I continue to marvel at how isolated chemistry is from non-chemists.  Not in the physical sense, but as a cultural disconnect.  Case in point: Our local high school principal wants to make the high school a “magnet” school for math, physics, and engineering. What about chemistry? It seems doubtful that he considered chemistry and purposely left it out. More likely, it is not on his radar screen.

In the course of operating the local astronomical observatory, we volunteers have the opportunity to interact with the public and with aerospace people and some local space science organizations.  The Boulder-Denver area has an unusual concentration of astronomy, physics, and aerospace engineering organizations. 

A very large part of space exploration is concerned with building probes, getting them in space, and acquiring the data. Behind every mission is an army of space system specialists, scientists, post-docs, accountants, project managers, and a collection of congressional supporters.  Maintaining a space exploration program requires extensive infrastructure and a healthy flow of cash. 

Despite this massive effort at the exploration of our solar system, what is notably absent is the larger participation of chemists.  Television programming aimed at mass markets rarely gives more that a passing mention to chemical composition of the cosmos. Chemists are never interviewed in this regard, nor are their books on the shelves of bookstores.

How strange. 

Ostensibly, our interest in the universe resolves to a few basic questions:  How big is the universe? How much stuff is out there? What is the stuff doing? And, what is the stuff, anyway?

A large part of the first question- How big is the universe?– must necessarily must come to grips with the distribution of matter in the universe.  The second question- How much stuff is out there?– requires an understanding of cosmic abundances of the elements and how mass funnels into certain buckets in the periodic table. The third question- What is the stuff doing?– requires an understanding of how matter is partitioned between the stars and the spaces between. It also requires that we have an idea of what kind of chemical compositions are out there because that determines how we quantitate the matter. Finally, the last question- What is the stuff, anyway?–  Golly, isn’t that just chemistry?

I do not mean to imply that nothing is being done in regard to chemical questions in space science. Considerable effort is being made to perform chemical analysis on a couple of Mars landers and work has been accomplished therein.  The Tempel 1 impactor experiment performed recently is another good example.

This essay isn’t meant to highlight deficiencies in space science.  Space science people are pretty busy trying to keep the process steaming along.  But I think that chemists as a group have perhaps been less than anxious to address cosmochemical questions. Part of it has to do with the space science establishment. Space science is dominated by government funding and is managed to a large extent by engineers, physicists, and aerospace management. Putting a package into space is largely a physics and aerospace exercise that exploits defense related technology. Propellant people and materials science people are involved, but they do not manage the projects and the cash.

Nobody thinks about strapping chemists to a rocket and sending them into space, though I know few chemists I would like to send into space. Space exploration thus far has been an aerospace adventure and the science packages have been largely physics-oriented. The chemical community has little experience as a whole in participation in space missions. So, the disconnect is an artifact of how space exploration evolved.

My point is that in the education of chemists, there should be a bit more exposure to nuclear and geochemistries.  The present emphasis on life science supports the allied health field very well, but perhaps at the expense of other areas of chemical science.  It all boils down to the funding and training of professors and the consequent development of curriculum. Professors teach what they know. If they do not know cosmochemistry, geochemistry, or nuclear chemistry, it won’t get taught.

[Edited for content 9/2/07]