Slashdot Mirror
NASA Supporting Nanotech Development
It doesn't come easy writes "In laboratories around the country, NASA is supporting the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. The basic idea is to learn to deal with matter at the atomic scale -- to be able to control individual atoms and molecules well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials."
Fir gawd sake! Dealing with matter on an atomic level has been around since Newton's time - and in it's modern incarnation since the late 19th century. It's called chemistry. Using macroscopic tools to inact precise molecular interactions and rearrangements. You know it's gone way to far when simple crown-ether derivatives get renamed "molecular cages" or worse "nano capsules" in an attempt to get funding. Want some funding for your research proposal? Drop in "nano", "bio" and "green" a few times, loose any detail of what you're acutally trying to do, and no problem...
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)
Real progress is made by small teams that see risk as opportunity, while NASA-style science is done by large teams that see risk as something to be avoided at all costs.
First of all, up to recently, space exploration was an activity that can't possibly be boosted by competition. Totally New Things[tm] usually come from government-funded research labs, such as the ARPANET, the moon landing program, etc... That's because such ground-breaking experiments can only be put together at a complete loss. Once the road is open, let competition pave it.
Secondly, it's true NASA today is stifled by a risk-avoiding attitude, but that's only because the administration (and the public) doesn't really have a strong desire to go to space, therefore any small problem leads to a reduction in NASA budget. The great things NASA did in the past were done because the administration just had to achieve what Kennedy promised, otherwise they'd have lost the race to the moon. In that light, loss of astronauts and giant rockets exploding right and left weren't very big concerns compared to losing face with the USSR. Nowadays, there is no USSR to compete against.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think science is totally broken because of the secretive, competitive approach which scientists take to towards their work.
Science is not really a commercial activity, people who spend 10 years working on something and lose in the last month to another team can have their entire career at risk over small issues of secrecy and professional ethics.
An open source approach in science would accomplish two things:
Right now, working in science is too much of a risk for people in some fields; particularly biotech. Why devote your career to something when you are judged by a first past the post system?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Real science is what you've described.
Commercialized science is not science, just refining.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sell? The public funds NASA. NASA's research should go back to who paid for it instead of locking it up within one company. I thought the USA was supposed to be a capitalist society? Let anybody use this new technology and there will be competition instead of one company doing everything.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Forget uses for NASA, how about create some nano machines that can create crude oil from garbage! All they need to do is rearrage the garabage molecules into crude oil or maybe hydrogen. Then the we can support our retarded "throw-away" society.
You don't think 24 years is a good run for a single spacecraft design? Hell, most car designs don't last half that long, and they are much simpler. It's time to move on to something better.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I have to disagree. The current trend towards "commercialisation" of Grant Distribution will bite us all on the arse in 20 years.
Hard Science research doesn't pay off commercially for years. Look at history if you don't believe me.
But now it's increasingly difficult to get a grant unless you can demonstrate that there's a good chance of commercialisation in the "near" future. As a result we have lots of "trivial" research, and very little new work being done. Even Universities, which used to be bastions of the pure research, now are driven by this economic pragmatism. It's harder than its ever been to get approval (let alone funding!) without an "Industry Partner", which means that the pure research simply isnt being done.
In 20 years time when that pure science would have been sufficiently developed to solve real-world problems, we'll be asking "Why did we let this happen?"
It won't be a return to the Dark Ages, but it will be considerably dimmer than what we had from the 1950's though to the early 1990's.
You make it sound like challenger and columbia were slow mistakes. There were not. The shuttles have a known set of issues. All mechanical things do. We are asking the most complex piece of equipment ever built to work in the harshest of environments. All of the issues with each shuttle were known way ahead of time. In both cases, engineers wanted to either delay and/or inspect. The problem in BOTH of these, was that people in charge were politicians. In the case of the colmbia, o'keefe had apointed a set of yes men who had less engineering and more "management/polical" experience. They were happy to ignore the suggestions, advice, and even pleadings of those below them to please those above. NASA did not screw up. O'keefe and his political appointees did. Likewise, the same for the challenger. The real lesson from colmbia will be that real engineers need to be put in charge, not "managers".
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Furthermore, many corporations are terrified of technology which fundamentally transforms the market. Granted, this is not science per se, but it still represents a way in which corporations have a vested interest in iterative, trivial progress. They expect to extract all of the money they can from a particular technology before cooking up the next one: stable, predictable, and stagnant. Yeah, it's old hat, but look at the internet revolution: Xerox dropped the ball because they had a vested interest in stability.
It should be sold, as in licensed, and not merely given away as that generates licensing revenue for the government which if the laws covering it were written right, would allow a lessening of general tax revenue being sent to NASA proportionate to licensing income to a certain point above which NASA reaps the excess to expand their operations.
It should of course be in the domain of the executive and legislative branches as per usual as to international licensing/sharing of data gleaned from NASA work.
NASA should be in the business of straddling the line between government operations and private operations as a bridge between our heavy/technological industries and the government so that what we as taxpayers invest comes back to us in the form of improvements in our standard of living. It will never be NASA taking us to the moon for vacations. It will be private companies. We shouldn't do anything that cuts off or otherwise puts off that eventual future.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)