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For centuries, the work of scientists and military planners has often gone hand in hand.
Here NowJeremy Hobson learns more from the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson), who writes about this relationship in "Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military", which he co-authored with Avis Lang.
"It's always been like that," says Tyson. "The military has some sort of modern-day invocation, but if you consider the behaviors of sovereign states, if they wanted to expand their territory, they should do it in a way that would know where they were going and where they were going. Where they came from. geographically, and to achieve that, you had to navigate.
Highlights of the interview
When the link between astrophysics and the army began
"Navigation is something you did with the stars, the sun, the moon and the stars, which would give you an idea of where you are on Earth and what you should do to get back to where you came from. [from]. And who knew the sun, the moon, and the stars at one point, except astronomers? We knew the sun, the moon and the stars. We care about the timings. We care about clocks. We had interests that resonated much in the ambition to build the empire of the nations that had as their goal. "
When landing the moon in 1969 as a mission driven by domination rather than science
"We remember the [President John F.] Kennedy's speech contains the words: "We are going to put a man on the moon, bring him back safely to Earth before the end of the decade. There is nothing grand or grandiose … – It's a moving word from a young president who represented the modern era, and in you, you feel like in your American DNA that we are exploring and that we discover. However, this same speech – which was a speech he delivered at the joint session of Congress in May 1961, six weeks after [Soviet cosmonaut] Yuri Gagarin had just come out of his orbit and we did not have a ship capable of carrying a human being into space without detonating the launching pad. He says, "If the events of recent weeks" – he did not even mention [Gagarin’s] name – "If the events of recent weeks do not reflect the impact of this adventure on the minds of men all over the world, we must show the world the path of freedom on the path of tyranny.
"It was the battle cry against unholy communists. Oh, by the way, we're going to the moon. And so, once the war cry was in place, it provided a source of money when you feel threatened. It's the engine of the war to spend money, and that's why we went to the moon. And that's why no one should be surprised that when we learned that the Soviet Union was not going to the moon, we had just finished everything. If you were watching when we went to the moon, the writings were, "Oh, we're on the moon in 1969? We will be on Mars by 1985 and that's where we go and that's why we are … "No. The only reason we would be on Mars is that Russia wants to put some ground on Mars. And all Apollo-era astronauts, except one, were military pilots. They came from the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force, even though it was a civilian agency.
"By the way, since we're on the moon, why are not you taking this little experience with you? Here is a bag, here is a shopping bag, bring stones so that we can analyze it and do not waste them too much when you do it. So yes, science has arrived. But that's not what drove it, and that's not why we did it. But science has taken place and science has historically always incorporated geopolitical activities.
On the international space station, driving in a similar way
"At the time of the 80s – it was called Space Station Freedom at the time, it was not international, it was our space station – it's the Cold War. Russia was going to have a space station, we are going to have a space station. So we start building the space station and in 1989, peace breaks out in Europe. And in 1993, it's official and we say, "Oh, and all these Russian space scientists? They are really talented and we do not want them to go to an opponent. So we invited Russia to join us in Space Station Freedom and then became the International Space Station. All these decisions were geopolitically motivated. But by the way, you can make science zero. "
What to do with this connection
"I do not appreciate judging him. It's hard not to judge something like that, but I've worked hard not to judge it. For me, in compiling this book, looking at the role that science in general and astrophysics in particular played in helping the fighter, I walked away and said, "I'm not going to judge on this subject. I will just present it as it is. The reader can judge, love or dislike it, but that is what it is. So that's your third choice – it's not good, it's not bad, it's just what it is. "
President Trump's calls to create a space force
"I do not have a horse in this race. I can tell you that if you are interviewing air force generals who are currently overseeing the US space command, many of them will say, "We have a good control over the space under the airspace. # 39; aegis of an air force ". What you're doing is that you're going to move everything in the Air Force's space portfolio, and that becomes its own category, a space force. And I could throw a few things if you can, maybe I could throw an asteroid defense, maybe? Or, how about cleaning up space debris? So that my trade that I drive from space is not jeopardized by bolts at 18,000 miles an hour flying in space falling from a mission?
"I do not have a fundamental problem with that, and the fact that it came out of Trump's mouth does not make him crazy."
From the book: "Accessory to the war"
by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang
On February 10, 2009, two communication satellites, one Russian and the other American, crashed five hundred miles above Siberia, at a speed of over 25,000 miles at the same time. 39; hour. Although the war was the engine for the construction of their precursors, this collision was a purely peaceful accident, the first of its kind. One day, one of the hundreds of resulting debris could break on another satellite or paralyze a spaceship with people on board.
In the field during the same winter day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 7888, above the 6440 decline in March 2009, but not much more than half of its peak in October 2007. Holdings , the eponymous supplier of elevator music, filed for bankruptcy. General Motors announced a reduction of ten thousand white-collar jobs; federal investigators raided the offices of a Washington-based lobbying firm whose clients were the main contributors to the House Subcommittee's campaign on defense spending; the incendiary Iranian president said at a rally celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution that Iran was "ready to hold talks on the basis of mutual respect and in a fair atmosphere"; and the new secretary of the new US President's Treasury presented a $ 2 trillion plan to induce speculators to buy the unstable American assets that had collapsed the global economy. Civil engineers announced that 70% of the salt applied on the icy roads of twin cities was in the watershed. An environmental physicist announced that one-third of the best-selling laser printers formed a large number of ultrafine particles damaging the lungs from vapors emitted when the printed image was heat-sealed to the paper. Climatologists have announced that flowering areas of nearly 100 species of plants have been climbing in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona over the past 20 years, as temperatures rise in the summer.
In other words, the world was changing and threatened, as is often the case.
Ten days later, an international group of prominent economists, government officials, and academics met under the auspices of the Columbia University Center on Capitalism and Society to discuss how the world could emerge. of the financial crisis. Edmund Phelps, director of the center, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, argued that some financial regulation was necessary, but stressed that it was not necessary to "discourage[e] the financing of investment in innovation in the non-financial business sector, which has been the main source of dynamism of the US economy. What is the non-financial business sector? Military spending, medical equipment, aerospace, computers, Hollywood movies, music and other military expenses. For Phelps, dynamism and innovation go hand in hand with capitalism and war. Asked by a BBC interviewer for "big thinking" about the crisis and whether it was "a permanent indictment of capitalism," he replied, "We desperately need capitalism to create interesting work. ordinary people – unless maybe we can fight against Mars or something as an alternative.
In other words, a dynamic economy depends at least on one of the following factors: profit, war on the ground or war in space.
On September 14, 2009, just months after the satellite blast and a few blocks from where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood eight years and four days ago, President Barack Obama sits down. is addressed to the collectors of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the investment company whose bankruptcy is often presented as having triggered the avalanche of financial failures in 2008-2009. That same morning, China laid the first stone of its fourth space center on an island near the equator – the latitude of choice to exploit the speed of rotation of the Earth, thus minimizing the fuel required for its launch and maximizing the potential payload. By the end of 2014, construction was complete, well before the complete reconstruction of the World Trade Center site. An Associated Press reporter referred to China's "huge space ambitions" and, after presenting an impressive list of Chinese achievements and space ambitions, said "China says its space program is purely peaceful, even if satellite weapons have led some to question that. "
The same could be said for the context and support of the generously funded space programs created by the Cold War superpowers. If he was alive today, the seventeenth-century Dutch astronomer and mathematician Christiaan Huygens could tell us that we would be fools to think that ambitious companies in the space can be carried out without massive military support. In the 1690s, when Huygens was thinking about life on Mars and other planets known to populate the night sky, he was pondering how best to stimulate inventiveness. For him and his time, profit was a powerful incentive (capitalism was not yet named), and conflict was a stimulant of creativity recognized by God:
God so pleased God to command the Earth. . . that this mixture of wicked men with good, and the consequences of such a mixture of misfortunes, wars, afflictions, poverty and others, have been given to us for this very good purpose, namely. the exercise of our Wits and our sharpening of our inventions; by forcing us to secure our own necessary defense against our enemies.
Yes, going to war requires intelligent thinking and promotes technical innovation. Not controversial. But Huygens can not help but make the link between the absence of armed conflict and intellectual stagnation:
And if men led all their lives in continual peace, without fear of poverty, without the danger of war, I have no doubt that they would live better than Brutes, without the knowledge or enjoyment of these advantages. to make our lives pass with pleasure and profit. We should want the wonderful Art of Writing if its great use and necessity in trade and war had not forced invention. It is to this that we owe our art of sailing, our art of sowing, and most of these discoveries of which we are masters; and almost all the secrets of experimental knowledge.
So it's simple: no war equals an intellectual leaven. According to Mr. Huygens, the war has served as a catalyst for literacy, exploration, agriculture and science.
Was Phelps and Huygens right? Should war and profit be at the base of civilization on Earth and the search for other worlds? The story, including last week's story, makes it difficult to answer no. Over the millennia, space studies and war planning have been trading partners in the ongoing pursuit of leaders to gain and maintain power over others. Star charts, calendars, chronometers, telescopes, maps, compasses, rockets, satellites and drones are not inspiring civil initiatives. Domination was their goal; the increase in knowledge was incidental.
But history is not destiny. Maybe the present is calling something different. Today, we are confronted with "enemies and misfortunes" that Huygens has never dreamed of. Surely the exercise [of] our Wits "could be geared toward improving all rather than the triumph of a few. Admittedly, it is not too radical to suggest that capitalism will not have much to do if several hundred million species disappear for lack of drinking water, breathable air, or perhaps the aftermath of 'an asteroid in free fall or cosmic rays.
Looking at the Earth from an orbiting spacecraft, a rational person could certainly feel that the "necessary defense" may have more to do with the vulnerability of our beautiful blue planet, exposed to all the vicissitudes of the cosmos, than with the transient power of one arms, political decision makers, nationalists and ideologues from one country, however virulent they may be. Hundreds of kilometers above the surface of the globe, "peace on earth, goodwill toward men" might seem less like a standard line on a Christmas card than as an essential step towards a sustainable future. Earth enemies among us and threats above us.
Reprinted from Accessory to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang. Copyright © 2018 by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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