Andy's Blog

Moving Andy's Blog

2010-02-11T11:41:00.001-08:00

I've been using Blogger to build and publish my blog, but rather than use their servers for hosting I have been using FTP to publish the blogs on my own site (The AndyZone). Recently, Blogger has decided that they are investing too many resources into maintaining FTP so they are ending that service as of March 31, of this year. Rather than surrender my content to their servers, I am switching to Wordpress and continuing to host the blogs on my own site. This notice will be the last entry made at this address.

To make WordPress work with my site I had to make a small change in the blog's URL. This blog's new address will be: http://www.theandyzone.com/opedblog/. Please bookmark the new address.

Thank you for your patronage.

Andy

How Stupid Can We Be?

2008-08-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

In the case of our manned space program, we’re about to find out.
If you’ve been in touch with the news at all, you know about the Russian invasion of Georgia. The Russians are not going anywhere for a while, and their continued presence will increase the friction between our country and theirs. That’s too bad, not only because of the tensed general state of the world but because of what it can mean for the US manned space program.

I’ve always been for cooperation between the United States and other countries, and I’ve always felt the US manned space program’s role in easing tensions between the US and Russia has been one of its brightest benefits, no matter what else we technically did or did not gain. But there is a subtle and important difference between cooperating with foreign partners and being dependent upon them. It’s not in the best interests of the United States to ever become dependent on any country for its access to space. Yet, with the upcoming retirement of the shuttle and the four to five year gap that will exist between that event and the rise of the Constellation program, the United States will be dependent upon Russian Progress and Soyuz vehicles to keep the International Space Station manned.

Now, here comes Georgia, the Russian invasion, and a possible new Cold War. At least that’s what’s being threatened, in true Soviet fashion.
Whether either country can really afford a new Cold War may not be a moot point, but I’m not going to explore that here. Even without that, any Russian whim can cut off US access to the ISS or make it so expensive the cost to get there is prohibitive. If that happens, we’re going to come to understand the short sightedness of mothballing the shuttle before Constellation is flying. Combine that with a rising Chinese influence in the conquest of space, and the United States could find itself, for the first time in its history, a spaceborne power flying in third place.

Yes, there have been recent efforts in the US Congress to extend the shuttle for a flight or two and even talk of using the shuttle to close the “Shuttle-Constellation” gap. The problem is that, because of current funding levels and the attitude of top officials in NASA and the administration, they want to stop the shuttle from flying as soon as possible to turn both their dollars and their efforts to Constellation. They don’t want shuttle extended. But just like human gestation periods are fixed, so is the time you can cut to bring a new program on board. Constellation can’t be born and flying soon enough to get us out of this mess.

There may be some time left to keep the shuttle flying until Constellation can lift off, assuming you can push that idea past the organizational resistance in NASA that would have to be overcome. But the last external tank for shuttle has already been built and tooling for the metal behemoths is already being torn down to make way for The New Toy. In our rush to bury what has been painted as a faulty past, we may wind up losing our near-term leadership in space. What that might cost us is anyone’s guess.

What's the Difference?

2008-08-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were at dinner with another couple when the lady across the table pointed out that the invasion of Georgia by Russian was the mirror image of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. She was right. What are the similarities? Both countries invaded to promote regime change and both countries did so against the opposition of an inferior military force. What are the differences? Well, the Russians invaded to support pro-Soviet forces in the break-away Georgian province of South Ossetia after Georgian military forces cracked down on it. The United States invaded Iraq under the false pretenses of “fighting the terrorists” and ending the possibility of supplying them and Hussein with “weapons of mass destruction” that have never been found.

I busted out laughing this morning at Condeleesa Rice’s statement that “This is not 1968 and the Russians cannot threaten their neighbors and hope to get away with it.” Are they really so blind they can’t see the amazingly arrogant irony in that statement? Have they never asked themselves what it is that makes us think we’re going to get away with the invasion of Iraq?

History will make its judgments. And history will not be formed until after we have left the country and the government of Iraq takes its final form, one that could be very different from that we see today. Despite the fact that the “Surge” has calmed things down, we’ve still got a long road to hoe.

What is it in the American political psyche that makes us believe that anything in the cause of freedom is okay? That is the way we think; for if it were not, our leaders could not blind us with it whenever they had some darker political objective they want to pursue. The Bush administration went into Iraq with a child-like view of the place that ignored a thousand years of history and assumed the Iraqi people would just jump at the chance to be free no matter what the cost. This is the same failed thinking used to try to cure an alcoholic by offering them recovery whether or not they’re ready for it. People have to be in enough pain that it forces them through the fear of change, or it ain’t gonna happen. The only people who know if that is true for them are the ones involved. In the case of Iraq, it ain’t us.

What Barack Obama Needs To Change

2008-01-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

While I consider myself an independent voter, my political leanings often lead me to vote for Democratic candidates. I said early on when Barack Obama appeared on the Presidential scene, I might vote for him. Indeed, like most American voters, I want big-time political change; and Barack was my favorite political candidate. But I can’t vote for him now; and I question whether he really is the candidate for change. It’s all due to his position concerning the American space program.

I’m not going to pretend I’m unbiased. As many of you know, I work for an American space program contractor in the Shuttle program; and what happens at NASA does have a direct impact on my livelihood. But even if that were not true, I’d feel the same way. It was my love and attraction to the program, misplaced or not, that has driven many of the things that have happened in my life. I also care about what happens to the program because I believe it does have both direct and indirect and positive impacts on the quality of life for the citizens of our country and the world as a major contributor to science, technology, and medicine. While I won’t pretend to believe the space program holds the key to human survival, it does portend to pay back dividends that mostly improve life as we know it.

Of all the current political candidates, Hillary Clinton has the best articulated, clearest, and most positive outlook on America’s manned space program’s future. While she has not stated her support for Constellation, she has shown she considers NASA’s programs worthy of continuance. Barack, on the other hand, has no firmly developed space policy and, in fact, has stated he would pay for educational programs he wishes to expand by delaying Constellation for five years. My first reaction to that was: Is he nuts? Such a move would devastate the agency and result in massive layoffs at a time in history when our other only manned spaceflight program is winding down, after which support for ISS is already in question and the US will be dependent on its sometime questionable Soviet partner, and spaceflight prowess from China is on the increase. But even more than that, his approach is the same old tired and easy-to-justify one used by the Democrats to gut NASA funding after the “race to the moon” had been won. How can he claim to be the candidate of change when he can’t think of anything new to do to increase both NASA and educational funding?

Moreover, his approach shows a total ignorance of the reality of the makeup of the Federal budget. NASA expenditures typically live in the 1% or less range of overall Federal expenditure. For 2008, NASA funding is estimated at 17.3 billion dollars while the Department of Education is slated to receive 56 billion dollars and the Department of Health and Human Services is to receive 69.3 billion dollars. The War in Iraq and Afghanistan (and only the latter is justifiable, in my opinion) will cost $141.7 billion dollars in this year alone. That is in addition to the $481.4 billion dollars being given to the Department of Defense for their “baseline” budget. The US Government’s total budget request is $2,902 billion dollars, making the NASA budget responsible for 0.596 percent of the total Federal expenditure.
This morning I watched as Senator Obama referred to the JFK decision to take the country to the moon as an example of American “can do” and as a vision of hope. How hypocritical to do so when his only vision of the future of the space program is to confine it to a bureaucratic bog! That will do nothing to inspire the best toil from American minds or offer our people the shining glimpse of the future that NASA sometimes represents?

If you’re really for change, Barack, a good place for you to start is there.

Evil Spirits and Other Things

2007-03-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

I get so busy writing the other blogs on this site I forget about this one. That’s something I’m going to work to remedy. After all, the purpose of a blog is as much to catch one’s everyday thoughts and feelings, and that is especially true of this blog. It is its major purpose.

The news that Mayan Priests were going to purge their temple of “evil spirits” after George W visited it this week kept me in good humor all week long. I’d like it a whole lot more if they wouldn’t stop there; there’s plenty of other “evil spirits” hovering around our Capitol in Washington, D.C. to get rid of. They could probably make it a lifetime goal to cleanse the place; but I suppose that would tear them away from their own people too long. Besides, you can’t blame them for leaving us Americans to solve the problem; we did create it by electing all of them, after all.

Guess there is another point of view than that of the Conservative Right in this country, after all.

It will take decades to undo the damage to U.S foreign relations caused by the Bush Administration.

The battle for the rights of us everyday guys to fly in the skies of this country continues. I spoke with a friend of mine who was concerned about the user fee proposals Bush has circulated through Congress, proposals that the airlines are backing to shuffle off on general aviation more of its own mismanaged costs of doing business. Having dealt with airline management twenty years ago on the other side of an FAA user group, I can tell you that the airlines do not care for general aviation and wish it would go away. That has not and will not change; nowhere is there a better example of how money corrupts than in their attitudes toward use of the skies and how they can sometimes influence Congress. I’ve never been able to figure out why it is that pilots are so politically apathetic, reacting often only when it’s too late to do something. I’ve been trying to figure out how general aviation pilots could stage some kind of boycott, but the only ways I can come up with so far would make us more villains than victims in the public eye. Part of the problem is there is already the perception that most aircraft owners are “fat cats” anyway. But then most people aren’t privy to the sacrifices most owners make (like giving up other vacations or selling a truck or even a home) to keep their airplanes flying. Mechanics and FBO’s at controlled airfields really need to be lobbying against this; they can expect their traffic to dry right up if pilots are charged user fees to fly into their field.

Switching gears to Iraq…

If you’ve read anything I’ve written here at all, then you now I predicted that the war in Iraq would prove to be disastrous to the United States. Unfortunately, most of what I said about the war has proven to be true. I also said that once we had committed to it, we had to stick in to win; the problem, of course, is that it doesn’t look like a military victory is possible there. At some point in such a situation if a political solution doesn’t take shape, then we’ve got to decide when to bring the troops home with whatever honor we can.

That said, I don’t agree with Democratic proposals that publically call for bringing the troops back this year or early next. It’s not that I think such proposals don’t need to be examined; it’s that I think they have no business being made public. As much as I hate to agree with Chaney on any subject, he’s right when he says that such deadlines encourage the insurgents to simply wait us out, though such a tactic is probably the unfortunate truth of the situation no matter what we do. It is the job of the Democractic party to keep the Republicans honest; it is not their job to sabotage the war effort by playing politics with it.

By the way, for all you future politicians and presidents out there, the major lessons of Iraq, Viet Nam, and Afghanistan are these:

(1) Americans will respond vigorously when directly attacked. We have no qualms about going anywhere and doing whatever it takes to defend ourselves.

(2) American support of a war based on political goals rather than a direct attack will rightly be weak, so don’t plan on waging a war that will last more than a few years or count on Congressional and popular support lasting longer than that.

(3) Don’t assume your military forces are so almighty they can handle anything. Plan wisely, or the enemy will prove you wrong.

(4) Once you go in with a military, go in with as single focus: to win. We didn’t do that in Afghanistan which is why the Taliban are resurgent and Osama Bin Laden still hasn’t been caught. Our mission was NOT accomplished there; it hasn’t really even begun.

(5) Don’t assume the rest of the world thinks like you do and wants the same things. They don’t. Freedom belongs to those who want it not necessarily to those who need it.

Turning the Tide?

The IED (Improvised Explosive Device) has been the insurgent’s weapon of choice. But now there is a weapon to combat the IED, and it has the potential to reshape the dynamic of the Iraqi conflict, and perhaps turn the tide in America’s favor.

A company named Force Protection is hand-making armored vehicles specifically designed to combat the IED. A troop carrier named “the Cougar” and a larger crane-equipped vehicle called “the Buffalo” are slowly being deployed in the Iraqi conflict. So far, there have been no casualties among the troops who have been riding in these vehicle who have hit IED’s; needless to say, our government needs to do everything it can to speed up production and deliver these vehicles into Iraq, and Baghdad specifically, as fast as they can.

It’s too bad it’s taken four years to develop these vehicles and get them delivered, but there is still time for them to make a major impact in the conduct and outcome of the war.

It’s true the insurgents will try to find some way to defeat them, but that may be harder for them than first appears. The obvious solution is to target them with heavier weapons. But weapons of that magnitude will slow them down tremendously, be hard to camouflage when in place, and make their hiding places immediately visible and targets when used. A little more air cover will take care of that tactic relatively quickly.

The technologically superior power does not always win. Good tactics and surprise (or confusion on the enemy’s part) can offset that advantage. Still, technology can and often does make the difference between winning and losing; and these vehicles appear to be in that category of “making a difference” for much the better.

Switching Gears to the Space Program…

Having a goal to reach by a deadline is a good thing unless it forces you to take shortcuts that compromise safety or arbitrarily ends a program short of its goals. That’s why I’m having a hard time understanding NASA Administrator Griffith’s rigid insistence that the shuttle program will be shut down in September 2010 regardless of where the program is.

The current problems with hail damage with the external tank will be solved, but it’s looking more and more that even the mid-May launch date may be optimistic. We’ll know more after a meeting next week. No matter what the next launch date is, it’s a fairly sure thing that some flights will slide later than desired. Managers’ choices will then become to either compress the number of flights left into a tighter schedule , to terminate some missions altogether and sacrifice some long term objectives, or extend the 2010 arbitrary deadline and complete the entire ISS build-up. The option that makes the most sense to me is that last one. Orion probably will not fly as soon as NASA had hoped (due to budget cuts), so ISS must be put into god enough shape to stand the empty abyss of time that will pass before Orion does fly.

I don’t share the opinion of many of the “outlanders” that the space shuttle was a mistake. Indeed, ultimately, the shuttle will have proven to have played a decisive role in manned spaceflight history and, at some point, another winged vehicle that treads the space between earth and orbit will become a necessity, whether it’s operated by NASA or some company whose name we do not yet know.

Our Days Are Numbered

2006-07-04T02:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy with getting my group ready for the launch of STS-121. We work in the Mission Evaluation Room, the engineering support room for the program and the flight control team. I worked the first launch attempt on Saturday morning and helped examine the L5L jet heater problem and cleared it for launch. Last night, I attended the MMT meeting in Houston during the discussion of the foam crack as an observer. I wanted to see the rationale for flight myself and then had to notify my console folks to come in for the launch attempt on the 4th.

All of us working in the program are aware of what is at stake here. Being in Safety has never been an easy job. If things go wrong, like they did on STS-107, then we have failed. That’s a sober reminder of the importance and consequences of what we do.

On a personal level, this flight is filled with uncertainty. I’ve been with shuttle for almost twenty years now, so it’s sad that the program is ending. There is also a bit more stress. Aside from handling the emotional burden of another accident if it occurs, there is the knowledge that my job has a finite end, bringing with it an uncertain future. A younger friend of mine in the program with me sayid yesterday it's foolish now not to have updated resumes, and he’s right. Of course, there never is a guaranteed job unless you’re a civil servant, and even that guarantee is not 100%. At my age (55 as of 2 days ago), finding a new job in this industry will be tough. I’ve known there would be financial turmoil ahead, but I’ve been hoping it’s four years off.

NASA needs the shuttle to do well. If STS-121 launches and we do not liberate large pieces of foam or any foam that threatens the vehicle, then NASA will have demonstrated that it can bounce back from adversity and solve a very difficult technical problem. We talk at work all the time about how the problem is due to the vehicle’s “piggyback” design; if the Orbiter were riding on top of a booster stack, the “tip of the spear” so to speak, then any debris shedding would have no impact. Personally, I’ve always felt that winged space vehicles were the way to go, and you can bet that at some point we’ll return to some variant of them again. Hopefully, then the lessons of shuttle will carry forward. Even with the “spam in a can” design of CEV, many of the technical lessons learned with designing and managing flight systems and operations can be applied along with (hopefully) lessons learned during Apollo. For despite the beating the shuttle is taking in the press and the court of public opinion, the shuttle is still a complex and wonderful machine.

As NASA managers have returned to saying, spaceflight is a risky business. NASA did itself and the public a disservice in the Reagan era by adopting the rhetoric of making spaceflight routine. The new commercial ventures, which travel at much lower velocities and altitudes and can slowly ratchet up their achievements and pace as financial capital flows in, have a much better chance of doing that. That is not the government’s role in space. The government’s role is to take the risks that the commercial sector won’t, to blaze new ground, and to open up the New Frontier to human exploration and development. In that light, NASA will always be doing a risky job, and that is what we get paid to do.

I’m not on the launch shift today. I’m helping the MER Safety Console tonight if we launch today, and I believe there’s a good chance we will. I’ll be working mainly as a substitute this mission, stepping out of my usual role in order to let my younger troops step up the bar while they can. We all know the shuttle’s days are numbered, and that makes each opportunity we have to work with it a little more precious.

Browsing for Trouble

2005-12-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

It’s not uncommon to pass by new car dealerships on Sunday afternoon and see folks pulled up to their closed gates and walking though the herds of vehicles. It’s nice to be able to walk through the autos and not be hassled by salesmen. What I didn’t know when we chose to do that this past Sunday, we were setting ourselves up for a loss of income and identify theft, as are a lot of unsuspecting Houston citizens every Sunday if they choose to stop at any of the car dealerships along I-45 north of the Beltway and south of Alameda Genoa.

We stopped at David McDavid Nissan on Sunday afternoon (Nov 6) about 2 p.m. to take a look at the trucks. It was a sunny day with some clouds and a little rain just to the south of us, and we pulled just off the northbound service road, parking in the closed southernmost entrance to the dealer’s car lot. The first batch of trucks we looked at were just to the right of our car, on the passenger’s side, not more than twenty or thirty feet away. It took us three to five minutes to look at those trucks and decide we saw nothing of interest. So, we moved toward the other side of the dealership to look at a couple of trucks parked near the showcase. We were up there maybe two or three minutes, taking about another minute to get back to our car. We were gone five minutes, tops, if that.

When we got there, we found a gentleman and his teenage daughter in a black pickup next to ours. As we approached, he was saying something about a guy “over there” who had gotten broken into. As I got closer to the car, I could see glass from the front, passenger side window on the ground, and it was my car he was talking about! My wife was right behind me and she almost leaped over at the window to look inside the car, becoming visibly upset as she realized someone had stolen her purse. She had set it down on the floor in the front of the seat and left it in the car when she had gotten out.

The gentleman from the pickup was talking to his son on the phone and getting the telephone number for the Houston Police Department. He also was telling me about another gent about sixty or seventy yards to the south whose pickup had also been broken into. While we had parked our vehicle perpendicular to the street inside a little driveway, he had pulled up parallel to the direction of traffic and had been up on the curb. The thief or thieves had broken the driver’s side window, found his wife’s purse pushed up under the passenger seat, and stolen it as well.

Neither of us had heard or seen anything. While we didn’t have a car alarm on our vehicle, they had; but it hadn’t helped them at all. The natural traffic noise from the nearby freeway, even on a Sunday afternoon, was enough to not only cover the sound of glass breaking but also their car alarm as well.

The gentleman in the black pickup let me use his cell phone to call the Houston Police. We waited for a policeman to arrive; it was about 40 minutes later when an officer got there. He told us this was the 6th of these called in today, and it was something thatg occurred every Sunday. The department considered these robberies unsolvable; and the policeman shared that his own wife had been victimized by one of these crimes. He had recovered her purse and nearly everything in it except for her cash by searching garbage dumpsters in a nearby apartment complex; and though he recommended we do the same, I mentally filed that idea away as something we were not going to do. We had no idea whom we were dealing with. Searching through dumpsters if you’re a uniformed policemen with a Glock strapped to your hip might be a good Sunday afternoon activity; but I wasn’t a uniformed policeman and wasn’t armed. My idea of a good gun is the 20mm, 6000 round per minute, Vulcan canon found in the F-14; and I just didn’t have one of those. Besides, I was not going to risk me and my wife getting into a confrontation with some dirty bad guys. Better to let the stuff go.

I pulled out as much of the loose glass out of the broken window as I could, told my wife to sit in the rear seat on the driver’s side to minimize her exposure to fragmented glass, and then lowered the rest of the windows in the Montero. In my car, lowering all the windows seems to minimize the actual “wind” in the car; the most wind is experienced when either or both front two windows are down. I drove home no faster than 40 mph at any time and used sidestreets and backroads where traffic flows were normally slower. I parked the Monetro in our garage to protect it until I could get the window fixed; and we began to quickly access our bank and credit card accounts to either close them our or shuffle monies to a place where the thieves could probably not reach it. The police officer had said they were after cash; but we had much bigger concerns.

My wife, like most women, had her entire life represented in the contents of that purse. While it contained only a little cash (about $40-$45), it also held most of her credit cards, her debit card, her driver’s license, a professional license, a NASA spouse I.D., a 20GB iPod and a new iPod Nano (both engraved), her cell phone, a pager from her employer, and various other items I’m sure we haven’t tallied, yet. As we detailed the purse’s contents, the officer pointed out how putting all her stuff in one place (her purse) left her vulnerable to huge losses if the purse was taken. We talked about that, too, and how it was better for both of us not to have i.d.’s and credit cards and/or money in the same place. I typically don’t carry them all together.

In any case, my discussion with the policeman pointed to the fact that this crime occurs every Sunday along this strip of highway. The crooks know that women get tired of carrying their purses and leave them in their cars as they walk, usually with a friend or spouse, around the car lots. The crooks know that car lot security cameras do not cover the streets, and the noise of passing cars will cover what they are doing. They hit fast and leave, ripping off the purses, and taking the cash. Unfortunately, it is not public knowledge that this is happening every Sunday and that everyone who stops at a car dealership along this stretch of highway is at significant risk. I am not sure how long this has been a problem but it has been going on long enough so that the police are aware of it, and I did not get the impression that it was considered enough of a problem they were going to divert resources to put an end to it. Interestingly, the officer stated that only at the Toyota dealership where there was a guard was this not happening.

This happened to us between 2:00 and 2:20 p.m. in the afternoon on a nice day with plenty of traffic. We certainly won’t be stopping to look at cars in this area on a Sunday afternoon ever again, or anytime the dealerships are closed. (I’m sure the dealerships prefer you come by when they’re open anyway, so there’s no financial incentive for them to post guards or cameras to solve this problem.) Obviously, I recommend that everyone avoid this area and don’t assume this is a safe activity. It’s not only unsafe, but it’s very expensive.

Common Sense

2005-10-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

CNN hosted some interesting ideas for the rebuilding of New Orleans. There are many folks out there who know how to make lemonade out of a lemon. Within it all, there still is the basic question that needs to be asked an answered: How much of the city of New Orleans does it make sense to rebuild? My answer would be: only that which is above sea level.

Admittedly, that will leave a large part of the city in rubbles. But the reality is that next year, as the people in Florida saw this year, New Orleans could be dealing with damage from another major hurricane. Can we really afford, even as a country, to pour billions of dollars back into the area, only have to do it again next year? And the year after?

Admittedly, the Cameron, Louisiana barely above sea level didn’t fair a lot better than New Orleans did. There are no structures there now, and the people are going to have rebuild from scratch. But at least they have a reasonable chance of doing that in a reasonable time using a reasonable amount of resources. Rebuilding any city that is dependent upon levees to stem the tide of flooding on multiple sides because it is below sea level seems like a trip into insanity. I’m just talking simple physics here, folks. Even the best engineering must succumb to that. And has. Consider that the National Weather Service is saying that the New Orleans debacle was caused by only a Category 3 storm. What would happen if a year from now New Orleans saw a true Category 5?

Man too often likes to pretend he can beat Nature. He has won some battles. Ultimately, though, the trick to a happy life is to learn to live with it, not constantly fight it. I don’t see how completely rebuilding New Orleans like it was serves anyone. It’s time to be smarter instead of arrogant.

Deja Vu

2005-10-06T03:17:00.000-07:00

There’s an old saying that those who do not pay attention to the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. There’s not a better place to observe that in action than in the environment that’s starting to form around the new NASA lunar program.

When America was focused on beating the Russians, the public rallied around the manned space program and didn’t give the expenditure of public funds a second thought. But once we had landed on the moon and the Russian threat of beating us there had disappeared, the voices of disenchantment with our manned space program began to resonate throughout our political landscape. Eventually, those voices won out. The Apollo program was ended even though three Saturn Five launch vehicles were almost completely built. NASA tried to lick its wounds by putting up Skylab and moving on to shuttle, the next new thing.

With NASA’s new manned exploration program barely on the drawing boards, those same voices are starting again. The Washington Post published an editorial stating—as its has been said a hundred times before—that robotics can do it better and cheaper and there is no need for a manned program.

Indeed, the success of many of NASA’s robotics programs do show that they are effective scientific tools. But robotics inevitably runs up against the barrier of design. Robots still can only do what they are designed to do and do not possess the ability to adapt to new and unusual situations humans do.

With the winding down of the shuttle and space station programs, there is an opportunity for those people opposed to space exploration in general or human space exploration in particular to gain enough political momentum to shut down NASA’s efforts to maintain a manned presence in space. NASA and those who support it must begin now to ensure that the public sees the value in our continued presence in space, and not just from an apologetic viewpoint as was often taken in the post-Apollo era. Otherwise, with our economy being dragged down by the war in Iraq and the damages from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the shutdown of the shuttle program could mean a U.S. absense from space just when many other countries, like China and member countries in the European Space Agency, are gearing up for man expanded presence.

Likewise, NASA needs to be cautious both about shutting down the shuttle program too early and not utilizing shuttle and ISS assets to take us forward into the next generation programs. NASA Administrator Griffin has the right idea in trying to ensure that NASA does not see a lot of “down time” between the end of its current programs and the first flight of its new one. If he either shuts shuttle down too early in the vain hope of accelerating the new programs or steps off into new development programs that require too much money and time to bring forward, he might wind up wishing that the shuttle was still flying, risks and all.

Stemming Hypocrisy

2005-05-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

The US House of Representatives has approved expanded uses of stem cell research, and President Bush has threatened to veto the measure. His reason? He says that he will not allow us to destroy life to save it. Isn’t that exactly what he is doing in Iraq? Hasn’t he maintained that the American sacrifice, which is the destruction of young American lives, is worth the life we’re attempting to give to the people of Iraq?

This is, as is often the case when dealing with issues surrounding abortion, nothing more than another case of hypocrisy. There’s a lot of that going around in Washington these days.

Take, for instance, the Republican cry against “activist judges”. These are judges who rule in directions against those of the Republican right. Meanwhile, the big battle in The Senate has been over Bush’s picks for the Federal courts. Why? Because he’s busy stacking the courts with conservative judges, ones he believes will interpret the law, in their own activist way, to lean toward conservative values. Otherwise, if all judges were not exercising their own belief systems in interpreting the law, why would it matter?

The reality is that both parties pull this stuff to solidify their own political power instead of doing what’s best for the country. I don’t think I’ve seen such arrogance, self-righteousness, or hypocrisy coming out of Washington in decades. The sad truth probably is that it’s just reflecting where we are as a people. Or we wouldn’t put up with it.

Freedom has little long-term hope unless we get honest and reel it in. We are becoming, in effect, our own worse enemies

Spiritual Engagement

2005-05-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

A survey of young Americans recently reported they were actively engaged in a wide search for their spirituality, one that was open to an exploration of many of the world’s religions and points of view. That is a very good thing. If that is true, then the generation of American youth hitting the streets now have a better chance at improving the world and making it the heaven it could be than any generation of the past century or centuries. They are seeing all too clearly the devastation religion could cause.

The world is aflame because of the adherence to single, rigid points of view that too often masquerade as religion or are often encouraged by it. There is a huge difference between religion and spirituality; and, in most cases, the churches we hold so dear are the enemies of true spiritual growth rather than the facilitator of it. Americans, as a group, seem to have little understanding of the difference between the two; and it is our codependence on churches that is to blame.

The religions of Native America, for the most part, worked to integrate humans with their environments and bring peace and harmony to both the individual and the tribes. The religion of White America focuses instead on establishing dominance and practicing fractionalization, spending much of its energy trying to play God rather than helping people remove the blocks they have erected toward Him. It is the so-called “most religious” faction of our country that is the guiltiest of this; their own lives appear racked with distrust of a God that cannot handle the world in the way they want it, which is why they have to tell you how it is. Rather than focus on their own issues with Him, they focus on the world around them, judging everything that does not fit their view of everything as “evil” or “sinful”. In reality, those concepts don’t exist outside of human perception.

The bottom line problem with nearly all churches is that you are attending an organization dedicated to teaching you what someone else’s belief in God is rather than giving you the tools to let you discover on your own Who He Is.

Today’s world would be better off without religions. There would be no holy cause you could claim to be following as you mistreated your fellow man, no one in a position to manipulate your vote using God as a justification, and no one to justify your inflecting your views of the world and “proper” behavior on anyone else.

I applaud everyone who works to discover God on his or her own and finds Him in the peace, serenity, Love, and Still Small Voice that tells you and you alone what to do.

Culture of Life?

2005-02-10T15:17:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago when President Bush was contrasting us with the terrorists, he stated that we believe in a culture of life. I’ve heard that rhetoric used by the conservative right when talking about issues of abortion. While I don’t disagree that our culture does seem to hold life in a higher regard than many other cultures, I’m not convinced that Mr. Bush and many of his brethren really understand what that means.

I must consider such a statement hypocritical if, as a country, our first response in any situation in world affairs is to resort to military force; and indeed, with this President more than any other in recent history, he seems to use force and diplomacy backwards. You cannot claim you believe in a culture of life if your first impulse in dealing with world situations is to go to war. War overseas. War at home. Against abortion clinics. Against the environment. Against homosexuals.

If Bush believes in a culture of life, then why does his current budget slash funding for programs benefiting Mother Earth, education, the National Parks, and many other things that enhance the quality of life for everyday Americans?

Does he believe in life only for the conservative right?

It would appear so.

Cold Weather

2005-01-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

The weather report this morning reflected the typical Houston winter pattern. It would be warm out today, up in the seventy degree (Farenheit) range. But up north, it is much colder. Some places it’s in the twenties and even in the teens, if not below zero.

It’s colder still in Washington, DC, where the outside air temperature is only one of the gauges. My wife and I both remarked how the cold temperature showed on the face of a TV reporter from Houston, Jessica Willey, who is reporting on the President’s Inauguration. I don’t know where Jessica is from, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s somewhere in the south. She obviously was not used to the twenty degree temps she was dealing with. The real question is whether the chill she was feeling was due just to the weather.

I’ve listened all week to the rationalizations justifying that this Presidential Inauguration is one of the most expensive on record. People seem confused over holding an Inauguration this expensive and holding one at all. They keep throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The President could just raise his right hand and swear in and give the $40 million+ to tsunami relief or impact things closer to home and give it as a “thank you” to those families whose loved ones have been killed in Iraq. Many of them probably need bucks to make ends meet. That’s not happening, and the Inauguration fits the tone of the Administration behind it, i.e., arrogant, extravagant at the expense of others, and operating in denial.

Spending $40 million dollars on something the rest of America will get no benefit from feels a lot like, “Let them eat cake!”.

Grounded Mentors

2004-12-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

One of the airplanes I’ve loved throughout my flying career is the T-34. The tandem cockpit, two-seater, single-engine aircraft was used by both the United States Air Force and the US Navy as early as the 1950’s as a primary flight trainer. At the end of their service, they were passed on to Navy flying clubs, where I flew them, and to private hands. It was a great little warbird not much bigger than any other single engine airplane and hell of a lot of fun. I’d love to own one myself. The usual $150,000 price tag has put it out of my reach for now.

Just north of Houston a few weeks ago, the second local T-34 crash in two years occurred. Much like the first, witnesses saw a wing depart the aircraft in flight. This is a known defect of these airplanes. The FAA had instituted an inspection program to try to counter the risk, and the aircraft involved in the crash had complied with those requirements. Both airplanes were owned by Texas Air Aces. The first crash killed the company’s founder.

The FAA has grounded the airplanes. (Click here for a copy of the Airworthiness Directive.--Note: You'll need Adobe Acrobat to view it.) As painful as I know that is for the aircrafts’ current owners, I feel it’s an appropriate move. It’s not clear at this point what, if anything, can be done to keep the airplanes flying safely. Better inspection requirements might do the trick, though that may be doubtful. There’s a mechanism at work that’s obviously not fully understood. A mandatory replacement of the wing spars in the airplane might also prove to be just a band aid since nothing would be done to address stress and fatigue on the accompanying structure. I’m not going to pretend I know what the answer is; but if I were a T-34 owner today, I’d be bracing myself for a permanent grounding. It may be time to simply retire the airplanes or simply retire the A or B models individually if one has a more provocative failure history than the other.
I hope a solution can be found that can allow the airplanes to fly safely. Most general aviation aircraft are flown safely past their original design lifetimes because of strict maintenance programs and owners willing to put the necessary money in their airplanes to refurbish them. But those of us in the aviation community may have to accept that the service lives of these airplanes have been so different that time has finally caught up with them, and it’s time to let them soar into that big graveyard in the sky.

B Is For Bullshit

2004-11-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

If you've read much of what I've written here, then you know I'm not a Bush fan. I wasn't happy that he won the election nor was I surprised. We Americans are a country in denial.

Of course, now that he has won, Bush is once again appearing as the ?compassionate conservative? he is not. Besides, I thought compassion was a dirty word. It sure seemed to be during the campaign, in more ways than one.

Bush stated that he was going to focus much of his presidency on issues of morality and economy. The economy is his business. Morality is not. Governments, by their very nature, lack morality. How is he expects to give away something he doesn't have?

I was hoping that the election would prove that ?b is for balance?. But the country would have none of that. Instead, we proved that ?b is for bullshit?. Stand by. We're going to have four more years of it.

Closing In

2004-11-03T15:22:00.000-08:00

Between having to bring work home and spending what free time is left looking for airplanes, I haven't had much time to write anything of my own. I miss it.

That said, after chasing several duds, I believe we are closing in on our airplane. All the ducks seem to be lining up on this one. I'll know more after this weekend. On Saturday, Connie and I are flying a Tampico TB9 to an airport near Farmerville, Louisiana to inspect a red, white, and yellow 1974 Grumman Traveler. If the logs and paperwork and the airplane prove to be as good as they appear and the current owner and I can reach a deal, I hoping to have him fly the airplane down to Galveston, Texas for a pre-sale inspection and appraisal next weekend. We would take ownership of the airplane sometime within the next two weeks, as soon as we could get all the transfers worked out.
The sooner, the better. Or so I feel right now. Later, I may wonder why I rushed so to get into more debt.

I'll know more Sunday.

Mr. Andy's Wild Ride (Part 2)

2004-10-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

I had thought that dealing with individuals would be more straightforward than dealing with a broker. What I’ve discovered instead is that it all depends on the person.

Case in point was the owner of the Indiana Traveler. When I contacted him about his airplane and asked him when the annual was, he stated that the annual was going to go on that week. After studying a picture of his airplane, when I asked him the long etch mark on the airplane’s canopy that streamed from the outside air temperature gauge was a scratch or a crack and whether it was going to be repaired during the annual, he said it was and it was already being done. When I asked him when the airplane would be available to inspect and fly, he said it was available anytime. How could that be if the airplane was having an annual performed on it? He then wrote me saying he already had an offer for $30,000 for the airplane ?as is?. I wrote back that I wasn’t ready to make an offer until I inspected and flew the airplane; but if I liked what I saw, I would be willing to beat that offer up to the amount of his asking price, i.e., $34, 950. He then wrote back, apparently forgetting what he had written just a short time before, saying that he was in a Catch 22 because he had this offer for $30K ?as is? and didn’t want to commit to having the annual performed unless he had a firm offer?from me. I responded by asking him to let me know if the other guy bought the airplane.

That ended that ?conversation?.

I told my wife that this guy was not someone I wanted to do business with.

Interestingly enough, that brought my favorite Traveler back into the picture. Not long after we had said goodbye to the one over in Sarasota that had its wings pulled off, I discovered one for sale I really liked and that was based in the same place. It was also being handled by a broker. The name of his company was and is ?Direct Aircraft Sales?. At the time I e-mailed him, it was just after Hurricane Frances; he was in the process of relocating his business to Montana. While I couldn’t know why, I suspected it was because there is no sales tax on aircraft in Montana and because there also are no hurricanes. Anyway, he and I had some very good e-mail conversations and, even better, when I checked on everything he was telling me, it turned out to be true. But as we got close to talking about me going out to inspect the airplane, I got distracted by the Texas Cheetah. I decided a couple of days ago to go back to looking at the Sarasota Traveler, so I wrote an e-mail to the guy telling him I wanted to pick up pursuit on this airplane, asking him what I’d have to do to get a pre-sale inspection, and asking him for terms, i.e., how much down, etc. I still hadn’t gotten a response when I found out that my company was ending me to Kennedy Space Center for a workshop. Airline connections are through Orlando. So, if I could take some time off, I’d be within a two hour drive of Sarasota where the airplane was. I cleared that with my boss. Were things finally starting to fall together? It was too early to tell. But one thing I needed to know for sure was whether someone could meet me on Oct 21st at the airplane to show it off. I only had a few days to find out before my travel arrangements would be made.

If I couldn't make it happen, I'd decided to let the airplane go.

Mr. Andy's Wild Ride (Part 1)

2004-10-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

The pages of these blogs have been somewhat blank, much less to the chagrin of both my readers than that of my own soul which fills up with black, yucky gook when I don’t write. I have been preoccupied with airplanes.

It all started with a 1952 Piper Pacer, a white and blue striped, high-winged, four-place taildragger. I borrowed money against my 401K to pay for her; but, alas, she had other ideas. When the airframe and powerplant mechanic I hired to do a pre-sale inspection said ?cough?, she did and spit out unhealthy low compressions, forcing the bare truth from the airplane’s owner that the compressions had been trending downward but holding steady. Not anymore. I offered to take the sweet thing off his hands and give her a better home, but he wanted to try to fix her up with cut-rate medicine and pass her off later at the same price. Fine for him. I moved on.

Next came an Experimental Mustang II. The airplane caught my eye because it was painted up like a World War II Navy fighter. The price was right because the engine was run-out. (And for those of you who don’t know, an airplane engine overhaul costs around $12,000!) We looked at her until I got uneasy about the workmanship in the plane. I mean, the throttle knob looked like it had been bought at Home Depot, i.e., a large, brass knob stuck on the end of the throttle cable. The mixture control, instead of being the red handled vernier knob most pilots know and love, was a black knob with the word ?MIX? hand drawn across it with white paint. The coup de grace was when I realized that the engine’s magneto controls and starter were located in front of the right seater instead of the left where I would be flying from. Bad news if you had to troubleshoot an engine in flight, and with this one already at its overhaul lifetime, the odds were good I would. The airplane had great lines, great color, would haul my wife and I and baggage across country at fairly good speeds, was a taildragger, and I could even do aerobatics in it (It’s that male, macho, pilot thing). But if it fell apart during my first high-g pull, what good would it do me? I felt it became time to move on.

I then fell in love with a Throp T-18 in Brownwood, Texas. Built by a certified FAA airframe and powerplant mechanic under contract to an airline pilot, it was a beautiful machine with sleek lines and fast cruise. But its tiny waist made it a tight fit and it's challenging handling meant my wife couldn’t easily learn to fly it. I was arranging a trip to inspect and fly it when my wife saw a Grumman Traveler, and that was that.

At several times in my life, I have flown Grumman Tigers, and I have always really loved them. They’re fast and agile, have great payload capability, and a sliding canopy, something that makes them look like a mini-fighter. I told my wife about one being sold in Florida and showed her a picture of it.

?I’d be tempted to go for my pilot’s license in that,? she exclaimed. ?I’d be real tempted to go for it!?

And that, of course, shifted the whole discourse of what we had been looking for. Up until that point, we had been looking at any and every thing within our price range and that had the useful load to deal with us. If only I could fly it, who cared? But, after talking more about the pro’s and con’s of the Grumman line, our pleasant experiences with them, and that my wife might really want to get her license, we decided to stop looking at the Thorp...or anything else... and center our attention on the four place Grumman line of aircraft. While we’d love to have a Tiger, folks are asking top dollar for them; we could afford a Cheetah or a Traveler. While there are some subtle design changes between the airplanes, all the four place versions are members of the AA-5 family and differ from each other primarily by the engine used in them. The Travelers and Cheetahs use 150 hp Lycoming engines while the Tigers have 180 horsepower engines of the same make. The fastest airplanes of the lower horsepower bunch are the 1975 Traveler and all the Cheetahs. At cruise altitudes and power settings, they’ll make 128 knots over the ground. That’s 140 mph for you ground pounders. It’s fast enough for me.

The first Traveler we started looking at was a beautiful little red and white bird down in Sarasota, FL. It was priced at $36,000 and had great paint and a nice instrument panel. A guy named Gary was selling it. On the phone, he admitted he had bought it just to sell it and then gave me a story about what was happening to it now. It’s having new seals put in the wings, he said, and then would go through an annual while at a paint shop in Bartow, Florida. He spouted out the name of the guy who was going to do all the work. The airplane would be ready in a couple of weeks, he said.

Parts of his story didn’t line up. Why would the aircraft be having all this work done in a paint ship? Using online FAA records, I ran checks of both the paint shop and the guy he claimed was doing the work. The paint shop was not an approved FAA repair station, and the guy he said was doing the work was not a licensed FAA mechanic. Hmm. The whole story was smelling fishy...!

Using a picture of the airplane, I ran a search of FAA records and found the airplane’s real owner. Using the Internet more, I ran down the true owner’s phone number and gave him a call.

The guy who claimed he owned and he had made a deal, but no money had changed hands nor had any title been transferred. The airplane was having wing tank seals installed...and had been for the past ten months! It wasn’t in Bartow but was down in Fort Lauderdale.

?I’m getting tired of this shop ?two-weeking? me to death,? the owner told me. ?They’ve promised me they’ll have the airplane ready in two to three weeks.?

Uh, huh. And I’ve got a bridge in Texas I’ll sell you. Time to walk away.

Another brokered airplane, also located in Florida, also held the promise of leading us to the promised land. Checking into this one showed it wasn’t registered to the broker but a gentleman in California. The broker, when I contacted him, was in the middle of fleeing to Montana where there is no sales tax on aircraft nor any fear of hurricanes. You would’ve thought he would have taken his airplanes with him, but he hadn’t. They were still sitting in the midst of Florida, even as Hurricanes Charley, and Francis, and Jeanne hit. When I looked at what could become a very confused tax situation, I felt like the hurricanes had hit me. Rather than dealing with tax fights between three states (Florida where the airplane was sold, California where the airplane was still registered, and Texas where the airplane was going to be based), I decided to walk away. I have to give the guy credit, though; his story was checking out. The owner confirmed that the broker had bought the airplane and I was able to find his mechanic’s name in the right town and in the FAA registry. In the end, though, my wife decided that the airplane ‘s price was higher than she wanted to go.

She liked, instead, a damaged Cheetah that was only 100 miles away from us. I had thrown the airplane out of the consideration pool early because the paint was incomplete and I thought we could get one without a damage history. But since she liked it and it was close, I started chatting with the owner via e-mail. I asked him to come down from his $39,800 asking price to $29-32 based on the damage, which had happened only a year ago. He would talk $33.5K, he said, and no lower. I thought that was agreeable, at least until I retrieved the title and damage records from the FAA. The airplane had been damaged more than it first appeared; the cowl had been replaced and I had been assured that the prop and engine had not been involvedbut I had no idea that the wings had been, too, when the pilot flying it—and not the current owner—had overshot the runway and flown into some trees. Adding to that, the title search disclosed a possible lien problem with the airplane. It appeared it might be simply a bureaucratic misunderstanding, but I couldn’t wager thirty thousand dollars to find out. Just days before I was to inspect it, I backed away. Too many dark clouds seemed to be hanging over the airplane. I didn’t need my instrument flight rating to see that.

The third and last brokered airplane landed in New Jersey, though the owner/ broker lived in Pennsylvania. It was a Cheetah with an almost run-out engine but a great avionics package, nice paint, and a nice interior. When the broker reduced the plane’s price to $30,000, he made it quite a deal. Even if we had to pump $12k into an engine rebuild shortly after we bought it, the plane would be worth every penny. This airplane was, at least, registered in this guy’s name. But the show stopper came when he said that, after I inspected it, I would have to give him 25% down for him to hold the airplane for two weeks. I had just enough cash to cover that, but I consider $2000 the minimum cash reserve I want in my pocket to deal with the inevitable things I’m bound to discover on a ?new? old airplane I want fixed. I told him I could only give him $5K. He refused the offer, implying he didn’t think I was serious. For me, $5000 was serious enough!

This guy said he wanted to sell it quickly and gave that as rationale for not accepting my offer. I have no doubt he wants to sell it quickly. We’ll see if he comes crawling back. (If he does, my wife and I have decided not to pursue this airplane, but it might be fun!)

Not sure if I had passed over the Texas Cheetah too quickly, I printed out pictures of the airplane, a description of it, and a description of the landing incident and flew them down to visit with my mechanic, Bill Wynn. I found him in his hangar at Galveston’s Scholes Field airport. After we talked about the airplane, how and who had repaired it, he told me that a more proper price for that airplane was akin to the low side of what I had first offered the guy, i.e., $29K. That cinched it for me. I decided to walk away from the Texas Cheetah once and for all.

Now, I just found a Traveler for sale in Indiana?

A Tale of Two Airplanes

2004-09-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

At long last, I met with the owner of N1961A and my hired gun, mechanic Bill Wynn, out at the airplane. Bill whipped out his handy air compressor, opened up the panels surrounding the Piper Pacer’s cowl, and went to work inspecting the engine. Tom, the airplane’s owner, disappeared to the airport’s terminal to use their rest room while I sat on the cement floor of the covered tiedown going through the airplane’s logs and its accompanying paperwork. I wandered over and watched Bill pull a couple of spark plugs and knew from the way he was looking at them, something was wrong. So, I asked him what he was seeing, and he explained there was an exhaust leak at the point where the exhaust manifolds attach to the engine.

?That’s what’s causing all the crappy stuff on the spark plugs,? he said. The plugs were dark with a rough skin, as of they had been sitting next to a volcano and had taken on a coat of black ash. It could be just that the gaskets around the heads were leaking and a gasket replacement would fix it. It would also mean there were worse problems, i.e., cracks in the heads or some uneven machining of the heads at the manifolds. There was no way to know until he pulled the heads off, and he didn’t plan on going that far today.

He moved around to the other side of the four cylinder engine and repeated his spark plug pulling task, shaking his head. This side of the engine was leaking, too.

The big ?kaboom? came when he hooked up his air compressor and, working with his son-in-law Robbie who is also an FAA certified Airframe and Powerplant mechanic, checked the engine’s compression. An attachment from the compressor is hooked into the holes in the heads left by the removed spark plugs. The attachment contains a pair of air pressure gauges. As Robbie rotated the propellor in discreet chunks, the pointers on the gauges jump to pressures in direct response to the engine cylinders hitting top dead center, the point of maximum compression within. The gauge readings reflect the engine’s compression which is a direct reading of its efficiency. I knew that good compression on this engine, a Lycoming 0290D, which supposed to be between 70 and 80. I had even seen paperwork that showed after the engine’s overhaul, accomplished about 500 flying hours ago, the compression had been as high as 78 (80 was the highest it could hit). Today, the engine was not doing anywhere near that good.

Bill came over to me immediately and gave me the bad news. The engine needed what was called a ?top overhaul?, a reworking of each of its four cylinders. To do it right would cost between $1000 - $1500 per cylinder. Which meant if I proceeded with buying this airplane, I would be into a possible $6000 expense right off. Just as Bill was telling me this, Tom wandered back from the bathroom.

?Tom, you might want to come over to hear this,? I said. Bill explained again what he had found.

Tom fessed up that the engine’s compression had been falling over the last three annual inspections but had dismissed the problem, in true NASA fashion, as ?known?. The compression had never been as bad as the test today had shown it. I told him I’d still take the airplane if he was willing to come down $6K on the price, but our previous conversations about price led me to believe he wouldn’t do that. I was right. He started immediately talking about trying to fix the problem in December when the airplane’s annual was due and his mechanics told him he could perform a top overhaul for $350 a cylinder. Bill emphasized that with engine work it was really true you got what you paid for. He might be able to get it done for that, but he’d be repeating the process shortly afterward. Tom mumbled something about maybe if I was still interested we could talk then. I told him my wife and I would be moving on to look at another airplane. I felt he was trying to repair the airplane on the cheap and would have no confidence in any repair he made to it. Additionally, the inspection had shown he had an over exaggerated sense of what his airplane was worth; many owners do because of their emotional attachment to the airplane.
I thanked him for letting us look at his airplane, made sure Bill had my address so we could settle up the bill, and left.

I can’t say how disappointed my wife and I are both are, despite the fact I know it was for the best. I’ve spent too much time the last few days looking for another airplane. I ws about to let the whole thing go for now when I stumbled on a Piper Tri-Pacer I like for sale in South Carolina not far from where my sister and a good buddy of mine who is not only a pilot but an ex flight instructor, NASA astronaut instructor, and airplane owner. The Tri-Pacer’s owner has not responded yet to either phone calls or an e-mail, but I am hoping to hear from him. We’ll see. To be honest, the whole experience is eating so much of my time up I am out of balance, and that’s something I need to stop. I’ll chase this airplane for a few more days. If I haven’t made any progress by next week, I’ll reevaluate what I’m going to do.

The Politics of Fear

2004-09-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine matter. I do envision a world where water, electricity, food and education would be for free in the next 25 years for everyone on this planet. That's the beginning of dismantling fear, anger and politics and religion. The real evil in this world is politics and religion. Spirituality is the antidote because it is free." – Carlos Santana

I thought it was so interesting when I read the newspaper article containing this quote from Carlos Santana obtained during an interview. The writer had referred to Mr. Santana as an "alien", meaning he was someone not of this world. What a sad statement that is about us as a society and as human beings that he sees it that way. I must be an "alien", too, because not only do I understand those sentiments but agree with them wholeheartedly. But the real key to "dismantling fear" is not to make any material thing free...even food, water, and electricity...but for people to embrace their spirituality and live from it.

The Republican party likes to hold itself out as the party of God. Yet, the display of anger and derision that racked the airwaves during the Republican convention makes me question what god they’re talking about. The Republicans appear to be a party of religiosity and a prime example of why church and state need to be separate.

I know many people who are religious. I know few whom I consider to be spiritual.

When I look at what four years of the Bush administration has brought?war, anger, divisiveness, and suppression of freedom of expression--often through indirect attacks or attacks on character-- I don’t see how the country can sustain four more years of this. But the Bush administration doesn’t want us to see that or anything else, so they’re trying to deflect us by using the politics of fear. That is a very dangerous tactic to use in any free country. History is replete with examples of the worst politicians and dictators doing exactly that same thing, i.e., leading the people to rationalize their power and behavior by convincing them they are keeping them safe. We think we’re oblivious to sliding into dictatorship because we live in America. I bet the Germans thought they were, too. Or how else would Hitler have risen to power? Their denial was so thick they never questioned what he was doing until after their country was both invaded and vanquished and they were living in poverty.

If the Republican party has no claim to stay in office other than they will keep us safe, they deserve to be kicked out. It’s not the government that’s going to keep the country safe but the vigilance and resistance of each American citizen. The government plays a role; but without us, they can do nothing. They seem to have forgotten that.

We have Saddam Hussein (a Bush family personal enemy) but not Osama Bin Laden. Who has killed more Americans? Yes, Al-Quaida is more on the run; but one has to wonder how much more the organization would be wounded, if not fatally so, by the capture of its leader. Our armed forces are spread too thin and our attention diverted from Afghanistan, where it needed to stay, to Iraq, where it never needed to be. It is a parallel to what is happening here where our attention is focused nearly solely on terrorism and the war in Iraq while the economy, the environment, and many other things decay from inattention. Could it be that the Bush Administration knows it can’t manage these things so it’s keeping our attention focused everywhere else? They would deny that, of course, but then there’s nothing about Bush, his party, or his administration that points to self-awareness or anything that even remotely resembles true consciousness.

Chasing the Airplane

2004-08-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

I believe we are close to closing a deal on the Pacer. I have the money and the pre-sale inspection is Monday, Labor Day. That’s really ideal because both the owner and I are off work and can both be there when the mechanic does it. I’m hoping to close a deal with the owner the next day.

The big unknowns are the condition of the fabric and the engine. I suspect the engine is okay; it only has 480 hours on it since it was overhauled. The fabric is another story. While it looks okay, I’m anxious to see whether it passes a punch test or not. If it does, the deal is a go at a price I believe the owner will find reasonable. If it doesn’t, I’ll literally have to cut my offer in half; it will cost me $12,000 to recover the airplane. I could cut the cost down to about $3000 by doing it myself, but I’d have to train up and that would also put the airplane down for six months. Not willing to go there. Besides, when I already can’t get everything done, does it make sense to take on anything else?

My wife and I are both looking forward to closing the deal. Unfortunately, even if I do, between getting the proper legal paperwork filed with the FAA and a trip we have upcoming, I may not get to fly the airplane until the week after.

Apologize for what?

2004-08-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Bob Dole’s insistence that John Kerry apologize to the US government for his anti-Vietnam war comments is about as funny as it is ridiculous but not unexpected. It has become ?unpatriotic? under the Bush administration and the Republican party to disagree with the party line. It would have been interesting had the Republican party been in charge of the country in 1776. Spouting then the rhetoric they are spouting now would have made them Torries.

It is the duty of every citizen, which makes it the duty of every military officer, to speak up against those things he believes are contrary to American ideals. I have observed many veterans who cannot let go of "being at war" and who insist that ?America right or wrong? is the only way to go. There is a modicum of truth in that approach; we must all strive to do what is in our country’s best interests to ensure its survival. The rub comes in when deciding what the best course is; and the only way to do that fairly and occasionally wisely is through the political process. The First Amendment is its cornerstone; without it, we are no better than the ?enemies? we cherish to hate so much.

Bush’s military record has been questionable from the git-go, and the attacks on Kerry really are meant to divert attention away from that fact. I’m not surprised that Bush seems too ready to commit the country to war; it’s easy to practice bravado when you’ve never been shot at. If anyone needs to apologize to our government, it’s Dole and those folks out there who have so little faith in our own leadership they are willing to disparage our country’s awarding of medals to Kerry as undeserved.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to get off the fear mongering, which is what this play-battle about who would be the best Commander in Chief is, and get onto something more substantive. American cannot live on security alone.

Back from the Wilds of Walt Disney World

2004-08-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

The reason there haven’t been any posts to this blog for about the past week is simple. I wasn’t here. Instead, my wife and I were spending our third anniversary at Walt Disney World in Florida?with a one day swing through Kennedy Space Center. Our timing was absolutely perfect. Though we did have to deal with some rain, we were home before either tropical weather system (i.e.. Bonnie or Charley) ravaged the Florida coast.

I’d like to tell you that we are Mickey and Minnie’d out, but we’re not. We had a great time and hit the three parks in Walt Disney World we were aiming for. We even ate dinner with some Disney characters. Who says you can’t have a second childhood?

Of course, we paid Disney prices for everything. That’s to be expected. But they were nothing compared to the price of a hotdog and fries at Kennedy Space Center’s visitor center. I paid almost $7 for the pair! Won’t do that again.

I’m still need to download pictures out of our digital cameras, though we really didn’t take that many. I got no pictures inside Disney’s new ride, ?Mission:Space?, a helluva thrill ride that sends you to Mars, complete with space sickness. Nor inside the light-hearted bouncing and accelerations of ?Star Tours?. I might have a few from the ?Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular?. But I gave up on trying to photograph inside ?Pirates of the Carribean? long ago.

One thing no one talks to you about is the after-affect of such a rollicking visit. It’s called ?PMD?-Post Mickey Depression. My wife and I are suffering from it now. It’s showing itself via an urge to drop into early retirement and make people smile. Too bad we’re both trapped in that thing called ?making a living?.

By now, one of my favorite authors, Ed Abbey, must be turning in his grave. You’ll have to forgive me for this, Ed; my wife had never been and always has wanted to go. That’s done, now; and in deference to us both, our next anniversary will be spent in a more Abbey-like fashion, i.e., river-running the Grand Canyon. I can’t wait to write about that!

From Adversity Comes Prizes

2004-08-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

t’s often true that out of adversity comes prizes....that life leads you by the hand and takes you places you had never thought you could go but secretly hoped to.

It’s been tough at work. The scramble to safely get the space shuttle flying again has been anything but easy. My workload and responsibilities are at the highest levels they’ve ever been. And rightly so. The Columbia accident happened on my watch. I’m determined to do what I can never to see such a thing happen again, and it’s not only because it’s what I get paid to do. It’s because I have a personal stake in it.

Yet, I have had mixed feelings about this job and living in Houston for quite some time. My heart is in the desert southwest but finding work there has not been easy for me or my wife. Events always seemed to push us back here to Houston, and I kept asking God ?Why?? It was nice I seemed needed at my job at Johnson Space Center; but that is a mixed blessing for me and my charges, my coworkers I am expected to lead. One balances this kind of things with hobbies, something one loves to do. My hobbies have centered lately around computers and video. The problem is that they hold the unrealized potential of becoming a job. Hard to relax at that, especially when I’ve been told the shuttle program has only six more years of life in it. While I project it has ten to twelve, I have no illusions that when the program ends, so does my career. The last twenty years of my life, including the three years I was away from NASA, have been tied up with the space shuttle in one way or the other. It’s where most of my expertise is, and I’ve been around NASA long enough to know the true story. I’ll be too old to be needed once this program winds down. Especially as a contractor, I expect to be unceremoniously put out to pasture.

Which is why the airplane is such a surprise.

Flying has been one of my loves for various reasons, some healthy, some not. I got my private pilot’s license on December 22, 1973. I was in the Navy at the time, an enlisted jet engine mechanic using the Naval Air Station China Lake’s flying club airplanes to do the deed. From there I had gone on to get my commercial license and instrument rating (via the G.I. Bill and the Auburn University School of Aviation), gotten into Navy flight training and wound up in the backseat of an F-14, gone to NASA to train astronauts and learned to fly the space shuttle simulator, all the while plugging through the sky in little airplanes off and on, more off than on sometimes. Over the years, I had developed a love/fear relationship with flying. I sometimes wasn’t sure if I loved it anymore. I kept doing it because whenever I did, I felt better. It was, in essence, another form of therapy and a hidden form of joy...when I wanted to let it be.

For years, I’ve been flying with the Bay Area Flying Club. Located at a now-closed airport first called "Spaceland" and then "Houston Gulf", the club had given me relatively cheap access to Cessna 150’s and 172’s, 200 horsepower Piper Arrow’s, and Grumman Tigers. When Gulf was closed by a developer who bought the place from the Bin Laden family (an ownership that caused a lot of notoriety after 9/11), the club moved out to Clover, an airfield recently renamed ?Pearland Regional? and located between Pearland and Friendswood where my wife and I had bought a house. While out at the clubhouse a few months ago, I noticed a white and blue striped taildragger for sale nearby. It was an easy walk to go check it out. A paper stuck on a window said it was for sale. I really liked the airplane but I assumed I could never afford to buy it. And I was right. But what hadn’t dawned on me then was while I couldn’t afford to buy it, my wife and I could.

The airplane sat and sat, not selling. Was it waiting for me?

I mentioned it to my wife; and much to my surprise, she was all for getting it. She was, in fact, more excited than I was about it. If I had any doubt about being blessed by having a pretty wife that loves to fly, it disappeared. Not only was this something we could do together, but it was something we were looking forward to.

I want to buy this airplane. I feel right about it. Aligned with harmony. I’m cautious, though , because I also know this shiny apple could be hiding rotten meat. As a friend of Connie’s says, ?Friends don’t let friends buy airplanes?. My two closest pilot friends spent between two and five thousand dollars on their airplane’s first annual. Gulp! If we buy this airplane, its annual will be due in December and will cost at least $500. If we suddenly had to recover the airplane, it could cost about $10,000. While the fabric looks in good shape, I’m told the airplane was last recovered in 1982. Good fabric will last between 20 to 30 years, meaning we’re in the window for having it replaced. And there’s also the risk of me losing my medical. While I’m in fair shape, I’m not in good shape because I’m overweight and need to exercise more and change my diet and stressful lifestyle. The airplane’s going to force me to. My medical is due in February 2005. I have no reason to think I wouldn’t pass it, but "what if"?

I flew in the airplane for the first time yesterday. While I didn’t get to perform landings and take-off’s (the riskiest part of a flight in a taildragger) because his insurance woudn't let me fly, I did fly the airplane at altitude for a while, putting her through turns, slow flight, and a take-off stall. I liked how she flew. And he didn't appear to work that hard during the takeoffs and landings. The airplane was a typical short wing Piper. No float even at an approach speed closer to the Piper Arrow than the Cessna 172.

This is an airplane we can afford and one of the few that matches expense with capability. It’s not a great climber. With me and the skinny owner aboard on a 95 degree hot summer day at sea level, we got 400 fpm. But he wasn’t flying at best rate. I believe I could have gotten another 100 fpm out of it. Not great but respectable. Still, we want to go to the Big Bend area with it, something we'll have to do in early spring, winter, or late fall....once I figure out how to keep us from getting shot down or intercepted by the Border Patrol erroneously thinking we're smugglers.

So, what now? The pre-sale inspection is next. I’m still deciding which mechanic to use for that task. I have the insurance quote and I’m going to get AOPA to do a title search. If the title search is clear and the pre-sale inspection doesn't turn up any big ticket surprises, I’ll make the owner an offer. Stay tuned.

Told Ya!

2004-07-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

t’s often true that out of adversity comes prizes....that life leads you by the hand and takes you places you had never thought you could go but secretly hoped to.

It’s been tough at work. The scramble to safely get the space shuttle flying again has been anything but easy. My workload and responsibilities are at the highest levels they’ve ever been. And rightly so. The Columbia accident happened on my watch. I’m determined to do what I can never to see such a thing happen again, and it’s not only because it’s what I get paid to do. It’s because I have a personal stake in it.

Yet, I have had mixed feelings about this job and living in Houston for quite some time. My heart is in the desert southwest but finding work there has not been easy for me or my wife. Events always seemed to push us back here to Houston, and I kept asking God ?Why?? It was nice I seemed needed at my job at Johnson Space Center; but that is a mixed blessing for me and my charges, my coworkers I am expected to lead. One balances this kind of things with hobbies, something one loves to do. My hobbies have centered lately around computers and video. The problem is that they hold the unrealized potential of becoming a job. Hard to relax at that, especially when I’ve been told the shuttle program has only six more years of life in it. While I project it has ten to twelve, I have no illusions that when the program ends, so does my career. The last twenty years of my life, including the three years I was away from NASA, have been tied up with the space shuttle in one way or the other. It’s where most of my expertise is, and I’ve been around NASA long enough to know the true story. I’ll be too old to be needed once this program winds down. Especially as a contractor, I expect to be unceremoniously put out to pasture.

Which is why the airplane is such a surprise.

Flying has been one of my loves for various reasons, some healthy, some not. I got my private pilot’s license on December 22, 1973. I was in the Navy at the time, an enlisted jet engine mechanic using the Naval Air Station China Lake’s flying club airplanes to do the deed. From there I had gone on to get my commercial license and instrument rating (via the G.I. Bill and the Auburn University School of Aviation), gotten into Navy flight training and wound up in the backseat of an F-14, gone to NASA to train astronauts and learned to fly the space shuttle simulator, all the while plugging through the sky in little airplanes off and on, more off than on sometimes. Over the years, I had developed a love/fear relationship with flying. I sometimes wasn’t sure if I loved it anymore. I kept doing it because whenever I did, I felt better. It was, in essence, another form of therapy and a hidden form of joy...when I wanted to let it be.

For years, I’ve been flying with the Bay Area Flying Club. Located at a now-closed airport first called ?Spaceland? and then ?Houston Gulf?, the club had given me relatively cheap access to Cessna 150’s and 172’s, 200 horsepower Piper Arrow’s, and Grumman Tigers. When Gulf was closed by a developer who bought the place from the Bin Laden family (an ownership that caused a lot of notoriety after 9/11), the club moved out to Clover, an airfield recently renamed ?Pearland Regional? and located between Pearland and Friendswood where my wife and I had bought a house. While out at the clubhouse a few months ago, I noticed a white and blue striped taildragger for sale nearby. It was an easy walk to go check it out. A paper stuck on a window said it was for sale. I really liked the airplane but I assumed I could never afford to buy it. And I was right. But what hadn’t dawned on me then was while I couldn’t afford to buy it, my wife and I could.

The airplane sat and sat, not selling. Was it waiting for me?

I mentioned it to my wife; and much to my surprise, she was all for getting it. She was, in fact, more excited than I was about it. If I had any doubt about being blessed by having a pretty wife that loves to fly, it disappeared. Not only was this something we could do together, but it was something we were looking forward to.

I want to buy this airplane. I feel right about it. Aligned with harmony. I’m cautious, though , because I also know this shiny apple could be hiding rotten meat. As a friend of Connie’s says, ?Friends don’t let friends buy airplanes?. My two closest pilot friends spent between two and five thousand dollars on their airplane’s first annual. Gulp! If we buy this airplane, its annual will be due in December and will cost at least $500. If we suddenly had to recover the airplane, it could cost about $10,000. While the fabric looks in good shape, I’m told the airplane was last recovered in 1982. Good fabric will last between 20 to 30 years, meaning we’re in the window for having it replaced. And there’s also the risk of me losing my medical. While I’m in fair shape, I’m not in good shape because I’m overweight and need to exercise more and change my diet and stressful lifestyle. The airplane’s going to force me to. My medical is due in February 2005. I have no reason to think I wouldn’t pass it, but ?what if??

I flew in the airplane for the first time yesterday. While I didn’t get to perform landings and take-off’s (the riskiest part of a flight in a taildragger) because his insurance woudn't let me fly, I did fly the airplane at altitude for a while, putting her through turns, slow flight, and a take-off stall. I liked how she flew. And he didn't appear to work that hard during the takeoffs and landings. The airplane was a typical short wing Piper. No float even at an approach speed closer to the Piper Arrow than the Cessna 172.

This is an airplane we can afford and one of the few that matches expense with capability. It’s not a great climber. With me and the skinny owner aboard on a 95 degree hot summer day at sea level, we got 400 fpm. But he wasn’t flying at best rate. I believe I could have gotten another 100 fpm out of it. Not great but respectable. Still, we want to go to the Big Bend area with it, something we'll have to do in early spring, winter, or late fall....once I figure out how to keep us from getting shot down or intercepted by the Border Patrol erroneously thinking we're smugglers.

So, what now? The pre-sale inspection is next. I’m still deciding which mechanic to use for that task. I have the insurance quote and I’m going to get AOPA to do a title search. If the title search is clear and the pre-sale inspection doesn't turn up any big ticket surprises, I’ll make the owner an offer. Stay tuned.