Here's Why

Podcasting?

The Grapefruit got me pregnant is as good a Discovery story as any for testing the Podcast audio blogging plugin MTEnclosures.

So far, the plugin doesn’t work.

In this story I explain how Grapefruit and its juices can interfere seriously with medication.

Thanks to Matthew for alerting me to the Podcasting phenomenon.

broken computer

The noise from my computer’s CPU fan makes me physically ill, its a strain to sit in the same room. In addition, windows crashes frequently, and many applications won’t run. Its long past time for a new computer.

My apologies to those who has sent long emails and been disappointed at no reply, and to those who would have liked me to write on my blog more often. Short ones I can manage, longer ones and I have to run from the room before completing them.

Hopefully normal service can be resumed soon once I make the decision and fork out the money. Until that time, I haven’t ignored you, but I can only reply to short emails.

Leftovers labelled

I’ve occasionally had problems with leftover food in the fridge: I can’t always remember how long ago I put them there, and I’m not always sure how long they can keep safely anyway.

“When in doubt, throw it out”, has been my slogan. Not good for saving money, but safest for preserving my health.

I’ve discovered a better way, that doesn’t rely on my memory. I’ve bought a roll of white sticky labels to keep by the fridge. Now when I put leftovers into a container, I can pop a sticker on it, and write in the date.

Most leftovers are only good for three or four days at most.

According to When Good Foods go bad, my gouda cheese can last three weeks after breaking the seal and putting it in a plastic box.

I now have the equivalent of “use by” stickers for my leftovers, with no need to force my poor memory into service.

NASA gives us the Eye

Neal Newman, NASA attache to the US Embassy in Canberra unveiled his new sales pitch at the University of NSW.

Neal described his job as being to build interest in NASA.

The vision is to return to the moon as a first step. George W. Bush described the vision in 2003,…and there is still no concrete plan in place.

Neal Newman explained that the Apollo moon program was “not sustainable” - it cost five percent of US Gross Domestic Product, and this couldn’t continue. So NASA concentrated on the space shuttle.

The X-prize phenomenon was a shock to NASA. People happily spent twenty million dollars to enter a competition, to be the first to send private astronauts to the edge of space ,and win only ten million dollars in prize money. NASA wants to cash in on this enthusiasm.

Neal described President Bush’s 2003 new ‘vision’ for a future in space , paid for by international and private funding, rather than US government funding.
In May 2005 the repaired space shuttle launches again.

A mere five years later, in 2010 NASA retire the space shuttle fleet forever, to free funds of three and a half billion dollars per year for NASA to spend… in better ways.

In 2014, the replacement craft is scheduled to be launched.
Thats a PLANNED gap of at least four years when the US will not have any manned space flight capability at all. It looks like they are bowing out of manned space flight.

The private sector is expected to completely provide for the International Space Station personnel and supply transport. Perhaps persuaded by cash prizes, in order to gain the prestige of supplying the winning vehicle. Or perhaps another nation will create and donate the transport vehicle and staff it. They don’t know. It’ll work out somehow.

In 2008, the vision sees a Lunar robotic orbiter launched. The US already did this forty years ago.

In 2020, a mere fifteen years from now, Humans will land on the moon, …again.

Strangely, the only reason Neal could give for returning to the Moon was that it is a stepping stone to a manned landing on Mars. He’s just not trying very hard. He didn’t try to give any reasons for a manned flight to Mars, either. I guess he knew he was speaking to Space fans so he didn’t have to sell it very hard. Or maybe its been pushed so far into the future that NASA have no real plans in that direction. Robert Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” program was more believable, especially when budget is such an issue. However its been dropped.

We were introduced to “Project Constellation”

The aim is to design modules for changeable targets and technologies so as not to commit to obsolete goals or tools. To be flexible enough to take into account advances in technology, and changes in political will.

They have catchy slogan about spriral transformation being a “system of systems”. Isn’t everything?

NASA will be offering competition cash prizes to copy the success of the X-prize, and calling them “Centennial challenges” There are no specifics just yet, about the amounts or even what the challenges are, just a web site.

No plan, just a vision.

Neal then dimmed the lights to show us a slide show of NASA’s impressive accomplishments of the past, while he played a CD of the Beatles’ song Yesterday

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be,
There’s a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Why she had to go I don’t know she woldn’t say.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.
Now I need a place to hide away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.”

It was like a eulogy for NASA! The party is over.

Neal turned the lights back up to give NASA’s 21st Century answer to “why go to space?”

Basically, the kids aren’t motivated to do boring industrial engineering careers, so they aren’t taking up engineering. Have a space program to excite them into taking up an engineering career, and they’ll be easily moved into the boring industrial jobs the Bush economy needs them to work in. No space program, and no motivation for young scientists and engineers that the mundane economy needs.

Neal then gave the new NASA answer for the question “why return to moon?”
Answer: “Its good practice for further away”.

This is a much worse fake answer than pretending the Enemy will launch attacks from the Moon if we don’t secure it first.

There are industrial and scientific reasons for returning to the moon, but it appears that the Bush administration and NASA aren’t interested in them, and more importantly, have no interest in interesting US, in them.

Why go to Mars?
NASA’s answer is to understand Earth better. A better scientifc answer, in everyday language, yet it doesn’t really say very much.

The vision continued:

n 2009 a robot rover will land on Mars with a fifty kilometre range.

Four years later in 2013 it will return a sample of Martian soil

After that, there is no date for humans actually landing on Mars

NASA promises to put the new Mars images straight to the internet for everyone to play with, instead of keeping them secret. This is an introduction to the new sharing philosophy at NASA’s spiral transformation.

Neal revealed at last an amazing and powerful new scientific toy, the NASA World Wind which he demonstrated for us.
Basically the NASA World Wind is a satellite mapped model of the Earth that you can access on your home computer. The broadcast images come from the Motis satellite. You can zoom in on apparently any place on Earth, and see images from the last satellite pass-over. On his laptop, he was able to zoom in to within 15 metres resolution, and find the Snowy Mountains in NSW, and his old school in California, where he could see how heavy the traffic had been earlier in the day.

The software is downloadable for free from NASA, and requires a 1 GHZ CPU and 3 gigabytes of hard disk space. They have written it so that the bulk of the rendering and search work is done over the internet by the NASA servers. They are encouraging schools and Universities to make the tool available to students and researchers, and they are adding world databases of biological, seismological, geological and geographical information to the model.

Neal recommends that the fastest access time from Sydney to the NASA servers is about 10pm.

Neal said that when online, there is up to ONE METRE resolution. This is an amazing tool to just give away free to the public. This is the sort of Big Brother use of satellites that we have seen portrayed on TV shows like Alias in the hands of unscrupulous Intelligence Agencies, now useable by anyone with a newish PC.

The software is Open Source. Its part of letting interested parties the world over help NASA. Open Source means that not only can organisations check there isn’t something nasty hiding away in the code, but that enthusiasts around the world can improve the software, and add new capabilities to it, or even sell it and make a profit.

The NASA World Wind software and databases are free because they are government funded. Thats the new philosophy. Very welcome, and unexpected.
Its also very clever. This is a fantastic and lasting Public Relations tool that instantly demonstrates some of NASA’s value without dragging people along to watch a space shuttle launch at 4am in Florida.

Another new slogan at NASA is that space travel “is a journey not a race”.

They hope to get space instruments built by foreign governments like Australia in return for Australian scientists working at NASA.

There has been concern at the aging of NASA staff, and a recognition of the need to get new blood and new thinking into the organisation, and to make use of people’s interest in space travel by listening to their opinions and suggestions.

I need a new computer so I can run the fancy software and plan to take over the world while gloating over an accurate photographic three dimensional globe of the world, while other people zoom in and watch ME.