When Supporting Space Comes Back To Bite You
For the 7th Congressional District: Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, opinion, Houston Chronicle
“It’s not that Culberson doesn’t care about water. He does. But most of the time, he seems to care a bit more about the water on Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter, than he does the water in the Addicks and Barker dams. Or in our bayous. Or in our homes. Culberson has expended untold political capital trying to force NASA to send probes to Europa in search of alien life. That’s an admirable scientific mission, even if some planetary researchers think the limited resources could be better spent. Here on Earth, Houstonians can rest assured that Fletcher will prioritize human life over the extraterrestrial. That includes life-saving flooding policies that emphasize prevention over costly recovery.”
Keith’s note: Rep. Culberson has been a tireless champion of the exploration of Europa, Astrobiology, SETI, and interstellar exploration. If the House flips Rep. Culberson will lose his House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies chairmanship. With that will go his overt advocacy and the ability to use that advocacy as chair to push things through the appropriations process. Rep. José Serrano, New York is the ranking member of the subcommittee and is poised to take over as chair. Serrano is not known for any overt support for these things – and he is certainly not the active advocate that Culberson has been. Elections have consequences.
Meanwhile, a PAC supporting Culberson’s opponent is running a goofy ad that dumps on him for supporting space science at NASA – some of which studies climate change. Based on this ad Culberson’s opponent is apparently against funding NASA. This is an odd stance to take in an area where NASA is a major economic force.
From the full text of the newspaper’s endorsement, I think supporting space comes back and bites a congressman when it means he isn’t doing his job. The text is about how Mr. Culberson’s positions (on more than just space) don’t really match his constituents views. And that he hasn’t been doing much to convince his constituents that he’s right and to change their minds. Voting for what their constituents want or convincing them he’s got a better idea defines, to a large extent, a congressman’s job description.
If Mr. Culberson wants Europa missions and his constituents want other things, then he should have been trying to convince them why they should be willing to support Europa missions (or why those missions don’t interfere with the things they actually care about.) From the sound of it, he hasn’t been doing a good job in that respect.
It just shows the risks of supporting space exploration if there are few space jobs in your district. It makes it easy for your opponent to make you look disconnected and a “space” cadet who ignores everything else. If he loses it will reinforce the lessons other politicians have learned that supporting space exploration is poison if there is no NASA Center in your district generating jobs.
Mr.Clinton was widely criticized for making decisions based on polls. True or not, surely part of any representative’s job is to help constituents.
But part of his job as well is leadership, or behaving like a statesman, which may mean favoring longer-view benefits.
True, but it’s also a matter of someone making a case out of an issue beyond his control. The Addicks and Barker Dams were built by the U.S. Army Corps of engineers in the 1940’s to prevent Buffalo Bayou from flooding the city of Houston. Both were located in an area of woodlands/meadows and intended to hold the water there to allow a slower controlled release during heavy rain events. Then about 20 years ago the county allowed developers to start building expensive housing in the “beautiful” and “natural” setting. When Hurricane Harvey hit the dams did there job holding the bulk of the water and only allowing some to flood the woodlands downstream. Only now of some that woodland held new housing developments.
So I am not sure what he could have done other then pass a Federal Law preventing folks from building on flood plains. He did get flood aid for them afterward. But as Forest Gump says “Stupid is what stupid does.” What is funny is his opponent works for a law firm known for representing local developers. It’s interesting to note they are just parroting Ms. Fletcher’s campaign line.
Great example. I am sure you know that Houstonians have a natural antipathy towards zoning.
On a brighter note, though, the land use community has been on this issue for decades, and finally beginning to make some progress. Even here in Florida. Support is coming, oddly enough, from the right, littered as it is with ‘fiscal conservatives’ who bemoan repeated payments to hurricane-battered homes on barrier islands, or floods, as you point out.
One thing I’ve noticed from a long career in the field is this: money has momentum.
Well good that’s good to hear. When flooding shows up increasingly on the news, it’s more difficult to ignore it. I was about to say antipathy towards zoning should go hand in hand with not rewarding people who disregard obvious hazards.
If memory serves, this has been going on for some time. After hurricane Hugo (1989), didn’t South Carolina ban beach front development on barrier islands, because it’s, well, stupid? Or, strictly speaking, because the State didn’t want to pay for disaster relief to bail out people who did something stupid. If I’m remembering correctly, that ended up in the Supreme Court, over just compensation for lost real estate value and whether or not that constituted a “taking.”
If Rep. Culberson loses and the Republican retain control of the House the Chair of the Subcommittee will go to a Representative from Huntsville, so probably say good bye to the Europa Clipper. If the Democrats win the Chair will go to a Representative from New York City who appears to have little interest in space and will likely funnel more money into the NIH. Either way astrobiology loses. Such is the thin thread that determines the future of humanity.
Probably investing money in the NIH is a better bet for the “future of humanity”. Or climate change.
I love science, and Europa, but your belief that the “future of humanity” depends on an expedited mission to Europa (on a giant & ruinously expensive SLS to boot) seems… awry.
No. 500 years from now folks will remember if life is found on Europa. Or if we learn we are the only life in the Solar System. But no one but a few historians will remember about the political battles of today or the climate change panic, just as no one remembers the politics of Spain in the 1490’s or the famines of the Little Ice Age.
Climate change panic? Do you have information that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists don’t have?
The “thin thread that determines the future of humanity” is dependent on many factors scientific. The search for life on Europa is only one, and not necessarily the most pressing. I’ll refer you back to the consensus of climate scientists. Certainly, there are more than a handful of factors that are at least as important as a search for life on Europa, if not more so: the cure for any number of diseases; the development of clean and affordable energy sources; finding an energy and resource efficient way to provide clean water to the increasing number of people in need of as much; the need for new antibiotics to counter drug resistant bacteria….. The list long.
We need to remember that last part, the bit about the list being long. Science is big. There are lot of social, technological, and intellectual needs dependent on science. Determining whether life exists on Europa is only one.
I accepted CO2 based climate change in the 1970’s when the Atomic Energy Commission was working to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones. When did you first recognize it? BTW the AEC was the organization that first funded the monitoring of CO2 on Mauna Kea in the 1950’s. If the AEC had been successful with it’s nuclear strategy in the 1970’s, CO2 levels today would be in the low 300s ppm. But because the new (post Earth Day) environmentalists were irrationally, and anti-scientifically, anti-nuke they derailed the AEC’s strategy creating today’s crisis and panic among environmentalists.
But the solution today is the same as it was then, nuclear for base line power and converting to an electric based economy. The other half is basic civil engineering and chemical engineering using nuclear to keep costs down. But the environmentalists, in full panic mode, still are not looking for rational solutions. Instead they are trying to see who is able to scare other environmentalists the most with predictions of gloom and doom, a common feature of panic behavior.
Those of us who support nuclear energy would do well to find a descriptive term that includes the newer and much cleaner designs with very little waste (thorium, for instance).
I don’t know what that term is (yet).
So what can we do to get all the homeowners (in either Nevada or New Mexico) on board with a nuclear waste reprocessing and storage facility in their backyard?
There are two emerging technologies that may in the next few decades make nuclear waste a more manageable problem. The first is molten salt thorium reactors. They burn down the Thorium fuel so the volume of waste is one percent of what it is with light water reactors for equivalent production of megawatt hours. Then the waste has a fourteen year half life and safely decays to virtually nothing radiation levels in 200 years.. Three American companies that I know of (Flibe Energy (founded by Kirk Sorensen), Transatomic(founded by Leslie Dewan), and Terrapower(funded by Bill Gates)) and many international organization are aggressively pursuing this technology now. Oak Ridge National labs successfully ran one of these reactors continuously from 1968 to 1972.
The other technology is the SPARC fusion reactor being developed by MIT with private money that was made possible by the recent breakthrough of REBCO superconductors that can carry much higher current than any previous material. The containment fields become much stronger and the field instabilities seen in previous designs simply go away. MIT says they are now hoping for a pilot reactor to be putting power into the grid within fifteen years.
Between these two, we have a good shot at clean affordable emission free energy coming online within a couple of decades. The fact that significant private money is flowing into these two technologies means the investors no longer think the payoff is thirty years away. If successful, these two technologies could cure a number of serious problems the world is facing.
Yes, and there is also another solutution for nuclear waste which makes the 10,000 year argument of environmentalist a red herring – nuclear waste transmutation. As technology advances it will be only a matter of time that practical techniques are developed to transmutate highly radioactive material into material that is less radioactive.
https://inis.iaea.org/colle…
I like the Thorium Reactors and since Thorium is found on the Moon I see them being the eventual solution to lunar energy needs.
That’s easy: reduce the volume of waste while explaining to folks the actual nature of the extant waste. Eric explains this very nicely.
Yes, nuclear waste generates various image of dangerous chemicals ready to explode. But as I point out to my students its usually nothing but contiminated clothing, tools, etc. I then point to the smoke detector, which is an ionization one, and explain that it is an example of nuclear waste since it contains a small amount of Americium-241 to function. Most a shocked, but it is a learning moment.
How about starting by calling the waste “nuclear residue” to make it sound less nasty, which it is? Then maybe this coming generation of power could be called “environmentally sustainable nuclear power” because compared to pressurized light water reactors it most certainly is. Then a phrase describing it could say – The new generation of safe environmentally sustainable nuclear power produces minimal nuclear residue.
The nuclear residue will have very useful isotopes that can be used for a number of applications including nuclear medicine. So the reprocessing step could be called, “Rare isotope extraction.”
Long term storage will be much smaller and needed for only 200 years as compared to tens of thousands of years for the existing stuff so it could probably be done safely in most states on site at the power plants. It’s all in how you spin it.
I don’t think saying “nuclear residue” instead of “nuclear waste” will help. You do know we had to stop talking about “nuclear magnetic resonance” (NMR) imaging, and start saying “magnetic resonance imaging” (MRI) because a significant number patients were scared of anything nuclear. Even though NMR has nothing to do with radiation; it’s just that the resonance involves the nucleus of the atoms.
The biggest broblem the nuclear industry still faces is the lack of a facility for fuel reprocessing. Yucca Mountain has congressional approval but suprisingly it is not the best geologically. The WIPP site in Carlsbad NM has excellent geology for long term isolation but the political situation remains unresolved. Not suprisingly, no governor wants his state designated as a dump for the whole country’s nuclear waste.
Yep, that has been one of the core strategies the environmentalists have used to destroy the industry. I always find objections to Yucca Mountain irrational given it is located near the Nevada Test Site where there are numerous radioactive craters from atomic testing. Placing fuel rods in underground chambers near it are an order of magnitude less hazardous compared to the existing radiation hazards at the test site. And it’s an order of magnitude safer than storing them at the existing power sites. But the environmentalists choose to reject science in favor of the political beliefs.
I’d just like to say definitely not all environmentalists are anti-nuclear power. I’d be curious to know the proportion of people that consider themselves environmentalists that are also anti-nuclear.
I’d say that among my liberal friends at the very least the hostility is dramatically less than 20 years ago.
Folks see the advantage of electric cars, for one thing.
I’m all for electrification. I’m not convinced of fission or fusion or … — I worked on fusion for a short while at the Princeton Plasma Physics lab, our understanding of nuclear physics still puts random byproducts everywhere, whether in fission waste or the fusion blanket — but we could certainly benefit from more “all of the above (except fossils)” energy funding. Hydro where we have it, wind and solar where we have it, and limited nuclear w/ the best tech available.
And then the hard part: electrifying the end users. Cars and home heating will be difficult, but it must be done.
Hmm. I wasn’t aware we were having a contest about who accepted AGW first. In 1970, I was six years old, so I guess you get to win the internet on that point.
Nuclear energy would seem at first blush to be a significant factor in global warming mitigation, but it has serious issues, just as Daniel alluded. We have a significant nuclear waste handling issue, one that has yet to be resolved. Despite what you claim as largely a problem created by “irrational environmentalists”, the problem is still severe and is recognized as being severe by people and scientists other than “irrational environmentalists”.
No matter how dismissive you are of the problem, safe storage of the products of nuclear energy production is something that has not been definitively solved here in the US.
I don’t think radioactive wastes are an unsolvable problem. To my mind, the real problem with nuclear power is that people are idiots. Not everyone, of course, but when you look at the history of nuclear accidents (all of them, not just the big ones like Chernobyl or Fukushima) the large majority involve a great deal of flat-out, human stupidity. Including stupidity in violation of existing rules and policies.
Technical details like multiple, smaller reactors might help, but it’s hard to effectively legislate common sense. I’d be overwhelmingly in favor of nuclear power if you could convince me the people running the plants would never (or very rarely) be idiots.
I agree. it’s hard to see the urgency of this particular misison compared to many others.
That’s debatable. I doubt many people remember 1490s politics in Spain, or the fact that the Reconquista ended in 1492. But if it hadn’t happened, Columbus’ first expedition probably wouldn’t have been funded. The Europeans would eventually have found the Americas anyway, but even a few decades delay could have made the world a very different place. So I don’t agree with the thesis that, simply because people won’t remember the issue in 500 years, the issue doesn’t affect that future world. So, remembered or not, how we deal with climate change might have more impact on the world of 2518 than astrobiology. (Even if you don’t think climate change is harmful, efforts to deal with it could alter the economic balance between nations and have very long-term effects.)
Yet 500 hundred years from now, Life will still be there on Europa (unless — oops! — we somehow kill it off…), waiting for us to discover it. Except that if we don’t get it in this decade, we will probably get there in 50 or 100 years, or whenever. So it’s not really _that_ urgent, eager as I am for us to get the Clipper on its way.
It’s very difficult to weigh these conflicting issues, both compelling, but if we don’t get climate change under control soon enough, there may be no deep space exploration 500 years from then on, or ever after….
We appear to be orbiting near the inner edge of the “Habitable Zone” in the Solar System, and I think we do not really know just how stable our current climate situation is. Where is the “tipping point”, at which all the many warming feedback effects become so powerful that no practical human engineering can stop Earth from ending up like Venus ? Ugh.
You do know that during that last Intergracial the temperature was much higher than now? But your post is a good illustration of the panic behavior the environmentalists are prompting. Climate change will be solved just like earlier doom and gloom crisises have been solved, by private efforts with Tesla and Green Mountain energy being good examples.
As a side note, putting it off for 500 years means delaying the progress in technology that will come from it for 500 years. Who knows how valuable that will be. If Europe had put off the discovery of the new world by 500 years its likely most of the benefits and advances in science and technology would not have happen as Europe would have stayed in the stagnation it was in prior to the discovery of the New World. The last 500 years and especially the last 300 years have been extraordinary in terms of how humanity has progressed forward.
The question is, was that temperature rise similar to the one we have now, or is our current temperature rise drastically quicker? The Interglacial might have been a slow enough change allowing the world’s surface systems and life to keep up. And what would be the consequence of waiting long enough to fully compare the two?
There have been roughly 60 glacial and interglacial periods in the last four million years. The Andrill project which drilled through the sediments off the coast of Antarctica was able to figure out the water temperature by the species of diatoms in each sediment layer. The different species are very temperature sensitive and leave a fascinating record of ocean water temperature. From the temperature they were able to estimate the sea level rise. In most of the interglacial periods the oceans rose forty to sixty feet higher than they are now. Some periods rose to roughly ninety feet higher than current levels. And some seemed to have very rapid rises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
These environmental changes seem to be a big factor in evolution driving both the extinction and emergence of species. Change and stress drive evolution as species adapt.
I’m not sure what your point is? Extinctions have occurred before in the Earth’s history, of course. But when *your species* is the one threatened with extinction, it’s rather a different matter.
Very cool, thanks for the info and link, Eric. I’m always interested in reading up on projects like that. I had definitely known about reading the fossils in sediments for determining temperature, but I don’t think I knew that project. Probably some climate research I’ve read used that data.
What I had heard recently is sea levels have been seen to commonly rise 20-30 feet higher than the current level throughout recent geological history based on coral sediments found along coasts all over. ANDRILL data goes back much further though.
I imagine that those changes are indeed a big factor in evolution. Changing conditions can lead to different biological strategies winning out. Also extinctions will lead to some open space and opportunities for survivors.
Coral reefs are referred to quite often regarding the geological record and climate. I’ve read about worry that they may be killed off, and I guess they are dying off in many places currently, but I believe I read that’s due to ocean temperature. Coral is sensitive to small changes in ocean temp. The worry is that ocean temperature may change too quickly for the coral to adapt or evolve as it has countless times in the past. I believe the Great Barrier Reef’s current living structure is estimated at 6,000-8,000 years, though it is built on previous structures from the Pleistocene.
Perhaps the changes in the past weren’t too rapid that coral could not adapt somehow. Or perhaps there was great upheaval in the ecosystem and the coral reef makeup we have now is much different from that which built the lower levels of our current reefs. Those sea level changes would certainly be large enough to displace them as well, but the question is over what time period? I guess I’m due for more reading on coral reefs.
Coral Is Sensitive to Small Changes in Ocean Temperature
https://sciworthy.com/coral…
New Coral Dating Method Hints at Possible Future Sea-Level Changes
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do…
Yep, including creating humans as we know them today. If not for rapid climate change we would probably still be a fairly rare species living in Africa, little more advanced than Chimpanzees are. But rapid climate change created a dynamic environment that favored intelligence and tool using, including clothing, fire and artificial shelters. The last climate change appears to be responsible for the beginnings of argiculture.
If you look at archeology as illustrative, it’s quite possible that if we blunder onto Europa now we will destroy the thing we are looking to “discover”. Most archeological discoveries would be better served by proceeding slowly and cautiously and waiting until nondestructive methods are available. Our own ignorance could easily damage the signal we seek; dealing with more pressing problems at home and waiting until technology advances further could be ultimately beneficial.
Archeological technique has advanced dramatically since Schliemann’s efforts in the 1870s. It’s far from perfect, but the sensibility about protecting the site is well-established.
How a descending rocket flame affects the site remains unexplored as far as I know.
Right. My point is that we’re still in the 1870s when it comes to astrobiology. We’ve had a hundred years of archeological practice, and zero years of astrobiological practice. I’m arguing that it’s plausible that we would actually be better served by waiting until we’ve got a hundred years of boots-on-the-ground experience on (say) Mars before we go drilling into Europa. It’s hard to predict the future, of course. I just don’t think the sky is falling if we can’t go to Europa right this very minute.
Except that Europa is a radically different world than Mars and its not likely the lessons will apply, especially if there is no life on Mars.
It’s precisely because there is likely no life on Mars that it makes sense to experiment and learn there first. The life that could be on Mars is likely to be deep underground and less likely to be cross-contaminated by our blundering. Europa’s vast interconnected ocean will spread our amateur mistakes.
Again, I’m not actually anti-Europa. I’m just making the case that, given the near-term threats to our home planet and our general inexperience with astrobiology, postponing a Europa mission by a few decades is not the worst thing that could happen. Flying to Europa on a more sustainable heavy lifter with a few more decades of astrobiology under our belt could be lemonade not lemons, especially if it lets us address the needs of our home planet before they become unmanageable.
Why do you keep making it an either or question? The $2 billion an Europa mission will cost isn’t even a rounding error versus the hundreds of billions spent on the environment every year. Its like saying Spain would have been better off using the money they used to fund Christopher Columbus to feed a few dozen families.
And Astrobiology will never advance beyond vague theories and speculation if you don’t send missions out searching.
Also please explain how the Europa Clipper will contimate Europa when all it will do is just fly-by Europa? You do know it’s not a lander mission? It’s just one that will make repeated fly-bys using radar and other instruments to study Europa.
I think drilling down to Europa’s ocean is a long way off. First, the ice layer is pretty thick. If we’re lucky, it’s only a few kilometers down, and a couple dozen is quite possible. (I’m not one of the optimists expecting to find one lucky, convenient spot with water just below the surface.) And, given the radiation environment, we’re talking about entirely robotic drilling, and even then, the robots’ electronics is going to fry in a few weeks.
But we actually do have some relevant experience, and probably more relevant than what we’ll learn on Mars. Lake Vostok is a subglacial lake under 4 km of ice, and we’ve drilled down to it and done various biological studies. Admittedly, much of that experience has been discovering the _wrong_ ways of doing this sort of work. But that’s part of learning.
I also worry about saying we should wait for the technology to improve and for us to learn how to do things right. The problems are that, first, you can always say some future development will make things easier. That can be a justification for infinite delays. Second, I don’t see how we can learn to do it right without trying (and doing it wrong a few times…)
And we won’t find what, if any, impact until we do it. The policy you advocate is how fields of study, and societies, stagnate and decline.
Not sure where you found policy advocation in my comment. Actually the bit about the rocket flame was just a quick example, and as it turns out, not a very bright one, as Dr. Crary points out.
Sorry, that was actually for C.Scott Ananian, not you. Waiting until we have all the solutions as he advocates ensures stagnation as the solutions are rarely found if you don’t seek them.
I thought your point about rocket plumes was a good one. So good that people designing a astrobiology mission had already thought of it. It’s enough of an issue that they settled on a painfully Rube Goldberg solution to avoid having to deal with it.
As far as astrobiology is concerned, the descending rocket flame part is one justification using a “sky crane” in the Europa lander concept. The rocket stage hovers above the surface and lowers the lander on a cable, so the rocket plume never gets too close to the surface.
It easy to look down on the pioneers of archeology, but don’t forget if it wasn’t for their efforts, especially to popularize their work, the science of Archeology might not exist today. Recall that nothing prevented archeology from emerging hundreds of years ago, except that no one other than art collectors had an interest in the emergence and development of past societies,
Europa Clipper will cost $2 billion and change.
$2 billion is not going to even make a dent in climate control policy. $2 billion for Europa Clipper is not what’s standing in the way of efforts here.
Culberson is getting Gingrich’ed.
Yep, or Moonbeamed, just as Governor Brown did when he had the “crazy” idea to have California to place its own satellite in space to monitor the state’s environment.
I worked for Jerry Brown’s office at that time. Everything he said on this notion is now seen as utterly prophetic.
Yes, imagine if it had been built and Califorinia had those decades of observations to make decisions on.
I really hope California does put their own damn satellite in space. It would be helpful to the entire country. Planet Labs seems like a great partner for it. California leadership will benefit us another time.
Wow, that Moonbeam thing was in 1978 – “I remember back in 1978 I proposed a Landsat satellite for California. They called me ‘Governor Moonbeam’ because of that,”
That criticism and nickname sound incredibly ignorant right now and would look terrible for the people that pushed that if I knew who they were.
Planet Labs is a fine company, but several state universities are also quite capable of building good, small satellites. (Cal Poly more or less invented CubeSats.) Since California has a greater GDP than most countries (including ones like the United Kingdom, who have their own satellites…) I think the state could afford a few small satellites. But it might be more palatable to have state universities (and students) build them. I’m confident Berkeley could do a good job (although I’m biased as an alumni) and I’m pretty sure others state schools could as well.
Agree
Sometimes a good idea, if it could talk, would say…with friends like that…
At some point, someone needs to challenge this pernicious and, IMO, groundless groupthink that every dollar spent on NASA is somehow a dollar taken from the pockets of the poor.
It’s a depressingly common fallacious stance. It reminds me of how basic science is always seen as frivolous and unnecessary when compared to applied science and engineering.
If those two paragraphs had been omitted from this op-ed, it would have been unexceptional: just an endorsement by a fairly left-of-center newspaper for a fairly left of center metroplex of a candidate which better reflects its views, which would be assumed by readers to operating from a premise that either candidate would be pro-science and more specifically pro-space science, so it ends up being a wash on that score.
But the inclusion of this as a key reason to reject Culberson really is astounding. Frankly, it comes off as anti-science and parochial. Even for something like federal coastal flood prevention infrastructure, the $2 billion that Europa Clipper will cost would be a rounding error. You might expect this from a paper in Vicksburg or Fargo, but *Houston*?
It’s a reminder of just how limited the public support is for space, even in cities where it ought to be strongest – and therefore why so much of the support that IS out there is based on the creation and sustenance of well paid local workforces.
I read the entire editorial, and I do not think the paper is anti-science at all. It even refers to the Europa mission as admirable. They did not say a Europa lander was a bad idea, only that it was premature and possibly wasteful for Congress rather than the scientific community to mandate such a major mission at this point in the exploration process. In a prior editorial the paper supported a different strategy that may have more support among the scientific community.
The vast majority of the editorial concerned other issues. Every tax dollar is precious and NASA and the government as a whole have a lot of priorities that will provide practical benefits, including climate science. I think the thrust of the editorial was simply that in their opinion the incumbent had not given enough attention to the needs of his community. As the old saying goes, all politics is local.