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01/01/2015
From the 1930s to the 2030s?
CHAPTER 52 Game Changers
One often sees or hears the term "game changer" these days. Pope Francis, with his criticisms of the Vatican hierarchy, shunning of the more luxurious trappings of the papacy and his role in the long overdue reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, certainly qualifies as a game changer. With the end of another year and the celebration of my 87th birthday a few days ago, one tends to reflect on one's life and what the future holds. A couple weeks ago, I and other alumni of Dickinson College received an email from Dr. Nancy Roseman, president of the college. The subject of the email was 102-year-old Dr. Benjamin James, who in retrospect was a true game changer in my life. Roseman mentioned that James had recently fallen, injuring his shoulder but is doing quite well recuperating in a nursing home and she suggested he would welcome cards.
Roseman described James as a "Dickinson treasure" and well she might. Go back all the way to 1931, when James was the 142-pound center on the Dickinson football team that actually beat mighty Penn State 10-6 in Beaver Stadium. James later joined the Dickinson faculty, where he served in many posts including professor of psychology, admissions director, a year as coach of the football team, etc. Indeed, this past year President Roseman observed that he had served in so many positions but never as president. She rectified that by making him president for a day. I Googled to find an actual TV clip of the ceremony, with James making a short speech of appreciation. At 102, he was remarkably alert and expressed himself quite well.
OK, why was he a game changer for me? In 1943, I was finishing 11th grade in school in Mechanicsburg, PA, some 10 miles from Carlisle. My mother decided that I should go to college without graduating from high school, took the bus to Carlisle and pleaded my case to get into Dickinson. At Dickinson, who did she talk to? Ben James! He agreed to let me enter Dickinson that summer on probation. Off probation, I finished Dickinson in three years by going summers. I went to the University of Pittsburgh thanks to my mother hearing of a visit to Mechanicsburg by the dean of the graduate school at Pitt. She arranged for him to meet me and at the end of the meeting, I was going to Pitt. There, I met my wife-to-be, as well as the graduate student who would join Bell Labs and arrange the interview that resulted in my being hired at Bell Labs. Obviously, Ben James was a most important game changer. Had he said no to my mother, I would not have met my wife, there would be no Brian Trumbore or Harry Trumbore, editor and cartoonist of this Web site, respectively, and you would not be reading this column.
Well, let's consider some other game changers. Last month I said that I would probably get back to writing about my obsession, space-related stuff. I was delighted to read in a NASA press release that a true game changer, the Kepler mission, is back. You may remember that the Kepler spacecraft had fulfilled its mission to find new planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. In fact, Kepler has found over 4 thousand planetary candidates and about a thousand of these have been confirmed as planets! Sadly, one of the mechanical components of Kepler broke down and the mission was over. The mission involved detecting the dimming of a star's light when a planet transited between the star and Earth. To do this Kepler had to be pointed precisely and steadily on its targets. This stability was obtained by using "reaction wheels". When one of the reaction wheels failed it looked like the planet hunting was over. But the Kepler mission people weren't ready to give up and managed to come up with what they're calling the K2 mission. This involves using the pressure of sunlight as a "virtual" reaction wheel to help stabilize the spacecraft. Now, Kepler is back with its first new planet detected in the K2 mission. Bravo to the men and women of the Kepler team.
We've all heard of the next game changer, another space mission by the name of Rosetta. The journal Science has chosen Rosetta and its rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it's "Breakthrough of the Year". In an article in the December 19 issue of Science, Eric Hand makes the point that, while the lander Philae and its problems and achievements have gotten the most attention, the real breakthrough will come from Rosetta itself in an orbit around the comet. At times Rosetta will come as close as 6 miles away from the comet and its camera has the capability of distinguishing objects just centimeters apart. Hand also notes that Rosetta not only can see things in detail but it can also "sniff" the stuff coming off the comet. It has already detected expected water, methane and hydrogen and also the rarer compounds formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. There is speculation that life of Earth came about when comets delivered not only water but also various organic compounds that stimulated the creation of life. Unfortunately, the lander Philae was supposed to dig down deeper into the comet and analyze for more complex molecules but, bouncing around into a position where sunlight is blocked prevents charging of the batteries to power the drilling. Hopefully, when the comet gets closer to the sun Philae might wake up and accomplish its mission.
And let's not forget our most sophisticated rover, Curiosity. It is making news with the detection of organic chemistry on Mars. Curiosity made headlines when it found a sudden spike in methane in the atmosphere surrounding the rover. Methane could be a sign of life but the compound can arise from inorganic chemistry such as water reacting with certain types of rocks. Curiosity has also found organic chemicals in rocks as well as evidence of flowing water billions of years ago. Who knows, maybe there was life of some sort there a very long time ago. It should be very interesting to follow Curiosity as it climbs up Mount Sharp and analyzes the various layers as it's climbing.
When it comes to game changing, the people I most admire are the men and women who ride those rockets out into space. I have expressed skepticism that the Holy Grail of manned spaceflight, a roundtrip to Mars, will ever be achieved. However, NASA is starting serious planning to achieve such a mission, possibly in the 2030s. This year, 2015, three astronauts in particular, if all goes as planned, will be engaged in an experiment that will shed light on the possibility that a human can handle such an extended trip to another planet.
One of these men, Scott Kelly, graces the cover of the December 29 issue of Time magazine. In March, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to take off for the International Space Station, where the plan is for them to spend a whole year. The third astronaut will not be out there in orbit but will stay here on the ground. He is Mark Kelly, Scott Kelley's identical twin, who has been in space four times and is known to the public as the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, Congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt some years ago. As an identical twin, Mark will serve as an ideal "control" subject and will be subjected to all the same kinds of medical tests as his orbiting twin. We already know of various changes that weightlessness has produced in astronauts who've been in space for prolonged periods. These include weakening of muscles, bones, possibly the heart and changes in the eyeball due to shifting fluids, etc.
The Time magazine article by Jeffrey Kluger and another article by Charles Fishman in the January/February 2015 issue of The Atlantic provide very good pictures of the trials and tribulations of life on a space station. Some time ago, I believe I mentioned in a column that I had heard an interview with an astronaut on the radio and he described some of the problems he had adjusting to life back on terra firma after spending an extended period on the Space Station. One problem that has to be considered is that if a human gets to Mars after a year or so in space, will he or she be able to cope with gravity again and accomplish whatever tasks are assigned. One thing the rover Curiosity found was that the radiation it encountered on the way to Mars was stronger than expected, another factor that must be considered for a manned mission.
Oh, there's another thing. Scott Kelly has to go to Russia to hitch a ride with the Russian cosmonaut to the Space Station. Let's hope that political differences with Mr. Putin don't enter into the picture. One plus is that Kelly and Kornienko will have company, with scheduled rotations in and out of other astronauts during the year the two spend in space. On a real mission to Mars it sure would be nice if the space travelers were truly compatible. Well, whatever the outcome of the year in space, I would be highly surprised if the mission wasn't game changing, with some surprises resulting in having to alter specific items in the plans for a trip to Mars.
Have a happy new year and let's hope that some of the problems here on Earth are resolved or lessened in 2015. Hopefully, my next column will be posted on or about February 1.
Allen F. Bortrum
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