Critics point to waste and lack of direct impact.
TOMS and the phase-out of harmful chemicals. An Antarctic hole in the ozone layer. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). The phase-out of exploratory surgery. Digital breast biopsy system. Mandating NASA to share with the private sector.
Conclusion: Critics will remain negative. There are critics from many corners who condemn the amounts of money spent in the pursuit of space. Some say there is no need to waste money playing around in space when there are so many people right here on earth who need help and could better use that money for space exploration and experimentation. Morton says, The huge increase in government-financed research and development that came with Apollo did not increase America’s overall technological lead. It may even reduce it, by drawing scientific and commercial talent into heroic fields and away from prosaic ones.” People who would scorn to put extra dollars into welfare payments are happy to recommend that scientific explorers be given billions, bewitched by the frontier dreams of manifest destiny (Morton 18). What Morton and others who hold with his views fail to take into account, however, are the vast benefits that we have already realized from space exploration.
If we never gained any more benefits from our own space program than we have already seen, attaining them was well worth the cost. We haven’t heard much environmental commentary in the past ten years from environmentalists featured in television commercials claiming that the ocean would be dead within seven years. Some of these outspoken and visible souls, trained in acting rather than in oceanography or marine biology, were misled by other environmentalists in their claims of the proximity of catastrophe. They lacked either the ability or desire to educate themselves on their subjects of interest before speaking out so publicly. The Earth’s ozone layer is another dying ocean topic. Unlike the uneducated actors, however, scientists around the world are working to determine how much of the ozone-related change in the atmosphere is caused by humans and how much is attributed to natural processes (Kenitzer 1996).
Of the several NASA space labs scattered across the country, Goddard Space Flight Center is the one most focused on environmental matters. As such, Goddard teams are responsible for measuring and monitoring ozone levels. Launched in 1978 aboard the Nimbus 7 polar orbiting satellite, NASA’s most visible and best-known ozone research instrument is the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS). It is managed by Goddard and provides high-resolution maps of global ozone levels. Ozone depletion data supplied from TOMS has been instrumental in global agreements to phase out the use of ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide. The Antarctic ozone hole is seasonal and cyclical, being most prominent between August and October of each year. Though we don’t yet know how much of the witnessed ozone depletion is natural and how much is man-made, TOMS data shows that the seasonal depletion grew every year between its discovery in 1979 and 1994, when the depletion was the most dramatic ever recorded.
Since then, however, the seasonal depletion has been shown to be much less severe than in the past (Kenitzer 1996). Goddard manages other environmental survey systems using data collected from satellite-mounted mechanisms. TOMS is simply the most visible because of the popular interest in the topic of ozone depletion. Other benefits of the space program concern diagnostic and monitoring techniques and devices used in the medical field. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a direct outgrowth of the system developed for use on manned space missions and today is a standard diagnostic tool in every major hospital in the country (Cone 18).
Since it reveals the structures of the soft tissues within the body, radiologists no longer have to rely solely on X-rays to make a best guess about what might be happening within an individual’s body. Radiologists can attain perfect views of internal systems from any MRI, which has also moved exploratory surgery closer to obsolescence. That in itself is a major benefit. There is growing concern and potential evidence that cancerous growths only begin their rampant runs after exposure to the atmosphere. If that theory does indeed prove to be true, then MRI has already saved lives in numbers that no one can measure. Another medical benefit resulting from the necessary monitoring of manned space expeditions is telemedicine.
Telemedicine is the future of healthcare.
