What's New Friday Apr 3, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 3 Apr 09   Washington, DC

1.  SPACE: A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT ABOUT NASA SCIENCE.
Dear Mr. President: Last month you said the space agency is drifting and 
needs a mission "appropriate for the twenty-first century."  The new 
Administrator, you said, should think about "the next great adventures and 
discoveries under the NASA banner."  I know you’ve been busy with G20 
stuff and haven’t had time to name this visionary, so in an effort to help 
What’s New did the thinking for whoever it will be:  1) Astronauts are a 
relic of the 1960’s "space race" and a major obstacle to the continued 
exploration of space.  Therefore the ISS, which serves no useful purpose 
anyway, should be given to China and the crew sent home on the Soyuz.  
Maybe astronauts could be awarded medals for courage in fighting the Cold 
War.  2) Global-warming critics insist climate change is the result of 
solar variations and is not anthropogenic.  Therefore, NASA should move 
with due haste to locate DSCOVR at the unique Lagrange-1 vantage point to 
resolve this question.  3) The greatest quest in science is to find life 
to which we are not related.  Therefore, NASA’s robotic exploration of the 
solar system should be expanded to include the ocean moons of Jupiter.   
There should also be a ban on human visits to any planet that might harbor 
life; we’re crawling with bugs.  4) The great discovery of this century is 
the existence of planets around other stars.   The bad news is that we 
can’t get to an exoplanet. The good news is they can't get here. Therefore 
we should employ the huge advances in optical technology to develop a new 
generation of advanced space telescopes capable of examining exoplanets 
for evidence of life.  

2.  SPENDING: BOTH HOUSES PASSED A BILL, BUT NOT THE SAME BILL.
The $3.5 trillion spending bill is good news for science.  Major 
differences between House and Senate versions must be resolved by a 
Conference Committee, but it should not significantly affect science.

3. TEXAS CREATION: "SOMEBODY’S GOTTA STAND UP TO EXPERTS."  
So spoke Don McLeroy, the dentist who chairs The Texas Board of Education 
which met this week to set new science standards.  The issue that 
dominated the meeting was creationism. The experts lost. The tactic was to 
insert ambiguities that could be construed as calling for creationism to 
be taught. Creationists will use that to lobby textbook publishers. The 
publishers just want to sell books and Texas is a big market.  McLeroy 
says he believes the sudden appearance of fossils supports the creationist 
view. What fossils? Texas used to float on a fossil ocean of oil. It has 
disappeared a lot faster than it formed.

4. ELECTRIC CARS: WHAT WE REALLY NEED ARE BETTER BATTERIES.
China says it plans to become the leading producer of hybrid and all 
electric vehicles. That's not good news for General Motors which aims to 
dig its way out of a hole by going more heavily into electric vehicles 
such as the plug-in Volt. The weak link in everybody's plan is the 
batteries

5. BS ABOUT BMS: IS NORTH KOREA FUELING A BALLISITIC MISSILE?
They’re sure trying to make people think they are.  They do this every so 
often to wring concessions out of the West. There is a call in Japan to 
shoot the missile down if it passes over their territory, but North Korea 
says they'll retaliate. The one thing we can be sure of is that the US 
won't shoot it down with interceptor missiles from silos in Alaska.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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