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Deep Thoughts #6

By clearthinker - April 22, 2008, 7:44PM

Why all this worry about nuclear weapons? It's much easier to get anthrax into a community. In fact, the USSR worked a lot on bioweapons in the 50's because it was the "poor man's nuke."

In case you forgot, no one has ever been connected to the anthrax letters sent to Congress way back in the days just after 9/11.

On April 20, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security provided a free give-away to AAA League baseball fans in Albuquerque. Don't believe me? Look at
http://www.albuquerquebaseball.com/schedule/promos/index.html?date=2008-4-20
You should be outraged with this use of public funds. I know I am.

Trucks run on diesel fuel because it used to be more cost efficient. It no longer is. Be very afraid.

You can't send people to Mars. Solar irradiation would occur to fatal levels during the trip. This was not a problem in going to the Moon -- only a few days of transit time. It was all a gamble. It worked. For the Moon. Not for Mars.

The country's emergency response is very weak. To outbreaks of anthrax in cities just 1000 miles apart would overwhelm our ability to deal with it -- we simply don't have enough expertise to cover two (or more) at once. Our enemies know this.

Terrorism is about trying to gain a political outcome by putting fear (terror) into people. By this definition, many of our government officials are terrorists -- to citizens of the US.

As bad as air travel currently is, we will miss it when it's gone. It will be gone for most of us during our own lifetime.

Comments (11)

You can't send people to Mars. Solar irradiation would occur to fatal levels during the trip.

Please see this question from The Mars Society:

Q: What are the dangers from radiation in transit and on the surface of Mars?

A: …Russian cosmonauts aboard Mir have taken doses as high as approximately 150 rem, with no apparent side effects to date.…

There are two types of radiation which concern astronauts: solar flares and cosmic rays. Solar flares, irregular discharges of radiation from the Sun, are made up of particles with roughly 1 million volts of energy, and can be shielded effectively. Astronauts inside a spaceship during any of the last 3 large recorded solar flares would have experienced doses of 38 rem; if they were inside of the storm shelter designed into the Mars Direct habitat, the dose would have been 8 rem. On the surface of Mars, which offers much radiation protection due to its atmosphere, the unshielded dose would have been 10 rem, the shielded dose 3 rem.

Cosmic rays, which constantly bombard space with an average energy of roughly 1 billion volts, are much more difficult to shield against. However, they occur in considerably lower concentrations than the radiation from a solar flare. In fact, on a conjunction-class flight, astronauts would take an average of 31.8 rem from cosmic rays over the course of a year; on a longer opposition-class flight, they would take 47.7 rem over 1.75 years.

In total, radiation doses of 52.0 and 58.4 rem taken on conjunction- and opposition-class missions, respectively, are well below dangerous thresholds -- even were they to come all at once, instead of over the course of years.

Hey, you brought it up.

Posted by Ben Hocking
April 22, 2008 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink

Humans have only been in "deep" space during the Apollo Lunar Missions. Anything above space stations are in orbits low enough to be partially shielded by the atmosphere (or Earth itself).

You need a bunch of water tanks for the space travelers to duck into during the entire solar flare incident. Water is damned heavy...and has to be lifted from the ground and sent along in the journey -- and back.

As I said, with "deep" space mission of just a few days to the Moon, the risks were tolerable, but it was a gamble. It will be a virtual certainty that space travelers will deal with solar flares on a 3 year mission to Mars. As of yet, there is no effective means of protection in the Constellation's designs.

I've attended Mars Society meetings. These are the same people who talk of terraforming Mars. Even when you point out that we already haven't done a good job on the single planet we've managed to terraform.

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink

I still love you, clearthinker, but I sense a pattern here. Solar energy and other renewable energy can't be effective because it can't currently generate enough efficient energy from the sun. We can't go to Mars because as of yet there is no effective means of protection from solar flares and cosmic rays.

What you frequently seem to discount is the possibility of progress on these issues in the future. Especially if dedicated and intelligent people start working hard on the problems.

Posted by Allsburg
April 22, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink

I'll be happy to discuss the science and technology of it with you if you like.

If you are merely reading your issues from the MSM, I daresay, you should be at *least* as skeptical of those articles as you would of, say, campaign coverage and spin.

I say this from experience: I've been interviewed by the MSM on occasion on technical things, so I say this with some experience (which may or may not mean much on an anonymous board).

Would you call your weatherman a pessimist if, after he has analyzed all the data from the satellites, he forecast rain?

As far as dedicated and intelligent people working on the problem: it takes money... lots of it. And I may someday write a blog on why the government has, of late, been ineffective in getting things done with it. Many problems are not of industrial interest, except in the abstract, and certainly shareholders won't pay for things.

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink

At the risk of being too clever - I like REM - I saw them in Atlanta.

Posted by MrDeadeye2U
April 22, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink

At least you didn't sleep through it.

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink

Plenty of unpleasant events on the horizon.

Food and water wars, sudden weather weirdness, new diseases, new ranges for existing diseases and pests; oh, boy.

Posted by Tom Wright
April 22, 2008 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink

My biggest fear is that when (not if) the next terrorist attack comes, people will think that the Dept of Homeland Security has been doing a great job and therefore the only recourse will be a *further* restriction of civil liberties.

It's important to get the word out *now* to hopefully make people think a bit more when that event happens.

FEMA's response to Katrina was not outrageous... it was typical and could be expected.

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink

Au contraire, re FEMA. It performed well and people thought well of it under James Lee Witt (Clinton).

Many things that are possible in principle will not happen because of other issues, perhaps politics, perhaps mechanical impediments. The dream of Mars will fall to economic woes, not engineering issues. The changeover to fully solar energy production will falter due to limited manufacturing supply of PV and other hardware.

But advances will happen, anyway. There is enough value in near orbit for the development of cheaper and cleaner ways off planet to continue. There is enough money to be made in solar and related markets for that to continue to accelerate. There is enough money in high-end medicine for development of more life-extending techniques like custom-grown organs and tissue (fights over that in our future).

There is enough knowledge to feed the current world population and quite a bit more. Ditto getting off oil, ditto educating the world, or connecting the world. It won't happen, but that's not really new; people have been fighting over territory, women, and resources for all of history. Famines are entirely natural, from a certain viewpoint. Die-offs happen to all species.

You point to what seems likely, but not what is possible. That is where the interesting stuff is. If we only accept the pessimistic projection we might not try very hard. A lesson from life is that the guy who never quits might get lucky, while the one who gives up is toast for sure.

Posted by Tom Wright
April 22, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink

Au contraire, re FEMA. It performed well and people thought well of it under James Lee Witt (Clinton).

The scale and intensity of FEMA -- and on a major city -- was unprecedented. Government bureaucracy on all levels was to blame... not all of it from the national level. It feels good to get on the Bush Administration -- and there were stupid moments -- but the response and miscues would have happened either way. The gorilla weighs 800 pounds no matter who the zookeeper is.

The dream of Mars will fall to economic woes, not engineering issues.

Having been associated with Constellation -- and having deeply researched the Apollo program -- I can tell you, with all due respect, that this is flat out wrong. The engineering issues are immense. It's hard to describe to people how amazing it was that not one Saturn V blew up -- it was an amazing engineering feat, but in comparison to (a) what will be required to go to Mars and (b) how close we came to *not* getting to the Moon, it is a bottle rocket.

There is enough knowledge to feed the current world population and quite a bit more.

Simply not true. The world is overpopulated. At best, there will be a massive lowering of the US standards of living (5% of the population that uses about 25% of the world's energy -- you do the math), to that of what we now consider 3rd world status. I refer you to OVERSHOOT by Catton.

You have absorbed a meme where political will is what is needed. You need to incorporate physical reality. Some things are mathematical and can't be refuted on any political basis.

If we only accept the pessimistic projection we might not try very hard. A lesson from life is that the guy who never quits might get lucky, while the one who gives up is toast for sure.

I'm not sure what you do for a living, but presently I am working in a very direct way for the protection of the country from a technological standpoint. This includes both people and natural assets. And I interest the government at various levels on a very regular basis. I tilt at a huge number of windmills each day -- that is not done by being pessimistic. If you are involved in the trenches and have a different path, I would love to hear about it.

If, however, you are arguing from a simple tone of blind optimism, that is part of the problem. Imagine if, when someone asked why you support a particular candidate, you answered "Just because I like him/her."

Not very convincing, is it?

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink

I'm sorry, the first line should read:

The scale and intensity of KATRINA....

Posted by clearthinker
April 22, 2008 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink