The Decline of Laughter

The Decline of Laughter

"What is needed, it seems to me, is a seriously rude, arrogant, and well-educated class of journalists, who would lend each other support in ridiculing the pretensions of their censors."

4Frontiers internship

So it finally happened. I'm now a research & technology intern at 4Frontiers Corporation. It's a space commerce company set up in 2005, incorporated in Florida, with the goal of eventually getting a privately funded manned base on Mars in an economically viable way (as opposed to Bush's so-called "Vision for Space Exploration" which will result in yet another taxpayer-fueled boondoggle on the Moon and a repeat of the Apollo flag-and-footprints missions on Mars). Not that I dislike space exploration - quite the opposite - but I despise those who would have us foot the bill for political advantage.

In any case, the private exploration and exploitation of space should be encouraged. And 4Frontiers is one of the few organizations spearheading the effort. In fact, they're actually doing much more about their goal than NASA is, with much fewer resources. Which says a lot about government-funded projects those days.

http://www.4frontierscorp.org

The name 4Frontiers comes from the "four frontiers" of the forthcoming space economy: Earth, Moon, Mars, and the asteroids. Their plan is to exploit the economic potential of the moon, Mars, and the asteroids as to create a sustainable manned venture to Mars. Here's the interns page. I'm on the bottom.

http://www.4frontierscorp.com/company/interns.php

Because there is a non-disclosure agreement limiting what I can say right now, I can only repeat what the company has already released in the media. I am working with a few other interns on a MarsBase1 concept, to be built on Earth for research and testing purposes and for "informative entertainment".

Mars Oracle Update

I've been laying off on the Mars Oracle design document for a few weeks now. Because of finals and these two chapters for that writing contest (see previous post), I simply couldn't work on it as often as I would like to. On top of this, I missed the turn-in deadline. The reason is that this window of opportunity MarsDrive gave us was meant to produce updates to existing documents, not for these (like me) who realized they had to scrap their existing plans and start all over again. I racked up quite a page count over these three months, but it wasn't enough to justify a final turn-in.

The good news is that the Mars Oracle document is, despite its unfinished state, over four times as dense as my original sample return plan and roughly two-thirds longer. Unlike the older plan, it contains raw numbers and estimates. For example, I finally figured out the ascent vehicle's possible fuel requirements, Delphi's likely atmospheric entry parameters, and the estimated trajectories for both the outbound and return legs. All of that required mere algebra, and a few choice freeware. That truly surprised me, since I assumed these areas would be beyond my limited education in aerospace engineering.

One change I made in the overall design since my last posting:

Diborane-carbon dioxide combustion has been dropped for the ascent. Upon further research and analysis, I found that diborane would weigh down the entry vehicle too much to be viable (since it is imported from Earth). To make matters worse, diborane is a dirty fuel that leaves too much solid byproducts (which can choke off the nozzle throat after a certain time).

Instead, the ascent vehicle will be fueled with liquid carbon monoxide and oxygen procured from atmospheric CO2 via high-temperature electrolysis. Carbon monoxide isn't the best rocket fuel, but it burns clean with oxygen and is environmentally friendly (for Mars, not for Earth!). Overall, this combination's specific impulse is good enough that the propellant tanks won't need to be too large. But the best part is that Delphi will be landed empty. Because it will be extremely light for a sample return lander, combined with new methods for precision landing coming online, thousands of sites at many different elevations will be available. Since 100% of the return propellants are generated from the Martian atmosphere, there is no need to store any liquid en route. This will do wonders for the mission cost.

I should be able to return to Mars Oracle after this month, possibly earlier. Stay tuned.

Freedom in Fiction

Sorry for the long absence. I've been busy with school and Mars Oracle. But now that finals are over, I finally have some writing to finish up. You see, there is a writing contest called Freedom in Fiction which is supported by the Mackinac Center on Public Policy. The idea behind this contest is to find the next bestselling author who can tell a compelling story with pro-freedom and/or anti-totalitarian themes.

http://www.mackinac.org/freedominfiction

Two sample chapters must be submitted, along with an outline of your story, by January 1st. Come March, a panel of judges will review these chapters and select up to 10 authors, who will be asked to finish their stories in exactly one year. In addition, these finalists will receive $1000 each. The one whose story is selected in 2009 will receive $10,000. Depending on how well the published book sells, another 90,000 dollars can be won.

So far, I think my two chapters are about halfway done. One is the prologue and the other is the second to last chapter. For those who don't know... it involves a genetically engineered supersoldier who's at odds with an extremely powerful totalitarian regime. Think of it as a mix of Metal Gear Solid, 1984, Halo, and V for Vendetta :)

The "New and Improved" Big Brother

Everyone needs to read this. Be aware.

The "New and Improved" Big Brother

Today's comment is by Mark Nestmann, our Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant, Privacy expert and President of The Nestmann Group.

Dear A-Letter Reader,

Not that long ago, it was easy to know when you were in a police state. But not anymore.

Indeed, in just the last 12 months, the United States has quietly brought into existence several initiatives that resurrect some of the worst aspects of a Nazi or Soviet-style police state. But they've done it in such a way that almost no one noticed.

The Old Big Brother

In the old big brother police states, you knew your place. And you acted accordingly.

Phones were tapped - often badly. Once, a colleague told me that when he was visiting Syria, he picked up the phone in his hotel room and heard his monitors chattering in Arabic. After a moment, the line became silent and he made his call - with full knowledge that every word was being transcribed for later review by Syrian intelligence.

In the classic police state, you also knew - immediately - when you'd crossed the line from acceptable to unacceptable behavior. The police would come out, kill a few members of the opposition party, and then retreat behind the barricades. This still occurs in some police states -like Myanmar - with its ongoing campaign to stamp out dissent.

Naturally, mail is read in an old-style police state. Nor were these efforts particularly sophisticated. A friend of mine from Cuba once told me that when he was growing up in the United States, his parents, who had remained behind in Cuba, wrote to him often. Not only were their letters opened, but they were also censored. Entire sentences were obliterated with a magic marker to make them unreadable.

Another example of a classic police state is the use of internal passports. In the Soviet Union, you couldn't travel outside your own village unless you received the appropriate stamp on your internal passport. Naturally, permission was often forged, or purchased in exchange for a small bribe.

The New Big Brother

The new big brother is much more subtle, yet far more intrusive. Especially if you live in the United States, you're under a pervasive and continuous surveillance of which the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Castro could only dream.

Consider wiretapping, for instance. Thanks to a new law from Congress, enacted in July - the so-called "Protect America Act," it's perfectly legal for the government to wiretap U.S. citizens, without a warrant. All that's required is for the attorney general to certify that foreign intelligence gathering is a "significant purpose" of the wiretap.

The wiretapping takes place at the telephone company switch - not at your home or office - so you'll never know whether your conversations are being monitored or not. No annoying clicks or hums. No clumsy attempts to stop chatter on the line when you pick up the phone.

Crossing the Line

Then there's the matter of political protest. For instance, plenty of Americans oppose the Iraq war. And the Bush administration isn't very happy about this domestic opposition.

But instead of sending out goon squads armed with night sticks, clubs and machine guns, the way that an old-style dictator might do, the Bush administration's response was much more subtle.

On July 17, President Bush simply signed an executive order that essentially outlaws all opposition to his Iraq war policy. If you breach this order's provisions, you could lose everything you own: your home, your car, your retirement account, your bank accounts, etc. - all based on a secret determination by the Treasury Department that you have no right to contest in court.

You Are What You Write

U.S. law has long required a search warrant to open first-class mail unless postal inspectors suspect it contains something dangerous, like a bomb, or contraband like narcotics. But last December, President Bush quietly asserted a new government prerogative to open domestic mail without a warrant, probable cause, or even suspicion that it contains dangerous materials or contraband.

Bush did this through a mechanism known as a "signing statement." This is a statement issued when a bill is signed into law, stipulating that the president has the authority to ignore certain of its provisions. Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, more than all other presidents combined.

The last time the U.S. government had a widespread mail-opening program was in the 1970s, at the height of the Vietnam War. During this period, U.S. intelligence services became highly proficient at opening mail and then resealing it without the recipient ever being the wiser. And that was 30 years ago. It's hardly unreasonable to suspect that today's surreptitious mail opening techniques are even less detectable.

Permission to Travel

Finally, there's the internal passport. In a "free" country like the United States, it would never do to issue such an obvious reminder of government oppression. People might complain. Even the Fox Network might start complaining about our eroding civil liberties.

Once again, though, the U.S. government came up with a much more subtle, high-tech, replacement for the internal passport. It's called the "Advance Passenger Information System" (APIS).

With the APIS, you'll need to obtain permission from the Transportation Security Administration to travel on any commercial airliner or ship that goes to or from the United States. Until APIS clears you, you won't receive your boarding pass. You'll also need permission to travel through the United States (e.g., if you're changing planes at a U.S. airport on a trip between two foreign countries).

Naturally, the entire process - for both domestic and international travel - will occur in total secrecy. If you're denied permission to travel, you won't be able to appeal the decision to any court. Your only recourse will be through the TSA bureaucracy.

Fighting Back Against the New Big Brother

Indicating displeasure with the old big brother was relatively simple, albeit dangerous. You simply dispatched a few thousand (or hundred thousand) demonstrators into the streets. Sometimes it worked, as in the Czech Republic's Velvet Revolution. Other times, it didn't work, as in the violent crackdown now occurring in Myanmar.

But with the new, warm and fuzzy big brother, police state machinations are so subtle that it's impossible to know if you're being watched. You can't tell your telephone calls are monitored. You can't see if your mail has been opened, or know if you're on a terrorist watch list. Your first clue that a problem exists might be when you're denied the right to board a plane, or more ominously, when your bank account is frozen.

What's more, the vast majority of Americans seem to like being monitored. It makes them feel important. Perhaps that's why reality TV shows are so popular, and why young people spend much of their free time chatting over insecure Internet connection, viewing one another on their web-cams.

However, if you don't like the idea of having your telephone calls, letters, political activities, and travel habits continuously monitored, there are steps you can take to avoid this type of surveillance. Here are a few suggestions.

1. One of the best ways to avoid telephone surveillance is to use a "throwaway" cell phone you purchase over the counter, with cash, along with a prepaid calling card. When you recharge the phone, don't use a credit card - buy another prepaid calling card, with cash.

2. To protect yourself from being secretly prosecuted for a political crime, such as opposition to the War in Iraq, move a substantial portion of your assets outside the United States. It's unlikely that most foreign countries will cooperate with enforcing civil forfeitures for political crimes. They're particularly unlikely to cooperate if the government targets your otherwise lawful activities or charitable contributions, without any accompanying criminal proceeding.

3. While it's impossible to know whether a particular letter you send to someone will be opened, you can prepare the envelope, and the contents, in such a way that the recipient will know it's been inspected. One classic way to do this is with wax seals. It's possible for those reading your mail to duplicate whatever wax seal you use. But this precaution will discourage casual opening of your mail.

4. If you travel via commercial airline or steamship into, out of, or within the United States, you won't be able to avoid the APIS "permission to travel" gauntlet. If you value your travel privacy, one way to avoid this system is to walk across the Mexican border at any border checkpoint, find the nearest bus station, and disembark in a major city. Purchase your round-trip air tickets there. You'll be subject to the Mexican APIS, but so long as your flight doesn't come close to or cross a U.S. border, it won't be subject to the permission to travel initiative.

Yes, big brother is back. Warm and fuzzy, or not, the initiatives taken in just the last 12 months by the Bush administration invade your privacy in ways you scarcely could have imagined. It's time to wake up.

Fall Quarter

The past few days has been good to me. I'm taking 20 credits at Tacoma Community College, goal being an university transfer degree in engineering so I can go to University of Washington to obtain a bachelor's in aeronautics and astronautics. The classes look much more interesting than what I had at Rochester Institute of Technology - Intro to Philosophy is actually going to have debates in the last few weeks of class! RIT did not have these, which shows me that, while it isn't a half-bad school, it is alarmingly egg-headed.

Other than Intro to Philosophy, I'm taking Intro to Psychology, Psychology of Human Sexuality, and Calculus I. Three of these four I am repeating from the Institute in order to raise my GPA. Once I complete Calculus I satisfactorily, I should be able to get to the real meat of my degree.

Mars Oracle Sample Return & Ballistic Hopping w/ Carbon Dioxide ISRU

More than a year ago, a private consortium called MarsDrive posted a design contest for a robotic sample return mission to Mars. The rationale for this mission is that it's very expensive to send any payload beyond Earth's orbit, hence the laboratories we can put on Mars will have to be very small. With the limitations of robotic technologies and the long radio delay between Earth and Mars, even the best robotic mission we can send will never compare to what humans can do in a fully-equipped laboratory. If we can just get a few grams of Martian soil (referred thereafter as regolith) and rocks and bring them back, we could analyze them for years on end. With this data, it will support an eventual human presence on Mars.

There's just one other thing. Mars enthusiasts will already know what I'm talking about, but I'm writing this mostly for the layperson. The amount of fuel required to get to Mars and back is no mean number. There is no way we can do this mission, much less a human trip, if it carries all of its own propellant. That's where In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) comes in play. A decade ago, Dr. Robert Zubrin came up with a way to manufacture a number of propellants on the Martian surface from liquid hydrogen and indigenous carbon dioxide. This method cuts the amount of propellant brought to Mars by a huge factor. Since then, almost all sample return concepts have included ISRU.

Now for the contest. Even with ISRU, a Mars sample return mission will still carry a stratospheric price tag and a huge burden of risk. Simply put, we haven't yet launched a payload from Mars. There are many things that could go wrong, and testing all the potential points of failure has its own astronomical budget. This is why MarsDrive decided to post this contest, to bring out the most innovative and cost-effective sample return plan. There are six of us competing and each one of us have posted an entry very different from the others. So far, we're on our second-generation plans. I admittedly went into this contest without knowing the faintest thing about space mission design, having completed only two years of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, so my first draft was a bit embarrassingly... amateurish. But since MarsDrive posted ALL of our first-draft entries, I've gotten a good look at each of them and concluded that two of them were much better than mine and the rest worse (much less thought out). That put mine in the middle. Not bad for someone who's completed only half of his education, right?

So after an interminable delay in which MarsDrive couldn't get its judges together (lucky stroke for me!), they gave us a three-month window of opportunity to update our entries. They're all due at the start of November. I've been working tirelessly to come up with a much better plan than the ones who "beat" me last time. My first draft included a ballistic hopper that runs on indigenous carbon dioxide, but I erroneously combined it with the ascent vehicle. Bad judgment on my part. So this time, I'm separating it from the ascent vehicle (to increase performance on both vehicles) and introducing a number of things that will make the mission even more cost-effective than my competitors.

I have called my design plan Mars Oracle. Based on this name, the two vehicles of this mission are the return vehicle (Delphi) and the ballistic rocket hopper (Socrates). The ballistic hopper has its own documentation in aerospace circles, as it is already being considered for future Mars rover missions because of its potential to investigate a wide array of sites separated from each other by distance and impassable terrain. I thought it would be perfect for a sample return mission for that reason (can get a much more diverse assortment of samples)

Instead of a rover that runs under its own power, I chose a design based on one of the studies done by the European Space Agency. It is a small rover that runs on caterpillar tracks, like a tank, and is capable of reconfiguring itself from a roving position to a drilling position. Because of mass reasons, It does not run under its own power. Instead, it gets all of its power and communications through a tether connected to the hopper (and return vehicle). That way, this rover can be carried by the hopper very easily. I envision this mini-rover to weigh the same as Sojourner did, but with a much greater instrumentation-to-mass percentage because it doesn't have to carry solar panels, antennas, etc etc.

After much agonizing, I eliminated liquid hydrogen from the ISRU scheme. It's a bitch to store on Earth (hydrogen economy advocates listen up!), even worse in space, and very little better on Mars. Because of its low molecular weight, it can leak out of a solid-metal tank. This so-called boil-off forces the mission to carry a greater amount than necessary, and it embrittles metal in the process. To make matters worse, liquid hydrogen is an ultra-cryogen, meaning that it must be stored at infernally cold temperatures. How cold, you ask? Well, as cold as space can get, but that's not half of it, because space can get uncomfortably hot sometimes. Not even Mars can get as cold as liquid hydrogen has to be, which leads to thermal management complexities that, while can be done, are still unnecessary. And even after all of this, it can still boil off! Even with zero-boil off storage technologies, there's the extremely low density to contend with, which leads to heavier and bigger tanks for the equivalent amount of fuel.

I won't name my choice of fuel for fear of my competitors peeking in. But rest assured that it's much more dense than liquid hydrogen, burns very well in carbon dioxide, and easily storable in space and on Mars (i.e., it doesn't boil off). It's a bit on the toxic side, but that won't be a problem for these technicians on the launchpad.

All in all, I think Mars Oracle has the potential to be much more robust and leaner than its competitors. But we'll see how the judges decide on that come May.