In his usual thorough and readable style, Rand Simberg analyzes the language of HB 3245, entitled the Commercial Space Act of 2003.

If you have been following the X-Prize (and Simberg) closely, you are probably aware of the concerns about which regulatory regime would govern suborbital flights with passengers -- the fairly
mature commercial aviation regime under the FAA (complete with ruinously expensive aircraft certification) or the Commercial Space Flight administrator (formerly under the DoT, currently under the FAA, and again under DoT, if the bill passes). As Rand points out, while the bill fills gaps left open in the Commercial Space Flight Act of 1984 to specifically address the issue of carrying passengers (a/k/a "spaceflight participants") as payload, it is a bit open-ended on the compliance requirements for a vehicle operator to carry a spaceflight participant. In other words, it leaves a great deal to the discretion of the regulators.

In all, it would be an improvement over the current regime, primarily for the certainty it would bring. But I can't help wondering whether the Wright Brothers would have succeeded had they been confronted with the mass of laws and regulations we now inflict on our innovators.

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Steven Den Beste has nightmares. So do I.

What can we do to rein in out-of-control lawyers?

I personally favor the "English" rule (discussed at length, including pros and cons, here).

One thing's certain: if bar associations (and judges) think lawyer jokes are the cause (and not just a symptom) of declining respect for the profession while ignoring the real causes, then other solutions will be imposed from outside, for better or worse.

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Virginia Postrel had a couple of interesting posts recently about the visual aesthetics of musical instruments.

I play pipe organ (solo) as well as Hammond Organ and electronic keyboards (in a band), so I have some direct experience with these matters. While I am an amateur organist, I did study four years with a great professor (Frank Speller) on one of the best and most beautiful instruments in North America at UT-Austin.

Pipe organs are each truly unique, and exist at an interesting intersection of music, architecture, interior design, history, and geography. There is no "standard" organ in the sense that there is a standard grand piano (88 keys) or acoustic guitar (6 strings). There has been a long-running debate going on in the pipe organ community about the aesthetics of a major new organ being built by Glatter-Goetz/Rosales going into the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles. Gehry himself has described the organ facade he helped design as a "box of french fries."

In the context of the building, the organ design seems perfectly suited to its environment. But many organists have their drawers in a bunch because of the perceived lack
of "dignity." They have already passed judgment on it as an atrocity. Mind you, no one has yet even heard a note played on the instrument, which is likely to be on a par with other great modern concert hall organs (at the Meyerson, the Benaroya, etc.)

I just hope the sound of the organ is as bold as its visual design.

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Glenn Reynolds has an interview up with Neal Stephenson today at Tech Central Station.

Glenn wrote a column last week reflecting on Stephenson's Quicksilver and the renewed interest in the 17th century, which was the hatching ground for the Enlightenment ideals that helped form our liberal, capitalist, secular society.
Many of the criticisms I have seen of Quicksilver are aimed at the multiple narrative asides into the minutiae of 17th century life. But it was exactly those kinds of asides in Cryptonomicon that really turned me on to his writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash and look forward to plowing my way through Stephenson's latest.

I'll have more comments on the Enlightenment in a later post on the separation of church and state.

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Early polling results showing a win by Ah-nold.

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Interesting synchronicity between Bruce Sterling's "top ten" list I discussed below (and which Prof. Hall discussed here) and the classic Star Trek episode "The Naked Time," which I am currently viewing on DVD (#10 on Sterling's list). At the beginning of the episode, Spock and Lt. Tormolen beam down to Psi 2000, where the lieutenant idiotically removes his glove, exposing himself to the contaminant that releases everyone's inhibitions and nearly leads to the destruction of the Enterprise. Starting at 10:21 into the episode (and shortly before his death), Lt. Tormolen waxes eloquent about the futility of manned exploration of space (#6 on Sterling's list):

"What are we doing out here anyway?. . . [We] leave men and women stuck out on freezing planets to die. . . What are we doing out here in space? Good? What good? We're polluting it. . . destroying it. . . we've got no business being out here, no business. If a man was supposed to fly, he'd have wings. If he was supposed to be out in space, he wouldn't need air to breathe . . . We don't belong here. It's not ours."

You can guess where I stand on this. I believe we do belong in outer space. As Heinlein said, the earth is just too small and fragile a basket for humanity to keep all of its eggs in. We are one asteroid impact, one script-kiddie nanobot or custom-sequenced doomsday virus from extinction. Now, whether the "manned exploration" should continue to be done by NASA is a debatable point. I am not too happy with the way NASA ended the USAF's approach best exemplified by the X-15 of incrementally expanding the flight envelope. I think there is still a valid military role, but the "scientific" value of the whole "civilian" space enterprise has been way oversold, as Rand Simberg has so much more eloquently put it elsewhere (again and again).

But now we see private enterprise picking up where the X-15 left off. Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne follows the same principle as the X-15, except that he had to design and build his own B-52 (the stunningly beautiful White Knight) to launch it from.

We also now find out that the SF idea of a space elevator may not be so farfetched given reasonably foreseeable implementations of current materials science.

So perhaps we'll see settlement (not just "exploration") sometime in the near future.

Charming Star Trek anachronisms in this episode: At 28:18, you can see Spock using a slide rule to calculate the Enterprise's orbital trajectory. Also, check out the analog clock at 47:05.

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Nice article at DefenseLINK today about WWII veteran Richard D. Beaver, age 84.

Some highlights: He had quite an interesting career in the Navy, and was one of the relatively few enlisted naval aviators to serve our country. "We were kind of a breed of our own, I guess," Beaver said. "They called us 'Silver Eagles,' and three enlisted pilots who were commissioned became admirals. So that's quite a history, which we're proud of."

Beaver exhibits the attitude that I am convinced has as much to do with longevity as diet or exercise: "I came here to the Armed Forces Retirement Home (formerly the Naval Home) in 1991 when I was 72. People are supposed to be old at that age, but I didn't feel old. I felt like I was about 40 or 50, and there are people here at 60 who look like they're 120."

As I begin to advance beyond young adulthood (I'm still only 35), I am starting to see some of my peers' mindsets beginning to harden. Some of them are really beginning to act old before their time. I hope I look and feel as good as Mr. Beavers at his age.

On a side note, the Armed Forces Information Service maintains a free mailing list and will email articles to you containing stories (like this one) that never see the light of day in ordinary mass media. Check out this link to read more about subscription information.

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Kirk versus Picard. Who wins? You decide. (Via the Corner).

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Thanks to Prof. Hall at Spacecraft for the plug! (And yes, this blog is brand new).

He has some kind words for NasaWatch today. I hope he found that site through my blog, as NasaWatch was one of the first sites I began to visit regularly when I initially ventured onto the Internet in 1996.

Like Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor and the now-defunct Suck.com, Keith Cowing was blogging up a storm before the term "blog" had even been invented. And he shows how it's done.

Thanks again for the linkage.

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Charles Johnson links to a beautiful image of the Sombrero galaxy.

I have to admit, when I first saw it, I thought "Photoshop." (As did an unfortunate troll in the comments section, who insisted that the image was faked, even after being given the link to an original, untouched photo).

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Texas science fiction author Bruce Sterling has a new article up at "http://www.technologyreview.com."

When I went through my cyberpunk phase, I was a big fan of Sterling's. I drifted away from him for several years but greatly enjoyed his Holy Fire, which examines the effects of life-extension technologies on humans in the classic hard-SF tradition.

Now he has come out with a list of technologies that "deserve to die." While I think the goal of identifying obsolete technologies that should be phased out is a noble one, I don't agree with the general thrust of this particular list. It begins with Nuclear Weapons and ends with DVDs. It also contains Manned Spaceflight (#6) and Incandescent Lighting (#4). (His views on the latter are not likely to win him any rave reviews from Virginia Postrel).

Getting rid of nuclear weapons is a pipe dream. I agree with Sterling's point that we have in fact honed our precision technology to the fine point that nuclear weapons are no longer "necessary." But the main value of nukes remains their strategic deterrent power, not their tactical utility. I think we need to preserve the legitimate threat that we can vaporize Mecca, or Pyongynag, or Tehran, (or even Moscow or Beijing) to preserve the stability of our current international system. Instead of destroying nuclear weapons, I would prefer to see a gradual swords-to-plowshares transition to their peaceful use to power Orion starships.

Sterling's views on manned spaceflight also reflect a strange lack of vision in an SF author. First, his argument is against a straw man: "Thanks to decades of biological research, it [is] now quite clear that flying around the solar system is bad for ones health." I'm not sure which alternate history he is looking at, because so far we haven't done any manned "flying around the solar system." In this he fails to anticipate what many SF authors and speculative engineers propose, namely, the use of centripetal/centrifugal forces to simulate gravity on extended missions. Second, and perhaps more important, Sterling seems to see space exploration as something that can be "destroyed" as though it were nothing more than a government program. But with each passing day, I am more optimistic that we will see the development of commercial, manned space travel thanks to private pioneers such as Burt Rutan and my neighbor (of sorts) John Carmack.

I'll be posting more on these items later, but some good links to explore space news and policy in general are: Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings, Keith Cowing's NasaWatch and SpaceRef pages, and Professor Hall's Spacecraft blog.

Update: I should make it clear that I don't consider flying circles in LEO, or even the seven manned missions to the moon (with six landings) to be "flying around" the solar system. Heck, Kubrick's and Clarke's 1968 vision of our future in space had us arriving at Jupiter two years ago.

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It's always sad to see it happen. I was afraid last season that Alias jumped the shark when Sydney and Vaughn hooked up ("They Did It"), and even more certain once Sydney became a regular CIA agent instead of a double agent (the Alliance is destroyed).

The first couple of episodes this season have now confirmed my fears. Consider the shark jumped.

Update: My brilliant wife just pointed out the continuity error from the cliffhanger episode last season to the premier this season. Last season, the old CIA station director (the bald guy) took the call from Sydney when she woke up in Hong Kong. But he is nowhere to be seen this season, and Dixon is now the director. Remember -- in show time, there was no delay between the cliffhanger and this season.

Update: Just watched the end of tonight's episode. You've got to be kidding. The new character is Mrs. Vaughn??

***SPROING*** That was my suspension of disbelief completely and finally snapping.

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MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. As I click through the site, I have to remind myself that this is not a science fiction movie. Check out the team descriptions on the Research page.

I'm particularly interested in the results of Team 4's research into biomaterials and nanodevices for soldier medical technology.

Update: I find the medical applications of nanotechnology particularly amazing whenever I stop to consider that it was only at the time of my parents' birth that penicillin first became widely available.

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You might wonder about the name of this blog. Who does this guy think he is claiming to be the "best" in anything?

As should be clear from my first few posts here, music will be a recurrent theme on this blog. Born in 1968, I was blessed to come of age musically during the golden age of 80s rock. One of my favorite hard rock stations during these formative years was Q102, "Texas' Best Rock."

At about the same time, I was acquiring a taste for "hard" science fiction, and I began to work my way through Robert Heinlein's juvenile fiction. I soon graduated to Heinlein's master works such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land.

As most net-geeks probably know, the word "grok" is a Martian word from Stranger in a Strange Land and means literally "to drink" and more loosely "to be at one with." Its many senses include understanding, fully comprehending, intuiting, empathizing, and so on. Following in the time-honored SF tradition of merciless punning, I put the two together.

Like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

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Today would have been the 49th birthday of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I'm not a huge fan of his, but I admire his mastery of the blues.

Plus he was a Texan, which redeems all kinds of sins.

For more on the blues, check out PBS tonight, for the Red White and Blue installment of The Blues.

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Tired of Rush? Me too.

That's why I prefer the original Rush. Look for their new DVD in less than three weeks (October 21, to be exact).

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Who am I and why am I here?

I'm a Texan, a husband, a father, a lawyer, a musician, an SF fan, a soccer coach, a cyclist, and an amateur theologian. This is my first try at blogging, and I hope to weave the many interests I have into a cohesive narrative on life, the universe, and everything.

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This site is a personal weblog and represents my opinions on whatever comes to mind. It does not represent in any way the opinions of my employer or any other of my clients.

I retain copyright in all original materials published on this blog. I love the public domain and would be happy for you to exercise your fair use rights to any of my original materials here. Copy, spread, quote, criticize. But if you do use any of my original works in any way, please do me the courtesy of giving me attribution and a link.

I am an attorney, but I am not your attorney, absent a physically (not electronically) signed engagement agreement. Nothing on this site is intended to constitute legal analysis. Don't rely on anything here; I'm writing for fun and for free, and you get what you pay for.

This means you should not send me confidential information or ask me for advice, either through comments on the blog or via email. I reserve the right to delete any comments posted here for any reason. I can't imagine that I would ever edit someone else's comments here, but if I do, then I will indicate the editorial changes. If you send me an email, please note that I reserve the right to publish portions of it on this blog or elsewhere.

Thanks,
John Lanius

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