Duck Dodgers, to space and beyond . . .

Prickly City by Scott Stantis

Father Orthoduck can remember being a duckling and watching anxiously as now-Senator John Glenn orbited the Earth in Friendship 7 on 20 February 1962. At that point Father Orthoduck was still an immigrant duckling having arrived in the USA only 13 months before. He can remember the great wonder he felt when he watched those grainy black and white pictures and wondered if John Glenn would land safely. Like all other ducklings, he wanted to be an astroduck and thought he wanted to be an Air Force officer when he grew up. Well, Father Orthoduck ended up being a sky pilot instead of an astroduck, but he catches himself looking up at the sky every so often, and avidly reading science fiction to this day.

As readers of this page know, Father Orthoduck is also quite socially progressive in some areas. But, one of his sadnesses is the false dichotomy that sprung up between social work and basic scientific/advanced studies. Some of the advocates of caring for the poor, the widow, and the orphan so concentrated on those, and only those, issues that they refused to see the beneficial results of funding scientific studies whose outcomes might not be predictable. They continue to try to turn science into an enterprise rather than an investigation. They forget that if the outcomes are predictable, then we are not doing science, we are simply doing technological studies. And they forgot the real benefits that have come from investigative studies into basic sciences and daring studies, such as the space launches. New techniques in microminituarization, new techniques in medical treatment, new techniques in many areas that we now take for granted came as a result of the studies necessary to put a person into space.

And, so, we now get these “studies” funded by our government granting agencies that are absolutely ridiculous. Why are they so? Well, because studies cannot get approved unless they can write up ahead of time a prognosis of what the outcome might be. A person applying for a grant cannot say that he/she does not know what they expect to find. That grant would be immediately rejected. And, so, we get these studies that are legitimately lampooned by the media and watchdog groups because they are studying what all of us already know. And, this comes out of our mistaken drive for utilitarianism, our insistence that if it does not have utility, if it is not immediately useful, then it is not worth funding. After all, how can we spend money that is needed for the “poor.”

On the other side are those who argue that all science ought to be funded by private enterprise. Well, uhm, actually that group insists that everything ought to be funded by private enterprise if at all possible. But, that group is also mistaken. Many studies can indeed be funded privately. But, the reality is that the type of study that is funded privately tends to have a limited reach. For instance, pharmaceutical companies do fund many studies into applicable drugs, but they are not going to fund studies for putting another person into space. And, some of our studies have become so intricate that they require massive funding of the type that only a government collaboration can give. For instance, some of the physics studies that require massive colliders cannot be purely privately funded. It is basic research that may give benefits, such as fusion reactors, in the future, but may never give purely practical benefits. But, we cannot know before we do the research. Nevertheless, their apriori opposition to government funding has also hurt scientific investigations and our space program.

And, so, Father Orthoduck hopes that the day will come when we look upwards again, and return to the moon. Not just for the sake of returning to the moon, but for the sake of returning to an ideal of growing in the knowledge of this universe which our God has made. Father Orthoduck cannot resist finishing by saying, “Live long and prosper.”