SPACE EXPLORATION A PLEA FOR ASTRONAUTS AND COSMONAUTS TO UNITE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 18

SPACE EXPLORATION A PLEA FOR ASTRONAUTS AND COSMONAUTS TO UNITE

(By

EDWIN DIAMOND

in "Newsweek”)

(Reprinted by arrangement)

Vladimir Komarov, the Soviet cosmonaut who died when his spaceship crashed, never met Virgil Grissom, Edward White or Roger Chaffee, the three United States Apollo astronauts who were killed in a flash fire during ground tests of their spacecraft at Cape Kennedy last January.

The fact that these men were strangers points up a terrible tragedy. They probably would have enjoyed each other’s company, as men of a special breed often do. Komarov and the Apollo men had a great deal in common: they were all in their 30s or early 40s, fond of their families, superbly trained, physically fit and utterly devoted to their profession of space explorer. More important, if they had known each other—if there had existed some minimal coordination between the two space-faring nations whose uniforms they wore—all four men might be alive today and preparing for new adventures. Instead, Komarov, Grissom, White and Chaffee have become the first human sacrifices on the altar of the “space race” rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. And I am convinced there will be more sacrifices until the present lunar lunacy is replaced by common sense —and common cause—in the space programmes of both nations.

New Opportunities Co-operate with the Russians? For almost 10 years now—since Sputnik I heralded the new space age—l have been exposed to all the arguments against a space compact. I know that competition, individual and national informs and invigorates all our lives and leads to new peaks of achievement I know the high prestige stakes that will go to the first nation to reach the moon and probe the planets. I know that military hardware is inextricably bound up in the space programme and that secrecy has its advantages (although much less today than a few years ago); and I know that four deaths, or even 40, in space, is a small price when compared with the weekly death toll in Vietnam or even on the nation’s highways. But for 10 years I have also known that the new space age offers an unprecedented opportunity for new approaches, for freeing Americans and Russians alike from the old rivalries and tired shibboleths. For years, both nations have given lip service to the eminently reasonable notion of co-operation in space. “Why . . . should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?" John F. Kennedy asked the United Nations General Assembly in one of his last major addresses in September, 1963—and today the idea has become a banality of international speechmaking. But

knee-jerk repetition should not dull the idealism of the message—or conceal its practical advantages. Savings Possible Co-operation in space could lead to productive rather than duplicative competition; it could change the hazardous atmosphere of haste and pressure that contributed to the Apollo disaster. The enormous costs of space exploration (5 billion dollars a year In the United States, roughly the same in the Soviet Union) could be reduced without any loss of glory; the riches of space, after all, are numerous enough to give everyone a productive lode to explore.

The lives of some astronauts and cosmonauts might be spared; more remotely but nevertheless quite conceivably, some lives might be spared in Vietnam (as the United States and U.S.S.R. are drawn closer together in a community of interest) and on the highways (as research money and scientific talent are released from the relatively narrow course of the space race and directed toward more mundane concerns). Specifically, what can be done to bring about these benefits? It is not just a matter of two Americans and two Russians jumping into a spaceship and flying off into the sunset together, Holly-wood-style. Based on technical as well as political realities, I would distinguish two stages of action.

Stages Of Action At a minimum, the United States and the U.S.S.R. can without loss of face and security: 1. Establish a co-operative tracking network, At present the United States has girdled the world with tracking stations approximately 35 degrees north and south of the equator in order to keep in almost continuous radio contact with its astronauts. The Russians have no such worldwide network. As a result, Komarov was out of contact with mission control for eight hours, almost a third of the time he was in orbit During his final orbits, United States stations monitored his efforts to right the ship.

Had there been some form

I of liaison agreement between ! the two countries, it is con- ■ ceivable that Soviet scientists might have been able to relay corrective advice via the United States stations. Even I without a crisis, continuous i tracking-arrangements make - sense. In principle the ar- > rangement is no more radical • than the job performed by the i national air-traffic controllers ■ who serve international air- • line routes. And it is a two- ' way street: some day an er- ’ rant American spaceship may find itself too far north to be ’ in range of its own stations. ; Information Exchanged i 2. Exchange mutually beneficial information. The exact

cause of Komarov’s troubles may never be announced officially, but from what has been said so far it seems that he experienced some of the same attitude-control problems that beset the Gemini 8 astronauts. Many of these malfunctions have already been dissected in news stories and (much later) at international scientific meetings. But a truly free and frank exchange has been hobbled by the whole divisive psychology of the space race. In fairness, the U.S. has behaved better in this regard than the Russians, who are obsessed with a nearpathological desire for secrecy. This, in my opinion, is not because they are so advanced in comparison to the U.S. but rather because they are so far behind and have relatively little to show. But there is evidence that the Russians could be coaxed out of their mania for secrecy. World-wide weather information collected by satellite is already being shared by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.—even though the same Soviet satellite systems that take weather pictures also do their military reconnaissance work—and both nations plan to link their communications satellites in a special television programme on June 25.

Divide And Conquer 3. Divide and conquer space in co-ordinated fashion. A perfect precedent for “territorial” assignments in space now exists. By international agreement the continent of Antarctica was taken out of cold-war rivalries in 1959 and made a scientific preserve; Russian and American outposts—as well as those of ten other countries including Britain, France, Japan and Ar-gentina—co-exist in peaceful exploration (and exchange movies and holiday greetings.) No nation now can claim Antarctica as its own. There is room enough there to conduct experiments and mount new adventures without crowding out anyone else. The same should apply on a much grander scale in space. To take one example, the earth's magnetosphere—the newly discovered boundary to the earth’s magnetic field—is so vast that U.S. satellites could explore one side while Russian vehicles were exploring the other—at half the expense and half the time it would take for one nation to plot the magnetosphere’s area. After trying out such modest steps as these, the two space Powers could escalate the degree of co-operation—as well as invite aboard any other interested nations. The most obvious project for coordinated effort would be the moon. The U.S. is committed to a manned lunar landing in this decade. But John F. Kennedy, the man who made that commitment, apparently was beginning to have doubts about it just before his death. The Soviets have been even more ambivalent about the moon. The best reconstruction of Komarov’s flight plan suggests a rendezvous between Soyuz I and another ship.

Mating Of Missions If huge earth-orbiting laboratories are in fact the major aim of the current Soviet programme, this would suggest a way to co-ordinate the space activities of the two nations. A mating of hardware Is not practical: N.A.S.A.’s tangled problems with industry in the Apollo programme demonstrate that there are difficulties enough even when contractors “all speak the same language,” as Project Mercury director Robert Gilruth once put it But a mating of missions is still possible. The Soviet Union might concentrate on orbiting space stations while the U.S. —befitting its present lead and its greater resources—might be assigned the first lunar landing. United States tracking stations would be pledged for the space-station effort while the Soviets would i release all information collected by their unmanned lunar vehicles.

Is any of this likely? Despite all the pieties that followed the deaths of the Apollo astronauts and of Komarov, no one of real authority in either the U.S. or the Soviet Union is exploring these possibilities. Dr. Hugh Dryden, N.S.A.'s deputy administrator, worked assiduously for space cooperation until his death in 1965; since then, the matter has languished. It should not any longer. The price—in men and material, in space and down on earth—is too great for any > 1 nation to pay.

Edwin Diamond, a senior editor of “Newsweek” has been covering man’s efforts at space exploration ever since the first Sputnik was launched almost a decade ago. In this article Mr Diamond pleads for some first steps in United States-Russia co-operation in space.