Summary:
As you watch the video, think about:
Captions:
Jeff Stanger: We're familiar with Velcro and non-stick surfaces, what other examples of materials
Jeff: or technology's developed in the space program do we see everyday?
Dr Jack Bacon: Well, actually Velcro was not invented for space but it was one of those things that we adapted very quickly and promoted the use.
Jack: There are many things that were used in the space program, that were developed for the space program
Jack: that we did because we had to take the weight or the mass out of just about everything in the human existence.
Jack: The rocket can only carry so much mass into orbit, it burns a tremendous amount of chemical energy to get there
Jack: and so to the extent that you can make the things that you carry with you lighter, more performance per unit weight the better.
Jack: Now, you start with a vacuum in the space environment and you have to fill it with everything
Jack: that makes you a productive and happy human being. So, everything in our society, every piece of our world had to be carried on the spacecraft.
Jack: In order to make it all fit we had to take the weight out and so whether it was new materials
Jack: for structure or whether it was thermal insulation, better packaging, more efficient lights,
Jack: more reliable and lighter weight switches. All of that kind of technology once it was developed for the spacecraft
Jack: found it's way immediately into the public sector. So, while it had a very particular use
Jack: to make it lightweight on the spacecraft, everyone on the planet could benefit from it.
Summary:
Listen to Jack discuss the impact of rapid expansion of science and technology and consider:
Captions:
Jeff Stanger: Throughout history there's been a steady rise in the development of technology but occasionally there's been surges like fire,
Jeff: printing, the steam engine and so on. We're now experiencing a huge acceleration or surge,
Jeff: how do you think this is affecting society?
Dr Jack Bacon: Well, let me first talk about the cause a little bit then we'll talk about the affects.
Jack: The real surges have come when we've improved our ability to communicate ideas.
Jack: Remember what I said about how we are the species that adapts the environment to meet us
Jack: and that we do that through our technology, our understanding of the physical world and that
Jack: understanding is communicated in writing and the spoken word and to the extent that we've been able to
Jack: improve our transportation of people and ideas, certainly the introduction of writing itself or the printing press, each of those were
Jack: major jumps in the human ability to communicate ideas. We grow with our ideas and so today we have the advent of the Internet,
Jack: the Web, the global search of everything that's ever been put into a book is now imminently available to every child on the planet.
Jack: Our ability to find what we know is now instant and universal and I see that that will be as big a jump as we had when we
Jack: invented the printing press itself.
Jack: It changes the way and rate in which we can gather and share our information.
Jack: So, I think those are the big jumps, not just a particular invention but the flow of ideas.
Jack: Now, that flow of ideas is global now and what we used to have until the beginning of the industrial revolution was
Jack: completely isolated societies all growing in their own environment with their own resources and the technologies developed locally.
Jack: But since the exploration of the world really kicked into gear in the Renaissance the societies
Jack: have become more and more linked as of the start of the twentieth century in early 1900s there
Jack: were seven different economies in the world, every continent essentially had it's own and
Jack: they would rise and fall during the course of a generation.
Jack: These days the world economy is beating together, it rises and falls as a unified global economy.
Jack: It means that everyone in the planet is talking and working with others around the globe.
Jack: We've never seen a point like that in history when all humans cared about their mutual well-being since
Jack: the earliest tribes of mankind, a hundred thousand years ago. So, it's an interesting turn of events
Jack: that after spreading across the globe, we're finally back to where we consider ourselves
Jack: to be a global village just as Buckminster Fuller said back in the 1970s.
Summary:
Listen to Jack's research into nuclear fusion and think about:
Captions:
Jeff Stanger: One of the biggest challenges that faces us today is what might happen when fossil fuels run out . Can you tell us a bit about your research into nuclear fusion?
Dr Jack Bacon: Well, in my graduate work at the University of Rochester in upstate New York, I had chosen to work in the development of nuclear fusion as a possibility for creating new and improved rocket propulsion to take us farther out into space.
We've so far been limited in our production of energy on the planet by burning things and we always used to burn hydrocarbons, we always burned wood and peat.
We would basically take the biomass that grew on the planet and burn it.
When we discovered the coal and the liquid fossil fuels that allowed an unprecedented growth in the energy consumption of the planet and of course we create technologies, materials, we transport ourselves around by consuming energy and fossil fuels were an easy source
But of course they have pollution problems and they are finite, we will run out of them eventually.
Nuclear fusion is the process that runs the sun, it basically takes hydrogen atoms and turns them into helium atoms, it is done at enormous temperatures and pressures and it's those enormous temperatures and pressures that are difficult for us to achieve.
The only way we've reached them in the past is to create the fusion reaction right in the core of a traditional nuclear bomb or uranium bomb and that is the hydrogen bomb that we're all so scared of
There's been tremendous progress since the 1950s on finding ways to make a very small controlled reaction, certainly not bomb like more like a fireplace and the world is now building it's very first thermonuclear engineering reactor in Cadarache in the south of France in Provence.
I think there's six different nations that are working to build it together. My own involvement was on a different type of fusion, I worked in laser induced nuclear fusion, this was inconceivable when I was born because the laser had not yet been invented.
During my lifetime the laser came online, the idea of actually using it to implode small target pellets and make energy out of them was a possibility and it still is a possibility.
I've left the fusion game and have gone onto work in rockets and in building a spacecraft but there are many of my friends from my college days that are still pursuing it.
I believe that very soon we will be able to leave the fossil fuels behind for major power production, a fusion reactor is a very big thing and it will be like a major power plant.
We won't see them in your automobile and so we'll see a gradual fading of the use of liquid fuels, mostly still left for transportation, you'll start to see some substitution coming out of the biofuels
and we'll go back to where we were before the industrial revolution, just burning the grasses and the woods that grow around us and we'll get back into balance again.
Summary:
As you watch the video, think about:
Captions:
Jeff Stanger: So, Jack what might be the future of the world when all the fossil fuels are gone?
Dr Jack Bacon: We will still have fuels that we can get out of the biomass it will look very much like today's gas and oil.
I think you're going to see a lot more solar, fusion, there's a very high technology kind of thing and I think
that a lot of people don't particularly want to run long cables underground to their house if they could just
get their own energy supply right off their own land if we could get it cheaply with solar panels I think that
would be a preferable solution.
You know than on the highways there's more solar energy landing on the asphalt of the road bed that is
consumed by all the cars and trucks driving up and down that same asphalt all day.
So, we could conceivably just get rid of all of the petro chemicals used in transportation and just make a
solar powered transportation system but it would take a significant investment from the technologies we have today.
It's one of those problems that we'll leave for the upcoming generation but you can imagine what a world
changing thing it would be if one of the children watching this video were to say 'I think I know how I can
do that' or 'If I dedicate my life to it I could end up changing the world by the time I was fifty'.