The Current Status of the Federal Helium Reserve, In Case You Were Wondering . . .

One issue that should keep Americans up worrying at nights is the current status of the Federal Helium Reserve.

No worries.  It is still there near Amarillo, Texas, storing vital helium for America's defense and scientific needs.

The Bureau of Land Management's brief history of the Federal Helium Reserve notes that stockpiling began in 1925.  At that point, the Army and Navy were interested in the possibilities of dirigibles for wartime use.  USS Akron  is the best known example of naval airship construction and use.

Development of more reliable and effective airplanes quickly killed defense applications.

After World War II, NASA and research communities relied on the reserve for their helium.  Overall, however, "federal demand for helium did not live up to postwar expectations."

In 1996, the goals of the program shifted.  The government now operates the reserve and pipeline system, provides helium gas, evaluates helium bearing gas fields, and provides access to land for helium recovery.

The helium reserve must be of immense national importance.  Right before the government shutdown last month, Congress passed and Obama signed a bill designed to keep the reserve fully funded and operational.

Helium, especially in liquid form, is vital to research and it gradually growing more expensive.  Reports indicate that the United States reserve, the only of its kind, has allowed supplies to dwindle.

A helium reserve is needed and it may be a good idea to have more than one.  The private sector, however, can and should run this operation.

Interplanetary Internet Coming Soon. But What About Service Here?

NASA just figured out how to increase data transmission, including potentially internet service, 500 percent . . . to the moon and back.

According to Wired, a science and technology blog (duh), NASA successfully tested a laser based system of transmitting data.  It launched a probe that traveled almost a quarter of a million miles (the approximate distance to the moon) and fired a laser at it.  The test worked.  Data streamed successfully to and from the probe.

One of the major hurdles to interplanetary space flight lay in reliance on radio waves for data transmission. While radio waves are, essentially, as fast as lasers (both traveling at light speed), radio transmission requires more power and energy to transmit.  It also needs larger surfaces to "catch" signals from farther away.

Laser transmissions can also carry a broader range of information, such as 3 D videos.

The downside to laser transmission lies in the precision needed.  Radio waves broaden out from the source.  Lasers remain tightly focused in a small beam.  Imagine a pitcher trying to hit a catcher's mitt from ten million miles away.

Google, NASA, and others look to the future and plan for an interplanetary internet.

Meanwhile, West Virginians are also looking for reliable high speed access.  But problems with government waste may be standing in the way.  Perhaps the best business and research minds in rural states with spotty access should take note of this latest development and see if it could help.

NASA's Most Important Mission

Almost fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy gave our space program direction and a sense of purpose when he challenged it to put a man on the moon before 1970. Scientists around the country worked with engineers and remarkably developed missions that accomplished that feat. Considering the technology of the time, it was an exceptional achievement.

So what is the great push in the 21st century? According to NASA chief Charles Bolden, he was told by his boss, you know who, that his primary mission is to reach out to Moslems.

Say what? Yup. he has been charged to reach out to remind Moslems of all of their achievements in science, technology, and space exploration. I am not joking or making this up even though it sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit.

CXharles Krauthammer nailed it when he said this reeks of imperial condescension. It's also a bizarre perversion of the mission of the agency. These are engineers, not diplomats; scientists, not sociologists. Their mission is to get us to Mars, to get the space station to work efficiently, to "go where no man [or robot] has gone before." One dime spent by NASA in this wrong headed attempt at using engineers to community organize is too much and troubling in the extreme.

Once again, Barack Obama's failure as a leader ends up as a waste of our nation's time and money.

Commercializing Welcome Centers, Rest Areas Could Ease WVDOH Financial Burden

Forty some odd years ago NASA realized that a ball point pen would not write in space. They worked on the problem and spent over a million dollars to make a ball point pen that would write in zero gravity.

They were successful and developed a beautiful pen at great taxpayer’s expense, but NASA solved the wrong problem. The problem was not to make a pen write in space, but to just “write” in space. The Russians realized that they only needed to write in space, not use a ball point pen and simply used a five cent pencil instead of wasting a million dollars. The lesson is the first thing you must do to be successful in solving a problem is make sure you have identified the true problem.

At the end of November the amount of expected revenue for the West Virginia highway fund was down $14.6 million, mostly because of the poor economy. Immediately there was talk out of Charleston about raising taxes, but the tax rate is not the real problem. The real problem is the rising cost and reduced revenue. Until these problems are solved, the state’s Department of Highways will continue to have problems even in good economic times. The state must get creative on generating additional revenue and cutting cost.

There are 22 welcome centers and rest areas run by the WVDOH. Each costs approximately $500,000 a year in annual maintenance for a total of $11 million dollars. Two of these on the West Virginia Turnpike have a Federal exemption to allow them to be commercialized, which is pretty common on toll roads. However they also occur in a few other places on non-Toll Road Interstates, such as I-95 north of Baltimore, MD.

Commercialization of West Virginia’s other twenty rest areas and welcome centers could provide a partial solution to the WVDOH funding problems. As these are leased to private companies then a $10 million drain on the WVDOH would disappear as responsibility for the maintenance would shift from the state to the private companies. There would also be a revenue stream generated from the lease agreements. A drain on the state highway fund would be turned into revenue generation, all without putting any additional burden on the taxpayers.

There would also be employment benefits for the state. Each rest area at a minimum would end up with a fast food restaurant and a convenience store/gas station. The average fast food chain restaurant employs about 60 persons and the convenience store 10 persons. This would generate approximately 1,400 private sector jobs across the state from entry level fry cooks to well paid manager positions. As an example; if the two rest areas in Braxton County were commercialized in this way, the Braxton County unemployment rate could drop from 8.3% to 5.3% making it the lowest in the state.

The benefits do not stop at increased employment and reduced operating cost to the state. The free market approach also creates new tax revenue streams into the states coffers. The 1,400 new employees and the new businesses created will pay income taxes to the state. There will now be property taxes paid to the counties at the rest areas on the equipment installed where before there was none. Most important to WVDOH is the gasoline sold at the new filling stations will pay new taxes directly to the highway fund without raising taxes on struggling WV families.

In these hard economic times West Virginia must work to solve the correct problems and reduce the burden of taxes on all the people of the state in the process. We must look for new solutions to old problems and stop thinking the only solution is increasing taxes.

Brain Drain

A recent report by West Virginia University shows that under fifty percent of West Virginia college and university graduates find work in West Virginia. As one might expect, high numbers of law and health care graduates stay. This means that newly created experts in business, science, engineering, and other key fields leave in droves.

Right now, WVU, Marshall, Fairmont State, and the other colleges and universities are the stae's greatest resource. We have little trouble attracting smart kids from inside and outside this state. We need to make a priority out of keeping them here. Scenery, quiet small towns, a vital urban center such as Morgantown, and other factors could sell West Virginia IF the state had opportunities.

Why would a budding entrepreneur with the next great idea want to locate his business here? Modern technology means that a lot of businesses could locate almost anywhere there is wireless internet. Even in areas where business can access this, why would they want to pay higher taxes, slog through more regulatory burdens, and put themselves at risk doing business in a "judicial hellhole?" In such an environment, government investment is about all you can expect because it's tough to sue them and it does not pay taxes.

Getting a small branch of NASA is nice. Convincing the next Bill Gates that this is the perfect place to take a risk and launch a major private initiative is much better. Time for West Virginia to realize that sometimes the business of government must be business.

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Thank goodness someone, somewhere came to their senses and realized that Congress is a serious institution of government, not a three ring circus or social hour. Caroline Kennedy can safely return to the cocktail circuit and New Yorkers can rest easy. Now, hopefully, we can dispense with the clown that may or may not have been elected by Minnesota.

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Speaking of weird decisions . . .

Thank goodness we are about to have a US attorney general who helped the Clinton Administration pardon Puerto Rican terrorists to help solidify Hillary's election chances.

Congratulations to NASA

NASA almost never gets full coverage unless they screw up in a major way. However what they do with their relatively tiny budget is sometimes nothing short of incredible. Their Phoenix Mars Lander successfully landed on our solar system's fourth planet recently with its intricate parts all working in good order.

Phoenix's mission lies in testing the subterranean ice just beneath the surface of Mars' northern hemisphere to see if it at one time supported life. The presence of water on Mars makes an eventual manned landing and colonization much more likely within the next few decades. The Phoenix mission cost $420 million total which actually carries a relatively small price tag compared to other government expenditures. Additionally NASA's research and development usually creates a host of new technological advances for each mission, making the investment well worth the money. We should remember that NASA also employs West Virginians in the Fairmont area.

The day should come this century when the shoestring budgets of NASA are eclipsed by private enterprise as men and women search for economic opportunities in space. The moon and other space objects should contain multitudes of useful minerals. Low gravity manufacturing in a century or so be more cost efficient than that on Earth. Space's potential to benefit mankind is potentially limitless. Future generations will thank the tireless and determined minds now at NASA for their baby steps into the great beyond.

Interesting Information on Climate Change (Possibly)

The technology blog "Daily Tech" recently published a story that could be a huge blow to the hopes and dreams of anti-capitalist environmental ideologists.

According to this website, which publishes a wide variety of technology oriented stories, NASA's climate change information was faulty. It previously showed that the year 1998 was the hottest on record. Global warming supporters rely on NASA's relatively short term statistics to bolster their theories on climate change. The Daily Tech asserts that a bug associated with Y2K skewed the temperature records. 1934 now stands as the hottest year, with five of the ten warmest occuring before World War II.

The author of the article claims that NASA "quietly" re-released their climate figures and that the mainstream media will likely ignore the story. If true, this removes another pillar from the argument that mankind needs to place more economic decisions in the hands of anti-capitalist scientists and bureaucrats to save itself.

Most other "evidence" comes from correlations and models that get tweaked by their creators more often than video games. Questioning such methods will lead to the truth of the matter whatever that may be. Journalists need to follow up on the Daily Tech's story to see if it has legs, then communicate the results to the mainstream media market. John Stossel? Are you out there?

Update: apparently someone did. Fox News covered the story in their science section on August 11th.

Link to article http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+Finds+Y2K+Bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm

Warming Up to a Historical Perspective on the Climate

Ever tasted Scottish wine? You probably have not, but in the Middle Ages it was considered good enough that the French complained of the competition. The idea of Scottish wine may surprise those that know it is too cold to grow grapes in Scotland. From about the 1000s until the late 1300s temperatures rose to levels substantially (climactically speaking) higher than today. This allowed grapes to grow in Scotland and Viking colonizers to build cities and raise sheep in Greenland.

At this point you may be shocked. Rising global temperatures did not lead to the destruction of all mankind like Al Gore told us they would? During this period urban civilizations expanded across the planet. From central Mexico to the Great Plains to Europe trade and commerce fueled the expansion of cities and nations. The Mayan pyramids, the great burial mounds in the Ohio Valley, and the Gothic cathedrals all appeared in this era. It is called the Medieval Warm Period and it ended in the late 1300s.

The Medieval Warm Period’s warmth was replaced by the extreme cold of the Little Ice Age. The Viking colonists abandoned Greenland to expanding ice sheets, agriculture declined in northern Europe, and the great trade routes connecting eastern North America to the Aztecs and West Coast broke down. Decline in agricultural productivity coincided with the rise of imperial powers such as the English, Spanish, and Five Nations of the Iroquois League seeking to conquer new regions. Only in the 1700s did temperatures gradually climb again over the long term.

Surely this is all the fault of George W. Bush and Halliburton. Although some want to pin everything from climate change to the fall of the Roman Empire on President Bush, he does not control everything. In fact no one can say with any certainty what controls the climate, or even what the climate is doing right now. Some say it is warming, others say it is just fluctuating. NASA revealed recently that the Martian ice caps are melting and that Mars has gotten warmer. Again you could blame President Bush for that, but NASA believes that the sun’s energy output has increased lately.

Thirty years ago Newsweek and scientists warned us that the climate was cooling to dangerous levels and that industrialism was ushering in an ice age. Now these same people want us to believe that civilization is creating a hot spell that will end mankind. There is nothing wrong with trying to reduce pollution and trying to conserve resources. Industrial and capitalist nations have accomplished more towards those ends than any other system in the world. Using scare tactics and lies to frighten the public for a quasi-Marxist and anti-industrial political agenda is despicable.