Hearing Transcript

The President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy PUBLIC HEARING Galileo Academy of Science and Technology 1150 Francisco Street, San Francisco, CA Thursday, April 15, and Friday, April 16, 2004 Pete Aldridge Well, good afternoon. Welcome to the fourth public hearing of the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond. I’m Pete Aldridge. I’m the Chairman of the Commission. I’m especially pleased to be holding this hearing at the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology here in San Francisco. And what an appropriate name, first of all, and the school’s motto is “A new school under the stars.” So I thought that was quite appropriate that we be here. We would all like to thank Principal Margaret Chiu … and Vice Principal Anthony Hailey, administrator Bettie Grinnell, and the students and parents of the Galileo Academy for allowing us to be here today. The students are on the spring break, and although we know that the Galileo students are deeply interested in space, science, and technology, we also understand that spring break is spring break. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Principal Chiu, the school librarian Patrick Delaney, and other members of the faculty are in Shanghai participating in an educational exchange conference sponsored by Harvard University. Mrs. Chiu, we hope that you and your colleagues will see all these proceedings via the Moon to Mars website and know how grateful we are to be here at Galileo Academy. Here today representing the San Francisco Unified School District is Assistant Superintendent Dr. Frank Tom. Dr. Tom, we wish you continued success in educating young people for careers in science and technology. Would you please stand so we can see you? You’re out there somewhere. It’s hard for to us see the audience with all of these bright lights in our face. Now, I’d like to introduce the hardworking members of the Commission, starting at my far right and will be here shortly is Carly Fiorina. Carly serves as the chairwoman and chief executive officer of the Hewlett-Packard, which she joined in July of 1999. Her roots are deep in technology and she has served in senior executive leadership positions at AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Michael Jackson is a Senior Vice President for E-Com Technology Corporation. He is a former U.S. Department of Transportation Deputy Secretary and was instrumental in the early formation of the Transportation Safety Administration. Dr. Laurie Leshin is the Director of Arizona State University’s Center for Meteorite Studies. She uses spacecraft and sophisticated laboratory instruments to trace the history of water and possibility of life in our solar system. 1 Les Lyles was in the Air Force for more than 35 years, rising from the Air Force ROTC program to become a four-star general and commander of Air Force Materiel Command. In that preretirement position, General Lyles was responsible for the U.S. Air Force research and development community. Dr. Paul Spudis is a planetary scientist at the John Hopkins University at the Applied Physics Laboratory outside of Baltimore, Maryland. His specialty is in the geology of the Moon. He has also studied the geology of Mars, Mercury, and many other worlds. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He served on the President’s Aerospace Commission, which made recommendations to Congress and related government agencies on how to improve the health and future of this industry in the interest of the American economy and national security. Retired Congressman Robert Walker is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates—a firm specializing in telecommunications and technology issues. Bob served in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 1997, representing his home state of Pennsylvania. While in Congress, he was Chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, with NASA oversight. He, too, served on the recent Aerospace Commission as its Chair. Dr. Maria Zuber is the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and leads the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Maria has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. Steve Schmidt, next to Maria, is our Commission’s Executive Director. Steve is a Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator and our federally designated official for this advisory committee. Before we begin today, I want to announce that today we are releasing information about responses to our website. So far, MoontoMars.org has received close to 4 million hits and over 5,000 written responses from 64 different countries. All of the responses have not been positive, but pro comments outnumber con comments seven to one. The opposition comments are mostly concerned with the budget and spending on anything that doesn’t address terrestrial needs. Pro comments, with California in the lead, echo a strong belief that exploration is part of human nature, that space is the next frontier and that the Moon, Mars and Beyond initiative will reap benefits for all humanity, education, technology, and jobs. More details regarding the public findings are available on our website. That’s www.MoontoMars.org. And I encourage you to read the press release there. We will begin this hearing with a panel of experts on the entertainment aspects of space exploration. I don’t need to tell anyone how many people get their information about space from novels, films and even videogames. Interesting, the creative technologies associated with new media are not unrelated to the high-tech of space. Our first panelist literally needs no introduction. We are honored to have the accomplished and popular writer Ray Bradbury joining us via satellite from Los Angeles. Who knows? Perhaps the leap from publication of his Martian Chronicles to the first outpost on the Red Planet may not take 2 nearly as long as the progression from Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon to the Apollo launch. Mr. Bradbury, we welcome your perspective. We will hear from Mr. Bradbury first, and then after which, I will introduce our other panelists. Mr. Bradbury, are you on? We’re not getting any sound. Could we get somebody working on getting the sound? O.K., does Mr. Bradbury know he’s not getting through? Unidentified speaker No. Pete Aldridge Okay. Do you want to try it now? Ray Bradbury All right. Is this better? Pete Aldridge Yes. Ray Bradbury Can you hear me now? Pete Aldridge Yes, we can. Ray Bradbury Is it good and clear? Pete Aldridge It’s clear, but it’s—we still got a little background noise, but I think—why don’t we go ahead and proceed? 3 Ray Bradbury All right. Now I have always considered—I’m writing a new book called Too Soon From the Cave, too Far From the Stars, in other words, we’re the in-between generation. We have been out of the cave about 10,000 years. We’re on our way to Alpha Centauri with a way stop on the Moon and Mars. We know very little about the generation of life on Earth. We have tried to explain it to ourselves. It’s very difficult. We have no answers. I worked for the Smithsonian a few years ago creating a planetarium show about the universe, the Big Bang and what have you. And in doing that, I got to thinking about the generation of life on Earth and what we’re doing here. There’s not one of us who hasn’t laid awake at night or stood up or laid out on a hill and looked at the universe and wondered, “What’s it all about? Why are we here?” Well, my idea is this—that there’s no use having a universe, billions of stars and all creation before us if there’s no audience. So the universe, in mysterious ways, created life on Earth as an audience for this miraculous experience of being alive in the universe. We are the audience. We will witness and we will celebrate. Now, if that is true, and I think it is, we are the audience that the universe needed to appreciate it. But now here we are on the threshold of space, running back to the Moon, which we should never have left, and going on to Mars. I would like to put this in a framework for you: 500 years ago, three Italians set out from various parts of Europe. Cristoforo Colombo—Columbus—set out representing Spain, and then England came along with Giovanni Caboti representing Henry VIII, and the third person, Verazzano, another Italian, set out for India. All three of them could not have guessed 500 years into the future. So, on the way to India, all three of them bumped into a huge obstruction, an obstruction that was empty, that was uncivilized, that was cold and rejected them. Cristoforo Colombo—Columbus—did not land on the main continent of this huge obstruction on his first trip. Giovanni Caboti examined the northern regions of this unknown continent. Only one man, Verazzano, landed. First of all, he’s Italian on the shore somewhere near Kitty Hawk. Somewhere near Kitty Hawk—that’s fascinating to think about it, isn’t it? 400 years before Kitty Hawk an Italian lands on an empty shore, and 400 years later, the Wright brothers take off into the air above the Earth.

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