[ale] [OT][Fwd: Arthur C. Clark on the Shuttle disaster]

[James P. Kinney III]

As many people on this list are interested on space exploration just due
to the cool geek factor alone, I am forwarding this note from Arthur C.
Clark that was sent out to the alumni of Princeton University as well as
several government political leaders. As to be expected, it is very well
written and expresses many of the same sentiments I have been thinking
about these past weeks. The quote from Larry Niven should be made the
official motto of NASA.

-----Forwarded Message-----


Tribute to Columbia

In a few months we will be celebrating the first centennial of
heavier-than-air flight.  It is now hard to believe that when the Wright
Brothers started the revolution which has changed our world, most
Americans papers never reported the event  because they were sure it was
a hoax.  Leading scientists had "proved" that it would defy
the laws of Physics. 

The conquest of the air took many lives  though only a fraction of those
lost during the millennia when the Oceans were opened up  for
navigation.  As Kipling wrote: "If blood be the price of
Admiralty,  Dear God we have paid in full"!

Well, with Columbia and the earlier Apollo 7 and Challenger tragedies, we
are starting to pay the price of Astronautics, and inevitably some are
asking "Is it worthwhile"?  A hundred years from now such a
question will seem as absurd as criticisms directed at the importance of
aviation, c1900.

No-one will deny the enormous value of space technologies for
communications, weather forecasting, surveying  and peace keeping. 
However, most, if not all, of these duties can best be performed by robot
satellites: what useful work can men - and women  do in Space?

Lost satellites  have been saved by an astronaut with a screw driver -
and it is not easy to make robots perform this sort of feat.  Whole new
branches of medicine will be opened up in the weightless environment of
space, while this will also attract countless tourists during the 
decades to come.

Although space travel is still extremely expensive, there is no reason
why it should always be the case.  One day the noisy, inefficient and
dangerous rocket will be replaced by the Space Elevator, which is exactly
what its name implies.  It costs about $1000 worth of electrical energy
to take a human being up to  Geostationary Orbit  - and perhaps $100  for
the round trip, since most of the  energy can be recovered on the
downward journey! For years I have been saying that one day the chief
costs of space travel will be for catering and in-flight movies.

More seriously, there is a vital reason why we must explore Space: the
very survival of the human race may depend upon it.  There were at least
three major meteor impacts during the last century, and almost every week
our atmosphere protects us from meteorites which could deliver kiloton
blasts if they reached the earth's surface.

Some 60 million  years ago a comet or meteorite changed the course of
evolution and gave an un-prepossessing little mammal a chance to replace
the  giant reptiles who were then lords of the earth.

In 1973 I opened "Rendezvous with Rama" (choosing the ominous
date 9/11!) with a devastating meteor impact on Europe. In that novel I
proposed the name "Spaceguard" for an organization which
would watch out for dangerous celestial projectiles, and deflect or
destroy them.  I am happy to say that when Congress ordered NASA to look
into the matter, the resulting report (Jan 25th 1992)  was called the
"Spaceguard Survey", with due acknowledgement to the novel.  

As my fellow science-fiction writer Larry Niven summed it up: "The
dinosaurs became extinct because they did not have a space
programme".  If the same thing happens to us, we will have proved
our unfitness to survive.

Arthur C Clarke
Colombo.  10 February, 2003





-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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