Who Do Voodo?
Dateline: September 21, 2000
"VOODOO SCIENCE" > Page 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Space Tales
Park tackles a host of other issues, too, and the list is long enough to offend just about anyone. Among those that Park asserts are clearly debunked, or should be, by now: perpetual motion machines, gravity shields, the Roswell Incident & UFO abductions, cancers caused by power lines, pathologic conditions caused by ruptured silicone breast implants, touch therapy, magnet therapy, and homeopathic medicines.
But all of these topics have been addressed in other books and magazines, so while Park's discussion of them is good, I won't go into them here. Instead, I'd like to focus briefly on a topic we don't generally hear skepticism about: human space exploration.
It's a truism that if a person is going to be honestly skeptical about the deeply held beliefs of others, then that person should be willing to turn that skepticism against their own beliefs. Most atheists and skeptics I have known have been big supporters not just of science generally, but space exploration specifically.
I admit that I have always been supportive of putting people into space - but after reading Park's critique, I'm really not so sure now. I can't do justice to all of his arguments, but I would like to present a few of the basic ideas here and hopefully spark some discussion.
Cost: Putting humans into space is tremendously expensive in comparison to robotic missions. Gold costs around $300 per ounce while putting that ounce of gold into space on the shuttle would cost over $800. In practical terms, this means that if gold were floating free in low-earth orbit, it wouldn't pay to send people up there to collect it. On the other hand, the hugely successful Mars Pathfinder mission cost only one quarter of a single shuttle mission.
Danger: Humans are generally limited to staying in low-earth orbit, just 200 to 300 miles up - beyond that, there is no further protection from the earth's magnetic field. On a two or three day trip to the moon, we can hope there won't be a solar storms - but on a three-year round trip to Mars, there would be several.
This isn't a minor issue - large solar storms could kill astronauts unless they hide in lead-lined coffin-shaped shelters. And they would have only just enough time to do it while in a spacecraft. On the surface of Mars, they could never travel far from shelter if they wanted to survive a possible solar storm.
Then there is the high-Z radiation that we know so little about. It is very different from the typical radiation we experience or can produce here on earth. But every cell in an astronaut's body would be exposed to such radiation on a trip to Mars and the harm could be massive - not just in terms of cancer, but also central nervous system damage.
Finally, there are the negative effects of living in a zero-gravity environment even for relatively short periods of time. The heart is over stressed, bones lose calcium, muscles atrophy, the immune system becomes depressed, diarrhea is endemic, sleep cycles are severely disrupted, and astronauts experience bouts of depression and anxiety. And all of this adds a lot to the expense of human space travel.
And yet, most of what we have learned about our solar system has come from robotic missions: Mariner, Pioneer, Voyager, and more. These robots, produced and launched at a much lower cost than any human missions, have become our eyes, ears and even noses in environments which are way too dangerous for us to set foot in.
So why do we do it? Largely for political and emotional reasons. The political reasons are less glamorous and more embarrassing: programs like the space shuttle and space station employ huge numbers of aerospace people in congressional districts across the country, and so no one wants to cut back (much less kill) anything that brings money and jobs back home.
But the emotional reasons are less embarrassing - we get a thrill from seeing human beings push past the boundaries around us. It's exciting to see other humans move beyond our planet and personally experience "the final frontier."
It seems to me, however, that we need to start balancing out these political and emotional motives with some skepticism. We shouldn't eliminate research into human space exploration entirely - after all, we may someday develop technology that will overcome the many problems. And the sad fact of the matter is that our planet is doomed - eventually, our sun will explode and our species will die unless we find a way off.
But in the meantime, most of the money spent on human space exploration would probably be better spent on robotic missions that cost less and deliver a better return. We need to learn more about the places we want to go anyway.
This, of course, is why skepticism is so important in our era of technology. We only have limited resources, and we need to decide the best way to use them - not through emotions and politics, but by evaluating the best means of achieving our ultimate goals: to learn and to survive.
First Page > Introduction > Page 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Do you have an opinion about this article? Make it known on the Discussion Forum!
Get weekly updates about what's new on the site and news from around the world:
|
|
|
|
Read the Latest News on religion, freethought and related topics from around the world! Updated regularly. |
|
|
|
|
