Author Archive: W. S. Topp

That Ought to Take Care of it…

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Of all the nonsensical, wrong-headed, asinine, and ignorant justifications for a massive wall along the southern border of the United States, the crackpot idea that a wall can stop the flow of illegal drugs is the most absurd.

Beyond the fact that the vast majority of drugs that enter the United States through the southern border come through ports of entry which presumably will remain open, here are a couple of other things to consider:

1. Drug trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar global industry with astonishing profit margins. Drug smugglers are not mom-and-pop criminals, trying to scratch out a meager living by running a kilo or two of marijuana across an undefended border. They are international conglomerates, with research and development departments, logistics departments, finance departments, and virtually unlimited resources.  Thinking you will halt drug trafficking by building a wall is like thinking you will put General Motors out of business by closing a dealership on Main Street.

2. Economics tells us that if there is a demand for a product, someone will find a way to supply that product.  Right now, the market for illegal drugs in the United States is the largest in the world, exceeding $100 billion annually.  That’s $100 billion going to drug smuggling organizations every year. That will buy a lot of ladders.

3. Think they can’t afford countermeasures? According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, a kilogram of fentanyl that cost $2,600 can make more than 666,000 individual pills (with 1.5 mg of active ingredient) which can be sold for $15 each, generating $10 million in revenue.

4. They’ve already defeated the wall.  Here are some of the ways drug cartels smuggle narcotics into the United States today:

  • Privately-owned motor vehicles
  • Tunnels
  • Ships and boats
  • Commercial aircraft
  • Private airplanes
  • Submersible watercraft
  • Commercial vehicles
  • Shipping containers
  • Mail
  • Private courier services

5. The history of drug interdiction efforts – as well as the history of prohibition in the United States – makes clear that drug traffickers will adapt to any interdiction efforts that the government may attempt. As Theresa Cardinal Brown, Director of Immigration and Cross-Border Policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center explained, “The profit incentives to find ways over, under, around, or through any border infrastructure are high, and the cartels have more than enough money to spend on R&D.”

For more information, see:

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/09/why-drug-traffickers-laugh-at-trump

https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/drug-trafficking-smuggling-cartels-tunnels/559814001/

February 8, 2019

Good Leadership is Super

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His victory yesterday was the sixth Super Bowl championship won by Patriot’s head coach Bill Belichick, the most by any NFL coach. The extraordinary run of success during Belichick’s career with New England includes 16 first place finishes in 19 seasons, a regular season record of 225-79, and a postseason record of 30-10.

In an era when NFL rules are designed expressly to prevent sustained periods of winning or losing, Belichick’s record is nearly as remarkable as the downtrodden Cleveland Browns’ 20-year record of 95-225.   

Of course, as head coach of the Browns in the 1990’s, even Belichick had a losing record, so the otherworldly forces that keep the Browns down are apparently stronger than the forces that ensure Belichick’s success.

But it is possible that no supernatural forces are involved at all, at least not concerning Belichick and the Patriots. Former Patriots player Mathew Slater credited Belichick’s leadership for New England’s success in a 2017 interview.

“There’s no substitute for character,” Slater said, and Belichick, “plays a big role in it. He understands how to motivate this team, how to draw this team closer together, how to get us to believe, how to get us to trust, and to have faith not only in our process but in one another. When we need it most, we know it’s there.”

That’s a pretty good description of effective and successful leadership that can be applied almost anywhere.

February 5, 2019

Four Leadership Roles for Emergency Managers

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There are thousands of books, articles, white papers, power point presentations and webinars about leadership. They all provide helpful information. But few address the exceptional leadership challenges faced by emergency managers.

It’s not that the basic principles of leadership don’t apply to emergency managers. They do. But the field of emergency management has some special characteristics that leaders must be aware of.

One of the distinctive features of emergency management organizations is that they are nearly always small. FEMA has thousands of employees and some state EMA’s have hundreds, but county and city EMAs typically have just a handful of employees, often fewer than five. One result of the small size of emergency management agencies is that the heads of these organizations do not always feel like leaders.

In larger organizations, leaders add value by maximizing the productivity of their employees. But in a shop with only three or four workers, local EMA directors must spend their time writing plans, conducting public outreach, developing exercises, and performing other emergency management tasks. Thinking about leadership can seem like a luxury that a growing workload won’t allow.

But leadership is not defined by the boxes on an organization chart. In truth, emergency managers have four critical leadership roles and their performance as leaders in all of these roles will determine how prepared their communities ultimately are.

Two leadership roles for emergency managers are described on agency organization charts, but two others are not.  The four leadership roles for emergency managers are:

  1. Designated leader of your emergency management organization.
  2. Leader of preparedness and emergency management activities within your larger organization.
  3. Leader of your community’s formal emergency management enterprise.
  4. Leader of your community’s overall preparedness and emergency management program.

Emergency Management Organization Leader

As leader of your organization’s emergency management program staff you are filling a traditional leadership role, and all of the familiar rules of leadership apply. You have positional authority and your responsibility is explicit. You are responsible for managing and directing whatever employees are assigned to your unit. As a leader of an identified work unit your primary job is to ensure that your people have everything that they need in order to do their jobs. You set priorities, distribute resources, enforce standards, provide guidance, remove obstacles, and monitor performance. Your leadership role is clear and you have the support of your organization’s HR department and your own supervisors.

Your priority in this role is to ensure that your staff members have the resources to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Leadership Tips: Take care of your people, train effectively, remove obstacles to performance, motivate, delegate, lead by example.

Organization Preparedness and Continuity Leader

Your leadership role within your organization extends beyond your particular work group. Whether you work for a city or county government, or for a non-governmental organization, regional organization, or a private business, you are your organization’s subject matter expert for preparedness and emergency management. As such, you play a key role in ensuring that workers are prepared for emergencies and disasters and that the organization is fully prepared to resume operations as quickly as possible following a disaster or disruptive emergency.

In this role your authority is less clear, although you are unlikely to be openly challenged.  Some organizations will give you formal responsibility for employee preparedness and continuity planning, but some won’t.  Even if you have formal authority for the organization’s program, you can expect some level of resistance from other departments when you propose preparedness activities that will consume time or other resources. Your ability to implement effective preparedness or continuity programs will hinge largely upon your professional expertise and your ability to persuade others that preparedness is cost-effective and will benefit the organization. To succeed in this role, you must be fully supported by your organization’s top executives. The good news is that most people want to be prepared for disaster, especially if they receive appropriate guidance and sufficient resources.

Your priority in this role is to ensure that your organization’s personnel are fully prepared for emergencies or disasters and that your organization is able to resume operations as quickly as possible following disaster.

Leadership Tips: Communicate effectively, assess risk, prioritize, identify benefits, exert influence upward and laterally, get your leadership on board.

Emergency Management Community Leader

Your third leadership role is widely acknowledged throughout the community, but you will have to work hard to achieve your objective. As the leader of your community’s emergency management establishment, you will coordinate the emergency management efforts of all the organizations, agencies, groups, and individuals who have a role in your community’s emergency management program.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of organizations that will participate in your community’s mitigation, response, and recovery efforts. Some will have a seat in your EOC, but most won’t. Together, these organizations will provide the actual emergency management services that you will coordinate, including search and rescue, first aid, evacuation, sheltering, provision of emergency food and water, debris clearance, and so many others. Their roles and responsibilities should be described in writing in your operational plans and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

As the senior emergency manager in your community, your job is to coordinate the efforts of these organizations to ensure that your community is as prepared as possible to manage the consequences of disasters or large-scale emergencies. Consider all of these organizations and groups as members of a very large team, and you are the team leader. Your job is to build the team, prepare it, direct it, monitor its progress, and keep it on track. While all of your team members will accept their roles, you need to remember that emergency management is not the primary mission of these organizations. Their day-to-day priorities are going to be very different from yours, and they may struggle to find the time or resources to fully support your program.

Your priority is to build and shape an effective team that works together to efficiently and effectively implement your community’s emergency management program.

Leadership tips: Plan diligently, identify capability gaps, share information freely, train effectively, exercise frequently, build relationships, encourage collaboration, manage conflict, create and maintain a sense of urgency.

Community Preparedness Leader

Your final leadership role is to spearhead community-wide efforts to increase preparedness of individuals and businesses and to build community resilience. The better prepared residents and businesses are, the more resilient your community will be and the quicker your community will be able to bounce back from disaster.

Your position as the senior emergency management official in your community, your professional knowledge, your relationships with other community leaders, and your experience in preparing and disseminating public messaging make you a highly credible and trusted advocate for preparedness.

Your priority is increase disaster preparedness of your community by providing accurate information and motivating community members to act.

Leadership tips: Develop positive messaging, ensure messaging reaches all members of the community, build trust, use multiple communication channels, be persistent.

And finally

As an emergency manager, your actual work unit might be quite small. But your position as the senior emergency management professional in your community gives you important leadership responsibilities that affect every resident and organization in your jurisdiction. Your willingness and ability to perform as a community leader will make a significant difference in your community’s ability to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disaster.

January 22, 2019

Not Another Meeting

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“Oh, God, not another meeting”

We’ve all heard it, most of us have said it.  And the truth is, meetings can be unproductive, tedious, and utterly wasteful.

But the takeaway isn’t that meetings are bad. The takeaway is that bad meetings are bad. Good meetings are not automatically bad.  In fact, good meetings can be good. Very good. Especially for emergency managers.

If you ever find yourself sitting across from your new boss, and you hear a comment like, “I don’t believe in meetings,” the first thing you should do when you get back to your office is update your resume’ and type out a quick letter of resignation. Don’t put a date on yet, but keep it where you can find it in a hurry.

Why? Because if your boss says he or she doesn’t believe in meetings, what they’re really saying is, “I don’t believe in sharing information, especially with you. Information is power, and there is not enough for both of us. I don’t want you to know what I am thinking, what my priorities are, or what I might do tomorrow and I don’t especially care what you think.”

If your boss won’t share information, you can be certain of one thing: he or she is setting you up to fail. Eventually something will go bad and you are going to end up on Front Street holding the bag.

In emergency management, law enforcement, and the military I have worked for many types of leaders: Good leaders, bad leaders, indifferent leaders, inspirational leaders, and leaders who can’t spell ‘leadership.’  There are lots of things that make a good leader, but one trait is always present. Good leaders share information. Bad leaders don’t.  I am not sure which way the causation arrow points: maybe sharing information makes you a good leader, or maybe being a good leader makes you share information. Either way, the connection is clear.

Emergency managers should recognize this intuitively, as the entire emergency management enterprise is based on collaboration and cooperation – both of which require unconstrained information sharing. Good emergency managers are out and about, listening and learning. There’s not time enough in the day to do everything, and those plans really need to be updated, but you are not learning anything sitting in your office all day. And no one else is learning anything, either.

As an emergency management leader, your job is to share information.  And not just with your staff, but with every organization, agency, community group, and resident of your community. Meetings can be a very effective tool for sharing information, explaining your priorities, developing relationships, understanding other points of view, and getting your message out.

If you are not sharing information regularly with the people and organizations that you are relying on – either through meetings, newsletters, e-mail updates, or other means – you are undercutting your own effectiveness as an emergency manager.

The best leaders I worked for conducted regular staff meetings to share information, discuss the future, and receive updates on ongoing projects. As a staff officer, I learned how my bosses think, what they expected, what their priorities were, and what our unit’s goals were in these morning meetings. I also kept abreast of the work my colleagues were doing, what problems they were having, and how they were resolving them.  Every morning update or staff meeting was a mini-AAR, overflowing with lessons learned.

Of course, meetings need to be properly conducted to have lasting value.  There are lots of articles and webinars about how to conduct effective meetings, and a good leader will learn how to do so.

At a bare minimum each meeting should have an agenda, a specified deliverable, someone in charge to keep the meeting on track, a time limit, and should only include people who have a reason to be there.

Despite what you might have heard, good meetings certainly have a place in the professional emergency manager’s toolbox.

January 20, 2019

“Burn on Big River”

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It was a small fire, as fires go, and it wasn’t the first time that a river choked with industrial waste had burned. But a brief mention in Time Magazine in August, 1969 about burning fuel on the Cuyahoga River came to epitomize the sorry state of America’s environment in the years before the Clean Water Act and other seminal environmental legislation became law.

The fire on the Cuyahoga became “the emblem for all that was wrong with industrial America,” said environmental activist Denis Hayes yesterday, during a discussion at the Cleveland City Club. Hayes rose to prominence as an environmentalist in 1970 when he coordinated the first Earth Day event at the request of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. That first Earth Day drew 20 million participants to rallies, protests and other environmental events across the nation.

Thanks to Time Magazine, the Cuyahoga River fire became widely known, said Hayes. But suggestions that it sparked the American environmental movement overstate the importance of the incident.

America’s patience with massive industrial pollution had already given out. Environmental groups had been working to reduce industrial pollution and had already made significant progress. An oil spill off Santa Barbara in January and February 1969 contaminated more than 200 miles of California coastline, highlighting the problem. The Cuyahoga River fire on June 19, 1969, though immortalized in Time, was just one more outrage.

But Time’s story, though brief, caught the public’s attention, said Hayes. “It was a teachable moment for Americans.”

It was not, however, the first time the Cuyahoga River had burned. Nor was it the most serious fire ever to occur on the river. Flammable liquids on the river had burned at least a dozen times previously, and a fire in 1912 had killed five people, according to researcher Doug Kusak. Industrial rivers in other cities had also suffered fires. But the myth that the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and major environmental legislation persists.

Regardless of the role the Cuyahoga River played in raising America’s environmental consciousness, since 1969 the nation has made great progress, said Hayes. He expects that the U.S. economy will continue to evolve from its past reliance on heavy industry to a more sustainable model that is less damaging to the environment.

The Cuyahoga River today.                                                                                                                                                                 (photo: wvgirlinthe216)

But now we face new threats, including climate change, mass extinctions, and plastic loading in the oceans. These are international problems, said Hayes, and taking effective action internationally is much more difficult than taking action nationally.

We have already passed several tilting points, he said. No matter what we do now, hurricanes will continue to get stronger, extinct species will never come back, and ocean acidification will never be reversed.

While solving large-scale international problems, like climate change and mass extinctions, will require coordinated efforts by governments and industry, individuals can make a difference, said Hayes. Most importantly, individuals can take local action and demand effective action by their elected officials. “The real Earth Day is election day,” he said.

While supporters of environmental action might have science on their side, said Hayes, their opponents have been more motivated and more effective. People who support efforts to preserve and protect the environment must match the passion of these other groups. While Hayes does not believe that single-issue voting is appropriate, he said citizens concerned about the environment should make clear that candidates who do not understand the critical importance of environmental issues – including climate change – should not be considered qualified to serve.

Individuals can also make a difference through their purchasing decisions, said Hayes. Consumers should demand environmentally sound manufacturing processes, products, and packaging “There is one way our economy works,” he said, “when there is a demand for something, it tends to be produced.”

Despite the significant environmental problems facing us today, Hayes believes that positive change is possible, but will require international cooperation and collaboration and effective leadership by the United States. “Across the world, there are different solutions, different economies, different cultures, different problems,” he said. “We all need to come together.”

January 19, 2019

Burn on Big River

There’s a red moon rising
On the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s a red moon rising
On the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you’re calling me
Cleveland, even now I can remember
Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin’ through my dreams

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on

Burn on Big River by Randy Newman

https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/37064/

For more information about the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River, see:

https://https://www.ideastream.org/news/fact-checking-five-myths-of-the-1969-fire-on-the-cuyahoga-river

January 19, 2019

photo: Jim Ridge / Share the River

Those were the days…

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Sign in luncheonette window, circa 1943
(Photo: Oregon Historical Society)

“Remember when” posts are pretty popular on social media, especially posts that contrast life as a kid in the 1950’s or 1960’s with life as a child today. Many of the comments on these posts focus on changes in technology. Sure, dial telephones and VCRs might confuse kids today, but I would like to think that kids today would be even more astonished to find out that not too long ago Americans – including teachers, pastors, business owners, nurses and combat veterans – could legally be denied service at gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and other establishments, simply because of the color of their skin.

January 12, 2019

Wake Me When It’s Spring

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A Beagle might find drugs hidden in a suitcase at the airport. A Labrador Retriever might bring back a murdered duck. A German Shepherd might lead a blind person through heavy traffic.  A Border Collie might help with your taxes. But Sammy, our LBD (Little Brown Dog), can tuck himself into his bed on a cold winter morning. Some things just can’t be taught.

January 11, 2019

Is it spring yet?

The Only Woman in the Room

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Beate Sirota was a 22-year-old language expert working for the Allied occupation authorities in Tokyo in 1946 when she wrote one of the most important paragraphs in Japanese history.

One of a handful of women on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), Sirota was tasked with drafting a section of the proposed Japanese constitution that would establish civil rights for Japanese women involving marriage, money, and family.

When adopted as part of Japan’s postwar constitution, the sentences Sirota wrote redefined the role of women in Japanese life, upending a thousand years of cultural and social tradition, exactly the result that MacArthur was looking for.  Along with the renunciation of war and the strengthening of Japanese democracy, the equality of women was a key part of MacArthur’s plan to smash the power of the Japanese militarists who had disastrously led Japan into World War II.

Women had never enjoyed equal rights in Japan. Marriages were arranged and adultery was permitted for husbands, but not for wives. Women could not own property and had no legal, economic, or political rights. High schools were segregated by sex, and there were no colleges or universities for women at all. MacArthur was determined to halt Japan’s traditional gender discrimination, and Beate Sirota would play a key part.

Sirota was born in Austria, the daughter of a well-known concert pianist.  But the rise of Nazism terrified her parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated to Vienna. When Sirota’s father was invited to teach and perform in Japan, they grabbed the opportunity. From ages five to fifteen, Sirota lived in Japan, where she learned the intricacies of the Japanese language and of Japanese society, including the powerlessness of Japanese women.

In 1939, at age 15, having completed secondary school in Japan, Sirota enrolled at Mills College in Oakland, California.  She was there in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Unable to return to Japan, she completed her studies and obtained work as a translator. For nearly four years she had no direct contact with her parents.

As soon as the war ended, she looked for a job that could take her to Japan, so that she could search for he parents. Fluent in Japanese, she quickly found work as a language expert with the U.S. government’s Foreign Economic Administration supporting the Government Section of SCAP in Tokyo.   Upon arrival in Japan, she located her malnourished parents, who had survived the war despite constant government suspicion.

In February 1946, the Government Section was assigned to draft a new constitution for Japan. The document would need to be approved by General MacArthur before submission to the Japanese government, which would have final say.  MacArthur wanted to use the new constitution to make far-reaching social changes in Japan. Belying the importance of the task, the Government Section was given just eight days to prepare their initial draft.

As the lone woman in the unit, Sirota was assigned to write the section on women’s rights. It didn’t matter that she had virtually no government experience and had studied modern languages in college.  She was a woman – the only woman readily available – and that was qualification enough.

Undaunted – indeed, energized by the tasking – Sirota quickly toured all of the available libraries in Tokyo, gathering samples of constitutions that could guide the Section’s work. She found the German Weimar Constitution of 1919 to be especially helpful.  The Japanese Meiji Constitution of 1889 was useful mostly as a template for what not to include, she noted later.

On her own initiative, Sirota also drafted a section that would protect Japanese children from exploitation, ban full-time child labor, and ensure free medical and dental care for children.

“Believing this was a chance Japan would never have again,” she wrote, “I wanted to be sure not to omit a single thing that might benefit Japanese women in the future.”

While the section on children’s rights and many of the specific details of her section on women’s rights were dropped by U.S. officials, the document that was ultimately presented to the Japanese for review included her language guaranteeing equality for women. When Japanese officials saw the American draft, they were initially opposed to the section on women’s rights. But when an American officer pointed out that the section had been written by Sirota, who had lived in Japan for more than ten years, was fluent in the language, and understood the point of view and feelings of Japanese women, Japanese officials relented, and the article remained in place.

Later, many of the specific requirements Sirota had drafted that were dropped from the constitution were incorporated into legislation, and thus became law.

Sirota served in Japan until 1947. For the rest of her life she worked as a translator, primarily for the Asia Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving relations between Asian nations and the west. She died in New York City in 2012.

Article 24 of the Japanese Constitution, promulgated on November 3, 1946:

Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.
With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.

For further information on Beate Sirota Gordon’s experiences in Japan, see her memoir: The Only Woman in the Room, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1997.

Photo: Occupation of Japan, 1945. Scene at Sasebo, Kyushu, Japan, shows mother working with sleeping child on her back. Photographed by crewmember of USS Chenango (CVE-28), released October 19, 1945. Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collection of the National Archives. (2015/12/01).

January 10, 2019

A Year in Space

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The International Space Station (Photo: NASA)

In 1960 an explosion at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur launching complex killed hundreds of people. Rather than halt their program to investigate the disaster and implement safety features to prevent a re-occurrence, the Soviets pretended the incident never happened and kept it a secret for decades, even from the families of the victims.

That attitude towards crew safety is just one of the cultural and operational differences between the Russian space program – a continuation of the Soviet program – and NASA, according to Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who spent a year in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015-2016. Kelly chronicled his mission in a memoir titled, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

Kelly’s book details his career and his year-long mission. Having trained as a Navy pilot to fight the Soviet military, he was especially attentive to the operational and cultural differences between U.S. astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts that he lived with aboard the station.

Throughout his flight – and for several years prior – Kelly worked closely with Russian cosmonauts and technicians. During this period he learned to adjust to the different ways of operating and the differing philosophies of the American and Russian space agencies, including their attitudes towards crew safety.

NASA’s safety rules routinely delay or scrub launches right to the final moments of the countdown, Kelly wrote. American astronauts were never certain that they were going into space until the rocket engines ignited. Not so for the Russians, who “haven’t scrubbed a launch after the crew was strapped in since 1969.”

Kelly also described differences in the ways NASA and the Russians designed and procured equipment. Though robust and dependable, Russian equipment is often less technologically advanced than U.S equipment, as the Russians highly value efficiency and low cost. Kelly cites the Soyuz capsule – originally designed in the 1960’s and still in use today in updated versions – noting that it is cheap, simple, and reliable. The Russian Progress resupply vehicle, which brings food, spare parts and other needed components to the ISS, is another example. The vehicle is very similar to the Soyuz, he writes, “because the Russians never create two designs when one will do.”

As an astronaut, Kelly piloted two space shuttle missions (STS-103, Shuttle Discovery in1999 and STS-118, Shuttle Endeavour in 2007) and completed a five-month mission on the International Space Station (October 2010 – March 2011). In 2012 he and a Russian cosmonaut were selected to spend a year aboard the ISS as the subjects of a study on the effects of long-duration space flight. Kelly’s year in space lasted from March 2015 until March 2016. During his career he spent a total of 520 days in space. Remarkably, Kelly’s twin brother, Mark, is also an astronaut.

But Kelly‘s career almost never got off the ground. As a college freshman he was hardly the over-achieving honor student/Eagle Scout that is typical of American astronauts. He was, in fact, a poor student who was, in his words, “A directionless, undereducated eighteen-year-old with terrible grades.” But Kelly never lacked intelligence, and when he found direction he responded with energy and discipline. During his first semester at college he read Thomas Wolfe’s account of NASA’s Mercury program, The Right Stuff and he became hooked. “I felt the power of those words washing over me,” he wrote. “I felt like I had found my calling.”

Newly dedicated and driven, Kelly earned a Navy officer’s commission and was selected for flight school. Like a film character from Top Gun, he became the best of the best, flying F-14 fighters off the crowded decks of aircraft carriers. Later, like the seven Mercury astronauts whom Wolfe chronicled, he became a test pilot – the best of the best of the best. Finally, he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut – the best of the best of the best of the best.

The International Space Station was designed and built by a 15-nation coalition, including the United States, Russia, and the space agencies of Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been continuously inhabited since November 2000, and by now more than 200 persons from sixteen nations have visited it.

While Kelly calls international cooperation the highlight of the ISS program, station operations are not as international as you might think. The station consists of multiple modules and is roughly divided into two segments: the Russian segment, where the Russians live and work; and the U.S. segment, where everyone else lives and works. In addition, each astronaut or cosmonaut works directly for his or her own space agency, rather than for some international space organization. Thus, ISS crew members work on their own national experiments, follow a daily schedule prepared by their own national space agency, eat food supplied by their own nation, and speak with their flight controllers on their own national communications system.

The different nationalities cooperate with each other, and share resources when necessary, but they are more neighbors than co-workers, albeit neighbors in an alarmingly dangerous neighborhood that requires constant vigilance, near-total trust, and frequent cooperation just to stay alive. And for all the national differences that are observed, Kelly reminds us that the ISS, “is the longest peaceful international collaboration in history.”

Despite significant cultural differences, Kelly writes that American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work well together. “We make an effort to learn about and respect one another’s cultures, and we have agreed to carry out this huge and challenging project together, so we work to understand and see the best in one another.”

But Russian attitudes about sharing information take some getting used to. Russian cosmonauts have lower base salaries than American astronauts, wrote Kelly, but the Russian Space Agency pays cosmonauts a significant bonus for each day they are in space. However, if the Space Agency determines that a cosmonaut made a mistake, they decrease the cosmonaut’s bonus. Thus, there is a tremendous incentive for cosmonauts to withhold information about problems or other issues from their own Mission Control personnel. This is especially dangerous because Mission Control has access to thousands of engineers, technicians and other specialists who understand every component of the ISS. Their knowledge is critical to keeping the ISS operating and the crews safe.

Similarly, Russian training is more detailed than comparable U.S. training, but the reason is not necessarily to ensure that cosmonauts are safer or better trained. Instead, writes Kelly, training serves to protect the trainers from blame in case of an accident or failure. “Everyone involved in training needs to certify that the crew was taught everything they could possible need to know. If anything should go wrong, it must then be the crew’s fault.”

Cosmonauts also are encouraged to avoid responsibility for mistakes. To be certified for flight, cosmonauts must pass a difficult oral exam. But once their performance is graded, cosmonauts have an opportunity to contest their grades, and they do so by attempting to minimize and avoid responsibility for any mistakes they made on the exam.

While the ISS orbits silently above our heads, it is easy to discount the difficulty and danger of spaceflight. But that’s a luxury not available to astronauts or cosmonauts. As a reminder, during a nine-month period that included the start of Kelly’s mission, three resupply vehicles were lost during missions to the ISS, including two in a row. Fortunately, none carried passengers, but the Soyuz rocket that failed on a Russian supply mission is the same type of rocket used to bring cosmonauts and astronauts to the ISS and the SpaceX rocket that failed is the same model rocket that NASA will use to transport astronauts in the future.

On his first spacewalk outside the ISS, Kelly was shocked to see the extent of damage to the exterior of the station. Fifteen years exposure to micrometeoroids, orbital debris and the sun have left the station pitted and scarred. At one point during his year on the ISS, Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts were forced to take refuge in the docked Soyuz capsule – a Soyuz capsule is always docked at the station to serve as a ‘lifeboat’ in case of a catastrophic accident – when an old satellite was detected approaching the station and there was no time to maneuver the ISS away from it. Orbiting earth in the opposite direction as the station, the impact speed would have been 35,000 miles per hour, and a collision would have instantly destroyed the ISS, and in all likelihood the Soyuz capsule.

For a full account of his ISS mission, see Scott Kelly’s book: Endurance; A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

 

top image: Scott Kelly aboard the International Space Station. (NASA photo)

January 8, 2019

“harmful, wasteful, and offensive…”

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President Trump will apparently speak to the nation about the national security “emergency” we are facing on our southern border.

This will be great.  I can hardly wait to hear the fact-based, well-reasoned rationale for spending $20 or $30 billion dollars on a wall.  Since no one except the dictator of some banana republic would propose a project of this size or expense without carefully evaluating all aspects of its implementation, I am sure that the speech will be informative, accurate, non-partisan, and compelling.

Of course, we can all expect that the president will use actual data and other evidence to explain the problem with our current situation and how, exactly, a wall will solve the problem. (You know, like, if the problem is 11 million undocumented persons here, how will a wall remove them; or, if nearly 60 percent of the persons here “illegally” actually entered the country legally through ports of entry and overstayed their visa period, how will a wall address that problem?)

I will be especially interested in learning about the detailed proposals for a border barrier that the Republicans in the Congress prepared when they drafted the current federal budget. As they have been responsible for all aspects of national defense and homeland security for the past two years, I am looking forward to seeing the report of the congressional hearings Republicans must have held to examine this critical issue. (Too bad the Fake News Media wouldn’t cover those important hearings.) The testimony they must have heard from border security professionals, immigration officials, environmental groups, lawyers, local government officials, and affected landowners must have been illuminating.

As the White House is convinced that this is a significant issue, and has been saying so for years, I am sure that the administration has amassed a trove of compelling data to support the proposal. I can’t wait to see the numerous studies and reports that the Department of Homeland Security must have prepared to analyze and evaluate the cost and benefits of a wall. I am looking forward to hearing why funds spent on a wall will be more effective than funds spent on additional border personnel, fencing, better equipment, training, surveillance devices, increased cooperation with Mexican authorities, and immigration courts.

I must admit that I have not been paying enough attention to this critical issue.  I have somehow missed the administration’s detailed plans for acquiring the necessary land (much of which is privately owned); constructing the barrier on harsh, remote, difficult terrain; monitoring the border; maintaining the wall; and addressing the inevitable attempts to circumvent the wall.

So, I am sure the speech will be great.  Hopefully it will be as convincing as the conservative Cato Institute’s 2017 report titled “Why a Wall Won’t Work.”

(link here: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work )

If you aren’t available to watch the president’s speech, and if you don’t have time to read the report (which really is compelling…), here’s a couple of summary paragraphs from the report:

 

“In a sense, the wall merely represents the Trump administration’s worst instincts and desires. It is harmful, wasteful, and offensive, but an ineffective wall is nonetheless better than the surge of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to round up and deport people that the president also wants. No wall has ever arrested, robbed, battered, or murdered nonviolent people, as immigration enforcement has. A wall will not create an interest group to lobby for itself, endorse nationalist presidential candidates, and demand more power and funding, as the Border Patrol union does.

The wall is more than a symbol. It will harm the lives of thousands of border residents and immigrants while wasting billions of tax dollars. But in a world run by nationalists, the one small source of comfort for non-nationalists over the next four years may be the knowledge that it could be worse.”

 

January 7, 2019