PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet LETTERS, 12 February 1999
-------------------------------
(1) OF OSCARS, ASTEROIDS & THE HAMMER OF GOD
Sir Arthur C Clarke, Sri Lanka
(2) BREAKING AND SPLITTING ASTEROIDS BY NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
(3) MINOR BODIES, MAJOR PLANETS & THE PROBLEM OF
CLASSIFICATION
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
(4) BACK CONTAMINATION FROM AN OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: AN
INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN RUMMEL OF NASA'S PLANETARY PROTECTION
OFFICE
E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
====================
(1) OF OSCARS, ASTEROIDS & THE HAMMER OF GOD
From Sir Arthur C Clarke, Sri Lanka
Dear Benny,
Amused by Scott Manley's comments on
ARMAGEDDON, which I've not
yet seen.
I have seen DEEP IMPACT, which I thought
fairly good - but not
as good as it should have been if Spielberg had used THE HAMMER
OF
GOD! I didn't even get a credit and wept bitterly all the way to
the
bank. However, he still has the option - perhaps he'll do the job
properly in a few years time...
All best,
Sir Arthur Clarke
11 Feb 99 (Whoops - 1999!)
==============================
(2) BREAKING AND SPLITTING ASTEROIDS BY NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
The paper "Breaking and Splitting asteroids by nuclear
explosions to
propel and deflect their trajectories" by D. Fargion may be
of interest.
It is available at http://xxx.adelaide.edu.au/abs/astro-ph/9803269
(mirror site of an LANL document service http://xxx.lanl.gov/ which has
many other scientific papers)
Regards
Michael Paine
============================
(3) MINOR BODIES, MAJOR PLANETS & THE PROBLEM OF
CLASSIFICATION
From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
Re: WHY THE IAU NEED CLEAR RULES FOR CLASSIFICATION OF MINOR
OBJECTS
SUCH AS PLUTO AND IT'S MOONS
From Alan Fitzsimmons <A.Fitzsimmons@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK>
Judging from the current debate I gather it's time to agree (to
avoid real controversy ) that KBO's smaller than Pluto and yet to
be
discovered will not be counted as planets. At the same time I
hope
agreement can be reached to allow objects larger than Pluto the
honour of becoming our solar system's 10th, 11th, etc. planets.
It would be exciting to the public, if such a new planet was
spotted
the way some of our contributors seem to anticipate. In fact,
also
objects propelled into highly elliptical orbits by Jupiter aeons
ago
might supposedly show up one day. Even if in cometary orbits I
believe any such massive objects still deserve the distinction.
For Spaceguard purposes the discovery of planet-sized bodies in
rogue orbits would be bad news, since the Armageddon scenario of
an
object the size of Texas hitting Earth would all of a sudden be
science fiction no more. One thousand years of preparation might
not
be enough to avert a direct doomsday hit.
Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.)
===============
(4) BACK CONTAMINATION FROM AN OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: AN
INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN RUMMEL OF NASA'S PLANETARY PROTECTION
OFFICE
From E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
Benny -
Here follows a somewhat hopelessly subjective report of my
interview
with John Rummel of NASA's Planetary Protection Office. I don't
think
you will mind my sharing with the Conference my initial
reluctance to
report this, and your request to keep the Conference posted. I
think
that by the end of this dispatch the reasons for my reluctance
will be
clear. Here goes -
Several weeks ago I attended the headquarter's press briefing for
the
Stardust mission. As most of the Conference participants
are fully
aware of Stardust, if they are not actually participants in it,
my
intention was simply to gather information on the technologies
for
interception that Stardust would testing. I was pleasantly
surprised to
find that John Rummel, head of NASA's Planetary Protection
Office, was
going to be among the panelists. I sought to ask Rummel
about back
contamination in general, and he graciously gave me an extended
interview.
An important point to remember here is that unlike the case in
the
Soviet Union, where Mars missions were secret, and discussions of
the
back contamination problem were held among the scientists in
secret, in
both the United States and France the issue will be discussed
openly.
This will entail a public debate, and public perceptions will be
important. In this regards, in the United States the
public's
perception of the hazard of back contamination from a comet or
meteorite has been influenced by the popular movie "The
Blob". This
movie starred a young Steve McQueen, and in it a meteorite
delivered a
gelatinous creature to the Earth which ate several hapless
teenagers
and part of a town before it was stopped by the US Army. Rummel's
appearance at the Stardust briefing was largely to put at ease
any
concerns which the public might have that NASA's Stardust mission
might
trigger such an event, and to explain why this was not even
remotely
possible.
The most important item that I received from Rummel was
confirmation of
NASA management's focus on a manned Mars mission as the next
project
after space station, with a landing date of 2010. I had earlier
reported to the Conference Dan Goldin's statement to John
McLaughlin
that men could be landed on Mars by 2010, and Rummel confirmed
this.
Towards the end of the interview I asked Rummel how many samples
he
would feel comfortable with before manned flight, and he said
3. As a
follow-up, I asked him if this meant 2 more before 2010, and he
told
me, "That's the plan."
Naturally, I was pleased at this "scoop", but the
members of the
Conference can now read about NASA's manned Mars plans in a fully
illustrated article by Paul Raebun in the February issue of
Popular
Science. In brief, when the RLV and EELVs come on-line in
about 2005
or so, NASA is looking at converting the shuttle into a heavy
lift
vehicle by simply removing the main engines from the shuttle and
putting them onto a recoverable capsule. With a drop in the
price to
orbit of 2 orders of magnitude, manned Mars missions become
financially
possible, and a number of different manned mission architectures
are
being closely examined.
Earlier, a Moon based array telescope capable of extra-solar
system
planet resolution had been in contention as the follow-up project
to
the Space Station (see the post to the Conference of the abstract
on
the ISE with Goldin as co-author). Naturally, these capabilities
could
have been used for the detection of smaller NEOs, provided that a
fully
automated computer detection, orbit determination, and
identification
system could be developed to handle their far larger numbers
(pace
Steel). This is pretty much now out of the running, and
barring a
substantial impact, or the discovery by the Shoemaker search of a
NEO
on an Earth collision course, Conference members may not expect
capabilities to detect smaller NEOs until after 2010. Even then,
this
capability will probably only be developed if the smaller impacts
for
the last 5,000 years or so can be fully documented through field
work
guided by rigourous historical research.
Rummel's own estimate of the likelihood of Martian extremophiles
was
indicated by his statement that sub-surface drilling operations
on Mars
would have to be conducted with the greatest care. While I
share the
hopes of many that Mars is a biologically friendly environment,
and
that both manned exploration as well as settlement will be
possible,
hopes do not make science. If Rummel's right on this, and if any
Martian sub-surface organisms turn out to be not friendly, the
terra-forming and settlement of Mars will simply be out of the
question. Operationally, Rummel's estimate of the likelyhood of
existence of surface extremophiles on Mars is pretty much close
to
zero, as will be seen.
The earlier post to the Conference which first prompted me to
write on
the topic of back contamination asserted that the exchange of
life
between planets by impact debris had been adopted by NASA as
policy.
This was confirmed at the briefing, and I must retract my earlier
scepticism of this claim, as well as my subsequent statements on
National Research Council courses of action. At the briefing I
saw for
the first time a report from a 7 to 8 person subcommittee of the
National Research Council which set out a detailed flow-chart on
the
pre-conditions necessary for extreme biological containment
measures to
be taken. The final step in the flow-chart was the decision
point,
"Have living organisms been previously exchanged?", and
going to the
explanation I found that impact was the mechanism of exchange set
out.
I wish I could give a fuller citation for the NRC report, but
this is
the only copy of it that I have ever seen.
This produces in me a certain feeling of irony, and I need to go
into
these feelings now. The first items from me ever to be posted to
the
Conference, and this was done by others long before I even knew
the
Conference existed, were my questions on the meteorite list to
Ron
Baalke of JPL about JPL's seeming obliviousness to the most
important
mechanism in Mars' geological processes in the last several
billion
years, impact events, in light of the quite obvious craters and
rubble
that were all around Pathfinder. I was simply sick and
tired of
hearing the phrase "Earth-like Mars" coming from JPL,
when what Mars is
is Mars-like, dammit. I was told at the time that in all their
press
releases JPL had included 2 sentences, so they had covered the
issue
fully.
Now I'm told by the NRC subcommittee that yes, indeed, there have
been
plenty of impacts, so frequent and massive that they have
transported
living organisms to the Earth. So I go from being told that
2+2=3 to
being told that 2+2=5. Well, the last I heard most of the
specialists
were waiting for the data from Mars Global Surveyor before
refining
their impact histories and rate estimates for Mars, and it
strikes me
that the members of the NRC subcommittee were being somewhat
premature
in making this kind of detailed assertion before that data comes
in.
Next I come to the other assertion put forth by the NRC
subcommittee,
that these impacts transported living organisms from Mars to the
Earth,
and vice-versa. Here again irony intrudes. Dr. McKay has been
trying
for the last several year just to establish that a fossil was
delivered
to the Earth by impact, little less a living organism, and he has
been
facing extreme scepticism. Rummel mentioned in discussing
the Stardust
danger with Paul Hoversten of USA Today, who I had invited over
to join
with me in the interview, the lethal effects of radiation and
temperature in the space environment, and here on the other hand
we
have the NRC subcommittee minimizing them. Finally, from
what I know
of the mechanics of large scale impacts (which knowledge is very
limited, I admit), the deeper rocks are pretty much vaporized, so
any
life forms exchanged would have to come from the planets'
surfaces.
I don't care if this report does come from an NRC subcommittee,
and I
know others here who are specialists in this area will strongly
disagree with me on this, but it still strikes me that putting
forth
hypothesis as fact and then using it to guide national policy is
bad
science in the extreme.
The previous post to the Conference also stated that the
hypothesis of
the impact exchange of living organisms had been adopted by NASA
as
policy, and in this they were again correct. The NRC Subcommittee
report was dated August, 1998, and had been used for the Initial
Design
Review of the joint US-French Mars Sample Return mission. The
Initial
Design used a simple ballistic capsule to return the Martian
samples to
Earth, with a landing to be made in Utah. It was felt that
using a
parachute would actually increase the chances of failure of the
capsule, and that aerobraking alone would be a better way of
decreasing
the capsule's velocity at impact.
Rummel expressed irritation at the murmurs of attack on this
Initial
Design, as the Preliminary Design for the Mars Sample Return
Mission
will not be even go up for review until June of this year. I need
here
to make my own bias clear: Personally, my own estimate of the
existence
of Martian extremophiles is "I don't know". Given that
"I don't know",
it would seem to me that the prudent course of action would be
the same
as for a chance encounter in a bar: Take precautions. Minimally
I'd
like to see a parachute added to the ballistic capsule: if the
parachute failed, the return capsule's ballistic capabilities
would
be intact. Even better would be the ballistic capsule, plus
parachute,
plus aerobraking and initial examination on the International
Space
Station: triple redundancy. One could think of this as a
couple of
dates first, if one were so inclined.
I asked Rummel a series of questions about NASA co-ordination
with
other US agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),
the
National Institute of Health (NIH), the Army Biological and
Chemical
Warfare Command (ABCWC), and the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). I
was very surprised to learn that in NASA's opinion the only US
governmental agency with any oversight would be the US Department
of
Agriculture, as in NASA's view the CDC and NIH only had
jurisdiction in
the case of known organisms, and anything that might arrive in
the Mars
Sample Return would certainly be unknown.
I do not know whether this view of roles and jurisdictions is
held by
the other US agencies themselves. Rummel has scheduled a
meeting with
representatives from these agencies for April, to discuss the
formation
of a joint committee, as well as the powers and tasks that this
committee will assume, so these other agencies' own views of
their
roles and jurisdictions will probably be clear shortly
thereafter. One
major problem is that the Preliminary Design Review for the Mars
Sample
Return mission is to be held in June, and these agencies may feel
that
NASA has given them too little time to prepare for this.
Rummel stated that NASA did not intended to involve the Army
Biological
and Chemical Warfare Command, but instead would rely upon the CDC
for
these capabilities. Once again public perceptions come into
play, as
there was a popular movie some years back called "The
Andromeda Stain".
In this movie a fictional Army program to capture space organisms
and
return them to Earth for weapons use went awry and ended up
killing a
small town before escaping into the general environment in a
surprise
ending. Factually, the CDC does not have the same field
handling
capabilities as the ABCWC.
As for foreign review processes, these were still unclear. Rummel
thought that the Acadamie would be involved as well as CNES. I
did not
ask him whether ESA might have any role.
The interview continued with the question on the number of
samples that
Rummel would feel comfortable with before men landed, which was
touched
on above. Rummel thought that three samples would be
necessary: two
samples could be connected by a straight line. When I
expressed my
doubts as to NASA's capabilities with long range rovers, Rummel
expressed his satisfaction with the Altacama desert experiments
and
Dave Lavery's management of NASA's robot research programs.
Once again certain feelings of irony intrude. The Altacama desert
rover
relied on a Russian artificially intelligent autonomous robotic
vision
system. Many years ago I spent about a year and half of my life
trying
to bring the Space Research Institutes robotic vision team out of
the
Soviet Union before its collapse. When I took the team's
head to
Lavery we were informed that all his moneys were committed for
several
years to come. To my knowledge the only reason that the
Altacama
experiments took place at all were because of the incredible
efforts by
Lou Friedman of the Planetary Society to see that this technology
was
not lost. And during all this time NASA carried on about
teleoperated
robots, ignoring the fact that the signal travel times from Mars
and
back made telerobotic operations there useless. Even after
the problems
that Pathfinder hit trying to use teleoperations and virtual
reality to
control the Sojourner rover over a limited range, NASA went on.
It finally took the astronauts telling NASA management in very
direct
terms that they would simply be too exhausted by the prolonged
exposure
to micro-gravity during the flight to Mars to control a landing
there
before NASA finally acted. While I welcome Goldin's emphasis in
his
2000 Budget briefing on robots who feel, and his unveiling of a
proposal for the 2003 deployment of an autonomous aircraft for
the
exploration of Mars, from my point of view this is about 9
years too
late. If only Lavery had provided funding; if only NASA had
had its
small business programs in place then; if only the United States
had
had any industrial robot manufacturers at all; ah then, if only,
the
sound of the surf breaking on the sandy shores of Crete would not
be so
faint...
I followed up with the question about 2 more missions before
2010, and
got the confirmation of the manned program mentioned at the
outset.
I then asked Rummel if they had given any thought as to what they
would
do if an astronaut were to become contaminated, and he said that
they
hadn't figured out their policy on that yet. Apparently, it
has not
dawned on anyone at NASA that in that case NASA would be dealing
with a
known organism, and that the jurisdiction of the CDC and NIH
would then
kick into place: It would not be NASA's call.
With that I thanked Rummel and wished him the best of luck,
sympathizing with him about what is going to be a couple of
frantic
months. Rummel pointed out to me that its going to be more
like a
couple of frantic years. I agreed with him whole-heartedly
on that and
left.
Benny, I have written to you before about my reluctance to report
on
this topic, and let me now go into these reasons in a little more
detail. The people in the western States are particularly
sensitive
about threats to their environment, and mention should be made
here of
yet another movie. This movie, "Rage", starred
George C. Scott as a
farmer who takes down his rifle and goes on a rampage after his
son is
killed by an accidental release of pathogens during an Army
weapons
test. The movie was made in the very early 1970's, before the
conventions against biological weapons had kicked in, and was
based
upon an actual accidental release by the Army. While the
movie did not
do all that well nationally, it made a whole lot of money in
selected
western markets.
As it currently sits, NASA intends to ballistically land a
capsule
carrying samples from Mars in Utah. The sides are already
starting to
form up: the space enthusiasts for Mars at any risk; those
outraged by
the current design.
While I know that some of the Conference members will be directly
involved as participants in this debate, as this confrontation
blows up
publicly, the Conference may become too heated, and work on the
more
serious problem of impact events may suffer. And given the
lack of
hard data, a lot of this debate will essentially be a useless
exchange
of hypothesis. Further, neither side in it seems to be
considering
that any sample return plans and operations will of course be
modified
by NASA depending on what is actually found on Mars first by the
landers and later the rovers.
When I wished Rummel the best of luck I meant it. He is not
only going
to be facing Representatives and Senators from Utah, he is going
to be
facing the general public out there as well. There is going to be
tremendous pressure exerted on Rummel by the space enthusiasts as
well
as by that part of NASA involved in the manned Mars mission for
him to
always find in their favor. He is going to need the courage,
instantaneous wit, and sure judgement of a launch control officer
if he
is going to get through it: The ability to push the button and
shut it
down, manned or not, if conditions make it necessary, regardless
of any
other factors.
I have no expertise in this area, and I have already shared with
the
Conference members what I learned about this topic from the
Russians.
My advice to anyone involved directly with this is simply to
design
your missions so that they will be successful no matter what
conditions
are encountered, and I really have nothing more to add to that.
As for
whoever succeeds me in following this matter for the Conference,
I
simply suggest that if they interview Rummel at any public event
in the
western part of the country, they stand to the crowd side and at
least
3 feet away.
All the best
Ed
--------------
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