SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE JULY 14, 1997 TRANSCRIPT

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After a poetic reading by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, a panel discussion on why we just can't ignore the lure of exploring new frontiers, most recently the red, rocky surface of Mars.

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JIM LEHRER: Robert Pinsky. As regular viewers know, he's offering poetic additions to the NewsHour from time to time.

More now on discovery. Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of a trilogy on Mars. Author and producer Ann Druyan, who worked on projects with her late husband, Carl Sagan, she's co-producer of the new movie "Contact," based on a Sagan story. Valerie Neal, the curator of "Well Next, Columbus" exhibit at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington. And science journalist Jim Hartz, who covered NASA for many years, hosted the "Today Show" on NBC. He's now the host of the PBS series "Innovation." Ms. Neal, the thrill of discovery remains in us all, just like it did in the 16th century?

VALERIE NEAL, National Air & Space Museum: I believe it does, and we see it at our museum every day as literally thousands of people come into the National Air & Space Museum. Their coming is itself an act of exploration. They come to be on a mission to see something, have a direct encounter with something real they know about; or they come using their leisure time to expand their horizons and learn something new. So we see it alive and well every single day.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Druyan, what drives it? What do you think drives this? Is it the idea that there are other--there may be life out there in space somewhere?

ANN DRUYAN, Author/Producer: Well, of course, that's a powerful motivation, but I think the hardy enterprise that Spenser was writing about is in part the permanent revolution that is science; that error-correcting mechanism which is revealing these undreamt of worlds, and it resonates with everything in us. We have always been wanderers and we are wanderers still.

JIM LEHRER: But if were not--like say Mars--be specific--if we were not looking for life, would the drive and the excitement that we've all experienced these last several days be there, do you think?

ANN DRUYAN: Yes. Because even in the absence of life, which, of course, it's very possible on Mars, it's the potential of the frontier. I think that our ancestors were not always looking for life, but they were looking for new ecological niches to tenant, and I think that Mars, which reminds us so much of Death Valley when we look at that rocky prospect, is a great candidate.

JIM LEHRER: Kim Stanley Robinson, you've written novels about--about Mars. How does the science fiction version of Mars compare with the real version that we've been looking at?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, Author, Mars Trilogy: Well, the science fiction version I wrote about was based on the real data that we had from Mariner and Viking, so it's really quite a bit the same--at the beginning anyway.

JIM LEHRER: But what do you think drives this curiosity and this excitement that has been exemplified in all the news media and everything else that we've experienced over Mars? Is it a basic thing about curiosity and discovery, or is there more to it, just because it has to do with space?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: I think it's a basic thing that we like to look at landscapes, and that as primates, we like to look at new landscapes, and we don't really get to do that anymore because the Earth has been revealed to us. So those first pictures from Pathfinder were an extraordinary experience, one that's not really available to us very often anymore, a new landscape.

The panorama being as varied and interesting looking as it was compared to Viking, I think is one component of this excitement. I also think that the announcement last year that there was possibly life that lived on Mars in the past is a big part of this excitement also.

JIM LEHRER: So you would agree with those who say that--if we weren't looking for life, it wouldn't be quite as exciting?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: Yes. You know, when we went to the Moon and the pictures came back and people looked at that and they said immediately, boy, this is a dead world, and they were right about that. And now, you look at these pictures from Mars, and everybody's commented, it does look kind of Earth-like, although they're not really remembering, I think, the thinness of the atmosphere.

I mean, it is a very hostile environment there. But people say, wow, that looks like it could be lived on, and that also is fundamentally true. So life is a big component in this, yes.

JIM LEHRER: Life a big component in this, do you think, Jim Hartz, as a journalist?

JIM HARTZ, Journalist: Oh, yes, I think so. It did begin back with the rock last summer, with the possibility of their being fossil life inside that. That's still an open question obviously. But I think there is another factor as well, and that is the kind of American tradition of rooting for the underdog. Here was this mission that cost less really than $200 million, which is a lot of money but by NASA standards and by the Moon flight standards, is really not very much.

You had this team of young, bright scientists and engineers out there at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who had taken on an extraordinary--nobody had ever thought about driving a spacecraft directly ballistically into the atmosphere of a planet and then bouncing it with a bunch of balls, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen times, it's going to turn right side up, and then this little--little creature.

There's some anthropomorphic aspects of the little Sojourner, I think, comes out, and he's got his little lasers out there, and he's got his cameras, and he's tooling around, and he runs into the rock the wrong way. And you can't help but share in the excitement of those young people out there who have pulled off quite a coup, I think.

JIM LEHRER: Somebody suggested, Jim, that what makes this so different too is that these are not astronauts; these are not heroic astronauts; these guys work with this stuff back in laboratories.

JIM HARTZ: They're young scientists and engineers who had an idea, sold it to the agency, and carried it off almost flawlessly. Now, they're having some problems with the software, which I think probably will be solved. It sort of comes and goes. But it seems to me like from the point of view of Americans every day that they're up there is kind of, you know, gravy. The original mission was just to get there to test the equipment, and there's a lot more that are going to come beyond it.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Neal, people are coming to the--now if they come to the Smithsonian--I mean, you've got the history of space exploration and all that--but you keep it updated, do you not?

VALERIE NEAL: We certainly try to stay current with the dynamic world of space flights, space exploration, as well as the world of aviation. And we're fortunate in that right now we have a whole gallery dedicated to exploration. We have a Mars terrain in that gallery where people find themselves--

JIM LEHRER: Are you updating with these pictures?

VALERIE NEAL: We are. We have models of the Pathfinder lander and the rover. We have a link to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so that as the images come public, they're coming right into the museum. People can come into the gallery, feel as if they're on Mars almost. It's even cooler in that gallery.

JIM LEHRER: I'm sure it is. But what about--what about the point we've been talking about, that based on your observation of the folks who come to the Smithsonian, is it different because these are not astronauts, because they're folks who are running little toys and they're scientists?

VALERIE NEAL: I don't know if it's different, but I think this mission does demonstrate that the dichotomy between human and robotic exploration is really rather artificial; that in this robotic expedition you have a tremendous human component, as Jim was just saying. And the robots are operating as a result of human intention and human will, and human decision making.

At the same time machines are tremendously versatile, rugged observers and data collectors. And they can do things for us, provide a tremendous wealth of data back. So I think a mission like this breaks down the kind of artificial barrier in the argument between human--proponents of human exploration and proponents of robotic exploration. It's a partnership.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Druyan, where does it go from here now? Do we build factories and houses and schools and television stations on Mars? Do we go further? What does this open up that we didn't know about?

ANN DRUYAN: Well, I think it reminds me a little bit of a toddler who's clinging to its mother's legs and then it in 1976 ventures forth from the Viking project, and then there's a crisis of nerves, and it'll run back, scurrying back to the mother, and then another foray. I think this is the first of many forays.

I'm very impressed with Dan Goldin's leadership of NASA and his plans for ongoing every two year a major mission of safe exploration, robotic safe exploration, and I think that the--getting up to speed of the international space station and the beginning of a kind of healthy presence in space as a mounting platform for greater journeys of exploration, of human exploration, I think we're at the beginning of another Golden Age, and I know that it will stimulate and excite our kids to start really studying science in a way that we were by Apollo in those early missions.

JIM LEHRER: A Golden Age for what purpose?

ANN DRUYAN: Well, this--you know, as a society, we used to be known as being capable of doing the impossible. That was one of our virtues. Kennedy's mandate to walk on the Moon was something out of Hereditist--like a mythical Persian King would ask his people to accomplish the impossible.

And that ambition, boldness, in a benign enterprise with, of course, undeniable spinoff political competition and maybe some not so lofty aspects to it, that willingness to reach for something so far away stimulated an enormous cultural explosion.

And I think that you don't have to go to stickless frying pans or Tang. You can see the kind of inspiration that it provides for our kids so that they know why they're studying, why they're going to school. And, of course, a program of ambitious science education really has to be part of this in order for it to really work.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Robinson, should we go on and on and on and on?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: In my opinion, I think we could kind of regard the solar system as an achievable goal for humanity. The rest of the universe is--

JIM LEHRER: But for what purpose?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: Well, these are places that could become second homes or vacation homes. Mars, in particular, is very well suited for the process of terra farming, giving it an earthlike environment, and this as a project would actually teach us a tremendous amount about planetology and how environments work that we're going to need to know to manage the Earth in the next couple of centuries where there's going to be some environmental problems bearing down on us, so that the next couple of centuries could be regarded perhaps as a kind of a choke point in history, where if we can get through that period, then we might, indeed, enter a kind of Golden Age.

So Mars, I think, serves as a way to study the Earth. I think that's the most important way, a way to think about the Earth and also a way to appreciate the Earth; that you see those pictures from Pathfinder, and you think, oh, that's a stunning sight, and then you really can walk outdoors and see a much more stunning sight right outside your home; that the Earth is really the most beautiful planet in the system. And so just spreading around to the other ones is sort of just a way of enjoying our own world better.

JIM LEHRER: Jim Hartz, you've covered this whole space exploration almost from the very beginning. Do you see this as a new--as a new jumping off spot?

JIM HARTZ: I'm not sure.

JIM LEHRER: Possibly a Golden Age?

JIM HARTZ: I'm not sure, Jim. You flattered me a while ago. You called me a science writer. I'm a reporter that's written about science. I don't put myself in the category of some friends of mine who are very, very good. I'm not sure where we're going to go.

I think possibly this exploration of Mars--probably more than possibly--probably really is going to be much more orderly, for example, than our exploration of the Moon, which was basically a political decision, to go there the way we did, and with the intensity that we did--six flights, one right after another.

It was basically a political race with the Soviets. We don't have any competition right now. So it probably is going to be driven by the science and by the necessity.

There's no real necessity to go to Mars right now and to go colonize their terra forma, or whatever you want to call it. That may happen in the future. And it may well be something that--

JIM LEHRER: You agree with Mr. Robinson, that there may be--

JIM HARTZ: Possibly.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

JIM HARTZ: Possibly. But it ought to be driven by what we need, because we'll find out what we know in an orderly exploration. And the key question right now in a lot of people's mind is this little rover is in there in a huge flood plain that was an ocean. We're not talking about just a little flood that came down the street.

This was an ocean of water that came there and was there at one time on the planet. It's gone now. Nobody quite knows where it is. It may be underground. It may be frozen in the tundra, whatever. Now, that raises a profound question about what's happening here on Earth. We've got a lot of water here too. Is there a possibility that something catastrophic like that could happen to us?

When we started looking at the elements in the beginning--say the simplest one--hydrogen--found out a lot about that--went to the next one, helium, that's what we're doing now kind of with the planets. We've learned a lot about where we are. We learned something more about the Moon, and now we're going to the next step, learn more about Mars, which is most like the Earth.

We've got Galileo circling Jupiter right now. We've got Casini going to go to Saturn very soon. What we're doing is now an orderly exploration of the place where we live. I think that's good.

JIM LEHRER: Is it exciting, Ms. Neal?

JIM HARTZ: To me it's local news, by the way. The whole universe.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

VALERIE NEAL: I think it's tremendously exciting to be alive at this time when human beings are moving out into the solar system.

JIM LEHRER: All right. We'll leave it there. Thank you all four very much.

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