Preparing for the Future

Sailing into the future...

How stunningly weird is it, that we’ve been in space for almost 60 years… and our first real-genuine experiment deploying a solar sail is about to be launched (by the Planetary Society), later this month? A human lifespan… to get around to trying something to simple, obvious and inexpensive?   The delay is so strange and unlikely, it almost makes one conjure up sci-fi/thriller/paranoid explanations. 

Support the solar sail on Kickstarter.  Something worthwhile.

Other interesting things, in the offing...

Innovating for the future: an interesting article about the history of and the death… and rebirth(?) of corporate research labs, reports that "innovation may no longer be in corporate-affiliated research parks, but is cropping up in unexpected places... which goes hand in hand with rapid shifts and expansions in the information landscape." 

Ah, but as you'll hear me repeat, those who have sabotaged investment in U.S. research are traitors and enemies of our children.  No less.

Financing the future...will we see...an attack of the algorithms? In a disturbing trend, monetary funds run by robots now account for $400 billion of the worldwide economy.

Mining for the future...Last summer the UN's International Seabed Authority issued the first deep sea exploration permits, allowing companies to start actively looking for places to mine Manganese nodules and other sources of rare earth elements from the ocean floor. As I forecast in EARTH (1989). Might this be a way around the current Chinese near-monopoly on rare earths production?

In the short term. Maybe.  But till we're mining asteroids (including "davidbrin") we won't yet be rich enough.

== Powering the Future ==

Speaking of solar... Bike lanes covered with solar panels follow the median of highways in South Korea: “...for 20 miles between the cities of Daejeon and Sejong, they can be running down the median of a six-lane highway. And what's really special about this one is that it is covered with solar panels, generating electricity and shading the cyclists as they ride,” reports this article in TreeHugger. Sounds nice -- till you factor in noise, danger and exhaust fumes.  Reboot idea source.  Try again.

My own passion is to see solar panels running along the west’s great aqueducts, shading the water and reducing evaporative losses. The energy that’s generated would benefit from a clear right-of-way for cheap power lines.  Add a bike-path? Sure!

Better yet, the aqueducts are (not-quite but sort-of) perfect for Elon Musk’s Hyperloop transport system! The main California Aqueduct runs roughly along the I-5 interstate freeway – with, admittedly, a few more twists. The point is that Elon might be able to flexibly hop from one to the other, with the aqueduct portions being much, much cheaper to acquire and build upon than portions running down an interstate median. Now, to power with that water-and-electricity-saving roof of solar cells.

Been musing this idea more and more…

One of you did some of the math: “Just the California aqueduct is 1129 km long and 10 meters wide.  That figures to a surface area = 1.129E7 m^2.  Now, assuming solar energy 1.2 KW per M^2, with 20% conversion efficiency: then this surface area would generate 0.27E7 KW… or 2.7 GigaWatts. Out of California’s current electrical demand ~50GW, that’d be a whopping 6%. Compare this to existing California solar = 6GW, so a complete solar roof over the CA Aqueduct (and that is only the largest of California’s many water channels) would provide half again the existing solar power base in California alone.”

It's been done in India: a canal in Gujarat topped with solar panels. See the picture to the right.

Hm, well, the numbers can be quibbled in either direction.  But not by enough to refute the notion. Now factor in all benefits:

1) No appreciable environmental tradeoffs. Very little additional land need be set aside for this power plant, unlike the vast solar arrays now being erected in sensitive desert areas.

2) Access is simple and secure. The roads and infrastructure needed for construction are already in place.  Indeed, the accompanying power lines can simply follow existing aqueduct rights-of-way, saving time and expense.

3) Excess power has an immediate use, pumping water over the Tehachapis to holding reservoirs that can then be swiftly tapped for hydro power, when clouds come in.

4) Prevention of evaporative loss from the aqueducts themselves.  This is, of course, the biggest win-win benefit, in times of drought. And this is where a call to the smart mob comes in.  Can anyone find estimates of what this saving would amount to?  

Indeed, one must wonder about unintended consequences, as some evaporation would then condense on the solar roof’s support structures. Anti-corrosion will have to be part of basic planning.  Still, here's the capstone that makes all of this sound plausible --

Elon Musk tweeted, "Have asked SolarCity if we can do something philanthropic with the CA aqueducts to help the water crisis. Investigating…"

And...what about the All American Canal as well?

== Preparing for worst cast scenarios ==

Battling infectious diseases: There have been missteps. As this article notes, empty Ebola clinics have been reported: “After spending hundreds of millions of dollars and deploying nearly 3,000 troops to create Ebola remedy centers, the United States ended up creating facilities that have largely sat empty: Only 28 Ebola sufferers have been treated at the 11 remedy units built by the United States military…”

Before getting all outraged at this “waste,” perhaps some perspective? All right, the help arrived a bit late and our civil servants learned a lot, so that they’ll do better next time. Which is… um… kinda the point, yes? For all of its tragedy, this Ebola outbreak was on the medium-small scale, compared with the nightmare scenarios we all might face, next year or next decade.

On that broader perspective, this exercise was, in fact, worth every penny! We’ll be quicker off the mark, next time, better skilled and equipped.

 == Educating for the Future ==

Along the same lines as my posting -- How the American Education System Doesn't Fail -- this article - We don't need more STEM majors, We need STEM majors with liberal arts training --  shows both true wisdom and obdurately silliness.  

Yes, we need to double down on America's investment in "breadth" during college.   All around the world, the normative baccalaureate degree is three years, with 17-year olds diving into narrow fields with utter specialization. 

In sharp contrast, the American (and Canadian) Bachelor's Degree takes four years because all STEM majors are required to take a year's worth of humanities/history/Lit etc... and vice versa for humanities majors needing science survey classes. This article's author is only expressing the value system under which she was raised.  One with which I wholly agree! (As a "scientist/novelist" who earns his living across the entire spectrum.) You want MORE breadth?  Fine. I am down with that.

But to not even acknowledge that's already what we do?  Vastly more than any other nation on Earth?  Did you see her mention that? Even remotely?  Nope, just finger-wagging chiding -- the coin of our era -- instead of constructively pondering how to improve the miracle we already have. Pure silliness.

 == Predicting the Future ==

A reminder to you nit-pickers out there that I am willing to live by the principles that I preach! I have talked a lot about how we need “accountability for those who claim to predict. Actually, my fans have noticed the unusual number of "hits" or predictive successes that seem to have been scored in EARTH. These  accurate foretellings... and some that were embarrassingly off-target(!) are now being tracked at this site.

Feel free to suggest ways in which I have been wrong or right!  Not just in that one novel.

Here’s my essay -- Predictions Registries -- on why we should be doing this for everyone!  Especially politicians and cable news pundits and merchants of fear. 

 = And Finally =

What if...Ayn Rand reviewed children's movies? Hilarious!  

I really like the deep and original song by Big Data - “Dangerous.”  Their video is complex, layered and entertaining, demanding full attention: "How could they know, how could they know.. what I been thinking? Like they're right inside my head because they know, Because they know, what I been hiding..."

Then there’s this more shallow and yet deeply disturbing alternate version. Yeouch! 

Wagers! Demand Wagers!

First, announcements.

- I speak for the Skeptics Society : In the year 2525: Big Science, Big History and the Future of Humanity at Caltech, Pasadena CA, May 30.

- May 21 I address the Singularity Group in New York City at the Hatchery at 1601 Broadway (7pm).

- June 10, I speak at The Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California.  

- After which I fly to give talks in Portugal (Porto) and Madrid.

So many exciting things are happening in our world... like we're about to have a spaceprobe zip by Pluto!  A month ago we orbited Ceres and found oceans!  Before that, human beings (well, Europeans) landed a probe on a comet!  Poverty is declining worldwide.  The U.S. economy is on a great path. The air is getting better and we've seized the right to aim cameras at the police! There are hard problems to solve, and every reason to believe that combinations of technology, law and individual initiative will solve many of them.

And yet, the merchants of gloom have us seized by the throat.

Desperate to turn us away from good news - and especially the confidence to believe problems can be solved - they cast a spell of despair, in all directions.  But let's face it... this illness is especially rife on one end of the lobotomizing political "spectrum."  An end that has simply gone insane.

              Is there something you can do?

Something simple and effective that will give you victory after victory in our ongoing culture wars?  Yes there is!  A simple trick.  One that works!  In fact, it works almost every time.

== The way to get yammering loonies to shut up  ==

Two news items show how fast Barry Goldwater is spinning in his grave.  First, U.S. House Republicans have voted to slash NASA’s budget for the Earth Science division. (Under Bush, they tried repeatedly to eliminate all uses of the word "earth" in NASA programs and missions.)  For 25 years, those who declare "we need more science" to prove/disprove climate change have systematically sabotaged the science that might resolve the issue to a precision demanded by Fox. This follows an earlier decision to to cut NSF’s geoscience budget. And the State of Florida's new regulation forbidding officials from ever even mentioning or considering rising seas or climate change.

This hypocritical cowardice is not aberration.  It is a core hallmark of the New Confederacy.

Here is another --

Jade Helm 15, a military exercise, brings wild speculation in Texas about ‘martial law’.  A large but relatively routine exercise to train troops in counter-terrorism methods has become the latest Black Helicopters fantasy in the minds of the whole posse comitatis crowd. Conspiracy theorists claim it’s an attempt to institute martial law, possibly in collusion with (I kid you not) Wal-Mart. Ted Cruz has signed up to share the Koolaid. (See: The Truth Behind Jade Helm Conspiracy Theories.)  And in response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has ordered the State Guard to 'monitor' federal troops there during the exercise. 

(Without explaining what 'monitor' means. Never mind that the president can legally federalize the national guard, any time he chooses, and the "state guard" in Texas is not what you think. Nevertheless, in fact, "Mr Transparency" wholly approves of "monitoring"! It is one cure for crazy.)

Yes, yes, this story makes way too much out of a fairly small phenomenon -- some far-right flakes hate-fantasizing about the US military.  Indeed, at the far ends, there are almost as many flakey conspiracy fetishist romantics on the left as on the right.  No, what's important here is the fact that the fanatical fringe on the right sits atop a much much bigger, only slightly less fanatical "main" body of confederates.

Put aside the spectacular insult to our men and women in uniform — any ONE of whom would blow the whistle if anything even 0.01% as nefarious were actually going on.  You know this is not about modeling reality, at any level.  

It is about stoking the insatiable engine of the Indignation Industry.  Hence, disproof won’t make a scintilla of difference.  Open transparency will help a bit. (I almost always prescribe big doses, to ensure that Big Brother does stay far away: as he is right now.) Transparency will limit the number of frenzied conspiracy nuts to a screeching small-but-deeply-harmful minority.  

But even transparency will only see to it that they'll back out of THIS howling mania, gleeful in the after-rush of sanctimony, looking for the next one to wave about, shrugging off any reminder that they predicted, in 2008, that "Obama will take all our guns." Safe in the serene knowledge that the rest of us will fight like hell to preserve their right to be raving morons.

Is the situation hopeless?  Not! As I said -- there is a method.  One that absolutely works. Let me repeat that. It works. 

Again, it works, absolutely. That is, if you parse it carefully.

And not one Blue American of stature has ever once (to my knowledge) actually used this sure-fire method for forcing conspiracy nut-jobs to back off.

== Demand wagers! ==

Put money on it. Offer odds. Insist they step up and offer stakes, like real-men. 

If they are so sure of their paranoid ravings — sure enough to throw America into fever after fever and thus harm us all and insult our professional warriors — then they ought to be willing… even eager… to take my money in a bet!  

What? No? Here's my money! If you are so sure, put yours on the table and then walk away with winnings, when your ravings come true!

Watch... oh watch how they backpedal, the instant there are actual consequences to foaming at the mouth.  The instant facts and evidence threaten to have real bite.

Let me link you to my earlier posting about this: Take the Wager Challenge and Help push back Culture War . And I am serious. It is a weapon Sane America never, ever uses… even though it is one that will work.  It works; and it is a sign of the raw stupidity of liberals, that they have not learned how to wield this sword.

Try it!  Read the write-up. Offer wagers. Watch how fast the cheap cowards back off!

== So why am I optimistic? ==

Remember the confident Republican declarations that Obama would not only take our guns, but give us $200/barrel oil?  

According to tech-economics guru Mark Anderson, the recent drop in the price of oil constitutes a “massive effective tax cut” for the world’s population. Compare estimated expenditures on oil and gas before and after the drop.

Past-year estimate: $866, 875, 000,000

Next-year estimate: $456,250,000,000

Change YTY: $410,625,000,000

Even accounting for a recent uptick, and the fact that all sorts of fatcats and intermediaries will siphon billions in price manipulations and collusively anti-competitive conniving — “Eventually, this tax cut will find its way through the system, driven (one hopes) by competitive market forces rather than by price manipulation schemes. Once this occurs, the world will have almost half a trillion dollars in unexpected windfall cash gains per year to spend on things like hospitals, schools, and infrastructure - right? Or, okay, weapons.

 “All in all, this change may represent the largest change in "externalities" costs the world has seen since World War II - except, perhaps, for the ramping costs of global warming.”

Oh, regarding that other thing - climate change: “How would you like some real estate in Miami? Waterfront prices are actually going up, while the local government is planning on buying 18 pumps to stave off sea-level rise caused by global warming - a term the governor's office has forbidden any state officer from uttering.”

In both cases, the driver that’s absolutely essential is new technology.  Those “game changers” I referred to, earlier.  And those won’t happen if anti-future and anti-science types — some on the far-left and nearly everyone on the entire-right — keep applying fanaticism to problems better addressed by vigorous and optimistic problem-solving negotiation and a can-do spirit.

== The biggest wager … Obamacare ==

With the next presidential election underway, all GOP candidates are swearing to make repeal of Obamacare their central goal, how’s that playing with the American people? Especially with this commie-disaster law ruining health care in America and enslaving everyone and sending costs skyrocketing… except …

...except that nothing of the sort is happening. “The problems that marred the rollout of Obamacare have been fixed. The law, meanwhile, is reducing the number of Americans who lack health coverage as intended, as a new report from the Rand Corp. shows. And just as important, many unintended consequences that critics of the law predicted have failed to materialize.” 

The Bush era skyrocketing of premiums has largely abated.  More people are getting reliable preventative care. Health related bankruptcies have plummeted. The number of people with employer-arranged insurance has risen, rather than fallen. There's been no socialist takeover of the health system. While there are flaws that merit fixing via negotiation, not one of the Chicken Little screech predictions of negative consequences has come true.  Not… even… one.

Oh, how I wish some of the cowards who I offered wagers about Obamacare would have had the cojones to actually put money where their frothing mouths were.  But none of the screeching ninnies would actually take a bet.  Demanding wagers did have one effect though.  They always shut up about the topic... around me.

And it was worth putting the United States through hell, freezing the political process in rigor mortis, such that the only thing the GOP-dominated House of Representatives did, month after month was pass shrill ACA repeals that they knew would never go anywhere… and you maniacs did all of that… over this?

The want the ultimate irony?

 When public approval of the ACA, which has been rising every month for the last twenty, finally passes a critical threshold, Republicans will suddenly remember… 

“Oh yeah!  The ACA was OUR PLAN ALL ALONG! It came from the Heritage Foundation and the GOP party platform and it was called ‘Romneycare’ at one point… It’s ours!  It was always our idea! We'll take the credit now, thank you.”

Watch.  That’ll happen. (Not one other person will be on record, having predicted it.)

 And the dittoheads will conveniently forget every shrill jeremaiad.  Only dig this well, please.  This time we will remember.  That you guys are completely insane.

Justice from Transparency

A tsunami of light... In a cameras - everywhere culture, science fiction becomes reality, The Los Angeles Times ran an excellent run-down on this year’s status of camera and surveillance tech, showing how the trend is accelerating. Oh... and this front page article features yours truly, in the first sentence and last...

...and on radio, I was a panelist about the trend of turning the cameras back on the police.  The latest? The ACLU offers a new cell phone app. One tap and your video-phone turns on while uploading the event directly to YouTube, in case the device itself gets “damaged”.  In Turning the Cameras Back on Police, I discussed this on NPR with an ACLU representative… along with a representative of the Los Angeles County police officers’ union and an organizer for Black Lives Matter.

Of course, all this media comes after 25 years predicting and opining on this inevitable trend. With this posting -- and this one -- among the most recent examples. 

== Are some folks starting to get it? ==

As that L.A. lieutenant typifies, the mature pros in our constabularies are already ahead of the curve, emphasizing that the 2013 rulings are fully accepted. "Citizens have a perfect right to record us, so long as they stand back and do not interfere."  Ah, but this will be a process (as I described in EARTH and The Transparent Society.) A process in which good cops will learn how to cull their own ranks of thugs...

... while the rest of us learn the subtleties of citizen power.  Take this article: 

What to say when the police tell you to stop filming them.

'First of all, they shouldn’t ask! “As a basic principle, we can’t tell you to stop recording,” says Delroy Burton, chairman of D.C.’s metropolitan police union. “If you’re standing across the street videotaping, and I’m in a public place, carrying out my public functions, [then] I’m subject to recording, and there’s nothing legally the police officer can do to stop you from recording.”…  

Yet still some officers do. Last week, an amateur video appeared to show a U.S. Marshal confiscating and destroying a woman’s camera as she filmed him.'

'Most officers, says Sanchez, now know that bystanders have a legal right to film police. Now, instead of hearing assertions that they can’t record at all, he says that Copwatch volunteers are accused of interfering with police activity. “What we hear is, you can’t film here, you need to back up,” he told me. At which point, says Sanchez, the volunteer complies—by taking one step back.'

Me? Mr. Transparency is much less confrontational, when it comes to the small details. Hey, my aim is not to be an asshole, but to assert citizen oversight. I would instead say: 

“Out of respectful citizenship, officer, I am taking five steps backward.  Any further will impede my right – as your employer – to supervise you. But I am willing to listen, if you explain why you need even more space than that.  Oh, and meanwhile this interaction is uploading live.”

So, what if the fellow seems angrily about to lose it, and do something regrettable? Then I would speak loudly:

“Are you getting this Larry?  Well keep your camera aimed at me while staying out of sight!  We’ll see what this officer with badge number 68643 is about to do.”  

Whether or not “Larry” exists, by now they are starting to grasp this. That it is not the camera you see that will ultimately hold you accountable.

It's the one you don't see....

== And more on cop cams == 

Now this article from Gizmodo - How Police Body Cameras Were Designed to Get Cops Off the Hook -- yet again provides a feast of in-depth information about the cop-cam trend... while the author maintains the most amazing obduracy and inability to step back or ask even the simplest question.  Like "what might be next?" 

Not one year ahead, did he look, nor even try to extrapolate.  Or ask "What might happen when the plummeting price of body cams and instant cloud storage, puts these tools onto the lapels of every ghetto youth?"

Picture every kid, every harassed pedestrian or driver, with a little box and winking red light, and every frame going straight to online storage. Are you actually... actually telling us that won't change things?

(Note: I was talking this over with design guru Don Norman, and we realized that there are two innovations badly needed, right now, beyond the ACLU's instant-upload app.  In the SHORT term we have to come up with some kind of velco or hanging lanyard thing that will let ghetto youths get out of their car with their cell phones hanging free from their necks... so that they can raise their hands open and bare! Hands free is absolutely essential and you know why. These innovations are needed right now, this very moment... plus some millionaire to fund a very rapid deployment of thousands of cheap, hanging-phone-holders.

(Over the longer run, of course, we need small, blue-tooth detachable cams that any person can leave as a dash cam, but snatch up and pin to his lapel, before getting out of the car... and the very act of pinning it sets the upload going. Again, to complete the process, and NOT in order to be offensive to the majority of decent men and women who heroically patrol our streets. No aspersions, just moving on to complete this transition to a world of accountability and light.)

I portrayed this happening around the year 2020, in my novel EARTH.  In my nonfiction book, The Transparent Society, there is a section describing exactly this transformation, as citizens become empowered with both the right to look-back at authority and the tools to enable it.

No, getting back to the detailed and yet myopic Gizmodo piece, the issue here is one of journalism.  How on Earth does a fellow who cannot even squint at how the simplest tech trends might affect tomorrow get to opine and tell us what's going on? 

== Bright fools ==

How Transparency Will Change the World: In a pair of TED-style talks, Daniel Dennett, the Tufts University philosopher and cognitive scientist, and Deb Roy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and Twitter’s chief media scientist, talk about the spread of digital technology and the advent of social media has made it much more difficult to keep secrets. This new transparency will profoundly influence the evolution of our institutions, the authors argue. “When these organizations suddenly find themselves exposed to daylight, they quickly discover that they can no longer rely on old methods; they must respond to the new transparency or go extinct,” they write.

Dennett’s talk at a skeptic’s conference in 2014 is “Can churches survive the new transparency?”  Starts rather interesting, by comparing our new transparent society to the sudden transition that life on Earth underwent, when (according to one theory) the oceans suddenly became clear or transparent. “Transform and adapt to a new, transparent society, or die,” he tells all organizations.  Alas, though, the second half of his talk slows down and devolves into another atheism rant, much too akin to the structured belief systems that he (with some good reason) disdains.  

Alas, as we saw in an earlier blog, most of the punditsphere is filled with bright fools yammering about Big Brother’s eyes, without offering a single suggestion what we might do to effectively hide from them.  Meanwhile ignoring the truly important matter, Big Brother's hands.

== Transparency blips ==

An ex-girlfriend of the co-pilot who deliberately crashed a Germanwings plane into the alps, killing all 150 on board, has told how he vowed to "do something" history would remember him by. Creepy … and totally to be expected.  Indeed. I told you all to expect more and more guys like this.  Call it the Erastratos Syndrome.” See my longstanding proposal for how to deal with it: Names of Infamy: Deny Killers the Notoriety they seek.

Twitter trolls getting their come-uppance when a vigorous (and empowered) dad hunts them down and names them?  Sure, it's straight from The Transparent Society​, but even earlier Vernor Vinge's story "True Names."  In fact this is a good thing. We need a society that forgives (in wary stages) youthful indiscretions.  But these guys have shown us they are the sorts of fellows who might be bullies, if not held accountable.  Most of us aren't.  We deserve better lifelong credibility than you do, putz. And accountability will flow.

Ah justice... Man who made thousands posting women's stolen nudes goes after news sites that posted pictures of him.

More and more eyes are looking down on our planet: As both satellites and UAVs grow cheaper, smaller, and more ubiquitous, researchers and agencies such as SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch are using increasingly pervasive sky images to catch cheaters and destroyers, tracking down environmental violations ranging from oil spills to wetland destruction, from illegal landfills to fracking to illicit fishing activity. Skytruth's motto: If you can see it, you can change it.... 

It all begins with shining light into the shadows.

Alas, the deepest shadows might bring about our worst nightmares. The money now spent on developing “artificial intelligence” or AI for finance, equities or commodities trading etc vastly exceeds the AI research budgets at the top 100 universities, combined.  And nearly all of it is done in secret, to develop programs whose ferocious drives are predatory, parasitical and all-devouring insatiable. 

That’s some combination!  As I have said repeatedly, “Skynet” won’t come out of the military.  It will come out of the portions of our economy that win every political battle and every tax break.  Indeed, what better clue that our AI overlords have already… come awake?

== Finally...politics ==

 "A Florida statute governing the preservation of public records requires elected officials, including the governor, to turn over records pertaining to official business “at the expiration of his or her term of office.”

Let's just take this law, in principle, and: (1) extend it to the period during term of office, and (2) to any communications not with close family members, and (3) require that such official uses only communications devices publicly certified to be reliably be recording all.

Oh, but an interesting aside: it took Jeb Bush 7 years to comply fully with a Florida law requiring him to turn over his emails. So much for yer dubble standard, boys.

Reach for the Skies

I had dinner last night with X-Prize impresario Peter Diamandis, at the annual Strategic Investment Conference run by Altegris and my friend John Mauldin. Vernor Vinge and I were invited to ask the first questions of Peter, who earlier in the day had stopped at UCSD's new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, to help unpack the five finalist entries in the Tricorder X Prize.  Read up on all that, because the future is shifting under our feet.  See especially Peter' Diamandis's orgy of optimism, his book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think. The trends are amazing.  If that future is stymied, it will be because of treason to humanity.

I'll be chatting with Elon Musk in a few weeks. The ongoing series of accomplishments of this fellow - who is rapidly becoming our generation's cult-Edison figure - only begin with electric cars and fantastic space rockets (soon to land on their tails, the way we kids of the 1950s always knew they would.) Elon's new venture, in selling home battery packs to level the load and let some citizens get off-grid, is terrific. We spoke of it three years ago and I want to be a customer.  But this is just the beginning.  He has his eye on drought problems caused by climate change.  More on that in our next science-dump.

And, of course, there is not just one "good billionaire" out there. Amazon's Jeff Bezos also wants to stimulate the future, using well-earned gains from the real capitalism of delivering goods and services.  (Unlike the parasites who use their lucre to warp democracy and siphon wealth via "financial services" and low-royalty resource-extraction.) See (at last) a good look at the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket.  And much more in the background.

== More amazements! ==

There's a new entry in the space-tourism sweepstakes, without the rush (or danger) of a rocket launch. Recently,  World View completed an unmanned flight that took its balloon 100,000 feet in the air, and safely landed the capsule using a parafoil.Team leader Jane Poynter predicts by the time it’s ready for launch, as early as 2016, World View will have spent less than $100 million on development. That means tickets aboard a World View balloon—$75,000 each—will also cost less than half as much as those to board one of Virgin Galactic’s flights.

Mining the skies...NASA is developing its first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid, moving it to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with asteroid samples.  Watch this informative video. The Planetary Resources company -- founded by Peter Diamandis and Erik Schmidt (Google) and other Pacific Coast style moguls -- intends to make us all richer by accessing the cornucopia that awaits us, out there.  

I'm pleased that NASA is also on this course (instead of the insane Bushite notion of re-landing on the sterile-useless Moon.)  We're helping, at NIAC!

Not all space news is great.  There are setbacks. Simmering in the background news is the apparent destruction of an older U.S. Defense Department weather satellite, spewing yet more debris into low earth. The news stories blame a decaying battery that might have overheated and exploded. But take a closer look. This satellite was in approximately a sun-synchronous orbit, at about 846x837 km altitude…near the center of the band congested with both large debris (mostly Russian) and small debris, mostly untracked, from China's 2007 Fengyun/A-sat (anti-satellite weapon) test — the two biggest sources of destructive space debris. According to one prominent space engineer I know: “I strongly suspect that the satellite was hit by untracked Fengyun debris smaller than 10 cm.”

In other words, the peril that we were shown in the movie GRAVITY is very real, indeed.

 == And More....==

Vigorous climate change denialist Sen. Ted Cruz is chairman of the Senate’s Space and Science Committee.  His recent, hostile interaction with NASA Director Charles Bolden should be the stuff of legend, in which Bolden defended the fact that NASA builds satellites and other missions aimed at studying one particular planet – our Earth.  It seems that those who proclaim “we don’t have enough science yet, to confirm global climate change!” also do not want the science that might answer those questions.

And you are surprised? Under G.W. Bush, NASA was ordered to drop “Earth” from its vocabulary.  Rick Scott's Florida - the US state most vulnerable to rising seas - has banned all state agencies for planning against days that nearly all scientists -- the folks who actually know stuff -- see coming at us like a freight train.

And.... reaching for the skies...A lovely animation of a concept for a lunar space elevator.  

A fascinating article on how constellations of small satellites may deliver broadband to the whole world.  

How cool!  Watching the behavior of stars and gases in collisions of clusters of galaxies… and using gravitational lensing to measure the dark matter… enables astronomers to learn something fundamental about the nature of dark matter.  

A lovely interview at JPL with INTERSTELLAR  screenwriter Jonathan Nolan and my friend Kip Thorne, the physics advisor on the film.

== Two miracles of space! ==

In his book Of A Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer credited the Apollo era NASA with accomplishing two "miracles" of a biblical scale. First - it gob-smacked him one day that "these geeks are actually going to the moon!" The second bona fide miracle? They were actually succeeding at making it boring!

Seriously, of all the mazillion channels of TV, which one covers the most exciting and inherently interesting real life stuff that's going on, right now, in real time? And which one is the most tediously sleep-inducing?  The NASA Channel, of course.  Making all of this worse is the stunning and willful wave of cynicism that has swept all generations, especially of Americans, who used to have such a gosh-wow reputation for their eager, can-do spirit.

What is the anthem of the Baby Boomers? It was provided by Peter Finch, in the movie Network. Remember?  "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" 

An utterly futile paean to sanctimony and the drug high of useless rage, it's poisoned us. As I lay down colorfully here: Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be mad as hell?

But -- inspired by Peter Diamandis -- I declare that you don't have to put up with that, anymore. Just pay attention to what we've done, as a people, in the last few months:

Human beings -- well, Europeans -- landed a laboratory on a comet!

One of our robots started climbing a mountain on Mars.

We confirmed Ganymede has more liquid water than planet Earth.

New data doubled the estimated size of our own galaxy.

The New Horizons probe is fast approaching its July encounter with freaking Pluto....

And humanity - via NASA - has arrived in orbit around Ceres! Finding hints that the dwarf planet/asteroid might also have buries seas.

What a year it's been, with all of that... plus discovering scads of extrasolar planets -- numbering up to five thousand at latest count...

...and finally getting satellites out there to study the Earth (after a previous administration deliberately sabotaged science).  Indeed, these are amazing times. And in a couple of months, our New Horizons emissary will sweep past freaking Pluto! Wowzer.  And that's just space.  You know that I could type till my fingers were bloody, and not run out of reasons that you... and yes, I mean directly you... ought to be proud as heck.

Hence, the most amazing thing is that we... aren't!  The cult of fear-mongering cynicism has grown so intense that it's time for you to get mad! Mad at the merchants of fear and doubt and small-mindedness. Mad at the propagandists who seek to keep you "mad as hell" all the time.  Mad at the whole "I'm as mad as hell" ethos that poisoned a generation, a nation, and threatens all our kids.

Next time something cool happens, on Earth or in space, get up and shout out the window "I AM A MEMBER OF A CIVILIZATION THAT DOES STUFF LIKE THIS!"

Watch my rant about how we need to (aggressively!) fight cynicism with pride and joy.

Or else...

... be proud to be a member of the same species as cretins like this one:

 “NASA should stop wasting time exploring other planets because God's only experiment with life is on Earth," according to televangelist Pat Robertson.

We are at war, all right. A war for the future that, ironically, we can only win by fostering the confident song of ambitious joy in our hearts.