PDF review and rant: “After the moon – what?”

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Nov 272021

If you look back to NASA in the mid-1960’s, it certainly seems like it was an organization filled with people who thought that the future was wide open. Apollo was merely going to be the first step; after some landings would come longer-term “camps” on the moon, with stays of a few weeks in temporary habitats; then would come bases that could be visited by multiple crews. Nuclear powered space stations with artificial gravity. There would be manned flyby missions to Venus and eventually manned landings on Mars; as propulsion systems inevitably grew vastly more capable, manned missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would follow in due course.

By the time Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon, though, it was becoming clear that the future was not going to be what it should have been. As noted previously, the production line of the Saturn V was shut down a year before Apollo 11, not only limiting the possible missions of the Apollo program but ending hope for missions that would expand upon Apollo. Shortly after Apollo 11, it seems that morale at NASA was already in decline as the engineers, scientists, technicians and so on could see the writing on the wall. Not only was Saturn dead, but funding was in decline and it was becoming clear that there was minimal political interest in carrying Apollo forward… the job of beating the Soviets to the Moon was done, and the important scientific work, not to mention the prospect of carrying western civilization to the stars, was not that important to the political class who were far more interested in the “Great Society” spending programs. So in September of 1969 a “Seminar on Manned Flight Awareness” was held at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, to deal with the issue:

The successful lunar landing and completion of the flight of Apollo 11 achieved a national objective in this decade and is a significant milestone in man’s continuing progress in space exploration. Historically, achievements of such magnitude, requiring concentrated efforts over an appreciable time period, are followed by a letdown and general relaxation of the personnel involved. In addition, this letdown may be amplified by a serious morale problem when funding cutbacks are experienced. The result is n decline in the required attention to detailed workmanship which can cause a rise in accident rates and potential loss of life.

To counter these potential morale and complacency problems in the spaceflight program, this Government/Industry Manned Flight Awareness Seminar is being conducted. The objective of this seminar is the maintenance of high quality workmanship through effective awareness and motivational programs. We intend to do this by outlining NASA’s plans for future programs and the resources being made available to successfully conclude these programs. In addition, executives of various industrial firms deeply involved in space work will present their views of the future. In this way we can get the message from NASA Management to the individuals responsible for doing the work that is vital to assuring a high quality of workmanship in the aerospace force.

Not having been born yet, I don’t have any firsthand information on just what was going on at the time in NASA. However, one thing I *do* have firsthand information on was the end of the United Technologies Center/Chemical System Division facility south of San Jose, California, circa 2003-2004. That company was a manufacturer of solid rockets such as the booster separation motors for the Space Shuttle, booster rockets for the Tomahawk cruise missile, Minuteman ICBM stages and so on. It was a vital part of the rocket industry of the United States. And in 2003-2004, it was *obvious* to everyone there that the company was doomed. Things were going wrong left and right to the point that a lot of us were wondering if it was active sabotage; in reality it was merely management and unions working together to make things as ridiculous as possible. Coupled with the fact that the company could, at best, turn in a profit measured at a handful of millions of dollars a year while sitting on *billions* of dollars of prime Silicon Valley real estate, everyone there knew that the companies time was strictly limited. So, what did the USAF and NASA do about it?

The USAF/NASA told the rest of the United States aerospace industry to *not* hire any of us. We were embargoed from seeking employment elsewhere, at least at companies that received federal contracts. So we stayed on the job. Until, of course, the embargoes were lifted, then we fled like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

It seems that NASA in September 1969 was facing a similar predicament. Everyone there – scientists, engineers, technicians and subcontractors of all kinds – could see the writing on the wall. And when you know that the project you’re working on has a near-term end date, you look for somewhere else to be, preferably before all your co-workers get the same idea. This is sensible, but it’s also a problem. Yes, Apollo/Saturn had a distinctly limited lifespan. But the program still had a number of years left, and it would need the bulk of the staff to stay on the job to make sure that the spacecraft and launch vehicles were finished, maintained and prepared for their missions. If everyone at NASA fled for brighter opportunities elsewhere, the missions still funded would be unable to be completed. So NASA held a seminar that seemed to have the singular goal of convincing people just how bright NASA’s future really was. A space shuttle would be available by 1976 and a space station by 1979… as well as a polar orbit station and one in geosynchronous. A lunar orbiting station around 1976. Nuclear powered inter-orbital shuttles. Manned missions back to the Moon and on to Mars.

It was all wrong. Yes, the Shuttle finally arrived in the early 1980’s, greatly delayed and vastly and permanently over budget, each flight costing one to two orders of magnitude more than originally projected. yes, a space station did eventually arrive… in the 1990’s, handicapped by international politics, small, undermanned, under-capable. None of the rest of it even *tried* to happen. The seminar reads like desperation, or a rah-rah session at some multi-level marketing scheme; I had flashes to scenes in the recent Hulu series “Dopesick” where Oxycontin sales reps are getting the latest BS about how great the next dosage of the pill will be, so go out there and sell more.

*A* future does not mean *A* *GOOD* *FUTURE.*

No. It was the end, and apparently everyone involved could see it.

You can download a PDF of the 80-page seminar publication HERE.

Eastern DashCam

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Nov 232021

Dashcam compilations of Exciting Incidents can be entertaining. Up until recently, the great majority of the compilations I’ve seen have featured either largely American videos, or largely Russian/Eastern European videos; random European, Australian and Asian vids tossed in. But I recently stumbled across a channel that seems to be entirely east Asian… I *think* Chinese, but I don’t know for sure. And after having watched far too many of them, I noticed some distinctions from the US/Russian vids.

First and most obviously, these Chinese videos feature a *lot* more direct human involvement. The western videos seem to be largely one machine hitting another, but the Chinese vids have far more pedestrians getting plowed over. And part of the added human element is the presence of *far* more two and three wheeled scooters and bikes. You hit a car, all you see is metal and glass. You hit a scooter, the human is hard to ignore.

More subtly are the differences in the people. In the western vids, you get a lot of reaction from the people in the dashcam car, whether they are actually involved or not. Ranging from laughing at what they’ve just seen to screaming about it, to yelling between driver and passenger to drivers yelling at other drivers, westerners have a lot to say (even if much of it is utterly meaningless in the end). But the eastern videos are shockingly silent. There are reactions of course, things that I assume to be akin to “look at that” and “uh-oh,” but most of the time the driver says nothing at all. At first I thought maybe they were shocked into silence… but now I suspect it’s due more to being quite blase about it. And that I suspect is related to another thing I noticed: many to perhaps most of the incidents are caused by one or more of those involved being utterly oblivious to their surroundings. The lack of situational awareness on display can be astounding. If I was on a scooter surrounded by cars and semi trucks capable of 70 miles per hour, my head would be on a swivel; these people seem to live in their own little worlds, unaware that other vehicles – or rules of the road – even exist. Pedestrians step out into major highways without looking. Bikes blow through *busy* red lights. Scooters stop in the middle of a fast, busy street for no apparent reason. People on bikes and scooters plowing directly into giant stopped trucks. I saw one where someone was driving a scooter with an umbrella open *in* *front* *of* *them.*

Most of the individual clips cut off within seconds of the incident. But those that go on a little longer demonstrate something else: bystanders often don’t seem to care. In the US or Russia, a wreck would be followed promptly by people rushing in to help (or perhaps to take pictures), but in what I assume to be China, the response largely seems to be “that’s not my job.”

So if you want to see people on mopeds getting clocked by cars and tossed all over the road to the complete indifference of their fellow man, this channel is for you.

Stereotypes:

Russian dashcam vids are the result of vodka (and ice). American dashcam vids are the result of assholes. Chinese dashcam vids are the result of obliviousness.

Can’t stop the signal, Mal

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Nov 232021

Whenever there is an “unfortunate incident,” the masters of social media scrub their sites of the unfortunate evidence that the perpetrators left behind. But sometimes they are not fast enough, and other people save and archive at least some of that stuff. As an example: the vehicular attack in Waukesha was carried out by a guy with not only an extensive criminal record, but a long record of racist, pro-violence, anti-cop, anti-Trump postings of various kind including a number of “music” videos. That all got scrubbed. But it also got archived, as seen here:

Waukesha Attack Info Dump

Some “interesting” stuff there. It should be noted that Darrell Brooks is likely not an anomaly… he’d most likely a foretaste of the future. Humanity is getting dumber, and dumber people have lower impulse control and a higher predilection for violence. Dumber people are more likely to believe patently stupid stuff, like the libels about Rittenhouse, and then lash out stupidly and violently as a result. Video taken not long after his massive hate crime showed that he was not whacked out of his gourd either on drugs or insanity; he appears to be rational and planning for the future. This was an intentional act, and it’s certainly reasonable to suspect that he was driven to it not only by his criminal nature but by the drumbeat of lies from the media, politicians, even clergy, all of whom should be sued straight into the poorhouse. Brooks was someone who should have been permanently removed from society *years* ago, but after a recent attempted vehicular murder the local DA let him roam the streets with the very same vehicle he used in his last attack on a mere $1000 bail.

If it was possible to imagine a rational society, we would be planning prison reform, such that people like this would *never* again be released from prison, long before their rap sheets got as ling as this guys. People like this should be weeded out of not just society but the gene pool before they spread not only misery and death but another generation of their idiot ilk. At the same time, immigration reforms to assure that the best and brightest come in, the worst and dimmest are kept out. Welfare programs that discourage the poor from having kids that they can’t, or won’t, take care of; social policies that promote multiple children for those who are successful and useful members of society. But there is virtually no chance that such reforms are even possible. My last remaining hope not only for western civilization but mankind itself is space colonization. Because morons are self-limiting in environments that are infinitely hostile to dumb decision making. On a space colony – Moon, Mars, Asteroidal, Orbital – the stupid and the violent and the criminal are threats not only to themselves but to everyone else, so they would be dealt with in a permanent fashion. Science Fiction often has such types getting tossed out airlocks; this is, of course, also a stupid decision. Better by far to dump them into the waste reclamation system so that at the end they can provide at least some modicum of benefit to the society they would otherwise have harmed.

One less savory solution might be to let the Chinese deal with it. They have announced that they are working on genetic weaponry targeting ethnic groups; the presumed purpose would be to either wipe out or enfeeble every ethnic group on the planet except for the Han. But the same technology could presumably be used to attack people based not on the genetic markers of ethnicity, but genes regulating intelligence. A man-made plague that wipes out or sterilizes people with sub-90 IQ’s would be distasteful… and also almost certain to be apocalyptic as the disease mutates in the wild and begins to target a far wider range of targets. Cows and pigs and birds and fish, after all, all have sub-90 IQs; it would be pretty friggen’ awful if Earth was stripped of all animal life except for some rather startled smart folks.

As we race towards Idiocracy, things are only going to get worse. We now have obviously sub-normal elected officials pushing to empty the prisons, flooding the streets with exactly the sort of people who should rather have been launched through a Stargate with a trebuchet.

And if you were looking for a black pill to dim your outlook, this guy has you covered (assuming you can get through his rapid-fire rather jabbery presentation):

I draw a different message…

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Nov 212021

YouTube decided that I needed to see this trailer:

It’s yet another sportsball movie. Yawn. But the schtick here is that the sportsballers in question are college, not professional, and there is some movement afoot to get them paid and get them medical insurance. Because the sportsballers currently don’t get paid, while their coaches and other staff can have salaries measured in millions; and while the staff have careers lined up for potentially decades, most of the sportsballers *won’t* go on to become professionals.

Message: boo hoo poor college sportsballers who spend several years getting feted and fawned over and provided with enough cars and other gifts and whatnot that if they weren’t idiots they could fund a pretty decent post-college retirement even without moving on to professional sportsball.

However, my takeaway is this: stop funding college sportsball. Instead of giving the coach six million dollars a year, give that money to the nuclear engineering department. Give it to the college Chess Team or the RC Airplane team or the Liquid Propellant Rocket Racing To The Stratosphere team. Or the Medical department. Or the physics lab. Or the library, to keep actual books on actual stacks that the students can actually access. You know… what academics are *supposed* to be about.

If these people are worried about college sportsballers getting so injured that they’ll need medical insurance more than the average college student, then clearly sportsball is an unwarranted risk. Get rid of it, turn the stadiums into lab spaces (imagine what the Ag Science department could do with an average football field) and instead of football and basketball, focus Rah Rah Go Team instead onto the Chess team, the college Halo/Call of Duty/Donkey Kong team.

There. Problem solved.

“Toxic masculinity” or “white privilege?” You decide

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Nov 172021

In saner times, we would all read this story and, while all admitting that it’s a sad tragedy, we’d also all look at the father described here and say “Now that… that was a man.” This would be followed by a grave head nod, a slow non-ironic golf clap, the pouring out of libations, the solemn murmurings of oaths and/or prayers, a warning given to those in Valhalla or StoVo Kor that A Man is coming. Sadly, these are not sane times.

11-Year-Old Plane Crash Survivor Was Saved By Her Dad’s ‘Bear Hug’ in a Final Act of Love

A commuter plane went down, and a fathers last act was to try – successfully – to protect his daughter. He, and everyone on the plane who *wasn’t* his daughter, died.

You may wonder why I’m going at this new story from a cynical standpoint. Simple: the article suggests a “related” article:

White Moms: There’ll Always Be a New Kyle Rittenhouse If We Don’t Address White Privilege

Where we are informed that the urge to defend and protect is the result of white privilege, and that cowardice and unwillingness to defend self, family or strangers is the better approach. That white moms need to teach their white sons to disdain the very *concept* of willingness to help.

Hey, lady: ᚷᚩ ᚠᚢᚳk ᚣᚩᚢᚱᛋᛖᛚᚠ

If Kyle Rittenhouse were Black, I can guarantee he would not be on trial … he’d likely be dead and likely it’d be at the hands of local authorities.

Really. Ask Timothy Simpkins about that.

The UN makes the case for active nuclear weapons development programs

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Nov 172021

And a space program!

A few weeks ago the United Nations put out a video where an indifferently rendered Utahraptor goes before the United Nations and argues that he knows a thing or two about extinction, that extinction is a bad thing, and that humans should not subsidize their own extinction. Rather, humans should work *against* extinction. These are all good points. And the logical conclusion to draw from this is that mankind should, at once and without delay, convert the money currently being wasted on social welfare programs into industrial-scale efforts to develop gigaton-yield thermonuclear devices, deep-space comet and asteroid detection and tracking systems, fast and efficient interplanetary transport system. The nukes would be used to divert potential threats; the improved propulsion and power systems would have the secondary benefit of opening the entire solar system and its resources to exploitation and colonization. heavy industry and its pollution could be moved off-world; Earth could be converted into a garden. By doing so, mankind – and every species we choose to bring with us – would be rendered *almost* immune from extinction. Nothing else mankind could possibly do would have a hope in hell of being even a minuscule fraction as impactful.

Welcome to the world, kid

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Nov 132021

I stumbled across some paperwork that for no readily apparent reason I’ve kept for a quarter century. Shown below are two correspondence that might be of some amusement. They deal with my very first “real” job after graduation, when I was hired to work on a The Next Big Thing project for Orbital Sciences Corporation.

First up (some personal data redacted):

Neato! I’m hired! So I packed up my stuff (including my baby archive, which fit in two boxes), drove from Illinois to Virginia right smack in the middle of the Blizzard Of The Century, spent a bucket of cash for an apartment, and started an exciting new adventure, sure to be filled with excitement, career fulfillment and fair and reasonable treatment from my employers. What could possibly go wrong?

Gee, that was fun.

It was a short, sharp shock that gave me a good solid look at the aerospace industry in the US. Unfeeling corporations, sociopathic bosses, incredibly blinkered, short-sighted management *and* self-serving unions, all beholden to quite possibly the *dumbest* politicians in human history.

I shoulda gone into art. I have no real talent for it… but then, I’ve seen “Star Trek: Discovery” and it’s clear that talent and skill are no longer important or even desirable in modern artistic endeavors.

Janeway ain’t wrong

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Nov 112021

Back before the yammering yahoos were forever going on about the need for “strong women characters,” pop culture was *full* of strong women characters. Star Trek: Voyager ended up kinda jam-packed with them… Janeway, Torres, Seven of Nine all ended up being well-written, well acted characters with distinct respectable personalities. Kes… meh, not so much. Modern live action Trek, sadly, has failed spectacularly in that regard, producing characters (both male and female) who run the short gamut from utterly forgettable to incredibly childish and annoying. Honestly: the bridge crew of the Discovery is *loaded* with women. How many of them do you even know the names of?

Janeway was a *proper* Starfleet captain: she commanded respect without having to berate people; she was emotionally affected by the things that happened around her and to her crew, but she was Captain enough to know when to keep it together. But then there’s “Michael Burnham.” Gah.

Burnham deserves no respect. Nor do the talentless hacks who write her.

Well, here we are

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Nov 112021

Sure, this is Britain, but the same nonsense would likely apply here as well:

Professor draws rage for telling students to work hard and avoid partying

A Cambridge University physical sciences professor sent out an email to his student saying:

“Please be careful how you handle yourselves here in these early weeks: remember that you are NOT at any other uni, where students do drink a lot and do have what they regard as a “good time” – and you are NOT on a course, as some Cambridge courses sadly are, where such a behaviour pattern in possible or acceptable.”

“Physical Sciences is a VERY hard subject, which will require ALL of your attention and your FULL brain capacity (and for a large fraction of you, even that will not be quite enough). You can ONLY do well (i.e. achieve your potential, which rightly or wrongly several people here assumed you have) I you are completely focused, and learn to enjoy the course. People who just TAKE the course, but enjoy their social life, can easily survive in many subjects — but not in this one.”

He is… NOT WRONG.

But people flipped out anyway.

I remember a few professors early in my aerospace engineering studies who made the same point, and they were not only not wrong, they were not wrong to do so. I had one Statics (a basic course required of *all* engineers, so the classroom was a huge auditorium) professor in particular who spent the first week badgering us, more or less bullying us to quit and find some field other than engineering. And he was partially successful: as memory serves, something like a third of the students bailed in that first week. And they were right to do so: if you can’t take some pressure, you shouldn’t be an engineer. If you go into art and get it wrong… who cares/ if you become an engineer and get it wrong. buildings collapse, planes explode, people die and nations fail. Science and engineering are *hard,* and spending your time partying and drinking will *not* help you. if the professor here convinces a student to study rather than party, he could well prevent an adequate student from becoming a failed one.

Those who are arguing that the professor is wrong are setting up students to fail. Even if the university dumbs down the requirements for graduation so that students who should have failed end up passing, once they get out into the private sector, they will find that they are incapable of remaining employed.

Budget Bunker

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Nov 092021

A few days ago I posted a link to a video of a professional underground bomb shelter. Lots of money, but also it looks like lots of reinforcement, with claims of lots of durability and a lifespan measured in centuries.

And then…

Shipping containers are freakin’ plentiful, and it sure seems like they’d make dandy homes and even underground shelters. But they are thin-walled and minimally reinforced… and as I understand it, they are not closed on the underside. The floors are *wood.* So unless a lot of work is done, if you bury one, the mud and water – if you bury it in a place that will ever see ground water – will readily flow right in. This is not to say that a shipping container-based underground bunker would be useless; depending on location, they might be just fine. But they are unlikely going to handle flooding, blast overpressure or trucks driving over them.

You watch *one* video of a bunker being built, and YouTube decides “well, this guy is clearly obsessed with underground shelters, so let’s show him all of them.”

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