Science

Is the Space Program Worth It?

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A few days ago on the way to work I was listening to Dirk Van’s show and he posed an interesting question to the listeners. Is the space program worth it?

Most said that it was, for a variety of reasons. Some of them posed were national pride, research that is done, and there were others.

I remember visiting the Kennedy Space Center several years ago. I loved the museums filled with the rockets and equipment used to explore space. I also was able to walk through the area where they were working on the International Space Station. I was with my father and he said to me “this has got to be a black hole of money here”. I couldn’t argue. I assume that NASA is run like any other government program, and is rife with waste.

The benefits of the space program are many. So many of the things that we use every day that we take for granted have been either invented or improved due to the space program.

But can’t we build a structure that can hold a perfect vacuum here on earth for a LOT cheaper and do the research there? Like for say, a billion dollars? For fiscal year -09, NASA’s budget was almost $18bb!

Do we need the weightless part to get the good research done?

Can’t private industry or individuals look for life on other planets?

I would love to hear from some of our scientists who read the blog as well as others on this subject.

Journalists and Rocket Scientists

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In 1920, Robert Goddard was conducting experiments with rockets. In an editorial, The New York Times sneered at Goddard’s work and particularly at the idea that a rocket could function in a vacuum:

That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

In 1969…the year of the Apollo moon mission…the NYT finally got around to issuing a correction for their 1920 mistake.

What is noteworthy about the original editorial is not just the ignorance, but the arrogance and the outright nastiness. As the AstronauticsNow post points out, “The enlightened newspaper not only ridiculed the idea that rocket propulsion would work in vacuum but it questioned the integrity and professionalism of Goddard.” The post goes on to say that “The sensationalism and merciless attack by the New York Times and other newspapers left a profound impression on Robert Goddard who became secretive about his work (to detriment of development of rocketry in the United States)…”

It appears that some of the attributes of the NYT which make it so untrustworthy and unlovable today are actually cultural characteristics of long standing.

Worth keeping in mind when reading NYT analyses of Climategate.

Riddle Me This

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A few weeks before the Climategate scandal started to bounce around the blogs, I wrote an essay here about how the global warmists were acting just like every other doom-shrieking huckster from the past five decades. Since all of the others were wrong, terribly and horribly wrong, I said that I wasn’t too worried about any toasty catastrophe.

That is why I haven’t been paying too much attention to the collapse of the latest doom-of-the-week. After all, it isn’t like I haven’t seen this tired process play itself out over and over again.

But it is tough to avoid it altogether if you rely on blogs for your news. And there is a recurring theme that gives me pause.

Most climate scientists that appear on news programs, or who write op-eds for the various news outlets, all say the same thing. This scandal might cast more than a decade of work done by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia into doubt, but it doesn’t invalidate research done by other scientists which support the idea that this planet is warming due to human action.

Well, gee, why in the world doesn’t it invalidate their work as well?

Didn’t the CRU boast the largest and most comprehensive collection of climate data in the entire world? Didn’t this massive collection of data inspire, if not directly influence, just about every other climate scientist’s work? Aren’t the people who authored the Emails which prove dirty tricks, data manipulation, and collusion to hide problems with their research the most prestigious and influential climate scientists in the world?

So why in the world should anyone take any climate scientist’s word for their integrity, and soundness of their work? Isn’t the onus on them to prove that they aren’t crooks and liars, like the big guys were?

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, but I may be missing something.

“What?” Said the Chinchilla

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The Daily WTF is a site that collects programmers’ horror stories. I thought the following horror story [it’s the second story on the page] provides a good example of why it’s important to double-check the code of scientific software.

Long ago, I worked as a programmer at a university’s hearing research lab. They were awarded a large government grant to study the effects of different kinds of noise on hearing. For the really loud and really faint noises, the researchers used animal subjects with ears that are similar to human ears. Specifically, chinchillas.
 

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