January 24, 1975

Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin

Chief, Life Sciences Astronaut Office
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

Houston, Texas 77058

Dear Dr. Kerwin,

This is to respond to your letter of January 3rd and to the draft
recommended program plan on life sciences, appendix 12, Outlook for Space
1980-2000.

As I read the paper, I found in it a number of ideas that ware
provocative and that I might have been too ready to dismiss out of hand
before giving them more careful deliberation. After further study I would
have to say that the draft contains a number of very interesting and
probably productive ideas; at the same time there are others that are so
inherently implausible that they should be reexamined vary eritically and
in some instances undoubtedly scrapped.

In general I would be the most skeptical of those suggestions that
imply the use of the space environment as a routine operational context
for therapy, for diagnosis, even for research or for production. Even if
the marginal costs of space transportation should be greatly reduced, either
as a result of enormous technical strides, or of the absorption of fixed
costs by investment in space for other motives, its seems very likely that
for most purposes one will eventually find much cheaper implementations on
earth. On the other hand, the space environment may be the only way to
investigate some fundamental phenomena, insight into which may then lead to
a variety of technical implementations. The therapeutic use of the space
environment will almost certainly follow this principle and I suspect that
the same will hold for a number of the production processes where control of
the gravitational environment seems to be the key issue. The credibility of
the proposals is hindered by insistence on the same framework for large
scale implementation and for the initial inquiry.

I will turn now to specific points in the draft by heading and number,
I think you have put firet things first in your discussion beginning at page 3.
Weightlessness ts unlikely to prove to be a really cogent experimental variable
for those biological situations that are already unresponsive to drastic
changes in orientation. For example, if we routinely grow bacteria in cultures
that are violently tumbled; and at the same time can Manage pretty well in atill
cultures; it is hard to believe that we are going to find exciting effects
in a xero G environment. Evan there we have no way to control the sporadic

over
Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin -~2- 1/24/75

accelerations that are the results of Brownian movement of particles on
that scale. Hence, to begin with indisputable empirical observations
such as those that have been observed in human space flight is the most
appropriate and the issues raised under Al-5 are certainly of the
greatest importance not only for astronautics but for a spill-—over

into terrestrial medicine. They do not reflect the highest priorityges
for medical research but this is such a tightly interconnected web that
it is impossible to predict where one will find the most promising leads
for dealing with major health problems.

On the other hand, I would be very cautious about trying to include

persuasive remarks about the operational use of weightlessness for the
reasons stated before.

C. The medical use of space communications is already under way.
(Consult Dr. Frank Kuo, Aloha System, University of Hawati/Menoa, 2540
Dole Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822),

D. %IT can understand the synoptic ecology aspects of vector control. But the
references to Monitoring E. coli make no sense to me. Do you mean “sonobuoys"
with automated E. coli sensors that need space communication links? As the
significant sites adjoin dense settlement that sounds far-fetched!

E. I buy the physiological studies. The idea of followins genetic adaptation
to zero-G in anything larger than a fruit-flv would call for larger
experiments in space than have even been done on earth! (One has to think
of a minimum of 10 generations for populations of 109 individuals for
neaningful experiments on evolution).

I would reject all but El and E5 as adjuncts to A.

F. A/ok and the rest of the paper.

Sinceraly yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics