Dr. Carl Sagan
(Applause)
Thank you for that generous introduction. I’m delighted to be here with you.
I have 20 minutes in which I want to talk about two or three very serious questions and then I’ll be delighted to
answer questions on them or anything else on your mind in the question period.
In the last few thousand years,
human beings have devised an extraordinary set of technological advances which have
enhanced our lives, have helped to diminish disease and
increased well-being, although there is a great deal more work to be done.
But at the same time,
that technology has developed
weapons of increasing sophistication and power to such an extent that
we have now reached the extraordinary moment where
our global civilization
and perhaps the human species itself
is in peril because of the possible misuse of this technology.
For me, the dual content
of technology is very clear
because the same technology
that I am involved in the spacecraft exploration of the planets,
rocket technology, nuclear technology, electronics, computer technology,
is also the very same technology that is used to device
and produce weapons of horrendous, grotesque destructive power,
of which we have amassed, we humans, some 60 thousand.
60 thousand nuclear weapons.
Almost 30,000,
so-called strategic weapons, waiting for the orders to be launched halfway across the planet.
Even a tiny fraction of these weapons
could produce a catastrophe absolutely unparalleled in the history of human beings.
For example,
how many cities do you think there are on the planet earth?
If we define the city as having 100 thousand people or more,
there are only 2300 cities on the earth.
That means, the United States and the Soviet union, if they so wished could,
targeting 2 nuclear weapons per city,
destroy every city on earth
and have almost 20 thousand strategic nuclear weapons left over, to say nothing of almost 40 thousand so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons.
This is clearly madness.
There is no need for these weapons. They serve no conceivable military purpose.
If the function of the nuclear weapon is to discourage a potential adversary from using his nuclear weapons,
a tiny fraction of the existing arsenals would suffice.
We live in the year of Chernobyl and Challenger.
These are high technology, high visibility projects of the Soviet Union and the United States
in which in enormous amounts of national prestige have been invested.
They are the last things you would imagine would go wrong
in those societies because they have so much to lose if something does go wrong.
And there were confident estimates, some only a year before the catastrophes,
about how improbable such catastrophes would be.
An article in Soviet Life quoted authoritatively a
Soviet deputy minister
talking specifically about the Chernobyl reactor, it’s a curious coincidence,
saying that the average time you will have to wait for a catastrophic accident at Chernobyl was tens of thousands of years.
The next year: Boom.
NASA officials
were widely quoted saying that at the then current launch rate
of the space shuttle you would have to wait 10 thousand years or more before there was an explosion on launch.
Boom.
The lesson is
that despite our best intentions,
we can make serious technological mistakes.
We also know many examples. Consider the KAL007 (Korean Air Lines 007) incident
that there are serious human mistakes that happen.
This is also the century of Hitler and Stalin
and we realized that madmen can achieve high office in modern industrial states.
Or people can go mad while in office. If you put those together,
the likelihood that the technology would go wrong if you wait long enough,
the capacity of humans, as part of our being human, to make errors,
and the possibility of madness in high office
and you combine that with a world littered with 60 thousand nuclear weapons, then you have a prescription
for the most serious disaster that we have ever faced.
And at the same time,
almost everybody,
at least in this country,
goes on as if that is business as usual. No crisis. Nothing to worry about.
Occasionally, there are concerns.
At the time the Reagan administration took office, there got to be a great deal of concern about the consequences of nuclear war, partly because of
the activities of physicians organizations indicating
how inadequate American medical care, the best in the world to be sure, would be case of even a small nuclear war.
In fact,
the estimates of the number of people who would be killed outright
in a major exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union range
from hundreds of millions to a few billion people killed. And that’s just from the direct consequences.
And from the longer-term consequences, including
radioactive fallout, climatic change such as nuclear winter,
the estimates are that another few billion people might be killed.
Well, a few billion plus a few billion
is getting very close to the total number of people on the planet.
Now, it seems to me that there are only two conceivable solutions to this problem.
One is:
to reduce the arsenals so that, in the worst case, the worst concatenation of
technological failure, misunderstood orders, madness in high office,
you could not destroy the global civilization.
Massive, bilateral, verifiable divestment of nuclear weapons.
And this is, of course, the proclaimed stated policy of the United States and the Soviet Union.
The only trouble is every year these two countries add to the strategic arsenals enough weapons to destroy, once again,
every city on the planet. They talk a good game.
The other possibility is a defense.
Something that would protect you with high reliability.
protect the civilian population of your country in case of the worst happening.
And this is Star Wars. And Star Wars has, it must be acknowledged,
a major political objective,
that is, to calm people's justifiable fears about nuclear war.
There are many things that can be said about Star Wars.
For example, I had a debate with General Abramson at the State department
in late July on this issue. There are so many things wrong with it you can talk for hours just listing the
dangerousness and foolishness of Star Wars.
But let me give a few examples:
One has to do with porosity.
In the best case,
if we spend a trillion or 2 trillion dollars, if we have decades of technological development,
how many Soviet warheads would get through?
And the answer, according to advocates of Star Wars
in the department of defense, for example, the technologically competent people would give you some number of
“Oh maybe 80 percent, maybe 90 percent” or something like that.
Suppose it’s 90 percent.
90 percent of Soviet warheads can be shot down reliably.
That means, of course, that 10 percent don’t get shot down. Soviet Union right now has well over 10 thousand strategic warheads.
If you let 10 percent of them get through, that’s a thousand warheads. A thousand warheads is enough to destroy the United States utterly.
So, by the testimony of the program’s advocates,
it cannot protect the civilian population of the United States,
which was, you remember, the objective
in the president’s speech where he talked about making nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.
But since then there’s been a change, what senator Gore of Tennessee calls “bait and switch.”
And now it’s justified: “Well, it would defend missile silos, or it’ll confuse the Soviets.”
That’s a very different story.
The Soviets can, of course, add to their
strategic offensive forces to overwhelm whatever the United States, at great expense,
manages to do in the way of defense.
The Soviets can outfox by
decoys and penetration aids.
They can under fly the system because it does nothing for low altitude or
speed boat delivery system, or cruise missile delivery system,
or nuclear weapons in small airplanes. I remind you that small airplanes filled with bales of marijuana penetrate the United States everyday ad libitum.
And it is ruinously expensive.
1 trillion dollars is half the national debt.
Trillion dollars is twice the total indebtedness of all third world nations to all western banks.
1 trillion is too much to take casually.
You have to get your money’s worth for a trillion dollars.
And finally, the Star Wars program has the problem that the Soviets perceive it,
the most generous of them, as economic warfare.
The less generous of them as a
token of US intent
to do a first strike on the Soviet Union. They recognize it cannot protect the civilian population of the United States
but if the US makes a massive first strike on the Soviet Union,
Star Wars may be enough to mop up the residual Soviet forces that might be used for retaliation.
So, Star Wars
cannot protect the civilian population of the United States,
can be overwhelmed, under flown, outfoxed, it’s ruinously expensive, and it’s likely to increase chances of nuclear war.
Except for that, it’s a terrific idea.
(Laughter)
What we really should be doing,
the first thing on the agenda, the thing that's most clear,
because it has the largest leverage on the nuclear arms race,
is a treaty banning further tests of nuclear weapons.
In 1963,
the United States unilaterally
stopped testing nuclear weapons above ground.
The Soviet Union immediately responded with its own unilateral moratorium, just by accident. It was a coincidence, same week.
And this de facto moratorium became a de jure treaty, the 1963 limited test ban treaty,
and from that time to this not a single US or Soviet nuclear weapon has been exploded
on the ground,
in the air,
or in space.
On August 6th, 1985 the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima,
the Soviets announced a unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear testing and invited the United States to follow suit.
The US response was to explode 20 nuclear weapons
and to contemptuously reject the Soviet invitation.
It is a very good way
to halt the further escalation of the arms race. It is not enough in itself. We want to decrease the arsenals
but it’s an excellent first step
to defuse the technological drivers
of the arms race on both sides.
It is clear that the Soviet leadership is under pressure from their own hardliners.
The offer will not remain open forever.
Present expiration date is New Year’s Day.
And I think there’s an urgent necessity for the United States to follow suit.
This is clearly indicated in public opinion polls.
Both houses of Congress have urged that the United States
join the Soviets in this, and many mainstream groups are supporting it, just as an example.
Just in a few days,
Annie and I’ll be there,
a venerable organization, the American Public Health Association meeting in las Vegas,
is going to have a massive demonstration at the Nevada nuclear test site on September 30th
to protest continued nuclear testing by the United States, to urge United States to come to its senses,
and there is every indication that there’ll be massive civil disobedience, that means,
crossing a white line and getting arrested for trespassing,
by very respectable physicians and health professionals and others. And I give this to you as just one example
of the recognition of the seriousness of this issue
by almost everybody but the Reagan administration.
I’d like now to come to my last topic.
And again, it’s this bifurcation that the technology implies.
We have vast abilities.
There is an extraordinary amount that we can do.
The US space program is in deep trouble.
It has lost a sense of purpose which, in fact, it lost shortly after the Apollo program
and since then it’s merely been:
“Let’s develop machines.”
A shuttle, a space station. Never what they’re for.
And in particular, the exploratory goal, which was the triumph of the Apollo era,
has been completely lost from the US space program.
At the same time, the European space agency and the Japanese
and the Soviets have had gradually increasing sophistication and vigor in their programs.
Something that to me makes an enormous amount of sense
is a joint, US-Soviet, manned and womaned, mission to mars as part of a long-term program.
The science would be extraordinary. Mars is a world of wonders. I would not take the time to describe it but
it is just a fascinating place.
A billion years ago
water was flowing on Mars. There were rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans.
Something happened between then and now
and it might be good for us to discover what.
I don’t think that you can justify sending humans to Mars purely for the science. You can send robots for a whole lot cheaper.
But just as Apollo
was primarily a political program,
it was the US response
to the Bay of Pigs debacle and the fact that the first people to orbit the earth happened to carry Soviet passports,
so now also such a program could only be justified on political grounds.
But the story has change.
It is not competition but cooperation which is called for now.
And a joint Soviet-American program
could capture the imagination of people all over the planet
to show that these two nations could use that high technology
on behalf, for a change, of the human species
and to blaze a pathway into the third millennium,
eventually making the human species a multi-planet species.
The cost looks to be less than the Apollo program,
vastly less than Star Wars, roughly the same as a single major strategic weapon system.
It is as if God said to us:
“I set before you two choices:
you have the technology
to destroy yourselves.
You have the technology
to carry yourselves to the planets and the stars.
It’s up to you.”
Thank you.
(Applause)
As you can imagine, we have questions on the wide variety of topics today, Dr. Sagan.
This first question would like to know: Why do you not support the impetus which the strategic defense initiative has given to basic research in the fields of laser, nuclear and space technology?
Thanks.
Because that argument is basically flawed.
In the case of Apollo, for example,
we heard: “Listen, Apollo is really great because of spin off.” That’s what we are hearing here. Spinoff.
For example,
“Because of the Apollo program we have stickless frying pans or cardiac pacemakers.”
Well, if we want to have stickless frying pans or cardiac pacemakers, we can get them directly
by investing in stickless frying pans and cardiac pacemakers
without spending 25 billion dollars to send some people to the moon.
That’s not the way you make a pacemaker.
And in just the same way,
if we are interested in lasers for surgery,
we should develop lasers for surgery
and not go via the route of a hydrogen bomb exploded in space
to shoot down some foreign missiles
in violation of about four  different treaties the United States have solemnly signed, I forgot to say that before.
The spin off arguments
are an indication that the other arguments have been found wanting
and I don’t think for a moment we ought to be bamboozled by spin off arguments.
It’s too much money. A trillion dollars for laser surgery,
you can do laser surgery for a tiniest fraction of that, if that’s what you are after.
France, through a United Nations initiative, has proposed the establishment of an international remote sensing agency which would serve to provide total global reconnaissance so every country would be able to observe every other country totally.
Would be in favor of such an activity?
Thank you.
There are many advantages of the space program.
Meteorological satellites which
would save enormous amounts of money in avoiding crop damage.
Communications satellites, which are binding up the planet. Historic revolutions occur because of
of communication satellites. Scientific satellites which
it’ll be not surprise to you that I think it’s a good thing.
But, by far, the most important kinds of satellites
have been military reconnaissance satellites. This is why
I am not opposed to military activities in space.
It’s only weapons in space that I’m opposed to.
Military reconnaissance satellites
prevent the hotheads and paranoids on each side
from thinking the worst of the other.
It’s a way to see what the other side is actually doing in terms of military capabilities and troop movements and
treaty compliance and all the rest.
And so, it is enormously stabilizing.
And that’s why Lyndon Johnson said that those satellites were worth their weight in gold.
And they are.
And, by the way,
that is one of the many reasons why the challenger disaster
is a disaster in many senses.
The US has an important KH11 and KH12 satellite technology which can’t be put up into space
because we don’t have the booster.
And at the same time, the United States does its
share of saber rattling all around the world. It’s very dangerous to do that
without having the optimum satellite reconnaissance. Now,
if the monopoly
in satellite military reconnaissance is held by only two nations and they are the contending superpowers,
there is a clear danger
that they will, in public utterances, at least distort what they see for domestic or foreign political purpose.
If there were an independent organization,
some other nation which didn’t have a political axe to grind, if you can find one,
or some international organization,
then this possible misuse of a satellite reconnaissance capability be avoided.
But more than that,
the rest of the world could be clued into what is actually happening with the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the French SPOT satellite, for example,
was recently used to see what is the state of Soviet preparations for
resuming nuclear testing if the United States does not reply,
except by exploding more nuclear weapons.
So, to make a long answer short,
I think it’s a very desirable thing to involve other countries just as
it’s very desirable to involve other countries in verification of,
for example, compliance with claimed moratoriums on nuclear weapons testing.
The Natural Resources Defense Council,
a Washington-based public service organization, has an arrangement right now
with the Soviet Academy of Sciences,
in which American scientists and seismometers are at the Soviet nuclear test facility at Semipalatinsk
they don't monitor any Soviet explosions, just American explosions.
That is an example of a private organization
helping in this way.
The heads of state or government of India, Sweden, and 4 other countries
have said they would be glad to take over the monitoring on both sides
of compliance with the comprehensive test ban treaty and I think that’s a good idea.
This questioner notes that opponents of the joint US-Soviet Mars mission fear the Soviets would use it to steal American technology and then use it for weapons. Would you give us your reaction to that please?
Well, or the other way around. Maybe the Americans would steal the Soviet technology and use it for weapons. What you have to bear in mind
is that in this sort of planetary exploration space technology
the Soviets are very good.
The Soviets were
the first to
land a spacecraft on the moon. They were the first to photograph the back side of the moon. They were the first to land working spacecraft on the surface of Venus.
That’s a tough place.
Venus has a surface temperature of 900° Fahrenheit.
It has a surface pressure of 90 times the pressure in this room
and an atmosphere which contains hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, and sulfuric acid.
Being the first to land a spacecraft there and take pictures and all that is not easy.
Remember, the Soviets sent two spacecrafts to Halley’s comet just last March.
The United States did not send anything because we couldn’t afford it.
By the way, how expensive was it?
It was exactly as expensive as a single B-1 bomber,
but for which the United States has committed to buy 100.
99 evidently would have compromised national security.
(Laughter)
American scientists have prepared a report for the Office of Technology Assessment, have testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on justice issue
and what they say is that the two countries very near parity
on this sort of issue but even if there was some technology transfer on both directions
you have to look at what we get in exchange.
And the idea
of the United States and the Soviet Union getting some practice in working together on high technological systems before the cameras,
the television cameras of the planet, is worth a great deal.
Just picture it for a moment.
The interplanetary space craft is constructed in earth orbit.
Little astronauts and cosmonauts are
welding,
moving girders,
building stuff together,
and it’s all on television over a period of a year or two.
Then they board the spacecraft, again, televised.
They takeoff for Mars. It’s some nine-months journey.
They orbit Mars. They then get into a descent module.
They land on the surface of mars, Americans and Soviets together on behalf of the human species.
Again, the television cameras, show this happening.
They then explore Mars. They go on, let’s say, some wheeled vehicle down
an ancient riverbed looking for fossils on the banks or whatever there is.
There, they spend some time, months let’s say, on Mars. That’s all before the television cameras.
Then they come back to earth with Mars samples or whatever wonders they have found
and that’s on television. Imagine such a sustained period of many years,
in which the United States and the Soviet Union together, maybe with Europeans and others,
are doing something, a great adventure, great exploration, high scientific merit,
together and everyone on earth sees it.
That, it seems to me, is worth a great deal.
This questioner would like to know: Why do you put so much faith in US-Soviet cooperation in a venture to Mars in today’s climate of political distrust?
Distrust tends to be self-propagating.
Distrust breeds distrust.
There is no reason
for the Soviets to trusts us,
or for us to trust the Soviets,
on any issue, except, I hope this is true,
that each nation wishes to survive.
That each nation wishes to have its people survive.
And their children. And their grandchildren.
There are powerful human reasons why I think we can rely at least on that.
And, for that reason,
doing things together, even small things,
is well worth doing.
Sigmund Freud said,
a long time ago,
that it is shared action between nations
that leads to the diminishment of mistrust.
The United States and Soviet Union each have a list of abuses by the other as long as my arm.
You ask for the justification of any abuse that one of those countries does
and they’ll you about an abuse that the other country does.
But this is a treadmill.
There is no way of getting out off this
unless you are willing to break out.
This is a way of breaking out
without compromising national security, without involving anything to do with nuclear weapons. It could be done, for example,
in parallel with whatever divestment of nuclear weapons I sincerely hope the two countries would be done.
It also has the right timescales in order to make
a useful goal for the national space program.
It is not so far in the future as to be impossible to do in the lifetimes of people working now.
And it’s not so short-term as not to focus the program.
It’s exactly at the right technological distance
in just the same way that Apollo
was the right technological distance in 1961, when president Kennedy
asked for an American to be landed in the moon and brought back safely by the end of the decade.
And by all standards,
present studies suggest
that the technological leap
from president Kennedy’s speech to Apollo 11
is less than the technological distance from today to a landing of humans on Mars.
You refer to the importance of television coverage of all events attended to that
and, since you are before an audience of journalists,
this questioner would like to have you grade the savvy and accuracy of science technology and space reporting in the United States today
and compare that to the reporting that you see in other countries.
Whew…
(Laughter)
What shall I say? There’s some good and there’s a whole lot bad.
One complaint I have is that science has a kind of panache
which is used to cover other stuff.
On television you see people who are called science reporters,
but they are not science reporters. They’re medical reporters. They’re technology reporters. They are not science reporters.
When people win Nobel prizes in chemistry or physics,
how many times have you gotten a coherent explanation of what they won their prize for?
It’s just some guy: “I was really surprised. They woke me up in the middle of the night. My wife said she didn’t believe it. Yeah, I’ll be glad to go to Stockholm.”
(Laughter)
What was it for? We never hear.
Virtually every newspaper in America
has a daily astrology column.
A daily astrology column.
Astrology is of course a hoax.
There’s no such thing.
All tests show it doesn’t work.
It’s been known for hundreds of years.
(Laughter)
Why do we have astrology columns?
Those newspapers don’t have a weekly astronomy column by and large.
(Applause)
How is that?
How many major American newspapers have one science correspondent? Never mind a science bureau.
One person whose job it is to do science. Never mind technology.
Never mind medicine. Those are important. I’m talking about science.
You have
pages and pages of stock reports.
Minuscule, quantitative information.
Pages after pages.
Does everybody understand how to read it? No.
But it’s considered that there is a subset of the readership of the newspaper for whom that’s important.
Newspaper feels it has an obligation to provide for that subset.
You look at the sports pages.
Box scores.
WB.
RBI.
SO.
What’s that?
(Laughter)
If you are not a baseball fan, you don’t know.
You pass that by. But there’s enough people who are interested that the newspaper considers its obligation
to show that detailed, quantitative information.
Where is the page which gives the detailed science information?
Where is the page that encourages youngsters to think about it?
That shows that they can understand it. The mere appearance of science
in newspapers would say to kids: “Look,
it’s not too hard for you. It’s it the newspaper.
Everybody knows newspaper isn’t hard.
I must be able to understand this.
(Laughter)
It must be okay, science."
(Applause)
See, I think there is a vast underestimation of the intelligence and curiosity of the American people.
When we did our Cosmos television series constantly
had that happen and just recently it’s been,
Annie and I and some others, we did, some would call Cosmos Special Edition.
and again, we are getting people, I mean, ordinary people, not
not fancy academics,
truck drivers, hairdressers,
taxi drivers
saying to us:
“I wish there was more of that on television. That’s what I like. I learned something.
For the first time in months I learned something from television.”
Or people say,
often but by no means always, women say:
“I had always thought I was too dumb to understand science.
Your program showed me I could understand it.” It them a self-confidence,
a feeling that they could go further. Lots of people went further because of Cosmos.
I think in television, in the magazines, in newspapers and in radio,
much more could be done to convey science
to the average person. And it’s important.
It’s important, first of all, because
we are a scientific species. I mean, we are the only species in the planet that does science. It’s intrinsic to us. We’re curious. We want to find out.
But also,
as I've tried to say in my talk,
understanding science is central
to solving
the very serious technological problems which face us. How can we challenge
clear, false statements
by one government or another
if we don’t understand the underlying technology?
It’s not harder.
The technology you have to understand
to understand the nuclear arms race, to understand Star Wars, to understand any of these issues
is not more difficult than what you have to understand to follow the sports pages.
And I believe there is a real obligation to get that information to the American people. Our lives may depend on it.
Dr. Sagan, what do you think it might take to get
newspaper editors to devote more space and energy to covering science?
A reasoned argument.
Divine intervention. Somewhere between those two.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
That’s actually a good transition to this next question. This person would like to know: Why should not creation science be treated equally with evolution in our classrooms?
Because there is no such thing as creation science.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Evolution is the backbone of modern biology.
You cannot understand the nature of the biological world without understanding evolution.
I maintain that evolution is a fact. Not a theory.
Science uses the word theory in a way that’s different from how it’s used in everyday life.
In everyday life people say: “Oh, that’s just a theory,” meaning you
invented it while putting on your slippers as you got out of bed this morning.
But in science, a theory is a very well supported body of knowledge.
The atomic theory,
you know, that everything is made of atoms.
People don’t say: “Oh, it’s only a theory.”
Evolution is a theory on that level.
It is very clear that evolution happened. All you have to do is look at the record in the rocks. If you have an undisturbed sedimentary column,
at the top are the beasts and vegetables, the fossils of, the beasts and vegetables around now.
As you go deeper down, you go further back into time, as is clearly indicated by
radioactive dating,
and you find fossils of animals and plants you don’t know.
Who are those guys? They are not around now.
Also, down there, how come there’s no cows?
How come there’s no people down there? There’s just dinosaurs and trilobites.
It’s very clear: down there,
many of the plants and animals that are around today
weren’t around. They hadn’t come into being yet.
Up here,
those guys, those dinosaurs and trilobites, they are not around anymore.
They’ve all become extinct.
Life evolves.
Now, that doesn’t say that,
when I say evolution is a fact, that’s not the same as saying that
the mechanism of evolution is a fact.
There, there are still significant debate
on, for example, the extent to which natural selection explains everything, or in which
cosmic disasters have changed things, and so on.
But I think evolution is absolutely clear cut
and of all the nations in the planet, this is about the only one which is, say, a serious issue.
And it’s a serious issue for emotional reasons.
There’s a lot of people who don’t want to be considered an animal.
I’m sorry. I’ll be glad not to call you an animal if it offends you.
But we are animals.
We have evolved. And it’s very important self-knowledge.
And then, of course,
the main reason is that there are people
whose belief in the literal truth of every jot and tittle in the book of Genesis
is offended by evolution.
But the book of genesis, I must say, is not literally true.
It has problems. It has internal
Genesis chapter 1 contradicts genesis chapter 2,
just to start at the beginning.
(Laughter)
The Bible clearly implies the earth is flat.
It talks about the four corners of the earth in many places.
Maybe you remember the time that Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain to offer him all the kingdoms of the earth.
From that high mountain you can see all the kingdoms of the earth.
Only if it’s a flat earth.
If the earth is round, you can’t see the kingdoms on the other side.
At least Satan thought that the earth was flat and nothing that the author of that section of the Bible wrote contradicts it.
The Bible is a great literary document, it’s a great historical document,
it’s a great ethical and moral document but it is not a scientific document.
And I think that is something which it’s clear and ought to be taught.
And creation science, so-called, it’s merely an attempt
to introduce, contrary to the clear intent of the first amendment,
and I certainly share your fondness for it,
a particular religious viewpoint
imposed on the educational system of the United States.
Not only would I like to see
first amendment lounges. I’d like to see the whole United States declared a first amendment zone.
(Applause)
Dr. Sagan, this questioner asks:
“Do you believe there may be more to be learned in our inner space, namely our oceans, rather than in outer space?
I don’t like to compare the two,” this questioner says, “but would you like to give us your thoughts?
Well, there’s a lot more up there than down here so, you know, more.
But there’s no question that the remaining major unexplored area on this planet
are the oceans. They have a great economic importance, great scientific importance and,
very nicely, there is a range of submersibles now.
Maybe you remember the vehicles exploring the Titanic
which are opening up a whole new generation of undersea science and I’m all for it.
By the way,
this is not the only place with an ocean.
Titan, the big moon of Saturn, looks to have an ocean of liquid hydrocarbons
and it’ll be nice to explore that too
and if OPEC gets out of hand, there’s an economic possibility, although the freightage would be high.
(Laughter)
This questioner would like to know: What would be the fallout of the split in the scientific community, specially universities, on the merits of Star Wars?
Thanks. There are so many things to say about Star Wars. I didn’t have a chance to mention this.
It’s not just academic community, it’s also industry.
You waive a trillion dollars
at the US airspace community and academia,
and you are going to find, no matter what the merits of Star Wars are, a whole lot of people sign up.
And, what is more,
there’s a danger
that you’ll produce a
kind of technological momentum,
all just to keep making money and perquisite of power and promotions, and stock options, and all of that,
that you can’t turn off.
The political power
of an already politically sophisticated industry
that is devoted to maintain what one flag officer described, “the feeding frenzy,”
can be enormous.
I am very proud of the academic community that so many
scientists who could’ve been supported by Star Wars have signed a pledge, I’ve forgotten how many people, it’s something over 8,000 I believe,
top ranking academics from the best physics departments of the United States
saying that they will not accept any support to work on Star Wars.
But, of course, lots do because they have mouths to feed. They have families. They have mortgages.
And every time that happens,
someone is taken out of the civilian economy,
out of working on pure science, out of working on things which would maintain the economic position of the United States in the world,
and into something that has virtually no economic value. The dollars put into Star Wars are much less efficient in stimulating the economy
than dollars put into
domestic technology
or even pure science.
Dr. Sagan, what is your reaction to NASA’s cancelling some 11 major scientific missions that would’ve flied in space shuttle?
Should the private sector get behind these missions financially
and should the academic sector formally protest an excess of military missions?
Well, when Challenger blew up and the shuttle program was put on hold,
there were a superb set of scientific missions that were in the pipeline
ready to be launched by shuttle.
There was, for example, dear to my heart, the Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter.
First spacecraft to orbit a planet in the outer solar system. First spacecraft to send an entry probe
into the atmosphere of Jupiter to, as it descends through the atmosphere,
to examine what’s there. Fantastic mission.
Or the Hubble space telescope.
By far, the largest optical telescope ever put into earth orbit,
promises to revolutionize our knowledge of cosmology, the large-scale structure of the universe, information on
on the origin and fate of the universe, search for other planetary systems. The most extraordinary expected harvest.
All of that is just sitting around.
The cost of maintaining the Hubble space telescope
is something like a million dollars a day.
Just to maintain it.
And, where does this money come from?
Where does the money come from to maintain the scientific and technological teams who'd be needed later on to launch the thing
to study the data and then send back?
So the loss to NASA is not merely the obvious human tragedy
and the technological setbacks and the money needed to replace a shuttle, if that’s what we are doing,
but the subsidiary effects, which are extremely serious.
I don’t think there’s any chance that private industry will put up the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for pure scientific satellites.
Private industry is in the making money business
and you can’t make money, just knowledge,
which of course, leads to money on the longer time scale but industry is not interested in longer time scales.
No, the only way to solve this problem is to put more federal money into resuscitating NASA
which is in desperate trouble
and there’s a great demoralization. There is no goal or direction
to NASA. Scientific and technological teams are breaking up.
Scientists who I know are leaving the top-ranking technological institutions within NASA
or that support NASA
and we have a real crisis
which has the danger, at least in the middle term, of being irremediable,
that is, if all those people leave,
and then we get somebody else in the White House who says: “Wait a minute. This is really, very bad. We need NASA,”
The people to do it may not be so easily acquired.
So, I maintain there is a genuine crisis which can only be solved
a) by a larger NASA budget
and b) and almost more important,
a coherent sense of the national goal in space of the United States.
I will do so.
(Laughter)
This next question is apparently from one of your television fans. This person wants to know:
Assuming that the universe is expanding, does that imply that it is finite? And if it is finite, what is beyond?
Great question.
I can best answer by an analogy.
Consider a sphere.
And in the way this is often described, a balloon.
That’s to represent the universe, but it’s a two-dimensional universe,
that is, it’s just the surface of the balloon which is the universe, let’s say,
and on that surface there are flat two-dimensional things:
flat galaxies, flat stars, flat planets, flat astronomers.
Now,
consider that universe.
Is it finite?
Sure.
There’s only so many squared inches or centimeters
on its surface.
But, what’s on the other side?
There isn’t any other side.
The surface is all there is. You go around and you come back to where you started from.
Now, you’ll say: “But, wait a minute. There’s a whole lot of space inside and outside.”
But that’s in that third dimension that those flat guys can’t get to.
Now, up everything one dimension
and you have a kind of sense of what the answer is to the question.
The universe can be, in Einstein’s words,
“finite but unbounded.”
I think you now have part of the answer why there isn’t more science reporting in newspapers.
(Laughter)
No, no. If that wasn’t clear then that was my fault, not your fault.
(Laughter)
This questioner would like to know: Why should we want to establish colonies in space anyways?
Well,
colonies in space occur as a multitude of ideas, some of which I don’t think are very good ideas.
For example, the idea of a large, self-sustaining human community in Earth orbit,
which could be done, by the way, could not conceivably solve any population problems. Every day on the planet
there's a few hundred thousand more people born than die,
so you would have to launch a few hundred thousand people every day just to keep the population at a constant rate.
You would recognize that, even when NASA was doing well, this was beyond its capabilities.
There are some people who think it’ll be a good idea to
have self-sustaining communities of human beings on other planets so, if the worst happened here,
that at least there would be humans somewhere.
I don’t think that’s a good idea either
because I think it would, just a little bit,
add to the sense that the worst isn’t really the worst.
But, in the long term,
after solving our problems here,
the idea of humans moving out into
the space frontier, after the earth is all explored,
appeals emotionally to a whole lot of people. Not to everybody.
James Van Allen has described this as a kind of religion
in which a lot of people feel it, but they can’t tell you what the justification for it is.
But we are an expiratory species.
Remember, we come from hundreds of thousands of years of hunter gatherer ancestors.
People who roamed. Nomads.
That’s who we are, and I believe, in our genes somewhere, that urge is there.
The earth is all explored, except the ocean bottoms, the previous questioner asked about. It’s natural to look out to the planets to do this.
And I gave before some political reasons why I think it’ll be good to do,
the United States and Soviet Union together,
but I recognize that not everybody might find these last,
in the gene’s argument, a compelling argument. Still, a lot of people feel it.
Dr. Sagan, as usually, we have way more intriguing questions than we have time today. Before I ask the last question, let me present you with our certificate of our appreciation for being here today
and a national press club paperweight, which can weigh down your newest theories, I guess.
The last question that I have is from someone who would like to know: When can we expect to spot Sagan’s comet?
(Laughter)
Well, I am not sure what that is. Annie and I wrote a book called “Comet”
and, since I’m very unlikely to discover a comet, I guess that
we’ll probably call it “Sagan-Druyan’s” comet. It's the only one I’m likely to have
and that’s out in hardback right now,  will be out in paperback in November.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
