The Planetary Report
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SOCIETY ¢ --e- 0 Board of Directors CARL SAGAN NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE President Chairman and CEO, Director, Martin Marietta Co'rporation Laboratory for Planetary Studies, Cornell University JOHN E. BRYSON Chairman and CEO, BRUCE MURRAY Southern California Edison Vice President Professor of Planetary Science, JOSEPH RYAN California Institute of Technology O'Melveny & Myers LO UIS FRIEDMAN STEVEN SPIELBERG Executive Director director and producer Board of Advisors he peaceful, early days of summer News & Reviews-Page IS-Clark DIANE ACKERMAN JOHN M. LOGSDON T here at Planetary Society headquarters Chapman reexamines one of the most poet and author Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University have not been easy ones for our mail car august magazines in the realm of amateur BUZZ ALDRIN Apollo 11 astronaut HANS MARK rier. He's been lugging unusually heavy astronomy: Sky & Telescope. Earlier in the The University of Texas at Austin RICHARD BERENDZEN mail trays into our offices every day. year, our faithful columnist was not too educator and astrophysicist JAMES MICHENER author JACOUES BLAMONT In our May/June issue, we published a pleased with the redesign of the magazine, Chief Scientist, Centre National MARVIN MINSKY letter by Clay Kallam criticizing the So but he was willing to take another look. d'Etudes Spatiales, France Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts ciety for what he saw as an overemphasis World Watch-Page 19- The fate of RAY BRADBURY Institute of Technology poet and author PHILIP MORRISON on the exploration of Mars, He clearly the United States' space station continues ARTHUR C. CLARKE Institute Professor, Massachusetts author Institute of Technology struck a nerve among other members, for to dominate news of the spacefaring CORNELIS DE JAGER PAUL NEWMAN we have been deluged with letters both world. In its redesigned state, it seems to Professor of Space Research, The Astronomical Institute at actor attacking and supporting his position, We be surviving its budgetary passage Utrecht, the Netherlands JUN NISHIMURA FRANK DRAKE former Director General, print two more in this issue's Members' through Congress, but its final form has Professor of Astronomy and Institute of Space and Astrophysics, University of Astronautical Science, Japan Dialogue. (In case you're curious, the let not yet been determined, We also report California, Santa Cruz BERNARD M. OLIVER ters have been running about 60 percent on a recent agreement among the space LEE A. DUBRIDGE . Chief, SET! Program, former presidential science advisor NASNAmes Research Center against Kallam's position,) faring nations to coordinate their explo JOHN GARDNER SALLY RIDE An exchange like this is very important ration of Mars, founder, Common Cause Director, California Space Institute, University of California, to The Planetary Society. To maintain the Questions & Answers-Page 20-If MARC GARNEAU San Diego, and former astronaut Canadian astronaut ROALD Z. SAGDEEV organization's vitality and to keep mem you're stuck on the surface of Earth, how GEDRGIY GOLITSYN former Director, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Institute for Space Research, bers in touch with one another, we have to can you tell how far away the Sun is? Russian Academy of Sciences Russian Academy of Sciences share our differing views of the Society, And, if the Moon was born from material THEODORE M. HESBURGH HARRISON H. SCHMID President Emeritus, former US Senator, New Mexico, So let's keep that mailbag loaded, excavated from Earth by a giant impact, University of Notre Dame and Apollo 17 astronaut how did that material form into another SHIRLEY M. HUFSTEDLER S. ROSS TAYLOR educator and jurist Professorial Fellow, Project META: What Have We Found? world? GARRY E. HU NT Australian National University, space scientist, United Kingdom Canberra Page 4-We've been on-line with this A Planetary Readers' Service-Page SERGEI KAPITSA LEWIS THOMAS Society-supported search for extraterres 22-Even though it's continuing, the Institute for Physical Problems, Chancellor, Memorial Sloan Russian Academy of Sciences Kettering Cancer Center trial radio signals for just about eight years Magellan mission has been chronicled by GEN. DONALD J. KUTYNA (RET.) JAMES VAN ALLEN now, and here Paul Horowitz, the project one of the best space science writers, former Commander, Professor of Physics, US Space Command University of Iowa leader, reports to members on what we Henry S,F. Cooper, Jr., of The New Yorker. have-and haven't-found. Society Notes-Page 23-Keep up with The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680) is published six times yearly at the editorial offices of The Planetary Society, 65 North Catalina Avenue, Back to the Moon, on to an Asteroid: your fellow members and read this news Pasadena, CA 91106, (818) 793·5100. It is available to members of The Planetary Society. Annual dues in the US or Canada are $25 US dollars The Clementine Mission-Page 10- about recent Society doings. or $30 Canadian. Dues outside the US or Canada are $35 (US), These days the phrase "better, cheaper, -Charlene M, Anderson Editor, CHARLENE M. ANDERSON Technical Editor, JAMES D. BURKE faster" is being chanted by mission Assistant Editor, DONNA ESCANDON STEVENS designers everywhere, The first deep Copy Editor, GLORIA JOYCE Don't Miss Our Production Editor, MICHAEL HAGGERTY space craft built with that idea in mind is Art Director, BARBARA S. SMITH Annual Sales Catalog! Viewpoints expressed in columns or editorials are those of the authors and now being readied for launch, do not necessarily represent positions of The Planetary Society, its officers 9r advisors. © 1993 by The Planetary Society. From Cycle to Cycle: Magellan's Mis Admittedly, it will be pretty hard to Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement Number 87424 sion Continues-Page 16-Magellan has miss the catalog, since it's bound into completed its radar mapping mission, but the center of this magazine. But please COVER: Clouds of stars fill the night sky near the take the time to leaf through it and center of the Milky Way. Among the hundreds of the spacecraft continues its investigation billions of stars that make up our galaxy, there may of Venus. Now it's concentrating on map take a look at the many new offerings, be some that have nurtured life-forms similar in ping the planet's gravity, Plus, the space This is an extremely easy way to technological development to ourselves-that may be aiming radio beacons in our direction. This is craft is periodically dipping into Venus' begin your holiday shopping, and any the hypothesis behind Project META, The Planetary upper atmosphere to test a new technique profits from the sales department go Society's search for the radio signals that could tell to support the Society's programs. us that extraterrestrial beings exist. called aerobraking. Magellan has much Image: ©ROElAnglo-Australian Observatory, photo by David Malin still to teach us about Earth's sister world. --------- NEWS BRIEFS Like fans at a cosmic stock car race, As administrators of a membership organization, The Planetary Society's Directors astronomers are lining up to watch a and staff care about and are influenced by our members' opinions, suggestions historic pileup next summer. In late and ideas about the future of the space program and of our Society. We encourage July they plan to aim virtually every members to write us and create a dialogue on topics such as a space station, a telescope in the world toward Jupiter lunar outpost, the exploration of Mars and the search for extraterrestrial life. to see what happens when big chunks Send your letters to: Members' Dialogue, The Planetary Society, 65 North of a shattered comet (Shoemaker Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 911 06. Levy) punch into the far side of the planet at almost 40 miles a second, exploding with energy equivalent to almost a billion megatons of TNT. I read Clay Kallam's letter in the May/June 1993 issue of The Planetary Report and (See the July/August 1993 Planetary was pleased to see that it got a real dialogue going. The issue he raises is not just Report.) whether we should send people to Mars and other planets, but, more important, the Scientists calculate that the cOlil.et raison d'etre for the human exploration of space. Like Kallam, I am afraid that after train will hit the far side of Jupiter' 30 years of hearing the old science fiction mantra "It is our destiny to fly to other from July 21 to 23, causing repeated worlds-Space is ourfinalfrontier," popularized by John F. Kennedy and repeated flashes over two or three days. Jupiter ad infinitum at the start of every Star Trek episode, we have come to believe (and rotates once every 10 hours, so the enjoy believing) our own propaganda. Our space race, culminating in Apollo 11, was a product of economic and political impact zone will soon spin into view and they can inspect the results. pressure. President Kennedy didn't talk about new frontiers because it is our destiny -from Kathy Sawyer in the to be in space. Rather, he was getting us psyched up for that decade-long "peaceful Washington Post competition" with the Soviets to get to the Moon first. The Moon race was a product of historical, political, economic and technological pressures and attitudes that will never happen again. So, let's stop comparing it to everything we do in space. The Planetary Society has tried to bring back the old enthusiasm for space travel by Last spring 's announcement that focusing on a human trip to Mars. But the enthusiasm of those days was unique and NASA would seek Russian help to can't be repeated. That's why there is no equivalent ground swell of public or political redesign and build the space agency's support now for a human trip to Mars.