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.edu
jim@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.