Yesterday the White House announced the latest step in its export control reform effort, including the release for public comment of the methodology the State Department plans to use to rewrite the US Munitions List (USML). That approach has already been applied to one category of the USML, Category VII (tanks and military vehicles), with nearly three-quarters of the items currently on the list being taken off. According to the statement, the administration “has an aggressive schedule to complete its rewrite of the entire USML in 2011.” Earlier this fall officials indicated that Category XV, which covers satellites and related components, would be reviewed next after Category VII, although there was skepticism that this would lead to near-term relief from ITAR. The administration also announced yesterday the creation of Export.gov, a web site designed to help companies comply with export control requirements.
In an op-ed in Friday’s Houston Chronicle, former NASA engineer April Evans decried the agency’s plans to perform radiation exposure experiments on monkeys, her opposition to which led her to resign her job at JSC. The op-ed, though, comes two days after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) declared victory in their effort to block the experiment, claiming that NASA “has quietly called off plans” to carry out the study at Brookhaven National Laboratory, without elaborating. PETA had been carrying out various protests of the work, including demonstrations outside NASA headquarters. In May, a young woman interrupted NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s speech at the International Space Development Conference in Chicago to protest the experiments; PETA said the unidentified woman was a “supporter” of the organization but not part of an organized protest.
In an op-ed in Friday’s Houston Chronicle, former NASA engineer April Evans decried the agency’s plans to perform radiation exposure experiments on monkeys
Disgusting. Your NASA life sciences funding at work. As one who has worked for companies who do animal research I can say 95% of it is marginal science, unethical, and unnecessary. Good for April Evans for going public. As she points out, evaluating the effects of hazards on animals is no substitute for mitigating the hazards themselves. Need to live in a radiation environment? Develop shielding. Don’t fry a monkey. It is surprising how widespread such engineering malpractice is. Cutting the NASA budget should start with life sciences.
April Evans “went public” a long time ago. In light of PETA’s declaration of “victory,” either Ms. Evans is uninformed as to the status of the experiments or PETA is making things up. I’m honestly not sure which is the case.
As for the life sciences program, I have colleagues in SLSD who are ardently opposed to those experiments. They are doing critical work on figuring out how to keep human being healthy in microgravity and you do them a tremendous disservice by tarring their profession with such a wide brush.
Have you no shame? I guess not, since you are so quick to defame others while hiding behind a psuedonym.
The radiation exposure estimates for a Mars flight have changed little in more than 20 years. Better electrostatic shielding concepts are available but little funding supports them because of intercenter friction. The monkey experiments were completely unnecessary.
If humans are going to live permanently in space and travel several months through interplanetary space then they’re going to have to live in appropriately shielded facilities.
We need to accept this reality and make the proper adjustments for the substantially increased amounts of mass for our space transportation scenarios beyond cis-lunar space.
Mass isn’t necessarily required. All hazardous space radiation is in the form of charged particles, and can be repelled by a strong positive charge. That’s why the electrostatic shielding system developed mainly by Robert Youngquist at Kennedy Space Center is so revolutionary.
Animals are cheap, bred quickly and provide a lucrative underground economy for those involved. Laboratories know this and have taken advantage of this fact for decades, if not centuries.
It is disgusting, but it’s a fact of economic life for various labs and the pharmaceutical industry in particular.
Well I think is is obvious they will need a safe house to go to during specific solar event at the very least, I advocate an inner hull surrounded by water, one of the best sheilds there is, plus if your on an exploration mission you can’t have too much of it, obviously multiple launches need to fill it up but there will have to be anyway, the mars ship will have to be put together in segments anyway, it will look more like skylab with several Orion capsules hooked to it or perhaps a few dragons.
Anyway water is the answer for shielding
They are doing critical work on figuring out how to keep human being healthy in microgravity and you do them a tremendous disservice by tarring their profession with such a wide brush.
Sorry. Lavish, perpetual funding of well understood subjects is not in the national interest. Too many marginal research activities have ridden the coat tails of the NASA budget. It is time for change.
“Anyway water is the answer for shielding”
Polyethylene is actually better. Packs in more hydrogen atoms per unit volume so it blocks more radiation.
FWIW…
The long-term effects, and mechanisms driving said effects, of the space environment on the human body are not “well understood.” Go look at the Human Research Roadmap. It identifies critical gaps in our knowledge for the safe, sustained human exploration of the solar system.
http://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/
Do your homework before you presume to pass judgment on others.
Major Tom wrote @ December 12th, 2010 at 10:29 am
Is per unit volume the right metric? I would think the relevant metric would be per unit mass because spacecraft tend to be more mass limited than volume limited.
For radiation shielding, yes, Rhyolite. The higher the hydrogen density of the material, the better it performs.
Yes hasnt inflatables, with water jackets, shown to perform very well with regards to radiation? Bigelows inflatables could be adapted for long missions like a Mars flight!
There are studies that suggest an inflatable habitat alone could have kept radiation exposure at ALARA levels during the intense solar storms of the 1970s. If you use a water jacket for your consumables storage, so much the better.