Reprinted from ‘Impact of Space Exploration
on Society’ Volume 8, Science and Technology
Series, 1966, a publication of the American

aay Astronautical Society. Publications Office
AERONAUTICAL SOCIETY P.O, Box 746, Tarzana, California 91356

 
   
PLANETARY EXPLORATION AND BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Joshua Lederberg*

Space flight has had very little impact on biology so far. Dr. Harold

P. Klein himself is associated with some outstanding exceptions: The
support that space research has given to the problems of organic molecu-
lar origins. However, fundamental biology has so far been such a negligible
part of the actual commitments of the space program that we should not

delude ourselves with any other expectation.

The picture is changing, especially with the dramatic steps of the
planetary programs. But we have had only the first glimpse and this
needs to be followed up by much closer study and frequent visits to
reconnoiter Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Every celestial body has some
importance to biology, just as the subject merges with cosmology in its

concern with the origins and evolution of large scale bodies.

It is grossly premature to draw any fixed conclusions about the history
of Mars from the Mariner IV Photographs. They have an enormous amount
of information tucked away on them, only bit by bit coming to the
surface. One point does seem clear - that Mars has a great deal of
fine structure, requiring much higher resolution. One of the most im-
portant questions these probes have to answer is the distribution of
temperature and moisture. There is still every possibility of quite a
good deal of subsurface water on Mars as ice or as permafrost, which is
exactly where we would have to expect it to be in view of what we have
long known about the average crustal temperature of the planet. So

here is a geological question, but one of the most urgent for biology.

 

* Professor of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo
Alto, California

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NASA has not enjoyed a very satisfactory rapport with many earth-bound
biologists. This is perhaps inevitable because the grounds of communi-
cation at this stage of the program are necessarily so slim. By the
very tradition of their work it is also true that biologists must have
a more parochial (that is, more earth-limited) outlook on science than
physicists and chemists who already know that their subjects are
relevant to cosmic nature. Of course the change in this outlook is
exactly one of the major opportunities for the exploration of space,
but we can hardly expect that iconoclastic approaches will be welcomed
by the old order, especially when they cost, or they seem to cost, a

great deal of money.

I would like to press a constructive suggestion for this and many

other reasons. Now that we have passed the first pioneering stage, we
should cast our programs to match a longer range pattern. Instead of
selecting isolated experiments for implementation, NASA's principal
efforts should be to build general purpose laboratories, reprogrammable
from earth, so that the whole scientific community can have a continuing
opportunity to experiment in space and on the planets. The astronomical
observatories are in many ways a prototype of this approach. One impli-
cation is that NASA will choose participants willing to regard themselves
as architects, whose design will be in the service of the commmity. This
has not been the main pattern of space science to date. And this has
tended to disassociate it from the important traditions of a broad
sclentific interface and of experimental competition and criticism

which are fundamental to real advance.

An important theme of this meeting should be the impact of technology
rather than of "space". I suggest that NASA's charter be broadened to
help cover some of the glaring breaches in the application of technology
to biological questions. This approach seems to me essential because of

the very powerful momentum that the very existence of an organization

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like NASA implies. ‘There are important reasons at many levels, and most
of these are defensible in most idealistic terms, why the budget of such
an organization should remain relatively stable from year to year with
allowances for temperate growth, once its major organizational requirements

have been laid out.

But this approach leaves no room for flexibility in looking for new goals,
for attempting to harmonize the most fruitful application of these powerful
technological resources. You all know the vicious cycle that it takes a
rather large investment to plan a program in the necessary detail so that
it can attract the funding needed to get it off the ground. With NASA
committed by charter to this one use of its powerful technology, it has no
basis by which it can explore others that its own staff might wish to

consider,

It seems to me that NASA already touches almost every base in science and
technology for its pioneering purposes; it could very well be charged to
do at least the system definition planning for many other technological
projects and, indeed, to seek out just the ones that seem most propitious
and would give the greatest cost effectiveness over a range of human
values. Space research and development is already doing this by indirec-
tion to an extraordinarily extent. But we need an aggressive and capable
agency to shoulder this job over a much broader front of non-military
applications.

I am sure many of you could furnish you ow favorite suggestions for
constructive technological development. One that I feel that is long
overdue, because it ought to be quite amenable to the kind of technology
that NASA knows how to mobilize, is the artificial heart. After all,
this is a pump of high reliability, good work-to-weight ratio, effective
restart capability, which circulates fuel and oxidants under computer
control, Should not space technology include a handful of small projects
like this to help fill its mission gap over the next decade?

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If you stop to think of this as an example, or to take another example,
if you look for computer applications in biology, and then look further
at the contrast between the potential impact of technology and what we
actually have, you might agree with my outlook in answering the question
of this symposium: the impact of space technology on biology is to show
us by dramatic example how much is possible that we could do if we would

just face up to our unmet challenges.

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