Recently Freeman Dyson made some remarks in an interview with The Register which have conservatives gleeful on the climate change issue. Here’s a celebrated scientist arguing that climate change is being overestimated, that climate change scientists are all crazy and biased, and that carbon dioxide emissions are actually beneficial! The most exciting aspect of this development for climate change deniers is that they can now shut down the “no respectable scientist” argument – Freeman Dyson is a very well-respected theoretical physicist, and here he is saying that all this ‘climate change’ nonsense is purely manufactured and idiotic!
Such comments from such a highly respected scientist might be surprising to a lot of people, but this is actually revealing of a long-standing fissure in the scientific community between environmental scientists and rocket scientists. This results largely from the backgrounds, methods, and overall goals of these two disciplines: rocket scientists are generally engineers who dream of burning propellants to send things flying through the air, eventually reaching space, the moon, other planets, etc. To do this they searched the entire catalogue of nasty chemicals known to man for the best, most efficient, most powerful substances that can react with each other to produce thrust.
Environmental scientists, meanwhile, are primarily from purely scientific backgrounds rather than engineering ones, and their mission is generally to protect the world from all those nasty chemicals we’ve learned about. To do this they develop tests and assays for water sources and air samples and animal life and plant life and everything else they can find, to discover what nasty chemicals are present there and figure out where they’re coming from. It’s no surprise, then, that these disciplines wind up in conflict with each other from time to time.
Consider, for instance, the beloved book on rocket propellants, Ignition! by John D. Clark. In it he shares a story in which he was encouraged to research dimethyl mercury as a rocket propellant (for reference, dimethyl mercury is the same substance that claimed the life of heavy metal toxicity specialist Karen Wetterhahn in 1997 because just a few drops got onto her protective gloves). Clark was cogniscent enough of the dangers of dimethyl mercury that he decided he’d rather not synthesize the stuff himself. Instead he called up a friend in Rochester and asked the guy to synthesize 100 pounds of the stuff and send it over. His friend replied that an attempt to synthesize 100 pounds of dimethyl mercury would fog every piece of photographic film in Rochester. His alternative plan is to just inject pure mercury into the combustion chamber, so the rocket would dump out mercury gas as it flew.
In testing the idea Clark worked on designing a scrubber for the system, so that all the mercury gas could be condensed from the exhaust istead of just dumping it into the atmosphere, but he was taken off the project before the idea was actually tested. Dean Couch and D.G. Nyberg were instead tasked with testing the idea in 1960, who just took the whole busines out to the desert and tested it without the scrubber. They found that with a 250-pound RFNA-UDMH motor, injecting 20 volume percent mercury into the motor, they got a 40% increase in density impulse.
Now to a rocket scientist, this story is an exciting tale of innovation in rocket propellant to achieve a 40% increase in density impulse. To an environmental scientist, this whole story is horrifying. That well-trained chemists would even consider synthesizing such a huge quantity as 100 pounds of dimethyl mercury is chilling already. That a whole project would be undertaken with the end goal of having a missile or rocket fire a mercury fuel and dump mercury gas into the atmosphere is equally disturbing. That the concept got tested, without any precautions to condense the mercury instead of just dumping it into the atmosphere, surely did no good for the environment in that desert.
The trouble here is that these two disciplines have very different goals which are naturally – if not inherently – opposed, and that each is only somewhat willing to go out of its way to accomodate the other. If a rocket scientist has some crazy compound that he wants to use as rocket fuel, he might be willing to test that rocket in uninhabited areas. He might grudgingly agree to test the substance in motors with a condenser, so that the exhaust isn’t pumped into the environment (although the end goal is still to put the substance in a rocket engine and fly that rocket to space, for which purpose a condenser would be impossible). He might agree to any number of other safety precautions in case of spills and mishaps and the like, to make sure that in cases of spills or hard starts he doesn’t wind up dumping gallons of toxic material into the groundwater.
But the environmental scientist, meanwhile, is likely to look at the end goal of the project, and calculate the environmental impact, and then argue that the entire project should just be scrapped. Not worth a 40% increase in density impulse to dump 100 pounds of mercury gas into the atmosphere, he might say. At this point, the rocket scientist doesn’t just see him as the conscientious safety officer trying to make sure precautions are taken to prevent spills and the like. The rocket scientist has a project, accompanied by some dream of human space travel and colonization and the like, and he sees the environmental scientist as wanting to destroy all that by killing funding to the project.
What does all this have to do with Freeman Dyson? Well Dyson isn’t technically in either of these camps, since he’s a theoretical physicist, but he’s much more in the first camp than the second. All of his career, Dyson has focused on theoretical analysis of human space flight and the implications thereof. As a matter of fact, early in his career Dyson was involved with a rocket development project which, in retrospect, boggles the mind.
It was called Project Orion, and the goal was to build a rocket with very high thrust and very high specific impulse. To explain briefly, rockets have several different parameters that describe their effectiveness. To the politician or customer who is hiring rocket scientists for some project, the important parameters are payload (the pounds of stuff that you are transporting to space or the moon or wherever) and cost (the number of dollars required for the job). For the rocket scientist, these are heavily controlled by two characteristics of their fuel system: thrust and specific impulse. Thrust is the amount of force the rocket can generate at once, and specific impulse is a measure of how much fuel it takes to generate that thrust. Traditional chemical rockets are capable of generating very high thrusts, but generally only with pretty mediocre specific impulse. Ion engines are a more recent development, and are often used for orbital work. They use an electric current to fire ions of propellant very fast behind them, resulting in a very high specific impulse, but only with incredibly low thrust. So with chemical rockets you can’t send your manned mission to Pluto because you run out of fuel before you build up enough velocity to get there; but with ion rockets, you can’t get off the planet, and even if you use chemical rockets just to reach orbit, it takes ion engines years or decades or centuries to build up that velocity.
Project Orion was based on a different alternative from either chemical rockets or ion engines. Project Orion was based on something called nuclear pulse propulsion. That sounds fancy and cutting edge and all that, until you learn what it really is. Basically, chemical rockets and ion engnes are both based on firing some kind of matter (chemical exhaust in the one case, ions in the other) out the back really fast to push the rocket forward. Nuclear pulse propulsion is based on firing nuclear bombs out the back of the rocket, and then detonating them behind you to push yourself forward. If you’re looking to put a small city in orbit of Jupiter, this is the kind of technology you might need.
If you’re thinking “but won’t all those nuclear bombs do some damage wherever you dropped them?” then yes, yes they will. A fair amount of thought was put into minimizing the damage from a nuclear explosion in the 50’s, when we were still regularly testing giant bombs on uninhabited atolls just to prove we could. But as it turns out (and this is where the work of environmental scientists comes into play), there’s not really a safe place to blow up a nuclear bomb, let alone several. Where could we launch such a rocket and not have unacceptably high environmental costs? Deserts? Uninhabited atolls? Even if we could put it in one of the most uninhabited and remote places on Earth – Antarctica – there would be huge amounts of radiation dumped into the environment to damage human and animal cells, not to mention the obvious environmental impact of the blast itself. Remember, Elon Musk has floated the idea of dropping several thermonuclear bombs on the Martian polls as a way of warming the planet enough for human life. What would that do to our already-warming planet?
But you can almost see how when the vision of human space exploration is big enough and real enough in your mind, but you probably won’t live to see it, the costs of such a technology might feel like they don’t outweigh the benefits. Imagine putting a city in Jovian orbit! Imagine colonizing Io and Europa and Ganymede and Callisto! Imagine putting humankind on every rock in this solar system, and maybe even pushing out to other stars! Surely, in the face of all that, a bit of radiation isn’t such a high cost, is it?
And he has long been a proponent Freeman Dyson dreams of cheap space travel. He hoped we would have men on Mars by 1965, and Saturn by 1970. He still believes that space exploration in the last few decades has been overly cautious and conservative, and likes to theorize about when we’ll finally achieve cheap manned space travel (in his estimation, within the next century or so). Indeed, since his specialized contributions to things like the development of quantum mechanics earlier in the 20th century, he has instead concerned himself with more the more fanciful and exciting prospects of futurism. He predicts bright and fantastic futures of genetically engineered organisms which solve many of today’s apparently intractable problems with ease.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that he is such a skeptic on issues surrounding global warming. He acknowledges the existence of antropogenic global warming; he accepts that this is likely to have a lot of negative impact on the planet and mankind; but when it comes to the finer points of the science involved, he has always been a skeptic. In 2009 the New York Times ran a cover story on Dyson, discussing his controversial views on the subject, and in a follow-up interview by Yale Environment 360, Dyson admitted: “My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerant criticism that a lot of them have. I think that’s what upsets me.” In other words, he isn’t much of a climate scientist, and he knows it, but he still speaks up because the way climate change scientists conduct themselves bothers him somewhat.
TL;DR: If you believe in climate change, don’t let Freeman Dyson’s objections bother you too much. He’s a brilliant scientist, but this isn’t his area, and he’s motivated more by some ideological differences between space exploration fans, who look forward to colonizing other planets, and environmentalists, who prefer to focus on preserving this one. And if you don’t believe in climate change, touting Freeman Dyson as your champion is less meaningful than you might hope.
As you said in your TL;DR, he's a theoretical physicist. Not a climate scientist.
I know of some engineers who don't accept evolutionary theory and some biologists who don't accept the big bang theory, but these arguments from authority are not appropriate. We should care about the experts.
Based off the data, he's wrong. That's why the scientific consensus is what it is.
isn't Dyson the guy that gave up the 3 run home run to Jose Bautista today?
On October 15 2015 09:40 ChristianS wrote:He’s a brilliant scientist, but this isn’t his area, and he’s motivated more by some ideological differences between space exploration fans, who look forward to colonizing other planets, and environmentalists, who prefer to focus on preserving this one. And if you don’t believe in climate change, touting Freeman Dyson as your champion is less meaningful than you might hope.
the planets are millions of kms away... and no one can even do 1000 km for even a few moments.
ya, ummm when a human gets 1000 km off the surface of the earth i'll start to lay awake at night worrying about colonizing other planets.. until then... i wouldn't really make it a priority.
Ah good old climate change. The predictions of doomsday just keep rolling in. I got so sick of the climate change debate I actually joined the AMS last year so I could have direct access to most of the peer reviewed stuff and their journals. It only made things worse to be honest LOL. Plus I quickly found out I didn't have as much time as I wanted to actually read the stuff.
Begrudgingly I have realized that the issue has become so political and polarized it's incredibly hard to have honest discussion about it, even among scientists who for the most part rely on funding from both sides. Both sides of the political and business spectrum pump money into the system to spit out answers that they want to hear, and there's actually plenty of data for both sides. You want to deny climate change? Look at satellite data which has shown next to no warming for 18 years. You want to accept climate change? Look at the surface stations and ocean buoys which have shown consistent warming since 1996. I could go on and on. Everyone has their reasons why the other sides data is wrong, or skewed, or biased, there is very little truth among all the smoke and mirrors.
It's actually somewhat saddening. Facts and figures are so misconstrued too. Alarmists like to cite that magical 97% number. 97% of all climate scientists agree in climate change. Alarmists then use that as the reason why we need to act now. Meanwhile the vast majority of those 97%, when actually pressed, will tell you that while they agree in climate change, they will say climate change has always been occurring and don't actually agree the implications of increased co2 emissions is of serious cause for concern. Deniers say almost everything is based off the sun, and this warming period is consistent with history and we're actually heading for an ice age within 20 years or so due to sunspot and solar activity trends. The nice thing about that prediction is we'll all still be around hopefully to see if that one plays out or not. Most of the doomsday alarmist predictions have been revised to 2050 or later, some of Al Gore's stuff has already been proven wrong but not much.
Edit: I guess after all of this I should actually say where I stand. Climate change is real, mankind is affecting it (I feel that should be obvious) but I feel in general it's way over-hyped by some. None of the destructive things being predicted are based in reality and are all based off theory and models which are always changing and being revised for later dates.
On October 15 2015 12:33 LuckyFool wrote: I got so sick of the climate change debate
To be clear, there isn't a debate. At least, for the experts. Even the Republicans aren't even trying to pretend man-made climate change doesn't occur anymore. That's when you know the science has really won.
Alarmists like to cite that magical 97% number. 97% of all climate scientists agree in climate change.
On October 15 2015 12:33 LuckyFool wrote: I got so sick of the climate change debate
To be clear, there isn't a debate. At least, for the experts. Even the Republicans aren't even trying to pretend man-made climate change doesn't occur anymore. That's when you know the science has really won.
On October 15 2015 12:33 LuckyFool wrote: I got so sick of the climate change debate
To be clear, there isn't a debate. At least, for the experts. Even the Republicans aren't even trying to pretend man-made climate change doesn't occur anymore. That's when you know the science has really won.
Alarmists like to cite that magical 97% number. 97% of all climate scientists agree in climate change.
I think you mean experts. Not alarmists.
Alarmists use the number in a deceiving way was my point.
I just have a problem with the use of the term. Maybe it's just my personal connotation for the word, but alarmist sounds to me like a person is being unjustifiably alarmed. We should be alarmed! It's a really big deal.
I just checked a few online dictionaries, and according to the definition of alarmist, it is one who exaggerates danger in order to cause needless panic. I would argue that people trying to raise awareness of climate change are, by definition, not alarmists.
On the other hand, I think a good example of an alarmist is one of the many Fox News pundits who always cry about the "War on Christmas/ Christians", because that's not really a thing, and it's exaggerating an issue in order to cause needless panic/ backlash.
@JimmyJRaynor: Sam Dyson. And I'm a little unclear on your second statement, but 1000 km away is just low earth orbit. People can do that pretty easily. The moon is 380,000 km away, and Mars is 55 million km away, but we're talking about manned missions to Mars by the 2030s. Of course reaching Mars and terraforming Mars are two different things, but we're not so far off as you might think.
@DPB: I don't follow the research that closely, but I believe you. On the issue of anthropogenic, I haven't researched it but I would guess that somebody must have done a pretty convincing proof just based on isotopic studies by now, right? Fossil fuels will have a different isotopic signature to their carbon, so it should be possible to detect changes in isotopic signature as we burn more fossil fuels. That'd be pretty close to a smoking gun on whether or not the changes are anthropogenic.
In general my background is in chemistry, which makes me a bit more equipped to understand local environmental problems like air pollution and the like, and less able to understand large-scale modeling of planetary atmospheric trends. From a bit of reading from physicists and the like, it seems like some of the stranger claims made about climate change (for instance, that it's causing an increase in extreme weather like hurricanes) are probably not on very firm ground, so in some of those cases words like "alarmist" might be warranted. Freeman Dyson is probably at least right in that there are a lot of factors that the climate models struggle to account for – he cites changes in plant activity as a result of the increased composition of CO2 and changes in cloud formation as a result of increased composition of CO2 as two examples of things that climate change models don't account for. I don't, however, think that's strong enough to warrant saying the field is bankrupt or that Obama chose the wrong side and Republicans chose the right one.
@LuckyFool: That's nice I guess. Good for you joining AMS just to research the issue. But at the end of the day when you express skepticism, all I can say is so what? You think the doomsday predictions are overstated and the whole issue is overhyped, but unlike the climate scientists who made those predictions, you don't really have any evidence for your claim (besides maybe something weak like "well they made this other claim before, and that didn't pan out, so this one probably won't either"). The computer models and the like might have flaws, but at least they're offering a rigorous, evidence-based way of looking at the issue. It seems like all you're offering is all most climate change deniers tend to offer: shrugging your shoulders at the experts and saying "eh, what do those guys know anyway?"
I think one of the most important things about climate change is that we don't really know which of our models is correct. In general, they all predict warming to some degree, but to what degree is not certain. The effects of that warming are surely in doubt as well.
If on that basis people criticise global warming as 'overhyped' I think its kind of silly in the sense that, one would think that human beings don't want to gamble on the future of the human race, precisely because we don't really know how severely continued warming will exacerbate the climate, in terms of hurricanes and other natural disasters, as well as effects on our world ecology that we all rely on.
We only have one planet to live on, it seems rational to not want to take any risks that could lead to these runaway warming scenarios.
But I think Dyson is definitely making a mistake in how he phrases things. Expressing skepticism on climate change due to the fact that he doesn't like how they treat other people isn't really that logical, if that is indeed what he is doing. Additionally he admits he doesn't know the technical details that well, so that should be a pretty good reason why he shouldn't offer commentary on the issue at all, so as not to confuse the general public.
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Also as a side note I'm not sure how valid all of the psychoanalysis is. I'm sure certain rocket scientists wouldn't care how much stuff they dump into the atmosphere, but others could easily not be the same. Just like if you like cars and flying that doesn't mean you aren't environmentally friendly. Its not mutually exclusive unless the rocket/car your flying/driving emits 10% of the world's CO2 or something ridiculous like that.
That read though. Thanks was a fun quite dose of what is what in science. But from what i get is that don't trust anyone? An environmental scientist is bias and a physicist is bias.
So....is climate change real or not still no answers!!! Is co2 the most evil of evil in the world!?!? find out on the next episode... xD
On October 15 2015 15:58 ChristianS wrote: @JimmyJRaynor: 1000 km away is just low earth orbit. People can do that pretty easily. The moon is 380,000 km away, and Mars is 55 million km away, but we're talking about manned missions to Mars by the 2030s. Of course reaching Mars and terraforming Mars are two different things, but we're not so far off as you might think.
since '72, the farthest a human being has been is 350 km away. so getting to 1000 km would be a major accomplishment. Your optimism and enthusiasm is heartwarming but travel to Mars , many millions of kms away just ain't happenin'
@radscorpion9: Nothing I've presented here in terms of "psychoanalysis" (if you want to call it that) is all that far-fetched. Rocket scientists tend to hate environmentalism like engineers tend to like math and lawyers tend to be liberal. It's not universal, sure, in that there are doubtless a few rocket scientists who are also environmentally minded out there. But in general they're natural enemies.
One of the many effects of this has been that while development of biofuels has seen a lot of progress in the last decade or so, development of biofuel for rockets has not. if you google around you'll find a few researchers here and there trying to make something from tree sap work, and then engineer bacteria to grow it, but in general you'll find not a lot of people from NASA, and not a lot of people in the space industry. Because developing biofuel might save the environment, but it almost certainly will not get your rocket to space any faster or more efficiently.
@Pandemona: The nice thing about science is that it's not really an issue of bias. It's an issue of evidence. The reason climate scientists are climate scientists is because their job is to make sure the know all the evidence there is to know on the question. Then they build models with that evidence, which try to take into account all of the complex laws governing tides and currents and cloud formation and everything else to make predictions of what will happen if we continue on the current path. Those predictions are then the stuff you hear telling you that CO2 is the devil because it's going to melt the poles and submerge Malta and Florida and all the other low-lying territories of the world.
Then someone like Freeman Dyson comes along and says "well I'm not really familiar with the data, but..." and proceeds to make nit-picky objections like that largely amount to:
1) There are things the models can't model accurately (this is always true of models). 2) If climate change causes problems, maybe we could just fix those some other way.
So on the issue of the seas rising, he says we should look into trying to induce snowfall in Antarctica. On the issue of raising CO2, he says that (ignoring the many other negative effects) plants grow a little better in a high CO2 environment, so maybe the benefits outweigh the risks, and if not, maybe we could genetically engineer fast-growing trees to eat up all the CO2. These are all interesting enough ideas, but not really responsive to the issue that CO2 is going to cause a lot of problems in the world as things are going now, and all of his geoengineering solutions depend on technology that isn't there yet. If nothing else there's surely some wisdom in slowing down the forward march of carbon emissions enough that we'd have time to develop those geoengineering solutions.
@JimmyJRaynor: I mean, ISS floats a little higher than 350 km, so it's not strictly true that nobody has been further than that since 1972. Not to mention the fact that before 1972, we went to the moon, which is 380,000 km away, so we're capable of going at least that far. 1000 km away wouldn't be a major achievement, and the reason we haven't done it is just because there's no reason to. There's nothing in space 1000 km away that we would care about going to, so we could send a rocket up with people on it and push our apogee up to 1000 km, float up there, and then de-orbit, but what would be the point?
Distances isn't even really the best way to think of space – consider that in a Newtonian plane with no gravity, you could reach any point on that plane just by pointing towards it, burning just a little bit of fuel, and then waiting long enough. A better way to look at it is delta-v's required to reach various destinations. Looked at like that, Mars is well within reach, which is why we've sent plenty of probes and rovers already. The reason we're not sending people yet is primarily because there's a lot of other tech we would need (for instance, a way to get home, a way to live while we're there, etc.) that we haven't really developed yet. But NASA's current plan is to put people on Mars in the 2030's, and I don't think there's any particular reason to think they couldn't do it.
On October 16 2015 04:41 ChristianS wrote: @JimmyJRaynor: I mean, ISS floats a little higher than 350 km, so it's not strictly true that nobody has been further than that since 1972. Not to mention the fact that before 1972, we went to the moon, which is 380,000 km away, so we're capable of going at least that far. 1000 km away wouldn't be a major achievement, and the reason we haven't done it is just because there's no reason to. There's nothing in space 1000 km away that we would care about going to, so we could send a rocket up with people on it and push our apogee up to 1000 km, float up there, and then de-orbit, but what would be the point?
Distances isn't even really the best way to think of space – consider that in a Newtonian plane with no gravity, you could reach any point on that plane just by pointing towards it, burning just a little bit of fuel, and then waiting long enough. A better way to look at it is delta-v's required to reach various destinations. Looked at like that, Mars is well within reach, which is why we've sent plenty of probes and rovers already. The reason we're not sending people yet is primarily because there's a lot of other tech we would need (for instance, a way to get home, a way to live while we're there, etc.) that we haven't really developed yet. But NASA's current plan is to put people on Mars in the 2030's, and I don't think there's any particular reason to think they couldn't do it.
350 < 1000. i said 1000.
lol, there is no evidence our circulatory systemS ( notice the plural) can withstand true low gravity. the space station people are experiencing 90+% of the gravity we experience... (G*m1*m2)/(r^2) .. just plug in the #s urself and do the math on your own.
its been 44 years since these long distance missions allegedly happened. put it this way, If the longest plane ride from 1929 to 1980 were 3 kilometers then i'd have doubts about the authenticity of Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. i feel the same way about the Apollo missions.
here is Buzz claiming we'll be back on the moon by 2010.
bush said they're going back in 2006 and it gets cancelled in 2009 before we can begin to compare the progress made during the '62 to '68 time frame.. when JFK yapped at Rice and men were orbiting the moon 6 years later.
when humans actually go 1,000+ kms off the earth's surface on a consistent basis i'll start to pay attention to this stuff....
so far.. its all talk.. with them always trying to reach into the taxpayers pockets to get more money for SPAR/MDA Space Missions. my stance is zero federal tax money for SPAR.. and i'm voting accordingly on October 19th.
they can have all the pie-in-the-sky fantasy world plans they want.. just don't ask for Canadian federal taxpayer dollars for this crap which is all a waste of money.
On October 16 2015 01:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote: since '72, the farthest a human being has been is 350 km away.
This is what I was responding to. And wait a minute, I'm dealing with a real life Apollo missions skeptic? You don't think we actually went to the moon? In that case, several things need to be addressed here:
Regarding circulatory systems People often confuse zero-g and zero-gravity. They think that you go to space and all of a sudden gravity vanishes, largely because they'll see videos of astronauts floating around inside ISS and think "oh, there's no gravity up there." So let's get a couple definitions straight:
-Zero gravity is when there are no massive objects near enough to you for gravity to exhibit any significant force on your body. That means the Sun, Earth, Mars, and whatever else is so distant that you can't see them, and you aren't significantly tugged in any direction by them.
-Zero g is the sensation of weightlessness experienced when nothing is resisting your acceleration due to gravity. You can almost simulate zero g by simply going skydiving, except the air resistance is still opposing your acceleration due to gravity. But for the first few seconds of your dive, when you haven't built up enough speed for air resistance to be a very significant factor, that is what zero g feels like.
Technically it's true that no human has ever escaped Earth's sphere of influence, so we don't have physical evidence that they won't die horribly from the low gravity, but that's not a real concern, because from the circulatory systems' perspective, zero gravity and zero g aren't distinguishable. Since your whole body is being tugged by gravity at the same acceleration, you're not accelerating relative to yourself. So if zero gravity weren't survivable because your blood pressure would freak out somehow, the same would be true in zero g.
Regarding why we haven't gone back to the moon People who are surprised by this generally misunderstand the full scale of a Saturn V rocket. Understand that in 1966, NASA's budget was almost 5% of the federal budget. A HUGE amount of public money was going to making sure JFK's challenge was met. With that in mind, look at the specs of a Saturn V:
-138 feet tall, 33 feet in diameter -empty mass: 287,000 lbs, full mass: 5,040,000 lbs (remember, all of the rest of that mass is fuel they burn on the way up) -total cost: $494 million at the time, not in 2015 dollars
A Saturn V is like building a fucking skyscraper that's meant to fly. It's payload was 310,000 lbs, larger than any rocket before or since. This is the rocket that was necessary to have the delta-V to go to the moon.
Now I don't know the details of your skepticism of Apollo missions – which ones you think actually went, which ones you think didn't, what information you trust and what information you don't, etc. But I bet you don't, at least, doubt the existence of the Saturn V rocket, considering how massive and well photographed it was. If that's the rocket we need in order to go to the Moon, you need a pretty fucking good reason to be going to spend, in modern dollars, $3.2 billion. That's an expensive plane ticket.
And NASA doesn't particularly want to send people back to the Moon any time soon. It was great PR, it was a big victory for the US over the USSR, but it didn't really serve much scientific purpose over just sending unmanned probes. We brought back some rocks, and that was cool. We took some pictures, that's cool too. We planted a flag, neat. But if we want to learn more about the moon, we're better off with something like GRAIL to scan the whole thing and be able to discern things about the interior. There's not really much purpose to spending $3.2 billion dollars just to prove you really can send someone back. Instead the focus since the 70's has been on figuring out the complexities of humans being in space, back then with Skylab, and today with ISS.
It's interesting in a thread about a climate change skeptic that a Apollo missions skeptic would show up, because in both cases a similar phenomenon can be seen: an overwhelmingly well-supported truth is being denied by someone who is by no stretch of the imagination an expert in the area, simply because they have some aspects of that truth which they couldn't seem to reconcile in their mind. The point is, that's a problem with you, not a problem with that overwhelming truth.
@radscorpion9: Nothing I've presented here in terms of "psychoanalysis" (if you want to call it that) is all that far-fetched. Rocket scientists tend to hate environmentalism like engineers tend to like math and lawyers tend to be liberal. It's not universal, sure, in that there are doubtless a few rocket scientists who are also environmentally minded out there. But in general they're natural enemies.
Well I did some google searching as you asked. I found this nice OMEGA project from NASA. It ran for four years, from 2009 to 2012 (if I'm not mistaken). Here's the description:
Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae (OMEGA) is an innovative method to grow algae, clean wastewater, capture carbon dioxide and to ultimately produce biofuel without competing with agriculture for water, fertilizer or land...The OMEGA system is being investigated by NASA as an alternative way to produce aviation fuels. Potential implications of replacing fossil fuels include reducing the release of green house gases, decreasing ocean acidification, and enhancing national security.
Also there's another article about how NASA is developing an algae bioreactor as a sustainable energy source to produce biofuel as well as a variety of other products. Here is a link:www.nasa.gov
In 2014 they conducted a study and showed how using aviation biofuels can reduce greenhouse gases by at least 50%, which is part of their stated vision of transforming industry to one which relies on low-carbon fuels and alternative propulsion systems. Here is that link: www.biofuelsdigest.com
They also of course have a page on their own environmental stewardship, which you can find here, which they state that they are constantly searching to improve efficiency, recycling, waste management, emissions...etc. www.nasa.gov
In general I don't see any evidence that you are right. If you had some polling data I could look at, where the majority of rocket scientists say they could not care less about the environment I might be inclined to believe you. But based on what I've seen the opposite is true, and I think you might be generalizing from one anecdote you've heard.
In general I think most scientists stand together on issues even if they are in diverse fields, because though they study different areas they all share the same methodology and general views on the importance of evidence based reasoning. The environment is clearly important in many ways when you speak to environmental scientists; and since rocket scientists are generally fairly intelligent people they would be aware of many more things outside of their field of expertise and how important they are.
I just can't envision a smart, genuinely curious and (usually kind) scientist suddenly taking the view that he should just waste as much fuel as possible and throw a bunch of dangerous chemicals into the air because why not only big explosions from rocket ships matter!! Maybe if the guy was a hick from the south who likes driving monster trucks?
It just seems so silly to me (no offense)...I really feel like the general personality type of a scientist precludes that kind of wasteful and damaging behaviour. Intelligent people generally don't do those sorts of things.
If you want evidence I'd probably just refer you to the book I mentioned – Ignition! by John D. Clark. You'll find plenty of instances of horribly nasty chemicals being synthesized by the ton and shipped around the country because they thought they might be decent rocket fuels. Other instances from the book include research into using boranes and halogens as fuels, both of which could be fairly dangerous in the environment.
I think, though, you might be interpreting my statement about rocket scientists as a bit stronger and more negative than I meant. Rocket scientists are not overwhelmingly skeptical about climate change or anything. In fact climate scientists and NASA scientists often work together on a lot of their research, and there's a lot of overlapping questions (for instance, researchers on climate science and NASA scientists are both very interested in how storms form and what perpetuates them – how does Jupiter's big red dot stick around so long?). And of course, scientists have no particular desire to be wasteful or dump dangerous chemicals into the environment for no particular reason. Both environmental scientists and rocket scientists are, generally, intelligent people.
But understand how something like Project Orion or Clark's "Ultra High Density Propellant Concept" would make a lot of sense to one discipline but not to the other. Sometimes to the other disciplines environmental scientists can feel a bit like schoolmarms who are overly concerned with leaking just a few milligrams of this or that substance into a nearby pond. This is particularly true for those in applied sciences, such as engineering, where there is frequently a job to be done (such as putting a thing in space) and the safety officers and environmental advisors telling them not to use this or that fuel or implement this or that safety measure are just kind of getting in the way.
But I'm not trying to indict rocket scientists as environmental monsters or anything. There is an environmentally conscious way to go about space exploration, and we've moved more towards that over time. I don't have polls to prove it just like I don't have polls to prove that lawyers tend to be liberal or economists tend to be conservative, it's just a general impression you get looking at the field. Frankly I'm a bit surprised to get pushback on the issue, since in my experience this has never been a particularly controversial claim, even among people I've known who were very enthusiastic about rocket science.
From a Historical point of view, climate has ALWAYS changed. Its no surprising news; And of course its changing even now; What people fail to understand is that the planet is not in danger, it will survive change. Do you think 1 degree will make a difference to a mass of earth used to volcano explosions, Glacial eras, continents movement and such? The point is to decentralize your point of view as a human in favor of the earth, which is bigger, stronger and tuffer than you. The debate should only exist where humans are concerned, but not in a lets save the earth kinda thinking. If you want to do that recycling, growing your own vegetables and trading used goods does much more for humanity.
According to NASA Earth has warmed 0.06 degrees since 1998. It would take 12 times that long to get to 2 degrees which is when the global warming scientists say we will have problems. 17 years *12 is over 200 years.
It is very difficult for us to predict what will be important to mankind 200 years from now. It would be like asking someone from the time of Napoleon to predict what we might want these days.
To use an example from Paul Krugman, they may have done something to increase the number of Horses available, while in reality most of us do not want horses. We want cooler cell phones and faster wifi, which are concepts totally unimaginable in 1815.
Even if the Earth permanently warmed several degrees it is not clear to me that this would be catastrophic given that: #1) Life in general thrives near the warm equator and suffers near the poles. #2) Humans are a tropical species. #3) In America, people have shown a strong preference for moving from colder climates to warmer climates over the past 50 years or so.
@pebble444: Essentially, you're agreeing that the climate is changing but denying that it is anthropogenic. What if research could demonstrate pretty clearly that it was, in fact, anthropogenic?
I don't actually follow climate change research that closely, so I'll have to stick with a hypothetical. Have you heard of radiocarbon dating? The premise there is that radioactive isotopes of carbon will slowly decay until none are left. They are regenerated, however, when high energy photons and other particles from the sun enter our atmosphere. That creates an equilibrium on the surface where the ratio of radioactive isotopes in the air is generally about constant, while anything underground for thousands of years, including fossils and fossil fuels, will have a much lower presence of radioactive isotopes.
So suppose we measure the ratio of radioactive isotopes in the air, and we find that it has been dropping more and more. This would seem odd at first, since this number has remained more or less constant over time. But then we realize the obvious explanation: we're burning millions of pounds of fossil fuels every year, and those fossil fuels have relatively low radioactive isotopes, so we're essentially filling the air with non-radioactive carbon. Of course the sun is still there to dump in high-energy particles and try to restore the balance, but it simply can't do it fast enough.
Wouldn't that be pretty unambiguous evidence that the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic?
@meadbert: The issue here is assuming that the warming effect is linear, as well as assuming it's the only serious concern. Here's several obvious concerns – this is in no way intended to be an exhaustive list of the potential problems caused by manmade climate change, but merely intended to demonstrate that the issue is important and climate science is worth caring about.
-Okay, so we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Interestingly, the world doesn't heat up as quickly as you'd think based on the amount of CO2 we've put out. Why? Because a lot of it gets dissolved in the oceans. Alright, fine, so what? Well, this causes a few problems. First, the oceans become hypoxic, as CO2 competes out oxygen as a solute. That means large sections of the ocean become unfit for living things, because there's not enough oxygen for them.
The other thing this means is that even if the Earth doesn't warm up immediately, we know it is likely to spiral out of control when it heats up a little bit, because the solubility of a gas in a liquid decreases with temperature. So if the ocean is full of CO2, every time the planet heats up a little bit, it will heat up quite a bit more just because the ocean released a lot of CO2.
-Okay, so the planet heats up quite a bit. So what? Well, the first big problem is that the poles start to melt, and the water level rises a lot. Some polities like Malta cease to exist entirely, and basically any coastal area has billions of dollars of land lost.
Well, okay, that sucks, but after that we're in the clear, right? Well no, again, part of the issue is that the warming effect is accelerating. So the more it's warmed up already, the faster it's going to warm up. So the warming effect might seem slow now, but when you understand the process is likely to follow an exponential curve rather than a linear one everything gets a lot scarier.
Then there's a lot of non-temperature-related issues, like pollution or damage to the ozone or mass extinction events as species all over the planet are thrust into a much warmer climate than that in which they evolved. All things considered the possible consequences of climate change are serious enough to be worth looking into how to avoid them.
EPT
still no answers!!! Is co2 the most evil of evil in the world!?!? find out on the next episode... xD
