RoadDave

Watched the Colin Powell, “Live At The UN” Show on CNN… 

No music, no dancing, no jokes, no laser light show, no confetti cannons, no Silly String or appearances by J. Lo. and Ben Affleck.  Just some talking head, some photos and some graphics.  A merely OK PowerPoint show, but that was about it.

Oh, he also did the evidence thing on Iraq.  Looks convincing enough. 

There will always be a percentage that think all this is a Conspiracy by the same folks who offed JFK, run the Black Helicopters near Area 51, control the Monetary Supply from Zurich, manipulate Oil Prices, change newspaper headlines after the fact and make sure that any UFO photos are suppressed along with the mystery device that allows cars to get 100 miles per gallon on plain tap water.

I’m putting my 2 cents worth on Feb 14.  Ramadan ends at sunset on the 13th of Feb.  This is not good.  Marylou will upset as Feb 14th is her birthday, so Geo W Little Tree and General Tommy Weiners might reconsider the date. 

Move it to the 15th, if only to make sure everything lights off on a Saturday.  Better for traffic, as most folks are at home.

With the Gulf War (Raytheon Presents: The Gulf War II Brought To You By Lockheed-Martin (c)) sequel overshadowed by Columbia breaking up on re-entry, the American Administration has bought some time to come up with the goods.  By the goods, I mean the convincing evidence that Iraq is hiding their candy.

As most have seen, the backing for the war is not 100%: There are people who think its not a done deal, as is their right in a democracy.  They want to see the goods.

They want to see Colin Powell or Gen. Tommy Franks up on the stage with Ari (Mister Friendly) Fleischer with some pictures of Saddam Hussein standing next to a Scud missile, personally loading it up with nerve gas and radioactive waste, to fire off at Israel, Kuwait and France.  I suspect that even if such a picture existed, such level of evidence would still not convince a small percentage.  I can live with that percentage. 

Even in such a screwed up time as the Bay of Pigs CIA invasion of Cuba and the whole Cuban Missal Crisis (circa 1961-1962) the Administration put up the pictures from U-2 flights showing the launchers and missiles being loaded into Cuba.  “Here’s the Goods.  See this?  Bad Thing.”  The polloi bought in.  Castro Bad.  Missiles Bad.  Kick Their Ass.

The same should hold true for Raytheon Presents: The Gulf War II Brought To You By Lockheed-Martin (c).  Show us the goods.  Tell us what the hell we’re looking at and we’ll go along in all likelihood.  It is patently obvious to anyone with even minimum mental skills (Congress, Parliament) that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy.  But being a Bad Guy is not quite enough to get your ass kicked.

If the US has information that puts the lock on it, show it.  It doesn’t even have to hold up to Lance Ito-Johnny Cochrane kind of rules of evidence (Yak think?  Sure..it’s in, babe) but just has to be obvious enough that the average person can say ‘Uh-Huh.”

Then we can Let Slip The Dogs Of War with all that entails.

For those who are not Space Cases (meaning fans of the whole Space Industry) here is a bit of a primer on the Shuttle.

The Shuttle is not that big.  Sort of the size of a DC-9/MD-11 airliner, except fatter through the middle where the payload bay and Canadarm are, but basically DC-9 sized.  There are plenty of other aircraft around that are significantly bigger.

The Shuttle and for that matter the International Space Station or any other satellite, have to be going around 17,400 miles an hour to stay in orbit.  That’s the same speed as the Earth spins at, so less than that speed, it falls, more than that, it goes further away.

The S-turns Columbia was performing when it came apart are perfectly normal.  An S-turn increases the drag of the Shuttle to what little atmosphere is there and slows it down.  If the Shuttle doesn’t slow down, the runway would have to be Arizona and New Mexico.

The Shuttle does not have engines like an airplane when it lands.  The whole thing is a big glider when it comes back to Earth.  However, computers can and do control all the landing flying.  The pilot of the Shuttle can take over, but the only time they really get involved is after the Shuttle is over the end of the runway, the last 30 feet or so of landing. 

Landing an airplane without engines running is called a dead-stick landing and is part of every pilot’s training.  Shuttle pilots train incessantly in landing because without an engine, you only get one shot at landing, which is also why the Shuttle lands quickly, moving more than 250 miles an hour at the end of the runway as it comes in.  This gives them lift from the Shuttle wings and body, rather than falling like a brick. 

Gliders do this too: you dive at the end of the runway to pick up speed, to have lift, to land gently.  A 747-400 Best Glide speed is 163 knots, meaning, yes, you can land a 747 without engines in an emergency as long as the forward speed is more than 163 knots the wings give you lift. 

The problem comes in the big S-turns to slow down the Shuttle.  Going so fast, what little air there is, creates friction and heat.  As an example, the Concorde, grows almost 2 inches as it flies.  That is the heat of the air going over the airplane at speed and altitude and is perfectly normal.

The tiles on the outside of the Shuttle are designed to reflect and dissipate that extreme heat.  These tiles aren’t installed by some guy named Gino singing Italian love songs and smoking a cigarette while laying up the tiles.  Each tile is unique, custom manufactured to fit one specific area of the outside of the shuttle.  The tiles can handle more than 2800 degree heat with no big problem. 

The risky bit is the Shuttle, although covered with these tiles, is made of aluminum, some of it not much thicker than the side of a can of Diet Coke.  And this is the way the vast majority of airplanes are made.  Thin aluminum, riveted, glued and bonded together.  Very strong and very light, but put a disposable aluminum pie plate on the stove at home and see it burn and melt and stink something fierce.  Lots of heat and aluminum is a bad thing, which is why the tiles are on the outside of the Shuttle.

Tiles do fall off the Shuttle on every flight.  A few failures are fine, as long as they are not too many in one place.  Each tile has a service life and a service history.  NASA knows everything about every component on the Shuttle, right down to the casting lot and who has ever touched a part of the Shuttle. 

For instance, to change the toilet paper in the lavatory, they don’t just jam a roll of Charmin in there.  The bum wad is custom manufactured for NASA.  They know the content of various fibres, what plant made it, what chemicals were used to make it, when it was made, what packaging went around it, who and what is in the packaging, when it was shipped, by whom, in what truck, what treatment was done to the paper for space use, how many fibres are loose if the sheet is tossed around, or used to blow your nose and so on.  Then, to swap out some paper, there is a written procedure for the technician, who is observed by his supervisor, who then inspects the work, signs it off and turns it over to a second or third team who inspect and check and then check again. 

The joke is, when the stack of paperwork is the same height as the Shuttle, it’s probably ready to fly. 

Could someone sneak a bomb onboard to kill the Israeli astronaut?  Almost impossible.  NASA knows who made the ink in the pens they use, so a stray box that had not been inspected, inside and out, by dozens of people, is not going to happen.  NASA knows.

There is, as best I can tell, no ‘black box’ on the Shuttle.  The whole Johnson Space Center in Houston is the black box. 

I figure about 2/3rds of the radio bandwidth from the Shuttle to Earth is taken up with telemetry.  Everything is measured, constantly, to make sure its working properly.  There are people at the JSC who do nothing but monitor the status of the lights in the lavatory.  Is it burnt out?  Does it work?  Is it overheating?  Does the circuit breaker have any problems? Will it work when needed?  Is it on now? Is it going to turn off properly?. 

This is why the last message from Columbia was about tire pressures.  Houston was checking the pressure in the Michelins to make sure they wouldn’t land on a flat.  If there was a flat, they’d all know about it as it lost pressure in orbit and have procedures for landing with a flat. The default response to anything abnormal is STOP.

Columbia went through a major overhaul in 2000.  This meant the Shuttle was completely taken apart and everything was x-rayed, tested, tapped and blessed.  In aviation this is called a D-Check, where the airplane is torn down to bare metal and inspected up the wazoo for anything even slightly bad, tired, worn out, or just marginal, then fixed, replaced, or given a bath and cleaned up.  Again, everything is signed off, then checked again and again and again then signed off again.  Then audited.

The Shuttle is also a brew of bad chemistry.  Hydrazine, Peroxide, Kerosene, Liquid Oxygen and so on.  These bad chemicals are needed to provide electricity, oxygen, water, rocket thrust and so on for the Shuttle.  NASA knows how to manage these bad things in space and on the ground, but there is still the concept that is core to space flight:  Acceptable Risk.

We take an Acceptable Risk every day.  Gasoline, in liquid form, is dangerous, but you can toss lit matches in a pool of gasoline with little or no problem, aside from stupidity.  Gasoline vapours are the really bad thing.  Toss a lit match in an old car gas tank and it will fly about 20 feet in the air.  If you’ve ever been to the drycleaner, your clothes have been subjected to PERC, perclorethane, or dry cleaning fluid.  PERC is highly flammable, probably carcinogenic and smells horrid.  We still drive around with 43 liters of flammable Regular Unleaded and look snappy when we go out in our dry cleaned dress up duds.

NASA is the Master at Acceptable Risk.  We don’t know, yet, why the Shuttle came apart, but we will in time.  It could be because of thousands of little things all combining at one point in time and space just stacked the cards the wrong way.  In crash investigation, its called the Golden Nugget.  The trick is to find it, document it and figure out how to never have it happen again. 

Give it time and they’ll find it. It could be very complex, or it could be something as simple as Columbia hit a little piece of space junk a week and a half ago that nobody knew about.  They’ll find it.

Looks like the Space Shuttle has blown up on re-entry over Texas.

The last fifteen minutes, everyone on board was probably excited about the prospect of getting home after sixteen days of intensive work.  Then something went wrong.  Seeing multiple radar reflects means the thing came apart, perhaps on re-entry.  We’ll find out later but right now, its not looking good.

Marylou had a point as watched CNN.  We forget that the space program is full of grisly potential for death.  We’ve come to look at it as commonplace as driving the car.  Perhaps these are more heroic people than firefighters and police.  They knew all the dangers and trained for all the potential things that could go wrong, taking the risks as part of the job.

A very sad day and a very noble day.  They gave their lives for the advancement of science.  Just as important as giving their lives for freedom.

The UN Weapons Inspectors didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction.  Big surprise there, although they can ramble more or less wherever they want, the Blue Hat Crew is closely supervised by minders who are in constant radio contact with Saddam’s head office. 

Saddam, not being stupid, merely evil, doesn’t leave his bad things out in the rain.  There are no big buildings marked “Mass Destruction Weapons Factory #12” in downtown Bagdad.  The stuff is spread out, repackaged and hidden in other things that make up a civic infrastructure, like power plants, water filtration works, machine shops and the like.  Incidentally, Iraq is about 3/4 desert, which makes hiding things easy in a big sandbox outside the built up areas. 

As an example, CFB Carp (Canadian Forces Base) outside of Ottawa was essentially unknown to everyone in Ottawa for years.  Same with the CFB Perth and a couple of others.  Even in a full blown Parliamentary democracy, with freedom of he press and the other stuff, very, very, very few people knew that there were full blown nuclear bomb proof bunkers around Ottawa as well as some very good electronic listening posts sniffing the airwaves.  Therefore, in a dictatorship, with absolute control over essentially everything, can you hide stuff you don’t want people to find?

The downside here is that the US is a full-blown democracy, with freedom of the press.  The media has been reporting troop movements rather well, in their quest to have the best, most up to date information.  The media has also been doing a good job of postulating how things might go down, some of it wildly speculative, and some dead on the money. Does Saddam need to put more spies into Kuwait and Qatar to see how things are building up?  He’s only got to turn on Cable 33 and watch CNN.

I’m not going to say we should restrict the media, as I believe a free and unfettered media is a good thing.  But I also believe that the military should ask the media, nicely, to shut the fuck up.  The media will go along with it mostly and be more discreet in its reporting. 

The other step from the military is to stop giving press conferences:  “We’re not talking about it. It is a Secret. Shut The Fuck Up.” should be the only response from any military person either here or there at least until the manure and the ventilator come together.

Now, I trust the military, a bit.  And I trust the media, a bit.  The task is to kick Saddam out and he doesn’t need the information as to how and when and where we’re going to do it, handed to him on a silver platter.  I am willing to see the media cut out of the loop of information right now to keep from telling that armed nutbar how we’re doing on getting ready to hoof him one up the backside.

I know that seems contradictory, but the cost of a free media right now will be measured in human lives in a few weeks.  As far as I’m concerned, one soldier’s life is worth all the Conrad Blacks, Izzy Aspers, Ted Turners and Rupert Murdochs in pursuit of ratings and circulation numbers and media ‘glory’ of having the story first.

I can live with that contradiction just fine thanks.  We’re going to war.  That is a terrible thing and I don’t like it.  But if we’re going to go, let’s not panty-waist around.  Go.  Do.  Win.  Come home.