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Chapter VI. American Science
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Part I.
Read and translate the following words and word combinations:
To monitor To encourage the acquisition of knowledge
Scientific establishments To lag behind – отставать
Hands-on scientific instruction Challenges of World War I
To give a mighty boost Scientific undertakings
To destine To entail
To diffuse To pursue
Public outreach To follow the suit
Intact Under the auspices [ ‘o: spisэs]
A chunk To regain momentum
To pave the way To be second to none
Similar to education, the USA does not exercise a centralized science and technology policy. At the same time it is impossible to say that there is absolutely no central monitoring of science and technology here. The US scientific establishments have always been serious responses to society’s practical needs. Since America was rich in natural resources but relatively poor in facilities and personnel for education and research, an independent establishment with close ties to the Federal Government was needed to master resources for the guidance of the nation’s scientific community. When in the late 18PthP and the early 19PthP centuries new ideas and technology demanded new approaches and teamwork, the American Association for the Advancement of Science was founded (1848.
In 1863 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS ) was organized. The creation of the Academy originated from the immediate practical problems of the time of the Civil War. It also reflected the fact that at that time the US was beginning to emerge as a technological country. 0. The Academy created departments and bureaus related to scientific and technological problems (the Geological Survey, the National Bureau of Standards, the US Weather Bureau, the Patent Office, etc. ). The need for hands-on scientific instruction led to the organization of scientific schools and centers of learning and research (at Yale and Harvard Universities), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M. I. T. 1861).
American political leaders’ welcomed the scientists from other countries. Among them the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell from Scotland, a developer of alternating-current electrical systems Charles Steinmetz from Germany, the creator of television camera Vladimir Zworykin. The serb Nikola Tesla went to the U. S. in 1884, where he invented brushless electrical motor based on rotating magnetic fields.
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. The challenges of World War I had a far-reaching effect on the development of science in the USA. During the war and after it American universities produced the great number of well-trained scientists and engineers. With the introduction of graduate schools into American education scientific research began to play a major role in many universities. American industry began to have a scientific foundation; several of the larger industries established research laboratories of international level. The Federal Government also developed a number of scientific agencies. Besides during World War I and especially during World War II a lot of leading European scientists, many of them of Jewish descent, fled to America from the regimes of their countries. One of the first to do so was Albert Einstein. After him a good percentage of Germany’s theoretical physics community left for the US as well This circumstance gave American science in general and the American academy in particular a mighty boost.
In the post-war era the US began to occupy a position of unchallenged leadership, being one of the few industrial countries not ravaged by war. By the mid-1950s the research facilities in the US were second to none, and scientists were drawn to the US for this reason alone. This led to the situation that since 1950, Americans have won approximately half of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences
One of the most spectacular-and controversial- accomplishments of US technology became the harnessing of nuclear energy. The concepts that led to the splitting of atom had been developed by scientists of many countries before, but the conversion of these ideas into reality of nuclear fission was accomplished in the US in the 1940s. The development of the atomic bomb and its use against Japan in 1945 initiated the Atomic Age, a time of anxiety over weapons of mass destruction that lasted through the Cold War.
The sophisticated advantages of atomic energy led also to its peaceful uses in economy and medicine. The first US commercial nuclear power plant of atomic energy started operating in Illinois in 1956.
The US government gives huge investments to the science sector, which. attract scientists from all over the world to work there. The increasing number of American Nobel Prize winners (so far over 781) shows that the level of science and the organization of science management in the US has become very high.. It is also worth mentioning that among the American Nobel Prize winners there are not a few Russian former compatriots (over 60), who moved to the USA during different periods of time and under different circumstances. Undoubtedly, they have left a considerable “Russian” trace both in American and the world science.
Since World War II thanks to large-scale federal sponsorship the nature of academic research has gone a very substantial change in the humanities and social sciences as well
The increased expenditure on scientific research and education propelled the United States to the forefront of the international scientific community. The American Academy of sciences (NAS), which occupies at present a whole quadrangle at Constitution Avenue in Washington D. C., has a great number of programs that include the participation in international scientific undertakings, the development of working relationships with other academies, cooperation in worldwide scientific project. Although it does not maintain direct research programs of its own, as, for example, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy plays its leading role in various advisory governmental committees and determining scientific policy matters in general. The Academy also established a number of its Councils and Foundations.
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The National Research Council. NRC was intended to strengthen and enlarge the role of the Academy in public affairs by adding to its staff a much larger body representing a very wide cross-section of American scientists and engineers and acting at the same time as the center for intersociety scientific activities.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for the progress of science across all disciplines: astronomical, space, earth and ocean sciences; programs concerned with biological and social sciences; investigations in engineering; encouraging the training of engineers at undergraduate and graduate levels through grants. NSF sponsors work in mathematical sciences, computer research and chemistry; manages and funds the US activities in Antarctica. NSF also administers programs for exchange with other countries of students, scholars and teachers.
The American Physical Society (APS) pursues the mission “to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics”, to be active in public and governmental affairs, and in the international physics community. There is a long list of the names of prominent American physicists awarded with different national and international prizes: Gorge Pullin working on gravitational waves, Kris Larsen, studying astronomy and black holes, David Landau, the Director of the Center for Simulational Physics at the University of Georgia, Timothy Gay with his group investigating polarized electron scattering chiral molecules (e. g. DNA) and many others.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 as an organization of distinguished engineers, sharing with the National Academy its responsibility for advising the Federal government.
There are also in the USA scientific organizations formally classified as “independent research institutes “ but nicknamed as “T hink Tanks ” or “ Brain Factories ”. The main aims of TT or BF, attached to the Federal. government and its Agencies by annual contracts, are not traditional research and development but long-range thinking and producing analysis ideas necessary for policy-making, problem solving and decision-making. The largest of the “think tanks” is the RAND Corporation (Research and Development). RAND employs a lot of prominent scholars: mathematicians, chemists, physicists, social scientists, computer experts and others. The most important researches carried out by RAND are connected with military tasks.
A great part of Research and Development is done at the US universities, oriented toward not only instructing undergraduates but also toward research, sponsored mainly through contract systems. At present the US universities are involved in two kinds of research.
Department research is carried out by the faculty in the traditional academic pattern. It is supervised by a professor, assisted by graduate students and technicians. Such research is not budgeted by outside sources and referred to “ as little science ”.
Big science research is mainly funded by outside sources: the Federal government agencies, NSF, private business enterprises, different non-profit institutions and even international agencies, e. g. UNESCO. Most of the research at the best private universities such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Johns Hopkins University and others is done by the grantees of above mentioned bodies. As one of the means of aiding the progress of science and engineering they offer three-year graduate Fellowships to the brightest graduates and students. Among those who have received this Fellowship are 9 Nobel Prize Winners, many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Space research. A considerable part of the money comes from the Pentagon, which remains the biggest supporter of new technologies and developments. The US government also maintains its own laboratories (such as the Oak Bridge National Laboratory, the National Research Laboratory or the Brookhaven National Laboratory ) run by government workers but dependent on universities as a source of permanent research personnel. The governmental and military contracts also encourage the growth of science-oriented industries nearby ( e. g. Bell Laboratories).
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Almost in tandem with the Atomic Age there has been running t he Space Age. American scientist Robert Goddard was one of the first to experiment with rocket propulsion systems in the 30s.. Over next 10 years the interest in rocketry increased in the US, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union. During the late 1940s, the US Department of Defense pursued upper atmospheric research as a means of assuring American leadership in this field. A major step forward came when President D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year for 1957 to gather scientific data about the Earth.
The Soviet Union quickly followed the suit, launching in October 1957 the world’s first artificial satellite SPUTNIC 1. The space race began and in October, 1958 the Congress and the President created the Federal Independent Agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as “ An Act to provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere and for other purposes ”. NASA was headed by Famous German rocket specialist Werner von Braun and absorbed into itself the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and lots of other organizations. It keeps three major research laboratories and some smaller test facilities (with the annual budget of 100 million dollars and 8000 employees). Eventually NASA created other Centers and a number of affiliates including the Space Center in Huston, where the forming and training of the space crews is carried out.
On April 12th, 1961 Russian cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. After returning to the earth he pronounced a well-known challenge: “Now let the other countries try to catch us”. Several weeks later President Kennedy appealed to Congress: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth”. Within very short time after that NASA began to conduct space missions. On May 5th, 1961 Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American to fly into space, and on February 20th, 1962 John H. Glenn became the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth. One of the highlights of the program occurred during Gemini 4, on June 3, 1965, when Edward H. White became the first US astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.
The main achievement of NASA during its early years involved the human exploration of the Moon Project Apollo. In 1968, after 11 years of major challenges and tragedies – notably 1967 fire in an Apollo capsule, having taken the lives of three astronauts, the Apollo project under the auspices of the NASA was under way. Apollo 7 carried three men around the earth, and then Apollo 8 carried three others around the moon. Apollo 9 and 10 tested the workability of the lunar module. On July 16, 1969, the spacecraft Apollo 11 was ready for launching. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were transferred to the lunar module, the Eagle, and landed on the moon, leaving behind a plaque that read “ Here Men from Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon. July 1969 A. D. We Came in Peace for All Mankind”. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, said Neil Armstrong as he first scuffed the surface of the moon with his foot on July the 20PthP.
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Since then, there have been other American flights to the moon. . Displays at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. show the developments in space travel. From the scientific point of view, Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 expeditions were especially important., as they were aimed at learning more about the origin of the moon and the universe. During the moon expedition astronauts Scott and Irwin were able to leave the lunar Module to drive around over more than 27 kilometers of lunar ground and bring back a chunk of truly ancient lunar crust. After Apollo 17 the exploration of space shifted from the Apollo lunar program to Skylab, the manned orbital space station. In 1975, NASA cooperated with the Soviet Union to achieve the first international human spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The two spacecrafts were launched within 7. 5 hours, docked three hours after and. 3 American astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Vance Brand, Donald Slaytor and 2 Soviet Cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valerii Kubasov met and shook hands in orbit. After that various US space shuttles docked with the Mir nine times, and 52 American astronauts as well as astronauts from Europe and Japan, visited the station for research and training.
During the 1980s and the 1990s, the USA launched several spaceships to investigate distant planets. Pioneer X passed Jupiter; Mariner X became the first probe to fly to Venus and Mercury. The Viking probes landed on Mars and provided valuable information of the planet.
By the 1980s NASA had created the nation’ space transportation system of the future – the Space Shuttle, that was a reusable manned spacecraft taking off like a rocket and landing like an airplane. After the number of successful missions of shuttle Columbia, the third in NASA’s shuttle program Discovery went into operation.
Although the risks of the space flights were decreasing, and space flights have become to seem almost routine one cannot insure their absolute safety. The tragic day in the space program was on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after liftoff due to the leak of one of two Solid Rocket Boosters. All seven members of the crew including a woman astronaut were killed. On the First of February 2003 American Space Shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas as it descended for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida following a 16-day flight. All its seven crewmembers died. The Shuttle program was grounded for over two years, while NASA and its contractors worked to redesign the Boosters and increase safety and regain the momentum lost due to the Challenger disaster.
In spite of the tragedies and loss of the human lives NASA has remained a leading force in space scientific research. Since 1975 there have been a number of space expeditions to Mars, Jupiter and its moon Europa stimulating public interest in aerospace exploration. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates. Using innovative technologies, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars on July 4th, 1997 and explored the surface of the planet with its miniature rover. The Mars Pathfinder mission was a scientific success, watched by many via the Internet. This success was followed in January 2004 to much scientific and popular acclaim by the landing of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
John Mather and George Smoot’s Nobel Prize awards of 2006 marked the inception of cosmology as a precise science and manifested the work of more than 1, 000 researchers, engineers and other participants for the experimental measurements that revealed the blackbody form of the microwave background radiation measured by satellite launched by NASA in 1989.
With the end of the cold war the technical cooperation between Russian and U. S. scientists aerospace companies increased. In the 1980-s the USA and Russia set up five united workgroups for coordination of cooperated actions in such fields as biology, astrophysics, solar physics and interplant researches. In the 1990-s both countries continued cooperation and spread it to aeronautics and piloted space flights. From 1995 to 1998 the joint programs Mir-Shuttle and Mir-NASA were carried on. The USA-Russian Space cooperation was supervised by joint American-Russian workgroup ESJWG, including the representatives of different governmental bodies, universities and institutions of the USA and Russia. The ILS (International Launch Services ) joint venture was formed in 1995 and became another example of cooperation between the two countries One of the notable events in bilateral space work was the establishment of the Sea Launch International consortium, of which 40% was owned by Boeing Commercial Space Co. and 25 % by Russian Energiya Rocket Space Corp. The achieved experience paved the way for the creation of another International project ISS with the participation of11 countries. The permanent work of ISS began in November2000. In May 2000 the first launch of the U. S. rocket-carrier Atlas 111, equipped with a Russian RD-180 engine was conducted. .
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