Why We're Stuck With Old School Tech

As you may, or may not, know I am a science fiction author.  Authors tend to write what they know, but occasionally they have to conduct research for topics that they aren’t as familiar with but still influence their work.  In conducting research for an upcoming novel, I had to consult with someone more versed in nuclear physics than me.  That person was my uncle, who has a PhD in that discipline.  During the course of our discussion, it was decided that the tech I was proposing (although still theoretical) was simply a refinement of an existing and outdated technology.  He asked why I would be considering putting it in my novel.  I replied: “because it works.”  We continued to discuss the idea of antiquated technology used in science fiction, but it got me thinking about why we didn’t progress faster.  Later, I saw the movie “Pacific Rim”, and saw that they were using the same technology as a plot device.

Why, with all the advances in technology, do we still cling to outdated and clearly inferior technology?  For example, almost all automobiles manufactured today use a combustion engine for power.  Oh sure, there are all electric cars made by Tesla, Nissan, Toyota, Chevy, Ford, and others but they aren’t widely used.  The technology for the internal combustion engine has been around (in various forms) for nearly 300+ years. 

What about nuclear power, and other power generating technologies?   Nuclear reactors, coal, and natural gas power plants all use steam turbines to generate electricity.  Steam, wind, and waterpower have been used for thousands of years (around 1st century AD).  The only ‘tech’ that changed was the method used to turbine.  There is so much energy lost in this process that it’s almost laughable that it’s our primary conversion method for energy.  The best we can get from converting thermal energy to electricity is a paltry 58%.  Hydroelectric power is far more efficient (98%), but isn’t useful in powering spacecraft.

So, instead of developing more efficient means of energy production, we try to shoehorn the current technology into better efficiency.  It’s like trying to cram the ugly step—sister’s foot into the glass slipper, it doesn’t quite work.  The question of why we haven’t been able to progress beyond our current technology comes down to practicality.

Fusion would be great, and holds a lot of potential, but there are steep engineering obstacles to getting our money’s worth out of the most basic equation E=M .  That simple formula tells us that the amount of energy of 1 kg of matter would be 9x  joules.  Unfortunately, our most efficient nuclear reactor is only 34% efficient, but these are fission reactors, and NOT fusion reactors.  The problem with fusion is that it currently takes a tremendous amount of energy to begin the process, we can’t sustain it, and it would prove difficult to maintain.  Other ideas have gravitated to anti—matter reactors, but all anti—matter we have created is almost instantly destroyed when it encounters regular matter.

Our inability to move on is due to our inability to overcome the engineering obstacles in converting the latent power that exists in every atom into something we can use to power everything we need it to power.  That may seem dismal on its face, but I think of it as an opportunity.  As we continue to refine current/ancient technologies to make them more efficient, we solve problems that help us make technologies that are more advanced possible.

If you look at our engines and generating technologies, you will notice a stark improvement over previous generations.  When I first entered college, the most fuel-efficient production car was lucky to get 27 mpg.  Today the most efficient car is an electric that gets 121 empg.  A lot of small engineering problems had to be solved in different disciplines in order to obtain that level of performance, and there are more to be solved before it becomes widely viable.

Movie Madness

Sorry for the absence, but I've been on vacation.  I'm trying to put out a new article once a week, so hopefully I can keep it up with all the writing I have to do.

I love movies.  It’s nice to sit back and relax in the fantasy of a good story.  Problem is: I have all these silly facts floating in my head from lots of education, and they tend to detract from the experience. UGH!

Let’s start with one of my biggest pet peeves: timelines, that annoying nonsense that gets in the way of a Hollywood story.  Take the Lone Ranger from Disney.  The premise of the whole film was the personal feud between two pair of brothers, one nefarious (Cavendish) and the other lawmen (Reid) surrounding the events of the Transcontenental Railroad (May 10, 1869).  Let’s start with a few minor issues.

1. Bass Reeves (Texas Ranger who is thought to have inspired the Lone Ranger stories) wasn’t a Ranger until 1875.

2. A corrupt US Army officer, Jay Fuller, massacres a village.  The only one I can find that remotely happened around that time, occurred around Christmas of 1868 (6 months before, not days), and in Oklahoma NOT Texas.

3. Tonto was supposed to be the only survivor of his village after the Cavendish brothers massacred the village 27 years earlier. No record of such a mass killing exists.

4. Tonto was given a cheap pocket watch from Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1842 in exchange for information on a silver deposit.  Sears, Roebuck wasn’t founded until 1893.

This leads us to the next bone of contention: Location continuity.  As much as I like to see Utah’s film industry get a nod, it’s a little disconcerting to see Utah become Texas in every way possible.

1. The Golden Spike (last spike) was driven in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. Promontory, UT is almost 800 miles (as the crow flies) from the area in Texas that this was depicted in maps in the movie.

2. The Texas does not have Delicate Arch, or Monument Valley.  It doesn’t have anything close to that.  No matter what a certain Texas themed steakhouse chain wants you to believe.

3. Comanche territory in Texas was nowhere near the size that the maps in the movie portray (taking up most of the area of Texas to North Dakota).

Then my last beef: Bad science.  Some of the science in movies is just plain awful, and downright dangerous.

1. No helper engines.  Trains are heavy, and require at least one helper engine to make it up steep inclines.  This is especially true for steam locomotives in the 19th century.

2. Handling nitroglycerin like any other liquid.  Let’s be honest here.  Nitroglycerin is a HIGHLY volatile chemical.  Manufacturing was so hazardous that its inventor, Alfred Nobel, insisted on having NO machinery or anything to cause vibration in his factory, and even lost an assistant when an explosion blew it up.  The point being that you would NEVER put it near the railroad, let alone on it.  That’s why Nobel invented Dynamite.  It was nitroglycerin in a stable form for easy transport. 

3. Guns + dynamite = huge explosion.  Unless you’re using it against said liquid nitroglycerin, you would need Tannerite (yeah, not around then).

4. Silver makes a terrible ballistic material.  It’s terribly expensive, valuable, and less than half the weight and density of Lead.

When movies do get things right I have to cheer.  Star Trek: Into Darkness did a lot of things right, but even then I was a little disappointed.

1. Kirk and gang never experience ANY time dilation when going warp speed = Bad.

2. When at warp the light is red shifted, so you see microwaves and radio waves as white light = Good.

3. Space ship damage leaves debris field = Good.

4. Enterprise enters earth’s atmosphere shortly after engaging in battle near the moon = BAD! (3 day trip for Apollo mission).

5. Transporting people from Earth to Kronos = BAD!  Doesn’t that make the whole starship thing moot?

6. Bat’leth vs phazer = don’t think Klingons are stupid enough to take a knife to a gunfight.

7. Kirk getting in trouble for violating The Prime Directive = Good, but wouldn’t a court-martial be held.

8. Seatbelts! = Good.  Finally, someone got the hint to install seatbelts on a moving vessel.

9. Handling a radiation victim without a suit = BAD!  One of the first victims from a core meltdown was so radioactive they had to bury him in the ambulance he died in.  It was only for the homage to Wrath of Khan, and a set up for a cheesy KHAAAANNN!!!

10. Flying in arcs = Good.  When Kirk and Khan are launched out of the garbage chute, they travel on a curved arc instead of a straight line.

I’m sure there’s more I could nitpick, but I think you get the idea.  I guess there must have been more to enjoy with Star Trek than Lone Ranger, because I’ve seen Cris Pine kick holy behind 4 times in the theater, and I’m never going to sit through Lone Ranger again.  It wasn’t the actor’s faults.  Both had decent talent that acted well, but Trek did more things believable and right than Lone Ranger.  Despite the fact that not all the Enterprise crew rate seatbelts.

A Word on Piracy

      I'm going to take a step back from my normal routine of blogging about science, to mention another topic dear to my heart.  It concerns Science Fiction literature, and the effects digital piracy is having on our favorite entertainment.  For those who think that science and sci-fi have nothing in common, let me just say that many of today's technologies would not exist if someone hadn't inspired a scientist or engineer to figure out how that fictional tech could really work.  Unfortunately, the creativity is at risk due to the nature of digital piracy. 

      There is a lot of talk about piracy lately.  It is pervasive, and affects every product and service known.  Pretty much any form of intellectual property is subject to piracy: books, software, movies, and music. 

      Sometimes the piracy is directly related to scarcity; such as the television show “Game of Thrones”, where HBO only allows subscribers to view it, or you have to purchase a copy.  Many people, like myself, want to watch it, but are not willing to plunk down $50 for each season without REALLY wanting to watch it repeatedly.  Others pirate because they don’t like the idea of someone getting rich off their hard-earned cash.  They envision authors, actors, musicians, and the nameless leech-like executives (that suckle off the teat of the consumer) rolling around vaults of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.  The vast majority of people pirate because they feel that they shouldn’t have to pay for something that they can get free.  Unfortunately, every action has its consequence, and piracy is no exception.

      To protect their investment, content producers (i.e. movie studios, record companies, publishers, authors, musicians, actors, and video game makers) have resorted to draconian methods and tactics.  DRM, SOPA, PIPA, DMCA, and ACTA are just a few of the acronyms that we have been forced to deal with in an effort to combat piracy.  Every single one of these efforts has broad unintended consequences that do nothing more than hinder the free exchange of ideas, and stifle creativity.

      What kind of piracy are we talking about?  Is it Oliver Wendell Jones shouting at his computer “Avast! ye scurvy corporate swabs! Prepare to be boarded!”?  No.  It is taking material that doesn’t belong to you, and either giving it away, or selling it for a profit without compensating the original creator.

      I once saw a description on YouTube that stated that the poster wanted more content so they could make money from Google ads.  This person was quite honest that they didn’t create the video in question, but felt that somehow the creators OWED they for making something they enjoyed.  This made me angry.  Not because I had anything to do with making the video in question, but that someone who had put NO effort into producing the finished product felt that, they should enjoy the profits of other people’s labor.  Even the hacking group Anonymous took issue when someone ripped videos off their YouTube channel, and made money selling ads to view it on a similar sounding channel.

      What bothers me is not someone enjoying my work without giving me a dime, but there are other people trying to make money on something they had absolutely NO help in creating.  Although I work very hard, and put in thousands of hours to complete a single novel, I am not the only one involved.  My wife put in just as much time as I do, as well as my daughters.  Everyone worked to make this the best it could possibly be.  We looked for continuity problems, grammatical errors, plot holes, character consistency, and scrutinized every word to come up with something that would be pleasurable to read. 

      Many self-published authors are satisfied with their first draft, and put it out to the public without any regard for spelling, punctuation, grammar, plot, story, or consistency.  Many books (movies and TV shows) that DO have traditional publishers lack imagination, or discernible plot, and are replete with continuity errors.  I read some books, and wonder how in the world these monstrosities ever got to a printing press.  I have done my very best to make my books, and stories the best they can be.  Are they perfect?  No, but they are as good as I can make them.

      If you enjoy my writing, and want to continue to progress along the story line; I have to be able to produce them.  Long story short: I have bills (just like you).  I can’t barter for my phone, mortgage, taxes, gas, car, or children needing medical care.  I have to pay cash.  The only way to do that is to work, very hard.  Even with a steady job, something always demands more of my hard-earned money.  I am not the only author in this position.  Only a select few (authors, actors, artists, etc.) make enough money that they can quit their 9 to 5 jobs and create full-time.  Ask any author who belongs to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and they will tell you that they don’t make much money from writing.  They do it because they enjoy it.  Most are happy to find a modest paycheck in the mail for their efforts, but some don’t even make back their advance.

      For those who chose the self-publish route, the idea is quantity over quality.  The more books you have, the more money you make.  It doesn’t matter if the books make little sense, and have horrible writing.  Sell them for 99¢ and people will not mind paying for something that took almost no effort to create.  I will not, cannot abide that mentality. 

      I feel that you get what you pay for, and most publishers ask for more than they deserve.  When you purchase a J.K. Rowling book, you pay for the publisher’s cost (including paper, ink, illustrators, editors, typesetters, printers, and profit) as well as the author’s agent (usually 15-20%) and finally the writer (who might get as little as 10-20% of the book price.  My books aren’t cheap, but they aren’t expensive (like those sold by major publishers).  I have taken on all the expenses of the publishers, and still have people who (for some silly reason) expect to be paid for their hard work.  They deserve to be paid.  That is only possible if people pay for the book.

      I don’t charge an exorbitant price to read my book (either in physical, or ebook form), but I don’t want people to think it’s some cheap pulp fiction novel plopped together in an afternoon, and spammed its way to profit.  I only ask that a fair price be paid, so I can continue to make these stories available.  It is a LOT of work to get a decent book published.  There are many expenses, (usually assumed by publishers) which I have had to accept in order to get the book into your hands.  It has to be worth it to me to continue to publish the stories I have, or I think my efforts (and money) would be better spent on other things. 

      Piracy takes the financial incentive away, and makes it a liability.  It is stealing.  It is taking my precious time, energy, effort, creativity, and money.  Whatever justification is used to reconcile the need to get something free or even profit from my work is only an illusion.  If you were to reverse the situation, things would be different.  If you spent years working on something, spending thousands of hours on it, investing your passion and soul into crafting it; only to have someone else take it (or worse: take credit for it).  You would be outraged (to put it mildly).

      What I’m asking for isn’t much.  The cost of the novels isn’t outlandish, and barely covers my expenses.  I’m not being a giant douche and sticking DRM all over it.  I’m asking you to be a decent person, because I’m being decent to you.  I probably don’t even know you.  I am asking you (politely) to allow me to continue to share my hobby with you.  That isn’t too much to ask.  It isn’t unreasonable.  It is only asking a fair price for quality. 

      You might not like my writing, or enjoy Science Fiction or Fantasy (not everyone does).  If that is the case, don’t buy my books, but please don’t think that piracy isn’t a victimless crime without consequences.  SOPA might not have passed, but that doesn’t mean that laws like it are going away.  As long as people pirate, there will be companies trying to punish that activity, regardless of the unintended consequences.  Don’t give them the ammunition they need to make something as simple as reading a book a living nightmare.  If you don’t believe me, ask the Swedish woman who had her Kindle turned into a brick, and all her lawful purchases annulled because she was suspected of piracy, or the Hugo awards presentation that was effectively shut down by DRMbots that determined copyrighted material was being used without explicit permission (which they had).

      One of the main themes of DARK ESCAPE is that actions have consequences.  Think to yourself; is this inexpensive book really worth ruining everyone’s enjoyment over the long run?  The answer you’re looking for is - no, it isn’t

Interplanetary Landfill

It’s time I explained something about garbage.  Not just any garbage, mind you, space garbage.  Every satellite, manned spacecraft, and missile ever launched since 1956 has left, in some way, some debris in orbit.  From tools, and bags dropped by astronauts, to shattered remnants of weapons tests and collisions.  The problem has been recognized as a real threat to space travel for quite some time, but little has been done to address the problem (other than monitoring). 

Space junk is such an issue it has its own webpage, Wikipedia article, and an entire division of NORAD devoted to the problem.   Unlike the scene in Wall—e where the spaceship busts through the crowd of satellites surrounding the earth, the situation is far more serious.  Satellites don’t just sit still in orbit.   They travel tens of thousands of miles per hour.  In an earlier post, I showed a video of a car hitting a wall at over a hundred miles an hour.  A collision in orbit is 10,000% worse.  Even a small object can cripple a satellite, or destroy a space station.  The ISS (International Space Station) has to routinely alter course to avoid floating debris.

Image credit NASA

The problem isn’t getting any better.  Every month there are new satellites launched into various orbits, on various missions, by an increasing number of countries.  Not every launch is successful, and not every country cares about the debris left over (I’m looking at you DPRK and China). 

This isn’t ordinary junk.  It isn’t plastics, spare tires, Bart Simpson dolls, or unused AOL floppy disks.  Satellites are generally made of expensive materials in order to resist the harsh conditions of space.  This means a lot of gold, copper, aluminum, silicon, and rare earth metals that comprise electrical circuits, and the shielding necessary to keep them from shorting out during solar storms.  There are power systems, which can include solar and nuclear sources, and fuel for guidance systems to keep the satellite in the desired orbit.  Satellites are NOT cheap.

The greatest problem confronting scientists right now is how to deal with the problem.  DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) has been looking at solutions that involve robots, lasers, nets, and automated spacecraft to collect the ever increasing trash, and get rid of it (either by recycling, moving, vaporizing, or returning).   Described in this Mental_Floss article.

The solution isn’t as easy as it sounds.  Remember the debris is moving rather quickly (17,000 mph +) and that contacting said debris in the wrong manner could, as I said earlier, cause significant damage to the spacecraft, if not the debris.   A simple case of this was a weapons test by China in 2007, where they destroyed a satellite using a “kinetic kill vehicle”.   The resulting impact shattered both vehicles into over 150,000 pieces with over 2,300 of those pieces larger than the size of a golf ball.   

Lasers would move the debris out of the way instead of vaporizing it, because blowing the junk up only adds to the problem.  I’m not a fan of this because: 1) it’s wasteful (throwing away gold makes no sense), 2) pushing our junk further into space, is just polluting the entire solar system instead of just our earth moon system.  

I’m also not a fan of capturing the debris and then vaporizing it on re—entry, because we’re just back to throwing away gold.  On top of that, we go through the expense of launching the retrieval vehicle into space.  

Using a single use capture vehicle to go after one bit of space debris at a time would take a very long time somewhat address the issue.  Remember there are hundreds of thousands of individual bits of junk up there.  This method would return the debris, but be a very expensive remedy in the end. 

Obviously, the problem is a complex one, and that no one solution will work in all cases.  It’s also not a problem limited to the United States.  This is a global issue that needs to be addressed sooner, rather than later.  

PLEISTOCENE PARK II

After reviewing my last post, I felt that some additional clarification was needed beyond some appending (which I have already done).  Adding it to the last blog would only make it unreadable.

First and foremost, I must clarify that I am not condemning Dr. Church, his theories, or his work.  I tried (unsuccessfully in the first draft) to state that Dr. Church had been misquoted, and that he had attempted to correct the problem by denying the accusation that he was attempting an ethically questionable procedure.  I also was not implying that he was a reflection of the fictional John Hammond from “Jurassic Park”.

The hypothetical scenario postulated by Dr. Church in Der Spiegel and the fictional story by Michael Crichton bring up the same ethical questions, and are easily compared by anyone who has read the book, or seen the movie.  Dr. Church has simply become the focal point of the Internet’s knee jerk reaction.  The ethical conversation is constantly happening in academic circles, and has been going on for years.

The interesting thing I noticed (after my own knee was done jerking) was that the Internet seemed to react in an amazing way.  Reporters, bloggers, and laypeople tended to react as if this technology was readily available, and ready for implementation.  Dr. Church, correctly, pointed out the current theories and techniques required to accomplish the cloning processes are evolving quickly, and that it will be possible to manipulate DNA to benefit society.  He also noted that this isn’t possible right now.

Cloning a complex organism like a human is extremely difficult, and fraught with problems.  Even mammals that we can clone are very expensive and usually reserved for research purposes only.  The high rate of failure and multiple problems with live births makes cloning impractical for anything else.  The idea that this technology is currently perfected and practically viable shows just how our society has difficulty discerning fact from fantasy.

The problem comes from the ethics and morality of manipulating the genetic structure to such an advanced degree.  There are shades of grey, and certainly slippery slopes that have to be negotiated.  Frankly, Dr. Church came off as arrogant, and dismissive of the morality involved in such endeavors.  This isn’t surprising as it’s his passion and life’s work to investigate all the possibilities available, and to increase our understanding of our own genetic code.  Being able to understand the potential and truth about our universe is essential for any good scientist.

The main issue he brings up is that the ethics and morality used to determine what is right and wrong largely depends on what any society is willing to accept.  There are parts of the world where genetic manipulation, of any kind, is unacceptable, and illegal, but others where they are more tolerant. 

Where this becomes troubling is where the unintended consequences of such actions become a hazard that can spin beyond our control.  A current controversy is applicable.

A researcher, studying how to weaponize a strain of the influenza virus, wants to publish his research in a publicly available peer reviewed journal.  This person is doing what scientists are supposed to do research, review, and repeat.  Research is only good if it is reproducible by one’s peers.  If you want a case study of what happens when they circumvent this process, Google Pons and Fleischmann.  The issue isn’t that he shouldn’t be doing this research in the first place, but what will happen if someone capable or repeating his research uses it as an actual weapon. 

This is when the variation in morals and ethics become unacceptable.  A terrorist or rogue state might have no problem justifying the use of a weapon that can’t possibly be controlled, but the government that funded the research would never dream of using it. 

This is the double-edged sword of science.  Oppenheimer regretted the use of the atomic bomb as a weapon.  He wasn’t a bad scientist, or person.  He was doing the research he felt was right, but was disenfranchised by those who used his research as a weapon to take the lives of thousands of Japanese civilians. 

The subjective nature of ethics and morality make the issue of genetic research a perilous venture.  The unintended consequences must be weighed against the benefits of any genetic manipulative technology.  What can easily be used to extend life and cure disease, can easily be turned to destructive ends.  What Dr. Church advocates is open discussion of these topics.  The free exchange of ideas is laudable, and clear definitions about what is, and isn’t, acceptable need to be established.  The difficulty with this discussion lies with the subjective nature of these ethics.

What Dr. Church understands, but appears to dismiss, is that people are uncomfortable with the idea of creating a sentient life form, so closely related to humans, in a lab.  The idea that humans would assume control over our own evolutionary process appears to be inevitable to Dr. Church, but that doesn’t sit well with most people.  The religious implications of supplanting God aside, the idea is arrogant and elitist.  Who determines the direction of human evolution, and who evolves and who doesn’t?  Does this degrade into an X-men, Gattica, Hunger Games, or Dune Sci-fi morality tale? 

Science fiction writers have posed these questions since H.G. Wells.  In many ways, fiction allows us to explore these ideas, and have these hypothetical discussions before they occur.  The problems really start when the actual discussions begin over science fact.  Most people have a difficult time separating the facts from fiction, and it is interesting to watch the ignorance square off with the arrogance online. 

The unfortunate reality is that scientists seem to dismiss the concerns and ideas of the countless works of fiction because they are just that...fiction.  That is what frightens the public the most, and why we have celebrities touting wild discredited “scientific” theories about the causes of autism in children.  That is why there is such a firestorm over the very idea that Dr. Church postulated the cloning of a 30,000-year-old extinct hominid species.  The idea that science would be too arrogant to understand the full consequences of their actions is a common theme in science fiction, and is only reinforced when scientists don’t choose their words carefully.  I guess writers, like me, won’t run out of material anytime soon.