After the success of its Cassini probe, NASA is building another probe to launch into deep space. There’s only one challenge. Unlike the last one, which after twenty years was complete, this new probe is expected to last for a century. It is an impossibility that any of the scientists present at the launch will live to see the probe fulfill its mission.
Thinking ahead, NASA has hired a sociologist to ask the right kinds of questions. At what point should scientists pass down knowledge to the next generation of scientists? What information should they transfer? Will the next generation of scientists view the mission the same way they will with advances in technology, or will they want to do things differently?
Shabbat. Kashrut. Torah. Israel. We don’t need a sociologist to tell us how to pass down our heritage. It’s written in our DNA.
We look to the farthest reaches of the galaxy for inspiration. But if we probe ourselves, we can find everything that we needed was inside of us all along.
– Rabbi Dan Dorsch
