All posts by Rand Simberg

Space

Hubble Mission Safe?

I received an email from an astronomer pointing out an article in today’s Gray Lady that says a Hubble mission might be as safe, or safer, than an ISS mission. I’ve omitted the emailer’s name in case there’s any political sensitivity.

While I don’t subscribe to Josh Marshall’s hoax theory about NASA’s new focus, I do believe that the NASA hierarchy has been less than truthful concerning changes to its mission goals. When Sen. Barbara Mikulski called Sean O’Keefe concerning the cancellation of shuttle missions to Hubble, he told her that the decision was a combination of money and safety concerns. Once he heard from her that money might not be a problem, his message changed to that of safety alone. Indeed, Jon Grunsfeld’s first comments about the mission cancellation also mentioned money, but safety has now become the overriding arguement, as it is harder to dispute from the outside.

As an astronomer, I’m concerned about the future of basic astronomical research under the new NASA. NASA has quietly put off for at least a year, perhaps more, funding for its MIDEX and SPEX smaller space astronomical instrument missions and cut back funding for approved programs, and O’Keefe’s press conference about the budget was not friendly to basic science (unless you are studying the science of weightlessness on the human body) or space astronomy. Now, this is NASA’s perogative — as my husband says, none of the “A”s in NASA stand for “astronomy” — but I can’t help but think that the broader public might not be concerned about the decline of the one science everyone seems to find compelling and approachable. And it was Bush’s father who made a similar announcement about big goals for the US space program, which then petered out into nothing. It doesn’t take political animus to fear that current path could lead to little progress.

Anyway, I emailed you because I haven’t seen much sign that, outside of those of us who are directly affected, people have appreciated how much the new NASA focus is pulling money away from space science instrumentation and research. I’d like to see some discussion on this issue.

Well, I’m on record as believing that we ought to go ahead with the flight, and safety shouldn’t even be an issue, but that’s not politically correct these days. But I do believe that’s the primary driver for the decision, and don’t think that O’Keefe is being in any way disingenuous–at least I have no reason right now to think so. Risk assessments are always judgement calls, and while one engineer’s analysis may be perfectly valid, it’s always possible to find others who disagree, and NASA is erring on the side of caution right now, in response to the Gehman Commission and a reaction (and probably overreaction) to what happened a year ago.

However, I think that it’s a little too early to tell whether or not the new initiative will be good, or bad, for space science and astronomy in general. People are inferring from the fact that the Hubble decision was announced after the president’s speech that it was somehow a result of it. It wasn’t. They were both a result of the same root cause–last year’s loss of Columbia.

Actually, history indicates that we have the most vibrant space science program when we have a vibrant manned program as well (though it’s not clear whether that will be the case for deep-space astronomy). For example, as far as I know, Webb remains on track.

But what fans of space telescopes should really be doing is cheering on people working to reduce costs (i.e., not NASA), because that’s going to make it affordable for universities to put up their own suites of multi-mirror space telescopes. And if we really do set up a lunar base, farside will make a great place for a radiotelescope, blocked from the noisy earth.

War Commentary

Vintage Rumsfeld

Can be found here.

…In North Africa, Libya?s leader decided in December to disclose and eliminate his country?s chemical, biological and nuclear weapon programs, as well as his ballistic missiles. In the weeks since, Libya has turned over equipment and documents relating to nuclear and missile programs — including long-range ballistic missile guidance sets and centrifuge parts for uranium enrichment — and has begun the destruction of its unfilled chemical munitions. With these important steps, Libya has acted and announced to the world that they want to disarm and to prove they are doing so.

Compare Libya?s recent behavior to the behavior of the Iraqi regime. Saddam Hussein could have opened up his country to the world — just as Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and South Africa had done — and as Libya is doing today.

Instead, he chose the path of deception and defiance. He gave up tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues under the U.N. sanctions, when he could have had those sanctions lifted simply by demonstrating that he had disarmed. He passed up the ?final opportunity? that was given to him in the UN Resolution 1441 to prove that his programs were ended and his weapons were destroyed.

Even after the statues of Saddam Hussein were falling in Baghdad, the Iraqi regime continued to hide and destroy evidence systematically going through ministries destroying what they could get their hands on.

We may never know why Saddam Hussein chose the destruction of his regime over peaceful disarmament. But we know this: it was his choice. And if he had chosen differently — if the Iraqi regime had taken the steps Libya is now taking — there would have been no war…

…The advance of freedom does not come without cost or sacrifice. Last November, I was in South Korea during their debate on whether or not they should send South Korean forces to Iraq. A woman journalist came up to me and put a microphone in front of my face — she was clearly too young to have experienced the Korean war — and she said to me in a challenging voice: ?Why should young South Koreans go halfway around the world to Iraq to get killed or wounded??

Now that’s a fair question. And I said it was a fair question. I also told her that I had just come from the Korean War memorial in Seoul and there’s a wall that has every state of the 50 states in the United States with [the names of] all the people who were killed in the Korean War. I was there to put a wreath on the memorial and before I walked down there I looked up at the wall and started studying the names and there, of course, was a very dear friend from high school who was on a football team with me, and he was killed the last day of the war — the very last day.

And I said to this woman, you know, that would have been a fair question for an American journalist to ask 50 years ago — why in the world should an American go halfway around the world to South Korea and get wounded or killed?

We were in a building that looked out on the city of Seoul and I said, I’ll tell you why. Look out the window. And out that window you could see lights and cars and energy and a vibrant economy and a robust democracy. And of course I said to her if you look above the demilitarized zone from satellite pictures of the Korean Peninsula, above the DMZ is darkness, nothing but darkness and a little portion (Inaudible.) of light where Pyongyang is. The same people had the same population, the same resources. And look at the difference. There are concentration camps. They’re starving. They’ve lowered the height for the people who go in the Army down to 4 feet 10 inches because people aren’t tall enough. They take people in the military below a hundred pounds. They’re 17, 18, 19 years old and frequently they look like they’re 13, 14, and 15 years old.

Korea was won at a terrible cost of life — thousands and thousands and thousands of people from the countries in this room. And was it worth it? You bet.

The world is a safer place today because the Coalition liberated 50 million people — 25 million in Afghanistan and 25 million in Iraq.

RTWT

Space

Joshing Bush’s Space Policy

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

Space

Joshing Bush’s Space Policy

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

Space

Joshing Bush’s Space Policy

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

Uncategorized

Where No Wimp Has Gone Before

I was going to comment on this idiocy from Patrick Stewart, but a) it wasn’t anything new–he’s been spouting the same nonsense for years, and b) Lileks already did so more than adequately (as usual).

It’s tough to top Lileks when it comes to screeds, and I’m not saying that T. L. James does it, but he’s definitely (as Marlon Brando would say) a “contendah“:

The obvious flaw in such an argument (or its best feature, if you’re the one making it) is that the perfection used as a standard here is impossible. To overcome the usually-cited social, economic, and other problems would require either orders of magnitude more money than is available — let alone what could be applied by diverting what pittance the government spends on space each year — or a complete overhaul of human nature to remove the innate flaws, behaviors, tendencies, instincts, or whatever it may be at their root.

Another only slightly less transparent flaw/feature is that no matter how many of the typically-cited problems an all-out spare-no-expense global effort might succeed in resolving, the people making the argument today would be undeterred from finding other victims who need saving or problems that need fixing before we can even think about going into space.

In that vein, I’d point out that Jonah Goldberg made a similar dumb commentary a couple weeks ago on CNN. Rather than saying that we had to wait until all social problems were solved on earth, and every puppy had a home and no child went hungry to bed, he said that we couldn’t afford to send people to Mars until we’d finished the “war on terror” (the one that he himself has said was misnamed, not being a fan of a war on a tactic). It seems that everyone, even Star Trek fans, thinks that every want on earth has a higher priority than moving us into the cosmos.

But as Thomas, and countless others, including myself, have pointed out, the amount of money spent on space is so trivial, so miniscule in the context of mankind’s other problems, and the ability to solve the space problem with money so much more amenable, compared to them, that the notion that we must wait for them to be solved before tackling that one is ludicrous. While I don’t think that money spent on NASA, per se, is well spent, the notion that we could somehow transfer the NASA budget to some other more worthy cause and somehow thereby solve it is, simply, equally ludicrous.

There are various classes of problems, and saying that we must wait to conquer space until we’ve solved all the ills, social and miltary, on earth is equivalent to saying that we shouldn’t have settled the Americas until we had indisputable peace and prosperity in Europe. Does anyone think that, under those conditions, there would be any significant population here?

Space

Launch Permits

There’s been new legislation introduced in the House a couple days ago, that amends the Commercial Space Launch Act. It appears to supercede HR 3245, introduced last fall, which I analyzed at the time.

I haven’t had the time to analyze it in detail, and I’d like to talk to some of the people involved in drafting it before I pontificate, but one major change seems to be a new way of allowing people to fly, by letting them get a permit for research and experimentation, without requiring a full launch license. I think that it’s meant to be analogous to an experimental aircraft certificate, and it’s probably to address Burt Rutan’s chafing under the licensing regime.

I’ve long advocated something like this, and it will be interesting to see if it makes it through the legislative process unscathed (and if it gets vetted by Foggy Bottom, which may be concerned that the process isn’t rigorous enough to keep us compliant with the Outer Space Treaty). There are other implications of this legislation as well, but further discussion will have to await my finding enough time to dig into it.

[Update on Saturday morning]

XCOR seems pleased with the legislation.