the explorers journal - The Explorers Club

the
explorers
journal
EST. 1921
the
far out issue
spring 2010
john gl e nn
it’s all about having the right stuff
michael be nson
light from the dawn of time
se t h shos ta k
exploring the final frontier
v ol . 88 no.1 I $ 8.00 I w w w.e x p l orers.org I

the explorers journal
Spring 2010
the far out issue
cover: The trapezium cluster and dense,
coalescing clouds of ionized hydrogen
gas in the rich star-forming regions
of the Orion Nebula. Image courtesy
HST/ESA/NASA
one of many concepts put forth in the 1970s for future human settlement in space. image courtesy NASA.
far out
features
regulars
t he righ t s t uf f
Jim Clash chats with astronaut John Glenn, p. 12
a l a nd of
a ncient v iol e nce
Mars man Steven Squyres on the latest from the Red
Planet, p. 18
f inding M a rs
text and images by Kate Harris, p. 22
A s t ron a u t Reflections
by LeroyChiao, p. 28
p r e s i d e n t ’ s l e t t e r , p. 2
e d i t o r ’ s note, p. 4
e x p l o r at i o n ne w s , p. 8
e x t r e m e Me d i c i n e , p. 54
E x p l or ing t he
F in a l F ron t ier
by Seth Shostak, p. 32
L igh t f rom t he
D aw n of T ime
by Michael Benson, p. 36
Celestial Mech a nics
catching up with Hubble repairman Mike
Massimino, p. 48
me t e or i t e me n
by Jim Clash, p. 50
e x t r e m e c u i s i n e , p. 56
r e v i e w s , p. 58
w h at w e r e t h e y t h i n k i n g , p. 64

the explorers journal
spring 2010
president’s letter
a new golden age
The theme of ECAD 2010, “On the Cusp of Infinity: Exploring
the Universes Out There,” focuses on a very important topic
to us all, which is especially relevant to those involved in the
discovery realm. Today, discovery is on the brink of a whole new
“golden age” of exploration relating to the rapidly expanding
boundaries of our universe. As space exploration continues to
develop—along with the opportunities that it generates—there
remain many hurdles and concerns ahead. As a species, however,
we must continue to explore space, not only from a discovery
perspective but also as a means to seek out other habitable
environments and possible life-forms. It is the discovery work
undertaken by many Explorers Club members and their colleagues
today—both on Earth as well as beyond—that may well
help to ensure the chances of long-term survival of our species
and help to protect us going forward by providing alternative
planetary scenarios.
Recent changes in federal funding focus, however, indicate
a renewed emphasis on science and technology away from
human space flight; instead it emphasizes robotic exploration,
research, and International Space Station updates. Each day
brings new discoveries, many of unknown planets orbiting other
Sun-like stars, which have raised hope that some may prove
habitable. New information has also helped to identify a number
of previously known worlds that may once have been or may
remain currently at least partially viable for life-forms. It is anticipated
that humans will again return to the Moon and eventually
to Mars. However, human space travel in the near term, at least,
appears that it will increasingly fall within the realm of private
enterprise. Although government funding will be available to
encourage commercial endeavors interested in promulgating
private space voyage, a concerted multinational approach is
critical to maximize such undertakings. As exploration of our
solar system and beyond continues to beckon, The Explorers
Club intends to be there.
Lorie Karnath, President

ensure a future for the world
center for exploration!
T h e L o w e l l T h o m a s B u i l d i n g
p r e s e r v e a b r i c k c a m p a i g n
Founded in 1904 “to promote exploration by
all means possible,” The Explorers Club © has
become the premier resource for expedition
planning and research. This fabled venue has
also played a primary role for those pushing
the limits of knowledge and human endurance
as a place to share the results of their
expeditions with the greater public.
Today, we have embarked on a multiphase
restoration of our historic headquarters and
the extraordinary archives it houses—phase 1
will cost an estimated $1.5 million. To underwrite
this effort, we are offering for sale “virtual
bricks.” The purchase of bricks—which
cost $50 each—will enable us to procure the
necessary materials and expertise to carry
out this important project.
To learn more, please contact President
Lorie M.L. Karnath at 212-628-8383, or e-
mail: president@explorers.org.
the explorers club
46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
212-628-8383 www.explorers.org
the explorers journal

the explorers journal
Spring 2010
editor’s note
A star-studded issue
For this edition of The Explorers Journal, we have
embarked on a journey far from home in an attempt to
gain a better understanding of our fragile world and its
place in the unfathomable vastness of space and time.
To guide us, we have brought together some of the
best minds in space exploration—from astronauts who
have traveled beyond Earth’s gravitational pull to those
imagining the tools and technologies of tomorrow and
contemplating what might be found on future forays
out into the cosmos.
In his essay “Light from the Dawn of Time,” Michael
Benson provides a sobering reality check on just how
much—and how little—we actually know about our
universe. “We can see it, almost touch it,” he says,
“but the totality of all that we can observe—the planets,
moons, asteroids, comets, nebulae, and intergalactic
gas—is but 4 percent of what’s out there, the negligible
part, the part ‘made of stuff.’”
On the topic of stuff—the right stuff, that is—contributing
editor Jim Clash recently caught up with astronaut
John Glenn, who shares his thoughts on the future of
manned space exploration. Glenn, who first orbited
the Earth in February 1962, had the pleasure of returning
to the heavens aboard the shuttle Discovery in
1998, giving him a perspective few possess. Glenn’s
experiences are complemented by those of Leroy
Chiao, one of the first American astronauts to fly in the
Russian space program, and Mike Massimino, whose
valiant efforts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope
this past May will ensure that our view of the cosmos
remains uncompromised in the years to come.
We hope you enjoy the celestial delights!
celestial bodies such as those in our own solar system make up but 4
percent of the observable universe. Image courtesy NASA.
Angela M.H. Schuster, Editor-in-Chief

R are cl assics of e xplor ation
brought to you by
Th e Explo r e r s C lu b
&
th e Lyo n s Pr e ss
order online today!
www.explorers.org/publications/books_club/classics/classics.php
or call the Club to place an order at 212-628-8383
also available through amazon.com
$19.95
$19.95
$24.95 $16.95 $27.95
$16.95

the explorers journal
spring 2010
the explorers club
President
Lorie M.L. Karnath,
MBA, Ph.D. hon.
B o a r d Of D irec t ors
Officers
PAT RONS & S P ONSORS
Honor a ry ch a irman
James M. Fowler
Honor a ry President
Don Walsh, Ph.D.
Honor a ry Direc tors
Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.
George F. Bass, Ph.D.
Eugenie Clark, Ph.D.
Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D.
Col. John H. Glenn Jr., USMC (Ret.)
Gilbert M. Grosvenor
Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.
Richard E. Leakey, D.Sc.
Roland R. Puton
Johan Reinhard, Ph.D.
George B. Schaller, Ph.D.
Don Walsh, Ph.D.
Speci a l Direc tor
E.O. WIlson, Ph.D.
CL A S S OF 2010
Anne L. Doubilet
William S. Harte
Mark S. Kassner, CPA
Daniel A. Kobal, Ph.D.
R. Scott Winters, Ph.D.
CL A S S OF 2011
Capt. Norman L. Baker
Jonathan M. Conrad
Constance Difede
Kristin Larson, Esq.
Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D.
CL A S S OF 2012
Josh Bernstein
Joseph G. Frey, C.D.
Gary “Doc” Hermalyn, Ed.D.
Lorie M.L. Karnath, MBA, Ph.D. hon.
William F. Vartorella, Ph.D., C.B.C.
V ice President, Ch a p t ers
Joseph G. Frey, C.D.
V ice President, Membership
Daniel A. Kobal, Ph.D.
V ice President, Oper at ions
Col. Donald T. Morley
Vice President, Research & Education
Julianne M. Chase, Ph.D.
T r e a surer
Mark S. Kassner, CPA
A s sis ta n t T r e a surer
Otto E. Roethenmund
Secreta ry
Robert M.T. Jutson, Jr.
A s sis ta n t Secreta ry
Brian P. Hanson
l e a der Of E x plor at ion
($500,000+)
Mabel Dorn Reader*
benefactors Of E x plor at ion
($250,000–$499,000)
Richard H. Olsen*
Robert H. Rose*
Michael W. Thoresen
Pat rons Of E x plor at ion
($100,000–249,000)
Daniel A. Bennett
Donald L. Segur
Corpor at e Pat ron Of E x plor at ion
Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Supporter Of Exploration
National Geographic Society
* Deceased
the explorers journal
E D I T ORS
President & publ isher
Lorie M. L. Karnath,
MBA, Ph.D. hon.
Editor- in - Chief
Angela M.H. Schuster
Con t r ibu t ing Editors
Jeff Blumenfeld
Jim Clash
Michael J. Manyak, M.D., FACS
Milbry C. Polk
Kristin Romey
Carl G. Schuster
Nick Smith
Linda Frederick Yaffe
Copy Chief
Valerie Saint-Rossy
A R T DEPA R T MENT
A rt Direc tor
Jesse Alexander
the explorers journal © (ISSN 0014-5025) is published
quarterly for $29.95 by THE EXPLORERS CLUB, 46 East 70th
Street, New York, NY 10021. Periodicals postage paid at
New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster:
Send address changes to the explorers journal, 46 East
70th Street, New York, NY 10021.
Subscrip t ions
One year, $29.95; two years, $54.95; three years, $74.95;
single numbers, $8.00; foreign orders, add $8.00 per year.
Members of THE EXPLORERS CLUB receive the explorers
journal as a perquisite of membership. Subscriptions
should be addressed to: Subscription Services, the
explorers journal, 46 East 70th Street, New York, NY
10021.
SUBMIS SIONS
Manuscripts, books for review, and advertising inquiries
should be sent to the Editor, the explorers journal,
46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, telephone:
212-628-8383, fax: 212-288-4449, e-mail: editor@
explorers.org. All manuscripts are subject to review. the
explorers journal is not responsible for unsolicited
materials. The views and opinions expressed herein
do not necessarily reflect those of THE EXPLORERS CLUB or
the explorers journal.
All paper used to manufacture this magazine comes from
well-managed sources. The printing of this magazine is FSC
certified and uses vegetable-based inks.
THE EXPLORERS CLUB, the explorers journaL, THE EXPLORERS
CLUB TRAVELERS, WORLD CENTER FOR EXPLORATION, and The
Explorers Club Flag and Seal are registered trademarks of
THE EXPLORERS CLUB, INC., in the United States and elsewhere.
All rights reserved. © The Explorers Club, 2010.
50% RECYCLED PAPER
MADE FROM 15%
POST-CONSUMER WASTE

The President, Directors, and Officers of the Explorers Club
&
dinner co-chairs
Leroy Chiao FN’05 and Richard Garriott MN’98
present
The 106th Explorers Club Annual Dinner
On the Cusp of Infinity
Exploring the Universes Out There
master of ceremonies
Dan Aykroyd
we congratulate this year’s award winners
Donald C. Johanson, Mabel Purkerson, James M. Chester, Steven Squyres
an “out of this world” event
March 20, 2010
The Waldorf-Astoria
for information: www.explorers.org
image courtesy NASA/ESA/Hubble Collection

e xplor ation ne ws
edited by Jeff Blumenfeld, www.expeditionnews.com
Visionary submarine designer
Graham Hawkes has just
launched the latest in his innovative
line of underwater flying
machines, the DeepFlight
Merlin, a three-person “open
cockpit” winged submersible
that operates within the limits
of traditional SCUBA diving.
With an overall length of
4.57 meters, the Merlin, which
can be launched from yachts
or shore, is the smallest and
lightest submersible available
today, making it an ideal craft
for overflying reefs and shipwrecks,
and cavorting with
marine mammals. “The only
gear needed,” says Hawkes,
“is a face mask, as the air tanks
8
L aunch of t he
DeepFligh t Me r l in
Richard Branson takes delivery of Graham Hawkes’ latest
and regulators are mounted
inside the submersible.”
The flight controls, he says,
are mechanical linkages for
pitch, roll, and yaw, with a
throttle lever for forward and
reverse thrust. Although the
center seat is typically the
pilot position, the submersible
can be flown from any of
the three cockpits. The highly
maneuverable craft, which
cruises at a speed of 1 to 5
knots, can be flown gently
over the reef or dive nose-first
to desired depths and return
to the surface.
The Merlin, which incorporates
patented state-of-the-art
safety systems, boasts a flight
and navigation computer programmed
to keep the positively
buoyant craft inside preset
depth limits and control the
rate of depth change.
“Unlike conventional submersibles,
which use ballast
to rise and fall in the water
column,” says Hawkes, “our
positive buoyancy will never
allow the craft to land on a
reef.” According to Hawkes,
the Merlin was designed with
the lowest light and noise
emissions, enabling environmentally
responsible and unprecedented
encounters with
big animals.
The first of the Merlin sport
craft, puchased by Virgin
Atlantic founder Richard
Branson, will launch primarily
from its mothership, Necker
Belle, a 32-meter catamaran
operated by Branson’s Virgin
Limited Edition Group. The
luxury yacht is based for much
of the year on Necker Island in
the British Virgin Islands. For
information on Hawkes Ocean
Technologies, visit: www.
deepflight.com. For booking
information on the Necker
Belle, e-mail: enquiries@virginlimitededition.com.
B a d l u c k r e w a r d e d
turning misadventures into dreams
For years, we have brought
you tales of woe from the expedition
and adventure community.
Now comes at least
one way to turn those lemons
image courtesy Hawkes Ocean Technologies.

into lemonade: Travel Guard’s
World’s Unluckiest Traveler
contest. Every month in 2010,
the travel insurance company
will give away a Flip MinoHD
camcorder to the “unluckiest
traveler,” the top entry voted
on by the web-surfing public.
At the end of the year, winning
entries will compete for the
title of “World’s Unluckiest
Traveler” and a grand prize
$10,000 ultimate dream vacation.
For information: www.
worldsunluckiesttraveler.com.
F o r E r i c L a r s e n ,
O n e D o w n , T w o t o G o
North Pole next on list
On January 6, Eric Larsen, 38,
reached the South Pole after
a 47-day trek, completing the
first stage of his three-part
“Save the Poles” expedition
during which he plans to be
the first ever to make it to the
North Pole, South Pole, and
summit of Mt. Everest in a
continuous 365-day period.
Larsen, who hails from Grand
Marais, MN, has just departed
for the North Pole and, upon
competion of phase 2, is
targeting Everest for the fall.
He hopes to travel to the
frontlines of global warming to
document the changes occurring
in what he calls “the last
great frozen places.” Larsen
will also use the expedition as
a platform to advocate strategies
for reducing carbon
emissions and collect relevant
scientific data on climate.
In 2006, the explorer completed
the first-ever summer
expedition to the North Pole,
where he pulled and paddled
modified canoes over 960
EXPLORATION NEWS
kilometers (600 miles) of shifting
sea ice and open ocean.
In January 2009, Larsen successfully
led an international
team to the geographic South
Pole, becoming one of only
a few Americans to ski to
both poles. For information:
www.savethepoles.com.
A c r o s s A n t a r c t i c a
u n a i d e d
two-month traverse a success
American Ryan Waters, 36,
and Norwegian Cecilie Skog,
35, became the first team to
make an unsupported/unassisted
traverse across the
Antarctic continent when they
reached the Ross Ice Shelf
on January 21. The expedition,
which covered 1,351
kilometers (840 miles), began
on November 14 at Berkner
Island and ended 70 days
later at the Ross Ice Shelf,
with a stop at the South Pole
along the way.
The duo frequently had to
deal with high winds, whiteout
conditions, and bitter
temperatures that sometimes
dropped as low as -40ºC/F.
As if dealing with the weather
wasn’t challenging enough,
they also had to endure the altitude—Antarctica
is the highest
continent on Earth—and
massive sastrugi, hard waves
of drifting snow that form on
top of the ice.
Waters and Skog made the
journey on skis while dragging
all of their supplies and
gear behind them in specially
designed sleds. In order for
this expedition to be classified
as “unsupported” they had
to make the journey without
receiving a supply drop along
the way; to earn the distinction
as “unassisted,” they had to
finish the trip completely under
their own power. Previous
traverses of Antarctic were
done with dogsled teams
or by using massive kites to
pull the explorers across the
snow. For more information:
www.cecilieskog.com.
A p a s h e r p a
g o e s f o r 2 0
plans to break Everest record
Widely recognized as one
of the world’s greatest living
mountaineers, Apa Sherpa
has reached the summit of
Everest a record 19 times.
Now, the 50-year-old Nepali
plans to top his record,
aiming for a twentieth summit
of the world’s highest
peak this spring (see
The Explorers Journal, Fall
2009). In addition to setting
a new high, he is using his
climbing career to improve the
lives of young children in his
home village of Thame near
Everest Base Camp, where he
will travel this summer. As part
of the project, the Apa Sherpa
Foundation, with underwriting
from summit bid sponsor
Suunto, will construct a library
for the people of Thame. To
follow his expedition, visit:
www.supersherpas.com.
the explorers journal

EXPLORATION NEWS
On January 16, New York City
artist, adventurer, and sailor
Reid Stowe accomplished his
goal of remaining at sea for
1,000 days (2 years, 7 months
and 4 days) without re-supply
or touching land while aboard
his 70-foot gaff-rigged schooner
Anne, and in the process
broke four world records.
Stowe, 57, and his girlfriend
and first mate, Soanya
Ahmad, departed Hoboken,
New Jersey, on April 21,
2007, to attempt the longest
sea voyage in history. They set
sail with three years’ worth of
food, solar panels for energy,
large tarps to catch rainwater,
a laptop, an Iridium satellite
telephone, and a Metocean
tracking unit that would verify
the path of the 1000-day voyage
(see Google map at
www.1000days.net)
As Stowe and Ahmad
entered the rough Southern
Ocean on day 305, Ahmad
10
S a i l o r S t o w e B r e a k s R e c o r d
longest voyage without landfall
experienced debilitating
nausea, which was believed
to be seasickness. She was
transferred off the coast of
Australia to another boat that
ferried her to back to land
where it was confirmed she
was pregnant. She returned
to New York to have her son,
Darshen, now 19 months old.
Prior to Stowe’s voyage, the
longest continuous time on
record was 657 days held by
Australian, Jon Sanders after
his triple circumnavigation in
1987. As Stowe approached
Sanders’ solo record on day
964, Sanders wrote, “Well
done Reid. Good luck, mate.”
Last month at an event
for his friends and supporters
held at the South Street
Seaport Museum, Stowe,
whose computer has been
disabled by moisture, called
in by sat phone to explain that
instead of returning during the
stormy winter months, he has
decided to sail with the variable
winds and currents of the
Atlantic Doldrums, and plans
to return on June 17, 2010, at
which time he will have been
ship-bound for an astounding
1,151 days.
“I’m nervous about coming
back and dealing with the real
world and things I haven’t had
to think about for three years,”
says Stowe. “Nonetheless,
I feel lucky to have accomplished
this impossible goal
I’ve set for myself.”
F i r s t a n t a r c t i c
p l a n e f o u n d
Mawson craft buried in the ice
Australian researchers have
found the remains of the
first airplane ever taken to
Antarctica, 99 years after
it was brought there by
Australian polar explorer and
geologist Douglas Mawson.
Mawson led two expeditions
to Antarctica in the early
1900s, on the first one bringing
along a single-propeller
Vickers plane. The wings of
the plane, built in 1911, had
been damaged in a crash
before the expedition, but
Mawson hoped to use it as
a kind of motorized sled suring
the 1911–1914 Australian
Antarctic Expedition.
Unfortunately, the plane’s
engine could not withstand
the extreme temperatures and
it was eventually abandoned.
The plane, the first of its kind
from France’s Vickers factory,
had not been seen since the
mid-1970s when researchers
photographed the steel
fuselage nearly encased
in ice. The Mawson’s Huts
photo courtesy Reid Stowe.

EXPLORATION NEWS
Foundation had been searching
for remains of th craft for
three Austral summers before
stumbling upon metal pieces
of it New Year’s Day at Cape
Denison. For information:
www.mawsons-huts.org.au.
E x t r e m e I c e
P r i m e t i m e
time lapse captures glacier retreat
icebergs melting at Jökulsárlón, Iceland. Photograph by James Balog.
Acclaimed photographer,
climber, and scientist James
Balog has spent the past
three years working with
a dedicated team on the
Extreme Ice Survey (see
The Explorers Journal, Winter
2008/2009). The project
placed 33 time-lapse cameras
at 16 sites during 32 expeditions
to Greenland, Iceland,
Alaska, and the Rockies to
document glacier retreat and
the realities of global climate
change. His videos, taken by
cameras sealed in Pelican
cases modified with windows
and powered by solar energy,
show climate change in action,
with glaciers calving
and melting. Balog, author of
the acclaimed book Extreme
Ice Now, will have his work
featured in a NOVA-National
Geographic special scheduled
to air on PBS March 24.
“History will judge us as fools
if we don’t rise to the occasion
about this challenge,”
he said during a recent interview.
For more information:
www.extremeicesurvey.org.
the explorers journal

it’s all about having
the right stuff
As the Cold War with the Soviet Union intensified in
the early 1960s, America found itself decidedly behind
in the space race. Russia had already put a man (Yuri
Gagarin) into orbit around the earth. And while America
had sent two men suborbital (Alan Shepard and Gus
Grissom), many of its rockets were exploding on the
launch pad. Then on Febrary 20, 1962, astronaut John
Glenn came to bat for the U.S. and hit a home run, achieving
three earth orbits in his Mercury-Atlas Friendship
spacecraft. America pulled even with Soviets, never
to fall behind again. Glenn retired from NASA shortly
after, and served as senator from Ohio (Democrat)
for three decades before returning to the heavens
in 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. At 77, he
became the oldest man in space, a record that still
stands. Explorers Journal Contributing Editor Jim
Clash caught up with Glenn, now 88, to discuss his two
flights and the current state of the U.S. space program.
12
JIM CLASH: Briefly set up the historical context
for your pivotal Mercury flight in 1962.
JOHN GLENN: What people forget is what prompted
that flight, the rationale behind it. It was largely a
part of the Cold War. The Soviets were claiming
technical and research superiority to the United
States. They were bringing thousands of young
people in from Third-World countries, giving them
an education in Moscow, then sending them to
other places in the Soviet Union and back to
their homes again, almost as little Communist
emissaries.
Their claims of technical superiority were
borne out by the fact that they were launching
things, while ours were too often blowing up on
the pad. They, of course, orbited before we did.
We thought we were going to be first into space
with Al Shepard on a suborbital flight in 1961,
Astronaut John Glenn in a state of weightlessness, traveling at 17,500 miles per hour on February 20, 1962. image COurtesy NASA.

and lo and behold they launched Gagarin orbital
before Al. So there was a catch-up thing we had
to do. We certainly didn’t believe they were superior.
They were good in that particular area getting
started, but we knew for the long haul we were as
good as—or better than—they were.
We look back now and say, “Oh, that was just
a small incident,” but in those days there were
serious writings about the future of Communism
around the world, whether it was going to be a
dominant factor. We took this very seriously—the
Administration, President Kennedy and President
Eisenhower, after he came around to believe in
the importance of it. So at the time, we looked at
this as representing our country in the Cold War.
When you went off on a mission, was there risk
Yeah, there were risks, and you wanted to minimize
those—nobody was on a suicide mission—but
at the same time you realized that maybe some
risk was justified to achieve the purpose of what
we had set out to do.
JC: Tell me about the Mercury flight.
JG: I remember it all vividly. It was a very impressiongenerating
event at that time, so new. It seems it
was just a few weeks ago instead of all those years.
My feeling was we were dedicated to the program,
we had all volunteered for it. The seven of us had
come out of military test-flying, so we were accustomed
to high-speed flight, small cockpits, things
like that. We were competitive with each other to
see who would get the early missions. I’ve always
felt fortunate to do the one I did.
Gus Grissom and Al Shepard had done their
15-minute [suborbital] flights ahead of me. But on
mine, we finally got up to full orbital speed, 17,500
mph, which comes out to 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers)
a second. It is hard to believe that you’re traveling
that fast, but there we were. We had tried to foresee
everything, take corrective measures ahead of
time. Things happened we did not foresee, but we
had planned around them so you could keep going,
and that’s exactly what we did.
JC: There were problems on your flight, one of
which was a loose heat shield
JG: The first was earlier in the flight. Some scientists
wondered whether you could really control
the spacecraft just being up there yourself, looking
outside and at your instruments, what your sensations
might be. We had planned eventually to go
over from automatic flight, which was on during
launch. I was supposed to switch off one axis at a
time—roll, pitch, and yaw—try those out separately,
then combine the axes and see whether I could
control attitudes of all of them together.
Well, at the end of the first orbit, one of the little
thrusters stuck on and was wasting fuel. I had to
cut it off. I was a bit unsure of what was going to
happen with the other thrusters, but I cut the whole
thing off and just went to manual flight to save fuel;
otherwise we would have had to cut the mission
short. That was really the first thing—I won’t say it
was an emergency—we met we hadn’t planned on.
Later, there was the heat shield. Two different stations
on the ground had radio telemetry signals from
my spacecraft indicating the heat shield had come
detached. Normally, it would not do that until you
were on the main chute at the end of the flight. The
latches would pull, and it would drop down about
four feet onto a rubber bag that acts like an air pillow
to help attenuate the forces during landing.
They recommended I leave the heat shield
locked in place by not throwing away the retro-pack
after it had fired it for reentry. That pack sits right in
the middle of the heat shield, and there were three
metal straps that held it to the main body of the
spacecraft. Normally, once those retro-rockets fire,
they are detached and tossed away into space,
and you enter with a clean heat shield. What they
decided was if the heat shield really was loose, if
those latches had already pulled, it would be better
to leave the retro-pack in place to help hold the
shield in place until it had built up some aerodynamic
force coming back in. You didn’t want it out
there banging around by itself; that probably would
have let the whole thing burn up.
So that was our big emergency. As it worked out,
it was fine and I made reentry. But it made it unusual
from where I was because when I looked up
momentarily and glanced out, big blazing chunks
of stuff were going by the window, and I couldn’t
be sure whether it was the retro-pack or the heat
shield. Obviously, it was the retro-pack burning off,
and the heat shield was okay.
They talked about this down on the ground and
they didn’t tell me—that was the part I wasn’t too
happy with after the flight. I thought NASA could
have been more forthright with me and just stated
what the problem was rather than wait until I was
ready for reentry. Anyway, whether that was legitimate
or not, I guess we’ll always have disagreement.
the explorers journal

P r e p a r i n g f o r L a u n c h
Glenn enters his Mercury Friendship capsule before launch
on February 20, 1962. At 9:47 a.m. (EST), his Atlas vehicle
lifted him into orbit for a flight lasting 4 hours, 55 minutes,
23 seconds. Image courtesy NASA.

JC: How about your view from the Mercury capsule
JG: In orbit you’re keyed up and aware of everything
going on, every little noise, anything that may have
special meaning because of where you are. My first
view after I’d detached from the booster and the
capsule had turned around into orbital attitude was
looking back at Earth. I could see the whole state
of Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico toward New
Orleans. It was just beautiful. You could see the horizon
and the black sky above—you don’t see blue
sky up there. The blue we see on Earth is from light
refracting as it comes through the atmosphere. The
higher you get, the darker the sky gets. Then you
look back at Earth and there it is, sunlit and beautiful
underneath you.
JC: They gave you a ticker-tape parade when you
returned. What’s that like
JG: That’s something else again, I’ll tell you. I was
fortunate enough to be in two of them in New
York: one after the flight in ‘62 and the other after
STS-95 in 1998. It’s just an experience to see all
those people there, their emotions directed toward
you, proud of what the country was able to do with
these projects and what we’re learning from them.
It was a great experience both times.
JC: Ever experience fear
JG: I won’t say it’s fear. Fear connotes something
that interferes with what you’re doing. Was there
apprehension Of course. You’d be numb if you
didn’t have that. I’ve often called it “constructive
apprehension.” Maybe that’s splitting meanings a
bit. People will ask, “What do you think about when
you’re afraid, when you’re just ready to launch”
The standard answer in the astronaut corps—and I
think everyone claims parentage of this statement—
is, “How do you think you’d feel if you knew you
were on top of two million parts built by the lowest
bidder in a government contract”
JC: Contrast your 1998 Shuttle flight to Mercury.
JG: On Mercury, of course, I was the only one in
the spacecraft. You could loosen the straps a bit
to be more comfortable, but you didn’t get out and
float because there wasn’t space. On the 1998
flight, it was completely different. You not only got
out of your flight suit to change clothes, you floated
from one part of the spacecraft to another. We had
seven people on board. Between my two flights
there were some 120 manned flights, so it gave
the explorers journal

me a lot more confidence that we had most of the
critical problems solved, had things under control.
Back in ‘62 you always wondered whether we had
really thought of all the things that might go wrong.
JC: Maybe you could enjoy this one a little more
JG: Oh, you could. The purpose of the whole
program had changed. In ‘62 we were trying to
determine if we could just make orbital spaceflight,
and we proved we could. Through the years, as we
took a preeminent position in the space program,
the purpose was not just to catch up with the
Soviets but one where we’re doing research. In ‘62
I had some little experiments, too—spectrometer
readings of the sun, stuff like that—but by 1998
the whole purpose was fundamental research. We
had 83 projects on that one Discovery flight. Later,
Columbia had 90. We split those up so each of us
had our responsibilities and a strict schedule for
carrying them out. Every day’s mission was routine,
but they did make changes to schedules from the
ground if you needed more time on a particular
project. Between experiments, too, you had time to
get up and look out the window more and enjoy that
16
beautiful view, whether day or night.
My altitude in ‘62 was 160 miles (257 km)
down to a little more than 100 miles (160 km) on
a slightly elliptical orbit—not as high as we were
on Discovery, about 350 statute miles (563 km).
You’re looking at whole countries and things like
the Red Sea just laid out on a map below. You’re
above big weather systems and you can see the
whole patterns stretching out in circular form.
Sunsets and sunrises are very different. You’re going
almost 18 times the normal rotational speed of
the Earth, so the sun goes up and down rapidly.
But you also see the Sun’s rays channel through
the atmosphere following the curvature of the Earth
down to a termination point, with very brilliant colors
at the moment of sunset. The Earth’s atmosphere
acts as a prism for the light coming to you, and
for a few seconds you see a variance of the whole
spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet—at the same luminous intensity you see only
with reds, oranges, and yellows at sunset on Earth.
JC: Ever regret not landing on the Moon
JG: I would liked to have been on one of those lunar
STS-95 mission commander Curtis Brown and payload specialist John Glenn on the flight deck of Discovery, November 1, 1998. Image courtesy NASA.

flights, and I regret I was not. After my flight in ‘62,
I wanted to get back into rotation. I talked to Bob
Gilruth, the director, and he said no, that headquarters
didn’t want me back in quite yet. So I kept
requesting a number of times over the next year and
a half. Finally, he couldn’t say when, or if, I was ever
going back. It wasn’t that I had done a bad job, quite
the opposite; they said I had done an excellent job.
I found out much later, years after I had left
NASA, when one of the biographies of John
Kennedy was published. It said [Kennedy] had indicated
to NASA he’d rather I was not used again.
I don’t know if it was because of all the outpouring
and attention we had at that time, and what would
happen if I had been bagged on another flight or
something. So I guess that was the reason I wasn’t
used again. I finally left NASA and wound up running
for the Senate, was there for 24 years. So I
have no complaints about my spot in the program
and how it all worked out. But I would have liked to
be on one of those lunar landings, that’s for sure.
JC: What were you thinking as Apollo 11 landed on
the lunar surface
JG: Oh, that was a real cliff-hanger, because they
were down to their last few seconds of fuel, you
know—somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds
left when they actually set down. I was in the
control center down there in Houston at the time,
watching from the observation area, and they really
had everybody holding their breath!
JC: This is a critical time for the U.S. space program.
Which direction do you think NASA should go
JG: I think we should complete projects once
they’re started. When President [George W.] Bush
arbitrarily reassigned space program priorities in
2004, he announced that instead of concentrating
on the space station, we were going back to the
Moon and to Mars, plus continue the station. At the
time, I thought there would be more money for all
that, but Bush said NASA had to do it on its existing
budget. That’s ridiculous on its face, that you could
do that additional stuff within the same budget.
But NASA saluted smartly, and tried to carry
out his orders. What it had to do was cut a lot of
research money for the International Space Station
(ISS). The station is a $100 billion investment, just
now completed so we can put a full crew of six on
it. For $3 to $5 billion a year, we could not only
continue research, but also continue the shuttle.
That’s the other ridiculous part: They are cutting
the shuttle flights. So we’re going to be dependent
on the Soviets to get back and forth to our own
space station as there will be a delay before our
new launch vehicles are ready to go. This is very
short-sighted.
I don’t disagree with going to the Moon again,
and Mars—if we’re willing to pay to do it. But it is just
ridiculous to make a $100 billion investment and
then not maximize it. Instead of cutting ISS down,
as they’re planning to do in 2020, they should figure
out how to extend it so we get the major research
benefit from it. The basis of the space program is
to get research from the station that will benefit
people on Earth. When they see those benefits, it
will lead to more support.
JC: Your views on the The Right Stuff
JG: I thought Tom Wolfe’s book was pretty good.
Once Hollywood got hold of it, they hammed it up,
started inventing things. The movie made caricatures
of everybody involved—expanded on whatever
their normal traits were—and made a charade of the
whole thing. Back at that time, it was very serious
business. As far as entertainment, The Right Stuff
is a good movie. As far as a documentary of the
early space days, which they purported it to be, it is
not at all. The best space movie in my view is Apollo
13. That’s just the way it happened.
JC: What is the one thing about the Mercury flight
that sticks in your mind most today
JG: I can’t do that because the whole thing was
so impressive. You think launch is going to be tremendous,
and it was. Then to be up there at night
on the dark side of Earth able to see the lights of
Perth, Australia…the uncertainties of reentry…all
of those things are very, very vivid to me to this
day. But I suppose if I had to pick one, it would be
reentry because that’s when you have the highest
heat and greatest number of physical factors
operating on the spacecraft. You’re decelerating
rapidly, and it’s a very focused-attention time.
When you’ve come back into the atmosphere,
you’re going straight down supersonic through
about 27,000 feet, (8,230 meters) where the air
resistance finally builds to slow you to subsonic
speed. Then at about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters),
the main chute comes out. When you see that
through the window, you know you’re in great
shape, and that you’re going to land okay.
the explorers journal

a l a n d o f
a n c i e n t
v i o l e n c e
Mars man Steven Squyres on the
latest from the Red Planet
w h e r e t h e y a r e n o w
The locations of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which
have been exploring the Red Planet for six years, are shown
on this Viking image of Mars, which has been enhanced
by the addition of MOLA surface topographic information.
Image courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific
Visualization Studio.
the explorers journal

It has been six years since the Mars rovers Spirit
and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red
Planet, having traveled some seven months to get
there. On January 4, 2004 (UTC), Spirit touched down
near the center of the Gusev Crater, a Connecticutsized
depression once thought to have held water
(located some 16 degrees south of the planet’s equator).
Three weeks later, Opportunity came to rest at
Meridiani Planum, a vast crater-pocked plain halfway
around the Martian globe and where abundant deposits
of grey hematite, detected during earlier missions,
hinted at the past ACTION OF WATER.
Initially, plans called for a 90-day sojourn during
which the rovers—each weighing some 180 kilograms
(400 lbs) and loaded with identical suites of scientific
instruments—would probe their respective regions of
the Martian landscape, collecting data and images and
reporting back.
Now entering their seventh year of operation, the
20
rovers have far exceeded their warranties, having
collectively traversed some 25 kilometers of Martian
terrain since their arrival and having transmitted
thousands of images and data that are shaping of our
understanding of the fourth planet from our Sun.
The Explorers Journal recently talked to Cornell
University’s Steven Squyres, principal investigator
for the Mars rover project, about the status of the
mission and what we are learning.
EJ: How has the rover project changed our view
or understanding about Mars
SS: We have found abundant evidence of a violent
past preserved in the Martian rock. While initial
exploration of Spirit’s Gusev Crater landing site
revealed a more basaltic environment, the area
around the Columbia Hills, where the rover is now,
has variety of rocks suggesting that early Mars
was bombarded by impacts and experienced
Opportunity spies Block Island, an iron-rich meteorite of a type found on Earth. Image courtesy JPL/NASA.

elentless eruptions of magma and steam. We
have found aqueous silicates around what may
have been hot springs of volcanic fumaroles. At
a place we call “Home Plate,” a circular feature in
the Inner Basin of the Columbia Hills, Spirit found
a collection of layered pyroclastic deposits (coarse
grains lying beneath much finer material) which
fits the pattern of accumulation of material raining
down during a volcanic eruption. In contrast to the
steamy and violent environment encountered by
Spirit, Opportunity, working halfway around the
planet, has found evidence of a wetter environment
where acidic water once saturated the ground and
occasionally flowed across its surface.
EJ: So where are the rovers now
SS: In April 2009—some 800 Sols, or Martian days,
into the project and with more than 7.5 kilometers
traveled—Spirit became trapped in deep, soft sand
on the west side of Home Plate, eventually losing
use of its right front wheel and right rear wheel in
an attempt to free itself. After multiple attempts to
dislodge the rover, we have decided for now to
focus on experiments that will tell us information
about its current location. As it turns out the “sand
trap,” which we have nicknamed “Troy,” happens
to be an excellent site for research purposes.
Already, this has begun to yield interesting results.
Just below the surface, the rover has found
sulfate-rich deposits beneath its left wheels, which
we believe were formed in steam vents associated
with water-charged explosive volcanism. Spirit
is sitting on the edge of a small crater, astride a
boundary between crusty sulfate-rich deposits
and soils with an average concentration of sulfur.
We are also hoping that, from its stationary position,
we can use radio tracking of Spirit to monitor
any wobble in the planet’s axis of rotation, which
could tell us whether Mars’ core is molten or solid.
The biggest problem we face with Spirit now is
that winter is setting in the southern hemisphere
and the rover’s solar array is tilted 9 degrees to
the south, away from the Sun, rather than to the
north—as it would be if the rover were mobile—limiting
its solar power supply. Spirit will go semi-dormant
for the remainder of the Martian winter until
the rover begins receiving enough solar power to
recharge and resume operations.
Opportunity, on the other hand, has just
wrapped up operations at the Victoria Crater
some 19 kilometers from its landing site and is
now en route to Endeavour Crater, 11 kilometers
away. The craters, by the way, are named in honor
of great ships of discovery. During the traverse,
the rover has encountered several interesting features
on the otherwise barren plain. One, which
we dubbed Marquette Island, is a strange basaltic
rock about the size of a basketball that appears
to have come from deep in the Martian crust. We
think it is ejecta from a distant crater. The rover
also found two iron-rich meteorites of a type we
find on Earth, which we named Block Island and
Shelter Island. En route, we are having the rover
investigate Concepción Crater, a small, young
crater from a more recent impact.
Opportunity’s probe of the craters within the
Meridiani Planum has revealed that surface waters
evaporated there, leaving behind sulfate-rich
sands that, over time, have been shaped by wind
and solidified by groundwater.
EJ: Tell us about the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter (MRO), which recently spied depressions—thought
to be lakes—with drainage patterns
consistent with flowing water near the Ares Vallis,
a great gorge that runs along the Martian equator.
SS: From the information we have from the rovers,
it seems clear that water of some sort once flowed
across the Martian landscape. The new images
seem to confirm that. The relationship is synergistic
between the rovers and the MRO, which
provides a global view of the planet versus the
detailed inspection we gain on the ground. Each
informs the movements and operations of the others.
The MRO is a key component of rover planning
activity. MRO will see something that may
be worth a rover look. Also, MRO’s companion
orbiter Odyssey provides an important communications
relay between Earth-based operations
and the rovers at times when their locations are
on the far side of the planet from Earth.
EJ: What are your future plans for the project
SS: In addition to continuing to use the rovers as
long as they remain in service, we are also working
on the Mars Science Laboratory, which is somewhat
more robust than Spirit and Opportunity.
More than twice as large as the current rovers,
it will collect Martian soil and rock samples and
analyze them for organic compounds that might
attest life of some sort. For more on the state of
affairs on Mars, visit: mars.nasa.gov
the explorers journal

Finding Mars
here on Earth
text and images by Kate Harris
explorers club
student grant recipient
Solid as a rock, the saying goes.
But rock as a reference point
for stability is a geological fallacy.
Rocks crack like ice floes
and wrinkle like worn faces.
Tectonic forces heave rock to
heaven, building mountaintops
out of ocean bottoms. Elemental
forces dissolve stone into sand,
sifting beaches from those same
mountain summits. And in the
Andes, where volcanoes fume
over the land like temper tantrums rendered
topographic, rock explodes.
I have spent years absorbing such facts in
the classroom, but the heavy truth of geologic
transience only sinks in on the slope of Aguas
Calientes, a near 6,000-meter volcano in northern
Chile. It is late November and
seven of us are climbing this
peak as part of the High Lakes
Project supported by NASA
and the SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
Institute. On this expedition, an
international team of scientists
and engineers are probing this
lava-paved landscape in South
America for clues about whether
Mars was habitable billions of
years ago. In other words, we have come to the
Andes seeking the alien.
The search for extraterrestrial life is guided
by the search for water, a prerequisite for life as
we know it. Mars is one of the most promising
abodes for life in our solar system, with reservoirs
22

the Crimson waters of Aguas Calientes’ Summit lake are teeming with organisms.
of water ice on its surface today and evidence that
shallow, salty seas soaked its surface in the past.
Like ancient Mars, the Chilean Altiplano is a place
of cruel cold and searing ultraviolet radiation, a
parched high-altitude desert puddled here and
there with undrinkable brine. You might expect
such conditions to militate against life, but the
salty lakes that speckle this Mars-like desert support
a bounty of tiny, tough organisms. This means
that while ancient Mars was probably too hostile
for little green men, conditions might have been
clement for little green microbes.
The challenge of pursuing this research in
the Andes is that the most intriguing lakes hide
in the craters of colossal volcanoes like Aguas
Calientes. For the past two weeks, the High Lakes
Project team has been adjusting to altitude while
conducting fieldwork on the Altiplano. For the past
two days we have been crawling up a slide of broken
basalt and ash. In a few minutes, we will reach
the summit with a hard-earned if fleeting window
of opportunity for observations and experiments.
Such is the harsh arithmetic of a research expedition
in the Andes: two weeks of acclimatization
plus two days of arduous ascent equals a scant
two hours for science on the summit.
But as it turns out, even this basic math doesn’t
compute. On a rest break before the final slog
to the top, we receive a garbled message on the
radio: “Looks li gschhhhh Láscar gschhhh erup
gssschhh!” Nathalie Cabrol, a planetary geologist
with the SETI Institute and the leader of the expedition,
grabs her radio. “We do not copy. Please
repeat.” This time the message comes through
loud and clear in meaning if not delivery: “Gschhhh
looks like gschhhh Láscar gschhh erupting!”
When you are stranded on the lid of a volcano
in a landscape littered with dozens more, this is
precisely the last thing you want to hear. Láscar
and Aguas Calientes are volcanic Siamese twins,
joined at the slope. But while Aguas Calientes
has long been dormant, Láscar periodically stirs
and spews its igneous guts across the Chilean
Altiplano. The last eruption was just over a year
ago, and since day one of the expedition we have
noticed a phantasm of cloud above the volcano.
But in a geologically prone place like the Andes,
such sights are commonplace. You simply have to
gamble on tectonics and timing.
Today, however, the odds are stacked against
us. Nathalie tries to glean further details about
the shaky state of Láscar through the static on
our radios. We catch far -from-reassuring words
like earthquake, landslide, cloud. Our normally
unflappable porters glance nervously at the loose
boulders heaped above us. Seeking a vantage
less vulnerable to rock fall, they guide us the final
meters to the summit.
the explorers journal

Crouched in the crater of Aguas Calientes is
an implausibly crimson lake, its waters red as a
wound. Silence holds sway over winds suddenly
shuttered by stone. On the far side of the crater,
a white cloud creeps above Láscar. Whether dust
or smoke or sulfurous vapor, we can’t tell. But we
don’t intend to stick around long enough to find
out. The world has split open, the world is steaming
at the seams. Solid as a rock.
“Whatever science you planned to do in two
hours, do it in two minutes!” commands Nathalie.
“Then we’re getting the hell off this mountain.”
The Chilean Altiplano is a riot of jumbled rocks,
piled haphazardly and poised to tumble at the
slightest provocation. Entropy postponed, but
just barely. Volcanoes like Láscar and Aguas
Calientes are violent, vertical puckerings of the
planet, and basaltic scree drapes the land in a soft
and shifting skin. But like the slack scruff of the
gato andino, the wildcat that prowls the Andes, all
that looseness sheaths muscles taut with an unreckoned
power, tensioned somewhere between
grace and violence.
I am blissfully oblivious to all of this on my first
morning in the Andes, when I wake in a world
still solid. Frozen solid. I check my watch, hoping
24
to postpone entry into the polar realm beyond
my sleeping bag and tent. It reads 1:26 a.m. on
January 1, year unspecified. Last time I checked,
it was November. I have leapt forward who knows
how far into the future, or tumbled back in time, but
either case gives me ample excuse for avoiding the
mean cold a little longer. For future reference, the
conditions conducive to time travel are as follows: a
sleeping chamber at hypoxic heights, and nights so
subzero they freeze watches into confusion.
We initially dub our adopted homestead on the
Altiplano “Hotel Chilefornia”, but soon amend this
to “Hotel Chillyfornia” to more accurately reflect
climatic conditions. This basecamp is the skeleton
of an abandoned army building, somewhat lacking
in aesthetic charm but sturdy as a wind shelter.
Inside crumbling cinder block walls, we pitch a
tent city that would do any desert nomad proud,
complete with a kitchen, lab space, an office, and
sleeping tents. One porter poetically refers to
our camp as “the hotel of a billion stars,” since
those who brave a midnight bathroom break are
rewarded by a sky so salted with stars you expect
the air to smell like the ocean.
In fact, the air near the lakes we have come to
explore reeks suspiciously of the sea. Lagunas of
all shapes, salinities, and shades blink startled
and electric out of the bleached desert. These
high-altitude flora surround indigo waters. Facing page, crossing an andean summit lake by inflatable.

hallucinogenic blue, red, and yellow waters
cradle diverse communities of hardy critters like
copepods, algae, and tiny shrimps and worms.
Munching on these minute organisms are flamingos,
who slurp the briny broth through necks thin
and hollow as straws. Neon as some of the candycolored
lakes they haunt, I suspect these birds fly
to the Andes to dye their feathers pink. Or perhaps
the converse is true, and flamingo feathers
leaching pigment are to blame for the bubblegum
tints of certain lagunas.
Either way, these birds are more than pretty-inpink.
If the search for life on Mars is guided by
the philosophy “follow the water,” the search for
microorganisms at this altitude in the Andes is
guided by the philosophy “follow the flamingos.”
The sustenance of choice for Andean flamingos
neatly coincides with Nathalie’s sample specimens
of choice, making these birds ideal signposts
for interesting science. In the weeks before
our Aguas Calientes climb, we drive across the
aching expanse of the Altiplano, scanning lakes
for their spindly profiles. Once spotted, we shoo
them from their aqueous buffet, and Nathalie
wades in with plankton net in tow. On shore, the
rest of the team waits with plastic bottles gaped
wide to swallow samples of microbial muck, which
we will scrutinize back at basecamp.
When the water is too deep for hip waders,
the team takes to the lakes in inflatable boats and
scuba suits. Packing this gear on an expedition to
the arid Altiplano might seem a lunatic proposition—at
least tourists thought so when the High
Lakes dive team practiced their moves in a hotel
pool the previous year. Nathalie tells me that a
Speedo-clad German queried, “Where, exactly,
do you plan to scuba dive around here” She
pointed at the Andes on the desert horizon and
grinned. “See those volcanoes over there”
No diving is planned for this year’s expedition to
the summit lake of Aguas Calientes, but Nathalie
and Clayton Woosley, the expedition field engineer,
plan to collect data on the depth of Laguna
Lejía by traversing its waters in an inflatable raft.
The idea is that learning more about the physical
parameters and biogeochemical character
of these Andean lagunas will prime us to search
for ancient lakebeds on Mars, the ideal sites to
search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
For days we have waited for calm weather in
order to launch the boat, but wind ricochets unceasingly
around the Altiplano, sculpting dunes
into indecipherable runes and whipping lake
waters into a salty slurry. Eventually, the decision
is made to capitalize on—or more truthfully,
capitulate to—the elements. Propelled by paddles,
the explorers journal

a whimpering motor, and a gusty tailwind, Nathalie
and Clay surf across Lejía, their vessel a floating
fleck of dust on these wide, turbulent waters. An
hour later, they emerge exalted and salted on the
other side. One small step in Andes present, one
giant leap toward understanding Mars past.
Back at basecamp, I watch a copepod we caught
squirm beneath the harsh glare of a microscope.
The sight reminds me of film footage from the Apollo
lunar missions, when astronauts shot the distant
earth through a spaceship porthole. From the vantage
of lunar space, through the narrow lens of an
unsteady, floating video
camera, our pale blue
dot of a planet wobbled
and jerked against the
black cosmos like a live,
trapped thing magnified
out of all proportion, a
copepod scrabbling on
a microscope slide. Is
all life so vulnerable, so
solitary, so crushingly
oblivious
Maybe so, but life abounds in defiance to apparent
desolation, whether under a microscope or
on the Altiplano. From a distance, a five o’clock
shadow of grassy stubble covers the ruddy face
of the desert, but close up the grass resolves into
discrete clumps of botanical life islanded between
barren straits of dirt. Plants boast punk fringes of
blonde bristles, which camouflage gatos andinos
and provide fodder for the llamas that roam the
region. And everywhere, both in lakes and on
land, seen and unseen protean creatures eke out
a contented existence. We scientists swaddle
and cushion ourselves against the hostile Andean
climate, but when we sample these tiny life-forms,
we must swaddle and cushion them against the
relatively harsher realm of humans. What we call
extreme, the flora and fauna of this high-altitude
desert simply call home, and the converse holds
as well.
The history of this land is archived in volcanic
rock, and Ingrid Peate, a volcanologist with the
High Lakes Project, is here to scrutinize it. A truck
drops off Ingrid, Carlos Salazar, the expedition
doctor, and myself in the open desert to hunt for
compelling magmatic rocks, made of lava solidified
26
then shattered. No stone stands a chance against
Ingrid when she sets her formidable mind, biceps,
and rock hammer to the task of sampling, and
soon we are staggering under the weight of collected
chunks of the world.
As we hike along the vitreous lavascape, Ingrid
describes in dramatic detail the origin and evolution
of the terrain we are treading. Energy from
the condensational origin of the Earth still broods
internally, and every so often seeks surface expression
in places such as the Andes, where volcanoes
welt the land like a bad case of Archean
acne. The gritty pumice
underfoot once spilled
inhumanly hot across
the Altiplano. Proof
of this flow is found in
large-scale geomorphic
features, like the
clown collars of solidified
lava cinching the
necks of volcanoes,
and small-scale mineral
clues, like those
contained in the rocks we are collecting.
After a few hours of hiking and sampling, we get
a call from Nathalie on our radios. “We found fossils,
beautiful fossils!” she exclaims with the excitement
of someone who has spotted a little green
man on Mars. “Come check them out!”
Sure enough, lodged into the ancient shoreline
of Laguna Lejía is a miniature forest of fossilized
microbial mats. Water levels in Altiplano lakes
have plunged dramatically over ages, stranding
life that once thrived in shallow shores at higher,
drier, harsher elevations. Again and again on the
Altiplano, the apparently static world is revealed
as unstable. Lakes turn desert, habitable turns
inhospitable, microbes turn mineral, and the Earth
turns in space and time.
While we are examining the fossil shoreline,
Nathalie, still buzzing from the discovery, says to
herself, “You know, I feel so strangely at home out
here.” I look around: we are in a remote desert
with no potable water or food for hundreds of
kilometers. We are staring at samples of life long
dead. The wind is pummeling us with savage,
invisible fists. Mountains leer vast and volcanic
all around us. There is no refuge anywhere in this
salt-glazed, wind-scoured, sun-blistered wasteland.
Home
Geysers blow off their steam. Facing page, descent from the mountain.

There is something patently absurd about loving
a landscape for its intrinsic resemblance to another
planet. Yet in the Andes, like Nathalie, I find
myself falling in love with a pile of rocks because
they could conceivably be heaped and scattered
just so on Mars. This is the calling and curse of
nomads, who have eyes always for the land of beyond.
And when the land of beyond happens to be
another planet, your feet are never wholly planted
on this Earth. But for the High Lakes Project team,
seeking the alien on Earth is less about escape,
and more about connection, about seeing the
cosmic in the concrete.
And sometimes, this
means feeling most in
our element precisely
when we should feel
most out of it.
Back at Hotel
Chillyfornia after a
long day of fieldwork,
the porters chuckle at
our clothes and faces
crusted with fine desert
dust. Fossilized ourselves, more mineral than
mammal, we bear the telltale signs of sojourners
in a land beyond time.
Our few minutes on the summit of Aguas Calientes
are up, and we must descend. We chuck science
aside like so much excess baggage, and make a
break for home.
As we rush off the volcano, I am strangely
void of panic over possible annihilation by eruption.
Awe lodges in my throat like some kind of
palpable immensity I can’t quite swallow. We skid
down the scree slope, graceless as an avalanche,
and inhale a rotten-egg atmosphere of sulfur. The
sun ignites the Altiplano below, and the desert
blazes infernal beneath an indifferent indigo sky.
Lakes gleam as lapidary and inscrutable as the
stars. In this raw slant of light and mood, the
world has never looked so awesome, so fiercely
alien. Lurching down this unstable slope, I find
myself flung farther than ever before, farther than
the Andes, more remote than Mars, hurtled into
orbit around the infinitely dense, infinitely absurd
enigma that is our existence.
Before I know it, this orbit swoops me back
to Earth. A volcano that took two days to climb
takes barely three hours to descend, and soon
we are back on the relatively safe surface of the
Altiplano. At basecamp, we hear the full story
from the porters, who are in radio contact with
civilization: a Richter scale 7.7 earthquake rocked
the coast of Chile just 150 kilometers away. The
concrete walls of Hotel Chillyfornia wobbled like
wet noodles, Láscar belched a sulfurous cloud,
and the quake triggered rockslides on all sides
of Aguas Calientes except the very side we happened
to be climbing. In the end, we were just
plain lucky. Elsewhere, others were less fortunate:
two people in a nearby
village were killed, and
hundreds more injured
by falling buildings.
In this universe of
fickle foundations,
perhaps confusing
poise for permanence,
and rock for solid, is
a necessary coping
mechanism. Stone
by cell, the world is
unendingly transmuted by forces tectonic and
microbial, temporal, and mineral. But even as
the ground quakes beneath our feet, what else
can we do but steel ourselves against dizziness
and stumble on through the flux. There are risks
in wandering the volatile unknown, but there
are also chance sightings of the sublime in unabashed
force, glimpses of gato andino grace
in volcanic violence. Whether in the Andes or on
Mars, whether voyaging to distant lands or remote
reaches within ourselves, the goal of exploration is
to emerge both shaken and stirred.
Whatever high-altitude lakes and volcanoes in
the Andes might ultimately teach us about life on
ancient Mars, they taught me an awful lot about life
on Earth. Just before we scrambled off the summit
of Aguas Calientes, I stole a glance into the volcanic
crater lake. My reflection was warped in the
corrugated, ruby waters, but it revealed a truth so
simple and so staggering that I am reeling still: the
only aliens in the Andes are the lot of us.
b i o g r a p h y
Kate Harris (SM ‘04) is a young scientist, wilderness conservationist,
and writer. Her participation in this expedition was made possible by
a Scott Pearlman Field Award from The Explorers Club.
the explorers journal

A s t r o n a u t
R e f l e c t i o n s
a p e r s o n a l d r e a m c o m e t r u e
I’ve been fascinated by flying and space exploration
for as long as I can remember. Growing up
during the Cold War and the space race, I spent
much of my childhood building model airplanes
and launching model rockets. And like many,
I was inspired by the early astronauts. After
watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing, I decided
that I wanted to be one.
Luckily, my childhood dream of spaceflight
became a reality in January 1990 when I was
selected by NASA to join the space astronaut
corps. I had worked hard in school, earning
three degrees in chemical engineering, from
the University of California at Berkeley (B.S.)
by Leroy Chiao
and at Santa Barbara (M.S., Ph.D.). I applied
to NASA while working as a research engineer
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
One day, I received the phone call out of the
blue, inviting me to Houston for an interview
and medical testing. This was the beginning of
the adventure!
Since then, I have flown four space missions,
three aboard the Space Shuttle: STS-65 (July
8–23, 1994), STS-72 (January 11–20, 1996),
STS-92 (October 11–24, 2000), and most recently,
as commander and NASA science officer
aboard Expedition 10 (October 13, 2004–April
24, 2005), a joint United States–Russian mission
to the International Space Station (ISS).
For the latter, I trained and flew as the copilot
Leroy Chiao appears as a small reflection in his own helmet visor in the Pirs docking compartment of the international space station. Image courtesy NASA.
28

of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, launching from
the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. During
Expedition 10, we performed two spacewalks,
which offered me a unique opportunity to put on
a Russian Orlan spacesuit and to compare their
system with ours.
i n t e r n a t i o n a l a p p r o a c h t o
s p a c e E x p l o r a t i o n
It was interesting for me to note that cultural differences
extend into technical arenas. I found
the Russian space hardware and methods to be
effective, safe, and reliable. However, their approach
is totally different from ours in the West.
We Americans tend to engineer our systems to optimize
performance. For example, even the power
tool that NASA developed includes a microprocessor.
The Russians, on the other hand, use simple,
often mechanical systems. The analogy I use is that
American hardware is like a luxury car: comfortable,
with many amenities, but also complicated.
Russian hardware is like that old pickup truck:
uncomfortable, free of amenities, but it starts and
will get you to point B every time.
When China launched its first astronaut, Yang
Liwei, into space in October 2003, it became
only the third nation in the world capable of human
spaceflight. Three years later, I became
the first American to be allowed to visit the
Astronaut Center of China (ACC), in Beijing.
Over a series of visits there, I met the ACC director,
Chen Shanguang, and astronauts Yang
Liwei, Fei Junlong, Nie Haisheng, and China’s
first spacewalker, Zhai Zhigang. I was impressed
with China’s space program, which has leveraged
Russian technology and added sophistication in
what appears to be a blend of the Russian and
American engineering philosophies. Having flown
only three crewed space missions, China lacks
operational experience, not technological ability.
M a g i c o f S p a c e f l i g h t
Spaceflight is a magical, almost surreal experience.
It is this basis that forms the special bond
between astronauts and cosmonauts of all countries.
What’s the best part Looking back at the
Earth and taking in the stunning beauty of our
planet and being able to observe the same places
on our planet throughout the seasons.
A long mission to the ISS is quite different from
a two-week shuttle flight. Perhaps a good analogy
is the comparison of a marathon to a sprint. Just
as the crew settles into a comfortable groove after
four to six weeks, so does the human body. The
fluid shift from the lower extremities, which give
people a “full-headed” feeling, subsides, as do
other more subtle changes.
There’s nothing quite like living and working in
microgravity. And as the largest space structure
ever built, the ISS is the premier microgravity
laboratory and thus presents an ideal environment
in which to explore a host of research possibilities,
including the development of future vaccines,
which would improve life both on and off of the
Earth and beyond (see page 31).
T h e S p a c e S h u t t l e P r o g r a m
m a r k s a m i l e s t o n e
Originally conceived as a low-cost, reusable orbital
“truck,” the Space Shuttle was intended to fly almost
weekly and offer inexpensive space access
to both government and commercial users. It has
been flying now for nearly three decades, but after
134 flights and two fatal accidents, it has never approached
the original goals on cost and turnaround.
It is expensive to operate (around $500 million
per mission) and carries more risk than originally
thought. NASA’s own estimates place the fatality
risk on the shuttle around one in one hundred.
Nevertheless, it has been a magnificent flying
machine. There has been no other vehicle like it.
It launches like a rocket and then becomes an
orbital platform capable of deploying satellites;
supporting scientific instruments, investigations,
and spacewalking astronauts; and performing
rendezvous and docking with space stations. It
then reenters the Earth’s atmosphere to land on a
runway like an airplane. Twenty-nine years of operations
have produced numerous achievements,
including the deployment and servicing of the
Hubble Space Telescope, the construction and
support of the ISS, the rescue of several satellites,
and the conducting of thousands of scientific experiments.
We have learned much from the shuttle
experience, both in space technology and engineering,
as well as in operations. These lessons
the explorers journal

should be applied to future space vehicles.
What will become of the Space Shuttle and
the ISS This past summer I was invited to be a
member of a ten-person White House “Review
of United States Human Spaceflight Plans
Committee” to study these and other questions
about the future of the American space program.
Led by respected aerospace veteran Norm
Augustine, we came to be know simply as the
Augustine Committee. Our charter was to evaluate
the current NASA programs and to provide
option sets for moving forward. We were specifically
asked not to make
recommendations.
In all but one option
set we put forth,
the Space Shuttle
would be retired after
flying out the remaining
manifest, which
should occur within
the next year. In most
options, the ISS would
continue operations
through at least 2020.
We also presented
variations of forward exploration paths, which
would lead us out of Low Earth Orbit, with the
eventual goal of sustainable human exploration
of Mars. After the shuttle is decommissioned,
the United States will be totally dependent on
foreign—namely Russian—assets for astronaut
access to space, before the next U.S. vehicle
becomes operational. This gap will likely be at
least five to seven years. Recent U.S. budget
revelations indicate that there will be an effort to
encourage commercial efforts to launch astronauts
into space, which is a significant departure
from past American space policy. Although the
details are yet to be announced, this is an exciting
change in paradigm, which should open up
new opportunities.
P r i v a t e S e c t o r a n d t h e F i n a l
F r o n t i e r
When I left NASA a few years ago, I became
intrigued with the possibility of making the spaceflight
experience available to more people. When
Spaceship One (built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled
30
Composites team with financing from former
Microsoft executive Paul Allen) won the Ansari X
Prize in 2004, it proved that a privately built spacecraft
could fly to space. Although that effort was
a suborbital one, it was an important milestone.
Orbital flight is much more difficult, but several
individuals have flown commercially to space already
through the Russian space program. Private
commercial access to space is within sight, with
several commercial companies already working
toward that end (see The Explorers Journal, Fall 2008).
In 2006, I joined Excalibur Almaz, a private,
commercial space
company based on
proven, Russian hardware
from the Soviet
Almaz military space
project. The Soviets
successfully flew three
manned Almaz military
space stations, and
were developing a reusable
Almaz capsule
spacecraft before it
was canceled in favor
of the Soyuz spacecraft.
Excalibur Almaz has acquired the remaining
hardware from this program, which has been
flown on nine unmanned flight tests, and we are
in the process of refurbishing and modernizing
the spacecraft.
In addition to offering individuals the experience
of spaceflight, we are also working to become a
research platform provider. Our goal is to begin
offering one-week stays in Low Earth Orbit in a
few years. As our operations mature, we will explore
other flight profiles as well.
Spaceflight is a life-changing experience. The
idea is to bring it to as many people as possible.
A meaningful life involves dreams, challenge,
and exploration. This is what the Explorers Club
is all about!
b i o g r a p h y
A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Leroy Chiao served as a NASA astronaut
from 1990 to 2005. During his 15-year career, Chiao performed
six spacewalks in both U.S. and Russian spacesuits, and has logged
nearly 230 days in space. He is currently an executive vice president
of Excaibur Almaz, a private commercial space venture.
Chiao, in a Russian Orlan spacesuit, carries out a spacewalk during Expedition 10. Image courtesy NASA.

M i c r o b e s i n M i c r o g r a v i t y
the pharmacy of the future
By Ross von Burg
It seems in a microgravity environment without a gravity
bias bacteria grow faster, a lot faster; it is as if
they are hyper-adapted for it, almost a blob effect.
In one of our first experiments, they grew so fast in
the nutrient solution we thought they were going to
burst out of containment.
—T. Boone Pickens III, CEO Astrogenetix
If astrobiology is a new discipline that looks for past life in
the universe over deep time, astrogenetics is the future study
of life beyond Earth under microgravity conditions. Since the
beginnings of manned space exploration, we have known that
weightlessness is dangerous for fending off infection. Not
only does microgravity weaken the human immune system, it
increases the virulence of a range of microbes, making them
far deadlier in space than they are on Earth.
Viruses and bacteria in space grow as much as 1,000
times faster, even in Low Earth Orbit. Disturbing as the
phenomenon may seem, such rapid cell growth and turnover
may very well hold the key to curing a host of illnesses that
plague us here on Earth. Microgravity conditions afford us
the ability to prototype more potent and effective vaccines,
speed up drug development and testing from decades to
mere days, and to cultivate stem-cell lines in orbit.
This extraordinary potential has not been lost on such
space business entrepreneurs as T. Boone Pickens III,
whose company Astrotech Space Operations (formerly
known as SpaceHab) and its Astrogenetix subsidiary have
flown more than 2,600 biological experiments on the
Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station
(ISS) over the past two decades, sending them aloft in
modules developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Astrogenetix has created a unique toolkit of techniques
needed to send and retrieve these payloads as well those
needed to function within NASA’s highly regulated manned
space environment. Given that the ISS—recently completed
and expensive to operate—is sitting out there orbiting the
Earth every 90 minutes with mostly empty rack space
for experiments such as these make for an enticing, and
potentially profitable, prospect. This underutilized asset
was officially designated a national laboratory in 2007,
allowing for commercial processes developed there to be
marketed on Earth.
As those in the industry will tell you, part of the process
“is knowing the process,” one of the reasons as yet very
little science has been flown to the ISS. Its still takes
around 7,000 pieces of paper or so to get an experiment to
orbit but the process of working with NASA is obscure and
known only to a few. Despite the red tape, justifying the
launch costs with a low-volume high-cost cargo is exactly
what the industry needs and provides a profit margin ideal
for a commercial space endeavor.
A microgravity environment is especially good for developing
and testing antibiotic strains for pathogens such as
Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA), an antibioticresistant
superbug that is a common cause of infection in
hospitals. “When you have 100 billion telephone numbers,”
says Pickens, “finding the right one is key. We did it in
three trips for the Salmonella vaccine, which will sell 200
million doses worldwide.
Beyond rapid cell turnover, huge spikes become more
readily visible in the micro-array analysis. This provides
more accurate information as to on what and where the
drugs are acting on and how much of a drug will be needed
to accomplish a desired effect in clinical trials, making it
possible to rapidly prototype the strongest cells. It also may
be possible to carry out protein crystallization, a process
that doesn’t work well on Earth because gravity distorts
the crystalline matrix. To date, no one has successfully
done it in orbit, namely because of the need for more time
than has been available in the initial experiments.
The space business is littered with companies that have
gone bankrupt on cost overruns and disappointing service;
it’s the second wave of guys that usually make the money.
For the time being, however, Astrogenetix seems to have
a leg up on getting access and in positioning itself to be
a pathfinder for other researchers. The development of
microgravity research for biologics is sure to be a game
changer in the development and creation of vaccines and
stem cell lines for the benefit of all humanity.
b i o g r a p h y
A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Ross Von Burg works as a consultant
in the clean tech realm and as a public policy advocate.
the explorers journal

Exploring the
final frontier
a Quest for Life in the Cosmos
by Seth Shostak
The Allen Telescope Array. photo by Seth Shostak.
It took humankind only 400 years to fill in the
globe—to map and chart all the important
lands of Earth. That would be a long time to
wait for a bus, but four centuries is a rather
brief period of time when measured against
the 200,000-year history of Homo sapiens.
Outlining the continents was an interesting
project, but was accomplished—relatively
speaking—in a mere blink of an eye.
Although the world has been mapped,
there are still plenty of remote locales to seduce
the adventurous—the exotic nooks and
crannies of terrestrial topography that are so
frequently featured in the pages of this magazine.
Nonetheless, for many would-be explorers,
the Earth’s been done. The big carrot is
elsewhere: it is above us.
Modern voortrekkers gaze upon the night
sky and perceive a new terra incognita: outer
space. The sirens of the firmament beckon
with a hundred billion galaxies, each seeded
with a hundred billion stars. An immense arena,
untrodden and barely compassed, it’s the
final frontier: a limitless, three-dimensional
landscape begging for reconnaissance.
So when will it happen When will we cast
our rocket-powered caravels into the dark
voids beyond Earth Many folk think it’s just a
matter of time, and maybe not so much time
at that. Brought up on Star Trek and similar
fictional fodder, they confidently assume that
in a century or three, space will be subdued
as surely as were the wild places of Earth.
Yes, today’s rockets have only managed to
take humans to the Moon (and hopefully,
some day to Mars). But looking down the
pike, most people feel confident we’ll invent
warp drive or its equivalent a few generations
hence, and cruise to the stars.
Not so fast. Scientists are less than sanguine
about being able to boldly tour the galaxy.
Today’s rockets highball along at roughly
7 miles (11.2 kilometers) per second—a
speed that will get these craft to the Moon in
a day or so, and to Mars in half a year. These
are not intolerable flight times, although it’s
worth considering how quickly you’d book
an airline journey that confined you to a small
compartment for six months.
But comfy or no, going to the Moon or Mars
is merely puttering around our backyard. The
big prize is to travel far beyond the bounds
of our solar system, for only in those distant
realms will we find truly unexplored planets—
orbs that may be home to life. And on some of
those worlds we might also uncover societies
of sentient beings that could rival or exceed
the accomplishments of humankind.
Well, the nearest star is a million times farther
than Mars. Reaching Proxima Centauri,
a piddling 4.3 light-years from where you’re
sitting, would take our best spacecraft a hundred
thousand years, a scheduled flight time
that would surely tax the patience of Job. Of
course, we’ll build faster rockets in the next
dozen decades or so, thereby cutting the trip
down by a factor of two, ten, or even a hundred.
But we’re still talking about spending

centuries in a coach seat. And keep in mind that
this is the nearest other star. To reach any stellar
system with life might require a trip ten times
longer or more.
Could we beat this rap One possibility would
be simply to accept that going to other suns is like
Bolero—slow and soporific—and we’ll have to put
the crew into suspended animation until shortly
before arrival. The evident problem with this idea
is that we don’t know how to successfully suspend
the animation of anyone, despite what you
see in the movies.
A second possibility is to somehow construct
a spacecraft that could cruise near the speed of
light. This would greatly reduce
the perceived travel time
for the crew, thanks to special
relativity. However, this approach
runs afoul of some
simple physics. Consider
revving up a rocket—no bigger
than the Saturn V that
took men to the Moon—to 90
percent the speed of light.
The energy required is greater
than the United States has
consumed since its birth in
1776. That’s a lot of fuel.
In addition, barreling
through space at such a velocity
would turn grains of interstellar
dust into deadly missiles. These otherwise
innocuous bits of carbon would knife the length of
the spacecraft in less than a millionth of a second,
slicing and dicing the passengers en route.
It seems that rocketing to the stars might be
less than gratifying. But surely there’s warp drive
in our future After all, conventional rockets are so
twentieth century.
Well, it’s true that several inventive schemes
have been proposed to bend space in such a
way that our craft could take a shortcut from one
part of the cosmos to the other, reaching distant
destinations in no time flat. These distortions of
space and time are commonly called wormholes.
But while wormholes described on blackboards
often look promising, it’s unclear they will ever
work in real life.
The bottom line is simple: interstellar rocketry,
while an established trope of science fiction, may
be as much a pipe dream as fat-free doughnuts or
34
world peace.
So what does this mean Will our ken ever
extend beyond our cosmic front porch Is it hopeless
to think that we might someday commune
with other inhabitants of the galaxy, assuming
such beings exist
Some scientists think there’s hope aplenty.
It takes the form of a straightforward experiment
called SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence. The idea is to aim large radio antennas
at nearby star systems, and pick up broadcasts
from other worlds. Detecting a signal beamed
from space would be compelling evidence that
somebody’s out there, and allow us to learn about
extraterrestrial sentients without
fretting about either highspeed
rockets or wormholes.
SETI is well known to many,
being the subject of the popular
movie Contact (based on
the 1983 Carl Sagan novel of
the same name). In the film,
Jodie Foster—commanding an
array of large antennas—dons
a pair of headphones, tunes
her receiver, and soon picks
up an alien radio signal.
Unfortunately, real-life
SETI has failed to duplicate
Foster’s success, despite 50
years of listening.
Indeed, given the length of time SETI researchers
have been probing the skies, some people
question whether this effort is worth the candle.
After all, in a lifetime of surveillance, this project
has yet to uncover a single peep from the cosmos.
Could it be that there simply aren’t any aliens The
universe, which astronomers know is desperately
sparse, bitterly cold, and implacably hostile, might
also be sterile—or at least bereft of the sort of selfaware
biology that would amuse us in conversation.
If we concluding that Homo sapiens is creation’s
brightest bulb, this too would be ungratifying, unwarranted,
and a bit self-serving. Despite the length
of SETI’s search, its breadth has been shallow. This
is a simple consequence of the lack of resources.
A substantial NASA effort to make a systematic
search, an enterprise that cost American taxpayers
less than a nickel a year, was killed by Congress
in the early 1990s, just as the NASA equipment
was warming up. Since then, SETI has been a
Lakes of natural gas pool on Saturn’s moon Titan. Could there be slow-moving, organic life in these bodies of liquid Image courtesy Cassini Radar Mapper/JPL/ESA/NASA.

part-time activity mostly carried out on someone
else’s antennas—a small-scale project by a handful
of people, funded by private donations.
The upshot is that the number of star systems
carefully examined for radio signals is less than a
thousand—a trifling tally in comparison to the total
stellar complement of our galaxy. Indeed, SETI’s
reconnaissance to date is analogous to an imaginary
expedition to Africa in search of elephants.
Suppose you examined one city block’s worth of
real estate, and found it pachyderm-free. Would you
conclude that the continent is devoid of elephants
Given the limitations of the experiment, it’s
hardly surprising that evidence for extraterrestrial
life has eluded our grasp. But how many star
systems do we have to examine in order to find a
signal A conservative estimate is one million. The
trouble is, at the rate SETI has searched in the
past, surveying a million star systems will take another
50,000 years. That’s not much inducement
to sign on to SETI’s ship of discovery.
Fortunately, there’s a truism for this experiment
that’s important and largely unknown: the search
is becoming faster. Indeed, it’s becoming exponentially
faster, increasing in speed by 50 percent
every year. This is a consequence of the rapid
development of digital electronics. With more
processing power, SETI experiments can examine
star systems in batches, rather than one at a
time. They can also more quickly check out a wide
range of radio frequencies.
Consequently, lack of success shouldn’t be
confounded with lack of progress, and it’s possible
the scientists will find a signal in the next two
dozen years, assuming that the monies can be
found to execute the search.
In other words, in this generation we might be
able to accomplish what keeps Captain Kirk busy
in the twenty-third century: finding cosmic company
among the stars. And we could do it without confronting
the daunting difficulties of interstellar travel.
So what
Let’s say it happens. Let’s imagine that researchers
succeed in pulling a signal from the
dark voids of space. What happens next
A common view is that the discovery would
be kept under wraps, most likely by bureaucrats
fearful of civil unrest. A SETI detection would be
hushed up.
While appealing to those who like to imagine
that governments indulge in conspiracies, this
is nonetheless a remarkable contention, given
the widespread belief that at least some of the
thousands of unidentified lights seen each year in
the night sky—so-called UFOs—are extraterrestrial
craft. According to recent polls, approximately
one-third of the populace is convinced that alien
beings are visiting Earth, not to mention occasionally
interfering in our personal lives. But if this
supposed invasion hasn’t inspired the citizenry to
grab their pitchforks and lanterns, then why do we
expect that the announcement of a radio signal,
coming from hundreds of trillions of kilometers
away, would provoke panic
A cover-up is neither plausible nor necessary. In
addition, there’s no inclination for secrecy among
the SETI researchers themselves, so the detection
of any extraterrestrial broadcast would soon
be widely known.
It’s far more likely that discovery of other
thoughtful inhabitants of the galaxy would be received
not with panic but with interest. We would
want to know more: the nature of their biology,
their planet, and their culture. Unfortunately, the
technical limitations of most SETI experiments
preclude picking up any message attached to
their signals. We would only know that they were
“on the air.” But that discovery would surely be an
incentive to build far larger instruments to capture
the message, followed by a massive attempt to
decode and understand it.
Imagine, then, downloading a torrent of information
from a society that is literally and figuratively
alien. The eventual fallout might be profound, with
sequelae now only dimly foreseen. After all, Spanish
royalty could hardly have imagined what the longterm
impact of Columbus’ voyages would be.
But one consequence is easy to predict and
certain to be true: we would have proof that the
long chain of biological development that began on
this planet nearly 4 billion years ago was neither a
miracle nor a fluke. And, as remarkable as we are,
we’re not unique. Among the many discoveries by
our species, that might be the greatest of all.
b i o g r a p h y
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain
View, CA, is the author of the recently released Confessions of
An Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, published by National Geographic Books.
the explorers journal

light from
the dawn
of time
by Michael benson

From its earliest pixel-sized billisecond, the universe
was already a compound of extension and duration.
Light, fired forth from its first galaxies, continues
to extend to this day in a steady stream across its
great expanse. Ever-replenished spheres of light,
each centered on a source galaxy, are powered by
the massed fires of billions of individual suns. They
wink on and off across the eons as the galaxies
themselves dance and merge. Some of these stars
shine for billions, others for millions of years. Some
have burned steadily since they first ignited a few
million years after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years
ago. They’re individual cells in the bodies of galaxies,
discrete components of aggregate bonfires
shining across the blackness of deep time.
The farther out into space we look, the farther into
the past we peer. That’s because the incomparably
zippy, but nonetheless finite speed of the photons
issuing from the objects visible there—those irreducible,
massless subatomic particles of which light is
composed—imposes a time lag. Enforced by the
universal speed limit of the cosmos, these light rays
function like ripples in a pond after a pebble has
penetrated its glassine surface. Imagine a nocturnal
pond of a scale so vast that the ripples extending
out from each event take thousands, millions, or
even billions of years to echo off its banks. You’re
contemplating the scale of the known universe.
It reminds me of something Arthur C. Clarke said
one evening in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka, in late 2001—a
year he helped imbue with a futuristic sheen, even if
what we actually got wasn’t cryptic monoliths and
crewed Jupiter missions but a dismal millennial regression
and a World Trade Center in ruins. “Have
you heard about one of the greatest ideas in all of
science fiction” Clarke asked, a gleam in his eye.
“Slow glass.” And he sketched out the central concept
of Bob Shaw’s 1968 novel, The Light of Other
Days, in which a clear material so dense that photons
slow to a near standstill within it is developed. Those
gazing through a pane of the stuff, Clarke observed,
H e l i x N e b u l a
At 700 light-years away, the Helix Nebula—formed by the death
of a Sun-like star—is one of the closest “planetary” nebulae
to Earth. The Helix’s cast-off shell is excited into florescence
by the intense ultraviolet radiation emanating from a stellar
remnant soon to be a white dwarf, visible at the center. Image
courtesy Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/NASA/ESA.
the explorers journal

would inevitably see not what is, but what once had
been. He may as well have been describing the reality
of the space-time continuum.
If this sounds confusing it might help to consider
the following dialectic. When we contemplate the
sprinkle of tiny orange and red glints spread liberally
across the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image
on page 46—an 11-day exposure constituting the
deepest look into space-time ever achieved in
visible light—we’re looking at the earliest known
galaxies. But while to us they may seem incomparably
ancient, in fact they’re about as young as
galaxies ever got. What we’re seeing is a real-time
transmission from time’s edge. It’s a live feed, not
a faded photograph. And their photons continue
to shower in from all sides, impossibly faint: the
light of other days, uncut after its multibillion-year
passage through the slow glass of the universe.
Why are the youngest, most distant galaxies
orange or red Because as their steady streams of
photons pipe across space-time, their wavelengths
shift due to the acceleration accompanying their
great extension. Galaxies visible at time’s horizon,
awash in the brilliant blue light of the giant, shortlived
stars accompanying their birth, appear to
change color with increasing distance—a phenomenon
known as red shift. Their light goes from blue
to white, white to yellow, yellow to orange, orange
to red, and finally from red to infrared. The most distant
can only be discerned in infrared wavelengths—
one reason why the upcoming James Webb Space
Telescope, a successor to the Hubble, will operate
exclusively in such frequencies. When even these
wavelengths go dark, it doesn’t necessarily mean
that no galaxies are there, only that they’re so far
away—and traveling so rapidly further due to the
inexorable expansion of the universe—that it’s no
longer possible to perceive them. Their piping has
descended in register, finally merging with the surrounding
rumble of space and time. They’re lost in
the craquelure of a very big picture.
H o r s e h e a d N e b u l a
The spectacular dark Horsehead Nebula, some 1,500 lightyears
away, is actually a projection of the dense Orion
Molecular Cloud. The gas and dust behind it is both illuminated
and ionized, blazing from the five-star system known as Sigma
Orionis, which causes the Horsehead to cast a shadow.Image
taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
38

If the red color of these most distant galaxies accentuates
our sense of their great age, we should
remember that the reason they’re visible in the first
place is their youth—because the beacon-like intensity
of their young stars has punched through all
the innumerable furlongs of intergalactic gas and
dust between. The same class of blue giant stars
can be found powering many of the nebulae closer
to our home. As for the latter—the comparatively
close, fast-burning suns that actually appear blue
because they’re too close for their light to shift red—
they too are young, the product of stellar hatcheries
within the galaxies of our epoch. Although ancient,
the contemporaneous universe is still busy recycling
materials and forging new stars.
Since we’ve sprung so recently into sentience on
the third rock from the Sun, we haven’t yet achieved
the technologies necessary to choose various
angles on a given nebula or galaxy. But we do have
various gauge telescopes to provide different fields
of view, and these help supply both the wider context
and the particulars of what we’re seeing.
Our lack of freedom to move from our spacetime
location is also partially ameliorated by the
fact that separated but similar phenomena can
be oriented in many different ways vis-à-vis this
panopticon, the Earth. For example, although we
don’t have the ability to conduct comprehensive
surveys of single galaxies by moving telescopes
to various viewing angles, there are enough spirals
out there to see individual examples face on,
three-quarters and edge on, with most of the gradations
in between. The many can inform the one,
in other words, and the one illuminate the many.
The images presented here contain examples of
the tabulated, the measured, the flood-lit, the well
figured-out—the things we’re reasonably sure of.
Almost enough to obscure the predominance of
the mysterious, the ineffable, the cryptic, the woefully
unknown. Like a negative image of a smoke
T a r a n t u l a N e b u l a
The most active and brilliant region of the cosmos that can
be studied from Earth, the Tarantula Nebula, some 200,000
light-years away, is about 1,000 light-years across. As the
nebula is on the leading edge of the Magellanic Cloud, compression
of the interstellar medium due to the forward motion
of the galaxy may be responsible for its intense star-forming
activity. Image courtesy European Southern Observatory.
the explorers journal

screen in which the smoke itself now provides a
glowing nimbus of light, the latter category both
illuminates our ignorance and more accurately
reflects the true state of our knowledge. It also
allows for a consideration of the “mystery.”
The universe we know (or think we know) is 96
percent composed of substances of which we
know nothing. Appropriately enough, we’ve called
some of this inexplicable stuffing “dark matter.” It’s
not to be confused with “dark energy,” that other
variety of interstellar squid ink about which we know
only enough to say it exists—or so we think. The first
supplies approximately 22 percent of the mass that
visible objects such as galaxies must have, at least
judging from their actions. The second, a hypothetical
form of energy said to suffuse the entire universe,
supplies a further 74 percent of the “mass-energy”
of the cosmos; it’s considered both cause and culprit
of space-time’s ever-accelerating expansion.
Lately, astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists
have been debating whether or not the
first dark substance (of which we are entirely ignorant)
is not perhaps lower in quantity than originally
surmised, with the resulting gap filled by the second
dark substance (of which we know nothing). This
shuffling of unreadable cards contains a pleasing
hint of surrealistic absurdity to it. For no matter how
one juggles the percentages, it leaves a miserly 4
percent of the universe that we can observe—the
negligible part, the part made of stuff: stars, planets,
moons, asteroids, comets, nebulae, and intergalactic
gas. Like a man who’s lost his keys somewhere
in the darkness of the lawn and decided to look
for them under a nearby streetlight because that’s
where the illumination is, we focus on what we can
focus on, since we can’t read the rest.
And yet even where the lighting is good, mystery
reigns supreme. Tapping into millennia of research
into mathematics and geometry, we can identify
and even find ways to parse the logarithmic spiral
common to a galaxy, a typhoon, a chambered nautilus.
We can discuss the equations behind them,
m e r g i n g g a l a x i e s i n c e n t a u r u s a
Dust lanes of a spiral galaxy are superimposed across the brilliant
amorphous glow of an elliptical one as they merge in the
central region of Centaurus A some 12 million light-years away.
The bright blue highlights are bursts of new star formation, triggered
by the ongoing collision. Image courtesy HST/NASA/ESA.
42

the golden ratio, the spira mirabilis, and even kid
ourselves that we have a grasp of it all. But what
about the pullulation of probabilities that brought
forth each, the ineffable question of cause and
effect, the diminishing nested scales, the seeming
connections between, the positioning of one inside
the other and both within the third It’s a miracle,
it’s marvelous, it’s enthralling.
As for that chambered nautilus, it’s among the
most durable designs life ever conceived—a living
fossil unchanged since the Cambrian period, 500
million years ago. Yet it floats, seemingly weightless,
housed in a logarithmic spiral within Pacific
currents to this day. It’s a living refutation of time,
an example of counter-entropic determination on
the part of the cosmos that we can’t pretend to
understand. Each nautilus is a perfect replica of a
perfect replica of a perfect replica, a representative
of an unbroken chain of cephalopod iterations
extending back through two full orbits by the Solar
System of the Milky Way’s seething core—a span
312,500 times longer than Homo sapiens has
even existed, one of only 20 or so it has accomplished
since our sun ignited.
Here the metaphor of the photographic negative
again turns, becoming a reversed transparency—a
positive trope. What we see when we look
into the night sky is both absence and presence,
that which is illuminated by fireballs and swirls
of incandescent energy and that which is not so
fortuitously illuminated. If the profoundly mysterious
blackness of the latter seems to outweigh the
glowing certitude of the former, it turns out it’s an
accurate reflection of the true state of affairs—all
the way down to the percentages.
Positive or negative, it helps us measure the extent
of our ignorance: to know what we don’t know
and to recognize that, indeed, there’s something
in all that nothing. Even if we can’t explain how,
it speaks of the supreme success of a struggle
against time. And we know, in the words of William
Blake, that “eternity must be in love with the
S t e p h a n ’ s Q u i n t e t
Four of the five galaxies in Stephan’s Quintet are on a collision
course with each other. A fifth, the undisrupted blue
spiral, is actually a foregound galaxy not related to the group,
which is 210 to 340 million light-years away. Image taken by
the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
the explorers journal

productions of time”—just as we know that those
very productions both defy and mirror eternity.
Some of the images reproduced here depict
vistas whose photons started their long journey
toward us well before Homo sapiens arose on
this miniscule mote of oxygenated, irrigated Earth.
Some predate the very formation of the Earth itself,
and the star about which it orbits, eventually to be
received by us—products of a garden yet unformed
at their journey’s start. It is slow glass indeed.
And there we end, at the beginning, a scene shimmering
through deep time and interstellar dust. The
interacting galaxies of an early universe, glowworms
of different colors, glint at the bottom of deep wells,
reflected in perfectly polished concave mirrors encased
within scrupulously machined tubes. This still
water serves to gather far-traveled interstellar photons
from time’s edge. The enlarging mirrors of our
telescopes comprise material forged at the centers
of the same generation of stars they now record.
Our gaze is irrevocably bound to the very fibers,
tendons, muscles, synapses, and cognitive glints
that would be impossible without the heavier
elements, alien to the early universe, smelted by
giant suns in time’s earliest epochs. And we—our
physical selves and our earliest incarnations all
the way back to the first bacterium—what did we
do Rooted in temporality, we still managed to
race ahead, like dolphins in a storm surge, intent
on exploding out of the wave to intercept rays of
archival starlight—fecund rays, alive with the DNA
of a universe.
b i o g r a p h y
A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Michael Benson
is a New York-based writer and filmmaker. He is
the author of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary
Probes and the recently released Far Out: A
Space-Time Chronicle.
D e e p - T i m e E x p o s u r e
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the deepest picture ever taken of the
universe in visible light; the image represents a cumulative exposure
time of more than 11 days. Among the 10,000 galaxies visible here
are those that formed within some 800 million years of the Big Bang.
These earliest galaxies can be seen as small red forms, some appearing
as mere dots. Image courtesy HST/NASA/ESA.
46

C e l e s t i a l
m e c h a n i c s
Catching up with Hubble repairman
Mike Massimino
With the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, aboard
Space Shuttle Discovery in April 24, 1990, astronomers
believed they had entered a new age. For now they had
the power to peer out into space with a clarion view
of the cosmos uncompromised by Earth’s atmosphere,
or so they thought. Not long after the telescope’s deployment,
a flaw was discovered in Hubble’s 2.4-meter
primary mirror. The outer edge had been ground too
flat by a depth of 2.2 microns, a spherical aberration
that produced images too soft in focus to be useful.
Following the installation of corrective optics
during STS-61 in December 1993—an effort undertaken
by Explorers Club fellow Jeffrey A. Hoffman—Hubble
finally began to deliver on its promise in unimaginable
ways. Hovering some 570 kilometers (360 miles) above
48
the Earth, Hubble has produced thousands of images,
which have provided us with an unprecedented look
into the universe, and, consequently, into deep time.
Af ter nearly t wo decades of service—and sever al
maintenance missions—however, this magnificent
feat of engineering was once again in need of repair
with weakened bat teries and t wo failed instruments.
This past May, the seven astronauts of STS-125
undertook a now-or-never mission aboard the Space
Shut tle Atl antis to save the crippled Hubble. Their
valiant efforts were recorded for posterit y via
an IMA X camer a mounted in the shut tle cargo bay.
The footage will be included in an extr aordinary
new film Hubble 3D, which is sl ated for nation-wide
release on March 19.
STS-125 spacewalkers refurbishing the Hubble, Image courtesy NASA.

The Explorers Journal recently caught up with STS-
125 astronaut Mike Massimino, 47 and a native
New Yorker, to talk about his mission’s record-setting
extra vehicular activity (EVA)—at 36 hours and
56 minutes, the longest, and perhaps most complex
in NASA history—and what the future holds
for one of astronomy’s most precious assets. This
recent foray into space was Massimino’s second
Hubble servicing mission. During his first, aboard
STS-109 in March 2002, he and his colleagues
upgraded the instrument’s power supply; installed
a new camera, new solar arrays, and a new cooling
system; and replaced a series of gyro stabilizers.
EJ: From what we hear, the mission set a new
record for endurance.
MM: We did. Four of us—John M. Grunsfeld, Michael
T. Good, Andrew J. Feustel, and myself—carried out
the repair during five spacewalks over a five-day
period. We set a record of 35 hours 55 minutes on
STS-109. On this mission, my two walks totaled 15
hours, 58 minutes. I guess you could say it was a
couple of long days at the office.
EJ: We assume you were under a bit of pressure
to “get it right”
MM: We had practiced the maneuvers over and
over again in the pool over the course of two and
a half years. Every time we missed something or a
task took longer than initially estimated, we would
go back and refine the maneuver or the tool kit used
to carry it out. I constantly kept a mental checklist
of all of the things that could go wrong. The idea
was to minimize the number of things that could go
wrong. And then, of course, there is the worry that
you accidentally break something. Can you imagine
coming back and having to tell your family, your colleagues,
the whole world, “Yeah, that’s me, I’m the
guy who broke the Hubble,” or having astronomy
books that said, “We would know the answer to
this important such-and-such a question if it weren’t
for Mike screwing up the Hubble…” I guess you
could say it adds an element of pressure.
EJ: How hard was it to carry out the work
MM: It is probably far more tedious than difficult.
One access panel had 117 small fasteners that had
to be removed—and then put back. When you have
so much to do, you have to focus on just one task at
a time, removing one bolt, disconnecting one wire.
You cannot get ahead of yourself or allow yourself
to get distracted. If you do, it will bite you.
EJ: After all of that practice, did you encounter any
surprises once the actual repair was underway
MM: At the beginning of the first spacewalk, one of
the handle bolts on the wide-field camera, which
we were replacing, just wouldn’t give. Ultimately,
we decided to just break the handle off. I have told
Jeff [Hoffman] it was “all his fault” since he put
the camera handle bolts in so tightly during the
first Hubble servicing mission in 1993. Actually,
he just did his job. I just had to undo his overly
efficient job. On the second spacewalk, one of
the replacement gyros wouldn’t fit inside the telescope.
Luckily we had another one that did fit.
EJ: What all did the STS-125 mission accomplish
MM: We put in two new scientific instruments:
a cosmic origins spectrograph, which collects
ultraviolet photons, and a new wide-field camera,
which will allow us to see even deeper into the
universe. We repaired two failed instruments: the
space telescope imaging spectrograph and the
advanced camera for surveys. We also put in new
batteries, new gyroscopic stabilizers, a new computer,
a refurbished guidance sensor, and replaced
the insulation around several instruments. We also
installed a device to aid in de-orbiting, when the
telescope is eventually decommissioned.
EJ: So after all of your hard work, what is the future
of Hubble
MM: I think we will get another ten years out of
Hubble, because of the repairs and because of what
we have learned about rationing its power and rotating
the use of its gyros so they will last longer. There
are six [gyros] on Hubble but it can be manipulated
using only two. Hubble has been a great project to
be associated with as the information it is providing
is for everyone, not just for a privileged few.
EJ: Tell us about the IMAX film.
MM: When I did my first spacewalk eight years ago,
I came back thinking, “It just doesn’t get any more
beautiful than that.” Because the shuttle orbits the
Earth every 90 minutes, the transition from day to
night is really dramatic. The view of the Earth is fantastic.
It is as close as one can get to seeing heaven,
only better. With this most recent mission, I feel the
same. I just wanted the whole world to see what I
had the privilege of seeing. Now they can.
the explorers journal

a date with the
meteorite men
Sometimes all the high-tech stuff in the world is no
match for experience, luck, and a sharp eye.
I’m standing where blue sky meets the yellow
sand of a west Texas oil desert and where
a chance encounter with the extraterrestrial
changed forever the shape and texture of this
landscape.
Some 63,000 years ago, a school bus-sized
mass of molten iron and nickel from the asteroid
belt between Mars and Jupiter plunged to
Earth here, leaving a hole 30 meters deep and
170 meters across. The explosion, equivalent to
three times that of the atom bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, spewed shrapnel over a 2.5-kilometer
by Jim Clash
radius, scouring four more smaller craters nearby.
I had never heard of Odessa until recently.
Flipping through cable channels one night, I
came across a Discovery Science show called
Meteorite Men. Geoffrey Notkin and Steve
Arnold, the stars, stood in a barren Kansas
cornfield while a Hydratrek tractor pulled an
odd-looking, Rube-Goldberg assortment of
wires and pipes behind it. The giant metal detector
made alternating high- and low-pitched alien
sounds as it bumped along.
As with most shows like this (MonsterQuest,
Ghost Lab, UFO Hunters), I expected an
entertaining buildup but was pretty sure that
nothing would be found. I was wrong. Two giant
extraterrestrial gold is found in the oddest places. Photo by Suzanne Morrison ©aerolite meteorites. Facing page, the tell-tale reddish-black patina is a good sign that this is a meteorite. Photo by Jim Clash.
50

meteorites—one weighing 123.8 kilograms (273
lbs.), the other 104.3 kg(230 lbs.)—were unearthed
just 2.5 meters beneath the surface! Who
knew Exotic locales like Antarctica, Namibia,
and Siberia are the only places you find these
things, right
In fact, in 2005, en route to the South Pole by
ski, my group was told to keep our eyes peeled for
anything dark on the snow. A rock resting on the
isolated 2,743-meter (9,000-ft.) polar ice plateau
was almost certainly from space (how else could
it have gotten there). Early on I saw something,
unclipped from my sled, and skied over. My guide
snickered, and soon I discovered why: In front of
me was something the Chinese expedition, a few
days ahead of us, should have scooped into its
“dispose of” bag.
After watching the Discovery show, I contacted
Notkin. He said more episodes of Meteorite Men
soon would be filmed and, sensing my enthusiasm,
asked if I wanted to tag along.
So here we are, just off Route 20, 8 kilometers
west of Odessa at the second largest recognized
meteorite crater in the United States (the largest
is in Arizona). Over the centuries it has partially
filled with silt, and most of the obvious meteorites
rusted away or were hunted before the area
became a protected national natural landmark a
half-century ago.
We have special permission from Tom Rodman,
who owns the land, to hunt any undiscovered
underground remnants with metal detectors—the
proviso being that anything found will be donated
to his on-site Odessa museum.
Meteorites are rare. The known world inventory
is less than the annual production of gold in one
year (2,500 tons), according to Darryl Pitt, a New
York collector. (When we spoke, Pitt was on his
way to hunt down debris from a fireball sighted
over Michigan.) What actually falls to Earth, however,
is a much bigger number.
A 1996 study on meteorites found in deserts
(P. A. Bland, “Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society”) concluded that between
36 and 166 space rocks larger than 10 grams per
million square kilometers of desert fall annually
(that translates to 18,000 to 84,000 falls worldwide).
But because water makes up more than 70
percent of the Earth’s surface, most meteorites
end up at the bottom of oceans, lakes, and rivers.
Arnold and Notkin are often called the “odd
couple” of space rock hunters. Notkin, the elder
at age 49 (they have the same birthday, February
1), is a staunch vegetarian and hunts more for
passion. He is also methodical and scientific in
his approach. Arnold, 44, loves meat (on our trip
the explorers journal

he snapped up large quantities of beef jerky) and
collects mainly for money. He goes more on his
gut. Arnold’s discovery in 2005 of the 648.6 kg
(1,430-lb.) Brenham Meteorite makes him legend
among hunters.
Not surprisingly, a big secondary market exists
for space rocks, because of their rarity. Collectors
pay from $100 for small fragments to hundreds of
thousands of dollars for large pieces displayed in
museums. Meteorites from the asteroid belt between
Jupiter and Mars (the most common, and
the ones in Odessa) average a few dollars per
gram, while those from Mars and the Moon (yes,
they can identify origination by chemical composition
and structure) command $1,000-$2,000 per
gram. Prices, as with any collectible, vary with
condition, type, and age (see “Know Your Space
Rocks,” facing page).
There are the celebrity collectors of these
things, too. Musician Sting of The Police was
given a 40-kg (88-lb.) shield-shaped Campo del
Cielo meteorite for his birthday in 2008.
While “stones” by far are the most prevalent
falls (some 90 percent), the majority of finds are
metallics (some 6 percent of falls) because of
52
electronic devices like hand-held metal detectors
and ground penetrating radar (GPR), both of
which we have in Odessa. Hunting for metallics
still can be frustrating, though, as we quickly discover.
More often than not, the fruits of our digging
turn out to be nails, bullet shells, bottle caps,
wire—what they call “meteor-wrongs” for obvious
reasons.
Hunting in Odessa is generally safe, with a few
exceptions. Because of the arid climate and sandy
shrub geography, myriad snakes inhabit the area.
Most are nonpoisonous (of the bull variety), so we
take the warning with a grain of salt. Later, though,
I almost step on a diamondback rattler which, with
a good bite, can kill a human sans medical treatment
in under an hour.
The other thing to beware of here in oil country
is pipeline. Sarah Cervera, a graduate student
at the University of Texas El Paso, hauls out the
school’s $300,000 ground-penetrating radar
machine—good at identifying and mapping submerged
metal down to about 5 meters (15 feet).
Our team is excited to have such a sophisticated
piece of equipment at its disposal. But time after
time, after identifying metal, our Bobcat digger
Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold set off in search of more. Photo by Jim Clash.

meteorites from top: a Sikhote-Alin, which fell over Siberia in 1947; interior of a Seymchan pallasite found in Russia in 1967; and a Franconia stone found in Arizona in 2004. Photos by Suzanne Morrison and Geoff Notkin © Aerolite meteorites.
unearths rusted cans (some riddled with bullet
holes), pipe fittings—even working gas pipelines
which, had we punctured them, could have had us
playing the role of meteorites in reverse.
After a few days of major disappointment with
our electronic equipment, good old luck and the
sharp eyes of Arnold turn out to be our greatest asset.
While driving on an unpaved access back road,
southwest of the big crater, he spies something and
asks the driver to stop the truck. Everyone laughs,
thinking Arnold is hallucinating out of frustration.
Sure enough, though, once we get out we
see telltale reddish-black stones, pitted with the
typical rusted Odessa texture, right there, in the
roadbed! Some aren’t even buried. Shovel-picks
materialize from the back of the truck, and digging
up the road quickly commences. Eventually we find
more than 27 kg (60 lbs.), and all of it attracts the
test magnet, another indication it is the real thing.
Notkin’s theory is that the roadbed rock, mined at a
quarry nearby, contained the samples, but workers
spread them out on the roadbed decades ago not
knowing what they were.
Later that week, the dig results are taken to be
formally analyzed by Laurence Garvie at Arizona
State University and Arthur Ehlmann, curator
of the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection in
Dallas. Verdict The samples, indeed, are Odessa
meteorites (a coarse octahedrite composed of 90
percent iron, 7 percent nickel, 1 percent cobalt,
with trace metals mixed in). As per the agreement
we donate our find, but Rodman lets us keep a few
small samples.
A few weeks later, I had drinks with Apollo 11
astronaut Buzz Aldrin and his wife, Lois. Aldrin
told me once that none of the Apollo astronauts
were given personal Moon rocks despite the fact
that more than 360 kg (800 lbs.) were hauled
back to Earth on the Apollo missions. So I offered
him one of my meager “samples” from Odessa.
He inspected it quizzically, asked if I knew about
the Tunguska explosion over Siberia (I did), pocketed
the rock and thanked me with a big smile.
Later when I told my story to Pitt, the New York
collector, he laughed. “Do you know how many
of my friends have given Buzz meteorites—really
NICE ones” I let that sink in for a minute, then
had to smile myself. The moonwalker is as gracious
as he is a true American hero.
(For more on Notkin and Arnold, visit www.
meteoritemen.com.)
K n o w Y o u r
S p a c e R o c k s !
Meteorites come in three basic flavors: metallics,
stony-irons, and stones. Within these categories
are several substrata, but here are the basics:
Me ta l l ics
· less than 6% of falls, but majority of finds
· 90% iron, 7% nickel, with trace elements
· strongest attraction to magnets
· easily found with metal detectors and by sight
· remnants from core of asteroids
· find sites: Sikhote-Alin (Siberia); Odessa (Texas);
Campo del Cielo (Argentina); Canyon Diablo
(Arizona)
S t on y- Irons
· rarest, with less than 3% of falls
· attracted to magnets (roughly 50% iron/nickel)
· beautiful interiors (pallasite substrata contain olivine
crystals)
· remnants from mantle of asteroids
· find sites: Atacama Desert (Chile); Brenham (Kansas)
S t ones
· more than 90% of falls but smaller number of finds
· hard to identify because resemble terrestrial rocks
· weak attraction to magnets (up to 23% iron/nickel)
· remnants from surface of asteroids and planets
· Mars and Moon meteorites in this category
· find sites: African deserts, Antarctica, Australia,
Gold Basin (Arizona), Buzzard Coulee (Canada)

E x t r e m e m e d i c i n e
your health and safety in the field
He alth in the
final Frontier
zero gravity and other challenges
by Michael J. Manyak, M.D., FACS
Long before the first manned space flight, humanity
dreamed about civilian space travel. As this sci-fi
fantasy nears reality, major concerns about safety
persist. Explorers Club Fellow Richard Williams, M.D.,
NASA’s Chief Health and Medical Officer, addresses
some major issues of space travel health. Williams has
extensive experience in health care for U.S. astronauts
and development of public policy regarding space
health and travel, and discovered a syndrome related
to balance problems during high G-force flight.
MJM: What are the unique medical problems associated
with space travel
RW: Microgravity, space radiation, and isolation
and confinement all can produce changes
in physiology and behavioral health. Adaptive
physiological changes after exposure to the
space environment can increase the risk of
pathologic conditions on Earth. Some examples
54
are transient adaptations of neurologic and balance
systems (resolved within days of return),
bone-mineral density loss in microgravity,
muscle strength loss in microgravity, possible
immune compromise, and cataract development
years earlier than expected. Other problems related—and
possibly unique—to space travel may
emerge as knowledge and evidence grows.
MJM: Aside from normal exclusions for remote
travel (i.e., cardiopulmonary instability, unstable
diabetes, etc.), are there other medical conditions
that may not impede terrestrial travel that
would preclude space travel
RW: Our experience so far shows that travelers
can experience the space environment for short
durations (minutes to days) with medical conditions
acceptable for travel to remote and extreme
terrestrial environments. But like in extreme
Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million lightyears away. Image courtesy CalTech Palomar observatory.

Earth environments, the longer the duration of
stay, the higher the risk of an underlying medical
disorder causing untoward consequences.
MJM: Isolation and stress could certainly create
psychological problems, especially in someone
with an underlying predisposition or susceptibility.
How do you screen for psychological stability
for long-duration space flight
RW: NASA employs a team of psychiatrists
and psychologists to provide behavioral health
screening, through interview and testing, prior
to selection as an astronaut. NASA behavioral
health personnel support astronauts, and the
flight surgeons taking care of them, throughout
their careers. This behavioral health support intensifies
before, during, and after missions—especially
long-duration missions—with scheduled
opportunities for crew members to interact with
behavioral health specialists.
MJM: Ionizing radiation is more intense in outer
space. How much of a problem will this be and
what measures are being entertained to protect
travelers
RW: Space radiation is different from most terrestrial
sources of ionizing radiation. Space
radiation consists of particles (protons, electrons,
neutrons, and the nuclei of elements)
traveling at light- and near-light-speed. These
particles cause damage at the cellular level as
they pass through tissues. The biological effects
of this unique radiation are not well known,
and research is being pursued to delineate the
short- and long-term risks better. Spacecraft
themselves afford some protection from space
radiation, and spacecraft like the International
Space Station (ISS) contain areas where the
crew members can take shelter in the event of
a space radiation event (such as a solar particle
event). Research for effective shielding materials
and techniques is a priority.
MJM: What are the long-term effects of microgravity
and how will those be addressed or
minimized
RW: The known long-term effects of microgravity
relate mainly to loss of bone-mineral density, cardiovascular
deconditioning, and loss of muscle
strength. These are minimized by aggressive
aerobic and resistive exercise regimens on
orbit, and aggressive rehabilitation upon return.
Evidence concerning long-duration space flight
is still in its early stages, though, and other conditions
and microgravity related health liabilities
might surface.
MJM: How do nutritional requirements for space
travel differ from terrestrial requirements
RW: Nutrition remains one of the great challenges
of human spaceflight. Many astronauts
find that foods taste more bland in space. Some
crewmembers experience weight loss. A great
deal of effort is spent on providing a diet that is
as interesting and varied as possible, while still
fulfilling nutritional requirements.
MJM: What medical issues occur with high-G
forces encountered on launch and reentry
RW: Space Shuttle crew members are exposed
to a maximum G force three times that of gravity.
Despite microgravity deconditioning, crew members
tolerate reentry well. Long-duration crew
members return lying recumbent to minimize the
untoward effects of G forces. The longer the
duration in space, the more difficult G forces are
to tolerate.
MJM: What technologies will be utilized to monitor
astronaut health
RW: On the ISS, we can remotely monitor vital
signs and ECG, perform video telemedicine
activities, perform ultrasonography, and accomplish
limited laboratory work. We are developing
advanced ultrasonic, colorimetric, chromatographic,
video, and other technologies to monitor
astronaut health in real time.
MJM: If an adverse medical event occurs, will
there be instant communication back to earth
to inform and receive instruction on medical
management
RW: Communication delays in low Earth orbit
(LEO) are minimal, though periodic short communications
blackouts can occur. Real time
telemedicine is our primary medical practice
and routinely performed. With exploration
beyond LEO, communications delays ranging
from seconds to 20 minutes will challenge us.
Development of near-autonomous health care
systems to support long-duration flight beyond
LEO is a major goal.
the explorers journal

A FAR OUT ISSUE SPECIAL
E x t r e m e C u i s i n e
food for the epicurean adventurer
F u t u r e F o o d s
dining well beyond the van allen belt
"Among the challenges for interplanetary missions is
that food will have to be resistant to degrading due
to exposure to radiation," says Charles T. Bourland,
former director of NASA's space food program and coauthor
of the recently releASED ASTRONAUT'S COOKBOOK
(SEE PAGE 59). SPACE FOODS, HE NOTES, MUST ALSO be loaded
with antioxidants to counter the effects of radiation
on the crew and have plenty of calcium to arrest
bone loss. ANOTHER THING HE SUGGESTS WE CONSIDER IS
THAT THESE FOODS WILL BE MADE primarily FROM PLANTS
AND CELLULAR MATRICES PROPAGATED IN SPACE, WHICH WILL
RESULT IN A LARGELY VEGETARIAN DIET. NONETHELESS, SAYS
BOURLAND, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE COMPUTER-CONTROLLED
FOOD SYNTHESIZERS MADE POPULAR BY SCIENCE FICTION
MAY ONE DAY OFFER A HOST OF TEXTURED PRODUCTS, which
will PROVIDE TASTE SENSATIONS we fondly ASSOCIATE WITH
FAVORITE DISHES HERE ON EARTH.
56
Such offerings are already taking hold in the culinary
world in the form of "molecular gastronomy," a scientific
discipline launched in 1988 by Oxford physicist
Nicholas Kurti and Hervé This, now scientific director
of the Fondation Science & Culture Alimentaire in
Paris. Its purpose: to use the tools of physics, chemistry,
and biology to investigate the process of culinary
transformation—why, for instance, a soufflé swells.
"Take an egg for example," says This. "If we heat it,
water evaporates and the proteins denature and polymerize
to enclose water. The result is a cooked egg.
But is there another way to do this The answer is yes,
with alcohol, which also denatures proteins. If you put
a whole egg in alcohol, and you are patient enough, the
ethanol will permeate the shell and promote coagulation.
After a month, the result is a strange coagulated
egg called a Baumé, after the French chemist Antoine
1970s artist's concept of human settlement in space. image courtesy NASA

Baumé (1728–1804). It is simple science, but it can
help us make new and better foods. If we are able to
understand why a certain food is tasty and pleasurable,
we can describe its preparation scientifically."
Molecular gastronomy as it is practiced in some of
the foremost kitchens in the world—at Ferran Adrià's El
Bulli in Spain, at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck in the
United Kingdom, and at Pierre Gagnaire's eponymous
restaurant in France—has come to include many ingredients
common in industrial food manufacturing but
seldom seen in a professional kitchen: hydrocolloids,
emulsifying agents, and a host of reactive ingredients.
Among these are calcium chloride (a firming agent
for canned goods) and sodium alginate (a gum product
made from seaweed often used in candy making).
Together they form a stable gel that can be flavored in
all manner of ways. Techniques in large part involve
gellification, emulsification, and spherification—the
mixing of liquids with small amounts of alginate and
dripping the concoction into a bath of calcium chloride.
For the latter, the chemical reaction produces
caviar-like pearls with liquid centers.
Here are a couple of recipes that rely on some of
these techniques and elements so that you get the idea.
The specialized ingredients they contain may be obtained
from: www.albertyferranadria.com/eng/texturas
-info.html or www.koerner-co.com —AMHS
Stefa n D. Cz a pa l ay 's
Tom ato & Goat Cheese
rollups
ingredients:
• 200 ML TOMATO JUICE
• 550 ml distilled water
• 2 grams sodium alginate*
• 8 grams calcium lactate*
• 100 grams soft goat cheese
• HANDFUL FRESH BASIL LEAVES
• GRAPESEED OIL, FOR FRYING basil leaves
• PARMIGIANO REGGIANO, CHILLED IN THE FREEZER
Utensils:
• ~ 20 × 30 cm cookie sheet
• spray bottle
• pastry bag with cake-decorating nozzle or a small ziplock bag, one
bottom corner cut to make 2 cm opening
1. BLEND TOMATO JUICE, 50 ML DISTILLED WATER, AND SODIUM ALGINATE
AND ALLOW TO REST FOR A few OF HOURS FOR AIR TO DISSIPATE.
2. MIX 500 ML WATER AND CALCIUM LACTATE together AND PUT IN A
SPRAY BOTTLE. SPRAY COOKIE SHEET WITH CALCIUM SOLUTION.
3. POUR TOMATO MIXTURE ONTO COOKIE SHEET IN A THIN LAYER. SPRITz
tomato mixture WITH MORE CALCIUM SOLUTION. ALLOW TO REST FOR
10 MINUTES. YOU NOW HAVE A FLEXIBLE TOMATO GELée.
4. Put softened goat cheese in bag and pipe along one of the long
edges of the gelée. Roll up. Garnish with fried basil leaves and
shaved frozen parmigiano reggiano.
Stefa n D. Cz a pa l ay 's
Spik ed space candy
ingredients:
• 450 grams sucrose*
• 50 grams isomalt*
• 170 grams water
• 200 grams of your favorite liquor, such as Grand Marinier
• box of corn starch
Utensils:
• cookie sheet
• non-reactive sauce pan
• candy themometer
• two clean non-reactive dishes
• dehydrator or oven set to lowest possible temperature
1. place sucrose, isomalt, and water in sauce pan and bring to a
rolling boil, 117ºc/242ºF, continuing to clean the sides down
with a spoon.
2. upon reaching 117º/242ºF, add liquor, kill heat, and cover with a
clean dish cloth to trap all alcohol and eliminate evaporation.
3. after a few minutes, pour mixture into one of the clean nonreactive
dishes and then into the other to make sure the
mixture is well combined. DO not use a spoon to stir or the
sugar will crystalize.
4. cover cookie sheet with loosely packed corn starch and pour
mixture on top.
5. place in dehydrator at 40ºc/104ºF for 45 minutes. If you do not
have a dehydrator, use the lowest possible setting on your
oven , heating it for five minutes, killing the heat, and placing
cookie sheet inside for 2 hours. The result is small crunchy
candy balls with liquid liquor inside.
El Bulli's
Fiz z y Lyor a spberry
rocks
ingredients:
• 250 grams sugar
• 100 grams water
• 50 grams fizzy*
• grated peel of 1 lime
• 10 grams powdered Lyoraspberries*
utensils:
• candy thermometer
• nonreactive sauce pan
• silpat-lined container
1. Mix the water and the sugar in a saucepan and cook at
130°C/266ºF until sugar dissolves.
2. Remove from heat and let sit until it reaches 140°C/284ºF.
3. Add Fizzy, powdered Lyoraspberries, and the grated lime peel
and stir so that everything dissolves completely.
4. Pour quickly into silpat-lined container and leave to cool & harden.
5. Break the rocks as desired.
* ingredients and a video showing preparation of the recipe above and more
can be found at www.albertyferranadria.com/eng/videos-and-recipes.html

e v i e w s
edited by Milbry C. Polk
328 pp • New York: Harry n. Abrams, 2009
• ISBN: 978-0-8109-4948-5 • $55 • Reviewed
by Angela M.H. Schuster
In his latest literary offering,
Far Out: A Space-Time
Chronicle, visionary writer/
filmmaker Michael Benson
takes us on an extraordinary
journey through both
space and time—a whirlwind
tour of sorts from nearby
F a r O u t :
A s p a c e - t i m e C h r o n i c l e
by Michael Benson
nebulae only a few hundred
light-years away—and well
within our own Milky Way
galaxy—to the infant stars
of an early universe, still
cradled at the edge of time,
more than 13 billion years
in the past. The visually rich
coffee table volume is illustrated
with more than 200 of
the finest astronomical images—captured
not only by
Hubble but several powerful
and well-known land-based
telescopes, including the
3.6-meter optical/infrared
Canada France Hawaii
Telescope, perched atop
the summit of Mauna Kea.
The chapters in the book are
meant to be read either front
to back or back to front, for
the farther out one goes, the
closer one gets to the beginning
of the story.
Along with essays on the
state of astronomical observation
and current theories
of cosmology, Benson offers
us myriad chronological waypoints
that tell us just what
was going on Earth when
the light we now observe
was issued forth. For some
of the images, astronomers
of the Renaissance were on
trial for herasy. In the case
of Giordano Bruno, he was
burned at the stake in 1592
for believing that the stars
in the sky were suns like our
own, orbited by satellites.
Benson tells us that the sunlight
that touched Bruno’s
face on that May day will
not reach the Pleiades for
another three decades. For
those worried about intelligent
life out there judging us
and our culture from early I
Love Lucy episodes, Benson
says, worry not. What they
are sure to see is a primordial
Earth—as chronologically
primitive as it is distant from
their vantage point.
58

A d a m ’ s T o n g u e
How Humans Made Language,
How Language made Humans
by Derek Bickertone
304 pp • New York: Hill and Wang,
2009 • iSBN-10: 0809022818 ISBN-13: 978-
0809022816 • $27.50
Derek Bickerton, professor
emeritus of linguistics at the
University of Hawaii, writes a
compelling, if irreverent, analysis
of the various theories of
the development of language
in his new book, Adam’s
Tongue, How Humans Made
Language, How Language
made Humans. He takes into
account the recent discoveries
that humans are not alone
in the ability to communicate:
elephants, sea lions, parrots,
great apes, dolphins, ants,
bees, and many other species
use a variety of methods
to transmit information. Yet,
somehow it is only ourselves
who have developed a communication
system that has
allowed us to remain in the
driver’s seat on Earth.
“If humans got language,”
Bickerton writes, “they can
only have gotten it because
REVIEWS
they had some pressing need
for it.” But what was the need
Bickerton debunks most theories
because they do not meet
the criteria of uniqueness
(why did only our ancestors
develop this ability), ecology
(what was happening in the
environment that produced
the spark), credibility (the first
sounds had to have meaning
beyond grooming or alarm
for it to evolve), and selfishness
(using language had to
benefit the speaker and the
group). Bickerton offers some
thought-provoking scenarios
as to how and why language
developed based on how species,
especially our own, are
affected by and also change
their environment, which in
turn causes speciation.
T h e A s t r o n a u t ’ s
C o o k b o o k
by Charles T. Bourland &
Gregory L. Vogt
220 pp • New York: SPringer, 2010 •
ISBN: 978-1-4419-0623-6 • $29.95 • reviewed
by Angela M.H. Schuster
In this delightful compendium—penned
by Charles
T. Bourland, former head of
NASA’s space-food program,
and Gregory Vogt, a NASA
educator and writer—we are
presented with all manner of
things about space-food from
how dishes are prepared for
astronauts to the challenges
of designing food delivery
systems that function in zero
gravity. Along with numerous
recipes that have nourished
our space program participants,
the volume is peppered
with trivia and profiles of various
astronauts and their favorite
delights—shrimp cocktail a
hands-down favorite.
K 2
Life and Death on the World’s
Most Dangerous Mountain
by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts
352 pp • New York: Broadway Books,
2009 • ISBN-10: 0767932501, ISBN-13: 978-
0767932509 • $26
Known as the “savage mountain,”
K2 is the second highest
mountain in the world and one
of the most lethal, claiming one
in four climbers who attempt its
summit. Located in Pakistan’s
the explorers journal

Karakoram Range, K2 is so remote
it is not visible even from
the nearest village. Since its
discovery in 1856 by a survey
team, its height and difficulty
have lured the best and bravest
of mountaineers, including
Ed Viesturs, the first American
to summit all fourteen of the
world’s 8,000-meter peaks
and author of the recently released,
K2, Life and Death on
the World’s Most Dangerous
Mountain. Viestures picked six
K2 expeditions, (1938, 1939,
1953, 1954, 1986, and 2008)
to lay bare the “story behind
the story” in order to explore
the basic tenets of mountaineering:
“risk, ambition, loyalty
to one’s teammates, self-sacrifice,
and the price of glory.”
He begins his story in
August 2008, when several
international expeditions were
poised for the final slog to K2’s
summit. Echoing the Everest
disaster of 1996, things began
to go wrong early on—a
late start by oxygen-deprived
climbers; a pile-up at a narrow
“bottleneck,” where everyone
waits their turn; bad weather
moving in; and the usual problems
of miscommunication.
When the climbers reached
their prescribed turnaround
time, many were still waiting to
ascend. Then disaster struck.
An enormous serac (suspended
glacier) hanging above the
bottleneck, which had been
stable for decades, calved,
roaring down the mountain
and cascading down on the
climbers.
Veisturs recounts the events
of that climb and helps us understand
that there was no one
event that claimed 11 lives. He
60
REVIEWS
also looks at his own experience
climbing K2 and honestly
recounts events that his previous
book, No Shortcuts to the
Top, glossed over. The book is
packed with little-known acts
of incredible heroism, stupidity,
selfishness, profound
friendship, bitter life-long enmity,
feats of daring, amazing
rescues, and horrific loss. He
says he wanted to “imagine my
way into their company, where
I can ponder the what-mighthave-been
of their dilemmas.”
In addition to being a great
read, the book examines the
hubris we all carry with us and
how we come to terms with it.
N o t e b o o k s f r o m
N e w G u i n e a
by Vojtech Novotny
256 pp • Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009 • ISBN-10: 0199561656, ISBN-
13: 978-0199561650 • $34.95
When field ecologist Vojtech
Novotny, a professor of ecology
at the Czech Academy
of Sciences, settled in New
Guinea to study tropical
forests, he had no idea what
the foray would bring over
the course of a decade. For
in addition to the region’s
extraordinary environmental
diversity, he found abundant
culturaldiversity with distinct
groups speaking more than
1,000 languages. His experiences
there are recorded in
Notebooks from New Guinea,
a charming and insightful, if
unusual, riff on the world he
encounters.
Soon after his arrival,
Novotny finds that magic and
spirits permeate local belief
systems, which impact his
own work. He finds he has to
move his entomological lab
because the swamp where it
was built sat atop a masalai
(spirit), which was believed to
be causing sickness in the lab.
When discussing cannibalism,
he tells us “one might argue on
humanitarian grounds against
ideologies that view neighbors
as canned meat on two legs,
(but) eating the deceased
was actually a highly civilized
custom.” Novotny is interested
in the edges of populations,
where he says the most
change is occurring. Whether
speaking of plants, insects,
or people, he talks about a
landscape that is in constant
flux as volcanoes bury and
tsunamis wash away villages,
rivers change course, and mining
companies strip the land.
What Novotny discovered is a
people with a profound sense
of place who have a deep
understanding of their natural
environment, which is being
crunched by “the big yellow
tractor.” His book is a delight,
an ode to a unique part of the
world.

T HE E X PL OR E RS CLUB chap t e r chairs
46 east 70th street, New York, NY 10021 I 212-628-8383 I www.explorers.org
National chapter chairs
interNational chapter chairs
A l a sk a
John J. Kelley, Ph.D.
Tel: 907-479-5989
Fax: 907-479-5990
ffjjk@uaf.edu
Atl a nta
Roy Alexander Wallace
Tel: 404-237-5098
Fax: 404-231-5228
awallace3@bellsouth.net
Chicago / Gre at L a k es
James S. Westerman
Tel: 312-671-2800
Fax: 312-280-7326
jimw@carbit.com
Florida
Jim Thompson
Tel: 727-204-4550
otexplorer@gmail.com
George Rogers Cl a rk
Joseph E. Ricketts
Tel/Fax: 937-885-2477
jer937@aol.com
Gre ater Piedmont
John Adams Hodge
Tel: 803-779-3080
Fax: 803-765-1243
jhodge@hsblawfirm.com
Ne w Engl a nd
Gregory Deyermenjian
Tel: 978-927-8827, ext. 128
Fax: 978-927-9182
paititi@alumni.clarku.edu
North Pacific A l a sk a
Mead Treadwell
Tel: 907-258-7764
Fax: 907-258-7768
meadwell@alaska.net
Northern Californi a
Alan H. Nichols, J.D., D.S.
Tel: 415-789-9348
Fax: 415-789-9348
nicholsalan9@gmail.com
Pacific Northwest
Ed Sobey, Ph.D.
Tel: 206-240-1516
ed.sobey@gmail.com
Phil a delphi a
Doug Soroka
Tel: 215-257-4588
dsoroka@errc.ars.usda.gov
Rock y Mounta in
Karyn Sawyer
Tel: 303-717-8863
karyn@msbasset.com
S a n Diego
Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn
Tel: 760-723-2318
Fax: 760-723-3326
rio@adventure.org
Southern Californi a
David A. Dolan, FRGS
Tel. 949-307-9182
daviddolan@aol.com
Southern Florida
Rosemarie Twinam
Tel: 772-219-1970
Fax: 772-283-3497
RTwinam@aol.com
Southwest
Brian Hanson (Chapter Liaison)
Tel: 512-266-7851
brianphanson@sbcglobal.net
St. Louis
Mabel Purkerson, M.D.
Tel: 314-994-1649
purkerm@msnotes.wustl.edu
Te x a s
C. William Steele
Tel: 214-770-4712
Fax: 972-580-7870
speleosteele@tx.rr.com
Wa shington, DC
Polly A. Penhale, Ph.D.
Tel: 703-292-7420
Fax: 703-292-9080
papenhale@yahoo.com
A rgentin a
Hugo Castello, Ph.D.
Fax: 54 11 4 982 5243/4494
hucastel@mail.retina.ar
Austr a lia-Ne w Ze a l a nd
Christopher A. Bray
Tel: 61-403-823-418
chris@chrisbray.net
Canadi a n
Amanda S. Glickman
Tel: 250-202-2760
amanda@paparumba.org
www.explorersclub.ca
E a st A si a
Steven R. Schwankert
Tel: 86 1350 116 3629
steven@sinoscuba.com
Gre at Brita in
Barry L. Moss
Tel: 44 020 8992 7178
barola2780@aol.com
Norway
Sturla Ellingvag
post@explicofund.org
Pol a nd
Monika M. Rogozinska
Tel: 48-22-8484630
Fax: 48-22-8-484630
m.rogozinska@rp.pl
South A si a
Mandip S. Soin
Tel: 91-11- 26460244
Fax: 91-11-26460245
mandipsinghsoin@gmail.com
W estern Europe
Robert E. Roethenmund
Tel: 49-173-611-66-55
rroeth1@attglobal.net

H a l f M o o n
Henry Hudson and the Voyage that
redrew the map of the New World
62
by Douglas Hunter
329 pp • New York: Bloomsbury Press,
2009 • ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-680-7 • $28 •
reviewed by Carl G. Schuster
If you want to read about
Englishman Henry Hudson’s
1609 New World voyage in
the Dutch ship, Half Moon
(Haelf Maen), this is by far the
best iteration, measuring well
above myriad other offerings
that commemorate the 400th
anniversary of the explorer’s
jaunt up the Hudson River.
Drawing on new primary
research materials, Douglas
Hunter recounts the voyage
and delves into its purported
purpose in this colorful and
reasoned narrative. Although
Hunter cites important sources,
he falls short of completing the
narrative by extracting from the
materials what they say about
Hudson, but missing the larger
picture: what these say about
Hudson’s close ties to the
English crown.
Hunter mentions the
REVIEWS
oddness of the Dutch hiring
Hudson, but says little of the
fact that the navigator actually
hijacked the Half Moon,
returning it not to Holland as
per his contractual orders but
to Dartmouth, the English naval
station to which privateers
delivered their prizes for assay.
While Hunter does not
state directly that the 1609
venture was a black bag
job, this is the inescapable
conclusion. Hudson was not
a self-employed “explorer/adventurer,”
going hat in hand to
wealthy merchants looking for
sponsorship. Instead, he was
part of a well-oiled exercise
in the emerging science of
geography, sponsored by the
court—and the highest levels
of English intelligence—and involving
the brightest and most
enlightened minds of the age.
T h e B e t t e r t o E a t
y o u W i t h :
Fear in the Animal World
by Joel Berger
360 pp • Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2008 • ISBN-10: 0226043630, ISBN-
13: 978-0226043630 • $29
More than 125 years ago,
Alfred Russell Wallace
recognized that we live in “a
zoologically impoverished
world.” In his book, The Better
to Eat You With: Fear in the
Animal World, wildlife conservationist
Joel Berger examines
how this impoverishment came
to be and the conservation
policies needed to redress
it. Berger reminds us that the
purpose of conservation is to
“hold on to what we have and
to build what we have lost.”
To do this, he says, we have
to “understand animals, their
natural history, and the threats
to their existence.” Among the
examples he gives is that of
the reintroduction of wolves to
Yellowstone after a 70-year absence.
Before the wolves were
released, many wondered how
the moose, elk, birds, and other
animals would react when they
first encountered their ancient
enemy Would they even
remember
Berger recounts an experiment
that involved playing
sounds of unfamiliar animals to
gauge reactions. Buffalo hardly
reacted to the sounds of an
ancient predator, lions. When
roars of a more recent predator
filled the air, however, fear was
evident in the animals’ levels of
stress hormones and their rush
to protect their own.
Berger roamed across
North America, Russia, Asia,
Patagonia, and the Arctic,
seeing a landscape that has
changed profoundly in the last
century as large animals have
disappeared. If we continue
to kill an average of 300,000
predators every year, he warns,
this will have an adverse effect
on the natural world, and ultimately
on us.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB LEGACY SOCIE T Y
“I joined the Legacy Society
because it is an integral part
of The Explorers Club and
vital to ensuring its future
success. Join us!”
—Roland R. Puton, MR’87
Roland Puton at a mountain pass during the Minya
Konka trek, Tibet, September 2006.
Robert J. Atwater
Capt. Norman L. Baker
Barbara Ballard
Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.
Samuel B. Ballen
Mark Gregory Bayuk
Daniel A. Bennett
Josh Bernstein
John R. Bockstoce, D.Phil.
Bjorn G. Bolstad
Capt. Bruce M. Bongar, Ph.D.
Garrett R. Bowden
Harry Davis Brooks
Lt. Col. Jewell Richard Browder*
August “Augie” Brown
John C.D. Bruno
Lee R. Bynum*
Virginia Castagnola Hunter
Julianne M. Chase, Ph.D.
Maj. Gen. Arthur W. Clark,
USAF (Ret.)
Leslie E. Colby
Jonathan M. Conrad
Catherine Nixon Cooke
Constance Difede
Mr. & Mrs. James Donovan
Col. William H. Dribben, USA
(Ret.)*
Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D.
Amelia Earhart*
Lee M. Elman
Michael L. Finn
Robert L. Fisher, Ph.D.
John W. Flint
Kay Foster
James M. Fowler
W. Roger Fry
Alfred C. Glassell, Jr.
George W. Gowen
Randall A. Greene
Jean Charles Michel Guite
Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn
Allan C. Hamilton
Scott W. Hamilton
O. Winston “Bud” Hampton,
Ph.D.
Brian P. Hanson
James H. Hardy, M.D.
Judith Heath
Robert A. Hemm
Gary “Doc” Hermalyn, Ph.D.
Sir Edmund P. Hillary, KG,
ONZ, KBE*
Lotsie Hermann Holton
Charles B. Huestis
Robert Edgar Hyman
J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust
Robert M. Jackson, M.D.
Kenneth M. Kamler, M.D.
Prince Joli Kansil
Lorie M.L. Karnath
Anthony G. Kehle, III
Anne B. Keiser
Kathryn Kiplinger
Thomas R. Kuhns, M.D.
Hannah B. Kurzweil
Carl C. Landegger
Robert M. Lee
Michael S. Levin
Florence Lewisohn Trust
J. Roland Lieber
Michael Luzich
James E. Lockwood, Jr.*
Jose Loeb
John H. Loret, Ph.D., D.Sc.
Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D.
Robert H. Malott
Leslie Mandel
Robert E. McCarthy*
George E. McCown
Capt. Alfred S. McLaren,
Ph.D., USN (Ret.)
Lorus T. Milne, Ph.D.
James M. Mitchelhill*
Arnold H. Neis
Walter P. Noonan
Martin T. Nweeia, D.D.S.
Dr. John W. Olsen
Kathleen Parker
Alese & Morton Pechter
William E. Phillips
Prof. Mabel L. Purkerson, M.D.
Roland R. Puton
Mabel Dorn Reader*
Dimitri Rebikoff*
John T. Reilly, Ph.D.
Adrian Richards, Ph.D.
Bruce E. Rippeteau, Ph.D.
Merle Greene Robertson, Ph.D.
Otto E. Roethenmund
James Beeland Rogers, Jr.
Rudy L. Ruggles, Jr.
Gene M. Rurka
Avery B. Russell
David J. Saul, Ph.D.
Willets H. Sawyer, III
A. Harvey Schreter*
Mr. & Mrs. Donald Segur
Walter Shropshire, Jr., Ph.D.,
M.Div.
Theodore M. Siouris
William J. L. Sladen, M.D.,
D.Phil.
Susan Deborah Smilow
Sally A. Spencer
Pamela L. Stephany
Ronnie & Allan Streichler
Arthur O. Sulzberger
Vernon F. Taylor, III
Mitchell Terk, M.D.
C. Frederick Thompson, II
James “Buddy” Thompson
Marc Verstraete Van de Weyer
Robert C. Vaughn
Ann Marks Volkwein
Leonard A. Weakley, Jr.
William G. Wellington, Ph.D.
Robert H. Whitby
Julius Wile*
Holly Williams
Francis A. Wodal*
* Deceased
A s l on g a s t h e r e i s Th e Ex pl or e r s Clu b,
your n a m e w i l l b e li s ted a s a m e m b e r of Th e Legac y Societ y.
THE LEGACY SOCIET Y COMMIT TEE
Theodore M.Siouris (Chairman), Robert J. Atwater,
August “Augie” Brown, George W. Gowen, Scott W. Hamilton,
Brian P. Hanson, Peter Hess, Helen Kahn, Kathryn Kiplinger,
William E. Phillips, Mabel L. Purkerson, Jack Rinehart, and Jim Thompson
for additional
information
contact
the explorers club
46 East 70th Street
New York, NY 10021
212-628-8383
development@explorers.org

W H A T W E R E T H E Y T H I N K I N G
great moments in exploration as told to Jim Clash
last man on the moon
Gene Cernan
On December 14, 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan
stepped up from the lunar surface onto the Lunar
module ladder. He left behind a world not visited since
by humans. He was the twelfth and final astronaut to
walk on the moon. Now a retired Navy captain, Cernan,
76, recalls the event like it was yesterday.
JC: Tell us about stepping on the Moon.
GC: Unless you do it, you haven’t done it. Having
come close on Apollo 10, it was important to
cover that last 47,000 feet. Once I finally stepped
on the Moon, no matter what was to come of the
next three days—or the rest of my life—nobody
could take those steps from me. People ask how
long will they be there and I say forever, however
long forever is, like my daughter’s initials [TDC]
that I scribbled in the sand.
JC: You’re best known for your last step.
GC: The more nostalgic, perhaps, were those final
steps. I looked back at Earth in all its splendor—I
think of it as sitting on God’s front porch looking
home—then down at my last footprint and
realized, “Hey, I’m not coming this way again.”
It’s not like going to grandma’s farm and coming
back next summer. I hesitated, asking what was
64
the meaning of the last three days, not just to me,
but to you, and all who would follow. I didn’t have
an answer then, and I don’t now.
JC: Any regrets about your time on the Moon
GC: I left my Hasselblad camera there, with the
lens pointing up, the idea being someday someone
would come back and find out how much
deterioration solar cosmic radiation had on the
glass. Going up the ladder, I never took a photo
of my last footstep. Wouldn’t it have been better
to take the camera with me, get the shot, take the
film pack off, and then throw the camera away
JC: It is interesting that the first and last men on
the Moon are Purdue alumni.
GC: Neil [Armstrong] and I shared an office before
we flew. And we’ve become pretty good friends
since. He has been hassled a bit for being less
free with his personal life and the media. There
are lots of people who could have been first on
the Moon. But nobody could have handled the
after-effects with more dignity than Neil.
More of Jim Clash’s columns and videos can be found at www.
forbes.com/tothelimits or www.youtube.com/jimclash.
Eugene A. Cernan walks toward the Lunar Rover at the Taurus-Littrow, landing site of NASA’s sixth and
final Apollo lunar landing mission. Photograph by Harrison H. Schmitt, courtesy NASA.

the explorers journal
The official quarterly of
The Explorers Club since 1921
www.explorers.org
Dare to go
where no one
has gone before!
subscribe online to The Explorers Journal today!
From vast ocean depths to
the frontiers of outer space,
The Explorers Journal offers
firsthand reporting from
those pushing the limits
of knowledge and human
endurance.
Founded in 1904 to promote
exploration “by all means
possible,” The Explorers
Club is an international
organization dedicated to
the advancement of field
exploration and scientific
inquiry. Among our members
are leading pioneers in
oceanography, mountaineering,
archaeology, and the planetary
and environmental sciences.
image by Cristian Donoso, diving in western patagonia