The anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing got me thinking about why public support for NASA has ebbed. The reason is simple: Earth orbit is not a new place to be explored, so it no longer inspires enthusiasm.
Operations there are necessary, of course, but they are not exploration. They are utilization, which is not glamorous.
To recapture the public's imagination and support, NASA must send both robots and men to new places. The broad support for the Mars rovers and landers is clear evidence of this effect.
Even returning to the moon may not capture the public imagination, because we have already been there. Without something new and grand, such as a real colony, going back to the moon is utilization, same as Earth orbit.
Exploration is "out there somewhere new". Destinations that capture the imagination are Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and the asteroids and comets. To inspire, that is where we must go, with robots and with men.
That will require far better rockets than we have ever built, a way to shield against bursts of lethal solar radiation, and some sort of artificial gravity to stave off the permanent bone loss that occurs after about a year in weightlessness.
It would also be helpful if there were some less expensive way to reach the jumping-off point: Earth orbit. That means we need a real "space plane" of some kind.
Far Better Propulsion
"Far better rockets" are most likely nuclear items. I suggest we resurrect the nuclear explosion propulsion concepts from old Project Orion of 1959-1965, and the gas-core nuclear thermal rocket concepts from old Project Rover of 1959-1972.
Key requirements are very high thrust to weight ratio at very high specific impulse (efficiency). Our ion and plasma jet engines have the efficiency, but not the thrust-to-weight. Flying with them is still way too slow, excepting perhaps something called VASIMR.
Long ago, we learned from Project Rover that the nuclear stuff is too dangerous to test here on Earth. We learned this from testing actual nuclear rocket engines in Nevada between 1959 and 1972, although few today remember it.
Project Rover was killed when President Nixon killed Apollo in the middle of 12 planned missions. By extension, he also killed the planned 1980's Mars landing. Without a Mars mission, Rover was "not needed."
How shortsighted!
The tale is even more sordid for old Project Orion, which was funded by USAF, not NASA. That concept was even more powerful than the nuclear rockets of Project Rover. Its original design mission was a 3-year voyage to Saturn and back, in a spacious and comfortable vehicle similar in size and construction to a small ocean liner!
When the USAF space program was dismantled and given to NASA, they saw Orion as a competitor to Rover, not as a complement. So it died for lack of funding.
Yet these concepts could still be used today. They are just forgotten.
A Real Reason to Return to the Moon
The airless, waterless, uninhabited moon hangs within our reach, with the rockets that we already have. I cannot think of a better reason to return to the moon than to put a nuclear propulsion development station there.
It is a stable, safe place to "play" with dangerous stuff. It is almost as if God put it there for us, precisely for that purpose. You cannot develop new rockets hanging around weightless in space, where every test is a flight test.
We could use the new NASA Ares rockets, or something from the commercial side like Spacex's Falcon-9, or even the existing heavy launchers like Delta, to get to the moon. But it will be the nuclear stuff built on the moon that gets robots and men to Mars and other places very fast.
Protecting Human Crews
Men will require a suitable habitat in which to live during these voyages. A cramped capsule simply will not do. Something like the old Skylab or Mir space stations, coupled to the fast nuclear propulsion, is a more realistic approach.
There must be room inside for artificial gravity by centrifuge, or else the entire vessel must spin. That spinning piece sets the size of the ship. The two critical questions are: how fast a spin can we tolerate, and how much artificial gravity is enough?
Nothing we have ever done, including the ISS space station, answers that second question. Maybe that's an experimental item we should add to the ISS.
The exploration ship must also offer protection from solar radiation storms. A thin sheet-aluminum shell will not do. At least a part of the ship must be constructed of heavier stuff, like steel plate, which is quite heavy. (That's another reason for developing very powerful propulsion.)
Access to Orbit
Any future space plane project, for access to Earth orbit, should heed lessons-learned: no parallel stacks, no political footballs for budgets, and no dependence solely on rocket propulsion (like the 1990's X-33). I suggest parallel-burn rocket with plain ramjet during a fast ascent, not the re-entry-in-reverse usually assumed for scramjets like 1980's X-30.
Further, to be cheap, it has to be reusable the way an airliner is reusable. That requires a very structurally robust vehicle, leaving less room for fuel.
It will probably be a "two-stage airplane", with a rocket-and-ramjet propulsion rig on the orbiter stage. The space plane designers need to talk to the missile people about compact combined rocket-ramjet technologies. That never happened in all the previous projects, including the retiring space shuttle.
Destinations and Reasons to Go There
Going to the moon is not exploration, but utilization. However, it must be first on the list, so that the immensely powerful propulsion we need can be safely developed.
As for human exploration destinations, perhaps the nearby Earth-crossing asteroids should be next. We actually have a need to go there: learning how to deflect the ones that threaten to hit us. We really need to find out in detail what they are made of, and how they are put together, to accomplish that goal successfully.
Next is Mars, of course. It has captured people's imaginations for centuries, and will continue to do so until people have explored it fairly thoroughly. That effort should morph directly into a utilization colony, without the decades-long interruption we saw on the moon.
Then, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. After that, who knows?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Another Antique Comes Out of Storage
The pictures show two old-time air-cooled VW “beetles”, basically a 1933 technology. Both were actually running when the pictures were snapped.
The blue one is a 1973 model that spent two stints in deep preserved storage on the Idea Farm, one about 5 years, the second about 3 years. It has been running since 2005 as a daily job commuter, and since October 2006 as the “ethanol VW” experiment.
The white one is a 1960 model that spent a continuous 14 years in deep preservation storage on the Idea Farm. That is a very rigorous test of the preservation techniques, which actually proved very successful.
The blue VW runs just fine on E-85 ethanol fuel, which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. I did the modifications myself at no out-of-pocket cost, just some labor. Being an antique, I now drive it slower, but in earlier days, it was quite capable of hard use at full highway speeds, being about 60 HP. It was the car I bought for my wife, when we were first married.
The white VW “woke up” on a stiff gasohol blend, E-34, which is 34% ethanol and 66% gasoline. This blend burns fine in any 4-stroke engine, completely unmodified. I chose it for its high octane, much better than premium gasoline, and for its cleaner-burning characteristics relative to plain gasoline.
This old white VW is the car I learned to drive in, and that I drove to school and to work for over 30 years. The engine is about 40 HP, and its top speed is about today’s highway speed. It makes the other VW seem quite “new”.
The deep preservation methods actually worked quite well, in spite of the fact that this old white VW was the very first car I tried them on. About the only serious problem was some water-induced corrosion, traceable to a brake system flush I did converting over to DOT-5 silicone brake fluid. I now know exactly how to avoid that “next time”.
The only other one left to return to an operable state is the 1969 VW camper bus (not pictured here).
The blue one is a 1973 model that spent two stints in deep preserved storage on the Idea Farm, one about 5 years, the second about 3 years. It has been running since 2005 as a daily job commuter, and since October 2006 as the “ethanol VW” experiment.
The white one is a 1960 model that spent a continuous 14 years in deep preservation storage on the Idea Farm. That is a very rigorous test of the preservation techniques, which actually proved very successful.
The blue VW runs just fine on E-85 ethanol fuel, which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. I did the modifications myself at no out-of-pocket cost, just some labor. Being an antique, I now drive it slower, but in earlier days, it was quite capable of hard use at full highway speeds, being about 60 HP. It was the car I bought for my wife, when we were first married.
The white VW “woke up” on a stiff gasohol blend, E-34, which is 34% ethanol and 66% gasoline. This blend burns fine in any 4-stroke engine, completely unmodified. I chose it for its high octane, much better than premium gasoline, and for its cleaner-burning characteristics relative to plain gasoline.
This old white VW is the car I learned to drive in, and that I drove to school and to work for over 30 years. The engine is about 40 HP, and its top speed is about today’s highway speed. It makes the other VW seem quite “new”.
The deep preservation methods actually worked quite well, in spite of the fact that this old white VW was the very first car I tried them on. About the only serious problem was some water-induced corrosion, traceable to a brake system flush I did converting over to DOT-5 silicone brake fluid. I now know exactly how to avoid that “next time”.
The only other one left to return to an operable state is the 1969 VW camper bus (not pictured here).
Monday, June 15, 2009
On the Election Unrest in Iran
Well, it looks like the secretive ruling mullahs in Iran got caught stealing the election. The unexpected strength of the moderate opposition seems to have scared them into attempting to forestall a political upset.
Although self-styled as the "Islamic Republic of Iran" since the Shah fell and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979, Iran is definitely not a democracy or a republic. The mullahs pull all the strings from the shadows, having the revolutionary constitutional power to override the "elected government".
This particular religious dictatorship ultimately espouses a cultural return to the 10th century, with enslavement of women, and the deprivation of all modern forms of communication and entertainment. That prescription should sound awfully familiar, as it is exactly that espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and thousands of other such groups.
In Iran, the mullahs have been moving very slowly in that direction, because many Iranians are well-educated, and would understand such oppression for what it really is. However, if one replaces education with religious indoctrination, after a time one ends up with an ignorant population that will willingly submit to domination "in God's name".
Examples of this educational effect include the illiterate tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban took over quickly. In Pakistan's Swat Valley, people were literate, and opposed a Taliban takeover there, albeit only with the help of the Pakistani army.
The continuing massive unrest in the streets of Iran seems also to have taken the mullahs by surprise. They are now backpedaling a bit, calling for an "investigation" of the election fraud claims. However, the outcome would seem to be pre-ordained: no dictator ever gives up power willingly.
I predict that there must be another revolution in Iran, in order to throw the mullahs out and establish a true republic or democracy. Whether this will actually happen is at best unclear, but it is clear that the scale of the protest has made the mullahs fear such a revolution.
Scared dictators do have a history of lashing out. This could get very ugly.
I think it much more likely that the mullahs will maintain their dictatorship by means of armed oppression. If they win, expect nuclear war in the Mideast as soon as they accumulate enough weapons-grade materials.
They would do this in part to deflect attention from their domestic activities. Hitler did the same thing starting World War 2 in Europe.
As I said, this could get very ugly.
Although self-styled as the "Islamic Republic of Iran" since the Shah fell and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979, Iran is definitely not a democracy or a republic. The mullahs pull all the strings from the shadows, having the revolutionary constitutional power to override the "elected government".
This particular religious dictatorship ultimately espouses a cultural return to the 10th century, with enslavement of women, and the deprivation of all modern forms of communication and entertainment. That prescription should sound awfully familiar, as it is exactly that espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and thousands of other such groups.
In Iran, the mullahs have been moving very slowly in that direction, because many Iranians are well-educated, and would understand such oppression for what it really is. However, if one replaces education with religious indoctrination, after a time one ends up with an ignorant population that will willingly submit to domination "in God's name".
Examples of this educational effect include the illiterate tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban took over quickly. In Pakistan's Swat Valley, people were literate, and opposed a Taliban takeover there, albeit only with the help of the Pakistani army.
The continuing massive unrest in the streets of Iran seems also to have taken the mullahs by surprise. They are now backpedaling a bit, calling for an "investigation" of the election fraud claims. However, the outcome would seem to be pre-ordained: no dictator ever gives up power willingly.
I predict that there must be another revolution in Iran, in order to throw the mullahs out and establish a true republic or democracy. Whether this will actually happen is at best unclear, but it is clear that the scale of the protest has made the mullahs fear such a revolution.
Scared dictators do have a history of lashing out. This could get very ugly.
I think it much more likely that the mullahs will maintain their dictatorship by means of armed oppression. If they win, expect nuclear war in the Mideast as soon as they accumulate enough weapons-grade materials.
They would do this in part to deflect attention from their domestic activities. Hitler did the same thing starting World War 2 in Europe.
As I said, this could get very ugly.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
On Bad Healthcare and Bad Government
A friend recently sent me an article describing how the new President’s campaign promise of healthcare reform might be far more expensive than previously thought. The tone of the article clearly reflected its author’s stance with the opposition. I saw nothing new in the article’s arguments, warning as it did about the “perils of socialized medicine”. Actually, I have seen little new from either side in this debate, for many, many years.
I think the President is bumping into an ugly reality on this issue. The choices appear to be to put bandages on the existing employer/insurance-driven system, or go to a government-run system. I disagree. Although I do not know what they might be, I feel very strongly that there must be some other choices available.
It will take “thinking outside the usual political box” to resolve this issue successfully for the American people. However, just as in years past, everyone is entrenching into their two opposed traditional positions, and no one anywhere is approaching this problem with the open, inquiring mind that is required.
One of the two positions seems to be to maintain the existing multi-provider health-for-profit system, with the pharmaceutical corporations and the malpractice lawyers making a very corrupt “killing”, and multiple insurance companies with their duplicated overheads unable to make a killing unless they cheat.
They cheat by defeating what was for us the point of insurance at all: a big pool to spread costs. These insurance companies are so horribly inefficient that they are only profitable if they carefully pick their pools (read that as covering only those who never get sick). The byzantine rules and out-of-control premium costs effectively deny adequate coverage to something like 1 in 4 of us, if not more.
The other position is "single payer", a euphemism for the British system of fully-socialized, government-run "health care" that is really merely rationing in a completely dis-incentivized environment. Others point at the Canadians, but they use exactly the same system as the British. In either country, health care delivery for all but the most routine things is usually bureaucratically delayed until the patient dies. Effectively, that is really how costs are cut to tax-supportable levels.
As far as I am concerned, both approaches are abject failures!
I do not know exactly what the Scandinavians are doing, but I do know these four things about what they do:
(1) everyone is covered,
(2) the total of their taxes is comparable to the total of all our taxes at all levels of government (both totals are about 65% when you include Social Security in our total, which goes into the general fund, and has for decades; that's effectively a tax),
(3) on the average Scandinavians live 10 years longer than Americans, and
(4) their oldsters are healthier later into life than ours, so that old age there is much pleasanter than old age here has become.
With respect to point (2), let me add: those three countries also maintain large, well-equipped, and formidable military establishments, comparable to ours in a per-capita sense. I know of the military endeavors of the Swedish and the Norwegians from my days in the defense industry. I presume the Danish are similar, although I never had any dealings with them.
As I already said, I do not know exactly what they are doing in those three countries to provide health care for their peoples, but those four items I just listed above, make a powerful argument to go look. Maybe there is something they do that we can adapt and use here.
We ought to at least look!
Here is the only reason that I can see, as to why this possibility has been excluded from our debate here in America: the “very loud-talking” money of the entrenched special interests. In this case that would be the gigantic (and international) pharmaceutical corporations, the trial lawyers groups, and the big insurance companies themselves. These giants have enough “petty cash” to have bought almost all of Congress. We the people are nothing but a disposable source of income to them.
A representative owned by these giants will vote against the interests of the people every time the issue comes up. Further, as a group, they will hide this pattern by cloaking the debate in terms of opposing ideological positions that are in fact logically ridiculous. And that is exactly what has been going on for over 20 years on this issue.
This happens on a lot of issues critical to the American people, not just health care. And it is about to happen again on healthcare.
And THAT is why I recommend voting against all incumbents, unless one can personally verify that an incumbent did more good than harm while in office. VERY FEW qualify, in my book. (I found only three out of all the choices at all levels on the last ballot, although I have now identified a fourth.) It does take time for a freshman representative to put down roots into the “good-old-boy” corruption system. Therefore, that garden requires frequent weeding. And we-the-people have NOT been doing our weeding.
And THAT is why we have bad government.
I think the President is bumping into an ugly reality on this issue. The choices appear to be to put bandages on the existing employer/insurance-driven system, or go to a government-run system. I disagree. Although I do not know what they might be, I feel very strongly that there must be some other choices available.
It will take “thinking outside the usual political box” to resolve this issue successfully for the American people. However, just as in years past, everyone is entrenching into their two opposed traditional positions, and no one anywhere is approaching this problem with the open, inquiring mind that is required.
One of the two positions seems to be to maintain the existing multi-provider health-for-profit system, with the pharmaceutical corporations and the malpractice lawyers making a very corrupt “killing”, and multiple insurance companies with their duplicated overheads unable to make a killing unless they cheat.
They cheat by defeating what was for us the point of insurance at all: a big pool to spread costs. These insurance companies are so horribly inefficient that they are only profitable if they carefully pick their pools (read that as covering only those who never get sick). The byzantine rules and out-of-control premium costs effectively deny adequate coverage to something like 1 in 4 of us, if not more.
The other position is "single payer", a euphemism for the British system of fully-socialized, government-run "health care" that is really merely rationing in a completely dis-incentivized environment. Others point at the Canadians, but they use exactly the same system as the British. In either country, health care delivery for all but the most routine things is usually bureaucratically delayed until the patient dies. Effectively, that is really how costs are cut to tax-supportable levels.
As far as I am concerned, both approaches are abject failures!
I do not know exactly what the Scandinavians are doing, but I do know these four things about what they do:
(1) everyone is covered,
(2) the total of their taxes is comparable to the total of all our taxes at all levels of government (both totals are about 65% when you include Social Security in our total, which goes into the general fund, and has for decades; that's effectively a tax),
(3) on the average Scandinavians live 10 years longer than Americans, and
(4) their oldsters are healthier later into life than ours, so that old age there is much pleasanter than old age here has become.
With respect to point (2), let me add: those three countries also maintain large, well-equipped, and formidable military establishments, comparable to ours in a per-capita sense. I know of the military endeavors of the Swedish and the Norwegians from my days in the defense industry. I presume the Danish are similar, although I never had any dealings with them.
As I already said, I do not know exactly what they are doing in those three countries to provide health care for their peoples, but those four items I just listed above, make a powerful argument to go look. Maybe there is something they do that we can adapt and use here.
We ought to at least look!
Here is the only reason that I can see, as to why this possibility has been excluded from our debate here in America: the “very loud-talking” money of the entrenched special interests. In this case that would be the gigantic (and international) pharmaceutical corporations, the trial lawyers groups, and the big insurance companies themselves. These giants have enough “petty cash” to have bought almost all of Congress. We the people are nothing but a disposable source of income to them.
A representative owned by these giants will vote against the interests of the people every time the issue comes up. Further, as a group, they will hide this pattern by cloaking the debate in terms of opposing ideological positions that are in fact logically ridiculous. And that is exactly what has been going on for over 20 years on this issue.
This happens on a lot of issues critical to the American people, not just health care. And it is about to happen again on healthcare.
And THAT is why I recommend voting against all incumbents, unless one can personally verify that an incumbent did more good than harm while in office. VERY FEW qualify, in my book. (I found only three out of all the choices at all levels on the last ballot, although I have now identified a fourth.) It does take time for a freshman representative to put down roots into the “good-old-boy” corruption system. Therefore, that garden requires frequent weeding. And we-the-people have NOT been doing our weeding.
And THAT is why we have bad government.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
A Plea for a More Civil Political Discourse
I get a lot of forwarded e-mail letters and articles from friends and acquaintances. Many of these are, shall we say, unfavorable toward our new President and his administration.
Over the decades, I have learned that jokes and opinions adverse to sitting Presidents are quite normal. But, in the last couple of decades, I have noticed two things that disturb me greatly.
One is the vitriol, the sheer unadulterated defamation, in lots of the recent material that I have seen. This is clear evidence of a hatred that is poisoning our collective political life, and that is dangerous.
The other disturbing trend is that this hate campaign has been directed not just at the current sitting President, but at his party even when it was not in power. This tells me a lot about the very negative thinking of those who actually produce this stuff.
I am not a Democrat. Nor am I a Republican. Over the years, both parties have advanced proposals that I have liked, and other proposals that I have detested. Over the years, I have picked and chosen candidates whom I felt would do good things for America, regardless of their party. In my opinion, that is what all Americans should do.
Now, over the last several decades, I did tend to vote for more Republican ideas than Democrats, because those ideas back then were generally more moderate: a more moderate size of government, moderation in spending, etc. This was actually a very centrist position, by today’s standards. I like centrist stuff. It is usually the least intrusive, least harmful.
The problem is, today’s GOP is not the party of moderation anymore. The last traditional Republican (moderate-politics) President I can remember was Eisenhower. In recent decades, the closest thing I saw to that moderate ideal was Bill Clinton, the Democrat! In much of what he did, he was closer to the mold of the moderate Republicans of old. He balanced the budget, reformed some welfare into workfare, and he did not start any wars. This was entirely unlike Reagan, Bush 41, or Bush 43, all Republicans.
The departure of Arlen Specter from the GOP is a very public example of something that has been going on since before Reagan. The “power base” of the GOP was once politically-moderate folk of a strong connection to big business, just as the “power base” of the Democrats were the politically-moderate folk of a stronger connection to organized labor. Both parties had their extremists: the GOP included some very “right-wing” extremists, while the Democrats had both right wing extremists (“Southern conservatives”) and the “far left liberals”.
The makeup of the Democrats is still mostly unchanged: a moderate core and lots of fringe wackos on the left, although they lost most of the Southern conservative extremists to the GOP.
In contrast, the “power base” of the GOP shifted sharply to the extremist conservatives, plus what amounts to some very intolerant Christian religious extremists (the so-called “evangelicals”). After that shift, the party essentially began purging itself of moderates, such as Specter. That is why fewer and fewer people identify themselves as Republicans in the polls any more.
Unless the GOP becomes less extremist and more inclusive, or unless a new party espousing moderation arises, then I think that the best hope of obtaining moderate politics and policies now lies with the Democrats, at least for the next few years. Yet, one of the reasons I voted for more Republicans than Democrats over the previous decades was a tendency of the Democrats to get taken-over by their own “left-wing liberal” membership, just about election campaign time. That still happens.
Even so, I am pleased with the selection of Mr. Obama by the Democrats, and that he won the election. Obama and McCain were both moderates within their parties, both “centrist” politicians. These two men were closer to each other in their politics than either was to his party’s “base”. I simply think that the polyglot political baggage of the Democrats is less harmful to us right now, than the right-wing extremist baggage of the GOP. It’s a lesser-of-two-evils thing.
That brings me back to the vitriolic and defaming email forwards. These were directed at the Democrats all through the presidency of Bush 43, and were particularly mean-spirited about Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton during the long campaign for the last election. A lot of these were “photo-shopped” images or “testimonials” depicting Obama as unpatriotic and un-American. Some of it was quite clumsy and easily spotted for what it was. After a while, even the jokes are no longer funny. This stuff is still being produced and circulated.
The latest egregious example is a careful quoting-out-of-context of Mr. Obama, who said “America is not a Christian country”, with the implication that we are not religious at all. The full text actually says “not a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim country”. The full meaning, in proper context, is that this country is not just one of these, but all of these, and much more besides. His meaning is entirely positive, and very inclusive, even of those who do not believe. It certainly includes all Christians, and not just those who pass the “litmus tests” for the extremist Christian religious right.
The election is over. We are being tested by multiple emergencies that transcend all politics. We desperately need our President to succeed, no matter who he is. This continuing campaign of political hatred actually endangers America.
It has to stop.
I submit to you all that Barry Goldwater was wrong back in 1964 when he said that “extremism … was no vice”. It is a terrible vice. And it is a potent danger, whether in politics or religion. After all, it is extremist religious fanatics that we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. That they are Muslim matters not. It is the extremism, not the brand of religion, that drives them to do Satan’s work for him: to kill others for God.
As LBJ once said “come let us reason together”; and let’s do it in the moderate center of our political and religious lives.
Over the decades, I have learned that jokes and opinions adverse to sitting Presidents are quite normal. But, in the last couple of decades, I have noticed two things that disturb me greatly.
One is the vitriol, the sheer unadulterated defamation, in lots of the recent material that I have seen. This is clear evidence of a hatred that is poisoning our collective political life, and that is dangerous.
The other disturbing trend is that this hate campaign has been directed not just at the current sitting President, but at his party even when it was not in power. This tells me a lot about the very negative thinking of those who actually produce this stuff.
I am not a Democrat. Nor am I a Republican. Over the years, both parties have advanced proposals that I have liked, and other proposals that I have detested. Over the years, I have picked and chosen candidates whom I felt would do good things for America, regardless of their party. In my opinion, that is what all Americans should do.
Now, over the last several decades, I did tend to vote for more Republican ideas than Democrats, because those ideas back then were generally more moderate: a more moderate size of government, moderation in spending, etc. This was actually a very centrist position, by today’s standards. I like centrist stuff. It is usually the least intrusive, least harmful.
The problem is, today’s GOP is not the party of moderation anymore. The last traditional Republican (moderate-politics) President I can remember was Eisenhower. In recent decades, the closest thing I saw to that moderate ideal was Bill Clinton, the Democrat! In much of what he did, he was closer to the mold of the moderate Republicans of old. He balanced the budget, reformed some welfare into workfare, and he did not start any wars. This was entirely unlike Reagan, Bush 41, or Bush 43, all Republicans.
The departure of Arlen Specter from the GOP is a very public example of something that has been going on since before Reagan. The “power base” of the GOP was once politically-moderate folk of a strong connection to big business, just as the “power base” of the Democrats were the politically-moderate folk of a stronger connection to organized labor. Both parties had their extremists: the GOP included some very “right-wing” extremists, while the Democrats had both right wing extremists (“Southern conservatives”) and the “far left liberals”.
The makeup of the Democrats is still mostly unchanged: a moderate core and lots of fringe wackos on the left, although they lost most of the Southern conservative extremists to the GOP.
In contrast, the “power base” of the GOP shifted sharply to the extremist conservatives, plus what amounts to some very intolerant Christian religious extremists (the so-called “evangelicals”). After that shift, the party essentially began purging itself of moderates, such as Specter. That is why fewer and fewer people identify themselves as Republicans in the polls any more.
Unless the GOP becomes less extremist and more inclusive, or unless a new party espousing moderation arises, then I think that the best hope of obtaining moderate politics and policies now lies with the Democrats, at least for the next few years. Yet, one of the reasons I voted for more Republicans than Democrats over the previous decades was a tendency of the Democrats to get taken-over by their own “left-wing liberal” membership, just about election campaign time. That still happens.
Even so, I am pleased with the selection of Mr. Obama by the Democrats, and that he won the election. Obama and McCain were both moderates within their parties, both “centrist” politicians. These two men were closer to each other in their politics than either was to his party’s “base”. I simply think that the polyglot political baggage of the Democrats is less harmful to us right now, than the right-wing extremist baggage of the GOP. It’s a lesser-of-two-evils thing.
That brings me back to the vitriolic and defaming email forwards. These were directed at the Democrats all through the presidency of Bush 43, and were particularly mean-spirited about Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton during the long campaign for the last election. A lot of these were “photo-shopped” images or “testimonials” depicting Obama as unpatriotic and un-American. Some of it was quite clumsy and easily spotted for what it was. After a while, even the jokes are no longer funny. This stuff is still being produced and circulated.
The latest egregious example is a careful quoting-out-of-context of Mr. Obama, who said “America is not a Christian country”, with the implication that we are not religious at all. The full text actually says “not a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim country”. The full meaning, in proper context, is that this country is not just one of these, but all of these, and much more besides. His meaning is entirely positive, and very inclusive, even of those who do not believe. It certainly includes all Christians, and not just those who pass the “litmus tests” for the extremist Christian religious right.
The election is over. We are being tested by multiple emergencies that transcend all politics. We desperately need our President to succeed, no matter who he is. This continuing campaign of political hatred actually endangers America.
It has to stop.
I submit to you all that Barry Goldwater was wrong back in 1964 when he said that “extremism … was no vice”. It is a terrible vice. And it is a potent danger, whether in politics or religion. After all, it is extremist religious fanatics that we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. That they are Muslim matters not. It is the extremism, not the brand of religion, that drives them to do Satan’s work for him: to kill others for God.
As LBJ once said “come let us reason together”; and let’s do it in the moderate center of our political and religious lives.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
On Asteroid Defense and a Good Reason for Having National Space Programs
This planet is at some risk for the impact of an asteroid or comet. The last time a "big one" hit us, it was extinction for the dinosaurs.
I will be attending the First IAA International Planetary Defense Conference in Granada, Spain, the last week in April. That conference will look at ways and means to defend ourselves from this threat.
I am going because my paper from last fall was accepted for poster presentation. It concerns the potential benefits of adding electrostatic attraction to the "gravity tractor" concept, one of several possibilities.
For asteroid deflection defense overall, there are three serious ("killer") concerns as I see it:
(1) adequate warning time is beyond our technical means for the more numerous smaller bodies,
(2) no adequate propulsion exists to get out there quick enough to do any good,
(3) most of the few objects sampled so far appear to be loose rubble piles, not solid objects capable being pushed by most of the deflection force concepts.
Item (3) - the rubble-pile problem:
The gravity tractor is attractive for item (3) because it is a body force, and could "tow" a sand pile with the force of gravity as the tow cable. We already have the micro-thrust ion and plasma thrusters that could do this job.
The gravity tractor requires long lead times because the forces are so small. It takes a long time to build up deflection effects, which is why items (1) and (2) are such conceptual "killers".
My electrostatic upgrade to the gravity tractor provides a "tow cable" that might be 4 orders of magnitude stronger, for very little added equipment to the spacecraft. Getting more deflection faster eases somewhat "killer" items (1) and (2), and, it just might make possible a second attempt if the first fails.
Item (2) - the response-time problem:
In my opinion, item (2) can be solved by dusting off the old 1950's "Project Orion" concept for nuclear explosion propulsion. That's the nearest-term super-powerful atomic rocket concept available, and we did everything but put one together and test it, back then.
There is also the solid core nuclear thermal rocket, which we actually did build and test quite successfully about 1959-1972. It is a lot less powerful than the explosion approach, but still far better than the best chemical rockets.
The solid core nuclear rocket has a more powerful cousin, gas core nuclear, which was well-studied experimentally, but never built and tested as a rocket engine, about 1965-1972. With any of these, the idea is to get out there very quickly, with multiple options for deflection forces, and do whatever is needed, based on what you find when you get there.
Item (1) - the distant-detection problem:
We need some observation equipment dispersed out there in space, all around the solar system, to find and characterize these things. Immensely-powerful propulsion would make this possible in a realistic fashion.
The key to all of this, and much more, is therefore immensely-powerful propulsion:
We need that nuclear explosion drive, and the gas core nuclear thermal rocket, for a variety of compelling reasons besides asteroid defense. Our past history with solid core nuclear thermal rockets says that neither of these is safe to do, down here on Earth.
Space stations are no help. You cannot develop rocket engines hanging weightless in space, where every test is a flight test.
But, as if made-to-order by God for us, the moon waits, only 240,000 miles from home. Airless, waterless, and uninhabited, it truly is a safe place to test dangerous things.
I cannot think of a better reason to go back to the moon, than to test and develop those immensely-powerful atomic rockets.
G.W. Johnson 4-21-09
I will be attending the First IAA International Planetary Defense Conference in Granada, Spain, the last week in April. That conference will look at ways and means to defend ourselves from this threat.
I am going because my paper from last fall was accepted for poster presentation. It concerns the potential benefits of adding electrostatic attraction to the "gravity tractor" concept, one of several possibilities.
For asteroid deflection defense overall, there are three serious ("killer") concerns as I see it:
(1) adequate warning time is beyond our technical means for the more numerous smaller bodies,
(2) no adequate propulsion exists to get out there quick enough to do any good,
(3) most of the few objects sampled so far appear to be loose rubble piles, not solid objects capable being pushed by most of the deflection force concepts.
Item (3) - the rubble-pile problem:
The gravity tractor is attractive for item (3) because it is a body force, and could "tow" a sand pile with the force of gravity as the tow cable. We already have the micro-thrust ion and plasma thrusters that could do this job.
The gravity tractor requires long lead times because the forces are so small. It takes a long time to build up deflection effects, which is why items (1) and (2) are such conceptual "killers".
My electrostatic upgrade to the gravity tractor provides a "tow cable" that might be 4 orders of magnitude stronger, for very little added equipment to the spacecraft. Getting more deflection faster eases somewhat "killer" items (1) and (2), and, it just might make possible a second attempt if the first fails.
Item (2) - the response-time problem:
In my opinion, item (2) can be solved by dusting off the old 1950's "Project Orion" concept for nuclear explosion propulsion. That's the nearest-term super-powerful atomic rocket concept available, and we did everything but put one together and test it, back then.
There is also the solid core nuclear thermal rocket, which we actually did build and test quite successfully about 1959-1972. It is a lot less powerful than the explosion approach, but still far better than the best chemical rockets.
The solid core nuclear rocket has a more powerful cousin, gas core nuclear, which was well-studied experimentally, but never built and tested as a rocket engine, about 1965-1972. With any of these, the idea is to get out there very quickly, with multiple options for deflection forces, and do whatever is needed, based on what you find when you get there.
Item (1) - the distant-detection problem:
We need some observation equipment dispersed out there in space, all around the solar system, to find and characterize these things. Immensely-powerful propulsion would make this possible in a realistic fashion.
The key to all of this, and much more, is therefore immensely-powerful propulsion:
We need that nuclear explosion drive, and the gas core nuclear thermal rocket, for a variety of compelling reasons besides asteroid defense. Our past history with solid core nuclear thermal rockets says that neither of these is safe to do, down here on Earth.
Space stations are no help. You cannot develop rocket engines hanging weightless in space, where every test is a flight test.
But, as if made-to-order by God for us, the moon waits, only 240,000 miles from home. Airless, waterless, and uninhabited, it truly is a safe place to test dangerous things.
I cannot think of a better reason to go back to the moon, than to test and develop those immensely-powerful atomic rockets.
G.W. Johnson 4-21-09
Sunday, April 19, 2009
On Tax Rebellions, Tea Party Campaigns, and Secession Movements
On Tax Rebellions, Tea Party Campaigns, and Secession Movements
These things are pointless attention-getting behavior. They are staged either for, or taken advantage of by, those with hidden agendas.
Simply voting the bastards out, to end corruption in government, would accomplish pretty much the same end, and with a lot less trouble and collateral damage than any attempted secession, tea party, insurrection, or other defiant or violent acts.
The problem we face lies within both parties, and is quite independent of their agendas and ideologies. Both parties are completely corrupt, and most of the candidates they bring to us are also completely corrupt.
Special interest money talks way too loudly in all levels of American politics. Party agendas always seem to trump doing the people's business. All of this is very wrong.
In recent decades, both parties' political agendas have been and still are the most egregious crap. It is through debate and compromise that we get ideas that might actually work.
I have not seen any willingness (in either party) to engage in real debate and compromise, not since before the "Reagan Revolution" of 1980. Pathetic.
I recommend: vote for no incumbent unless you can personally verify that he/she did more good than harm while in office. Very few will qualify, if any.
It takes time to put down "roots" in the corruption system. That "garden" therefore needs frequent weeding. This is quite independent of any party preferences any of us might have.
In point of fact, this voting choice must supersede any party preferences. As also the voting patterns of any truly worthy representative should also supersede party agendas (and that is one thing I look for, and I rarely find, if ever).
On the November 2008 ballot, I found only three names of incumbents I could justify voting for. Since then, I think I have found one more I can justify retaining.
But no one else !!!!!!!!!! Not one, of a plethora of office holders, candidates, or opponents. There’s a lot of “I don’t know” on this list, but, unless I know, I vote "no".
If everyone approached their civic duty voting in this way, we eventually would have largely-honest, largely-uncorrupted government. Please consider doing this yourself, and also passing along my recommendation to others, if it makes any sense to you.
These things are pointless attention-getting behavior. They are staged either for, or taken advantage of by, those with hidden agendas.
Simply voting the bastards out, to end corruption in government, would accomplish pretty much the same end, and with a lot less trouble and collateral damage than any attempted secession, tea party, insurrection, or other defiant or violent acts.
The problem we face lies within both parties, and is quite independent of their agendas and ideologies. Both parties are completely corrupt, and most of the candidates they bring to us are also completely corrupt.
Special interest money talks way too loudly in all levels of American politics. Party agendas always seem to trump doing the people's business. All of this is very wrong.
In recent decades, both parties' political agendas have been and still are the most egregious crap. It is through debate and compromise that we get ideas that might actually work.
I have not seen any willingness (in either party) to engage in real debate and compromise, not since before the "Reagan Revolution" of 1980. Pathetic.
I recommend: vote for no incumbent unless you can personally verify that he/she did more good than harm while in office. Very few will qualify, if any.
It takes time to put down "roots" in the corruption system. That "garden" therefore needs frequent weeding. This is quite independent of any party preferences any of us might have.
In point of fact, this voting choice must supersede any party preferences. As also the voting patterns of any truly worthy representative should also supersede party agendas (and that is one thing I look for, and I rarely find, if ever).
On the November 2008 ballot, I found only three names of incumbents I could justify voting for. Since then, I think I have found one more I can justify retaining.
But no one else !!!!!!!!!! Not one, of a plethora of office holders, candidates, or opponents. There’s a lot of “I don’t know” on this list, but, unless I know, I vote "no".
If everyone approached their civic duty voting in this way, we eventually would have largely-honest, largely-uncorrupted government. Please consider doing this yourself, and also passing along my recommendation to others, if it makes any sense to you.
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