Quotes from Maria Mitchell

“There are the brightening and flickering variable stars whose cause is all unknown and the meteor showers for all of these the reasons are as clear as for the successions of day and night. They lie just beyond the daily mist of our minds, but our eyes have not yet pierced through it.”

“We must face the light and not bury our heads in the Earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation pushed on and on, will reveal new ways in which God works and bring to us deeper revelations of the wholly unknown. The physical and the spiritual seem to be at present separated by an impossible gulf, but at any second, that gulf may be overleapt, possibly a new revelation may come.”

Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was a Quaker and America’s first woman astronomer. During her time, whaling was an important industry for the island: Nantucket was the world whaling capital from 1800 to 1840. Mitchell was a smart, accomplished woman who began studying astronomy at the age of twelve. She was observing one night in 1847, when she discovered a comet—for which the King of Denmark awarded her with a Gold Medal. Later, she became the first professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865 and the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women in 1875. Through her work, Mitchell hoped to encourage young women to engage in astronomy.

Jay Buckey

I was very appreciative of the opportunity for astronaut Jay Buckey to come speak to our class. I thought it was beneficial in a few different ways—plus it was fun and I thought it was great to have a guest speaker.

One thing I really enjoyed learning about were all the different animals that were brought along with Spacelab. I thought it was impressive that they managed to keep oyster toadfish, which of course need water—an aquarium in microgravity! I was also intrigued by the experiment with the space rats versus the ground rats. The space rats, after returning to the earth, were able to adapt and walk normally, even though they had developed in space. So microgravity did not really affect their development, except that they had more difficulty than the ground rats in flipping themselves over when turned on their backs.

Furthermore, it was interesting that Dr. Buckey talked about Neurolab as being the most scientifically intense shuttle mission. He seemed rather disappointed that NASA has not sent up any more missions like Neurolab—and now the shuttle program is ending. But Dr. Buckey talked about his interest in long-duration spaceflight, particularly to Mars. He said that the three major issues would be bone loss, radiation, and the psychosocial effects of such a long flight. However, he would like to see NASA become more goal directed in regards to the International Space Station, and I can agree with that. We need firm dates plotted along a timeline to ensure more productivity.

Additionally, I really like what he said about investing in the spaceflight program: if every investment is a winner, then maybe we are not investing enough. We cannot be scared to send humans into space just because there might be some risk involved; we cannot know all the direct benefits of human spaceflight. And I agree with what Dr. Buckey said about demonstrating our reliability by continuing to send humans into space. Then, we can maintain our capability to travel into space, and I certainly think that is beneficial to us.

Plus, the United States needs to be the forerunner of the "next new industry." Maybe that means commercial spaceflight—Obama seems open to that, based on his new vision for spaceflight. Obama would rather push forward towards Mars or an asteroid instead of continuing with missions to low-earth orbit, leaving room for commercial endeavors.

Thus, Dr. Buckey basically solidified my argument for human spaceflight—and I thought he was very eloquent about it. It was clearly very interesting to hear about an astronaut's perspective on the United States space program since he is the one actually involved in it.

Obama and the Human Spaceflight Program

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about President Barack Obama's plans for the United States human spaceflight program.

This week, the New York Times posted an article, claiming that "Obama vows [for a] renewed space program," and quoting that “the bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space, than I am.” I have to wonder about that, considering that the future of the Constellation program, which would send humans back to the moon, remains quite dim. Admittedly, though Obama intended to cancel the program entirely in February 2010, this week he has now suggested using the Orion spacecraft, part of the Constellation program, as "the technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions." The proposed launch date for Orion is in 2015 and could send humans to the moon in 2020, but Obama has suggested using Orion as a rescue vehicle for the Space Station.

Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan wrote a letter concerning Obama's plan to cancel the Constellation program, which MSNBC quotes him as saying, "For the United States, the leading spacefaring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature." I think that the Orion spacecraft could be our next big step in the human exploration of the moon and beyond, and I can agree with the astronauts that we cannot give up this endeavor. I think it would be unreasonable to rely on the Russians to bring our American astronauts into space for too long.

According to the New York Times, Obama also said, "we can’t just keep on doing the same old things we’ve been doing and thinking that’s going to get us where we want to go." I would like to know what exactly Obama thinks is old because I believe that NASA has created certain goals for itself, such as eventually sending humans to Mars, and NASA intends to pursue those goals.

However, perhaps Obama's vision for the future of NASA is commendable in a certain regard: over the next five years, he will increase NASA's budget by $6 billion. Also, he seems to be redirecting NASA's mission towards exploration of Mars (by 2030), asteroids (by 2025), and beyond, instead of concentrating on low-earth orbit. The Times claims that Obama's visions is "a call for private industry to innovate its way to Mars, rather than a call for a national effort to demonstrate American predominance." Furthermore, Obama will devote $40 million in order to retain jobs involved with the space industry and he will create over 10,000 new jobs nationwide, which I think is a good idea since we would certainly lose a lot of jobs without the space program. Perhaps the only problem with all this is that Obama's timeline extends beyond his presidency and future presidents may have a different agenda.

I also thought it was interesting that Obama said:

Why spend money on NASA at all? Why spend money solving problems in space when we don’t lack for problems to solve here on the ground?... We have to fix our economy. We need to close our deficits. But for pennies on the dollar, the space program has fueled jobs and entire industries. For pennies on the dollar, the space program has improved our lives, advanced our society, strengthened our economy, and inspired generations of Americans. And I have no doubt that NASA can continue to fulfill this role.

I suppose it is nice to hear that our President has faith in the space program, but I wonder if this speech was enough to rouse public support for the program. Obviously NASA has benefited us and can continue to benefit us, and NASA is really only a small portion of the United States budget. But maybe that does not necessarily mean that Americans have to support the space program because we have no real initiative like we did during the Cold War. We are only pursuing this because we feel like it—and I am all for that. I am just not so sure that the American public is completely for that. We need more faith in the space program.

Articles Read:

1. MSNBC: "First Moonwalker Blasts Obama's Space Plan"


2. NASA: Transcript of Obama's speech, April 15, 2010


3. New York Times: "Obama Vows Renewed Space Program


4. Space.com: "All Space Out: Past Presidents' Cosmic Visions" (with comments from Roger Launius, whom we have read in class)


5. Wikipedia: the Orion spacecraft

Robonaut

Yesterday, I saw a documentary from Scientific American about some of the new advancements in robotics. I learned about Robonaut, which is being developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Robonaut has these sensors all over its hands so that it can grip things, and basically act just like a human. Unlike other robotic spacecraft, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, which are meant to explore, Robonaut is intended to perform specific tasks, particularly to do prep work. For example, on the International Space Station, Robonaut could set up all the equipment for an EVA, the astronauts can come out and work, and then Robonaut will clean up after the EVA. Or, if we went to Mars, we could send Robonauts ahead of time to set up a habitable place for the astronauts. 

I definitely think that Robonauts could be useful to us in this manner because it provides a decent balance between robotic spaceflight and human spaceflight. Robonaut can enhance our experience in space because it can perform some of the mundane tasks that take up a lot of time while the astronauts perform more important work. Plus, maybe we can establish a more emotional connection with Robonaut because it so greatly resembles another human being and it can respond to our speech and gestures. So, this reiterates the conclusions drawn from our class presentations: as we look towards future space travel, I think it is important that we continue to pursue human spaceflight, while working cooperatively with robots.

I really liked what one of the developers of Robonaut said about humans and robots working together in space: it's like going to the beach. We can send the robot to the beach to investigate the sand and pick up seashells to bring back for us. However, we will still want to go to the beach because it's nice there and it's fun. So, we have this nice compromise between humans and robots. I thought this was a really great analogy, but one thing I can comment on is that going to the beach is different from going into space. The beach, at least for us living on the seacoast, is really close by and of course it's fun to go there and relax on a hot summer's day. Yet, traveling into space is a lot father away and is a lot more risky, particularly because radiation in space is worse than a simple sunburn on Earth. Then again, if we properly prepare ourselves for the dangers in order to minimize our risk, I still believe we should pursue human spaceflight because that is what we love to do.

Do Robots Have Brains?

According to NASA, the Mars rover Opportunity is getting smarter as it is getting older. The rover has greatly exceeded its expected lifespan, and it is now in its seventh year, so NASA took the liberty of installing some new software over the winter. Now Opportunity is capable of making its own decisions about the objects it wants to explore. The new technology is called AEGIS, which stands for Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science.

With the upgrade, Opportunity's wide-angle navigation camera can take pictures of the surrounding rocks and determine if the rocks meet specific criteria. For instance, it can look for a light-colored rock, and then it can use its narrow-angle panoramic camera to focus in on a specific rock and take pictures of it through three different filters. During a trial run, Opportunity found exactly the rock that the scientists wanted it to find.

Maybe if robots can start thinking on their own, like Opportunity, we will not need to send astronauts to the Red Planet. I wonder if this takes away from NASA's goals of reaching Mars and studying it. I mean, we still have dreams of actually setting foot on Mars, but if the robots can make their own decisions, maybe NASA will decide not to try to send humans to Mars. As NASA researcher Bret Drake said, "We're still looking at human exploration of Mars as one of the goals of the future at the top level."

Here is an article from Fox News on how NASA proposes to travel to Mars, where you can read more from Bret Drake.