sci.research.careers

On Oct 4, 10:30 am, rick++ wrote:
> Today is the 50th anniversary of the space age.
> Government funding of science R&D got its start during WWII,
> continued afterwards, but was waning, until the shock of
> the sputnik launch woke things up and funding really increased.
> I guess this helped my interest in science because in the 60s and 70s
> this result in a whole seried of quality high school science textbooks
> and course materials. If you look at some of the pre-Sputnik
> textbooks,
> they are pretty staid and often outdated.

Pre-Sputnik textbooks are over 50 years old, so of course
they are outdated. ;-)

Seriously, having lived (and been educated) through them,
I give mixed grades to the educational "reforms" which
gained impetus from Sputnik.

Last night on "Wired Science" on PBS they did a
segment about how you can't get real chemistry
sets today like we could when I was gowing up. Too
much product liability. What is available says in
large letters on the box "No chemicals!" One guy
who sells real chemicals to science teachers and
amateur scientists was arrested by the Feds and
fined $30,000. The piece showed a bar chart of the
decline of American students majoring in chemistry,
and implied the reason was chemistry courses with
no even slight element of danger (=fun?) any more.
They didn't mention the job market or foreign students,
but I think they have a point, at least partly. The
other thing was the old chemistry sets had drawings
of serious looking people in lab coats on the front,
looking like they were fighting back ignorance on the
frontiers of knowledge with nothing but their minds
and a test tube, while today's boxes have wacky
looking cartoon figures that could be on Sponge Bob.

>
> Like many other government of investor big money programs,
> the large influx of money probably resulted in a "science bubble"
> with too many scientists chasing too few positions to this day.
> That caused a lot of pain, but at least "science" is still larger than
> it would have been without federal support. And the bubble burst
> was even worse in collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yep.

>
> My big sadness is that things did not turn out like 2001: Space
> Odyssey.
> Filmed two years before the first moon landing it painted an
> optimistic
> future for the space program, if you ignore the aliens and neurotic
> computers.
> All of that was acheiveable if Earth its act in order. Soon the US
> manned
> space program will go on a 5-7 year hiatus between the decommission of
> the shuttle
> and the implementation of Orion. Incidentally the Orion is being
> designed
> two miles from where I am typing this. Its kind of the the "elepahnt
> in the living
> room" sucking up huge technological talent in this area. The buzz is
> Orion
> is progressing pretty well, but as a big government bureaucracy it
> willl achieve
> its goals late.

As I was saying years before the TV commercial, "Where's
my flying car? I want my flying car!"

I've been toying with the idea of an autobiographical look
at the whole Sputnik inspired space and science race
from my point of view, . someone who was inspired
to go into science based on the "rah rah save us from
godless communism scientist as demigod" propaganda
of the late 50s and early 60s and didn't get the brass ring.
Last night on "The News Hour" they had the guy from
West Virginia who started building rockets when inspired
by Sputnik and went on to have a movie done about it
(and went on to work for NASA). I should have gotten my
book out in time for this anniversary, as a counterpoint
(and to take advantage of the publicity), but probably most
people would rather read about the good times of American
hegemony in science and technology (those that still read
at all) than the down side.

Cheers,
Russell