Author: Ernst Stuhlinger
In 1970, Zambian nun Mary Jucunda wrote a letter to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, who became NASA's Marshall Space Fellow for his original research in the Mars Journey Project Deputy Director of Science at the Navigation Center. In the letter, Sister Mary Jucunda asked: How could he be willing to spend billions of dollars on projects as far away as Mars when there are so many children on Earth who are currently unable to eat.
Stuhlinger quickly wrote back to Sister Jucunda, along with a photo titled "Rising Earth," the iconic image taken by astronaut William Anders in lunar orbit in 1968 (in the photo the ground of the Moon can be seen). His sincere reply was subsequently published by NASA under the title "Why Explore the Universe".
May 6, 1970
Dear Sister Mary Jucunda:
Every day I receive many letters like this, but this one touches me the most because it comes from a compassionate, inquiring mind. I will do my best to answer your question.
First of all, allow me to express my deep respect to you and your brave sisters, who are dedicated to the noblest cause of humanity: helping fellow human beings in distress.
In your letter, you asked me why I would spend billions of dollars on a voyage to Mars when there are still children on Earth who are dying from starvation. I know you don't want an answer like, "Oh, I didn't know there were kids starving to death, well, from now on, put a hold on all space programs until the kids have eaten." Facts In the past, I knew something about the problem of famine in children long before the technological level of human beings could imagine a trip to Mars. And, like many of my friends, I think this is the time to start our great expeditions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. In the long run, I even think that the engineering of space exploration will be more helpful to solve the problems of human beings than the various aid programs that are either only debated and quarreled year after year, or even delayed after compromise. the current crises.
Before detailing how our space program can help address crises on the ground, I want to tell a short, true story. It was 400 years ago, there was an earl in a small town in Germany. He was a kind-hearted man who donated a large portion of his income to the poor in his town. This is very admirable, because there were many poor people in the Middle Ages, and there were frequent outbreaks of plagues that swept the country. One day, the Earl met a strange man. He had a workbench and a small laboratory in his house. He worked hard during the day and devoted a few hours every night to research. He grinded small pieces of glass into lenses, and then put the grinded lenses into the lens barrel, which he used to observe small objects. The Count was fascinated by this never-before-seen gizmo that could magnify things. He invited the eccentric to live in his castle, as the earl's doorman, after which he could devote all his time to the study of these optics.
However, the townspeople were angry when they learned that the Count was spending money on such a weirdo and his useless stuff. "We are still suffering from the plague," they complained, "and he spends money on that idler and his useless hobby!" The count was unmoved. "I'm going to help everyone as much as I can," he said, "but I'm going to continue to fund this man and his work, and I'm sure it will pay off someday."
Sure enough, his work (and the efforts of others at the same time) paid off handsomely: the microscope. The invention of the microscope brought unprecedented advances in medicine, and the resulting research, and its results, eradicated the plague and other infectious diseases that ravaged much of the world.
The end result of the money the Earl spent in support of this research and invention greatly reduced the suffering of mankind, which was far more rewarding than simply spending the money to relieve those suffering from the plague.
We are currently facing a similar problem. The President's annual budget totals $200 billion, which will be used for health care, education, welfare, urban construction, highways, transportation, overseas aid, defense, environmental protection, technology, agriculture, and many other domestic and foreign projects. This year, 1.6% of the budget will be used to explore the universe, and the spending will be used for the Apollo program and other small projects covering astrophysics, deep space astronomy, space biology, planetary exploration engineering, and georesource engineering. and space engineering technology. To cover the expenses of these space programs, the average American taxpayer earning $10,000 a year pays about $30 in space, with the remaining $9,970 available for general living expenses, recreation, savings, other taxes, etc. pin.
You might ask, "Why not take $5 or $3 or $1 out of the $30 taxpayers are paying for space to feed starving children?" To answer that, I need to briefly explain our nation's economy How it works is similar in other countries. The government consists of several ministries (such as the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and Human Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Defense, etc.) and agencies formulate corresponding annual budgets according to their functions, and strictly implement them to cope with the oversight of the Council of State, as well as to cope with the pressure from the budget department and the president for their economic benefits. When funds are finally allocated by Congress, they are used strictly for planned projects approved by the budget.
Obviously, the projects included in NASA's budget are all aerospace-related. Budget items that are not approved by Congress are not funded, and naturally not taxed, unless other departmental budgets cover the item, thereby spending money not allocated to space programs. As can be seen from this brief description, in order to assist hungry children, or to increase the amount of aid to existing foreign aid programs in the United States, the relevant departments must first propose a budget and then approve it by Congress.
To ask whether I agree with the government to implement similar policies, my personal opinion is absolutely in favor. I don't mind paying a little extra tax every year to help hungry children no matter where they are.
I'm sure my friends will feel the same way. However, things are not easy to achieve simply by canceling plans to go to Mars. On the contrary, I even think that the space program can contribute to alleviating and eventually solving the problem of poverty and hunger on Earth. The key to solving the hunger problem has two parts: food production and food distribution. Agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing and other large-scale production activities involved in the production of food are highly productive in some parts of the world and severely under-produced in others. Through high-tech means, such as irrigation management, fertilizer use, weather forecast, yield assessment, programmed planting, farmland optimization, crop habit and cultivation time selection, crop survey and harvest planning, the productivity of the land can be significantly improved.
Sputnik is undoubtedly the most powerful tool for improving these two key issues. In the orbit away from the ground, the satellite can scan a large area of land in a very short time, and can simultaneously observe and calculate a number of indicators required for crop growth, such as soil, drought, rain and snow weather, etc., and can broadcast this information. to the ground receiving station for further processing. Sputnik systems, equipped with land resource sensors and corresponding agricultural programs, have been shown to boost annual crop yields by billions of dollars in even the simplest models.
How to distribute food to those who need it is another completely new problem. The key is not the capacity of the ship, but international cooperation. Small country rulers are troubled by the importation of large quantities of food from large countries, and they fear the influence of foreign powers on their dominance along with the food. I am afraid that the problem of hunger cannot be effectively solved until the barriers between countries are eliminated. I don't think the space program can do miracles overnight, however, exploring the universe helps move the problem in a good direction.
Take the recent Apollo 13 accident, for example. In order to ensure smooth communication when astronauts were in the critical atmospheric re-entry period, the Soviet Union shut down all broadcast communications within the same frequency band as that used by the Apollo spacecraft. At the same time, ships were dispatched to the Pacific and Atlantic waters to prepare for the first search and rescue work. If the astronauts' life-saving capsules land near the Russian ship, Russian personnel will rescue them like their own astronauts returning from space. Likewise, if the Russian spacecraft encounters a similar emergency, the United States will certainly not hesitate to provide assistance.
Improving food production through satellite monitoring and analysis, and improving the efficiency of food distribution through improved international relations, are just two aspects of improving the quality of human life through space programs. Now I would like to introduce two other important roles: promoting the development of science and technology and improving the scientific literacy of a generation.
The moon landing project required a high precision and reliability unprecedented in history. Faced with such stringent requirements, we need to find new materials and new methods; develop better engineering systems; use more reliable manufacturing processes; make the working life of instruments longer; and even explore new laws of nature.
These new technologies invented for the moon landing can also be used for engineering projects on the ground. Every year, about a thousand new technologies developed from space programs are used in everyday life, making better kitchen utensils and farm equipment, better sewing machines and radios, better ships and planes , more accurate weather forecasts and storm warnings, better communication facilities, better medical equipment, and even better everyday gadgets. You might ask why the life support system for the astronauts' lunar module was designed in the first place, rather than a remote sign-monitoring device for heart patients. The answer is simple: when solving engineering problems, important technological breakthroughs are often not obtained directly in a step-by-step manner, but come from the imagination and firm action that can inspire a strong innovative spirit, ignite the imagination, and integrate all resources. Challenging goals.
Space travel is undoubtedly a challenging undertaking. Voyages to Mars will not directly provide food to solve the famine problem. However, it brings a wealth of new technologies and approaches that could be used outside of the Mars project, which would yield benefits several times the original cost.
If we want human beings to live better and better, in addition to new technologies, we also need constant new advances in basic science. Including physics and chemistry, biology and physiology, especially medicine, are used to look after human health and deal with problems such as hunger, disease, pollution of food and water, and environmental pollution.
We need more young people to devote themselves to science, and we need to give more help to talented scientists who do. There are always challenging research projects, and at the same time ensure adequate resource support for the projects. I would like to reiterate here that the space program is a catalyst for scientific and technological progress, providing excellent and practical opportunities for academic research work, including the study of the moon and other planets, physics and astronomy, biology and medical sciences, etc. For it, exciting research topics continue to emerge in the scientific community, and human beings can glimpse the incomparably magnificent scene of the universe; for it, new technologies and new methods are constantly emerging.
Of all the activities controlled and funded by the U.S. government, the space program is undoubtedly the most high-profile and most controversial, even though it accounts for only 1.6 percent of the total budget and less than three-thousandths of the gross national product. As the driver and catalyst of new technologies, the space program carries out a number of basic scientific research, and its status is destined to be different from other activities. In a sense, the impact of the space project on society is equivalent to the war activities 3-4 thousand years ago.
If countries no longer compete with bombers and long-range missiles, but instead compete with the performance of lunar spacecraft, how much war will be avoided! The wise victor will be full of hope, and the loser will not have to suffer, no more seeds of hatred, no more wars of vengeance.
Although the things we carry out in the space program are far away from the earth, and the human vision has been extended to the moon, the sun, the planet, and the distant stars, astronomers pay more attention to the earth than all the above. The space project brings not only the improvement of the quality of life provided by those new technologies, but as the research on the universe deepens, our gratitude to the earth, to life, and to human beings will become deeper. Space exploration makes Earth a better place.
The photo attached to the letter is a view of Earth taken by Apollo 8 in orbit around the moon on Christmas Day 1968. This photo is perhaps the most valuable of all the results of a space program. It broadens the horizons of human beings, makes us so intuitively feel that the earth is such a beautiful and precious island in the vast and boundless universe, and at the same time makes us realize that the earth is our only home, and leaving the earth is a barren and cold outer space. No matter how limited prior knowledge of the Earth was, how inadequately understood the serious consequences of disrupting the ecological balance were. After this photo was released to the public, in the face of various severe situations that human beings are currently facing, such as environmental pollution, hunger, poverty, excessive urbanization, food problems, water resources problems, population problems, etc., I call on everyone to face up to these serious problems. There are more and more voices. People's sudden attention to their own problems cannot be said to have nothing to do with these initial space exploration projects currently underway, and the new perspectives on our own homeland that they bring.
Space exploration not only provides humans with a mirror to look at themselves, it also brings us new technologies, new challenges and enterprising spirits, as well as a sense of optimism and self-confidence in the face of serious practical problems. I believe that what human beings have learned from the universe fully confirms the famous saying of Albert Schweitzer: "I look at the future with anxiety, but with good hope."
My sincerest respects to you and your children!
Sincerely,
Ernst Stallinger
Deputy Director of Science
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