Day 4 – Tuesday, July 12

During this first portion of the summer, we have 3 classes per day and workshops / evening lectures at night. Our first 3 lectures were outstanding! Five-time shuttle astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman (who performed the first Hubble repair mission) gave a great lecture called “The Space Perspective” in which he used an inflatable earth about 2 feet in diameter to show us the scale of space. On this scale, Everest is ¼ mm off the surface of the earth and Low Earth Orbit is 1 cm off the surface. The moon’s distance from earth is about 10 times the diameter of the earth. So that put the moon all the way on the other side of our lecture hall from the inflatable earth. This really helped me understand the distance from the earth to the moon. It was pretty surprising. Hoffman’s talk really was a fantastic way to begin because as we delve into all the technical, scientific and political topics of space we will need to bear in mind that space is so cool!

Our second talk was from John Logsdon, Professor Emeritus, Space Policy Institute at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, about “Policy Rationales for Space Activities.” I am really excited to learn the policy side of things. This is such a great summer to be here because of the uncertainty of NASA’s future. The last shuttle liftoff occurred the day I left for ISU and we don’t currently have a replacement vehicle. I’ve been staying plugged in to the NASA discussions in Congress via Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline, @jeff_foust). Logsdon has recently written several articles (here's one) on the current NASA mess. His talk on Tuesday was about the most common rationales for space programs since the 1950’s – national security, national prestige and leadership, and scientific knowledge. More recently the rationales are enhancing military capabilities, creating basis for commercialization of space, tangible benefits for society, and assisting in social and economic development. Sometimes people try to use exploration as rationale but so far that is not a strong enough reason. We talked about whether human exploration is more compelling than robotic exploration. Most of us agree it is. It’s an interesting debate!

The third discussion was “Economic Rationale for Space” by Michael Simpson, President of ISU. I really found this interesting because as an engineer, I have never had a real class on economics. Some of the economic rationales for space programs are: creating minimum demand for certain high tech products and shortening the very long run.

After the 3 lectures we had lunch and then an introduction to the 7 departments. After that we had a fun debate about human exploration vs robotic exploration. We all had to argue one side or the other in 60 seconds depending on which half of the room you were sitting in. Luckily I was on the pro-human exploration because I don’t think I could have argued the other side. My argument was tongue-in-cheek. I asked, “Have you seen Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and basically any sci-fi with robots? What is common in all those movies? The robots rise up and try to kill us!” After the debate we took a vote – all but one person voted to continue human exploration. Yay! Maybe a slightly biased group though. *wink*