The American Scene; Unidentified

Good morning, this is Donald Smithburg for the Illinois Institute of Technology on the American Sea. Today, we're starting a series of programs on space. It happens to be space month, and we'd like to explore it, particularly I think it's interesting because the program broadcasted at this time in the morning tracks an unusually large audience of children, and sometimes I have a feeling that I'm sort of as a host on this program in sort of a Sunday morning substitute for Captain Kangaroo, but at least space is one thing that I feel it does interest the youth a great deal, and we'd like to talk about some aspects of it, beginning today with a sort of an overview on some programs that we have at Illinois Tech and the Illinois, the IIT Research Institute, which is of course an affiliate of our organization. We're doing some rather exciting things, I believe, and we'd like to share them with you. My guest today, I have Dr. Leonard Reifel, who is Director of Physics Research and Astroscience at Technology Center,

and Mr. Charles Tarrell, who is a Manager of Nuclear Research at the IIT Institute, or that's the name it will be called after June 1st. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. We're going to ask you first, what is Astroscience Center and land would you want to take that? Well, yes, Astroscience Center is a new entity we're putting together down at Tech Center at Armor Research Foundation, and as you say, soon to be IIT Research Institute. It comes about because, as we'll get into some today, the problem in space is one of many sciences and many disciplines, and so we needed something to put all this together in a highly coordinated way. So we have a number of experts, presumably experts, who work very closely together and train to harness all of the talents down at Tech Center to this one objective. There are, of course, many other objectives too, but the whole idea is to get everybody

going on the same target. Well, in this kind of a program, we're getting into space projects, you'll get into almost every field of science that's going to chop, and not just physics, so you have to be a physicist. That's right. Yes, your statement is quite correct. This is one of the key things that was learned early in the space research business, or that is, when it got started, that it was, was and required a multi -discipline approach. And this, of course, as Len was just indicating, one of the key functions that we see the Astroscience Center performing. Well, I'm curious about it because it also involves social sciences, as you know, I'm a social scientist, and so I'm curious about it from that aspect tonight. I think that we have, at Techology Center, certainly a bewildering variety of people doing bewildering variety of things, actually. How does this hitch into, if I may ask, this into the

national space effort? Len, how do you tie yourself in with NASA, for example, with the national space agency? Well, in the space center, we will be taking some role in many of the projects that Tech Center is already doing for NASA, for the space agency. There are a whole host of scientific programs now going on. We see that expanding over the years, and in order to keep us from falling all over one another, this will kind of be the focal point for information and sort of technical liaisons. So everybody knows what talents are available around, and what activities it might be interesting to them are going on in some other part of Tech Center. So there's not a lot of young people who are interested in space, and some of them will be coming to Illinois Tech for their education. Quite right. How does the research activities knit into the educational program? Well, NASA, of course, is very conscious of the fact that in this huge space effort, they've got to have an awful lot of new technical

blood. So they are providing down a Tech Center, I believe, a number of fellowships, and quite a few of the people who will be coming to study at Illinois Tech will undoubtedly also end up working on some of the research programs monitored by the Space Center. Well, what are some of the scientific objectives of our space effort? You wouldn't think that, Chuck, what are we trying to do? I'm an old Edgar Rice Burles man myself, and I don't know anything about space. Well, Don, let me answer your question in a rather general way to start off with. Clearly, the scientific exploration of space itself by both man and unmanned spacecraft missions is one of the prime objectives and the way that we shall go about this. Going on, I would say that the advancement of science and technology is another very special and key objective. Certainly the development of, or I should say, advancement of

understanding, man's understanding of himself and of his environment is certainly another one of the key objectives. There are many others, of course, as I'm sure as you will recall, in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which was passed by the Congress, established these rather general objectives that I have just outlined, and also specifically authorized the establishment of a new federal agency, as you referred to in NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and invested the responsibility for these objectives in that organization. Well, there's an awful, this thing is coming at us so awfully fast, isn't it? Land, what, not only six years on that Russian spritz, but upsputment? Well, you see, we spent a long time sort of in the doldrums and not knowing whether we wanted to get into space or not, and then the mood of the country was such that

Congress got cranked up, and the scientists went along with it. They had been pushing the scientists had to go into space on some kind of a scale for many years before the public kind of caught up with us. I wonder if you noticed that, in the list that Chuck just gave you, there was no military aspect to it, and this is one of the big problems today. The country is in the middle of a big debate now as to whether there is a military reason for going into space, and so far the answer is we don't know. Well, of course, there must be military reasons when we're going along with programs like Tyros and other spy -on -the -sky activities, and there has to be some military complications and probably even military satellites armed with rockets. Well, Donner's, there's one obvious point that can be made here, certainly under one of the objectives I stated, namely the advancement of science and technology. It is essentially a truism to say that the military

and the security of the country will, of course, benefit from any advancement of science and technology. But the point that, and I think it's rather important to establish that land is making is that the exploration of space for peaceful purposes is the specific mission of the NASA Agency, you see, that the military and therefore the country's defense posture will gain by indirect means is, of course, of course. And we can go back to this a little historically, Alan, when did people first become sufficiently interested in space, or when did the scientific capabilities begin to allow for space exploration? Wasn't that in the Goddard experiments? Well, of course, rockets were being played with on a small scale for many, many years, but I think it was only about World War II that the real big activity in science and technology began to turn towards space, and that was when V2s and so on were developed. And after the war, people

say the Navy, particularly here, did a lot of early work using German V2s to explore the lower part of space and things snowballed very rapidly after that. Getting on this military thing just once more, because I think it's awfully important, the point is that we know we want to put men on the moon. We know we want to put men in space, but we do not know whether it makes any sense to put a military man either in space or on the moon or on Mars or in place else. And that's a real question now. I suppose there are so many unexplored aspects of this thing that we really don't know what we're getting into. Is it going that fast, Chuck? The speed of our knowledge, so that raises this fundamental problem, of course, of coordinating the knowledge. I think it's safe to say that our knowledge and skills are, of course, not keeping up with our capacity to

define problems. I think always the situation, unfortunately, that one has to deal with. And, of course, again, emphasizes the need for this great cross -fertilization of scientific and engineering talent in all fields of endeavor. Well, we get into the question, men, about manned and unmanned space flights. Is there advantages to one or the other? Can we learn something from manned spaceflight that we can't learn from unmanned spaceflight landing? Well, take the example of the moon. The country's already committed to do both things, to send a man to the moon and to send instruments to the moon. We've tried a number of times to send instruments so far we haven't succeeded, at least completely. But before we get men out there, it's going to be very certain that we have instruments there first so that we cut down the number of surprises that poor guy is going to have to deal with. And that's just the point, that an instrument can do something that it's designed to do and it can do it in any given case probably better than a man. But the man can take account of surprises. He can make observations

that the instrument wasn't designed for because the man didn't know the thing was there when he designed the instrument. That's the real reason for getting men out there to deal with the unexpected. What can we learn from something like Marin or two, for example? Do we know anything about the fire planets as a result of that particular venture? Well, Don, as I'm sure you know, are to date, or until this past year or so, our entire knowledge of our nearest neighbors, the moon and space, and of course the Venus and Mars being the nearest of our planetary neighbors. All of our knowledge about these bodies has existed purely from observations made from the Earth with all of the attendant problems that are associated with that. I'm referring, for example, to the problem of atmospheric interference on telescopic observations of things like this. So, in recent years, and of course, greatly increasing in the future, with our ability now to get above the atmosphere, get out of this range of these

interferences. And of course, as the time goes on to get both not only close to but essentially on many of these bodies, will just enormously increase our capability to learn about those specific bodies. And that this knowledge is needed is, I think again, obvious. After all of the years that man has inhabited the Earth, we still know relatively little about it. And there are many people who argue, and I think quite successfully, that we will probably learn more about this Earth once we get off of it. Old couple of weeks ago in the daily newspapers, I noticed an article saying, does the hydrogen bomb change our weather? Do we know anything about that? Thanks for that question. I think most of the explosions of the past, probably all of them with one or two conceivable exceptions, haven't done a thing. Now the conceivable exceptions are the high altitude explosions, particularly one of them called starfish. And that created an artificial radiation belt, which

caused a lot of hover in the scientific community. It was no particular surprise, I think, in many regards, but in some ways it was a little unusual compared to what we expected. There's probably one chance and a hundred million that that has had, or will have had, some discernible effect on the weather. But I personally think it's odds are a hundred million to one against it. Well, can't we can learn a great deal about the weather from a space exploration, can't we? In terms of, I know you're not meteorologists. Well, again, you have to have the overview, and I think both Chuck and I have been watching with interest the kinds of things that the weather satellites have been doing. Yes, the tyrosystem, and it's very preliminary stages of operation, has been really eminently successful. It has predicted storms, it has given us actual weather patterns of hurricanes developing in the South Atlantic. And I think there is, if I recall correctly, this recent hurricane that was struck the Galveston

area, they had a great deal of advanced warning and predictions I've heard run millions of dollars and possibly even lives were saved as a result of knowing about that. One of the points is that up to now you couldn't see the forest for the trees, you're right in the weather and you're here running around on the ground and you're trying to see what's going on. Now you get off a few hundred miles and you can see these great weather patterns developing over the whole globe, and that allows you to see something that's very simple and obvious once you've seen it. But when you're down there in the middle of it, you just can't tell what's going on. I am a young son who likes to watch things like space to death and that sort of thing. What is it? What's it like out there? We got any information? And is it anything like space could that, or book Rogers, or whatever we grew up on, I grew up in book Rogers. It's more uncomfortable. That's for sure. Don, it is, do you realize that it has only been within very recent years that we have learned to, and I picked, I heard this phrase somewhere and I don't remember where, not to precede the non

-space by the adjective empty. Space is not empty. There is a vast quantity of what we call it, things are materials for the moment, that occupy that what we used to call the interplanetary void. Len has been especially interested in recent months in interplanetary gases, plasmas, the effects of solar winds, these emanations from the Sun itself. We really know relatively little about these things, and the unmanned spacecraft has given us the opportunity you see to proceed out where these things exist, to make detailed measurements. You asked a moment ago about Mariner 2, has it really given us anything of value? Some six experiments that were performed on that particular spacecraft were very simple, but yet provided us with information that we simply didn't have before. Give you some example of how alien space

is and how space cadet gets some things right, but obviously can't think of anything. Everything, you take a glass of water here and it sits comfortably on the ground and stays well behaved, but if a man in a spaceship going from here to Mars wanted to drink some water, he couldn't do it in the glass. What would happen if that glass were going in space is that the water would sort of rise up out of it and finally end up in a ball just floating in the center here someplace, in zero gravity, and he might have to eat it like he would eat an apple. Well, they have to have a special prepared food for man out in space. I know that what was the Russian, when I went out there tea -toffee, and I believe it was, it got some gastrointestinal upsets. Do we know anything about what happens to a man when he gets it? Or do we have any information, let's put it this way, Landu, do we have any information that's coming in from the Russians? They have given some information, of course not as much as we would like, and they have the advantage of having flown much longer

missions. And that's probably the most important thing, you see, because if you're going to go much further than the moon, if you're going to go out say to Mars, and that's a very interesting planet for men to visit probably, then you've got to be in the zero gravity condition for months at a time, and that's like being very second bed where your muscles aren't doing anything. And then you want to land and go through this terrific strain of re -entering the Earth's atmosphere. It's not obvious that you can survive that, after having soaked out there doing nothing with those muscles so long. I just saw the other day that calcium seems to come out of the astronauts' bone with surprising speed when they're in space, and that's true for short times, like a week or less. What it's going to do after six months is still open, still very much open. Apparently we're going there, though. There seems to be, would you say that we're on the horizon where we will, where maybe your children in mind might see Mars? I don't

think there's any doubt about it. There are, of course, tentative schedules have been planned. As you know, the so -called and essentially now famous Apollo mission is scheduled to go sometime around the end of the 60s. I think, yes, I think we will. We will have a man or the Russians will have men. Somebody's going to get men on the moon in the period 1967, 1968. And it's probable that they can survive that, without any of these complications I was talking to earlier. Going to these planets where it takes a lot longer, there may be some really fundamental barriers against that, and that's one of the things we've got to find out. What about the Van Allen radiation belts, aren't they? Oh, I don't think they really represent much of a hazard. You just get out of them in a hurry so that they don't, they don't give anybody too much radiation and therefore make

them sick. There are a lot of other troubles in space besides that one. What are some of the immediate objectives in our own solar system? What are we trying to look for? What are scientific objectives? What are we trying to find out? Let's just lay aside the military for a moment. Well done to me, one of the most intriguing questions, is this one about whether or not we're alone in the solar system? As you know, there is some evidence to indicate that certain forms, admittedly elementary forms of life, have the potential of existing in such places as Mars are even in Venus, although from the recent data the temperatures look like they might be too high for life as we know it. I think clearly that this is one of the most important and undoubtedly will be one of the questions. That is this question of does life exist in any form in our solar system? That is most important and that will receive and should receive a great deal of attention

in the coming years. This has strange consequences even in terms of theology. The whole meaning of men's relation to his universe is changing again like it did with Copernicus. And the astonishing thing is we may learn about this just from very simple experiments. For instance, to find out whether there's life on Mars, it's a very simple experiment in principle. All you do is all you do, it's a tremendous job. All you do is take a microscope and land it there. And what literally we're going to do is shoot out some sticky strings and let them drag along the ground and reel them back in and see what's stuck to them. And they're also going to do things like listen and maybe they'll be buzzing or humming or something like that. What are the problems? No footsteps. This is a question I'd like to ask you Chuck. So far I noticed that we have tracking stations that are keeping track of the

various unmanned instruments that are out in space or orbiting the earth. Are we getting into a situation where we may have some difficulty with the garbage out there that is causing it? I mean the large number of satellites and their vehicles that have gone up with them. No, I don't think so. Most of the, let's call it a debris for one of a better name. Has a finite lifetime as a rule within the, depending on the particular orbit and where it is and that sort of thing. I suppose it's possible that someday we may have to have a space salvage operation which may have to go up there and clean up the upper parts of the atmosphere. Certainly doesn't appear to be beyond the technological capability. It does. No, that's interesting. Well look at it like this. If you can put a man on the moon with the enormous complication that that involves. Well then I think if you keep it in that context, certainly we can go up when we have the

booster capability to retrieve much of this debris as I call it. You will have to admit, Chuck, that it's a very expensive garbage car. You better go most expensive. That may be another point we want to talk about in one program in this series is the cost of this thing. I think that we probably not better not get into it today. But what about if we go beyond our solar system? Where do we get into there? Is space infinite or does anybody know? I don't think anybody really knows. I think that in many senses of that word infinite, it probably is. One thing is certain that we're going to have to contend ourselves with the puttering around in this solar system. Getting to another solar system is, well, it really is unimaginable. It takes 10 years or so for light to get from here to another star roughly. Traveling at the speed of light is out of the question for a human being for the foreseeable few centuries anyhow,

I should think. It just takes too much energy to take a pound of matter, let alone a human being and have it going very near the speed of light. You have to use enough just sheer energy that it's enough to melt the whole crust of the earth for say a mile down. So when you start talking about getting a 50 ,000 pound spaceship at those speeds, you're using all the energy available from the sun for some way at the time and that kind of thing. But in terms of looking out there, that's another matter. What about nuclear powered rockets and that sort of thing? Is that possible or we're working on that? Yes, quite definitely, and in fact the nuclear powered rocket appears to be one of the potential ways that will allow us to expand well out into our own solar system. It is maybe necessary even to develop nuclear power to the point that it's usable for even a Venus or a Mars mission, for example. It's been, I think, rather clearly established that we do not necessarily need it for a lunar mission, but there are many definite advantages

to having it available. For example, as the upper stage of a multi -staged vehicle, the last stage might be a nuclear powered vehicle. What are we using now, cheaply in fuels for less stuff? Well, hydrogen and oxygen are the principal fuels. There are a very large number of chemicals, let's call them, that are under investigation as potential fuels. It all boils down to how much specific thrust that a pound of fuel will give you. One of the best fuel systems that is going to be useful for the next decade or so is the hydrogen oxygen one. We are now working very hard in this country to build a rocket called the Centaur that uses that mixture. Until we get to that one, we're using chemicals which are not quite as efficient, so you can't quite get the payloads that you'd like. Have the Russians develop better fuel systems? I don't really know. I think they've got, certainly, got bigger rockets, but whether they've got better fuels is a... I

don't think we know. We just don't know. We don't get enough information from the Russian scientific journals. Well, they have classification too, you know. The point is if you can build a big rocket to get something into space, you can get a bomb into space. And so we run into the classification of data, which is another important point to what extent are our activities at the Astral Science Center handicapped? Or are they by the classification system? Well, I think it's not in the planning that that will be a handicapped, but then you would agree with that and we're doing it. Yeah, the whole Astral Science Center is dealing with NASA space agency programs and those are unclassified. Well, we really don't see any problem there. I just wondered about that because there has been considerable speculation in the scientific community that the classification of data, various kinds, is in hindrance in

terms of man's advancement in basic knowledge. I think that's one of these traditional positions that certainly has elements of truth in it, and it's a matter of degree. I personally feel that the kind of work we've been doing has not been handicapped by classification. Well, can you tell us just something where we're going in the Astral Science Center, is this a combined teaching and research program, or what we didn't do with. Well, it's primarily a research center, and what it really is, as I said, a liaison group. It does not withdraw from all of tech center of those people working in space and put them in one group by enemies. What it does try to do is keep them in communication with one another. Well, I'm friend at that point. We're going to have to break off this discussion. And this is the first in a series of programs that we're going to have on space, and specifically our technology centers role in it as we move along here. And I'd like to thank you very much, gentlemen, Mr.

Terrell and Dr. Rifle for coming in and joining me on the budget. Thank you, O'Donnell. It's a pleasure.