Commercial space flight and Egyptian elections

One positive news item from the last week was the launch of SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft and its successful docking with the International Space Station, making it the first commercial spacecraft to dock with another spacecraft. Though the mission isn't over (Dragon still has to return to Earth), this marks a major step towards developing a private space industry. While I'm certainly not one of those who believes that private enterprise is inherently better than government programs, there are advantages to having private companies becoming involved in developing space. While the initial steps into space inevitably had to be made by large governments like those of the US and Russia, since only they had the resources, having only a half dozen governmental space programs, all subject to the vagaries of political and economic circumstances, involved in launching spacecraft limits the possibilities for developing space.

As I mentioned in discussing the recently announced plan to mine asteroids, I wouldn't want to see space treated the way Earth sometimes has, with companies engaging in indiscriminate and destructive exploitation. However, most of the current crop of private entrepreneurs involved in space, while they may want to make a profit, seem to care just as much or more about advancing space exploration in positive ways. This is something that I am very much in favor of, no matter who is doing it. So I am glad to see SpaceX succeed, and I hope its competitors will also be successful in their ongoing efforts. It will also be interesting to see how this mission affects debates over funding for NASA. There has been talk in Congress about cutting some of the funding for developing commercial space flight, so that rather than funding efforts by two companies, NASA would have to pick one. This seems a rather odd thing for many of the ostensibly pro-free enterprise people in Congress (particularly from the Republican party) to advocate, as you'd think they'd want to encourage competition. On the other hand, they want to restore more funding for planetary exploration, a part of NASA's budget that was cut in the Obama administration's proposal, and I agree with those who want that funding restored. But then I am in favor of increasing NASA's overall budget, despite the budget problems the US has, so that all of these efforts can be fully funded. Admittedly, in the current climate, this is unlikely, but perhaps successful space missions like this one will help change a few minds on both sides of the political divide in Washington, not to mention among the public.

Another major news item was the first round of voting in Egypt's first open presidential election. The two top vote-getters, who will face each other in a runoff election, were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi (or Morsy) and Ahmed Shafik, who was the last prime minister under Mubarak and is supposedly on good terms with the military leadership. This is not a particularly encouraging result, as a win by Morsi would leave the Brotherhood in control of both the presidency and the legislature, which might be dangerous to Egypt's status as a relatively secular nation. Granted, the Brotherhood is fairly moderate (especially in comparison with the ultra-conservative Salafists) and disclaims any interest in immediately imposing Sharia law. But Morsi did make some rather disturbingly fundamentalist-sounding remarks in campaigning, though that may have been mainly an effort to attract Salafist support. A victory by Shafik, on the other hand, would be viewed by many as a restoration of the old regime. Shafik claims that he has no intention of going back to the Mubarak era, but few of those who were active in the revolution trust him. His "law and order" platform appeals to many ordinary Egyptians tired of the chaos of the revolution, but unless he openly calls for reform of the police agencies responsible for all the human rights violations committed under Mubarak (and since), I certainly wouldn't support him. It's no wonder one Egyptian liberal said being asked to choose between Morsi and Shafik is like being asked how you want to commit suicide. If I were an Egyptian, I certainly would have a hard time choosing between these two dubious candidates. There was at least one positive sign for the future in the election, though, in that leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi unexpectedly came in third place. It would have been far better, though, if the runoff were between him and Morsi, or better yet the more moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who only came in fourth, despite leading in some pre-election polls. As it is, Egyptians will be stuck with Morsi or Shafik (probably Morsi).

As an aside, going back to space, an unusual astronomical event will be taking place a week from now (June 5 or 6, depending on location). Venus will pass in front of the Sun as seen from Earth, an event known as a transit of Venus. These take place in pairs eight years apart, separated by gaps of over a century. The last transit of Venus took place in 2004, but the next won't occur until 2117. So if it is a clear day, it will be worth making the effort required to see it (of course one can't look directly at the sun without special protection, so one of the standard methods for observing the sun -- which will generally be mentioned in any article about the transit -- has to be used). I'm not certain I'll manage to see it myself, since we frequently get cloudy weather. In any case most of the transit as seen in Taiwan will take place in the morning, so I'll probably only see the later part even if the weather is good. Still, I hope to at least get a short look at some point.

Some links and news briefs

Since I haven't had time to write about anything at length lately, here are a few links to interesting articles.

In this news article, a human rights report issued by the Taiwan government pointed to the concentration of media ownership as a matter for concern. This is certainly a serious problem, particularly given the pro-China slant of one of the largest media groups, the Want Want Group. Despite their silly name, their power in Taiwanese media is a serious matter. There are other problems with Taiwan's media not mentioned here, such as overly partisan reporting and an obsession with trivial, sensationalized stories (not that these problems are exclusive to Taiwan). With regard to the concentration of media ownership, I might note that in another article I read recently, on problems with media freedom in Balkan countries such as Macedonia, someone mentioned that the problem there wasn't a lack of media outlets, but that there were two many competing for too little money, resulting in a tendency to go for easy sensationalism rather than tackling difficult stories, and that they would be better off with fewer but better funded media entities. This makes sense, but obviously there's a happy medium where you've got enough news sources to ensure that a variety of viewpoints are being presented, but not so many that they have engage in cutthroat competition. For that matter, as I noted, even with a narrow concentration of media power in a few hands Taiwanese media still engage in sensationalism. But this is a complex issue, with the media and the public both deserving a share of the blame, and an in-depth discussion will have to wait for another day.

A big news story internationally was Chen Guangcheng's escape from his village to the US embassy in Beijing (two of the many related stories can be read here and here). The thuggish behavior of the local officials in Chen's home village in Shandong has been in the news before, but his escape forced the US to deal directly with his plight. I won't comment on how they did except to say that they could have been more forceful in their dealings with China. As for China, what is particularly disgraceful is that they openly tolerate this kind of behavior by local officials -- at least until the local people rise up in large numbers, in which case they will sometimes be forced to step in. While Chen is hardly the only dissident in China to suffer from severe oppression and mistreatment by the authorities (something which neither the US nor concerned people around the world should forget), his case further exposes how far China has to go to become a nation that shows even minimal respect for human rights.

Finally, here are a couple more links to articles on unrelated topics (though the first has some relationship to the two above): one is about how a judge in the US ruled that a recent law relating to detention of terror suspects violates the First Amendment, and the second is about the pluses and minuses of the huge charitable foundation started by Bill and Melinda Gates. Both of these articles raise some interesting points that are worth expanding on, but for now I'll let them speak for themselves, other than to say I think the judge made the right ruling.