Friday, May 30, 2008
There is a bold, adventurous NASA that explores the universe. That NASA
had a magnificent week. Having traveled 423 million miles since leaving
Earth the Phoenix Mars Lander soft landed in the Martian arctic. Its
eight foot backhoe will dig into the permafrost subsoil to see if liquid
water exists. There is another NASA that goes in circles on the edge of
space. That NASA is having a problem with the toilet on the ISS. I need
not go into detail to explain what happens when a toilet backs up in zero
gravity - it defines ugly. NASA rushed to get a special pump to fix the
toilet loaded on Discovery before its Saturday launch. Discovery is set
to deliver Japan's Kibo module to the ISS next week. Kibo, which means
hope, is described as a major expansion of the research capacity of the
ISS. We can hope, but no field of science has been noticeably affected by
previous research on the shuttle or the station.
According to today's Science, a battle is shaping up over NASA's refusal
to send the Alfa Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS on board the space
shuttle. The experiment was agreed to by former NASA chief Dan Goldin
(WN 12 Jun 98) more than a decade ago.
However, Michael Griffin, NASA chief, claims every square centimeter of
shuttle space is all needed just to finish the ISS on schedule. Otherwise
the ISS would have to be dropped in the Pacific unfinished. The NASA
authorization bill approved last week, however, proposes $150M for the
launch. The bill will be considered by the full house this summer.
A 1990 law requires presidents to report to Congress every four years on
the impact of global climate change on the United States. Three years
behind schedule, the report projects increased illness and death as a
result of heat and spread in the range of Lyme disease and West Nile
virus.
In 2003 President Bush himself announced FutureGen, a utility consortium
with government subsidies that would build a new clean power plant to
demonstrate advanced techniques for converting coal to a gas, and for
sequestering pollutants deep under ground. As with the Freedom
Car, "government subsidies" was the secret password that sucked industry
in. GM still rolls its hydrogen car out for photo ops, and farmers still
grow corn to collect ethanol subsidies, but neither technology helps with
the energy problem
He served the nation well leading the National Human Genome Research
Institute after James Watson stepped down. His idea of relaxation is to
roar about the countryside on a Harley. He also plays the guitar,
eloquently defends Darwinian evolution, and yet became a devout Christian
at age 29. He cited two factors for his conversion: the anthropic
principle and the moral law. Almost all religious scientists cite the
anthropic principle; the moral law is the principle that humans
instinctively know right from wrong.
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