Looking Backward, Looking Forward forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium Edited by Stephen J. Garber National Aeronautics and Space Administration The NASA History Series National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations NASA History Office Washington, DC 2002 NASA SP-2002-4107 Looking Bac kw ard, Looking Forw ard—Forty Y ear s of U .S. Human Spaceflight Symposium Stephen J. Garber NASA SP-2002-4107 22785-looking back cover 11/20/02 1:42 PM Page 1 About the cover illustration: “T + 30 Seconds” by Vincent Cavallero is a powerful abstract view of a space launch. NASA Image 74-HC-402. 22785-looking back cover 11/20/02 1:42 PM Page 2 Looking Backward, Looking Forward forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium 8 May 2001 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page i 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page ii Looking Backward, Looking Forward forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium Edited by Stephen J. Garber The NASA History Series National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations NASA History Office Washington, DC 2002 NASA SP-2002-4107 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page iii Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S. Human Spaceflight Symposium / edited by Stephen J. Garber. p. cm. -- (The NASA history series) (NASA SP-2002-4107) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Astronautics--United States--History. 2. Manned space flight--History. I. Garber, Stephen J. II. Series. III. NASA SP-2002-4107. TL789.8.U5 L66 2002 629.45’009--dc21 2002014550 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page iv v Preface and Acknowledgments—Stephen J. Garber . . . . . . . .1 Foreword Introduction—John M. Logsdon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Opening Remarks—Daniel S. Goldin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Keynote Address Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Perspectives on the Past Forty Years of Human Spaceflight The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited —William Sims Bainbridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 What If? Paths Not Taken—John M. Logsdon . . . . . . . . . .81 The Experience of Spaceflight Apollo and Beyond—Buzz Aldrin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Breaking in the Space Shuttle—Robert Crippen . . . . . . . . .101 Going Commercial—Charles Walker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Science in Orbit—Mary Ellen Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 Training for the Future—T. J. Creamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 Table of Contents 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page v vi Looking Backward, Looking Forward Perspectives on the Next Forty Years of Human Spaceflight Expanding the Frontiers of Knowledge —Neil de Grasse Tyson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 Pushing Human Frontiers—Robert Zubrin . . . . . . . . . . . .137 About an Element of Human Greatness —Homer Hickam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 The Ethics of Human Spaceflight—Laurie Zoloth . . . . . . .165 Future Visions for Scientific Human Exploration—James Garvin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 The International Space Station and the Future of Human Spaceflight Preparing for New Challenges—William Shepherd . . . . . .203 About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 The NASA History Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page vi Preface and Acknowledgments—Stephen J. Garber 1 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 1 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 2 3 Human spaceflight is the driver for most activities that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under- takes. While NASA certainly has a rich aviation research heritage and has also done pathbreaking scientific and applications work using robotic spacecraft, human spaceflight is a difficult and expensive endeavor that engenders great popular enthusiasm and support for NASA. Much of this public interest stems from pushing boundaries of adventure, by exploring the unique and challenging physical environment of space. Humans can also perform tasks in space that machines cannot. We can think, analyze, and make judgment calls based on experience and intuition in real time. In little more than forty years, we have gone from thinking, planning, and hoping that humans will enter space to having rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts permanently living aboard an International Space Station (ISS). We have moved from the Cold War, which set the historical context for super- power competition in space during the 1960s, to joint ISS missions involving over a dozen cooperating nations. Not only have humans proved that it is possible to survive in the harsh physical environment of space, but astronauts and cosmonauts have conducted important scientific and engineering feats in space. We’ve discovered that microgravity is a unique labo- ratory setting that is potentially useful for scientists in a broad array of disciplines such as pharmacology, materials science, and physics, as well as more obvious fields such as astronomy. The pool of people who have flown in space has also broadened tremendously in the past forty years. We have moved from a group of seven handpicked men that were trained as military Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 3 4 test pilots to men and women of many national and professional backgrounds. Diversity has become an avowed goal of most fed- eral agencies, including NASA, so that people of many ethnici- ties and personal backgrounds not only fly in space but serve in key roles on the ground. Older astronauts in their sixties and even seventies have flown in space. Beyond pilots and com- manders, NASA now trains scientists and engineers as payload specialists to fly in space. Even more than the payload specialists who are not “career astronauts,” NASA has tried to bring other civilians, such as teachers, into space. The issues of diversity in general and of civilians in space in particular have ebbed and flowed in importance over time but continue to be relevant. In recent history, the subject of paying tourists in space has come to the forefront. This obviously relates to the ongoing topic of commercial- ization. Spaceflight has always been expensive, but in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, the federal government began looking at ways to privatize certain space activities. Different individuals in the commercial sector have expressed varying degrees of interest in making human spaceflight a profitable endeavor. While robotic applications satellites such as remote sensing and com- munications have been significant ventures since the early 1960s, both the government and the private sector have warmed to commercialization of human spaceflight somewhat later. In the mid-1990s, NASA turned over certain key operational activities of the Space Shuttle to the private United Space Alliance in an attempt to lower the government’s costs for “routine opera- tions.” Recently, NASA has also entered into several high-profile Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 4 5 joint agreements with private companies that are interested in conducting specific experiments, selling data, or targeting mar- keting opportunities in space. Whether these activities will turn out to be profitable or otherwise worthwhile remains to be seen, but commercialization efforts certainly have been an important force in space history. The history of human spaceflight has also been shaped signif- icantly by technologies that were initially developed outside the aerospace sector. The computer and biotechnology revolutions have had major impacts on how space operations are planned and executed. In addition to exponential increases in computing power, the advent of digital microelectronics has made fly-by-wire technology possible, which in turn has improved safety. Like computers, advances in biotechnology enable new experiments, knowledge, safety, and health in space; space research also syn- ergistically benefits the biotechnology industry. One technology that thus far has proved elusive is an inex- pensive, reliable launch vehicle to improve human access to space. There are many reasons this has proved problematic. Perhaps the first is that escaping Earth’s gravitational pull has continued to be an inherently difficult task technically. Secondly, many knowledgeable people would argue that the government has not provided sufficient financial resources to address this problem after the end of the space race and Cold War. While commercialization still looms large in the space context, no pri- vate companies have devoted truly significant resources to address this problem because they typically believe that their investment will not be rewarded any time soon, and because they Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 5 6 often view such research problems as the government’s domain. Some people even contend that the real cost of launching humans into space is the unnecessary redundancy in personnel costs of having a “standing army” to launch spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle. According to this controversial line of thinking, the launch technology per se is not unduly expensive, but we need a different paradigm for ensuring that we can launch people into space with reasonable safety and cost factors. Safety has always been and always should be a primary concern of any program that puts people in a dangerous envi- ronment such as space. Nevertheless, our views of safety have evolved historically. Hopefully we have learned to be more “proactive” in preventing accidents, but what does this mean, and how is this actually implemented in practice? Over the past several decades, a growing body of social science literature on risk assessment and management has emerged, but few scholars have seriously analyzed risk in spaceflight from such a perspective. What qualifies as an acceptable risk for a robotic spaceflight may obviously be totally unacceptable in the human context. Such a safety debate has played out in the struggle to find an appropriate power source for long-duration human space missions such as a voyage to Mars. While nuclear power in various forms may be acceptable to the majority, although certainly not all sectors, of the general public for deep-space planetary probes and the like, it faces greater opposition for human spaceflight. On the other hand, would it be possible to adopt the safety model of the nuclear submarine? While the technology base may be present to make this technically feasible, public opinion in the Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 6 7 United States has seen nuclear power as inherently risky and contro- versial. While scientists such as astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz have undertaken research in exotic forms of power such as ion or plasma propulsion, such technologies are still in the distant future. While the history of human spaceflight has generally been one of great technological achievement and inspiration, space- farers have also suffered many disappointments, both in terms of human tragedies and in failing to meet goals we have set for our- selves. Disastrous accidents such as the Challenger explosion and the Apollo 1 fire are etched into our collective memories and prod us to take prudent risks and be ever vigilant about safety whenever lives are at stake. At another level, we have been repeatedly frus- trated by our inability to achieve aims such as routine, reliable, and inexpensive spaceflight. Why have we failed in these areas? Is our technology base still immature, or are there other political, cultural, and social factors that limit our ability to satisfy our yearning to explore space? What is our next logical step after the ISS? Should we send humans to Mars? Before we attempt such long-duration missions, we still have much to learn. Even though NASA has now flown humans on Skylab and the ISS, most Shuttle flights are only one to two weeks in duration. We still need to understand more about how microgravity affects human physiology. We know it causes motion sickness in many astronauts before they become acclimated, but researchers still cannot predict which ones will become ill, nor is there a good treatment for this ailment. Microgravity also causes bone density to decrease, which can be reversed by exercise in space, but how much exercise and what Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 7 8 kind is best? Will astronauts on interplanetary missions be exposed to excessive amounts of radiation over their long journeys? Since weight is a hindrance to lifting spacecraft to Earth orbit, lead shielding may not be the best solution. Other, perhaps more subtly vexing challenges for long- duration missions fall into the realm of psychology. For months on end, the crews presumably will be confined to quite small spaces that will make submarines seem roomy. In addition to potential claustrophobia, the crew will certainly be very isolated. Not only will no other humans be anywhere nearby, but audio and visual communications back home will not be in real time, so astronauts will not be able to speak directly to mission control if a problem arises or to their families for personal comfort. While submarine crews and polar expeditions may provide some answers for how to deal with the psychological stress of such journeys, human spaceflight to other planets will clearly present unantici- pated challenges precisely because it has not been done before. Public opinion has also influenced the realm of human spaceflight in ethical dimensions. When should we allocate financial and human resources to space exploration instead of other, more immediate problems such as social welfare, poverty, and healthcare? Our values also play important roles in allocating resources within NASA’s budget. We must balance, for example, the knowledge that comes from Earth remote-sensing satellites with the inspirational value of having astronauts take us to new places. Ethics also play into issues such as how much or little we alter the environments we are exploring and studying. At the dawn of the space age, few people gave such ethical debates Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 8 9 much thought. Indeed, the space race of the 1960s was won with specific engineering achievements, even if some critics would dismiss them as propagandistic stunts. Without the overriding Cold War driver, however, such ethical concerns will likely take on greater significance in the future. Even more important than determining whether our tech- nologies and crews are prepared for long-duration spaceflight, spacefarers and their supporters would do well to remember that there must be a fundamental rationale for further human space- flight. Ideally, it should be concise and easily articulated so that the public can readily understand it. Currently, space advocates are struggling to convince Congress and the public why human exploration is important enough to support with government funds at all. Clearly, NASA’s future budgets are unlikely to be as large as they were during the early space race, so planners will need to be thrifty and innovative. The future is likely to bring other unanticipated challenges. Will the Chinese initiate a serious human spaceflight program of their own? Perhaps the future international political situation will make it advantageous for NASA to cooperate with China. Will another country such as Brazil loft astronauts into orbit in the next forty years? Will space become a new battleground for military conflict, despite many years of international efforts to keep it peaceful? Will the discovery of life, even if unintelligent beings, on another celestial body rally efforts for further human exploration of the solar system, let alone further reaches of the universe? A confluence of anniversaries made the spring of 2001 a propitious time for reflection on a forty-year record of achievement Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 9 10 Looking Backward, Looking Forward and on what may lie ahead in the years to come. The fortieth anniversary of Alan Shepard’s first spaceflight, the first time an American flew in space, took place on 5 May 2001. The fortieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight, the first time a human traveled into space and orbited Earth, took place on 12 April 2001. Coincidentally, this date was also the twentieth anniversary of the launch of STS-1, the first Space Shuttle flight. In addition, 25 May was the fortieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous “urgent needs” speech in which he proposed putting an American on the Moon “before this decade is out,” initiating the Apollo Project. Last but not least, the Expedition One crew to the ISS had finished its historic first mission in the spring of 2001. Thus, the NASA History Office joined efforts with the NASA Office of Policy and Plans and the George Washington University Space Policy Institute to put together a one-day seminar on 8 May 2001 on the history, policy, and plans of human space- flight. The seminar was open to the public and featured the view- points of those who have flown in space and also of nonastronaut experts. The speakers were a fairly diverse lot in terms of back- ground and views, but all were accomplished in their fields and gave thought-provoking comments. The program began with opening and keynote remarks by then-NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and respected author Charles Murray. An inspiring speaker, Goldin challenged the audience to persevere through the inevitable and the unexpected challenges facing human space exploration. Murray related sev- eral moving anecdotes about the Apollo program and how its management techniques stood out. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 10 11 The first panel focused on the experience of spaceflight and featured an Apollo astronaut, one of the first Shuttle astronauts, a scientist, a commercial payload specialist, and an astronaut trainee who had not flown in space yet. Buzz Aldrin talked about his unusual career path to the Moon and about a future launch vehicle system that enthralls him. T. J. Creamer spoke about the continuity of building on the achievements of others before him and specifically mentioned how the daughter of another panelist, Bob Crippen, was a trainer for his astronaut class. Scientist Mary Ellen Weber discussed how significant micro- gravity research could be for the average person on Earth and also enthralled listeners with her experience of having to look down from on orbit at incoming meteorites. Charlie Walker, the first astronaut to fly specifically on behalf of a company, covered how NASA could best work together with private industry. The second panel featured a variety of historical perspectives on the past forty years. The distinguished speakers covered such specific topics as Soviet-American reactions during the space race, the importance of safety, and counterfactual history. The author of a monumental volume on the Soviet space program, Asif Siddiqi, reinforced how the perceptions, misperceptions, actions, and reactions of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. created the dimensions of the space race. John Logsdon posed a number of “what if” questions to push historians to rethink our assumptions of the causes of key events. Astronaut and manager Fred Gregory discussed how thinking about reliability has shifted from forcing people to demonstrate a specific safety flaw before a launch would be postponed to the current situation, where managers must Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 11 12 actively show that it is safe to launch. William Sims Bainbridge revised his arguments about the social and cultural aspects of the “spaceflight revolution.” In the afternoon, another panel looked at the future of human spaceflight. A variety of speakers, from engineers and scientists to a philosopher and a popular author, gave their provocative opinions on the challenges facing human spaceflight. Astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson challenged space buffs to think of a major engineering or scientific project in history that was not begun for at least one of three reasons—national security, economics, or ego gratification. Robert Zubrin, a passionate advocate of human missions to Mars, echoed Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous frontier thesis that it is our destiny to explore new worlds. Homer Hickam proposed that one underappreciated reason for human spaceflight is to tap solar power for use on Earth, and he evoked Wernher von Braun in emphasizing the need to explain clearly why space exploration is worth doing at all. Ethicist Laurie Zoloth challenged listeners to consider the moral conse- quences of human exploration of new places. Jim Garvin engaged the audience by discussing exciting new technologies that could be used to send humans beyond Earth orbit. Finally, William Shepherd, the commander of the Expedition One crew to the ISS, gave his take on some lessons learned from his personal experience that could be applicable for future human spaceflight missions. Shepherd views the ISS as a stepping stone on the way to Mars and discussed his vision for how such chal- lenging journeys could be accomplished. He points out that not only do we need to develop more powerful and autonomous space- Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 12 13 craft to reach Mars, but we also need to address cultural differ- ences and standardization issues inherent in what he believes will be increased international cooperation. Shepherd also argues for consolidating expertise in a National Space Institute, similar to the military service academies. Such a seminar is not only a collected work in the sense of many authors, but also in the sense of many producers. Many of the same people who helped stage the seminar also helped with the production of this volume. Louise Alstork, Nadine Andreassen, Jennifer Davis, Colin Fries, Mark Kahn, Roger Launius, and Jane Odom of the NASA History Office helped greatly with both the seminar and the book. Jonathan Krezel, Becky Ramsey, and Michelle Treistman of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute assisted John Logsdon in staging the seminar. Many thanks also go to Tawana Cleary, who graciously handled the astronauts’ appearances, and to the good folks at NASA TV for all of their work. Special thanks go to Mike Green, of the for- mer Office of Policy and Plans, who helped initiate and organize the seminar, and who also chaired a panel. In terms of produc- ing the book, special recognition goes to Michelle Cheston, Dave Dixon, Melissa Kennedy, and Jeffrey McLean in the Printing and Design group at NASA Headquarters. Thanks to all of these pro- fessionals for their help with logistical matters and for stimulating new and provocative ideas that promise to maintain interest in and debates on the course of human spaceflight for years to come. Preface and Acknowledgments 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 13 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 14 Introduction—John M. Logsdon 15 Foreword 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 15 16 Looking Backward, Looking Forward Astronaut Alan B. Shepard receives the NASA Distinguished Service Award from President John F. Kennedy in May 1961, days after his history-making Freedom 7 flight. Shepard’s wife and mother are on his left, and the other six Mercury astronauts are in the background. NASA Image S67-19572. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 16 17 Today is an auspicious day for holding this symposium. Today is the fortieth anniversary of the day when Alan Shepard came to Washington after his historic flight. He participated in a parade, addressed a joint session of Congress, and then came to the White House, where President John F. Kennedy gave him a medal. On that same day, 8 May 1961, Vice President Lyndon Johnson presented President Kennedy with a set of recommen- dations concerning the future of human spaceflight that con- tained a historic memorandum signed by NASA Administrator James Webb and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. These recommendations had been developed in the two- and-a-half weeks after Kennedy, on 20 April 1961, had asked the Vice President to carry out a review to identify a “space pro- gram which promises dramatic results in which we could win.” This set of recommendations led to Kennedy’s decision to accel- erate the space program, aim at across-the-board space preemi- nence, and set a lunar-landing goal as the centerpiece of the space program for the 1960s. A decision wasn’t made on 8 May 1961, but the decision paper that led to Apollo and all that fol- lowed reached the President that day. To start this celebration of forty years of U.S. human spaceflight, there’s no more appropriate person than the ninth Administrator of NASA, Daniel S. Goldin. Dan has served as Administrator longer than any of his eight predecessors and has made remarkable changes in the organization. I think as we look back ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now at his time as Administrator, we’ll find that he set NASA on a productive course for the twenty-first century. Introduction—John M. Logsdon 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 17 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 18 Opening Remarks—Daniel S. Goldin 19 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 19 20 Looking Backward, Looking Forward Daniel S. Goldin with a model of the Mars Pathfinder’s Sojourner rover. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 20 21 1. Remarks at the presentation of NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal to astronaut Alan B. Shepard on 8 May 1961. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 366. Opening Remarks—Daniel S. Goldin What a wonderful day it is. We are taking the opportunity this morn- ing to reflect on what it has meant since 1961 to be a spacefaring nation. We are also looking forward to the next forty years of human adventure in space and what it might bring us as a civilization. While the specifics of what will unfold during the first part of the twenty-first century are not certain—and that’s the wonder of the space program—I can say with certainty that the possibilities are boundless. Accordingly, I am both excited about where we have been and where we are going. Alan Shepard, of course, had become the first American to fly into space during a 15-minute suborbital flight on 5 May 1961, riding a Redstone booster in his Freedom 7 spacecraft. At the ceremony that followed, President Kennedy recognized the courage and sacrifice of all those involved in America’s first human spaceflight. The President commented that Shepard’s success as the first United States astronaut was an outstanding contribution to the advancement of human knowledge, space technology, and a demonstration of man’s capabilities in suborbital flight. President Kennedy also juxtaposed the very public flight of Alan Shepard with the secrecy of our rival at the time, the Soviet Union: “I also want to pay cognizance to the fact that this flight was made out in the open with all the possibilities of failure, which have been damaging to our country’s prestige. Because great risks were taken in that regard, it seems to me that we have some right to claim that this open society of ours, which risked much, gained much.” 1 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 21 22 President Kennedy’s comments about the risks and rewards of spaceflight are just as applicable today as they were on 8 May 1961. In forty years of human spaceflight, we have achieved enormous successes, gained astounding knowledge about our universe and our place in it, and brought untold benefits to the people of the world. We have learned to survive in the incredibly hostile environ- ment of space. We have landed on the Moon. We have developed a remarkable vehicle, the Space Shuttle, which enables Americans to travel to and from Earth orbit much more readily than any previous launch technology, and we will have a vehicle that will take us not just to low-Earth orbit, but, eventually, we will develop a vehicle to take us out of Earth orbit. I’m especially pleased to recognize the leadership of Alan Shepard as the first Mercury 7 astronaut to fly to space. He was truly an American hero, and I’m proud to have known him. Not long after I arrived at NASA, Alan met me to tell me that what we were doing at NASA was very important and that he personally wanted to make himself available. He said that he’d do anything that I asked to help accomplish the NASA mission. If I wanted him to testify before Congress, or meet with senior officials, or speak to schoolchildren, or take a trip across the world, he would be happy to do it. He was an individual who had been the first American to fly in space, as well as an individual who had walked on the Moon. He offered to carry the message of the importance of human space- flight to the masses because he believed in it so deeply, and he believed in this great nation of ours. Alan Shepard believed that NASA is a representation of the best that America has to offer. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 22 23 He was enthusiastic about this fact and always shared it at every opportunity. He left us a legacy of excellence that is unmatched. We need more heroes like Alan Shepard and the other won- derful astronauts who are opening up the cosmos. They are the modern descendants of Lewis and Clark, Richard Byrd, and Charles Lindbergh. They set their sights on the distant horizon of space and the journey to unknown places, bringing back knowledge and understanding. They inspire us with their perse- verance. They lead us, as Americans, to a loftier place, and Alan was the first American there. In some respects, we have come a long way since Alan Shepard flew the tiny Freedom 7 space capsule forty years ago, but, in other ways, we have not yet journeyed so far. Alan would have been the first to say that while the technology has changed, the curiosity of the human mind and the courage of the human heart remain the same. Those who venture forth into space are a breed apart. Alan Shepard and every other astronaut should not be thought of simply as passengers or visitors in space. They are blazing a pioneering trail that will be followed by others once they have made the way safe. When we make the way safe, we are going to do great things. As I was preparing these remarks, I thought about the pos- sibilities. We’ve been locked in Earth orbit for too long, but we are going to break out. There’s no doubt in my mind. The seeds are there. This is the anniversary of NASA’s forty years of human space exploration, and it represents an important crossroad. As we celebrate it today, we continue to move toward a visionary goal. In our quest to make what is envisioned real, we test, we build, we launch, we learn, and we fail. Then we start again and Opening Remarks—Daniel S. Goldin 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 23 24 never ever worry about the criticism of failure—because in failure we learn, and we start the cycle again. So we are not only celebrating the past today, but also drawing a demarcation point from which to envision the future yet more wondrous. Let us work together to make it happen. Let us burn into our brains that this civilization is not condemned to live on only one planet. Let’s burn it into our brains that in our lifetimes we will extend the reach of this human species onto other planets and to other bodies in our solar system. Let’s build the robots that will leave our solar system to go to other stars and ultimately be fol- lowed by people. I wish that Alan Shepard could have been here with us today. We lost a true pioneer when he passed on in 1998. He liked to say of space exploration, “I know it can be done,” “it’s important for it to be done,” and “I want to do it.” His spirit lives on in that quest for our future in space. I would like to close by dedicating this activity on the past, present, and future of U.S. human spaceflight to the memory of Alan Shepard, the first American hero of the space age and my personal hero. Thank you very much. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 24 Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 25 Keynote Address 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 25 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 26 27 These remarks give me an excuse to revisit a world that Catherine Cox and I had a chance to live in vicariously from 1986 to 1989 when we were researching and writing about Project Apollo. As I thought about it, I realized that actually very few people in this audience have had a chance to live in that world, either vicariously or for real. For most people today, NASA’s human spaceflight program is the Shuttle. The NASA you know is an extremely large bureaucracy. The Apollo you know is a historical event. So to kick off today’s presentations, I want to be the “Voice of Christmas Past.” If we want to think about what is possible for human spaceflight as part of America’s future, it is essential to understand how NASA people understood “possible” during the Apollo era. It is also important to understand that the way NASA func- tioned during the Apollo Program was wildly different from the way NASA functions now. In fact—and I say this with all due respect to the current NASA team members who are doing fine work—the race to the Moon was not really a race against the Russians; it was a race to see if we could get to the Moon before NASA became a bureaucracy, and we won. But the lessons of that experience should be ones that we still have at the front of our minds. First, I would like to provide some perspective on time scale. Think back to 20 July 1990. This was the twenty-first anniversary of the first lunar landing, but that is not why I chose the date. From 20 July 1990 to May 2001 is the same amount of time as from the founding of NASA to the first Moon landing, only eleven years. If you think back to what you were doing on 20 July 1990, it just Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 27 was not that long ago. So if we think about what infrastructure for human exploration of space existed in 1958, when NASA started, we realize there was virtually none. At that time, there were few buildings, a small staff, and not a glimmer of the equipment that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo would use. At that time, the largest booster in the U.S. launcher inventory was the Redstone, which was less powerful than the escape tower on the Saturn V. The Space Task Group that was responsible for NASA’s early human spaceflight efforts was formed only a few months after NASA itself. Occasionally I am asked, “How can we get to Mars?” I am tempted to say, “Well, junk the current space program, go down to Langley Air Force Base, put together forty-five people that have no experience whatsoever, give them eleven years, and they will do it.” Now that is facetious, but it is how short the period of time was between ground zero and the first Moon landing. The speed is only symptomatic, however, of the way that NASA functioned during those early years, and I want to go over a few of those characteristics. The first was simply youth. Of the forty-five people who were initial members of the Space Task Group, Robert Gilruth was the oldest at forty-four. Joe Shea and George Low got their jobs at thirty-two and thirty-four, respec- tively. Chris Kraft got his first big job at the age of thirty-four. Glynn Lunney and Gene Kranz, lead flight directors during the big Apollo missions, became flight directors in their twenties, and they were still barely into their thirties when they were lead flight directors for the Apollo flights. People were very young, and it made a difference. As you talk to the people of Apollo, they will say over and over, “We didn’t 28 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 28 29 know we couldn’t do it.” People who were older who would try to come into this business often were not able to cut it. The reason they could not cut it was that they were too aware of all the ways that things could go wrong. One of the things that youth brings with it is an ability to form tightly knit teams, another characteristic of the early NASA. It was so small to begin with that everybody knew one another. Even though by the time Apollo flew, it had mushroomed into tens of thousands of people, those initial connections remained. There were people who had known each other at Langley Center and at Lewis Center who dealt with each other in ways that had nothing to do with their places in the organization charts. Joe Bobek, who was a second-generation Polish immigrant with only a high school education but a genius mechanic, became chief inspector for the Apollo spacecraft. In contrast, George Low was the courtly offspring of an affluent Austrian family, a brilliant engineer, and exceedingly well educated. Before every Apollo flight, George Low would take a sandwich down to the pad and sit down with his old mechanic buddy from Lewis Research Center. They would talk about what George Low needed to know about that spacecraft. You had people such as Joe Shea and George Low taking demotions all the time during the Apollo Program. They were sent out of Washington to the Centers. They were technically far lower on the ladder than they had been before, but the reason they did that was because that was where the action was. I do not want you to feel that I am completely unrealistic and starry-eyed about Apollo. Were there any people who were Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 29 30 mostly concerned about their careers during Apollo? Of course there were. But if you talked to a lot of people from Apollo, you also got a very clear message with lots of evidence that this was the period of their life when their personal careers really weren’t nearly as important as focusing on the job at hand. People were calling back and forth, ignoring lines of hierarchy in their quest to solve problems. Incredibly brilliant engineers were running the program. People such as George Mueller, who was in charge of human spaceflight at Headquarters, were extremely well-versed in virtually all details of their programs. In terms of engineering, Mueller could wrestle to the ground a rela- tively low-level engineer on his own particular specialty. The same thing could be said again and again for people such as Shea, Low, Max Faget, and all the rest. They were managers, yes, but they knew just about everything there was to know about the systems they were dealing with, and this made a lot of difference when they wanted to obtain the respect and the over- time work and the commitment of the troops. Another important aspect of the program, which you can get away with more easily when it’s a young program, was its incredible audacity. I shall give you three examples. The first example goes back to George Mueller in 1963. He came into NASA as head of human spaceflight and set his underlings to work on a comprehensive look at the schedule and how it was going. They were not going to get to the Moon before 1970 or 1971; that was absolutely clear. So what did George Mueller do? He imposed on the Centers all-up testing. This meant that the first flight of the Saturn rocket, with its Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 30 31 mammoth 7.5 million pounds of thrust in the first stage alone, would be with all three stages in that stack. All three stages were untested when Mueller made this decision. This approach was anathema to the German rocket team down at Marshall. The Germans had done very well by testing incrementally, one piece at a time. The engineers from Langley had done very well taking their experimental aircraft over the years and testing them out one step at a time. Here was this guy from the ICBM world, the third culture, as it were, that made up NASA in those days, telling them, “We’re going to do all-up testing—we’re going to do it all at one time.” No committees made that decision. George Mueller made that decision. It was not a political decision. He was not doing it just to get to the Moon before 1970, although that was clearly one of the motivations for it. But the engineering logic behind it was absolutely fascinating. I recommend you look at this decision-making process as a case study of rigorous engi- neering thinking combined with enormous willingness to do what was necessary to get a job done. The second case of audacity was George Low’s decision to make Apollo 8 a circumlunar mission. Again, in reconstructing how it was done and why it was done, we are not talking about some wild-eyed adventure. There were engineering reasons why it was possible and why it was not only possible, but valuable. But it was the kind of decision which pushed everything in the schedule a quantum leap ahead of where it would have been otherwise. The third case of audacity is not a particular event; it is the years that Joe Shea was the head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. It has been Joe Shea’s legacy to be remembered Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 31 32 as the guy who was pushing so hard that mistakes were not caught, and we had the 1967 fire that killed three astronauts. This was a very controversial period in NASA history, and Joe Shea certainly took the fall for the accident. Nobody was tougher on Joe Shea than Joe Shea was on himself. I submit to you that he was doing exactly the same thing that George Mueller and George Low were doing. But the coin came up tails for him. But if it had come up tails for George Low in Apollo 8, people would have said, “What on Earth are you doing trying to send the second manned flight of an Apollo spacecraft around the Moon?” If the first flight of the Saturn V on the all-up had failed, people would have said, “Well, that was really dumb to try to test all three stages at once.” The first time it had ever been done, everybody told him he should not do it, and look what happened. The Apollo Program was audacious, and occasionally it failed. But the only reason we had a spacecraft as mature as the one we had in 1967 was because Joe Shea had been operating that way for four years and accomplishing wonderful things by so doing. In trying to pull together my thoughts about the way NASA operated, I would like to suggest considering the Apollo 12 mission. I recommend that NASA have a three-day seminar for senior management staff on Apollo 12, meditating on it as a fascinating example of managing a space program. As some may recall, Apollo 12 was hit by lightning. It was actually hit by lightning twice in the boost phase of the first stage, knocking everything onboard to flinders. All the warning lights went on. Down on the ground, it wasn’t that all the data had been lost on Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 32 33 the controllers’ screens, but that the data made no sense whatsoever. They didn’t know that the spacecraft had been hit by lightning. All the con- trollers knew was that the platform had been lost; the guidance plat- form had been lost; that they weren’t able to read any of their data; and it was taken for granted that what you had to do at that point was abort. Here is the first vignette from that Apollo 12 launch. Sitting at one of the mission control consoles was one John Aaron. He later rose to great heights in NASA, but at that time he was only twenty-five or twenty-six years old. A year earlier, he had been sitting in the control room at Houston watching a test at the Cape, which they often did just to get to understand their systems better. This particular time, at some point during the test, his screen suddenly turned to weird numbers. Incidentally, the screens of the Apollo controllers did not have nice graphics on them. They were black screens. They had fuzzy white numbers, [with] columns of fuzzy white numbers on them at that time. That’s all the controllers viewed. The numbers were constantly changing. Incidentally, it is Shortly after liftoff on 14 November 1969, lightning struck the Apollo 12 Saturn V launch vehicle and the launch tower. NASA Image KSC-69PC-812. Special thanks to Kipp Teague for help with this image. Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 33 34 Looking Backward, Looking Forward also true that the numbers were not in real time because the computers were quite slow. So controllers had to factor in that some of the numbers that were changing were 15 seconds old, while other numbers were 10 sec- onds old and so forth. That is the kind of thing you did if you were an Apollo controller. Aaron had looked into things, called up the Cape, and finally man- aged to figure out what was going on. He was told of an obscure board, called the signal condition- ing equipment, SCE, that would have restored their numbers if it was switched to auxiliary mode. This was something that John Aaron had done that was not a formal part of his job. It was part of hundreds of similar experiences he’d had. This was not something that the con- trollers had practiced in any simulation since then. He was probably one of the only people in all of NASA who knew this thing existed. In the critical launch phase, when they were about to lose a crew, when everything was going crazy, Aaron looked at that screen, and he understood within a matter of seconds what was going on. On the Apollo 12, the spacecraft had been hit by lightning twice in the initial ascent phase. Controllers had lost the platform but managed to reset it. They had a couple of hours in which to go through tests of the spacecraft, and then they had to decide whether to go forward with translunar injection. Technicians in the Firing Room listen to Apollo 12 and Mission Control overcome lightning- induced electrical problems. NASA Image KSC-69P-856. Special thanks to Kipp Teague for help with this image. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 34 35 Catherine Cox and I really wanted to reconstruct the decision that was being made by Rocco Petrone, Chris Kraft, Jim McDivett, and the other senior people who were in charge of that flight. We talked to all of them, and we couldn’t get a story out of it because here’s what happened. These twenty-six-, twenty-seven-, twenty-eight-, twenty-nine-year-old controllers went through all the systems down there in the control room. Then they turned around to the back row and said, “We’ve got a clean spacecraft; let’s go,” and there was no fretting about it. When I was interviewing Gene Kranz once, I asked him, “Gee, this seems to me like a very dicey thing to do. Yes, you’ve checked out the spacecraft, but, after all, the thing has been hit by a huge bolt of lightning through all its electronics.” Kranz was very matter-of-fact about it—“No, you go the way the data leads you.” So I finally asked him “if a similar thing happened with the Space Shuttle and you had to make the equivalent of a decision to go out of Earth orbit, would you do the same thing?” Gene Kranz was not often at a loss for an answer, but he just sat and stared at me for about five seconds, and then he broke into a laugh, and he didn’t say anything. That was the way that that mission worked. It was a story of everything that made the human spaceflight program such a wonderful adventure, as well as an excellent case study from which later people could learn. I second the remarks of Administrator Goldin about the future of human spaceflight. I think that his aspirations for it are just right. The only thing I would add is that if it is to succeed, human spaceflight must most of all capture the public imagination. Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 35 36 Part of the reason for that is hardheaded politics; you can’t have a big program unless you have gotten the political funding for it, and the political funding only comes for it if you have captured a large part of the public imagination. The essence of human spaceflight is that it does great things. That is how it captures the public imagination. About 600 years ago, with the invention of the scientific method, the deep abiding human impulse to understand and to explore, which previously had been confined to philosophy and religion, was let loose on all the other ways that we could explore the world. Now, in the twentieth century, I think that human space- flight touches the wellspring of the human spirit and excites a great many people. Human spaceflight also represents the great next adventure in that continuing quest to understand and to explore—only this time it is to understand and explore the universe. We are never going to get a majority of the American people to share in that aspiration any more than you could get 51 percent of the people in Europe who wanted to get in small dangerous boats and go to the new world. There always will be objections such as “We would be better off spending money to combat poverty here on Earth.” There is, however, a sizable minority who has a lot of influence, and they can be energized. But the only way that they can be energized is if human spaceflight remains true to its mission—it must do something beyond building one brick after another. It must continue to push the envelope with audacity, by going [to] new places, by doing new things, by taking on grand missions. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 36 Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray 37 So as somebody who doesn’t have a technical background and doesn’t work for NASA, I’ll go ahead and give some advice anyway. Get a grand mission, believe in it, give it to a new gener- ation, and get the hell out of the way. Thank you very much. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 37 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 38 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 39 Perspectives on the Past Forty Years of Human Spaceflight 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 39 40 Looking Backward, Looking Forward Hermann Oberth in the foreground appears with officials of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Huntsville, Alabama, in 1956. Left to right: Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger (seated); Major General H.N. Toftoy, Commanding Officer for Project Paperclip; Dr. Wernher von Braun; and Dr. Robert Lusser. NASA Image CC-417. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 40 41 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 1. William Sims Bainbridge, The Spaceflight Revolution (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1976). There are two models of the future of spaceflight, and there are two theories of how that future might be achieved. The first model of spaceflight assumes that we have already achieved most of what is worth achieving in space, whereas the second imagines it will be possible to build a truly interplanetary civi- lization in which most human beings live elsewhere than on Earth. The first theory holds that progress comes incrementally from the inexorable working of free markets and political sys- tems, whereas the second believes that revolutionary transfor- mations must sometimes be accomplished by social movements that transcend the ordinary institutions and motivations of mundane existence. My 1975 Harvard doctoral dissertation, published in 1976 as The Spaceflight Revolution, attributed the early stages of development of space technology in large measure to a social movement that transcended ordinary commercial, military, or scientific motives. 1 First, visionaries like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth developed the ideology of spaceflight. Then tiny volunteer groups coalesced around their ideas in Germany, America, Russia, and Britain, becoming the vanguard of a radical social movement aimed at promoting the goal of interplanetary exploration. Shrewd and dynamic entrepreneurs, notably Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev, took the movement on a military detour, gaining the support of 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 41 42 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 2. Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995); Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 3. National Commission on Space, Pioneering the Space Frontier (New York: Bantam Books, 1986). the German and Russian governments. Finally, the movement became institutionalized as the space programs of the Soviet Union, United States, and other countries. After I wrote, some historians gave greater emphasis to the technical needs of the German war machine and the technocratic values of the Soviet Union in the development of spaceflight. 2 Their analyses focus on later phrases in space history, and certainly the social movement was crucial at the very beginning. There is room to debate how long it was influential and when institu- tional factors took control. The role of a transcendent social movement in the development of spaceflight is an intrinsically interesting question for historians, but it becomes very impor- tant if we use the past to try to understand the future. Thus, for me, the crucial question has always been “Can spaceflight tech- nology develop to the fullest possible extent without the often irrational impetus that a social movement can contribute?” Human beings have not left low-Earth orbit since 1972, and for thirty years the emphasis in space has been relatively modest projects that satisfy some of the conventional needs of terrestrial society. The 1986 report of the National Commission on Space argued that the solar system is the future home of humanity, where free societies will be created on new worlds, and great new resources will benefit humanity. 3 However, governments, private 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 42 43 4. Frank Morring, Jr., “NASA Kills X-33, X-34, Trims Space Station,” Aviation Week and Space Technology (5 March 2001), pp. 24–25. 5. William Sims Bainbridge, Dimensions of Science Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). enterprise, and the general public have not endorsed solar system colonization as a practical or worthy goal. This essay will first consider whether technological break- throughs in space technology and the rational motives of ordinary institutions have the capacity to break out of this relatively static situation. Then we will survey the roles that social movements of various kinds might play and conclude with an examination of one particular nascent movement that might possibly build the foundation for a spacefaring civilization. When The Spaceflight Revolution was written, we had great hopes that the Space Shuttle would be an economic as well as technical success, but sadly, the cost of launching to Earth orbit remains prohibitively high for many applications. The most recent disappointment is the cancellation of the X-33 and the inescapable realization that we are still a long way from the ability to develop a low-cost launch system. 4 Science-fiction writers and other visionaries have suggested a vast array of alternative orbital launch methods. 5 Some, like electric catapults and Jacob’s ladders, have some grounding in scientific principles but may present insurmountable engineering difficulties. Others, like antigravity and reactionless drives, have no basis in science and thus must be presumed impossible. A third of a century ago, practical nuclear fission rockets were The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 43 44 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 6. Richard W. Siegel, Evelyn Hu, and M. C. Roco, Nanostructure Science and Technology (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 1999); M. C. Roco, R. S. Williams, and P. Alivisatos, Nanotechnology Research Directions (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2000); M. C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2001). 7. Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner, The Case for Mars (New York: Free Press, 1996). under development, but this approach now seems environmen- tally unacceptable. It is hard to devise a more environmentally benign propellant than the hydrogen and oxygen used by the main engines of the Space Shuttle. There is some hope that nanotechnology will save the day with materials based on carbon nanotubes that are vastly stronger yet lighter than metals. 6 However, the X-33 failure shows that it is not easy to work with radically new structural materials in demanding aerospace applications, and we may be many decades away from being able to manufacture propellant tanks, wings, and other large structures from carbon nanotubes. Perhaps Robert Zubrin is right that [the] use of native Martian resources will significantly reduce the cost of a manned expedition. 7 However, the cost may still be more than people are willing to invest. Thus, the Mars society that has been organized around Zubrin’s vision may be more important for reviving the spirit of the spaceflight movement than for any particular tech- nical innovation it offers. Technological breakthroughs in rocketry would certainly help promote space development, but the advances we are likely to see over the next several decades will not be sufficient in themselves. We also need a profound boost in the motivation to invest in an aggressive space program. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 44 45 8. For example, see the National Research Council report, People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science, ed. Dianna Liverman, Emilio F. Moran, Ronald R. Rindfuss, and Paul C. Stern (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1998). 9. Robert W. Smith, The Space Telescope (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Satellites in low-Earth and synchronous orbit are of great importance in the collection and distribution of information, thus essential to the information economy. The wide range of civilian applications includes telephone, data transmission, tele- vision, navigation, weather observation, agriculture monitoring, and prospecting for natural resources. 8 The technology is largely perfected, and incremental progress can be achieved by improvement in information systems and simply by investing in more relatively small satellites of the kinds we already have. Current space technology has proven the capacity to send robot space probes to any location in the solar system and a few billion miles beyond. Orbiting observatories, such as the decade- old Hubble Space Telescope, are effective means for gaining information about the vast realm that lies beyond the reach of space probes. 9 Much can be accomplished over the next century in space science without the need for major new launch technology. Indeed, one could argue that if science were the prime purpose of spaceflight, we would have done well to keep manufacturing the forty-year-old Saturn I, rather than developing more sophis- ticated launch systems. Many scientists and ordinary citizens believe that the chief justification for the space program is the knowledge of our place in the universe gained by probes and space telescopes. However, The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 45 46 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 10. Matthias Krings, Anne Stone, Ralf W. Schmitz, Heike Krainitzki, Mark Stoneking, and Svante Pääbo, “Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans,” Cell (1997) 90: 19–30; see also Dennis H. O’Rourke, S. W. Carlyle, and R. L. Parr, “Ancient DNA: Methods, Progress, and Perspectives,” American Journal of Human Biology, 1996, 8: 557–571. 11. Jeffrey T. Richelson, America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1999). if the government really wanted to advance fundamental knowledge that is interesting to the general public as well as to scientists, it would put its money not into spaceflight but into paleontology, archaeology, and anthropology—extremely underfunded fields where rapid advances could be expected to follow quickly from any increased investment. The search for human origins is a noble and tremendously exciting scientific initiative waiting for the political will to achieve profound discoveries. Very little is currently invested in primary data collection in paleontology and archaeology, and a few million dollars a year could work wonders. In physical anthropology, tools of genetic science already exist that could chart the evolution of the human species and its geographic dis- persion. For example, existing techniques are capable of sequenc- ing the DNA of Neanderthal specimens and determining their relationship to modern humans. 10 All that is needed is funding. Military reconnaissance satellites have been essentially per- fected, and they are already capable of accomplishing almost any data gathering the defense establishment is willing to invest in. 11 For a quarter century, enthusiasts have urged the development of a space-based missile defense system, perhaps employing beam weapons. If it required orbiting many large installations, it 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 46 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 47 12. William Sims Bainbridge, The Spaceflight Revolution (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1976), pp. 241–243. 13. Electric Power from Orbit: A Critique of a Satellite Power System (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1981). 14. Gerard K. O’Neill, The High Frontier (New York: Bantam Books, 1977); Richard D. Johnson and Charles Holbrow, editors, Space Settlements: A Design Study (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1977). would promote the development of efficient launch vehicles which could then be applied to other purposes. 12 But currently its advocates emphasize localized theater defense systems and “smart rock” ICBM interception methods that do nothing to advance civilian spaceflight. Since the 1960s, there has been much talk about commercial exploitation of outer space. For a time, attention was given to the idea of collecting solar energy in space and beaming it to Earth, and there still is hope that some new industrial processes that require weightlessness will prove to be economically profitable. However, space-based solar energy systems would be extremely costly and are not currently part of the world’s response to energy needs. 13 Today, materials scientists are much more excited about a wide range of terrestrial nanotechnology techniques than about the dubious value of weightless manufacturing. Like military applications, hypothetical industrial satellites would probably be in low-Earth orbit; although, some writers have argued that it might be cheaper to build them from lunar materials because of the low velocity required to leave the Moon. 14 This would demand some degree of lunar colonization, and it would thereby build a transportation infrastructure that would reduce the cost of deep-space missions. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to develop a scenario in which the Earth itself could ever benefit from importation of raw materials 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 47 48 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 15. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 16. Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (New York: Bantam, 1993); Green Mars (New York: Bantam, 1995); Blue Mars (New York: Bantam, 1997). from beyond the Moon. It is more than a cliché that the world is becoming an information society, postindustrial rather than indus- trial. 15 The Earth has ample supplies of almost every useful chemical element, and it is not plausible that we could find energy sources on Mars that would be cost-effective to bring to Earth. Martian resources would be of value if we had already decided to live there, but we would need some motivation other than raw materials to do so. In purely economic terms, beyond synchronous orbit or maybe lunar orbit there may be no bucks; therefore, no Buck Rogers. Some say that the pressure of population growth on Earth will force humanity to colonize other worlds. Perhaps the most plausible version of this scenario was suggested in Kim Stanley Robinson’s series of novels about terraforming Mars—the rich ruling classes might want to develop Mars as a home for them- selves when Earth becomes unendurably overpopulated. 16 Unfortunately, examination of actual fertility and mortal- ity trends does not provide a clear demographic justification for space colonization. The population explosion has not yet halted in many poor nations, but they certainly do not have the wealth for spaceflight. Fertility rates have dropped so far in most of the industrial nations that they are poised for a population collapse that would remove their motivation to expand out into space. Recent United Nations estimates predict that nineteen nations of the world will each lose more than a million in population 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 48 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 49 17. Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2001), p. 58. 18. Frederick W. Hollmann, Tammany J. Mulder, and Jeffrey E. Kallan, “Methodology and Assumptions for the Population Projections of the United States: 1999 to 2100,” Population Division Working Paper No. 38, United States Census Bureau, 2000. 19. Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review (February 2000), 65: 19–51. by the year 2050: Russia (loss of forty-one million people), Ukraine (twenty million), Japan (eighteen), Italy (fifteen), Germany (eleven), Spain (nine), Poland (five), Romania (four), Bulgaria (three), Hungary (two), Georgia (two), Belarus (two), Czech Republic (two), Austria (two), Greece (two), Switzerland (two), Yugoslavia (two), Sweden (one), and Portugal (one). 17 Fertility rates are also already below the replacement level in Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Fertility rates are still above replacement in the United States, and the U.S. Census projects population growth throughout the next century. 18 In part, growth is assured by immigration and by the fact that fertility rates are still high in some minority groups. Major uncertainties are the roles of religion and politics. The collapse in European fertility rates may partly be explained by secularization and by indirect effects of the welfare state. 19 America is far more religious than almost any European nation today, other than Ireland and Poland, and its political environ- ment is quite different from that of Europe or Japan. If the United States eventually follows the other industrial nations in abandoning religion and adopting the welfare state, then American fertility rates could collapse just as those in most of 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 49 50 Europe have already done. If that happens, then there is no nation both rich enough and demographically motivated to col- onize the solar system. Finally, one might hope simply that the passage of time will allow a steadily increasing portion of the population to become interested in space. Spaceflight accomplishes a little more each year, and the growing status of science fiction in popular culture should also contribute to increased enthusiasm. However, opinion polls reveal only modest growth in sup- port for the space program. Perhaps the best data source is the General Social Survey, a repeated scientific study of a random sample of Americans that has included a question about the space program for twenty-five years. In 1973, just 7.8 percent of the American public wanted funding for the space program increased. By 1998, this fraction had grown just to 10.8 percent. A pessimistic way to look at this is to note that this increase of 3 percentage points over a quarter century would mean 12 per- centage points every century. Linear extrapolation would predict a majority of the population would support increased space funding in about the year 2325. Of course, a crude projection like that is scientifically inde- fensible. Support has moved up and down over the years, apparently in response to events. The highest level of support was in 1988, responding to the nation’s return to space after the Challenger disaster, when 18.9 percent wanted funding increased. The biggest trend over the twenty-five years was actually a shift from feeling funding should be reduced to feeling it was about right. In 1973, 61.4 percent wanted the space program reduced, compared with Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 50 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 51 20. William Sims Bainbridge, “Collective Behavior and Social Movements,” in Sociology by Rodney Stark (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1985), pp. 492–523, reprinted in second edition (1987) and third edition (1989). only 42.2 percent in 1998. Those who felt about the right amount was being invested rose from 30.8 percent in 1973 to 43.8 percent in 1998. But a projection based on the fifteen years from 1983 to 1998 shows no growth in those who want space funding increased and no decline in the proportion of the popu- lation who want it reduced; so projections are very sensitive to the assumptions on which they are based. While opinion polls give some reason for slight optimism, they certainly do not reveal the kind of rapid growth in support that would be required to break out of the current doldrums. Hope springs eternal, but there is little reason to expect that either a breakthrough in space technology or a surge in conventional moti- vation will transform spaceflight in our lifetimes. Thus, we need to consider the possible impact of another spaceflight social movement. The regularities of human interaction can be classified in terms of four levels of social coordination—parallel behavior, collective behavior, social movements, and societal institutions. 20 Parallel behavior is when individuals do roughly the same thing for similar reasons, but without influencing each other directly. An example is the isolated pioneers who developed the intellec- tual basis of spaceflight, including Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and the early work of Oberth. On the basis of their ideas, an inter- national network of informal communication developed, chiefly 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 51 52 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 21. William Sims Bainbridge, “Beyond Bureaucratic Policy: The Space Flight Movement,” pp. 153–163 in People in Space, ed. James Everett Katz (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1985). 22. Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1962); Hans Toch, The Social Psychology of Social Movements (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). through publications, in which the ideas were disseminated, and spaceflight enthusiasts came into contact with others of like mind. The sociological term for informally coordinated mass activity is collective behavior, including such phenomena as pan- ics, riots, fads, and crazes. It often happens that collective behavior can develop a degree of formal organization and become a social movement. For spaceflight, the watershed was the founding of prospace vol- untary organizations, notably in Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain. A successful social movement often becomes incorporated in or co-opted by a societal institution, such as government space programs. Then, the early enthusi- asms of the typical institutionalized movement become mired in bureaucratic inertia, and it is very difficult to transform well- established institutions. 21 Much of the traditional social-scientific literature on social movements focuses on the movements of deprived groups within society. 22 These often take the form of protests, and they typi- cally challenge the comfortable status of societal elites. To many influential people, the evolutionary processes of conventional societal institutions feel safer and more reasonable than revolu- tionary movements. Since the end of the Apollo program, a number of moderate social movement organizations have supported increased efforts 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 52 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 53 23. Trudy E. Bell, “American Space-Interest Groups,” Star and Sky (September 1980), pp. 53–60. 24. Michael A. G. Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-Space Movement, 1972–84 (New York: Praeger, 1986), p. 308. 25. William Sims Bainbridge, “Religions for a Galactic Civilization,” pp. 187–201 in Science Fiction and Space Futures, ed. Eugene M. Emme (San Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1982). in space. 23 In the main, these are respectable groups, and their contributions have been worthwhile. However, as Michael Michaud noted in his study of these groups, they have not achieved significant breakthroughs. 24 A really new spaceflight movement might upset the delicate relationship between the established space program and the branches of government that provide the money for it, and it might alienate many opinion leaders in the general public, even if it energized the enthusiasm of others. At the very least, a fresh social movement would demand fresh thinking that shatters con- ventional notions about what science, technology, and the human spirit could accomplish in space. Religious movements are especially suspect in the modern era, yet they have the capacity to break through ordinary rou- tines and to experiment with utopian alternatives such as [an] extraterrestrial society. 25 Few people already involved in the space program, and few members of the general public, are pre- pared to embrace a radically new religion. Some of them are faithful believers in the traditional religions. Most of the rest are probably secularists with neither religious faith nor much trust in religious enthusiasts. Most people seem horrified by the few highly publicized religions oriented toward contact with extraterrestrial beings. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 53 54 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 26. Robert W. Balch, “When the Light Goes Out, Darkness Comes,” in Religious Movements, ed. Rodney Stark (New York: Paragon House, 1985), pp. 11–63; “Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Peep’s UFO Cult,” The Gods Have Landed: New Religions From Other Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 137–166; Ryan J. Cook, “Heaven’s Gate,” Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. Richard Landes (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 177–179; Winston Davis, “Heaven’s Gate: A Study of Religious Obedience,” Nova Religio 3 (2000) http://www.novareligio.com/ davis.html 27. Susan J. Palmer, “Purity and Danger in the Solar Temple,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 11 (1996), pp. 303–318; “The Solar Temple,” Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. Richard Landes (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 394–398. 28. Susan J. Palmer, “The Raëlian Movement International,” New Religions and the New Europe, ed. Robert Towler (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1995), pp. 194–210; Phillip Charles Lucas, “Raelians” in Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. Richard Landes (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 342–344. 29. Bhaktivedanta Swami, A. C., Easy Journey to Other Planets (Boston: ISKCON Press, 1970). Both Heaven’s Gate 26 and The Solar Temple 27 tried to travel to other worlds by committing suicide, and the latter also commit- ted a number of murders. A theologically similar space-oriented group called the Raelian Movement has not resorted to violence but has hurled a powerful religious challenge at conventional society by setting out to clone human beings as part of its radi- cal method for transcending the limitations of terrestrial life. 28 Religious movements have a tendency to pursue goals by supernatural rather than natural means. An example is the little book published by the Hare Krishna movement, Easy Journey to Other Planets, advocating chanting rather than rocketry as the best means to experience other worlds. 29 Thus, it is possible that space-oriented cults will seek to explore the galaxy, but they will 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 54 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 55 30. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996); William Sims Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997). probably attempt to do so through supernatural rituals rather than through spaceflight. 30 This brief survey of research on social and religious movements is not very encouraging. However, the examples of the civil rights, women’s liberation, and environmentalist movements remind us that social movements are often very effective in changing society’s priorities. Perhaps a totally new kind of move- ment could emerge in the next few years, employing technology to serve fundamental human needs that in earlier centuries would have motivated religious or political movements. Let us imagine a successful social movement of the future that could actually build an interplanetary and even interstellar civilization. I will present one idea here, but perhaps others are possible. The idea relies upon plausible developments in fields of science and technology that seem remote from astronautics— namely cognitive neuroscience, genetic engineering, nanotech- nology, and information systems. But the fundamental key is a transcendental movement that would provide the motivation to apply these developments to the foundation of cosmic civilization. The chief impediment to rapid development of spaceflight is the problem of returning a profit to the people who must invest in it. The most obvious way to motivate people to invest in interstellar exploration is to invite them to travel personally to 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 55 56 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 31. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, 1999). 32. Roger A. MacGowan and Frederick I. Ordway, III, Intelligence in the Universe (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966). the stars and create new lives for themselves on distant worlds. But we are decades and perhaps centuries away from having the technological capability and infrastructural base to accomplish this in the conventional manner we have always imagined—by flying living human bodies and all the necessities of life to other planets. There is, however, another possible way. Visionaries in a number of cutting-edge disciplines have begun to develop the diverse toolkit of technologies that will be required to overcome death. A prominent example is Ray Kurzweil, a pioneer of computer speech recognition, who argues that human beings will gradually merge with their computers over the next century, thereby becoming immortal. 31 The idea dates back at least to Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 novel, The City and the Stars. In 1966, Roger MacGowan and Frederick Ordway speculated that successful spacefaring species might evolve past the state of being biological organisms, becoming “intelligent synthetic automata.” 32 We have in fact advanced some distance in that direction over the past thirty-five years, and we now see the real possibility of achieving that dream in a manner that preserves unique human personalities and blends natural with synthetic modalities. For a number of years, I have studied the techniques for archiving aspects of human personality in computerized infor- 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 56 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 57 33. William Sims Bainbridge, Survey Research: A Computer-Assisted Introduction (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1989); this textbook includes nine software programs and datasets; Social Research Methods and Statistics (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1992); this textbook includes eleven software programs and datasets. 34. William Sims Bainbridge, “Religious Ethnography on the World Wide Web,” Religion on the Internet, ed. Jeffrey K. Hadden and Douglas W. Cowan, Vol. 8 of the annual Religion and the Social Order (New York: JAI/Elsevier, 2000), pp. 55–80, especially pp. 66–75. 35. The Question Factory, www.erols.com/bainbri/qf.htm 36. www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/eod/ mation systems, along the way publishing computer-assisted textbooks on some of the methodologies. 33 In May 1997, I launched a Web-based project, called The Question Factory, to create a very large number of questionnaire measures to archive aspects of personality that were generally missed by standard psychological tests. 34 In addition to placing a number of item- generation open-ended surveys on my own Web site, I joined the team creating Survey2000 and Survey2001, two major online questionnaire projects sponsored by the National Geographic Society. My initial result was a set of eight personality-archiving software modules incorporating 15,600 items and 31,200 meas- urements. 35 Anyone can begin to archive his or her personality using these Windows-based programs today. A complementary approach involves making digital audio- visual recordings of a person’s perceptions, speech, and behavior. For example, Carnegie-Mellon University’s Experience on Demand project is developing “tools, techniques, and systems allowing people to capture a record of their experiences unob- trusively.” 36 Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has videotaped the reminiscences of more than 52,000 survivors of the European holocaust, a 180-terabyte 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 57 58 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 37. www.vhf.org/ dataset that cost $175 million to assemble. 37 The same effort could have captured much of the personality of a single individual. A combination of real-time computer graphics and artificial intelligence based on an individual’s full personality record could even today produce a realistic dynamic simulation of that individual. Many people today carry personal digital assistants (PDAs), and some of these are already connected to Internet. Over the next few years, these will evolve into multimedia gate- ways to the world of information, serving as advisors, coaches, agents, brokers, guides, and all-purpose servants. At the same time they perform all these functions, they can unobtrusively record the user’s wishes, thoughts, actions, and words. Advanced devices of this type will adapt to the user’s needs and personality, so they will have to learn many of the facets of the person anyway. They will also be companions that converse and play games with the user. Many forms of personality-archiving methods can be blended seamlessly with these activities. A combination of foreseeable advances in several fields of science and technology will permit vast improvements in our ability to capture and reanimate a human personality. In time, cognitive neuroscience, perhaps drawing upon molecule-size sen- sor developments in nanotechnology, will be able to chart the structure and function of a living human brain. “Gene on a chip” 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 58 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 59 38. William Sims Bainbridge, Goals in Space (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991). bioelectronic devices will permit cost-effective sequencing and analysis of those aspects of a person’s genetic code that influence his or her personality. Information science, especially in the very active field of digital libraries, will develop the necessary tech- niques for efficient storage and access of petabyte records of the individual. Finally, advances in genetic engineering, information systems, and robotics will allow archived human beings to live again, even in transformed bodies suitable for life on other plan- ets and moons of the solar system. New lives must be lived on new worlds. 38 Overpopulation from a zero death rate would soon fill any one planet, and humanity would lose its finest treasure if there were no more children. In the past, several religions imagined that the afterlife was located in Heaven. Once reanimation of archived human personalities becomes possible, it will be necessary to enact a worldwide con- stitutional law that resurrection must not be done on Earth, but only in the heavens. We see the beginnings of this prohibition against terrestrial resurrection in the remarkably powerful worldwide movement to ban human reproductive cloning. Other technologies are likely to be banned on Earth in later decades, such as advanced forms of artificial intelligence and android robots. Genetic engi- neering is already under concerted attack, and there are the 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 59 60 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 39. Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired (April 2000). 40. William Sims Bainbridge, “Computer Simulation of Cultural Drift: Limitations on Interstellar Colonization,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (1984) 37: 420–429. 41. Sebastian von Hoerner, “Population Explosion and Interstellar Expansion,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (1975) 28: 691–712. beginnings of a movement to ban some forms of nanotechnology. 39 Scientists in these fields may have to do their work beyond the reach of terrestrial religions and governments, but that will be costly. Only a goal as valuable as eternal life could motivate investment in substantial scientific infrastructure on the Moon or Mars. Calculation of the geometric realities facing colonization of the universe suggests that there might not be enough room in the galaxy for endless copies of absolutely everybody. The population of an expanding sphere of inhabited worlds increases according to the cube of its radius, while the surface area from which col- onization ships can directly reach new solar systems increases only as the square of the radius. 40 To some extent, this problem can be dealt with by gradually increasing the time between lives. But unless a means of instantaneous interstellar travel is devised, the rate of expansion of the human population is limited. 41 The answer is a simple one. A person must earn a new life by contributing in some way, direct or indirect, to the development and maintenance of the entire system that explores and colonizes space. Thus, each generation has a moral contract with the ones that follow. Every person who contributes substantially has a right to expect at least one more life. Future generations must honor that promise if they are to have any hope that the genera- tions after them will grant them a second life as well. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 60 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 61 42. Nathan Keyfitz, “The Family that Does not Reproduce Itself,” Below Replacement Fertility in Industrial Societies, ed. Kingsley Davis, Mikhail Bernstam, and Rita Ricardo- Campbell (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 139–154; Ben J. Wattenberg, The Birth Dearth (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987). As noted above, many human populations are failing to reproduce even at the replacement level and are destined to vanish gradually from the Earth through an insidious form of genetic suicide. 42 In particular, highly educated nations and groups whose religion or philosophy does not encourage childbirth are failing, whereas uneducated populations and fundamentalist groups are growing. Well-educated people can ensure the demo- graphic growth of their population through interstellar immortality. By “arrival of the fittest,” those with the most advanced minds and cultures will spread across the galaxy. Even a very low birthrate per lifetime can cause population growth when an individual has many lifetimes in which to reproduce. Additionally, some individuals who make extraordi- nary contributions to human progress may thereby earn the right to live out several lives simultaneously in different solar systems, reproducing themselves as well as giving birth to children who are distinct personalities. We have the technology, already today, to begin archiving human personalities at low fidelity within what I call Starbase, a database destined eventually to be transported to the stars. To gain entry to Starbase, a person must contribute significantly in some way to the creation of interstellar civilization. One way is to help develop technologies for archiving and reanimating 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 61 62 Looking Backward, Looking Forward human personalities at ever higher fidelity. Another is to work toward the establishment of small human colonies, first on the Moon and Mars, where Starbase can be headquartered and where serious work on reanimation can begin. When the time comes for the first interstellar expeditions, they will be carried out not by biologically based humans in their first brief lifetimes, but by eternal Starbase modules incorporat- ing the archived but active personalities of the crew and colonists. At the destination, the crew will not waste its time ter- raforming planets, but will adapt the colonist into whatever form (biological, robot, cyborg) [that] can thrive in the alien environ- ment. Subsequent waves of colonists can be sent as radioed data files in a technically feasible version of the old science-fiction dream of teleportation. A Starbase movement could offer the stars to people living today, and this realistic hope would motivate us to create first an interplanetary then an interstellar civilization. It draws upon advanced technology from fields other than rocketry, and it promises to serve the instinctive desire for survival. By conceptu- alizing human beings as dynamic systems of information, it har- monizes with the fundamental principles of postindustrial society. Such a movement could provide powerful new motiva- tions for a second spaceflight revolution. In conclusion, ancient Greek scientists knew that the Earth was a sphere, and they understood roughly how large it is. However, the classical civilization of Greece and Rome failed to exploit that knowledge, send expeditions to the Americas, and colonize the New World. Similarly, our more technically advanced civilization 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 62 The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited—William Sims Bainbridge 63 understands the fundamental scope of the galaxy, yet we seem to lack the cultural dynamics and social organization required for interplanetary let alone interstellar travel and settlement. Pessimists might conclude that we should tear down our present civilization quickly to hasten the next Dark Age, so that the successor spacefaring civilization will get an earlier start. But the seeds of each new civilization need to be securely planted within the old—just as Christianity took root within classical society and later helped shape industrial society. Two thousand years ago, Christianity was but one of many cults vying for attention within the Roman Empire, but it rose to become the most influential movement of all human history. Thus, optimists would attempt to launch many space-related social movements in the hopes that one of them would eventually take humanity to the stars. At the extreme, optimists and pessimists might agree that the human species, as it is currently defined, simply is inferior to the task. With a lifespan generally under a century, we require quick returns on our investments, and our instincts are too eas- ily satisfied by modest lives on our home planet. But extreme optimists differ from pessimists in that they imagine we can evolve into something higher, a truly cosmic species for whom all the universe is home. Count me among the optimists. Probably, many intellectual leaders and policymakers in the standard aerospace agencies and corporations will find the Starbase idea too radical for their tastes. Yet business as usual is not going to create interplanetary civilization. In time, the standard institutions of Western civilization will disintegrate, like those of the Roman Empire 1,600 years 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 63 64 earlier. Already we see demographic trends that are extremely worrying—unchecked population growth in the poor countries and impending collapse in most advanced nations. Human exploration of the universe through an aggressive space program has nearly stalled. The future demands a new spaceflight social movement to get us moving again. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 64 Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi 65 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 65 66 Looking Backward, Looking Forward Sputnik 1. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 66 67 I would like to take a broader historical view of the space race and look at the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States in the early years of the space race. Then I would like to add some thoughts on the writing of history and how we understand it. In the past ten years, our view of the space race has changed dramatically. Much of this has had to do with the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent availability of an unprecedented amount of information that has allowed us to rewrite that one side of the history of the space race. Previously, we only knew bits and pieces of what the Soviets did. Now we know not only what they did, but why they did certain things, which is an important aspect of writing history. Writing history is about making sense. It is about building patterns, about putting together pieces and making those pieces fit. It is not about chronologies. The writing of this new history indicates a funda- mental maturity of our field and space history. We are now able to move from chronologies to making sense. One of the things that I want to talk about today is how we have understood the space race. Traditionally, we have viewed it in terms of action and reaction. One side reacted to the other and did certain things, and then the other side reacted to that. So there was this chain reaction of events. The new historical record suggests that’s not so far from the truth, but perhaps we need a slightly more nuanced approach. I would like to touch on three very important milestones in the space race and reexamine those events in the light of new infor- mation—Sputnik, the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and the Moon race. Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 67 68 Sputnik has been considered the first big milestone in the space race. For over forty years now, we have considered Sputnik the first shot, the opening salvo. I would not disagree that Sputnik was the first physical manifestation of the space race, but I would argue that the space race actually began before Sputnik. As most of you know, Sputnik was launched during the International Geophysical Year, a period of intense scientific research organized by scientists all over the world. There were a number of key proposals from the American side to participate during the International Geophysical Year [IGY]. As most of you know, the Eisenhower Administration announced in July 1955 that the United States would launch a satellite during the IGY. The reasons behind that decision are fairly complex, and so I will not go into that. But what’s most interesting from the Soviet side is how they reacted to this announcement. This announcement by the Eisenhower Administration set up a series of deliberations on the Soviet side about how they should react. These deliberations cul- minated in a project to preempt the American side by launching a huge scientific observatory. So, for the Soviets, the race had already begun immediately after the Eisenhower Administration’s announcement. An interesting sidebar to this occurred in late 1956, when Wernher von Braun’s team-tested a missile. The Soviets mistakenly believed that this missile was actually trying to launch a satellite, which shook them. This misperception fueled a Soviet sense of urgency that “we have to do this before the Americans.” Thus, they dropped their plans to launch this huge scientific observatory Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 68 69 and decided to launch a small metal ball, which they could quickly do. Of course, we know that small metal ball as Sputnik. So this new information asks us to reconsider and reframe certain events that we know as the “Holy Grail” of history. In one sense, the space race might not have begun on 4 October 1957, but rather it perhaps began two years earlier. That’s an important distinction that may lead us to think about these events in a sharply different way. The second issue is Yuri Gagarin’s flight in 1961. Certainly apart from Sputnik, no other event has been more important for both sides in the early years of the space age. For the Soviets, this was their high point, their peak. For the Americans, Gagarin’s flight was important because it set off deliberations that led to the decision to go to the Moon. Again, this demonstrates an action-reaction dynamic. The new information also suggests that the Soviets really were reacting to the Americans, or at least what they thought the Americans were doing. Gagarin’s flight was planned almost as a reaction to Mercury, and the timing of his flight was, in many ways, a reaction to what von Braun and others were thinking in terms of when NASA would launch the first American in space. A lot of it had to do with timing, but a lot of it was pure luck. It could have easily been Alan Shepard who was the first human in space. It turned out to be Yuri Gagarin. But there definitely was an action-reaction dynamic, and it’s important to take that into account in looking at other events in the space race too. Finally, I would like to go to the third issue, which is the Moon race. We know that the Soviets were in a race to the Moon with the United States, and they tried hard. Kennedy committed Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 69 70 NASA to a Moon landing in 1961. It was a national goal. But the Soviets hardly took notice. In 1961, they had just launched Yuri Gagarin and had no reason to feel threatened. It was only in 1964 that they really began to think seriously about a Moon landing. It was a national priority only in 1967, which was too little, too late. The action-reaction dynamic also plays into the Moon race. One of the interesting things that I have discovered in my research is how American information seeped over to the other side and how the Soviets dealt with it. Apollo is an interesting case because repeatedly throughout the 1960s, the Soviets sim- ply did not believe that the Americans would make it to the Moon by 1969. They really had this feeling, and you would see this in documents. “Well, yes, they’ve got this equipment ready and that equipment ready, but it would just be impossible for them to make the 1969 deadline.” What really shook them up was the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, because this impressed upon the Soviets the imminent reality of a human Moon landing. But again, by then, it was too little, too late. I think what all of this indicates is that, in some sense, the seeds of the Soviet failure were actually laid much earlier in the sense of complacency that emerged after Gagarin’s flight. In some ways, the Soviets believed that “we’re the best already,” and it was too late before they realized that the U.S. was committed to Apollo and, thus, was a real threat. Another interesting point concerns the post-Apollo period. The Soviets handled their failure in an unsurprising way, given that they had hidden their effort in the first place. They responded Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 70 71 to Apollo by saying, “Well, we weren’t in the race at all,” and for many years, this denial was accepted lore for most Western observers. Because of this Western notion that “Well, we were just racing ourselves,” many critiques of Apollo emerged. Whether or not one thought Apollo was a good or a bad thing for the ultimate future of the American space program, the value of it as an international competition and a demonstration of supreme rivalry was called into question for many years. During the 1970s and 1980s, many critics were frustrated and disap- pointed that “we’ve spent so much money and effort to get to the Moon first, and yet, there was no race after all.” Of course, in the past ten years, we have understood more clearly that there was indeed a space race. We know it was hard- fought, and we know the Americans won. I think this is one example of how history itself is dynamic and changing, pointing out that nothing is fixed. I expect that how we remember the Moon race forty years from now will be quite different from how we remember it today. We should not compartmentalize history into saying that it is restricted by artificial boundaries and we can only understand history by looking through these blinders. We need to broaden our perspective by looking at the other side and trying to under- stand the action-reaction interrelationship that was going on in the 1960s and 1970s. I would like to end with some final thoughts on how we evaluate history. Professional and academic historians often want to write about events and people from some measure of dispassionate distance. We tend to evaluate space history Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 71 72 through contexts such as geopolitics, the Cold War, the missile gap, and presidential administrations. But there is also some- thing to be said about imbuing history with the essence of what makes people want to do certain extraordinary things. If we look at the flight of Yuri Gagarin or the flight of Alan Shepard, it is almost impossible to see these as events outside of the Cold War. But I think it is also important to recognize how important the flight of Yuri Gagarin, for example, was simply in the course of human history. It was the first time that a human being had left the planet Earth. I think that historians should not be afraid of appealing to that sense of the human imagination—to step back from geopolitics and the Cold War to see an event from a much broader perspective. I hope historians can take up that challenge in the future. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 72 Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory 73 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 73 74 Looking Backward, Looking Forward NASA’s safety priorities. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 74 75 From the first days of the Mercury program to today’s efforts aboard the International Space Station, human safety has always been the primary consideration for human spaceflight. Looking backward, consider NASA’s first attempts to reach space without human crews. Rockets tipped over, rockets exploded on lift off, rockets careened off course . . . it sure didn’t look safe. Before we could put a life at risk, the rockets had to be made safer. How? Mostly through the application of brute-force engineering—essentially the “Fly, Fix, Fly” approach. This approach did eventually lead to safer rockets; how- ever, to produce a spacecraft intended for routine human flight into space, NASA needed to design safety into the vehicle, not just add safety on after a problem was discovered. This need drove NASA to become the home of some of the world’s best design engineers and produced some of the best system safety, quality, and reliability engineers. NASA demonstrated through the Mercury program that we could launch a human into orbit around the Earth and recover the astronaut and spacecraft safely. During the Gemini program, we perfected complex rendezvous and docking in space, and per- formed spacewalks. Both astronauts and equipment operated safely during longer durations in space. By the time the Gemini program ended, NASA was doing what was once thought impossible. Even with increasingly complex equipment and quick turn- arounds between missions, the astronauts always returned home safely. Success was becoming routine and expected. NASA experienced a rude awakening in January 1967, when the Apollo 1 capsule burst into flames during a preflight Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 75 76 ground test. The three astronauts performing the test perished in the blaze. The test had called for simulating a launch configuration, so the capsule was pressurized with 100 percent oxygen, and the hatch was sealed. Investigators determined that an electrical short sparked the fire. In a 100-percent oxygen environment, the fire quickly engulfed the capsule. But the test was being performed with an unfueled launch vehicle, so it was not considered haz- ardous! NASA never considered the possibility of a fire during the test—crew evacuation and fire suppression were not part of the test scenario. NASA responded to this tragedy by strengthening safety oversight, clarifying responsibilities, improving communications, improving test safety analysis and emergency procedures, and making safety design enhancements to the Apollo spacecraft. Congress established the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel to provide an independent review of the safety of NASA programs and operations. NASA established an Office of Flight Safety, independent of the flight program office, to review all aspects of design, manufacturing, test, and flight from a safety standpoint. NASA recovered from this tragedy. NASA astronauts landed on the Moon six times and returned safely. The Apollo 13 mission demonstrated that NASA could recover from a serious technical mishap and return the crew safely to Earth. In the 1970s, NASA conducted the Apollo-Soyuz program and the Skylab program—logging more human spaceflight success. For a period of time, America did not have a regular human presence in space. Throughout the 1970s, we were developing and building the next generation of [the] reusable space vehicle, Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 76 77 the Space Shuttle. In the mid-1970s, Agencywide advocacy for flight safety became the responsibility of the NASA Chief Engineer. From 1981 to 1986, NASA flew twenty-four Space Shuttle missions. Although we experienced some anomalies along the way, the astronauts always returned home safely. Again, success was becoming routine—until a cold January day in 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger suffered a major failure in the seals of one of its boosters and exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. All seven crewmembers were killed. In the painful months that followed, there were indepth, critical reviews by NASA and external bodies. The Shuttle pro- gram was grounded, and each safety practice was dissected and examined. Safety goals and procedures were revisited; even orga- nizational and individual attitudes were considered. The reviews found a number of management flaws. For example, O-ring seal problems in the boosters had surfaced on previous missions. However, this information was not widely circulated. Concerns expressed by safety engineers did not always reach management in a timely manner. Additionally, the magnitude of the risk and the associated ramifications may not have been fully understood by the decision-makers. There had been growing pressure on NASA to launch the Shuttle regularly and on schedule. No one believed that they had enough data to prove that the launch was not safe. A collective mindset evolved—if no one could prove that the launch was unsafe, it must be safe! In the few years after the Challenger accident, NASA put in place a number of improvements to its safety program. These included: Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 77 78 • Creating an independent safety organization, reporting directly to the Administrator. • Increasing the budget and staffing for safety, reliability, maintainability, and quality assurance. • Improving communications. NASA created an additional avenue to communicate safety concerns in a confidential manner—the NASA Safety Reporting System. • Strengthening risk-management programs and initiating significant problem reporting, trend analysis, and inde- pendent systems assessment capability. These improvements form the basis for today’s Safety and Mission Assurance Program, and since return-to-flight in 1988, every NASA Space Shuttle flight has flown and landed safely. How has human spaceflight safety advanced over the past forty years? Well, for one thing, we know more. We know more about engineering, materials, and robotics. Safety and mission assurance tools are much more advanced. We have the capability of improved nondestructive evaluation, and we can do computer modeling and sophisticated “what if” scenarios. Today, we know more about program management and more about what it takes to fly safely. We know that there are a million things that can go wrong, and we know that we can never become complacent. We will not allow ourselves to be bul- lied by schedules, and we won’t let cost constraints make us skimp on safety. We don’t ask our engineers and managers and experts to prove it is not safe to fly. Rather, we ask them to prove that it is safe. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 78 79 This is a philosophical change from the days before Challenger and a fundamental management principle for safety of flight. Today’s human spaceflight safety prelaunch assessment review process is independent and comprehensive. For each launch, NASA managers prepare a Certificate Of Flight Readiness—we call it the COFR. Before I sign the COFR, I must personally understand all the safety issues and their resolution. If I do not have confidence that everything has been done to make the flight as safe as it can be, it is my job to not sign the COFR. The Administrator would not have it any other way. The International Space Station heralds a new era of space exploration for America. On this program, safety is NASA’s highest priority. My staff performs continuous oversight and independent assessment on the design, development, and operation of the International Space Station. In sum, I’d like to describe the illustration shown [on page 74]. This picture represents NASA’s safety hierarchy. We articu- lated the safety hierarchy a little over two years ago, as part of our quest to be the nation’s leader in safety and occupational health, and in the safety of the products and services we provide. The safety hierarchy stresses that we are all accountable for assuring that our programs, projects, and operations do not impact safety or health for the public, astronauts and pilots, employees on the ground, and high-value equipment and property. When people are thinking about doing things safely, they’re also thinking about doing things right. And for the past couple of years, we’ve had some pretty good results. In the time since the failures of the Mars 98 missions that occurred in late Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 79 80 1999, every NASA spacecraft launch has met the success objec- tives, and every Space Shuttle mission has safely and successfully met all mission objectives. Now I can’t say that NASA’s safety program is solely responsible for these achievements, but, as we like to say, “mission success starts with safety.” In the future, looking forward, we will continue to make spaceflight even safer. That is NASA’s vision. That is NASA’s duty to both those who will travel into space and the American people who will make the journey possible. Looking Backward, Looking Forward 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 80 What If? Paths Not Taken—John M. Logsdon 81 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 81 82 Looking Backward, Looking Forward President John F. Kennedy speaks before a crowd of 35,000 people at Rice University on 12 September 1962. NASA Image 69-HC-1245. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 82 83 I want to ask all of you to join me for a few minutes in a men- tal experiment. There is a certain sense of determinism as we review a period of history, like the forty years of U.S. human spaceflight. There is an implicit assumption that there were no alternatives to the way things happened. If you step back even half a step, you know that’s not true; that along the way, history could have been very different if different choices had been made, if different events had happened. So I have arbitrarily picked a few situations in those forty years and invite you to ask along with me: “What if things had been different?” This notion of counterfactual history has some legitimacy. I have used it as a class assignment for my students in space policy, asking them to write about what might have occurred if different choices had been made. Dwayne Day, a former student and now a colleague, has suggested a whole symposium on counterfactual space history, and that might be an interesting thing to do someday. As I looked into preparation for this talk, I discovered there is a body of literature on counterfactual history. And, not surprisingly in the Internet age, there are even Web sites devoted to the topic! So let us start with the first “what if.” The Mercury Redstone 2 flight on 31 January 1961 carried the chimpanzee Ham. It went too high and too fast. Ham experienced over 10-Gs on reentry, and the spacecraft landed several hundred miles down range. He was a very angry chimpanzee when rescue teams reached the Mercury capsule. The problem that caused the devi- ation in flight trajectory turned out to be very simple to identify; it was quickly diagnosed as a malfunctioning valve. It could have been fixed, and the next flight, which had been scheduled to What If? Paths Not Taken—John M. Logsdon 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 83 84 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 1. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997). carry the first astronaut, could have been launched without an intermediate test flight. But even in those days, safety was criteria number one. So Wernher von Braun and his team insisted on a flight of the repaired booster with a dummy spacecraft; that flight took place on 24 March 1961. The reality is if the 31 January flight had been successful, then the 24 March flight could have carried Alan Shepard. He would have been the first human in space, not Yuri Gagarin. What might have been the impacts of that? It is reasonable to speculate that the Soviet reaction, the U.S. reaction to Yuri Gagarin’s flight, President Kennedy’s subsequent reaction to the Gagarin flight, the press reaction, and the political reaction that provided the fuel for Kennedy to ask his advisors to find a dra- matic space program with which the United States could “win” might all have been entirely different. It is quite possible that the United States would not have decided to try to surpass the Soviet Union in spectacular space achievements. Then a very different space history would certainly have evolved. Here is another possibility. In President Kennedy’s inaugural State of the Union address, he invited the Soviet Union to coop- erate in the exploration of space. In fact, early on, he had tar- geted space as an area for trying to develop mutual confidence and reduce tensions with our Cold War adversary. Kennedy was forced by the reaction to the Gagarin flight to compete, but he never gave up the cooperative idea. There’s a book called One Hell of a Gamble 1 that traces the fact that Kennedy, between the 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 84 85 time he received the memo recommending Apollo and the time he announced Apollo on 25 May 1961, kept asking the Soviet Union “might you want to cooperate in space?” He received no response from the Soviets, so he went ahead with his speech on 25 May. Ten days later, in Vienna, he met Nikita Khrushchev for the one and only time and suggested “Why don’t we go to the Moon together?” As Asif Siddiqi has suggested, at that point, the Soviet Union didn’t have a lunar program, really didn’t take the United States very seriously, and the official party line was to link cooperation to general and complete disarmament. So there was no positive response from Khrushchev. Kennedy never really went away from the idea. In September 1963, at the United Nations in the most public possible way, he suggested, “Why should this be a matter of national rivalry? Why don’t we do it together?” Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, has written that at that point the Soviet leader was beginning to think more about cooperation. Kennedy, ten days before he was assassinated, sent a memo to Jim Webb asking for a plan to coop- erate with the Soviet Union in space, including a cooperative lunar-landing effort. What would have happened if Khrushchev’s answer had been yes? Well, there are lots of possibilities. If the answer had been yes at Vienna in 1961, for example, the political support that made Apollo possible likely would have collapsed. This political support was based on competition, on the idea of the United States gaining a preeminent position in space. So if the Soviet Union had accepted Kennedy’s offer, I’m not sure Apollo would have ever happened. What If? Paths Not Taken—John M. Logsdon 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 85 86 Looking Backward, Looking Forward 2. Stephen Baxter, Voyage (William Morrow and Company, 1997). Could the Soviet Union have carried out its part of the pro- gram if cooperation had taken place? It is not clear whether the post-Khrushchev leadership of Brezhnev and Kosygin would have been as committed to this. It is also debatable whether the Soviet Union could have contributed to the program in the ways that would have m