Reading this article on the impact of a magnet incident at CERN and how it is impacting the race for a ‘God’ particle. It made me think why are we building £billion systems to compete with each other? Can’t one look for the ‘God’ particle and the other for a ‘Jesus’ particle or something? It seems to me to be a bit of a waste of resources. Especially as the CERN collider can do things that the US one can’t do. Why are they doing the same thing?
Although the Space agencies seem to be cooperating on the surface it seems the same thing is going on in the race in space. The European Space Agency has previously released a list of projects it is looking at funding. Read here. These are split into two bands, L-Class at 650M€ and M-Class at 300M€ from which it will pick one from each.
The L-Class candidates include:
- Laplace: This mission would go to Jupiter and its moons. A key target of interest would be the icy moon Europa which is thought to harbour an ocean under its icy crust. The mission would deploy three orbiting platforms to perform coordinated observations of Europa, the other Jovian satellites, Jupiter’s magnetosphere and its atmosphere and interior.
- Tandem:The mission would explore both Titan and Enceladus, the other Saturnian moon currently fascinating scientists. The mission would carry two spacecraft – an orbiter and a carrier to deliver an instrument-carrying balloon and three probes on to Titan.
- Xeus: This next-generation telescope would study the X-ray Universe. It comes in two parts: a mirror satellite and a detector satellite which have to be flown in formation with extreme precision.
The M-Class candidates include:
- Cross-scale: A swarm of 12 spacecraft to make simultaneous measurements of plasma (charged gas) surrounding Earth.
- Marco Polo: A sample-return mission to a near-Earth object. It would consist of a mother satellite which would carry a lander, sampling devices, re-entry capsule as well as instruments.
- Dune and Space:These are two mission ideas before Esa that would tell us more about the mysterious “dark matter” and even stranger “dark energy” that seem to dominate our Universe but which have proven frustratingly difficult to explain with current observation technologies.
- Plato:A mission to find and study planets beyond our Solar System. It would be capable of observing rocky (similar to Earth) exoplanets around brighter and better characterised stars than its predecessors, such as the recently launched Corot mission.
- Spica: The Japanese are proposing a mission which would launch a telescope to study the cosmos at far infrared wavelengths. If Europe became involved, it would bring expertise and technology developed for its own Herschel telescope due to launch next year.
Bear in mind these are examples from late 2007 so there was probably many more on the table. Some will already have been rejected and others added. Nevertheless it gives an idea of where we are heading.
Many of these are the ‘first’. First to Jupiter, Saturn etc. While Spica, Xeus are similar to a NASA project, the Webb Telescope, but at different wavelengths.
The pooling of resources seems to be only when a single project cost is so high that neither can fund it by itself like LISA. Other projects seem to have a lot of overlap and the feeling that it is all about being first.
Can’t we just work together? I’m sure that the X-Ray add on for Webb would be cheaper than a brand new telescope for example. There are some geniuses at both these agencies that would be able to iron out the details to get the most out of the funding. There are downsides of course but if the add on shows promise then a later upgrade, perhaps the original proposed telescope, could be justified for example. In addition this race to be first was great for progress when political points were to be made, such as the Space Race, but nowadays we should be sharing resources and ideas. Now perhaps the competition is better for funding which I can understand but cooperation is much better in my view especially now purse strings will undoubtedly be tightened although I accept I’m not a politician.
If we are working together and not looking to go first can we then look at a very topical project? Global Warming, or is it Cooling…. Anyway Climate Change. Let’s build two systems. One to study the sun, recording sunspot activity and solar flares etc., and the other to study the Earth, recording temperatures, CO2 etc. Let’s stop these pseudo scientists fiddling with the base station data to meet their predictions and find out exactly if we have a problem at all. Plus the information we receive will help us predict the future changes and then from reliable and verifiable data available to all we can analyse and work out a way forward together. Perhaps the fact that we don’t even seem to be considering a clear definition on the ‘Single, Most Important Issue for Man’ must make us wonder.
Personally I see that being more important than being first with a probe to Saturn. No matter what results we find. After all if we find water are we going to get there anytime soon with a hose? Nope thought not.
Only thing is won’t we look silly if when we do get to Saturn they dig up a store of books there with the answer to cancer, instructions on solving the energy crisis, a how to on FTL travel and the Universes best seller ‘How to teach Economics and basic Mathematics to Socialists’. Still I suspect it is worth the risk. (Everyone knows that no matter how advanced a species is you can’t teach those subjects to socialists. That one is clearly a fairy tale)
Medical Ethics
Ethics has always been something of interest to me. I see it being something that we as a species seem to be losing rapidly.
Only a hundred years ago people killed themselves rather than go against their principles. The shame of being found out or to have failed made people fall on their swords. Now we don’t seem to have any ethics whatsoever and even when caught with our hand in the till we just smile, make excuses and carry on.
So when I read about people questioning the ethics of things like stem cell research and the specific issue of is it ethical to allow voice box transplants I have to wonder exactly what it is that we think is unethical. Taking the voice box transplants as an example.
These people are going to receive a gift that will allow them to speak properly again and repair a part of themselves that has been damaged. Sounds good and very much something we should encourage. No one is killed or injured by this process. Even better.
Where do ethics come in?
Now I can understand where if I needed to sacrifice an unborn child to give this ‘gift’ but this seems to be using cells from his own body. It’s not even got the same ethical issues as a kidney transplant from a living donor. What is the big issue with Stem Cells? It’s not like we revere unborn human life anyway. I’m sure there is a logical solution to the issue.
It’s about time we sorted out these ethical issues and made some guidelines. Hopefully not those based on any religious documents or it will be unethical for me to eat bacon or replace someone’s heart valves with a pigs.