Now we know which side to take: Balding Billy blasts billionaires' space efforts

Nothing against Balding Billy, really. He and his lovely wife, Bonnie Kate, will be King and Queen of Great Britain some day. Probably. Assuming the monarchy survives his father. Which it most likely will. The monarchy is too important for the British tourism industry.

But that doesn't mean that anyone should take these "Royals" seriously. The Brits like them because they have good manners and dress well and they provide a little lustre to any social occasion that any of them happens to attend. An animatron could probably do those jobs just as well. But the "Royals," being human, and not very bright, are capable of stupendous blunders, and make them from time to time, giving fodder for the tabloids (at least outside of Britain) and plots for new Netflix programs. It all keeps the tourists interested.

Before you accuse me of being unfair, consider the position of the monarch in the British constitutional scheme. The Sovereign can advise, and warn, and has a right to be informed -- and then, when instructed, to sign here and here and read the occasional speech exactly as written. The Brits know better than to actually pay heed to one of these creatures.

So, when Balding Billy says, in a BBC interview, "We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live," it means absolutely nothing.

Billy may or not be a billionaire in his own right. Yet. He will be eventually, of course. And he will acquire his billions in the oldest of old-fashioned ways: He will inherit it. (The present Queen controls a vast personal fortune in addition to the tourist traps she fronts.) But -- unless I missed it -- he's not advocating hocking the Crown Jewels in hopes of 'repairing' the Earth.

It's all very amusing, really, how the billionaire space entrepreneurs, Musk, and Bezos, and Branson, are portrayed as having the solution to all the world's problems in their wallets, but selfishly choose instead to squander their fortunes on space travel:

But that doesn't mean that it's true. Because it isn't.

We should continue to try and solve our problems here on Earth. Which we'll never do, of course, because we are imperfect beings who will never achieve perfection in this life. But we can keep trying to improve.

At the same time, however, we must also look to the future, to our future, as a species. Our fragile civilization should persist, at least until the next eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano... which probably won't happen this year or next... but might. And all the tax revenue in the world won't help us then. And who knows what other nasty tricks Mother Nature may play on us? Maybe it will be another, deadlier virus. Maybe it will be an asteroid. No... dispersal is a sound strategy for any species; it is a necessary strategy for ours, too.

I'm sure I'd much rather have Balding Billy and Bonnie Kate as neighbors than Musk or Branson or Bezos. Less drama. Polite chit-chat over the back fence. Their kids would play nice with my grandkids. But, obnoxious as they may be, I'd trust Branson and Musk and Bezos with the future over Balding Billy. Any day.

Evolution... or devolution? Of the teaching of evolution and the abandonment of space

Adapted from this post on The Blog of Days.

Image of the final landing of Shuttle Atlantis obtained from NASA.

There are many who would call today Monkey Day because it was on July 21, 1925 that the Scopes trial ended -- with a finding that high school teacher John Scopes had violated Tennessee law by teaching the theory of evolution to his students. Fortunately, we've progressed quite a bit (evolved, you might say) since then: I don't think even Texas has again made it actually illegal to teach evolution in the schools. Of course, there are more than a few states where the teaching of evolution appears to be frowned upon. A 2012 Gallup poll revealed that 46% of Americans believe that God created mankind in our present form -- and somewhere in the last 10,000 years to boot. Maybe we've not evolved as much as some of us would like to think.

And yesterday, July 20, was Moon Day, commemorating mankind's first tentative steps on another world (our own Moon). As mentioned in Friday's post, we gave up on the Moon in 1972 -- haven't been back since. The American Space Shuttle program, which ferried astronauts to and from Low Earth Orbit, was itself abandoned two years ago today, on July 21, 2011, when the Shuttle Atlantis touched down in Florida at the end of STS-135.

Come to think of it, maybe we should reconsider this evolution thing. We seem to be going backwards....

Another gloomy Moon Day

Cross-posted from The Blog of Days.

It was on July 20, 44 years ago, that a human being first left footprints on a heavenly body other than Earth. Thus, Saturday, July 20 is Moon Day.

It's a bittersweet occasion. Neil Armstrong has passed away since we observed Moon Day 2012 (he died last August 25) and Buzz Aldrin is 83. It is now 41 years and counting since anyone has been to the Moon. Here's the complete list (complete with links to Wikipedia entries on each astronaut and mission):

	Name	Mission	EVA dates
1	Neil Armstrong	Apollo 11	July 20, 1969
2	Buzz Aldrin
3	Pete Conrad	Apollo 12	November 19-20, 1969
4	Alan Bean
5	Alan Shepard	Apollo 14	February 5-6, 1971
6	Edgar Mitchell
7	David Scott	Apollo 15	July 31–August 2, 1971
8	James Irwin
9	John W. Young	Apollo 16	April 21-23, 1972
10	Charles Duke
11	Eugene Cernan	Apollo 17	December 11-14, 1972
12	Harrison Schmitt

In all the years since, we've flown no higher than the International Space Station. Yes, it is a remarkable achievement to build even a small outpost that's technically in Outer Space -- but the ISS is in Low Earth Orbit -- it's just camping in Earth's backyard compared to the wonders that lie before us.

There are two Americans in the six-person crew currently on board the International Space Station (this crew is referred to as Expedition 36). One of these is Karen L. Nyberg, a PhD in mechanical engineering, currently serving as a flight engineer aboard the station. Dr. Nyberg is pictured at right. The other is CDR Christopher J. Cassidy, USN. An Italian and three Russians, including Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov, round out the current crew.

Our astronauts get to and from the space station these days by hitching a ride with the Russians.

Saturday. Moon Day.

What went wrong?

Curiosity travels millions of miles, finds litter

Well, this has been an unfocused week here at Second Effort: A family story, a computer gripe, personal angst, and outrage at the Taliban. How can we tie this all up, neat and tidy, for a Friday?

Well, we can't.

So we'll change the subject -- again....

This artist's concept, obtained from the Huffington Post,
shows the rover Curiosity, of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission,
as it uses its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument to investigate
the composition of a rock surface.

You're looking at an artist's depiction of NASA's Mars Rover, Curiosity, as it rolls around the Martian landscape testing rocks and looking for signs of life.

This isn't an actual photo, of course, because -- at least as far as we know -- there's no one there to snap the rover's picture.

But we have to hedge here. The Huffington Post is reporting that Curiosity has found a "shiny object" in one of its first probes of the Martian surface. Herewith the object:

No, take a look again. You'll see it. There's a speck here that clearly does not match the surrounding dirt.

The linked HuffPost article says NASA scientists are not yet ready to say what the speck is -- but they're pretty sure it didn't fall off the rover or the lander that brought the rover to the surface. It appears, they say, to be of Martian origin.

Some dumb Martian may have left a gum wrapper behind. Littering may be a universal constant. But did Blxrrszt leave that there recently... or many millions of years ago?

Or maybe it's a piece of plastic from an ancient Martian landfill. That stuff never breaks down, does it?

Here is a story to watch with great interest.

But in the meantime, does anyone else notice the similarity between Curiosity and these two Hollywood space robots?














Johnny 5 from Short Circuit and WALL-E from, well, Pixar's WALL-E, bear a distinct resemblance to NASA's Curiosity, don't you think? Is this an accident? I think not.

Feeling a little gloomy on Moon Day

I'm putting up the post that I put up today on The Blog of Days here too. I hope you make visiting The Blog of Days a regular part of your online experience -- there's something new there every single day -- and (unlike this blog) the entries over there tend to be much shorter.

It was on this day, 43 years ago, that a human being first left footprints on a heavenly body other than Earth. Thus, today is Moon Day.

I'm just finding it hard to celebrate. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are old men now -- not yet as old as John Glenn (I hope you did celebrate his birthday this week) but it's 40 years and counting since anyone has been to the Moon. Here's the complete list (complete with links to Wikipedia entries on each astronaut and mission):

	Name	Mission	EVA dates
1	Neil Armstrong	Apollo 11	July 20, 1969
2	Buzz Aldrin
3	Pete Conrad	Apollo 12	November 19-20, 1969
4	Alan Bean
5	Alan Shepard	Apollo 14	February 5-6, 1971
6	Edgar Mitchell
7	David Scott	Apollo 15	July 31–August 2, 1971
8	James Irwin
9	John W. Young	Apollo 16	April 21-23, 1972
10	Charles Duke
11	Eugene Cernan	Apollo 17	December 11-14, 1972
12	Harrison Schmitt

In all the years since, we've flown no higher than the International Space Station. Yes, it is a remarkable achievement to build even a small outpost that's technically in Outer Space -- but the ISS is in Low Earth Orbit -- it's just camping in Earth's backyard compared to the wonders that lie before us.

You probably didn't know this, but a new crew just arrived on the Space Station -- launched from Kazakhstan on July 14. Yes, the new crew includes one American, CAPT Sunita L. Williams, U.S.N. Williams flew to the Space Station from Russia because we have no operational manned spacecraft in the United States today.

Today. Moon Day.

What went wrong?

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OK, that's the end of today's Blog of Days post... but I wanted to give Second Effort Readers something extra... even if, this morning, it's not original.

I saw this cartoon on Zach Weiner's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal a week or so ago. Substitute "manned space program" for "large particle colliders" and you'll have a pretty good idea of what I wish I could say to all those people who say "we have to solve our problems on Earth first before we venture into space...."

An old quasi-fanboy regrets the reception that John Carter's received

When I was a boy I devoured the Tarzan books of my fellow Chicagoan, Edgar Rice Burroughs. From Tarzan, I graduated to Burroughs' thrilling stories of dying Barsoom, of Captain John Carter and his beautiful Martian princes, Dejah Thoris of Helium. Burroughs could buckle some serious swash.

I don't know if I read every single one of Burroughs' Barsoom stories, but I read a bunch, and more than enough to catch the references and bouquets tossed Burroughs' way through the years by later sci-fi authors. And Burroughs inspired scientists, too: Carl Sagan, I learn this morning, had a poster-size map of Barsoom outside his office at Cornell.

A few years ago, I bought a compilation of Burroughs' Mars stories from Barnes and Noble and reacquainted myself with the stories. (Barnes & Noble will sometimes repackage and republish books that have finally fallen into the public domain. It took me awhile to figure this out.) I didn't feel cheated. I still thoroughly enjoyed the stories.

You can as well, and you don't have to pay for them: Many of the Barsoom stories are now in the public domain and available online for free download to your iPad, Kindle or Nook.

If the books were still being published -- and if they were graphic novels or comic books instead of actual books -- and if I were 30 or 40 years younger -- if all those things were so, I'd probably be considered almost a "fanboy" of the Burroughs series. (Fanboy, for those of you as old, or older, than I, refers to a certain type of juvenile who obsesses over some geeky series -- Star Wars, for example. It is often used in a derogatory sense, describing in particular one who greatly overdoes his affection, whose devotion to the fictional Obi-Wan Kenobi trumps any relationship he should have, or might have had, with an actual living human.)

I'm not taping any fake arms to my shoulder blades, nor do I plan to at any time in the foreseeable future, but I did watch the commercials for the John Carter movie with great interest and hope. I was encouraged by the fact that a Pixar veteran, Andrew Stanton, was directing. Pixar is another word for quality, as far as I'm concerned.

Thus it was that I eagerly opened Roger Ebert's tweet to his review of John Carter last Thursday.

And then I was disappointed.

Ebert didn't like the movie.

He didn't hate it either, but he didn't recommend it.

I bought the Sun-Times Friday morning hoping against hope that he might have changed his mind for the printed review. (I'm not sure that real fanboys even know what newspapers are. Except maybe Superman fanboys, since Clark Kent still -- I think -- toils for the Daily Planet. Right?)

But Ebert didn't change his mind. And it was a busy weekend at home -- shortened by the time change on top of everything else -- and I couldn't get Long Suffering Spouse to come with me to see the show.

This morning I hear that John Carter made "only" $30.6 million this weekend, finishing second in the weekend box office sweeps to The Lorax. Because John Carter supposedly had a $250 million budget, this opening is being interpreted as not just disappointing, but devastating. John Carter is being compared to Ishtar in some circles.

Well, I still want to see the movie. And I hope it builds at the box office.

Historian Gingrich wants to go to the Moon

At one of the recent Florida debates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to shamelessly pander to the significant segment of recently-unemployed Shuttle Program employees in the Sunshine State by suggesting that the U.S. should set up a lunar colony immediately. (Space program jobs for Florida! Yippee!)

Going back to the Moon, and establishing permanent bases there, is certainly a policy I support -- so, therefore, I must support Historian Gingrich's White House bid, right?

Oh, puleeeze.

Historian Gingrich doesn't mean it -- he said it only in hopes of grabbing a couple of votes in tomorrow's Florida primary. If he survives the Florida primary, the lunar idea will be conveniently shelved as he moves on toward Super Tuesday.

If, somehow, Historian Gingrich were actually nominated and elected, the plan would not be revived.

And if, somehow, the idea were revived, President-Historian Gingrich would find it unpopular, even among his fellow Republicans. Mitt Romney was, predictably, against the idea. Ron Paul, at least, got off a good line by stating that he would not want a full-fledged colony, but he could think of certain politicians he'd like to send to the Moon.

The future of this country is out-of-this-world. This is a frontier nation; we urgently need a new frontier. We've expanded from sea-to-shining-sea (much to the chagrin of most of our original inhabitants -- although they are slowly getting even with us, one slot machine at a time....)

We've expanded from sea-to-shining-sea and there's nowhere to go but Up. President Kennedy knew that that the space program wasn't about a handful of votes in one state's primary, but about our entire nation's destiny, about the dreams and aspirations of our restless people, bottled up in our increasingly crowded and regimented cities -- he knew we need new places to boldly go.

But Newtie won't take us there; nor has he any intention of really trying.

I imagine President Obama must pinch himself every morning, trying to reassure himself that he is really awake: With the economy still in the dumpster, our out-of-control national debt, our crumbling infrastructure, the stalemate in Congress, his poor personal polling numbers -- with all these negatives, he can't be other than thrilled beyond measure with the likely Republican opposition in November. And when President Obama kneels down at night by his Presidential four-poster, saying his evening prayers, I am sure that he includes a fervent prayer of thanksgiving for the Good Lord sending him Historian Gingrich.

I don't know why this doesn't dominate conversation either

(This image taken from Yahoo! Comics. Arlo and Janis
appears locally in the Chicago Sun-Times.)

No less an authority than Steven Hawking states, "I think the human race doesn't have a future if it doesn't go into space." Yet only comic strip artists and Curmudgeons talk about it.

How sad.

When can we go? Kepler Space Telescope finds potentially habitable planet

(Obtained from Space.com.)

OK, so Kepler 22-b is 600 light years away. And we'll have to get the marketing department to come up with a better name.

But Mike Wall of Science.com writes in an article posted today on Yahoo! News, "If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius)."

I'm ready to leave tomorrow. Do you suppose the neighbors will be friendly?

Probe Finds Large Amount of Water on Moon

ABC News is reporting that the probe that NASA recently crashed into the Moon splashed up a lot more water than expected -- enough that humans might be able to set up a base inside the crater with hot and cold running water -- all locally produced.

Can we go back now?

Obama cancels moon program; Iran launches another satellite-carrying rocket

Another generation will pass away -- at least -- before more Americans walk where Buzz Aldrin once briefly trod.

That's the intended consequence of President Obama's proposed cuts in NASA's budget. According to Joel Achenbach's February 1 article in the Washington Post, "the administration effectively plans to kill the Constellation program that called for a return to the moon by 2020. The budget, expected to increase slightly over the current $18.7 billion, is also a death knell for the Ares 1 rocket, NASA's planned successor to the space shuttle."

Budget proposals are sometimes overridden: In a recession Congress gets mighty testy about cutting back programs that will cost jobs in the districts of powerful members. That's the response focused on by the AP's Jay Reeves in this article, from today's Chicago Tribune.

Stopping development on Ares not only means losing jobs in the near future; it means that the billions that NASA has already spent on the project were wasted.

The Washington Post says that the Obama budget "will call for spending $6 billion over five years to develop a commercial spacecraft that could taxi astronauts into low Earth orbit. Going commercial with a human crew would represent a dramatic change in the way NASA does business. Instead of NASA owning the spacecraft and overseeing every nut and bolt of its design and construction, a private company would design and build the spacecraft with NASA looking over its shoulder." In this vision, NASA would evolve into an FAA and/or an NTSB for rocketships.

As visions go, this is a pretty good one. But... is it overly optimistic on the basis of today's technology?

That depends, apparently, on whether you're a candidate for the proposed "seed money" that the Feds may sprinkle over aspiring aerospace contractors. Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin is quoted in Achenbach's article as saying, "One day it will be like commercial airline travel, just not yet.... It's like 1920. Lindbergh hasn't flown the Atlantic, and they're trying to sell 747s to Pan Am." Griffin is opposed to abandoning NASA's return to the moon. But, Achenbach writes, "John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said the critics underestimate the maturity of the commercial sector." But Mr. Gedmark represents the folks who would be the beneficiaries of federal largesse.

My own opinion is that we're still in the Lewis and Clark stage of spaceflight: Right now, we are trudging through the wilderness, looking but not staying. When we set up permanent installations, like frontier forts, in orbit and beyond, commercial enterprises will scramble to set up trading posts... and tourism... and manufacturing.... The Russians are already bringing the occasional tourist to the International Space Station.

But America had better wake up to the fact that if we don't claim the high ground of outer space, others will.

And we may not be real pleased with who we see up on the hills when we wake up one morning.

Case in point: Iran launched another rocket yesterday, this one carrying animals, according to an article yesterday by Adam Gambett in the Guardian. The British newspaper article notes that the Iranians also launched a satellite into orbit last year on February 3, the 30th anniversary of the 1979 revolution. (See, linked Guardian article from February 3, 2009.)

Yesterday's flight was apparently sub-orbital (the capsule containing the small animal passengers was allegedly returned safely to Earth). But if Iran can put a satellite into orbit, it can also put a warhead on the surface. Anywhere on the surface.

America was very careful, in the Cold War era, not to goad the Soviets into militarizing outer space. Our astronauts generally were career military officers -- but we were careful to stress the civilian control of NASA and our peaceful intentions in reaching for the stars. The Soviets may have been unpleasant, but they weren't crazy: They knew we could militarize space if they did, so they didn't either.

Meanwhile, in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launches satellites and tries to build nuclear weapons. And he's crazy as a loon. The Soviets -- as logical atheists who didn't believe in a next world -- were understandably chary about blowing up this one. Ahmadinejad, though, has a well-known "penchant for Shia eschatology," repeatedly claiming "to be personally guided by the Mahdi, the prophesised messiah of Islam." (Quotes from this essay, posted on Al Jazeera.) The Mahdi is the 12th, or "Hidden" Imam, who, though born in 868 A.D., is still living and will return at the End of Days (with Jesus, by the way) to establish justice in the world.

Do you think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will show any restraint... if gets the opportunity... about militarizing space?

We don't have to launch orbital nuclear platforms to stop Ahmadinejad. We don't need lasers or bombs. We just have to be there first. We have to hold the high ground.

Best one sentence review of Avatar

I wish I could take credit for this one, but I heard it from my son-in-law:

Avatar: Ferngully meets Dances With Wolves.

This is not a knock against the movie. I saw it this weekend in 3D and enjoyed it immensely. The indispensable Roger Ebert compared Avatar to the original Star Wars in his review. The comparison is appropriate: Like Lucas in 1977, James Cameron has stretched technology in remarkable ways in order to create a wonderful new world.

Pandora is so breathtakingly beautiful, in fact, that we don't mind the derivative plot, which here is a not-very-thinly disguised Halliburton vs. Noble Savages morality play. Guess who Mr. Cameron is rooting for? We don't even mind that a key plot point involves mountains floating in mid-air (a nod to Flash Gordon, presumably?) or that the mineral that the Earthpeople want to extract from Pandora is called "unobtainium."

Like the original Star Wars, Avatar will long retain the power to transport the people who saw it in first run to a wonderful place -- even after the technology that made it possible becomes commonplace. But one also hopes that Mr. Cameron will learn from Mr. Lucas' experience with Star Wars: No matter how much we loved Avatar, that doesn't mean that we'd be interested in a prequel.

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By the way, the human behind the beautiful blue Princess Neytiri is Zoe Saldana -- who played Lt. Uhura in last summer's Star Trek remake.

The real news in the manned space program is an RFP

In government-speak, an RFP is a request for proposals -- which means some bureaucrat has money to spend and is searching for someone on whom to bestow a contract.

I saw this story on Yahoo! News almost three weeks ago (and the link was still good this evening): The link would take you to a Reuters story by Irene Klotz who wrote "NASA plans to use $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger transportation service to space." NASA is already spending $500 million "to help two U.S. firms, Space Exploration Technologies, a privately held company known as SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp, develop rockets and capsules to deliver cargo to the station," Klotz writes.

These are good signs even if, as SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk told Reuters, "Fifty million is [only] what it costs for one seat on the (Russian) Soyuz."

The Old West wasn't privatized in a day, either. True, before the Revolution, settlers poured through the Cumberland Gap and settled Kentucky. No government action was involved in that at all; the British Government actually forbade these settlements at one point -- and several of our own Founding Fathers were hoping to make a killing on land claims from the Crown that were being settled out from under them. But, later, as the new American government staked its claim to the Northwest Territory and, later, the Louisiana Purchase, by building frontier forts, contracts had to be let so that supplies could be provided for the garrisons. Some of the suppliers settled in around the forts, or paved the way for others so to do and private enterprise began to take over from the government.

So, too, it may be with space exploration?

Well, the Space Truck is flying again: STS-128 is docked at the International Space Station, on day two of a planned 13 day mission. This latest launch of Shuttle Discovery probably didn't register on most people. But these flights are beginning to wind down now... and it's time... long past time, really... to take the next step into Space.

24 hours before the 40th anniversary of man's first steps on another world

Here's the list, straight from Wikipedia of the only men to walk on the Moon:

	Name	Mission	EVA dates
1	Neil Armstrong	Apollo 11	July 20, 1969
2	Buzz Aldrin
3	Pete Conrad	Apollo 12	November 19-20, 1969
4	Alan Bean
5	Alan Shepard	Apollo 14	February 5-6, 1971
6	Edgar Mitchell
7	David Scott	Apollo 15	July 31–August 2, 1971
8	James Irwin
9	John W. Young	Apollo 16	April 21-23, 1972
10	Charles Duke
11	Eugene Cernan	Apollo 17	December 11-14, 1972
12	Harrison Schmitt

Since December 14, 1972 -- nearly 37 years ago -- no man or woman from any nation has set foot on the Lunar surface. In fact, no one has left low Earth orbit in that time.

We've accomplished much in the last 40 years: We have personal computers far more sophisticated than the computers available to our lunar astronauts. We have HDTV and blogs and and Facebook and Tweeter and energy drinks. We have microwave ovens. We have an African-American in the White House. We've had two women, and will soon have a third, on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But in this singularly important regard, we've accomplished nothing.

Not a particularly happy anniversary so far as I'm concerned.

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If you've read this far, you may also be interested in this essay, Space: Is the final frontier all it used to be? by AP Writer Ted Anthony. An excerpt:

"At the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken, and unrestraint is triumphant." So said Frederick Jackson Turner, the 19th-century historian whose ideas showed Americans how important their frontier experience was to them.

"I wanted to be a spaceman — that's what I wanted to be. But now that I am a spaceman, nobody cares about me." So sang Harry Nilsson, the musician who in 1972 channeled the changing feelings about space exploration in this country.

Today, somewhere between those two absurdly different ideas, sits America's attitude about space.

America needs its attitude toward space exploration adjusted -- or it will be left in the dustbin of history by more vigorous Asian cultures.

Older Daughter's wedding, the Moon landing, and advice for Mr. Obama

We've been rehashing my daughter's wedding this week here at Second Effort, and I've told a few long-winded stories already, and I hope to spin a few more before (a) the topic is exhausted or (b) Oldest Son gets married next year, but for today I just want to focus on one scrap of conversation I picked up while hopping from table to table at the reception.

The conversation at this table had turned to the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Moon landing. My friend Steve observed that, if the opportunity presented itself, his 80-something father-in-law would climb on board a rocket in a minute. Steve's wife agreed, adding that she still resents being dragged into the den for every mission launch when she was a kid. "I can't stand to watch that stuff even today," she added with some emphasis.

I hadn't thought of this. President Kennedy inspired a whole generation of men and women to reach for the stars -- and some of these men and women turned their kids off to space forever by 'forcing' them to watch it on TV. Some of those one-time kids are running the country today.

I suppose it's human nature. People like to decide things for themselves. And kids in particular are not always inclined to share their parents' views. In fact, like Steve's wife, a lot of young people tend to rebel against things their parents think important.

The 40th anniversary of man's first lunar landing precedes by only a few months the 37th anniversary of man's last lunar landing. The first anniversary would be so much more meaningful if the second anniversary did not exist.

It's long past time to inspire a new generation. Mr. Obama has his hands full, of course, with the recession and other matters. He's been trying to "stimulate" the economy back into smooth operation with costly public works programs. But these tend to be highway projects or other infrastructure projects -- too long deferred, perhaps, but subject to criticism because they don't move us forward toward new, more energy-efficient modes of transportation or other, greener technologies.

And there's even some argument, among Mr. Obama's own supporters, as to whether the stimulus has worked. One of his long-time boosters, a Mr. Buffett of Omaha, Nebraska (you may have heard of him), has suggested that, in fact, a second stimulus package may be necessary.

I have just the thing. Mr. Obama can announce that we are going to colonize the Moon -- and land an expedition on Mars. He can even paraphrase President Kennedy's September 12, 1962 speech at Rice University in his announcement:

We choose to go to Mars before the end of the next decade and do the other things, like colonizing the Moon, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

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Photo obtained from Yahoo! News; Mr. Kennedy's actual Rice University speech is quoted in this Wikipedia article.

Discovery launches; Bellwood native commanding

Shuttle Discovery took off from Florida last night, climbing into low Earth orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station.

This time, America's Space Truck is under the command of Air Force Col. Lee Archambault, pictured at left, a native of the near-west Chicago suburb of Bellwood and a graduate of Proviso West High School. The mission has two major goals, first, to deliver Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to the space station and, second, to deliver and install the "S6 truss" to the station. According to NASA, "The S6 truss will complete the backbone of the station and provide one-fourth of the total power needed to support a crew of six." The truss will support energy-generating solar panels. The STS-119 Mission Summary (which you can access by following the NASA link in the preceding sentence) also advises that the shuttle crew will also "replace a failed unit for a system that converts urine to potable water."

This last task in particular may not seem glamorous, but this 'ultimate recycling' is of vital import if human exploration of space is ever going to really begin.

At this point, for all of our Shuttle launches, we are still playing in Mother Earth's back yard. Once we went to the Moon -- Col. Archambault grew up, he said, carefully following the career of another Bellwood native, Eugene Cernan, one of only a dozen men ever -- so far -- to have walked on the Lunar surface. But that is like a toddler walking to the corner -- and coming straight back. As a species, we've yet to cross a 'busy street.'

And Mother Earth's back yard is getting crowded, too. The space station recently had to be moved to avoid a piece of floating space debris. The Chicago Tribune reports this morning that the station may have to move again in order to avoid a chunk of a disintegrated Russian satellite.

If Col. Archambault's mission seems a little prosaic, the fault does not lie with him or his brave crew. The fault lies with our short-sighted leaders who hold back men and women with the vision and drive to reach for the planets and, some day, for the stars.

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The crew and mission patch of STS-119 (click to enlarge):

Magnetic field failures and mass extinctions

You were probably feeling too jolly about now anyway. Let's grim things up a little with this article from Discovery News which posits a link between a weakening of the Earth's magnetic field and the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, when 90 percent of life on the planet was wiped out.

I don't like the odds.

Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo suggests that a weakening magnetic field allowed increasing amounts of cosmic radiation to reach the Earth, breaking nitrogen atoms into ions that formed seeds to create huge cloud masses and massive global cooling. This catastrophe was put in motion by "a plume of super-hot material" that began rising from the Earth's core. It was the movement of this plume toward the surface weakened the Earth's magnetic field, according to the article.

When the plume reached the surface, it became three supervolcanoes. From the article:

On their own they were too small to do much harm, but together Isozaki thinks they cooled the climate even further, launching an extinction as bad as the one that would kill the dinosaurs 185 million years later.

This didn't happen overnight: The sequence so far took around five million years to complete. The really massive die-off came 10 million years later. Isozaki thinks this, too, was a consequence of the plume.

Other scientists disagree. According to the Discover News article, Gregory Retallack of the University of Oregon agrees that the first extinction event was bad -- killing as many as two-thirds of all species -- but thinks there was a recovery before the really massive die-off. The apparent recovery between the two events apparently diminishes the likelihood that the extinction events are causally linked.

I'm not at all sure that's comforting.

Anyway, the deterioration of the Earth's magnetic field was not a one-time-only event. Wikipedia's article on geomagnetic reversal suggests that the field is deteriorating right now, and the rate of deterioration has accelerated in recent years. On the other hand, "The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks." Also, the Earth's magnetic field "has gone up and down in the past with no apparent rhyme or reason."

Ah, well. The point is, Al Gore can make us curb all our hydrocarbon emissions but if the Earth's magnetic field flips on us, we all might die anyway. It's flipped before and will flip again.

Life on Earth has only a precarious hold. As large as our home planet is, it is still a speck in the cosmic order of things. And our planet changes over time -- always has, always will. Who are we smug humans to think we can arrest the planet's natural course? Why our we so arrogant to assume that our pollution will cause more than a blip in the natural course of the planet?

As a species, we really should be thinking about Plan B, don't you think? We need to start boldly going: In nature, dispersal is recognized as a really good survival strategy.

Math teachers need tutors? No wonder our kids' math education doesn't add up

Yes, I'm off on a math tirade again, but at least I've given you a cartoon to look at (Stumbled upon here).

Of course, the cartoon is funnier if you remember, even dimly, your lessons about imaginary numbers and irrational numbers.

Some primary school teachers in the Washington, D.C. area apparently had so much trouble remembering much simpler concepts (like whether 43 is greater than 23) that their school districts have hired math tutors to tutor the teachers.

So writes Michael Alison Chandler in Thursday's Washington Post. Specifically, Chandler writes:

Arlington County and Alexandria have at least one part-time math specialist in every elementary school, and Fairfax County has more than 70 in elementary or middle schools. Montgomery County has "math content coaches" in about 50 elementary schools; Prince George's County has 20 coaches; and traditional D.C. public schools have 50. Many math specialists in the area work in high-poverty schools and are funded by the federal government. Other positions are paid for locally and subject to budget pressures.

Long Suffering Spouse heard a story along these lines this morning over the radio here in Chicago. I don't know if the report she heard was inspired by Chandler's article or involved schools in the Chicago area. I couldn't find a story online concerning this topic other than Chandler's.

But the issue Chandler writes about is certainly not confined to the Washington, D.C. area: College students training to be teachers have very few math requirements.

Look: If our kids' grammar school teachers don't know basic algebra (and in some cases, apparently, don't grasp even the most basic math concepts) is it any wonder that our grammar school graduates can't place out of high school Algebra I?

I know I sound like the hysterical yuppie parent who frets his kid won't get into Harvard because he didn't secure a "place" in the "right" pre-school.

But this is for real: To get as far as Calculus in high school, kids must either place out of Algebra I as freshmen or be allowed to double up later on, as I was allowed to double up with Geometry and Algebra II as a high school sophomore, more than 35 years ago. It is the vanishingly small number of kids who take high school Calculus from which our dwindling pool of American-born engineers is drawn.

This is the future of our country at stake. We must demand more rigorous math standards in our schools.

Math scores, moon shots, and the decline of America

Isn't that a beautiful shot?

It's a photo of a space capsule returning safely today to Earth. One of those on board was American video game designer Richard Garriott, son of retired American Astronaut Owen Garriott.

How wonderful is that: A son following his father into space! So how does this illustrate the decline of America?

The photo comes from China Daily. You can follow the link to coverage on that site, or this link to Steve Gutterman's AP story published in today's Chicago Tribune. If you do, you will find out that the capsule is a Russian Soyuz TMA-12, landing on the steppes of north-central Kazakhstan. Young Mr. Garriott had to pay for his ride.

It's been a terrible week to be an American -- at least if you're an American who hopes for a bright future in this country. India launched its first lunar mission this week. Chandrayaan-1 left a couple of months later than expected -- last September I wrote that the launch was expected in March or April of this year.

But it's underway now. The first link in the preceding paragraph will take you to the Chicago Tribune story marking this world-shaking event. Now, as a registered Curmudgeon, I still read paper copies of newspapers. The Chicago Tribune still has pretensions of being the newspaper of record in Chicago and the Midwest. And do you know where this story ran in our local newspaper of record? Page 10. In a roughly four column-inch hole.

There was another space-related article opposite, on page 11: NASA, it seems, is whining about "unfounded criticism" of its Shuttle replacement program. Jay Reeves' AP story cites a recent NASA report about decreased morale and fear of budget strangulation at NASA. Yet, he writes, "NASA plans to fly a test version of the Ares rocket in late spring or early summer and retire the space shuttle in 2010. The first missions are scheduled for 2015."

We are giving up the sky for at least five years. I have no confidence that we'll ever get it back.

Why? Because of stories like this one, by Dave Newbart, in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times. Our public schools are turning out kids who know no more mathematics than their counterparts in Third World countries. "Although CPS [Chicago Public Schools] math scores have improved since 2003," Newbart writes, "fourth-graders still tested worse than all but Cleveland and Washington, D.C., in the United States. Just 13 percent of CPS eighth-graders were proficient in math, putting them on par with students in countries such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Jordan and Macedonia" -- close to the level of students in Slovenia and Armenia and "far below economic competitors such as Singapore, Japan and Taiwan."

Newbart didn't mention India. But he didn't have to, did he? India is going to the Moon. America is going into steep decline.

It doesn't have to be like this. We can make specific, practical demands of our highly ossified education establishment. As I wrote earlier this month, junior high kids need to place out of freshman Algebra I in order to be eligible to take Calculus in high school. Kids who take Calculus in high school have a chance to become engineers. They are the ones who will develop the technologies that will get us back into Space.

Not interested in Space? More interested in "global warming"? Well, who the heck do you think is going to reverse "global warming" -- if it is really caused by humans and not part of the natural cycle of Earth's weather? Al Gore? Al Gore will stretch his mighty tax policy and carbon credits across the land and we will be saved?

Who will save us from high oil prices? Sure gas prices are "down" now -- the cheapest around my house is at $3.19 for regular unleaded as of last night and the national average is down below $3.00 -- but how long will this last? Will tax policies save us from dependence on foreign oil?

We need engineers. We need scientists. We need researchers. We need Algebra I in our junior highs and Calculus in our high schools.

And it has to be real math -- not dumbed down so everybody passes and feels good about themselves.

I don't want my grandchildren to feel good about themselves if it means their grandchildren will be reduced to hunter-gatherers.

I will give you one real-life example in closing. As you may recall, my Long Suffering Spouse teaches in a Chicago Catholic grammar school. Our test scores are lots better than the comparable average CPS scores. But, just the other day, one of my wife's colleagues was fuming. My wife's colleague teaches 8th grade algebra and she discovered, to her dismay, that her kids could not solve problems like this:

5¼ - 2¾ = ?

You'll note: No tricky x's or y's to fool the kids -- no need even to convert quarters to eighths or anything like that.

And her students couldn't do this.

Now she has to go back and address this deficiency when she should be trying to get all or at least some of her pupils to place out of Algebra I in high school. The students' self-esteem is wonderful... but their chances for success in technical fields is already -- at the age of 12 or 13 or 14 -- in serious peril.

Moon shots and math scores are related. Energy dependence and math scores are related. Green technologies and math scores are related. Wake up, America, while yet there's time.

On Columbus Day, in praise of discovery

When I was a boy we were taught that Columbus' voyages, and the other expeditions of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, and later of the Dutch and the English, were epic, inspirational tales. We learned it was an Age of Discovery, as European eyes were opened to the wonders and the riches of a new and unimagined world.

It has since become fashionable to rethink all this. The Conquistadors were cruel exploiters, robbers, brigands, destroyers of indigenous peoples. Later settlers were invaders, despoilers. Berkeley, California, in fact, does not observe Columbus Day at all: Today, according to its civic calendar, is Indigenous Peoples Day.

Both narratives are too simple. Yes, the first explorers brought death and destruction to the native populations... but the worst devastation was wrought, not by weaponry or military force, but by accident. By forces neither the explorers nor the indigenous peoples were able to understand: Microbes. The result would have been the same if the Spaniards arrived as willing pupils, eager to respect and admire the indigenous cultures.

If Charles C. Mann's 1491 (reviewed on Second Effort at this post) is correct, Indian populations in North and South America alike were far greater at the outset of the Age of Discovery than when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. What early settlers thought of as a pristine wilderness was really a graveyard, peopled by a bare remnant. (Remember Squanto, whose timely assistance saved the Pilgrims? He had escaped English captivity only to return to a home that no longer existed. His people had been wiped out by disease.)

The pre-Columbian indigenous peoples of North and South America tamed nature in ways that Western science is only now beginning to understand and appreciate -- but they were not superior beings ready to ascend to an astral plane. They were people. They quarreled, they fought wars; in some cultures they practiced human sacrifice, sometimes on an almost industrial scale. The Aztecs would never have been defeated by the handful of Spanish soldiers who opposed them, even with the Spaniards' superior technologies. The Conquistadors would themselves have been easily conquered but for the fact that they recruited huge numbers of their own as they marched through the countryside -- willing allies, not subjugated slaves, a truly popular rising to throw off their cruel Aztec masters.

Spanish subjugation came later.

It is too simple, then, to say that the Age of Discovery was only "Good" or only "Bad." There was tragedy as well as triumph. But from this often painful fusion of the Old World and the New, came America, the hope of the world.

Today the whole world is mapped. Spy satellites can read license plates in parking lots and direct missiles down chimneys. Still, we don't entirely understand our world. We know the climate is changing because we've learned that the world's climate has always changed, over time. We reason that our own activities are having on impact on change currently, even if we disagree on how much or what kind. Or whether a particular observed change is the product of a global phenomenon or a purely local one.

Of course, we only have this one example to work with -- even though God has provided us with a seemingly limitless number of stars and planets for us to discover and explore.

Some day, far in an unimaginable future, we may encounter a planet with indigenous sentient beings (even the Vatican acknowledges the possibility). My hope is that we remember what we have learned from the tragedies of our past Age of Discovery and apply those lessons for the benefit of ourselves and those whom we may encounter alike.

And, in the immediate future, as we explore our own backyard, and see how other planets work close up, perhaps we can learn more, too, about the operation of our own. But only if we overcome our new prejudice against discovery and exploration.

Happy Columbus Day.