The Meeting: Space Dustup

  "Okay Rex," said Drachir. "Go. Space dust."
  "Well, first, let me talk about some Earth dust," said Rex. He took a small plastic sample bag out of his pocket. The bag contained a quantity of what looked like ordinary household dust. "This is something the Tech department recently whipped up. I believe Charles helped." Charles made a little mock-bow in his seat. Rex continued, "It may not look like much, but this is a surveillance camera, recorder, and transmitter. The thing about it that I'm interested in is the optical properties." Using his Blacknet cell phone, Rex put some displays up on the big screen. "Here's the spectroscopic analysis of the index of refraction at various wavelengths. This diagram uses the refraction data to ray-trace the internal path of the incident light. As you can see, it's focused internally on the phototransistor grid."
  Rex took another sample bag out of his pocket. This one contained just a pinch of dust, darker than the first sample. "This was recovered in the BSU museum after the recent bogey sighting," said Rex. He flash more displays on the big screen. "The optical properties are very interesting. Even though the index of refraction is higher than in our dust..."
  "That's pretty high," said Charles. "It looks like...is it diamond?"
  "I believe it is high-quality synthetic diamond. Flawless, as near as I can tell. As you can see, the ray-tracing diagram shows that in the museum sample the light is also focused internally, on something that just might be an image raster. The image raster is composed of and is connected to a complex of organic compounds that may represent some kind of organic circuitry. Justin, you've looked into that. Do you concur?"
  "I can give you a definite maybe," said Justin. "It could be some kind of circuitry."
  "I can't show you the third sample," said Rex. "It was collected in aerogel by a stratospheric drone. Most of it looks like ordinary space dust, but one grain in ten thousand matches our possible surveillance dust here. Spectroscopic analysis of grains in space suggests that a similar ratio matches the museum dust sample."
  "Wasn't there supposed to be a space probe that was going to take samples of the dust orbiting the sun?" asked Benny. "Whatever happened to that?"
  Rex glanced down, dreading what would come next. He would have to answer Benny's question, then he and Charles would get into it..
  Drachir shifted irritably in his seat. He saw it coming, too.
  "It was canceled because NSA needed the funds for the Mars mission," said Rex.
  "You know...," Charles began. Drachir folded his arms and gave a small, impatient grunt. "...for what we're spending on the manned Mars mission, we could cover the planet with rovers and flying drones."
  "We need to learn how to survive in space," said Rex. "All our eggs are in one basket -- the Earth. If something happens to the Earth, the human race is doomed."
  The lights flickered briefly, and the surge protectors in the building bleeped as they registered a power glitch.
  "That's been happening a lot lately," said Mal, frowning.
  "Power distribution on the East Coast has pretty much been taken over by Plenty, Incorporated," said Charles.
  "That's the AmCap subsidiary?" said Drachir. AmCap was somewhat notorious for dealing with quality issues by arranging for big campaign donations to be given to interested politicians.
  "Yeah," said Charles. "They're pretty big in the Midwest, too."
  "I thought deregulation was supposed to foster competition," said Mal.
  "Plenty's pretty much out-competed everyone else," said Charles.
  "We're getting well beyond the scope of this meeting," said Drachir. "Can we get back to the topic at hand?"
  "I don't think we're ready for a manned mission to Mars," said Charles. Drachir put his hand over his eyes. "I think we should go in with the Russians on their space resort project."
  "That's just for a bunch of rich fat cats who think the Mile High Club isn't exclusive enough any more!" said Rex. "There isn't going to be any science being done there!"
  "I have to admit, the only space science I've seen recently that actually required humans to be in space involved studying humans in space," said Benny.
  "You're not helping," said Rex.
  "Rex, why don't you drop by Long Ley this afternoon and see how the mission planning is coming along," said Drachir. "You can take the tilt-rotor and be back here tonight for the light show."
  Rex bit back an intemperate reply. Long Ley Aerospace Force Base was all the way out on the coast, three hundred miles away. Even with the Company tilt-rotor, that was an hour out and an hour back. Plus, while he was intensely interested in the mission itself, he hated talking to the bureaucrats in charge. They didn't really understand what was at stake. "Do you still want me at the university this morning?" he asked.
  "Of course," said Drachir with what surely wasn't a sadistic little smile.
  Damn busy day, Rex thought. However, the thing with Dr. Reimer's lab intrigued him. Up until now it had seemed that Drachir had been keeping Rex away from the stasis field investigation, which was odd, since of all the operatives he knew about, Rex had the most relevant knowledge second only to Reimer himself. Now that Drachir was letting him in on it, Rex really couldn't say no. So he decided not to complain about the day's workload.
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Author's note: Wikipedia on optical lens design, digital cameras, the stratosphere.
Using aerogel to collect space dust.
Surveillance dust. A more advanced and paranoid version. If this guy's right the transparent society is already here, at least for some people.
Best argument for manned space flight that I could find. If you think that's lame, you should have seen the others. On the other hand, this critique of the US space shuttle and the ISS raises some pretty damning points.
Electricity deregulation -- the energy corporations are all for it, of course, but other people have found the results disappointing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031101603.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0425/p02s01-usec.html
This may be because power generation and distribution may be natural monopolies. If one company can supply power for a lower price than two companies can, then competition can never get started. The results achieved by electricity deregulation -- the failure of meaningful competition to arise -- suggest that electricity is indeed a natural monopoly, as economists have long suspected.
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