The Linguistic Culture-10 (Education and Science in the USA) (1157936), страница 4
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Alexander Seversky (1894-1974) was a designer of military aircraft.Among his ideas were the autopilot system disprove in the air. StepanTimoshenko (1878-1972)-scientist-metallurgist, the largest specialist in theworld of resistance materials. Nobel laureate economist Leontief, theinventor of television Zworykin, aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky, the greatophthalmologistElenaFedorovich,NinaFedorova-geneticist,academician of the National Academy of Sciences, physicist GeorgeGamow and many others.Being one of the few industrial countries not crashed by war, the US began tooccupy a position of unchallenged leadership in the post-war period. Althoughthe USA does not exercise a centralized science and technology policy, it isimpossible to say that there is absolutely no central monitoring of science andtechnology there.
The Federal government spends huge amounts of moneyon science. It is the main source of funding for fundamental research andthe biggest customer of military programs.Modern network of scientific organizations in the United States includesfederal financed research centers, state laboratories, private industrial firmsand non-profit organization.
The US government maintains its own laboratories(such as the Oak Bridge National Laboratory, the National Research Laboratoryor the Brookhaven National Laboratory). The governmental and militarycontracts also encourage the growth of science-oriented industries (e.g. BellLaboratories).Scientific organizations formally classified as “independent research institutes“but nicknamed as “Think Tanks” or “Brain Factories” were organized.
The mainaims of TT or BF, attached to the Federal government and its Agencies by annualcontracts, are long-range analysis and ideas necessary for policy-making, problemsolving and decision-making. The largest of the “Think tanks” is the RANDCorporation (Research and Development). RAND employs a lot of prominentscholars: mathematicians, chemists, physicists, social scientists, computer expertsand others. The most important researches carried out by RAND are connectedwith military tasksThanks to large-scale federal sponsorship the nature of academic research hasgone a very substantial change.The American Academy of sciences occupies at present a whole quadrangle atConstitution Avenue in Washington D.C. It has a great number of programs thatinclude the participation in international scientific undertakings, the developmentof relationships with other academies, cooperation in worldwide scientificproject.
Although it does not maintain direct research programs of its own, as, forexample, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy plays its leading role invarious advisory governmental committees and determining scientific policymatters in general. The Academy also established a number of its Councils andFoundations.The National Research Council. NRC was intended to strengthen and enlargethe role of the Academy in public affairs by adding to its staff a much larger bodyof American scientists and engineers and acting as the center for intersocietyscientific activities.The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for the progress of scienceacross astronomical, space, earth and ocean sciences; programs concerned withbiological and social sciences; investigations in engineering; encouraging thetraining of engineers at undergraduate and graduate levels through grants.
NSFsponsors work in mathematical sciences, computer research and chemistry;manages and funds the US activities in Antarctica. NSF also administers programsfor exchange with other countries of students, scholars and teachers.The American Physical Society (APS) pursues the mission “to advance anddiffuse 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 ofprominent American physicists awarded with different national and internationalprizes: Gorge Pullin working on gravitational waves, Kris Larsen, studyingastronomy and black holes, David Landau, the Director of the Center forSimulational Physics at the University of Georgia, Timothy Gay with his groupinvestigating polarized electron molecules (e.g.
DNA) and many others.The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 as an organizationof distinguished engineers, sharing with the National Academy its responsibilityfor advising the Federal government.A great part of Research and Development is done at the US universities,sponsoredmainlythroughcontractsystems.The organization of research in universities is carried out in two forms: onthe basis of grants and contracts.
Universities conduct research not only intheir laboratories, but also in laboratories belonging to different governmentdepartments. The largest Federal research centers are managed undercontracts of University administration. An example is the Laboratory LincolnattheMassachusettsInstituteoftechnology.Thanks to the cooperation of University research with industry there is therapid growth of scientific and industrial complexes. Among such complexesthe most important are: the Cambridge-Boston, San Francisco, LosAngeles, Princeton and Houston. Big science research is mainly funded notonly by the Federal government agencies and private business enterprises, butalso by some international organizations, e.g.
UNESCO. A considerable part of themoney comes from the Pentagon, which remains the biggest supporter of newtechnologies and developments.One of the most spectacular-and controversial- accomplishments of US federaltechnology became the harnessing of nuclear energy. The development of theatomic bomb and its use against Japan in 1945 initiated the Atomic Age, a time ofanxiety over weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, besides military aims, thesophisticated advantages of atomic energy led also to its peaceful uses ineconomy and medicine.Almost in tandem with the Atomic Age there has been running the Space Age.American scientist Robert Goddard was one of the first to experiment with rocketpropulsion systems even before the Second World War.
During the late 1940s,the US Department of Defense pursued upper atmospheric research as a meansof assuring American leadership in this field. A major step forward came whenPresident D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite to gatherscientific data about the Earth.In October 1957 the world’s first artificial satellite SPUTNIC 1 was launched in theSoviet Union. The space race began and in 1958 the Congress and the Presidentcreated the Federal Independent Agency National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) as “An Act to provide for research into problems of flightwithin and outside the Earth’s atmosphere and for other purposes”. NASA washeaded by Famous German rocket specialist Werner von Braun and absorbedinto itself the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and lots ofother organizations.
It keeps three major research laboratories and some smallertest facilities (with the annual budget of 100 million dollars and 8000 employees).Eventually NASA created other Centers and a number of affiliates including theSpace Center in Huston, where the forming and training of the space crews iscarried out.When in1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin returned to the earth hepronounced a well-known challenge: “Now let the other countries try to catchus”.
Several weeks later President Kennedy appealed to Congress: “I believe thisnation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moonand returning him safely to earth”.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 thehighlights of the program occurred on June 3, 1965, when Edward H. Whitebecame the first US astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.The main achievement of NASA during its early years involved the humanexploration of the Moon. In 1968, after 11 years of major challenges andtragedies – notably 1967 fire in an Apollo capsule, having taken the lives of threeastronauts, the Apollo project was launced under the auspices of the NASA.Apollo 7 carried three men around the earth, and then Apollo 8 carried threeothers around the moon. Apollo 9 and 10 tested the workability of the lunarmodule. On July 16, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landedon the moon in Apollo 11, leaving behind a plaque that read: “Here Men fromPlanet Earth First Set Foot upon the Moon.
We Came in Peace for All Mankind”.“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, said Neil Armstrongon returning to the earth.Since then, there have been other American flights to the moon. Displays at theNational Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. show the developments inspace travel. From the scientific point of view, Apollo 15 and Apollo 16expeditions were especially important, as they were aimed at learning moreabout the origin of the moon and the universe.
During the moon expeditionastronauts Scott and Irwin were able to leave the lunar Module to drive aroundover more than 27 kilometers of lunar ground and bring back a chunk of trulyancient lunar crust. After Apollo 17 the exploration of space shifted from theApollo lunar program to Skylab, the manned orbital space station.In 1975, NASA began to cooperate with the Soviet Union to achieve the firstinternational human spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP).
The twospacecrafts were launched within 7.5 hours, docked three hours after and 3American astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Vance Brand, Donald Slaytor and 2Soviet Cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valerii Kubasov met and shook hands inorbit. After that various US space shuttles docked with the Soviet Mir nine times,and 52 American astronauts as well as astronauts from Europe and Japan, visitedthe station for research and training.During the 1980s and the 1990s, the USA launched several spaceships toinvestigate distant planets: Jupiter, Venus and Mercury. The Viking probes landedon Mars and provided valuable information of the planet. Since 1975 there havebeen a number of space expeditions to Mars, Jupiter and its moon Europastimulating public interest in aerospace exploration. NASA’s Hubble SpaceTelescope launched in 1990 discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates.
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