by Bill Fawcett
But Observer could also have gone on to enter orbit, its little mechanical mind blissfully unaware that it had missed the sequence to turn its transmitter back on; or it might be aimlessly wandering the solar system. In any case the Galactic Ghoul was back, with a vengeance.
Observer’s disappearance cost NASA much more than a satellite. The entire program came under stringent review. Expensive missions were fine if they were successful, but not when they wasted taxpayer money for nothing. Observer was the last huge expensive probe NASA would ever launch. The Clinton administration pressured the space agency to find a new way of doing business, or stop doing business. To get approval, all missions would have to be faster, better, and cheaper, so that if one craft were lost it would not be such a significant setback.
At first, the new “better, faster, cheaper” NASA functioned like the ideal space agency, redesigning its entire approach to Mars missions. The new “Discovery” program of low-cost high-science return robotic missions, involved launching a dual mission every 18 months or so, a much tighter schedule than the space agency had ever tried to run. The next two missions incorporated much of the same science instrumentation originally flown on the Observer, but at a fraction of the cost, each coming in at under $250 million.
Both were roaring successes. The 1996 Mars Global Surveyor delivered the first high-resolution surface map complete with topographical details despite a problem with a cracked solar panel, producing more images than any other mission. The Mars Pathfinder, a lander mission, launched later the same year and actually arrived before Surveyor. Instead of braking thrusters, its lander used a cheap low-tech landing system of parachutes and airbags. Inside, it carried the first Martian rover. Sojourner immediately became a media darling as it drove around the landing zone transmitting a mobile, ground level view of the red planet. The lander was only designed to last for a month, and rover, a week, but the lander lasted more than three months. At the time the lander finally died the rover was still functional. Programmed to circle the area in the event of a communications silence, little Sojourner could be circling there still.
Also launching in 1996, the Russians tried again, this time with European collaborators. The craft failed soon after launch, crashing back to Earth, cause unknown.
NASA, riding high on their return to glory, quickly followed in 1998 with the Mars Climate Orbiter. Designed as a weather mapping satellite, it also doubled as the main support relay for the upcoming Mars Polar Lander.
Part of the newer, faster, cheaper plan required outsourcing projects previously done in house. It also reduced the budget for system redundancies and testing. No one realized that one team of programmers was working in metric while another was working in English units. The difference between the two is small in most things, but once the Climate Orbiter reached Mars, the math error amounted to 90 kilometers, the difference between traveling above the atmosphere—or in it. Orbiters are designed to orbit, not fly. The Climate Orbiter burned up in the atmosphere.
Perhaps the little Sojourner woke up the Galactic Ghoul. If so, he woke up hungry. That same year Japan launched their first Mars probe, the Nozomi, an international effort containing equipment designed by scientists from around the world. Heralded as a unique multi-nation event, it also marked the first time the Canadians participated in a planetary mission. It should have been simple. All they wanted to do was park in Mars orbit, but instead Nozomi became the ultimate Mars hard-luck story.
Trouble started moments after launch when Nozomi veered off course. The controllers managed to correct the flight path, but had to use extra fuel to do it. When the orbiter reached Mars it no longer had enough fuel to break for orbit, zooming past its target in 1999. Engineers managed to recalibrate its flight, giving it a course that would ease it into orbit more gently—at a cost of four more years and two more rotations around Earth. Then in 2002 a solar flare knocked out all power, causing the little remaining fuel to freeze. In a last ditch effort to save the ship, engineers, lacking galactic jumper cables, toggled the probe’s power on and off hundreds of times as Nozomi passed near the Sun, hoping to tap into the Sun’s energy to jump-start the ship. It actually worked. But the ship corrected its path only to suffer a fatal electrical short in its navigation system. In the end Nozomi barely missed Mars as it passed by into interplanetary darkness.
While the Japanese fought to save their probe, NASA, still smarting from the Climate Orbiter loss, launched the Mars Polar Lander. The lander, whose mission included searching for signs of water or ice at the Martian pole, carried two special probes, Deep Space 1 and 2, designed to crash into the planet and burrow into the ground to search for water. As it happened, it was the Polar Lander that crashed instead.
Landers usually slow their descent using special thrusters designed for that purpose. Previous landers used their radar to sense when they were ready to touch down, and thus shut off the engines. To save money and simplify things, the Polar Lander was equipped with special sensors on each of its “feet” designed to sense the upward bounce the moment it touched down, and turn the engines off. Unfortunately, later testing discovered that the very act of deploying the landing legs creates enough shock to cause the same amount of “bounce.” The Polar Lander probably fired its engines, deployed its landing legs, then sensing the resulting flex, concluded it was already on the ground and immediately turned the engines off again. It would have fallen the remaining 40 meters like a stone. Budget cuts and mismanagement were cited as the reason the glitch had not been discovered in testing before the mission.
Since the 1960s there have been thirty-six Mars missions. Twenty of those have ended in disaster. Since the sixties, the Russians have only managed four qualified successes out of eighteen attempts. Yet they are not incompetent. The Soviets ruled Venus, achieving fifteen successful missions to that planet, yet Mars defeated them. Mars is also largely responsible for forcing NASA to redesign its methodology—twice. Yet we keep coming back, unable to resist the lure of the red planet.
And somewhere out there the Great Galactic Ghoul is waiting.
“If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
—Matthew 15:14
Myopia in Space
Joshua Spivak
Ever since Galileo’s first telescope scanned the skies, scientists have created bigger and better instruments to unlock the mysteries of the universe. But even the largest earthbound telescopes have serious limitations. While the skies seem clear, earth’s atmosphere makes celestial gazing blurry. With the growth of rocket technology, in 1990, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a new type of satellite that was supposed to make our view of the heavens clearer, the Hubble Space Telescope.
Unfortunately, quality control was not in the plan.
Originally proposed in 1946, the forty-three-and-a-half-foot-long Space Telescope was designed to bypass atmospheric conditions and allow the use of equipment unmatched on earth. Placed in orbit around the earth, the astronomical satellite would take clear pictures of the outer reaches of space and time, granting scientists a window into the origins of the universe. While the goals were lofty, the projected budget did not come cheap and, with the Cold War raging, few politicians thought they could spare the funds.
In the following years, teams of scientists continued to fight for the project. Finally, in 1977, Congress approved a then-enormous price tag of $475 million for its creation. By the time the Hubble finally lifted into orbit on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, a mere seven years late, the price had ballooned to more than $2 billion.
Still, the potential benefits were enormous.
According to astronomer Robert Smith, with the Hubble, “stars should be observed at distances about seven times greater than with ground-based telescopes.” Without the distorting glare of the atmosphere, astronomers would then be able to give more accurate readings of a star’s location. Additionally, images in infrared and ultraviolet light, which are generally
absorbed by the atmosphere, would also be observable.
Around launch time, the scientific community was aflutter with the possibilities—but then they turned on the orbital telescope. Astute observers quickly noted a serious recursive and potentially fatal issue in the downloaded data. The pictures were nowhere near as sharp as they should have been. After running nearly every conceivable test in mission control, the scientists and technicians finally uncovered the cause of the error. One of the subcontractors, the PerkinElmer Corporation, who had underbid their contract to build the mirror so it would properly focus the incoming light, blew it.
PerkinElmer, bidding sixty-nine and a half million dollars (and eventually charged over three hundred million dollars for the shoddy work), tested the mirror by flashing a light beam through a tiny lens. For an effective test, the lens had to be set up at precisely the right distance. To align the lens, the technicians beamed a light through a rod with a special painted cap centered by a hole. Unfortunately, no one noticed that a spot of paint had worn off the cap, throwing off the grounding of the primary mirror by 1.3 millimeters. In a telescope mirror that must be able to reflect the tiniest amount of light clearly and accurately, this seemingly tiny error was potentially catastrophic.
NASA was showered with criticism, as even one of the projects’ staunchest defenders, Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski (whose state benefited from the government spending on the Goddard Science Center), called the Hubble a “techno-turkey.”
Harried scientists debated a host of solutions (including bringing the telescope back to earth), eventually deciding on a seven-hundred-million-dollar space shuttle repair mission.
In December 1993, after two years of intense training, a team of astronauts flying on the Endeavour hand-wrestled the spinning telescope into position. Over the course of eleven days and five elongated space walks, the repair team, led by Payload Commander Story Musgrave, removed a key piece of equipment, the high speed photometer, and replaced it with a device that refocused the light coming in from the primary mirror. Despite the danger, the mission, arguably the highlight of the entire space shuttle program, went perfectly.
If not for the work of scientists and a team of astronauts, the Hubble might have gone down in the books as one of the great debacles of American science.
“I don’t know jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.”
—Will Rogers
The Starr Report
Brian M. Thomsen
In September of 1998, a new publication premiered at number one on the USA Today bestseller list. It had all of the requisite elements of a commercial hit novel—intrigue, deceit, conspiracy, and plenty of salacious sex.
But this wasn’t a novel.
It was nonfiction, and it was authored by an agent of the United States government and thoroughly authorized by Congress.
Called the Starr Report, it was designed to make the case for the successful impeachment and removal from office of the President of the United States. Its actual title was far more mundane: Referral to the United States House of Representatives pursuant to Title 28, United States Code, § 595(c), Submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel, September 9, 1998, and it was the product of a several-years-long investigation into certain events involving President William Jefferson Clinton, ranging from a failed land deal in Arkansas, through an alleged sexual harassment lawsuit, right to allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice revolving around adulterous sexual activity in the White House.
The actual cases involved were incredibly convoluted, as was the investigation, managed by Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, a former Solicitor General for the Reagan administration. Close to ten years later the veracity of all sides of the argument is still subject to debate, and not really germane to the topic at hand since it is the report itself that is the subject of this article.
The document’s release was announced with a flourish by the spokesman of the Independent Counsel’s office, Charles Bakaly, who proclaimed: “As required by the Ethics in Government Act, and with the authorization of the court supervising independent counsels, the Office of Independent Counsel submitted a referral to the House of Representatives containing substantial and credible information that may constitute grounds for impeachment of the president of the United States.”
The report from Starr included a twenty-five-page introductory summary, 280 pages of narrative, and about 140 pages dealing with details of alleged impeachable offenses, as well as grand jury transcripts, videotaped testimony, affidavits, and other materials gathered in the investigation. Starr’s office delivered two sets of the material, or 36 boxes in all.
From a legal standpoint the report had to provide the basis for the impeachment and removal of the president.
From the political standpoint the report had to provide a basis that would engender the public’s support for such an action.
It failed on both accounts.
On the basis of the evidence provided by the report, the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives voted out four articles of impeachment (charges against) President Clinton:
The President provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury regarding the Paula Jones case and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
The President provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony in the Jones case in his answers to written questions and in his deposition.
The President obstructed justice in an effort to delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence of evidence related to the Jones case.
The President misused and abused his office by making perjurious, false and misleading statements to Congress.
Two of the charges, one count of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, were voted through by the full House on pretty much a party line vote while the Senate failed to convict the president of these charges, falling short of even a majority vote.
Despite the voluminous materials gathered and the thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, the case mounted by the Starr Report failed to pass legal muster in the court of Congress.
But this was not its greatest failure.
The Starr Report was as much a political positioning document as a legal one. It had to sway the general public away from supporting a very popular president by portraying him as having committed offenses that made him unfit for office, not just legally, but morally and ethically as well.
Most people didn’t understand such concepts as perjury and obstruction of justice. What they did understand was adultery, lying, cheating, and lying about cheating.
It stood to reason, according to some of the president’s opponents, that if the matter was cast in this light, the public would rally against the man in the White House.
As a result when the report was published, the sections included:
II. 1995: Initial Sexual Encounters
A. Overview of Monica Lewinsky’s White House Employment
B. First Meetings with the President
C. November 15 Sexual Encounter
D. November 17 Sexual Encounter
E. December 31 Sexual Encounter
F. President’s Account of 1995 Relationship
A. January 7 Sexual Encounter
B. January 21 Sexual Encounter
C. February 4 Sexual Encounter and Subsequent Phone Calls
D. President’s Day (February 19) Break-up
E. Continuing Contacts
F. March 31 Sexual Encounter
VI. Early 1997: Resumption of Sexual Encounters
1. Role of Betty Currie
A. Arranging Meetings
B. Intermediary for Gifts
2. Observations by Secret Service Officers
B. Valentine’s Day Advertisement
C. February 24 Message
D. February 28 Sexual Encounter
E. March 29 Sexual Encounter
F. Continuing Job Efforts
VII. May 199
7: Termination of Sexual Relationship
A. Questions about Ms. Lewinsky’s Discretion
B. May 24: Break-up
These sections (and the supplemental appendix materials) did not skimp on any of the salacious details—to the point that the report itself was banned in certain countries due to the explicit content. A German journalist even tried to sue Starr for publishing pornography on the Internet once the report was posted as an official government document under Starr’s authorship.
It was the thinking of Clinton’s opponents that the inclusion of the less than prudish materials would attract more readers, thus exposing them to the evidence at hand, and winning them over to the pro-impeachment side.
Attract readers, indeed it did—but that was about it.
In fact, most of the public, having weighed the evidence, seemed to decide that “lying about sex” shouldn’t be construed as an impeachable offense, no matter how sordid the details. Just because he might not be the type of guy who you would want to date your sister didn’t mean that he was incapable of running the country, and as far as the masses were concerned, his immoral peccadilloes didn’t seem to get in the way of doing his job.
Lying about sex was not the same as lying about matters of state, or reasons for getting in a war, or even cheating on your income taxes.
