Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

I will tell you how it all began. It was the 1990s I was approached by Columbia university press on a chapter on an encyclopedia they were writing about the history of the 20th century. Now what is significant about it is the person originally scheduled to write it was Carl Sagan. He had been asked to contribute a chapter to but died a year later. I was honoured to be asked.

At the time I was writing monthly for natural history magazine. I almost declined. But then I thought, no, maybe I can do something different.

Maybe why not think of discovery, not in the 20th century; not even in terms of the discovery of objects, or places, but maybe the discovery of ideas. And I would track the transition from the discovery of places, going back to the the era of the great explorers, to the discovery of ideas, once you've mapped the whole earth. What is left there for you to discover? Yes, there is the bottom of the ocean, but philosophically what is left for you once you know the whole earth is there? You have the exploration of ideas. And these ideas then take you to new places beyond Earth; they take you to space.

And I thought to myself at the time, you know, I really want to go to Mars. Its an unpopular view amongst my astronomy colleagues, maybe a 3:1 ratio see no value of sending human people to space. By the way, that sentiment is held by an entire generation, in my colleagues who grew up in the 1960's when we went to the moon and so there is a little bit of hypocrisy there; and I've taken them to task on it … not only that its politically naïve to think that NASA is simply your private science funding agency … but more on that later.

So, I said to myself how much would it cost to go to Mars, say it cost half a billion, it would only take a year, so lets say half a trillion. That’s expensive, that’s a lot. Yet, in reality, it's a small percentage of our total economy.

But I thought I am going to go back through the history of time and ask what did we do to propel our community to invest in this way. And I dedicated a whole chapter in my book of a list of things that drove humans to do great things. So I made a list of the most expensive things we have ever done as a species, such as the Great Wall of China, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project, Cathedral buildings in the renaissance, the Columbus voyages, the Magellan voyages, the pyramids, etc.

I thought after this list, the motivations for the most expensive things we have ever done it would fill a whole book. But in my analysis, I could come up with only three drivers.

No more than three.

No fewer than three.

The number one driver of them all is war. Or, politically, you can call it “defense”. That gets you the Great Wall of China, that gets you the Manhattan Project, and in fact that also gets you the Apollo Project. It's the “I don't want to die” driver. If you are threatened, you will spend without risk to not die. That’s the obvious one.

The second is gaining great economic wealth. It's not quite as powerful as the previous, but it is really powerful, operating on the motivations of nations. That’s what gets you the Columbus voyages. Columbus himself was a great discover, but the person who had to write the check for his voyage gave the command "When you go, take these flags, declare the new new land ours, and bring back riches." Queen Isabella did not say, “Come back and report to us what botany discoveries and fantastic science you may find there!” Columbus might have been interested in it; his crew might be interested in it; but not the people who wrote the checks.

The third greatest driver... We see much less of this today. And this is the praise of royalty of deities. And this is the need to praise a deity or royalty that is more powerful than you are. This is why you get cathedrals, maybe the pyramids and similar ancient megaliths.

So I said to myself, if we are going to Mars, and since Mars is expensive, it HAS to satisfy one of those criteria.

And this was my first revelation. And this was the centre piece of my revelation.

And I said to myself, my God! How many people know this?! Because you hang around professional qualified space enthusiasts, and what do they tell you? They'll say, "Oh, the reason why we stopped going to the moon, we didn't have leaders, we needed visionary people, we stopped being risk takers." There is a whole list of arguments people will give you for why we are not in space right now. Why the space frontier has not continued beyond humans landing on the moon.

I deduced, without exception, that every single item on the list, is DELUSIONAL. My experience of history tells me that NONE of these reasons matter to those that are writing the cheques. So, I started exploring which ways our reasons for going into space as a cultural frontier could use one of these three methods.

A couple of years went by. I get a phone call from the White House. April 2001. It's the GW Bush White House. I got a phone-call. They said, "We want to check your interest and see if you want to serve on a commission." I was confused, as I did not know anything about commissions; I was a scientist.

In academia, politics is the barrier between where you are standing and where you want to go, whereas in Washington politics is the currency of all interactions.

They said it was called the 'Commmission on the Future of the United Airspace Industry' and they said they had to ask me a few questions. And then came out all the questions, all the types of questions that are illegal on a job application. Then they asked are you familiar with the president's politics and policies; what do you think of them?

When appointed to the panel, I soon learned, being a liberal brought up in New York, that when talking to someone who is not liberal you can NOT stand there and have that conversation. It doesn't work. Because there is actually a smokescreen there. You can not stand there and have a civilized discussion.

THIS is what the television talk shows do. They get people with hot air on both ends and at the end there is just more hot air. You actually have to crawl out of those zones and stand in the middle and have that conversation. And over the period of that commission, that's what I did. And by doing that, I learned things about the far right, or would not have know or even seen or understood. So it was quite illuminating.

I will give you an example of a liberal smokescreen bias. Because there are biases on both ends of the spectrum, but it's hard to see them when you are there. You have to look at them and step back.

Nobody liked Bush, and when I said I was appointed to the Bush commission, they said, “Oh, they appointed you because you are black, to make them look good.” Well, actually, there were numerous black people already on the panel, including women experts in the aeronautical industry. So the argument evaporates immediately. There were others: the head of Lockheed Martin; Buzz Aldrin (the second person to walk on the moon).

What I noticed there is that everyone REEKED of testosterone. Because they were captains of agency, directors of corporations, former security advisers. Even the women had testosterone. Anything she would say or write would effect your stock price. The rules are six members are appointed by Congress, six are appointed by the White House. Of the six members appointed by Congress there was a mix, a mix that reflected the partisan split at the time. They are trying to be politically fair as they do this. Bush could have appointed six Republicans, but he didn't. I just said I am a registered Democrat. So people that say they only appoint Republicans; no. That's just part of the smokescreen at the limits of each of the political spectrum.

Now …. why am I even taking you down this road? I am just trying to share with you my baptism into this aerospace and NASA. And what I have done with it since then.

So, I am there and apparently, in the previous 15 years, the aerospace industry had lost about 0.5 million jobs. Congress was worried about this: They were mainly worried as this is military related, yet at the same time with this; they also make the space ships.

I was contracted as one of the space people. One of the trips that we took was around the world. The mission was to visit foreign locations to see other countries to see what they are doing, see if they are ahead of us, see if they are keeping up.

We visited China. I went to Beijing in 2002 and I went there with a complete stereotype of what was there. I was expecting bicycles and small corner shops. It was not like that at all. There were Mercedes, Ferraris, more flash than most American cities.

We go to meet with captains of industry there, and I look closely and see on their hands college rings, graduate degrees from American universities in engineering. Almost every engineer that is shaping the engineering and industrial frontiers in China were trained in the USA, and all experts due to the exploration culture of the 1960s.

We took a trek to the Great Wall of China. It was spectacular, literally snaking its way all the way over the horizon as far as the eye can see. Again, this was a great invention based on war.

So here I was at the Great Wall. This is out in the middle of nowhere. No industry for hundreds of miles. So I really had to try something, and I went to my friend and asked to borrow his cell phone (a GSM enabled cell phone). I called my parents in New York, my mum answered “Oh you're home so soon!” THAT's how good that connection was! I'm on the Great Wall of China, I don't see any industry, no antennae. There was NOBODY in China anywhere saying “Can you hear me now?” Something was afoot. Something was afoot that we were in denial of.

We visited France, we visited England, we visited all sorts of countries that speak our language. But, here's Russia. I don't even know the alphabet. But, when we met Russia, there was a bond there that I did not get from any other community in the world. Even though we were sworn enemies during the Cold War, we alone embarked on that grandest of adventures to explore space. There was a comradely there. I felt it. It was in the timber of our interaction. A deep connection and mutual respect for each other.

In Brussels, we meet a coordinated set of a European initiative to explore space together. One of the issues was we were perfecting our GPS, yes it was a military project, but once it became part of our commerce then the ownership kind of shifted, from the military to the public. Our planes are equipped with GPS retrievers and Europe was planning a competing system to the GPSD system. It's extremity expensive, and we are there, and we said, "You can use our GPS." And they said, "We can build our own." Our worry was if we did that they will require every one of their aeroplanes to be equipped with their Galileo receivers, which is already in a bad economic state.

And I remember the guy sitting across from me and he was kind of smug. We were almost begging them, in fact.

And I had an epiphany at that moment.

I am angry. I am pissed off. Not because this guy looks smug, but because here is an enterprise, that we and the Russians pioneered, bargaining as if it's soy beans. As if it's some sort of trade regulation that we have to resolve. I don't have experience with this state of mind. I grew up when America lead the world with technology.

And for me to bear witness to this: I was angry with America.

Meanwhile, I come back to America and everyone is talking about the Saturn Five. Now I love Saturn 5, don't get me wrong, but every time people talked about space they kept referencing the golden age of space, I don't have problem with, except … I had my next revelation when looking at the Saturn Five rocket in a museum.

WHY am I genuflecting on the Saturn Five rocket?! It's the first Earth rocket to leave Earth orbit and go some place. Is there ANY piece of technology you can name where you are genuflecting in front of the very first version of it, wondering how they did it? Every form of technology there ever was, as the decades move on, looks more and more quaint until you dust it off, put it in a corner and forget about it.

Yet we are still cherishing the Saturn Five rocket; that is 45 years old.

So I knew something else was wrong with America.

If you keep praising something, it means nothing comes after it.

More evidence that we stopped dreaming.

The Apollo era ends. If science really mattered to NASA how many scientists would have gone? We would have had loads on every mission? We only had one. And that was the last mission to the moon. Kennedy's speech, six weeks after Yuri Gagarin left Earth and went into space safely, we didn't yet have a vehicle that would go into space and kill someone when it returned, JF Kennedy stands up and utters these prophetic words:

“We will put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.”

We collectively have cleansed our memory of that memory and that speech. We think of Kennedy as a visionary, as a charismatic explorer that dreams about space like the rest of us. And there is some of that rhetoric in that speech.

BUT go two paragraphs earlier in that speech. How about that? By the way, in Kennedy Space Center there is a whole granite wall there where they have the above quote embossed on the wall.

Two paragraphs earlier: "If the events of recent weeks are any indication for this endeavour on the minds of men everywhere, then we must show the world the path of tyranny over the path of tyranny.”

It was a battle cry. That's the war driver. That's the check writer. It garnered fraction of the Federal Budget that getting to the moon required. Why isn't that part of the speech there on the granite wall? Plenty of room there; I checked.

You could even summarize and say, “KILL THE COMMIES, GO TO THE MOON." It would fit just fine. That’s part of the delusional thinking that goes on. So when we stopped going to the moon, upon learning that russia is not getting to the moon, they stopped their moon program. Russia beat us in every practical achievement until then, first everything in orbit, they won all the records.

Practically EVERYTHING we did in space was either a reaction to something Russia did first, or something they said they were going to do. We trail them. Another delusional point from that era.

So now we've stopped going to the moon, the space enthusiasts say "All we need is a charismatic leader, and then we can go to Mars." NO! There's no reason to go to Mars, because Russia is not going to Mars. So the whole program ends. It just ends.

Let's go forward further. In 1989, George Herbert Walker Bush, on the 21st anniversary of the Apollo mission, gave an auspicious speech: “We will build a space station, and a colony on the moon, and go onto Mars." He wanted to emulate the Kennedy speech. But, in his speech, was there a war driver? No. He just used the rhetoric. He referenced Columbus, and the discovery of our genes, and what we are as humans; always curious to explore frontiers. And then some people estimated the value: half a trillion dollars. It was DOA in congress. Nothing. Some people say, well he didn't have the right charisma.

Its got NOTHING to do with charisma …

… what happened in 1989?

PEACE broke out in Europe. You want to do a half a trillion dollar project and your not even at war, who are you kidding?!

What he was missing was not Kennedy's charisma; that’s not what interfered with anyone following his plan. Not only that, but NASA's budget was 17 billion a year. Multiply that by 30 years, you've got half a trillion dollars. So saying we can't afford half a trillion dollars is a lie! It's money already going into the system anyway. Another case of delusional thinking.

In the sixties, that was arguably the most destructive decade. There was a Cold War, a hot war, civil unrest, student revolts, people getting arrested; the one shining beacon of that decade was the Apollo Program. The end of 1968 the first mission to leave Earth orbit, in a figure 8 loop round the moon one of the astronomers picked up a camera. Saw the beautiful lunar landscape; and there rose Earth.

Earth, as never before seen by human eyes.

That picture called Earth rise is one of the most well known pictures ever taken. What else happened in the 1960's ? You didn't have to go far, there would be news articles, talking about the city of tomorrow, the hopes of tomorrow, the dreams of tomorrow, the home of tomorrow. We never got the flying cars, and I'm still angry about that, but none-the-less we were dreaming. We were imagining a tomorrow. And who would enable that tomorrow but scientists, engineers and technologists. They are the enablers of tomorrows dreams. We actually had an innovation decade.

What do you think the world fair was all about? It was about tomorrow. 1964 we are on our way to the moon, the Gemini is testing pieces of the moon voyage, each one more ambitious than the next. Space was inspiring a nation to dream about tomorrow. It was inspiring innovation. Bill Gates and Steve Job were 13 and 14 when we landed on the moon.

I submit to you, that in spite of the moon voyage being drawn with military motives, that the return on that investment is HUGE economically. And I'm not talking about spin offs, countless current everyday technologies commercialized today are due to technological inspirations due to NASA research. The curved pavements on the side of highways? NASA invented that. You might say, now why did no one else think of that? They were not motivated to do so. You know why NASA came up with this? Because they care more about the shuttle that goes into space than your car! That's an important fact here.

Science has never caused governments to pay huge amounts of money. There is a threshold, that we hit with Hubble. Anything above that, the interest to do it has to survive changes in political leadership and political fluctuations in the economy for the cheque writing political entities. That's why if I say lets go to Mars then we can do science, if there is a downturn in the economy the press goes to the unemployed who cant feed the family, saying 'but we are going to mars!' does not play well. That's why ONLY two drivers work.

The I don't want to die driver.

And the I don't want to die poor driver.

I finally claim that NASA is a force of nature on the educational pipeline of America. It is what inspires people to think big, to dream of tomorrow.