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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve been giving our Netflix a workout, preparing for a quickly approaching day when my wife no longer works at the Cable Company. Soon, our free cable will be disconnected and we’ll be back to watching a lot of movies.

So I recently decided to start ordering all the old movies I loved. I’m here to tell you, there’s a vast conspiracy going on in Hollywood right now. Someone is running around replacing all the great movies I loved as a teenager with weak facsimiles full of bad acting, hokie plots, and abrupt endings.

For example, The Last American Virgin. Remember this movie? A high school outcast, still a virgin, falls in love with the pretty girl. His friends make it their mission to get him some action, and yet somehow he always misses out. I remember this movie as being good. So who replaced it with this crappy B-movie?

You want another example? How about Hot Dog: The Movie? I remember the first time I saw Out Cold, I thought to myself, “Hot Dog: The Movie was much better.” I was wrong. More bad acting, weak action sequences… and the music… Oh God, the eighties synth music is maddening. Laughter inducing. Somehow, Rhonda Shear made these movies more tolerable on USA’s Up All Night. Either that, or someone has replaced all the original movies with these shoddy adaptations. I’m now scared to move Weekend at Bernies to the top of my rental queue.

Last year on December 1st, I looked out the window and didn’t see any snow on the ground. I remember telling my wife I was going to make a video… a time lapse of sorts, highlighting the fact that we didn’t have any snow in Fargo in December. A theory on climate change if you will.

Well the next day, it started snowing. And it didn’t stop snowing. In fact, we had the snowiest December on record last year. Ever. It didn’t change my mind about climate change, since climate change causes all kinds of weird weather, cold, warm, wet, and dry. But it did teach me a thing or two about making assumptions.

So I won’t be making any predictions about winter this year. But I do want to mention, yesterday was November 1st and there was no snow on the ground in Fargo. Here’s a picture I took near the greenhouse at NDSU.