- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
High hopes meet high frustration in this panel, whose participants collectively yearn for a new vision to guide our space program. Andrew Chaikin recommends a three-step self-help regimen to move the program forward: lowering the cost of access to space (the going rate is 10 thousand dollars per pound!); embracing “outside-the-box” ideas; and engaging in a national conversation about space. Supriya Chakrabarti predicts that in around 30 years, NASA will be deploying robotic terrestrial planet finders and using the moon for both tourism and commercial development like mining. This will be possible if in the short term space scientists look for low-cost launch options, which might include exploiting existing missile technology. Richard Binzel puts the odds of a civilization-threatening asteroid impact in the next 100 years at one in a million, but believes the odds are a whole lot better that human beings will be exploring asteroids in space. We’ve got a leg up since we’ve already sent robot reconnaissance to the moons of Jupiter. If we’re worried about catastrophic asteroid strikes, Binzel says, we should start taking incremental steps, such as putting nuclear reactors in space to power vehicles for long inter-planetary journeys.Related Videos
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Dava Newman
December 8, 2009
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Space Shuttle Discovery Mission to the International Space Station
Stephanie Wilson
September 14, 2006
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Looking Ahead to the Future of NASA
Charles Bolden
May 10, 2010
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Dava Newman SM '89, PhD '92
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems Director of Technology and Policy Program and MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Professor Dava Newman is currently the director of the Technology and Policy Program and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. She is professor of Aeronautics and the Astronautics and Engineering Systems Division as well as an affiliate faculty in the Harvard-MIT Health, Sciences and Technology Division. Professor Newman’s research contributes to the fundamental knowledge of human performance in extreme environments by interweaving biomechanics, human factors engineering, modeling, and design.
In the space environment, she quantifies astronaut motion and studies the subtle mechanisms underlying neuron-musculoskeletal adaptation, which are not easily studied on earth. She is currently developing her fourth space flight experiment, the MICRO-G experiment, which will fly on the International Space Station in a few years.
Newman is concurrently designing a revolutionary, advanced spacesuit for future exploration missions, the BioSuit System, which she targets for 2020. She has been honored with a NASA Manned Flight Awareness Team Award and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She is a recognized AIAA Distinguished Lecturer and recently received the National Aerospace Educator Award.
In addition to teaching classes in leadership and engineering at MIT, she has published and presented more than 200 papers in refereed journals and at conferences and other professional groups. She is a regular speaker and participant at engineering conferences given by groups such as the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and International Design for Extreme Environments Assembly (IDEEA) among many others. In 2001, she published her first book entitled Interactive Aerospace Engineering and Design.
Newman earned a Ph.D. from MIT in Aeronautics, Biomedicine and Engineering.Andrew Chaikin
Author, Air and Space: The National Air and Space Museum Story of Flight
Supriya Chakrabarti
Director, Center for Space Physics
Boston UniversityRichard Binzel
Professor, Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, MIT
- About the Host
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About the Host
Technology and Culture Forum
Video Player
Space Exploration: The Next 100 Years
- Moderator: Dava Newman SM '89, PhD '92
- Andrew Chaikin
Supriya Chakrabarti
Richard Binzel - October 23, 2003
- Running Time: 1:36:00
