1. One of the big issues with space flight is cost. There are two mitigating fac

Question

1. One of the big issues with space flight is cost. There are two mitigating factors when considering the cost of space flight, one is the scientific knowledge that is gained and the other is the technological offshoots of space flight. Do an online search and discuss one technological offshoot of the space program.

2. Sending humans into space is far more expensive than using robots. For instance we could send dozens of "rovers" to Mars for the cost of sending a "manned" flight there. What are the policy implications of these kinds of choices?

Explanation / Answer

1.

Two new machines developed with the help of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have found their way into hospitals on Earth, where physicians have put them to use sniffing out harmful microbes and probing patients' skulls.

In Europe, Russian air scrubbers built for the space station Mir - and later installed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) - have been integrated into hospitals to protect staff and patients alike from airborne spores, bacteria and viruses. Dubbed Immunair, the system creates a personal "clean room" that can be deployed around children to ward off infection or protect against biological agents like small pox and anthrax.

In California, NASA engineers are working alongside neurosurgeons to turn an infrared video camera normally used to study the Earth into a tumor-hunting brain scanner.

Breathing easier

Developed for ground-use by the France-based firm AirInSpace, the Immunair portable clean room is an evolution of the Plasmer device originally constructed by Russian engineers to protect the air breathed by Mir cosmonauts from biological contamination.

Plasmer air scrubbers pass contaminated air through a series of strong electric fields and cold-plasma chambers to collect and kill bacteria, molds, fungi and other microorganisms. Bulky versions of the device were first invented in the 1990s and installed first on Mir in 1997 and then aboard the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS in April 2001.

With support from ESA, which provided market research, funds and the industrial suppliers, AirInSpace successfully created the portable Immunair that can be folded and wheeled through hospital corridors like an elementary school blackboard, then set up around an individual patient's bed.

Brain scanners

While European researchers work to stamp out airborne particles, a team of JPL engineers and neurosurgeons are hoping their infrared camera will lead to more accurate surgical procedures by isolating tumors from surrounding brain tissue.

Brain tumors run slightly hotter than their surrounding tissue due to their differing metabolic level, said the study's lead scientist Babek Kateb, a research fellow at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.

By tracking that thermal difference, surgeons will be able to determine definite boundaries between diseased tumor cells and normal brain matter.

Using a quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP), the JPL camera is sensitive enough to catch even the smallest variation in temperature - just one hundredth of a degree Celsius - in brain tissue, Gunapala said. The imager also is strong enough to provide high-definition television (HDTV) quality imagery at sensitivities down to about two cells, he added.

Researchers said the eventual goal is to incorporate infrared cameras into the microscopes currently used by surgeons to track their tumor removals, allowing doctors to switch between the two during an operation to monitor their progress.

2

In terms of sheer scientific output, manned exploration of outer space has a good track record. More than 2,000 papers have been published over the last four decades using data collected during the manned Apollo missions, and the rate of new papers is still rising. In comparison, the Soviet robotic Luna explorers and NASA's Mars Exploration rover program– Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity – have each generated around 400 publications.

Humans hold a number of advantages over robots. They can make quick decisions in response to changing conditions or new discoveries, rather than waiting for time-delayed instructions from Earth. They are more mobile than current robot explorers: The Apollo 17 astronauts covered more than 22 miles in three days, a distance that has taken the Mars Opportunity rover eight years to match. Humans can drill for samples deep underground and deploy large-scale geologic instruments, something that no rover has achieved on another body.

Of course, humans and robots each have their own advantages for exploration of outer space.

"There isn't a battle between robots and humans – that's comparing apples and oranges," said James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We send the robots as our pathfinders and scouts, and they open the frontiers so that we can decide where and when to send the people."

Humans and robots already work together on Earth and in space. There are schemes that offer the advantages of human exploration without incurring as high of a cost.

"What makes robots at a distance inferior to humans is one thing only: latency," said astronomer Dan Lester of the University of Texas at Austin.

The time it takes for a signal to travel from a robot back to mission control on Earth is a major stumbling block. Commands sent to a Mars rover take between 5 and 15 minutes. Light travel time to the moon is around 2.6 seconds.

"It takes 10 minutes to tie a knot with the Earth-moon latency," said Lester. "But if we could bring that down to about 100 milliseconds, the robots themselves are very capable." Teleoperated robots on the surface of another planet would have greater strength, endurance, and precision than human explorers, he added.

Teleoperation has been considered in the past for space exploration. During the Apollo era, the technology was not well developed but in the last decade, it has taken off. On Earth, surgeons in Baltimore now perform operations in Indonesia while officers in Nevada covertly spy on nuclear sites in Iran.

Lester envisions a future where astronauts camp out on Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos and order remote-controlled robots to drive long distances over the planet's surface, set up geologic instruments, and collect samples for analysis. He estimates this could greatly reduce costs because roughly half the price tag of a manned mission is spent on getting people down and back up the deep gravity well of a planet.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 1
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.