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The Planetary Report Have Done an Excellent Job of Bringing the Public The Board 01 Directors CARL SAGAN BRUCE MURRAY President Vice President Director, Laboratory for Planetary Professor of Planetary Studies, Cornell University Science, California Letters to the Editor Institute of Technology LOUIS FRIEDMAN We encourage our members to write to us on topics related to the goals of The Planetary Society: Executive Director HENRY TANNER California Institute Continuing planetary exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. THOMAS O. PAINE of Technology Former Administrator, NASA Address them to: Letters to the Editor, 65 N. Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91106. Chairman. National JOSEPH RYAN Commission on Space O'Me/veny & Myers Board 0' Advisors DIANE ACKERMAN JOHN M. LOGSDON Going to Mars is a great idea, but to stress cooperation between the United States and the Soviet poet and author Director. Space Policy Institute George Washington University ISAAC ASIMOV Union may not be. I agree with The Planetary Society's view that a joint mission is the only sane way author HANS MARK to go; however, there are still many people (including lawmakers,l'm sure) who do not. Cooperation Chancel/or, RICHARD BERENDZEN University of Texas System in space is possible and it will probably happen since both nations are well aware of the advantages. President. American University JAMES MIC HENER In the meantime, The Planetary Society may be alienating potential supporters who would whole­ JACOUES BLAMONT author Scientific Consultanl, Centre heartedly support a Mars venture of a more nationalistic nature. I'm not suggesting that you dilute National d'Etudes Spar/ales. MARVIN MINSKY France Donner Professor of Science, your ideals, but simply that you change your focus a little. Massachusens Institute RAY BRADBURY 01 Technology Perhaps the Society should try harder to rekindle the fiery enthusiasm and adventurousness that poet and author PHILIP MORRISON consumed America during the Space Age. Of course, part of that enthusiasm was driven by political ARTHUR C. CLARKE Institute Professor, Massachusetts author Institute of Technology competition, but there was more than that. Just look at the science fiction of the 1950s-it was posi­ CORNELIS DE JAGER PAUL NEWMAN tive, limitless and arrogant in its depiction of human potential. These attitudes led us into the Space Professor of Space Research, actor The Astronomica l Institute at Age. As a nation, our attitude was still young, brash and wild-eyed with the sense of Utrecht. The Netherla nds BERNARD M. OLIVER Chief, SE T! Program. adventure-and of wonder. Things are not so simple anymore, but we could learn a lot from those FRANK DRAKE NASA/Ames Research Center Dean, Division of Natural pioneers of 30 years ago. Sciences, University of SALLY RIDE California at Santa Cruz former astronaut The Planetary Society and The Planetary Report have done an excellent job of bringing the public LEE A. DUBRI DGE ROALD Z. SAGDEEV and the space science community together. Now that you have established your scientific credibili­ former presidential Director, Institute for ty, maybe you can afford to stress this purely human side of the issue a little more. The important science advisor Space Research, Academy of Sciences of the USSR JOHN GARDNER thing is to gain all the support possible for the Mars mission and to get this country determined to fo under. Common Cause HARRISON H. SCHMI D go in the first place. Human beings have always been eager to accept the challenges that fire their former US Senator. NM THEODORE M. HESBURGH and former astronaut souls and stir their imaginations. They just need someone to do the stirring. President Emeritus, University of NoIre Dame LEWIS THOMAS TERRENCE CHURCHMAN, Monrovia, California Chancelfor, Memorial Sloan SHIRLEY M. HUFSTEDLER Kettering Cancer Center educator and jurist JAMES VAN ALLEN As a science fiction writer, I am disturbed by the present administration's relative indifference to GARRY E. HUNT Professor of Physics, space scientist,United Kingdom University of Iowa space exploration and non-military space research. After watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon in 1969, many of us believed that the coming decades WOUld, at least, see lunar space stations The Planetary Report (ISSN 0736-3680) is published six times yearly at the editorial off ices of The Planetary Society. 65 North Catalina Avenue. and explorations of Mars. We had proven that there was no limit to our vision, our inventiveness Pasadena. CA 91106. (81 8) 793-5100. It is available to members of The Planetary Society. Annual dues are $20 in the US. $25 in Canada, and $30 and our courage. What ever happened to our pioneering spirit? outside the US or Canada. I believe, however, that the public's passion for space is still very much alive and needs only the Editor. C HARLENE M . ANDERSON ; means for its articulation. I propose that The Planetary Society lobby Congress to include a line on Technical Editor. JAMES D. BURKE; Assis tant Editor, DONNA STEVENS ; the income tax return form next to the line "Presidential Election Campaign Fund" inviting taxpayers Art Director, BARBARA SMITH to contribute $1 to $5 in tax credits to space exploration. Viewpoints expressed in columns or editorials are those of the authors and This would serve not only as a source of much needed revenue for the space program but would ~~ :~i ~~;s~a~~a ~e~e~~~ t ~I~~~~~~ ~:C~:t; l aneta ry Society. its officers provide the American public with a ballot for directly expressing its concerns for the advancement In Canada. Secood Class Mall RegistratIOn Numbel 9567 of space exploration. DANIEL BRAWNER, Inglewood, California COVER: APollo 15 astronauts photographed the The report by Clark Chapman in "News and Reviews" (see the SeptemberjOctober1987 Planetary Arlstarchus-Prlnz region of the Moon from their Report) on the Meteoritical Society meeting at Newcastle--upon-Tyne, England in July was very in­ command module. Crater Arlstarchus, about 40 teresting. kilometers in diameter, Is at upper right. In the However, Louis Alvarez, although the first to "prove" (in my view) the theory of catastrophic im­ foreground are the lava-drowned, ruined ramparts of the ancient crater Prinz and the pacts as the cause of mass extinctions, was not the original proponent of the idea. I refer you to mysterious network of rilles believed to result "Cataclysm and Evolution," Popular Astronomy, May, 1942, by Harvey Nininger, co-founder of the from more recent volcanic activity. Meteoritical Society. Photograph ASI5-2607 courtesy JPUNASA ROBERT D. NININGER, Rockville, Maryland I Thirty Years of SETI- I , The NASA Administrator Looks at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence On October 12, 1987, Dr. James C F1etcher, Adminstmtor of NASA, spoke to the 38th International Congress of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) about the possible future of the space program. Dr. F1etcher projected himself 30 years into the future and imagined what the then-Adminstmtor of NASA might say to the IAF Congress of 2017. Here we reprint the section ofDr. F1etcher's remarks dealing with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SEn). y the mid~1980s, very few people were convinced techniques employed to eavesdrop on our galaxy-tech­ that no other life exists in our galaxy. The consen­ niques that allow radio astronomers to search tens of mil­ B sus that there must be intelligent life on worlds lions of channels at the same time and to distinguish be­ beyond our solar system emerged because we had learned tween possibly valid messages and terrestrial radio fre­ a great deal about the physical universe since its birth. quency interference. We learned that in our galaxy alone, there is a stagger­ He or she will explain how a NASA project begun in the ingly large number of stars-as many as 200 billion. Astro­ 1990s searched the galaxy, using a multichannel spectrum nomers believe that most of those stars, except close bina­ analyzer linked to several radio telescopes and to the an­ ry stars, have planetary systems in some stage of develop­ tennae of NASA's Deep Space Network. ment. Of these, about five percent, or on the order of 10 bil­ The Administrator will then tum to plans for a follow-<>n lion, are called "good suns." These are stars not so large as SETI program to be conducted from the far side of the to bum up before advanced life could develop on one or Moon. He or she will remind the audience that the search more of their planets and not so small that one of their for that elusive needle-intelligence beyond Earth-in this temperate planets would stop rotating because of its prox­ cosmic haystack we call the Milky Way will result eventual­ imity to the star. ly in one of two things happening. Either we find what we If our solar system is typical of most, the chance is fairly are looking for, or some evidence of it; or we will go on for a good that about half, or 5 billion, of those "good suns" long time and decide there is no one else out there, be­ would have "good Earths"-planets at the right distance cause we find no reasonable evidence to the contrary. from their respective suns to allow life to develop. If we were to discover extraterrestrial intelligence, it Now, on what fraction of these "good Earths" would life would be inevitable that we would want to do something begin? The Administrator would find it hard to answer that, about it. Perhaps we would want to communicate with the even though we know that the ingredients for carbon­ beings whose signals we intercept. Perhaps we would de­ based life either already exist in the universe, or can be termine how to go out and meet them, or how to occupy readily manufactured by natural processes.
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