"How to honour the Sabbath in space"

The Globe and Mail (5 Dec 06, page B7) printed this article written by Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem (through Reuters). I have no idea what his particular background, beliefs or motives are, but he wrote about the Institute for Science and Halacha, and all the solutions their scholars have found for observant Jews to use today's technology without disrespecting the Torah. Examples range from using disappearing ink for doctors to write prescriptions on the Sabbath (forbidden to make permanent markings) to doorbells that work on air pressure rather than electricity (forbidden to make a fire), to wrapping coffins in thick corrugated cardboard prior to takeoff so they can be considered "enclosed" and therefore "unable to spread impurity" during a flight (the Kohanim (members of Judaism's priestly caste) are banned by ritual law from coming in close proximity to the dead).

"The Torah was given to us 3,500 years ago in the desert," says 73-year-old Rabbi Levi Yitzchack Halperin, the institute's executive director and chief theological scholar. "Each generation takes up the challenge to apply it."
[...]
Rabbi Halperin dismisses any notion of theological cheating in the workarounds. "If there are loopholes in the Torah they are there for a reason," he says, stroking his flowing white beard.

Now I'm far from being a scholar, but I've always believed these religious laws originated as practical sense: basic rules to protect public health and thus ensure strength and survival, even under the harshest of conditions. So I can't help but wonder if Rabbi Halperin and others at the institute have somehow profoundly missed the point?
Another thing I can't help but wonder, aren't the Kohanim one of the groups in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings?