The United States has been sending Billions of dollars a year into space since the 1960s.  Many people would rather spend the money here on earth.  Aside from TANG and a lot of pride the day the Eagle landed, have we gotten our monies worth?  Could we have gotten more for our money if we spent it on other things?  What did we really get for our space dollars?

For one thing we got greatly improved communications.  Satellite communications, a definite child of the space program, has given us the ability to make phone calls around the world especially to remote places.  As well as live video of events the world over from international disasters to the Olympic Games.  Got cable or satellite TV?  Thank NASA.  Yes even the cable companies receive their feeds via satellite before sending it down the cable to your house.     

As they say on TV, wait there is more.  How about Global Positioning Satellite?  GPS is spreading like wild fire in the military, commerce and our private lives.  GPS is more than a cool toy.  This navigational aid saves tons of money in fuel savings alone.  Think about it for a minute.  If only 1 million drivers avoid driving 1 extra mile a year because GPS navigation kept them on track we would save 1 million miles of driving.  At 20 miles per gallon that is 50,000 gallons of gas or 6 tanker trucks.  Far more than 1 million drivers have GPS and they save way more than 1 mile a year.  It adds up pretty quick.

GPS does more than just get us where we are going.  Even if you totally oppose the Iraq war or war in general, GPS saves lives on both sides.  GPS gives us the ability to carry out surgical strikes against enemy targets.  In World War 2 Allied bombers dropped hundreds of bombs over large areas in hopes of hitting their targets.  Those bombs were lucky to hit within a couple hundred yards of the target.  Today's GPS guided munitions strike within 6 inches of their targets thus reducing the number of bombs dropped the number of bombing raids launched and the number unintended causalities.  War will always be ugly but GPS technology has enabled the United States greatly shrink the battle field.

Our space program saves lives in other ways too.  Most people think Hurricane Katrina was a deadly storm and it was.  Nearly 1500 people died.  But look at the recent cyclone in Myanmar.  The death toll from that event is an estimated 130,000.  As bad as Katrina was most people lived to talk about it because of the early warning to evacuate.  Some didn't heed the warnings but our space based weather satellites tracked Katrina as well as all of our major storms from the time they are low pressure systems until they hit. Just think how bad Katrina would have been if nobody knew it was coming.

Environmentalist should love the space program.  About half of today's space missions are dedicated to study of the earth’s environment.  From the hole in the ozone to global climate change to ice pack mapping, the space program leads the way in many earth science studies.  Environmentalist are looking to get rid of the gasoline engine and coal burning power plants.  NASA is leading the way.  NASA has been a leading user and developer of hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels.    

This does not even scratch the surface of what we get from our space program.  And if you are impressed with that list, think about this.  Today's first graders have access to better computers than the engineers that launched our first space endeavors.  Space forces scientists and engineers of all disciplines to work together and solve a wide variety of problems.  The solutions to these problems will surely bring new benefits to those of us who remain earthbound.

Most people want to be right all the time.  I want to be right all the time.  But there is a big difference between being right and just thinking you are.  Sometimes we lie to others, sometimes we just lie to ourselves and sometimes we just don't know the truth to begin with.We have 2 houses of congress full of people who think they are right making decsions for us and guess what, somebody is wrong.  Somebody is either knowingly or unkonwingly making some bad decsions because they are wrong.

 

Some policies are based on opinion.  Things like the Iraq war.  Anyone can throw up a humdred and one "what if" scenerios which makes it hard for people to nail down who's right and who's wrong.  But for many issues there is a clear right or wrong.  Take ethanol for example.  I was for all for it, now not so much.  I don't care which party is for it or against it.  I don't care if I have to admit I'm wrong.  Determining the truth about ethanol is an 8th grade science fair project.  Congress needs to watch Myth Busters.

 

I want to do what is right and best for our country.  I want congress to cut through the crap and fully support or fully reject ethanol based on the truth.  I will have more respect and support for a congressman or senator who tells me the truth regardless of which party they are in even if it conflicts with my current beliefs.  You want my vote, earn it by telling the truth.

 

Are you for or against ethanol?  Does ethanol polute less than gas?  Does ethanol yeild more fuel per unit of oil than gas?  Does ethanol take food off our tables and lead to higher food prices?  Does milage go down when you run ethanol?  The answer to these questions are not opinon.  They are easily provable facts.  So before we potentially go any further down the wrong road, lets have a science fair.  The funny thing about math and science is if you enter that world without bias you will always find the truth.

 

Why can't we take some flex fuel vehicles down to the Daytona race track and run some laps?  Simple science, put and measured amount of gas in a vehicle take it up to 55, lock on the cruise and run it dry see how far you get.  Repeat with ethanol.  Do this three times average your results and tell me the truth.  Measure the emissions and use a little fifth grade math and find out which fuel polutes more.  They say all the corn that goes to ethanol still gets into the feed system for livestock and we actually get more out of the same amount of grain.  Really, how hard is that to prove.  Back to fifth grade math.  If farmer Brown sells 20 tons of corn to the local ethanol plant to make fuel, how much corn does the ethanol plant need to sell to cattlemen for feed to equal 100%? Show me the receipts! We know it we get 19 gallons of gas out of a barrel of oil.  How come we don't know how much ethanol we get out of a barrel of oil?  I would love it if ethanol turns out to be the wonder fuel that breaks our oil dependency.  But quit jerking me around and tell me the truth. 

 

Any high school science teachers looking for a class project? 

Jamie, Adam calling all Myth Busters!  

 

 

How can the local, state and federal governments spend trillions of dollars year after year, decade after decade and never solve a problem?  They are not even on the way to solving any problems.  Our problems will never go away until politics as usual ends.  My introductory blog is the first step to getting the "D" and "R" out of politics and out of the way.

 

Even though my troubleshooting training and experience is in electronics, the basic troubleshooting skills can be and needs to be applied to any problem you wish to solve.  Our current governement does not apply any of the basic rules of troubleshooting.  All our current governement does is throw big piles of money recklessly at our problems with no clear plan of attack.  Solid troubleshooting skills must be adopted by both parties before any problem will be solved. 

 

The absolute first thing that must be done in successful troubleshooting is identify the cause of the problem.  The reason our money is wasted and nothing is solved is largely due to our feable attack on the symptoms of problems and total disregard for the true cause of these problems.  Secondly, one needs to understand that there are no single issues.  All the issues are connected.  If you touch one you touch them all.  We always need to remember an action will cause an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else.  When working on solutions to one problem the successful problem solver will take into account the impact their plan will have on other issues.  Next is use the right tool for the right job.  For the people in elected office the tool for any of our problems is information.  They have a great advantage of living in the information age.  However we live in the bad information age.  Good information is the right tool for this job.  Sloppy media, self serving special interest and politicians that are more likely to follow the herd instead of lead the pack constantly place road blocks between solutions and problems.

 

The last requirement is not really general troubleshooting but applies to solutions to our collective problems.  Any real solution is going to be a partnership between the three main segments of our society.  The people, the government and the business community.  Each of the three will have a role in every problem.  Our roles will not be evenly split in equal thirds, each issue will require a different specific formula for true success.

 

No plan will work until we adopt solid troubleshooting techniques.  Ideas good and bad will continue to fail until we change the way we evaluate and execute these ideas.  Common sense will do far more than any Senator.  

 

I intend to use this blog to put forth ideas geared to solving our problems.  I'm not conceeded enough to think these are the only ways to fix problems they are just a common sense approach our problems.  Hopefully these ideas will spark others to add constructive input and we can build real effective solutions by using all of our collective skills, experience and education.