I love space, me. Not in terms of "I need my space" (not really an option when you live in a house as small as mine anyway), but in terms of the huge, black, cold, silent expanse above our heads, below our feet and generally pretty much anywhere except here. There is something extremely cool about looking up at night at the minuscule specks of light glittering away, and thinking that each and every one of them is so many squillions of miles away that the distance is completely beyond human understanding. Oh, and they all look different to how they seem from here, because in the case of most of them, the light that we're seeing now began its journey before humans were even on earth. The fact that humans are capable of describing something like this with words like "twinkle twinkle little star" speaks volumes about the human capacity for creative stupidity.
There are many ways of appreciating the expanse of space more effectively, one of which is through the avenue of space exploration. NASA, being one of the finest organisations that the US government has ever produced, has made this very easy for us to enjoy at home - if you're on a fast internet connection, do tune in to NASA TV at some point. At the time of writing, the channel is showing live pictures from the Space Shuttle Endeavour as it heads towards the International Space Station (ISS) in order to dock with it. This is accompanied by the audio of the transmissions between the Shuttle astronauts and Mission Control, and by a commentator explaining what is going on and what is coming up later. For a science geek such as myself, this is immensely awesome.
If you're more of the "sit out in the garden with a telescope" school of space appreciation, you can join in too. Heavens Above is a site that delivers a frankly worrying amount of information, not only about stars and planets, but also about pretty much every orbiting satellite and piece of junk that's visible from the ground. Its killer function, however, is the service that will predict the exact position of these satellites at any point in time and from any point on the Earth's surface. It was because of this that I was able, last night, to stand outside and watch the bright dot of the ISS swoop silently overhead, followed a minute later by Endeavour as it slowly closed on the station's position.
Now, it may seem difficult to credit, but there are those in this world who, when confronted by all of this, will just complain that it costs too much and there's nothing out there worth exploring anyway. Given how much space exploration can cost (every servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope costs $150 million), this is a reasonable objection to bring up, so let's have a look at the figures. Every year, the UK spends about £200 million on civil space projects, as shown by this Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) report [PDF]. As also noted by the report, this is split between three areas:
Given that the third item has the least funding (30%), let's look at it first. Anyone who complains about the government spending money on satellites, but is happy to use the internet, watch TV or travel on any form of transport that uses GPS is a filthy hypocrite, quite frankly. Satellites are vital for all of these - yes, even terrestrial TV, which would be almost totally limited to material from within the country of broadcast without them. All phone networks, too, use satellites as a major help for communication, and in remote areas satellite phones are the only means of real-time communication.
Let's move on now to the second item in the list, which takes up an unspecified amount of funding from the remaining 70%. Earth observation is the key to accurate weather reports, to measuring the extent of climate change, and to accurate mapping projects (go and play with Google Maps for a few minutes, then imagine it without the vast majority of the imagery on board. Not so much fun now, is it?) Going back to the POST report, it appears that this same data is used to inform environmental policy and for coordinating disaster relief. Personally, these are things I'd rather not do without.
On to the remaining item in the list, then, and probably the one that's most controversial in terms of the "pointless/useful" debate: astronomy and scientific exploration. I'll fully admit that the things found out by these missions generally do not have a direct bearing on life down here on Earth. Does this make them useless?
Well, for a start, there are indirect spinoffs from pretty much everything done in space. Although the development of Teflon, the most-cited example of this, actually has nothing to do with space exploration (you'll note that NASA has to produce a page listing what the space programme hasn't produced, due to the number of things that it has), industry is full of advances that have been either sparked or entirely invented by scientists working on space exploration. The computer industry is one of those - the fact that NASA needed a computer small enough to go on a spacecraft, and which didn't require the use of punch cards and ticker tape, must have been a major boost to the development of microelectronics. Digital cameras, too, are a direct result of astronomical research - the CCD chip, as used in every digital camera, was invented for use in telescopes.
What's more, even if scientific research doesn't directly affect us, there is something to be said for acquiring knowledge for its own sake. Does it have any practical effect on the way we live to know that the Earth goes round the Sun, rather than the other way around? No? And yet, this is a fact that we expect every child to know, and we'd be horrified to learn that science education couldn't be bothered to cover it. In the same way, even if placing two remote-controlled rovers on Mars doesn't affect us down here, the vast amounts of data we're getting from them mean that we now understand our nearest planetary neighbour better than ever before. Oh, and if you're still not convinced, take a look at the Hubble Deep Field image.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that space exploration is extremely expensive, and this money could indeed be spent on other things. However, there's a few things to note. The first is that the space industry generates jobs and incomes, which find their way back to the government in the form of taxes. The second is that there are plenty of other areas of spending which, one suspects, are either just as "disposable" or vastly oversupplied. For example, the UK's defence budget in 2007 was a shockingly high £32 billion, as shown by this publication from the Treasury. The current governmental estimate for the price of the London Olympics in 2012 is up to £9.35 billion. In October 2005 the MoD estimated that the Iraq war had cost the UK £3.1 billion (goodness knows what it's up to now). I could go on. Essentially, expensive though space exploration is, these costs are as nothing compared to some of the things the government gets up to already.
One other thing - without this research, I am never going to fulfill my childhood dream of being an astronaut. Are you really going to take that away from me?
Friday 10 August 2007
Let's also not forget that this research is vital if personal flying cars are ever going to be produced.
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