Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 5:58pm
Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 5:58pm
A lot of loose ends are floating around my head, so this will be a news edition.
First off, just before leaving work we watched the successful launch of the last X43 scramjet. This was built for NASA to test an old rocket theory for scooping oxygen at high speeds instead of carrying oxygen aloft in a heavy super-cooled tank. The goal was to reach Mach 10, which is something like 7,000mph, two miles per second, or roughly about 40% of the speed needed to reach LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
According to downlink telemetry, it looks like they may have fallen just shy of Mach 10, but certainly near enough considering the extreme conditions of sending a Pegasus booster rocket sideways through the atmosphere instead of into space where it normally has little air resistance. In fact, the last attempt failed for this very reason – the booster skin overheated due to atmospheric friction and all sorts of nasty things happened as consequence before the X43 could be set loose. Perhaps in 30 years some version of this will be used to get stuff into space. But there is no money left, and more likely – after a round of sustained self-congratulation – yet one more promising design will be heaved atop the amazingly mountainous cinder cone of dead-end space initiatives.
Back on earth, Mass Pike traffic races west though it looks like we’re making slightly better time. And as I contemplate the vagaries of Mach 10 versus the notion of a train at Mach 1/12th we zoom past Auburndale Station, then dive into the wilderness between Route 128 and Wellesley Farms with nary a lamplight visible except the occasional twinkle from distant headlights signaling between a thousand naked tree branches.
Past Wellesley Farms, civilization returns, but with far less splendor. The world is now decidedly horizontal again with few buildings more than two stories tall. All of this is presented to my eyes as spots of light and I must depend on memory and creativity to reconstruct forms that must truly underlie these reference points. Roads are mere strings of periodic street lamps. Parking lots are defined by scattered cars parked in well-lit spaces. After Wellesley College – for a mile at least – it is entirely dark again, and I wonder just who has enough money to endure the taxes on so much undeveloped land.
Into the night we roll on invisible wheels stopping at dimly-lit stations much the same way as the first trains of 170 years ago. Those who fought in the Civil War rode this line, people who knew George Washington, most likely as well. Unless a better way can be found to move vast tonnage overland, no one in the future will see the Worcester Line any differently than we see it today, at least until the seas rise to swamp coastal cities in a hundred years or two, or once we travel to the stars to build railroads on distant worlds.
Drifting into view, Framingham Station is very much a terrestrial place with my high-sounding rhetoric seeming a bit out of place as we lumber through the poorest sections of this town. This is where muggings could happen at night while waiting for a train. But mainly I don’t worry. For some reason I feel that I can evaluate that sort of risk – even if it is far more dangerous than amorphous risks I can’t begin measure competing for my attention.
Once again I come full circle back to my internal debate. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt may not be at the core of all thought, but it acts as an important dimension, since everything said with conviction arrives with some measure of these elements – even if the speaker refuses to acknowledge any of it.
Ashland Station waits as we roll fast through one last apparent wilderness.
Now I must bid adieu.
