The danger of a good thing

It is often too easy to accept a good thing, and dangerous too. Good things can be bad for you. Let me explain.

Years ago, I had to leave college and take a full-time job. I didn’t have the time or funds to be a student. I paid off my student loan debt, and stayed in that same job that I was in. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was comfortable. I had an easy job that didn’t pay badly. It wasn’t great, but not bad. I owned a house, a dog and was married to my beautiful wife. I spent my days at the office, would come home to my wife and dinner. Some days I would do yard work, others we’d go out. It was good.

As is always does, the rains came. There was a sudden change in management. My boss was replaced by one of my least favorite co-workers. He didn’t give me a chance. He immediately restructured the business, folding my responsibilities into three other positions to reduce costs. After seven years I was unemployed and uneducated. I had trouble finding a job that fit my skill and payment requirements. I knew what had happened: I had become complacent. Now I had to pay the price.

I’d had chances to go back to school. I’d had chances to find another job more suited to me in a field I could advance in. I did not. I was lured into complacency and lulled to sleep by comfort. I was not working where I wanted to be.

In The Book of Mormon, the Jaredites had a similar problem. They followed the word of the Lord to a good place, the valley of Moriancumer. It must have been beautiful. I think about the group of refugees that had suffered fear, doubt, and loss, gathering as a small group of friends and family in a good place and building a home. After four years they built a new normal, they had a good life and became comfortable. Their spiritual leader, the brother of Jared, finally went to the Lord in prayer. He was chastened for hours.

He had followed the word of the Lord. He’d faithfully lead his friends and family away from everything they had ever known into nothingness based solely on prophecy. They had left everything they had to follow the Lord, is that not good?

It was not enough. It was only good, not great. It was too easy to accept the good thing the Lord had given them and not look beyond it to receive more. The Lord had more in store for them. In Ether 2:7-8 we read:

Despite his earlier failings, the brother of Jared had such faith
that he saw the finger of the Lord

7 ”And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people.

8 And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God”

That is a far greater destiny than a small village in the old world. The Jaredites were meant to expand, to travel to a land of promise where they would expand to cover the whole face of the land. They would build cities that the Nephites would marvel at hundreds of years later.

They followed the word of the Lord and traded “good’ for “better.”

We too are meant for more. I don’t care who you are, you could be a millionaire, President, or a genius – you haven’t actually arrived yet. We are infinite children of an immortal Father. We are not meant for small things, or even mortal things. We are not meant to toil in obscurity and mediocrity. Our Father built us for more than that. He calls us to higher things, and He will qualify those he calls. His is a way of glory.

We won’t reach these heights all at once. He will have steps for us to take. Sometimes we will need to stand and wait on the Lord. He may need us to put down roots and build a life somewhere, but we should never be too comfortable. The whole of eternity is lies before us. We have time. We may need to start small or fall to grow. We may have to fight our way up, but we should never stop moving. The moment we stop looking forward – we have lost. We can always pick up our burden and repent to keep following him, but that calling may be gone. We can miss steps and still reach our ultimate goal, but a chance may only come once, passing irretrievably into our history as something that could have been.

John Greenleaf - Poet and author

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these ‘it might have been’” – John Greenleaf

Our God is a loving God, and a God of second chances. The Lord stands with his hand out-stretched ready to lift us to greater heights, But first we have to reach out to him.

My goal now is to never become complacent again. I never want to be left in the dust and ruins of my own inaction again. I wish to keep moving forward, always improving and growing until I reach that perfect day. And then, I will look on to what lies ahead.

A Soft Answer

A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.

Proverbs 15:18

It's been on my mind lately (especially given the recent events in our presidential race) that the art of a measured answer may be slipping away. Our language has become heated and furious without empathy or moderation.

I read an article detailing events at the rally of a political front-runner. The candidate was using his usual inflammatory language to rile the crowd, with many small words designed to excite emotion rather than promote thought. As he spoke, a fight broke out, not the first at his rallies. The event passed with barely a blurb online. People were just being people after all.

A first grader could tell you what was wrong there. "he shouldn't have done that" or "he could have used his words" might be the response. How have we come to the point that such a breakdown of decorum becomes common-place?

Be not angry at whatever happens, and if you have reason to be so, show it not; put on a cheerful countenance especially if there be strangers, for good humour makes of one dish of meat a feast.
George Washington, Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour
  

Much comes from our internet culture. There is an allure in saying what you truly feel, or something outrageous; we can get a rush from the shock people feel. It is dangerously freeing to have a shield of anonymity or distance to divorce oneself from the emotional destruction our loose and careless words can cause. It can be like a crack habit, a needed fix, an addiction.

As we let our online freedom go to our heads, it can begin to show in our real lives. Childish misbehaving is all it really is. "I dare you to do it," says one. A moment of rebellion against the good principles later "Wow, I can't believe he actually did that." A new star is born on the playground, because even among children controversy sells. The rush of misbehavior online can be amplified by our playmates.

Is it a need to show bravado? Is it rebellion against establishment? Is it the need to prove ourselves that drives us to rude, crude, and foolish actions?

A person may have a temporary respect of a few when his peers see him as radical and brave enough to insult or mock someone to their face, but it will not last. Nothing they say will be anything but a wacky memory in later years. There is nothing to inspire, no quotes will be written as nothing of substance is said. It is base emotion and not intellect that rule their tongues. As others grow wiser, they will see that and leave.  

 But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

 Therefore, if ye shall come unto me, or shall desire to come unto me, and rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee—

Go thy way unto thy brother, and first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I will receive you.

3 Nephi 12:22-24

Take time to think before you speak. Why do you want to say what you plan to say? What is the company? If this were told to someone not present, would they be offended?  What we say is part of who we are. If you wish to be better, speak of better things. If you wish to seethe in ignorance -- mock and insult, pour out scorn and reap what you sew. 

Hatred precludes thoughtful discussion and reconciliation. We are greatest when we stand together, so push no-one away. Unite and rise together.

Jonathan Potter

Mormons and the LGBT community: it's not what you think.

Many of you are here because of the recent rule of the LDS church regarding children of LGBT couples. The following is my take on what is going on, not an official representation of any organization.

I have gay friends. I believe people should be treated equally regardless of sexual preference. I am also a Mormon; a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS church. As such, I was unprepared for the recent rule of the church. I read with shock and surprise articles stating that my church will not allow the children of LGBT couples to be baptized into my church. It took a couple of minutes for the reason for that position to hit.

I guarantee that it's not what you're thinking right now, keep reading.

The church policy can be hard to understand sometimes. the following is from an official statement of the church:
"All visitors are welcome to our chapels and premises so long as they respect our standards of conduct while there. The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us to love and treat all people with kindness and civility—even when we disagree. We affirm that those who avail themselves of laws or court rulings authorizing same‐sex marriage should not be treated disrespectfully. Indeed, the Church has
advocated for rights of same‐sex couples in matters of hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment, and probate.."

And yet there is this thing with the kids. If you're saying "What?!" you are not alone. I understand why people are outraged with the way the media puts it. I think they have it completely backwards, although I haven't found an official explanation from the church yet.

Here is the thing, I think this rule is in place to protect LGBT families from being torn apart. It's because we care about them. The rule is not to punish them, it's not because we find them impure, it's not because we hate them, it's not because the children are somehow sinful (all these are against the teachings of the church and contrary to its character)--it's because sexual preference is a core part of a person's identity, and no child should have to choose between faith and family. It is more important that they have a good relationship with their parents than it is for them to be a member of the church.

In the King James version of the Bible in Exodus 20:12 we read, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." This is one of the big ten commandments, and I believe is the reason the children can't join the church. We believe this trust and respect between parents and children is sacred and to be respected.

We also teach that giving in to same-sex attraction is a sin. Please note that I said "giving into same-sex attraction." Same-sex attraction (or SSA) is not a sin in itself. Many people are born with it and can't help it. It's nothing to be ashamed about; it is a "thorn in the flesh," a trial we are meant to overcome. However, entering into a sexual same-sex relationship is a sin. I don't apologize for this belief; it is scriptural and true. I do promise you that I will not force this belief on anybody or judge people who believe differently. I also can't teach this principle to a kid with two married moms or two married dads. We will not let any underage child join the church without the full support of their parents, regardless of their home situation. No parent could support their child if by example they completely go contrary to the teachings of the church by legal lifestyle choice. We choose to respect the head of the household.

Baptism in The Church of Jesus Christ is not like most other religions. Baptism in this church is the door to membership in the church. Maintaining membership in the church requires obedience to all of God's commandments, not just the ten commandments (again, this rule is to help us to grow, not to punish failure.) A life following the commandments of God means we live by the law of chastity: no sexual relations except with the one person of the opposite gender that we are married to. No exceptions. All members must do this. This does not mean we can't be friends or family with those who do not obey this spiritual law.

Perhaps most famously, only members living by our high standards of  morals and obedience can enter our temples. This has more to do with respect of the sacred and learning line upon line than it has to do with and secrets or a sense of elitism. It is simply very special to us.
Photo credit: "Salt Lake Temple, Utah - Sept 2004" commons.wikimedia.org

As the children come of age and become independent they may choose to join the church. When they are the head of their own household, they are free to choose as they wish. I pray that this rule will come to be seen as what I believe it was intended to do: a way to free families from the possibility of being pulled apart by our faith.

We are all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of God with divine potential and infinite worth. He loves every one of you, and asks us to love one another. I pray for the day when voices of hatred, fear, misunderstanding, discrimination, and suspicion are replaced by universal love and understanding. We invite all to come to Christ, feel of his love and to join us. I hope this helps us all to come to an understanding.

Please understand that I do not wish to argue. Any language that is confrontational or disrespectful of others, be it Mormons or the LGBT community will be deleted. I hope to unite, not dive here.

Copyrights, Patents and Lawsuits

I'm sure you've heard the fights in the news. Apple got a patent on rectangular smartphones with a touchscreen and rounded corners. Amazon got a broad patent on scheduled home delivery of perishable goods (think the milkman). It's illegal to play most DVDs on a linux computer. You can buy a movie, but can't change its format or edit it for your own use. You know what I'm talking about.

There have always been frivolous lawsuits; recently there was a girl who sued her grad-school for a C+. People can be stupid and greedy, but when a company does it, it's something else. It can be destructive to competition, innovation, and small business. Capitalism falls apart and destroys the market when people get out of hand with lawsuits and corporate greed. Let me give you an example:

I'm going to tell you about Monsanto Chemical Company. You may not know the name, but they have been in your life. Some of the plastic you come in contact with was made by them, maybe even parts of the device you are using right now. Had something with wheat, corn, or another crop in it lately? The crops were very likely grown from Monsanto seeds, fertilized with Monsanto fertilizer, and sprayed with Monsanto insecticide and weed inhibitors. They make RoundUp and grass seed for your lawn. This is one big company. Like any big company they attract a lot of hate. In this case, it's not all unwarranted.

Monsanto has copyrights on living things and is using that to control most American farmers. Remember how I said they sell seeds? Now, in some ways it makes sense to copyright that. If you spent millions to genetically engineer a corn seed to grow fast and strong with hardly any water in a record time, you'd want to make your money back. You wouldn't want someone to make their own copy of your product that you worked so hard on and sell it. But Monsanto is not just protecting themselves.

There are a lot of opinions about GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) crops, and I'm about to afflict you with mine. I believe careful responsible gene manipulation to be beneficial. As long as we are careful not to create a monoculture or an invasive hybrid, it's fine with me. Many are more healthy and nutritious, use less water and fertilizer, and can't be grown accidentally. High-yield crops grown on little land is better for the environment too.

As soon as genetic engineering was invented and the gene sequence copyright created, Monsanto started copyrighting and patenting seeds. Not just what they made, either. They would find strains of seeds and if they could (they usually could), they would make it their property. There are certain sequences in DNA that are owned by Monsanto that used to be used by farmers for hundreds of years. Farmers would save some seed each year to re-plant next year. Now you either need to buy a license to grow your own seed (only the big farms can afford that) or buy new seed every year. Even if you get the license to grow crops from saved seeds, you'd need special chemicals to germinate many of them. They are not like natural seeds. All this cuts into profit big time. Every year they have to pay Monsanto (but the gains of using super-crop can help offset this cost).

There are still open pollinated crops: non GMO seeds that are in the public domain. Some of these are strains that are hundreds to thousands of old. If you have one of these, in theory you should be safe... in theory. Some of these have had their DNA copyrighted by Monsanto, either by accident or design. There is another issue as well.

Let's pretend that you are a farmer. You grow millet, just like all your neighbors. Some of your neighbors sell out to a Monsanto super farm. One day, out of the blue, you get a summons to court for copyright infringement. They not only want you to pay millions in fines, but back pay for 10 years of crops! You have no idea how it's possible as you have always used your saved seed stock, direct descendants from seed your great grandfather bought. You've never used Monsanto crops, but your neighbors did. There are several ways your crops might have been marked with genetic markers:

1. Cross Pollination: Bees can travel miles with pollen on their legs. Any field within 5 miles of yours is a risk.
2. Birds: A bird might eat a seed from another field and poop over yours.
3. Wind/Shipping Spillage: Strong wind may move seed or trucks may lose seed while passing your farm.
4. Erosion: Water might carry seed from one field to another. 

Bad news for you. How did they even get a sample of your crop? It turns out that they do random tests in non-affiliated fields, without knowledge or consent of the farmer. They trespass. As a huge company, they put legal pressure on your small farm. There's no way to win. Debt looms. Will you sell or hold out and pay Monsanto every year and deal with debt and profit loss? You could buy new non-GMO seed that's not contaminated.

This is not a random example; it's a true story.

The industry as a whole is becoming a battle-ground of lawsuits. The difficulty of entry into the markets is now also measured in the capital needed to survive an onslaught of lawsuits. Economies of scale dictate that big companies are more durable in a war of legal attrition. If some small firm wanted to sell new smartphones, they'd need to weather lawsuits from LG, Samsung, Apple and HTC. They don't need to win, just starve you. Innovation is stifled by this.

Luckily there is a counter-movement. It all started with a frustrated MIT student named Richard Stallman.

Richard Stallman is almost considered a god by many programmers. He has been responsible for some of the greatest changes in software in the last century, and for starting a movement that changed the world forever. Good beard too.

He was a computer programmer in the early days - a real pioneer. In those days they would change programs to suit their needs. Suddenly companies started making it impossible to access the source code, mostly to protect their intellectual property, but this meant that sometimes without modification the software would be unusable. If you used somebody else's code, even a friend's, you could be sued. He had a flash of inspiration. What if you had user-driven software creation? A community developing software for everyone can make a powerful and constantly up-dated tool. Being free, it could dodge some industry pit-falls. With help, he created the GNU license, a brilliant piece of legal gobbledy-gook that protects the producers, users, and modifiers of any free product. It spread like mad.

Have you ever used Mozilla Firefox, Linux, Android OS or Netscape? GNU. There is a staggering amount of free programs on the internet, everything from smartphone apps to software to run UAVs and industrial robots. The model of the system spread to non-product related fields. Wikipedia is free. It's even leaking into the physical world.

3D printing looks like the next revolution. A 3D printer takes a computer file and turns it into a  three dimensional physical object, usually in plastic, but metal and ceramics are starting to appear too. A file with a cup will produce a plastic cup. A 3D picture of your head will make a small bust of you in plastic. Free drawings are available all over the internet. An astonishing 70% of a 3D printer can be made in a 3D printer. Self replicating machines. Welcome to the future.

Many of the great advances and innovations started as a free product. Innovation flourishes where there is little chance of lawsuit. For the sake of our country and our world, I hope that the big guys lighten up. Play nice and let's get better together.

Cybernetic Implants and Prosthetics

We live in the future. It doesn't look how we thought it would; there are no flying cars or house-keeping androids, but there are robot vacuum cleaners and we can use our cell phones for anything (but are mostly used to play Angry Birds and look at pictures of cats). Dreams of yesterday are the realities of today, and if not today, there is always tomorrow. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. I say - not necessity, but desire. What humans desire is power, life, pleasure, love, and ease. Whatever we want, from a desire to save a life, to protect our children, or to feed our family can be traced to these basic goals. All innovations have been for one of these goals in one form or another, this includes what we term the necessities. These desires are central to what we are. Our works and our dreams hinge on this.

Today our focus is on life and power, in particular the ways we try to change ourselves to something beyond our natural state. Humankind has always had fictitious super-heroes. Demigods, legendary warriors, gods, demons, and Marvel Comics all have one thing in common: they reflect the dream of being more than human. We want more strength than our frames permit, better healing to recover from any injury, the ability to fly, to see in the dark, to move things with thought alone, and even immortality. We have bent our strength to these ends.

The Etruscans were making false teeth out of animal teeth or adding gold to fix their teeth in place as early as 7000 BC. This is one of the earliest examples of body improvement by the surgical introduction of non-natural materials.

We have been finding ways to modify the human body, replacing what is weak or lacking with man-made replacements. This is nothing new. We have always sought ways to make better bodies as far back as history tells us. People have been adding bits of metal, leather, and bone to their bodies to hold back the march of physical decay for thousands of years. Sometimes we add bits of metal and leather for purely cosmetic purposes (think piercings). Over time we have become better at re-building ourselves.
Our recent advances would stun our ancestors - the progress has been absolutely stunning. Enhancement has become common place. We've even advanced into integrated cybernetics. Cybernetics is defined as command (thought), action (motor ability in muscle), and feedback (senses sending input to command centers) working together. So, you are already cybernetic. Your body works as a well-oiled machine, unless it breaks. When we break down, we've got two main choices which I'm going to call the gardener approach and the engineer approach.

A gardener will graft branches, use fertilizer and chemicals, prune or train branches into new shapes to cure - basically most modern medicine today. This is a topic for another time.

An engineer will find a faulty part and either remake or replace it. An engineer looks for ways to update the design and lives for a good upgrade. The best upgrades network devices together for increased inter-operability.

There have been some problems historically with this method. Infections where flesh and foreign objects meet. Lack of control and functionality. The new parts never worked as a part of the body. That has changed. So let's get to it!

Hypoxyapatite: Used as a coating on metal surfaces, bone and flesh can bond to it like an antler bonds to the skin of a deer. This can allow the body to attach to a piece of metal as if it were a natural part of the body. A titanium bone can be as firmly linked to muscles and other bones as you like. Ports and protrusions can pass through the skin with no fear of infection.

Nervous System Control: Artificial limbs and control devices have come a long way. The C-Leg has archived well-deserved fame helping wounded warriors walk again, but a man with a C-Leg can't wiggle his foot. The sensors in the leg can guess how he wants to move but can't read his mind... yet.


The woman in this video has a device implanted in her brain (note electrode on her head) allowing her to move the arm as she wishes. Reading the brain like this is easier and more mainstream than many people think. We've advanced to the point where we can record sound by using readings from the hearing centers of the brain instead of a microphone. The electronics in the video above can be cheaper than an iPhone because of the simplicity of it (not the arm, just the mind reader thing), but the human research needed to produce it, the sterility standards needed to certify it as human safe, and the skill needed to implant it put it way beyond the reach of the common man. Lucky for us, that isn't the only way to read the mind. More on that below.

Haptic Feedback: Close your eyes and touch something for a second. Several remarkable things happen at once: your skin comes in contact with the surface; nerves at the surface send back information on the surface (texture, temperature and size). Your skin deforms as you press against it; nerves throughout your skin telling you how much pressure you are exerting. Nerves in every joint relay information on the position and angle of each joint giving your mind knowledge of your current posture (known as proprioception), letting you know the position of the object you touch relative to yourself.

This is far harder than reading the mind. Giving signals back to the brain has proved very, very difficult. Pain is easy to produce, but imagine the complexity of smooth or cold. Even our greatest success in this area, the cochlear implant, has very limited resolution. New tech has enabled us to link electrical sensors to nerves. This has been around for a while, but limited by the difficulty of  connecting the tiny nerves and the limited time before the body rejects the electrodes. Recent development has refined the lifespan and precision of the connections. Go here if you want to know where we are now.

Microbial Glucose Fuel Cell: Imagine a pace maker that never needed batteries, but drew energy from your body, just like everything else. Your blood contains glucose, refined bio-fuel destined to power your cells. Scientists have figured out how to make microbes turn this into electricity; this can be built into a tiny implantable fuel cell along a blood vessel, powering electronics in your body. Hit this link for the long explanation. Warning: contains words. Lots of words!

Artificial Muscles: Self-explanatory. The name is what they are. These have been around for ages too. Many of them use shape-memory alloys, but the field has recently undergone a revolution.

This century's miracle material: graphine. It has many  uses. Pictured here is a twisted strand of nano-muscle. It's made from nano-tubes, graphine rolled into tube shape.  

They made tiny cords of carbon nano-tubes and filled them with paraffin wax. A change in heat causes the cord to contract. The tiny yarn above can lift hundreds of thousands of times its own weight and resist even more without breaking. This can be used to make bundles of muscle fiber that act like human muscles but are. in fact, many, many times stronger. As long as there is power, they will not tire. Also, they could stop a bullet.

So, where does this all put us? I think we've come a long way. We are almost at the point of creating a perfect prosthetic.

Remember this scene from The Empire Strikes Back? Luke Skywalker's hand is almost possible. It's a fusion of engineering and flesh. Hypoxyapatite could bind it into the body, nerves wired into sensors in the hand, blood powering the artificial muscles

The problem is the cost of the project would rival the Apollo program! The tech is all experimental and costs a lot.

At the moment this is the best we can do.

So, what about optional implants? The idea is not that far-fetched. Each year hundreds of women have stuff packed in to their breasts for no other reason than appearance. I can easily imagine a market for tiny fibers planted in to an arm that give you superhuman strength. How about re-enforced bones? Maybe you'd buy if someone offered to give you a reflective layer on the back of your retina to give you night vision like a cat? One that would serve a good purpose is a system to add oxygen to the blood in case of emergency. There are tiny nano machines called respiracites that doctors are studying. The idea is they will activate if your blood-oxygen level falls too low. They could keep you alive underwater for four hours or so.

Something I'd like is to replace the canals in the inner ear. The canals are lined with tiny hairs; when you turn your head, the fluid in the ear pushes the hairs. The vibration of these hairs gives us our sense of balance. Now, the problem is if we move too much, the fluid just sloshes around and the signals get confused. Our brain can't compute that, so we just feel dizzy. Imagine if we replaced the whole thing with a couple of accelerometers. You'd have great balance and never get dizzy.

The average reaction time to an expected event is 1/10th of a second. That is how long it takes for your eyes to see it, the signal to travel to the brain, the brain to process it, the brain to send a signal, the signal to reach a limb, and the limb to move. How about replacing some of those nerves with fiber-optics? Could you increase reaction speed?

Another fun one is controlling things with your mind. There is already a commercially available product that can do that without even the need to implant it!

This is the Neurosky Mind controller. Wireless and flexible, you can get one with an SDK  and  go nuts. They are still finding uses for this thing.

At the moment, the Neurosky only has a single channel of control. This can only be used to control one thing, like dim a light or press the gas pedal. You'd need something different if you want a brake.

I'd like to see a Neurosky used with eyeball-tracking and a computer. There are trackers you can buy for a PC. Just look at an icon, and your cursor is on it. No more hand-mouse-eye, just eye. When you press a button it selects what you are focused on. The end result is a computer that is faster than one with a mouse! Now, replace the button with a Neurosky, and you have control with just looking and thinking. This has real-world applications (besides the obvious cool factor) as a tool for the handicapped.

The goal is to make it a part of you. I think the best technology is one that is so natural that you don't even notice it's there. Something so perfect that you just do the impossible without a second thought.

With this kind of tech at our disposal, I imagine it will be only a matter of time before companies start offering implants to the general public. The question is: how far do we go? Can we slow the aging process? Can we be super human? Should we?

If we go ahead with this, we risk widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. They haves would be stronger, faster, smarter with longer lives. The have-nots would not be able to compete. Already it is illegal to enhance your body and compete in sports.

At what point do we stop being human? I don't know the answer to this, or even have much of an opinion on the matter. I do look forward to the need to make the choice. The future is going to be interesting and fun.

New Space

About that update plan...

Yeah, it's not happening the way I planned. I thought that I would finish my post in a week. I kept on editing and editing until finally I forgot it completely. I'm going to to switch to a shorter post more unplanned update style.
This mini post is being written on a train with my cell. There will be no proof read, spell check or fancy pictures. It'll just be stuff I think is cool.

Today the topic is New Space. If you are unfamiliar with that term it means any private non-government space program. Off the top of my head there are several I could name:

Spacex (my favorite)
Cignus
Virgin Galactic
Masten Aerospace
Armadillo Aerospace
Blue Origins
Sierra Nevada Corporation
Bigelow Aerospace
Linx Aerospace
Excalibur Alamaz
Planetary Resources
Deep Space Industries
Space Exploration

Many of these make their money by selling to the US government. In the past companies like Boeing, Lockheed, ATK  and Playtex (yes that Playtex, they made spacesuits as well as bras) have built things for NASA - but there is a vital difference. All these were NASA driven, and the senate is in NASA's driver's seat.

During the great space race NASA did whatever worked. There was only one goal set by the government - go to the moon. Nothing else mattered. Scientists look at blueprints and picked the cheapest one, the one that looked like it would work. Cost, speed and innovation were the watch-words of the day. NASA was very efficient for a government entity.

Then the worst thing for NASA happened, our competitor all but disappeared. With the death of their chief designer followed by their demoralizing defeat in the race to the Moon the Soviet space program all but disappeared. Low earth orbit was the new goal. NASA managed to do a few things on inertia - a few more moon landings were done and Skylab was launched with left-over Apollo gear. Then began the change.

Apollo launched Apollo with 4.1% of the USA's budget. That was the first to change. NASA runs on less than .05% of the budget today. This slowed progress down. Next there were more goals set for NASA by the senate: go back to the moon, land rovers on Mars, put satellites in orbit, invent better airplanes, build a reusable space plane (shuttle), come up with new engines, build a space station, invent robots for space, do medical research, figure out how the weather works, launch space telescopes, refuel and repair satellites and run education programs - all at once. By the way, do it only with the technologies we pick, after all we want jobs in our district.
Guess what that means. NASA is a jobs program now. The senate wants to reuse shuttle parts for new rockets, just to send jobs to ATK. It makes no good sense.

I'm not just talking here. I have hours of specific examples, but I won't subject you to my whiny tirade (unless you ask for it in the comments below), so I'll just give one example. Do you remember the X-33? No? Back in the '90s there was a cool program to replace the space shuttle called Venturestar. It was a single-stage to low-earth-orbit space-plane (I'm running out of dashes) with a revolutionary engine. The half-scale prototype was the X-33. Great promise in this thing. The design had this crazy complicated lobed tank design. The higher-ups specified a carbon-fiber (seriously, more dashes) fuel tank, because everybody knows those are lighter right? I'll let you in on a secret, carbon-fiber can't do tight corners easily. If you put a bend in it you need way more material to get it strong enough. The extra material was enough to put it way over the weight budget. The engineers shook their heads and said "This is stupid, it will never work. We can build it out of aluminum/lithium alloy like on the space shuttle for way less money and less weight." They did. They were just about to put the light and strong tank to the test when the NASA director testified before congress that his program needed a little more budget for the carbon-fiber tank. It became law that the tank HAD to be Carbon-fiber. So the program spent the rest of it's budget exploding too-heavy carbon tanks on a test stand until it was cancelled. The end. Just one of hundreds of stories.

Enter new space. Private companies looked at the space program and said "Oh come on, it's only rocket science!" They began to beat NASA at their own game. Instead of going to NASA and taking orders with NASA's pork-bloated blueprints, they produced a design using good sense and looked for buyers. Spacex has a launch system less than 1/10th the cost of the shuttle per pound to low-earth-orbit. Bigelow took an old NASA design that failed because law-makers got in the way, and will launch next the first manned version next year. Sierra Nevada Corp. is also using a NASA cast-off. Virgin cut NASA out all together and made a space airline just for fun. Everybody still has to play by NASA's rules (they must get permits and pass safety tests), but the change is that NASA doesn't pick the technique, just the product.

This brings us to the last new field: asteroid mining. A single m-type asteroid may have more platinum than all the platinum humans have ever mined in all history. There is water, helium 3 and iron too, all very expensive to launch. So companies are starting to appear. Deep Space Industries just launched. This is the second mining company, they are competing with Planetary Resources. This one launched with a daring video showing a long term future. Nobody has had the guts to do that. Once I get to the office I'll add the video and post it.  
Special bonus: try to spot the Avatar reference in the video.



Cheers!

Generation Ships

Warning: this post gets strange and creepy. Read your own risk

One of the great staples of science-fiction is human settlement of space. The protagonists are shown plying the cosmos in gleaming ships capable of conveniently violating the speed of light to have adventures on fantastic worlds far from our own. The unobtanium powered handwavium drives permit the ships to cross the incomprehensibly great vastness of space in a matter of plot moving months, days, or hours. This allows us to have homes on many worlds, and importantly, to travel between them. This is not possible by any method we are even close to understanding.

Space is big. I mean really, really big. Metaphors break down and the mind boggles with the sheer size of it all. The Voyager 1 space probe is traveling at 62,136kph (38,592mph) and was launched way back in 1977 and is only now at the edge of the solar system. That is only 11 billion miles away. If Voyager was going to pay a visit to the neighbors, then we could say in 35 years it opened the door and walked down the steps. It hasn't crossed the lawn or the sidewalk or the street. We struggle to reach the nearest body to us, the Moon, can you even imagine interstellar travel?

I sure hope so because that is what this post is all about.

In almost every Science Fiction story there is a reason to leave Earth. Maybe our home was destroyed, or we were lured off with riches, adventure, and treasure, or maybe we just out-grew the earth and had to leave for lack of room. Another good reason that they never seem to think of is just to have a back-up for the human species.

Let's say for a moment that we had a reason to leave our star-system. A planet wide evacuation would be difficult because I want this to be a near-future hypothetical situation. That many people would not be possible. So, for our purposes let's say it was a back-up of humanity just in case something happened to Earth - this lets us send a small group to colonize another world.

One of the biggest constraints in not technology, but budget. Apollo just sent four men to the moon, yet it strained the resources of our coffers, personnel, and our ingenuity to the limits. Any interstellar launch will be many, many orders of magnitude greater. All launches measure cost by weight. Take a space shuttle. Its purpose was to put cargo in space - human cargo and equipment or supplies. That total payload is the whole raison d'etre, so all cost of maintenance, procurement and launch costs are just for that cargo. If you take the total cost and divide by the weight of the payload, you get a cost per pound to low-earth-orbit. A single gallon of water cost $80,300 on the shuttle! Newer programs cost far less, but remember, it's not going to low earth orbit, but to another star-system. Again, we are not talking far future, but near future, so things like weight and fuel are all tied into a single problem: cost. We theoretically have the technology to build a star ship now, but there is not enough money on the entire planet to do so. Not money available - I'm saying in existence. A program to launch millions of people may not be possible for eons to come.

Let's pretend that we've found a world. The Kepler space telescope picked up an earth-like planet, and after years of observation with first; the Hubble, then the James Webb followed by even bigger and better systems, our scientists decided it would support a colony. It will be a new home for humanity, to hedge our bets and preserve us from extinction. Excitement builds on Earth. Humanity unites to build something truly colossal: our first star ship.

It has a tremendous amount of fuel to allow it to move at fantastic speed. Due to the immense distances involved, it will take hundreds of years for our ship to travel to its destination, a very short time when discussing interstellar travel. Decades, perhaps centuries will be spent accelerating, then that many more to slow it down as it nears the new world. This means that most of the ship will consist of its exotic fuel. Next is life support. This ship will be a home for the colonists for longer than most American cities have existed. There must be food, air, heat, power, and comforts for hundreds of years. There must be a shield on the front of the ship. A grain of sand at millions of kilometers an hour would have an impact like a warhead. This shield will be a heavy piece of ablative armor, perhaps with some sort of deflector field to improve our ship's chances. We should make our ship narrow enough to be protected by a small shield, to save on weight. The math says our ship will be kilometers long.

James Cameron's Avatar star ship is shown above. It actually has a good lay-out. Huge fuel tanks and engine in one end, debris shield, storage and habitat at the other. It's just a little small. A great feature is that the habitat spins to provide the illusion of gravity.

Because our ship will take hundreds of years to travel, the crew is an issue. Nobody on board will live to see the end of the journey. Only their descendants will make the trip. This is called a "Generation ship."

Construction of the ship will be largely done in space - it's far too big to launch from the earth in one piece. Much like we built the International Space Station, it will be launched as parts. The star ship will be expensive. Stephen Hawking talked a bit about this. He pointed out that the people who build the ship will spend a great deal of time and treasure on this huge project, only to see a few people board it, the engines power up and then move out of the solar system, never to return. It will have to be a selfless sacrifice, or perhaps an act of desperation.

Aside from the antimatter - or whatever fuel source we have - the ship must carry the colonizing equipment, life support and everything. Space and weight are at a premium here. We must deduce what the minimum we can send is, and then shave that where we can. The goal is to establish life, in a meaningful way, on this world. There need to be educators, doctors, nurses, engineers, architects - in short all the human resources of Earth. We don't just want this colony to survive, we want it to thrive. We don't need all of that immediately, but we need it when they reach the planet. In addition, we need to avoid inbreeding and the Founder Effect.

So the question is, how few people can we send? How broad a genetic base do we need, and how do we prevent gene pool deterioration? I don't really know. It's hard to find any info on this. I think, from what I've been able to find, that if you deliberately select for genetic diversity you can establish a population with as few as 6,000 - if you maintain a high birth-rate. This is a problem. That pushes the habitat size and needs way beyond what is reasonable. That is more than the crew of a Nimitz class super-carrier!  The big aircraft carriers are like a floating city, but are far too cramped. Even with an open deck, the crew needs shore leave and time off rotation. We can fix this by increasing the size of the habitat to three times the size of a Nimitz class carrier, or reducing the crew. Neither will work. Hold on to your hats, there's a solution, but it's kind of disturbing.

Do you remember the frozen sleep pods in 2001, A Space Odyssey? Yeah, those don't really work. It would be nice if they did. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to freeze people and keep them alive.

2001, A Space Odyssey also failed to have much of a back-up crew. Frozen sleep, if it even worked would not be without fatalities. Two guys left awake to run the ship is not a good idea.

Maybe I should say that frozen sleep doesn't work on developed humans. Embryos are a different story. This brings us to this freaky idea I got from the life cycle of some species of aphid.

In early spring the aphids hatch  out of eggs. They are small, but strangely are all female and born pregnant. They grow and give live birth to their young. These are clones of their mothers, also born pregnant. They give live birth to clones. The cycle continues with each generation producing the next by parthenogenesis until fall. In the fall a mutation occurs. Some are born male and some are born as unfertilized females. Sexual reproduction of these strange aphids produces eggs that can survive the winter.

Wow, you're still reading?

The idea is that you launch a ship crewed solely by young women, about 60 of them, and a hold full of frozen embryos. Of the passengers, only a few will be core crew. The others would be grunt labor or some other occupation like hairdresser. All crew would have time to pursue their own interests on the side, even change career if they wished.

In this plan there are two sets of embryos aboard, one for transit, one for re-population. The transit embryos are all female, genetically tested to ensure that they are similar to simplify medical treatment. They could even be clones. During transit each woman will impregnate herself with one by in vitro, and raise her child to replace her. Thus the population is maintained at a manageable size. As they near their destination they will begin to grow the population, each one having multiple children. They'll open up the habitat sections that were kept sealed to save supplies and expand their space to handle the new generation.

NASA came up with a concept of an inflatable habitat section for the International Space Station called a Transhab, a concept now being used by Bigelow Areospace to build their own station. This may be a good idea, the living area for the new generation. They can be kept deflated to conserve supplies and prevent transport damage in the hundreds of years before use.

After they land on the planet they will continue as they were. Once they hit about 3 thousand they will open the second batch of embryos. This batch contains genetically diverse male and female embryos, the base of our new population. There will be some cultural problems to sort out - after all these women will have never met a man before. There also will be a period of cultural change as they go from lesbian relationships (if any formed at all) to heterosexual. The shock would be great.

Now, I think this whole thing is a bad idea and really, really creepy. What I want to happen is I want to take my wife aboard a faster-than-light ship to a distant world, and go visit our parents on earth every Christmas. This whole thing was a thought experiment with foreseeable technologies. Who knows, when we leave Earth we might just beam straight to a new place instantly. Guessing the future never works as well as we think it will. Just look how much more advanced our cell phones are than Captain Kirk's communicator.

I can't wait to see the surprises that lie in store for us. How will we leave Earth and when? I would love to know.
 P.S. I promise that the next post will be less weird... well at least a little bit less weird.