Election 2016: Compromised Immunity

Voting has begun in the 2016 election cycle at long last. And we see once again why I should stay out of the prediction business, because I was sure Trump's campaign would run aground once actual votes had to hit the bottom of a ballot box. Although to be sure, his electoral performance does slightly underperform his polling ... small comfort for the campaigns that have gone under to the Trump juggernaut. The GOP still has a chance to reclaim the candidacy from the insurgency, but they'll have to act quickly and decisively in order to do so.

It's kind of like the situation they had in 2008, when Huckabee surprised everyone with strong showings in early states. The antibodies in the Republican bloodstream came out in force, then. They found someone to rally around who had a somewhat troubled relationship with the Establishment, but could nonetheless manage to work with them most of the time.

But the antibodies are much, much weaker this year. The capital-E establishment candidate has already folded his tent. Rubio is probably their best bet at this point ... but Rubio may not be able to gather a first-ballot majority at the convention. No one may be able to.

I've said before that contested conventions are like bunch sprints in pro cycling. They're great fun to watch, but they generally happen because someone screwed up. In this case, the establishment has lost control of the nomination process, allowing a complete outsider to mount a so-far successful insurgency. Can they claw it back before there's an all-out floor brawl at  the convention?

Time will tell.

And now, the numbers. I draw my polling data from Pollster, and I've begun to use the prediction-market aggregator Predictwise to see how the betting markets are doing.

The Democrats

Clinton: 48.2% poll, 93% prediction
Sanders: 42.5% poll, 7% prediction

The polling indicates a tightening race, but the betting markets have Clinton as a heavy favorite. There's a definite undercurrent of discontent on both sides in this election cycle. Pollster has a "right track/wrong track" poll on its front page, and that poll has been underwater for quite some time now. "Wrong track" is down from its financial-crisis peak, but it's still running about three-to-two in favor of people not being happy about how things are going. This is why Sanders is giving Clinton a run for her money. I'd be frankly astonished if Clinton managed to lose the nomination, but there's a non-trivial possibility that could happen. But Clinton will have to juke left to out-Bernie Bernie, and then juke back to the center for the general election. Doable, but there's danger for her in that the Sanders camp will do the GOP's oppo research for them. But on the other hand, Clinton has been around long enough that there's really nothing new to turn up. Unless you've been living in an isolated cabin for the last twenty years, you know who Hillary Clinton is, and you probably have already formed an opinion about her. Opposition research will be of scant use to the GOP if she does win the candidacy.

The Republicans

Trump: 38.0% poll, 79% prediction
Cruz: 18.5% poll, 1% prediction
Rubio: 17.1% poll, 18% prediction
Carson: 8.5% poll, 0% prediction
Kaisch: 8.5% poll, 2% prediction

The clown car has winnowed down to a five-man race at this point, which is actually a two- or three-man race, depending on how you parse the numbers. I think Carson's basically out. And while Kaisch is the adult in the room at this point, he's also basically out. Come Tuesday, I think one or both of them might pull the striped handle and punch out. At that point, the GOP establishment has a choice to make, and it's not an especially palatable one. I think that to some extent they've made peace with a Trump candidacy. They think he's someone they can cut deals with. Which may well be true: cutting deals is just about the man's only skill of measurable worth. So in the sorting algorithm, they'd rather have Trump than Cruz. Of course, the establishment would rather have a case of genital warts than Cruz, but that's beside the point. They'd really rather have Kaisch, because he performs best against Clinton in the polls. He even wins most of them. Rubio would be their second choice. He still loses most of them, but he's not the down-ticket calamity that Cruz might well be. What the establishment needs if they're going to get someone who's not Trump is for the race to down-select, hard, as soon as possible. The not-Trump vote is spread too wide, and if it stays that way, Trump carries a fat slab of delegates to Cleveland. Maybe not enough to win outright, but enough to force a scrum on the convention floor ... and enough support to threaten a third-party candidacy which would well and truly screw the GOP. So, they're either going to have to throw their support behind a preferred non-Trump guy now, or decide they can live with Der Donald. But they have to pick soon. Time's not on their side.

The General Election

Generic Democrat: 61% prediction
Generic Republican: 39% prediction

Like I mentioned earlier, if you look at Pollster's head-to-head general election polls, the only Republican that has a clear chance is John Kaisch. But the GOP does not appear to be willing to nominate a candidate who can win. They'd rather bask in the purity of their righteousness than have an actual chance to effect policy. It's not the choice I'd make, but ...

The most interesting match-up from a statistical point of view would be Rubio vs. Clinton, since the error bars basically overlap. That looks like a true toss-up. The least interesting ... well, I really can't pick just one. Basically, any of the match-ups where the error bars don't touch. A clear decision is a clear decision.

Anyway, if you're looking to put money down, I'd take 3-2 odds on Clinton taking the oath of office next January. Not sure I'm especially happy about that -- but it's looking like that's the way it's liable to shake out.

Depending on where you live, it's too late to vote early, but it's never too late to vote often. Either way, get out and vote!

Election 2016: Peak Trump?

I like to look at two different kinds of data during election seasons. One of those will be the polls, obviously. This far out, the polls aren't always going to tell you anything tremendously useful, but they do get a sense of what the people who are paying attention are thinking. The other thing I like to look at are the prediction markets. These two sources tend to converge as the event draws closer. But this far out, it sometimes looks as if they were describing two entirely different contests.

Like now, for instance. Looking at the polls, it's all about Trump versus Carson. But Vegas loves them some Rubio. The intriguing question here is, why? (More on that later.)

The other question -- and I think this one has an important bearing on what kind of primary we're looking at -- is ... well, where is Rick Santorum?

Remember, the GOP's usual modus operandi amounts to "It's His Turn." A shocking number of Republican nominees were the runner-up the last time around. Let's look at all of the races in the last seventy years or so, and see what the trend tells us:

1952: Eisenhower (Taft)
1956: Eisenhower (inc.)
1960: Nixon (VP)
1964: Goldwater (Rockefeller)
1968: Nixon (Reagan)
1972: Nixon (inc.)
1976: Ford (inc.)
1980: Reagan (Bush the Elder)
1984: Reagan (inc.)
1988: Bush the Elder (Dole)
1992: Bush the Elder (inc.)
1996: Dole (Buchanan)
2000: Bush the Younger (McCain)
2004: Bush the Younger (inc.)
2008: McCain (Romney)
2012: Romney (Santorum)

Re-elections don't count, so we can discount 1956, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1992, and 2004. Nixon in 1968 is sort of unusual, but Nixon could claim a form of seniority in having been both a Republican VP and nominee. Excepting those, we have a fairly strong string of the prior runner-up taking the top spot in the next available election. Reagan in 1980 was the runner-up in both 1968 and 1976. Bush in 1988 was the runner-up in 1980, as well as the VP of a still-fairly-popular President. Dole was the runner-up in 1988, as was McCain in 2000 and Romney in 2008.

And Santorum? According to Pollster, he's sitting at 0.5%. Which means that the existence of Santorum supporters cannot be proven by any known statistical science.

This is going to be like 1964 or 2000: a year where they GOP throws "It's His Turn" onto the dust-heap, and does something else. What we don't know yet is whether 2016 will be more like 1964, or more like 2000. In 1964, there was an ideological struggle within the Republican party. in 2000, they'd been out of the White House long enough to want a winner, ideology be damned. Or, maybe, 2016 ends up being a little bit of both. The Goldwater-Reagan era of conservatism is over. This may be the year we find out what will take its place.

The Republicans

The interesting thing about this chart from Pollster is that it appears that Trump has hit at least a temporary ceiling. I'm actually surprised that he appears to be truly serious about seeking the nomination. I'd pegged this for a vanity project. It may still be a vanity project. And for a while, his poll numbers skyrocketed with no end in sight. For now, at least, it appears he's hit a hard ceiling of support. Time will tell if this is a fluke, or if it's for real. But when we turn to the betting markets, such as PredictIt, we see another story emerge:

Rubio: 0.49
Trump: 0.24
Cruz: 0.23
Bush: 0.17
Kaisch: 0.12
Carson: 0.11
Christie: 0.08
Fiorina: 0.07
Paul: 0.06

Yes, the Vegas bookies do love them some Rubio. And his polls don't totally stink -- he's in third behind Trump and Carson. He's well-positioned to heat up once the real voting starts in January. January is always when the vaporware candidates fold up like cheap suits. But Rubio strikes me as kind of an empty suit. I'm going to have to take a closer look at this in the coming weeks to months, because clearly they're seeing something in him that I don't.

The Democrats

Well, this isn't particularly interesting. You can look at the PredictIt numbers if you care to, but they're giving nearly four-to-one odds in Clinton's favor. Either the bosses have made the tactical decision to clear the decks for Secretary Clinton, or it's just that everyone is scared spitless of the Clinton machine. "It's Her Turn" seems to be in full effect, though; and it doesn't particularly matter why. If you're a Democrat, get used to the idea that Clinton will be your nominee. She's just about going to have to deliberately try to lose the nomination to fail to get it. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is still achievable for her ... just not especially likely.

Voting begins in 87 days. Remember, vote early, and vote often!

The Mystery Continues

I've been meaning to write something about the disappearance of MH370, except that there's not a whole lot to say. What we don't know dwarfs what we do. With so little information to go on, speculation runs rampant ... and who's to say what's right?

That's still mostly true. At least, it's true until new facts surface.

Perhaps "surface" is an unfortunate word choice in this case. Last Wednesday, an interesting piece of debris washed up on the shores of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. It's the right size and shape, and more importantly it bears the Boeing part number for a flaperon on a Boeing 777 airliner. News agencies were careful not to go too far out on a limb with this, and only said it might be from MH370.

Caution is all well and good, but exactly one 777 has gone missing. One more than none, and one less than two. If you find such a part floating around the ocean, where might it come from? You get three guesses, and the first two don't count.

Now, we can't say a whole lot just yet. It's only one piece, after all. But its condition tells us a great deal indeed. It allows us to put some reasonable bounds on what might have happened.

First of all, we can once and for all discount and discard all those loony theories about terrorists hijacking it and flying it to a hidden airbase. The fact that fragments are washing ashore means it went down over water. I never could make myself take that option seriously, anyway. The Boeing 777 is an enormous airplane. You'd need eight thousand feet of runway to land it, and 45,000 gallons of fuel tanks to refuel it. Good luck building such a secret airfield without the NRO finding out about it.

No, that never even made bad sense. Nor did any of the other hijack/misdirection theories. The people who might have been able to pull it off lacked any visible motive, and the people with motive had no means.

So, it went into the water. But not on a steep, nose-dive trajectory. That kind of impact would have destroyed it utterly. It's in relatively good condition, no obvious deformation. That argues for some kind of horizontal entry, most likely after fuel exhaustion. Leading, of course, to the question of how it got there. There is certainly no shortage of theories.

What keeps tugging at my attention, though, is what we do know about the plane's path. It went incommunicado shortly after signing off with Malayan ATC, and shortly before they were supposed to contact Ho Chi Minh ATC for enroute clearance.

I wish I could remember precisely where I saw this -- odds are better than even it's someone James Fallows at the Atlantic was corresponding with at the time -- but it reminded me of one key fact. Pilots always have an alternate airfield in mind. No matter where they are in their flight plan, they always know the closest airfield they can make for if something hits the fan. And MH370 made a beeline for Penang, the closest airfield at the time that could accommodate them.

The question becomes: Why?

I'm having a hard time convincing myself that it was anything but a fire in the cockpit, possibly an electrical fire of some kind. In that case, standard procedure is to turn off anything that might be feeding the blaze. Radios, transponders, whatever; if it draws power it's got to go down, until you have the fire under control. The right turn at Penang confused me, though. Then, I went and did some digging. Not much, Googling for "penang approach chart" turns up all kinds of useful information. The details are here if you should care to see for yourself. The pertinent bit is shown below.

At first glance, then, it looks as if they set their autopilot to make a beeline for the BIDMO meter fix, and then join the inbound traffic for runway 04/22. They might even have programmed their autopilot to make the base leg turn ...

Under this theory, they failed to control the fire, and were no longer conscious when they got there. I'd even hazard a guess that no one onboard was. There are no airtight bulkheads on an airliner. Toxic air will get to everyone eventually.

Or it might have been decompression. We had a similar event, on a smaller scale, back in 1999 when Payne Stewart's private plane lost pressurization, and sailed across country until fuel exhaustion.

But this leaves one question unanswered: why did it turn south? If, indeed, it did turn south? Its last known course was more or less towards India. It had to have made a left turn in order to end up in a position for one of its parts to wash ashore on Reunion.

We still don't know. We won't know that until after we find the wreckage ... and we might not know even then. 

We may just have to get used to not knowing. While all questions have answers, we are not promised that all answers will be revealed.

The End of the Beginning

Fifty-six years, six months, and fourteen days.

That sounds like a long time, and in terms of a single human life, it is. But in terms of humanity's lifetime, it's barely a blink of an eye. And I think that's the proper context, because it's the length of an era that ended today. By the time I finish writing this, I expect that we will have heard, one way or another, about whether or not the New Horizons spacecraft survived its encounter with Pluto. That encounter brings to a close the first era of humanity's exploration of the Solar System.

I place the beginning of this era on the first of January 1959, with Luna 1's flyby of the Moon. Luna 1 had been intended to hit the Moon, not fly by. But since these were early days yet, barely more than a year after the very first Earth satellite, rockets and guidance systems weren't all that reliable. Nevertheless, it became the first man-made object to enter heliocentric orbit. It's still out there, somewhere.

Venus, being the closest planet to Earth, was an obvious choice for our first planetary mission. Mariner 1 was intended to be the first, but again, guidance systems were still fairly new and not entirely reliable. The range safety officer had to hit the big red button when the Atlas-Agena booster decided it wanted to go for an unplanned excursion. They'd learned a thing or two, though, and in those early days they tended to plan these missions in pairs. If one of them didn't work, the other one probably would. And so it was that Mariner 2 became the first to fly by Venus on the fourteenth of December in 1962.

Staying with the pattern, the next target became the next farthest planet from Earth: Mars. And the script looks remarkably similar -- Mariner 3 was intended to be the first, but ... No, it wasn't the guidance system this time. This time, the payload shroud failed to open properly, and the spacecraft couldn't get any sunlight on its solar cells. The spacecraft limped along on battery power for a bit, then died, and drifts in eternal Solar orbit. Again, though, this is exactly why they planned these things in pairs. Mariner 4 came off without a hitch, and flew by Mars exactly fifty years ago today, returning the first-ever close-up pictures of another planet.

From 1965 to 1973, there was a bit of a drought of "firsts", partly because Project Apollo soaked up a bunch of time, money, and talent... But also because the next steps were going to be really difficult. And besides which, they had something pretty clever in mind, and had to wait for the right opportunity.

The next pair of probes to launch were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, bound for Jupiter. "Wait," you may ask, "isn't Mercury closer?" Well, sure. But Mercury is also really, astoundingly fast. And that makes it a fairly tricky target. They had an idea, but they weren't 100% sure it would work. Anyway, the Jupiter launch window opened up first in any case. In December of 1973, Pioneer 10 gave us our first close-up look at the biggest of the planets, its system of moons, and its terrifyingly powerful radiation belts.

But we hadn't given up on Mercury. No, even though we'd have to do some pretty fancy work with a pool cue to get us there. Mariner 10, the last of its series, launched in November of 1973, and pioneered a technique we'd use again and again in the future: the gravity assist. We couldn't build a rocket powerful enough to fling a probe by Mercury -- well, we could, but no one was willing to allocate a Saturn V to the mission -- so we'd hitch a ride by Venus and steal a small bit of its momentum to get us the rest of the way. This gives us a twofer: two planetary visits for the price of one. Four, actually; Mariner 10 flew by Mercury three times. First in March 1974, then again in September 1974, and again in March 1975.

This proved good practice for the main event. Remember Pioneer 11? Pioneer 11 followed up its Jupiter encounter with an encore at Saturn in September of 1979. But even that was merely a warm-up. Another pair of probes were coming through, and in scientific terms they were armed for bear.

Bar none, the single spacecraft that broke more trail than any before or since just about has to be Voyager 2. Both Voyagers flew by both Jupiter and Saturn. And both were launched at a very fortuitous moment ... a moment when the four giant planets line up in such a way that one trajectory can link them all. Voyager 1's Grand Tour was cut short, though, to give it more time to give Saturn's moon Titan a close-up look. It would be left to Voyager 2 to take it all the way home. In addition to Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in January 1986, and Neptune in August 1989. No one has been to either one since.

After this, there was another period of drought ... for much the same reason. The outer planets are hard to get to. It would be almost a quarter-century before we finally got around to finishing out the initial reconnaissance of the Solar System. Dawn has been cruising around the Asteroid Belt for quite some time, first orbiting Vesta before flying over to take up station around Ceres. I won't dwell on that, though, especially since I've so recently written about it.

Which brings us to what we've been watching this last month or so.

Pluto has been, at most, a vague blob. What we didn't know about it was ... well, about everything. Once we'd found its moon Charon we could get some idea about its mass, but we were never entirely sure how big it was. Or precisely what it was made of. Or what it looked like. But even if we never hear from New Horizons again, what it's already found has utterly revolutionized our knowledge of the outskirts of our system. Even if we can't call it a planet anymore, there can be no doubt that these are worlds. Even if we never get another byte of data, what's already been gathered will keep scientists busy for years.

I don't have to write any more about that hypothetical though. Because we have a hard lock on a healthy ship. And over the next sixteen months, at an agonizing 4K bits per second, New Horizons will empty its tape recorders into our data banks.

I can scarcely imagine what it's seen these last twenty-four hours.

Soon, I won't have to.

The Puzzlement of Discovery

The defining exclamation of scientific discovery isn't "Eureka!"

Sometimes it works out that way. "Eureka" -- from Greek meaning, more or less, "I have found it" -- is supposedly what Archimedes exclaimed upon realizing, while sliding into his bath, that displaced water may be used to measure the volume of a solid object. He'd been having a dispute with a goldsmith, you see, and suspected he'd been cheated. He needed to find a way to prove it, and a solution presented itself to him.

"Eureka" moments are far more common in engineering than in science, actually. Inspiration for the solution for technical problems tends to strike at the weirdest moments. I've had them at the gym, in the shower, and while walking across the street to a convenience store.

But moments of true discovery? Those aren't marked with glad shouts. Those are more often marked with puzzled murmurs. Not so much "Eureka!" as "What the heck did we just see?"

We're seeing one of those unfold in real time. Dawn is settling down into its science/mapping orbit around Ceres. And Ceres is proving to be a very puzzling place.

The $100,000 Question here is: What are those shiny bits? No one really knows for sure. The closer we get, the better and clearer the pictures are, but so far that hasn't brought any real clarity. One article I read compared them to Las Vegas at night, as seen from space. No one takes that interpretation seriously, mainly because Ceres is a damned odd place for ET to build a casino.

There's no real proof yet, but most people have a sneaking suspicion that what we're looking at are ice sheets. And not just those two bright spots, they're starting to show up all over Ceres' surface. Which may mean ...

... that there's just a thin layer of dusty rock on top of a thick layer of ice.

If that's the case ... this is a find of unimaginable value. Gold in them thar hills? Feh. Don't bother me with such penny-ante stuff. Water is important.

If humanity is to have a future away from Earth, we'll have to find somewhere to get water. Beyond the obvious, water can be electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen. We need the oxygen to breathe, the water to drink, the hydrogen can provide power via fusion (once we figure out how to do that), and hydrogen and oxygen together can be used as rocket fuel ... or, the water itself can be used as the working fluid for a nuclear thermal rocket. But all this hinges on finding a place to get water that isn't prohibitively expensive.

Water is abundant here on Earth. But you have to lift that out of Earth's gravity well, boosting it ten kilometers per second to punch through the atmosphere, up to altitude, and then up to orbital speed. Then you have to boost it from low Earth orbit to wherever it is you need to use it.

Incidentally, this is why the movie Elysium never made any sense to me. Anyone with the technical savvy to build an orbital habitat would know better than to get their routine supplies from down here. The delta-V costs will simply eat you alive. But I digress...

Or maybe I don't? Because the problem is, if you can't get water from Earth, where do you get it?

Well, lots of places. Jupiter and Saturn have plenty of icy moons. Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, and each of those have about as much water as Earth does, in the form of ice. The problem is, though, you have to lift that ice out of either Jupiter's or Saturn's gravity well, and that ain't exactly cheap. You're better off doing that than lifting it from Earth's surface, but not by a tremendous amount.

Ceres, now... In terms of delta-V, getting to and from Ceres isn't that hard. It takes a long time, but doesn't take much fuel. Remember that Dawn flew from Vesta to Ceres on about a fistful of rocket fuel. And fuel is the long pole in this particular tent. An enormous ice supply, located in the middle of the Asteroid Belt, is a Godsend for would-be colonists. It makes a ludicrous fantasy into ... well, still a very difficult enterprise, but at least one that's within shouting distance of feasible.

Or, it could all be smoke and mirrors. Something else entirely. Soon, we'll know for sure, one way or another.

Election 2016: Too Damn Early Edition

The clown car is now complete.

Of course, there's exactly zero chance that The Donald stays in the contest long enough to actually file disclosure papers with the FEC. He's got thirty days to do that, plus two more or less automatic 45-day extensions. With four months to play with, that takes us to October, by which time he'll have pulled the plug. In the meantime he gets exactly what he wants: the opportunity to strut and preen in the spotlight while people paid toadies pretend that he's meaningful and significant.

This does a disservice to the real candidates in the race. Candidates of substance, of experience, candidates who have real policy achievements they can point to. Whether or not those policy achievements were good things or not is open to debate. But people like Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and yes, even Mike Huckabee have earned a place at the table. Feckless nitwits like Trump haven't.

Be that as it may, though, it's that time again. Time for America's political parties, all across the spectrum, to club together and figure out who they're going to put forward for the office of President of the United States.

The stakes are high ... though not necessarily for the reasons you think. Yes, all the usual things are at stake: Supreme Court nominations, legislative action, the normal stuff. But there's also a historical dimension.

Whoever wins in November 2016 is going to get an absolute boatload of unearned credit.

Why, you ask?

Check out a time history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, plotted on a logarithmic scale:

I'd like to draw your attention to the behavior since 1940. From 1940 to about 1965, there was a period of fairly steady expansion. Then from 1965 to about 1985, a period of leveling-off. From 1985 to 2000, another expansion. Since 2000, another leveling-off.

There are policy explanations, of course, and proponents of the policies in effect during expansions will surely tout them. But there are also longer-term cycles at work, and developments that political policy has little to do with ... and we're primed for another expansion. It will probably get underway sometime between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021. The party of the occupant of the White House will try to claim the lion's share of the credit, earned or otherwise.

So the question remains ... who will that someone be?

For now, the Democratic Party's contest looks simpler, so that's where I'll start. (Numbers from Pollster. To keep the lists to a manageable size, I'll omit anyone under the 2% threshold.)

Hillary Clinton, 59.5%. While party unity can be a good thing, there's such a thing as too much unity. There needs to be at least some fractious debate during a primary, or the candidate is weakened. But that's beside point anyway. My issue with Clinton is the same as my issue with Jeb Bush -- there's been a Clinton or a Bush in the Presidential conversation since 1980. 1980! Two families have dominated Federal electoral politics for nearly forty years. This. Is. Not. GOOD. If you don't want an oligarchy, you kind of need to stop voting for oligarchs.

Bernie Sanders, 12.2%. Clinton's token opposition from the Left. I say "token", because I don't believe Sanders can pull enough support from the "center" part of the Democratic center-left coalition to win.

Joe Biden, 11.2%. Biden may make a race of it yet, but it's even odds that he decides to hang 'em up. The man is understandably heart-broken just right now, and may not have the fire and the thunder left for a hard campaign.

The Republican Party's list is considerably more active, and more interesting to talk about.

Marco Rubio, 11.7% No, pay attention. This isn't a continuation of the above list. It's just that there are a heck of a lot of Republicans going for the brass ring, and really, at this stage the polling really doesn't tell us much. The people at the top of the field probably have the "legs" to make a real challenge of it, but it's going to be a hard slog.

Jeb Bush, 10.9%. See? This is what I was going on about with Clinton above. We just can't seem to quit 'em. Although to be fair, as a former Governor, he's earned a right to be in the conversation. But I don't have to like it.

Scott Walker, 10.6%. And there's not a whole lot of daylight separating the top spots. Walker and Bush are duking it out for the "Seasoned Republican Governor" spot, while Carson and Rubio are still in the mix.

Ben Carson, 10.2%. And even amongst these four, their supporters only account for about 43% of the response field. It's going to be a wild ride, just like last time, with a succession of also-rans peaking and flaming out all through the Summer, Fall, and Winter.

Mike Huckabee, 8.8%. That said, while we're going to see some shake-outs from the Top Ten, I kind of suspect the Top Five will all be around for the Big Show in January. They've all rounded up enough financial support to make it through Super Tuesday, at a minimum.

Rand Paul, 8.4%. Sadly, I suspect Senator Paul will likely be one of the casualties. I say "sadly" because while I don't always (maybe even often) agree with him, I respect him. I respect a legislator who has the fortitude for an old-school, hold-the-floor filibuster. But since he doesn't have a "pocket billionaire" funding his campaign, he probably won't be able to go the distance.

Ted Cruz, 6.2%. So, we're all agreed now that "natural born" is perfectly well satisfied by jus sanguinis? By having an American parent? Sweet.

Chris Christie, 4.3%. He's not the lowest-ranked former governor in the race ... but he soon will be.

Carly Fiorina, 4.2%. I'll admit, I haven't paid much attention to Fiorina's policy views. I was too busy paying attention to her spectacular ineptitude at Hewlett-Packard. She took over an industry giant that made the finest hand-held computing devices known to Man, and left a smoldering pile of wreckage. Yeah, that's the kind of executive experience we really need in the Oval Office...

Rick Perry, 2.7%. Do not discount this man. His performance in the 2012 campaign debates was a bizarre anomaly. Expect him to bide his time, and quietly collect support from the flame-outs as they occur. He'll have swapped places with Christie on this list by the end of the summer.

Rick Santorum, 2.2%. In a normal GOP year, "It's His Turn" is powerful mojo. As the 2012 runner-up, you'd expect Santorum to be polling higher this time around ... except that this is no ordinary year. They've been out of office long enough for panic to begin brewing. The GOP is going to go one of two ways. They're either going to go for electability, or they're going to go for an ideological firebrand. I'm not sure Santorum fills either bill.

John Kaisch, 2.1%. OK, so Christie has room yet to fall to get to lowest-ranked Governor on this list.

The Donald, 1.9%. I include Captain Combover just to indicate that the bucket has clanged noisily off the bottom of the well. And there isn't any water down there. Well's dry, folks.

And that's where we are. The Democrats don't have enough candidates, and the Republicans have too many. It's liable to still be that way this Fall, when things begin to heat up in earnest.

And remember, as I always say: Vote early, and vote often!

Fifteen for '15

It's one of those funny things that you really can't seem to quantify or prove, but nevertheless that everyone seems to agree upon: the older you get, the shorter a year gets. No one knows why. But everyone I've ever talked to about it agrees that it's so.

Anyway -- here we are, again. Another new year. Another old one gone to the discard pile. Except that it doesn't really feel all that new. That's something else that happens as you get older. I remember there used to be a magical feeling about approaching midnight on New Year's Eve. Like there was something special about the numbers rolling over to zero. That vanished for me somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, not entirely sure where.

Having a teenager might have had something to do with it. That'll drive you to cynicism, alcoholism, or (often) both.

But I'm here to tell you, it gets better. They do grow up. They even -- Deo Gratia -- become rational adults.

And so, without further ado, fifteen observations for 2015.

ONE -- I'm going to be doubting the wisdom of this motif come 2020 or thereabouts. Maybe even sooner.

TWO -- Henceforth, I will be referring to Kim Jong-Un as The Great Hambino. When his government stops acting like a hobo on crank, he can have his name back.

THREE -- Big year ahead in spaceflight. For me, the highlight will probably be New Horizon's Pluto/Charon encounter in July. They've woken the ship up from the eight-year hibernation it's been in since the Jupiter fly-by in 2007, and the team is getting ready to begin its science mission in February. This is an encounter that means a lot for those of us who grew up when Pluto was the ninth planet, and to date the only one we haven't seen close up. That ends in July.

FOUR -- But wait, there's more! Dawn will be entering orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres in March, having left Vesta in September of 2012. Despite having been launched a year later than New Horizons, Dawn will end up being the first spacecraft to have a close encounter with a dwarf planet. On the other hand, Ceres may not be as interesting as Pluto ... but then again, it might. We don't know ahead of time what we'll find, which is part of what makes the trip worthwhile.

FIVE -- While the Dragon 2.0 won't fly this year, tomorrow morning we'll get to find out if they can land a Falcon first stage on an autonomous ocean barge or not. SpaceX is saying they have a 50-50 shot of this thing working right the first time. But I sure wouldn't put money on them not being able to figure it out within a flight or two. Once they work the bugs out, this will allow SpaceX to recover, refurbish, and re-use an enormous chunk of flight hardware that everyone else just throws away. Good news for SpaceX, as well as its shareholders and customers; mildly worrisome for everyone else in the business.

SIX -- It will be a while before anything is known for sure, but my guess is that Scaled Composites will identify what went wrong with VSS Enterprise, fix it, and be ready to go back into test by the end of the year. But that depends on a number of things -- the final NTSB report and whether or not Richard Branson wants to press ahead being the two most important ones.

SEVEN -- And last but not least, the planet-hunter Kepler isn't down for the count, after all. They've managed to work out a mode of operation that will allow some observations to go forward, even with its reduced capability. It may be several years before my #4 observation from last year comes to fruition -- that'll probably require much more capable sensors than we currently have -- but I'm still optimistic we'll find a habitable world Out There fairly soon.

EIGHT -- Nothing new to report on the fusion energy front ... yet. But keep an eye on this. The fact that a company as big as Lockheed has laid its name and reputation on the line tells me that they've got a solid path forward. The odds are that we won't hear anything new until it's demonstration time. This points back to items #5 through #7 from last year, and I'll say it again: while concern is warranted about our power future, panic isn't. More and more, it's looking like we'll have the tools we need when we need them.

NINE -- This is a partial call-back to #5 above ... but I just wanted to point out how far 3-D printing has come. The thrusters they're going to use both for contingency aborts and precision landings? Made by 3-D printing, with metal. Not plastic, metal. Also, a 3-D printer has been delivered to the International Space Station. I wasn't aware that was even possible. Early 3-D printing technology required gravity in order to do its thing. Apparently, they've figured out a way around that. Interestingly enough, the first thing they made with their new 3-D printer was a part for the printer ... which tells me we're that much closer to being able to build a machine that can rebuild itself. Cool, and scary, all at the same time.

TEN -- Please, merciful God, spare us Clinton vs. Bush in 2016. Surely there are other candidates. But I fear that may be how the primaries shake out.

ELEVEN -- What a difference a year makes. Several years of 8-8 futility, and all of a sudden the Cowboys turn into an unstoppable-on-the-road juggernaut. Which sets up an interesting situation this coming Sunday in Green Bay -- the irresistible force meets the immovable object. The Cowboys are undefeated on the road. The Packers are undefeated at home. One of those streaks ends on Sunday.

TWELVE -- Somewhat related: is anyone out there still questioning the wisdom of drafting Zack Martin instead of Johnny Manziel? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

THIRTEEN -- While the lower gas prices are nice, something's going on behind the scenes that no one's quite figured out yet. We know that Saudi Arabia spun their taps wide open, what we don't know is why. There are a few possibilities, ranging from the highly likely to the improbable. Increasing the supply drops the price, that's obvious. Question is, who benefits? And who's hurt? Is this intended to put some hurt on the Iranians? Maybe, and a weakened Iran would be a good thing for the Saudis. Do they want to put a squeeze on the Russians? Maybe, insofar as they've provided Iran with backing. Do they want to drive prices low enough to put the resurgent American oil industry in a bind? I tend to think that's an unintended consequence, but I'm just guessing. Low prices put advanced recovery techniques, such as fracking and tar sands, at an unfavorable place on the price curve. But if they see that as such a threat, then ... maybe they're drawing down low enough that it's "smoke 'em while you got 'em" time. But if their reserves were getting that low, the smart play would be to lean it out as long as possible, wouldn't it? In any case, this bears close attention, and you should probably keep an eye on it.

FOURTEEN -- When Autocorrect gets good enough to make this site obsolete, then it's time to worry about Artificial Intelligence.

FIFTEEN -- (Added 11Jan15) Yep. Definitely regretting this motif.

Two Bad Days, One Good One

Flight test is a harsh, unforgiving business.

Modern computer modeling can sometimes give you an incorrect appreciation of this. You think you have all the angles figured. You think you've accounted for everything. You think you've analyzed the stresses down to the last nut, bolt, rivet and weld. But there's a small problem ... one of the unfortunate implications of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is that every model is necessarily incomplete. That is, the only complete model of a thing is the thing itself.

So ... the only way to find out how the thing behaves is to go try it out for real. To try it in the real world, where there are few (and sometimes only one) way to succeed, and innumerable ways to fail.

That's not always a bad thing, by the way; failure can be instructive. But those lessons sometimes come with a staggeringly high price tag.

On the 28th of October, Orbital Sciences Corporation had an Antares launch vehicle sitting on the pad at Wallops Island in Virginia, set to carry a Cygnus resupply pod to the International Space Station. The Antares rocket's first stage is powered by two AJ-26 rocket engines. The AJ-26 is a repackaging by Aerojet General of the Soviet-built NK-33. Originally, the NK-33 was intended to be the main engine for the N-1 lunar booster, with thirty in the first stage and eight in the second stage.

Someone ... oh, God, someone should have thought this through. Because the N-1 "flew" four times, without much variation in the outcome.



Anyway, recycling old rocket bits is Orbital's stock in trade. When they found a bunch of perfectly good rocket engines sitting in a warehouse, someone thought "Score!" Which is how two ex-Soviet engines ended up in an American rocket. Engines, by the way, that were notorious for trying to eat their own turbopumps. Which is more or less how this happened.



At some point you have to wonder if the actual purpose of the NK-33 was the conversion of fuel and structure into shrapnel and combustion by-products. Needless to say, Orbital is now looking for a new engine for Antares. (Addendum, 27Dec14: I'd have expected them to look for a non-Russian engine, but ... yeah, they're using another Russian engine. On the upside, the RD-181 is built in the same factory as the RD-180. The RD-180 has proven fairly reliable so far. On the downside, this puts Antares at the mercy of whatever the hell Putin decides to pull this month. They may yet regret this choice.)

The good news is that nothing was hurt, apart from OSC's pride. The same can't be said for the test mishap suffered by VSS Enterprise.

On October 31st, VSS Enterprise dropped from its White Knight Two carrier airplane for its fourth powered flight, and its thirty-sixth flight overall. Virgin and Scaled Composites had, by all accounts, been pursuing a long and fairly conservative flight test program, expanding the flight envelope bit by bit with each new powered flight. It should have been a fairly routine outing. The full NTSB report won't be available for some time, but what seems to have happened is that the copilot hit the "feather" switch too soon, while the rocket engine was still burning. The sudden nose-down pitch caused the ship to break up in flight, killing both crew on board. (Addendum, 27Jan15: Rarely have I been happier to have been wrong. Peter Siebold, while seriously injured, was not killed in the crash.)

I'm reserving judgement, here. I don't know enough about how it operates ... but it does seem to me that switch should have a guard of some kind. By way of comparison, on the C-130, the paratrooper "jump" light switch has a metal flange that will not allow you to turn that light on unless you've already opened the jump door. And maybe there's already something like that there, and the crew got confused.

Truth is, we just don't know yet, and probably won't know until the report is released.

There is some good news to go along with the bad, though. In early December, there was a test flight of the new Orion crew capsule. NASA looks like they've shook off whatever was ailing them back in their Ares-1X days. On December 5th, a test version of the Orion spacecraft was launched on a Delta IV Heavy booster on a two-orbit test flight. The launch and re-entry both came off without a hitch.



I had heard Ares-1X described as "a low-fidelity test of a bad design." It's not really fair to say that of Orion. Orion took two passes through the Van Allen radiation belts, and the Delta second stage fired a second time on the last orbit, to accelerate into re-entry. The peak deceleration was 8.5 times the force of gravity. This was a fairly rigorous shakedown cruise. It was a legitimate test that NASA could have failed.



They didn't.

Now, it's probably still true that Dragon V2 will beat a manned Orion into space, because Orion is paced by NASA funding and Dragon is paced by the whims of an eccentric billionaire, but once it does fly, Orion will be a top-notch ship. Of that, I'm very confident ... and a few years ago, I wasn't.

Flight test is a harsh, unforgiving business. Its lessons are paid for in blood. But we do learn, and in the end, the lessons are worth it.

How Long? Not Long...

I've been keeping an eye on fusion research for quite some time. Some thirty-odd years ago, I made a short list of developments that would figuratively keep the wolf from our door. There's no particular order to them. As I saw it then, our key long-term problem was resource exhaustion. It's still our key long-term problem. There are three things that can solve that problem if they arrive soon enough. Back then, I saw the first as cheap access to low Earth orbit. I still think that's important ... but I also think that we'll basically get it for free if we get the other two items. So today's list gets pared down to two: high-temperature superconductors, and controlled fusion.

Modern civilization is electrical power. That's a gross oversimplification, but it's nonetheless true that given enough economical, clean power, a lot of our problems go away. Not all, not by any stretch of the imagination, that's an unfortunate consequence of human nature. But just about any resource-based problem you can name can be either greatly reduced or even eliminated if you can throw enough power at it. Water shortage? Cheap desalinization fixes it. Emissions? Plentiful clean power fixes it. And once you take those two off the table, that buys us time to deal with what's left.

High-temperature superconductors are a force multiplier. Most of the power we generate -- about two-thirds of it -- vanishes between the generator and the user. This isn't due to sloth or inattention. This is a fundamental physical fact. If you push one ampere of current across one ohm of resistance, you lose one watt of power. Two amps, four watts. The power lost is equal to the square of the current times the resistance. High-tension lines run at scarily high voltage on alternating current, so that they can reduce the amperage to as low a value as possible. And even with some of the country's best electrical engineers having worked on it for a century or more, a two-thirds loss is the best we've been able to manage. Now, replace those power lines with a high-temperature superconductor. The resistance drops to zero. So do the power losses. At a stroke -- without adding any extra generators -- you triple the deliverable power. And that's before you get to the other things superconductors can do for you: better electric motors, better generators, better everything ... except heaters. The guy who tries to use superconductors to make a better electric heater is going to be a sad, sad man.

Controlled fusion is the other key. We're getting into a resource exhaustion problem to begin with because everything we try to extract power from runs out on us. Coal, oil, even radioactive isotopes will run out on us eventually. Fusion power relies on hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the entire Universe. Something like 95-99% of everything you see when you look up at night is hydrogen. It is, therefore, something we're extremely unlikely to ever run short of.

Virtually limitless power will change ... well, just about everything.

This is what makes Lockheed's announcement this last Wednesday so important.

For the last decade, several teams have been investigating odd corners of plasma physics to try to find a better way to control the fusion reaction. I've written several times about the Polywell project, founded by the late Robert Bussard, and they had some promising results from 2007 to about 2010, when they went dark. They're still working under a Navy contract, I think. But there were other approaches, too: dense plasma focus, inertial confinement, field-reversed configuration, Z-pinch ... one of them was bound to pay off sooner or later.

The announcement didn't have much detail. What Lockheed said is that they'd build a small reactor within the year, and have a prototype for a 100-megawatt model within five.

First, what this says to me is that the Navy is their primary customer. That's the right size to be a reactor replacement for the Navy's submarines and carriers, but it's also the right size to re-engine their frigates and destroyers. The Navy would like to start putting things like railguns on their surface combatants, but they don't have the power available to do that yet. This will change that.

Second, this is a project Big Oil won't be able to stifle. The small guys, like Bussard's old outfit, they could bully or stymie. Lockheed is the DoD's biggest supplier. If there's anyone that can tell Big Oil to help themselves to a tall, cool glass of SHUT THE **** UP, it's probably Lockheed, the DoD, or both.

Third ... we're close. Real close. I've always said fusion would be the transformational game-changer. We've never been closer to it becoming reality. It won't change everything, and not right away, but fission power will become obsolete overnight. The knock-on effects are going to be tremendous.

There does remain the possibility that it won't work. There's always that chance. I don't think it's very high, though; they wouldn't make such a public pronouncement and stake the company's name and reputation on it unless they were pretty damn sure of their success.

By the end of the decade ... we'll know.

And our world will never be the same.

In Praise Of Federalism

Yesterday, Scotland went to the polls and decided they still wanted to be part of the United Kkngdom, as opposed to a separate nation. Not everyone is happy with that decision. However, I can't help but think the question itself could have been avoided, had Westminster been willing to devolve some real power to the constituent nations -- Wales, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

If you squint at Devo-Max in bad light, it looks a lot like something familiar to those of us here in the States... Not that we haven't had our own problems with it.

A hundred and fifty years ago, six hundred thousand Americans died sorting out the primacy of the Federal government over the several States. That notwithstanding, the several States still enjoy a fair degree of autonomy. That autonomy is what prevents such a referendum from becoming an issue over here. Paradoxically, autonomy undergirds unity.

It has several other advantages.

I've heard Federalism described as "fifty laboratories of democracy." It's not a bad image. Each state tackles issues in its own way, some successfully, some less so. The bad ideas get left behind. The good ones -- a key example being the Massachusetts health care reform law that became the basis for the Affordable Care Act -- become more widely adopted. We are seeing it happen in marriage law, too. And in marijuana legislation. A few States try something new, others see it work -- well OR poorly -- and take the lessons to heart.

And sometimes, different conditions will perforce lead to different laws. Montana, with cities separated by miles upon miles of a whole bunch of nothing, will NEED different highway rules than Rhode Island. It's lunacy to force identical rules on both.

And, last but certainly not least, our founding documents state clearly that a government's legitimacy rests upon the consent of the governed. As a practical matter, it's easier to secure that consent at the local level, than at the State or Federal level. The more decisions that are made closer to the citizen, the better. You feel more like you have a real stake, more like you can have a real effect on policy.

I have a lot of friends who disagree. I expect I'll be hearing from a few shortly. Nonetheless, I'm still a Federalist.

Any Landing You Can Walk Away From...

As the old saying goes, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. And if they get to use the airplane again? That's a great landing. A couple of things I saw recently brought that to mind.

First, an incident reported by CNN. They didn't say which ship this was, but a Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier II pilot had a bit of excitement during a training mission. Takeoff was routine enough, but when he raised his landing gear, the nose gear didn't come all the way up. OK, that's bad. Time to go around for a landing. But wait, there's more!

CNN doesn't do embedding, sorry to say. But the rest of the story is that the nose gear wouldn't come all the way back down, either. But that's OK, because they're prepared for just such an emergency. Turns out they've got a standard piece of equipment to catch the nose. The pilot just has to line up on it exactly for it to work. Fortunately, lining up exactly is what Marine Corps aviators do for a living.

But, I have to say, that feat of airmanship pales by comparison to something I saw on my way home. The traffic seemed worse than usual. You almost never know exactly why. As I took the Highway 287 exit south from I-20, I saw some police cars parked on the overpass below. I didn't see what they'd stopped for. I was kind of busy driving. But, after I got home and checked up on some news, I saw what it was and wish I'd actually seen it.

Pictured: A lifetime supply of luck, expended.

Yes, you're seeing that right. Someone landed an airplane. On a curved highway overpass. IN RUSH HOUR. And they're probably going to live long enough to brag about it.

I'm trying to think of something else to say about this, and I'm failing miserably. If you pitched this as a scene in an action flick, they'd laugh you out of the room. No one would believe it. This is either a harebrained stunt gone wrong, or an unbelievably awesome feat of airmanship, bringing a busted bird home. I really hope it's the latter.

Either way, they've got a story to tell their grandkids that'll be hard to top.

"A 21st Century Spacecraft"

A week or so ago, we finally got a look at the long-anticipated manned version of the Dragon spacecraft. Originally, we were expecting something not too dissimilar to the existing Dragon. We've seen it presented like this:

Designs often change, though; what we saw a few weeks ago looked like this:

The unveil event can also be seen on YouTube, if you haven't seen it yet. I'm not going to talk about it much, but here it is in case you're interested.

A few non-obvious points:

First: This gives us something we haven't had in a long time, if ever: a manned spacecraft with a crew abort option throughout the flight envelope. We had that after a fashion with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Mercury and Apollo had a launch escape tower, and Gemini had ejection seats. The Shuttle had its own ... special problems. First of all, while the SRBs burned, you had no options. None. As I say sometimes, if something goes wrong before you punch those things off ... well, the Chaplain briefs that Emergency Procedure on Sunday mornings. And the Return to Launch Site abort wasn't much better. In simulated aborts, I've heard they got the Orbiter back about one time in three. They got the crew back somewhat more often, two times in three. Not. Good. But now, we'll get a fully controlled, accurate landing capability, available throughout ascent. This is much better.

Second: I find the relocation of the solar cells interesting. Look at the proposed Falcon Heavy for a minute:

I ran the numbers a while back, and a Falcon Heavy can put a nearly-full Falcon second stage plus Dragon payload in Earth orbit. The second stage has enough juice left for Translunar Injection, Lunar Orbit Insertion, and Transearth Injection. That said, I wasn't sure how the "wings" on the current Dragon would hold up under thrust. Well, that's a moot point with Dragon V2. Now that the cells are mounted flush against the outer wall, it's all good. Clearly, they're looking ahead to using V2 with the heavy-lift version.

Third: Seven seats. And, they look like pretty nice seats. 

Hand-tooled leather available as an upgrade option.

As I've said before, seven seats is what you really want for ISS crew change-out. Six space station crew plus one pilot. More to the point, we will no longer need to rely on the good graces of the Russian government ... good graces that we're having more and more reason to doubt.

Fourth: A proper, modern "glass cockpit" instrument panel, with the most critical functions having manual back-ups. I didn't see a standby instrument cluster in that middle area, but by the time they ship the first unit I wouldn't be surprised to find one there. Standby instruments are important, people...

In any case, now we know what it'll look like. If all goes well, next year we'll find out how it flies.

D-Day Plus Seventy

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven for these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has greatly reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God on this great and noble undertaking.

-- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day, 6/2/1944

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.

-- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, handwritten note of a message to be released if the landings failed

That is the price of liberty. Vive la France!

-- Contre-Admiral Janjard, Free French Navy, giving the order to bombard the French coast

Will someone tell me how we did this?

-- Colonel James Rudder, Ranger commander, at Pointe du Hoc twenty years later

It's a fair question.

Mine is slightly different: Where do we find these men?

Without fail, every generation of Americans has stood forward to the call. And I do mean without fail. I can remember being worried about our country's future, back in the early to mid 1990s. I looked at the younger generation, teenagers then, and they looked feckless and mostly useless. I despaired of them rising to meet any challenge ... then 9/11 came, and they surprised the Hell out of me. As useless as they looked, they grew into fine, strong men and women.

Seventy-odd years ago, it was my father's generation's turn. In early 1939, America had about 300,000 men under arms. We barely had an Army. That changed in December of 1941. The attack happened on the 7th, a Sunday. On Monday the 8th, recruiters had as much business as they could handle. And so the work began, turning civilians into soldiers. Accustoming men to had been used to doing their own thing to routine and discipline. There was exercise and hardship to develop their bodies, and other forms of training to focus their minds. They always knew, even from the start, that they'd have to invade continental Europe. They also knew they'd have to put paid to Imperial Japan, more or less at the same time. They didn't know how just yet, they just knew they'd have to do it.

Amphibious assault wasn't new ... except as a matter of scale. The invasion of Europe was the most complex undertaking in human history to that point, perhaps equalled by the construction of the Great Pyramids, but not surpassed. Before the men could even begin to assault the beaches, stupendous amounts of weapons, vehicles, and supplies had to be amassed in England; and plans drawn up to ship those ashore. The raid on Dieppe early in the war showed that capturing a port intact probably wasn't going to happen, so they had to develop a work-around for that. And, at the same time that they were assembling such amazing amounts of stuff that a blind man could see the invasion coming, they had to deceive the Germans as to where the blow was to fall. They sold a bogus Army to the Germans, aimed at the Pas de Calais, while the real invasion was targeted for Normandy. The kicker was that the fake Army was under the command of General George S. Patton, probably the one American commander the Germans actually respected. Maybe not as an equal, but as a near-equal. That sold it: they bought the deception hook, line, and sinker.

They originally wanted to go in May, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. It looked like the weather wouldn't cooperate for June, either ... but in the late hours of June 5, they got a lucky break. The storms would let up for the morning of the 6th. Eisenhower wasn't totally happy with the odds, but he was even less happy about waiting another month. He didn't much like it, but didn't see any other option but give the order: Go.

Assault transports, destroyers, and battleships stood out to sea. Transport aircraft stuffed to the gills with paratroopers took off, followed by other transports towing gliders. The finely-honed plan went cubist almost immediately, with the airborne troops dropping all over the target zone, and landing craft missing their mark by as much as a mile. It didn't matter. From the commanders ashore like Norman Cota and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., to the common private, everyone improvised to the utmost to do the most important thing that day: break the Atlantic Wall. Get inland. Establish a foothold.

It was a near-run thing, especially on Omaha Beach. But all five beaches were secure by the end of the day, thanks to the skill and courage demonstrated by the British at Gold and Sword, the Canadians at Juno, and the Americans at Omaha and Utah. It would be a while before enough strength amassed ashore to break out, but with the Atlantic Wall ruptured, the Germans would be unable to do a single thing about it.

But none of that answers my question: Where do we find these men?

I think the answer is ... we find them everywhere. Because in a real sense we don't find them. They find themselves. Free men, given the liberty to choose, see their home in danger, and refuse to let anyone else do their job.

This, of course, leaves us with a very important question, one that I'm not sure we've ever answered adequately.

Are we keeping faith with the sacrifices they've made on our behalf?

I look at the VA ... and I am ashamed.

Surely, we can do better. Surely, we must do better.

Phelps

Many preachers have a go-to phrase that expresses their take on the ministry. You might even say it's their mission statement. For Saint Francis of Assisi, it was "Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary using words." A former pastor of mine liked the phrase, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." The church I currently attend used the motto "Love Matters" when I first joined. They let you know what kind of person, what kind of congregation, they aspire to be.

Then, you have Fred Phelps. His motto ... well, it wasn't so much a motto as it was an answer to an interviewer's question. When asked about his approach, when asked what he felt about being so widely hated, he said, "Good. If I were not hated, what claim could I have on the ministry of the Gospel?"

That, I think, is the key thing you had to understand about Fred Phelps, and the key thing you had to understand about how to deal with him and his followers. He loved being hated. It was his measure of success. Back when supporting civil rights got you death threats, he was all about civil rights. If you ask how someone who was so right back in the '50s could be so wrong now, you ask the wrong question; the man simply enjoyed the opprobrium of his fellow citizen. Now, why he enjoyed it so is a fair question, but one that has now been rendered somewhat moot.

I never wasted a whole lot of time thinking about him, or his bloated distortion of Christianity. And I never wasted much time on hating him or his followers. Hate is the wrong response anyway, since that's what they crave. No, I'll tell you the proper way to treat them -- as they deserve.

You don't hate clowns. You point, and laugh at them.

Election 2014: Texas Goober Primaries

Yes, it's that time again, when Texans go to the polls to begin the process to elect another Governor, though no one's entirely sure why. I mean, the Texas Governor is extraordinarily weak to the point that your average night-shift convenience store manager has more actual authority within his sphere of competence. Still, this is something we've become accustomed to doing, so here we are.

Pity it's such a dull year.

A few years back, we had a grand old time, with Kinky Friedman on the ballot, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn running as an independent candidate, apparently for the sheer joy of poking a sharp stick in Rick Perry's eye. Now, that was fine sport.

The Democratic primary features Wendy Davis, and a bunch of people who aren't Wendy Davis. The Republican primary features Greg Abbott, and a bunch of people who aren't Greg Abbott.

Mainly, Davis seems to be running against Ray Madrigal, who has been running for the Democratic nomination so long that he's forgotten why. But since hardly anyone has ever heard of Mr. Madrigal, his chances of success are somewhere on the same order of magnitude as the number of R's in "Fat Chance". So, it's safe to say that Wendy Davis will end up the Democratic nominee for Governor after the March 4 primary.

Abbott is running against a veritable Cast of Thousands for the Republican nomination. Said cast includes a right-wing radio host, a secessionist, and a former Univision host who's evidently forgotten that in Texas "G.O.P." stands for "I Hate Mexicans." So, Greg Abbott will probably wind up as the Republican nominee after the March 4 primary, provided that the secessionist doesn't pull enough support to force a runoff. That's a distinctly non-zero probability, given the amount of free-roaming crazy loose in the Republican primary electorate these days.

As to who will win, it's anyone's guess. Pollster says that Greg Abbott sits at 40%, Wendy Davis at 34%, with "We're having an election?" bringing up the rear at 26%.

Early voting starts on February 18, and runs through the 28th. The Primary Election is on Tuesday, March 4th. Vote early, and vote often!

Ten Years!

Ten years ago, the rover Opportunity landed on the surface of Mars. It was expected to last at least 90 Martian days. At this point, it's lasted about forty times that long, and looks to be good for still more.



In the ten years Opportunity has been on station, we've gathered an immense amount of data, and made several amazing discoveries. Some of them have been confirmations of things long suspected, others took us by surprise. Ten years ago, it was still an open question whether or not water had ever flowed on Mars; now, it's proven fact. Ten years ago, it was highly speculative to say that Mars ever had the necessary conditions for life. Now, while it's not proven for sure yet, the facts are lining up in favor. Between them, Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity have been chipping away at the unknowns, revealing a world more complex that we'd imagined, with a richer past than we'd suspected.

In other recent news, we turn our eyes outward to the Asteroid Belt. European scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered something surprising about the dwarf planet Ceres. It seems that it periodically ejects plumes of water. While we'd suspected that Ceres was at least partially made of ice, this provides confirmation. Fortunately for us, the Dawn spacecraft is already on its way, having left Vesta a while back.

You know, this makes me feel sorry for poor New Horizons.

When New Horizons launched, it was a mission to fly by the farthest known planet, Pluto. While enroute, Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet. Which was still OK, since New Horizons would still be the first mission to a dwarf planet, right? Um, no. Turns out that while New Horizons will fly by Pluto in July of 2015, Dawn will reach Ceres in January.

Some people just can't buy a break.

Anyway, it's wonderful to know that we can still build things that last. Voyager, launched way back in 1977, still checks in regularly with Earth. Opportunity still soldiers on after ten years driving around in the Martian dust. And just next year, we'll get our first close-up views of not one, but two dwarf planets.

These are great days, ladies and gentlemen. And we've barely begun.

Fourteen for '14

Once again, we've broken the shrink-wrap on a brand-new calendar. We've seen off a grizzled old Father Time to a well-earned retirement, and welcomed in a smiling Baby New Year -- who, clearly, had no clue what he's in for. But he'll learn soon enough. Probably by, say, noon two days ago. And with that, we'll dive right into fourteen not-so-random thoughts for the New Year.

One: Holy God, Mr. Kim's a bad-un. We knew he was crazy. What we didn't necessarily know until now is that the guy has one hell of a mean streak. We probably should have gotten a clue last year when he had someone executed by mortar -- yes, machine-gunning wasn't enough, they used artillery -- for failing to observe a decent period of mourning for his late father. Then, he had a former girlfriend executed. And late last year, we found out that he had his uncle executed as well, for an alleged putsch-in-progress. Well, now details have leaked about the method. Kim Jong-Un had him thrown in a cage with 120 starving hounds. Along with five of his top aides. It's ... less than encouraging, knowing that someone with these kinds of anger issues even has a nuclear button to push. It's a little more reassuring to know that he's still got a ways to go before they can air-mail a batch of instant sunrise to anyone outside of North Korea.

Two: Nut-cases like Li'l Kim are why theater missile defense is still a damn good idea.

Three: I'm provisionally going to call Number Four from last year proven. The key wording here is, "for a sufficiently generous definition of Earth-like." The closest thing to an Earth-like planet found so far, GJ 1214b, is a lava planet with an atmosphere containing zinc sulfide, postassium chloride ... and water. Still, the fact that we can actually sense its atmospheric composition from 33 light years away -- thirty-three light years! -- is phenomenal. Stupefying, even. On the plus side, Kepler-62e and -62f are about the right size, and about the right distance from their star ... but they're about 1,200 light years away, so it'll be a while before we have enough data to be sure. Again, wording is important: by the terms I laid out last year, that's close enough.

Four: Now, to raise the stakes: We'll find a true Earth-twin, and soon. Right size, right place in its solar system, right atmospheric composition, and yes, oceans of liquid water. Our instruments get better every year. I don't seriously expect it to happen this year ... but I didn't expect Number Four from last year to be proven out so soon, either.

Five: Research at the University of Twente has revealed a new way to wind superconducting cables that will vastly extend their productive life within a fusion reactor. You can read the whole paper here. Solid information about other ongoing projects is still kind of hard to come by. Since the Polywell project is run by the Navy, and the Navy is playing its cards close to the vest, we won't know more until they decide to exercise a contract option to continue the research. Still, it's worth keeping an eye on. Fusion's been a tough nut to crack. But if we can figure it out, our energy problems are just about over.

Six: One researcher, Joe Eck, has produced a superconductor that keeps its superconducting properties up to a temperature of 38C, or about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Soon, they'll be pushing Tc up to values that will be useful for long-distance high-voltage power lines. Provided, that is, that the material is amenable to use in that capacity. The obvious advantages of superconducting power lines will lead someone to take up that challenge. As I've written before, we lose about two-thirds of the power we generate between the power plant and the end user. Meaning that, if we had superconducting power lines, at a stroke we'd triple the amount of deliverable electrical power. When I first started writing about this, it was a highly speculative prospect. Now, it's just a matter of time.

Seven: The three items above, together, lead me to the conclusion that while concern about our power future is still warranted, panic isn't. Relax, guys. We've got this.

Eight: VSS Enterprise, the successor to SpaceShip One that Burt Rutan is building for Richard Branson, made two powered flights last year, both going supersonic. On the second test flight in September, they tested the "feathering" that they will use for deceleration and descent from flights above 100km altitude. About 370 people have put a deposit down on their ticket, and 80,000 more are on the waiting list. No, I'm not one of them -- the quarter-million-dollar ticket price is too rich for my blood. Besides, the price is bound to come down sooner or later. The reason I'm writing all this is simple: after a few test flights to expand the flight envelope, I expect them to go for broke this year, all the way up to the Big Black. A steady stream of paying customers will follow, and the REAL Space Age will be well underway.

Nine: Meanwhile, Elon Musk looks on and says, "Suborbital? That's cute." DragonRider has passed its initial design reviews with NASA. SpaceX has announced a target price of $140 million, or $20 million per seat if all seven seats are used. So far, SpaceX hasn't announced any space tourist initiatives yet. Their primary customer for DragonRider is NASA, aiming to muscle Soyuz out of the crew rotation business. But the implication is obvious. If Branson proves that a market's there, someone will put two and two together, and pick up a phone to give Mr. Musk a call. It's only a matter of time, now.

Ten: The first astronaut of NASA's Group 20, Michael Hopkins, is aboard the International Space Station, and will be until March 2014. I find it remarkable that it only took two years after completion of training for the first member of Group 20 to get a flight. Then again, it has been four years since selection... Amazingly enough, there was a selection for Group 21, and it completely escaped my notice. The eight astronaut candidates selected in June will join the 47 astronauts currently on the active list. It looks like they're on a four-year rotation now, so we should look for Group 22 to be chosen in June 2017.

Eleven: Total radio silence so far on Johan Bruyneel's arbitration hearing, in the wake of last year's Armstrong scandal. Although, really, it's not fair to call it the Armstrong scandal, since Lance wasn't doing anything anyone else wasn't already doing. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way by (a) turning all the dials up to 11, and (b) being a total jerk-ass about it. Everybody and his dog was cheating during those years. Mind you, he richly deserved to lose those titles, and no one else really deserved to pick them up. Still, once the decision is released, I expect the other shoe to drop. We know who, what, when, where, and why; we do not know how. How was he able to avoid the testing protocols so long and so well? And how far did the corruption go? We'll probably learn more in the year to come.

Twelve: It'll be interesting to see how well Lolo Jones does in bobsled. Bobsled and luge are my two favorite winter sports. But as you might have noticed, I have a thing for speed, and these are just about the two fastest muscle-powered sports there are.

Thirteen: Another season, another 8-8 finish for the Cowboys. I can haz new GM? Yeah, like Jerry's gonna fire himself. Maybe next year ... but probably not.

Fourteen: But wait! The primaries are coming up for the 2014 Texas Gubernatorial election! So far, the only entrants I've heard of are Wendy Davis on the Democratic side, and Greg Abbott for the Republicans. Presumably, there's going to be some competition, but my gut feeling right now is that it'll be Abbot vs. Davis in November. I'll dig into more detail on that in coming weeks, but this could be a fun one. Also -- looks like Governor Perry's ginning up for another run at the Republican nomination in 2016. No, don't laugh. His performance last time was an aberration. If he manages to show up properly prepped and briefed, he could spring an unpleasant surprise on his competitors.

And that's it for now. Happy New Year, all! And thanks for reading.