The Press TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1965. Apollo and Diana

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30939, 21 December 1965, Page 20

The Press TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1965. Apollo and Diana

“ We are the opium smokers, the far-out schemers ”, said Mr Leonard Yarbrough on his way through Christchurch from the Space Flight Centre in Alabama to the Antarctic plateau. Mr Yarbrough was quoting from A. W. O’Shaughnessy’s “The

“ Music-makers ”. The poem continues: “We are the “dreamers of dreams, World-losers, and World- “ forsaken, On whom the pale moon gleams These lines, written 90 yean ago, are an apt description of the planners of the Alabama centre's project Apt too, is the name “Apollo” given to the project: Apollo was the sun god of classical mythology, patron of music and poetry, twin brother of Diana, goddess of the moon. Mr Yarbrough’s journey to the end of the earth may seem to have a tenuous connexion with space research, but scientific advance depends heavily on “ far-out schemers ”. The laws of science have been compared to the decrees of fate. In a Harvard lecture 40 years ago. Professor A. N. Whitehead reviewed the origins of modern science: The pilgrim fathers of the scientific imagination, as it exists today, are the great tragedians of ancient Athens, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Their vision of fate, remorseless and indifferent, urging a tragic incident to its inevitable issue, is the vision possessed by science. Fate in Greek Tragedy becomes the order of nature in modern thought The absorbing interest in the particular heroic incidents, as an example and a verification of the workings of fate, reappears in our epoch as concentration of Interest on the crucial experiments. In spite of the apparent emphasis on technical development in applied science, scientists become “ dreamers of dreams ” when any major advance is made. If the dream is truly prophetic it establishes a new signpost beyond the frontiers of previous knowledge. Sometimes the search for new knowledge has an immediately practical purpose; more often than not, a major scientific discovery has no immediate purpose except to establish a new signpost. Mr Yarbrough’s observations as an engineer on the polar plateau, where the “ hostile environment ” poses problems for man’s survival similar to those expected on the moon’s surface, may produce information of value for the Apollo project. Or his mission may turn out to be useless, at least for the purpose in hand. This uncertainty underlies most attempts to advance scientific knowledge. Space research is tremendously costly. Why, it may be asked, should so much of the world’s limited resources of scientific talent, time, and money be committed to this particular “dream”? The visions of scientists have been doubted before; now the policies of two great nations engaged in a race to the moon can be questioned. The race will not be halted; that is certain. Placed in its wider context, the “race to the moon” may prove to be man’s biggest single step into the scientific unknown. Neither Mr Yarbrough nor any other scientist can say whether the colossal cost of making this step will be “ justified ”; all that anyone could say at this stage is that there is no evidence to the contrary.