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Day 1: Keynote Address: Lennard Fisk | Session 1: Space Policy – Expectations and Reality | Session 2: Space Science – the Next Decade | Session 3: Role of Education in American Competitiveness
Day 2: Session 4: Mars – The Best is Yet to Come | Session 5: Space Entrepreneurs | Luncheon Speaker: Andrea Seastrand | Session 6: Exploration – One Year On | Session 7: Earth Science – the Next Decade | Session 8: Report on the Hubble Servicing Mission

Lennard A. Fisk, Thomas M. Donohue Distinguished University Professor of Space Science, University of Michigan; Former Chair, Space Studies Board, The National Academies

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The following is the text of the Carl Sagan Memorial Lecture given by Len Fisk on 18 November 2008 at the American Astronautical Society National Conference in Pasadena, California. This lecture was based in part on a paper “The impact of space on society: Past, present and future,” by Len A. Fisk, which appeared in Space Policy, 24, 175, 2008.

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Civil Space and the National Agenda

L. A. Fisk
University of Michigan

Text of the Carl Sagan Memorial Lecture
American Astronautical Society Annual Meeting
Pasadena, California
November 18, 2008

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to deliver the Carl Sagan Memorial Lecture. For the subject that I want to deal with today, and indeed the main subject of this meeting, the timing could not be more appropriate. We have just elected a new President, Barrack Obama, on an agenda of change – and thus, as is normally the case, and certainly the case today, we can expect major changes in the nation’s space policy, and indeed in many other policies. This is of course an opportunity for developing a more vigorous civil space program, and as an essential component of civil space, a more vigorous NASA. It is, however, an opportunity that is strongly tempered by the fiscal reality in which we live, with the world’s economies in serious peril.

The theme that I would like to develop today, and would hope that our nation’s leadership will come to appreciate and support, is that civil space is important to our national agenda. It offers solutions to many of the nation’s problems and allows pursuit of many of the opportunities that lie before us. And that a vibrant NASA is the essential underpinning to the success of civil space.

As we develop this theme of the proper role of civil space in the national agenda, let us remind ourselves that the origin of civil space, the origin of NASA, was to serve the national needs of the 1950s and ‘60s.

A Brief History

We all know the history. To get to space you need a rocket, and the basic rocket technology, on which we still rely today, was developed by the Germans in the cauldrons of World War II. In the spoils of that war, the Americans did well, acquiring the leader of the German rocket program, Wernher von Braun and 525 of his leading engineers and technicians, and 100s of V2 rockets to play with.

In the U.S., after the war, relatively little rocket development took place. Rockets were viewed as military weapons, and from our location and with the Soviets as the enemy the U.S. needed an intercontinental ballistic missile that could carry an atomic warhead. However, atomic warheads were heavy, and U.S. senior advisors concluded that an ICBM would never be possible. That situation changed in the early 1950s with the development of the hydrogen bomb, which required much smaller warheads. Thus in 1954, the United States Air Force declared the Atlas program to develop an ICBM its highest priority.

In the late 1950s the U.S. was interested in satellites, not for science, but as reconnaissance satellites for observing the Soviet Union. This was a time in the U.S. of much fear of the Soviets, and much ignorance of what they were capable of. It was a time when the U.S. flew U-2 planes over the Soviet Union, one of which was shot down causing an international incident for the Eisenhower administration. Satellites would not have the problem of being shot down. However, it was unclear how the Soviets would react to over-flights of satellites. Would it be considered a destabilizing threat?

In 1950, in the living room of James van Allen, in Silver Spring, Maryland, the International Geophysical Year was conceived, and then carried out in 1957-58. As part of this worldwide effort to understand Earth, the founders of the IGY thought that launching a satellite would be a good contribution. The U.S. government was supportive, not because of the science it would do, but because a scientific satellite would legitimize over-flights of satellites in general.

The U.S. assigned the development of its rocket and satellite to the Naval Research Laboratory – the Vanguard program – because NRL was considered to be essentially a civilian organization, and the U.S. wanted only indirect ties to the military. Unfortunately, NRL had difficulty in developing the Vanguard rocket and the Soviets launched first, with Sputnik on October 4, 1957. Vanguard blew up in December, and the U.S. turned to Wernher von Braun, now with the Army in Huntsville, for the rocket, and to JPL for the satellite, and the first American satellite, Explorer 1, was launched on January 31, 1958.

There is probably no single event in American history that has had more positive impact on American society than Sputnik. We had our Pearl Harbor. We had a Civil War. The final outcome of Pearl Harbor and our Civil War was a stronger, more advanced America. However, the initial consequences were death and destruction. The American response to Sputnik, and the Soviet launches of satellites and humans that followed, was all positive, and has transformed our society.

Our response came quickly. Shortly after the launch of Explorer 1, Congress passed the Space Act, the bill authorizing the establishment of NASA, and imparting to it high-minded purposes and a most comprehensive mission.

And there was more. In 1958, the National Defense Education Act was passed, which altered forever scientific education in the United States. The research universities came into their prominence, in recognition that the pursuit of technology in defense of the nation requires that the vast science and engineering resources available in American universities needed to be fully deployed.

The transformation of American society continued with President John Kennedy’s remarkable pledge in 1961 committing the United States to place a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade was out. Perhaps the most revealing statements of Kennedy’s intentions appeared later in the speech when he said “a Moon landing would demand sacrifice, discipline, and organization: the nation could no longer afford work stoppages, inflated costs, wasteful interagency rivalries, or high turnover of key personnel”. He stated also: “every scientist, every engineer, every technician, contractor and civil servant must give his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space”.

Kennedy viewed the Apollo program as an event that would transform the nation. And transform us it did. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA consumed 4% of the Federal budget; some 400,000 Americans worked on Apollo; some 20,000 American industrial firms of all sizes. From Apollo, and the all the other aspects of space that developed concurrently, we vastly improved the American technical workforce, and our sense of what technology can accomplish for us.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this brief recital of space history is how a program that had its origins strictly in the military – the German rocket program of World War II, ICBMs, the need for military reconnaissance satellites – evolved into a highly visible, aggressive, and comprehensive civil space program of human exploration, of science, and of the utilization of space for society. To be sure, throughout the history of space program, the development of military space, has continued unabated – better ICBMs, more capable military reconnaissance satellites – to now where a modern military is completely dependent on the space assets it can deploy. However, most of the military work has been classified, invisible to the public. The public side of space, which society is most aware of and which it most benefits from, is the part of space that we pursue for strictly peaceful purposes.

The reason this evolution occurred is straightforward. In the Cold War between two superpowers that were capable of destroying each other, real war was not possible. And so civil space became a proxy for war. An opportunity to demonstrate your nation’s technological prowess, and no one needed to be hurt in the demonstration.

Space as a demonstration for a nation’s technological capabilities was in fact wonderful cover for developing all possible space capabilities. The more you could do, the more you demonstrated your nation’s technological prowess. In addition to Sputnik 1 and 2 in 1957, the Soviets orbited the Moon and took pictures of the far side in 1959, a testimony to the precision of Soviet rockets. They launched the first human into space in 1961. On the American side, in addition to pursuing Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, the first weather satellite, TIROS 1, was launched in 1961. Also in the early 1960s, the first active communication satellites were launched, in time to provide television coverage of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The first mission to another planet, Mariner 2 to Venus, was launched in 1962. The human space flight program may have dominated the American budget in the 1960s, but the idea was to be very good about all aspects of space, and to do it in the most visible way possible.

Other nations, beside the Americans and Soviets, soon joined the Space Age. The Europeans, through ESRO, the predecessor to the European Space Agency, ESA, launched its first satellite in 1968. The first Japanese and the first Chinese satellites were launched in 1970. The Indian space program launched its first satellite in 1975.

Now many nations have highly developed space capabilities. Indeed, the development just since the turn of the 21st century has been dramatic. Chinese astronauts. Europe with the ability to autonomously dock with the International Space Station. Indian with a highly developed launch capability. Israel with sophisticated reconnaissance satellites. To cite just a few examples.

Part of the Underlying Infrastructure of Our Civilization

Over the years since the beginning of the Space Age, we have seen space become part of the underlying infrastructure of our civilization. We have weather satellites that provide the data to sophisticated weather forecasting models, to predict the weather throughout the world. We communicate through satellites, particularly the visible images of television that bring to each of us an awareness, unprecedented in human history, of what is happening everywhere in the world at all times. We have direct broadcasting that brings the television signals directly into our homes. We have global positioning satellites, which help us fly our airplanes, let us find our ways in automobiles. We have remote sensing satellites that provide high-resolution images from around the world, available now on Google-Earth for all to see.

All this is now part of our basic infrastructure as a civilization. We don’t particularly marvel that is available, we assume it will be and think no further about it.

When considering the impact of civil space, we have to look no further the global interconnections that have flourished in the last few decades. We live in a global economy. Corporations are multinational. Manufacturing and trade are worldwide. Countries who in previous generations might have been suspicious enemies now are dependent upon each other for resources and as marketplaces for their manufactured goods. It has had a stabilizing effect on world peace. And it has been greatly facilitated by satellite observations and communications. Detailed knowledge of what is happening everywhere in the world, and the ability to share that knowledge. It reduces fear, and makes the full engagement among societies possible and routine.

The Subtler but More Profound Impact

There is, however, a subtler but far more profound impact of the Space Age. And that is how we view ourselves as humans, how we relate to each other, what is our place in the cosmos. For most people I suspect the change in attitude, the penetrating new insight, followed from the historical picture of Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 8 en route for the first time to the Moon. The Earth is beautiful, isolated in the cold darkness of space. We look fragile. Who would not conclude that we have a responsibility to protect our home, to ensure that it remains a safe haven for us in the inhospitable cosmos?

For others there was a profound awakening when Voyager, leaving the solar system, turned its cameras to look back and see the planets, including Earth, as mere dots of light. How vast space is; how alone we are at least in our local neighborhood.

And then there has been the steady drumbeat of astronomical discoveries. Space is the ideal location from which to observe the universe. Our atmosphere shields us from many forms of radiation and even in visible light, which does penetrate through the atmosphere, it can be distorting. So from virtually the beginning of the space program, the space faring nations of the world have launched ever more sophisticated astronomical observatories, and greatly expanded our knowledge of the universe, and greatly expanded the questions we can ask, and can expect eventually to answer.

We have observed the remnant radiation from the Big Bang that began our universe. We have found that the expansion of the universe continues to accelerate, driven by a force that we don’t yet understand. We have discovered that there is matter in the universe, a lot of it, which we can’t yet observe. We have seen galaxies forming at the beginning of the universe, and stars forming in our own galaxy. We have discovered planets around other stars, many of them, so many that it is ever more likely that there are other Earth’s and perhaps other civilizations comparable to our own.

We have generated marvelous images from our great observatories peering into the universe in all the different wavelengths of light. The public, in many cases, cannot fully understand the scientific discoveries enabled by these images. But they have no difficulty in marveling in the beauty and the majesty of the universe, and in its unfathomable vastness.

The Copernicus revolution of the early 16th century displaced Earth and thus humans from the center of universe, showing that we are just another planet orbiting the Sun. I doubt the public of that time paid a great deal of attention, but the Copernicus revolution ultimately affected society and its attitudes, even religion.

We are in the midst of another such revolution, which in time will have equally profound consequences. As the vastness of the universe becomes known and appreciated by all, and how common are our planetary circumstances, we become ever more insignificant. But perhaps we will view that insignificance in the most positive light — that our tensions and conflicts, which are our constant, everyday concern, are truly insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

The Exploration of the Solar System

We have also explored our own solar system, revealing the wonders and the opportunities it contains. Prior to the Space Age, the planets were observed with only very limited resolution, by telescopes. Now we have been to them all. Depending where you stand on whether Pluto is a planet, we will be there shortly also.

It has been a systematic process. First flybys that produced many surprises. Then orbiters about many of the planets –Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a Mercury orbiter currently underway. And in the case of Mars, there have been landers with their rovers that roam the surface, and look for water and maybe life.

The epic journey of exploration of the Space Age has been the Voyager spacecraft, which visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and now the two Voyagers are en route out of the solar system, both having crossed the termination shock of the solar wind, where the supersonic expansion of the solar atmosphere, the solar wind, goes subsonic and begins the process of merging into the local interstellar medium.

There has been unprecedented excitement in the discoveries of each planetary mission. The flybys were events for which the public stayed up and watched. The rovers on Mars have been adopted by the public, and followed on the Internet with each new canyon and rock formation that is explored.

In the U.S. and perhaps elsewhere in the world, we are witnessing a fascinating difference among the generations as to what is impressive. To the older generations, who witnessed Apollo, human space flight is impressive. The astronauts are true heroes. However, to the younger generations, who are steeped in technology, who vicariously participate in all sorts of adventures through their computers, rovers on Mars are more impressive. Indeed, the younger generation would say what is so impressive about sending people into space. The technology, much of which is not new, is primarily to keep the astronaut alive. The rovers, however, are based on the latest technology. They are doing something we have never done before. And wouldn’t it be better still if the younger generation could drive them themselves.

Indeed, if one of the purposes of the space program is to demonstrate your nation’s technological prowess, which is more impressive? Human space flight, which uses the technology of the ‘60s, and may in time take us back to the Moon, or to invoke the full power of the revolution in technology that has occurred over the past few decades – in materials, in electronics – and robotically colonize our solar system.

The Sun and the Space Environment It Creates

Consider also how much we have learned during the Space Age about our Sun and the space environment it creates and in which we live. This year is the 50th anniversary of Gene Parker’s seminal paper, which predicted that the outer atmosphere of the Sun, a million degree plasma, would expand supersonically into space creating a solar wind. Parker’s paper was highly controversial at the time, nearly rejected by the journal. It took the first interplanetary mission, Mariner 2 in 1962, to settle definitively that indeed Parker was correct. The atmosphere of the Sun extends to fill a large region of space, to carve out a heliosphere from the local interstellar medium. And we now know from Voyager that the supersonic flow continues to around 100 times the distance from the Sun to Earth.

The engine of the space environment of the solar system is of course the Sun itself. Prior to the Space Age, the Sun was viewed as a relatively benign object, a constant source of light and energy, on which we depend for life. With the advent of space observations in many different wavelengths of light, the true character of the Sun has been revealed. Its surface and lower atmosphere are a cauldron of dynamic processes, driven by strong magnetic forces, that can eject large amounts of high-energy particles, and at times large amounts of matter, which can impact Earth and other planets.

This is the space environment through which we fly our satellites, and hope some day to fly humans. It is not a friendly place. It is a place where damage can be inflicted on our technologies, and if we are not careful, death inflicted on our human explorers.

We have made much progress in documenting the range of conditions that can occur in our immediate space environment. We have made only limited progress in predicting the conditions in space. Yet if our societies wish to make maximum use to the opportunities that space provides, we will indeed need a reliable predicative capability.

The Sun is a cyclic object. It has an 11-year cycle in its activity. Its magnetic polarity flips every 11 years, for a 22-year magnetic cycle. The causes of the cycles, their length, the strength of the activity, all these are only primitively understood, and not reliably predicted. Yet there is evidence of the imprint of these cycles on life on Earth, through means we do not understand. As we sort through the undeniable impact of humans on the climate of Earth, we need to make sure that we understand all the natural forcing functions, and can predict their occurrence and their impact.

Taking the First Feeble Steps in Learning to Live and Work in Space

During the first 50 years of the Space Age, we have also taken the first feeble steps in learning to live and work in space. The efforts to use the space environment, particularly the microgravity environment, to do research which has application on Earth, has for the most part been an unfilled promise. It can be argued that the unfulfilled promise results from the lack of flight opportunities. Missions have been few and of relatively short duration. The International Space Station, which is designed to provide the opportunities to pursue this research, is just now being completed.

What we have done, however, over these 50 years, is learned to live in space and to construct things there, which has established the usefulness of humans in space. We have demonstrated that humans can remain in weightlessness for extended periods. Since this experience has been within the protective shielding of the Earth’s magnetic field, and thus relatively free of radiation, the radiation hazard of space and its consequence for humans, and whether weightlessness and radiation together is a serious complication, this still remains to be determined.

Perhaps the most impressive feature to date of the International Space Station is that it has been built. A cooperation among many spacefaring nations. An extraordinary construction project, in which many different pieces of hardware had to come together and be assembled on orbit. We have certainly proven that we can work together as spacefaring nations to achieve an impressive accomplishment.

We are racing to retire the Shuttle, which has become a much-maligned vehicle. Its safety is a concern. Its cost far exceeds what was expected by its designers. But what a marvelous vehicle for learning to live and work in space. Maneuverable; a large payload capacity; large down mass. It made the assembly and utilization of the International Space Station possible.

Earth Science

Finally there is Earth science. No other science discipline has had more direct impact on society than Earth science. And space has made that impact possible. We have passed through a tipping point in the last 50 years, to where now our everyday activities, our use of natural resources, are having a global impact on the future of the planet. The sustainability of Earth to support human life is in question. This is a global problem. And the global perspective of observations from space is required to understand what is happening to Earth, what our future holds.

We have also learned, strongly influenced by the global perspective provided by space observations, that Earth is a highly coupled system. The atmosphere, the oceans, the cryosphere, the land surfaces, the biosphere are all coupled, in an intertwined system, in which complex feedback mechanisms are possible. Understanding Earth, and what we as humans are doing to it, is not an easy problem. It does not do any good simply to say that Earth is warming due to fossil fuel emissions. That is certainly so. But the knowledge that is required is what are the regional consequences. How will precipitation patterns change, or growing seasons? Exactly how much will sea levels rise; a foot makes a big difference.

It will take many observations from space, and much of the world’s scientific talent to understand exactly how Earth works, and to predict exactly what we as humans are doing to it; and to monitor and evaluate our efforts to protect the future of the planet, should we ever be so wise as to engage in a serious effort to avoid the pending catastrophe.

In the late 1980s NASA made a serious effort to embark on a major program to make comprehensive observations of Earth, and to support the science needed to understand the observations, with its multibillion dollar Mission to Planet Earth. That program has to date been largely abandoned under the same government policies that have treated the human influence on the climate as an uncertainty. The perceived economic consequences of any meaningful response were considered to be so overwhelmingly negative that ignorance of what our future holds is a preferred state. Generations to come will not be kind to us that we treated the future sustainability of the planet so cavalierly.

At least we can say that one of the most important impacts of civil space is that it has provided the basis for our growing human awareness that our societies, collectively, will determine the future of the planet. Most of us know this. Most of us came to this realization because of the global perspective of Earth that has been provided by space observations. Most of us would like to see wise decisions being made to protect that fragile globe that we saw from Apollo 8 and be sure that it remains our hospitable home in the hostile and lonely environment of space.

Civil Space and the National Agenda

The civil space program was formed to serve clear national needs – to fight the Cold War by proxy. To help transform the nation into a more technologically advanced society. We did that job well. And moreover, society realized many additional benefits. We vastly increased our knowledge of Earth, the Sun, our solar system, and the universe beyond. We altered forever our understanding of our place in the cosmos. And, perhaps, most important, we made possible a world that is highly interconnected and interdependent, and thus more secure.

The question of course is, then, what role should civil space have, and what role should NASA have in the national agenda of today and tomorrow.

Global climate change: The governments and the societies of the world need facts on which to base sound policy decisions to ensure the sustainability of Earth. We have an energy crisis, and in time we will find new sources of energy, and these new sources must be consistent with the necessity to maintain a planet on which we can live. The information on the sustainability of Earth will come from space observations, and the interpretation and analysis of data that space observations provide. NASA and NOAA need to provide the most comprehensive and complete information possible on how Earth works, what we as humans are doing to it, and to do so as soon as possible before irrevocable damage has occurred.

Economic growth: We have sent the modern day version of the fur trappers or the Lewis & Clark expedition to determine what it is like to live and work in our near space environment. Is it not now time for the settlers to follow? Humans and robotics working synergistically to expand our economic sphere to include the near space environment, the Moon, and the asteroids. If so, NASA, together with other nations, needs to extend the human presence throughout these regions.

National security: We live in a more secure world because the nations of the world are reliant upon each other. Will we not also be more secure in space if space becomes a routine place to conduct science and for commerce? Where the spacefaring nations cooperate, as we do in science and in commerce on Earth today.

The image of the United States: We should be concerned with the image of the United States in the world, and find ways to portray ourselves as a forward thinking, cooperative society, with concerns for all the world’s peoples. Our civil space activities in all their dimensions, from our cooperative programs to how we treat and involve the citizens of other nations, provide us with the opportunity to be a shining example of the image we wish to project.

Science: There are compelling tasks that need to be undertaken in specific scientific disciplines. If we extend the human presence into space we no longer have the luxury of treating the conditions and the hazards of space as an interesting scientific problem, to be solved at our leisure. We need instead to develop a true predictive capability of the space environment through which humans will fly. And we should do so as soon as possible.

Perhaps we will decide that the future of fundamental physics is in understanding dark energy, which is not understood, but appears to be powering the expansion of the universe. We need to mount a worldwide effort to use our capabilities in space to understand this fundamental force of nature. With anticipation, as with all previous discoveries in fundamental physics, that future societies will depend on and profit from the discoveries we make.

Culture: It cannot be that we occupy this vast universe alone. Where does everybody else live? What are they like? We need to determine how common life is, even within our own solar system. And search for life elsewhere in the universe, and if possible to communicate with it. Such an event would alter the course of human history like no other.

Planetary protection: Asteroids can hit Earth and destroy us. An unlikely event, but not an impossible one. We need to fully understand our risks, and to be prepared to defend ourselves.

Technology: We need to ever improve the technology we depend on to explore and to utilize space, and to make these technological advances available to the broader economy. To do so, NASA has to ensure that its people have imagination, a willingness to take reasonable risks, searching for advances and improvements, not ever being satisfied with the way we have always done it. And to do so, not in isolation, but rather on behalf of all endeavors in space.

Education: We have a need for a technically competent workforce, to solve the many problems facing our nation, and to ensure our economic future. Space has a proven record of creating technically competent workforces. The Apollo program inspired a generation to pursue careers in math, science, and engineering. We can do it again.

Hope: Perhaps most of all, particularly these days, there is a worldwide need to believe that the future can be better than the present, and to collectively work to secure that brighter future. Space is all about the future. We envision a time when our planet is safe from ourselves. When our economies grow without bound. When our knowledge of the wonders of the universe has become true understanding. When we are a true spacefaring civilization. We need to pursue that brighter future.

And none of these activities, or any other national agenda item to which civil space and NASA could contribute, are mutually exclusive. There should be no single, dominant goal for NASA. Our nation faces, and indeed the world faces so many problems, and civil space has the ability to contribute solutions to many of them. And we are blest with so many opportunities that civil space can help us pursue.

We can ask of course whether what I am advocating is affordable in our financially imperiled world today. Perhaps the likelihood is similar to the probability of being hit by an asteroid. An unlikely event, but not impossible.

NASA is funded at less than 1% of the Federal budget. Why this amount? It is historical. The funding level for NASA was established by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and it has changed little since.

It is also a budget level that is wholly incompatible with how pervasive civil space has become in our society, and how important it is to our nation’s future.

At some point the immediacy of the current financial crisis will abate, and we will turn our attention again to our nation’s future. And when that discussion occurs, civil space needs to take its rightful place in the national agenda.

Thank you very much.