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EU to launch new constitution in space!
Facing uncertain prospects on Earth, the European Union constitution is being launched into space. Struggling to raise public interest in the historic document, EU leaders said Friday that European astronauts will bring the charter along when they blast off toward the International Space Station on April 15 from Baikonour, Kazakhstan.
Too bad our Founding Fathers lacked such means of persuasion — they had to make do with letters to the editor explaining the features and safeguards of the proposed Constitution…imagine! How much easier the Federalists’ job would have been if only Ben Franklin had spent his time building rockets instead of flying kites and chasing after Parisian ladies.
“It will undergo full testing before it can be flown,” EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told reporters at the opening of an EU space exhibit. “You can be sure it will come back.”
Does this mean they plan to man-rate their Constitution?
If and when the thing ever gets implemented, the citizens of Greater France EUrope may come to wish the document had made its return flight aboard a Progress.
French astronaut Michel Tognini accepted a bound copy of the document as well as the EU’s 12 gold-star flag.
“We have to be sure that we don’t destroy your treaty,” he said, jokingly.
Yes, yes, we wouldn’t want that now, would we (he asked, ironically)?
Seriously, though, just think about that for a moment — the EU is sending with its astronaut a bound copy of a very large document (the proposed EU constitution is not a three-page outline like ours), which one would assume (since no indication is given otherwise) that it is on conventional paper. Does this strike anyone else as a bad idea?
Officials at EU headquarters hoped the publicity stunt would help sell the document, which faces ratification in all of the EU’s 25 member states.
See, now, this illustrates a subtle difference between the US and EUrope — when our government uses its space program for a silly publicity stunt, it’s to pay for something already sold, rather than to sell something to the reluctant masses:
An EU survey released last month showed nine out of 10 EU citizens know little or nothing about the treaty that is expected to become the cornerstone of their political life.
Surely, launching it into space will help improve those numbers — no need to actually ‘splain it to the proles, eh?
Looks like NASA may be taking commercial resupply of ISS seriously:
With the shuttle fleet currently grounded, the ISS is completely reliant on Russian supply ships launching on time. Later in 2005, the European Space Agency will make the first test flight of its Automated Transfer Vehicle, a cargo ship designed to supplement the Russian Progress ship. The Japanese space agency, NASDA, is also working on another uncrewed supply ship, the H-2 Transfer Vehicle, scheduled for a 2007 launch.
If NASA is looking for commercial resupply alternatives, one might conclude that they don’t see the French EUropean and Japanese programs as adequate to the program’s needs.
But NASA is looking for more alternatives to supply the station. “We’re looking for innovative solutions,” said Bill Readdy, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations. The agency will issue a call for proposals in summer 2005.
One might also conclude that the agency sees the French EUropean and Japanese solutions as something less than innovative. Interesting.
In the 1990s, NASA tried without success to recruit new ideas for commercial transportation. “Now it appears there may be a couple of real contenders,” Readdy told reporters.
Yes, now that a space market independent of NASA is emerging, and now that the agency seems a bit more willing to take commercial alternatives seriously. The proof will be in how NASA actually treats those companies responding to its overtures.
MSNBC – Space racers unite in federation
America’s top rivals in the private-sector space race are now on the same side, in a federation newly formed to advance their infant industry’s interests.
The Personal Spaceflight Federation, whose establishment was announced Tuesday, brings together a who’s who of space entrepreneurs, including SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, whose team won the $10 million X Prize last October, and video-game genius John Carmack, whose Armadillo Aerospace team was among the leading contenders for the prize.
The industry group plans to work with federal regulators to help draw up the “rules of the road” for suborbital space tourism, following up on last year’s landmark law on private-sector spaceflight, said Gregg Maryniak, who serves as the federation’s chief spokesman as well as executive director of the X Prize Foundation.
I can’t find a reference to it now, but there was talk some months back about splitting the space nuclear power and electric propulsion portions of Prometheus…it looks like it may indeed happen under the coming 2006 budget: NASA 2006 Budget Presented: Hubble, Nuclear Initiative Suffer
The biggest casualty of NASA’s latest budget request is the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission, which is effectively canceled in the 2006 request. NASA had planned to launch the multi-billion dollar probe around 2015 as the Project Prometheus nuclear power and propulsion initiative’s flagship demonstration.
NASA officials now say JIMO is too ambitious an undertaking for an initial demonstration, and a search for an alternative mission is underway. NASA is still requesting $320 million to continue nuclear power and propulsion work in 2006, but that is substantially lower than the roughly $500 million the agency had planned to spend based on last year’s five-year budget projection.
Apropos of the previous post, a quote from astronomer E.E. Barnard:
Man is too quick at forming conclusions. Let him but indistinctly see a thing, or even be undecided as to whether he does actually see it and he will then and there set himself to theorizing, and build immense castles of conjecture on a foundation, of whose existence he is by no means certain.
Speaking of research leading to unexpected discoveries, it seems a NASA scientist has been studying the “bulge” in the back of President Bush’s suit coat:
Finally, on October 8, this reporter ran an investigative report about the bulge in the online magazine Salon, following up with a second report (10/13/04)?an interview with an executive of a firm that makes wireless cueing devices that link to hidden earpieces?that suggested that Bush was likely to have been improperly receiving secret help during the debates.
At that point, Dr. Robert M. Nelson, a 30-year Jet Propulsion Laboratory veteran who works on photo imaging for NASA?s various space probes and currently is part of a photo enhancement team for the Cassini Saturn space probe, entered the picture. Nelson recounts that after seeing the Salon story on the bulge, professional curiosity prompted him to apply his skills at photo enhancement to a digital image he took from a videotape of the first debate. He says that when he saw the results of his efforts, which clearly revealed a significant T-shaped object in the middle of Bush?s back and a wire running up and over his shoulder, he realized it was an important story…
The Times was at first very interested, Nelson reports. There was, after all, clearly good reason to investigate the issue. The White House and Bush/ Cheney campaign had initially mocked the bulge story when it had run in Salon, first attributing it to “doctored” photos circulating on the Internet (New York Times, 10/9/04), and later claiming that the bulge, so noticeable in video images, was the result of a “badly tailored suit” (New York Times, 10/18/04). Bush himself contradicted this White House and campaign line when he told ABC?s Charles Gibson (Good Morning America, 10/26/04) that the bulge was the result of his wearing a “poorly tailored shirt” to the debate.
Now Nelson?s photos?the result of his applying the same enhancement techniques to the debate pictures that he uses to clarify photo images from space probes?rendered all these official if mutually contradictory explanations obviously false.
Why, it’s truly amazing what NASA’s image enhancement techniques can do! Good thing Dr. Nelson didn’t have anything more pressing to do back in October.
The story is a long and tedious recounting of how Nelson’s expose was spiked due to pressure from the Bushitler Junta’s propaganda tentacles (e.g.: the editors of the LA Times and NYT), but it ends with a chuckle-inducing flourish that should be captured here as an example:
But personally, I think that Nelson?s assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose decades-long career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who decided to say very publicly that, without reservation, he was convinced there was something under a president?s jacket when the White House said there was nothing…
“I?d certainly choose [Nelson?s] opinion over that of a tailor,” Revkin concluded, referring to news reports that cited the man who makes the president?s suits. “Hard to believe that so many in the media chose the tailor, even in coverage after the election.”
Ooh, let me take a crack at explaining that one. Maybe…it’s because…any random tailor can be reliably expected to know more about the fit of a suit than can an astronomer poring over a TV stillframe…? Could it be?
The “Bush is sending us to Mars” myth makes an appearance in this article about the upcoming budget request.
Some presidential budget initiatives are big deals when announced, but fade quickly. Remember Bush’s mission to the moon and to Mars?
He put startup funds for the mission in his 2005 budget. Congress rolled it into funds for other space programs. Bush seldom talks about going to Mars any more, and didn’t in Wednesday’s State of the Union.
What did he expect, a Kennedy-style “hard things” speech? Had that happened, we would surely be hearing sneering about Bush’s unrealistic Apollo-scale plans.
Sure, one doesn’t hear Bush talking about the VSE, but then actions speak louder than words. A VSE-sparked organizational shift is underway at NASA, the CEV (integral to the plans for VSE) is about to enter the formal proposal phase, and some of the first steps towards termination of the Shuttle program (a VSE cornerstone, required to free up existing funding for it) have been taken. Mars itself is more of an organizing goal for the agency at this point than a specific budget item requiring speechifying by the President to secure public support. It should hardly come as a surprise that it didn’t get a mention in a SotU speech whose focus was a controversial plan to reorganize a massive welfare program (yes, a cynic could describe the VSE in such terms, but you know what I mean).
Unfortunately, I think (the aptly-named) Raum has half of a point here, just not what he thinks it might be: Bush should at least show a little public backing for the VSE once in a while, if for no other reason than to keep his critics from using it as a token slam against his other policies.
Looks like the ongoing research into “global warming” is bearing some useful fruit: Humans Could Make Mars Earth-Like by Global Warming
Scientists have calculated that it would only be necessary to inject powerful greenhouse gases into the Martian atmosphere to ?terraform? the planet.
Over time, the Martian ice caps would melt and the atmosphere thicken enough to make the planet habitable…
The key involves triggering a run-away greenhouse effect using gases nearly 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide at holding in heat.
The scientists, led by Dr Margarita Marinova at the American space agency?s Ames Research Centre, focused on fluorine-based gases made of elements readily available on the Martian surface.
A compound called octafluoropropane, or C3F8, produced the greatest warming, which was enhanced further by combining it with several other gases.
The computer model showed that adding about 300 parts per million of the gas mixture to the thin Martian atmosphere would spark a runaway greenhouse effect.
Not that I think it’s necessary to terraform Mars for human habitation. Nor is it all that clear to me that it’s desirable to do so, given the opportunity cost involved…introducing or retaining energy in the Martian atmosphere could very well worsen dust storms in the near term, for instance, making it more rather than less difficult to access and operate (and live) on the surface.
What makes this development interesting to me is that it is an example of the unexpected benefits that can result from basic scientific research…even research with dubious foundations. The sky-is-falling catastrophism motivating research into anthropogenic global warming (with the unscientific a priori goal of finding evidence of climate change and pinning the blame for it squarely on human activity) may ultimately prove to be an echo of the alchemical search for a means of transmuting lead into gold…a search which proved fruitless, but which as a by-product launched chemistry as a scientific discipline.
…while I am out of town on business. I should be back to posting on Friday.
Mark Whittington refers to an RTTM board posting on four of the general architectures being considered by the Lunar Strategy Roadmap Committee.
Mark likes #4, and I have to agree. It has the ring of a terrestrial port authority or industrial park, which by their nature imply infrastructure construction as an incubator for commercial development.
Another potential benefit to establishing a development authority is the possibility of sidestepping some of the tranzi opposition to property rights in space. If the development authority could be “chartered” through a sufficiently broad multilateral agreement, for instance, it could serve as a sort of “land office” for private land claims, recognizing such claims while simultaneously providing “rules of the game” for the process to mitigate the effects that those who support “common heritage” language are (or claim to be) concerned about.
The first three options have lesser merit (particularly #3), which is further diminished by the apparent prejudice against turning over to the private sector whatever presence has been established on the Moon when NASA decides to move on to Mars.
(Despite the title of this blog, I’m not in favor of the sort of mad dash to Mars #3 implies…I’ll support whatever architecture has the best chance of getting us into space, in the generic sense, to stay.)
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