Chapter 406: The rescued astronaut being interviewed
The audience was very satisfied with this guest.
After Leonard’s introduction, the three guests introduced themselves respectively, and then Leonard began to dominate the entire program:
“Both of you have experienced the space station for a long time. Work, in fact, to the outside world, our people have always believed that aerospace is a waste of taxpayers' money. According to a previous New York Times survey, even in areas with relatively high educational levels like Washington, D.C., 70% of people think that our funding for NASA is on the high side.
Can you tell me? From a more specific perspective, what is the significance of space station work? ”
Megan and Will looked at each other and said: "For a long time in the past, most of its work was no different from basic subject research, whether it was space observation or universe exploration.
We once put a plate The sticky aerogel was placed outside the International Space Station for a full year to capture tiny meteorites from the solar system.
< br>Eventually we found the existence of organic compounds in these meteorites, which are the building blocks of life.
But does it have any significance in reality?
Probably not. Very few studies, such as those in medicine, are of practical significance to us
Now the situation is different. We can see that China's space station is operated externally and turned into a tourism project, able to receive 300 tourists a year.
If the International Space Station did not exist, then we would need to start from scratch to build a space station in space. But now we have rich experience and can complete the construction of the space station based on the past, and launch something similar to the Amerikans. space tourism project. ”
In reality, Americans are tired of the unconditional high allocations to NASA. Although NASA successfully returned to the moon this year, compared with China’s international rescue, public support for NASA has declined. Not only did it not rise, it actually fell.
"Science Amerikan" , as soon as you hear the name, you will know that it is a program that favors supporting scientific exploration, and the host's position is also very clear, which is to make Americans realize that we should support NASA again under his guidance.
It is based on this stance that they can invite these big names in the aerospace field
After Meghan finished speaking, Mark signaled to the host that he had something to say. After receiving permission, he said:
“For a long time in the past, we benefited from Wan, Roosevelt’s adviser in the field of science and technology in 1945. Nevar Bush's study, called Science: None "The Ending Frontier" policy report, in which the report promoted a close scientific research contract relationship between the federal government and universities, successfully shaping a linear paradigm from basic research to applied research to technological innovation
Our past science and technology. Leading the way thanks to this report. A large number of technologies in the aerospace field have been applied in the civilian field.
The impact of NASA's annual R&D investment on economic growth and improvement of people's quality of life cannot be directly felt by everyone, but it is real. < br>
Like Apollo Computer image enhancement technology developed during the moon landing program was used for MRI image processing in hospitals; chemical insulin pumps were based on technology used by Mars rovers, which later led to the development of kidney dialysis machines. There are too many cases.
Not only should we not reduce our investment in NASA, but we should increase our investment in NASA and university research amid direct competition from China.
If we cannot compete with China in the field of science and technology, then how can we compete with China? Is it a competition between the efficiency and working hours of engineers and workers on both sides? ”
Mark’s view is also the view of Silicon Valley elites.
This White House failed to lower the U.S. debt after coming in, but instead further pushed up the U.S. debt, and most of the money All of them have been invested in the field of technological research and development, and subsidies have been provided to enterprises. Among them, the subsidies received by Boeing It is the most common, so much so that Boeing has become the representative company of government subsidy concept stocks in the US stock market.
“Mark’s view is also the view of scientists and engineers that I have always come into contact with, so our research and development is very important. The investment is so high, why do we seem to fall behind China in an instant?
Is it just like the point raised by Musk in his interview with Wright that China has locked the upper limit of our technological development through room temperature superconducting technology?
If so, what should Amerikan do now to get out of this predicament? "
Mark obviously thought about this issue seriously after the last reflection and made full preparations before coming. He said:
"First of all, from an all-round perspective, we still It’s an advantage. It’s just because China’s strengths in room-temperature superconducting-related fields are particularly outstanding that we think Amerikan is no longer good. But if we put it in other fields, we are still ahead of China.
But China is catching up very quickly. Originally we might have been at 90, and China was at 20. Now we are still at 90, and China has reached the level of 70.
There are many reasons for this. The first point is that our R&D investment is decreasing. Our share of global R&D expenditure dropped from nearly 40% in 2000 to 28% in 2017. In 2018, our R&D investment dropped to the lowest level since 1955. A new low, while China’s share of global R&D spending soared from less than 5% in 2000 to more than 25% in 2017.
Looking only at paper publication data, our proportion of total basic scientific research output is also declining, while China is growing rapidly. Even among highly cited papers, that is, among high-quality papers, China The country has also maintained rapid growth.
We have invested less money and our scientific research efficiency is not as good as that of the Chinese. Naturally, we are being rapidly caught up.
In addition, cutting-edge scientific exploration is no longer just the exploration of a single field as in the past. Now more and more cutting-edge science and technology need to involve multi-disciplinary collaboration and require multi-dimensional openness across departments, regions, and disciplines. Through collaboration, the scientific community begins to transcend the traditional boundary categories of pure science and move towards a highly complex and open scientific ecosystem.
In the past, I could cooperate with professors from the same university, and then with professors from different universities. Now, university professors cooperate with corporate scientific research departments, and our basic scientific research organizational structure and funding paradigm and reward mechanisms are still mainly directed at individual researchers, and the scientific research management model is still directed at individuals, which is outdated.
Our main competitor, China, under the leadership of Wright, has begun to implement a corporate-led, government-funded scientific research sponsorship model. ”
This means that the Nature Fund gave Chen Yuanguang a certain share, allowing him to direct which researchers the money should be given to.
This sponsorship model has been quarreling at Amerikan for more than two years. , the debate is very fierce, American's companies also want to take over this leadership
China's. The annual scale of the Natural Fund is 30 billion RMB, and the amount given to Chen Yuanguang is only 3 billion. It was 2 billion before, and now it has increased to 3 billion.
How much has the federal government paid to its basic disciplines every year in recent years? The investment in scientific research in basic disciplines alone is almost US$50 billion
Companies definitely want to take control of this money away from the federal government. Wouldn’t it be nice to use this money to support scientific research projects related to their own business operations? It is equivalent to an extra amount of scientific research expenses.
Therefore, this type of voice is the loudest among pharmaceutical giants and chemical giants.
The media they sponsor often bring up Chen Yuanguang’s charge of the National Natural Science Foundation to make excuses, saying that America’s backwardness is due to its rigid scientific research investment mechanism.
The opposition naturally has huge energy, mainly coming from White House bureaucrats and law-study leaders in academia. The two sides have fought fiercely, especially in the past year.
Because the Elephant Party is about to step down. The Elephant Party will step down next year if it can’t do anything. The White House boasted loudly before coming to the White House. After that, it can’t do anything.
The biggest highlight of returning to the moon is the crisis of the International Space Station. Instead of becoming a highlight, it has become a stain.
The Xiang Party will support enterprises in managing scientific research funds, and if the Donkey Party enters the White House, these companies will never even think about it.
"So you support corporate management of scientific research funds?" Leonard asked quickly.
“No, I don’t know whether it is better for enterprises to lead, but I know that it is time for our scientific research funding model to change. As for how to change, I don’t know.” Mark continued: “We are now more The big crisis is what you said is the growing mistrust between the scientific community and society.
As you just said, even Washington, DC, has begun to distrust NASA and hopes to cut off the high budget for NASA.
This distrustful relationship is rapidly reducing public trust in science and scientists. Open science is facing a serious crisis of trust. We need to reshape the scientific research contract with a high degree of mutual trust between universities, governments, industries, and civil society. relation.
Increasing investment, changing the dominant model of federal scientific research funding, and reshaping scientific research contract relationships are indispensable. This is what we need to do now. ”
The vast majority of the audience invited to the scene by CBS in New York are highly educated talents. After Mark finished speaking, the applause from the audience fell from sparse to uniform.
"Mark's point of view is very enlightening. I hope the federal officials in front of the TV will listen carefully. This is not just for NASA and Americen Aerospace, but for all basic scientific research projects.
This reminds me that NASA’s corporate competition model has fostered SpaceX, but the federal basic scientific research projects have not achieved outstanding results.
Both Will and Megan have experienced accidents on the space station, especially Megan, who just recently returned to Earth on a Chinese space shuttle. Can you tell us more about how this happened? "
Megan thought for a while and said: "At that time, I was watching the live broadcast of NASA's return to the moon, praying for my colleagues on their journey to the moon, and hoping that everything goes well for them.
Not long after the starship was launched, the space station started to alarm. We quickly came to the command module and found that all the cabins were alarming. Judging from the alarm indication signal, it was an air leak.
Later, further investigation of the problem revealed that the air was leaking very quickly. The materials used to repair the leaks in the past had pores, and the pores were expanding rapidly.
After we contacted the ground control center, the other party's calculation was that the oxygen content in the cabin would drop below the human acceptable range in about an hour.
The original plan was to use repair materials from the space station to repair the two cabins, and then close the airlocks between these two cabins and other cabins. We waited for rescue in these two cabins. .
As a result, it did not last for an hour. After half an hour, the air was already so thin that it was difficult to breathe, and the cabin door used to store repair materials could not be opened because the air pressure changed too quickly.
We tried many methods but could not remove the repair material. After the air leak reaches a critical point, even if the repair is successfully completed, it will be useless.
At this point we are facing the most difficult situation. The two oxygen tubes and emergency oxygen supply device contained in the spacesuit can only support 6.5 to 8 hours.
This means that the ground needs to complete the entire process from launch to docking in such a short time.
And the rescue spacecraft also needs to be loaded with sufficient oxygen supply.
It needs to carry oxygen and then be able to rescue 12 astronauts at the same time.
At that time, everyone said nothing but they were still very pessimistic in their hearts
Because this was an almost impossible task, even if all the starships were not used for the mission of returning to the moon, this It's still hard to save everyone.
I can't accept it emotionally that Satoshi Furukawa would make such a decision, but from a rational point of view, this is the only way to survive.
Behind is China’s aerospace plane to perform the rescue mission. The entire rescue mission went extremely smoothly. As you know, not all astronauts have the opportunity to perform spacewalk missions. Some astronauts do not even come to the space station. For the first time, they also did not perform a spacewalk mission.
I am one of them.
Fortunately, under the leadership of Andre, everyone completed the space walk.
For me, the first time was to walk along the surface of the space station and into the Chinese space plane. It was obviously an unforgettable experience.
During the space walk, I compared the International Space Station and China’s space plane. The space plane was really huge. Although I didn’t have a God’s perspective and couldn’t see what I looked like at that time, I thought we should Just like a bunch of ants, heading towards their destination.
On the contrary, I didn’t feel much when taking the aerospace plane to the space station in China and then returning to Earth.
Because it's so quiet, unlike any aircraft I've ever been in.
It is as quiet as the International Space Station.
As you know, the International Space Station orbits the Earth every 92 minutes. So fast but no sound. In transportation on Earth, there are noises or vibrations that make you aware that you are traveling very fast.
But on the International Space Station, there is no sound even when traveling at a speed of 27,000 kilometers per hour.
When we were on the International Space Station before, maybe at the beginning of the mission, I was able to take some pictures of England. When I went to have lunch we were over Brazil, and by the time we came back from lunch we had crossed the Himalayas.
The feeling of flying in a space shuttle is similar to that of being on the International Space Station. It was only after I returned to the ground that I realized that it was a bit too quiet. ”
(End of this chapter)