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MARSLIFE FALSE ALARM: NewsTrove dug up this article on life on Mars from the Atlantic, with the tantalizing headline:
Life on Mars
Space scientists won’t say so, but the results of three brilliantly-conceived experiments lead inevitably to one startling conclusion: Life, in some form, exists on Mars
So, that piqued my interest. Well, it’s an article dated June 1977, and has to do with the biological instruments on the Viking landers. However, it is a fairly detailed layman’s overview of the three instruments, how they worked, what they were supposed to look for, and the preliminary results from each.
It’s not breaking news, no, but it is good background reading.
MONUMENT TO APOLLO: I’ll be the first to agree that we ought not repeat Apollo in form or rationale…but even the most bitter “flags and footprints” critics out there have to acknowledge that it was an incredible feat.
In his latest essay, “An Apollo National Monument”, John Carter McKnight argues that the positives of Apollo — the technological achievement, the triumph of reason, the icon of a progress-oriented outlook — outweigh the shortsightedness of the program’s goals and organization, and that these positives ought to be memorialized in a dramatic and unforgettable fashion:
I have long argued against attempts to resurrect that sense of purpose, and against grandiose schemes built on the premise of it magically reappearing, and regard Apollo as a significant misstep in the path towards a spacefaring civilization. Yet the fact remains that Apollo was a uniquely positive accomplishment born of American national will. We have a Statue of Liberty; we could use an Icon of Hope and Reason.
Perhaps you can guess from that snippet what it is he is proposing. Granted, there are a few technical snags with the proposal as he has described it, but nothing that can’t be overcome.
As to whether it would be worthwhile, that is another matter. I don’t need a monument to Apollo, as I get the point of it all quite readily whenever I see any of the hardware, read a book about it, see video from the launches or moon walks, etc. I suspect this is true of others in the space advocacy community. But McKnight has a good point regarding the “moonrace revisionists”, who claim with increasing volume — and, unfortunately, increasing audience — that the landings never occurred, that we could never have gotten to the moon in the 1960’s with the technology available. I doubt that a monument would change the minds of those who accept this class of conspiracy theory — but for those who might be tempted to listen to such crackpots, it could serve as a quiet touchstone of reality.
RENOVATIONS: Bear with me while I fiddle with the site template.
UPDATE: With a couple of hours’ work, I think I’ve improved the legibility a bit. Yes/no?
LATER UPDATE: I think the permalinks are working now — another problem I had been unaware of.
GIFTIE GIE US: Thanks to Rand Simberg for the link and the constructive criticism.
I’ve (obviously) fixed the links for now, but I think it’s high time for a thorough redesign.
A GREEN RED, OR A RED GREEN? Confused leftie Philip Shropshire tackles the perennial “Should we go?” question — “we” in this case referring to liberals.
His answer is yes, surprisingly, but unsurprisingly for the usual leftie reasons, anti-capitalism chief among them. However, he does touch on a broad-appeal reason for settling Mars: the ability to experiment with new social and political systems.
(And was that a dig on the Mars Society in there? I can’t decide if he thinks the government-in-exile thing is a good idea or not — nor am I aware that that is in fact a stated goal of the Society, rather than one among many member/chapter initiatives.)
THIS IS TOO GOOD: Via Houston MS’er Robby Gaines’ “Spotlight on Space” newsletter: Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.
While the site doesn’t take on Mars flicks like Total Recall, Mission to Mars, Red Planet, or Ghosts of Mars, it does at least take a much-deserved swipe at Armageddon.
HOW ABOUT ‘MIDNIGHT ROCKETRY’? Here we go again, another report “addressing” the problems in the aerospace industry, this one from the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry.
The Administration and Congress should reaffirm the goal of stabilizing and growing the U.S. aerospace workforce.
Why is this a goal in itself? Isn’t this something that would naturally happen if the industry were allowed/encouraged to thrive independent of government? Independent of something for the industry to do, beyond just feast-or-famine boondoggles that result in massive hiring and equally massive layoffs, stabilizing the workforce demographics is impossible — you’ll continue to see a two-peak distribution, one peak being the young workers not yet disillusioned enough to leave the industry and the other peak being the greybeards financially trapped in the industry by their proximity to retirement age.
And how would you folks grow the workforce? Ah, let me guess: another boondoggle project!
The Administration should create an interagency Workforce Task Force from the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Education and other government agencies, as required, to respond to long-term industry workforce and training needs.
…because, you know, nothing produces concrete, measureable, real-world improvements like a bunch of disconnected, agenda-driven bureaucrats with no knowledge of the topic at hand sitting around a table talking at each other and producing content-free encyclopedia-length reports that no one will ever read.
The Administration should develop the Aerospace Industry Promotion (AIP) program for schools and community colleges to attract public attention to the importance and opportunities within the aerospace industry.
Again, I ask, why is this even necessary? This is something which, in a rational ordering of things, would be undertaken by the industry itself as a goodwill/recruitment effort. If at all. Why not devise some market-oriented reforms in government policy which will allow the industry to become self-sustaining, and then let it handle this sort of work on its own?
Besides…what opportunities, exactly?
Congress should propose tax credits for employers who invest in the skills and training of the workforce for employees enrolled in registered apprenticeship programs and other occupational training that meet the needs identified by industry.
And so you end up with a glut of trained aerospace workers, with nothing to do.
No no, guys — the horse goes before the cart…
The Administration and Congress should make long-term investments to keep the American aerospace workforce “pipeline” filled.
Talk about missing the point. The problem with recruiting to the aerospace industry is not that there is a shortage of engineers or technicians or craft workers (I seem to recall a sudden surge in the supply a few months back, don’t you?). The problem with recruitment is that the feast-famine nature of the aerospace market as currently constituted scares away anyone who values job security and career-building over the “gee-whiz” aspects of working (for a little while anyway) on something really cool.
What needs to be stabilized is the whimsical nature of next-big-project government procurement, and what needs to be grown is an independent, private-sector space business. The above proposals do nothing to address the real problems.
SPACE LEGOS: Speaking of bricks, here’s an ENN article from last May about experimental polyethylene-regolith bricks produced by scientists at NASA Langley, William and Mary College, and University of Wisconson-Madison.
BRICKBOTS: A brief article with references on the development of bricklaying robots.
The author notes that “In most of the countries around the world the implementation of this robot would be more expensive than to hire labor. “ What the short article seems to describe is a telepresence or “waldo” device, ie: one which operates as an extension of an operator but not independent of him. However, once the bricklaying process is mechanized (or a new mechanized bricklaying process is developed, a subtly different thing), there is no reason that it couldn’t be increasingly automated to the point of simply requiring supervision rather than direct operation.
There is nothing stopping those involved from developing such machines today, except the expectation of a poor market for them due to the new technology being more expensive than the skilled labor it replaces. However, the economics on Mars will be very different in this regard — Mars will not be like the countries around the world, in terms of labor rates, as the skilled labor required for bricklaying will be far too expensive on Mars. If brick structures are indeed desirable in martian settlements, the economics may support development of such machines. Matured on Mars, the technology could then be used on Earth, where it would now be competitive against skilled labor.
And of course, the license fees for the technology would defray the cost of its development, and eventually turn a tidy profit for the martian developers.
IN RELATED NEWS: Another space festival, the World Space Festival, will precede the Space Rocks concert.
The kickoff World Space Festival will be held Saturday, October 12, 2002 in Houston, TX , at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
What:
There will be guest speakers, live music, comedy, dancing, DJ’s, raves, movie screenings, activities for kids, and more! It will be a full day of spacey fun! In addition, it will continue into the evening hours at local music clubs.
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