Opinions & Reviews

OPINIONS

PRO: by Jason Shen CON: by Inna Vishik

The NASA Space Program: Rocketing Ahead or Burning Off? PRO: NASA Research The Sky is Not the Limit

F

ounded in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is supposed “to provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.” Some say the real reason NASA was created was to close a supposed “missile gap” between our rocket technology and that of the Russians. NASA stepped up to the challenge and rapidly advanced American rocket technology in the following years. In the darker years of the Cold War, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions lit up the hearts of Americans with pride and wonder. Millions held their breath as Apollo 11 put the first man on the moon and gasped at the photographs of a pale blue dot floating in a sea of darkness. The ambitious Hubble Space Telescope paid off in spades with brilliant pictures of planetary nebula, supernovas and pulsars. Hubble also showed us how large the universe really was, revealing the sky’s darkest recesses teeming with distant stars and galaxies. The Space Race represented the power of American ingenuity and drive. At a time when people felt uncertain about tomorrow, with nuclear war hanging over them, NASA and the space program gave them hope. Hope for a better future for America, and for the world. Today, we again find ourselves in uncertain times. Terrorism, economic depression, and epidemics are constant concerns for us, and we despair at the political and cultural divisions in our country. What we need is something to unify us—something to bring us together with amazement and excitement. A great space program can reinvigorate our passion for science,

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and it can lessen our earthly concerns and bring our attention to the stars. Americans are interested in learning about science: in the 80’s, scientist Carl Sagan captivated us with his science television series Cosmos that ran for over 15 years. It is estimated that over 500 million people in 60 countries have seen the show, showing that there is a broad interest in cosmology and science.

Human spaceflight should be expanded Today, NASA missions are simply to shuttle astronauts to and from an orbiting space station. Although there is some important research conducted on the International Space Station, it is difficult for the public to view it as the ground breaking, breathtaking work that characterized the Apollo program or the Viking Missions. The Mars rover and the Deep Impact mission are better examples of powerful, spine-tingling ideas put into action. We need to be more ambitious with our projects and tackle challenges such as putting humans back on the moon and onto Mars, building a space elevator, developing solar sails, and designing more powerful rocket engines. Of course there are physical and technological limitations at this point including radiation protection, fuel and power sources, and time delay in communications, to name a few. However, the time and money spent on these endeavors are investments in our future.

The government has an obligation to further science research As a part of the Bush’s Renewed Spirit of Discovery, NASA reevaluated its mission: its purpose is now “to understand and protect our home planet…to explore the Universe and search for life…[and] to inspire the next generation of explorers . . . as only NASA can.” While there are occasions where missions have failed,

where billions of dollars and human lives have been lost in tragedy, CON: NASA Research – Money Lost in Space NASA must continue its mission. Exploration is by nature a very risky and dangerous business. The benefits are worth the risks, Since the Apollo moon landing in 1969, two generations of though: NASA got us excited about science, created hundreds of children have grown up with starry-eyed visions of being launched new technologies, and helped the United States become a leader among the stars. Although most of them never make it into space, in aeronautics. their fascination with rockets drives them into careers in science We need to stop thinking of our space program as a source and engineering. At least, such is the wish of The National of government waste. NASA spends less than 1% of the federal Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). budget, and has sparked breakthrough technologies. Radial tires NASA was founded during the Eisenhower administration made from the Viking Lander’s parachute material enjoy a 10,000 in response to the launch of Soviet satellites. In the years that mile tread life increase. A magnetic bearing system developed for followed, science and engineering saw an influx of eager people the Space Shuttle allows machines to operate without the degrading responding to the communist threat. By the time Armstrong’s effects of friction, and is used in famous “one small step for industries such as electric power man” signaled American generation, petroleum refining, victory in the space race, NASA Con: Nasa spends money on publicity ploys and obscure science and natural gas pipelines. had grown into the giant that Cooling suits that circulate cool it is today. Not only does the air, originally used for astronaut agency launch rockets, but suits, help firefighters survive and it conducts research in fields reduce the symptoms of multiple such as astronomy, biology, sclerosis and cerebral palsy. and climatology. Therefore, People may say that those things NASA might seem like the could have been invented without perfect agency to conduct NASA. Of course they could have, basic research: it is a large but they are so unexpected that government organization with it would have been difficult to plenty of publicity and annual think of them. When intelligent, spending in the tens of billions determined people creatively of dollars. However, NASA’s solve problems to achieve an role as a publicity mechanism objective, innovative new ideas, and the short-sighted nature products and procedures are the result. of its funding cause many basic science projects to be abandoned, Aristotle observed that “all humans, by nature, desire to even after innumerable dollars and hours are spent on them. know,” and his poignant observation of mankind is an everlasting There is no doubt that good science has come out of NASA. one. Human exploration and discovery has been a cornerstone The agency has invented the technology to launch humans into not only in American history, but in the history of our species. space, taken colorful photos of the far reaches of the universe Since the beginning of time, people have looked to the stars and using the Hubble space telescope, and explored the surface of our wondered. NASA is in the position to gather more information planetary neighbor with the Mars rover. However, even projects about the mysteries of the universe. By focusing on ambitious, such as these—which bring great advances and great publicity— long-term projects, and facing the challenges that they present, are vulnerable to long delays and even cancellation due to budget we can learn more about our world and the universe around us. cuts. If the Hubble space telescope, one of NASA’s greatest At the same time, the pictures of the Earth taken from space force successes in recent decades, can be scrapped, it is no surprise us to commit to protecting the fragile planet we all call our home. that smaller research projects that still have the potential to yield A strong space program will propel this nation, and this world, tremendous results are abandoned. towards a hopeful future During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, NASA began to pursue research in biology and medicine, spurred by exciting advances in Pro: It is the government’s obligation to further science research those fields, including the sequencing of the human genome and the cloning of mammals. The Cell Culture Unit was one of these endeavors. It received funds to prepare experiments studying the growth of cells in space, aboard the International Space Station. Although many capable scientists worked on the project, it fell behind schedule and went overbudget, while even more money continued to be spent. Eventually NASA’s interest in biological research waned, and now all it has to show for the project is the dead links that show up in a Google search. Had the money been allocated to groups within academia, the investment would likely have yielded returns in important research. NASA has the money and visibility to complete many great projects, but compared to other institutions such as academic and government labs, NASA does a poor job of fostering research projects and nurturing them

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Is human space flight necessary?

to completion. This oversight results from the inherent goals and structure of the agency. It is no accident that NASA is almost synonymous with science in the public eye. The agency exists largely as a publicity machine: pretty press releases and a website remind young Americans that science can be glamorous and exciting. Big, loud rockets remind hostile nations of the United States’ economic and military power might. An International Space Station demonstrates a commitment to multi-nationalism. Now that the cold war has thawed, NASA’s most publicly renowned activity—human spaceflight—exists solely for publicity.

Human spaceflight is costly and unnecessary NASA does sometimes do experiments in the shuttles. The 2003 Columbia mission, whose tragic end is one of NASA’s greatest embarrassments, studied the effects of microgravity, or weightlessness, on topics such as combustion and the formation of protein crystals. Although some scientific value might have been gained from these experiments, it was all for show (and was certainly not worth the loss of seven lives). Gravity has been well understood for some three hundred years, and it is a simple calculation to account for its effects on terrestrial experiments. Moreover, the cost of launching these experiments into space is orders of magnitude greater than performing related experiments on earth, where they could yield equally valuable information. There are countless such projects on Earth, but the agency chooses to focus media attention on expensive and glamorous endeavors, usually at the expense of smaller, more tractable ones.

Scientific research shouldn’t be left in the hands of government In addition, NASA is sensitive to political pressure from the government in charge. For example, a previous administration supported “biological and medical research in space” whereas currently the administration has changed its mind to focus on “the moon and Mars”. However, the effects of government ideology are much farther reaching. Currently, in times of high deficits and high spending, the favored vehicle of the government is highcost, high publicity projects—namely, upgrading the shuttle fleet

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(whose technology is largely unchanged from the 1970’s) and improving the International Space Station (a calculated display of international solidarity that has been disintegrating in the past few years for lack of funding and servicing). As a result, Fiscal Year 2007 saw 15% cuts to basic research at NASA. Astrobiology suffered the most with a 50% cut. The largest outcry from the scientific community came from the cancellation of a mission to Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter that may possibly harbor life. This mission could have become one of NASA’s greatest scientific successes, comparable to the Hubble space telescope and the Mars rovers, but it was cut in favor of soon-to-be-publicized money vacuums. The extreme hierarchy of the organization is another reason why NASA’s research is suffering. Research flourishes in academia and in government labs because a small number of individuals are able to take responsibility for an entire project, or an entire critical part of a project. They are usually pursuing ideas that they conceived themselves, which magnifies their investment in their science. However, in a hierarchical setting, where responsibility comes from a remote individual at the top, it is hard to feel ownership of a project. Additionally, projects are usually assigned to contractors who assign their work to subcontractors, and so on, until it becomes difficult to make the smallest decision without first contacting everyone involved for numerous meetings and yards of red tape. These orphan projects have a greater possibility of stagnating and being abandoned, especially in times when “some NASA programs that are not directly related to the exploration mission” are being “reformulated or terminated,” according to a White House press release. The sprawling arms of NASA extend beyond the agency, by outsourcing to private companies to produce the hardware and software necessary to complete a project. This division of labor seems sensible, but the way NASA conducts it opens the door for failure. Rather than granting the project to the most capable company, NASA almost always goes with the one that charges the least amount of money. For example, when the Cell Culture Unit project required a container to harbor cells in space, the company that won the bid was one that had never produced biological equipment. They failed at making an adequate device,

which cost the project time and money that could have been saved by outsourcing to someone more capable. But the incapable parties do not always lie outside the organization. Very often, the people in charge of projects do not have an advanced degree in the field (or in a related field, or even a bachelor’s degree in science, or in the case of George Deutsch – former presidential appointee at NASA headquarters, any degree at all). Usually, they achieve these high positions by staying with the organization for a long time, and they have little expertise outside what they have been doing for years. Additionally, as a NASA civil servant, you have to commit a serious crime in order to lose your job, so there is not the normal work-hard-to-keep-yourjob attitude. For the researchers at NASA, this arrangement is a recipe for failure: they are forced to follow the direction of people who do not know where they are going. This poor organization has

had dire consequences in the past: the independent commission hired to investigate the Columbia disaster partly blamed NASA’s social culture for delaying the investigation of problems seen soon after the launch of the shuttle. Science requires nurturing for its projects to mature, but NASA is a fickle parent. The agency adopts projects when they are trendy or affordable, and abandons them when they can no longer be accommodated. NASA is also a vain custodian of government money earmarked for research, only focusing on immediate public image, rather than long-term repercussions. Our taxes will fund this research either way, whether it is conducted by NASA or conducted in a lab funded by some other government agency. Don’t we deserve to see our investment in science pay off?

REVIEWS

For instance, students in poorly equipped schools may perform significantly worse academically than students with adequate academic resources. In this case, most of their performance is determined by their environment. If students from poorly ou said that just like your mother.” At some equipped schools are given more adequate academic resources, point in your life, someone may have made this their school performance may be influenced most directly by type of remark about your behavioral similarities their own abilities and work ethic. Thus, Ridley argues, academic to a relative. Perhaps, after you have won an performance becomes more heritable. Likewise, in countries lacking sufficient food supply, poorer award, people have commented on how intelligent, athletic, or otherwise talented and “lucky” you are. This may have led you to members of the population will be malnourished and most likely question how much of your award could be attributed to natural to have low body weights, while wealthier members will be wellfed and have normal to high body weights. If all abilities and how much came from the people are given equal access to food, however, late nights you dedicated to diligently genes are more likely to control how much each working on a project or early morning individual eats and how much of what he or she practices you committed to attending. eats is stored as body fat. Body weight becomes When reading about news events, you more heritable. may have wondered how some people Ridley’s examples of gene-environment grow up to commit felonies while their interaction include schizophrenia, body siblings, presumably given comparable weight, and language acquisition. One of the upbringings, lead honest, productive lives. most fascinating, and at times mind-boggling, For readers who are curious about issues illustrations of gene-environment interaction such as these, Matt Ridley’s book The is Ridley’s discussion of identical twins (whose Agile Gene explains many of the complex genes are identical) raised in different households factors directing the interplay between our and compared to identical twins raised in genetics and environment. the same household. Ridley also addresses A follow-up to Ridley’s book Genome, scientific debates as to how and if humans can be which offers readers a tour of the human objectively distinguished from all other animals, genome, Agile Gene makes the argument given genetic similarities and behavioral parallels that nature and nurture are isolated, between them. competing mechanisms of development. Through Ridley’s conversational tone, Rather, the book asserts that each complements the other and influences How does our genetic material influence how instructive metaphors, and engaging examples of scientific findings, Agile Gene is accessible for the how the other contributes to an organism’s we respond to our environment? average college-educated reader, regardless of physical and behavioral attributes. Ridley describes genes as, “parts of an information system that collects scientific background. Because of the subject’s relevance to human facts about the world in the past and incorporates them into good behavior, personality, and social interaction, those with political design for the future through natural selection.” Specifically, science and psychology backgrounds will likely find the book just through a system of operons, enhancers, and promoters that allow as absorbing as would those with biology experience. Moreover, certain traits to be expressed under particular conditions, genes readers with an extensive genetics background will probably not follow “if-then logic: if in a certain environment, then develop in need Ridley’s abundant metaphors to clarify concepts, but they will likely find his examples and scientific examples informative. a certain way.” An intriguing concept that Ridley introduces is heritability, by This book is for any reader seeking to know more about why he or which distinctions between people in certain populations become she is so easy to identify at family reunions or what is behind our heavily dependent on genetics, rather than on environment. unique physical appearances, personalities, and interests.

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