"Approaching the end of Apollo, my frustration often surfaced. No one in America seemed to care that we were giving up, surrendering the future of the next generation of young people with stars in their eyes.... How I wished John F. Kennedy were still alive, challenging us to dare and to dream. I feel the same way today; the boldness and scope of his vision is not to be found today in our space program and in our nation.... Entering the twenty-first century, we have an unimaginable array of technology and a generation of young Americans schooled in these technologies. With our powerful economy, we can do anything we set our mind to do. Yet we stand with our feet firmly planted on the ground when we could be exploring the universe. Three decades ago... Americans placed six flags on the Moon. Today we no longer try for new and bold space achievements; instead we celebrate the anniversaries of the past.... Our work is unfinished" - Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not An Option
There's a certain something about science which is part of its appeal to me and to many others. Call it a willingness to dream, if you will. Sometimes a dream may be amusing, as with the molecular creations (dodecahedrane, cubane, superphane, basketane, and of course buckminsterfullerene) described in Designing the Molecular World by Philip Ball. Sometimes a dream may be visionary and bold, as with the dream to finally understand the physics that underlies our world. There's definitely something interesting about the fact that the fundamental particles of the universe can be drawn in a chart on a T-shirt, or that the equations behind classical electromagnetism can be scribbled on a scrap of paper. For some 400 years, scientists have dared to dream that they can understand and explore the universe, ever since Galileo peered into the night skies with a simple telescope.
I read a large amount of books and magazines; in addition to the science books that fill my bookshelf, I subscribe to Scientific American and Discover and several other scientific magazines. They all are, in some way, connected with the dreams of science, whether it be the dreams of the past (scientific history) or dreams about the future of science. How excited I was when I saw the March 2000 issue of Scientific American, which at the top had the words "Special Report: Sending Humans to Mars"! How incredibly nifty. However, I was considerly less enthusiastic when I actually read the articles inside. In the article "How to Go to Mars", George Musser and Mark Alpert mention, "In all the proposals for sending humans to Mars, the crucial first step is launching the spacecraft into a low Earth orbit (200 to 500 kilometers up). The basic problem is that any manned craft using present-day propulsion technologies will need a huge supply of propellant to get to Mars and hence will be extremely heavy: at least 130 metric tons and possibly twice that much". That's fine. No one ever said that attaining dreams was easy. But I was absolutely shocked when I looked at the chart on the following page.
This chart is one of the most dismal and saddening things I've ever seen. It's a horizontal bar chart divided into two parts: an upper one labeled "Existing Launch Vehicles" and a lower one labeled "Proposed Launch Vehicles"; the bars in each part are different colors to emphasize which vehicles currently exist and which are proposed. The horizontal scale reads "Lift Capacity (metric tons to low Earth orbit)" and goes from 0 to 100. Yes, that's rather distressing already. The existing launch vehicles, the Titan 4B and the Space Shuttle, we are told by this chart, can lift 22 and 23 metric tons, respectively. The proposed launch vehicles, the Delta 4 Heavy, the VentureStar, and the Magnum, can lift 23, 25, and 80 metric tons, respectively. The Magnum's bar is obviously emphasized, being almost four times longer than the diminutive bars above it. Wow. 80 metric tons to low Earth orbit. The caption to the side, reads, "Current launch vehicles cannot meet the needs of a human mission to Mars. Boosting a 130-ton Mars craft into low Earth orbit would require six launches of the Titan 4B, space shuttle, Delta 4 Heavy or VentureStar - but only two of the Magnum". Only two of the Magnum, we're told. Obviously it sounds like one heck of a powerful rocket; too bad it's only proposed. Let's drop the suspense.
The key is, current launch vehicles CAN meet the needs of a human mission to Mars! The Saturn V, relic of the Apollo era, could lift some 124 tons into low Earth orbit. You must never forget that the Saturn V is one hell of a powerful rocket; its first stage is capable of producing some 7.5 million pounds of thrust. If the Saturn V were included in the chart described earlier, its bar would extend past the Magnum - past the end of the chart, in fact! It would be some six times longer than the bar for the Space Shuttle - and it would be in the Existing Launch Vehicles category. That's right. Over 30 years ago, Americans constructed a rocket that could be used today to send humans to Mars. The Scientific American article claims that "reviving production of [the Saturn V] would be impractical". But we've already done it once. The second time should be no harder than the first; we still have the Saturn V blueprints, after all (contrary to a goofy myth, they were not destroyed), and we have incredibly advanced technology compared to the clunky machines of Apollo era. In fact, we should be able to do better than the Saturn V today. Impractical indeed. We love to boast of how new computers are so incredibly advanced compared to the models of six months ago, but when it comes to picking rockets for Mars missions, some would have us believe that we can't even do 65% as well as the rockets of thirty years ago. The reason that I'm so horrified by the Scientific American article and chart is that it shows an extreme reluctance to dream; it implicitly says that not only can Americans not far exceed their past achievements, they can't even come close to replicating those achivements today. Perhaps it's because the writers don't realize exactly how far America has come since the 1960s. The Apollo Lunar Module had a computer in it, as we all know. According to Gene Kranz in Failure is Not an Option, this computer, the most advanced one that they could possibly fit into the diminutive LM, had an amazing capacity of 36,864 words of fixed storage and 2,048 words of erasable storage. (A "word" is a variable amount of computer storage; it's the chunk that a computer is most comfortable working with. The LM's words were 16 bits in the hardware, so that equates to 4,096 bytes of erasable storage.) In contrast, the Texas Instruments TI-92+ calculator has some 2 million bytes of fixed storage and five hundred thousand bytes of erasable storage. All in a handheld package costing some $200. (Not to mention that the TI-92+ represents ancient technology as well; it contains a Motorola 68000 processor, the same kind as used in the 8MHz original Macintosh of January 1984. Current processors reach over 1000MHz, and modern personal computers often have over 200 million bytes of erasable storage, to say nothing of fixed storage.) My point is, that Apollo-era technology is REALLY old, and 30 years of advancement have given us the ability to do even more in rocketry and computing and everywhere else. Our future achievements should not be dwarfed by our past achievements - quite the opposite! Over thirty years ago, about two decades after the invention of the transistor, hardworking Americans constructed machinery that safely carried men to the Moon and back, creating an achievement that will be remembered for all time. When the twentieth century is dimly remembered by the inhabitants of Earth, Apollo will shine brightly as a reminder that, even in that dark era, men were capable of great things.
"In retrospect, it is clear that Apollo was an element of twenty-first-century exploration which was somehow drawn forward 50 years and, incredibly, implemented with early-1960s electronics technology - a fact which demonstrates the supreme mastery that the astronauts and their ground support team had over their remarkable vehicles" - David M. Harland, Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions
Our challenge, then, is to not rest on our laurels. It has been the dream of many to land on another planet; humans still have not done so. We've planted our flags and footprints on a chunk of rock blasted out of Earth some 4 billion years ago by a great impact, but never on another planet. It is time. The Apollo Moon mission was, indeed, sparked by politics, by a drive for the Americans to finally beat the Soviets at something. Scientific exploration had nothing to do with how Apollo got started. And, indeed, once Apollo really began to return with scientific discoveries, it was shut down exactly as Lyndon B. Johnson prophesized. That diminishes in no way the accomplishment of the American people, although it does say something about the American political process. John F. Kennedy, regardless of his motivations, really did challenge the American people "to dare and to dream", as Gene Kranz aptly put it. That spirit of exploration must continue into the twenty-first century. Robert Zubrin, in his book The Case for Mars, makes similar points to my own, and also emphasizes that even old technology is capable of landing men on Mars, therefore with modern techology we can do equally well or better. He dares to dream as well (and makes it cost affordable to boot).
Imagine my shock when in Voodoo Science by Robert Park, I read that he includes Robert Zubrin among the cast of quacks debunked. I could not believe my very eyes. Park concentrated on making fun of Zubrin's idea to terraform Mars (a speculative idea at best, which everyone realizes) and of his claim that a small nuclear reactor could be brought to Mars to assist in producing fuel. Park then rapidly launched into debunking the (rather more speculative) L5 society, leaving Zubrin far behind. I feel that he did a great injustice to Robert Zubrin. I read The Case for Mars myself and found nothing reminiscent of quackery in the book. Rather, I found only sane and thoughtful judgements about what's possible and what's not; what should be considered and what should be ignored. Yes, terraforming Mars is a wildly speculative idea that, even if put into action, won't take place for several centuries. Zubrin recognizes that, I recognize that, everyone recognizes that, but Park didn't seem to. Whatever Robert Zubrin thinks should be done with Mars in the far future doesn't affect his ideas about what can be accomplished right now. And those ideas are practical and absolutely not voodoo. (Zubrin's book is rather less speculative than Mind Children and Robot by Hans Moravac, and even while Moravec gets extremely speculative he still doesn't fall into what should be considered "voodoo science".) The rest of Robert Park's book was good. But I can't forgive him for his reluctance to dream, to dare to think that Americans are still capable of great achievements. That kind of pessimism is simply unforgivable.
"When a Saturn V stage was in place for a night firing, its bright flame would cast a glow across the land. During the brief minutes of its firing it would hold back the night. And in that state, one could cherish the dream that somehow there would be other lights, brighter and stronger, to drive shadows from the hearts of men" - T. A. Heppenheimer, Countdown: A History of Space Flight
The path to the future is clear. Humans must continue to explore space, and to do it in the right way. The whole idea of a Space Shuttle and an International Space Station, while all very interesting, is rather useless. It is wading in shallow tidepools when we've already crossed a lake, and an ocean awaits us. (The Space Shuttle can reach only the lowest of low Earth orbit and can't even reach most satellites.) We need to explore space, using a combination of automated probes and manned missions. We need to do so out of a greater need than economics or politics. Humans need to explore space because by not doing so, we are denying our creative and curious nature.
You may find reviews of books mentioned on this page, and many others dealing with space exploration, on my Book Reviews page.
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