Transhumanism

The Feb 23 Economist has an article on "the wacky world of anti-senescence therapy". What is that, you ask?

Humans are certainly living longer... Much of this change has been the result of improved nutrition and better medicine. But to experience a healthy old age also involves maintaining physical and mental function. Age-related non-pathological changes in the brain, muscles, joints, immune system, lungs and heart must be minimised. These changes are called “senescence”.

Anti-senescence therapy sounds like magic, right? The Fountain of Youth or something like that. Death is the only thing as certain as taxes. Right?

Not necessarily. Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge recently presented research at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Economist article notes;

As an engineer, he favours intervening directly to repair the changes in the body that are caused by ageing. This is an approach he dubs “strategies for engineered negligible senescence”.

A simple explanation of this approach is that we have the science and engineering skills to improve our life spans. This goes beyond studies of diet and exercise. Our bodies naturally break down as we age, but to some extent, we have developed the ability to rebuild them. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Sort of. We're getting closer.

So how seriously can we take Dr. de Grey? An article at OpenDemocracy addresses the question:

Within the scientific community, he is regarded with a mix of interest and scepticism. Is he a pioneer or a crank? Naïve or prophetic in his claims that we will soon be able to live for hundreds of years? Nuland's now infamous profile in Technology Review implied that there were major flaws in de Grey's scientific theories, but seemed more concerned that he might pose a threat to society. Noting that "the most likeable of eccentrics are sometimes the most dangerous", Nuland concluded that:
"his clarion call to action is the message neither of a madman nor a bad man, but of a brilliant, beneficent man of goodwill, who wants only for civilisation to fulfil the highest hopes he has for its future. It is a good thing that his grand design will almost certainly not succeed. Were it otherwise, he would surely destroy us in attempting to preserve us."
In the firestorm that followed the Technology Review piece, things got personal. One editorial comment – likening him to a troll – still reverberates in internet discussions.

"Do you care what people say about you?" we ask. "Yes. Deeply", is his instant reply. "I take it very seriously." Yet de Grey says that he's moved beyond the stages of being ignored or laughed at and is now being actively opposed. He seems quite relaxed about this progression.

This sounds like a marvelous bit of research to share with my students, especially as it interacts with the nanotechnology that I am struggling to incorporate into my curriculum. High school students love to discuss ageing and morality, don't they? One question that is sure to come up is the money.

Where does he think this funding might come from? "Public funding tends to be low risk, low gain. And technology funding from venture capital is too short term. What we need is funding that is ambitious and long term. That tends to come when national pride is at stake or when seriously rich people think it's cool."
It's the latter – an elite band of Silicon Valley millionaires and wealthy philanthropists – who are funding much of the research into life extension at the moment.

Hey, that sounds awfully familiar. And that's something I can support - as does Dr. de Grey.

The last paragraph from OpenDemocracy's story is a doozy that I think I will be sharing with all of my classes (not just this year's):

Science isn't a clean, logical endeavour pursued by individuals who interact only through peer-reviewed journals. It's a messy mixture of experimentation, argument and debate. And when it meets politics it becomes messier still. It is every scientist's responsibility to shape and be shaped by what society wants from science, to listen to the public and to take its concerns seriously. Whatever one may feel about his theories, this is something that Aubrey de Grey is doing in a quite unique and valuable way.

66 Years to Go...

Ed Wonk highlights a story about Hazel Haley, who has been teaching for 69 years. She has been in the same room since 1952. My parents were in diapers that year. Her story is remarkable - well worth a read.

Hillary and the Vouchers

The video and some transcripts of it are making the rounds on the blogosphere. I was directed to find it at Michelle Malkin, no surprise. You can see it here.

CLINTON: Suppose that you were meeting today to decide who got the vouchers. First parent comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher. Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send, you know, my child to the Jewish Day School. Great here's your voucher! Next parent who comes says, "I want to send my child to the private school that I've already dreamed of sending my child to.' Fine. Here's your voucher.
Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist.' You say, 'Wait a minute. You can't send...we're not giving a voucher for that.' And the parent says, 'Well, the way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. And therefore, you gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, gave it to a secular private parent. Under the Constitution, you can't discriminate against me.'

Suppose the next parent comes and says 'I want to send my child to the School of...the Jihad.' Wait a minute! We're not going to send a child with taxpayers dollars to the School of Jihad. 'Well, you gave it to the Catholics, gave it to the Jews, gave it to the private secular people. You're gonna tell me I can't? I'm a taxpayer. Under the Constitution.'

Now, tell me how we're going to make those choices.

The fact of the matter is that this argument - as compelling as some would like to think it is - boils down to a matter of elitism. Wealthy people can choose to send their children to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School, or the Jewish Day School, or the school of the Church of the White Supremacist, or the School of the Jihad (nice ring to that one). But poor parents cannot. How could a Democrat with presidental aspirations ever be making this statement?

The answer is the NEA, of course. The NEA hates vouchers, because they threaten the monopoly we public school teachers currently have and are desperately trying to hold. There's a union, dammit. A union that votes and whose financial support any Democrat with presidential aspirations would clearly need. That is all there is to it.

What is the Value of Algebra?

You will never need to know algebra.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes an open letter to a high school dropout named Gabriela:

The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry in order to graduate. This is something new for Los Angeles (although 17 states require it) and it is the sort of vaunted education reform that is supposed to close the science and math gap and make the U.S. more competitive. All it seems to do, though, is ruin the lives of countless kids. In L.A., more kids drop out of school on account of algebra than any other subject. I can hardly blame them.

Oh, no. Is this guy really going to tell students that one of the subjects we most need to improve in our schools is useless? Why would he do that?

Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column...
Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not.

I am almost at a loss for words. The hubris is so thick that it seems like sarcasm... but there is no follow-through. It is not sarcasm. He is serious. He thinks that he never uses algebra. He thinks that it ruins lives to tell students that they have to learn it in order to get a high school diploma.

Part of me really wants to get worked up over this. I'd like to ask Mr. Cohen if he feels any differently about literature, because his column reminds me of those people who drag their child into the bookstore and demand the books that are assigned by the school, and then stare in horror as the books are delivered. "Oh my GOD! She has to read that whole thing? Look at the size of that book, and it looks so boring! What the hell does she need to read this for? Augh!"

But part of me is too tired for Mr. Cohen and his kind. Good for you, Mr. Cohen. There is nothing so satisfying as the casual dismissal of things you do not like, is there? I am sure it makes you feel like Peter Pan to tell the students of this nation that they are wasting their lives away in the persuit of education. But even in this dismissal of learning, Cohen may have taught the careful reader a lesson: One need know nothing more than how to type, in order to get a job as a journalist.

Science and the Government

(This article now cross-posted at AtlasBlogged)

Part of the problem with government funded science is that money is the rudder of scientific research. If scientific research is funded by a private individual, organization, or corporation, then the aims of the research are plain, and scientists know ahead of time what they are in for. But with government funding, researchers often believe that they should be given free rein to seek "truth", and the public believes that their findings represent "truth", and often fail to view the findings with the skepticism that true science demands.
Furthermore, the findings of these scientists do not belong to them individually, and accusations of silencing by the government are not hard to find - especially when research is begun under one administration and ends under another. And, in some cases, those accusations might be true... and that might or might not be done with good reason, which makes the situation even more mucked up. The whole enterprise of science becomes a political battleground - something that irks scientists who feel entitled to the funding and the findings.

Consider NASA's budgetary balancing act. The agency is being asked to retire the shuttle fleet and bring on a new generation of launch vehicle over the next decade (see previous), and in order to afford doing so, they are cutting funds to other projects. From the Hampton Roads Daily Press:

Leaders of the House Science Committee launched a bipartisan assault on President Bush's proposed budget for NASA on Thursday, saying the plan makes troubling cuts in aeronautics and science programs to finance a manned mission to the moon and Mars.

Two years after Bush announced his plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020, the initiative is triggering wrenching changes within NASA that are raising alarms in Congress.

NASA's 2007 budget calls for a 30.4 percent increase in space exploration systems over the current year's spending level. Much of that money would go to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle to replace the aging fleet of space shuttles.

But to finance that increase with relatively little new money next year, NASA would have to cut spending on aeronautics research by 18 percent. Langley Research Center in Hampton, which specializes in aeronautics, is expecting a budget cut of about $50 million next year.

While science programs would get a modest funding boost of 1.5 percent next year, lawmakers complained that a new five-year plan calls for a $3.1 billion cut compared with last year's projections. The magnitude of that cut, aides said, could affect things as varied as the Mars robotic exploration programs, advanced telescopes to find planets around distant stars, and programs to observe phenomena such as black holes.

"I am extremely uneasy about this budget, and I am in a quandary at this point about what to do about it," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., the committee chairman, who summoned NASA Administrator Michael Griffin to Capitol Hill to discuss the spending plan.

"This budget is bad for space science, worse for earth science and perhaps even worse still for aeronautics."

We are apparently of the belief that space science would not exist if it were not for NASA, and a cut in NASA science expenditures will lead us back to the dark ages. The answer, I suppose, is more funding - because government spending isn't yet enough, right?

From the Charlottesville Observer:

We're glad concerned NASA scientists and officials have decided to speak out. And we hope President Bush and his political advisers learn a lesson from this whole, ugly affair: Trying to muzzle scientists whose findings are politically inconvenient is a terrible idea. And it usually doesn't work, either.

This is true, but this also assumes that the muzzling is wholly a matter of dirty politicians trying to impose religion over Truth. That is not a safe generalization, even if you believe it to be the case here.

The AP reports that the House Science Committee on Thursday demanded more transparency and scientific openness. It is a noble demand, but it is simply unrealistic. The immediate issue is very offensive; a NASA PR officer resigned...

...after he was accused of trying to limit reporters' access to a noted NASA climate scientist and insisting that a Web designer insert the word "theory" with any mention of the Big Bang.

But not every issue of scientific openness or censorship will be this cut and dry, and government would be well served to stick to research that has direct and legitimate use by government agencies, most notably the military.

To emphasize my point, I direct readers to this article: NASA and NOAA Open Science Policies Not Matched at EPA.

Despite public concerns about Bush administration political interference with science, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is requiring prior headquarters approval for all communications by its scientists with the media, according to an agency email released Thursday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national association of government workers in natural science agencies.

The scientists quoted in this article sound very reasonable - how come NASA and NOAA scientists are told to engage the public in open dialogue, but EPA scientists have to go through their PR department? But the fact of the matter is that every interview that starts with "I work at the EPA..." is one that purports (implicitly or explicitly) to be an official statement of the agency, the government, and the scientific community. The agency is absolutely correct to have a level of oversight in this - the most liberal policy should be one of uncensored access to EPA scientists, but with the agency made fully aware of all interviews and speeches, and able to denounce, deny, or fire the scientist, depending on the content of the comments. It is wholly inappropriate to allow individual scientists (who after all have political agendas of their own) to represent an agency and the people of the United States, without any supervision.

The Ice Machine

From the Tampa Tribune:

Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants.

Her project won the science fair at the New Tampa school, and she hopes to win a top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday.

The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling.

"I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much," she said. "And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner."

Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.

My anecdotal input: Ice machines are hardly ever emptied for cleaning. They can get pretty nasty, and nobody notices it until the health board comes by. The managers of the restaurants say in the story that they clean the ice machines regularly, but there is a difference between cleaning the dispenser and cleaning the ice maker itself. That is probably where the bacteria is coming from.

Toilets, on the other hand, are frequently emptied (flushed) and scoured thorougly. Managers are notified if they are imperfect.

In defense of the restaurants:

Galina Tuninskaya, vice president of Applied Consumer Services, a private lab that tests drinking water, said the standard for drinking water is usually 100 colony-forming units of bacteria per milliliter. The highest amount Jasmine found was 54 units in ice from a self-serve machine.

Pasco and Archimedes

Just a quick note that one class attempted to use the Pasco Force probes to do a lab on Archimedes Principle. I don't really know how well it went, because I didn't give them a procedure (that's my usual treatment for honors or AP) and I haven't graded them yet. But the general point here is that any lab that could make use of a spring scale or a triple beam balance, could probably use a force sensor to do the trick. That's no justification for buying the probeware, but if you are getting the probeware anyway for labs on friction, Newton's laws, Hooke's Law, etc, then keep in mind that they can be used for this sort of thing as well.

The typical procedure I saw being used by the lab groups involved a graduated cylinder and several brass weights. The students determined the volume of each brass weight by seeing how much the water level went up when the weight was dropped into the cylinder... and then the lab group would argue about how to use this information to calculate the buoyant force. The trick of course is that for any object submerged in water, the buoyant force will be ~10N per liter of space the object takes up. I am hoping that when I go to grade the labs, most of them will show that they did this part properly, but I have seen in the past that many students have trouble keeping straight the difference between the density of water and the density of the object displacing water. We shall see.

As for the experimental part of the lab, they all seem to have figured out that they could use the force sensor to hang the brass weight from a string and record the weight, then lower the weight into the water and see what it weighs while submerged. I really should have made them turn in a procedure before hand, because a few of the groups doubtless enacted this procedure after seeing everybody else was doing it.

Wish me luck. I will be drafting a step-by-step procedure for my standard-level classes to use for this lab. They'll probably be doing it next week. And keep an eye out for a Hooke's Law lab - AP just did that using both a force sensor and a motion sensor, and I will post their various procedures as soon as I have a chance to read through them.

That's So Brokeback

One of my administrators gave me the scoop on a nearby high school that made the Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Parents and other interested spectators will have to do the cheering for the Douglas Freeman boys basketball team at tonight's Colonial District basketball tournament quarterfinal.
Freeman's principal, Dr. Edward Pruden Jr., has banned all students from the Rebels' game against visiting Maggie Walker Governor's School. The Rebels won the district regular-season title and are the top seeds in the tournament. The ban doesn't affect Maggie Walker students...
The ban is punishment for an inappropriate cheer during last Friday's home game against archrival Mills Godwin.

Their inappropriate cheer that went unreported in the T-D? Some Freeman students singled out a Godwin player and refered to him as "Brokeback Bobby" all night. The school was concerned about proper public decorum, sexual harassment lawsuits, and general sportsmanship.

Um, especially that part about the lawsuits.

Pruden has expressed in the past that he wants the students to cheer for Freeman and not against the opposition, and especially not to single out an individual player.
"We were shocked he banned students from a home game," said Laura Rothenberg, a senior who has been a part of the cheering section for four years. "It has made us step back and see that Dr. Pruden took it to heart and was offended. Once everyone cools down, we can accept the fact that it was inappropriate and come around and start with new momentum."

Well, that's a pretty cheery assessment. I suspect most students won't see it that way. I suspect most students will feel that Dr. Pruden is an overreactionary jerk who punishes the whole school for the behavior of a few. I suspect they will think him power-mad.

I really, honestly understand his motivation, but I really don't think this was the proper response to the situation. The primary concern for every educator must be to educate. What lesson can we honestly expect Freeman students to take from this event?

The ban covers one game. The district tournament continues at Douglas Freeman with the semifinals tomorrow night and the final Friday. Freeman, as the district champion, already has earned a berth in next week's Central Region tournament and will have a home game Feb. 21.

But it's not just an issue at high schools, as fans of the Gonzaga basketball team have been in the news lately for the exact same thing. The response there?

...the faculty advisers for the Kennel Club booster group urged students to avoid "inappropriate chants"...

There is no ban of the entire student body. There is open discussion on campus of what is appropriate and what is not. High school students are not too young to be treated the same way. As one of my openly gay students noted to me today, teenagers are more offended about not being treated as mature individuals, and having the entire student body punished for the actions of a few, than by the chanting of words that are used as slang throughout the school anyway.

"That principal is so... brokeback!" he said with an ironic smile as he swept out of the room.

These kids know what is right and what is wrong. It is just that they sometimes need to be reminded of it, and told that wrong behavior will not be tolerated. They don't need to be summarily barred from a school event just so the administration can cover their butts.

(This article now cross-posted at AtlasBlogged)

I've Got No Wires To Hold Me Down

I am wireless at home! Mrs. Wulf actually did it, so I can't take any credit whatsoever. But I am in the kitchen, on a laptop, totally unplugged. It feels good.

Pasco Probeware Works

FINALLY!

The initial reason I started this blog was to share some of my methods with other teachers, especially science teachers. This is only my third year teaching high school, but I have been teaching at various other levels for almost a decade now, so I am getting a little confidence and feeling like I might have some things to share.

The number one thing that I wanted to share was the use of Pasco Probeware in my high school physics classroom. Our school invested a few thousand dollars on Pasco Probeware last year, in hopes of making our science labs better learning experiences. I have modeled the use of them on some of the labs I performed as a student (and later taught as a TA) at VCU. Last year was a transition year, as I took old labs and altered them for the new equipment - replacing spring scales with force probes, and thermometers with temperature probes.
But the motion sensors had the biggest impact, because students were able to see a real-time graphic display of x-vs-t for one dimensional motion. This makes it much more intuitive for them to learn the relationships of position, velocity, and acceleration.

I was so excited about this year being even better. But then disaster struck. From my point of view, having our school switch from Mac to PC was a nightmare. None of the Pasco software was installed on the PCs, and the probeware was useless... until this week. I could have dealt with this just fine, if at the beginning of the year I had been told "no Pasco till February". But instead I have been hearing "next week" the whole time, so I haven't had the best attitude. I don't blame anyone for the delay in installation, but it has been very unfortunate for my classes.

Anyway, they work now. The software is installed and we got started this past Thursday and Friday with an introduction to motion lab, which was a little ridiculous for the students, considering that they had this material back in September. But it was nice to give them something easy, so they could concentrate on using the software more than learning the concept. The lab consists of graphing motion relative to the sensor, and matching some pre-made graphs of position vs time. We discussed how the sensor is able to determine your distance (x = v/t, and it knows the speed of sound in air), and played around with them a little bit. If anybody reading this would like to see the lab instructions, I would be more than happy to email them to you (they are in powerpoint format). Contact me at Wulf@atlasblogged.com. You are welcome to alter the document or use it as is, free of charge.

Starting this coming week, I expect to be using the force sensors to investigate Archimedes Principle. I am trying to come up with a good and useful way to use our few pressure sensors to do a good lab on Bernoulli, but I might have to settle for a demonstration. I will keep you all updated.

The Future of Space

(This article now cross-posted at AtlasBlogged)

Last week saw the anniversaries of three separate NASA disasters that weigh heavily on the future of spaceflight. It is inherently dangerous to strap oneself in at the top of a rocket and travel at the speeds necessary to achieve orbit. It is expected that NASA is doing everything it can to mitigate those dangers. But it is not enough to fix the O-rings and launch away.

When the family car breaks down too many times and repair costs stack up, many people face the quandary of paying the maintenance costs or putting the money toward a new automobile.
But at NASA, officials are trying to keep space shuttles far older than most cars on the road today going until at least the end of the decade, while hurrying to build and fly a new reusable passenger launch vehicle to replace the shuttles. All this, under a virtually flat budget.
Most experts say the agency really has no great options for reliably putting astronauts or large sophisticated cargoes into space over the next 10 years or so.

(story by Lee Bowman, here)
The fact is that the nature of spaceflight over the last 30 years has been relatively boring for the public, who funds space flight but probably does not understand why – especially in the post-Cold War era. Are we racing anybody at this point? Well, maybe China, but I don’t think most Americans actually see it that way.
(Incidentally, I recently found that the Chinese astronauts are called “taikonauts”. See previous.)

Due to safety concerns about the shuttle fleet, we are actually now in a position of having to rely on the Russians, despite our victories over them in the original Space Race and Cold War. Soyuz flights are the only way to replenish the ISS with crew and supplies, and new components for the ISS are not able to be delivered as long as the shuttles sit grounded. Too large to be taken on Soyuz, they highlight our inability to fulfill our promises regarding ISS.

The situation chafes partners like the European and Japanese space agencies, each with sophisticated modules that cost more than $1 billion to build gathering dust until they can hitch a ride.

It may be that the vehicle itself isn’t the biggest problem, since the vehicle is designed around the larger goal. Why are we in space at all? Is it to have an ISS, or to have manned missions and eventually a base on the moon, and Mars?

John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said human spaceflight had never recovered from the decision to build the program around the shuttles and then the International Space Station, maintained mainly by shuttles.
"NASA is attempting now to recover from 35 years that in many ways were a dead end," Logsdon said. "That was not NASA's mistake, but the country's, the national leadership's."
It took two disasters -- the Challenger and then the Columbia -- to shock the White House and Congress into trying to redirect the program, Logsdon said.

(from NYT story carried here)
So what about the next generation of American spacecraft? What is it, when will we see it, and will it be any good?

Current plans have the shuttles flying through 2010 to finish building the ISS, with new lunar-capable vehicles coming on line by 2014. Projected dates vary, but it seems hard to avoid a gap in flight coverage of at least three years. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has recently confirmed that the agency expects roughly 18 more flights out of the shuttle program (no definitive word on whether any will involve repairs to the popular Hubble Telescope), but the cost of these flights precludes other projects and expenditures, including R&D.
From Space.com:

That means other projects have to be canceled, cut back or postponed in order to free money for the shuttle's last missions. A steady trickle of reports in recent months indicate several space science and aeronautics projects are being cancelled or pushed back.

Well, it turns out the next generation of vehicle didn’t need that much R&D. The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is planned to make use of shuttle booster rockets (Solid Rocket Boosters, “SRB”) along with a variant of the shuttle’s huge External Tank. Unmanned and heavy lift missions are being planned with the same concept, with the ability to use extended-length SRBs for more thrust as needed. The general interchangeability of systems is expected to reduce costs, as is the fact that the systems are familiar and already in production.
From SpaceRef.com:

Fairly early in the analysis, planners determined that a new hybrid booster had no particular benefit over a launcher developed from either EELV or shuttle-derived designs. They also determined that cost effectiveness could be achieved if the launch vehicles chosen for CEV systems could yield a higher flight rate by multiple government users, such as the national security community.
According to sources familiar with the launcher section of the so-called 60 Day Study, the future U.S. manned and heavy lift launch vehicle architecture will be based on two configurations of shuttle-derived vehicles.
Cargo vehicle studies using Space Shuttle ET and SRB hardware focused on two major variants: so-called "side-mounted" and "in-line". Side-mount designs hang cargo and/or crew off the side of a large external fuel tank as is currently done with the space shuttle. In-line designs place the cargo (or crew) directly atop a lower first stage as did Saturn launch vehicles.

Manned missions to the moon or to Mars would essentially make use of shuttle components with an Apollo Saturn-style module on top. The interchangeability scenarios shown in the image here practically scream “toy”, but are looking more and more realistic.

In the end, the two ET-derivatives; a side-mount vs. a stacked in-line produced better safety margins for the CEV aboard the in-line mold line.

One of the more interesting developments (read about it at (another article from Space.com)
is the fact that NASA is planning to use engines

fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and methane...
While methane is a less efficient propellant than liquid hydrogen, it is easier to store for long stretches and is readily available on Mars, making it possible for NASA to meet future propellant needs by taking advantage of martian resources.

The use of an Apollo-style module is also desirable with regard to escape options for the crew.

For the CEV crew to escape a launch abort, only the part of the CEV containing the flight crew would be explosively detached from the remainder of the CEV/launcher. This approximates, by comparison, the Apollo launch escape philosophy wherein the Command Module was separated from the remaining Service Module part of the Apollo spacecraft.

Of course, all of this is based on the assumption that it is the function of the United States government to involve itself with missions to the moon and Mars, or even to the ISS. There is renewed interest and even excitement in spaceflight these days, but much of it is in the private sector, with plans to begin space tourism within the next two years.

Within the next two years, billionaire businessman Richard Branson promises to begin suborbital flights from a planned launch pad in New Mexico… Branson has reportedly already sold tickets for future space trips – for $200,000 each – despite the fact he does not yet have a spaceship to market.
The commercial space race kicked off last year when a small company based in the Mojave Desert successfully flew the first privately built aircraft – SpaceShipOne –70 miles above Earth to the edge of space twice in less than a week. The company, Scaled Composites LLC, collected the $10 million Ansari X Prize and captured the imaginations of those who dream of space travel. The company is building SpaceShipTwo and has an agreement with Branson’s company to design a commercial space vehicle for as many as nine passengers.
Congress has decided not to regulate such flights until the industry matures. For the X Prize flights, Scaled Composites received a commercial launch license, the same one a defense contractor needs to launch a rocket.

(Virginia Pilot story here)

But what is the point of going to space? Other than, of course, because it is there. Should this be the interest of the government, or of private agencies? What is the legitimate function of the government, anyway? There are certainly good arguments for government involvment in spaceflight, but they aren't often made... probably because the right questions aren't often asked. (follow-up coming soon...)