Is space boring?
My latest assignment for my students has been to participate in the Cassini Scientist-for-a-day Essay Content. In the process of working with them, one of my kids told me something I found very disturbing.
She doesn’t care about space and space exploration.
Woof. It’s hard to come back with a short and snappy answer to that comment, other than the standard teacher admonishment, “Well, do the essay anyway.” It was honest, and I suppose a somewhat legitimate reason for not being keen on doing the assignment, but it is simultaneously a sad comment on her intellectual curiosity.
It’s a feeling that is shared by many others, I suppose. It explains why the US public is now so bored by space exploration, almost 40 years after two guys walked on the Moon. The gee-whiz has gone out of space.
[Since writing this post, I discovered Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, blogged on "Why Explore Space?" He answers the question better than I can.]
Cassini is part of a long-term mission to explore Saturn, its moons and its ring system. Its companion probe, Huygens, landed on Titan, the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Together the two probes have sent back spectacular images of the ringed planet and its moons since their arrival in July 2004.
To connect students with space exploration, the Cassini team is sponsoring a contest in which students have to argue in a 500-word essay why one of four possible imaging targets is the best. They have to provide evidence that their chosen target would provide the most scientifically useful information.
I thought it was a great way to encourage some critical thinking and to add a change in pace in my course, so I made it an assignment. After a couple of days of floundering around with the somewhat open-ended nature of the question, most of my students were able to compose reasonably well-written essays. I plan to submit them to the Cassini contest later this week, after I check them for spelling, grammar and logical consistency.
I was totally unprepared for the student’s comment that she had no interest in space, and thus no fundamental interest in doing the essay. As a space buff from childhood, I just take it for granted that space is interesting. It’s a real slap in the face to hear someone does not remotely share the same feeling.
Aside from the cool images we get from these space probes, what do we get out space exploration? The standard answer is that we gain a better understanding of Earth and our place in the universe.
Take Titan as an example. Its atmosphere resembles pre-biotic Earth’s in many ways: short on oxygen, heavy on methane. In a real sense, Titan, despite its smaller size and greater distance to the Sun, is a simulation of the early Earth. Learning more about the geology and meteorology of Titan would enable scientists understand more about conditions on Earth before life “poisoned” the atmosphere with O2.
Saturn’s rings have fascinated observers for hundreds of years. Until recently, their stability over time was poorly understood. We now know that tiny moons orbiting within the ring system “shepherd” ring particles and keep them in place. In the process, we can understand orbital dynamics better than before.
The moons of Saturn exhibit a bewildering array of compositions and terrains. Some are probably older than Saturn itself. Studying them would enable us to get a better handle on how the solar system formed billions of years ago.
Now, do any of these discoveries have any bearing on one’s immediate life and situation? Frankly, no. Unless we manage to find life on Titan, for most people the pursuits of the Cassini-Huygens mission is less important than, say, whether Lindsay is re-entering rehab (again). Intellectually, space exploration (for now) is interesting, but not captivating. It’s like a PBS documentary, informative but not gripping like a Hollywood action film.
So I can see why a student would not find space all that exciting. We no longer have any direct connection to it. Sure, there’s the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, but even these missions are dull. Aside from the tragic accidents of Challenger and Columbia, the Shuttle program to the public is about as exciting as flying in a jetliner. The ISS is about as exciting a business convention. There’s no zing anymore.
Unfortunately, to inject real excitement in space exploration would require a lot of money and a real national commitment to once again send humans toward another celestial body. Despite George W. Bush’s announcement of an initiative to establish a base on the Moon and send a mission to Mars, nothing has come of it.
Zing costs money, and we seem to be spending our money elsewhere lately.
November 13th, 2007 at 3:14 am
This is a problem. I run into numbers of people that thing space is “boring”.
But if you dig a little, you often find what’s “boring” is how space exploration is touted or marketing or explained especially by NASA, scientist and science media.
This is such a serious issue I’ve sacrificed almost everything to make a film about it called “Outside In”. I think space exploration is really about knowing ourselves and our place in the universe. Thus, it’s only boring if we are boring. And if we find ourselves boring, it means because we’ve stopped exploring.
I’m aiming with the film to connect science, religion, spirituality, art i.e. our search for truth about ourselves, the universe and our place it in through space exploration.