Carl Sagan and Space Exploration (1934-1996)
In 1960s America, science journalism, unlike science fiction, was sparse and mostly performed by journalists with little or no scientific background. Science was perceived as minimising the need for religion but it did not fill the spiritual void that this left in people. These problems were challenged by American physicist Carl Sagan. Sagan tried to present the universe as such a beautiful and exciting place that people would not need pseudoscience or dogmatic religion in order to believe in something extraordinary. This idea was articulated by a fan who wrote to Sagan; "you made me realise I was a part of the fabric of nature, part of the universe, a feeling I yearned to have in church but never did" (quoted in Druyan, pp.165).
The Star Garden
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Carl Sagan
Sagan began writing to scientific journals in his late teens and was mentioned in an article, suggesting that organisms could exist on Mars, whilst he was still an undergraduate. This evoked anger in faculty members who were perhaps jealous and perhaps felt that real science had no need for speculation of this sort. This foreshadowed the backlash that was to come, cumulating with Sagan's rejection by the National Academy of Sciences in 1992.
As a student in the late 1950s, Sagan organised a lecture series on campus in Chicago which, decades later, he compared to the series 'Cosmos' (Davidson, pp.79). He presented the planets as physical places to be explored rather than points of light in the sky. Sagan saw 20th century planetary exploration as analogous to the European exploration of the 16th and 17th centuries. He talked of going to new places in the spirit of adventure, discovering new lands and perhaps new wildlife. This idea was reflected in the logo for the Planetary Society which Sagan formed with fellow American physicists Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman in 1980.
As a postgraduate student in Berkley, California, Sagan involved himself in three experiments which would later influence his most powerful arguments for planetary exploration. These were the Mariner 2 space probe to Venus, which was launched in 1962, the Stratoscope balloon project and NASA's origin of life experiments, both conducted in 1960. During his time on these projects Sagan wrote scientific articles, gave speeches and began to be quoted by the media.
Sagan's first success with a mainstream scientific journal came with 'The Planet Venus', published in Science in 1961 (Sagan, 1961, pp.849). That same year, Sagan's greenhouse model of Venus, along with the suggestion of 'terraforming' it, a term he borrowed from Jack Williams' science fiction of the 1940's, made it into the New York Times and Newsweek (Davidson, pp.116). His views earned him a place at the 1961 Green Bank convention which became known as the first Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) meeting. It was here that American physicist Frank Drake first discussed the Drake equation.
The Drake equation states that the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy which we may be able to communicate with (N) = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L where;
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of the above that go on to develop life
fi = the fraction of the above that go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space
The SETI program went on to use radio telescopes to scan for signals of extraterrestrial intelligence. You can now do this yourself by downloading SETI at home.
In the 1960s, Sagan became actively involved in the civil rights movement, travelling to Alabama for a march in 1963 and lecturing at the Tuskegee Institute, a predominantly African American college, in 1965 (Davidson, pp.193). Sagan spoke out against the Vietnam War and nuclear warfare (Sagan, 1985), he also enjoyed marijuana, claiming it increased his creativity and likening its use to the mental awakening found in Plato's analogy of the Cave (Davidson, pp.214). Sagan's approach allowed his message to be spread to a vast number of people who would otherwise have no active interest in what was seen as a pursuit for patriotic white males.
In 1965, when Mariner 4 came back with photos showing the 'dead' surface of Mars, Sagan fought to keep interest alive by further involving himself with the media. Using an article in the New York Times, he juxtaposed the images of Mars with photographs showing the Earth from the same distance. People with no understanding of science could see that evidence of life forms would not be observed from such a distance. In his 1966 book 'Planets', Sagan toured the Solar System, explaining the reasons for visiting each planet and citing Soviet astronomer Iosif Shklovsky's suggestion, that there could be 'libraries and museums' on Mars' moon Phobos (Sagan, 1972, pp.139). 'Planets' was popular enough to make the Time-Life series of popular science books.
Sagan had a direct affect on NASA's expenditure since areas of public interest are more easily justified in the use of public money. Sagan brought publicity, and therefore funding, to the projects he was interested in. By the time Mariner 4 came back, Sagan held a $198,000 NASA grant to study the 'biochemical actuaries of terrestrial micro organisms in simulated planetary environments' and a $134,684 two year grant to study exobiology.
In 1968, Sagan became editor of Icarus magazine, having been associate editor of for quite some time. Sagan embraced the philosophy of Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, advocating ad hoc conjectures and lack of means of falsification as a way to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Icarus became a medium for scientists to present the bold conjectures Popper ascribed to good science. Sagan was not afraid to posit controversial and speculative hypothesis, as long as the theory could be falsified. This allowed him to show a more speculative side of space exploration which enthralled many readers. That same year Sagan helped found the American Astronomical Society's division for Planetary Sciences, whose membership increased from one hundred shortly after he joined, to one thousand four hundred at the time of his death (Broad, 1998).
Media coverage of NASA plunged after the Apollo missions ended with evidence of life on the Moon looking more and more unlikely. Sagan wanted to sell science in the same way that the media sells products and these intentions came into effect when Jerome Agel, a producer of scholarly literature, invoked the idea of a book on the cosmos which, after seventeen rejections, was published as 'The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective'. Sagan dictated the book, often whilst high, and the literary style was akin to prose, full of inspirational metaphors and imagery;
'There is a place with four suns in the sky - red, white, blue, and yellow;
two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth - and made of diamond.
There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second.
There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria.
There are stars leaving the Milky Way. There are immense gas clouds falling into the Milky Way.
There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X - and gamma - rays and mighty stellar explosions.
There are, perhaps, places outside of our universe" (Sagan, 2000 pp.51).
'The Cosmic Connection' contains three chapters on the necessity and benefits of planetary exploration and was championed by Sky and Telescope, Time magazine and Patrick Moore, amongst others (Davidson, pp.257). New Scientist proclaimed; "if aliens come tomorrow and ask for our leader, we shall take them to this man" (Ridpath, pp.36). Sagan made a number of television appearances to promote the already very successful book, including an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He went on to become the show's 'house astronomer' and hence became the most famous American scientist of the time.
To many distinguished scientists this was a mark of disrespect, Sagan was accused of simplifying science to bias his personal claims which were then presented as representing the views of the entire establishment. Other astronomers, such as Robert Jastrow, had previously appeared on the Tonight Show without such success and there was a touch of resentment that the voice of popular science was not that of the most accomplished scientist. Sagan's popularity led him to a $50,000 advance for a new book, 'Other Worlds' (Davidson, pp.268 and Sagan, 1975).
When NASA was refused funding for a manned mission to Mars due to inflation caused by the Vietnam War, Sagan suggested launching robotic probes to land on the surface instead and made it his crusade to win over the public. Carson helped endorse the view and the success of this project led to an article in TV Guide, a less prestigious magazine than science journalists were used to, but with an audience of ten million readers it provided an opportunity to reach the masses. Shortly after this, Sagan was profiled by Rolling Stone magazine, he was now not just a scientist but a celebrity in his own right.
Sagan's influence not only meant that the Viking missions went ahead, but they contained a camera capable of spotting moving objects. Sagan made what were seen as outrageous claims about the possibility of 'polar bear sized' animals on the surface. This kind of talk ignited the imagination of the public but scientists worried he was setting them up for a fall and feared the backlash. The first view of the pink Martian sky came in 1976 after a Titan Centaur rocket hurled Viking 1 into space. There was no sign of life.
Sagan with a model of the Viking lander Sagan and the Pioneer plaque
In 1977, Sagan became involved with composing data to be sent out of the Solar System with the Voyager probes, having previously helped design the Pioneer plaque, along with Drake, and Sagan's second wife Linda Salzman Sagan.
In 1980, the thirteen part television series 'Cosmos' aired. Cosmos was preceded by a large media campaign and within a few weeks, Sagan appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the 'showman of science'. Cosmos received mixed reviews and the kind of fame that led to spoofs and impersonations (O'Connor, 1980, pp.31 and Zogln, 1981). The show won a number of awards and the accompanying book became a New York Times best seller for over seventy weeks. It also received critical acclaim from Astronomy and Sky and Telescope (DeVorkin, pp.536).
By 1980, the SETI program was severely underfunded and Sagan, Murray and Friedman founded 'The Planetary Society' in order to fund it privately. The Society was opened by Steven Spielberg in 1981 and allowed the public to become actively involved in lobbying congress for funding (Burns, pp.400). That same year, Sagan received a $2 million advance to write the science fiction novel 'Contact' (McDowell, pp.16). The book was, amongst other things, an assault on the critics of the SETI program.
After his death in 1996, Sagan was described in Nature as "the greatest populariser of the 20th century" (Burns, pp.400). His vision inspired many current planetary scientists including David Goldin, the administrator of NASA from 1992 until 2001. Goldin regularly consulted Sagan for advice, he witnessed the Mars Pathfinder land and proposed interstellar probes, an idea taken from Sagan's book 'Pale Blue Dot' (Broad, 1998).
Sagan also produced a generation of successful explorers in his students. David Morrison went on to become chief scientist at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California. Steven Squires headed the NASA team that designed the Mars Rover (Webster, 2006) and Christopher Chyba chaired the Europa Orbitor mission, which he proposed in 1998 as a continuum of Sagan's legacy (Broad, 1998). The current president of the National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone continues to promote space exploration in Sagan's memory (Morris, pp.454). No one has yet been able to approach Sagan's success for popularising space exploration.
References
Burns, J.A., 1997, 'Carl Sagan (1934-96) Astronomer and popularizer of science', Nature, Vol.385
Davidson, K., 1999, 'Carl Sagan; A Life', John Wiley & Sons, New York
DeVorkin, D.H., 1981, 'Cosmos Review', Sky and Telescope, Vol.61
Druyan, A., 1997, 'Does Science Need to be Popularized?', Carl Sagan's Universe, Terzian, Y. and Bilson, E. (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
McDowell, E., 1981, 'Sagan sells first novel to Simon and Schuster', New York Times, Jan 13th 1981
Morris, E., 2005, 'In defence of data', Nature, Vol.436
O'Connor, J., 1980, 'Pulling Cosmos into Perspective', New York Times, Dec 14 1980
Ridpath, I., 1974, 'A Man Whose Time Has Come', New Scientist, July 1974
Sagan, C., 1961, 'The Planet Venus', Science, Vol.133, pp.849-858
Sagan, C., 1972, 'Planets', Time-Life Books, Iowa
Sagan, C., 1975, 'Other Worlds', Bantam, New York
Sagan, C. 1985, 'On Minimizing the Consequences of Nuclear War', Nature, Vol.317, pp.485-488
Sagan, C., 2000, 'The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Webster, G., 2006, 'Mars Rovers Advance Understanding of Red Planet', NASA Mission News, Jan 24 2006
Zogln, R., 1981, 'Science on TV: How sharp is the focus?', New York Times, April 26 1981