willner@cfa250.harvard.edu (Steve Willner P-316 x57123) (01/20/89)
Following is the prepared text of a speech by NASA Administrator
James Fletcher. The text came from the NASA news service and is
posted here in its entirety. Please note that the remarks are
Fletcher's and NOT mine; I am merely reporting and not expressing
either agreement or disagreement.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
James W. McCulla January 17, l989
Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Immediate Release
(Phone: 202/453-8398)
REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY:
EXPLORERS CLUB, NEW YORK CITY
JANUARY 17, 1989
DR. JAMES C. FLETCHER
NASA ADMINISTRATOR
INTRODUCTION
I consider it a great privilege--and a great opportunity--to
be able to address you this evening. A privilege, because this
august body holds dear so many of the values that energize the
Nation's activities in space and it is good to share ideals among
those on both side of the public-private fence. An opportunity,
because I feel the currents of history are rapidly taking us
toward a decisive fork, an irreversible set of choices that will
determine for our lifetimes the role and position to which the US
can aspire in carrying forward man's destiny beyond the frontiers
of Earth.
If this sounds a bit ominous, a little disturbing, it is
meant to. As a nation, I believe we have become a bit apathetic,
a bit disinterested in the substance of the great decisions and
focused more on our immediate and personal horizons. We really
do leave a shockingly large percentage of our critical decisions
up to others without that intellectual involvement so necessary
to a true national consensus, a true long-term commitment to a
course of action for a significant purpose.
As the United States moves from this Administration to its
successor, a hundred special interests are preparing to take
sides in fierce contention for some piece of the Federal budget
and some portion of the President's attention. It should be of
serious concern to everyone, not that there are so many needs and
interests in conflict, but that the standards of decision among
them seem to favor immediacy over futurity. One of the great
issues in the developing debate is that of our Nation's stake--
and probably our civilization's stake--in the exploration of the
universe. And a significant element in the outcome of that
debate is that the real issue is seldom confronted and made
explicit by the executive, the legislature, or the media upon
which so many of us must rely for informed opinion.
This evening I hope to put some flesh and sinew onto the
bare bones of the argument for space.
IMPERATIVES
Perhaps the most compelling imperative in history has been
the human demand to explore, to experience, to know, and
eventually to control the totality of the available
environment. Early man's epic treks have taken him to every
continent and across every ocean. Some mechanistic models of
human history assign the causes of our ancestors' expansive
migrations to factors of climate and resources and competition; I
think we cannot overlook the intrinsic factors that lie deep
within us all and motivate us to seek knowledge and experience,
to explore and tame the unknown.
We need only to look about us to see the great lessons and
relics of history: societies that recognize the nature of the
human challenge build and grow and prosper. Those that lose
vitality, that lose the sense of adventure and risk, that trade
investment for immediacy become frozen in time and today are only
fading legends and curiosities.
But we must wonder at the performance of our predecessor
civilizations--the great intellectual and physical works that
characterize these nations and empires of the past remain alive
today as the foundations of our own sciences, technologies, and
philosophies. We see the evidence of enormous engineering skills
in the roads and highways and aqueducts and canals that tied
together the early empires of Asia and Europe and South
America. We rely every day on the structure of abstract thought
and the discipline of logic that has given us the tools of art
and science. What will we leave as valuable and as permanent to
those inheritor civilizations we will count as our inheritors?
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
There is a well-known phrase, indelicate but pithy, that
says, "root hog, or die." It applies to societies as it does to
individuals. It means that the ultimate price of complacency is
extinction, that the reward of investment is the survival of our
heirs.
The space program represents, in one small nutshell, all
that we can say about challenge and response, about the quest for
greatness and the penalties of failure. It is widely accepted
that there are extremely powerful economic consequences stemming
from the exploration of space. New technologies developed in
response to the space challenge energize the whole of our
industrial society with new capabilities, new products new
employment. Space systems are so integral to our daily life as
to have become invisible--operational telecommunication,
navigation, and environmental monitoring space services are
embedded in our civilization. The children of today learn a
cosmology far different--and far more excitingly accurate--than
we could teach even one short generation ago; space exploration
has opened windows into the physical universe that will never
close. Even the games of children rely on computers commonplace
today but that only twenty years ago had not yet been invented
for our first tentative Apollo expeditions to the Moon. The
character of space exploration, whether by machines or men, has
allowed us to leave strife behind and make the reaches beyond our
planet a lasting symbol of peace dedicated to the benefit of all
mankind. The nature of space systems makes them particularly
suited to the study and investigation of our own planetary
processes; it is from space that we have gotten our earliest
warnings of the possible growing crisis of climate and it is only
from space that we will be able to fix upon and understand the
real extent and direction of environmental change. Above all,
space has posed a challenge to the nation in terms of physical
and intellectual unknowns to overcome. With success has come a
sense of national satisfaction and pride, and a position of
earned leadership in the world.
I would point out that the accomplishments of the past and
the continuing promises of the future have come at an
astronishing low price for the values received--this year, for
example, the entire NASA space and aeronautics program represents
less than 1% of the Federal budget. One might suspect that the
prior record alone would suffice to assure continuing support
from the two halves of the our government, from both sides of the
political aisle, and from every part of the American public. I
believe I can speak to that last point: the civil space program
is overwhelmingly popular in this country. It carries virtually
no downside implications and everyone can share in its victories
over obstinate nature, its revelations of new knowledge and
capabilities, its expansion of our horizons, its adventure and
sense of wonder and elevation of the human spirit. The public
EXPECTS a first-class program performance. I know that, in his
final budget submitted only ten days ago, President Reagan
recognized the values of the NASA programs and requested nearly
all the resources we need to fulfill these key commitments
already made and expected. The new President is another
unequivocal and outspoken proponent of civil space and its
contributions. The Congress, without regard to partisanship, has
steadfastly funded and supported a strong civil space effort--
perhaps not always identical in detail with the one requested but
by and large the one representing a national consensus on what we
should do and where we should go.
THE TASK AHEAD
If the civil space record is so good and our supporters so
steadfast, why is there reason for such keen concern? I assure
you that the concern is real. The program we are trying so hard
to bring to fruition is an integral, interdependent whole--and,
therefore, vulnerable to serious dislocation in the face of even
small perturbations. The funds being requested do not permit us
the luxury of backups, of alternatives, of programmatic
robustness. Virtually every element of the program is being
pursued on a success schedule--and we know in advance that there
will be unforeseen technical problems to solve and dilemmas to
face which will require internal adjustments and constraints.
After nearly three years of extremely hard work, the most visible
part of NASA is once again in operation. The Shuttle is
successfully flying crews and payloads.
But we have only flown twice, and there is a critical
backlog of payloads waiting for transportation to space. We have
planned fourteen flights over the next two years, trying to
balance the demand for launch services with the necessary care
and prudence we must observe in the inevitably risky business of
manned space flight.
We must launch our third tracking and data satellite next
month to complete the global network that supports all the free
world's space explorations. Two months later, we will launch the
long-delayed Magellan spacecraft to map Venus. We will then
launch the Galileo mission on a complex gravity-assisted
trajectory that will eventually take it to Jupiter. At the end
of the year, we expect to carefully place in Earth orbit the
Hubble Space Telescope which will permit astronomers to explore
our universe out almost to its edges and back almost to its
origins. The gamma ray astronomical observatory will be in space
the following year, as will the international cooperative Ulysses
mission to monitor solar activity at the sun's previously unseen
poles. Manned Spacelab missions will investigate many physical
and life processes in the yet little understood low gravity
environment of space. The Shuttle is integral to our manned and
instrumented exploration programs; we dare let nothing interrupt
our steady recovery and return to reliable flight operations.
The Shuttle is our principal means of reaching space and our only
piloted space vehicle capable of flexible space operations--
manned experiments, revisits, or retrievals. About a third of
our total effort is focused on keeping the Space Shuttle program
moving usefully forward, and half again as much goes to the
science and applications experiments that are steadily expanding
the sphere of human knowledge. We have worked long and hard to
bring the shuttle back into safe operation. Truly significant
and exciting payloads are waiting to fly. We still have many
modifications to make on the shuttle.to make it as safe and
reliable as it needs to be. The time to move ahead is now.
The other side of this coin is Space Station Freedom,
promising us the first real step away from earth on the way to
the future. The free world has made a strong beginning here; the
concern of all of us is the follow-through. Station Freedom has
been designed and redesigned by experts and amateurs and
enthusiasts and critics. The configuration we are building today
with a top industrial team is the RIGHT station--I dare say the
ONLY right station--for the tasks ahead. We know we and our
international partners will be conducting a bewildering variety
of exciting experiments, ranging in scope from microchemistry to
macrophysics. We will be using the station as a shirt-sleeve
laboratory in space allowing easy interaction the research with
his equipment. We expect a flow of important exploratory
discoveries and the development of technological insights
directly applicable to our society's needs on the surface. But
the larger reason for Station Freedom is reflected in its very
name. The Space Station is our gateway to freedom, freedom to
live away from earth, freedom to visit, to explore, to settle
elsewhere in the solar system. Space Station Freedom will
simultaneously teach us how to live and work and relax in a new
environment and how to build the structures and habitats that
will make human exploration a realistic as well as a spirit-
lifting adventure. Whether we go sooner or later, whether we go
directly or first to an extraterrestrial base on the moon, man
will go to Mars and beyond. And the vehicles man will use will
be the technological descendants of a space station.
Station Freedom is the first step toward being able to call
ourselves a space-faring nation. Just as those earlier nations
that conquered the ocean barriers to exploration and expansion
became great in response to the challenge, so will latter-day
nations that recognize the nature of today's response to
challenge have the opportunity to flourish. The other half of
the analogy holds as well: historical extinction awaits the
cultures unwilling to risk the voyage, afraid to wet their feet.
It is a paradox, I feel, that this so simple point is so
hard to make when we talk about the Space Station. The
governmental process, both in the executive and legislative
branches, discovered the notion of "options and alternatives" a
few years ago, and now doesn't know how to stop asking the
question, "Why not some other way?" Of course the motivation
behind the questions is legitimate: are we embarked upon the
right course for the right reasons aimed at the right goals?
Restudy after restudy simply reinforces the conclusion that
Station Freedom is well conceived and well managed but very
sparingly financed. There is simply no room for further trimming
or shaping or cutting. We either are going to build it-- and
build it right--or not build it at all. And this binary
consequence of under-budgeting and micro-management must be
brought home to all who have an interest in the outcome.
The total budget for NASA the President has laid before the
Congress and that the incoming President must evaluate has
already been severely "edited"--some might say overly so--during
its development. The level of assurance that we can deliver a
first-class performance to America teeters in the balance with
every constraint imposed, whether dollars or people or time or
policy. I am more than usually concerned this year because the
overall financial affairs of the country are not at their
healthiest, and long-term investments are always an easier
political target than are deliveries of current services. In the
complicated debate that will range about the issues of deficit
financing, debt management, trade imbalances, and our
responsibilities to those in need, I worry that the small shining
light of future hope fueled by the civil space program may be
dimmed.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF IRRESOLUTION
In truth, the moment is coming when the nation chooses to
lead--or to follow. I want to be as certain as I can that that
choice is made knowingly and not by default. I cannot in good
conscience return to private life without one last public
service, trying to assure that the whole of American society be
engaged in the decisions about its future strength, even its
future survival. The thinly stretched space program before the
country today cannot be taken as the banker for the Federal
budget, or even for the smaller element termed "discretionary."
Flesh and sinew are as taut as possible; even a nick can mean
organic rupture and collapse.
We have always held that under a democracy the nation
receives what it deserves. What I believe the nation deserves
above all is a forthright understanding of the implications of
those great decisions being made in the name of the republic. I
believe the truth should be cast in as stark terms as possible,
especially during a time when bad news is routinely disguised and
even the most dedicated defenders of the public interest find it
hard to find an audience.
Failure to meet the challenge would be a failure of
political will. It would mean relinquishing for good the banner
of leadership we have carried so proudly even during the darkest
times of technical adversity. And the price of forfeiture is one
paid by our children and their descendants. Without investment
now there simply cannot be a future return; if we falter, if we
are irresolute, if we cannot balance sacrifice with promise, then
we have stolen the birthright of our successor generations.
Among the great gifts of Rome's cultural genius were the
organizing principles of an integrated transportation network, a
universal language, and a system of valued citizenship under
law. Scholars will argue endless about why the Roman imperial
enterprise fell upon evil days; however, no one will seriously
argue with Santayana's observation on who may be condemned to
repeat an uncomfortable history. We have great virtues in our
republic and I have great faith in the commom sense of its
citizens. I have even greater faith in the power of great
challenges--when so recognized--to elicit noble responses. That
is where we as a nation stand in space today, and that is why I
am so appreciative of the chance to address this audience.
I would leave you with one thought. Earlier I said that,
sooner or later, mankind would reach the planets. I firmly
believe that is true. But a terrible question remains
unanswered: what language, what culture, what values will shape
the ethos of the first human settlement on Mars? I do not know
the answer, but I hope you and all who share with you a
dedication to our cardinal national beliefs can help share an
answer of which we and our heirs will be proud. There really can
be no second-best place in the judgment of history.
--
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123 Bitnet: willner@cfa
60 Garden St. FTS: 830-7123 UUCP: willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Internet: willner@cfa.harvard.edujim@pnet01.cts.COM (Jim Bowery) (01/26/89)
In James Fletcher's speech to the Explorer's Club he states: > ........We see the evidence of enormous engineering skills > in the roads and highways and aqueducts and canals that tied > together the early empires of Asia and Europe and South > America... > ...What will we leave as valuable and as permanent to > those inheritor civilizations we will count as our inheritors? To use a Reaganism -- there he goes again -- comparing infrastructure based on mature engineering technology with the "infrastructure" being built by NASA. Whatever we leave to our inheritors, it will have little if anything to do with NASA as it currently exists. The sooner we get NASA out of the "infrastructure" business, the sooner business will be safe to start maturing the engineering techniques of space infrastructure. Maybe in 100 years or so that technology will be mature enough for the government to take over and do it on the scale of the interstate highway system without screwing things up. > Space systems are so integral to our daily life as > to have become invisible--operational telecommunication, > navigation, and environmental monitoring space services are > embedded in our civilization. All based on technology developed privately or by the military. Typically, NASA attempts to parasitize the credibility of others. > The nature of space systems makes them particularly > suited to the study and investigation of our own planetary > processes; it is from space that we have gotten our earliest > warnings of the possible growing crisis of climate and it is only > from space that we will be able to fix upon and understand the > real extent and direction of environmental change. What James Fletcher fails to mention, for obvious reasons, is that the Nimbus 7 data to which he refers, was withheld by NASA "scientists" from the rest of the world for 7 years because they didn't want people to find out that the ozone hole was real after NASA had discarded the data on the hole as erroneous. It was ground-based researchers who, after refusing to disbelieve their own evidence for a hole in the face of NASA's reports, forced NASA to fess up about their fiasco. > I would point out that the accomplishments of the past and > the continuing promises of the future have come at an > astonishing low price for the values received--this year, for > example, the entire NASA space and aeronautics program represents > less than 1% of the Federal budget. Such stupendous accomplishments as: * Spending 8 times the budget of the NSF per year while producing 1/8 the technical returns. * Actively killing off all alternatives to the Shuttle both existing and proposed. * Budgeting $20 million dollars for private launch services and claiming before the Space Sciences subcommittee with an arrogant grin that this is all that is needed at this time (Fletcher in response to a question by Congressman Ron Packard). PS: A single private launch costs about 4 times that amount. * Blowing up a teacher/mother live on national TV before the expectant eyes of tens of millions of school children, who now have nightmares about space instead of dreams. Even if the launch had been a success we would have believed NASA was bringing the space frontier to average Americans so it was a good gamble in any case. * The above mentioned cover-up of ozone-layer destruction during the 7 years of human history in which the most chloroflourocarbons were dumped into the atmosphere. 1% of the Federal budget!? The Defense Department should be envious of the destructive power weilded by NASA on such a paltry $10 billion/yr. > The program we are trying so hard > to bring to fruition is an integral, interdependent whole--and, > therefore, vulnerable to serious dislocation in the face of even > small perturbations. Quite by design. Setting everything up to be totally interdependent guarantees political support for every part from every other part regardless of its merit. This is known as programmatic hostage-taking and NASA is getting better at it with each passing decade (yes I said each passing DECADE, folks... time to wake up -- its been 20 years and almost $200 billion (1989) since Apollo). ...then after paragraphs of merciless yammering and big lies about SPACE STATION FREEDOM, our hero from Utah, who made sure Morton Thiokol with its seamed solid rocket segments would one day propel seven astronauts to martyrdom, continues yammering... > ...Scholars will argue endless about why the Roman imperial > enterprise fell upon evil days; however, no one will seriously > argue with Santayana's observation on who may be condemned to > repeat an uncomfortable history. And we certainly don't want to discuss those reasons here, especially since the most obvious among them is the fact that the Roman decay manifest itself in cancerous bureaucratic growth. I love James Fletcher... I really do. His sleaze is so transparent as to be touching. If only all the bureaucrats in NASA were so naive. Well, we all need dreams. UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!jim ARPA: crash!pnet01!jim@nosc.mil INET: jim@pnet01.cts.com
peter@memex.co.uk (Peter Ilieve) (01/28/89)
I would like to comment on two points in James Fletcher's speech to the Explorers Club, posted by Steve Willner <willner@cfa250.harvard.edu>. > Even the games of children rely on computers commonplace >today but that only twenty years ago had not yet been invented >for our first tentative Apollo expeditions to the Moon. Why is he saying this? The only reason I can think of is to imply that it was the Apollo programme that drove the development of computers. I don't think that that was true at all. > The nature of space systems makes them particularly >suited to the study and investigation of our own planetary >processes; it is from space that we have gotten our earliest >warnings of the possible growing crisis of climate and it is only >from space that we will be able to fix upon and understand the >real extent and direction of environmental change. This is even more questionable. The "possible growing crisis of climate" I assume to be the question of the hole in the ozone layer and possible overheating due to increases of CO2. The ozone data were first produced by the British Antarctic Survey station at Halley Bay. A satellite (I don't know which, NOAA??) had reported similar data but this had been rejected as due to faulty sensors. To forstall nationalistic comments, I am not saying this because it was the *British* Antarctic Survey, but because it was on the ground. Similarly, I believe that the best data showing long-term CO2 increases come from the mountain-top observatory in Hawaii (whose name I vaguely know but can't spell :-). I am not saying this to be anti-space, but these seem poor examples to use in support of the current space program. Peter Ilieve peter@memex.co.uk Memex Information Systems Ltd. East Kilbride, Scotland Standard disclaimer: these are my comments, nothing to do with Memex.