THE US is not a country that likes to be beholden to anyone. Remember, we鈥檙e the ones that refuse to dip our flag to the Olympic flame. So when NASA representatives go to Capitol Hill these days to testify about how the International Space Station is doing while the shuttle fleet stays grounded, the words tend to sound like they are coming through tightly clenched jaws.
The Russians will see us through this difficult time, was the refrain at a hearing this month before the space subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Science.
No, we won鈥檛 need to subsidise them for providing that help. Yes, we are confident that the Russians鈥� unmanned rockets are up to the job. Yes, the Russians are just as concerned as we are about the safety of the crew of the space station 鈥� the latter said without irony, even in the face of an ongoing investigation into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.
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But Congress has never been wildly enthusiastic about a partnership with the Russians. The Clinton administration made the argument that collaboration would prevent Russian space hardware falling into the hands of unfriendly nations, something that seemed imminent immediately after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Congress went along, just about.
But from the tenor of the hearing, at least some members of Congress would like to put things back on a footing that the US is more comfortable with: we鈥檒l buy Russian services when we need them, but if we ever again have to rely on the Russians to keep our space programme going, it鈥檚 going to be too soon.
At least the space agency can assure Congress that we have managed to send an American-built space probe to Mars on board an American rocket.
WHAT with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to deal with, and threats from and to North Korea and Iran, global warming has not exactly been top of the Bush administration鈥檚 agenda. But the Department of Energy has been thinking about it, and especially about 鈥渃arbon sequestration鈥�. That鈥檚 the smart name for capturing carbon emissions from factories and autos and burying them somewhere, or planting trees to sponge CO2 out of the atmosphere. The effectiveness of sequestration is unproven, but it鈥檚 popular because it means that people do not have to conserve. It is rather like pharmaceuticals-based medicine: a pill that cures a problem makes more money for more people than a public health campaign that might change everyone鈥檚 behaviour and prevent the problem in the first place.
The Bush administration will soon convene a 鈥渉igh-level ministerial鈥� conference to discuss the wonderful potential of carbon sequestration. There is new enthusiasm since a recent paper in Science magazine (vol 300, p 1560) showed that the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past 20 years has 鈥� apparently 鈥� increased plant growth (net primary production) significantly. Defenders of carbon sequestration say that is evidence that fast-growing new forests, such as those in the north-eastern US, can suck up enough CO2 to help offset the admittedly massive quantities of carbon emissions the US produces.
But the authors of the plant study may disappoint Bush and his energy planners. The same processes that made plants grow faster, they say, also tend to alter soil bacteria and decomposition 鈥� changes that could actually raise emissions of CO2.
