What I Learned Today

A chance discussion at work raised the question of how much our leaders at Caltech and JPL earn. Some investigation turned up interesting results.

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the president of Caltech (Jean-Lou Chameau) was paid a staggering $765,260 in 2009 (most recent numbers). He also serves as a director of MTS Systems Corporation, earning ~$150,000 per year in fees and stock awards. Impressive.

In contrast, the most recent salary reported for Charles Elachi, director of JPL (which is a division of Caltech), was $455,820 in 2006. At that time, the president of Caltech (David Baltimore) was paid $590,000. It is not clear whether Elachi’s salary has grown with the president’s; turnover in Caltech presidents seems higher than that of JPL directors, which could lead to faster salary growth.

Now a point of comparison. The president of the United States is a job with a fixed salary dictated by Congress. My understanding has been that one goal is to never position this job as something one might do for the money — that being perhaps a poor motivation for applying. The reality is a little more complex. Most of us learned in school that the president earns $200,000 per year. This had been in effect since 1969 (a long time for any salary to remain fixed!), but changed in 2001, when the salary was bumped up to $400,000 per year (at the instigation of Bill Clinton, whom it didn’t benefit; George W. Bush was the first to enjoy the increase).

Initially it seems a little strange that the head of Caltech (or JPL) is compensated at a higher level than the president of the country. But again, the president isn’t meant to be the highest earner in the country. And when you dig a little deeper, total presidential compensation tells a different story. In addition to salary, the president of the U.S. receives “a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 non-taxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment.” Further, the president is provided with a home (while in office), meals, transportation, security, etc. After leaving office, the president continues to earn a $191,300 per year pension and also receives a government-provided office with staff and travel funds. Wow!

I present these figures not in any way to snipe at our institutional (and national) leaders, but more as an awed observation of the fact that any individual could be paid so hugely. I know there are other individuals that undoubtedly are paid more (we’ve all heard about crazy CEO salaries and compensation), but it just boggles my mind that anyone could even make use of such a huge sum in any practical fashion. No doubt they have good financial advisors, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they contribute large sums to charitable institutions, which can certainly make use of the money. But otherwise — how much can a single individual (or family) realistically spend in getting through life? And once those needs are met, what else is there?

For people with this kind of disposable income, it seems a perfect opportunity to think big. Fund research for diabetes! Make that mission to Mars happen! Invest in technology that can fundamentally change how we interact with, or how we understand, the world (and each other). No one person can solve every problem or investigate every idea. But money can be the lever to swing the massed efforts of others in a productive, world-changing direction. In that way, these seeming excesses of compensation instead can compensate us all.

When your money starts piling up in a savings account with a 0.5% interest rate, you know you need to take action. On a friend’s recommendation, I checked out Lending Club, an organization that facilitates loans between individuals (more information from wikipedia’s article on Lending Club). Rather than paying 29% interest to a credit card company, for example, a borrower can post a request for a $10,000 loan to pay off the credit card at a 15% (or other) rate, and a suite of investors can choose to fund that loan in small increments. Collectively, they provide a loan to the borrower — and they also collectively absorb the risk associated with the loan.

It’s quite an interesting concept. You can review each individual loan in which you might want to invest, which details all of the relevant information about the borrower, including their credit score, a loan risk rating, the interest rate (assigned by Lending Club), the amount of debt they currently have, their credit history, etc. You can then decide how much money to allocate to the low-risk (but lower return) loans versus the high-risk (but potentially higher return) ones. I opted for a conservative mix of mostly lower risk loans, to try it out.

I opened an account with $1000, which is now spread across 40 notes ($25 each). My instinct would have been to make larger investments in fewer loans, but this seems to be the default strategy recommended by the site, so I’ll see how it goes. Browsing the loan options was almost as interesting in a social sense as in a financial one. Each person has their own story and personality associated with their loan request. The vast majority of the loans I saw were for debt (usually credit card) consolidation purposes. (Some people have frighteningly large revolving credit balances, like $50,000!!!???!) Other common loan types were home improvements, wedding expenses, and medical expenses. Some were to pay off an existing Lending Club loan that had a higher interest rate — which seems a smart bootstrapping process; after making some payments, your credit rating may improve and thereby qualify you for a lower rate. I think it definitely makes sense to take advantage of such an opportunity, as a borrower.

For me, as an investor, the cost so far has been my $1000 plus the 30 minutes it took to browse and select 40 loans. The site does offer an automated portfolio builder (given a specified risk level) which provided a starting point, but I was unwilling to blindly accept its choices without at least reviewing them. I replaced some with others that seemed more attractive (or meritorious). The site offers the ability for investors to post questions to the borrowers, which are publicly visible; these conversations were often more useful than the initial description of the loan on the borrower’s part.

After selecting my 40 loans, I was given the following summary:

• Average interest rate: 10.88%
• Expected default: 1.51%
• Service charge: 0.6%
• Projected return: 8.76%

I’ll keep an eye on it to see just how good that projection is!

One other aspect of the account creation process I found interesting was that to open an account you have to certify the following:

I currently reside in one of the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, KY, LA, ME, MN, MO, MS, MT, NH, NV, NY, RI, SC, SD, UT, VA, WA, WI, WV, or WY;
I have an annual gross income of at least $70,000 ($85,000 if residing in CA) and a net worth (exclusive of home, home furnishings and automobile) of at least $70,000 ($85,000 if residing in CA); or a net worth of at least $250,000(determined with the same exclusions) ($200,000 if residing in CA), OR, if I live in Kentucky, that I am an “Accredited Investor” as determined pursuant to Rule 501(a) of Regulation D under the Securities Act of 1933, AND,
I will not purchase notes in an amount in excess of 10% of my net worth, determined exclusive of my home, home furnishings and automobile and if I live in California and do not satisfy any of the above tests, I will not invest more than $2,500 in Notes.

This makes me wonder what happens if you violate this certification. What if my AGI dropped below $85,000? What if I invested more than 10% of my net worth? What if I moved to Oregon? Would they cancel my account? Reject my money? And where did this kind of “certify that you’re a sensible person” requirement come from? There’s a story there, I’m sure.

Could it make sense to take a one-way trip to Mars? This notion has been floating around for years, but it got some recent press when Drs. Schulze-Makuch and Davies published a paper titled “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars.” Their thesis is that this might be the solution to several of the barriers to a crewed mission, providing among other benefits a major reduction in mission cost (up to 80% reduction, which is pretty dramatic!). This can only be accomplished by shifting our perspective on what such a mission is: not a there-and-back-again jaunt like a trip to the Moon, but the establishment of a sustained presence on Mars, paving the way for future colonists and expeditions. Schulze-Makuch and Davies declare that:

“… to attain it would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays been replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.”

The initial reaction to a one-way trip concept is often one that assumes that the humans involved would immediately expire at the end of their mission. “One-way” sounds like “suicide”. But it’s not more of a “suicide” than inhabiting Earth, which is just as much of an ultimate death sentence — we just don’t think of it that way. Well supplied and informed, an expedition to Mars could survive for a long time, albeit in a harsh and demanding environment. They might not live as long as they would on Earth — or they might live longer; no one’s going to get hit by a car on Mars! And just think of the amazing accomplishments this group of 21st-century pioneers would attain, in technology and in science, and also in poetry and psychology: making Mars a human location, not just a light in the sky.

This short paper is definitely worth reading to see how Schulze-Makush and Davies set out the arguments for, and the conceptual design of, such a one-way mission. I was heartened to see their clear statement that “No base on the Moon is needed to launch a one-way human mission to Mars.” This is true of any mission to Mars, but has become somewhat lost in the various Constellation program discussions.

If there really were an opportunity to volunteer for a one-way mission to Mars, where you’d live out your days in a “cave-centered biosphere”, exploring and discovering and serving as a pathfinder for future advances — I’d sign up in a heartbeat. It’s difficult to think of any more important and meaningful goal to which I could devote my life here on Earth. (I know some, or all, of you will disagree with me on this, which neither offends nor dissuades me in the least. :) )

Vanity license plates can be an interesting form of constrained art, like the sonnet or haiku, but much, much shorter. In California, they can contain up to 7 characters, which are letters, numbers, and a few special symbols (like ♥ and a handprint). To while away the tedium of my commute to work, I enjoy spotting new and interesting plates. This being California, I always have plenty of plates to consider.

On July 28, I started recording the vanity plates I’d seen. As of today, I’ve collected 167 distinct plates. It surprises me that I’m able to find at least one new one practically every day I drive to work. There must be just enough variability in my (or everyone else’s) travel time that I get a slightly different sample of cars each day.

Some of the plates are funny, some are clever, and some are cryptic (probably in-jokes that don’t make sense unless you know the person). Here are some of my favorites:

• 1 HOBBIT
• BK WERM
• BMRNATR (on a BMW)
• C ATROX: a good puzzle — hint (rot13): fanxr
• CAKE 4 U: it’s not a lie?
• DTH STR
• ESC2PCH: local reference
• FTDHTR: really?
• GODZLLA
• HAUNT3D
• HTLIKME
• HYR N U (on a jacked-up SUV)
• IDIG K9Z
• IFYTE4U (the vehicle was emblazoned with lawyer ads)
• KNEADY (the vehicle had massage therapist ads)
• KRPT2NT
• LYSDXIC
• MI♥ZTKN
• MJSSAYN
• RMAGETN
• SASSIQT
• TUF CKY
• UKARYOT: go science!
• ULIV1NS
• WB OUIVR: a French geek?

Another cool one, which I didn’t spot but a friend did, is “TWS BRLG”.

Some are just a bit weird, or too obscure for me to “get” them:

• 1MADHUN
• 7THSONN
• AE6KO: ham radio call sign?
• BYE BTZ
• EOEOEO
• IOWE GOD
• KHAL8
• LMN DROP
• MY2CATZ
• MY MUZIK
• NOR DO I
• OWL BAIT
• YYYYYY2
• Z DAWGZ

What’s your favorite vanity plate?

On a tip from my officemate, today I checked out the live camera feed from the clean room next door where our next Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (or MSL), is being tested. MSL doesn’t launch until next fall, but they’re busy putting it through its paces right now to ensure that all of the instruments work as expected. It’s in a clean room so that we can minimize the amount of terrestrial biota it picks up prior to launch. We’d hate to inadvertently inject our own life into the pristine Martian environment — especially if we then detected it and thought it could be Martian!

As I write this, at 10:30 p.m., a technician in his bunny suit is walking around the rover, tinkering with connections and still hard at work. The video is dubbed “Curiosity Cam” because it is alliterative and because MSL acquired the name “Curiosity” as the result of a naming competition (I prefer simple old MSL).

But earlier today when I tuned in, JPL was also offering a live chat to accompany the video. Two anonymous folks in our newsroom were fielding any and all questions posed by anyone who dropped in. At first glance it seemed a bit dull — but then I started reading the comments and quickly became sucked in. How can you help but want to answer the questions of the curious public? Here are some excerpts. (Note that people who connected but didn’t log in via twitter or facebook, including me, were assigned generic “ustreamer” ids.)

The most common question (which maybe you have as well) is what the flashing blue light means. I thought it was probably just a visual signal that testing was in progress… but learned from the chat that instead it means that power is flowing to the rover.

ustreamer-43285: i’ve had 2 questions answered by jpl…this is awesome.
ustreamer-61986: i want to work for NASA!!!
ustreamer-01212: me too
Giati: me 3
ustreamer-25131: me 4
ustreamer-59789: Hell yeah, just no way im as smart as these guys. Awesome]
ustreamer-75761: yep nasa beats all other space agencys by a mile

Not a kilometer?

The two JPLers officially answering questions were named NASAJPL and NASAJPL-1. I was repeatedly impressed with how they fielded all sorts of questions, with a polite and informative tone, no matter the question.

ustreamer-33518: i hope this rover doesnt get stuck do you have a system to stop that happening?
NASAJPL: 33518, the rover’s six 20-inch wheels are designed to help maneuver out of such a situation.

One individual, 59789, was really taken with speculations about the upcoming astrobiology-related press conference on Thursday. The link he/she posted certainly falls into the “speculation” genre. I couldn’t resist chiming in to help out.

ustreamer-59789: Not at all. Thursday meetng will put that to rest. Nasa revealing they found biological life on Titan
ustreamer-59789: http://current.com/technology/92832052_story-of-the-century-nasa-may-announce-thursday-to-have-found-life-on-saturns-moon-titan.htm
NASAJPL-1: There are a lot of rumors about the Thursday briefing. It will NOT be an announcment of finding extraterrestrial life.
ustreamer-69544 (Me): There is a lot more to the field of astrobiology than just finding current life — we want to know about conditions conducive to life, and all of the chemistry involved, too.
NASAJPL-1: Repeat: it will NOT announce the finding of life on Titan. It’s too bad people out there are trying to get attention by running false stories.
NASAJPL-1: 69544 That is correct!

Then the questions started getting more and more interesting:

ustreamer-75761: wish ion drives were being used it would be a whole lot faster then currnent tech
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 75761, ion drives accelerate much more slowly than chemical rockets. They are good for very long trips but not for trips to Mars.
ustreamer-49140: 69544 … I understand that. But it’s still bewildering, with all our tech we have to send a FLEET of probs to mars to find out if theres life there. Surely it can be done with a single probe ?
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 49140, no one knows how to search the whole planet with a single spacecraft. But we learn more from each one sent!
ustreamer-49140: 69544. I agree, but we shouldent have to travel ALL over mars in an effort to find life. Just as someone sending a probe to earth would find life no matter where the probe landed.
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 49140, if life were as prevalent on Mars as it is on the Earth, you’re right, we would already have found it!

… and even relevant to geology!

ustreamer-02837: is it believed the lanscape on mars was created by water?
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 02837, the Martian surface has been shaped by ancient water, and aeons of wind, and episodes of volcanism.

ustreamer-77218: Earth is much bigger than Mars, but about 70 % of the Earthen surface is covered by water. On Mars there is 0 % covered. How much land compared to earth is it on Mars?
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 77218, great question! In fact the land surface on Mars is quite close to the land (non-ocean) area of the Earth.
ustreamer-77218: Thank’s “US-69544”. =) And Moon? about half of Mars?
ustreamer-69544 (Me): 77218, it looks like the Moon’s surface area is about 1/5 that of Mars.

(Actually, my quick math was a bit off — it’s between 1/4 and 1/5 that of Mars.)

After a while I started to wonder if NASAJPL and NASAJPL-1 would realize that I too was at JPL… and then I decided to get back to some real work. But wouldn’t it be fun to be the JPL expert fielding these questions?