The Practical Values of Space Exploration Part 1

The Practical Values of s.p.a.ce Exploration.

by Committee on Science and Astronautics.

INTRODUCTION

This report has been undertaken for a special reason. It is to explain to the taxpayer just why so many of his dollars are going into the American effort to explore s.p.a.ce, and to indicate what he can expect in return which is of value to him.

Such an explanation, even after 2 years of relatively high-geared activity in the s.p.a.ce exploration field, appears to be warranted. There is still a segment of the U.S. population which has little, if any, notion of the values that the s.p.a.ce program has for the average citizen.

To these people the expenditure of billions of dollars on missiles, rockets, satellites, Moon probes, and other s.p.a.ce activities remains something of a mystery--particularly when so many other worthy projects throughout the land may be slowed or stalled for lack of funds.

If, therefore, the practical value of the American s.p.a.ce program is being questioned, it is a question which needs to be answered.

It is interesting to note that the problem is not unique to the United States. In the Soviet Union, which counts itself as the world's prime investigator of s.p.a.ce, there is likewise an element of citizenry which finds itself puzzled over the U.S.S.R.'s penchant for the interplanetary reaches.

"What do sputniks give to a person like me?" a Russian workman complained in a letter which _Pravda_ published on its front page. "So much money is spent on sputniks it makes people gasp. If there were no sputniks the Government could cut the cost of cloth for an overcoat in half and put a few electric flatirons in the stores. Rockets, rockets, rockets. Who needs them now?"[1]

It goes without saying that the workman was severely chastised by the Soviet newspaper, but his point was made.

No matter where taxpayers live they want to know--and are ent.i.tled to know--what good a program of s.p.a.ce exploration is to them.

During the 1960's it is expected that the U.S. Government will spend anywhere from $30 to $50 billion on s.p.a.ce exploration for all purposes, civilian and military. It is the intent of this report to delineate in lay language, and in terms which will be meaningful to those who have not followed the American s.p.a.ce program closely, the reasons for this great investment and the probable returns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 1.--A single shot of the 8-barreled Saturn of the future will cost millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions. What makes it worthwhile for the taxpayer?]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] a.s.sociated Press dispatch, dateline Moscow, June 12, 1960.

I. The Unseen Values

The United States has not embarked upon its formidable program of s.p.a.ce exploration in order to make or perpetuate a gigantic astronautic boondoggle. There are good reasons, hard reasons for this program. But, in essence, they all boil down to the fact that the program is expected to produce a number of highly valuable payoffs. It not only is expected to do so, it is doing so right now.

Many of the beneficial results can be identified.

Those already showing up are detailed in the sections of this report which follow. They include the most urgent and precious of all commodities--national security. Beyond that, they also include a strengthened national economy, new jobs and job categories, better living, fresh consumer goods, improved education, increased health, stimulated business enterprise and a host of long-range values which may ultimately make the immediate benefits pale into relative insignificance.

Practical uses such as those just listed mean the taxpayer is more than getting his money's worth from American s.p.a.ce exploration--and getting a sizable chunk of it today.

Nevertheless, if we can depend on the history of scientific adventure and progress, on its consistent tendencies of the past, then we can be reasonably sure that the greatest, finest benefits to come from our ventures into s.p.a.ce are yet unseen.

These are the unpredictable values, the ones which none of us has yet thought of.

Inevitably they lag behind the basic research discoveries needed to make them possible, and often the discoveries are slow to be put to work after they are made. Investors, even governments, are human, and before they invest in something they normally want to know: What good is it?

We can be sure that many American taxpayers of the future will be asking "what good is it?" in regard to various phases of the s.p.a.ce program.

There was an occasion when the great Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, was asked this question concerning one of his cla.s.sic discoveries in electromagnetism. Maxwell replied: "What good is a baby?"

Now, as then, it takes time for new knowledge to develop and become useful after its conception and birth.

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE UNEXPECTED

A graphic ill.u.s.tration of "unseen" benefits in regard to atomic energy has been expressed by an experienced researcher in this way:

I remember a conversation I had with one of our nuclear scientists when I was a member of the Weapons Systems Evaluations Group almost 10 years ago. We were talking about the possible peaceful applications of fission. We really could think of little that could be done with it other than making fissionable material into a form of destructive power. There had been some discussion about harnessing the power of fission, but this seemed to us to be quite remote. It seemed difficult to conceive of the atomic bomb as anything but sheer power used for destructive purposes. Yet today the products of fission applied to peaceful uses are many. The use of isotopes in industry, medicine, agriculture are well known. Food irradiation, nuclear power reactors, now reactors for shipboard use, are with us, and it is hardly the beginning. I frequently ask myself, of late, what 10 years from now will be the commercial, shall we call it, applications of our missile and rocket programs.[2]

There are innumerable examples of the way in which invention or discovery, or sometimes just simple human curiosity, result in useful payoff. And frequently no one suspects the direction the payoff finally takes. The point, of course, is that _any_ knowledge eventually pays dividends. The things we learn from our national s.p.a.ce program will produce benefits in ways entirely unrelated to missiles or interplanetary travel. (See secs. III and IV.) The reverse is also true; knowledge gained in areas quite remote from outer s.p.a.ce can have genuine value for the advance of s.p.a.ce exploration.

Investigation into the skin of a fish provides a good case in point.

A German inventor who migrated to California after World War II had long been interested in ways to reduce the drag of friction produced by air or water on the surface of objects pa.s.sing through them. One day, while watching a group of porpoises cavort past a speeding ship with the greatest of ease, it occurred to him that the skin of these animals, if closely studied, might shed light on ways of cutting surface friction.

It was many years before the inventor was able to enlist the aid of aquarium managers in securing porpoise skins for study. In 1955, however, he obtained the necessary skins and found that dolphins, in fact, owe much of their great speed to a unique skin which markedly reduces the effect of turbulence against it. From this knowledge has come the recent development of a diaphragm-damping fluid surface which has real potential not only for underwater high-speed bodies, such as submarines, torpedoes and underwater missiles, but for any vehicle where fast-moving gases or fluids may cause drag.[3]

The implications of this knowledge for satellites near Earth or for reentering s.p.a.cecraft are obvious.

Sometimes a reverse twist in reasoning by a speculative mind will result in enormous practical utility.

In Cambridge, Ma.s.s., a sanitary engineer teaching at the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology began to wonder about the principles of adhesion--why things stick to each other. Do they only stick together because some sticky substance is holding them, or are there other reasons? "If a person is sick," he asked himself, "is it because a cause of sickness is present or because a cause of health is absent? We now know that in infectious diseases the first alternative is true; the patient is ill because he harbors pathogenic germs. The opposite case prevails in deficiency diseases, where necessary vitamins are absent from food and illness is brought about by this absence. To which of the cla.s.ses does adhesion belong? When we cannot produce a dependable bond, are we dealing with the lack of some adhesive force or with existence of an obstacle to sticking?"

Operating on the theory that adhesion might result not only from the presence of a sticky agent but from the removal of all impediments to sticking, this scientist has now managed to produce strong adhesion between the least sticky of substances--polyethylene plastics. He has done it by studying the molecular structure of polyethylenes and removing all impurities which normally find their way into the manufacture of such material. The next step: "We hope to prepare adhesive joints in which a n.o.ble gas acts as an adhesive. n.o.ble gases are the least active substances known to chemistry; if they can adhere, it is clear that no specific forces are needed for adhesiveness."[4]

No great imagination is required to perceive the meaning which this new knowledge, if proved out, will have for our everyday lives--to say nothing of its usefulness in the making of astronautic equipment.

THE ULTIMATE VALUES

In any event, it is apparent that where research is concerned--and especially s.p.a.ce research with its broad scale of inquiry--we cannot always see the value of scientific endeavor on the basis of its beginning. We cannot always account for what we have purchased with each research dollar.

The Government stated this proposition when it first undertook to put the s.p.a.ce program on a priority basis:

Scientific research has never been amenable to rigorous cost accounting in advance. Nor, for that matter, has exploration of any sort. But if we have learned one lesson, it is that research and exploration have a remarkable way of paying off--quite apart from the fact that they demonstrate that man is alive and insatiably curious. And we all feel richer for knowing what explorers and scientists have learned about the universe in which we live.[5]

In this statement there is political support for what the historian, the anthropologist, the psychologist consider to be established fact--that some innate force in the human being makes him _know_, whatever his formal beliefs or whatever his unconscious philosophy, that he _must_ progress. Progress is the core of his destiny.

This is a concept which, in connection with s.p.a.ce exploration, has been recognized for many years. One of the earliest and most perceptive of the s.p.a.ce "buffs" stated it before the British Interplanetary Society in 1946 in these words: "* * * our civilization is no more than the sum of all the dreams that earlier ages have brought to fulfillment. And so it must always be, for if men cease to dream, if they turn their backs upon the wonder of the universe, the story of our race will be coming to an end".[6]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 2.--In the years immediately ahead, the orbiting observatory or the manned satellite will uncover crucial information about the nature of the universe.]

STEERING A MIDDLE ROAD

In any endeavor which is as futuristic as s.p.a.ce exploration it is not difficult to become lost in the land of the starry-eyed prognosticators.