Nothing Rhymes with Atari

Into the skies soars a rocket Atari
Funded by NASA and princes Qatari 

 

Farewell to the Last Man on the Moon

Gene Cernan, the last human being to walk on the moon, has died. Naturally I didn't know Cernan, and as always I feel a strange twinge when the death of a celebrity hits me harder than that of any less famous person, but Cernan's work, like those of the other astronauts, moved me profoundly as a child. And to this day, I'm amazed that the men who walked on the moon were and are my contemporaries.

Cold war politics aside, manned exploration of the moon stands as one of humanity's most profound and incredible achievements, and I am shocked that now half of the men that walked on the moon are gone before they could see anyone return. I hope at least a few of them live to see people continue humanity's exploration of the solar system before they, too, pass on. 

Day of the Asteroids

Anyone paying any attention at all to the news this week has been anticipating the flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. While scientists predicted that the asteroid would give us a close shave, passing within the orbit of Earth's geosynchronous satellites, they assured us that there was no danger the hurtling rock would slam into Earth.

So it came as quite a surprise when reports and dramatic videos from Russia depicted a light brighter than the sun streaking across the Ural sky, followed by a shockwave that shattered countless windows and injured, at last count, over 1,100 people. We still don't know the full story, but so far it looks like the ten-ton asteroid slammed into the atmosphere at over 30,000 mph and exploded into fragments with the force of a small atom bomb.

And yet it could have been so much worse. We're lucky DA14 didn't hit Earth, because it's many, many times larger than the meteor that streaked over Russia today; the damage would have been tremendous, though not bad enough to threaten the species. Still, there are rocks flying around in our solar system more than capable of wiping out life on Earth, which is why so many scientists have been pushing governments to step up their efforts to track asteroids and other celestial bodies. With enough warning, it's possible that we might be able to deflect a species-killing asteroid before it hits us.

Such a threat, of course, might not happen for hundreds or thousands of years. Or it could happen tomorrow. But when the stakes are this high, I'd certainly rather be safe than sorry. Protecting Earth from asteroid strikes is only one reason I support space exploration, but it's one of the big ones.

Hopefully the hundreds of Russians injured today will make full recoveries. And perhaps more people will start looking to the skies in the wake of today's twin near-misses.

Copernicus Hill, Manitoba

In 1973, Manitoba's Polish community erected this monument to celebrate the quincentenary of the birth of Copernicus. It's located on Copernicus Hill, in Manitoba's Duck Mountain Provincial Park. Judging by my height in this photo, we must have visited when the monument was quite new. It was a very warm, very sunny day, and I remember how fascinated I was by the sundial; Mom and Dad explained how it worked, and my mind boggled. I'm certain this is one of those childhood incidents that sparked my interest in science, particularly astronomy, and while I didn't pursue science as a career I still follow new developments avidly. I'm really looking forward to seeing what discoveries might be made by the James Webb Space Telescope  and the Terrestrial Planet Finder, should they actually ever be completed, launched and funded. Just think - within our lifetime we might actually discover habitable planets besides Earth, or even extraterrestrial life. With Webb, we might be able to see far enough to view the light of the first galaxies being born. Awe-inspiring!

Water on Mercury

While space exploration of Mars tends to get the lion's share of media attention, I'm riveted by the news that NASA's Messenger spacecraft has detected strong evidence that the planet Mercury harbours water ice at its poles, and possibly even organic matter. It seems hard to believe that a planet with temperatures that can reach nearly 500 degrees Celsius could have ice anywhere, but Mercury's poles get very little exposure to the sun so temperatures are much, much lower. Apparently the shade of deep craters also helps preserve the ice.

As we learn more about our solar system, it seems more and more likely that we'll find extraterrestrial life somewhere within Sol's orbit - probably only microbes, but even that would be a stunning new paradigm for human beings to accept. I am profoundly grateful to live in an era when humanity's best and brightest are discovering so many new wonders.

"Outer Space" by Sander van den Berg

Sander van den Berg is a Dutch video editor. He created "Outer Space" from old NASA images of Saturn and Jupiter taken by the Cassini and Voyager space probes, stitching together still photographs to produce the illusion of motion. If old black and white photos from decades past can be used to create wondrous works of art like this, just imagine what future artists will do with higher-resolution, full colour photography from more sophisticated probes!

Berg's Vimeo page boasts only one other video, a short travelogue of his (her?) trip to Egypt. It's also worth a look, well-edited and insightful.

Space Cases

Several of my friends and colleagues - people I admire and respect - have opined that space travel is a waste of money, that the resources we devote to putting a man on the moon or space probes on Mars could be better used on Earth, presumably to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, and so on. In other words, we should solve our problems at home before we start doing extraneous things like investigating outer space.

I've always been a space buff, so naturally I find this attitude somewhat shortsighted. But as a person who believes in social justice, I'm willing to ask myself if exploring space is worth the costs.

President Bush has asked Congress to increase NASA's budget from 15.4 to 16.2 billion dollars. That's a lot of cash, and sadly, thanks to Shrub's complete ignorance of rational space policy, much of that cash will probably be wasted on flashy projects designed not to advance science, but to score propaganda points and enrich aerospace firms (which donate millions of dollars to the Republican party).

That aside, let's pretend that 16.2 billion could be used only for experiments and programs that promise to deliver real results that will expand our knowledge of the universe. What kind of return are we getting on our investment? (And yes, even though I'm a Canadian, I do mean "we," even though my taxes aren't being touched by NASA. If we take a global perspective, we have to realize that resources diverted in one nation - and benefits accrued by that nation - affect all of us.)

Well, over the years NASA and other space agencies have given us reams of data about the composition of stars and planets, a much greater understanding of weather patterns on our own planet (including crucial environmental data), communications satellites, and various spinoff technologies that we use in everyday life. (Though some argue that such spinoffs could have been developed more efficiently with R&D programs devoted specifically to the invention of the spinoffs.) Space missions have also given us thousands of remarkable photographs, from the Earth/Moon shots of the Apollo missions to the Hubble Space Telescope's awe-inspiring vistas of deep space.

Could we make do without all this? I suppose we could. It's possible that understanding the nature of the universe is something we could learn in a thousand or ten thousand years, long after we've sorted out our problems. Perhaps it's not fair for us to delight in this new knowledge or to vicariously launch ourselves into space along with those daring astronauts - not when our neighbours are wondering where their next meal is coming from. I have to admit that I've had these doubts myself.

But let's see what else we're spending our money on.

Let's see...in the last three months of 2001, Coca-Cola enjoyed sales of $941 million. In just three months, human beings spent nearly a billion dollars on a soft drink that isn't even good for them. In fact, we're spending $60 billion a year on soft drinks.

One useless product that we can easily do without dwarfs NASA's budget. If we must eliminate space travel so that all that money can be devoted to solving Earth's problems, so too should that $60 billion we spend on soft drinks. There's just no excuse.

We spent over a billion dollars to see one movie: Titanic. Nearly that much to see three, the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

While we're at it, we should eliminate:

video games ($9.4 billion annually - nearly the size of the NASA budget)
NHL hockey ($2 billion)
Hallmark greeting cards ($4.3 billion annually - a quarter of the NASA budget - ONE greeting card company, producing one of the most wasteful and useless products on the market! And since Hallmark claims it has 50% of the greeting card market, I assume we're actually spending $8.6 billion a year on cards.)*



...and on and on it goes, including the US military, with an annual budget of $400 billion, more than every other government on Earth combined. The sheer waste and futility boggles the mind. How much are wealthy collectors willing to pay for rare works of art? Millions? Tens of millions? Why aren't we outraged that that money isn't being funnelled to worthy causes?

I think the lesson here is this: human beings spend a disproportionate amount of their intelligence and talent, not to mention the Earth's resources, on frivolity. Just as I defend NASA spending, I'm sure others can find reasons to support professional hockey and greeting cards.

But let's not kid ourselves. Even if every government on earth suddenly decided to cancel their space programs, the money saved wouldn't be diverted to feeding the hungry, healing the sick, or housing the homeless. More than likely, we'd all demand tax cuts so that we could buy more DVDs or books or Silly Putty.

I'm not alone in that. I'm just as hypocritical as everyone else.

But please, guys. Let's not single out the space program. At least our adventures in space have given us some genuinely worthwhile scientific insight. And perhaps more importantly, they've helped raised the consciousness of thousands of people, helping us see our Earth as one world without borders, a world that needs to be protected from our own shortsightedness. And we really can't predict the other benefits that may come from our exploration. Perhaps the answers to our problems can't be found on Earth; perhaps we need to look beyond our own horizons.




*Figures compiled from the New York Times, Advertising Age, Hallmark, and my own memories of box office figures. Come on, it's a Blahg, not a scholarly journal.