Potpourri CVIII

Note to other Blogger.com users: For some reason the "Paste" option is disabled in IE 8. Copy/paste works just fine in Firefox!

Busy research day…too much stuff to explain everything in detail, so I'm just posting headlines and links.

Monarch Butterflies in Spaaaaaaaace!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091208-space-monarch-butterflies.html

Leonard David on Public Space Travel
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/091207-spaceshiptwo-space-touristm.html

Variations in Brightness for Sun-like Stars
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091207-sun-stars-brightness.html

Cassini Providing Data on the Heliosphere
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/View_From_The_Center_Of_The_Solar_System_999.html

Jeffrey Bell on “Rocket Plane Roulette”
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Rocket_Plane_Roulette_999.html

NASA Moon Design Competition
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_announces_moon_design_competition_999.html

Climate Protestors Climb the Roman Colosseum
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/091209124623.rpqa087c.html

NASA Managers Looking at Adding Another Shuttle Flight
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/12/nasa-evaluating-sts-135-addition-to-shuttle-manifest/

Moment of Random: Captain Berlin vs. Hitler
http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/12/08/captain-berlin-vs-hitler-movie-review/#more-14335

Need Coffee eview of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods
http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/12/08/neil-gaiman-dreams/#more-14323

RFI for Using Constellation or Robotic Hardware for Future Missions
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32990

Anti-Terrorism Hero or Wishful-Thinking Nut?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/tedd_petruna_i_thwarted_muslim_hijackers_on_airtra.php?ref=mp

Creating Starfleet Academy?

NASAWatch: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/creating-starfl.html
OpenNASA: http://www.opennasa.com/2009/12/07/starfleet-academy/
Me: http://bartacus.blogspot.com/2008/07/starfleet-academy-proposal-several.html

Bar Camp? Not Quite What You’re Thinking…
http://www.opennasa.com/2009/12/05/spaceup-a-space-unconference/
http://spaceup.org/agenda/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

Government in the Digital Age
http://www.opennasa.com/2009/11/25/government-in-the-digital-age/

Leading in an Era of Disruptive Innovation (THINK, for God’s sake and your own. THINK before you unleash your infernal gadgets on the world!!!)
http://www.opennasa.com/2009/11/19/leading-amidst-the-disruptive-innovation-storm/

Boeing Looking for a Non-Union Source of 787 Parts Due to Strike (I’m shocked, shocked…)
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/12/07/daily19.html

Flight Delays Up in October (Okay, fine, but how many of those were due to airline problems vs. the government’s antiquated Air Traffic Control system?)
=http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2009-12-08-october-airline-performance_N.htm

Go Boldly on The Space Show
http://www.goboldlynasa.org/
http://spacefellowship.com/2009/12/07/this-week-on-the-space-show-121/
http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1271

(From Dar the Science Cheerleader) Hydrogen-Powered Cars for Kids...and This is a Toy!
http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/12/the-cure-for-the-holiday-shopping-blues/

Science Jewelry for the Brain
http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/12/science-jewelry-for-your-brain/

I Can Has Singularity?
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/cascio20091120/

Global Warming and Mt. Kilimanjaro
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342404574577892593153408.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

Did You Know that CO2 Was a Threat to Public Health? According to the EPA, It Is
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view600.html#Tuesday

Shubber Ali on Giving Up Space Blogging (Can’t Say That I Blame Him)
http://spacecynic.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/thanksgiving-and-a-sort-of-farewell/

Jeff Foust on NASA’s FY2010 Budget
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/12/09/fy2010-budget-endgame/

Chris Carberry Resigns from Mars Society Executive Director Post
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/12/05/mars-society-executive-director-steps-down/

Soyuz to Start Launching from French Guiana
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/11/30/335601/soyuz-to-go-west-in-2010.html

For Orlando people who get warm and romantic thoughts about cold & ice
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/attractions/orl-ice-pg,0,1748946.photogallery

Walt Disney World is Reducing Discounts in 2010. Wait a minute, Disney does discounts??
http://thedailydisney.com/blog/2009/12/iger-disney-will-dial-back-on-park-discounts-in-latter-part-of-2010/

The Copenhagen summit on global climate change is not going well...the U.N. is not happy that it's not getting its way and that a draft agreement was leaked to the press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

From my NASA PAO feed:

NASA MAKING GOVERNMENT MORE ACCESSIBLE WITH CUTTING-EDGE USE OF NEW MEDIA

WASHINGTON -- NASA is supporting the White House's Open Government
Directive with a number of Internet-based programs designed to make
the agency more accessible and create a dialog with the American
people about their space program.

NASA is one of six departments and agencies working to spur innovation
by making it easier for high-tech companies to identify
collaborative, entrepreneurial opportunities. Government agencies are
home to treasure troves of data and information, too much of which is
underutilized by the private sector because it is either not easily
found or exists in cumbersome formats. NASA and the National
Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration in the
Department of Health and Human Services, the Agricultural Research
Service in the Department of Agriculture, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in the Department of Commerce and the
Department of Energy are working together to increase access to
information on publicly-funded technologies that are available for
license, opportunities for federal funding and partnerships, and
potential private-sector partners.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Programs Office is working to establish
an RSS feed to publicize technologies available for public licensing.
By making information from multiple agencies available in RSS and XML
feeds on Data.gov, the government empowers innovators to find the
information they need and receive real-time updates, which can fuel
entrepreneurial momentum, create new jobs, and strengthen economic
growth. NASA's RSS feed will make these opportunities more visible to
the commercial and research communities. NASA plans on having the
feed operational by Dec. 31.

NASA also has undertaken an extensive effort to use the Internet and
social media tools to engage the public on agency activities. NASA's
home page on the Internet, www.nasa.gov, offers information on all of
the agency's missions, research and discoveries.

In January 2009, nasa.gov capitalized on the agency's growing social
media efforts by rolling out a new "Connect and Collaborate with
NASA" page, at www.nasa.gov/connect. This provides the public with
quick connections to the agency's pages on Twitter, Facebook,
UStream, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, as well as NASA podcasts and
vodcasts on iTunes. The page also provides links to agency chats,
Tweetup events, RSS feeds and the agency's official blog.

The agency's social media presence was further expanded in November
with the addition of NASA's Twitter feed to the homepage. The website
offers links to NASA-related desktop "widgets" and opportunities for
the public to collaborate directly with the agency through art
contests, engineering challenges and imagery and data analysis.

Another new communication tool is Spacebook, a NASA internal expert
networking utility. Spacebook has been used to improve collaboration
across NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The Spacebook site allows
new and established NASA staff to get to know the agency's diverse
community of scientists, engineers, project managers and support
personnel.

"Space doesn't explore itself. Science doesn't discover itself. People
do that, and to do that they have to talk," said Emma Antunes, the
project manager who also manages Goddard's Web site. "They have to
trade questions and ideas. They have to connect. And, the more
diverse the group, the more likely connections and conversations will
lead to new ideas and innovation. Spacebook will enhance NASA's
capacity to do just that."

A fun video from the Coalition for Space Exploration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZWMeFR5bw

TV show recommendation by Hu: Outer Space Astronauts... http://www.syfy.com/outerspaceastronauts/

Web Contest:
Enter this contest for pre-collegiate students by building a Web site that communicates your vision of the future.

Furniture made from reclaimed wine barrels: http://www.etsy.com/shop/StilNovoDesign

And, of course, I'd be remiss as a space geek if I didn't point out the rollout of SpaceShipTwo on Virgin Galactic's site.

And I think that'll do for tonight...

Potpourri CIX

I've got about a week's worth of random links to clear out, so I might as well get cracking.

Might as well start with this email I got from myself courtesy of FutureMe.org:

Dear FutureMe,

You've been to Europe and--hopefully--seen the Ares I-X flight go up by now. You had three weeks to yourself; what did you learn? What did you do for others? What did you come back with (hopefully nothing contagious)? What contacts/friends did you make? What did you learn from the launch?

Now get writing!

/b

If you're interested in sending messages to your future self, FutureMe is kind of fun.

From Cliff, a unique take on how to compare Obama's deficit spending with George W. Bush's deficit spending.

From Father Dan, a 1948 cartoon on freedom and what it means to have it taken away. Ten minutes long, but worth the watch.

From Dom, a flow chart of "Hey Jude" by The Beatles. No, really.

From Lin: an indication that the Obama administration might've exaggerated a little on the number of jobs created by the stimulus. I'm shocked, shocked...

From me, a list of the Ares I-X blogs posted up to and during launch:

• Following Ares I-X on Launch Day (summary of all the different ways/sites people can use to get information on I-X) http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256637046961.html
• One on One and Another on the Other (discussing the significance of Ares and Atlantis on the launch pads) http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256642619884.html
• The Pulse of the Public (videos of spectator reactions at KSC)http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256645425971.html
• Pulse of the People, Part II (more spectator reactions—a hoot!)http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256648140578.html
• Flight Rules and Triboelectrification (What the heck is that?)http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256648398611.html
• The Pointy End of the Rocket (discussion of the five-hole probe)http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256648957643.html
• When is a Rocket Launch Like a Soap Opera? (summary of our various challenges during the day) http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256653671613.html
• Not Today (brief comment on the scrub) http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256657433409.html
• Whatever Happened to the Five-Hole Probe?
  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256733950658.html
• Why a Four-Hour Launch Window?
  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256735155402.html
• Triboelectrification Questions? Try This.
  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256743468990.html
• Liftoff!
  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X.blog/posts/post_1256749357624.html

NASA has an iPhone application.

From work, a series of 3D images of the Ares I-X rocket. Yowza! (Note: Java required to run.)

• Ares I-X on 39B 10/23.2009 at 10am from MLP side 3 (North side)
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1-XPadBMLPNE091023/
• Ares I-X on 39B 10/23/2009 at 10am from MLP side 1 (South side)
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1-XPadBMLPSo091023/
• Ares I-X on 39B 10/23/2009 at 10am on 295 foot level
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1-XPadBlvl300_091023/
• Ares I-X in VAB High Bay 3 as viewed from Mobile Launch Platform
  http://nasatech.net/Arex1-XStack090823/
• Ares I-X in VAB High Bay 3 as viewed from High Bay 4 16th level crossover
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1X-hb4lvl16Stacked090823/
• Ares I-X in VAB High Bay 3 as viewed from F Tower C Platform Catwalk
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1-Xupper091015/
• Ares I-X in VAB High Bay 3 as viewed from E Roof South
  http://nasatech.net/Ares1-Xmid091015/
• 39B ready for Ares I-X ---- modified to accommodate Ares I-X
  http://nasatech.net/PadBmod300_091014/
• 39B ready for Ares I-X ---- modified to accommodate Ares I-X (235 foot level)
  http://nasatech.net/PadBmod235_091014/

Antarctic ice loss might have been overestimated.

An article on NERVA, among other things.

Even if the U.S. government has a hard time explaining why it needs a space program, the European Space Agency does not.

From Dea, a little graphic that amused me because it occasionally hits close to home. The scary part is that meetings in this job can go 4-8 hours...WAY off the scale for this chart.

Oh yeah, speaking of Ares I-X, Fox News posted a slide show from the mission.

I think I've found my next tax haven: a floating city!

And I guess that will do for now. Thanks for reading...or not.

Potpourri XCIII

Let's get to it. I've got French lessons to catch up on!

Thomas Sowell has a hard-hitting piece on Obama's inexperience.

A variety of stories from my AIAA news feed:

• A Boeing plant in South Carolina is voting on whether to keep the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union in their shop. That will not make Obama happy.
• NORAD is conducting an exercise to prepare for the Vancouver Olympics. I didn't realize al-Qaeda had an air force.
• NASA has selected the crew for what could be the last scheduled Space Shuttle flight. It's real, folks, regardless of what the Augustine Panel decides.
• French wine growers are benefitting from satellite imagery.
• NPR has a story today on NASA's Student Airborne Research Program.

Paul Spudis has a good editorial on sustainability in space exploration. The problem is that there are two kinds of sustainability in the space business: technical and political. And the technical, if "boring" to the electorate or their elected officials, will not be politically sustainable. However, a politically exciting and sustainable program might leave behind little that is reusable.

Liberal Camille Paglia, a still-strong Obama supporter, has torn into the Democrats' handling of the healthcare bill. This is not a good sign.

The United Nations Secretary-General says we have four months to act or global warming will doom us. By "act," he means sign a climate treaty in Copenhagen that will cut greenhouse gas emissions. Right. After one of the coldest summers in the history of modern record keeping.

I am in the process of reading the House healthcare bill, but it is a long, painful slog, and I have other things to read as well. In the meantime, I commend this analysis by a classics professor to your attention.

More on the Blue Brain project. Gotta wonder about the Singularity.

Potpourri LXXXIX

Mixed bag this evening, so let's just reach into the inbox and see what colored marbles I dig out.

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• Global warming is amok! Weather is out of control! Uh...unless you're a tornado hunter.


• Um...or a hurricane tracker. Remember when Al Gore, the Smartest Man With a PowerPoint, predicted that all of our weather was going to get worse every year?
• Remember the moral outrage over the Big Three automakers' CEOs taking corporate jets to Washington for their powwow with the president? Well, apparently, it's still okay for members of Congress to use private jets. I'm shocked, shocked...

Rod Coppinger at Flightglobal takes a few shots at the orbital fuel depot idea.

Responses to Darlene the Science Cheerleader have not been particularly polite or pleasant in the land of academia. I find a lot of the comments akin to something you'd read in high school: "brains" getting snippy because "a cheerleader is trying to do what we're supposed to do." These critics have little sense of humor or appreciation for what Dar is trying to do. The fact that she's a Republican probably just makes things worse, at least in the academics' eyes. Too bad. Dar has an audience, and probably a larger one than many of the folks currently sniping at her. It's not just a matter of cute. Positive attitude matters, too, and Dar has it in spades.

From Doc, a cool site on ways to get involved with the space biz.

One sign that I'm a Gen Xer is that I got cubicle toys for my birthday (I am currently 39.99999). Dr. OZMG sent me a sensitivity consultant from The Cubes. The awesomeness is so great it hurts.

After I finish with Europe, my next big vacation might be New Zealand, partially because I can hang out with the DUDE and Mrs. DUDE, partially because that's where they filmed Lord of the Rings, and partially because it's just a beautiful country.

Some idjit who didn't do well with women went nuts and killed three people and then himself in Pittsburgh. Dude, what the heck were you thinking? What were you doing/saying with these women that caused them to reject you? Could it have been that "tense, creepy, might-go-off-and-shoot-people" vibe you were giving off? Losers of the world, get thyselves to church!

The U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship is ready to deploy.

New from Hu: Someone has taken the time to unleash a critical preemptive strike on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra before it comes out. Why waste the energy? It'll be on DVD within three months anyway.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) detected free oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, indicating signs of life. Might've made a more intriguing story if it hadn't found life...or intelligent life, anyway.

Lego is cosponsoring a Lunar X Prize contest. Cool!

Oh yeah, and rather than take the word of the media, talk radio, or the blogosphere, check out this link and read for yourself the current healthcare bill before Congress...all 1,000+ pages of it. I read the Clinton healthcare plan, so I guess I'll subject myself to this one as well. Expect a very long blog entry, come the day...

And on that note, I guess I'll sign off. Tomorrow I'll be 40. How the heck did that happen? Never mind...

Energy and Its Opponents

NASA "scientist" (the quotes are on purpose--he shifted from serious scientist to advocate years ago) has been arrested along with actress Darryl Hannah and others for obstructing traffic in a protest against coal power. Hansen is upset about global warming and its potentiallly catastrophic effects on the planet (ignoring the catastrophic effects brought about by another Ice Age).

We need a little rationality on the energy debate, which we are unlikely to get, because the two "sides" of the issue are at serious cross-purposes:

1. Global warming is happening! It's serious, deadly, and we need to act NOW to prevent an even greater catastrophe!
2. Climates are changing all the time via "weather." Why don't we collect more data before we make a bad decision that does more harm than good?

Then there's the fact that global climate change advocates' solutions for the problem lead inevitably to a contracting of the Western way of life. Consider their treatment of the primary forms of energy used today:

1. Petroleum: A finite resource that is the primary creator of pollution and global warming.
2. Nuclear: Too dangerous due to potential meltdowns (even though Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear power accident in American history, never hurt a single human being).
3. Coal: It's "dirty," and must be eliminated.
4. Natural gas: A finite resource, essentially a form of petroleum, and so must be subject to restrictions or rationing.
5. Hydroelectric: Dams can drown or destroy animal and plant habitats (human habitats are conveniently ignored).
6. Ground-based solar: Ideal (even though it produces less than 1% of U.S. energy needs and is essentially useless on cloudy days, at night, and at higher latitudes with lower amounts of sunlight).
7. Geothermal: Okay (but limited to places where geothermal vents are present).
8. Wind: Ideal (even though the wind doesn't blow all the time, and if we want to keep our economy functioning at the current levels, we'd need hundreds of thousands of them--oh, and where are we going to get the energy and petrochemicals necessary to manufacture these windmills?).

These sources haven't been used yet, but protests can't be far away...

1. Space-based solar power: No organized lobby against SBSP, though I can imagine it will be objected to on public safety and military grounds ("It could be used as a weapon to fry people!").
2. Helium-3 fusion: Another energy source so far lacking an enemy. However, it is nuclear power (you know--like that sun that's providing solar power?), and so must be evil, even if it hasn't been accomplished yet.
3. Tide and Ocean-thermal electric conversion (OTEC): Tidal energy hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but would probably get negative points for cluttering up rich people's beachfront property. OTEC would require very large, oil derrick-like structures over the deep places in the ocean. You run a cable down to the cold regions of the deep ocean, and the temperature difference creates a potential difference, and thus electrical current. No doubt these structures would be protested for being ugly in the middle of nowhere.

Anyhow, I can only assume that those who protest all useful energy production must have a death wish. The internet takes energy. Creating plastic computers (you know: Macs) requires energy and petrochemicals. Creating high-productivity fertilizers to improve crop productivity and feed the hungry millions of the world requires energy. Creating new pharmaceuticals to keep everyone healthy requires energy plus complex chemistry, often found in petrochemicals. CAT scans, MRIs, and other medical wonders require energy to operate and energy to manufacture. Coffee makers require energy to manufacture and operate. Even bicycles and basic garden tools require energy to be produced--energy often provided by hydrocarbons (aka petroleum). Trucks, trains, and aircraft require fuel to transport necessary goods to stores.

We cannot cut ALL of the high-density energy resources from our economy, or millions, nay, billions of human beings will starve for lack of food, transportation, and medicine. The upcoming "cap and trade" legislation is simply a tax on energy, and it will hurt everybody in the name of a cause that has yet to close its scientific case. When are we going to say "Enough!"?

Potpourri LV

I learned to dislike the New York accent after hearing people yell at me with it while checking in at Disney's Dixie Landings Resort. This story didn't change my mind much.

Been awhile since I've looked at this, but it's a good reference. If you're interested in survival skills for a variety of disasters--hurricanes, terrorist attacks, nuclear war, etc.--this site gives you a starting point.

If you're interested in counteracting some of the force-fed global warming rhetoric thrown your way, you might consult The Skeptic's Handbook.

And finally, a little political humor for your day. JibJab.com does a pretty good of zinging candidates and political figures from both sides. This time they take on our "super hero" president. Thanks to Mitch for sending this one!

Potpourri XXXVII

Let's see, what's out there? Oh, yeah! Got to start with this: the Obama administration knew that the Supreme Court's ruling that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant even though they did NOT like the decision! Someone, of course, is in big trouble. There were all sorts of "green" laws that were going to happen under Obama. The whole article from The Hill deserves to be quoted in full:

OMB memo raises doubts about EPA findings
@ 4:17 pm by Eric Zimmermann
An EPA finding last month that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health rests on dubious assumptions and could have negative economic impacts, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned.
The memo has no listed author but is marked "Deliberative–Attorney Client Privilege." A spokesman for OMB told Dow Jones Newswires that the brief is a "conglomeration of counsel we've received from various agencies" about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The author(s) of the memo suggest the EPA did not thoroughly examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and human health.
"In the absence of a strong statement of the standards being applied in this decision, there is concern that EPA is making a finding based on…'harm' from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects," the memo says, adding that the "scientific data that purports to conclusively establish" that link was from outside EPA.
Additionally, the new regulations triggered by the finding would likely harm the economy, the brief warns.
"Making the decision to regulate CO2…is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities," the memo reads.
Finally, in language sure to anger climate change activists, the memo questions whether climate change might bring benefits that would mitigate the costs.
"To the extent that climate change alters out environment, it will create incentives for innovation and adaption that mitigate the damages," the memo reads. "The [EPA finding] should note this possibility[.]"
The memo goes so far as to suggest that global warming might be a net positive for certain regions of the United States.
"It might be reasonable to conclude that Alaska will benefit from warmer winters for both health and economic reasons," the authors note.
At a Senate hearing today, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) grilled EPA administrator Lisa Jackson about the memo.
"This is a smoking gun," Barrasso said, accusing the EPA of making the finding for political reasons.
Jackson responded that the finding was based on science and was in no way politicized.
"That analysis had been done really before I took the oath of office," Jackson said.
She acknowledged that curbing climate change might have economic impact, and added that the costs could be minimized through the administration's favored cap-and-trade system.
"We do understand that there are costs to the economy of addressing global warming emissions, and that the best way to address them is a gradual move to a market-based program like cap-and trade," Jackson said.

The genie is out of the bottle. Let the merriment and chaos begin.

Your Humble Narrator is famous, from an academic point of view. I’ve got a textbook here called “Societal Impacts of Spaceflight,” which was printed by NASA and based on a bunch of papers presented by historians, sociologists, and those sorts of folk at a symposium a couple years back. One of these writers actually cited one of my articles. Page 493, reference 43, links to my "Save Our Planet: Space Advocates See the Bigger Picture" article on Space.com. Wacky!

Tip o' the fedora to Michael Mealling for finding this article by George Will on the upside-down economy. Will references an article in Foreign Affairs that might be worth reading, if you're a subscriber.

Speaking of Mr. Mealling, a Masten Space Systems guy, Masten has performed a successful test of one of their rockets. Martin and I, of course, got into a lot of back-and-forth about the relative merits of government- vs. private-funded space travel. Martin's position is basically that "Physics is a beyotch" and that if there were a better way to get into space, someone would've come up with it by now. I beg to differ. And while I won't divulge any confidences or comments Martin made, I'm not shy about mine:

I agree that X-projects are the way to go. Unfortunately, we don’t do those anymore. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To wit: if you have a large organization with lots of money (NASA, as opposed to a startup), then you are only going to think in terms of a multi-constituency, large-organization solution. The U.S. was working its way toward space using airplane-based thinking, with X-20 Dyna-Soar as the next step after X-15, but the Russians got there first using a ballistic missile, and the airplane-based approach was dropped. Airplane designers have a different approach to problems than rocket builders. We’ll never know how the U.S. space program would have turned out if we’d stuck with the airplane-based approach because we get sidetracked by the artillery shell approach. We’ll also never know what would’ve happened if we’d stuck with the company-based model of production instead of the government-based approach because we had Apollo. Can we go back to that? I don’t know. Maybe someone could try to build Dyna-Soar and find out the hard way.

Is business-based rocket travel “imminent?” Perhaps not. I’ve gotten my hopes up too many times to be that much of an optimist anymore. However, the big-government, big-rocket approach is also fundamentally flawed and needs to be rethought. The entrepreneurs should be encouraged and funded, even if it means doing things that are considered tacky, hucksterish, stunts, or Not Worthy of the Grandeur of Space, as NASA would have it.

Martin did have an interesting link to a Jeff Bell article on spaceplanes, which I will share.

New from Hu:

• The Mars Spirit rover is having road troubles.
• Boeing is moving its missile defense division from Arlington, VA, to Huntsville. Gosh knows we could use the business. Here's hoping Obama doesn't cut the missile defense budget.
• Vladimir Putin's price for signing the next Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) is for Obama to scrap our missile defenses. Reagan's answer at Rekjavik to such a gambit was historic and world-changing. One can only guess or hope with the current president
• Google is mating with a spreadsheet...and producing products that should help web searchers better organize their data. Sounds useful, but I'd like to see the final output.

Rebranding Global Warming

Environmentalists are changing their language, much like Barack Obama changed the War on Terror. It's not "global warming," it's "deteriorating atmospheric conditions," or some such thing now. Don't you feel better?

The OTA and Environmental Policy

This week's change in the Environmental Protection Agency's stance on carbon dioxide is an excellent example of why the Office of Technology Assessment needs to be reopened. In short, the Obama administration declared that "carbon dioxide and five other industrial emissions threaten the planet."

Leaving aside the threatening the planet thing, it is worth noting that this change was brought about, in part, because the U.S. Supreme Court--not a group of scientists or even scientifically trained lawmakers--declared that CO2 was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and, as such, subject to regulation under the EPA. The Bush Administration has ignored the ruling, for the most part, just as the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject the Kyoto Treaty during the Clinton Administration, for the simple reason that the regulations required to comply with Kyoto would impose serious costs on our economy. The Wall Street Journal continues:

Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, sought a middle ground, proposing to focus carbon caps on coal-fired power plants and vehicle tailpipes -- and holding off any move until the nation emerges from recession.
American Electric Power, a utility giant with 5.2 million customers in states from Texas to Michigan to Virginia, is already considering what coal plants would have to be shuttered and how high rates would have to go to comply with either a regulatory or legislative mandates to curb carbon dioxide.

Senator Alexander's take might make sense as a fall-back position, but the simple fact is that additional environmental regulations will slow down an already-troubled economy. Want to stay in recession for a few more years? Carbon dioxide regulations will do that, as businesses will have to pay heavy fines, make alternate investments, or just plain go out of business because they can't meet the technological needs of complying with new CO2 regs.

Regardless of the good intentions of the regulators and environmental-protection lobbyist groups, the end results will be less energy production, as witnessed by American Electrical Power decision above, and also less movement of goods and services. Trucks and planes are the primary means of getting goods and services to market, and if more truckers and airlines face bankruptcy due to lower sales or higher regulatory costs, our economy will grind to a screeching halt. People also will travel less because businesses pass on higher costs to the consumer. That means an even slower commercial aviation sector. And with a sicker economy, where will Obama get the tax revenues to pay for his massive budget?

Again from the WSJ:

A proposal by President Barack Obama would cap the emissions of greenhouse gases, then force polluters to purchase emission permits, which could be traded on the open market. The details of the cost of carbon credits have been left to Congress, although Mr. Obama has said he wants all emissions covered, with no allowance for free emissions, as some business groups and lawmakers want.

Interestingly, the "cap and trade" carbon credit scheme was born at NASA, where scientists needed to find a fair way to get time on the limited number of instruments available on the Galileo spacecraft orbiting Jupiter. Since lots of people had experiments they wanted to run and there were only a limited number of instruments aboard the orbiter, the Galileo team came up with a way to trade time. Someone considered applying the same logic to how much pollution would be allowed in a given region, and thereby allowed businesses to pay for more "carbon credits" to make up for additional pollution, or make a profit by improving efficiency and selling their lower carbon needs to companies that need them. This system has also been used to control the production, distribution, and use of electrical power.

Sounds great, right? Well, maybe. However, there are a couple of problems with the cap-and-trade system, the first of which is that the "experts" setting up the system established an arbitrary level of "total pollution" allowed or energy available to the system. They make no allowance for the possibility that their standard for carbon emissions might be too stringent (in the CO2 example) or that the amount of energy available might increase through new technologies in the power grid example.

Ah, but we're not done yet...

The details of the cost of carbon credits have been left to Congress

Some proponents of the cap-and-trade system have called this a "free market" approach to pollution control. That would make sense if businesses generating carbon dioxide were permitted to set the price based on market forces. However, as noted above, Congress would be setting the price/value of carbon credits, which means another government intrusion into the marketplace. Of course this could be done on purpose, as it puts a great deal of power into the hands of Congress and makes them seem like the "good cop" to industry--better to deal with representatives or senators than the bureaucrats at EPA. Talk about a protection scheme! So your choices on the price of carbon credits are a bunch of unscientific lawyers in Congress or unelected bureaucrats at the EPA. This isn't a choice between good and bad, but bad and worse.

The impact of the EPA finding could be dramatic. Using the Clean Air Act, the EPA could raise fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, such as by authorizing nationwide adoption of California's rules for greenhouse-gas tailpipe emissions.

That could require auto makers to produce more hybrid and electric vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid under development by General Motors Corp. The Volt, however, is expected to carry a sticker of about $40,000, or roughly twice the price of a conventional Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

This has already become an issue. With GM, Chrysler, and Ford taking bailout money from the government, Uncle Sam has seen that it can pretty much dictate to these companies whatever they want, from capping CEO salaries to picking what cars they can build to firing the CEO. The American public might not want the Chevy Volt, but that's what the government wants to give them. And what are our poorer citizens supposed to do if they can't afford the Volt?

Another side effect of the Volt and the other brands' hybrid vehicles is that new technologies are expensive, just like new pharmaceuticals on the market. Companies make the price of these vehicles more expensive to recoup their investment until such time as 1) the vehicles are a proven money-maker and 2) they've improved enough to be mass-produced and thereby reduced in price. Government doesn't think that way, because points 1) and 2) are private-sector ways of thinking. Government says, "This is the car you will be allowed to buy, and if you don't like it, you can't have another."

How did CO2 become a pollutant, anyway?

Carbon-dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere have fluctuated wildly for millennia; at one point billions of years ago, it was the dominant gas in the atmosphere.

However, the EPA ruled that today's higher concentrations are the "unambiguous result of human emissions." Concentrations of carbon dioxide and other gases "are well above the natural range of atmospheric concentrations compared to the last 650,000 years," the agency said.

A couple of questions come to mind here:

• If CO2 levels have fluctuated wildly (and naturally) in the environment over the last 650,000 years, how are we to determine what constitutes a "normal" level of the gas?
• And what is so special about the last 650,000 years as opposed to the last million years? Or 65 million years, for that matter?
• Who is setting the levels for what's deemed appropriate, and what guidelines are they using?

The WSJ notes:

In its decision, the EPA stressed that it considers CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases to be pollutants because of their role in propagating climate change, not because of any direct health effects.

This is almost unbelievable arrogance on the part of the EPA. Instead of using an objective standard for harm, like "X parts per million of Y compound in the atmosphere has been determined to cause Z health consequences," they instead have opted to make CO2 a pollutant based on a theory that is still in debate. After all, just in the last 30 years, we have shifted from fears about global cooling (1970s) to global warming (1988-2007) to now global cooling again. Unable to decide which horse to bet on, environmental activists now use the ambiguous term "climate change" so as to hedge their bets and still get the regulations they want.

The EPA did acknowledge some positive impacts from higher CO2 concentrations.

What might those impacts be? And why aren't those impacts weighed against the potential downsides? What standards of "positive" and "negative" impacts are being used, and who is deciding and enforcing what side of the climate-shift debate should be considered most important?

This is the sort of situation that calls for a new arbiter. By all means, we should leave data collection and science to the scientists. However, when it comes to deciding what is to be done about scientific findings--especially on a federal government level--such decisions should be made in the open by elected officials. There is never only one solution to a technical problem. This is what separates engineering from science. Science might determine that, in fact, the Earth is warming due to human-based industrial activities, and said warming will produce negative effects on human civilization. Engineers and political decision makers have the obligation to come up with and decide upon the best solutions. For instance:

• If too much carbon in the atmosphere is the problem, are there newer, more efficient ways to sequester the carbon without regulating and taxing the productive economies of the West?
• If temperature increases are the problem, might we not place a large Fresnel lens at the Earth-Sun Lagrange (L2) point to reduce the amount of solar radiation the planet is receiving?
• If flooding from melting glaciers is the problem, how much would it cost to build more homes on stilts or more cities behind walls?
• If the Earth absorbing too much sunlight is the problem, mightn't we increase the albedo (reflectivity) of our cities by requiring white-tile roofs instead of gray or black?

Again, the science might be what it is--and the data are still coming in--but the decision about what to do with the findings should be debated in an open forum, not decided arbitrarily based on the personal political biases of some very partisan bureaucrats or self-appointed "experts." The OTA can provide the necessary buffer between information and decision-making that makes our society stronger than those that suffer from command-and-control economies. We'd best start now, before the EPA starts acting "for our own good," even if the results of their regulations turn out to be very, very bad.

Potpourri XI

Rockets could destroy the ozone layer. Waiting to see if this line of argument catches on in the U.S. while the Chinese and Indians continue to go forth boldly.

Morgan Freeman is going to host a Science Channel show on space exploration. Huzzah!

NASA has a presence on FlickR.

Chicago is rated is #1 by AskMen.com as the best city "for dating and sex, sports and entertainment."

India is looking at building its own space shuttle.

A mockup of the Orion crew exploration vehicle's crew module is on display on the National Mall.

The Ares I-X test flight is shifting to August. This is starting to infringe on my trip to Europe. My request to alter the launch window around my vacation was not accepted, unfortunately.

The U.S. is falling behind in cyber-warfare. That's probably because all our IT has been outsourced to Bangalore.

Interesting site on Antarctica and global warming...and another site offering an alternative theory on how ice ages affect the shapes of continents and oceans.

G20 protests turn violent, surprising no one.

From the "If Bush did this" file, President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod. It was later revealed that she already has one.

Jeff Krukin from the Space Frontier Foundation posted an April Phule's Day press release on behalf of President Obama. Will Watson at SFF had another PR regarding space. Doc's response was priceless: "It was hard to hear the joke over the sound of all those axes grinding."

As I mentioned yesterday, the ISDC is coming up. I got my leave approved today, so I'll be booking my registration this evening.

And, on a lighter note, North Korea is fueling up its latest rocket. Japan, China, and the U.S. are all on alert, at one level or another. (Okay, I'm kidding. That's not a "lighter note." I'm just snarky this evening.)

Global Warming, Etc.

Despite the drop in sea ice this summer, it grew back in record time, up to 1979 levels: http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834

*

I’m going to meander through this mine field again, partially in reaction to my reading about the “science court.” The climate change is precisely the sort of thing that could stand a good, direct discussion in an objective forum. Of course I’ve already mentioned the difficulties there: one side says, "The issue is already settled! We need to do something NOW before it's too late!"; the other side is saying, “Hold on, all the data isn’t in yet.” This actually requires two separate discussions, neither of which has yet taken place, to my knowledge:

• What’s going on? What is the actual data concerning climate change? Are we getting warmer or colder, and how much of that is related to human activity? What can be done to ensure that we have all of the necessary data? What experiments, if any, can be performed to verify particular theories?
• What do we do about it? Once we are clear on what’s actually happening with the planet’s climate, we need to give serious thought to what should be done—if anything. The idea of doing nothing doesn’t appeal to folks who prefer an activist government (liberals, neo-cons). The idea of taking drastic, expensive action with vast economic consequences probably won’t appeal to large segments of the voting public in the U.S., and other nations (China, India) might not participate at all. And what will the cost/benefit statement look like? Environmental activists bristle when crass “economic arguments” like that are used. However, costs and benefits need not be just a matter of dollar and cents. Why should large segments of human civilization be slowed down drastically NOW, especially if the payoff isn’t that great. Bjorn Lobmorg’s recent book on this issue deserves further attention.

In any case, until a civil and conclusive discussion or debate can be held regarding point 1, point 2 will always be problematic. Will our new president take this sort of caution to heart when he starts modifying U.S. environmental policy? I’m not particularly hopeful on the score, but the idea of a discussion is at least preferable to an enforced mandate from above.

Public Lecture Review: Dr. Roy Spencer, Global Warming Skeptic

Dr. Roy Spencer, a professor of meteorology at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH), was the guest speaker for HAL5's monthly meeting this week. He is a self-described global warming skeptic, which is a label that is bound to cause him trouble in certain sections of the news media. Spencer has probably earned himself an extra dose of opprobium by being the "official climatologist" of Rush Limbaugh's Excellence in Broadcasting network.

Regardless of his reputation in the media, Dr. Spencer is a serious climate scientist, and seems a rather low-key guy to be associated with Rush. Be that as it may, Spencer is a clear, fine speaker with a good sense of humor and patient, calm demeanor, which he no doubt needs when addressing critics in the media, the classroom, or in Congress.

What, exactly, does it mean to be a global warming skeptic? In the case of Spencer, it means a few things:

• He does not deny that global warming has occurred in the last century. However, he notes that this is part of a general increase that has occurred since the "Little Ice Age," which lasted from around 1300 to 1850. The Little Ice Age, in turn, was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period, when average global temperatures were the same (or higher) than what they are now.
• He does question exactly how much of that warming is the result of human-based activities, such as burning fossil fuels.
• He does focus on the data related to climate change (actual numbers), not just rhetoric. (My big gripe with the global warming hysteria has been that I don't believe people repeating assertions proves that said assertions are true. Related to that gripe is a personal reaction to any mass movement: I don't like to be pushed around. People need to reason with me if they want to get their point across--I'll accept comprehensive data, not selective data, and not anecdote-based scare-mongering. But I digress.)
• He does question some of the assumptions made by the physics-based computer climate models that have been used by James Hansen and others to declare that a global warming crisis is in the making (or already happening).
• He does not believe that the Earth's climate system is hypersensitive to human activities.
• He does believe that the natural processes of our planet have a larger impact on weather (short-term trends) and climate (long-term trends) than human activities.
• He does believe that the climate model-makers have their causes and effects reversed.

I'll focus on the last point, since that was the focus of Spencer's talk. I'll have to use English-major terms here, since I'm not a scientist. He began by explaining that the Earth's atmosphere tends toward equilibrium, with the amount of heat absorbed from sunlight equalling the amount of infrared radiation (heat) radiated into space. The basic premise of global warming and the "greenhouse effect" is that excessive carbon dioxide created by human activities is disturbing this equilibrium. This is happening because carbon dioxide (CO2) is creating more clouds, preventing heat from escaping into space.

If I understand Spencer correctly, though, he believes that cloud changes affect temperatures more than temperatures affect cloud changes. At some point, he explained, scientists noticed that temperatures worldwide had increased, on average, and that carbon dioxide had increased as well. Scientists interpreted this coincidence of activity as a definite correlation--that is, A caused B. However, Spencer asserted (and this is the first time I'd heard this) that carbon dioxide increases occurred after the temperature increases. If true, this means that the temperature increases are due to something else.

Here's how Spencer explained the Earth's climate changes in response to increases in heat (wherever they come from):

• More heat is pumped into the system.
• More heat produces more water vapor.
• More water vapor means more clouds are created.
• More clouds in the Earth's atmosphere increases the planet's albedo (reflectivity), causing more sunlight to be reflected into space rather than reaching the surface. In this way, equilibrium is maintained.

So what's causing the temperature increases and ice ages? Here are some possibilities Spencer mentioned:

• The tilt of the Earth.
• The eccentricity of Earth's orbit.
• Changes in solar radiation. On this point, Spencer indicated that the amount of light put out by the sun was not enough to account for climate change unless the climate was exceptionally sensitive to such changes--a position he opposes.
• Natural fluctuations in heat circulation between the oceans and the atmosphere.

Spencer did show a lot of graphs and charts reflecting his models and the more traditional models being used by the global warming theorists. However, I must confess that I didn't "get" them. The numbers and the patterns of the lines on the charts (temperature on the X axis, changes in radiant energy lost on the Y axis) didn't tell a story I fully understood. I'd probably have to spend some more time with the equations and the data to understand the implications of what his model is showing.

However, Spencer's political comments were perfectly clear. He echoed the global warming believers' comments, mostly for laughs (this is, after all, Red State America):

• "Everything's going to get worse."
• "It's all George Bush's fault."
• "How could they be wrong? They spent hundreds of millions of dollars!"

His own responses to some of the alarmist talk in the climate change community offer the patient listener food for thought:

• "Most of the model makers were trained in physics, not meteorology. They're used to dealing with equations. The Earth's weather is biological in its complexity. It's really functioning according to chaos theory."
• "Any time you replace vegetation with man-made structures, heating increases."
• "Any time air is sinking in some places (the Sahara, parts of the Pacific), it's because air was forced to rise in other places."
• "Why do we allow trees to change the environment, but not humanity?"
• "It's not like I'm for pollution. Humans pollute just by existing. It's a matter of what you're willing to put up with."
• "It's only the wealthy economies that can afford to develop the technologies to find the solutions [to global warming]."
• "I"m probably being cynical, but I believe politicians and scientists who want to be politicians view this as an opportunity to control people by controlling their energy use."

It is this last statement that most likely wins over Limbaugh, though John Coleman (a former Chicago weather man--WLS-TV--and founder of The Weather Channel) has also taken issue with global warming alarmism. And Spencer's global average temperature chart, which I've seen in other places, does show a temperature drop for the last two years, coming down off a recent high in 2005. As Spencer put it in his low-key way, "It will be interesting to see if this trend continues over the next few years." The maximum temperature increase Spencer is predicting by 2100 is less than 1 degree Celsius, as compared to the 2.5 to 5 degrees predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Which numbers do you think is more likely to get governmental attention and action?

I asked Spencer what he thought about solar power satellites, a favorite technology of mine and others in the pro-space community. I wanted to know, specifically, if he thought that the microwave power beams being transmitted to the Earth's surface would add considerably to the Earth's heat load. His response? "It sounds sexy, but it's just going to be excessively expensive compared to the amount of energy [production] you'll get."

Spencer is using cloud cover data gathered by NASA's Aqua satellite (and others). He is not making things up, nor is he exceptionally partisan. He is not shrill or screaming or pounding the table or denouncing global warming theorists as corrupt, evil, or part of some vast global conspiracy (governments are another matter entirely). What he is doing is asking these people to question their assumptions and their models, as good scientists should. He even admits, rather humbly, that "I could be wrong." It's unfortunate that the folks he's questioning do not have similar humility--that attitude used to be a cornerstone of the scientific method.