Category Archives: Technology and Society

The Russian Asteroid Strike

I just woke up to the news. I’ve heard some people say it’s not related to the flyby today, but that seems like a remarkable coincidence. Are they both part of a cluster, which could mean that there is potential for more hits, or do they know this one came from an entirely different direction?

Related: what would happen if Tonguska hit New York City?

Oh, this Guardian article says that ESA has ruled out a relationship. I’d still like to know on what basis. It’s also claiming almost a thousand people injured (but no reports of deaths yet, fortunately). I guess it will get sorted out later today.

And this is a good reminder to support the B612 Foundation, because I expect the government to continue to dither, even with these stark reminders.

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, I see that people had already started to discuss this in comments at yesterday’s post before I was awake.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jorge Frank (who was one of the reviewers of my book when I was drafting it) says that it’s too soon to say.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, now Don Yeoman is saying that it’s unrelated:

Yeoman stressed that the bolide event was likely not associated at all with the incoming asteroid 2012 DA14, which will fly within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of Earth when it passes safely by our planet today.

“The asteroid will travel south to north,” Yeomans said. “The bolide trail was not south to north and the separation in time between the fireball and 2012 DA14 close approach is significant.”

I think the jury’s still out, for reasons that Jorge notes. Yes, they’re far from each other, given the time and velocity, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not part of a cluster that were once a single object, that have spread out from perturbations over the eons.

The Search For Consciousness

As this article shows, we know a lot less about the human mind than we should (even during the Terri Schiavo case, I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that there was no one home). As the article notes, these are the forgotten people that society doesn’t want to deal with. I know that being locked in is one my biggest fears, infinitely worse than a jail sentence. If technology can open up lines of communication, that would be a huge breakthrough.

From The Asteroid Hunters

A warning:

The chance of another Tunguska-size impact somewhere on Earth this century is about 30%. That isn’t the likelihood that you will be killed by an asteroid, but rather the odds that you will read a news headline about an asteroid impact of this size somewhere on Earth. Unfortunately, that headline could be about the destruction of a city, as opposed to an unpopulated region of Siberia.

The chance in your lifetime of an even bigger asteroid impact on Earth—with explosive energy of 100 megatons of TNT—is about 1%. Such an impact would deliver many times the explosive energy of all the munitions used in World War II, including the atomic bombs. This risk to humanity is similar to an individual’s odds of dying in a car accident. That risk is small, but would you drive a car without air bags and seat belts? The question is apt because our society is effectively doing so with regard to the risk of a devastating asteroid strike.

I’ve been concerned about this for years (actually decades, ever since Alvarez first came up with his dinosaur theory, which seems to have been recently confirmed).

Solar Geoengineering

A quick and easy way to stop global warming?

It would certainly be cheaper than carbon reduction, but it’s not clear if it would work, or what the other side effects might be. And of course, if it’s even necessary.

But if it really is a problem, schemes like this, or space-based ones, make a lot more sense than screwing up the global economy.

Gun Control, Mental Health And Public Safety

A requested letter to Ted Cruz:

The United States is at something of a crossroads here: we can remain focused on gun control, or we can look at the root cause of not only the random acts of mass murder, but many other serious social maladies. The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has played a destructive role not only with respect to crime, but also with the degradation of urban life, and with the barbarous degradation of mentally ill people, who are a large fraction of the homeless in our country.[11]

Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is the root cause of most of these shocking acts of mass murder, and the much more common but less publicized murders that happen every day in America, which very seldom involve high-capacity magazines or scary looking black rifles.

Pretending that gun control is going to have much of an impact on this is like putting a Band-Aid on an arm with a severed artery. It is only a short-term solution, because it covers up a deeper problem. It is time to recognize and solve the root problem.

Gun control isn’t about guns, or public safety. It’s about control.

[Update later morning]

Randy Barnett has a letter for Ted, too, as does Dave Kopel.

Thoughts On Gun Control

Too much common sense from Robert Levy, so the politicians won’t pay any attention.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The public disapproves of Obama’s gun policies by 54-42%. Actually, they seem to disapprove of almost all of his policies. Think in particular about the 2-1 opposition to his deficit policy as he spouts his lies tonight. There was no majority who voted for Barack Obama. Those who put him over the top were voting against the demon Romney, per the Obama campaign strategy.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related: the war on drugs, overcriminalization and militarized police raids.

Commercial Space Transportation Regulation

In my book, here’s one of my recommendations in the conclusion:

The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST), currently located within FAA and often referred to by its internal code designation as FAA-AST, should be taken from under the FAA administrator and reconstituted as a separate agency of the DOT, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation as do normal DOT agencies. The OCST was originally constituted as a special office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation as an interim measure under President Reagan’s executive order of 1983, codified by subsequent legislation in 1984. It was moved under the FAA early in the Clinton administration as a result of Vice President Gore’s “streamlining government” initiative. Giving it independent status would both elevate the national importance of space transportation, and remove it from the routine-transportation, common-carrier-oriented safety environment of the FAA, which (as previously mentioned) lost its role in the promotion of the aviation industry in the wake of the ValuJet crash in the late nineties. Additionally, consideration should be given to relocating to such an agency various routine space-transportation-related infrastructure and operational responsibilities located in other agencies where they are peripheral to those agencies’ main purpose and function and often suffer from inattention and low priorities.

Dana Rohrabacher has read a draft, and I suspect that’s partially what’s behind this:

Rohrabacher said that it remained vital that FAA recognize that commercial spaceflight is still an emerging industry and not over-regulate it. He noted that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation was originally placed directly under the Secretary of Transportation, and only later moved to the FAA. “The culture of the FAA is based on a mandate to protect passenger safety,” he said, but argued that commercial spaceflight, being far less mature than aviation, requires a different regulatory philosophy. “That’s a very different mandate and a very different approach, but it’s necessary for us to recognize that if we are to be successful in moving the industry forward.”

Rohrabacher said that FAA was, for the time being, doing a good job treating aviation and spaceflight differently, but warned he would seek action to move the office out of the FAA should the situation change. “Ultimately, if that proves too difficult for the FAA to reconcile, we may end up having to move this whole job back to the office of the Secretary of Transportation.”

Sounds good to me.

As a side note, the congressman has provided me with a book blurb:

Mr. Simberg makes the compelling case that great deeds and great rewards require great risks, but NASA and my colleagues in Congress have become so risk averse in the arena of human spaceflight that we are incapable of accomplishing great deeds. America must have the stomach to let explorers and settlers willfully take on the kinds of risk necessary for opening the frontier of space to settlement under the rule of law. If we continue to overvalue that risk, or prohibit those who would willfully undertake it, then other nations, with no respect for human life, will be more than happy to fill that void. Left unchecked, the well-meaning, but misguided, group that promotes “safety at all cost” will continue to establish hard ceilings that we can’t break through, require the expense of immense amounts of time and money, and will ultimately cost us our preeminence in space. We must not cede the high ground of space to those who do not believe in freedom. And we must respect the freedom of those individuals who are willing to put it all on the line to head over that next hill – even when that hill is in space. Mr. Simberg’s book Safe Is Not An Option handles this sensitive issue with skill, grace, and tremendous insight.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; and former Chairman of the Space Subcommittee

I have several others as well, which I’ll put up at the book’s web site, perhaps this week.