Filed under: BoingBoing, Mars, movies, NASA, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Survival, tech
How many times have you seen someone die in space? I mean in science fiction movies. Ignore the mass deaths from some huge battle. Think instead of individual deaths of a crew member on some kind of ship.
OK, and what usually happens with such an individual, post-mortem?
Right, it’s some variation on “burial at sea”. Unless there’s a specific reason why the body is kept for scientific purposes. This just makes sense – there’s a long tradition in many human cultures of burial at sea, for all kinds of practical and superstitious reasons. And while we’re still very much at the beginning of humankind’s ventures in space, we do think of it as akin to traveling the ocean.
So, how do you think NASA is planning on dealing with such an eventuality? Well, Mary Roach has a brief, but very interesting piece up at BoingBoing about a proposal for how to cope with a death on a trip to Mars. Here’s the intro:
The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China’s space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?
Swedish ecologists Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak and Peter Mäsak are the inventors of an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation and burial, called Promession. The technique entails freezing a body, vibrating it into tiny pieces, and then freeze-drying the pieces, which can then be used as compost to grow a memorial shrub or tree. The pair recently collaborated with NASA and design students in Denmark and Sweden to adapt Promession for use on a Mars mission.
Roach’s article contains illustrations and explanations from the proposal, showing how the system could be adapted for use on a long-term mission to Mars. Technically, it seems very straight-forward. Interestingly, it uses a ‘body bag’ type system similar to what I have in Communion of Dreams .
But I think that the article, and the proposal, show a curious mindset from NASA: they are still very much thinking in terms of being Earth-bound, and doing Earth-bound science, rather than exploration. Because exploration involves inherent risk, whereas in doing science one tries to eliminate risk in order to get dependable, testable data.
A couple of years ago I wrote about a proposal for a “one way” trip to Mars – where the astronaut(s) would accept that they would die on the planet rather than try and return. This hugely simplifies such a trip, since you don’t have to carry all the equipment and fuel needed to get back. Here’s a quote from that original newspaper item:
“When we eliminate the need to launch off Mars, we remove the mission’s most daunting obstacle,” said McLane. And because of a small crew size, the spacecraft could be smaller and the need for consumables and supplies would be decreased, making the mission cheaper and less complicated.
While some might classify this as a suicide mission, McLane feels the concept is completely logical.
“There would be tremendous risk, yes,” said McLane, “but I don’t think that’s guaranteed any more than you would say climbing a mountain alone is a suicide mission. People do dangerous things all the time, and this would be something really unique, to go to Mars. I don’t think there would be any shortage of people willing to volunteer for the mission. Lindbergh was someone who was willing to risk everything because it was worth it. I don’t think it will be hard to find another Lindbergh to go to Mars. That will be the easiest part of this whole program.”
As I said in that previous post, we’re all gonna die – only the manner and timing of our deaths are unknown. I think that McLane is right – there would be a huge number of people willing to volunteer for a ‘one-way’ trip to Mars. But even beyond that, if we’re dedicated to the idea of a return-trip (and there are plenty of good reasons to want to do so) mission, there are still plenty of people who would accept the personal risk and want to be “buried at sea” should they die during such a trip. Why bother with additional specialized equipment and supplies to cope with returning the body of a deceased crew member? Hauling all that extra weight to Mars and back makes no sense at all.
Perhaps, when we have advanced the technology of spaceflight sufficiently, to the point where it is akin to transportation here on Earth now, it’ll make sense to have mechanisms in place to return the bodies of explorers and scientists and military troops. But we have a very long way to go before we get to that point.
Jim Downey
As mentioned, the care-giving book is coming together well. As with Communion of Dreams, my Good Lady Wife has taken on the task of finding an agent/publisher for it. To that end yesterday she asked me for another query letter to use for some contacts who wanted a slightly different presentation from the initial query letter we crafted. Here’s a bit I thought I would share, and see if anyone had thoughts on it:
Her Final Year is a joint memoir told using a 12-month format as an analogy for the Alzheimer’s cycle, where each ‘month’ represents one phase of the disease progression. The authors, two men caring for their respective mothers-in-law, explore the process of discovering and dealing with the decline of the family matriarch by interweaving their own thoughts and experiences with what they learned along the way from — and about — health insurance providers, medical professionals, Hospice nurses, social workers and nursing homes. The first part of the book (about two-thirds of the text) ends with the death of the Alzheimer’s patient, but then the second part of the book (subtitled His First Year) is the story of recovery of the men and their families from the care-giving experience, and how they were enriched by it.
Given that there are currently no memoirs from this POV, but that a growing number of men find themselves in the role of care provider, the authors hope that this book will fill a need and find a wide audience. Some people will want to read it straight through as a story of love and redemption, others will use it as a resource by finding which ‘month’ most fits their situation and looking there for guidance and support. It should appeal not just to care providers, but also to people who know someone in that role and wish to understand how best to help them. With the aging of our population, this includes the majority of Americans.
Thoughts?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Terrorism, Violence
…for ages that if someone *really* wanted to hurt our country, they could do so with a bunch of small-scale bombs at tourist sites and malls around the country. The bombs wouldn’t have to be big, or kill a lot of people – just scare people enough that they stop going to those places unless they really needed to. The economy would collapse in a matter of weeks, given that about 70% of our GDP is generated by consumer sales.
So let’s hope that this isn’t the first such instance:
Car bomb scares Times Square but fails to explode
NEW YORK – Police found an “amateurish” but potentially powerful bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square, authorities said Sunday.Thousands of tourists were cleared from the streets for 10 hours after two vendors alerted police to the suspicious vehicle, which contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
So far, reaction to this event seems to be calmer than I would expect. But we’ll see what happens when it’s no longer the weekend and people start using it to try and score political points on one side or the other. Remember, fear sells.
Jim Downey
I don’t think most people here in the US understand violence. They have too little experience with it. They think violence is a schoolyard fight, or gunplay in slow motion on a screen.
It’s more visceral than that. More basic. It is the unleashing of an older part of ourselves – a genetic memory of survival.
For decades I have watched reactionary forces strut and hype, threatening violence or implying the threat of violence. You see it with the rhetoric of the Tea Party in its latest incarnation. I’ve kept an eye on it, but never paid it too much attention – people fear change, and those fears sometime manifest as that kind of low-level violence. Oh, I don’t mean to deny the damage that a few lone loons can do – our history has shown repeatedly that political violence can indeed change the course of events for the short term. But even that is limited.
What worries me much more is something I have begun to see over the last few years, and in increasing amounts recently: rhetoric from the left which is starting to match the threats of violence from the right. It is always cloaked in terms of self-defense, or of ‘standing up to the right’ – but it is there, nonetheless.
And this is much more dangerous. Because then it is not a matter of just ‘simple’ violence. It is gang-war. It is tribal. It is the madness which erases civilization for a while.
We don’t think that it can happen here. Not again. We think we are too advanced. Too educated. Too secure in our democratic structures.
Bullshit.
When one side starts using the language of violence, even to the point of flaunting guns and invoking the Civil War, they’re crazy.
When the other side decides the time has come to take the crazies seriously, to the point of talking about arming themselves or de-humanizing the Right (both of which I have seen a lot of in recent weeks), then we’re playing with fire.
It’s not like I am a pacifist, or unwilling to defend either myself or those people and values I hold dear. I understand the need for taking a threat from someone seriously. But increasingly things feel like they are starting to spin out of control.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Guns, Preparedness, Survival, Terrorism, Violence
“What’s that?”
“Oh, I got it for giving a donation to the snipers.”
I looked again at the pewter skull, about the size of a silver dollar, hanging on a thin ribbon on my friend’s chest. There was a hole in the middle of the forehead, through which the ribbon ran.
A shudder ran through me.
* * * * * * *
The SHOT Show was huge. Massive. Some 50,000 attendees. I heard that if you walked all of the paths through the various booths and displays, you’d cover something like 34 miles.
Big chunks of the show were dedicated to booths catering to “Law Enforcement,” though there was more than a little para-military stuff in these areas. Not surprising, given how much police agencies deal with para-military tactics; they need para-military equipment.
I wandered through these areas, along with pretty much all the rest of the show. Not that I have any real interest in any of the stuff most of them were featuring – I don’t have a ‘wannabecop’ mindset. I was just curious. And it was . . . educational.
* * * * * * *
“Ballistics by the inch? What’s that all about?”
The man stopped next to my table in the food court, looking at my name tag. It was early evening, but I was beat from walking most of the show and dealing with the crowds. I don’t do crowds well. My ‘extrovert batteries’ were worn out, and all I wanted was just a light dinner before going to hide in my room and charge up again for the next day of the show.
But, he was smiling, and seemed nice enough. I gestured to the empty chair across from me. He set his tray down, and we introduced ourselves.
“Well, BBTI is a project myself and several friends did, testing how muzzle velocity varies according to barrel length for 16 different handgun cartridges.” I handed him a card.
“Just external ballistics, then?”
“Yeah. But we’ve put all the data online for people to use freely. We launched the site about 14 months ago, and we’re now approaching 2 million hits.” I’d given this little spiel enough times already at the SHOT Show that it pretty much rolled off my tongue automatically. “Why?”
“Well, I’m into ballistics, too. Though that isn’t my ‘day job.'”
* * * * * * *
One of the major reasons I went to the SHOT Show was to make contacts, to meet people with whom I had corresponded. One of these was Kathy Jackson, editor of Concealed Carry magazine and the person behind the excellent Cornered Cat website. I had chatted with Kathy many times over the years, and we worked with her on the great article that Concealed Carry did on the BBTI project.
Anyway, when we did finally have a chance to meet in person the last day of the show, it was a delight. There were four of us, all chatting together. In the course of the conversation, she asked “what is the silliest thing you’ve seen here?”
There was, truth be told, a *lot* of silly things at the show. There was the odd little bayonet which was supposed to affix to your pistol. There were the “mall ninja” toys and people who wore them. There were the science fiction/fantasy themed custom knives which would be useless in the real world. But I said “All the grim-faced men and women in the advertising photos and banners in the LE section of the show.”
* * * * * * *
“What’s your day job?”
“I’m a research scientist. We do a lot of work for NASA and the various aerospace industries, mostly things like orbital mechanics.”
“What brings you to SHOT?”
“Launching a new ballistics calculator, for long-range shooting. Really long range shooting. Stop by the AI booth tomorrow, and I’ll show you.”
We chatted from there, comparing notes on the show, discussing our respective backgrounds in shooting and what got us each interested in the projects we developed. Smart guy. Very smart guy.
* * * * * * *
There was a very interesting post last night on MetaFilter. I know I mention MeFi a lot, but that’s because I am frequently impressed with the quality of the discussions which take place there. This one was about Simo Häyhä, one of the most deadly snipers in history with over 800 confirmed kills during the Finnish “Winter War“. The whole thread is here, but what caught my attention was the discussion which ensued concerning the ethics of being a sniper.
Several people commented that snipers were little more than sociopaths who took some pleasure at killing. Here are two such comments:
How does it feel to have personally murdered that many people?
posted by monospace at 9:11 AM on January 28
And:
Also, the idea that “legalized killing” is really conceptually different from illegal murder would seem to imply that the people who are best at “legalized killing” are temperamentally unrelated to those who murder. I do not buy this. Häyhä’s lack of retrospective remorse is no doubt related to the fact of why he was such an effective killer in the first place: hurting others didn’t have much of a negative emotional effect on him. He probably enjoyed hurting people, which is how he was so calm and good at doing it.
It’s not a stretch to believe that the dispositions that make the best soldiers/snipers are identical to the dispositions of the worst rapists and serial killers. The only difference might be a slightly different life context. The difference between a certain person being celebrated as a war hero or reviled as a serial killer might come down to the chance event of a war happening at a certain time.
posted by dgaicun at 1:59 PM on January 28
There was a lot of push-back against this mindset. The best is from a woman who lived through the siege of Sarajevo. Here’s an excerpt from her:
Sarajevo was a city with a mixed Serb, Croat and Muslim population, as well as significant numbers of Jewish and Roma people. Probably the most obviously “multi-ethnic” city in the former Yugoslavia. It was also a peaceful, cosmopolitan place. This made it a particularly significant target for those Serbs who used ethnic hatred and “the practical impossibility of people living together” as justification for genocide and violent aggression. Sarajevo’s existence proved that to be a lie. Naively, many Sarajevans – myself included – assumed that our solidarity as a city would magically ward off any attacks. Wrong!
Because Sarajevo is in a valley surrounded by mountains which quickly were controlled by Serb forces, we were in an indefensible position. We didn’t have much to defend ourselves with in any case. We were, at first, a purely civilian population. But we were shelled and massacred anyway.
Slowly, some of the men in town who owned rifles (for hunting) realized that one of the only ways to defend themselves was by becoming snipers. These were the same guys who – only weeks or months earlier – argued that only through pacifism would we survive and show the world. We soon discovered the world didn’t care much. As many of us lost family members and started starving, we realized that if snipers would slow the numbers of civilians being killed, that’s what needed to happen. There wasn’t any other choice.
I lived frighteningly near the frontline. So much so, that in quiet moments, there would occasionally be dialogue between “our” snipers and the Serbs shooting and shelling us from the hills. Usually, it was our guys shouting at the Serbs in the hills to lay down their arms. (Most of the Serbs were “local” and frequently each side personally knew the guys on the “other” side.) These requests were quite obviously ignored. It didn’t stop our guys from trying, and they were heartfelt pleas. Our snipers were engaged in self-defense, and I’m amazed that people are so ignorant of war – even in secondhand terms – that they see no difference between self-defense and aggression.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 4:26 PM on January 28
And another from the same comment:
I can’t idolize a sniper, no matter how tough he was. To be a sniper you have to be no more than one notch away from a psychopath. To kill 800 people, looking at each of them in the face, you have to be dead inside.
How can I say it? That’s just fucking stupid. Maybe, if you know you’re firing on civilians in an act of senseless aggression, it takes a kind of heartless person to do that. But that certainly wasn’t true for Häyhä, who was defending his country and people and likely saved many more lives than he took. Unlike probably everyone else on MetaFilter, I have been a victim of snipers twice, with scars to prove it. That’s not including a shelling that killed my parents, broke my scapula to bits and put me in a coma for weeks. Or the white-hot shrapnel. So if anyone has a right to judge snipers harshly, I am her. But I make the distinction between the people who shot me for no good reason and those who were defending a peace-loving, multi-ethnic city. Because there is a difference.
* * * * * * *
We stopped at the Accuracy International booth, and the fellow gave us a demonstration of the ballistics calculator he’d developed. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but suffice it to say that this hand-held device was extremely well designed and robust, capable of holding up to the worst kind of weather and, um, ‘field conditions.’ With it, a capable marksman with the right kind of gun could easily hit a moving target at the range of thousands of yards. Indeed, it is so sophisticated that it will calculate air density differentials according to elevation, and the effect that they would have on the flight of a given bullet at a given angle, because it was meant to be used for making shots up or down the sides of mountains. It’s such a powerful tool that it actually falls under the US laws concerning weapons technology transfers.
* * * * * * *
My comment about the grim-faced men and women was missed in the general chatter, and I’m glad. I meant it, because using those images was so over-the-top in many applications as to be absurd. You know, the whole ‘warrior’ images being tied to a particular flashlight or type of boot. Just . . . silly. Those I know who have been in real grim situations seldom celebrate the fact or try to draw notice to it.
But it is easy to misunderstand that. Sometimes a little black humor is entirely appropriate.
Before I left the show I stopped by the sniper’s table and quietly left a donation. They were out of the little skulls. Which was just fine by me.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism
As if the introduction of full-body scanners after some nut set his nuts on fire wasn’t enough – now security officials have decided to play a game of “hide the Semtex” and wound up losing a lump of it in a passenger’s baggage on an international flight. A lump big enough to down a jetliner. And then they didn’t bother to tell anyone for three days.
No, I am not making this up:
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — A failed airport security test ended up with a Slovak man unwittingly carrying hidden explosives in his luggage on a flight to Dublin, Slovak officials admitted Wednesday — a mistake that enraged Irish authorities and shocked aviation experts worldwide.
While the Slovaks blamed the incident on ”a silly and unprofessional mistake,” Irish officials and security experts said it was foolish for the Slovaks to hide actual bomb parts in the luggage of innocent passengers under any circumstances.
The passenger himself was detained by Irish police for several hours before being let go without charge Tuesday.
The Irish were also angry that it took the Slovaks three days to tell them about the Saturday mistake and that the pilot of the airplane decided to fly to Dublin anyway even after being told that an explosive was in his aircraft’s checked luggage.
Can you imagine being the poor bastard who unwittingly was the mule for this little exercise? That’d be my luck:
Ding dong.
“Honey, there are some gentlemen here from the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security who want a word with you . . . ”
Jeez.
Anyway, now that this delightful stunt has happened, I expect that we’ll all have to stop taking any luggage whatsoever, for fear that some security official somewhere will forget where he left his “bomb components”.
Hey, makes as much sense, and would do about as much good, as the full-body scanners we’ll all soon have to go through.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism, Violence
Look, not to be too explicit about this, but the use of full body scanners won’t make a damned bit of difference to someone who wants to smuggle a bomb or bomb components onto a plane (or anywhere else.) Because there are these things called body cavities, where people have actually been known to insert and hide stuff.
The Dutch have already announced that henceforth all passengers heading to the US will have to go through such scanners. Yesterday on All Things Considered I listened to professional fear-monger and former Bush Administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff claim that full body scanners are the solution, but that the evil ACLU had thwarted their use:
Mr. CHERTOFF: Well, a couple of years ago we began the process of testing them to see, first of all, if they worked and second, if they could be deployed without unduely restricting the flow of traffic. And the good news is that we were able to demonstrate that they were successful. We could use them without slowing up traffic and we could also protect privacy.
The difficulty is the ACLU and other similar organizations began a very aggressive campaign to limit or prevent the use of these machines and it culminated frankly last year in a vote by the House of Representatives to be very sharply restricted of the use of these machines. So, although we have acquired these machines, they are not as widely deployed as they should be.
Yeah, as reported this morning on NPR, there are concerns about the scanners being “intrusive”:
But lawmakers have been among those reluctant to deploy the machines. In June, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to restrict their use. The vote was big — 310-118 — and bipartisan. Members of both parties said they were concerned that the pictures were too intrusive and questioned their effectiveness.
That’s what also worries privacy groups, which have mounted a major campaign against the machines, now being tested at 19 U-S airports. They say there’s no guarantee the pictures won’t be misused.
“There’s nothing to prevent images from being retained even when they say they won’t be retained,” says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group at the forefront of the campaign.
But above and beyond the privacy concerns, is the simple fact that just scanning what is on the outside of someone’s body, or in their carry-on, or in their luggage, is insufficient. Because you can insert sufficient explosive into your rectum to do serious damage. In fact, it’s already been done on at least one occasion this year:
On the evening of Aug. 28, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister — and the man in charge of the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts — was receiving members of the public in connection with the celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. As part of the Ramadan celebration, it is customary for members of the Saudi royal family to hold public gatherings where citizens can seek to settle disputes or offer Ramadan greetings.
One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program.
* * *
But the al-Asiri case ended very differently from the al-Awfi case. Unlike al-Awfi, al-Asiri was not a genuine repentant — he was a human Trojan horse. After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
I’ve joked about this as the TSA’s “Grab your ankles, please” moment – but as a matter of simple fact, unless we actually go to full body-cavity searches, we cannot prevent this technique from being used in the future. Anything short of that is nothing more than a minor annoyance for terrorists, and an intrusion into the privacy of all other individuals who fly. Do we *really* want to take that step?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 
