Board of Directors CARL SAGAN BRUCE MURRAY President Vice President Director, Laboratory Professor of Planetary for Planetary Studies, Science. California Letters to the Editor Cornell University Institute of Technology LOUIS FRIEDMAN HENRY TANNER Executive Director Corporate Secretary and The recent issue of The Planetary Report concerning astrometry and planetary systems (September/ Assistant Treasurer, JOSEPH RYAN California Institute October 1984) was marvelous! Each author was concise and easy to understand. Bravo to all those O'Melveny & Myers of Technology involved. Board of Advisors STUART L. FORT, Indianapolis, Indiana DIANE AC KERMAN CORNELIS DE JAGER poet and author Professor of Space Research. The Astronomiea/ lnstitute at Just a short note of opinion .. .if Owen B. Toon has not yet written a book for laypersons, then I ISAAC ASIMOV Utrecht. The Netherlands sincerely hope it is in his plans. "Planets and Perils" in your January/February 1985 issue was one author HAN S MARK of the clearest and most beautifully written short articles I have read in years. There is a style and RICHARD BE·RENDZEN Chancellor, President. University of Texas System eloquence in his writing which is absent from so many scientific works, and it is refreshing to see American University JAMES MICHENER such knowledge combined with such grace. JACQUES BLAMONT author WENDY SINNOTI, Chicago, Illinois Chief Scientist PHILIP MORRISON Centre National d'Etudes Spatia/es, France Institute Professor, Massachusetts Recent letters to the editor reflect concern about the industrialization of space and who is footing Institute of Technology RAY BRADBURY the bill. I believe space industrialization will help to achieve planetary exploration. Government poet ;;rid author PAUL NEWMAN JOHNNY CARSON actor may get us out there once or twice, but in the end private industry will take us out to stay. As entertainer BERNARD M. OLIVER Planetary Society members, we are active participants in the future of space exploration. The FRANK DRAKE Chief, industrialization of space is linked closely to that goal. SETI Program, Dean, NASA/Ames Research Center Division of Natural Sciences, PAUL D. BOSSLET, O'Fallon, Missouri University of California at SALLY RIDE Santa Cruz astronaut The goal of landing a human crew on Mars has the same glow and flaw that the Apollo Moon LEE A. DUBRIDGE ROALD Z. SAGDEEV former presidential Director, Institute for program had. The glow is the enormity of the task, the almost "ultimate" challenge. The flaw, science advisor Cosmic Research, Academy however, is that it is a one-shot deal. Beyond the goal of landing, there is no other end. The flaw of Sciences of the USSR JOHN GARDNER in Apollo was that no one asked, "What do we do after we've landed? How do we take advantage founder, HARRISON H. SCHMID Common Cause former US Senator, of what we've done?" New Mexico SHIRLEY M. HUFSTEDLER I suggest that rather than merely seeking a landing on Mars by the end of the century, we establish educator and jurist LEWIS THOMAS a permanent, peopled base on the Moon. A landing on Mars represents only a technological Chancellor, Memorial Sloan GARRY E. HUNT Kettering Cancer Center achievement, and not a particularly impressive one at that. A permanent settlement on the Moon Head of Atmospheric Group, represents both an achievement and commitment to humans in space and to our continued Imperial College of JAMES VAN ALLEN a Sc;ience and Technology Professor of Physics. existence. London, UK University of Iowa HAL HORNE, San Diego, California The Planetary Report (lSSN 0736-3680) is published. six times yearly at the editori al offices of The Planetary Society. 110 S. Euclid Avenue. Pasadena. CA 91101 Many of today's scientists probably grew up as I did, devouring science fiction and daydreaming of Editor, CHARLENE M. ANDERSO N; Te chnical Editor, JAM ES D. BURKE; distant stars. When Sputnik lifted off they were still children, but suddenly no longer dreamers. Associate Editor, LYN DINE McAFEE; They were stuck in school when mature men were going into orbit and beating them to the Moon. Editorial Assistant, DONNA STEVENS; Now they are scientists in their primes, filled with questions, ambitions and their childhood dreams. Art Director, BA I3 BARA SMITH In twenty years their careers will slip away; in fifty years, their lives. Viewpoints expressed in columns or editorials are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Unfortunately, there are few answers in space that cannot wait twenty or even fifty years. The positions of The Planetary Society, its officers or advisors. Copyright ~1985 by The Planetary Society. taxpayer has his pictures and cares little about the chemistry. History has passed beyond the In C<tnada, Second Class Mail RegistratiOn Number 9597 expensive, bold, lonely voyages of our Columbuses. Now is the time to expand our shipyards, build our galleons, establish our outposts and secure our supply lines. We must make room for the COVER: This radar Image, obtained by the Areclbo workers, the merchants and even the scoundrels. Only then will the New World become self­ Radio Observatory, shows the large highland region on perpetuating and self-justifying. Venus called Ishtar Terra. Blue indicates smooth areas, Now is not the time to insist that millions be spent on narrow, scientific questions, no matter while yel/ow and red areas are rough. Maxwell Montes, how tantalizingly close the answers. The long range view requires that we establish base camps the bright area in the bottom left (east), is the highest like climbers on Everest. Quick runs to the summit only sap our strength and endanger the whole area on Venus, Freyja Montes (center righ~ or north) and Alena Montes (center top, or west) are similar, but mission. We must capitalize on the public's present good will and establish a solid position in smaller mountainous areas, The large, dark blue area space. Our generation's unexciting role is to be builders; our children will be the new explorers. in the center Is Lakshmi Planum, a high smooth We can't squander their future . plateau. (The curve along the right of the image is the edge of the data, not the limb of the planet.) Image: BARRY ZIMMERMAN, Hanover Park, Illinois Donald B. Campbell, Ellen R, Stofan and James W. Head r------ -- --------------- I IOSIF SHMUELOVICH SHKLOVSKII, one of the world's lead­ ing astrophysicists and the Soviet pioneer in the modern I. S. SHKLOVSKlI, 1916-1985 search for extraterrestrial intelligence, died in Moscow on March 5, 1985 following a massive stroke. He was born in the Ukraine, the son of a rabbi, on July 1, by Carl Sagan 1916, a year before the Bolshevik Revolution, and matricu­ lated in physics at Moscow State University in 1938. As a graduate student, in the wake of the Nazi invasion, he was relocated to Central Asia in an arduous railway journey that included a number of other students destined to play a leading role in Soviet science, including Andrei Sakharov. but "the probability of our meeting," he wrote to me, "is After the war Shklovskii initiated a series of seminal unlikely to be smaller than the probability of a visit to the scientific papers mainly concerned with the evolution of Earth by an extraterrestrial cosmonaut." stars, the interstellar gas, and their interaction. His work Nevertheless, the tides of domestic repression wax and embraced the solar corona; a theoretical analysis, before wane, and in the late 1960s Shklovskii was granted permis­ its discovery, of the 21-centimeter radio spectral line of sion to make his first journey to the United States. I had neutral atomic hydrogen; the prediction that many interstel­ the pleasure of meeting him then, and many times sub­ lar molecules could be detected by radio astronomy; cir­ sequently in the United States, in the Soviet Union, and in cumstellar masers; an analysis showing that planetary Western Europe. His quick insights and unconventional nebulae, enormous bubbles of interstellar gas, evolve from trains of thought were exhilarating. red giant stars; and the prediction, now widely accepted, He had an infectious smile, and would grab your elbow that an x-ray star is a close stellar pair, one of which is a or poke you in the lapel to make you pay attention to what neutron star. Shklovskii's early fame came from his de­ was coming. His sense of humor was extraordinary, but monstration that the most prominent supernova remnant he did not suffer fools gladly. I remember a meeting on in the sky, the Crab Nebula, shines in ordinary visible light communication with extraterrestrial intelligence in Soviet by synchrotron emission, generated by electrically charged Armenia in September 1971, in which a Soviet scientist particles accelerated in an intense magnetic field. was proposing the somewhat daft thesis that the greatest Shklovskii was always interested in the possible applica­ scientific works - the triumphs of Newton, of Darwin, of tion of what he had learned about the stars to the planets Einstein - had all been devised at a time of solar maximum, of the solar system. He performed early studies on the when the Sun puts out more high-energy charged particles evolution of planetary atmospheres, and later proposed than on average. "Yes," Shklovskii remarked in an aside that nearby supernova explosions may have played an im­ to me which could be heard throughout the conference room, portant role in the evolution of life on Earth, perhaps trig­ "but this man's idea was invented in a deep solar minimum." gering the extinction of the dinosaurs. (The prevalent view He received the Lenin Prize in 1960 - perhaps for work today, by contrast, is that the cause was the collision with with military radio and radar systems - but was consi­ the Earth of an asteroid or cometary nucleus.