Reflections on Science and War
I recently returned from a trip to DC with my family. On our way out of town, we chose to visit the Steven F. Udvar Hazy museum, part of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. As a sucker for anything about flight and space — and as the father of two young boys — this museum was an absolute hit.
The space is cavernous and home to a huge variety of flying objects. It houses everything from a Space Shuttle (Discovery), to a Concorde, to the B29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (the Enola Gay), to an XF–35 thrown, to a wide array of missiles and other weapons.
I found myself noting the difference between the Space Shuttle, weather satellites, and competition planes and the other military hardware. Some of these machines were built for the purpose of discovery — of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and experience. Others were built to destroy what we have built and kill our fellow man.
However, the reality is that the dichotomy between the two is not nearly so clear as that description would lead you to believe. The reality is that many of our scientific discoveries have come through military investments. Our scientific advancement has been inextricably linked with our investment in military equipment — and often with war.
That was a sobering realization that came to me when looking at Gemini capsules next to cruise missiles in the museum. They may seem to be from very different parts of our human experience — but they are more closely related than you might think.
Originally published at Jeff Keltner.
