The Last Frontier – By Amanda Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

The Last Frontier – By Amanda Green

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to figure out what to write about. It would be easy to go the political route. With run-off elections about to happen, and some of the candidates going to extreme measures to garner enough votes to win their nominations, it would be easy to do. That’s especially true when you live in Texas and have candidates who have no problems bringing up their opponent’s distant history of psychological problems or, much worse, making public criminal charges that had been expunged from a candidate’s record – which puts the revealing party in trouble in the state where the charges were initially filed. Add in the mayor of San Antonio, a rising star in the Democratic Party, about to be named to Obama’s cabinet, a governor’s race where headlines talk about candidates running out of the state for campaign financing and, well, it’s Texas politics as usual.

But none of that really called to me. Maybe it’s because I’m politicked out for the moment and know that, come the Fall, it will all start over again. Maybe it’s because I’m in the middle of writing my second science fiction novel. Maybe it’s because I grew up with the Gemini and Apollo missions and dreamed of where our space program would be once we entered the new century. Whatever the reason, the topic that called t me this morning was our space program – or perhaps I should say our lack of one.

Some time ago, Sarah asked where her aircar was. I want to know where our space exploration program is. That’s been especially true of late when I’ve seen more and more stories about whether or not Putin would try to claim the Moon for Mother Russia. Then there was the article – and I can’t find the link to it right now – about someone actually selling advertising on the Moon.

Articles like the one in this morning’s Dallas Morning News about SpaceX Dragon returning from the International Space Station, bringing with it equipment and experiments, remind me of the excitement I felt as a kid, sitting in the den and watching the rockets take off from Cape Canaveral. Seeing the picture of Dragon returning to earth, parachute open as it nears splashdown, brought a smile of excitement to my lips.

It also brought memories. I don’t remember President Kennedy promising back in 1961 that we would have a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. But I do remember taking the small TV my grandmother had given me to elementary school so the class could watch the latest blast off or splash down. I remember sitting with my grandmother in the den of our home on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon. President Kennedy’s promise to have a man on the Moon had been fulfilled and the solar system and beyond lay before us.

Somewhere along the line, our priorities changed. The space race turned into a crawl. Our government was suddenly more interested in studying the sex life of a tree frog than it was in continuing the space program. There are times it seems clear that the politicians who are supposed to have our country’s best interest at heart have forgotten the advantages of being the first in the space race. I’m not talking about just the cache of being “first”. There are the defense advantages as well as the potential economic and scientific advantages as well.

In my writers groups is a gentleman who is writing a self-help book that centers around trailblazers. That is what this country used to be about. If we could think about something, we’d find a way to do it. There was a sense of adventure and determination that is becoming harder and harder to find. Instead, we are faced with criticism if we don’t fit in with the current trend of the day. Colleges are talking about requiring “trigger warnings” on anything that might, on some day in some distant future in someone’s alternative universe, offend or upset someone else.

Of course, those same rules don’t apply to the other side. Imagine the howls of outrage that would have gone up if a bunch of people had banded together to make sure only men won on a slate of literary nominees. Now consider the fact that no one seems to be too upset with all the self-congratulatory tweets about how the SJWs made sure only women won the Nebulas.

We now find ourselves in a country where it is more important to make sure no one feels they might not be as good as the next person than it is to nurture a pioneering spirit or an inquisitive mind. We are dumbing down our schools, and doing our children a great disservice, by not pushing our kids to do their best. Instead of trying to push students to raise the bar, we instead go to the lowest common denominator. Consequences are no longer of any, well, consequence. Bullies know they can get away with their actions because the bullied kids will think twice before fighting back because they don’t want to be suspended. Parents don’t put consequences on their kids in too many situations and, as a result, we now have the affluenza defense.

Where are our dreamers? Where are those inquisitive minds that put a man on the Moon?

Fortunately, there are companies like SpaceX who have taken up the cause of the space race. But how long will they be allowed to do so before the government starts putting so many regulations on them that it is no longer financially viable for them to continue operating? How long will it be before the governmental infighting, not just between our government and others but within the government itself, finds the US tossed out of the ISS?

I want my aircar. I want my grandchildren to have the possibility of leaving the Earth on a rocket, whether it is to go to DisneyMars or to be part of a deep space exploration team. But, when I look at what is going on – and not going on – in the space program and within our government, I find it hard to believe any of that will ever happen. While other countries, and private businesses, are moving forward, I can’t help thinking that we are moving backwards. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go back to that surrey with the fringe on top.

Space is the final frontier. I don’t want to be the last to the exploration party.

 

MESSAGE FROM SARAH: Oh, yeah, while you’re at it, buy Amanda’s novel, under the pen name Sam Schall

 

290 thoughts on “The Last Frontier – By Amanda Green”

  1. We are dumbing down our schools, and doing our children a great disservice, by not pushing our kids to do their best. Instead of trying to push students to raise the bar, we instead go to the lowest common denominator.

    As the father of a newly minted 8th grader, I know all about this. My son excels in math and science at school. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean what it once did. He’s desperate for information and to learn. Too bad the school can’t do it. That puts it on me to teach him more and more.

    Consequences are no longer of any, well, consequence. Bullies know they can get away with their actions because the bullied kids will think twice before fighting back because they don’t want to be suspended.

    I guess this is where my son is ahead of the curve. He’s actually hoping to get expelled so he can be homeschooled. It’s about the only way my wife will quit fighting me on that. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind so much if our schools weren’t so God awful.

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    1. I’m sure someone’s already pointed you at Khan Academy – http://www.khanacademy.org/ – where he can learn what he wants at his own speed.

      Also, encourage him to go the Advanced Placement or college prep route. My son was content to ‘coast’ and be kinda bored in regular HS after 8 years in a reasonably rigorous private school – until a friend encouraged him to get into the advanced courses. Now, finishing 10th grade he’s gone further with math and chemistry than I ever managed.

      Hope this helps!

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      1. Familiar with Khan (had a former gubernatorial candidate actually tell me about it. Kind of awesome, actually :D ), and since he’s now in summer vacation, we’re going to do some stuff where he can learn faster. It’s just a shame that he’s wasting his time all day at school learning nothing.

        I’ve already talked to him about AP courses. Unfortunately (fortunately?), he’s got another year until high school.

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          2. That’s what I meant by “Great Courses.” I think my family STILL keeps them in business. ALL Marsh wanted for xmas was their course on ancient engineering.

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            1. I think Redquarters has all the fine art courses, many of Greenburg’s classical music courses, and a couple of architecture courses. Plus at least ten history courses. I could probably do Western Civ and a massive chunk of World History just from that shelf in my parent’s bookcase. I’m up to the Mongols in the History of Asian Civilization.

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              1. Please do! We’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that Timmy hasn’t learned 10% of what he should have this school year. He definitely WON’T be attending school in CoS District 11 next year, no matter what.

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          2. BTW, does anyone know a good online cursive course? They taught my son a bit in second grade, and said they would do more in third. He’s now about to start eighth and nothing.

            My handwriting is atrocious, so I’m hardly the best person to teach him, so something online would be awesome. Does lukeion.org cover that?

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            2. Apparently teaching cursive writing is now being dropped completely by most schools.

              I wonder what we are going to do for signatures? Finger or thumb print? At least one circuit of the courts accepted the argument that finger prints have not been properly proven to be unique. Sigh

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                1. And the nice thing is that once you’ve learned cursive, you’re ready for Cyrillic cursive! Whee!

                  (Heh, my dad hates my Cyrillic cursive because he says it’s so sloppy. And it is. My English cursive isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere as nice as it was when I was in 3rd grade.)

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                  2. I don’t care for German cursive. It’s just different enough to make my head hurt. Sort of like jumping between fraktur and current printing, but more so.

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                    1. Unfortunately that’s closest to what I learned. I changed it somewhat in the US so people would “get” it which has led to a handwriting only G-d could love (and I’m not sure about HIM)

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              2. The only cursive I remember is my signature, which is unreadable. I can read cursive (especially the stuff written 100-150 years ago, because I practice it) but I always preferred real writing. Then when I first started surveying I had to learn a totally new style. It was company policy (and actually standard policy in that region) that all field notes were written in all capital letters and eights were always written by draying one circle on top of another, instead of drawing a figure eight. This made field books much easier to read. Considering that the distinction between my cursive and my real writing was that one had distinct chicken scratches, while in the other the chicken scratches bled together, this was probably a good idea. But since this was the only way I hand wrote stuff for years, it became my standard and I have to stop and think in order to write lower case letters. As for cursive? Well I refused to write it after I got out of grade school (and yes got docked by some English teachers for printing and refusing to write in cursive) so I believe I would have to sit down with something written in cursive in front of me to look at while trying to remember how to write it.

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                1. Sounds like the Navy logbooks.

                  I still use cursive, but about half the time I take notes…rather than writting things on a computer…. so rare to never!

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                2. I only *really* learned cursive because one of my elementary school English teachers was insane and taught us D’nealian (Italics, basically). A year before that, my father insisted on teaching me how to sign my name over the summer, so I could sign for my bank account. Then, I got an interest in the traditional penmanship in high school, and even made some invitations with calligraphy. For all that, my handwriting is still pretty sloppy. :) More often than not, I still often sign my maiden name.

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                1. Was that the one where they looked at how the crime scene prints were actually collected and compared, and found that a lot of the time they were using so few points of similarity that it was something like one in a thousand chance of a false positive instead of one in a million or more? (It sounds impressive, but remember the old joke: “you’re one in a million. There’s a half dozen of you in New York.”)

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            3. Probably the best bet for that would be a paper book, the kind you trace over, and tons of practice. That’s how Mom got me to have semi-decent handwriting. Of course, she also taught us calligraphy and italics. With quill pens, by the time I was his age. So maybe that’s an idea.

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                1. My son needs help with his handwriting, and so do I. I find the idea of an “antique” style copybook, with the aphorisms, moral stories, and proverbs as text, appealing. I can’t find any such thing, though. I can barely find a copybook that teaches a hand I would want to imitate! Does anyone know where I can find such books? And if not, would anyone be very interested if I can gather the resources to create one? (highly unlikely, but not impossible)

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                  1. You might want to look at “Handwriting Without Tears,” which I use with my students. It’s worked pretty well, teaches basic letter formation with a lot of practice, and has a good line of cursive books.

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                    2. There was a time I wanted to get those, but not for The Daughter, who is seriously disgraphic. I can do some calligraphic work, but I wanted to learn Spenserian Penmenship. Maybe I’ll send the link to The Spouse and drop a hint towards some future gift giving occasion.

                      One of the greatest problems I had with home education was all the courses I wanted to do for me. Silly, I wasted so much of my school time, although looking back I can say a great deal of it was wasted for me.

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                    3. YES. I ended up getting a lot of stuff for me too. It cost us 11k for the kid’s one year of homeschooling and only part of that was just him. The rest was his brother, his dad and I. (Okay, maybe 3k of that, but still.)

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            4. No. Find a local art extension school and put him in a caligraphy course. Or buy him a caligraphy kit. Works better if you do it with him. (That’s what I did with younger son.)

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                    2. Well, the only award I’d actually be honored to win, my views won’t hurt me.

                      It’s not like they won’t give the Prometheus Award to a libertarian. :D

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                    4. I still love what I told someone about Brad Torgersen’s anthology.

                      Brad described the honors all of the stories had accumulated. The next post, I said, “But don’t let those awards fool you. It’s actually really good!”

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                    5. Awards are nice, but there’s one award to rule them all.

                      The George Washington award. Make a sale, make a fan, make a reader happy. Money in your pocket and sweet reads for the readers. *grin* Keep writing!

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        3. Sorry for the delay in responding. I had connectivity problems yesterday and am hoping they have finally been dealt with. Since your son has another year before high school, does his middle school/junior high have pre-AP courses? If not, I would consider supplementing with something from Khan. Good luck!

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      2. Or find a school with a college program. It saved younger kid’s life and my sanity. From 9th grade on, he was half-time in college. Also saved us a bunch of tuition, since it was cheaper under that program (so he’s taking double major. eh.)

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        1. That’s a great idea and one I second. Several of our schools in the DFW area offer such programs. Some districts even have agreements with local colleges for in-residence programs. The daughter of a friend of mine went that route and it prepared her much better for going off to “the real” university than staying in the suburban high school would have.

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    2. One of the contributing reasons that The Daughter was pulled for home schooling during her first year in Middle School was an incident where she had been hit on the back of the head by another student while walking between the gym and the school buildings during an unsupervised class change. The vice-principal who called me was very apologetic for interrupting my day to tell me that The Daughter might have a concussion. (It appears that her past experience informed her that most parents cared far more about their day being disturbed than the safety and well being of their children.) The student who had hit her was already on permanent ‘in school’ suspension.

      The same year another parent had go outside the school system to press charges when, after a gym class, her son was badly beaten in the unsupervised boy’s locker room where he was changing to return to class. The gym teacher and his assistant were in a separate office during the incident. The school wanted it keep the matter ‘in house.’ It was found that the students who beaten the boy were already well known within the justice system and had other violent gang related charges pending.

      You ask why I mention unsupervised? There had been prior incidents between students as they moved between buildings on campuses and the district policy required that there be an adult available. There was also a similar policy that when occupied the boy’s locker rooms at the gyms always have an adult on hand.

      I shudder to think that these behaviors were occurring in Middle School regularly enough that such policies had been written. I am angered that the system did nothing to protect the children entrusted to their care but pass policies they would not backup by making sure that they were enforced.

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      1. Well, a month or so back, my son comes home to tell me he has three days of in school suspension. I ask why.

        Well, it turns out there was this kid who had been harassing him for months. My son took it for a while, but this day, the kid decided to go beyond words and stepped on my son’s foot (on purpose). My son did the same. The little punk then tried to body check my son.

        Robby then threw down his books, announed “Let’s go!”, let the other kid drop his books, and proceeded to beat the tar out of the other kid.

        Of course, that’s why he was facing expulsion for another fight, but it’s also why he wasn’t really worried about it.

        I’m sorry about your daughter, and I hope she was OK. The sad fact is that the schools set our children up to be victims. They treat anyone who fights the same, regardless of who started what. That has no basis in the real world where self defense is a valid defense.

        Yet another reason I’d rather homeschool. Alas, the spousal unit refuses to consent. :/

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        1. We were fortunate all way around. I took The Daughter to her doctor, and it appeared that she was only temporarily stunned. As the attack came from behind and The Daughter was stunned for a moment, the other child had taken off before The Daughter could respond. Otherwise, she would probably have lashed out defensively without thinking and have been put on out-of-school suspension, as she had parents who were involved and would have seen that she had supervision.

          Home schooling is a frightening challenge and a big commitment. If you really take education seriously you can question whether you have the necessary skills and knowledge to provide a well rounded experienced across the full range of subjects. Further, not all parents and children have the necessary relationship to carry it off. We had originally been very reluctant to consider it ourselves.

          The Spouse and I realized that, although The Daughter was in an excellent gifted program, we were already having to supplement school for her. We also realized that she had advanced to where what we really needed to do was guide her to material and help her learn how to learn on her own. The Daughter, who had initially, in spite of many challenges, loved school, was begging to be educated at home. We realized that if she stayed in the system she was headed to a point where she would ‘check out.’ This all helped us in making the decision to home educate.

          We could have served her better on higher math. Overall I believe that we did better by her. In the end The Daughter did not give up on the idea of school.

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          1. She’s one of those who still thinks of homeschooled kids as being weird, stuff like that. She had a homeschooled friend who was, well, weird. She’s convinced that will happen.

            I point out that our kid is a second generation geek. He’s already weird. No dice thus far.

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            1. I once had a local pswedo-intellectual at the local public library state that we were abusing our kids because not only were we homeschooling the the poor bairns, we didn’t even have a TV at home. After all, “how can they possibly relate to their peers?!”

              No matter that they daily related to people from pre-K through college and on with no noticeable problems. They were pretty well amused by the guy’s concern, though.

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              1. It’s funny, because when kids grow up, they have to interact with more than just their age group.

                Honestly, I’m curious about when this whole “age group” thing started, in part because it’s weird. My son goes to the same school that I did when I was in sixth grade. He’s now been there two years. When I was in school, everyone milled about outside until the first bell rang, and then you made your way to homeroom before the last bell. At the end of the day, they rang a bell and you were out. It was on you to get where you needed to be.

                With my son, we have to pull up into a lane at the back of the school, letting students out one at a time. They’re then sent directly to homeroom. At the end of the day, they’re directed to different places depending on how they get home. (walkers are just sent out into the mean, mean world thankfully). At all times, they keep the grades separate.

                An area high school built a special building for ninth graders, ostensibly so seniors wouldn’t “pick” on them. They then get onto the same buses with these kids.

                They do everything they can to keep these kids apart from anyone but their own age groups, but as I’ve pointed out to my son, that’s not what the real world is like.

                At least if I could homeschool him, I could make sure his interaction was with a variety of age groups as well. Homeschool groups would probably help in that a lot.

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                2. Here’s the argument against that whole “socialization” thing.
                  Discovery Institute did a study in the year 2000. The study involved counselors observing videos of kids playing, including both home schooled and public school kids.
                  The counselors didn’t know which were which, and they noted that the homeschool kids demonstrated fewer behavioral problems than their peers. “Because public school children have, as their main role models, peers, while homeschool students have as their main role models, adults.” – http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/homeschooling/socialization-tackling-homeschoolings-s-word/

                  I mean, some kids with less force of personality are learning their social skills from kids who think it’s okay to step on someone’s foot and body check them.

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                  1. Very true.

                    I’d looked at that study when my wife and I were having this discussion last year. My son essentially wasted a school year, because he was in put in a class with a bunch of idiots. They don’t group by grades or anything like that (officially), but he had a bunch of morons in his class. Out of nine months of school, six months were review of some time. He had, maybe three months of actual learning. I was pretty sure I could make sure he learned a whole lot more.

                    Alas, she still didn’t want to go along with it. Which was why my son was hoping someone would start something with him again before the school year ended. Expulsion would have made the decision much, much easier. :)

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                    1. Pick some pulp-age sf stories and have him read them. That’s how Marshal started “learning” If he’s not up to that yet, may I recommend Disney comics? Clean, have a story and tons of popular references.

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                    2. No, he’s old enough. His most recent assessment has my 12 year old son reading at a high school junior level.

                      I needed to get another copy of Starship Troopers anyways. Now, I have another reason. :D

                      Seriously though, he tends to be more into fantasy than SF, so we’ll see what all I can get him reading. Maybe some Robert Howard.

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                    3. Marshall’s favorite was Have Spacesuit because he LIKED the engineering descriptions…
                      Try Diana Wynne Jones and Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching which yes has a female protagonist, but my boys both loved.

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                    5. Have Spacesuit — Will Travel, YES! Also The Star Beast (a personal favorite) and Citizen of the Galaxy.

                      Diana Wynn Jones is fun: there are the Christopher Chant books, and Archer’s Goon.

                      While I would usually agree on Pratchett, I am still trying to get over one that hit the wrong buttons with me. Anyway, I can pretty much recommend any of the books featuring the Witches or the Nightwatch, as well as Moving Pictures and Faust Eric.

                      (I hope I have got the html right on that last title…)

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                    7. I suspect that if he enjoys these and wants more this crowd can continue to amply supply recommendations. Things like H. Beam Piper’s two Little Fuzzy books and there are the Louis L’Amour’s westerns featuring the Sackett family.

                      If he likes baseball there is The Glory of Their Times which is recollections gathered from early professional players — people who played with Cobb and Ruth. It includes the story of how Germany Schaefer stole first base … from second.

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                    9. Fantasy books for young teens:
                      I was about that age when I discovered the first six or nine Drizzt books; I think David Weber’s Wargod series would be a good fit, but please read it first– it’s free, and the first chapter has possible issues, you know your son better than I would.

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                    11. Good, I’m halfway in love with Bahzel. (only halfway, because I can spot a lot of similarities between him and my dear husband. Just Elfie is shorter, and his dad isn’t a Barbarian King.)

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                    13. IF (rather big IF here) he can get past the old-fashioned style, try the Tom Swift books, which you can get at Gutenberg, since your budget is limited.

                      Incidentally, I will argue that Eradicate Samson is the most quintessentially American character I have ever read.

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                    14. Might suggest it to him. Not sure he’ll manage though. He couldn’t make it through the second book in the Inheritance series (Eragon series), so I’m not holding out hope on that front.

                      Still, it wouldn’t hurt. :)

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                    15. My own favorite Pratchett is a kid’s book with a boy protagonist. Only You Can Save Mankind.

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                    19. It was the way it undermined the happy endings of the earlier books — and furthermore did it off-stage, between books, and didn’t really convince me it had happened — that killed the fourth one for me.

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                  2. I heard this argument from my parents (not that I ever desired to be homeschooled, just that I happened to be present around such discussions) and when I was in boy scouts there was plenty of evidence to back this up (anecdotal, but when a new boy came to join scouts you could identify a homeschooled on in a minute, and this wasn’t a favorable identification) . But, and this is a big but, you needed to look at the types of families these homeschooled kids came from. There were basically two types, with interestingly enough some overlap, those were a) flower child, hippy parents who thought their kids should never be constrained by “the system” and should be “free to choose their own path” and b) those who wanted to “protect” their kids from the evils of the world and so isolated them. The first type commonly let their kids do whatever they wanted with few to no constraints (which means that their schooling was usually very poor) the ones that actually cared about their kids produced much worse children than those that used it as an excuse to neglect their kids and go do whatever they wanted, because at least the neglected kids learned from the school of hard knocks that actions had consequences. The second type generally produced kids that were not only naïve, but had no idea how to interact with people (and often especially others their age) outside of the very rigid regulated environment they had always been confined to. It was amazing how many parents of homeschooled kids could manage to combine these two seemingly opposing philosophies (I always thought doing so was proof that they had permafried their brains back in the sixties and seventies) but the combination of the two was not particularly beneficial to the kids.

                    Now the interesting thing was that scouts was usually a very good choice for even these homeschooled kids with flawed parents, and the scouting tended to benefit both extremes to such a degree that within a year you could no longer pick those homeschooled kids out. Sometimes the parents even realized that they had a deficiency in their child’s education, and brought them to scouts in order to remedy that, in others it was just a convenient babysitting tool and I doubt they noticed the benefits to their child.

                    Today homeschooling is being done by not only many more parents, but by parents who a) actually have their kids best interests at heart b) have a brain in their head and c) are not necessarily at the ends of the ‘wierd’ spectrum (weird parents tend to have weird children, and since most homeschoolers used to be weird, well it is no surprise that most homeschooled children were weird). I still recommend something such as scouting for homeschooled children where they get the chance to regularly interact with other kids, but the majority of homeschooled kids I meet today, if they stand out from normally schooled kids at all, it is in a positive, rather than a negative, manner.

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                    1. This is the reason we didn’t go full-time homeschooling. Why? Because we know we’re Odd. We’re Odd in a more world-wise way than those people, but left to our own devices, our kids would have a very strange education consisting of 90% science fiction and have no clue how to talk to people outside the community.
                      Colorado used to have a law that you could send the kids to your local school for any classes/activities you chose while homeschooling for the others. IF that had been in place when the kids hit middle school, I’d have brought them home and sent them back for lab classes, gym and choir. Enough to keep them “normal.” They cancelled it just before then though (and unjustly I think, since homeschooling parents ALSO pay taxes to the school district.) And I was afraid my strange kids would become… REALLY strange.

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                    2. I had a friend in high school who did that, went to school half days and homeschooled the other half. Only incidence of that I was ever aware of, but yes it worked very well.

                      And don’t get me started on the extorti… tax system that pays for indoctri… education.

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              2. Snort. I had a Prof tell me that i needed to get a TV so I could keep up with the pop-culture references for the undergrads. Two days later I had to explain to Prof what the Terminator was and why NPR mentioned it, and the Three Laws of Robotics.

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        3. Lo, many years ago – it was the practice to “take our fights outside” – like on the way home from school, not on the school grounds where some interfering adult would blame the wrong kid, or something. If you didn’t want the fight, you walked home a different way, is all.

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          1. Yeah, we did that too. Unfortunately, our school districts are laid out according to demographics rather than pure geography, so walking home isn’t an option for a lot of kids.

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            1. Doesn’t matter. In Colorado, since they enter their house or meet their parents, the in-locus parentis of the school applies. (And by the way I don’t know if they legally have one, but they claimed it.)
              SO — we learned that we started picking the kids up at the school door.

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              1. Oh, they do that in Georgia too. Have since I was in school.

                But what they don’t know, they can’t punish, and it’s a lot easier to hide a fight off school grounds.

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      2. Yep. Kids’ gym uniforms got stolen in Middle school and then they got suspension for not having them. (Not joking.) Robert got a suspension because they stole his gym shoes. he wore a 15. We had to drive to Denver to replace them. Can’t do that mid-week.

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      3. It’s been going on long enough that there is a real problem of high school bullies doing exactly what they’ve been doing since preschool….but as adults, say at bars or gyms, and going to jail because that is assault or attempted murder.

        One case, the guy actually tied to give someone a swirly.

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            1. Well, there’s a certain number of adults who would have to admit they themselves had committed assault and attempted murder in order to condemn them.

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            2. In the case the young man beaten in the locker room those who beat him were awaiting processing on several similar actions done outside of school. They had prior convictions, but they were ‘children’ from ‘bad environments’ so everyone made allowances for their youthful ‘hi-jinks.’

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              1. I once got called to Middle School because my kid was being put in detention for not bringing a pencil to lab. (He’d been on a field trip, they came back late and he wasn’t allowed to go to his locker.) WHILE THERE with a big deal being made over this, and my poor son in tears, a call came into the VP’s office. A kid was holding a classroom at knife point… again. BUT he didn’t get detentions — I asked — because it would “traumatize” him since he came from a bad environment, etc. This is when I called my husband and said “If you don’t come down here and deal with these people RIGHT NOW they’re never going to find the bodies.” He came. He came in his best New England cold-fury. He said “The detentions stop now, understand?” They stopped. We wanted to take him out then and there, but he insisted he’d not be “run out” so he stayed through the end of the year.

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        2. Didn’t Heinlein write about that in Starship Troopers?

          Maybe it’s time for History & Moral Philosophy courses.

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          2. You mean you want the current crop of teachers instructing children in morality, explicitly.

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            1. Only if the teachers are veterans. :)

              IIRC, H&MP was dependent on a mathematically verifiable theory of morality, so we’re not there yet. Civics courses might be useful, though.

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        3. Oh, them going to jail isn’t the problem. Them being stupid enough not to grasp that they’re doing things that are going to get them sent to jail is the problem.

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            1. Yes, immediate punishment is helpful. That was the one good thing about receiving in-school physical punishment from the principal.

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      4. I don’t blame you at all for pulling your daughter. I would have done that and then gone after not only the kid who hurt her but those who made such actions possible. Even if they were indemnified under the law, I’d have the story out there in the media, on social media and every other format I could find. That sort of behavior, on both the student’s part and the administration’s, is a result of taking power to discipline away from the admins. Detention and in-school suspension means nothing to most kids. Those it does worry are not the ones who need it anyway. We need common sense to return to education but I’m not holding my breath for it to happen.

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  2. Our government was suddenly more interested in studying the sex life of a tree frog than it was in continuing the space program.

    I remember when I first started hearing the argument protesting spending money for space. It went something like: Why are we are throwing away billions in space while there starving people here on earth? (Never mind that one can make a well reasoned argument, supported by facts!, that through the application of technology gained in the space race we have, among things, increased our crops…)

    The same groups never came forward to protest such projects as the tree frog research.

    The best spin I can put on this would be to postulate that they wanted us to increase the tree frog population and use them as food.

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    1. It’s all about the resources allocated, and the purpose behind them. The people wanting to grab space funding were looking at the immediate use of that money – that they could use it to shill for votes.

      They didn’t bother looking at the other aspects – that the money was used to support a lot of highly educated people, used to support a technological infrastructure that was constantly trying to find better ways to get to space, and that money went to suppliers (which needed to employ people) and wages (which were spent on products and services, thus employed people) – with many benefits to society as a whole.

      They thought it was simply easier to cut out the middleman, and give money to the poor.

      And it worked so very, very well, didn’t it? Got them votes – but not a whole lot else. (SMH)

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    2. FWIW, I’m glad to see companies like SpaceX pick up the slack on the space program. In time (too much time, unfortunately), I believe they’ll surpass where NASA got and do it for a buttload less money. I think most of us understand that American governmental agencies have a habit of throwing money at problems while more cash strapped organizations don’t.

      One of my favorite examples is how NASA spent millions coming up with a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Soviets, for all the ills of that society, came up with something better. They used a pencil.

      Now, that’s one of the only times you’ll see me say something nice about the Soviets. The other is when I talk about the AK-47. However, my point is that now, there are no piles of money to throw at problems. Companies like SpaceX and their competitors (and there WILL be competitors) are going to be the ones to give us our air cars, private space ships, and all of the other staples of science fiction. NASA might ave built them in time, but they’d have been ridiculously expensive. SpaceX? It’ll do it for fraction of the price.

      I wish we hadn’t abandoned NASA like we did, but at least there is hope for the future…and it’s got free market written all over it. :D

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      1. The pencil story is old and hoary, and I believe unsupported. For one thing in zero-g you do NOT want pencil shavings/graphite dust floating around the cabin. Graphite can cause shorts if the voltage is high enough, and grit of any kind is a bad idea where you need reliable seals to vacuum.

        The other thing about pure exploration is you learn things you didn’t know you didn’t know (paceRumsfeld…) For example, surface termination of silicon. Only because they had to develop the HUGE vacuum pumps to create the testing chambers for equipment did they finally get the vacuum gauges working, and the pumping tech solid and cheap enough for people to really start looking at the surface properties of materials like silicon, germanium, etc. And they discovered what they thought were the properties of silicon were actually the properties of silicon completely covered in hydrogen. Once they knew what silicon really was, they figured out the properties of precisely doped silicon, which is why you now have something blinking 12:00 at you in 30 different places in your house, and your phone has more computing power than Apollo Mission Command had.We are swimming in miracles made possible by putting men on the moon.

        THAT’S why we need to go to space. To learn about things we don’t even know exist yet.

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        1. Note that I didn’t say I was fine with what’s happened to NASA. I was just trying to put a positive face to the story.

          As for the pen story, it may well be apocryphal. The underlying point, that money was thrown into something when simpler options may have been available. I understand about pencil shavings, but mechanical pencils don’t need sharpening (when were those invented?)

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            1. Use a 22 bullet, the lead doesn’t flake like graphite does. And yes I recommend that with malice aforethought, thinking of the reactions of many of our blessed leadership to idea of sending astronauts into space while in the possession of deadly ammunition.

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          2. I’m really not trying to pile on you. I want you to understand why that story is wrong, and give you the information to squash it yourself if it is repeated to you. If you look at it closely, it is a “them fancy scientists ain’t so smart, spending millions for no good reason, we shouldn’t listen to them” story. The same story that gets actual billboards on buses claiming that “smart people ride the bus and don’t have to worry about the price of gasoline”. (And yet they are cutting routes because the bus service is losing money. Gee. Maybe they DO need to worry about the price of gas after all.) Sure, sometimes scientists get so wound up in their own worlds they lose sight of the practical everyday needs of the world around them. But *sometimes* they have very good reasons for what they do. The Russians had a lot of cheap shortcuts in their space program. They also had a lot more dead cosmonauts in orbit. There is a price for everything and sometimes it isn’t paid in money.

            I’d rather encourage people to “run and find out” when they encounter stories like that. And ask what the bus is using for fuel, then, if we don’t have to worry about gasoline prices.

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                  1. I do not care who started it stops right now!

                    Please consider that one may not be just addressing you in particular on this issue, but, prompted by your post is now addressing the general audience that reads Sarah and may not know the whys and wherefores.

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                    1. And I was joking. Hence the emoticons.

                      I stepped out of my lane, misspoke, and stepped back in. No animosity on my end, and it doesn’t look like there was anywhere else either.

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                    2. Sigh

                      Hense my use of one of the many classic parentisms to start. I am from a family of oral story tellers and communicators. Unfortunately, voicing is lost with the written word. :-(

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                    4. (I thought it was all hilarious…) He was on my side! And he looked at me funny! (Waits eagerly for CACS to threaten to either stop the blog or “wait ’til Sarah gets home”)

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                    10. (narrows eyes at T.L–I can call you T.L, right, since you seem to be my brother-from-another?) I’m putting you in my book. Briefly.

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                    13. Of course! Would being ripped apart by a dimensional portal between worlds be satisfactory? I’ve got lots of fancy CGI and the Wilhelm Scream all set up and waiting :-D Now, whether you die nobly or as a consequence of your evil actions is still being thought on…

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                    6. Nice. It’s been a while since I was on there. I don’t even remember what the last thing was to be perfectly honest.

                      Of course, I’m rather hit or miss with Twitter.

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          3. Not to mention that the Fisher Space Pen was invented by the company, who then took it to NASA…

            As for mechanical pencils, I’m pretty sure they’ve been around in one form or another since the 1700s.

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        2. We are swimming in miracles made possible by putting men on the moon.

          Amen! Preach it sister! Of course, here you got the choir…

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        3. And then there’s little things like this… http://heroicrelics.org/info/f-1/f-1-injector.html

          How DO you design a fuel injector for a 1.5 million-pound thrust engine? Where you’ve got 5 lbs of fuel per square inch per second blowing into a controlled explosion, along with enough liquid oxygen to keep everything nice and warm? (And to keep the plate and baffles nice and cold?)

          Done before CAD-CAM became the norm – where trial and error (most likely one heck of a lot of error) was the way of progress.

          I wonder at times if such a thing could even be done at this point, whether in the time frame of the ’60s or not. Computer modeling’s got its place, but sooner or later you’ve got to bend the metal and see if it flies, and how it unexpectedly fails.

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          1. First tested at the big test stand at Marshall.
            Interesting historical note, after that first test they had to rotate the flame bucket 180 degrees to avoid a repeat of the unfortunate loss of half the windows of stores on the south Parkway. Instead, after every subsequent test they would receive bills from dairy farmers who’s cows stopped producing milk after the shockwave hit. This in a fan downrange out to about 50 miles.

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          2. The amazing thing to me is that the F-1 engine was pretty much all internally controlled via fluidics, not electronics. The little wormy squiggles and branches and tiny valves that responded to variations in pressure and flow in the fuel and oxidizer control paths also served as the analog logic that managed startup and kept it running in a (mostly) stable fashion.

            That level of fluidics is a lost art today.

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            1. I think it could possibly be recreated fairly quickly, if there was a need for it – but the microprocessor’s pretty much eliminated that.

              Hmm. Might be a story idea there…

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              1. A fluidic computer would be useful in Stirling’s Emberverse (_Dies the Fire_ et sequelae). I lost interest in the story after the second book, but the idea of a world where high-tech stopped working was interesting.

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      2. “In time (too much time, unfortunately), I believe they’ll surpass where NASA got and do it for a buttload less money.”

        Space X is already way ahead of NASA in several important ways. They recently soft-landed their first stage in the water and will soon start landing the various components for rapid re-use. The Shuttle was all politics and a terrible kluge wasting both time, money,and astronauts. Nasa is a political Kluge and screws up much of what it touches. Read about the DC-X and weep – took NASA to crash it and set SSTO back indefinitely.

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        2. With all due respect, Space X has only done atmospheric tests with its components (IIRC), whereas taking something up to space and keeping it there for several orbits, then bringing it back is a different kettle of carp.

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  3. Pingback: Beginnings and more | Nocturnal Lives

    1. This was supposed to be a response to TL Knighton above. Not sure why it’s appearing un-threaded:-(.

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        1. Seconded. My attempts to have posts auto-launch at my place have come to naught. On the other hand, considering what I’m paying, the service is excellent. ;)

          Mildly OT but still technology: don’t microwave molasses cookies (to warm them up so they are nice and chewy) for more than 10 seconds . Especially not if you are in a place with hard-wired smoke-alarms linked to a security system. I did the experiment so you don’t have to. 30 seconds (the phone rang) is waaaaay too long. *cough, cough, fan, fan*

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  5. It drives me bonkers when people say: “Well, we can’t into space until we’ve made things perfect here on Earth.” What they really mean is that we can’t ever go to space. Because things will never be completely perfect here. Somewhere, someone will be unhappy. There will be problems of some description. I’d sooner we be imperfect across a thousand worlds than trapped on one forever.

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    1. I would think that the goal of a perfect world is the dream of small minds with little scope or understanding of human beings. (It is a subject of major contention: whose perfect are we talking?)

      If such things were possible, and given the nature of man I doubt it is, I think that it would be utterly boring. So something would have to be done about that, think droogs…

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      1. Related, they’ll offer as evidence the “estimates” of those who depend on the problem being big.

        Example: one in five children is “faced with” hunger.
        They asked kids if they always got to eat what they wanted, and as much as they wanted of it.

        Look around and notice that, hey, maybe one in a hundred kids looks like they’ve missed a meal?
        That’s just proof of how insidious the problem is! One in five is going hungry, and you can’t even tell!

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        2. Got a friend with a tall, skinny son. Bones stick out all over on the kid – but he’s pretty much completely indifferent to eating. (Except steak. He’ll chow down on that like there’s no tomorrow, and practically lick the plate.)

          He says he doesn’t feel hungry, though he looks like a concentration camp survivor…

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        3. Well, that’s better than the definition of “spent less than average on food” — I was hungry for a month by that definition; funny, I didn’t feel hungry — and “is eligible for food stamps and doesn’t get them” even if you are a ranch hand who gets bed and board as well as wages, or a low-income family with an enormous garden.

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          1. Got curious…. we almost qualify for food stamps.

            When my husband was activated, we easily could’ve qualified.

            That is…horrifying.

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        4. Yup. There’s a regional program that sends peanut butter (and junk food) home with kids so they won’t be hungry. None of the kids from any of those schools are exactly slender, and no one wants to say what the parents/care givers are doing with the money the state and feds give them to feed said kids with (if indeed there is no food $$ at home).

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        1. Suuuuure we are. That’s the ticket, hypothetical bodies lying everywhere oozing red.
          Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I own a truck and just bought a bulk pack of cheap plastic tarps. Colorado would however be a bit of a stretch.

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        2. This is all research, officer. Like a time when a bunch of writers were earnestly discussing online how to pickle a human body. (One of the writers reported that his wife’s reaction was better research to find out than experiment. . . .)

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          1. You’d be surprised how many conversations about dead bodies and cannibalism my writer’s group ends up having. Or maybe not.

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      2. If you snap?

        Hm. Perhaps less “hide the bodies” and more “explain the sudden depopulation of a small to medium metro area.”

        And — of course.

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      6. Sure! I think that it’s also a desire for no change or perhaps space program won’t benefit them (graft) so why have it.

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      7. If I snap, you guys will help me hide the bodies, right?

        Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the cause?

        If so, our obvious answer is to figure out a way to send the cadavers into high-orbit and beyond. That way, if the government will have to re-initiate the space program in order to collect the evidence. ;-)

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    3. The best answer to that position is to mention an old back of the envelop calculation someone once did that showed that to bring the rest of the Earth’s population up to the standard of living of US citizens would take more sheer mass than that of our entire planet. So, we either must agree to giving up our own current standards or find another source of stuff.
      Asteroid mining, materials processing in orbit with cheap power and free vacuum, with just that we could turn much of the Earth into a park.
      Just why is it that the anti space bozos hate people so much?

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    5. But they want it. If they don’t get it, they’ll hold their breath. Ooooh, let’s promise if they hold it long enough, everything will be perfect. Besides, purple is such a wonderful color for the SJWs and GHHers.

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  6. I was very disappointed with NASA’s focus on Low Earth Orbit, LEO, focus. I would have been OK with the space shuttle program if it was a stepping stone to getting to the Moon and beyond but it seemed like they were happy with the space shuttle being the apex of the triangle. Now we don’t even have that and are relying on Russian and private rockets even get to LEO. When I was a youngster I was sure we would have people living on the Moon by now, it seemed like the logical next step to the exploration of our solar system. Camera’s and robotic landers can only do so much. To really own and understand something you need boots on the ground.

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    1. I worked for the Agency for 24 years, everything from Spacelab to ISS to the Constellation program. Biggest problem IMHO was the fragmentation and politics that resulted between headquarters and the field centers. That was much of the reason for never getting to a unified goal other than to keep the cash cow flowing milk to the various little empires. And too, the dismal failure to even try to sell space to the American people.
      Some of us really did believe that the moon was the only right next step, while the Mars bugs pushed equally hard for their program. As part of a study team shortly before Constellation was cancelled and I left service we determined that with Aries I and V the moon was easily doable. Mars was an order of magnitude harder and still had several fundamental technologies yet to be fully developed.
      Note, our entire solar system is reachable with current technology. It’s all a matter of engineering at this point. The only things holding us back are resources and will.

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      1. The only things holding us back are resources and will.

        Mostly will. Resources* are another engineering and logistics problem (which you’d know better than I).

        We’ve lost the will.

        *I realize you’re probably talking more financial resources to fund the engineering, but conceptually I still stand by my statement.

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          2. This is an area where my optimism is thin. While I have no doubt WE retain the will, I fear we’re a small subset of the population, anymore. The elites lost the will, and subsequently the population at large lost the vision. I’d be thrilled to be wrong, though.

            This is why I favor private enterprise exploration. Not to see the end of NASA, but to help fuel the vision that might restore NASA.

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            1. I still have a nasty feeling that the elites — and not just here at home — will start throwing up roadblocks the instant private enterprise starts making headway. This will partly to salve their wounded pride, and partly to keep the peasants from escaping the fief.

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          3. It’s about resource allocation. You can go for a long-term return that would be incredible (but may fail) or a short-term small return that’s dependable.

            Growing the economy versus buying votes – which is going to win?

            For a politician, the MOST important thing is to stay in office where they can ‘do good’. Even if that ‘good’ would be seen as harmful, it’s what they’ve convinced themselves they’re doing.

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          4. They have also through parsimonious funding constraints and very “interesting” SES and higher appointments done their level best to smother the native will and love of science and exploration inherent in the American people. And the media has some small part in that as well.

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            1. Once upon a time, scientists were rock stars. People knew the names of major scientists. They were celebrities of a sort.

              Today, those same scientists are relatively obscure outside of their fields. Oh, a lot of people know Stephen Hawking. Some even know Neil DeGrasse Tyson. But others?

              Hell, I’m as guilty as anyone else because I don’t keep track either. But yeah, the media has to shoulder part of the responsibility for it. After all, they’re not exactly doing their part to make sure we know who these people are.

              What’s amusing is how there’s always an outcry in how we’re falling behind in math and science, yet what is anyone doing to make math and science actually cool?

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          5. Remember, all this “lost the will” stuff happened when there were three TV networks, maybe five national papers or magazines of national cultural significance, and no way for anyone holding any minority opinion to connect outside of face-to-face (i.e., say, at SFF cons). Things are diffeent now, and just becuase the New York Times says something is so no longe makes it so, in spite of the dreams of the NY-Washington elites.

            Ask Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Robert Bigelow or any of the newspace entrepreneurs if they have any problems recruiting for their companies. The public didn’t abandon space; NASA (to the frustration of a lot of space-minded NASA employees) and the rest of the .gov abandoned space, instead descending into the pit of bureaucratic infighting and backside covering that is NASA today.

            The thing that worries me is we are doing space now as sort of a cult of personality effort. What if Elon Musk had a different bug than wanting to go to Mars? If not for one individual’s efforts and a lot of that individual’s personal cash (reportedly at one point, basically all of the fortune he’d made selling Paypal), there would be nothing being developed outside of the cost-plus contracting world for getting up into orbit. And if others have this thought, then those folks are targets for the wrath of the bureaucrats.

            But maybe it’s really inevitable: If you boil down the current newspace boom, it’s all the fruit of the rise of the internet, which is itself the fruit of the military wanting to leverage all the intergrated circuit spinoffs from the early space and ICBM missile programs, so space is basically bootstrapping space. Maybe that means it’s some sort of developmental imperative, just waiting for the right individual as a catalyst.

            That thought reinforces my optimism. Hopefully we’ll be getting off this rock in my lifetime, with other than vastly overqualified government employee astronauts leading the way.

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      2. As long as we don’t destroy their incentives to go, I’m betting on the private companies. The DOD may have created the internet, but commerce made it cheap and accessible to the rest of us. I’m looking for the same with space. I hope.

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        1. Yes, yes — but is there PORN in space? You know that’s how the internet started off.

          Come see yer naked aliens. Get yer naked aliens RIGHT HERE. (yes, I’m still running. Why do you ask?)

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          1. *jogging along*

            Um. Pardon me, ma’am, I was told there’d be naked aliens. Is that where you’re headed?

            Say! Is it raining carp? Is this a carp-et bombing?

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          5. We don’t need nekkid aliens! We need zero-g, gymnastic, bounce-off-the-walls sex! ;-)

            I’ve heard that it would be really difficult to have sex in microgravity. Get some guinea pigs willing subjects and let’s find out what they come up with!

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    3. I share your disappointment. I hate seeing what has happened to our space program — not to mention other areas of our industrial and research endeavors — over the years. I want my aircar, damn it, and I want my son to be able to fly in a rocket. But more than that, I hate giving up the potential scientific, economic and defense advantages a viable space program could give us.

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  7. Already bought the book and gave a review. It was really good– enjoyable story.

    As for space— I am pretty angry about what is going on right now (and has been going on since the 1980s). I thought I would be on the moon by now.

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    1. And I appreciate the review and good words! ;-)

      As I said above, I want my aircar and I want my kid to be able to leave the planet and go exploring.

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  8. Moved down to be able to reply…..

    Thanks to the internet, we can all miscommunicate at the speed of light! :D

    Sadly, I think a lot of the trouble online comes not from miscommunication, but from people understanding just fine and YOU ARE STILL WRONG!

    If I had a dime for each time someone said “no, you don’t understand” and then proceeded to say exactly what I’d already understood them to be saying and I simply don’t agree with, I’d go get a mocha right now.

    Somewhat related, you want to really piss people off, go and actually read their sources, and check what they’re citing. Usually results in sarcasm about how it must be nice to never be wrong about anything, ignoring that some people don’t say anything until they’re pretty sure. (A lot of relatives are finding out that part of why I’m so “easy to get along with” in person is because, while I don’t think they’re right about something, I won’t correct them unless I’m absolutely sure. Online, though….)

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  9. *SIGH*

    Amanda’s making me think on a Monday morning. That’s not right, Amanda. As punishment, I’m not going to tell everyone how much I enjoyed Vengeance from Ashes. Granted, it was relentlessly paced and entertaining and the kind of thing that any fan of military SF can get into and enjoy but nope, not gonna say that now. As further punishment, I absolute REFUSE to buy the sequel until it’s offered for sale. AAMOF, I probably won’t buy it until the payday AFTER it’s released. I hate to have to do this Amanda. It hurts me worse than it hurts you, but you’ve done it to yourself. (Of course a nitpicker may point out that I couldn’t have bought it before it came out and that I always wait till payday comes before I buy new books but my opinion of people who nitpick is lower than that of people who make me think. :P)

    And now for the reason that Amanda has given me a brain cramp…

    The whole private space travel vs NASA thing makes me queasy, mainly because it messes with my worldview. I am – and always have been – a believer that the free market is the best way to move technology forward. I mean, I’m just old enough to remember the switch from rotary dial phones to touch tone phones. Then came the deregulation of the telephone industry and the breakup of Ma Bell. Fast forward ten years and we’ve got affordable and reliable cell phones. That fast. Get the government out of the way, let competitive pressure take over and innovation happens. The reverse is also true. The tras-continental railroad was built by two private companies that then made a profit off of its existence (and yes, they were subsidized – in land that no one was using). In the twenty-first century railroads are heavily regulated and subsidized and lose money. Go figure. For whatever reason, it doesn’t work that way with space.

    NASA has always been a government endeavor. That’s only shocking when you consider the fact that it has actually had so much success. Communications, navigation, materials science and even freeze drying technology have all improved because of the space program. Oh, and let’s not forget robotics. Next time you run your Roomba ask yourself if it would have been possible without automation technology invented for use in Mars Landers. Oh, and speaking of Mars landers, I wonder how many improvements were made to LIFE SAVING TECHNOLOGY when NASA decided to use airbags to land its rovers. I’m just sayin’. And now they’ve cut funding to these programs to give money to people who don’t work. I guess it makes sense. Why not kill off the most successful government program since ever and use it to increase funding to people who don’t work? I mean, if it WORKS it can’t be allowed to make all of the other government programs look bad right?

    OTOH private industry, sans government involvement, has a very limited track record with spaceflight in general and especially in manned spaceflight. I’m not saying it can’t or won’t work, but right now we have no way to know what will happen. I’m hoping that SpaceX not only succeeds, but gets some real competition soon. I guess we’ll see. It just makes me uncomfortable that in this one instance, government actually seems to have a better track record. It’s weird.

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    1. For the unmanned cargo flights to the ISS, SpaceX has competition from Orbital Sciences. There are three competitors for the Commercial Crew Program, including Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX.

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      2. I’m just hoping I live to see the day were people – not companies, but individuals – own their own spaceships in the same way people own their own airplanes. It was never going to happen with NASA being the sole space going group out there.

        With SpaceX and others, I really think it is just a matter of time. I just hope I get to fly in my son’s private space ship on the way to his timeshare on Mars.

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        1. I’d be happy to reach the Moon.

          Someone sent me this from an article the other day:

          Going to law school in an uncertain job market is a lesser risk for Cole Leonard than his career alternative.
          Leonard, 27, must choose between going to Texas Tech’s law school, where he has been accepted, and trying to become one of the first colonists on Mars.
          Leonard is among 705 people competing to colonize Mars under a project organized by a Dutch entrepreneur and his nonprofit, Mars One, the Dallas Morning News reports. About 200,000 people applied to become colonists; by next year, 24 finalists will be chosen.
          Company founder Bas Lansdorp, who made big bucks with his wind energy company, hopes to raise about $6 billion to fund the project in part from a reality TV show broadcasting the training of the colonists, the trip and the landing, the newspaper says. The colonists would spend the rest of their lives on Mars because the technology doesn’t exist for a return trip.
          Leonard, who lives in Plano, Texas, currently works as an aide to a Dallas County commissioner. He says he’s “expendable” because he has an identical twin brother,

          As a lawyer familiar with the lousy job market, I think he should keep training for Mars. As the mother of twins, I do take issue with his statement that he’s expendable, and think he should go to law school.

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          2. Well, he’s expendable pretty much in the sense that we all are: The real question is, what in the end is the best purpose for which he could expend his life? In the end, is the genome better off stuck on one rock, or is it best spread out a bit in case of the unforeseen? Is his own personal genome better served by a long safe life swaddled in cotton and airbags, or a shorter gloriously productive life pushing the boundaries and extending the range?

            The articles about one-way colonization of Mars struck me as illustrating something that the culture seems to have lost: When did we ever get a guarantee that any trip was certain to include a return? Not now, not in the pioneer days, and not in the deeper past. The probability may be higher now, but there’s still no guarantee that you will come back. Obviously the best course then is to never head off with Gandalf, never take that train down to Casablanca, never leave Africa, never leave home, at all, in fact, never get out of bed.

            Or we could be human beings and go see what’s out there.

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          3. I think he should avoid Mars One completely. Near as I can tell, the guy who’s organizing it doesn’t know what he’s getting into, and if he gets a launch, he’s going to get everyone killed.

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    2. The limited track record has a bit to do with regulation and a lot to do with the incredibly high cost of initial entry. Now that some of that cost is paid, private enterprise has some room. Ultimately, though, private enterprise is profit driven, and that adds constraints.

      As I said somewhere else around here, my hope is that private involvement spurs public vision.

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    3. Vengeance from Ashes was indeed a fun read. I am working my way through for a second time.

      Since I don’t know how to send in typo reports, I just wanted to note that at location 1991 (Kindle for iPad) the word “mine” should have been “minor”. (Chapter 9 paragraph 5, last word.)

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    4. Jim, you are a bad, bad man. You made me snort coffee out my nose and onto the kitten. Who, let me tell you, was not amused. Just for that, I will not stop writing the sequel to Vengeance from Ashes. I will not stop talking about it and I certainly won’t refrain from posting snippets starting next week. Further, I won’t turn it into a GHH or SJW tract on how men are evil and women should rule, preferably after culling out most of the universe’s males because, well, they’re evil. I won’t stop pricing it and the other books in the series so that you can buy at least two of them for the price of one of the GHH socially correct, traditionally published e-books. And, most of all, I won’t turn on RAH and condemn him. I swear I will continue to write books so I can take you money and laugh all the way to the bank ;-)

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  10. “there was the article – and I can’t find the link to it right now – about someone actually selling advertising on the Moon” Gee, that sounds like The Man Who Sold the Moon Where can I sign up?

    One of the biggest problems I have seen looking back at the American Space Program is the lack of a true objective. Yes, JFK set a goal of reaching the moon before the end of decade. Then what? I can find no indication of a long term objective. The whole thing was doomed to failure from the start – imo – which part of the reason we haven’t been back.

    Trying getting your hands on a copy of “Lost in Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age” by Greg Klerkx. Some interesting stuff there. Now if you want to see what we could have try “Halfway to Anywhere: Achieving America’s Destiny In Space” by Harry G. Stine. (one of these days I’ll finish “The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space)

    I actually look forward to the day that the fed no longer finances the exploration. Maybe then we’ll get where we should have been back in the 70’s.

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    1. Part of the problem is space law and “you can’t own anything in space” set up by a bunch of no-count countries who were afraid to be left out. If we’re going to spend money, by gum we’re going to own it.

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      1. That’s the incentives issue, isn’t it? Article II of the Outer Space Treaties only bars national appropriation in outer space. There is, however, a widely held counter-view, that because countries are barred from claims of sovereignty or other appropriation that so are their citizens. Guess which view is repeated most often?

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        1. I’m curious as to how those laws forbidding appropriations will be enforced. How many nations will actually make war on another over Ceres? The nations most capable of such a war might actually be the happiest to see those laws cast into the dustbin.

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          1. If the nations that can reach space start believing that “there’s gold in those asteroids”, then IMO they’ll start saying “let’s change/discard” those rules.

            Oh, they’ll likely ignore those who can’t reach space and those who can’t reach space won’t have the military power to do anything but whine.

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          2. No, the problem is western idiots will hold their nations to them, until one of the shitty little countries actually manages to get to space. THEY won’t respect them.

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          3. Oh, and since someone might think that phrase — which an idiot Dem used for Israel — is a reference, no. It’s meant literally. Anyone think Kenya or Venezuela would respect those treaties, if they could get to space?

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            1. If Kenya or Venezuela ever get that big a jump over the developed world, they’ll be in a position to dictate whatever terms they like, because they’ll also be in position — a la Moon is a Harsh Mistress — to lob a man-made meteorite at anyone who gives them any trouble.

              Come to think of it, that answers my question about enforcement of those laws. “Don’t like my claiming Ceres? That might cost you a seaport, mon ami.”

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              1. As to private ownership of an asteroid–no problem so long as you leave it there. The problems will start when you return to Earth with a cargo of rare metals. Can you sell what all those countries say you don’t own? Will the US defend your claim and merely tax you, or will they confiscate the whole cargo?

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                1. Even the Europeans seem willing to agree that private ownership of extracted resources might be recognized. The thing to remember with the property rights question is that a) there is private property in space (XM owns those satellites), and b) the “mining” and land issues are all unsettled.

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                2. Huh. So there’s an economic reason to how pretty much every Gundam series starts – conflict between an Earth government and orbiting space colonies.

                  Well, now I’m kicking myself for not seeing it earlier.

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    2. I strongly second Wyldkat’s recommendation on Lost in Space. It’s got some really good case studies and moves along at a good clip.

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  11. This morning a package arrived from an old friend I have not seen for years. In downsizing he ran across some books I had loaned him in 1988 which he was now returning. One of those books was Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future by Newt Gingrich published in 1984.

    Newt was a great fan of the space program. I can’t help but wonder if the Window of Opportunity he talked about has passed, at least for the USA. I sure hope not!

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  12. The only truly private space related efforts are the suborbital tourist ventures. Everyone else Orbital, Space X, et al. are simply looking to provide a service to the government. The only current real exception to this fact besides suborbital is satellite launch which went essentially private as soon as it became profitable.
    As for Sarah’s flying car, we could have them today, in fact we do, but they are essentially grounded by FAA and air traffic control regulations. The necessary technology is not in the cars themselves, but in the AI required for safe operations once millions of them try to use the same airspace. Once you get above hovercraft height FAA restrictions price the technology out of the range of a typical consumer.

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    1. It is those restrictions, and all the rules and regs the FAA and other federal agencies have in place and will put in place, that worry me. As long as the government is invested in keeping the auto industry afloat without making it adapt to reality instead of to the government’s idea of what is “right” and “good” for us, I fear we won’t see any real alternatives making it to the market and surviving for long.

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  13. The space program has always been very important to me. Though I have never worked directly for NASA, the reason why I went into astronautical engineering, the reason why I continue to work in the field that I do, has a lot to do with the prospect of one day getting mankind off this rock.

    I remember when I was in kindergarten or early elementary school: At the time we had gone over Rennaisance artists in one of my classes. My ambition at the time was to be a renaissance man after the style of Leonardo DaVinci. My teachers asked me if I even understood what that meant – “Sure I do. It means being a master of every art – being good at everything seems like the thing to do!” (Eyerolls from the teachers. I still have a quixotic drive, confined mostly to physics/engineering to fundamentally understand everything, even though I know it will take me forever).

    Sometime after that, my parents got me a magnet set for Christmas with various spacecraft, rockets, and a background of a star field and the lunar surface. I was fascinated by this relatively simple toy – space travel hadn’t been something I had considered before, and in discovering that it was even possible, and furthermore that we had been *doing* it, gave me a feeling described best by Werner von Braun: “I knew then what Columbus must have felt!” *That* was what I was going to *do*. (This was before I was reading a lot, so it predated written science fiction, but probably contributed to my voracious appetite for the genre.)

    (I had a bit of conceptual trouble at first – my mind was still formatted with Aristotolean physics, so the idea of orbiting and interplanetary coasting didn’t make much sense to me in Kindergarten/Xth grade (whenever it was.)) I remember driving my teachers nuts trying to figure it out.

    Anyway, the rest is long winded history. I applied myself to math and physics, I went engineering, I went aerospace engineering, I joined the Air Force. Had there been no possibility of fundamentally expanding our world, I don’t know that I would have applied myself with the same energy and focus. (It didn’t help that the entire time I was doing this, our space program was falling apart.) The idea of an eternally closed and limited world, with mankind turning back and contenting itself never to even try to leave “spaceship Earth” seems like death to me.

    (Of course, the problems of space travel and colonization are hard ones, and Nature doesn’t have to oblige us by making possible a means to do it. But even so, I will continue to work towards improving our technology, and hope to work on a space program someday. Maybe a private one – we’ll see…)

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  14. Thank you. From what I’ve read in your comments, he sounds like a very interesting and accomplished man.

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    1. Well, sorta. He’s nineteen, so he’s still partly an engineer, and you know, working on social manners. Some days like most juvenile males, he communicates in partial sentences and grimaces, but… I think he might turn out well.

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      1. At least based on what I recall from the misty past of my youth, that semicommunicativeness is really a blessing – the glib silver tongued teens that I recall all ended up in politics, or in one case organized crime, so I repeat myself.

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  15. It seems that the Apollo project, which was never about space, but about proving we could do a command economy big project better than the Soviets, sidetracked any real progress in Space Settlement for 50 years now. Fortunately, private enterprise is re-entering the field, not only with SpaceX, but also Xcor, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, Planetary Resources, among a host of others.

    If you go back to the 50’s, you can see concepts developed by Disney (and others) of a gradual, expansion of humans out from the Earth into space, first to LEO, then on to the Moon and further out. If we could have gone, and stayed, rather than flags and footprints, we could be permanently in space by now with thousands of private citizens (if not millions) having gone, and some possibly permanently there. Instead we’ve had less than 500 total, almost all of them government employees.

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    1. Unfortunately most of the current private effort is for suborbital tourist excursions. Simple physics dictates that achieving a stable low Earth orbit and return is an order of magnitude more difficult. It’s a matter of conservation of energy don’t you know.
      The good news is that once you nail the ground to LEO and back part you’re half way to just about anywhere in our solar system. Biggest constraints are things like long term maintenance of cryo fuels and extended survivability of humans in zero g and the high space radiation environment.
      Where we are now, the greatest handicap to private space exploration is the lack of short term return. Established publicly traded companies have to show yearly if not quarterly profits to keep the shareholders happy. The return on investment in space is vast, but very long term, damnit.

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      1. My biggest hope for the private space race at the moment: make space attainable again, in the minds of the public. Reignite the imagination of the American people. Long term projects and the return on same, I’m not sure those are obtainable by solely private enterprises at the moment (which pains my libertarianism, but I muzzle it). But — public/private ventures? With dual missions/goals? I suspect that model could take us somewhere.

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        1. One of the more commercial aspects of NASA’s use of SpaceX and Orbital for getting cargo to the ISS was that NASA used fixed price rather than cost-plus contracting. Not surprisingly, this served as an incentive for the companies to keep costs down.

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          1. Don’t forget Sierra Nevada “Dream Chaser” and Boeing CST-100. Then there is NASA “Orion”.

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            1. Yes, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX are competing to take astronauts in the future through the Commercial Crew program. SpaceX and Orbital are taking cargo right now commercially.

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        2. Doesn’t need reigniting, since it never went out – see the audience counts for Star Wars, and The Trek franchises, all the way up to Gravity. The public is still ignited; it’s the politicians who went out.

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          1. You may be right. I may be borrowing pessimism and doubt from the mysterious ‘they’ and taking counsel of my fears.

            Perhaps I’m letting my subconcious accumulate data from the dismal showing of dismal SF and draw erroneous conclusions.

            I’m willing to hope, and eager to be wrong.

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            1. Do not take counsel from the Gray Goo which the mainline publishers call SF. There’s optimistic SF being published by a few publishers (cough Baen cough) and by a vast range of self epublished authors on places like Amazon.

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              1. Yeah, I have aspirations to Human Wave authorship. My subconscious, however…

                That guy can be a downer.

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  16. “Space is the final frontier. I don’t want to be the last to the exploration party.”
    AMEN! From a defensive standpoint, we certainly cannot afford to be the last to the party. From a technological standpoint…*SIGH* I’m probably going to get into trouble for this…From a technological standpoint, humanity and the rest of the nations on this planet CANNOT afford for the United States to be the last to the party. And no, I’m not talking about money.

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    1. Yep. Unfortunately, our government doesn’t seem to really be worried about defense on any level. It’s so much easier to try to appease the enemy than to tell him to take his demands and shove them. And then hand him the stick with which to do the shoving.

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