RIP Neil Armstrong

[Cubster]

You can't qualify sceintific research by measurable achievement, that's simply not how it works. Scientific advances are pathways to the unknown, which we cannot by definition put a pricetag on. For most scientists, the pratcial application of their discoveries is simply a byproduct of the process. This doesn't mean we should pour money into all scientific research without asking for something in return, it just means we can't expect to understand the significance of a bunch of people in white coats leaping about in excitement because a string of numbers have appeared on their computer screens.

[Parus Ater]

Exactly so.

The current example is IO being unimpressed by a slow moving robot on Mars when Curiosity's delivery was one of THE most complex engineering feats in human history and was met with trivial jokes on the TV news of it's chances of success and not much talk of what it's actually doing.

[Invisible officer]

Well, struggling every year to get some money for historic research I know that fight for research money only to well.

Curiosity project is just what his name say, with no engines available for a fast travel we will have nothing from Mars. Not in the next decades and possibly never.
Don't get me wrong, research is great. I professionaly do another kind of non productive research and love it. But to get the tax payer to pay for that is hard work. We have to entertain him and tell him about the great idea of research. Days for the public, lectures, answering mother's questions to help school kids to do homework.... All this nibbling away a lot of the scarce money and time.

But that vehicle is no good transport for an idea. A Neil Armstrong was the hero of a generation. The guys at the controls of that machines not.
MSL budget is $1.9 billion. In these financial dimensions those who pay for it must get convinced that is more than the spleen of some scientists. Apollo was a bestseller in the book shops, books on MSL .......

Such a sum in military histoy research.

[grant]

All very sad

Though if your in America and read the NBC news you would have learnt it was Neil Young and not Neil Armstrong that had passed away

Keep on rockin' in the Free Moon.

[Parus Ater]

The big difference is that historic research, though valuable, doesn't do very much at all. Scientific endeavour has given us so uch. Take CERN, not long ago we were being told it was a massive waste of money by people on the internet... a CERN invention. Space Travel, another wast of money but our mobile phones demand it, people would literally be lost on the way to an unfamiliar town without it. History is emotional and insightful but it's not life changing as much as the Scientific Method.

Kids aren't interested in Astronomy or Science but you tell any child an amazing fact then they will get excited. Most kids don't know the sun is just a star but really, really close or you can see whole other planets with your own naked eye and to find a child that's looked through a real telescope is very, very hard.

Kids know history, mostly about Nazi's, granted but they know it. Science, not nearly as much. Sorry, but science wins.

[grant]

[Cubster]

Kids know history, mostly about Nazi's, granted but they know it. Science, not nearly as much. Sorry, but science wins.

Ah, but unless we preserve and investigate history, we lose the accumulated knowledge of previous generations. Imagine how much further science would be today had the wisdom of ages not been lost in Alexandria? I think we compartmentalise academic subjects to make it easier for us to deal with them, yet although we treat them in isolation, none actually exist in isolation. Language, science, history, geography, the arts, they are all dimensions of our existence that continually intersect.

Whoa. Those creosote fumes are like ... mind expanding dude.

[Parus Ater]

Agreed, Cubster but the point is, researching sword hilts from circa 1805 and digging a medieval midden isn't bringing that knowledge back. What can be learned about the loss of the Great Library is that Science should be a higher priority than other things. For instance, nobody has ever been flayed alive in the street with a broken pot for not liking String Theory.

[Invisible officer]

Hmm, a lot of that popular story that Space science brings progress on earth is just propaganda.

Teflon...., the best known old myth. 1938 invented, no NASA around. A story like that about better planes or computer development resulting from space research.
Mobile phones? They need masts, not satelites.

Well, GPS needs satelites , invented for the military. In civil life nice for people that are unable to read a map (no, no bad jokes about woman) but I need none.
But it's good for all the stories about stupid peoples doing everything the GPS says. Here in Berlin alone a few managed to drive into one-way streets and even waterways . Providers managed to read in a ferry as bridge or channels as streets. Splash.

That the Internet was developed at CERN is true. But, a story like that of teflon. The idea was there before.
It has nothing to do with the expensive experiments done there. It was invented to make exchange of scientific ideas easier. The studies done there are getting deeper and deeper in the mechanics of the universe. Large Hydron Collider research is safe. Like atomic energy. Great if everything is working well and nobody blunders.

The best results from CERN are those developed in good old tradition. Talking.

And Neil Armstrong? Now he is history. Without the historians he will be forgotten. Some strange obituaries show that it started allready.

[Cubster]

Yet surely the value of science is how it improves our lives? Thus it's a subjective judgement that will differ from person to person. Does someone living in isolation in a Peruvian rainforest enjoy a life more or less rich and full than I? No idea.

One could easily argue that no-one researching antique sword hilts ever wiped 140,000 humans off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye either. The great strength and great weakness of science is that it is utterly amoral and its exploration is littered with the potential to do good and harm in equal measure.

I would hold the value of pushing forth the boundaries of human understanding, neither higher nor lower than preserving or restoring that which we have already learned.