The Texas Progressive Alliance asks What Happened to Sandra Bland, and what might happen to Blue Bell Ice Cream, as it brings you this week's roundup.
Off the Kuff looks at the lawsuit filed against the state for refusing to issue birth certificates to children of undocumented immigrant mothers.
Lightseeker at Texas Kaos makes a compelling argument as to why the Democratic Party needs to sharpen its message in a way in which it resonates with and motivates the majority of D voters. Why we need a better Democratic story and how Sanders' candidacy underscores this point.
Socratic Gadfly says that if Obama is going to visit a federal prison and talk about commuting sentences, he ought to throw the long bomb by going to Florida and freeing Leonard Peltier.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know Greg Abbott screwed up child support payment upgrade. Republicans don't really care about kids. You can tell by action after action.
From WCNews at Eye on Williamson. The rotting fruit of one-party rule in Williamson County, County GOP Elected Officials Using Courts For Petty Political Battles.
The disruption at Netroots Nation's presidential town hall forum by activists associated with Black Lives Matter was a clash between the politics of the old-school Social Democrats and that of the New Democrats' identity politics. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs thinks there will a coming-together of the two movements or a cleaving of the Democratic Party as the dynamic unfolds.
Neil at All People Have Value discussed Obama's role in taking away our freedoms through the New Horizons mission to Pluto. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.
===============
And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
The Texas Election Law Blog celebrates its second anniversary, and reviews the case that led to its beginning.
Ken Janda asks how can Texas continue to ask for billions of dollars in uncompensated care payments to hospitals for uninsured patients coming to emergency rooms, when more than one million of those people could be put into Medicaid Managed Care?
The TSTA Blog warns of "dangerous anti-educator" Scott Walker.
Texas Vox cheers the forthcoming end of coal.
Grits for Breakfast is pleased to see that funding has been allotted for research into the underlying scientific bases for the forensic tools and methods currently used in the criminal justice system.
David Ortez gives a graphical representation of the Houston Mayoral fundraising race.
Rachel Pearson explains why that video hit job on Planned Parenthood is "pure applesauce".
Texas Clean Air Matters documents the trend towards clean, affordable power.
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
July 20, 2015
February 21, 2014
#Mars, biatches? Well, maybe not
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| Properly measuring and protecting against Martian radiation will be key to any manned mission to Mars./Space.com photo |
That's because, as Space.com notes in a great new piece, we're just starting to figure out what we need to know about cosmic rays. And, the problems will be on Mars, not just in flight.
Let's take a peek at it, before doing an update on the possibility, and needs, of an actual scientific mission:
The Mars rover Curiosity has allowed us to finally calculate an average dose over the 180-day journey. It is approximately 300 mSv, the equivalent of 24 CAT scans. In just getting to Mars, an explorer would be exposed to more than 15 times an annual radiation limit for a worker in a nuclear power plant.So, double that for the return trip. Add 50 percent, off the top of my head, for time on Mars. That's 60 CAT scans, or 37.5 times the power plant worker's limit. Or, 750 mSv, which is 75 rem. Per Wikipedia, we're at a lifetime dose for a nuclear power plant or similar worker.
In short, while a trip to Mars isn't going to turn an astronaut into the cosmic-ray version of Frankenfood, without at least some shielding, it's going to definitely increase his or her likelihood of cancer. And, especially with men, it's going to increase the likelihood of sterility.
That said ...
Is this doable? Yes? Any time this decade? No.
It is a big sum to do this, unless we want a one-way trip, which somebody likely would volunteer to do. I think setting a target date of about 2035 allows out years to fatten that budget, do the R&D on radiation shielding, use more robotic missions to focus what a manned mission should do, etc. That also allows NASA plenty of time to work out details of a joint effort with Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, and maybe other partners.
Also, our current rockets are too small, specifically capsule size. As I've blogged before, unless you want to do the 1-day stop-and-return to have the lowest-energy return trajectory, you've got to have more than three people on that mission. And, that adds up to additional weight, space and food, plus additional weight and space for the exercise area. Mars' gravity is enough more than the moon's that, without adequate exercise in flight, an astronaut is liable to break a leg on landing.
That 2035 tracks pretty closely with the "30 years away" of my original blog post.
Wikipedia has an entry entitled "Manned mission to Mars." Since I started writing my thoughts independently of looking at it, I'm going by what I have written, with brief references to it.
Shorter take? Illustrations of such a trip look great, don't they? Well, drool away, because those illustrations are about as close as we're getting in your lifetime or mine to landing people on Mars, in my opinion.
There's three main reasons why "cool" images are all we'll be seeing in the foreseeable future. They're called space psychology, space safety and space engineering.
And, most of those are connected with the idea that, at minimum, we're talking 1.5 years of travel, with distances far greater than lunar travel. And, the low-fuel journey, for one-quarter of what the "fast" trip takes, involves 2.8 years, more than half of that on Mars.
This will tax engineering, certainly tax human psychology, and without massive advances in shielding from cosmic rays, will kill astronauts -- not on the actual trip, but more surely, and with at least as much life reduction on average, as smoking two packs of Camels a day.
In short, beyond the illustration, we have to do R&D on human physiology for a long journey in "zero gravity," a certain amount of exploration into 1/4 Earth gravity, then a long journey back into zero gravity. We have to do the psychological R&D, more rigorous than Russia's mock trip to Mars, on a capsule of as many as seven people confined together for 6 months or more, and, on Mars, as far away as 20 minutes, one way, by communications link.
Details on the "why" of all of this below the fold, updated to reflect how NASA's current manned mission planning is woefully inadequate, starting with the spacecraft.
1. Space psychology. A trip to Mars will take about 400-450 days round trip. Once on Mars, astronauts either have to wait about 1.5 years for an optimal window for return, or else burn much more fuel to get back to Earth after a relatively short one-month stay. Details of both options, as well as a faster outward trip, are here. Having to burn 3x as much fuel for a faster outward trip, and 5x as much for an earlier return is not a negligible consideration.
Here's the bottom line:
A. Hohmann transfer both ways plus 1.5 years on Mars = 2.8 years.
B. Fast trip out plus 1 month on Mars plus slow trip home = 1.5 years.
So, we've got astronauts away, well away, from Earth for a minimum of 1.5 years. And, if we want to maximize the "return" on going to Mars, we've got them there three years.
Even in near-Earth orbit, and with less than a year's time, we've seen psychological stress on some outer space crews. Yes, there have been simulated Mars trips, but, given the many minor things that can go wrong in real space, and the simple psychological factor of knowing that Earth is "just outside the door," I'm not sure how well you can simulate the psychology of such a trip. The Russian mockup was far short of that. First, they had the knowledge they could bail. Second, it only simulated a one-way trip; the time on Mars and the return time was not in the simulation.
For just about all the trip, astronauts will be outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere. Dangerous, in terms of radiation? Yes, enough to make some people rethink the whole idea as potentially fatal:
"The estimate now is you would exceed acceptable levels of fatal cancer," said Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist for NASA's space radiation program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "That's just cancer. We also worry about effects of radiation on the heart and the central nervous system."And then, there's the gravity issue. We'd have either 450 days of zero gravity and one month of 1/4 Earth gravity, or 450 days of the former and a little more than that of the latter.
Cucinotta says these estimates do take into account protective shielding around a crew vehicle, probably some form of polyethylene plastic. Lead shields actually create secondary radiation when struck by cosmic rays, while water, perhaps the best form of protection, would have to be several meters thick to get enough protection. ("Houston calling Water Balloon 1, do you copy?")
Lead and water, in any case, are very heavy for the quantities that would be required, making them an expensive shielding to launch.
At the same time, while Mars' gravity is low, low enough to not be "good" for Earth-accustomed astronauts, it's heavy enough to be problematic after 225 days of no gravity, as the story above notes;
"What happens if they land on Mars and try to lift an object that's fairly or reasonably heavy, they could herniate their discs," said Alan Hargens, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California San Diego who studies the effects of gravity on astronauts. "One of the main issues is that when they arrive at Mars, there's nobody there to take care of them. If they have some issue due to de-conditioning in that six month period, they'll definitely have a problem."It's true. Even with treadmills and other gravity simulators on the spacecraft, in the first few days on the Martian surface, there would be a high risk of muscle pulls, muscle and tendon tears, hernias and broken bones, and possibly heart attacks due to stress.
Because you'd definitely need "backup," that means not just one, but two members of each crew would have to be physicians. (One could be a psychiatrist, to address issues under point No. 1. We're going to need a psychologist anyway.
There's also another medical problem that's already hit some shuttle/ISS astronauts: Vision problems.
According to one NASA survey of about 300 astronauts, nearly 30 percent of those who have flown on space shuttle missions — which usually lasted two weeks — and 60 percent who completed six-month shifts aboard the station reported a gradual blurring of eyesight.It's obviously progressive. A trip to Mars would have worse effects on a higher percentage of astronauts. It's fairly serious, and so far, recovery has not been complete in those who have suffered it.
3. Space engineering. This is going to subsume several things.
Let's start with a bottom line that also relates to point 1: the communication time gap. When Earth and Mars are at opposition, it's 20 minutes one way for communication.
So, if an Apollo 13 type event happens, during almost all the journey, astronauts are on their own.
That affect Earth engineering. We can't have an Apollo 13 problem, as far as improvised fixes, of trying to mate square canisters and round holes or vice versa. Can't have it. That means that the U.S. government, U.N., EU, a consortium or whatever, has to ride a very, very heavy herd on private contractors. That, in turn, ramps up the price.
Second, radiation shielding. Unless you have astronauts who sign "death sentence waivers," our current engineering simply can't protect against it. Period.
Third, crew composition. Let's say we have a crew of seven.
Of course, we' re not getting there anyway. But, that would be a minimum. Arguably, even on the first flight, you'd want an eighth person, another engineering/construction person. That then said, what crew capsule size are we talking about? And, are we conforming a crew to a capsule or vice versa? In either case, seven is a minimum, I think.
Don't forget all the food that means. All the water conversion and air filtration that means, with multiple redundancies on systems.
Meanwhile, NASA's Orion crew vehicle only seats four. NASA's skimping a LOT on both human backup needs, legitimate crew needs and space psychology issues. More reason to say both that we're not going to launch a manned mission to Mars any time soon, and we shouldn't, at least not under current planning.
However, Boeing's new capsule (update, May 8, 2015) does seat seven, and does so in comfort, style and modernity, as this story details, complete with the photo and more at the link.
Details note that the pilot's seat has had traditional switchgear replaced with tablet-like interfaces. In turn, that reduces cabin clutter.
Plastic has replaced metal in a lot of places, which reduces weight.
It generally looks much more ergonomic.
Now, this is being targeted to low-Earth orbit, for flights to the International Space Station and commercial use. But, the size is right and general design elements are right. No reason why something based on this couldn't be the Mars craft.
There's one more "engineering" option. Let's call it "financial engineering." Throwing aside radiation, building a spaceship that can offer some exercise protection against zero-G debilitation, be big enough to offer some small bit of buffer against space psychology, be big enough to, over a few trips, carry Mars base construction raw materials, etc. ....
Will cost at least $1 trillion in today's money to build and launch.
The U.S. is not doing that alone. See above.
Partnerships also need to to "R&D" on the willingness of even the biggest government joint venture to shell out that much.
December 03, 2012
#Arsenicgate part deaux from NASA on #Curiosity?
In line with NASA's bullshitty non-annoucement of anything new on Mars, and with the "fiscal cliff" ahead, is every US federal government agency going to have similar PR in days ahead?
Background for that rhetorical question?
When the actual "Arsenicgate" press conference was held, I said NASA had "good" reasons for it's PR fluffery, namely that budget talks were ongoing, and NASA was looking at the possibility of some serious cuts.
In fact, I got into a spat with over-serious science blogger Greg Laden, who both strenuously insisted that the researchers had found something real and significant (wrong, Greg, as they've been refuted on everything from the actual findings the the quality of their work and in between, and are now too lazy to even want to put in the effort to try to replicate their own earlier research) and that NASA wouldn't do something like that (also wrong, as scientists are just as much human beings as anybody else).
Indeed, Laden eventually threatened to "ban me from the Internet," revealing (even before his Freethought Blogs issues) just how over-the-top he is.
But, back to today.
Given that NASA said something incredibly breathless about three weeks ago about a finding by Curiosity, and then, when that went more viral, took more than a week to start walking that back, good skeptics should once again rightfully be suspicious of the agency, in my opinion.
And, while my opening paragraph was halfway snarky, it's not totally so. If the Pentagon suddenly says something rosy about Afghanistan, hold on to your wallets.
Background for that rhetorical question?
When the actual "Arsenicgate" press conference was held, I said NASA had "good" reasons for it's PR fluffery, namely that budget talks were ongoing, and NASA was looking at the possibility of some serious cuts.
In fact, I got into a spat with over-serious science blogger Greg Laden, who both strenuously insisted that the researchers had found something real and significant (wrong, Greg, as they've been refuted on everything from the actual findings the the quality of their work and in between, and are now too lazy to even want to put in the effort to try to replicate their own earlier research) and that NASA wouldn't do something like that (also wrong, as scientists are just as much human beings as anybody else).
Indeed, Laden eventually threatened to "ban me from the Internet," revealing (even before his Freethought Blogs issues) just how over-the-top he is.
But, back to today.
Given that NASA said something incredibly breathless about three weeks ago about a finding by Curiosity, and then, when that went more viral, took more than a week to start walking that back, good skeptics should once again rightfully be suspicious of the agency, in my opinion.
And, while my opening paragraph was halfway snarky, it's not totally so. If the Pentagon suddenly says something rosy about Afghanistan, hold on to your wallets.
August 06, 2012
I have #Curiosity about #NASA, #Mars and superstition
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| NASA's 'good luck peanuts.' (Space.com photo) |
But, with such technological skill, does NASA (technically, JPL) really need its good Mission Control staff ... keeping a jar of "good luck peanuts"? No, I'm not joking. (Click No. 3 above the top of the first roll-through photo and caption to get the details.)
Oh, sure, one could easily say it's a "harmless tradition."
One could also look at how it got started, then try to remove all jars of peanuts from Mission Control during the next Mars mission and see just how much of a superstition it is.
One could also note that there have been unsuccessful Mars missions since Ranger 7. The Mars Climate Orbiter, which crashed because different engineers used a mix of metric and ASE (feet/inches) measurements and didn't communicate this to one another, immediately comes to mind.
On November 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board released a Phase I report, detailing the suspected issues encountered with the loss of the spacecraft. Previously, on September 8, 1999, Trajectory Correction Maneuver-4 was computed and then executed on September 15, 1999. It was intended to place the spacecraft at an optimal position for an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring the spacecraft around Mars at an altitude of 226 kilometers on September 23, 1999.Now, this could be a "teaching moment" for NASA/JPL, where top brass, at a minimum, says something like this:
However, during the week between TCM-4 and the orbital insertion maneuver, the navigation team indicated the altitude may be much lower than intended at 150 to 170 kilometers. Twenty-four hours prior to orbital insertion, calculations placed the orbiter at an altitude of 110 kilometers; 80 kilometers is the minimum altitude that Mars Climate Orbiter was thought to be capable of surviving during this maneuver. Final calculations placed the spacecraft in a trajectory that would have taken the orbiter within 57 kilometers of the surface where the spacecraft likely disintegrated because of atmospheric stresses.
The primary cause of this discrepancy was engineering error. Specifically, the flight system software on the Mars Climate Orbiter was written to take thrust instructions using the metric unit newtons (N), while the software on the ground that generated those instructions used the Imperial measure pound-force (lbf). This error has since been known as the metric mixup.
While we at NASA are not about to restrict individual employees' behavior, we do not condone it, either, and we certainly do not support the thought processes behind it.Then, blast that jar out to space along with all the old sweaters of Gene Kranz.
Of course, speaking of sweaters and other sartorial issues, as a segue, my friend Leo Lincourt mentions that JPL even has a history of connection to the occult.
September 28, 2011
#ArsenicGate updated
It's now clearer than ever that NASA's hyping of some alleged arsenic-based life several months ago (with arsenic allegedly replacing phosphorus) was a big PR hype by NASA, as this extended piece shows. See page 3 to get the details on NASA's PR blitz. On page 4, NASA tries to justify this:
I stand by what I first said about this, re Congressional funding. With the end of the shuttle, and Congressional GOPers in a budget-cutting mood, NASA needed a "splash." So, it created one.
And, while not all of the PR hype was directly or indirectly lead scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon's fault, much of it was. I do feel sorry that NASA and the overseers of the research group she was in at the time have made her a scapegoat; but, she bought her ticket months before the official announcement.
Hey, Greg Laden? Still buying the NASA company line?
Hat tip to my friend Leo Lincourt for the story link.
Because NASA is dependent for funding on Congress, and therefore its constituents, it needs to project an ongoing sense of relevance. But the agency also needs to maintain its scientific credibility. The controversy over GFAJ-1 demonstrates the risks inherent when a scientific institution assumes a media role. NASA’s publicity blitz created expectations that weren’t matched by the paper’s data, and this vastly amplified the criticism that followed.
Dwayne Brown, the NASA spokesman, has said that the agency is comfortable with how it handled the affair, particularly the use of the term “extraterrestrial life.” In a story posted on the Embargo Watch blog, he said, “It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback. However, the statement was accurate. The real issue is that the reporting world has changed because of the Internet/bloggers/social media, etc. A ‘buzz’ term like ET will have anyone with a computer putting out anything they want or feel. NASA didn’t hype anything—others did.”
I stand by what I first said about this, re Congressional funding. With the end of the shuttle, and Congressional GOPers in a budget-cutting mood, NASA needed a "splash." So, it created one.
And, while not all of the PR hype was directly or indirectly lead scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon's fault, much of it was. I do feel sorry that NASA and the overseers of the research group she was in at the time have made her a scapegoat; but, she bought her ticket months before the official announcement.
Hey, Greg Laden? Still buying the NASA company line?
Hat tip to my friend Leo Lincourt for the story link.
July 10, 2011
Fusion power: Stop me if you've heard this before
Stewart C. Prager, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, a Department of Energy national laboratory, is giving us the old song-and-dance about how peaceful nuclear fusion power is just around the corner. He's also probably got ulterior motives for this, which I'll address at the end.
He says:
Second, his time/money estimates are what we've always heard from fusion folks, just like AI ones. There's no guarantee they're close to true; "rough estimate" is probably an understatement.
Third, desal for drinking water is pricey enough, and has environmental consequences of its own right now.
The ulterior motive? Prager works for DOE lab.
Given that the reality of the last space shuttle flight, and a hiatus of at least a few years in U.S. manned space flight is settling on on the collective minds of the scientific world, and given the hard-nosed debt talks in DC, etc., well ...
Expect more op-eds from this from more managers/administrators of federal labs, research centers, etc., whether in fusion,complemenary medicine pseudomedicine, nanotech or whatever.
Look at NASA's fake exobiology arsenic PR smokescreen earlier this year. We probably ain't seen nothing yet.
He says:
Seven partners — the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — have teamed up on an experiment to produce 500 million watts of fusion power for 500 seconds and longer by 2020, demonstrating key scientific and engineering aspects of fusion at the scale of a reactor.First, just because other countries are sinking more money into fusion than the U.S. doesn't guarantee they're right.
However, even though the United States is a contributor to this experiment, known as ITER, it has yet to commit to the full program needed to develop a domestic fusion reactor to produce electricity for the American power grid. Meanwhile other nations are moving forward to implement fusion as a key ingredient of their energy security.
Indeed, fusion research facilities more modern than anything in the United States are either under construction or operating in China, Germany, Japan and South Korea. The will and enthusiasm of governments in Asia to fill their energy needs with fusion, as soon as possible, is nearly palpable.
What has been lacking in the United States is the political and economic will. We need serious public investment to develop materials that can withstand the harsh fusion environment, sustain hot plasma indefinitely and integrate all these features in an experimental facility to produce continuous fusion power.
This won’t be cheap. A rough estimate is that it would take $30 billion and 20 years to go from the current state of research to the first working fusion reactor. But put in perspective, that sum is equal to about a week of domestic energy consumption, or about 2 percent of the annual energy expenditure of $1.5 trillion.
Fusion used to be an energy source for my generation’s grandchildren; now, plans across the world call for a demonstration power plant in about 20 years.
Second, his time/money estimates are what we've always heard from fusion folks, just like AI ones. There's no guarantee they're close to true; "rough estimate" is probably an understatement.
Third, desal for drinking water is pricey enough, and has environmental consequences of its own right now.
The ulterior motive? Prager works for DOE lab.
Given that the reality of the last space shuttle flight, and a hiatus of at least a few years in U.S. manned space flight is settling on on the collective minds of the scientific world, and given the hard-nosed debt talks in DC, etc., well ...
Expect more op-eds from this from more managers/administrators of federal labs, research centers, etc., whether in fusion,
Look at NASA's fake exobiology arsenic PR smokescreen earlier this year. We probably ain't seen nothing yet.
December 29, 2010
Bad, or at least breathless, science, by NASA?
Update, Dec. 28: Here's a lot more on how NASA had motive to fluff this bad science. Read the whole thing, to be sure, but this image ought to say it all:
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.
===
Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.
And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:
Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.
Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.
Update, Dec. 6: If shoddy research controls and mechanics make an experiment bad science, then this looks to pretty officially be bad science. Note to Greg Laden and other "fluffers" - why continue flogging this? Let's see some more posting at Science Blogs and Discover about how this baby ever saw the light of day, instead.
Update, Dec. 7: The Guardian has an excellent roundup of NASA's dissing of all the skeptics and naysayers. Again, fluffers ... more skepticism!
Update, Dec. 8: Slate has an excellent article about how NASA has sponsored not-so-good science AND blown the media coverage issues. And, at least one professor says NASA had motive for this fluffery. But, because of the reason for that motive, it could well backfire:
I didn't think so much about that as budgetary motives, but it makes sense. No big news from Mars probes for a while. Obama announces budget cuts and mission changes. The next planned shuttle flight keeps getting shoved back.
Yep, that's motive.
First, contra the breathlessness, at Gizmodo AND elsewhere (see below) — don't tell me that just because Gizmodo isn't a science site, that NASA had nothing to do with "framing." The evidence for that is becoming more and more clear, despite someone like Greg Laden at Scienceblogs, an unrepentant fluffer here and here. That said, Greg's definitely lost credibility in my eyes over this issue.
But, per the first of his linked blog posts:
I never said, myself, that NASA "lied or cheated." I didn't use the phrase "flim flamed" [sic] for its fluffery, either. But, if that's what you think fluff PR for apparently shoddy science should be called, OK!
The New York Times and Phil Plait both also, among others, seem to have gotten a bit breathless.
Second, it's simply untrue that it "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth." As this Wikipedia page points out, arsenic substitution in some "sugars" in some bacteria is well-known. And, for readers who criticize Wiki, before this story, the three footnotes on the arsenic section prior to this story come from the University of Minnesota, NIH, and New Scientist. Got problems with all of them, too? Beyond that, Pharyngula, in his post about the NASA story, also has information on how arsenic in organic compounds is nothing new.
Third, I don't get why people have a blanket condemnation of Wikipedia. On current events/politics/living history, YES. But, in general, in the natural sciences, in more ancient history, and many other areas, Wikipedia is pretty reliable.
Fourth, ff NASA is using the same language as the Gizmodo post is, or left itself open to this, then, we're going past breathless science and getting close to bad science. That's what you get for hyping something you embargo, too, BTW.
Meanwhile, the PR should be labeled bullshit, not just breathless. More reality.
The New York Times notes this bacterium was CULTIVATED to substitute arsenic for phosphorus; it wasn't "discovered."
That said, the NYT opens its story with its own "breathlessness":
It makes it sound like we're still largely clueless about chemical bonds and organic chemistry.
Again, though, this Wikipedia page says we aren't, listing other elements, like boron, in possible exotic life.
Finally, also from the NYT ... the DNA claims haven't fully tested out yet, so this might also be rushed science:
And, still more.
Not quite "breathless," but close, here, as Astrobio's coverage also appears not to have read the material referenced by Wiki and Pharyngula.
Again, not quite so true.
In short, this is about 1/10 of what NASA led people to expect.
And, Astrobio does redeem itself by citing a skeptic:
Given budget cut talks, I honestly wonder if there's an ulterior motive to all this breathlessness. Create an adapted form of life under lab conditions, drop hints that get some tech sites to call it "alien," hint that it might be useful for expanding the search for exobiology ...
And, then, ramp up the push for new Mars mission money or something.
====
A sidebar to this story, as written up in detail by Greg Laden, is whether this doesn't open the window to multiple lines of evolution.
I think that's unlikely, even though theoretically possible. Here's why.
Per Nature News, the arsenic-based bacteria were just 60 percent as efficient in growth rate as their original kin. That's a pretty huge efficiency difference. Given that few places on earth, if any, have significantly higher arsenic concentrations than Mono Lake, it would be hard for such bacteria to find an extremophilic location that exempted them from phosphorus-based competition.
Nature News has more on that line of thought:
All good questions.
And, there's yet more skepticism from Nature News.
First, exactly how is the arsenic working?
And, how do the arsenic compounds avoid breaking down?
So, this needs a LOT more research. It ain't Pons-Fleischmann trotting out cold fusion, no, but, it does seem ... sketchy, so far. (That said, I'll admit that Wikipedia's article on cold fusion is iffy itself.)
===
Update, Dec. 20:Arsenic exobiology researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon is dismissive, and in a wrongly, fudging, sense, concerns about hydrolysis of the arsenic compounds in DNA. Seriously, this has gone beyond breathless; this is indeed bad science.
Per Wikipedia's article on alternative life chemistry, linked above, the hydrolysis issue caught my attention the day of the announcement. Obviously, it caught the attention of science professionals, too, and Ms. Wolfe-Simon is left without explanation, so she bloviates.
Meanwhile, here's proof of NASA's fluffery on the arsenic compound/exobiology story that had nothing to do with alien life - the hed on NASA's announcement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.
===
Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.
And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:
Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.
Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.
Update, Dec. 6: If shoddy research controls and mechanics make an experiment bad science, then this looks to pretty officially be bad science. Note to Greg Laden and other "fluffers" - why continue flogging this? Let's see some more posting at Science Blogs and Discover about how this baby ever saw the light of day, instead.
Update, Dec. 7: The Guardian has an excellent roundup of NASA's dissing of all the skeptics and naysayers. Again, fluffers ... more skepticism!
Update, Dec. 8: Slate has an excellent article about how NASA has sponsored not-so-good science AND blown the media coverage issues. And, at least one professor says NASA had motive for this fluffery. But, because of the reason for that motive, it could well backfire:
Some scientists are left wondering why NASA made such a big deal over a paper with so many flaws. "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," says John Roth of UC-Davis. The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up. And today many scientists think that all of the alleged signs of life in the rocks could have just as easily been made on a lifeless planet.
I didn't think so much about that as budgetary motives, but it makes sense. No big news from Mars probes for a while. Obama announces budget cuts and mission changes. The next planned shuttle flight keeps getting shoved back.
Yep, that's motive.
First, contra the breathlessness, at Gizmodo AND elsewhere (see below) — don't tell me that just because Gizmodo isn't a science site, that NASA had nothing to do with "framing." The evidence for that is becoming more and more clear, despite someone like Greg Laden at Scienceblogs, an unrepentant fluffer here and here. That said, Greg's definitely lost credibility in my eyes over this issue.
But, per the first of his linked blog posts:
I've asked for specific critiques of the NASA press release and have received one, which makes a good suggestion but hardly demonstrates that NASA lied or cheated or flim flamed.
You, on the other hand, are quickly making it onto my list.
I never said, myself, that NASA "lied or cheated." I didn't use the phrase "flim flamed" [sic] for its fluffery, either. But, if that's what you think fluff PR for apparently shoddy science should be called, OK!
The New York Times and Phil Plait both also, among others, seem to have gotten a bit breathless.
Second, it's simply untrue that it "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth." As this Wikipedia page points out, arsenic substitution in some "sugars" in some bacteria is well-known. And, for readers who criticize Wiki, before this story, the three footnotes on the arsenic section prior to this story come from the University of Minnesota, NIH, and New Scientist. Got problems with all of them, too? Beyond that, Pharyngula, in his post about the NASA story, also has information on how arsenic in organic compounds is nothing new.
Third, I don't get why people have a blanket condemnation of Wikipedia. On current events/politics/living history, YES. But, in general, in the natural sciences, in more ancient history, and many other areas, Wikipedia is pretty reliable.
Fourth, ff NASA is using the same language as the Gizmodo post is, or left itself open to this, then, we're going past breathless science and getting close to bad science. That's what you get for hyping something you embargo, too, BTW.
Meanwhile, the PR should be labeled bullshit, not just breathless. More reality.
The New York Times notes this bacterium was CULTIVATED to substitute arsenic for phosphorus; it wasn't "discovered."
The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.
That said, the NYT opens its story with its own "breathlessness":
Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.
It makes it sound like we're still largely clueless about chemical bonds and organic chemistry.
Again, though, this Wikipedia page says we aren't, listing other elements, like boron, in possible exotic life.
Finally, also from the NYT ... the DNA claims haven't fully tested out yet, so this might also be rushed science:
By labeling the arsenic with radioactivity, the researchers were able to conclude that arsenic atoms had taken up position in the microbe’s DNA as well as in other molecules within it. Dr. Joyce, however, said that the experimenters had yet to provide a “smoking gun” that there was arsenic in the backbone of working DNA.
And, still more.
Not quite "breathless," but close, here, as Astrobio's coverage also appears not to have read the material referenced by Wiki and Pharyngula.
The recent discovery by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of an organism that can utilize arsenic in place of phosphorus, however, has demonstrated that life is still capable of surprising us in fundamental ways.
Again, not quite so true.
In short, this is about 1/10 of what NASA led people to expect.
And, Astrobio does redeem itself by citing a skeptic:
Steven Benner, a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla., remains skeptical. If you “replace all the phosphates by arsenates,” in the backbone of DNA, he says, “every bond in that chain is going to hydrolyze [react with water and fall apart] with a half-life on the order of minutes, say 10 minutes.” So “if there is an arsenate equivalent of DNA in that bug, it has to be seriously stabilized” by some as-yet-unknown mechanism.
Benner suggests that perhaps the trace contaminants in the growth medium Wolf-Simon uses in her lab cultures are sufficient to supply the phosphorus needed for the cells’ DNA. He thinks it’s more likely that arsenic is being used elsewhere in the cells, in lipids for example. “Arsenate in lipids would be stable,” he says, and would “not fall apart in water.” What appears in Wolfe-Simon's gel-purified extraction to be arsenate DNA, he says, may actually be DNA containing a standard phosphate-based backbone, but with arsenate associated with it in some unidentified way.
Given budget cut talks, I honestly wonder if there's an ulterior motive to all this breathlessness. Create an adapted form of life under lab conditions, drop hints that get some tech sites to call it "alien," hint that it might be useful for expanding the search for exobiology ...
And, then, ramp up the push for new Mars mission money or something.
====
A sidebar to this story, as written up in detail by Greg Laden, is whether this doesn't open the window to multiple lines of evolution.
I think that's unlikely, even though theoretically possible. Here's why.
Per Nature News, the arsenic-based bacteria were just 60 percent as efficient in growth rate as their original kin. That's a pretty huge efficiency difference. Given that few places on earth, if any, have significantly higher arsenic concentrations than Mono Lake, it would be hard for such bacteria to find an extremophilic location that exempted them from phosphorus-based competition.
Nature News has more on that line of thought:
For example, if phosphate in ATP was exchanged for arsenate, would the energy-transfer reaction that powers a cell be as efficient? In metabolic processes in which arsenate would bind with glucose, would the bonds it forms — weaker than those of phosphate — be as effective? And phosphate groups bind to proteins modify their function, but would arsenate work as well?
All good questions.
And, there's yet more skepticism from Nature News.
First, exactly how is the arsenic working?
To be truly convincing, however, the researchers must show the presence of arsenic not just in the microbial cells, but in specific biomolecules within them, says Barry Rosen, a biochemist at Florida International University, Miami. "It would be good if they could demonstrate that the arsenic in the DNA is actually in the backbone," he said.
Also, he says, the picture is still missing an understanding of what exactly the arsenic–phosphorus switch means for a cell, says Rosen. "What we really need to know is which molecules in the cell have arsenic in them, and whether these molecules are active and functional," he says.
And, how do the arsenic compounds avoid breaking down?
"It remains to be established that this bacterium uses arsenate as a replacement for phosphate in its DNA or in any other biomolecule found in 'standard' terran biology," says Steven Benner, who studies origin-of-life chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida.
Arsenate forms much weaker bonds in water than phosphate, that break apart on the order of minutes, he says, and though there might be other molecules stabilizing these bonds, the researchers would need to explain this discrepancy for the hypothesis to stand. Still, the discovery is "just phenomenal" if it holds up after further chemical analysis, Benner adds. "It means that many, many things are wrong in terms of how we view molecules in the biological system."
So, this needs a LOT more research. It ain't Pons-Fleischmann trotting out cold fusion, no, but, it does seem ... sketchy, so far. (That said, I'll admit that Wikipedia's article on cold fusion is iffy itself.)
===
Update, Dec. 20:Arsenic exobiology researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon is dismissive, and in a wrongly, fudging, sense, concerns about hydrolysis of the arsenic compounds in DNA. Seriously, this has gone beyond breathless; this is indeed bad science.
Per Wikipedia's article on alternative life chemistry, linked above, the hydrolysis issue caught my attention the day of the announcement. Obviously, it caught the attention of science professionals, too, and Ms. Wolfe-Simon is left without explanation, so she bloviates.
Meanwhile, here's proof of NASA's fluffery on the arsenic compound/exobiology story that had nothing to do with alien life - the hed on NASA's announcement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"
December 28, 2010
Does NASA 'new' life form signal multiple evolutionary tracks
Update, Dec. 28: Here's a lot more on how NASA had motive to fluff this bad science. Read the whole thing, to be sure, but this image ought to say it all:
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.
===
As reported in the New York Times and plenty of places elsewhere, NASA today unveiled the "discovery" of a new bacterium in which arsenic appears to substitute for phosphorus in both DNA and ATP.
First, before getting to the meat of the header, let's explain the scare quote first, then the italics.
The New York Times notes this bacterium was CULTIVATED to substitute arsenic for phosphorus; it wasn't "discovered."
OK, so that would leave us a bit skeptical about how relevant this is to multiple evolutionary tracks.
Second, also from the NYT ... the DNA claims haven't fully tested out yet, so this might also be rushed science:
That addresses the appears to replace phosphorus.
Now, let's get to the meat of the header.
A notable sidebar to this story, as written up in detail by Greg Laden, is whether this doesn't open the window to multiple lines of evolution.
I think that's unlikely, even though theoretically possible. Here's why.
Per Nature News, the arsenic-based bacteria were just 60 percent as efficient in growth rate as their original kin. That's a pretty huge efficiency difference. Given that few places on earth, if any, have significantly higher arsenic concentrations than Mono Lake, it would be hard for such bacteria to find an extremophilic location that exempted them from phosphorus-based competition.
Nature News has more on that line of thought:
All good questions.
And, there's yet more skepticism from Nature News.
First, exactly how is the arsenic working?
And, how do the arsenic compounds avoid breaking down?
That then said, per the specifics of how arsenic is poisonous to multicellular life, as (gasp, I'm referencing it again) Wikipedia's arsenic article notes, while this theoretically opens the door to multiple evolutionary pathways, in reality, I can't see that there's a great likelihood of it, at least this particular pathway.
So, this needs a LOT more research. It ain't Pons-Fleischmann trotting out cold fusion, no, but, it does seem ... sketchy, so far. (That said, I'll admit that Wikipedia's article on cold fusion is iffy itself.)
That said, I'm boosting part of my response to Greg into the body of the post here.
First, I am by no means the only person who has said he or she thought the paper, etc., was rushed. To analogize: Bite size chunks can be undercooked and, IMO, this chunk needed more time on the grill.
Second, per me, PZ Myers and many others, there's disagreement on how "spectacular" the trick is, especially given that this was a trick induced in a controlled environment. Again, I note: Mono Lake already has a high arsenic level, and (so far at least) no similar arsenophilic bacteria have been found in the natural environment of the lake. Add in the relative weakness of arsenic bond to phosphorus ones in water, and, at least on Earth, that leaves open the question of just how likely it is.
Now, tying that to exobiology. I don't know what difference, if any, Mars has from Earth in As/P ratios. Given the fact that wasn't mentioned in the presser, the answer is either "little difference" or else "oops, big NASA error." But, short of something like that, a talk of environmental differences, NASA erred again, or "fluffed/hyped," in making the exobiology link.
Oh, and a final note for Greg the commenter - possibly Greg Laden?
From a commenter at Pharyngula:
So, sorry, Greg, nice try but you're flogging a dead horse.
Update, Dec. 6: If shoddy research controls and mechanics make an experiment bad science, then this looks to pretty officially be bad science. Note to Greg Laden and other "fluffers" - why continue flogging this? Let's see some more posting at Science Blogs and Discover about how this baby ever saw the light of day, instead.
Update, Dec. 9:More yet on the NASA fluffery angle:
Here's proof of the fluffery - the hed on NASA's annoucement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"
Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.
And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:
Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.
Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.
===
Update, Dec. 20:Arsenic exobiology researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon is dismissive, and in a wrongly, fudging, sense, concerns about hydrolysis of the arsenic compounds in DNA. Seriously, this has gone beyond breathless; this is indeed bad science.
Per Wikipedia's article on alternative life chemistry, linked below, the hydrolysis issue caught y attention the day of the announcement. Obviously, it caught the attention of science professionals, too, and Ms. Wolfe-Simon is left without explanation, so she bloviates.
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.
===
As reported in the New York Times and plenty of places elsewhere, NASA today unveiled the "discovery" of a new bacterium in which arsenic appears to substitute for phosphorus in both DNA and ATP.
First, before getting to the meat of the header, let's explain the scare quote first, then the italics.
The New York Times notes this bacterium was CULTIVATED to substitute arsenic for phosphorus; it wasn't "discovered."
The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.
OK, so that would leave us a bit skeptical about how relevant this is to multiple evolutionary tracks.
Second, also from the NYT ... the DNA claims haven't fully tested out yet, so this might also be rushed science:
By labeling the arsenic with radioactivity, the researchers were able to conclude that arsenic atoms had taken up position in the microbe’s DNA as well as in other molecules within it. Dr. Joyce, however, said that the experimenters had yet to provide a “smoking gun” that there was arsenic in the backbone of working DNA.
That addresses the appears to replace phosphorus.
Now, let's get to the meat of the header.
A notable sidebar to this story, as written up in detail by Greg Laden, is whether this doesn't open the window to multiple lines of evolution.
I think that's unlikely, even though theoretically possible. Here's why.
Per Nature News, the arsenic-based bacteria were just 60 percent as efficient in growth rate as their original kin. That's a pretty huge efficiency difference. Given that few places on earth, if any, have significantly higher arsenic concentrations than Mono Lake, it would be hard for such bacteria to find an extremophilic location that exempted them from phosphorus-based competition.
Nature News has more on that line of thought:
For example, if phosphate in ATP was exchanged for arsenate, would the energy-transfer reaction that powers a cell be as efficient? In metabolic processes in which arsenate would bind with glucose, would the bonds it forms — weaker than those of phosphate — be as effective? And phosphate groups bind to proteins modify their function, but would arsenate work as well?
All good questions.
And, there's yet more skepticism from Nature News.
First, exactly how is the arsenic working?
To be truly convincing, however, the researchers must show the presence of arsenic not just in the microbial cells, but in specific biomolecules within them, says Barry Rosen, a biochemist at Florida International University, Miami. "It would be good if they could demonstrate that the arsenic in the DNA is actually in the backbone," he said.
Also, he says, the picture is still missing an understanding of what exactly the arsenic–phosphorus switch means for a cell, says Rosen. "What we really need to know is which molecules in the cell have arsenic in them, and whether these molecules are active and functional," he says.
And, how do the arsenic compounds avoid breaking down?
"It remains to be established that this bacterium uses arsenate as a replacement for phosphate in its DNA or in any other biomolecule found in 'standard' terran biology," says Steven Benner, who studies origin-of-life chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida.
Arsenate forms much weaker bonds in water than phosphate, that break apart on the order of minutes, he says, and though there might be other molecules stabilizing these bonds, the researchers would need to explain this discrepancy for the hypothesis to stand. Still, the discovery is "just phenomenal" if it holds up after further chemical analysis, Benner adds. "It means that many, many things are wrong in terms of how we view molecules in the biological system."
That then said, per the specifics of how arsenic is poisonous to multicellular life, as (gasp, I'm referencing it again) Wikipedia's arsenic article notes, while this theoretically opens the door to multiple evolutionary pathways, in reality, I can't see that there's a great likelihood of it, at least this particular pathway.
So, this needs a LOT more research. It ain't Pons-Fleischmann trotting out cold fusion, no, but, it does seem ... sketchy, so far. (That said, I'll admit that Wikipedia's article on cold fusion is iffy itself.)
That said, I'm boosting part of my response to Greg into the body of the post here.
First, I am by no means the only person who has said he or she thought the paper, etc., was rushed. To analogize: Bite size chunks can be undercooked and, IMO, this chunk needed more time on the grill.
Second, per me, PZ Myers and many others, there's disagreement on how "spectacular" the trick is, especially given that this was a trick induced in a controlled environment. Again, I note: Mono Lake already has a high arsenic level, and (so far at least) no similar arsenophilic bacteria have been found in the natural environment of the lake. Add in the relative weakness of arsenic bond to phosphorus ones in water, and, at least on Earth, that leaves open the question of just how likely it is.
Now, tying that to exobiology. I don't know what difference, if any, Mars has from Earth in As/P ratios. Given the fact that wasn't mentioned in the presser, the answer is either "little difference" or else "oops, big NASA error." But, short of something like that, a talk of environmental differences, NASA erred again, or "fluffed/hyped," in making the exobiology link.
Oh, and a final note for Greg the commenter - possibly Greg Laden?
From a commenter at Pharyngula:
1) The best As:P ratio they got was 7.3:1 in dry cell weight. They are using media with phosphate contaminants (~3 uM). The extremely slow growth rate (20-fold in six days; compared to E. coli roughly 20-fold in 90 min) suggests limited growth that is occurring from phosphate salvage. ...
3) There is no evidence that As is incorporated into functional DNA or RNA and that such As-nucleotide is competent in replication/translation. They have evidence that As is incorporated into nucleic acids. That’s a major leap from there to functionally competent DNA/RNA.
4) Arsenate diesters are unstable in water. The hydrolysis rates for arsenate esters are 10,000 – 1,000,000 times faster than the corresponding phosphate esters. No stability; no genetic information. The notion that water is kept away is curious at best and the hallmark of pathological science at worst. ...
6) It’s been known that arseno-ADP, the ATP analog, is not stable in water. ... How do you get to arseno-DNA without arsenic analogs of ATP?
So, sorry, Greg, nice try but you're flogging a dead horse.
Update, Dec. 6: If shoddy research controls and mechanics make an experiment bad science, then this looks to pretty officially be bad science. Note to Greg Laden and other "fluffers" - why continue flogging this? Let's see some more posting at Science Blogs and Discover about how this baby ever saw the light of day, instead.
Update, Dec. 9:More yet on the NASA fluffery angle:
Here's proof of the fluffery - the hed on NASA's annoucement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"
Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.
And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:
Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.
Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.
===
Update, Dec. 20:Arsenic exobiology researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon is dismissive, and in a wrongly, fudging, sense, concerns about hydrolysis of the arsenic compounds in DNA. Seriously, this has gone beyond breathless; this is indeed bad science.
Per Wikipedia's article on alternative life chemistry, linked below, the hydrolysis issue caught y attention the day of the announcement. Obviously, it caught the attention of science professionals, too, and Ms. Wolfe-Simon is left without explanation, so she bloviates.
More on NASA's motives to fluff ArsenicGate
When the story now deservedly known as ArsenicGate broke, with NASA "fluffing" a mid-level exobiology story into something it wasn't even close to being, I blogged both about the bad science involved and how NASA's fluffery didn't stack up to the reality of claims about things like multiple evolutionary pathways.
In both posts, I said that NASA had "good" motive for such fluffery, including, above all, the success at that very time of the first privately-funded orbital space flight.
Well, here's a lot more on how NASA had motive to fluff this bad science. Read the whole thing, to be sure, but this image ought to say it all:
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.
But, per the story, NASA can do all the fluffery it want; that doesn't guarantee results.
August 13, 2009
Food another tough hurdle for manned mission to Mars
Apollo and space station/shuttle food preparation, preservation and packaging just won’t cut it on the tougher interplanetary rigors of a trip to Mars.
NASA is both looking at new preservation techniques and sending an unmanned advance lander with a food cache.
NASA is both looking at new preservation techniques and sending an unmanned advance lander with a food cache.
August 01, 2009
NASA advisors think outside box on manned flight
Manned trips to Lagrangian points? Interplanetary ones, but no landings at first? Practice landings on Martian moons? That and more are all very interesting — if the money ever comes available.
July 26, 2009
Millions for Mars but zip for global warming
That was President George Bush’ NASA vision, and so now, we’re running out of satellites, both at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to study global warming.
And, we need that now more than ever.
And, we need that now more than ever.
July 19, 2009
Post-Apollo 11, Tom Wolfe rues no 1970s Mars shot
Oh, Tom Wolfe is right about one thing — in terms of rocketry, NASA was more ready to go to Mars as a piggyback on Apollo than today.
But, Wolfe is either woefully ignorant of, or deliberately overlooking of, how much we’ve discovered about the intensity of interplanetary radiation between then and now. (Shockingly, Stephen Hawking is, too.)
If we had sent men to Mars 35 years ago, with Apollo-level radiation protection, who knows what would have happened?
Also, we were clueless about the psychological issues.
Finally, NASA scientists knew post-landing “sterility” provisions for Apollo crews were woefully inadequate if the Moon had a actually had any life. That said, we are pretty sure Mars h as no bacteria, but, what if it has dormant virus-type life? Even today, we might not be able to fully protect against that being brought back to Earth.
At least Wolfe isn’t as triumphalist as someone like Krauthammer.
But, Wolfe is either woefully ignorant of, or deliberately overlooking of, how much we’ve discovered about the intensity of interplanetary radiation between then and now. (Shockingly, Stephen Hawking is, too.)
If we had sent men to Mars 35 years ago, with Apollo-level radiation protection, who knows what would have happened?
Also, we were clueless about the psychological issues.
Finally, NASA scientists knew post-landing “sterility” provisions for Apollo crews were woefully inadequate if the Moon had a actually had any life. That said, we are pretty sure Mars h as no bacteria, but, what if it has dormant virus-type life? Even today, we might not be able to fully protect against that being brought back to Earth.
At least Wolfe isn’t as triumphalist as someone like Krauthammer.
February 25, 2009
Ooops on that NASA CO2 satellite
It’s now sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Seven seconds after the ignition of the third stage, the payload fairing — a nose cone that protects the satellite as it rises through the atmosphere — failed to separate.
I say Rex Tillerson inserted some secret ExxonMobil tracking device!
Seven seconds after the ignition of the third stage, the payload fairing — a nose cone that protects the satellite as it rises through the atmosphere — failed to separate.
I say Rex Tillerson inserted some secret ExxonMobil tracking device!
February 23, 2009
First CO2 satellite going into orbit
About half the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels is currently unaccounted for. Orbiting Carbon Observatory, NASA’s first satellite dedicated to CO2 tracking, should change all that.
Ooops on that satellite, though!
It’s now sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Ooops on that satellite, though!
It’s now sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
January 02, 2009
Should we tear down NASA-military barriers?
If it is just for developing joint rocket technology, as the story indicates, I'm in full agreement.
It might also break down some hidebound thinking inside NASA.
It might also break down some hidebound thinking inside NASA.
December 30, 2008
NASA as far as ever from men on Mars?
Questions about how far NASA is on both rockets and spacecraft for the future, questions about whether those questions have been stifled for political reasons — the internal NASA politics of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, not BushCo politics — and questions about what options it has, show that NASA is an agency in search of a rationale, focus, mission and vision on the manned side of space flight (especially beyond the space station), and still struggling with all four of those points.
That said, Griffin is at the heart of much of the controversy, and appears too stubbornly invested in his own views on how NASA should approach manned flight. I think Obama would do well to replace him immediately.
And then have NASA take a look at that rationale, focus, mission and vision — a non-romanticized look. I think manned flight to Mars needs to be shelved for many, many years.
That said, Griffin is at the heart of much of the controversy, and appears too stubbornly invested in his own views on how NASA should approach manned flight. I think Obama would do well to replace him immediately.
And then have NASA take a look at that rationale, focus, mission and vision — a non-romanticized look. I think manned flight to Mars needs to be shelved for many, many years.
December 11, 2008
One appointment Obama needs to make
A new NASA head to replace the increasingly full-of-himself Michael Griffin.
Mike, first, NASA isn’t yours.
Second, we can’t afford a manned moon shot right now, especially one that’s supposed to be the starting point for a manned trip to Mars.
Mike, first, NASA isn’t yours.
Second, we can’t afford a manned moon shot right now, especially one that’s supposed to be the starting point for a manned trip to Mars.
September 09, 2008
Michael Griffin smoking crack?
The NASA chief went postal in an e-mail that eventually got into the cyber-mitts of the Orlando Sentinel.
His gripe? The 2010 phase-out of the Space Shuttle.
Problem? Two.
First, its Orion replacement won’t be ready until 2010.
Second, the Russia-Georgia situation likely nixes rides on Soyuz.
That combined means no U.S. astronauts on the International Space Station for a four-year gap.
Actually, there’s three problems. Griffin failed to put blame where blame is due for both problems, his ultimate boss at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., “Mr. Man on Mars” and “Mr. Build a Pipeline Through Georgia.”
His gripe? The 2010 phase-out of the Space Shuttle.
Problem? Two.
First, its Orion replacement won’t be ready until 2010.
Second, the Russia-Georgia situation likely nixes rides on Soyuz.
That combined means no U.S. astronauts on the International Space Station for a four-year gap.
Actually, there’s three problems. Griffin failed to put blame where blame is due for both problems, his ultimate boss at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., “Mr. Man on Mars” and “Mr. Build a Pipeline Through Georgia.”
August 12, 2008
Men on Mars, nothing; where’s the shuttle replacement?
Answer? It won’t be here for at least five more years.
NASA claims that it will have the replacement Orion spacecraft ready to fly to the International Space Station by 2014.
Only if pigs get wings.
NASA claims that it will have the replacement Orion spacecraft ready to fly to the International Space Station by 2014.
Only if pigs get wings.
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