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The Century's Top Engineering Challenges

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-want-talking-fruit dept.

coondoggie writes "The National Science Foundation announced today 14 grand engineering challenges for the 21st century that, if met, would greatly improve how we live. The final choices fall into four themes that are essential for humanity to flourish — sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability, and joy of living. The committee did not attempt to include every important challenge, nor did it endorse particular approaches to meeting those selected. Rather than focusing on predictions or gee-whiz gadgets, the goal was to identify what needs to be done to help people and the planet thrive, the group said. A diverse committee of engineers and scientists — including Larry Page, Robert Langer, and Robert Socolow — came up with the list but did not rank the challenges. Rather, the National Academy of Engineering is offering the public an opportunity to vote on which one they think is most important."

9 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"manage the nitrogen cycle?" by Zakabog · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Yes, I've tried Google and Wikipedia."

    Apparently you didn't look that hard - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle#Human_influences_on_the_nitrogen_cycle found that by typing "Nitrogen Cycle" in google. It was the first result.

  2. Re:"manage the nitrogen cycle?" by Mspangler · · Score: 4, Informative

    I hope it means to get cereal grains to fix their own nitrogen so you wouldn't need nitrate fertilizers, especially with natural gas heading for its own production peaks. North American natural gas is expected to peak about 2010, unless the deep Gulf is more productive than they currently think.

    If we don't come up with that, we'll need three or four thousand LNG tankers cruising to the middle east and back to keep the pipelines full. (Worse case admittedly, but eventually one of them is going to go boom, then the others won't be allowed to dock, and then ...)

    "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow." (S. Ivanova, 2260)

  3. The List (with annotations) by RobBebop · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Make solar energy affordable - Done
    2. Provide energy from fusion - This is something I don't know anything about.
    3. Develop carbon sequestration methods - More information
    4. Manage the nitrogen cycle - More information. I feel like on a basic, local level this can already be accomplished easily. On an advanced/global level though... Manage it? In the next 100 years maybe we can gather some data points so we can UNDERSTAND it. Until then, any attempts to "manage" it would be foolish
    5. Provide access to clean water - Tried and true method and 1, 2, 3 Orgs doing it.
    6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure - And run on-time and build more parks - but who will fund it?
    7. Advance health informatics - This "engineering goal" is too general to discuss. It's like, make it easier to get useful data on our health. Duh!
    8. Engineer better medicines - I think "Engineer better robots" would be a more worthwhile engineering goal... but that's just me.
    9. Reverse-engineer the brain - Teaching it, and studying it
    10. Prevent nuclear terror - This is a political bombshell that I won't go near, but from what I see the strategy is (a) deterrence, and (b) threaten anybody with a nuclear project.
    11. Secure cyberspace - Ha!
    12. Enhance virtual reality - In a practical way or just enough so that my brain can be tricked into thinking that an incredibly hot women is going down on me?
    13. Advance personalized learning - Not sure what this is...
    14. Engineer the tools for scientific discovery - Another overly general one, but I'd like to think "discovery" is a misspelling of "exploration". Lately I've been thinking that our satellites are similar to the Triremes of Greece times (which are bound to stay close to our shores), the Apollo/Space Shuttle is like Viking ships (which couldn't (or weren't) be used to setup a new settlement), and then this would be the equivalent of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria (except they will be called Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln).

    I am going to be fair... this is really a list of things that can be completed in the next 25 years. These are not "100 year" goals. They are simply to generalized, for the most part. A real engineer knows that goals should be Specific, Measurable, and ARTistic. These goals don't qualify.

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  4. Re:I would add: by rah1420 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Good luck with that. An oil company would buy up the rights and suppress that just like they did with the Ovonic battery.

    See the section in the linked article entitled "Patent Encumbrance" and then go to Cobasys and try and buy a rack of Ovonic NiMH batteries to build your own plug-in electric vehicle. Let me know how that works out for you.

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    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
  5. Re:I would add: by nexuspal · · Score: 4, Informative

    Heh, very close to done, on a previous article here on slashdot, a discovery come through that would do such a thing. In fact, IIRC, lithium ion batteries are already packing more power than high explosives, and close to as much energy as gasoline per unit of mass.

    --
    I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure :-P
  6. Re:The biggest challenge, by far by i_b_don · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok... mod me stupid.

    I read NSF and heard "NSA".

    me - dumbshit

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    all language nazi's will burne in heil!
  7. Re:Carbon sequestration by cgraves · · Score: 2, Informative

    Right now, if we capture carbon dioxide (and we have the technology to do that already pretty efficiently) we have a huge problem of what to do with it. The best technology available today involved injecting it into the ground or under the sea - neither of which are good options. The technology that's being talked about is carbon mineralifcation - the technology to turn CO2 into graphite, or diamond, or soot. That's would be a huge help in fighting global warming. Carbon mineralifcation is actually called mineral carbonation, and it is not what you say. It is converting silicate minerals into carbonate minerals by reacting their cations with CO2, a process that is constantly happening to rocks everywhere but on geologic timescales. As a stable, permanent carbon storage option, those studying it are looking to accelerate the reaction as an economic, industrial process. See here or here for information.

    Turning CO2 into graphite, diamond or soot is the opposite in a way - it would be an energetically uphill process that must be driven by non-fossil energy or else you have no choice but to produce more CO2 in the process. One could see this as storing renewable or nuclear energy in solid carbon by splitting CO2, similar to recycling CO2 to liquid fuels.
  8. more generally... by tinkerton · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a very strong conviction with some, especially in America, that things are much safer with one big boss, however evil(Hobbes). And it's not wrong.

    Proliferation of any means of provoking large scale mayhem is an increasing problem because of the number of players alone. If every country(or any organisation that's big enough) had an array of such weapons, chances of things going very wrong increase, in part because of things getting out of control in tit-for-tat reactions. Imagine 1962 with 10 players instead of 2.

    There's also a point in distinguishing "terrorists" from "sane people", but here I would agree that the point is overestimated and it places an insane trust in the power of sanity. Uh. Also, terrorists blowing up a big city isn't the end of the world. It's only one city. Humanity will survive :)

  9. Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" by ApharmdB · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management