With the passing of Leonard Nimoy, it has become apparent that the world of Star Trek still holds power in the minds of many. The vision of an optimistic future, where humankind has matured enough to start reaching out to the wider universe and deal with problems to the best of our ability is made all the more poignant by the constant daily stream of bad news, scandal, inanity, and demonstrations of how far we have to go if we truly want to qualify as intelligent life forms. Indeed, it seems like there are too many working to take us in the opposite direction, back into the Dark Ages of fear and superstition.
And yet the Final Frontier is still out there - and we ARE making progress in a myriad of ways.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
The video at the top of this diary is a demonstration that out of the eye of the ADHD news media, things are getting getting accomplished all the time by people working on the cutting edge, building on the best that humanity is capable of. If it's not disastrous, bloody, shocking, or some kind of spectacle, odds are the press will have little time or space for it. (Pun not intended.) But... that doesn't mean it's not happening, or that it is not important. (Here's the link if you can't see the video.)
24/7 the International Space Station orbits the earth. Crews do research, carry out observations, and continue to maintain and upgrade the station. Did you know that the crew has just finished a series of major spacewalks to prepare for new vehicles coming up to the I.S.S.? Did you realize humans have been doing this for 50 years now? If you know where to look on the Internet, you can watch it as it happens.
There is so much we are doing in space. The European Space Agency has embarked on the Copernicus program, to fly a series of satellites designed to look at the earth by a variety of means. The Sentinel satellites already in orbit are providing fascinating new data, radar sensing information it would be difficult to get any other way. Sentinel 2 is going to give us even more detailed views of the earth than the Landsats have. It promises to be amazing.
What kind of things are we finding? Who knew the fertility of the Amazon rain forest depends on dust blowing from Africa?
The glowing arcs above are slices of dust clouds in the atmosphere, imaged along lines of longitude. Between 2007 and 2013, the satellite, called CALIPSO, bounced lasers off the dust and analysed reflected light to find that about 27.7 million tons of dust reaches the Amazon basin every year.
Due to the region's high rainfall, phosphorus in the soil – which is essential for plant growth – is washed away by local rivers. But luckily, the Saharan delivery contains about the same amount of the lost element, replenishing its supply.
http://youtu.be/...
Satellites are showing that same Amazon basin suddenly experiencing an increase in logging. It's practically real time feedback on how changes in government policy can have unfortunate consequences. Satellites are also giving us a handle on how much illegal seafood is being caught in the oceans, critical information if we are to keep more fisheries from collapsing. This multimedia piece combines imagery from space with views from the ground to show the ongoing story of what has happened to the Aral Sea. It's getting harder to claim ignorance for an excuse for what we are doing to our planet.
And while we're looking down, we're also looking up and out. The Hubble Space Telescope continues to push back the edges of the known universe, and hopefully will for years yet to come. (For those who argue there's no real need for humans in space, it should be remembered the HST would have had a short career if it hadn't been for the ability of the Space Shuttle to take crews up to periodically work on it.)
Meanwhile, back in the solar system, the Dawn mission is giving us an up close and personal look at the Asteroid Belt's largest members, Vesta and Ceres. (What's up with the bright spots? Maybe we'll know soon. Maybe not - that's why we have to go look.) New Horizons is closing in on Pluto - we're going to be getting our best look ever by July - and then it'll be on to the Kuiper Belt.
When the DSCOVR mission finally reaches its parking orbit at L1, we'll be getting a real time look at the Earth that should give us valuable information on climate issues and will also give us an early warning of solar flare storms headed our way. If you don't know why that second objective is important, look up Carrington Event and think about what it would do to our current technology-based civilization. An early warning could be critical to minimize damage, damage that could take years to recover from.
(If you'd like to monitor Earth's magnetic field on your own, here's directions for a simple device you can build at home. Channel your inner Spock.)
A common argument against devoting resources to space is that "We need to fix our problems here on the ground first." It's been proven repeatedly that that argument completely misses the point. It's the views we get from space that have given us the perspective we need to fully appreciate many of the problems we have on Earth. In fact, it's given us the ability to really see some of those problems for the first time - and a big advantage in beginning to take action on them. Good decisions need good information; knowledge IS power.
It's right up there with the fallacy that spending money on space programs is a waste, as though we're simply loading money into missiles and shooting them off into the void. That money is spent on the ground. It goes to people, creating the kind of jobs that are supposed to be desirable and more than pointless drudgery; it drives research into both pure and applied science; it inspires our youth; it validates our existence as more than just consumers in an economic machine. We spend trivial amounts on space and science in general, one reason we're struggling as a civilization.
Given both the size of the solar system, the technology we currently have at our disposal, and the complexity of things we're attempting, any space mission takes years to get off the ground. It calls for long term thinking on the part of government, and a continued financial commitment. Not to put too fine a point on it, a society that can field a vigorous space program and keep it up is displaying a level of function that bodes well for its future. It's a test the U.S. is failing.
For all the scientific breakthroughs it produces, the space program in general — and planetary exploration in particular — is an inexpensive enterprise. "People grossly overestimate the budget that NASA gets," said Niebur. The president's fiscal year 2016 budget calls for $18.5 billion overall for NASA — 0.46 percent of the federal budget. "Most people think it's 10 times that much."
Of that, the allotment for planetary science has been cut to $1.36 billion — the fourth such proposed cut by the Obama administration, and far short of what is needed by the program. (The rest of NASA's budget goes to earth science, human space exploration, and operation of the International Space Station, among other things.) According to the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space research and advocacy organization, for the planetary science division to run well, the United States should spend at least $1.5 billion every year to explore other worlds — "less overall," they report, "than what Americans spent on dog toys in 2012."
The kind of thinking needed to plan for spending years to send a spacecraft billions of miles out into the unknown for the sake of finding out what is out there, with no guarantee of success, no immediate return, and little more than a guess as to what might be waiting is the kind of thinking we need for so many other problems facing us as a civilization. It calls for imagination, persistence, and curiosity - and optimism. It calls for looking at the universe as it is - not what we would like it to be, for admitting what we don't know - but would like to, and facing up to the challenge it presents - knowing that it is a challenge worthy of the best we have to offer.
The reaction to Leonard Nimoy's passing is a reminder that there is much that calls to us in the vision that Star Trek posed of the future. It speaks to a need to feel like we are heading in the right direction, that today is better than what came before, and that the future can be better still. The Final Frontier is still waiting, if we dare to meet the challenge. The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
I'm going to close this with a video that speaks in the words of another visionary, Carl Sagan, words that still have power, words that have even greater relevance now.
http://youtu.be/...
Link to the original video in large format: http://erikwernquist.com/...