by Bill Nye
While we are thinking about redirecting NASA, I argue it would be a big improvement—though politically very difficult—if we were to convert the eight NASA centers into what are called federally funded research and development centers. That would make them quasi-independent, with the ability to fire people, which, I can tell you, can change things in a good way for everyone involved. That’s how the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, operated in conjunction with Caltech, works; it’s also how the Applied Physics Lab near Baltimore, operated by Johns Hopkins University, is set up. It’s no coincidence that those two labs have been responsible for some of NASA’s most celebrated recent missions, including the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers on Mars, Cassini probe at Saturn, Dawn at the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, MESSENGER at Mercury, Juno at Jupiter, and the New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
The Planetary Society cannot tell NASA or the president or Congress what to do, but we do hope that the Humans Orbiting Mars report will serve as a guideline. Space exploration is beautifully non-partisan; it has no agenda beyond discovery, and it excites everyone regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. The biggest obstacle is the perception that it is a luxury with little practical payoff, and I’m working on that. From time to time, several members of The Planetary Society staff and I go to Washington, DC. For a full day, we meet with members of Congress. We show them the value of space exploration for science, technology, and education. We explain our methodical plan. Above all, we expound upon the remarkable discoveries that await us on Mars and beyond. One evening, the Society hosted a gathering of members and supporters at the Mott House, one block from the US Capitol. Congressman Adam Schiff, whose district includes Caltech, joined us and addressed the group. The mood was supportive. We will see. We are doing everything we can to amplify our influence.
I also have to say that as much as I believe in the search for life on Mars, it is not the only place where we can embark on new boundary-pushing ventures like the ones that made NASA so inspirational in its early days. Earlier I mentioned LightSail-2, an experimental spacecraft pushed by the momentum of sunlight, that has been developed and built by The Planetary Society. I hope to fly it in late 2017 or early 2018. NASA has a couple of inspirational missions of its own in the works. I was recently at Cape Canaveral watching the launch of OSIRIS-REx. (It stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer . . . I mean, really?) In 2018 the probe will visit the asteroid Bennu and bring back samples. Bennu is made of some of the most primitive material in the solar system. It is also on an orbit that brings it very close to Earth at times. OSIRIS-REx will allow scientists to learn much more about the origins of our planet and the rest of the solar system. The mission will gather data and test technologies that will be essential if we ever have to defend our planet from an incoming asteroid. NASA is also in the planning stages for a mission to Europa, Jupiter’s giant ice-covered moon. Under its frozen crust, Europa has an ocean twice the volume of all the water on Earth. It’s another fascinating place to look for life. If all goes well, we could be doing just that in the mid-2020s. NASA can still innovate with the best of them when the bureaucracy gets out of the way and the visionaries are allowed to set, meet, and plan both short-term and long-term strategies.
All of these missions and mission concepts are important not just because they push the boundaries of engineering but because they push the bounds of imagination. They are the quintessential perspective-shifting nerd undertakings. I already mentioned the implications if we find life elsewhere in the universe. But what if we don’t? What if we keep looking and come up with nothing? That would be extraordinary, too. Either way, the answer will tell us something profound about our place in the universe: Are we part of a cosmic web of life, or are we something singular and unique? If it really seems like we are alone, that makes taking care of our planet even more poignant and profound.
I still hear the question all the time: How can we spend money on space exploration when there are so many problems here on the ground? I get it, but here’s the thing: The problems are all linked together. The engineers at GM and the ones at NASA are dealing with the same problems—not just the same conceptual issues of short-term versus long-term thinking, but a lot of the same technical problems of battery design, control systems, autonomous navigation, and so on. It’s no coincidence that Elon Musk’s two main companies are SpaceX and Tesla; he clearly sees the connection. If we can reach higher in the search for life on Mars, we can also reach higher in developing clean energy, fighting poverty, and reimagining travel here on Earth. Let’s go!
CHAPTER 23
Tragedy of the Traffic Accident
Like pretty much everybody in the world who drives, I’ve been in a few crashes over the years. So far, none have been serious, but every time something happens, I cannot help reflecting on the crazy inefficiency of the whole business. I pull out, watch for traffic, and someone rear-ends me; a guy runs a red light and smacks the left front end of my Volkswagen Beetle; or a car bangs into a taxicab I’m riding in. I drive close, obviously too close, to the guy in front of me. I almost avoid hitting his car, but I get rear-ended and pushed into his bumper, hard. All of these things have happened, and all of them make me think about how strange it is that we exert so much engineering effort to improve a system that fundamentally is so inefficient: all those cars on all those roads.
From one point of view, the setup we have now is vastly better than the one we had a couple of centuries ago. After all, we do move a great many of us a great many places at virtually any time of day and in almost any weather. Cars are much faster and more reliable than horses, and they don’t litter our roads with manure. A lot of thoughtful design and engineering work went into all these roads, vehicles, traffic signals, and so on. But from another point of view, the way we do things today is just crazy. Look how big a car is compared with its driver. Look how wide a road is compared with a sidewalk. And look at all those specially-trained drivers in charge of heavy equipment moving at high speeds. How much of today’s transportation infrastructure would be the way it is if we were starting from scratch? What if we took an everything-all-at-once, big-picture approach and allowed nerds to redesign it from the bottom of the pyramid up, focusing on safety and efficiency—how much better could they do? I have a feeling that they could do a lot better. Soon I think they will.
Our current transportation system has what civil engineers call a high “level of service” (ability to go place-to-place and door-to-door) using cars and trucks on roads—but only as long as we do not introduce too many vehicles, and as long as nothing goes wrong. The problem with too many vehicles is obvious: The need for adequate spacing between cars, the delays created when streams of traffic cross during merging and exiting on the highway, and the undesirable faster-slower waves introduced by vehicles moving at nonmatching speeds all conspire to slow traffic way down. And if you really want to screw things up on a street or highway, have a crash. They happen all the time, generally because fallible people like you and me are involved. Okay, no one like you is ever involved; you are an above-average driver who does a fantastic job even though every day you are surrounded by stupid people driving those other cars. I know, I know, it’s your burden to bear.
But the statistics are sobering. In 2015 alone, 38,300 people were killed on US roads. Another 4.4 million were injured. You probably know someone who was killed in a car crash. You almost certainly know someone injured in a crash; you may have been injured yourself. With those injuries come hospital bills, lawsuits, loss of productivity, and, above all, personal misery—all things better avoided. This is the unsurprising consequence of putting hundreds of millions of people at the helm of metal-and-glass rolling road missiles, with only limited restraints to keep them from doing something truly stupid (like driving drunk or tired, or simply not watching the road while adjusting the radio or fiddling with a phone). We all share in the costs and in the misery.
If you haven’t checked it out already, look on the Internet for the crash-test video of a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air running into a 2009 Chevy Malibu. (You can easily find it on YouTube.) It shows an “offset head-on” crash; that’s when the driver’s side of one car smashes into the driver’s side of the other car. Many of us yearn for the good ole days of what seemed like overbuilt, too-strong-to-fail cars. But when you watch the videos of the test, shot from several different angles and points of view, it’s shocking how much better the modern Malibu does at protecting the driver and passenger. By comparison, the Bel Air looks almost as if it had been designed to kill people. There was a lot of steel in the old cars, but it was not arranged especially well for a crash. It sent the crash energy right on through to the inside of the car. It was brawn without brains, you might say. Same brand, same basic type of midsize sedan, just built 50 years apart with a whole lot more of an understanding of how injuries occur.
All that great-looking sheet metal also wasn’t arranged very well for the number-one job of a car, which is, of course, carrying people. When you lift the hood of one of these old vehicles and look inside, you see a great deal of unused space. If you’re an average-size adult, and you were inclined to jump over the front grille, you could easily stand between the engine and the inside of either front fender. Some of that length is due to the excesses of 1950s styling, but much of it ended up there honestly. The total length of the car was largely determined by what was required to keep the crankshaft of the engine in line with the body of the car so that the twisting shaft could carry the power of the engine all the way to the rear of the car. Early on, cars were all rear-wheel-drive because it was a little complicated to have the front wheels do two jobs: the steering and the propelling. Nowadays, most passenger cars have front-wheel drive because the arrangement provides better traction and more room for the passengers inside. Better “packaging,” as we call it in the engineering biz.
A modern car (or truck or SUV) is the most complex device you own; it’s like your furnace, refrigerator, cell phone, and living room furniture all bundled together and put on wheels. There are only a few configurations that make everything in a car or truck work correctly, but there are near-endless configurations that would not work. You could accurately say the same about any modern industrial product. In design, chaos and disorder are easy to come by, while effective harmony demands an enormous amount of effort. That’s why you should respect the good designs around you. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to arrange all the bits so that the thing—be it a city, a car, or a cafeteria tray—comes together to fulfill its purpose effectively. A good design requires a combination of broad insight and tightly focused attention to detail.
The everything-all-at-once approach—paying attention to impact forces, the power delivery from the engine, the exact shape and placement of the seats, and a thousand other details—requires a more complicated solution than arranging the engine and the rear wheels in pretty much a straight line. That was then. But today the added complexity of modern vehicles pays off with a vehicle that works and performs better. That approach has improved the assembly process, as well. And there’s no need to restrict this insight to automotive design. The more details engineers take into account, the better the final outcome. Too many people overlook the vast practical payoff from decades of nerdy improvements in science and technology: Almost every product you use is designed better today than it was in the past. This is true of refrigerators, washing machines, ski jackets, bicycles, and windmills. Put a half-century-old vacuum cleaner next to a modern unit, and think about which one you’d rather clean your house with. We’ve progressed a lot since that 1959 Bel Air, in almost every way.
As it happens, my parents’ 1963 Chevy Bel Air (the white one with the red interior that so charmed my sister and me) was not that different from the one in the crash video. One time, my father slammed on the brakes and my face smashed into the steering wheel. This was back before safety belts were standard; my engineering-minded father had added them, but not in the middle of the front bench seat, where I was perched. This was also, I should note, before my father invented his THANKS sign to signal other drivers. The impact changed the shape of the cartilage in my nose, and I couldn’t smell so well until I got my nose professionally straightened after another trauma years later while I was playing ultimate flying disc (Frisbee). So I can tell you firsthand, those old cars were pretty brutal. Without a half-century of nerd engineering, they still would be. New designs needed to be only good enough in terms of safety. The marketing teams in the pyramid of design did their jobs well, a little too well, and buyers accepted the old safety compromises . . . for a while.
What really pushed the automobile forward was regulation. Much as Rachel Carson helped galvanize the environmental movement that showed up at the first Earth Day, Ralph Nader and a few other activists helped focus a public demand for better, less crash-prone cars. Nader has since gone on to become a bit of an extremist. But when he criticized the Chevy Corvair, people listened and agreed that we could do a lot better with a few laws to protect us all from carelessly engineered products. People asked for it, legislators demanded it, and the engineers were set loose to develop their better solutions. That’s how we got our modern cars with crumple zones in the side and back as well as the front. The nerds looked at all of the constraints and came up with a good solution: Let the car crumple in a crash. In a collision, a modern car is often sent to the scrapyard, but car crashes are a lot less deadly as a result. A car that looks like an accordion after a serious accident is a sign that some engineers you’ll probably never meet did their jobs very well indeed. It’s been a long road to get to our current level of design refinement because designing a car is complicated, but that’s only part of the story. The auto industry has also been held back by the kind of halfway thinking I encountered in my meeting with the GM engineers. (We still don’t have an electric small truck, by the way.) The point is that we change the world when we want to. When we don’t press for change, the results can be deadly. And in spite of all the progress, we have a long way to go.
Even as I celebrate the fantastic (phantastic) physics involved in keeping us from killing ourselves with our modern cars and SUVs, I cannot help acknowledging that all the fixes I’ve described so far are wasteful. Deciding as a society that we need cars that can crumple effectively means accepting ahead of time that we’re going to be crashing and crumpling a lot of cars. That’s accepting car crashes as a permanent constraint of the current system and the existing solutions. Now we (nerds, regulators, customers, all of us) need to take a look at that constraint to figure out a better way—not just to mitigate the danger of the constraint but to eradicate it completely. A better way to manage our transportation system a
lready exists, in my opinion, and we all seem ready to accept it.
I’m talking, if you haven’t guessed, about self-driving cars. It’s an everything-all-at-once process, where you have to take the really big view to see the full implications and possibilities. Safety is the obvious benefit. At long last, we are about to really get on with it—stop merely trying to minimize crashes and start doing a lot better at preventing them entirely. Right now, flying is around 200,000 times safer than driving. Try this little thought experiment. You drive from Portland, Oregon, to Orlando, Florida, and back, let’s say 10 times. It will take you a couple of months. Meanwhile, I fly round-trip from Portland to Orlando 10 times. Who do you think is more likely to get killed or injured? It’s you, the driver. The planes themselves and the air traffic control system are way safer, hands down. So it will be with the self-driving cars of the future. Car crashes will still happen, but they will be rare, and they will happen in vehicles that are built to protect us even better than they do today. Engineers will keep working to improve safety every place they can. I’ll bet that future generations will listen to old folks’ stories about car crashes with head-shaking, decades-removed disbelief.
Once we have ultrasafe personal vehicles that don’t require personal control, we will be able to start exploring novel ways to get around. You might not be a big fan of taking a public bus right now; maybe the route and schedule aren’t right or there aren’t enough seats. But what if you could summon a personal vehicle that would instantly show up at your door and take you to your exact destination? Would you mind so much if you were sharing that ride with a few others—especially if you could relax, work on your laptop, or play games on your mobile phone as you go? In this way, ride-sharing could catch on in a way it never has before. Remote locations that are not convenient to any kind of public transit service could become accessible by a summoned autonomous car. Even along well-traveled paths like Washington, DC –New York–Boston, you might find it faster and more pleasant to relax in a quiet, electric self-driving vehicle than to haul yourself to the airport and hop aboard an airplane or make your way to the Amtrak station. It will certainly be better than piloting your own car along the crowded lanes of I-95, and more efficient, too.