C'mon Man!

In May 1961 President Kennedy announced the goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. The goal was achieved on July 20,1969, when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong left the Lunar Module and stepped onto the surface of the Moon.

Footprint on the lunar surface (NASA)

Or did he?

Hold on. I don't buy into the conspiracy theories about the moon landing being faked. But man, there are some doosies out there. No, what I'm writing about here is more along the lines of, "Why in the world has our exploration lagged since 1969?"

Apollo Mission Control (NASA)

Think about it. NASA was able to put men on the moon using 1960's technology eight years after getting the presidential order. Early estimates for the lunar landing project appear to put the cost of the program at around $20 billion. Those early estimates were quickly raised to roughly $33 billion as discussions concerning the feasibility of a lunar landing project continued. At the end of the program NASA estimates Apollo cost $25.4 billion (about $95 billion in 1990 dollars).

In an article commemorating the one-year anniversary of the passing of Neil Armstrong, James Hansen, a history professor at Auburn University and Neil Armstrong's biographer in "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong" (Simon & Schuster 2005), notes that it took 400,000 Americans to man the Apollo team. So, $25 billion and 400,000 people. That is quite an investment - but they got it done.

Another interesting fact concerning the Apollo 11 mission was the computing power required to make it fly. In this Computer Weekly article, it is highlighted that the "...Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) used a real time operating system, which enabled astronauts to enter simple commands by typing in pairs of nouns and verbs, to control the spacecraft. It was more basic than the electronics in modern toasters that have computer controlled stop/start/defrost buttons. It had approximately 64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz."

The same article also notes that a, "...USB memory stick today is more powerful than the computers that put man on the moon."

C'mon man!

And therein lies the genesis of this blog. What could we accomplish today with $100 billion (in 2013 dollars) and 400,000 highly educated and motivated team members?

Are we reduced to goofing on Elvis?

Yesterday I wrote a tantalizingly titled piece about the potential demise of Apple. I had read an article that lamented how Apple appears to have forsaken innovation for design. Consumer electronics is not a moon mission but I suspect a lot of the technology that has been behind the incredible advances of the last fifty years came from the space program, more specifically from Apollo.

So what are we doing with that technology?

A CNN article provides one list of the top twenty-five technological advances in the last twenty-five years:

1. Wireless world 
2. Defense technology
3. Alternative fuel vehicles
4. Biotechnology
5. Computers
6. Lasers
7. Genomics
8. Global finance
9. Processors
10. Digital storage
11. Space
12. Fiber optics
13. Satellite TV & radio
14. DNA testing
15. Video games
16. Biometrics
17. Energy and water savers
18. Scanning tunneling microscopes
19. Batteries
20. E-baggage
21. Remote controls
22. Animal cloning
23. Manufacturing technology
24. The big picture
25. Weather technology

Where is space on this list? Number 11. The CNN article highlights the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars lander missions as the top achievements in this category. To be fair these are tremendous things but, at the risk of sounding trite, they allow us to look around the galaxy. While there is value in this, and it's exciting to be able to explore the Red Planet via remote picture feed, and even see beyond our own solar system using Hubble, these types of missions pale in comparison to manned space flight. 

There is something inside humans that drives us beyond the next mountain, that sends us out upon the waves heading toward a destination we can't even see yet. Think about the early explorers. When Magellan, Columbus, daGama, Eriksson, Vespucci and others set sail, they didn't have modern technology. They did have the advantage of exploring in an environment that contained breathable air. And if they were successful in reaching land, food and fresh water were - potentially - available to replenish their supplies. 

Sailing the sea in basically a leaky, wooden canoe

But something keeps bugging me about this. Where is our spirit of adventure? Where are the explorers of today? By all accounts Neil Armstrong was a quiet, humble man. On the other hand, he was also a man who, beginning at the age of 20, flew 78 combat missions in the Korean war. A man who flew over 200 different aircraft including the famous X-15.

That's not a plane...it's a rocket with wings...

Obviously, Armstrong had that pioneer spirit, that desire to see what would appear over the next horizon. Where are those men and women today? Working in computer labs? At universities? Maybe at the LHC in Switzerland? How many times can you climb Mount Everest or skydive?

Remember that guy Magellan? The first to be credited with circumnavigating the globe? Killed by Natives in the Philippines. How about Hernando de Soto, the first European explorer to cross the Mississippi River? He fell ill and died. His men weighed down his body and dumped him into the Big Muddy. Juan Ponce De Leon didn't find the fountain of youth. But he did find a poison arrow, dying in Florida in 1521. Giovanni da Verrazzano, of the New York bridge Verrazanos, took one voyage too many, ending up killed - and eaten - by natives in the Lesser Antilles. And you thought Brooklyn was dangerous.

History is full of examples of men and women who pushed the envelope, who strove to break barriers and explore our world. Take another look at the list above. Which of those twenty-five technological achievements lends itself to the next frontier? Video games? E-baggage? Animal cloning?

For the love of Lewis and Clark!

It's time to take our great technology and focus it on the horizon once more. I bet you can find any number of people willing to step off this earth and be the next Columbus or Cook. 

In fact, there is one team of people that are doing just that: MarsOne.

Even if you are Ah-nold, if you go to Mars with MarsOne, "You won't be baaaack."

Would you take a one-way trip to Mars? The MarsOne program is not funded yet but cost estimates for the program are around $6 billion - far less than what it cost to send us to the Moon in 1969. So is MarsOne the next Queen Isabella? Only time and the tides will tell...

What do you think?

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Science!

As my small but faithful readership knows, I try to be a man of faith. However, that does not mean that I am anti-science. I'm fascinated by our ability to fly a rocket an incredibly long way (anywhere from fifty-four million kilometers to over four hundred million kilometers), detach a landing module and deposit a technical dreamboat onto the surface of a distant, red planet. In fact, if you go here, you can read all about NASA's current program managing several rovers on the surface of Mars, including the latest, Curiosity. According to NASA:

Human space exploration helps to address fundamental questions about our place in the Universe and the history of our solar system. Through addressing the challenges related to human space exploration we expand technology, create new industries, and help to foster a peaceful connection with other nations. Curiosity and exploration are vital to the human spirit and accepting the challenge of going deeper into space will invite the citizens of the world today and the generations of tomorrow to join NASA on this exciting journey.

This looks like a spot I visited in Saudi Arabia!

I'm not here to debate the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on space exploration. There are some tremendously useful technologies that have come out of the space program - things like cordless tools, for example. What is on my mind are those things that we do in the name of science that, well, have some questionable value to mankind as a whole.

In fact, I was listening to NPR yesterday morning and heard about an ongoing experiment to determine if animals flock together (herd, school, etc.) to be safer. The very first line of the on-line report says,  "By tricking live fish into attacking computer-generated "prey" scientists have learned that animals like birds and fish may indeed have evolved to swarm together to protect themselves from the threat of predators."

In a burst of sarcasm I will likely regret I thought, "Really? Marlin Perkins taught us that in the Sixties without the aid of computer generated prey."

Our generations' Steve Irwin

I grew up watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, with Marlin Perkins traveling around the world teaching us about animal behaviors and all manner of weird things - including the fact that when you were watching a herd of wildebeests on the plains of Africa, the one straggling in the back was likely to get eaten by that cheetah hiding in the brush.

At the risk of mixing metaphors in this blog, that's not rocket science.

Near the end of the NPR segment, Christos Ioannou (University of Bristol, UK) says, "I think it's the first evidence that this coordinated behavior we see in bird flocks and fish schools, where individuals are really highly coordinated in the direction they're heading, has an anti-predatory effect, to our knowledge that's the first time it's been done in a really clear, experimental way."

Again, can't we see this type of behavior playing out in the wild nearly at will? Perhaps the caveat is in an experimental way. I'm not sure how much this experiment cost or who paid for it but this is just one example of science trying to prove something that seems, well, intuitive.

I'm sure that there are other reasons that creatures flock or school together but after growing up watching Wild Kingdom and other shows that presented cool information about animals, this is just an area where I didn't think we needed to expend a lot of resources. Of course, Wild Kingdom isn't on the television anymore and sadly, Steve Irwin has passed, so maybe there is a need for folks like Ioannou and his fellow researchers to come up with video games for predatory fish. If nothing else, perhaps they are this generations' Marlin Perkins?

Or maybe, they'll end up like these guys:



What do you think?

X

Zeus must be green with envy

Today I viewed a slide show from Time.com highlighting ten objects that had been carried into space. The first picture showed three Lego figurines that have accompanied the Juno probe. The Juno probe was launched on August 5^th, 2011 and will arrive in orbit around the planet scientists believe was the first to be created in our solar system sometime during the year 2016.

I could get lost in all the information that is available on the Internet concerning this mission. Although not a huge space nut, I do think it’s cool that we are exploring the space around us. The NASA Juno website is especially cool with a haunting soundtrack reminiscent of Myst and other neat multimedia tidbits.

But the real impetus for today’s blog is those three little Lego figures:

                                  Two fictional characters and a scientist?

In case you can’t pick them out, here’s who is riding Juno on its five-year trek to Jupiter:

Jupiter: On the right is Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods (or Jim Morrison). Jupiter makes all the sense in the world, right? I mean, the mission is to explore his eponymous world. Luckily he has his trademark lightning bolts handy in case things get dicey.

Juno: In the middle is Juno, Jupiter’s wife. One website I found, that talks about the Roman gods, mentioned that Jupiter was a little scared of Juno. That must be because she used to hit him with the frying pan she is holding in her hand. I swear when I first looked at this picture I thought to myself, ‘Why are they sending a Lego image of Chris Evert into space?'

Galileo: On the left, we have Galileo Galilei, the Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. Naturally, he’s holding a telescope and a soccer ball-sized rendition of Jupiter – the planet – not the Roman god. I can only imagine that Galileo is a tad cranky about a couple of things; one, his head looks ridiculous. The least NASA and Lego could have done was give him a comb-over. And two, he’s no doubt thinking to himself, ‘How did I get stuck on a five-year space journey with two mythological figures?’ NASA could’ve put a red velvet hat on him and he would’ve looked like Santa Claus bearing astronomical gifts.

I don’t really believe in extra-terrestrials. But for the sake of argument, what if some alien life forms are cruising by Jupiter around 2016 – maybe the ones that are in that cloaked ship out by Mercury – and happen upon these three figures. What are they going to think about Earth and the people who inhabit our planet?

What do you think?

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