Conference 7.286::space

937.0. "Text of OSTP Director Gibbons' von Braun lecture" by BARCOD::DEUFEL (Oh Bother) Mon Apr 03 1995 12:32

Article: 2819
From: [email protected] (Dick Buenneke)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,sci.space.science,sci.space.tech
Subject: Test of OSTP Director Gibbons' von Braun lecture
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 14:05:54 -0800
Organization: RAND Graduate School -- Santa Monica, Calif.
 
Remarks by
Dr. John H. Gibbons
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
 
Wernher von Braun Lecture
 
March 22,1995
 
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
 
The New Frontier: Space Science and Technology in the Next Millennium
 
[slide 1 -- sunrise in orbit]
I'm delighted to be with you this evening.  It's an honor to be here.
 
A new millennium is nearly upon us.  The next few years mark the transition
between the twilight of one age and the dawn of the next.  During this
transition, we will have the opportunity to reflect upon the great and
dynamic changes that are taking place around us:
 
*       Here at home, Americans are asking fundamental questions about the
social contract that binds them together and to their government;
 
*       Around the world, new forms of cooperation between governments are
reducing barriers to commerce, technology, and culture, enhancing the
prospects for new forms of collaboration, and defining anew the meaning
of national boundaries;
 
*       Dramatic and unparalleled advances in technologies for information,
health, transportation and the environment are fundamentally redefining
how we live and work;
 
*       We continue our struggle with the problems of environmental degradation
and overpopulation, with violence and famine caused by centuries-old
ethnic and religious conflicts and, with an increased threat of proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction.
 
Tonight, I would like to reflect upon both the role that the space program has
played, and continues to play, in enabling technological and societal change
and how these changes have, in turn, altered our perception of space research
and exploration.  I would like to share with you a vision for the future of US
and international space activities.  A vision that is simultaneously optimistic
and affordable; practical and, l believe, exciting.
 
Why we Go to Space
[slide 2 -- Saturn 1 launch]
Space technology has been one of the defining forces of this century.  The
Soviet launch of Sputnik in October 1957 and the ensuing space race to the
moon came to symbolize the conflict between the competing world views of
communism and democracy.  Space became the ideological battlefield upon
which each country sought to demonstrate its prowess and win global
influence.
 
This titanic struggle yielded dark moments -- such as the Cuban missile crisis
-- where it seemed to many that technology would ultimately be the undoing
of mankind.  But there were also bright moments, such as the Apollo moon
landing, where space technologies seemed to light a clear path to the future.
In following this path, the United States has discovered that:
 
First, space applications are a practical and essential part of our daily lives.
[slide 3-- NASA Advanced Communication Technology Satellite]
 
*       Satellites provide essential communication services to both the
developed and the developing world.  Whether it is the global distribution
of news and entertainment, or the regional delivery of health care and
educational programming, satellites constitute a critical component of the
emerging Global Information Infrastructure.
 
*       Space also provides a unique vantage point from which to analyze and
monitor our complex planet.  Satellites have dramatically increased our
ability to predict the weather and its many consequences; Multi-spectral
imagery from space has provided unprecedented advances in regional and
global resources management; and, satellites for treaty verification have
helped us to keep the peace.
 
*       Finally, the diverse scientific, military, and commercial
applications of the Global Positioning System are revolutionizing how we
work, play and
travel.  Although originally developed for military use, the United States
has welcomed the global use of GPS for a wide range of peaceful purposes
and anticipates the pivotal role that GPS could play in the global air
traffic management systems of the future.
 
 
Second, space research and technology can make us better stewards of our
planet
[slide 4-- Earth, "Blue Marble"]
 
The very first images of the Earth from weather satellites and from the
Apollo missions literally changed our view of the planet.  In these pictures --
particularly the one known as the "Blue Marble" -- the Earth, hanging in
empty space, seemed, for the first time, small and fragile.
 
Astronaut Bill Anders, remembering his first view of Earth from the Apollo 8
command module, said: "Looking at the Earth and seeing it floating like -- I
thought, since it was Christmastime -- a little Christmas tree ornament
against an infinite black backdrop of space ...  it seemed so very finite.
It was this view of the fragility and finiteness of the Earth that is the
impression,
frankly, that I hold more in my head than any other."
 
It was Dr.  Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, who later pointed
out that although we had sent highly sophisticated spacecraft to study other
planets, we had not taken a similar interest in our own planet.  She led a
study group that recommended a program to accomplish this task and
dubbed it, somewhat ironically, "Mission to Planet Earth."
 
The simple truth is that we still don't understand well enough how our planet
works and how human activities are affecting the biosphere.  Space
technology can play a pivotal role in this research.  For example, we learned
more about ocean circulation from a single US/French satellite than in the
whole history of ocean research.  Satellite measurements also played a
critical role in monitoring and understanding ozone depletion in the upper
atmosphere, thereby averting a major health and biological catastrophe.
 
And we are just getting started.  Some two dozen missions to study the global
environment will be flown by the year 2000.  NASA's Mission to Planet
Earth, and its companion programs in the US and other nations, are building
the knowledge base that is a critical prerequisite for achieving a sustainable
future.
 
Third, space exploration is providing phenomenal insights into the nature of
the Universe.
[slide 5 -- Hubble Cartwheel Galaxy]
 
1994 was an absolutely outstanding year for space science.  Indeed,
astronomer John Bahcall has called it -- perhaps with only a little
exaggeration -- the most important year to be alive for astronomers since the
dawn of man.  The Hubble Space Telescope is simply wowing the world.  Most
recently, it has given us striking evidence that the universe may be
billions of years younger than we thought.  It's found conclusive evidence
that massive
black holes exist at the core of active galaxies.  And, it's brought us the
first views of infant galaxies, which formed only about two billion years
after the Big Bang.
 
And that's not all.
 
*       Hubble data have confirmed the existence of protoplanetary disks around
newborn stars.  This is the strongest evidence yet that the same basic
process that formed the planets in our Solar System may be common
throughout the galaxy.
 
*       Looking Earthward, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory contributed to
the discovery of a strange new phenomenon known as upper atmospheric
flashes that may provide a link between phenomena in the Earth's lower
atmosphere and events in the upper layers of our atmosphere.
 
[slide 6-- Hubble, Comet Nucleus]
*       The Comet Shoemaker-Levy's collision with Jupiter in July was a seminal
event for astronomers.  Such events may occur in the solar system only
once every thousand years or more.  The early detection of the comet by
the Near Earth Object Program allowed unprecedented preparation to
observe this event from ground and space-based observatories, sparking
worldwide interest from the scientific community and the public.
 
 
And finally, cooperation in space offers us a new vision of global cooperation:
 
[slide 7-- Space Station]
International cooperation in space offers a rare opportunity for nations to
pool their interests and resources in exciting and challenging ventures.  Such
cooperation is a laudable successor to the dark conflict that characterized the
birth of the space program.  The Apollo moon landing was, assuredly, an
American victory, yet it seemed then, as now, "a giant leap for all mankind."
 
But the Cold War did not end with Apollo.  For years, the US and Russian
space programs continued along their separate paths, not really competitors,
not yet partners.  Then the Berlin Wall came down.  The Soviet Union fell
apart under its own weight.  And the world changed dramatically.   The space
programs of both countries had to adapt to a changing world.  Gradually, we
came to see the space program as a tool for building peace and international
understanding rather than a weapon of the Cold War.
 
This is why, in 1984, the United States invited our close allies in Europe,
Japan, and Canada to join us in building a space station.  And, this is why
the Clinton Administration, a decade later, took the bold step of inviting the
Russians to be full partners in the International Space Station.
 
 
Visions of the Future
 
But what next?  Are the glory days of the space program in front of us or
behind us?  Although physicist Niels Bohr's warned that "It is very
difficult to  make an accurate prediction, especially if it's about the
future" -- I feel confident in predicting that the best days of the space
program are yet to come.  In the future, space will play an increasingly
important role in our daily lives, in our science, our adventures, and the
security of this nation.  I would like to take a few moments to examine
some of the ways in which space technology will continue to change the
world in which we live.
 
 
The Information Society
[slide 8-- HPPC National Grid]
 
Today, we are in the midst of a digital revolution that promises to transform
the way we use and share information.  Satellites, including the new
generations of hand-held mobile and broad-band communications satellites,
will play a critical role in this revolution.  They will provide affordable
links to the global network from the most remote corners of the planet. 
And they will help link existing terrestrial networks as well.  The result
will be more
open markets, more freedom of information, stronger democracies, more
productive workers, and a higher quality of life for billions of people around
the globe.
 
Satellites will help communications and computer companies to develop ever
more sophisticated products and services.  A new generation of "information
appliances" will replace today's computers, cellular phones, and televisions:
wallet-sized, wireless, personal digital assistants that help you organize your
life and keep in touch with your office, digital newspapers, magazines, and
books delivered directly to your laptop computer, and new learning tools
using virtual reality or providing access to huge digital libraries of
information.  These new tools will enable users to access and manipulate data
in ways that we cannot even imagine today.
 
We can see examples of what will be possible in the future in the research
community today, particularly among scientists using remote sensing data
and computer models.  Because their work is so data-intensive and because it
requires interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers have developed software
and networking technology that enables people around the country to access,
manipulate, and share huge data files of imagery.  Experiments currently
being conducted by NASA and industry on the Advanced Communication
Technology Satellite are demonstrating that satellites too will play an
important role in networked, high data rate communications.
 
The New Explorers -- Putting our Minds Where our Feet Won't Go
[slide 9-- Proposed Venus Multiprobe]
In the future, we will continue our exploration of the solar system and
beyond.  However, this exploration will proceed in ways that would have
surprised, and I think fascinated, Wernher von Braun.
 
The von Braun paradigm -- that humans were destined to physically explore
the solar system -- which he so eloquently described in Colliers Magazine in
the early 1950's was bold; but his vision was highly constrained by the
technology of his day.  For von Braun, humans were the most powerful and
flexible exploration tool that he could imagine.  Today we have within our
grasp technologies that will fundamentally redefine the exploration
paradigm.  We have the ability to put our minds where our feet can never go.
We will soon be able to take ourselves -- in a virtual way -- anywhere from the
interior of a molecule to the planets circling a nearby star -- And there
exclaim, "Look honey, I shrunk the Universe!"
 
Today, the great challenge of space exploration and utilization is making it
affordable and efficient.  I am happy to say that's exactly what Dan Goldin
and NASA are trying to do.  The Jet Propulsion Lab, for example, is now
developing concepts for a ten-pound spacecraft that is no bigger than your
fist.
 
The next century will likely see the flowering of a new manufacturing
revolution, enabling an armada of tiny, intelligent machines to travel
outward from Earth to explore new worlds.  These small spacecraft will
require less power and smaller, lower-cost launch systems.  They will take
advantage of next generation on-board intelligence capabilities and will have
little need for elaborate terrestrial control and operation centers.  The
result
will be to greatly increase the science output while reducing the physical and
human resources required to develop and operate a mission.
 
[Slide 10-- Earth at various resolutions]
 
There will even be occasions when we conduct dramatic new exploration
missions without ever sending spacecraft to distant worlds.  In the not too
distant future, we may have the technology needed to image planets that may
be orbiting nearby stars.  It might be possible to infer through spectroscopic
analysis of their atmospheres or the color of their oceans whether they are
life-bearing.  What a revelation that would be!
 
All of these options will greatly enhance our research into the human role in
exploration.  We are firmly committed to the space station, not only because
it opens a door to new research, but because it is an essential step in
understanding how humans react to the space environment.  Early in the
next century we will hopefully understand the difficult questions of bone loss
and blood chemistry that currently beset astronauts spending long periods in
space.  With this knowledge and the knowledge obtained from our robot
explorers, we will be prepared to answer the important questions about the
next destination for humans in space
 
 
A New Understanding of the Planet Earth
[slide 11 -- TOPEX, wave height]
 
As we set out to explore new worlds, we must also be good stewards of the one
world in which we all live -- and the only world we can count on.
 
In the words of Robert Burns:
 
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
to see oursels as others see us!
it wad frae mony a blunder free us...
 
Perhaps it was the view from space that Burns was imagining!  One of the
space program's most important contributions is to increase our
understanding of our planet so that we may enhance life on Earth.
 
As the century ends, the United States and its international partners will
have an array of sensors in Earth orbit measuring the atmosphere, oceans,
biosphere and land surfaces, as well as the interaction among these elements.
These sensors will be linked by sophisticated information systems providing
data to scientists and researchers.  This work will produce answers to
fundamental questions about the Earth, how its systems interact, and how
and why it changes.
 
We will have powerful new tools for analyzing weather, for the longer-term
prediction of floods, drought, violent storms and the dynamics of biological
change, such as disease and the migration of flora and fauna.  We will have a
complete survey of the Antarctic ice sheet, and we will be making the first
assessments of changes in thickness of the Greenland ice sheet and the first
global rainfall assessment.  In the future, routine forecasting of El Nino
occurrences and consequences will be possible with enormous potential for
economic savings.
 
Soon we will be able to perform repeated global inventories of land use and
land cover from space, evaluate the consequences of observed changes, and
analyze the consequences of different preventative and adaptive practices.
We will use satellites for the first global assessment of air pollution in the
lower atmosphere, leading to continual assessment of changes in global air
quality.
 
In short, space technology can give us the information we need to understand
the role that human activities play in this complex cycle as well as the
influence of "natural phenomena."  This knowledge is absolutely essential if
we are to be responsible stewards of this planet.
 
 
How We Will Get There
-[slide 12-- Sunrise in Orbit]
Space science and exploration has inspired and enriched us.  What more
could we ask?  Well, as they say, "happiness can't buy money."  The current
review of budgets and programs in the Administration and in Congress
implies that even high priority programs, such as space science and
exploration, will be coming under increased scrutiny.  That's the bad news.
The good news is that much of what we must do to develop an aggressive
space program for the future has already been started.
 
First, we are truly reinventing NASA.  This means that we must take an
organization established during the Cold War as a federally mobilized
response to Sputnik, and transform it into an agency that is more relevant to
today's economy and today's world.  An agency that will once again define
excellence in space science and technology.  This task will be difficult and it
will not be done without some legitimate pain.
 
However, reducing the size of NASA is not an end in itself.  We must also
work with NASA to change the way it does business.  The aerospace industry
has matured considerably since the days of Apollo.  As a result, the private
sector can now accomplish many of the tasks formerly done by the
government.  Satellite communications, space launch, and remote sensing
were all originally government programs but are now being offered
successfully by the private sector.  In the future, we must ensure that NASA
does only those things that it does best.
 
NASA's 1996 budget contains a number of programs that already incorporate
this new approach.  For example, the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV)
program will focus on developing low-cost, next-generation launch vehicles,
while the Discovery program will seek to advance the state of the art of
spacecraft for space exploration.  Both of these programs have sought, from
the beginning, to include significant industry participation, management, and
funding.
 
Finally, we must to seek creative ways for the space programs of the world to
combine their talents, resources, and facilities to accomplish goals that are
beyond the reach of any one country.  Space Station and Mission to Planet
Earth provide us with early examples of this trend.  In the future, we must
seek other opportunities to build durable links between our individual efforts
in space science and exploration.
 
In 1965, President Johnson asked: "As [man] draws nearer to the stars, why
should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?  As we push even more
deeply into the universe, we must constantly learn to cooperate across the
frontiers that really divide the earth's surface."
 
In this spirit, I would like to share with you some of the recent footage
of the historic launch of US astronaut Norm Thagard on a Russian Soyuz launch
vehicle  and his arrival on the Mir space station.
 
[Run tape: approx 2 min.  30 sec.]
 
I thank you for your attention and look forward to participating with you in
this important venture.
 
I would be happy to take a few questions.
 
(end)
 
-- 
Richard H. Buenneke Jr.                     Tel: (310) 393-0411, Ext. 7382 
RAND Graduate School                       Fax: (310) 451-7038
  of Policy Studies                             Internet: [email protected]
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