The Century's Top Engineering Challenges

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."

Comments

Re:"Prevent nuclear terror"

[Zeinfeld]

How is that an engineering feat? Seems more like a people feat.

Ever heard of social engineering?

Seriously, what is securing cyberspace if not a people problem? The machines don't cause the problems, people do.

Securing cyberspace is easy, building systems to secure cyberspace that users can actually use is the hard part. People have been telling me to get a Mac as the solution to all my usability problems for years. So today I bought one.

OK so the Mac is nicer in many respects, but mostly as far as I am concerned on the hardware package side than the software. But the security usability is no better. None of the assistants in the shop were able to solve the simple security tasks I proposed. Which is good for me I suppose since there would be no point in trying to solve an already solved problem.

Now securing the fifty year old banking IT system, now that is much harder than securing the Internet, and that is the system the criminals are attacking because that is where the money is.

Missing option: holes.

[w3woody]

I'm with Scott Adams: Holes.

To summarize, what we need is a better way to dig cheap holes.

Think of it: with a cheap way to drill a hole we can drill down close to the mantle of the earth for cheap geothermal. With a cheap way to dig a tunnel we can expand our freeway infrastructure by placing new roads below ground. Infrastructure can be run underground more cheaply--if we have a cheap hole to run them through.

Holes are the future.

Re:Missing option: holes.

[zippthorne]

It's not drilling the hole that's the problem. It's holding back the walls against hydrostatic pressure, while still having a usefully open space to pipe water down to be turned to steam. The places where we already have geothermal aren't drilling all the way down to the mantel. They're drilling down to a convenient pocket of magma close to the surface. There are many places with magma-resources that are yet to be tapped, but it is by no means practical for any arbitrary point on the earth's surface to simply keep drilling until they reach magma.

The necessary advance isn't a "hole drilling robot." It's incredibly strong, heat-resistant pipes, and some kind of trick for installing them while drilling without affecting the bore diameter or preventing bit replacement.

Re:I would add:

[cgraves]

I would add: An electric battery with an energy density comparable to gasoline. The problem is that gasoline combustion gets about 80% by weight of its reactants from the air (O2). Though the energy stored in batteries can be much more efficiently used, they store their oxidizer inside, so even if we could gasoline itself in a battery, it cannot be as dense. Unless it is an air battery, at which point you are looking more and more like a fuel cell.

But, yes hopefully we can approach "comparable".

Re:"Prevent nuclear terror" - also

[tsotha]

Declared nuclear states (and states like Israel that are unofficially declared) are just fine. If the Israelis lob a nuke at the Russians, they know they have only twenty minutes or so to make peace with whomever they worship. India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed countries that have, what, seven wars under their collective belt haven't nuked each other. Fear is a wonderful demotivator.

But terrorism is different. Let's say Al Queda gets ahold of a nuclear bomb. What, exactly, is their downside to actually using it? Who would we retaliate against if they used it to blow up New York? Hell, they might not care if we went on a big bombing spree, since all the dead Muslims are gonna get their virgins.

And why are you so sanguine about their chances of actually acquiring one? The technology is over sixty years old - you can get plans off the internet. People have been caught selling stolen Russian fissionables now on more than one occasion. And terrorist groups don't seem to have a big problem attracting engineers. Sure, they probably couldn't build a fusion bomb, and a crude fission bomb might be large and have a yield of "only" 50kt or so. That would be enough to kill millions.

Personally, I don't think nuclear terrorism is an "if" question. It's a "when" question. But short of a verifyable, complete international ban on all nuclear devices, including power stations, I don't see how it can be prevented.