"what good is it?"

 

an editorial by BEN BOVA

 

On the weekend that Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars, I received a call from the New York office of the British Broadcasting Company. A pleasant-voiced young woman asked if the editor of Analog would be willing to make some comments, via transoceanic telephone, about the Mars flight for a BBC radio show.

"What we want is something wild and far-out . . . you know, some­thing science-fictional, sort of crazy."

The interview never took place.

But the incident stirred all sorts of memories. Here was a perfectly re­spectable radio journalist sitting in London, ready to talk to New York over a communications link that in­cluded an artificial satellite relay, about a spacecraft that had just gone into orbit around Mars. And she wanted something way-out!

It's symptomatic of what's hap­pened to the Exploration of Space.

There's no more sense of wonder about it; it's getting to be almost commonplace. In fact, the BBC show was scrubbed at the last minute be­cause the President of the United States announced further troop with­drawals from Vietnam. That took precedence over Mars. And isn't that symptomatic of what's happened to the space program!

Back in those ancient days when Arthur Clarke had written only two or three books, and Wernher von Braun was still top-secret, those of us who spoke in public gatherings about going to the Moon or Mars were usually greeted with pained stares, distasteful grimaces, and two words:

"It's impossible."

A few years later, when von Braun was launching Explorer I into the wake of two stunning Russian suc­cesses and the wreckage of Van­guard, people still thought that going to the Moon was ridiculous. But now they no longer claimed it to be im­possible. Said they:

"It's too expensive."

By July of 1969, when Yankee in­genuity—and a Boston Irish Presi­dent's leadership—had put Ameri­cans on the Moon, the popular song was:

"We knew it all along."

An interesting evolution of atti­tudes: It's impossible. It's too expensive. We knew it all along.

Lately, a new verse has been added to the old refrain:

"What good is it?"

Space exploration is not Relevant. It does not attack the Burning Issues of Our Times. It's a needless luxury. What's it done for the average man?

If you accept the context in which those accusations are usually made, all of the charges are true. Space ex­ploration is no more relevant to our pressing social problems than Co­lumbus's voyages were to the battle between Christianity and Islam on the Iberian peninsula. The fact that Europe became absolutely undis­puted master of the world, eclipsing the Muslims, Indians, Turks, Chinese, and everybody else—well, was that cause or effect? Hard to say; but the fact is that the two events went hand-in-hand: exploration and a critical change in the tide of world history went together.

Is it any coincidence that our thrust into space exploration came at a time When we, as a nation, were determined to prove to the world that our technology was second to none? Is it a coincidence that our in­ternational prestige was enor­mously—if temporarily—uplifted by the success of Apollo 11? Or that our prestige has been slumping hand-in-hand with our decreasing vitality in space exploration?

But—what good is it?

Most of us who enjoy science fic­tion have the feeling that space ex­ploration is a fundamental, vital part of mankind's growth. In a sense, this is an almost religious feeling: man must explore space, because, well, that's what being a human being is all about! Fine. This feeling—like all religious fervors—is well and good for the believers. But it doesn't con­vince the infidels. And there are a lot more of them than there are of us.

The anti-intellectual streak in America is wide and deep. You can see it in the attitudes that the average American has toward university pro­fessors and "them college kids." You can see it in the hallowed chambers of Congress, where science is treated as something sort of in-between a pork barrel and a cure-all. You can see it in the political leaders we elect: "eggheads" don't make it, "the average man" does. From the self-professed know-nothings of the last century to the McCarthy purges of the 1950s, anti-intellectualism has consistently been a powerful force in American politics.

 

The current attack on the space program is only a small part of a general attack on science and tech­nology, an attack that draws its strength from this basic anti-in­tellectual attitude. The scientist is a figure of mystery and fear to maw, Americans. Just take a look at the way scientists are portrayed in most theatrical or film productions: either the scientist is cold, ruthless and amoral, or he's a ridiculous, pom­pous ass who can't see an inch past his own nose.

So, if we try to answer the "What good is it?" question by saying that space exploration is necessary to fur­ther man's development, to increase our knowledge of the universe, to look for other forms of life, perhaps other intelligent races—forget it! That kind of argument will not only fail to win supporters for space ex­ploration, it will actually frighten many people at the deepest levels of their consciousness.

The question of the value of our exploration of space is really a sub-­unit of the larger issue: What good is this mighty technology we have de­veloped?

There are many people in this fair land who seriously believe that tech­nology is a threat to human ex­istence. They equate war, pollution, overpopulation, and the tensions and anxieties of urban life with the rise of technology. And since technology is evil, in this view, then science must be evil, too.

How can this attitude be changed? Only by performance. Only by an­swering that simple, tough question: What good is it?

The problem is, technology by it­self can't solve the problems that are bothering most Americans today.

Getting to the Moon was a rela­tively easy job. There was a basic po­litical decision to be made. Once made, the scientists and engineers had a clear field ahead of them. Poli­ticians battled each other for the chance to get NASA centers—and jobs—in their states. Congress voted the billions of dollars necessary to get the job done, mainly because in­ternational politics made Project Apollo an important display of American strength and determina­tion.

But look at the problems that are relevant today. Urban decay. Inter­city transportation. Education. Pollu­tion. Clearly, technology has an im­portant role to play in the solution of each of these problems. But just as clearly, the political and social as­pects of these problems loom much larger than the technological aspect.

Shortly before Albert Einstein died, a disillusioned young man asked him, "How come we can make nuclear bombs, but we can't make peace?" Einstein replied, "Because nuclear physics is much simpler than politics." True enough. Hit a ura­nium atom's nucleus with a proton of sufficient energy, and the nucleus will fission. Every time. Hit a man with a new idea and you have very little idea of what he'll do. People are unpredictable, despite the best efforts so far of the sociologists and psychologists.

Going to the Moon was easy com­pared to building a highway through a city. The Moon isn't cluttered up with unpredictable people who don't want to move out of the way, who refuse to be steamrollered, who'll tie you up in court for years of costly delays.

The aerospace industry is aching to turn its talents and unemployed manpower loose on transportation and pollution problems. But the political structure to support such technology simply does not exist. Not yet. There is no way for a Boeing or
Grumman to tackle, say, the air pollution problem of New York City.

The technology exists. Using technology on hand today, and a clear political field, the engineers could reduce air pollution levels enormously.

But what would be the price for this desirable result?

For one thing, you'd probably have to put your car through an ex­haust emissions check every time you stopped for gas. Rather expensive and sophisticated equipment would be set up at each gas station to measure the pollutants coming out of your car's exhaust pipe. Other equipment would be on hand—much of it very conventional—to adjust the tuning of the car's engine so that exhaust emissions are within tolerable levels. The equipment used for measuring emissions would be so­phisticated, as we said, but it would be simple to operate. Part of its so­phistication would be in the "human engineering" necessary to make the equipment usable by gas station at­tendants, with relatively little special training. The military has a long his­tory of procuring sophisticated gear that is operated by ordinary GI's, with rather minimal training. Of course, the technicians who maintain the equipment are rather highly specialized people. In the case of the gas station pollution-monitoring gear, there would probably be special technicians covering the gas stations on a regular rotation basis, to check the equipment and make sure every­thing is operating properly. In the military, this is called IRAN: Inspect and Repair As Necessary.

Such a system of monitoring and engine adjustments, if mandatory and vigorously pursued, could cut automobile pollution down to very low levels. It would also be neces­sary, in the long run, to get Detroit to produce low-emission engines. The Federal Government is already pur­suing this. Federal emission standards for 1975 are low enough to cause loud wails of complaint from Detroit, despite the fact that automo­tive industry witnesses told Congress many years ago that such engines could be produced "within five years of a go-ahead." Thus Detroit has been hoisted on its own petard.

 

But to get back to our hypothetical situation. Given clear political sail­ing, the engineers could also dras­tically reduce the pollutants emitted by factories and electrical power plants. The price would be a ten or twenty percent hike in the electricity bills we pay. The difference between the ten percent and the twenty is mainly a matter of how efficient the antipollution equipment will be. There exists today a whole complex of smoke scrubbers, soot catchers, cooling towers and other devices to clean smokestack gases and elimi­nate thermal pollution of water. They are expensive, both in terms of capital cost and in cutting down the operating efficiency of the plant to which they're attached. But, if you want to dramatically reduce the pol­lution, it can be done. For a price.

Now look at where we are politically. No political organization in this nation has the authority to walk into every factory, power plant and gas station with expensive antipollu­tion gear and force every citizen to pay the price for pollution control. In fact, such political power could easily become a problem in itself—what starts out as antipollution could end as antifreedom.

Much the same situation can be found in most of the other Burning Issues of our times. The technology is there, ready and willing to tackle the problem. But the political setup is not ready. High-speed trains go through many cities, towns, counties, states—each with its own set of politi­cians, union leaders, landowners, and cantankerous citizens. Urban re­newal has become a political football in most cities. Education is at the mercy of thousands of individual school boards that are more inter­ested in keeping costs down than im­proving the quality of the children's education. Everybody wants to im­prove the quality of life, but nobody wants to pay for it.

And meanwhile the scientists and engineers are facing shrinking budgets, hostile attitudes, and that basic question: What good is it?

The simple answer to that question is: As good as you want to make it.

 

* * * * *

 

Last spring Kelly Freas was as­signed by Analog to do a series of sketches of the NASA facilities at Cape Kennedy. He thoroughly en­joyed doing the job, but came away deeply concerned about the future of the space program, convinced that the situation was nothing less than desperate: the rhetoric couldn't con­tradict the obvious fact that schedules were being wound down, mis­sions scratched for lack of funds, personnel sharply cut—all the signs of imminent collapse.

Since we science-fiction types , seem to be the only ones who appre­ciate the real importance of the space program, as opposed to its political and economic aspects, Kelly decided we would have to be the ones to do whatever could be done.

He realized that his best contribu­tion would be in the field he knew best—the illustration of ideas—and shortly came up with designs for a series of posters. He then asked the advice of a friend, Ben Grey, Graphics Coordinator of the City of Chesapeake School System. The Chesa­peake schools authorized its graphics students to produce a series of six posters, to be placed in all the schools in the system. The kids did the photography, plates and print­ing—from Kelly's originals.

One of the posters is reproduced here. The black-and-white reproduc­tion hardly does justice to the origi­nal. In full, fluorescent color the posters are truly magnificent.

The poster sets are available directly from Kelly. Any requests for, information about them sent to Analog will be forwarded to Kelly, immediately.

 

THE EDITOR