Potpourri CXXXVII

Here's the latest batch of foolishness...

Boeing flew a formation flight with its newest and oldest aircraft.




Israeli nanotechnology researchers claim to have developed an anti-icing surface.


Some good news for a change: Russia wants to work with the U.S. on space projects past 2020. I don’t think that means they’ll lower the price of Soyuz launches anytime soon, but the sentiment is nice.


The problem with Voyager 2 has been addressed: a bit was “flipped” through random radiation.


The FAA chief doesn’t like his agency being a “piñata” for airlines’ schedule delays. Okay, fine. But if the FAA has been slow to upgrade our out-of-date air traffic control system and ATC delays are the primary cause of planes being stuck on the tarmac, shouldn’t FAA be a legitimate target for the stick?


A citizens group from Texas is visiting Capitol Hill to make a plea for the Constellation Program. Visits matter. So do well-written letters. If you want the U.S. to continue having a human space exploration program (as opposed to just sending humans to low-Earth orbit, which is not exploration), then your voice matters!


Steven Colbert visited Johnson Space Center recently. Nice to have at least one influential media personality digging space.

The inner workings of a 1950s ballistic computer. Cool!


A 1939 Popular Mechanics article describing a transcontinental airplane flight—all 15 hours of it. Yikes!


A Saudi woman beat up a member of the nation’s morality police. I admire her spirit, but don’t like to think about the ultimate outcome.


The Long Now Foundation is sponsoring a talk on fusion.


Food for thought: Science Warriors vs. Philosophers of Science.

From Walt Disney World: How to move a 120-ton Winnie the Pooh tree.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s something of a revolution going on in Thailand.

From Hu, for D2: two articles on training marine mammals for homeland security purposes: here and here. Cindy, Sandy, Seymour, and Clyde have been busy.


The White House blocked a Chicago chef’s tweets as he was being brought in to serve the President. Predictable. Organizations want to use social media when it’s to their advantage and suppress it when it doesn’t. Can’t have it both ways, guys. And really: what's the security risk on a chef?

From Jerry Pournelle: why don't more medical discoveries become cures? Would you believe government regulations have something to do with it? Would you be more likely to believe it if the story was from Newsweek?

Sabine has some interesting thoughts regarding the No Child Left Behind Act (a regular volleyball Doc and I bat back and forth during some of our daily bull sessions). I will have to reread the entry when I get some more time. I'm not sure if I'm qualified or knowledgable enough to argue for or against any of her points, but she posits a very important question. Paraphrased, she wants to know how failing school systems are supposed to clean themselves up when they're given no money or other resources to do so?

Late Addition from Kate Down Under: a Civil War hero of Gettysburg receives a posthumous Medal of Honor 147 years late. I've actually stood at the position where Alonzo Cushing's artillery battery was emplaced, and it was not exactly excellent ground, nor could it have been easy fighting with no long-range guns. Cushing's unit held Cemetary Ridge in the face of Pickett's Charge at close range. I don't know what would've been crazier: being one of the 13,000 men Pickett led in a dash across an open field or being one of the artillerymen forced to hold the line against 13,000 charging Confederates. The Civil War (called "The War Between the States" by some historians or "The War of Northern Aggression" by historians in my neighborhood) is the reason why American military doctrine has since emphasized minimizing casualties. Over 600,000 American lives were lost in that conflict.

That'll do for now. Off to attempt 8 hours of sleep. I know: craziness!

Potpourri CIX

Spent a couple days hanging with the incomparable Dr. OZMG. Not nearly enough, but I'll survive. Meanwhile, the inbox continues to fill up with other, less important items that still require my attention. Let the good times roll...

New from Hu: This was a surprise to me, but Orion Propulsion (run by my friend Tim Pickens) has been bought by Dynetics (a company that now employs two former customers of mine, former Marshall Space Flight Center Director Dave King and former Ares Projects Manager Steve Cook. Huntsville and the space business really are a small world.

If you scroll down on this page, the YouTube video on this page is kinda fun. Fighter jocks doing what they do best--showing off in their pretty airplanes.

Here's a picture of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner's first flight, which has been delayed a bit due to technical issues. The 787 isn't that far different from other commercial airliners you'll see, but its fuselage has more composites than any previous model, making the plane 20% lighter that it would be if it were made of metal. Cool concept, but I'll be interested to see what the long-term effects of pressurizing and repressurizing an all-composite airframe are. Unlike metal, apparently composites are harder to check for fatigue. This bears watching, especially with an airliner that is being built across multiple sites worldwide.

NASA has a new website that allows teenagers to have access to mission data for school papers and so forth. Pretty cool!

Speaking of Dr. OZMG, she's registered for the Reykjavik Marathon in Iceland this coming August. The Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE) recommended checking both the regular Icelandair web site, but also the site for locals to see about getting the best rate for air fare. Yes, the site's in Icelandic, but as the DUDE put it, "The res pages for most airlines look alike."

The DUDE also suggested a couple of novels by an Icelandic author: Yrsa Siguoardottir, Last Rituals and My Soul to Take.

From Lin, with the comment, "This seems like further justification for space exploration." Four planets found circling other stars? Yes, indeedy. That sounds like justification to me. But we're having trouble funding stuff flying within this solar system...good luck finding money for something orbiting another star if there aren't Vulcans involved.

Another reason the U.S. needs to maintain the ability to fly humans into space: Russia just isn't that dependable as a partner on some things. For instance, it has recently reneged on an agreement to provide NASA with plutonium needed to power exploration vehicles. Once the Shuttle is retired, the Russians will be able to charge whatever they like for their services, especially if SpaceX or United Launch Alliance don't have their collective acts together yet.

From Doc, a new poster, with a suggestion that I restrain him from ordering this item for his cube.

Found during my morning environmental scanning, "a crisis of confidence for aerospace careers." It's getting difficult to be a professional space geek, unless you REALLY want it.

Potpourri LXXXVIII

First up: my buddy Darlene the Science Cheerleader managed to get her "Science Makeover" series mentioned on a FoxNews.com story and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She got so much traffic from the story that it crashed ScienceCheerleader.com. Doc recommended she get a different web hosting service, and I reckon that's where she's heading. Anyway, gooooo Dar!

If you can't afford a jet pack, why not try a water-jet pack?

Sad story from Chicagoland. This 45-year-old guy died saving his two children from rip currents in Lake Michigan. Turns out he's a third- or fourth-cousin of mine. The kids are fine, but they now have to go forward without their dad. A shame. And they've got another little one on the way, if I read the news right. Jeez.

The Examiner in the UK has an analysis of NASA's rocket choices.

From Lin: Russian soccer fans are being encouraged to drink whiskey to ward off the swine flu. That's one alternative, I suppose. I thought the Russkis preferred vodka, though.

Speaking of Russia, a pair of Russian attack subs has been patrolling off the U.S. East Coast. Someone call Alec Baldwin...

One of my fellow space advocates, Veronica, has her own website now. Check it out!

Bill Clinton has gone to North Korea, and now two American journalists have been released. It's a miracle! Wonder what that cost.

The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005. I'm guessing 9/11 had a lot to do with that, but still...are people that messed up, or is the world? I prefer optimism and church. They're a lot more work, but worth it.

The War in Georgia and the Space Program

While the news media is transfixed by the invasion of the oil-producing former Soviet republic of Georgia by its former masters, not too many of them have given much thought to the effect of Russia's actions on the space program.

This has been a big issue for me since Space Adventures started sending tourists to the International Space Station. I questioned my fellow space advocates' embrace of this activity, especially since Russia was not all that reliable. But at the time I was grousing, it was 2000-2001, and my Cold Warrior opinions were not welcome. Well, here's a "See, I Told You So" 7 years later. Now we have Russia invading one of its former client states/satellites.

This invasion makes sense if one has read a bit of European/Russian history as well as The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington. In short, we're now facing a world situation where large regional powers are trying to reassert and maintain their power over smaller states in their neighborhood. Russia had a "cordon sanitaire" or set of buffer states between itself and the West between 1919 and 1991. Making former satellites like Ukraine, Poland, or Georgia members of NATO was a direct threat to Russina security, as they saw it. That might not be logical, but it is prudent. Russia wants its buffer back.

So why does this affect the space program? Because Russia has been a major partner in building and staffing the International Space Station and, once the Space Shuttle retires in two years, they will be our only transportation provider to ISS. Will Russia refuse the U.S. access to ISS once Shuttle retires? Will they jack up the price of Soyuz flights to ISS the way they held Europe hostage for higher oil prices? Will ISS become the site of the first "space war?" Those are the types of questions and possibilities Bush and the next president must consider if Russia is going to continue to be an aggressor.

On the U.S. side, we have some other questions to consider. For instance:

• Do we keep the Space Shuttle flying longer?
• Do we increase funding to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program?
• Do we increase funding for the Constellation Program to speed up development of Ares and Orion?
• Do we do all of the above?
• Do we scrap everything and build a different rocket?

Funding all of the above would probably cost $2-3 billion per year at best. More likely, we'd be looking at $4-5 billion in new funding on top of the current $17 billion NASA budget, assuming the current budget gets past the threat of a continuing resolution in Congress. This, of course, overlooks the operational consequences of extending the Shuttle, which Mike Griffin has addressed again and again:

• As long as we continue to fly Shuttle, the vehicle processing and launch infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center must remain as is. The longer we keep Shuttle in place, the longer it will take for our launch systems (the Vehicle Assembly Building, the launch pads, etc.) to be ready to launch Ares I and Ares V. That might not delay the development time for Ares I, but it will delay our ability to fly it.
• We can increase funding for COTS--and I'm for that anyway--but there will be some resistance, given that the only serious competitor in the field (SpaceX) has failed three times to get something into orbit.
• We can increase funding for Ares and Orion. However, Griffin, Jeff Hanley, and others have pointed out that even if you threw a couple billion dollars at Constellation, money isn't the issue. Roger Bilstein's Stages to Saturn provides an excellent narrative that explains why building new rocket systems is a long, arduous, linear process. That means, even if you threw ten or a hundred billion dollars at a new engine system (say, J-2X), it would still take seven years to build it. You have to build things, test them, have them blow up, try something new, and then retest.
• We could stay on plan: retire the Shuttle, build Ares, accept the five-year gap, suck it up, and pay the Russians whatever they want to charge to get access to the ISS.
• We could shift gears, change direction, try some other rocket design--start from scratch with DIRECT or make EELV human-rated and put an Orion capsule on top of it--and hope that either of these choices shrinks the anticipated five-year gap in America's ability to launch human beings into space. Keep in mind that the last time America had a gap in human spaceflight capabilities were the years 1975 to 1981. Those weren't particularly great years (think: Carter), but civilization did not collapse.
• We could quit. Let the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and Indians inherit the spaceways.

The best question someone could ask the two major candidates would be: "America's space program is a waste of time and resources. Why should be bother spending money on space at all? Why don't we just close it down?" Okay, it's not the best question someone could ask, but it would bring the space issue into focus. Do we really want it shut down completely? Does greatness (okay, pride and power--the things McCain talked about in his space statement--but also future technologies and resources) no longer matter to America? Are we going to give up being the single richest, most powerful nation in history just because it's too much work or too expensive? Ye flippin' gods.

Regardless of what happens in Georgia, the media needs to give more thought to the space aspects of a new Cold War with Russia, because it is nearly here, and our space program looked a lot different the last time we had a Cold War. The last time we had one, we went to the Moon.