2012-04-03
post/20429437606
An illustration of the Vanguard 1 satellite, launched in 1958, by turkeychik.
The image was used in Alice Gorman’s article in The Conversation, Saving space junk, our cultural heritage in orbit:
One of the most significant pieces of “space junk” is the US satellite Vanguard 1. Launched in 1958, this satellite is now the oldest human-made object in space.
Historians argue that the infrastructure set up for Vanguard 1 – including tracking stations in Australia – shaped all subsequent US space programs. That’s a lot of cultural significance packed into an aluminium sphere the size of a grapefruit (as USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev disparagingly called it).
2012-03-28
post/20080560687
A Dymaxion-style map of “key infrastructural sites deemed vital to the national security of the United States” (via iamdanw).
2012-03-16
Andrew Cockburn On Drones
Andrew Cockburn’s recent subscriber-only article, Drones, Baby, Drones in the London Review Of Books covered the US military’s recent favourite toy, its history, and why it may not be all it seems. I thought it deserved a summary for a wider audience.
The US has tried automated systems before:
Igloo White, which cost $7 billion, was an early attempt to automate the battlefield: tens of thousands of sensors, designed to pick up sound or movement, each one in radio contact with computers in Thailand, were scattered around the jungles of Vietnam and Laos in the hope of locating and targeting enemy supply columns on the Ho Chi Minh trail. But the Vietnamese quickly learned to move the sensors or make them send false signals and the experiment was abandoned in 1972.
There were also much-publicised claims for advances in technology in the Gulf War, the bombing of Serbia, and in Iraq after 2003. In each case, watchdogs (such as the US Government Accounting Office) claimed after the conflicts - when nobody was watching - that the programmes tended to produce much worse results than were claimed.
The last decade’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the distaste for casualties from the western public, have meant a bonanza for those making automated systems:
While American and British casualties on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan ticked upwards, the skies grew dark with target-seeking aircraft, manned and unmanned, operating under such codenames as Constant Hawk and Angel Fire. Many of these systems were vastly expensive: one airborne system for detecting roadside bombs, Compass Call, cost $70,000 an hour.
Unfortunately, as with previous systems, they may not have actually worked that well:
In 2007, an intelligence unit in Baghdad called the Counter-IED Operations Integration Center analysed hundreds of these missions and concluded that most of them had ‘no detectable effect’ on the enemy.
That hasn’t stopped the funding for new projects, such as Blue Devils and Gorgon Stare, developed by MAV 6, whose CEO, David Deptula, used to be an Air Force three-star general. That said, maybe we don’t have much to fear:
Gorgon Stare’s camera images could not distinguish humans from bushes, or one vehicle from another. It had severe problems working out where it was. It broke down, on average, 3.7 times per sortie. The testing unit recommended that it shouldn’t be deployed, advice rejected by higher authorities, who quickly dispatched it to Afghanistan.
It’s not just the military. Despite Rick Perry’s pledge during his abortive run to be a presidential candidate that he’d deploy drones at the Mexican border,
when the Department of Homeland Security compared the relative performance of unmanned Predators and manned light Cessna aircraft in detecting illegal border crossings, it found the old-fashioned plane to be ten times as effective and 30 times cheaper. (Keeping a drone in the air involves two or three times as much backup manpower as a jet fighter like the F-16.)
It’s bad enough that drones are expensive and unreliable, but as events in Iran have shown, they’re also vulnerable to hacking:
In a less publicised incident last March, an American reconnaissance plane over South Korea suddenly returned to base on discovering that its GPS was being jammed, an imprudent move since it confirmed to the North Koreans the effectiveness of their methods.
Sadly, as the article concludes, the Air Force and its suppliers are tied together with lobbyists, and whether or not their unmanned aircraft actually work seems to be beside the point. Deptula argues now that the problem is that there’s still a “man in the loop”, the remote pilot who actually flies the drones (which, for all the hype, are still far from automated). This seems mildly insane to me, but then, the future will no doubt show which of us is right - but wait for the audit commission’s report rather than believing CNN.
(I very much enjoy my subscription to the LRB, despite being perpetually an issue behind in the physical edition. I’d heartily recommend one if you want to read the full post.)
2012-03-15
post/19359314990
![The Atlantic: Why Your Prius Will Bankrupt Our Highways:
In 2009, the highway commission finally released its report, which included projections on what would happen to the trust fund as cars’ average fuel economy rose.
In its “baseline forecast,” it assumed the average gas mileage for cars and light trucks would rise to 31 miles per gallon by 2035. In the “conservative forecast,” the commission assumed average fuel efficiency would rise to 45 MPG. Adjusting their projections for inflation — shown via the lines in chartreuse — the commission found that the real value of the trust fund would eventually drop by as much as 40%.
The graph shows what the [Highway Trust Fund] would be worth — in green and blue — and how much money the fund would need to maintain its purchasing power in 2008 dollars.
Fuel economy and a reluctance to raise taxes mean that there’s no money to repair and extend US infrastructure.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0xzb2wUCn1qz4vjro1_500.jpg)
The Atlantic: Why Your Prius Will Bankrupt Our Highways:
In 2009, the highway commission finally released its report, which included projections on what would happen to the trust fund as cars’ average fuel economy rose.
In its “baseline forecast,” it assumed the average gas mileage for cars and light trucks would rise to 31 miles per gallon by 2035. In the “conservative forecast,” the commission assumed average fuel efficiency would rise to 45 MPG. Adjusting their projections for inflation — shown via the lines in chartreuse — the commission found that the real value of the trust fund would eventually drop by as much as 40%.
The graph shows what the [Highway Trust Fund] would be worth — in green and blue — and how much money the fund would need to maintain its purchasing power in 2008 dollars.
Fuel economy and a reluctance to raise taxes mean that there’s no money to repair and extend US infrastructure.
post/19357130129
Lexington: The president and the pump, in The Economist.
I’ve remarked elsewhere that Americans (and especially Republicans) who otherwise hold the free market to be inviolate seem to have a really hard time understanding that the price of oil is actually determined outside their country’s borders. (Perhaps that’s because, until the 1970s, it wasn’t.)
2012-03-14
post/19292062454
2011-12-21
post/14582760012
2011-07-18
post/7769931245
2011-06-27
Compare and Contrast: Rail Edition
BBC News: China tests Beijing-Shanghai bullet train
Engineers have conducted a test-run of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link, days before its public launch.
Officials, reporters and company bosses were on board for the 300 km/h (190mph) train’s maiden voyage, which the government has promised will halve the journey time to under five hours.
China is planning to roll out high-speed lines across the country.
But the project has come under fire for its high cost - the Beijing-Shanghai line cost 215bn yuan ($33bn; £21bn).
And the government has earmarked a further 700bn yuan for the rest of the project, which would see 16,000km of track being laid by 2020.
BBC News: Clash over new high-speed rail tunnel in Italian Alps
Police have clashed with demonstrators in the Italian Alps over the construction of a new high-speed rail link with France.
Tunnelling is set to start for a line from Turin to Lyon, which is expected to cut the travel time by nearly half.
Local residents built barricades to prevent heavy machinery from starting work in the picturesque Val di Susa, in northern Italy.
Police used fire hoses and tear gas to disperse them.
San Jose Mercury: Central Valley plan snags on politics
The plan for high-speed rail in California is to start on the Fresno side of the San Joaquin River, between Bakersfield and Chowchilla, and go until the money runs out.
The Central Valley, for many reasons, is a practical place to begin. The land is broad and flat and relatively inexpensive, and the federal government, which is contributing billions of dollars, requires it.
The first section will one day form the spine of a system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, officials say. But there is no money guaranteed to build the rest, and the initial tracks, through towns like Wasco and Madera, are conspicuously far from where most people live.
