THE $325 MILLION CRASH

That is my view from where I sit writing my blog this morning. I will shortly be at the Ala Wai Golf Course, and a perfect day is predicted. The weather, that is. Hawaii has this year been spared of serious hurricanes. There are two ocean disturbances in the East Pacific, but neither one should threaten us.

Today, people in Florida, specifically just north of Fort Meyers, will suffer the worst day of their lives, for Hurricane Ian, at 155 MPH, will any moment now as I write this make landfall over those islands facing Port Charlotte. Much of them won't be the same in a short while because of the storm surge, of perhaps up to 20 feet. Ian became a hurricane only Monday, and could well still attain Category 5 strength, which begins at 157 MPH.

Gusts are up to 190 MPH. Here is something I learned from my time involved with wind power. The energy of wind increases by the cube of the velocity. Thus, image standing in winds of 45 MPH. You can be blown over. Now, compare the effect on your body at 180 MPH, which is not quite, 190 MPH, but good enough for this comparison. 180 MPH is 4 times more than at 45 MPH. Cube that number and you get 4x4x4 or 64. Gusts of wind destroy houses and blow down trees. Imagine a 180 MPH gust of wind hitting a large tree or apartment with 64 times the energy of one at 45 MPH. You can't really, but then increase that to 190 MPH, and that is what will be the effect of anything on land.

The dangerous quadrant is #1, where storm surge and winds are maximal. However, the fourth quadrant is where the rainfall might be more severe, into the third. Even the east side of Florida will be threatened...by tornadoes.

Ian officially made landfall at 150 MPH, will pass by Disney world and track east of Orlando. The eye should pass south of Daytona Beach and into the Atlantic Ocean, making landfall over South Carolina Friday night. You can expect a few Saturday and Sunday football and baseball game cancellations. But that's nothing compared to the wake of devastation to be wreaked across west and central Florida.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused $179 billion in damages. Last year Hurricane Ida was said to be responsible for $75 billion, the fifth highest. What will Hurricane Ian do? What could a Category 5 do? Global warming will only increase the potential.

So to the subject of today, valued at 1/1000th the cost of serious hurricane damages, a topic I've followed for decades. Many years ago I met with Edward Lu, who was involved with founding of the B612 Foundation, an organization established in 2002 for asteroid deflection. B612 is in tribute to the home asteroid of The Little Prince. Lu is a former astronaut with a PhD in applied physics from Stanford. We discussed the matter of finding hundreds of million dollars to fund a project. Two decades into his dedication, he remains actively involved in the effort. No doubt that the B612 Foundation can be credited for stimulating the DART project. They are well on their way to keeping Planet Earth safe from incoming asteroids. To the right is Lu with Apollo astronaut, Rusty Schweickart, also one of co-founders of the foundation.

A lead-in to what happened this week when NASA crashed a $325 million spacecraft called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), weighing in at 1260 pounds, 55 feet from the center of 11 billion pound asteroid Dimorphos (520 feet long) at 14,000 MPH about 7 million miles from Earth. There was a shoebox-size camera which showed the encounter. Don't watch from the beginning. Go to about 1 hour and 43 minutes. Dimorphos is a minor-planet moon circling asteroid Didymos.

Was this expensive $325 million encounter worth it? Heck yes! What is the value of life on Planet Earth? Priceless. I once worked for NASA and I'm getting to think that all that is doing is providing inspiration and romance about outer space. Except for one potential benefit. If a major asteroid is indeed steering towards our planet, we need a solution to ward off extinction. We won't know the impact of DART, which will come in time, but it is the beginning of determining an answer. Clearly, priceless is worth a lot more than the nearly $200 billion of damages caused by Hurricane Katrina.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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