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The Way of the Explorer
significant statistically, and would suggest something about the state of
each participant’s state of belief during the process. What we could not
control was the influence of cultural bias (about which many books have
now been published), that was bred into the individual belief systems of
those reporters and editors who would interpret for the public at large
and publish their own opinions. In classical physics, the individual’s belief
system does not matter. However, in this realm of science, I would later
discover that it not only comes into play, but it is also fundamental.
The NASA administration never chastised me for the project, and a
large number of space center personnel even dropped by my office, furtively,
to inquire about the experiment. But there was forever afterward
an undercurrent of disregard for such studies by nearly all the administrators
at NASA—all, that is, but Wernher von Braun. One day after leaving
quarantine, he contacted me privately to tell me he understood what I
wanted to do. He then hinted at the possibility of using some of NASA’s
resources so that we might be able to accomplish some of this work. What
he wanted me to do was to conduct a survey and assemble a list of NASA
facilities, people, and equipment that might be useful for some of the
consciousness studies that consumed both our interests. Unfortunately,
before my survey was well underway, von Braun left NASA for private
industry, thoroughly discouraged that the budgets for space efforts were
being reduced. There would be no lunar surface missions after Apollo 17,
and certainly no mission to Mars. The American public had had their fill.
Therefore, there would be no need for the construction of the huge rockets
needed to take man throughout the solar system in the foreseeable
future. So von Braun simply left.
After the quarantine, I had a six-month obligation with NASA headquarters
to be on call for public relations work. There were visits to foreign
capitals, the Paris Airshow, educational projects, and politicians who
had enough budget clout with NASA to pry an astronaut loose for an
appearance with his constituents. I had also agreed to back up the Apollo
16 crew, knowing that this would be my last crew assignment with NASA
unless I was willing to wait another decade for a shuttle to fly. Ground
assignments within government simply held no appeal.
The atmosphere was tumultuous at NASA in 1971, as a bureaucratic
inertia was setting in. Kennedy’s mandate 10 years earlier had challenged
the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It was
declared primarily for political reasons, and it wasn’t an open-ended mandate
for a series of missions that would initiate exploration of the solar
system at large. The decade had drawn to a close, the project had come in
on time and below budget. Now money was the big obstacle, and the
American people decided, more or less by default, that the next epoch of
exploration was not yet at hand.