Friday, 20 November 1998 Washington, DC
1. START II: RUSSIA IS LOSING ITS MISSILES TO THE RAVAGES OF AGE.
After languishing for six years, START II is expected to come up
for a vote in the Duma, not because hard-liners have softened,
but because the missiles are disintegrating anyway. Because of
the collapsing economy, there is no money for maintenace. As the
chair of the Duma's Defense Committee solemnly explained, "Nobody
knows where a missile is going to fly after launch." Ironically,
dismantling more than 2,500 weapons under START II may not be
good news either. It will be harder to keep track of the pieces,
which must be guarded by soldiers who haven't been getting paid.
What will hard-liners in the US Senate do now? They've used the
failure of Russia to ratify START II to justify their refusal to
take up the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(WN 4 Sep 98).
2. ISS: IN SPACE AS ON EARTH, IT'S LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
Russia's last-minute request to put ISS closer to Mir
(WN 13 Nov 98)
gave NASA a few laughs. The Zarya (Dawn) module went up this
morning, and in a couple of weeks the US will send a shuttle up
with another tinker toy. But even as the Russians were mounting
Zarya on a giant Proton rocket, The Economist was calling for
scrapping the station. An accompanying article recalled that as
early as 1991 the American Physical Society warned that a manned
space station could not be justified by its contributions to the
physical sciences, and this summer the American Society of Cell
Biologists said the same about life sciences
(WN 17 Jul 98)
.
3. WARP DRIVE: BREAKTHROUGH PROPULSION PROPOSALS SOUGHT.
If the
laws of physics are standing in the way of progress, it's time to
change the laws. NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program
has just released its first call for research proposals. It's an
exciting concept. The plan is to achieve at least one of the
following: 1) eliminate the need for propellant; 2) overcome the
limitation of the speed of light; or 3) produce unlimited energy
on-board. The proposal acknowledges that these challenges may be
"far from fruition, and perhaps even impossible." The impossible
is presumably harder to achieve. Alas, the experimental solar-powered
ion-propulsion engine on NASA's Deep Space 1, which the
media somehow connects with Star Trek, "mysteriously" shut down.
4. BRAIN CRAMP: PATENT OFFICE HIRES "ORIGINAL" THINKER.
Ever
since evangelical inventor Joe Newman failed to get his energy
machine patented -- those annoying laws of physics got in the way
again -- there's been pressure to get deeper thinkers into the US
Patent Office. In its recent newsletter, the Office profiled the
newest patent examiner, an expert on the "luminous and deadly
Galactic center, the meaning of the ancient Minoan bull leaping
sport, and the correct interpretation of Atlantis." You can read
all about them in his handbook on surviving the apocalypse. And
if he can survive an apocalypse, just about anything is possible.
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