Zager And Evans – In The Year 2525
An evening pause: How about a pop classic from 1969? This song epitomizes the passionate, sometimes over-wrought cultural atmosphere of the 1960s quite nicely.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Year: 2016
Dirt roads Omaha’s solution to crumbling roads
The coming dark age: Because the substandard asphalt roads installed by private developers decades ago under an agreement with Omaha are now crumbling and the residents don’t want to pay to replace them, the city has chosen to rip out the roads and replace them with dirt roads.
For years, the arrangement held up. But as the roads began to age and crumble, and as new residents replaced the original homeowners, resentment intensified about a city government that maintained some neighborhoods while ignoring others. Said neighbor Bill Manhart, “It’s like living in the country, but in the middle of the city…There’s so much dust and mud on the street, what’s the point?”
A series of meetings between city officials and residents of the affected neighborhoods, which include about 10,000 houses, hasn’t resolved the problem. “This is insanity,” declared City Council member Chris Jerram at one heated council session earlier this year. Austin Rowser, Omaha streets superintendent, said the city’s position is “a matter of fairness. Some property owners paid for better streets and a minority didn’t.” He added that the city simply can’t afford the roughly $300 million bill to fix all the substandard streets.
That doesn’t fly with residents who say that dirt roads or crumbling pavement are unworthy of a well-off community with a growing population, a tiny unemployment rate and four Fortune 500 companies.
The blame here falls on everyone. Taxes and government revenue today are much higher than in the past when most of the city’s roads were built. Yet, the city doesn’t have the cash to do this fundamental work, because that money is devoted social programs or union salaries that no one wants to cut. Meanwhile, the well-to-do residents who live in these areas got cheaper roads back when, under an agreement that said they’d pay for maintenance. They don’t want to, however. Instead, they’ve been willing to let the roads crumble, and now prefer to have the rest of the city’s taxpayers pick up the tab.
The result: A crumbling social order illustrated by a city that is replacing paved roads with dirt ones.
More evidence ULA will pick Blue Origin over Aerojet Rocketdyne
In a press interview published in late July, a ULA executive confirmed that the company is going to pick Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine for its new Vulcan rocket.
ULA used a Russian engine for its expendable Atlas V booster but has long relied on U.S. suppliers such as Aerojet Rocketdyne. For Vulcan’s reusable engine, ULA is turning to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. The company’s cutting-edge BE-4 is powered by liquid natural gas instead of kerosene or liquid hydrogen.
By partnering with a startup like Blue Origin, ULA gains other advantages. “There is a world of difference between the culture at Blue Origin and the culture at Aerojet Rocketdyne,” said [Dr. George F. Sowers, ULA’s vice president for advanced programs]. “We knew we could absorb some of their culture by osmosis, just by working with them.” That influence shows up in cross-team collaboration. “We are literally breaking down walls to create a ‘Silicon Valley’ workspace,” Sowers said.
Sowers is very careful to say nothing about the Atlas 5 and the engine that will replace the Russian engine in its first stage. ULA originally signed its deal with Blue Origin with the Atlas 5 in mind, but has not made a final decision between Blue Origin and Aerojet Rocketdyne because Congress appears to favor Aerojet Rocketdyne’s engine, and Congress is a very big gorilla you do not upset. However, their development plans for Vulcan are incremental and closely linked with the Atlas 5. They plan to introduce Vulcan piecemeal in various upgrades of Atlas 5 as they go, so if they are set on using Blue Origin’s engine in the Vulcan rocket, it probably means that they plan on using it to replace the Russian engine in Atlas 5. This interview appears to confirm this.
An isolated dune on Mars
Cool image time! The image above, cropped and rotated to post it here, shows a single isolated large dune inside an unnamed crater on Mars. The image was taken by Mars Odyssey on June 5. To the right is a close-up of the dune itself. Its isolated nature as well as the darkness of its sand in comparison with the surrounding territory has probably got some planetary scientists scratching their heads. Furthermore, the darker streaks that appear to flow down the dune are quite intriguing. Were they formed by briny seep water, as has been found with other seasonal dark slope streaks? Or are they evidence of sand avalanches?
I imagine that there will be an effort to monitor this dune over time, to see if it changes.
Russia commits money to research manned lunar mission
The competition heats up? Russia is apparently going to spend about $7.5 million studying the issues involved with sending humans to the Moon.
This is only a preliminary study. Since Russia can’t even fund its space station work fully, I don’t know where they will get the money for a full lunar manned mission.
Costs rise on Obama’s asteroid mission
The year delay in Obama’s as yet unfunded unmanned asteroid mission, a preliminary to a proposed manned asteroid mission, has caused its budget to grow from $1.25 billion to $1.4 billion.
More significantly,
NASA’s cost estimate for [the unmanned] ARRM excludes launch and operations. In a March 2016 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of NASA’s major programs showed a cost of $1.72 billion. Gates explained that the $1.72 billion includes the launch vehicle cost, set at approximately $500 million as a placeholder since NASA has not determined which of three launch vehicles will be used (Delta IV Heavy, Falcon Heavy, or the Space Launch System).
…The next administration will have to decide if the costs are worth the benefits. Although NASA has decided they are, the House Appropriations Committee disagrees. It denied funding for the program in its report on the FY2017 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill, which funds NASA. The bill has not passed the House yet, however, and there is no similar language in the Senate version, so NASA is not currently prohibited from spending money on the project.
So far, NASA has been funding this Obama project by stealing money from other projects in NASA, since Congress has consistently refused to appropriate extra money for it. This approach has worked up until now, as they are only funding initial design work. Where they think they will get the money for a full mission however remains a complete mystery to me.
August 16, 2016 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold. We discussed the journey of Curiosity of course. I also spent some time elaborating on some of the engineering advantages SpaceX has because of its success at vertically landing its Falcon 9 first stages.
» Read more
Trump’s agriculture advisory panel
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has announced his list of agricultural advisers, drawing mostly from established Republican players.
The New York City real estate mogul’s rural and agriculture advisory committee — comprising 65 people — is a Who’s Who of farm policy, with five members of Congress, including the chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees, 10 current and former farm-state governors and two former GOP presidential nomination rivals, former Govs. Rick Perry and Jim Gilmore.
…The list includes some major GOP donors, including Charles Herbster, a Nebraska cattle rancher who’s serving as the council’s chair, and Bruce Rastetter, a wealthy agribusiness leader in Iowa. But it also lists most of the Republican farm policy establishment, including Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Mike Conaway of Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who used to lead the House panel, as well as nearly a dozen state agriculture commissioners.
The advisory committee — which is six times larger than Mitt Romney’s 2012 panel — also includes a number of distinctly Trumpian characters, from Red Steagall, Texas’ official cowboy poet, to Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner who made national headlines for trying to bring deep fryers and sugary drinks back to schools.
Much of this panel appears to be very much mainstream Republican establishment, which has its positives and negatives. On a positive side, the article notes that in the panel’s first discussions about policy there was talk about eliminating or streamlining federal regulation on agriculture. On the negative side, the panel has some important members who favor the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal worked out by the Obama administration.
This information once again suggests that Trump will govern somewhere in the middle. If Congress is controlled by Republicans than there is also a good chance that its policy will lean rightward, though this panel also suggests that policy will continue to favor the crony businesses that the Republican leadership likes.
Gloria Gaynor – I will Survive
An evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen, who noted, “Some days just go better than others. For some of the other days, this song may be appropriate.”
The Grand Canyon
When I posted here on Behind the Black that Diane and I were on our way to the Grand Canyon for our annual hike to the bottom, one of my readers, Keith Douglas, commented that he and his family would be there about the same time. In trying unsuccessfully to meet up, at one point Keith mentioned that his two kids, aged 24 and 23, were proposing they hike into the canyon. Keith emailed me to ask, “From what I read, hiking into the canyon and out is not recommended for a one day activity. What about halfway and back up? Can that be done in an afternoon? It seems pretty hot.” I responded,
Though one can hike down and up in one day, this is not recommended for most. Usually you need to be in very good condition and young. It also helps if you are a long distance runner. Hiking down to Indian Gardens [about two thirds of the way down] can be done as a day trip, but if you don’t hike a lot it will be an intense and long experience. Also, having the right pack and gear is essential! People who go carrying a one liter bottle of water and no hat are guaranteed to suffer.
I didn’t tell them they couldn’t do it, or that they shouldn’t, or that it wasn’t possible. I simply outlined some of the basics for doing it, and let them decide what to do.
Keith answered, with humor, “Thanks for helping me talk my kids out of a hike down.” He later added, “I read a hiking guide on the nps website. It seems to be designed to discourage canyon hiking rather than prepare novice hikers.”
In one sentence Keith encapsulated the problem with almost all of the advice the Park Service gives about the Grand Canyon.
» Read more
Balanced Rock at last
My pessimistic prediction that Curiosity’s science team would take the least risky route and thus not pass close to the butte with the balanced rock has fortunately turned out to be very wrong! They have moved Curiosity into the closest gap to get the best views of both the balanced rock as well as the butte behind it. The image on the right, cropped, was taken by the rover’s mast camera as Curiosity entered the gap between the buttes. It shows clearly that balanced rock broke off from the layers above and landed on its side.
The image below the fold shows the same butte after Curiosity had passed the balanced rock (inside red box).
» Read more
The status of SLS for its first launch in 2018
Link here. The article gives an excellent and detailed overview of where construction of SLS presently sits, what the problems are that still remain, and what they have done to overcome them.
What struck me most however in reading the article was how long it takes them to do anything. For example, it appears they will assemble the rocket in the spring of 2018 for a December launch. In fact, the description of this assembly in this article partly explains to me why SLS will have the ungodly slow launch rate of at best once every two years.
In addition, the article describes how NASA has handled a number of engineering issues that have come up, and for each the approach seems to me to be more complicated than necessary. However, I am not an engineer and have never been part of this kind of work. Maybe everyone does it this way.