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What to Do With LOP-G or Another Future Space Station?
Expanding on this comment.
What should be done with the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) or another brand-new low-Earth orbit space station? Alternatively, can the ISS be rebuilt piece-by-piece to allay concerns about aging components? Or should it be burnt in the atmosphere or split up to form new stations?
LOP-G is a boondoggle by design, but it could be built much more cheaply using Falcon Heavy launches, and it could be given some worthwhile missions and experiments. Here are a few ideas:
Space telescopes
Space telescopes could be assembled and repaired at a space station. JWST's cost overruns and delays are going to cast a shadow over future flagship space telescopes. One way to reduce costs massively while continuing to provide larger apertures would be to assemble a telescope in orbit. In the future, robots or automated docking systems ought to be able to accomplish this, but if you already have humans staying at a space station, why not have them service telescopes while they're there?
JWST has to ride a single rocket into space and follow a number of steps for successful deployment. A telescope built at a space station could accept many components flown on multiple Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, BFR, New Glenn, or Vulcan rockets. If one rocket explodes, the loss is relatively minor. The size of a space telescope flown on a single rocket is limited by the width and volume of the payload fairing. JWST can unfold its mirror segments to fit a greater aperture into the payload fairing, but this mechanical mechanism could fail, and if it does, it would render the telescope completely inoperable. The planned JWST successor LUVOIR has different configurations depending on whether or not SLS (8.4-10 meters) or BFR (9 meters) will be available to fly the telescope. While you could fly as many smaller mirror segments as you wanted to if you kept adding new launches to your manifest, the largest mirror segments ever cast are coincidentally 8.4 meters in diameter:
There is a technological limit for primary mirrors made of a single rigid piece of glass. Such non-segmented, or monolithic mirrors can not be constructed larger than about eight meters in diameter. The largest monolithic mirror in use are currently the two primary mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope, each with a diameter of 8.4 meters. The use of segmented mirrors is therefore a key component for large-aperture telescopes. Using a monolithic mirror much larger than 5 meters is prohibitively expensive due to the cost of both the mirror, and the massive structure needed to support it. A mirror beyond that size would also sag slightly under its own weight as the telescope was rotated to different positions, changing the precision shape of the surface. Segments are also easier to fabricate, transport, install, and maintain over very large monolithic mirrors.
Segmented mirrors do have the drawback that each segment may require some precise asymmetrical shape, and rely on a complicated computer-controlled mounting system. All of the segments also cause diffraction effects in the final image.
Finally, JWST requires lots of testing and retesting in order to ensure that the hundreds of potential failures that could kill the mission do not occur. With a space-assembled telescope, you could launch without doing nearly as much testing, since you would have humans capable of fixing most of the problems that could happen, multiple launches instead of a single launch, and you could more readily tolerate the vibrations shaking up each component of the telescope, since it is not assembled and ready to deploy yet. You could also pack the payload fairing with padding that could be removed by the astronauts.
While there could be space telescopes operating directly at the site of the space station (such as in lunar orbit alongside the LOP-G) or close nearby (loosely tethered to the station or in a different but easy-to-reach orbit), we could also use orbital (re)fueling to send completed space telescopes to their final destinations. Since most of the energy expenditure comes from entering or leaving Earth orbit, this could end up being very efficient.
By exploiting all of these advantages, we could assemble space telescopes that dwarf the JWST and LUVOIR in size and capabilities.
Artificial gravity modules
We already know that prolonged exposure to microgravity is bad news for astronauts, but at least one of our ACs is very skeptical of the health effects of lunar or Martian gravity on the human body. What better way to test this than in a rotating artificial gravity module? While it is not directly comparable to the gravity of a planetoid, and you can experience a difference in acceleration between your head and toes, it could be used for exercise, sleep, animal and plant experiments, etc.
The lower the gravity you want to simulate, the smaller and slower the module can be. So simulating 0.165g or 0.376g will be cheaper than 1g anyway.
The Nautilus-X was a proposed spacecraft that would have used a centrifuge to provide artificial gravity. A demonstration module for the ISS would have cost only an estimated $83 million to $143 million, not counting launch costs.
Inflatable modules
Speaking of modules, Nautilus-X planned to make extensive use of Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable modules. Inflatable modules are a partially-proven concept, in that we actually managed to get one version, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, to the ISS. Plans to remove it have been delayed as it provides useful storage space and appears to resist radiation and micrometeorites as well as other parts of the ISS.
The B330 and BA 2100 modules would provide a much greater volume for a space station, with the BA 2100 providing more than double the current volume of the ISS inside of a single module. As for protection:
- Some designs offer higher resistance to space debris. For example, the B330 provides ballistic protection superior to traditional aluminum shell designs.
- Some designs provide higher levels of shielding against radiation. For example, the B330 provides radiation protection equivalent to or better than the International Space Station, "and substantially reduces the dangerous impact of secondary radiation."
I imagine that if you had further concerns about module durability, you could inflate it and then install plates or other coverings on the outside to provide additional layers of protection from radiation and micrometeorites.
Propellant depot
I haven't done the math™ on this one at all, but perhaps this could make sense, particularly in the LOP-G scenario. If you want LOP-G to be more than a useless ISS clone, it would make sense to have the station facilitate trips to the surface, by storing propellant, refueling craft that reach the station, or delivering it to the surface for use by people who are already there. How would it get there? A BFR tanker would be a good choice. Where would it come from? Presumably from Earth or sources of water on the Moon itself, if the economics work out.
Perhaps the U.S. could sell China some propellant to help them build their Moon base.
Depending on the orbit, LOP-G could also facilitate communications for anybody or anything on the far side of the Moon.
Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented
Millennial Couple Bikes Through ISIS Territory to Prove ‘Humans Are Kind’ and Gets Killed
"Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans."
An idealistic young American couple was killed in an Islamic State-claimed terrorist attack last month while on a cycling trip around the world.
Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, who were both in their late 20s, last year quit their office jobs in Washington, DC, to embark on the journey. Austin, a vegan who worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Geoghegan, a vegetarian who worked in the Georgetown University admissions office, decided that they're were wasting their lives working.
"I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige,” Austin wrote on his blog before he quit. “I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned. Too many thunderstorms went unwatched, too many gentle breezes unnoticed.”
Read more here: https://www.pluralist.com/posts/1824-millennial-couple-bikes-through-isis-territory-to-prove-humans-are-kind-and-gets-killed
The couple's "joint blog" here: http://www.simplycycling.org/
Perhaps these two should have gone to Sunday School more often, where they might have learned the Lord's Prayer.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley!
Oh well - rest in pieces, you dumb fucks!
However, Austin and Geoghegan's dream trip came to a tragic and gruesome end when they got to Tajikistan, a country with a known terrorist presence. They were riding their bikes through the country on July 29 when a car rammed them, according to CBS News. Five men got out of the car and stabbed the couple to death along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.
Two days later, ISIS released a video showing the same men sitting in front of the black ISIS flag. They looked at the camera and vowed to kill "disbelievers," according to The New York Times.
Some conservatives have framed the tragedy as a cautionary tale about not just the perils of travel but also naivete in general. In their telling, an overly generous understanding of human nature is behind much of today's progressive movement, including calls to radically scale back immigration enforcement and policing and support for socialism.
Some liberals, for their part, might view Austin and Geoghegan as martyrs in the struggle for a better world, or simply as unfortunate.
Coverage varies with other news outlets:
https://iotwreport.com/wapo-asks-if-murdered-pollyanna-millennial-couple-were-naive/
https://www.app.com/story/news/world/2018/08/08/jay-austin-lauren-geoghegan-isis-tajikistan-simply-cycling/935093002/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/world/asia/islamic-state-tajikistan-bike-attack.html
Charles Darwin isn't commenting on this story.
Long-Lost Marilyn Monroe Nude Scene Remains Lost
A Long-Lost Marilyn Monroe Nude Scene Was Just Discovered
It’s taken decades, but researchers have finally found Marilyn Monroe‘s long-lost nude scene from the 1961 film The Misfits. [...] In the lost scene, Monroe and Clark Gable kiss, and he leaves. Then, things get particularly racy when Monroe drops the bedsheet covering her naked body. According to Deadline, this scene is historic: if left in the film, it would have been the first nude scene by an American actress in a major motion picture. Director John Huston later cut the nude scene because he believed that it wasn’t necessary to the story, but Frank Taylor saved the footage because of its importance (or maybe for, uh, personal reasons).
[...] Taylor has not yet decided what to do with the lost footage, so don’t expect Monroe’s nude scene to end up on YouTube any time soon.
Submit it to the Library of Sexual Congress for "preservation" or GTFO.
N-Tape
New tape shows Trump campaign aides discussing possibility of N-word tape
The use of "dog" to describe Manigault Newman, who was the highest ranking African-American in Trump's White House during her tenure, did little to dampen the renewed allegations of racism against the President.
Some of his top aides rushed to defend him, claiming they'd never witnessed him use racist language in their interactions.
"I've been around @realDonaldTrump publicly & privately for 25yrs. I've NEVER ONCE - EVER - have heard him say the disgusting & terrible word that the Opportunistic Wacky Omarosa claims," wrote Dan Scavino, Trump's longtime social media director.
Breakthrough: Trump close to calling his critics "bitch-ni**as".
Disney's Big Gay Backlash
Jack Whitehall faces backlash as Disney's 'first gay man'
Jack Whitehall has received backlash online after news broke that he'd been cast as Disney's first major gay character in Jungle Cruise.
The comedian wrote that he was "honoured" to be a part of the 2019 film, and it was later reported that he would be playing an openly gay man.
The news has led some people to ask why a gay actor wasn't cast for the role.
"Could they seriously not pick someone actually gay?" one person tweeted.
Others have argued that hiring gay actors to exclusively play gay roles is "typecasting".
15 years ago, or maybe last year, this headline would have had a very different meaning. But it's 2018.
Review: The Diary of the Rose Ursula K. Le Guin
A recent (off-topic?) discussion touching on Sci-Fi revealed to me that some people see hope and promise in science fiction stories. Those people don't see the warnings, it would seem. To me, science fiction has always been filled with dire warnings.
We recently discussed Ms. Le Guin, when she passed away. https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/01/25/011250
More about her here: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html
I must admit that I wasn't a "fan" - that is, I didn't read everything she wrote, and wait impatiently for her to write more. But, yes, I did read some of her work. I've been reading a little more of her work, since her death. And, that work is filled with dire warnings!
The Diary of the Rose tells about a psychiatric doctor (Rosa), with access to some really marvelous technology, which helps her to see into the minds of her patients. Rosa spends her early career working with children, and people with truly disabling problems. Rosa is engrossed in psychiatric problems, diagnosis, and prognosis. She is the doctor's doctor - everything is about making people healthy, or at least as healthy as possible.
Then, Rosa is brought her first political prisoner. Of course, Rosa isn't aware that he IS a political prisoner. She is only told that he has to be "fixed". Unaware that the diagnosis and prognosis has already been determined, Rosa gets into Sorde's (the patient) head. She is shocked to learn that there is really nothing wrong with Sorde. But, as she learns more, both she and Sorde know exactly where "therapy" will lead, and where it will end. The patient's mind must be destroyed!
The story is scary, in that, it doesn't so much "predict" real life in some future dystopia, as it reports on real life in the modern world. In much of the world in the past few hundred years, it would be political suicide to imprison, then execute a political dissident. But, having that same dissident "hospitalized" for some form of "insanity" can be expedient.
Oh, there is indeed some "science" in this fiction. The tools that Rosa has to work with are amazing. But, the story would be much the same with or without those tools. The psychiatric doctor is being used to effectively euthanize a potential political dissident.
I do invite people to get acquainted with Le Guin. Further, I invite those people to extrapolate some of today's technology into her stories. 24/7 surveillance? Genetic mapping? Digital mapping of the brain? The deeper we dig into who and what we are, as people, the closer Rosa's diagnostic tools come to reality.
I haven't been a Le Guin fan in the past, but I am becoming one.
For those who might search for this story - it is part of Volume 1 of the 'Where on Earth' collection of short stories. It may or may not be published in other anthologies, but this is where I found it.
Enjoy!
C-Ville Anniversary
Charlottesville remembered: 'A battle for the soul of America'
It could only happen in the birthplace of Christian Weston Chandler.
World's Top Empathy Researcher is a Big Bully
She’s the world’s top empathy researcher. But colleagues say she bullied and intimidated them
Tania Singer, a celebrated neuroscientist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, is known as one of the world’s foremost experts on empathy. In her research, she has sought to demonstrate that meditation can make people more kind and caring. The title of a profile of Singer written by this reporter in 2013 summed up her public image: Concentrating on Kindness.
But inside her lab, it was a very different story, eight former and current colleagues say in interviews with Science. The researchers, all but one of whom insisted on remaining anonymous because they feared for their careers, describe a group gripped by fear of their boss. “Whenever anyone had a meeting with her there was at least an even chance they would come out in tears,” one colleague says.
Singer, one of the most high-profile female researchers in the Max Planck Society (MPG), sometimes made harsh comments to women who became pregnant, multiple lab members told Science. “People were terrified. They were really, really afraid of telling her about their pregnancies,” one former colleague says. “For her, having a baby was basically you being irresponsible and letting down the team,” says another, who became a mother while working in Singer’s department.
[...] In a plan presented to the researchers on 25 July, MPG said it would separate Singer from her current colleagues and allow her to set up a new, smaller research group in Berlin for 2 to 3 years while the postdocs and Ph.D. students in Leipzig finish their projects and move on. (The Leipzig group, which once numbered more than 20 scientists, has dwindled to just five.) She would then return to her lab.
“It appears the Max Planck Society decided it would rather sacrifice another generation of students than risk a scandal,” says one former colleague. Asked how MPG would ensure that future students are treated better, a spokesperson says details of the plan are still being discussed.
[...] [Colleagues] say working with Singer was always difficult. She wanted to be in control of even the most minute research details but was often not available to discuss them. In-person meetings could quickly turn into a nightmare, one colleague says: “She gets extremely emotional and when that turns dark it is terrifying.” Another co-worker describes what happened after he told Singer some people in her group were unhappy: “She was very hurt by this and started crying and screaming,” he says. “It escalated to the extent that she left the room and went door to door in the institute in our department, crying, yelling to the people in the room ‘Are you happy here?’ When she came back, she said: ‘I just asked and everyone said they’re happy so it’s obviously you that’s the problem.’” (A colleague who says he was present corroborates the story.)
Almost every current or former lab member brought up Singer’s treatment of pregnant women; the issue was also on a list of grievances, shared with Science, that lab members say they drew up after a meeting with the scientific advisory board in February 2017 to record what was said. “Pregnancy and parental leave are received badly and denied/turned into accusations,” the notes say.
In Spite of the Haters, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Worth $250m
How Goop's Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow's Company Worth $250 Million: Inside the growth of the most controversial brand in the wellness industry. (archive)
On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a "sustainable competitive advantage," according to the class catalog.
She moved to the teacher's desk, where she sat down and crossed her legs. She talked about why she started the business, how she only ever wanted to be someone who recommended things. When she was in Italy, on the set of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," she'd ask someone on the crew about, say, where the best gelato was. When she was in London, on the set of "Shakespeare in Love," she asked a crew member where to find the best coffee; in Paris, she asked an extra where to find the best bikini wax; in Berlin, the massage you can't miss. She wasn't just curious. She was planning this the whole time. The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter's recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, "I love what you're doing with Goop." G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn't even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a "godmother" to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and "gave permission" to start thinking about how to monetize it.
[...] G.P. didn't want to go broad. She wanted you to have what she had: the $795 G. Label trench coat and the $1,505 Betony Vernon S&M chain set. Why mass-market a lifestyle that lives in definitional opposition to the mass market? Goop's ethic was this: that having beautiful things sometimes costs money; finding beautiful things was sometimes a result of an immense privilege; but a lack of that privilege didn't mean you shouldn't have those things. Besides, just because some people cannot afford it doesn't mean that no one can and that no one should want it. If this bothered anyone, well, the newsletter content was free, and so were the recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins.
[...] A gynecologist and obstetrician in San Francisco named Jen Gunter, who also writes a column on reproductive health for The Times, has criticized Goop in about 30 blog posts on her website since 2015. A post she wrote last May — an open letter that she signed on behalf of "Science" — generated more than 800,000 page views. She was angry about all the bad advice she had seen from Goop in the last few years. She was angry that her own patients were worried they'd given themselves breast cancer by wearing underwire bras, thanks to an article by an osteopath who cited a much-debunked book published in 1995. Gunter cited many of Goop's greatest hits: "Tampons are not vaginal death sticks, vegetables with lectins are not killing us, vaginas don't need steaming, Epstein Barr virus (E.B.V.) does not cause every thyroid disease and for [expletive] sake no one needs to know their latex farmer; what they need to know is that the only thing between them and H.I.V. or gonorrhea is a few millimeters of latex, so glove that [expletive] up."
But something strange happened. Each of these pronouncements set off a series of blog posts and articles and tweets that linked directly to the site, driving up traffic. At Harvard, G.P. called these moments "cultural firestorms." "I can monetize those eyeballs," she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It's never clickbait, she told the class. "It's a cultural firestorm when it's about a woman's vagina." The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!" as if she were yodeling.
Who would hate on a pseudoscientific goop-peddling succubus with steam-cleaned nether regions (and an egg)?
Previously: NASA Disputes Origins of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop "Healing Stickers"
