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Where Next America?

Think Tank Transcripts:Space Program

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MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. Just 25 years ago,America planted the stars and stripes on the moon. A great nation hadachieved a great feat. But soon we scaled back. Is America no longerlooking for new frontiers?

Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus areDaniel Boorstin, Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, the librarian ofCongress emeritus, and author of 'The Discoverers'; John Logsdon,director of the Space Policy Institute at George WashingtonUniversity and author of 'The Decision to Go to the Moon: ProjectApollo and the National Interest'; Michael Novak, Jewitt chair at theAmerican Enterprise Institute and winner of the 1994 Templeton prizefor progress in religion; and Professor Rita Colwell of theUniversity of Maryland and president-elect of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science.

On the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing, the questionbefore this house: Where next America? This week on 'Think Tank.'

Americans have always been pioneers. Lewis and Clark first crossedthe continent in 1805. By 1869, the transcontinental railroad wascompleted. And after the British and the French failed, America builtthe Panama Canal.

And in 1961, a new, young president declared the nation would openanother new frontier.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY (on videotape): We choose to go to themoon in this decade and do the other things, not because they areeasy, but because they are hard.

MR. WATTENBERG: Thus began the race to the moon. NASA's Apollomoon landing program was a colossal effort involving 400,000 workers,20,000 contractors, and costing almost $80 billion. And on theevening of July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong was the firstperson to set foot on the moon.

NEIL ARMSTRONG (on videotape): Tranquillity Base here. The Eaglehas landed. It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

MR. WATTENBERG: America had gone from the first flight of theWright brothers' biplane at Kitty Hawk to the moon in just 66 years.America returned to the moon five more times. Since then, we havecontinued to send astronauts into near-earth orbit, but we have nevergone back to the lunar surface.

Then disaster struck. In 1986, the Challenger space shuttleexploded. For nearly three years, the American space program wasgrounded. Meanwhile, ambitious plans to build a permanent spacestation and to send men to Mars have been postponed.

And another grand scientific project, the superconductingsupercollider, designed to probe deep into the heart of matteritself, was abandoned.

At the end of the 20th century, some critics say that America haslost the pioneering spirit and question whether the United States haseither the will or the wallet to embark on new, ambitious nationalventures.

Dr. Daniel Boorstin, has America lost its pioneering spirit?

MR. BOORSTIN: No, I think not. On the contrary, I think we shouldremember -- in the first place, at the risk of laboring the obvious,I'd like to remind us all here that if it hadn't been for a voyage ofdiscovery, a very expensive voyage of discovery about 500 years ago,we wouldn't be sitting here today. No telling where we would be.

But it is also notable that our age of discovery is the age ofpublic discovery, and the experience of discovery, of the landing onthe moon, is entirely different from any other great discovery thatmankind has achieved.

I was there with my wife and children in our living room justoutside Chicago 25 years ago. And that has given the act of discoverya communal significance. It brings us together in a way in whichColumbus' -- when Columbus made his discovery, you know that messagedidn't get back to Spain for seven months, and it was three yearsbefore people in England had heard of it. But we were there, anddiscovery is an electrifying, a catalytic experience for all of usnow.

MR. WATTENBERG: John Logsdon, do you think we've sort of lost thatgreat urge?

MR. LOGSDON: I think underlying our sentiments there is that, butwe've kind of gotten caught up in the problems of the day or the weekand maybe have lost a little bit of our ability to organize for grandthings. And thinking about this period in history, it was only 25years from D-Day to landing on the moon, both large, centrallyorganized, major undertakings.

Now, 25 years later, we're debating, can we do that kind oflarge-scale, should we do that kind of large-scale undertaking?

MR. WATTENBERG: Rita Colwell, as president-elect of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science, do you sense that thereis an anti-science feeling growing in this country?

MS. COLWELL: I don't think it's an anti-science feeling so much asan apprehension that a tremendous amount of change is taking place. Ithink we're in a transition period where we really are refocusing onsocietal needs and on the directions we want society to take, becauseafter all, we spent the last 50-plus years strengthening ourselvesfor an adversary who of course has crumbled. And now we are lookingto where we can strengthen ourselves as a society.

But there are changes taking place that are very dramatic. Thecomputer changes, the changes in medicine, and that marriage oftechnology and biology I think is going to bring some veryinteresting changes in

MR. WATTENBERG: Those are mostly private projects, not publicprojects. The ones you just mentioned, computers and biotech, areprincipally private, not public.

MS. COLWELL: Sure, but they're manifested I think in a very largeproject, the human genome project, which is a multi-billion dollarproject that is, again, sort of inward-looking.

MR. WATTENBERG: And that is designed to do what, the human genomeproject?

MS. COLWELL: To understand the very structure of humans, thegenetic basis of heredity, what makes us, let us say, European,American, what makes us think, the genes that control not onlydisease, but health and strength and intelligence.

MR. WATTENBERG: That's mapping the DNA.

MS. COLWELL: Mapping the DNA.

MR. WATTENBERG: Michael Novak, you have come at this at a somewhatdifferent perspective perhaps. Have Americans lost that will for thegreat adventure?

MR. NOVAK: No. I think that what Professor Colwell just talkedabout, the new biological exploration that's going on, is justfantastic. And Americans are using their practical inventivenessevery day.

In the celebrations of D-Day, I remember reading that the Fordline began producing an aircraft a day at certain factories; theLiberty ships, one a week. This was inventiveness just pushed to theultimate at that time. I think that's going on every day throughoutAmerican life. The communal projects I think have taken a backburner, but it's going on privately.

MR. BOORSTIN: I think the menace to the spirit of discovery, thatis, the willingness to reach for the unknown, is the very spirit ofinvention. Technology aims to solve a particular problem, to producea horseless carriage, a plane that will fly. But the spirit ofdiscovery is the voyage into the unknown.

And our preoccupation with the cost-effective, with what will --the question whether this will pay off, tends to lead us away fromthe voyage into the unknown, because we all know really that the bestthings in the world are not cost-effective. The best experiences,love and children, are the least cost-effective things on earth, andyet they are examples of the importance of not calculating

MR. WATTENBERG: But people argue today politically, Dan, as youknow. They say, well, the man on the moon is the equivalent ofbuilding a pyramid in space. And what about affordable housing, whatabout health care, what about poor people, what about education? Youwould -- how do you -- you must get that question all the time. Howdo you deal with that?

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, I would remind you, and I wrote a chapter onthis in 'The Discoverers,' that the pyramids were not an entirelyfruitless enterprise. They were a community enterprise. There werelots of Egyptians who were proud of their pyramids when there weren'tso many other things to be proud of.

MR. WATTENBERG: They built up a tourist trade, I mean, 2,000 yearslater.

MR. BOORSTIN: Well -- exactly, exactly.

MR. LOGSDON: What do we remember Egypt for, good housing or thepyramids? I mean, what is the United States in the last third of thiscentury going to be remembered for? I'm sure one of the things isbeing first on the moon. I mean in the broad future historical sweep,that will be one of the accomplishments for which the 20th century isremembered.

MR. NOVAK: I think that's one of the things that made the moonvoyage so exciting and so dramatic, because it was beyond theordinary, humdrum things. We had already had the highest level ofliving in the world, but to go out beyond and see ourselves in awhole new way from a distance, to see the fragility of this planet,the way we're all one, I think that was an evocation of a kind ofmystery.

MS. COLWELL: I think I would remind us that flight itself did notstart in a dramatic way. The Wright brothers made their forays -- butsuddenly we found ourselves transformed. And I would maintain thatthis is happening in neurobiology and in computer science, where weare learning how to reconstruct the thought process. And I think bythe time we come to the year 2000, the combination of the technology,through biotechnology coupled with the exploration into thought andsimulation of thought, we'll find that we have a revolution in ourhands.

MR. WATTENBERG: John Logsdon, let me ask you a question, ahistorical one, because I know you're working on this project. Whydid we go to the moon? Why did we put a man on the moon?

MR. LOGSDON: I mean, first of all, we didn't go for science. Itwas a project of discovery, but discovery and science are not thesame thing. We went because of cold war competition with the SovietUnion.

In my work, I found this kind of classic memo from John Kennedy toLyndon Johnson, written a few days after the first Russian went intospace, first human in space. Kennedy asked the vice president for anoverall survey of where we stand in space and said do we have achance of beating the Soviets by a long list of things; is there anyother space program which promises dramatic results in which we couldwin?

I mean, there were the criteria -- space, drama, win.

MR. BOORSTIN: John, you're suggesting an objective that WilliamJames assigned us nearly a century ago, when he called for the moralequivalent of war. And that is what discovery has provided us. It hasproduced enormous investment, a sense of community and patriotism andrivalry, which is also a good thing between civilized countries inthis kind of area. And that I think is a way of describing some ofthe potentialities of the space exploration, which cannot beestimated in budget terms.

MR. NOVAK: Some of the great cathedrals were built out of rivalrybetween city and city, and they were built as a matter not only ofreligious dedication, but of civic pride. So rivalry doesn'tnecessarily close down the elements of mystery that are involved andexcitement.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dan, you have studied this. Do great nations andgreat civilizations make grand gestures? Is that sort of a law ofhistory, that when you have a great nation, they feel they have tobuild a pyramid or send a man to the moon or build Notre Dame? Or isthat sort of a myth?

MR. BOORSTIN: In the first place, Ben, I don't believe in laws ofhistory. I think what we're talking about today, a man landing on themoon, is the best illustration that could ever be given of theimpossibility of predicting history. If people were going to say,what's the most outlandish thing you could imagine, it would be manlanding on the moon. So that we don't talk about it.

MR. WATTENBERG: If we were sitting here a thousand years from nowand somebody said, what was the most important thing that happened inthe 20th century, is it plausible that the answer would be, oh, thatwas the year a man first landed on the moon?

MR. BOORSTIN: It's certainly possible, but I couldn't predictthat. We might be sitting on the moon a thousand years from now, too.That's another possibility.

MR. WATTENBERG: John Logsdon has written of the 1969 space -- ofthe landing on the moon that it was the initial step toward homosapiens becoming a multi-planet species. Do you believe that if we'resitting here a thousand years from now or five hundred years fromnow, that man will have -- be colonizing space? MR. LOGSDON: Man andwoman. Otherwise there's no colonies, right?

MR. WATTENBERG: As they say, man embraces woman.

MR. LOGSDON: Yeah, I think that there -- the idea that, given thetechnological capability, which we've already demonstrated, thatwe're going to stay on this planet forever goes against human nature.So it's not a question of whether; it's a question of when and underwhat organizational leadership. And we did it as a competitiveenterprise in the '60s. Can we cooperate as a species in doing this,large-scale expeditions in the future, or does it still have to besomehow a rivalry?

But going back to the moon, first like Antarctica, science, spacesort of thing, and then eventually out beyond the moon to asteroidsor to Mars, I think is close to an inevitability. I agree with Dan,there is no certainty in history, but it seems to me that humans wantto see what's over the next hill.

MS. COLWELL: I suggest that what will trigger it will be what hasbeen sort of science fiction to the present, and that is looking forevidence of life, origin of life or explanation of the evolution oflife on this planet. I think that tie may very well be the triggeringfactor for the further exploration.

MR. NOVAK: I think one reason this sort of project stands out isit's not just exploring what we can do and what we can know, but whoare we? It sheds an interesting light on our whole destiny, our wholepredicament here in the universe. And that gives this particularscientific adventure a dimension that not all have; some others have,but not all have. MR. BOORSTIN: I think -- of course Michael wouldgive it more theological import -- I would be a little lesstheological and qualify the observation earlier, and suggest thatperhaps we're not going --we're moving from homo sapiens to homoludiens, man at play. We have these tools, we can play around them inouter space. Isn't that wonderful? And I think to stand in amazementand delight, that also is a sign of our humanity.

MR. LOGSDON: And that's why I think humans have to be involved.Sending machines is not the same thing. The memo that went to Kennedythat recommended Apollo said, 'It's men, not machines that capturethe imagination of the world.' And I think that's true in '94.

MR. WATTENBERG: If in your role as president-elect of the AmericanAcademy for the Advancement of Science you went to the Congress for aspecific project and said, the eminent historian Dan Boorstin saysthis is a good thing because it's man at play, and they're sittingthere with these budgets and they're saying, I have poor kids in theghetto -- you know the list -- what do you say if you quote DanBoorstin and say, hey, it's a good thing to have man at play?

MS. COLWELL: I think it would be humans learning about theirorigins and their future. And I would suggest that we now have thetools that we didn't have at the time of the moon landing todetermine whether there was life, at least as we know it, on themoon, on Mars, through the DNA technology, the nucleic acidsfragments that we now can determine the relationship and the originof. I think we have the technology to answer some very fundamentalquestions that we couldn't have done several years ago and 30 yearsago.

MR. BOORSTIN: I would suggest that a better way of perhapstestifying before Congress, when you think of man at play, I'm notthinking of people kicking soccer ball around, but I'm thinking ofBenjamin Franklin and his kite.

MS. COLWELL: Exactly.

MR. BOORSTIN: That's how we learned the relationship ofelectricity to lightning. That -- he was -- that was a kind ofplayful thing to do, wasn't it?

MS. COLWELL: Just to learn, to understand, to find out what thisis all about.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dan, was the space program and the landing on themoon and its continuation specifically an American accomplishment, ora human accomplishment, and is that

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, it is a human accomplishment because we arethe heirs of all the scientists before us. But there is another pointI'd like to put to our eminent theologian, Michael, and that is, muchof it is contained in the parable of the Garden of Eden, and theeating of the apple would suggest that there is always a price, youknow, that knowledge has both a good and evil side to it. You know,when you know things, you have a destiny that you can't abdicate. Wemust use the electronic, the atomic powers to get us to the moon, butalso we're cursed with the possibilities of atomic warfare.

And I think that's something we must remember, that there isalways a price, and discovery gives us both a reward and a pricewhich we can never predict or imagine. That's we should pursue them.

MR. WATTENBERG: John, is there anything like the moon missioncoming up next? I mean, where does

MR. LOGSDON: No. We've been in a kind of 25-year hangover. We'vebuilt means rather than goals. We've built a space shuttle that wassupposed to make it cheap and easy to get in space. It isn't. We arebuilding the space station, granted Congress's good will. So at theturn of the century, we'll have an international research laboratoryin space, still not knowing exactly what we're going to do there. Butthat's just going in circles. It's not very exciting.

MR. WATTENBERG: Where is the big stuff going to come from, publicor private?

MR. LOGSDON: You've got to differentiate when you talk about spacebetween using space for profit or purposes on earth. That's privatesector activity -- communications satellites, earth observation. ButI think the exploration, the next round of space exploration, isstill going to be government-driven.

MR. BOORSTIN: Do you think we will have to await some kind ofgrand international rivalry for the kind of next step of exploration?

MR. LOGSDON: No, I'm hopeful and hoping -- and it may be thelatter -- that the next time it can be done as a collaborativeenterprise, saying here's a way of demonstrating the ability of majornations to work together on a challenging goal, that it doesn't haveto be head-on-head competition.

MR. BOORSTIN: What avenues do you see for that, John?

MR. LOGSDON: Well, we're doing it in the space station. The spacestation now involves the U.S., Canada, Japan, Europe, and Russia. Imean it is all the major space -- these countries working together ona single thing. It's a grand experiment in technologicalcollaboration.

At the other end, Rita mentioned the human genome project, whichis an international project totally, division of labor amonglaboratories all over the world. We can learn to do this sort ofthing.

MS. COLWELL: Actually, let me interject and say that I thinkthat's the direction science in fact is going. Theinternationalization of science I think is a fairly dramatic andpossibly a revolutionary kind of event because the big programscannot be done, I think, by individual countries.

MR. NOVAK: I just wanted to say that that internationalcollaboration that you both were talking about a moment ago wasalready symbolized when we looked for the first time from the moonback to the earth and saw it there, little and blue and fragile, butone. If you talk about interplanetary exploration, in a certain way,then the whole planet is involved. And so that was already there in

MR. WATTENBERG: Michael, you sound like a world federalist.

MR. NOVAK: I'm not a world federalist, but we are one people, andif Dan will permit me, one people under God, and a particular god

MR. BOORSTIN: I will permit you.

(Laughter.)

MR. NOVAK: -- a Jewish-Christian god who gave us all the vocationto create and explore. And the confidence we all have thatexploration will be on the whole good is told there on that veryfirst day of the Bible: and God created everything and saw that itwas good.

We do have that optimism. It's a great gift to our civilization,and it's resulted in a tremendous amount of exploration. We're farfrom finished.

MR. WATTENBERG: And not in conflict with goals to help the poor orMR. NOVAK: No, absolutely not.

MR. LOGSDON: No. There is an illusion that the space program costslots of money. And in absolute terms it's expensive, but as aproportion of what government spends or of the wealth of society,it's a very, very small fraction. We can afford to have a good spaceprogram if we choose to have one.

MS. COLWELL: We've begun to realize that what is done in onecountry environmentally affects another country. We've begun tounderstand that decisions on abuses of chemicals and decisions onexploring and exploiting some aspect of the environment does affectthe rest of the globe. And I think this interdependency is part ofthe international attitude and development in science.

MR. WATTENBERG: Isn't that going to engender politically in theUnited States the case that we are losing our sovereignty?

MS. COLWELL: I think we're gaining a great deal more.

MR. WATTENBERG: You hear it in the trade agreements. I mean that'swhat some of the arguments are, that we're losing our sovereignty.And you are saying the great new moon projects, the Panama Canal --it's going to be everybody's flag up there.

MR. BOORSTIN: But isn't it true that in the world of knowledge,there is no sovereignty. There is only diffusion. That is, knowledgeis the only commodity that increases by diffusion.

MR. WATTENBERG: But Neil Armstrong, you know, didn't put a U.N.flag up there.

MR. BOORSTIN: No, but the world profited from the posture of thatflag. It was a human flag, not just an American flag.

MR. LOGSDON: And he didn't say, one small step for U.S. citizens.

(Laughter.)

MR. BOORSTIN: And that was appropriate that he didn't say that.But I think that we must recognize, as Rita points out, that theadvancement of knowledge is the advancement of a common store which-- the value of which increases the more it's diffused.

MR. LOGSDON: Michael talked earlier about some of the theologicalaspects of discovery, of finding our place in the universe. And thereis a debate for those of us that are close in to the space communityof what kind of goal could energize future activity in space. And oneof the ones is looking for planets around other stars, trying tounderstand how unique or whether our solar system is unique.

MR. BOORSTIN: But when we think about the effect on nationalattitudes, I think the important thing is to realize that the wholespace enterprise has awakened us to areas of ignorance that we neverimagined. And that's the spirit of discovery, the zest for the quest,the reaching for what you don't know, and not because you expectsomething particular, but because you don't know what to expect.

MR. LOGSDON: And we're coming up on the 25th anniversary ofApollo. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore are trying to figure out what theyshould say about it, and we'll leave that to them. But there's been alot of talk about virtual reality, about sending our sensors andstaying home. To me that's very unsatisfactory. Just sitting on thisplanet and letting our machines do our exploration? Not veryattractive future to me.

MR. WATTENBERG: Thank you, Daniel Boorstin and Rita Colwell, JohnLogsdon and Michael Novak. And thank you.

You know, this is a new program, and we have appreciated hearingfrom you. Please do send your comments to the address on the screen.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg. END

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