From Streetcars To Spaceships

Is anybody afraid of the new, "raunchy" BBC?

Okay, let's see if I've got this right. A couple of broadcasters on BBC 2 made prank calls to a guy most famous for playing a grossly racist character on a wonderful but very rude show. In those calls they claimed to have slept with his granddaughter.

You know, his granddaughter, the well-known goth stripper. Member of that supremely demure group, The Satanic Sluts.

The granddaughter who one of the broadcasters had actually dated.

The granddaughter who is shocked, shocked I say, that they could do such a terrible thing.

Maybe I'm reading the story wrong.

Probably not since one of the broadcasters has now resigned.

Despite, I might add, that this whole "outrage" is a brilliantly effective bit of astroturfing by the far right wing Daily Mail. A paper that literally supported Hitler. A paper that, "just coincidentally" is now running high profile, high traffic, high profit features on sweet young Miss Voluptua.

Just goes to show what a media outlet with money, smarts, and no shame whatsoever can do to sabotage anybody these days. Even the Beeb.

What a world.

We should send our dead into space.

In honor of Halloween, I'm repeating here a proposal I made in the recent Slashdot thread on the idea of a one way mission to Mars.

We should start sending dead bodies to Mars. And, for that matter, to the Moon. I'm not the first to propose this. A company called Celestis is working on a very primitive version already. And I would guess that they'll get more ambitious as technology and infrastructure advance. But, like everyone else who discusses this, they assume that cremated remains are the way to go. In a world of more billionaires than most of us can count, I think that it's legitimate to start thinking through something far more ambitious with more than symbolic remains meant to accomplish more than symbolic goals.

Offer to "bury" people by having their bodies shipped to Mars, the Moon, or some other point outside the gravity well. The bodies can launch on low-fuel, high-g rockets and get there by equally low-fuel slow trajectories. Let's say delivery to Mars orbit within five or six years, depending on launch time. Then, when they get there, the bodies get placed within a mix of carbon compounds and inert martian crushed rock on top of which lots of microorganisms are dropped and used to kickstart a soil supply. One that we then *know* will have the right balances of nutrients, have a decent amount of water, and a wide range of microorganisms. Add fifty or sixty pounds per body of biodegradable packing material (i.e. straw) and a biodegradable coffin and you'll really be in great shape. Maybe if you include a translucent outer case with serious insulating properties you won't even need much of a greenhouse waiting at your destination. A job for aerogel, seems to me.

One approach would have multiple greenhouses, each of which is "seeded" with one body and then named after the person whose remains jumpstarted that ecosystem. If that were done, I guarantee that the families of people whose bodies had been part of this would continue to kick in money and other resources to see the "family" greenhouse enlarged, sustained, and, let's face it, publicized.

Personally, I'm not sure that I would be willing to eat food that included molecules from the bodies of, say, Bill Gates or Karl Rove but I suspect that Mars settlers would find ways to deal with that.

Betcha it would work, too. Get the cost down to two or three million dollars each and you'll have to barricade the doors to keep rich, elderly techies and plutocrats from signing up too fast. I figure at most a hundred million in development costs. Less than the cost of some marketing campaigns. If costs can be brought down to two million per corpus and the charge kept at, say, three million, it shouldn't take more than ten years or so at worst to be in the black and, by the way, have developed a kickass set of launch expertise, facilities, and rights to thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds of rich biomatter, all already delivered to Mars. If necessary, it could even initially be delivered to a Martian parking orbit to wait for settlement locations to be chosen.

Just think of the variations. Pet burial. The same technique delivered to a greenhouse on the Moon. Or at a laGrange point where a space station is planned. And so on.

Many of the biggest concerns about settling space really come down to the logistics and cost of somehow getting supplies to wherever humans are trying to settle. And any vehicle carrying humans is mostly limited to one g or less of sustained acceleration, minimized transport time, temperatures inside the vessel of 15 to 30 degrees celsius, of a "proper" mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and so on. All of which means that you're shipping cargo at passenger prices. So, every kilo of mass that is shipped separately cuts costs. And, as I've pointed out before, by treating these cargo needs as opportunities for others to get what they want, they'll pay for the privilege of supporting the mission.

Do you think that this idea is morbid? Personally, I think that it's beautiful.

Are you afraid of those corpses spreading disease at their destination? We know by now how to sterilize damn near anything, and the simple mechanics of the transport process will freeze the cargo near absolute zero, which will kill off most microorganisms good and proper. There's not much that humans need to worry about that can survive two years or more at the temperatures of deep space. The bigger concern will be ensuring that payloads rotate so that they don't cook on one side and freeze on the other.

Anyway, that's it. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that this is one of the sanest and smartest ways to make the settling of space practical by cutting costs, reducing the time for a colony to become viable, getting wealthy and powerful people emotionally invested in the mission, and even creating more narratives that help make the process of human expansion beyond our planet into something that will inspire songs, stories, and, someday, even myths.

Have a great Halloween.

-Rustin

Coming now: poor people with poorer judgement

There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about all the consumers and businesses who are now having financial problems due, largely, to their bad judgement. The hardware chain that goes out of business, putting several hundred people out of work, because their business model depends on weekly infusions of short term credit. The family who "bought" a home far bigger than they could afford and are now unable to pay their mortgage/figuring out that commuting costs are not a trivial concern/are just now figuring out that heating a three thousand square foot house takes a hell of a lot of scratch. Not to mention people who are just now "realizing" that Lincoln Navigators and their behemoth cousins aren't practical vehicles for much of anything.

Now, I'm sorry, but none of the stories I've seen about examples of the new hard times have succeeded in getting me to think of these people as anything but idiots getting their comeuppance. In many cases, idiots with a vast sense of entitlement and an active contempt for reason. I don't doubt that these blameless sufferers are out there and I'll agree that some of the employees of businesses that have gone under are entirely blameless, but as for families, well, I'm sorry that so many children have to suffer for the anti-intellectual and self-indulgent behaviors of their parents.

Anyway, I do have a more specific point to make. Much though these people annoy me no end, I have spent enough time studying corporate behavior in recent decades to be fully aware that, to a certain extent, these are learned behaviors. Ones that have been deeply inculcated. As my friend Sara pointed out when we talked about this last night, these people have, in large part, been less convinced of their ways of doing things than they have been imprinted with them.

If you stop and think about it, we have an entire society who have been trained into the learned helplessness of sitcom fifties housewives. They have been trained to believe that almost every problem is best addressed by spending money. They believe that, so to speak, they should do the vacuuming in high heels and pearls; that being thin and well-groomed and amiable are far more important than actually being competent. That somebody else should do the thinking for them. That they should all do their best to be June Cleaver but without the housekeeping skills. And I'm telling you that what we've seen so far is nothing to the years of disasters we've got coming because however bad their material circumstances now, many of them are going to try to spend their way out of poverty and, in a few years, when the last of their assets are gone and they've all used up the favors of relatives and friends, we will have millions of people who will not only be in utter penury, they'll be embittered and hostile because, as they perceive it, they will have been punished for doing what they were "told" to do and their primary conclusion about all of this will not be that they need to change how they think and act but that what "has been done to them" has been fundamentally "unfair".

These are, as I've been saying for years now, a generation of permanent children. You can see it in everything from the television they watch to the primary colors and comfort foods of their surroundings. And they are the kind of people who, realizing that they can't make their mortgage payment, will think that it's entirely rational to "do what they need to relieve their stress" by getting seventy dollar pedicures.

These are people for whom even their DIY shows are largely aspirational, paid for by travel agencies and cookware companies, designed to convince them that the only way to cook that special dish is with this unique pan and four kinds of specialty ingredients, down to boutique salt.

Implicit in much of the media coverage of people losing their homes is the assumption that they can be taken at their word when they say that they're planning to buckle down, get serious, and make the right choice to get back on their feet. Frankly, I don't believe it. I think that many of them would never have gotten into this if they could have thought their way out of a wet paper bag. And you don't undo terrible reasoning skills in a week. I think that the articles talking about families doing things like selling their daughter's bike at a yard sale for three dollars are going to turn out to be more indicative. In the next six months or so we will continue to see a hell of a lot of people eating the seed corn. And then complaining that it's unfair that they have nothing to eat.

You heard it here first.

-Rustin

Living on the moon needn't mean living at one sixth G

One of the many absurd things I see people saying to recommend building space stations rather than moon bases is that space stations can be rotated to provide a simulation of earth gravity while a moon base will be at the moon's gravity of one sixth of that on earth.

Have these idjits ever been to a summer carnival?

Okay, let me break it down. Nothing would keep a moon base from incorporating sections that work just like the planned residential sections of a large space station, in other words, circling on a track at some speed such that the inhabitants will feel one G of force. All that one would have to do is slant the floors to take advantage of the existing gravity and keep the whole shebang running at a slower speed than would be needed in space. Everything else would also be easier. The rotating sections could "lean into" a track made of moon rock, thereby considerably reducing the load on the system creating the rotation relative to what would be needed out in space. Repairs would, of course, be much easier. If the system needs to be shut off for a while things don't just drift off or fly away, they settle down to the ground.

Would this be a huge engineering job? Well, yes, but by definition, it would always be less of a job than doing a facility of the same size in zero g. Per person, per cubic meter of usable space, it's the same general idea but at lower speeds in a simpler, safer place to build. And not only would it be safer and easier to build, if you let go of a space station, you drift off into the vacuum unless and until you either rocket yourself back and/or somebody goes after you to get you back. You let go of a facility like this and you're standing on the moon. Worst case scenario: you fall down, you stand up.

The only legitimate counter I see to this is that building and operating anything on the moon is likely to be subject to the famously abrasive lunar dust. I've got nothing to say to that though I suspect that in the not too distant future engineers will figure out ways to treat it all as a series of problems in fluid dynamics and charged particles and it'll become nothing more than a constant annoyance. Especially since the lack of atmosphere means that once you've got an area clear of dust it stays clear, except for what astronauts track back with them. They might even find a way to, in effect, pour concrete over an area, "soaking up" the dust in that area and creating a nice, rigid platform.

One could also say that being subject to the several week cycle of sunlight and daylight is a pain in the ass and I agree. But as a former operations guy, I would gladly trade that periodic two week loss of daylight to get the nice, predictable alternation of plenty of sunlit time for things like running solar collectors and plenty of sun-free time to do things like have engineers go outside with less radiation risk or trouble dissipating heat.

Anyway, I've been reading this baloney about the evils of moon gravity for years and I just wanted, once and for all to put it to rest.

Happy days,

-Rustin

When it comes to comes to our future in space, consider the Azores.

These days people seem to think that in the old days when Europeans were first settling the New World ships just sailed away from the dock in England or wherever and the next time they saw land was when they reached the Americas.

 

Nope. They took pit stops along the way.

 

A key part of what made early transatlantic travel viable was two tiny groups of islands called the Azores and the Canaries, one off the coast of Africa and the other straight out from Portugal, nine hundred miles closer to America than the European mainland.

 

Columbus's ships stopped at the Canary Islands on their first trip to America to repair, restock, and refit. On the way back they stopped at the Azores for much the same reason. And, of course, they never actually reached the American mainland, having made it only to the islands of the Caribbean, those islands themselves being closer to Europe than the American mainland is.

 

All the way until the early 1900's it was common for ships crossing the ocean to stop in the Azores. A transatlantic trip was nowhere near as practical without somewhere almost a third of the way there to get food, water, and repairs. Many a ship would never have made it across the Atlantic without the safety that the Azores provided. And many a voyage would never have been attempted without the knowledge that those islands were there. Even if a stop weren't planned those islands improved the odds. Trips going along the northern route used Iceland and Greenland and Newfoundland much the same way.

 

So what's my point?

 

A lot of talk turns up these days comparing the settling of space to the "conquering" of America by Europeans all those years ago. I agree that this is, in many ways, an excellent comparison. That being the case, let's remember that those voyages were done in the most practical way possible. By settling each and every possible safe harbor along the way. And, whenever possible, minimizing the length of unbroken stretches at sea.

 

This approach kept them alive. It greatly reduced the quantities and range of supplies they needed to carry. It shortened the time they needed to be away from medical care and shipyards. It cut the distances supplies needed to travel and greatly reduced their costs. It made it more practical for them to have perishables. It helped keep them sane.

 

So, that having been said, if we're serious about settling space, not just making cool gestures or trying to win some sort of nationalistic race, then we should grow up and slow down. Yeah, Mars is probably a better long term destination. But it's foolish, positively foolhardy, to try to do the trip in one massive burst from down inside the earth's gravity well.

 

I'm certainly not the first to say this.

 

We should be using shipyards in Earth orbit, launching the most simple things we can. We should be using all that sunlight to create high energy density fuel. And those space stations should be in partnership with people and robots on the Moon, mining ore, collecting data, even running greenhouses that themselves take advantage of all that undiluted sunlight.

 

If we're serious about settling Mars then we should be focusing first on stations at the LaGrange points and on the Moon. The moon cuts the cost of fuel. It lets supplies be boosted from a much less onerous gravity well. It's a better place to get minerals and shielding and maybe even fresh food.

 

They are our Azores.

Do you think that you know what it means to get truly seriously injured?

It's been over four years since I blew my apartment to smoking ruin and myself to a charred, bloody invalid. Four years, one month, and twenty-four days, to be precise. And to look at me, I'm now again a vigorous, energetic guy. Somebody who seems to do just fine moving furniture, walks for miles at a time, usually carries a messenger bag heavy enough to make people uncomfortable if I have to check it at a counter somewhere, and leaves most people asking me to slow down when they walk with me.

And that's great. For what it's worth.

I just picked up a seven pound package and a ten pound package at my mailbox and just the act of carrying them the twelve blocks or so to the bus stop was enough to leave my biceps spasming. Now, admittedly, I haven't slept much in the past few days and I haven't exactly eaten as well as I should but I haven't done anything all that strenuous and I do get exercise on a regular basis. What might have happened after six or seven hours of exhausting physical effort before the fire now sometimes happens after ten or fifteen minutes. And I never really know before it happens is this is one of my "good" days or one of my "bad" days.

What's my point? That when you're dealing with people who, like me, have survived serious injuries, the type that leave you in and out of hospitals for months, the kind that leave you needing to learn to use limbs again or dress yourself again or spending a year or more waiting to be able to breath normally again or eat normally again, when you're dealing with people like us, remember that even when we seem healed, even when we walk just fine and don't talk about pain anymore or otherwise seem "still sick", we're still not back to who we were before. And, crucially, you will never be able to judge again what they will find painful or difficult.

People meeting me now don't notice my scars unless I point them out. My body language has returned to what it was. I talk just fine. Unless you're really paying attention, I don't do anything visibly different from a "normal person". But I'm telling you that I work around my considerable remaining physical problems all the time every single day. And, frankly, it's five times more obstructive and tiring to tell people about what the issues are and try to get them to accommodate than it is to just deal with it myself. So don't assume that if somebody doesn't tell you that something is wrong that thereby you know that nothing is wrong.

I just went to pick up a pocket dictionary and it hurt enough to leave me tempted to give up and just look on line. This happens all the time to me now.

Just in case you still don't see my subtext here, let me bring it right out front. Courtesy of the last seven years of warfare by our citizens, we've now got hundred of thousands more Americans who are crippled. Millions by some definitions. And when you're dealing with those vets, try to remember what I wrote above.

Point one: Even if they tell you that they're okay, they're probably not "okay".

Point two: It's not for you to decide how they should cope. If they want your help, give it to them. But remember that they're adults and it's not up to you to decide for them how they're doing.

Point three: We'll be dealing with walking wounded for at least the next fifty years. "Normal" ain't normal anymore and never will be again. If you're still stupid enough to think that things like ADA requirements for buildings are foolishness then I hope that your legs break tomorrow and you have to climb fifteen flights of stairs without crutches. Every day. In the dark. While it's raining. And your ears are screwed up and you can't keep your balance.

My friend Sara refers to most people as "temporarily able-bodied" to keep the point in the foreground that today's aggressive yuppie running for the train and pushing everybody else out of the way may well be tomorrow's emergency room visitor. This applies to you, the reader.

Keep it in mind.

-Rustin

The Indian moon mission has launched.

Here's to Chandrayaan-I! All of our lives have gotten just a bit richer as the Indian mission to the moon launched, carrying, in addition to their own five payloads, three from the ESA, two from NASA, and one from, would you believe, Bulgaria. While we can all talk about their concerns with remote sensing and various other projects, we all really know that this is, first and foremost, the entry of another player in the game of having a moon-capable space program, with all that that implies. This is just fine with me.

It's good to live in the future.

So what *is* "reasonable" funding for Amtrak?

So we're all supposed to be delighted that Amtrak's government funding has been increased by the majestic sum of a bit over one billion dollars.

We all have seen plenty of numbers recently about government funding for other things so I'm just going to leave that statement all by itself.

We could sure use some cheaper polyimides.

I just got the latest email from NASA Tech Briefs, which included an invitation to a web seminar about Vespel. Now, I haven't worked with Vespel, per se, but I have very fond memories of some other polyimides. Back in my prototyping days I played around with any number of very tough materials since my fiber bending device required that I be able to soften high-temperature fiber optics, which required a heating system and surrounding framework that would have melted most conventional components.

Anyway, the point is, plastics really do enable lots of wonderful things. Things that we would be much impoverished by having to do without. But we need to have ones that forgo some of the typical weaknesses. Creation from petrochemicals. VOC outgassing. Vulnerability to heat. Well, since the days that NASA built silvered kapton polyimide sheets as insulators for the space shuttle it's been obvious to me that we should pay more attention to this class of materials. Can you imagine what it would do to the viability of fabric structures like yurts to be able to incorporate a massively tough silvered bubble wrap that didn't significantly outgas and could tolerate temperatures up to 300 Celcius?

So the next time somebody asks you why we should be working to get more American kids to study math and science, this is a mighty fine example of a technology that could still use a hell of a lot more work. One where improvement could result in products right out of science fiction that would enrich our lives. One that is not about software or sales or any of those other clean fingernail professions that everybody seems to think are the only important ones anymore. (Aside, of course, for our fetishized enthusiasm for any job that involves the chance to beat up and/or kill people.)

Keep it in mind. Cheap polyimides. The kind of thing that will never be on the cover of Time Magazine could really make our world a better place.

I just bought a netbook.

For what it's worth, having now put myself through all this angst, I decided in the end to go back to the one that had most impressed me when I first tried out different devices at J&R a few months back, the HP 2133. I, of course, ordered the Linux version with the 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB  of RAM, and a 120 GB hard drive. All of this set me back the modest sum of 440 bucks since Amazon is having a sale right now to prepare for the release of the new models. I got a little neoprene case for another 17 bucks and I'll be getting one of the various mini mice, which should add about another 10 bucks. All in all, about $470 for a less than three pound device that should let me get massively more work done. My only real concern is that it's so elegant looking that I'll be worried about theft.

Anyway, when it gets here and I've unpacked it in another couple of weeks I'll post something to say what I think.

G'night.