From what I have seen and heard about how NASA does things, I would say that budget constraints probably played a role in this accident. I have also noticed that the older, more experienced NASA scientists and engineers often seem reluctant to help the younger scientists and engineers get the training and experience they will eventually need when it is their turn to lead a mission. I think a lot of older scientists and engineers are afraid they will be forced to retire when funding gets tight, so they prevent the younger people from being involved in mission development/operations as long as they can. The older scientists and engineers love their jobs so much that they just can't let go when it is time. I've seen older scientists who were within a year or two of retirement take on a new satellite hardware project even though the mission would not be launched until several years after they retired. Due to retirements and the deaths of 50+ year-old scientists, younger scientists may suddenly find that they are a critical part of a spacecraft instrument team, even though they have little or no experience with this sort of thing. NASA is just not encouraging the older, more experienced principal investigators to pass on their knowledge to the younger scientists and engineers. There doesn't seem to be a clear path to train and advance the younger people, with gradually increasing mission responsibilities as they gain experience. In my opinion, this is one of NASA's biggest problems right now.
Actually, I think that this is a sign that NASA and the U.S. government are finally changing their attitudes about the developing space programs in India and China. We missed out on a big opportunity to participate in China's Double Star mission not too long ago, solely for political reasons. The European Space Agency did cooperate with the Chinese on Double Star, and European scientists are now reaping the benefits. President Bush has done a lot to undermine NASA's credibility, but Michael Griffin is trying to maintain NASA's reputation as a leader in space exploration and science. Even though this new lunar mission will be primarily an Indian mission, NASA can now claim that India wouldn't be able to do it without our support. We can't say that about the recent Chinese space exploration efforts.
Maybe they can't use emission spectroscopy the way most people think about it, but there are other spectroscopic techniques that can be used by orbiting satellites to study the Moon's composition. Check out this page about the instruments on board the Lunar Prospector mission. This mission was launched in 1998, and crashed into the Moon in 1999.
Since the article posted on Slashdot doesn't really explain why scientists think there might be ice on the Moon, I think your questions deserve a decent answer. Some recent unmanned missions like the Lunar Prospector have made spectroscopic measurements that suggest there are higher than normal concentrations of hydrogen near the Moon's poles. This could indicate the presence of water ice, or hydrogen tied up in the molecules of the rocks on the Moon. They did try crashing the Lunar Prospector into the Moon at the end of its mission, but the experiment didn't work out as planned. The reason why they are looking in deep craters, is that parts of the deepest craters near the Moon's poles may be permanently in shadow. Sunlight never reaches the bottoms of these craters, so that water ice might be able to exist there in a sort of permafrost layer. There is some evidence for water ice in deep craters near the poles of
the planet Mercury as well. If I understand the new NASA mission correctly, they are basically going to do a more sophisticated version of the Lunar Prospector experiment. Even if this new mission finds evidence for water, it doesn't mean the water is necessarily in a form that could easily be used by astronauts - it could be bound up chemically in the rocks, making it difficult to extract.
I think some people are missing the point here. There is a good reason why the intelligent design issue keeps coming up in any discussion regarding the Bush Administration's science policies. Bush's decisions and public statements have continously undermined science in the United States - from his beliefs on intelligent design, the re-organization of NASA to emphasize manned missions rather than science, to the actions of his administration regarding the environment and global warming. The intelligent design debate and the censuring of scientists who warn of the impacts of global warming are intimately connected through Bush's personal beliefs and the policies he makes as a result of these beliefs.
Maybe the debate on/. isn't the most sophisticated, and it does tend towards flames from both sides of the ID controversy, and name-calling between Democrats and Republicans. However, the fact that these same issues keep coming up shows that a lot of people are deeply concerned about the way the U.S. government appears to be stirring up anti-science sentiment, undermining our educational system, and encouraging intolerance and religious fundamentalism.
This whole thing sort of reminds me of what happened to Galileo. People didn't really want to accept the way his observations would change the way we view the world. He also really irritated a lot of powerful people in the church, through both his scientific studies and some of his political actions. The result was that the church imprisoned him, in an attempt to cover up what they considered a blasphemous and incorrect view of the world. Of course, most people now believe Galileo was right about the objects in our solar system. I'm surprised that the parallels between what happened to Galileo and the ID/evolution debate and the treatment of the global warming scientists hasn't been brought up here before.
Galileo supposedly once said: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Lately, it seems that politicians and the general public have lost all sense of reason, and are trying to deny what science is telling us about the world around us.
I really worry about the weight society gives to standardized tests to measure intelligence. I have a Ph.D. in physics, so I suppose I am pretty smart. On the other hand, I did really lousy on the logic part of the SATs/GREs. It was full of annoying questions that usually involved guessing how old some guy named Bob is, given that he is older than Mary and younger than Pete, and so on and so forth. They never had "Just ask Bob how old he is!" as an answer choice. That always seems like the most logical answer to me - why strain your brain trying to figure it out, when you could just ask Bob? I think that they have changed this part of the GRE to something else now - I took it a really, really long time ago. I tried taking an I.Q. test once, just for fun, but the whole thing was these stupid logic questions like on the GRE that I took. I got extremely bored by the whole I.Q. test thing and quit after about 5 minutes. I just didn't care enough about the I.Q. test (or knowing what my I.Q. is) to actually think about the questions and work through the test.
I don't mean to sound arrogant, like I think I am too smart for these silly tests. On the other hand, I'm not sure what these tests are really measuring, as your educational background, cultural experiences, etc. can have a big impact on your scores. I think this is why the test preparation industry is such a big deal. Taking courses to learn how to take these tests seems to boost people's scores. If this is the case, aren't the tests just measuring your ability to take that particular type of test, rather than actual intelligence or abilities?
I just don't think that we understand enough about the way the brain works to accurately gauge things like intelligence 100% of the time. Yes, some people are smarter than others. Some people are good at math, others at music, and some lucky people are good at both things. In grad school, one of the other students told me that women just aren't as good at math and science as men because we think differently. In the end, he dropped out, while I actually graduated. I just wish that society could stop worrying so much about trying to quantify intelligence and labeling people as "average" or "slow" or "genius" because of a test score. Or deciding that they are not cut out for a particular career because of their race or gender. We should just let people be themselves, and the rest will sort itself out eventually.
You claim to be a space scientist, but you seem rather ignorant of how and why NASA was originally formed. Your post sounds as though you believe that NASA originally consisted of a bunch of bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to adminster grants awarded to corporations and educational institutions, and to set government policy on activities in space. This has always been a part of NASA's mission, but it is not the sole reason for NASA's existence. When NASA was formed in 1958, it maintained 3 research laboratories - it now has 10 such laboratories. Scientific research and the development of spacecraft and spacecraft instruments have always been a part of the NASA organization. Some work was contracted out in the past, as it is today, but NASA has always employed its own scientists and engineers.
I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with someone who has worked with NASA since the space program's very beginning. Most of his work has been on unmanned spacecraft missions. He raised a very interesting question. If you were to take average people off the street, and ask them which astronauts were in orbit right now, how many people would actually be able to name even one of the astronauts currently on board the International Space Station? How many people would know that three of these astronauts were just launched into space yesterday, on board a Russian Soyuz rocket?
I agreed with my scientist friend that very few people would be able to name any of the current astronauts. If their is such strong public support for manned space exploration, then why doesn't the public pay more attention to it? When I was a kid, I always knew the names of the astronauts who were going up on the shuttle - Joe Allen, Pinky Nelson, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison - to name a few. These people were my heroes. Shuttle launches and landings were always covered in full on the TV news, and there were stories about the astronauts and their work in space on TV nearly every night. Now we only hear about the astronauts when someone dies. I doubt that most kids today know the names of any current astronauts. Most adults probably don't either. However, if you ask someone off the street who Britney Spears married, or what the names of Angelina Jolie's kids are, they can probably tell you. If you ask kids today who their heroes are, they will probably name sports figures or other celebrities, not astronauts.
If people today care so little about manned space exploration, why are we making it a national priority? We can focus on science instead and actually gain new knowledge about our universe and the origins of life. The science return on unmanned missions is so much greater than it is for manned missions, when you consider the amount of money spent.
I've tried teaching college courses where I made material available to the students ahead of class on a web site. When you do this, there is no incentive for the students to come to class. They think they will do just fine if they download the notes. The exact same thing happens if I post the notes online after the lecture. The problem is, students who skip lectures and just use the online notes miss out on the discussion in class. I've found that the people who rely on the online notes and skip class do worse in a course than the people who make the effort to come to class and pay attention. The people who actually come to lectures are always the ones who do the best in a course. I don't know if having the online notes really helps the best students retain the material or not - the main thing is that these students actually want to learn, and make an effort to do so.
I could provide handouts in class, but if you have a very large class, you often do not have a large enough photocopying budget to hand out copies of each day's lesson. I did try this once for a complicated homework project. I passed out the assignment and then went over a very detailed step-by-step example of how to complete the assignment. Only about half the class sat through the whole thing. Some people left immediately after getting the handouts or about 15 minutes into class. The people who skipped class habitually and just downloaded the notes didn't even bother to come, even though I had posted a notice on the website saying I would go over the project in class. Of course, only the people who listened to the entire lecture actually completed the assignment correctly. They also thought it was a really cool assignment. The people who didn't listen to the entire example in lecture struggled through it, and complained the homework was too hard when it was due. The only people who actually asked me for help with the assignment outside of class were also people who had been in class when I did the example and were doing just fine - not the people who really needed help.
The really sad thing is, the assignment I gave my college students was originally designed as an exercise for K-12 students. I figured that college students would be able to do it without much trouble, since they should have a stronger math background. I know of people who have done this exact same exercise with talented middle school/high school students. The younger students usually do it correctly, and with less complaining, even though they may ask for a lot of coaching along the way. For some reason, there is a big change in the attitudes of a lot of students towards school and learning over the summer between high school graduation and their first semester of college.
I totally agree with you Gallowglass. A lot of universities today have classes with 300+ students. A professor can't be expected to tailor their course to the individual needs of every single student in the class when there are this many students. Hiring a tutor, taking advantage of free tutoring services provided by dorms and honor societies, or even forming a study group with other students in the class is much more helpful than whining that the prof doesn't accommodate all learning styles.
I don't know of any published studies that say American scientists are leaving the U.S. in large numbers. However, the U.S. job market for people with degrees in astronomy and the space sciences is horrible right now and it keeps getting worse. I got an e-mail a few minutes ago saying that NASA funding for a program to which I was going to submit a proposal was just reduced from $4 million to $1 million. NASA anticipates that this program is going to get requests for $24 million this year, so quite a few people are not going to get NASA funding. Most of NASA's money is going to support the Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and Bush's half-baked vision for conquering Mars - not science. The more senior scientists I know have told me that they don't ever remember NASA funding in our field being quite this bad before. The NSF is not doing much better.
Currently, I am a researcher supported by soft-money. I've been applying to faculty positions so I won't need to depend so much on NASA funds, but I'm not having any luck. Two faculty positions I applied for were cancelled due to budget cuts about a month after the application deadline. I have been told by several different people that since I am having trouble getting research funding and finding faculty jobs here in the U.S., I should look for positions in Europe. Unfortunately, my European colleagues tell me the funding situation is not good there either, as their countries are also cutting back on funding for many space science programs. I don't really want to move to another country, and even if I did want to leave the U.S., there isn't really anywhere I could go. Funding in the space sciences is tight everywhere right now. I'm hoping I can make the jump to industry, but I'm not sure if the job market in the aerospace industry is any better.
My only problem with impeaching Bush is that we would be left with Dick Cheney as President. We'd have to go pretty far down the line of succession before we got to anybody who really understands the problems facing our country. Politicians are just not listening to scientists anymore, and on those rare occasions when they do, they just twist our words around to fit their own agenda. I do my civic duty - I vote, atttend caucuses, and write the occassional letter to my Congressmen when I feel strongly about something. It doesn't do any good. What we really need is for more scientists and engineers to run for public office. We need to rally the troops - how about a Million Scientist March on Washington?
There are two major problems with using manned space exploration missions as a public relations tool: (1) very few people who dream of becoming astronauts will ever get to travel into space, and (2) NASA gets extremely bad press whenever lives are lost. Astronauts do go out to schools occasionally to do outreach, but there are many more scientists analyzing data from unmanned missions working at NASA or at universities who do this kind of outreach on a regular basis.
I regularly participate in a program where I answer children's questions about space exploration. Data from most of the NASA spacecraft missions are now publically available online. Anyone can go and see the latest data from a number of NASA and even NOAA satellites on the Internet. This also makes it possible for K-12 students to participate in space exploration by analyzing data from NASA spacecraft for a school science project. There are even instruments on NASA spacecraft that have been built primarily by undergraduate and graduate students in science and engineering. Some NASA spacecraft, like the mission recently launched to Pluto, contain a CD of the names of average people who support space exploration. The Startdust@home (http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/) project will allow Internet users to help analyze data from the Stardust mission.
Admittedly, scientists have not always done a good job of involving the public in space exploration. However, they are getting a lot better at it, thanks to the Internet. Unmanned missions can be an even better tool than manned missions for getting the public interested in space exploration, when outreach programs are planned properly. There are many ways that the public can participate in space exploration through unmanned missions and experience the excitement of discovery for themselves. People just need to make the effort to participate in these opportunities. With manned missions, we can only experience new discoveries vicariously through the astronauts, and there are limits to where we can send humans with our current technology. Personally, I think this is why the media seldom covers Space Shuttle launches in the detail that they used to do in the 1980s.
I find this quite ironic since President Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative during his 2006 State of the Union Address. Maintaining a strong space program with a solid foundation in science would help increase our global competitiveness, especially since China and India are now trying to start space exploration programs of their own.
Our government's policies are not consistent regarding science and technology, and both President Bush and Congress are to blame. Our lawmakers don't understand the human impact of their decisions regarding the budgets of agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Every time they re-allocate funds from one project to another, cut programs, or fail to increase the NASA and NSF budgets sufficiently to account for inflation, scientists and engineers lose their jobs. The U.S. government is shooting itself in the foot when it comes to our global competitiveness in science and technology.
Thanks for posting Griffin's statement!
Any scientist will tell you that it is extremely difficult to communicate your research to the public. I can't help wondering if the problems with NASA's public affairs office are partially due to the difficulties inherent in communicating science to the public and partially due to political pressures and the personal beliefs of the people working in the public affairs office.
Maybe the people in the public affairs office thought they were helping NASA's funding situation by making the scientists' work seem more in line with the President's goals for space science. However, even if they had good intentions, I agree with Griffin that it is not the job of public affairs officers to filter or adjust scientific information.
From the article: The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said
It hasn't been that long since I earned my Ph.D. in physics, so I only really have personal experience as a scientist with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as president. Bush and his advisors may say they support science, like they did in the article, but what they say and what their policies actually support are entirely different.
When I was a graduate student, Bill Clinton was president and the future of the space sciences seemed very bright, indeed. Funding for new missions and research was plentiful, and some of the NASA centers were hiring bright young scientists in permanent, civil service positions.
Since George Bush has been president the funding situation in the space sciences has become completely hopeless. The NASA re-organization to support Bush's exploration vision has made it extremely difficult for scientists in certain fields to obtain funding. The NASA programs I normally would submit grant proposals to have been delayed and even threatened with cancellation. I recently applied for a government job at NOAA, but it the job search was cancelled a month later because they lost the funding for this position. You seldom see permanent jobs advertised at government research centers in my field anymore. Faculty positions are hard to find as well. All I can find in my field are post-doctoral and other temporary positions.
I don't know if this is just a reflection of the poor state of the economy in general, or if it is mainly due to the policies of the Bush Administration. All I know is that I am having a really hard time establishing my career as a scientist, and that my supervisors and colleagues do not have a favorable view of George Bush at all. I don't hear my colleagues talk wistfully of the days when Clinton, Reagan or anyone else was President.
However, I do hear things like "Since George Bush has been President, funding has been really tight..." on almost a daily basis. Based upon what I've heard from other people at work, government support for science has never been quite as bad as it is now.
I think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy should do a special with George Takei at a Star Trek Convention. Most of the guys I've talked to at Star Trek conventions seem like nice people, but some of them would definitely benefit from being shot with a phaser set on "fabulous."
I have a Ph.D. in physics and know a bit about magnetic fields. I'm not a particle physicist, and I don't pretend to know a whole lot about unified field theories. However, I have a few issues with the article that I would like to point out.
The article said that this warp drive idea was based upon generating a sufficiently large magnetic field. It is extremely difficult to generate large magnetic field in the laboratory, as anyone who has worked with particle accelerators or has studied nuclear fusion can tell you. This is part of the reason why we do not yet have working commercial fusion reactors for electrical power plants. People have been saying we are only a few years away from developing fusion power plants since the 1970s, but anyone with a realistic viewpoint will now tell you that scientists really don't know when we might be able to develop a working fusion power plant. It still takes too much electrical power to contain and heat the nuclear fuel in current fusion devices for this to be a practical power source. If we haven't been able to make a decent fusion reactor in the last 30 years, I'd say we're a really long way from making a warp drive.
This guy I knew in graduate school once told me that it was really funny to stick your head into the huge magnets in the particle accelerators at Brookhaven National Lab. Apparently the magnetic field was so strong that it affected your vision. According to my friend, the strong magnetic field made it appear as though the lights in the room were blinking on and off. I've never tried this myself so I don't know if it is true. The senior physicists could have been playing a joke on him, or he could have just been pulling my leg. However, if it is true, then any hypothetical spacecraft powered by gigantic magnetic fields would need to be unmanned due to these weird effects. I think it would also be difficult to put current computer techology on this spacecraft since it could be screwed up by the big magnetic field.
We know about a lot of situations in astrophysics where huge magnetic fields are generated. If making a huge magnetic field is all there is to creating a wormhole or warp drive, then why don't we see pulsars and neutron stars popping in and out of existence throughout the known universe, when their huge magnetic fields warp the fabric of the universe and send them hurtling across space and time?
I'd really like to be able to travel to other solar systems like on Star Trek, but I just don't see it happening any time soon. I've never heard of these scientists in the article before, so I'd take a wild guess and say they are on the fringes.
My right thumb and ring finger started hurting really badly after I moved my bookshelves. It also hurts down my wrist and forearm when I grasp something heavy with that hand, like a milk jug or big pile of books. I thought I was getting carpal tunnel, but my doctor said I had deQuervain's Tendinitis. She basically said that the only cure was rest. The doctor visit went something like this -
Me: Doctor, it hurts when I go like this.
Doctor: Then don't do that.
I just love modern medicine!
Re:The definitive HAARP conspiracy book
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HAARP Amping It Up
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The book "Angel's Don't Play This HAARP" is a total joke, but not to the authors. I took a look at Nick Begich's website. The information they have there about HAARP is full of scientific errors. Begich seems to take this HAARP conspiracy stuff seriously, but I kind of wonder about his intentions. In addition to informing people about the evils of HAARP, his web site is also selling a lot of audio CDs that claim to be able to cure anything that ails you physically or spiritually.
If you check out Nick Begich's background on his site, it says "Begich received his doctorate in traditional medicine from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines in November 1994." What the heck is "traditional medicine?" I googled for "The Open International University for Complementary Medicines". If I found the right place, it looks like a correspondence school based in India for alternative medicine. This does not sound like an accredited medical school to me - some of the other sites I found when googling tend to support this.
Begich sounds a bit like a modern day snake-oil salesman, in my humble opinion. He's not a medical doctor or a scientist. If you believe the stuff on his web site, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale on eBay. Hurry! Bidding ends in 10 minutes.
I first heard about all of the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP when I was studying physics in graduate school. When I took a research trip up to Alaska, I asked my apartment building manager if she could take care of my plants. She totally freaked out because she had heard about this evil HAARP thing the U.S. government had hidden in the Alaskan wilderness.
All of the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP are a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The physics behind this project is complicated and not understood by your average Joe. People understand just enough of it to realize how little they actually know, and that scares them. After my apartment manager told me about HAARP, I checked out a few of the web sites claiming to tell the truth about HAARP. Some of these "experts" on HAARP claimed that because they had Ph.D.s they were qualified to judge the merits and true purpose of HAARP. These people probably got their "degree" by responding to an e-mail from some school in Nigeria that will give you a diploma based upon your life experience if you send $500. It never fails to surprise me how many naive people out there will believe anyone who claims to have a Ph.D. in something or will believe anything they read on the Internet. Nerds are supposed to know better!
These conspiracy theories aren't just ridiculous because of their faulty and inaccurate science. A major conspiracy to cover up a secret and illegal military experiment implies that the leaders of the U.S government are organized enough to restrict the release of information and coordinate their cover stories and propaganda. Our government couldn't properly coordinate the relief efforts for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Does anyone out there honestly think our government is organized enough to orchestrate a massive cover up for the development of an evil death ray?
Then again, why should anyone believe what I have to say? I know people involved with HAARP and I have a Ph.D. in physics so I'm just another evil genius out to destroy the world. People like Art Bell who seriously believe that there is a conspiracy would probably think that I am a part of it and lying about everthing. I wish I was part of the conspiracy so I could go take that alien space ship they have hidden at Area 51 and leave the planet as soon as possible. I sure don't like the way our world is heading.
I'm not worried about the 95% who will say "Meet members of the opposite sex" or the 4% who will say things like "Go sky diving." It's the remaining 1% I'm worried about!
What we'd all really like to know, is what country did you originate in, and what country you think has a better work/life balance? I think we would all like to move there. I'd love to say goodbye 'carpal tunnel,' and go 'carpe diem!'
I think the question "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" could make an awesome Slashdot poll. Then again, I'm kind of afraid of the answers some Slashdot readers might post. Maybe that question is best left unanswered!
The article said:
"The cost of employing one chemist or engineer in the United States is equal to about five chemists in China and 11 engineers in India."
People who have college and graduate degrees in the U.S. expect to make significantly more money per year than someone who does not have an education. Labor unions and the government's minimum wage requirements have inflated the salaries for some unskilled jobs to the point where the salaries of management and skilled workers have to be raised to maintain a reasonable separation in salary. For example, I know someone who has worked as a manager at a large, upscale hotel for several years. A couple of years ago, the room attendents (the maids) union in her city decided to go on strike. The salary and benefits increases negotiated by the union were so large, that the room attendents ended up making about the same salary as my friend - even though she had a college degree, and most of the room attendents didn't even have the equivalent of a high school education. Fortunately, the upper level management of her hotel chain realized they would have a hard time retaining their hotel managers, so my friend got a raise too.
Even though this example is from the service industry, it points out the difficulty we have in the U.S. with the relatively small gap in salaries we have between skilled and unskilled workers. I have friends and family members who are struggling to get by on minimum wage, so don't get me wrong here, I think it is good that we have labor standards in the United States. However, we just can't compete with a developing country like India, where a huge portion of the population is uneducated and lives in poverty. In countries like these, it is possible to pay someone with a college or even a graduate degree a salary that would be considered very low for their job by U.S. standards. Even though the science and engineering salaries are lower in countries like India, they are still significantly higher than what someone without an education would earn in those countries. There is no way the U.S. can compete with these countries, unless we do away with minimum wage, labor unions and other protections our government uses to ensure we have safe working conditions. This just isn't going to happen.
I don't think there is a good or simple solution to decline of science and engineering in the United States. Paying our scientists and engineers better salaries might help, but then again it might not. Companies would just send more of their technical work overseas to countries like India, where salaries are a lot lower. Companies in the U.S. just don't seem to have any sense of patriotism or desire to keep their business and jobs here. Incidentally, I'm not so sure that the industry salaries for scientists and engineers being low are the problem. Another friend of mine has a B.S. degree and works in the biotech industry. He makes about $30,000 more per year than I do with a Ph.D. in physics, working at a university. The salaries for people in academia who have only just received their Ph.D.s a few years ago are not competive with salaries for industry. Why work at a university and teach the next generation of scientists and engineers when you can work in industry and make more money? I also think that upper level corporate executives and government administrators are paid a lot more than they are worth. Sure, they have a lot of responsiblity, but then again so does an engineer designing a new commercial aircraft or a scientist studying infectious diseases.
I think the only way to maintain our technical expertise is for our government and our corporations to start valuing the work done by scientists and engineers more than the work performed by the bureaucrats.
Corporations also need to cultivate some sense of loyalty to their home country. Maybe tax breaks to companies who hire scientists and engineers who are U.S. citizens, rather than outsourcing jobs or importing talent from overseas would help. It would also help if people in the U.S. in general would be willing to accept a slightly lower salary and standard of living in exchange for job security. Of course, we'll all being playing hockey in hell before any of these things happens.
I took a look at the "About Us" section of the SpaceNow website. The people who put together the site don't really seem to have a large team behind them. Judging by their photos, they are also pretty young - maybe just out of college or maybe recent Master's graduates.
My own experience has shown it is incredibly difficult for someone in their 20s and 30s to really make a difference in government policies on space exploration. Society now has about 50 years of experience in space exploration, so there are already many groups lobbying in favor of space exploration out there. Most of these groups are lead by established scientists and engineers who have developed relationships with government leaders over many years. Most of these groups would not give younger people a whole lot of power in terms of directing programs for communicating with the public. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, but unfortunately, it's just the way things are. With all of these other groups out there, I think the people behind SpaceNow are going to have a hard time getting noticed by the powers that be.
One group that has done a lot to support both manned and unmanned space exploration is The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has been around for quite a few years and has many famous and wealthy people supporting its objectives. They also provide educational information similar to what the young men behind SpaceNow are going to provide. There are also tons of other web sites out there where people can learn about the fundamentals of rocketry - such as the Planetary Society again, as well as the Basics of Space Flight web site from JPL. The Challenger Center also is an important space science education group, at least in the United States.
One thing that the SpaceNow people are trying to do that's a bit different is provide a public forum for discussion. However, there are already forums out there. Even though Slashdot isn't devoted exclusively to space exploration, there are quite a few lively discussions about this topic on Slashdot.
I really do wish the creators of SpaceNow the best of luck. But I think they are going to have a difficult time getting noticed with all of the similar groups out there. The groups and web sites that I have mentioned are based in the U.S., so I don't know how many similar groups are in Canada (I assume the.ca domain means they are Canadian). The creators seemed to all be associated with the same university, so if any of them are reading this, I suggest that they concentrate on getting their message out to their local community first. Some ways to do this are through local museums and planetariums, astronomy clubs, and Cafe Scientifique meetings in their area.
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From what I have seen and heard about how NASA does things, I would say that budget constraints probably played a role in this accident. I have also noticed that the older, more experienced NASA scientists and engineers often seem reluctant to help the younger scientists and engineers get the training and experience they will eventually need when it is their turn to lead a mission. I think a lot of older scientists and engineers are afraid they will be forced to retire when funding gets tight, so they prevent the younger people from being involved in mission development/operations as long as they can. The older scientists and engineers love their jobs so much that they just can't let go when it is time. I've seen older scientists who were within a year or two of retirement take on a new satellite hardware project even though the mission would not be launched until several years after they retired. Due to retirements and the deaths of 50+ year-old scientists, younger scientists may suddenly find that they are a critical part of a spacecraft instrument team, even though they have little or no experience with this sort of thing. NASA is just not encouraging the older, more experienced principal investigators to pass on their knowledge to the younger scientists and engineers. There doesn't seem to be a clear path to train and advance the younger people, with gradually increasing mission responsibilities as they gain experience. In my opinion, this is one of NASA's biggest problems right now.
Actually, I think that this is a sign that NASA and the U.S. government are finally changing their attitudes about the developing space programs in India and China. We missed out on a big opportunity to participate in China's Double Star mission not too long ago, solely for political reasons. The European Space Agency did cooperate with the Chinese on Double Star, and European scientists are now reaping the benefits. President Bush has done a lot to undermine NASA's credibility, but Michael Griffin is trying to maintain NASA's reputation as a leader in space exploration and science. Even though this new lunar mission will be primarily an Indian mission, NASA can now claim that India wouldn't be able to do it without our support. We can't say that about the recent Chinese space exploration efforts.
Maybe they can't use emission spectroscopy the way most people think about it, but there are other spectroscopic techniques that can be used by orbiting satellites to study the Moon's composition. Check out this page about the instruments on board the Lunar Prospector mission. This mission was launched in 1998, and crashed into the Moon in 1999.
Since the article posted on Slashdot doesn't really explain why scientists think there might be ice on the Moon, I think your questions deserve a decent answer. Some recent unmanned missions like the Lunar Prospector have made spectroscopic measurements that suggest there are higher than normal concentrations of hydrogen near the Moon's poles. This could indicate the presence of water ice, or hydrogen tied up in the molecules of the rocks on the Moon. They did try crashing the Lunar Prospector into the Moon at the end of its mission, but the experiment didn't work out as planned. The reason why they are looking in deep craters, is that parts of the deepest craters near the Moon's poles may be permanently in shadow. Sunlight never reaches the bottoms of these craters, so that water ice might be able to exist there in a sort of permafrost layer. There is some evidence for water ice in deep craters near the poles of the planet Mercury as well. If I understand the new NASA mission correctly, they are basically going to do a more sophisticated version of the Lunar Prospector experiment. Even if this new mission finds evidence for water, it doesn't mean the water is necessarily in a form that could easily be used by astronauts - it could be bound up chemically in the rocks, making it difficult to extract.
I think some people are missing the point here. There is a good reason why the intelligent design issue keeps coming up in any discussion regarding the Bush Administration's science policies. Bush's decisions and public statements have continously undermined science in the United States - from his beliefs on intelligent design, the re-organization of NASA to emphasize manned missions rather than science, to the actions of his administration regarding the environment and global warming. The intelligent design debate and the censuring of scientists who warn of the impacts of global warming are intimately connected through Bush's personal beliefs and the policies he makes as a result of these beliefs.
/. isn't the most sophisticated, and it does tend towards flames from both sides of the ID controversy, and name-calling between Democrats and Republicans. However, the fact that these same issues keep coming up shows that a lot of people are deeply concerned about the way the U.S. government appears to be stirring up anti-science sentiment, undermining our educational system, and encouraging intolerance and religious fundamentalism.
Maybe the debate on
This whole thing sort of reminds me of what happened to Galileo. People didn't really want to accept the way his observations would change the way we view the world. He also really irritated a lot of powerful people in the church, through both his scientific studies and some of his political actions. The result was that the church imprisoned him, in an attempt to cover up what they considered a blasphemous and incorrect view of the world. Of course, most people now believe Galileo was right about the objects in our solar system. I'm surprised that the parallels between what happened to Galileo and the ID/evolution debate and the treatment of the global warming scientists hasn't been brought up here before.
Galileo supposedly once said: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Lately, it seems that politicians and the general public have lost all sense of reason, and are trying to deny what science is telling us about the world around us.
I really worry about the weight society gives to standardized tests to measure intelligence. I have a Ph.D. in physics, so I suppose I am pretty smart. On the other hand, I did really lousy on the logic part of the SATs/GREs. It was full of annoying questions that usually involved guessing how old some guy named Bob is, given that he is older than Mary and younger than Pete, and so on and so forth. They never had "Just ask Bob how old he is!" as an answer choice. That always seems like the most logical answer to me - why strain your brain trying to figure it out, when you could just ask Bob? I think that they have changed this part of the GRE to something else now - I took it a really, really long time ago. I tried taking an I.Q. test once, just for fun, but the whole thing was these stupid logic questions like on the GRE that I took. I got extremely bored by the whole I.Q. test thing and quit after about 5 minutes. I just didn't care enough about the I.Q. test (or knowing what my I.Q. is) to actually think about the questions and work through the test.
I don't mean to sound arrogant, like I think I am too smart for these silly tests. On the other hand, I'm not sure what these tests are really measuring, as your educational background, cultural experiences, etc. can have a big impact on your scores. I think this is why the test preparation industry is such a big deal. Taking courses to learn how to take these tests seems to boost people's scores. If this is the case, aren't the tests just measuring your ability to take that particular type of test, rather than actual intelligence or abilities?
I just don't think that we understand enough about the way the brain works to accurately gauge things like intelligence 100% of the time. Yes, some people are smarter than others. Some people are good at math, others at music, and some lucky people are good at both things. In grad school, one of the other students told me that women just aren't as good at math and science as men because we think differently. In the end, he dropped out, while I actually graduated. I just wish that society could stop worrying so much about trying to quantify intelligence and labeling people as "average" or "slow" or "genius" because of a test score. Or deciding that they are not cut out for a particular career because of their race or gender. We should just let people be themselves, and the rest will sort itself out eventually.
You claim to be a space scientist, but you seem rather ignorant of how and why NASA was originally formed. Your post sounds as though you believe that NASA originally consisted of a bunch of bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to adminster grants awarded to corporations and educational institutions, and to set government policy on activities in space. This has always been a part of NASA's mission, but it is not the sole reason for NASA's existence. When NASA was formed in 1958, it maintained 3 research laboratories - it now has 10 such laboratories. Scientific research and the development of spacecraft and spacecraft instruments have always been a part of the NASA organization. Some work was contracted out in the past, as it is today, but NASA has always employed its own scientists and engineers.
I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with someone who has worked with NASA since the space program's very beginning. Most of his work has been on unmanned spacecraft missions. He raised a very interesting question. If you were to take average people off the street, and ask them which astronauts were in orbit right now, how many people would actually be able to name even one of the astronauts currently on board the International Space Station? How many people would know that three of these astronauts were just launched into space yesterday, on board a Russian Soyuz rocket?
I agreed with my scientist friend that very few people would be able to name any of the current astronauts. If their is such strong public support for manned space exploration, then why doesn't the public pay more attention to it? When I was a kid, I always knew the names of the astronauts who were going up on the shuttle - Joe Allen, Pinky Nelson, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison - to name a few. These people were my heroes. Shuttle launches and landings were always covered in full on the TV news, and there were stories about the astronauts and their work in space on TV nearly every night. Now we only hear about the astronauts when someone dies. I doubt that most kids today know the names of any current astronauts. Most adults probably don't either. However, if you ask someone off the street who Britney Spears married, or what the names of Angelina Jolie's kids are, they can probably tell you. If you ask kids today who their heroes are, they will probably name sports figures or other celebrities, not astronauts.
If people today care so little about manned space exploration, why are we making it a national priority? We can focus on science instead and actually gain new knowledge about our universe and the origins of life. The science return on unmanned missions is so much greater than it is for manned missions, when you consider the amount of money spent.
I've tried teaching college courses where I made material available to the students ahead of class on a web site. When you do this, there is no incentive for the students to come to class. They think they will do just fine if they download the notes. The exact same thing happens if I post the notes online after the lecture. The problem is, students who skip lectures and just use the online notes miss out on the discussion in class. I've found that the people who rely on the online notes and skip class do worse in a course than the people who make the effort to come to class and pay attention. The people who actually come to lectures are always the ones who do the best in a course. I don't know if having the online notes really helps the best students retain the material or not - the main thing is that these students actually want to learn, and make an effort to do so.
I could provide handouts in class, but if you have a very large class, you often do not have a large enough photocopying budget to hand out copies of each day's lesson. I did try this once for a complicated homework project. I passed out the assignment and then went over a very detailed step-by-step example of how to complete the assignment. Only about half the class sat through the whole thing. Some people left immediately after getting the handouts or about 15 minutes into class. The people who skipped class habitually and just downloaded the notes didn't even bother to come, even though I had posted a notice on the website saying I would go over the project in class. Of course, only the people who listened to the entire lecture actually completed the assignment correctly.
They also thought it was a really cool assignment. The people who didn't listen to the entire example in lecture struggled through it, and complained the homework was too hard when it was due. The only people who actually asked me for help with the assignment outside of class were also people who had been in class when I did the example and were doing just fine - not the people who really needed help.
The really sad thing is, the assignment I gave my college students was originally designed as an exercise for K-12 students. I figured that college students would be able to do it without much trouble, since they should have a stronger math background. I know of people who have done this exact same exercise with talented middle school/high school students. The younger students usually do it correctly, and with less complaining, even though they may ask for a lot of coaching along the way. For some reason, there is a big change in the attitudes of a lot of students towards school and learning over the summer between high school graduation and their first semester of college.
I totally agree with you Gallowglass. A lot of universities today have classes with 300+ students. A professor can't be expected to tailor their course to the individual needs of every single student in the class when there are this many students. Hiring a tutor, taking advantage of free tutoring services provided by dorms and honor societies, or even forming a study group with other students in the class is much more helpful than whining that the prof doesn't accommodate all learning styles.
I don't know of any published studies that say American scientists are leaving the U.S. in large numbers. However, the U.S. job market for people with degrees in astronomy and the space sciences is horrible right now and it keeps getting worse. I got an e-mail a few minutes ago saying that NASA funding for a program to which I was going to submit a proposal was just reduced from $4 million to $1 million. NASA anticipates that this program is going to get requests for $24 million this year, so quite a few people are not going to get NASA funding. Most of NASA's money is going to support the Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and Bush's half-baked vision for conquering Mars - not science. The more senior scientists I know have told me that they don't ever remember NASA funding in our field being quite this bad before. The NSF is not doing much better.
Currently, I am a researcher supported by soft-money. I've been applying to faculty positions so I won't need to depend so much on NASA funds, but I'm not having any luck. Two faculty positions I applied for were cancelled due to budget cuts about a month after the application deadline. I have been told by several different people that since I am having trouble getting research funding and finding faculty jobs here in the U.S., I should look for positions in Europe. Unfortunately, my European colleagues tell me the funding situation is not good there either, as their countries are also cutting back on funding for many space science programs. I don't really want to move to another country, and even if I did want to leave the U.S., there isn't really anywhere I could go. Funding in the space sciences is tight everywhere right now. I'm hoping I can make the jump to industry, but I'm not sure if the job market in the aerospace industry is any better.
My only problem with impeaching Bush is that we would be left with Dick Cheney as President. We'd have to go pretty far down the line of succession before we got to anybody who really understands the problems facing our country. Politicians are just not listening to scientists anymore, and on those rare occasions when they do, they just twist our words around to fit their own agenda. I do my civic duty - I vote, atttend caucuses, and write the occassional letter to my Congressmen when I feel strongly about something. It doesn't do any good. What we really need is for more scientists and engineers to run for public office. We need to rally the troops - how about a Million Scientist March on Washington?
There are two major problems with using manned space exploration missions as a public relations tool: (1) very few people who dream of becoming astronauts will ever get to travel into space, and (2) NASA gets extremely bad press whenever lives are lost. Astronauts do go out to schools occasionally to do outreach, but there are many more scientists analyzing data from unmanned missions working at NASA or at universities who do this kind of outreach on a regular basis.
I regularly participate in a program where I answer children's questions about space exploration. Data from most of the NASA spacecraft missions are now publically available online. Anyone can go and see the latest data from a number of NASA and even NOAA satellites on the Internet. This also makes it possible for K-12 students to participate in space exploration by analyzing data from NASA spacecraft for a school science project. There are even instruments on NASA spacecraft that have been built primarily by undergraduate and graduate students in science and engineering. Some NASA spacecraft, like the mission recently launched to Pluto, contain a CD of the names of average people who support space exploration. The Startdust@home (http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/) project will allow Internet users to help analyze data from the Stardust mission.
Admittedly, scientists have not always done a good job of involving the public in space exploration. However, they are getting a lot better at it, thanks to the Internet. Unmanned missions can be an even better tool than manned missions for getting the public interested in space exploration, when outreach programs are planned properly. There are many ways that the public can participate in space exploration through unmanned missions and experience the excitement of discovery for themselves. People just need to make the effort to participate in these opportunities. With manned missions, we can only experience new discoveries vicariously through the astronauts, and there are limits to where we can send humans with our current technology. Personally, I think this is why the media seldom covers Space Shuttle launches in the detail that they used to do in the 1980s.
Our government's policies are not consistent regarding science and technology, and both President Bush and Congress are to blame. Our lawmakers don't understand the human impact of their decisions regarding the budgets of agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Every time they re-allocate funds from one project to another, cut programs, or fail to increase the NASA and NSF budgets sufficiently to account for inflation, scientists and engineers lose their jobs. The U.S. government is shooting itself in the foot when it comes to our global competitiveness in science and technology.
Thanks for posting Griffin's statement! Any scientist will tell you that it is extremely difficult to communicate your research to the public. I can't help wondering if the problems with NASA's public affairs office are partially due to the difficulties inherent in communicating science to the public and partially due to political pressures and the personal beliefs of the people working in the public affairs office. Maybe the people in the public affairs office thought they were helping NASA's funding situation by making the scientists' work seem more in line with the President's goals for space science. However, even if they had good intentions, I agree with Griffin that it is not the job of public affairs officers to filter or adjust scientific information.
From the article: The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said
It hasn't been that long since I earned my Ph.D. in physics, so I only really have personal experience as a scientist with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as president. Bush and his advisors may say they support science, like they did in the article, but what they say and what their policies actually support are entirely different.
When I was a graduate student, Bill Clinton was president and the future of the space sciences seemed very bright, indeed. Funding for new missions and research was plentiful, and some of the NASA centers were hiring bright young scientists in permanent, civil service positions.
Since George Bush has been president the funding situation in the space sciences has become completely hopeless. The NASA re-organization to support Bush's exploration vision has made it extremely difficult for scientists in certain fields to obtain funding. The NASA programs I normally would submit grant proposals to have been delayed and even threatened with cancellation. I recently applied for a government job at NOAA, but it the job search was cancelled a month later because they lost the funding for this position. You seldom see permanent jobs advertised at government research centers in my field anymore. Faculty positions are hard to find as well. All I can find in my field are post-doctoral and other temporary positions.
I don't know if this is just a reflection of the poor state of the economy in general, or if it is mainly due to the policies of the Bush Administration. All I know is that I am having a really hard time establishing my career as a scientist, and that my supervisors and colleagues do not have a favorable view of George Bush at all. I don't hear my colleagues talk wistfully of the days when Clinton, Reagan or anyone else was President. However, I do hear things like "Since George Bush has been President, funding has been really tight..." on almost a daily basis. Based upon what I've heard from other people at work, government support for science has never been quite as bad as it is now.
I think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy should do a special with George Takei at a Star Trek Convention. Most of the guys I've talked to at Star Trek conventions seem like nice people, but some of them would definitely benefit from being shot with a phaser set on "fabulous."
I have a Ph.D. in physics and know a bit about magnetic fields. I'm not a particle physicist, and I don't pretend to know a whole lot about unified field theories. However, I have a few issues with the article that I would like to point out.
The article said that this warp drive idea was based upon generating a sufficiently large magnetic field. It is extremely difficult to generate large magnetic field in the laboratory, as anyone who has worked with particle accelerators or has studied nuclear fusion can tell you. This is part of the reason why we do not yet have working commercial fusion reactors for electrical power plants. People have been saying we are only a few years away from developing fusion power plants since the 1970s, but anyone with a realistic viewpoint will now tell you that scientists really don't know when we might be able to develop a working fusion power plant. It still takes too much electrical power to contain and heat the nuclear fuel in current fusion devices for this to be a practical power source. If we haven't been able to make a decent fusion reactor in the last 30 years, I'd say we're a really long way from making a warp drive.
This guy I knew in graduate school once told me that it was really funny to stick your head into the huge magnets in the particle accelerators at Brookhaven National Lab. Apparently the magnetic field was so strong that it affected your vision. According to my friend, the strong magnetic field made it appear as though the lights in the room were blinking on and off. I've never tried this myself so I don't know if it is true. The senior physicists could have been playing a joke on him, or he could have just been pulling my leg. However, if it is true, then any hypothetical spacecraft powered by gigantic magnetic fields would need to be unmanned due to these weird effects.
I think it would also be difficult to put current computer techology on this spacecraft since it could be screwed up by the big magnetic field.
We know about a lot of situations in astrophysics where huge magnetic fields are generated. If making a huge magnetic field is all there is to creating a wormhole or warp drive, then why don't we see pulsars and neutron stars popping in and out of existence throughout the known universe, when their huge magnetic fields warp the fabric of the universe and send them hurtling across space and time?
I'd really like to be able to travel to other solar systems like on Star Trek, but I just don't see it happening any time soon. I've never heard of these scientists in the article before, so I'd take a wild guess and say they are on the fringes.
My right thumb and ring finger started hurting really badly after I moved my bookshelves. It also hurts down my wrist and forearm when I grasp something heavy with that hand, like a milk jug or big pile of books. I thought I was getting carpal tunnel, but my doctor said I had deQuervain's Tendinitis. She basically said that the only cure was rest. The doctor visit went something like this -
Me: Doctor, it hurts when I go like this.Doctor: Then don't do that.
I just love modern medicine!
The book "Angel's Don't Play This HAARP" is a total joke, but not to the authors. I took a look at Nick Begich's website. The information they have there about HAARP is full of scientific errors. Begich seems to take this HAARP conspiracy stuff seriously, but I kind of wonder about his intentions. In addition to informing people about the evils of HAARP, his web site is also selling a lot of audio CDs that claim to be able to cure anything that ails you physically or spiritually.
If you check out Nick Begich's background on his site, it says "Begich received his doctorate in traditional medicine from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines in November 1994." What the heck is "traditional medicine?" I googled for "The Open International University for Complementary Medicines". If I found the right place, it looks like a correspondence school based in India for alternative medicine. This does not sound like an accredited medical school to me - some of the other sites I found when googling tend to support this.
Begich sounds a bit like a modern day snake-oil salesman, in my humble opinion. He's not a medical doctor or a scientist. If you believe the stuff on his web site, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale on eBay. Hurry! Bidding ends in 10 minutes.
I believe that the article on HAARP and the aurora iamlucky13 referred to was published in the journal Nature.
I first heard about all of the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP when I was studying physics in graduate school. When I took a research trip up to Alaska, I asked my apartment building manager if she could take care of my plants. She totally freaked out because she had heard about this evil HAARP thing the U.S. government had hidden in the Alaskan wilderness.
All of the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP are a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The physics behind this project is complicated and not understood by your average Joe. People understand just enough of it to realize how little they actually know, and that scares them. After my apartment manager told me about HAARP, I checked out a few of the web sites claiming to tell the truth about HAARP. Some of these "experts" on HAARP claimed that because they had Ph.D.s they were qualified to judge the merits and true purpose of HAARP. These people probably got their "degree" by responding to an e-mail from some school in Nigeria that will give you a diploma based upon your life experience if you send $500. It never fails to surprise me how many naive people out there will believe anyone who claims to have a Ph.D. in something or will believe anything they read on the Internet. Nerds are supposed to know better!
These conspiracy theories aren't just ridiculous because of their faulty and inaccurate science. A major conspiracy to cover up a secret and illegal military experiment implies that the leaders of the U.S government are organized enough to restrict the release of information and coordinate their cover stories and propaganda. Our government couldn't properly coordinate the relief efforts for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Does anyone out there honestly think our government is organized enough to orchestrate a massive cover up for the development of an evil death ray?
Then again, why should anyone believe what I have to say? I know people involved with HAARP and I have a Ph.D. in physics so I'm just another evil genius out to destroy the world. People like Art Bell who seriously believe that there is a conspiracy would probably think that I am a part of it and lying about everthing. I wish I was part of the conspiracy so I could go take that alien space ship they have hidden at Area 51 and leave the planet as soon as possible. I sure don't like the way our world is heading.
I'm not worried about the 95% who will say "Meet members of the opposite sex" or the 4% who will say things like "Go sky diving." It's the remaining 1% I'm worried about!
Hey there powerpointmonkey!
What we'd all really like to know, is what country did you originate in, and what country you think has a better work/life balance? I think we would all like to move there. I'd love to say goodbye 'carpal tunnel,' and go 'carpe diem!'
I think the question "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" could make an awesome Slashdot poll. Then again, I'm kind of afraid of the answers some Slashdot readers might post. Maybe that question is best left unanswered!
The article said: "The cost of employing one chemist or engineer in the United States is equal to about five chemists in China and 11 engineers in India."
People who have college and graduate degrees in the U.S. expect to make significantly more money per year than someone who does not have an education. Labor unions and the government's minimum wage requirements have inflated the salaries for some unskilled jobs to the point where the salaries of management and skilled workers have to be raised to maintain a reasonable separation in salary. For example, I know someone who has worked as a manager at a large, upscale hotel for several years. A couple of years ago, the room attendents (the maids) union in her city decided to go on strike. The salary and benefits increases negotiated by the union were so large, that the room attendents ended up making about the same salary as my friend - even though she had a college degree, and most of the room attendents didn't even have the equivalent of a high school education. Fortunately, the upper level management of her hotel chain realized they would have a hard time retaining their hotel managers, so my friend got a raise too.
Even though this example is from the service industry, it points out the difficulty we have in the U.S. with the relatively small gap in salaries we have between skilled and unskilled workers. I have friends and family members who are struggling to get by on minimum wage, so don't get me wrong here, I think it is good that we have labor standards in the United States. However, we just can't compete with a developing country like India, where a huge portion of the population is uneducated and lives in poverty. In countries like these, it is possible to pay someone with a college or even a graduate degree a salary that would be considered very low for their job by U.S. standards. Even though the science and engineering salaries are lower in countries like India, they are still significantly higher than what someone without an education would earn in those countries. There is no way the U.S. can compete with these countries, unless we do away with minimum wage, labor unions and other protections our government uses to ensure we have safe working conditions. This just isn't going to happen.
I don't think there is a good or simple solution to decline of science and engineering in the United States. Paying our scientists and engineers better salaries might help, but then again it might not. Companies would just send more of their technical work overseas to countries like India, where salaries are a lot lower. Companies in the U.S. just don't seem to have any sense of patriotism or desire to keep their business and jobs here. Incidentally, I'm not so sure that the industry salaries for scientists and engineers being low are the problem. Another friend of mine has a B.S. degree and works in the biotech industry. He makes about $30,000 more per year than I do with a Ph.D. in physics, working at a university. The salaries for people in academia who have only just received their Ph.D.s a few years ago are not competive with salaries for industry. Why work at a university and teach the next generation of scientists and engineers when you can work in industry and make more money? I also think that upper level corporate executives and government administrators are paid a lot more than they are worth. Sure, they have a lot of responsiblity, but then again so does an engineer designing a new commercial aircraft or a scientist studying infectious diseases.
I think the only way to maintain our technical expertise is for our government and our corporations to start valuing the work done by scientists and engineers more than the work performed by the bureaucrats. Corporations also need to cultivate some sense of loyalty to their home country. Maybe tax breaks to companies who hire scientists and engineers who are U.S. citizens, rather than outsourcing jobs or importing talent from overseas would help. It would also help if people in the U.S. in general would be willing to accept a slightly lower salary and standard of living in exchange for job security. Of course, we'll all being playing hockey in hell before any of these things happens.
I took a look at the "About Us" section of the SpaceNow website. The people who put together the site don't really seem to have a large team behind them. Judging by their photos, they are also pretty young - maybe just out of college or maybe recent Master's graduates.
My own experience has shown it is incredibly difficult for someone in their 20s and 30s to really make a difference in government policies on space exploration. Society now has about 50 years of experience in space exploration, so there are already many groups lobbying in favor of space exploration out there. Most of these groups are lead by established scientists and engineers who have developed relationships with government leaders over many years. Most of these groups would not give younger people a whole lot of power in terms of directing programs for communicating with the public. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, but unfortunately, it's just the way things are. With all of these other groups out there, I think the people behind SpaceNow are going to have a hard time getting noticed by the powers that be.
One group that has done a lot to support both manned and unmanned space exploration is The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has been around for quite a few years and has many famous and wealthy people supporting its objectives. They also provide educational information similar to what the young men behind SpaceNow are going to provide. There are also tons of other web sites out there where people can learn about the fundamentals of rocketry - such as the Planetary Society again, as well as the Basics of Space Flight web site from JPL. The Challenger Center also is an important space science education group, at least in the United States.
One thing that the SpaceNow people are trying to do that's a bit different is provide a public forum for discussion. However, there are already forums out there. Even though Slashdot isn't devoted exclusively to space exploration, there are quite a few lively discussions about this topic on Slashdot.
I really do wish the creators of SpaceNow the best of luck. But I think they are going to have a difficult time getting noticed with all of the similar groups out there. The groups and web sites that I have mentioned are based in the U.S., so I don't know how many similar groups are in Canada (I assume the .ca domain means they are Canadian). The creators seemed to all be associated with the same university, so if any of them are reading this, I suggest that they concentrate on getting their message out to their local community first. Some ways to do this are through local museums and planetariums, astronomy clubs, and Cafe Scientifique meetings in their area.