More on the Past and Future of Manned Spaceflight

In response to Russell's recent posting, "Apollo on Steroids", I mentioned that I have, for various reasons and for ten or fifteen years, been gravely dissatisfied with NASA's approach to manned spaceflight. So I am interested to read that the current administrator of NASA shares some of the views that I hold. (No, he doesn't publicly advocate research into nuclear launch vehicles. :^) Click on the image to read about an interview with Michael Griffin.

Griffin's summary quote is, "Only now is the nation's space program getting back on track." I want to agree. At least things are looking up in terms of real plans announced. Let us hope that today's plans come to fruition.

What do you think of this analysis of NASA's post-Apollo record? Is it too harsh? I'll admit that I don't think so.

Here we go again.

I copied the following article from one that I wrote for my blog at StumbleUpon.

I suppose that it's time for me to comment on the whole evolution-versus-intelligent-design issue that is in the news right now.

The image above links to a piece in The New York Times. As with every piece on the up-coming court battle over the Dover, PA, school board's decision to mention intelligent design in the biology curriculum, I feel frustration in reading it. The problem is not so much in the reporting as in the general lack of education and understanding on both sides.

Contrary to the picture painted by the controversialists, there is a real middle ground. Being able to see the middle ground and to see that it is worth standing on, however, requires a proper understanding of the philosophy of science.

First of all, everyone should recognize that no scientific theory can ever be proved true. (See Thomas Kuhn's classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) It is always a possibility that future observations, as-yet undiscovered evidence, may cause the currently prevailing theory---however firmly entrenched it now seems to be---to be thrown out, never again to be considered as a candidate for "truth". Look, for example, at what happened to Newtonian mechanics. Even better, look at what happened to Darwin's own theory of smooth, gradual, continuous evolution. In each case, the old theory had to be thrown out and a replacement sought. Now we have general relativity in mechanics and punctuated equilibrium in evolution. Who knows how long these will last? It might even be that with super-advanced science a thousand years from now, someone will look back on our view in which we imagine the earth as going around the sun and think, "How quaint."

In any event, if the "science advocates" would admit the fundamental principle that no scientific theory can ever be considered a truth, and if the religious fundamentalists would recognize this admission, then we should have at least the beginnings of accommodation.

Second, it should be noted that although science progresses by the ruling out of scientific theories, the process of ruling them out is not one in which religious faith or philosophical predisposition plays a part. A theory is tested against repeatable observations. If crucial new observations come along, and a theory survives (for the time being), then that's interesting. If crucial new observations come along, and a theory is thereby ruled out, then that's interesting, too. The science classroom should be about identifying for students those theories that stand up to the observational test. Moreover, the scientific communities in which the theories are developed are the right authorities for determining which theories are consistent with the present state of observational knowledge. No one else is competent to do so.

When the school board or the state tries to intervene in what should be a purely scientific matter, then the educational process is broken. Note carefully: I am not claiming that such intervention is the cause of the brokenness; the intervention may just be a symptom of a more fundamental brokenness. For example, if a scientific theory be taught as if it were a "truth" or a "fact", and not merely a theory that happens to fit the observational facts, then the educational process is broken even before the state tries clumsily to intervene in order to "fix" things.

The state or the school board is right to mandate that we call a theory a theory and not call it a fact. The intervention goes too far, however, if it introduces a non-scientific theory for consideration in a science class.

My recommendation is that every student (and adult controversialist) be required to take a course dedicated to the philosophy and history of science. This is more valuable than "learning biology" or "learning physics", and even the student who would otherwise not take a science course should be required to study the philosophy.

Wish Them Luck

Just talked to Lark. He is sitting on I-10 with one of his dogs and Deline is in the car behind him with their other dog and as much stuff as they could take with them to San Antonio. They have evacuated their home in Friendswood to get away from Hurricane Rita.
Right now, the projected path would take Rita just west of Galveston as a Category 5 storm - stronger and larger than Katrina when it hit Mississippi and Louisiana.
Lark's home is about 30 miles inland but the real fear is Galveston Bay filling up with the storm surge and causing waterways like Clear Creek to swell and flood neighborhoods like Friendswood. And of course, there's always the wind and rain from the actual storm as it rolls through. Lark says his house is on one of the higher altitude streets in the neighborhood, so he is hoping for the best. Lark and Deline left this morning wondering if their house will be there when they come back. Lark said it was very eerie.
It will take them 6 to 8 hours to get to San Antonio because of all the traffic, but at least they got out in plenty of time.
Cross your fingers for them.

Apollo on Steroids

Today NASA announced how we are planning to implement Pres. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. The folks responsible for creating the website have done a terrific job, so if you have a decent bandwidth, it's well worth checking out. If you don't, and this is even remotely interesting to you, a visit to your library's computers would be worthwhile. Just go to http://www.nasa.gov, and it's the first thing to pop up.

A lot of these plans have been rumored for some time, so depending on what you've heard, there won't be many surprises, other than the glitz of the webpage. To me, it's "Apollo on Steroids." A four-person Apollo capsule gets launched on a two-stage stack to low Earth orbit. The first stage is a Shuttle solid rocket booster, and the second stage is powered by a Space Shuttle main engine. This stack will be twice as tall as the Shuttle on the pad, and nearly the height of a Saturn V. There's a separate launch of the (uncrewed) lunar lander and the trans-lunar injection stage. This stack has a central core of 5 Shuttle main engines, with two solid rockets on the sides, so it's like Shuttle only just as high as the other crewed stack. The crew rendezvous with the lander and injection stage, then head for the moon, where all four of them descend to the surface. At first it will be for only a few days, but later, we want to send them to establish a permanent base on the south pole, because we think there may be ice there that they could use. When they come back, they ride parachutes, but they will end up on the ground, not the ocean. We are going to try to make it as much as possible like a mission to Mars, so the lessons learned will be relevant.

You should save this post, and compare it to what we actually are doing 10 and 20 years from now. When Shuttle was in this stage of design, they were going to fly it like a commercial jet, one mission per week. After all the compromises, we ended up with a pretty amazing vehicle, but it was lot less than the initial vision.

Despite all this, I'm optimistic. As near as I can tell, the folks who came up with this have been at it for most of their 20-ish year careers. They've had a lot of false starts, including two since I've been here, first under Bush I, then again under Clinton when we thought we might have found archaic micro-bacteria fossils in a Martian meteorite. What's different this time, from where I sit, is that it has finally sunk in that we won't by flying the Shuttle until we all retire. We will do something different, or NASA as we know it will wither away. Even if what we end up with looks a lot different from today's shiny computer graphics, the decisions we make today will be with us until our children are running the show, and maybe theirs as well.

One of the things I've been working on is how we will communicate with that crew at the lunar south pole, if that's where we send them, and how they will navigate. It's a real challenge, since there is little to no direct line of sight back to the earth. Think about that: being stationed in the bottom of deep crater, 30 times further away from home than your own home is from the other side of the planet, and never even being able to catch a full glimpse of where you came from, and where your family is waiting for you, except on the computer. Just like Space Odyssey. And just like on Everest, we will probably end up with corpses there. I hope it's not in my lifetime.

I know we had a topic on this last year, but do you all think we are on the right track? Can NASA do the job -- or should we let entrepeneurs take these risks? There would still be plenty of scientific missions that NASA might be best suited to undertake, things like studying whether the Earth's magnetic field will continue to shield our atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind, searching for Earth-like planets around other stars, and finding the gravitational echoes of the origin of the Universe. For now though, it appears that the die is cast. (If you prefer Roman allegories, Caesar put this "alea iacta est" when he crossed the Rubicon to invade Italy; for him, the gamble paid off.)

The Joy of Shifting (with a Clutch)

Not too long ago, I got my first car ever that didn't have a clutch. Not by choice, but since "standard" now means automatic, and "manual" is only available in the very top-end model of the car I bought. To compensate, they equip the other models, like mine, with something they call "Tiptronic." It's pretty neat actually; essentially it's an automatic, but you can put it into a mode where it behaves more or less like a clutchless manual. You push the stick forward for each upshift, and backward for each downshift. Since, like all automatics, there's still no direct coupling between the engine and the wheels, there's a bit of a delay, but that doesn't bother me too much.

What I miss is the joyful rhythm of shifting a manual; having all my arms and legs involved, precisely synchronized with what my mind wants the car to do. If you've never got comfortable with a manual, you probably think I'm crazy, but if you have, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a level of immersive, physical contact with the machine that you just don't get with an automatic.

Maybe eventually I'll be clicking through those gears on my Tiptronic with my left foot happily at ease on the footrest, but so far, I've found I just put it in "Drive" mode and drone mindlessly along. With this car anyway, it's every bit as nimble as I can do with the Tiptronic.

Blood Money

Guess who is handling the reconstruction of New Orleans' navy ports?
That's right - the people who brought you the Iraqi Reconstruction Project - Halliburton (or more accurately the Halliburton subsidiary - Kellogg, Brown and Root).
Before a single National Guard soldier had even set foot in New Orleans to rescue the thousands of people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center, the feds had already given a $500 million contract to KBR to start work on the reconstruction of those ports in New Orleans.
Why do you suppose Halliburton scored such a high-profile contract so quickly before anything was actually done to save the PEOPLE of New Orleans?
Could it be because they have experience handling this kind of work ala Iraq? Possibly.
Could it be because they have a great reputation of handling this kind of work? If, by good reputation, you mean the misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars in reconstruction funds provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority, I suppose that's a possibility.
Could it be because of Halliburton's close ties to George Bush and Dick Cheney? If I were still a betting man, that's the choice on which I would put all my chips.
If you would also like to profit off the devastation and deaths from Hurricane Katrina, call your broker and invest in Halliburton stock as soon as possible (the abbreviation is HAL on the NYSE). I hear the stock is at a 52-week high and climbing.

Note from MacArthur's German teacher

Hey, the following is an e-mail from Mary ElBeheri, the German teacher Walter and I had at Mac. (She retired this past summer.) She and I still correspond, as I did some substitue teaching for her after I quit teaching at Alamo Heights before Patrick and I got married. The email had a distribution list including some of her friends in Europe...

The involvement of the high school is an excellent thing. Showers, food, and a student body to run fund and supply drives. I think caring for the refugees in small parcels is going to be the way to help folks get back on their feet.



Hi
It is unbelievable to see the devastation in New Orleans. I thought you would be happy to know that MacArthur High School is a Red Cross designated center. http://www.neisd.net/mac/katrina.html 25 families are living in the ROTC building. I am very proud of our school for doing this. SO far it is the only high school in San Antonio involved. Davis Middle School is one,too.

The old Kelly field and the Alamodome are taking in many displaced persons in San Antonio. The children and students will attend schools and universities here this semester.

Actually the whole State of Texas as stepped up to help out. Dallas, Houston, SAn Antonio are each taking in 25,000 people and many small towns are taking in smaller numbers. I heard today that Detroit is also taking a large number and Chicago has offered.
For those of you watching the process in Europe, it is as bad as it looks.
I was in New Orleans 3 weeks ago and the city is really destroyed. Some of you may remember Mr Richard, teacher, counselor and now retired AP, he is from New Orleans. I called him yesterday and he told me he had from all his brothers and sisters and they are all staying with relatives and friends in other states. I was so happy for him. We contacted the Whole Foods grocery store and they told us the store we had visited was destroyed but all their employees are okay and they will have jobs in other stores. On the other hand the hotel chain we stayed in has no idea about its employees.

In hindsight we know that the poor citizens of New Orleans should have been bussed out before the storm hit. New Orleans has 50+% of its people living under the poverty level. They had no cars, no money to make it possible for them to evacuate. Of course now we are bussing them out as the sitatuation has become a national tragedy. Thank God for our Red Cross, our Military personnel and for all the support from around the world.
Germany was the first country to offer help, I was so proud!!

For those of you interested in the animals and house pets, most were taken out early. We have many here in the SA Shelter waiting to be adopted.
The Zoo animals were saved.

If you want to help out the people in New Orleans, the best way is through the American Red Cross. http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/

Hugs to all
Mary

In Memoriam: New Orleans

Tennyson, "In Memoriam"
(Oxford Book of English Version,
http://www.bartleby.com)

FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn 5
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 10
As our pure love, thro' early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 15
My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me. 20

II

I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, 25
And travell'd men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.

So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus 30
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 35
The chalice of the grapes of God;

Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp'd in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells. 40

III

Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 45
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 50
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all, 55
If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 60

IV

To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, 65
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass 70
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe 75
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire. 80

V

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move 85
Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam
My blessing, like a line of light, 90
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.

So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark 95
Slide from the bosom of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run. 100

VI

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, 105
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;

And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb; 110
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:

When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought 115
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;

And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood; 120

And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.

VII

How fares it with the happy dead? 125
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.

The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense 130
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;

And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs)
May some dim touch of earthly things 135
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.

If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all. 140

VIII

The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife, 145
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds, 150
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 155
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope. 160

IX

'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

Thou makest thine appeal to me: 165
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 170
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 175
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills? 180

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail! 185
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

X

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down; 190
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;

Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed 195
With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star; 200

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild 205
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger's child;

As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; 210
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.

XI

Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick 215
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song. 220

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 225
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret 230
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.

XII

Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend, 235
Which every hour his couriers bring.

Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho' as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass'd by his faithful guard, 240

And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.