A Direct Hit for Propaganda

(In red, the orbital path of debris created by China's 2007 anti-satellite missile test. This debris will stay in orbit for roughly 35 years, creating a hazard that satellites and spacecraft must navigate around or risk being shredded by)

Missile destroys satellite - Video

James Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser, denied the allegation that the U.S. was flexing its military muscle. "This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings," he said.

The military also timed its efforts to minimize the chances that debris would hit populated areas. But the United States is "prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory," according to a report.

Well, that's nice of us. I still want to know what country the satellite would have come down in, had we not shot it down. Making that information public would go a long way toward justifying this whole episode, but no information to this effect has been released. This makes me think that it was just going to fall into the ocean, which means this whole adventure was unnecessary.

The Wall Street Journal fulfills the predictions I made in the last entry with stunning pomposity:

A successful shootdown would be a useful warning to countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea that are building ballistic missile programs. In the U.S., it might even silence diehard critics, who still say missile defense is impossible despite a string of successful tests. By the way, the systems that will be used in the satellite shootdown wouldn't be up to the job had the U.S. not withdrawn in 2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which imposed serious technological constraints.

"See? These liberal international agreements actually make it harder to protect Americans!". What crap.

Deterrence and P.R.

From CNN: "The U.S. military may try within days to shoot down a failed satellite using a missile launched from a Navy ship, officials announced Thursday":

"While much space trash and debris have safely crashed to Earth after burning up in the atmosphere on re-entry, authorities said what makes this 5,000-pound satellite different is the approximately 1,000 pounds of frozen toxic hydrazine propellant it carries."

Oye, where to start with this one? Essentially, the military is temporarily overstating the risk this satellite poses just long enough to try to destroy it with a missile, not because it's actually dangerous, but because there's a P.R. opportunity for missile defense.

Hydrazine, despite the scary name, is just hydrogen peroxide. While you probably don't want a lungfull of the stuff, we're talking about a thousand pounds that will first be incinerated by atmospheric re-entry, then, if any survives, spread and diluted by the atmosphere. Wherever you're reading this from, I guarantee there's a factory, refinery, or plant nearby dumping far worse things into the atmosphere, according to EPA regulations. Hydrazine has been used as rocket fuel since world war 2, so plenty of it has already been dumped into the atmosphere.

My favorite part:

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said there's nothing the military can do to make the outcome worse. "If we miss, nothing changes. If we shoot and barely touch it, the satellite is just barely in orbit" and would still burn up somewhat in the atmosphere, Griffin said. "If we shoot and get a direct hit, that's a clean kill and we're in good shape," he added.

Here's what happens next: either the military is able to hit and destroy the satellite seconds before it hits the atmosphere, and it becomes a big story. A reminder that despite having trouble with the low-tech stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military's still got us covered with the high-tech stuff. Or, they miss and the satellite burns up, with maybe a few chunks hitting the ocean.
In this case, the story is "we're safe, all went according to plan, and missile defense technology wasn't really designed for this kind of thing anyway". I think it's 50/50 which way it'll go.

What's conspicuously missing from the current story is that the military knows exactly where and when this satellite is coming down. They're tracking it with radar, and before they could begin putting the assets in place to attempt to shoot it down, they'd have to know exactly where it was going to be, and consequently, where it would end up. If you recall, the original story was all about how they had no idea where or when it would come down. I explained in my last entry that this didn't necessarily mean it was a threat. Somewhere between then and now, they ran the math and didn't tell anyone. Lame.

One other super-relevent piece of this story: in the first test of this technology by any country since the 1980s, China destroyed a weather satellite with a missile last year. So that's been hanging over us.

I can't wait to see what happens.

Big Science!

Ben Stein is at it again in the run up to the release of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", his "intelligent design" propaganda movie. PZ Meyers tears into the "Darwin Day" post on the film's website:

"In a way, I'm impressed; I'd have to really struggle to write something that was such a dense array of concentrated stupid, but for them, it seems to be a natural talent, allowing them to blithely and effortlessly rattle off a succession of falsehoods without blushing.

Let's begin with the beginning. You don't even have to be a biologist to be embarrassed by these wankers."

I can't wait to see this movie and tear it up. In the meantime, I've been writing a review of "The Privileged Planet", another ID propaganda movie, so that will be posted sometime this weekend.

Chinese Punk, Japanese Jazz

Whatever it is that made jazz more than the deflated anglo-suburban endeavor it's become in the US, they've got it in Japan.

The Seatbelts -


This is action-jazz, like we used to have here. So I've read in books. Anyway, wow:


China's also showing us up, but they've sprouted a punk movement.

Joyside -


Whole teams of coolhunters and ethnographers have been deployed to answer the big questions: How did this happen? How can we sell it? NPR answers both questions. There are a lot of good reasons to be punk in China, so I think we should let them keep it. We were just turning it into punk-pop anyway.

Carsick Cars -


See Also: Snapline

"Adopt, Adapt, Adept", indeed.

Don't be a Donna

Satellite Weeks Away from Hitting Earth

This worked better as a West Wing C-plot than in real life.

From season 2, "The Fall's Gonna Kill You":

Ed and Larry approach, laughing.

LARRY: Donna.
DONNA: Yeah.
LARRY: Have you seen C.J.?
DONNA: No. What’s so funny?
LARRY: Ed just got a fax... [laughing] I’m sorry. Ed just got a fax from a man named Byron Talmadge. He’s the Associate Administrator for NASA’s Office of Space Cadets....
ED: Flight.
LARRY: Office of Space Flight.
ED: The OSF.
DONNA: What’d the fax say?
LARRY: A huge Chinese satellite is gonna come crashing to Earth, and we don’t know where, and we don’t know when.
DONNA: Seriously?
ED: Yeah, it’s right here in the fax.
DONNA: A satellite is... crashing to Earth and NASA sent us a fax?
ED: Yeah.
DONNA: This is for real.
LARRY: Yes.
DONNA: [terrified] A satellite is gonna crash into the Earth?
ED and LARRY: Yes!
DONNA: Why are you laughing?
ED: We thought it was funny.

The two of them turn to leave.

DONNA: I’m an assistant. What am I supposed to do with this information?
LARRY: The fax was for C.J., just give it to her when you see her.
WOMAN: Donna, they say it’s not going to rain this afternoon.
DONNA: Well, that’s a relief. [walks off]

Later, end of Act 4

C.J. turns away. Josh follows after her.

JOSH: You know, uh, Donna got hold of this fax that was sent to the press office from the OSF at NASA.
C.J.: What, something falling out of the sky?
JOSH: Yeah.
C.J.: We get that fax once a week.
JOSH: Yeah, but Donna doesn't know that. She thinks it's an emergency.
C.J.: And you didn't want to tell her?
JOSH: No, 'cause the other way you get a day's worth of entertainment without leaving the office. She doesn't know that these things fall out of the sky all the time... once every ten days, as a matter of fact. Since the first year we started putting man-made objects in space, 17,000 have come back and remarkably, not one person has been hit. [beat] So I suppose there's an argument to be made that we're due.
C.J.: Yeah. You picked me right up there, Josh.

C.J. crosses the street.

JOSH: See you tomorrow!

We pan up to the "Pennsylvania Ave 1600 Block" street sign and -

DISSOLVE TO: END TITLES.
FADE TO BLACK.
THE END

P.S. - The math says you're safe. Several tons of meteors actually make it through the atmosphere and hit the ground every day, and no one's ever been killed. Every planetary science undergrad at the University of Arizona gets to / has to crank out the math on this one. Bottom line, there's sooo much earth and sooo few people. You're good.

Whale stories

Of all the "designer dirigibles" profiled lately by Dezeen, my favorite by far is the "Manned Cloud":


Also, R. Douglas Fields surveys current research which asks "Are whales smarter than we are?":

From the neuroanatomical evidence she concludes that the large whale brain supports a complex intelligence that is driven by the socially complex and highly communicative lifestyle of these predators.

Mercury's cool I guess.

The Messenger probe will reach Mercury today around 2pm and immediately start sending back images. Unless it forgets to slow down or something, which is not without precedent.

Messenger took this video as it left Earth:



UPDATE: It forgot to slow down, but it was supposed to. Although the probe reached Mercury today, it's moving way too fast to just park itself in orbit. It's going to whip back out towards Venus a few more times to slow down, and eventually settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011 (!). Stupid laws of physics. No, no, I love them.

Mars is safe...for now.

Risk of Mars impact now 1 in 10,000.

Meanwhile, having successfully navigated the asteroid belt, NASA's "New Horizons" probe snaps this picture of Jupiter and its moon Io (with an erupting volcano) on its way to Pluto:

The Question, 2008

Every year, the Edge Foundation asks the world's smartest people one question. This year's: "What have you changed your mind about? Why?".

This takes days to read, but my favorite answers so far are "The Handicap Principle", "Mother Nature is not our friend", "Why men are at the top", and "Taking the Posthuman Era Seriously".

My former Professor (and great inspiration) Carolyn Porco articulates the point of this blog in her answer:

"When the truth becomes problematic, when intellectual honesty clashes with political expediency, when voices of reason are silenced to mere whisper, when fear alloys with ignorance to promote might over intelligence, integrity, and wisdom, the very practice of science can find itself imperiled. At that point, can darkness be far behind?"

Yo, what she said.

Science Debate 2008

A call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology

Go. Sign.