Think of the
spectacular imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. I continue to marvel at all
the wonders of the universe this single scientific instrument has revealed. And
I think of the tiny number of humans who work at the Space Telescope Science
Institute who’re responsible for this.
A few hundreds
of men and women whose work reveals to all seven billion of us humans on this
planet the true splendors of the universe far surpassing anything contained in
any mythological tales. The world owes a great deal to the Hubble Space
Telescope … for opening our eyes, for expanding our horizons, for showing and
proving again and again that the zaniest predictions of theoretical
astrophysics are commonplace occurrences out there in the cosmos. And Hubble
has also revealed phenomena that have left the theorists stunned before they
started to contemplate about it and could barely believe that such stuff was
really happening.
But the success
of Hubble is a story which wonderfully demonstrates the complex connectedness
of all of science. It’s not merely the small team at the STSI who can be
credited with its achievements. The Hubble Servicing Missions come to mind. The
space shuttle was clearly indispensable for this. Hubble could have been
launched without the shuttle but it could not have been serviced without it. So
the shuttle program becomes a prerequisite. The gigantic technological marvel that
was and is the space shuttle is one of the true triumphs of human ingenuity and
engineering.
The debates
about its cost effectiveness apart, it was a triumph that was a witness to the
hard work of thousands of people. The shuttle was in many ways an epitome of
many braches of science and engineering such as material sciences, aeronautics,
etc.
The shuttle
program itself was a successor of the historic achievements of the Apollo
missions. Apollo certainly expanded the envelope of human capability in many
engineering disciplines. The Saturn V rockets were extraordinary examples of
engineering complexity that unmatched reliability. The lunar modules, the
ascent engines, all those things never failed. Even the accident of Apollo 13
was converted into a gigantic triumph with incredibly innovative ingenuity. Perhaps
a million people were involved with the Apollo project.
Apollo itself
could only be conceived because of the advances across the scientific spectrum
in the 19th and 20th centuries.
So the Hubble is
like the top of a pyramid. The top can’t exist without the rest of bulky whole.
This would also apply to other achievements too. Think of the Voyager missions whose
legacy continues to this day with the extraordinary Voyager spacecrafts that
work to this day.
Whereas telescopes
let us marvel at the vastness of the universe and let us peer back into the
early universe, particle accelerators help us look deep inside into the
fundamental structure of nature.
The cutting edge
Large Hadron Collider at CERN is again an engineering marvel that meshes a
variety of high technology components. It has the world’s largest
superconducting magnets and incredibly complex machinery to detect evanescent
stuff such as the Higgs boson and other particles which might lurk in tiny nooks
and crannies of the universe.
Perhaps we’ll
detect the presence of extra dimensions with the help of the LHC …
Humans have not
set foot on Mars yet. Clearly, it’s going to be decided based on cost
considerations. Humans consume so much food that transporting what three or six
of them might consume over a two-year time period to Mars becomes a logistical
nightmare. So, appropriate decisions will be made based on what we can afford.
I’m reminded of
Carl Sagan saying: ‘To make an apple pie, you must first invent the universe.’
That’s so true! Whether
you want to make an apple pie or send a Hubble to space.