Free Frank Warner

Atlantis’ last flight: For NASA, the beginning of the end

Today’s launch of the space shuttle Atlantis begins the last flight of the modern American space program. Its scheduled return on July 20, 42 years after Americans first landed on the moon, will be a sad day, an ending.

The optimists are assuring us that ending the government-sponsored U.S. space program opens the door to privately sponsored space exploration, in which entrepreneurs will have market incentives to find more efficient ways to take humans far deeper into space.

The pessimists are not so sure. It is possible that government will kill private space travel, too. The most likely scenarios: Someone will complain that Private Launcher X’s rockets produce scary pollution, or Private Launcher Y will have one fatal accident, and the government will over-react. Result: Americans grounded forever.

I hope private companies will pick up the fallen baton. I hope they’ll find breakthroughs in energy and biology to thrust new manned (and womenned) spaceships to Mars and beyond. I pray the government that abandoned the new frontier doesn’t block others who are boldly determined to go.

Frank Warner

Global warming turning the Sahara green?

It seems eminently wise to prevent a major increase of any gas in the Earth's atmosphere. At the same time, the recent increase of carbon dioxide levels could have some beneficial effects. We're hearing now that global warming may be have made parts of the Sahara ready for farming.

Now, if the governments there are wise enough to set their citizens free to farm, we may soon see the greening of the desert.

We still should closely monitor global CO2 levels, and do what we can to slow the increase. There has to be a point where the CO2 is too high.

Frank Warner

George Monbiot: Japan disaster converts me to support nuclear power

George Monbiot, longtime opponent of nuclear power, in The Mail & Guardian:

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation. ...

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

This confirms a feeling I've sensed since the beginning of the Japanese disaster. After more than 30 years experience with nuclear power, people on both sides of the politics are a lot more realistic.

Frank Warner

Astounding: Satellite photos of Japan, before and after earthquake

Take a look at The New York Times gallery of satellite photos showing several Japanese locations before and after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. On each photo, you can grab the center frame and move it back and forth to compare the civil order that was with the chaos that is.

Dramatic!

Frank Warner

Nuclear accident in Japan: The Falkland Syndrome

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant reported an explosion at 3:30 p.m. today Japan time in its No. 1 containment building. The video looks scary. It's hard to believe no power plant worker was killed.

If a full meltdown occurs, no, it will not burn through the Earth to the Falkland Islands. But this is a dangerous stage, and if the reactor north of Tokyo melts down and spews radioactive particles throughout the region, it could be a lingering catastrophe, particularly for a nation as geographically small as Japan.

The series of earthquakes and the tsunami together amount to a disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Frank Warner

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Update: So far I'm hearing three Fukushima workers were exposed to high doses of radiation, four have broken bones, and one, at a separate Fukushima reactor, was found dead. I'm not sure what this man is supposed to have died from. It sounds odd.

Meanwhile, four Japanese railroad trains just disappeared from the tracks?

Officials also are saying there is no damage to the Fukushima No. 1 reactor's steel container. I guess they mean the reactor vessel. Sure, it's good to have to have an intact reactor vessel, but if everything else is going wrong all around it, that vessel won't last. Let's hope the sea water cools it off enough.

Never a moment more destructive: Tsunami in Japan

Are you seeing the video?

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake has hit Japan. It shook the earth off Japan’s northeast coast and triggered a tsunami that has swept away thousands of buildings.

No one yet knows how many people have been killed and injured. Two hundred and fifty miles southwest of the epicenter, large sections of Tokyo are without power. Closer to the quake, fires have broken out all over the city of Sendai. The Onagawa nuclear plant has shut down.

Let’s hope the human toll is low. But the damage we've already seen is so extensive that it may take decades to recover.

Frank Warner

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Next: Watch for the impact in Taiwan and the Philippines. Then Waikiki, Hawaii.

Unit 731: More of Japan’s WWII atrocities uncovered

Sixty-six years after World War II, Japanese officials are digging up a medical school site in Japan that may hold human remains from Imperial Japan’s wartime program of ghastly experiments on living prisoners.

The program was called Unit 731. Most of its horrifying work was done in China, but some of its “specimens” were sent to Japan.

Unit 731, based in Harbin in northern China, conducted experiments on tens of thousands of mostly Chinese and Korean prisoners, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war. Some historians estimate up to 250,000 people were subjected to experiments. The remains of some are thought to have been transported from China to Tokyo for analysis.

According to historical accounts, male and female prisoners, named "logs" by their torturers, were subjected to vivisection without anaesthesia after they had been deliberately infected with diseases such as typhus and cholera. Some had limbs amputated or organs removed.

Remember, defeating Japan in World War II wasn’t necessary to avenge Pearl Harbor. Defeating Japan was necessary to stop that dictatorship’s horrors on many fronts.

Frank Warner

Can Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords say yes or no? Anything?

Astronaut Mark Kelly, whose wife Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is reported to be recovering from a Jan. 8 bullet through her head, said today he will take his scheduled space shuttle flight in April.

Then he said his wife “would” approve:

“I know her very well and she would be very comfortable with the decision that I made.”

What gives? I thought Congresswoman Giffords moved an arm on Jan. 12 to indicate, “yes, I can see.” I thought her condition was upgraded from “serious” to “good” on Jan. 25. She was making “lightning-speed” progress just nine days ago in a Houston rehab center.

Absence of information. So why is Kelly saying only that Giffords “would be very comfortable” with his flight into space? Didn’t he ask her?

Or is the Arizona congresswoman not making the fast recovery that doctors and Kelly said she was? Kelly refused to talk about her condition today, and doctors have stopped giving progress reports, so this is confusing at best.

We all wish Congresswoman Giffords a speedy and complete recovery, but don’t we have a right to know whether a member of Congress is competent enough to say yes or no?

Frank Warner

Cost of converting U.S. to 100% nuclear energy? $2,550 per person per year, cheap!

Chris Uhlik, a Stanford graduate with a doctorate in electrical engineering, has just estimated how much it would cost to convert the United States’ energy mix to 100 percent nuclear-powered electricity.

His calculation: $2,550 per person per year, or about 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Uhlik says that with reasonable regulations, the price could be reduced to less than 2 percent of GDP.

That ain’t bad. Not only would this American electricity be free of carbon dioxide emissions, it would be free of profits shipped off to foreign slave states and other tyrannical troublemakers.

As Uhlik says (in comments below his post):

Solar is on a fast learning curve (about 18%) so it could (IMO probably will) win in the end, after all, look at all those self-installing, self-repairing, capex-free solar cells based on chlorophyl covering our planet today. I fully expect technology to advance to the point where nanotech/biotech PV and photo-chemical cells again sustainably generate a significant share of the world’s human energy demand (like they did several thousand years ago).

In the mean time, I worry that atmospheric CO2 levels will rise to dangerous levels while we wait for solar energy and storage technologies to mature. So while the solar learning curve is fast, I worry that maybe it isn’t fast enough. I can’t do the calculation because I don’t think anyone understands climate dynamics well enough yet to definitively say what CO2 level is “too high”.

From what we know today, I think CO2 levels are already too high and we are in for substantial sea level rise over the next century no matter what. I’d prefer we get off fossil fuels sooner by using mature nuclear technologies to displace fossil carbon now in order to minimize the (substantial) damage. And I did this little calculation to show that the cost of doing so isn’t unreasonably large and is in fact small compared to doing the same thing with conventional renewables.

Problem solver. If we can develop some wise leadership, our Congress can jump on this idea, reform our energy policies and finally solve the 1973 crisis.

Frank Warner

Coded message of Civil War just deciphered by CIA codebreaker

A secret message to Confederate General John Pemberton, delivered in a tiny bottle during the July 4, 1863, siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, finally has been decoded for historians by a retired CIA codebreaker.

The message from a Confederate officer tells Pemberton, whose forces were under attack on the east side of the Mississippi River, that he could expect no help from Confederate troops on the west side of the river, but a diversion might be arranged.

This was the day Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. (Meanwhile, Union General George Meade was defeating General Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg, Pa. Lee retreated and would not surrender until 1865.)

Scrambled mail. The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., which received the encoded Civil War message as a donation in 1896, recently asked David Gaddy, the CIA codebreaker, to try deciphering it.

The message on the 6.5 by 2.5-inch paper says “July 4th” in uncoded words. Then it says:

Sean weiuiuzn: Dtg cnp lbnxgk oz bjqb feqt feqt xzbw jjoa

tk her tpzwk. Pbw Rysqu Vowpzyxx qeon ek wasskipw plvo

Jkz hmn nvaeuo xv dwaj boypa ski mld tyyroe lvpl.

Mfysiu xy fqeo npk m obpc fyxjfhoht as etov b ocajosvqu

M ztzv tpiy daw fqti wttj j dqgoaia flwhtxti qmtr

Sea Lylplxfo.

Tough translation. Some of the letters are difficult to make out, so the text here may not be completely accurate. It appears that one letter can stand for more than one other letter, depending on the line it is in. According to the Confederacy Museum, the author of the message probably was Confederate Major General John G. Walker.

Gaddy translates General Walker’s message this way:

“Gen’l Pemberton: You can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen’l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy’s lines. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion. I have sent you some caps [explosive devices]. I subjoin despatch from General Johnston.”

Daunting puzzle. It’s hard to figure exactly how the code works. Some reports explain that the code simply requires replacing each letter of the words with a letter a few places away in the alphabet. For example, an “A” in the message would become a “D,” and a “B” would become an “E.”

But a closer look reveals the code is at least a little more complicated. The word “Johnston” is spelled two ways: “Vowpzxqq” on one line, and “Lylplxfo” on another. Other words also have multiple coded spellings. So it is a tricky puzzle for most of us.

Congratulations to David Gaddy for figuring it out.

Frank Warner

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Update: Blaine's Puzzle Blog has figured out the code in a way that anyone can understand it. He also found that the original note has misspellings that complicate the decyphering.

If you repeatedly write the key phrase "Manchester Bluff" above the letters it tells you the offset from the actual letter. A is an offset of zero (the same letter in the plain text). B is an offset of 1, C is 2, etc.

Check out Blaine's detailed explanation.