-
Why Explore Space?
In
1970, a
Zambia
-based nun
named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to
Dr.
Ernst
Stuhlinger
, then-
associate director of science at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight
Center
, in response to his
ongoing research
into a
piloted mission to
Mars
.
Specifically, she asked how he could suggest
spending billions of dollars on
such a
project at a time when so many children were
starving on Earth.
Stuhlinger soon sent the following
letter of explanation to Sister Jucunda, along
with a
copy of
Earthrise
,
William
Anders, from the Moon (also embedded in the
transcript). His thoughtful
reply was
later published by NASA, and titled,
(
Source:
Roger Launius
, via
Gavin Williams
; Photo above:
The surface of
Mars, taken by
Curiosity
today, August 6th,
2012. Via
NASA
.
)
May 6, 1970
Dear Sister Mary Jucunda:
Your letter was one of many which are
reaching me every day, but it has
touched me more deeply than all the
others because it came so much from
the
depths of a searching mind and a compassionate
heart. I will try to
answer your
question as best as I possibly can.
First, however, I would like to express
my great admiration for you, and
for
all your many brave sisters, because you are
dedicating your lives to
the noblest
cause of man: help for his fellowmen who are in
need.
You asked in your
letter how I could suggest the expenditures of
billions
of dollars for a voyage to
Mars, at a time when many children on this
Earth are starving to death. I know
that you do not expect an answer such
as
from now on I will desist
from any kind of space research until mankind
has solved that
problem!
before I knew that a voyage to
the planet Mars is technically feasible.
However, I believe, like many of my
friends, that travelling to the Moon
and eventually to Mars and to other
planets is a venture which we should
undertake now, and I even believe that
this project, in the long run, will
contribute more to the solution of
these grave problems we are facing
here
on Earth than many other potential projects of
help which are
debated and discussed
year after year, and which are so extremely slow
in
yielding tangible results.
Before trying to describe
in more detail how our space program is
contributing to the solution of our
Earthly problems, I would like to relate
briefly a supposedly true story, which
may help support the argument.
About
400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town
in Germany. He
was one of the benign
counts, and he gave a large part of his income to
the poor in his town. This was much
appreciated, because poverty was
abundant during medieval times, and
there were epidemics of the plague
which ravaged the country frequently.
One day, the count met a strange
man.
He had a workbench and little laboratory in his
house, and he
labored hard during the
daytime so that he could afford a few hours every
evening to work in his laboratory. He
ground small lenses from pieces of
glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes,
and he used these gadgets to look at
very small objects. The count was
particularly fascinated by the tiny
creatures that could be observed with
the strong magnification, and which
he
had never seen before. He invited the man to move
with his laboratory
to the castle, to
become a member of the count's household, and to
devote
henceforth all his time to the
development and perfection of his optical
gadgets as a special employee of the
count.
The townspeople,
however, became angry when they realized that the
count was wasting his money, as they
thought, on a stunt without purpose.
man for a useless
hobby!
much as I can
afford,
work, because I know that
someday something will come out of it!
Indeed, something very good came out of
this work, and also out of
similar work
done by others at other places: the microscope. It
is well
known that the microscope has
contributed more than any other invention
to the progress of medicine, and that
the elimination of the plague and
many
other contagious diseases from most parts of the
world is largely a
result of studies
which the microscope made possible.
The count, by retaining some of his
spending money for research and
discovery, contributed far more to the
relief of human suffering than he
could
have contributed by giving all he could possibly
spare to his
plague-ridden community.
The situation which we are
facing today is similar in many respects. The
President of the United States is
spending about 200 billion dollars in his
yearly budget. This money goes to
health, education, welfare, urban
renewal, highways, transportation,
foreign aid, defense, conservation,
science, agriculture and many
installations inside and outside the country.
About 1.6 percent of this national
budget was allocated to space
exploration this year. The space
program includes Project Apollo, and
many other smaller projects in space
physics, space astronomy, space
biology, planetary projects, Earth
resources projects, and space
engineering. To make this expenditure
for the space program possible, the
average American taxpayer with 10,000
dollars income per year is paying
about
30 tax dollars for space. The rest of his income,
9,970 dollars,
remains for his
subsistence, his recreation, his savings, his
other taxes,
and all his other
expenditures.
You will
probably ask now:
the 30 space dollars
which the average American taxpayer is paying, and
send these dollars to the hungry
children?
have to explain briefly how
the economy of this country works. The
situation is very similar in other
countries. The government consists of a
number of departments (Interior,
Justice, Health, Education and Welfare,
Transportation, Defense, and others)
and the bureaus (National Science
Foundation, National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, and others).
All
of them prepare their yearly budgets according to
their assigned
missions, and each of
them must defend its budget against extremely
severe screening by congressional
committees, and against heavy
pressure
for economy from the Bureau of the Budget and the
President.
When the funds are finally
appropriated by Congress, they can be spent
only for the line items specified and
approved in the budget.
The
budget of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration,
naturally, can contain
only items directly related to aeronautics and
space.
If this budget were not approved
by Congress, the funds proposed for it
would not be available for something
else; they would simply not be
levied
from the taxpayer, unless one of the other budgets
had obtained
approval for a specific
increase which would then absorb the funds not
spent for space. You realize from this
brief discourse that support for
hungry
children, or rather a support in addition to what
the United States
is already
contributing to this very worthy cause in the form
of foreign
aid, can be obtained only if
the appropriate department submits a budget
line item for this purpose, and if this
line item is then approved by
Congress.
You may ask now whether I
personally would be in favor of such a move
by our government. My answer is an
emphatic yes. Indeed, I would not
mind
at all if my annual taxes were increased by a
number of dollars for
the purpose of
feeding hungry children, wherever they may live.
I know that all of my
friends feel the same way. However, we could not
bring such a program to life merely by
desisting from making plans for
voyages
to Mars. On the contrary, I even believe that by
working for the
space program I can
make some contribution to the relief and eventual
solution of such grave problems as
poverty and hunger on Earth. Basic to
the hunger problem are two functions:
the production of food and the
distribution of food. Food production
by agriculture, cattle ranching,
ocean
fishing and other large-scale operations is
efficient in some parts of
the world,
but drastically deficient in many others. For
example, large
areas of land could be
utilized far better if efficient methods of
watershed
control, fertilizer use,
weather forecasting, fertility assessment,
plantation
programming, field
selection, planting habits, timing of cultivation,
crop
survey and harvest planning were
applied.
The best tool for
the improvement of all these functions,
undoubtedly, is
the artificial Earth
satellite. Circling the globe at a high altitude,
it can
screen wide areas of land within
a short time; it can observe and measure
a large variety of factors indicating
the status and condition of crops, soil,
droughts, rainfall, snow cover, etc.,
and it can radio this information to
ground stations for appropriate use. It
has been estimated that even a
modest
system of Earth satellites equipped with Earth
resources, sensors,
working within a
program for worldwide agricultural improvements,
will