40 years ago, today, the astronauts aboard the Apollo 13 splashed back to Earth. We nearly lost the astronauts on this ill-fated mission. Instead, we learned something about American ingenuity, teamwork, and, ultimately, the enduring-yet-fragile, if not finicky, relationship between the public and our national space program. Read PC Mag’s piece about President Obama’s effort to address concerns and criticisms, from the likes of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, “that the U.S. intends to remain a world leader with its space program,” despite plans to abandon related programs.
(NASA and the astronauts ended up using the moon’s gravitational force as a slingshot to hurl the Shuttle back towards space. The drama aroused a long-sleepy American public which had grown–and, arguably, still is–complacent to the manned-space program. You can see pictures and learn more about this here.)
I had the pleasure of spending time with one of those heroes, James Lovell. About 15 years ago, former Discover Magazine editor, Jeffrey Kluger (who is now at Time Magazine) wrote a fascinating book, Lost Moon, detailing the dramatic events of this historic mission. The book was turned into a movie, Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.
Disney Publishing owned Discover at the time, and the release of this book coincided nicely with a program I ran called the Discover Magazine Technology Awards. The Awards culminated each year at Walt Disney World (talk about FUN) and James Lovell graciously agreed to host the Discover Awards TV show, from Epcot. We weren’t able to record any parts of the show until every guest left the park–after midnight! We filmed straight through until roughly 5:30am. He was such a trooper. I’ll never forget that experience. I’ll post pictures when I’m back home in Philly.
Everyone should have the opportunity to meet an astronaut. If you haven’t yet had that opportunity, I’ve got the next best thing for you. I’ll be interviewing Dr. Story Musgrave who’s been on six shuttle missions. He performed the first space walk on Challenger’s first flight and later led the effort to repair the Hubble Telescope via another space walk! (The Hubble’s turning 20 this week). Is there anything in particular you’d like me to ask him? Fire away! darlene@sciencecheerleader.com
It was 40 years ago today
The NASA astronauts survived their trip some way
They’ve had to hang in there a while
‘Cause they were so far away- many a mile
So may I introduce to you
The heroically brave astronauts you’ve known for all these years
NASA’s Apollo 13 mission crew!
Apologies to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (Beatles)!
Forty years ago Norman Bourlaug won the Nobel Prize. Perhaps we can learn something from him.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/population-overshoot-is-determined-by-food-overproduction/
Population Overshoot Is Determined by Food Overproduction
Even after more than ten years of trying to raise awareness about certain overlooked research, my focus remains riveted on the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population and scientific evidence from Hopfenberg and Pimentel that the size of the human population on Earth is a function of food availability. More food for human consumption equals more people; less food for human existence equals less people; and no food, no people. This is to say, the population dynamics of the human species is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other living things.
UN Secretary-General Mr. Kofi Annan noted in 1997, “The world has enough food. What it lacks is the political will to ensure that all people have access to this bounty, that all people enjoy food security.”
Please examine the probability that humans are producing too much, not too little food; that the global predicament humanity faces is the way increasing the global food supply leads to increasing absolute global human population numbers. It is the super-abundance of unsustainable agribusiness harvests that are driving population numbers of the human species to overshoot, or explode beyond, the natural limitations imposed by a relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably damaged planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth.
The spectacular success of the Green Revolution over the past 40 years has “produced” an unintended and completely unanticipated global challenge, I suppose: the rapidly increasing supply of food for human consumption has given birth to a human population bomb, which is exploding worldwide before our eyes. The most formidable threat to future human well being and environmental health appears to be caused by the unbridled, corporate overproduction of food on the one hand and the abject failure of the leaders of the human community to insist upon more fair and equitable redistribution of the world’s food supply so that “all people enjoy food security”.
We need to share (not overconsume and hoard) as well as to build sustainable, human-scale farming practices (not corporate leviathans), I believe.
For a moment let us reflect upon words from the speech that NORMAN BOURLAUG delivered in 1970 on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize. He reported, ” Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.”
Plainly, Norman Bourlaug states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction, but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}. Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food.
According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is most similar to the population dynamics of other species. Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life as we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic, large-scale overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years.
Recall Dr. Bourlaug’s prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the “Green Revolution” and to the extraordinary increases in the world’s supply of food. Please consider that the sensational increases in humanity’s food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug’s great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers.
We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing large-scale food production capabilities (as opposed to small-scale farming practices) on human population numbers worldwide between now and 2050. If we keep doing the “big-business as usual” things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world’s food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the fairly near future.
It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the large-scale corporate production of food; for providing broad support of small-scale farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present overly abundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for immediately, universally and safely following Dr. Bourlaug’s recommendation to “reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely.”
Steve Salmony is a self-proclaimed global citizen, a psychologist and father of three grown children. Married 38 years ago. In 2001 Steve founded the AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population to raise consciousness of the colossal threat that the unbridled, near exponential growth of absolute global human population numbers poses for all great and small living things on Earth in our time. His quixotic campaign focuses upon the best available science of human population dynamics in order to save the planet as a place fit for habitation by children everywhere.