Untitled Document

26 September 2003

E-Bulletin Backscatter

Sheldon,

I greatly enjoyed Forrest Mims' reminiscences about the early days of personal computing, MITS and Bill Gates. It caused me to recall that Gates once fired off a letter to one of the early computer magazines to complain (quite justly) that his BASIC code, written for the Altair, was being freely passed around and used in the amateur computing community without any payment to Microsoft. At the time the prevailing sentiment was that all code ought to be free and open-source in the true amateur tradition. Gates early on judged accurately that personal computing had potential way beyond the hobbyist level.

Norm Stanley

Susan Campbells need for magnets

Sheldon,

A very good source of powerful magnets are old hard disk drives. The head armature mechanism uses a coil suspended in a fixed magnetic field. Drives are easily disassembled **IF** you have a Torx screw driver bit. These are readily available at Radio Shack and even at some hardware stores. The two magnets are typically kept in a small frame which you should maintain if possible. The field in-between the two magnets is intense.

Tim Davis

Cyclotron for a School in Brazil

Dear Dr. Carlson:

I am a physical science professor at a Brazilian public high school with very few resources. My students are very enthusiastic about the science fair and they want to construct a cyclotron. I understand SAS sells a CD-ROM that has plans for a cyclotron.

Brazilian custom regulations are very absurd, in the sense that if you buy a CD from overseas, they make no distinction between a music CD, software or just a collection of papers (as is the case of the Amateur scientist CD-ROM). In that case, I have to pay 200% taxes and it is impossible for me to assume this cost which, by the way, will come out of my private savings, because we don't have government resources.

I was wondering if there is some way of purchasing on-line with my credit card at least the article which has the description of the cyclotron (it will be a few dollars). It would also help if you could tell me in what issue of the Amateur Scientist column the cyclotron project appeared, and I could try to find it in a public library, but I'm afraid it's not very common here. I appreciate your help.

Your truly,

Fernando Angiolini

Dear Mr. Angiolini,

I have asked our E-Bulletin Editor, Sheldon Greaves, to compile and send you all of the articles from the Amateur Scientist CD that pertain to particle accelerators with our compliments.

I hope you will keep us posted on your efforts to construct a cyclotron.

Best wishes,

Shawn Carlson

Spreading the Word

Dear Sheldon,

On vacation I met a part-time cop at a California State Park who teaches science in grade school. He runs their 8th grade science projects but had never heard of SAS or the web site. So I sent it to him. From my experience with my son's project, I think this web site is perfect for science project idea generation. Perhaps you are already doing this but have you considered approaching some nonprofit for funds to spread the word to grade and high school science teachers?

Dick Mitchell

U.S. Space Weather Service in Deep Trouble

Editor's Note: I'd like to thank Peter Baum for bringing this item to our attention. -sg

Dear Friend,

The following describes Space Environment Center's unfortunate financial situation. For the coming fiscal year, the House Committee-recommended funding creates a huge shortfall, and the Senate Committee's recommendation implies no support for space weather service at all this year. Possibly a new service would be established elsewhere in the government, but that is uncertain at this point.

We thought you would like to know.

Ernest Hildner and the staff of SEC

SUMMARY
For Fiscal Year 2004, starting October 1, 2003, the House Appropriations Bill for Commerce, Justice, and State continues Space Environment Center's funding at $5.2 M (a reduction of 40% below the FY02 level). Worse, the FY04 Senate Appropriations Bill zeroes Space Environment Center and all space weather in NOAA, so services, data and observations, and archiving would all disappear if the final appropriation is at the Senate level. At the House funding level, starting October 1 SEC will rapidly lose about half its staff, negatively affecting its ability to serve the Nation with operational products, data collection, and R&D. Unless the appropriation level for Space Environment Center is restored to the level of the President's FY04 Budget Request, $8.3 million, the Nation's civilian space weather service is in trouble. At the President's requested funding level, Space Environment Center can almost return to FY02 level of services, data, and R&D.

BACKGROUND
NOAA's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado, provides a range of services to the Nation related to space weather phenomena. Among other activities, the Center is the unique provider of real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, it conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics, and it develops techniques for forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances. That is, Space Environment Center is the Nation's space weather service, monitoring and predicting conditions in space, much as the National Weather Service does for meteorological weather.

SEC jointly operates the Space Weather Operations Center with the U.S. Air Force and serves as the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space environment. It is the government's official source for alerts and warnings of disturbances. Customers include DoD, NASA, FAA, airlines, operators of electric power grids, communicators, satellite operators, the National Space Weather Program, and commercial providers of value-added space weather services. Partnering with researchers funded by NSF, NASA, and the DOD, Space Environment Center is the place where much of the nation's $100s of millions annual investment in the National Space Weather Program and in space physics research is applied for the benefit of commerce, defense, NASA spaceflight, and individual taxpayers.

SEC's appropriation lines can be found in the Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research portion of the Budget.

In the omnibus appropriations Bill for FY 2003, the SEC received a severe cut to its budget of about 40%, with no explanation for the reduction. One-time funding additions have kept SEC afloat in FY2003. The President's Budget request is $8.3 million for SEC in FY2004 (an amount consistent with its past budgetary levels), but the House Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Committee provides only $5.2 million, or roughly 40% less than the amount necessary to maintain SEC at its current operational effectiveness. Again for FY04, no explanatory text was included in the Committee Report to explain this reduction, and it far exceeds the 18 % reduction below request meted out to NOAA Research overall and the 1% reduction to National Weather Service's request. The Bill has not yet been acted upon by the full House. The Senate Appropriations Committee explains its termination of space weather in NOAA in the Report accompanying its Commerce-Justice-State Bill as follows. The full text of the Senate Report may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=sr144&dbname=cp108&

Solar observation. - The "Atmospheric" in NOAA does not extend to the astral. Absolutely no funds are provided for solar observation. Such activities are rightly the bailiwick of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Air Force.

Needless to say, there is no evidence to suggest that NASA and the Air Force agree that one or the other, or both, should operate the Nation's civilian space weather service.

CONCLUSION
Unless SEC's appropriation level is increased in Conference, the best outlook is that Space Environment Center shrinks to less than half its capability (House mark), and the worst is that space weather will disappear from NOAA (Senate mark). In this case, the Nation's space weather service will have to be reconstituted in some other agency, at greater cost and lesser capability, to meet the Nation's needs.

**************************************************
Ernest Hildner Director
Space Environment Center Manager
NOAA Space Weather Program
325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80305
www.sec.noaa.gov