Space News from Last Week

Last week things had me looking up.  Literally.  There were several news stories that caught my attention all related to things is space.  They all had some surprising, previously unknown element to them.  So, I just thought I’d share them with you.  

GPS (in all its Varieties)

At the beginning of the week I found out that the Global Positioning Satellite system (GPS) was wholly and solely owned and operated by the United States Military.  While the military allows private companies and individuals to access and use the system, its primary purpose is to allow the military to locate and position troops, ships, planes, and resources with precision.  

Additionally, it is used far more often than when you’re driving in a strange neighborhood and want to find the nearest gas station.  There are usages that civilians put it to use when they are not even aware of it.  For example, every time you access your account through an ATM machine the GPS system is contacted.  Why?  The ATM is stationary, right?  And we’re standing right in front of it when we’re using it, so we KNOW where we are, right?  Well, one reason is the create an “electronic fence” around the ATM.  If the ATM is moved beyond a specific radius of where it is installed, by thieves trying to get the money inside, it sends a signal to the financial institution that owns it to alert the police and advise of its location.  In 2014, a system was proposed to use the GPS system to track lost or stolen ATM cards.  This is for the newer cards that have a chip embedded into the card itself.  I don’t know whether this proposal was put into effect, or to what degree, but it was something I didn’t know until recently.  

There is more than one “GPS” system out there, too.  The general name for these satellite systems is “Global Navigation Satellite Systems, or GNSS.  The American GPS system is the largest, with 33 satellites, and is global, covering the entire world.  The other global systems are GLONASS (Russia), Galileo or Galileo Position System (EU), and BeiDou (China).  There are two regional systems as well, QZSS (Japan) and IRNSS (India).  

The reason why other countries want their own navigation system makes more sense when you remember GPS’s military heritage.  In a conflict it would be very bad to be unable to locate the position of your soldiers, ships, and planes, and very likely to happen if you were using the system of the country you were in conflict with.  One article I read while surfing the net on this topic indicated that it’s believed that China’s BeiDou system has features that may allow it to track the locations of specific users on demand, and there was speculation that the GLONASS system may have these same capabilities as well.  It’s not difficult to believe that GPS, both the EU’s and American’s, would something similar features.  

Space War

One thing that was made clear in my readings about GPS was how heavily the United States military makes use of it, and how that is a vulnerability for the military.  Satellites in orbit are in what is referred to as an “Offensive Dominant” environment.  This means that satellites to defend, being in the worst possible defensive position: their position, velocity, and direction of travel is well known, they are bright and easy to spot, and they are relatively easy to damage or destroy.  The only defensive posture is one of deterrence.  If someone does something to one of our satellites, then we do something like that or worse to one of theirs.  

In a Scientific American article entitled, “Orbital Aggression” by Ann Finkbeiner (November, 2020), the threat to the United States, both in terms of threats to civilian life and military operations, were described.  Not only is our military’s actions heavily dependent on the GPS system they created and operate, but surveillance and communications as well.  And in our everyday lives we depend on our satellite systems, to make phone calls, pay for things, watch movies, etc., etc., etc..  And these satellites are, as described in the article, “sitting ducks” to any potential enemy that might want to disrupt our lives or even damage the fabric of our society.  

I remember when the newest branch of the military, the United States Space Force, came into existence about fourteen months ago, it was met with some derision.  Not the least of which was directed toward its emblem, which looks a lot like that of Star Fleet Command in Star Trek.  But the article, which interviewed several people formally or currently in or associated with the U.S. Space Force, made it clearer why such a command is necessary to protect such vital assets, while heavily stressing that long term protection should also include diplomatic efforts to create agreed upon rules and procedures to give each other space in…. Well…. Space.   

It still didn’t explain why the Space Force uniforms are camouflage, though.

Perseverance and Friends

On Thursday, February 18th, the NASA Mars Rover, “Perseverance,” successfully survived it’s “seven minutes of terror” during descent to successfully land on Mars.  

Perseverance is the largest and most ambitious rover to land on the system’s fourth planet to date.  It also includes a flying drone, the first helicopter on Mars, that will allow it to extend it’s exploration range farther than its wheels along can take it.  It has already sent back some spectacular pictures, including my personal favorite of an image taken during the descent, looking down at the rover in its harness as the jet pack descends to set it on the surface.  

It has been took long, it seems to me, for us to have something literally making us look up and into the future with a positive perspective.  The Perseverance landing has given us that, along with the possibility of more in the future.  

But surprised me the most in the news coverage of the Perseverance landing was something that I had not known before.  That there are two other space vehicles recently arrive in Mars orbit.  

A Chinese rover mission, Tianwen-1, arrived in order before Perseverance.  It is spending the next three months studying the martian terrain before landing a rover in June for a 90 day mission.  This is China’s first interplanetary mission and first independent probe sent to Mars.  The scientific mission is to study martian climate and soil, and prepare samples for a possible return mission to Earth.  But it’s overall goal is to validate Chinese communication and control technologies for deep space missions.  

The other vehicle in Mars orbit is a satellite called Hope launched by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency.  The UAE has a Space Agency?  I had no idea.  Well, they do.  And with the help of laboratories at Arizona State University, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of California, Berkeley, they’ve launched their Mars probe.  The probe was launched from Japan’s launch facilities in Tanegashima.  They are the first Arab country, and fifth country overall, to send a probe to Mars, and the second to do it successfully on the first try (India was the first in 2014).  Quite the accomplishment.  Hope will send two years orbiting the red planet studying its atmosphere and climate.  

The reason for the trio arriving at Mars at almost the same time was Earth and Mars being in the ideal positions for a fast trajectory back in July.  All three missions took advantage of that to launch at that time.  

After a year of masking up and looking down, these missions have given me something positive to look forward to. 

Conspiracy Theories and the Aliens Amongst Us

Last week I heard a news report about the leader of the GOP in Michigan, Mike Shirkey, claiming that the insurrection in Washington, D.C. on January 6th was a hoax.  That it was staged by people working to smear then President Trump and that the people involved, “wasn’t Trump people.”  

Mr. Shirkey was censured by his state’s party the next day and has since apologized for “insensitive comments,” but has not recanted his opinion on the subject.

When I heard this report I became very upset and disturbed.  How can it be, I asked myself rhetorically, that so many conspiracy theories like this and others before it, like Qanon, and the idea of a “stolen election,” can sprout forth and gain traction.  I have no doubt that Shirkey’s idea will gain traction.  That it already is being spread amongst the citizens of this country that willing to believe it.  

And the ultimate reason, I’ve come to believe, is that their brains are just built differently than mine.  

In October of last year, there was an article published by Scientific American about this.  It was in the Behavior and Society section under the title, “Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences.  It was written by Lydia Denworth.

In the article, Ms. Denworth describes research done by scientists from Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University demonstrating the differences between liberal and conservative thinking may be rooted in personality characteristics and biological predispositions.  

The article describes how, in individuals that describing themselves as “Conservatives,” the part of the brain called the amygdala will have more gray matter than in individuals describing themselves as Liberals.  This is the part of the brain most responsible for regulating emotions and evaluating threats.  Self-described Liberals, however, will have more gray matter contained in their anterior cingulate cortex than conservatives.  This is the part of the brain responsible for resolving conflicts and detecting errors.  

The chicken and the egg problem regarding these differences, the question as to whether such differences predisposes someone to think conservatively or liberally, or whether one’s experiences and how one was raised creates conditions in the brain where these regions are more highly developed, is up in the air.  And it is not an either/or situation, where someone can be completely categorized as one or the other.  People reside on a spectrum of political believes and can sometimes have or support causes that contradict the classification of liberal or conservative were they to be so labeled.  

The point to take from this though, I believe, is that some concepts will sit more easily in one person’s brain than it will in another’s.  The experience we have with languages are an example.  Some languages have concepts that are absent in others.  In Japanese, for example, there is the concept of “Ma,” which is described as a pause or interval in space and/or time, but which has no exact translation, though it has great importance to Japanese art and culture.  The Pirahã tribe of South America have a language with no recursive elements.  This is when two sentences are combined with one inserted into another.  For example, “The man is wearing a hat” and “The man is walking down the street,” becomes, “The man wearing a hat is walking down the street.”  

Apparently because of this lack of recursion, the only language in the world that lacks it, the Pirahã language lacks perfect tense, which we use to talk about the past.  As a result of that they don’t have any history, oral or otherwise.  Their discussions are always about what is happening now or a “short time” in the future.  They have no numbers.  No fixed color terms.  No tradition of art or drawing.  They have no words for, “all,” “each,” “most,” or “few.”  The Pirahã use canoes to fish, which they buy from other tribes, but when one is broken or unusable they don’t build a new one.  When shown how to, they replied that they wouldn’t do it because, “it was something that wasn’t done.”  

The Pirahã word for other languages translates as “crooked head.”  The negative connotation is real.  

The Pirahã are an extreme example.  But all of us can be accused of regarding some other group or people as “crooked headed” because they just don’t get something that seems obvious to us.  And while it is possible to learn what someone else’s viewpoint might be it goes our inclination.  Studies have show that everyone’s first response when told something to believe is wrong is to defend it.  And to continue to defend it even when evidence is presented showing its flaws.  As with learning a language, it takes effort and effort requires at least a sense that there is something there for us to find.  It is probably harder for us to see this need than the Pirahã to see this need since the people we’re dealing with, the “other half of the country” from whatever position you stand in, seem to be using a language that we’re familiar with.  It’s the conceptual underpinnings that are askew.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, America is a country separated by its common language.  

So…  What is to be done?  In another Scientific American article, this one from November 2020, the author, Claire Wardle, was writing about how to get through the misinformation of the then coming election.  Ms. Wardle’s advice was, instead of muting those that post such seemingly outlandish beliefs, or to argue with them, focusing on the veracity of what they are saying, we should start a dialogue, using “emphatic and inclusive language” about the choices they are making and the results they want to see.  

At the time I read this article I will admit to being dissatisfied.  I wanted to find a weapon to prove them wrong.  To show them their errors and find a way to make them change their thinking.  Or at least shut up and go back into the shadows.  

But in this way, also, I’m reconsidering.  If someone were to confront me about something they didn’t believe in this way, it would only escalate into something worse, with both sides entrenched in their beliefs, looking for some way to get back at each other.  And that would be the best case scenario. 

When I first went to Japan in 2007, someone on the tour with me said that she was going to explore the country as if she were visiting another planet making contact with an exotic alien species.  I liked the idea and adopted it in my own way.  I think it can help us in our current socio-political solution.  That we are in a colony that we share with similar looking alien race.  Some may be duplicitous and/or violent.  But others could very well be looking at the landscape that I am and are seeing something different because of how they are wired.  To live in peace we will need to learn what each other is seeing so we can at least speak about it in a common tongue. 

Reaching Intellectual Herd Immunity

Since posting my last blog entry, I’ve remembered something which, upon consideration, makes me realize my hope for what I called a “Cloud Based BS detector” was a faint one. 

It was during the early days of the internet.  I might have been using AOL to get online.  For those who don’t remember it was one of the first services to allow people to get online and connect with each other.  Their CDs to get you started used to be ubiquitous.  

I was a big lover of the internet in it’s early days.  It made my computer (a Macintosh Performa at the time) more like the computers on Star Trek that anything had been up until then.  That had been my standard of what computing was supposed to be like.  You’d say, “Computer…”, ask your question and then get an answer.  It may not have had Majel Barrett’s voice, and it didn’t necessarily point out the best, most accurate answer from the list it brought up, but I remember running my first search online and thinking to myself, “Yes!  This is what I’ve been waiting for!” 

It was the day I encountered the flip side of that coin, that still plagues us today, that I’m considering.  

As something of a futurist and a science fiction writer, I spent a lot of time looking for state of future technologies.  Fusion power was one in particular that I had an interest in.  It was about that time that I think I first encountered the quip, “Commercial fusion power is twenty years in the future.  And it always will be.”  

This one day, though, for a moment, it looked like it might be right around the corner.  I don’t recall how I came across it, but I found a website that seemed to indicate that researchers had solved problem of creating a reaction that produced more power that it took to initiate or run.  This is one of the hurdles fusion power has yet to solve, except in the most extreme and  inconvenient example of a hydrogen bomb.  

I was plowing through the pages of results offered, trying to understand it all, if only enough to be able to explain it to others and use it in a story, when I found a page that identified the organization that was posting this information on line.  It was the organization created by Lyndon  LaRouche.  

For those who don’t remember or never heard of Lyndon LaRouche, he was a political activist from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.  He was also the first person I knew about that I would dub a “conspiracy theorist” before I had heard of the term.  From the time I was a senior in high school until his death in 2019 he was nominally a member of the Democratic party, though it was an uncomfortable relationship from what I recall.  He did run for President in every election from 1976 to 2004.  

One of the issues he advanced was about fusion energy and the reasons it always seemed to be twenty years in the future.  I was aware of his beliefs at the time, and when I saw his name on the page my enthusiasm fell precipitously.  I went back and went over the information presented and read more closely the introductory pages of the presentation.  There I found the statements of why the information being provided was being “kept from us.”  I can’t remember the forces he named, but it’s a familiar story told in different versions multiple times.  

At that point, I checked the sources referenced in the data presentations, double-checked more reputable sources, and came to the conclusion that it was what I had become afraid it might be.  I deleted the bookmark I had made to return to the page later and moved on.  

Remembering that search and my response, I think I did exactly what everyone should do when presented with information about something that concerns you, particularly a topic you find important.  I verified the truth in the presentation as best I could and found it lacking.  A collection of half-truths, backed up by speculation and “evidence” that had been edited to delete anything that detracted by what the person presenting it believed.  It was disappointing.  

What’s even more disappointing is that this action, if we were employ it every time we are confronted with misinformation, would take up almost every waking hour that we have in a day.  So many out there are throwing out some of the most outlandish beliefs at such a rate, that the best we can do is glean over it, make a decision about what you think you know, or what you remember hearing from a source you trust, and then move on.  And, hope that others more gullible that you are (or hope you are) don’t fall for it and try to take us down a disastrous path.  Judging by the numbers for some of the more recent batch of conspiracy theories, that is a faint hope.  

A passage from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens comes to mind.  It’s the scene when Ebenezer Scrooge notices something under the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Present.  The ghost opens his cloak to reveal two starving children huddled at his feet.  They are mankind’s children, he proclaims, though he takes care of them.  They are a boy named Ignorance and a girl named Want.  We are to beware of them both, the ghost declares, but especially we are to beware of Ignorance.  

We are in the midst of two pandemics.  One is the physical pandemic of Covid-19.  There other is the intellectual pandemic of misinformation.  Like the physical pandemic, the intellectual one has very likely infected more people than we’ve counted.  The keys for defeating it, like the one for Covid-19, depends on everyone being responsible and diligent in protecting themselves.  Using masks of critical thinking to screen out viruses or memes that would infect us with bad information and spread it to others as if it were truth.  

And like the physical virus, fighting the spread of the virus of misinformation, lies, and falsehoods, is going to take a long time to defeat.  Even as vaccines are finally getting out to people, we’re still looking at weeks and months before we reach “herd immunity” with Covid and can face each other as we did before.  

Reaching an intellectual form of herd immunity will take much, much, MUCH longer, I’m afraid.