SORTING THINGS OUT

MY CHRISTMAS CARD TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET

Gather all your memories
inside your circled arms
and clasped hands.
Be still and breathe deeply.
Gaze down and place
them all in order.
Let times of joy
and exhilaration
rise to the top.
Make room
for days of grief
and make a special place
for when you reached out
and helped another.
Let darker memories
sink to the bottom.
hidden in haze.
An expiation,
each soul owes to itself.
 

NOTORIETY

This week's La Jolla Light (Volume 100, issue 49, Dec 6, 2012 for reference when archived)  features an article on a local "rocket scientist"/sculptor, and on its web site:

www.lajollalight.com, pages 33 and 43.

ON FEELING DIMINISHED

     It helps, when you’re feeling diminished, to rationalize. Rationalization never hurt anyone, provided it is restricted to how you feel with respect to the world around you. Rationalizing bad action..... well that's another matter. In the former case, a little thought might put an entirely new and bright perspective on what otherwise might leave one dour and fitful.

    Just to illustrate, let me cite the experience of walking my dog. He’s a rescue, but that had nothing to do with his being big and handsome, a Ridgeback mutt with the gait and bearing of a lioness. But the comments I get: “What a handsome dog!” “What a beautiful  dog,” leave me  without adequate words in reply. What can I say? “Thank you”?  I really had nothing to do with it. Sometimes I smile and answer, “Well, he can’t help it.”  Eventually, I run out of comments, so I simply stand mute when it is obvious the sole attraction is the dog, who stolidly accepts pats on the head and  neck rubs.

    But never do I hear the words: “What a handsome man!” “What a beautiful man!”  So I wait, impatient to get moving, while the dog grins up at me in a self assured manner. Well, there was that one case, but in all candor I must admit that the person wore glasses, and there was no way to know what she actually saw.

    So here is where the rationalization takes place. There is something called acceptance. Alcoholics know about this. A little thought will then lead you to taking an entirely different perspective on the above situation. Let’s just say you are walking the dog down the way to the woods where he does his daily thing and across the street a pair of groomed white poodles on leashes gripped by a nondescript dog walker lift their heads toward you. You imagine one poodle saying to the other: “Scruffy dog. But what a handsome man!”

BETRAYAL (a book review)

                                                     

     I suppose, because it is listed as a NY Times best seller, this book by noted journalists Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” needs no further review. But for this reader the book understates the problem, tip-toes around important issues and omits  some significant ones. The authors take an internal perspective whereas a blend with an external perspective might have strengthened their work. Most notably it is weak on the substance and implications of globalization and tepid in recommendations for restoration of “The American Dream.” Globalization has arguably hurt the American economy, but it is an inexorable aspect of civilization’s plunge into the future. At its present stage it is anarchistic. There are no models to follow. There is no overriding strategy. The omni-present driver is money, as in the ancient quote: Money is the nerve-string of greed, power, war and all piety.1 The world is feeling its way forward and it can be expected that there will be collateral damage, on occasion on a huge scale. The damage can be alleviated, but for that we need leaders who are both knowledgeable about globalization and provide intelligent leadership instead of participating in the anarchy.

    The book is strong on statistical information covering the consequences of transfer of manufacturing jobs to countries where labor costs are less than a tenth that in the United States. The end game, as manufacturing moves from nation to nation for cheap labor, foretells a future when all have made the leap into equally modern status. What then? It is already occurring as jobs are moving out of China into other countries. Not mentioned is that some manufacturing jobs are coming back to the United States as a result of rising foreign costs. But in those cases the scenario changes to one where the new operations are highly automated, so fewer workers are needed to do the same job.

    The writers give short shrift to the importance of unions in negotiating wage levels and benefits. Unions have long carried water for the rest of labor force. Without them we get the Walmart situation where workers are paid below the poverty line, letting the rest of society pick up the tab for medical services, etc. And they take no notice of the fault line in the economy that is the farce of gains in productivity; a familiar word as the President and the labor department find it appropriate to boast of gains. But productivity gains don’t benefit workers, as wages have remained stagnant or are dropping. Instead, productivity is manifested in profit, distributed to shareholders and taxed at a meager 15%. Had workers benefited, they would have been taxed at a higher rate.
   
    Globalization is the new economic driver and there is no stopping it. There are six billion disenfranchised people out there who aspire to lives that are safe, secure, rewarding and enlightened. It’s different now, because the activists are young and they know about the world. The Arab Spring is just the beginning of those stirrings. And again, progress will be slow and sporadic because there is no model and no unifying strategy. It begs for leadership. That leadership should occur here, in the United States. Were it to be seriously undertaken, the benefits would be huge. One aspect of globalization will be the shedding of the stranglehold that religions have had on individuals, communities, societies and nations over the millenia. The bastions are crumbling and the final state devolves into the individual’s sense of equilibrium between the part that copes with reality and the part that is spiritual,  humbled by the beauty and resilience of nature, immensity and majesty of the universe and the mystic powers that account for being here at all.

    Unfortunately the nation is well along on the road to an oligarchy where the rich and powerful hold the reins and American workers are an expendable commodity, since they are cheaply available in other nations around the world. History is littered with the fall of empires where excessive concentration of riches led to downfall. There is no case where it can be cited that concentration of wealth was a good thing. To remove any doubt about a takeover by the elite, here’s an example, cited by the authors: The sixteenth amendment, permitting the Federal Government to collect income taxes, was passed in 1913. In 1940 the tax code numbered thirty-eight pages. Today it numbers over 76,000 pages. It begs the questions: Who did this? Was it the product of committed legislators who detected faults in the original document and set out methodically to fix it? Or was it the product of numerous private interests, without a care that they were yanking the  country around, writing amendments to suit their own interests, and relying on bought politicians to stuff them unnoticed into must-pass legislation? There are many examples. One has only to examine the cozy relationship between corporations and the legislators via a massive lobbyist intrusion into the mechanics of government.  Close to home, for example, California representative Duncan Hunter Jr., like his father before him, is beloved by the military and the industries that support it for unwaveringly championing their causes.

    One wonders what was going on in the minds of the framers of the constitution. They were all skilled men with combinations of financial and political experience. But theirs was a nation of under three million people, less than the population of Connecticut. Could they possibly have thought that they were producing a document that would hold together a nation with a population two orders of magnitude greater? That is not likely as they knew from the start that they had produced an imperfect document. Only thirty-nine of the original fifty-five framers signed it. There was an immediate need for corrections and James Madison introduced seventeen potential amendments in the first Congress. They were eventually boiled down to ten, which comprise the Bill of Rights. At best they must have believed that they had produced a document with a strong core, but with elastic boundaries, susceptible to subversion, and that common sense in the citizenry and the government would combine to preserve its integrity. For that, hopefully, they believed the legislative and deliberative bodies of Congress, the Justice department and the Supreme Court would be adequate. They hoped for the best, and it is remarkable how well it has worked.

    The writers do not treat adequately the hoax that was foisted on the Americn people embodied in the argument that manufacturing is so yesterday - that this advanced nation is advancing into the service business, doing things like generating software and inventing new stuff. The trouble was that there was not that much employment opportunity in those venues. Fifty-year-old iron workers and furniture makers who have lost their jobs to China  are unlikely to become software specialists, and worse still, corporations soon discovered that they could outsource service jobs cheaper to places like India. So the entire premise disappeared like morning fog after sunrise.

     Across the population there really is not that much difference between conservatives, liberals and moderates. They face and cope with the same daily problems. Safey, security, comfortable housing, affordable medical care, ability to raise and provide a good education for their children and providing for retirement are major concerns. But powerful schemers see it profitable to split them, gain the allegiance of the side most likely to support their aims, and maneuver elections so that legislation is passed to favor their desires. All that is constitutionally permissible, but really stretches the boundaries of what the framers produced and intended, especially in the First Amendment.

         The authors dwell on internal machinations that work to the advantage of individuals who want to shape the nation to fit their specific ideologies. A notorious example discussed at some length is the extremely wealthy Koch family, which owns and operates numerous continental industries in the energy field. Fred Koch, founder of Koch industries, was also one of the founders of the John Birch Society in 1958,  headed by Robert C. Welch. Although Welch died in 1985, the society still has chapters in all fifty states. Its agenda includes promotion of anti-collectivism, limited government, personal freedom and dismantling of the Federal Reserve System. Two sons, David and Charles, inherited the Koch fortune. They were well schooled by the father and continued the Birch Society ideology with measures of their own, such as the funding of think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Society which publish papers that are supportive of the Koch brothers’ beliefs and aims to shape the nation to their liking. The brothers are heavily involved in elections, spending millions through organizations like Americans For Prosperity and Freedom Works to elect State and Federal legislators they can influence and manage. Such activities are unhelpful. They are potholes on the road to evolving  globalization, which is unstoppable.

    Finally, the writers are weak in their closing recommendations for “Restoration of the American Dream.” For one thing, the dream can only be restored within the context of globalization and the burgeoning attendant issue, which may become critical to survival: climate change.  Climate change can only be managed if the entire world is committed. It cannot be solved by a single nation, no matter how well its own situation is improved.  They are correct in stating that for four decades public policy has been driven by the elite, and that has led to the current dilemma. They are correct in calling for abandonment of “Free Trade” notions and instituting and enforcing “Fair Trade”practices regardless of damage to multinational corporations that are currently engaged in what can only be described as economic anarchy.  They are correct in assessment of requirements to revise the tax code, but they tread softly on the idea of heavily taxing the super-rich. This seems to coincide with President Obama’s astonishingly timid stand in this matter, saying “We are going to ask the rich to pay a little bit more.” Ask the rich? The correct stand should be “We are going to tell the rich they must pay more... a lot more.”

    Raising taxes on the rich isn’t going to solve the debt problem, but  instead of further exacerbation of the middle class, it will provide government funding to rebuild existing infrastructure, build new infrastructure, corral the globalization phenomenon and learn to guide it, fund sustainability technology for averting climate change and conserving resources, modernize education, and undertake other advancements that can only be done by the people together, with the government as the operational medium and strategic planner. A recovered middle class will solve the rest of the debt dilemma.

    What a ride it’s going to be.  If handled right, living can be safe, secure and even exhilarating far into the future. If we botch it, even the super-rich will know misery.


1. A version of this quote is in the novel “Forever Ulysses,” by C.P Rodocanachi. Viking Press, 1938.

SENIOR LIVING

                                               

This story is a sequel to “Happy Valentine’s Day, posted January 2012

          Every morning at 8:00 am, five days a week, Stanley Worthington, former NASA Administrator and now CEO and President of International Minerals, enters the Brockman-Hayes Industrial Arts Building on 43rd street and rides the elevators to his seventieth floor office. He stops at his secretary’s desk and greets her with a “Good morning, Rose.” She hands him a sealed brown envelope and a cup of coffee that she has freshly brewed for him and he disappears into his office, closing the door behind him. For the next hour Rose abides by a standing order that he is not to be disturbed for any reason short of a fire, a bombing or an earthquake. That first hour of the day is when Stanley does his best work. He seats himself at his desk, sips from the coffee mug, retrieves a pearl handled letter opener from a drawer and slits the envelope open, whereupon he withdraws two sheets of paper on which are printed in order of priority the news items that have been determined to be of vital interest to him. There are never more than two sheets, sometimes there is only one.

        The papers come from the Odyssey Corporation in La Jolla, California. Their contents are highly confidential and are therefore delivered by courier, the Internet being deemed by Odyssey to be too leaky. The service costs  $250,000 a year. Having first profiled Stanley, Odyssey daily trolls the torrent of information that is generated worldwide daily, five hundred times deeper than what is available from Google, selects information that could conceivably be of use to him, refines and condenses it and delivers it to his office. For Stanley the annual fee is a bargain because he can recover it many times over by moving immediately on the actionable items in the papers.

         On this day an item catches his eye that is obliquely related to International Mineral’s operations on the moon. A paper, authored by Dr. Miles Hadley had just been published in Nature. Dr. Hadley was one of two physicians posted at the Sir Arthur C. Clarke lunar mining base, the third of the mining consortium’s successful lunar ventures. The paper conjectured that a person’s life span might be doubled, living on the moon. The argument centered on the possibility that debilitating diseases like arthritis and osteoporosis, joint failures and other maladies had less likelihood of occurring in the one-sixth gravity on the moon.  Moreover, the isolation factor appeared to be significant, and this was borne out by comparing the incidence of illness within the existing lunar human complement with similar groups on the planet. As this lunar mining base had been in operation now for over twenty years, Dr. Hadley claimed to have supporting information based on studies of long-term workers at the lunar base.

         Odyssey’s paper pointed to the internet source where the full article could be retrieved and Stanley immediately looked it up. The wheels began to turn. The Sir Arthur C. Clarke mining site was nearing the end of its productivity. Here was the most extensive lunar installation by far. If further use could not be found for it, it would become the first exo-planetary ghost town. Besides comfortable accommodations for over a hundred workers, and a robust infrastructure, there were extensive five-meter diameter tunnels and several chambers dug inside the precipice that rose from the meteor impact floor. Liquid air tanks adjacent to the settlement, resupplied from Earth, could be depended upon to last for hundreds of years.

         After reading the article, Stanley spoke with Dr. Hadley through a secure link to the lunar settlement. Something in Dr. Hadley’s assured manner as he described his observations served to accelerate  the speed at which Stanley’s idea was developing. International Minerals wasn’t going to shut down the Sir Arthur C. Clarke site after all.  International Minerals was going to go into the retirement home business.

         Stanley was quite aware that the clientele for lunar retirement would be drawn only from the relatively few who could afford it. Worldwide, there were over 2000 billionaires.  Surely five percent could be convinced to go for it, at a billion dollars a pop. The first thing, before doing anything else, was to pulse the wealthy community to determine whether there was interest in living away from the planet if their lives could be extended to a hundred and fifty years. He prepared a glossy brochure that outlined the project and circulated it among a few hundred wealthy acquaintances. He was stunned at the response. The desire to live as long a lifetime as possible and avoiding physical disabilities in the process was much stronger than he had thought. Moreover, there was another unexpected attraction. People were more than just mildly interested in following the progress of their progeny out to the sixth and seventh generations. They were excited at the prospect of being able to guide them in the role of super patriarchs and matriarchs.

         Stanley formulated the topology of the lunar retirement installation in his mind. The external settlement that supported the mining operation for so many years could house the caretakers. They would provide all needed support, including medical attention when needed, maintenance, dining, and maid services. As at present, its communication system was fully adequate for occupants to connect with Earth at any time. Housing for retirees, however, would be inside the tunnels and chambers that were created during the mining operations. They would be fitted with LED tiled ceilings that delivered night and day in sync with Earth’s rotation, seasonally changing wall images, dioramas, and all furnishings and accoutrements needed for living without hardship. Then, in an inspired thought, Stanley imagined an external transparent bubble connected to one of the tunnels. He knew it was possible to build one robotically. He had seen it happen in Germany, where engineers had demonstrated construction of a Buckminster Fuller hermetically sealed thirty-foot diameter globe solely by robots in the space of a few hours. Stanley envisioned occupants gathered there for star gazing, dining by Earthlight, even dancing. How light-footed they would be!

         Stanley took his sketches and plot plans of the lunar excavations one story down to the offices of the Pershing-White Engineering and Architects firm that had done much of the engineering for the mining company’s lunar operations. He commissioned them to do a preliminary design and cost estimate to a depth just sufficient to persuade the international members of the mining consortium to approve the venture.

         Within five years the first group of retirees, mostly in their sixties and seventies, packed their personal belongings and departed Earth aboard a lunar transport for their new home away from home. All looked forward to surviving for at least another lifetime.

                                                             ***

Cory Hamilton was in the first group of residents of the Lunar retirement colony. He had gotten wealthy with his invention of the pulsed well digger, which was rapidly adopted in many regions of the world, and to which some attributed both the saving of entire segments of humanity from extinction, but also averting possible water wars. Cory was also a backyard horticulturist. He looked forward to pursuing his hobby in the lunar environment. Although the thought of finding a soul mate, and possible bed mate, in that lean environment had hardly entered his mind, he turned immeasurably brighter in spirit upon meeting Sung Mei, who in turn seemed attracted to him. Sung Mei had inherited well from her father, a successful international real estate broker. She was an accomplished artist. Artworks produced in her studio on the moon were snapped up on Earth as soon as the lunar freighters landed with them.

Cory had not been in residence in the lunar colony many days before he found himself probing the extremities of the cavernous lunar settlement. After some expeditions he found what he was looking for; a tunnel, about half the width of other passageways and a little over human height that led for some distance and terminated at an empty chamber. He flashed his flood lamp about and concluded that here was where he would set up his hydroponic gardening center. A couple of years elapsed before he had it well lit and equipped, as all supplies had to be imported from Earth, and were transported only under conditions when the freighters had extra load carrying capacity. There was a celebration when Cory delivered the first baskets of lunar grown string beans to the kitchens and thence to an evening’s gathered diners. Cory got to be known as “Farmer Hamilton.” But Cory was not just your routine grower. He was an experimenter, and over the years his gardens delivered hybrid vegetables that had never existed before on Earth. True to form, his business sense led him to begin another venture, marketing patented lunar-produced seeds to larger seed suppliers on the planet.  

One day, many years after taking up residence on the moon, Cory Hamilton awoke early. He stood beside the bed he shared with Sung Mei, stretching, working his joints, looking tall and gaunt in the half-light that was ever present in the bedroom. Sung Mei stirred. Looking at him, she murmured, “You have a beautiful body.” He looked at her, still snuggled between sheets. “You’re not so bad yourself.” At ninety years, Sung Mei’s complexion was flawless, her hair a rich black, her eyes as sparkling as a young girl’s. Ten years older, Cory ran his fingers over his sideburns. “You can see, though, that I am aging,” he said with a wry grin.

“Today.......” Cory then said slowly, “I am going to harvest tomatoes.”

“Sung Mei leaped out of bed. “I’m going with you”

           The pair breakfasted together, then headed for Cory’s garden chamber. They walked the distance, followed by the little yellow robotruck that Cory requisitioned for transporting the crop to the kitchens. As they entered the garden chamber they could see the red fruit hanging like Christmas tree decorations from vines that clung to the opposite wall.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Cory commented.

          “They are gorgeous,” Sung Mei replied. “They are heart stopping.”

The prophetic nature of Sung Mei’s statement escaped Cory. Sung Mei had often used it in the past to describe things of incredible beauty, like the night view of a full Earth or a universe so rich with stars and galaxies through the transparent external observation dome that it seemed you could reach out and scatter them, like tossed sparklers.

 The pair worked quietly. Cory harvested the fruit from the upper reaches, leaving the lower ones to be plucked by Sung Mei. Finally, when the last one was gently laid on the truck, its small container now heaped with tomatoes, they stood and gazed upon them with admiration. Cory took one in his hands and sliced it in two and handed one half to Sung Mei. He sent the robotruck on its way and the two stood watching as it disappeared down the corridor, munching on their tomato halves.

           Sung Mei swallowed the last of her tomato and suddenly said, “I don’t feel so good. I feel faint.” Cory grabbed her and led her to a bench by the wall of the tunnel where he sat beside her, enfolded in a strong arm. Her head rested against him. She was already dead. Her heart had stopped beating. “Cory drew a deep breath “I don’t feel so good either,” he muttered, as his last breath too gave out.

The next morning somber residents of the retirement community gathered in the dining hall. Cory and Sung Mei were dearly loved. They were the first of the initial lunar retirees to pass away. The fact of their passage at the same time invited speculation that inevitably led to hushed comments asserting a probability that it was mutually agreed suicide. But why?

The leader of the week stood and delivered a short eulogy. At the conclusion of her short speech she said, “We will miss the fruits of Cory’s gardening. His last crop, delivered to the kitchens just before this lovely couple left us, was a harvest of beautiful tomatoes. I had them juiced and they now fill the glasses before you. I propose a final toast to our departed friends.” She lifted her glass and said, “To our dear friends, Cory and Sung Mei.”

The gathering stood as one, lifted their glasses and repeated: “To our dear friends, Cory and Sung Mei,” and they all then drank together.

REAP AS YE SOW

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 It’s understandable, isn’t it, that an aging rocket engineer would, upon reading a Space News headline: “China Plans to Launch Three Astronauts to its Spacelab in 2013,” be moved to follow a path of inquiry  that recalled an obituary in the November 4, 2009 New York Times on the passing of Qian Xuesen, Father of China’s Space Program, at 98, and finally, to a period of American history following World War II that was called the Second Red Scare, (The first Red Scare occurred after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, a period of labor unrest, strikes, riots and associated radicalism)

During the Second Red Scare, which arguably coincided with the onset of the Cold War, the nation was preoccupied with the problem of communist spies in its midst, even infiltrated into high government positions. The central issue was the transfer of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, which enabled their development of nuclear weapons faster than anyone could have imagined. There was reality in this, as communist party members Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell and others were arrested for passing secret information to the Soviet Union. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were tried and executed. Others received long prison sentences.

It was a period of intense surveys by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, which doubled in size for the purpose of hunting down communists and communist sympathizers. It acquired the name McCarthyism, as the thrust of the effort took the form of a highly publicized personal hunt for communists by Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy and his staff. The vendetta up-ended the lives of an estimated 10,000 people, resulting in their firing from their jobs, ending productive careers, and blacklisting to prevent future employment. 

Some actions got considerable public attention. A hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 to strip J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the Manhattan Project, of his security clearance, got enormous publicity, as Lewis Strauss, head of the commission and Edward Teller paired to recommend the action. The testimony was that Oppenheimer was a security risk because of a long-past and inconsequential connection with communist sympathizers. It was Teller’s Judas moment, a fall from grace in the scientific community, as it was known that there were strong disagreements between Teller and Oppenheimer regarding the hydrogen bomb. 

But the story of Qian Xuesen is fully as interesting and perhaps carries greater weight as it points to the folly of precipitous, heavy-handed and prejudicial actions on the part of the government, and how in the long term it can lead to unexpected, and from some standpoints, undesirable consequences.

Qian Xuesen, better known in the United Sates as Hsue-Shen Tsien, or Dr. Tsien, was born in China in 1911. At the age of 23 he traveled to America to study aeronautics at MIT. A year later he transferred to Cal Tech to pursue his doctorate studies under Theodore von Karman. In von Karman’s words, Dr. Tsien was an undisputed genius in the fields of missiles and rockets. During world War II, with two others, he founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where initial developments produced the Private, Corporal and WAC Corporal missiles. Dr. Tsien produced papers on esoteric subjects such as shell buckling, essential for structural analysis of future missiles and space launch vehicles. One paper defined an approach to a reusable spaceplane, which many years later constituted part of the inspiration for the Space Shuttle.

Dr. Tsien married famed opera singer Jiang Ying. Two children were born in the United States. In 1949 Tsien applied for U.S. citizenship.

As post-war consultants to the US Army, Dr. Tsien and von Karman traveled to Europe after the war to assess wartime advances in aerodynamics and to interview Wernher von Braun and other German rocket scientists and engineers. Their recommendations led to eventual establishment of a substantial group of rocket specialists, including von Braun, at the  Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, where Redstone and Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) were developed, and which evolved into NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center where development of Saturn V was centered during the 1960’s, and later, the Space Shuttle.

In Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, “2010,” the ill-fated space ship Tsien was named after Dr.Tsien. An asteroid, 3763 Qian Xuesen is named after him.

The full story will likely never be revealed, but in 1950 Dr. Tsien found himself caught up in the massive net that the FBI had cast to round up communists. He became a suspect based on someone finding his name in a communist leaning paper published in 1938. The summation is that the United States ended up deporting one of its most formidable geniuses.

In 1950, according to the most credible history of occurrences, Dr. Tsien booked travel for himself and his family to visit his parents in China. The FBI arrested him as a spy as they were leaving. Among claims were that he had “crates” packed with technical and classified information to take with him. None of this has ever been confirmed. One story had it that a top secret document was found on his person that was later admitted to be nothing more than logarithmic tables.

Dr. Tsien was imprisoned, stripped of his security clearance, and later put under house arrest where he remained for five years, struggling to regain his former status, together with restoration of his security clearance. Finally he gave up, deciding to return to China. Behind the scene negotiations took place with China, where he was desperately wanted, resulting in a swap that involved release of several pilots who were captured and imprisoned during the Korean War. Dr. Tsien had considerable support by colleagues during his struggle for vindication, but to no avail. Undersecretary Dan Kimball characterized the deportation as “The stupidest thing this country ever did. Dr. Tsien is no more a communist than I am.” In 1955 Dr. Tsien and his family were deported.

China, far behind the United States and the Soviet Union in missile technology, awarded Dr. Tsien the responsibility for developing a robust missile capability. He began by establishing the Institute of Mechanics, to train the technologists needed to implement the envisioned missile and rocket capability. The Fifth Academy of the National Defense Ministry was founded October 8,1956 and Dr. Tsien was named its Director. Construction of China’s first missile base was begun in April of 1958 and was placed in service in October of that year. The Soviet Union was on friendly terms with China at that time and supplied short range missiles and technology for the initial test programs. China began development of its own medium range ballistic missile in 1960. In 1964 China detonated its first nuclear device.

Dr. Tsien’s work led to development of the Long March series of launch vehicles which facilitated China’s entry into competition with other nations….the United States, Europe, and Russia for launching commercial satellites. Dr. Tsien witnessed China’s independent entry into manned space flight. China had not been  invited to participate in the International Space Station. Based on Tsien’s pioneering work, China now has the heft and resources to go it alone and could easily surpass other nations in future space ventures.

Dr.Tsien retained warm feelings for the American people. As for the government, that was another matter. Cal Tech gave Dr. Tsien its Distinguished Alumni award in 2001. Aviation Week named him its Man of the Year in 2007. He was highly honored in China.

At General Dynamics Astronautics Division, where I worked as a rocket engineer, there was a man of Chinese origin in the program offices named L.T. Cheung who was a close acquaintance of Dr. Tsien. We simply addressed him as “L.T.” About two years after Dr. Tsien was deported, L.T. received a Christmas card. Its cover featured a simple floral design. Inside there was a one-line message:

“This flower blooms in adversity.”

GOD AND STARSHIPS

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The recent upsurge of interest in interstellar travel, as manifested in symposia, workshops, a serious contract funded by DARPA titled “The 100 Year Starship,” at least two dedicated web sites, and astronomer confidence that “out there” are perhaps hundreds of millions of planets like Earth, has stirred reminiscences that are germane to the subject, if only to support the argument that big things happen from little steps along the way.

Post-World War II, a substantial amount of effort went into ferreting out peaceful uses for nuclear energy, among which were submarine and ship propulsion, commercial nuclear power plants, and fantastic geo-engineering schemes like using nuclear explosions to dig canals. General Atomics, then a division of General Dynamics in San Diego, California, was one of the sites where free-wheeling thinking and analyses were routine among a select cross-section of scientists. One idea that got a great deal of attention was powering a very large rocket with nuclear explosions. The scheme involved exploding small bombs behind a huge plate, atop which was mounted the spacecraft on a bank of compression springs, the purpose of which was to absorb the shock of the explosions. Scientists working on the concept included Freeman Dyson, Ted Taylor and Kedar Pyatt. Proponents presented data that showed a capability for interstellar travel.  Soon however, the ban on atmospheric nuclear explosions squelched the idea (keywords: Orion Rocket).

A serious study of a starship was undertaken by the admirable British Interplanetary Society (BIS) during the 1970’s with its Daedelus concept. This was a feasibility look at a fusion powered unmanned probe designed to approach Barnard’s Star, about ten light year’s distant, within the lifetimes of some of the engineers working on the project. Off and on, BIS has continued in the ensuing years with other concepts ( keywords: Daedelus Star Ship).

In the early nineties, Son Jon and I, BS-ing far into the night, came up with the idea of starting up a professional society, “The Interstellar Propulsion Society,” dedicated to exploring propulsion devices that would make interstellar travel possible, the idea being that if you could solve these problems, then the rest of the technology would rapidly fall into place. We would invite papers and publish a monthly journal. It started off with a bang. We got notables like Robert Forward, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Professor James Arnold (all deceased now), and the super enthusiast Marc Millis to agree to sit on the executive board. But as the months passed, this ambitious effort became overwhelming and we had to abandon it. Meantime, Marc Millis, who worked at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, approached Headquarters and asked the question: “Hey, shouldn’t we be doing this?” There was agreement to the tune of a $25,000 allocated to look into the subject. When the money ran out, to Marc’s dismay, there was no further interest. But Marc continued  working privately, in the process producing some of the most interesting presentations on the subject ever seen.

        In the course of time Marc left NASA to pursue advancements in interstellar travel. He set up the Tau Zero Foundation, dedicated toward that end. There are two web sites: www.tauzero.aero and centauridreams.org. Centauri Dreams is the medium for disseminating public information. Tau Zero aims at collecting and publishing serious papers. Son Jon keeps his hand in, helping with the web sites, while I am now just an interested bystander, and even a somewhat skeptic about the wisdom of attempting interstellar travel.

            But these efforts too could falter, as the organization’s proposal to work DARPA’s 100 Year Starship  study, funded at $500k, was awarded  instead to astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African American woman to go into space. It should be noted that this study does not design a starship. Its purpose is to establish a foundation for other studies over the next 100 years, both government funded and private, leading ultimately to solutions to the problem of interstellar travel.

            In another scene, NASA has again entered investigations relating to interstellar travel, exploring ideas of achieving warp speed by exploiting mathematical loopholes that indicate that warping space-time is theoretically possible. In such a scheme a starship’s engine would compress the space ahead of it and expand the space behind it. In effect, the starship moves rapidly to another place without adverse effects on the travelers. In this wild scheme of things travel to the nearest stars might be accomplished in a matter of days without adverse effects, instead of hundreds of years by conventional propulsion. To this end, Dr. Harold White, lead scientist for Advanced Propulsion in NASA’s engineering directorate and a few colleagues are undertaking small scale experiments in a Houston “skunk works” to demonstrate that space time compression is indeed possible. 

          I have become a skeptic because it seems that the Great Creator of the cosmic experiment, which now credibly contains the possibility that there must be other populated planets, must have worried about cross-contamination, were the inhabitants of one planet to approach another. For instance, how could carbon based explorers conceivably interface successfully with silicon based life on another planet?  Suppose one of the creations has advanced so far that it concludes that all other life forms are irrelevant and must be eradicated?  Concerns such as this would help to explain placing them at distances so far apart that travel from one to another would be impossible. I can imagine now, after having viewed productions such as Star Wars and Star Trek, Avatar and Outlanders, the Great Creator would feel vindicated in having made that decision.

         Then again, my thoughts often turn to the uninteresting  “asteroid” that has been tracking Earth’s orbit around the sun at a position in line with its axis of rotation for some hundreds of years. I hope to reveal more (frailties of aging a consideration) in an upcoming novel, titled “An Exceptional Journey to the Moon,” of how its inhabitants are working the problem of seamlessly merging into Earth’s population, happily, one hopes, with the result that it becomes significantly upgraded.

ARE ASTRONAUTS ORDINARY PEOPLE?

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Throughout history people have been lifted to unparalleld heights by others who regarded them as heroes. Within the human psyche there seems to be a need for such regard, something akin to the need to become subjects of ill-defined deities. Some immediately come to mind: Thomas Paine, Horatio Nelson, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther, Edith Cavell, Irena Sendlerowa, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Cromwell. The list seems endless, though none enjoy universal acceptance. For instance, the German monk Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church and generated a huge following. Among other issues, he took it to task for the abomination of selling indulgences. Separation into what became the Lutheran church did not endear him to the Vatican. Late in life, he was also known to have become strongly antisemitic.  Oliver Cromwell was a strong military leader as well as political, but is not admired by the Irish for his genocidal ventures in Ireland. Of course there are countless individual heroic acts, but those are generally accepted as singular manifestations of being caring and responsible human beings.

 Since the beginning of the space age, new heroes have appeared on the scene, at least for some, in the form of astronauts.... the brave souls that dare to venture into space. Some among astronauts are pleased to wear that crown, but the less egocentric would  prefer the stand taken by the late Neil Armstrong, the first to set foot on the moon. Armstrong argued that he was only doing his job, a position easily supported by acknowledgement that it would not have occurred but for the labors of thousands of scientists, design and development engineers, technicians, manufacturing and tooling engineers, craftsmen and assemblers, and the billions of dollars coughed up by the public. But the aura remained, as shown by how he was honored following his recent passing at 82 years. Perhaps there is a connection to be drawn from the naming of the first launch vehicles to carry astronauts into orbit after mythological heroic figures - Apollo, Atlas, Saturn and Titan.

  My interest in this subject was sparked following the recent publication of a commentary in Space News by former astronaut Walter Cunningham, in which, as a climate change denier, he claimed that he and others within the NASA community were winning the “war against global warming.” The arrogance and irresponsible nature of the commentary by someone who had had the extreme privilege of viewing this fragile planet from space during an Apollo mission begs the question of whether opinion by former astronauts should carry any special weight above that of other citizens. Then three other recent events, closely related; the fiftieth anniversary of the first American to orbit Earth by John Glenn, the forty-third anniversary of the first landing by humans on the moon and a month later the death of Neil Armstrong, the first to set foot there, prompted the question: Are astronauts ordinary people? At first glance, poring over the bios of the two hundred thirty-eight astronauts who have left the profession, one might reach that conclusion. Married, raising children, golfers, hunters, hikers, craftsmen, mountain climbers, pilots, cyclists, musicians.... even artists, all common to middle class America. End of story. Or is it? It might be interesting to dig a bit deeper. In this young profession that began with John Glenn’s Earth orbit flight in 1962, twenty percent are no longer alive.

Getting down to basics, what does it take to be an astronaut? It is someone in excellent physical condition who will carefully and faithfully follow prescribed directions.....someone who  can be depended upon not to panic in a bad or unexpected situation but immediately attend to it with sensible and sometimes innovative solutions.  As it happens, there is a vast pool of such experts in various fields, both men and women, where performance requirements are virtually the same and where enthusiasm about space exploration runs high.

             NASA’s requirements for application to the Astronaut corps are straightforward: a BS degree in engineering, bio-engineering, mathematics or the physical sciences; Three years of progressively advancing experience in the applicant’s chosen field. That requirement is lessened by one year with a Masters degree and does not apply if the applicant is a PhD, or if the applicant has 1000 hours of pilot-in-command experience with commercial or military jet aircraft. The applicant must meet basic requirements of 20/20 vision, be a citizen of the United States, blood pressure not over 140/90 and height between 62 and 75 inches. The applicant is subjected to interviews and medical examination. Success here leads to selection for the candidate training program, which lasts two years. The best of the graduates are then selected for the final intense training program, out of which astronauts are chosen and assigned to missions. After passing military water survival tests and achieving SCUBA proficiency in preparation for EVA training, astronaut training includes International Space Station systems, EVA skills, Robotics skills, Russian Language and Aircraft flight readiness.

            It stands to reason that NASA would have a preference for experienced pilots in its astronaut complement as they have already demonstrated the high level of skill needed to follow complex directions and to rapidly assess and take corrective action when something goes wrong. Following are four interesting events.

           

The Apollo flights were preceded by the Gemini program, a series of eight low Earth orbit flights to practice rendezvous and docking in space. A two-man crew was orbited in the Gemini capsule, somewhat larger that the preceding Mercury capsules. Separate flights orbited unmanned Agena spacecraft which were fitted with  a docking interface. On the eighth flight, crewed by Neil Armstrong and David Scott, the first U.S. docking operation was performed as planned, joining Gemini to the Agena spacecraft. Then suddenly the combined spacecraft began to spin. Picture trying to analyze a situation like this while spinning at ever more rapid speeds. Yet, Armstrong managed to stabilize the joined craft by activating the reentry control thrusters on Gemini. It was concluded that a roll thruster on Gemini had remained open, and confirmed by rapid depletion of thruster propellants. The mission was terminated and Gemini was returned to Earth in an emergency landing in the Pacific.

Apollo 13 was crewed by astronauts James Lovell, John Swigart and Fred Haise. My contention that astronauts may be ordinary people is buttressed by the fact that this was not the originally scheduled crew, who were bounced for reasons of lax attitude toward training, extra marital affairs and exposure to a communicable disease. Fred Haise was a replacement for Ken Mattingly, who had been exposed to German Measles seven days before flight. Mattingly played an important role in subsequent events for this hair-raising flight. Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970.  Fifty-six hours into the lunar flight the oxygen tank on the service module exploded, rendering the service module useless for providing utilities to the command module. The mission now was not a landing on the moon but how to get the astronauts safely back to Earth. With the limited provisions in the command module and lunar modules, it became an issue not only of a rapid reconstituting of flight mechanics, but of survival with limited supply of power, food and water, loss of cabin heat, and application of ingenuity under  extremely stressful conditions. A fine example of how humans can measure up to tough situations. Heroic? Not unless saving yourself can be termed heroic. Heroic is landing a disabled passenger aircraft in the Hudson River and saving its hundreds of passengers.

           

            Apollo 16, the fifth lunar landing mission, carried the second lunar rover, popularly known as the “moon buggy,” to enable exploration of extended territory. The rover was a two- passenger, four-wheel electrical drive vehicle built by the Boeing Company. Early in its use a fender extension broke when astronaut John Young bumped into it. No fixes were attempted, though astronauts reported dust covering everything and vehicle performance dropping off. We are in an age when people don’t fix their own cars anymore. But then again, some do. On Apollo 17 the fender extension broke again when Eugene Cernan accidentally struck it with a hammer handle. Repairs were attempted by taping the extension in place but it was lost after about an hour, the astronauts returning covered with moon dust.  Subsequently a fix was made with a lunar map, duct tape and a pair of clamps from the lunar module, which worked for the remainder of the mission. In this instance we see both clumsiness and innovation in play.

            Finally, the Skylab spacecraft that followed the Apollo lunar missions provides a spectacular example of how astronauts can function to save a mission gone badly awry.  Skylab was an orbital workshop that was built by using the Saturn V third stage as the basic structure and furnishing the inside with components to achieve America’s first space station. Skylab was launched into orbit on May 14, 1973 by a Saturn V that was left over from cancelled Apollo missions. Not long after liftoff a micrometeoroid shield whose function was to moderate the temperature inside the spacecraft broke away, In breaking off it partially deployed one of the spacecraft’s solar panels, which later in the flight was blown away by retro rocket fire from the second stage during separation. Once in orbit it was determined that the opposite array was entangled in debris and wouldn’t deploy. At that point the mission could have been aborted. A saving aspect was that some power was available from the Apollo Telescope Mount, attached to Skylab, when its solar arrays successfully deployed. Engineers took a couple of days to assess whether the spacecraft could be repaired and finally a three man crew, led by Charles Conrad, accompanied by Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin departed for Skylab with an assortment of tools and repair material. Arriving at the spacecraft, their first job was to fashion a shield, known as “the parasol” to take the place of the missing micrometeroid shield, which lowered the 100 deg F plus temperature inside the spacecraft to an acceptable level. Next they set about freeing the stuck solar array, finally getting it to deploy. Though still at lower power than hoped for, the station was able to complete its mission with two more visits by astronauts. The total occupied time for Skylab was 171 man-days.

If longevity is on your life agenda, you might not choose to be an astronaut. Thus far, for American astronauts, life expectancy turns out to be 52 years. Of two hundred thirty eight astronauts who have left the profession, forty-seven are deceased. One is tempted to compare with other professions where life expectancy is low, like logging, fishing and long distance trucking. An extrapolation (admittedly risky for so small a sample) reveals that flying to and operating in space is three to four times worse. Counting four lives lost in T-38 trainer crashes, 21 deaths occurred in the line of duty... seven crewmembers lost in each of the space shuttle accidents (Columbia and Challenger) and three in the Apollo command module fire on the Florida launch pad.  Eighteen deaths were from natural causes, of which five were from heart failure and the rest from different forms of cancer. The remaining eight deaths were from various causes, including plane crashes, auto, motorcycle and water ski accidents, one suicide and one death on Mt. Everest. The high rate of cancer in a group of humans presumably selected for extraordinarily good physical condition raises the question about whether space exposure has an influence.

            Experience thus far has shown that women are fully as capable as men in the astronaut occupation. There is little evidence that in the hands of men, performance is better. Yet, of the two hundred thirty eight astronauts who have left the field, only twenty seven were women. Before he became senator, John Glenn testified before Congress in an attempt to ban women from going into space. He failed, but what actually developed seems little more than a nod to the other sex by NASA administrators. It seems also that a course correction is advisable in selection of future astronaut complements.

            Where do retired astronauts go?  They are still young and most are obliged to find ways to make a living. The following information is more or less fluid, as occupations may change with changing opportunities. For example, astronaut Harrison Schmitt, whose single flight was on Apollo 17, logging 301 hours in space, took employment with NASA until 1975 when he left to run for United States Senator from New Mexico. He served a single six year  term and then returned to employment in academia, lecturing, consulting and other pursuits.  A geologist, Dr. Schmitt has recently aligned himself with climate change doubters like Walter Cunningham.

            It was no surprise to find that over fifty astronauts found employment at  companies that do business with the government. Only a few reached top level. Most were at vice-president, assistant vice-president, manager or director levels. That reminds one of the revolving door situation in Washington where staffers and legislators find jobs as lobbyists due to their insider connections. Twenty astronauts took employment in academia and a like number got jobs at various government agencies. Less than ten went into the medical field, where they had apparently had their original training.

            There seems to be not much desire to enter the political scene on the part of astronauts. . Besides Harrison Schmitt, only Jack Lousma and John Glenn sought careers in the United States Senate. Jack Lousma lost his bid to Carl Levin. John Glenn was elected Senator from Ohio in 1974 and served for four terms, retiring in 1999. Glenn was one of five senators caught up in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. His ambitions extended to a try for the presidency and two tries for a vice-presidency but none were not successful. In 2012 there are one or two ex-astronauts campaigning for spots in the House of Representatives.

            The remainder of retired astronauts entered various occupations that included consulting, lecturing, investing, writing, and start-up businesses. Some, like Buzz Aldrin and John Young, work as advocates for the space program. A few immodestly take every opportunity to preserve a strong public image. Others went in interesting directions: Apollo astronaut Alan Bean became a successful artist, specializing in space exploration art works. Apollo 15 Astronauts James Irwin and Charles Duke turned to religion. Duke entered missionary work and Irwin became an evangelical Minister. Irwin added to his fame by organizing two expeditions to Mt. Ararat to find Noah’s Ark. In the second attempt Irwin was injured and had to make the descent on a horse. Scott Parazinski (MD), veteran of five STS flights, was a mountain climber. On the second try he was the first astronaut to climb Mt. Everest, reaching the summit on May 20, 2009. Another astronaut, Karl D. Heinz, was not so fortunate. He died in the attempt when he contracted pulmonary edema after reaching an altitude of 21,000 feet. The story of Brian O’Leary is especially interesting. An astronomer and expert on physical properties of the Martian surface, he was appointed in 1967 to be part of the first crew for a manned Mars mission. He left NASA  a few months later when prospects of ever getting into space faded. From there he returned to academia, authored over a hundred papers and several books, and also held positions at the Energy Department and Science Applications International Corporation. In later years O’Leary stepped outside the bounds of conventional physics to pursue ideas on anti-gravity and free energy. He moved his base of operation to Ecuador from where he conducted workshops and continued to write and lecture. O’Leary died in 2011.

             

            Two former astronauts made it big in the corporate world, attaining CEO status with large companies. Frank Borman, veteran of Gemini missions and the first lunar orbital flight in Apollo  8, rose to be  CEO of Eastern Airlines. William Anders, also of Apollo 8, entered government service where he served as executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, followed by appointment to be first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Upon leaving government service he spent several years in senior positions at General Electric and Textron. In 1990 he entered General Dynamics Corporation as Vice-Chair and a year later became Board Chairman and CEO. Anders presided over a major reconstitution of the conglomerate assembled in the 1950’s by John J. Hopkins, including sell-off of major divisions like Convair Ft. Worth and the Astronautics Division in San Diego. Anders left bitter feelings, when, after assuring soon-to-be-unemployed workers at the Astronautics Division that it would not be sold, executed a sale of the division to Lockheed Martin within months. Anders resigned in 1993.

           

            In retrospect, it was probably not entirely Anders’ doing. There is some opinion that he was directed to take these actions by the Department of Defense...... the “Military/Industrial Complex” at work.” Others believe that major shareholders were in the mood for a shakeup in corporate assets.  He was simply following orders. That’s what astronauts do.

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