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Wretchard makes an interesting point about organizational communication problems and the recent tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo:

Not just the Canadian Human Rights people, but a whole spectrum of organizations throughout the world, create taboos which eventually stifle the internal cognitive processes within them. And those taboos are so entrenched it often requires a crisis — an impending bankruptcy, a corporate takeover, or a revolution — to overturn them. Management consultants are paid large amounts of money to initiate “communications processes” through which the unacknowledged problems of a failing organization can once again re-enter the realm of “actionable knowledge”.

The San Francisco zoo story provides an example of something all too common within organizations: the emergence of the open secret. If Carey Baldwin is to be believed, the keepers of the SF Zoo have known for nearly sixty years that the tigers kept within their enclosures only out of their own free will. The wall and moat were shams to preserve the illusion that the big cats were enclosed. In reality, the public’s safety was dependent on the behavior of the “good kitties”. Given their only recently marred record, the tigers have really exceeded our low expectations of their behavior.

In contrast, human institutions can be less intelligent than we give them credit for. They can ignore critical information simply because the word is out that the subject is not to be discussed. They can take data and bury it; discover knowledge and extinguish it. Because they have internal interests which take priority over their official ones. Even the death of a 17 year old zoo visitor won’t change things.

Sound familiar?

Posted on December 31st, 2007 under Orion. Comments Off

Rick Moran has put together a Fred Thompson Blogburst for today, to show blogosphere support for Thompson heading into the Iowa caucuses. It’s certainly time for Fred to have a surge (and well past time for the execrable Huckabee to tank) — here’s hoping that he’ll get enough of a bump out of Iowa to remain in the race, as the electorate grows increasingly weary of and/or disgusted with the other GOP candidates.

Personally, my preference is for Fred not because I dislike all the others (which in fact I do, to varying degrees), but because he by and large has the right core principles. I’m not especially interested in his social conservative positions, but everything else on the list tracks well with my own.

Fred’s campaign plans to run an ad blitz in Iowa this week touting his conservative cred, and is looking for help in funding the spots.

Posted on December 27th, 2007 under Miscellaneous. Comments: 1

NASA is suddenly taking an interest in conflicts of interest.

One wonders when they’ll take a closer look at the more glaringly obvious (and vastly more expensive) one.

Posted on December 22nd, 2007 under Space Policy. Comments Off

Looks like Spirt and Opportunity (and their orbital brethren) may have excellent seats for some upcoming fireworks:

“We’re used to dealing with odds like one-in-a-million,” Chesley said. “Something with a one-in-a-hundred chance makes us sit up straight in our chairs.”

The asteroid, designated 2007 WD5, is about 160 feet across, which puts it in the range of the space rock that exploded over Siberia. That explosion, the largest impact event in recent history, felled 80 million trees over 830 square miles.

The Tunguska object broke up in midair, but the Martian atmosphere is so thin that an asteroid would probably plummet to the surface, digging a crater half a mile wide, Chesley said.

The impact would probably send dust high into the atmosphere, scientists said. Depending on where the asteroid hit, such a plume might be visible through telescopes on Earth, Chesley said.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is mapping the planet, would have a front-row seat. And NASA’s two JPL-built rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, might be able to take pictures from the ground.

And we thought we were lucky when Galileo was almost in position for Shoemaker-Levy…if it happens, this ought to make for some fun pictures, not to mention some interesting science.

It’s a pity we couldn’t steer a bunch more asteroids (or more appropriately, comets) to hit Mars. A few billion tons of water injected into its atmosphere might do wonders for near-future settlement prospects.

I’m curious, though, as to where this particular asteroid came from — is it one that astronomers have known about for a while, which was only recently perturbed? Or has it only recently appeared on the scene? If the latter, what is the likelihood that a similar asteroid could appear unexpectedly, giving us only six weeks to prepare for a possible impact (such that we could)?

Posted on December 22nd, 2007 under Space Science. Comments Off

Michael Huang discussesways around Congress’ proposed ban on NASA work on manned Mars exploration, but misses one glaringly obvious loophole.

The House of Representatives version of HR 3093, the bill that determines NASA?s funding for 2008, effectively bans the study of an entire planet:

Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

The House committee report mentions the proposed prohibition:

Finally, bill language is included prohibiting funding of any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

…But the exclusive nature of the law allows a human mission to Mars to take place, if the mission also does something else. If the hardware used to explore Mars was also used to explore the Moon, then that?s acceptable. Most importantly, if the mission to Mars included both humans and robots, then that could also go ahead. A humans-and-robots mission would not violate the law because it is not exclusively human. So the law intended to enforce an anti-human, robot-only space policy may end up enforcing a both-humans-and-robots policy, which is what NASA and space enthusiasts have wanted all along.

Whoever is crafting the Congressional language is falling into the same trap that many if not most people do when discussing space and NASA’s role in it: the idea that space is for “exploration” and nothing more. And they compound this error with the use of “exclusively”…apparently intended to avoid curtailment of robotic exploration, the language in fact only limits activities on or related to Mars whose sole function is human exploration. Call me optimistic, but it would seem this proposal would not in fact curtail human activity on Mars — it would instead force it to be something more than exploration.

Such as, maybe, settlement.

I don’t know how he missed that one, since it’s much more obvious to me than using humanoid robots as manned exploration proxies, or performing manned exploration of Phobos and Deimos. It wouldn’t have to be a big settlement effort, just enough to provide a fig leaf for whatever exploration the agency wanted to do.

Of course, I can’t imagine NASA ever getting behind it. Sure, they’d get to send humans to Mars, but at least some of them would be going as settlers instead of Right Stuff™ astronauts. Plus, NASA is unlikely to fight to exploit that loophole if (as it sometimes seems) they aren’t really interested in sending people to Mars in the first place.

I’m not really sure that it matters much. We’re not planning to return to the Moon until 2018-2020, and by then Barney Frank and many of the others who are pushing this proposal will no longer be in Congress. Plus, the Constellation program is unlikely to do any serious work on Mars missions until after Orion is flying and Ares V and LSAM are in the pipeline. Either way, there is probably fifteen years in which to overturn the prohibition, if it gets passed, and ample opportunity for events (such as a Chinese push to the Moon or other “market challenge”) to overtake its reason for being.

Posted on December 5th, 2007 under Space Policy. Comments: 1

This is new to me: The Mars Journal: The International Journal of Mars Science and Exploration. It looks pretty interesting, and potentially useful as an information resource.

I’m baffled that I haven’t ever seen this journal referenced anywhere before (it isn’t because the publication is new, since it predates MarsBlog by at least a few months).

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 under Space Technology. Comments: 1