Rocket Scientist

It is serendipitous that I check out Gumby the Science Cat’s blog every day.  Here I was talking about manned and unmanned space and, long-windedly, pointing out they need to work together when one of the best examples of this makes the news again:   Hubble.  I’ve been working on other stuff all day so I hadn’t noticed, but Gumby came through for me.

As a strange coincidence, this is a topic I know, and in depth.  You see, I was the EVA (Extravehicular Activity) Safety Flight Lead for the last two Hubble Servicing missions.  So, let me start by saying this: Hubble, the jewel of the unmanned space programs, loved by all, owes everything to our manned spaceflight program.  There, I said it.

If you’re the kind of space nut that does more than download the fabulous pictures (and you can find some gorgeous photos from many NASA archives here, well worth the visit) from Hubble, you probably know about the lens problem that needed to be corrected on Servicing Mission 1.  You may or may not know about the gyros that have sent Hubble into safe mode before.  All have been replaced more than once and we’ve had a hurry-up mission to save the Hubble before.  Servicing Mission 3 became Servicing Mission 3A and 3B, the last two missions.  We’ve also lost a transmitter we never intended, had circuitry fry because of overheating on the batteries, replaced a power control unit (and that was one heck of a task), replacing thermal shielding, recovering peeling handrails and install cooling systems that had never been intended to keep science instruments running.

Now, let me also be one of the first to say that the Goddard Hubble folks are some most dedicated and creative minds out there at NASA.  They manage to tackle many problems that had never been foreseen with original and inventive corrections that, time after time, work just like they’re supposed to.  Tools get changed on the fly, new ways of reaching or cooling or grasping are devised so that our crewmembers can do the near impossible.

But the EVA crewmembers are fabulous.  On both flights I worked, the EVA crewmembers (two teams of two) were astounding and I was continually impressed with their acumen, their dedication and their skills.  And, on Hubble, you need every skill, every brain cell you can get.  The tasks are difficult, with tight schedules and spaces and many delicate instruments and surfaces that can’t be touched or jostled or exposed to light.  In some cases, one crewmember will hold the legs of the other as he disappears half-way into the bowels of the telescope.  They have specialized tools, tons of them, they don’t use anywhere else on dozens of carriers and storage units.  [As a frame of reference, there are 54 pages of acronyms for the Hubble Space Telescope alone].  There are always more tasks than time, upgrading support equipment, like the data recorders, solar arrays and, for the next flight, batteries, swapping out instruments and, of course, repairing what has gone south since the last flight.

EVA’s are practiced in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL), no less than ten times for each activity they’ll do on orbit, more than average because they have to be carefully choreographed or there just won’t be time for it all.  Extra days (contingency days) are usually filled to capacity as well in case the opportunity comes along to add another EVA.  Believe me, it will be put to good use.

Well, today something else broke, the data handler that sends the scientific information down.  Fortunately, there’s a spare, but switching it is a nontrivial task and it hasn’t gone live since the ground testing 20 years ago.  If it works, we get more from our telescope.  If it doesn’t, we won’t get any more from Hubble until the servicing mission goes up, which has just been delayed until at least next year.  Why?

Well, even if all goes well, they might want to replace the broken part, or we’re just one failure away from losing the Hubble’s science for good.  But, to do that, there are some things to do:

1. Roll back to VAB.  Other flights will have to go.  The schedule’s tight and we’ll need to reconfigure the payload bay.
2. Rework the crowded EVA schedule (which may mean dropping another precious task) to fit the rework.
3. Train the crew in the new task.  That’s a lot of work which may require building a mockup, planning a task, possibly building new tools, working it in the water perhaps a dozen times.
4. Evaluating the new task for hazards.  All that certification and safety review was likely complete.  Now, the new task will have to be evaluated as well.
5. Testing and certifying the replacement.

We’re lucky we had the opportunity to address this.  The timing of the failure was fortunate.  Just remember, when we enjoy the beautiful pictures and new discoveries Hubble has in store for us the next few years, who made it happen.

Thanks, astronauts.  We owe you.

I’ve gone into concerns I have about NASA, particularly the manned space programs.  Notably, that many of them aren’t so much problems NASA has created as much as burdens they bear, challenges that make it harder to do what they dearly want to do: explore space.  But there is one more thing I worry about.

Let me remind you that these are my personal opinions and not those of NASA or those of my company.

Yes, one more thing I’m afraid NASA lacks: vision.  When the space program in the US began, people dreamed and knew what they wanted to accomplish, were breaking new ground to make it happen.

Now, the path to everything reachable in the next decade has already been trod.  The Shuttle/Orbiter is an astounding machine, but it has a very limited range: low earth orbit.  And, the same features that it was designed to meet, like reusability, are working against it.  Reentry is incredibly hard on equipment and the outside of the Orbiter, as we learned with Columbia, is delicate.  When you have a single and precious resource, something as capable but also as complicated, as the Shuttle, you move from constantly improving and updating as you learn lessons to patching and finding rationales to work around problems that arise, because design changes are expensive, complex and correcting them can be more trouble than the original problem.

We’ve been using the same hardware for nearly thirty years - which means we don’t have the rocket genius that took us from Mercury to Apollo in about a decade.  Everything we do now is a variation on what’s been done before and the brain power we need, no, the vision that takes us forward, well, I haven’t seen it.  I don’t have it either.  And it’s hard to get excited up over doing something that, well, has already been done, and spectacularly.

This is very important.  Fuzzy goals lead to fuzzy requirements.  Fuzzy requirements mean everyone isn’t working to the same plan, which will be a nightmare with a complex program where so many elements have to work together.  Fuzzy requirements make it harder for even the most dedicated contractor to provide what’s needed.  That means iterations, design changes, and adjustments (which have to move sideways as well as up and down or, again, hardware won’t work together) are far more complicated and hard to put into the system, even in the early design phases.

But, also, without the kind of vision von Braun and the other early NASA dreamers had, without that genius and ability to lay new paths and build new dreams, the program is missing the cohesive glue that ensures many diverse systems are brought together in a meaningful way.

People who are inspired can do great things and it takes a dreamer with a technical mind to create that kind of inspiration.  There are a lot of good people working on this, but, without inspiration, without the unified dream pulling it all together, making something new and exciting happen is just so much harder.

Update: Foxnews picked up on this and has an article on similar lines: here

“Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.”  — Wernher von Braun

There is another reason NASA is less effective than they could be (and this applies to unmanned NASA as well): poor financial thinking.

Let me remind you that these are my personal opinions and not those of NASA or those of my company.

Now, I mentioned budget in my post on politics, but it bears repeating.  You can’t run programs that last 20 years if you don’t have consistent funding, and that means funding that provides the money for the program when it’s needed, not “next fiscal year” or not “use it this year even if you aren’t ready.”  If you commit to a program, and the program is doing as promised, you need to support the program through fruition, even with administration changes, even as times change. [Note that I agree programs that have demonstrated their inability to do as planned deserve to be canned.]  I feel this inability to follow through is one reason why the Shuttle doesn’t have a viable alternative today when so many alternatives have been in the works over the past decade or so.

But it’s really more than that.  There’s a great deal of penny-wise, pound-foolish going on.  Take for instance, government oversight on contracts.  It was explained to me that contractors are dinged for having too many spare parts for contracted work, that someone counted things like bolts and dinged the contract for having half a dozen more than necessary.  As a result of this policy, even for simple, easily obtained parts, they buy minimum lots, which are much more expensive per unit than buying in bulk.  Now, you might say, so what?  In some cases, buying the minimum doubles and triples the price for buying five times more of an item.  Still a bargain you say?

Let’s do some math.  I need a dozen bolts.  I can buy them in sets of 12 for $4/each: 48.  I can buy 120 for $1 each.  $48:$120 - a bargain.  Except, one didn’t pass inspection and one broke during testing, so I need more. $48 dollars.  However, I also couldn’t get any more work done while I waited for purchasing to process the order, so people, who still get paid, waited while administrators/purchasers ordered the part and the vendor pulled it together and sent it.  Say, it’s a small organization, with administration spending three hours on the purchase, making it and getting it approved: minimum $45, but probably more.  Meanwhile, say two mechanics were sitting on their hands or doing make work waiting for the part they needed for the say week they waited: $1600.  Now, to save $72 dollars, you have spent $1743 and you only have ten spares.  Recap: $165:1743 and you’d have 108 spares with no schedule hit.

And that’s with an easy-to-get part.  On some unusual items, like pins for hermetically sealed connectors (which are easy to lose/bend/break) or bolts made of an unusual alloy like TZM, the wait could be months, even more than a year.  Pound foolish.

Budget vagaries often require buying parts or committing to vendors early in the design process because of long wait times or money available this fiscal year rather than next.  Learning important things out that should call out design changes mean either your money is wasted if the parts no longer work or you have a less than optimal design using the parts you’ve bought.

And that leads me to the most cost ineffective practice of all: going cheap.  My budget is tight now, so I get what’s “cost effective” even if it doesn’t work as well.  Then it breaks during testing.  So I build another one.  It survives during testing (but it’s weakened though no one knows it).  And then it breaks in flight.  So, I have to build another one, test it, fly it up whereever it goes (and, believe me, the cost to fly any item is astronomical) and the crew has to learn how to replace or repair it and then take the time out to do it.  Meanwhile, the precious time in orbit is also wasted (as well as untold man-hours on the ground figuring out what to do to fix it and making it so).  No equipment, if it were made of diamond encrusted platinum, is more expensive than having to correct it on orbit.  Pound foolish.

If we are going to make as much out of NASA as we can, we are going to have to realize that doing something twice (or more) is never cost effective over doing it right the first time.  And don’t get me started about the needless risk.

I remember once, talking to a hardware provider about a repair we were doing that we had done before and were having to do again, only now with a hurry-up, extra mission to repair.  I asked, since we were sending up replacements, if we had corrected the problems that were causing them to fail so frequently.  They said, “No, it would be too expensive to redesign them.” *Head bop* More expensive than adding a $300 million mission?  I don’t think so.  Pound foolish.

I truly believe that human spaceflight is a worthwhile endeavor.  But I’m worried about how we’re going about it.  And I have a number of reasons why.

Let me remind you that these are my personal opinions and not those of NASA or those of my company.

Another of the reasons I’m concerned is the upper hand contractors have in this business.    In the real world, of non-government regular people, one picks a vendor/contractor/product based on one’s honest judgement and the quality of the work, reputation, etc.  In general, the same thing happens here.

But that’s where the similarities end.  In the real world, if you have someone build you a gazebo and it takes longer and costs more and the quality isn’t what you’d hoped for, you could sue, perhaps get your money back.  Here, if something costs more than projected, if it doesn’t work right and must be reworked, if it doesn’t meet requirements, if it takes longer than expected, the contractor still gets paid.  What’s more, the contractor gets paid for the extra time it takes, for the cost overruns, often gets paid more to fix the things that weren’t the way they should have been.

Think that’s crazy?  Me too.

There are a few reasons for this.  Aerospace is specialized work, that’s part of it.  Human spaceflight is not like commercial aircraft or military; we aren’t buying in bulk.  It’s specific, it’s unique, and much of it can’t be effectively marketed anywhere but with NASA.  Also, NASA has (for excellent reasons) very stringent requirements on quality control, materials, etc.  In order to meet them, a contractor must do a lot of extra work, have their processes reviewed, be willing to be overseen and/or hire their own overseers.  So, where someone might have 20 or so contractors around to build his gazebo, NASA doesn’t have a huge pool of potential contractors that have the skills, the know-how, the resources to do what they need.  That’s a bad bargaining position and it’s not likely to change much.  There will always be specialized needs and a limited number of companies capable and willing to fill those needs.

Big contractors, of course, have other cards to play.  One is politics.  They know how to schmooze and they know how to tell a story that sounds great.  They know where to make the most of lobbyists and campaign contributions, how to remind the right politicians of the production facilities in so-and-so’s district that certainly don’t want a big lay-off.  Often civil servants leave gov’t pay to join big contractors, and many have considerable civil servant and political contacts.  It’s big business and I think it would be naive not to think that some high level design decisions or top level requirements are devised with a particular contractor in mind.

Are contractors evil?  No and there are a wealth of hard-working dedicated people in contracts associated with NASA.  No doubt about it.  But it’s an environment that all but begs for corruption.

If you do the job well, you get paid what you were promised and probably a happy bonus.  You keep your folks working X years and your reputation shines.
Do the job barely, meeting the bare minimum or only slightly less and take twice as long, you get paid more and your people work for twice as long, fixing, revising, updating, correcting problems.  You may lose your happy bonus (though probably not all of it), but you’ve just doubled what you were paid.  And your reputation suffers little.  Contracts practically cry out to be underbid - there’s no penalty.

It isn’t amazing that companies take advantage of this.  It’s amazing so much good work still gets done (and it does).  But there’s a catch.  Without an incentive to be efficient, we aren’t.  No sense doing more than you have to - you’ll get paid the same.  Again, that doesn’t apply to every employee, but it does flavor how some companies and, even by extension, how government begins to work.  When faced with an non-emergency, there’s no incentive to have a single person or a tight team figure out a remediation, go to one or two boards for approval and then get the work done.  By doubling or tripling the size of the teams, decisions are instead made by committee (who are all paid) so it takes ages longer and will probably go to review multiple times, have meetings for weeks and months, wait to go to reviews, go back and rework it, contact experts and wait on their answers (getting paid for all of this) and then fix it.    Can’t blame the contractor - business is all about getting the most money you can from the customer.

In an emergency, everyone works their butts off, but many an emergency was a non-emergency that didn’t get the attention it needed earlier.  That’s working harder, not smarter.  And problems found in the field, in flight, are always more cost effective to correct early in the process, not later.  But working lots of people lots of time to correct emergencies (on the fly) gets a lot of good attention and makes more money.  It’s sort of a counterincentive to having nothing go wrong.

I am disappointed in how our contracts are written that doing something right the first time turns out to be bad business.  I can feel bad that building a product on time and on budget, delivering the kind of quality that doesn’t need 18 kagillion fixes over time, or that has to complicate mission operations or add to the busy on-orbit schedules of our crewmembers is not good business for our contractors.  Folks, there’s something seriously wrong with that.

Yesterday I told you why I’m proud of the US space program. But I’m worried about it, too. And I have a number of reasons why.

Let me remind you that these are my personal opinions and not those of NASA or those of my company.

So, what’s changed, why isn’t NASA doing what they used to do? Why aren’t they more effective, making the same kind of breakthroughs that they did in the 60’s and 70’s?

Well, first of all, in some ways, they are. The scientists that complain about taking money from the unmanned programs were right to be concerned. Many of the unmanned programs are absolutely amazing: the Great Observatories, Mars explorers and mappers, Cassini, Pioneer, Voyager. We have spacecraft to study the sun and each of the other planets, even some that have examined moons for other planets.

It is freaking fabulous.

So, maybe the question is, why haven’t we done as much in the manned programs. Probably the biggest reason why unmanned has been more cutting edge and effective than manned programs? Politics.

Let me ask you a question. Back in the sixties, when JFK vowed to get to the moon, who wanted to get there before he ever thought of it? Yep, von Braun and several other rocketheads. And, aside from setting a goal and a timeline, what did JFK tell NASA to do? Not a damn thing. You know why? ‘Cause he wasn’t dumb enough to think he knew how we were going to do it.

Back then, scientists and engineers were telling the government what needed to be done (and Russia was making it clear it was doable) and the government was writing the checks. The people who built the space program weren’t in it for money (and I’m not saying those in charge today are either) - they just wanted to go into space, to make it happen. And they did.

The problem with spectacular success, especially when politics are around, is that everyone wants their name, their brand on the next success. As Apollo was (in my opinion) prematurely shut down, politics started calling the shots. Politicians started telling the scientists and engineers what they wanted, which meant requirements stopped working together. The Shuttle is a remarkable craft for many reasons, not the least of which that it has been so successful despite the many conflicting requirements imposed on its design.

Politicians also change. Engineers go down one path for several years and a change in administration pulls the rug out from under them. Your program evaporates after you’ve put in years of work. Or, the plan is completely changed late in the design process so that those years of work are still tossed. You will never get that dream house if you have stupid demands that make it structurally unsound or needlessly expensive or if you raze it to the ground six months after you start construction. Over and over again.

Nor will that dream house go up if you change what you’re willing to pay on a month by month basis. If you cut back the budget after the framing, you risk it all if you decide “No roof this month, I’ll catch that later.” Contractors balk, vendors move on, talent finds new avenues for their skills. Ditto for space endeavors.

Each year, the plans already in place are shaken up and reordered, requirements change, money added or taken away. Throw away the plans (eight years in development) for Space Station Freedom and start over. Bring in partners for political reasons (even if they are very capable), but the organization and control is confused and unwieldy. Change responsibility for other programs because a politician wants to make sure a NASA center in his district doesn’t have a big layoff.

Politicians don’t make good science and technology decisions because they serve too many masters and they don’t have the expertise. And they change and frequently. It is amazing what has been accomplished by NASA given some of the political games that are played with their programs.

So, why is it different for manned spaceflight rather than unmanned? In unmanned, scientists are still calling the shots on what needs to be done.

Food for thought.

I said I have some opinions about what’s wrong with today’s human space program.

I do, but I need to preface them with saying they are just my opinions. I’m not speaking for my company and I’m not speaking for NASA.

But, before I do that, here’s a little lesson in what amazing things have been done by this country for manned space exploration (and I will probably take some time to do the same for Russia since they have many sizable achievements as well, but today, let’s focus on the US). There are a plethora of wonderful unmanned achievements as well, but, for today, let’s focus on the manned stuff.

The NACA/NASA (and other US agencies) have done some amazing things, some things that we’re trying to duplicate right now and are just about stumped to do, that’s how amazing they were. Let me give you a brief timeline (or you can look it up on Wikipedia if you prefer). And it starts before NASA.

1955: The decision is made to have the Naval Research Laboratory design the first rocket to put a satellite up. Von Braun (with the Army) is told to stop work on his plan using a modified Redstone rocket (his design) and work on mid-range ballistic missiles. He does work on missiles but does so by designing the Jupiter C which, coincidentally, is capable of launching a satellite into orbit.

1957 (October): Russia beats us to the punch by launching Sputnik (and launches a second satellite in November, that same year)

1957 (December): The NRL program tries and fails (spectacularly) to launch the first US satellite. (They were successful in putting up the second US satellite, Vanguard 1, in orbit in March 1958 - and it’s still out there now, though it stopped working and is now debris)

1958 (January): The US launches Explorer 1 on a modified Jupiter C rocket - note that this involved modifying a Jupiter C rocket and building a satellite in 84 days. JPL was impressive even then.

1958 (June): NASA created. Von Braun is working on Saturn rocket concepts.

1960 (July): Von Braun transferred to NASA (on the condition he can still work on the Saturn rockets).

1961: Alan Shepherd is the first US man in space with a suborbital hop on a Redstone rocket.

1962: John Glenn is the first US man to orbit the earth, this time atop an Atlas rocket.

1965: First Gemini mission (2 astronauts)

1967: Apollo 1 Fire.

1968: Orbit the Moon with Apollo 8.

1969: Apollo 11 lands on moon and we walk on it. Apollo 11 is followed by Apollo 12 (1969), Apollo 14 (1971), Apollo 15 (1971), Apollo 16 (1972) and Apollo 17 (1972). Apollo 13 was flown as well but did not land.

1973-1974: Skylab was our first “station” using a Saturn second stage.  Russia, by the way, has had several space stations of various sizes and complexity.

1975: Apollo-Soyuz rendezvoused with a Soyuz craft (using Apollo craft).

1981: First Space Shuttle flown. The Space Shuttle was originally conceived in 1968 and planned in 1970.

1998: International Space Station assembly begun.

By the way:

Mercury Program cost $384 million ($2.7 billion in 2007 dollars)
Gemini Program cost $5.4 billion ($ 30+ billion in 2007 dollars)
Apollo Program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2007 dollars)

Our entire 50 year space program has costs us $810.459 billion. The last 7 years of Iraqi and Afghanistan warfare have cost us $604 billion (per NASA Budget on Wikipedia)

You decide which one leaves the kind of legacy we can be proud of.

Just sayin’.

Reading the ScienceDebate2008.com responses to the responses, I was struck by something that scared me a little.  Somehow, between Apollo and today, many scientists decided that manned space isn’t necessary.  I mean, I knew that many regular folks, using their cellphones and watching the hurricane photographs on cable TV, were under the impression that space was of no interest, but I didn’t realize that scientists, perhaps the bulk of them, feel that way.  Frightening.

That tells me two things:  NASA’s PR stinks and we (I mean scientists, too) bought into a bunch of myths on what’s important.  All of us.  If scientists aren’t going to fight for space exploration, who’s going to do it?

Few (or at least few in science and engineering) were naysaying that when Apollo was at it’s peak.  You want to know what we did on the moon?  Let me tell you, we did plenty, plenty like our little robots are working away to do on Mars and plenty those robots will never be able to do.  You can read about it on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals (and I recommend it for any space nuts).  This is the real deal and I think we owe it to those pioneers to read those again and remind ourselves why it was we sent people to the surface of the Moon in the first place.

I know the arguments against human spaceflight on the taxpayer’s dollar.  I just don’t agree with them.

What has human spaceflight ever done for us?  (Usually followed by a list of important issues more deserving of money)  A great deal.  Space requirements drove solar power, recycling methodologies and waste management systems, remote medical operating systems (used all the time), nonflammable materials, pressure vessels, fuel cells, etc.  We found out more about our planet by bringing soil home from the Moon than we ever would have found out otherwise. We’ve learned more about physiology, more about acceleration and low gravity on people.  And manned spaceflight inspired us to do so much more in space than we ever would have, including communication for all those fun every day devices that people depend on and think come from who knows where.

 Let private industry do it.   Folks, I’ve been working in manned spaceflight for nearly 20 years.  It isn’t easy.  Space is unforgiving and we’ve learned a lot of really really hard lessons along the way.  NASA was largely successful, not because they were willing to accept death and failure along the way but because they weren’t.  This cavalier attitude by those trying to do it in the private sector, describing rockets that blow up seconds after launch or put equipment in the wrong orbit as “successes,” talking about acceptable losses among paying customers, just demonstrate they really don’t get it.  SpaceShip One went up and barely kissed space for a tiny instant, and came down,  oscillating wildly.  Twice (only one time on the oscillating, I think).  That is hell and gone from letting someone spend an appreciable amount of time in the uncompromising and harsh conditions of space, and it didn’t required nearly the same systems that a true spaceship will need.  Let me put it a different way.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Part of the problem here is that scientists see manned spaceflight as competing with unmanned scientific space flight endeavors.  They see that because that’s exactly what has happened.  Space and space endeavors are badly underfunded, with goals that change with the politicians in office, plans that sounded great on paper that are ungainly, expensive and impractical to the point of impossibility in the light of day, contractors get paid whether they work or not and a wealth of technological and scientific decisions are made by political “necessity.”  You rob Peter to pay Paul all day, every day, it’s not mystery what you’ll accomplish:  not a damn thing.  That kind of thinking leads to foreclosure and a cardboard box under the underpass for regular people.  In gov’t, it means you spend a lot of money to walk away with very little.

When manned programs, which are expensive, need more than they’re alloted, unmanned programs get crunched. But that isn’t manned spaceflight’s fault - it’s bad management (which is at least a whole blog of its own that I’ll do later) by the government.  If you spent all your money on your electricity bill so that you can’t pay the water bill, does that mean you shouldn’t have electric lights?  Or that you just haven’t managed your money correctly.

Unmanned space exploration is an excellent investment for any industrialized nation.  There are things you can learn about the sun and radiation and astronomy and the weather that human spaceflight will never teach us.  And vice versa, especially if we start actually exploring with people again.  It isn’t that one can give us everything and one can’t.  Neither can get us everything, but they complement each other wonderfully.  It is foolish and unnecessary that they’re competing.

We spend hundreds of billions on the military every year, 10x more than any other nation and more than the rest of the world combined.  Hundreds of billions.  We spend 20-25 billion on space.  In my opinion, it isn’t that we should have to choose between them, it’s that we need to find a smart way to do both.

One thing I almost never do is talk politics, not because I don’t think it’s important (particularly this year) or because I’m short of opinion. The problem with politics is that it can get ugly fast, so ugly so fast that people are quickly talking past one another instead of thinking and listening. And that gets nowhere, uh, almost immediately.  Well, I’m doing so today.

I am passionate about science, and science, in my opinion, is a key focus for this election. Some time ago, a group calling themselves Science Debate 2008, concerned about how our government would be addressing science issues, provided 14 science related questions for the presidential candidates. Well, two major candidates have answered and I think it’s worthwhile for anyone interested in this subject, anyone who cares about scientific issues and considers them pertinent to this race, to read their answers and hear what they have to say. I would also recommend looking at their records and other actions to see if they’ve been willing to walk the talk they’re providing. You will have an opportunity, and I encourage you to take it, to rate both Obama and McCain on their answers and provide comments.

I believe these are very important topics and we need to know that the people who want to lead us for the next four years understand the challenges and are willing to take the steps necessary to address them.

I won’t tell you here what I think, though I have added comments myself. I sometimes thing politicians have a tendency to underestimate the intelligence of the constituency. I hope we can prove them wrong.

I didn’t write anything here yesterday.  I can’t say I feel bad about it; I finished a chapter and a half in my Bete novel, which is still in desperate need of a title.  I’m not the kind of writer that slogs a page or so a day, every day, when writing.  That’s a process that doesn’t work for me.

Forcing writing leads, in my case, to crappy writing.  I have been pressing on, though, on the chapter before because it was a chapter for setting up what was coming, introducing key characters to each other, laying groundwork.  That, for me, tends to be dull.  I expect it reads dull right now, but it’s a first draft and it’s better to have at least a placeholder than letting it sit, which is what I’d done for some time.  I managed to finish off the last bit of that yesterday.

And then it was to battle.  I’d set up my enemies rather carefully here.  My protagonists are pretty badass so I can’t throw something halfass at them.  The attackers need to be scary, they need to be dangerous, enough so that my characters have to reveal their shapechanging capabilities, but not so much that the “bad guys” can’t be beaten.

Whereas I struggled all last week to finish the 2300 or so words of Chapter 17, last night I wrote Chapter 18 in about 2 hours for about 2000 words.  And that wouldn’t have taken so long except I took the trouble to set the scene more than I tend to.  I know what the battle looks like, but the reader doesn’t.  I needed to make sure the reader didn’t get distracted trying to figure who was where while man-sized mantises and dragonflies got their butts kicked.  It will need refining, but I think I have the important aspects there.

But it also demonstrates why I write like I do.  When I get to the part of a book where things are happening, where my characters have rehearsed it because it’s a pivotal moment, I don’t need encouragement or to make time.  I can sit down and beat out ten thousand words in a weekend.  It’s the bits in between that glue all those pivotal moments together, that show characters interactions and build up the elements that will make those pivotal moments seem real that bog me down.  They’re necessary but not what I write for and, I suspect, not what the reader reads for.

In the end, though, it’s how well I pulled off both that will determine whether my book is as good as I wanted it to be.  Here’s hoping.

On NASAWatch, which is not a site I recommend, they noted that loss of a single component brought down the entire NASA email system (this just after they were down for nearly a week because the server goes through JSC only, so the hurricane affected all NASA mail).  There are few things, technologically, more irksome, more certain to fail, and more embarrassing when they do so, than single point failures.

Failure tolerance is a good thing.  It’s the best defense there is against Murphy’s law.  At one time, NASA strived to meet the principle of Fail Operational, Fail Safe.  That meant that any single failure did not affect function (or at least not critical function).  A second failure might leave the hardware nonfunctional, but it would leave it safe - if the function is critical, of course, nonfunctional is not safe.   Even more, it ensured that there were at least three failures required before reaching an unsafe condition.

Now, of course, that isn’t always possible.  A nuclear reactor containment vessel is unlikely to be redundant.  Extra wings on a plane in case one shears off is likely less than useful.  Sometimes adding redundancy and additions paths adds so much complexity, weight, etc. that the design becomes ridiculously unwieldy.

But, in general, it’s a good thing.  If 12 bolts can bear all the stress necessary, adding one or two other bolts allows for failure without compromising the overall capability.  (This is especially important in space endeavors where a stripped or broken bolt may not be recoverable). If one can accommodate redundancy, especially with unreliable equipment, it’s smart engineering practice to do so.  This is more true when hazards can result from failure.

So, if a complex or key system fails because of a single component or a readily foreseeable circumstance, that argues poor engineering.  Bad in real life…

But it’s damn useful in science fiction.  You want to make an interesting story, twist the plot, add hardship, shake things up a bit?  Have a critical component fail.  You want to add tension, pressure, up the excitement?  Make your critical item one of a kind, no spares, hard to come by, made of something scarce and/or requiring interaction with someone hostile to recover it?  Do so, and suddenly things are hot and exciting.

Just remember not to use this little trick too often because, if you do, your engineers will look like total morons or it will become cliché.  Not that it isn’t a little cliché already thanks to Star Trek and the like.  But it’s still good for excitement if you can exercise a little restraint.

I was surprised at my reaction when I saw a discussion where Star Wars was described as “pure science fiction.”  Hard science fiction is fiction that is firmly grounded in science, where the science is as much a part of the story as the characters.  Despite my science background, I don’t write hard science fiction because I’m much more into characters than science.

However, Star Wars does not count as pure or hard science fiction.  Why do you say that?  Haven’t you seen the “Science of Star Wars” type shows?  Yep.  Not impressed.  In reality, what did they do in Star Wars that made scientific sense?

They shot out of open portholes and landed crafts in bays open to space.  They wander about on asteroids wearing only gas masks as opposed to full pressure suits.  The ships are cool-looking, but impractical.  Center of gravity on most are so out of whack as to make them challenging to fly realistically.

Actually, I guess I’m not a huge Star Wars fan.  The story, of course, is old and proven, the kind of feel good story that’s been used over and over because it’s successful.  Some of the characters are appealing (more so after the “first” one when someone besides Lucas did the dialog).  Above, all, though, it had tons of glitz in a movie industry that had never seen anything like it.

But, even without the science, did it make sense? The weapons are highly impractical (explain, for instance, the advantage to being able to destroy a planet into dust - what have you really accomplished?  Space dust is somewhat less than useful.).  Hand to hand skills under such circumstances are, uh, superfluous.  Why the stress on that?  Exactly how many droids wander the deserts of Tatooine for the Jawas to be able to make a living off stealing them?  And how come it took 13 minutes to fly at “full throttle” down the trench on the Death Star, but the whole Death Star is kilometers in the background seconds later.

What does the Empire achieve by “taking over” that they didn’t have working behind the Republic?  Given the success of the robot fighters, what was the benefit of the clones?  It’s not like they were encouraged to think independently since disobedience was punished by death.  Why clone a bounty hunter for a flood of soldiers?  Why would a space port, like that on Tatooine, not take off-world money or have a way of converting it?  Why have a port then?  Why in the world would anyone of conscience buy the freedom of a boy and leave the mother he adored?

Star Wars is an excellent example what happens when I’m not in love with the characters enough: everything that doesn’t make much sense leaps out and grabs me by the throat (including why Luke could be all but unaffected by the brutal and probably torturous death of the people that raised him, but devastated for three movies about the death of a man he’d known three days or so).  I like Hans Solo and Leia else I might have a list for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but I guess you get the idea.

For an unpublished author (except for a few short stories and technical papers), I’ve got a very distinctive voice.  I might say, too distinctive, but I like it so I’m not going to.

I took a single creative writing class in college and my teacher wasn’t sure why I was in the class.  Admittedly, it was the kind of teacher that wrote “literary” poetry, the kind that give me headaches.  He explained that I shouldn’t be there since I already had a “populist” style.  “I don’t know why you’re in here,” he told me in a sad voice.  “You have a developed style.  You write stuff anyone could read.”  Uh, yeah.  Clearly, he thought that was a bad thing, but really, shouldn’t you write stuff anyone could read?  I might add that, though he didn’t change my style, he gave me an A anyway (telling me that I did my style very well).

What does that mean?  I like dialog.  I like for people to get to know my people by hearing what they have to say.  I rarely spend a lot of time describing characters in detail as I like readers to figure out who they are by who they are rather than what they look like, or, at most, how other characters see them.  I describe action in detail, but setting minimally.  For me, the texture and life that pulls the story along is all in the people.

Of course, I have other quirks, too.  Rapists get killed, and not necessarily gently.  Protagonists don’t rape.  Ever.  Ditto for child abuse and other heinous crimes.  Since I often write in extreme environments where survival is key, violence is frequently a part of the story.

I like humor.  There is no genre that can’t be improved with a little humor.

All of my longer works (novel length) involve cats.  It’s a signature.

I like my female characters strong.  Chances are, if my heroine is in distress, she saves herself at least in part.  I also like men that are strong enough to respect the strengths in the women.

When I use science, I make it real.

When I write characters, they have flaws.  That makes them real, too.

So, what’s your style?

I know writer wannabes (and writers) ask that question all the time.  Or, at least, those of us addicted to fiction do.  What makes a good story?

People frequently ask me what kind of stories I write, what kind of stories I read.  I have quite a bit of science fiction and fantasy on my shelves, but I have historical and romance and even murder mystery and horror.  No western though.  But it’s more about the authors than the genres because the authors on my shelves are all people who know how to tell a good story or , at least, know how to tell a story well.

Naturally, that’s my own goal.  In fact, I can’t remember when I didn’t want to tell stories.  Prose and essays assignments were as likely to turn into stories as anything else when I’d slip out of my own skin and put myself in someone else’s.  Oh, they were a little like me, perhaps a facet of me that I took out and warmed in my hand, then planted to see what might have grown if the garden were different.  The tendency toward science fiction and fantasy was as much laziness on my part as anything - you can make more than a character to suit your fancy, but a whole world.  And why not?

But I don’t tell the story to give a reader a world.  I tell a story so I can give the reader what I get from the very best stories: a chance to wear a new skin for a while, to understand myself better by pretending, if for only a bit, to be someone I’m not.  That’s why my heart thunders when Val Con senses that Miri is in danger.  That’s why I sobbed when Moreta disappeared in the colds of between.  That’s why I laughed with Beautiful made that newbie thank Captain Redhead for nearly spitting him on his own knife.

And I want to give that to others.  I want you to thrill when Venetia rides the wind to her lover’s bower.  I want you to wipe away a tear as Charley waits for eternity for the little girl that will never return.  I want you to feel the lightning dancing from your fingertips with Stormna as she calls the storm to replenish a land stricken with drought.  I want you to stumble with Tander trying to follow his stealthy wife as they infiltrate a mountain fortress.  I want you to ache for Laren and the mother he lost - and the mother he spurned.

I’d like to think I’m doing you all a favor by writing all this, but I love doing it.  Painting the pictures with words when my hands are too clumsy to do them in reality, setting the sky or the world, hitting the right phrases so that, when you read it, you can hear the voices talking.  Perhaps these skills are all in my head and I miss with words just as I do with paint.  But, if I can give one person, just one, what I want them to see, to hear, to feel.  If I can make one person cry or laugh or gasp, well, that would be worth it all.

So, what makes a good story for you?

Hurricane Ike has come and gone.  I’m not sorry I didn’t evacuate, given the traffic updates I’d heard and the relative safety we enjoyed, but I will admit to some disturbing minutes overnight.

The wind picked up considerably about 10 pm and the house rattled.  Our crappy windows didn’t crack, but did leak like sieves.  Since many shingles and sizeable portions of tar paper were whipped away by the wind, so did the roof.  What fun.

This, by the way, is where I got to Saturday before the electricity went out again 45 minutes after we got it.  We didn’t get it back until 4 pm yesterday.  I can understand why, especially as a safety engineer, but it’s hard to be teased that way.

Our area, which was not flooded, did lose a lot of wooden fences, a lot of shingles and many many trees.  However, just a couple miles down the road, Kemah/Seabrook/La Porte faired very poorly, with boats left sunk or on the road and businesses badly damaged with a considerable storm surge.  I’m sure most of you have seen pictures and heard horror stories.  Galveston Island was hit hard and many parts of the Houston (on the other side of us) were under water.

Much of the area is still without power (~75%) and there are a few areas with standing water.  Now it’s all about putting things back together and we were pretty fortunate.

But, we’ve had a very impressive dearth of casualties - single digits in all of Texas.  The authorities down here deserve some of the credit for encouraging intelligent evacuation rather than wholesale panic.  I think that’s one reason why things are going as smoothly as they are.  There’s hardship and inconvenience, pain and even devastation, but there’s been a dearth of anarchy.  I’ve pleased to see everyone working so hard to help each other.  I was proud of us when we had that influx of New Orleans refugees.  I’m proud of us today.

There are some down sides to living in the deep south, oil country, etc.  But the people around here are top notch people.  I’m proud to be here with them.  Especially today.

I live in Houston, or rather, just southeast of Houston and am in the path of Hurricane Ike.  And, yes, we’re staying.

Now, for those who say, “You’re a scientist!  Can’t you heed warnings?”

Well, yes I can.  If I need to.

Ike is an unusually large hurricane and it did a lot of damage many Carribean islands (where it hit at category 4), especially Haiti and Cuba.  By staying here, I’m not trying to imply this is not a dangerous storm.  Any storm can be dangerous, especially if one is close enough to the coast to face storm surges.  However, even inland, one can be susceptible high winds and storm spawned tornados.

But it isn’t category 4 any more.  It is just barely Category 2.  Nor do models indicate significant intensification before landfall.  Where we are is above the highest likely storm surge and we’re far enough from rain-susceptible waterways that rain filled waterways are unlikely to do more than limit travel in the short term.  We are some thirty miles from Galveston which will take the brunt in this area.  Something else that’s important is that the storm is speeding up and is expected to come AND go from this area over about 24 hours, which is not the same as a storm lingering and dumping tons of water (like Tropical Storm Allison did several years back and Hurricane Mitch did in Central America).  A slow-moving storm would threaten many areas of Houston, including some of the riverside areas north of town.  This storm is expected to reach Ohio (much weakened) before the weekend’s out.

Even the authorities have recommended hunkering down if one is relatively safe - evacuation for those that need to flee can be hampered if everyone leaves whether they need to or not.  We saw that during Rita (which blew over a bush in our yard).

We have spots to hide in the house if necessary.  We have supplies and entertainment. We have flood, hurricane and regular insurance.  We may lose power.  We may have short-term water issues.I wouldn’t be surprise if we lost cable/phone/internet for a bit.  But I truly believe we are in minimal danger.

And, as soon as circumstances allow after Ike comes through, I’ll let you know how we are.  So, no worrying.

I doubt there are many Americans who don’t know what happened today, seven years ago.  In many ways, it has defined America for this century as well as providing a rationale for many other horrible things.

But, most of all, it was a terrible waste.  Two beautiful buildings destroyed (and many others badly damaged), thousands of innocents lost in planes and offices.  An act of hatred.  And, for America, a moment of solidarity in total shock and horror and eventual rage.

I was not there in New York and knew no one lost.  I was home sick that day and would have known nothing about it for who knows how long if I hadn’t called in sick where they told me they were closing Johnson Space Center anyway.  I turned on the TV just in time to see the second tower fall.  But I, and everyone else, saw them, over and over, struck by planes, saw them fall in a horrible cloud of dust with their precious cargo of innocent souls and the selfless rescue workers who were trying to save them.

I didn’t know them before, but we eventually all knew them and suffered with them and their families.  We heard their phone messages and stories, learned about their families and theirs dreams.

There was a period, too, of finger pointing and complaining, as the shock receded into fury.  We were angry at the terrorists, of course, and the religious fanaticism that went with it, with the people shielding them, with others that shared aspects of their religion…  But also with folks here as well.  A tragedy this big, there was plenty of blame to go around.

I don’t want to talk about that.  I don’t want to talk about the hatred and fear that followed this horrific event.  That has, literally, been done to death.

What I want to talk about are some unsung heroes that have taken a lot of flack: the building designers.  Yes, I know, the way that they were built, the extreme heat weakened the steel so that the weight pancaked and piled up until it all came down.  Folks, these buildings were hit by commercial airliners.   I don’t think any architect should have been expected to design for such a contingency, at least not before it actually happened.

But look at what these buildings did anyway.  Even hit by planes and burning, they stood for a relatively long time, allowing thousands to escape certain death.  But, what impresses me most, is the tiny footprint when they collapsed.  Each 1400 feet tall, they did not fall over, even with the tremendous amount of force and energy impacted at the top. Several buildings were lost, most from the complex, but how many more buildings could have been destroyed, how many more lives lost if the had fallen over instead of falling in on themselves, if the South Tower had slammed into the North Tower instead of collapsing, if they had not remained standing long enough for so many to escape.  The toll would have, could have been so much higher.  So kudos to the designers for planning building them as strong as they did and in a way to facilitate their eventual demolition.

And, although they’ve been acknowledged before, I can’t forget those brave firemen, policemen and other emergency workers who stormed into those doomed buildings, some to escape with other refugees and, many, to die.

Rest in peace.  And thank you.

In the novel I’m working on, which is clearly percolating in the back of my mind because I keep bringing it up here, I started out with a space accident.  Now, when it comes to science, I am mostly a dabbler in most of the heavier sciences:  biology, chemistry, quantum physics, particle physics, electromagnetics, etc.  I have an excellent grasp classical physics and orbital mechanics as well as a good understanding of most of the engineering fields.  I don’t write really hard science fiction for the very good reason I’m not qualified to do more than try not to through the laws of physics, etc. out the window if I can help it.  But, once in a while, something I write wanders into my bailiwick and I go to town.

Space accidents fit.  I understand, as I mentioned, orbital mechanics and was kind of stoked about doing something really science-y after my sword and sorcery novel was completed.

I had a binary planet system (like Pluto and Charon, only larger, more earth sized), with some gravity fluctuations as a result and other wobbles and quirks.  I played with a magnetic field and unusual radiation (which helped screw up the ship as it crash landed, solved some problems for me and accounted for missing on the landing by several km).  Finally, a little candy for the geeks.

Only, when I had a few people read it in a forum, they all said the same thing:  lose the prologue it sounds like Star Trek.  Aside from the fact that my physics is better on any given day than Star Trek’s (OK, that hurt a little), I was using my mission control console as a guide, not a show.  In fact, one reader decided to chastise me having the captain call out commands to positions not names (though this is standard practice for Mission Control and, according to my understanding the Navy, too).  I still maintain, as much as I love Star Trek (not for its science), every space oriented story is not the same..

So, in the end, I had to excise it.  Painfully.  My geek moment, set aside.  *Sigh*.  I kept a quick blurb so people had some sense of what was happening and kept the original in a different file.  I figured I could add it as an appendix for those wanting a geek fix.

Still…

There was a time when I thought about pursuing genetic engineering.  I was a kid; I didn’t realize how important it was or would become.  I just found it fascinating.  Well, as usual, my innate lack of practicality won out so I became what I am (dummy).  However, I still find it fascinating.

One way I undulge my fascination is with fiction (Haha, you thought I would be talking science again, today, didn’t ya?).  I think Dune might  have started it with their talk of breeding lines.  I did some dabbling with it in the finished novel, what with my “tribe” where only female children can be conceived.  It’s fun to play with.

However, in my new novel, it’s more prevalent.  I have again a tribe where there are unusual traits.  For all members of this group (effectively another tribe), everyone has some sort of psychic power, but some, called the Prime, are also shapeshifters, sometimes involuntarily.

Yes, it’s not pure science fiction.  I don’t like to limit myself and shapeshifting is almost as interesting to me though not for scientific reasons.  I don’t know why it appeals to me, but it always does.  There’s something about the power of changing into something else, different emotions, different strengths.  I’ve played with it before, although that character could change into any shape, but, in this case,  each of the Prime can only change into one other creature, including a protohuman.  When human, they share some of their animal traits (like night vision) or temperament (like hissing for the snake individual and purring for the cat).  They are all predatory animals of the fiercer variety and it appealed to me to play with the traits while they were human, too.

What does this have to do with genetics?  Well, I added a quirk.  Prime can’t mate with prime (or really safely with others of the same tribe) without a good possibility of death, much like a Manx cat is generally bred with a “normal” cat as two Manx genes makes a dead kitten.  So, our shapeshifters must find mates from outside a tribe in a world where shapeshifters and psychics are considered demons.  Makes it tough to be honest with mates, find love, or breed a new generation. So, yes, I play with sociological stuff, too.

Yep, writing is a “what if” type person’s playground.  Any quirk of society, science or fancy that crosses my mind is apt to find itself explored in a novel.  I just can’t be trusted with any idea.  Heck, I once had a conversation with a friend of mine, talkingabout that irrating voice they were using in some car that said things like “The door is ajar.”  I said, “Could be worse.  It could be saying, ‘You drive like an idiot.’”  Now I have a story called “Back Seat Driver.”

If I could just figure out a way to work out the mass question, how they can change mass without cheating science, and nothing could stop me.

Not that anything can really stop me now. 

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

                                                                        –William Penn

Recently, I found myself hot under the collar.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a temper.  But this was all about science and I work very hard to keep my cool and professionalism when it comes to science – passion and science = bad science.

But I was beginning to understand why so many scientists and naysayers are getting into arguments just short of fistfights.  It’s hard for even the best scientist to keep his or her temper down when they are being accused of lying and laziness.

This discussion is not going to be about religion.  I truly believe in freedom of religion including anyone’s belief in Thor or the monster that hides under the bed.  I have not been granted omniscience (aside from believing in fairies myself) and have no right to tell you what to believe in as long as (a) you don’t try to force it down my throat and (b) don’t try to pretend it’s science.

Science is a fascinating beastie.  It’s all about finding out what and how reality is and, if possible, figuring out how to manipulate it for the betterment of mankind.  Fortunately and unfortunately, reality is pretty slippery.  It provides some facts pretty easily, some with a lot of work and some, well, it still hasn’t provided a clear answer.  Fortunately, it’s what we don’t know that makes it fun.  Unfortunately, what we don’t know (or, worse, think we know) can be very dangerous.  For instance, long ago they tried blood transfusions under the correct assumption that blood can help when blood’s been lost.  Unfortunately, their lack of knowledge about blood factors meant that some transfusions didn’t go too well so that it was an act of desperation until blood typing was discovered early in the 20^th century.

It is because of this, the thrill and excitement (and the risk) of what we know and don’t know that scientists voluntarily subject themselves to strict rules and processes of rigor.  Rules include repeatability (preferably independently), adequate controls, and theories that can be disabled with a single immutable fact (which is not the same as a single data point).  All the data must be accounted for or explained; one cannot pick and choose the data.  And, to be really recognized, it needs to withstand something called peer review.

Peer review?  You expect them to police themselves?  Yes, for two reasons.  First, one cannot evaluate the science of a proposal, conclusion or bit of research without an in depth understanding of science and scientific processes.  Generally, this effectively limits you to scientists or “former” scientists (if such things exist).  Secondly, scientists want to be right.  Being wrong, spectacularly, is not how any scientist wants to be remembered.

Yeah, but don’t we look after our own?  Actually, not so much and there’s good reason.  There is no benefit for a scientist to give a free pass on the work of another scientist. If the work is bogus or sloppy, the reviewers would be impugned (rightly) along with the researcher by their failure to look at it critically. Wherein politicians (and some other, but not all, professions) can generally make mistake after mistake and survive, in the scientific world, a single instance of dishonesty and/or sloppy work can ruin a career.

If someone does research and writes conclusions, a reviewer is obligated to try to shoot holes in it, find the problems, look for errors, whether the reviewer agrees with it or not, or we do a disservice not only to the rest of the world, but to the researcher. If it’s wrong, we don’t want to hang our hats on it (and we save the researcher some embarrassment). If it’s right, we want it to be as bulletproof as possible.

And people in the same field do not all agree (HAHAHAHAHA!) - far from it. It is, in fact, the hemming and hawing on details that have let so many less familiar with the process think that so many scientists disagree on global warming, when what they are really doing is trying to understand not IF there will be changes, but how much, how fast and what we can do to minimize it. On that, I feel comfortable saying consensus has not been reached.  But it doesn’t mean the science isn’t invalid.

Don’t get me wrong. Scientists get excited by findings, breakthroughs, new possibilities, verifications, etc. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. And, yeah, anyone who does work they’re proud of likes recognition. That’s why we peer review and take our time accepting new ideas. If an idea can take being tested independently and repeatedly, if it can stand the test of time and many different people trying to poke holes in it, it stands a much better chance of being valid that if it came from one excited individual.

That’s one reason I get so hot under the collar at being accused of laxity or dishonesty. I’m part of those very checks and balances. Does nothing get by us? Sadly, yes, mistakes are made here and there. But they usually get caught eventually and the numbers of that, I feel, are low. Truth told, I don’t know of any other profession that examines itself so critically, puts in so many impediments and challenges to ensure that integrity, that objectivity that makes science what it is. Because people do use that information in a life and death way, we have to be responsible with what we say.

Your doctor doesn’t have the same review process. Your mechanic either.  Your lawyer can do all kinds of stupid things (at hundreds of dollars an hour).  And there’s not much you can do to preclude their mistakes being made.  In most cases, there is little you can do except fire someone (after the fact, mostly likely) or in cases of egregious error.  In most cases, you just have to live with it. Think of how much better government might be if positions and arguments in government were vetted with the same rigor as science.  (I find it ironic that people are more likely to be believe others who have a vested interest in persuading you to a point of view - bankers, big business, politicians – than those that have none.)

Believe me, folks, we don’t want to tell you bad news.  There’s no glory or riches in telling people what they don’t want to hear.  If we tell you, it’s because that’s what the evidence is telling us and we don’t want our unwillingness to put it on the line to cause anyone to be hurt unnecessarily.  At the least, we have no interest in looking stupid.

In science, we really try to weed out the mistakes before you ever see our results.  We’re human, but we want the truth out there more than we want our name on it.  We’re not perfect, but we’re trying to do the right thing.

Cut us a little slack, k?

I am something of an anethma. On the one hand, I’m a professional engineer/physicist and enjoy my job. On the other hand, I kinda got into this engineer job by accident (like my degree) so I’ve never followed the typical engineer profile. I was a dork in school, but not the nerd with the taped nose bridge. I didn’t take stuff apart and put it back together. I didn’t blow up bombs and firecrackers for entertainment value. I didn’t play with Legos(TM) or build stuff with things. I didn’t wonder how things worked.

Really, it’s a wonder I’m able to do anything. Except, I’ve always had an innate sense of logic (which might explain why I didn’t speculate how things worked - in many cases, I just knew). It’s not a useful as it sounds. If you want a thermodynamic system built or a circuit, I’m not a good choice to do it. However, if you need someone to look over someone’s designs and figure out what’s wrong with them, I’m your gal. My “horse manure” sense is crystal clear and my logic really helps me to identify things quickly that doesn’t make sense.

So, what’s the point? Well, I was just thinking about my husband. He was homeschooled and has not had the opportunity for a secondary education, but he’s brilliant and capable. It’s odd, really, that I’m the engineer rather than him as he has the temperament and interest and I don’t.

One thing that particularly struck me this morning is his love of tools. I mean, he loves toys, I mean, tools. Power tools, specific tools, hand tools, multitools - you name it. My husband has five or six multitools and that leads me to another thing that seems to fascinate men in general and my husband specifically: weapons.

We don’t have guns, because I’m a safety person and we don’t have a safe way to store them at the moment. But knives Lee has in abundance and his interest and knowledge on this topic is amazing. Do you wonder, with sword effectively an intellectual oddity in this day and age, why there is still so much interest and fascination with blades?

Is it because I’m the oddity that I don’t get it?