thumbnail of Exploring the Universe; 10; The Challenge of the Space Age
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
The rather strange thing about man, since he first appeared on the surface of the earth, he's been engaged in quite a bit of activity trying to get off the surface. First there was Icarus, who recalled, who fashioned wings out of feathers and wax, but they dissolved tragically when he saw it to close to the Grecian Sun. The inout-of-the-Vinci, some 500 years ago, tried to make the tale of the mythical Icarus come true. This is a model of the inout-of-s flying machine, except it didn't fly very well. There was an effort and didn't want to mankind's first air disasters. But much later, there were the more realistic, but still denied dreams of the American rocket pioneer Robert gutted. In the thirties, he sent the first liquid fuel rocket along. And now, more recently, the astronauts and cosmonauts, like Shepard and Glenn and Titov and Gagarin, men who finally made good the
age-old dream of actually stepping into space. One day soon, we will go farther into these men in the Atlas. Giant rockets, like the ones in the background there, will carry us to the next great frontier, the man landing on the moon itself. But even now, at the threshold of man's great journey, we may well pause to ask ourselves, are we in danger of overreaching ourselves in this adventure into space? Vicarus did in his way, are we in ours? That's an examin' that question with Dr. Robert Jestero and Dr. Philip Abelson about the challenge of the space age. These are some of the symbols of the space age and the models of the actualities involved
of the challenge. This, of course, is Atlas. For military purposes, it's an ICBM. It can carry a nuclear warhead up here and condent to condent. For peaceful purposes, we also use it to carry scientific instruments and men for that matter into space. Because with Atlas and the Mercury spacecraft here attached, Atlas has already boosted the American astronauts into orbit, as you know. Here's Titan. Titan is a military vehicle and the launch vehicle for scientific space research, too. And soon, Titan will carry, we trust, the two-man Gemini spacecraft, which you see here, into actual orbit. Next to Titan, back on our nominee. This is Titan, so that's Titan. This is Saturn, Saturn Earth. The big version will develop seven and a half million pounds of thrust. Before the end of this decade, that will expected to be landing the first men on the moon itself. The surface of the moon, when you look at it through a telescope, is a rather inhospitable
place to look at. The keep man alive there and to explore the surface, much new and strange equipment will be needed. And such equipment is actually being developed right now. The first lunar base may look something like this. And exotic appearing vehicles are designed now for getting about on the rocky and dusty, we presume, surface of the moon. The dust layer may be a few inches thick or much thicker, and this will get through most any kind of dust, as you see. This hardware, as it's called in the space business, here's some more here, is intended to do, I think, three things primarily. First, to extend the frontiers of our knowledge in general. And then to develop our technology for the exploration of the other bodies of our solar system. And third, and perhaps most important, to carry out the president's directive, which is to get to the moon as soon as possible. I'm going to ask our guests if they think it makes a difference. Whether or not we get to the moon, before the Soviet Union gets to the moon, which seems like a fair question. Our guests today,
Dr. Abelson and Dr. Jester. Dr. Robert Jester, a nuclear physicist and director of the Garter Institute for Space Studies of NASA, too, that's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and also Professor of Geology at Columbia University. And Dr. Philip Abelson, a member of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Director of the Geophysical Lab of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, an editor of the Weekly General Science, which is the Weekly General Lab Science. And those are lots of tidal gentlemen, and I know they already begin to encompass the whole picture. What about that question? Is it vital that we arrive at the moon before the Soviet Union, Dr. Abelson, you want to explain? Competition between us and the Russians is based on a thousand different frontiers. Landing on the moon is one of those. And our competition with the Russians is vital that we top them in as many spheres as we can. Dr. Jester, how do you feel about that? I agree with Dr. Abelson. I think that the lunar landing project is a very important
projection of our national vitality, and that it is essential for us to prosecute it with the greatest degree possible. I don't think that we will disappear if we don't make it first, but I think that we have a good chance to do so, and we are going to try as hard as we can. Dr. Jester, you said I believe that landing a man on the moon is somewhat similar to the discovery of the new world by Columbus, in what way? Is it a frontier or a reaching? Well, I had in mind the fact that in the late 15th century, middle and late 15th century, under the initial impetus of Prince Henry the Navigator, a series of voyages of exploration set out from Portugal and down the coast of Africa and up around India, and then across to America and then in the Jellens case around the world. These voyages of exploration expanded the knowledge of Western Europe from a very small area to our entire planet in a small time, and you can see the change in the maps of that century. It's quite striking. I believe that
the intellectual ferment, the product of these explorations was not in the gold and spices they brought back, but in the fact that they introduced new ideas and new possibilities which forced people out of their established patterns of thinking. In that general stimulus to the society of those times, we found the ferment that laid the ground for the preparedness for the scientific revolution. I think that now for the first time in 500 years we're on the threshold of a similar wave of exploration which will influence our society in this constructive way in the next century. I think Dr. Jastro is trying to reason by analogy, and that's always a bad way of arguing. Actually, the scientific revolution has been witnessed for several hundred years, and while the exploration of space is perhaps one of the 10 important scientific areas for research in the next decade, I would be fully as interested in the exploration of inner space,
what's the new the oceans, what's the continent, I would be all interested in the exploration of the human mind. Nobody understands how memory works, for instance. Nobody understands how the brain works. Well, would you rule out space because of the mind being more desirable? Where do you put the emphasis? Well, I would regard space as being a very important frontier, but it's not just the only frontier. It's one of a large number of very important challenges that the human mind faces today. Well, Dr. Jastro, didn't you mean that this one in frontier leads on to other frontiers being breach-based? I think that it's very important not to exaggerate the man who are landing as the endpoint, but rather as a milestone on the road to the exploration of the solar system, and in itself, accompanied in the technology that it develops by a number of scientifically
valuable and practically useful developments in weather and communications, all of these things together on the space program, and it is a very substantial addition to our effort to understand our physical environment and at a cost of 1% of the gross national product, at least that's what's projected for the next couple of years. Well, I think it's of course very important to explore space, but again, to me it would be important to empty the lunatic of silence, and if we understood the human mind, we might be well on our way to do it. The exploration of space is not preventing us from studying the problems of mental health. It's not an either-or proposition. To a certain degree, it is because there can only be one item that has the real spotlight, one item that has the national priority. If you make space and the conquest of the moon, the most important object of
national effort, then some of the other areas of endeavor are going to suffer. Well, it's not possible to separate the military and- Would take- I object- Very, very, very, very exciting. There's no one I would rather argue with. We can come back to it if you'd rather. Again, you put this in terms of either-or, but I would like to submit to you the belief that the stimulus which space exploration presents for the younger generation and drawing to their attention the challenge of understanding our physical environment will draw talent into science and engineering and direct the attention of the people to these highly important, practical, and intellectual questions in a way which- which more obstrues matters, less easily communicable, cannot do, and the net result is an enrichment of a total fund of intellectual activity, the enduring
contribution that we want to pass on- that we haven't want to pass on. Well, some of us- There is a crowding here as a bob. There has been recently a proposal to explore the crust and mantle. This proposal calls for just $30 million, not $30 billion, and probably this exploration of interspace, exploration, what's beneath this, what's in the ocean. This may very well have hard going in the Congress, and it certainly will have hard going in the competition for young men. I will tell you something. If I may speak for what I think would be the congressional reaction, I believe that it will have less hard going by virtue of the attention which has been drawn to the problems of planetary history and evolution and the structures of planets, the moon included as a planetary body, then it would have if the IGY and the ensuing space program did not exist. Couldn't we send men to the moon, this is put on your side, in the form of instruments,
not actual people and do all the research we want to by instrumentation in much cheaper? Well, we certainly could find out a great deal about the moon with the instruments. In fact, I would estimate that we can find out about 75% of what we will learn through sending instruments and at a cost of 5 or 10% of what will be spent in the lunar landing program and furthermore without the endangering of life. Well, I found myself in the addition of differing with you, Dr. Abel. Because I think that scientists generally tend to devalue the importance of humanity and the human judgment of the Intuit have element. I would like to say that an instrument as elaborate and complex and sophisticated as it may be is not capable of applying to the image on the Vidicon tube, the accumulated wisdom of past centuries as it forms in the mind of the trained
observer. He can pick out billions of bits of information, one bizarre element on the lunar terrain that he will direct his attention to. He can seize an unexpected opportunity and out of these unexpected things will come the real progress. Well, it isn't as if one couldn't have a TV camera upon the lunar surface just looking at it and the man could be sitting in the comfort of his laboratory not worrying whether the next solar flare was going to adjust his sights and adjust his enterprises to direct himself right then and there to that element. He can't wait a few months in design or at least to be unfortunate if he had to design a new flight. What is that that happened? I'd like to see you take on your geophysical research by remote control sitting in your chair in Philadelphia. Well, but here's the man on the moon and of course everything he has he's brought with him. Now, so he looks at the lunar surface and sees this exciting phenomenon that
you speak of and it turns out that he's like the plumber that's fixing the bathtub and he finds he hasn't bought the right tools along. Well, perhaps he brought enough tools to find the rosetta stone like that. I think that that one way or the other you must remember we are going to have to deal with unmanned exploration for about eight or ten years and by the end of eight years of unmanned exploration we will be pretty anxious to enter on this culminating phase in which the special sensitivity of the human brain can be applied. I think it's apparent that the United States space program has lots of pros and cons in it. Some of the pros are an exhibit over here. We leave the doctors for just a minute to come back to them shortly. The pros are, for example, our friends. Here's a mine tell star here. This is the model of the communication satellite which already enabled us to have actual television conversation with Europe as you recall at magic
night when we went to Maine and over Maine where the tracking antenna picked up in this dome here. Tiny tell star over the ocean and it relayed this. That was a quick trip to Paris. Dr. Jesto's question or Dr. Abel Sonslampi was that as good as being in Paris. Here's a little full-size electrical generator of power from atomic energy. He uses isotopes and gives a few watts of power for satellites where there could be no other way to provide this much power in space for a long time. And the under is the model of X-BOR-10. X-BOR-10 was the Earth satellite launched into orbit two years ago to study the region between the planets
and it's sending back quite a bit of data these days, still up there. The U.S. scientific space program began, you recall, with the launching of X-BOR-1. It was carried aloft in January 1958 and it was a great exciting moment and a great success. It reported, among other things, the Van Allen radiation bill. Then came Vanguard 1 showing that our Earth once thought to be round. It was actually rather a pear shape, I guess you might call it. In fact, we do call it and gave scientists information about the density of the Earth's sub-artistry. All together, the U.S. has successfully launched more than 40 manned and scientific satellites reporting on the nature of outer space. It launched these. One had to build the space capsules and transmit their findings to Earth with new technologies, new industries turning out the space hardware. Hardware of tiny power TV cameras, tiny power plants, as in the case of Tyros, which you see here reporting weather
from above the clouds as it goes around every hour or so. New words found in the language that you're hearing every day now, telemetering, orbiting, countdown. Words which serve the space age as do hundreds of thousands of men and women in new jobs which they've learned. New factories and new communities have appeared overnight on the American landscape. And on the American landscape, not only the new factories, busy with people, but on formerly lonely beaches once inhabited with sea birds are now giant buckets, rightly waiting for their trip. All this vast effort to get into space requires of course a huge number of dollars, our dollars, as much perhaps as 50 billion dollars. But whatever the final sum is, a good portion of it will be spent in basic research. And I would like to talk to Dr. Jastro and Dr. Abelson about money and research right now. You know, great many scientific institutions have had
government contracts to do specific jobs of research. They built new buildings, acquired extensive equipment, expanded their staffs, and all new government money. Now does this money mean that they have lost, perhaps, control of research? It's gone to governmental. Some people say bureaucratic influences. So far, there's been really remarkably low old vert attempt by the government to control the policies of the university. But in the background is the threat, for the government in one moment could really wreck the finances of some of these major universities if they cut off the funds. If I were a president of a big university, I would be very careful about whose toes I stepped on in Washington. And no matter how careful you are, can you effectively prevent it if it happens? Well, I think it's a danger, a serious danger for the universities
to be on guard against, but a good administration on the part of both government agencies and universities can avoid it. What effect does it have in existence now on the program on universities which were traditionally independent, of course. Now they get about a quarter of their income from the government. Is there some interference by omission rather than commission, conformity of a climate of what's going along with it and that's still the boat? Well, there are many levels. For instance, if one were interested in obtaining a grant in geophysics, he would be a little bit careful to see to it that he maintained proper relations with the bureaucrats in charge of grants in geophysics. Of course, if he wants money from the foreign foundations, he's going to be careful about his context.
Two, this is a normal fiber of human relationships. Well, that is true, but we in this, we have a democracy and can exist as long as we can have a certain degree of freedom of expression. If that expression is continuously tailored to meet an invisible threat, then we can get into bad shape without even really knowing. I'd like to mention one destructive thing which one can see already in that is that teaching and research are two sides of the same coin and the government has shown some disposition to try to separate and narrowly define its project objectives and be careful that none of its money spills over into the educational function of the university, but really it cannot separate these matters. It's so very well on the graduate level, I think, Phil. There's a problem there to be resolved. Well, Dr. Abelsen said a while ago that at one time the standards of scientists were superior to the standards of the general population. Today there's no visible
difference, I think you said. Well, in an earlier day, men who were in science were there because they loved creation of knowledge. They loved what they were doing. In many occasions, they were poorly underpaid. They continued their studies because they wanted to do it. The government has now poured so much money into research that it's relatively easy for a man to make pretty good money at it and this is attracted into scientific investigation. The great many operators, the great many people that really don't care for creation of knowledge or understanding. All I care is the power and the glamour that goes with science today. I'm sorry to admit I have to agree with you fully. I think it's a very, very serious problem that is arising. Any way out of this? I believe
that it is necessary to educate the people who have public responsibility to some basic, some elementary understanding of the substance of science so that they are able to make the basic critical judgments on the scientific advice that's given to them and at the same time to educate the scientists to some of the realities of Washington and other parts of the world so that we can bridge the gap between the two cultures. People who have responsibility at the present time are rarely able to make these critical judgments. There is a myth and a mystique of science which prevents them from properly assessing the worth of the people who come to them with scientific advice. Dr. you think of the two cultures as the scientific and the administrative or controlling group. What about C.P. Snow's little mention of the third culture which is the populist at large? If they were aware of science or knew more of its nature, doesn't public opinion move those controlling people,
the administrators? It seems to me that the second and third cultures are really one in the problem that we're discussing at the moment. We must communicate the nature of science to people who are not going on to a specialized interest in it. Yes, the education in science has fallen far behind the real level of influence of science and technology on the lives of all of us. What caused that to happen? Partly it's a conservatism of educators. For if the educators really had kept up with the realities of the new knowledge, they would have insisted that there be far more science introduced into the classroom. Phil, I think you're being too kind to a scientific community. It's the fault I believe of the scientists who have not been sufficiently people oriented to be willing to take the time and the effort to teach this object properly.
Nobody gets out of college today, who was not going on in science, with a good understanding of the true role that science plays in our society. Bob, you're asking our fault. Yeah, but we have a job of work to do in science. If we're going to be good scientists, we've got to work very hard as that. We can't be missionaries at the same time. We've got a job to do with human beings, and our concentration of interest in science is very great, but we're still immersed in our society. The ivory tower is surrounded by a sea of people. What about the individual? We talked about him. Is he in danger of losing, as a scientist, his ability to create with the influx of teams, great numbers of people who create as a team, as in case of NASA? Well, I was going to suggest Phil answered because he's a private citizen, in a sense, if I'm not right. The individual, if he is determined to make a contribution, can make a kind of vision under almost any circumstance. And this is shown because they
earlier scientists, when they were, well, Madame Curie and her shed was able to carry on her great discovery. So that, just a little bit of bureaucratic entanglement, it may be an excuse to a person who isn't going to do anything anyway, and always beef that they're all these impediments, but the really good man will find, will dodge around such obstacles as being trivial. Creativity will emerge, and a few cases where economic need has killed it in the past. You can be sure that it will not be killed now. That's one happy circumstance of this very rich support of science. Or there is one negative aspect in getting some money people into science. That is that we've gone in a great deal of mediocrity, and it is a tradition in science that when you create something you publish it in the literature, and the literature has become so
voluminous these days, that it is very hard to separate the seed from the chat. There's Siddhagon, let's chat. Is that a true science, you're a freshman business right now? Could I ask you to sum up our basic examination, the challenge of the space age? What would you define as being? I think its challenge is that it presents us with new opportunities for extending our understanding and our control over our physical environment. Our problem will be to see that these opportunities are used in such a way that the enduring potential achievements are realized and that we are not misled by short-range goals and spectacular aspects. Well I'm just hoping that in all this chatter about the space age that we don't lose sight of interspace and the other very important human challenges. The study of the mind, the study of embryology, of the earth, of past life, the origin of life, a great many important challenges
that we must move on with. Thank you Dr. Evelson, and Dr. Jester over here. And that is the definition from two famous scientists of the challenge of the space age. Perhaps you have your own challenge. The challenge to know about what is going on in the fields which they define. That question is up to you. The challenge is yours if you choose to accept it. This is NET, National Educational Television.
Series
Exploring the Universe
Episode Number
10
Episode
The Challenge of the Space Age
Producing Organization
Mayer-Skylar Productions
Contributing Organization
Thirteen WNET (New York, New York)
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/75-02c8676m
NOLA Code
EXUN
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/75-02c8676m).
Description
Episode Description
Dave Garroway asks if we are in danger of overreaching ourselves in our explorations of space. Dr. Robert Jastrow, nuclear physicist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and professor of Geology at Columbia University, and Dr. Philip Abelson, member of the Atomic Energy Commission Advisory Committee on peaceful uses of the atom and director of research for the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, disagree on the answer. Dr. Abelson believes that there are many frontiers more worthy of exploration than the moon - the human mind for example. He calls a landing on the moon an "athletic feat," and says that, at ten percent of the cost, we could obtain 75 percent of the information by sending machines to the moon instead of men. Dr. Jastrow, on the other hand, compares the voyages of men into space to the great voyages of exploration at the end of the Fifteenth Century, and he believes that these space explorations will open up a new age of enlightenment. The two scientists agree that government money exerts powerful authority in the fields of research and that the great amount of money available tends to attract the unscrupulous along with the dedicated. Neither feels that other areas of science are necessarily neglected now because of the large amounts of money being put into space research. But they fear that in the future glamour and financial rewards will attract too many scientists into space study. Additionally, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is hiring so many scientists that there may be a shortage of scientists in other fields. In closing, Dr. Jastrow asserts that the space age presents new opportunities to extend our control over our physical environment. Dr. Abelson replies that, since science has so many challenges, we should not spend time to quibble about the space age. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Series Description
Exploring the Universe is an exciting look into the modern theories and advances of science from the possibilities of life on other planets to the creation of our universe. Host for the series is Dave Garroway. Mr. Garroway and his guests all prominent scientists convey their own awe and the wonder at the universe to the television audience. Additionally, they hope to develop a deeper understanding of the philosophy of science so that the lay citizen will be able to make responsible judgments concerning science and government. Each episode documents by pictures, film, and fascinating experiments, provides a glimpse of a provocative field. About the series, Mr. Garroway says, I have long felt that no one has really lived who has not looked into the eyepiece of a telescope. I hope Exploring the Universe conveys some of the feeling of excitement that science brings to me. Exploring the Universe was produced under a grant from the National Science Foundation, and is based on but is not a duplication of the American Foundation for Continuing Educations adult reading-discussion series, Exploring the Universe. Exploring the Universe is a production of Mayer-Sklar Productions, which consists of 11 half-hour episodes originally recorded on videotape. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Broadcast Date
1963-00-00
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Science
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:29:23
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Director: Kane, Dennis B.
Executive Producer: Vaughan, Charles
Guest: Jastrow, Robert
Guest: Abelson, Philip
Host: Garroway, David Cunningham
Producer: Cooper, Lester
Producing Organization: Mayer-Skylar Productions
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_2052 (WNET Archive)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Duration: 00:29:09?
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2317095-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 16mm film
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Identifier: [request film based on title] (Indiana University)
Format: 16mm film
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Exploring the Universe; 10; The Challenge of the Space Age,” 1963-00-00, Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c8676m.
MLA: “Exploring the Universe; 10; The Challenge of the Space Age.” 1963-00-00. Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c8676m>.
APA: Exploring the Universe; 10; The Challenge of the Space Age. Boston, MA: Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c8676m