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Real space age is just beginning, symposium concludes
March 26, 1999 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With a sober look toward the past and giddy anticipation of the future, scientists, engineers and visionaries gathered in Washington this week to grapple with the big questions of space exploration: Where do we go, why should we go, and how will we get there? While there was optimism to spare at the daylong "Space 2000: Space Exploration at the Millennium" symposium, hosted by American University, even the most ebullient acknowledged that the political conditions that fueled America's conquest of the moon no longer exist.
"(President) Kennedy didn't send us to space because it was neat, but to flex our technological muscles," said Donna Shirley, former manager of NASA's Mars Surveyor and Pathfinder missions. Now, in the absence of Cold War fears, finding a compelling rationale for a robust international space effort looms as a more daunting problem than the technical issues of how to get there. Buzz Aldrin and other elders of the space program were united in their surprise -- and dismay -- at how abruptly the manned exploration came to a stop after the last Apollo mission.
"After the third mission, Apollo became not a gateway to exploration, but a singular moment," said panelist Andrew Chaikin, author of "From Earth to the Moon." "We went to the moon at the very earliest moment when it was possible. In fact, now that it's over it seems like a fairy tale. It's almost like (President) Kennedy yanked a decade out of the 21st century and spliced it into the '60s." For now, the cornerstone of NASA's strategy for surviving in the post-Cold War world is to do things better, cheaper and faster. It's a policy that has served the agency well, most notably with Mars Pathfinder, a bargain-priced mission that proved to be a public relations bonanza. "Pathfinder cost the same as the budget of the movie 'Waterworld' and got much better reviews," Shirley said.
But it remains anything but cheap to send humans, rather than robots, into space. That's primarily because rocket propulsion technology hasn't advanced significantly since NASA's heyday of the '60s and '70s. "For 30 years, we've been using basically the same vehicles," said NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin. With the "miserable inefficiency" of current technology, Goldin said, it costs $10 thousand per pound just to get off the ground. But in the next 10 years, he predicted, the cost will be reduced to $1,000 per pound and later still, to $100 per pound. "Once access is solved, the frontier is open," he said. But, he admitted, "we have a long way to go." Goldin predicted that a revolution in transportation will occur in the next 50 years, comparable to the revolution in communications of the past half-century. He sketched out a paradigm for future exploration: First, man will establish robotic colonies, beginning on Mars. The robots will scout for the best locations and set up infrastructure, housing, and manufacturing facilities. Then humans will follow, and the robots will be sent out to explore further in the solar system. Goldin's other far-reaching visions for the near future include "smart" spacesuits that monitor astronauts' physical states at all times; facilities for manufacturing marrow, blood, and even organs in space; and space telescopes that will reveal features of planets outside our solar system. "It's OK to dream again in America," Goldin said. "Science fiction is becoming reality."
But still, there's the problem of motivation. Jill Tarter, director of the Phoenix Project for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), suggested that humankind would become much more interested in space exploration if confronted by the possibility of extinction. There's always the chance that the Earth might be rendered uninhabitable from a cataclysmic collision with a comet or meteor, she said. Timothy Ferris, author of "The Whole Shebang: Coming of Age in the Milky Way," agreed that survival issues might provide a worthy goal for space exploration. "We could bequeath to our descendents... an insurance policy of another planet to inhabit," Ferris said. Retired NASA engineer Homer Hickam said that while the odds of a calamity coming our way from outer space were remote, "we're quite capable of causing calamity from within." Hickam, whose memoir "Rocket Boy" inspired the film "October Sky," said it's time to leave the days of expensive chemical rocketry behind and come up with a revolutionary new propulsion system. Hickam, who has hasn't lost his Alabama drawl or his boyish enthusiasm, said that moment could be close at hand. "Fusion, fission, antimatter, will open the entire solar system to exploration," he said. "It takes the will and the imagination of the people -- this country and the world -- to make it happen. "I think we can field one of the drives within 15 years and it will be just like the solar system has become our neighborhood. I say we can do it. Let's go." RELATED STORIES: Contest will send tiny student experiment to Mars RELATED SITES: American University
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