Canvassing Concord

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

-Margaret Mead

I was reminded of this well-known quote this morning as I listened with about a dozen other volunteers (mostly from Massachusetts) to a pep talk on canvassing  at the Barack Obama campaign office in Concord, New Hampshire. Although I had canvassed last Saturday in Keene, NH, I arrived there late and didn't get much of a briefing. I was assigned to work with an experienced local volunteer that time, so learning "on the job" worked out fine. But some of the tips in the briefing today were useful, especially the info about voter registration rules in NH (you can pre-register up to 10 days before the election, but you can also register at the polls on Election Day).

Canvassing is not rocket science - you get a list of voters and a neighborhood map, you drive to the neighborhood, walk around and knock on doors, introduce yourself, and have a conversation about the election. The key points are "who will you vote for?" and if you are an Obama suporter, will you consider volunteering yourself? It's actually pretty good fun in the few cases where the voter is actually home, especially supporters and undecided voters who are willing to talk with you. Usually I just encourage these voters to check on a few things on the web, especially the facts about who would benefit from the Obama and McCain tax plans (by income level), and about McCain's health insurance plan (employer-provided insurance benefits would be taxed as income in McCain's plan, among other strange and problematic features - check this analysis of the McCain plan).  This was only my second day canvassing for Obama, and it went pretty well. I also spent an hour back at the office calling voters, which went better than my calls from home have gone this past week (perhaps calling from a NH area code is part of the reason).

Being part of this small group of thoughtful, committed citizens today was a good feeling. The local campaign staffers told us that with so many volunteers coming into New Hampshire to help the local volunteers, they are reaching many thousands of voters in person and on the phone, identifying supporters, adding more volunteers, and preparing for the big get-out-the-vote push on Election Day. 

It's Time for Science and Reason

A great message from some smart and caring people. Learn more at CFI.

The methods and values of scientific thinking have expanded our knowledge about life and our place in the universe. This modern knowledge—based on experience and evidence—has brought enormous benefit to humanity, yet many people still choose to rely on ancient texts and beliefs to guide their lives and their nations.

The Center for Inquiry exists to change this situation. We are here to promote the scientific outlook, to expand the methods and values of science into all areas of human endeavor.

Carnival of Space #71

The Carnival of Space has a slightly unusual but timely host this week - the web site of the .astronomy conference that will be held in Cardiff, Wales next week (September 22-24).

.Astronomy is described as a "Conference on Networked Astronomy and the New Media," and presentations will discuss changes in how astronomy is done in an era of massive data from sky surveys, robotic telescopes and virtual observatories, blogging, social networking, and software tools such as Google Sky and Microsoft's World Wide Telescope, all linked together by the internet.

As usual, the carnival will steer you to recent posts from a number of interesting blogs. The picture above shows the star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 which is 500 light years away. Of interest is the object in the upper left which may be a massive planet orbiting this star. If confirmed, this would be the first direct image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star. Babe in the Universe explains more here. This was also the Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Drill, Drill, Drill?

Please read this powerful and moving essay about what is at stake in this fall's election. It was written by Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues."

I'm In Love

No, it's not Obama! Well, not in the same way. I'm actually in love with my new 16 GB Apple iPod Touch. I came very close to buying one of the first generation models when they came out (a year ago?). But I decided the lack of a hardware volume control was a deal breaker for using it in the car (turns out it probably would have been OK). I also thought the price vs. memory value wasn't that good with the first models. This one was $299 for 16 GB which seems like a good balance.

The WiFi web and email, the decent size screen for movies, the maps, YouTube, the whole touch-based interface - and of course the music - these are all very cool. And they work really well - I haven't read a word of documentation. But the apps that came over from the iPhone clinched the deal, especially the multi-touch Pocket Guitar. Not really that useful as a musical tool, and pretty awkward to play, but it's still the coolest 99 cent instrument ever.

Whatever Apple's and Steve Jobs' faults, they create products that truly are a pleasure to use. I owned and enjoyed a Mac from 1984 to 1994 when practical considerations pushed me to PC's and Windows, and with rare exceptions, computers have just been tools for me since then. The iPod Touch reminds me of what it's like to experience geek love for a really well designed product, a pocket computer orders of magnitude more powerful than my original 1984 Mac.

Obama's Plan for Change

In this two minute ad, Barack Obama talks simply and directly about our troubled economy and about his plan for change. You can see a quick summary of the plan here, and of course there is in-depth information on this and many other issues available at barackobama.com/issues.

Totally Free Astronomy Intro

I just learned about this from a member of my astronomy club. Michigan Tech University is offering an introductory astronomy class this semester (PH1600), taught by Professor Robert-J.-Nemiroff. The lecture videos are available through iTunes U and as direct downloads from Learnoutloud.com.

I downloaded the lectures available so far and previewed parts of the first one, and it seems like a solid, college-level introductory astronomy class. One unusual thing about it is that there is no textbook, or rather that they are using Wikipedia as the text book! As the professor explains in the first lecture, the on-line resources for introductory astronomy are quite strong and are typically more up-to-date than any paper textbook. Required reading includes the Wikipedia articles on Universe, Electromagnetic Spectrum, and Light Year. They will also use NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day as a continuously updating resource on astronomy developments.

Obama: On Being Helpful and Hopeful

Although it's very narrow indeed, Obama has opened up a slight lead over McCain in the latest CBS/NY Times and Reuters/Zogby polls. This suggests that the GOP convention/Palin "bounce" has been damped out, and that the disasters on Wall Street are reminding voters that the economy matters more to them than lipstick and moose (mousse?). McCain is trying to distance himself from the Bush administration on the economy, but it doesn't seem to be working very well. I'm sure they're cooking up some fresh lies and dramas for the coming weeks to try to distract voters from the issues as Palin has done for a couple of weeks now.

Meanwhile Obama remains cool and unflappable, good qualities in a president I think, though some supporters think he needs to act more passionate. I think he and his team are just running with their game plan, efficiently doing what it takes, and since I've been watching the update videos from campaign manager David Plouffe, I've been impressed with how focused and methodical they are in covering all the bases. They are doing well with money, but they still need more to cover all the battleground states. I've given a few $25 "matching fund" donations to encourage first-time contributors this week - it's nice to receive their personal notes.

I too am trying to stay focused, even in the face of phone call frustration. It seems New Hampshire voters are wise to this political calling thing, and most seem to use their answering machines to screen their calls. I have gotten through to some undecided voters, providing some information that could possibly affect their decisions, and working to get someone in the NH campaign to help an elderly lady I spoke with to vote by absentee ballot (she wants to vote for Obama but didn't think she'd be able to get to the polls). I even had a few enjoyable discussions with Obama supporters - very energizing. This weekend I'll be back in New Hampshire to canvass some more. It's pretty small stuff, but if thousands and thousands of people do this sort of small stuff (and they are), it could add up to something big. I'm nowhere near complacent about this - I'm guessing it will be a very close election and we will need to push all the way - but I am feeling somewhat helpful, and somewhat hopeful.

Speaking of Space Settlements

In my last post, I referenced the NSS space settlement art contest and calendar, and this reminded me of something I've been meaning to write about for some time - the Lifeboat Foundation "Ark I" space settlement concept. The Lifeboat Foundation is a private foundation that is studying ways to protect humanity from various "existential risks" - things that might wipe us out, ranging from runaway biotechnology or nanotechnology to various terrorist actions (biological, nuclear, etc.) to asteroid strikes and more. They have many interesting people studying a lot of cool defensive ideas, but if the worst happens, they are also looking into space settlements, self-sustaining space colonies that could allow at least some human beings to survive to preserve our legacy and perhaps rebuild our civilization.

Of course this sounds like science fiction, and it is nowhere near practical implementation, but you have to start with ideas and designs. Ark I is essentially a large space station or space colony in low Earth orbit, built to house about 1000 people. A structure this large would clearly require advanced and lower-cost space transportation than we have now, and this too is part of their planning. If humans are to live for a really long time in space, solutions to problems such as artificial gravity, radiation shielding, food production, and extreme recycling of everything (the "self sustaining" bit) need to be developed.

When you think about it, the International Space Station is a pretty good testbed for this whole "living in space" thing. Many people have said this and it only seems "out there" because people see no immediate need for anyone to live in space when we have a perfectly good planet down here. Or shall I say as long as we have a perfectly good planet down here. But this might not always be the case.

Of course if things get really nasty down here (my favorite Tom Lehrer line, "when the air becomes uraneous, we will all go simultaneous"), being in LEO may not be the best spot either. But it's a good place to practice and relatively easy to get to compared to, say, the Moon (and protected by the Earth's magnetic field). You could easily imagine (as many SF writers have) that materials from the Moon or near-Earth objects might eventually be used to build these space habitats rather than lifting everything out of Earth's gravity well.

The picture above is an artist's impression from the Lifeboat site, not an Orbiter shot. It would be cool to have Ark I and the waverider space planes in Orbiter - I'll ask around and see if any add-on developers are interested in modeling these for Orbiter. There is one historic space settlement concept that was developed as a nice add-on for Orbiter, the Stanford Torus, shown at left. This design was the result of a 1975 space habitat workshop that was inspired by the early space colony ideas of the late Gerard K. O'Neill. The white disk is a reflector used to direct and control sunlight for the living areas on the inside surface of the toroid. More Stanford Torus pix from Orbiter here.

P.S. Lifeboat Foundation has a cool 3 minute video of the Ark I and the Waverider spacecraft (21 MB streaming WMV here, 800x600). It is reminiscent of the scene of the Pan Am spaceliner docking with the big wheel space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's as silent as space itself - add your own Strauss.

Views of Space Settlement

From recent posts, you might think the theme of this blog has morphed from space/education/science/astronomy/etc. into politics, but that is definitely not my long term plan. I normally maintain a Newsweek-level interest in politics, keeping up with important developments, but not getting too distracted by them. This fall's presidential election is a major exception, and I have gotten more involved with it than I expected, with fund raising and even canvassing and making phone calls for the Obama campaign, in addition to writing about it. I believe it's really important, and I can't help it - I want my country back. But I haven't given up on the "space stuff" by any means.

I just received the fall issue of Ad Astra from NSS (National Space Society). It's a pretty good issue with an article about the new NSS Space Ambassadors educational program (I've already applied), reports on ISDC 2008 in Washington, as well as articles on the ISS, Mars Phoenix, COTS, and more. There is also an article about the winners of this year's space settlement art contest, with some really cool examples. I can produce some pretty cool space images using Orbiter, but a talented artist can really transport you to that futuristic space environment. NSS puts out a calendar based on the space settlement art entries, and I just ordered the 2009 edition.

Bonus: I just noticed a link on the Ad Astra page for a free PDF (1.5 MB) of an excellent multi-article report on space based solar power from the spring 2008 issue.

Obama: Politics Is Personal

I had a great day in New Hampshire yesterday. First I joined a large and enthusiastic crowd in Manchester to hear Barack Obama speak. While he covered most of the same points made in his acceptance speech in Denver, he updated many of the comparisons between his plans and those of John McCain, with a lot of emphasis on how the economy is impacting so many Americans, and how McCain doesn’t seem to really understand this or have any plans that will help.

Obama talked about some of the lies that the Republicans are perpetuating in their ads and speeches, especially the idea that Obama will raise everyone’s taxes. According to this analysis from the Tax Policy Center, Obama’s plan will actually lower taxes for at least 95% of taxpayers, with larger percentage cuts for the bottom 60% who are hit hardest by rising energy and food costs, increasing taxes only for those making over $600,000 per year (McCain’s plans will lower taxes for everyone, but by less than 1% for the bottom 60% of taxpayers, and by 4.4% for people making $2.9 million or more – a typical Republican view of “tax relief”).

Obama mainly stuck to the issues and did not make any personal attacks on McCain or on Sarah Palin, whose name was mentioned only once (as McCain’s running mate). Palin is still getting a lot of attention in the press, and the more I learn, the scarier she is. But Obama and Biden should not get involved with this Republican side show, which is aimed at distracting voters from the fact that McCain is out of touch and is not prepared to deal realistically with the challenges of a global economy.

The “personal” part took place in the afternoon, which I spent canvassing for the Obama campaign in a small town near Keene, NH. Accompanied by an experienced local volunteer and with a big assist from my GPS, I visited around 25 homes in this rural area and spoke to a number of voters, including a good number of Obama supporters and a few undecided voters. Naturally some people were not interested in any political callers, and a few others were solidly for McCain. Usually we just thanked them for their time and moved on, but in a few homes where the person seemed open to discussion, I asked why they liked McCain over Obama. In a couple of cases, their response was clearly based on misconceptions (e.g., Obama will raise my taxes), and I was able to plant some seeds of doubt. Maybe some will change their minds, or at least dig a little bit for the facts. You never know.

Canvassing is a pretty inefficient process, but there really is no substitute for face to face contact, and I found it invigorating to be directly involved in this small way. I was one of many out of state volunteers who had come to the Keene office on this kickoff weekend, and I spoke with a few of the others. One Connecticut man had worked for the John Kerry campaign in 2004, but the rest were like me, doing this for the first time in their lives (I discount my brief college experience working for McGovern in 1972). I plan to go back several more weekends this fall to help wherever I can.

It may sound like political rhetoric when Obama says that this election is not about him, or John McCain, or Joe Biden, or Sarah Palin – “it’s about you.” But I’ve read about and now have seen firsthand how regular people who never got directly involved in politics before have been inspired by these times and especially by this candidate. It is about you – about us – and about taking back this country from special interests and putting it on the road to a better future. And yes, it’s about “change we need.” And it’s about time.

If you have the time – I know, you probably don’t – but if you can make the time to volunteer for the Obama campaign, I urge you to do so. If you can’t, but you support Obama, talk about his ideas with others, and make sure everyone you know is registered to vote.

Have GPS, Will Travel

Tomorrow I will take another leap from my personal comfort zone and drive up to New Hampshire to canvass for Barack Obama. While Massachusetts should be pretty "safe" for Obama, New Hampshire is a battleground state that has been decided by fewer than 10,000 votes in the last two presidential elections (went for Bush in 2000, Kerry in 2004). So I will join a lot of other Obama supporters in trying to convince undecided New Hampshire voters to vote for Obama-Biden. I've also signed up to do this on a few more weekends this fall. I don't have any idea how it will go (I haven't done this since 1972 when I campaigned in college for George McGovern!), but I can talk with people about the issues, and I won't take it personally if a few of them slam the door in my face.

But first I will get to see and hear Senators Obama and Biden at a morning rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. That should be pretty cool.

Carnival of Space #70

The Carnival of Space is back with a lot of cool posts to explore, hosted this week by Orbital Hub. Check it out.

Cool (Earth) Solar

Now this is some cool solar technology. How do you make concentrating solar collectors cheap? Make them out of plastic sheeting and blow them up to the right shape like balloons! That's the basic idea from CoolEarth Solar. The inflatable collectors can be cheap enough to replace every two years, and they are so light, that the structure for mounting them and tracking the sun can also be light and fairly simple. As they say in this PDF presentation, "solar farming" should be taken more literally - make the individual parts cheap and scalable, like growing wheat in a big field, as opposed to growing it in a greenhouse.

Concentrating sunlight onto photovoltaic cells means you need a lot fewer cells. This approach combines clever use of optics and mechanics, with cheap, ubiquitous materials (plastic sheeting, air, a tiny amount of aluminum to coat the reflecting surface). Here's the basic environmental impact (from the notes in the PDF presentation, slide 4):

Our approach is to suspend concentrators on support and control cables stretched between poles. The ground under the concentrators is shaded only by about 10% and remains free for other uses like farming or ranching. Suspending the concentrators also preserves habitat. It is also inexpensive: telephone companies, ranchers, and farmers have already figured out how to set posts cheaply across vast spaces.

Cool indeed.

Космонавтка: Russian Space Heaven

Thanks to a post on Orbiter-Forum.com, I just discovered a really cool web site on all things related to the Russian manned space program. Космонавтка (Kosmonavtka, "female cosmonaut") is the work of Suzy McHale, who hails from Melbourne, Australia (a lovely city I got a chance to visit two summers ago). It covers everything from the cosmonaut roster to the Soyuz spacecraft to personal hygiene kits (and much more).

I like the fact that she includes the Russian for many objects, names, and acronyms (there are brief Russian-English and English-Russian glossaries too). Why? Because reading words in the Cyrillic alphabet is about all that's left of the four semesters of Russian I took in college back in the seventies. I've kept my French and Japanese at a semi-useful level, but I barely used Russian after school and alas, it faded, except for the odd phrase like Где мой брат? and Я не знаю, я турист. Not very useful, I'm afraid, unless my brother happens to be kidnapped while we're on a visit to Moscow.

I really don't know as much about the Russian space program as I would like, so thanks to Suzy McHale for creating this very cool site. Спасибо большое!

Great New England Air Show 2008

Thunderbirds NE Air Show 2008, originally uploaded by FlyingSinger.

I went to the Great New England Air Show at Westover ARB in Chicopee, Massachusetts today. It was cool. The weather was terrible yesterday, so I and basically everyone in New England went today, leading to enormous traffic delays getting in and out. But it had been about three years since my last air show, and it was worth a little traffic frustration.

Eating junky air show food on the sunny tarmac, inspecting and photographing planes I've seen dozens of times, watching amazing aerobatic and parachuting performers - I've been doing this since I was ten years old, and it's still fun. I just love stuff that flies!

The USAF Thunderbirds were the featured act and I was happy to find that Thunderbird #5 (lead solo) was flown by a woman, Major Samantha Weeks. Major Weeks is not the first woman to fly the F-16 with the Thunderbirds (that was Major Nicole Malachowski in 2006), but she was the first I had seen perform. Of course she was amazing, as you would expect from a member of this elite precision flying team.

I saw some other interesting airplanes, including a ski-equipped LC-130, and I talked with the weapons officer of a B-52. I was sitting in traffic when the USMC AV-8 Harriers flew, which was a disappointment. I've seen Harriers in static displays at several shows but never saw a flight performance by this V/STOL aircraft (the one flown by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie "True Lies" - a very cool albeit highly implausible scene). I have a few more pictures on Flickr.

Obama and Science

Science and technology are vitally important to the future of this country and indeed the world. Voters should know the positions of the candidates on these vital issues. Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots initiative to encourage the presidential candidates to debate the most important questions in science. This initiative is supported by leading scientific and engineering organizations, universities, and many individuals including Nobel Prize winners. They have received over 3,400 questions from 38,000 individual signers, and they have distilled these down to the 14 most important questions, stated to encourage discussion and embellishment in a debate setting.

While I have not seen any sign that there will be a direct presidential debate on science, Barack Obama's campaign has submitted his answers to the 14 questions (McCain's campaign has indicated that he too will provide answers). Obama's answers are thoughtful and include specific policy proposals to deal with these issues. It is encouraging to see that unlike the Bush administration, Obama takes seriously the issues of global climate change, pandemics, stem cell research, energy, science education, scientific integrity, and yes, space (his answer to the space question is brief but consistent with the longer space policy document I referenced in an earlier post).

Looking beyond the media circus surrounding McCain's vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, I am more concerned that in addition to opposing government funding of sex education and wanting to deny the right to an abortion under nearly any circumstances, she openly supports the teaching of creationism in public schools. She is just scary. I was somewhat heartened to read this MSNBC Cosmic Log report on political prediction markets that don't seem to be too impressed with the convention hoopla (Dem or GOP) or with McCain's new "pit bull with lipstick." I hope they are right! Of course hope is not a strategy, so I'm also glad to learn that the Democratic drive to register voters in key states is going well. Maybe we will manage to avoid a Bush third term after all.

Carnival of Space #69: From A to Zed

Free Space gives us an alphabetical tour of twenty-six space and astronomy blog posts at this week's Carnival of Space. Check it out.

Solar Sails in Orbiter

I’m heading home Friday after a busy week in Glasgow, and with this very flaky hotel internet connection, I haven’t had much of a chance for blog reading or writing. But I did manage to read a great post on solar sails tonight at Centauri Dreams. Paul Gilster reviews an interesting new book, Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel.

This prompted me to see what Orbiter add-on makers have to offer in the solar sail department, and was happy to find that a 2002 add-on by “ObiWan” (Felipe Comparini) had been updated in 2007 for the current Orbiter version. I had to play around with installation folders to get it to work, but once I did, it worked well (I moved some .cfg and .ini files to the main /config folder - note that the orbiter.log file can be very informative when Orbiter crashes due to missing or misplaced files).

The solar sail configuration file says its area is 2800 (presumably square meters, about 53 meters square). This looks about right compared to the shuttle I inserted in the second picture for scale (shuttle length is about 37 meters). So this is not an interstellar sail, but it lets you play around to see how these things work. The included scenario starts you in a near-circular Earth orbit at about 1220 km altitude where you can separate from an upper stage (J), wait a few minutes for clearance, and deploy the sail (D). The animation is pretty cool.

This new version includes an autopilot which takes care of orienting the sail so the solar flux raises your apogee over a series of many orbits (turning edge-on to the sun on the “upper” part of each orbit). Normal and transverse forces are reported at the bottom of the screen, along with the sail angle (maximum normal force is about 0.35 Newtons or about 0.078 pounds-force). I used up to 1000x time acceleration and got the apogee up to about 7000 km before saving my scenario and quitting to write this.

ObiWan includes very brief instructions and the solar radiation pressure equations he used to implement this add-on. It always impresses me that Orbiter’s open architecture allows things like space elevators, rail guns, and solar sails in addition to any kind of rocket-like vehicle, and that add-on developers use these features in their add-ons – all for free.

P.S. The force values reported by this add-on seem substantially too high. The solar radiation pressure at 1 AU is about 4.5x10-6 N/m^2 so for a perfectly reflecting surface at normal incidence, the force would be 2*(4.5x10-6 N/m^2)*(2800 m^2) or about 0.025 newton. To get 0.35 N would take almost 40,000 square meters.

Glasgow

So far Glasgow seems like a pretty nice city. I’ve only explored the area around Glasgow Caledonian University which is hosting the conference I’m attending this week. I arrived this morning in heavy rain, but by early afternoon it had gotten sunny and I spent some time walking around after lunch. I wish I had some pictures of my own to show, but the digital camera I bought at the last minute (long story) doesn’t work. I bought a couple of cheapo disposable film cameras and but I won’t know the results for a while, a rather retro experience in the digital gratification era.

I always explore bookstores, even in Germany, Taiwan, and Japan, but the nice thing about UK bookshops is I can actually read the books and magazines. I spent some time in Borders (I know, that’s American, but the books are different) and in Waterstones, a UK stalwart. I like the fact that there’s a magazine here called Spaceflight, and I bought the September issue. Serendipity struck in the science section with the late Ernst Mayr’s 2001 book What Evolution Is. This has put Tom Kelly’s LM book on temporary hold, and three chapters in, I really like it. More later, probably. Most of those three chapters were read this evening over a couple of pints of Guinness in a nearby Irish pub, so I’m ready to call it a long jet-lagged day.