The surrogate science debate

steve smyth — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:48:05 GMT

I'd pay to hear Hillary speak extemporaneously on science issues...her only experience is learning about DNA from the stain on Monica's dress...

The surrogate science debate

Scott Smith, Acton MA — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:20:04 GMT

Going to the moon again is a waste of money. In fact, "human exploration" is far more costly then sending rovers, and isn't likely to produce any more useful information.

We need to spend our science dollars here on the current planet. How about creating the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered cars?

The surrogate science debate

EJ — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:09:42 GMT

Employ Technology and Innovation to Solve Our Nation’s Most Pressing Problems
The 21st century tools of technology and telecommunications have unleashed the forces of globalization on a previously unimagined scale. They have “flattened” communications and labor markets and have contributed to a period of unprecedented innovation, making us more productive, connected global citizens. By maximizing the power of technology, we can strengthen the quality and affordability of our health care, advance climate-friendly energy development and deployment, improve education throughout the country, and ensure that America remains the world’s leader in technology.

Read it all at : http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

The surrogate science debate

Ms. "Biodiversity," Brewster, NY — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:12:30 GMT

The issue of science policy is the most important issue on which I will base my decision of who to vote for. There is no other issue as important as scientific research in finding solutions to the world's current major problems. Indeed, if science does not find solutions to problems such as global climate change, human overpopulation and consequent worldwide water and food shortages, the pollution of resources such as air and water that will prevent our being able to use them or cause severe health conditions, then every other problem becomes a moot point. If we cannot survive in the conditions we have created, it does not matter what state our economy is in or whether we are on speaking terms with another government or not.

The surrogate science debate

Ferris Valyn, Ann Arbor, MI — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:59:35 GMT

Scott Smith - human spaceflight isn't about exploration, or science - its about space development, and space colonization. As for spending our dollars on the current planet, well, space development and colonization is doing that.

Condemning manned spaceflight because it doesn't produce more science is like condemning a school lunch program because it doesn't provide college tuition.

The surrogate science debate

Kurt, Indiana — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:34:24 GMT

If you own the Moon, you own the Earth. It's called a linear accelerator, or a "rail gun." It's in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," by Robert Heinlein. To those of you who say, "that's just science fiction," I say that Heinlein did the science, then wrote the fiction. And why does China wish to set up a permanent base, if the Moon is so useless. Return to the Moon and stay, or live in poverty whilst our Chinese masters dictate policy under threat of bombardment. I'm not joking; I'm not paranoid; I just see into the future better than most. And there is a very positive reason for returning to the Moon: it allows access to the vast resources of the Solar System (wealth) and a platform for moving polluting technologies off-planet.

The surrogate science debate

kws, memphis, tn — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:33:37 GMT

A choice between 'head and heart'? I would think that the scientist would go for 'the head' - logic & facts, rather than passion. A person may be very passionate in their delivery of very wrong ideas and not have a clue about how anything works. Sadly, I believe more people are falling for it with Obama.

The surrogate science debate

roger,kentucky — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:28:47 GMT

Any canditate that doesn't support a strong space program is giving away everything that this country has ever stood for. this is one of the areas that has been supported by democratic and republician presidents. to cut nasa is leaving war as the only accelerator of technology. space is majority peaceful and anyone cutting nasa is BETRAYING this nation and all we stand for. This is an area that must remain nonpolitical for the furure of the United States and the human race as a whole. LEAVE THIS ONE OUT OF POLITICS folks. and do not support anyone who will butcher it for thier own political DREAMS or HOPES

The surrogate science debate

B.E.S. — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:39:53 GMT

For my part, I note in astonishment that the biggest elephant in the room continues to go unnoticed: the woeful, wide-spread scientific illiteracy of the average American citizen. When is anyone going to float a plan for nation-wide curriculum standards (and implementation, and enforcement thereof) for primary education? When is anyone going to talk about integrating and coordinating instruction across scientific subjects (mathematics/chemistry/biology/geology/physics)? When is anyone going to make it a priority that the next generation to come out of America's schools must be overwhelmingly more scientifically literate than the current, failing generations? And when it comes to quality education, when are we finally going to drop the "not invented here" syndrome, and begin to steal ideas from other nations around the world, that actually work and have been proven effective over many years?

The surrogate science debate

CCMarty — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:58:02 GMT

Scott, hydrogen powered cars won't solve anything, because hydrogen is not an energy source. Where do you get the energy to create the pure hydrogen? Electric cars will at least give us access to more, and cheaper, energy sources.
EJ, Technology should have improved our lives a huge amount ALREADY in the last 40 years. The only reason it has not is that special interests, through lobbyists and politicians, are stealing most of the benefits (in the form of our money, of course).

The surrogate science debate

Randy, Swansea, SC — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:41:24 GMT

Kudos to Kurt in Indiana. Your 100% dead on. There are enough metals & other resources for mankind in the Asteroid Belt, even with the current geometric increase in consumption, for the next 10,000 years. A single 6-7 square mile solar-power array in geostationary orbit, where it's exposed to sunlight practically 24/7, collects more energy in 1 year than all the remaining oil reserves on the planet. We just convert the power to microwave form, beam it down to receiving stations on the surface (plenty of open space in the Southwest), and convert it back to electriciy.
Read Gerard K. O'Neil's "The High Frontier"; his students at Princeton calculated that with the Apollo tech we had then (this was the summer of 1969!), we could build solar-power satellites, a mining base on the moon & orbital manufacturing facilities. From there, it's a short step to building orbital colonies at the LaGrange points (points of gravitational equilibrium in the Earth-Moon system) & elsewhere in our Solar system. This gets our species spread out, so that we don't go the way of the dinosaurs if another rock that size hits the planet, and relieves some of the population pressure on our world. Check this out & more at www.nss.org.
We MUST elect a president who will make this a national imperative, just like JFK did in setting the goal of landing a man on the moon; solar-power beamed down to earth to get us off our addiction to Mid-east oil, encouraging the space launch industry so there will be no shortage of lift capability to do this, which will then give us a internationally desired product (energy) to sell. This will go a long way towards correcting our trade imbalance, as well as creating thousands of jobs & giving a huge boost to our economy.

The surrogate science debate

Ilya, Boston, MA — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:09:21 GMT

"For my part, I note in astonishment that the biggest elephant in the room continues to go unnoticed: the woeful, wide-spread scientific illiteracy of the average American citizen."

Yes -- exemplified right here by Kurt from Indiana, who uses "Moon as a Harsh Mistress" as military textbook. First, Heinlein greatly overstimated the explosive yield of railgun slugs. An object entering Earth's atmosphere from lunar distance has kinetic energy equivalent to about 17 times its mass in TNT -- nothing tio sneeze at, but nowhere near nuclear range Heinlein portrayed. Second, electromagnetic railgun produces tremendous EMP pulse when fired, impossible to hide. Exact location of Looneys' cannon in Heinlein's book would be revealed the first time it were fired -- and so would be the location of your hypothetical Chinese cannon. Third, an object fired from Moon's surface takes three days to reach Earth. That's three days' time for a retaliation strike, not to mention to move/evacuate any possible target. And fourth, if Chinese were ever silly enough to build a railgun on the Moon, US will not need an extremely expensive and vulnurable manned base to counteract it. What it will need is a number of small stealthed bombs floating in cislunar space, ready to accelerate and hit the (very well-known) location when needed. US military goes for automation whenever possible, for a good reason. And a railgun on the Moon can not do anything that a B-2 bomber (and within couple decades, an unmanned bomber) can not do MUCH faster, MUCH more stealthy, and for MUCH less money.

The surrogate science debate

J.L.F., Cleveland, Ohio — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:37:07 GMT

I have to agree with B.E.S. As an engineer, most of the people I talk with about science seem no better informed that an average 15th century commoner. If you dig a little, basically it is all just magic to most people. They know some buzz words to lay out, but don't have any fundamental understanding of how their world works.

I think this is because science education in this country focuses on the facts of science and almost nothing on the philosophy of science. Being able to name the parts of a cell on a biology test, while laudatory in general, doesn't teach people the main philosophical pillars that make science the most effective tool mankind has ever devised to examine and explain the physical universe. With a firm, repeated grounding in the why's and how's of science, the what's will follow. This will turn out a generation of people ready to create new ideas and make new discoveries. And even if kids don't grow up to be scientist and engineers, they will still come out of school with an understanding of the scientific process and the critical thinking skills to at least have a shot of knowing when somebody is trying to sell them the modern equivalent of snake oil.

The surrogate science debate

mthomas — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:18:42 GMT

Will soon publish Self-Sustaining Mars Colony project.

http://nlspropulsion.net/Documents/AIAA_paper.pdf

The surrogate science debate

Summer, San Antonio, Texas — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:24:42 GMT

I agree whole-heartedly with BES. Too often our graduate school programs are more than 50% foreigners. Too often high school students don't understand basic terminology thrown out in media frenzied scientific reports. How can we expect to be world leaders or form intelligent (even if opposed) opinions without knowing what is being discussed. We need to make a high school diploma say two things: basic knowledge to know what's going on and ability to handle college (and even graduate school). A high school diploma means nothing now.

The surrogate science debate

Scott, Wa — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:37:29 GMT

I am not a big fan of Obama. I have been to his website many times looking over his science policy and it seems to lack any substance.

As one poster said above my vote is very dependent on who has a solid science and space exploration policy. Hillary seems to have a better policy in my mind with a bit more facts and Obama's has just a bunch of words. I really don't consider creating a nationwide wireless network science. It is leveraging existing technology that has been around for a few years now. I also think that telling people in a debate that they should 'just go to the Obama campain's website' is a poor and weak answer.

Both have a very weak policy on Nasa but right now and I am disappointed in that.

The surrogate science debate

Scott Smith, Acton MA — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:14:41 GMT

Ferris Valyn - NASA is fine, during good economic times. However our current fiscal situation suggests a more prudent course would be to scale back on projects with little (even long term) returns on investment. We still haven't even taken care of New Orleans yet.

The distances required to travel to another solar system suitable for humans colonization, makes it unpractical. Perhaps in a couple of centuries it will be attainable. For the near future, we should concentrate our resources on the planet we currently live on. Hydrogen power first, transporters later.

I used to dream of space colinization too, when I was much younger.

The surrogate science debate

JWunder — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:16:59 GMT

Hillary is the only candidate that has explicitly said she believes in evolution. That is THE one question that separates intelligent people from stone age IDiots, and demonstrates that she's pro-science.

The surrogate science debate

Delmar Fairchild, Barron, WI — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:30:15 GMT

The reason the Chinese want to go to the moon is to get He3 for an unlimited supply of clean energy. They would pay for the trip many times over and be the heros of the world. See attached note:

Helium 3 is a rare isotope of Helium. Helium 3 has potential to be used in nuclear fusion (confused? see Nuclear Fusion for details). Because of its use in nuclear fusion, it is expected to sell for $3 billion per metric tonne. An atom of Helium has two protons, two electrons and two neutrons. On the other hand Helium 3 only has one neutron. Helium 3 is found in abundance on the moon but only in few amounts on Earth. One source of Helium 3 on Earth is from nuclear weapons. 15 kilograms of Helium 3 is produced by decaying nuclear weapons each year. That is nowhere near the needed 100 metric tonnes that could be used to power the world. On the moon, there is an estimated 1100000 metric tonnes of Helium 3. This is enough Helium 3 to power the world for up to 11 thousand years.

The Helium 3 was most likely deposited by Solar Wind, a stream of particles moving from the sun. The theory that the Helium 3 was deposited by Solar Winds would explain why this isotope is common on the moon and rare on Earth. The Earth's ozone layer filters out most of the cosmic radiation coming from the sun.

The surrogate science debate

Branden Gemzer — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:39:28 GMT

While I think a long term feasible and conservative plan to have some kind of presence on the moon and mars is essential to mankind, I think we need to work first on more efficient forms of energy and other technologies that could assist us in settling space more easily and with less costs. A standard should be set on energy and other technologies that once met would open up the question of traveling beyond our small sphere. The only reason to speed up are questions of national interests, but I think if we spread our nationalism beyond the planet, we've kind of missed the real point. While I would like to see it all done in my life time we need to have patience as a species.

The surrogate science debate

Maria, New York — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:11:54 GMT

As a science teacher, I am very distressed at the lack of science knowledge among Americans. Science-Math-Technology has not been a priority in this country and we will soon suffer the consequences of a science-illiterate society. A child's so-called computer literacy seems to be measured by their score in a video game or their ability to navigate MySpace. One of my college students in an environmental science course asked me how to spell "NASA". Science must become a national priority. This includes primary and secondary education and support for space exploration, and technology that will lead to solving our global environmental problems.

The surrogate science debate

Tom Carter — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:39:12 GMT

We need a manned presence in space that is significant enough of an investment not to be killed off on a whim by a change of party or mood in Congress. Robots don't die when you cut off their funding.

I think, however, that the nearest salvation of the manned space program will be a time when the military budget can be siphoned into science. We're already at a point where war between the superpowers would only mean killing your best customers and economic suicide on everyone's part. Yet we're spending to maintain a military thats only being used to stamp out global hotspots that arn't even our problem.

Unfortunately the governing generation all over the globe is still bogged down in a proxy-war mentality while claiming the need for deterrence. They seem to have missed the fact that economics has turned out to be a far more effective defense than nukes.

The economics to make space travel successful are there, we're just stuck with the same sort of skeptics who derided airplanes and the internet in generations past in control of the budget.

The surrogate science debate

Ferris Valyn, Ann Arbor, MI — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:27:24 GMT

Scott - first, space development and space colonization doesn't have little and long term returns. Things like Space based solar power, and zero-g manufacuturing, (espcially the advent of zero-g manufacturing, which we may very well see before the end of this decade, definitely before the end of next decade) will radically change society, much like the internet did in the early 90s.

Further, we don't need to go to other star systems for colonization. we can begin right here, in this solar system.

The surrogate science debate

Randy, Swansea, SC — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:17:07 GMT

Sorry, I've got to disagree with Ilya in Boston. Did some checking around on Wikipedia under various topics (railgun, coilgun, kinetic projectile, kinetic bombardment, etc.). Since linear motors (linac) have achieved speeds of up to 30km/s, this equates to 108,000 kph (about 65,000 mph). The moon's orbit hangs about a quarter millon miles out from Earth. This means a projectile would cover the distance in less than 4 hours - not 3 days.
Equivalent kinetic energy of TNT is 4.6MJ/kg (megajoules/kilogram). Kinetic energy in an object is mass times the velocity squared divided by 2. If a 100kg kinetic strike mass was launched at the mentioned 30km/s (from an underground rail gun, which would mask the EMP!), we're talking a kinetic energy of 583,200 MJ - in excess of 63 tons of TNT! Scale that up to 1000kg, and you're over half a kiloton of TNT. Now, the Little Boy nuke that was dropped on Hiroshima was "only" 13 kilotons...need I say more?

The surrogate science debate

Looey Munn Roundup, MT — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:00:34 GMT

I agree on the need for science education to be upgraded. My compatriots know virtually nothing of science, nor have found it interesting.

I have read many practical books out in the Sci-Fi area, Ben Bova and Jerry Pournelle, and Robert Forward's "Indistinguishable from Magic", all good materials on what we could do, from various angles.

With the incomming Asteroids that astronomers have found, it seems to me we are being foolhardy to let them fly on and figure out later if they will hit us or steal our moon, either catastrophic for life on earth. NASA was reported thinking about visiting one sometime in the future...but IF they are on collision course, a while in the future will be too late.

I think it also would be an excellent idea to get the L5 living area going, so if the asteroids smash the earth, we have humans surviving, and if the Global Warming folks get us into a Malthusian Crisis with their plans, we have a place to take in people and send supplies to Mother Earth.

The surrogate science debate

Looey Munn Roundup, MT — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:01:32 GMT

continued...

Too bad not enough people in the US can even understand the issues! But we have had the government dumbing down our schools, with the various programs like "No Child Allowed Ahead" (NCLB takes up half the school year as I have read, so the advanced kids mark time). And showing in schools the rather totally discredited Al Gore Film on Global Warming...shown in court to be false and misleading!

MAYBE there is yet time to save ourselves from destruction, but we need to stop spending mony on non-profitable things, and on moving everybody to the lowest common denominator, and get cracking on what is needed to free us from the limitations of the Earth before it is too late.

Seeing these problems even when our shooting down our own dangerous defunct satellite occasions protests...folks seem to want, or rather do not realize the problems of, dangerous chemicals hitting the earth!

We need good, non-biased education, and we need programs to use space properly for humanity, not political gain! How to is already researched...and sitting unused.

The surrogate science debate

Looey Munn Roundup, MT — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:25:59 GMT

As for an April debate, I think that would be a great idea...if is handled as a debate, really, according to regular debate rules with the exception that nobody is required to be the affirmative or negative, and if the question is carefully worded to be to the scientific issues, and not just to show off politics.

I think the candidates themselves should be the ones debating, and given the normal debate times for position presentation, and rebuttal.

I would propose, though, to modify the rules to include ALL the remaining contenders, no matter how remote, since I would like to hear Ron Paul's answers to the question also, as he represents a different viewpoint. And other minority Parties with other viewpoints, since their viewpoints might bring to light issues other than what the major parties like to rant and rave on. Like how would a "green" party
handle the issues?

It would take a little longer, but since the debate times for presentation and rebuttal are short, it would not unduly extend the length.

One problem I have seen in political debates before is the shutting out of minority dissenting opinions and suggestions.

After the debates are judged by regular debate rules, which are well documented, the candidates would be free to spend their own money later on further media coverage if they wished.

What say ye?

The surrogate science debate

Frank Glover Rochester, NY — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:32:47 GMT

"Going to the moon again is a waste of money. In fact, "human exploration" is far more costly then sending rovers, and isn't likely to produce any more useful information.

We need to spend our science dollars here on the current planet. How about creating the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered cars?"

Cars? Why not do *everything* by telepresence? Why make those expensive, dangerous things (causing more deaths in one day, than in *all* spaceflight, so far) called 'cars' at all?

Oh, that's right, not everything is risk-free, necessairily too expensive (manned flight does not *have* to be as expensive as NASA and other government agencies do it), or even *can* be done telerobotically...

The surrogate science debate

Bernard, Canby, OR — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:15:23 GMT

I am very happy to hear that at least the democratic candidates are consider going to science debate, however, we must not forget that the Executive branch isn't the only one up for grabs. There are also 435 House races and 35 Senate races, and any policies the next president wants to push must make it through Congress. When we look at the bigger picture, we can't forget that Senator Inhofe (http://sharp.sefora.org/people/senate/james-inhofe/) has been spreading lies about global warming, while Senator Boxer (http://sharp.sefora.org/people/senate/barbara-boxer/) has been a huge supporter.