And when asked what the great turtle stood upon, the child said it stood upon another turtle. And when asked what THAT turtle stood upon, the child replied, why, another turtle, of course. When a further question began to form, the child interrupted and said "I see where you're going with this, and it's no use. It's turtles all the way down!"

-the other Doug

Depending on how you want to play it, you could add the sub-satellites left in lunar orbit by Apollos 15 and 16. Each was carried aboard the CSM's SIM bay, and was deployed from the CSM before the crew headed back to Earth.

In fact, these were the very first operational satellites released from any manned vehicle, either in Earth or lunar orbit.

-the other Doug

You see, Dan? There's room for common ground, even between conservatives and liberals!

Bodes well for the future...

-the other Doug

First off -- Doug, you know I was exaggerating for dramatic effect -- -- although, as with all such things, there is a germ of truth there. After all, as Benjamin Franklin once said, all rebellions are illegal in the third person -- such as "their rebellion." It is only in the first person -- "our rebellion" -- that they become legal.

We can try (and, to a certain extent, succeed) in "sending our minds but not our bodies" to other worlds. But there is a satisfaction of exploration that cannot be achieved unless human beings actually trod the sands and shores of the new worlds. Why do you think we anthropomorphize these robots as much as we do? If we could bring Spirit and Oppy back home, there are those who would give *them* ticker-tape parades, as if they could appreciate the adulation...

Yes, we need heroes. And we need heroes who accomplish great voyages of exploration far more than we need heroes who have proven their prowess in killing. Enemies come and go, and more often than not become allies in the next war -- but explorations live on in human history, the first steps onto foreign soil being remembered long after the wars that preceded or followed them.

For those of you who insist that there is no place in space exploration for manned explorations, I ask of you -- why do we, then, make those who perform manned explorations heroes?

The answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is that we all, in our heart of hearts, truly want to do such exploring ourselves. We can satisfy that need vicariously when one of us, another human being whose life and experience we can truly share and understand, does that which we long to do. But no matter how hard we try, we cannot anthropomorphize robots enough to fulfill that same need by looking through their cold eyes of glass, metal and plastic.

Yes, there are places humans cannot go, and we will expand our horizons via robots as much as is necessary. But (as has been said before), there is a fundamental truth to our nature: man must explore.

-the other Doug

THIS is the logical fallacy in the stop-manned-spaceflight argument. I absolutely guarantee you that a cessation of U.S. manned spaceflight will not result in larger budgets for unmanned exploration.

In fact, a cessation of U.S. manned spaceflight will inevitably lead to a cessation of U.S. unmanned space exploration.

If that's what y'all want -- if y'all REALLY want to leave unmanned space exploration to ESA and China -- then go ahead, side with that article.

Besides, I take UK criticism of anything American with a grain of salt -- the Brits really haven't forgiven us colonists for our little rebellion, and you guys on the other side of the pond can never pass up an opportunity to stick it to us whenever you can...

-the other Doug

Well, Emily -- a partial solution would be if you could get TPS to hire me as a reporter/analyst, and I'll cover some of the sessions you can't cover...



-the other Doug

Speaking of cricket...

I used to live in an integrated neighborhood in north Minneapolis. By "integrated," I mean that there was a good mix of white, black, hispanic and asian ethnicities represented. We were all pretty middle-middle class, and there were no real racial problems in our neighborhood. (In general, I prefer to live in a pretty evenly mixed, integrated area.)

Having said that, a good many of the black youths in the area chose the "urban black" culture and look -- at this point, basically the gangsta rapper look.

So, imagine my stupefaction when I passed a local park, one spring day a few years ago, to see a fair number of local young black males, in the park -- playing cricket! Wearing traditional cricket uniforms of sweaters, white pants, those silly little hats -- the whole nine yards.

It was amusing, heart-warming (in a way), and above all, extremely unexpected. The latter being the reason for the formers, I'm sure.

So, every time I think of cricket, I think of a bunch of young black men, in the park, wearing their cute, oh-so-very-English cricket outfits, bowling and batting...

-the other Doug

Open the pod bay doors, please, ljk...

-the other Doug

I was watching a special on the National Geographic Channel last night, in which they discussed the Taggish Lake (I think I have that name right) meteor.

Now, in earlier coverage of that event, I had learned that the pieces of that meteor were light and frothy, with more voids than rock. However, last night, an LPI investigator showed one rather solid piece and stated that it was simply a set of clays.

So -- if that's the case, then why in the Solar System was anyone surprised that Deep Impact indicated the presence of clays in Temple II?

Obviously, the Taggish Lake meteor was a fairly decent-sized chunk of a comet. Which means we've been examining cometary clays for some years now.

Anyone have any further details on this?

-the other Doug

Mr. President, we are facing a mine shaft gap!

-the other Doug

The one that's gone too far over on this side of the pond is a series on The History Channel entitled "Modern Marvels." When that series started, you had some very nice looks at fascinating elements of our modern-day infrastructures -- but they seem to have run out of truly "marvelous" topics, and now they're just reaching.

For example, a few of their latest topics have been cement, gasoline and basements. I wouldn't be surprised if their next topic turned out to be cow dung.

It was a good show, but I think they need to retire the show and move on...

-the other Doug

OK, Phil -- after my diatribe on what I think is *really* wrong with the world today, I guess I should just finish up reading unread posts and then trundle on off to bed...



-the other Doug

I'm glad you're familiar with it, Dan. As a speechwriter, I know you must crib from a lot of sources (who doesn't?) -- and if you crib from the gentleman in question, well, you're stealing from the best.



I've always been impressed with the line I first quoted -- the author was acutely aware that people will remain in ultimately self-destructive situations because they fear change. Things have to get *really* bad before they get motivated to try and change things for the better.

If fear of change is so powerful that people will endure great hardships and abuse just to avoid it, we have to consider that most of the odd behaviors we see in today's world (including those who insist that we never landed on the Moon) are probably being motivated by fear of change.

I mean, look at the consp1racy nuts and those who promote intolerance -- a lot of their message boils down to their wanting to *force* the world to be simple enough for them to understand (and control), and for it to *stop* changing so fast, so they can *maintain* control.

I'm personally convinced that the exponential rate of change that the past few generations have lived through have taken a heavy toll on the individual and mass psyches of the cultures of mankind. Two Hundred years ago, every person on Earth knew everything there was to know about the things they used and wore and watched and lived. Their worlds were small, but they were sure of their places in them.

Now, people can easily find ways to feel completely insignificant, without the ability to truly understand even the simplest of the tools they use, much less feel like they are anything more than a very small cog in an unimaginably huge machine. This results in psychoses which provide people with something they apparently need -- a sense of their own importance, a means of simplifying the world to their ability to understand, and a means to feel in control of their own worlds. Their psychoses manifest in different ways -- from being convinced that everyone else is believing a lie but only *they* know the truth, to believing that the universe is only 6,000 years old and that any evidence to the contrary was put there on purpose by God to confuse us and tempt us into the sin of hubris. In each case, the basic tenet of the belief is an untestable statement of faith -- which is psychologically indistinguishable from a basic psychotic break.

And please, while we can dismiss the m00n-h0ax crowd as ineffective idiots, there are others who manifest their lack-of-control, fear-of-change psychoses in much more destructive ways. And in far too many instances, the most destructive of the manifestations become rampant in an entire given culture, supported and even orchestrated by power-hungry men wielding distorted (or downright prostituted) versions of a given spiritual faith. (Just as one example, I don't think you could create terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, which use suicide attacks, without playing primarily on your adherents' fear of living in a Cosmos that was not perfectly and neatly ordered, with their own brand of Islam being the only correct interpretation of the true will of Allah. You see how the Al Qaeda world-view simplifies the world -- superior, correct, divinely-inspired Us against all the inferior, incorrect, evil Thems [defined as anyone who is not Us] -- and ensures you of a sense of personal importance? It fits the pattern exactly.)

There are a lot of different manifestations, but IMHO it's undeniable that there's one root cause -- being born into a world that's too complex for you to ever hope to understand, using tools you could never duplicate, relying on literally tens to hundreds of thousands of people you've never met (and will never meet) to provide you with food, clothing, shelter and all of the amenities you enjoy -- it creates both an individual and a cultural need for *something* to provide us with a sense of control, of being able to make some kind of difference, of being able to assure one's self of one's own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

And we're creating psychotic behaviors to satisfy those needs.

That's not good. It's unhealthy, and it's ultimately very, very dangerous.

It's a problem that involves all of Mankind, and it's a problem that's not being addressed in *any* systematic way. Anywhere. The only systematic *appreciation* of the problem is in places where unscrupulous, power-hungry people are *using* this ubiquitous need to persuade people to do ULTIMATELY self-destructive things, like committing suicide. Or just persuading them that their government gets a perverted kick out of h0axing them.

But, in every event, *using* them. Not helping them.

This is the only arena in which I can see that we could actually gain some traction against all of the fear-based, irrational behaviors that threaten us in this modern age. We don't need to change human nature by doing away with this very basic fear. We just have to find a moral, ethical, universal and truthful way of *satisfying* that need -- a way that doesn't incite people to self-destructive, psychotic behaviors.

Now, all I have to do is invent that, and get everyone to buy into it, and find a way to implement it over the protests of those who profit by keeping others afraid and psychotic... gee, that and five bucks will buy me a cup of coffee.



-the other Doug

It looks *very* much to me that the large, circular basin feature is *not* an impact feature. It appears to be a collapse feature.

Consider -- the basin appears to be at a constant (though different) altitude both inside and outside the rim, there isn't much in the way of a raised rim or concave floor to this basin at all. The rim itself is a series of very steep cliffs, with evidence of landslides at its base. Some features seem to be cleanly cleaved apart by the rim.

It's possible that this is an impact feature, and the basin rim massifs have "relaxed" back into the ice crust -- but the terrain immediately outside the rim cliffs doesn't appear to be any more or less degraded than the terrain immediately inside of them, and some features seem transected by the rim but otherwise intact. For example, I cannot imagine that landslide crater could have predated an impact basin and still be recognizable as a crater. And yet, it appears likely that landslide crater *does* predate the basin.

If this is an impact feature, I'd have to think it's not a basin in the sense of basins on terrestrial planets. Perhaps a smaller impact triggered a set of concentric cracks around its primary crater, which allowed a general collapse of an area defined by the natural resonance of the impact? Because that basin rim looks a lot more like a radial graben than it looks like a basin wall.

-the other Doug

All, right -- damnit, I have this one excerpt from this document driving through my brain. If anyone out there doesn't know who wrote this *now*, then I fear it's true that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to uphold these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

"But whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

"Prudence, it seems, would dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer what evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new forms for their future security."

-the other Doug

Very warm, Phil. I know this will likely give it away entirely, but the following statement in this particular document is:

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new forms for their future security."

-the other Doug

Thank you, Phil. I was pleased with that post. I've written an *awful* lot of things (heck I'm nearing "senior member" status here, and that's just one forum over only a couple of years). Some of them were decent, others weren't.

But that post, in my not so humble opinion, was one of the better things I've ever written.

Just chalk it up to speaking about a subject very, very close to my heart.

-the other Doug

p.s. -- I laid down a bit of a challenge in that post, that no one has responded to:

"Please recall the words of someone who knew a little something about Mankind's striving: '...Mankind is more disposed to suffer what evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.' (Extra credit for those who can identify the writer and the document.)"

How about it -- can anyone name the author and the document? -toD

January 27, 1967 -- I was 11 years old. My brother and I were watching TV, waiting for dinner, when the network interrupted local programming (something they didn't do all that often) to read the initial report of the Apollo 1 fire -- which stated that "at least one member of the crew has died." To my everlasting shame, my first thought was that I hoped it hadn't been Grissom or White. To my 11-year-old mind, it seemed somehow that the second American in space and the first American to perform an EVA were somehow more important than a rookie who had never flown. I still feel bad about that.

January 28, 1986 -- Just the previous day, I had exulted in the triumphant return of my Chicago Bears from their Super Bowl victory. This was the very first time in my life that a sports team I followed had won a championship. It felt really good. And then, after I had spent a few days feeling *so* good, I was at work when a friend called me. She asked if I knew that the Shuttle was supposed to fly today -- I said yeah, I knew they were going to try again, but that I wasn't all that sanguine on the chances for this, the sixth attempt to launch this mission, would actually get off the ground today. Then she blurted out, "Doug, the Shuttle exploded." I took an early lunch, ran home, and watched the coverage, over and over again. By running the network's super-slow-motion version of the event at a fast scan, I got a speed-of-event that let me actually see the orbiter rip off of the stack and spin away from the fireball. It was a traumatic day.

February 1, 2003 -- I was scheduled for a driving shift at my Pizza Hut, starting at 11 am. I had spent the night sleeping on the couch, with NASA-TV running on the tube, so I would wake up when the voice chatter got thick, since Columbia was supposed to land at about 9:15 a.m. my time. I was listening to the chatter, half-asleep, and then nodded off a bit -- until waking up about five minutes after the vehicle ought to have landed, and still just seeing the image of the MCC on the screen, knew something had to be wrong. Just about then I heard Leroy Cain talking the flight control team through the data captuire and archive process, and knew something had to be terribly wrong. I switched over to CNN, and the first thing I saw was a bright re-entering star breaking into multiple pieces, each leaving its own contrail, and I knew exactly what had to have happened. I quite irrationally felt guilty -- as if, had I not nodded back off to sleep during the entry, I could somehow have changed the result.

I have known many triumphant and glorious days. These three were not.

-the other Doug

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"?

-the other Doug

This is followed, as most people may recall but that none of the transcripts ever capture, by Charlie Duke's immediate response to Armstrong's "quote." Now, keep in mind that Duke was the only person, other than Armstrong, who knew that Neil was going to change the LM's callsign after touchdown -- so he *knew* what to say next, and he still almost blew it:

Duke: Rog, Twank -- Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathin' again, thanks a lot.

-the other Doug

Really? Wait, let me put on the news for a second, here...

Nope -- no sign of us over here on this side of the pond starting to think yet!



-the other Doug

Remember, JPL has 3D software that we don't have. They ought to have a better idea than we do of the small-scale topography at any given point. That's probably how they manage to pull it out time after time...

-the other Doug

Yes. But it is, in absolutely NO conceivable manner, ANYTHING like Cricket!

-the other Doug

Reminds me, in a sort of strange way, of a headline in my hometown newspaper from 40 or 50 years ago.

I grew up in Bloomington/Normal, Illinois -- a "twin cities" set of mid-sized towns that had started out about 6 miles apart but had grown together over the course of many years. I was actually born and raised in Normal (leading me to tell people that I started out Normal, but have been moving farther and farther away from Normal ever since.)

There are any number of small farming communities surrounding Bloomington/Normal, and some of them have rather, well, odd names. One of these small towns is Oblong, Illinois. (You can look it up on maps. The place really exists.)

So (as I indulge my passion for making a short story ever longer... hehehehe...), the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph once ran a headline in their wedding announcements column that read:

Normal Man Marries Oblong Woman

It's the complete truth, I swear...

-the other Doug

Methinks you obliquely reference the old joke, the punchline to which is "YOU'RE Thor??? I'm tho thor I can hardly thit!"



-the other Doug