Andrew Hagen

As a space enthusiast, I was saddened along with many others when the first SpaceX rocket exploded on launch on Friday, March 31, 2006. SpaceX is a private company engaged in the business of launching vehicles into space. The March 31, 2006 launch was non-secret and government-funded.

Unfortunately, SpaceX Vice-President of Business Development Gwynne Shotwell compounded the launch disaster with a conceited, secretive approach. Interviewed on Science Friday with Ira Flatow, she flatly rejected every opportunity to make public (1) what might have caused the explosion; (2) photographs annd video of the rocket coming back to Earth, or even (3) the type of vehicle the rocket carried. (* audio available) Ms. Shotwell did clearly state that this was not a secret government project. It was a launch funded by DARPA, a US government agency, and held some kind of demonstration satellite for the US Air Force Academy, but any further information was not forthcoming. There is no indication that SpaceX had any information at stake related to any comparative advantage over competitors.

The approach of SpaceX and Ms. Shotwell is totally unacceptable in a society of free government. This launch was funded by taxpayers, and to deny information at this stage is unreasonable.

The only logical inference to draw is that SpaceX is an unaccountable company that cannot be trusted with your investment dollars.

I commend Ira Flatow of Science Friday for his probing, hard-hitting interview with Ms. Shotwell, available for free on the Science Friday web site. Perhaps Ira Flatow is considering filing a FOIA request with DARPA and the US Air Force Academy to retrieve all available data regarding the crash. I hope for the prompt release of the complete data set to the public.

Burt Rutan says we are five years away from routine space tourism. (*)

It’s going to happen.

To their detriment, chimpanzees idolize humans. (*) To our detriment, humans imitate chimps. (†)

NASA tells the world of a historical discovery today.

In the 1870s, two Italians, priest Pietro Secchi and astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, announced that Mars had canali. (*) Canali is Italian for “channels” but was translated into English as “canals,” implying construction. Subsequently a firestorm of intense scientific debate and public interest considered whether H₂O was present on the Red Planet. (†) (‡) (§)

In a news conference today, NASA has announced that its rover Opportunity has acquired evidence that the area in which it landed was once “drenched with water.” Mars has water. There may be a great deal of water under the Martian surface.

It is mission accomplished for NASA and its international partners, including Germany. We have made a huge leap forward in the search for life in the rest of the universe.

The immensely important field of space geology now gains a high level of public prominence.

Continuing coverage. (**) (††)

Space.com reports that the rover Opportunity has made a major discovery on Mars. Lips are sealed for now. (*) Rumor says it has something to do with water and perhaps with life.

Space.com expects a press conference early this week.

A few years ago, scientists made the claim that upon re-examining data from the 1976 Viking Mars landers, those early missions found evidence of microorganisms. (†)

A meteor found in Antarctica in 1984 and thought to have come from Mars provided evidence of Martian life, said a study released in 1996. (‡)

With panache and humor, Exit Mundi collects, describes, and illustrates the many horrific ways in which the world may cease to exist. (*)

A few years ago, the BBC did a program on the world’s largest volcanoes. It termed them “supervolcanoes.” (*) One of its subjects was the volcanic system at Yellowstone National Park, USA. Since then, a number of alternative news sources have played up the possibility that the Yellowstone supervolcano could go at off any time, killing millions. (†) This dovetails nicely with apocalyptic prophecy and the “America has it coming” line of argument. Among their claims is that Yellowstone has recently seen a higher than normal level of volcanic activity. (‡)

The US Geological Survey, however, actively studies volcanic activity at Yellowstone (§), and reports that there is nothing unusual going on. (**)

We have no reason to believe that the Yellowstone volcano (††) will go off any time soon.

Update: 24 March 2004. The bulge in the lake has earned a special section on the USGS web site. The diagnosis is that it is “very unlikely” that this is an indication of a volcanic eruption . (‡‡)

Update: 12 June 2005. The USGS Yellowstone volcano site is online. (§§) Two separate (***) interviews with scientists (†††) are available.

Case closed. No need to panic.

Steve Sailer is a controversial conservative who defends the concept of race and its importance. (*) Sailer is right to criticize those who deny that humans can be divided into races, though he is wrong on the importance of divisibility.

Championed by scientists like Stephen Jay Gould, the idea that race is unscientific has become popular. Racial science has notoriously focused on skull sizes and IQ scores. To sum it up, racial science has been conducted in an unscientific manner and has contributed to bigotry. Gould and others go further. They say that race is a concept that is not scientifically defensible.

Yet, that does not make sense. In science, and particularly in biology, exacting precision is not absolutely required.

Let’s say a biologist is studying snow leopards. (†) One snow leopard cub weighs 45 kilograms, and another weighs 50 kilograms. Are they really both snow leopard cubs? Their weights are different. Weight is very important in distinguishing between housecats and great cats. Indisputably, the two cubs weigh different amounts. Yet, they are of course both snow leopards. There is no reason to think that either the slightly lighter or the slightly heavier snow leopard is the prime exemplar of the species.

With humans, we can obviously lump people into a few major groups. Skin color and hair types are frequently remarked upon. African-Americans are at higher risk for sickle-cell anemia, and at a lower risk for malaria. Lactose intolerance is more prevalent in non-Caucasians. Between different groups there is a gray area. This can readily be seen in the appearances of biracial children. If we really wanted to, however, we could come to a rough, inexact scientific judgment about which race each person belonged to. (‡) But why would we want to?

There is no reason to believe that racial differences justify a differentiation of policy goals based on race. Many people are shocked when they see low African-American test scores. To begin to understand the causes, go into the black community and look at the poverty, family dissolution, crime, and lack of police protection. Consider the import of racism. The disparity of conditions may lead to a disparity of policy approaches toward different races. Affirmative action is justified to redress historical racism. Yet, despite all of this there would be no justification for pigeonholing blacks as one kind of worker and whites as another.

There is no reason to believe that racial differences outweigh individual differences. If you were hiring an engineer, and had to choose between two individuals, one African-American and one European-American, you would need more information before you knew which one would make the better engineer. For example, you would want to compare their level of education and experience in engineering.

Non-scientists can also come to judgments about people based on their perceived race. When not benign, these judgments are necessarily wrong, but they are perhaps inevitable until that day is reached when “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood,” to quote Martin Luther King.

What is condemnable is the privileging of some race above another, and the false linking of certain inborn traits to certain races and those traits to justifications for inequitable distributions of political or economic power. The people that do this are properly called racists. Sometimes they prefer to be called “racialists,” but the meaning is similar enough.

In conclusion, racial types may very well exist within humanity. Science could discover this if it were properly carried out. Racial science may even be a valuable endeavor. For example, medicine might benefit from insight into racial differences. So long as we care about justice, however, even a valid racial science would have little or no value in informing our practical affairs. The far more important information is the boundless potential and unique personality of every human being. Properly conducted racial science may be worthwhile for pure knowledge’s sake, or perhaps for resisting racism, but for little more than that.

Children who grow up without human contact are not socialized. The study of these feral children can provide a window into human nature. (*) Their sad tales underscore children’s need for the protection of their parents. (†) The BBC has looked into the phenomenon. (‡)

Journalists are reporting that President Bush will use the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight to announce a new commitment to the space program. (*) I’m a strong supporter of revitalization. (†)

Bush may indeed be readying a major policy proposal. He might be about to call for new research into propulsion technologies, for a permanent lunar base, for a Mars mission, and for a space plane. He may state his support for a national aerospace policy that rejuvenates a lagging, critically important industry. I hope he does. More likely, however, Bush will go through the motions for political purposes while proposing little new spending.

America should be spending far more on her space program. Fifty billion dollars per year might not be enough. Public spending is the only way to jumpstart our society so that we may become a space-faring nation.

No Democrat since John F. Kennedy can apparently be bothered to do more than the obligatory posturing on this issue.

I would like to see a new political party, with one of its main planks being a truly 21st century space program that challenges either the Republican or Democratic Parties for major-party status.

Update: 5 December 2003. Buzz Aldrin suggests building a platform at L-1, a location between the Earth and the Moon. (‡) L-1 is a low-gravity area from which far-ranging missions could be conveniently launched. (§)

The aquatic ape theory (AAT) postulates that human evolution has its roots in seagoing apes, or perhaps salt bog–trodding apes. (*) When I first ran into the AAT, I laughed almost all the way through, but then it seemed to make sense. Our ancestors would have lived in the trees. Their descendants lived in the water. Then, their descendants moved back to land. They became us.

In contrast, the standard theory of human evolution has human beings going from trees to savannahs, where our ancestors were hunters that stalked the plains. According to the standard theory, there was no aquatic interlude between trees and savannahs.

To sum up a few of the main AAT arguments: the relative lack of hairlessness on humans as compared to our closest living primate relatives, the bipedalism or erect walking of our species, the great amounts of sweat given off by human beings, and many other anatomical details put us in close relation to aquatic mammals. Analogues include whales, dolphins, and mammals such as elephants whose ancestors may have lived in the sea. One of the least scientifically compelling but most emotionally compelling arguments is that the strange human affinity for beaches is perhaps a hearkening back to a distant past.

Our aquatic ancestors would have lived approximately four to six million years ago. The evidence for the AAT is primarily anatomical. Fossil evidence does not exist. That might be explained by the lower likelihood of fossils forming in the wet environments where aquatic apes would have lived. Furthermore, the “Lucy” fossil has very long feet that Morgan has compared to flippers.

The AAT is not taken seriously by the scientific establishment. It has primarily been advanced in popular science books, like Elaine Morgan’s Scars of Evolution. This tends to stigmatize the theory.

Jim Moore has done the AAT a great service by attacking it. (†) Perhaps if the theory could be shown to withstand some good, hard critical scrutiny, it could attract more serious researchers.

My own thought is to take a group of human beings, move them to a secluded beach somewhere, take away all their technology, and have them to live as the aquatic apes would have. If we are a species in transition, we should be able to go back. As Thor Heyerdahl did (‡), the theory could be partially proven by re-enactment. If a group of humans could survive in such conditions, then that might be evidence for the AAT. (§)

Is AAT a scientific project that will advance our knowledge? That is not yet known. The AAT has a long way to go before it will be taken seriously by the scientific establishment. Still, the ability to know more about the human past is so important that it is worth the expending of great effort. If the AAT eventually falls, it falls. The higher goal is to advance scientific knowledge.

A discussion group is available. (**)

Denis Dutton reviews Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom by Paul H. Rubin. (*) The author has an original take on human nature. (†) For example, human beings may be naturally fit for groups of around 20 to 40, because that was the size of hunting bands in the Pleistocene Era.

It sounded less and less crazy as I read through the review.

The report on the loss of the space shuttle Columbia was released last week. (*) It is 248 pages. (†)

What is most disturbing is the report’s indictment of the management culture at NASA, a perfect echo of the criticism of NASA following the 1986 loss of the Challenger. It is pathetic at this point, but NASA now seems to have a web-based safety problem reporting system. (‡)

Congress should get its share of the blame, however, for failing to fund NASA more generously. Had Congress given NASA the money it needs, we would at least have the next generation space plane ready to go. With Congress’s yearly pittance of $10 billion paid to one of the government’s most important agencies, it will take years before the space plane is ready.

In the New York Review of Books, H Allen Orr has an unexpected but ultimately very satisfying takedown of Matt Ridley’s Nature via Nurture. (*) Ridley tells his audience that genes are active throughout an organism’s life, thus ending the old nature vs. nurture debate. Convincingly, however, Orr finds the debate still very much alive.

Are physical laws the same in one galaxy as they are in another? The assumption of science is that they are—that laws are universal. In the New York Times, Paul Davies writes of alternative scientific thinking to the effect that our universe is just one of its kind in a multiverse. (*) In every universe, different physical laws would prevail. This would, in Davies’s words, put truth “forever beyond our ken.”

Of course, that is not right. There would likely be rules governing the metaverse itself, and metalaws governing what kind of laws are possible in any universe. If the metaverse conjecture were accurate, we would simply have to seek knowledge of those laws. There is no need to despair. Truth is still within our ken.

At 9:00 AM EST today, mission control at NASA lost all communication with the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia (OV-102) as it descended to Earth over North Texas. (*) The shuttle, which made the first space shuttle flight in 1981 (†), was returning to Cape Canaveral in Florida from its sixteen-day mission, STS-107. The shuttle disintegrated. All seven crew members were lost. (‡) President Bush spoke to the country this afternoon. (§)

An independent governmental investigation will probe the cause of the disaster. Early speculation has centered on an anomaly that occurred during launch. A piece of foam from the external fuel tank is said to have broken off, struck the left wing, and possibly damaged some of the heat-resistant tiles. (**) The Columbia had a problem with debris foam damaging its heat-resistant tiles in 1997 during STS-87. (††) There is also talk of a “thermal differential” on the left wing during reentry. Caltech astronomer Anthony Beasley, interviewed by ABC News, said that as he watched the Columbia return to the atmosphere this morning from Owens Valley, California he saw pieces of debris separating from the shuttle. This would indicate that the breakup began earlier than previously thought.

This flight had the heaviest or one of the heaviest payload landing weights in the history of the space shuttle. The shuttle liftoff weight was 452,842 lbs., the orbiter/payload liftoff weight (which apparently excluding the external fuel tank and boosters) was 263,701 lbs., and the orbiter/payload landing weight was 232,788 lbs. (‡‡) I’m not sure of the significance or lack thereof of this.

The International Space Station, of course, remains in orbit. (§§)

There is no reason to believe that terrorism was involved in this incident. (***) No radar data shows the presence of any surface-to-air missile. Of course, sabotage on the ground would be a possibility, but only speculation can support such a notion today.

The disaster underscores the risks of space travel. The seven astronauts lost were Shuttle Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, and Mission Specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon. They knew the grave risks, and not only took them, but sought them out to advance the project of human space flight. Now they have passed into the pantheon of astronautics. They and their heroism will not be forgotten.

Last edited: 8 February 2003.

In his new book, Lost Discoveries, Dick Teresi sets forth an account of how basic facts about the natural world were discovered and scientific tools were invented in cultures and civilizations other than the West, even as Europe plodded through the Dark Ages. Westerners drew on much of this knowledge as they made discoveries and laid the technological groundwork for the modern age. The New York Times reviews it. (*) The book is partly a long, corrective footnote about our supposedly assured presumptions, made possible now that we know more of the origins of the building blocks of scientific knowledge, such as that of the place-value notation system, which was invented in ancient Babylon. It is also an acknowledgement of cultural achievements that were eventually forgotten. For example, the ancient Chinese knew that the year lasted approximately 365.25 days, but apparently no lasting scientific inquiry was erected on top of that. Other people in another time would have to independently make that same discovery, again.

Many cultures have achieved knowledge, but few have managed to place one foot in front of the other, and to continually build in steps upon already existing knowledge. Moreover, many cultures achieved some measure of knowledge, and then lost that knowledge for one reason or another. This is tragedy. When the Incan library and the Alexandria library burned, the contributions of generations went up in smoke.

Lest we Westerners feel assured in our repose of scientific and technological achievement, we ought to remember that all knowledge is perishable. The only way to secure knowledge is not to hide it in a cave, or to entrust it only to elites, but to free it. The only way to save science is to let all men practice it. While the West systematized science, and formulated the scientific method, there is nothing special about the West that predestined it to scientific success. The insights we have available to us were won slowly and with much struggle, intellectually and politically. For every Newton there was at least one Galileo. There is every sign, in this age of fascist totalitarian terrorists and fundamentalist anti-intellectuals, that to protect the storehouse of knowledge that men have today, and to extend its benefits to all, and to extend its reach ever deeper into the mysteries of nature, will require more struggle. So, possessed of this conviction and of the rectitude of the critical mentality, we march on. Only now, thanks to writers like Teresi, we can be even firmer in our belief that science rightly belongs not to only one civilization, but to all humanity.

“The Commission concludes that the nation will have to be a space-faring nation in order to be the global leader in the 21st century—our freedom, mobility, and quality of life will depend on it.” The report issued today by the Walker Commission, formally the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry, starkly draws the aerospace challenges facing our country. Our future depends on success in space. (*) (†)

The report is not easily available from the Commission’s web site. They could have just posted links to the PDFs, but instead they chose to do something else. If you dig, you can finally find the PDFs, including the executive summary. (‡ PDF)

The Commission notes that the aerospace industry is in poor shape, and that while the workforce is graying, schools aren’t producing enough graduates with the requisite science and math skills to replace retirees. Yet, aerospace is integral to economic performance, transportation, national defense, and homeland security, just to list a few important areas. The report calls for a national aerospace policy. The problem has been that a wide variety of agencies from the Department of Defense to NASA to the FAA to several others take action that affect the aerospace industry without the guidance provided by one overarching policy. In particular, the new aerospace policy must work in concert with the nascent homeland security policy.

One interesting problem area is air traffic control. For the past few decades, the pace of information systems upgrades by the FAA has been slow. While the current plan will not be finished for several years, the future challenges soon upon us will include handling both manned and unmanned aircraft and, no doubt, vehicles comparable to space planes. Then, there are the additional homeland security needs in the wake of 9/11. A massive automation of air traffic control is required.

For future space exploration and travel, the Commission suggests that new, breakthrough advances must be achieved in the field of propulsion. Travel time within the solar system must be cut from years to weeks. It won’t happen without more research spending by the federal government.

The economic recommendations are far-reaching. Regulations need to be streamlined, international trade in space products must be opened, and more focus must be given to teaching the next generations math and science.

The Commission suggests that very high level goals are within reach. By 2010, we should be able to demonstrate technology that cuts travel time by air and through space by half, aviation noise by 90%, and the fatal aviation accident rate also by 90%. In addition, time to market for new aerospace technologies can be slashed significantly.

It’s now in the hands of Congress, and, by extension, its constituents. If the Republican-controlled Congress is able to undertake both aerospace policy and homeland security in a competent manner, that would be a huge accomplishment. Will it happen? Let’s pressure our legislators to make sure it does.