by Gideon Marcus
In February 1958, just months before Galactic Journey took to press, Vice President Nixon visited Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He went personally congratulate the team that had built America's first artificial satellite, Explorer 1.
Vice President Richard Nixon and a model of the Explorer satellite with Dr. Lee DuBridge, left, president of Cal Tech, and Dr. William H. Pickering, right, director of the Cal Tech Jet Propulsion lab, during a news conference in Pasadena, Calif., Feb. 17, 1958.
Now it is 1970. President Nixon is presiding over a severe curtailing of our space program. Next month, Apollo 13 will head to the Moon, marking the end of the first stage of lunar reconnaissance. The original plan was for ten increasingly ambitious lunar landings, paving the way for long term exploration and exploitation. But it's looking now like Apollo 11 was more of a conclusion than a beginning. The Saturn V assembly line is shut down, Congress and the President are against any ambitious space endeavors, and even the three phases of Apollo flights are being cut down to two.
That said, our space endeavors are not entirely ended. In addition to at least five more Apollo flights (the fates of Apollos 18 and 19 are in the balance; Apollo 20 has been canceled definitively), NASA plans to launch a space station into orbit built out of a dry Saturn upper stage. The first 28-day mission will take place in 1972. Three astronauts will conduct the first long-term experiments in space. Two more missions of 56-day duration will follow.
But then "Skylab" will go into hibernation. There won't be any more American spacecraft to visit or service the home in space—at least not until 1977. That's the earliest that the proposed "space shuttle", all that's left of NASA Administrator Tom Paine's grandiose proposal for space development, which had included a trip to Mars on nuclear engines and several large space stations, can be brought online.
It is appropriate that it looks like tomorrow will be the day Explorer 1's orbit finally decays and sends the little satellite plunging into fiery reentry. In its 13-year lifetime, it completed more than 58 thousand revolutions of the Earth, traveling 1.66 billion miles. Explorer discovered the Van Allen Belts, fields of radioactive solar particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. Its launch, on January 31, 1958, marked the true beginning of the Space Race. Perhaps in decades to come, this comparatively brief moment of space pioneering will be known as "The Age of Explorer".
Ironically, one of the biggest poo-pooers of space exploration, at least of the manned variety, is the scientist who perhaps contributed the most to Explorer 1's design. Dr. James A. Van Allen, Univ. of Iowa Director of Physics and Astronomy Departments, had this to say earlier this month:
"The Apollo missions, to me, are straightforward though immensely difficult tasks. They do, however, yield relatively little in the way of fundamental understanding of nature. They are not scientific in that sense. There is a longstanding controversy as to whether a manned spacecraft is a better way to conduct science in space than an automated, commandable spacecraft. I’m sure there is no simple answer to that question. As the general romance and entertainment value of manned flight tend to wear off a little, I think this question will be attacked in a thoroughly pragmatic way.
"[Apollo 11's lunar landing] might properly be compared to the explorations of Amundsen and Perry and Byrd in the Arctic and Antarctic, or perhaps Lindbergh flying the Atlantic. These are great achievements, heroic achievements, but the general potential of the Moon in its relationship to human life on a large scale is by no means obvious to me. I don’t think any competent person has found a significant, economic, human use for the Moon.
"[The Space shuttle and Skylab are feasible.] Whether or not it is sensible to pursue them, I have a great difficulty in judging."
President Nixon, Congress, and the majority of the American people seem to agree with the Professor.
What do you think?
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