The Practical Values of Space Exploration Part 9

Ambitious, advanced, sophisticated s.p.a.ce exploration in the future is almost certain to require a high degree of international cooperation and perhaps even a pooling of resources and funds to some degree. Already America has found it expedient, in some cases mandatory, to depend on facilities in other countries for her ventures into s.p.a.ce. A good example is the close cooperation between the United States and tracking bases located in Canada, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere. An even better one is the important part played in U.S. efforts by England's giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. Most of our launches are followed by this equipment and much of the best scientific information gained from it. In the case of Pioneer V, Jodrell Bank was essential to keep in touch with the satellite at the longer distances and, moreover, was actually required to separate the fourth stage of the launch vehicle and direct the payload toward its Venus...o...b..t.

Mutual need and cooperation thus fostered by s.p.a.ce exploration can be expected to siphon off some of the political tensions of the future, especially as more and more nations become interested in s.p.a.ce and inaugurate complex programs of their own.

LIMITATIONS ON s.p.a.cE RESEARCH

There are some who are convinced that the exploration of s.p.a.ce is rigidly limited and that the landing of men on extraterrestrial bodies other than the Moon is quite improbable. They are sure that extensive travel outside the solar system is impossible.

Admittedly, the problems of such travel are enormous. But are they incapable of solution?

Twenty-six million miles to Venus, 49 million miles to Mars, 3,680 million miles from the Sun to Pluto at the outer edge of the solar system. The nearest of the stars is 25 million, million miles away, and travel to it at 10 miles per second would require 80,000 years.

Is the travel of man to the stars a futile dream? Each generation of man builds on the shoulders of the past. The exploration of s.p.a.ce has begun; who now can set limits to its future accomplishments?[78]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 15.--Need for international cooperation in the U.S. s.p.a.ce program is ill.u.s.trated by this map showing the areas from which help must be procured for projects already planned or underway.]

That is the thought of one of the Nation's most expert s.p.a.ce scientists.

_"Who now can set limits * * * ?"_

It seems to mesh curiously well with one of the most interesting phenomena of our day--the emergence of a breed of engineers, technicians, teachers, and scientists who do not recognize limits and who refuse to concede that something cannot be so because it fails to fit conventional patterns or conform to the physical laws of the universe as we now know them. Of this there is growing evidence.

For many years it has been an accepted "fact," for instance, that the Moon is a dead world with no life upon it. The suggestion made by the great 16th century mathematician, Johannes Kepler, that some life might exist on the Moon was debunked into silence long since. Yet today a fellow of the British Royal Astronomical Society writes that the first men to arrive on the Moon may find not only plant life but possibly animal life. "The fact that terrestrial organisms may be unable to survive in the surroundings of another planet is by itself no more significant than that fishes and other marine animals die when exposed to the air. From their point of view air is uninhabitable because they have failed to equip themselves with lungs."[79] And he adds that his surmise "leaves out of account the possibilities of the Moon's underground world, which are incalculable, for there water, the vital gases, congenial temperatures, and increased pressures will all be present. Only sunlight is absent."

Then there is Project Ozma, the search for life on other planets or in other star systems, which began in April 1960 at Green Bank, W. Va. It is being undertaken by the National Radio-Astronomy Observatory and consists of carefully directed listening by radio-telescope for signs of intelligent broadcasts originating outside Earth.

At Stanford University another astronomer is concentrating the efforts of part of his laboratory on behalf of a similar idea. The chances are, he believes, "that the superior races of other planets in other galaxies have already developed a communications network among themselves, and have entered a joint program to scan all the other solar systems looking for signs of awakening civilization among the backward planets. Each of the advanced communities might pick as its probe a.s.signment a single other solar system--and one such probe may well be circling our Sun right now on a routine check for life."[80] Unexplained delayed echoes of earthly radio transmissions received in the past, it is thought, could be evidence of such a scheme.

Are goings-on such as these nonsense?

Here is the answer given by one hard-headed science writer:

Centuries may pa.s.s before there is any sign of intelligence outside the Earth. But the advantages of communication with another civilization that has survived our present dilemmas are far too great to permit the experiment to be abandoned.[81]

The results of recent and more orthodox experiments have already done much to shake the complacency of scientists in regard to their concepts of s.p.a.ce. Investigations have disclosed that, far from being a complete vacuum, s.p.a.ce is relatively full of matter and energy. Hydrogen gas, radiation belts, cosmic particles, solar disturbances of unknown nature, micrometeorites--and, from Pioneer V, proof of a 5-million ampere electromagnetic ring centered about 40,000 miles away.[82] The director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory in Cambridge, Ma.s.s.,[83] has said that more and more startling astrophysical information was gathered during the first few weeks of the s.p.a.ce age than had been acc.u.mulated in the preceding century.

In brief, it is becoming the vogue in science to refuse to say "impossible" to anything. On the contrary, the watchword for tomorrow is shaping up as "take _nothing_ for granted."

FUNDAMENTAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LIFE

Everything learned from s.p.a.ce exploration thus far indicates that the knowledge lying in wait for those who manage to observe the universe from outside Earth's atmosphere will be far grander than anything uncovered to date.

We may finally learn the origin of our universe and the method of its functioning. A good part of this knowledge may be no farther away than the next 3 to 5 years. Satellite telescopes now under construction are expected to elicit far more information than even the 200-inch giant at Mount Palomar. One such observatory satellite, to be launched in 1963 or before, "will permit a telescope of about 10 feet in length to point at heavenly bodies within a tenth of a second of arc for periods up to an hour. Present plans call for an orbit between 400 and 500 miles, as a lifetime of at least 6 months is required to observe the entire celestial field."[84]

Perhaps, and sooner than we think, we shall find a clue to the destiny of all intelligent life.

Perhaps the theory advanced by a noted eastern astronomer will turn out to be true--that biological evolution on the habitable planets of the universe may be the result of contamination left by s.p.a.ce travelers arriving from (and leaving for) other worlds. In other words, the fruition of life on the various planets of the millions of solar systems might be the product of a wandering group of astronautic Johnny Appleseeds who leave the grains of life behind them. "s.p.a.ce travel between galaxies has to be possible for this, but of course this needs to be only quite a rare event. In a time of about 3.3 billion years, the most advanced form of life occurring in a galaxy must be able to reach a neighboring one."[85]

The notion seems fantastic.

But when we look clear to the end of Earth's road (and a.s.suming the astrophysicists are right in their theories about the evolution and ultimate death of our solar system) we know that Earth will one day become uninhabitable. Life on Earth must then perish or move elsewhere.

If we further a.s.sume that mankind will not want to die with his planet and if we acknowledge that other worlds may have been through this entire cycle in eons past--perhaps the notion is not so unreasonable after all.

Whatever the truth is on this score, s.p.a.ce exploration will certainly be of "practical" value to our descendants when that dim, far-off day arrives.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL VALUES

Long before the arrival of that millennium, however, the knowledge and understanding awaiting us through the medium of s.p.a.ce exploration is certain to have profound effects on the human race psychologically and spiritually.

It already has had effects on humans of all ages.

Adults, who are paying the taxes to support the s.p.a.ce exploration program and reaping its practical values, are also thinking of themselves, their country, and their world in broader, more knowledgeable terms.

In a sense, children may be even more deeply involved.

There is a special group which may play a useful role in spreading the new values growing from the exploration of s.p.a.ce, and this is the children who play at s.p.a.ceman today. Whether or not they take this interest with them beyond childhood remains to be seen.

However, the unique fact in the present situation is that never before have children rehea.r.s.ed a role that really will not exist until they are adults. To be sure all of them will not fulfill this childhood role, but the fact that the reality lies ahead rather than in the past (as with cowboys and Indians) may stimulate them to retain a sensitivity for the various meanings man in s.p.a.ce can have for our future.[86]

Put it another way--if it is true, as a modern Chinese philosopher has said, that the search for knowledge is a form of play, "then the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, when it comes, will be the ultimate toy that may lead mankind from its cloistered nursery out into the playground of the stars."[87]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 16.--s.p.a.ce vehicles of the future may look like this artist's drawing of an electrical propulsion craft. The nuclear reactor is located at the extreme left, followed by a neutron s.h.i.+eld, heat exchanger, gamma-ray s.h.i.+eld and propellant. The center tank houses turbogenerating equipment. Excessive heat is dissipated in the large radiator. At the extreme right are two crew cabins, landing vehicle and a ring-shaped accelerator.]

MATURING OF THE RACE

The psychological and spiritual changes necessitated by this evolution may be at a cost far beyond dollars--because many of us will be hard put to negotiate them, especially if they come too rapidly.

Nevertheless, negotiating them must also be placed in the category of "practical" values--for in the long run it seems to be an essential part of the maturing of mankind.

The years ahead will face us with many sputniks and thereby will require of our citizens stern, costly, and imaginative partic.i.p.ation in programs to meet and surmount the many complex challenges with which our growing technology confronts us. To succeed in s.p.a.ce and to succeed on Earth, we must somehow learn to make the larger world of ideas, so brilliantly exemplified by the satellites, the immediate environment of the individual. There is a race we must run--the race for an enlightened and involved public.[88]

So if we can accept the wrenches which s.p.a.ce exploration is apt to apply to our time, pocketbook, energy, and thinking, the values and rewards as outlined in this report should gather headway and grow continuously greater.

s.p.a.ce technology is probably the fastest moving, typically free-enterprise and democratic industry yet created. It puts a premium not on salesmans.h.i.+p, but on what it needs most--intellectual production, the research payoff. Unlike any other existing industry, s.p.a.ce functions on hope and future possibilities, conquest of real estate unseen, of near vacuum unexplored. At once it obliterates the economic reason for war, the threat of overpopulation, or cultural stagnation; it offers to replace guesswork with the scientific method for archeological, philosophical, and religious themes.[89]

Such conclusions seem a bit rosy. But sober study indicates that they may not be too "far out" after all.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Hauser, Philip M., "Demographic Dimensions of World Politics,"

Science, June 3, 1960, p. 1642.

[73] Bacq, Prof. Z. M., "Medicine in the 1960's," New Scientist, Jan.

21, 1960, p. 130.

[74] 59 supra.