Potpourri CXXXIII

A Pakistani airport pulled over a guy with circuitry in his shoes.

Earth microbes are unlikely to contaminate Mars. Well, duhhhh.

Piece of Newton’s apple tree is set to fly on Shuttle. Fun!

Also fun: they're getting a live Star Trek show at KSC Visitor’s Center.


From my buddy John, a fellow Chicago Irishman and writer, some interesting links for aspiring writers.

From the Down Under Defense Expert, a little hair-raising audio from a pilot arguing with Air Traffic Control at Kennedy Airport about where he could or could not land in a high crosswind.

Now we’re talkin’…space tourism flights out of Curaçao! If the zero-gravity thing doesn't work so well for you, you've got access to plenty of high-octane tropical drinks once you land.

Soyuz rockets are now being assembled in Guyana. Wonder what ol' "Uncle Joe" Stalin would've thought of that?


An Augustine panel member is criticizing Obama's NASA spending plan.

Massachusetts is in line to receive over $15M in STEM grants.
 
My friend and fellow space blogger Jeff Foust, as always, is worth reading. The last two sentences made this editorial for me.

There's some more high-resolution video of the Pad Abort 1 test available on Vimeo.
 
A rain-making laser? (No Dr. Evil references, please.)
 
Investors were not impressed by $1 trillion European bailout proposal, designed to stem the impending financial ruin of Greece and other nations on the Continent. Among the guarantors for this bailout would be France, Germany, and the American taxpayer. What, you didn't know?

Potpourri CII

Working on clearing my inbox while I do laundry and pack for Europe. One week to go. HOO-wah!

This is important and disturbing, so it's moving to the top of the pile: aides to Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) are drafting legislation that would give the president power to disconnect private-sector computers from the internet during a "cybersecurity emergency," whatever the heck that is. An amazing amount of commerce is performed via internet. If this bill passed, a large segment of the population and the private sector might find itself unable to conduct busines or communicate electronically. How's that hope and change working out for ya?

The first image of a complete molecule has been captured. Amazing!

Don't try this at home or on safari!

More from the animal kingdom...painting elephants. I can't help wondering if these elephant artists have started smoking and complaining about how the bourgeois tourists don't understand how they suffer...

Mahmoud Ahmadenijad wants to prosecute his political opponents in the recent Iranian election for stirring up trouble (e.g. daring to question him)...you know: kinda like prosecuting Bush administration officials after the last election.

From @skytland, a panel summary from "South by Southwest" (a.k.a. SXSW), one of the largest new media events in the country. The panel topic? "Moon 2.0," which is to say, participatory space exploration of the moon. My buddy Doc might be going to this event. I'll get my media fixes vicariously through him.

Someone else is looking to build a space hotel. I've got to confess: the more I think about the effects of weightlessness, the more I think staying the heck here sounds like a great idea. Is it heresy for a space advocate to say that? Probably, but there ya go. Happy to have the opportunity to go, but really, I've got laundry to do. Or something.

CNN is reporting that some sectors of the economy are reviving themselves without government assistance. You know: that whole "invisible hand" thing that some of my liberal friends don't trust or don't believe exists. My question is: if that's the case, can we stop with the bailouts already and not spend the rest of that trillion-dollar "stimulus?" As Father Dan puts it to me when I ask silly rhetorical questions, "Get a grip!" The stimulus isn't about stimulating the economy. We already had proof when Bush did it that government stimulus spending does not work, and that was $700 billion worth. Then Obama doubled down with over a trillion. So the answer to my question is, yes, we can stop with the bailouts, but we won't because President Obama has a different agenda in mind. So here's the game plan:

1. Jack up government spending to show that he's "doing something."
2. Admit after the fact that the deficit is too high.
3. Raise taxes to pay down the deficit, which is what Obama wanted to do in the first place because he's a strict redistributionist.

As usual with government-centered attempts to redistribute wealth in an economy, this plan will fail because rich people will either move out of the country, stop working, or eventually run out of money. Once that happens, he goes after the middle class and raises their taxes so that their money can be used to "make things more fair." And when there are no more rich people or middle class (except, of course, the government officials dispensing this "social justice"), well then we'll all be equal...in our misery. How's that hope and change working out for ya?

Michael Vick played his first game in Philadelphia and got a standing ovation from the fans. Which more or less proves what I was grousing about when he first got his gig with the Eagles: social stigma and bad publicity don't have any force anymore. Shame on them and shame on us when all that matters is victory without considering the character of those achieving it. If the fans in Philly don't have any shame about hiring this thug, will the fans of the teams playing against the Eagles reject Vick and not show up for the games? To repeat Father Dan's comment, "Get a grip!"

Laundry is still in progress, but I'm done clearing out the inbox. Never mind my grumpiness, have a great day!

Potpourri LXXI

Doc and I have been engaged in an extended discussion about the frog-marching of Sarah Palin out of the public square. The DUDE (Down Under Defense Expert) brought a Peggy Noonan column to my attention about this. As I noted in my discussion with Doc, I didn't do my due diligence on Palin's positions/papers--most of what I caught about her came from sound bytes--some good, some not so good. It appears, if one reads Noonan's column, that Palin really didn't have a lot of positions explaining the foundations of her beliefs. My choices in 2008, after my original choices dropped out of the GOP race (Thompson, Romney), were bad (McCain), mad (Paul), or frickin' sad(Obama or Clinton).

I can understand mockery, for instance Palin's flubs in interviews, but what continues to bother me is the vitriol--the visceral hatred critics displayed toward Palin and George W. Bush before her. It's one thing to disagree with one's opponents; it's another to consider them the Devil Incarnate or some retarded human being worthy only of contempt. I didn't hate Sarah Palin, nor would I mock her. I think she's a nice lady with a lot of spunk and an ability to fire up a crowd. She supported causes I agree with: pro-life, pro-oil drilling in ANWR, and pro-gun, for instance. The few speeches of hers I've heard or read seemed to articulate those views pretty well, so I don't understand the "lightweight" comments, nor do I agree with Ms. Noonan that Palin was utterly out of her depth on the issues. Might she have been better off staying off the radar in Alaska? Perhaps. But the drama is over. With any luck we can move off of Palin, Michael Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett and move back to things that actually matter, like the economy, Iran, North Korea, missile defense, etc.--you know: the issues--all of which President Obama is handling not handling well, I might add.

Rocketplane Kistler is looking at Hawaii as a possible base of operations for space tourism flights, as well as possible transportation services.

Big aerospace companies met with Senator Shelby (R-AL) to discuss their plans for supporting the Ares Projects. This line from a Shelby aide was telling: "it appeared that the aerospace contractors did not have a public support strategy." A couple of reasons for this come to mind: while Big Aero has big contracts with NASA for Ares, they might just as easily pick up other contracts if the administration decided to cancel Ares. They probably also see what kinds of negative press Shelby is getting regarding his efforts to pull money from other NASA centers that support COTS so he can protect Ares jobs in Huntsville. Mind you, I'm one of those jobs in Huntsville, and a Republican, but I think Shelby's funding games are shortsighted. We need COTS and Ares as multiple means of access to the International Space Station. I might have to write another letter.

Need a poster of the X-15 hypersonic aircraft? NASA has one you can download.

The Charles Bolden/Lori Garver confirmation hearings appeared to be a lovefest. NASA should have a new Administrator soon.

America is in no danger of being taken over by an iron-fisted tyrant. However, we might find ourselves smothered under a cloying, will-do-anything-for-you Mommy State if we're not careful. This article on cafeteria snacks also comes from the DUDE. His commentary is priceless:

In the second month after they won the election, the centre-right government down here rescinded the law passed by the previous leftist government that required government approval of what snack food would be sold in schools. The reason given, which set off days of strident yawping our nanny-staters, was that parents should be the ones to decide what foods their kids should eat.

Another Space Education Moment

I first heard about Teachers in Space at the 2006 International Space Development Conference. They're essentially a nonprofit run by the Space Frontier Foundation that will set aside slots for teachers to travel into space on one of the any-day-now suborbital space tourism outfits. The concept sounded pretty cool. As the "Vision" part of their web site describes it:

Imagine thousands of astronaut teachers, in schools all across the country, sharing their spaceflight knowledge and experiences with millions of students. This vision could become a reality within the next ten years.

What I've liked about the space tourism movement/industry is the way it democratizes spaceflight. After all, what is more likely or easier: joining the Air Force, becoming a pilot, and picking up three or more college degrees, all for the hope of going into space while competing with 500 other super-competent people, or just getting rich enough to buy a ticket? There are many routes to becoming rich in America, and a surprising number of them don't require a college education. And if you manage to put $40,000-a-year teachers into a space tourism rocket and let them come back and talk to their students about their experiences--well, heck, you've "infected" a whole new generation of space geeks! And these kids will have a different expectation of spaceflight than those of us raised under the Aura of the Astronauts.

Don't misunderstand me--I greatly admire our astronauts. I see someone like Story Musgrave or any of the Shuttle astronauts who come to Marshall, and I read their resumes and feel like an absolute slacker. They really ARE our best and brightest. But if future Americans are going to have the opportunity merely to go into space as paying passengers, they don't NEED to be our best and brightest, merely damnfool enough to plunk down the coin to go. And that would include me. The only future that would allow an English major like me to get into space would be one where I can go as a passenger, not as some sort of pilot, scientist, or technician. So I think Teachers in Space is a good idea. Maybe I ought to become a teacher. I might have a better chance than the getting-rich route!

Ad Astra and good night.

Sorting Out Engineering Reality

A recurring problem I have in my line of work is judging what’s “true” and what’s not. It’s not so much that I think people are lying to me about what’s going on in the space business, it’s just that I was too lazy in junior high, high school, and college to get myself a serious education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This is a problem for me and, I fear, for many more Americans, as more and more of our nation’s future choices will be STEM-based. This is part of the reason I’m such a fan of Darlene the Science Cheerleader: she’s a strong advocate for science education among the non-scientific masses, and gosh knows we all need it.

Now mind you, the space business has, as one of my previous employers put it, “plenty of engineers; what we need is a writer.” So that’s been my role: technical writer. I translate Engineerish into English. I’m able to do this without understanding the work 100% because I understand how words work. They aren’t paying me to understand it all. I do my level best, of course, to educate myself so that I do understand it. And I understand enough about political philosophy and policy to be an advocate.

Sometimes, however, it’s difficult to know which technologies, among the many I’ve supported over the past 8 years, stands a solid chance of succeeding. That leaves me the option of taking things on faith or getting myself a better education. The following narrative, then, is a review of the hot technologies space advocates support, how they’re supposed/claimed to work, and what the objections to them are. I can explain them clearly, as you’ll see, but I can’t for the life of me sort out all this.

Space Solar Power (SSP) / Solar Power Satellites (SPS) / Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP)
How It’s Supposed to Work
A solar power satellite is a large array of solar cells—say, a mile across—placed in orbit. Because it is above the atmosphere and in the sunlight for longer periods of time, the theory is that the SPS would collect more solar energy than ground-based solar. The energy collected from these solar cells would then be transmitted, projected, or beamed down (pick your verb) to a rectifying antenna (rectenna) on the ground. The power would then go out from the rectenna to a nearby electrical grid. The potential output of such a system would be in the 1-10 gigawatt range.

The Arguments Against It

• It’s too expensive to get the hardware into orbit.
• Even if you could bring down launch costs, the operating costs would still not make SSP commercially competitive with any ground-based energy source, including ground-based solar.
• Even if you could get the hardware up there cheaply and get it to provide power competitively, any usefully scaled SPS is too big to fit on any known launcher (except, maybe, Ares V).
• Even if you could get the hardware up there cheaply and on a properly sized rocket, it wouldn’t work for the following reasons:
  --Beam attenuation; i.e., the microwave or laser transmitting power to the ground rectenna would lose too much energy to be worthwhile.
  --The SPS would be so big and so lightweight that solar radiation pressure alone would cause it to keep drifting along its orbit. This is how one powers solar sails, which are meant to travel.
  --Even if you could get the hardware to work, it would never be accepted by the public because:
  o Environmental activists would go bonkers protesting it because it uses radiation as its primary output (even if that same radiation is also used to power ground-based solar cells).
  o Government environmental regulations would stifle the technology somehow, with or without encouragement from the environmental lobby.
  o “Someone could use it as a weapon.” (See the James Bond flick “Goldeneye” for a sample of what that might look like.)
  o It wouldn’t provide much more energy than ground-based solar power.

Fine. I would submit a bit of my own hardheaded criticism, if I may: All of these objections come before anyone has even tried to build, field, and test a single SPS. We should at least try the bloody thing before trashing it or dismissing it out of hand. The cynics and skeptics might be right, but I’d feel more confident of their verdict if they had hard data to back up their assertions.

Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) / Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) / Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO)
How It’s Supposed to Work
A Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) is just what it sounds like: a rocket for getting to space that you can fly more than once. An RLV is supposed to be completely reusable, operating like an aircraft. No stages are dropped into the ocean, the vehicle flies multiple times, and costs are thereby reduced through mass production and repeat flight cycles.
The Arguments Against It
NASA has spent a great deal of time and money trying to develop precursor technologies or actual RLVs for the last 20 years or so. The Space Shuttle system, designed in the early 1970s, is partially reusable. Its solid rocket boosters return to Earth by parachute and splash down into the ocean. The orbiter, which houses the crew and cargo, lifts off like a rocket, its fuel tank is discarded and dropped into the Indian Ocean, and the orbiter then completes its mission, reenters the Earth’s atmosphere, and comes in to land like a glider. The orbiter is then refurbished and refitted for another mission.

The failed or incomplete RLV or partial RLV programs include the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP), Space Launch Initiative (SLI), Orbital Space Plane (OSP), DC-XA, X-33/VentureStar, and X-34. For want of budgetary support or technological feasibility or both, NASA has not been able to do it. Does that mean RLVs are impossible? No, but they are really damned difficult, and the work has been attempted by some very bright people, both inside and outside the world’s premier space agency. Jerry Pournelle is more optimistic on this score than I am. He believes that the problem with RLV/SSTO has not been the technology so much as the organizations running the programs. He believes if the old NACA “X program” model is followed, then technology development could happen—not immediately, and not with billions and billions of dollars spread around a number of big contractors and important states—but with single contractors, small budgets, shorter timeframes, and more humble goals. Unfortunately, I don’t think our government is up for small and humble anymore.

Space Elevators
How It’s Supposed to Work
A space elevator (also called an “orbital tower” or “skyhook”) is a structure that stretches from a point on Earth all the way out to geosynchronous orbit. The centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation counteracts the elevator’s tendency to fall, so the tower stands straight out from the planet like a giant radio tower. The structure becomes an “elevator” when you attach climber vehicles capable of transporting people or cargo up and down the tower’s surface—the most common imagined climber would be a maglev (magnetic levitation) train. The maglev climber would require only electrical power to move, and would not produce sonic booms or require explosive chemicals, as rockets do.
The Arguments Against It
The structural materials strong enough to build a self-supporting elevator were only theoretical until the late 20th century. Then companies began experimenting with artificial diamonds, carbon “whiskers,” and now carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, no one has made enough carbon nanotubes (which are molecule-sized) to build load-bearing structures. At present, they’re simply too expensive to mass produce.

Another interesting argument I’ve heard is that the elevator would act as a massive short circuit for the entire planet’s ionosphere, which would essentially fry, melt, or disintegrate the tower. The argument here is that the large amount of charged particles in the Van Allen Belts would follow the elevator all the way down to the Earth, becoming the world’s largest lightning rod.

The last argument against the elevator comes from my own experience observing the Space Elevator Games in Las Cruces in 2006. These Games are sponsored by NASA as a means of generating competition to create technologies that could lead to a space elevator. Rather than a typical wound cable (the original concept for the elevator), these experimental crawlers all had to make their way up a six-inch-wide, 60-meter (~197 feet) tall industrial belt suspended from a crane. We were in the desert, mind you, so winds tend to be a little fickle, but the best guess was that winds were gusting to 10-15 miles per hour. Even in that slight breeze, the belt was whipping about in the wind like a crazed sail or weather flag in a full gale. Several teams had difficulty just attaching their crawler to the belt, much less getting their vehicle to climb the twisting belt. My verdict: even at great tension, atmospheric effects on the Earthbound side of the elevator would prevent any vehicle from traversing the distance safely, to say nothing of what sorts of oscillations might develop when moving through orbital space.

Asteroid Mining
How It’s Supposed to Work
Planetary science professor John S. Lewis makes a pretty compelling case for mining the metals of nickel-iron asteroids to fulfill resource needs here on Earth or for building settlements in space. These asteroids include massive amounts of iron (obviously), platinum-group metals (useful for fuel cells), water and ammonia “volatiles,” and the equivalent of natural stainless steel.
The Arguments Against It
We’ve landed a couple of robotic spacecraft on asteroids. They weren’t designed for that, but the gravity on asteroids is so small (measured in thousandths of a gravity) that they could just about turn off their thrusters and drop onto them without a jar. That microgravity will be a problem for humans working there, of course, as we’re learning from the International Space Station.

Next, we have never developed the technical tools for mining, extracting, and refining materials in micro- or zero gravity. (An obvious answer, of course, is “why don’t we?”) However, most mining and refining processes done here on Earth require high heat and gravity effects to separate different components from each other.

Finally, returning to Lewis’s book, he made a point that if all of the useful metals and other materials were mined from a single Amon-class asteroid and sold on Earth at current market prices, their value would be $20 trillion. It’s a great theory that ignores economic reality. Let’s say we found an asteroid that really did make platinum as common as sand on Miami Beach. Even if the platinum were put to work building catalysts for a worldwide fleet of fuel cells, the price of the commodity would drop to about what you’d expect to pay for a handful of sand in Miami Beach. The materials of the Asteroid Belt may be abundant, but they’ll have to make people rich in space because they sure as heck won’t be on Earth.

Space Tourism / Personal Spaceflight
How It’s Supposed to Work
Civilian excursions into suborbital space by Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, etc., could generate enough demand and traffic to produce mass-produced rockets, experience in operating RLVs (see above), and capital for a functioning space economy in orbit.
The Arguments Against It
Space tourism has been “just around the corner” since 2004, and it looks like it’ll be another year or two before Virgin Galactic is able to fly paying customers aboard their Burt Rutan-built Spaceship Twos. A lot of operations have folded since the X Prize was won. Others are working in secret. Many things can go wrong, and the American public is not quite as willing to embrace risk as it was 40-50 years ago. One bad accident, and some believe that lawsuits will all but kill the “personal spaceflight” movement.

The more sarcastic individuals within NASA are quick to point out that SpaceShipOne did not make it to orbit, but “repeated something the X-15 was able to do 40 years ago, and Rutan did it using technology developed by NASA.” Aside from the sour-grapes and elitism in those comments, they are technically correct. Yet work on personal spaceflight continues because there still are people willing to shell out the big bucks ($250,000 for a flight on Virgin Galactic, if and when) to fulfill their dreams of space travel.

*

And these are just some of the issues to be addressed in the space business. I haven’t even touched on the Ares vs. EELV or DIRECT/Jupiter 120 debate (nor will I comment publicly on activities where I have a vested employment interest). I know a little more about the government vs. private sector debate, but feel that that’s an argument for another night. In any case, this evening I wanted to focus on technical issues because these are the bigger questions that I do not have enough basis in theory or practice to answer properly. Political questions are another matter.

So, seriously: if there are any technical folks out there who know a reasonably quick way to get smart on the big engineering questions floating around the space business today, I’d be happy to hear it. In the meantime, I can only help the ones who DO know the facts and theories behind their pet projects frame their arguments in better language. The rest, unfortunately, I have to take on faith.