War Commentary

Listen to This

In today’s New York Times, Philip Bobbitt says in “Why We Listen”:

In the debate over whether the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we must not lose sight of the fact that the world we entered on 9/11 will require rewriting that statute and other laws. The tiresome pas de deux between rigid civil libertarians in denial of reality and an overaggressive executive branch seemingly heedless of the law, while comforting to partisans of both groups, is not in the national interest.

Who watches the watchmen? On one hand, it’s tricky to safeguard the data and trust the users of a vast database to stay narrowly focused. On the other hand, users do very little to secure their cordless and cell phone and internet traffic and send out email messages as plain text. Should they enjoy any privacy protection at all?

General

Seals And Scenery

Just a quick postcard or two, since I’m not posting anything consequential (as though that’s something new…) but go check out some of the space blogrolls to the left, and this week’s issue of The Space Review should be up.

About fifteen years ago, for some reason, a group of elephant seals decided to colonize a stretch of beach by Point Piedras Blancas, just north of San Simeon. It was a surprising location, because it’s hardly a remote area–Highway One goes right by it, and I remember that when they first started mating and birthing here, there were a lot of cars just pulling over to the side to look. State wildlife people put up barriers to prevent this, and set up special parking lots from which to view the beach. Several years ago, one could walk among them, but this is now strongly discouraged with fences and docents.

With all the protection, and despite the tourist interest, the population has exploded, and right now is breeding season. There were hundreds of pups on the beach, still in their black pre-weaning coats (they’ll molt and go gray after about six weeks, when they start swimming and eating in the ocean). Many are almost newborn, and staying close to mom.

We drove a little farther north, and had lunch at Ragged Point. It was somewhat cloudy and foggy, but the view to the north of the Big Sur coastline was still gorgeous.

Administrative

Off To Cambria

We’re heading up to the California central coast for a couple days to celebrate (or mourn) the most recent anniversary of the date of my birth. I’ll take my laptop, but I don’t know if the place we’re staying will have internet (though it’s getting more and more rare to find a place that doesn’t these days), so I don’t know if I’ll be posting. But I’m supposed to be relaxing and hiking and enjoying the scenery (and what a change in scenery and climate it is from anywhere in Florida), so maybe I should chase the blogging monkey off my back for the weekend, anyway.

Hey, I can quit any time I want…

[Update on Saturday night]

Hotel in Cambria does in fact have wireless. But I’m going to try to minimize time on the computer anyway.

Space

Wrong Lessons Learned

It’s twenty years today since Challenger was lost with all aboard. It was the first real blow to NASA’s confidence in its ability to advance us in space, or that our space policy was sound. It finally shattered illusions about twenty-four flights a year, to which the agency had been clinging up until that event, but it wasn’t severe enough to really make a major change in direction. That took the loss of Columbia, three years ago this coming Tuesday.

Unfortunately, while that resulted finally in a policy decision to retire the ill-fated Shuttle program, the agency seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it–they should have come to realize that we need more diversity in space transport, and it cannot be a purely government endeavor. Instead, harkening back to their glory days of the sixties, the conclusion seems to be that, somehow (and inexplicably) the way to affordability and sustainability is exactly the approach that was unaffordable and unsustainable the last time we did it.

But one has to grant that Apollo was safe, and probably the new system will be more so than the Shuttle was. But safety shouldn’t be the highest goal of the program. Opening frontiers has always been dangerous, and it’s childish to think that this new one should be any different. The tragedy of Challenger and Columbia wasn’t that we lost astronauts. The tragedy was that we lost them at such high cost, and for missions of such trivial value.

This is the other false lesson learned from Challenger (and Columbia)–that the American people won’t accept the loss of astronauts. But we’ve shown throughout our history that we’re willing to accept the loss of brave men and women (even in recent history) as long as it is in a worthy cause. But NASA’s goal seems to be to create yet another appallingly expensive infrastructure whose focus is on recapitulating the achievements of four decades (five decades, by the time they eventually manage it, assuming they keep to their stated schedule) ago.

Will the American people be inspired by that? I can’t say–I only know that I am not.

Would they be inspired by a more ambitious program, a riskier program that involved many more people going into space at more affordable costs, even if (or perhaps because) it is a greater hazard to the lives of the explorers? I surely would. But it seems unlikely that we’re going to get that from the current plan, or planners.

Administrative

Mission Aborted

This was a memorably disastrous business trip. I flew into Seattle last night, and had my connecting flight to Edmonton cancelled for weather, with no other flights scheduled until this morning. Of course, after standing in a long line, there were no seats left on it. There was no point in my getting a later flight, because the meeting was today, and the next flight wouldn’t get me up there until about 6 PM (and my return flight was scheduled for 6:30 tomorrow morning). So I got put on the standby list in the hope that I could still attend the afternoon part of the meeting.

Since it was an act of God, the airline didn’t pay for my room in Seattle, but they did get me a discount at the Ramada. Unfortunately, when I got there, along with many other stranded Edmontonians, the computer at the check-in desk was down, so there was another long line there.

I finally got a room, about 11 PM (my original flight to Edmonton had been scheduled to leave at about 9), with a lottery ticket for a flight at 9:50 AM this morning. When I got to the gate, I was greeted by a sign asking for volunteers to give up their seats–the flight had checked in overbooked, and I was about fifth in line on standby. To add to the fun, there was a weather advisory on the flight, meaning that there was fog in Edmonton, and that there was a good chance that it would be diverted to Calgary. If this happened, I’d still end up not getting to Edmonton until this evening, just in time to find out what happened at the meeting and fly back to LA in the morning.

At this point, this trip was so snake bit that I was getting to be quite confident that if I did manage somehow to get on the flight, it would not only get diverted to Calgary, but the bus that was supposed to get me to Edmonton would break down on the road, and then the weather would move in with a vengeance, preventing me from getting back to California on Saturday, where I was scheduled to celebrate my birthday with Patricia, who is flying in here from Florida tonight, with a hotel room reserved up in Cambria for Saturday and Sunday nights.

So I decided to just cut my losses.

Fortunately, the people on Horizon Air (who operated the Dash 7 flight that I was supposed to take to Canada) were willing to simply refund my total ticket, and get me on the next Alaska flight back south. Unfortunately, they were having trouble finding the forms they needed to fill out in order to make it all happen. Eventually, though, they did get a credit on my credit card bill, and a return ticket to LA.

Of course, when I got to LA, the people at the place where I’d valeted my rental car couldn’t take my money, because there was a problem with their receipt printer, on which one of the women was performing surgery with a pair of scissors (a servicing tool that I’m sure is not approved by the factory at which the device was manufactured). But finally, they accepted payment, issued the key to the valet, and I got my car. I just got back to my room with a sigh of relief. I’m not going anywhere for a couple hours.

Administrative

Sleeping In Seattle

Which is better than sleepless, I guess, but I’m not supposed to be in Seattle. I’m supposed to be in Edmonton, AB, but my connecting flight was cancelled for weather. Say what you want about Florida, but they never cancel airplane flights for freezing fog. Whether I eventually get there depends on whether I can go standby in the morning. Otherwise, the trip is pointless, and it’s back to LA.

Oh, well…

Space

Anniversaries

I’m pretty busy and don’t have time to write anything particularly profound about it (I’m about to get on a flight to the Great White North, where we may have a mini bloggerbash in Edmonton), but as I mentioned on The Space Show a couple hours ago, tomorrow will be the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, in which Gus Grissom, Roger Chafee and Ed White were suffocated and burned. Saturday will be the twentieth anniversary of the loss of the Challenger. Here were my memories of that event from a post four years ago. Jim Oberg takes advantage of the anniversary to explode (so to speak) several myths about the disaster.

And of course, next week will be the third anniversary of Columbia’s breakup over Texas. I may have more to say on that when the date arrives.

Political Commentary

A Tutorial On Scoundrels

A Canadian who doesn’t hate the US has a response to Michael Moore’s idiocy:

Michael, even though you are highly political and rub some folks on the other end of the political spectrum the wrong way, we do appreciate your unabashed enthusiasm for our country.

You might be surprised to know that there are a considerable number of us who have kind thoughts and feelings toward Americans and America, even when we differ on some the policies coming out of Washington.

We wanted to elect people to national office who reflect that view and not the American-bashing one that the Liberals have spewing out for 13 years. That is why we sent the Conservatives to Ottawa.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!