It may just be that my recent superannuated birthday is weighing on my mind, but I have been having curmudgeon thoughts a lot lately. 

First curmudgeon though:  why do prices continually go up?

For as long as I can remember, coffee in the Mission Control Center cost 10 cents.  Best coffee around, too.  For more than 20 years, the price hasn't changed.  Its not subsidized, there is an informal "club" that manages the coffee.  Nothing fancy, plain joe accompanied by powered creamer and sugar if you must.

A few months ago, I was floored when the sign said the price was now 15 cents!  Highway robbery.  Of course, they also have added a bunch of foo-foo creamer options (hazelnut, amaretto, yech) that no real flight controller would touch.  I can remember when men were men and flight controllers . . . .well, I guess it must be my advanced age which is leading to this rant.

Why is this important?  Because, if you want to know the truth, all the real decisions in the MCC are made at the coffee pot.  I know, the flight control team is all tied in on console with all the information displayed on multicolored interactive computer screens.  But the real management decisions all get made when the flight director comes by the coffee pot and all the senior managers sitting in the viewing room converge there too. 

Second curmudgeon topic:  grown children being contrary.

In case you caught my blog post comparing Star Trek to our current space program, I would point out that my son has written a similar blog post comparing Star Trek to his work -- in a very favorable light.  Aren't children supposed to follow their parent's lead instead of taking the opposite tack?  http://www.umportal.com/article.asp?id=5588

Third curmudgeon topic:  stupid comments about launch weather scrubs. 

I have been to KSC and I have waited for the weather to clear enough for it to be safe to launch our astronauts.  I have even taken my family down there and had their vacation plans disrupted due to launch delays.  So I can somewhat understand disappointment about launch delays.  But anybody with a brain should realize that launching into a thunderstorm is just plain stupid.  In the bigger picture, delaying a day or three will never be remembered.  Having the shuttle struck by lightning would haunt us for a long time.  So pipe down.  It is Florida in the summer time.  What did you expect.  Pack more . . . clothes . . . next time.

Fourth curmudgeon topic:  blog-o-sphere confusion over who sets national space policy.

Recently the ISS program manager had to tell the media that NASA is developing plans to deorbit the ISS in 2016.  Everybody on the internet jumped on that as the stupidest thing ever heard.  Why would NASA want to eliminate a hugely expensive project just as it is becoming useful?  Short answer -- NASA doesn't want to do that.  Congress and the OMB have indicated that they will not give us the money to keep it operating.  By international treaty we must dispose of orbital objects when their lifetime is complete.  This is not a stupid decision on the part of NASA, it is, as the Gehman report said, "a failure of national leadership."  Time will tell if we continued to be directed down this course or if we will be given operating funds to use the ISS as a national research laboratory as it was intended.

Final curmudgeon topic: the more things change the more they stay the same.

 During our recent office move, one of my co-workers cleaning out his files came across an ABC Radio transcript by Jim Slade made on August 12, 1991.   He was at KSC and after talking for a few minutes about the activity at KSC he got to the gist of his commentary which I will excerpt for your reading pleasure:

"There is a cynical tendency to jeer whenever a big, visible program doesn't work right.  Impatience, leavened with the idea that lots of money ought to mean perfection.  . . .  If you want to know what's wrong with NASA, you will have to dig back in your history books ten to fifteen years ago when neither the White House nor the Congress could decide if the space program was fish, fowl, or tinker toy.  Funding was inadequate to do the job  . . . More importantly, though, the space agency was getting no direction.  No political leader had the interest or the courage to say "this is what we ought to do with the things we have learned," and, as a result NASA drifted . . . there has been one commission after another making a study of what the US should be doing in space in the next fifty years.  Usually, they say the say the same thing:  go back to the moon and on to Mars.  And so far, there has been a lot of political talk about it . . . ."

OK, after this, no more curmudgeon thoughts.  I promise.  Really.

For my birthday, my son and fellow Star Trek aficionado gave me some DVDs with the old TV series.  Needless to say, I have made a lengthy review of the subject lasting far into the evenings over the last week or so.

As a fictional future, Star Trek set a high standard:  there was always in interesting planet to explore, every week there was a challenging interpersonal (interspecies?!) relationship to develop, the good guys always won, camaraderie reigned supreme.  Even logic and reason, while important, were shown to be inferior to human intuition and compassion.  Every episode left you with the feeling that things just would just get better and better.  What an exciting, upbeat, pleasantly challenging universe we would encounter in the future!  Pop culture was profoundly affected:  “Beam me up Scotty!”

So my evaluation of the genre?  Star Trek ruined an entire generation, maybe two.

Don’t get me wrong – I really enjoy the old series (except maybe for the first movie).  I still do.  I indoctrinated my kids and they are working on indoctrinating my grandkids.  Beam me up Scotty, indeed.

Alas, one of the most poignant Dilbert cartoons of all time has a senior engineer telling a naive young intern to “climb into the Jeffries tube” (the air conditioning duct) to get to “engineering” where an impending disaster could to be averted.   After the intern gets stuck in the duct, the senior engineer says “this is where the intern finds out that life is not like Star Trek”.   Too true:  real life is not like Star Trek.

We have not found any alien civilizations (yet), nor life of any kind elsewhere.  Even the evidence for fossilized life on some meteorites is highly controversial.  Humans have briefly scouted exactly one other world full of “magnificent desolation.”   Most of our human time has been spent in low earth orbit, eking out a toehold in space.  Some of our robots have visited more worlds and their splendid visits give us some hope for future exploration.

But for my generation, indoctrinated in the Star Trek mythos, the bar was set high and in real life the results have been, well, meager.  Space exploration has lead to the development of loads of new technologies (GPS, direct broadcast satellite TV), and there have been many examples of courage and heroes to inspire us; but we are a little short in the interaction-with-beings-from-other planets department.  (No UFO letters please).

Real life has turned out to be a lot darker and more complicated than any of the TV episodes or even the movies.  Nothing really gets settled in an hour in real life, does it?

Over the years the Star Trek franchise also changed as the new episodes became darker and less optimistic.  Picard stuck in endless battles with the Borg; Voyager never going to make it home, Deep Space 9 battling shape shifters to an inconclusive standoff, and Enterprise which became a dark soap opera centered on the relationships between the crewmembers.  The last movie has become the of the darkest of all – exchanging a bright future timeline for a more sordid and darker one.  Sigh. So much for "rebooting" the future.

(Meanwhile, I have often pondered the metaphorical symbolism of the Borg Collective as a substitute for the OMB.  Really.  “Resistance is Futile.”  Think about it.)

If the Star Trek writers were to make a more real-life episode, it would probably have consisted of Jean-Luc Picard testifying before the Federation Senate subcommittee on the Star Fleet budget and how it was inadequate to carry out the exploration mission which was the primary reason for the existence of the Fleet.  An interesting or exciting episode?  No.  But then, as I said before:  real life is not like Star Trek.

So a whole generation or maybe three has been ruined to expect excitement, glamour, interspecies interaction, and a host of things that space exploration in the real universe simply does not provide.  Ruined.  Expectations set too high.  Thus we have many people who might otherwise support space exploration but are disappointed by its current status.

I was fortunate to have a personal interaction with the Great Bird of the Galaxy, Gene Roddenberry while I was in college in the early 70’s.  His vision – and it remained constant until he passed away – was of an optimistic future.  A future where hard work, risk taking, and good judgment, trust, and compassion would lead to rewards for both the individual and society as a whole.  The franchise did not turn dark until he was gone. 

Call me a pollyanna if you like, but I agree with Roddenberry.   There is an exciting future out there for us. 

I guess I really have been ruined because I really do - at my core - believe that hard work, risk taking, good judgment, trust, and compassion will lead to great rewards for our whole society.   All the societies on Earth.  Heck, even those alien societies we may encounter some day.

Now if we could just get a Zefram Cochrane to show us how to travel a warp speed . . . . 

 . . . .   maybe real life would become like Star Trek.

Recently I had a couple of regular scheduled airline flights where we encountered strong turbulence (at least for an airliner) and got bounced around pretty good.  It happens and its not pleasant.  That put me in mind of the poor Air France jet that went down in bad weather over the Atlantic.  We may never fully know what happened there.  These thoughts lead me to remember times when we had to deal with stormy weather surrounding space flight.

My last assignment as Ascent/Entry Flight Director for the space shuttle was for STS-113 in the fall of 2002.  It was a memorable flight, several technical delays and then a spectacularly successful mission to the International Space Station.  Of course you remember the one day we delayed for weather, don't you?  I certainly remember because it is etched in my memory.

Obviously we must have good weather to launch.  Florida is lightning capital of North America; afternoon thunderstorms are typical, changing winds are to be expected, clouds and low visibility are normal.  But some of the Florida days are crystal clear blue with light winds and we really like to take advantage of those days to launch.  Except I had to scrub for weather on a beautiful Florida fall day.

The shuttle rules are based on the principle that something might go wrong during the launch phase and the crew should have a fighting chance of landing somewhere with reasonable weather.  To ensure that, the flight rules are long, arcane, and tedious, and make the Weather Officer watch not just the Florida weather, but weather at landing fields all up the east coast of North America, from South Carolina to Canada; then weather in the British Isles, Spain, Morocco, a little African country called The Gambia, Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Diego Garcia, Hawaii, and whew, back home to the mainland where California and New Mexico have abort landing sites.  Weather doesn't have to be good everywhere -- that is impossible -- but there are categories where at least one of a group of nearby runways must have good weather.  Otherwise, the rules call for the Flight Director to call for a scrub.

The trickiest abort is the Return to Launch Site (RTLS).  Weather must be good at the Shuttle Landing Facility, about 5 miles west of the launch pad, and here is the tricky part - 20 to 30 minutes after launch.  As Yogi Berra observed:  "Forecasts are difficult, especially about the future."

All of these weather related Flight Rules and their associated Launch Commit Criteria have been on the books for years, approved by senior NASA management, and refined with the latest meterological understanding and tools.

In spite of the complex abort landing site weather rules, if the weather in Florida is good for both launch and RTLS, it has been very rare to scrub a launch for bad weather at the other abort landing sites. 

On that beautiful fall day in Florida, with the crew on board and the tank full of gas, both landing sites in Spain had thunderstorms at the field with strong winds, precipitation, and - worst of all - lightning.  The shuttle is particularly vulnerable to lightning.  So I had to call for a scrub.  No-Go for TAL weather. 

For all the dignitaries and senior NASA officials at the viewing stands in Florida, this was a serious disappointment.  Cooler heads would recognize that this was a good decision, but some were clearly wondering what the stupid Ascent Flight Director was thinking -- weather is perfect for a launch in Florida -- why do we care about Spain? 

Having been around the block a few times, I was well aware of the buzz that was probably developing a thousand miles east of Mission Control.  But, better to scrub a day for safety than to put the crew in a bad situation.  If a TAL abort occurred and the weather caused a bad day at the runway, nobody would ever forget it; especially me.

One thing I have never understood.  Some of my co-workers bide their time for the day they reach NASA retirement age, and say that they will tell their management what they really think when they have a pension in hand and can walk out the door safely.  Worrying that telling the boss the truth has never been part of my make up.  If they don't like the truth, too bad.  I've rarely had a boss at NASA take my truth telling in a bad way.  This weekend, I reach the magic NASA retirement age.  Will it make any difference in my outspokenness?  I doubt it, but we'll see.

Now, from time to time, NASA is blessed with retired military flag officers.  Admirals and Generals who have ably served their country for many years achieve military retirement age and come back for a second career on the civilian side of the government.  Often these folks provide capable leadership and invaluable knowledge.  Sometimes, these folks merely occupy a square on the org chart and never understand what we do or how we do it, and we must find ways to work around them.  On rare occasions, one of these retired military officers takes it on himself to become the drill instructor to NASA to mold us into a different, more military culture.

After the launch was scrubbed, I had a call from one of those retired flag officers who just happened to recently come into my chain of command.  At rather high decibel levels I heard all about the all weather capabilities of current military fighter aircraft.  I heard all about how badly delaying schedules hurts the program.  I heard all about how a good leader would have made a better judgement call and proceeded to launch.  On and on.

After I hung up the phone I thought about how little he understood our work.  How vulnerable and fragile are our spacecraft.  And how much care is required to fly safely in space.  Sometimes it is not a popularity contest, and you just have to accept that.

Coming back from vacation, my email and real mail boxes are stuffed.  One internet article that several folks forwarded to me came up several times.  At the surface, it was suggested that this is a counterpoint to my last post about the Chinese navy in the 15th century. 

I strongly encourage you to read this article by John Derbyshire.  I found it a very interesting read.  Here is the link and I encourage you to read it yourselves: 

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzc2NTYxMzVjNWRkMzc0YzQ0Y2VhNGI1ZGRkMTc2N2I

Now, having read Mr. Derbyshire's article, I think that he is right on the mark.  In fact, I think we even agree at a very significant level.

My analysis comparing space to exploration in the 15th century is summed up this way:  "Over the next centuries, the European countries repeatedly decided to go forward, by fits and starts . . . into the world for trade, treasure, discovery, and glory.  They immersed the west in new ideas, new technologies, and new innovations.   . . .  The Chinese course lead inexorably to stagnation, then dissolution, then decay, and finally to destruction."

Mr. Derbyshire's conclusion is that "The lawyerly mandarins of the Obama administration have no interest in science or in imaginative enterprises of any kind,  . . . Perhaps our country . . . is in for a few centuries of introverted, creativity-free stagnation under bossy literati, until something unexpected comes banging on the door to wake us from our opium dreams."

So we both see the same consequences of terminating our exploration.  All that we have done to date will be pointless, left without even suitable monuments for future generations to wonder at.  Only those bold and persistent enough to build on the past explorations will reap the transforming benefits.

Stopping now would put the United States on the ash heap of history, just like those Chinese who burned their fleet six centuries ago.

I hope we choose a vibrant future full of exploration, development, innovation, creativity, and unfathomable economic growth.  I want to avoid centuries of opium dreams where the rest of the world passes us by.

This is a little talk I put together to give at various functions.  I learned all this in college world history class.  Pardon the all caps - it is written as a speech and my old eyes need large font to read it.

But the point is as important as it can be.  We stand on the brink of ceding American leadership in exploration to other nations of the world.  We need to think about the consequences of this action.

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IN MY NEW ROLE I GET TO TRAVEL AROUND THE COUNTRY AND TALK TO A LOT OF PEOPLE.  THESE DAYS I AM FREQUENTLY ASKED THE SAME QUESTION:  CAN WE AFFORD THE LUXURY OF HAVING A SPACE PROGRAM.  IN THESE DAYS WHERE THE NATION IS FIGHTING TWO WARS, THERE IS A CRISIS IN HEALTH CARE, THE NATIONAL DEBT IS REACHING ASTRONOMICAL LEVELS, AND WE ARE IN AN ECONOMIC RECESSION, INDEED FIGHTING HARD TO PREVENT ANOTHER GREAT DEPRESSION, CAN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AFFORD A SPACE PROGRAM. 

IT DOES LITTLE TO POINT OUT THAT NASA RECEIVES 0.6% OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET AND IF ALL SPACE ACTIVITIES WERE TERMINATED THAT DROP IN THE FEDERAL BUCKET WOULD NOT SOLVE ANY OF THE PROBLEMS FACING THE NATION.

I BELIEVE THAT A STRONG BUSINESS CASE CAN BE MADE THAT THE SPACE PROGRAM LEADS TO ECONOMIC GROWTH THROUGH THE INVENTION OF NEW PRODUCTS WHICH STIMULATE NEW BUSINESSES AND INDEED WHOLE NEW INDUSTRIES.  BUT I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT CASE TODAY, INDEED I BELIEVE YOU ARE MORE FAMILIAR WITH IT THAN I AM.

A CASE CAN BE MADE THAT SPACE EXPLORATION EXCITES OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TO STUDY SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, ENGINEERING – AREAS WHICH THE NATION IS DESPERATELY SHORT OF NEW COLLEGE GRADUATES.  BUT I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT CASE TODAY.

A CASE CAN BE MADE THAT BY LOOKING BACK ON THE EARTH AND STUDYING OTHER PLANETS WE CAN BEST UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR CLIMATE AND PERHAPS HOW TO CONTROL IT.  BUT I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT CASE TODAY.

THERE IS AN EVEN STRONGER CASE THAT SPACE ACTIVITIES HELP PROTECT OUR NATION MILITARILY; BUT I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT CASE TODAY.

I AM HERE TODAY TO TALK ABOUT THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES OF SPACE EXPLORATION, OR OF NOT HAVING SPACE EXPLORATION.

I AM MINDFUL TODAY THAT WE CHOSE OUR OWN DESTINY.  WE ARE FOUNDED BY PIONEERS WHO SAW OPPORTUNITY AND WHO HAD THE COURAGE AND ENERGY TO TAKE A CHANCE. 

HISTORY TELLS US THAT THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES.  IT IS NOT A GIVEN THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL ALWAYS BE GREAT.  TODAY WE ARE THE WORLD’S ONLY SUPER POWER AND WHAT WE DO IN SPACE CONTRIBUTES TO THAT POSITION.  WITHOUT CONTINUED COURAGE AND SWEAT, WE COULD FIND OURSELVES NO LONGER THE LEADER OF THE WORLD.

EVERYONE KNOWS THE QUOTATION FROM THE HISTORIAN GEORGE SANTAYANA:  “THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM THE PAST ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT”.   AND SO, TODAY, I HAVE A LITTLE HISTORY LESSON FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT IN THE DAYS TO COME.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO THERE WAS ONLY ONE SUPERPOWER IN THE WORLD: CHINA. 

THE MING EMPIRE RULED A PEOPLE MORE NUMEROUS THAN THE ANCIENT ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT, LARGER IN TERRITORY THAN MODERN RUSSIA, VASTLY MORE POWERFUL AND RICHER THAN ALL THE PETTY FIEFDOMS OF CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN EUROPE PUT TOGETHER. 

THE MING EMPIRE WAS FABULOUSLY WEALTHY.  THE EMPEROR WANTED A NEW CAPITOL:  THEY BUILT THE CITY WE KNOW AS BEJING FROM EMPTY GRAZING LAND.  

THE EMPEROR NEEDED TO FEED THE PEOPLE IN HIS NEW CITY:  THEY BUILD THE GRAND CANAL, AN ENGINEERING FEAT NOT RIVALED UNTIL THE SUEZ AND PANAMA CANALS. 

THE EMPEROR WANTED A NAVY, SO HE APPOINTED AN ADMIRAL TO BUILD A FLEET OF  1,500 SHIPS. 

THE LARGEST OF THESE SHIPS RIVAL THE SIZE OF WWII’S SUPPORT AIRCRAFT CARRIERS; THEY WERE THE LARGEST WOODEN SHIPS EVER BUILT, THE LARGEST SAILING SHIPS EVER BUILT.

IT WAS NOT UNTIL THE AGE OF STEAM AND STEEL FOUR HUNDRED YEARS LATER THAT LARGER SHIPS BUILT.  THERE WERE OVER 30,000 SAILORS IN THIS NAVY.  CHINA WAS SO INCONCEIVABLY RICH IN THOSE DAYS THAT THE COST OF THIS VAST NAVY WAS AN INCONSEQUENTIAL FRACTION OF THE RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO THE EMPEROR.

THE CHINESE ADMIRALS SET OUT ON MANY VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY AND COMMERCE TO THE PHILIPPINES, MALAYSIA, INDIA, AND AS FAR AS THE EAST COAST OF AFRICA.  FOR OVER 40 YEARS THE MING NAVY MADE MANY VOYAGES WHICH RESULTED IN CHINESE HEGEMONY:  TOTAL  POLITICAL CONTROL OVER HALF THE WORLD.    NOT HALF THE “KNOWN WORLD” AS THOSE IGNORANT EUROPEANS MIGHT GUESS, BUT HALF THE TOTAL WORLD.

 FROM THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE THROUGH INDIA TO THE BERING STRAIT, FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND TO THE WEST COAST OF THE AMERICAS, TRADE AND TRIBUTE POURED INTO CHINA.  ALL OF THESE ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE WELL DOCUMENTED AND WELL KNOWN TO HISTORIANS.

IN A RECENT BOOK, A RETIRED BRITISH ROYAL NAVY SEA CAPTAIN, GAVIN MENZIES,  PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT THE CHINESE NAVY CIRCUMNAVIGATED THE WORLD IN 1421, DISCOVERING ANTARCTICA IN THE SOUTH AND COMING WITHIN TWO HUNDRED MILES OF THE NORTH POLE IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. 

CAPTAIN MENZIES HAS EVIDENCE THAT THE CHINESE SET UP COLONIES NOT JUST ON THE ORIENT FACING EAST COAST OF AFRICA, BUT ON THE WEST COAST AS WELL, CHINESE COLONIES IN THE CARIBBEAN, NEAR PRESENT DAY PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND, AND ON GREENLAND.  WOW.

HOW DID THE EUROPEANS GET AN ACCURATE MAP OF THE WORLD 75 YEARS BEFORE COLUMBUS AND A CENTURY BEFORE MAGELLAN?  FROM CHINA!

SO THE CHINESE WERE THE WORLDS GREATEST SUPERPOWER AND CONTROLLED HALF THE WORLD AND EXPLORED THE ENTIRE GLOBE

IN 1415, THE TINY PRINCIPALITY OF PORTUGAL PUT EVERYTHING ON THE LINE.  PORTUGAL WAS INSOLVENT, ITS PRINCE IN DEBT AND HIS COURT THREADBARE.  AFTER A HUGE DEBATE, THE PORTUGUESE BORROWED JUST ENOUGH MONEY TO FINANCE A FEW SHIPS AND THEIR CREWS. 

WITH LESS THAN TWO DOZEN SHIPS - NONE OF THEM LARGE BY EVEN THE MISERABLE EUROPEAN STANDARD OF THE DAY – THE PORTUGUESE FOUGHT A SUCCESSFUL SEA BATTLE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND CAPTURED THE PORT OF CEUTA ON THE NORTH AFRICAN COAST.  THIS OPENED UP, EVER SO SLIGHTLY, TRADE WITH THE ORIENT, ESPECIALLY INCREASED TRADE IN THE HIGHLY DESIRED SPICES FROM THAT REGION. 

THE SCRAPPY PORTUGUESE DECIDED TO GO FORWARD, LEARNING THE LESSON THAT TAKING RISKS WAS WORTHWHILE, AND LOSSES COULD BE ACCEPTED.  THEY INVENTED A NEW TYPE OF SHIP SUITED FOR THE STORMY ATLANTIC, THE CARAVEL, THE FIRST REALLY NEW SHIP DESIGN SINCE ANCIENT TIMES. 

THE CARAVEL BECAME ONLY THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF CONTINUALLY IMPROVING AND INNOVATIVE SHIP DESIGNS THAT HAVE CONTINUED EVEN TO THE PRESENT.

THE PORTUGUESE EARNED THE ADMIRATION AND ENVY OF ALL THE EUROPEAN STATES, AND EVERY COUNTRY TRIED TO EMULATE THEM. 

THUS STARTED THE AGE OF WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN.

OVER THE NEXT CENTURIES, THE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES REPEATEDLY DECIDED TO GO FORWARD, BY FITS AND BY STARTS, FOR GOOD REASONS AND FOR BAD ONES, ALWAYS WITH ENDLESS DEBATE, GENERALLY TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF FINANCIAL INSOLVENCY.  BUT THE WEST EUROPEANS MADE THE DECISION TO GO FORWARD INTO THE WORLD FOR TRADE, TREASURE, DISCOVERY, AND GLORY. THEY IMMERSED THE WEST IN NEW IDEAS, NEW TECHNOLOGIES, AND NEW INNOVATIONS.

BACK IN CHINA, AFTER A GENERATION OF ASTOUNDING VOYAGES, THE GREAT MING ADMIRAL DIED AT SEA.  THE EMPEROR ALSO DIED, AND THE NEW EMPEROR CAME UNDER DIFFERENT INFLUENCES. 

THESE VOICES COUNSELED THE YOUNG EMPEROR TO TURN INWARD.   SURELY CHINA HAD ENOUGH PROBLEMS TO SOLVE IN CHINA, WHY WASTE TIME AND ENERGY EXPLORING?  THESE ADVISORS TOLD THE EMPEROR THAT THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE WORLD TO MATCH CHINESE CULTURE - TRUE.  THEY TOLD THE EMPEROR THERE WERE NO GOODS IN THE WORLD TO RIVAL CHINESE GOODS - TRUE.  IN SHORT, THEY CONCLUDED, THERE WAS NOTHING OUT THERE FOR CHINA – A CONCLUSION THAT SOUNDED LOGICAL BUT WAS FAR FROM TRUE. 

THEY ADVISED THAT CHINA SHOULD PROTECT WHAT THEY HAD FROM THE FOREIGNERS.  FOREIGNERS WHO WANTED WHAT THE CHINESE HAD.  THE EMPEROR FOLLOWED THIS ADVICE.  HE COMPLETED THE GREAT WALL TO KEEP FOREIGNERS OUT.  HE BUILT A NEW CAPITAL, A “FORBIDDEN CITY” TO KEEP THE CITIZENS OF HIS OWN COUNTRY OUT. 

THE EMPEROR ORDERED THAT THE FLEET BE BURNED.  THE SAILORS WERE DISBANDED.  IT BECAME A CAPITAL OFFENSE TO BUILD A SAILING SHIP WITH MORE THAN TWO MASTS.  THE EMPEROR EVEN ORDERED THAT ALL THE RECORDS OF ALL THE VOYAGES BE BURNED.  CHINA TURNED INWARD.

WHEN THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS BERNARDO DIAS AND VASCO DE GAMA ROUNDED THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE FROM THE WEST TO THE EAST, THEY FOUND LEGENDS OF WHITE GHOST SHIPS THAT HAD COME TWO GENERATIONS EARLIER.  AFRICANS ALL ALONG THE EAST COAST WERE WEARING CHINESE STYLE HATS AND CLOTHES.  

WHEN MAGELLAN CROSSED THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND CLAIMED THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS FOR KING CHARLES OF SPAIN HE FOUND SILK AND PORCELAIN, ALL IMPORTED FROM CHINA YEARS BEFORE, BUT THE TRADERS THAT BROUGHT THEM HAD VANISHED. 

ALL THROUGHOUT THE INDIES, EUROPEANS FOUND REMNANTS OF A CULTURE THAT HAD BEEN OF GREAT INFLUENCE BUT WHICH HAD DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY FROM THE SCENE: CHINESE CULTURE. 

THE CHINESE COURSE LED INEXORABLY TO STAGNATION, THEN DISSOLUTION, THEN DECAY, AND FINALLY TO DESTRUCTION.   FOR THERE CAME A DAY WHEN THE PORTUGUESE AND THE OTHER EUROPEANS CARVED UP THE PITIFULLY WEAK REMNANTS OF CHINA FOR THEIR OWN COLONIAL USE.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS LATER, THE GREAT 20^TH CHINESE HISTORIAN WEI PU CONCLUDED THE CHOICE OF DIRECTION WAS CRITICAL.  THE CHINESE TURNED INWARD, THE EUROPEANS WENT FORWARD.   THAT CHINESE HISTORIAN OBSERVED:  “THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD FOR THE LAST 500 YEARS HAS BEEN THE HISTORY OF THE WEST.” 

CHOICES MATTER.  THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES, SOME UNSEEN AT THE TIME.  BUT ONE CONSTANT HAS HELD THROUGH HUMAN HISTORY; TAKING RISKS TO FIND NEW KNOWLEDGE, NEW LANDS, AND NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS, NEW CULTURES, AND NEW IDEAS HAS ALWAYS PAID OFF.  STAYING HOME IS THE SHORT ROAD TO FAILURE.

SO ARE WE, TODAY, TO BE THE CHINESE OR THE PORTUGUESE?  WHICH DIRECTION WILL OUR COUNTRY CHOOSE?  THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES, ONLY REWARDS FOR THOSE WHO ARE WILLING TO SEIZE OPPORTUNITY, TAKE RISKS, WORK HARD, AND SHOW COURAGE.

THE CHINESE HAVE LEARNED THIS LESSON FROM HISTORY.  WILL WE?

I wrote this note to the shuttle team in 2004.  I think it is still true today.  Maybe more so than in 2004.

Rice vs. K State tonight at Reckling Park in the NCAA regional baseball playoffs.  Texas has already advanced to the super-regionals facing TCU.  Why do we care?  Read on:

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This note is not about really sports but about exploration. Let me tell you why.

JFK was on a roll.  He could move a crowd with a speech.  He knew what would excite an audience and he could build on their emotion.  It was a hot summer day in Houston and the event was outdoors at Rice stadium.  The President had come to town to elaborate on his space exploration initiative.  He talked about the technical challenges, like the requirement for materials to withstand temperatures of several thousand degrees, or "almost as hot as it is here today" he quipped.  Then he came to the centerpiece of his speech:

SOME PEOPLE ASK, WHY GO TO THE MOON?

THEY MAY WELL ASK, WHY CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN?

WHY 35 YEARS AGO, FLY THE ATLANTIC?

WHY DOES RICE PLAY TEXAS?

At this point the crowd which contained many university alumni, faculty, and students started cheering.  But JFK knew better than to slow down; without a pause he continued:

WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON

The cheering intensified, not cheering about a football team but about a new goal

WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON AND DO THE OTHER THINGS,

NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE EASY BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD

BECAUSE THAT CHALLENGE IS ONE WE INTEND TO WIN

At one time, during the 1920's and 30's there was parity in football in the Southwest Conference; Rice won its share of the championships and on any given Saturday in the fall any team had the potential to beat any other team.  But after WWII the University of Texas took off in size and came to dominate football in the region.  Rice earned the dubious honor of becoming the smallest school in the nation to play Division I sports. 

Logically, mathematically, analytically, Rice should never beat Texas.  With a regular period, the Rice University faculty debates giving up football - or all Division I athletics -  as a waste of time, money, and effort. 

And when the historians replay the tape of JFK's speech, they generally clip out the phrase 'WHY DOES RICE PLAY TEXAS?'  perhaps because the reference may be obscure to some people, perhaps because it seems less important than Lindbergh flying solo across the Atlantic.  But if that phrase is clipped out, I submit you may miss the point. 

Texas dominates the series 64-21-1.  The conferences have changed and the two teams don't play every year, and when they do, it doesn't count for conference standings. 

Logically, mathematically, analytically, there is no point for Rice to play Texas. 

But about once a decade, the illogical happens: the underdog triumphs.  Facing the challenge makes a fundamental change in the people who face that challenge.

George Mallory was one of the early explorers to attempt to climb Mount Everest, the penultimate "highest mountain".  When they asked him why, Mallory's reply became legendary: "Because its there".  But that reason smacks of adolescence, it fails to describe any compelling value.  George Mallory died on the slopes of Mount Everest.  Tinzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first successful assault of the world's highest mountain.  Later Hillary spoke about the experience:  "It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves". 

The Universe neither knows nor cares if we boldly explore or silently fade from the scene. 

But we know. 

The point is what the challenge does to us.  There is nothing "virtual" about being on the mountain peak, or on the lunar surface.  The challenge changes us and that may very well be the most important thing of all.

JFK spoke about the challenge of the lunar program as being a measure of us as a people; could we meet the challenge.

Today, we are facing another space exploration initiative and the challenge is the same.  Exploring the space frontier is extremely difficult, saturated with risk, immensely challenging.  Our part is to fly the Space Shuttle safely soon.  It is a formidable challenge.  But everyone from the President down tells us that demonstrating that we can meet this challenge is the necessary cornerstone to all that may come afterward.  Flying the shuttle safely and completing the International Space Station will demonstrate that we -  our agency - our nation - has the competence to continue on and roll back the frontiers.  Meeting this challenge will change us.

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Somebody recently wrote that this was a poor reason to explore space.  There are many reasons to explore space.  I've written a number of posts providing various reasons, some intensely practical, some more philosophical.  Go ahead and look back over the record here. 

But challenging the best in ourselves to do something hard; that is not an inconsiderable reason either.

"But why, some say, the moon?  Why choose this as our goal?  And they may ask, why climb the highest mountain?  Why thirty five years ago fly the Atlantic?  Why does Rice play Texas?  We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.  Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.  Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."

This is the anniversary -- you know I'm big on anniversaries -- of the first ascent of Mt. Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary.  Even JFK compared going into space with climbing the highest mountain.  Since a good friend and college, Scott Parazynski, just completed his personal conquest of that mountain, it seems timely to review the comparison.

DANGER: 

Not including 2009, over 4,100 successful summits of Mt. Everest have been made by 2,700 different people.  210 fatalities have occurred on the mountain with 120 bodies remaining unrecovered on its upper slopes.  Thus the overall fatality rate is about 5% on the world's highest mountain.  But Mt. Everest it not the most dangerous high mountain.  Here are the top three:  Annapurna (8,091 m) 130 climbers have summitted Annapurna, while 53 have died. The overall fatality rate is thus 41%. Nanga Parbat (8,125m) 216 climbers have summitted Nanga Parbat and 61 have died. The overall fatality rate thus 28.24%. K2 (8,611 m) 198climbers have summitted the world's second highest peak. 53 have died. K2's overall fatality rate is 26.77%.

The total number of people who have been in earth orbit (including those who went to the moon):  465 individuals making just over 1000 total trips.  If suborbital flights are included, this number gets a bit larger.  Fatalities:  including Apollo 1 and the single fatality in the X-15 program, 22 people have lost their lives in space - or an overall fatality rate of just over 2%.

DIFFICULTY:  Both getting to earth orbit and climbing the highest mountains are incredibly difficult, right at limits of what we can do.

TEAMWORK:  Both ventures require large teams to plan, provide and coordinate logistics, and execute the plan -- even when just a very few of the team members actually attempt the summit.

EXTREME ENVIRONMENT:  I recommend Ed Vestur's excellent book "No Shortcuts to the Top" to explain the extreme environments encountered above 8,000 meters. 

First of all, thanks to all who wondered how I have been doing.  It has been a very busy month and I'm afraid that blogging fell off my "to do" list.  The outlook for summer is also extremely busy but I will try to update frequently as I have the time!

Yesterday we rightly spent the day remembering those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country and for freedom.  It is, as Lincoln said, altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  For our sake, not for theirs, to rededicate our lives, not to consecrate what they have done. 

But yesterday, May 25, was another anniversary; in 1961 the young President of the United States boldly proposed that this nation should send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth before the decade was out.  That is a good thing to commemorate, too.  Our nation achieved that goal and we still bask in the reflected glory of that achievement.

It is hard to remember, but within the life of those older than . . . 48 . . . that to "aim for the moon" was a code phrase for setting out to do the impossible.  A quixotic task.  Something that no serious person would attempt.  Something guaranteed to fail because it was so patently impossible.  Foolish, foolhardy, not worth attempting.

The nation just witnessed the repair and refurbishment of the Hubble Space Telescope.  Moments of high drama, all carried out by human beings.  A repetition of similar missions which transformed NASA's biggest flop into the most productive scientific instrument of our time.  In retrospect it looked so, so very easy; and so, so very risk free.  It was neither.  Nor was it cheap.

As always there are a few critics out there that wish us to believe that such a mission was a waste of time and money, foolishness beyond description, risk undertaken for no good reason.  They point out that if we were to take the money and resources spent on the Hubble servicing missions over the years we could have built a fleet of Hubble space telescopes. 

Well, of course they are right.  But they are also wrong.  As Oscar Wilde once remarked, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Because the cost is not just dollars and cents.  It is in the will and achievement of the nation.  In 1990 the Hubble looked like the biggest failure in the history of space exploration.  Coupled with the recent loss of Challenger and the grounding of the shuttle fleet for elusive hydrogen leaks, the agency was on the brink of being disbanded.  Proposals to send people beyond low earth orbit were scuttled.  The national mood was depressed.  Dollars and cents aside, no one would suggest that NASA build another telescope, much less a fleet of them. 

What a difference we see now.  Hubble, like its namesake, has revolutionized cosmology.  We understand our place in the cosmos in a much more profound way that we did before.  It is hard to even understand how we could have been so limited before.

In 1905, a Swiss patent office clerk by the name of Albert Einstein had what has been called the "anno mirabilis" -- year of marvels -- when he published five papers that changed the world.  Interestingly, the Nobel committee rewarded him with their prize in Physics for his paper on the photo-electric effect even though many think that the award would have been for his paper on relativity or one of the other subjects.  The photo-electric effect is such a mundane topic in comparison.  Yet, this is the basis for modern digital semiconductor electronics.  Computers, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital television, and much more rely on what Einstein described so brilliantly in 1905.  An nobody in 1905 could predict any of these devices.  In fact, the US Commissioner of Patents stated very shortly before 1905 that everything which could be invented had already been invented.  He proposed shutting down the US Patent Office for lack of future work.

In one of those landmark papers, Albert Einstein introduced a term called "the cosmological constant".  He later felt that was his biggest mistake.  In recent years, the Hubble Space Telescope collected information that indicates Einstein's cosmological constant may have been one of his greatest predictions.  There is an unknown process at work in the universe that is very poorly understood.  Cosmologists call it "dark energy" and do not understand it.  But its observed properties seem to fit closely with the 'cosmological constant'.

If the HST had been labeled a failure in 1990 and never touched by the gloved hands of astronauts, it is unlikely - in the extreme  - that future space telescopes would have been funded.  After all, NASA was a flop, right?  The accelerating expansion of the universe would have gone undiscovered for an untold period of time.  The cosmological constant would still be regarded as Einstein's biggest mistake.  And we would not be on the trail of uncovering the characteristics of enigmatic "dark energy". 

So, in a hundred years from now, how will we solve the energy problem?  Obviously all the inventions that can be invented already have been!  And certainly we understand the universe perfectly well!  And of course a whole fleet of Hubble Space Telescopes would have been built even if the first one was flawed! 

Not.

The value of the human touch far surpasses the mere price of the journey.

In 1985 I was a Propulsion Systems Officer in the Space Shuttle Mission Control team.  I was responsible for the reaction control system that was absolutely vital to orient the space shuttle outside the atmosphere, and for the orbital maneuvering system which provides the final push to get the orbiter into orbit and the deorbit burn to come home.  These liquid rocket systems are a mechanical engineer's delight:  lots of plumbing, valves, some smoke and fire, knowledge of orbital mechanics required, thermal control, crew interaction, and software.  We had a great team and I was proud to be part of most of the early shuttle missions.  But it was time to make a move to supervisor, and in the spring of the year I was selected to be the leader of the INCO group.

INCO stands for Integrated Communications -- that's just about what you think:  radios, recorders, instrumentation, television.  That discipline is an Electrical Engineer's delight.  Not mine.  I took exactly one EE course in college and nearly flunked it.  But the big bosses said it was OK, I would be a supervisor who knew all the processes and procedures for Mission Control.  I didn't need to understand the technical stuff, they told me, that was what the staff was for.

That was a lie.

Very quickly I found out that understanding the basics of radios and digital electronics was absolutely mandatory for supervising the INCO team. 

Oh, and the INCOs were responsible for the coffee pots for the MCC -- but that story will have to wait for another post.

I decided that I would have to go through the process to be certified as an INCO if I were to lead this group.  This is not easy!  The INCO team is made up of the shift leader in the FCR (who you see on TV) - he is the guy who owns the title "INCO" and responds directly to the Flight Director; then in the "back room" are the support staff:  RF COMM, and INST.  The entry level position was INST.  The Instrumentation Officer is responsible for the onboard telemetry, the signal conditioners, the engineering recorders, etc. 

I understood nothing about any of this stuff.  But the INCO folks recognized that they would have to teach me their job if I were going to be an adequate leader, so they all pitched in.  I read the books, went to the lectures, observed the operations in the MCC, did all my homework.  Then I was ready to start working in the MCC for the integrated simulations.  With the astronaut crew in the space shuttle simulator in building 5, and an entire Mission Control team in building 30, these sessions were intense.  The Simulation Supervisor and his training team were diabolically clever in developing training lessons where interlocking malfunctions could appear insurmountable - but which a good crew and MCC team could overcome.

On my final day as the supervisor of the INCO section, I participated in an integrated Ascent simulation.  We would practice launching the shuttle over and over and over again, with the clock picking up about 2 minutes before liftoff, and as soon as the shuttle cleared the tower malfunction after malfunction appearing in short order.  Most of the time the crew survived.  Sometimes the shuttle even made it to orbit.  But it was intense.  And back in the office, all the Flight Control management is listening to the comm loops to hear how well the team is doing.

It was an artifact of the system that when the simulator starts at T-2, not all the communications system is in the right configuration.  In real life, the INCO team has many hours to command all the various components to the optimum conditions for launch, but in an integrated Ascent sim, there are two minutes to get everything configured properly onboard.  This meant that the INCO, the RF COMM, and the INST were all banging away on their command keyboards furiously to get all the commands sent to the (simulated) shuttle before lift off.  In those ancient days (well before PCs and point&click logic), the consoles had the Multifunction Command and Display Keyboard.  Basically this was a bunch of pushbuttons which had the hexadecimal alphabet on the keys plus one larger key marked "Command Execute."  You had to know the hexadecimal code for the command you wanted to send; have the dexterity to type it in correctly; confirm on the computer display the code was entered properly; then hit Command Execute for the big mainframe computer on the ground floor of the MCC to send the command.  A fraction of a second later the command would be received at the shuttle (real or simulated) and if everything lined up properly Things Would Happen.  The Right Thing, you hoped.

So with each run, my job was to start the MADS recorder - capturing the "ancillary" data for post flight analysis.  As soon as the simulator went to run at T-2 minutes, I would carefully type in the hexadecimal command for MADS recorder start, verify that code appeared properly on my computer screen, and push the command execute button. 

Ascent simulations are not very interesting to the INST operator because Sim Sup generally targets the bigger systems -- main engines fail, external tanks leak, fire breaks out in the cockpit, stuff like that.   Ascent runs take only about 15 minutes, then you debrief, turn the simulator around, and start again.  Many times.  After all day, I got pretty good at starting the MADS recorder.  Ticky tickety tick, execute.  Next run:  ticky tickety, tick, execute.  And repeat. 

On the last run of the day, I punched in the numbers by rote, disregarded the computer screen and hit the execute key.  "WHY DID THE FM TRANSMITTER JUST TURN OFF" echoed in my headset.  "INST - YOU SENT THE WRONG COMMAND!"  Uh oh.  Just one little keystroke wrong.  I was the goat.  

The debrief was not fun. 

When I got back to my office, there was a note on my door from the Division Chief:  "Come see me". 

As I said, that was my last day as an INCO.  Back in the PROP section the next morning. 

Moral of the story:  Treat each command as if it were your last.  It could be.