Les Johnson's Blog: Space, Science, and Entertainment, page 3

Who was Vannevar Bush? Why you should know

The government/industry partnership that existed from WW2 through ~1980 fueled the technological innovation that defined the USA and we are still benefiting from the partnership today, though the pipeline is beginning to run dry. With the ascendance of applied research and connecting all research with specific economic return targets plus a lack of understanding by policy makers of how fundamental research historically provided unknown-at-the-time economic benefit decades later, we entered a period of R&D decline in about 1980 that we still suffer from today.

Governments demand accountability from those receiving taxpayer-funded research dollars. And they should. But results from fundamental science don’t appear in the country’s health, economic or military pipeline overnight. Sometimes it can take decades from the first promising scientific observation to a tangible product. Sometimes that product is simply an increase in human knowledge without a physical ‘widget’ ever being produced. Sometimes the results from fundamental research help a researcher in another field make a breakthrough by simply learning of someone else’s seemingly unrelated research. (This is another reason scientific conferences are important – at topic for a future blog entry.)

Industry isn’t any better; in fact, it may be worse. The bottom line, a return on investment, is what matters in the world of business. This is where applied research is more reasonable. In counterpoint, don’t forget that Bell Labs performed fundamental research that led to incredibly profitable technologies. Still, with an eye on quarter-to-quarter profitability, sustained research funded by industry doesn’t happen very often.

Policy makers should familiarize themselves with the life of Vannevar Bush (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar...) and rethink the current government/industry partnership model. We need to return to the post-WW2 model that Bush helped put into place. This partnership led to an incredible period of research, technological creativity and innovation – a history lesson worth understanding.

Flying in space without fuel

One upon a time there was a project called ProSEDS. It was a little experiment that would have demonstrated a new type of space propulsion using a long, thin conducing wire called a “space tether.” The neat thing about space tethers is that they can propel a spacecraft without using any fuel – they aren’t rockets. Tethers can propel a spacecraft by using something called the Lorentz Force, which is generated when a wire carries a current in the presence of a magnetic field. The electrons that make up the current carry an electric charge and are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field. Since they are trapped in the wire, the entire wire is deflected (pushed), pulling the spacecraft along for the ride.

The ProSEDS experiment would have shown that these electric forces can be used to spacecraft propulsion and paved the way for a whole new generation of propellantless spacecraft circling the globe and never running out of gas. But the ProSEDS, for which I was the project scientist, was canceled in the wake of the Columbia disaster and the next space tether propulsion experiment to fly was Japan’s T-Rex in 2010. To the best of my knowledge, there are no tether missions planned to fly anytime soon though there have been several proposed (EDDE and TEPCE are among them).

For more information about space tethers, check out the Wikipedia site (it is well done and very comprehensive) and Chapter 15 of {book: Living Off the Land in Space} (the book I co-authored with Greg Matloff and C. Bangs).

Solar Sails to the Stars

I learned today that I will be the second speaker at the Icarus Interstellar Congress in Dallas next month. My talk will follow Greg Benford’s and will be about solar sails, one of the few real technologies that might be able to take us to the stars.

Solar sails use light, as their name implies, to ‘sail’ through space. They don’t need any fuel and they can operate wherever there is enough sunlight, or laser light, to make them go. They’re low thrust, meaning they don’t have a rapid acceleration, but it is constant – potentially enabling them to go faster than any rocket ever made. And, most importantly, they’re now real. In 2011, the Japan’s IKAROS mission showed the world that a large sail (over 40 feet on each side) can deploy in deep space and navigate using only the pressure of sunlight. NASA plans to fly its own sail, the Sunjammer, next year. Sunjammer, named after a solar sail in a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, will be over 100 feet on a side and scalable to much larger sizes.

This is a far cry from the Texas-sized sails we’ll need to reach Alpha Centauri, but it’s a start.

The Inspiration of Star Trek

As I enjoy a rainy 4th of July writing in my library with my dog at my feet, I often gaze at the model that sits directly in front of me on my desk – the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701. What an inspiration. Gene Roddenberry will undoubtedly be remembered and revered alongside the other 20th Century greats Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

So many of my colleagues at NASA were similarly inspired by the original series or one of its spinoffs. I’ve seen survey results that rank the inspiration of Star Trek right beside the reality of Apollo 11 as the basis for many NASA engineers and scientists choosing space exploration for a career.

What can we do to motivate the generations to come?

ONE WAY TRIP TO MARS ANYONE?

“How many of you would sign up for a one-way trip to Mars?” This was the question I heard Buzz Aldrin ask at last year’s Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration Workshop in Houston, Texas. In an audience comprised of mostly scientists and engineers, more than half raised their hands. I was not among them.

I was astounded at the response. Would these highly-educated scientists really give up the blue skies and green grass of Earth to live forevermore in what amounts to a Winnebago on the fourth planet from the Sun? A good day on Mars is colder and more inhospitable than a bad day in Antarctica. Instant death would surely follow the first careless mistake and there would be no easy way to get help in an emergency. What were they thinking???

Yes, I would go on a round trip to Mars and back. I would take a calculated risk in order to experience Mars first hand but I would definitely want to return to my family and friends, to my yearly trip to the North Carolina mountains and to the simple walks around the neighborhood that I take with my wife each day. But I wouldn’t give all that up to live and die on Mars.

Mars-One (http://applicants.mars-one.com/) is talking about settling Mars and for them the one way trip might actually become a reality. What about for you? Would you go on a one-way trip to Mars?

They call this science?

Top 10 Science Stories of 2012 – Not!
While moderating the midnight “Mad Scientist” panel at last weekend’s LibertyCon, we talked about Scientific American’s “Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...

This is all well and good, until you start counting down to the #1 science story of 2012 and learn that many of the stories they list aren’t really science stories at all. Here is the list, you be the judge:

#10 Felix Baumgartner’s high altitude jump (Yes, this stunt is considered science by the magazine.)

#9 Starvation Diet Fails to Boost Longevity - in primates as it does in rats (This is science.)

#8 Bold, Private Efforts Step into Roles Vacated by NASA (Personally, I don’t consider this science. But that may be my NASA bias showing through.)

#7 Pandemic Avian Flu Genes Made Public (Another real science article)

#6 Record Meltdown of Arctic Sea Ice (Another science article, but it is somewhat tainted by the #1 article you will see below.)

#5 “Obamacare” Upheld by Supreme Court (This one is clearly a non-science story.)

#4 Publication of the ENCODE Encyclopedia: A Milestone in Genome Research (Yeah! Another science story!)

#3 NASA’s Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars (I consider this to be an engineering story, not a science story. But perhaps I am splitting hairs…)

#2 The Higgs Boson is Detected (A real science article.)

#1 Sandy Devastates the U.S. Northeastern Coast (Yes, this is Scientific American’s #1 science story for 2012.)

To say that the attendees of the panel were disappointed in the list would be an understatement. I’m beginning to think that Scientific American should change its name – any suggestions?

The End of Human Civilization?

Last weekend, I attended the LibertyCon science fiction convention in Chattanooga and participated in several panels. Once of the most interesting was a discussion of “The End of Civilization.” The panelists (mostly authors and scientists) discussed way they thought the world -- human civilization -- might end. It was interesting enough to post the initial listing here:

Michael Z. Williamson “The Yellowstone Supervolcano”

Tedd Roberts “Drug research run amok”

Steven Cobb “Asteroid impact”

Julie Cochrane “A Carrington Event”

John Ringo “A bioengineered virus”

Patrick Vanner “Cyber attack”

Llian Price “Infectious disease”

Catherine Asaro “The Singularity”

And, finally, my initial contribution “Online virtual reality addiction”

The list grew during the hour-long discussion – what’s your favorite?

Being and author and working for ****

I've been writing and publishing books since the publication of my popular science book Living Off the Land in Space in 2007. My latest book is mostly science fiction; a collaboration with Jack McDevitt that will be released by Baen Books May 29th.

As a NASA employee for over 20 years, specializing in advanced concepts and advanced propulsion technologies, I’ve worked on some pretty cool projects that I’d like to tell the whole world about. But I am afraid to do so.

The reason? I work for NASA and, as a federal government employee, I have to get permission to have outside employment as an author each and every time I write a new book. I’m almost is the same position with blogging. When I consider a blog post, I have to ask myself, “Is this related to my current job at NASA?” If so, then I have to consider it part of my day job and get it reviewed prior to posting. If not, then I can probably post it – but I still have this lingering doubt that I’m not inadvertently violating some rule regarding conflict of interest. (Having my duties as an employee of the federal government conflict with my “outside activity” as an author and general space development advocate. In other words, I cannot use my public job for private gain.)

So, I don’t know how often I will be able to update this blog. Nor do I know what I will be able to say within it when I do. But I will try my best to make it work.

Stay tuned…