The Coming Space Age

One should not consider the earth any more than any other planet as the center of the universe. Something is going on in space and time, which whether we like it or not, spells duty. And so this tribe of earth, man, moves upward, almost instinctively toward space. This face age has been coming for a long, long time. For some centuries now, man in his dreams has projected himself to the stars.

But it wasn't until he started the purposeful development of such things as rocket power that he was able to do anything practical about it. And then it wasn't always practical. Until the 20th century, the rocket had been used mostly to liven up such occasions as the 4th of July, the Chinese New Year, and the entertainment of royalty. History has recorded a few military uses in China and in Europe. But for the most part, the rocket was a plaything, pretty to see and frightening to hear. But some men saw beyond the sparkle too many serious uses for this unpredictable force. This is the first successful American rocket shoot. It didn't go very high, and its path was anything but straight, but it was the beginning. A few years later, in the midst of broken piece treaties and a booming of war drums, Hitler rose to power.

His vision of accomplishment was strictly an earth-bound one, but the war he started was instrumental in putting the space-age just around the corner. Before the war, there was formed a group in Germany called the Space Travel Society, that was making ambitious experiments with liquid-fueled rockets. Liquid fuel, though costly and dangerous, represented a major breakthrough because of its tremendous power potential. Results here, though not always successful, impressed the German military, who thought the rocket might be a good trump card. Desperately needing a miracle weapon to win back his war, Hitler brought the spacemen into the Nazi war effort, and directed them to develop a rocket-propelled weapon that would be impervious to the enemy's air defenses. With money, material, and the pressure of imminent defeat urging them on, the rocket men increased rocket knowledge by leaps and bounds. So the rocket was developed by a scientific process of trial and error to be a deadly machine of war.

But always in the minds of some of the men working on it, the thought remained that they were really laying the groundwork for a much larger goal, the cock ring of space. Finally, as per military directive, they delivered the goods too late in the war to sidestep defeat, but early enough to show the world its possibilities. Even with the development of the B2 missile, space still was a long way on, but there were other factors hard at work that were capable of blowing islands or cities to imagination in a matter of seconds.

For a military world, the marriage of the missile and the atom was a natural step. Knowing this was a mushroom that could be offered but not eaten, the world's powers threw themselves into a vast search for security, one that seemed to find war and peace at the same time. In the Russian search, we know little except for the results. But in this country, the milestones that have led us to the break of space are of a more public nature. To begin with, what wasn't known made up most of the five, which meant that new theories, engineering concepts, testing procedures, and the men to do all this had to be found. Most of the early work had a strictly military aspect, developing rocket engines capable of carrying nuclear or thermonuclear arm missiles thousands of miles to military targets. Bolded, welded, and cemented to spraying test stands hidden in noise-breaking valleys, they were developed.

To make a complete war arsenal, missiles with many jobs entered the arena. They were air to air, air to ground, and ground to air missiles. It was difficult to keep up with their names, let alone their function. Still, all were necessary in hurdling the complex problems guarding the entrance to space. Problems of heat, guidance, fuel, cost, even recovery. This technological buzzard of missile-shaped sizes and jobs were and still are considered to have primarily military value. But their greatest fruit was in giving us new knowledge that would help men attack not men, but the barriers that lie between earth and space. In all of this scientific advance, there was one element missing. The one most satisfying demand. That of man at the controls. One of the initial steps was the development of the ex-their series of vehicles designed to carry man higher and faster than ever before.

Development was now at the stage where if man wanted to ride to the stars, he had to start catching up with his technology. With the breaking of the sound barrier, man was on his way. This dummy, weighted and instrumented to approximate a 200-pound man, is representative of the greatest obstacles standing between man and space. This obstacle is man. Everything that we take for granted here on earth simply does not exist in space. And to make matters worse, there are things in space which do not exist on earth. Up there, man must provide himself with a chunk of earthly environment and at the same time defend himself against the environment of space. Luckily for man, he is able to inflict upon a reasonable fact similar to himself, the stresses and strains he would encounter before he inflicts it upon himself.

However, there comes a time when in order to advance further, man must trust himself to his science. One of the more dramatic events was the supersonic sled ride taken by Colonel John Stan. This five-second run, which attained the speed of 632 miles per hour and during deceleration subjected Colonel staff to as much as 50 G's or 50 times his own body weight was invaluable.

It proved a human body could sustain acceleration and deceleration forces somewhat comparable to those of a man carrying rocket. Another experiment aimed at probing the problem of weightlessness shot mice 37 miles high. On the way up, they were subjected to 4G and a speed of 1900 miles per hour. Able to feel but not comprehend the pull of gravity, they are held to the floor of their cage. But then during the period known as freefall, they are free to all weight and float, bounce and grimly hang on, proving that weightlessness may be confusing but indurable.

Any space traveler will have plenty of time to sleep, to eat and to think, especially to think. To find out how man will react while cooped up in a small cramped compartment, this man, Airman Ferrell, spent an entire week in a space chamber. As much as possible, all conditions were those that might face a man alone in space. He could not see out and had certain duties to perform. Although by no means a completely accurate indication, the successful carrying out of this test did indicate that man can isolate himself in space and remain a whole man. Man's space dream is now beginning to assume a palpable shape. The details of such matters as the kind of clothing, learning of space directed coordination and how to navigate when the moon is under instead of over you are being tackled.

Men are taking tests on frictionless tables in centrifuges and in new cockpit that show altitude measured by the hundreds of miles and speed by the thousands. A timetable has been set to launch a man-caring vehicle, the X-15, to an altitude of 100 miles plus. Its pilot, if he has time, will have the clearest look at the stars yet seen. Our vocabulary has been broadened to include thrust, mock, locks and orbit, and has slightly changed our definition of satellite and explorer. In Minnesota, Major Simon's is sealed into a gondola stuffed with recording gear that will allow ground watchers to know more about how his body is behaving than he will himself. Suspended from a polyethylene balloon, 280 feet high, he is set loose from an old mine pit in an exploratory trip taken to find out how man fares so close to space.

On his way up, Major Simon's takes pictures of the Earth from various levels. The first is a few thousand feet up. The second is from the halfway mark, 50,000 feet high. With the balloon over his head expanding as he rises, he sets his camera for a shot from his high point, 20 miles above the Earth. The horizon is 400 miles away, and for man, space was never closer. Then, just a few months later, an event took place which speeded up the reach for space. Russia launched a rocket that started sputting spinning, and to top that off, sent up the world's first space travelers, one of man's best friends.

This country has since followed suit with several explorers, sent aloft as part of its contribution to the International Geophysical Year. Within the span of a few minutes, we have reviewed some of the scientific advances that are brought us to our present level of development. These scenes of the Jupiter Sea being ready for the launching of another explorer brings us to the present, facing the future, where it leads to other than up, is the greatest challenge of this coming space age. Now, I'll hear to speculate on the meaning of the future.

Now, I'll hear to speculate on the meaning of the coming space age are four men who are playing leading parts in the attainment of space. They are Dr. Clifford Fernis, Chancellor of the University of Buffalo, former chairman of the Research and Development Board for the Committee on Guided Missiles, and Technical Advisor for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Dr. Fernis is the author of numerous aviation articles, including America's Tomorrow and the Next Hundred Years. Dr. William Pickering, Director of the California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the foremost developers of the Army's program that resulted in the successful launching of America's first explorer. Dr. Sigfried Singer of the University of Maryland, Dr. Singer has performed much useful experimentation in the fields of cosmic radiation, rocket exploration, and upper atmosphere research, and is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Dr. Fred Whipple, astronomer and head of the Harvard College Observatory, who has conducted much valuable research on stellar and planetary evolution. In addition, Dr. Whipple has served upon many governmental research agencies, and Dr. Ben H. Charrington, former director of the University of Denver Social Science Foundation, and now director of the Rocky Mountain Office of the Institute of International Education. Dr. Charrington will lead this discussion. Now that we've had this brief review of the past, I would like to ask each of you gentlemen if you would kindly just state what you see to be some of the developments in the foreseeable future in this area. I start with you, Dr. Fernis.

Dr. Charrington, I think the most obvious thing is that we're going to get away from the surface of the earth where we've been living for so many, many, many years. Now, what's going to happen is, of course, I suppose the subject to this question is seeding, and I think you're going to find varying opinions. I trust the audience won't mind if they find that we do have some different ideas. Perhaps I would not wrap this up correctly, but perhaps you should go ahead and Dr. Pickering or one of the others. Dr. Pickering? Well, it seems to me that the next step, of course, is to continue our exploration, which has been started with the satellite program, the IGUI satellite program, where the satellites we're now having the air and what we'll also have later on this year. Beyond that, of course, we will carry out a scientific exploration out beyond the immediate vicinity of the earth, out to the moon, and out to the planets. Mr. Singer? Well, I would agree with that. I think immediate purpose will be to extend our explorations to some distance beyond the earth into the vicinity of the moon. There's much valuable information that can be learned about the distribution of cosmic rays, about the origin of magnetic storms and aurora, and all these very puzzling geophysical effects that people have been trying to explain for so many years.

Would you add something to that, Dr. Whipple? Well, I certainly agree with the statements, and feel that now his astronomer can get his feet off the ground, and his eyes above this murky atmosphere, through which we've had to look, and find out what the universe is really like. The first step in that direction, of course, is to the moon, which I think will tell us about the evolution of the earth, and another step that I am very interested in, of course, is the telescope in space to tell us about the universe at large. I think we, Lehmann, are very much, are quite curious to know what kind of information you, scientists, are getting from the Sputniks and the satellites that are now circling the earth. Well, Dr. Jarrington, the two explorers satellites which are up there are giving us quite a lot of information about cosmic rays and meteorites in space, and we're also measuring the temperature of the instruments.

So we're getting some idea of the engineering problem of how to control temperature in a space vehicle. We've also been measuring the orbits of the satellites and the Russian satellites, and have been making calculations from these orbits, which I think Dr. Whipple would perhaps tell us about. Yes, I'm particularly pleased to note how valuable the observations by the moonwatch teams over the world have been in observing the Russian satellites and our own satellites, because these are volunteer teams made up of people who are not professional scientists, but are interested in science and want to contribute to it. And we have found from the observations, particularly of the Russian satellites and some from our own, that the air density at great altitudes, about 120 miles to begin with, is some five times greater than we thought it was before these experiments started. And as we go higher, we find that this discrepancy is greater than it was at 120 kilometers, observations of now have become quite good up to about 220 miles.

Are these satellites revealing any new problems that you didn't expect to encounter? Well, we had discovered some new things about the cosmic radiation and the radiation bombarding the Earth, which are quite unexpected. We are finding radiation intensity is considerably higher than we had originally anticipated when we reach high altitudes above the surface of the Earth. This is a phenomena which is a very interesting one in which we'll require considerably more investigation before we understand it fully. Dr. Charing, can I just if I might just interject here as a pure amateur in this sort of profound observation, I think that the conversation thus far has indicated that the average conception of space is entirely wrong because it's always been assumed that among a lot of people, with a lot of people that the space contains nothing. Well, obviously thus far we've been talking about a lot of things out there in the space.

Perhaps it isn't very dense, but this is really what the heart out is. We wanted to find what there is out there. We do know there are a lot of things in terms of radiation and matter. And so this is what makes it so intriguing is the fact that space isn't just emptiness as people have assumed for so many many years. Apparently the Earth's atmosphere really never stops. It gets thinner and thinner, and Dr. Witt was just told us it's actually a little denser than what we calculated. Apparently then the atmosphere of the blends is quite imperceptibly into the interplanetary gas, which we think is ionized hydrogen. It may have a density of maybe a hundred or so atoms per se, do you agree? One of the funny effects that nobody thought of before the satellites got started, apparently these satellites get charged up. They charged up and this may introduce some peculiar effects on their interaction with the atmosphere. And people are discovering a lot of interesting new phenomena that they haven't thought of before. You know that we have here in Colorado on the top of Mount Evans, a laboratory for the study of cosmic rays.

And we've had scientists from many universities, I think including Harvard, in the summer up there. I think there are other mountain peaks and other parts of the world where the study of cosmic rays have been going on in the summertime. And you foresee that these will have to be abandoned or will probably be abandoned because they will be so inadequate. In the information they will give in comparison with what the revelations that you will find through them being able to get out into space. Dr. Chang, tonight I'm quite certain that we know abandoning the basic observations of that type that have been made on the earth. You recall that we still do said simple things to measure the pressure of the atmosphere, even though that has been mentioned for many many years. The point is that the new types of measurement in space give us additional information, other aspects of the cosmic rays. And particularly of course aspects of our Earth's magnetic field, because these rays are charged particles moving very closely the velocity of light.

And from the meat to the Earth's magnetic field, they move in very complicated paths, which are so complicated that very few people have even attempted to draw them. And the weaker ones can only come in near the poles. Now if the cosmic rays always kept a constant intensity, the same numbers striking all the time, then we could abandon such observations as on your mod ovens, balloon observations and other ones. But the fact is that the cosmic rays change in intensity, and at the moment we're not very clear just how. It has seen that the sun affects them, that produces some of them, but there are variations until we understand these and the tie-in of the variations in the Earth's magnetic fields. I am certain that we'll continue with probably more ground-based observations as we add observations in space. Dr. Charington, I'm very sure that all the people in Colorado will be very glad to know that they won't have to bend in Mount Evan.

But there is a little bit more of a point on this, just as Dr. Wiffle said. As for instance, I visualize that it's not going to be too long before the weather bureau, as a matter of routine is going to have observation satellites up there for getting the long range observations and predictions for the weather. I think this is going to be quite valuable, because you're going to be able to see the, literally, sea by the instrumentation on board. The whole weather pattern throughout the Earth, and make an observation complete, let us say, in every 90 or 100 minutes, this is going to be very valuable. But at the same time, I don't think the weather bureau is ever going to abandon the sending up of these weather balloons, which is now part of the routine, because this gives you the fine structure of the weather. And so I think that these instrumentation things that we've been carrying on and Mount Evans and the weather balloons and these various other things will continue. And so it's not going to be replaced with the other, the higher observation, for such a mundane thing as weather, or finding out more about the cosmic rays, these are going to add a great deal to our knowledge.

But they're not going to replace these fine observations. We have close to the surface. How about a trip to the Moon? Will you think that men will be making that trip very soon? I don't know how soon, but I'm quite sure the men are going to make a trip to the Moon in one of these days. There are some very difficult technical problems that have to be solved. Even before we can get a man out into space and they have a vicinity of the Earth, we have to build a spaceship or a space vehicle. That's large enough to carry the man, his food, his air, and whatever else is necessary to keep him alive. And then we also have to build a space vehicle so he can get him back to the Earth again and getting back from an orbit down to the Earth is not an easy problem. Somehow you have to get rid of a tremendous amount of energy that you have when you're in the orbit.

And as you come into the Earth, as we all know, the friction of the air can cause the space vehicle to be heated to in your distance and burn off like a media. So somehow that problem has to be solved so as to bring the man down gently enough that the forces which he would experience would not be too violent and likewise the spaceship wouldn't burn up. So we have to solve that problem and then if we're going to send him out to the Moon, we have to keep him alive for much longer period of time while he's on the journey to the Moon and around the Moon. And then there are some very interesting navigation problems to get from the Earth to the Moon and back again. So there are lots of problems to be solved, but I am proud sure we are going to go to the Moon sometime in the not too distant future. Do you other side disagree with him? Well, I think I would agree. I wouldn't want to put a time on it. I think no one in a very responsible position ever has put a time on it either because the techniques have a way of developing and jumps you may discover all sorts of shortcuts that you haven't anticipated before.

Something that's fairly certain is that the first step will have to be the start of picking suggests a man or a little vehicle probably the vehicle will fit very tightly around the man start with. It will be very small and it will just be meaning to test the idea of re-entering a man and bringing him back intact and unharmed. This is a major problem. Would you let me sort of assume the role of the unsophisticated human beings of the Earth? I'd speak as if we're more for the common run of mankind. We are asking ourselves, we'd like to ask you scientists, what bang does all of this development have before in our future as human beings here on the Earth? What consequences? Do you see any danger to the basic aspirations that characterize men generally throughout the world?

Throughout our little world at least? How do you feel about that, Dr. Ferness? Well, could I counter with another question as to how much danger was involved in human race and Columbus's first voyage? I don't think we know any more about what we're going to find and what's going to come out of it than Columbus and Queen Isabella did when they first started out. They were wrong what they had in mind and now the whole world which was opened up by Columbus's voyage was this dangerous or was it beneficial? I happen to be an optimist myself and think in the long run it's beneficial but it's certainly upset a lot of people. It changed a lot of things. Let me be a little bit more specific, Dr. Ferness. A great deal of this experimentation now is being carried out under the auspices of the military. Most correct, therefore so on. Is there not possibly a danger to the peace of the world in that fact?

Well, I don't think that there is inherently any more danger to the peace of the world in that than there was when the man first invented the born arrow. If people are intent on fighting, they're going to fight with what they have and this enlarges your scope of operation. But it isn't inherent in exploring space that it is going to lead to more warfare. I can say of course that all these things beginning with the born arrow and then gunpowder and then the airplane that made everything more destructive. My point is that these things don't cause wars. The causes of wars are much more involved in the human being. Now they do make them more destructive. So I'd say that the danger involved in this is not in the developments in the knowledge itself but as to whether or not the human beings are really intent on fighting. This is the important thing. I hope to pick up a point there and not exactly disagree with you but your statement that weapons of war there have become more destructive.

But if I have interpreted my history correctly in wars of the distant past, the percentage of the total population killed in the wars was considerably higher than it has been in more recent wars. If one puts in the numbers, even though in World War II we had great bombs and could carry the warfare all over enemy territory and both the two enemies over each other's territory, the percentage of the total population killed in that war was very much less than it was in some of the ancient wars in which practically half of the population would be decimated. So I think it proves the point that you were making. It's not the weapons of warfare that determine the destruction to mankind but mankind himself makes these decisions. Yeah, an interesting point.

I think there's some things of comforting about the idea that the future wars would be fought out in space. There's some great distance away from there. I think this one can say with some assurance that very, very few people will be directly affected. I must say this concept appeals to me a great deal of sending space ships out to great distances to fight the war and the country who ships returns wins. I think I would like to add just the point in connection with the fact that as you point out the military are essentially doing all the space investigations at the moment. One of the obvious reasons for this of course is that the vehicles which are necessary for the space exploration are vehicles which the military have developed as guided missiles. I think you probably know that the Congress is currently investigating a plan to establish a national aeronautical and space agency which will be a civilian agency to carry on much of this space exploration. So that I think that probably in the fairly near future we will have a civilian agency directing a national space program.

And the military of course has been suggested well. We want to maintain a military space program for military purposes also. But I just want to make the point that we do have vehicles because the military have been building large guided missiles for their own purposes. But will it be possible to persuade the Congress to make adequate appropriations to a civilian experimental organization? Well personally I hope so. I realize that this may be a problem but I hope that the Congress does realize a significance to the nation of having a sound space program. Well one thing is one thing Dr. Charrington I think that we must all be realistic in facing this problem of support. And I think we must all recognize that for the moment of any rate the prime motivation is fear because this is the purpose of the military is our national defense and the reason that we feel we should have a national defense.

And right the field is basically a matter of fear and this is not by any means necessarily evil because there have been many many things that have come out of the military development which are based essentially on fear as for instance take the airplane. I think that we had it not been for the military importance of the airplane in World War One and World War Two. We would even yet have commercial aviation you had to have that impetus of that development and then we developed the point where it's practical to use it for peaceful purposes in which we all benefit. I think an even more dramatic one is that the is the use of nuclear energy. Now of course it was from the humanitarian point of view the introduction of the use of nuclear energy on the world stage was highly destructive. You can say it was horrible in other words the first atomic bomb which burst over Hiroshima in 1945.

But added not been for this military motivation which was based on fear to start using atomic energy first in the destructive phase. We would at least we would have delayed our peaceful use of atomic energy I think but at least a century. And it's going to be extremely important in the next 50 years that we do have this atomic energy for peaceful purposes is by the energy demands of the world. Otherwise we will not have been able to support all these as we used up our natural resources. So this is one of the uses of adversity and my point is that if we as a nation properly present to the voters. The fact that these things are first important because they probably are necessary for our own national offense. If we follow them up there is always these byproducts of extreme importance for peaceful uses. And all this knowledge we find I think we can get the public to continue this part of this. But it is a very important point that we must have this have faced frankly the fact that the.

We must as a nation if we are going to advance be willing to support this going to new knowledge. If it happens to be motivated in the first place for the military purposes fine but let's carry it on from there and make whatever peaceful and constructive use as we cannot have a two. In other words the military is not all destructive there is a tremendous amount of constructing work and let's take advantage of it while we have this motivation. I am sure none of us are criticizing the military at all because we recognize this danger and they fear that quite nicely arises from it. But supposing that our statesmen are successful in beating somewhat the causes of this fear. Supposed that we could work out let us assume in the near fairly near future some kind of an accommodation with the Russians. Do you want to see the possibility of collaboration with the scientists of Russia and the Communist country in other words a global. Coordination of scientific interest in this whole area of space.

Is that the sort of a goal that you would like to look forward. There is no world-wide collaboration in the IGY International Geophysical Year and quite good collaboration. And the Russians are participating in that. They are making all the data available to us because geophysical research has truly world-wide significance and it is for the furtherments of mass knowledge. You see they are making their data available to you. Oh yes. They are not holding back the data that they are getting from their Sputniks. Well, Sputniks is of course a special case but I believe that the Russians are making the certain of their Sputnik data available. Not the rocket data but the scientific data. Are we reciprocating? Are we making our data available to them? Yes, we certainly are. I should like to speak as an astronomer because I think we have been perhaps the most international of the sciences for many years. And to illustrate this nature of collaboration, even during World War II, we had rather good communication throughout the world across all of the war boundaries, information concerning new discoveries and other types of astronomical information.

And naturally we want to see as much international cooperation as we can in these matters of basic science because I think these developments are made which are so valuable to one country, are valuable to the world of large and increase our cultural heritage that man as a whole has and therefore extremely valuable to the future of the world and to world peace. I see a certain hope in this space life for peace and the following way. I think for example to put a man on the moon requires rockets which are very much larger than any rockets we have now. In fact, they may be so larger, they have no more military significance.

I mean after all after we can lift a hydrogen bomb to anywhere in the world, what more need one do with rockets it might ask. Well, if we ever get to that stage and we have to consider putting a man on the moon, we will have to consider putting a sizable fraction of our national budget into this project. And chances are we're not going to do this unless we feel the Russians are going to make a similar contribution. And then in Charlie apart from the military necessity of keeping pace with our potential enemy in this space exploration, are there practical benefits you can see for the human race that are of not a military character at all? Is it too is that I'm beginning to the realm of the unknown there? Are you already foresee certain definite benefits to mankind? Well, just as a generalization, I think I would say that in any new field of science, the unexpected is going to turn up. And if we knew exactly what was going to turn up, we wouldn't need to do it.

Now, this means that the areas of application I feel likewise not completely predictable. On the other hand, one can also make a positive statement that in developing the space technology, you will certainly have contributions in many areas of science and technology, which will have applications far afield from the space application. This sort of thing has happened, of course, in the nuclear energy field. Well, the work on nuclear energy has the applications in the medical field and all sorts of other areas. The same kind of thing, I'm sure, will come out of the space technology. I don't know is anybody having anything to do with this? I think so. The first is mentioned at this point about the weather, which is tremendously important. I feel for our economic well-being, I'm sure that the possibility of predicting the weather over longer periods of time should literally add billions to our natural income. Not only for the farmers, but for just every section of our economy.

How did you and Dr. Fernish feel quite confident that we will eventually be able to predict the weather? There was certain accuracy over a rather long period of time. And I would also agree with that. I would also say that this, I don't know whether this is possible, perhaps it isn't even desirable, but I think under proper control it would be, that when you can predict whether then we're coming closer to the point of being able to do something about it. Now, I think this may be very valuable because when you really understand the weather phenomena, then you're getting to the point where perhaps we can do something about it. But it's going to take this overall view. In other words, getting away up there and looking at it continuously before we're really going to get that my understanding. I mean, it would tremendously increase the agriculture production. I know. And it could. It's going to be on someone. Let's give it a little hint. It seems to me or what the benefits might be if we only could find some way to get along with our Russian friends and our communist friends. Well, I would say that this weather satellite or the contribution of satellite to weather information, weather forecasting is going to come about weather without any cooperation from our Russian friends.

Excuse me, Dr. Pickering, Dr. Singer has to leave to catch a plane. Thank you very much, Dr. Singer, for your participation in the panel and the happy landings. You were saying that you thought no question about it being able eventually to reach the moon. What do you think about that? What do you think you're mental fine when it gets to the moon? Well, the moon, of course, is uninhabited. There can be no life there because it is practically a complete vacuum. But landing on the moon will tell us, I am quite certain, some real answers to the questions of how they evolved and how this matter collected into the ball that we live on. But of course, if one is interested in life, they believe a great deal of interest in finding out about Venus because there we don't know what's beneath the clouds.

We have no evidence, no loud radio, for example, from Venus that indicates there would be any civilized life there. But there is a real mystery as the nature of that surface beneath the clouds. Of course, Venus is very much like the earth and size. On the case of Mars, we have some fair evidence that there is a type of life, the vegetation. We doubt that there is any higher type of life. There is no oxygen there to speak of and very little water. But no evidence of cities or any man-made structures, roads and the canals that have been talked about in the literature. I am certain random surface markings are very conceivably old waterways at the time when the planet mattered not water. On the other hand, astronomers today I think would agree with me in feeling that we are probably not alone in the universe because there must be millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of planets in our galaxy alone,

that are more or less like ours. And it seems very illogical to believe that somewhere most of those may not have developed life that would be perhaps not like us in any way but still conscious of living being. But of course the chance of our going to investigate any of these planets doesn't look possible except for those close to us in our own solar system. Because with any speeds that we can hope to attain even with rather magical fuels and within the type of scientific technological development we have today, it will take so many, many, many years to go even to the nearest star and back again that it does look hopeless to find out about life on other planets if they are on other stars or about other stars.

You was going to say something again a little bit more about the military astronauts of this outer space exploration. Are you tickering? Yes, I wanted to comment a little bit about this question of the Northly applications of satellites. We hear a lot about this and I think we better ask ourselves what can we see right now because it looks interesting to the Northly. And certainly one thing which has been discussed right about is the possibility that from a satellite you can view the Earth as you circle around the Earth. And this then gives you a means of looking over what's going on anywhere in the Earth. And now of course you're doing this from a considerable height above the Earth to a 300 miles perhaps up and you're traveling a five miles a second.

So it's not particularly easy job. But nevertheless it is something which certainly could be done. And also here's things and to add and that is presumably something which the military would be interested. Now and also here's things about using the satellites to drop bombs on other parts of the Earth. And I think we ought to realize the mechanics of this problem, the physics of this problem. And realize that this is not something which one does. If you're in a satellite and you have a bomb and you drop it, the bomb just comes right along in orbit. In order to get the bomb down to the Earth, it would be necessary to slow it down somewhere and get it to absorb and get it to the down in the atmosphere where it would be slowed down and eventually reach the Earth. And I suppose one could imagine doing this with some sort of a rocket contraction which would shoot the bomb backwards as it were and eventually get it down to the Earth.

But it certainly looks like the hard way to do it. If you wanted to throw something here to some other spot on the Earth and you have the rocket power available to do it, this obviously is the thing to do to do it directly, not to go through the intermediary of putting it up in a satellite. And then somehow with some very fancy gadgets drop it back down again. So I think we ought to realize that the satellite is not a threat in the immediate sense of being a means of dropping a bomb onto another country. But there are other things which one can think of. For example, we've mentioned satellites and meteorology. I think another thing we ought to mention is satellites and communication. If we have a satellite up at some appreciable altitude above the Earth, a large fraction of the Earth's surface will be visible from the satellite. This means that if we could communicate from two points on the Earth's surface by way of the satellites sending a signal up to the satellite relaying it down again.

And this might give us some means of being able to increase our communication capacity between different points on the Earth's surface. Or it may even give us some means of relaying television signals over large portions of the Earth's surface. So that from a communication standpoint, here's an application of satellites. And this is something which could have either commercial or military value. Now, of course, as we get into this space age, as we begin to explore space and begin to get some experience with these things, other things are going to turn up, other applications, perhaps military, perhaps commercial, certainly scientific, things which we haven't dreamed of now. If we want to make an analogy to what happened when the Wright brothers flew their first airplane, there were very few people in the military who had any interest in that airplane at that time. And there were very few people anywhere who had any realization of the implications of that invention, the full implications of it.

And now, as we start off on a space age, we have to watch that we don't fall into the trap of saying, well, the only obvious things we can see are less than so. And that's all. When we get out there, when we get some experience, there are going to be lots more things which will turn up. Dr. Charington, of course, Dr. Whipple took us out beyond the solar system a little while ago, very fly at 3 and thank you for bringing us back so well. And Dr. Prickering just had us up at least quite a few hundred miles on the communication system. There's one aspect of this, which is going to be a byproduct, which I think is not too far from reality. In other words, this is the matter of rocket aircraft for transport of people and goods, if you choose. You might say this is going to be one of the rockets like you use on ballistic missiles with wings on it after we have solved this reentry problem.

And we have the rockets, which have been developed by the military. They're very reliable. Then we'll be able to take this and use it as a piece of vehicle and go anywhere we want to and then face the earth in two hours, let us say. You'll have to get up there and follow the ballistic path that you'll be going 15 to 18,000 miles an hour. And we'll say this is going to be very expensive perhaps at well and you'll say why does anyone want to go that fast anyway. But this is what our grandfather has said if we were talking about the 350 mile routine commercial aircraft at present time. So I think that one of these things of the exploration of space is going to be the more mundane thing of simply going from here to there on the face of the earth. And I'm anticipating that this is going to be a commercial operation, perhaps it's going to be a premium fare. But in a way, this is going to be very useful in some way. And slow down, so that you can look.

We don't exactly have the laws of physics. We'll let us do it. Now there's some engineering has to be done. I'll mention that, but it will be possible to do it. I'm quite sure that I think this brings out a very important point about this space travel that with the technology we have today without any new major breakthroughs. We don't have to have breakthroughs at all. It's a matter of engineering now to do this space exploration. Go to the moon, go to the planets and of this continental travel on an hourly basis. You know that Dr. Charmington, this is one of the things which really frankly rather worries me about young men and to a certain extent. Young women now that they don't seem to really grasp the possibilities of what it means to really utilize the things we now know. I think one of the greatest in the highest human activity is to acquire more knowledge. But there's such a tremendous field in the space investigations opening up such a tremendous field just with imagination of the younger people.

We just get them enthused about that rather than being so darn interested to get a driver's license and drive a car just as soon as their parents let them. We just get a little bit of mental enthusiasm. It's fantastic what the possibilities are in their own generation. I just wish we could get a little theme under them on some of these things. Well, Dr. Franschur, University of Fred, and do you feel that it will be necessary to make any radical changes in our American system of education or to get our young people excited about these possibilities and prepare to appropriate them? I do feel that you don't have to have any radical changes, but I do think that we in the educational system in general that we have not yet found the secret of keeping this enthusiasm alive. This is a major old problem, but I feel that for some reason we have lost the stimulation and motivation which making them want to learn and want to go ahead and do things. The call that I really don't know, but this is one of the things which I think really comes down to this.

I do think this is an extremely serious problem you're discussing there, and I've put it in terms of the intellectual climate. We have not, for the reason that I don't understand well, but I think that we could correct the situation. We've not shown in this country proper appreciation for intellectual activity. We've shown it for athletic activity which I think is very important, but when a student does well in his classes and gets to the top of the class, he often becomes a social outcast locally. I think at the conscious level, we can do a great deal to encourage this by giving rewards in cities and a favorable comment in the press, TV, other means of communication to students who do extremely well in their courses and to intellectual activities on the local level. And I think that they can help to remedy this by such mean.

I couldn't agree with you more, Dr. Reppler, but I think that there needs to be more than just simply the matter of public recognition because certainly this thing of the stimulation of the mind that you really get a great kick out of it, but just as you get a great kick out of winning a race or making a touchdown, there is that inherent thing there. If we can just take the space age and get them enthusiastic and keep them enthusiastic. Make them say that science is really the frontier. We don't have any more physical frontiers now, but we do have a mental one. And I think science and intellectual activities represent it. Thank you very much, Dr. Furnish. Thank you, Dr. Green. Thank you, Dr. Ripple. For I'm sure that if the all the young people of America could have been here tonight to hear you see you that this enthusiasm we welcome to generate would have been generated. Let us hope that with this constant streaking of the world that you've been talking about tonight that we'll find some way of accommodating our different philosophies of life between the communist world and our own world, under which we can have peace and at the same time deserve the freedoms that we cherish. And get ahead with all in appropriating the potentialities of this new space age.

This is National Educational Television.