I’ve been watching BSG for some time now (which is obvious enough if you search this blog for the word "frak"), and the show has a surprising depth of complexity. Surprising to many because it’s science fiction; but I’ve been reading SF since I was a boy, so complexity in that genre doesn’t surprise me. I’m surprised simply because TV shows don’t generally show such dimensionality. BSG has it, and the last few episodes ending Season 2 and starting Season 3 have had it in spades.

This past week’s story was so current I was shocked. A very brief synopsis (SPOILERS!): cylons are the bad guys, and have nearly wiped out all humans. Some humans escaped and found a planet to colonize, but the cylons followed and took over. There were lots of allegories to WWII (some people turned collaborator, some went underground to become insurgents, most just followed along) and some obvious references to our current situation in the US. with the Iraq war.

The humans eventually rebelled and escaped. But back on board the ship, a ring of six people started grabbing people they thought were collaborators, tried them without their knowledge, and if found guilty blew them out the airlock. This situation was handled very well by the writers and actors, I’ll add.

What really shocked me was, at the end (BIG SPOILERS!) it was revealed that all this was orchestrated by the President of the humans. He authorized the power to The Six to try and execute collaborators without public trial, without legal voice, and even without their knowledge. The President defended this position, and he in fact made rational arguments. These arguments, however, did not make what he did right.

If this topic sounds familiar, maybe it should. I’ve written about this before (first here, and then following up on it here). In the show, the President resigns (for other reasons) and the new President gives amnesty to all collaborators. That’s neither here nor there for the purposes I’m writing now.

What is most interesting to me about this is that Mrs. BA and I let the Little Astronomer watch the show. We generally don’t; BSG is decidedly for grown ups, with many episodes having very mature themes. But we decided to let her watch this, figuring that if things got too intense we could tell her to go somewhere else for a few minutes. They never did, so she got to watch the whole thing. I’m glad she did.

After the show, she was a little confused. So we talked a bit about Hitler, the Hitler Youth, and collaborators (direct themes of earlier episodes of BSG). We talked about what it meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, what the difference is between "innocent" and "not guilty" (a subtle difference, but as wide as the gulf between stars), and how some people think it’s better that 100 guilty people go free rather than jail one innocent person, and how some people think the opposite.

That last point was crucial. She said, "I think it would be OK if one innocent person goes to jail if it means 10,000 guilty people do too." I then asked her, how about 9000 people? Or 2000? Where do you draw the line? We then explained what a "slippery slope" argument was, and how you have to be very, very careful when drawing a line in the sand. Where do you draw it? When is it okay to jail an innocent person? Is it ever?

Liberal or conservative, libertarian or autocrat, right/left/middle/agnostic, I don’t care. These are not theoretical issues. Maybe they never were, but they have solid impact these days, very solid. You might think Battlestar Galactica is just a TV show, or you might think it’s a literary masterpiece, but either way, it’s an excellent stepping stone to talk about topics that really, we all need to be talking about now. My daughter is young, and there’s no way she can understand the subtleties of these arguments, but I’m hoping that just by talking about them with her she is learning how to think about them. I swear, if more people knew how to think, this world would be a far finer place to live.

Don’t forget– "Monster of the Milky Way" is on PBS tonight at 8:00 local time!

Regular readers know that Bulgaria has a secret agenda to destroy astronomy. Not satisfied with all the Universe, though, they are also trying to undermine copyright laws:

[Bulgarian Forein] Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software – WordPress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog – an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.

Open-source software? WordPress?? Ye gods. What’s next? MySpace?

If anyone is curious, this entry is mostly a response to this.

I originally was going to put this in the previous post as an update, but it got long enough and covers enough topics to make it its own entry.

The mission update is going on right now as I write this. They will install the two science instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, both of which are sitting in a warehouse waiting to go. They’ll replace all six gyros and the batteries. They’ll add thermal insulation blankets on the outside of Hubble. They’ll replace one Fine Guidance Sensors, an incredible telescope that keeps Hubble locked on to its targets (and which can be used for some science). They’ll also install and "over voltage protection device", and a soft capture mechanism on Hubble’s aft end to facilitate docking. Finally, they will try to fix STIS, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which shorted out a few years ago.

WF3 will replace WFPC2, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 installed back in 1993. WF3 is cool– it uses the original WFPC chassis with all new optics to seriously upgrade the camera capabilities (unlike the current Advanced Camera for Surveys, it has ultraviolet imaging detectors). COS will replace the no-longer needed COSTAR, the optics originally installed to correct Hubble’s flawed mirror. Now all on board detectors have optics already installed to correct the flaw.

I’m very excited about the potential repair of STIS. I worked on that camera for many years, and if it’s fixed it gives Hubble sight into the far-ultraviolet, which no other camera can do. It will complement ACS, COS, and WF3. However, repairing STIS will be difficult. Taking the cover off the instrument will be the first hard part– there are 111 screws (yes, one hundred eleven) holding the cover on. Worse, those screws are not designed to be taken out by astronauts! But they have designed a "capture device" to make sure they don’t lose any screws. After they get the cover off, they still have to replace the failed electronics board, and that has its own issues. But of course the folks at Ball Aerospace (who built STIS) and at NASA have looked into this as best they can, and they still have time to make sure they understand everything they can about this mission.

This whole mission is going to cost $900 million. A lot of that is already spent, and will be spent over the next 18 months before launch. That includes launch costs, which are significant, of course.

Is it worth it? I think so, but of course there will be detractors. I’ll point out, as I always do, that this kind of money sounds like a huge amount when stated baldly, but in fact if you pro-rate it across the timeline and by the people in the US who will pay for it, the cost is actually pretty low considering what we get out of Hubble– and I don’t just mean the science, which is plentiful, but the sheer inspiration of the mission. If you want to make this mission worth it, then go to Google Images, download a good Hubble image, and stick it on your wall. When I hand out Hubble pictures after I give public talks, the kids rush the stage to grab them. The look on their faces makes it clear how worth it Hubble really is.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin spoke today at Goddard Space Flight Center, and he announced that…

The Hubble servicing mission is ON!

The mission is slated for 2008. There are contingencies, of course. This all depends on the Space Shuttle, which is not terribly reliable as far as scheduling goes. There are many space station missions that need to go up first, too. But the Hubble mission is officially on the docket, and that’s great news!

This wasn’t a huge surprise, of course. Even before Griffin spoke, Ed Weiler (GSFC Director), in his introductory remarks, went out of his way to point out that Maryland Senator and tireless Hubble promoter Barbara Mikulski was in the audience. That made it pretty clear that NASA wasn’t about to let Hubble go. I noticed she was the first to stand up and applaud when Griffin actually announced his decision, too.

In the interest of getting this news out quickly, I’m posting this entry early — Griffin is still speaking as I write this. I’ll post updates as I get a chance.

Update 1: Griffin announced the astronaut list. There were several first-time astronauts, which was interesting. At least three have PhDs — none in astronomy! That’s funny, and a bit ironic. But this looks like a good crew, including John Grunsfeld, who has flown four times, two of which were Hubble servicing missions.

Update 2: Barbara Mikulski said a few words. I find it interesting that she pointed out that servicing Hubble is important for science and science education. Griffin has not been a big supporter of the education arm of NASA. I know this won’t mean much to him, but it’s great to hear a US Senator actually make a statement indicating how important science education is!

But nuts, she also said that when it was launched, Hubble’s "lens" didn’t work. Sigh. Hubble doesn’t have a lens, it has a mirror.

Update 3: There will be a mission press conference at 9:15 Pacific time. I’ll watch that and post more updates. Until then I have to get the Little Astronomer to school and me to work!

When I was a kid it was popular for people to have records playing (yes, LPs) of weird sounds out their windows. Screams, moans, creaky doors, all those cheesy sounds. One house had whale songs playing, which I thought was cool and not at all scary.

I was thinking about this today, and suddenly remembered a post I put up last July about extremely creepy sounds from Saturn and the Earth’s aurora. Wanna scare the kiddies on Halloween? Download those and loop ‘em. You’ll probably scare them enough to have lots of leftover candy.

Here’s the link to the Earth sounds, and here are the very creepy Saturn sounds.

Oh, and the picture above? That’s just a little Halloween gift from the Chandra space observatory.

This has been done before on other missions, but it’s still cute: NASA is putting a microchip onboard the Dawn spacecraft which will contain the names of thousands of people. You can have your name on it too: just sign up for it!

Dawn is a mission to study the big asteroids Ceres and Vesta, and it’s had a checkered past. I’m really glad to see everything going well for it now! 170,000 people have signed up to have their names sent to main asteroid belt. Will yours be among them?