Your letter was one of many which are reaching me every day, but it
has touched me more deeply than all the others because it came so much
from the depths of a searching mind and a compassionate heart.
I will try to answer your question as best as I possibly can.
First, however, I would like to say what great admiration I have for
you, and for all your many brave sisters, because you are dedicating
your lives to the noblest cause of man: help for his fellowmen who are
in need.
You asked in your letter how I can suggest the expenditure of billions
of dollars for a voyage to Mars, at a time when many children on this
earth are starving to death.
I know that you do not expect an answer such as "Oh, I did not know
that there are children dying from hunger, but from now on I will
desist from any kind of space research until mankind has solved that
problem!"
In fact, I have known of famined children long before I knew that a
voyage to the planet Mars is technically feasible; however, I believe,
like many of my friends, that traveling to the moon and eventually to
Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now
and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute
more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on
earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and
discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding
tangible results.
Before trying to describe in more detail how our space program is
contributing to the solution of our earthly problems, I would like to
relate briefly a supposedly true story which may help support the
argument.
About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany.
He was one of the benign counts and he gave a large part of his income
to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated because poverty was
abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague
which ravaged the country frequently.
One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little
laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so
that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his
laboratory.
He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in
tubes; and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects. The
count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be
observed with the strong magnification and which he had never seen
before.
He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to
become a member of the count's household, and to devote henceforth all
his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a
special employee of the count.
The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the
count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without
purpose. "We are suffering from this plague," they said, "while he is
paying that man for a useless hobby!"
But the count remained firm. "I give you as much as I can afford," he
said, "but I also support this man and his work, because I know that
someday something will come out of it!"
Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of
similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is
well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other
invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the
plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world
is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.
The count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and
discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than
he could have contributed by giving all he could possibly spare to his
plague-ridden community.
The situation which we are facing today is similar in many respects.
The President of the United States is spending about $200 billion in
his yearly budget. This money goes to health, education, welfare,
urban renewal, highways, transportation, foreign aid, defense,
conservation, science, agriculture and many installations inside and
outside the country.
About 1.6 per cent of this national budget was allocated to space
exploration this year. The space program includes Project Apollo, and
many other smaller projects in space physics, space astronomy, space
biology, planetary projects, earth resources projects, and space
engineering.
To make this expenditure for the space program possible, the average
American taxpayer with $10,000 income per year is paying about 30 tax
dollars for space.
The rest of his income, $9,970, remains for his subsistence, his
recreation, his savings, his taxes and all his other expenditures.
You will probably ask now: "Why don't you take 5 or 3 or 1 dollar out
of the 30 space dollars which the average American taxpayer is paying
and send these dollars to the hungry children?"
To answer this question, I have to explain briefly how the economy of
this country works. The situation is very similar in other countries.
The government consists of a number of departments (Interior; Justice;
Health, Education and Welfare; Transportation; Defense; and others),
and of bureaus (National Science Foundation; National Aeronautics and
Space Administration; and others).
All of them prepare their yearly budgets according to their assigned
missions, and each of them must defend its budget against extremely
severe screening by congressional committees, and against heavy
pressure for economy from the Bureau of the Budget and the President.
When the funds are finally appropriated by Congress, they can be spent
only for the line items specified and approved in the budget.
The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
naturally, can contain only items directly related to aeronautics and
space. If this budget were not approved by Congress, the funds
proposed for it would not be available for something else; they would
simply not be levied from the taxpayer, unless one of the other
budgets had obtained approval for a specific increase which would then
absorb the funds not spent for space.
You may realize from this brief discourse that support for hungry
children, or rather a support in addition to what the United States is
already contributing to this very worthy cause in the form of foreign
aid, can be obtained only if the appropriate department submits a
budget line item for this purpose and if this line item is then
approved by Congress.
You may ask now whether I personally would be in favor of such a move
by our government. My answer is an emphatic yes. Indeed, I would not
mind it at all if my annual taxes were increased by a number of
dollars for the purpose of feeding hungry children wherever they may
live.
I know that all of my friends feel the same way; however, we could not
bring such a program to life merely by desisting from making plans for
voyages to Mars. On the contrary, I even believe that by working for
the space program I can make some contribution to the relief and
eventual solution of such grave problems as poverty and hunger on
earth.
Basic to the hunger problem are two functions: the production of food
and distribution of food. Food production by agriculture, cattle
ranching, ocean fishing and other large scale operations is efficient
in some parts of the world, but drastically deficient in many others.
For example, large areas of land could be utilized far better if
efficient methods of watershed control, fertilizer use, weather
forecasting, fertility assessment, plantation programming, field
selection, planting habits, timing of cultivation, crop survey and
harvest planning were applied.
The best tool for the improvement of all these functions, undoubtedly,
is the artificial earth satellite. Circling the globe at a high
altitude, it can screen wide areas of land within a short time; it can
observe and measure a large variety of factors indicating the status
and conditions of crops, soil, droughts, rainfall, snow cover, etc.,
and it can radio this information to ground stations for appropriate
use.
It has been estimated that even a modest system of earth satellites
equipped with earth resources sensors, working within a program for
worldwide agricultural improvement, will increase the yearly crops by
an equivalent of many billions of dollars.
The distribution of the food to the needy is a completely different
problem. The question is not so much one of shipping volume; it is one
of international cooperation.
The ruler of a small nation may feel very uneasy about the prospects
of having large quantities of food shipped into his country by a large
nation, simply because he fears that along with the food there may
also be an import of influence and foreign power.
Efficient relief from hunger, I am afraid, will not come before the
boundaries between nations have become less divisive than they are
today.
I do not believe that space flight will accomplish this miracle
overnight; however, the space program is certainly among the most
promising and powerful agents working in this direction.
Let me only remind you of the recent near-tragedy of Apollo 13. When
the time of the crucial reentry of the astronauts approached, the
Soviet Union discontinued all Russian radio transmissions in the
frequency bands used by the Apollo Project in order to avoid any
possible interference, and Russian ships stationed themselves in the
Pacific and the Atlantic oceans in case an emergency rescue would
become necessary.
Had the astronaut capsule touched down near a Russian ship, the
Russians would undoubtedly have expended as much care and effort in
their rescue as if Russian cosmonauts had returned from a space trip.
If Russian space travelers should ever be in a similar emergency
situation, Americans would do the same, without any doubt.
Higher food production, through survey and assessment from orbit, and
better food distribution through improved international relations, are
only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life
on earth.
I would like to quote two other examples: stimulation of technological
development and generation of scientific knowledge.
The requirements for high precision and for extreme reliability which
must be imposed upon the components of a moon-traveling spacecraft are
entirely unprecedented in the history of engineering.
The development of systems which meet these severe requirements has
provided us a unique opportunity to find new materials and methods, to
invent better technical systems, to improve manufacturing procedures,
to lengthen the lifetimes of instruments and even to discover new laws
of nature.
All this newly acquired technical knowledge is also available for
applications to earth-bound technologies. Every year, about a thousand
technical innovations generated in the space program find their ways
into our earthly technology where they lead to better kitchen
appliances and farm equipment, better sewing machines and radios,
better ships and airplanes, better weather forecasting and storm
warning, better communications, better medical instruments, better
utensils and tools for everyday life.
Presumably, you will ask now why we must develop first a life support
system for our moon-traveling astronauts, before we can build a
remote-reading sensor system for heart patients.
The answer is simply: significant progress in the solution of
technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by
first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong
motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs
men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by
including chains of other reactions.
Space flight, without any doubt, is playing exactly this role. The
voyage to Mars will certainly not be a direct source of food for the
hungry; however, it will lead to so many new technologies and
capabilities that the spinoffs from this project alone will be worth
many times the cost of its implementation.
Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great
need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the
conditions of human life on earth.
We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and
physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these
problems which threaten man's life: hunger, disease, contamination of
food and water, pollution of the environment.
We need more young men and women who choose science as a career, and
we need better support for those scientists who have the talent and
the determination to engage in fruitful research work.
Challenging research objectives must be available, and sufficient
support for research projects must be provided. Again, the space
program with its wonderful opportunities to engage in truly
magnificent research studies of the moon and planets, of physics and
astronomy, of biology and medicine, is an almost ideal catalyst which
induces the reaction between the motivation for scientific work,
opportunities to observe exciting phenomena of nature, and material
support needed to carry out the research effort.
Among all the activities which are directed, controlled and funded by
the American government, the space program is certainly the most
visible, and probably the most debated activity, although it consumes
only 1.6 per cent of the total national budget and less than one-third
of 1 per cent of the gross national product.
As a stimulant and catalyst for the development of new technologies,
and for research in the basic sciences, it is unparalleled by any
other activity. In this respect, we may even say that the space
program is taking over a function which for three or four thousand
years has been the sad prerogative of wars.
How much human suffering can be avoided if nations, instead of
competing with their bomb-dropping fleets of airplanes and rockets,
compete with their moon-traveling space ships! This competition is
full of promise for brilliant victories, but it leaves no room for the
bitter fate of the vanquished which breeds nothing but revenge and new
wars.
Although our space program seems to lead us away from our earth and
out toward the moon, the sun, the planets and the stars, I believe
that none of these celestial objects will find as much attention and
study by space scientists as our earth.
It will become a better earth, not only because of all the new
technological and scientific knowledge which we will apply to the
betterment of life, but also because we are developing a far deeper
appreciation of our earth, of life, and of man.
The photograph which I enclose with this letter shows a view of our
earth as seen from Apollo 8 when it orbited the moon at Christmas,
1968.
Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this
picture may be the most important one.
It opened our eyes to the fact that our earth is a beautiful and most
precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place
for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by
the bleak nothingness of space.
Never before did so many people recognize how limited our earth really
is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological
balance.
Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder
and louder, warning of the grave problems that confront man in our
times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production,
water control, overpopulation.
It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous
tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided
us the first good look at our own planet.
Very fortunately, though, the space age not only holds out a mirror in
which we can see ourselves; it also provides us with the technologies,
the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack
these tasks with confidence.
What we learn in our space program, I believe, is fully supporting
what Albert Schweitzer had in mind when he said:
"I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope."
My very best wishes will always be with you and with your children.
