Rather than the usual depressing
topics of how technology is ruining society, and all the bad things going on in
the world, this week I’d like to take a look at something good humanity has
done. On the same day, the European Space Agency made history by landing a
spacecraft on a comet and Kim Kardashian attempted to “break the internet”. The Wall Street Journal analyzed popularity
and trends amongst both topics throughout social media for 24 hours, and
thankfully the comet landing came on top. Besides the simple idea that “breaking
the internet” is absurd and impossible, I’m glad society was more interested in
scientific breakthroughs rather than pop-culture. Not only did the scientific
articles triumph in media outlets, such as Reddit, the news of the comet had
over 1.6 times the tweets. In addition, its posts on average were 21% more
positive than ones about Kim’s nude photographs. For someone who gained their
popularity in large due to a sex tape, I couldn’t comprehend why nude
photographs would make any further substantial impact.
So much
of the Rosetta mission is inspiring, and it is an enormous accomplishment for
mankind. After flying for over 10 years and traveling hundreds of millions of
miles through space, landing on the comet the size of Central Park was no easy
feat. One depiction of the flight path can be seen here. Over
2000 people assisted with this mission in some capacity. The spacecraft needed
mid-course corrections, calculations for 4 gravity assists, and to take into account
the future positions of planets, asteroids, and the end target. During its
flyby of Mars, it was merely 250km (160 miles) from the planet. When Philae was
launched, its harpoons failed causing at least three bounces, on edge of
drifting away from the comet, before it landed successfully. This was a mission
of colossal proportions and tremendous step forward in the scientific
community.
Ethically,
the only argument I can fathom against the mission is the huge price tag that
came with it. The total cost of Rosetta is close to 1.4 billion Euros ($1.75
billion USD), with Philae itself costing about 220 million. Not only is this
relatively low when put in perspective, half the price of a modern submarine,
or three Airbus 380 jumbo Jets, it also covers a period of almost 20 years from
the project’s start in 1996. Still, such a large number can lead one to ask
what we are gaining from this mission that is worth such monetary value. As can
be seen from the price of the Philae, the majority of the cost is actually in
development and construction of the spacecraft and all of its instruments. Any research
gone into the space program also helps us down here on earth; many technologies
originally designed for the space program now hold integral parts in main
stream society. Many of these things we take for granted, and wouldn’t even
associate with space, but their creation was funded by the various space
programs. Several big inventions to note are LEDs, coreless tools, smoke
detectors, scratch-resistant glass, infrared thermometers, and artificial
limbs, along with huge leaps in material science. Specifically from Rosetta we
have advances in solar cell technology.
The
spin-offs are one aspect, but in addition we need to take into account humanity’s
desire for exploration and knowledge. I doubt anyone would ever argue against
putting time, effort, and money into the internet, saying that it isn’t worth
the cost. Yet if there had not been a need for particle physicists to share
data, there would be no World Wide Web. The Rosetta mission isn’t simply providing
exciting new insights into how the planets were born and how life began, this dying
sector of “pure science” contributes in many other aspects of society. Science
for the sake of science and knowledge is becoming less and less common due to the
common goal of profitability, and businesses seem to only care about the bottom
line. There are only few companies that come to mind who even attempt this idea
of pure science. One is IBM, who has contributed countless computing
developments along with its more recent creation of Watson. In recent years
Google has also ventured into areas of applied research and pure science, with
things like their X Lab and various contributions in the Robotics field. Pure
science is what is creating the future and serves as the backbone of technological
development. The money put towards this contributes to society infinitely more than
if it were to be put towards nude photographs of celebrities.
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