Now that football season is underway, it's just about time for the Presidential primary season to being in earnest. Just about everyone who's going to participate in next year's Republican primary has declared their candidacy. And, of course, we already know who the Democratic nominee will be. (You get three guesses. The first two don't count.) With all that said, we're going to dust off our crystal ball, and do some more prognosticating. (All figures from intrade.com, current as of Friday night.)
(Prognostication is something I probably shouldn't do. My record is somewhat less than stellar. I'm on record predicting Donovan McNabb to give the Eagles good reason to regret trading him to the Redskins, after all, and we all know how that turned out. Anyway...)
Democratic Party
I'm only doing this for completeness' sake. It's all over bar the shouting. As I said before, in the modern era, sitting Presidents just don't get turfed for re-nomination. And also in the modern era, they just don't go for a re-do on their running mates, either. So, I'm not even going to bother looking up the numbers. It's Obama/Biden for Team Blue in 2012, unless one or both of them get run over by a bus or something. (Which ain't gonna happen.)
Republican Party
And the Republican race is about to get fun. In the list to follow, one person wasn't even on it back in March, and ... well, let's just get to it.
Rick Perry, 32% -- And, surging out of nowhere, the Governor of Texas is in the lead, at least according to Vegas. He should officially declare his candidacy tomorrow in South Carolina. This is a development that should surprise no one. He spent a good bit of time last year denying he'd seek the Presidency. But it takes an extraordinarily humble man to resist that clarion call, and successful politicians are very seldom humble. He'd already become the longest-serving Governor in Texas' history. What else was there for him to do, but to go for the brass ring? And in a very real sense, his presence sucks all the oxygen out of the tent for everyone else. With his executive experience, his popularity with the Tea Party, and his skill in political skullduggery, he steals damn near everyone's trump cards. The man's got a clear path to the nomination, provided he doesn't do anything utterly stupid.
Mitt Romney, 29% -- Romney still clings stubbornly to second place. As well he should: he's been laying the groundwork for 2012 ever since the dust settled from 2008. But nothing important has changed. The big millstone around his neck is still the fact that ObamaCare is RomneyCare with the serial numbers filed off. He's going to have to find a way to run away from that without looking ridiculous. This feat is probably beyond him. He'll do all right in the Northeast. But once the race swings into the South and West ... well, let's just say Perry's got him bore-sighted.
Sarah Palin, 7% -- Yes, no one else is even out of single digits. Frankly, Palin has waited too long to get into the race. Michele Bachmann has already garnered much of her Tea Party base, and Rick Perry has already stolen most of that thunder. There might be room for two Tea Party candidates in the primary. No way is there room for three. Thanks for playing, Ms. Palin, your consolation prize is a Fox News gig.
Ron Paul, 6% -- Ron Paul will hang on until the bloody, bitter end. He hasn't a ghost of a chance of winning the nomination, but as long as he gets a bully pulpit, he'll use it to air his ideas. He's quite mad, of course, but I respect his persistence.
Michele Bachmann, 5% -- Given that Bachmann will probably win Iowa, I'm surprised to find her this low on the list. I'm going to kick myself for not buying a handful of Bachmann shares now, and unloading them right after the Iowa caucuses. I could turn a tidy profit. Still, she won't last. She's got Iowa, Romney's got New Hampshire, but after the race heads South, it's all Perry all day. (Seriously, I don't see how that dude loses, unless he shoots himself in the foot.)
Tim Pawlenty, 5% -- And sinking like a stone. I don't see how he recovers from the evisceration he got in last night's GOP debate. Stone barking mad Bachmann may be, but she was all over Pawlenty like a cheap suit. This just ain't Tim's year.
Others -- Not much to say. Newt's toast, but we knew that, even if no one's actually told him yet. He's still got a 1% share, for some inexplicable reason. Other than that, I see a whole bunch of names with zeroes by them. To a first approximation, this is probably going to be a three-way race initially: Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Then, there'll be a down-select to Perry and Romney, and I expect Perry to win the nomination. They're laying down a 32% chance that the VP nominee will be Marco Rubio, but that's no more than a wild guess. As we all know, the VP pick comes down to who wins the nomination, and what sort of VP they want. We don't have enough information to go on yet to make a reasonable prediction.
And The Winner Is...
Currently, the betting line is 51%-47% in favor of the Democratic candidate, if you go by party. On the individuals list, Barack Obama leads with 49%, the nearest competitor being Rick Perry at 17%. It's going to be a tougher sell next year unless the economy improves, but if the Republicans go full-bore extremist, that might scare enough independents back into Obama's column. It'll be an interesting election season next summer and fall. But, I still think it favors the incumbent. Obama/Biden for the win is still worth a buck or two.
Remember, kids, vote early, and vote often!
Friday, August 12, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
For Want Of A Nail
I have a fascination with the last irretrievable moment. In every accident, in every major event, there's almost always a definable moment where disaster could have been averted. If only key people had had one key piece of information, if only they'd made one decision differently, everything could have been different.
There was one such moment during the last tragic mission of Columbia. If the manager in charge had pushed for satellite images of the shuttle's underside, the extent of the damage might have been known, and it might have been possible to mount a rescue effort. There's a lot of mights involved ... but we also might have gotten those seven people back alive. And we might be seeing one now, in Washington. But that's not the one I'm talking about today.
On the first of June, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Its automatic systems had blurted out signals of danger, and then, silence. At the time, I had speculated about what might have gone wrong. Speculation was all it amounted to. Without the flight data recorders, no one would ever know the truth of the matter, and the data recorders were buried under eleven thousand feet of ocean. I fully expected no one would ever see them again.
I vastly underestimated the tenacity of France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis. In May 2010, they had narrowed the location down to a five by five kilometer area. That gave them a small enough zone to allow a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to make a more detailed search. In April of this year, they found the wreckage, and with it not only the flight data recorder, but also the cockpit voice recorder. If that wasn't amazing enough, they were able to recover all of the data from both devices. Truly, this was astounding work, and my hat's off to them.
Now, after sifting through the reams of data available to them, the BEA has issued some preliminary reports. It turns out that some of my initial speculations were right, some less so.
The data clearly tells us that the pitot probes had iced over, corrupting the data going into the air data computers. This meant that the data feeding the primary flight displays weren't any good. What's not clear to me yet is exactly what happened next. They don't say if an updraft lifted the nose of the aircraft, or if the ice on the aircraft caused it to slow to a dangerously low speed. I'm guessing the latter, because they say that the crew pulled the nose of the aircraft up, which they probably wouldn't have done if the aircraft was already nose-high. The main point is, the aircraft was already on the verge of a stall, and lifting the nose made a bad problem worse. The aircraft then simply fell out of the sky.
The preliminary report released today says that it's basically a pilot training problem. Pilots typically have little to no training flying an aircraft manually at that speed and altitude, and therefore have little intuition on how they should recover from a situation like this. The BEA recommendation is to add this condition to the pilot training syllabus.
After thinking about it a bit, I have a few observations of my own.
1) Standby instruments rarely get the respect they deserve. Ideally, your cockpit scan should include your standby instruments, especially in a glass-cockpit airplane. If your air data computers are hosed for whatever reason, your standby instruments may still have good information on what your airplane's doing. If your standby instruments don't agree with your primary displays, you've got a problem. Exactly what kind of problem you won't know, but at least you can start looking. This particular failure cascade seems to indicate that the crew were still flying by the primary displays, up to the point where they no longer had any aerodynamic control. Respect your ISIS, ladies and gents, that's what it's there for.
2) Airbus makes an exceptionally sturdy fuselage. Really, this could apply to any modern composite-structure fuselage. They're absurdly strong. From the initial reports, I expected that the aircraft would have broken up in midair from aerodynamic stresses. A mostly aluminum structure probably would have. But from the wreckage, we know that it was intact when it hit the water. It was doing some pretty serious gyrations on the way down, and didn't come apart. That's solid construction.
3) These days, we can find damn near anything, damn near anywhere. I was sure those recorders were gone forever. Fish food, if there are any fish that live two miles down. Apparently, modern sonar is as good as a searchlight. I don't know exactly how those French submarines were able to narrow the field down as close as they did, and for obvious reasons they're not telling. But it's clear that if they want something found on the ocean floor, it can be found. And that wasn't a guarantee ten, or even five years ago.
4) There's a good reason for all this, besides morbid curiosity. The reason people like me pick disasters apart like this isn't that we're morbid toads. We may be, but that's beside the point. We want to know what happened, and how it happened, so we can stop it from happening next time. If that's even possible. The important lesson to come out of all this is that we've uncovered a gap in pilot training. We have the means at our disposal to close that gap. Thirty minutes of simulator time a year, and a pilot will have "experienced" this situation with enough fidelity that he or she will know what to do if the real thing ever happens. The next time this happens we'll probably never hear about it. The passengers will experience a bout of worse than normal turbulence, the pilots will experience five minutes of bowel-freezing terror, but the airplane will arrive at its scheduled destination. We'd have not known this, if we'd let it alone. Poking and prodding is part of our job. Our duty. Not always the most pleasant part, but an essential part nonetheless.
It's not much consolation for the people who lost loved ones two years ago, but this knowledge, painfully gained, may allow us to save the next one. That's certainly worth something.
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Don Seath, my first professor in Aerospace Engineering, who passed away in May from pancreatic cancer. You taught me well.
There was one such moment during the last tragic mission of Columbia. If the manager in charge had pushed for satellite images of the shuttle's underside, the extent of the damage might have been known, and it might have been possible to mount a rescue effort. There's a lot of mights involved ... but we also might have gotten those seven people back alive. And we might be seeing one now, in Washington. But that's not the one I'm talking about today.
On the first of June, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Its automatic systems had blurted out signals of danger, and then, silence. At the time, I had speculated about what might have gone wrong. Speculation was all it amounted to. Without the flight data recorders, no one would ever know the truth of the matter, and the data recorders were buried under eleven thousand feet of ocean. I fully expected no one would ever see them again.
I vastly underestimated the tenacity of France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis. In May 2010, they had narrowed the location down to a five by five kilometer area. That gave them a small enough zone to allow a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to make a more detailed search. In April of this year, they found the wreckage, and with it not only the flight data recorder, but also the cockpit voice recorder. If that wasn't amazing enough, they were able to recover all of the data from both devices. Truly, this was astounding work, and my hat's off to them.
Now, after sifting through the reams of data available to them, the BEA has issued some preliminary reports. It turns out that some of my initial speculations were right, some less so.
The data clearly tells us that the pitot probes had iced over, corrupting the data going into the air data computers. This meant that the data feeding the primary flight displays weren't any good. What's not clear to me yet is exactly what happened next. They don't say if an updraft lifted the nose of the aircraft, or if the ice on the aircraft caused it to slow to a dangerously low speed. I'm guessing the latter, because they say that the crew pulled the nose of the aircraft up, which they probably wouldn't have done if the aircraft was already nose-high. The main point is, the aircraft was already on the verge of a stall, and lifting the nose made a bad problem worse. The aircraft then simply fell out of the sky.
The preliminary report released today says that it's basically a pilot training problem. Pilots typically have little to no training flying an aircraft manually at that speed and altitude, and therefore have little intuition on how they should recover from a situation like this. The BEA recommendation is to add this condition to the pilot training syllabus.
After thinking about it a bit, I have a few observations of my own.
1) Standby instruments rarely get the respect they deserve. Ideally, your cockpit scan should include your standby instruments, especially in a glass-cockpit airplane. If your air data computers are hosed for whatever reason, your standby instruments may still have good information on what your airplane's doing. If your standby instruments don't agree with your primary displays, you've got a problem. Exactly what kind of problem you won't know, but at least you can start looking. This particular failure cascade seems to indicate that the crew were still flying by the primary displays, up to the point where they no longer had any aerodynamic control. Respect your ISIS, ladies and gents, that's what it's there for.
2) Airbus makes an exceptionally sturdy fuselage. Really, this could apply to any modern composite-structure fuselage. They're absurdly strong. From the initial reports, I expected that the aircraft would have broken up in midair from aerodynamic stresses. A mostly aluminum structure probably would have. But from the wreckage, we know that it was intact when it hit the water. It was doing some pretty serious gyrations on the way down, and didn't come apart. That's solid construction.
3) These days, we can find damn near anything, damn near anywhere. I was sure those recorders were gone forever. Fish food, if there are any fish that live two miles down. Apparently, modern sonar is as good as a searchlight. I don't know exactly how those French submarines were able to narrow the field down as close as they did, and for obvious reasons they're not telling. But it's clear that if they want something found on the ocean floor, it can be found. And that wasn't a guarantee ten, or even five years ago.
4) There's a good reason for all this, besides morbid curiosity. The reason people like me pick disasters apart like this isn't that we're morbid toads. We may be, but that's beside the point. We want to know what happened, and how it happened, so we can stop it from happening next time. If that's even possible. The important lesson to come out of all this is that we've uncovered a gap in pilot training. We have the means at our disposal to close that gap. Thirty minutes of simulator time a year, and a pilot will have "experienced" this situation with enough fidelity that he or she will know what to do if the real thing ever happens. The next time this happens we'll probably never hear about it. The passengers will experience a bout of worse than normal turbulence, the pilots will experience five minutes of bowel-freezing terror, but the airplane will arrive at its scheduled destination. We'd have not known this, if we'd let it alone. Poking and prodding is part of our job. Our duty. Not always the most pleasant part, but an essential part nonetheless.
It's not much consolation for the people who lost loved ones two years ago, but this knowledge, painfully gained, may allow us to save the next one. That's certainly worth something.
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Don Seath, my first professor in Aerospace Engineering, who passed away in May from pancreatic cancer. You taught me well.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Sesquicentennial, Part XVI: First Clash
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
There is a misconception common to all belligerent parties in virtually ever war that has occurred in human history. It is a misconception so common that the catchphrases associated with it are almost impossible to link to a particular conflict. "Our boys will be home before the leaves fall." "They'll be home before Christmas." While the second can at least be placed confidently after the reign of Constantine the Great, the former has probably been said in every human language that has ever existed.
For one, while it's true that at a war's outset both sides believe that they will win, one side must be wrong. For another, at a war's outset, each side usually believes -- mistakenly -- that the other side is made up of ineffectual pushovers that can't stand the heat. For recent examples, you need only look to the phrases "Mother of all battles" and "Shock and Awe" for prominent cases on both sides. The same was true a century and a half ago. The same was true throughout recorded history. Truly, some things never change.
The fever produced by the simultaneous forces of a fervent belief in victory coupled with a fixed belief in the other side's inherent cowardice caused the major papers of the North to temporarily push Lincoln away from the plan drafted by his army commander, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott. Scott, you remember, had proposed to first surround the Confederacy, then cut it in half. This would take years, but would be the surest way to bring the Confederacy to defeat. No one was balking at the "sure defeat" part, it was the "it would take years" clause that had them dismayed. With such a fine army encamped, and with such a pusillanimous foe, how could our fine boys but win glorious, prompt victory?
In such passions are horrifying disasters born.
The Army of Northeastern Virginia had come into being out of the various companies, brigades, and divisions that had been assembled from the troops gathered to defend Washington, immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. President Lincoln appointed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell as its commander. General McDowell was under immense pressure from the Northern press to go out and do something. President Lincoln was, as well. McDowell initially resisted such pressure, sure that his men weren't yet ready for such action. McDowell was well-suited to make such a judgement, having been an instructor of tactics at West Point. It was an objection swept aside by Lincoln: "You are green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike." So, on July 16, General McDowell left Washington with the largest army that had yet been assembled on the North American continent, with the assignment to go out, find the enemy, and engage him closely. Their initial objective was a rail junction at Manassas, Virginia.
The rail junction was held by a much smaller Confederate force under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, of whom we've heard already. In a coincidence that would become commonplace in the years to follow, Beauregard and McDowell had been classmates at West Point. Beauregard, initially, only commanded 20,000 men against McDowell's 30,000. But one of the advantages of sitting on a rail junction? Reinforcements can ride in as soon as you know you need them. Beauregard held all the crossings of the Bull Run, so while McDowell searched for ways to outflank his old classmate, Beauregard sent dispatches by telegraph calling for extra men.
They almost didn't arrive in time. McDowell held Beauregard's attention with part of his force, while he sent 20,000 men in a flanking move to threaten Beauregard's left flank. They forced a crossing at Stone House, and all that stood between them and Beauregard's rear was a single reduced brigade of Confederate infantry. If the orders had been given and received properly, this might well have been the end of it. But they weren't: the Union brigade that had been intended to lead the attack held up to wait for further orders, and the brigade that had been intended to feint in support found itself out in front all alone. Meanwhile, fresh reinforcements arrived, and Beauregard was able to plug the hole, and the battle was properly joined.
In their defense, flanking maneuvers are very complex, and require very close coordination and communication to pull off, even today. In an era when orders had to be delivered by hand, it required well-trained officers and well-drilled troops to have a realistic chance of doing it at all. At this point, the Union had few of either. For while Lincoln was right, and the Confederacy had this problem also, the Confederate President had guessed right, and had put his best men and best troops on the line between Washington and Richmond, expecting that is where the heaviest blow would fall, first.
I've mentioned this hidden advantage before. It's not so much that the Confederacy had better officers, or better soldiers. It's that, having no previously-existing officer corps to placate, Davis could put his most able men in the most crucial commands. It's no mere coincidence that Beauregard was present at both Fort Sumter and at Bull Run.
The Confederates had another crucial advantage in this battle: interior lines of communication. The battle lines between two armies usually curve, the commander who sits on the inside of the curve has a shorter distance through which he has to move men and orders, which makes controlling the battle much easier.
The sum total of all of this is that, while McDowell initially enjoyed significant advantages in manpower and position, his inexperienced subordinates could not make enough use of those advantages to penetrate the Confederate lines. They certainly tried hard enough. And it was a near-run thing even so. During the battle, the Union artillery commander moved two of his guns to the far end of his line, hoping to fire from enfilade into the Confederate army. At about three in the afternoon, these two guns were overrun by the 33rd Virginia. The 33rd Virginia wore blue uniforms, and the Confederate Stars-and-Bars banner had horizontal stripes that, from a distance, looked almost like the Stars-and-Stripes used by the Union. Orders to fire on the captured guns were countermanded by an officer who mistook the Virginians for Union forces. The Virginians turned the guns on the Federals, marking the turn of the tide. McDowell had lost the initiative, and with the arrival of Confederate reinforcements he had lost the manpower advantage as well. He was forced to order a retreat.
The retreat began well enough, but the order of march was bungled by inexperienced officers. An overturned artillery wagon caught fire, sparking a retreat into a rout. Men who had been marching in good order suddenly turned and ran headlong towards their rear. They were joined by the wealthy citizens of Washington, who had turned out with picnic baskets to watch the glorious display. Retreating troops found the roads jammed with carriages.
One Union officer managed to distinguish himself in the humiliating rout: William Tecumseh Sherman was grazed in the knee and shoulder while leading his men against the enemy, and managed to keep his men in better order during the retreat than most. His superiors would remember this, later.
When he saw the enemy in headlong retreat, President Davis urged his commanders to pursue the enemy closely. But, now that the were on the offensive rather than the defensive, Beauregard discovered to his dismay that inexperience is a knife that cuts both ways. The day's fighting had left his men very disorganized, and it took quite some time to get them sorted back into their proper units again. Beauregard elected not to pursue. McDowell was initially afraid of a Confederate counterattack on Washington, but was able to employ aerial reconnaissance (Professor Lowe's balloon Enterprise) to verify that no such concentration of Confederate forces was happening. Both armies withdrew from the field.
The reaction on both sides could be fairly characterized as shock. The Northerners were shocked when their much-anticipated glorious victory had turned into an ignominious rout. The Southerners were shocked to discover that the Yankees would put up a vigorous fight, after all. Both sides came to the sudden realization that this would be a long war, far longer than many had anticipated. It was now clear that victory would come with a staggeringly high price tag. And it was equally clear that defeat would carry a price still higher. And, above all, one thing was now known with crystal clarity:
The only men who'd be home before the leaves fell would be the maimed and the dead.
There is a misconception common to all belligerent parties in virtually ever war that has occurred in human history. It is a misconception so common that the catchphrases associated with it are almost impossible to link to a particular conflict. "Our boys will be home before the leaves fall." "They'll be home before Christmas." While the second can at least be placed confidently after the reign of Constantine the Great, the former has probably been said in every human language that has ever existed.
For one, while it's true that at a war's outset both sides believe that they will win, one side must be wrong. For another, at a war's outset, each side usually believes -- mistakenly -- that the other side is made up of ineffectual pushovers that can't stand the heat. For recent examples, you need only look to the phrases "Mother of all battles" and "Shock and Awe" for prominent cases on both sides. The same was true a century and a half ago. The same was true throughout recorded history. Truly, some things never change.
The fever produced by the simultaneous forces of a fervent belief in victory coupled with a fixed belief in the other side's inherent cowardice caused the major papers of the North to temporarily push Lincoln away from the plan drafted by his army commander, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott. Scott, you remember, had proposed to first surround the Confederacy, then cut it in half. This would take years, but would be the surest way to bring the Confederacy to defeat. No one was balking at the "sure defeat" part, it was the "it would take years" clause that had them dismayed. With such a fine army encamped, and with such a pusillanimous foe, how could our fine boys but win glorious, prompt victory?
In such passions are horrifying disasters born.
The Army of Northeastern Virginia had come into being out of the various companies, brigades, and divisions that had been assembled from the troops gathered to defend Washington, immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. President Lincoln appointed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell as its commander. General McDowell was under immense pressure from the Northern press to go out and do something. President Lincoln was, as well. McDowell initially resisted such pressure, sure that his men weren't yet ready for such action. McDowell was well-suited to make such a judgement, having been an instructor of tactics at West Point. It was an objection swept aside by Lincoln: "You are green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike." So, on July 16, General McDowell left Washington with the largest army that had yet been assembled on the North American continent, with the assignment to go out, find the enemy, and engage him closely. Their initial objective was a rail junction at Manassas, Virginia.
The rail junction was held by a much smaller Confederate force under Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, of whom we've heard already. In a coincidence that would become commonplace in the years to follow, Beauregard and McDowell had been classmates at West Point. Beauregard, initially, only commanded 20,000 men against McDowell's 30,000. But one of the advantages of sitting on a rail junction? Reinforcements can ride in as soon as you know you need them. Beauregard held all the crossings of the Bull Run, so while McDowell searched for ways to outflank his old classmate, Beauregard sent dispatches by telegraph calling for extra men.
They almost didn't arrive in time. McDowell held Beauregard's attention with part of his force, while he sent 20,000 men in a flanking move to threaten Beauregard's left flank. They forced a crossing at Stone House, and all that stood between them and Beauregard's rear was a single reduced brigade of Confederate infantry. If the orders had been given and received properly, this might well have been the end of it. But they weren't: the Union brigade that had been intended to lead the attack held up to wait for further orders, and the brigade that had been intended to feint in support found itself out in front all alone. Meanwhile, fresh reinforcements arrived, and Beauregard was able to plug the hole, and the battle was properly joined.
In their defense, flanking maneuvers are very complex, and require very close coordination and communication to pull off, even today. In an era when orders had to be delivered by hand, it required well-trained officers and well-drilled troops to have a realistic chance of doing it at all. At this point, the Union had few of either. For while Lincoln was right, and the Confederacy had this problem also, the Confederate President had guessed right, and had put his best men and best troops on the line between Washington and Richmond, expecting that is where the heaviest blow would fall, first.
I've mentioned this hidden advantage before. It's not so much that the Confederacy had better officers, or better soldiers. It's that, having no previously-existing officer corps to placate, Davis could put his most able men in the most crucial commands. It's no mere coincidence that Beauregard was present at both Fort Sumter and at Bull Run.
The Confederates had another crucial advantage in this battle: interior lines of communication. The battle lines between two armies usually curve, the commander who sits on the inside of the curve has a shorter distance through which he has to move men and orders, which makes controlling the battle much easier.
The sum total of all of this is that, while McDowell initially enjoyed significant advantages in manpower and position, his inexperienced subordinates could not make enough use of those advantages to penetrate the Confederate lines. They certainly tried hard enough. And it was a near-run thing even so. During the battle, the Union artillery commander moved two of his guns to the far end of his line, hoping to fire from enfilade into the Confederate army. At about three in the afternoon, these two guns were overrun by the 33rd Virginia. The 33rd Virginia wore blue uniforms, and the Confederate Stars-and-Bars banner had horizontal stripes that, from a distance, looked almost like the Stars-and-Stripes used by the Union. Orders to fire on the captured guns were countermanded by an officer who mistook the Virginians for Union forces. The Virginians turned the guns on the Federals, marking the turn of the tide. McDowell had lost the initiative, and with the arrival of Confederate reinforcements he had lost the manpower advantage as well. He was forced to order a retreat.
The retreat began well enough, but the order of march was bungled by inexperienced officers. An overturned artillery wagon caught fire, sparking a retreat into a rout. Men who had been marching in good order suddenly turned and ran headlong towards their rear. They were joined by the wealthy citizens of Washington, who had turned out with picnic baskets to watch the glorious display. Retreating troops found the roads jammed with carriages.
One Union officer managed to distinguish himself in the humiliating rout: William Tecumseh Sherman was grazed in the knee and shoulder while leading his men against the enemy, and managed to keep his men in better order during the retreat than most. His superiors would remember this, later.
When he saw the enemy in headlong retreat, President Davis urged his commanders to pursue the enemy closely. But, now that the were on the offensive rather than the defensive, Beauregard discovered to his dismay that inexperience is a knife that cuts both ways. The day's fighting had left his men very disorganized, and it took quite some time to get them sorted back into their proper units again. Beauregard elected not to pursue. McDowell was initially afraid of a Confederate counterattack on Washington, but was able to employ aerial reconnaissance (Professor Lowe's balloon Enterprise) to verify that no such concentration of Confederate forces was happening. Both armies withdrew from the field.
The reaction on both sides could be fairly characterized as shock. The Northerners were shocked when their much-anticipated glorious victory had turned into an ignominious rout. The Southerners were shocked to discover that the Yankees would put up a vigorous fight, after all. Both sides came to the sudden realization that this would be a long war, far longer than many had anticipated. It was now clear that victory would come with a staggeringly high price tag. And it was equally clear that defeat would carry a price still higher. And, above all, one thing was now known with crystal clarity:
The only men who'd be home before the leaves fell would be the maimed and the dead.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLVI
Atlantis took to the skies today for the last time, closing the books on thirty years of Space Shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center. For the sixth time, we've seen the last launch of an American spacecraft series. As a salute to NASA's fifty-year history of manned spaceflight, here they are: the swan songs.
First: Gus Grissom on America's second spaceflight, Liberty Bell 7, the last flight of the Mercury-Redstone series.
Second: The last flight of the Mercury program, Gordon Cooper aboard Faith 7.
Third: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini XII.
Fourth: Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on Apollo 17. On this December day in 1972, some say the sun rose twice...
Fifth: That wasn't the end for Apollo, though. Apollo spacecraft would fly four more times, on Saturn IB rockets. The last one would fly in July 1975, carrying Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand on a rendezvous with Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov during the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Sixth: The next "last one" wouldn't come for another thirty-six years. Today, Atlantis flew into orbit for the last time, carrying Chris Ferguson, Douglas Hurley, Sandra Magnus, and Rex Walheim towards the International Space Station.
As of this writing (11AM Friday) no videos of the launch had been posted to YouTube yet. So, the roll-out will have to stand in for now.
(Addendum, 10Jul11: NASA TV comes through.)
Which spacecraft will be number seven? That isn't yet clear. What is perfectly clear, though, is that there will be one. Despite the problems we're facing, America isn't prepared to give up on this enterprise just yet. Besides, I've got a sneaking suspicion that we've already seen lucky number seven's prototype...
And the journey continues!
First: Gus Grissom on America's second spaceflight, Liberty Bell 7, the last flight of the Mercury-Redstone series.
Second: The last flight of the Mercury program, Gordon Cooper aboard Faith 7.
Third: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini XII.
Fourth: Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on Apollo 17. On this December day in 1972, some say the sun rose twice...
Fifth: That wasn't the end for Apollo, though. Apollo spacecraft would fly four more times, on Saturn IB rockets. The last one would fly in July 1975, carrying Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand on a rendezvous with Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov during the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Sixth: The next "last one" wouldn't come for another thirty-six years. Today, Atlantis flew into orbit for the last time, carrying Chris Ferguson, Douglas Hurley, Sandra Magnus, and Rex Walheim towards the International Space Station.
As of this writing (11AM Friday) no videos of the launch had been posted to YouTube yet. So, the roll-out will have to stand in for now.
(Addendum, 10Jul11: NASA TV comes through.)
Which spacecraft will be number seven? That isn't yet clear. What is perfectly clear, though, is that there will be one. Despite the problems we're facing, America isn't prepared to give up on this enterprise just yet. Besides, I've got a sneaking suspicion that we've already seen lucky number seven's prototype...
And the journey continues!
Friday, June 24, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLV
I've been unavoidably detained by my paying gig, but I should be back to something like a normal schedule shortly. In the meantime, there are a couple of May/June 50th Anniversaries worth noting.
Frank Sinatra once said, "Miles Davis never wasted a note, boy, or a word on a fool." He was right. Roughly fifty years ago this summer, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue. And every note is exactly where it should be.
Fifty years later, artists all over are still covering it:
Also about fifty years ago, not quite a month after Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space with the flight of Freedom 7. The Atlas rocket that would eventually take Mercury into orbit wasn't quite ready yet (it had an unfortunate tendency to try to burn all of its fuel at the same time) so the first couple of flights used the smaller Redstone missile.
So far as I'm aware, no one's ever attempted a "cover" version of Mercury, which is probably for the best.
Frank Sinatra once said, "Miles Davis never wasted a note, boy, or a word on a fool." He was right. Roughly fifty years ago this summer, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue. And every note is exactly where it should be.
Fifty years later, artists all over are still covering it:
Also about fifty years ago, not quite a month after Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space with the flight of Freedom 7. The Atlas rocket that would eventually take Mercury into orbit wasn't quite ready yet (it had an unfortunate tendency to try to burn all of its fuel at the same time) so the first couple of flights used the smaller Redstone missile.
So far as I'm aware, no one's ever attempted a "cover" version of Mercury, which is probably for the best.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Sesquicentennial, Part XV: Tell Me How This Thing Works
--FIRST -PREV NEXT-
The month of April and May in 1861 were a very confused -- and confusing -- time. No one was entirely sure what was happening on the ground in some of the border states, least of all the poor folks that lived there.
Take Missouri for example. Missouri's pro-Secession Governor, Claiborne Jackson, called a convention after the initial rush of seceding slave states to consider joining the Confederacy. The convention so convened voted quite convincingly against secession. The Governor wasn't happy with that answer, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Then, after Fort Sumter, the Governor rejected President Lincoln's call for volunteers. Not only that, but after a secessionist mob seized the U.S. Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri, Governor Jackson called out the state militia and put secessionist officers in charge. Then, Captain Nathaniel Lyon of the U.S. Army captured a fair number of said secessionist militia at Camp Jackson ... and all Hell broke loose.
The secessionists failed to make much headway in Missouri, but Governor Jackson got away, with a "government-in-exile" of sorts. Technically, I suppose you could say that Missouri belonged both to the Union and the Confederacy. It was a God-awful mess all around. It was like this all through the border states, particularly in Missouri, parts of Tennessee, and in the northwestern part of Virginia. There was fighting between ardent pro-secessionists, and equally ardent Unionists, but quite often it wasn't really about Secession or Union. All politics is local, after all, and there were a lot of cases where the crisis gave people a semi-legitimate reason to do something they might have wanted to do for decades...
"What's that? That damn wheelbarrow-stealing bastard Jenkins is a secessionist? Well, I reckon that makes me a UNION MAN! Come on boys, get yer squirrel guns!"
Later on, they'd tell their grandchildren about their ardor for liberty and Union, but if they were being honest with themselves, a lot of it in those confused early days was good old-fashioned score-settling. And some of that score-settling wouldn't end for years after the war was officially over...
But not all of the fighting was unorganized. There were a few men who were working according to a plan. Major General George McClellan was one such man. He had the command of the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. McClellan was a West Point man, and had been generally successful at everything he did. Among other things, he had re-written the Army's cavalry manual, invented a new saddle, and surveyed several railroad routes. He had actually resigned from the Army in 1857 to work for the Illinois Central Railroad. He had also worked for the Ohio and Missouri railroad, so he knew well the importance of the railroad to keeping an army well-supplied. With Virginia seceded, part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was now in enemy territory. This was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue. Also, McClellan had good reason to believe that this part of Virginia was of a strongly pro-Union sentiment, and he could count on considerable local support.
McClellan ordered Colonel Benjamin Kelley to take his troops south, and secure the line of the B&O Railroad. This area of Virginia was only lightly defended, being that no one really expected a major attack here. There's a pretty good reason for that. Northwestern Virginia was a rough, hilly place. It's hard to move men and supplies. The Confederates holding this ground were at the end of a fairly long supply chain, while Col. Kelley would be fairly close to his base. And, if he could seize and hold the railroad, resupply would be fairly simple.
The Battle of Phillipi was a fairly small affair, all told. Some called it the "Phillipi Races", because the Confederates didn't do a whole lot of fighting, and did a lot more running. They were outflanked, outnumbered, and badly outgunned. Only four Union men were killed out of about two thousand, while the Confederates lost 26 of about 800 defenders.
At the time it was dismissed as inconsequential. But there were two important facts about this skirmish. For one, it was the first engagement between regular Federal and regular Confederate forces in an open pitched battle. And for another, it marked the beginning of the long, slow campaign that would proceed down the Ohio river to the Mississippi, and then from the Gulf of Mexico northward, meeting somewhere in the middle. The Union controlled the railroads along the Ohio River, and this would never be seriously threatened by the Confederacy, although they would attempt raids throughout the rest of the war.
The Union was beginning to execute its grand strategy. Would the Confederacy ever have an answer?
The month of April and May in 1861 were a very confused -- and confusing -- time. No one was entirely sure what was happening on the ground in some of the border states, least of all the poor folks that lived there.
Take Missouri for example. Missouri's pro-Secession Governor, Claiborne Jackson, called a convention after the initial rush of seceding slave states to consider joining the Confederacy. The convention so convened voted quite convincingly against secession. The Governor wasn't happy with that answer, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Then, after Fort Sumter, the Governor rejected President Lincoln's call for volunteers. Not only that, but after a secessionist mob seized the U.S. Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri, Governor Jackson called out the state militia and put secessionist officers in charge. Then, Captain Nathaniel Lyon of the U.S. Army captured a fair number of said secessionist militia at Camp Jackson ... and all Hell broke loose.
The secessionists failed to make much headway in Missouri, but Governor Jackson got away, with a "government-in-exile" of sorts. Technically, I suppose you could say that Missouri belonged both to the Union and the Confederacy. It was a God-awful mess all around. It was like this all through the border states, particularly in Missouri, parts of Tennessee, and in the northwestern part of Virginia. There was fighting between ardent pro-secessionists, and equally ardent Unionists, but quite often it wasn't really about Secession or Union. All politics is local, after all, and there were a lot of cases where the crisis gave people a semi-legitimate reason to do something they might have wanted to do for decades...
"What's that? That damn wheelbarrow-stealing bastard Jenkins is a secessionist? Well, I reckon that makes me a UNION MAN! Come on boys, get yer squirrel guns!"
Later on, they'd tell their grandchildren about their ardor for liberty and Union, but if they were being honest with themselves, a lot of it in those confused early days was good old-fashioned score-settling. And some of that score-settling wouldn't end for years after the war was officially over...
But not all of the fighting was unorganized. There were a few men who were working according to a plan. Major General George McClellan was one such man. He had the command of the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. McClellan was a West Point man, and had been generally successful at everything he did. Among other things, he had re-written the Army's cavalry manual, invented a new saddle, and surveyed several railroad routes. He had actually resigned from the Army in 1857 to work for the Illinois Central Railroad. He had also worked for the Ohio and Missouri railroad, so he knew well the importance of the railroad to keeping an army well-supplied. With Virginia seceded, part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was now in enemy territory. This was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue. Also, McClellan had good reason to believe that this part of Virginia was of a strongly pro-Union sentiment, and he could count on considerable local support.
McClellan ordered Colonel Benjamin Kelley to take his troops south, and secure the line of the B&O Railroad. This area of Virginia was only lightly defended, being that no one really expected a major attack here. There's a pretty good reason for that. Northwestern Virginia was a rough, hilly place. It's hard to move men and supplies. The Confederates holding this ground were at the end of a fairly long supply chain, while Col. Kelley would be fairly close to his base. And, if he could seize and hold the railroad, resupply would be fairly simple.
The Battle of Phillipi was a fairly small affair, all told. Some called it the "Phillipi Races", because the Confederates didn't do a whole lot of fighting, and did a lot more running. They were outflanked, outnumbered, and badly outgunned. Only four Union men were killed out of about two thousand, while the Confederates lost 26 of about 800 defenders.
At the time it was dismissed as inconsequential. But there were two important facts about this skirmish. For one, it was the first engagement between regular Federal and regular Confederate forces in an open pitched battle. And for another, it marked the beginning of the long, slow campaign that would proceed down the Ohio river to the Mississippi, and then from the Gulf of Mexico northward, meeting somewhere in the middle. The Union controlled the railroads along the Ohio River, and this would never be seriously threatened by the Confederacy, although they would attempt raids throughout the rest of the war.
The Union was beginning to execute its grand strategy. Would the Confederacy ever have an answer?
Monday, May 23, 2011
What Might Have Been, Part II
Last time, we looked at some alternate post-Apollo scenarios, with an eye towards leveraging technology that the American taxpayer had already bought and paid for. After discarding more and longer Moon missions as expensive and impractical, we settled on basing the 1970s manned space program around two long-duration space habitats: the S-IVB based Dry Workshop, and the S-IVB based Wet Workshop.
Which begs the question: why are we doing this, anyway?
Mainly, if you want to tackle manned interplanetary spaceflight at some point, you have to address the question of whether or not a human being can stay alive, healthy, and sane after spending between 400 and 600 days in free-fall. There are a lot of ways to simulate the effects of free-fall on a human body. But there's only one way to find out for sure what free-fall does to you. And the key unanswered question pretty much to this day is still this -- can we deliver a crew to Mars that's fit to work once they get there? This series of missions is intended to answer that question.
Now that we've decided that we can afford to do this, and that this is something we actually want to do ... what does the schedule look like? More to the point, what kind of operational tempo can be kept up? As it turns out, the industrial plant at Kennedy Space Center was sized for a pretty heavy workload. There were two Saturn launch pads that were in the original plans, Pad 39C and Pad 39D, that were never actually built. The VAB could have kept all four busy. To get an idea of what kind of tempo KSC would have been capable of, let's look at the schedule that was maintained from December 1972 to December 1973:
December 6, 1972: Apollo 17 (Saturn V)
May 14, 1973: Skylab 1 (Saturn V)
May 25, 1973: Skylab 2 (Saturn IB)
July 28, 1973: Skylab 3 (Saturn IB)
November 16, 1973: Skylab 4 (Saturn IB)
So, in any one calendar year, KSC could support two Saturn V flights, and three Saturn IB flights. Which means that a single Saturn V flight plus three Saturn IB flights are easily within reach. That will form the basis of our alternative schedule.
Little would have been different in the flight schedule, at least up until February 1974, when Skylab 4 returned to Earth. The Wet Workshop R&D cycle would have been running in parallel with Skylab's, and would probably have had flight-ready hardware by early- to mid-1974. The Wet Workshop concept would require a few development test flights before it could be trusted with a long-duration mission. There were no such worries with Skylab, since it could be launched all in one lump. But with the Wet Workshop, first you had to prove that you could actually vent the liquid hydrogen tank and fill it with breathable air. Then, you had to prove that you could erect living quarters inside it, and use it. After that, it's a matter of qualifying the habitat for stays of three months, six months, then a year or longer. Possibly by the fifth flight, you could be ready for your most ambitious missions. With that in mind, let's take a look at what could happen by 1981.
1974:
* WWD-1 (Saturn IB): First development flight for the Wet Workshop. After orbital insertion, the crew performs a transposition and docking maneuver, and vents the LH2 tank. In principle, this should work, and then the crew pressurizes the tank with breathing air, and spends about a day fitting out the interior of the tank as living and working space. This first development mission lasts about 30 days. As a small bonus, after undocking from the workshop, the crew chases down and docks with Skylab, boosting it up into a higher orbit. After a 10-day stay at the old station, they return to Earth.
* Skylab B (Saturn V): Bet you didn't know that the Smithsonian exhibit was actually a flight-ready backup. Under this revised plan, the Air and Space museum loses one of its more interesting conversation pieces.
* Skylab B-1 (Saturn IB): First crew to occupy Skylab B. Three-month mission.
* Skylab B-2 (Saturn IB): Second crew to occupy Skylab B. Three-month mission. The intent, more or less, is to try to have Skylab B occupied continuously for as long as its consumables hold out. My guess is that Skylab B will have a design lifetime of two years, from mid-1974 to mid-1976.
1975:
* WWD-2 (Saturn V): This is the second development flight for the Wet Workshop. It involves both a more energetic trajectory, and a slightly more ambitious goal. This three-month mission inserts a S-IVB lab module into lunar orbit. Yes, it's actually possible to use a more-or-less stock Saturn V to put an empty S-IVB stage in orbit around the Moon. There was a McDonnell-Douglas design study in 1970 that worked out some of the details. Plus, I've flown this profile in Orbiter, so I know it's doable.
* Skylab B-3 (Saturn IB): Third crew to occupy Skylab B.
* Skylab B-4 (Saturn IB): Fourth crew to occupy Skylab B. It's more or less at this point that a Soyuz crew pulls alongside, docks, and spends about a week on board conducting joint experiments.
* Skylab B-5 (Saturn IB): Fifth crew to occupy Skylab B.
1976:
* WWD-3 (Saturn V): This is the third Wet Workshop development mission. It will be launched on a trajectory that will place the S-IVB lab module into an orbit 23,500 miles above the Earth, at an inclination of 28 degrees. This is almost, but not quite, like a geostationary satellite orbit. Instead of remaining stationary over the same point on Earth's surface, it will trace out a figure-8 between 28 degrees North and 28 degrees South. There was a proposal to fly the mission such that the figure-8 is anchored over Europe and Africa. Over the course of six months, seasonal change can be observed in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This is a tricky mark to hit from a piloting standpoint, but it's well within the Saturn V's capability.
* Skylab B-5 (Saturn IB): Sixth and last crew to occupy Skylab B.
* Skylab C (Saturn V): Third Dry Workshop station. This one is built with some resupply capability in mind. I expect this model will last for about three, maybe four years.
* Skylab C-1 (Saturn IB): First crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-2 (Saturn IB): Second crew to occupy Skylab C.
1977:
* WWD-4 (Saturn V): Fourth Wet Workshop development flight. The mission profile is similar to WWD-3, but with a duration of at least one year. One possible wrinkle is that, instead of a fixed figure-8, the station is placed either slightly above or slightly below synchronous altitude. Then, instead of a perfectly-fixed figure-8, the figure-8 wanders eastward or westward with time. I found this out by accident, when I tried to nail a perfectly-fixed figure-8 and failed. There's some possible value in this: you get long loiter times over a region, but over the course of the whole mission you could cover the entire Earth, at least between 28 North and 28 South. With the successful conclusion of this mission, the Wet Workshop is considered proven for longer-duration missions.
* Skylab C-3 (Saturn IB): Third crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-4 (Saturn IB): Fourth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-5 (Saturn IB): Fifth crew to occupy Skylab C.
1978:
* Skylab C-6 (Saturn IB): Sixth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-7 (Saturn IB): Seventh crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-8 (Saturn IB): Eighth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Manned Venus Flyby: And here's the payoff for having developed the Wet Workshop capability. As mentioned previously, you don't need to stay in Earth orbit exclusively. Once you've proven the technology, you can go strut your funky stuff across the Solar System ... within reason.
The dates are wildly optimistic, though ... starting from 1968, there's no way, no way at all, that this mission would be ready for launch by October 1973.
1977 and beyond:
* Skylab C-9, C-10, C-11, C-12: These are the last missions to Skylab C. Skylab D will probably fly in 1978, and will be used into the 1980s.
* Manned Mars Flyby: The other obvious target, accessible within a reasonable time frame.
* Manned Asteroid Flyby: This is contingent on finding a suitable target. Eros would be a good candidate. Or Icarus. It's just a matter of finding one or two that come close enough to make a flyby worthwhile.
And, The Downside...
Every option taken carries with it an opportunity cost. For example, having decided to build the Space Shuttle, we closed the door on getting the most out of our investment in the technology built for Project Apollo. This program is no exception. Having decided on a more ambitious manned program in the 1970s, the development work that would have led to the Shuttle is never accomplished. Which means that some of the Shuttle's unique advantages are not available in the 1980s. Such as:
No Hubble Space Telescope. Honestly, I could stop here. If you had to pick one single instrument that has revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe more than any other in the last 25 years, you'd have to pick Hubble, hands down. No Shuttle means no Hubble. That means no Hubble Deep Field. And none of the stunning images we've become accustomed to. Hubble was a key instrument in the observations of Supernova 1987A, and of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter. And if that weren't enough all by itself...
Fewer Scientists In Space. The Shuttle can carry seven people at a time, only two of whom have to be pilots. Apollo could only carry three, two of whom were pilots. This, the fact that the Shuttle can carry up to five scientists at a time, made things like the Spacelab module possible. Now, after thirty years of Shuttle flights, I think it's probably safe to say that most of the people who've flown in space have been scientists or engineers; this would not have been the case otherwise.
So, as glorious as this alternate program would have been, I have to say that it's just as well that we didn't. Maybe this really is the best of all possible worlds.
Next in this series: Once upon a time, it was thought that Space Shuttles would fly fairly often, as many as fifty flights a year for the whole fleet. What would have to have happened to make that possible?
Which begs the question: why are we doing this, anyway?
Mainly, if you want to tackle manned interplanetary spaceflight at some point, you have to address the question of whether or not a human being can stay alive, healthy, and sane after spending between 400 and 600 days in free-fall. There are a lot of ways to simulate the effects of free-fall on a human body. But there's only one way to find out for sure what free-fall does to you. And the key unanswered question pretty much to this day is still this -- can we deliver a crew to Mars that's fit to work once they get there? This series of missions is intended to answer that question.
Now that we've decided that we can afford to do this, and that this is something we actually want to do ... what does the schedule look like? More to the point, what kind of operational tempo can be kept up? As it turns out, the industrial plant at Kennedy Space Center was sized for a pretty heavy workload. There were two Saturn launch pads that were in the original plans, Pad 39C and Pad 39D, that were never actually built. The VAB could have kept all four busy. To get an idea of what kind of tempo KSC would have been capable of, let's look at the schedule that was maintained from December 1972 to December 1973:
December 6, 1972: Apollo 17 (Saturn V)
May 14, 1973: Skylab 1 (Saturn V)
May 25, 1973: Skylab 2 (Saturn IB)
July 28, 1973: Skylab 3 (Saturn IB)
November 16, 1973: Skylab 4 (Saturn IB)
So, in any one calendar year, KSC could support two Saturn V flights, and three Saturn IB flights. Which means that a single Saturn V flight plus three Saturn IB flights are easily within reach. That will form the basis of our alternative schedule.
Little would have been different in the flight schedule, at least up until February 1974, when Skylab 4 returned to Earth. The Wet Workshop R&D cycle would have been running in parallel with Skylab's, and would probably have had flight-ready hardware by early- to mid-1974. The Wet Workshop concept would require a few development test flights before it could be trusted with a long-duration mission. There were no such worries with Skylab, since it could be launched all in one lump. But with the Wet Workshop, first you had to prove that you could actually vent the liquid hydrogen tank and fill it with breathable air. Then, you had to prove that you could erect living quarters inside it, and use it. After that, it's a matter of qualifying the habitat for stays of three months, six months, then a year or longer. Possibly by the fifth flight, you could be ready for your most ambitious missions. With that in mind, let's take a look at what could happen by 1981.
1974:
* WWD-1 (Saturn IB): First development flight for the Wet Workshop. After orbital insertion, the crew performs a transposition and docking maneuver, and vents the LH2 tank. In principle, this should work, and then the crew pressurizes the tank with breathing air, and spends about a day fitting out the interior of the tank as living and working space. This first development mission lasts about 30 days. As a small bonus, after undocking from the workshop, the crew chases down and docks with Skylab, boosting it up into a higher orbit. After a 10-day stay at the old station, they return to Earth.
* Skylab B (Saturn V): Bet you didn't know that the Smithsonian exhibit was actually a flight-ready backup. Under this revised plan, the Air and Space museum loses one of its more interesting conversation pieces.
* Skylab B-1 (Saturn IB): First crew to occupy Skylab B. Three-month mission.
* Skylab B-2 (Saturn IB): Second crew to occupy Skylab B. Three-month mission. The intent, more or less, is to try to have Skylab B occupied continuously for as long as its consumables hold out. My guess is that Skylab B will have a design lifetime of two years, from mid-1974 to mid-1976.
1975:
* WWD-2 (Saturn V): This is the second development flight for the Wet Workshop. It involves both a more energetic trajectory, and a slightly more ambitious goal. This three-month mission inserts a S-IVB lab module into lunar orbit. Yes, it's actually possible to use a more-or-less stock Saturn V to put an empty S-IVB stage in orbit around the Moon. There was a McDonnell-Douglas design study in 1970 that worked out some of the details. Plus, I've flown this profile in Orbiter, so I know it's doable.
* Skylab B-3 (Saturn IB): Third crew to occupy Skylab B.
* Skylab B-4 (Saturn IB): Fourth crew to occupy Skylab B. It's more or less at this point that a Soyuz crew pulls alongside, docks, and spends about a week on board conducting joint experiments.
* Skylab B-5 (Saturn IB): Fifth crew to occupy Skylab B.
1976:
* WWD-3 (Saturn V): This is the third Wet Workshop development mission. It will be launched on a trajectory that will place the S-IVB lab module into an orbit 23,500 miles above the Earth, at an inclination of 28 degrees. This is almost, but not quite, like a geostationary satellite orbit. Instead of remaining stationary over the same point on Earth's surface, it will trace out a figure-8 between 28 degrees North and 28 degrees South. There was a proposal to fly the mission such that the figure-8 is anchored over Europe and Africa. Over the course of six months, seasonal change can be observed in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This is a tricky mark to hit from a piloting standpoint, but it's well within the Saturn V's capability.
* Skylab B-5 (Saturn IB): Sixth and last crew to occupy Skylab B.
* Skylab C (Saturn V): Third Dry Workshop station. This one is built with some resupply capability in mind. I expect this model will last for about three, maybe four years.
* Skylab C-1 (Saturn IB): First crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-2 (Saturn IB): Second crew to occupy Skylab C.
1977:
* WWD-4 (Saturn V): Fourth Wet Workshop development flight. The mission profile is similar to WWD-3, but with a duration of at least one year. One possible wrinkle is that, instead of a fixed figure-8, the station is placed either slightly above or slightly below synchronous altitude. Then, instead of a perfectly-fixed figure-8, the figure-8 wanders eastward or westward with time. I found this out by accident, when I tried to nail a perfectly-fixed figure-8 and failed. There's some possible value in this: you get long loiter times over a region, but over the course of the whole mission you could cover the entire Earth, at least between 28 North and 28 South. With the successful conclusion of this mission, the Wet Workshop is considered proven for longer-duration missions.
* Skylab C-3 (Saturn IB): Third crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-4 (Saturn IB): Fourth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-5 (Saturn IB): Fifth crew to occupy Skylab C.
1978:
* Skylab C-6 (Saturn IB): Sixth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-7 (Saturn IB): Seventh crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Skylab C-8 (Saturn IB): Eighth crew to occupy Skylab C.
* Manned Venus Flyby: And here's the payoff for having developed the Wet Workshop capability. As mentioned previously, you don't need to stay in Earth orbit exclusively. Once you've proven the technology, you can go strut your funky stuff across the Solar System ... within reason.
The dates are wildly optimistic, though ... starting from 1968, there's no way, no way at all, that this mission would be ready for launch by October 1973.
1977 and beyond:
* Skylab C-9, C-10, C-11, C-12: These are the last missions to Skylab C. Skylab D will probably fly in 1978, and will be used into the 1980s.
* Manned Mars Flyby: The other obvious target, accessible within a reasonable time frame.
* Manned Asteroid Flyby: This is contingent on finding a suitable target. Eros would be a good candidate. Or Icarus. It's just a matter of finding one or two that come close enough to make a flyby worthwhile.
And, The Downside...
Every option taken carries with it an opportunity cost. For example, having decided to build the Space Shuttle, we closed the door on getting the most out of our investment in the technology built for Project Apollo. This program is no exception. Having decided on a more ambitious manned program in the 1970s, the development work that would have led to the Shuttle is never accomplished. Which means that some of the Shuttle's unique advantages are not available in the 1980s. Such as:
No Hubble Space Telescope. Honestly, I could stop here. If you had to pick one single instrument that has revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe more than any other in the last 25 years, you'd have to pick Hubble, hands down. No Shuttle means no Hubble. That means no Hubble Deep Field. And none of the stunning images we've become accustomed to. Hubble was a key instrument in the observations of Supernova 1987A, and of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter. And if that weren't enough all by itself...
Fewer Scientists In Space. The Shuttle can carry seven people at a time, only two of whom have to be pilots. Apollo could only carry three, two of whom were pilots. This, the fact that the Shuttle can carry up to five scientists at a time, made things like the Spacelab module possible. Now, after thirty years of Shuttle flights, I think it's probably safe to say that most of the people who've flown in space have been scientists or engineers; this would not have been the case otherwise.
So, as glorious as this alternate program would have been, I have to say that it's just as well that we didn't. Maybe this really is the best of all possible worlds.
Next in this series: Once upon a time, it was thought that Space Shuttles would fly fairly often, as many as fifty flights a year for the whole fleet. What would have to have happened to make that possible?
Saturday, May 14, 2011
What Might Have Been, Part I
We are currently counting down to the last flight of the Space Shuttle program. Just over thirty years ago, Columbia roared into the Florida sky for the first time; late this year or early next year, Atlantis will be the last to touch down on Runway 33.
Others will write about what the end of this program means. I may be one of them. But not today. Instead, I want to spend some time imagining what else might have been. Today, we're setting the Way-Back Machine to 1968, and take a quick peek at NASA's post-Apollo plans.
By 1968, it was fairly clear that they would probably take a swing at the first Moon landing sometime in 1969. Having hit the mark that President Kennedy set for them in 1961, they needed another goal to keep as many of their staff gainfully employed as possible. They had already been working on a set of post-Apollo options under the label Apollo Applications Program, but were also working on much more ambitious plans. What they presented to the Nixon Administration in 1969 was an ambitious, integrated program that included a reusable space shuttle, nuclear space tugs, a space station, and a manned mission to Mars by 1986.
That's not the might-have-been I want to look at. Going down that road requires you to imagine that Congress would be willing to fund NASA at its peak levels for another ten or fifteen years. That was never going to happen. But what might have happened is that a more modest program could have been proposed: one that built on technology that the American taxpayer had already bought and paid for. The question before us is, what could be done with a second production run of Saturn boosters and Apollo spacecraft? Further, what can be done with a fairly modest investment in additional spacecraft research and development?
Some of this ground had already been covered by the Apollo Applications Program design studies. For our purposes, though, only two pieces of AAP will be of interest to us: the Wet Workshop space station, and the Dry Workshop space station. While a lot of AAP's focus was on extending Apollo lunar technology towards building a semi-permanent or permanent base, the additional R&D funding to make that happen probably wouldn't be forthcoming. But there are practical considerations to contend with as well. As it turns out, three days is about as long as the A7L space suit could last in the lunar environment. By the end of the Apollo 17 moonwalks, the joints in Cernan's and Schmitt's suits were beginning to seize up from the moon dust. It just wasn't realistic to expect this suit to stand up to a full week of daily use, much less a month or more. This is a problem that could be cracked, given enough research focus; but the funding required to solve that problem just isn't forthcoming in the time frame we're talking about. So, as a practical consideration, we're going to restrict our consideration to things we can do without having to contend with dust.
This is the problem that AAP was faced with. With landings taken off the table, what's left? The only thing left is long-duration space flight. Which is why this alternative program centers on two different space station platforms: the Wet Workshop, and the Dry Workshop. Each one has its own strong points, and its own drawbacks.
The key advantage of the Dry Workshop is the reason why it's the one we actually built and flew in the Skylab program: it's a far better, and far more well-equipped research platform. More than one crew can use it. And you don't have to worry about packaging anything to withstand exposure to cryogenic propellants during launch. But the drawback to a Dry Workshop is that you can only put it in one place: in low orbit around Earth.
When you're talking about a Wet Workshop, the term "space station" may be a bit of a misnomer. You're using the liquid hydrogen tank of the spent S-IVB stage as living space for your crew, but the spent S-IVB stage isn't necessarily in low Earth orbit. There are any number of mission profiles. It's possible to put an empty S-IVB stage in orbit around the Moon, for example, giving the crew a place to stay while they spend a month or two doing detailed observations from lunar orbit. Or, it's possible to put an empty S-IVB stage in an inclined 24-hour period orbit, where it will trace out a figure-8 on a globe, giving you the opportunity to make observations of the same region of Earth over an extended period of time. The most ambitious mission profiles involve interplanetary fly-by trajectories to Mars or Venus. You can't carry as much equipment as you could with a Dry Workshop. But, the equipment can be more closely tailored to the specific mission at hand. It's a marvelously flexible concept.
We know that such a thing would have been possible. But would it have been affordable? Probably so: between 1968 and 1981, about $30 billion was spent on STS research and development. The marginal costs for a Saturn V launch were $185 million in 1969, and $55 million for a Saturn IB in 1972. A second production run of Saturn V boosters, 15 units, would run $2.775 billion; and a second production run of 30 Saturn IB boosters would run $1.650 billion. Skylab cost $2.2 billion, so we can guess that the wet workshop would cost at least as much. Call it $5 billion, for R&D for the first unit of each, and $500 million per unit thereafter. Fiscally, it looks doable.
Next time, we'll attempt to unpack the schedule, to see how much might have been done in the 1970s. And we'll also take a look at the downside: what we'd have given up on by going down this road.
Others will write about what the end of this program means. I may be one of them. But not today. Instead, I want to spend some time imagining what else might have been. Today, we're setting the Way-Back Machine to 1968, and take a quick peek at NASA's post-Apollo plans.
By 1968, it was fairly clear that they would probably take a swing at the first Moon landing sometime in 1969. Having hit the mark that President Kennedy set for them in 1961, they needed another goal to keep as many of their staff gainfully employed as possible. They had already been working on a set of post-Apollo options under the label Apollo Applications Program, but were also working on much more ambitious plans. What they presented to the Nixon Administration in 1969 was an ambitious, integrated program that included a reusable space shuttle, nuclear space tugs, a space station, and a manned mission to Mars by 1986.
That's not the might-have-been I want to look at. Going down that road requires you to imagine that Congress would be willing to fund NASA at its peak levels for another ten or fifteen years. That was never going to happen. But what might have happened is that a more modest program could have been proposed: one that built on technology that the American taxpayer had already bought and paid for. The question before us is, what could be done with a second production run of Saturn boosters and Apollo spacecraft? Further, what can be done with a fairly modest investment in additional spacecraft research and development?
Some of this ground had already been covered by the Apollo Applications Program design studies. For our purposes, though, only two pieces of AAP will be of interest to us: the Wet Workshop space station, and the Dry Workshop space station. While a lot of AAP's focus was on extending Apollo lunar technology towards building a semi-permanent or permanent base, the additional R&D funding to make that happen probably wouldn't be forthcoming. But there are practical considerations to contend with as well. As it turns out, three days is about as long as the A7L space suit could last in the lunar environment. By the end of the Apollo 17 moonwalks, the joints in Cernan's and Schmitt's suits were beginning to seize up from the moon dust. It just wasn't realistic to expect this suit to stand up to a full week of daily use, much less a month or more. This is a problem that could be cracked, given enough research focus; but the funding required to solve that problem just isn't forthcoming in the time frame we're talking about. So, as a practical consideration, we're going to restrict our consideration to things we can do without having to contend with dust.
This is the problem that AAP was faced with. With landings taken off the table, what's left? The only thing left is long-duration space flight. Which is why this alternative program centers on two different space station platforms: the Wet Workshop, and the Dry Workshop. Each one has its own strong points, and its own drawbacks.
The key advantage of the Dry Workshop is the reason why it's the one we actually built and flew in the Skylab program: it's a far better, and far more well-equipped research platform. More than one crew can use it. And you don't have to worry about packaging anything to withstand exposure to cryogenic propellants during launch. But the drawback to a Dry Workshop is that you can only put it in one place: in low orbit around Earth.
When you're talking about a Wet Workshop, the term "space station" may be a bit of a misnomer. You're using the liquid hydrogen tank of the spent S-IVB stage as living space for your crew, but the spent S-IVB stage isn't necessarily in low Earth orbit. There are any number of mission profiles. It's possible to put an empty S-IVB stage in orbit around the Moon, for example, giving the crew a place to stay while they spend a month or two doing detailed observations from lunar orbit. Or, it's possible to put an empty S-IVB stage in an inclined 24-hour period orbit, where it will trace out a figure-8 on a globe, giving you the opportunity to make observations of the same region of Earth over an extended period of time. The most ambitious mission profiles involve interplanetary fly-by trajectories to Mars or Venus. You can't carry as much equipment as you could with a Dry Workshop. But, the equipment can be more closely tailored to the specific mission at hand. It's a marvelously flexible concept.
We know that such a thing would have been possible. But would it have been affordable? Probably so: between 1968 and 1981, about $30 billion was spent on STS research and development. The marginal costs for a Saturn V launch were $185 million in 1969, and $55 million for a Saturn IB in 1972. A second production run of Saturn V boosters, 15 units, would run $2.775 billion; and a second production run of 30 Saturn IB boosters would run $1.650 billion. Skylab cost $2.2 billion, so we can guess that the wet workshop would cost at least as much. Call it $5 billion, for R&D for the first unit of each, and $500 million per unit thereafter. Fiscally, it looks doable.
Next time, we'll attempt to unpack the schedule, to see how much might have been done in the 1970s. And we'll also take a look at the downside: what we'd have given up on by going down this road.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Video Del Fuego, Part XLIV
or, Blogger Ate My Homework
Some sort of techniwockle confoogality at Blogger seems to have eaten the draft I was working on. So, until I figure out what to do about that, enjoy this track from They Might Be Giants.
Some sort of techniwockle confoogality at Blogger seems to have eaten the draft I was working on. So, until I figure out what to do about that, enjoy this track from They Might Be Giants.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Better Late Than Never
Well, I had intended to go on hiatus for a few weeks, but for obvious reasons, this won't wait.
Six years ago, give or take a few months, I wrote:
"To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, you can stand on a hill in eastern Afghanistan and look west, and with just the right kind of eyes, you can see the high-water mark where Islamofascism's wave crested, and fell back. In a weird way, I'm glad we didn't put paid to him at Tora Bora. I'm glad he's survived to witness these moments. He will die, eventually, with the searing knowledge of his utter DEFEAT burned indelibly into his synapses. Yes, this, too, is justice."
This was in the optimistic blush of a brief wave of elections and promises of elections that swept the Middle East in late 2004 and early 2005. I was, to say the least, overly optimistic. But I still agree with the broad outlines of what I had written.
Osama bin Laden is dead. He was killed not by an anonymous missile strike, but by a SEAL team that had been infiltrated into his compound. And while I'm happy he's no longer breathing our air, I'm just as happy that he saw Tahrir Square before he checked out. He died not in glory, but in defeat. Now, some quick observations.
One: As I often say when these things happen, there's an extent to which this changes nothing. Bin Laden was in direct operational control of Jack and Squat, and Jack left town a few years ago. He kept in touch by courier, which proved to be his downfall, but how much detailed planning can you really do that way? We still have the Taliban to deal with in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to deal with, led by Anwar al-Amriki in Yemen. Or so it's thought. So, the plate's still pretty full.
Two: On the other hand, this does change a lot. Bin Laden was an important symbol of the movement. He was the one man that everyone in the movement looked up to and respected. He was, unquestionably, The Big Cheese. And don't forget the detritus that was taken from his compound upon his demise. Al-Qaeda in Iraq pretty much folded up like a cheap tent once Abu Musab al-Zarqawi got his ticket punched. Everyone bin Laden was in direct contact with has to be sweating bullets right about now. If they go to ground now they might be able to break contact and stay a step ahead of pursuit. Or, they might not. They won't know until a SEAL team shows up at the door yelling "CANDYGRAM!"
Three: And that's also an important point, all by itself. Ten years ago, the CIA didn't speak to the special-ops community well, if they even spoke at all. Now, they work together fairly seamlessly. It's taken a decade to do it, but the CIA has returned to its OSS roots, and rediscovered the old-school arts of human intelligence. And they've also added a few new wrinkles, such as teaching commandos police forensics techniques. These things take time to work, when they can work at all. It may take years to finally get that last piece of the puzzle. But a sufficiently patient and dedicated investigator can crack the coldest of cold cases, if they get the right resources to do so.
Four: Pakistan has some 'splainin' to do. Like, just how was he able to hide in plain sight like this, just outside of their capital city? Mind you, the Pakistani ambassador had a good point. Two words: Whitey Bulger. That said, the point still stands that Pakistan's intelligence agency basically set up the Taliban, back in the day. There's been a long-standing suspicion that the ISI had been tipping off Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets when raids had been planned. They weren't trusted with the information on this raid until it had already happened. There's a serious conversation that has to happen between our governments, and it ought to happen soon.
Five: While this doesn't destroy Al-Qaeda, or even come close to it, Al-Qaeda is essentially irrelevant. The sweeping changes seen this spring in the Arab world have basically left them behind. You see, for all his faults, George Bush got one thing right: they key problem in the Arab world could be traced to a lack of self-determination. Al-Qaeda's answer to that was to re-institute the Caliphate, under a strict system of Islamic law. But this spring's demonstrators want no part of that program. They want democratic government, laws that mean something, and protection for their civil rights. The upcoming Arab generation is grabbing hold of self-determination with both hands, and are winning for themselves the honor and the self-respect that come with it. They have no need of Al-Qaeda. It probably won't die, but it'll persist more as a criminal syndicate than as a political movement.
Six: This ought to put paid to the ridiculous notion that President Barack Obama is some sort of pacifist, who won't even use military action as a last resort. It also ought to put paid to the equally ridiculous notion that President Obama is a closet Muslim that will shy from spilling a fellow-traveler's blood. And while Trump was having a fit about Obama's birth certificate, Obama was busily planning a surprise bullet fiesta for Osama bin Laden. This man will take care of business when it's necessary. You doubt this at your peril.
Seven: It's far too early to tell where this all ends up. I do believe that a wave of change is sweeping that part of the world, and that there's not a single government over there that will escape unscathed. Not all of the movements will succeed. Some will fail to fulfill their early promise. Some of them, maybe even most, will succeed at least partially. And a few will succeed brilliantly. And the world will be a better, safer place for it. There's still some excitement to come, but at least there's more hope in the air than there's been in many, many years.
Eight: And lastly, what effect will this have on next year's elections? Probably not much. A year and a half is an eternity in politics, and besides, the economic conditions next summer will have a far more profound effect. What this unquestionably does is give Obama one more positive point to hit regarding his record in office. And possibly most telling, it's a foreign policy point. It's ludicrous now to campaign against him as being soft on terrorism. Not that it'll stop them from trying. I'm just saying, it won't work. If next year is as incumbent-friendly as I'm beginning to suspect, it'll just make them look pitiful.
OK, now back to my regularly-scheduled vacation. See y'all in two weeks, give or take.
Six years ago, give or take a few months, I wrote:
"To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, you can stand on a hill in eastern Afghanistan and look west, and with just the right kind of eyes, you can see the high-water mark where Islamofascism's wave crested, and fell back. In a weird way, I'm glad we didn't put paid to him at Tora Bora. I'm glad he's survived to witness these moments. He will die, eventually, with the searing knowledge of his utter DEFEAT burned indelibly into his synapses. Yes, this, too, is justice."
This was in the optimistic blush of a brief wave of elections and promises of elections that swept the Middle East in late 2004 and early 2005. I was, to say the least, overly optimistic. But I still agree with the broad outlines of what I had written.
Osama bin Laden is dead. He was killed not by an anonymous missile strike, but by a SEAL team that had been infiltrated into his compound. And while I'm happy he's no longer breathing our air, I'm just as happy that he saw Tahrir Square before he checked out. He died not in glory, but in defeat. Now, some quick observations.
One: As I often say when these things happen, there's an extent to which this changes nothing. Bin Laden was in direct operational control of Jack and Squat, and Jack left town a few years ago. He kept in touch by courier, which proved to be his downfall, but how much detailed planning can you really do that way? We still have the Taliban to deal with in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to deal with, led by Anwar al-Amriki in Yemen. Or so it's thought. So, the plate's still pretty full.
Two: On the other hand, this does change a lot. Bin Laden was an important symbol of the movement. He was the one man that everyone in the movement looked up to and respected. He was, unquestionably, The Big Cheese. And don't forget the detritus that was taken from his compound upon his demise. Al-Qaeda in Iraq pretty much folded up like a cheap tent once Abu Musab al-Zarqawi got his ticket punched. Everyone bin Laden was in direct contact with has to be sweating bullets right about now. If they go to ground now they might be able to break contact and stay a step ahead of pursuit. Or, they might not. They won't know until a SEAL team shows up at the door yelling "CANDYGRAM!"
Three: And that's also an important point, all by itself. Ten years ago, the CIA didn't speak to the special-ops community well, if they even spoke at all. Now, they work together fairly seamlessly. It's taken a decade to do it, but the CIA has returned to its OSS roots, and rediscovered the old-school arts of human intelligence. And they've also added a few new wrinkles, such as teaching commandos police forensics techniques. These things take time to work, when they can work at all. It may take years to finally get that last piece of the puzzle. But a sufficiently patient and dedicated investigator can crack the coldest of cold cases, if they get the right resources to do so.
Four: Pakistan has some 'splainin' to do. Like, just how was he able to hide in plain sight like this, just outside of their capital city? Mind you, the Pakistani ambassador had a good point. Two words: Whitey Bulger. That said, the point still stands that Pakistan's intelligence agency basically set up the Taliban, back in the day. There's been a long-standing suspicion that the ISI had been tipping off Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets when raids had been planned. They weren't trusted with the information on this raid until it had already happened. There's a serious conversation that has to happen between our governments, and it ought to happen soon.
Five: While this doesn't destroy Al-Qaeda, or even come close to it, Al-Qaeda is essentially irrelevant. The sweeping changes seen this spring in the Arab world have basically left them behind. You see, for all his faults, George Bush got one thing right: they key problem in the Arab world could be traced to a lack of self-determination. Al-Qaeda's answer to that was to re-institute the Caliphate, under a strict system of Islamic law. But this spring's demonstrators want no part of that program. They want democratic government, laws that mean something, and protection for their civil rights. The upcoming Arab generation is grabbing hold of self-determination with both hands, and are winning for themselves the honor and the self-respect that come with it. They have no need of Al-Qaeda. It probably won't die, but it'll persist more as a criminal syndicate than as a political movement.
Six: This ought to put paid to the ridiculous notion that President Barack Obama is some sort of pacifist, who won't even use military action as a last resort. It also ought to put paid to the equally ridiculous notion that President Obama is a closet Muslim that will shy from spilling a fellow-traveler's blood. And while Trump was having a fit about Obama's birth certificate, Obama was busily planning a surprise bullet fiesta for Osama bin Laden. This man will take care of business when it's necessary. You doubt this at your peril.
Seven: It's far too early to tell where this all ends up. I do believe that a wave of change is sweeping that part of the world, and that there's not a single government over there that will escape unscathed. Not all of the movements will succeed. Some will fail to fulfill their early promise. Some of them, maybe even most, will succeed at least partially. And a few will succeed brilliantly. And the world will be a better, safer place for it. There's still some excitement to come, but at least there's more hope in the air than there's been in many, many years.
Eight: And lastly, what effect will this have on next year's elections? Probably not much. A year and a half is an eternity in politics, and besides, the economic conditions next summer will have a far more profound effect. What this unquestionably does is give Obama one more positive point to hit regarding his record in office. And possibly most telling, it's a foreign policy point. It's ludicrous now to campaign against him as being soft on terrorism. Not that it'll stop them from trying. I'm just saying, it won't work. If next year is as incumbent-friendly as I'm beginning to suspect, it'll just make them look pitiful.
OK, now back to my regularly-scheduled vacation. See y'all in two weeks, give or take.
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