What Lies Beneath

Since the beginning of the human race, man has looked skyward and watched enviously as birds flew effortlessly above him. Some of our most creative predecessors were bewitched by a desire to join the fowl. To soar beyond them must have seemed an impossible feat.

One of Davinci's flying machines

On February 15th, 1914, Lieutenants J. C. Carberry and W. R. Taliaferro set a new Army altitude record in a Curtiss biplane, ascending to 8,700 feet. From the beginning of powered flight in 1903, it had taken a mere 11 years to ascend beyond the cruising altitude of most birds.

Curtiss and one of his biplanes

Like many records, this one was set by courageous explorers utilizing the best engineering a nation had to offer. And like many advances in aerospace history, what was one day dangerous and groundbreaking would soon become unremarkable in every aspect except its accessibility. For example, Telluride airport is located 9,070 feet above sea level -- higher than Carberry and Talieferro's record-breaking flight -- and serves over 20,000 passengers per year.

Telluride Airport

The pattern continued. In August 1963, a North American X-15 rocket plane piloted by Joe Walker flew to an unofficial altitude record of 354,199 feet. This met the internationally agreed definition of space flight, and Mr. Walker was awarded a set of astronaut wings.

North American X-15

In October 2004, test pilot Brian Binnie flew Scaled Composites' Space Ship One to an altitude of 367,440 feet, beating Joe Walker's record and opening up an era of commercial space travel to any joy rider who can spare $200,000.

Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two. Now taking reservations!

But in this race for the stars, we may be missing something. By looking ever upward, we remain blind to the wondrous discoveries which lie deep in our own oceans. The potential is huge -- discoveries of wondrous new species, chemical compounds useful as medicines, and an understanding of our history lie beneath the surface.

Deep Sea Cusk Eel

We'd better get started.

Flyover Country

In 1869, the world's First Transcontinental Railroad was completed. It was possible, for the first time, to travel between the eastern and western halves of the United States on one continuous rail line stretching from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. Supplanting earlier means of travel, the railroad turned what used to be a hazardous, months-long journey by wagon train and stagecoach into a safe, relatively comfortable one-week affair that could be had for as little as $65.

Airplanes came on the scene in 1903, but the first coast-to-coast flight wouldn't happen until 1911, when Calbraith Rogers flew from Sheepshead Bay, New York to Pasadena, California. Sponsored by Armour Meat Packing Company to the tune of $5 per mile, Rogers' trip required 70 stops for fuel, sleep and food. (His mechanic, who rode by train, often arrived at their meeting points before Rogers did.) That wasn't the only record Rogers set -- he was also aviation history's first casualty due to a bird strike.

This trip time would be shortened significantly by other historically significant aircraft (some of which are still in use today), but on February 11, 1939, Ben Kelsey flew the XP-38, an experimental fighter aircraft which would go on to play a major role in WWII, to set a record by flying from California to New York in 7 hours and 2 minutes. Kelsey also punctuated his own record with a crash when ice fouled his engines (but lived to tell about it).

In just 70 years, the time to travel across America had fallen from months to days to hours, a reduction of over 99%.

Air travel became ever more efficient, and today we're herded into pressurized aluminum tubes and disgorged five hours later on the other end of the country. But amidst what we've gained, something has also been lost. The coasts, fat with technology and media conglomerates, have risen to dominate an influential segment of public opinion but can be accused of having lost touch with the way of life and values which persist in the nation's interior. The coasts ignore the middle at their peril. Flyover country will have its say.

Calling Major Tom

On January 30th, 1958, the first US satellite, Explorer I, was launched into orbit. It was a late entrant to the space race -- the Soviet Union had beaten the US into orbit by almost 4 months. Sputnik 1, the USSR's first satellite, was quite primitive, even by the standard of a 1980s digital wristwatch. All it did was transmit a beeping sound via radio waves back to earth. But it was on a frequency any sufficiently motivated amateur could monitor, and the whole world was rapt with attention.

Sputnik 1

Darn kids always stirring up trouble!

(Listen to Sputnik here. It's spooky!)

By today's standard, the US satellite Explorer I was also primitive, but it did carry a small number of scientific instruments and was the first spacecraft to detect the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt, giving some hint of the great scientific strides which would be taken with space exploration.

President John F. Kennedy kicked the space race into high gear when he announced America's intent to be first to land on the moon. JFK famously called the moon mission "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."

A generation of students was galvanized. How could they not be moved by the challenge to be a part of that adventure? The benefit to the US was great -- where the US had once lagged in science, technology, engineering and math graduates, the space race produced a long procession of these who helped make America the leader of the scientific and economic world.





But the supply of new scientists and engineers has fallen off in recent years, and as the average age of science and engineering employees crept inexorably towards retirement age, former President Bush established the Constellation program, a multistep NASA plan designed to take manned space exploration all the way to Mars. But going to Mars was only one of the intended benefits: It was also made to once again motivate a generation to dedicate themselves to STEM fields.

There's certainly plenty to explore. Look what we found when we pointed the Hubble space telescope at the darkest slice of sky we could find, where we supposed nothing at all existed.

Every dot of light is an entire galaxy.

Sadly, it is not to be. And one wonders where it all will end up.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

When national governments need to find out what an adversary is up to, they've got a lot of choices. Sometimes too many. It used to be simpler.

On January 23, 1918, the first balloon ascension was made by American Expeditionary Forces. Balloons enabled observation of enemy troop movements and preparations from many miles behind the front line. Being filled with hydrogen, they could also blow up spectacularly.

U.S. Army balloon accident at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1918

Technology progressed quickly. Aircraft soon took up the reconnaissance role, and in 1964, the Lockheed SR-71, the ultimate expression of this progression, first took to the air.

Lockheed SR-71

Designed to fly more than three times the speed of sound at more than 80,000 feet, the SR-71 flew too high and too fast to be intercepted by the 900+ missiles fired at it by the Soviet Union and its client states. When the President had a question, the SR-71 could be called on and, a few days and a few million dollars later, return with an answer.

The SR-71 was retired from military service on January 25th, 1990. Why? This represented the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one in which untouchable spy satellites were bolstered on the ground by increasingly pervasive digital intelligence gathering. Cheap cameras and pervasive data networks have turned whole societies into de facto watcher states. With such broad surveillance underway by not just government agencies but also private businesses and citizens, unintended consequences were inevitable, and they have caught even the most experienced intelligence arms off guard.

Israeli Mossad operatives captured on hotel CCTV during an assassination operation.

Just because something is possible, does that mean we should do it? I doubt it.

Also this week: The US Air Force in 1959 determined that only about 1% of all UFO reports couldn't be explained. Of course, it's a conspiracy.

You Dropped a Bomb on Me

On January 19th, 1910, aviators Louis Paulhan and US Army Lt. Paul Beck dropped three two-pound sandbags at an air demonstration in Los Angeles, proving that dropping bombs from aircraft was a feasible proposition.

Spiffy hat modeled by Lt. Paul Beck	Louis Paulhan

Was it progress? In any case it was the founding of a new technology of war, one which would quickly move on from its crude origin. Their demonstration almost didn't come off. It is often believed that lawyers have ruined modern life, but there they were in 1910, trying even then to spoil everyone's fun. The Wright brothers, who had first demonstrated powered flight in 1903, had patented pieces of their aircraft and attempted to halt Paulhan's flight. Aviators aren't generally known for backing down from a challenge, though, and the normally peaceful life of an unsuspecting piece of dirt was, if not ended, at least momentarily interrupted by a pair of rudely placed sandbags.


In 1911 Giulio Gavotti, a pilot serving in the Italian Army, first turned Paulhan's and Beck's theory into application when he pulled the pins from four grenades with his teeth, then dropped them onto a camp of Ottoman soldiers in Libya.

Guilio Gavotti

The attack made news. "Aviator Lt. Gavotti Throws Bomb on Enemy Camp. Terrorized Turks Scatter upon Unexpected Celestial Assault," screamed the headlines. (In fact, a post-attack inquiry showed that the grenades had either failed to detonate or exploded harmlessly, and most of the soldiers were unaware they'd been attacked, but the media didn't let the truth get in the way of a good story.)

Certainly some kind of progression was occurring. From 4 Italian grenades in 1911...





...35 years later, technology had marched on a bit.

Operation Crossroads Never before had a war engulfing half the world been ended with the application of a mere two bombs. But this one was. And that has to be some kind of progress.