Solipsism Gradient

Finally, someone came along and articulated my view that fearing gene-modified foods is silly. Richard Dawkins, noted geneticist and inventor of the “meme” meme, wrote this:

The genetic code, on the other hand, with a few very minor exceptions, is identical in every living creature on this planet, from sulphur bacteria to giant redwood trees, from mushrooms to men. All living creatures, on this planet at least, are the same “make”.

The consequences are amazing. It means that a software subroutine (that’s exactly what a gene is) can be carried over into another species. This is why the famous “antifreeze” gene, originally evolved by Antarctic fish, can save a tomato from frost damage. In the same way, a Nasa programmer who wants a neat square-root routine for his rocket guidance system might import one from a financial spreadsheet. A square root is a square root is a square root. A program to compute it will serve as well in a space rocket as in a financial projection.

…What this means is that there is a case to be made on both sides of the argument, and we need to exercise subtle judgment. The genetic engineers are right that we can save time and trouble by climbing on the back of the millions of years of R & D that Darwinian natural selection has put into developing biological antifreeze (or whatever we are seeking). But the doomsayers would also have a point if they softened their stance from emotional gut rejection to a rational plea for rigorous safety testing. No reputable scientist would oppose such a plea. It is rightly routine for all new products, not just genetically engineered ones.

Recommended by Mark Frauenfelder on boing boing.

Wired has an article about building a beanstalk. This means a structure reaching from someplace on the Equator right into geosynchronous orbit and beyond; depending on your point of view, this can be considered a tower, an elevator, or a cable. There are several proposals. Placing an asteroid into orbit and spinning out two cables – one inwards, one outwards – seems to be the most practical way. Elevators would go along the cable and lower the cost of getting stuff into and out of orbit to less than 1% of current levels.

The only material theoretically able to resist the enormous stresses and support its own weight is made of carbon nanotubes. Only in the past few weeks some researchers have been able to make longer strands of nanotubes (20 centimeters) in larger quantities, but a beanstalk would need billions of tons of meter-long nanotubes bound into a light but strong matrix. This kind of manufacturing may become possible over the next few decades.

As any SF reader knows, this sort of thing has been featured in several books. Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Fountains of Paradise” is the first I recall offhand. I’ll post a more comprehensive list later.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Red Mars”, “Green Mars” and “Blue Mars” go into much more detail about the technical and political aspects of building such a thing. But he also discusses the scary aspects: who will control the elevator? What if it’s brought down by terrorists?

Time.com has comments on the possible cause of the accident. They say that most probably the International Space Station will be evacuated somehow and then abandoned for a few years at least. Dave Winer’s Scripting News pointed at that link and posted many others.

Ernie the Attorney quotes Richard Feynman‘s thoughts on the Challenger accident:

…For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Doc Searls‘ comments on Challenger are also worth rereading. Jim Flowers is yet another weblogger setting up a collection of links and comments on the accident.

Only days after the 17th anniversary of the Challenger accident, the Columbia breaks up while landing after an otherwise successful two-week mission. All 7 astronauts are presumed dead. There were reports of a piece of thermal tile or insulation breaking up during lift-off and hitting one of the wings, but technicians concluded that this didn’t do significant damage – seems to have been a mistake. But then, they couldn’t stay up indefinitely, either…

All principal news sources and weblogs are tracking the news. Scott Adams is building a list here.

By a coincidence, today I started rereading “Shuttle Down” written in 1980 by G. Harry Stine under his pen name “Lee Correy”. This book has the shuttle Atlantis making an emergency landing on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Of course, in the book there’s a happy ending… Stine, who died in 1997, was active in the early US rocket experiments and was co-founder of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy.

BTW David Brin‘s “Earth”, one of my favorite books, also features a shuttle stranded on Rapa Nui.

Update: another coincidence: the third major disaster for NASA, the fire which killed three astronauts inside the Apollo-1 capsule (on the launch pad) happened Jan. 27, 1967. The Challenger accident was proven to be related to low launch temperatures… the Apollo accident seems to have no such connection. However, both showed a lethal combination of design failures, mechanical failures and administrative screw-ups. No doubt this happened again.