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What's New | 4 Mar 2005 21:19

WHAT'S NEW Friday, March 04, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 4 Mar 05   Washington, DC

1. SCIENCE BUDGET: TAX REVENUES DOWN, WAR COSTS UP, BIG TROUBLE. 
You don't have to be Alan Greenspan to know what happens when
taxes are cut during a costly war.  And it's happening.  Science,
with no champions in this administration, looks to be one of the
big losers.  NASA, alone among science agencies, would get an
increase under the Bush request, but the entire 5%, and more, is  
destined for the Moon-Mars Initiative, which has no discernable
science content.  Meanwhile, Hubble will be dropped in the ocean. 

2. MOON-MARS INITIATIVE: EXPLORING THE OUTER LIMITS OF POLITICS. 
So what's really behind "The Vision"?  Why is the administration
pushing so hard for a science initiative that scientists scorn,
and which won't take place on Bush's watch?  Ah, but that's the
plan.  It will be up to the next administration, stuck with a
huge deficit, to decide whether to go ahead with a meaningless
but staggeringly expensive program to see if humans can do what
robots are already doing.  As one well-informed NASA watcher put
it, "Moon-Mars is a poison pill.  It hangs responsibility for
ending the humans-in-space program on the next administration."

3. FAITH-BASED GOVERNMENT: TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO CONGRESS? 
David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House Office of
Faith-Based Initiatives, complained last month that although the
conservative religious community had delivered the votes for the
Republican landslide, they hadn't seen much faith money.  Stung,
the White House called a meeting with 300 religious leaders.  "It
is said that faith can move mountains," the President told the
cheering throng, "and I'm here to talk about how to move that
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What's New | 11 Mar 2005 21:29

WHAT'S NEW Friday, March 11, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 11 Mar 05   Washington, DC

1. HANS BETHE, 1907-2005: WHO BECAME THE CONSCIENCE OF SCIENCE.
"I always wanted to find out how the world is made, what it is
made of, what holds it together, what makes it operate the way it
does," he once explained.  He was confident that the answers can
only be found by science, and at 98 he was still finding them.

2. TEMPLETON PRIZE: CHARLES TOWNES CITED FOR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.
In his famous paper, The Convergence of Science and Religion,
Townes wrote that "Understanding the order in the universe and
understanding the purpose in the universe are not identical, but
they are also not very far apart."  They are a universe apart. 
Steven Weinberg, another great Noble-laureate physicist, wrote
"The more the universe seem comprehensible, the more it seems
pointless."  Nevertheless, by our count Townes is the sixth
physicist to win the Templeton, which in dollars is larger than
the Noble Prize.  Others awarded the Templeton include Charles
Colson of Watergate fame, and the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham.

3. NASA: TERMINATION IS PLANNED FOR HEALTHY BUT AGING MISSIONS.
No, it's not another hospital euthanasia scandal.  This time it's
active NASA science missions being turned off to free money for
the President's goofy Vision for Space Exploration.  According to
a story in Nature this week, managers of seven missions that are
"past their prime" (man, this is cold) have been told there is no
money to keep operating past October.  That includes two Voyagers
looking for the heliopause, where true interstellar space begins.
Pioneer 10 started the search, but it was passed by the younger,
faster Voyagers 8 years ago.  (Isn't that always the way?)  The
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What's New | 18 Mar 2005 21:06

WHAT'S NEW Friday, March 18, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 18 Mar 05   Washington, DC  

1. THE VISION: AEROSPACE ENGINEER PICKED TO LEAD NASA TO MARS. 
Described in media stories as a Johns Hopkins physicist, Michael
D. Griffin is at the Applied Physics Lab, a government contract
lab far from the campus, and although he has a B.A. in physics,
his Ph.D. is in Aerospace Engineering from the Univ. of Maryland. 
During the Reagan years he was Deputy for Technology of SDI (Star
Wars), which managed to squander $30B on mythical weapons. 
Eighteen months ago, Griffin testified before the House Science
Committee on "The Future of Human Space Flight".  He began by
invoking Queen Isabella and Columbus.  OK, so he's not very
original, but the Columbus mission was to find a short cut to
plunder the riches of the East.  That is just the sort of sound
conservative economics the universe needs.  But maybe, before we
settle the rest of the solar system as Griffin proposes, we might
want to ask our robots if there are any riches out there to
plunder.  Meanwhile, it probably wouldn't hurt to take better
care of this planet.  These other places don't look that great.

2. FICTION: AN IMAGINATIVE CREATION THAT DOES NOT REPRESENT TRUTH
The Index of Forbidden Books was abolished by Vatican II, but
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who used to be the top enforcer in the
Vatican, still harbors nostalgia for the old days.  "Don't buy
and don't read" The Da Vinci Code, he instructed Catholics.  That
should help sales, as though it needed help.  Some scientists
would put Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear, on an Index. 
It's standard Crichton, i.e. the bad guys are scientists.  In
Jurassic Park, for example, scientists discovered the secret of
life   and used it to make a theme park.  Scientists in State of
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What's New | 25 Mar 2005 20:46

WHAT'S NEW Friday, March 25, 2005

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 25 Mar 05   Washington, DC

1. FREEDOM ELEMENT: DO YOU KNOW HOW EASY IT IS TO SELL BALONEY? 
In his 2003 State-of-the-Union address, President Bush called for
building a Freedom Car, "powered by hydrogen and pollution free" 
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN03/wn013103.cfm.  Baloney, but people
didn't ask where the hydrogen will come from.  They asked if it's
safe.  Hey, it's fuel -- fuel burns.  However, Dr. Addison Bain
insists that in the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, it was the paint
that burned, and compared it to rocket fuel.  More baloney, but
guess who bought it http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0700/070004.cfm? 
However, A.J. Dessler, D.E. Overs and W.H. Appleby found the burn
rate of an actual piece of Hindenburg fabric to be thousands of
times too slow.  The fire consumed the Hindenburg in 34 seconds.
If the 800 foot-long craft was painted with solid rocket fuel, it
would have taken 12 hours to burn end to end.   Dessler is a PhD
physicist (Duke), 26 years as Professor of Space Physics and
Astronomy at Rice (15 years as Dept Chair), directed the NASA
Marshall Space Sciences Lab (4 years), and is Sr. Scientist at
Univ of Arizona, Lunar and Planetary Lab.  What about Dr. Bain?

2. DIPLOMA MILLS: MAYBE THEY CAN GET TOGETHER FOR CLASS REUNIONS. 
In his memoir, The Freedom Element: Living with Hydrogen, Doctor
Bain says he is a former manager of hydrogen programs at Kennedy
Space Center, but what is he a "doctor" of?  He writes of being
"teary-eyed" at finally becoming a PhD, but nowhere mentions his
alma mater.  Even the bio on the jacket of his book gave no clue. 
A Google search turned up nothing after Flathead High School in
Montana.  Someone suggested we try California Coast University, a
"distance-learning" university in Santa Ana.  That's where Lynn
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