Atomic trains! Space patrol cars! Robots, space tanks and of course — the “Luna Hovercraft”! I love this stuff. See Life Magazine’s gallery:
50 years ago this month, Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space.
Although the intensely celebrated accomplishment was technically much less challenging than that of Yuri Gagarin’s earlier flight, it was the event for which America had been waiting. (Gagarin’s flight orbited the Earth, while Shepard’s capsule stayed only on a 15-minute, ballistic trajectory).
Shepard, a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot, was one of America’s original 7 “Space Heores”. Besides Project Mercury, Shepard also flew on Gemini, and later in 1969, he commanded Apollo 14 and landed on the moon.
Shepard died from leukemia in 1998, in Pebble Beach, California.
“It’s ‘Mother’s Day’. Not ‘Mothers Day’!”
“A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself.” — Anna Jarvis
Anna Jarvis (1864 – 1948) was a formidable lady. I should have liked the pleasure of meeting her. She is known for creating Mother’s Day, but she was extremely unhappy with what her idea had grown into.
Mrs. Jarvis championed Mother’s Day as a simple day to honor one’s own mother, the most special mother a person could have — not all mothers. This is why she was adament that it should always be spelled “Mother’s Day”, but certainly not “Mothers Day”.
The evolution of Mother’s Day into a commercialized celebration appalled and aggrieved Mrs. Jarvis. She launched a massive campaign against its commercial exploitation. Boycotts and vitriolic denouncements of candy and greeting card gifts were just some of the tactics used in her appeals to bring Mother’s Day back to basics. Unfortunately, she was hardly successful and ultimately died, some would say, from grief.
Brian Handwork has the story in National Geographic Magazine.
Please note: The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author, Mr. Musk. (Cheaper ways to space are the subject of my most recent magazine article) — RK
Whenever someone proposes to do something that has never been done before, there will always be skeptics.
So when I started SpaceX, it was not surprising when people said we wouldn’t succeed. But now that we’ve successfully proven Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon, there’s been a steady stream of misinformation and doubt expressed about SpaceX’s actual launch costs and prices.
As noted last month by a Chinese government official, SpaceX currently has the best launch prices in the world and they don’t believe they can beat them. This is a clear case of American innovation trumping lower overseas labor rates.
I recognize that our prices shatter the historical cost models of government-led developments, but these prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or “teaser” rates meant to lure in an eager market only to be increased later. These prices are based on known costs and a demonstrated track record, and they exemplify the potential of America’s commercial space industry.
Here are the facts:
Today is the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Chernobyl disaster. I was in Vienna, Austria at the time. More than 1,000 km away — but still not at a “safe” distance, as we eventually found out.
We did not hear about the disaster until several days later. The Scandinavians had sounded alarm bells when they suddenly observed radioactive precipitation. For several more days, the Soviet Union denied any involvement. The Kremlin then proceeded to downplay the true scale of what was going on at the plant, which was engulfed in a radioactive inferno straight from hell.
Meanwhile, things were getting scary for us. Heavy rain was falling in Vienna and many areas in Europe. The news got worse from hour to hour. Within days, the radioactive fallout could be measured in grass, vegetables and in dairy products.
Soon thereafter, radioactive pollutants from Chernobyl could be measured in many food products. In some, they exceeded legal limits. Whether these products were really discarded (and where) will forever remain a mystery. Who could tell for certain?
One particular method by which the contamination problem was handled was fascinating: suppose a dairy plant has milk with levels of cesium-137 (also spelled “caesium”) above the legal threshold. Rather than throwing out good money, it is perfectly legal to simply mix the contaminated milk with milk from an uncontaminated area. Voila! No costs for discarding the radioactive batch. And the product can still be sold legally. In other words, the mass of consumers becomes a nuclear waste disposal without even knowing it.
It turned out that concentrating certain foodstuffs also concentrates the radioactive contaminants. For example, if dry milk powder is made from milk contaminated with Cs-137, the concentrations can get quite high. Dry milk powder is the main component of baby formula. What to do with all the contaminated baby formula?
Some of the contaminated batches were reportedly sent to Third World countries. The “rationale”: slightly contaminated formula is better than no formula, and besides: since there was less “overall” exposure on other continents, the people there would still receive less than the maximum “allowable” dose.
Which brings me to an important point. Who decides what “allowable” and “acceptable” exposure thresholds are?
We could go into how the observational data was obtained, and how the “scientific consensus” was formed. But it would be long-winded and complex. Perhaps this is good subject for a book I might write one day. (It would shock most of you).
If there is truly a scientific consensus, why do the legal limits vary from country to country?
Then, there’s the problem with all thresholds. At Fukushima, there is now a forbidden zone 20 km around the reactors. Tens of thousands of people have unceremoniously been kicked out of their homes and businesses and are not allowed to return.
So if a house is 19 km from the plant, one is ordered to leave. If a house is 21 km away, it is supposedly safe and everyone should be happy? (Because some force of magic stops radioactive stops at the 20 km mark?)
Let’s say the Great Leader (based upon the esteemed opinions of highly respected experts selected by the Great Leader) sets the legal threshold of I-131 in water to a certain level. Does this mean we are perfectly safe if we drink just as much water to consume only 99% of the legal level? But if we ingest 101%, we might suddenly keel over?
Isn’t the same water used to make coffee for a 90-year old the same that’s used to make infant formula, which may be the main source of water and calories for a baby?
Is there is no difference between heavy-set grandpa who eats sushi only on occasion, and a young woman who weighs half of grandpa, is pregnant and loves seafood?
In addition to the whole demented absurdity surrounding thresholds, there is another inherent problem. Numbers tend to promote a sterile, dehumanizing viewpoint. The root data are just based on statistical evidence, but worthless when viewed from the level of an individual human being affected by real life consequences.
Let’s say contamination with a certain substance causes cancer deaths to 1/1000th of a percent in the population. You might say: Okay, that’s a very small risk, considering that 20% of the population in industrialized countries dies from cancer anyway. Therefore, 1/1000th of a percent is quite acceptable.
But 1/1000th of a percent would mean 3,000 deaths in the United States. Now picture 3,000 people. Can you look each them into the face and tell them that their death from cancer is “acceptable” to you?
What if you or one of your loved is among this group of 3,000? Ah, you see? Most likely, you would not find this to be quite acceptable. In the end, what is acceptable (or not) gets rather personal.
Today, there are still hundreds of farms in Britain on which sheep milk contains more than the “acceptable” levels of radioactive contamination. Just a few weeks ago, wild boar in Austria were found to be contaminated beyond the legal thresholds. (The investigators had bought the contaminated boar’s meat off the shelf, in regular stores). And there are similar problems with some reindeer in Scandinavia.
How many lives did the Chernobyl disaster take? Estimates range from several thousand additional cancer deaths to several hundred thousands. (A recent paper on the subject was presented by Lisbeth Gronlund here).
But just like thresholds and maximum exposure levels, these numbers are not based on real, direct hard evidence, but rather on theories, assumptions, inferred conclusions and speculation.
Unfortunately, the whole truth will never be known.
I recently wrote a feature story about the many uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (“drones”). It was published in February 2011 issue of the German Gruner+Jahr publication, Wunderwelt Wissen.
I truly believe that drones will revolutionize law enforcement, border patrol, search and rescue, security, agriculture, environmental monitoring, fire fighting, traffic control and many other areas.
Here is a good example for what drones can do. Flying over the Fukushima reactors is very dangerous at this time. Not only because of the direct radiation, but also because radioactive particles can get sucked into aircraft. Unmanned drones, on the other hand, can fly very close and and provide images and measurements around the clock. Some can even hover in the air and get within a few meters of parts to be inspected.
Here are a few aerial shots.
Although I have been covering the nuclear industry, nuclear weapons and proliferation issues for about 20 years, I have not commented on Fukushima on this blog. I didn’t feel I had anything to add to what was being reported in the popular media.
But now, the information being released is beginning to appear inconsistent and contradictory. These are signs of a coverup in progress.
The nuclear event at Fukushima looked bad from its very beginning with the Tohoku 2011 earthquake. My initial concern was that it could get much worse from there. And it did.
I think my Australian colleague Mark Colvin summed it up best in his Twitter message: “Most worrying thing about Fukushima: every day something happens that was categorically ruled out the day before.”
A ghostly image from inside the control room at Fukushima, where emergency workers are trying to assess the situation with flashlights. Click to enlarge. Foto: TEPCO
It is rather typical for such incidents that the public is not told the entire truth at all times.
I remember Chernobyl well. I was in Vienna at the time, when suddenly the Scandinavians began to wonder why they were suddenly measuring radioactivity in remote lakes, and soon thereafter, in the rain. The Soviet Union was still not admitting that their Chernobyl reactor No. 4 was literally on fire and out of control.
The Chernobyl event turned out to be the most massive nuclear debacle in history, forcing the evacuation and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people, spewing radioactive pollution over areas thousands of miles away, and resulting in countless deaths. And yet, the seriousness was only gradually admitted — too late for many who ultimately paid with their lives.
Let’s jump back to Fukushima: there was a little noticed tidbit released by Japan’s Kyodo news agency. It reported that a neutron beam had been detected on 13 different occasions, over a period of several days, at a location 1.5 km (about a mile) southwest of the plant. (Source: http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80539.html)
The beam was reportedly weak — but this distracts from the real issues: Why was it there in the first place? And why was it not made public until 10 days later?
When heavy atoms split in an event called “nuclear fission”, highly energetic particles called “neutrons” shoot out with high velocity. They are so fast that they will simply fly through most matter.
Although these free neutrons can damage living tissues through which they pass, they are too fast to split heavy atoms. Therefore, in a nuclear reactor, a “moderator” substance is employed to slow them down. At just the right speed (and therefore: the right energy level), these neutrons will split additional heavy atoms in the nuclear fuel. This results in the release of more neutrons, which split more fuel atoms, and so forth — the so-called self-sustaining “chain reaction”.
Normally, these free neutrons are contained within the reactor vessel. They certainly should not be measurable from a mile away. For the neutron beam to exist, some kind of nuclear fission reaction must have taken place without shielding. But how and why?
So the report of a neutron beam is very alarming for several reasons:
First, it could be an indication that a reactor containment vessel has split open. Or, at least that pipes have vented or spilled gas or liquid containing fissile materials from the inside of the reactor core.
Unfortunately, it is most likely that the point of origin would have been Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. This is the only of the three destroyed units running on mixed-oxide fuel. This type of fuel contains a high percentage of plutonium, which could be the explanation for the observed neutron beam.
Depending on how bad the leak is or was, this might mean that the surrounding ecosystem could be poisoned for generations.
But what alarms me even more is that the neutron emissions were reportedly detected on March 13, but not admitted to the public until March 23. What exactly happened on March 13?
In hindsight, it now seems interesting that days ago, some sources at the IAEA were already speaking of suspicions that the primary reactor containment vessel had failed. But they did not clarify what evidence they had.
Has the IAEA been told of the neutron emissions much earlier, and has everyone conspired to keep this tell-tale sign from the public? Perhaps in order to allow an ordered evacuation?
During the subsequent days and until today, the official line of TEPCO has been that a primary vessel breach was “unlikely”, then “not certain”. Today, Japan’s prime minister reportedly voiced concerns that indeed, it may have occurred.
Short of a reactor containment vessel breach — could the neutrons have originated from spent fuel? Not unless there is something very seriously wrong. After fuel elements are used in the reactor, they are hot and highly radioactive. So they are stored outside of the primary reactor vessel, in a “spent fuel pool” of water. The water does two things: it cools the fuel, and it also absorbs some of the radiation it emits.
The fuel for the types of reactors used at Fukushima Daiichi comes in form of pellets, which are contained in long metal rods. We know that at Fukushima some (most? all?) of the water in the pool was lost. The fuel elements were partially or fully exposed to air. Without proper cooling, the casings holding the fuel may split, and gases containing fissile materials may escape.
Meanwhile, workers have been dousing the reactors inside the destroyed buildings, and the exposed spent fuel elements with salty sea water, which of course is corrosive and generally a material of last resort among firefighters.
Minerals from the water will undergo chemical reactions with the radioactive isotopes emitted from the reactors or leaking spent fuel elements. This results in thousands of different radioactive chemicals with different soluability, some of which will seep into the soil, ground water and the coastal waters. But right now, this is seen as the lesser evil.
Still, the flow of information is spotty and consists of pieces of a puzzle that does not seem to fit together. Something is very fishy here.
UPDATE, March 26, 2011:
TEPCO admitted today that water pools in the basement of at least one reactor building was “10 million times more radioactive” than what was to be expected of water from inside the reactor cores. This is another indication that (a) casings of fuel elements have broken and (b) a primary reactor vessel has been breached.
UPDATE, March 27, 2011:
In a stunning reversal comes now TEPCO’s announcement that it made a “mistake in the assessment of the measurement of iodine-134” and that the “the number is not credible”.
As Julie Makinen and Kenji Hall write in the Los Angeles Times today, “But now, more than two weeks into the disaster, the updates — via news conferences, press releases, website data charts and Twitter feeds, all laden with technical terms such as “bequerels,” “microsieverts,” “millisieverts” and “iodine-131″ — have become so frequent and so granular as to become essentially indecipherable and meaningless to the average person.”
Actually, I’d expand this to say the releases (both the radioactive and the information) are full of gaps, contradictory and inexplicable even to experts.
UPDATE, March 28, 2011:
According to TEPCO announcements today, traces of plutonium have been found in several soil samples taken from the site. This is almost irrefutable proof for a breach for a primary reactor containment vessel, fuel element casings, and a partial fuel meltdown.
Adventist Development and Relief Agency International’s Response to Japan Tsunami
All Hands Volunteers’s Response to Japan Tsunami
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Response to Japan Tsunami
American Red Cross International Services’s Response to Japan Tsunami
AmeriCares’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT)’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Baptist World Alliance / Baptist World Aid’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Brother’s Brother Foundation’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Catholic Relief Services’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Church World Service’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Direct Relief International’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Giving Children Hope’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Habitat for Humanity International’s Response to Japan Tsunami
International Medical Corps’s Response to Japan Tsunami
International Rescue Committee’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Japanese Red Cross Society (English site)
Mercy Corps’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Medicines Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)
(has a medical team on the ground, but donations go into the general fund)
Operation Blessing’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Relief International’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Save the Children’s Response to Japan Tsunami
UNICEF (United States Fund)
World Vision, United States’s Response to Japan Tsunami
Please note:
Some have commented that Japan is wealthy and needs less assistance than poorer countries. This is a misconception. The nation of Japan has not asked (nor does it expect) financial assistance. However, the organizations listed above are currently expending their resources on helping victims in Japan. Unless these funds are replenished, less funding will be available for their global operations. In disasters on such a monstrous scale, we are all connected.
This Sunday we will again do the crazy switch: “Daylight Savings Time”. But the assertion that Daylight “Saving” Time “saves” energy is bunk. It is simply a stupid and anachronistic idea. It serves no documentable purpose and should be done away with.
Not only have the positive effects of DST never been conclusively documented. On the contrary! In recent years, there has been a growing body of scientific evidence showing an increase in energy consumption during DST.
The idea behind DST was that more daylight in the afternoon would reduce the need for artificial lighting, thus cutting down on energy costs.
But as it turns out, more light (and heat) in the afternoon also means an increased demand for air conditioning, which results in a net increase in energy usage. These are the findings of a 2008 study by two University of California, Santa Barbara researchers. “I’ve never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this,” said lead researcher Matthew Kotchen.
Studies conducted in Japan, Australia and the State of Indiana have reached similar conclusions.
In the U.S., the situation is rather bizarre: some states switch to DST, others don’t. In the State of Indiana, some counties have DST. Others don’t. So if one drives though the state, the time jumps!
There is similar confusion around the globe. Some countries switch to DST, others don’t. Some (just to top everyone else in terms of absurdity) switch only one half hour forward and back.
Here is a world map showing DST usage:
Legend: DST implemented (blue), DST not implemented (red), DST formerly used but now abolished (orange). Click to enlarge.
Of course, this impacts telecommunications, the travel industry, navigation and international business.
It is idiotic (to say the least!).
By the way: another false myth about DST is that Benjamin Franklin suggested it. Not true! Franklin merely suggested that getting up earlier (with the sun) and going to bed earlier would be more efficient – considering that most illumination in his days came from (expensive) candles and oil lamps.
Franklin is said to have remarked: “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. In 1784, he also published an anonymous letter, which satirically suggested taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Of course he was not serious. And he never suggested to move the clocks back and forth.
Here is an organization with the goal of abolishing DST for good: http://www.standardtime.com/
(Adapted from my blog post of 03/07, 2008)