MILLIONS of North Americans found themselves plunged into darkness when the power failed on the night of 14 August. Light returned to most within hours 鈥� but very little has so far been shed on the cause of North America鈥檚 biggest blackout ever.
Congress recently summoned engineers and scientists to Washington to ask them what went wrong with the electricity grid. Too early to tell, they said.
This was the perfect answer. Democrats could blame Republicans for deregulating power companies, letting them buy and sell electricity in an open market and skimp on investment. Republicans could accuse greens of using the blackout to push 鈥渕arginal鈥� technologies such as solar cells and windmills to create some sort of hippy energy nirvana. Some could then say it was now time to end the long tug-of-war over drilling for oil in Alaska鈥檚 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though oil isn鈥檛 used to make electricity in the US.
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Then others could counter by saying that what the US really needs is the construction of enough transmission lines to carry power around the country. To that industry executives could reply: yes please, but how do you plan to persuade citizens to let us string new cables over their backyards?
One witness told Congress that it might take a year to piece together what went wrong. But legislators are determined finally to pass a bill creating an energy policy. The country has none, while the bill has languished for almost three years. This raises the possibility that Congress may try to fix the electricity grid before anyone knows what caused it to fail, in keeping with its unwritten credo that the appearance of motion 鈥� no matter where 鈥� is always better than standing still.
A KEY recommendation of the Gehman committee, investigating the Columbia space shuttle accident, was that 鈥渙nly significant structural changes to NASA鈥檚 organisational culture鈥� will enable the space agency to succeed in the future. But bureaucracy is a tenacious beast.
Federal rules governing agency activities can slow the best intentions to a crawl. Take NASA鈥檚 draft 鈥淪tatement of Work鈥� for public comment on a proposed International Space Station Research Institute, released this month.
鈥淣ASA seeks comments from industry, academia, organisations and individuals regarding contracting to a non-government organisation to establish an Institute for International Space Station research management,鈥� according to the accompanying press release.
The space agency, in other words, is asking people to say what they think of creating a new institute. Next, it will seek comments from people who actually want to set one up. With luck, that phase of the project can begin a year from now.
So in two years or so the institute might actually begin giving advice about planning and coordinating future use of the ISS. Good thing it鈥檚 not responsible for safety.
Speaking of safety, it seems that on Saturday 6 September contractors working on a new weather satellite dropped it from a height of approximately 1 metre onto the ground, where it tipped over before coming to rest. Ooops!
