More Budget Madness

Given the prevalence of the issue in the news and its importance not only to the US but to the world economy, I sort of feel like I should comment more on how the extremists in the US Congress (particularly the House of Representatives) are bringing the US to the brink of financial disaster. But on the other hand, it's getting rather depressing to read not only the inanities spouted by the hardliners (and even the relative moderates -- "relative" being the key word here; most of them would be extremists in any other context), but the sort of "compromises" that President Barack Obama and the Senate Democrats have been reduced to pushing (huge spending cuts -- and far too little of it defense spending -- without any increases in revenue?). One thing I can understand is Obama's insistence on raising the debt limit through the end of next year. While Congress often raised the debt limit more than once a year in the past, they did it with a minimum of fuss. Only the same fringe characters who are creating a crisis this time around would really want to go through all this again any time soon.

I do wonder how many Americans really understand the facts of this debate. Even aside from believing the false ideas promoted by the right-wing fringe, like the claim that all wealthy individuals and corporations are "job creators" and any kind of tax increase will hurt growth while spending cuts won't, or the assertion that the US tax burden is particularly heavy, or any other such nonsense, many people may not even be aware that the raising the debt limit simply authorizes the federal government to pay the bills for spending that has already been passed by Congress. It has nothing to do with authorizing new spending. The time to be negotiating over future spending and taxes is when a new budget is proposed, not when the question is whether the US will fulfill its commitments. But given the crisis that some irresponsible people have created, perhaps Obama should consider using the 14th amendment to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. He might actually have better constitutional grounds for doing so than for picking and choosing which bills to pay. Incidentally, while I can understand the writer's conclusion that anyone wanting to be US president should have their head examined, I don't think Obama (or most other people) fully realized what kind of unhinged, vitriolic opposition he'd be facing. Also, if no sane, sensible people wanted the job, then we'd end up with someone like Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, or Sarah Palin as president of the US, which would be a complete disaster for not only the US, but the rest of the world as well.

Miscellaneous Musings

As a follow up to my last post, I should mention another landmark in space exploration that took place in the last few days. The NASA spacecraft Dawn went into orbit around Vesta, the second-most massive (and the brightest) of the asteroids. This is the first mission to any of the large asteroids (a number of missions have visited smaller asteroids). After orbiting and studying Vesta for a year, Dawn is scheduled to fly on to Ceres, the largest asteroid (and under the IAU's current classification, the smallest dwarf planet -- though a number of other bodies, including Vesta, are considered possible dwarf planets), which it will reach in early 2015. This mission marks a significant milestone in solar system exploration and should greatly increase our knowledge of the asteroids.

Back on Earth, however, things don't look quite so good. The extremists in the Republican party are continuing to insist on their nonsensical position on the US federal budget according to which they refuse to consider any form of revenue increase whatsoever in the effort to reduce the budget deficit, an absurd approach to take (especially since one of the biggest reasons there's such a big deficit in the first place is the foolish tax cut enacted during the W. Bush administration). Most of them compound the problem by acting reluctant to cut the defense budget significantly, despite the fact that it makes up half of the discretionary budget. What's more, a lot of them are even calling for measures that would heavily restrict the government's future use of the budget as a policy tool (one of its main functions), such as a balanced budget amendment. If their game of chicken with the debt ceiling and a default by the US government on its debt threatened only the US, it would be bad enough, but it could even endanger the world economy, which is still in rather shaky condition. There are many, many things that could be said about the ridiculousness of the Republican position, but for an overview of how the simpleminded "taxes bad" mindset has taken over the Republican party, see this article.

Of course the idiocy doesn't stop at tax and budget policy. The dim bulbs among the Republicans in the House of Representatives even attempted to repeal the very sensible and easily achievable standards for efficiency in light fixtures (standards which the industry itself supported), calling their efforts an attempt to "save the light bulb". Fortunately their effort failed, but nearly as miserably as it should have. If they had succeeded, no doubt they would have gone on to do away with fuel efficiency standards and even bring back leaded gasoline (after all, we can't have the government telling people what kind of gasoline they can buy, can we?). It's getting hard to think of civil ways to talk about these people....

Finally, having posted on it before, I showed mention the unraveling of the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Readers may note that I made a point of qualifying my comments about him with phrases like "if [he] is guilty of what he is accused of", so I have always acknowledge the possibility that he was innocent. On the other hand, even if Strauss-Kahn's accuser has proved to be unreliable, that does not necessarily mean he is not guilty, just that it would be impossible to make a strong case against him. It's worth remembering that he is also accused of sexual assault against a young French writer a number of years ago, and there were reports that she was considering bringing charges (depending on the charge, the statute of limitations would not yet have expired). Of course he may be innocent in both instances, but it would be easier to believe that if he gave a convincing explanation of his behavior, including a strong condemnation of anyone who would actually force themselves on someone else (I wouldn't expect him to condemn sexual relations based on consent, and there would be no reason for him to do so -- indeed that would just be hypocritical). As for his political career, whether he can recover remains to be seen. But if there is good reason to believe he is guilty of sexual assault, in France if not in New York, then I would rather hope not. While it's certainly possible for someone with significant moral flaws to be a good leader, and for the most part politicians should be judged for their public actions rather than their private lives, serious sexual assault is a bit too much to accept.

A Year on Neptune and the Future of Space Exploration

According to a news report the other day, as of July 11, it's been one year since the planet Neptune was discovered; one year on Neptune, that is. This sounds about right, since Neptune was discovered on September 23, 1846, and the planet takes 164.79 Earth years to orbit the Sun. The idea that a single year could last that long is fairly mind-boggling to most people, though it is not even close to being the most incredible statistic astronomy has to offer. Neptune itself, the most distant of the large planets in our solar system, is a fascinating place, and the story of its discovery is equally fascinating, though too long to relate here (incidentally, though Neptune was only recognized as a planet in 1846, it was observed several times before by astronomers who took it for a star, the earliest and most notable being Galileo Galilei). Neptune, like Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, is a gas giant planet, with a radius almost four times that of Earth and a mass of more than 17 times that of Earth. It is blue in color, has a faint ring system, and thirteen known satellites, most notably the large moon Triton. Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 4.5 billion km (compared to about 150 million km for the Earth).

There is still much to learn about Neptune, as well as about the even more distant objects beyond it, such as the small planets (or dwarf planets, if we accept the IAU's reclassification) Pluto and Eris (though it has been over 80 years since Pluto's discovery, only a third of a Plutonian year -- which lasts 248 Earth years -- has passed since it was identified). While a spacecraft is on its way to Pluto and its companion Charon, there are no other such missions scheduled, so we may have to settle for studying Neptune (which was visited once by a spacecraft, Voyager 2 in 1989) and other objects in the outer solar system from a distance for quite some time into the future.

While it may be a long time before any more robotic spacecraft visit Neptune, and even longer before humans get anywhere near it, there are a lot of other places in the solar system that we should be trying to get to in the next few decades, by robotic craft or even with human-crewed missions. Among them are Jupiter's moon Europa, Saturn's moon Titan, and of course Mars and the asteroids (the latter two being the near-term goals for human space exploration, along with the Moon). The problem, as usual, is getting enough funding for the missions (even though as I've pointed out elsewhere, space exploration costs far less than a lot of other things we spend money on, whether it's the US government spending money on the military or the general public spending it on sports or cosmetics). Many people are regrettably short-sighted about such things, not only politicians but people in the media as well.

For an example of the latter, take the recent issue of the Economist which featured a cover showing the space shuttle in flight and the title "The End of the Space Age". The cover refers to the other, much more widely reported space-related milestone of the past few days, the launch of the last space shuttle mission. The magazine's lead editorial declared human space exploration dead or at least almost so, and seemed to give the impression that this was a good thing. I disagree, of course, and so I sent a rather rapidly written but hopefully coherent response, which I will conclude this blog entry with:

Your editorial on the future of space exploration was regrettably short-sighted and unimaginative. I take issue not so much with your view of the near-term problems faced by human space exploration, particularly the budget difficulties hindering any major endeavors such as a return to the Moon or sending humans to Mars, as they are formidable. But I do disagree with your view that this hiatus in space exploration by humans is anything other than temporary (absent a disaster on Earth that is destructive to human civilization as a whole), and I certainly take exception to your implication that this is a good thing, made most obvious by your dismissively referring to advocates of space exploration as "space cadets".

The benefits brought by space exploration, whether human or robotic, have been numerous, but near-term "practical" benefits are not, or at least should not, be the main driver behind sending people into space, or for that matter behind any scientific endeavor. People like Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein did not do science because they were concerned about practical applications to their work. It is part of human nature to be curious about the unknown and so to explore new places. What's more, this type of exploration is highly inspirational. How many of today's leaders in the fields of science and information technology were inspired to take up their current careers by seeing humans walk on the Moon? A human mission to Mars could do the same for a new generation.

Furthermore, if we take a long-range view, there is a lot to be gained in human expansion into the rest of the solar system. Whether we talk about mining, testing cutting edge technologies, or even settling permanently on Mars or elsewhere, human space exploration will someday pay for itself. Of course that day is far in the future, and in the meantime a large upfront investment is necessary. But why should humanity restrict itself to thinking in terms of the next decade or even the next generation? There is no reason we cannot invest in something that will bear fruit a century from now (indeed, we had best learn to think in such long-range terms if we hope to deal with climate change).

Finally, your observation about "diminishing returns" from robotic exploration reveals a misunderstanding about the purposes and status of such exploration. The goal was never simply to visit as many places as possible to add them to the "stamp album". The goal has always been to learn as much about our neighborhood as we can, to answer all sorts of questions about our surroundings and our origins. What we have learned in many cases makes it more imperative, not less, that further exploration be made. Is the ocean under Europa's icy crust home to life? How about Saturn's massive moon Titan with its thick atmosphere and its hydrocarbon lakes and seas? Is there now or has there in the past been life on Mars? Only further exploration by robots or humans can answer these questions and many more. Perhaps the current generation will indeed prove too short-sighted to care, but eventually the natural drive to explore will drive us out away from Earth.