Homeland Security Stupity

Now for a brief break from conference blogging–just how idiotic is this?

Beards are out. So are jeans and athletic shoes. Suit coats are in, even on the steamiest summer days.

That dress code, imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, makes federal air marshals uneasy

John Young’s Speech At RTTM

“That Saturn shakes purty bad, but not near as bad as it did in the movie…” in reference to Apollo XIII.

He’s describing his flight to the moon.

The Principal Investigator for the seismometer told him, “If you don’t put my experiment out right, don’t come back.”

He’s describing a spinout in a lunar rover. “Do you know what saved us? …There was nobody coming the other way. I’m sure that when we get two rovers up there we’ll have the first lunar auto accident.”

He describes dust as one of the key challenges to lunar operations (a point made by a speaker yesterday, who was a designer of the rover).

He illustrates the fractal nature of the lunar surface by pointing out an object that looks like it’s a few feet away from him, which is actually the distance of two football fields.

He’s showing a picture of the far side, which is very heavily cratered, particularly in the highlands. He’s clearly very concerned about the threat of extraterrestrial object impacts. He points out King Crater, which is 77 km in diameter (he claims that the object that created it could have wiped out Nevada and much of California.

Now he’s talking about supervolcanoes, three of which are in the US (including Yellowstone and the Long Valley Caldera by Mammoth Lakes in California–I didn’t catch the third one). Yellowstone is overdue to blow, and no one knows when the next one will happen. When it does, it will likely wipe out civilization.

“You’re ten times more likely to die in a civilization-ending event than in a commercial airline crash. NASA is working to make airline flights ten times as safe, so you’ll then be a hundred times more likely…”

He’s praising Bob Bigelow for his work on inflatable structures.

“You’ll know we’re serious about going back to the moon when you see people heading back there with shovels.”

In a question on the state of the art in new suits, talking about the need for a good glove: “The human hand is a heck of a piece of machinery, and sometimes gets into trouble going places that it doesn’t belong.”

Ends by showing a picture of his grandchildren: overall theme of his talk is protecting the planet. He thinks we’re in a space race, but not with another country, but rather against nature.

John Young’s Speech At RTTM

“That Saturn shakes purty bad, but not near as bad as it did in the movie…” in reference to Apollo XIII.

He’s describing his flight to the moon.

The Principal Investigator for the seismometer told him, “If you don’t put my experiment out right, don’t come back.”

He’s describing a spinout in a lunar rover. “Do you know what saved us? …There was nobody coming the other way. I’m sure that when we get two rovers up there we’ll have the first lunar auto accident.”

He describes dust as one of the key challenges to lunar operations (a point made by a speaker yesterday, who was a designer of the rover).

He illustrates the fractal nature of the lunar surface by pointing out an object that looks like it’s a few feet away from him, which is actually the distance of two football fields.

He’s showing a picture of the far side, which is very heavily cratered, particularly in the highlands. He’s clearly very concerned about the threat of extraterrestrial object impacts. He points out King Crater, which is 77 km in diameter (he claims that the object that created it could have wiped out Nevada and much of California.

Now he’s talking about supervolcanoes, three of which are in the US (including Yellowstone and the Long Valley Caldera by Mammoth Lakes in California–I didn’t catch the third one). Yellowstone is overdue to blow, and no one knows when the next one will happen. When it does, it will likely wipe out civilization.

“You’re ten times more likely to die in a civilization-ending event than in a commercial airline crash. NASA is working to make airline flights ten times as safe, so you’ll then be a hundred times more likely…”

He’s praising Bob Bigelow for his work on inflatable structures.

“You’ll know we’re serious about going back to the moon when you see people heading back there with shovels.”

In a question on the state of the art in new suits, talking about the need for a good glove: “The human hand is a heck of a piece of machinery, and sometimes gets into trouble going places that it doesn’t belong.”

Ends by showing a picture of his grandchildren: overall theme of his talk is protecting the planet. He thinks we’re in a space race, but not with another country, but rather against nature.

John Young’s Speech At RTTM

“That Saturn shakes purty bad, but not near as bad as it did in the movie…” in reference to Apollo XIII.

He’s describing his flight to the moon.

The Principal Investigator for the seismometer told him, “If you don’t put my experiment out right, don’t come back.”

He’s describing a spinout in a lunar rover. “Do you know what saved us? …There was nobody coming the other way. I’m sure that when we get two rovers up there we’ll have the first lunar auto accident.”

He describes dust as one of the key challenges to lunar operations (a point made by a speaker yesterday, who was a designer of the rover).

He illustrates the fractal nature of the lunar surface by pointing out an object that looks like it’s a few feet away from him, which is actually the distance of two football fields.

He’s showing a picture of the far side, which is very heavily cratered, particularly in the highlands. He’s clearly very concerned about the threat of extraterrestrial object impacts. He points out King Crater, which is 77 km in diameter (he claims that the object that created it could have wiped out Nevada and much of California.

Now he’s talking about supervolcanoes, three of which are in the US (including Yellowstone and the Long Valley Caldera by Mammoth Lakes in California–I didn’t catch the third one). Yellowstone is overdue to blow, and no one knows when the next one will happen. When it does, it will likely wipe out civilization.

“You’re ten times more likely to die in a civilization-ending event than in a commercial airline crash. NASA is working to make airline flights ten times as safe, so you’ll then be a hundred times more likely…”

He’s praising Bob Bigelow for his work on inflatable structures.

“You’ll know we’re serious about going back to the moon when you see people heading back there with shovels.”

In a question on the state of the art in new suits, talking about the need for a good glove: “The human hand is a heck of a piece of machinery, and sometimes gets into trouble going places that it doesn’t belong.”

Ends by showing a picture of his grandchildren: overall theme of his talk is protecting the planet. He thinks we’re in a space race, but not with another country, but rather against nature.

Yet More RTTM Blogging

Jeff Krukin points out another shortcoming of the Aldridge Commission report. It doesn’t contain the word “settlement,” settling (as it were) instead for the more neutral (and neutered) phrase, “extended presence.” It remains focused on exploration, and not the broader vision.

He is announcing the formation of a new Space Frontier Foundation project to rectify the public perception of space as exploration, rather than the broader view, called the “Space Settlement Project.”

Sounds like a worthwhile activity.

John Young is going to speak after lunch.

Mr. Nuance

A quick break from conference blogging to point out yet another reason, via Mark Steyn, in the wake of the exposed lies of Joe Wilson, why I can’t even consider voting for Kerry:

Some of us are on record as dismissing Wilson in the first bloom of his unmerited celebrity. But John Kerry was taken in — to the point where he signed him up as an adviser and underwrote his Web site. What does that reveal about Mister Nuance and his superb judgment? He claims to be able to rebuild America’s relationships with France, and to have excellent buddy-to-buddy relations with French political leaders. Yet anyone who’s spent 10 minutes in Europe this last year knows that virtually every government there believes Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa. Is Kerry so uncurious about America’s national security he can’t pick up the phone to his Paris pals and get the scoop firsthand? For all his claims to be Monsieur Sophisticate, there’s something hicky and parochial in his embrace of an obvious nutcake for passing partisan advantage.

A comment from someone at Roger Simon’s site, with which I have some sympathy (though I came to that realization during the 1990s, not as a result of the latest lying and viciousness in the war):

I ask myself why I feel such animosity towards the Democratic party, a party that I belonged to for so many years. Betrayal is the word I come up with, I feel betrayed by the triviality, immaturity, and sheer lunacy of the party. It’s not like some other party, say the Republicans, whose oddities I can tolerate as the eccentricity of the neighbors, no, it’s like finding that my wife has run off with a derelict with whom she had a long standing secret affair. Not only do I feel betrayed, but I wonder how I could have been such an idiot, overlooking all the signs and clues.

Live RTTM Blogging–David Gump

David Gump of Lunacorp started off his talk with a twenty-year old poster about business opportunities in space, displaying the Shuttle and the then newly announced space station program. It was a cautionary note, reminding us of all the things that can go wrong, and how the more things change…

[Update]

Central lesson learned:

Government-owned infrastruxture (with federal employees as the space workforce) is poison to commercial ventures (cannot be overcome by good intentions–institutional barriers are too deep).

Privately owned facilities (vehicles, platforms, bases) are essential to success.

He hates the phrase “space advertising.” Emphasis needs to be customer rewards.

Prizes are good, but cannot be the only way for NASA to involve the private sector (same point that Jim Benson of SpaceDev made yesterday). Prizes are good for amateurs and angels, but businesses won’t accept the risk of being beaten to the deadline.

Lunacorp’s submittal for the NASA exploration initiative was to rely on the invisible hand, by nurturing private enterprise, and not to attempt another “Stalinist plan.”

Live Blogging–Wendell Mendell

Thanks to Michael Mealing (see comment here), I’m back on the air, and waiting for the first talk (Wendell Mendell, lunar guru from Johnson Space Center).

[Update about 9 AM]

Dr. Mendell is relating a history of how his thoughts have evolved on getting back to the moon. Brief summary: he started out naive in the early eighties, and but eventually came to realize that NASA was incapable of carrying out the vision, and that private activities will be the key. He made a variation of a theme that I’ve commented on in the past (when I called space, including currently low earth orbit, a wilderness). He described it as an undeveloped country with vast resources, but no infrastructure.

[A few minutes later]

He’s hammering on a theme now that Paul Spudis reinforced yesterday in the keynote address: that various players are working hard to subvert the president’s initiative to support their own agendas. Moreover, the continued focus on Mars indicates that people were not listening to what the president said (he mentioned it only once, as part of the phrase “Mars and beyond”).

He’s knocking down the misconceptions that the only purpose of going to the Moon is to learn how to go to Mars, or to test equipment that will be used on Mars.

More thoughts on this later (and probably a column or two) after I collect my thought, and am not distracted actually listening.

[Another update]

This was mentioned briefly yesterday, but Dr. Mendell says that there is serious talk among some at NASA of doing a “touch and go” on the Moon. In other words, immediately after a lunar landing, we’ll then go on to Mars, thus somehow (in their demented view) having satisfied the letter (if not the spirit) of the president’s vision.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!