endorsed byCommittee members, for an International Lunar Research Park. Bothproposals are for public/private/international collaboration. There are, of course, those who would prefer a NASA-stand alone effort, and those who would prefer a purely private enterprise approach. But a reality check shows that the public/private/international approach will be much more robust, and stand a much greater chance of becoming a permanent beachhead on the Moon. It is also much more likely to lead to the first civilian industrial settlement.And that is precisely the Vision of the Moon Society. The Moon Society urges other pro-space organizations, the public, and the media to support Buzz Aldrin's proposal.

For more on the Moon Society International Lunar Research Park proposal, see: http://www.moonsociety.org/reports/beyond_nasa.html

Thank you for your support

http://www.moonsociety.org/

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New from Hu:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally hit 10,000, a number it hasn't reached in a year. That's still not the high it reached during the Bush administration. Still waiting to hear when this becomes "Obama's economy."
• CNN/Money ran a business profile piece on Huntsville, Alabama.
• The Airborne Tactical Laser (ATL) has hit a moving target from the air. Sha-ZAAAAM!!

The Constellation Program has a pretty cool 12-minute video explaining some of the roles flight testing have in making a better space program.

Your useful piece of trivia for today: 62 years ago today, Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager broke the sound barrier--750 miles per hour in level flight over the high desert of California--in the Bell X-1. Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, the book or the movie, is still the best portrayal of the seminal moment in aviation history. Saaaa-lute!

There's a web site out there that depicts every space mission ever sent to other worlds of the solar system. Very cool!

NASA is again looking at technology development for reusable launch vehicles. Good! Actually, a meeting I was in today gave every indication that the Obama administration is interested in spending more money on science and technology development research. About bloody time.

From my AIAA news feed:
Some Astronauts Annoyed At SpaceX's Dragon
The Orlando Sentinel (10/14, Block) reports, "Asked what bugs them most about NASA outsourcing the job of flying crew to the International Space Station, some astronauts roll their eyes and say: 'Dragon,'" the manned capsule being built by SpaceX, because of the fear of being "little more than human cargo" since the ship is fully automated. "SpaceX has hired its own former astronaut, Ken Bowersox, to make Dragon more astronaut-friendly," a move the article describes as a "clear example of how serious it is about leading a new commercial era in American space exploration." The article, positively describing SpaceX's efforts, notes the "biggest concern" of "astronauts, NASA officials and some members of Congress" is that "SpaceX ships are rivals to Ares and Orion, a view SpaceX dismisses." Bowersox describes the ships as "enablers" for NASA to conduct exploration.

From the Wall Street Journal:

• God vs. Science isn’t the issue…
  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704429304574467320574576460.html
• Sudden Change, Big Effect http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469473830302630.html

From Lin: Sheriff Arpaio, the tough-guy from Arizona, vows to continue sweeps to capture illegal immigrants while the Obama administration would prefer that he not.

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Some late-breaking news from the Drudge Report: Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group bidding to purchase the St. Louis Rams. The sole reason for this is his political views, however tactfully or tackily expressed, and the negative publicity they generated. The campaign run against him and the restraint of trade that this campaign has now created sets a very ugly precedent: the NFL has just announced that Limbaugh's cash is good only at the ticket gate or the bar, it won't be accepted in the front office. I wonder what would happen if another conservative ever decided to invest in a football team. Heck, I wonder what would happen if I ever decided to. It will be interesting to see what the fallout is from all this. Limbaugh won't take it lying down: of that I am reasonably certain.

Why Do We Pay Attention to Celebrities When They Say Stuff Like This?

Whoopi Goldberg entertains conspiracy theories about the moon landings being faked.

Where the heck is Buzz Aldrin?

Potpourri LIX

Getting close to a two-month countdown on the European vacation. Woo hoo! My buddy R2D2 sent a packing checklist. I'll add it to the pile. Gosh knows I need all the help I can get.

New from Hu:

• Gizmodo update on the Constellation Program.
• A couple editorials from Buzz Aldrin on Constellation, one in Discover, on on CNN.com.

From Blake, a couple episodes of Robot Chicken's version of Star Wars, here and here. NOT for kids.

And from Jeff, a new reader, a new site. He describes it as follows:

My blog deals with current news on NASA Space Missions,International Space News, Shuttle & Station,Moon & Mars,Solar System,Earth,Universe,Aeronautics,Science & Technology International Space Station, NASA, Shuttle & Station, Moon & Mars, Solar System, Universe.

Thanks for reading!

Tip o' the fedora to Rick Moore for finding this: my single concession to the recent news on the passing of Michael Jackson, the complete video of Captain EO, a Francis Ford Coppola/George Lucas 3D film that appeared at Epcot's Journey Into Imagination in the '80s.
Part I
Part II

Here's a hangover we'll regret in the morning: the House passed the carbon cap and trade (e.g. energy tax) bill 219-212 this evening. Say goodbye to cheap everything, if the Senate passes this. If the Senate does not pass it, that will be through the concerted efforts of motivated private citizens willing to get involved and make their voices heard. My letters and emails will be in the mail tomorrow.

Potpourri LVII

From the nine corners of the globe, Rhetoric & Rockets continues its proud new tradition of feeding potpourri to all 20 of its regular readers. Thanks!

And now for something completely different from the DUDE*, a story about a man who got into it with a clothes dryer and lives to tell the tale.

(*DUDE = Down Under Defense Expert)

New from Hu (and discussed on this blog a week or so ago): Orion Propulsion announces that it has completed qualification tests on its attitude control system for Bigelow Aerospace's Sundancer space station.

Also from Hu: SeaLaunch has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Not good.

A very long but entertaining article by GQ Magazine on what NASA's been up to, space-wise.

Must be seen to be believed: Buzz Aldrin, Snoop Dogg, and space hip-hop. As Dave Barry would say, "And I'm not making this up."

Everything you wanted to know about the F-35's weapons systems except how to defeat them.

From my AIAA news feed:

• LCROSS Will Stream Live Its Approach To Moon.
• Work Continues On Ares I-X Launch Pad.
• Orion Propulsion Develops Environmentally Friendly Propulsion System.
  

Potpourri XLIX

Interesting stuff out there today. Let's start with...

Buzz Aldrin has his own web site, and apparently I'm now on the mailing list. Gosh, I wonder how that happened. 8-)

Forbes Magazine is questioning the financial health and viability of the Constellation Program.

I asked a couple folks what they thought the cause might be of the Air France crash. Scott had some thoughts...

As I type this I’m hearing that wreckage was found, but found from a C-130. It doesn’t look like a ship will get there until tomorrow. Considering all the flotsam one finds even when sailing the “empty” parts of the world’s oceans there’ll have to be some serial-number matching before anyone can say for sure if that particular stuff came from that particular airplane, or from an airplane at all.

The main thing to keep in mind is that accidents like this rarely have a single cause.

The storm idea, for example. Sure, there’s no aircraft strong enough to withstand a storm that’s big enough; and composites need special protection from lightning. That said, aircraft fly through the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ICTZ) hundreds of
times per day. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a Singapore Airlines. Or Malaysian, or Garuda, etc. The tops of some storms in the ICTZ can top out in the mid-50,000 feet range. You have to fly around them as you can’t fly over them unless you’re in a U-2.

...and here's an detailed meteorological analysis of the crash area at the time.

Obviously I'm not the target audience for this, but if you're a conservative and you like rap, you might enjoy this YouTube video. Oy.

From Cassie, a link to an IEEE article by Elon Musk.

The official notice on the members of the Augustine human spaceflight panel matches the earlier rumor posted on the Orlando Sentinel.

Not going to explain this, just going to ask that you watch it.

An extended blog and photo review of the new Disney Vacation Club at the Contemporary Resort.

The International Space Station now has a full staff of six astronauts. About bloody time. Now we'll see what they can do with it.

Scaled Composites has had its first test firing of the hybrid motor that will power SpaceShipTwo.

Potpourri II

Steve Jobs gave a pretty decent commencement address at Stanford University in 2005...

...during which he referenced something we used to have in the Leahy household: The Whole Earth Catalog, which has now gone online. I didn't have much use for it as a kid, but the Catalog did feature one science fiction novel: Dune by Frank Herbert.

And following from the same hippie ethos that powered the Catalog, Doc referred me to a farming cooperative here in Northern Alabama, which allows people to buy fresh-off-the-farm foods for a relatively minimal cost. Best for families--it's a lot of food!

And the last bit of fun from the hash in my head this evening...I'm now six months away from going to Europe. Huzzah!

Oh, wait. One more thing...some new thoughts on space policy from Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Okay, I'm done.