Revisiting Autonomous / Self-Driving Car Rants

On October 19, 2014, I posted a very derisive take on the idea we were going to see autonomous vehicles any time soon. This was 2 years and a couple months before the “google self driving car project” was spun out as Waymo, and way before that weird lawsuit between Waymo and Uber.

The legislative environment has become substantially more autonomous vehicle friendly. As of April 2017, according to wikipedia, public road testing was legal in 23 states and DC. Driverless testing also legal in Michigan.

https://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/2014/10/19/

Let’s start with the list of why the Waymo car is the Worst Driver Ever

Waymo can’t drive in the snow.

In March of this year, Waymo was trying to drive in the snow.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/27/waymos-self-driving-van-heads-to-tahoe-for-some-time-in-the-snow/

Turns out, they were also testing it in heat:

https://qz.com/1029644/waymo-googl-took-a-self-driving-car-to-californias-death-valley-to-make-sure-it-could-withstand-the-heat/

(That wasn’t on my list of problems to be addressed.)

Waymo is also testing in the rain (altho it is a little worrisome that the level of rain they are testing for is in Kirkland. Seriously.)

http://mashable.com/2017/02/14/drive-ai-rain-demonstration/

In the above article, a different self driving package (retrofit) dealt with a bad human driver cutting them off at a four way stop, a broken traffic light, night time and rain.

Last week, Waymo released an update on what it could deal with. Here is Timothy B. Lee (not Tim Berners-Lee, and honestly, this Tim has caught my eye for producing head scratching nonsense several times already, so don’t trust it too much)’s take on it.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/5-things-we-learned-from-waymos-big-self-driving-car-report/

There is a link to the actual filing Waymo did:

https://waymo.com/safetyreport/

Can handle night time and light rain (Kirkland!) but will be geo-fenced. Waymo continues to _only_ drive on its map. Apparently, Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix.

So. In much the same way that your in-laws who you decided you won’t let drive your kids around Ever Again move to places like Arizona because it’s a lot easier to drive out there, Waymo is going to release its first cars in Arizona. Because being a bad driver is a lot easier to survive there than many other places. (If you are wondering how I can safely get away with making snotty remarks about in-laws, it is because _my_ in-laws moved to Florida, so none of this could possibly be about them. My apologies if you live in Arizona. You may keep wondering what exactly I mean by that. I am, too.)

That Blue Origin Engine and the Impact of Rockets on Atmosphere

Recently, Blue Origin successfully tested one of their engines, the big one.

Here is coverage at ars:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/blue-origin-has-successfully-tested-its-powerful-be-4-rocket-engine/

Probably should do the disclosure thing here: I used to work for the elf with the maniacal laugh. I'm about as big a fangirl as it is possible to be, since I was a customer at his other company before 1995 wrapped up, and working for it by the following spring. Every couple of days, I think of El Jefe, and go, I love you, dude! And I love the life I have, because I interviewed with you and you seemed like -- unlike a lot of other software types with entrepreneurial dreams -- you were okay with the money side of things (<-- still slightly embarrassed by how badly I underestimated him. But only slightly.). There _will_ be bias if he's anywhere in the picture.

"This engine, the liquid natural gas-powered BE-4, has been closely watched both within the aerospace industry and in military space because it uses innovative new technology, has largely been developed with private funding, and is fully reusable."

When I read this sentence, I went, weird. They left out the environmental issue. Entirely. But I don't think that was an accident, as such.

People who luuuuuurrrrvvveeee space development really don't like what rockets do to the atmosphere, so mostly, they hope that all of the people who they are trying to convince to support their outside-the-atmosphere dreams (Other Planets! Mining Asteroids! Orbital Colonies! Hydroponics! Beaming Solar Power to Earth! etc.) will fail to notice the really, really nasty shit that happens when you put a payload on top of a pillar of fire.

(The Raptor Engine, mentioned in the same article, is using the same fuel, or a very closely related fuel, as the BE-4.)

Traditionally, rockets have been fueled with Other Stuff. We never did actually do any of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket

But if you read the whole thing, you'll see that that idea was never entirely tabled, either; they just decided not to attempt it for launch from Earth.

Most _actual_ rockets have run on something that is more or less kerosene. Which sounds spectacularly weird when written down, because, wait, like hurricane lanterns? Yep, like that.

A characteristic of kerosene is that it produces a good amount of black soot when burned. And that is true even when burned in a rocket, and that black soot being deposited in the upper atmosphere is one of a number of worrisome things associated with rockets before this new generation being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX. That black soot almost certainly will contribute to global warming; right now, few launches ("low cadence") means not a lot of soot; lots of launches would mean enough that probably we would need to factor that into global warming calculations. Other factors: alumina (which might be reflective and bounce heat out -- but probably would absorb IR and increase warming) and, worst of all, chlorine gas combining with other shit and eating up the ozone layer that we went to all that trouble over aerosols and old-school refrigerants to try to preserve.

As near as I can tell, this new generation of rocket engine won't make soot in the upper atmosphere, nor will it create chlorine oxides that eat up the ozone, nor will it do anything with alumina whatevers that are still a bit of a wild card in models. It may do something really, really awful, but if it will, I can't find any indication of that anywhere obvious. And it sort of looks like Musk and Bezos are genuinely trying to address the pollution / climate impact of rockets, along with the cost problem.

Which is basically all I'm looking for. I don't point at problems to make people _stop_. I point at problems to make sure that people devote resources to assessing and maybe addressing before progressing. Pretending those problems aren't there, or don't count, or can safely be hidden from the suspicious public does not impress me.

We still have a massive problem in terms of human exploration and development, because the shielding thing is going to be tough to solve. But if we can bring ourselves to take seriously the radiation hazards outside our atmosphere, I'm reasonably certain we can come up with a strategy there as well.

Friday evening text message

I got an FB message from a cousin (by marriage, on my dad's side) with condolences on the death of my mother. She had attended the memorial and was thinking of me on the way home.

I said thanks, what? (<-- not an exact quote).

My mother died on October 1. I found out about 3 weeks later, quite by accident. My younger sister was also not notified, and some of the cousins on my mom's side (two of her nephews and their families) were also not notified. The cousins who _were_ notified, assumed I already knew -- a reasonable assumption.

This was not an oversight. The sister who was in charge of the memorial made a point of getting my contact information when I saw her in person in Seattle in April. My father has _always_ told me of all the deaths in the family and any funerals and memorials as they came along. With the exception of calling me to tell me about his liver cancer and my mother's declinining health shortly before her death, that's basically the only time he ever contacts me, because Jehovah's Witnesses --- which my parents and the sister who did not contact me still are -- believe that contact with family members who have left the organization must be cut off completely, with a very limited exemption for family business. But it's a mystery why they decided not to tell my that my mother died.

I sent belated condolences via email to my father, to ensure he had all my current contact information (again) and I'll send a letter. I called a cousin who I am close to (he hadn't heard either; my mother was his aunt, and a mutual uncle died earlier in the year), and felt better after talking to him.

I didn't sleep well. Being reminded forcibly of the mean-spirited crazy that is my family of origin, well, it is hard to maintain emotional equilibrium in the face of that.

Please do not send condolences for my loss. I know that's the formula, and I usually encourage people to stick to the etiquette formula, but in this case, what I'm really looking for is agreement that, yeah, it's super weird and basically wrong to not tell someone that their mother died for three weeks after the fact. I don't care _how_ serious the rift is in the family. Memorials are for the living, not the dead, and people went to that memorial hoping to see me. The sister who ran the thing and didn't tell me said she didn't know why I wasn't there and attributed the estrangement to me. I don't know that I would or would not have gone to the memorial. I certainly didn't want that decision taken entirely away from me. And I would have spent the last three weeks communicating with other family members had I known what had happened.

Well, sure I'm estranged from _her_ by choice. She sexually molested me extensively. I want nothing to do with her. Losing contact with her was one of the best things about Not Being a Jehovah's Witness Any More. Her continued membership in that organization is solid evidence in my mind that it is in no way representative of any just deity.

But being estranged from the rest of my family was never my choice and I've done everything I can think of -- short of harassment and stalking -- to repair that rift. My mother was a major participant in ensuring the distance was as great as possible. But her death is clearly not going to lead to any kind of repair attempts on the other side.

So the next time someone tells you, oh, Jehovah's Witness are Nice People, well, don't you you believe it. And if they tell you, they don't really shun their ex-members, don't believe that, either.