CONQUERING SPACE-ONE MAN AT A TIME

A  March, 2012  op-ed  in Space News I believe worth repeating because nothing has changed.

Feb. 20 marked the 50th anniversary of the first American manned flight into Earth orbit, when John Glenn was launched atop a modified Atlas ICBM, tightly cocooned inside the Mercury capsule. It was a memorable day for me, as I was propulsion engineer for that flight. In the ensuing years the manned program included four additional Mercury flights; 19 Gemini launches, of which 10 were unmanned; 11 crewed Apollo missions; three crewed Skylab missions; one Apollo-Soyuz Test Project; 36 space shuttle flights to construct and service the international space station; and approximately 90 orbital flights with the shuttle functioning as a payload carrier for NASA, commercial and Department of Defense missions.

These are all formidable achievements, by any measure. Still, a perceptive observer of the space programs over those years must wonder a bit at the contrast between the highly productive, multiple missions undertaken by the unmanned segment of NASA, operating with budgets a fraction of the manned program, and the more elusive products of the manned program. One can’t help but notice that over those 50 years since Glenn’s flight, the United States has kept an average of less than one astronaut in space. We aren’t going to conquer space with one person on the job.

There seems to be a lack of public awareness, and indeed a lack of congressional awareness, that space activities divide into two general categories: space exploration and space exploitation.

The role of exploitation falls naturally within the purview of manned missions, although cases can be cited where humans in space were not involved. The U.S. government may fund a development, essentially a pathfinder mission, until events converge so that commercial firms can take over and make a profit. The first pathfinder mission was performed by NASA, beginning with Telstar, before there was a manned space program. It confirmed Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions that communications satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit could produce a sea change in global communications. Commercial firms soon moved in and the result is the ongoing multibillion-dollar enterprise that is the array of services now being provided by stationary satellites. Another example is the GPS system, a constellation of positioning, navigation and timing satellites developed and placed into operation by the Department of Defense. The addition of a strong civilian signal kicked off enormously varied terrestrial applications.

An unfortunate turn of events resulting in a loss of direction took place with the wind-down of the Apollo program. “On to Mars” was the euphoric call after the last Apollo flight, and even before the program’s conclusion. A wet blanket was thrown over the whole manned program when the price tag was revealed and Congress balked. Adhering to its role in exploiting space for humanity’s benefit, a logical course for Apollo Phase 2 would have been a return to the Moon to search for high-value minerals, following which, in the course of time, terrestrial mining concerns would take over. The Apollo mission was NASA’s Lewis & Clark expedition, but unfortunately not as enduring.

As it happened, a second opportunity for a pathfinder mission immediately occurred, when NASA elected to use remaining hardware from the Apollo program to build the Skylab workshop. The program should have continued. It could have been the forerunner to colonies of orbital workstations and tourist destinations funded by private |interests.

The rest is history — NASA departed from its role as exploiter of space to that of a transporter of payloads by taking up development of the space shuttle. The end product, the international space station (ISS), built after transporting payloads turned prohibitively expensive, does fit the exploitation role with the exception that it is dead-ended. No one is going to build another ISS.

Now, with NASA’s eyes on a mission that would take astronauts to the surface of an asteroid, it appears that pathfinder missions will be put off for some time. High adventure seems to be a more powerful draw.

Worthy pathfinder missions could be:

• Return to the Moon with the object of finding valuable resources such as rare earth minerals, setting up refining prototypes using solar power, and laying the ground work for terrestrial mining companies to take over.
• Build a solar power system demonstrator, including both orbital and ground elements. Confirm or adjust the findings in extensive previous studies. Lay the groundwork for utilities companies to invest and take over.
• Return to the Skylab mode of space station — smaller workshops of varying applications, serving the needs of other nations as well as the United States. Lay the groundwork for private industry, as well as hotel and tourist enterprises, to invest and take over.

Space exploitation will serve America best if there is promise of return in both quality of life improvement and financial gain. That, for the present, is the proper role for manned space operations. It is worth emphasizing that NASA’s role is to identify and perform the pathfinder missions. The federal government’s role is to approve and fund opportunities and burn down the risks to the point that commercial takeover is attractive.

Finally, more adventurous missions like a trip to an asteroid, a martian moon or Mars itself can and should wait until the capability of sensors and robots is exhausted. Staying on the present path, with one or two astronauts doing duty in space, offers a low prospect of conquering space, and the cost will continue to be very high.

LIVING END?

Authors note: Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible to write in a style that is comfortable for me

My Dear Trill,

     I want to thank you for the portrait. It is quite good. I like the way the eyes follow you around the room. How did you achieve that?

     Another of your sweeping questions, and one that is concerning many people these days. “How long can the human race survive? I will try to tell you what I know about the subject, though changes, good and bad, are occurring every day. 
     Yes, it does concern me too, though I won’t be around when events have reached a tipping point - a point of no return. Some say that ir has already occurred, but I’m not sure I agree.

     Diogenes of Sinope was a well known cynic and critic, in constant conflict with the the culture, corruption and confusion of his time, and doubts about the future in the Aegean region of the world, around 400 BC.

     Today there are many such critics and cynics, including self-styled prognostigators, diviners of Revelation and Nostradamus, religious fanatics, producers of The Farmers Almanac, politicians, opportunists and, more credibly, an assortment of scientists who use real data to produce trend analyses and apply other computational techniques to buttress their predictions of where humanity and the biosphere are headed.

    Who to listen to?

     Two prominent British astronomer/physicists, Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees, have recently expressed opinions regarding how and why the human race may disappear in the next one hundred to one thousand years. They cite the rapid advancement of technology as being too much for most humans to cope, with machines taking over more and more of the theorizing and decision making, corporate perfidy, nuclear war, global warming and genetically modified viruses as being new phenomena of our own making, and that reckless mismanagement will ultimately bring about extinction.

      They are on the same page regarding one possibility, as expressed by Martin Rees in a recent interview following a visit to nearby Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California:          “My worst nightmare would be that some crazy guy with an ecology fantasy that humans were a plague would try to use some type of biological technique to kill lots of them, without caring who they were.” Not a far-fetched idea, thinking back to the world-wide influensa pandemic of 1918 that killed, world-wide, from twenty to forty million people. A little mischievous tinkering with the ubiquitous rhino virus, and who knows?

      Both scientists are concerned about the gradual but ever more rapid change to the biosphere, of which there is ample evidence. Deforestation may leave Earth looking like Lebanon, hundreds of years after its cedar forests were timbered to almost the last tree, to build ships - but with much more dire consequences, as forests are needed to absorb carbon dioxide emissions. Neither speaks to the role of positive feedback (when things get worse, they get worser), or what steps must be taken to reverse a trend.

      Stephen Hawkings consistently warns about perilous times ahead and even worse, because pessimisticaly “things could go wrong.” As recently as last year he warned scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) that investigations of the Higgs Boson (the God Particle), could inadvertantly initiate “catastrophic vacuum decay,” creating a quantum bubble that would expand at the speed of light and consume the entire universe. He did not add that an event of this sort could occur at any place in the universe, may have already occurred, and is speeding toward us. The event could reach Earth and the solar system millions or billions of years from now......or tomorrow.

      I take a lighter view of Higgs Boson in my poem “The Hunters” the last two lines of which read: “What a kick for humanity, if it turns out to be the same as love.”

      Both scientists agree that the next hundred years are critical. Hawking believes that the human race will be saved only by moving into space and onto other planets. But billions, most of Earth’s population, would be out of luck.

      Sustainability in space is problematic. Aboard the International Space Station virtually no effort has been expended to solve problems along this line. Instead, there are steady rocket flights of resupply missions, taking food and supplies to the astronauts and returning to Earth laundry and trash.

      Rees, on the other hand, insists that the problems can and must be solved on Earth, arguing that there is no place in space that is as benign as the harshest place on Earth - the Antarctic. 
      So there you have it, Trill. The human race could be saved by a concerted effort by most of its population. But that would divert them from the daily struggle just to exist, or, at the other extreme, from the pleasurable and wasteful life that they are used to.
          Sometimes I get “off the track”, thinking about this.

In a dream world
poets tell it like it is.
Women preserve order
as they do in their own homes. 
Men are stewards of the planet 
and all its living things.
As evening approaches,
their thoughts turn to dancing 
to rhythms
they didn’t know were there. 
War is unthinkable. 

CARWELL'S DECISION

      “That’s quite a gash you got there,” old Doc Holmes said, holding Tom Carwell’s arm to the early morning light that streamed through the window. “What happened?”

       “My Shepherd bit me. Came home from the late shift Thursday last. Keep him chained to the dog house. I went to feed him and he jumped at me, snarling and foaming at the mouth. He bit me good.”

      “Good God! Then what?”
      “I shot him dead with my 12 gauge.”
      “You saved the carcass?”
      “No. I torched him atop a pile of apple tree prunings I had stacked in the field.”
      “That wasn’t very smart. My boy, you could be in a lot of trouble. Chances are pretty good you’re gonna get hydrophobia, better known as the Rabies. You notice any encounters of your dog with other animals in the past week or two?”

      Tom appeared in thought for a few moments. “Well, yeah, he had a run-in with a crazy squirrel a couple of weeks age, Varmit stood his ground and mixed it up with the dog before running for it. Ran up a tree by the river, out along the first branch and then fell into the water. I didn’t see him after that.”

     “Well. There goes our evidence. I got some bad news for you, Tim. We’re going to have to inoculate you, and it ain’t gonna be fun. I’m gonna stick a big needle into your stomach every other day for two weeks. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”

     Tom shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s get to it. Will it work?”

     “Depends. We’ll know in six to eight months for sure. The virus is very slow moving. There will be symptoms showing up if and when it gets to your brain. Meantime, go on living like you normally do.” He busied himself scrubbing out the wound, applying antiseptic, and wrapping the arm in a bandage. “Now lie down here and we’ll get to the hard part.” He went to a wall cabinet and retrieved a huge needle. He then slowly filled it from a refrigerated ampule and approached his patient.

                                               ***
     "Ain’t often I slide the barn doors open in the mornin’ and see a man hangin’ from the rafters,” I said, as I escorted the local sheriff and coroner there as soon as they arrived,- the Sheriff, Duke Jenkins in his Pontiac cruiser, flashing red and blue lights and Dwayne the Coroner in his Dodge Power Wagon. I’d telephoned them from a neighbor’s house down the road and by the time I got back, they were turning into the driveway.

     “You cut him down?” Duke asked.

     “Yeah, he was high up. I couldn’t reach him. Cut the rope from above. He fell to the floor like a sack-a-potatoes. I didn’t touch him after that.”

     Duke approached the body and turned it over, the contorted face up. “Why, this is Tom Carwell,” he said. “I know him.” He removed the rope from around his neck.

     I recognized him then. Tim was my next door neighbor, a quarter mile up the road. Lived alone. He worked night shift in Hazeltine’s excelsior factory, down by the railroad tracks.

     “Any nearby relatives you know of?’ Duke asked.
     “Only a sister,” I answered. “Lives up Meredith way, maybe New London.”

     Dwayne bent over and lifted Carwell’s arm. "This here’s a fresh bandage, professionally done. Might pay to give Doc Holmes a visit.” 
     He then went to his truck and retrieved a gray, stained tarpaulin. He spread it out on the floor, rolled Carwell’s body onto it, wrapped it carefully and tied the ends. “Grab that end,” he said to me. Together we carried the body to the truck and placed it on the cargo platform. The two men then sped away. Curious, I followed in my car.

     It was still early but Doc Holmes was already holding office in the downstairs quarters in his home on Main Street when the men arrived with Carwell’s body. Then I had a change of heart and drove on by, stopping at Ruth’s local coffee shop. Tom was dead. Nothing was going to change that, no matter what Doc Holmes had to say. 

- e. hujsak

FRIENDS

Author’s note: Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible to write in a style that is comfortable for me.

My Dear Trill,
It is not surprising at all that in growing up and entering the real world  you are suffering   moments of disappointment and even despair. I am sorry to read that a dear friend has summarily “defriended” you. Such people may be troubled, have decided to change their lives, are  having a fit of petulance, or have paranoias over which they have no control.Try not to dwell on it. Fortunately time is a great healer and your one-time friend will soon become a distant memory.
       There is a difference between acquaintances and friends. One can have many acquaintances, but should hold only a few friends. The more you have, the greater the likelihood that there will be opportunists or predators among them. Beware of sycophants. The test is loyalty, remaining true despite what events turn up.
It is amusing that you are still thinking about what religion you would be comfortable in. Such a wide choice. Do you know, there are approximately 23,000 denominations of the Christian religion alone in the world? It is hard to believe than any were started by other than opportunists.  I am sure you will let me know of your choice, whenever it comes about.  
Then there are other religions where God doesn’t even enter the picture. A heavily populated one  is the secular religion called  consumerism. The economies of most nations are capitalism. Success is based on ever increasing growth. The strength of all the media has been harnessed to get  more and more adherents to the religion -  hawking products you can easily do without.
You may benefit from reading a new book “Age of Anxiety: by Joseph Bottum. In it he details the unexpected phenomenon of post-Protestantism, a flight by millions from the formal church to a way of life in which the individual is in control of morality, spiritualism, and all the other aspects of living in the Occidental world. It is quite a  revealing, and in many ways a thoughtful and reassuring book
But I worry that with the weakening of formal religion, a concurrent ascendance of opposition forces invites a  sober reckoning regarding where world society is headed. This is where sustainability makes its appearance, a marshaling of human effort around the world to behave and perform as though Earth is not here to plunder, but to conserve and protect her in all aspects. Is it possible that sustainability will become the new secular religion, firmly displacing consumerism? There are many reasons why this is necessary, and one can only hope that it will occur in time to save Planet Earth as we know her, so accommodating to humanity.
Remember to always be a skeptic, but follow through with thoughtfulness. Whenever someone approaches you with an “opportunity,” be aware that in all probability it is their opportunity.

OUT OF THE BLUE

To be defriended
Is like a summary execution,
Sudden and unexpected,
But painful, nevertheless.

TSUNAMI

It seems like only yesterday, but it was eleven years ago, on December 26, 2004, that the great Indian Ocean undersea earthquake occurred, killing  upwards of 250,000 people and inundating thousands of villages in the Indonesian and Sri Lanka region, in the ensuing tsunami. It gives pause to think about the fragility of humanity, despite a capability to accomplish astonishing deeds.

MUSINGS

We rocked, didn't we?

We sent rockets to the moon,

Ringed Earth with satellites 

And sang songs that echoed 

Around the world.

We tamed the atom and trained

Electrons to be our willing slaves.

We built bigger shovels,

Bored deep holes and

Scraped off mountain tops

To stoke our ubiquitous engines.

Paul Bunyans all, feeding off

The spirit of Walt Whitman.

Still, it is the emptiness

That is the future that torments us.

Foolishly, we look for clues

From Revelation, Nostradamus.

Then, more soberly 

We think of innocents upon

A widened beach, spellbound

By the incoming tsunami.

-e hujsak

FAMOUS QUOTES

(admittedly, some not so famous.)

Everyone possesses a finer self and a less-than-finer self, The eternal problem is which is allowed to, or made to. triumph over the other. - E. Hujsak

You can live without religion and meditation, but you cannot survive without affection.  -  Dali Lama

No matter how wealthy, abandonment of a friendship leaves a person irredeemably impoverished.  -  E Hujsak

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss .people.- Eleanor Roosevelt.

   

History is the presentation of facts in the order of their appearance. Interpreting it may be self-serving  - E. Hujsak

Self-regard goes a long, long way. It can be mistaken for wisdom. It can masquerade as vision. With enough of it, the clown transforms himself into a ringleader. The dwarf looks like a giant.  Frank Bruni  -  NYT

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. 
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

A man’s character is his fate. - Heraclitus

Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.  - Franz Schubert

           Those who contemplate the beauty of Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.  -  Rachael Carson

         When a person tells you, "I'll be honest with you," it is a fair assumption that that person is a frequent liar.

BOOKS OF NOTE

Author’s note: Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible to write in a style that is comfortable for me.

My Dear Trill,

Your reading list is impressive. I am happy to know that you find time, make time, for reading and your selections are a good blend of classics, contemporary works, plays and poetry.
These days, a person is too tempted to spend time staring at a screen, occasionally extracting something useful out of the miasma that pervades the media and the Internet. Particularly irritating to me is the snowstorm of e-mails begging for money for one cause or another, and even to help them do their jobs, for which they  are already paid handsome salaries. And also irritating is the fact of the media becoming the most highly developed drug pushers on the planet, in the employ of  pharmaceutical firms seemingly bent on having you survive by consuming their products. 
But  that is not what I have in mind to discuss with you. I want to tell you that you have not listed what I believe are the two most important literary works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 
The first is Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, which is a wake up call to humanity to stop poisoning planet Earth and learn to nurture her, for the benefit, and indeed, survival of humanity as well Earth’s wild life. The second book, The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, was published in 2014. It dwells on the knowledge and impact of the destruction and extinction of species after species by humans.
In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson  writes persuasively on how rampant use of the insecticide DDT in the mid-twentieth century was a danger to society in manifold ways. The insecticide came into common usage in  World War II when the military used it to clear islands of malaria threat as well as other diseases.  Rachel detailed how the pesticide  entered the metabolism of birds on a large scale. The direct effect was  a softening of eggshells, preventing the appearance of a next generation. Large inroads in the bird population had already been made. The California Condor and the Bald Eagle nearly disappeared. It’s a long and compelling story, but as a result of one woman’s earnest study and warnings about harm to the environment through large scale use of the pesticide,  in the United States, and indeed around the world, DDT is now banned except under special conditions. The battle is not over. It is believed that an alarming decrease in the bee population is due to introduction of synthetic pesticides, added to fertilizer, that aid plant growth but spell disaster for bees who are in close contact with the plants in their honey gathering and pollinating mission.
In The Sixth Extinction (2014) Elizabeth Kolbert dwells on the horrific impact of  uncontrolled hunting and killing over the years, extending to the present, such that entire species have disappeared or are on the verge of disappearing from planet Earth. In the last century we have seen the disappearance of passenger pigeons, the Great Auk, the Dodo Bird,  the Tasmanian Tiger, the Falkland Islands Wolf, the Caribbean Sea Eel, the Carolina Parakeet, the African Atlas Bear, the Zanzibar Leopard, the Toolache Wallaby. Among those now threatened are Elephants, Polar Bears, African Lions, Rhinos, and the Siberian Tiger.  In the news today is concern about the vanishing Vaquitas Porpoise in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Totobaba fish. 
Contributing to the extinction of species is the Chinese craving for artifacts made of ivory, which has led to a decimation of the elephant population in Africa.  Another gross failure in that culture is its greed for shark fin soup, notably in China proper, but also in Chinese restaurants around the world. The belief is that the soup increases sexual potency and has other health benefits, but there is no scientific evidence that this is true.  Sharks are caught, stripped of their fins, and returned, crippled, to the sea, where they die, no longer able to swim. The fins are frozen and sold to an eager market. Similarly, Chinese demand  for the bladders of the Totoaba fish has led to fears about the extinction of this species in the Gulf of Mexico.
Fortunately, there is growing international concern about these matters. Whether humans will measure up before more species are driven to extinction is subject to conjecture.