Back from Vegas and NewSpace 2006

Definitely a good trip, both fun and inspiring. Definitely a sense that a lot is going to happen in the space industry in the next few years. Clark Lindsey has a quick wrap-up including links to other sources, and he'll probably have more later at HobbySpace.

The timing and location of the conference was perfect, coming in the wake of the launch of Genesis-1 by Bigelow Aerospace. I was fortunate to be a part of a group that was given a tour on Thursday afternoon of the company's facilities by Mr. Bigelow himself. No picture taking was allowed, but a separate media group was allowed selective picture taking. Jeff Foust provides a photo gallery plus a very descriptive article on Bigelow's efforts and their new openess about them.

Outside of conference activities, I enjoyed time in the pool and good food and libations. Thursday evening I went to an enjoyable show up at the Sahara by the Scintas, a great family musical comedy act. Plenty to do in Vegas without losing all your $$.

Anniversaries


NASA

Thursday is the 37th anniversary of humanity's first expedition to the lunar surface. Check out Rand Simberg's ceremonial commemoration of that epic event.

I'll be off to attend the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2006 Conference. We'll be discussing how to bring about human settlement of the Moon and other places on the frontier in an appropriately dry place with temperature extremes and an artificial environment. The conference is being held in Vegas.

Thursday is also the third anniversary ('blogiversary') of the launch of this humble blog. Here is the inaugural post (Note that I was too inexperienced to think of giving it a title.) on Life at the Frontier.

Embryonic Conflict

As the Senate debates and the Old Media distorts, W is prepared to stand by principle and veto a bill funding embryonic stem cell research and sign two other bills prohibiting 'fetal farming' and promoting legitimate alternatives.

We are all Israelis Now

The situation in the Middle East which exploded in the past week calls for our prayers for peace and for the people of Lebanon and Israel. That does not mean there is a moral equivalence here. Hezbollah and their more powerful backers are clearly the aggressors, and this situation is only part of a global picture.

There has been much commentary, but Larry Kudlow in his NRO article says it as good as anyone.

All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous thank-you for defending freedom, democracy, and security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel is doing the Lord's work. They are defending their own homeland and very existence, but they are also defending America's homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East.

And on the connection to the war in Iraq:

Israel's next front may indeed be Syria, which is also directed by Iran and is a safe haven for terrorists - including former Saddam Baathists and others who move freely between Syria and Iraq in order to cause trouble. Many experts still believe that Syria is safe-harboring Saddam's unfound inventory of weapons of mass destruction.

Kudlow discusses the economic aspects, and the closes with a salute to Israel's courage in responding to this crisis.

When the dust clears the world will applaud Israel for its courage. Sensible freedom-loving people everywhere will realize that Israel's furious response in the face of senseless terrorist attacks will have made the world a better place.

In fact, we are all Israelis now.

Happy Landing

Shuttle Discovery landed safely today after a highly successful mission. The ship landed with one less crew member than when it launched as European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter stayed behind on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is now staffed up to three crew members, with major assembly Shuttle missions upcoming.

Contrasting World Views

The successes of Shuttle Discovery and Bigelow's Genesis-1 are good news to those who see human expansion into space as a vital way of providing for future generations. However, as Michael Huang points out in his Space Review article this week, there are some who not only see no human future in space but would prefer there be no long-term human future at all. Welcome to the bizarre world of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT).

Of course, the repulsion of VHEMT lies in the end of humankind: the loss of cumulative achievements in the arts and sciences, the elimination of countless future human lives, and the end of intelligent life on Earth. Of great consequence is the loss of a future for life itself.

Do we take the path of seeking the death of the human species or the path of expanding to welcome and provide for future generations of human beings? This question once again frames what Pope John Paul II so aptly described as a conflict between a culture of death and a culture of life.

Welcome to the Hotel Bigelow

Well, the guest rooms aren't ready for checking in yet, but Bigelow Aerospace has launched its first inflatable test vehicle riding a converted Russian ICBM into orbit. The company reports that the vehicle, Genesis-1 has been successfully expanded and its solar arrays are deployed.

Bigelow Aerospace has received confirmation from the Genesis I spacecraft that it has successfully expanded.

We have also confirmed that all of the solar arrays have been deployed.

This is the first of a series of test flights using technology from a NASA program called TransHab (cancelled in the late nineties before any test vehicles could be flown). The goal is to commercially develop space modules for use as laboratories, manufacturing sites and, yes, hotels in the next ten years.

The Non-Conflict Between Ethics and Progress

With a crucial Senate vote coming up this week, Robert George and Eric Cohen last week pointed out the fallacy of the hype for embryonic stem cells.

Instead of engaging in fraud and coverup, or conducting experiments that violate the moral principles of many citizens, we should look to scientific creativity for an answer. Since the cloning fraud, many scientists -- such as Markus Grompe at Oregon Health & Science University and Rudolf Jaenisch at MIT -- have been doing just that. And others, such as Kevin Eggan at Harvard, may have found a technique, called "cell fusion," that would create new, versatile, genetically controlled stem cell lines by fusing existing stem cells and ordinary DNA. Scientists in Japan just announced that they may have found a way to do this without even needing an existing stem cell line.

In other words: all the benefits of research cloning without the ethical problems. Looking ahead, it is becoming increasingly likely that reprogramming adult cells to pluripotency, rather than destroying human embryos, will be the future of regenerative medicine. It offers both a more efficient and far more ethical way forward.

AOK

The STS-121 mission appears to be achieving its objectives so far, including docking with the International Space Station (ISS), validating the intactness of the Shuttle's thermal shielding, and yesterday's EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity - the formal name for a space walk) which repaired some critical ISS hardware and tested the sturdiness of a boom that could allow the crew to do repairs on the bottom side of the Orbiter, a capability that is crucial for NASA potentially giving a go-ahead for a final Hubble servicing mission.

Check out the Space.com STS-121 mission page for links to mission reports as the flight progresses.

Rockets' Red Glare


NASA/KSC

Space Shuttle Discovery soared into space with today's spectacular July 4th launch. While some small debris were spotted falling from the External Tank, analysis so far does not indicate any major problem. Discovery is set to dock with the International Space Station on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il had to grab attention with some fireworks of his own as North Korea test fired several missiles today around the same time as the Discovery launch. The anticipated test of a long range missile apparently turned out to be a dud, failing early in flight.

Happy Independence Day!

As we join in the festivities of the Fourth, let's strive to keep to the values proclaimed in the Declaration that make it worth celebrating.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Go for Launch

NASA has decided to go ahead with tomorrow's July 4 Discovery launch after analyzing an anomaly with the External Tank's foam coating.

Mexican Election Outcome

Felipe Calderon and his party appear to have won the Mexican national elections in a tight race. Calderon's win favors free market policies and a cooperative position with the US and is also a positive outcome for the prolife movement.

This is not an Old Saturday Night Live Skit

The state of New Jersey REALLY is still closed!

Hubble Eye Reopens

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), a key Hubble Space Telescope instrument, was reactivated on it's redundant side after the instrument stopped operating nearly two weeks ago.

Let's Try This on Tuesday

Weather once again scrubs the Discovery launch. Next attempt will be for a July 4th launch.

Scrubbed for Today

Weather conditions have caused the Discovery launch to be rescheduled for tomorrow.

The Countdown Continues...



...for tomorrow's scheduled launch of the STS-21 mission of Space Shuttle Discovery, while the weather forecast remains doubtful. Follow developments at SpaceFlightNow's Mission Status Center and watch live video coverage on NASA TV.

Much is riding on this flight, which opens the final phase of the Space Shuttle Program. Our prayers are with you, STS-121 Crew.

Neutralizing the Word Games

Here's a great article on the what may be the most challenging frontier for the prolife movement, the topic of abortive contraception.

The truth is, it was the abortion rights and family planning movements that have been playing word games for the past few decades, and the pro-life movement is simply trying to correct the damage.

This decades old controversy revolves around the definition of a single word: conception.

The site No Room for Contraception is breaking ground on the whole topic of the impact of contraception on society.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Demythified

My friend Pete Backus, a leading scientist at the SETI Institute, describes three myths commonly held about SETI that don't correspond to reality. The common thread among the misconceptions is that people tend to think a much more extensive SETI search has been carried out than is actually the case. Thus any conclusion about the success or failure of this endeavor is quite premature.

More Info on WMDs?

Not surprisingly, the Old Media is playing down the story about the discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. The finding of these older, but still potentially very dangerous, chemical weapons doesn't provide conclusive evidence about the scope of the Iraqi weapons program at the time of the 2003 war. But the information disclosed last week was only a tiny portion of a larger pile of still classified documentation that could shed light on the WMD situation.

Michael Ledeen at NRO argues for releasing all of the documentation.

And we should demand they honor their calling, we should demand that the whole document be declassified and released, so that we can evaluate it ourselves, and decide how important it is or isn't. Because we know that the fourth branch isn't going to give us the facts, unless they fit their agenda.

Declassify the WMD document now. We'll tell you what it means.

And while you're at it, how about producing the other Iraq documents, the stuff from Saddam's files, that you promised to give us? We haven't seen much of that of late, have we? I wonder why...

I tend to agree, with the caveat that information that might allow still hidden WMDs to fall into terrorists' hands or endanger informants be withheld, as described in this Strategy Page article.

If the United States were to have announced WMD finds right away, it could have told terrorists (including those from al-Qaeda) where to look to locate chemical weapons. This would have placed troops at risk - for a marginal gain in public relations. A successful al-Qaeda chemical attack would have been a huge boost for their propaganda efforts as well, enabling them to get recruits and support (many people want to back a winner), and it would have caused a decline in American morale in Iraq and on the home front.

So There Were No WMDs, Right?

Looks like another politically correct assumption is going down the drain. This developing story is breaking at Fox News and other sources tonight.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

While these weapons discussed in the declassified report are apparently degraded pre-1991 Gulf War weapons, they do raise a lot of questions about what we've been told is known about what was supposedly not found in Iraq.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

I've seen other reports on reliable Internet sources over the past three years that caused me to doubt the sweeping assumption that there were no WMDs in Iraq. There may be more declassified information forthcoming, according to Senator Santorum and Rep. Hoekstra.

Go For Launch



NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has announced that NASA is proceeding toward a launch of the next Space Shuttle mission, STS-121 on Saturday, July 1, even with the objections of the agency's chief engineer and safety office. The concerns center around the potential for debris falling from 'ice-frost ramps' on the Shuttle's External Tank which could damage the Orbiter. The rationale for the decision is explained in this somewhat lengthy SpaceflightNow.com article.

Griffin does base his decision on, among other things, the eventual redesign to the ice-frost ramps to mitigate the risk and the crew's ability to use the space station as a 'safe haven' in the event of damage to the Orbiter on ascent.

"So how do I justify that? With as much uncertainty as we have, I ... certainly would have to think harder about putting a crew on this vehicle if I thought they didn't have the space station safe haven option and the launch-on-need (rescue flight) option and for that matter, if push came to shove, to call up Russian Soyuz spacecraft for rescue. I do not see the situation we're in as being a crew-loss situation."

Just personally reading into this statement, but the status of the Hubble servicing mission, which will not have the space station 'safe haven' available, may depend on implementation of the eventual redesign.

Momentum Shift

Much has been written about the amazing recent turn of events. Two weeks ago, Democrats, much of the Old Media, and other political insiders were making cocky predictions about how the Republicans were doomed to defeat in an angry public tide demanding change. Columnist Tom Bevan points to the conjunction of events of the past two weeks that prove all bets are off.

For the first time in months the White House has gotten sustained positive news coverage out of Iraq, and Bush's poll numbers appear to be inching back upward. Democrats have been forced to stand in the president's shadow, offering meek criticisms that begin "Zarqawi's death is good news, but . . ." Suddenly, Democrats are back in the perilous position of trying to criticize the president without coming off looking like they're rooting for America to fail in Iraq.

Bottom Line: It's too soon for either side to proclaim victory and this will be another hard fought election campaign.

More from Stephen Hawking: Science and Religion

Physicist Stephen Hawking recalled a meeting he and other scientists had with Pope John Pull II at the Vatican, discussing the relation of science and religion.

Hawking said the pope told the scientists, "It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."

A probably more accurate description of the meaning of JPII's statement has been provided by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

"Here is what the Pope actually said: ‘Every scientific hypothesis about the origin of the world, such as the one that says that there is a basic atom from which the whole of the physical universe is derived, leaves unanswered the problem concerning the beginning of the universe. By itself science cannot resolve such a question.’ The Pope then quoted Pope Pius XII as saying, ‘We would wait in vain for an answer from the natural sciences which declare, on the contrary, that they honestly find themselves faced with an insoluble enigma.’

When Stephen Hawking Talks, People Listen

Physicist Stephen Hawking says space settlement is required to ensure the survival of the human race in the event of natural or man-made catastrophe on Earth. While less well-known advocates of space settlement have been saying this for a long time, the Hawking announcement headlined the Drudge Report for much of the day, even with W in Iraq and Rove exonerated also happening today.

I would add that expansion into space is not only a way of ensuring the human race as a whole against extinction, but also a way of providing resources for future generations rather than fearing resource depletion from supposed 'overpopulation'.

A Child Sees Through The Handwaving

With all of the issues that are being discussed at a frenzied intensity these days, Nat Hentoff zeroes in on what has really been the major crisis in our society these last thirty-plus years, and cites the wisdom of a child who saw past all the verbal and mental handwaving.

"But," said her son, "that means killing the baby." The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. "But," he said, "it doesn't matter what month. It still means killing the babies." Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old's clarity of thought and vision.

The Week That Was

I got home late Friday/early Saturday from a week of payload safety training at Johnson Space Center. As usual, I'm a couple of days behind when a big story breaks. On the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, I'll cite a commentary from National Review Online for insight into the strategic and political implications.

The killing of Zarqawi and the completion of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government is a fortunate confluence that allows a new departure in Iraq. Zarqawi's killing will make the American public think progress is possible in a way that a recitation of optimistic statistics never will. The White House believes- correctly, in our view-that the portion of the American public that is persuadable on Iraq will listen to a message based on the argument that loss in Iraq will bring dire consequences, and that the U.S. is constantly adjusting based on conditions rather than mindlessly "staying the course." A redoubling of effort now could be sold in these terms, and it would be natural to couple it with the completion of Maliki's government.

And here is a report from SpaceflightNow.com on the vital role that space assets played in the operation to take out Zarqawi.

As a Christian, I have to pray that even such an evil man can find redemption from eternal damnation. However, in a lighter vein, I can't help speculating on what the appropriate form such a fate might be. Perhaps instead of enjoying eternity with seventy-two voluptuous virgins, it would be finding one's self stuck for eternity in the company of seventy-two clones of Hillary Clinton.

Memorial Day

Ben Stein delivered a moving message to families of those who have given their lives to defend our freedom.

Your loved ones' lives and deaths had as much meaning at the lives and deaths of every American who died for freedom from Valley Forge to the Battle of the Bulge to Cho-Sin Reservoir to the Cu Chi tunnels to the Balkans to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Falluja, Iraq.

And if the media doesn't know it, every other American does. This is a very difficult fight, but the ordinary American knows what your loved ones have done and respects them.

Democrats' Worst Nightmare

That is the title of Bob Novak's column describing Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Steele sees national implications and put it to me this way in a conversation before the recent rally in Upper Marlboro: "It's a breaking point. I've heard the talk: 'Hillary, Bill, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, all are coming in to campaign against you. They can't bear to see you win this race.' If I win this race, I am sure that the whole dynamic changes."

This morning I was one of a large, enthusiastic group of supporters who walked with Lt. Gov. Steele in the parade in downtown Rockville, wearing the official Steele T-shirt I'd just received for the occasion. (Once you've got the T-shirt, you know the campaign is really underway.) The response of the crowds was as warm as today's summery weather, so it looks like it's going to be a good race for the Senate.

"--time for a great new American enterprise--"

I had not yet even reached my sixth birthday, so I don't remember watching a presidential speech forty five years ago today (though I do remember watching Alan Shepard's flight a few weeks earlier), but this one had a lasting impact on my life and my career.

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

Dud Vinci Code

With the long awaited/debated opening of the film version of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code at hand, critics have turned thumbs down on the film's artistic traits, while Christians around the world are preparing to respond to its spiritual challenge. One of the best resources is Jesus Decoded, a TV/DVD documentary and an associated web site containing volumes of information challenging the myths portrayed in The Da Vinci Code. Both are sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Also, check out the many Catholic bloggers who are commenting (which makes this an opportune time to update the link to the Catholic Blog Directory (St. Blog's Parish) at the top of the 'Blogs' section of my sidebar).

I haven't read the novel and I don't expect to spend my money to promote the movie. Now if you want to see Ron Howard and Tom Hanks do something that they do well (portraying space exploration), check out a copy of Apollo 13 and enjoy it at home this weekend.

Newt on the Frontier

Meanwhile, a potential successor to W shares his thoughts in an e-mail interview on how to enable developments which will lead to migration into space.

Prez Speech

W proposed a multiple part approach to the illegal immigration issue, including National Guard deployment while Border Patrol forces are ramped up, enforcement against employers, and a 'guest worker' program. Commentary I've seen so far is ambiguous, although the combination of approaches proposed is what was generally expected.

Old Media v. Reality

As the Old Media continues its downward spiral into absurdity, it's about time I add the Media Research Center and its associated blog, NewsBusters, to my lists of links and blogs. In the blog, Rich Noyes dives into the Old Media hyperventilating over the NSA database story. My favorite paragraph is where he puts into perspective the relative intrusion into our privacy by the NSA v. that of another government agency.

Today’s article does not allege that any calls are listened in on. Indeed, as USA Today describes it, the program seems like a thoroughly innocuous database of the same information that appears on your phone bill, but with your name, address and other personal information removed. Given that another government agency — the IRS — maintains information on American citizens’ employment, banking, investments, mortgages, charitable contributions and even any declared medical expenses, this hardly seems like a major assault on personal liberty.

(Hat tip to Tim Graham at The Corner.)

ISDC 2006

So much information coming out of the International Space Development Conference just held in LA. There is a sense of hopefulness in the air that efforts to open the frontier are gaining momentum.

No time right now to recapture it all here, so I'll refer you to a compendium of many of the presentations and other web reports at HobbySpace.com.

Follow-up: Andrea Clark

Andrea Clark died peacefully on Sunday after her family successfully fought to reverse a Hospital decision to deny her life sustaining care.

Her family said she was not in pain but had developed a severe infection her body was unable to continue fighting.

"We hope that the battle that we fought for our sister will bring to light and bear witness to the horrible acts committed in the name of ethics in hospitals across the state of Texas," the Clark family said in a statement provided to LifeNews.com.

Important Matters

While I don't like the rising costs of fueling my car more than anyone else, I hope people will put things into perspective by the time they vote in this year's vital elections. Three things I did this weekend are reminders of what are really important matters.

On Saturday evening, I went to downtown Silver Spring to see the newly released movie United 93, an intense retelling of that horrific September morning five years ago and the courageous actions of a band of airline passengers and crew members who prevented one more devastating attack, probably on the U.S. Capitol. (Not the most soothing movie to see a few days before I fly out of town to the ISDC, but I had to go see it.) Definitely a reminder of what we're up against.

Leaving the theater after the movie, I went next door to Border's and bought a copy of Party of Death, the new book by National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru examining how the anti-life agenda of abortion, euthanasia, etc. were imposed on the nation by the courts and the media, and how the Democratic Party was coopted into becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Planned Parenthood & company. I'm looking forward to reading this account of how we got to where we are and how we can take back our future for a more life-affirming agenda.

Another situation where the dignity of human life is being blatantly disregarded is the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of the Sudan. I attended the rally on the Mall today with thousands of others to support action by our nation and the world to end the atrocities. This issue transcends the usual partisan divisions, with rally speakers from across the political and religious spectrums. Perhaps for that very reason, the situation has been undercovered in the media. Anyway, for more information and to sign an on-line petition, check out SaveDarfur.org.

Reflections on Space Policy Priorities

Dennis Wingo analyzes the keynote address given by White House Science Advisor Dr. John Marburger to the Goddard Symposium in March, pointing out the significance of integrating space into economic and security interests.

The Vision for Space Exploration, as laid out in amplified form by Marburger, is an incredibly positive vision - one that we as space advocates have been pining forever to be stated. It is incredible to me that this speech by Marburger is not on the wall of every single space advocate, and on the front of ever space advocate group's web page. Even Ad Astra left off almost 40% of the speech from its web page - ironically, the part where a cost/benefit analysis leaves space wanting. We as space advocates need to absorb this speech (space advocate in this context includes NASA), look at its "vision" and look to see what can be done to align NASA and other national space efforts to support space development as an engine of U.S. economic competitiveness.

Urgent Case: Hospital 'Ethics' Committee Threatens Woman's Life

Andrea Clarke, a patient at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, TX, will be denied life sustaining medical treatment over her and her family's objections. More info at ProLifeBlogs.

Get on the phone. Again, the info: Andrea Clarke is at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, TX. St. Luke’s is located at: 6720 Bertner Avenue, Houston, TX. Their phone number is: 832-355-1000. Here’s the website, and a general email address: generalinformation@sleh.com

Andrea's cause has been taken up by a diverse community including the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, Democratic Underground, and Right Wing News.

Happy 16th for the Hubble Space Telescope


NASA, ESA

HST was launched sixteen years ago today and the Space Telescope Science Institute has released a new image of the galaxy Messier 82 (M82).

Habemus Papam! - One Year Later

Today is the first anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's election to the Chair of St. Peter. Happy Anniversary BXVI!

Earthquake Anniversary

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When I lived in the Bay Area (from 1979 to 1996), I learned how such a singular event could have an impact on the history of a region, and of the resilience of humans and all life to come back and thrive in spite of adversity.

Have a Blessed and Happy Easter and Passover!


Link from www.truecatholic.org, artist not listed.

Brothers and sisters:
If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Col 3:1-4

Have We Forgotten?

Whatever sentence is decided for Zacarias Moussaoui, perhaps the most important outcome of the proceedings is the reminder the public is receiving of the horrors of the September 11 attacks and of the heroism of ordinary people, particularly the passengers of United Flight 93 who prevented another devastating attack, perhaps on the U.S. Capitol. A transcript of the struggle onboard the plane is here.

Happy Anniversary

Today marks the anniversaries of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering orbital flight (45th) and the of first launch of the Space Shuttle (25th). Rand Simberg has an NRO column up on the significance for the future.

Finally, this double anniversary is being celebrated around the world with Yuri's Night parties. (I'm planning to go to the DC event tonight.)

Exploring a Planetary Neighbor

Europe's Venus Express has arrived.

Double Moonshot

NASA has added a secondary spacecraft mission to its planned 2008 launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission is designed by the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA and is explained in this NASA press release.

After launch, the secondary payload LCROSS spacecraft will arrive in the lunar vicinity independent of the LRO satellite. On the way to the moon, the LCROSS spacecraft's two main parts, the Shepherding Spacecraft (S-S/C) and the Earth Departure Upper Stage (EDUS), will remain coupled.

As the spacecraft approaches the moon's south pole, the upper stage will separate, and then will impact a crater in the south pole area. A plume from the upper stage crash will develop as the Shepherding Spacecraft heads in toward the moon. The Shepherding Spacecraft will fly through the plume, and instruments on the spacecraft will analyze the cloud to look for signs of water and other compounds. Additional space and Earth-based instruments also will study the 2.2-million-pound (1000-metric-ton) plume.

NASA added the option for a secondary payload since an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) launch allows for additional payload weight in addition to LRO. This proposal was selected from nineteen responses to NASA's request and provides an innovative, economical and timely way to obtain additional data vital for future human lunar exploration and development.

Three Years After the Fall

Today is the third anniversary of the toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad marking the fall of that brutal regime. Just what kind of threat Saddam Hussein was is discussed in this Investors Business Daily article (hat tip to Power Line Blog) analyzing the information revealed so far by the release of captured documents and recordings by the government (with many more on the way).

The Pentagon has obviously been sitting on a treasure trove of paper incriminations against Saddam's regime. So far, just a minuscule amount of the more than 3,000 hours of tape recordings of Saddam and 48,000 boxes of intelligence documents has been translated and deciphered.

What has come out so far has confirmed Americans' worst fears about Saddam's evil regime. To review:

Saddam is heard on a 1997 tape predicting terrorism would soon be coming to the U.S., while his son-in-law — who was in charge of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — gloats about lying to U.N. weapons inspectors to hide the extent of Iraq's WMD program.

Saddam, in a tape made in 2000, talks with Iraqi scientists about his plans to build a nuclear device. He discusses Iraq's plasma separation program — an advanced uranium-enrichment technique completely missed by U.N. inspectors.

The article also asserts why the Bush Administration would pass on an obvious opportunity to vindicate its justification for going to war.

At present, we're relying too much on translations by bloggers and other amateurs. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., says the White House has been dragging its feet for fear of embarrassing supposed allies (such as Russia) whose links with Saddam would come under scrutiny.

Here is the web site where the government is posting the captured intelligence information.

ISS Crew Swap Completed

The Expedition 12 crew landed accompanied by the Brazilian crew member who launched with the Expedition 13 crew which replaced them.

Conservatives and the Frontier

In this week's Space Review, Taylor Dinerman challenges Stephen Moore's article in the April issue of American Spectator magazine (I could not find the article on the American Spectator web site.) which criticizes W's space exploration plans as just another wasteful government program. Many conservatives do not seem to realize how vital opening the frontier is to our national defense and economic prosperity. Of course, it is critical that the implementation of the NASA program enables the private sector to follow the explorers and develop and settle the frontier.

At last month’s Goddard Symposium Marburger made the point that “The ultimate goal is not to impress others, or merely to explore our planetary system, but to use accessible space for the benefit of humankind. It is a goal that is not confined to a decade or a century. Nor is it confined to a single nearby destination, or to a fleeting dash to plant a flag. The idea is to begin preparing now for a future in which material trapped in the sun’s vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of life.”

And as I have pointed out in this post, developing the frontier is a vital long term part of building a culture of life.

And All Without Even One Embryonic Stem Cell

We do live in exciting times. This Washington Post article describes how urinary bladders were regenerated in a laboratory and are functioning in several young patients.

The "neo-bladders," each one grown in a small laboratory container from a pinch of a patient's own cells, have been working in seven young patients for an average of almost four years, according to a report released yesterday by the British journal the Lancet. The organs have remained free of the many complications that bedevil the conventional practice of surgically constructing bladders from other tissues.

If ongoing studies continue apace, the researchers said, they hope someday to offer patients more than a dozen other homegrown organs, including blood-vessel complexes, partial kidneys and perhaps hearts.

Remembering Pope John Paul II

The first anniversary of Pope John Paul's death is being commemorated around the world. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI recalled JPII's impact on the world.

Benedict said John Paul had left a profound mark on the history of the church and all of humanity, ushering the church into the third millennium, visiting the world and meeting with heads of state, young people, believers and nonbelievers alike.

Pope John Paul II was the Vicar of Christ for half of my life and I'd say the most influential person in the world during that time. To see how the passing of Pope John Paul, the funeral rites, and the selection of his successor were reflected on this humble blog, check out my April 2005 archives. (Remember to go to the bottom and scroll up for chronological order.)

Irish in Silver Spring

Saturday evening I went to explore downtown Silver Spring's new Irish pub/restaurant, McGinty's Public House.

Good food and drink. I had a pint of Harp, Boxty (scallion & potato cake) and beef chili. They assure me the menu will soon be expanded to include that Irish pub standard, Shepherd's Pie.

Definitely a fun place to visit when you're in the area.

One Year Ago

Today is the first anniversary of Terri Schindler-Schiavo's cruel court imposed death by dehydration. This is how I posted the news (from my March 2005 archive) after hearing it announced by Laura Ingraham on her radio show.

Terri Schindler-Schiavo (1963-2005)
Terri died this morning of court ordered dehydration/starvation. I won't say that she 'passed away' because, in fact, she was pushed. Pray for Terri in eternal rest, pray for her family and pray for all of us. The work of Terri's fight will go on.

See BlogsforTerri and ProLifeBlogs for many other remembrances and reflections. And Dory of Wittenberg Gate has posted her final installment of Bloggers' Best for Terri Schiavo, including a recent post from this humble blog.

Let's pray that history will not record that Terri's death was when our civilization went over the cliff into barbarism, but that it marked a turning point galvanizing society to protect the dignity of every human life.

Happy Tenth Birthday...

...to NASA Watch.

Activities in Memory of Terri Schindler-Schiavo

On the day before the first anniversary of her cruel court-imposed death, Terri's family formally launched the Terri-Schindler Schiavo Foundation to help protect other disabled people.

For numerous other articles related to Terri published in the past few days, check out BlogsforTerri and ProLifeBlogs.

Terri Schiavo, Iraq, and the Old Media

The Old Media found itself on the defensive last week when President Bush, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham (You go girl!) and others challenged the Media accuracy and balance in covering the war in Iraq. Tim Graham of the Media Research Center described the situation well in this NRO article.

Something I keep wondering is if President Clinton were conducting the same policy under the same circumstances, would the Old Media spin be so overwhelmingly negative? Because while the Media bias has reached a unprecedented frenzy in the past year on Iraq, anti-terror policies, Katrina, the economy, etc., I still feel the most appalling media bias occurs around social issues, especially those involving life and death.

I recall last year while in traffic listening to a network news report on the radio during the time when Terri Schindler-Schiavo was being dehydrated to death by court order. The announcer stated that 'most experts' assure us that Terri was totally unaware and not feeling a thing. Having access to other sources of information indicating the kind of suffering she was going through. I did something unusual for me and yelled an epithet at the car radio (you know, the colorful metaphor for bovine manure). Of course, this bias has a long history on the topic of abortion and is as current as the latest hype on embryonic stem cell research.

I've come to accept the possibility that some of the elites in the Old Media and elsewhere are so obsessed with protecting their politically correct lifestyle choice fantasies (which include justifying abortion, euthanasia, etc.) by trying to bring down George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans that they've lost sight of the national security impact of their distorted spin on the current situation.

Do they fear Pope Benedict more than they do Osama Bin Laden? After all, the Holy Father and other religious and social leaders and more and more common people are peacefully challenging the 'conventional wisdom' being spun by the Culture of Death.

And whatever W's effectiveness on other issues, his two most outstanding domestic accomplishments are named John Roberts and Samuel Alito. With more judicial nominations possibly on the way, the pc crowd must feel a desperation to stop W and the Senate majority from ensuring the dismantling of the 'new morality' which has been judicially imposed on our society for the past forty years.

So, hopefully, the awareness will continue to spread that the Old Media emperor has no clothes. The flood of information from alternative sources is already having a tumultuous but healthy effect on the nation's political climate.

And back to Terri, the blogburst continues. Check in with BlogsforTerri, ProLifeBlogs, and the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation.

Likely Cause

A fuel leak near the first stage engine is the likely cause of Friday's launch failure, according to preliminary analysis by SpaceX. A U.S. Government led anomaly investigation will follow.

SpaceX Has a Bad Day

The SpaceX Falcon 1 launch attempt ended in loss of the vehicle. The company is investigating the cause of the failure.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk earlier described the risks in undertaking a new launch venture, comparing it to his prior experience in the software industry.

In a pre-launch press briefing last November before the first attempt to fly the Falcon 1, Musk acknowledged the difficulty in rocketry. Successfully launching a rocket requires everything to go right, and history is littered with failed inaugural flights. Musk compared the maiden flight with trying to develop perfect software.

"It is like...if you had a very complex piece of software that you test pieces of but you can't test the whole thing together until you ran it for the first time, nor could you test it on the exact computer that it had to run for the first time. But when it does run for the first time it can have no bugs. When was the last time you saw a piece of software that met that criteria?"

Try, Try Again

That's what SpaceX will do tomorrow with its Falcon 1 first launch.

UPDATE Thur. ~ 1 PM: Make that Friday for the launch attempt.

Blogburst for Terri Continues

Stay tuned to BlogsforTerri,ProLifeBlogs, and Wittenberg Gate for comprehensive coverage of the blogging in memory of Terri that is going on at this time. This post from Sounding the Trumpet really recalls the heart wrenching emotional roller coaster a year ago.

It was the eighteenth, while we were all on spring break. We could scarcely believe they had done it, and then we thought it would be for a few hours; a judge would give an emergency injunction, it would be replaced. We don’t starve people in America. I remember refreshing the page, refreshing, waiting for a change, waiting for good news….how long would it be?

And as the hours turned into days, and the days melted into each other, and our hopes rose with one hour and fell with the next. Our hearts were there in Florida with her, in the hospice that had become a torture chamber, a prison of death. Her mouth was parched, her lips bled. How angry I was when they made those stupid arguments for “mercy-killing”. Come, shoot her then! That would be far more merciful. Starving is not a humane way to kill anyone–ask any of those who took part in the hunger strike, drinking only water.

Meanwhile, Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk who stood on the front lines for Terri, spoke at the University of Minnesota Duluth on Monday, with hope for new protective legislation in that state.

"Society has chosen to kill our most vulnerable," O'Donnell said during his hourlong presentation that included rare footage of Schiavo in her hospice room. "I ask you to choose life and defend life."

Iraq: Anniversary and New Information

As a new assault against terrorist forces was launched this week, today is being marked as the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq with official statements and debate and protest demonstrations. No doubt it is a time to remember and pray for those soldiers who gave their lives and for those people who suffered and died during the war and under the tyranny that preceded it.

Meanwhile, the government has discretely begun releasing documents and recordings through this web site which are shedding new light on the circumstances leading up to the war, according to Fox News.

The release of the documents, expected to continue for months, is designed to allow lawmakers and the public to investigate what documents from Saddam's regime said about such controversial issues as weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda in the period before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The Web site cautioned that the U.S. government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available."

The release of this information is being welcomed by key members of Congress.

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., requested the release of millions pages of documents and audio recordings captured during current and previous U.S. military operations in Iraq. Most have sat untranslated for years.

Last weekend, Negroponte agreed to set aside money and establish a system to make the documents available to the media, academics and other researchers.

In a statement, Hoekstra welcomed the chance to answer questions about prewar Iraq. "Whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them, the most important thing is we discover the truth of what was happening in the country prior to the war," he said.

Blogburst for Terri

One year ago today, the court ordered death of Terri Schindler-Schiavo began with the removal of her feeding tube. Terri fought on for twelve days until March 31, 2005, when she succumbed to the effects of dehydration. This somber anniversary period is being marked by many bloggers in a 'blogburst', where bloggers participate in publishing posts focused on a particular topic during a particular time period.

This blogburst is being coordinated by BlogsforTerri, which was established last year during the fight for Terri's life by linking to relevant posts from participating bloggers. That list of bloggers grew to several hundred at that time. Also check out the site for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, founded by Terri's family to continue the fight to protect other vulnerable people from what Pope John Paul II so aptly called the 'Culture of Death'.

The last half of March was a heart wrenching time for all who were involved in the fight for Terri's life. The intensity is reflected in the March 2005 archive of this blog. While it is painful to look back at the events at that time, let us be encouraged that Terri's fight goes on in the larger battle to protect the dignity of every human life, regardless of condition.

I'll be posting at various times during this blogburst, relaying the powerful words of others and adding my own thoughts as appropriate.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!



Artist unknown, Link by Catholic Forum

Catholic Forum provides descriptions of St. Patrick here and here.

Saint Patrick's Breastplate

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort me and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

In the spirit of the holiday, check out LiveIreland.com for webcasts of Irish music and other media direct from Ireland.

Arrival at Mars

A day after the news about Enceladus, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) successfully entered orbit around Mars, seven months after its launch last August. The spacecraft will provide unprecedented high quality imagery of the Martian surface and will probably add to the startling discoveries about our Solar System that are being made.

I've added the MRO web site to the list of links on the right.

Water, Water, Everywhere!


NASA/JPL

Well, in more and more places, anyway. The latest is the Saturnian moon Enceladus, where geysers of water were discovered by scientists on the NASA Cassini mission. The discovery is significant because the presence of water in various locations hints at the possibility of life elsewhere in space. Water is also vital to the enterprise of expanding the presence of human life beyond Earth.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

The exciting news took an unusual twist this morning in what started out as an erroneous Internet report of a possible discovery of evidence life itself, as recounted here by Keith Cowing. No microbes or monoliths, but once you have water, who knows?

Prairie Fire!

Yesterday, Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota signed the bill passed by his state's legislature setting up a direct challenge to the imposition of abortion-on-demand that has existed in the United States since 1973. This 'prairie fire' is spreading as Mississippi and other states consider legislation sharply curtailing abortion. Of course these laws are expected to be challenged in court, with appeals working their way to the Supreme Court, which will have to consider whether to revise or overturn its 1973 abortion rulings.

I'm not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar, so I don't know if this is the best strategy or whether it will directly lead to the end of judicially imposed abortion-on-demand in our land. However, history is full of courageous acts that have challenged entrenched injustice. One can think of decisive moments in our country's anti-slavery and civil rights movements,or of the peaceful stirring of the workers in Poland's Gdansk shipyards which acted as a catalyst for the eventual downfall of Soviet Communism.

There will be setbacks. Don't expect the Culture of Death to turn the other cheek. Regardless, called to do God's work, we're in this to win and there's hope in the air, as was evident last night when I participated in the annual Maryland March for Life in Annapolis.

Two Space Developments

While preparing for the inaugural launch of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle scheduled for the week after next, SpaceX has revealed its plans for a manned orbital vehicle. Here are reports at SpaceRef.com and Space News.

Meanwhile, Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine published an intriguing report about what might be, or might have been, a hidden space program called "Black Star". There is skepticism, and even Aviation Week itself says "iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive." If it is accurate, it means that there are at least a few unnamed pilots who are members of a never revealed 'astronaut corps' who have shared the experience of flying in space.

Setting the Record Straight

A weird article by John Lasker on Wired Magazine's web site claimed that the participants in this week's March Storm on Capitol hill were sent by aerospace companies to advocate policies designed to establish the basing of weapons in space. The piece seems to rely heavily on the input of Bruce Gagnon, an activist who seems to be somewhere to the left of MoveOn.org.

ProSpace President Marc Schlather has responded in a letter to the magazine's editor, posted here at SpacePolitics.com.

By far his most grievous mischaracterization is this sentence: “Some of the lobbyists represent the aerospace industry, but most have been hired by smaller space startups and entrepreneurs.”

I was very clear with Mr. Lasker about the fact that our members are volunteers and private citizens. For instance, at this week’s March Storm those in attendance included:

Ten college students (from the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, University of Colorado and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical).
An emergency room doctor
A materials scientist (who does not work in the aerospace industry).
A software engineer
A corporate training specialist
A Wall Street executive

We do have one member in long standing who is employed by a major aerospace company as a systems engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, which could hardly be described as a weapons system.

In addition each of our members pays their own way to Washington. As some came from as far away as California that represents a substantial expense. No aerospace company paid the airfare or hotel bills of our attendees, nor was any member compensated for attending March Storm (except this author, who is the only paid employee of ProSpace).

This is the way we have done things since our founding twelve years ago. And it is chief among the reasons we are warmly welcomed back by members of Congress and their staffs each year – they know our agenda is one that is not based on any possible personal gain for our members, but rather a genuine concern for the direction of our nation’s space efforts.

UPDATE: The Wired article linked above has now been modified to correct the more outrageous misinformation about ProSpace that was present in the original posting. Also, Marc Schlather's letter has been published on the Wired web site.

Citizens' Space Agenda

We conducted our training session today and this week space advocates will take to 'the Hill' in the annual ProSpace March Storm. Thirty volunteers will be visiting Congressional offices to advance an agenda of forming public policy to enable and expedite economic enterprise to expand our human presence in space. This year's objectives include:

- Using prizes to stimulate technological innovation in the
private sector while paying only for results and not effort;
- Using commercial space service providers to the maximum
extent possible;
- Creating a new public-private partnership between DOD
and the emerging space industry.

SpaceX Announces a New Window

SpaceX has announced a new launch window for the inaugural launch of its Falcon 1 launch vehicle, March 20 through 25.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Goes to Supreme Court

I've italicized the name of the procedure that many Media sources refer to vaguely as 'a certain late term abortion procedure'. The Supreme Court today agreed to review the appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked enforcement of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.

According to LifeNews.com, the outcome of the case could likely turn on the changed make-up of the Supreme Court that occurred within the past year with the Selection of John Roberts as Chief Justice and Samuel Alito as Associate Justice. Alito replaced the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the deciding vote overturning a Nebraska state law banning Partial Birth Abortion in 2000.

Responding to the 2000 Supreme Court decision, Congress included a lengthy findings section, detailing the hearings it held on partial-birth abortions, in hopes it would persuade the nation's top court that a health exception is unnecessary.

The findings section cites an American Medical Association convened to study the issue of partial-birth abortions. The expert panel "could not find 'any' identified circumstance" where partial-birth abortion "was 'the only appropriate alternative'" to preserve the health of the mother."

It also indicated partial-birth abortions may pose health risks for women. Such risks include cervical incompetence, trauma to the uterus, and lacerations or hemorrhaging.

Saddam Tapes

The unveiling of the tapes of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein discussing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was covered in a CNN web post on Saturday. The article included differing interpretations from various officials and experts and indicates much more information may be forthcoming.

The tapes, which were obtained by the U.S. government sometime after the invasion of Iraq, are part of about 35,000 additional boxes of material on Iraq's weapons programs and efforts, said an aide to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, who has reviewed the tapes.

The material is awaiting translation, the aide said, and the Bush administration is contemplating making all the material public for journalists and academics to translate and review.

Meanwhile, the FBI translator who originally interpreted the tapes says that ABC News reinterpreted the excerpts they broadcast last Wednesday night.

Tierney says, however, that what Saddam actually said was much more sinister. "He was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq," he told Hannity.

And national security expert and writer Ken Timmerman writes at NewsMax.com on what one former top Defense Department official says really happened to Iraq's WMDs.

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John. A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored "Intelligence Summit" in Alexandria, Va.

Best of this Blog, etc.

Sometimes, I'll put a little more work into a post here, and get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing it at the top of this page. Then, of course, I stay current and blog again, meaning the favorite scrolls down and eventually off the page, to be found only in the archives. Occasionally, it's a special post that covers one of the major themes of this blog or, better yet, ties together two or more themes in a big picture view. (Yeah, I know some might say a 'flying leap'.) And the post will have an enduring timeliness beyond the events of the day.

So, I've introduced a feature called Best of this Blog near the top of the sidebar on the right. The first two posts to enter this 'hall of fame' are Why We March, my annual (slightly revised each year) essay I post around the time of the March for Life in January, and Most Precious Resource, the post from earlier this week that covers asteroid mining and the social implications of the frontier. I'll occasionally add others when I blog new posts that I feel deserve this enduring recognition, or discover old ones in the archives.

I've also added to and revised my links, including a few added blogs.

This Could Be Really Big

Saddam tapes including WMD discussions to be released at Intelligence Summit Saturday.

Not sure this will happen without some last minute interruption. There is apparently a giant struggle within the intelligence community which in some ways reflects the larger social/political divide in American society.

ABC News actually aired brief excerpts of these tapes last night, but they and the rest of the Old Media continued to obsess with VP Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Let's see how much Saturday's revelations are communicated to the public. Stay tuned.

The Most Precious Resource of All


NASA, Artist concept by Denise Watt.

Mark Sonter, an Australian mining expert, has been active for years in the space community pursuing the potential of extracting resources from the asteroids, which he explains in a column at Space.com. The author begins by stating the two reasons humanity has to be interested in asteroids, particularly those that follow paths that cross Earth's orbit around the sun.

The Near Earth Asteroids offer both threat and promise. They present the threat of planetary impact with regional or global disaster. And they also offer the promise of resources to support humanity's long-term prosperity on Earth, and our movement into space and the solar system.

The variety of resources available in these objects is presented.

Spectroscopic studies suggest, and 'ground-truth' chemical assays of meteorites confirm, that a wide range of resources are present in asteroids and comets, including nickel-iron metal, silicate minerals, semiconductor and platinum group metals, water, bituminous hydrocarbons, and trapped or frozen gases including carbon dioxide and ammonia.

As one startling pointer to the unexpected riches in asteroids, many stony and stony-iron meteorites contain Platinum Group Metals at grades of up to 100 ppm (or 100 grams per ton). Operating open pit platinum and gold mines in South Africa and elsewhere mine ores of grade 5 to 10 ppm, so grades of 10 to 20 times higher would be regarded as spectacular if available in quantity, on Earth.

Sonter goes on to explain the economics of asteroid mining and the fact that lowering the cost of getting into space is key to opening up this enormous new industry. The tremendous impact this industry can have on the lives of human beings is illustrated by this citation of another space resources expert.

Professor John Lewis has pointed out (in Mining the Sky) that the resources of the solar system (the most accessible of which being those in the NEAs) can permanently support in first-world comfort some quadrillion people. In other words, the resources of the solar system are essentially infinite... And they are there for us to use, to invest consciousness into the universe, no less. It's time for humankind to come out of its shell, and begin to grow!!

Note: a 'quadrillion' is a one followed by fifteen zeroes.

Professor Lewis, a noted planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, explains in a profound way the social significance of this potential frontier industry in his book when he says

The best use of the wealth of the asteroid belt is...to expand our supply of the most precious resource of all - human beings.

Let me make a personal observation here. This blog may seem to readers as an eclectic mix of seemingly unrelated topics. However, as I say up top, my goal is to tie together various themes in a big picture view.

The 'conventional wisdom' of the human future is often portrayed as a situation of limited and diminishing resources requiring 'population control' (and all its lethal implications) to prevent some kind of global catastrophe. This dismal view of the future is flawed on several levels.

For one, population control efforts are often coercive, especially on the world's poorest people, and often divert aid money that should be spent on providing food, clean water, and medicine. Also, even before space resources are considered, human resourcefulness in developing the resources of this planet and using them more efficiently make the population alarmists' case seem rather dubious.

However, many foresighted people see human expansion into space and development of the resources and energy there as the long term positive alternative to the more dismal agendas. Protecting and providing for future generations is the moral imperative behind our expansion into space. Part of a culture of life is to take the long view, to take risks on the frontiers to provide for the lives of future human beings, each of whom have a unique God-given dignity.

Winter Events

The Winter Olympics in Turin started Friday with the spectacular opening ceremonies.

Meanwhile, the unofficial snow shoveling event could involve millions of participants on Sunday. The venue, far from Turin, is the Middle Atlantic and New England states, where a 'nor'easter' is moving up the coast overnight. Forecasts tend to vary, but I'm hearing 5-8" here in the DC Area with more further up the coast, including blizzard conditions in parts of New York and New England.

UPDATE SUNDAY AM: Well, we got a little more, most places in the area getting well over 10", but the snow has stopped here, and radar shows the storm pulling away. Soon time to go and begin to dig out.

Out With A 'Big Bang'

Politically correct censorship these days most often occurs in the Old Media or in other circles supportive of left wing or so-called 'progressive' agendas. However, it can have negative consequences whichever side of the spectrum it come from.

A young public relations official assigned to NASA by the White House, George Deutsch, resigned this week following a controversy which surfaced in a New York Times article surrounding his restricting reporters' access to climate scientist James Hansen. Another episode involved Deutsch's alleged insistence that a web designer append every reference to the Big Bang with the word 'theory'.

Now I'll grant that I'm usually skeptical of any social/political controversy stirred up by the NYT. Never-the-less, I have heard that this is a real concern at NASA Goddard and other centers and in other federal science agencies, and that it goes beyond this one individual. Space.com describes the situation in this article.

Administrator Michael Griffin sent an e-mail to the agency's workers on Saturday in which he discussed scientific openness and the role of the agency's public affairs office.

“The job of the Office of Public Affairs, at every level in NASA, is to convey the work done at NASA to our stakeholders in an intelligible way,'' Griffin wrote. ``It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff.''

Atrocity Thwarted

Actually, probably quite a number of terrorist attacks have been thwarted. President Bush spoke today and cited the disruption of a plot to attack the Library Tower in Los Angeles in 2002.

As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror we face a relentless and determined enemy that operates in many nations -- so protecting our citizens requires unprecedented cooperation from many nations as well. It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot. By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets; by working together we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland.

Definitely a reminder that we cannot remain complacent or distracted by political rancor in these testing times.

ProLife Organizing in Washington DC Area

Some prolife advocates in the DC Area met last weekend to step up the coordination of activities. The plans include taking advantage of Internet communication capabilities. More at ProLifeBlogs here.

I've added MarchTogether and Pro-Life Unity to the prolife links section of my sidebar.

White House FY2007 Budget Request

The Administration's Fiscal Year 2007 budget request was released on Monday. As expected, increases were primarily in national and homeland security areas and science and education efforts related to the American Competitiveness Initiative announced in the State of the Union Address.

The proposed budget for NASA is just under $16.8B. Exploration Systems, particularly the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) received a big increase over last year's budget. Costs for maintaining the Space Shuttle and finishing the International Space Station have put pressure on the rest of the budget, causing some science and aeronautics programs to be deferred or cancelled. There is $150M in the budget to continue preparations for a Shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, pending a safe Shuttle Return To Flight.

Jeff Foust provides reactions from several space organizations.

The Church and Western Civ

One advantage of traveling out of town as I did a couple of weeks ago is that time in an airline seat allows for activities that are often hard to fit in otherwise, like actually reading a book. The book I read upsets the conventional wisdom of recent decades or, in fact, of the last two or three centuries.

How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods Jr. Ph.D. is a revealing look at how the Catholic Church, through its principles and organization, provided the foundations for the progress we take for granted in our society today. The author provides numerous footnotes to source materials, so this work presents a real challenge to any would-be 'debunkers'.

Check out this TCRNews page for a review and Amazon link.

What Mr. Woods has deftly shown is that if anything, the opposite is true. Many of the principles that the Enlightenment promoted and that secular humanism embraces have actually been borrowed from Catholic thought! Far from being a threat to the concepts of equality, human dignity, peace, the advancement of science and other of the good concepts that secular thought cherishes, the Catholic Church is the very foundation on which these ideas are supported! Far from being a hindrance to the advancement of human culture, the Church was the only reason Western Civilization actually did advance at all! One shudders to think what would happen if Western culture did indeed altogether abandon its Catholic roots!

I think a big part of the issue is that the agenda pushed by politically correct forces today, including abortion, euthanasia, etc. is no longer compatible with the truly inclusive principles of human dignity espoused by the Church. Therefore, the myth of the Church as a regressive institution continues to be propagated today. Thankfully, Dr. Woods' work will be a powerful tool in setting the record straight.

Two Media Items on the Future in Space

A stimulating discussion on the direction of future space activities was aired on NPR's Talk of the Nation/Science Friday this pat week. The show featured Tom Jones, planetary scientist and former astronaut; Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX; Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation; and George Whitesides, Executive Director of the National Space Society.

Unfortunately, the NPR affiliates in some major markets, including Washington, D.C., do not air the second hour of Science Friday, when this segment was featured. However, you can listen to it from the link at this NPR web page.

Meanwhile, Clark Lindsey has posted his speculative predictions on the next ten years in entrepreneurial space activity in his Commercial Stairway to Space v.2006.

While no projection of future events comes precisely to pass, these projections are a realistic speculation on what could happen based on enterprises currently underway. The next step in this direction could come as soon as this week if SpaceX succeeds in its inaugural Falcon 1 launch.

Middle East Getting Crazier Than We Could Have Imagined

Time hasn't allowed me to keep up here with all the developments recently that threaten the peace of the world (Iran, Hamas, the anti-cartoon jihad, etc.). Victor Davis Hanson has a provocative commentary at NRO.

Ever since that seminal death sentence handed down to Salman Rushdie by the Iranian theocracy, the Western world has incrementally and insidiously accepted these laws of asymmetry. Perhaps due to what might legitimately be called the lunacy principle ("these people are capable of doing anything at anytime"), the Muslim Middle East can insist on one standard of behavior for itself and quite another for others. It asks nothing of its own people and everything of everyone else's, while expecting no serious repercussions in the age of political correctness, in which affluent and leisured Westerners are frantic to avoid any disruption in their rather sheltered lives.

A Distant Thunder

At the March for Life convention the day before the March, I bought an intriguing DVD being sold in the exhibit area. A Distant Thunder is a compelling story that combines courtroom drama and supernatural suspense. More in this review at ProLifeBlogs.com.

The movie itself is designed to be a supernatural thriller with provocative symbolism and a suspenseful surprise ending. It unmasks the horror of partial-birth abortion in a gripping court room setting by recounting the procedural steps from a medical perspective. After identifying with the main character, it becomes difficult not to accept the personhood and humanity of the unborn and question the morality of all abortion.

The Floras set out to make a difference by using their theatrical expertise to penetrate, in a thought provoking manner, into the modern culture without sounding “preachy”. A Distant Thunder certainly accomplishes this task and, at 35 minutes in length, is an excellent tool for productive discussion with teenagers and adults.

Jonathan and Deborah Flora spoke at the Blogs for Life conference I attended on the morning of the March and I met them again briefly later in the day near the Supreme Court.

While the Hollywood establishment continues to attempt to indoctrinate a politically correct agenda on our society, as demonstrated by this year's Academy Awards nominations, it is refreshing to see some Hollywood professionals produce a high quality countercultural (by today's standards) work.

UPDATE: A friend has sent me a link to Fr. Frank Pavone's commentary on the movie.

New House Majority Leader and 'Earmarks'

House Republicans chose a new Majority Leader, John Boehner, in a effort toward initiating reforms to move beyond recent congressional scandals.

One of the issues Mr. Boehner and the Congress will face is the question of 'earmarks', which now divert billions of dollars from federal agencies' primary missions toward projects designed to benefit individual congressional districts. The federal government is struggling with severe budget pressures, so it should be a priority to see that those dollars are spent on the purposes for which they were intended.

For just one example, the Fiscal Year 2006 NASA budget contains $321 million in earmarks. Now, some of these items probably do happen to contribute to NASA's core missions, and even serious reform probably won't end the practice of earmarks entirely. But suppose that $321 million could be focused on one or more of NASA's key efforts over 2 to 3 years. That amount of funding would probably cover a significant part of the cost of a final Shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Or it could provide for one or more robotic missions to the Moon or elsewhere in the inner solar system. This amount of money could also accelerate NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Centennial Challenges efforts to stimulate commercial space activity in support of NASA's goals.