Volume 99 Number 1 Spring 2013 Journal of the WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MC2 LIBRARY JUL 2 4 2013 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Board of Discipline Editors ii Editor’s Comments S. Rood iii Erratum A. G. G/uckman v Human Systems Integration G. P. Kreuger 1 Commercial Truck Driver Performance J. F. Morgan, eta! 25 Springs of Washington, D.C. J. M. Sharp 39 Annual Meeting: Outgoing President’s Remarks J. Cole 59 Annual Meeting: Incoming President’s Remarks J. Egenrieder. 60 Annual Meeting: Board of Managers Photo 62 Membership Application 63 Instructions to Authors 64 Affiliated Institutions 65 Affiliated Societies and Delegates 66 ISSN 0043-0439 Issued Quarterly at Washington DC Washington Academy of Sciences Founded in 1898 Board of Managers Elected Officers President James Egenrieder President Elect Terrell Erickson Treasurer Ronald Hietala Secretary Jeff Plescia Vice President, Administration Kathy Arle Vice President, Membership Sethanne Howard Vice President, Junior Academy Dick Davies Vice President, Affiliated Societies Richard Hill Members at Large Paul Arveson Michael Cohen Frank Haig, S.J. Mark Holland Neal Schmeidler Catherine With Past President Jim Cole Affiliated Society Delegates Shown on back cover The Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences The Journal \s the official organ of the Academy. It publishes articles on science policy, the history of science, critical reviews, original science research, proceedings of scholarly meetings of its Affiliated Societies, and other items of interest to its members. It is published quarterly. The last issue of the year contains a directory of the current membership of the Academy. Subscription Rates Members, fellows, and life members in good standing receive the Journal free of charge. Subscriptions are available on a calendar year basis, payable in advance. Payment must be made in US currency at the following rates. US and Canada $30.00 Other Countries $35.00 Single Copies (when available) $15.00 Claims for Missing Issues Claims must be received within 65 days of mailing. Claims will not be allowed if non- delivery was the result of failure to notify the Academy of a change of address. Notification of Change of Address Address changes should be sent promptly to the Academy Office. Notification should contain both old and new addresses and zip codes. Editor of the Journal Sally A. Rood Associate Editor Sethanne Howard Academy Office Washington Academy of Sciences Room 113 1200 New York Ave. NW Washington, DC 20005 Phone: 202/326-8925 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WAS, Rm 113, 1200 New York Ave. NW Washington, DC 20005 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences (ISSN 0043-0439) Published by the Washington Academy of Sciences 202/326-8925 email: journal@washacadsci.org website: www.washacadsci.org 1 200 New York Ave Suite 113 Washington DC 20005 wwvK''washacadsci org Journal of the WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Volume 99 Number 1 Spring 2013 Contents Board of Discipline Editors ii Editor’s Comments S. Rood iii Erratum in the Winter 2012, Vol. 98, Issue 4 A. G. Gluckman v Articles Human Systems Integration (HSI): Psychological Influences in Design Produce Exceptional Operator Performance G. P. Krueger 1 Commercial Truck Driver Performance in Emergency Maneuvers and Extreme Roadway Conditions Presented in a Driving Simulator J. F. Morgan, S. A. Tidwell, M. Blanco, A. Medina-Flinstch, and R. J. Hanowski 25 Springs of Washington, D.C.: A Tale of Urbanization J. M. Sharp 39 Annual Meeting Outgoing President’s Remarks J. Cole 59 Incoming President’s Remarks J. Egenrieder 60 2013 Officers and Board of Managers Photo 62 Membership Application 63 Instructions to Authors 64 Affiliated Institutions 65 Affiliated Societies and Delegates 66 ISSN 0043-0439 Issued Quarterly at Washington DC Spring 2013 11 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences Editor Sally A. Rood, PhD sallv.rood@cox.net Assoc. Editor Sethanne Howard, PhD sethanneh@msn.com Board of Discipline Editors The Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences has a 12-member Board of Discipline Editors representing many scientific and technical fields. The members of the Board of Discipline Editors are affiliated with a variety of scientific institutions in the Washington area and beyond - government agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology; universities such as George Mason University; and scientific societies such as IEEE. Anthropology Astronomy Biology /Biophysics Botany Chemistry Computer Sciences Environmental Natural Sciences Health History of Medicine Physics Science Education Systems Science Emanuela Appetiti eappetiti@hotmail.com Sethanne Howard sethanneh@msn.com Eugenie Mielczarek mielczar@physics.gmu.edu Mark Holland maholland@salisbury.edu Deana Jaber djaber@marymount.edu Kent Miller kent.l.miller@alumni.cmu.edu Terrell Erickson terrell.ericksonl@wdc.nsda.gov Robin Stombler rstombler@aubumstrat.com Alain Touwaide atouwaide@hotmail.com Katherine Gebbie gebbie@nist.gov Jim Egenrieder Jim@deepwater.org Elizabeth Corona elizabethcorona@gmail.com Washington Academy of Sciences Ill Editor’s Comments Special Section on Human Factors This issue features two articles based on presentations at the Washington Academy of Sciences’ Capital Science (“CapSci”) conference in March 2012. The papers were presented on behalf of the Potomac Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (POT-HFES) mini-symposium at CapSci 2012, and they are: • “Human Systems Integration (HSI): Psychological Influences in Design Produce Exceptional Operator Performance” by Gerald Krueger, and • “Commercial Truck Driver Performance in Emergency Maneuvers and Extreme Roadway Conditions Presented in a Driving Simulator” by Justin Morgan and a highly-regarded group of researchers at Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute. The Academy has featured a series of CapSci POT-HFES mini-symposia and follow-up articles in this Journal over the years. For those particularly interested in the topic, the former issues with multiple articles on the topic of human factors were dated: Summer 2006, Fall 2008, and Fall 2010. We thank Dr. Jerry Krueger for organizing the series of special issues and note that, as we’re going to print on this issue, the U.S. Army MANPRINT Program is announcing availability of an upcoming Joint HSI display in the Pentagon ... so, clearly it’s a timely topic! Articles and Follow-up The third article of this issue, “Springs of Washington, D.C.: A Tale of Urbanization” by John (“Jack”) Sharp, focuses on another important topic— changes to certain geological conditions that originally made the D.C. area attractive for settlement centuries ago. The background on this article extends back to the time of the nation’s bicentennial, when Garnett Williams examined old newspaper files to locate the city’s springs and understand the early water courses dating back to 1776. This research resulted in Williams’ 1977 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Circular entitled (sadly) “Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways.” As follow-up to that bicentennial study, the Geological Society of Washington sponsored a 2012 field trip to examine the modern-day sites of the long-ago “fresh brooks and streams” of the D.C. area. Our brief article is based on the recent field trip, about which Dr. Sharp commented, “I think the important thing is for folks to realize what is under their feet (and cars) and how it affects our environment ...” Spring 2013 IV We’re pleased to share this eye-opening perspective, and think you’ll enjoy learning from it. Thanks to Sandy Neuzil of USGS for her help and advice on the material. Academy Business We also include in this issue remarks made at the Academy’s May 15, 2013 annual meeting by outgoing president Jim Cole and incoming president Jim Egenrieder, along with a photo of our distinguished officers and board. I’d like to invite members of the Academy community to contact me if interested in working with our interdisciplinary Journal staff on various roles. We are beginning a new search for individuals to serve on our Board of Discipline Editors. As always, we welcome ideas for special issues and manuscripts on topics of interest to our readership. We also welcome essays on current issues and letters to the editor on recent articles. Last, but certainly not least, we’re always happy to add to our great group of anonymous reviewers and volunteer proofers. We have a dedicated group of individuals who are devoted to the Journal’s cause on an ongoing basis — and we’re truly grateful for their help — and, at the same time, we also appreciate fresh views and energy! For help with this issue, we thank Professor Katherine E. Rowan, Director of the Science Communication Graduate Program at George Mason University (GMU); Elizabeth Grisham, student in the same GMU program; and Emanuela Appetiti of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions. Thank you, again, to all. Sally A. Rood, PhD, Editor Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences sallv.rood@cox.net Washington Academy of Sciences Erratum in the Winter 2012, Vol. 98, Issue 4 Albert Gerard Gluckman, “Methods to derive the Einstein partial differential equation describing the ray optics and kinematics of his light ray path experiment with moving mirror,” pp. 47-62. (a) Section 4 on page 52 Was: “This assignment simplifies equation (5)” Should be: “This assignment simplifies equation (7)” (b) Section 4 on page 52 Was: “Applying the chain rule of the differential calculus to the terms in equation (6) yields” Should be: “Applying the chain rule of the differential calculus to the terms in equation (8) yields” (c) Section 4 on page 53 Was: “Therefore, equation (9)” Should be: “Therefore, equation (11)” (d) Section 5 on page 54 Was: “Upon substitution, equation (10)” Should be: “Upon substitution, equation (12)” Spring 2013 VI (e) Section 5 on page 55 The appearance of the array at the top of the page is: r f x\i^) ~ I r I H, K) - | .x ’ - H) c_,..r | H, K ) - \!^-K)cj.t\ H, K ) -> - ‘-.xiHXy - ^ \H,K') ‘irl'O.;^) - Srl.¥,A') - T(0-.¥}max ’ which implies that the bucket must initially be filled no more than halfway with water, to prevent liquid from spilling out at the maximum angular speed. Equation (6) is plotted in Figure 1 for three different values of co! For any angular speed, z-h when r ! R-2 . As the bucket spins faster, the water level drops in the center and rises up near the walls, as Newton noted. Summer 2013 18 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 r/R Figure 1. Profiles of the water surface for three different angular speeds. 3. Angular Speed From an Energy Analysis The moment of inertia of the water in the spinning bucket is R f 7 = 1 r'lnprzdr - 1 + CO 2 A 3 ft), (7) max J using Eqs. (4) and (6), where the moment of inertia of the water when the bucket is at rest is /q = mR~ / 2 . The moment of inertia increases as water is Tung farther away from the axis of rotation with increasing angular speed, up to a maximum value of 4/q / 3 . Just as the elastic potential energy of a spring with a particle attached to its end is Ax / 2 where x is the translational displacement of Washington Academy of Sciences 19 the particle and k is the spring constant, so the torsional potential energy of the rope with the bucket attached to its end is Uj=\c(f)- (8) where (f) is the angular displacement of the bucket and c is the torsional constant of the rope. The gravitational potential energy of the water relative to the bottom of the bucket is Rz R { 1 2 o 2 2 A , (D 2(0 r ^ ^ ^ ^max ^max^ J /7q = 1 1 lirprdzdrgz = npg^ rh 0 0 0 V using Eq. (6). With the help of Eq. (4), the integral simplifies to f .4 ^ dr (9) Un = mgh 9 1 + T V -^^^max J (10) which reduces to the expected result if co = 0 . Note the seemingly paradoxical fact that even though the water is cylindrically symmetric and Uq is therefore independent of ^ as measured in the rotating frame of the bucket, Uq is a function of co which in turn depends on the angle (j) as measured in the inertial frame of the laboratory. The resolution of this paradox is that the angular acceleration is presumed to be small enough that z can be taken to be independent of (f) over any 2 tt range, and yet the height of the water at a given radius varies over the course of many revolutions of the bucket. As noted in Ref [7], water in a 9-cm-diameter Lucite cylinder spinning at a constant rate of 300 rpm takes about 1 minute to attain its equilibrium paraboloidal shape, indicating that the coupling between z and (j) is weak but nonzero. Assume that the mass of the bucket is negligible compared to that of the water. Then the total potential energy U of the system is the sum of Uj and Uq. Suppose that the rope is twisted through an initial angle and the bucket is released from rest, so that the initial kinetic energy is = 0 and the initial potential energy is U-^=\c(l^+\mgh. (11) When the rope has untwisted to some angle (f) so that the bucket is rotating at angular speed co, the kinetic energy is Summer 2013 20 x/' ^ r 2 ^ T 2 "^O 4 — I CO ~ — ^0^^ "I — CO 2 2 “ 6.4,, according to Eq. (7), and the potential energy is IT 1 ,2 1 , Wg/7 4 Uf - —c^ + — mgh H : 0) . 1 1 6(0, max Conservation of energy now implies that c(4 . ^ ' ?>co. max (12) (13) (14) Noting that I^co^^^^lrngh , we can rearrange Eq. (14) into the normalized form EI_ + 2 — c f 1- 2 ^ V 4. ^max ^max Solving this biquadratic equation gives 2 (15) (0 CO, max i { \ + p 1 (!> 2 A V 1 (16) 7 where mgh (17) The dimensionless constant P is the ratio of the initial torsional potential energy / 2 to the initial gravitational potential energy mgh / 2 . The square root of Eq. (16) is plotted in Figure 2 for three different values of p. Note that the maximum value of /? is 3 if co is not to exceed when the cord has fully unwound at (f)-6 . Furthennore, even at the midpoint of the bucket’s oscillations when = increasing /? from 1 to 3 increases co by only 55%. Washington Academy of Sciences 21 Figure 2. Angular speed of the water as a function of the fractional unwinding of the rope for three different initial numbers of twists of the bucket. 4. Period of Torsional Oscillations Take the square root of Eq. (16), substitute co = d(f)ldt, and separate variables. Then integrate over a quarter period T / 4 as the bucket passes through its equilibrium position and the cord fully winds back up, to get 1 0 f 1 + /? 2 A € J -1/2 r/4 = j ■ 0 (18) — 1 1 Multiply both sides of this equation by (f)^ (5 ^ . Then make the change of variable in the left-hand integral to ^ where sin^ = ^/^). Perform the right-hand integral and substitute Eq. (17) into it to eliminate /?. Using Summer 2013 00 = >/2wg/7 / /q , Eq. (18) gives the period of the bucket’s torsional oscillation as T = Pcos^ 6 % 1 ^/l + y^COS" 6 -\ nl/2 de. (19) The square root in the denominator inside the square brackets is approximately l + 0.5/?cos“ 6 in the limit as ^ 0 . Denoting the period as Tq in this small-angular-amplitude limit, one immediately obtains To (20) as expected, since / ^ /q for small cu according to Eq. (7). The integral in Eq. (19) can be numerically evaluated for nonzero /?, but it is found to only increase slowly with p. Even at the maximum value of /? = 3 , the period of oscillation is merely 12% larger than Tq. In any case, Eq. (16) gives an exact solution in phase space, whereby quantities are expressed in terms of the twist angle (j) rather than in terms of the elapsed time t. For example, substituting Eq. (16) into (6) gives the height of the water at any point in the bucket as a function of the angle that the cord has unwound. In particular, at the walls of the bucket where r = R, let Z denote the height of the water. Then the fractional rise in the height of the water at the walls above the stationary level is Z-h h \ f 1+/? 1- 2 ^ V -1 (21) which is equal to the normalized square of the angular speed of the bucket, according to Eq. (16). As already mentioned, Z-2h when P = 2 and ^2^ = 0. 5. Closing Remarks Why is the period 12% longer for large-angle oscillations of this torsional pendulum than it is for small amplitudes? The reason is not the same as for a simple pendulum. For a simple pendulum, the period increases because the approximation ?,\r\6^9 breaks down at large Washington Academy of Sciences 23 angles. Instead, the reason here is the increase in the moment of inertia of the water, in accordance with Eq. (7). In particular, if we froze the water, then the period would be independent of amplitude, just as it is for a mass on a Hookean spring. Finally, let's return to the key assumption underlying the analysis. The viscosity of the water must be high at the walls and bottom of the bucket if the fluid is to instantaneously adjust to the motion of the solid container. At the same time, the viscosity needs to be low within the bulk of the fluid to prevent differences in angular speed between one region of the water and another. Fortunately, simulations for the spin of an incompressible fluid in a cylindrical container suggest that there are viscid boundary layers in the water near the solid surfaces of the cylinder, accompanied by an inner inviscid core [10]. The situation is similar to laminar flow over an airplane wing, with drag motion close to the wing and potential flow far away from it. References [ 1 ] I. Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Vol. 1: The Motion of Bodies, orig. 1686, translated by A. Motte, revised by F. Cajori (Univ. of CA Press, Berkeley, 1934), p. 10. [2] E. Mach, The Science of Mechanics (Open Court Publishing, London, 1919), p. 232, online at http://archive.Org/stream/scienceofmechani005860mbp#page/n5/mode/2up [3] J. Grube, “Centripetal force and parabolic surfaces,” Phys. Teach. 1 1, 109-1 1 1 (Feb. 1973). [4] Z. Sabatka and L. Dvorak, “Simple verification of the parabolic shape of a rotating liquid and a boat on its surface,” Phys. Educ. 45, 462^68 (Sep. 2010). [5] S. A. Genis and C. E. Mungan, “Orbits on a concave frictionless surface,” J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 93, 7-14 (Summer 2007). [6] C. P. Price, “Teacup physics: Centripetal acceleration,” Phys. Teach. 28, 49-50 (Jan. 1990). [7] J. M. Goodman, “Paraboloids and vortices in hydrodynamics," Am. J. Phys. 37, 864-868 (Sep. 1969). [8] R. E. Berg, “Rotating liquid mirror,” Am. J. Phys. 58, 280-281 (Mar. 1990). [9] M. Basta, V. Picciarelli, and R. Stella, “A simple experiment to study parabolic surfaces,” Phys. Educ. 35, 120-123 (Mar. 2000). Summer 2013 24 [10] J. S. Park and J. M. Hyun, “Spin-up flow of an incompressible fluid,” Proc. 15th Australasian Fluid Mech. Conf. (Sydney, Australia, Dec. 2004), online at http://www.aeromech.usvd.edu.au/15afmc/proceedings/papers/AFMC00036.pdf Bios Carl E. Mungan is an Associate Professor of Physics at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. His research interests are currently focused on stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers and spectroscopy of rare-earth-doped crystals and glasses. Trevor C. Lipscombe is the Director of the Catholic University of America Press in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Physics of Rugby (Nottingham University Press, 2009) and coauthor of Albert Einstein: A Biography (Greenwood, 2005). Washington Academy of Sciences 25 An Examination of Historical and Current Laws Governing Leporids Kelsey Gilcrease South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Abstract Leporids (rabbits and hares) are usually assumed to be abundant; however, some populations in North America are declining. Over time, the human use of leporids has involved trapping, breeding, and consumption. Now there are increasing concerns about the conservation of leporids. Wildlife laws can assist with the management of wildlife declines, as they underpin how leporid populations are regulated. There has been little research regarding how and why certain jurisdictions developed in the context of leporid conservation. In order to improve conservation efforts, a historical legislative baseline must be understood. This study examined the historical underpinnings of 19*’’ century legislation regarding leporids in the United States by examining published wildlife laws, including hunting regulations, scalp laws, and laws related to the possession of game — and also the violation of those laws. The study revealed that leporid legislation during the 19*’’ century in the United States focused on the regulation of take through either bounty limits or limiting hunting seasons. The findings provide an understanding of why people could not hunt leporids during certain seasons, why people could not hunt with ferrets, and why leporid meat could not be sold during certain times of the year. Introduction Wildlife laws impact how wildlife populations are regulated (Coggins 1978) and how species are treated (Linder 1988), and they also impact organismal biology, the economy, and certain social factors (Coggins 1978). For example, wildlife laws regulate population size through the use of bag limits and hunting seasons; the selling and shipment of game meat contributes to the economy. Leporids (rabbits and hares) are prey species, game species, herbivores, and maintainers of the ecosystem, and they contribute to the diversity of floral species in the ecosystem (Zedler and Black 1992, Lees and Bell 2008). Historically, leporids were “in abundance” in the United States (e.g., Hallock 1883, Bailey 1908) and, in fact, they were so abundant that numerous “rabbit drives” were held for jackrabbits across the United States (Palmer 1896). Today, however, almost one in four Summer 2013 26 species of the Order Lagomorpha — which includes rabbits and hares (Leporidae), and also pikas (Ochotonidae) — are threatened (lUCN 2013a). Since laws impact wildlife populations, it is imperative to examine the historical underpinnings of legislation relating to leporids. The 19^’^ century was an interesting time period in the United States as people immigrated into the country, settlement began to develop, and states joined the Union. The conversation on historical wildlife laws seems to focus on who had the power to regulate wildlife law or who had the power to hunt (e.g., Lund 1976, Lueck 1989, Lueck 1995); however, there has been little research on how and why historical laws pertaining specifically to leporids were developed and approached. In particular, there is little understanding of how decisions were made, why people could not hunt leporid species during certain seasons, why people could not hunt with ferrets, or sell meat during specific times of the year. The aim of this paper is to clarify how and why certain leporid legislation was implemented. First, the paper lists the laws and regulations pertaining to leporids from 1800 to 1900, followed by an analysis of these laws, including those for protecting or hunting leporids, hunting with ferrets, and selling meat. Since a historical analysis is valuable in order to understand current laws (Bean and Rowland 1997), the paper includes a comparison of current and historical leporid legislation. Finally, in order to examine historical laws, it is necessary to examine a state example to assess how the historical laws worked in practice {i.e., violations that occurred with legislation); therefore. New Jersey is used as an example of how often the rabbit laws were violated from the 4-year period from 1896 to 1900. Historical information can play an important role in conservation efforts and could be better incorporated into conseiwation studies (Meine 1999, Szabo and Hedl 2011). In conducting this research, electronic academic databases were searched under the terms “rabbit laws” and “rabbit scalps” from 1836 to 1900 through the Library of Congress website for historical newspapers. Identified laws were typed into Google Books and searched over the years 1800-1900 and additional materials were identified, including peer reviewed publications and government published articles. The study methodology was based on the historical research method which involved the validation of data (Leedy and Ormrod 2010). Therefore, the newspapers and articles were examined for external evidence and carefully chosen as primary sources. Once articles were deemed genuine. Washington Academy of Sciences 27 internal evidence dealt with interpreting the historical information, and this involved listing assumptions to guide interpretation of the data (Leedy and Ormrod 2010). The following assumptions guided the interpretation of the data for this research: the laws echoed the need for people to protect their assets, and protect leporids for the future as people enjoyed hunting them; and, many wildlife populations were undervalued at the time (as described by Lueck 1989). A process for analyzing qualitative research was applied in which the data were coded, and items with closely linked concepts were categorized (Holloway 1997). For example, laws relating to protection/ ferrets/ hunting dates/ selling meat were coded as a “1”; laws relating to bounties were coded as a “2”; and laws relating to “other” were coded as a “3.” 19th Century Laws Relating to Leporids A summary of the laws pertaining to leporids in the United States from 1820 to 1899 is presented in Table 1. As shown in Figure 1, the majority (66%) of the laws from 1820 to 1 899 focused on the protection of rabbits. Others allowed scalping. Further analysis revealed that the eastern United States focused on the protection of rabbits or hares with season dates, bag limits, banning the use of ferrets during hunting, and/or restricting game sales. The western states focused on bounties, and the counties paid money to individuals who captured jackrabbits. Many of the laws were of county jurisdiction (see Table 1). Counties imposed fines or jail time for individuals who disobeyed the law. The more lenient laws involved $l-$5 fines or jail for 10 days. It was also apparent that the earlier 19^'’ century laws concentrated on hunting seasons and methods of capture. In the laws listed in Table 1, the leporid hunting season lengths ranged from 4 months to more than 2 years. The later 19^*^ century laws dealt with the export and sale of game (Palmer and Oldys 1900). Summer 2013 28 Table 1. Summary ofU.S. laws pertaining to leporids, 1820-1899 State Year Legislation/Regulation California 1895 Senate Bill 644 - Bounty for rabbit scalps. Delaware 1852 Chapter 55, Section 1 1 - Cannot kill a rabbit between February 1 and October 15 in Kent or Sussex County. Hawaii 1890 Legislative Assembly, Chapter 6 1 - Cannot keep or breed rabbits in Hawaii except people raising rabbits in a confined area and kept as pets. 1898 Section 1483 - Cannot keep or breed rabbits unless people kept them confined and kept as pets. Idaho 1899 House Bill Number 16, Section 1760 - An Act to provide a bounty for rabbits (no more than 5 cents). Kansas 1877 Kansas Laws March 6, 1 877 - Rabbit Scalp Bounty Act. 1877 Kansas Laws of 1877, Article 1 8 - Authorizing a rabbit scalp bounty with amendments. 1885 House Bill No. 456 - Authorizing bounty on rabbit scalps, and repeals Chapter 53. Laws of 1 885. 1889 March 9, 1 889 House Bill No. 458 - Bounty upon rabbit scalps not to exceed 5 cents per rabbit. Kentucky 1873 Chapter 46. Section 3 - Cannot kill a leporid between February 1 and October 20. Fine is $3. 1874 Chapter 76, Section 2 - Cannot kill a leporid in Bourbon County from February to August, or fined $10. Maryland 1898 206 Section 15 D - Cannot possess or sell a leporid between December 24 and November 1. Fine is $1-$10 for each rabbit. Massachusetts 1894 Chapter 97 - Cannot kill or sell rabbits between Mareh 1 and September 15; $10 fine. Michigan 1897 Act 282, Section 1 - Cannot use a ferret to hunt rabbits in Wayne County. The fine is $5. or jail for 10 days or less. New 1 tarn psh ire 1899 Chapter 131. Section 4 - Cannot kill a leporid between April 1 and September 1 5 or will be fined $5 for each animal and/or possible jail time for no more than 30 days. New Jersey 1820 Anyone who destroys, takes, or kills a rabbit except between September 1 and February 1 will pay $1 for every rabbit offense. 1896 Chapter 169. Section 4 - It is unlawful to have a rabbit or hare in possession except from November 10 to January 1 . Penalty is $20 for each animal killed or in possession. Washington Academy of Sciences Table 1. Summary oFU.S. laws pertaining to leporids, 1820-1899 (continued) New York 1880 Chapter 584. Cieneral Statutes ol'New York. Section 1 - Cannot kill rabbits with ferrets. 1881 Penal Code 655 - Rabbit coursing is illegal. 1893 Columbia County Ordinance, Section 7 - Leporids cannot be killed between December 1 and October 1 or a line. Oregon 1893 Chapter 85. Section 4229 - Between 5 and 25 cents bounty for Jackrabbits. Pennsylvania 1876 Pennsylvania Game Law of 1 876 - Rabbits only game from October 1 5 to December 15. 1878 No. 207, Section 3 - No one can have or sell a hare or rabbit between January 1 and October 15. Penalty is $5 for each animal killed, and $10 for each rabbit killed with a ferret. Rhode Island 1882 Chapter 95, Section 1 - Cannot kill a leporid between January 1 and September 1, and cannot use a ferret; $5 for each offense, or jail for 10 days. Utah 1888 Chapter 17, Section 1 - Bounty for jackrabbits 2 cents. Vermont 1894 Section 4610 - Cannot kill a rabbit or hare between May 1 and September 1; fine $5 for each killed. Virginia 1894 Chapter 80, Section 3 - Not lawful to shoot rabbits between January 1 and November 1 5. 1896 Chapter 323, Fairfa.\ County - Cannot kill or capture leporids from February 1896 to January 1, 1898, but can kill or capture rabbit with traps or dogs from November 1 to January 1 . Fine is $5-$20, and jail not exceeding 30 days until fine is paid. 1896 Chapter 790, Shenandoah County - Cannot kill or capture leporids between March 1 and November 1 every year. The fine is between $10 and $50, and may involve jail time between 30 and 60 days. 1896 Chapter 853, Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond. Westmoreland, King George Counties - Cannot kill, sell, or possess jackrabbits from May 1, 1896 to October 1, 1898. Can keep jackrabbits for breeding. Fines are $20 and higher. 1896 Chapter 80, Section 3 - Cannot shoot rabbits between Januaiy 15 and November 1 5 in Accomac and Northampton Counties. 1896 Chapter 388, Section 1 - Cannot kill leporids between Februar) 1 and September 1 in Chesterfield County. Fine is between $1 and $5. 1896 Chapter 755, Section 1 - Cannot kill, hunt, or sell leporids between February 1 and November 1 in Essex County. Fine is $5-$20 for each ofTense. 1896 Chapter 323. Section 1, Fairfax County - Cannot kill, capture, or sell leporids between February 12. 1896 and January 1. 1898. Washington 1877 Laws of Washington, Section 5 - Authorization for rabbit scalp bounties. Wisconsin 1897 Chapter 1 88. Section 33 - Cannot use a ferret to hunt rabbits. Fine is between $10 and $25 or jail until fine is paid (not more than 30 days). Summer 2013 30 Figure 1. U.S. lavvs/regulations relating to leporid protection, scalping, and other purposes, 1820-1899 Impact of Historic Regulations on Leporid Conservation As the research findings demonstrate, certain historic regulations have particularly impacted the conservation of leporids today, including historic regulations relating to leporid hunting and/or protection; the use of ferrets in hunting; and the sale of meat. Early Laws to Limit Hunting and Protect Leporids Both protecting and hunting leporids appeared to be controversial in the eastern United States. On the one hand, people wanted to hunt leporids and it was unclear as to why a predator or varmint could take the animal when the leporid could provide nourishment for human consumption (Annual Report of the Game Commissioners of the State of Pennsylvania 1914). At the same time, farmers and nursery owners in Ohio were upset by the protection of rabbits, as the rabbits would multiply and impede the growing of crops and trees (Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture 1898). On the other hand, wildlife populations in many states generally were decreasing (Dambach 1948) and it was therefore necessary to Washington Academy of Sciences establish hunting seasons. People wanted to protect rabbits From hunting and rabbit dogs so that they would not become scarce (Recreation 1899, Willis 1900, Recreation 1900). Dambach (1948) states that Ohio hunters enjoyed hunting rabbits and that provided protection for the rabbits through hunting seasons, banning the use of ferrets, and regulating the sale of rabbits that were taken legally. In the past, the hunting seasons were designed around breeding seasons (Dambach 1948, Tober 1981). Conservation and sportsmen’s organizations helped to shape the hunting seasons and the means of taking animals so as to ensure supply of game (Dunlap 1988). As far as transparency was concerned, changes in hunting seasons occurred often. In fact, it was difficult to determine or be in compliance with game seasons and shipment timing, as there was little transparency between states (Palmer and Oldys 1900). All of these factors reflected the value of rabbits to citizens either for aesthetic reasons or for taking rabbits for their meat or fur. The first law to protect rabbits with a closed season (September 1 to February 1) was enacted in New Jersey in 1820 (Palmer 1912). Regulating Hunting with Ferrets In addition to the controversial hunting of rabbits, the use of ferrets when hunting was specifically controversial. Some hunters thought it was easier to hunt rabbits with ferrets, since ferrets were efficient hunters, as long as the hunters were not bagging numerous rabbits at once with the ferrets (Recreation 1900). On the other hand, there were many hunters who were opposed to allowing ferrets on hunts. For example, some sportsmen thought it was cruel to catch a rabbit with ferrets and wanted heavy fines placed on people who hunted rabbits with ferrets (Recreation 1900). This type of hunting was not easy on ferrets because sometimes hunters sewed the lips of the ferret (Wood 1865) and, if a muzzle was not put on the ferret, the ferret would not work well in a rabbit buiTow (The National Encyclopaedia 1884). In addition, some people thought that hunting with a ferret was not sportsman like (Stonehenge 1859). Tastly, people were afraid rabbits would become “almost extinct” by hunting with ferrets in Ohio (The Stark County Democrat 1874). Lund (1980) suggested that legislators began to recognize that the take of game could be regulated by limiting the more efficient hunting methods, such as the use of feiTets for hunting rabbits (Linduska 1947). Summer 2013 32 Regulating the Sale of Meat Selling leporid meat was also controversial for a variety of reasons. In addition to fanners, hunters also wanted to hunt rabbits and sell the meat. However, according to the Annual Report of the Game Commissioners of the State of Pennsylvania (1914), farmers did not have time to hunt and felt it was wrong for others to gain profit from meat taken from the farmer’s land (Annual Report of the Game Commissioners of the State of Pennsylvania 1914). Additionally, people who enjoyed game meat would either need to become hunters or sacrifice eating game if meat selling was restricted (Michigan State Game, Fish, and Forest Fire Department 1889, American Gardening 1899). Some felt that if it was illegal to kill an animal out of hunting season, then it should be illegal to sell the animal outside of the hunting season (Palmer and Oldys 1901). Lund (1980) suggested that the laws would be easier to administer when the crime was selling game rather than hunting it. Thus, ceasing to sell game was a way to protect leporids and prevented market hunters from illegal takings during a closed hunting season (Michigan State Game, Fish, and Forest Fire Department 1889). In fact, court proceedings dealt with the selling of game meat and ownership of game animals. One such case was the 1 896 case of Geer v. Connecticut, which preceded the Lacey Act of 1900, and which stipulated that the state could regulate wildlife transport once the animal perished. The Lacey Act (1900) made it illegal to move killed wildlife into another state when state laws were violated (Lueck 1989). One State Example: New Jersey This section describes one state and its prosecution data on violations that dealt with leporids. New Jersey was the first state to establish hunting season dates on rabbits in 1820. New Jersey utilized game wardens and sheriffs to enforce the game laws (see Annual Reports of the Board offish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey 1896-1899). According to New Jersey’s 1896 Chapter 169, it was illegal to have a rabbit in possession except between the dates of November 10 and January 1. The fine was $20 for each animal out of regulation. Figure 2 illustrates that during the first four years of this law, the highest instances of rabbit offenses occurred in 1 898 in New Jersey (data obtained from Annual Reports of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey, 1896-1899). The offenses that occurred during the 4- Washington Academy of Sciences year period from 1896 to 1899 ineluded killing, possession, snaring, snooding or netting, using a ferret, trapping, and offering leporids for sale (Annual Reports of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey 1896-1900). Figure 2. Offenses involving rabbits in New Jersey, 1896-1900 The year 1899 was the highest in terms of acquitted or suspended rabbit offense cases, with 77% of the cases being acquitted or suspended (Figure 3). By 1900, only 20% of the cases were acquitted or suspended (data obtained from Annual Reports of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey 1896-1899). Comparing Current and Historical Laws Current laws governing leporids retain many aspects of the historical laws, such as those regulating bag limits, hunting seasons, the sale of rabbit meat, rabbit coursing with dogs, use of feiTets in hunting, and banning hunting on Sundays. In the past, regulations regarding wildlife rehabilitation and more advanced transportation laws were not imposed. Hunting restrictions too, have evolved over the years (Lueck 1995). For example, it is unlawful to shoot from roads or hunt near buildings or machinery (see Lueck 1995 for more details). As for scalp laws, there are few to no leporid bounty regulations today. Summer 2013 34 0.9 0.8 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 Year Figure 3. Rabbit criminal cases that were acquitted or suspended in New Jersey, 1896-1900 Historical laws did not possess a species status classification system to speeify which leporids were covered by legislation. Today, however, on a species level, one of the earliest leporids to be classified as “near threatened” status was the white-sided jackrabbit {Lepus callotis) in 1975 (lUCN 2013b). Leporids with threatened, vulnerable, and endangered species status include the Columbia basin pygmy rabbit, Brachylagus idahoensis, and the riparian brush rabbit, Sylvilagus bachmcmi riparius. For these species, the focus of leporid conservation has shifted to the restoration of habitats, translocation efforts, rehabilitation programs, recovery programs, and reeovery plans. Indeed, there are states where several species of leporids live and, in these states some leporid species can be hunted, whereas others cannot. For example, in Ohio the snowshoe hare {Lepus americamis) cannot be hunted, whereas other leporids can be hunted (Ohio Department of Natural Resources 2013). In addition, states such as Iowa and Missouri have banned hunting of white-tailed jackrabbits {Lepus townsendii) yet, in other states, the white-tailed jackrabbit can be hunted throughout the year. Table 2 presents a synopsis comparing current and historic regulation related to leporids. Washington Academy of Sciences 35 Table 2. Comparison of historic and current laws on leporids Historic Laws Current Laws Bag limits Bag limits continue Hunting seasons Hunting seasons continue Could not sell rabbits during off season in some states Cannot domesticate wildlife as pets at any time without an appropriate permit Cannot sell wild game meat in some states Regulations on shipping rabbits to other states ( 1 900 Lacey Act) Transportation laws (1966 Animal Welfare Act and amendments) restrict shipping Could or could not use a ferret to hunt Using a ferret to hunt rabbits remains illegal in many states Laws against rabbit coursing Rabbit coursing is illegal in some U.S. states, but remains legal in some Could not shoot on a Sunday Ban on Sunday hunting continues in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. (2008 State Sunday Hunting Ban Statutes) Scalp/bounty laws None Summary of the Historical Underpinnings of Leporid Legislation Leporid legislation in the 19^^ century did not include regulations on disease, introduction of exotic species, or impact of fire or grazing animals on leporid populations. Instead, the historic laws related mostly to hunting seasons, with the first leporid season being established in New Jersey in 1820. This is consistent with Lund (1976) and Lueck (1989) who reported that the earliest state controls involved establishing hunting seasons. The first bag limit for leporids was in Wisconsin in 1903 (Palmer 1912). Coggins and Evans (1982) noted that the laws were not consistent between states. For example, the eastern states focused on protection of leporids, whereas the western states imposed bounties. There are positives and negatives regarding the consistency among the laws. When laws are consistent within and between states, there is less confusion for hunters who travel between counties and states. However, when the laws are not consistent within and between states, it may lead to poor wildlife enforcement (Stockdale 1993). For this reason, laws may need to be inconsistent by necessity as habitat changes occur throughout regions and Summer 2013 36 related regulations on hunting may vary with regional wildlife and habitat changes (Lueck 1995). As noted, certain historical laws and regulations have had a particular impact on the conservation of leporids today. They especially include regulations related to hunting and/or protection, the use of ferrets, and the sale of meat. Regarding laws and regulations to hunt or protect, Lund (1976) suggested that the level of regulation was reliant on the degree of exploitation. This perspective could be hard to ascertain, given the lack of wildlife hunting statistics and population data for the 19^*^ century. Today, population census records along with mortality and hunting statistics are used to help determine hunting seasons and bag limits. Since hunting with ferrets was an efficient and effective means of hunting rabbits (Linduska 1947), some states banned using a ferret for hunting to protect rabbit populations (Dambach 1948, Quesenberry and Carpenter 2011). Ferrets are considered exotic animals, may become feral, and can prey upon native wildlife (Long 2003, Tully Jr. and Mitchell 2012). For these reasons, some states such as California do not allow ferrets as pets (Rollin and Kesel 1995). All of these factors may be reasons why ferrets are not used in hunting today to help conserve leporid populations. Market hunting historically helped to supply meat and pelts to cities, but it has been suggested that the sale of wildlife meat may have led to declining wildlife populations (Geist 1985, Stockdale 1993). Regardless of whether the regulation of meat selling has contributed to wildlife conservation so that populations do not decline from market hunting, regulations on transporting or importing game meat are important so that diseases are not introduced or new species are not introduced that compete with native wildlife (Geist 1988, Butler et al. 2005). Conclusions and Implications for Further Research Many aspects of the 19^'’ century laws regarding leporids still exist today for the leporids that are allowed to be hunted in the United States. As discussed, this includes hunting seasons and bag limits, ferret restrictions, and meat sale regulations. Many laws in the 19^'^ century did not specify which species of leporids were covered by legislation, as a species conservation status classification system did not exist in the 19^’^ century. Washington Academy of Sciences 37 I’he establishment of the hunting season was one of the earlier regulations for conserving wildlife in the United States, and hunting season dates and lengths were altered numerous times (Palmer and Oldys 1901). Presumably, a longer hunting season would decrease populations further than a shorter hunting season. However, it is unclear as to whether an extension of hunting season has an impact on overall wildlife population numbers. Palmer and Bennett (1963), George et al. (1980), and Rexstad (1992) found no effects of season length on population size or survival of various avifauna. However, Grau and Grau (1980) found that hunting season length was important and depended upon hunter effort, cost, management, and enforcement of laws as the hunting season lasted. Similarly, few studies examine the length of the hunting season specifically on leporid population numbers. Regarding leporid hunting in the past, presumably a shorter hunting season meant less take; however, more data are needed to prove this. Dambach (1948) speculated that hunting season lengths for cottontails were dependent on hunting pressure, disease, or adverse climate in Ohio. Further research in this area could focus on how hunting season lengths have been chosen. As historical documents become more available, further research could also deteiTnine clear-cut dates as to when hunting allowed the use of ferrets in rabbit hunting in the United States. Further research could focus on historical enforcement of the laws. Tober (1981) and Stockdale (1993) pointed out that laws were not enforced very well during the 19^'’ century. It would be useful to note the number of wardens or officers available to catch violators, whether the wardens were paid or volunteers, how many violations were reported, and what crimes were reported more frequently - according to, for example, whether a warden or officer spent more time on land or water. It would also be useful to compare additional state prosecution lists to determine how many violations involved leporids. This would enable a comparison of enforcement between states to determine if some states placed heavier emphasis on game or fish violations. If more emphasis was placed on game violations, this could reflect a rough estimate of wildlife abundance with regard to hunting (Dambach 1948) and could infer that leporid populations were healthier if there were fewer hunting violations. Summer 2013 38 References American Gardening. 1 899. Volume 20, No. 2 1 7. New York, USA. Annual Report of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey. 1896. Trenton, N.J. Annual Report of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey. 1897. Trenton, N.J. Annual Report of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey. 1898. Trenton, N.J. Annual Report of the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners of the State of New Jersey. 1899. Trenton, N.J. Annual Report of the Game Commissioners of the State of Pennsylvania. 1914. WM. Stanley Ray State Printer. Harrisburg, PA. Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture. 1898. The Laning Printing Company. Norwalk Ohio. Bailey, V. 1908. Farmer’s Bulletin Volume 335. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Bean, M. J. and M. J. Rowland. 1997. The Evolution of National Wildlife Law. Praeger Publishers. Connecticut. Butler, M. J. 2005. Commentary: Wildlife ranching in North America -arguments, issues, and perspectives. Wildlife Society Bulletin 33: 381-389. Coggins, G. C. 1978. Federal Wildlife Law Achieves Adolescence: Developments in the 1970s. Duke Law Journal 1978: 753-816. Coggins, G. C. and P. B. Evans. 1982. Predators’ Rights and American Wildlife Law. Arizona Wildlife Review 24: 821-879. Dambach, C. A. 1948. The relative importance of hunting restrictions and land use in maintaining wildlife populations in Ohio. The Ohio Journal of Science 68: 209-229. Dunlap, T. R. 1988. Sport Hunting and Conservation 1880-1920. Environmental History Review 12: 5 1 -60. Geist, V. 1985. Game Ranching: Threat to Wildlife Conservation in North America. Wildlife Society Bulletin 13: 594-598. Geist, V. 1988. How markets in wildlife meat and parts and the sale of hunting privileges jeopardize wildlife conservation. Conservation Biology 2:15-26. Washington Academy of Sciences 39 George, R. R., J. B. Wooley, J. M. Kienzler, A. L. Farris, and A. 11. Berner. 1980. Effect of hunting season length on ring-necked pheasant populations. Wildlife Society Bulletin 8:279-283. Grau, G. A. and B. L. Grau. 1980. Effects of Hunting on Hunter Effort and White-Tailed Deer Behavior. Ohio Journal of Science 80: 150-156. Hallock, C. 1 883. The Sportsman’s Gazetteer and General Guide. Orange Judd Company. New York. Holloway, 1. 1997. Basic Concepts for Qualitative Research. Wiley-Blackwell. Oxford. International Union for Conservation of Nature (lUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. 2013a. Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/vear-of-the-rabbit-species-hopping -out-of-view. Accessed July 15, 2013. lUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2013b. Mexican Association for Conservation and Study of Lagomorphs. Romero Malpica, F. J. and Rengel Cordero, H. In: lUCN 2013. lUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.1. www.iucn.org. Accessed August 4, 2013. Leedy, P. D. and J. E. Ormrod. 2010. Practical Research Planning and Design 9 Edition. Pearson Education. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Lees, A. C. and D. J. Bell. 2008. A conservation paradox for the 2U‘ century: the European wild rabbit Oryctolagus ciiniculus, an invasive alien and an endangered native species. Mammal Review 38: 304-320. Library of Congress Historical Newspapers. 1874. The Stark County Democrat. Ohio. February 12, 1874; Available; http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84028490/1874- 02-12/ed-l/seq- 2/#datel = l 836&index=5&rows=20&words=ferret+ferrets+rabbit&searchTvpe=basic&se quence=0&state=Ohio&date2=^1900&proxtext=rabbit+ferret+&v^l5&x=13&dateFilterT Vpe=vearRange&page=l . Accessed August 6, 2013. Linder, D. O. 1988. “Are all species created equal?” and other questions shaping wildlife law. Harvard Environmental Law Review 12: 157-200. Linduska, J. P. 1947. The ferret as an aid to winter rabbit studies. Journal of Wildlife Management 1 1: 252-255. Long, J. 2003. Introduced Mammals of the World: Their History, Distribution and Influence. CSIRO Publishing. Collingwood, Australia. Lueck, D. 1989. The Economic Nature of Wildlife Law. The Journal of Legal Studies 18: 291-324. Lueck, D. 1995. Property Rights and the Economic Logic of Wildlife Institutions. Natural Resources Journal 35: 625-670. Summer 2013 40 Lund, T. A. 1976. Early American Wildlife Law. New York University Law Review 51: 703-730. Lund, T. A. 1980. American Wildlife Law. University of California Press. Berkeley, California, USA. Meine, C. 1999. It's about Time: Conservation Biology and History. Conservation Biology 13: 1-3. Michigan State Game, Fish, and Forest Fire Department. 1889. Darius Thorp, State Printer and Binder. Lansing, Michigan, USA. Ohio Department of Natural Resources. 2013. Hunting/Small Game. Available at: http://www.ohiodnr.com/wildlife/dow/regulations/hunting smallg:ame.aspx#rabbit. Accessed July 1 1, 2013. Palmer, T. S. 1896. The Jack Rabbits of the United States. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Palmer, T. S. and H. Oldys. 1900. Laws Regulating the Transportation and Sale of Game. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Palmer, T. S. and H. Oldys. 1901. Digest of Game Laws for 1901. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Palmer, T. S. 1912. Chronology and Index of the More Important Events in American Game Protection 1776-191 1. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Palmer, W. L. and C. L. Bennett. 1963. Relation of Season Length to Hunting Harvest of Ruffed Grouse. Journal of Wildlife Management 27: 634-639. Quesenberry, K. and J. Carpenter. 2011. Ferrets, Rabbits and Rodents: Clinical Medicine and Surgery. Elsevier. St. Louis, Missouri. Recreation. 1 899. Volume 1 0 (Number 1 ). G. O. Sheilds (Editor). New York, USA. Recreation. 1900. Volume 13. G. O. Sheilds (Editor). New York, USA. Rexstad. 1992. Effect of Hunting on Annual Survival of Canada Geese in Utah. Journal of Wildlife Management 56: 297-305. Rollin, B. E. and M. L. Kesel. 1995. Care, husbandry, and well-being: an overview by species. CRC Press. Boca Raton, Florida. State Sunday Hunting Ban Statutes. 2008. http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/env- res/state-sundav-hunting-ban-statutes.aspx). Accessed 13 June 2013. Stockdale, M. 1993. English and American Wildlife Law: Lessons from the Past. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies 47: 732-739. Washington Academy of Sciences 41 Stonehenge. 1859. The shot-gun and sporting rifle and the dogs, ponies, ferrets. Routledge. New York, USA. Szabo, P. and R. Hedl. 2011. Advancing the integration of history and ecology for conservation. Conservation Biology 25: 680-687. The National Encyclopaedia. 1884. Volume 5. Published by William Mackenzie, London. Tober, J. A. 1981. Who Owns the Wildlife? The Political Economy of Conservation in Nineteenth-Century America. Greenwood Press. Tully, T. N., Jr. and M. A. Mitchell. 2012. A Veterinary Technician’s Guide to E.xotic Animal Care. AAEIA Press. Lakewood, Colorado. Willis, E. R. 1900. The Last Rabbit. In: Recreation, Volume 13. G. O. Shields (Editor) New York, USA. Wood, J. G. 1865. The Illustrated Natural History. Routledge and Sons. New York, USA. Zedler, P. H. and C. Black. 1992. Seed dispersal by a generalized herbivore: rabbits as dispersal vectors in a semi-arid California vernal pool landscape. The American Midland Naturalist 128: 1-10. Bio Kelsey Gilcrease is a biology and ecology instructor at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, South Dakota. Her main research interests include the conservation of leporids, conservation planning mechanisms, biogeography, and population ecology of mammalian fauna. Summer 2013 Washington Academy of Sciences Coiled Tubing Operations May Offer Paradigm Shift in Humanitarian Logistics 43 Apoorva Sinha Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia Abstract TOHL, Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics, is a start-up non-profit based on a logistical innovation responsible for the advent of mobile infrastructure. Using small-diameter flexible tubing, TOHL’s goal of installing supply lines, particularly for water, quickly and cost- effectively is an important departure from the conventional methods of using disaster-affected roads and bridges for aid delivery. TOHL’s founders recently demonstrated the concept by laying more than one kilometer of tubing in roughly nine minutes on July 5, 2012, in the mountainous fringes of Santiago, Chile. TOHL has created a potential paradigm shift in disaster logistics by aiming to provide water supply lines at an unparalleled rapid pace and with extensive operational versatility. The TOHL creators intend to use this advantage to change disaster logistics globally, one tubing operation at a time. This paper presents the decision-making and analyses involved in the process of exploring the technical feasibility and organizational sustainability of TOHL as a business venture. Introduction The 2010 Haiti earthquake, with a catastrophic magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter only 25 kilometers west of the Haitian capital, Port-Au-Prince, has been recognized as one of the largest modern devastations in human history. The tragedy claimed more than 220,000 lives and more than a million people were left homeless in its wake within a month of the earthquake (see Disasters Emergency Committee). The extent and magnitude of the devastation led to the eommencement of one of the biggest modem relief efforts in recent history to aid Haitians with an influx of aid, money and relief workers from around the globe. The disaster’s scope served as the catalyst behind an innovation tailored specifically to resolve issues regarding the provision of water, the ultimate necessity for life, and its availability to disaster-affected victims. This new innovation, called Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics, or TOHL, was conceived with the specific idea of helping Summer 2013 44 sustain human life post-disaster by providing supply lines for clean potable water to those in dire need of it. Conception of the TOHL idea was the direct result of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) coverage of the Haiti disaster and its aftermath. The extensive media disclosure of the post-disaster relief effort was crucial in creating a catalyst for change in the minds of TOHL’s founders - both engineering students at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) - and helping to identify that there was a problem amidst the broken infrastructure and shattered society of Port-Au-Prince. The founders of the non-profit TOHL, Inc. became convinced that the relief delivery systems used after disasters were not ideal, and that a better solution could not only help increase the rapidity and scale of help for disaster victims, but also be implemented cost-effectively. The primary catalyst behind moving forward with the TOHL concept in its nascent stage was a dialogue that Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States and head of the post-earthquake operation in Haiti, had with the BBC. Among the various points Mr. Clinton raised with regard to the challenges faced by the relief workers, he emphasized an important fact that created clear validation for TOHL’s founders that the field of disaster logistics was not in an ideal state. He highlighted that often it wasn’t the availability of necessary resources on the ground that constrained relief operations, but rather the incapability of the local infrastructure to deliver the relief to the disaster victims. The BBC interview resonated instantly. TOHL started from the outset as a brainstorming exercise about the most effective methods for transporting materials, and the possibility of creating post-disaster supply lines that could be installed rapidly. TOHL was not conceived in a Georgia Tech classroom, although the conceiver, Sinha, the author of this article, was attending the university as a senior in Chemical Engineering at the time. TOHL was, however, the product of an iterative process by Sinha and his classmate — the TOHL organization’s founding partner, Benjamin Cohen^ — to improve on the initial concept and transform it into an economically feasible solution to problems in providing disaster relief The original inspiration to resolve the problem of disaster logistics emerged from S inha’s experience as an oil field intern in the summer of 2009. He discussed his initial concept at great length with Dr. Matthew Realff, associate professor at the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering at the time. TOHL's co-founder, Cohen, joined the team promptly thereafter. Washington Academy of Sciences 45 Conventional Humanitarian Logistics In the immediate aftermath of the Haiti disaster, the small team that TOHL eomprised — Sinha, Cohen, and Dr. Realff — investigated the contemporary state of humanitarian logistics. They found that existing disaster relief operations throughout the world use the remnants of the pre- disaster local infrastructure to create logistical supply lines to aid victims. As such, the ability of the pre-disaster local infrastructure to withstand a disaster is an important factor in determining the rapidity of post-disaster operations. This fact has important repercussions for any disaster relief system already in place or being developed. For example, if all the local roads and bridges have been rendered useless by a natural calamity like an earthquake, relief organizations would be much slower in commencing operations than in a scenario where only a portion of the roads and bridges are damaged. The impact of disasters on the local infrastructure can vary in both magnitude and profile. The randomness of damage inflicted is a primary reason behind the need to customize every response situation. The uncertainty associated with disasters mandates a rapid response and strategic shifts in the logistics of every operation, thereby reducing efficiency in the rate and volume of delivery. It would also stand to reason that the scale of a post-disaster operation would be a function of the number of victims affected in a region. Presumably the relationship would be direct — that is, more money, personnel and time would be allocated to affected areas with larger populations than those with smaller populations. In the field of humanitarian relief, the needs of the many almost always outweigh the needs of the few, and for good reason. However, in humanitarian logistics (a subset of humanitarian relief operations), the TOHL group found that the efficiency of an operation has no correlation with the number of affected victims. A humanitarian logistics operation might be effective at providing aid to a hundred people, yet completely helpless in delivering aid to hundreds of thousands of people due to logistical bottlenecks and a lack of post-disaster infrastructure. Put simply, the efficiency of a humanitarian logistics operation does not have a direct relationship with the number of affected people. A high number of disaster victims does not necessarily mean aid will be delivered more quickly or efficiently to them than to smaller Summer 2013 46 pockets of victims — even if the efforts, personnel and time attributed to the project have been scaled as necessary. Ideal Humanitarian Relief versus Logistical Trade-offs In an ideal world, a logistician working for a disaster relief agency or a government emergency response branch would be able to reach and deliver aid to the largest number of disaster victims in the shortest amount of time, throughout the affected region without any restrictions. The food, water and medicine stocked in government or non-governmental organization inventories would be moved out of the warehouses as soon as they are received and begin their journey toward disaster victims. The stocked aid would be dispersed in a way to maximize the number of people helped in the least amount of time possible to prevent the loss of life due to starvation or lack of water. The ideal relief effort would also maximize outreach to the various geographic parts of an affected region. The logistician’s only consideration would be the anticipated demand for aid in a particular region, and not the limitations of the crew in delivering the aid. Ideally, the logistician would not consider anything but the needs of the disaster victims in determining the flow of aid. Also, the logistician would have a complete range of movement throughout an area when choosing the optimum course of action. The issues presented by faulty or non-existent infrastructure would be circumvented in an ideal relief operation. Most importantly, the favorite humanitarian logistics operation would be cost-effective and, ideally, free of cost. The above ideal scenario for a disaster logistician is considerably different from an actual situation witnessed on the ground. In reality, an approach that balances versatility and performance with cost-effectiveness is still missing. Historical Use of Aerial Vehicles and Modern-Day Costs While the local infrastructure and its post-disaster condition can hamper the effectiveness of relief operations using land vehicles, the strategic use of aerial vehicles like planes and helicopters could help to overcome these restrictions. The battle for Britain was won, among other reasons, due to the Allies’ airlifts that helped sustain the British population (Wilmot, 1997). The Russians survived Germany’s invasion due to a similar effort by the Allies who used parachute-dropped supplies to sustain the Russian troops Washington Academy of Sciences 47 and general populace (Wilmot, 1997). While ihe glorified efforts of the Royal Air Force and the well-documented Russian policy of “scorch and burn” have been established rightly as the key factors in these battles, the air-drops of aid served as important contributors to the outcomes of the two conflicts. Like war, post-disaster logistics is more of an art than a science. The money spent on using aerial methods in the rather unglamorous field of humanitarian logistics presents a serious issue for logisticians. Money is the most liquid asset available to relief logisticians. The prudent use of money is crucial to maximizing the number of lives saved after a disaster. Aerial methods are considerably more expensive than land-based logistics operations. Due to these inlierent costs, aerial vehicles are seldom used for relief delivery operations — and are actually used only as a last resort. The logistician is forced to examine the use of aerial delivery with extreme scrutiny because its trade-off value is particularly high. With a cost of roughly 30 to 80 times higher than the use of land transport in most post- disaster situations, the use of helicopters is abandoned for cheaper alternatives. Based on typical disaster conditions and scenarios, pockets of disasters victims may be left without access to external aid for long durations of time. Instead of choosing an expensive method to reach them, the choice may be made to wait until the repair of the local infrastructure before a substantial influx of external aid can commence. Paradigm Shift With the above situation predominant in the field of disaster logistics today, Sinha and Dr. Realff initially discussed the prospect of change. They analyzed the notion of creating new supply lines after a disaster, rather than focusing on improving the rate of infrastructure repair. New supply lines, functioning as an infrastructure independent of the local roads and bridges, could prove useful in maximizing the reach of logisticians in disaster-affected regions. However, the new supply lines would need to meet other criteria, as well. In order to make any difference in the field of disaster logistics, they would need to have the potential of rapid deployment — at least quicker than the time required to repair the pre-existing infrastructure. They would also need to offer other benefits over infrastructure repair, such as versatility in application and the ability to be deployed in a variety of disaster scenarios with ease. They would also need to be scalable with Summer 2013 48 both the flow of resources that could be managed, as well as the distances that could be traversed. Most importantly, they would need to be cheaper than the use of aerial methods — in fact, much cheaper initially to convince logisticians to use them in place of other existing approaches. As TOHL began taking its first steps towards viewing disaster logistics through a new paradigm. Dr. Realff provided an important piece of advice. Based on the radii of downtown sections of the world’s major cities, he proposed that any supply lines that could cost-effectively and rapidly create a flow of resources such as water over a distance of 10 kilometers or more — and could do so for many types of disasters with relative ease — would be valuable to a logistician. Such a system, the newly- formed TOHL team agreed, would have the potential to replace current practices in the disaster logistics industry. The traditional approach of using the pre-existing infrastructure to carry out relief efforts could potentially be replaced with an innovative stance of creating a rapidly deployable mobile infrastructure. In theory, the mobile infrastructure could be slotted in place during the first stage of a disaster response, and then removed once the pre-existing infrastructure was rebuilt. Once installed, such supply lines would not only help increase the range of a relief delivery effort in its first stage of response, but would also disengage the repair of the local infrastructure from the relief effort. Based on this line of thinking, the questions then became: What would constitute this mobile infrastructure? What would the supply lines be? How could they be deployed quickly, and over a variety of terrain? How could they be cost-effective and also have the potential to scale, per the needs of the situation? Coiled Tubing Answers to the above questions were found in the oil field. Sinha had worked through the summer of 2009 in Middle Eastern oil fields. He proposed the use of homogenous tubing, such as that used in well services around the world, as a possible method of creating the desired mobile infrastructure. Historical Use of Coiled Tubing in Wartime The earliest use of coiled tubing dates back to the second World War, when the Allies used a similar method to create fuel supply lines to facilitate the invasion of the Nomiandy beaches in the decisive battle that started on D-Day (Searle, 2004). The project was named by the acronym Washington Academy of Sciences 49 “PLUTO,” which stood for Pipelines Under I he Ocean. Spooled tubing was laid across the English Channel. It was designed to be denser than water so as to be concealed from view. A set of about twenty independent tubing systems was installed for this purpose and was a crucial component of the D-day invasion. The tubing was also designed to have a small diameter. This not only decreased the installation time, but also served as a safety measure since a leak in any one tube would not hamper the fuel rate drastically. Recent Applications of Coiled Tubing in Oil Fields After its debut, coiled tubing regained prominence in oil field use following a hiatus of more than 30 years. A problem faced in the adaptation of coiled tubing for down-hole oil field operations was that the tubing, which was used as an interface between the high down-hole pressures and the low pressures on the ground, would snap out of the wells and create damage. This issue initially stalled use of coiled tubing in well- service applications. However, the creation of high-pressure injectors in the 1980s allowed the safe insertion of coiled tubing into high-pressure wells. Coiled tubing offered well-service companies an efficient way to lower tools and sensors down into the well hole. It also served as a useful supply line for tools and liquid acid over tens of thousands of feet, and could be deployed in a matter of hours to accommodate high flow rates during operation. It offered well-service companies an efficient method to target particular zones in the well bore for stimulation operations. Through the use of coiled tubing, the operator could accurately target specific depths for acidization, and thereby minimize the loss of acid volume to neighboring zones. Most importantly, coiled tubing worked independently and did not require any support of the well bore casing or liners during deployment. All of these attributes have made eoiled tubing an integral part of oil field well-service operations. Based on these attributes, the TOHL founders become increasingly confident that the flexibility and strength of coiled tubing would offer an advantageous addition to the arsenal of disaster relief logisticians. Since coiled tubing’s first application was in logistics, they feel the technology’s story is coming full circle with the founding of TOHL Inc. Demonstrating Coiled Tubing Operations The TOHL team’s first job was to adapt and test the oil field application of coiled tubing for a new incarnation in the field of disaster logistics. The new tubing concept and unfolding TOHL organization Summer 2013 50 entailed new activities and required more staff to help with those activities. Based on Dr. Realff s early counsel (to focus on enabling water flow over a distance of 10 km), the team became convinced that the use of light, flexible, quickly-deployable, small-diameter tubing would work to create a mobile infrastructure faster than pre-disaster infrastructure could be restored to functionality. For humanitarian operations, the TOHL tubing would be constructed out of high-density polyethylene (HOPE) tubing, a material that has been certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (and similar regulatory agencies in other countries) to carry potable water. HDPE has been tested successfully to work at a temperature range of 60 degrees Celsius to -30 degrees Celsius without any lasting deformation or other issues. As the concept grew, the TOHL team also grew steadily thi'ough the addition of motivated Georgia Tech graduates. For example, Melissa McCoy^ and Travis Horsley‘S were instrumental in creating the first source of funding for the budding TOHL start-up via the Start-Up Chile program. Relocating to South America, Cohen and Horsley were able to use their new, but limited, funding judiciously to test the viability of the mobile infrastructure through a pilot run. TOHL’s first pilot run took place on July 5, 2012, a windy day in the hilly outskirts of Santiago, Chile. For this full-scale test, a helicopter with a load capacity of 1,500 pounds carried roughly 1 kilometer of small-diameter HDPE tubing and quickly laid a supply line through a path bursting with cacti in less than 9 minutes! (see Figure 1) This fast 9-minute test run helped to show that mobile infrastructure would outpace almost any effort to repair damaged local road infrastructure. It also showed that the concept could transcend the likely trade-offs and challenges (such as, for example, cacti and brush) that might hamper the use of conventional infrastructure. Benefits of Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics We believe that mobile infrastructure offers several advantages over conventional infrastructure in post-disaster relief situations. The benefits primarily relate to; (1) response time and delivery optimization; (2) the advantage of continuous delivery; and (3) more effective use of relief personnel. Washington Academy of Sciences 51 . 0 Figure 1. Proof-of-concept test in the mountains of Chile. Summer 2013 52 The location of roads and bridges is fixed and cannot be altered. If a disaster were to force victims to find refuge away from the existing roads, their migration — however small in distance — would drastically increase the time and effort necessary to deliver aid. During the first stages ot disaster response, time is the most crucial commodity and is highly correlated with the number of lives saved. Mobile infrastructure offers the potential to lay supply lines to reach inaccessible disaster victims quickly and to target the exact location of victims — thereby increasing the likelihood of optimally delivering a larger amount of external aid to more locations in a fixed period of time. TOHL supply lines also offer another fundamental advantage over the use of conventional or permanent infrastructure. They are inherently continuous in nature, as opposed to the supply lines established by vehicle transportation. The use of land or aerial vehicles requires a routine return to a base location to ensure a constant flow of aid. The use of conventional vehicles requires the engagement of equipped personnel who are almost always in dire supply. This need for personnel usually outlasts the local infrastructure repair process, as community rebuilding is a long-term process. It requires constant supervision by logisticians in charge to ensure that operations are running smoothly. In contrast, the use of TOHL tubing could create a supply line system similar to existing plumbing systems evident in some developed countries; once installed, and with the security aspects in place, it is likely that a TOHL system would not entail the need for constant monitoring, barring some contingency event. This would allow a logistician to better manage the limited time availability of relief operation personnel who are needed for multiple purposes. Water Delivery: Steps to Become Operational The TOHL developers identified water as the most important necessity for disaster victims, for readily apparent reasons. While the average individual has the capability to survive without food for perhaps two weeks, the same person would struggle to endure two days without water. It was clear to the TOHL founders that a rapid way of delivering water to disaster victims is crucial to the success of any humanitarian logistics operation. For water delivery, the TOHL tubing would convert the conventional batch process of delivering bottled water with a continuous water delivery system. It is projected that the TOHL method for water Washington Academy of Sciences 53 delivery would be more cost-elTeetive, energy-elTicient, and environmentally-lriendly than eonventional methods of going back and forth, once the operational stage is reached. Getting to that stage will involve: (1) identifying available local water sources; and (2) converting the water to potable water for consumption by victims. In situations where the TOHL package is used to deliver water, local sources of water must be found, investigated, and approved in order to source the local water for victims. From TOHL’s experience in Chile, local sub-surface aquifers are the most common and reachable sources of potable water for use in TOHL operations. At other locations, water could be sourced from sun'ounding on-surface bodies of water such as seas, lakes, and oceans, depending on their availability. The water from the source location must be transformed into potable water before it is pumped through the TOHL system and transported to target locations. In order to meet water purification needs, TOHL has developed partnerships with certain water purification companies to ensure that TOHL’s water sources can be made potable. TOHL has collaborated with two partners who hold U.S. patents on their water purification technologies. They also exhibit the ability to scale up in purification volume, and have been tested by independent third parties for performance review. These partners are Innovative Water Technologies and a company in Chile that has patented a plasma-based water purification system. TOHL has aggressively explored the use of solar power to both drive water through the tubing system and purify the water. Based on the particular situation evident in a disaster relief assignment, the pumps providing the driving force for TOHL’s logistics could actually be powered using multiple sources. Most commercial motor assemblies that power pumps operate using diesel, petroleum, or natural gas as the fuel. If provisions need to be established for these fuels, TOHL lines could also be used to carry the fuel from an airport or seaport to the source of the water for the TOHL water lines. The TOHL lines canying the fuel would nonnally be rated for higher pressures and evaluated per more stringent performance criteria to ensure safe transport of the fuel. Model for Working with Local Clients To fulfill its business plan, the TOHL enteiprise is working aggressively to accumulate a global network of local clients, and has developed a model for working with those clients. Once a TOHL package Summer 2013 54 has been supplied to a local client, the most sustainable way to incorporate it into the tramework of tools used by local logisticians is by: (1) training the local workforce of logisticians; and (2) providing an option for maintenance and consulting if/when required in the future. Training the workforces of TOHL’s clients will allow those clients to integrate the TOHL package seamlessly into their pre-established logistical framework and optimize the TOHL application for local use. This would necessitate, for example, identifying a local power source for driving the system pumps. TOHL management believes that empowering clients with ownership of the package will allow the speediest response in the event of a disaster. There is also the option of having the TOHL management team available on-site to assist with a disaster response. During the later tubing removal stage, TOHL can provide assistance, although the earlier training stage should help ensure the user will be sufficiently capable of carrying out this operation independently. Addressing Risks and Uncertainties Disasters, natural or human-caused, are clouded by uncertainty, regardless of the methods used for disaster relief Disaster logistics is, by nature, an inexact discipline because it depends largely on the post- disaster state of the local infrastructure — and this varies, based on not only its pre-disaster condition, but also the extent and type of the disaster. For this reason, every operation must be considered in isolation, and every solution must be tailor-made to suit the situation being tackled. There are levels of uncertainties associated with almost every factor of a relief operation, from equipment needs and security concerns to local geography. Preparing for Equipment Needs The TOHL group has developed a network of service providers and suppliers in North America and Chile for the necessary helicopters, tubing, and pumps. The above model for working with local clients is intended to help establish an even broader network throughout the world. As noted, subject to client needs and the local availability of energy, the pumps that are used could be powered by diesel, natural gas, wind or solar power. The local availability of parts required for a TOHL operation can play a role in detemiining the feasibility of an operation and its associated costs. Some cost uncertainties can be overcome by basing cost estimates Washington Academy of Sciences 55 on the industry standards for necessary items such as, for example, pump specifications and pressure ratings. Tubing System Security System security is an important factor in humanitarian relief With other types of operations and applications (such as oil and gas), the tubing would typically be installed on land owned by known entities, making the possibility for vandalism less likely. We assume that security provisions for a hypothetical TOHL operation on privately-owned land should be similarly easy to establish. In the field of humanitarian logistics, however, the issue of security could be a factor as disaster victims who are battling the disaster conditions, possible staiwation, and each other may be prone to causing infrastructure damage for their own gains. TOHL has devised three methods to mitigate the security issue, as described below. Where possible, it is recommended that, post-installation, the tubing be buried several feet underground. HOPE tubing has historically shown positive results under the pressure of soil resting on it. Extensive tests to verify this were conducted by the Plastics Pipe Institute in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with positive results. This signifies that TOHL tubing used in humanitarian logistics could be buried.^ Doing so would add a physical layer of protection and make vandalism more difficult. It would also help to stabilize the tubing and ensure that environmental conditions do not rupture it or interfere with the continuous flow of supplies. TOHL management has learned that, in a humanitarian crisis zone, the single most important factor in ensuring the security of the equipment and crew is the relief organization’s relationship with the local community leaders. Therefore, a second strategy for mitigating the potential problem of vandalism is to acquire the approval of the local leaders for the supply line. This will help ensure that the community will take ownership of the physical infrastructure and equipment, once installed and operational. TOHL’s management also explored security strategies with the widely-known behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, and his research group. The author of the best-seller. Predictably Irrational (2008), Ariely advocates the use of empirically-found truths of human behavior to solve societal problems. His research associate, Jamie Foehl, assisted the TOHL team in devising several additional security mitigation strategies. One such strategy would be to reduce the supply flow rate in the event of a tube rupture, and make sure that the local public is well informed in advance of Summer 2013 56 the consequences of such an action. Another mitigation measure would be to place markers that show the distance to the target location along the length of any unburied tubing. This would help assure people that they are not far from the end of the tubing line and can soon reach the location for access to supplies without having to take drastic negative action before then. Cost Estimates and Comparisons The cost parameters associated with a disaster logistics operation are a major consideration in any scenario. Since TOHL conception, the founders have spent a considerable portion of their time examining the costs of implementing a TOHT operation, and verifying its ability to compete with conventional logistics from an economic standpoint. The team established a heuristic for the operational results of installing 1 kilometer (or 0.6 miles) of small-pressure tubing (with a rating of roughly 250 pounds per square inch) based on several terrain scenarios, as follows: Case 1: Installing 1 km of tubing over difficult terrain but with no height change, the flow rate delivered from the source location to a target location is estimated to be 300 liters per minute or more. In this scenario, the achieved flow rate could conservatively support over 300,000 people a day (assuming -1.5 liters per person per day). Case 2: A positive elevation change of approximately 30 meters from the source to target would deliver a reduced flow rate of about 8 liters per minute. In this scenario, we estimate that the flow rate could support approximately 7,500 people a day. As is evident from the flow rates in cases 1 and 2, if the height difference between the source and target locations were reduced, the delivery rate could increase exponentially. In the above cases, the cost of a TOHL team installing 1 kilometer of tubing using a helicopter would be consistent. Based on the pilot run in Chile in July 2012, 1 kilometer of tubing with the above parameters can be installed via helicopter in less than half an hour, even in aggressive ambient conditions such as strong winds and difficult terrain. The installation cost would include, conservatively, the labor and helicopter operation cost for a 2-hour period. Based on Chilean local rates, the cost of the labor and helicopter to deploy TOHL tubing over 1 kilometer was Washington Academy of Sciences 57 less than $3,000 (USD). Accounting for the cost of deploying the pumps, connecting the tubing system to the power source and making the I'OIIL line fully operational, the total installation cost for the TOHL operations described in cases 1 and 2 would amount to $4,500 (USD) based on our pilot study results. While the operational cost of a TOHL system is simply the cost of the fuel needed to run the system after installation, conventional batch methods require regular returns of the vessels carrying supplies (i.e., trucks or helicopters) to the target locations. Assuming an hourly rate of $1,000 (USD) and $40 (USD) for the use of a helicopter and truck respectively, inclusive of the labor cost, a TOHL system is found to be cost-effective relative to helicopter use within 2 weeks, and cost- competitive relative to truck logistics within a month of operation in both cases 1 and 2. This analysis assumes the helicopter is run for 6 hours per week to meet the required flow rates, and a truck caravan is run for roughly 50 hours per week to meet the same demand. It is important to note here again that in post-disaster situations, the functional roads are usually very congested and land-based vehicles suffer from severe bottlenecks. Comparing TOHL Estimates with Conventional Methods The TOHL cost estimate can also be compared with the estimated costs of conventional methods of disaster logistics when a particular timeline is established for the analysis. For this purpose, TOHL’s management communicated with disaster operation managers for various humanitarian organizations that were active in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. They learned about the conditions that existed in the immediate aftermath of the quake, including: the ground situation; the distances between the Haitian airport in Port-Au- Prince and the key relief camps; and, the height differences between the airport and those locations. Given the existing parameters, they made the following estimates: • We project it would have taken a TOHL team less than 48 hours after the required equipment arrived at the airport to have installed a 7-kilometer (approximately 4.3-mile) tubing system to a major victims’ camp outside of Santiago. Summer 2013 58 • The tubing could have provided water at volumes of 500 liters per minute. It is estimated that this would support a population of more than 450,000 with their water needs. • The cost for such an operation is estimated to be approximately $150,000, inclusive of the installation cost, water treatment provisions, and pump and motor assemblies. It turns out that actual figures incurred for the conventional logistics used at the time are not available for comparison purposes. However, it is important to note that a response time of 48 hours to provide potable water was not even possible with conventional methods, given the tools that were available there at the time, hi parts of Port-Au- Prince and Haiti, the time required for infrastructure repair was more than 60 days, which denied the logisticians a cost-effective method to deliver aid to the inhabitants. For particular densely-populated population centers in the vicinity of Port-Au-Prince, TOHL lines could have established a reliable supply of potable water within 72 hours of the necessary equipment reaching the Port-Au-Prince airport, the only functional international airport in the country in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. In summary, these early economic analyses reveal several general findings at this point about the use of mobile infrastructure in disaster relief Mobile infrastructure appears to be a practical alternative to the restoration of permanent infrastructure. It may offer a cost-effective option relative to the use of aerial vehicles dropping in supplies and other resources. And, from an operational standpoint, it is definitely competitive with the use of land vehicles for delivering the same aid in most contemporary scenarios evident globally. Conclusion The TOHL concept is the result of an unfolding paradigm shift aimed at tackling existing trade-offs facing the field of disaster logistics. Instead of looking at ways to repair conventional permanent infrastructure, the TOHL group is devising a method for deploying mobile infrastructure. Such a method could provide a logistician with versatility and flexibility in operations through continuous supply lines for delivering resources needed immediately after a disaster. Application of the TOHL concept to disaster logistics centers primarily on exploiting the ability to deploy rapidly in isolated regions or Washington Academy of Sciences 59 areas where the existing infrastructure cannot support the delivery of relief. TOHL’s supply lines could be deployed initially using aerial vehicles. This would provide the ability to deliver aid thereafter without the later need for aerial vehicles. Based on economic analyses conducted by the TOHL founders, the installation of mobile infrastructure offers not only a practical alternative to the restoration of permanent infrastructure, but also a cost-effective option relative to the use of aerial vehicles dropping in supplies and other resources. From an operational standpoint, mobile infrastructure is competitive with the use of land vehicles for delivering the same aid. In the laying of a supply line in the mountains of Chile, the new TOHL enterprise demonstrated that a new tool can be added to the arsenal of disaster logisticians. Since the successful proof of concept in July 2012, the TOHL team has been constantly working toward applying the idea of using coiled tubing toward modern-day humanitarian relief. The use of tubing proved crucial in the decisive battle of the Second World War. Those who valued human freedom and choice defeated those who did not in World War II, and an important step was taken at that time toward a more ideal world. The TOHL concept of today may also be a step in the right direction for the fields of disaster logistics and humanitarian relief - toward more ideal methods for logisticians attempting to improve their provision of post-disaster relief. ^ Benjamin Cohen is the co-founder of TOHL, Inc. and currently serves as its President and CEO. A Civil Engineering graduate from Georgia Tech, he has spearheaded TOHL’s emergence as a business and has been responsible for the creation of the start-up's base of operations in Santiago, Chile. Mr. Cohen is also an Echoing Green Fellow, 2013. 2 HOPE (High-Density Polyethylene) is a dense form of one of the major plastic materials used in plumbing and agricultural applications. HOPE offers robust performance over temperature variations and has been approved by many organizations worldwide to carry potable water safely. HDPE also offers the advantages of light-weight and low-to-medium pressure ratings that can allow significant water flow rates during operation. HDPE has a proven lifetime of up to 40 years and can be installed multiple times without showing any signs of fatigue. This compares favorably against the fatigue evident in stainless steel tubing after multiple coiling and uncoiling cycles. Summer 2013 60 Melissa McCoy serves an advisor for TOHL. She joined the team in August 201 1 and worked on the ground in Chile in September 2012. Her engineering education, work experience, Spanish fluency, and expanded network has allowed her to contribute to TOHL on both technical and business issues, and she now focuses on operations and external relations tasks of the venture. Travis Horsley is a partner of TOHL. Travis is part of the original TOHL team, and was instrumental in the strategic partnerships in Atlanta and Santiago to move the company from a tested technology to a scalable solution for fluid transportation for industry and humanitarian logistics. Travis manages promotion in local and international media, gauging new strategic markets for product entry, and seeking investment via business incubators and angel networks. ^ Burial may be more feasible in the event of certain types of disasters more than others, as it is unlikely the tubing could be buried cost-effectively if it is laying on a pile of rubble created by an earthquake. Also, if a line were to be buried in the wrong place, it’s possible that a flood could wash it out. 6 It is conceivable that the tubing could also have delivered granular food or small medical supplies. The use of TOHL tubing to deliver solid packages has not been tested, but TOHL’s management team states the tubing has the capability to deliver fluids and solids through an inner diameter of more than 10 centimeters. They anticipate this may be sufficient to handle more than 95% of the immediate requirements in a first-stage disaster response operation. Solid packages would be easier to transport as individual packages, and could be strung together through plastic welds to create a continuous transfer of material through the supply lines. The non-food materials required in the first stage of a disaster response are usually small medical supplies such as pills and needles. References Ariely, Dan. 2008. Predictably Irrational. Harper Collins, USA. ISBN 978-0-06- 135323-9. Disasters Emergency Committee, London, http://www.dec.org.uk/haiti- earthguake-facts-and-figures Wilinot, Chester. 1952, reissued 1997. (Written in part by Christopher Daniel McDevitt). The Struggle for Europe . Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. ISBN 1-85326-677-9. Searle, Adrian. 2004. PLUTO - Pipe-Line Under the Ocean. 2”'* Edition. Shanklin, Isle of Wight: Shanklin Chine. ISBN 0-9525876-0-2. The Plastics Pipe Institute. 2006. Handbook of Polyethylene Pipe. ISBN- 13: 978- 0977613106. Washington Academy of Sciences 61 Bio Apoorva Sinha is the conceiver and co-founder of TOHL, Inc. and currently serves as its Vice-President of Research & Development. A Chemical Engineering graduate from Georgia Tech, Mr. Sinha is currently pursuing a Master's in Chemical Engineering at the University of Calgary, and is very interested in innovation. Ele is responsible for providing leadership in creating new avenues for the expansion of TOHE’s applications into new industries, particularly the oil and gas and marine salvage industries, among others. 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Affiliated Society Delegates Shown on back cover Editor of the Journal Sally A. Rood Academy Office Washington Academy of Sciences Room 113 1200 New York Ave. NW Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 326-8975 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Academy of Sciences, Room 113, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20005 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences (ISSN 0043-0439) Published by the Washington Academy of Sciences (202) 326-8975 Email: iournal@washacadsci nrg Website: www.washacadsci.nrq .o' itfl 1898 9A 1200 New York Ave «/)\ Suite 113 O 1 Washington DC m I ^ f 20005 wvwv. wash acadsci.org Journal of the WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Volume 99 Number 3 Fall 2013 Contents Board of Discipline Editors ii Editor’s Comments S. Rood iii Humans to Mars: Stay Longer, Go Sooner, Prepare Now D. W. Gage 1 A Brief History of Government Policies to Promote Commercial Space B. Lai 25 Estimating the Climate Impact of Transportation Fuels: Moving Beyond Conventional Lifecycle Analysis Towards Integrated Modeling Systems Scenario Analysis M A. Delucchi 43 The Violinist’s Thumb: Stories about Genetics, Retro Diagnosis, and Human Life S. Kean 67 Annual Awards Banquet Photos and 2013 Awards Program 81 In Memoriam - Clifford Lanham (1938-2013) 95 Membership Application 97 instructions to Authors 98 Affiliated Institutions 99 Affiliated Societies and Delegates 100 ISSN 0043-0439 Issued Quarterly at Washington DC Fall 2013 11 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences Editor Sally A. Rood, PhD sallv.rood2@,gmail.com Board of Discipline Editors The Journal oj the Washington Academy of Sciences has an 11- member Board of Discipline Editors representing many scientific and technical fields. The members of the Board of Discipline Editors are affiliated with a variety of scientific institutions in the Washington area and beyond - government agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); universities such as George Mason University (GMU); and professional associations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Anthropology Astronomy Biology/Biophysics Botany Chemistry Environmental Natural Sciences Health History of Medicine Physics Science Education Systems Science Emanuela Appetiti eappetiti@,hotmail.com Sethanne Howard sethanneh@msn.com Eugenie Mielczarek mielczar@phvsics.gmu.edu Mark Holland maholland@salisburv.edu Deana Jaber diaber@marvmount.edu Terrell Erickson terrell.erickson 1 @wdc. nsda.gov Robin Stombler rstombler@auburnstrat.com Alain Touwaide atouwaide@hotmail.com Katherine Gebbie gebbie@.nist.gov Jim Egenrieder iim@deepwater.org Elizabeth Corona elizabethcorona@gmail.com Washington Academy of Sciences Ill Editor’s Comments The articles in this issue reflect two particular interests of the Washington Academy of Sciences: (1) space programs/ astronomy, and (2) research related to the environment. Space Programs and Astronomy The first article, “Humans to Mars: Stay Longer, Go Sooner, Prepare Now,” reflects the passions of the author — Douglas Gage, a former DARPA program manager — on sending humans to Mars. The article discusses the private and NASA roles required to do this. The second article, “A Brief History of Government Policies to Promote Commereial Space” by Bhavya Lai, discusses the history of both private and government support of private sector activities in the United States for promoting the commercial space sector. Lessons can be drawn from attempts by U.S. agencies to support this sector according to the paper — part of a study for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. [Commercial time out: Given our space/astronomy theme here, fm taking this opportunity to “plug” the Academy’s most recent monograph, A Century of Astronomy from the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences (August 2012), available through Amazon.com!] Research Related to the Environment Our third article of this issue is on “Estimating the Climate Impact of Transportation Fuels” — and is especially relevant because it highlights the timely example of biofuels to illustrate the usefulness of a new analytical application called Integrated Modeling Systems Scenario Analysis. The author, Mark Delucchi, is developing this approach at the University of Califomia-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. Academy Activities This Fall’s issue is rounded out with the fascinating and entertaining speech by author Sam Kean at the Washington Academy of Sciences annual awards banquet in October 2013. Also featured is a photo montage of the program and awards ceremony, and a listing of this year’s awardees and their fields. We include here, regretfully, a notice of the passing of Cliff Fall 2013 IV Lanham, a Washington Academy of Sciences member for many years and delegate representing the Washington Area Chapter of the Technology Transfer Society. Before closing, Td like to acknowledge the local role of Kaye Breen, President and CEO of the nonprofit Ballston Science and Technology Alliance (BSTA), in identifying Washington, D.C. area experts in many fields of research who continue to enthrall the public in our region through BSTA’s Cafe Scientifique. Lastly, please note this new email address for communicating regarding Journal content: sallv.rood2@gmail.com Sally A. Rood, PhD, Editor Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences sally.rood2@gmail.com Washington Academy of Sciences Humans to Mars: Stay Longer, Go Sooner, Prepare Now 1 Douglas W. Gage XPM Technologies, Arlington, Virginia Abstract Mars is the appropriate next destination for humans in space (not the Moon or an asteroid). Our initial program should send only two 6-person crews to Mars, and they should each remain on the surface for 8 years (as opposed to 5 crews, each for 18 months). The key challenges to the success of the Mars enterprise relate to the surface stay (as opposed to the travel to and from Mars). These challenges will be most effectively and efficiently addressed with long-term low-level efforts which; will involve many disciplines; should involve many organizations; and should be initiated now. NASA’s unique skills and experience should be applied immediately to answer several specific critical questions. Introduction While the Martian environment is extremely harsh to human sensibilities, the planet Mars is far and away the single best choice for an initial extended human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Balancing the difficulty of getting there, the resources available there, the challenges of keeping people alive there, and the probable payoffs of exploring there, no other extraterrestrial destination can compete (see Appendix B). If we can’t demonstrate that humans can live on Mars, then we as a species aren’t going anywhere else beyond Earth; moreover, if we do in fact demonstrate how humans can successfully live on Mars, we can fruitfully apply some of the lessons we learn doing this to the challenges we face living on Earth. While science fiction has treated the planet Mars as its number one destination in space for over a century [1], actual space exploration efforts are only now becoming seriously focused on sending humans to Mars. This paper was first presented at the June 4, 2013 Cafe Scientifique sponsored by the Ballston Science and Technology Alliance, www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/bsta. Kaye Breen, President & CEO. Fall 2013 9 The Planet Mars Facts and figures about Mars are available from numerous print and web resourees, including Wikipedia, and many images are available on the websites of specific missions, such as the Mars Reeonnaissanee Orbiter (MRO) or Mars Seience Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity. Individual referenee eitations have not been included in this paper for each individual mission or for every scientific term for which Wikipedia provides good introductory infomiation and/or the obvious web search will lead to an appropriate website. Physical values presented here should be treated as close approximations — for example, equatorial diameter is slightly larger than polar diameter, atmospheric pressure changes daily and with the seasons, and Curiosity’s reports of atmospheric composition differ from those returned by Viking [2]. Mars is a small planet, whose diameter of 6,779 km is just over half of Earth’s 12,756 km. As a result, gravity at the surface of Mars is just 37.6% of Earth’s (3.7 m/s , compared to Earth’s 9.8 m/s and our Moon’s 1.6 m/s“). The Martian day (“sol”) is 24 hours and 39 minutes long, remarkably close to Earth’s 24 hours. The Martian year is 687 Earth days, or 668 Martian sols. Mars’ orbit deviates significantly from circular, ranging between 206.6 and 249.2 million km from the Sun (compared to a near-circular 149.6 million km orbit for Earth), and Martian seasons are therefore not equal in length. Mars is closest to Earth when Earth is directly between it and the Sun (Earth-based astronomers call this “opposition,” since Mars and the Sun are opposite in the Earth’s sky) — between 57.0 and 99.6 million km, depending on Mars’s distance from the Sun at this point. Conversely, Mars is most distant when the Sun is directly between Earth and Mars (Earth-based astronomers call this “conjunction,” since Mars and the Sun appear to be very close in the Earth’s sky) — between 356.2 and 398.8 million km. Round trip light or radio communieation between Earth and Mars therefore takes between 6.3 and 11.1 minutes at opposition, and between 39.6 and 44.3 minutes at conjunction. The synodic period, the time from one opposition to the next, or from one conjunction to the next, is about 26 months (780 days). Mars receives an average insolation of 580 w/m , about 43% of that received on Earth (1,360 w/m ). Temperatures on the surface of Mars average -63C, ranging from +32C to -140C. Southern winter is much more severe than northern, to the point that enough atmospheric CO2 freezes out Washington Academy of Sciences 3 onto the south polar cap to reduce the atmospheric pressure across the whole planet by about 30%. The planet’s tilt, or obliquity, is about 25.2 degrees, remarkably close to Earth’s 23.5 degrees. However, while Earth’s obliquity varies by no more than about 2.5 degrees because of the presence of our large Moon, Martian obliquity varies from about 10 degrees to close to 50 degrees over time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. This implies that the planet continues to experience major climate changes — large changes in atmospheric temperature and pressure and the periodic redistribution of Martian water — on a time scale roughly similar to that of Earth’s ice age cycles. Martian atmospheric pressure is nominally about 0.5% to 1% of Earth’s 1013 mbars, and, as on Earth, diminishes with increasing altitude. In addition, as mentioned above, atmospheric pressure drops by about 30% during southern winter, and varies daily on the order of 10% due to a thermally driven diurnal atmospheric “tide.” The Martian atmosphere is about 96% carbon dioxide, 2% nitrogen, and 2% argon [2]. Geologic evidence indicates that Mars had major oceans 4 billion years ago, and today water makes up most of the polar caps and is also widely distributed across major parts of the planet, presumably as subsurface ice, brines or hydrates. As described above, major redistributions of this water likely occur over timescales of 10,000 to 1 million years. The detection of abundant water has rekindled hopes for the possibility of Martian life present or past, as has the recent discovery of a broad spectrum of extremophile life on Earth. Exploring Mars The exploration of Mars by unmanned spacecraft began in the 1 960s with the American Mariner flyby missions. It continued through the 1970s with the Viking orbiters and landers. This was followed by various orbiters; the Pathfinder mission with its Sojourner rover in 1997; the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) Spirit and Opportunity which landed in January 2004; 2008 ’s high latitude Phoenix lander; and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity which landed in August 2012. Interspersed with the successful missions were many American and Soviet/Russian mission failures, most recently the 2011 Russian Phobos- Grunt effort to return a sample from Phobos. [3] Perhaps the first serious plan for transporting humans to Mars was outlined by Wemher von Braun in his 1953 book Das Mars Projekt {The Mars Project) [4], which proposed an ambitious mission profile involving Fall 2013 4 giant “three stage ferry vessels” to Low Earth Orbit, “space ships” between LEO and orbit around Mars, and winged “landing boats” to and from the Martian surface. (It was then believed that the Martian atmospheric pressure was about 12% of Earth’s, some 10 to 20 times higher than we now know it to be.) While von Braun’s Mars Project was mere speculation in the early 1950s, the success of the Apollo program in the late 1960s led many people to expect that a human mission to Mars would be undertaken in short order. Instead, the financial pressures of the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet Moon program steered NASA onto the very different path of developing first the space shuttle and then the space station. Hopes for a human Mars program were revived in 1990 when President George H. W. Bush proposed the “Space Exploration Initiative” (SEI) [5], but NASA responded with an unaffordable plan bloated by the inclusion and extension of all of NASA’s existing and proposed research efforts. SEI was dead on arrival in Congress. In the early 1990s, in response to the demise of SEI, Martin Marietta engineers Bob Zubrin and David Baker developed a mission concept that came to be called “Mars Direcf’ [6], and several of its key features have since been incorporated into NASA and other “Design Reference Missions” (DRMs) [7]: 1) A conjunction mission comprised of a 6+ month transit to Mars, approximately 1 8 months spent on the surface of Mars, and a 6+ month return; 2) Pre-emplacement of unmanned assets, including an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) or Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV); and 3) In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) to generate fuel (methane) and oxidizer (liquid oxygen) from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide and hydrogen possibly extracted from Martian water. While the partitioning of functional elements into specific vehicles differs among the various proposals, this nominally 30+ month conjunction mission profile leveraging pre-emplacement of resources and ISRU now represents a consensus both inside and outside NASA. Unfortunately, while the Mars Direct concept provided at high level a technologically feasible and relatively affordable blueprint for a manned Mars mission, the political will to pursue such a program did not materialize, partly because of the constituency-driven nature of the NASA enterprise. The dream of Washington Academy of Sciences 5 human Mars exploration has been kept alive by the Mars Society [8], founded and led by Zubrin, and other efforts of Mars enthusiasts [9]. In 2004, President George W. Bush promulgated a “Vision for Space Exploration” (VSE) [10] with the stated goal of sending humans “to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond.” In fact, however, the Constellation program developed under the leadership of then NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was focused almost completely on getting Americans back into space after retiring the space shuttle fleet in 2010 and then returning to the Moon (nominally by 2020). It paid only the feeblest lip service to the Vision’s stated long term goal of putting humans on Mars. In 2009, the Obama administration chartered the “Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee” (a.k.a. the “Augustine Committee”) to assess the viability of the Constellation program. The Committee’s report [11] found that NASA’s human spaceflight budgets, as programmed, were totally inadequate. It proposed two alternative long range options, both requiring increased funding: 1 ) Returning humans to the Moon, or 2) Following a “Flexible Path,” developing the capability for extended (up to 1 year) human flights beyond Low Earth Orbit, to visit Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and the Earth-Sun Lagrange points. Getting humans to Mars was explicitly identified as the long-term goal, but characterized as financially out of reach. The Obama administration cancelled Constellation, but elected to continue the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). The Asteroid Retrieval and Recovery Mission (ARRM) was announced in April 2013 — see Appendix B, “Alternatives and Distractions.” Extended Missions, Program, and Base As noted in the last section, the consensus profile for bringing humans to Mars is a conjunction mission comprising 6+ month transits to and from Mars, with a surface stay of about 1 8 months. Conjunction Mission Profile Using a “Hohmann trajectory” — an elliptical orbit tangent to the orbit of Earth when closest to the Sun, and tangent to the orbit of Mars when farthest — minimizes transit energy requirements, and hence cost. It Fall 2013 6 is necessary, of course, that when the vehicle arrives at the destination orbit, the destination planet should actually be at that same point in the orbit. This means that Hohmann launch opportunities between Earth and Mars occur every 26 months in each direction, with the return launch window from Mars to Earth occurring about 2 months before the outbound window. A crew can thus return after 1 8 months on the surface, but also after 44 months, or after 70, 96, and so on. Program Context Dictates Extended Missions Since expected high costs make it unlikely that we will invest in developing a system capable of taking humans to Mars and then use it for just one 18-month surface-stay mission, NASA’s Design Reference Architecture (DRA) 5.0 assumes three successive independent missions [12]. We should consider how a sequence of manned Mars flights should be configured to create a rational program — one which maximizes scientific payoff consistent with minimizing costs and risks (maximizing crew safety). The Apollo program provides a baseline for comparison. A series of 6 independent sorties were made to different locations on the lunar surface in the three and a half years between July 1969 and December 1972, with surface stays ranging from 22 to 75 hours and total mission durations from launch to splashdown of between 8 and 1 3 days. Launch windows occurred every month when the lighting at the plamied landing site was appropriate, so the factor limiting the pace of launches was the assembly and checkout of the required Saturn launch vehicle stages and Apollo command, service, and lunar modules. This will not be the case with Mars missions. In order to keep the hardware production line and launch and mission control facilities active, we will need to launch during every window — every 26 months. This means that: • The second mission crew will launch from Earth 2 months after the first has launched on its return from Mars; • For a period of 4 months, we will have 2 crews in space; and • The second crew will not arrive on Mars until 8 months after the first crew has left. Zubrin proposed that the landing points for successive Mars sorties should be chosen no more than about 800 km apart, so that backup resources would always be “jusf’ a long rover ride away. This would be Washington Academy of Sciences 7 prudent, of course, but it raises a fairly obvious question: If we want to place a crew at point B on the surface of Mars, and already have a crew at point A about 800 km away from point B, why should we lly the first crew hundreds of millions of km back to Earth, and send a second crew all the way from Earth? Why not send a good ground transport vehicle and plan to have the first crew drive it from point A to the prepared site at point B? The risks of spaceflight are associated first with launch (shuttle Challenger), then with landing (shuttle Columbia, Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 1 1), and thirdly with cruise (Apollo 13). Being on the ground, on Mars as well as on Earth, is intrinsically much safer than being in space, and it is relatively easy to make it safer still. Since the basic conjunction mission calls for more time on the surface of Mars (18 months) than in transit (12- 1 4 months), it pays to invest in making the surface stay as safe as possible. In fact, we have a “virtuous cycle”: 1) The longer we are planning to stay on the surface of Mars, the safer we can and should make it; and 2) The safer it is on the surface of Mars, the longer we should plan to stay! Consider the following program plan: An initial crew (of 4 to 6 people) is launched to a carefully prepared site, and remains on the surface of Mars for a full 96 months, returning on the fourth minimum-energy Hohmann opportunity. A second crew follows to the same site 26 months later, and also stays for 96 months. Thus, we have 8-12 people at the base for a period of 70 months, we have no gaps in crew presence on Mars, and the mission operations team never has to deal with two crews in transit at the same time. We continue to build assets at the initial landing site, expanding to a second site only when the first base has achieved true critical mass. Instead of launching an Earth Return Vehicle to Mars 26 months before the first crew, we send it 26 months after the second crew. Moreover, the first return launch of the ERV can be an unmanned test flight carrying Mars samples back to Earth, and we will have the advantage of having “ground crew” to service its launch. Finally, because we are delaying the launch of the first ERV, we can also defer its development, thus employing a smaller team of rocket developers for a longer period of time [13]. Table 1 below presents a comparison of a Base First program with a program comprised of 5 independent 18-month conjunction missions. Fall 2013 8 Table 1. Comparison of the “Base First” plan with a program comprised of a sequence of five independent conjunction missions Mars Base First Program (2-96 month surface stays) 5 Conjunction missions (18 month surface stays) Time Ifom first crew arrival to last departure 122 months 122 months Time 2 crews on Mars 70 months (1@70 mo) — Time 1 crew on Mars 52 months (2@26 mo) 90 months (5@18 mo) Gap; 0 crews on Mars — 32 months (4@8 mo) # crews launched 2 5 EDL mass requirement 6- 1 0 tonnes 40 tonnes First ERV/MAV launch 52 months after first crew launch 26 months before first crew launch Extended Missions Dictate Early Base Establishment It is clear that supporting a crew of 8-12 people on the surface of Mars for 10 full years is a very different proposition from supporting 4-6 people for 18 months. NASA’s DRA 5.0 and other Design Reference Missions all the way back to the Mars Direct plan envision the crew living inside a habitat sitting on the surface. EDL (NASA-speak for Entry, Descent and Landing) to get this nominally 10-meter diameter 40-tonne “tuna can” unit to the surface of Mars in one piece represents a major technological challenge. The alternative approach proposed here for the “Base First” plan would have the crew live and work in underground tunnels constructed by robots before the crew arrives, creating a true Mars Base. Living underground would provide much better protection than a surface habitat against radiation, which — while much less intense on the Martian surface than in interplanetary space — is much more intense than on Earth or in Low Earth Orbit [14]. This approach also carries the additional advantage that a crew-landing vehicle could be much smaller than the 40 tonne tuna can habitat, greatly reducing the structural mass that would have to be brought from Earth, and radically simplifying the Entry/Descent/Landing problem [13]. For comparison, the Apollo Command Module (CM) weighed 6 tonnes, while the Apollo Lunar Module (EM), including both descent and ascent stages, was 1 5 tonnes. Washington Academy of Sciences 9 The underground space would be quickly and continually expanded to eventually include: • living, sleeping, and dining areas, galley, pantry, and garden; • medical/dental clinic with mini-intensive care unit, exercise facilities (gym and track), spa, and swimming pool; • medical, biological, chemical, and geological laboratories; • manufacturing and repair shops; and • storage for food, other supplies, spare parts, and collections of samples. Many critical systems will be required to support human life and mission operations — including themial control, air, water, waste, computing, and communications — but these various subsystems can be installed in the constructed underground base in a much more loosely coupled manner than would be possible in a tightly integrated habitat transported from Earth, thus simplifying component repair and replacement. The Challenges of the Base First Program The concept of a base on Mars is obviously not a new one; however, a common thread among mainstream (i.e., space agencies and contractors) thinking is the implicit assumption that the establishment of a base should occur only after a sequence of human sorties to identify the best location. The key arguments in this paper are that we should: 1) Plan for a Mars base beginning with the first humans we send to Mars; 2) Plan to send fewer people to Mars, but have each of them stay much longer; and 3) Invest heavily up-front in developing and refining the surface segment of the human Mars mission because travelers to Mars will spend (much) more time on the surface of Mars than in space, and this is where the critical challenges and payoffs lie. This will require either that NASA move well beyond its traditional focus on space transportation systems, or that one or more other entities assume a leadership role in the Mars exploration enterprise. One very recently initiated effort that is decidedly not mainstream is MarsOne [15], a Dutch-based organization working to establish a permanent Martian colony by sending 4-person crews to Mars starting in Fall 2013 10 2023. Something like 100,000 people have already applied online to make this 1-way trip to Mars. Successfully executing the MarsOne project will require overcoming serious challenges in raising the required funding and in actually developing the required systems in time to meet the proposed schedule. It is not unlikely that MarsOne (like NASA) will focus very heavily on the highly visible transportation components, at the expense of the ground-based “system of systems” necessary to support a viable Mars colony. The Base First strategy proposed in this paper explicitly addresses this requirement, and — because everyone returns to Earth — it avoids a commitment for the indefinite support of a Martian colony. On the other hand, it is clear that Base First deliberately cultivates the option for an informed future decision to establish a permanent base or colony. Can Humans Survive and Succeed on a 10-year Mission? Some may object that a mission profile calling for an 8-year stay on the surface of Mars (and 1 0 years away from Earth) is unreasonable — that the psychological stresses of living in such a small isolated group for so long would put the success of the mission, if not the crew’s survival, at unacceptable risk. However, the history (and especially the prehistory) of humanity is one of many small groups of people migrating into the unknown with no intention of returning, and we find many examples of small groups that have successfully lived in nearly constant isolation, including bands of hunter-gatherers, Inuit family groups, pre-20th century ship crews, castaways, and some soldiers and prisoners. However, while humans on Mars will be physically isolated from Earth, they will have high bandwidth connectivity to the rest of the humanity (albeit with a 6-44 minute round trip latency). They need not be lonely; the World Wide Web will expand into the Solar System Wide Web. But we must thoroughly explore the full range of issues associated with long-term connected-but-physically-isolated living, including understanding how and how well high-bandwidth long-latency network communications can compensate for the lack of physical contact. And we must develop an experience base on Earth before we dare send people on such a mission. Since it is likely that the success of the mission may depend on the “chemistry” of the specific personalities involved, it may be that a crew should begin living together as a coherent group (if not in full isolation) well before their launch. The psychological and psychiatric issues associated with spaceflight have been studied since the beginning of the space age; see, for example, [16], [17], [18]. Washington Academy of Sciences 1 1 Since living beneath 5 meters of regolith will mitigate the radiation hazard on the surface, the principal physiological challenge posed by the Base First mission (beyond those posed by a 30-month conjunction mission) is the loss of bone density and strength associated with the outward and return 6+ month zero gravity transits and eight years of 0.38 g Mars gravity. A focused exercise regimen, possibly combined with dietary modification, should at least partially mitigate these effects [19], and at some point it might be possible to install a one-g centrifuge in the base. Long-term exposure to a low-pressure high-oxygen atmosphere in the base habitat — which could be adopted in order to reduce Extravehicular Activity (EVA) pre-breathe time [20] [21, p. 20] — would constitute a second physiological risk factor. However, this is a risk that can be evaluated by experimentation on Earth (see Appendix A). An advantage of the base-first exploration strategy is that it will allow people to extend their stay on Mars, which would be absolutely necessary if the Earth Return Vehicle or Mars Ascent Vehicle could not be made ready during the return launch window, and might be desirable in other cases. Imagine, for example, that the crew exobiologist on the first conjunction mission were to discover living Martian life just a few weeks before she is scheduled to return to Earth. And, of course, one of the classic planetary exploration science fiction tropes (e.g., [22], [23], [24]) is that, when it is time to return to Earth, one or two characters (usually a couple) simply announce “we’re going to stay.” Required Technologies and Tools Viewed from an engineering perspective, it is clear that a Mars base will constitute a complex “system of systems,” one whose development will involve a large number of technical disciplines, and this fact must be explicitly acknowledged if we are to succeed. Here is a listing of some of the technologies and tools we will need to develop in order to create a human base on Mars: • surface nuclear power plant (nominally 150 kW electrical, plus thermal energy) • cryogenic storage and handling tools/sy stems • thermal control systems (including insulation) — different on Mars than in space • methane (and/or propane?)-oxygen power sources (electrical, thermal, motive; very small to very large) Fall 2013 12 • maximally-autonomous robotic systems • vehicles (manned and unmanned/robotic, ground and air, pressurized and unpressurized, all sizes) • construction technologies and equipment (including robots, autonomous or supervised) • communications and navigation systems (intra-base, off-base, and off-planet; supporting systems, vehicles, and people) • small-scale (“personal”) manufacturing technologies, paired with extraction/ development of appropriate material feedstocks • medical strategies/tools: auto-medicine (taking care of yourself), para-medicine (taking care of each other), and tele-medicine (accessing medical resources back on Earth) • ultra-reliable computing and other IT support (redundant, radiation-hard; wearable systems, etc.) Not only is this not “rocket science,” it’s not even just technology. We need to think about the following: • construction, physiology, and robotics; • psychology and sociology; • nutrition, gardening, and medicine; • architecture, history, insulation, and HVAC; • power distribution, IT, sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI); • biology, chemistry, geology, and seismology; • and ... In fact, the successful development of an effective base on Mars will require more than a solid systems-centric engineering perspective. It will also require a human-centric perspective, involving numerous social as well as technical disciplines. In essence, we are attempting to design the smallest-scale possible viable human economy and supporting ecology, and we don’t know in advance what this “nano-society” should (or even could) look like. However, NASA as an organization is focused on the “rocket science.” To understate the case considerably, “studies of surface activities and related systems have not always been carried out to the same breadth or depth as those focused on the space transportation and entry or ascent systems needed for a Mars mission” [21]. Perhaps the National Science Washington Academy of Sciences 13 Foundation (NSF), with its broad scientific purview and experienee managing U.S. Antarctic bases, might effectively participate in the development of the Mars base. Base Development Process and Technology Context Developing all the pieces for an effective base on Mars will be a complex undertaking, one quite distinct from the development of the system that will be required to transport humans to and from Mars. What is required is the development of an overall plan, starting from the physiological and psychological needs of a human crew, defining their task-oriented and other activities, leading to system and subsystem models, assessing and adopting/adapting technologies to implement them, and eventually validating the various subsystems through extensive testing and simulations here on Earth [20] [25]. This should be a “spiral” process that will be iterated until it is time to go, with multiple agencies/entities involved (e.g., development of a surface-sited nuclear power plant by the Department of Energy). The initiation of this activity need not and should not wait for a specific commitment to build the Mars transportation system. Perhaps the miost difficult challenge will be to manage a complicated program with a relatively small budget (as compared to rocket development), across multiple agencies, over a period of many years. Many technologies and systems developed for Earth will be carried unchanged to Mars. Others will have to be adapted to the particular situation of our Mars base. Rapidly changing technology complicates the development proeess. For example, at what point do we decide to adopt or adapt a given product or system for inclusion in our long-term Earth-based Mars base prototyping/ simulation enterprise? We can freely experiment with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) elements, but the decision to embark on a costly program to modify existing products for use on Mars must not be taken too early, or we will — like the U.S. military with its communications systems — be trapped in an expensive web of obsolete proprietary systems even as the rest of the world adopts technologies with much higher performance and much lower cost. The rapid evolution of teehnology also carries short-temi challenges with respect to what we actually send to Mars. Given the 26- month synodic period between launch windows, an assembly-test-launch (ATE) time that is not much shorter, and the 12-18 month COTS electronics product innovation cycle, we will have to decide whether to introduce a new generation of IT for each successive mission. It will Fall 2013 14 clearly be impossible to perform a full-mission duration test of new subsystems as they are deployed. Fortunately, the loose coupling of subsystems in the Mars base environment will allow easy module upgrades and the use of redundant units to ensure system-level reliability. Conclusion Because of the limitations placed by orbital mechanics on energy- affordable transits between Earth and Mars (transits that last 6+ months, and are possible only every 26 months), it would be suboptimal to execute the initial human exploration of Mars as a sequence of independent sorties analogous to the Apollo program. Costs and risks can be significantly reduced by pursuing a program in which the first humans we send to Mars remain there for many (nominally 8) years [13] [26], living and working in a safe and productive underground base constructed in advance of their arrival by robots [27] [28]. Twenty-six months after the first crew’s arrival, a second crew will land at the same base, and other sites of interest can be visited using ground vehicles. Such a program-level architecture: • affords a continuous human presence on Mars, • provides better shielding from radiation, • reduces the number of crew transits from and to Earth, • greatly reduces the maximum mass requirement for Entry/Descent/ Landing, • permits deferred development of the return vehicle (which could otherwise be a schedule-limiting element), and • allows an initial unmanned return vehicle test supported by “ground crew” to return samples to Earth. Adoption of a “Base Firsf’ exploration program will require us to acknowledge and engage the real challenges to the human exploration and colonization of Mars — maintaining the safety, health, productivity, and happiness of a very small population of humans on the surface of Mars for an extended period of time. Apollo/Saturn proved that powerful rocket systems can be developed in less than a decade, but the Mars surface stay presents many specific technical and non-technical challenges that have nothing to do with “rocket science.” Now is the time to start thinking seriously about these issues. Washington Academy of Sciences 15 Appendix A: Short-Term Agenda for NASA While this paper has argued strongly that preparation for a human stay on Mars requires much more than NASA, there are several issue areas that do require NASA’s unique expertise, and these should be addressed as soon as possible. Physiological Effects of Martian Gravity Over the past several decades, many astronauts and cosmonauts on Skylab, Mir, and the International Space Station (ISS) have experienced periods of zero-g (microgravity) longer than the planned 6-7 month transit to Mars. A number of serious physiological effects have been studied, and some strategies have been developed for mitigating them, as well as for dealing with the other challenges of zero-g — eating, showering, pooping, etc. [29]. But we have no experience base whatsoever with Mars’s 38% gravity. It is clear that many of the minor inconveniences of zero-g will not apply on Mars, but we do not know to what degree (if at all) the stay on the Martian surface will support recovery from the physiological effects of zero-g. The longer we are planning to stay on the Martian surface, the more critical it is to understand the long temi effects of 38% gravity, and this can only be done in space. Experiments with mice in a centrifuge installed on the ISS would provide an important first step. Exploring partial gravity on the ISS has been proposed multiple times, but never funded. Habitat Atmosphere: Pressure and Composition Beyond the baseline requirements of providing enough oxygen, eliminating carbon dioxide, and managing humidity, some key factors for selecting the atmosphere for manned spacecraft, specifically for the Mars base habitat, are these: • Reducing habitat pressure reduces required habitat pressure strength and atmospheric leakage to space. • Reducing spacesuit pressure decreases suit weight, complexity, and cost, and increases flexibility and comfort by reducing the work required for astronaut movement. • The risk of decompression sickness (DCS) or “the bends” at the start of an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) increases with increasing ratio of nitrogen partial pressure in the habitat to the total spacesuit pressure. Fall 2013 16 • Increasing oxygen percentage increases flammability, complicating both prevention and suppression of fire. The ISS, like the space shuttle before it, provides a standard Earth sea level atmosphere — 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) and 21% oxygen. As a result, preparation for an ISS EVA requires 4 hours of breathing pure oxygen, followed by 17 hours of 30% oxygen at 10.2 psi, followed by another hour of pure oxygen, before donning the EMU (“Extravehicular Maneuvering Unit” spacesuit) with 100% oxygen at 4.3 psi. However, this long delay will not be acceptable at a base on Mars. When something “outside” in the extended base complex goes “thump” in the night, astronauts’ lives may well depend on them being able to go out to check on it immediately. A habitat atmosphere of 40% oxygen at 6.0 psi, together with a suit atmosphere of pure oxygen at 3.0 psi would reduce the risk of decompression sickness to an acceptable level [20]. The mainstream of NASA’s thinking, however, seems to run along very different lines. Apart from Skylab in the 1970s, NASA has used 30% as the acceptable upper limit for oxygen, except in suits and pre-breathing. It is not clear, however, that 30% has been adopted as a formal limit. Nor is the documentation for NASA’s decision-making compelling or complete. It appears that NASA decision-makers have asswned away the low-pressure approach. In some cases, charts have been truncated so that neither a 3.0 psi suit nor a 6.0 psi habitat even appear [30]. Moreover, the NASA approach to dealing with DCS has been to work to develop higher pressure suits, and this is what NASA means when the phrase “advanced suif’ is used. Meanwhile, work on a radically different alternative approach — a low-pressure mechanical counter- pressure (MCP) suit — has been pursued at a low level for decades [31] [32]. (Think “wetsuit and scuba” as opposed to “hardhat diver.”) The bottom line is the following: Since an emergency on Mars may require an immediate EVA, the Mars habitat’s atmosphere and, by extension, the atmosphere in the transit “deep space” habitat should be low pressure and oxygen-rich. NASA should: (1) explore the full range of options and (2) develop an extensive experience base for the adopted atmospheric parameters, both on Earth and in near-Earth space. This should be done as soon as possible since many design decisions depend on it. Unfortunately, the default for the Orion Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle is a standard sea level Earth atmosphere. Washington Academy of Sciences 17 Martian Entry y Descent, and Landing for High Mass Payloads The “skycrane” that successfully brought the 1 tonne MSL Curiosity to the Martian surface in Gale Crater in August 2012 represented a major advance over the airbags used by Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. NASA is planning to use the skycrane again for another rover in 2020. However this approach cannot handle Entry/Descent/ Landing for a manned mission that will almost certainly exceed 10 tonnes. NASA should also immediately start the development of one or more new Mars EDL schemes to handle payloads in the range of 10 to 40 tonnes. Understanding whether it is most cost effective to land 40 tonnes in one piece, in two 20-tonne pieces, or in four 10-tonne pieces, is necessary to inform the design of the entire Mars mission system, from launch vehicles to human landers to surface habitats. Appendix B: Alternatives and Distractions The introduction to this paper posited that “the planet Mars is far and away the single best choice for an initial extended human presence beyond low Earth orbit.” If we accept that, and if humans are ever going to travel anyM^here in space, then they are going to go to Mars. So the actual question is not if but when we will send humans to Mars. Why Not Just Continue To Use Robots Instead of Humans? Thinking in the short term, however, human and robotic exploration of space are often framed as mutually exclusive alternatives. Why should we spend a lot of money to send humans to Mars when robotic missions from the Viking landers of the 1970s to the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers active in 2013 have made so many important discoveries at a tiny fraction of the cost? The principal reason is simple physics. The 6-44 minute round trip light-speed latency of communications between Earth and Mars precludes robotic teleoperation. Consequently, today we operate our Mars rovers with a single command cycle per sol: We send a command sequence to the rover and wait until the next sol to receive the results of the command execution, then repeat the process. While the software evolves over time so that we incrementally increase the payoff from each soTs work, it is still painfully slow, as is clear to anyone following the daily adventures of Curiosity. So the conclusion is this: The robots we have deployed, and the robots we are going to be able to deploy in the next few decades, are Fall 2013 18 simply not able to do what humans can do, and it takes so long for them to do what they can do, that sending humans to Mars muU become competitive if we believe that Mars is indeed worthy of serious exploration. In fact, the time when we finally send humans to Mars, presumably a few decades from now, will not mark the end of the involvement of unmanned systems in the exploration of Mars. Instead, robots and other unmanned systems will continue to play many critical roles on Mars, and the presence of humans will strongly affect the characteristics of the robotic systems we build. In advance of the first human landings, the descendants of today’s rovers will: survey candidate landing sites; identify and locate ice and mineral resources; establish power, communications, and navigation infrastructure; and construct underground habitats. Many of these systems will require much more strength and power than exploration rovers. Once humans have landed, mobile robots will continue to explore and preview sites for human exploration, identifying targets of interest and possible hazards. They will also perform ongoing construction tasks and transport equipment, supplies, and people. The arrival of humans on Mars will permit proactive maintenance and repair, and allow teleoperation and operator intervention, supporting multiple dynamic levels of autonomy. Therefore, the critical challenges to the use of unmamied systems will occur before humans arrive on Mars. Nevertheless, installed communications and navigation infrastructure should be able to support structured and/or repetitive operations (such as excavation, drilling, or construction) within a “familiar” operating area with an acceptable level of remote operator intervention [27] [28]. The single most limited resource on Mars will be human attention. Each person we send to Mars will require a huge investment in mass to be transported, and therefore in cost. It will be highly cost effective to create systems and procedures to leverage the attentional energy of each human on Mars — to do the most with the fewest people — and this can only be done by using “smart systems,” including robots. The question is not “robots instead of \\um2im on Mars”; instead, the answer is “robots before humans and robots M’ith humans on Mars.” Why Not Go Back to the Moon? Some have suggested that a return to the Moon is a logical step on the path of sending humans to Mars. Let’s examine and dismiss some of Washington Academy of Sciences 19 the arguments in turn; Use the Moon as a refueling stop? The lunar gravity well is deep enough that retrieving fuel from a depot on the surface of the Moon is energetically more expensive than bringing fuel from Earth, even if it were free. Use lunar in-situ resource utilization to prepare for Martian ISRU? The resources available on the surface of the Moon are totally different from those we plan to exploit on Mars, especially carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere and water from subsurface ice, brines, or hydrates. Use a long-term outpost on the Moon to prepare for Mars? Lunar gravity is a greater challenge than Mars gravity. Lunar day (an Earth month) is a greater challenge than Mars day, which is nearly the same as Earth’s. Lunar dust is “sharp,” and offers a greater challenge than Mars dust, which has been rounded off by wind action. Heck, Mars is a great place to prepare for putting an outpost on the Moon! Use Lunar Entry/Descent/Landing to prepare for Mars EDL? Parachutes work on Earth, while a retrorocket scheme is both necessary and sufficient on the Moon. The Mars atmosphere is thin enough that delivering large (say, 10+ tonne) payloads to the surface requires more than parachutes, but at the same time it is thick enough to interact with retrorocket exhaust at high velocities. The Moon can’t teach us anything here. The bottom line on this issue is that a decision to send humans back to the Moon would — by diverting financial, personnel, and attentional resources — effectively delay the human exploration of Mars by years, if not decades. Louis Friedmann, former Executive Director of the Planetary Society, put it well: “We should go to the Moon, and we did!” Why Not Go to a Near Earth Object? Sending humans to an appropriate Near Earth Object as part of the “Flexible Path” strategy would provide a good demonstration/rehearsal for the transit stage “deep space habitat” (DSH) that will carry humans to Mars. The criteria for selecting a target NEO include: 1) The energy (“delta- v”) required to send people to the NEO and back must actually be affordable; Fall 2013 20 2) The total time required for the transit to and from the NEO should be comparable to a transit to or from Mars (6-12 months); and 3) The NEO must be large enough so that we can rendezvous and land on it (many NEOs with a diameter less than about 50-70 meters are rotating too fast to actually rendezvous with and “land on.”) It turns out that the number of actual NEOs that satisfy all these criteria is very small. But this point is now moot, since NASA has recently adopted an alternate strategy, the Asteroid Retrieval and Recovery Mission (ARRM). Since the deep space habitat will not be ready by the early 2020s, instead of sending astronauts to an asteroid, NASA proposes to use an unmanned spacecraft to capture a small (roughly 8 -meter diameter) asteroid intact and bring it back to a stable distant retrograde orbit in the Earth-Moon system. This is close enough so that astronauts can visit and sample it using the Orion MPCV. While the retrieval mission would test out advanced solar electric propulsion, this expensive pair of missions will, of course, divert resources from preparing for an actual human mission to Mars. The retrieval component of ARRM should be canceled and the recovery effort redirected toward the tiny “mini-moons” (softball to dishwasher sized) that frequently enter the Earth-Moon system and remain for periods of up to a few years [33]. The fact that two private companies have recently been founded with the goal of actually mining asteroids — Planetary Resources Corporation (PRC) and Deep Space Industries (DSI) — makes the expenditure of scarce public funds for the NASA ARRM effort even less sensible. Don V We Need (fill in the blank) Before We Can Send Humans to Mars? A number of “exotic” propulsion schemes — alternatives to chemical rockets — have been or are being developed, and these are sometimes held out as being necessary before we can send humans to Mars [34]. For example: • A Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) propulsion system could support a faster human transit to Mars and reduce the cost of cargo transfer. An NTR system was fully developed in the 1960s, but the politics involved in using a nuclear approach would be fierce. Washington Academy of Sciences 21 • Ion propulsion is capable of providing continuous (but very low) thrust at very high specific impulse (a measure of “bounce to the ounce”). Such a low thrust modality might well provide a very cost effective transportation scheme to bring cargo to Mars with 20-30 months transit time, since much less fuel mass would have to be launched to Low Earth Orbit in order to deliver a given payload mass to the surface of Mars, as compared to chemical rockets. But we don’t need either of these schemes (or more futuristic schemes such as fusion rocket propulsion or a “space elevator”) to send the first humans to Mars. Chemical rockets, on a scale not much greater than Satum/Apollo, will do the job. References [1] Crossley, R., Imagining Mars: A Literaiy History, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, (2011). [2] Mahaffy, P. R., et al, “Abundance and Isotopic Composition of Gases in the Martian Atmosphere from the Curiosity Rover,” Science 19 July 2013: Vol. 341 No. 6143, pp. 263-266. [3] Individual reference citations have not been included here for each individual mission or for every scientific term for which Wikipedia provides good introductory information and/or the obvious web search will lead to the mission website. [4] Von Braun, W., The Mars Project (Das Mars Projekt), University of Illinois Press, Urbana, (1962). [5] http://historv.nasa.gov/sei.htm [6] Zubrin, R., The Case for Mars, Simon & Schuster, New York, (1996). [7] Rapp, D., and J. Andringa, “Design Reference Missions for Human Exploration of Mars,” JPL Report D-31340, (2005), also presented at ISDC, Arlington, VA, May, (2005). [8] http://www.marssocietv.org [9] Director Scott Gill’s documentary video. The Mars Underground, available on Amazon.com, provides an infonpative and entertaining overview of this subculture. [10] NASA, The Vision for Space Exploration, February 2004, available online at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space exploration2.pdf [11] Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation,” available at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617036main 396093main HSF Cmte FinalReport.pdf (2010). Fall 2013 22 [12] NASA. (2009). Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0. Online at http://www.nasa.gov/pdE373665iTiain NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf [13] Gage, D. W., “Prepare Now for the Long Stay on Mars,” Twelfth International Mars Society Convention, College Park, MD, 30 July - 2 August, (2009). [14] Rapp, D., “Radiation effects and shielding requirements in human missions to the Moon and Mars,” Mars 2, 46-71 (2006), available online at http://marsioumal.Org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp mars 2006 0004.pdf. [15] http://www.mars-one.com/ [16] Kanas, N. “Expedition to Mars: Psychological, Interpersonal and Psychiatric Issues,” Journal of Cosmology, Vol. 12, pp. 3741-3747, (2010). [17] Kanas, N. and J. Ritsher, “Psychosocial issues during a Mars mission,” AIAA 1st Space Exploration Conference, Orlando, FL, January 30-February 1, 2005. [18] Kanas, N. and D. Manzey, Space Psychology’ and Psychiatiy, 2d Edition, Microcosm Press, El Segundo, CA, (2008). [19] Keyak, J. H., A. K. Koyama, A. LeBlanc, Y. Lu, T. F. Lang, “Reduction in proximal femoral strength due to long-duration spaceflight.” Bone, Vol. 44, Issue 3, pp. 449-453, (2009). [20] Gage, D. W., “Begin High Fidelity Mars Simulations Now,” Ninth International Mars Society Convention, Washington, D.C., 3-6 August, (2006). [21] NASA. The Mars Surface Reference Mission: A Description of Human and Robotic Surface Activities, NASA TP-200 1-209371, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, (2001). [22] Landis, G. A., Mars Crossing, Tom Doherty Associates, New York, (2000). [23] Varley, J., “In the Hall of the Mountain Kings,” in the anthology Fourth Planet from the Sun, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, (2005). [24] Zubrin, R., First Landing, Ace Books, New York, (2001 ). [25] Zubrin, R., Mars on Earth, Tarcher/Penguin, New York, (2003). [26] Gage, D. W., “Mars Base First: A Program-level Optimization for Human Mars Exploration,” Journal of Cosmology, Vol. 12, pp. 3904-391 1, (2010). [27] Gage, D. W. “Unmanned systems to support the human exploration of Mars,” Proc. SPIE, Vol. 7692, 7692M, (2010). [28] Gage, D. W., “Robots on Mars: From Exploration to Base Operations,” Journal of Cosmology’, Vol. 1 2, pp. 405 1 -4057, (20 1 0). [29] Roach, M., Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, W. W. Norton, New York, (2010). [30] NASA, “Man-Systems Integration Standards,” NASA-STD-3000. Available online at httD://msis.isc. nasa.gov/ ( 1 995). [31] Webb, P. “The Space Activity Suit: an Elastic Leotard for Extravehicular Activity,” Aerospace Medicine, pp 376-383, April 1968. Washington Academy of Sciences 23 [32] Newman, D. and M. Barratt. Fundamentals of Space Life Sciences, Chapter 22, “Life Support and Performance Issues for Extravehicular Activity,” pp. 337-364, Fundamentals of Space Life Sciences, S. Churchill, ed., Krieger Publishing Co., Malabar, FL, 337-364, January 1997. [33] Granvik, M., R. Jedicke, B. Bolin, M. Chyba, G. Patterson, G. Picot, (2013), “Earth’s Temporarily-Captured Natural Satellites — The First Step Toward Utilization of Asteroid Resources,” in Asteroids: Prospective Energ}> and Material Resources, Edited by Viorel Badescu. Springer-Verlag, pp. 151-167. [34] Wall, M. “Incredible Technology: How to Launch Superfast Trips to Mars,” Space.com, Online at http://www.space.com/23445-mars-missions-superfast- propulsion-incredible-technologv.html, Nov. 4, 2013. Bio Douglas Gage is an independent technology consultant based in Arlington, Virginia. After working in robotics and communications for many years at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR Systems Center) San Diego, he served from 2000 to 2004 as a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), where he managed programs in robotic software. He has since consulted for NASA and DARPA, and has presented Mars-focused papers at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) and Mars Society conferences. Fall 2013 24 Washington Academy of Sciences 25 A Brief History of Government Policies to Promote Commercial Space' Bhavya Lai Science and Technology Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. Abstract This paper discusses the history of private and government support of private sector activities in the United States. Through a review of government legislations over the last many decades, it demonstrates that, despite perceptions, space activities for commercial purposes are not new, and private sector firms engaged in commercial activity have had public, private and government support for decades. A review of the history goes beyond a simple itemization of government activity. As several U.S. government agencies gear up to support increasing numbers of private firms in the space sector, there are many lessons that can be drawn from prior attempts. The lessons from these activities should be incorporated in future policy design and planning. Introduction There has been a major effort in the United States to bring the private sector into the primarily government-controlled space sector, and, in recent years, there have been many high-profile non-governmental developments in space. In 2012, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) — delivered cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) under a fixed-price contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is expected that SpaceX and other firms will take crew to the ISS by 2015. Other private and publicly held fimis have similarly ambitious plans; though not all might be realistic or feasible. Recently formed firms Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries intend to survey and mine asteroids. California-based firm Moon Express, among other firms, has announced its intention to win the Google X Prize (a $3 0-million prize to the first privately funded teams to land a robot on the surface of the Moon safely) and to use robots to start mining the Moon. Texas-based Shackleton Energy Company plans to mine ice in the Shackleton Crater at the lunar South Pole to provide propellant for planetary missions. Other companies have made forays into earth observation and remote sense. The start-up firm Planet Labs is expected to revolutionize Earth observation by providing low-cost high-resolution imagery quickly and inexpensively. Similar to Planet Labs, Skybox Fall 2013 26 focuses on imaging, and is combining web technology with a constellation of microsatellites to deliver insight into daily global activity. Despite perceptions that commercial space has recently arisen, it has been long in the making. Commercialization of space was anticipated by space enthusiasts long before government arrived, and its seeming recent emergence may well be a “re-emergence.” This paper discusses the history of commercial space activities in the United States, with the argument that there may be many lessons, especially related to government policy, from past successes and failures, that are worth incorporating as government agencies such as NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and others ponder ways to support the “nascent” private space sector. As the sections below show, the history of commercial space can be segmented into three major eras — early beginnings, referring to activities well before the start of the modem space age; fast forwarding to the 1980s which saw the first government effort to bring private sector into the largely government-run space enterprise of the Apollo era; and activities in the 2000s and beyond. Early Beginnings Private funders played a dominant role in funding early American “space-oriented” projects. These individuals had largely scientific aspirations and not commercial ones in mind, and their efforts were primarily concentrated in ground-based astronomical observatories. As Table 1 shows, most early large observatories in the United States were privately funded. The primary source of funds was wealthy individuals who were either indulging a personal interest in astronomy or who were interested in leaving to the world a personal legacy and monument. Examples of this type of patronage are the observatories built by Andrew Carnegie, James Lick, Leander McCormick, Charles Yerkes, and John Rockefeller’s General Education Board. The funding was also economically significant. Table 1 provides the 2008 gross domestic product (GDP) ratio equivalent values for a number of American observatories and space exploration projects in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the table illustrates, projects ranged in cost from around $50 million to upwards of $1 billion. Indeed, according to some experts, the recent emergence of commercial space activities is, in fact, a re-emergence: Washington Academy of Sciences 27 For the majority of its history, space exploration in America has been funded privately. The trend of wealthy individuals ... devoting some of their resources to the exploration of space is not an emerging one, it is the long- run, dominant trend which is now reemerging (MacDonald, 2010). Table 1. Early Astronomy Projects Project Year Cost 2008 GDP Ratio Equivalent Value University of North Carolina Observatory 1831 $6,430 $89,000,000 Williams College Observatory 1836 $6,100 $60,000,000 West Point Academy Observatory 1842 $5,000 $45,000,000 U.S. Naval Observatory 1842 $25,000 $225,000,000 Cincinnati Observatory 1843 $16,000 $149,000,000 Harvard College Observatory 1843 $25,000 $233,000,000 -Edward Phillips Endowment 1848 $100,000 $601,000,000 Georgetown Observatory 1844 $18,000 $154,000,000 Detroit Observatory 1852 $17,000 $81,000,000 Shattuck Observatory 1852 $11,000 $52,000,000 Hamilton College Observatory 1852 $15,000 $71,000,000 Dudley Observatory 1852 $119,000 $566,000,000 Dearborn Observatory 1865 $25,000 $37,000,000 Transit of Venus Expedition 1872 $177,000 $310,000,000 Lick Observatory 1876 $700,000 $1,220,000,000 Warner Observatory 1880 $100,000 $139,000,000 Transit of Venus Expedition 1882 $85,000 $101,000,000 McCormick Observatory 1881 $135,000 $168,000,000 Yerkes Observatory 1892 $500,000 $441,000,000 Mt. Wilson Observatory 1910 $945,000 $408,000,000 Ml. Palomar Observatory 1928 $6,550,000 $972,000,000 McDonald Observatory 1939 $840,000 $132,000,000 Source: MacDonald 2008 Fall 2013 28 Arguably, these science-oriented efforts and the inaccessibility of space encouraged a communal belief that space was the province of science. In the early development of American liquid-fuel rocketry, pioneers such as Robert Goddard undertook their research and development (R&D) largely using private funds and, in some cases (as with Goddard), private philanthropy (Pendray, 1964). Goddard was also funded by the Smithsonian Institution. Although the U.S. Government funded some battlefield rocket research during World War I, during the interwar years, only Germany and the Soviet Union aggressively supported rocket research with government money (Raushenbakh and Biryukov, 1968; Neufeld, 1996). While rocketry programs were beginning to attract military funding during the World War II (with the U.S. Government making a massive effort to acquire the German rocket scientists after the fall of Germany), the growth of public sector support for rocketry and spaceflight began to outweigh that of private companies and individuals with the beginning of the Cold War and later the launch of Sputnik. Even as the U.S. government centralized leadership in space- related research, development, test, evaluation, and exploration during the U.S. -USSR Space Race, private companies were extensively involved and increasingly interested in the evolutionary development of space technology and space capabilities. Some private companies were even interested in their own space ventures, particularly in the realm of commercial satellites. AT&T Bell served as a pioneer in this field. Not only did it co-sponsor the NASA Echo project, but it also invested $170 million of its money into its own successful satellite program,"^ Telstar, the cost of which included paying for launch services from NASA (Chaddha, 2009). Hughes Space and Telecommunications, whose Syncom satellite of 1 963 pioneered geosynchronous communication satellite design, effectively “forced” itself upon NASA to secure a sole-source contract for the then-controversial GEO satellite. Despite AT&T and RCA’s background and early success, the Hughes GEO design went on to dominate the communications satellite field. A growing concern over a potential telecommunications monopoly from space led to the 1962 Communications Satellite Act. The act provided for the formation of Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), a public-private entity that was given a monopoly over satellite communications subject to federal oversight and regulation. Likewise, growing international demand for satellite telecommunications Washington Academy of Sciences 29 Legal and Policy Guidance on Commercial Space: 1980s-1990s The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 states the need to promote economic growth and entrepreneurial activity through the use of the space environment for peaceful purposes. ” 1984 Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act The 1985 Amendments to the National Aeronautics and Space Act (P.L. 85568) directs that NASA "shall ... seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space. ” 1988 Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 required NASA "to purchase launch services for its primaiy payloads from commercial provider whenever such services are requirei in the course of its activities. ” L.S. Commercial Space Guidelines 1991 (NSPD-3) provided guidelines to "promote the policy of driving down market costs for private space through government investment. " 1992 Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act The Commercial Space Act of 1998 (P.L. 105303) states that "to the maximum extent practicable, the federal government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers: a priority goal of constructing the International Spaa Station is the economic developmen of Earth orbital space; and competitive markets . . . should therefore govern the economic development of Earth orbital space. ” led to the creation of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization — better known as Intelsat — in 1964, an organization that effectively allowed each country to monopolize control of their international satellite communications. Satellite communications control would only be fully returned to the private sector from these monopolies by the turn of the century.^ The 1980s and 1990s The 1980s saw a convergence of factors that encouraged the rebirth of private sector involvement in space. First, a wave of private sector companies began to challenge the government’s hold on space technologies. In 1984, PanAmSat was organized and became the first private satellite company to challenge the intergovernmental satellite monopoly Intelsat. Even more significantly, the French public launch service company Arianespace SA, founded in 1980, began to provide a new challenge to NASA’s launches and to American preeminence in the exploitation of space technology itself (Fuller, et al. 2011). The rise of a new commercially oriented (albeit state-owned) launch company in Europe would soon prove a stronger competitor to the American aerospace industry. Arianespace quickly became the global leader in commercial launch, surpassing the United States in 1986, and never looking back with the exception of 2004. Ironically, it was the U.S. government that helped to create Arianespace, in part, when NASA refused to launch a French-German commercial Fall 2013 30 satellite called Symphonic. This competition, however, complemented the Reagan administration’s goals of deregulation and commercialization, and, in 1984, Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Act. The goal of the act was “to promote economic growth and entrepreneurial activity through use of the space environment . . . [and] to encourage the United States private sector provide launch vehicles, reentry vehicles, and associated services” (Stone, 2012). As part of the Administration space policy, this act was viewed as a key step toward their goals of the eventual commercialization of space. As President Reagan stated during the signing ceremony: One of the important objectives of my administration has been, and will continue to be, the encouragement of the private sector in commercial space endeavors. Fragmentation and shared authority had unnecessarily complicated the process of approving activities in space. Enactment of this legislation is a milestone in our efforts to address the need of private companies interested in launching payloads to have ready access to space. ^ The act allowed private companies to launch their own vehicles provided that they obtain a license from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), which set up the AST (or Office of Commercial Space Transportation) with the responsibility to regulate the U.S. commercial space launch, encourage and promote commercial space launches, recommend policy changes, and facilitate the expansion of space transport infrastructure. The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) also set up an additional office, the Office of Space Commercialization (OSC), for the support of commercial space companies. It was during this time that NASA changed its approach to private space. Before the Shuttle first flew, NASA had initiated a so-called “Getaway Special” program that encouraged researchers in the science and technology community to develop small payloads and experiments that could be carried into orbit on a non-interference basis with the larger and more sophisticated payloads anticipated for Shuttle launch. While this program did not dramatically transform private space, it nevertheless spoke to the agency’s growing recognition that the nature of space operations was rapidly changing away from an exclusively government- supported model. Washington Academy of Sciences 31 In 1985, Congress amended the original NASA Act during its reauthorization, adding subsection (c) that required the agency to “seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space” (NASA, 2008). NASA support of the commercial use of space was strengthened by the addition of requirements that NASA “encourage and provide for federal government use of commercially provided space services and hardware, consistent with the requirements of the federal government.”^ The full effect of this mission change would not be known, however, since it was followed closely by the 1986 Challenger disaster. The disaster, which was followed by a nearly 3 -year suspension of space shuttle flights for reevaluation and testing, may have helped to accelerate the involvement of the private sector. Earlier, U.S. Government policy had supported the space shuttle as the sole method for space transport, and, accordingly, the private space industry had felt crowded out of launch service. However, the suspension of flights left the United States without serious launch capacity, leading NASA acting administrator William Graham to announce his support for developing a commercial launch industry and diversity in launch technology (Reynolds and Merges, 1998, p. 16). This change in policy from NASA, accompanied by new competition from Europe and the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act, served to stimulate the development of a domestic commercial launch industry (Fuller, et al., 2011), particularly for communication satellites. By 1990, American manufacturing of communication satellites and satellite ground terminals totaled approximately $6 billion annually (McLucas, 1991). Thus, from the policy shifts in the 1980s, came the opportunity for private expansion in the 1990s. Aside from the communications satellite industry, the launch sector grew most prominently, and two major forms of companies began to emerge: larger firms whose goal was to commercialize older and larger rocket teclmology and smaller start-ups attempting to develop new designs (Reynolds and Merges, 1988, p. 13). In addition to the growing opportunities for telecommunications services, most of these services were intended to be provided to and purchased by the government. In 1990, then President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Q Launch Services Purchase Act. The Act, m a complete reversal of the earlier Space Shuttle monopoly, ordered NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required for its activities. This decision was also made in Fall 2013 32 Key Legal and Policy Guidance on Commercial Space in the 2000s The Commercial Space Transportation Competitiveness Act of 2000 (P.L. 106405) finds that "a robust United States space transportation industry is vital to the Nation ’s economic well- being and national security. ” U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Policy (2003) directed the U.S. Government to “rely on commercial remote sensing space capabilities to the mcLximum practical extent. ” The White House Space Policy (2004) states “to exploit space to the fullest extent ... requires a fundamental transformation in U.S. space transportation capabilities” and that “the United States Government must capitalize on the entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S. private sector. ” The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L. 109155) states that “in carrying out the programs of the Administration, the Administrator shall ... work closely with the private sector, including by ... encouraging the work of entrepreneurs who are seeking to develop new means to send satellites, crew, or cargo to outer space. ” The White House Space Transportation Policy (2006) states that U.S. government departments and agencies shall “use U.S. commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent; purchase commercial capabilities and sen'ices when they are available in the commercial marketplace and meet United States Government requirements ..." the December 1986 Presidential decision directive “United States Space Launch Strategy” (Logsdon, et al. 1999). Acknowledging the new growth of the private sector, the government continued to expand on its policy decisions in the decade before, issuing the U.S. Commercial Space Guidelines in 1991 to promote the policy of driving down market costs for private space through government investment (Chaddha, 2009). This initiative was made more far-reaching still with the 1998 Commercial Space Act, which removed the restriction on NASA’s ability to purchase services from private companies. Previously, NASA could purchase hardware from contractors but not things like wholesale launch services (Chaddha, 2009). This decision opened significant new markets for private launch companies. In addition, the act also promoted the future commercialization of the space launch, the demonstration of launch voucher programs, and the potential administration of commercial spaceports (Stone 2012). Also encouraging this decision was a more general interest in private space access — even space tourism — using small indigenously developed space access systems. By 1995, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, first set up in the DOT, was transferred to the FAA as AST, adding the authority to regulate reentry in 1998 (FAA, 2011). The year 1998 also saw release of the Commercial Development Plan for the ISS.^ In 1996, the FAA issued the first commercial spaceport operators license to Spaceport Systems International in California (by 2012, the number would grow Washington Academy of Sciences 33 to eight FAA-licensed spaceports). The 2000s The start of the millennium accelerated commercial space activity. In 2000, Congress passed the Commercial Space Transportation Competitiveness Act, authorizing further appropriations to both AST and the OSC (which had been around since 1998). The act also authorized a study on a “liability risk-sharing regime” for commercial space transport in the U.S.’^ In 2005, the DOC transferred its Space Commercialization office to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).” In the private sector in 2004, Scaled Composites became the first company to receive a Reusable Launch Vehicle license from AST. Motivated by the reward of the $ 10-million Ansari X Prize, Scaled also became the first private company to organize a commercial human launch that same year (FAA, 2010). Also in 2004, the White House issued its Vision for Space Exploration, which included the goal of promoting international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests. After taking office in the spring of 2005, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin stated his view and his direction to begin an official program office for commercial cargo and crew (Stone, 2012); I believe that with the advent of the ISS, there will exist for the first time a strong, identifiable market for “routine” transportation service to and from LEO [low Earth orbit], and that this will be only the first step in what will be a huge opportunity for truly commercial space enterprise, inherent to the Vision for Space Exploration. I believe that the ISS provides a tremendous opportunity to promote commercial space ventures that will help us meet our exploration objectives and at the same time create new jobs and new industry. The clearly identifiable market provided by the ISS is that for regular cargo delivery and return, and crew rotation especially after we retire the shuttle in 2010, but earlier should the capability become available. We want to be able to buy these services from American industry to the fullest extent possible. We believe that when we engage the engine of competition, these services will be provided in a Fall 2013 34 more cost-effective fashion than when the government has to do it. To that end, we have established a commercial crew/cargo project office, and assigned to it the task of stimulating commercial enterprise in space by asking American entrepreneurs to provide innovative, cost effective commercial cargo and crew transportation services to the space station. NASA does not have a preferred solution. Our requirements will be couched, to the maximum extent possible, in terms of performance objectives, not process. Process requirements which remain will reflect matters of fundamental safety of life and property, or other basic matters. It will not be government “business as usual.” If those of you in industry find it to be otherwise, I expect to hear from you on the matter. This and other statements by NASA leadership at the time, with the support of Congress and the National Space Policy, created their Human Space Flight Transition Plan in 2006. By 2006, NASA had also initiated the Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) program, a public-private 12 partnership to foster private space access to the ISS. The year 2006 was 1 ^ also when NASA started using its other transaction authority privilege specifically to stimulate development of private sector capabilities. Referred to as a “funded Space Act Agreement (SAA),” it involved the transfer of appropriated funds to a domestic partner, such as a private company or a university, to accomplish an agency mission. These SAAs, which have continued to be used through today, differed from Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contracts in that they did not include requirements that generally apply to government contracts entered into under the authority of the FAR. For example, under these agreements, partners are not required to comply with government contract quality assurance requirements (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2011). Further executive support for the commercial sector came from the 2006 U.S. National Space Policy. Again, NASA administrator Michael Griffin was a strong supporter. Td like for us to get to the point where we have the kind of private/public synergy in space flight that we have had for a hundred years in aviation ... I see a day in the not-very- distant future where instead of NASA buying a vehicle, we buy a ticket for our astronauts to ride to low Earth orbit, or Washington Academy of Sciences 35 Recent Legal and Policy Guidance on Commercial Space First Use of Funded Space Act Agreements (2006) jump- started the NASA COTS program. The NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110422) states that "in order to stimulate commercial use of space, help maximize the utility and productivity of the International Space Station, and enable a commercial means of providing crew transfer and crew rescue services for the International Space Station, NASA shall make use of United States commercially provided International Space Station crew transfer and crew rescue services to the maximum extent practicable. ” The National Space Policy of 2010 (PPD 4) states that U.S. government departments and agencies shall "purchase and use commercial space capabilities ... to the maximum practical extent; actively explore the use of ... arrangements for acquiring commercial space goods; refrain from conducting United States Government space activities that preclude, discourage, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities, unless required by national security; actively promote the export of US commercially developed ... space goods and services. ” The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 states that NASA ' shall continue to support ... enabling the commercial space industry ... to develop reliable means of launching cargo and supplies to the ISS. ” a bill of lading for a cargo delivery to space station by a private operator. I want us to get to that point. (Milstein, 2009) The 2010 National Space Policy (Office of Scienee and Technology Policy 2006; White House Office of the Press Secretary 2010; National Space Policy 2010) expanded government support for commercial activity, especially in the launeh seetor but also opened the door for many other experiments in commercial space. Today In 2012, the first privately held firm — SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) — delivered cargo to the ISS under a fixed-price contract with NASA. It is expected that SpaeeX and other firms will be able to take crew to the ISS by 2015. The government aetively supports eommereial efforts (with launch being one of the better known areas). NASA’s Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program is ehallenging industry to demonstrate Earth- to-lunar surface flight system eapabilities and test technologies, and DARPA’s Phoenix program intends to develop and demonstrate teclmologies to harvest and reuse valuable components from retired, non-working satellites and demonstrate the ability to ereate new spaee systems at greatly reduced cost. Outside of the government, several private and publicly held firms have ambitious plans. There is no formal count of the number of “eommereial” activities, and new ventures are announced almost daily. In January 2013, for example, the Golden Spike Fall 2013 36 Company announced that it has plans to fly manned crews to the moon and back by 2020.'^ More recently, Deep Space Industries announced its intent to begin prospecting for asteroids suitable for mining by 2015 and by 2016 return asteroid samples to Earth. The private space sector today is large. In some applications, such as direct-to-home TV, the space sector is thriving. Three quarters of the world’s space related economic activity is commercial (see Figure 1), and space-related firms track the stock market and have outperformed the Standard & Poors (S&P) index in recent years (see Figure 2 where the Space Foundation Index is the middle line in the right-hand bar showing 2012). Figure 1. Global Space Activity in 201 1 (in billions of dollars) Total: $289.77 Billion Non-U.S. Government Commercial Space Transport. Services (<1%), $0.01 - ^ - n F w Source: The Space Foundation 2012b Summary By tracing the history of government policies, this paper demonstrates that while the space community is abuzz over recent developments and the growing potential of the commercial space sector, the reality is that the history of the role of non-governmental entities in space can trace its origins to a time well before the beginning of the space age. Washington Academy of Sciences 37 Figure 2. Financial Performance of Publicly Held Space-Related Companies, Mid-2005 to 2012 Source: The Space Foundation 2012a It also shows that, while many of the developments in commercial space appear to be recent (and certainly some of the successes in the launch sector are), the wheels of non-governmental activities in space were set into motion in the 1 980s. What we see today is a culmination of almost 30 years of Legislative and Executive support for commercial activity. Its recent emergence may well be a “re-emergence.” *This paper uses the National Space Policy definition of the term “commercial” space: “The term “commercial,” for the purposes of this policy, refers to space goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear a reasonable portion of the investment risk and responsibility for the activity, operate in accordance with typical market-based incentives for controlling cost and optimizing return on investment, and have the legal capacity to offer these goods or services to existing or potential non- governmental customers” (National Space Policy 2010). An analysis of the definition is conducted elsewhere (Science and Technology Policy Institute, 2013). "However, perceptions of the private commercialization of space were increasingly reflected in the science fiction literature. Even the earliest space best seller, Jules Verne’s 1865 From the Earth to the Moon, clearly described space as a domain of the American military industrialists. Later, Robert Heinlein’s 1966 novel. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, presented contrasting views of Lunar society and exploitation, and Kubrick’s 1969 work, 2001: A Space Odyssey, had a prominent Pan American logo on the spacecraft. ^See, for example, A Method of Researching Extreme Altitudes, http://www.clarku.edu/research/archives/pdf/ext altitudes.pdf. Fall 2013 38 ‘’However, AT«feT’s initial success did not guarantee its market dominance, as was quickly evidenced by its loss of a major early satellite contract, the Relay program, to rival RCA. To win the contract, RCA leveraged its previous experience building a variety of military satellite systems (particularly the Television Infrared Observation Satellite [TIROS] weather satellites) as well as fears about AT&T’s potential telecommunications monopoly. ^The exact relationship between COMSAT, Intelsat, and the private and public sectors for communication satellites was nuanced and changed over time. Appendix A to this report presents a more thorough case study on the growth, development, and commercialization of communication satellites. ^See “Perception vs. Reality in NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program,” http://www.thespacereview.eom/article/2 1 66/1 . ^Congressional interest in commercial space continues to the day. Most recently (June 20, 2012), the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space held a hearing on the “Risks, Opportunities, and Oversight of Commercial Space.” http://commerce.senate. gov/public/index. cfm?p=Hearings&ContentRecord id^c3ae3flc- fl b9-47a 1 -8eef-50 1 3d 1 d6819 1 &ContentTvpe id=14f995b9-dfa5-407a-9d35- 56cc7 1 52a7ed&Group_id=b06c39af-e033-4cba-922 1 - de668ca 1 978a&MonthDisplav=6& YearDisplav=20 1 2 ^See “Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990,” http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20497.0. http://archive.spacefrontier.org/commercialspace/lspalaw.txt. http://uscode.house.gOv/download/pls/5 1 C 1 0 1 .txt. ^See “Commercial Development Plan for the International Space Station,” http://historv.nasa.gOv/3 1 3 1 7.pdf ‘°Only 4 years later. Congress amended the original Commercial Space Launch Act to establish a regulatory framework specifically intended for human spaceflight. Provisions of the amendments included the concept of “informed consent” for space tourists as well as a new experimental launch test permit (FAA, 2010). "See “Departmental Authority,” http://www.space.commerce.gov/about/doo.shtml. '^Out of this effort came the first private space support missions flown to the ISS, by the Dragon spacecraft (National Research Council, 2012). "Granted it through P.L. 85-568, § 203. "See “NASA Policy Directive: Authority to Enter into Space Act Agreements,” http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displavDir.cfm?t=NPD&c=^1050&s=IL also explained at http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/science technology/lO 1 1 1 1 spaceact ppt.authcheckdam.pdf Washington Academy of Sciences 39 ’^See Golden Spike Company website, http://goldenspikecompanv.com/. '^See Deep Space Industries website, http://deepspaceindustries.com/. References Chaddha, S. 2010. “U.S. Commercial Space Sector: Matured and Successful.” Journal of Space Law’ 36 (1) (Summer): 23 pp. Commercial Space Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-303), Oct. 28, 1998 Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 (P.L. 98-575), Oct. 30, 1984. Commercial Space Transportation Competitiveness Act. 2000. H.R. 2607. 106'*’ Cong. Federal Aviation Administration. 2011. The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation. http://www.faa.gov/about/office org/headquarters offices/ast/media/l 1 1460.pdf. Fuller, J. Jr., J. Foust, C. Frappier, D. Kaiser, and D. Vaccaro. 2011. “The Commercial Space Industry: A Critical Spacepower Consideration.” Chap. 6 in Toward a Theory of Space Power. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press. http://www.ndu.edu/press/space-Ch6.html. Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act of 1984 [P.L. 98-365), as amended in 1988 and 1992. Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, Title II of the Fiscal Year 1991 NASA Authorization. Nov. 5, 1990. Logsdon, J. M., R. A. Williamson, R. D. Launius, R. J. Acker, S. J. Garber, and J. L. Friedman, eds. 1999. Accessing Space. Vol. IV of Exploring the Unknowm: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Division, Office of Policy and Plans. http://historv.nasa.gov/SP-4407/vol4/cover.pdf MacDonald, A. 2008. “The Remote Space Age: An Economic History of Space Exploration from Galileo to Gagarin,” (doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford). MacDonald, A. 2010. “A Brief Note on the Economic History of Space Exploration in America.” http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-vallev/files/pdfs/macdonald-alex/brief-historv- space-explore.pdf McLucas, J. 1991. Space Commerce (Frontiers of Space). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fall 2013 40 Milstein, M. 2009. “NASA Makes Space U-Tum, Opening Arms to Private Industry.” Popular Mechanics, October 1 . http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4263233. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L. 109- 155), Dec. 30,2005. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 1 10- 422), Oct. 15,2008. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 20 10. 2010. P.L. 111-267. 124 Stat. 2805. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 2008. National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 [P.L. 85-568], As Amended. Washington, DC: NASA Headquarters. http://historv.nasa.gov/spaceact-legishistorv.pdf. National Research Council. 2012. NASA ’s Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Space Policy. 2010. National Space Policy of the United States of America. PPD-4, Washington, DC: Office of the President of the United States. Neufeld, M. 1 996. The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemiinde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Office of Science and Technology Policy. 2006. U.S. National Space Policy 2006. Washington, DC: The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/national-space-policv- 2006.pdf Pendray, G. 1964. The Guggenheim Medalists: Architects of the Age of Flight (1929- 1963). New York. NY: Guggenheim Medal Board of Award. Raushenbakh, B. V., and Y. V. Biryukov. 1968. “S. P. Korolyev and the Development of Soviet Rocket Engineering to 1939.” Chap. 19 in First Steps Toward Space, edited by Frederick C. Durant 111 and George S. James, 203-208. Smithsonian Annals of Flight, Number 10. Washington, DC: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Press. http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/AnnalsofFlight/pdf lo/SAOF- 0010.pdf Reynolds, G. H., and R. P. Merges. 1988. Toward an Industrial Policy’ for Outer Space: Problems and Prospects of the Commercial Launch Industry’. 29 Jurimetrics J. 7. http://scholarship.law.berkelev.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1673&context=facpubs. Lai, B., J. D. Thorne, V. Brannigan, K. A. Koopman, S. Holloman, and B. J. Sergi. “New Developments in the Commercial (Private) Space Sector,” IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute, June 1, 2013. Washington Academy of Sciences 41 The Space Foundation. 2012a. Space Foundation Indexes. http://www.spacefoundation.org/programs/research-and-analvsis/space-foundation- indexes. The Space Foundation. 2012b. The Space Report 2012: The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity. Washington, DC. Stone, C. 2012. “Perception vs. Reality in NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.” The Space Review, October 8. http://www.thespacereview.eom/article/2 1 66/1 . U.S. Commercial Space Policy Guidelines, National Space Policy Directive 3 (NSPD-3) (Washington, DC: NASA HQ, February 1 1, 1991), http://www.fas.org/spp/militarv/docops/national/nspd3.htm United States Government Accountability Office. 2011. Key Controls NASA Employs to Guide Use and Management of Funded Space Act Agreements Are Generally Sufficient, but Some Could Be Strengthened and Clarified. Report GAO-12-230R. Washington, DC: U.S. GAO. http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/586367.pdf White House Office of the Press Secretary. “Remarks by the President on Space Exploration in the 21st Century 2010.” http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/trans/obama ksc trans.html. White House. U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Policy. April 25, 2003. Bio Bhavya Lai is a research staff member at the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) where her research focuses on manufacturing and space technology and policy. Before joining STPI, Dr. Lai was president of C-STPS, LLC, a science and technology policy research and consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts and prior to that, she was Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates. Dr. Lai holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in nuclear engineering from MIT, an M.S. from MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, and a Ph.D. from the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration (concentration in science and technology policy) at George Washington University. Fall 2013 42 Washington Academy of Sciences 43 Estimating the Climate Impact of Transportation Fuels: Moving Beyond Conventional Lifecycle Analysis Toward Integrated Modeling Systems Scenario Analysis Mark A. Delucchi Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Abstract As commonly employed, life-cycle analysis (LCA) cannot accurately represent the climate impacts of complex systems such as those involved in making and using biofuels for transportation. LCA generally is linear, static, highly simplified, and tightly circumscribed. The real world, which LCA attempts to represent, is none of these. Among LCA’s major deficiencies are: its failure to explicitly specify alternative courses of action; its incomplete accounting for price effects; its incomplete treatment of land-use change; its neglect of the nitrogen cycle; and its omission of climate-impact modeling steps and climate-relevant pollutants. In order to better represent the impacts of complex systems such as those surrounding biofuels, analysts need a different tool — one that has the central features of LCA, but not the limitations. I propose as a successor to LCA a method of analysis that combines integrated assessment modeling, life-cycle analysis, and scenario analysis. I call this method integrated modeling systems and scenario analysis (IMSSA). IMSSA uses dynamic, nonlinear, feedback- modulated representations of energy, economic, ecological, and technological systems in order to estimate the physical and economic impacts of policies or actions, particularly those related to biofuels. Introduction For SEVERAL DECADES analysts have used a tool ealled “lifecycle analysis” (LCA) to estimate the environmental and energy impacts of a variety of production and consumption processes. The distinguishing feature of LCA is that it aggregates impacts from all of the activities involved in producing, distributing, using, and disposing of a product. For This paper updates “Beyond Life-Cycle Analysis: Developing a Better Tool for Simulating Policy Impacts” in Sustainable Transportation Energy’ Pathways: A Research Summary for Decision Makers published by the University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, 2011, edited by Joan Ogden and Lorraine Anderson. http://steps.ucdavis.edu/STEPS.Book Fall 2013 44 the past 20 years, as concerns about climate change have grown and the search for alternatives to fossil fuels has intensified, LCA has been increasingly used to estimate emissions of “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) from the use of a wide range of alternative transportation fuels. However, as commonly used, LCA cannot accurately represent the impacts of complex energy systems, such as those involved in making and using biofuels for transportation. LCA generally is linear, static, highly simplified, and tightly circumscribed. The real world, which LCA attempts to represent, is none of these (Plevin et al., 2013). In order to better represent the impacts of complex systems such as biofuels, we need a different tool — one that has the central features of LCA, but not the limitations. This paper discusses the limitations of conventional LCA and then proposes a new modeling system called Integrated Modeling Systems and Scenario Analysis (IMSSA), which combines integrated assessment modeling, lifecycle analysis, and scenario analysis. Given the scientific consensus that the use of fossil fuels is causing rapid and unprecedented climate change, and the finding by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that fossil-fuel use must be drastically curtailed to avoid dangerous warming above 2 degrees Celsius (IPCC, 2013), I discuss the commonly-used LCA and the newer IMSSA in the context of understanding the climate impact of alternative transportation fuels in general and biofuels in particular. I focus on biofuels because bioenergy systems are especially complex and challenging to model. Background and General Critique of LCA Current lifecycle analyses of GHG emissions from transportation fuels can be traced back to “net energy” analyses. These LCAs were done in the late 1970s and early 1980s in response to the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, which motivated a search for alternatives to petroleum. These LCAs were relatively straightforward, generic, partial “engineering” analyses of the amount of energy required to produce and distribute energy feedstocks and finished fuels. Their objective was to compare alternatives to conventional gasoline and diesel fuel according to total lifecycle use of energy, fossil fuels, or petroleum. In the late 1 980s, analysts, policy makers, and the public began to worry that burning coal, oil, and gas would affect global climate. Interest in alternative transportation fuels, which had subsided on account of low oil prices in the mid-1980s, was renewed. Motivated now by global as Washington Academy of Sciences 45 well as local environmental concerns, engineers again analyzed alternative transportation lifecycles. Unsurprisingly, they adopted the methods of their “net-energy” engineering predecessors, except that they took the additional step of estimating net carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, based on the carbon content of fuels. By the early 1990s, analysts had added two other greenhouse gases, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), weighted by their “Global Warming Potential” (GWP), to come up with a metric known as lifecycle C02-equivalent (C02e) emissions for alternative transportation fuels. (The section “LCA Deficiency 5” discusses the GWP metric in more detail.) Today, most LCAs of transportation and global climate are not appreciably different in general method from those analyses done in the early 1990s.' Although various analysts have made different assumptions and used slightly different specific estimation methods — and as a result have come up with a variety of answers — only recently have a number of researchers begun to seriously question the general validity of this method that has been handed down to them (Plevin et al., 2013). In principle, LCAs of transportation and climate are much broader than the net-energy analyses from which they were derived. Hence, they have all of the shortcomings of net-energy analyses plus many more. For example, the original net-energy analyses of the 1970s and 80s can be criticized for failing to include economic variables on the grounds that any alternative-energy policy would affect prices and hence uses of all major sources of energy. Based on this criticism, the lifecycle GHG analyses that followed can be criticized on the same grounds, but even more cogently. (In the case of lifecycle GHG analyses we care about any economic effect anywhere in the world, whereas in the case of net-energy analysis we care about economic effects only insofar as they affect the country of interest.) Beyond this, lifecycle GHG analysis in principle encompasses additional areas of data (such as emission factors) and, more importantly, additional large and complex systems (e.g., the nitrogen cycle, the hydrologic cycle, global climate), all of which introduce considerable additional uncertainty. The upshot is that traditional or conventional LCAs of transportation and climate are not built on a carefully derived, broad, theoretically and historically solid foundation, but rather are ad-hoc extensions of a method — net-energy analysis — that was itself incomplete and theoretically ungrounded to be valid on its own terms. Therefore, this method cannot reasonably be extended to the considerably broader and more complex problem of estimating the global climate Fall 2013 46 impacts of transportation energy policies. Today, lifecycle analyses of GHG emissions from transportation fuels usually are consistent with LCA guidelines established by the International Organization for Standardization" (ISO). The ISO guidelines properly address only a few of the defieiencies discussed here. The broader LCA community is beginning to recognize the need for a more eomprehensive integrated modeling approach to traditional LCA problems. In this respect, Feng et al. (2008) discuss “system-wide accounting,” Pehnt et al. (2008) discuss “consequential environmental systems analysis,” and Finnveden et al. (2009) discuss “environmental systems analysis using life cycle methodology.” At a general conceptual level, all of these approaches and the one proposed here, are a version of the well established field of “integrated assessment modeling” (e.g.. Parson and Fisher- Vanden, 1997; Guinee et al., 2011; and Weidema and Ekvall, 2009). Comparison of Conventional LCA with IMSSA This paper proposes something similar to integrated assessment modeling (lAM), but with more emphasis on the systems integration and scenario analysis; hence the term, “Integrated Modeling Systems Scenario Analysis” (IMSSA). Figures 1 and 2 delineate the modeling structure in IMSSA and conventional LCA, and Table 1 compares conventional LCA with IMSSA. In principle, lifecycle analyses of GHG emissions from transportation fuels are meant to help us understand the impact on global climate of some proposed transportation policy or action (“policy/action”). I refer generally to the impacts of the policy/action on “environmental systems.” Figure 1 shows that IMSSA starts with the specification of a policy/action and ends with the impacts on environmental systems. In between are a series of steps that constitute the conceptual components of the model. The impact of climate change — the ultimate output of interest — is a function of the dynamic state of the climate system. Importantly, however, the climate system is influenced by a wide range of emissions beyond the three commonly considered in transportation LCAs (CO2, CH4 and N2O) and by other factors such as albedo (reflectivity). Emissions and non-emission factors, in turn, are affected by energy systems, material systems, land-use systems, and natural ecosystems. All of these are affected by, and in some cases affect, policies and economic systems. Washington Academy of Sciences 47 Figure 1, Representation of an ideal model (IMSSA) Fall 2013 CO 48 Indeed, as illustrated in Figure 1, there are many important feedbacks, especially between energy systems, material systems, land-use and ecosystems, economic systems, non-emission factors, and climate systems. However, conventional LCA does not capture this complexity (see Figure 2) and instead usually represents a simplistic no-feedback system that considers only energy use, emissions of three GHGs, and a simplified measure of climate, the Global Warming Potential. Some LCAs also include the lifecycle of materials, and recently some LCAs have added a simple partial treatment of land-use change (LUC). Thus, as indicated in Table 1 comparing the two approaches, conventional LCA lacks explicit representations of policy, economic systems, and climate impacts. It also has simplified or incomplete treatments of the nitrogen cycle, land-use change and ecosystems, the climate system, and GHGs other than CO2, CH4, and NjO.^ Figure 2. Representation of conventional LCA Washington Academy of Sciences 49 Table 1. Comparison of conventional LCA with IMSSA Component in IMSSA Treatment in Conventional LCA Policy analysis No policy analysis in conventional LCA, which simply assumes that one set of activities replaces another. Energy systems Energy systems typically are well represented as input- output relationships in conventional LCA. Materials systems Some conventional LCAs consider materials flows. Land-use and ecosystems Most conventional LCAs ignore land-use and ecosystems or treat them simplistically. Economic effects (prices) Conventional LCAs do not model price changes and their effects. Carbon cycle Conventional LCA does not have a formal model of the carbon cycle. Nitrogen cycle Conventional LCA does not have a formal model of the nitrogen cycle. Air pollutants Conventional LCAs count most but not all sources of CH4 and N2O, and typically omit (as GHGs) CO, NOx, SOx, PM, O3, and more. Albedo, hydrodynamics Not included in conventional LCA. Climate system GWPs are simplistic and do not capture several important aspects of climate change. Impacts of climate change Conventional LCA does not model impacts of climate change. Fall 2013 50 LCA Deficiency 1: Failure to Explicitly Specify Alternative Courses of Action Conventional LCAs of transportation and climate change typically do not analyze a specific policy or even posit a specific question for analysis. Instead, the implicit questions of conventional LCA must be inferred from the conclusory statements and the methods of analysis. In transportation-fuel LCAs, the conclusory statements typically are of the sort: “The use of fuel F in light-duty vehicles has X% more [or less] emissions of C02e GHG emissions per mile than does the use of gasoline in light-duty vehicles.” The method of analysis is illustrated in Figure 2 which indicates that, in conventional LCA, C02e emissions are equal to emissions of CO2 plus equivalency-weighted emissions of non-C02 gases, where the equivalency weighting usually is done with respect to radiative forcing over a 100-year time period. Given this, we can infer that the implicit question being addressed by most conventional LCAs of GHG emissions in transportation is something like: What would happen to an incomplete measure of radiative forcing over the next 100 years if we simply replace the limited set of activities that we have defined to be the “gasoline lifecycle” with the limited set of activities that we have defined to be the “fuel F lifecycle,” with no other changes occurring in the world? The problem here is that this question is irrelevant in these two respects, discussed in more detail in later sections: i. No actions that anyone can take in the real world will have the net effect of just replacing the narrowly defined set of ‘gasoline activities’ with the narrowly defined set of ‘fuel-F activities,’ and ii. We do not care about radiative forcing per se (let alone an incomplete measure of radiative forcing), and our concern is not limited to 100 years; rather, we care about the actual impacts of climate change over a very long time period of time. Because conventional LCAs do not evaluate explicit, realistic, specific policies/actions, it is difficult if not impossible to relate the results of conventional LCAs to any actual policies/actions in the real world. Washington Academy of Sciences LCA Deficiency 2: Incomplete (or No) Accounting for Price Effects 51 All energy and environmental policies affect prices. Changes in prices affect consumption, and hence output. Changes in consumption and output change emissions. In the real world, price effects are ubiquitous. They occur in every market affected directly or indirectly by transportation fuels — the market for agricultural commodities, the market for fertilizer, the market for oil, the market for steel, the market for electricity, the market for new cars — and often are important. Although most recent conventional LCAs do not account for price effects, the broader economic modeling community is beginning to analyze the role of price effects in LCA. As discussed under the section, “LCA Deficiency 3,” a few recent analyses have estimated how changes in biofuel production change the prices of agricultural commodities and thereby change the use of land, which leads to the emission or sequestration of carbon. Economic modelers also have just begun to examine some aspects of one of the most important potential price effects: the impact of any non-petroleum alternative on the price of oil. Price Effects Related to Oil Use In general, the substitution of any non-petroleum fuel for gasoline will contract the demand for gasoline, which in turn will contract demand for crude oil, which probably will reduce the price of crude oil. This reduction in the world price of oil will stimulate increased consumption of petroleum products for all end uses worldwide. The increased use of petroleum products will increase all of the energy and environmental impacts of petroleum use, including climate change impacts. Hence, the use of non-petroleum alternative fuels can cause increases in GHG emissions in the petroleum sector via price feedbacks. Economic theory suggests that the interconnections are even more complex. For example, a large price subsidy, such as the subsidy enjoyed by com ethanol, ultimately causes a loss of social welfare on account of output being suppressed below optimal levels due to the inefficient use of (tax) resources. This loss of output probably is associated ultimately with lower GHG emissions. Thus, in this case, a subsidy policy may have countervailing effects: On the one hand, there will be an increase in GHG emissions caused by increased use of petroleum due to the lower price of oil due to the substitution of ethanol. On the other hand, there will be a decrease in GHG emissions due to the reduction in output caused by the Fall 2013 52 subsidy. By contrast, a research and development (R&D) policy that succeeds in bringing to market a new low-social-cost fuel will, on account of the more efficient use of energy resources, unambiguously improve social welfare. Research on price effects related to oil use is relatively recent (Delucchi, 2005; Dixon et al., 2007; Hochman et ai, 2010; Rajagopal et al., 2011), and is consistent with the theoretical expectations discussed above. For example, Hoehman et al. (2010) quantify the effects of biofuels on global crude oil markets, and find that the introduction of biofuels reduces international fuel prices by between 1.07 and 1.10% and increases global fuel consumption by 1.5 to 1.6% (p. 1 12). Other Price Effects Price effects also are likely to be important in cases of joint production, where one proeess and one set of inputs inseparably produee more than one marketed output. It is well known that eom-ethanol plants, for example, produce commodities other than ethanol. A policy promoting ethanol therefore is likely to result in more output of these other goods, as well as more production of ethanol. The proper approach is to model the market for the other goods to determine, in the final equilibrium, what changes in consumption and production mediated by price changes occur in the world with the ethanol policy. The same issue of joint production also arises in petroleum refineries and in other processes in fuel lifecycles. Price changes can have a large number of what are likely to be relatively minor effects. For example, different life cycles use different amounts of steel and hence have different effects on the price and thereby the use of steel in other sectors. Although it might be reasonable to presume that in these cases the associated differences in emissions of GHGs are relatively small, sometimes many quite small individual effects add up (rather than cancel each other). Therefore, it would be ideal for lifecycle analysts to investigate a few classes of these apparently minor price effects. LCA Deficiency 3: Incomplete Treatment of Land-Use Change As indicated in Figure 1, changes in land-use can affect climate in several ways. They affect: • the flows of carbon between the atmosphere and soil and plants; • climate-relevant physieal properties of land, such as its albedo; Washington Academy of Sciences 53 • the nitrogen cycle which, in turn, can affect climate in several ways — for example, via production of N2O or by affecting the growth of plants which, in turn, affects carbon-C02 removal from the atmosphere via photosynthesis; • the hydrologic cycle, which again affects climate in several ways; and • the fluxes of other pollutants that can affect climate, such as CH4, volatile organic compounds, and aerosols. CO2 Emission from Land-Use Change Conceptually, an ideal model of the climate impact of changes in carbon emissions due to land-use change (LUC) caused by bioenergy policies has several streams, listed in Table 2. The modeling begins with an estimate of CO2 emissions from LUC based on the difference, over time, between ecosystem carbon content in a “no bioenergy program” baseline case compared with ecosystem carbon content in a “with bioenergy program” case (where “bioenergy program” refers to a specific program and need not encompass all bioenergy in the world). It ends with an estimate of the differences in climate impacts between the “with bioenergy” and “without bioenergy” cases. In a cost-benefit or economic framework, the impacts would be monetized and discounted to their present value. The (monetized and discounted) stream of climate-change-impact differences — associated ultimately with the year-by-year differences in land uses between the “no- bioenergy-program” and “with-bioenergy-program” cases — would represent the climate-change impact of CO2 emissions from LUC resulting from a bioenergy program. Ideally, this modeling would be part of a comprehensive analysis of the climate impacts of bioenergy programs, which would include, in addition to the impacts of CO2 emissions from LUC just described, two other general kinds of impacts: • the climate impacts of LUC other than those resulting from CO2 emissions (e.g., changes in albedo; see Cherubini et aJ., 2012); and • the climate impacts from the rest of the bioenergy production-and- use chain. Fall 2013 54 The value of all of these other impacts would be added to the value of the impacts of the CO2 emissions from LUC to produce a comprehensive measure of the climate impact of a bioenergy program. While a few recent LCA studies (e.g., Hertel et al., 2010a, 2010b; Plevin et al., 2010; Searchinger et al., 2008) have addressed part of Stream 1 in Table 2 (economic modeling of LUC), the treatment of this stream is incomplete. And no published peer-reviewed LCA study has addressed the other four streams properly. Most importantly, no LCA work apart from Delucchi (2011) has a conceptual framework that properly represents all of the following: the reversion of land uses at the end of the biofuels program; the actual behavior of emissions and climate over time; and the treatment of future climate-change impacts relative to present impacts. Biogeopitysical Impacts of Land-Use Change Changes in land use and vegetation can change physical parameters, such as albedo and evapotranspiration rates, which directly affect the absorption and disposition of energy at the surface of the earth, and thereby affect local and regional temperatures (Bala et al., 2007; Cherubini et al., 2012; Lobell et al., 2006; Marland et al., 2003). Changes in temperature and evapotranspiration can affect the hydrologic cycle (Georgescu et al., 2009) which, in turn, can affect ecosystems and climate in several ways, such as via: the direct radiative forcing of water vapor, evapotranspirative cooling, cloud formation, or rainfall. This affects the growth and hence carbon sequestration by plants (Bala et al., 2007; Marland et al., 2003; Pielke, 2005). In some cases, the climate impacts of changes in albedo and evapotranspiration due to LUC appear to be of the same order of magnitude, but of the opposite sign as the climate impacts that result from the associated changes in carbon stocks in soil and biomass due to LUC. For example, Bala et al. (2007) find that “the climate effects of CO2 storage in forests are offset by albedo changes at high latitudes, so that from a climate change mitigation perspective, projects promoting large- scale afforestation projects are likely to be counterproductive in these regions” (p. 6553). This suggests that the incorporation of these biogeophysical impacts into biofuel LCAs could significantly change the estimated climate impact of biofuel policies. Washington Academy of Sciences 55 Table 2. Environmental and economic modeling of LUC: Hierarchy of streams in the representation of the climate impacts of bioenergy policies due to CO2 emissions based on changes in land use Stream Delineation of Stream 1. Program actions Prices, yields, supply curves, and land uses can change over time, year-by-year, in the “with bioenergy program” case compared to the “no bioenergy program” case. These changes occur at the end of the bioenergy program as well as at the beginning. 2. Emissions Each change in land use (in each year) generates its own time series of changes in carbon emissions. For example, a change in land use in any year T initiates a process of carbon emission or sequestration that can continue for many years after T. These emission streams occur at the end of the program as well as at the beginning. 3. Concentration Each change in carbon emission or sequestration (in each year) generates its own time series of changes in COj concentration (atmospheric carbon stocks) and radiative forcing. and radiative forcing For example, an emission of carbon from soils in year T+x (due ultimately to LUC in year T) will generate an atmospheric CO2 concentration and decay profile and associated radiative-forcing effects that extend for many decades beyond T+x. 4. Climate change Any change in radiative forcing in any year will generate a stream of climate changes, the lag between radiative forcing (Stream #3) and climate change (Stream #4) being due mainly to the thermal inertia of the oceans. 5. Impacts Any change in climate, in any year (Stream #4), can impact people and ecosystems for many years (e.g., by changing the incidence of chronic diseases). Fall 2013 56 There also are interactive and feedback effects between climate change, land use, and water use. For example, changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration (due to climate change) will affect groundwater levels (Bovolo et al., 2009) and cropping patterns, which in turn will give rise to other environmental impacts, including feedback effects on climate change. People in less wealthy countries may be most vulnerable to these changes because they have less capacity to mitigate or adapt to impacts on groundwater (Bovolo et al., 2009). LCA Deficiency 4: Neglect of the Nitrogen Cycle Anthropogenic inputs of nitrogen to the enviromnent, such as from the use of fertilizer or the combustion of fuels, can disturb aspects of the global nitrogen cycle and have a wide range of environmental impacts. These include: eutrophication of lakes and coastal regions; fertilization of terrestrial ecosystems; acidification of soils and water bodies; changes in biodiversity; respiratory disease in humans; ozone damages to crops; and changes to global climate (Fowler et al., 2013; Galloway et al., 2003; Mosier et al, 2002; Vitousek et al., 1997). Galloway et al. (2003) depict this as a “nitrogen cascade” in which “the same atom of Nr [reactive N, such as in NOx or NHy] can cause multiple effects in the atmosphere, in terrestrial ecosystems, in freshwater and marine systems, and on human health” (p. 341; brackets added). As a result, nitrogen emissions to the atmosphere, as NOx, NHy, or N2O, can contribute to climate change through complex physical and chemical pathways that affect the concentration of ozone (O3), CH4, N2O, CO2 and aerosols: i. NOx participates in a series of atmospheric chemical reactions involving carbon monoxide (CO), volative organic compounds (VOCs), H2O, OH-, O2, and other species that affect the production of tropospheric ozone, a powerful GHG as well as an urban air pollutant. ii. In the atmospheric chemistry mentioned in i), NOx affects the production of the hydroxyl radical, OH, which oxidizes methane and thereby affects the lifetime of CH4. iii. In the atmospheric chemistry mentioned in i), NOx affects the production of sulfate aerosol which, as an aerosol, has a net negative radiative forcing and thereby a beneficial effect on climate (IPCC, 2007), on the one hand. On the other hand, it adversely affects human health. Washington Academy of Sciences 57 iv. NHy and nitrate from NOx deposit onto soils and oceans and then eventually re-emit N as N2O, NOx, or NHy. Nitrate deposition also affects soil emissions of CH4. V. NHy and nitrate from NOx fertilize terrestrial and marine ecosystems and thereby stimulate plant growth and sequester carbon in nitrogen-limited ecosystems. vi. NHy and nitrate from NOx fomi ammonium nitrate which, as an aerosol, has a net negative radiative forcing (IPCC, 2007), on the one hand, and thereby a beneficial effect on climate. On the other hand, this adversely affects human health. vii. As deposited nitrate, N from NOx can increase acidity and harm plants and thereby reduce C-CO2 sequestration. Even though the development of many kinds of biofuels will lead to large emissions of NOx, N2O, and NHy, virtually all lifecycle analyses of C02-equivalent GHG emissions from biofuels ignore all N emissions and the associated climate effects except for the effect of N fertilizer on N2O emissions. (Some preliminary, more comprehensive estimates are provided in Delucchi, 2003, 2006.) Even in the broader literature on climate change there has been relatively little analysis of the climate impacts of N emissions, because as Fuglestvedt et al. (2003) note, “GWPs for nitrogen oxides (NOx) are amongst the most challenging and controversial” (p. 324). Shine et al. (2005) estimate the global warming impacts of the effect of NOx on O3 and CH4, focusing on regional differences (z and ii above). However, they merely mention and do not quantify the effect of NOx on nitrate aerosols (vz above) and do not mention the other impacts {Hi, iv, v, and vzz). Prinn et al. (2005) and Brakkee et al. (2008) estimate effects z and ii. These studies, along with the preliminary work by Delucchi (2003, 2006) suggest that the climate impacts of perturbations to the N cycle by the production and use of biofuels could be comparable to the impacts of LUC. LCA Deficiency 5: Omission of Climate-Impact Modeling Steps and Climate-Relevant Pollutants The ultimate objective of LCAs of GHG emissions in transportation is to determine the effect of a particular policy on global climate and the impact of global climate change on quantities of interest (e.g., human welfare). This requires a number of modeling steps beyond the economic and environmental modeling discussed above. These steps. Fall 2013 58 discussed in Table 2, involve estimating relationships between policies and emissions, emissions and concentration, concentration and radiative forcing, radiative forcing and temperature change, and temperature change and climate impacts for all climate-relevant pollutants. Conventional LCAs omit or characterize poorly most of these steps and omit most climate-relevant pollutants. Conventional LCAs do not estimate the climate-change impacts of GHG emissions from transportation fuels, but rather use the quantity called “Global Warming Potential” to convert emissions of CH4, N2O, and CO2 into a common index of temperature change. GWPs tell us the grams of CH4 or N2O that produce the same integrated radiative forcing, over a specified period of time, as one gram of CO2, given a single pulse of emissions of each gas (IPCC, 2007). Typically, analysts use GWPs for a 1 00-year time horizon. There are several problems with the GWP metric (Bradford, 2001; Fuglestvedt et al., 2003; Godal, 2003; IPCC, 2007; Manne and Richels, 2001; O’Neill, 2003): • First, society cares about the impacts of climate change, not about radiative forcing per se, and changes in radiative forcing are not linearly correlated with changes in climate impacts. • Second, the method for calculating the GWPs involves several unrealistic simplifying assumptions, which can be avoided relatively easily in a more realistic, comprehensive CO2- equivalency metric. • Third, by integrating radiative forcing from the present day to 1 00 years hence, the GWPs in effect give a weight of 1.0 to every year between now and 100 and a weight of 0.0 to every year beyond 1 00, which does not reflect how society makes tradeoffs over time. (A more realistic treatment would use continuous discounting [Bradford, 2001; Delucchi, 2011].) • Fourth, the conventional method omits several gases and aerosols that are emitted in significant quantities from biofuel lifecycles and can have a significant impact on climate, such as ozone precursors (VOCs, CO, NOx), ammonia (NH3), sulfur oxides (SOx), black carbon (BC), and other aerosols (IPCC, 2007). Washington Academy of Sciences 59 A better approach is to use an equivalency metric that equilibrates the present-dollar value of the impacts of climate change from a unit emission of gas / with the present-dollar value of the impacts of climate change from a unit emission of CO2. Ideally, these present-value metrics would be derived from runs of climate-change models for generic, but explicitly delineated, policy scenarios. Toward a More Comprehensive Model: IMSSA If researchers want the results of their analyses of the climate- change impacts of transportation policies to be interpretable and relevant, their models must be designed to address clear and realistic questions. In the case of LCA comparing the energy and environmental impacts of different transportation fuels and vehicles, the questions and issues must be of the sort: “What would happen to [some measure of energy use or emissions] if somebody did X instead of Y?” where X and Y are specific and realistic alternative courses of action. These alternative courses of action may be related to public policies or to private-sector market decisions, or both. In any event, LCA models must be able to properly trace out all of the differences — political, economic, technological, environmental — between the world with X and the world with Y. So, rather than ask, “What would happen if we replaced [one very narrowly defined set of activities] with [another narrowly defined set of activities]?” and then use an engineering process-life-cycle model to answer this (misplaced) question. Instead, we should ask, “What would happen in the world if we were to take one realistic course of action rather than another?” And then use an integrated economic, environmental, and engineering model — IMSSA — to answer the question. Table 3 summarizes the conceptual differences between IMSSA and conventional LCA. Given the tremendous uncertainty in data, methods, and model scope and structure, IMSSA emphasizes scenario analysis rather than simple point estimates (or ad-hoc confidence intervals). IMSSA results thus would be described with nuanced statements of this sort: “Under the conditions A, B, and C, the distribution of climate-impact damages for policy option 1 tends to be lower than the distribution of damages for policy option 2. But option 1 also tends to result in lower vehicle miles of travel and lower GNP.” Fall 2013 60 Table 3. Summary of conventional LCA versus IMSSA Conventional LCA Approach IMSSA Aim of analysis Evaluate impacts of replacing one limited set of linearly linked I-O processes with another Evaluate impacts (worldwide if necessary) of one realistic action compared with another Scope of analysis Narrowly defined chain of energy and material production and use activities All energy, materials, economic, social, technological, ecological, and climate systems, globally Method of analysis Simplified, static, often linear energy-and- materials-in/emissions-out representation of technology Dynamic, nonlinear, inter- related, feedback- modulated representations of all relevant systems What is evaluated Emissions aggregated by some relatively simple weighting factors (e.g., “Global Warming Potentials,” ozone- forming potential Ideally, physical and economic impacts of direct interest to society (e.g., damages from climate change) How results are expressed Point estimates Distribution of results for a range of scenarios Conclusion As mentioned at the outset, this paper frames the discussion of IMSSA around the climate impact of biofuels because this is a particularly complex problem that nicely illustrates the deficiencies of conventional LCA. But might conventional LCA be acceptable for much less complex transportation-energy problems? In general, the more an energy alternative perturbs technological, economic, and environmental systems, the less suitable is conventional LCA. This suggests that, in principle, conventional LCA might be almost as accurate as IMSSA in estimating the impacts of alternatives that do not appreciably affect technological, economic, and environmental systems. Washington Academy of Sciences 61 The problem, however, is that often it is difficult to identify low- perturbation alternatives without using relatively complex models to scope the potential impacts. This difficulty is compounded because generally, the harder analysts and scientists look, the more impacts they find. Even alternatives that at first glance seem to have very small impacts (e.g., wind, water, and solar power) can, upon further inspection, turn out to have potentially nontrivial impacts not covered by conventional LCA. For example, the deployment of wind turbines over the ocean may cause local surface cooling due to enhanced heat latent flux driven by an increase in turbulent mixing caused by the turbines (Wang and Prinn, 2011). Large- scale photovoltaic arrays in deserts can alter surface albedo. This affects local temperature and wind patterns, with the sign of the temperature effect depending on the efficiency of the photovoltaic system relative to the background albedo (very efficient PV systems will cause local cooling) (Millstein and Menon, 2011). Nevertheless, resources for research are limited, and we cannot research everything forever. Ideally, we want to concentrate our efforts on problems that are important, uncertain, and tractable."^ Given this, the most sensible approach is to evaluate periodically the state of our knowledge so that we can continue to target important, uncertain, and tractable problems. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this process, we need fairly comprehensive tools in order to do any kind of screening at all. Thus, we should develop at least rudimentary IMSSA as quickly as possible in order to guide the evolution of our analyses. ' See DeLuchi (1991) for additional historical background and a review of early transportation LCAs. ^ See the ISO web site, www.iso.ch/iso/en/iso9000- 1 4000/iso 1 4000/iso 1 4000index.html ^ Note that this general criticism applies to methods that use economic input-output (I-O) analysis, such as hybrid lO-LCA methods (e.g., Lenzen, 2002). 10-LCA expands the boundaries of the energy and materials systems considered, but does not necessarily address the other issues raised here. If a problem is unimportant, well understood, or intractable, it is not worth a great deal of attention. 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Menon, “Regional Climate Consequences of Large-Scale Cool Roof and Photovoltaic Deployment,” Environmental Research Letters 6, 034001, doi: 10. 1088/1 748-9326/6/3/034001 (2011). Mosier, A. R., M. A. Bleken, P. Chaiwanakupt, E. C. Ellis, J. R. Freney, R. B. Howarth, P. A. Matson, K. Minami, R. Naylor, K. N. Weeks, and Z-L Zhu, “Policy Implications of Human-Accelerated Nitrogen Cycling,” Biogeochemistry 57/58: 477-516 (2002). O’Neill, B. C., “Economics, Natural Science, and the Costs of Global Warming Potentials,” Climatic Change 58: 251-260 (2003). Parson, E. A. and K. Fisher-Vanden, “Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 22(1): 589-628 (1997). M. Pehnt, M. Oeser, and D. J. Swider, “Consequential Environmental System Analysis of Expected Offshore Wind Electricity Production in Germany,” Energy 33: 747-759 (2008). Pielke, R. A., “Land Use and Climate Change,” Science 3\0: 1625-1626 (2005). Washington Academy of Sciences 65 Plevin, R. J., M. A. Delucchi, and F. Creutzig, “Using Attributional LCA to Estimate Climate Change Mitigation Benefits Mislead Policymakers,” Joz//v7^// of Industrial Ecology, in press (2013). Plevin, R. J., M. O’Hare, A. D. Jones, M. S. Tom, and H. K. Gibbs, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Biofuels’ Indirect Land-Use Change Are Uncertain but May Be Much Greater than Previously Estimated,” Environmental Science and Technology 44; 80 1 5- 8021 (2010). Prinn, R. G., J. Reilly, M. Sarofim, C. Wang, and B. Felzer, Effects of Air Pollution Control on Climate, Report No. 1 18, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts, January (2005). http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MITJPSPGC Rptl 18.pdf. Rajagopal, D., G. Hochman, and D. Zilberman, “Indirect Fuel Use Change (IFUC) and the Lifecycle Environmental Impact of Biofuel Policies,” Energy Policy 39: 228-233 (2011). Searchinger, T., R. Heimlich, R. A. Houghton, F. Dong, A. Elobeid, J. Fabiosa, S. Tokgoz, D. Hayes, and T.-H. Yu, “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases through Emissions From Land Use Change,” Science 319: 1238-1240 (2008). Shine, K. P., T. K. Bemsten, J. S. Fuglesttvedt, and R. Sausen, “Scientific Issues in the Design of Metrics for Inclusion of Oxides of Nitrogen in Global Climate Agreements,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 15768-15773 (2005). Vitousek, P. M., J. D. Aber, R. W. Howarth, G. E. Likens, P. A. Matson, D. W. Schindler, W. H. Schlesinger, and D. G. Tilman, “Technical Report: Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle: Sources and Consequences,” Ecological Applications 7: 737- 750 (1997). Wang, C. and R. G. Prinn, “Potential Climatic Impacts and Reliability of Large-Scale Offshore Wind Farms,” Environmental Research Letters 6, 025101, doi: 10. 1088/1 748- 9326/6/2/025101 (2011). Weidema, B. and T. Ekvall, Guidelines for Application of Deepened and Broadened LCA, Deliverable D18 of work package 5 of the CALC AS project. Co-ordination Action for Innovation in Life-Cycle Analysis for Sustainability, July (2009). http://www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/ssp/publications/calcas report dl8.pdf. Fall 2013 66 Bio Dr. Mark A. Delucchi is a research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, specializing in economic, environmental, engineering, and planning analyses of transportation systems and technologies, including: i) comprehensive analyses of the full social costs of motor-vehicle use; ii) detailed analyses of emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants from the lifecycle of passenger and freight transport, materials, electricity, and heating and cooking; iii) detailed modeling of the energy use and social lifetime costs of advanced vehicles; iv) the design and analysis of a new dual-road transportation infrastructure and new town plan that minimizes virtually all of the negative impacts of transportation; v) sustainable transportation and energy use; and vi) analyses of supplying 100% of the world’s energy needs with wind, water, and solar power. Washington Academy of Sciences The Violinist’s Thumb: Stories about Genetics, Retro Diagnosis, and Human Life 67 Presentation by Sam Kean at the Washington Academy of Sciences 2013 Awards Banquet Editor’s Note: This is a transcription of the speech by Sam Kean at the Washington Academy of Sciences 2013 Awards Banquet. Kean is the author of the New York Times national bestseller, The Disappearing Spoon, and most recently The Violinist’s Thumb. Both books were named among the top five science books of the year, and each was nominated for major awards here in the United States and abroad. The author and his books have been featured on NPR’s “Radiolab,” “All Things Considered,” and “Fresh Air.” References for these two Kean books appear at the end of this presentation. Introduction The Violinist’s Thumb is a book about genetics on the surface, but really deep down, it’s a story book. It’s a book about stories of all aspects of human life. Sometimes they’re very specific historical stories, about personal tragedies or triumphs, or people trying to prove or disprove an ancient legend. Some of the stories are bigger, more epic stories about who we human beings are and where we came from (e.g.. Why did we almost go extinct at various points?) ... Big questions about our species. One of the reasons I wrote the book is to show that — when it comes to genetics — genetics isn’t just about medicine anymore. Genetics has spilled over into a lot of other areas of human life — like archeology, history, art, DNA computing, and using DNA to perform computations. I wanted to get all those stories together in one place. Retro Diagnosis I thought I’d jump right in with probably my favorite example of using DNA in a new and different way, in a field I like to call “retro diagnosis.” The point of retro diagnosis is to figure out how your favorite historical celebrity died. You look at when they lived, where they lived, their social circumstances, and what they complained about on their deathbed. From all these things, you try to piece together how they died; you retro diagnose them. Fall 2013 68 Doctors are really incorrigible about doing this type of work. If you flip through medical journals, you find paper after paper saying, “So- and-so died of this ... this artist must have had this disease ... everyone is an idiot for not realizing that emperor so-and-so died of this.” They really butt heads sometimes, because there’s not any historical evidence. Unfortunately, if you’re not careful, you can get unwarped from reality pretty quickly with some of these theories. A lot of times they rely on information compiled hundreds of years after people died. So it’s as much legend as it is fact. Or, a few hundred years ago, people just didn’t know as much about medicine, so they may have been inaccurate about what they were saying. I’ve seen papers with serious suggestions, for instance, that Beethoven died of an STD [sexually transmitted disease]; he died of syphilis. Another paper said that Edgar Allen Poe died of rabies, which was kind of fitting with the lore at least. And another ... that Alexander the Great died of ebola, of all things. Just a partial list of all the things Charles Darwin supposedly suffered from in his lifetime includes: middle ear damage, pigeon allergies, arsenic poisoning, lactose intolerance, adrenal gland tumors, lupus, narcolepsy, agoraphobia, chronic fatigue syndrome, cyclical vomiting syndrome, and something called smoldering hepatitis. I’ve even seen straight-faced suggestions trying to diagnose fictional characters with various ailments. Such as suggestions that Sherlock Holmes had autism ... that Ebenezer Scrooge had obsessive compulsive disorder ... that Darth Vader had borderline personality disorder (uh, borderline?). Doing this type of work trying to retro diagnose people, you might think that DNA could be more objective. You just go in, test a little bit of bone or maybe some hair samples, and boom, you get an answer. They had a disease. Well, it may turn out they didn’t have a disease. As I explain in the book, it’s not always that simple. It actually takes a lot of interpretation to know what you’re doing and get a nice solid answer. So there are a lot of ambiguous cases out there still. DNA, An Exciting New Lens to Look at History The story I’m going to talk about now is actually one of the big success stories doing this type of work with retro diagnosis. This story got started in about 1300 B.C. with one of the Egyptian pharaohs who was born Amenhotep IV. A few years into his reign, Amenhotep said, “Enough with the Amenhoteps. We’ve already had four of them. I’m going to Washington Academy of Sciences 69 change my name to Akhenaten.” And that’s what he’s known as in history today — the famous pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten was a reformer above all. He wanted to refomi Egypt top to bottom. He started with Egyptian religious services. The people in Egypt traditionally worshipped at night and they worshipped a lot of different gods. But Akhenaten came in and said, “No, not anymore. I believe in one god. I believe in the sun god above. Because of that, we’re going to start worshipping during the afternoon, the sun god’s prime hours.” Unfortunately, he was a little rigid about this, and ended up making a lot of people very angry. For instance, he became something of a grammar Nazi. If people put the hieroglyphic for “gods” (plural) on a wall, he would have someone go in with a hammer and smash it because he didn’t want people even thinking about the idea that there could be more than one god. Or if a local family had a favorite god on a cup or plate or something like that, he would send his thugs into their house and they would take it and smash it on the ground because, again, he couldn’t stand the thought of people acknowledging another god. As you can imagine, this made a lot of people very angry. But as heretical as Akhenaten was with religion, he was equally heretical when it came to art. During Akhenaten’ s reign, you start to see a lot of realism — very realistic birds, crocodiles, plants, and other pictures like that — for the first time ever in Egyptian art. Even the people found themselves in very realistic scenes. Akhenaten might just be talking to his wife, the famous Queen Nefertiti. Or he might be sitting having breakfast with his son, the future King Tut. A lot of people were startled by this because they hadn’t imagined the pharaoh depicting himself in these normal, mundane, everyday ways. For all the realism in Akhenaten’ s reign, there was one thing that was decidedly unrealistic. That was Aklienaten, himself. Whenever you see pictures of Akhenaten, there is something a little “off’ about him. He always looks a little strange. And if you listen to archeologists describe the various depictions they’ve seen, they can sound like carnival barkers. One promises, “You’ll recoil from this epitome of physical repulsiveness.” Another called him a “humanoid praying mantis.” If you listen to the symptoms they find, they go on and on ... an olive-shaped head, a concave chest, spidery arms, chicken legs with backwards-bending knees, botox lips, pot belly, just on and on ... the anti David or Venus de Milo of art history. Archeologists were always wondering, “What the heck happened here? He’s the pharaoh. He could have himself depicted however he wants Fall 2013 70 in any picture, and he chooses to look like this? Why would you do that to yourself?” There was always one school of thought that said, “Well, maybe it was more realism. Maybe he did have a funny looking body. Maybe he had a genetic disorder of some sort.” And it wasn’t a bad guess because — to be frank — there was a lot of incest in the pharaohnic line. So it’s not implausible that he could have received a bum gene from one parent and the same bum gene from another parent and come down with a genetic disorder that would have left his body looking a little strange. But, of course, no one had any sort of hard evidence for this. They were just looking at pictures, squabbling back and forth with each other saying, “He had this ... no he didn’t ... yes he did ... no he didn’t.” Back and forth like this — until genetics entered the scene. It was really only when genetics entered the scene that they got a good handle on what was going on. In 2007, the Egyptian government finally let some archeologists and geneticists have samples from five generations of mummies including Tut’s and Akhenaten’s. They also did very meticulous CT scans on their bodies. From this work, they realized that none of the mummies had any sort of major defonnities, no genetic disorders that they could tell. From this they realized that the pictures — which sure don’t look realistic — probably weren’t even striving for realism. They were probably more like propaganda. The theory was that Akhenaten decided that his status as the pharaoh lifted him so far above the normal human rabble like you and me that he had to have a new body in public pictures to show that he was much different. Some of the depictions of him where he has a big pregnant belly were probably trying to tell people that he was the “womb” of Egypt’s well-being. Seems funny to show him as having a big belly, but it was effective propaganda. Now, all that said, there were subtle deformities that showed up in the mummies. And with each generation that passed, they actually found more and more defonnities like cleft palates or clubbed feet. Tut, of the fourth generation, actually had both a clubbed foot and a cleft palate. They realized why this was when they looked at Tut’s DNA. All of us have inside us these very repetitive sections of DNA. It’s like someone held a finger down on the keyboard for a while. I call them DNA stutters — again, just repetitive sections. You get some of these stutters from your mother, some from your father. So they offer a good Washington Academy of Sciences 71 way to trace lineages. Unfortunately for Tut, he got the same DNA stutters from both his mother and father. Because his mother and his father, in turn, had the same father. In other words, his mother and father were brother and sister. It turns out that Akhenaten’s most famous wife may have been Queen Nefertiti, but when it came time to produce an heir for the throne, he actually turned to his sister, and the result was King Tut. Eventually, this incise compromised Tut’s immune system and unfortunately it did the dynasty in. Akhenaten soon died and left the state in a mess, and the 9-year-old Tut had to assume the throne. The first thing he did was to try to renounce some of his father’s heresies, hoping for a better fortune. But it didn’t come. They found out what happened to Tut when they looked a little closer at his DNA. In addition to his own DNA, they found scads of malarial DNA deep inside his bones. Malaria was pretty common back then. Both of Tut’s grandparents (he only had two of them) came down with malaria at least twice, and they both lived with malaria into their 50’ s. So malaria wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. But Tut, with his compromised immune system, came down with malaria at about 1 9 years old. If it didn’t kill him, it weakened him so much that something else dispatched him pretty quickly. In fact, we can tell how precipitously Tut died by looking even further into the DNA. There were always these strange brown splotches on the tomb inside Tut’s wall. They were all over the tomb. Archeologists used to wonder, “What are these little splotches, and why are they here but nowhere else?” They realized what they were, but did some biological and chemical testing on them. They are actually molds; they are biological. What happened was. Tut died so quickly and unexpectedly, that they didn’t have time to let the paint dry on the walls inside his tomb. They had to seal him up before they were ready. The paint was wet, so it attracted mold and ended up defacing a lot of the pictures in there. So, powerful forces in Egypt never forgot the family sins. Tut died without an heir because he had turned to his sister to have children and neither of them could live because they were just too compromised. When Tut died without an heir, an army general seized the throne, and that army general died without a child. Then the famous General Ramses seized the thrown. Ramses had never liked the Akhenaten family, and he tried to erase them from the annals of the pharaohs. He decided he was just going to get rid of them. One of the things he really wanted to do was to get rid of Tut’s tomb. So he ended up erecting buildings over it and pouring a Fall 2013 72 bunch of rubble over it to hide it from view, and he did a pretty good job of it. In fact, he did such a good job of hiding Tut’s tomb that even looters struggled to find it over the generations. It all ended up backfiring on Ramses in that the treasures that survived intact made Tut the most famous pharaoh of all, even though he wasn’t that important in his time. Really, the only reason we know about Tut today is because Ramses did this. He took over when he was young; he only lived 10 years, and didn’t do a whole lot. But because his treasures survived intact, he’s a very famous pharaoh today. That story shows you can start with something pretty small and inconsequential like DNA and — if you’re careful and know what you’re doing — you can parlay that into a lot more information about the era’s art, history, politics, and funeral practices. If you take a closer look at the DNA, all these different areas come to light. It shows how DNA is an exciting new lens to look at history ... something I was trying to do throughout the book. DNA and Genes So, what is DNA and what are genes? They’re related, of course, but they are distinct things. DNA is a chemical, a thing (you can get DNA stuck to your fingers!), and it has a specific job inside cells. Its job is to store and encode information. It works a lot like a language does. Genes are a little more abstract, more conceptual. I like to think about genes kind of like stories, with DNA as the language that the stories are written in. So what kind of stories do DNA tell? Well, obviously, they tell stories about body traits. Why you have red hair ... why some people have blue eyes ... why some people have funny “hitchhiker thumbs” and things like that. They tell stories about your body. And of course if the DNA changes (if the DNA is damaged or mutated or something like that), the language changes and the meaning of the story changes. What I find amazing about DNA is that DNA works the same basic way in all known fomis of life. In all creatures, all plants that we can think of, DNA works in the exact same way — whether you’re talking about tulips, guinea pigs, toads, toadstools, slime molds, members of Congress, whatever. DNA and genes work the same basic way in all of these weird creatures. 1 just find that fascinating. Washington Academy of Sciences 73 Gene Names But when it comes to DNA and genes, there’s one thing that’s not quite the equal between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. And that thing is the names of genes. If you look at the names of human genes, they’re quite often long, really horrendous jargon-like words. They stretch on and on; random numbers pop up in the middle of them, and they’re really hard to understand sometimes. But scientists can have a little bit more fun with animal gene names. They can be a little bit looser and more creative. Specifically, I’m thinking about the gene names of the fruit fly. He might not look it, since he doesn’t look particularly witty or funny, but the fruit fly has probably inspired more interesting, creative, unusual gene names than every other animal out there. There are fruit fly genes named “Groucho” ... “Smurf’ ... “Lost in Space” ... “Fear of Intimacy” ... “Tribble” (after those little flying fuzzballs in that famous episode of Star Trek) ... “Faint Sausage” (and I have no idea what the Faint Sausage gene does, but it’s a wonderful name). There’s the “Tin Man” gene, and if the Tin Man gene gets mutated, fruit flies cannot develop a heart. There’s a gene that leaves fruit flies exceptionally tipsy after a tiny, tiny sip of alcohol. It’s called the “Cheap Date” gene. And on and on ... there are so many great fruit fly gene names out there. There’s an occasional zinger out there with other animals, too. Probably my favorite gene name involves the “Pokerythroid Myeloid Ontogenic” gene. It’s a perfect example of a terrible gene name, where you look at it and have no idea what they’re talking about with these words. But if you look at the first three letters, there’s a “p-o-k,” then there’s an “e,” then the next letter at the beginning of the next word is an “m,” and it kind of spells out “Pokemon.” In fact, the scientists who discovered this gene in mice named it the Pokemon gene. They published a paper about it, and it became the official name of the gene. Everyone had a pretty good laugh about this, except you can see right behind the word Pokemon is a little “R” with a circle around it, and that means restraint. The lawyers at Pokemon Inc. were not amused by this because it turns out that the Pokemon gene contributes to the spread of cancer in mice, and they didn’t want their cute little pocket monsters confused with tumors. They threatened to sue the heck out of these scientists and were really going to take them to the cleaners over this. So the scientists backed down and gave it another horrendous gene name. But, for one shining moment, there was actually a Pokemon gene. Fall 2013 74 Human Beings and Intelligence So far, I’ve been discussing mostly isolated genes, single genes. And that’s how genetics got done for a very long time — people looking at individual genes. Scientists nowadays are really working with systems of genes — 5 genes, 10 genes, a dozen genes, even more, all at once, trying to figure out all the ways those different genes interact. This is really where the best science is going on. A lot of our very important traits are examples of lots of genes working together. The most obvious example is height. There’s not one gene that makes you tall. It’s hundreds of genes all working together, some adding a little, some subtracting a little, all coming together to give you the height that you have. Another great example, although one that’s much more controversial, is human intelligence. What is, if anything, the genetic basis of human intelligence? How much can we trace to that? There have always been two schools of thought about this issue of human beings and intelligence. There’s one school of thought that says the most interesting thing is, “Why are human beings, in general, so much smarter than our relatives like chimpanzees and gorillas. What is it that makes the general human person so much smarter?” Then there is another group of scientists who say, “That’s an okay question, but what I’m really interested in is what sets some human beings apart from other human beings? What makes geniuses? Why are some people so smart?” This second group of scientists has always said, “If we want to learn about what makes human geniuses, we’ve got to study the brains of the smartest people out there. People like Albert Einstein.” Einstein’s Brain and Other Stories As some of you may know, we actually do have Einstein’s brain preserved in ajar to this day. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a gruesome story. It got started in April 1955. Einstein had an aortic aneurysm, a little tear in his aorta which is pretty fatal. He lingered on for a few days and died at about 1:15 in the morning at a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey. They called in a local doctor named Thomas Harvey to do the autopsy, and it should have been a pretty straightforward one, opening him up to make sure it was an aortic aneurysm, and then giving the body back. But Thomas Harvey was kind of ambitious. He got to thinking and said, “This is the grey matter of the greatest scientific thinker since Isaac Newton. We have one chance to save his brain. It’s not like we can go Washington Academy of Sciences 75 back a month from now and get his brain then. It has to be tonight, or never.” I think a lot of us might have felt the same temptation that Thomas Harvey did, but I’m not sure we all would have done what Thomas Harvey did which was to saw open Einstein’s head, remove the brain, sew the body back up, and give it back to the family without telling them that he was did this. Unfortunately for him, Thomas Harvey was a little excitable and he liked to talk. He got home that morning and told his wife about this, and also told his young son. The next day at school, the teacher was talking about Einstein, and what a loss his death was to the community, and the kid’s hand goes in the air (who can blame him) and he said, “My dad’s got Einstein’s brain.” Some newspapers got hold of the story and, as you can imagine, Einstein’s family was not very amused to find out this way what happened to his brain. Unfortunately, this is not the first celebrity autopsy to take a lurid turn like this. When Beethoven died, doctors set aside some of his inner ear bones beeause they wanted to study his deafness. Well, an orderly walked by and put them in his pocket, and no one ever saw them again. Haydn, the famous composer ... [when he died], phrenologists stole his head because they wanted to see what made a composer, and no one really knows to this day where it is. Thomas Edison, on his death bed ... someone put a jar in front of his face to capture his last breath, and then quickly put a lid on the jar. The jar actually ended up in a museum, and people came from miles and miles to see this jar with some air inside it. But it was considered very impressive at the time. Probably the worst of these stories involves Albert Einstein again. Because as soon as Thomas Harvey got done with him, another New Jersey doctor came in and plucked out his eyeballs and put them in a security deposit box in a bank, and they sat there for years and years. At some point in the 1980s, who else but Michael Jaekson offered $3 million dollars to get his hands on Einstein’s eyeballs. But the doctor who took them said, “No, they weren’t for sale, in part because he’d grown fond of taking them out and gazing into them every now and then.” I don’t lump Thomas Harvey in with these sorts of creeps and weirdos. He at least had a serious scientific purpose: To study Einstein’s brain and see what made him so smart. The first thing he did was take Einstein’s brain and weigh it. The disappointment started almost immediately because the average human brain weighs around 50 ounces, and Einstein’s brain weighed 43 ounces. It was on the low end of normal. Fall 2013 76 and one of the smallest brains Thomas Harvey had ever seen. We call people who are very smart “big brains,” but that was not at all the case with Albert Einstein. The next thing he did was chop up the brain into little pieces. He shellacked them with a hard plastic coating, put them in mayo jars his wife had cleaned out, screwed on the lids, and mailed them to neurologists around the country so they could look at them under the microscope. He said, “I want to know what made Einstein so smart. What was unusual about his brain?” The first round of neurologists got back to him and said, “We didn’t see a whole lot. Nothing really jumped out at us.” So Thomas Harvey said, “Well, they didn’t know what they were talking about.” So he got all the mayo jars back and sent them out to another set of neurologists and asked, “What made Einstein ‘Einstein’? And they said, “Funny thing. We agree with the first group, and didn’t find much that was unusual. It looked like a nonnal old man’s brain.” The more Thomas Harvey sent it out, the more he got the answer that it just looked like a pretty normal brain. There have been more studies over the years. There was one not too long ago saying they might have found a slightly unusual fold in his brain or a slightly higher density of neurons, but for the most part neuroscientists don’t quite trust these judgments because they’re working with a sample size of one. There is just one Einstein brain so they really don’t necessarily know what made it special. Maybe it was just an unusual feature of Einstein’s brain. One objection, for instance, is that there are certain brain parts that look bigger in Einstein’s brain. Well, it turns out you also sort-of buff up those parts of the brain when you play music for a long time. Einstein played the violin from the time he was 6 or 7 years old, and he kept playing his whole life. So, did music help him or was it his amazing spatial skills? No one really knows. Over the years, Thomas Harvey got the samples back and eventually just put them in two wide- mouthed cookie jars inside a cardboard box, and put this in his office behind a beer cooler, and that is where Einstein’s brain sat for decade after decade. The Genetic Basis for General Human Intelligence Meanwhile, that other group of scientists — the group that is interested in figuring out why are human beings so much smarter than chimpanzees and other apes — was actually making a fair amount of Washington Academy of Sciences 77 headway in figuring out the DNA and the genetic basis for some of our general human intelligence. Some of the findings are a little preliminary so we have to be a little cautious, but they are starting to give us the first real insight into what made human beings so smart. The DNA related to our intelligence has been analyzed in various roundabout ways. One example has to do with our jaw muscles. If you’ve ever seen a gorilla jaw, they are very big, thick jaws. It turns out that we had a mutation a while ago that deactivated one of the genes that closed up our jaw muscles. So we have much thinner jaws. Because we have thinner jaws, this leaves a little more room in the skull — a few cubic centimeters for the brain to expand into. So, our brain was able to get a little bit bigger because we have a thinner jaw. Another surprise was a gene called APOE, which is a gene that was originally linked to allowing human beings to be able to eat more red meat because it manages cholesterol. Well, it turns out that the brain needs cholesterol, too. Brain cells called neurons have these long axons on them that help send information out. These axons have a sheath on them called myelin, and one of the major components of myelin turns out to be cholesterol. Some versions of the APOE gene do a better job bringing cholesterol where it’s needed, so it is linked in some general way to human intelligence — and also to brain plasticity, another important part of intelligence. Some genes lead to direct structural changes in the brain. There’s a gene called the LRRTMl gene (another terrible gene name). It helps determine exactly which patches of neurons control memory, speech, and other things like that. Brains actually vary as much as faces do; the patches shift around inside your head. Some versions of the LRRTMl gene can even reverse parts of the left and right brain. It also increases your chances of being left handed, which is one of the only known associations for that trait. I find this really fascinating: Scientists have found 3,100 base pairs of so-called junk DNA or non-coding DNA in chimpanzees that got deleted in human beings. This area of non-coding DNA helps stop out-of- control brain cell growth. Out-of-control brain cell growth may sound great because you can get a really big brain that way. Unfortunately, it also leads to tumors. So human beings really gambled in deleting this stretch of DNA, but it turns out the gamble paid off, and our brains ballooned as a result. I think that story shows it’s not always what we gain with DNA, but rather sometimes what we lose that helps make us human. Fall 2013 78 The point is that it’s not just one gene or one mutation that suddenly made human beings very smart. It was a suite of genes. A lot of different things worked together in very small bits and added up to giving us the general intelligence that we have. What Makes a Genius? But there are always those other scientists out there addressing what is still a really intriguing question. What does make genius? What makes some human beings smarter than others? What separates them from the rest of us? You might be thinking, “We know something about the DNA as to what made human beings, in general, smart. We also have Einstein’s brain. Maybe we can look at Einstein’s DNA to figure out what made him so smart.” Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out, and I’m going to finish up the Einstein story by explaining why. Thomas Harvey eventually lost his job in New Jersey and, tiring of life there, he took off for greener pastures in Kansas. In Kansas, he actually moved in next door to the author William Burroughs, so they were neighbors in Kansas. Einstein’s brain rode shotgun in Thomas Harvey’s car when he was going across the country, and Einstein’s brain got back on the road in 1998 when Harvey and the writer Burroughs got in a rented Buick and drove cross-country to California to visit Einstein’s granddaughter, Evelyn. Evelyn was a little weirded out when they showed up with grandpa’s brain, but she allowed them to come in for one reason: she was poor and didn’t have much money. She had a lot of trouble holding down a job. She reputedly wasn’t very smart, and so was not exactly an Einstein. In fact, she’d always been told that she had been adopted by Einstein’s son, Hans. But Evelyn had heard rumors that after Einstein’s wife died he actually ran around with a lot of different lady friends in the Princeton area. And she realized that she might actually be Einstein’s illegitimate child, and the adoption might have been a ruse. She wanted to get a paternity test to settle things once and for all, but unfortunately the embalming process Harvey used ended up denaturing the DNA inside the brain, so it ended up being useless. There might be other sources of Einstein’s DNA out there ... hairy mustache brushes, spittle on pipes, or sweat on violins. There are all these possibilities, but for now, we actually know more about the genes of Neanderthals who died 50,000 years ago than about the genes of a man who died in 1955. Washington Academy of Sciences 79 Surviving Hiroshima and Nagasaki One of my favorite stories in the book involves a man who was visiting Hiroshima in August of 1945 when he saw a plane flying overhead and a little tiny speck fell out of it at about 8:00 in the morning, the atomic bomb. He saw it go off, and was tlirown back and burned all over his body. Hiroshima was devastated but he decided, “I have to get out of here. I have to get back to my home town.” So he struggled for a few days and got to the train station and finally got going on a train. The next day he pulled into his home town which was Nagasaki, right in time for the next atomic bomb to go off! So he was probably one of the most unlucky men of the 20th century. But the kicker on this story is that he actually lived until 2010; he lived 65 extra years after the atomic bombs went off. In the book I talk a little about how it was possible that his DNA survived that and what probably set him apart from other similar people — because he should have gotten cancer. It has to do with DNA repair mechanisms. Summary: The Overarching Story As I say, there are a lot of other stories in the book, but the overarching theme is the bigger story about who we human beings are. Besides what we normally think are the benefits of genetics — things for our physical bodies like instant diagnoses or medical panaceas — I think one of the real impacts of genetics is going to be a sort of mental enrichment, even a kind of spiritual enrichment ... a deeper sense of who we human beings are ... where we came from ... how we fit in with other life on Earth ... all of these different things. Right now is really a special time with regard to these stories. A lot of them happened thousands upon thousands of years ago. They can serve as cornerstones or turning points into a history that we thought we’d never be able to learn about because they happened so long ago. But it turns out that our cells have been copying these stories inside us for millions (and sometimes for billions) of years. And it’s only in the past decade or decade and a half that we’ve really been able to read these stories for the first time. So I hope this talk tonight and I especially hope The Violinist’s Thumb has been able to capture that excitement of being able to read these stories for the very first time. Fall 2013 80 Question: What is the significance of the title of the book, The Violinist^s Thumb? It’s one of the stories from the book about the violinist Niccolo Paganini, usually considered the greatest violinist who ever lived. He was active in Europe around the 1800s. He played for kings, popes, and Napoleon, and all these types of people. There were rumors he sold his soul to Satan for his talent — that’s how good he was! But one of the real reasons he was good was that he had these amazing, freakishly flexible hands. For instance, he could bend his pinky then make a right angle with the rest of his hand. He could also put his hand down flat on a table and touch his thumb and pinky behind. He could do things with his hands that you should not be able to do with your hands. That was one of the reasons he was such an amazing violinist because he could move his hands all over the place ... stretch them incredibly wide ... do things that lesser violinists couldn’t. From a modem perspective, it’s almost certain he had a genetic disorder of some sort because he could do this with all of his joints. All of his joints were bending the wrong way all of the time. I chose this as the title story for a couple of reasons. One, it shows you can use DNA to get at something like music history where there didn’t seem to be much of a connection, but you can ultimately get some interesting insight. The other reason was it highlighted an important theme of the book. Paganini had these amazing hands, but he was also a very hard worker and loved playing music. So it was really his genetic endowments, his temperament, and his environment all coming together — a “perfect storm” of traits that made him who he was. It wasn’t just his genes; it was his genes, environment, and temperament all working together. That’s the meaning of The Violinist’s Thumb. References Kean, Sam. The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. 2010. Kean, Sam. The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius as Written by Our Genetic Code. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. 2012. Washington Academy of Sciences 81 Washington Academy of Sciences Annual Awards Banquet* October 10, 2013, Arlington, Virginia Washington Academy of Sciences Annual Awards Banquet, Fall 2013 Washington Academy of Sciences’ 2013 Annual Awards Banquet at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association conference center * Photos by Duy Tran Photography Fall 2013 82 Master of ceremonies Terrell Erickson, President-Elect of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and banquet speaker Sam Kean Keynote speaker Sam Kean engaging the group Washington Academy of Sciences 83 Author Sam Kean presenting stories from his book. The Violinist’s Thumb Fall 2013 84 Washington Academy of Sciences Past President Ai Teich (left) and Science Policy award recipient David Goldston Washington Academy of Sciences Awards Committee Chair Sethanne Howard presenting the Distinguished Career in Science award to astronomer Nancy Roman, NASA retired (In Absentia) Washington Academy of Sciences 85 Attendees enjoying the Awards Ceremony speakers David Goldston, Director of Government Affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, accepting the award for Science Policy Fall 2013 86 Al Teich, Research Professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs at the George Washington University, presenting the award for Science Policy Washington Academy of Sciences President-Elect Terrell Erickson presenting the Environmental Sciences award to recipient Dennis Thompson (not photographed). National Range and Grazing Lands Ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Washington Academy of Sciences 87 Wakefield High School (Arlington, Virginia) Assistant Principal Betty Sanders (left), who presented the Lamberton Award; award recipient Verlese Gaither, and Washington Academy of Sciences President Jim Egenrieder Verlese Gaither accepting the Lamberton Award for Elementary and Secondary Education Fall 2013 88 Stuart Antman, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Physical Science and Technology, presenting the award for Mathematics and Computer Sciences Mathematics and Computer Sciences award recipient Pete Stewart (left), Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland; and Stuart Antman Washington Academy of Sciences 89 Martin Apple (far left), Past President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents; Health Sciences award recipient Douglas Wear, Pathologist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; and Health Sciences award nominator Mina Izadjoo, Senior Distinguished Scientist and Director of the Diagnostics and Translational Research Center of the Henry Jackson Foundation Washington Academy of Sciences Vice President for Affiliated Societies Richard Hill Fall 2013 90 Katharine Gebbie (left) and Mathematics and Computer Sciences award recipient Mary Theofanos, Computer Scientist at the Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute for Standards and Technology Washington Academy of Sciences 91 Washington Academy of Sciences Past President James Cole of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Katharine Gebbie, a long-time director of the Physics Laborator>' at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (retired), presenting one of the awards for Mathematics and Computer Sciences Fall 2013 92 Nominator Bhatka Rath, Associate Director of Research at the Naval Research Laboratory, presenting award for Chemistry Carter White, Senior Scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, accepting the award for Chemistry Washington Academy of Sciences 93 Washington Academy of Sciences Vice President for Affiliated Societies, Richard Hill (left) and the Academy’s Secretary, Jeff Plescia Washington Academy of Sciences 2013 Awards Banquet attendees listening to keynoter Sean Kean Fall 2013 94 Washington Academy of Sciences 2013 Awards Program Awardee Award (and presenter) Nancy Grace Roman Distinguished Career in Science and Technology (presented by Sethanne Howard) Carter White Chemistry (presented by Bhatka Rath) Mary Theofanos Mathematics and Computer Sciences (presented by Katharine Gebbie) Pete Stewart Mathematics and Computer Sciences (presented by Stuart Antman) David Goldston Verlese Gaither Dennis Thompson Douglas Wear Science Policy (presented by Al Teich) Lamberton Award for Elementary and Secondary Education (presented by Betty Sanders) Environmental Sciences (presented by Terrell Erickson) Health Sciences (presented by Mina Izadjoo) Washington Academy of Sciences 95 In Memoriam Clifford Lanham (January 24, 1938 - September 18, 2013) Clifford E. Lanham, a long time member of the Washington Academy of Sciences and its delegate representing the Washington Area Chapter of the Technology Transfer Society (T2SDC), passed away on September 18, 2013. In the 1990s, Cliff established the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) technology transfer program and functioned as its first manager. He was active in the formation of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer and served as the ARL representative. Upon retiring from the Federal establisliment. Cliff served as a volunteer with the Rockville Economic Development Corporation where he played a lead role in establishing the highly- successful annual Post Doctoral career event. Cliff was a well-known and much respected participant in the Washington area technology transfer scene. He was a founding member of the Washington Area Chapter of the Technology Transfer Society and was a leader in creating meaningful programs. He was an active member of the T2SDC Board of Directors and managed the Technology Transfer and Innovation Forum presentations for the past several years. Cliff was passionate in his belief in the difference that technology transfer can make in society. His drive and enthusiasm for technology transfer was felt by many and he will be missed. Anyone wishing to communicate with Cliffs son, Alex Lanham, and Alex’s son Storm, may contact them at CliffLanhamMemorial@gmail.com. Memorial donations may be made to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Fall 2013 96 Washington Academy of Sciences 97 Washington Academy of Sciences 1200 New York Avenue, NW Room 1 1 3 Washington, DC 20005 Membership Application Please fill in the blanks and send your application to the Washington Academy of Sciences at the address above. We will contact you as soon as your application has been reviewed by the Membership Committee. 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Proctor (1931-2013) 53 Membership Application 55 Instructions to Authors 56 Affiliated Institutions 57 Affiliated Societies and Delegates 58 ISSN 0043-0439 Issued Quarterly at Washington DC Washington Academy of Sciences Founded in 1898 Board of Managers Elected Officers President James Egenrieder President Elect Terrell Erickson Treasurer Ronald Hietala Secretary Jeff Plescia Vice President, Administration Kathy Arle Vice President, Membership Sethanne Howard Vice President, Junior Academy Dick Davies Vice President, Affiliated Societies Richard Hill Members at Large Paul Arveson Michael P. Cohen Frank Haig, SJ. Mark Holland Neal Schmeidler Catherine With Past President Jim Cole Affiliated Society Delegates Shown on back cover Editor of the Journal Sally A. Rood The Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences The Journal \s the official organ of the Academy. It publishes articles on science policy, the history of science, critical reviews, original science research, proceedings of scholarly meetings of its Affiliated Societies, and other items of interest to its members. It is published quarterly. The last issue of the year contains a directory of the current membership of the Academy. Subscription Rates Members, fellows, and life members in good standing receive the Journal free of charge. Subscriptions are available on a calendar year basis, payable in advance. Payment must be made in U.S. currency at the following rates. U.S. and Canada $30.00 Other Countries $35.00 Single Copies (when available) $15.00 Claims for Missing issues Claims must be received within 65 days of mailing. Claims will not be allowed if non- delivery was the result of failure to notify the Academy of a change of address. Notification of Change of Address Address changes should be sent promptly to the Academy office. Notification should contain both old and new addresses and zip codes. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Academy of Sciences, Room 113, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20005 Academy Office Washington Academy of Sciences Room 113 1200 New York Ave. NW Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 326-8975 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences (ISSN 0043-0439) Published by the Washington Academy of Sciences (202) 326-8975 Email: iournal@washacadsci.orq Website: wvwv.washacadsci.ora 1 200 New York Ave Suite 113 Washington DC 20005 WWW. wash ac ad sc i. org Journal of the WASHINGTON i ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Volume 99 Number 4 Winter 2013 Contents Board of Discipline Editors ii Editor’s Comments S. Rood iii Modeling El Paso-Juarez Illicit Drug Networks; Policy Implications A. Pena and E. Schott 1 Future Directions for the U.S. Research and Innovation Enterprise D. L. Wince-Smith 17 Washington Academy of Sciences Membership Directory 2013 31 In Memoriam Dr. Abolghassem Ghaffari (1907-2013) 49 Dr. John H. Proctor (1931 -20 13) 53 Membership Application 55 Instructions to Authors 56 Affiliated Institutions 57 Affiliated Societies and Delegates 58 ISSN 0043-0439 Issued Quarterly at Washington DC Winter 2013 II Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences Editor Sally A. Rood, PhD sallY.rood2@gmail.com Board of Discipline Editors The Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences has an 11- member Board of Discipline Editors representing many scientific and technical fields. The members of the Board of Discipline Editors are affiliated with a variety of scientific institutions in the Washington area and beyond — government agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); universities such as George Mason University (GMU); and professional associations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Anthropology Astronomy Biology/Biophysics Botany Chemistry Environmental Natural Sciences Health History of Medicine Physics Science Education Systems Science Emanuela Appetiti eappetiti@hotmail.com Sethanne Howard sethanneh@, msn.com Eugenie Mielczarek mielczar@physics.gmu.edu Mark Holland maholland@salisburv.edu Deana Jaber diaber@marvmount.edu Terrell Erickson terrell.erickson 1 @wdc. nsda.gov Robin Stombler rstombler@aubumstrat.com Alain Touwaide atouwaide@hotmail.com Katharine Gebbie katharine.gebbie@.nist.gov Jim Egenrieder iim@deepwater.org Elizabeth Corona elizabethcorona@gmail.com Washington Academy of Sciences Ill Editor’s Comments Armando Pena and Elizabeth Schott of the West Point Military Academy have written an outstanding “Washington, DC-oriented” version of their paper that won the student paper competition at the 2nd annual Industrial and Systems Engineering World Conference. The paper is “Modeling El Paso-Juarez Illicit Drug Networks: Policy Implications,” and the conference was sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Systems Engineering, November 5-7, 2013, in Las Vegas. We congratulate the conference co-chairs who included Washington Academy of Sciences members Dr. Jeffrey Fernandez and Dr. Anand Subramanian. Also featured in this issue is the December 16, 2013 keynote speech by Deborah Wince-Smith, President and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, for the 40^*^ Anniversary Distinguished Speaker Series of the Science and Technology Policy Fellowships Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Throughout 2013 the series featured noted scholars, scientists, and policy leaders sharing their insights and discussing today’s most compelling science policy issues — issues with implications from national to global perspectives. This keynote speech was the concluding address for the series and is entitled, “Future Directions for the U.S. Research and Imiovation Enterprise” It is the custom for this Journal’s winter issue to include an annual directory of members of the Washington Academy of Sciences. This provides the opportunity to urge any readers who are not members to join, and for members to urge the libraries that they use to subscribe to the Journal. To find out how to do either, please contact Journal editor Sally Rood at sallv.rood2@gmail.com or see the Academy’s website, www.washacadsci.org. I’m sad to say that in this issue we are also reporting on the passing of a two long-time Academy members: Lifetime Fellow Dr. Abolghassem Ghaffari and former WAS President, Dr. John H. Proctor. Sally A. Rood, PhD, Editor Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences sallv.rood2@gmail.com Winter 2013 lli r 'ij ' j - -I. .■ • A ••O’; • ^ V ' : . 4 * r . ' .'. ’*j . '■■■'* .• r • , * ■■.• • f- i' ■ -i ''■ K- 1 -’-•’^- { •* ■ fi'^; •- Modeling El Paso-Juarez Illicit Drug Networks: Policy Implications* Armando Pena and Elizabeth Schott United States Military Academy, West Point, New York Abstract In the past decade, El Paso, Texas, has been considered one of the safest cities in the United States with a population over 500,000 people. Just across its border though, sits Ciudad Juarez, considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. There is a unique social ecosystem between the two cities, a product of many years of shared history and traditions. The El Paso-Juarez area also happens to be one of the most valuable plazas for the Mexican Drug Cartels. Now that the territory is dominated by one cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, drug trafficking through the area will likely increase and smuggling through border crossing check points will continue to be prevalent. The purpose of this research effort is to assist the Border Patrol in allocating its resources towards improved interdiction of illicit trafficking. Whether it is manpower, money, technology, or any other resource, the Border Patrol desires to efficiently allocate to maximize interdiction. This analysis is intended to suggest a tool that will assist in allocating resources and aid the extremely important effort to maintain El Paso, Texas, as the safest city in the U.S. by keeping drugs away from the streets. This research presents a network flow model of the complex illicit trafficking network operating in the El Paso-Juarez area, and provides insight that will aid agencies such as the Border Patrol in allocating its resources. Modeling El Paso-Juarez Illieit Drug Networks “El Paso welcomes you to the safest city in America,” a recorded voice tells travelers arriving at the city’s aiiport. With a rate of 1.9 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2010, the city of Texas’ western extremity ranked number one that year, and again in 2011 (Washington Office on Latin America, 2011) and in 2013, as the safest of all U.S. cities with a population over 500,000, according to a study by Congressional Quarterly Press. Whether measured in the $18 billion spent annually on border security, the 22,000 National Guard soldiers, the record number of *This paper was the winner of the student paper competition at the 2nd annual “Industrial and Systems Engineering World Conference,” November 5-7, 2013, in Las Vegas, Nevada, co-chaired by Dr. Jeffrey Fernandez, Dr. Anand Subramanian, and others. See http://www.ieworldconference.orR for more infomiation on the conference, sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Systems Engineering (SISE). Winter 2013 criminal deportations in the past four years, or the record-low immigrant apprehensions this past year, the fact is that the border has never been safer (Manning, 2013). However, Mexican cartels are in a state of war to control such crossings as this, and the fact is that drugs are flowing constantly through Juarez into El Paso and into the rest of the United States. On the other side of the border, the battle in Juarez, Mexico, over the control of drug trafficking into El Paso began in 2008. The Juarez Cartel, Beltran-Leyva Organization, and remnants of the Gulf Cartel (including Los Zetas) have been battling against the Joaquin Guzman- Loera (El Chapo), Ismael Zambada-Garcia, Juan Jose Esparragosa- Moreno, and Ignacio Coronel-Villarreal Organizations for control of drug trafficking in the Plaza (High Intensity Drug Trafficing Area Program, 2009). Since then, conflict has spread across much of Mexico’s north, as various cartels, street gangs, local police, and Mexican Army units battle for legitimate authority. The 2010 homicide rate was well over 200 per 100,000 residents. More than 9,000 people have been murdered in Juarez since 2009 (Washington Office on Latin America, 2011). As a fonner Juarez resident, before 2008, I [Pena] was able to go out with my friends at night, play at any park, walk anywhere, and visit other people in neighborhoods that we did not know. After 2008, the night life disappeared. Shootings at restaurants, bars, parks, hospitals, schools, and any other place you can imagine made our houses the only safe place. While the recent war among various gangs and drug cartels in Mexico has made Juarez, Mexico, one of the world’s most dangerous cities, El Paso, Texas, remains calm, even eerily prosperous. Still, some three million people are linked at this border, by ties of blood and commerce, and its fluid social ecosystem still retains something unique and emblematic and perhaps, worth saving. The fluid social ecosystem is based in tradition, family, and uniqueness. Most people living in Juarez have family and close friends on the other side of the border. The close relationship between the two border towns is deteriorating due to the violence as the drug cartels battle to control illicit drug trafficking through the area. The purpose of this effort is to conduct a detailed modeling investigation into the illicit drug trafficking network in the El Paso-Juarez border area based on a holistic system analysis. Our goal is to develop a viable model that can be used by the Border Patrol in the area of El Paso, Texas, to better allocate their resources, so people like me [Pena] and Washington Academy of Sciences 3 Other El Paso residents are able to feel more secure and assured that the drugs flowing in Juarez, Mexico, stay away from our streets, and more importantly, from our people. Through extensive research, analysis, and system engineering problem solving, we propose a simplified network flow model that estimates drug flow by mode of transport through ports of entry (POE) in El Paso. These results can provide insights to allocating Border Patrol resources. Federal Strategy Against Drugs Illicit drug use in America contributed to an estimated $193 billion in crime, health, and loss of productivity costs in 2007, the year for which the most recent estimate is available. The 2012 National Drug Control Strategy serves as the nation’s blueprint for reducing drug use and its consequences. Since 2009, the Federal Government has spent more than $31 billion on drug control, including $9.4 billion in fiscal year 2012 for U.S. Law Enforcement and Incarceration and $3.6 billion for Interdiction (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2012). The West Texas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area The West Texas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) encompasses El Paso and overall includes 10 counties in West Texas that lie along a 520-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico border. El Paso POE are extensively used by traffickers to smuggle drug shipments into the HIDTA region. Traffickers use private and commercial vehicles and couriers on foot to transport drug shipments into the U.S. The following are some examples of seizures that demonstrate the methods that traffickers use to conceal and transport illicit drugs into the HIDTA: 120 kg of marijuana concealed in the fuel tanks of a tractor-trailer at the Zaragoza POE seized in December 2008; 2.7 kg of marijuana packaged in bundles and taped to the legs and midsection of a pedestrian seized at the El Paso del Norte POE in October 2008. These examples are utilized to model illicit trafficking methods of transportation and their capacities (High Intensity Drug Trafficing Area Program, 2009). Border Patrol Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is one of the Department of Homeland Security’s largest and most complex components, with a priority of keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. It also has a responsibility for securing the border and facilitating lawful international Winter 20 13 4 trade and travel while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws and regulations, including immigration and drug laws (CBP, 2013). Today, the El Paso Sector is one of nine Border Patrol Sectors that run along the Southwest Border of the U.S. with Mexico. The sector is comprised of eleven stations and covers the geographical region of the entire state of New Mexico and two counties within far west Texas. The El Paso Sector employs approximately 2,400 Border Patrol agents, six permanent vehicle checkpoints and patrols 268 miles of international border encompassing 125,500 square miles (CBP, 2013). El Paso Sector is understaffed according to interviews by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). In 1993, there were 3,444 Border Patrol agents stationed along the entire U.S. -Mexico border, 608 of them in the El Paso Sector. By 2011 there were 18,506 Border Patrol agents along the border, 2,738 of them in the El Paso Sector. Although El Paso has seen growth in numbers, this growth has been by proportion lower than growth in other sectors contributing to El Paso, ranking only seventh in apprehensions (Washington Office on Latin America, 2011). Efficient allocation of personnel can improve interdiction efforts. The scope of this project initially focuses only on the El Paso-Juarez border within the El Paso Sector. Ports of Entry The El Paso-Juarez region’s international border crossings are a system of regional, statewide, and national significance. They facilitate billions of dollars of trade, providing access to schools and businesses, and contributing to a shared regional culture and lifestyle. Most drugs pass right under border guards’ noses, smuggled in some of the tens of thousands of cars and trucks that pass daily through these official ports of entry (POE). Historical data captures the volume of trucks, buses, privately- owned vehicles (POV), and pedestrians moving through the POE from Juarez to El Paso by bridge and by month for 2011 (U.S. Customs Service and Border Protection, 2012). This data will be used to estimate the capacity of each POE that will be used in our model. For example, in January at the Paso Del Norte POE, there were 197,558 POVs and 342,956 pedestrians crossing. Additionally, drug seizure data is also available in order to estimate the amount of drugs transported across the border. Border Patrol seized 27,482 kg of illegal drugs at the El Paso area POE in fiscal year 2010. Although seizure amounts are broken down into Washington Academy of Sciences 5 various drug types (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine), we will model drugs as a whole, estimating the annual combined supply of drugs the Sinaloa Cartel is attempting to ship (High Intensity Drug Trafficing Area Program, 2009). Methods of Crossing Illegal Drugs Most drugs cross into the U.S. through the main POE in trucks and POVs. Pedestrians also cross drugs by hiding them in their boots, jackets, pockets, or other creative ways. Ultra-light aircraft and tunnels are also used. Mexican organized crime groups use ultra-light aircraft to drop marijuana bundles in fields and desert scrub across the U.S. border. The incursions are hard to detect and are on the upswing. The pilots release 250 pound (110 kg) payloads that land on the American territory (Marosi, 2011). We will use the capacity of the ultra-light aircrafts in our model. Drug-smuggling tunnels are very rare in El Paso. However, in June 2010, Border Patrol discovered a tunnel used by traffickers stretching 130 feet under the concrete-lined Rio Grande. Though small, dark and unventilated, the tunnel allowed people to crawl from Mexico to the U.S. The Border Patrol found 90 kg of marijuana inside the tunnel and arrested a 17-year-old from Mexico (Hinojosa, 2010). Consequently, our model will use five methods of transportation to include trucks, POV, and pedestrians through the main POE, and ultra-light aircraft and tunnels through the wilderness area in the Anapra vicinity. Measuring Border Patrol Effectiveness and Allocating Resources The 2012-2016 Border Patrol Strategic Plan establishes the approach that the Border Patrol uses in designing operations to meet their diverse challenges in policing the U.S. border. This Border Patrol’s plan “builds on the foundation of the 2004 National Border Patrol Strategy, which guided the acquisition and deployment of significant additional resources — personnel, technology, and infrastructure — to support execution of the Border Patrol’s mission” (CBP, 2013). The current Strategic Plan implements operations on a risk-based approach, focused on “identifying high risk areas and flows and targeting our response to meet those threats” (CBP, 2013). In essence, the Border Patrol deploys resources to meet the highest priority threats. However, how the Border Patrol actually defines the highest priority threats and allocates resources to target those threats remains somewhat elusive. Winter 2013 6 The Strategic Plan incorporates two goals in support and each goal has five sub-objectives. Their first goal is to Secure America’s Borders and their second goal is to Strengthen the Border Patrol. Within this structure, the Border patrol has developed an initial framework with the intent to measure operational and tactical effectiveness. However, they have not yet developed good performance measures to use within this framework to analyze the effectiveness of their operations and truly understand how well they are achieving their results given their resources. Stated within the Strategic Plan, the Border Patrol is continuing to develop and continually to refine “comprehensive, demanding, and results -driven performance measures that hold us to account. Even as the organization internalizes these standards, it also must effectively communicate overall performance to its most important stakeholders — the American public” (CBP, 2013). The Strategic Plan itself suggests the Border Patrol can improve how they currently allocate their resources. Additionally, in December of 2012, the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to review how the Border Patrol managed its resources, specifically at the southwest border and in particular to examine “the extent to which the Border Patrol has identified mechanisms to assess resource needs under its new strategic plan” (GAO, 2012). In its examination, the GAO found shortfalls. Two key results from the GAO study highlight the challenges that the Border Patrol was experiencing: 1) “Southwest Border Sectors Scheduled Agents Differently across Border Zones and Enforcement Activities”; and 2) “Data Limitations Preclude Comparing Effectiveness of Resource Deployment across Locations” (GAO, 2012). The report highlighted that there are multiple factors that Border Patrol agents considered in deploying resources, to include the local terrain, the different types of infrastructure, and the technology available. Ultimately the GAO concluded that the Border Patrol still needs to develop goals and performance measures in order to assess efforts and appropriately allocate resources: “Given the nation’s ongoing need to identify and balance competing demands for limited resources, linking necessary resource levels to desired outcomes is critical to informed decision making ... The establishment of such Washington Academy of Sciences 7 goals could help guide future border investment and resourees decisions” (GAO, 2012). The primary ehallenge in allocating resources is summed up by Cliristopher Wilson, an assoeiate at the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, when he stated, “We are talking about measuring illicit activity, which by definition is hidden” (Sukumar, 2013). The RAND Homeland Security and Defense Center published a study supported by the Department of Homeland Security through the National Center for Border Seeurity and Immigration that approaches the problem using pattern analysis and systematic randomness to allocate Border Patrol resourees (Predd, Willis, Setodji, & Stelzner, 2012). RAND’s analysis eoncludes that allocating resources by combining pattern analysis and randomness the Border Patrol will achieve greater interdiction rates than either approach alone. Ultimately however, RAND acknowledged that the value of this approach depends on how well future illegal trafficking flow matches historical flow. Research suggests that data limitations will provide a continuing challenge to the Border Patrol in measuring effectiveness in order to alloeate resources as effectively as they possibly could. Our modeling approach will take a unique perspeetive over other approaehes in attempting to quantify the likely flow of illicit drugs through each POE by mode of transport and by month in order to provide insights into allocating Border Patrol resources. Network Flow Model Network flow models have a wide range of applicability to real world problems. They are usually used in airlines, transportation companies, distribution centers, and many other scenarios where something needs to be sent or transported from a source to a destination using a certain transport method. Flow is assoeiated with the network, entering and leaving at the nodes and passing through the arcs. Flow is conserved at each node, implying that the total flow entering a node, either from arcs or external supplies, must be equal to the total leaving the node, either to arcs or to the external demands. The arc flows are deeision variables for the network flow programming model. The flow is limited in an arc by the lower and upper bounds on flow. Sometimes the term capacity refers to the upper bound on flow. Such limiting attributes are very important for the formulation of our network flow model (Chinneck, 2001). Winter 2013 8 Network Flow Modeling Approach and Problem Statement Our refined problem statement is to develop a practical model that can be incorporated into the tools and techniques of the Border Patrol, El Paso area, and offer insights into the allocation of resources to the different Ports of Entry to affect illicit trafficking. We will utilize a network flow model to represent the illicit drug smuggling network. We label the Sinaloa Cartel as the supplier, their methods of transportation through routes or POE as the arcs or routes, and the U.S. as the demand. Understanding the complexity of illicit drug trafficking, we made a conscious decision to narrow our focus to the El Paso-Juarez area. Narrowing our area of focus is intended to provide better localized results. Defining the Network We identify the source or supply node of our network as being the Sinaloa Cartel in Juarez and the destination or demand node as the U.S. We identify six different routes or arcs representing the main crossing points used by the Sinaloa Cartel to illegally cross the drugs. Each route has different methods that can be used to transport drugs. Figure 1 shows the network outline of our model. The five methods modeled include Trucks, POVs, Pedestrians, Ultra-light Aircraft, and Tunnels. Each method is modeled as having an average capacity as follows: A = Trucks (120 kg per truck); B = POVs (30 kg per POV); C = Pedestrians (3 kg per person); D = Ultra-light aircraft (110 kg per aircraft); E = Tunnels (90 kg per trip). Some methods are not employed on some routes. Methods of transportation for each route are as follows: i(l) = A, B, C; i(2) = A, D, E; i(3)= B, C; i(4)= B; i(5) = A, B, C; i(6) = A, B, C. The maximum capacity for each route by method is modeled as the largest month of the year. For example, in the Paso del Norte POE (route 3) the maximum number of pedestrians that crossed in 201 1 is 358,277 in December, which gives the upper bound for the pedestrians in route 3. We modeled the maximum capacity of each of the methods by month for each of the routes this way. Once we identified all the routes, methods of transportation, and the capacities for each, we developed the linear programming of our network flow. Decision Variables The decision variables will change in order to maximize the objective function. In this model, the decision variables are the amount of drugs the cartels are able to smuggle through each route organized by Washington Academy of Sciences 9 method of transportation and month. The total amount of drugs at each route is a sum of the drugs smuggled by each method of transportation used and the month of the shipment. They are represented by each leg, or arc, in the maximization flow network. X,jk = Amount of drugs in kilos sent through route / by method of transportation j during month k Supply (Sinaloa Cartel) i(l) = Santa Teresa, NM, POE i(2) = Anapra Vicinity i(3) ^ Paso del Norte POE i(4) = Stanton POE i(5) = Americas POE i(6) = Zaragoza POE Demand (U.S.) Figure 1. Network Outline The costs along these arcs are usually modeled as a function of actual cost in dollars. However, it is very difficult to gather accurate information regarding the costs that cartels spend transporting the drugs. Instead we model cost as gain (in percentage). For example, the cartels have a higher risk of losing their drugs if inspections at the POE are stricter, which could be represented with a lower gain percentage. If Winter 2013 10 inspections are quick and not enforced, there is a lower percentage of getting caught, which is represented with a higher gain percentage. For example, if we analyze the data, February seems to have very low traffic in the official POE. Low traffic volume allows the CPB agents to conduct more meticulous inspections. The cartels have a higher risk to get caught and a lower gain value. During Christmas time, there are a lot of people traveling in and out of the U.S. Border Patrol agents are required to keep inspection times to a minimum since people trying to cross to the U.S. may take up to three hours waiting in line to get inspected. Then, there is a lower risk to get caught and a higher gain value. As an example, 200 metric tons of drugs were seized from the 378 metric tons estimated to have been shipped to the U.S. from South America in 2009 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011). We use this approximation of 53% loss in seizures to model the gain value in our formulation. We assumed that each POE will reach a maximum gain value of 100% when it is at its maximum capacity (busiest), and a gain value of 47% when it is at its lowest capacity (slowest). Any capacity between the lowest and maximum capacity will be calculated with a linear relationship between those two values. As an example, at the Americas POE (route 5), February had the fewest number of trucks, POVs and Pedestrians through the route during the year. It is assumed that the Border Patrol is able to be more meticulous with inspections during the slower months leading to a higher likelihood of interdiction, and in turn less gain for the traffickers. The gain assumed is only 47% for each of these methods in February. The busiest month for Trucks and POVs is August resulting in a 100% gain and the busiest month for Pedestrians is December resulting in a 100% gain. Each other month’s gain is derived based on the relative monthly volume of traffic by method. This process is applied to every month and method of transportation at every route. Objective Function and Constraints The objective of the network flow is seen through the cartel point of view. In order for the Border Patrol to optimize its allocation of its resources, whether it is money, manpower, or any other resource, they have to be able to anticipate the cartel’s move. It is more convenient to create a model that mirrors the cartel’s rational course of action, which is to maximize its revenue. Therefore, our model will maximize the amount of drugs being smuggled into the U.S. The principle equation of our Washington Academy of Sciences network flow model follows. 6 5 12 max: 9i jk * jk (1) i=l ; = 1 k=l In equation (1), g is the gain value and x is the amount of drugs being transported to the U.S. in kilograms (kg) by each route, method of transportation, and by month. We will utilize the maximized decision variables from each route for the analysis. For example, once we run the network flow model in a linear program, we will be able to see the amount of drugs being smuggled at each node per method of transportation per month. We can use that information to compare it with the optimized amount from all other nodes and see where and when the drugs are being shipped. We can compare the data from each route to see where it may make sense to allocate more resources each month. An important assumption is the initial amount of drugs the Sinaloa Cartel is trying to ship. As discussed previously, the 2011 World Drug Report estimated that 53% of the total drugs is seized. If the Border Patrol was able to seize 27,482 kg in fiscal year 2010, we can assume that the initial amount of drugs that the cartels have to cross to the U.S. is 51,853 kg. Since we don’t know the actual route(s), month(s), and method(s) of transportation the Sinaloa Cartel used to smuggle the 24,371 kgs successfully into the U.S., we assume that the cartels equally distribute the drugs per month and per route in order to keep up with the demand in all areas of El Paso. Consequently, we used the amount 339 kg per route per month (Limitjk ). These are the final constraints: Xijk ^ Capacity ij;. (2) 5 (3) Xijk = dj * XimitSijk (4) Winter 2013 12 Equation (2) ensures that the amount of drugs crossed through each route is not greater than the capacity of each route. Equation (3) limits the amount of drugs transported due to the initial supply of the cartel, and equation (4) converts every unit of transportation into amount of drugs the cartel smuggles in kilograms depending on the capacity of each method of transportation (d). As a final constraint, we assumed non-negativity for our X variables. Method for Solving and Results Although this initial network flow model is simplified with only two nodes and can be solved in Microsoft Excel, we chose CPLEX. IBM ILOG CPLEX is a high-performance mathematical programming solver for linear programming. Its technology enables decision optimization for improving efficiency, reducing costs, and increasing profitability (IBM, 2013). CPLEX gives the opportunity to easily adjust the decision variables, objective function, and constraints to make changes to the model. This software can be used in the way ahead by adding many more constraints and decision variables since IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimizer has solved problems with millions of constraints and variables (IBM, 2013). With the intent to expand the network flow structure in future work, we used CPLEX as the method for solving this optimization problem. We set up the linear program to have the optimal solution output both amount of drugs in kilograms crossed into the U.S. and the units of each specific method of transportation being utilized to cross the drugs. Analyzing the output associated with our decision variables {Xjjk = Amount of drugs in kilos sent through route / by method of transportation j during month k), can provide insights into the likely methods of transportation used each month at each route which in turn can aid the Border Patrol to focus their inspections in either the truck line, POV line, or the pedestrian line at a given POE. Figure 2 shows example output results. Output results for November show that at routes 1, 4, and 6, traffickers will maximize their gain by smuggling through the POV line. In turn, CPB should focus their inspections more in the POV line. They should have extra manpower, sniffing dogs, or other resources available in those POV lines. Route 2 will experience some activity in the truck line and there is the possibility of a run through a tumiel in the Anapra vicinity. Routes 3 and 5 will have more activity in the pedestrian line of those two POE. Our model will provide the Border Patrol with viable insights to focus their inspection efforts and allocation of resources on a specific method of transportation. Washington Academy of Sciences November 120 100 80 ■£ 60 3 40 20 0 > O a. 0/ 73 O Cl. Route 1: Santa Teresa, NM, POE ■November, 0 > C ly) ■^L > C sn > > C CO > C D o ^ O) u O C c ^ Q. h- fZ TO O O C c 3 o TO 'v- TO O u 5 L- — 3 u Q. TO TO O O C c 3 h- u Q. TO TO O e c o ■D O Cl. < _c QO D 1— o ■D O Ci_ < op 3 1—