Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary
Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia,
in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. At the time
Dr. Stuhlinger was Associate Director for Science at the Marshall Space
Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. Touched by Sister Mary’s concern
and sincerity, his beliefs about the value of space exploration were
expressed in his reply to Sister Mary. It remains, more than four
decades later, an eloquent statement of the value of the space
exploration endeavor. Born in Germany in 1913, Dr. Stuhlinger received a
Ph.D. in physics from the University of Tuebingen in 1936. He was a
member of the German rocket development team at Peenemünde, and came to
the United States in 1946 to work for the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss,
Texas. He moved to Huntsville in 1950 and continued working for the Army
at Redstone Arsenal until the Marshall Space Flight Center was formed
in 1960. Dr. Stuhlinger received numerous awards and widespread
recognition for his research in propulsion. He received the Exceptional
Civilian Service Award for his part in launching of Explorer 1,
America’s first Earth satellite.
Dear Sister Mary Jucunda:
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 express my great admiration 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 could suggest the expenditures 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
travelling 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 will 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 dollars
in his yearly budget [more than $2 trillion in 2012]. 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 percent of this
national budget was allocated to space exploration this year [less than
.5 of one percent in 2012]. 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 dollars income per year is
paying about 30 tax dollars for space. The rest of his income, 9,970
dollars, remains for his subsistence, his recreation, his savings, his
other 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 the 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 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 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 the 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 condition 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 improvements, 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 prospect 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
over night. 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-travelling 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 material and methods, to invent better
technical systems, to 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
application 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-travelling astronauts, before
we can build a remote-reading sensor system for heart patients. The
answer is simple: significant progress in the solutions 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.
Spaceflight 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 spin-offs 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 moons
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 percent of the total national budget, and 3 per mille (less
than one-third of 1 percent) 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-travelling 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.
“Earthrise,”
one of the most powerful and iconic images from the Apollo program, was
taken in December 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. This view of the
rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind
the Moon after the first lunar orbit. Used as a symbol of the planet’s
fragility, it juxtaposes the grey, lifeless Moon in the foreground with
the blue and white Earth teeming with life hanging in the blackness of
space.
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.
Very sincerely yours,
Ernst Stuhlinger
Associate Director for Science
