Ad Astra

Yesterday I watched CNN's live footage of Space Shuttle Endeavor blasting off into orbit. Today, the 21-year-old spacecraft docked with the International Space Station two hundred miles above India, bringing materials for a renovation of the ISS that will include a bathroom, a kitchen, an exercise machine, two sleeping compartments, and a system that will convert urine and condensation from persperiation into - I kid you not - drinking water.

What is the point of having human beings in space? The legendary physicist Freeman Dyson points out that there are two types of space exploration; space science and space adventure.

We have a very successful space science program, carried out largely by machines. The Phoenix Mars lander just wrapped up a mission in which it discovered water - a pre-requisite for life as we know it - on the red planet. Our robotic probes have examined all the planets of our solar system in more or less detail.

The adventurous part of our space program is embodied in the space shuttle. This aspect of the space program is far more expensive, complicated and dangerous, and produces almost nothing in the way of tangible results.

The two things have become confused in the eyes of the public, Dyson says, as people believe that the shuttle program is doing science, and the program as a whole is in trouble because the human program is in trouble. Of course, the human program is in trouble because it lacks any clear goals, and the mechanized program is doing just fine. Here's an example of the work our probes have done:



This photograph was taken by the Cassini module as it turned its camera back towards the centre of the solar system. Saturn is dramatically eclipsing the sun, and if you look really hard at the space just above the rings on the left side of the picture, you can see none other than our own planet as a tiny bluish-white speck against the darkness.

And yet it is the manned missions that capture the public's attention. The idea of human beings working in space is deeply appealing, and the moon landing captured humankind's imagination for a reason.

Freeman Dyson believes that the human exploration of space is something that we must do and that does not need any justification, and I agree with him. It's in our nature, and maybe even in the nature of life as a whole to continue to expand and explore into new territory.

The shuttle program will be retiring in two years, giving way to the Orion program. Orion is a new type of spacecraft based loosely on the design of the Apollo modules and will have its first human flight in 2014. Orion will return humans to the moon in 2020 after a 50-year absence, and will ultimately send astronauts to Mars and beyond.

Interestingly, Orion shares its name with a theoretical nuclear-bomb powered spacecraft that Dyson worked on in the 60's, but that's a topic for another post.

The future of human spaceflight might also lay in private hands. The Anasari X-Prize was given out to Paul Allen's SpaceShipOne program in 2004 when his craft successfully entered low-orbit, and Richard Branson is actively planning to make an industry out of space travel with his Virgin Galactic.

I think that eventually the technology will become cheap and common enough that the average person will be able to go into orbit, at least for a vacation. The amount of computer power in your cell phone is hundreds of times more powerful than that used in the Apollo moon landers, after all. I just hope that it happens in my lifetime.

I believe that humanity is still in its adolescence, and I think that our ultimate destiny is in the stars. I know as a journalist that nothing captures the human imagination like a good story, and there is no grander story than humanity's ultimate place within the cosmos.

Why I am optimistic about President Obama

We live in such a cynical society and journalism in particular can be such a cynical profession that I feel obligated to summarize my reasons for being optimistic about the president-elect. Much of this has to do with my belief that Obama is a pragmatist more than an idealist.

Firstly and with history as my guide, I believe that the way that a president runs his election campaign is indicative of how he would run his administration. Obama ran a tight enough ship to defeat the Clinton political machine and to go on to make history as America's first (really) black president.

Obama showed himself to be a cool, rational leader who, while not afraid to throw a punch, avoided much of the mud-slinging that surrounds a political campaign. Obama did not touch the Clinton sniper-fire story, and was remarkably gentle with McCain's borderline-insane pick of a running mate.

Which brings me to the aspect of the campaign that had the most direct bearing on the candidates' decision making ability. Obama chose a respected former chairman of the senate judiciary committee and foreign affairs expert who is not afraid to speak his mind.

McCain chose a rookie governor with an embarrassing lack of basic knowledge in economics and foreign affairs. Who made the more pragmatic, more "conservative" choice? Who chose a running mate who would help them govern rather than help them win the election?

Secondly, I don't believe that Obama is out to transform the United States into Sweden. Obama is strongly supportive of the death penalty and is opposed to gay marriage. Progressive taxation, that issue he was hammered as a socialist on, was practiced by Republican hero Teddy Roosevelt.

One of my favourite parts of Obama's victory speech was when he admiringly quoted fellow Illinoian Abraham Lincoln as he reached out to the 47% of Americans who did not vote for him.

I believe that much like Lincoln, Obama will make his cabinet picks based on ability rather than ideology. When he was the president of the Harvard Law Review, the orthodox liberal Obama went out of his way to include more conservative law students, much to the chagrin of his ideological peers. Don't be surprised to see a Dick Lugar, or a Chuck Hagel, or even temporarily a Bob Gates in Obama's cabinet.

Thirdly, Obama is not one that will capitulate to terrorists. He has long said that he would not hesitate to use force were it necessary, and indeed, he's out-hawked John McCain on the question of cross-border strikes between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Clandestine attacks of this kind were taking place even as McCain condemned Obama's comments. I wonder to what degree the moveon.org, Michael Moore types are aware of this.

Finally and on a personal level I am absolutely tickled to have a president who is a friend of science. Obama is a rationalist first and a Christian second. Obama knows that taking something on faith alone is just not good enough when determining law and policy in a secular society.

The contrast with his opponents is particularly striking. These are people who decried research on bear DNA that could help prevent extinction, called a planetarium projector an "overhead projector" and even went so far as to question fruit fly research in the same breath that they called for research to help fight autism.

The degree to which the Obama administration will be effective in fighting radical Islamism, repairing the markets, dealing with the energy crisis, climate change and other issues we don't even know about remains to be seen. People were pretty psyched about Carter after all.

Still, I believe that Obama has the ability to be the president who defines the early part of a 21st century that has potential beyond our wildest dreams.

It's time to drop this idiot

John McCain recently called Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher an "American Hero", and "my role model".

Joe the Plumber as an abstract has become a centerpiece of the McCain campaign, standing in for the white, middle class exemplar of Nixon's "silent majority" who sees the times a-changin' and doesn't like it one bit.

Joe the Plumber as a human being makes nowhere near a quarter million dollars a year, and has trouble paying his taxes as it is. This emblem of the middle class is also considering a country music recording contract, has hired a publicist, and said he would be up for a run for congress.

He's also become a visible mouthpiece for the McCain campaign. Not content with calling Obama a socialist, saying he "tap dances like Sammy Davis, Jr.", and agreeing that an Obama presidency means death to Israel, McCain's role model had this to say today:



It could have originally been said that Joe the Plumber was not a legitimate target for investigation and criticism. No longer.

This election is a referendum on Barack Obama. McCain and Palin's strategy has been to link Obama to radical characters and to repeatedly pose the question "Who is the real Barack Obama?" The answer, of course, is that he is a smooth-talking celebrity who is conspiring to take your money and give it to poor people while he surrenders to terrorists and his friends conspire to bomb the pentagon.

Obama is going to be president-elect in two days. McCain cannot have his surrogates questioning his loyalty to his country and to the democratic process. The country is so divided on cultural lines that nearly half of the American public will believe that there is a traitor in the white house. If McCain really wants to put country first, he should drop this idiot and let him fall onto the pop-culture scrap heap next to "where's the beef".