The Larson Family

by Troy Michael Larson

In August of 2009, a White House panel examined NASA’s budget. The results? There was not enough funding to achieve the goal of returning an astronaut to the moon by 2020, and a Mars-Direct mission is also out of the question. Now, it seems obvious that manned exploration of the solar system and beyond is a dead pursuit.

In retrospect, one could argue a neverending string of accidents, mistakes, and serious miscalculations culminated in a broken system and the effective death of a functional NASA. As a result, I present my list of the top six things that killed space exploration.

1. Public Expectation - Prior to the Apollo missions, the general public knew very little about the moon and other planets. Many expected to find evidence of life, and even intelligent life. It didn’t take long for people to lose interest when the Apollo astronauts started bringing back only rocks and moondust without finding any evidence of geologic activity, much less, life. Imagination was further dashed when Mars probes with primitive cameras returned pictures of a Martian surface which appeared similarly lifeless and cratered. Since Apollo 17, there have been very few developments to inspire the imagination of dreamers. Fascination turned to apathy, and eventually, scorn.

2. Politics - Through decades of prosperity and despair, legislators have always been quick to find better uses for funding which could have gone to NASA. Frequently, NASA has been the target of politicians seeking to score political points against their opponents. The resulting back and forth has created a plethora of missions and projects which were greenlit, cancelled, restarted, stripped of funding, and eventually killed for good. NASA Budgets have been stripped to the point of rendering the agency ineffectual. Consider for comparison’s sake–in an year when troubled financial institutions received $700 billion in bailouts, and a health insurance reform initiative has a projected cost of one trillion dollars, NASA has an eighty-billion dollar budget for the next ten years.

With changing times, goals changed as well. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Apollo moon landing by virtually ignoring space exploration in favor of a more politically acceptable energy program. In contrast, President George H.W. Bush recognized the 20th anniversary by proposing the disastrous Space Exploration Initiative.

3. Grandiose Ambition - There is no better single example of a preposterous proposition than the aforementioned Space Exploration Initiative. SEI was a plan to return to the moon, and send a manned-mission to Mars. The elaborate plan included hundreds of NASA’s pet projects and technologies, and involved building space stations, orbital depots, moon bases and more. In fairness to then-President Bush, an exploratory report with a summary of costs was leaked before he had a chance to endorse any specific plan. Regardless, the price tag of 400-billion dollars was an extremely large number and it was immediately attacked by Congress and the public. The backlash was so severe, a simple request for five million dollars to get the process started was quickly struck down in Congress.

One can hardly blame NASA for being so eager considering the fairweather nature of enthusiasm for space science. I’m sure some of the engineers nearly jizzed in their pants when they heard the President was advocating a manned mission to Mars. Nevertheless, the space exploration community was faced with a new reality… figure out how to do it cheaper, or don’t do it at all.

4. Accidents - Without a doubt, the highly publicized tragedies of the US Space Program, from Apollo I to Challenger and Columbia, had a devastating effect on manned space exploration. Not only did they captivate the nation’s attention, but they shone a spotlight on the shortcomings of NASA. Terrible judgement, Go Fever, and engineering mistakes. The Space Shuttle disasters were particularly harmful. Everyone was soon aware that a space vehicle they once thought to be state-of-the-art, was far from it. O-rings were badly designed. Foam insulation for the external tank was an accident waiting to happen. The uninspiring achievements of the shuttle program soon had people asking if the risks were even worth it. Years later, Robert Zubrin would say “It’s time for NASA to have a goal worthy of the risks of human spaceflight.”

5. Orbital Lock - Upon the suspension of the Apollo program, NASA was faced with a curious dilemma… operating a space program without a defined destination. The science done in low Earth orbit is not without merit. We have learned volumes. But the idea of circling the Earth sixty times and coming back home doesn’t inspire many twelve-year-olds to take up a career as an astronaut. Even the International Space Station became more of a political achievement than an exploratory tool. Again, Robert Zubrin offered insight when he said something to the effect of, “We have been going round and round in Earth orbit under the pretense of gaining knowledge we can use when we actually have a plan to go somewhere.”

6. Bureaucratic Bloat - If you work for a large company, you know. Like every government agency, NASA’s efficiency is inversely proportional to the size of the bureaucracy. Since inception in 1958, the agency has grown and fragmented to unmanageable proportions. NASA has it’s headquarters in Washington D.C. Construction and launch complexes in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Virginia. Research centers in California, New York, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio. And test facilities in West Virginia, Mississippi, California, and Virginia.

In addition to sheer size, NASA has collaborated with so many contractors and foreign space agencies, they’ve created a virtual Sophus Lie puzzle which needs to be continually solved with every new mission. The unmanned Mars Climate Orbiter is a case in point. It burned up in the Martian atmosphere in 1999 after a miscommunication between NASA and subcontractor Lockheed-Martin concerning Imperial Units versus the Metric System. NASA Science Director for Solar System Exploration, Carl Pilcher, said “Human error occurs all the time. But even so we have a tremendous success rate because we have systems that detect and correct the errors. The problem here is that our system failed to do that.”

Thomas Gavin, Deputy Director for Space and Earth Science added the final insult: “A single error should not bring down a $125 million mission.”

Total monetary loss including the probe and lander amounted $327.6 million dollars. If that wasn’t enough, Mars Climate Orbiter’s sister probe, the Mars Polar Lander failed just 23 days later.

I have no doubt about the work ethic and good will of NASA’s hard working men and women. If you’ve ever known an engineer, you know they tend to be maniacal about their work and maddeningly anal about their attention to detail. Unfortunately, NASA’s engineers seem to be hamstrung by the agency’s broken system. We are left with only the hope that a burgeoning private space industry can jumpstart manned space exploration in a way that the world’s most successful government space agency can’t.

Help us Burt Rutan. You’re our only hope.

In my previous blog, Justice Delayed I explained how my Uncle Jim ended up in prison after a drunken fight in a hotel room, and how he was left incarcerated for about fifteen years longer than he should have been. But the story of how he was released is a story in and of itself.

When the state of Michigan passed a “Life Means Life” law in 1992, they decided to apply the law retroactively to all currently incarcerated lifers, whether they had been given a parolable life sentence or not. That meant my Uncle Jim, who could have expected to be released somewhere around 1992, suddenly found himself the recipient of a very long sentence extension.

A group of law students from a nearby university took exception with the idea that a prisoner’s sentence could be extended with the stroke of pen, disregarding the recommendation of the judge and jury who originally tried the case. So, legal challenges were filed, and after many years, the courts finally ruled in favor of the inmates. You can pass a “Life Means Life” law, but you cannot apply it retroactively to prisoners who have already been convicted by a jury and sentenced by a judge.

It was that ruling which finally sprang my uncle from prison just two days ago.

My Uncle’s plan upon his release was to come back to North Dakota and live with his Mom, my Grandmother, in Minot. So my Mom and her other brother John met up in New Haven, Michigan, picked up my Uncle Jim as he was let out of prison after thirty-two years, and began the long drive back to North Dakota. This roadtrip was the first time these three siblings have been together since they were just little kids.

On the way to Minot, they were gracious enough to stop here in Fargo, and I got to meet my Uncle Jim for the first time since I was in diapers. The picture above, left to right, is Uncle John, my Mom, me, and Uncle Jim. I made a big, home-cooked meal of Dakota Baby-Back ribs with homemade baked beans and we had a great time with the family. Jim and John got to know my wife and son, and I got so see my Mom for the first time in two years (she lives in Texas). We stayed up talking ’til late in the night.

Unfortunately, the visit was far too short. We went out for breakfast this morning, and then they had to get back on the road to Minot. They left a few minutes ago and they’ll arrive in Minot this afternoon. Jim will get to reunite with his Mom, and then it’s down to business. He’ll have to check in with his parole officer (he has forty-eight hours from the time he enters North Dakota to check in) and then get to work on settling in at my Grandma’s house and finding work. He has a potential employment opportunity already set up, and things seem to be going good on that front. He has been a physically active man while in prison, so his health is good for a man of sixty-seven, and that’s a blessing considering most men his age would be retiring.

We hope to travel to Minot in the next month or so for a visit.

2007

Fifty years from now, when we look back on the movies of this first decade of the millennium, we will compare them to the science fiction of the seventies. Bleak. Downbeat. Realistic.

28 Weeks Later is a stylistically brilliant example; aesthetically beautiful from lighting to editing. As a sequel, it remains visually and cinematically true to the original, 28 Days Later (2002) in it’s desperate depiction of survival in a post-apocalyptic London which has been virtually wiped out. There is no joy, no future, no hope.

The storyline picks up right where the original left off, but with a new set of characters. Great Britain has been destroyed by the infection, but the infected who wander the streets eventually starve to death. Under the direction of a U.S. led NATO force, the reconstruction of London begins. But it seems the claims the infection had run it’s course were far too optimistic.

This movie will make you squirm in your seat. The main characters, a family trying to survive and stay together, take you on a kind of emotional roller-coaster to a very sensitive place, which in turn makes the gory scenes of unbelievable violence all the harder to take. When Don (Robert Carlyle) is infected, transforms into a zombie, and then proceeds to gouge out the eyeballs of his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) with his thumbs, I almost gave up. Fortunately, I was watching with a group of friends and couldn’t just turn it off. I was glad to see it got better, although it is violent and gory.

28 Weeks Later does have its shortcomings. First and foremost, no Cillian Murphy. His role in the original installment pulled you in and kept you for the duration. The sequel suffers from it’s own serial-killing… all of our heroes end up dead in a relentless parade of uber-violent death scenes, including the aforementioned thumbs-in-eyes bit, the obligatory throat-tearing and limb-eating scenes we’ve come to expect from Zombie movies, and the immolation of an American Soldier with a flame-thrower. And just in case you’re not grossed-out enough, we also get countless head and chest explosions from high-caliber firearms, and the topper — the killing of dozens of infected with the blades of a helicopter. And at its core, the zombie premise limits the movie to the standard zombie-film mold — it’s a chase flick.

Like the original, 28 Weeks Later is loaded with societal parallels and ponderings, including homeland security, illegal immigration, and civil liberties. Like the movies of the seventies, this story mirrors reality in a difficult time–the implication being the thinking citizen has disappeared and has been replaced by blood-thirsty automatons. Where are the powers of good? Where are the voices of the righteous? But perhaps I’m over-thinking it.

*** Three Stars ***

It’s that time of the year in the Northern states. The deadliest time of the year… first snow. Every year, I’m reminded of the Keystone Kops, and the clown that used to perform during halftime at the ice show. A lot of slippin’ and slidin’ is goin’ down on the streets of Fargo right now.

I saw it on the way to work this morning… fishtailing as you round a corner… nearly sliding off the interstate off-ramp… And the stuff I saw other drivers doing was crazy too.

This time of year. It sneaks up on you. All summer you get accustomed to waiting until the last possible minute to leave for a destination, hopping into the car, and zooming over there as close to the deadline as possible. And it’s easy. And you can drive fast.

Problem is, when winter gets here, it’s hard to break those habits. You gotta warm up the car and/or scrape the windows, make some hot coffee and fill up your travel mug, bundle up for the weather, and finally head out the door to work. Then, on your way to work, you’re going way too fast because you’re behind schedule.

But, everybody does slow down… eventually.

This is my theory. Nobody slows down until they have their first “I Think I Just Shit My Pants” moment. If you live in the North, you know the moment… you’re half way to work, you’ve been in the car ten minutes, and that initial sense of driving awareness you had when you got in the car has been whittled away by radio, cell phone, and a morning smoke.

You turn off the main drag onto a less-traveled street, the intersections controlled with stop signs. You don’t pay attention to your speed. You’re approaching a stop sign, cross-traffic ahead, and you notice your first enemy. A glazed, icy appearance to the hard packed snow in the intersection. You step on the brake… too late. Your momentum is already more than the tires can handle on North Dakota road-lube. Your wheels lock up — You’re sliding. Cars crossing in front of you are seemingly unaware that you’re careening toward their doom. You’re pumping the brakes — or if you have ABS, stomping and steering. The intersection is twenty feet away. Ten feet.

And suddenly, like a miracle from God, the tires catch on something… some gravel, sand from a sand truck, your pride, and you come to rest with your front bumper just into the edge of the instersection. You can see the look on the face of the driver you just narrowly avoided killing. And you realize — “I think I just shit my pants.” The other driver thinks the same thing.

That’s the upside of the “I Think I Just Shit My Pants” moment. It’s for sharing. You can have yours, and at the same time, share it with someone else.

So you both go home, change your pants.

From that moment on, you slow down. You might have a couple of lapses throughout the winter, but even then, you’ll have a few minor panics, nothing major, but it will remind you of “that time earlier this year, when I shit myself.” And then you’ll slow down again.

But this time of year is dangerous, because only a few people have shit their pants so far. So when everybody else shits their pants, then we’ll be safe for the rest of the season.

That’s what I think anyway.

The geese migrating over our house in the fall of 2009. A little honking musical tribute as they go over is always welcome.

A couple of years ago, we had a problem with the engine in our Jeep Grand Cherokee, and for a while we thought the old bucket had met it’s demise. So, we went car shopping. Rebecca wanted an SUV, and after very little shopping around, we settled for a nice 2003 Kia Sorento EX.

It’s a nice little two-tone black and gold SUV. Four wheel drive, foor door, mid-size SUV — just a touch bigger than a crossover. She likes it, so we’ve been happy with it.

For anybody who might be thinking of buying a Sorento, here’s the skinny. We’ve had no major problems with the vehicle in the couple of years we’ve owned it. But we have experienced some odd/recurring problems you should know about.

First, we had a problem with the engine overheating last winter. I was sure we needed a water pump, but it turned out to be a bizarre — and thankfully less expensive — seal problem on the bottom of the coolant overflow tank. But the stubborn problem that’s been aggravating me to no end is HEADLIGHTs!!!

The bulbs on Becky’s Sorento burn out every nine months. And of course at different times, so you go out and change the left, and three months later, you’re out there changing the right. I just changed the passenger side bulb about two months ago, and the driver side burned out yesterday. And this is easily the fifth or sixth light bulb replacement in the last two years.

I figured I should write it down so next time it happens, I’ll be able to go back and see when I did it last time.

I also ran across some online advice suggesting it may be a bad ground between the fusebox and the fender, so I’ll be checking that out to see if it makes any difference. Keep you posted.

Click Here to read a step-by-step guide to replacing a headlight on a Kia Sorento.

A little background on me. For the first five years of my life, I did not have a prominent father figure in my life. As a matter of fact, I was surrounded by women. My mom, my grandma, and my aunt. And even after my Mom got married, I was still surrounded by women since I soon became big brother to two little sisters. And being the voracious reader that I was, I read everything, including my Mom’s women’s magazines. Don’t get me wrong, my Dad’s stash of Playboys made it into my brain too… but that’s not really reading now, is it?

When I became an adult, I looked back on that and came to the conclusion that there are some advantages to being raised by women. I’ve always felt like I have a better understanding of women than some of my male friends. And I’ve come to discover that I have some skills which are rare in adult males because of it… like shopping.

I shop for my wife all the time. And I’m not talking trinkets and knick knacks, I mean clothes. Somehow, I have a knack for knowing her size — even though she occasionally gets on me for buying them a little too small (I like ‘em tight, what can I say) — and being able to pick out stuff that looks good on her. I’m not saying I never fail, but I do pretty good most of the time. I distinctly remember one time when one of Becky’s friends looked at her and said, “He buys you clothes?” with this look of jealousy. I like it. I’m proud of it.

But recently, I’ve run head-on into a new problem. Becky is eight years younger than me… a young-looking thirty two and she can rock the trendiest clothes and pull it off. But I’m forty, and I look it. Goatee is getting a little gray.

So, not too long ago, I went to a trendy little clothing shop in the mall. I picked out a few things for Becky and went to check out. As the cashier is ringing me up, we’re making small talk, and I gestured to one of the articles I picked out and mentioned how my wife has been wanting one of these. The cashier goes on ringing up my purchases and then she dropped the bomb.

She said, “God, I don’t think my dad has ever bought me clothes.” I stood there for a moment, thinking “What did she just say?” And then she said, “As a matter of fact, I know my dad wouldn’t be caught dead buying me clothes.”

Yep, I heard her right. She thought I was buying clothes for my daughter! Was she even listening when I told her these were for my wife?? I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I was offended, but mildly amused too. I’m such a sensitive and considerate Dad.

So, she finished ringing up and bagging my purchases, and said, “Here you go. I hope she enjoys them.” And as I walked out the door I said, “Oh, I’m sure she will. She’s gonna look hot in these.”

That’ll teach her.

I would not be surprised to discover that ninety-nine percent of Americans know nothing about this. The Unites States Supreme Court is about to overturn a legal precedent which has stood for over a hundred years.

For some background, research Citizens United vs. FEC. The lawsuit concerns the ban on corporate dollars contributed to Federal elections. And the Supreme Court is expected to overturn the ban in December, effectively opening up future Federal elections — in other words, Presidential elections — to unlimited contributions from corporations.

Imagine the implications. Corporations will soon be able to contribute to any party or candidate with unlimited donations. Consider this… the ten largest companies in the world are as follows: one retailer (WalMart), one automaker (Toyota), one financial firm (ING), and seven oil companies. Let that sink in for a moment.

What effect on the last election — hell, any election — would it have had if oil companies had been able to contribute unlimited sums to the candidate or party of their choice? Which candidate do you think they would have supported? Which party is consistently friendly to corporate interests at the expense of the consumer? I don’t even need to say it.

So, when the next Federal election comes around, keep in mind the advertising messages you see in favor of, or in opposition to, the preferred candidates are subsidized by the corporations who want as much of your money as they can get.

You never know when you’re going to have an encounter with something (or someone) strange.

In 2004, Becky and I were leaving McDonalds in North Fargo. We were waiting for the traffic on University Drive to clear when we saw a guy go by us in a brown minivan. As he went by, he looked at Becky and pantomimed sticking his finger up his nose. She looked at me and said “Did you see that?”

After the traffic cleared, we pulled out onto University, and purely by chance, we caught up with him at a stoplight a couple blocks away. The light was red, and he was right in front of us. The light turned green, and he left the light extremely slow… half a block later he was still only going about fifteen miles per hour. So I casually pulled into the other lane to pass him, and just as I was moving into the other lane, he changed too, trying to stay in front of me.

So I pulled back into my original lane and stepped on it. Just as I was about half a car length behind him, I’ll be damned if he didn’t start coming back into our lane again. He was trying to run me off the road! I stepped on it, nearly clipped the curb trying to avoid getting sideswiped. I managed to clear his bumper by the time he came all the way back into my lane.

I pulled out my cell phone to dial 911. I help it out the window so he could see it — so he knew I was calling the cops. He immediately turned. I went around the block to get behind him and followed him for a couple blocks as I spoke to the operator and gave her the guy’s license plate number. She then had me pull over in a parking lot so I could meet up with an officer.

A few minutes later, an officer shows up, and he has this skeptical look on his face — like I’m some kind of road rager who somehow instigated this. He asked me what happened and I explained. He asked me what the guy looked like. I said, “He was kind of an overweight guy, brown hair, bald on the top but frizzy on the sides… like Bozo the Clown.” And then the cop said, “Oh! I think I know the guy you’re talking about. Kind of an eraserhead-type guy?” And I said, “Yes, that’s the guy.”

The officer said the guy lived a couple blocks away and asked us to wait a few minutes until he returned. So we waited. A few minutes later, the cop comes back and he says, “Yeah that’s the guy.”

He then went on to explain that this guy, Seely was his name, was well-known to the Fargo Police. He’s evidently mentally ill, schizophrenia or something. The cop explained that he has a problem with the color red, so he may have had a problem with our vehicle, a red Jeep Grand Cherokee, or maybe even Becky, since she’s a redhead. He said the guy lives across from a catholic school where all the kids wear red shirts, and he had a problem with that too. He seemed to think anybody associated with the color red was somehow evil or out to get him.

To make a long story short, the officer went to his house and issued him a ticket for reckless driving. He said if the guy pleads not guilty, you may have to testify. Well they never called us to testify, so he must have plead guilty. And that story was nearly forgotten until the other night — I went in the convenience store, and there he was, harrassing a cashier. After he left she told me, “When he’s not on his meds…” I assured her I knew all about Mr. Seely.

I guess the upside is, this encounter gave me a great idea for a screenplay. So if I ever make it as a screenwriter, I’ll owe a little inspiration to crazy Mr. Seely.

This is my recipe for Dakota Ribs with a Brown Sugar Rub.

Combine all of the following in a large bowl:

2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tsp dried basil
1 Tsp dried Thyme

Mix it all together until it’s a fine powder. Grab handfuls and rub it thoroughly over two racks of pork ribs, both front and back. Store extra rub in a dark container in a cool place.

Line a large cookie sheet with a single layer of tinfoil. Place ribs on cookie sheet. Bake ribs at 325 degrees for one hour and fifty minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool five minutes. Serve and enjoy!