CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

DIVISION OF BIOLOGY May 16, 1960

Dear Josh,

Last Saturday evening (May 14) there was a one-
hour program on Space Exploration on one of the major
TV networks (NBC, I think). It was presented on a
program called World Wide 60, a serious and sometimes
excellent documentary program sponsored by the network.
The show was evidently planned by, or with the close
cooperation of, NASA. Glennan appeared on it and spoke
at length, ag did Jastrow and several other important
space people. To my mind, it was a very foolish and
harmful program. The maymr emphasis was on man-in-space.
It was deliberately planned around the idea that the
most interesting and important thing that can be done
in space is to put a man-—-or, preferably, 50 men-—into
orbit. It was pointed out that man~in—space has the
highest priority in the NASA space program. Nothing else
seemed very important, except, of course, the possibility
of communicating with intelligent beings on other planets.
Quite a bit of time was spent on this. The possibility
of detecting non-intelligent life yas not mentioned,
naturally. Nothing was too wacky for this program, in-
cluding numerous drawing-board models for manned satellites,
complete with space ferries, etc., etc. I may be wrong,
but I think there was vipbually nothing of scientific
interest, or of genuine value for the public, in the whole
hour. The cynical huckstering of phony objectives was
shocking. It seems to me that the Space Science Board
has a legitimate right to make the strongest representa-
tions to NASA, pointing out that these are not the ob-
jectives of scientists working on the space program, and
that this method of "selling" space research to the public
can only have the most harmful results.

With best regards, etc.

a“
a id Mm
a Norman Oe