What are the benefits of space science to humanity?
This is one of the reasons why space science is so good as a science. It's because you only get one shot at it. So, there is a great deal of rigor in how to design, test, and come up with an experiment that you can actually do 100 million miles away without your intervention. Now, if you're part of a team that does that, then it skills you for all manner of other challenges where in fact, it's rather easier because what you're trying to do is only in the next room or in the next town. Building instruments, as we have done, that are able to work like this is invaluable for building instruments that you want to use on earth. Also it's not just for the people who actually do the space science, but if we can motivate people with space science into wanting to be space scientists (but in order to want to be a space scientist they'll have to learn science) then they can change their direction any time during that career progression. They could become, and they will become, it is undoubted, the hospital technicians that run the big pieces of equipment that diagnose you. (Doctors don't diagnose you anymore. It's instruments.) We need skilled people to run these instruments now; otherwise we get into long waiting lists. One of the things we were trying to do is make our instrument more rapid so that it would be a real-time instrument. Going out into the field in Africa, where you have loads of people with TB, if you can get them an instantaneous diagnosis, “You're at risk,” we pull you out of the line, “You're okay. You can go on your way.” If you can get that information that quick, you can imagine that you would see the benefits that you could get back here in Britain where you have to go to the doctor, get the appointment, have the doctor send you to the consultant, have the consultant refer you to the instrument, and have the instrument guy make the measurement and send the data back. How long have we now spent, during which time you were getting worse; you might be dying? If you could walk into somebody and they say [gesturing as if blowing into a tube], “I think you need treatment.” That's what it wants to be and that's the service people want.
