The Interlude There is no homework this week. Please sign up for Friday if you would like to give a presentation. We do have some posters and a video for Friday. If there are others, please let me know so I can schedule appropriate time. 1
Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft docked on July 17, 1975 There have been many effects of the space race on the modern world. While the space race was a competition between the USSR and the US, it was a competition for prestige and the opinions of the non-aligned countries of the world. It was a competition that did not involve the USSR and US in a direct military conflict. History has shown with the collapse of the USSR that the US come out on top in the space competition. 2
NASA actively promotes 'spin offs' from research done for its development of space travel and exploration. The list is large and were often developed with NASA research grants. 3
A topic currently on everyone's mind is hurricanes. We take for granted that we will have instant images of the storm from space in multiple views (water vapor, infrared, visible) and projections of the hurricane's path. This has not always been so. In September 1900 a hurricane hit Galvaston Tx which killed an estimated 6000-12000 people. It is the worst natural disaster in American history. 4
Image from Tiros I The first successful weather satellite was the 'Tiros' satellite. It was launched by NASA on April 1, 1960 and orbited for 78 days. Modern weather satellites are placed in geostationary orbits 42,000 km from the center of the Earth about the equator where they continuously view a region of the Earth in different regions of the spectrum. The accuracy of long range forecasts have significantly improved with the use of satellite data. 5
Another effect of the space race was reconnaissance or spy satellites. It can be said that these satellites which were military and not NASA developed were important in preventing nuclear war between the superpowers. There had been several incidents between the superpowers before spy satellites that resulted in heated verbal exchanges between the two governments like the 1960 shoot-down of a U2 spy plane. The U2 resulted in the cancellation of a major US-USSR summit in 1960. Spy satellites not only take high resolution photographic images but detect radio communications, missile launches for early warning, nuclear explosions and radar images through cloud cover. 6
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President Lyndon B. Johnson told a group in 1967 I wouldn't want to be quoted on this... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. [ Heppenheimer] 8
President Carter said in 1980 in the state of the Union address before Congress that: ' photo-reconnaissance satellites, for example, are enormously important in stabilizing world affairs and thereby make a significant contribution to the security of all nations 9
Class discussion Topic The invention and development of rockets has had many positive effects for society. Better weather forecasts especially for hurricanes and storms. Better communications with satellites, especially in geosynchronous orbits Better monitoring of the environment of Earth Discovery of new resources. Better information about military assets and intentions of adversaries (spy satellites). 10
Class discussion Topic Major parts of the US 'high-tech' economy have started with research done for the space program. In economic terms has the space race been worth the cost? Almost all of the knowledge on planetary astronomy has been the result of unmanned space craft. Manned space flight is very expensive compared to robot crafts. For example the ISS cost approximately $100 billion while the Cassini craft to Saturn cost about $4 billion. Is manned space flight worth the cost? 11