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"Worlds Beyond Our Own"
A Discussion of President Bush's New Vision for Space Exploration
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Thursday, February 5, 2004
5:30 PM
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Thursday, February 5, 2004
7:30 PM
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President Bush has given NASA a new mission: to return to the Moon and "to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own." How realistic is the president's plan and his timetable? Is it worth the money? Should it have been more ambitious? Is NASA up to the task? For that matter, why should we send humans into space at all? The Ethics and Public Policy Center invited two distinguished commentators to analyze President Bush's new plans for NASA and to present their observations and reflections on these and other questions.
Dr. Robert Zubrin is among the foremost advocates of human space exploration. In the early 1990s, Dr. Zubrin developed for Lockheed Martin a plan to put humans on Mars within ten years. This plan, detailed in Dr. Zubrin's 1996 book The Case for Mars, would use Martian resources to make a mission to the Red Planet much more affordable than NASA had previously estimated. An aerospace engineer by profession, Dr. Zubrin is the president of the Mars Society, an international organization that supports the exploration and settlement of Mars.
Dr. Robert Park is a leading critic of manned spaceflight. Known for debunking bad science, Dr. Park argues that human space exploration is costly, dangerous and slow, when compared to robotic missions. In his 2000 book, Voodoo Science, Dr. Park argues that telerobots are merely "extensions of our frail human bodies." The scientists who control the telerobots, and see through their eyes, become virtual astronauts. A physics professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Park is also Director of Public Information in the Washington Office of the American Physical Society.
The debate was hosted by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, under the aegis of its journal The New Atlantis, which focuses on the ethical, political, philosophical, and social implications of advancing technology. You can read more about the journal by visiting its Web page: www.TheNewAtlantis.com. An edited version of the debate between Drs. Park and Zubrin appears in the Winter 2004 issue:
More Information
Kasey Cook
1015 15th St NW #900
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 682-1200 x206
Fax: (202) 408-0632
E-mail: kcook@eppc.org
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| Technology and Society |
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The Age of Neuroelectronics
For decades, experiments at the border between brains and electronics have led to sensationalistic media coverage, vivid science fiction portrayals, and dreams of cyborgs and bionic men. But recently, this area of science has seen remarkable advances -- from robotic limbs controlled directly by brain activity, to brain implants that alter the mood of the depressed, to rats steered by remote control. In this New Atlantis article, EPPC Fellow Adam Keiper explores the peculiar history and present directions of this research, and considers the challenges of staying human in the age of neuroelectronics.
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Blogging on the Courts
EPPC President Edward Whelan, the director of the program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture, is a leading contributor to Bench Memos, National Review Online's award-winning blog on judicial nominations and constitutional law. You can read a list of all of his postings here.
Here is some of the praise Mr. Whelan has received for his blogging:
 From Steve Schmidt, who, as special adviser to President Bush, led the White House's efforts to confirm the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito: "Ed Whelan was the most influential and valuable commentator on the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. His remarkably rapid, thorough, and reliable responses to the distorted attacks on the nominees prevented those attacks from gaining traction. The White House was deeply grateful that he was on our side."
From Paul Mirengoff of the influential Power Line blog: "Blogs like NRO’s Bench Memos … enable legal super-stars like Ed Whelan to shoot down bad arguments against nominees within hours."
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