Credit: NASA
SYDNEY: Sending people and high-tech robots into space is not cheap and NASA gets through vast sums of money. This financial year alone the U.S. space agency requested more than A$20 billion in funding. How do they justify the expense? One way is to highlight the many technologies developed for the space program, but which now benefit society.
"One of the reasons for investing in space technology is that it's a particularly challenging environment and one that attracts very clever people," says Matthew Colless director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Coonabarabran, NSW. "As a result, you get engineering solutions that wouldn't otherwise come up." Here are a few of the coolest things that have spun out of space.
MEMORY FOAM
Maybe you have some in your bed. U.S. aeronautical engineer Charles Yost was contracted by NASA to find ways to reduce fatalities in aircraft crashes in the 1960s. His solution was to improve seating technology to absorb impacts, including a novel foam. Created by feeding gas into a polymer matrix, the foam has an open-cell solid structure that matches pressure against it, yet slowly springs back to its original shape. So successful was Yost's invention that it's now used in everything from wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs to car seats and safety helmets.
HEART PUMP
If you have heart problems this technology may save your life. Patients awaiting transplants or with weak hearts can be thankful that Johnson Space Centre engineers were interested in the way that fuel pumps in the space shuttle's main engines worked. Today's surgically-implanted heart pump, inspired by these fuel pumps and improved on by the Ames Research Centre, sucks blood from one of the ventricles, and pumps it back into the heart, keeping it going for months or even years and significantly improving heart patient survival rates.
OIL SPILL CLEANER
This technology is vital in mitigating environmental disasters. Yeast enclosed in tiny spheres of beeswax, soaks up oil through osmosis. Feeding off ocean spills, the microorganisms degrade the oil into carbon dioxide and water. As pressure builds up, the spheres burst, releasing the biodegradable components. The technology is based on NASA' s Jet Propulsion Laboratory work on the feasibility of encapsulating live cells and experiments in microspheres.
Justifying NASA
Justifying NASA is a moral question. I didn't think scientists did "moral"?
Well, just in case Australian scientists do, do "moral", let me pose this philosophic question here. You can take it -as scientific, if you will. Or you can cast it off as irrelevant to science.
In 2006 I posited that -the moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
I further posited that this statement of morality is the all-inclusive wellspring of secular morality, -and-, that this statement is a categorically true statement -both inclusively and exclusively.
As such, this statement gives rise to a new knowledge standard.
Empirical Knowledge once lauded over spiritual and superstitious knowledge.
And now, if any scientist can truly think -cogently-, they will realize, Categorical Knowledge, (based upon the moral imperative of life), will similarly laud over all Empirical Knowledge and especially the pursuit of empirical knowledge, where NASA finds itself.
I will warn my fellow scientists, -implied within the meaning of the moral imperative of life, is the succinct and damning notion, -that we should not take it upon ourselves to gamble, where the wager laid and bet -might lead to some possible detriment to the future. These lost wagers are historically cumulative and immorally weigh a heavy toll upon the future. This, is our present!
All science is such a gamble, IF it is not continually restrained by the moral imperative of life.
It will be 1000 years before anyone will command the greater portion of the Categorical Knowledge set.
But it will be the greatest achievement of mankind, -bar none.
Don Robertson
A Critique of Pure Science
??
- Heh - ? -
Justifying NASA
While I agree with the idea that what we do today should not have negative outcomes on future generations, I don’t think this should be confined to scientific research. This philosophy should apply equally to all human activity. As this is unlikely to happen then consider this:
The lives of past generations have, in many ways, undoubtedly had a detrimental effect on current generations. However, past generations have also contributed many positive aspects to current generations. Current generations face huge problems but on the whole if you consider things such as life expectancy, medical care, access to knowledge and labor saving technologies; I think most people’s quality of life is better than it would have been if they were born generations earlier. Most of these benefits are the result of scientific research conducted by generations who were free to explore the world and the universe around us as they wished.
Scientific research is a vital part of continual improvements to our quality of life. A fear of possible negative outcomes must not be allowed to stifle the acquisition of knowledge. The use of knowledge, once aquired, should be decided by society through discussion and debate as is currently the case.
Justifying NASA
First, let me thank the "Huh?" commenter. Philosophically, let me hope -you have served a learning purpose here-. It is this: Each of us only knows what is in our own heads. We only let into our heads -that which -enchants- us. This alone is important enough to note, because of the inherently emotional nature of -enchantment-. I can by this notion irrefutably prove (and have), -all logic is emotional. Scientists, take note!
This is why ClimateGate uncovered so many easily exposed holes. These emotional holes are everywhere in science. Science is not truth. Science only provides levers of truth. The real truth is in the byproducts and the emotional holes which reside in all scientific work.
Think of Percival Lowell's canals of mars. Percy saw no "canals" -he saw the veins in the back of his eyes from long hours of peering into a telescope.
Second, let me thank the second poster whose knee-jerk response indicates he-or-she has bothered to begin to think through some of this. Don't abandon your efforts just because I point out where you went wrong. Keep up your enchantment! You are on the right path.
You went wrong in your assessment here: "Current generations face huge problems but on the whole if you consider things such as life expectancy, medical care, access to knowledge and labor saving technologies; I think most people’s quality of life is better than it would have been if they were born generations earlier. Most of these benefits are the result of scientific research conducted by generations who were free to explore the world and the universe around us as they wished."
We live in a closed system. There is no point in trying to produce ever more food, or, increase longevity ever longer, because we end up with all the problems of overpopulation. The "better access to knowledge" (knowledge sets) are the gravest danger facing humanity. It is these knowledge sets -put into the wrong hands, careless hands, or unknowing hands, that are the grave danger. And because of the unfathomably infinite complexity of reality, we are all in the last group, -unknowing hands. (Think of Marie Curie!) Science has given us a host of catastrophes, and who knows? The next one could be the last one. There is no way to tell. The last one may have already happened!
Now though, -let me get to the crux of your argument. To say we have a better quality of life, is questionable from many angles, and from the point of view of the old -who lived in the past- -the statement is also an obvious falsehood. Think of the quality of life for five-year-olds today versus fifty years ago. Do not think life wasn't worth living 50, 500, 5000, or 500,000 years ago. It was.
BUT, let me address this notion like this- Due to the increased dangers given to humanity by science (by both WMDs and accidents of mass destruction) -no empirical human being alive today can be assured that either they or their progeny will have any chance at the most modest of standard of living or quality of life, that were both otherwise almost virtually assured and enjoyed by humans in every previous type of civilization with which we are familiar in history.
The moral imperative, and the resulting Categorical Knowledge that arises therefrom, actually change the necessary rigors of logic. The old logic systems simply do not meet with reality.
When something is declared to be categorically true, as is the moral imperative of life I recite in my first post, it cannot be ignored by logic. The moral imperative is a categorically true moral statement -both inclusively and exclusively. If it is a categorically true statement, then every other step in logic must measure itself against the moral imperative. This is how Categorical Knowledge arises, preeminent in human knowledge.
It's a difficult concept. It also throws a monkey wrench in all of our current empirical beliefs.
In other words, the trade-off science has made in increasing the innumerable shiny objects of technology has come at an untenable and an even illogical cost, -if we are to consider the franchise of the imperiled future, -for given the chance -those in the future would out-vote those alive today, -every time -were we to take a vote concerning whether to undertake these insane scientific gambles, -like genetics, like nanotechnology, like bioengineering and for that matter like almost all medicine today. That list goes on too.
Soon enough, no one who was alive when the A-bomb was invented, will be left alive in this world. But the stinking bombs will still be around! And the knowledge sets are spread ever further every day.
Finally, -you have made a false assumption that I have applied the moral imperative just to science, -perhaps because of my title I cite. I have also published -The New Epistemology of Morality and Truth- which was written before A Critique of Pure Science.
Best all!
Don Robertson
Limestone, Maine
Justifying scientific and technological development
Some good arguments there Don, I have a few quick points:
My opinions
Matthew Brooks
Bendigo, Victoria
On Facebook
Lost in Space
"Eventually Earth will be destroyed - either by a natural or man-made cause. While we need to protect the external environment so we don't cause our own destruction, we shouldn't stop the growth of our collective scientific knowledge, and the development of technologies and tools. If it weren't for our tools, we would never have escaped the mindless eternal present of nature. We have the intelligence to get ourselves off this rock before earth is destroyed. Our minds will eventually journey into space (whether in biological or other form), and we need quite a few centuries of scientific development to get us there."
This is a great post, Matt, if it follows no particular order and makes no more sense than the typical Simpson's episode. You have some bizarre sense of the humanitarian is all I can figure out.
You demonstrate by this post, exactly the nature of the literally billions of entirely disparate, desperately-shocking and confused conceptions of reality held by conscious human beings -all over the planet.
Sadly, you make about as much sense as someone like Barack Obama attempting to explain why the US must continue to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and push for more war with Iran, Yemen and Pakistan.
I wonder, is the whole world insane? Or, is it just me?
Other than the meandering direction the billions of individual consciousnesses plod forward through, no other direction can possibly be ascertained. Yes, we know greater populations are coming, more poverty and a greater incidence of pestilence, but no one is making plans to bring any of this about as if it were some positive event someone can forecast.
We are like fish in the ocean -swimming in schools-, none of us so prescient we can surmise the direction or the arrival of anything like the scientific fantasy you describe. You sound like a screen writer for sci-fi flicks, or a PR man for another cockamamie government program.
No one is leaving the planet to colonize the Universe, Matt. Human beings were clever enough to get to Easter Island, but for a very long time, they were not clever enough to get themselves off it.
The whole world might be on its own Easter Island for all any of us can know. That's the historical precedent for earth creatures. And, everyone is clearly treating their surroundings the same as did the Easter Islanders.
Viewing the 1968 movie "2001, A Space Odyssey", for a perspective on predictions about space and science -amply describes the improbability of the often silly predictions for future prospects, scientific or otherwise.
The future, if there is going to be a future we might appreciate, will require Categorical Knowledge.
Don Robertson
Huh? Still.
Don, what are you talking about?
Empirical humans? Almost virtual?
Your post makes no sense. And what the hell has it got to do with NASA? Strange man.....
Huh, is still unenchanted, uninformed, but game for an argument.
The article begins, "This financial year alone the U.S. space agency requested more than A$20 billion in funding. How do they justify the expense? One way is to highlight the many technologies developed for the space program, but which now benefit society."
A moral question arises from this apparently moral statement of NASA meant to justify their proposed annual budget request. But it is a moral question that gets answered, only looking at what are supposedly the positive spin-offs of NASA's massive budgets.
I have offered an argument that negates the basic premise underlying the assertion that science might ever provide any justifying-benefit for humanity over the long term. It is an underlying assumption that is a remnant of philosophic positions taken and common during the Age of Enlightenment.
I question this underlying assumption about any possible benefits that might come from science -citing philosophic work that is preeminent to any science. This philosophic work expounds 1) the moral imperative of life, and, 2) a new preeminent knowledge set, Categorical Knowledge.
In setting forth my philosophic argument, my own basic assumptions are these-
1) I assume reality is infinite complex, dwarfing all human knowledge, perception and ability.
2) I assume that life is good, and in fact, quite good enough given any alternative -of some scientist's notion of how life should be.
3) I resolutely assert that human nature will invariably corrupt the application of scientific knowledge sets. And that as these scientific knowledge sets currently exist -they represent a far more grave danger to humanity -than any other eventuality.
And 4) I assert that the only consciousness in humanity capable of assessing the betterment of the human condition, its potential or direction -is the consciousness of individual humans, -and then only quite fallibly -one at a time, most often ignoring the future, the future which is humanity.
Ergo, -->> there is no social psyche. -->> there is no mean truth path inherent to the unfolding alternations being fostered on human reality by the changes wrought by science -absent any good notion of what the moral role of science should be.
I will leave you all with this.
We would all always act within the constraints of our moral interests, were we to know how.
And yet, because we do not know what is moral, we cannot act in any manner that we can predict will allow us to do as we wish.
It seems, if we are ever to grasp the brass ring of free will, it will come by learning what is moral.
Science -has nothing to add here. It seems that if we ignore what is moral, we are no more than sentient automatons, like bees or ants.
We are more than the bees and ants though. We are conscious and we have a moral conscience.
My best to those who have remained. And my grateful thanks to Cosmos Magazine for the opportunity to write a few comments.
Don Robertson
for the editors
Lasik eye surgery - typo