Category Archives: Technology and Society

The Human Spaceflight Report

Dale Skran has a review, that mirrors a lot of my own concerns with it:

There is no discussion at all that the prospect for increased traffic to LEO for all purposes, including tourism, might lead to significantly lower costs; or that it may lead to reusable spacecraft with superior operational characteristics relative to existing vehicles or the SLS. This glaring absence seems remarkable given the stated goal of SpaceX to develop just such lower-cost, reusable craft, as well as their considerable progress in this direction. Of course, the efforts of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, XCOR Aerospace, and others to greatly reduce launch costs may all fail. However, the NRC report is based on the unstated assumption that over the entire period considered, all the way out to 2054, there will be essentially no progress in rocketry other than that funded by NASA exploration programs, and that for the entire period the SLS as currently envisioned will remain the preferred method for Americans to reach space. It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely foundation for the planning of future space efforts than this.

It is extremely myopic, and therefore of little value, but it was probably doomed to be so by its charter.

Climate Change

…and hot air:

In other words mitigation to slow or halt GHG emissions will be costly today with little payout over the next 100, if not 1000, years, making it unlikely that large mitigation projects have a positive net present value. And for these results to occur, the United States would have to be joined by the rest of the industrialized nations as well as the developing ones, something that is not going to happen.

Given that mitigation has gained little policy traction, many climate scientists seem to be paying more attention to adaptation. Indeed, the subtitle of the IPCC’s 2014 report is Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. In contract to earlier IPCC reports, the press release in April mentioned mitigation only once and adaptation 12 times. According to Chris Field, chairman of one of the IPCC working groups, “The really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change.”

What a concept.

[Noon update]

Math is math: “(100,000′s of Jobs + Billions of Taxpayer $’s) x 85 years = 0.018° C.”

Miles O’Brien

Life after the loss of an arm:

In my job as a science and technology correspondent, I have covered some of the advances in prosthetic technology in recent years. They are remarkable. But now that I am looking as a customer, I see shortcomings. The devices rely on actuators, which in turn rely on batteries. That makes these arms very heavy, less reliable, and not weatherproof. To make some of them work well, doctors need to move nerves to better connect them with sensors inside the robo-arms. Replicating what the human hand does is a very difficult problem for engineers, much harder than making an artificial leg. I have learned, though, that one hand—with all its dexterity, sensitivity, and opposable-thumb efficiency, along with something much more crude that has the simple ability to grasp—is all you need. For now, the split hook I wear is working well. I’m pretty sure that it’ll allow me, eventually, to return to the cockpit.

My prosthetist assumed I would like to have a cosmetic hand, one that has no real function but looks like the real thing, and so he made a mold of my remaining hand. An artist who produces fake wounds in Hollywood created a clear silicone mirror image. Then she sat with me for six hours, painting it, even embedding bits of hair snipped from my right arm. The result is haunting, and I don’t like looking at it. I’m not sure whom I would be wearing it for. I don’t feel the need to pretend or to make my presence easier on others.

The biggest problem I cope with is phantom pain. My arm has become a ghost, immobilized as if it were in a sling—which is where it was the last time I saw it. If I concentrate, I can move my imaginary fingers. The arm feels as if it’s been asleep and the circulation has just begun once again. First thing in the morning, it’s actually a pleasant, painless feeling. My arm is suspended, almost as if it is weightless. But as the day goes on, it feels as if it is progressively bound tighter and tighter, to the point of excruciating pain. In addition, my fingers often feel as if they’ve been jolted with surges of electricity.

He’s a mensch.