…and sequestration. Which is looking more and more likely.
Obviously, if I were running the agency, and didn’t care what Congress thought, I’d just cancel SLS and Orion. Webb should go, too, but the sequestration goal can be met with those two alone. I’d cancel Webb if I could redirect the money elsewhere. But Charlie and Lori aren’t going to have that option as long as Dick Shelby and Barbara Mikulski are calling the shots. So we’ll continue to waste billions on unneeded rockets and capsules, and an overpriced telescope, while planetary science goes fallow.
This is strongly related to my concept of the Apollo cargo cult. If we want to justify humans in space, we have to stop using the word “exploration,” because it simply raises the issue of letting robots do it. Talking instead about space development and particularly settlement implies humans, by definition. And if we can’t persuade the taxpayers that those are worthwhile goals, and instead try to sell them a bill of goods, then we don’t deserve taxpayer money for our hobbies. And cults.
The scientists ran their experiment on Arabidopsis plants—a go-to species for plant biologists. The control group was germinated and grown at the Kennedy Space Center (A), while the comparative group was housed on the International Space Station (B). For 15 days, researchers took pictures of the plants at six-hour intervals and compared them. Their results surprised even them: the plants in space exhibited the same growth patterns as those on Earth.
The researchers were looking for two specific patterns of root growth: waving and skewing. With waving, the root tips grow back and forth, much like waves. Skewing occurs when a plant’s roots grow at an angle, rather than straight down. Scientists don’t know exactly why these root behaviors occur, but gravity was thought to be the driving force for both.
So much for that theory. This means the potential for fresh food at ISS, if you’re a vegetarian (or even if not). They should be learning how to do weightless hydroponics. Of course, we still don’t know if animals, and particularly humans, can gestate, or how, and that’s true of partial gravities as well. And we’re not likely to until SSI gets funding for its variable-gravity lab.
NASA has to hope that Curiosity doesn’t find any. This is part of a broader issue. People who want to settle Mars had better hope we don’t find life there, or the biologists and greens will be decrying the “genocide” we might cause by contaminating the planet.
The pointless debate continues. And of course, it continues to carry its implicit and unshared assumption with it (e.g., that the purpose of this is “science.”).