Slightly humorous story about global warming & space explor.

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Posted by Patrick Dingle at 05/01/2001 3:26 PM EST


College Student on team #639, Red B^2, from Ithaca High School and Cornell University.



Thought this true story might be slightly interesting or humorous to some of you engineers (and especially NASA employees or Fuel Cell engineers) out there...

I had the opportunity to view Captain Jim Lovell (captain, Apollo 13, among others) give a lecture a couple weeks ago on campus. Unfortunately, his lecture happened to come to campus at the same time a group of Kyoto Now! Green Party activists were trying to get the university to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to pre-1990 levels on campus.

Anyway, on to the story. Lovell gives his hour-long lecture... He's an outstanding lecturer, and it was very interesting. After the lecture, there are a half hour of Q&A. Several questions asked about space exploration etc... Then, a lady in her mid 30s gets to the microphone. She first mentions how expensive the space program is, and questions (rhetorically) why the united states should continue to fund space exploration when, and I quote, "our own planet is dying." Next, she suggests that we should be spending the money on saving the planet. How money reduces greenhouse gas emissions, I have absolutely no clue... but she seemed to say that we should be spending money reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At this point she has been talking for about 2 minutes, and the audience is talking to each other and many people start to yell things at her and such. A security guard then asks her to ask her question. She then proceeds to claim that the space program itself contributes to global warming, and she quickly asked for Lovell to respond before she was thrown out.

Now I mentioned Lovell is a great speaker, but he knew exactly what he was talking about, and responded to every single point this lady made. His response must have been about 15 minutes to this one "question". First, he responds to her suggestion that money should be spent on saving the planet. He first mentions how the economy works... Spending money on the space program puts taxpayers' money in the hands of engineering companies and manufacturers, etc... and the money goes right back into the economy. Money doesn't disappear once spent, but circulates to other places. But his main point was that reducing greenhouse emissions is not both not a viable solution (since with current power technology it's directly proportional to the amount of energy produced) and there is no way for money to decrease emissions. Additionally, he points out that funding scientific research such as NASA puts money right in the hands of the researchers who research alternate means of energy. Finally, he responds to her comment about the space program contributing to global warming. As he mentioned many times in his lecture, he points out that the space shuttle and apollo missions, (and all other NASA missions) are powered by hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells, which have water as the only biproduct. In fact, it was an explosion in two of Apollo 13's three oxygen tanks that forced them to return to Earth. Lovell gets a stanging ovation after responding to this lady's comments.

Of course, these are not the real reasons the government should fund NASA... after all, NASA sponsers FIRST teams.

Patrick, who thinks if we send one rich person into space each year for $20 million, that is enough additional cash for NASA to fully fund ($50000 budget) 400 FIRST teams per year.

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Posted by Jason Rudolph at 05/02/2001 12:18 PM EST


Coach on team #168, Flashbacks, from North Miami Beach Senior High and Cordis.


In Reply to: Slightly humorous story about global warming & space explor.
Posted by Patrick Dingle on 05/01/2001 3:26 PM EST:



While I agree with you on the most part, I do disagree on some levels. Money can be spent to reduce emmisions by uprading old technology in manufacturing, etc, to more current technologies that are more efficient, etc. While I am not talking about power generation, per say, that is by far, not the only source of emissions. Also, and I know that this has nothing to do with funding NASA or anything, but you can't tell me that car manufacturers trends of moving towards producing bigger, more gas-guzzling suv's and trucks is helpfull to the environment. There are plenty of ways we can use money to help reduce emmisions, just saying "we can't, oh well" is not the best response. Not that I think the money should come from NASA, but I do think that more money does need to be used in subsidies and other govenment programs to make it more attractive to companies to reduse their enegry consumption, and emissions.

Jason
who just realized that this post really shouldn't have ended up in the "tech" forum

[archiver]

Posted by Patrick Dingle at 05/02/2001 9:02 PM EST


College Student on team #639, Red B^2, from Ithaca High School and Cornell University.


In Reply to: Re: Slightly humorous story about global warming & space explor.
Posted by Jason Rudolph on 05/02/2001 12:18 PM EST:



Yah, probably should have been in general... oh well...

Anyway, I firmly believe the only way to fix this problem, should it exist, is to develop new technology that elimanets the emission of greenhouse gasses altogether.... such as Dean's sterling engine. If the government wants to put money into these research areas, that's great... I also think many of these companies that do the research have NASA as a main customer... So you gotta fund NASA (not to mention the FIRST teams).

We could spend money on making power plants and cars more efficient, but this would mean spending billions of dollars on technologies that are still emitting greenhouse gasses, only a slim margin less. Due to population increases and other factors, greenhouse emission would still be forced to be increased. It's like trying to knock down a skyscraper by throwing pebbles at it.

Anyway, didn't mean for another argument about global warming... Just wanted to post a story I thought others would find interesting. Anyone feel free to respond if you have different viewpoints... but that's all i'm saying on the matter.

Patrick

p.s. thanks again for the ride to the bus station in FL!

: While I agree with you on the most part, I do disagree on some levels. Money can be spent to reduce emmisions by uprading old technology in manufacturing, etc, to more current technologies that are more efficient, etc. While I am not talking about power generation, per say, that is by far, not the only source of emissions. Also, and I know that this has nothing to do with funding NASA or anything, but you can't tell me that car manufacturers trends of moving towards producing bigger, more gas-guzzling suv's and trucks is helpfull to the environment. There are plenty of ways we can use money to help reduce emmisions, just saying "we can't, oh well" is not the best response. Not that I think the money should come from NASA, but I do think that more money does need to be used in subsidies and other govenment programs to make it more attractive to companies to reduse their enegry consumption, and emissions.

: Jason
: who just realized that this post really shouldn't have ended up in the "tech" forum

[archiver]

Posted by Jason Rudolph at 05/03/2001 1:06 AM EST


Coach on team #168, Flashbacks, from North Miami Beach Senior High and Cordis.


In Reply to: Re: Slightly humorous story about global warming & space explor.
Posted by Patrick Dingle on 05/02/2001 9:02 PM EST:



I agree with you mostly, and don't mention it, it's always nice to have another first a holic in the car