It has come to light, through an anonymous letter sent to the Oklahoma County DA's office and several local media outlets, that there is probably a considerable amount of financial impropriety that has been going on at the Jesus House, here in Oklahoma City.
According to the letter and tax records obtained by the local newspaper, the director of Jesus House, Janis Mercer, has given herself a $52,000 raise (around 50%), to $154,000, at a time when the homeless shelter 1) had a decrease in donations of around 25%; 2) has a tax lien on its property for failure to pay payroll tax withholding to the state; and 3) is currently about $1,500 overdrawn on its bank accounts.
In fact, Ms. Mercer's pay reflects more than 10% of all donations to the charity. (Here's a link to the full story.) Total donations fell to just over $1.2 million in the year Ms. Mercer's pay was raised, and in that year the Jesus House spent more than $200k more than it took in.
For decades the Jesus House has served our community, and was run by its founders, Ruth Wynne and Betty Adams, who inspired comparisons to Mother Teresa for their dedication to their calling of serving the poor. According to the shelter's website, the group was founded in 1973 in downtown Oklahoma City. Before that, Sisters Ruth and Betty ministered to the 'hippie' culture, when they began feeding kids on the street, and sometimes taking them home to sleep on the floor of their apartment. 'Sister Ruth would sit up with these young people, telling them about Jesus and reading scripture to them. Students from the nearby campus of OCU (Oklahoma City University) would also come by to talk to Sister Ruth, and the apartment was nick-named "that Jesus House".', according to the website.
These two women who founded the group, the last of whom passed away in 2002, were true believers who honestly did the Lord's work. I can remember one incident, back when I was growing up, when there was a crackdown on the homeless and indigent poor, during the winter. The shelter was forcibly shut down by the Oklahoma City Police Department, under orders from then-mayor Patience Latting. The women residents were taken to other area shelters, but when the shelters were full, several men were forced to spend the night out in the cold. By morning, three of them had died of exposure.
They supported their organization in its early days by cleaning offices in the downtown area, along with whatever volunteers they could gather to go with them. They worked tirelessly to carry out their ministry for years and years.
And now it's come to this.
Why is it that some people seem to think they can get away with skimming a little off the top of good people's generosity, or sometimes more than a little, in order to enhance their lifestyle? Even more, why do they think they can get away with using the Lord's name to do this? To take money donated in the name of Jesus Christ to help the poor in order to make a lavish lifestyle for yourself has to be the worst form of apostasy there is. Even if Ms. Mercer realizes what she's done, and makes restitution, and truly, deep down from within her soul she repents (which I honestly hope she does), it seems to me that she'd really be stretching the Lord's forgiveness here.
Now, with all the allegations and investigations going on, the future of what the two Sisters put together is very much in jeopardy. All their work, their lives' work, could very well come crashing down. Who's going to want to finance some director's lavish lifestyle when the money was supposed to go to feed and shelter and care for the homeless? (Making things even worse, as if such a thing were possible, is that Ms. Mercer is the daughter of Ruth Wynne.)
And it also casts a pall over all other charitable organizations. In such organizations all involved must avoid even the merest appearance of sin and impropriety. There are always those who are quite ready and willing to castigate the homeless, wanting to shove them off on some other community, send them down the road to some other city or town, and thereby eliminate the problem for 'us'. One of the things that I hear all the time, when the subject of religion comes up at work and elsewhere, are those who are very quick to point out the ones who've embezzled (a strong word, but let's call it what it is) from the churches and other organizations they've led in order to set themselves up in a comfortable lifestyle. Just down the road is the vast elaborate mansion of the pastor of a megachurch here in Oklahoma City, providing a perfect and readily visible illustration of this particular problem.
It is a betrayal of all of what Christ preached. It causes other believers to lose faith, in and of itself an heinous sin, according to the teachings of the Apostle Paul (for example, see 1 Corinthians 10:31-33). It keeps other potential believers from finding salvation. It's impossible to condemn this sort of behavior enough, to match the magnitude of this particular sin. (Of course, any sin is just as bad as any other, in the Lord's eyes, but one that keeps others from salvation must rank higher at least in human terms.)
Realizing that Paul and evenJesus Himself were accepting of those who preach the Gospel for their own selfish ends--that the preaching of the Gospel and spreading of the Good News is the more important part--it is still dishonest and hypocritical to manipulate the Lord's teachings for selfish ends. And it's basically the last thing the Church needs.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
My tree
In reviewing my previous posts, I realized I hadn't included the story about my tree.
I was with my grandparents when they bought their property south of town, back in the summer of 1973. They had owned some property in the area for years, and were looking for a newer and larger place in the same area.
They found a 10-acre lot of unimproved land with a gravel road running across it, right about in the middle. The road had been built to put in a microwave relay tower at the top of the hill, and consequently there was also electricity running up to the top of the hill. Anyway, they had looked at several properties that day, dragging me along (I was 6 at the time).
The place was pretty overgrown, what you'd expect from 'unimproved'. But there was an enourmous oak tree maybe 75 to 100 feet back from the road.
It was enormous then, probably 300 years old or older. Two adult men could not put their arms all the way around it. The first of the horizontal branches started about 10-12 feet up, and those were as big around as a regular tree. They were also pretty straight, making it perfect for the ultimate tree house. The branches extended out nearly all the way to the road, in a near perfect circle. Truely an impressive grand old oak.
(In fact, the only oak I've ever seen that surpasses this one is the ancient Old Senator oak, somewhere between 500 and 600 years old, in St. Augustine, FL. Theirs may be older and bigger, but mine is prettier; mine has the classic hemispherical shape, while theirs is more 'globular' and irregular. You do have to admire theirs, however, for being being a tough old tree, able to survive in a Howard Johnson's parking lot. Kinda reminds me of the Survivor Tree (which is an American Elm) here in OKC at the Murrah Building Memorial.)
I offered my grand-dad the princely sum of $26 (in that day, and for a 6-year-old) if he'd buy this particular lot and let me have that tree. He laughed, as did my grandmother and the real estate agent.
Later they decided to buy that property, and my grand-dad told me I could have that tree. We never did built the treehouse, but we did put in a succession of swings over the years. It's still there, even bigger and more massive than before. I had been concerned about it, given the massive ice storms that have struck that part of Oklahoma over the past few years, but that big old tree could support a huge load of ice, literally tons of the stuff, without strain. Anyway, it's still there, and appears to be in good condition.
I was with my grandparents when they bought their property south of town, back in the summer of 1973. They had owned some property in the area for years, and were looking for a newer and larger place in the same area.
They found a 10-acre lot of unimproved land with a gravel road running across it, right about in the middle. The road had been built to put in a microwave relay tower at the top of the hill, and consequently there was also electricity running up to the top of the hill. Anyway, they had looked at several properties that day, dragging me along (I was 6 at the time).
The place was pretty overgrown, what you'd expect from 'unimproved'. But there was an enourmous oak tree maybe 75 to 100 feet back from the road.
It was enormous then, probably 300 years old or older. Two adult men could not put their arms all the way around it. The first of the horizontal branches started about 10-12 feet up, and those were as big around as a regular tree. They were also pretty straight, making it perfect for the ultimate tree house. The branches extended out nearly all the way to the road, in a near perfect circle. Truely an impressive grand old oak.
(In fact, the only oak I've ever seen that surpasses this one is the ancient Old Senator oak, somewhere between 500 and 600 years old, in St. Augustine, FL. Theirs may be older and bigger, but mine is prettier; mine has the classic hemispherical shape, while theirs is more 'globular' and irregular. You do have to admire theirs, however, for being being a tough old tree, able to survive in a Howard Johnson's parking lot. Kinda reminds me of the Survivor Tree (which is an American Elm) here in OKC at the Murrah Building Memorial.)
I offered my grand-dad the princely sum of $26 (in that day, and for a 6-year-old) if he'd buy this particular lot and let me have that tree. He laughed, as did my grandmother and the real estate agent.
Later they decided to buy that property, and my grand-dad told me I could have that tree. We never did built the treehouse, but we did put in a succession of swings over the years. It's still there, even bigger and more massive than before. I had been concerned about it, given the massive ice storms that have struck that part of Oklahoma over the past few years, but that big old tree could support a huge load of ice, literally tons of the stuff, without strain. Anyway, it's still there, and appears to be in good condition.
Eufaula Revisited
I had an opportunity to revisit my grand-dad's place just south of the town of Eufaula some time ago, over the Memorial Day weekend and again over the July 4th weekend.
I hadn't been back there in years. The last time I was there was in the 1992-93 time frame, when I took my grandmother to visit her sister-in-law, who was living on the property at the time. It was still in pretty good condition then; everything was recognizable and relatively intact.
Well, now 18 years or so later, things have changed.
First off, my step-uncle, who had moved in to my grand-dad's house, ran the place into the ground. I never really knew him, so I'm going off what other people told me, but he apparently had a drinking problem, and sold off everything of value to finance his habit. Finally, one day the house burned down. He notified my mom with a phone call that went something along the lines of,
"Well, the house burned down. Can you make sure they send the insurance check to me?"
"Insurance? What insurance?"
And that was the end of that. In exploring the wreckage of the house, my brother noticed that certain things you'd expect to find in the debris weren't there--no TVs, no stove, not hot water heater, no washer or dryer, etc. And so the remains were just left there.
My great-aunt moved to a place in New Mexico some years ago, so her place was vacant for some time.
It was agreed that the other of my grand-dad's step-sons would be responsible for the property taxes. However, a few years ago my mother received a notice from the McIntosh County Sheriff's Department that the property was to be sold the next day at auction for non-payment of property taxes. She managed to make it in just before closing time and pay the four years of back taxes to avoid losing the property.
She found that someone had been 'squatting' in the vacant mobile home belonging to her aunt, and allowed him to stay for a very small rent (something like $150 a month) and a promise to keep up the property. Well, he wasn't very good about paying the rent, and even worse on the upkeep, and finally (and recently) he was forced to leave.
This was the condition of things when we went down there on Memorial Day.
'Someone' in the family had sold off half of the property, specifically the western, and more level, half, where my grand-dad's house had been (and where my tree still is; I suppose I should have gotten a deed for the tree, including all property within the drip line of the branches, but 6 year olds don't usually think of such things). So that side was off-limits.
The driveway leading up to my great-aunt's place was so overgrown my brothers had to use chainsaws to open it up enough for a car and a minivan to make it in. The mobile home was trashed; a lack of maintenance had led to water leaks and the floors are now so rotten you're in danger of falling through. The place was overrun with ticks; between me and my son we removed more than 30 of them once we got back. When we left, we locked the gate, though in reality the gate wasn't much of an obstacle, given the badly weathered and cracked condition of the gate and posts.
On the 4th, we went up there, outside of city limits, to shoot off some fireworks. Like most Oklahoma cities and towns, Eufaula has a ban on them for some reason. This makes little sense; Roswell, NM, a much drier and therefore fire-prone environment than found in the overwhelming majority of Oklahoma, has no such ban. On the 4th, Roswell is enveloped in a huge cloud of smoke from the vast numbers of firecrackers, rockets, fountains, screamers, poppers, mortars, and assorted other fireworks being discharged within city limits. But I digress.
We went up there, and the gate was open; the chain had been cut (though in reality all one really needed to do was to give the post a good shove and it would have fallen over). A window-unit air conditioner that had been there was now gone as well.
In another sense, however, it was absolutely amazing how 20 years of neglect will allow a property in southeastern Oklahoma to become overgrown. Nature, in that area at least, is very agressive about restoring the native vegatation to everywhere it had been cleared. I helped put in the mobile home in question, when I was 12 years old; being the shortest, I got the unenviable job of climbing underneath with a short shovel to dig trenches for the plumbing and septic lines. I also helped put in the wellhouse, and clearly remember pouring the foundation. It's on a slope so steep that the downhill corner had to be raised 36 inches to make the floor level.
It took about 20 minutes of searching to find the foundation of the old wellhouse. There were trees growning right up against the foundation, trees that are now 5 or 6 inches in diameter. The years have also worn off the inscribed initials on the corner, at least enough to where they're now illegible, though you can see something there in the concrete.
Elsewhere up and down the hill, my grand-dad's next-door neighbors, Leon Drew and his son, Leon Jr., are long gone, though someone else now lives in his house located far too close to the dirt road (if you put your house too close to a dirt road, the dust from anyone driving by floats in to your house and coats everything, which is why you want to site your house quite a bit back from the road). The house where the one kid who was in 7th grade back when I lived there, and rode the bus with me, is gone; even the regular (meaning non-mobile) home at the bottom of the hill is gone, completely overgrown and invisible. The microwave tower at the top of the hill was damaged in one of the ice storms we had a few years ago, and has since been replaced with a newer and more sturdy tower, and the nearby cliff, which had a great panoramic view of the lake below, is now so overgrown as to be inaccessible.
The spring is still there, and the blackberries have continued their spread along one of the property lines. But overall the whole place is a testament to the futility of human endeavor; that if we do not take the time and effort to maintain something, in fairly short order it will deteriorate and be reclaimed by nature.
I hadn't been back there in years. The last time I was there was in the 1992-93 time frame, when I took my grandmother to visit her sister-in-law, who was living on the property at the time. It was still in pretty good condition then; everything was recognizable and relatively intact.
Well, now 18 years or so later, things have changed.
First off, my step-uncle, who had moved in to my grand-dad's house, ran the place into the ground. I never really knew him, so I'm going off what other people told me, but he apparently had a drinking problem, and sold off everything of value to finance his habit. Finally, one day the house burned down. He notified my mom with a phone call that went something along the lines of,
"Well, the house burned down. Can you make sure they send the insurance check to me?"
"Insurance? What insurance?"
And that was the end of that. In exploring the wreckage of the house, my brother noticed that certain things you'd expect to find in the debris weren't there--no TVs, no stove, not hot water heater, no washer or dryer, etc. And so the remains were just left there.
My great-aunt moved to a place in New Mexico some years ago, so her place was vacant for some time.
It was agreed that the other of my grand-dad's step-sons would be responsible for the property taxes. However, a few years ago my mother received a notice from the McIntosh County Sheriff's Department that the property was to be sold the next day at auction for non-payment of property taxes. She managed to make it in just before closing time and pay the four years of back taxes to avoid losing the property.
She found that someone had been 'squatting' in the vacant mobile home belonging to her aunt, and allowed him to stay for a very small rent (something like $150 a month) and a promise to keep up the property. Well, he wasn't very good about paying the rent, and even worse on the upkeep, and finally (and recently) he was forced to leave.
This was the condition of things when we went down there on Memorial Day.
'Someone' in the family had sold off half of the property, specifically the western, and more level, half, where my grand-dad's house had been (and where my tree still is; I suppose I should have gotten a deed for the tree, including all property within the drip line of the branches, but 6 year olds don't usually think of such things). So that side was off-limits.
The driveway leading up to my great-aunt's place was so overgrown my brothers had to use chainsaws to open it up enough for a car and a minivan to make it in. The mobile home was trashed; a lack of maintenance had led to water leaks and the floors are now so rotten you're in danger of falling through. The place was overrun with ticks; between me and my son we removed more than 30 of them once we got back. When we left, we locked the gate, though in reality the gate wasn't much of an obstacle, given the badly weathered and cracked condition of the gate and posts.
On the 4th, we went up there, outside of city limits, to shoot off some fireworks. Like most Oklahoma cities and towns, Eufaula has a ban on them for some reason. This makes little sense; Roswell, NM, a much drier and therefore fire-prone environment than found in the overwhelming majority of Oklahoma, has no such ban. On the 4th, Roswell is enveloped in a huge cloud of smoke from the vast numbers of firecrackers, rockets, fountains, screamers, poppers, mortars, and assorted other fireworks being discharged within city limits. But I digress.
We went up there, and the gate was open; the chain had been cut (though in reality all one really needed to do was to give the post a good shove and it would have fallen over). A window-unit air conditioner that had been there was now gone as well.
In another sense, however, it was absolutely amazing how 20 years of neglect will allow a property in southeastern Oklahoma to become overgrown. Nature, in that area at least, is very agressive about restoring the native vegatation to everywhere it had been cleared. I helped put in the mobile home in question, when I was 12 years old; being the shortest, I got the unenviable job of climbing underneath with a short shovel to dig trenches for the plumbing and septic lines. I also helped put in the wellhouse, and clearly remember pouring the foundation. It's on a slope so steep that the downhill corner had to be raised 36 inches to make the floor level.
It took about 20 minutes of searching to find the foundation of the old wellhouse. There were trees growning right up against the foundation, trees that are now 5 or 6 inches in diameter. The years have also worn off the inscribed initials on the corner, at least enough to where they're now illegible, though you can see something there in the concrete.
Elsewhere up and down the hill, my grand-dad's next-door neighbors, Leon Drew and his son, Leon Jr., are long gone, though someone else now lives in his house located far too close to the dirt road (if you put your house too close to a dirt road, the dust from anyone driving by floats in to your house and coats everything, which is why you want to site your house quite a bit back from the road). The house where the one kid who was in 7th grade back when I lived there, and rode the bus with me, is gone; even the regular (meaning non-mobile) home at the bottom of the hill is gone, completely overgrown and invisible. The microwave tower at the top of the hill was damaged in one of the ice storms we had a few years ago, and has since been replaced with a newer and more sturdy tower, and the nearby cliff, which had a great panoramic view of the lake below, is now so overgrown as to be inaccessible.
The spring is still there, and the blackberries have continued their spread along one of the property lines. But overall the whole place is a testament to the futility of human endeavor; that if we do not take the time and effort to maintain something, in fairly short order it will deteriorate and be reclaimed by nature.
Gasoline--Ripoff!
Something completely different here . . .
OK, I've watched gasoline prices for years. And one thing I've noticed is that the difference in price between regular unleaded, premium and super hasn't changed much.
Way back when regular unleaded was 79.9 cents per gallon, premium was 89.9 and super was 99.9. That 10 cent per gallon difference per 'step-up' translated into premium being 112.5% of regular, and super was 125% of regular. This was back in the early to mid 1990's; I don't remember exactly when.
Recently I saw where regular unleaded was going for $2.509 per gallon, premium at $2.619, and super at $2.729 per gallon. That 11 cent per gallon difference per 'step-up' means that premium is now 104.3% of regular, and super is now 108.7% of premium.
Now, this means one of three things. First, that the cost of whatever it is that they do to gasoline to make it 'premium' or 'super' hasn't gone up much over the past 15 to 20 years. I can't think of anything that hasn't gone up in that time, so I'd discard this one.
Secondly, that those who put premium or super in their cars and trucks 15 to 20 years ago were getting ripped off, in that the actual cost of making the gasoline 'premium' or 'super' wasn't as much as what they were getting charged.
Third, that today those of us who are using regular are actually subsidizing those who use premium or super, in that the cost of making those higher octane gasoline blends is in fact higher than the price difference being charged for them. In this case, the 'regular' gasoline users are getting ripped off by being made to pay for things they're not getting, in order to keep the prices for premium and super artificially lower.
Not that I expect this learned dissertation into gasoline pricing structures will do anything; it won't lead to some massive consumer revolt and make all life fair and cause the planets to align and usher in an era of global peace. No, it's just another musing about how we're getting ripped off, and what's worse, we're all used to it.
OK, I've watched gasoline prices for years. And one thing I've noticed is that the difference in price between regular unleaded, premium and super hasn't changed much.
Way back when regular unleaded was 79.9 cents per gallon, premium was 89.9 and super was 99.9. That 10 cent per gallon difference per 'step-up' translated into premium being 112.5% of regular, and super was 125% of regular. This was back in the early to mid 1990's; I don't remember exactly when.
Recently I saw where regular unleaded was going for $2.509 per gallon, premium at $2.619, and super at $2.729 per gallon. That 11 cent per gallon difference per 'step-up' means that premium is now 104.3% of regular, and super is now 108.7% of premium.
Now, this means one of three things. First, that the cost of whatever it is that they do to gasoline to make it 'premium' or 'super' hasn't gone up much over the past 15 to 20 years. I can't think of anything that hasn't gone up in that time, so I'd discard this one.
Secondly, that those who put premium or super in their cars and trucks 15 to 20 years ago were getting ripped off, in that the actual cost of making the gasoline 'premium' or 'super' wasn't as much as what they were getting charged.
Third, that today those of us who are using regular are actually subsidizing those who use premium or super, in that the cost of making those higher octane gasoline blends is in fact higher than the price difference being charged for them. In this case, the 'regular' gasoline users are getting ripped off by being made to pay for things they're not getting, in order to keep the prices for premium and super artificially lower.
Not that I expect this learned dissertation into gasoline pricing structures will do anything; it won't lead to some massive consumer revolt and make all life fair and cause the planets to align and usher in an era of global peace. No, it's just another musing about how we're getting ripped off, and what's worse, we're all used to it.
PBS's POV documentary featuring Dominion Farms
Earlier this past week I caught a documentary on PBS, part of their POV series, about development in Kenya. Basically the documentary was decrying the loss of traditional culture in Kenya through development, much of it fostered by companies and organizations outside of Kenya.
Featured prominently in the documentary was a company called Dominion Farms. The CEO of Dominion Farms is Calvin Burgess, a man from Guthrie, here in Oklahoma. I know, or knew, Mr. Burgess, though I doubt he'd remember me. My first job in aviation was at the Guthrie airport, and I towed, fueled, and prepped Mr. Burgess' airplanes as part of my duties. He owned the largest airplanes on the field at that time, a Cessna 421 and later a Piper Cheyenne turboprop, the first turbine-engined airplane based in Guthrie, as well as a WACO classic biplane. His biplane was more than a toy; it was fitted out for full IFR instrument flight in bad weather, though why someone would want to fly an open-cockpit biplane through the rain at 80 mph is beyond me. It would be nice for flying at night, if you had to, I suppose.
Be that as it may, it seems to me that as unfortunate as losing the old ways, the old culture, in Africa is, it is nevertheless necessary, at least in the ways that hinder progress. The old ways include valuing and establishing one's status in society by the number of cattle one possesses. These are herded around from pasture to pasture as the inhabitants of the region have done for millennia. Crops are grown in a similar ancient, labor-intensive, manner. In fact, if one happens to revisit American history, things are pretty much there (with a distinctive local flavor, of course) as they were here 200 years ago.
However, we realized long ago that the most efficient use of our arable land is not the classic '40 acres and a mule' style of small family farms. Part of the upheaval of the Great Depression was the consolidation of the last of the classic small family farms (most of which were already marginal by that time) into much larger family farms, fewer in number, and worked exclusively by mechanical means, rather than by farmers walking behind their animals. This not only reduced the labor cost of production, it increased production dramatically. This continued throughout the 20th century here in the U.S., with large corporate farms predominating in large parts of the country today, and nowadays a single American farmer produces enough food to feed well over a hundred people, enough of a surplus to not only feed our own people but a significant number outside our own borders.
If we, as a species, not just as Americans, or as citizens of 'donor nations', but as the human race, are ever going to solve the recurring problems of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, it's going to require choosing one of three options. First, we can accept the necessity of changing the old order of things and implement modern agricultural methods worldwide, and accept the attendant upheavals in the social order in developing countries. The old ways are incapable of meeting the current need, much less the needs of the future. Secondly, we can drastically, and in a heartless and draconian manner, reduce the population of those developing countries to the point that they can feed themselves using their ancient and traditional methods of agriculture. This of course flies in the face of every civilized notion of proper moral conduct, and so is not an option for serious consideration. The third option is to continue to allow famines and droughts to take their toll, to continually have 'Feed The World' campaigns in the developed world for centuries to come, to continue to lose millions of our fellow men, women, and children to hunger every year, and to never solve the underlying problems that result in those famines and starvation.
There is simply no way for the people in undeveloped and relatively overpopulated regions (not necessarily individual countries, but geographic regions) that have historically been unable to feed themselves and have had to repeatedly rely on international aid to rise up out of the poverty and desperation without having to give up some of their traditional culture. What might have worked well when the population density was lower is now insufficient; it is a simple matter of mathematics and logic, nothing more. It's not the 'white man' coming in and 'recolonizing' the area, though perhaps given the history of the area (those who have seen the series may have noted that many of the locals could speak English quite well, which is an after-effect of British colonization that ended decades ago) it might seem so to local sensibilities.
It is far more logical to grow the needed food in the region (again, geographic region, not tied to political boundaries) than to ship it halfway around the world in response to a crisis. It's better to have the means of production within a few hundred miles of the need than several thousand miles away across oceans. Not only are transportation costs lower, but the response time is lower as well.
All of which does not necessarily mean the end of the local culture; we have, in a few limited (too limited, in my opinion) places preserved elements of our earlier culture (such as Colonial Williamsburg, Silver Dollar City, and the Cherokee Nation's Ancient Village, here in Oklahoma). Their old ways, that still predominate, are no less valid than our old ways, and just as worthy of being preserved. But the time has come where their old ways are standing in the way of progress, and if we are getting tired of starving children and abject poverty in so many places around the world, and if we are finally going to get serious about solving these problems and not just slapping a band-aid on them, then those old ways are going to have to go.
(As an aside, one of the things that we here in America have a problem with is with all those 'starving children' fund-raising programs. Yes, there are starving children in Africa; there are starving children in Kenya. However, Kenya, from what I've learned from the Kenyans I've met over the years, does have a fully modern side as well. There are modern cities, schools, government (a pretty good government, more or less--the same that could be said for our own; certainly we have our own problems with corruption), churches, universities, art museums--you name it. Despite what all those infomercials, commercials, articles, documentaries, and fund-raisers would have you believe, not all those countries are full of slums packed with starving children. They may have those, but they have very much more than just those slums.)
Featured prominently in the documentary was a company called Dominion Farms. The CEO of Dominion Farms is Calvin Burgess, a man from Guthrie, here in Oklahoma. I know, or knew, Mr. Burgess, though I doubt he'd remember me. My first job in aviation was at the Guthrie airport, and I towed, fueled, and prepped Mr. Burgess' airplanes as part of my duties. He owned the largest airplanes on the field at that time, a Cessna 421 and later a Piper Cheyenne turboprop, the first turbine-engined airplane based in Guthrie, as well as a WACO classic biplane. His biplane was more than a toy; it was fitted out for full IFR instrument flight in bad weather, though why someone would want to fly an open-cockpit biplane through the rain at 80 mph is beyond me. It would be nice for flying at night, if you had to, I suppose.
Be that as it may, it seems to me that as unfortunate as losing the old ways, the old culture, in Africa is, it is nevertheless necessary, at least in the ways that hinder progress. The old ways include valuing and establishing one's status in society by the number of cattle one possesses. These are herded around from pasture to pasture as the inhabitants of the region have done for millennia. Crops are grown in a similar ancient, labor-intensive, manner. In fact, if one happens to revisit American history, things are pretty much there (with a distinctive local flavor, of course) as they were here 200 years ago.
However, we realized long ago that the most efficient use of our arable land is not the classic '40 acres and a mule' style of small family farms. Part of the upheaval of the Great Depression was the consolidation of the last of the classic small family farms (most of which were already marginal by that time) into much larger family farms, fewer in number, and worked exclusively by mechanical means, rather than by farmers walking behind their animals. This not only reduced the labor cost of production, it increased production dramatically. This continued throughout the 20th century here in the U.S., with large corporate farms predominating in large parts of the country today, and nowadays a single American farmer produces enough food to feed well over a hundred people, enough of a surplus to not only feed our own people but a significant number outside our own borders.
If we, as a species, not just as Americans, or as citizens of 'donor nations', but as the human race, are ever going to solve the recurring problems of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, it's going to require choosing one of three options. First, we can accept the necessity of changing the old order of things and implement modern agricultural methods worldwide, and accept the attendant upheavals in the social order in developing countries. The old ways are incapable of meeting the current need, much less the needs of the future. Secondly, we can drastically, and in a heartless and draconian manner, reduce the population of those developing countries to the point that they can feed themselves using their ancient and traditional methods of agriculture. This of course flies in the face of every civilized notion of proper moral conduct, and so is not an option for serious consideration. The third option is to continue to allow famines and droughts to take their toll, to continually have 'Feed The World' campaigns in the developed world for centuries to come, to continue to lose millions of our fellow men, women, and children to hunger every year, and to never solve the underlying problems that result in those famines and starvation.
There is simply no way for the people in undeveloped and relatively overpopulated regions (not necessarily individual countries, but geographic regions) that have historically been unable to feed themselves and have had to repeatedly rely on international aid to rise up out of the poverty and desperation without having to give up some of their traditional culture. What might have worked well when the population density was lower is now insufficient; it is a simple matter of mathematics and logic, nothing more. It's not the 'white man' coming in and 'recolonizing' the area, though perhaps given the history of the area (those who have seen the series may have noted that many of the locals could speak English quite well, which is an after-effect of British colonization that ended decades ago) it might seem so to local sensibilities.
It is far more logical to grow the needed food in the region (again, geographic region, not tied to political boundaries) than to ship it halfway around the world in response to a crisis. It's better to have the means of production within a few hundred miles of the need than several thousand miles away across oceans. Not only are transportation costs lower, but the response time is lower as well.
All of which does not necessarily mean the end of the local culture; we have, in a few limited (too limited, in my opinion) places preserved elements of our earlier culture (such as Colonial Williamsburg, Silver Dollar City, and the Cherokee Nation's Ancient Village, here in Oklahoma). Their old ways, that still predominate, are no less valid than our old ways, and just as worthy of being preserved. But the time has come where their old ways are standing in the way of progress, and if we are getting tired of starving children and abject poverty in so many places around the world, and if we are finally going to get serious about solving these problems and not just slapping a band-aid on them, then those old ways are going to have to go.
(As an aside, one of the things that we here in America have a problem with is with all those 'starving children' fund-raising programs. Yes, there are starving children in Africa; there are starving children in Kenya. However, Kenya, from what I've learned from the Kenyans I've met over the years, does have a fully modern side as well. There are modern cities, schools, government (a pretty good government, more or less--the same that could be said for our own; certainly we have our own problems with corruption), churches, universities, art museums--you name it. Despite what all those infomercials, commercials, articles, documentaries, and fund-raisers would have you believe, not all those countries are full of slums packed with starving children. They may have those, but they have very much more than just those slums.)
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Government Inefficiency
One thing I've heard over and over again, in the current debate over health care reform, but in truth all my life, is people griping about how inefficient government is. We seem to take it as a matter of faith, as an unescapable reality that anything the government does it must be inefficient.
Now, I'm not debating that this is the sad state of affairs in many things that the government does. What I take offense at is that we as a people have come to expect this, that this inefficiency is as inescapable and as permanent as the sun rising in the east every morning.
Who ever said that government operations must be inefficient? Why do we accept that so many things the government does are done inefficiently? Why do we not refuse to accept this, and make our government at all levels, federal, state, and local, more efficient? Are we all just stupid? It's our own money that we're talking about, after all.
Now, I work for the government, specifically as a civilian aircraft engine mechanic for the Air Force. It's a good job, and I'm very glad to have it. And I do what I can to do my best every single day I'm at work; I do try to give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, which is fair all around. And I'd say that most of my co-workers do the same.
Previously, I worked in the commercial airline industry, at a couple of third-party maintenance providers. I will say that some of the procedures the government uses are bewildering, and would make absolutely no sense on the outside, i.e., for companies that actually have to turn a profit, or go out of business. It would be a good thing if the government would hold itself to 'best commercial practices' standards in all things; the government does not have to turn a profit, but it should act as if it did. If government at all levels had that commercial 'be profitable or die' mentality in it's operations, I know we'd save untold billions every single year.
But the main thing is that all of us need to demand better accountability and better efficiency from our government.
Now, I'm not debating that this is the sad state of affairs in many things that the government does. What I take offense at is that we as a people have come to expect this, that this inefficiency is as inescapable and as permanent as the sun rising in the east every morning.
Who ever said that government operations must be inefficient? Why do we accept that so many things the government does are done inefficiently? Why do we not refuse to accept this, and make our government at all levels, federal, state, and local, more efficient? Are we all just stupid? It's our own money that we're talking about, after all.
Now, I work for the government, specifically as a civilian aircraft engine mechanic for the Air Force. It's a good job, and I'm very glad to have it. And I do what I can to do my best every single day I'm at work; I do try to give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, which is fair all around. And I'd say that most of my co-workers do the same.
Previously, I worked in the commercial airline industry, at a couple of third-party maintenance providers. I will say that some of the procedures the government uses are bewildering, and would make absolutely no sense on the outside, i.e., for companies that actually have to turn a profit, or go out of business. It would be a good thing if the government would hold itself to 'best commercial practices' standards in all things; the government does not have to turn a profit, but it should act as if it did. If government at all levels had that commercial 'be profitable or die' mentality in it's operations, I know we'd save untold billions every single year.
But the main thing is that all of us need to demand better accountability and better efficiency from our government.
Universal Health Care
OK, so it's been a while since my last post. I've been busy.
I think I can make a pretty persuasive case for universal health care here in the United States based on, of all things, the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is sort of a strange document, in that we Americans just love to refer to it all the time, yet it's not a legal document. It's not a law; it was never enacted as a binding requirement on what our government is supposed to do. Rather, as Jefferson wrote in the first few introductory sentences, (and I'm paraphrasing here) when the time comes for a people to break away from another people, a decent respect for the proper relations between all peoples compels those who are breaking away to announce why they have chosen that course of action.
Jefferson then launches into the immortal words that all American schoolchildren are taught: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Of course the government-approved curriculum has our students stop there, before Jefferson gets into his more radical ideas, which apparently are a little too radical for general consumption nowadays--that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . . but I digress. Good words, revolutionary concepts, but not exactly germane to my attempt to justify universal health care.)
These are the fundamental principles on which America rests. Despite it's non-legal status, America's courts have for generations looked to the Declaration for guidance, because it so succinctly and clearly displays the intent of the same Founding Fathers who went on to create the Constitution (which is of course a full legal document, ratified and adopted some 223 years ago). 'All men are created equal' is the fundamental statement on which all our civil rights are founded upon, for example, and 'certain inalienable rights' goes even further to state that those equal men have specific rights that cannot be taken from them, and Jefferson was gifted enough to state that 'among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness', meaning that those three are among those rights, but the list of inalienable rights is longer than just those three.
So, among those rights that we as Americans hold dear is the right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government cannot deprive us of our lives without due process of law, meaning that if we commit a capital crime, and are found guilty by a jury of our peers, the government can put us to death, in such a way that is not cruel nor unusual. Furthermore, we as American citizens cannot be discriminated against based on race, national origin, sex, age, or a number of other things.
But yet the way our health care system is set up, it discriminates against us all on the basis of whether or not we have insurance and to a lesser extent, our income level. I for one cannot see a significant difference, in terms of moral justice, between denial of medical care based on whether or not I have paid for some sort of insurance and denial of the right to vote based on whether or not I own real estate, or whether or not I am descended from someone who was eligible to vote in the 1860 election, or whether or not I can pass some sort of voting test--all of these restrictions on the right to vote having been ruled unconstitutional decades ago.
Health care is fundamentally linked to that first listed inalienable right, the right to life, as to be practically one and the same. Without decent medical care, none of us could expect to live any longer than people did 200 years ago, before all the revolutionary changes that have made modern medical care the wonder that it is. If I am denied medical care because of an inability to pay, or (which is much more likely) if I receive substandard medical care because of an inability to pay, then I am being denied that most fundamental right guaranteed to all Americans.
Furthermore, with either a lack of medical care or a lack of adequate medical care, that's going to impact that other right, the pursuit of happiness. That great 'American dream', of self-sufficiency and of being able to own a home and be at least somewhat financially secure, is never going to happen if you have the misfortune of having a significant illness or injury, and not have adequate health insurance; you can count on being significantly in debt for at least a major portion of your life. So, without adequate insurance (or being fortunate enough to have been born to very wealthy parents), your ability to exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness is going to be severely constrained.
Now, the truly poor have Medicaid, enacted in the 60's, to alleviate some of this injustice (for that is what it is, truly named). The problem is that, first, those who make too much for Medicaid and don't have affordable insurance available to them are extremely vulnerable to financial disaster, if not an outright inability to pay for adequate medical care; secondly, Medicaid is subject to the same budgetary whims and shortfalls as road maintenance and state parks. Without that adequate medical care, Americans inalienable right to life is being denied. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences estimated in 2004, six years ago, that 'lack of health care causes roughly 18,000 deaths every year in the United States.' Since there have been no significant changes to our health care system since then, we've lost more than 100,000 American citizens to inadequate health care over the last 6 years--enough to fill a small city with our fellow Americans whose basic, fundamental right to life, set forth in the Declaration of Independence, has been denied. Here's a good example, and another, and another.
In fact, other studies suggest that the National Academy of Sciences estimate may be far too low. The Harvard Medical School found in 2009 that 45,000 Americans die every year due to inadequate health insurance. If the Harvard folks are correct, over 6 years, that's well over a quarter million unnecessary deaths.
I think I can make a pretty persuasive case for universal health care here in the United States based on, of all things, the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is sort of a strange document, in that we Americans just love to refer to it all the time, yet it's not a legal document. It's not a law; it was never enacted as a binding requirement on what our government is supposed to do. Rather, as Jefferson wrote in the first few introductory sentences, (and I'm paraphrasing here) when the time comes for a people to break away from another people, a decent respect for the proper relations between all peoples compels those who are breaking away to announce why they have chosen that course of action.
Jefferson then launches into the immortal words that all American schoolchildren are taught: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Of course the government-approved curriculum has our students stop there, before Jefferson gets into his more radical ideas, which apparently are a little too radical for general consumption nowadays--that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . . but I digress. Good words, revolutionary concepts, but not exactly germane to my attempt to justify universal health care.)
These are the fundamental principles on which America rests. Despite it's non-legal status, America's courts have for generations looked to the Declaration for guidance, because it so succinctly and clearly displays the intent of the same Founding Fathers who went on to create the Constitution (which is of course a full legal document, ratified and adopted some 223 years ago). 'All men are created equal' is the fundamental statement on which all our civil rights are founded upon, for example, and 'certain inalienable rights' goes even further to state that those equal men have specific rights that cannot be taken from them, and Jefferson was gifted enough to state that 'among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness', meaning that those three are among those rights, but the list of inalienable rights is longer than just those three.
So, among those rights that we as Americans hold dear is the right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government cannot deprive us of our lives without due process of law, meaning that if we commit a capital crime, and are found guilty by a jury of our peers, the government can put us to death, in such a way that is not cruel nor unusual. Furthermore, we as American citizens cannot be discriminated against based on race, national origin, sex, age, or a number of other things.
But yet the way our health care system is set up, it discriminates against us all on the basis of whether or not we have insurance and to a lesser extent, our income level. I for one cannot see a significant difference, in terms of moral justice, between denial of medical care based on whether or not I have paid for some sort of insurance and denial of the right to vote based on whether or not I own real estate, or whether or not I am descended from someone who was eligible to vote in the 1860 election, or whether or not I can pass some sort of voting test--all of these restrictions on the right to vote having been ruled unconstitutional decades ago.
Health care is fundamentally linked to that first listed inalienable right, the right to life, as to be practically one and the same. Without decent medical care, none of us could expect to live any longer than people did 200 years ago, before all the revolutionary changes that have made modern medical care the wonder that it is. If I am denied medical care because of an inability to pay, or (which is much more likely) if I receive substandard medical care because of an inability to pay, then I am being denied that most fundamental right guaranteed to all Americans.
Furthermore, with either a lack of medical care or a lack of adequate medical care, that's going to impact that other right, the pursuit of happiness. That great 'American dream', of self-sufficiency and of being able to own a home and be at least somewhat financially secure, is never going to happen if you have the misfortune of having a significant illness or injury, and not have adequate health insurance; you can count on being significantly in debt for at least a major portion of your life. So, without adequate insurance (or being fortunate enough to have been born to very wealthy parents), your ability to exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness is going to be severely constrained.
Now, the truly poor have Medicaid, enacted in the 60's, to alleviate some of this injustice (for that is what it is, truly named). The problem is that, first, those who make too much for Medicaid and don't have affordable insurance available to them are extremely vulnerable to financial disaster, if not an outright inability to pay for adequate medical care; secondly, Medicaid is subject to the same budgetary whims and shortfalls as road maintenance and state parks. Without that adequate medical care, Americans inalienable right to life is being denied. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences estimated in 2004, six years ago, that 'lack of health care causes roughly 18,000 deaths every year in the United States.' Since there have been no significant changes to our health care system since then, we've lost more than 100,000 American citizens to inadequate health care over the last 6 years--enough to fill a small city with our fellow Americans whose basic, fundamental right to life, set forth in the Declaration of Independence, has been denied. Here's a good example, and another, and another.
In fact, other studies suggest that the National Academy of Sciences estimate may be far too low. The Harvard Medical School found in 2009 that 45,000 Americans die every year due to inadequate health insurance. If the Harvard folks are correct, over 6 years, that's well over a quarter million unnecessary deaths.
Another nice little figure is that in 2008, four times as many US Army veterans died as a result of a lack of health insurance as were killed in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom (Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively)--that's 2,266 veterans who died, men and women who had volunteered to go into harm's way to do their duty to our country, every single one of whom once took an oath 'to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic; to bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . .' There are many who still, to this day, wear POW bracelets and fly the POW 'You are not forgotten' flags, to keep alive the memories of the POW/MIA servicemen and women we left behind in Southeast Asia, and it is 'altogether fitting and proper' that they should do this, as Lincoln said in his most famous address. But no one seems to want to remember these other veterans who also did their duty. But again I digress.
So, returning to the subject at hand, the only truly right, morally just, way to provide health care is to make it available to all people, to all Americans, regardless of income, skin color, race, national origin, age, sexual orientation, or any other means of discrimination.
Now, we do have, on a limited basis, universal health care for a few (relatively speaking). About 3% of Americans are covered by the military's TRICARE system. At one point, my family and I were covered by this system (my wife was injured on active duty and was placed on the TDRL-Temporary Retired Disabled List--while she recovered, and so we were eligible for TRICARE). Now, I will admit that TRICARE can be pretty spotty, and the quality of the coverage can vary greatly from one location to another. But where we were (in Jacksonville, FL) it was pretty good, primarily (I think) due to the presence of a full military treatment facility (MTF), the Naval Hospital at NAS Jacksonville.
There, we found a system unlike anything I had seen in the civilian world. There was no profit motive, so there was no need to order unnecessary tests; conversely, if a test was needed, there was no delay in getting authorization--you just went and had the test done. All the equipment was there and available; it might as well be used. The doctors there did not receive kickbacks (calling a spade a spade; a kickback is defined as a percentage of income given to a person in a position of power or influence as a payment for having made that income possible) from the drug companies for prescribing the latest and greatest drug with a multimillion dollar ad campaign, so they prescribed what worked, and what was necessary--not what would help the doctor writing the prescription make their car, boat, and house payments. All medical records were stored digitally on a computer network; there were even checklists that the doctors and other health care providers used to ensure that nothing was missed. Truly an extraordinary system, at least when it's at its best, as it was there. And I'd really like to point out that this was a quintessentially government-run health care system, of the type that it seems everyone on TV wants to lambaste. (You know, that's a good topic for another post . . .)
The care was timely, it was accurate, it was effective, and it was good. And it was cheap-$115 per quarter for our whole family. Now, that pittance of a premium didn't cover much of the total cost, which was in the neighborhood of $41 billion for FY2009, covering around 9 million people (active duty, guard & reservists on active duty, their dependents, and retirees and their dependents). That works out to a cost of between $4500 and $5000 per person, or around $400 a month. Extrapolating that out to cover all 300 million Americans, that would work out to about $1.5 trillion a year, if TRICARE was expanded to cover all Americans.
Now, that's an overly simplistic estimate. But I honestly believe that if someone were to do an 'apples to apples' comparison of our current health care system to a universal 'single-payer' government-run health care system, we will find that there would be significant savings from switching to a universal health care system. Oh, initially, there would be a big surge, as tens of millions of Americans currently without adequate access to health care got 'caught up', so to speak, but after a few years, you'd see a downward trend. Why? Reduced administrative costs for one reason, and economies of scale for another.
And there's another reason for universal health care--a healthier workforce is going to be more efficient and more productive than an unhealthy (or only partially healthy) workforce.
But regardless of the financial and economic reasons, universal health care is simply the right thing to do. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane"; this from a man who grew up in the Old South, where 'white only' and 'no colored' signs were common, 'separate but equal' was the law of the land, and hundreds of black men were lynched every year--he felt that despite all that, unequal access to health care was far, far worse. And he was right. The time to end this particular inequality, this particular injustice, was ages ago, and it didn't happen then. It is past time that we right this particular wrong. To not do so is to continue to betray the noble, honorable, and just principles on which our great nation was founded.
So, returning to the subject at hand, the only truly right, morally just, way to provide health care is to make it available to all people, to all Americans, regardless of income, skin color, race, national origin, age, sexual orientation, or any other means of discrimination.
Now, we do have, on a limited basis, universal health care for a few (relatively speaking). About 3% of Americans are covered by the military's TRICARE system. At one point, my family and I were covered by this system (my wife was injured on active duty and was placed on the TDRL-Temporary Retired Disabled List--while she recovered, and so we were eligible for TRICARE). Now, I will admit that TRICARE can be pretty spotty, and the quality of the coverage can vary greatly from one location to another. But where we were (in Jacksonville, FL) it was pretty good, primarily (I think) due to the presence of a full military treatment facility (MTF), the Naval Hospital at NAS Jacksonville.
There, we found a system unlike anything I had seen in the civilian world. There was no profit motive, so there was no need to order unnecessary tests; conversely, if a test was needed, there was no delay in getting authorization--you just went and had the test done. All the equipment was there and available; it might as well be used. The doctors there did not receive kickbacks (calling a spade a spade; a kickback is defined as a percentage of income given to a person in a position of power or influence as a payment for having made that income possible) from the drug companies for prescribing the latest and greatest drug with a multimillion dollar ad campaign, so they prescribed what worked, and what was necessary--not what would help the doctor writing the prescription make their car, boat, and house payments. All medical records were stored digitally on a computer network; there were even checklists that the doctors and other health care providers used to ensure that nothing was missed. Truly an extraordinary system, at least when it's at its best, as it was there. And I'd really like to point out that this was a quintessentially government-run health care system, of the type that it seems everyone on TV wants to lambaste. (You know, that's a good topic for another post . . .)
The care was timely, it was accurate, it was effective, and it was good. And it was cheap-$115 per quarter for our whole family. Now, that pittance of a premium didn't cover much of the total cost, which was in the neighborhood of $41 billion for FY2009, covering around 9 million people (active duty, guard & reservists on active duty, their dependents, and retirees and their dependents). That works out to a cost of between $4500 and $5000 per person, or around $400 a month. Extrapolating that out to cover all 300 million Americans, that would work out to about $1.5 trillion a year, if TRICARE was expanded to cover all Americans.
Now, that's an overly simplistic estimate. But I honestly believe that if someone were to do an 'apples to apples' comparison of our current health care system to a universal 'single-payer' government-run health care system, we will find that there would be significant savings from switching to a universal health care system. Oh, initially, there would be a big surge, as tens of millions of Americans currently without adequate access to health care got 'caught up', so to speak, but after a few years, you'd see a downward trend. Why? Reduced administrative costs for one reason, and economies of scale for another.
And there's another reason for universal health care--a healthier workforce is going to be more efficient and more productive than an unhealthy (or only partially healthy) workforce.
But regardless of the financial and economic reasons, universal health care is simply the right thing to do. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane"; this from a man who grew up in the Old South, where 'white only' and 'no colored' signs were common, 'separate but equal' was the law of the land, and hundreds of black men were lynched every year--he felt that despite all that, unequal access to health care was far, far worse. And he was right. The time to end this particular inequality, this particular injustice, was ages ago, and it didn't happen then. It is past time that we right this particular wrong. To not do so is to continue to betray the noble, honorable, and just principles on which our great nation was founded.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Name Change (for Spaceflight postings)
Well, due to an apparent complete lack of interest (no comments whatsoever), I've moved the postings concerning the future of American manned spaceflight to another blog, fortiteraadaspera.blogspot.com. Fortitera Ad Aspera translates (as far as I can figure) into Bravely To The Stars. I had tried the more common Ad Astra, Ad Astra Per Aspera, and Per Aspera Ad Astra (respectively, To The Stars, To The Stars Despite Difficulties, and Despite Difficulties, To The Stars) but apparently others have used these names for now-defunct blogs on blogspot. Anyway, I am hoping that the name change may generate more interest in this particular subject that's very important to me, and to the future of the United States.
I will try to use this blog to return to what is probably more appropriate for the Eufaula College of Loafers--just miscellaneous stuff, recollections, and so on.
I will try to use this blog to return to what is probably more appropriate for the Eufaula College of Loafers--just miscellaneous stuff, recollections, and so on.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Commercial Manned Spaceflight: Regulations?
As those who may have checked out my profile, I am an aircraft mechanic, and have been for coming up on 20 years. As with any aircraft mechanic, I am very familiar with the Federal Aviation Regulations, or FARs. These are federal laws, specifically Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
One of the problems in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's space policy document is that it appears to designate NASA as the regulatory agency in charge of spaceflight activities. NASA was never chartered as a regulatory body; the FAA is. In fact, the FAA already has some regulations pertaining to space launch and recovery operations (the Part 400 series FARs in Title 14 of the CFRs). I'm assuming that this is some sort of error or oversight on the Office of Science and Technology Policy's part, and not some sort of Executive Order changing governmental policy.
In any event, the Part 20 series FARs describe, in very great detail, the airworthiness and certification standards for different types of aircraft, engines, propellers, etc. There are literally several thousands of pages of regulations there, and if a person or company wants to develop a new airplane, helicopter, engine, or whatever, and sell it as an FAA-approved airplane, helicopter, engine, or whatever, that whatever-it-is will have to meet every single one of those regulations pertinent to that whatever, and demonstrate that it does; the FAA isn't just going to take your word for it.
Every major component, and nearly all minor components, have some sort of regulation pertaining to what size or shape it must be, how many of them there must be, where they must be located, what they can be made from, what types of indicators and controls must be provided. This has contributed greatly to our air transportation system being one of the safest in the world; you've got to go back quite a ways to find a design-related fatality accident involving a major US air carrier. (Specifically, design standards for transport-category airplanes (i.e., airliners) can be found in Part 25 of the FARs.)
The problem is that there is no equivalent for spacecraft. There are some basic regulations concerning the licensing and operation of launch and recovery facilities, pilot training requirements, and financial liability. Some of this perhaps leaves something to be desired; for example, a private pilot that has an instrument rating (for flying blind, on instruments only), with a 2nd class medical certification, has all that's required to fly a spaceship (other than some training on the spacecraft itself). What this means is that an airplane pilot with as little as 125 hours of flight time could, in theory, be legally qualified to carry passengers into orbit. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have someone a little more qualified at the controls--someone like US Airway's Captain Sullenberger (the pilot who put his Airbus down in the Hudson River last year--that was a very impressive piece of airmanship and coolness under pressure).
The biggest section (in terms of verbiage) of the Part 400 series of the FARs has to do with financial responsibility. This has everything to do with a little quirk of spaceflight. If you crash your privately-owned airplane into a house, you're liable for the damages--per international treaty. If you crash your privately-owned and -operated spacecraft into a shopping mall, the country from which you launched your spacecraft from is liable--per international treaty. So in order to obtain the FAA-required launch site license, you have to have liability insurance up to the limits specified in the FAA's regulations. Of course the government's attorneys got ahold of this one, and so it takes them page after page after page to say pretty much the same thing.
But there are practically no design or certification standards for spacecraft. Having a pretty decent knowledge of the FAA and how long things can take, this lack of standards is going to take a long time to rectify. It may be the Obama adminstration's intent to have the FAA cooperate with NASA in developing these design standards (and I hope they do; the NASA guys are the ones who know all about spacecraft design, operation, and maintenance). But until this happens this leaves a rather large and glaring hole in the entire plan to encourage commercial manned spaceflight.
History Lesson No. 1 Follow up
Ran out of time before work this morning . . .
One thing that needs to be made clear here. It was not the awarding of airmail contracts that enabled the early American airlines to get started. It did help, but in a larger sense, it just stimulated the overly competitive natures of their founders. Like a pack of wolves fighting over a carcass, they very nearly cut each others throats in their drive for dominance. In reality what brought stability and profitability to the early airlines here in the U.S. was federal regulation of the airline industry. To attribute the historical success of these companies to airmail contracts is to view the past through rose-colored glasses. Even after the airmail contracts were awarded, they still continued to try to drive each other out of business.
As the tired old saying goes, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Like so much of aviation progress, the history of the early airlines here in the U.S. has its share that's written in the blood of the unfortunate victims of crashes. If there is not sufficient government oversight and regulation of the future commercial manned spaceflight industry, we will once again have to learn those lessons, once again written in yet more blood. And while an airplane crash is bad enough, with the speeds and highly explosive fuel loads inherent in spacecraft launches, a crash involving a spacecraft could easily exceed the worst air disasters. We really need to tread carefully as we get into commercial manned spaceflight.
One thing that needs to be made clear here. It was not the awarding of airmail contracts that enabled the early American airlines to get started. It did help, but in a larger sense, it just stimulated the overly competitive natures of their founders. Like a pack of wolves fighting over a carcass, they very nearly cut each others throats in their drive for dominance. In reality what brought stability and profitability to the early airlines here in the U.S. was federal regulation of the airline industry. To attribute the historical success of these companies to airmail contracts is to view the past through rose-colored glasses. Even after the airmail contracts were awarded, they still continued to try to drive each other out of business.
As the tired old saying goes, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Like so much of aviation progress, the history of the early airlines here in the U.S. has its share that's written in the blood of the unfortunate victims of crashes. If there is not sufficient government oversight and regulation of the future commercial manned spaceflight industry, we will once again have to learn those lessons, once again written in yet more blood. And while an airplane crash is bad enough, with the speeds and highly explosive fuel loads inherent in spacecraft launches, a crash involving a spacecraft could easily exceed the worst air disasters. We really need to tread carefully as we get into commercial manned spaceflight.
Human Spaceflight: History Lesson No. 1
OK, still reading through the Review of US Human Spaceflight Plans Committee report, which has come to be known as the Augustine report, after the committee chairman, Norman Augustine.
One of the things that's referred to more than once is how, back in the 1920s, the US government stimulated the development of air travel by issuing government contracts to the newly-formed airlines to carry air mail. Aviation history has always been a hobby of mine, and I think that this particular bit of history has some lessons that we need to be aware of.
Yes, the government did indeed issue airmail contracts back in the 20s. When the first bids were solicited, there were over 5,000 applicants, but only 12 were selected. The victors, in an effort to expand and make more money, soon were undercutting each other ruthelessly on their airmail contracts, trying to take each others business. In an effort to restore order, Postmaster General Walter Brown, a very well connected Republican and close associate of then-President Herbert Hoover, sought and was given authority by Congress to award postal contracts regardless of the amount bid. Brown then imposed his own will on the nascent airline industry, consolidating the field down to just four: United Aircraft and Transport (later United Airlines), Transcontinental & Western Air (later TWA), American Airways (later American Airlines), and Easter Air Transport (later Eastern Airlines).
Three years later, in 1933, Senator and later Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black decided to hold hearings on the status of the airmail contracts and learned of what then became knows as the 'spoils conference' three years earlier, when Brown awarded the Big Four airlines their airmail contracts outside a competitive bidding process. Federal agents stormed airline offices around the country, seizing evidence of the grand conspiracy, and then-President Roosevelt ordered the airmail contracts cancelled, ordering the military to carry the airmail instead.
This in and of itself turned into another fiasco, as the military, after 15 years of neglect following the end of World War I, was woefully unprepared to fly the mails. They lacked the training and equipment necessary to fly in bad weather, and in short order 12 Air Corps pilots died in crashes directly related to flying the mail. Roosevelt was forced to relent, but to save face he ordered that none of the former four big winners of the spoils conference would be awarded new contracts. This is when the big four changed their names to match what we know today: United Air & Transport became United Airlines, American Airways became American Airlines, and so on. The big four managed to regain almost all of what they had, but two upstarts managed to shove their way in: Braniff Airways and Delta Air Lines.
Congress also got into the action, mandating that all airmail contracts would go to the lowest bidder, regardless of other considerations. They also established a time limit on the contracts, so they were periodically re-opened for bidding. This led the airlines to once again agressively undercut each other. In one example, Braniff bid on an airmail route from Houston to San Antonio (a distance of about 210 miles), at a rate of $0.00001907378 per ounce per mile, which would then result in a revenue of $0.004 per ounce per flight. Eastern, in an effort to cut into Braniff's route structure, bid $0.000000000 per ounce per mile--carrying the mail for free.
With diminishing revenues, something had to give at the airlines. What gave was maintenance, new aircraft, and crew training. Inevitably, this led to accidents and crashes, several of them involving celebrities and other notables. In a bind, the 'captains of industry' that headed the airlines went to Washington, to President Roosevelt, and made the stunning plea to have their industry regulated by the federal government. Riding the wave of public sentiment after the string of crashes, Congress and President Roosevelt created the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which in turn created the Civil Aeronautics Board, which then regulated the entire air transportation industry for the next 40 years. So the airlines had their routes and fares regulated by the federal government, establishing state control over the entire industry (sounds sort of communistic to me, but it worked). No airline could operate between the states without the CAB approving the route, the number of flights, the number of seats on the airplane, the fare they could charge, etc. Essentially the CAB turned the airlines into public utilities; in exchange for allowing themselves to be regulated, the airlines were guaranteed a small but reliable profit.
The airlines had proved unable to regulate themselves into providing a safe, reliable service, due to their own cutthroat competition between themselves. The aircraft manufacturers during this time were developing better, safer, and more capable airplanes, but the airlines were only barely able to buy them, due to a lack of revenue resulting from their own efforts to drive each other out of business. The CAB regulations changed all that; now that the airlines had some stability to their cash flow, and that flow was sufficient to guarantee at least a small profit, the airlines could afford the better and safer airplanes.
Despite the firm grasp of Big Brother on all aspects of their operations, the airlines grew and prospered, and created the basis of the air transportation system we have today. There were major shake-ups after deregulation of the airlines in 1978 (resulting in only three of those original 6 still being around today), but we've once again reached a point of equilibrium (albeit a relatively shaky one) with the airline industry today.
So . . . if our goal in space over the next several years is to try to encourage commercial development of space transportation by contracting governmental flights through commercial entities, we need to be very careful on what we do. We also need to have extremely close governmental scrutiny of exact what those contractors do and how they do it. Unfortunately we don't exactly have much in the way of government regulatory guidance in place to make this happen. More on that later; I still have to work for a living.
One of the things that's referred to more than once is how, back in the 1920s, the US government stimulated the development of air travel by issuing government contracts to the newly-formed airlines to carry air mail. Aviation history has always been a hobby of mine, and I think that this particular bit of history has some lessons that we need to be aware of.
Yes, the government did indeed issue airmail contracts back in the 20s. When the first bids were solicited, there were over 5,000 applicants, but only 12 were selected. The victors, in an effort to expand and make more money, soon were undercutting each other ruthelessly on their airmail contracts, trying to take each others business. In an effort to restore order, Postmaster General Walter Brown, a very well connected Republican and close associate of then-President Herbert Hoover, sought and was given authority by Congress to award postal contracts regardless of the amount bid. Brown then imposed his own will on the nascent airline industry, consolidating the field down to just four: United Aircraft and Transport (later United Airlines), Transcontinental & Western Air (later TWA), American Airways (later American Airlines), and Easter Air Transport (later Eastern Airlines).
Three years later, in 1933, Senator and later Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black decided to hold hearings on the status of the airmail contracts and learned of what then became knows as the 'spoils conference' three years earlier, when Brown awarded the Big Four airlines their airmail contracts outside a competitive bidding process. Federal agents stormed airline offices around the country, seizing evidence of the grand conspiracy, and then-President Roosevelt ordered the airmail contracts cancelled, ordering the military to carry the airmail instead.
This in and of itself turned into another fiasco, as the military, after 15 years of neglect following the end of World War I, was woefully unprepared to fly the mails. They lacked the training and equipment necessary to fly in bad weather, and in short order 12 Air Corps pilots died in crashes directly related to flying the mail. Roosevelt was forced to relent, but to save face he ordered that none of the former four big winners of the spoils conference would be awarded new contracts. This is when the big four changed their names to match what we know today: United Air & Transport became United Airlines, American Airways became American Airlines, and so on. The big four managed to regain almost all of what they had, but two upstarts managed to shove their way in: Braniff Airways and Delta Air Lines.
Congress also got into the action, mandating that all airmail contracts would go to the lowest bidder, regardless of other considerations. They also established a time limit on the contracts, so they were periodically re-opened for bidding. This led the airlines to once again agressively undercut each other. In one example, Braniff bid on an airmail route from Houston to San Antonio (a distance of about 210 miles), at a rate of $0.00001907378 per ounce per mile, which would then result in a revenue of $0.004 per ounce per flight. Eastern, in an effort to cut into Braniff's route structure, bid $0.000000000 per ounce per mile--carrying the mail for free.
With diminishing revenues, something had to give at the airlines. What gave was maintenance, new aircraft, and crew training. Inevitably, this led to accidents and crashes, several of them involving celebrities and other notables. In a bind, the 'captains of industry' that headed the airlines went to Washington, to President Roosevelt, and made the stunning plea to have their industry regulated by the federal government. Riding the wave of public sentiment after the string of crashes, Congress and President Roosevelt created the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which in turn created the Civil Aeronautics Board, which then regulated the entire air transportation industry for the next 40 years. So the airlines had their routes and fares regulated by the federal government, establishing state control over the entire industry (sounds sort of communistic to me, but it worked). No airline could operate between the states without the CAB approving the route, the number of flights, the number of seats on the airplane, the fare they could charge, etc. Essentially the CAB turned the airlines into public utilities; in exchange for allowing themselves to be regulated, the airlines were guaranteed a small but reliable profit.
The airlines had proved unable to regulate themselves into providing a safe, reliable service, due to their own cutthroat competition between themselves. The aircraft manufacturers during this time were developing better, safer, and more capable airplanes, but the airlines were only barely able to buy them, due to a lack of revenue resulting from their own efforts to drive each other out of business. The CAB regulations changed all that; now that the airlines had some stability to their cash flow, and that flow was sufficient to guarantee at least a small profit, the airlines could afford the better and safer airplanes.
Despite the firm grasp of Big Brother on all aspects of their operations, the airlines grew and prospered, and created the basis of the air transportation system we have today. There were major shake-ups after deregulation of the airlines in 1978 (resulting in only three of those original 6 still being around today), but we've once again reached a point of equilibrium (albeit a relatively shaky one) with the airline industry today.
So . . . if our goal in space over the next several years is to try to encourage commercial development of space transportation by contracting governmental flights through commercial entities, we need to be very careful on what we do. We also need to have extremely close governmental scrutiny of exact what those contractors do and how they do it. Unfortunately we don't exactly have much in the way of government regulatory guidance in place to make this happen. More on that later; I still have to work for a living.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
American Spaceflight: Lack of Clear Goals and Funding
Having been involved in a number of projects of various kinds in my career, I've always preferred being on those with clearly defined goals, and have tried to my utmost to avoid those with loose, nebulous, undefined goals. It's much more difficult to hit a moving target, and where the target is undefined in the first place, it is impossible.
Sort of typical for a lot of Bush Jr. goals, NASA's previous plan for returning to the Moon and perhaps on to Mars was pretty well defined, but it had another fatal flaw--a lack of funding. More than anything else, that's what has done in America's manned spaceflight program.
Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology commissioned the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee to research and report on the status of where America is going in regards to manned spaceflight. In their report, issued last October, they hit the nail right on the head in the first couple of sentences:
Sort of typical for a lot of Bush Jr. goals, NASA's previous plan for returning to the Moon and perhaps on to Mars was pretty well defined, but it had another fatal flaw--a lack of funding. More than anything else, that's what has done in America's manned spaceflight program.
Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology commissioned the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee to research and report on the status of where America is going in regards to manned spaceflight. In their report, issued last October, they hit the nail right on the head in the first couple of sentences:
"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."
[Here's a link to the report itself; however this is a 7.62Mb download, so if you've got a slow connection it's going to take a while.]
NASA's finest hour came back in the late 60's and early 70's, when they flew astronauts to the Moon. This was a result of having both a clear mission and sufficient funding to do the job. The U.S.-led coalition in the First Gulf War was successful because we had a clear mission (drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait) and had the supplies (mostly materiel stockpiled to fight the Soviets) and funding needed to make it happen. It's not enough to make grand political speeches and burst forth in flowery rhetoric, spewing pre-digested sound bites for mass media consumption--money in sufficient amounts is required. It's neatly summed up in a quote from the movie The Right Stuff--no bucks, no Buck Rogers.
So, what are America's goals in terms of human spaceflight? The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy lists the current administration's goals (a link to the document here), which is long on those nebulous 'sounds-good' goals (including the typical 'grow the American economy') and very short on specifics. Nowhere does it spell out time frames or specific goals as to what America intends to accomplish.
Some highlights:
- Adds $6 billion over 5 years to NASA's budget to 'enable us to embark on an ambitious 21st century program of human space exploration', but does not give any specifics as to what that program would include or when it would take place.
- Kills off the Constellation program, which was to be NASA's replacement for the Space Shuttle. "Instead, we are launching a bold new effort that invests in American ingenuity to develop more capable and innovative technologies for future space exploration." (And here's the heart of the problem--for the first time since the early 60's, the United States will not have any sort of domestically developed or built spacecraft capable of taking humans into orbit, and not even have any such spacecraft in development beyond the 'drawing board' stage.) Again, this lacks specifics as to what technologies are being developed or when we expect these investments to start showing results.
- Extends the service life of the International Space Station to 2020 or possibly beyond. Of all the proposals made in this document, this is the only one that makes sense (to me, at least). The Bush Jr. administration called for dismantling and destroying the ISS (by controlled re-entry, crashing it into the Pacific Ocean) in 2015. In other words, after nearly 15 years of construction (and untold billions in costs) we'll just crash it into the ocean after just 5 more years. ISS should have always been a more permanent facility; in fact, it would seem to me that it's obviously modular construction would allow for at least a limited repair and replacement capability in orbit, provided (of course) that a suitable transportation system (i.e., the Space Shuttle or some suitable replacement) were available to transport and retrieve modules needing repair and/or replacement.
- Creates several new programs 'to transform the state of the art in space technologies . . . potential 'game-changing' technologies . . . all intended to increase the reach and reduce the costs of future human space exploration as well as other NASA, government, and commercial space activities.' Again, it's long on grand inspiring pronouncements and very short on details.
- Improves the global climate change research and monitoring system, and increases NASA's efforts to 'bring cleaner, safer, and more efficient transportation to our skies'. Once again, sounds good but short on specifics. Also, we're getting into some inter-departmental stuff here. It's the FAA (in conjunction with the NTSB) that's supposed to make sure our skies are safer. Furthermore, since the American A300 crash in Queens, NY in November 2001, there's not been a major fatality accident of a major U.S. air carrier. All the other commercial fatality crashes since then have involved regional air carriers, and the recurring theme with these is inadequate enforcement of existing regulations, i.e., the FAA and the air carriers themselves not doing their job--not a technology issue. There is no apparent technology that needs to be developed to improve aviation safety. But I digress.
- Calls for a 'robust' robotic exploration effort, to include a probe to fly through the Sun's atmosphere and other new astronomical observatories. As before, other than the proposal to fly a probe through the Sun's atmosphere, there's no specifics. Noticeably missing is a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, which, with the demise of the Space Shuttle program, no longer has a means of being serviced and therefore has only a limited amount of time before it too comes down, burning up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
In other words, our new space policy is long on fine-sounding rhetoric and short on specifics. Now, having been involved in a variety of projects, sometimes it's nice not to have specifics. After all, if you don't have a deadline, you're never behind schedule. If you don't have a goal as to where you're going, you're never lost. In both cases, it's very easy to go back and get more funding, as no one expects you to get anything done according to any sort of schedule or plan. In short, what we've got for space policy looks like a great way to spend a lot of money on a lot of things that may or may not work, and to continue wasting time, getting nowhere at all except for the possibility of maybe developing some new piece of technology. And while we're at it, we'll be 'creating thousands of new jobs' at the expense of eliminating thousands of others. It smacks of yet another big funding giveaway to the biggest corporations who may or may not be able to deliver on what they promise to be able to do, but that's OK--we don't have any concrete goals in the first place, so it's hard to say if they meet those goals or not.
Like so many other things, what the United States needs in terms of space policy is clearly defined goals and a rough schedule of when we expect to meet those goals. Of course, no one should expect scientists to produce 'game-changing' technologies on a schedule--if in fact they're ever able to do so. There's going to be 'dry holes', to use an old oilfield term common here in Oklahoma. But we still need some clear direction as to what course we're setting. And this is something that's clearly absent in this new space policy.
So what should our goals be? That's clearly something for debate.
I think that, in some respects, trying to encourage commercial space development is a very good idea. It's not as if there's not already commercial space launches going on. Boeing has their Sea Launch partnership. SpaceX has developed it's own rockets and plans a manned spacecraft (though at least according to Wikipedia has had only a 40% success rate with it's unmanned rockets). Orbital Sciences Corporation has also been launching commercial satellites for years. And of course there's Richard Branson's audaciously-named Virgin Galactic Spacelines, which, despite all the hype, offers only a suborbital flight that can only barely leave the Earth's atmosphere, and is incapable of reaching even low Earth orbit.
Many years ago, my wife found a copy of G. Harry Stine's book, Halfway to Anywhere, at a Dollar General, and bought it for me. In it, Mr. Stine documented what was the state of the art in single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft in the early to mid 1990s. At that time, it looked like a great revolution was about to take place in the commercial development of space. Douglas Aircraft had developed their DC-X/Delta Clipper testbed and looked like they were going to succeed in scaling it up. Lockheed had their VentureStar spacecraft under development, and things were going good. There were supposedly many different companies lining up to have literally thousands of satellites launched into orbit, so many that there was bound to be a bottleneck due to not enough rockets and launch sites to go around. There were all sorts of applications that required commercial space transportation to make them possible, and the financial payoffs were clear and just around the corner.
So, what happened? Douglas promptly was bought out by their great rival Boeing, which killed off the Douglas commercial aircraft line and the DC-X testbed program (on the left), among other things. Lockheed's VentureStar (on the right) lost it's funding in 2001, though the company has been trying to keep the project alive in a much reduced form. There have been a flurry of smaller competitors that have popped up here and there, gotten their requisite article in Popular Mechanics, and then faded into obscurity.
Why is this? If the future was so rosy in 1994, why did it never materialize? Because it wasn't all that rosy to begin with. It was, to a certain degree, a product in search of a market.
Businesses exist to make money. If they don't make money, they die. With big companies, they study things before they jump into anything, and then if the return on investment is longer than they thought, or is in question, they'll generally cut their losses and move on. When Boeing, for example, decides to develop a new airliner, they first study the potential market for that airliner. If there's no market, or not enough of a market, they abandon the project and find some other new airplane that more closely matches what their customers want. I recall that prior to the start of the development program for their newest airliner, the 787 Dreamliner, they first looked at a high sub-sonic airliner, that would get to its destinations faster than the current generation of airliners, and would therefore have the potential to make more flights per day. However, their market studies showed only a lukewarm interest, so they dropped it. Similarly, Boeing didn't see all that big a market for a competing super-jumbo jet to match Airbus' A380 double-decker, so they didn't develop one.
This is why no one developed a new spacecraft capable of carrying humans into orbit. The technology is there, and has been there for decades. There are no major technical hurdles--it's just that there's no market for it. Now, the Obama adminstration and NASA (by abdicating it's leadership role) is attempting to 'jump-start' commercial manned spaceflight by creating a market--flying American astronauts to the ISS, which is what the Space Shuttle and Russian Soyuz capsules already do.
Now, other than flying astronauts to the ISS, is there any other market for commercial manned spaceflight? There's tourism, but that's about it. Oh sure, someone might be able to offer an in-orbit satellite repair service (as was done with the Shuttle) but if there was a market for this service, we'd have already seen this happen.
Do we really want to have another government-subsidized transportation system? Something like Amtrack, but going into orbit? Is this really a good use of taxpayer dollars (or in reality, due to the massive deficit spending we're doing, with money borrowed from China)?
Furthermore, how long does it take to develop a manned spacecraft? The ISS, even with an extension/reprieve, is only going to be up there 10 more years. If it's going to take 6 to 8 years to develop a manned spacecraft (it's taken Boeing more than 7 years to bring the 787 airliner from the initial concept to its first flight, and it's still not forecast to be in commercial service until the end of this year, so a 6-8 year development time for a manned spacecraft is probably optimistic), and that only leaves 2 to 4 years for these new commercial spacecraft to have a market. Supposedly we'll have some sort of new program for something by then, but as I've pointed out above, there's no plan to develop something new. So, in order to make back their development costs, these manufacturers are only going to have a few years worth of launches, which means they're going to have to charge more per flight than they would if they had 20 or 30 years of launches to look forward to.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Future of American Manned Spaceflight
Here's a subject that's dear to my heart--America's manned spaceflight program, or the apparent lack thereof.
About three weeks ago, I ran across an article on Google News (originally from the Wall Street Journal), saying that the Obama administration was planning 'outsource' America's manned spaceflight programs, eliminating NASA's Constellation program in favor of funding private-sector manned spacecraft. Included in this proposal is additional funding to keep the International Space Station in service for an additional 5 years beyond its currently-scheduled destruction in the 2015 time frame.
I was aghast. I was born in 1967, and can remember watching the last three Apollo missions on TV. My friends and I in preschool and elementary all had space toys (one had a very expensive kid's size replica space suit), and we followed the last few moon missions as well as Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. Then there was the long drought until the first of the Space Shuttle launches in 1981. Through it all, all the years of my life, and all the changes and different places I've gone, the things I've seen and done, I've never lost the fascination with space.
It's been a given that the United States was at least one of the leaders in space exploration, if not out-in-out the outright leader. Sure, the Soviets had considerably more experience with space stations and long-duration space flight, with their Salyut and Mir space stations, but ours was pretty good too, and a lot more 'flashy'. It's part of the American psyche, I think, that our nation is superior to most (if not all), and one of the cornerstones of that is that ours is the only flag on the Moon. Neil, Buzz, and all the rest may have 'came in peace for all mankind', and that's a very good thing, but it's still our Old Glory that's exclusively on the Moon.
But now it seems that in an effort to save money, we're going to throw that all away, or at least that's what I thought at first.
The plan (or at least part of it) is to give government funds to private industry to try to 'jump-start' commercial spaceflight. The intent is that doing so will reduce the cost to put satellites (and people) into orbit.
I have some major reservations with this whole plan. However, as this is going to take some time, I'll have to break this down into several posts.
About three weeks ago, I ran across an article on Google News (originally from the Wall Street Journal), saying that the Obama administration was planning 'outsource' America's manned spaceflight programs, eliminating NASA's Constellation program in favor of funding private-sector manned spacecraft. Included in this proposal is additional funding to keep the International Space Station in service for an additional 5 years beyond its currently-scheduled destruction in the 2015 time frame.
I was aghast. I was born in 1967, and can remember watching the last three Apollo missions on TV. My friends and I in preschool and elementary all had space toys (one had a very expensive kid's size replica space suit), and we followed the last few moon missions as well as Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. Then there was the long drought until the first of the Space Shuttle launches in 1981. Through it all, all the years of my life, and all the changes and different places I've gone, the things I've seen and done, I've never lost the fascination with space.
It's been a given that the United States was at least one of the leaders in space exploration, if not out-in-out the outright leader. Sure, the Soviets had considerably more experience with space stations and long-duration space flight, with their Salyut and Mir space stations, but ours was pretty good too, and a lot more 'flashy'. It's part of the American psyche, I think, that our nation is superior to most (if not all), and one of the cornerstones of that is that ours is the only flag on the Moon. Neil, Buzz, and all the rest may have 'came in peace for all mankind', and that's a very good thing, but it's still our Old Glory that's exclusively on the Moon.
But now it seems that in an effort to save money, we're going to throw that all away, or at least that's what I thought at first.
The plan (or at least part of it) is to give government funds to private industry to try to 'jump-start' commercial spaceflight. The intent is that doing so will reduce the cost to put satellites (and people) into orbit.
I have some major reservations with this whole plan. However, as this is going to take some time, I'll have to break this down into several posts.
Hi there!
Well, I've been meaning to start a blog for several years now, and never seemed to find the time to do so. What I'd like to do is to just throw out some miscellaneous posts from time to time and see what develops.
The blog name, EufaulaCollegeofLoafers, comes from a sign that someone had posted in a second-story window in an old building in downtown Eufaula, Oklahoma, many years ago, advertising it as the home of the Eufaula College of Loafers. (If you've ever been through Eufaula, you know that the downtown area is really just a couple or three blocks long.) My grandparents lived there in Eufaula and the surrounding area for many years, and we grandkids would go down there and run around in the woods, down at the lake, and generally all over the place whenever our mom would take us down there.
My grandparents passed away almost 20 years ago, but I still have fond memories of the town and the area in general. It's a pretty typical small town, somewhere around 4,000 or 5,000 now (about 3,500 back when I was growing up), with some distiguished football players from there (the Selmon brothers and J.C. Watts, specifically). Oklahoma's largest lake, Lake Eufaula, takes its name from the town, and the town runs right down to the water's edge. It's hot and humid in the summer, and can get pretty chilly in the winter. Lots of trees cover the rolling hills that surround the area, and of course there's good fishing and some pretty good hunting, too. The town puts on a pretty good fireworks display on July 4th, especially if you go out on a boat in Eufaula Cove to watch it, with the fireworks reflecting across the water.
Anyway, I didn't create this to blog about Eufaula (though the Wikipedia article doesn't do the town justice); the Eufaula College of Loafers thing is just something that's been stuck in my head for years, and I had to come up with some sort name, and all the better ones were taken.
The blog name, EufaulaCollegeofLoafers, comes from a sign that someone had posted in a second-story window in an old building in downtown Eufaula, Oklahoma, many years ago, advertising it as the home of the Eufaula College of Loafers. (If you've ever been through Eufaula, you know that the downtown area is really just a couple or three blocks long.) My grandparents lived there in Eufaula and the surrounding area for many years, and we grandkids would go down there and run around in the woods, down at the lake, and generally all over the place whenever our mom would take us down there.
My grandparents passed away almost 20 years ago, but I still have fond memories of the town and the area in general. It's a pretty typical small town, somewhere around 4,000 or 5,000 now (about 3,500 back when I was growing up), with some distiguished football players from there (the Selmon brothers and J.C. Watts, specifically). Oklahoma's largest lake, Lake Eufaula, takes its name from the town, and the town runs right down to the water's edge. It's hot and humid in the summer, and can get pretty chilly in the winter. Lots of trees cover the rolling hills that surround the area, and of course there's good fishing and some pretty good hunting, too. The town puts on a pretty good fireworks display on July 4th, especially if you go out on a boat in Eufaula Cove to watch it, with the fireworks reflecting across the water.
Anyway, I didn't create this to blog about Eufaula (though the Wikipedia article doesn't do the town justice); the Eufaula College of Loafers thing is just something that's been stuck in my head for years, and I had to come up with some sort name, and all the better ones were taken.
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