ALL IN THE NAME: The U.S. space program<\/b> has lots of problems these days. Once upon a time, NASA’s mission was quite simple: beat them damn Ruskies. But now that we’ve beat ’em, things just ain’t so simple anymore. Plenty of good questions come up, such as, what do we expect to get out of space exploration, and what’s it gonna cost. Do we really need to have people up there, or can we accomplish our goals faster and cheaper with robots? And where do we go next, now that we’ve sunk a lot of money into a space station that doesn’t have all that much scientific, commercial or military value, and an old and dangerous space shuttle that likewise doesn’t have much value but is the only way to keep the space station going for the next 10 years? And just to make the problem even more interesting, don’t count on increased funding from the government, nor on a groundswell of interest from private investors.<\/p>\n
Well, this is another fine mess, as they used to say in the old Laurel and Hardy movies. And at the moment, my mind isn’t up to solving it. But I do have one observation about NASA and the whole space exploration effort these days. And that is this: they just don’t come up with names like they used to. Back in the days of excitment, they gave their rockets and spaceships grand, inspiring names: Atlas, Mercury, Titan, Gemini, Saturn, Apollo<\/b>, etc. Admittedly, some of those names were jingoistic leftovers from the Cold War years when America thought it could overwhelm the world with its nuclear might (too bad that the Russians and everyone else finally figured out how to build atom bombs). But at least the space program was a place where that all of that grandeur and bombast could be directed for somewhat better purposes. Thus, the tradition of naming our nuclear missles after the mighty Gods of ancient legend, e.g. Thor and Jupiter, was carried forth to the vehicles that would probe the heavens. Even second-stage rocket components were given names like Centaur and Agena (not sure just what that one meant, but it still sounded ancient and mythological).<\/p>\n
Today, with the space program in the doldrums, our rockets and spaceships are given acronyms and other monikers that fail to ignite the imagination. I mean, what can you expect from something called the Space Shuttle<\/b>, whose official name is Space Transportation System (or STS for short)? And right now, the alternative to the Shuttle is called EELV<\/b> (evolved expendible launch vehicles). The backbone of the EELV fleet is the Delta<\/b> rocket, a name about as exciting as a muddy river. (The Delta evolved from the old military “Thor” rocket; they should have kept the old name). Upper stages are now given inspirational names like “IUS” or “Transtage”. Wow. And in the private realm, we have Sea Launch<\/b>, with it’s Zenit rocket (launched, not surprisingly, from a floating barge). What the heck is a Zenit? Something Russian, I think. C’mon, couldn’t they have at least added an “h” at the end? Orbital Systems at least tried to honor tradition with its “Pegasus”<\/b> booster, which is dropped from a jumbo jet as to blast-off in mid-air. Supposedly the Sea Launch scheme is better then Pegasus in terms of technology and launch efficiency. But sure not in terms of public inspiration.<\/p>\n
Someday, space travel and transportation will be entirely routine, and space vehicles will be as ordinary as 767s are today. (And if they can do that “Space Hook”<\/b> thing by lowering a cable down from a big satellite, space travel will have all the glamour of an elevator ride). But for now, space remains a big problem, and people need to get psyched in order to deal with it. Picking out grand and exotic names to inspire the imagination is more important than ever if our space program is going to avoid going the way of the old Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
SWEET HOME ALABAMA: I just read about Bob Riley<\/b>, the Republican governor of Alabama, a man with little sympathy for liberal Democrats. And yet, Governor Riley has suddenly found some friends amidst that crowd. Alabama has a terribly regressive taxation system, one that puts much more burden upon the poor than upon large corporations and high-income families. Well, turns out that Governor Riley has introduced a plan to change all that, a plan that reduces taxes for poor and working class households while increasing tax payments from the rich and the corporate sector. And it looks like he’s going to get it passed. How’d he sell it? By quoting the Bible. As a fundamentalist Christian, Governor Riley recalled the lines in the Bible where both Jesus and the Old Testament prophets said that the poor should be given a break. And he decided to put that mandate into action.<\/p>\n
My goodness, here’s a fundamentalist who takes Jesus seriously when he tells the rich man to sell his things and give the money to the poor. Gee, what’s next? Republicans who get pangs of conscience over “blessed are the peacemakers<\/b>?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ALL IN THE NAME: The U.S. space program has lots of problems these days. Once upon a time, NASA’s mission was quite simple: beat them damn Ruskies. But now that we’ve beat ’em, things just ain’t so simple anymore. Plenty of good questions come up, such as, what do we expect to get out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}