| Friday,
March 28, 2008 NEO News (03/20/08) News
from Science (pdf) & Wall Street Journal
Keeping the Earth Asteroid-Free Takes Science, Soft
Touch by Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2008; Page B1
Ex-astronaut Rusty Schweickart wants to save the world
from an incoming asteroid -- the multimegaton variety blamed for killing the
dinosaurs -- and he thinks that the only sure-fire way to keep them away is
by using, of all things, diplomacy. Mr. Schweickart was on the Apollo 9
mission that circled the earth testing the lunar lander, and had a
successful post-NASA career in business. Now 72, he is spending his
retirement trying to alert the world to the problem of Near Earth Objects,
or NEOs. Most of the time, he conducts the campaign sitting at a laptop
computer in the study of his home in the Sonoma County wine country of
Northern California. The Web connects him to a global network of other
ex-astronauts, astronomers, government scientists, space buffs and more.
Many of them are members of the B612 Foundation, which Mr. Schweickart
helped to found to research the problem.
Asteroids have been studied for centuries. But there
are still so many gaps in our understanding of them that Mr. Schweickart
says he has had to pioneer a lot of asteroidology himself. He tells me, "You
are looking at the world's expert in deflecting asteroids, and that is just
inexcusable."
The basics of the problem are familiar to Discovery
Channel viewers. Now and then, one of the millions of chunks in the Asteroid
Belt gets knocked into a different orbit, one that might one day lead to a
collision with Earth. The best place online to follow all this is at
neo.jpl.nasa.gov, where Mr. Schweickart himself checks in several times a
day. It's a kind of Facebook for asteroids, each one having its own home
page, along with a cool Java applet showing its orbits.
When it comes to actually dealing with an asteroid,
the Hollywood option, of nuking it to smithereens, is the least useful, says
Mr. Schweickart, largely because you can't control the debris. Serious
students of the topic prefer the idea of crashing a spacecraft into the
asteroid, thus nudging it into a new orbit. In fact, merely orbiting a
spacecraft nearby might do the same trick, on account of the craft's
gravitational pull.
Because asteroids have these sorts of easily imagined
happy endings, it's a more pleasant apocalypse to contemplate than, say,
global warming, for which there is no such easy solution.
Deadly asteroids also have something else going for
them: They can be dealt with for a relatively small amount of money.
Spending $100 million or $200 million a year for a decade will put in place
all the telescopes necessary to have a complete census of all of the NEOs
that threaten Earth. (Current efforts, of which there are several, tell us
about only a fraction of them.) Such a tracking program would likely give us
a warning time of decades ahead of any possible collision.
The hard part of asteroids, says Mr. Schweickart, and
the part he is spending nearly all of his time on right now, involves
finding a way to reach a global agreement on how the planet would respond
should an asteroid head our way. This is where the astronaut starts to think
like a diplomat. Indeed, several of the messages in his inbox last week
involved a meeting he's hoping to have in the fall with the
secretary-general of the United Nations.
Mr. Schweickart knows what you're probably thinking at
this point: That eliminating an asteroid is a job for Bruce Willis, not for
a bunch of diplomats. Hence, a short lesson from Mr. Schweickart, him with
an MIT degree, in orbital mechanics.
When an object like an asteroid is known to be heading
toward Earth, its exact splashdown point can't be calculated with any
certainty. Instead, scientists know only that it will fall someplace on a
thin line along the Earth's surface. These are the sorts of trajectories
that make news when wayward satellites drop back to terra firma.
Now suppose the impact line for an asteroid begins
over Country A, extends through Country B and ends at Country C. To nudge
the asteroid so that it misses Earth completely, you first have to push it
in one direction or another -- in effect, toward either A or C. That means
that residents of either A or C will bear a slightly greater risk if the
rescue effort doesn't push the asteroid quite hard enough. Naturally, the
citizens of A and C, and their political leaders, will be screaming for the
asteroid to be pushed in the other country's direction and out of their
backyard. Mr. Schweickart says the only fair way to proceed is to have a
decision-making formula drawn up well in advance, thus unaffected by the
political heat of an actual crisis.
Another reason to involve the U.N., says Mr.
Schweickart, is to overcome global suspicion that a unilateral American
antiasteroid effort would be a ruse to militarize space. Mr. Schweickart
says he also is concerned about the issue. Many in Washington, he says, seem
almost exclusively interested in the nuclear option.
Mr. Schweickart has been working on NEOs since 2001,
and says he will spend another year on the project before turning the reins
over to someone else. In the meantime, he's talking to everyone he can.
"Let's face it," he says, "being an ex-astronaut opens a lot of doors for
you." -- = = =
NEO News (now in its fourteenth year of distribution)
is an informal compilation of news and opinion dealing with Near Earth
Objects (NEOs) and their impacts. These opinions are the responsibility of
the individual authors and do not represent the positions of NASA, Ames
Research Center, the International Astronomical Union, or any other
organization. To subscribe (or unsubscribe) contact dmorrison@arc.nasa.gov.
For additional information, please see the website http://impact.arc.nasa.gov.
If anyone wishes to copy or redistribute original material from these notes,
fully or in part, please include this disclaimer.
=========
BREAKING: Oceans Cooling! Scientists puzzled by
'mystery of global warming's missing heat' (NPR)
Excerpt: Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying
the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments
suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five
years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean
scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
[…] The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since
the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the
global oceans. "There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything
really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on
a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than
the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Environment <http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1025>
The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100631>
Stuart Westmorland
Morning Edition <http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3>
, March 19, 2008 • Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean
have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the
oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That
could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists
aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface
of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record.
But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what
really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming
involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the
atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of
robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet
down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in
2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.<snip>
=========
Subject: what I would like to see you write about
Hello Jerry,
When you have recovered, and have more time and energy
for writing, I would like you to write more about your general principles
that are relevant to understanding society, government, the economy and so
on. Although you have written explicitly about general principles (your law
of bureaucracy, for example), most of what I have read of yours is addressed
to particular issues. It is clear from reading these writings of yours that
there is an underlying consistency of analysis across a wide variety of
issues. I would appreciate a more extended, more theoretical and general,
exposition of your fundamental principles. I suppose I’m asking for
something like a statement of what your understanding of a conservative
approach to public policy issues is, as I take it that your underlying
approach could be called a conservative one.
Perhaps you’ve already written such a piece, and I’ve
just missed it?
With prayers for your recovery,
Fr. Michael
Good suggestion, and I will put that into my list;
but you are of course suggesting a book. My principles are derived from
Burk, Kirk, and Possony, not necessarily in that order; Kirk and
Possony were mentors and friends, and had a great hand in my reading and
education. I met both of them when I was in graduate school in the 1950's,
and the association continued until their deaths. I also learned a lot from
Karl Wittfogel, another friend and mentor. I never studied formally with any
of them; of those who I did have as formal professors, Kenneth Cole of the
University of Washington (co founder with Kirk of Modern Age) was the most
influential in political science, Dean Edwin Ray Guthrie taught me more
about psychology and human behavior than anyone else, and Aaron Paul Horst
about the application of mathematics to prediction including in social
science. And I must not forget Herman Kahn, who was hired by Boeing to work
with the Systems Analysis group and was kind enough to give me some sound
advice on learning how to become an Operations Research / Systems Analysis
professional.
Enough reminiscence. I agree: it's worth trying to
make some principles explicit.
Start with The Map Is Not The Territory...
=========
A Plan for the Subprime Crisis
Dr. Pournelle:
John McCain made a speech yesterday addressing the
subprime mess. Hmmm, almost universal disapproval resulted, from Lou Dobbs
to the Democrats to the Republicans to others who are invincibly ignorant.
That means that it must be a good plan!
In fact, it is one of the few good ideas Mr. McCain
has had, even if (or “since”) it was borne out of his ignorance (God save us
from his ideas in areas where he is not ignorant). The government, i.e., we
taxpayers, should stay the hell out of the mess.
I owe the tenants nothing; I owe the owners of
derivatives nothing. Neither do you.
Here is my private sector offering that should be
considered, eliminating all the distortions that would be caused by
government and the Fed, thus causing other problems that can only be
“solved” by...you guessed it...the government and the Fed!
I am certainly not an unfettered free-market apostle
any more–I am persuaded by you, among others, that without some regulation,
we will have slave markets and body parts auctions on street corners. There
is just no stopping the unregulated, amoral “capitalist”. There is always
someone who will do anything for a buck.
Having said that, the penalties as well as the rewards
of the free-market should apply. Here are the proposals for each group in
the mess.
Premises:
The borrower who is in trouble may have overbought,
but that is not my concern. Most are first-time homeowners who were not
credit-worthy. They were renters prior to being given the loan; when they
“lose” their “home”, they will go back to being renters. So how are they
hurt by foreclosure?
The holders of derivatives are, frankly, people who
did not do due diligence or they let their stockbrokers do it for them. I
have yet to meet a stockbroker who does not like to sell financial
instruments, so the holders of the derivatives who got hoodwinked have only
themselves to blame. If that fact was not recognized, well...perhaps a
financial loss is deserved.
The mortgage salesmen are in a class by themselves–but
there is a market for their “services”, so who is the evil party? The
salesman or the purchaser of the derivative instruments? Both. I have no
solution for the salesmen, however, except that when an outraged public
rises up, the salesmen should be made into jerky, their houses burned, their
children sentenced to having to attend public schools, etc. On second
thought, perhaps the Eastwood "Unforgiven" punishment is a little too
severe! But you get the tongue-in-cheek point.
We regular people who are making house payments as we
lease property from local government (we do not own property if government
can take it) are going to be hurt, no matter what. It’s past time to
recognize that and attempt to minimize the pain. The line that cannot be
crossed is: no money from my pocket, directly or through inflation, to bail
out anyone.
Harsh? Only if one thinks that resistance to
out-and-out thievery is harsh.
My proposal:
Derivative holders should be “encouraged” to enter an
agreement with the defaulting borrower. That agreement should include:
1. A rental contract (which the borrower will have
anyway, no matter where) for the property should be executed. The contract
should stipulate that the payment will be the payment prior to any
escalation of payment through ARM.
2. The interest that would have been paid from payment
escalation should be credited to the renter’s account–absorbed by the
derivative holder.
3. At a certain specified time in the future, the
renter should have the option of continuing the mortgage at the higher
interest rate or of selling the home.
A derivative holder who does not want to participate
should not have to; however, the holder will have to face the loss of all
value of the instrument and, a likely result, will have to face legal
challenges personally and corporately for negligence to shareholders.
Perhaps an added incentive to participate might be that derivative holders
be formally immunized from civil action in cases where they do participate.
This way, everyone except the taxpayer will
“contribute.” The derivative holder who made the horrendous investment will
be penalized, but will not lose everything, certainly not the legal fees,
depreciation on a vacant home, or other costs of foreclosure. The penalty
that is realized is perfectly appropriate.
The renter/borrower may lose the house anyway, but has
a chance to recover from an unfortunate purchasing decision. He/she is no
worse off renting the same house than if there had been a foreclosure and an
apartment is rented.
Others in the neighborhood will not have to cope with
vacant or crack-houses in the neighborhood. Housing values will continue to
decline, but not as precipitously. Most importantly, money will not be
stolen from me and from you to subsidize a feckless business organization.
James Reynolds
I take it as a principle that Republics cannot
exist without a middle class. Aristotle defines democracy as Rule by the
Middle Class, and the Middle Class as "those who posess the goods of
fortunate in moderation." That folds into the notion of independence: a
class of voters on whom the government depends, and which does not depend on
the government in order to survive. (Note: of course we all depend on
government for survival in that we do not all stand armed to defend our
homesteads against mobs and all comers; I mean here economic survival.)
The middle class in the US has been required to
bear enormous burdens and pay for a growing class of those who contribute
little to the nation.
This latest crisis adds more burdens. Yes: many
made awful decisions, jumping into the bubble with intention of flipping
houses, in hopes of one big deal that would give, not financial
independence, but at least a step toward that. I understand the temptation,
when the State Legislature is demanding more and more from the Middle Class
in order to spend more and more on the Public "Service" and Education
aristocratic classes who must be paid before anything else -- and who demand
more every year, even as state revenue rises. It cannot keep up with those
demands.
So I have more sympathy with those who made bad
decisions.
The worst of it is that government now has no
resources but the printing presses to affect the outcome; and anything the
government does will be inflationary, possibly wildly so, which means a tax
on savings and fixed incomes.
All these matters must be taken into account in
trying to devise a way out of the situation.
==========
Predators & other threats
Defense Secretary Gates wants more unmanned Predator
aircraft in Iraq. But the Air Force worries about the long-term viability of
the spy plane program.
Nooo... the Air Force is worried about its (officer)
pilots losing the elitism of being a fighter pilot. (See past injustices
done on th A-10 community). Notice that the USAF will insist that PILOTS
have to control the UAVs - and it's really driving them wild to have to pull
a stint with a UAV unit, deploy then return to a fixed-wing unit and deploy
again. Whoohoo!... I'd wager I can attend an X-box Tournament and recruit or
hire 100 18-20 somethings, give em 2 weeks training and have 'em flying any
UAV in the inventory - anywhere in the world.
Nope, its about loss of stature and nothing to do with
inventory, training, or any other red flying fish they can come up with.
Hang tough, guy.
Couv
Colonel, I am on record as wanting the abolition of
USAF and DOD, and a return to a Department of War (Senior Department) and
Department of the Navy to include USMC, with each having its own Air
Service.
I've written about that before, and I'll get back
to it another time. In my judgment DOD has failed in both theory and
practice; and combining the services into DOD has made for some
constitutional problems as well. Again a story for another time.
As to USAF, a "service" that despises close support
of the field army (but will not give up that mission) and is run by fighter
pilots is not anything like optimum. Indeed, it's silly on the face of it.
==========
Subject: jep blogged about
Dear Jerry,
Hope to see you soon. Meanwhile, you've made a
specialized news entry. For the whole Blog Post you can see it on
Schneier.com.
Here's the best bits:
Pournelle is, in my opinion, a decent spec fiction
writer; he gets the military right, build his worlds in a craftsman-like
fashion and his characters clearly live in their universe.
He is a reasonably good tech writer - at the very
least he is entertaining which you can't say about many in that field. When
he writes on topics I know about, he's never wrong. Again, not something you
can say about many in that field.
About his other hobbies, interests and professions I
am not qualified to judge.
Posted by: Brian Dunbar <http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/>
at March 28, 2008 03:02 PM <http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/
2008/03/science_fiction.html#c258329>
= = =
To amplify, A General principle of Cyber-Information
Strategy would seemto be this:
In a distributed system that has been breached, one
needs to defeat the intruder in the most dangerous and most asymmetric ways
an intruder can attack the system, or can shunt resource and information
flow within the system.
People who can construct whole, not-yet-experienced
worlds in functional detail in their minds, and then unleash characters to
act independently, avariciously, immorally, or aggressively, or deceptively,
against the designed functioning of that system, these are the sort of
people you might want to hear suggestions from.
The first real security threat, beyond his
comprehension, I recall was Kevin Mitnick.
Foreign criminally minded establishments - secret
intelligence agencies - do not share their discoveries of our
vulnerabilities with us, like teen hackers and open source practitioners do.
Posted by: Peter E Retep at March 28, 2008 04:41 PM <http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/
2008/03/science_fiction.html#c258357>
= = =
Reminds me of
"Fiction Writers offer MI-5 and MI-6 advice on
Espionage":
Like Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis,
J.R.R. Tolkien, Malcom Muggeridge, T.E. Lawrence, Colin Wilson, the younger,
and those other Coventry Boffins advising the "real" spy-masters on how to
run notional agents under Double XX Committee, - not to mention Peter and
Ian Fleming, William Hood, Jean LeCarre, James MacQuarrie, Stella Rimington,
and Frederick Forsythe.
Posted by: Peter E Retep at March 28, 2008 05:28 PM
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives
/2008/03/science_fiction.html#c258371>
Allan Trimpi
Mostly I am sad to say this confirms why I pay
little attention to other blogs, and never allow people to post here. I read
through that thread with growing amazement that anyone would bother.
The facts are wrong -- I do not believe I ever
wrote for Creative Computing. I did write the lead column for BYTE for 25
years, and I was paid well to do so: anonymous thinks my column was
repetitious and boring, but apparently most BYTE readers did not, and Japan,
Istanbul, Riyadh, Sao Paulo, and other places paid BYTE for translation
rights and took the trouble to translate my columns into their languages, so
perhaps I did something right? In any event I was about the highest paid
columnist in the industry.
I did write the lead column for BYTE's sister
publication POPULAR Computing, and perhaps the courageous commentators were
confused? I don't know. As to Footfall, it was Number One on the NYT best
seller list, so again, perhaps we did something right; and Lucifer's Hammer
was #2 for 14 weeks, second to The Thornbirds.
As to my qualifications, I was a senior scientist
in the aerospace business, and Acting Director of Operations Research for
North American Space Division before going to Pepperdine, so perhaps I have
some right to comment on high technology and its impact on social life. But
apparently the commentators over there know better; although I looked in
vain for any positive contributions from them.
I do thank Mr. Dunbar for his comments.
But once again I find the whole thread a very good
confirmation of my principle not to allow others to make contributions to
this site without my approval. If people want to read the random and
unfiltered observations of everyone with lots of time on their hands, there
are plenty of places to find them; they won't find them here.
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Friday
|
