Samizdata

I attended Alan Boyle’s book release signing tonight amongst a group of familiar faces. As such things go, this one was a great deal of fun as attendees were actually rather familiar with the material and the debate to which Alan has taken the ‘Pluto is a Planet’ side. If you are interested in the history of the whole debate over what is a planet according to astronomers, this is a worthwhile addition to your shelf.

Alan Boyle reading from his newly released book, “The Case For Pluto” at Barnes and Nobles in The Grove in LA.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Alan’s book release also presents me with the excuse I have been waiting for to throw in my tuppence in this ‘debate’.

For astronomical purposes, the reclassification of Pluto to officially be a scare quoted ‘Dwarf Planet’ is useful. I can also admit their classification of every element other than Hydrogen and Helium as a metal might also be useful… to them. On the other hand, neither classification is of much use to anyone else. Oxygen might be an astronomer’s metal, but to one like myself whose undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, this method of sorting elements is rather silly. astronomer’s definition of planet is likewise rather worthless outside their discipline.

For those of us who look upon space as a place for settlement, commerce, and a source of resources to feed a solar system wide industrial economy, knowing whether a body clears its orbit of other matter is a “So what?” issue. Settlement and industry have different concerns and will most likely require a more complex system of classification. A planet with a thousand kilometer deep atmosphere that gradually turns to a liquid and then a solid phase is not useful for the same things as a body with a rocky surface. There may be temperate bodies out there covered with hundred mile deep oceans of water; there may be ones with molten rock surfaces. Each presents unique characteristics to the future explorer or industrialist.

From my point of view a planet has sufficient gravity to make it round-ish. Ceres and many of the new bodies outside of Pluto’s orbit are therefore planets in my book. I propose that just as Electrical Engineers ignore the astronomer’s definition of metal, the rest of us should ignore their definition of planet as well.

It is not everyday you find an email in your email box telling you someone you know is a real, honest to goodness spy, but that is what happened to me this morning. According to The Huffington Post:

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

The scientist also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged.

Personally I find it difficult to become exercised over someone passing information to an ally who may well use that information to do horrible things to people who really, really deserve it. It would be rather different had he sold information to China, North Korea, Iran or one of the other current or potential future enemies.

Oh, and the personal connection? I have crossed paths with Stu off and on over the last thirty years as he was once active with the L5 Society and was a leading figure in the Clementine lunar mapping project for which we (the National Space Society) awarded him one of our highest honours.

Stewartt Nozette receives the National Space Society’s Space Pioneer Award at the 1994 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Toronto for his work on Clementine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I still hold Stewart in the highest esteem and if I have anything to do with it, we will still reserve that space for his name on the Luna City wall of “Heroes of the Frontier” .

The following was sent to us by our occasional Samizdata correspondent and secret agent within the heart of the MSM, Taylor Dinerman.

Writing in the Washington Post Adam Nagorski the former Moscow corespondent (Reagan’s Missile Defense Triumph) wants us to believe that Obama’s September 17th decision to cancel the deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic of a missile defense system based on the one now deployed in Alaska and California, is somehow a triumph for Reagan’s SDI (Star Wars) concept.   Like they said to the tomcat when they brought out the snippers, “Its for your own good”.  

He writes, “The debate is no longer focused on whether to build such a system, but on what kind of system will do the job better against what sorts of threats. ” That debate was over long ago. The Democrats, in the 1990s under Clinton, came to the decision that publicly at least, they could no long promote the idea that the US population should   be totally defenseless against nuclear attack.  

Either Nagoski is ignorant or he is being disingenuous. In 1993 after canceling the first Bush administration’s space based Brilliant Pebbles with the words “I’m taking the stars out of Star Wars”., the Clinton administration could not simply abandon missile defense completely, instead, like the Obama administration they sought to proceed with the smallest and least offensive possible program.  They ordered the Defense Department to concentrate its efforts on defending against tactical and medium ranged missiles.   

After the GOP gained control of Congress in 1994 Clinton’s team faced unrelenting political pressure from Congress to build up America’s anti ballistic   missile defenses. They chose to support a few programs including the Navy one that Obama is now touting as if it were something new, and the Airborne Laser (ABL)   program that the administration has eviscerated.     

Most significantly Clinton and his team promoted something called National Missile Defense, a mid course interceptor system designed to handle ICBMs. It was this program that Bush, on taking office decided to proceed with especially after he withdrew from the much violated ABM treaty. This has long been the most controversial part of the US Missile Defense program since provides a direct, though weak protection to the US civilian population. For the Democrats and their allies who still believe in Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) this is intolerable.  

Bush and the GOP pushed ahead and now there are about 30 Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs) deployed in Alaska and California, along with a network of sensors. The Obama administration is choosing to cut the number of deployed GBIs to from the 44 ones planned by their predecessors to the ones now in the ground. The Bush plan was in itself inadequate, so this cut means that the US population is almost as completely vulnerable as it was under Clinton.  

Like Clinton, Obama knows little about missile defense or about nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. At least Bush had flown air defense missions in a nuclear capable aircraft, the F-102. To imagine the plan to deploy sea based SM-3 missiles as a substitute for the GBIs that were to be based in Poland is laughable, as is the idea that sometime around 2020 there will be a version of the SM-3 that can do the job the GBIs are now doing.  

The SM-3 is an excellent missile and Vice Admiral J.D.Williams (ret.), the father of sea based missile defense, is to be congratulated. It is however,   not a system that can defend the US population against an ICBM attack. That is the main question that Nagorski tries to avoid. The Democrats are still doing everything they can to prevent a real space based missile defense. The other question as to why Bush failed to revive his father’s Brilliant Pebbles program is a tough one for him and for the GOP. The little they did is now being cut to ribbons by President Pantywaist (as he was referred to in the London Telegraph.) Trying to put a Reaganesque happy face on this fact is typical of the way the MSM is willing to make a fool of itself for its man.

Taylor Dinerman

There is a rumour floating about that a lot of water has been found on the moon:

Reliable sources report that there will be a press conference at NASA HQ at 2:00 pm this Thursday featuring lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University.

The topic of the press briefing will be a paper that will appear in this week’s issue of Science magazine wherein results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 will be revealed.

There is both good and bad to this discovery from our viewpoint. Much will depend on whether the deposits are limited to polar cold traps as has long been suspected or are to be find over a broader polar area. The presence of ice cuts down the required consumables budget for any lunar settlement. The fewer bulk imports required, the nearer the time at which settlement is feasible. The downside is an International Regime led by the United Nations no doubt will be created to ration this valuable resource.

My presumption is they have finally found large deposits of real ice inside some of the polar region craters. The theory for the last thirty years has been that when comets strike the moon, most of the volatiles escape into space, but some linger long enough to find their way into the shadowed polar craters where the temperature is so low that water cannot remain a gas even in vacuum. About 25 years ago I helped a friend of mine, Dr. Francis Graham, to gain funding from the Space Studies Institute to do some telescope work on this problem. His results were negative but I believe Francis may have been one of the first to attempt the search.

They have finally fired the ‘big gun’ in the air. A Janes newsletter reports:

Boeing reports ABL COIL’s first in-flight firing. The Boeing Airborne Laser (ABL) team has fired the system’s primary chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) in flight for the first time, the company announced on 20 August. The firing, which took place at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) on 18 August, was carried out with industry team mates Northrop Grumman (which makes the COIL), Lockheed Martin (which is responsible for the beam-control/fire-control system) and the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA)

I will have to go searching for a picture. This is seriously Buck Rogers!

I found more news here in the Boeing Press Release. The beam was fired into a calorimeter to measure it and was not sent outside the aircraft. They may attempt a missile intercept before the end of the year.

A few months ago I noted the importance of having good people selected for the top jobs at NASA under the Obama administration. I believed then, as now, that NASA and the current way of doing business is a fact of life for those in space business and the best we can hope for is folks in the power seats who are positive towards wholly private space ventures.

There has been much too-ing and fro-ing in Washington during the ensuing months over the role of private sector and the old socialist space model. Surprisingly (to some), the most anti-free market action came from a Republican, Senator Shelby from Alabama. He succeeded in reprogramming funds for the COTS-D program, aimed at enabling the purchase of Astronaut tickets to space in a commercial way, back to funding of the old NASA and Aerospace Design Bureaus model borrowed from the Soviets during the Moon Race. Republicans are no different from Democrats when it comes to the basics. They like the Space Kommisars when they represent jobs and campaign contributions in their district or State.

But change is overdue. There is simply no choice for NASA and everyone knows it. Most importantly, the people now in charge understand it and with the supporting Augustine Commission findings (one of whose members, by the way, is a long standing occasional Samizdata reader) that change is about to be implemented.

As I indicated in the title, the end results of all this appear to be even better than I had dared hope.

Next year in L5 anyone?