Canadian Cincinnatus

Obama Makes Right Space Decision for Wrong Reason

I heard the first whispers at the 2008 International Space Development Conference in Washington: one of the lead contenders in the fractious Democratic Party nominations, Barack Obama, wanted to cancel the new space program and transfer NASA's budget to education and global warming research.  The human crewed space program would end.  It was enough to make republican space enthusiasts hope that Hillary Clinton would win.

Sure enough, Obama's committee has come back and recommended canceling NASA's Constellation program, which would have returned humans to the moon by the end of the decade.  After the shuttle retires, there will be no crewed spacecraft in development in NASA's budget.  To my surprise, I agree with this decision but for totally different reasons from Obama.

The far-left have hated the space program for decades, even though they constantly point to Kennedy for proof that they love it.  They believe it's a waste of precious government resources that should go to the poor, ignoring that thousands of jobs and brilliant technical innovations have come from the space program, helping to make the United States rich.

But Obama could not use social justice as an excuse for canceling Constellation without huge middle-of-the-road political fallout.  Most Americans have grown up taking it for granted that they are way ahead in space travel.  If Obama just shrugged off that lead and handed it over to the Russians or the Chinese he would be a one term president.  It's the things voters take for granted that are most dangerous to mess with, regardless of what the pundits say.

Instead Obama is pretending there still is a space program by pointing to upstarts like SpaceX and promising that they will one day take Americans back into orbit.  A corporation rather than NASA will do the heavy lifting in developing the next generation of crewed space ships.  Amazingly, Obama has discovered capitalism and the free market.  I suspects he cares little whether they actually succeed, and if SpaceX fails he can say Americans would be in space except for free market failure--not his fault.

But SpaceX might surprise both skeptics and President Obama.

The biggest problem for SpaceX was that NASA's Constellation was a two part program: Ares 1, which would've carried crew to orbit, and Ares 5, which would have carried the lunar lander.  Ares 1 was also to replace the space shuttle and resupply the International Space Station,  exactly what SpaceX wants to do with the Falcon 9 space craft.  Thus, SpaceX was in competition with NASA for space station resupply--quite a conflict of interests.

NASA has so far reluctantly provided support to SpaceX, mostly because Bush made them with the COTS program, but with this little company doing the same thing NASA was going to do at a tiny fraction of the cost, well, it was embarrassing.  The air force has given SpaceX way more support as they seek cheaper flights for their spy satellites.

Also, the Ares 1 has come under fire even from NASA engineers as potentially shaking astronauts to death.  NASA says it can fix this problem and I'm sure they can, but how much will that complicated fix cost?

I believe private industry can and will take over supply to Low Earth Orbit.  NASA paved the way for this over 40 years ago, and so many companies and countries launch satellites now it's dizzying.  It's the next logical step for a private company to start taking people to orbit, and SpaceX's plan, if achieved, will take a lot of people to orbit, maybe even private citizens going to Bigelow's space hotels.

But the biggest problem with NASA's Constellation program is that it was essentially an Apollo re-dux--going where we'd been before with even less purpose.  No one was excited about it.  I'm not saying that humans should never go back to the moon, but I am saying that NASA should be going where no one else dares: Mars.

At that same conference where I heard the first whispers of Constellation's end, I also heard a talk given by Dr Neil deGrass Tyson, head of Hayden Planetarium in New York.  The thrust of his speech to a room mostly full of NASA lifers was to try and make them understand that NASA is not a self-funding organization.  It runs on tax dollars, and that flow relies on a supportive public.  Unfortunately, the public doesn't get excited about space telescopes and missions to Pluto.  They don't sit glued to their TVs for shuttle launches.  The public gets excited about boots on the ground in another world.  They get excited about history-making firsts.

Many geologists were thrilled to get rocks from the moon, but that science was an after thought that Kennedy never envisioned.  Science piggybacked on public excitement.

Of course Obama will never support a Mars mission no matter what he says.  That's a bait and switch meant for voter consumption.  Cancel the lunar program but give some nebulous promises about trips to asteroids or the moons of Mars in the distant future.

But the next government might be moved to send Americans to Mars when the Chinese start to succeed with their space exploration.  Public sentiment will shift quickly if America falls behind.  If I were head of NASA, I would take all the money meant for Constellation and get some smart people designing new and innovative ways to get to Mars.  Forget the Apollo redux and be part of an exciting future.

NASA can be the leader again, but it has to stop living in the past.

Mike Downtown

The scientific-technological elite

The liberals are fond of remembering that part of President Eisenhower’s farewell address which cautioned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex. However there is another part to the same speech that they are just a wee bit less fond of quoting. To wit:

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Climate modeling anyone?

The left’s problem with evolution (and other human sciences)

John Derbyshire, over at National Review Online details the left’s problem with human sciences in his informative article, Will Obama Kill Science?

While the left loves to regale us with tales of the Scopes monkey trial (while omitting the detail that the high-school biology textbook that got the trial going in the first place recommended eugenic strerilization for lesser breeds – ‘nothing to see here folks, move along...’), they are increasingly wary of all the stuff coming out of genetics, genomics, demographics, psychometrics, physcial anthropology and neuroscience. As Derbyshire details:

“E.O. Wilson was having a jug of ice water dumped over his head at an AAAS symposium by people shouting “Racist Wilson you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” (1978)”, “Art Jensen looked set fair to be kicked out of the AAAS altogether following agitation by Margaret Mead et al. because of his 1969 paper on group differences in I.Q.”

The problem is that all the stuff about human nature that the left believes in is being disproven. Take the nature/nurture debate:

“Most people still think of human-science controversies in terms of nature/nurture. As a matter of real scientific dispute, that is all long gone. Nature/nurture arguments were at the heart of the sociobiology wars that roiled the human sciences through the last third of the 20th century. (The 2000 book Defenders of Truth, by the Finnish sociologist of science Ullica Segerstråle gives a full — and so far as I can judge, very fair — account.) The dust of battle has pretty much settled now, in science departments if not in the popular press, and nature is the clear victor. Name any universal characteristic of human nature, including cognitive and personality characteristics. Of all the observed variation in that characteristic, about half is caused by genetic differences. You may say that is only a half victory; but it is a complete shattering of the nurturist absolutism that ruled in the human sciences 40 years ago, and that is still the approved dogma in polite society, including polite political society, today.”

And that’s not even getting into any IQ controversies. Lots of data there if you care to look. Unfortunately, not a lot of politically correct conclusions can be based on it. So once again, move along folks, nothing to see...

Take this citation from the National Post that Derbyshire quotes:

“A group of U. S. professors launched a campaign this week protesting plans by a prominent political science organization to hold its annual conference in Toronto next year, claiming that Canada’s restrictions on certain forms of speech puts controversial academics at risk of being prosecuted … Bradley Watson, professor of American and Western political thought at Pennsylvania’s St. Vincent College, said he will present a petition calling for the American Political Science Association (APSA) to re-evaluate its selection of Toronto for its 2009 conference at this year’s annual meeting … His protest has garnered support from dozens of professors across the United States, including prominent scholars such as Princeton University legal philosopher Robert P. George and Harvard University’s Harvey Mansfield … [P]rofessors signing the petition are concerned that recent human rights commission investigations into Maclean’s and Western Standard magazines over articles concerning Islam, and the conviction of pastor Stephen Boisson, who was ordered by Alberta’s human rights tribunal in May to cease publicizing criticisms of homosexuality, suggest that professors risk being chilled from discussing important academic subjects, or ending up in legal trouble …”

It sounds like if you are in the life sciences, you are living in interesting times.

Are Global Warming Environmentalists Endangered?

The arctic is the last refuge for global warming environmentalists.  Whenever a scientist points out that the planet has actually cooled over the last few years (if you use 1998 as a base year) the environmentalists point to the arctic and shout, "But the ice cap is shrinking and the polar bears are starving."  This is their last argument that global warming, even though re-branded as global climate change, is still happening despite all other evidence.

Yup, the arctic ice pack hasn't been this small since the 1930s, and now scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution may have found out why.

They've discovered that earthquakes detected in Greenland in 1999 and 2003 where caused by eruptions of several massive undersea volcanoes, north of the arctic circle, right under the ice pack.

Indeed, because the eruptions occurred more than a couple of miles deep with all that heavy sea water to hold them back, they would have to be ten times more explosive than a continental volcano for the same ejection of lava.  Woods Hole scientists were surprised that this kind of energy was available.

Of course, to preserve careers, not one of these scientists says that the heat from these volcanoes is causing ice pack melt.  But as anyone knows who has ever boiled water on a stove top, the heat comes from the element at the bottom and travels up.  Heat rises.

If these volcanoes settle down, I bet that scientists will be surprised by how quickly the ice pack recovers over the next five years.  Of course, if the ice pack recovers, what will be left for global warming environmentalists?

Mike Downtown

Why Greg Olsen and Anousheh Ansari Are My Heroes

Not because they each spent twenty million dollars on a ride on the Soyuz up to and down from the International Space Station.

Ansari and Olsen shared their experiences on the space station at a panel at the International Space Development Conference in Washington last weekend.

The whole temper of a fascinating panel was disturbed when someone asked them, "Shouldn't you have just given the $20 million dollars to the poor instead?"

Rather than flinch, Olsen immediately explained that his charitable donations far exceeded the 20 million spent on the Soyuz, but that's not all.  Since then he's made over three-hundred appearances at schools, dress in his space suit, to tell kids about his trip and to encourage them all to go into maths and sciences so that America can continue to be the leader in technology.

The audience applauded, but Ansari wanted a crack at answering the question too. 

She told us about coming to America from Iran with nothing when she was sixteen.  She didn't know the language or the culture and was very intimidated.  But this is a country of opportunities, she went on to tell us, and she seized every opportunity.  She told us how frustrating it was as an immigrant to see many people who grew up here take all these opportunities for granted and just let them go by.

"But I seized these opportunities.  I worked hard.  It's my money, and I'll spend it how I want to."

The audience applauded enthusiastically.  As they should.  Good for her.  She and Olsen made it big, and there's nothing wrong with spending it.

Besides, they did each give $20 million to the poor.  Poor Russian rocket engineers.  They need to feed their families too.  One other thing I learned this weekend: the Russian space program is desperate for cash, but I guess that's obvious.  That's why they're taking up tourists with the Soyuz rockets.

Mike Downtown

CNN and Climate Scientists Under Siege at International Space Development Conference

An atom bomb of political incorrectness blew up Friday night at the gala dinner of the NASA sponsored International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC.  Burt Rutan, the visionary aircraft designer who built the first passenger civilian rocket to reach space, was accepting an achievement award from the hands of CNN's environment correspondent, Miles O'Brien.

Burt stunned an audience composed of scientists from NASA and civilian space enthusiasts when he stated that it was unconscionable for "a large corporation to make millions of dollars making people feel guilt about how they live, "and I'm talking about you and CNN, Miles O'Brien."

Remember, there are NASA climate scientists in the audience who have been forecasting the global warming apocalypse for their whole careers, which look like they're almost over judging by all the grey hair.

Burt went on to say that you could stick a pin anywhere in the ice core record of earth's climate and say that the planet was in a state of climate change crisis.  He also said that data had been "manipulated" and that we needed to "go back to the numbers." 

A shocked room listened as he went on to say, "and who are we to say that this is the right temperature for the planet?  It's been warmer before, maybe it should be warmer.  Who's to say that maybe humans won't be better off with a warmer climate?"

Mr. Rutan is not alone.  I went to as many talks and panels as I could on Friday, and several times my ears pricked up when some speaker said something like, "whether global warming is happening or not, space based solar power has great applications for the military in remote locations."  What did I just hear?  Whether global warming is happening or not?

One conference attendee said to me, "You won't hear about this moment on CNN."  I realized he was right.  CNN won't broadcast a competing view to Miles O'Brien.  And that's truly sad.

If there is unofficial debate at a NASA sponsored conference, I submit that Al Gore was very wrong when he said that there is no further need to debate global warming.  We should debate.  Publicly.  That's how we strip down to the truth.

Mike Downtown

Environmentalists Try to Re-write Their Predictions

Now that it's becoming obvious that there has been no global warming since 1998, and indeed there has been global cooling, environmentalist and the UN are claiming here that they always knew there would be cooling until 2015 and then (after they'd all retired) global warming would take off.

But Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth is proving to be an Inconvenient Record of the real history of their predictions, which claimed that global temperatures were already in a sharp rise that would continue unchecked unless we all returned to the dark ages.

Of course, if they (global warming fanatics) got it wrong about where the global climate was headed in the first ten years, could they be wrong about where it's going in the next one hundred years? 

Are Scientists Going to Miss the Next Ice Age?

If scientists fail to predict the next little ice age like the one that gripped the planet between 1645 and 1715, it will be because of a determination to ignore any evidence that runs contrary to the theory of Carbon/Human caused global warming. 

Astronomers Livingston and Penn were shut down by the journal Science two years ago when they suggested that sunspots might be winding down and could disappear altogether by 2015.  Interestingly enough, solar cycle 24 is very late coming and so far is very weak.  Could Livingston and Penn be right after all?  The last solar cycle with no sun spots began in 1645, thus the theory that no sunspots heralded the little ice age.

Right now even the fluffiest evidence in favor of C/H global warming is treated as fact, where as any evidence to the contrary is referred to as insufficient or dismissed as a statistical anomaly.

Whether the planet is in a long term warming phase or on the brink of a little ice age is anybody's guess, but that's why debate is essential. Al Gore's claim that the debate is over is now strangling scientific study.  This will inevitably lead to mistakes, and the reputation of science as a whole will suffer.

Mike Downtown