The purpose of this symposium was to consider, over the more than 50-year history of the Space Age, what we have learned about the other bodies of the solar system and the processes by which we have learned it. The papers in this volume provide a richly textured picture of important developments—and some colorful characters—in a half century of solar system exploration. What readers will find in this volume is a col- lection of interesting stories about money, politics, human resources, commitment, competition and cooperation, and the “faster, better, cheaper” era of solar system exploration”—Provided by publisher.
The purpose of this symposium was to consider, over the more-than-50- year history of the Space Age, what we have learned about the other bodies of the solar system and the processes by which we have learned it. The big questions of planetary science and what has been learned in the 50 years of solar system exploration. The development of theories about planetary science, solar system ori- gins, and implications for other worlds.
The papers that do appear in this volume nonetheless provide a richly tex- tured picture of important developments—and some colorful characters—in a half century of solar system exploration. What readers will find in this volume is a collection of interesting stories about money, politics, human resources, commitment, competition and coopera- tion, and the “faster, better, cheaper” era of solar system exploration.
INTRODUCTION
NASA’s Solar System Exploration Paradigm
The First 50 Years and a Look at the Next 50
The early flyby missions were all about leading the way in how to venture out into the solar system. As shown in Figure 3, the outer solar system had flybys with two Pioneer and two Voyager spacecraft. With the completion of the New Horizons flyby of the Pluto sys- tem, NASA was the first and only space agency to have completed the initial exploration of the solar system.
Steps like these will allow humans to go beyond this planet and out into the solar system once again. Up to the present, space agencies have collected samples from several solar system bodies, as well as samples of the solar wind. It touches on only a few examples in each of the categories that have defined our approach to solar system exploration for the last 50 years.
We are at the leading edge of a journey of exploration that will yield a profound new understanding of the solar system as our home. Robotic exploration not only yields knowledge of the solar system; it also will enable the expansion of humanity beyond low-Earth orbit.
Overview
Scientists, engineers, and others engaged in exploring space tend to answer the “why” question with stories about “spin- off” benefits, jobs on the ground, national prestige, and educational value. Westwick’s thoughtful perspective on the first half century of solar sys- tem exploration provides an excellent entry to the rest of this volume. This first excursion to another planet landed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Director William Pickering on the cover of Time magazine and as grand marshal of the Rose Parade.
They knew better than anyone what was riding on the landing: a $2 billion rover, for starters, but also, perhaps, the national appe- tite for solar system exploration itself. Curiosity’s success may have ensured that the United States, at least, will continue to explore the solar system, so that the history considered in this volume will continue. In between, robotic explorers have met triumphant success and epic failure; they have seen ring spokes and blueberries and have dealt with Great Galactic Ghouls and faces on Mars.
We now can look outward to our solar system and contem- plate all we have learned about it. We also can drop our gaze back to Earth and consider what deep-space exploration tells us about our own human history over the last 50 years.
Exploring the Solar System
Who Has Done It, How, and Why?
Women in the space program have been studied in relation to the astronaut corps, but much remains to be done for solar system exploration.2 The number of women present in JPL’s mission control for Curiosity was a marked contrast to all the men running Mariner, and how that happened is an interesting story. When we think of the people involved in solar system exploration, we mostly think about white-collar engineers and managers and neglect the many other people involved in the enterprise: machinists, security guards, secretaries—some. Each type of institution has different goals and cultures, and sometimes those goals and cultures include things besides solar system exploration.
The variety of American space institutions leads us to consider which other countries have done solar system exploration and why. A fun example is the Super Soaker squirt gun, invented by a JPL engineer.19 But arguing that CGI movies and Super Soakers justify solar system exploration is a thin reed. They thus helped to correct the geocen- tric perspective of planetary scientists—evident, for example, in the surprise at volcanic and tectonic activity in cold outer regions of the solar system.
3, Fruitful Encounters: The Origin of the Solar System and of the Moon from Chamberlin to Apollo (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. It is not what we as individual taxpayers get out of solar system exploration, but rather what we as a species gain from it. Physicist Niels Bohr said that science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” If so, then solar system exploration might rank with the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions in removing the prej- udices of geocentrism and anthropocentrism.
This chapter began with the observation that 50 years of solar system exploration has taught us a lot about our solar system, but equally about ourselves here on Earth. For example: how does the history of solar system exploration change our view of the Cold War, postcolonialism, the information revolution, or globalization and economic development. If the United States is, indeed, in strategic decline, or at least facing increasing competition, how are these developments shaping solar system exploration.
Will the rise of transnational, multinational, nonstate, or substate actors introduce new approaches to solar system exploration. Historians of solar system exploration should be pretty good at big pic- tures, since our frame of reference is the entire solar system. Solar system exploration is a human enter- prise, and it thus reflects not just the great achievements of humankind but also human foibles and failings.
Politics and Policy in the Conduct of
Solar System Exploration
Handberg raises the question of whether, in the post–Space Shuttle era, space science can, or will, be a partner in NASA’s grand plans for human exploration. And he wonders whether space science today is best located in NASA or perhaps in some other federal agency.
Funding Planetary Science
History and Political Economy
This chapter considers planetary science in the context of the federal budget, other federal research and development activities, and other space science activities at NASA. The role of the space science community is integral to understanding the importance of NASA’s scientific program and the value of federal investment in science and technology generally. The budget lines for NASA, the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are at the bottom of the graph.
McDougall …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. NASA reallocated the remaining funds from Voyager to the rising costs of the lunar effort.
The cancellation heightened the intensity of the scientific community’s criticism of NASA’s programmatic strategy and the insularity of the Space Science Steering Committee. All other years of the Pioneer program were budgeted in the Lunar and Planetary Exploration budget. A Case Study in the Politics of Funding Expensive Space Science,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Space Science Board, Planetary Exploration Space Science Board, National Research Council, The Outer Solar System: A Program for Exploration (Washington, DC: . The National Academies Press, 1969). Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration, Space Science Board, National Research Council, Strategy for Exploration of the Inner Planets Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1978). Prior to the 1990s, the SSB’s reports tended to focus on relatively narrow fields within each of the disciplines in space science.
National Academy of Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (Washington, DC: . The National Academies Press, 1972). Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration, Space Studies Board, National Research Council, An Integrated Strategy for the Planetary Sciences Washington, DC: . The National Academies Press, 1994). The Mars program became a subdivision of the Planetary Science Division in NASA’s Office of Space Science.
The MPIAT examined the systemic causes for the failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander. Thus, in the early decades of the relationship between the two organiza- tions, the SSB rarely delved into NASA’s programmatic territory. The SSB decadal surveys for planetary science represent the consensus of the community on scientific and, increasingly, programmatic priorities.
Heliophysics did not exist as a separate theme for most of NASA’s history and was housed instead in the space physics portion of the Astronomy and Space Physics budget line.
The Politics of Pure Space Science, the Essential Tension
Human Spaceflight’s Impact on Scientific Exploration
