Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Space Safety

5 Comments

Jeff Foust has some good questions in preparation for today’s hearing:

* What would be the safety implications of terminating the government crew transportation system currently under development in favor of relying on as-yet-to-be-developed commercially provided crew transportation services? What would the government be able to do, if anything, to ensure that no reduction in planned safety levels occurred as a result?
* What do potential commercial crew transportation services providers consider to be an acceptable safety standard to which potential commercial providers must conform if their space transportation systems were to be chosen by NASA to carry its astronauts to low Earth orbit and the ISS? Would the same safety standard be used for non-NASA commercial human transportation missions?
* If a policy decision were made to require NASA to rely solely on commercial crew transfer services, which would have to meet NASA’s safety requirements to be considered for use by NASA astronauts, what impact would that have on the ability of emerging space companies to pursue innovation and design improvements made possible [as the industry has argued] by the accumulation of flight experience gained from commencing revenue operations unconstrained by a prior safety certification regime? Would it be in the interest of the emerging commercial orbital crew transportation industry to have to be reliant on the government as its primary/sole customer at this stage in its development?

The problem is, of course, that this will not be either an honest or informed discussion, because there are so many rent seekers involved. I was glad to see Patti stand up for commercial industry, though.

More hearing coverage and links over at Clark’s place.

[Update a few minutes later]

You’ll be as shocked as I am to learn that NASA (once again) lied to the Augustine panel and withheld information about Ares/Orion safety. Well, at least they’ve been honest about their costs. And schedule. Right?

I agree with Ray — this is Powerpoint engineering at its finest (which is to say, worst). I’ll be very interested to hear what Joe Fragola has to say about this at the hearing today.

[Mid-morning update]

Well, now we know what Fragola thinks:

Fragola says that Atlas 431 would likely not pass a safety review for crew missions since it uses solid strapon boosters.

OK, so strap-on solid boosters that have never had a failure, on a launcher with a clean record — unsafe. A giant solid first stage that has never served in that solitary role — safe. Got it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Another tweet from Jeff:

Gifford closing out hearing, thanks witnesses for “briliant” testimony. Says she sees no grounds for changing course based on safety.

Well, neither do I. The reasons for changing course is cost and schedule, not safety. In fact, I’d be happy with a system much less “safe” if it actually accomplishes useful things in space, which Ares never will, because it’s unaffordable.

[Update a few minutes later]

A lot more detail from Bobby Block over at the Orlando Sentinel:

Fragola said that the passage quoted by the Sentinel story from the Exploration Systems Architecture Study concluding that it would take at least seven flights (two test flights and five mission flights) before the Ares I and Orion crew capsule could to be deemed to be as safe as the shuttle referred to a more powerful configuration of Ares-Orion that used a liquid oxygen-methane engine and not the simpler lower performance configuration being designed today.

Of course, the very notion that one can know or even properly estimate the safety of a vehicle with so few flights under its belt remains absurd.

[Update late morning]

Clark Lindsey has what looks like a first-hand report.

[Late afternoon update]

NASA Watch has the prepared statements from the hearing.

Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

What Is Science?

5 Comments

APS has an explanation for the warm-mongers:

Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the universe and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.

The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:

1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.

Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science.

But, but…it’s settled! We have to save the planet!

Political Commentary, War Commentary

We’re All Neocons Now

8 Comments

I haven’t had time to dissect the speech in real time, but I think that’s the headline, even with the attempted slams at the Bush administration. I could say a lot of other things, like his continuing speech quirk about Pahkeestahn, versus Afganistan (as in Laurel). The teleprompter apparently doesn’t do phonics…

But I think that’s the headline.

He seems to have finally learned that it’s a lot harder to govern than campaign.

[Update a few minute later]

Links to more thoughts. I’m sure I’ll have some as well, after seeing the transcript. That’s always the best way to evaluate The One’s speeches. And politicians’ in general, of course…

Humor, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Science And Society

It’s Really Quite Simple

9 Comments

I think I’ve found the pseudocode for Mann’s temperature charts:

input hockey_stick array
input year_data array
For each year (1000 - 2009) {
   while (year_data_of_year less than hockey_stick_of_year) {
      if (year_data_of_year less than hockey_stick_of_year) {
         year_data_of_year += 0.1 degrees
         }
      }
   plot year_data_of_year
   }

See, nothing to it. Poor Harry wouldn’t have had so much frustration if he’d just stuck with the script.

Uncategorized

Here We Go Again

10 Comments

Remember 2000, when everyone was partying in 1999 as though it were the end of the century and millennium, even though it had another year to go? Well, I was reading the American Airlines magazine this morning, and the monthly column from the airline president said that it was his last of the decade. And of course, Newsweek says that it was a “decade from Hell” (presumably because much of it was presided over by the BusHitler), also implying that it comes to a close at the end of the month. I’m not going to go through the explanation again, but the decade doesn’t end until a year from now.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

A Working Scientist’s View

2 Comments

Thoughts on Climaquiddick from Derek Lowe:

I have deep sympathy for the fellow who tried to reconcile the various poorly documented and conflicting data sets and buggy, unannotated code that the CRU has apparently depended on. And I can easily see how this happens. I’ve been on long-running projects, especially some years ago, where people start to lose track of which numbers came from where (and when), where the underlying raw data are stored, and the history of various assumptions and corrections that were made along the way. That much is normal human behavior. But this goes beyond that.

Those of us who work in the drug industry know that we have to keep track of such things, because we’re making decisions that could eventually run into the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of our own money. And eventually we’re going to be reviewed by regulatory agencies that are not staffed with our friends, and who are perfectly capable of telling us that they don’t like our numbers and want us to go spend another couple of years (and another fifty or hundred million dollars) generating better ones for them. The regulatory-level lab and manufacturing protocols (GLP and GMP) generate a blizzard of paperwork for just these reasons.

But the stakes for climate research are even higher. The economic decisions involved make drug research programs look like roundoff errors. The data involved have to be very damned good and convincing, given the potential impact on the world economy, through both the possible effects of global warming itself and the effects of trying to ameliorate it. Looking inside the CRU does not make me confident that their data come anywhere close to that standard…

But why should we pay any attention to him? He is, after all, one of those Evil Scientists™ in the pay of Big Business, not a noble one trying to save the planet (with millions of dollars in government and left-wing grants).

As a commenter notes, the biggest casualty of this episode is the credibility of science itself. But if it saves us from those trying to save the planet from us, perhaps it’s worth the cost, if it can be regained.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!