NIAC - from science fiction to science fact

Another inspiring video ...

Space Oddity

Neat, isn't it? The location really makes a difference!

I like the song, but the background reminds me that he's in a tin can, depending on rather primitive technology just to stay breathing. Still, we've taken that small step from our home planet - indeed, we took that "small step" some time ago - and it's critically important that we keep going.

Space isn't just for music videos. :)

Neil Armstrong 1930-2012

Neil Armstrong died today, and I thought this video clip of the first Moon landing would be appropriate.

Back then, we were still willing to do something, even if it took tax money. Back then, we still believed in America - in our institutions, in our government, and in our people. Back then, we weren't convinced we were in decline.

We had plenty of faults back then, but we hadn't lost America's traditional "can do" attitude. Both political parties still 'believed' in science, and both parties were willing to put America ahead of their partisan political ambition.

In many ways, we've progressed since then. Let's never doubt that. But we've also lost something. Thirty years of 'trickle-down' economics has destroyed our economy, as well as our confidence. We're less inclined to invest in America. We're far less inclined to take bold steps. We've lost our courage.

Or maybe we've just misplaced it. We've still got our heroes. We just don't back them anymore. Firemen are considered to be just greedy public employees, sucking on the government teat, no matter how many children they rescue from burning buildings.

And astronauts? What astronauts? America has to buy a ticket from other countries just to get into space! Forget about the Moon or Mars. We'd rather give tax cuts to people who already have everything.

It's sad that Neil Armstrong lived to see that. But it's sadder that he didn't live long enough to see us regain our senses and reclaim our ambition.

___
Thanks to Jeff for the link!

Sally Ride, 1951-2012

"That's what we call discrimination. And that's why we fight against it."

Yup.

The self-licking ice cream cone?

International Space Station (NASA/2009)

After 12 years and $100 billion, the International Space Station is complete. But where's the science?

From the Los Angeles Times:

More than a quarter of the area that NASA has designated for experiments sits empty. Much of the research done aboard the station deals with living and working in space — with marginal application back on Earth. And the nonprofit group that NASA chose to lure more research to the outpost has been plagued by internal strife and recently lost its director.

And more broadly, questions remain about whether NASA can develop U.S. capability to send experiments up and bring them back to Earth — and whether, in fact, the station can live up to the promises that were used to justify its creation. ...

This "incredible potential" is what NASA used to justify the decision to build a space station, which had been in the works since the Reagan administration.

"When we finish, ISS will be a premier, world-class laboratory in low Earth orbit that promises to yield insights, science and information, the likes of which we cannot fully comprehend as we stand here at the beginning," said then-NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin during a 2001 congressional hearing. ...

But then — as now — some questioned the station's future as a center of science. They note that much of the research done aboard the station deals with surviving the space environment.

Privately, some NASA officials worry the outpost could feed into the agency's reputation as a "self-licking ice cream cone" in that space-based experiments help NASA keep doing space-based experiments.

First of all, I'd say there's no question that NASA can develop a U.S. capacity to reach the space station (replacing the space shuttle, in other words). The only question is if we will.

We live in an America where we'd rather give tax cuts to the rich than educate our kids! We'd rather give tax cuts to the rich than see that our elderly get fed! We've got the ability to do great things. But do we have the will?

But what about the rest of this? Is it valid?

There's no doubt at all that we've made huge mistakes in America in recent decades, culminating with the biggest mistake of all (so far), the election of George W. Bush. If we haven't make huge mistakes in NASA, well, that would be the only place we hadn't.

But what about these particular objections? If we've been researching the effects of living and working in space, isn't that pretty much a prerequisite to everything else? We can't have scientists working in space if we can't keep them healthy and safe.

And it's not exactly worthless knowledge, anyway. Sooner or later, we human beings will have to leave this planet - or at least some of us will - if we expect our species to survive long-term. The Earth is a wonderful place for human beings, but it's also just one fragile basket.

There have been mass extinction events in the past, and there will be mass extinction events in the future. Heck, we're in the middle of a mass extinction event right now, and if we keep doing what we've been doing, that may come to include human beings, too.

So the ability to live and work in space is also a prerequisite for anything else we wish to do in space or on other planets, moons, or asteroids. It's valuable research, even though it might seem like a "self-licking ice cream cone."

For other scientific research, I don't know how valuable the International Space Station might be. Perhaps we would have been smarter to choose a different direction for our efforts. Well, as I noted, we Americans certainly have no shortage of mistakes to regret.

But now we've got the ISS. We've already spent that $100 billion. Are we going to just waste that investment?

To some extent, it's immaterial whether or not the ISS was a mistake. We've already spent the money. We're not getting that back. Yes, it will cost money to continue operations there, but shouldn't we at least attempt to get something back from that investment?

Well, as I say, research on living and working in space isn't nothing. We needed to know that, and we still do.

Furthermore, until now, we've been building the ISS. Logically enough, that's where we've focused our efforts. We seldom get much research out of a laboratory while it's still under construction. So it's a little early to be judging all this, isn't it?

NASA officials, however, say research is just beginning and already there have been advances.

Scientists at Johnson Space Center in Houston have taken advantage of the station's lack of gravity to develop "micro-balloons" the size of red blood cells that can carry drugs to cancer tumors. And the European Space Agency is looking to help doctors better diagnose asthma by using an air-monitoring device developed for astronauts.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," said Marybeth Edeen, NASA manager of the station's national laboratory.

The inability to completely fill NASA's science racks, she said, is simply one of the priorities. Up until now, NASA has been focused on building the station. Indeed, the station crew, which expanded from three to six members in 2009, now spends about 50 hours a week on science, as opposed to three hours a week in 2008.

We rarely know what we're going to get from scientific research. (If we did, there probably wouldn't be any reason to do it.) Knowledge is valuable. In science, even failures are valuable. If we know what doesn't work, we'll be better able to focus on what does.

Science is about evidence, and you have to do the research to get that evidence - or to confirm the evidence you've already got, or think you have. But look what science has given us. You wouldn't be reading this without science. You probably wouldn't even be alive without science.  I know I wouldn't be.

But these days, half the country doesn't "believe" in science. Science tells them the truth, and they'd rather believe fantasy. And that same half of the country would rather give tax cuts to the rich than anything else, apparently.

When tax cuts to the rich have a higher priority even than your own children or your own grandparents, then you know that science is going to be pretty far down the list.

Jose Hernandez, the astronaut

Heck, these Mexicans are even taking our space jobs,  huh?  :)

This video clip was released by Jose Hernandez, who's running for Congress in California, after Republicans tried to keep him from listing "astronaut" as his profession. Nice response, huh?

From Indecision Forever:

It's pretty much the worst nightmare of every immigration restrictionist. They keep agitating for a higher and higher, double-walled, electrified border fence and here comes a son of migrant farm workers who can fly through space, fuck you very much. In any case, a state judge has ruled that Hernandez meets even the state's stringent guidelines for stating one's vocation on a ballot…

Judge Lloyd Connelly rejected Republican arguments that Hernandez did not work as an astronaut in the year before filing his candidacy and cannot list "astronaut/scientist/engineer" on the ballot as his occupation.

He said Hernandez is an astronaut for "more than the time spent riding a rocket." Hernandez left his job at NASA in January 2011, then worked at a technology company until October.

I, for one, am desperate to know what occupations the Republican presidential candidates will list for themselves on the California ballot, given the requirement to state "one's current profession, vocation, or one held during the previous calendar year." Traveling from state to state while begging for money is a requirement for running an effective campaign, but "professional vagrant" just doesn't have a presidential ring to it.

This shows what's good about America and a bit about what's bad. Hernandez is the son of Mexican immigrants, migrant farm workers, and according to his biography, he was not even fluent in English until age 12.

But he got an education, worked as an engineer and an astronaut, and is now running for Congress. A real success story.

Unfortunately, class mobility isn't as easy as it used to be, especially with college costs going through the roof. Indeed, America isn't even close to leading the world in social mobility these days, and with constant tax cuts, things are getting worse all the time.

You're in good shape if your parents are wealthy. If not, well, I guess you should have thought of that before you picked them, huh?

This picayune kind of maneuver from the Republicans is sadly typical, too. I'd like to claim that only Republicans do this, but all too often, Democrats do it, too - though usually even more ineptly. Well, that's politics, I guess.

The important point to remember is that America still works. Mexican immigrants, like every other immigrant wave in our history, have children who are Americans.

Republicans are actually proposing a permanent underclass for illegal immigrants and their children. No matter what, you can't be one of us. No, even the black president of the United States isn't a "real" American to these people.

I suggest we treat Hispanics just like every other ethnic group which has come here voluntarily - including all of my ancestors. Welcome them, treat them well, educate their children, and we'll end up with Americans just like you and me.

It's worked for America for hundreds of years, and it will still work. Or are we too bigoted, too cowardly, and too cheap to let it?

Curiosity is heading to Mars

Neat, isn't it? Curiosity was successfully launched two days ago, so it's still going to be eight and a half months before it arrives on Mars.

I hope everything goes well. It seems incredibly complicated, doesn't it? But here's Phil Plait on that:

I’ve heard some folks wondering why NASA is using such a crazy complicated way to land the rover. The reason has to do with the gravity and atmosphere of Mars, as well as the mass of the rover itself. Landing on Mars is difficult. It has just enough gravity to make it hard to land with just rockets; it would take a lot of fuel, and that means you have to lug that all the way there, which in turn means less mass available for the science package. Mars also has air, which means you can use parachutes, but the air is too thin to make it practical to use them all the way down like we do on Earth. So we’re stuck having to use both rockets and parachutes.

And if you think Curiosity’s landing is crazy, don’t forget that Spirit and Opportunity used giant airbags to literally bounce their way down to the surface! That method wouldn’t work with Curiosity, which is too big for airbags.

Airbags might have seemed bizarre, but they were - relatively - simple. This is far from simple. And the rover itself seems far from simple.

Of course, this means that it has more capabilities than Spirit and Opportunity. But it also means that there are more things to go wrong. Well, let's hope everything goes well. I'm ready to pick out the location for my new vacation home on the Red Planet.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: we stopped dreaming

Dr. Tyson is right. And although I hate to plug my own blog posts - especially one that didn't catch anyone else's interest - I really must link to this one. We have become a timid little people, a people afraid to dream big, a people who think of all the reasons why we can't do something, rather than being courageous enough to try.

This isn't just about money, not even these days. And it's not even just about distrusting science, although that shows a similar level of cowardice, of refusing to face the truth. We used to dream big. Now, even our dreams are tiny, insignificant, timid little things.

If we can't regain that bold, optimistic, "can do" attitude we used to have, there's no hope for us. What has happened to my America? Really, what has happened to us?

Are we giving up on the dream?

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Abstruse Goose - history of flight

(Abstruse Goose)

If you're a fan of space exploration, check out History of Flight at Abstruse Goose.

What happened to the space program?

(Ed Stein)

Ed Stein's commentary:

When the space shuttle Atlantis makes its final flight at the end of June, the United States’ manned space program will come to an end for the foreseeable future. For those of us who grew up with the space program, first catching up to the Soviets after their launch of Sputnik, then through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, culminating with landings on the moon, there could be nothing more inspiring than seeing Americans expand our horizons into space. First the moon, then Mars, then–who knows? Jupiter, out past the edge of the solar system, intergalactic exploration, starships flying close to the speed of light. But, no. The moon was as far as we got. The shuttle program, interesting as it was, took us only into near-Earth orbit. Shuttles exploded, burned up in re-entry, the romance faded, the fleet aged with nothing to replace it, and the moon is as far as we got. We somehow became a nation more obsessed with cutting taxes and spending than with exploring the universe. A nation that put men on the moon now can’t even figure out how to pave our highways or pay for our schools, much less send men to Mars.

We've been talking about this in the ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo Group. What happened to the U.S. space program? It was more than 40 years ago that we first landed on the Moon, and we seem to have accomplished almost nothing since then.

At least, we have little to show for it. And now it looks like NASA's manned space program is closing down completely. We don't have a replacement for the shuttle - we don't even have a replacement planned - and our astronauts are looking for other work.

I see it as two separate questions - or, perhaps, two separate answers to the same basic question, one short-term and one long-term. Short-term, we just don't have the money.

When George W. Bush announced his proposal to return to the Moon, in January, 2004, it was a nice speech and a useful photo op in an election year, but he never budgeted sufficient funding for it. That he left for his successor. Apparently, coming up with the money was neither fun nor politically popular. And then, after giving us record breaking deficits, with his tax cuts for the rich and two completely unnecessary wars, he collapsed our economy.

Hey, we haven't been this bad off since the Great Depression. We just can't afford manned spaceflight now, especially when Republicans adamantly refuse to go along with any tax increases, not even ending those tax cuts for the rich which were actually supposed to disappear after ten years. Heck, they're actually clamoring for cuts in spending, especially for such luxuries as education, health care, and jobs. And science is one of the things they particularly hate.

I was surprised by this, but apparently the space program has never been especially popular:

Throughout the 1960s, public opinion polls indicated that 45 to 60 percent of Americans felt that the government was spending too much money on space exploration. Even after Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” only a lukewarm 53 percent of the public believed that the historic event had been worth the cost.

“The decision to proceed with Apollo was not made because it was enormously popular with the public, despite general acquiescence, but for hard-edged political reasons,” writes Roger D. Launius, the senior curator at Smithsonian’s divison of space history, in the journal Space Policy. “Most of these were related to the Cold War crises of the early 1960s, in which spaceflight served as a surrogate for face-to-face military confrontation.” However, that acute sense of crisis was fleeting—and with it, enthusiasm for the Apollo program.

And according to that same article, the average American thinks that NASA takes up 24% of the federal budget, instead of the actual amount of one-half of one percent. So they look at NASA as a juicy place to cut, not to increase spending.

Short-term, the money just isn't available. SETI is running out of money, too. Poor societies - or societies that think they're poor, because they don't want to pay taxes - don't do things like this. Only confident, ambitious, wealthy societies are willing to spend money on such things. And right now, that's just not us.

Long-term, IMHO, the reason is a little bit different, although there's an economic component to that, too. I just pointed out that space exploration was never especially popular in America. The fact is, we only went to the Moon because we didn't want the Soviet Union to get there first. It was a "space race," literally. It was a matter of national prestige.

But once we won the race, we realized that there was nothing there. There was no good economic reason to stay on the Moon or to explore elsewhere, either. I'm not saying there's no reason to explore our solar system. It's just that there's no good economic reason.

There doesn't seem to be anything out there that we can't get, far more cheaply, on Earth. And the absolute worst environment on Earth is better suited to human life than the best environment off our planet. Fact is, it would be far easier and far cheaper to colonize Antarctica than anywhere else in our solar system.

So there's nothing pulling us there. There's little or no incentive, except for idle curiosity and scientific research - both useful, but neither popular reasons to spend vast amounts of tax money. And, yeah, there's the romance of it, too, at least for us space enthusiasts. But what we need is a good economic reason.

I really wish we could find one, because I'm a space fan myself. I'm also a strong supporter of scientific research. Being curious about our solar system is a good enough reason for me. And if I needed another one, I worry about us human beings stuck on a single fragile planet. That's really putting all our eggs into one basket.

But I've got to acknowledge reality, too. We haven't been back to the Moon in decades, because there's nothing there. There seems to be nothing on the Moon that will make us rich or improve the lives of people on Earth in any way. Mars is equally inhospitable, and even farther away. And those are the most promising places we can imagine.

The only way we're going to colonize the Moon or Mars is if we become so wealthy that the economics of it really doesn't matter, or if we do discover something in space that gives us the incentive we need. I can't imagine what we might find that would do that.

And as far as wealth goes, well, we're overpopulating the Earth, overfishing our oceans, depleting pretty much all of our resources, and polluting the very atmosphere that keeps us alive. How do you think that's going to turn out?

The world's first experiment in terraforming

(photo source)

Here's a fascinating article at the BBC about the "world's first experiment in terraforming."

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.

Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".

What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.

In 1836, Charles Darwin stopped at Ascension Island, a volcanic "cinder" of an island in the south Atlantic, completely devoid of trees. A few years later, his friend, the botanist Joseph Hooker, also visited the island.

Ascension was a strategic base for the Royal Navy. Originally set up to keep a watchful eye on the exiled emperor Napoleon on nearby St Helena, it was a thriving waystation at the time of Hooker's visit.

However, the big problem that impeded further expansion of this imperial outpost was the supply of fresh water.

Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker's visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens - where Hooker's father was director - shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

These weren't invasive species, because there wasn't anything there to invade. But the cloud forest that exists there now is entirely artificial. According to the article, no one is studying it. If that's true, it's really a shame. How does the ecology function when everything has been brought to the island from elsewhere?

How about animal life? How about insects? Is the ecology stable, or still in flux. This seems remarkable to me. Surely, there's a lot we could learn from it. In fact, the article suggests that what we could learn there might be useful in terraforming Mars:

"What it tells us is that we can build a fully functioning ecosystem through a series of chance accidents or trial and error."

In effect, what Darwin, Hooker and the Royal Navy achieved was the world's first experiment in "terra-forming". They created a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem in order to make Ascension Island more habitable.

[Dr. Dave] Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way".

Naturally, terraforming Mars would be a lot bigger trick than this, but Ascension Island is worth studying, I'd think. Meanwhile, check out these pictures of Mars (I've copied one of them below). Neat as they are, just imagine them with green vegetation. That would be an enormous project, of course, but we'd have a whole world to gain.

How long could you survive in a vacuum?

According to this article, only 30 to 40 seconds. Maybe up to a minute, if conditions were just right and medical care was standing by (though you'd lose consciousness much before that). It's not just the lack of oxygen, since you can hold your breath longer than that, but you need air pressure, too.

I just thought it was interesting.

Flyover of Mars

If you're a space enthusiast, check out this video clip, a realistic flyover of Candor Chasma on Mars.

I must admit, as a game-player, that I wanted to see alien ruins there, and a human research colony - and be able to interact with both. Well, what can I say? I'm not ever going to get to Mars myself, and at this rate, I'll be unlikely to see manned exploration of the planet at all. But I can still use my imagination.

NASA "Uprising"

There's lots of talk these days criticizing Barack Obama's plans for NASA (for example, here and here - with my quotes taken from both articles).

Schmitt's harsh words are part of a furious blowback to the administration's new strategy for NASA. The administration has decided to kill NASA's Constellation program, crafted during the Bush administration with an ambitious goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020.

Of course, let's face it, there's not one single thing Barack Obama could do that wouldn't generate this kind of uproar. Not one.

And although Bush announced that glorious plan to return to the moon, he never once budgeted sufficient funds for it. (Kind of like his "Mission Accomplished" speech proclaiming the end to the Iraq War, don't you think?) And then he collapsed the economy.

So now, in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, the government is suddenly supposed to come up with vast new sums for the space program? Yeah, like that's going to happen, especially in this political climate. (And, of course, as far as people criticizing Obama, it wouldn't make the slightest difference, anyway.)

In fact, Obama's budget boosts NASA's funding by $6 billion over the next five years. The extra money is less than the $3 billion-a-year hike that a presidential advisory panel said would be necessary for a robust human space flight, but it's still an increase when many agencies are being squeezed. 

Yup. Funny, huh? Barack Obama is actually increasing NASA's budget. Just not enough to keep the Constellation program (which has been very controversial from the beginning). Well, we simply don't have the money these days. President Obama's blue-ribbon advisory committee "determined that under a realistic budget NASA probably wouldn't have a moon rocket until 2028, and still wouldn't have the hardware to land." Funny what happens during an economic collapse, isn't it?

Obama's move for a greater private sector role in space launches -- as he seeks to keep ballooning federal deficits in check -- has generated fears of job losses among thousands of NASA employees who provide an important economic base in Florida, a state usually crucial in presidential elections.

Well, duh! This is what really gets me. I don't care who's screaming the loudest about taxes ("read my lips") or the budget deficit, as soon as their own state is affected by any proposed cuts, they'll be screaming even louder about that. And in this, at least, the Democrats are no better than the Republicans.

Obama's 2011 budget request would nix Constellation's rocket and crew capsule, funnel billions of dollars to new spaceflight technologies, and outsource to commercial firms the task of ferrying astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

 

You'd think that conservatives would be praising Obama's move towards a greater role for the private sector in space launches, wouldn't you? Unless, of course, you had the slightest knowledge of U.S. politics. Heh, heh. Personally, I really like the idea of getting "routine" space launches into the private sector, with NASA focusing on science and more demanding tasks. After all, why should NASA be running a trucking service?

This means Americans would have to pay to ride on Russian rockets to get into orbit, a stark turn of events after the pivotal battle the United States and the Soviet Union fought to outdo each other in the space race.

 

True. But, of course, Barack Obama had nothing to do with that. This was decided by the Bush Administration years ago, and at this point, there's probably nothing we can do about it. We were never going to have a replacement for the shuttle ready in time, and extending the shuttle program would take money away from other NASA efforts and be unsafe, from what I hear. I never did like this idea, but it's far too late to complain about it now, don't you think?

The fact is, the money isn't there for everything we'd like to do. The money wasn't there even before the economic collapse - at least, it wasn't budgeted (instead, we decided that tax cuts for the rich were more important). And lest people forget, we're still in the middle of two wars (also unnecessary, but what can we do about that now?). Guess what? Spending money on wars and tax cuts means that there's less available for everything else. And that would be the case even if tax receipts hadn't plunged, and welfare costs risen, in the worst economic collapse since the 1930s.

Back when Obama's plans were first announced, I read some thoughtful commentary from real space enthusiasts (including these at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog), which concluded that this was not just the best we could expect, but also... not at all bad, anyway. As I say, encouraging the private sector to compete for relatively routine missions to near-earth orbit frees up NASA to focus on more important - or at least more challenging - things. The government should be concerned with basic scientific research and cutting edge technology, instead of just operating a trucking service.

Personally, I never thought much of the idea of returning to the Moon, since we were there 40 years ago and didn't see any reason to stay. Yeah, if we needed it as a stepping stone to Mars, fine. Or if we could find some other good reason to go back (and to stay, this time). But otherwise, it just seemed like a publicity stunt (the announcement being great politics, with no need to actually put sufficient money where Bush's mouth was). OK, sure, if we had all the money in the world, fine, go to the Moon again, along with everything else. But we don't.

Let's cut through all the crap here. America will never lead in space exploration without a strong economy. For decades now, we've been on the wrong path in this country. We've let our lead in education, and especially in science and technology, slip. We've favored tax cuts over educating our children, superstition over science, 'trickle-down' or 'voodoo' economics over strengthening the middle class. And as a nation, we've been too ignorant, too cowardly, too greedy, too short-sighted, too superstitious, too gullible, and too timid to even wean ourselves off of OPEC oil, let alone compete with China.

I'm pretty disgusted with my own countrymen these days. I'd hoped that would change after the Bush years, but it hasn't, or not very much. (I'm hearing talk about this being a great political year for Republicans. Really? After one year spent trying to dig ourselves out of all the messes the Republicans left us, we really want to invite them back to do even more damage? We've actually forgotten all that this soon?) Maybe my expectations were too high. Heck, maybe my expectations for my whole species were too high.