SCIENCE
Moonshine
BERNARD DIXON
If all goes according to plan, the next Apollo mission will blast off to the moon on July 26. Five days later, while all good Europeans are doing their Saturday shopping, the astronauts will be out for a spin across the surface of the moon in their 'lunar rover.' It's passing strange that, as we wait for the show to begin once again, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should have chosen this moment for one of its lunar luminaries, Captain Alan Bean, to publish the most threadbare apologia for manned space exploration ever to appear in public.
The first thing that needs to be said about Captain Bean's piece, which appears in the latest issue of that excellent UNESCO magazine Impact, is that it is grossly misleading. The title is 'The value of manned flights to the moon,' yet he quickly sidesteps the obligations of that title and talks mostly about space research generally. Satellites have been sent up, he tells us, to facilitate communications between nations, to provide information about weather conditions, and to survey the earth's resources.
None of this, of course, has the remotest thing to do with putting men on the moon. It's as simple as that. The undoubted and worthwhile benefits of space exploration, particularly for communications, do not depend in any way on the quite separate exercise of sending men to the moon. The quest for man on the moon has in fact distorted the scientific motives behind the space programme, forcing massive funds to be used in fabricating the life-support systems needed to sustain human life in the bizarre lunar environment. Bean mentions the moment when, on the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong 'took over the controls' to guide the module down smoothly onto the moon's surface. But ignores entirely Russia's demonstration that men are not necessary for this type of manoeuvre. Soviet space chiefs have been content to use their expertise in designing reliable automatic landing and sampling equipment, avoiding the massive extra cost of organising televised high-jinks on the moon or Sinatra sessions in space. Moreover, the type of scientific information gleaned from the moon — and the haul so far is staggeringly puny in relation to its cost — has been obtainable by either human observers or robot gadgetry.
Embarrassing in its nakedness, Bean also parades the ' spin-off ' argument, explaining carefully that conditions of weightlessness may help man to manufacture more perfect ball bearings and other vitals. Apart from coatings for non-stick frying pans, the space effort has already spun-off such things as telemetry units, designed to monitor bodily functions in astronauts but also useful in hospitals, and a new type of hammer developed for building the mighty Saturn V rocket. But again, none of these developments real or still dreamed-of, have any necessary connection with moon-going. It's possible that the unique conditions of near space may prove useful in various commercial manufacturing processes, but if so the discovery will not be a result of the moon race. And the suggestion that the Apollo programme has justified itself by stimulating science and technology is fatuous.
Sadly, there is a bitter reality behind all that proud talk about the stimulus to advanced technology. Throughout the United States, research and development facilities, spawned during the halcyon, days of Apollo, now lie idle. The US space programme is moving into a more sensible area, away from its adolescent passion for the theatrical, and many of those scientists and engineers who provided the skills for that phase are now no longer needed.
It's disappointing that Captain Bean and his kind still seem unable to admit the stark truth — that the Apollo programme was set in motion for no other reasons than those of international politics and showbusiness. What he does consider, briefly, is whether the money could have been better spent on projects affecting human welfare. His comment on that is memorable: "One should not only look at the mud and dirt around him, but should cast his eyes upward to the stars for inspiration and motivation to greater achievement." As justification for genuflecting before the tarnished spangles of Apollo, in a country of miserable poverty and malnutrition, that shows callous insensitivity indeed.
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