Answers to quiz + ASAT capability & the future of space itself

As promised the answers to my Quiz

What are dominant and recessive characteristics?
In any scheme of sexual reproduction genes occur in pairs. A dominant
characteristic requires only one gene to be present whereas a both
genes have to be present for a recessive characterisic.


What experiments did Mendel perform and how do they illustrate this.
Mendel was a monk and he performed experiments on peas in the
Monastery garden. He cross fertilised them and looked for
characteristics such as colour and crinkly leaves.


How are proteins made? How would I use yeast (say) to make a
particular protein?
Proteins are strings of amino acids. They are normally made from genes
(and enzymes). Enzymes are biological catalysts which are made from a
gene. Hence a gene is associated with a particular enzyme.


What are T cells?
These are white blood cells that do not have any immunological
activity themselves but act on and optimize other cells.

How do white blood cells (leukocytes ) operate?
They bind onto infective agents. As we shall see in a vaccine we only
need to bind to one site on the infective agent.


What would you understand by a cell fragment. How might it be made by
genetic engineering?
A cell fragment is simply a piece of a cell. It is normally regarded
as a single protein, or a part of a DNA sequence. It is important in
creating vaccines since we only need to have one accessible fragment
in a vaccine. This will create an immune response which will be
adequate. Genetic engineering will enable a fragment to be
manufactured in the cells of another organism - a yeast for example.

In the case of AIDS the virus frequently turns itself inside out so it
is hard to find an unambiguous binding site. Some progress has been
made. There are a group of prostitutes in Africa whose genetic make up
makes them immune to AIDS. Work is in progress to try to find a
binding site associated with the gene.

I will not take lectures from people who are totally unqualified lying
down. I tumbled to this when looking at the energy momentum balance of
ion propulsion. I will repeat. There can be no siege colonies without
a Von Neumann machine.

Space colonies are no substitute for working towards world peace and
adherence to arms control treaties.

ASAT and ABM systems

The US has just torn up the ABM treaty. Claim is that protection is
needed from the missile systems of rogue states. Reality is somewhat
different. Poland borders on Russia. It does not border on Iran. It is
hard to see how a radar station in Poland could possibly be relevant
to Iran. Iranian missiles would not go anywhere near. The offer of
President Putin for a station in Azerbaijan, which really does border
on Iran was turned down.
http://www.space4peace.org/asat/asat.htm
ABM systems are also ASAT systems and the most popular is a laser
mounted on a 747. The claim that only an Iranian (or other rogue
state) attack is planned is just rubbish. A laser system is
potentially capable of multiple kills. Technological advances in the
future will greatly expand capability.

Let us look at what ASAT means in practice.
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/CHI01177.xml
.. A moments reflection tells you that other countries are going to
respond to the ASAT threat. The Chinese test has been condemned for
the creation of space debris. In fact space is a rather fragile
environment from this viewpoint.

My suggestion is this. Part of defense policy should be directed at
reducing vulnerability and this means using ground based systems for
civil and military purposes even where they would be more expensive
than ground based systems. All civil communication should use fibre
optic cables with terrestrial transmitters on locations like the tops
of hills or tall buildings for mobile applications. You cannot have a
traffic management systems, either for cars or aircraft dependent on
such a fragile environment as space.

US defense policy is based on a contradiction. If you are fighting
terrorist groups or small countries without any aerospace capability,
you are OK. But, against such an enemy the utility of sophisticated
aircraft may be limited anyway. There is absolutely no point in
military secrecy - at least not for technology. A country which is
capable will be able to knock 70-80% of your military capability out
at a stroke, using ASAT weapons and sand. You can give detailed
hypersonic drawings to Al Qaeda or any small country and they could
not make use of them anyway.

All this does have an impact on marketing. Don't imagine that the
reasons why transoceanic passenger jets still use inertial systems is
nothing to do with the above. It might be an idea if in the future
jets flying oceanic journeys used RELATIVE positioning for collision
avoidance. Unless some method can be found of safeguarding the space
environment any cheap launch facility is highly problematic. In 20
years time there might be a market only for deep space scientific
missions and Ultra LEO spy missions. Everything else could be just too
dangerous.


- Ian Parker

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Relevant Pages

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