The Genius of Louis Pasteur

They recommend that "Congress authorize NASA to create
a fellowship program in space science and engineering.
This will help attract the best students to pursue careers in
these disciplines and permit access to space careers by
highly qualified young people regardless of their financial
situation." They also suggest that "NASA undertake a program
to upgrade university space research equipment."
A Question of Leadership
From Sept. 13, 1985 to Jan. 17, 1986, the National Commission
on Space held 15 public forums to allow the American
public to voice their suggestions and comments on the
future of the U.S. space program. Thousands of citizens
participated directly in these meetings or sent their ideas to
the Commission in writing.
Rather than issuing a technical government document
with a limited printing, the Commission has had its report
commercially published in paperback, available in bookstores
for the American public to read. Last month Paine
announced the Commission's plan to get a copy of the
report into every high school in the nation. A half-hour
videotape film on the 50-year program is available free of
charge from the Commission for use by schools and others.
2
This was not Paine's first experience in trying to project
long-range goals for the space program. As the head of
NASA during the time of the first Apollo lunar landing, he
was involved in the September 1969 study titled, "America's
Next Decades in Space," which presented four possible
scenarios for the post-Apollo future of the United States
space program. At the fastest rate, NASA projected that the
first manned expedition to Mars could take place in 1981.
This would have been preceded by a space station in 1975,
which by 1980, could have housed 50 astronauts and crew.
An Earth-to-orbit shuttle would be operational by 1975, the
report suggested, and a space tug to go to the Moon would
be ready a year later.
Needless to say, this program plan was never implemented.
The program was aborted because of the same
fallacious budget-cutting economic policies that the Reagan
administration is trying to foist on the space program
today. This time, Paine and the other members of the Commission
have decided to take their plan to the American
people, to garner broad-based support for an aggressive
series of space goals.
If policymakers in Washington had enough vision to look
50, or even 20 years into the future, they would see how the
decisions they make today—to replace the Challenger orbiter,
to build the space station on schedule, to upgrade
the space science programs—will determine whether the
nation can start implementing the necessary Moon-Mars
programs outlined in the Commission report in the future.
It is simply a question of taking the political leadership.
Marsha Freeman, director of industrial research for the
Fusion Energy Foundation, writes frequently on space policy.
Notes
1. Pioneering the Space Frontier is published by Bantam Books, Inc. (New
York) and sells for $14.95. See order blank on page 58.
2. The videotape is available from Pacific Productions, 1054 31st St., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20007 at $29. See ad, page 63.
38 September-October 1986 FUSION
Space Commission
An interview with Tom Paine,
Dr.Thomas O. Paine was the administrator of NASA in
July 1969 at the time of the first Apollo landing. Paine was
president of Northrop Corporation from 1976 to 1982, and
is now president of a Los Angeles consulting firm, Thomas
Paine Associates. He is interviewed here by Marsha Free-
Question: Do you think that the Commission report will be
able to influence policy decisions in Washington now, in this
time of budget constraint?
I think the report has a very difficult lifetime to get through.
Reports of the type we have just produced have a fairly
standard reception. That is, the day they're written, they
are called a "rosy view of the future," "much too far out,"
"Oh, my Cod, those things could never be achieved." But
I think if we were to be reviewing our report 10 or 15 years
from now, we would probably be getting the opposite criticism—"they
failed to foresee a lot of these new things that
have been coming along; the report is obsolete; it didn't
go far enough." In writing a report like this, you have to
face the fact that you're probably not going to be bold
enough in the long run, but you're probably going to be
too bold in the short run.
Question: I have here a short quote from Joseph Loft us from
the Johnson Space Center. "What's been achieved in space is
extraordinary. It you laid out a proposal to do in the next 25
years what has been done in the past 25 years, no one would
believe you."
That's my favorite quote. I thought that was a terrific
observation, and it's true. If we had said in the Space Commission
report that 8 years from now we were going to land
people on the Moon, we would have been laughed out of
Washington. Yet that is precisely what we said in 1962, and
it's precisely what we did! In many ways, if we were to
propose today to do what we've done for the last 25 years,
today's America, today's Washington leadership, in many
ways, would say, "Oh that's much too bold. You could
never do that." Yet the fact of the matter is, we've done it.
And I've had people tell me, "let me see those pictures of
astronauts riding on the Moon in a vehicle. I can hardly
believe it." They've already forgotten that that was all done,
16,17 years ago.
Question: Looking at launch requirements up to the mid-1990s,
including the construction of the space station, the testing and
deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the other