My latest review is up at the Huntsville Times! An interesting novel, at least nominally about a subject I've become very interested in - solar power satellites!
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
New Web Site and Organization
It's past time for some real action on the energy alternatives - we'll be collecting and posting articles on real solutions: things that are, at least in theory, technically and economically capable of replacing oil in the next few decades. Should be interesting...
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Baroque Cycle Review
Looks like they finally got my latest review up, of Stephenson's last book of the trilogy. Not bad... :-)
Moon/Mars and Physics
Well, it's a new year, time for an update!
My recent letter to APS News on the "Moon-Mars" program was published in the November 1st edition - a copy is also appended below. Meanwhile, however, my beloved organization went ahead with publishing an anti-"Moon-Mars" report . I've exchanged some email with the report authors, particularly Joel Primack - but I don't think we've convinced anyone of anything yet. Oh well.
Here's the letter:
My recent letter to APS News on the "Moon-Mars" program was published in the November 1st edition - a copy is also appended below. Meanwhile, however, my beloved organization went ahead with publishing an anti-"Moon-Mars" report . I've exchanged some email with the report authors, particularly Joel Primack - but I don't think we've convinced anyone of anything yet. Oh well.
Here's the letter:
Moon/Mars Offers Physics Opportunities
The August/September APS News highlighted a June resolution of the APS Executive Board, urging review of the Moon/Mars proposal and NASA's recent redirection. Calling the 10-15 year timeline for a return to the Moon a "rapid pace", the statement indicated concern about the impact on science and budgets.
Given that the most immediate scientific impact of the new "vision" is a termination of physical science research on the space station, there is certainly reason for this concern. But coming from APS the new statement is ironic in light of the still unrevoked 1991 APS Council "Statement on the Manned Space Station": "The United States needs a vigorous space science program, but such a program can be implemented for the foreseeable future without the proposed manned space station."
Science was never a good justification for the space station. Former APS Public Affairs director Robert Park is widely known as an outspoken critic of human space flight. Park is absolutely correct that human spaceflight is still far too expensive to justify any scientific returns. So far.
With a limited budget, hard choices have to be made on which programs will benefit society more. The money spent to make the aging space shuttles safer, since the Columbia accident, is taking away from science programs at NASA right now. The space station still has billions of dollars worth of committed funding before it can be declared even minimally complete. Bush, in announcing the new Moon/Mars direction, called for an end (by 2010) to the wasteful space shuttle, and thereafter a phasing out of space station commitments as well. This will both protect the substantial continuing science programs at NASA, and leave room for the new program as well. Whatever your views on our president, it's a logical way to proceed.
The reason we need humans in space is not for science. It is to learn how to do things better in space. Robots don't have the intelligence and insight that humans bring. The problems are basic: in our laboratories on Earth we take for granted simple things—shelter from the outside world, a steady internal climate, access to substantial electric power, and of course an abundance of graduate students to put the equipment together, twiddle the knobs, and fix it when it breaks. Fixing things in low gravity isn't so simple—even soldering doesn't work. Small-scale bench-top science that could bring great breakthroughs in space requires all of these, and we don't know how to do any of them cost-effectively yet—and we'll never learn by just sitting in our armchairs and thinking about it.
If the APS is interested in having any real impact on NASA's future, it should make an effort to understand the changes under way. Is it a good idea to turn NASA centers into independent research centers more like the DOE labs? Are there physical science areas that can contribute significantly to the new program, and should receive new funding?
Can we imagine any science we would like to do if the more robust and inexpensive private and federal space infrastructure expected actually comes to pass?
The Moon/Mars decision doesn't have much to do with science—and despite its political origin, has an inevitable logic that a new administration would be hard-pressed to reverse. NASA people are energetically tackling the new challenges they've been given—there are real opportunities here for physicists and physics research, if we are willing to be a part of it.
Arthur Smith,
Selden, NY
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Newsday letter
But that link is going to be invalid in a day or so. Here's the letter as they published it:
Climate change and terrorism
Your cartoon with Dick Cheney linking hurricanes to al-Qaida and the upcoming presidential vote was doubly ironic [Editorial, Sept. 25]. The record-breaking hurricane season this year is exactly the sort of thing scientists have been warning will happen, as we continue to burn fossil fuels and carbon dioxide warms the global climate.
If you think this year was bad, it will only get worse. Climate change threatens as much damage to our society as any conceivable terrorist attack.
The four years of the Bush administration have seen a tragic lost opportunity for the world. We Americans have joined our leaders in denial of the facts - yet the facts are there, as even the Bush administration admits in a recent climate report. Renewable energy research and development is grossly underfunded, and this administration and Congress allowed the wind energy production tax credit to expire.
And there is a link to al- Qaida: replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements is the only sure way to starve the terrorists of the oil money that supports them.
Arthur Smith
Selden
Climate change and terrorism
Your cartoon with Dick Cheney linking hurricanes to al-Qaida and the upcoming presidential vote was doubly ironic [Editorial, Sept. 25]. The record-breaking hurricane season this year is exactly the sort of thing scientists have been warning will happen, as we continue to burn fossil fuels and carbon dioxide warms the global climate.
If you think this year was bad, it will only get worse. Climate change threatens as much damage to our society as any conceivable terrorist attack.
The four years of the Bush administration have seen a tragic lost opportunity for the world. We Americans have joined our leaders in denial of the facts - yet the facts are there, as even the Bush administration admits in a recent climate report. Renewable energy research and development is grossly underfunded, and this administration and Congress allowed the wind energy production tax credit to expire.
And there is a link to al- Qaida: replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements is the only sure way to starve the terrorists of the oil money that supports them.
Arthur Smith
Selden
Monday, September 20, 2004
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Moonrush
And another review - Dennis Wingo's Moonrush. It's an interesting concept - whether the Moon might be a major future source of precious metals.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Latest Review: Futuring
I should probably post here more often... :-)
I do post often on sciscoop - http://www.sciscoop.com/
Also I've been occasionally posting to various NSS sites - for example here: http://chapters.nss.org/weblog/ - though that's more routine space society business.
Actually, regarding Huntsville, it looks like I'll be there in November for an NSS board meeting. Should be interesting.
I do post often on sciscoop - http://www.sciscoop.com/
Also I've been occasionally posting to various NSS sites - for example here: http://chapters.nss.org/weblog/ - though that's more routine space society business.
Actually, regarding Huntsville, it looks like I'll be there in November for an NSS board meeting. Should be interesting.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Wired on Space Solar Power
John Gartner, a reporter from Wired, called me last week about funding for space solar power. Apparently there was some money for it in 2001, but it disappeared somehow, without much outcry, into NASA's general budget. And I'm heading off to the SPS '04 conference in Spain next week, so we'll see if anything comes of that... good to have some advance publicity!
Monday, June 14, 2004
Out of Gas review with htimes
My review finally came out in print now too...
The other book I've been reading on this is Vaclav Smil's Energy at the Crossroads - he has a lot of numbers, many seeming very useful (despite the typos) - but he seems to have a subtle bias in all his arguments that implies energy is not as important to the world economy as, in fact, one would discover from the actual numbers he uses. A little disappointing...
The other book I've been reading on this is Vaclav Smil's Energy at the Crossroads - he has a lot of numbers, many seeming very useful (despite the typos) - but he seems to have a subtle bias in all his arguments that implies energy is not as important to the world economy as, in fact, one would discover from the actual numbers he uses. A little disappointing...
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
And on slashdot
They took a couple of weeks to put this up too - and oddly, changed the title (maybe Barnes and Noble has a different title for it)? Weird. Anyway, nice to have this getting some attention - and lots of posts!
Stephenson Review Up
My review of Stephenson's "The Confusion" just came out in the Huntsville Times. Hope you all like it :-)
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Recommendations to Aldridge Commission
I finally got around to writing up what I'd been thinking about and sending it in to the commission.
Comments are welcome here or there.
Two specific recommendations:
1. Establish a National Space Board, similar to the National Science Board, to provide stable long-term planning and oversight of the nation's space activities, including policy recommendations on budgets, taxation, regulation, and technology incentives to the President and Congress.
2. In planning, focus on enabling the key components of potential virtuous economic cycles: lower-cost access to space stimulating space markets, lunar oxygen for in-space refueling, production of energy in space for sale on Earth, etc... These are the pieces that, as we've experienced in use of computers to design new computers, can lead to truly exponential economic growth. This focus would appear in two areas: the general policy recommendations and incentive structures recommended by the Board, and prioritized lists of demonstration projects that could jump-start these new economic engines.
Comments are welcome here or there.
Two specific recommendations:
1. Establish a National Space Board, similar to the National Science Board, to provide stable long-term planning and oversight of the nation's space activities, including policy recommendations on budgets, taxation, regulation, and technology incentives to the President and Congress.
2. In planning, focus on enabling the key components of potential virtuous economic cycles: lower-cost access to space stimulating space markets, lunar oxygen for in-space refueling, production of energy in space for sale on Earth, etc... These are the pieces that, as we've experienced in use of computers to design new computers, can lead to truly exponential economic growth. This focus would appear in two areas: the general policy recommendations and incentive structures recommended by the Board, and prioritized lists of demonstration projects that could jump-start these new economic engines.
Monday, April 19, 2004
Baseball season
Ben doesn't have quite so many this year (16 teams in the league), but every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months we'll be out watching 2+ hour games. So far they (the "Rangers") have 1 win, 1 loss... A lot of his buddies are in the various other teams this year (neighbors on the street, friends from 3rd grade); the guy he sits next to in class made a third out off Ben's grounder one inning last game, and looked very pleased about it! His little brother, who used to play with Elizabeth's Pirates, is also on the same team.
After a quick trip to DC last week to meet with other publishers and also a brief chat with George Whitesides, I came back with the second installment of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle", The Confusion. Not quite as long as the first, but a similar mix of piracy, politics, and philosophy... And lots more Leibniz! Now I'm hoping to write a review before Mum gets here to read it
After a quick trip to DC last week to meet with other publishers and also a brief chat with George Whitesides, I came back with the second installment of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle", The Confusion. Not quite as long as the first, but a similar mix of piracy, politics, and philosophy... And lots more Leibniz! Now I'm hoping to write a review before Mum gets here to read it
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Prelude to interplanetary travel
I'm still in the middle of reading Robert Zimmerman's "Leaving Earth" (review at the above link) but we did get an overview of the book at his talk. By the way, the location, the 56th Fighter Group Restaurant was rather interesting - a reproduction of a World War II British air base, complete with Spitfire's parked outside. The food was pretty good too!
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Dad's comments on the transistor
Hi Dad :-)
Having some experience in semiconductor research, he had the following comments:
I worked in the transistor area between 1960 and 1964, and some of
my experiments were with the field effect on the surface of a semicondutor.
My understanding is that the DISCOVERY of transistor action by Shockley and
others was an accident arising from experiments on this surface field
effect. Of course, the investigation of semiconductor properties was
carried out at Bell Labs and at other similar institutions like Philips in
Eindhoven and IBM, Texas Instruments, etc. So one could argue that the
DEVELOPMENT of transistors at A.T & T. was done, as you say, to create
something new. That it was not pure research once the discovery had been
made?
I believe the big breakthrough came when photolithography was
applied to the problem. I believe the first company to do this was
Fairchild (Camera), in California. I don't know what links there are from
that company to Intel etc. But I do know that at the company I was with,
Mullard, a subsidiary of Philips, the view was that microminiaturisation
would be done by evaporating metals onto the surface of a semiconductor.
There was much work going on using diffusion of elements into
semiconductors, but the idea of using photographic techniques was not
seriously entertained.
Another comment, I'd like to make: a 19th century scientist I have
a great deal of admiration for is Michael Faraday. His work was done almost
entirely alone. He had one man to help him, that is all. His investigations
cover large areas of physics, physical chemistry and organic chemistry as
well. He, therefore, had little need for vast funding as is the case today,
partly to pay all the employees on a project. I think a great deal of
funding needs are probably exaggerated these days.
One final thought: with regard to the cost of PV, wouldn't you
agree that further reductions in price will come from much larger scale
manufacture and sales, rather than from new technology
Having some experience in semiconductor research, he had the following comments:
I worked in the transistor area between 1960 and 1964, and some of
my experiments were with the field effect on the surface of a semicondutor.
My understanding is that the DISCOVERY of transistor action by Shockley and
others was an accident arising from experiments on this surface field
effect. Of course, the investigation of semiconductor properties was
carried out at Bell Labs and at other similar institutions like Philips in
Eindhoven and IBM, Texas Instruments, etc. So one could argue that the
DEVELOPMENT of transistors at A.T & T. was done, as you say, to create
something new. That it was not pure research once the discovery had been
made?
I believe the big breakthrough came when photolithography was
applied to the problem. I believe the first company to do this was
Fairchild (Camera), in California. I don't know what links there are from
that company to Intel etc. But I do know that at the company I was with,
Mullard, a subsidiary of Philips, the view was that microminiaturisation
would be done by evaporating metals onto the surface of a semiconductor.
There was much work going on using diffusion of elements into
semiconductors, but the idea of using photographic techniques was not
seriously entertained.
Another comment, I'd like to make: a 19th century scientist I have
a great deal of admiration for is Michael Faraday. His work was done almost
entirely alone. He had one man to help him, that is all. His investigations
cover large areas of physics, physical chemistry and organic chemistry as
well. He, therefore, had little need for vast funding as is the case today,
partly to pay all the employees on a project. I think a great deal of
funding needs are probably exaggerated these days.
One final thought: with regard to the cost of PV, wouldn't you
agree that further reductions in price will come from much larger scale
manufacture and sales, rather than from new technology
Snow again!
Just as our first (poor, tiny, small mammal-eaten) crocuses were starting to flower. Oh well... I hope the daffodils survive - their leaves were a couple of inches high.
Joshua loves the snow though - he always likes to be outdoors, but I don't remember the other two ever being so excited at such an early age by snowfall. He was out tonight trying to throw snowballs at his big brother, having a blast!
Sunday, March 07, 2004
An amazing game
Ben's basketball team won their second straight game yesterday - apparently against the second-best team in the league! Not bad for a team where about half the players had never played before (Ben's previous experience consisted of throwing balls at a 7-foot basket in our driveway - and missing most of the time). As Coach Sweeney had warned, some of the teams were a bit stacked this year, with big experienced players picked out for a select few teams; in this case, all but one or two of the players on the other team was bigger and bulkier than every one of our players.
It didn't look good at the start. The other team scored quickly and repeatedly, with their players hitting the basket on every shot - the score stood at 8-0 after a couple of minutes. A couple of the other parents near me shared a grimace - this was going to be over quickly. But then Ben's team got really tight on defense, got the ball down to the basket, and were fouled on a shot, and had free throws; both of them went in. Suddenly the tables seemed turned - our little guys were getting the ball in the basket, dribbling circles around the big guys - and they were getting too scared to foul us. The score was 9-14 near the end of the first half, when Ben was fouled - and then made one of his free throws, and then shortly after got a rebound to make another basket - 9-17 at the end of the first half!
We got the first basket at the beginning of the second half, and another one not long after, but they had started scoring again and brought it up to 20-21. They were back in the lead at 26-25 briefly, then again at 30-29, but there wasn't much time left then and Ben's team had one more basket in them - final score: 30-31!
Pretty amazing game for a bunch of 9 and 10-year-olds!
It didn't look good at the start. The other team scored quickly and repeatedly, with their players hitting the basket on every shot - the score stood at 8-0 after a couple of minutes. A couple of the other parents near me shared a grimace - this was going to be over quickly. But then Ben's team got really tight on defense, got the ball down to the basket, and were fouled on a shot, and had free throws; both of them went in. Suddenly the tables seemed turned - our little guys were getting the ball in the basket, dribbling circles around the big guys - and they were getting too scared to foul us. The score was 9-14 near the end of the first half, when Ben was fouled - and then made one of his free throws, and then shortly after got a rebound to make another basket - 9-17 at the end of the first half!
We got the first basket at the beginning of the second half, and another one not long after, but they had started scoring again and brought it up to 20-21. They were back in the lead at 26-25 briefly, then again at 30-29, but there wasn't much time left then and Ben's team had one more basket in them - final score: 30-31!
Pretty amazing game for a bunch of 9 and 10-year-olds!
Friday, March 05, 2004
Science for its own sake, or not?
Prompted by my Suffolk Life letter, I've been debating with a friend on my apparent downplaying of the importance of space activities, and science, for their own sake, rather than for practical benefit. Excerpting from our debate a bit:
---------------------
[Can funding for science by justified by its "beauty"?] The National Endowment for the Arts gets barely over $100 million per year, and that's about it for federal funding for the arts.
The National Science Foundation alone receives well over $5 billion/year; that's a factor of 50 that's hard to justify on "beauty". Adding in NASA, the Dept. of Energy, NIH and research at the Department of Defense, the Dept. of Commerce's NIST and NOAA labs, etc. and total funding for what is nominally "science" is around $100 billion/year, or a factor of about 1000. We scientists are always complaining that's not enough of course :-)
There is certainly engineering value in doing science for its own sake. Pure science has been the realm of the greatest advances in science that were later used in engineering.
Consider how Maxwell gave us a much better understanding of electricity and magnetism. It was because of his work that we later discovered radio waves.
This is certainly a good example - it's amazing what a true understanding of nature, that science provides, can allow us to do. The question to me is, are we pursuing those new things we can do, to the extent that we should be with all the knowledge we now have?
Our world is forever changed as a result. Consider, also, the discovery of quantum mechanics. The earliest proponents were certainly not looking for any engineering application. Yet, no modern computer would work if quantum mechanics were not true.
Well, it did take 40 years from Einstein's photo-electric effect to the transistor; the connection is not very direct. How much of that intervening effort was pure science and how much was materials engineering? The transistor is certainly an example of a very focused development effort to create something new - effectively government-supported since it was done at the sort of regulated government monopoly (AT&T) which isn't really allowed to exist any more.
Goal-directed research (rather than curiosity-driven) is clearly directly responsible for some of our greatest technologies - the major World-War-II innovations (nuclear power, radar, jet engines, and von Braun's rockets) are obviously big examples. Turing's WWII work on cryptography led to the theoretical foundation and real inspiration for computing. Apollo achieved a remarkable feat on time and within budget; while not really inventing new technologies it did greatly expand the capabilities of a variety of pre-existing inventions - fuel cells, and computers again, for example.
Science benefits practical application, but practical application benefits science enormously too - there's a need for balance. To go back to Maxwell - true, his theory preceded the discovery of radio. But Faraday's electric generator preceded Maxwell's theory; application of that discovery took many years, but without widely available electricity almost no modern science would even be possible!
So, if pressed for engineering applications coming from pure science, they could certainly be impressively given. However, if that were the aim of these scientists, these discoveries would likely not have been made. So, science for science's sake is essential to our technological progress. I believe that as we advertise our profession, it is crucial that we help them to understand this. People should not be lead to believe that the only important science is that which has immediate engineering applications.
Obviously a sensitive point! Balance, balance - to me the balance in the last 20 years or so has tilted, at least at the highest levels of our government, much much too far in favor of "science for science's sake", to the extent that even the smallest attempts to try to set national technology goals (except in trendy so-far-inapplicable areas like "nanotechnology" or, sadly, the "hydrogen economy") are met with howls of disapproval and steadily disappearing funding. Example - the history of the "Advanced Technology Program" at the Department of Commerce - http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/2000/fyi00.080.htm - perhaps it could have been administered better, but note the attacks on goal-directed research there...
we are in the business of the search of truth. And, as a body, I have found the scientific community to be the most objective about truth, but not wholly. Thank goodness that we have experiment to finally decide "what is truth". We are in the search of experimentally verifiable truth. In fact, that is the definition of science - the search for experimentally verifiable truth. That is not what engineers do. They search for ways to use truth to improve our world. The mindset is totally different (and good). I appreciate what engineers do and certainly don't want a world with only scientists and no engineers. We need them both. They are both vital to the improvement of our world.
Yup. But engineers are easily enamored of "cool" stuff - doing everything with the latest technology, hitting the highest performance measures, cutting the tightest safety boundaries; they are not necessarily very practical either. My concern, relating to the original NASA issue, is more distinguishing between "science and engineering for their own sake" (which is how most of the $100 billion currently spent on public R&D every year in the US goes) and "science and engineering directed towards a common, near-term, achievable goal" (for example, fixing global warming). Aside from medicine, where I really don't know enough to comment, we don't seem to be doing much of this any more.
An example: high government funding for photovoltaics research under the Carter administration saw huge decreases in cost of the components and real practical applications in just a few years - and then right after that government funding for R&D in photovoltaics was cut way back, and costs improved much more slowly - if you look at the graph of technology funding and component cost it's a very clear relationship.
There's a text version of the history here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/renewable.energy.annual/backgrnd/chap11i.htm.
Note the 1978 "Solar Photovoltaic Energy, Research, Development, and Demonstration Act", which committed $1.2 billion to the field, and the price of photovoltaics falling to $10/Watt by 1984. It was down to $5/Watt in 1992; current prices are at best about $2.50/Watt. In the early 1970s, module prices had been $100/Watt or more (in 1992 dollars).
A graph of funding in the US and other countries, starting in 1981 (not adjusted for inflation - i.e. it's fallen much more than it looks): http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/fig8s.html
[Actually, here's a graph from the same report of PV prices since 1975 or so, when they were $30/W in 1975 dollars:http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/fig1s.html]
Another factor of 2-3 price improvement is all that is needed for a real revolution in renewable energy at the gigawatt scale of utilities, instead of the megawatt scale you see now, but it'll be 30 years away at current improvement rates.
On the space front, NASA had a program a few years ago, the Space Launch Initiative, to cut the cost to orbit by a factor of 10. There was some promise that it could work by greatly automating things and reducing manpower requirements for preparation for launch - but after spending about a billion dollars, it was cancelled. There's a litany of failed attempts of this sort, which seem to be stymied by the influence of the big aerospace contractors, who only care about the money, not what practical use comes out of it, and the congress, who mostly care about the jobs, and getting reelected themselves. And NASA managers are probably to blame too - for being too in love with engineering rather than practical goals. Perhaps that will change...
---------------------
[Can funding for science by justified by its "beauty"?] The National Endowment for the Arts gets barely over $100 million per year, and that's about it for federal funding for the arts.
The National Science Foundation alone receives well over $5 billion/year; that's a factor of 50 that's hard to justify on "beauty". Adding in NASA, the Dept. of Energy, NIH and research at the Department of Defense, the Dept. of Commerce's NIST and NOAA labs, etc. and total funding for what is nominally "science" is around $100 billion/year, or a factor of about 1000. We scientists are always complaining that's not enough of course :-)
There is certainly engineering value in doing science for its own sake. Pure science has been the realm of the greatest advances in science that were later used in engineering.
Consider how Maxwell gave us a much better understanding of electricity and magnetism. It was because of his work that we later discovered radio waves.
This is certainly a good example - it's amazing what a true understanding of nature, that science provides, can allow us to do. The question to me is, are we pursuing those new things we can do, to the extent that we should be with all the knowledge we now have?
Our world is forever changed as a result. Consider, also, the discovery of quantum mechanics. The earliest proponents were certainly not looking for any engineering application. Yet, no modern computer would work if quantum mechanics were not true.
Well, it did take 40 years from Einstein's photo-electric effect to the transistor; the connection is not very direct. How much of that intervening effort was pure science and how much was materials engineering? The transistor is certainly an example of a very focused development effort to create something new - effectively government-supported since it was done at the sort of regulated government monopoly (AT&T) which isn't really allowed to exist any more.
Goal-directed research (rather than curiosity-driven) is clearly directly responsible for some of our greatest technologies - the major World-War-II innovations (nuclear power, radar, jet engines, and von Braun's rockets) are obviously big examples. Turing's WWII work on cryptography led to the theoretical foundation and real inspiration for computing. Apollo achieved a remarkable feat on time and within budget; while not really inventing new technologies it did greatly expand the capabilities of a variety of pre-existing inventions - fuel cells, and computers again, for example.
Science benefits practical application, but practical application benefits science enormously too - there's a need for balance. To go back to Maxwell - true, his theory preceded the discovery of radio. But Faraday's electric generator preceded Maxwell's theory; application of that discovery took many years, but without widely available electricity almost no modern science would even be possible!
So, if pressed for engineering applications coming from pure science, they could certainly be impressively given. However, if that were the aim of these scientists, these discoveries would likely not have been made. So, science for science's sake is essential to our technological progress. I believe that as we advertise our profession, it is crucial that we help them to understand this. People should not be lead to believe that the only important science is that which has immediate engineering applications.
Obviously a sensitive point! Balance, balance - to me the balance in the last 20 years or so has tilted, at least at the highest levels of our government, much much too far in favor of "science for science's sake", to the extent that even the smallest attempts to try to set national technology goals (except in trendy so-far-inapplicable areas like "nanotechnology" or, sadly, the "hydrogen economy") are met with howls of disapproval and steadily disappearing funding. Example - the history of the "Advanced Technology Program" at the Department of Commerce - http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/2000/fyi00.080.htm - perhaps it could have been administered better, but note the attacks on goal-directed research there...
we are in the business of the search of truth. And, as a body, I have found the scientific community to be the most objective about truth, but not wholly. Thank goodness that we have experiment to finally decide "what is truth". We are in the search of experimentally verifiable truth. In fact, that is the definition of science - the search for experimentally verifiable truth. That is not what engineers do. They search for ways to use truth to improve our world. The mindset is totally different (and good). I appreciate what engineers do and certainly don't want a world with only scientists and no engineers. We need them both. They are both vital to the improvement of our world.
Yup. But engineers are easily enamored of "cool" stuff - doing everything with the latest technology, hitting the highest performance measures, cutting the tightest safety boundaries; they are not necessarily very practical either. My concern, relating to the original NASA issue, is more distinguishing between "science and engineering for their own sake" (which is how most of the $100 billion currently spent on public R&D every year in the US goes) and "science and engineering directed towards a common, near-term, achievable goal" (for example, fixing global warming). Aside from medicine, where I really don't know enough to comment, we don't seem to be doing much of this any more.
An example: high government funding for photovoltaics research under the Carter administration saw huge decreases in cost of the components and real practical applications in just a few years - and then right after that government funding for R&D in photovoltaics was cut way back, and costs improved much more slowly - if you look at the graph of technology funding and component cost it's a very clear relationship.
There's a text version of the history here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/renewable.energy.annual/backgrnd/chap11i.htm.
Note the 1978 "Solar Photovoltaic Energy, Research, Development, and Demonstration Act", which committed $1.2 billion to the field, and the price of photovoltaics falling to $10/Watt by 1984. It was down to $5/Watt in 1992; current prices are at best about $2.50/Watt. In the early 1970s, module prices had been $100/Watt or more (in 1992 dollars).
A graph of funding in the US and other countries, starting in 1981 (not adjusted for inflation - i.e. it's fallen much more than it looks): http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/fig8s.html
[Actually, here's a graph from the same report of PV prices since 1975 or so, when they were $30/W in 1975 dollars:http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/fig1s.html]
Another factor of 2-3 price improvement is all that is needed for a real revolution in renewable energy at the gigawatt scale of utilities, instead of the megawatt scale you see now, but it'll be 30 years away at current improvement rates.
On the space front, NASA had a program a few years ago, the Space Launch Initiative, to cut the cost to orbit by a factor of 10. There was some promise that it could work by greatly automating things and reducing manpower requirements for preparation for launch - but after spending about a billion dollars, it was cancelled. There's a litany of failed attempts of this sort, which seem to be stymied by the influence of the big aerospace contractors, who only care about the money, not what practical use comes out of it, and the congress, who mostly care about the jobs, and getting reelected themselves. And NASA managers are probably to blame too - for being too in love with engineering rather than practical goals. Perhaps that will change...
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J. Storrs Hall is impatient
Something prompted me to look up the recent book “Where is My Flying Car?” by J. Storrs Hall. I found an ebook copy in our local library (th...