BA Blog: My NASA OpEd in the New York Post

From the opinion:

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You know, a good friend of mine messaged me the other day to tell me about this awesome science blog he'd just discovered. Did I know about it? This Phil Plait guy?

Phil, I think you're absolutely right, and let's keep our fingers crossed that People in High Places (and not just the ISS) pay attention.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think we have to keep the message simple, for leaders to remember it (they don't know much about science after all).

Here is the message.

Bring Back Mike Griffin. You might not like his plan--but he HAS a plan. For too long shuttle replacement (and in-house engineering) has been stymied by Goldin era stagnation.

OSP was killed--New Horizons launched.
X-33 killed (rightfully)--Webb is built
NASP, X-34, X-38 all hatcheted, but we have Spirit and Opp.

We need pro-engineer types to push simpler rugged LV development the way Brunel did with shipbuilding.

we need to explore and have more adventures to keep chasing the dream.

DREAMS CAN COME TRUE

if we have the nuts .....as a good friend use to say...your just a squirrel in my world looking for a nut.

now that's pure xtasy

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it shows you how much i know....not much i guess----"sohhfly"

Hear, hear!

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

If it's so difficult to find someone to replace him... don't!

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Well, yes, but if I don't like it, what do I care? (I'm not saying I don't, mind; I don't know enough one way or the other to say. I'm just pointing out the logical error.) Isn't it better to sit still than go in the wrong direction? Wouldn't that take more work--and more money and so forth?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

No--sitting still doesn't solve anything. Griffin actually restored science funding--and 'countermanded' O'Grief's 'no-Hubble-repair' mandate.

And that is why our friend Hubble is fixed now. Now according to some--such a risky repair was a 'wrong decision.'

But we have a great observatory ready to do good science once again because we did not sit still, like a blade of grass....waiting to be CUT.

I personally think he did a very good job, but there's one guy on SpaceVidcast who absolutely HATES Dr. Griffin. If they brought him back, I'm worried that guy's head might explode.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

But what if--and this is not, if you think about it, unlikely--you think the money will be spent in the wrong way, a way that does not advance space science? What if you think he's going about it the wrong way? What are the odds that they'll do things the way you want any time soon if they've invested a lot of infrastructure in the other way?

I'm all for advancing science, and I have no horse in this race. I'm just saying that "even if you don't like him, he's better than person-to-be-named" is faulty logic.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

What I don't get is that we are spending billions and billions and billions on bailing out banks, car companies, etc. that screwed up, but they want to short NASA by 3 billion. I doesn't make any sense.

Been tellin' yah But yes, it does seem strange. Politics..

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Here's my op-ed:

From the original Augustine report:

"The Committee, chaired by Martin Marietta chief Norman Augustine, also called for development of a new heavy lift vehicle and a phasing out of the Space Shuttle..."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-9227968.html http://www.safesimplesoon.com/heavylift.htm

Gee now that sounds familiar--rather like Ares V and Constellation doesn't it? http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/co...esV/index.html

Norm--I expect you to stick with your original statment--and not sell out to the EELV lobby that even Elon Musk questions with regard to astronaut safety: Depressed Trajectory

Mr. President, you already have your Augustine report. Mike Griffin's VSE as advocated by Norm himself the better part of two decades ago.

If you try to put a fix in this latest iteration--we will all see it for what it is--a way to pay for your bank bailouts at the expense of NASA. Ares V is going to keep high paying NASA jobs in Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana (Michould), where taxpayers will remember who cut them. Also, the bluest counties in Florida are on/in the Space Coast:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

--remember that come your re-election bid, Mr President. We are watching.


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Let Norm and others know what you think.

www.whitehouse.gov


http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...r_augusti.html

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...9675#msg399675

The best-of-both nominee; Mr. Bailout, Neel Kashkari! ETA:
May 23, 2009
Obama to Tap Bolden as NASA Administrator

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*

I don't want to tread too lightly but what I get is that: (through my observation of history)-- ever since we discovered and started to exploit the "black gold" of Titusville PA -- the country and world as a whole is more driven in the direction of a self-absorbance and personal acquisition, and subsequently greed that-- in the end everyone "has a proverbial dime dropped upon them"

I, 100% --- agree with Dr Plait's stance-- we do need to step out of our little (soon to be ever more polluted, and climate-challenged) blue dot. Although only select few have ever gone into orbit or gone to the Moon---the wisdom gleaned from their experiences should be heeded---

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

I advise looking at the history of the colonization of the Americas.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Hi Gillianren,

I get the point...but

I firmly believe that this generation of individuals is not unlike the so-called greatest generation...we have ourselves to rely upon our scientific know-how to build upon.

society has made some strides in compensating for past transgression upon the land and some of its citizens...I am a firm believer in non-aggression when ever possible....I can only hope that I am not alone...


Putting melodrama aside, take a deep look at the social milieu of the past 130 - odd years...isolationism of individual has come from the Great advances of Technology...not the other way around.

we speak w/o speaking directly to one-another (eye-contact)...

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Humanity always seems to find a way to do the exact opposite of what it needs to do. In the past when folks needed to be nice to their neighbors, they weren't. Now that there is nothing but rock and ore (worth trillions) and there is nobody to displace--NOW people contemplate their navel under the "expansion-is-bad" dogma.

Scratch that--reverse it.

Sadly, I think that a lot of obstructions come from within the space advocacy community

Recently I attended one of the few Hard Science talks given at a recent Sci-fi (more like Fantasy) convention.

The Paranormal tracks naturally got more interest than the hard science events (distressingly).

One of the hard science guests was a Mr. McClintock, who even has a geographic feature named after him. He wrote about the building evidence for Global Change.

Notes:
http://www.bamanews.com/archives/200...1_archive.html
http://www.uab.edu/uabbio/s022/
http://imagicon.org/gatekeeper/?opti...style=f-larger

After explaining how we really do need to change at least our focus as a species, the discussion from the audience turned to NASA.

Sadly, he fell into the same old Penn and Teller "NASA can't do it--it'll be private..."

--and I sighed.

He was doing so well.

For him to successfully question the role of 'rational self interest' with regard to the environment--only to fall into the same trap from the same types of arguements leads me to the conclusion that even the brightest people need to be educated about space.

I may seem monomaniacal at times in my support for certain LVs, and it is my own fault for not framing the arguements in ways that would appeal to men of reason.

Consider the following comparison:

a.)Evolution

b.)Global Change (AGW)

c.)VSE/Constellation-Ares


All three propositions have a great deal of evidence in their support:

Prothro's book, Origin of Species, Why Evolution is true. Science finds over many decades.

As far as AGW is concerned there have been excellent support on this very board.

Last and not least, is the ESAS report, and the many questions answered by Dr. Stanley at nasaspaceflight.com and elsewhere. Posts here on Depressed trajectory with links explaining its import--the fact that Mike Griffin is a legit engineer--advocacy from Porco, the original Augustine report calling for increased capability to avoid the stagnation due to such warnings having been ignored, etc.


Now let us examine the critics of all three topics, and their arguements.

"All that evidence for evolution is just a bunch of satanists and atheists blowing smoke--and the world looks flat to me!"---(It might look it but it isn't)

"Aw, we already have EELVs, they're all we need right? Its just a plot to spend money. Why we don't need NASA anymore, we have spaceship one--that's the same as the shuttle--it has wings" (I won't even bother)

"Its just a bunch of Marxists trying to wreck the economy. With Communism dead, they have to fudge and come up with other enviro-hype.----(Some of that yes, but even libertarian Shermer had conceeded the field leaving Penn and Teller out in the cold) AGW looks to be indeed real. Evidence does in fact mount. We don't have to live in a 'green hell' but we can't just "drill baby drill" either. Or fight stupid oil wars.

In all three examples, the status quo (warts and all)--the NASA CARD requirements/ESAS findings, AGW evidence, and Evolutionary finds--holds up rather well thank you. A reasonably bright person should be able to see that some of the arguements against the mainstream suffer from the same problems, in that such arguements boil down to nitpicking over the mainstream evidence with no serious attempt to have a cogent response.

Creationists try to nitpick, then refuse to acknowledge the fact that their own competing arguements have problems. They predict nothing.

AGW deniers (who have a better track record with the unabomber 'artifice is bad' types having their own warts) are to a man folks who want unbridled, unthinking expansion done not responsibly (asteroid mining--no waste)--but recklessly due to unthinking greed.

Lastly, folks who love to strain at gnats with Orion routinely ignore any questions on EELV safety or cost, resorting to the old "ATK conspiracy" crap--when in fact it has been Boeing employees (Druyen-Tanker, pre-ULA EELV-info theft from LockMart via Satchell, Alexio, etc) who have a proven history of dirty play.


So to believe the ATMs on these three subjects, you have to belive in something even more outlandish---

"Small changes over time--nah!...Q-continuum power entities--a given!"

"All those hippies must be faking all those data points" Out of their caves, sir? Mmmmm

"Why an HLLV. Thats too big an unwieldy. Now lets build 20-60,000 mile tall space elevators, micro-payload assemble..."

Enough.

Listen to yourselves.


I am coming at this from a certain place, doing my best as a private taxpayer (it is our NASA, after all) to light this candle--in the darkness--and hold it up for all to see.

Passion has its place. I don't dispute that. John Brown was more useful to history than H. L. Mencken. A do-er is more use than a wiseacre.

Still, it is Reason that must guide us. Many think that I abandon reason as a blind advocate to a certain LV, or idea (Mulberries and Container ships work however, so the comparison works).

My point is that it is the enemies of VSE Constellation and Ares who limit both our reach--and our grasp--of the Cosmos.

And there is nothing reasonable about that.


I therefore find that I must remind you of what the BA said in his original op-ed

"I’m very concerned about the future of NASA and of space exploration itself, and I honestly don’t know what needs to be done."

Well, that is what experts are for, BA. I humbly ask that you use reason in spaceflight advocacy even as Shermer has in fighting his own libertarian bias against AGW evidence.

Norm Augustine called for STS to be retired and Heavy Lift pursued. He was ignored. Ares V funding has been axed by the sitting President, and now folks want to fly shuttle longer. That Norm has been ignored for 20 years--that is the source of your concern--not Griffins pro-engineering legacy. Face it, the know-how behind the Ares V of the past--the Beagle--is why we have the proper theory of origin. As a five year old, I could see human and ape skeletons and see the similarity. Now telling the dif' between a granny knot and a square knot? That's hard. No topologist am I!

But this is why we have engineers, and experts. Mike Griffin was both. He was ignored. So was Norm, who called for similar infrastructure. So was Bill Eoff, who called for the (DIRECT-class) Magnum. So was Zubrin and his Ares. So is Porco's call for large Ares V borne missions--and Porco is a reasonable woman and humanist extraordinare! That should be enough convincing.

Can evidence be faked? Yes. Piltdown man for instance. And if the current commision contradicts what Norm himself called for years ago--with precious little having been changed--I will call foul. But evidence is what we have--coming from Engineers who are hardly popular these days.

You are right to be concerned BA.

There are lots of political websites. Advocacy in politics is hard--faceless business. But there are only a few good science/astronomy websites out there, BA--and yours is one of the best--a forum where a future Korolov might be heard. His bullying power was in the Kremlin. You have similar reach here on the web.

You said you didn't know what to do. Here is a humble suggestion. Use every inflection, every witticism--every ounce of your intellect in joining us in advocating for VSE in general and Ares in particular. The arguements have been made and findings reached. I call upon you and all others here to UNITE behind real progress in space.

--or we will have to ride Progress--and Soyuz ('UNION') for the forseeable future.

Here is something to consider:

1.) The US economy (and the global economy as well) is presently in the toilet because the "engine" which drives the US economy (housing and the financial markets) has collapsed.

2.) "Monoculture" farming (i.e. growing one type of crop) is generally recognized as a Really Bad Idea^TM because if anything happens to the crop (And monoculture crops are exceedingly vulnerable to disease. Ask the Irish or banana farmers.), then your entire economy will implode.

3.) The efforts at restoring the US economy are primarily focused on "correcting" the problems with the system and not ensuring that other industries play an equal role in driving the US economy. (We'll prop GM up, but we're not looking at putting other industries in Detroit, even though many of the jobs that have been lost at GM will not be replaced once GM is out of government control.

4.) Putting boatloads of money into the space program helps create a diverse economy and can put many of the unemployed autoworkers back to work (the machinist who made car parts can make parts for a spaceship just as easily).

5.) The spin offs from the space program have lead to things like improved fire retardant gear, medical devices, and the like. The spin offs from the financial sector lead to Collaterialized Debt Obligations, ARMs, and the like.

6.) Having a large high tech industry attracts highly educated people to the US (who tend to make a lot of money), which adds to the economy and the tax base. Many highly educated folks are leaving the US to go to work in India and China, because the opportunities are greater there, even if the money isn't. If we put more into the space program than anyone else, a lot of those people will be inclined to stay in the US (since they're not likely to work on a manned mission to the Moon/Mars in India).

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

I agree with what both of you are saying.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Dear publiusr and Tuckerfan,

Your arguments are to the point and I do agree with you...despite past differences in semantics...we are (I hope)-- on the same page.

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Ah so the binary man is Phil, I had no idea. I came here because I saw you on British TV and was very interested to hear more, the main site said it was closed, I ended up finding my way to Discover Magazine and then to here. Thank you for welcoming me to the forums in the new arrivals section.

I must admit the binary sequence has me stumped, If it is Hex it is 69, or FI, is it a random sequence or is there a reason for it ?

If you don't tell me I can drive 2 miles down the road to Bletchley and get them to decode it, after all, they were quite good at decoding the enigma machine messages.

Respect.

Sorry, off topic.

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"If you've made it to retirement without being blamed for a major disaster, you've failed as an engineer."

I had no idea as well. The Bad Astronomer is Phil. I'm just me. I was only quoting him from his blog.

The 01101001 is many things, depending on the decoding. It's just a pattern of ones and zeroes in the end. Among my favorites are ASCII "i", and the first 8 numbers in the Thue-Morse Sequence, featured in my signature. Slightly more at article in topic Explain your name, and beyond.

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a teenager with the astronauts.

I liked john Glenn, but Allen B. Shepard is my true hero. Freedom 7.


instead they sent him straight up into the heavens at first alone.

Strapped into a capsule at the end of an intercontinental ballistic missile...

then with Edgar Mitchell and command module pilot Stuart Roosa for Apollo 14 he made it to the moon.

At least I have heroes.

I do not know what you youngsters have any more.

TV?

Reality TV?

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osiris

are explained in the first season of "Star-Trek The Next generation" when the galaxy-class Enterprise puts in for maintenance by a planet inhabited by a culture called the "Binars".

It is simple;

00 means no.
01 means yes.

With a brain one may work it from there.

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osiris

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So which is it?
Happened or not?

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Your "true hero's" name is Alan.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Oh, thank you, thank you for teaching me this elementary binary stuff. I don't know how I can be doing my job at work without this knowledge. I see the light now.

But, since you've used enough digits to convey four meanings, what does 10 and 11 mean?

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