National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration

Office of External Relations

NASA History Division

NASA Headquarters

Washington, DC 20546

NASA SP-2005-4701

Risk and Exploration

E A R T H , S E A A N D T H E S T A R S
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Risk and exploration: Earth, sea and the stars, NASA administrator’s symposium, 

September 26-29, 2004, Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California / Steven J. Dick 

and Keith L. Cowing, editors.

 p. cm.

1. Scientific expeditions—Congresses. 2. Underwater exploration—Congresses. 3. Outer 

space—Exploration—Congresses. 4. Technology—Risk assessment—Congresses. 5. 

Science—Moral and ethical aspects—Congresses. I. Dick, Steven J. II. Cowing, Keith L. 

Q115.R57 2005

910’.9--dc22 2005004470
Risk and Exploration

E A R T H , S E A A N D T H E S T A R S

NASA Administrator’s Symposium

September 26–29, 2004

Naval Postgraduate School

Monterey, California

STEVEN J. DICK AND

KEITH L. COWING, EDITORS

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Office of External Relations

NASA History Division

Washington, DC

NASA SP-2005-4701
TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW YOU WILL BE MORE DISAPPOINTED

BY THE THINGS YOU DIDN’T DO THAN BY THE ONES THAT YOU DID DO.

SO THROW OFF THE BOWLINES. SAIL AWAY FROM THE SAFE HARBOR.

CATCH THE TRADE WINDS IN YOUR SAILS. EXPLORE. DREAM. DISCOVER.

 Attributed to Mark Twain
Contents

Acknowledgments STEVEN J. DICK vii

KEITH L. COWING

Invitation Letter SEAN O’KEEFE ix

Introduction SCOTT HUBBARD 1

The Vision for Exploration SEAN O’KEEFE 3

Race to the Moon JAMES LOVELL 11

Bold Endeavors: Lessons from JACK STUSTER 21

Polar and Space Exploration

Discussion 35

SESSION ONE—EARTH

Hunting Microbial Communities in DALE ANDERSEN 43

Dry Antarctic Valley Lakes

High-Altitude Mountaineering ED VIESTURS 49

Exploring the Deep Underground PENELOPE J. BOSTON 55

Exploring the World’s Highest Lakes NATHALIE CABROL 61

Deep/Underwater Cave Environments WILLIAM C. STONE 69

A Writer/Climber Perspective DAVID ROBERTS 77

Discussion 81

SESSION TWO—SEA

Diving Shipwrecks JOHN CHATTERTON 97

Deep Ocean Exploration SYLVIA EARLE 101

Ocean Futures JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU 107

Exploration and the MICHAEL L. GERNHARDT 111

Risk-Reward Equation

Titanic and Other Reflections JAMES CAMERON 119

Over the Edge of the World LAURENCE BERGREEN 129

Discussion 139
SESSION THREE—THE STARS

Introduction JOHN GRUNSFELD 151

Risk and Reward in Apollo HARRISON SCHMITT 153

Mir Adventures SHANNON LUCID 159

Mars Exploration JAMES B. GARVIN 165

Mars Exploration Rovers STEVE SQUYRES 173

COBE and the James Webb JOHN MATHER 181

Space Telescope

From the Earth to the Moon GRAHAM YOST 187

Discussion 197

SESSION FOUR—WHY WE EXPLORE

Why We Explore JOHN GRUNSFELD 209

Discussion 219

APPENDIX—IN CLOSING

Closing Remarks SCOTT HUBBARD 245

Remarks THOMAS “T. K.” MATTINGLY 249

Remarks MICHAEL FOALE 255

About the Editors 269

Index 271

NASA History Series 287
vii

Acknowledgments

The NASA History Division is pleased to present the record of a unique meeting on risk and 

exploration held under the auspices of the NASA Administrator, Sean O’Keefe, at the Naval 

Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, from September 26–29, 2004. The meeting 

was the brainchild of Keith Cowing and astronaut John Grunsfeld, NASA’s chief scientist at 

the time. Its goals, stated in the letter of invitation published herein, were precipitated by 

the ongoing dialogue on risk and exploration in the wake of the Columbia Shuttle accident, 

the Hubble Space Telescope servicing question, and, in a broader sense, by the many NASA 

programs that inevitably involve a balance between risk and forward-looking exploration. 

The meeting, extraordinarily broad in scope and participant experience, offers insights 

on why we explore, how to balance risk and exploration, how different groups defi ne and 

perceive risk differently, and the importance of exploration to a creative society. 

At NASA Headquarters, Bob Jacobs, Trish Pengra, and Joanna Adamus of NASA Public 

Affairs led the meeting’s implementation. At NASA’s Ames Research Center, Director 

Scott Hubbard coordinated a group including Rho Christensen, Danny Thompson, Shirley 

Berthold, Victoria Steiner, Ed Schilling, Mike Mewhinney, Kathleen Burton, and the Ames 

Video Team. Mel Averner also contributed signifi cantly to the concept and content. The 

Naval Postgraduate School, commanded by Rear Admiral Patrick W. Dunne, provided a 

congenial venue. 

The meeting was broadcast on NASA TV, and thanks are due in this regard to Al 

Feinberg, Tony Stewart, Jim Taylor, and the planners’ collaborative: Mark Shaddock and 

Spotlight Productions, Donovan Gates of Donovan Gates Production, and Michael Ditertay 

and his staff on this 30-person television crew. Thanks to their efforts, a DVD record of the 

meeting has also been produced.

Thanks are also due to the moderators: Miles O’Brien of CNN, Chris McKay of NASA 

Ames, David Halpern of the White House Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy, and John 

Grunsfeld, NASA Headquarters.

Finally, thanks are due in the NASA History Division to Liz Suckow and Steve Garber, 

and to the staff in the Printing and Design Offi ce at NASA Headquarters: Shelley Kilmer, Cathy 

Wilson, Paula Kephart, Henry Spencer, Jeffrey McLean, Greg Treese, and Steve Johnson.

In order to maintain the informal fl avor of the meetings, these proceedings are based 

on transcripts that have been lightly edited for grammar and punctuation. Most references 

to slides shown during the presentations have been deleted.

Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian

Keith L. Cowing, Editor, NASAWatch.com

ix

Invitation Letter

The goal of the Risk and Exploration Symposium is to engage in an open discussion about the 

issue of risk—identifying it, mitigating it, accepting it—all in the course of exploration. Yes, 

risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called “sure-thing-taking.”

Challenge fosters excellence, often drawing on previously untapped skills and abilities. 

Each of us takes and accepts risk as a part of our daily existence. We often go out of our way 

to seek challenge. However, seeking challenge often means accepting a high level of risk. 

The dictionary defi nes risk as being exposed to hazard or danger. To accept risk is to accept 

possible loss or injury, even death. 

One of the key issues that continues to be debated in the tragedy of the Space Shuttle 

Columbia is the level of risk NASA accepted. And, ultimately, the entire nation is now 

engaged in a broader debate over whether or not the exploration of space is worth the risk 

of human life. 

While risk can often be reduced or controlled, there comes a point when the removal 

of all risk is either impossible or so impractical that it completely undermines the very 

nature of what NASA was created to do—to pioneer the future. 

Everyone today understands that human space exploration is a risky endeavor. 

However, the quest for discovery and knowledge, and the risks involved in overcoming 

seemingly insurmountable obstacles is not unique to NASA. Whether the challenge is 

exploring the depths of our oceans or reaching the top of our highest mountains, great 

feats usually involve great risk. 

During this symposium, we want to examine the similarities between space 

exploration and other terrestrial expeditions, and examine how society accepts risk. For 

example, more than 40,000 Americans die each year in automobile accidents. A recent 

study of 22,000 fatal accidents showed that nearly two-thirds of the victims were not 

wearing seatbelts—a clear indication that too many of us fail to understand the risks when 

we get behind the wheel of a car and fail to buckle up. 

Why are sacrifi ces made in the name of exploration more notable than the losses 

suffered in the course of everyday life? What lessons can be learned by studying the history 

of exploration and risk? And why are so many people willing to risk their lives to advance 

adventure, discovery, and science when, often, the benefi ts are unknown and indefi nable? 

We have assembled an invitation-only audience of participants for this important 

event comprised of NASA astronauts and leaders, as well as world renowned mountain 

climbers, deep sea explorers, cave explorers, Arctic and Antarctic researchers, scientists, 

communication experts, and others. These participants are involved, in a personal way, 

with risky endeavors, which serve to expand the frontiers of human knowledge beneath the 

sea, on the surface of Earth, and in outer space. 

We look forward to your participation in what we believe will be a spirited and highly 

benefi cial public discussion of risk and exploration.

Sean O’Keefe, NASA Administrator

1

Introduction

On behalf of Ames Research Center, one of your local hosts, I bid you greetings: to the 

Administrator, to my fellow Center Directors, distinguished guests from Headquarters, 

members of the NASA family. Our thoughts go out today to members of the Kennedy Space 

Center who cannot be here with us. They are attending to the damage from the hurricanes 

that have hit them recently. Greetings also to the rest of the distinguished guests here, and, 

of course, to our gracious hosts at the Naval Postgraduate School. 

We are here today to look at risk. How do we perceive risk, real and otherwise? How 

do we identify risk? How do we mitigate risk? And fi nally, when and how should we tolerate 

and accept risk? And all of this discussion, of course, is in the context of exploration, the 

essence of what we do.

What is risk? In our daily lives, we all assume multiple levels of real risk. We get 

into cars. We get into airplanes, some of us far too often. We cross roads. We use cell 

phones while we’re driving. We eat bacon and barbecued chicken that contain potentially 

carcinogenic nitrites. One way or another, all these things represent real risks that we 

tolerate and accept. Most of us mitigate these risks in some measure by doing things like 

wearing seatbelts, using the oversight of agencies like the FAA, remembering to look both 

ways, and getting our annual physical checkups. We are accustomed to living with risk, 

whether we realize it or not.

Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday morning, we are going to explore risk in the fi eld 

of exploration. There is monetary risk, programmatic risk, and, of course, the far more 

compelling issue of risk to life and limb of the explorers. We look at how we decide what 

risks are acceptable, both for the individual and the institution. I think this is a key element 

here. How do people perceive risk individually? How do we perceive risk as institutions? 

How do we collectively decide what we will accept?

Let me give you a little bit of insight from my own experiences. I will start with a 

program from seven or eight years ago where I was fortunate to be the manager of the Lunar 

Prospector mission. In December 1997, just days before the launch, we had to make some 

very tough assessments of the risk. There was a single-string spacecraft, fi rst use of a new 

launchpad, the maiden fl ight of a new launch vehicle, although it was a design based on 

some proven fl eet ballistic missile motors. There was a very tight budget schedule, and a 

relatively young team, although with some key experienced people at the top. So, why did 

we go for launch? Why did we accept that risk?

Well, we had a strong test program, solid teaming with effective communication and 

some very experienced key managers, open channels during the design and development 

process, and lots of insight from a “graybeard” committee that provided us with truly 

effective comments. In the end, the deciding factors amounted to a considerable degree 

of trust and the determination that we had done everything possible to ensure mission 

success. So, we launched. That mission was successful, and that data is now being used as 

we plan a return to the Moon in the not-too-distant future.

Another example is from the restructuring of the Mars program. In April and June 

2000, we had to decide whether to take the risk of going back to Mars for an opportunity 

1
2

that was just 38 months away. Would we not only send an orbiter, but would we send a 

lander? We had three opportunities there: do nothing, send an orbiter, and send a lander. 

Why did we take the risk of doing the most ambitious one?

Well, it was an outstanding launch opportunity. We had solid heritage from the 

Pathfi nder Mission. We had a fully developed payload, and we had a robust entry, descent 

and landing scheme that was well understood. We put two rovers into the mission to balance 

the risk against random failures, and I think, as you will hear later on in this meeting from 

Steve Squyres, having 2 rovers had an unanticipated benefi t of providing a rich panoply of 

hardware from which to reduce other types of risks. But, in the end, the reason we took that 

risk was because it was the right thing to do. A strategic plan brought us back to the surface 

of Mars and gained the kind of information that is now changing the textbooks, changing 

the way that we look at the Red Planet.

Finally, let’s look at the issue of human spacefl ight risk. I was honored to be the sole 

NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. It was one of the most 

diffi cult assignments that I have ever had in my career. In that entire seven months, we never 

lost sight once of the nine lives that were lost, the seven astronauts and the two searchers, 

the two helicopter pilots. Clearly, we take substantial risk when we put humans on the top 

of a rocket and leave Earth’s gravity well. How do we adequately mitigate that risk? From 

Columbia, we learned some tough lessons. We learned we need to develop a culture of safety 

for the long haul. We need clear communication, clear organization, adequate resources, 

rigorous and sound engineering principles, and a program systems engineering approach 

that addresses the entire effort, that addresses all the analysis that we need. 

We also need to effectively learn to encourage alternative points of view. If we do all 

of these things, can we eliminate risk, especially for human spacefl ight? I think not. Will we 

fi nd a balance of well-mitigated risk and a powerful level of acceptable risk? I, for one, think 

so. What will that balance be? That’s what we have come together to discuss today. 

Scott Hubbard, Director, NASA Ames Research Center

2

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page Open next section
There is no historic analogue, I think, to a gathering like this. 

Certainly, no records exist of people living in Lisbon 500 years ago attending a candlelight 

symposium featuring Amerigo Vespucci or Vasco da Gama or Ferdinand Magellan. So, this is 

an opportunity given by modern technology and the ease of transportation to pull together 

this really extraordinary group of folks who’ve experienced the full extent and breadth 

of exploration and the risks attendant thereto. Such a gathering was important for the 

purpose of parsing this larger question of risk and return on the exploration ventures we are 

about. I am particularly grateful to John Grunsfeld, who has really provided the intellectual 

horsepower behind this kind of effort to think about these questions in a structured way, 

and to Keith Cowing, two very disparate kinds of folks, but folks who share the passion and 

desire for exploration and an understanding of the attendant risk to it. So, to Keith and to 

John, I am most grateful for that extraordinary nudge that you all provided in pulling this 

together and providing the structure of the meeting.

We are gathered here, appropriately, in a place like Monterey, at the edge of a great 

ocean, to discuss exploration in all of it facets of extreme environments here on Earth and 

in space. Indeed, this historic location is steeped in a history of exploration. The ventures of 

Sean O’Keefe

NASA Administrator, 2001–05

The Vision for Space Exploration

Sean O’Keefe was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as NASA’s 10th administrator. He 

served from 21 December 2001 to 19 February 2005. During his term, O’Keefe actively supported NASA’s 

many missions to advance exploration and discovery in aeronautics and space technologies. 

O’Keefe joined the Bush Administration on inauguration day and fi rst served as the Deputy Director of 

the Offi ce of Management and Budget until December 2001. Prior to joining the Bush Administration, 

O’Keefe was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair at 

the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Appointed as the Secretary 

of the Navy in July 1992 by President George Bush, O’Keefe previously served as Comptroller and 

Chief Financial Offi cer of the Department of Defense from 1989. Before joining then Defense Secretary 

Dick Cheney’s Pentagon management team in these capacities, he served on the United States Senate 

Committee on Appropriations staff for eight years, and was Staff Director of the Defense Appropriations 

Subcommittee. His public service began in 1978 upon selection as a Presidential Management Intern.
4

so many people to explore and to establish the site of civilization that we see in 

this marvelous area here around Monterey is testimonial to that. What we enjoy 

each day in this community, and understand about exploration and its benefits, 

are here and evident each day. Certainly this evening we will have an opportunity 

to see that more specifically at the aquarium.

I want to provoke some thought and reflection about a central question 

which we’re discussing here in these two and a half days. Why do we take 

such risks to explore? As humans, what is it about us that really wants to 

understand that which is on the other side of the horizon, that which is on the 

other side of the ridge? In doing so, there are periods of our human history in 

which the acceptance of those risks have resulted in great gains and, in other 

cases a mere footnote, because it ended in a way that was less than fulfilling. 

In each case, there was always a contribution to that human desire to want to 

know and understand. How we assess those risks and deal with the challenges 

of exploration is the central question we are about in this two and a half days, 

and I am most grateful to all of you for accepting the invitation to participate 

in this kind of debate and discussion of how we may structure this question, 

not only in a public but also in a specific way. I am certain we will have a lively 

discussion of where you draw the line between the benefits of exploration and 

the inherent risks, especially as technology changes, and as we learn more about 

the environments in which we explore. 

Now, this is in part about NASA participation, to be sure, but it is mostly 

about those of us from NASA having the opportunity to learn from so many 

others who are engaged in the broader exploration agenda of the central questions 

we pose.

I am most grateful to see the Apollo, Shuttle, and Space Station veterans 

who have gathered here with us to share their thoughts. Indeed, I think it will be 

historic in and of itself to learn so much from them. All of them have dared to sit 

in a spaceship at one point (and in several cases, like Jerry Ross, seven different 

times), to sit on the top of the spaceship with millions of pounds of explosive 

fuel, prepared to put their lives on the line in order to advance that cause of 

exploration and discovery. Now I asked Jerry, why you do this, and he said, “Well, 

because it’s an opportunity to do so,” and he would easily sign up for an eighth 

flight this afternoon, I’m sure. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he would wait 

until noon to sign up for an opportunity.

To some, it may seem that NASA has made space travel routine. Let there 

be no mistake: I think we all fully appreciate and understand that space flight 

and exploration is still a very risky proposition. Despite our efforts to eliminate 

that risk, there will always be an attendant risk to such a venture. And, as a 

result, here in attendance are NASA scientists, engineers, and managers whose 

job it is to have constant vigilance about that risk. And in that regard, I view 

myself as included in that requirement for constant diligence to assure that risk 

is mitigated as much as we can. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

OPENING PHOTO: 

An artist’s concept of future exploration 

missions: Two kilometers above the lava 

fl ows of Mars’s Tharsis Bulge region, 

a geologist collects samples from the 

eastern cliff at the base of Olympus Mons, 

the solar system’s largest known shield 

volcano. 

(NASA Image # S95-01566. Courtesy of 

John Frassanito and Associates)
5

From the discussions that will take place here, I hope we will gain a greater 

appreciation of our responsibility as a public organization to take on bold and 

risky ventures, and to learn from those who have accepted private ventures and 

other approaches to how we explore risk. We want to know how to frame that 

discussion and debate, and evaluate that risk in a different way.

But, again, it is also a requirement that we do that in a diligent manner that 

minimizes and mitigates, to the maximum extent we can, what that risk may be, 

that we understand what risk is as much as possible and, in some cases, accept 

it relative to the returns we think are feasible. That’s the price of admission of 

what we do each and every time we’re engaged in any exploration venture, be it of 

human spaceflight or robotic probes. It is always measured in the public domain 

and in the public eye relative to what our expectations are to that return. Indeed, 

NASA is an agency that has been defined over the course of its 46 years by great, 

great triumph and unbelievably deep tragedy, and we’ve learned from both ends 

of that spectrum. It’s a consistent set of themes. It is, indeed, the singular aspect 

of what has described this agency throughout the course of its four decades.

We have purposely expanded the list of invitees, and we are very grateful 

to the folks who have accepted to be a part of this. We want to gain an added 

perspective from the people engaged in exploration of the Earth’s most extreme 

environments, and learn what they can bring to the question of why we explore 

in the face of danger. What is it about that act of exploration that makes it so 

appealing? And so important? And so much of an acceptance of human desire to 

want to understand and know that which we don’t? 

Within the NASA family, we have great respect for all who put their 

lives on the line: Not just to seek thrills, but, rather, to gain knowledge, wisdom, 

and experience that will benefit all humanity. All of those assembled here have 

a unique and exciting story to tell about what drives us to explore, whether 

engaged in it directly or specifically involved in supporting its effort, all with the 

same objective. 

All of those stories, I have no doubt, we’ll hear at this meeting. Also, we’ll 

learn from the experiences of how folks work to minimize and mitigate the risk, 

and learn where the fine line is between responsible and imprudent risk. Where is 

”

WHY DO WE TAKE SUCH RISKS TO EXPLORE? AS HUMANS, WHAT IS IT ABOUT US 

THAT REALLY WANTS TO UNDERSTAND THAT WHICH IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF 

THE HORIZON, THAT WHICH IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIDGE?

WHY DO WE TAKE SUCH RISKS TO EXPLORE? AS HUMANS, WHAT IS IT ABOUT US

“

WHY DO WE TAKE SUCH RISKS TO EXPLORE? AS HUMANS, WHAT IS IT ABOUT US

“

WHY DO WE TAKE SUCH RISKS TO EXPLORE? AS HUMANS, WHAT IS IT ABOUT US

SEAN O’KEEFE THE VISION FOR EXPLORATION
6

the differentiating line that marks that? Even when we’ve applied a careful calculus 

to these kinds of circumstances, in many cases and in many circumstances, 

the events of nature will provide a set of risks that must be responded to, and 

challenges independent of whatever control we might have over it. 

Our colleagues at the Kennedy Space Center, after their second hurricane in 

the span of a few weeks, are dealing with just that set of challenges, of risks that 

they are working through. And because of their extraordinary diligence, having 

survived two unbelievable events of what are natural disasters in their own right, 

nonetheless, have survived those experiences with all the Shuttle orbiters intact, 

all the space station hardware in great condition, and no loss of life, no injuries. 

It’s an extraordinary testimonial to the amazing diligence of Jim Kennedy, the 

director of the Kennedy Space Center, and what the Kennedy team has done to 

ride out this set of natural disasters. 

I was down at the Kennedy Space Center with Bill Readdy a week ago, 

and the poetic kind of discrimination with which nature provides us a set of 

challenges on risk were evident to us. I got an opportunity to see the Vertical 

Assembly Building, which is the dominant structure on the skyline of the 

Kennedy Space Center that all recognize, and you could literally tell which way 

the wind was blowing when Hurricane Frances blew in. Three of the four sides 

of the Vehicle Assembly Building were in relatively good shape. On one side of 

it, though, better than a thousand panels were blown off. Several of those panels 

have also departed as a result of the latest hurricane that just came through. As a 

consequence of striking some of the buildings in the area, ripping off big chunks 

of roof, all manner of consequence and destruction that occurred as a result of 

that, all of which was mitigated in some way, shape, or form. And yet, the irony 

is that right next to the Thermal Protection Building, where a portion of the roof 

blew off next to the Vehicle Assembly Building, there was a pressure-treated 

lumber gazebo without a scratch.

Nature discriminates very profoundly, and why it does, we don’t understand. 

It certainly is a case that reminds all of us, even in such a simple example as that 

one, that despite our best efforts, there are unknowns that will always rise up in any 

of these circumstances, in any case of exploration, for which the only defense we 

have is diligence and the hope that we have mitigated against it as well as we can.

We’re living in an era of great potential, one in which the exploration of 

the solar system and of the Earth’s most extreme environments will boost the 

opportunities we have to become a smarter, safer, healthier, and more intelligent 

world. Certainly, we’re more informed about the neighborhood we live in, a 

neighborhood defined as this little, bitty solar system around this little, puny 

star in a gigantic galaxy that is part of a massive universe. We are just on the 

cusp of understanding what our role is in that broader case, and it’s only been in 

the last 40 years that we have come to understand it in ways that are really quite 

profound. I’m confident that if we do this right, we’ll be amazed by the rapid pace 

of progress our future exploration activities will bring about.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
7

But we also know from history about the consequences of forsaking 

exploration. When we evaluate and determine as individuals, or collections 

of people and nations, to forsake those exploration opportunities, it has 

consequences. In the 15th century, China had the opportunity to be the world’s 

foremost maritime power and, indeed, possessed that capability. The Chinese 

ruling class, nonetheless, decided that the sponsorship of the fleet was an 

indulgence. History, in the course of the several centuries thereafter for that 

culture, is certainly a function of those choices that were made.

Certainly, we have the same opportunity in this country to make similar 

kinds of choices. In the 1875 time frame, the director of the Patent Office advised 

the President of the United States that it was a good time to close down the 

Patent Office, because everything that needed to be invented had been. Had 

the President of the United States accepted that wizened sage’s advice at the 

time, imagine where we’d be! Yet, that was based on a calculated understanding 

of what folks thought was the potential of new inventions. It wasn’t reached 

whimsically, it was reached by those who really believed that we had already 

incurred an enormous evolution of change of technology, revolution in industrial 

affairs, and, as a consequence, we were on a roll, and anything beyond that was 

going to be simply derivatives of the same. 

In the last century, we’ve seen an explosion of growth in the exploration of 

seas, remote regions of the Earth, and, indeed, space. All of which, arguably, might 

not have happened had that original set of recommendations been followed.

It is no accident that NASA’s founding occurred some 46 years ago this 

very week, in the same decade that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first 

stood on our planet’s highest peak, and that Jacques Cousteau used the good ship 

Calypso to conduct his epic voyages of undersea exploration. As explorers, we all 

share that common bond. 

We dare to dream grand dreams, and, in the process of doing so, assume 

tremendous risk, some of it beyond the scope of our knowledge of the time in 

which those dreams are assumed and accepted. We do so for what we know to be 

great purposes. We also, in the depths of those tragedies that occur, grieve when 

our brethren are lost in the cause of exploration. Indeed, part of the impetus for 

this symposium was brought about in debates that occurred in the aftermath 

of the Columbia tragedy. It was a tough report that the Columbia Accident 

Investigation Board released. It told us an awful lot about the technical problems 

that led to it, the engineering challenges that we did not understand, and, as a 

result, paid an ultimate price with nine people—the seven members of the crew 

as well as two engaged in the recovery of Columbia after its destruction. We 

learned that that is a horrendous price—again.

But it also brought about, as a consequence of debate, a discussion about 

how we contributed to that tragedy, and a broader public debate about a renewal 

of the purpose of why we explore. And that debate has gone on in a broader 

public policy sense. The year after that horrific tragedy, it nonetheless was an 

SEAN O’KEEFE THE VISION FOR EXPLORATION
8

impetus for motivating a debate by answering the fundamental question of why 

we explore and what the strategy and path ahead should be in pursuit of that 

human desire to understand.

In the process, it also raised a series of questions that we have the 

opportunity here, over this couple of days, to at least debate how they should 

be framed. We have, I think, as a consequence of the strategies the President has 

levied, and the direction that he has provided to us at NASA for exploration, a 

better understanding now of exactly how to pursue those exploration goals. And 

it’s laid out in a series of objectives and programs to achieve it, and a steppingstone approach, and a whole range of different ways in which we’re going to 

achieve that task.

But communicating the why of this venture has just begun as a public 

debate in the last few months. Again, this is an extraordinary moment in time, 

in which there has been a renewal of that spirit of discovery and exploration. In 

part, it must then engage in this broader public dialogue, because we are, after all, 

a public organization for which there is trust that is rendered to us by the public 

for our acceptance of these kinds of challenges. And that trust is fragile, and at 

each of the intervals in which we have seen either those great triumphs or great 

tragedies, it has been tested.

So understanding the why, and being able to communicate that in a way 

that’s effective, is part of what this discussion is all about. And while participating 

in the panel discussions, I would ask that each of us pose the following kinds 

of questions: How do we integrate the risk calculation with the benefits to be 

derived? What’s the return? How do we communicate that as well?

Because it’s apparent, when tragedies occur, what the depth of the risk 

was that was accepted, and then, therefore, not responded to effectively. But 

understanding what the benefits were to be derived sometimes gets lost in the 

translation, so how do we integrate that better? And that’s on a personal as 

well as a societal level. There are any number of colleagues here, and those 

who’ve elected and chosen to participate in this venture, who can articulate 

this on a personal level. But, also, how we translate that in a broader societal 

context, I think, is very important, why we’ve accepted those risks, for what 

potential gain.

Also, ask the question: How do we regularly remind ourselves of the risk, 

and is that really important? Is it something we really need to focus on, and to 

what level of depth and degree? Certainly, being accepting of it or dismissive 

of it is not one of the options, but what is the appropriate balance? Also, pose 

the question: How do we avoid complacency? It is human nature, it is part of 

our human makeup, that what we see repetitively we begin to accept as normal? 

If you’ve never seen it before, it suddenly becomes a remarkable circumstance, 

something which you respond to because you’ve never seen it before. And, yet, it 

may be far less significant as risk than what you see every single day, yet, because 

we see it so regularly, we accept it. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
9

What is it about our view as a culture, as a society, of why it is understood 

that there is a risk attendant to driving an automobile, flying in a commercial 

airplane? These are things we understand as being part of that, either intuitively 

or intellectually, and have recognized that despite the fact that lots and lots 

of folks every single year die in horrific automobile accidents, we accept that, 

as humans, because of the transportation and opportunities it provides, the 

facilitation of discourse and communication between and among each other, 

and the means to get from here to there. What is it about it that makes that an 

accepted level of risk? 

And, yet, in the act of exploration, when the tragedies occur, what is it that 

makes that either intolerable or why we question it? And again, the root of this 

may yet well be grounded in how well we understand the benefit that we think we 

gained as a consequence of the activity and the effect of accepting that risk.

Also, for those who are involved in wider-ranging sets of exploration 

opportunities, what is it about the risk that you accept that’s different than 

that which NASA accepts in what we do, and what is similar? How do you parse 

between both and determine what we can learn from this about that? And, I 

guess, the ultimate question: What can we learn from each other by how to 

frame this question differently and, indeed, communicate it more effectively as 

an opportunity for great gain? 

Over the course of human history every major advance has occurred because 

of the temerity on the part of human beings to want to understand and to explore 

and to do something that has not been tried or has been tried so irregularly as 

to have no pattern to it. If you think of every major advance in the course of our 

existence it has been attributed to that characteristic of us as human beings.

This week we have an opportunity to learn from each other’s experience 

so that we can go forward boldly into the unknown, informed by a responsible 

sense of how we communicate in a way that conveys the reasons why it is or is 

not accepted as an appropriate level of risk. We are resolved at NASA to better 

communicate with the public about why it’s necessary to take those risks, and 

why it is inherent in the way we, as human beings, conduct our lives in a way 

that would give meaning and purpose to this larger exploration agenda. At its 

“

”

. . . WE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN FROM EACH OTHER’S EXPERIENCE 

SO THAT WE CAN GO FORWARD BOLDLY INTO THE UNKNOWN, INFORMED BY A 

RESPONSIBLE SENSE OF HOW WE COMMUNICATE IN A WAY THAT CONVEYS THE 

REASONS WHY IT IS OR IS NOT ACCEPTED AS AN APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF RISK.

SEAN O’KEEFE THE VISION FOR EXPLORATION
10

core the answer is best summarized by a comment President Bush made in 

Houston just days after the Columbia tragedy, that this cause of exploration is 

not an option we choose, it is a desire written in the human heart. And when we 

can confront that, even on both ends of the equation—in its great triumph as 

well as in its depths of tragedy—and we’re reminded why we’re driven to this, 

what is it we can do responsibly as public servants, for those of us at NASA and 

in the broader community of explorers represented here, to communicate that 

more effectively?

I thank you all for your participation, and I look forward to sharing with 

all of you the spirit of exploration and discovery that I think is certainly evident 

in this group by so many people who have elected to spend their time to engage 

in these important questions. The manner in which we have framed this over 

these couple of days will bring those kinds of questions to bear in ways that, as 

we move forward in this next step of exploration, to return to flight, to complete 

the International Space Station, to develop through Project Constellation an 

opportunity to explore beyond Earth’s orbit, all of this may be the beginnings 

again of an opportunity to frame that discussion and debate, not only among 

ourselves, but in the broader public, in ways that highlight those purposes of 

exploration, and why we engage in the risks and accept them, knowingly, for the 

purposes for which NASA began. ■

 

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page 
Captain Lovell was selected as an astronaut by NASA in September 1962. He served as Command 

Module pilot and navigator on the epic six-day journey of Apollo 8, man’s maiden voyage to the Moon. 

On that fl ight, Lovell and fellow crewmen, Frank Borman and William A. Anders, became the fi rst humans 

to leave the Earth’s gravitational infl uence. He was spacecraft commander of the Apollo 13 fl ight, 

11-17 April 1970, and became the fi rst man to journey twice to the Moon. Captain Lovell held the record 

for time in space with a total of 715 hours and 5 minutes until surpassed by the Skylab fl ights.

Race to the Moon

James Lovell

Former NASA Astronaut and President, Lovell Communications

I’m an ancient mariner here and I see a lot more modern 

astronauts who have done a lot more than I have ever done. But I think the previous 

speakers have really set the scene for this discussion of how we perceive risk. Now, I 

would like to expand this concept of risk as it pertains to spaceflight, and, of course, Apollo 

13. But before I do, let me digress and tell several personal stories familiar to me of how I 

think risk is perceived.

The first story takes place long before we had NASA astronauts. After World War 

II, Wernher von Braun came over from Germany, and he and his team went out to White 

Sands, New Mexico with a bunch of dilapidated V-2 rockets. Their job was to fire those 

rockets up into the upper atmosphere and, with the proper sensors, determine maybe what 

the stratosphere was like—the flow, the elements, and things like that. 

 But von Braun was a very farseeing individual. He knew that someday man would 

go into space, and he would piggyback on these rockets some experiments that would 

determine, or help to determine, if man could survive in the environment of zero gravity. 

He would put small animals in the nose cone of these rockets and put a camera at the apex. 

And, then, as the rocket got up to the top of its apogee and started to come down, before 
12

it reached terminal velocity, he would photograph their reaction to see how they 

would react in zero gravity. 

Now, my story takes place out there at White Sands. One beautiful, blue 

day, out on the launch pad, is this dilapidated old V-2 rocket—gaseous oxygen 

just streaming out from the vent. Inside the nose cone there are two mice 

strapped tightly to their couches. This one mouse looks a little worried. His tail 

is twitching back and forth, and perspiration is coming out on his whiskers. He 

looks at his companion and says, “You know, I’m getting scared. The rocket could 

blow up! The parachute could fail to open! A mouse could get killed doing this 

kind of work!” And his companion, who had made about three flights before, 

said, “It beats hell out of cancer research!” So, in this particular case, this mouse 

figured that risk was the lesser of two evils.

Now, I’m going to tell you another personal story about this idea of risk. I’ll 

go forward quite a bit to Gemini 7, Frank Borman and I are on a two-week mission—

the purpose was to find out if man could live in space for two weeks, the maximum 

time to go to the Moon. And here is a case where, because of the newness of the 

situation, that risk was way overblown. The Gemini spacecraft proved to be a fairly 

decent vehicle; Gemini 3, 4, 5, and 6 were pretty good. But in those days, NASA and 

the doctors and the hierarchy—management—put the astronauts in the spacecraft 

and got them to keep their suits on all the time to fly these missions. For the first 

couple of missions—three and a half hours or even one day—that’s fine. But, as 

time went on, those suits got to be more uncomfortable all the time, you know, 

oxygen flowing through the body, drying up the body pretty badly. 

So by the time Gemini 7 came around, a two-week mission, we were 

determined that we were going to get out of our suits. We had a special suit but 

it was still bulky and uncomfortable. So we took off—and the first thing we then 

wanted to do was get out of the suits. We found out that the spacecraft’s integrity 

was there. Nothing was leaking. Everything was fine. Management said, “No. 

No—stay in those suits.” We said, “But everything is going fine here.” Finally, out 

of desperation, I had unzipped my suit and I had snuck out of it (or almost), and I 

was out of my suit in everything but name. Poor Borman was still in his suit, and 

I could see he was getting more tired and difficult. And, finally, after about three 

and a half or four days, we finally got permission to get out of the suits. 

So, here’s a case where the risk was overkill. I mean, we knew the spacecraft 

was good. We knew the best way to fly was in our underwear, not the suits. And 

now, of course, as you and I see on TV, on the shuttle flights they’re in shorts and 

T-shirts, so that’s the way that goes. 

And then the third little story I want to tell you about risk is one that 

you all know, but I think it’s a classic. And it was the Apollo 8 flight. Apollo 8 

was going to be an Earth orbital mission—around the Earth to test the Lunar 

Module and Command Module before we’d ever commit those two vehicles 

to go to the Moon. And as you know, two things happened in the summer of 

’68. Number one, Grumman Aircraft finally bit the bullet and said, “Hey, we’re 

not going to get this Lunar Module ready before 1969.” And then again, we had 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

OPENING PHOTO: 

The Apollo 13 lunar landing mission crew 

from left to right are: Commander James 

A. Lovell Jr., Command Module pilot, 

John L. Swigert Jr., and Lunar Module 

pilot, Fred W. Haise Jr. 

(NASA Image # S70-36485)
13

intelligence information that the Soviets were going to put a man around the 

Moon, a circumnavigation flight around the Moon, before the end of 1968—in 

fact, in the late fall of 1968.

And, as a matter of fact, we know now, talking to them and with everything 

in the open, that they were very serious about it. Their N-1 big lunar rocket was 

a failure, but their Proton and Zond probably could have done the job. And, so, I 

think in the fall or summer of ’68, they sent Zond 5 around the Moon with small 

animals. I think the reentry was so steep that the animals died, but it was a test 

that they were doing to see if they could put two cosmonauts around the Moon. 

They sent another spacecraft—Zond 6 Proton went around the Moon again. And 

while that flight was not a complete success, it had the possibilities of success.

And here’s where the change took place. In the Soviet Union, the hierarchy—

the management—was arguing: “Is the risk worth the reward of beating the 

Americans at least to get two guys around the Moon, or should we send another 

unmanned or animal-bound flight around the Moon before we commit to the 

people?” Leonov and Makarov, the two cosmonauts, were all set to go. They were 

arguing: “Let’s go.” Other people said no. 

And while they were hesitating—while they were vacillating back and 

forth—a bold decision was made in this country, in the fact that the Lunar 

Module was not ready, but Apollo 7 showed that the Command Service Module 

could last for 11 days. And so, the decision was made to send Apollo 8 around the 

Moon and to look for landing sites and things like that.

So here was a case where we analyzed the risk and we thought that the 

reward—the achievement and the ability to continue the Apollo program for 

landing—was well worth it. 

So, let me first state that everything in life involves a degree of risk—

and I think I’ve mentioned that before—from the moment we are born until 

we die. And the risk can involve physical, financial, or emotional factors. You 

know, the Hollywood stuntman has to weigh the reward for his efforts to the 

risk he faces. The investor faces a risk of financial gain or loss. And, certainly, 

when we get married, the emotional risk is there for a happy marriage or a quick 

divorce. Therefore, when we have control of our destinies, such as an active space 

program, we must analyze the reward we achieve for the risk involved and the 

action we must take to minimize that risk.

“

”

SO HERE WAS A CASE WHERE WE ANALYZED THE RISK AND WE THOUGHT 

THAT THE REWARD—THE ACHIEVEMENT AND THE ABILITY TO CONTINUE 

THE APOLLO PROGRAM FOR LANDING—WAS WELL WORTH IT. 

JAMES LOVELL RACE TO THE MOON
14

In the space program—at least the one I knew—we approached the risk 

factor in many ways. First, the contractors, of course, set standards for maximum 

reliability—99 percent, if possible. And they used the concept of redundancy, 

you know—one of this or two of this or three of that. In case one failed, we had 

backups. Every effort was made to simplify space system design. One example: 

In the Lunar Module propulsion system, pressure-fed fuel systems were used 

instead of the more complicated pump systems. We incorporated escape systems. 

Our design of the trajectory to the Moon—the first part—would be a free-return 

course. That meant if the spacecraft’s main engines failed in its inflight test, the 

spacecraft would be on a course that would take it to the Moon—and the Moon’s 

gravity would aim it back towards the Earth. And by using only the spacecraft’s 

attitude rockets, it could safely land back here on Earth. Thus, an added safety 

factor was given to the mission.

Of course, the intense systems training by the Mission Control team and 

astronauts was essential—including an analysis of possible failure modes and 

training to recover from them. Now, this training pointed out the limits on 

efforts to reduce risk in an Apollo mission. We only trained for single-point 

failures. Had we tried to train and develop recovering techniques for all possible 

combinations of failures—well, we’d still be at Cape Canaveral waiting for the 

first takeoff. And therein lies the problem between risk and reward. 

I guess the best way to visualize this, at least from my point of view, is 

to picture a simple X/Y graph—a plot. Let’s say that at the top of the Y, the 

ordinate at the top, is a factor up there saying “maximum risk.” And then as we 

gradually go down the Y ordinate, the risk decreases all the way down until we 

get down to the juncture of the Y and the X graph—and there, theoretically, is 

zero risk. On the X axis, we put all those factors that we might be able to make in 

terms of cost—those factors that we can put into a spacecraft that would reduce 

risk—high reliability, redundancy, extra safety equipment that would cover any 

failures, true training, et cetera.

I kind of think that as we plot the graph going down, that the risk 

would decrease very rapidly until we got to some point where it would start to 

flatten out and keep parallel, never getting down to zero risk. As a matter of fact, 

I also think that had we continued to go out, adding additional redundancies, 

adding other equipment to handle other failures that might occur, and giving 

the crews more intense training, more procedures that they had to follow in 

case there are certain things that go wrong, that the risk factor would actually 

start to go back up again. Therefore, there’s got to be a point whereby we can 

develop a system that we minimize the risk but without going overboard, 

because eventually you’ll compromise the spacecraft’s ability to complete its 

assigned mission. 

Now, I think we did a fairly decent job in weighing the acceptable risks 

with effort to reduce risk in the Apollo program. The first six Apollo missions 

proved that. On Apollo 11, Mission Control quickly resolved the landing radar 

problem. The brilliant analysis by John Aaron saved the Apollo 12 mission after 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
15

a lightning strike on takeoff. And so, by Apollo 13, Mission Control people and 

spacecraft crews were confident that they could handle any situation. There 

was, however, a wild card in our assumptions, and it surfaced on 13. Now Apollo 

13 was the third lunar landing mission and strictly, I think, the first scientific 

flight. It was targeted to land in the hills surrounding a crater called Fra Mauro. 

The scientists thought the lunar material there would be different from that in 

Apollo 11 or 12 and, of course, we thought the surface there would tell us about 

the interior of the Moon. 

The launch occurred on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 Central Standard Time. 

Perhaps the spacecraft number and the time was sort of a premonition of the 

events to come. During launch phase, our first crisis occurred. The center engine 

on the booster’s second stage shut down two minutes early due to a “pogo effect” 

or extreme oscillation on its structure. Now, this pogo effect was noticed in one 

of the booster’s unmanned flights. 

To reduce the risk in this area, an engine shut-down device was added 

to prevent the engine from going divergent and disintegrating. In addition, the 

booster was slightly overbuilt to allow a one-engine failure. Here was an example 

of added safety features to reduce the risk of a flight. Our initial trajectory to the 

Moon was that free-return course that I mentioned. But at 30 hours after launch, 

we changed our flight path to what we call the hybrid course. Now this was 

necessary to provide the proper visibility for a safe landing in Fra Mauro. And 

here is where we traded the reduced risk of a safe return home for the guarantee 

of a good visibility. Should our spacecraft engine fail now, our closest point of 

approach to the Earth on our return would be about 2,500 miles out. Much too 

far out for a safe capture by the Earth’s atmosphere. 

We didn’t worry about it. Fourth flight—second time to the Moon—and I 

was getting complacent. 

The explosion took place two days and 200,000 miles from Earth, resulting 

in the loss of all the oxygen, electrical power, and propulsion of the Command 

Service Module. At this point, the flight of Apollo 13 changed from another 

thrilling space adventure to a classic case of crisis management. It was here, too, 

that other factors came into play to reduce the risk involved in spaceflight. 

These are the attributes, or human characteristics, of a well-trained 

Mission Control team: good leadership—not just at the top—but throughout 

the organization, leadership that develops teamwork among all those involved, 

including contractors; use of initiative to find solutions to problems never 

contemplated or trained for; the ability to focus and persevere to find the right 

solution for each crisis; and, of course, a team that was well motivated to get 

the job done. Now, these are the ingredients that turned Apollo 13 from an 

almost certain disaster into a successful recovery. Mission Control and the flight 

crew worked together to configure the Lunar Module into a lifeboat. The crew 

successfully transferred the controls to the Lunar Module just as the Command 

Module died. Procedures were developed to use the Lunar Module landing engine 

to put the spacecraft back on a free-returning course. 

JAMES LOVELL RACE TO THE MOON
16

Let me digress a little bit on this. There is something that I had learned 

in the space program, based on what I am about to say, that I took with me 

from the public sector into the private sector: Always expect the unexpected. 

When everything is going right—when everything looks rosy, when nothing is 

wrong—it’s always nice to look ahead to see if there are symptoms coming down 

that maybe are pending for a possible crisis. 

When I started to maneuver—now remember, I have two spacecraft mated 

together and I’m controlling from the Lunar Module, and remember, also, that 

I spent many, many hours in simulators learning how to fly a Lunar Module. 

But when I put an input in to make a certain change of attitude, the spacecraft 

didn’t respond that way. I couldn’t figure out why. If I wanted to go down, it 

went up. If I went left, it went right. I mean, after all these hours! Well, then it 

dawned on me. I had a 60,000 pound dead mass attached to the Lunar Module , 

An interior view of the Apollo 13 Lunar Module and the “mailbox,” the jerry-rigged arrangement the Apollo 13 astronauts 

built to use the Command Module lithium hydroxide canisters to purge carbon dioxide from the Lunar Module. 

(NASA Image # AS13-62-8929)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
17

the Command Service Module, which, of course, we needed to get back into the 

atmosphere. The Lunar Module had never been designed to be maneuvered with 

the Command Service Module attached. We had to quickly figure out how an 

input would give me the right output to get to the proper attitude to make that 

burn to get back on the free-returning course. 

Now, again, it was discovered that the crew was being poisoned by their 

own exhalations. The round canisters in the Lunar Module to remove the carbon 

dioxide were becoming saturated. In the dead Command Module there were 

plenty of unused, square canisters. 

Using their initiative, the crew systems division thought up a way to use 

tape, plastic, cardboard, and an old sock to adapt a square canister to the Lunar 

Module. This removed the over-abundance of CO2 in the Lunar Module and, of 

course, prevented the poisoning of the crew. And, so, there was another little 

incident in system design. Why we had square canisters in the Command Module 

and round canisters in the Lunar Module, I will never know to this day. 

Throughout the return home, the risk of disaster decreased and the odds 

became more positive as each crisis was analyzed and a solution developed. When 

it became apparent that the spacecraft would miss the narrow return corridor for 

a safe landing, a procedure was used that was developed as a last ditch measure 

for Apollo 8. I was on that flight as a navigator, so I happened to know about it. 

Using the Earth’s terminator as a guide, a seat-of-the-pants manual maneuver 

was accomplished to put the spacecraft back on proper course. Again, proper 

training, including an analysis of how to make course changes after experiencing 

navigational failure, saved the day. 

If, in the development of the Apollo program, we carefully balanced the risk 

versus the reward of a lunar landing by incorporating such factors as extreme 

reliability, redundancy, simplification, and intense training to reduce the risk, then 

what happened on 13? Apollo 7 through 12 succeeded in doing their missions, and 

the problems they encountered were easily solved by Mission Control working 

with their crews. 

The answer is human error. It’s a virus that can be embedded in the best laid 

plans. Those of you familiar with the causes of aircraft accidents will understand 

that most accidents are caused by a series of events that overcome the pilot 

and/or the aircraft. Such was the case with Apollo 13. The first event occurred 

about eight years before Apollo 13 took off. NASA ordered all Apollo contractors 

to make their electrical systems compatible with the 65 volt DC power available 

at the Kennedy Space Center—even though the spacecraft were designed to fly 

with a 28-volt DC power system. That would simplify the testing at KSC. The 

contractors complied with this request with one exception. A thermostat, part 

of the heater system inside the oxygen tanks, was not exchanged for one that 

could handle the high voltage. The job of the thermostat was to protect the tank 

from overheating. When the temperature rose to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, 

the contacts would open, shutting off the heater power. At 65-volts DC power, 

however, the contacts could be welded shut, thus bypassing this safety feature. 

JAMES LOVELL RACE TO THE MOON
18

All tanks on Apollo 7 through 12 had this anomaly, but none experienced the 

sufficient heater operation during testing to damage their thermostats. 

A second incident occurred during the oxygen tank manufacture. A tank, 

designated for Apollo 10, was dropped at the factory. It was retested for flight 

qualification, but, because of the lost time, it was reassigned to Apollo 13. 

Several weeks before the launch of 13, the third incident took place. 

With the booster, the spacecraft all assembled on the launch pad, a countdown 

demonstration test was performed, making sure that all the components were 

ready for launch. The test was successful, but after the test, the ground crew 

could not remove the liquid oxygen from one of the spacecraft tanks. A review 

of the history of the tank revealed the damage incident at the factory. Studying 

the design of the tank indicated that, although the tank performed perfectly for 

all inflight operations, the fall could have impaired the ground crew’s ability to 

remove the oxygen after a ground test. 

To replace the tank would slip the launch by a month, and so the decision 

was made to use the tank’s heater system to remove the oxygen by boiling it off. 

The procedure was successful, but as the level of the liquid oxygen decreased, the 

temperature rose. At 80 degrees, the contacts of the thermostat started to open 

to shut off the power. The high voltage welded them shut, and the thermostat, 

instead of shutting off the power, became a conduit to keep the heater system 

on. We know now that the temperature rose to about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 

severely damaging the heater system. The problem was not detected. When the 

tank was filled with liquid oxygen, it was a bomb ready to go off. It exploded two 

days later, 200,000 miles from Earth, when we turned on the heater system. 

I might digress another little bit here because, in all this discussion of 

risk, there is a factor that’s called fate, luck, or something like that. This was 

the third time we turned on the heater system; nothing happened the first two 

times. If something happened the first time we turned on the heater system and 

that explosion occurred, we would never have had enough electrical power to get 

all the way around the Moon and get back home again, as we had already put the 

velocity on to go to the Moon. 

If it did not explode when it did, but waited until we turned on the heater 

system later, once we were in lunar orbit or when the Lunar Module was on the 

surface, we would never have had enough fuel in the Lunar Module to either get 

out of lunar orbit, or get enough to get back home again. 

“

”

 . . . IF YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE AN ACCIDENT ON THE WAY TO THE MOON, 

OUR RESEARCH SHOWS BE SURE YOU HAVE IT 200,000 MILES OUT.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
19

So, if you’re going to have an accident on the way to the Moon, our research 

shows be sure you have it 200,000 miles out.

I asked Gene Kranz, who was the lead flight director, what lessons he 

learned from Apollo 13 that could be applied to the Mission Control team—and 

maybe all of NASA. Here are some of his comments: Develop the chemistry of a 

winner. The mind-set for success must be embedded in the values and culture of 

the organization. Be positive. Be optimistic. Do the right thing the first time. 

A second comment that he made: articulate a common vision that 

focuses your energies on your objective; team focus to accomplish the mission, 

whether it is in crisis mode or whether it’s the entire organization. This 

was outlined by the President just recently. We must focus our energies on 

accomplishing that mission.

The third thing he mentioned: teamwork provides the multidisciplinary 

capability to deal with complex and fast-moving problems. We can say many 

brains are better than one. Get the team together. Think up the solution. And, I 

kind of think, when I look back now on our Apollo program, that this was pretty 

common throughout our entire NASA organization. We had good leadership at 

Headquarters. Marshall did the booster. Goddard did the network. Johnson did 

the spacecraft and the crew training. Kennedy did the launch and the integration 

of the whole thing. So, we had a pretty good team. 

Fourth, Kranz says: build momentum quickly. This allows rapid response 

to limit problem growth. I think what he means there is that a quick response 

will give an insight to head off future problems that might be the result of an 

original problem.

He also says: be flexible. Solutions often lie outside the box. The idea there 

was the carbon dioxide incident on 13. 

And then he says also: don’t get distracted, and don’t let your team get 

distracted. For Apollo 13, on that particular flight, when I was waiting for the 

information to come up to re-energize to get the Command Module back in 

operation again, there was delay after delay, and I thought that they were going 

to set up more information to find out what went wrong and give us more things 

to do than just get the spacecraft ready. I didn’t want the crew down there at 

Mission Control to be distracted. I needed those basic procedures to get the 

Command Module going again. 

He then says: overwhelm the problem. Use every available asset. As soon 

as you have one, call in everybody who has any idea of what may be happening, 

almost like verbal popcorn, but then you can winnow out what is good and what 

is not good. 

Finally, his idea is: keep the poise. Let your words and actions convince your 

team that you are controlling events. Good leadership. You saw the movie. Gene 

Kranz, like Ed Harris when the whole Control Center is talking about finding out 

what went wrong when they found out about the explosion, says, “Stop guessing. 

Stop guessing. Let’s work the problem.”

JAMES LOVELL RACE TO THE MOON
20

In our approach to accomplish the President’s directive of revisiting the 

Moon and on to Mars, we must accept a certain amount of risk and realize that 

unforeseen events are always present. The strategy of spacecraft development 

and mission design is to minimize the risk without compromising the goal. 

Whenever you are involved in an operation that handles thousands of pounds of 

high explosives, reaches extreme velocities, operates in a vacuum environment 

under zero gravity, and then encounters tremendously high temperatures on 

return, you are, if I can borrow the title from one of Tom Cruise’s old movies, in 

a “risky business.” The people involved in that business and those who monitor, 

critique, and investigate the results, should recognize that fact. 

To be completely risk-averse is never to take off. 

We should be aware that sometime in the future, we will again hear 

those words: “Houston, we have a problem,” and I hope we’ll be prepared to 

meet the challenge. Or, if I can steal the words from Gene Kranz, “failure is not 

an option”. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page 
Jack Stuster

Behavioral Scientist and Vice President and Principal Scientist, Anacapa Sciences, Inc.

Bold Endeavors: 

Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration

It is an understatement to say that it is a pleasure to be here today 

to talk to you about some of my research. The concept of risk is something with which we 

all are familiar. Every decision that we make from the most trivial to the most important is 

attended by some sort of evaluation and consideration of the costs and the benefits, and the 

likelihood of a successful outcome. 

Expedition risk is of a different order. And humans are not particularly good at 

estimating risk. The research shows that we have a tendency to underestimate risk over 

which we have some control, and to overrate risk over which we have no control. That’s 

why we take the risk of driving on the highways, where presently there are 1.5 fatalities 

per 100 million miles traveled—incidentally that’s down from 5.5 fatalities per 100 million 

miles traveled in 1966. You were four times more likely to die in a traffic crash 30 years ago 

than you are now, and there are nearly twice the number of automobiles and vehicle miles 

traveled. We’ve done a lot to reduce risk in certain areas. 

But why do nations and individuals explore? I have here just a partial list. Trade 

routes, looking for new resources, in some cases national prestige, and, of course, science.

Individuals explore sometimes to satisfy a need for achievement, to do something special, 

Jack Stuster’s work for NASA has included a study of Space Shuttle refurbishing procedures and studies 

of conditions on Earth that are analogous to space missions, including an analysis of diaries maintained 

by the leaders and physicians at French remote duty stations in the Antarctic and on small islands 

in the South Indian Ocean. He has developed design and procedural recommendations to enhance 

the habitability of the International Space Station, future spacecraft, and planetary facilities. Stuster 

completed a study of Antarctic winter-over experiences, expeditions, and voyages of discovery, which 

are documented in his book Bold Endeavors: Lessons From Polar and Space Exploration, published in 

1996 by the Naval Institute Press.
22

many times out of curiosity, including scientific curiosity, and I truly believe 

that some people explore because they need to accept risk. Life just isn’t enough 

without taking some chances. However, taking calculated chances is far different 

than being rash. 

Every bold endeavor that I’ve read about was accompanied by naysayers, 

people who predicted that the expedition would result in disaster. It’s archetypal 

that Columbus had difficulty finding the financing for his planned expedition. 

It wasn’t because people believed the world was flat. By 1492 all learned people 

knew that the world was a sphere. The circumference of the Earth had been 

calculated by the Greeks, and then again later, and accurately, 400 years B.C. or 

so, and again later, but the later estimate was off by a large factor. 

Columbus believed that he would reach Japan after traveling about 3,200 

miles west. He was right. He did make landfall 33 days after leaving Spain. But 

had he known that it was really 10,000 miles to Japan, and that a continent or 

two interrupted his voyage, he might not have taken that risk. He did maintain 

two journals, one for his own use, and one for the crew that showed they were 

making far greater progress than they actually were—a way for him to minimize 

his personal risk on board. 

There are many justifications for exploration. One of my favorites is from 

Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer, that might seem appropriate in this age 

when people complain about spending money on space. I mean—the critics say we 

should spend it here—as if the money were actually taken into space and thrown 

out of the spacecraft. But Nansen, who was a scientist as well as an explorer, 

wrote that “people perhaps still exist who believe that it is of no importance 

to explore the unknown regions. This, of course, shows ignorance. The history 

of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness toward light.” I think 

that’s beautiful. “It is therefore to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge. 

Man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer man.” I think 

that says it all. And also, Nansen was an early supporter of women’s suffrage, so 

please don’t judge him by his 19th century usage of the term ‘man.’ 

Roald Amundsen was a little more blunt in saying that “Little minds only 

have room for thoughts of bread and butter.” But I will talk more about both 

“

”

THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE IS A CONTINUAL STRUGGLE FROM DARKNESS TOWARD LIGHT.” I THINK THAT’S BEAUTIFUL. “IT IS THEREFORE TO NO 

PURPOSE TO DISCUSS THE USE OF KNOWLEDGE. MAN WANTS TO KNOW, 

AND WHEN HE CEASES TO DO SO, HE IS NO LONGER MAN.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Replicas of Christopher Columbus’s 

sailing ships Santa Maria, Niña, and Pinta

sail by Endeavour (orbiter vehicle 105) on 

Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 

Pad 39B, awaiting liftoff for its maiden 

voyage, STS-49, on 7 May 1992. 

(NASA Image # S92-39077) 
23

Nansen and Amundsen in a few minutes. There are many things I want to talk 

about that I’m sure I’m going to forget, so forgive me for that. 

Robert Falcon Scott wrote, after his first expedition to Antarctica, about 

how ill-prepared they were. “Not a single article of the outfit had been tested, 

and amid the general ignorance that prevailed, the lack of system was painfully 

apparent in everything.” Robert Falcon Scott gave great advice about things, but 

he didn’t really take his own advice. In his final hours, having reached the South 

Pole in 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen had been there 30 days earlier, 

and on the trip back, laying in his tent with comrades who had perished beside 

him, he wrote in his journal that “We took risks, we knew that we took them. 

Things came out against us, and therefore, we have no cause for complaint.” 

Scott was unlucky also. They perished only 8 miles from the supply 

depot that had been prepared for them. They just couldn’t get to it in the 

storm—1912 had been an unusually stormy year in Antarctica. Under other 

conditions, they might have made it to the depot and come home to write an 

account of their expedition. 

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who was also a member of Scott’s expeditions, 

wrote that “the members of this expedition believed that it was worthwhile to 

discover new land and new life, to reach the South Pole of the Earth, to make 

elaborate meteorological and magnetic observations and so forth. They were 

prepared to suffer great hardships, and some of them died for their beliefs.” 

They should have been more prepared. Others were. Scott used Manchurian 

ponies, which didn’t really cut it in the snow, nor had they ever tested the tractors 

they took to Antarctica. There was a certain hubris involved. Amundsen used 

dog sleds. The British would not use dogs or skis. It wasn’t British. They were 

going to slog it out. 

Most of my work has involved the risks associated with the psychological, 

behavioral, and human aspects of isolation and confinement. I use the following 

analogy to help people get a handle on what it would really be like to be on an 

expedition to Mars. Imagine living in a motor home with five other people for 

three years. You’re driving around the country, and you really can’t get out for 

about a year, and then, when you go outside, it’s for very brief periods, and you 

have to wear spacesuits, and you come back, and then you spend another year or so 

driving around with those same five people. You’ve already heard every story that 

they’ve ever told. The days blend one into another. The condition becomes mindnumbing, and the tiniest, tiniest things get on your nerves. It is characteristic 

of all conditions of isolation and confinement that trivial issues are exaggerated 

way out of proportion. Everyone who I’ve interviewed about this talks about how 

they would have an incredible argument at an Antarctic research station over a fax 

transmission or something, and blow up, and then an hour later wonder: “What 

the heck happened? What was that all about?” It is a universal occurrence.

One of the other universals of isolation and confinement is the strange 

relationships that occur with your Mission Control, with your headquarters, 

wherever it is located—in Antarctica, it might be Port Hueneme, or it might 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
24

be the Johnson Space Center or elsewhere. But the remote crew always gets the 

impression that “They really don’t understand the conditions under which we’re 

operating. We’re trying to get a job done here and they’re not responding fast 

enough.” Or, “They’re giving us too much to do.” It always happens. And, you 

know, I used to think that it was just endemic to isolation and confinement, 

but I think it’s a structural condition. Even the field offices of a corporation, a 

small one or a large one, or perhaps the research centers of a major government 

agency might feel these same sorts of tension. It is just a natural phenomenon 

that occurs. If you’re prepared for it, you can somehow reduce the risk.

Anyway, an expedition to Mars would be a lot like this metaphor that I’ve 

described for you. The first research that I conducted for NASA was conducted for 

the Ames Research Center. In 1982 they took a chance on this anthropologist who 

was working in the field of human factors to study conditions on Earth that are 

analogous to what we expected for future space crews. I studied conditions such as 

offshore oil platforms, commercial research vessels, fishing vessels, fleet ballistic 

missile submarines, saturation divers, and so forth, and came up with 100 or so 

design recommendations. It’s my understanding that a couple of them actually 

made it to the final design of the International Space Station, for which I’m grateful. 

I would like to know which ones they are. Personal sleeping quarters I don’t think 

has made it, and that was one of the most important recommendations. 

More recently, I’ve conducted research through the Johnson Space 

Center concerning longer-duration missions, one year to three years. The only 

analogues available for such a long mission are previous expeditions. And, of 

course, I included our experience with Skylab, and there is much of relevance 

from Skylab.

NASA has a tradition of trying to learn from the past, and in many cases 

is successful. However, I remember reading in one of the industry publications 

that: “One of the great lessons from the NASA experience on board Mir was that 

you really shouldn’t hard-schedule everything. You should have this task list 

that you put things on. And then the crew can go and take from that task list 

as necessary. Isn’t that a wonderful thing?” I thought: My gosh, that was the 

principle behavioral finding from Skylab. Didn’t anybody read those wonderful 

lessons learned reports from Skylab? 

So, I wrote a letter to the editor, and I probably angered a whole lot of 

people in doing so, but there is a lot that we can learn from the past, including 

our own more recent past. 

I’ve found that expeditions, and polar winter-over experiences in particular, 

resemble in many ways what we can reasonably expect for future space crews. 

Chronologically, the earliest of the expeditions that I studied was Columbus’s 

first voyage of discovery. And although it was only 33 days out to the New 

World and seven months total, there really is a lot to learn from that experience. 

For example, he had strong-willed subordinates who questioned his authority 

regularly. One of them [Pinzon, commander of the Pinta] left the expedition in 

search of gold to the north, leaving the two principal vessels. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
25

And it’s probably not well known that on Christmas Day, 1492, the Santa 

Maria went ashore and was broken up. The reason was the crew had partied the 

night before, celebrating Christmas Eve, and left the watch to a cabin boy who 

didn’t know what to do when the ship slipped its anchor. No one was killed 

during the process, but it left Columbus with only one hull. 

Columbus believed in triple redundancy long before it was a NASA policy, 

and he probably would not have left Europe with fewer than three hulls, and 

certainly would not have returned. Oddly, in one of those incredible coincidences 

that occurs that I’ve read about in the history of exploration, Pinzon rounds the 

bend of this little island—this tiny island where the crew was trying to decide 

what to do. Would they be able to rebuild and make a small craft out of the 

remnants of the Santa Maria? And then Pinzon shows up. They were able to 

return home, but in the two smallest of the three craft.

Redundancy is an important method for reducing risk and increasing 

reliability. There are other methods: overbuilding—you build the valve to 

withstand 150 percent of what you expect it to withstand; graceful degradation, so 

that you have time to do something about it; and maintainability. When you have 

a human crew, you should really take advantage of the crew for maintainability. 

One of my favorite explorers is the French explorer, Jules-SébastienCésar Dumont d’Urville. Early in his career, he was on the island of Milos when 

people approached him about a statue that was hidden in a cave. He saw it and 

wanted it for France, so they dragged it down to the ship, breaking off two arms 

in the process. It’s what we know as the Venus de Milo. Later in his career, he 

commanded two expeditions to the Pacific and to Antarctica. He was one of the 

first to see the mainland of Antarctica, which he named Adelie Land for his wife, 

whom he rarely saw. He also named the linguistic groups of the Pacific with 

the names that we use today—Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian. He was an 

exceptional leader. At a time when expeditions—naval ships, in particular—were 

commanded autocratically, he was a kind and generous captain. He dressed as 

the crew did, which perplexed the British any time they met, because they didn’t 

understand. They didn’t believe he was truly the captain when he was wearing a 

straw hat and an open shirt. He was a realistic man. 

On his second expedition, he was required to leave Marseilles carrying 

plants to the South Pacific. I don’t know exactly what the plants were, but he had 

lots and lots of plants. At first, he objected to it because they were in pots and 

all over the ship, including in his cabin. And, after a week at sea, he wrote in his 

journal that this was a wonderful addition to an expedition and, if he had his way 

with things, every French ship that left port would be accompanied by plenty of 

foliage and greenery inside. I think that that’s not too dissimilar from some of 

the comments that we’ve heard from space crews loving to spend time with the 

growing experiments on board. 

The French had discovered early on something that was very painfully 

learned elsewhere, and that is, that there’s often conflict among subgroups in 

an isolated and confined situation, and there were a lot of problems with the 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
26

civilian scientists and the military crew. The scientists were outside of the 

command structure and it was always a problem, which led to the demise of some 

expeditions, or contributed to it, at least. So the French would take bright Naval 

officers and train them to be botanists or natural philosophers and artists. 

It’s particularly appropriate that we talk a little bit about the Lewis and 

Clark expedition in this year of the bicentennial. And there is much to learn, 

even though there are great differences. It was all outdoors, for one thing, and not 

in a confined environment, except when they were in winter quarters in Oregon 

where it was raining all the time. One of the things that we can learn from the 

Lewis and Clark expedition is to establish a spirit of the expedition. Thomas 

Jefferson named it the “Corps of Discovery”—a brilliant thing to do. I was very 

pleased in 1999 when I visited the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center and 

saw a sign that read,” Expedition Corps.” I asked, “What is this?” Andy Thomas 

responded, “Well, it’s for the people who are planning to go to the International 

Space Station and beyond.” I said, “It’s a stroke of brilliance.” You have people 

already using the mind-set that this is an expedition. It’s going to be a long 

time—it’s not a test flight, it’s really an expedition. It’s my understanding that 

Michael Foale is responsible for doing that. [Foale replied that astronaut Ken 

Bowersox (also in the audience) was responsible for the use of the term]. Well, 

it was a stroke of brilliance and should be congratulated. It’s a wonderful idea. It 

helps people get in the mind-set for an expedition. 

There were 40 explorers with Lewis and Clark. By the way, only one 

member of the expedition perished in the entire three years, and he died of a 

burst appendix, we believe, based on a description of the incident. Any one of 

you who ever had acute appendicitis would probably agree with me that you’d 

want to have that out before you go. Now, the physicians tell me that that’s not 

necessary, but, from my experience, I wouldn’t want to have that condition a long 

way from home. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was 28 months long, about the 

same as an expedition to Mars might be. 

Lewis and Clark and their company met many native peoples along the 

way. That probably won’t happen on a mission to Mars, although some people are 

hoping for it, I’m sure. But one thing that they did was to describe everything in 

their journals. Captain Clark and Captain Lewis were meticulous journal keepers. 

I thought it might be interesting to find out what exactly they were doing 

on the 27th of September 1804—200 years ago today. I was amazed. It was the 

most pivotal period of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Two days ago, they were 

on the Missouri River, and they reached a tributary near what is now Pierre, South 

Dakota. They had finally encountered the Teton Sioux, who they had heard were 

going to be hostile to them. Indeed, it was a three-day period of intense hostility. 

They had learned through interpreters—through other Native Americans—that 

the Sioux intended to prevent them from going any farther and to steal all their 

stuff. The two preceding days were just incredibly tense. 

On the 27th, they were trying to leave the village, and the little boat that was 

taking them out to the larger keel boat had lost its anchor and was having trouble 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
27

maintaining its position. The little boat came out and parted the remaining cable, 

and there was a lot of hollering to get the people to their oars and so forth, and 

that alarmed Black Buffalo on shore, so he called all 200 of his warriors out to the 

shore. Lewis and Clark believed for sure that this was going to be the showdown. 

They went to stations—Clark went to the bow and manned the swivel gun, a 

little two-inch cannon loaded with shot. They had something like 20 men with 

blunderbusses loaded with shot trained on the main body of the group. They 

had a technological edge here. They would have wiped out 40 or 60 of the Teton 

Sioux, but there’s another 200 of them in arrow shot, and they could keep an 

arrow in flight at all times, and it’s a long time to reload the weapons on board 

the keel boat. 

There was this standoff for we don’t know how long, but it appears to 

be quite a while, with Clark in the bow shouting, the interpreter, who really 

didn’t speak Teton Sioux, trying to convey to Black Buffalo to control his people 

because there were warriors who were coming into the water, who were grabbing 

hold of the mast of the little boat to keep it ashore. They thought for sure that 

this was the incident that they had been fearing. What Clark didn’t realize was 

that his people obeyed him because it was a military organization. The Teton 

Sioux were only recently a tribal organization. It was a group of bands that came 

together when the resources permitted. Black Buffalo’s control over the 200 or 

so was based on his charisma—only a quarter of them were related to him and 

had some obligation to obey him. But Clark took a risk that if he held his ground 

and didn’t fire, it would be resolved peacefully. And the decision paid off. Finally, 

Black Buffalo pulled on the arm of one of the guys and apparently told him to 

back away, and the Corps of Discovery was permitted to go. 

Of course, the Sioux dogged them all along the way, trying to get them 

to come ashore or to take them on board, which Lewis and Clark didn’t do. I’d 

just like to read a sentence or two from the journal entry for this day 200 years 

ago. “We were on our Guard all night. The misfortune of the loss of our Anchor 

obliged us to lie under a falling bank, much exposed to the accomplishment 

of their hostile intentions . . . Our Bowman, who could speak Maha, informed 

us in the night that the Maha prisoners informed him we were to be stopped. 

We showed as little signs of this Knowledge of their intentions as possible. All 

prepared on board for anything that might happen. We kept a Strong guard all 

“

”

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE LEWIS AND CLARK 

EXPEDITION IS TO ESTABLISH A SPIRIT OF THE EXPEDITION . . . IT HELPS 

PEOPLE GET IN THE MINDSET FOR AN EXPEDITION. 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
28

 

night, no Sleep. Captain Clark, 27 September 1804.” Just south of the Mandan 

villages is where this all occurred 200 years ago today. 

The lessons applicable to the future? The importance of good leadership. 

Previous studies found that good leadership is actually more important than 

good habitability. Plan everything. Have a sense of cooperation and perseverance. 

To the extent possible, live off the land. Now, you won’t be able to hunt buffalo 

on Mars, but you will be able to use the resources on Mars in the same manner to 

extend your reach. And, of course, develop a spirit of the expedition, symbolized 

by the Corps of Discovery. 

 Another expedition that everyone knows about is the voyage of the Beagle. 

It was really a British surveying expedition, the purpose of which was to chart 

the coastline of South America. Captain Robert Fitzroy was—I can’t think of a 

polite word to use—a very stern and narrow-minded person. He at first didn’t 

want the volunteer naturalist, Charles Darwin, on board, because he didn’t like 

the look of his nose. And then later, off of the coast of Argentina, Darwin had an 

argument with Fitzroy and almost abandoned ship, because Fitzroy thought that 

slavery was a noble institution and had a lot going for it and Darwin thought it 

was disgusting. And, so, at their next port, Darwin spent several weeks on shore 

until he cooled off. 

Darwin wrote in his journal about the crowded conditions on board a 

research vessel. So many chronometers and so many people packed into small 

space. It was a very difficult journey for him. Darwin, after this five-year voyage 

and returning to England, lived to be a very old man. But he never again set foot 

on a boat, never again left England. 

One of the most relevant expeditions is the Belgian Antarctic expedition 

of 1898–1899. It’s relevant not just because it was the first expedition to winter 

over in Antarctica, the first expedition to really have science as its true objective 

in Antarctica, but because it was a multinational crew, cosmopolitan, and, in 

this regard, truly modern. It included Norwegians, Romanians, and, of course, 

Belgians. They had the very best of all French food, and one American, Frederick 

Cook, the ship’s physician. 

What happened on board the Belgica is well-documented. The crew gradually 

slipped into a malaise that was paralyzing to some of them. One man died because 

of what Cook thought was the effects of the isolation and confinement. One man 

developed a temporary deafness. Another man developed a temporary blindness. 

One man, each night, would find a place below deck where he could hide and 

sleep, because he thought people were going to kill him. Roald Amundsen served 

his apprenticeship as an explorer as mate on the Belgica, and later wrote, “Insanity 

and disease stalked the decks of the Belgica that winter.” He credited Frederick 

Cook with saving the expedition from certain psychological collapse. 

Cook saw what was happening, and he thought that there was this heavy 

psychological component, but he also thought something was missing from their 

diet. This was before vitamins had been discovered, but he figured there was 

something missing. He tried to get the men to eat fresh penguin meat, but it 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
29

tasted too fishy for many of the men. So, for those who were the most afflicted 

by this malaise, he would have them stand with nothing on except an overcoat 

exposing their naked skin to the glow of the ship’s stove. He called it the baking 

treatment. They’d stand there for as long as they could each day, taking turns 

doing this. Whether it had some effect on them, or maybe it was a placebo effect, 

it did have the effect of helping the crew get through this very difficult period. 

Cook also thought that exercise would help, so he required the crew to take walks 

on the ice, but this devolved into a circular path around the ship that became 

known as the “madhouse promenade.” 

It was a dismal time, and it appeared when the spring came that they were 

not going to be able to release themselves from Antarctic’s icy embrace. They 

worked very hard with ice saws and explosives and finally did break free, because 

they knew that they couldn’t survive another year. 

This is not to say that people haven’t survived isolation and confinement 

before; many have. There were often several hundred whaling ships locked in the 

ice at any given time in the north during the 19th century. It is well known that 

during the height of the Cold War, there were 10,000 American submariners, at 

any given moment, at sea, in isolation and confinement. 

Regarding the Australasian-Antarctic Expedition and Douglas Mawson, 

I formerly neglected the Australian contribution to exploration until my dear 

friend, Desmond Lugg, showed me that it was just a characteristic American 

narrow-mindedness to focus on certain things and disregard the rest. I rectified 

that situation by reading as much as I could about this expedition and about 

Mawson. There is a tremendous wealth of information that we can extrapolate 

from Mawson’s experience. For one, personnel selection is important, and, for 

another, weather influences everything. It’ll interrupt your plans. It will break 

equipment and keep you from doing things that you want to do. If you don’t think 

that’s relevant to the future, ask Michael Foale, who had on several occasions to 

retreat to the hardened portion of the International Space Station when there 

were solar events, solar weather. Also, on Mars, there will be similar solar events 

and solar particle events and also dust storms. Dust storms on the planet Mars 

can envelope the entire planet, and that would affect an expedition. 

Roald Amundsen was the most successful of all explorers; he always made 

it to his destination. First to the Northwest Passage. First to the South Pole. In 

1923 he was on two Dornier flying boats to fly over the North Pole. One of them 

developed problems and had to land. It crash-landed. The other one landed. They 

spent two weeks on the ice, leveling with wooden spoons an airfield for them to 

take off. Amundsen structured every moment of every day. The hours of work, the 

hours of eating, the hours of sleep, the hours for talking, for smoking, everything. 

He was in charge, and he made himself known to be in charge and organized 

everything. When they returned to Norway two weeks later, of course everyone 

thought he had died in the ice, and it was a wonderful welcome. Amundsen later 

perished in the North while looking for Umberto Nobile, a guy who he devoted 

his biography to criticizing. I work in the field of human factors, and I’m grateful 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
30

to Roald Amundsen for his wonderful statement, “The human factor is threequarters of any expedition.” 

Ernest Shackleton is probably the best known of all the explorers. There 

are movies about him, books about him, and seminars at corporations to impart 

the style of leadership that he had developed. His recruiting ad from a London 

newspaper read, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, 

long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor 

and recognition in case of success.” Now, this might 

have been a personnel selection measure on his part, 

because I truly believe he thought he was going to 

return, but he wanted to make sure that everyone who 

embarked with him would be aware of the risks. 

Shackleton had very clever ways of selecting 

people not so much on their technical expertise, but 

on how well they got along with their colleagues. He 

would ask them impertinent questions, and if they 

responded defensively, that might not be the kind of 

person that you really want in your tent eight months 

into a bad situation. But if they were humorous 

about it or philosophical about it, the person might 

be okay. Although Shackleton never made it to any of 

his destinations, he never lost a man. On the British 

trans-Antarctic expedition, the Endurance was locked 

in the ice, and [the] crew spent months on board, 

and then several months in a camp next to the ship 

as it was sinking. Then they moved to a camp that 

was on an ice floe that was as large as they could see, 

but, gradually, as the winter ended, the ice floe was 

breaking up around them. It was a mile across. Then 

it was several hundred yards across. Then it was 100 

yards across. They had been practicing their egress 

to the boats. They had saved lots of equipment and 

three cutters from the ship. They had everything in 

the boats and they had practiced many, many times to escape the floe. It started 

to break up beneath them. It actually broke up right in the middle of the camp. 

Shackleton dramatically rescued one of his crew members from the ocean, pulling 

him onto the ice, and they departed. Then, they spent a week in these open boats 

in the worst sailing conditions on the planet, before they made it to a tiny rock 

called Elephant Island, where they made it ashore. 

Shackleton knew that they could not survive there very long, so he selected 

five men to accompany him on the most arduous and dangerous open-boat 

voyage probably ever undertaken, to get to a whaling station on South Georgia 

Island. He took some of the people with him because he needed their skills, but 

he took some of the five people with him because he didn’t want to leave them 

Ernest Shackleton. (Source: Shackleton, E.H. The Heart of 

the Antarctic, Volume I, 1909. p.234.) 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
31

there. They were the malcontents that might have made things really bad for the 

folks who were going to be confined to the huts they made from the overturned 

cutters on Elephant Island. He eventually made it to safety. They made five rescue 

attempts, finally getting to Elephant Island with a borrowed tug from the country 

of Chile. It is a wonderful story. 

I want to talk just for a moment about Richard Byrd, because he’s American 

and one of the few of the American polar explorers that I consider relevant. 

On his 1934 expedition, Byrd built Advance Base, a 9 by 13 foot hut that was 

transported 100 miles from Little America and buried in the snow. It was going 

to be his experiment in isolation and confinement. Originally, he intended to 

have two people live there, but wrote later that he didn’t want to subject anyone 

else to the risk. He considered the primary source of risk to be the psychological 

risk of being alone in complete darkness. Well, he really shouldn’t have done 

this, because he almost killed himself three different ways. He fell and injured 

his shoulder even before the party that had delivered him had departed. He was 

continuously poisoning himself from the exhaust from the gasoline generator 

and from the fumes from a poorly vented stove. He almost froze to death when 

he locked himself out of the cabin in a storm—that was poor human factors 

preparation, the latch on the door. 

But the crew at Little America knew that something was wrong several weeks 

into this experiment when his Morse code transmissions were the equivalent of 

slurred. They mounted three different rescue missions before they got to him, 

and he was in terrible shape. He survived to write one of the most eloquent 

accounts of life in isolation and confinement at its worst in the book Alone, in 

1938. “Time was no longer like a river running, but a deep still pool,” he wrote. He 

also said that “a man who lives alone lives the life of a wolf.” That is, his manners 

left him, which is something that happens in isolation and confinement

The Norwegian Polar Expedition is one of my favorites and the expedition 

from which we can derive the most benefit. Fridtjof Nansen would have had a 

wonderful career in modern times, either as a rock musician or an actor. But he 

was a scientist. He was one of the founders of the modern theory of neurology. 

He was one of the popularizers of skiing as a sport. He had skied across Norway 

from Bergen to Oslo. Skiing was not a sport at the time, it was something rural 

people did to get around. 

It is difficult for us to appreciate what the world was like during the closing 

years of the 19th century. We take for granted a communications network and 

travel abilities that allow us to reach anywhere in the world. But in 1893, there 

were still many unknown regions and many unanswered questions of the natural 

world, and the most compelling was, “what is at the North Pole?” Is it land? Is 

it ice? Is it open ocean? There were fanciful predictions. And many people had 

perished trying to find out. 

Nansen had a plan. There was some evidence that the polar ice pack moved 

across the top of the world from east to west. So he thought: if a ship were built 

properly, it could be locked in the ice on purpose, and then you could allow nature 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
32

to carry you across the top of the world. He had a plan for a ship which he called 

the Fram. “Fram” means “onward” in Norwegian, and it was his personal motto. 

He approached the Norwegian government with this plan and received a grant. 

He had to go back, not unlike modern expeditions, because of cost overruns for 

building in an additional margin of safety. 

During a time when crews were separated—with the “men,” or crew, sleeping 

before the mast in the forecastle, and the officers and scientists in the main 

cabin—Nansen designed the Fram so that all staterooms opened onto the saloon, 

or the main area, a perhaps characteristically egalitarian, Norwegian approach. 

It was a very stratified society, but he did this to encourage comradeship and 

facilitate habitability. Nansen tested everything beforehand. There were spinoffs 

from his expedition. Polar travelers still use the Nansen Cooker, because it 

extracts the last calorie of energy from fuel. 

The Norwegian Polar Expedition provided a model for all future explorers. 

The Fram sailed up the coast of Norway, across Siberia, and at a point closer to 

Alaska than Norway, headed into the pack ice on purpose. The ship was built 

with a rounded bottom and a recessed keel. Every fitting could be removed so 

ice could not get a purchase on this ship. When the ice encroached, and the 

pressures increased on the hull, the ship rose up out of the ice and remained 

cradled in that manner as she drifted across the top of the world. The theory was 

proved, and when it appeared they would get no farther north, Nansen selected 

one man, Hjalmar Johansen, to accompany him on a dash to the pole. 

After many weeks, they found that they were only making a mile a day. So, 

at the closest that anyone had reached to the North Pole at that time, they turned 

back. They had no hope of regaining the Fram. They made it to Franz Josef Land 

where they were caught by an early winter. 

Nansen knew that the secret was to keep people busy with meaningful 

work, and, of course, to be especially careful about the food. Norwegians are 

not afraid of the cold. They say there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad 

clothing. And he also knew that it was important to keep people entertained. 

The crew looked for every opportunity to celebrate. After awhile, they actually 

went into their almanac to find other countries’ holidays to celebrate. Special 

celebrations break the monotony and help motivate a crew. 

Nansen and Johansen built a 6 by 10 foot hut out of stones and walrus 

hides. Their entire world was illuminated during that Arctic winter by the pale 

glow of a blubber lamp. They had nothing to do. They slept sometimes as many 

as 20 hours out of the 24, in the same sleeping bag, because it was the most 

efficient way to conserve heat. But they never resorted at any time during their 

nine months to any sort of conflict or harsh words. This was the first thing that 

the press asked them when they got back. How did you survive?

They burst from their hut in the spring and performed every task that 

was required of them expertly, despite the mind-numbing sameness of the nine 

months that they had endured in isolation and confinement. They couldn’t clean 

themselves. They had no towels. They didn’t have a change of clothes. They 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
33

would take their knives to scrape the soot that came from the blubber lamp that 

heated their food and illuminated their hut. They would scrape the blubber off 

and back into their lamps, recycling the fuel. It was incredible. Their dreams were 

filled with clean clothes and Turkish baths. 

Nansen and Johansen came upon a British expedition within a month 

after leaving their hut, and they stayed there for another month or so until that 

expedition’s relief ship came. The day that they stepped foot on Norwegian soil, 

the Fram broke loose from the Arctic pack ice on the other side of the world, then 

made its way back. The crew was united and sailed together around Norway and 

up Christiana fjord to what is now Oslo. They were greeted as if they had just 

returned from another planet. It’s hard for us to imagine what it was like 110 years 

ago, but the similarities to the feelings that we would have are certainly there. 

This artist, explorer, neurologist, oceanographer, champion skier, and 

founder of Norway was instrumental in the League of Nations. He received the 

Nobel Peace Prize for saving hundreds of thousands of lives from the Armenian 

situation, and also helped with a famine. The new Soviet Union after World 

War I wouldn’t recognize the Red Cross. Nansen was respected throughout the 

area for his experiences, and organized a relief effort, when he found that there 

was a famine underway, while helping to repatriate prisoners of war. Presently, 

there are people in Eastern Europe who hold what is called a Nansen passport for 

displaced persons. His legacy is wonderful. 

There is much to learn from the past that is applicable to the future. I have 

a lot to say about that, but I am out of time. The main themes to emerge from my 

research are: Certain problems are highly predictable, but they can be mitigated 

by taking the proper precautions. One of the most important findings is that 

humans can endure almost anything. 

My work has focused on the behavioral and human factors issues, and I 

performed a content analysis of diaries that were maintained by the leaders and 

physicians at French remote duty stations on tiny islands in the south Indian Ocean 

and at the Dumont d’Urville station in Antarctica. Engineers have been asking 

the behavioral sciences for many years, “What’s the most important behavioral 

issue? Is it privacy and personal space? Is it sleep? Is it group interaction? What 

is it?” Psychologists and others would say, “Well, group interaction.” “Well, how 

much more important?” “We don’t know.” 

I used content analysis to help answer the engineers’ questions. The 

method is based on the assumption that the more someone writes about a topic, 

the more important it is to that person. I found that group interaction received 

almost twice the number of category assignments as any other category. The 

study resulted in the first rank ordering of behavioral issues based on quantitative 

data. I also found a decline in morale during the third quarter of an expedition; 

whether it is a 5-month mission or a 12-month mission, there is a drop, in effect. 

Initially, I thought, isn’t this an interesting and useful discovery. Then I started 

to realize that it applies to almost everything. Think of a semester in college: 

you’re only three-fourths of the way done and there is all that work yet to do, and 

JACK STUSTER BOLD ENDEAVORS
34

I’ve only got three weeks remaining. I think it applies to many situations in addition 

to isolation and confinement. 

There are some specific lessons. One of them is to design for redundancy, as 

NASA does so well, and also for maintainability. There is no substitute for having 

Captain Lovell on board to take duct tape and fabricate a solution to a problem. One 

should expect casualties. Don’t consider it out of the question. Also understand 

that weather will affect everything. The conditions will be different, but most of the 

problems that will confront future explorers will be the same problems that were 

confronted in the past. It won’t be the gasoline-powered generator or the poorly 

vented stove that Byrd encountered, but some other similar situation. 

We have embarked on a new age of discovery already, and there is much more 

in store for us—wonderful things. 

One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur C. Clarke, who is one of the most 

prescient people on the planet. He invented the PDA for 2001: A Space Odyssey. He 

invented the communications satellite, as we all know. His words inspire me. Every 

time there is a visible pass of the International Space Station over my house, I am 

out on my roof watching it. “Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past 

generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the 

distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving 

on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir 

. . . Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration—among the equatorial 

stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession 

of the Ports of Earth—the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their 

planetfalls and their departures.”

I could find lots and lots of quotes about taking risks. There are hardly any 

about not taking risks, which might be telling. Of course, we heard earlier about 

Admiral Zheng, whose armada of more than 300 ships in the early part of the 15th 

Century sailed from China all the way to Africa. The flagship of his armada was 

more than 300 feet long. Compare that to state of the art 1492 [European] naval 

technology. What would history have been like had the Emperor not had all the 

ships burned and made it a capital offense to build a ship with more than two masts? 

We might all be speaking Chinese now. I’m not sure. It’s important, sometimes very 

important, to take risks, because the costs of not taking them can be greater than 

taking them. 

I want to end on a more cheerful note. My favorite philosopher, Mark Twain, 

commented on more than the weather in San Francisco in the summertime. He also 

said “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t 

do than by the ones that you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the 

safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ■

Back to Contents page 
MILES O’BRIEN: We have a little bit of time left, and I just wanted to open it up. Raise your 

hand if you have a question. 

QUESTION: The question I have for both Jim Lovell and Jack Stuster is: It seems to me one 

of the key differences between the explorations which you have studied so much and space 

exploration is something that you touched upon, that is, the relationship between the leader 

on site and the team at Mission Control. That, to me, seems to be a big difference between 

the polar missions where the leadership of one person on the ice meant everything and 

space missions which, ultimately, like it or not, will be second-guessed. What is the best 

way, as NASA plans missions of great length, to work that out so you don’t end up with a 

Skylab mutiny-type situation?

JAMES LOVELL: Well, let me answer that question in this manner. In the early days of our 

space exploration, as many of our audience knows, the people who designed the work to 

be done on the spacecraft, sitting back at a desk and thinking of what to do, often had an 

overabundance of things to do until you got into the spacecraft. When you were actually 

working in zero gravity and you had the ability to adapt to that zero gravity, you were 

overburdened with things to do at the beginning. So, the people on the ground have to 

realize what the conditions are in the spacecraft to be able to accomplish the tasks that you 

give the crew. In the early days, this was a lot of times not thought about until the crews 

sort of rebelled and went back to the controllers or mission planners and said, “Look. Here’s 

what we can do, and here’s how we have to stretch out the agenda.” 

JACK STUSTER: You’re right. The early explorers, of course, had no way of communicating 

with their base of operations. And, even when it became possible, some didn’t take advantage. 

For example, Shackleton could have had a [radio] transmitter on board the Endurance—he 

chose not to, because he didn’t want to have that connection. And I’ve discussed this issue 

with Claude Bachelard of the French polar program, and if he had his way, he wouldn’t have 

much communication at all with home, only the most necessary things, because of the 

potential for problems. In that list that I mentioned very briefly of the behavioral issues, 

number one is group interactions. Number two was outside communications. And most 

Discussion
36

of it had a negative valence to it. So communications is definitely an issue, but 

NASA is doing an awful lot in that regard. 

The Life Sciences folks at NASA Headquarters have sponsored a great deal 

of research just on this very issue of communications between on-orbit crew 

and Mission Control. I watch every morning NASA TV, and the relationship 

that Mission Control folks have with the International Space Station crew is 

wonderful. It just seems terrific, and it goes both ways. The crew learns how 

to deal with Mission Control, and Mission Control learns to be sensitive to the 

special issues of the crew as well. 

MILES O’BRIEN: Of course, on Mars you’d have a 40-minute roundtrip for 

communication. That would probably complicate things a little bit. It would be 

more like e-mail. 

QUESTION: I just recently downloaded the Saturn I user manual that the Skylab 

guys referred to, and it says the specification for reliability on the Saturn 1B 

system was only 0.88. Now, with the Shuttle and how we’ve gone towards the 

all nines or five nines (.99999), where do we look at the boundary of reliability, 

which you were talking about in your discussion? 

JAMES LOVELL: Well, it’s tough to answer that. I think a general assumption 

that whenever we design any component, whether it’s a booster, a spacecraft, or 

a segment of something, we try to get the greatest reliability. We try to man-rate 

the system so that we can have reliability on the system that we’re going to use. 

Now, I don’t exactly know what all the percentages are of the various items that 

we’ve used over the years. But I would assume that in our present operation, 

and in the future work on some of the new vehicles that we’ll design, that is 

one of the greatest concerns and greatest pushes that we will try to do, is to get 

the greatest reliability. And we do that again, as both of us talked about, with 

redundancy, and the reliability of the components themselves. And we learn a 

lot, by the way, by past experience. I didn’t mention that, but Apollo 14 took off 

with a lot of things changed to it based on the potential that 13 had. They looked 

at all sorts of things before they launched Apollo 14, in about a nine-month cycle 

before they could relaunch it. 

QUESTION: I think there is a critical point, that is, evaluation of risk could be 

approached objectively by a variety of techniques, and you can try your damnedest 

to reduce that. But at some point someone has to make a decision—.88 or .89, 

who makes the decision and on what basis do they make the decision? Is it 

subjective, objective, a democratic vote? How do you do that? 

JAMES LOVELL: I’ll answer again. The decision is made on, what is the reward? 

I’ve mentioned that critical thing on Apollo 8. The Americans thought, our NASA 

folks thought, that the reward during Apollo 8 was well worth the risk, whereas 

the Soviets thought that maybe they should send another unmanned spacecraft 

before risking a new cosmonaut. And, so, you had to look at the reward. If the 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

OPENING PHOTO: 

View of the fl ight director’s console in the 

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas, 

during the Gemini 5 fl ight in 1965.

(NASA Image # S65-28689)
37

reward is tremendous, then we have to accept a tremendous risk that is involved 

with it. Like any other risk factor, if you invest a lot of money in something, 

you have to think that that’s well worth the risk to invest that money to get the 

reward back. And it’s the same way with almost any operation that we do. That’s 

the way I look at it. 

MILES O’BRIEN: Jack, just to follow up on that, to what extent did the polar 

explorers get specific about the risk? Or was it just all a gut feel? 

JACK STUSTER: It wasn’t a mathematical exercise, that’s for sure. It was highly 

subjective. But it is a personal equation, and some people are willing to accept 

more risk than others, and it all depends on what the potential benefit is. If the 

potential benefit is great, then we were justified in taking a greater risk. 

MILES O’BRIEN: Would Shackleton and Amundsen have been good astronauts?

JACK STUSTER: I think so. They would have been good mission managers, because 

they attended to every detail. For them, there was very little risk, because they had 

already attended to every detail, unlike others who didn’t. But, if you attend to every 

detail, if you had planned for every possible contingency that you can think of that 

might occur, reasonably, there’s a certain confidence in your ability. It’s not really 

taking a risk. The risk is something out of the ordinary, the weather, something that 

might come up that you can’t really count on. And then, you compartmentalize it, 

and it’s okay to deal with it.

MILES O’BRIEN: Any other questions out there? Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION: My question is, how do you evaluate the reward? And, just as an 

example, think of Cortez and Pizarro, they would have thought that their 

expeditions to the New World were accomplishing great benefits for Spain, but 

we see them as genocidal, wiping out great cultures. How can there possibly be 

an objective measure of reward or benefit? 

JACK STUSTER: Well, I think if we encounter other living beings of some sort, or 

some other entity, that would be a parallel. But, if it’s a matter of science, then you 

measure the actual importance of your discovery, and it becomes, again, a subjective 

thing. I think astrophysicists and astronomers might be more inclined to take 

greater risks than geologists to rescue the Hubble [Space Telescope]. I think it is a 

personal equation. Am I wrong? Well, what I mean is, if the outcome is important 

to the individual or to a discipline, then those people are likely to take greater risks. 

But no one wants to make a rash move, however motivated, however wonderful the 

benefit might be. He wants to make sure that everything has been covered that can 

be beforehand, to minimize the risk. But the very nature of exploration makes it 

almost impossible to predict what you will get in the way of benefit. 

MILES O’BRIEN: The very nature of exploration makes it impossible to predict 

what you will retrieve.

DISCUSSION
38

QUESTION: Miles, this may be as much for you as the panelists. We have an 

interesting juxtaposition of risk taking this week. Burt Rutan is getting ready to 

fly on Wednesday morning. And he would argue that he has carefully balanced 

the risk/reward ratio, and he is very proud that he’s never lost a test pilot. And 

he clearly thinks the risk is worthwhile. But NASA is often held to a different 

standard, because it’s the government somehow making that decision, rather 

than an individual. Government has facilitated Rutan’s flight, and has clearly 

said that if he wants to do that himself, he can. But how does the government 

take that similar risk? Does it get harder and harder to do? 

MILES O’BRIEN: Yeah, is the bar set higher because you’re a government entity? 

I think that’s true. If Burt Rutan, as a private entity funded by Paul Allen, wants 

to do this, I think the level of acceptance that people have over the consequences 

of that, whatever it may be, I think it’s greater. And I don’t have an easy answer 

for how a government agency can accept that same level of risk. But, the other 

side of it is, you have all these smart people in this room, and a lot of resources 

that you can bring to bear to try to minimize that risk even more. I mean, Rutan 

has done what he has done so far for around 20 million dollars. And what is that? 

That’s a NASA study, right? A few NASA studies. [Laughter] But, nevertheless, it 

is pennies on the dollar compared to the amount of cost and amount of resources 

that NASA has. So, I think that maybe that allows you to accept and create risk 

with more safety. 

JAMES LOVELL: Let me answer that if I could, because I think the classic example 

was, President Kennedy got up in 1961 and, in his speech, he said we plan to land 

a man on the Moon and bring him back from space before the end of the decade. 

Now, we had just put Alan Shepard up two weeks before, in the suborbital flight, 

had not yet put anybody up in Earth orbit, much less thought about sending 

anyone to the Moon. So, he saw that this was a risk, because of the position that 

the country was then in, we were behind the Soviets at that time in technology, 

and they were doing all these things. And he had to get a position where he 

thought he could make a bold move. So, he, as the President, represented the 

government, represented the people, thought that we could do that particular 

job. It was a huge risk. If we failed, what would be the situation? He took it upon 

himself as the leader to put us in that position. 

JACK STUSTER: Burt Rutan is reducing risk, it’s my understanding, to win the X 

Prize. It is the weight equivalent of three people. There is only the one person and 

then the weight equivalent of two people that are going up. So, he has reduced the 

exposure to risk by taking the weight equivalent. 

MILES O’BRIEN: I’m trying to get one of those seats. 

JACK STUSTER: I know. [Laughter]

MILES O’BRIEN: And there would be no shortage of volunteers, either. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
39

DISCUSSION

QUESTION: After the Apollo I fire, the Nation grieved. The spacecraft was fixed, 

and it flew in a very short period of time. After your mission, there was a similar 

sort of thing. There wasn’t a lot of discussion. There was some, but not a lot, of 

asking, “Why are we doing this?” There seemed to be a compelling thing drawing 

us out there. Flash forward to the Challenger. There was a lot of hand wringing. 

It took a lot longer than people thought to fly again. Flash forward to Columbia. 

Although something came from this in a space policy, it still seems to be so 

much more difficult to get back to what seemed to be so natural in the ’60s. For 

either of you, have we lost something since then? Is there something that can be 

regained? Is there a magic phrase or something you can do that can bring that 

back, or were we just lucky at that time?

JAMES LOVELL: Well, I think you have to look at the accidents in the context of 

which they occurred. With the Apollo I fire, there were problems because we did 

not really understand the use of sixteen pounds per square inch oxygen in ground 

tests, which we learned very belatedly. The program, at the time in which that fire 

occurred, was one of intense competition. It was intense prestige in this country. It 

was one that wanted to be continued to go on to completion. After the Apollo, as 

we all know, nationally it was sort of like a ship without a rudder for a while. We 

had various stages of the Space Station. We tried to figure out what to do. What I 

first recall is we were going to build a space station, a shuttle, and a transportation 

device all at one time. We found we couldn’t do that. I think that a loss today, a 

Challenger or Columbia, as compared to a loss during an intense period, is entirely 

different. We watch these spaceflights take off on television with seven people 

involved. It is an instant tragedy when we see something like that happen. Actually, 

I lost more friends testing airplanes until the Challenger accident occurred. We took 

that loss. As you, Jack or Miles, mentioned, sometimes you become accustomed to 

certain risks. In test flying, we become accustomed to someone buying the farm 

occasionally, and we didn’t think more about that. We try to learn what happened, 

and then we try to change the system and to improve the system so it won’t happen 

again. Now there are major tragedies. If we lose something, it is a major tragedy 

because it represents part of our country. 

MILES O’BRIEN: Jack, what was the media response after Scott’s team perished? 

Was there a call never to go back to the Poles?

JACK STUSTER: I don’t know. I’m not sure what the media response was. There 

was a great deal of finger pointing and probably a lot of similar response. It didn’t 

stop the progress of exploration

MILES O’BRIEN: People weren’t calling for the end of that exploration 

necessarily?

JACK STUSTER: No. As a matter of fact, it was ennobled. The heroic death of 

Scott and his polar party wasn’t acknowledged. There wasn’t the inquiry, let me 

put it that way, that resulted in the detailed list of changes that must be made 

for the next one. 
40

MILES O’BRIEN: Question?

QUESTION: In putting together a team for a high risk mission, what relative 

emphasis should be put on, on the one hand, technical knowledge/training, and, 

on the other, personal qualities, like resourcefulness and the ability to control an 

out-of-control situation? 

JACK STUSTER: Does it involve isolation and confinement? A small group? 

Isolated and confined? Technical performance? You will find that people who 

are technically competent might be called upon to perform their expertise only 

occasionally, whereas if they are living in isolation and confinement, they are 

always interacting with each other. So, the skill you should really select for under 

those circumstances is getting along with each other, and then ensuring that 

it’s the case by demonstrating it, rather than as a test, by simulations or past 

performance. Of all the principles of the behavioral sciences, ranking them in order 

of validity, the best predictor of future performance is past performance. You find 

people who have been successful cooperators in the past, and you have a better 

chance that they would succeed. If you are going to go to Mars, 13 Norwegians 

with some seafaring experience would be good. Just don’t pack the blubber lamp, 

right? It would be a bad thing. 

If I could return to the question, the question was, what is the relationship of risk 

and benefit? NASA is compelled to justify the activity. Often it is the spinoffs—

Teflon and so forth. There has been one that I have hoped for a long time. Long 

duration space exploration will result in bone demineralization. It could be the 

show stopper. The bones become brittle in the same manner that elderly people’s 

bones become brittle, to the extent that it could be dangerous to the explorers, 

either when they make their planetfall or, certainly, when they return. There are a 

lot of very smart people financed by NASA who have been looking into this issue 

to develop a countermeasure. There are people who take the mechanical approach 

of stressing the bones to trick the osteoblasts and osteoclasts into leaving the 

bones alone, and so forth. I have been hopeful that a solution would come. I have 

just learned that if this pans out, it will be the most monumental spinoff that 

NASA has ever come up with, and, certainly, will justify all previous research and 

all future expeditions and research, and that is a countermeasure in the form of 

a pill to bone demineralization. Everyone has an elderly relative, a grandmother, 

a mother, who fell and broke her hip and either succumbed as a consequence or 

the quality of her life was changed. All of us look forward to a future where we 

will live in fear of falling and breaking a hip. This countermeasure successfully 

developed by NASA will change all of that and would be, as I said, worth all of the 

effort that went before and will occur in the future. 

MILES O’BRIEN: Sounds like a story to me. [Laughter]

JAMES LOVELL: Jack, you’re not suggesting we send John Glenn up again, are 

you? [Laughter]

MILES O’BRIEN: Okay. That’s all the time we have. Great panel. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page Open next section
S E S S I O N O N E

 earth
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Dale Andersen has made almost 1,000 dives beneath the thick ice of lakes and oceans. He helped 

develop a number of techniques needed to explore the lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, including 

both human and robotic exploration (using the fi rst remotely operated vehicle—ROV—in the Antarctic). 

In 1991–92, as a member of the Exobiology Implementation Team under the auspices of the U.S./Soviet 

Joint Working Group for Space Biology and Medicine, he led the U.S. fi eld team on a six-month joint 

U.S./Soviet expedition to the Bunger Hills, Antarctica. Currently, Andersen (along with Wayne Pollard at 

McGill University and others) has been studying perennial springs and ice-covered lakes in the Canadian 

High Arctic.

Dale Andersen

Astrobiologist, Antarctic/Arctic Researcher, SETI Institute

I’m going to talk about my experiences in both the 

Antarctic and in the Arctic, and I’ll focus more on the Antarctic; right now it’s a little 

bit more exciting. 

We started back in the late ’70s, working at some of the lakes that are in the dry 

valleys. And this is one of the largest ice-free regions that exist there. There is a series of 

lakes with very, very thick ice cover, and nobody had ever probed these lake before, and 

looked at them in depth, other than just taking some drills and popping small holes in them, 

and taking a soda straw approach. We wanted to look at them in a little different fashion. 

As I started thinking about this symposium, I started categorizing the kinds of risks 

that we were involved with over this period of time. And for us it really came down to 

mission risk, the success of our expedition in general, and personal risk, which I divide into 

transportation to and from the research site. 

We usually take large ski aircraft to get down to McMurdo Sound, and then to get up 

north we use Twin Otters. And then to get into our remote fi eld sites, we’ll take helicopters, 

or, in some cases, on some of the expeditions we’ve taken Soviet icebreakers around the 

Hunting Microbial Communities 

in Dry Antarctic Valley Lakes
44

continent, and then taken helicopters inland and have been dropped off. We 

don’t have much control over what happens during those times. We’re there for 

the ride and, hopefully, we make it. And obviously sometimes the weather and 

the conditions can get pretty bad along those lines as well. 

Then, we actually live and work in these remote environments. We have to 

learn how to do both of those things—we have to learn how to live effectively. 

That takes quite a bit of effort, if you’re going to spend lengthy periods of time 

in these remote settings. 

And, then, it’s not just living, but you also have to accomplish some work. 

Developing the skills that require you to do that work is also something that 

we’ve had to overcome over the years. And then there is also the scientifi c 

credibility from a personal standpoint. We can put all the effort into going to 

these regions to do the studies, and if we get there, and the weather is too bad, or 

if the equipment doesn’t work, or we’ve forgotten something really important, 

it’s just too bad. And, then, we come back with nothing but our hands in our 

pockets, and say, well, we had some good times. And, then, the program managers 

yell at us and don’t give us any more money. The ultimate currency would be 

scientifi c publications. And if you don’t get those scientifi c publications, then 

you don’t get to go back down and do that kind of work again. 

And, then, there is the family setting. It’s always diffi cult to be away for 

these long periods of time, especially when you are in a hostile environment. 

Your family doesn’t know from a day-to-day perspective if you are just wandering 

around in the snow or if you’re drowning underwater or whatever is going on. So 

that’s one of those long arms that’s always reaching out to you. 

Over time, we’ve really had poor communication. And it’s something that 

has only changed in the last fi ve or six years. Now we can pretty much have global 

communication on an instantaneous basis. It used to be that we just didn’t have 

any; it took weeks for something to get through. 

Then there’s risk to others, or assigned risk. If I’m a leader on an expedition, 

and I can send people out to do work, my level of risk assessment is different 

than what I would expect for somebody else, depending on their level of training 

or what their experience is. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Scott Tyler (UNR) and Bob Wharton 

(Idaho State) pull Dale Andersen from 

the water at Lake Hoare, Taylor 

Valley, Antarctica. 

(Image copyright Dale Andersen)

“

”

NOW WHY DID WE GO TO THESE PLACES? WE DID HAVE SOME OF THE PROGRAM 

MANAGERS WHO WERE ASSOCIATED WITH THE PROJECT TELL US . . . THAT WE WERE 

JUST GOING TO FIND A BUNCH OF ROCKS, AND THAT WE’D WASTED EVERYBODY’S 

TIME AND MONEY. WHAT WE FOUND WAS A REALLY LUSH, LUXURIANT, MICROBIAL 

ECOSYSTEM THAT HAD NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
45

For a program manager, that perspective might be completely different. 

It’s different if they’ve never been in a fi eld situation similar to that, or if they 

have any kind of mountaineering or diving experience, or some other kind of 

experience that they understand personal risk from that standpoint. But it’s 

valuable to have experienced people in those positions.

Again, there are different kinds of transportation risks that I’ve been 

involved with: large aircraft, large icebreakers, even Hägglund track vehicles that 

we can take across the ice shelves among the continental ice, and helicopters. 

All of those have different types of risk associated with them. And then in some 

cases, like the Hägglund track vehicles, we drive those personally, so then we have 

to be able to understand how to drive a vehicle like that, keep it out of crevasses, 

and understand what to do when it breaks down, which it invariably will. 

In the dry valleys, a lot of the ice is not in the valley itself. You have the 

continental ice fl owing through, and you have a barrier that essentially keeps 

a lot of this from going into the valley. The evaporation highly exceeds the 

precipitation, so it’s quite dry. But some of the small features in between the 

glaciers are actually lakes. One example is Lake Hoare, where we spent quite a 

bit of time studying the lake ecosystem itself. Now these lakes are permanently 

covered in ice, and the ice thickness ranges from about 3 to 4 meters up to 6 

meters. In earlier years, about the only way people studied these lakes was 

to go out and drill a small hole through it, and then take water samples and take 

some other measurements. But nobody ever really asked the question, what’s 

going on at the bottom? Because most people thought the light levels were so low 

that there wouldn’t be anything on the bottom.

Well, a few years later, we decided to open these lakes up with 

a bigger hole so that we could go down and look. I guess, for some 

reason, we weren’t smart enough, or at that time underwater cameras 

were still a hassle to get a hold of, and it was just as easy to put us in 

the water as it was to take a little camera and drop it down the hole. 

But that wouldn’t have had nearly the fun factor, either, I guess. 

We developed a system that allowed us to melt holes through 

this thick ice. Essentially, we take a copper coil and just put hot 

antifreeze solution through it, let it melt down the ice. You can see 

that we can move in and out of that ice cover, as we’re melting it. 

It’s like a tunnel, of course, a water tunnel. Then we suit up and we 

jump in. Originally, we started out in wet suits and double hose 

regulators, which is kind of ancient history. Over the years, that was 

obviously not the best solution, because you’ve got to deal with a 

really cold wet suit once you get out of it. If it’s minus 30, it’s not 

too comfortable to take a wet suit off in those conditions. You can 

see that we’re on tether, because once you go in, you’ve got one way 

in and one way out. 

Now why did we go to these places? That to me was the 

biggest payoff. We did have some of the program managers who were 

A dive hole being “cut” through the ice at 

Lake Hoare, Taylor Valley, Antarctica. 

(Image copyright Dale Andersen)

DALE ANDERSEN HUNTING MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES
46

associated with the project tell us, just before we were getting ready to go in for the 

fi rst time, that we were just going to fi nd a bunch of rocks, and that we’d wasted 

everybody’s time and money. What we found was a really lush, luxuriant, microbial 

ecosystem that had never been seen before. And as it turns out, these tunnels that 

we make through the ice are just like tunnels back through time, 600 million years 

to 3.5 billion years ago. This gives us a glimpse of early Earth, and, perhaps, of 

early Mars. If lakes existed on Mars, they would possibly have been ice-covered, 

and possibly have microbial communities similar to what we see in the dry valley. 

These kinds of microbial mass communities are very, very prolifi c. 

Our work there is very dependent upon the training that we received. We 

have to be very safe. We’re diving in extremely remote areas where we don’t have 

the opportunity—at least, at that time, in this particular area, we didn’t have the 

opportunity—to get back to a recompression chamber. The closest one would 

have been in New Zealand, and that’s, of course, after a helicopter possibly came 

out, and picked you up, and dragged you back to McMurdo, and put you on a C141 Starlifter back to New Zealand. 

When we were in other situations, we didn’t have that option at all. The 

nearest chamber was probably several months away. And we worked everywhere 

from about 40 meters up to the water columns. We have to be very, very careful 

about the dives that we go on, and the kind of diving that we’re doing. That one 

tether that takes you back to the surface is so very important. So it’s kind of like 

“follow the light.” But it’s actually very fun diving. It’s very exciting to go into 

these lakes. 

We also started a program a number of years ago. Because we can only go so 

far out on our leash underwater, we really are restricted to the amount of material 

we can see. So we started a telepresence project where we started using remotely 

operated vehicles—actually Sylvia Earle loaned us the fi rst ROV [Remotely Operated 

Vehicle] that was used down in the Antarctic in one of these lakes. A lot of the 

algorithms that we used for one of our ROVs was actually utilized later on the Mars 

Pathfi nder. Some of guys in the Intelligent Mechanisms Group at Ames worked 

very closely with us on that. Anyway, that was a very good means of getting out and 

away from that dive hole, and getting into working with other communities. We 

also had to learn to operate this kind of equipment in those environments. 

Now we just don’t follow the microbial communities underwater. We also 

follow them wherever we can fi nd them. That includes on top of the glaciers. We 

then have to pick up ice climbing skills and some general mountaineering skills 

when we want to go up into the alpine areas. So, it’s a real skill mix to work in 

these kinds of regions. 

In 1991–1992, I had the opportunity, along with Jim Rice who is here in 

the audience and Peter Dorn who is in Chicago, Illinois, to go to the Bunger 

Hills, another ice-free area in the Antarctic, with the Soviets. That was a joint 

expedition between our two space programs through the Space Medicine and 

Biology Working Group, and it was part of the Exobiology Implementation Team 

that allowed us to get together with their exobiologists. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
47

Three of us joined eight Russians. We traveled for two months around the 

Antarctic continent by icebreaker. We got dropped off by helicopter for the next 

four-and-a-half months in extremely remote settings with quite a few cultural 

and language barriers. To be honest, the expedition took place at the very last 

minute because of the way programmatics worked and the way permissions go, 

and because the dialogue between the Soviets and the U.S. at the time was kind 

of slow. We didn’t fi nd out that we were actually going until four weeks before 

we left, so we had to buy everything, ship everything, and get everything down 

to South America. Hopefully, it was all there when we got there. We actually 

didn’t open up our boxes until we, literally, got to the Bunger Hills and the last 

helicopter left. It was a pretty quaint setting. We spent some time in some of the 

huts that they had there, but we also spent quite a few months sleeping in tents 

on the ground in the rocks. There was a great deal of wind. This is an area that 

is prone to katabatics. 

So we had quite a few diffi culties while we were there, but we also had 

to accomplish some work. All in all, it was a very successful mission, both 

scientifi cally and culturally. It was culturally enriching to all of us, and it showed, 

at that time, even though it wasn’t a space project per se, the two space programs 

were working closely together in an isolated, Mars-analogue environment. 

More recently I have shifted poles, and we are now working in the Canadian 

high arctic. The setting is not altogether that different. It is very glaciated. 

There are large Alpine glaciers and outlet glaciers, along with large ice sheets. 

We’re studying a series of perennial springs in this region. These are the highest 

latitude perennial springs in the world, along with those over in Svalbard. This is 

a great Mars analogue. There may have been springs on Mars coming up through 

thick, continuous permafrost. This is where we would go to see these. Again, 

this is a very remote setting to which we take Twin Otters and helicopters, are 

dropped off and left for a few weeks or months. It’s a little shorter logistics train 

up to the Arctic, so we can get back and forth much easier. Nevertheless, while 

we’re there, we are actually a little more isolated, at times, than we are in the 

McMurdo dry valley area. ■

DALE ANDERSEN HUNTING MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
High-Altitude Mountaineering

Ed Viesturs is America’s leading high altitude mountaineer, having climbed many of the world’s most 

challenging summits, including ascending Mount Everest fi ve times. He holds this record with one 

other person. Viesturs is the only American and one of fi ve people to climb the six highest peaks in the 

world—all without supplemental oxygen. He is currently on a quest to climb all 14 of the world’s highest 

mountains (above 8,000 meters) without the use of supplemental oxygen. He has successfully climbed 12 

to date.

I’ve been climbing now for 27 years, and, hopefully, I’ve done 

it the right way. I started by climbing small peaks and then aspired to climb higher and higher 

peaks. As I was going higher, I eventually realized that what I liked about mountaineering 

was the extreme challenge and how diffi cult it was and, also, the beauty of climbing these 

mountains without oxygen—the pure way, the hard way. I had probably a diffi cult start, 

though, in my career, being raised in the great mountaineering state of Illinois. But it was in 

high school that I was reading adventure books: Amundsen, Scott, Endurance, and books like 

that. I came across a story written in 1950—Annapurna, and it details the fi rst ascent of an 

8,000-meter peak. There are fourteen 8,000-meter peaks in the world, roughly 26,000 feet 

and above. In 1950, a French team climbed this peak called Annapurna. They succeeded, and 

it is a very amazing story. It inspired me to start climbing mountains. 

The fi rst thing I had to do, obviously, was to get out of Illinois, and I chose to move to 

Seattle. My other goal in life was to become a veterinarian, so I studied veterinary medicine 

in the Seattle area. I started climbing voraciously and learned from people who were very 

experienced, very conservative, and willing to teach me their craft. Eventually, I landed a 

Ed Viesturs

American High-Altitude Mountaineer
50

job guiding on Mount Rainier, 14,400 feet, which I have now climbed 192 times. 

Most of those times were as a guide. 

I truly believe that my safety and success in the Himalayas is because of 

my guiding experience, because, as a guide you always have rather inexperienced 

clients in tow. You are responsible for them. You always have to be evaluating 

risk and always asking yourself, if this happens, how do I get out of that? So you 

are always trying to think ahead, or, at least, not waiting until something were to 

happen. I truly think this has helped me a lot in the Himalayas. 

As I was guiding and climbing higher and higher peaks, I started dreaming 

big. Obviously, the highest peak you can dream of is Mount Everest at 29,035 

feet. I thought that if one day I had the chance to go there, it would be an amazing 

thing. On the summit there is one-third the amount of oxygen that there is here 

at sea level. To date, almost 2,000 people have stood on the summit of Mount 

Everest. The kind of clothing that we wear is very lightweight. It’s very technical. 

The boots are thermoplastic. There is foam insulation. The fabrics we use are 

single-layer GORE-TEX®, breathable, waterproof, and these products insulate 

us, but we still have to move to create body heat. We don’t have any internal heat 

source other than our bodies. Basically, these products do not help us climb the 

mountain, but they make it safer. We climb faster and more effi ciently. 

Most people that climb Everest—I’d say 95 to 98 percent of the people 

that climb Everest—use supplemental oxygen. Even with supplemental oxygen, 

it is very diffi cult to climb this mountain, because the oxygen is mixing with 

ambient air, and you are only really reducing your relative altitude a couple 

thousand feet. It is still very diffi cult, but I decided long ago that if I ever had 

the chance to go to Everest, or one of the other 8,000-meter peaks, I would not 

use oxygen to climb these mountains. I thought it would be more interesting 

to challenge myself and to see if maybe I could get to the summit, rather than 

guaranteeing myself getting to the summit. So, that is a rule that I made long ago 

and something I’ve lived by. 

I had my fi rst chance to go to Mount Everest in 1987. We were climbing the 

North Face. With my partner, Eric Simonson, we were part of a large team of about 

10 climbers, and it takes 2 months of climbing, setting up a series of 4 camps, and 

carrying loads to just get into position to go to the summit. In the end, if you can 

get one or two people from that team to the summit, then that is teamwork, and 

that’s a success. So, Eric and I were making the fi nal dash to hopefully get to the 

summit. I was climbing without oxygen the last 300 vertical feet of the summit 

ridge to the top of the world. It was kind of late in the day, and the weather was 

changing. Eric, rather conservative, as am I—we were looking at the top, thinking 

that we could probably get ourselves to the summit, but we probably wouldn’t get 

ourselves down. For both of us, that seemed to be a huge decision-making factor. 

I have always felt that climbing has to be a round trip, right? 

But a lot of people lose sight of that. They see this goal that’s two hours 

away and they’ve spent years of preparing and training and months of climbing, 

and when it gets to that close of a distance, they’re willing to throw caution to 

OPENING PHOTO: 

This image featuring Mt. Everest and 

Makalu was taken by an Expedition 8 

crewmember on the International Space 

Station (ISS). 

(NASA Image # ISS008-E-13304)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
51

the wind simply to get to the summit and then, hopefully, they’ll get down. And 

a lot of those people, unfortunately, never make it back down. For me, the risk is 

too great—I don’t want to die going to the summit of the world. So we walked 

away—300 feet from the top. And it’s something I thought about every single 

day for three more years. 

Two years later, in 1989, I climbed the third highest peak in the world, 

Kangchenjunga. We climbed by a very steep and diffi cult route—this is the 

technical climbing that we had at 24,000 feet. Very strong team, rather good 

conditions, and in the end, we reached the summit of Kangchenjunga at 28,200 

feet on a very, very pleasant day. And if the weather’s good, and you have time, 

you can stay for about an hour on the summit. If the weather’s bad, three minutes, 

take some photos, and down you go. We stayed for an hour. Looking 80 miles to 

the west, you could see three more peaks in the distance. And the one closest 

to the center, the large one, is Everest. And even though I was there standing on 

Kangchenjunga, I was longing to be back on Everest to fi nish that last 300 feet. 

A year later, I did go back to Everest. And—we were making the fi nal ascent, 

300 feet away from the summit once again. Climbing without oxygen at these 

altitudes, you go very, very slowly. You take a step and you breathe 15 times. You 

take another step and you breathe 15 times. And then you think about taking 

another step, and you breathe 15 times. 

But after 12 hours of continuous climbing from the high camp at 27,000 

feet, I then, fi nally, stood on the summit of the world. And to me, this was the 

most amazing point of my career—to be on the top of the world. I’ve always told 

people this is the closest you can get to outer space without actually leaving the 

ground. This was an amazing moment for me.

The following year, I went to K2—the second highest peak in the world—

and by all means, much more diffi cult to climb than Everest. It’s steeper, the 

weather is worse, and only 200 people to date have climbed K2. And I went there 

with my great friend from Seattle, Scott Fisher. 

At 26,000 feet was our last camp before we made the fi nal dash to the 

summit. The shelters and tents weigh about fi ve pounds. On K2, the higher you 

go, the steeper it gets and the more dangerous it gets. And that’s where you really, 

“

”

I HAVE ALWAYS FELT THAT CLIMBING HAS TO BE A ROUND TRIP, RIGHT? BUT A 

LOT OF PEOPLE LOSE SIGHT OF THAT. THEY SEE THIS GOAL THAT’S TWO HOURS 

AWAY AND THEY’VE SPENT YEARS OF PREPARING AND TRAINING AND MONTHS OF 

CLIMBING, AND . . . THEY’RE WILLING TO THROW CAUTION TO THE WIND. 

ED VIESTURS HIGH-ALTITUDE MOUNTAINEERING
52

really have to be careful, and that’s where a lot of accidents occur, because people 

are so focused on just getting themselves to the top, they’re not even aware of the 

weather, their surroundings, and the conditions. And that’s something that you 

really have to evaluate every step of the way. And, luckily, we climbed it on the 

fi rst attempt. And once you climb K2, you never think of going back. 

I also met that year on K2 another great friend, Rob Hall from New Zealand. 

We became great friends and did many climbs throughout the world. We climbed 

Everest together several times as well as Lhotse, Everest’s neighbor. Lhotse 

is the fourth highest peak in the world. And what we started to do was to do 

tandem climbing where we would go and climb Everest over a two-month period, 

acclimatize our bodies, and then, quickly, in succession, climb another 8,000-

meter peak in just three days. And so we could utilize our acclimatization. 

Tragically, though, both Scott and Rob died in 1996 on Mt. Everest during 

the tragic storm of May 10th. I was there with my wife. I was the climbing leader for 

the Everest IMAX fi lm. My wife, Paula, was our base camp leader. Our expedition 

leader, and the director of the fi lm, was David Breashears. Very experienced 

climber, very detail-oriented, and an amazing leader to have on this climb, where 

you had a very diffi cult task in taking a 42-pound camera to the summit, doing 

what other climbers were doing but also schlepping this giant microwave-sized 

piece of metal to the summit as well. And after six weeks of climbing, we were in 

position to go to the summit. We were going to go on May 9th—this was a day 

ahead of everyone. We evaluated the weather conditions. The weather patterns 

weren’t what we were hoping they would be and we decided to go down. Our 

friends, led by Rob and Scott, made the decision to continue on to the summit 

on May 10th and then, sadly, the storm occurred, and on that day eight people 

died—two of them my great friends. There was nothing we could do. 

We couldn’t climb up to them fast enough; we couldn’t get a helicopter 

to get up to them. And that’s the thing about mountaineering. It’s one of 

the places on the planet where rescue is literally impossible, unless you send 

humans to go do the rescuing. There are no machines and there’s no other way 

to get these people. 

Part of the reason, I think, that the tragedy occurred is that people were 

swayed by the group decisions that were made. It was almost like, if six people 

are going, then ten people are going, then twelve people are going. You know, 

there’s comfort—there’s psychological comfort—in groups with larger numbers. 

And I think people would say, “Well, they’re going, so I’m going to go.” And then 

they kind of just kept pulling each other up higher and higher late in the day as 

the storm was brewing. We helped with the rescue. We quit fi lming and stopped 

what we were doing in relation to our own objectives. We helped bring some 

people down and then, after that, we managed to pick up the pieces, and we 

went back up the mountain two weeks later. Not in spite of what happened, but, 

I think, to show the world that you can climb these mountains and live to talk 

about it. If you fi nd the right conditions, and if you wait with patience for the 

proper weather, you can climb these mountains and live to talk about it. The 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
53

summit is only half the trip, and the most important half of the climb is, in my 

opinion, the descent. 

I’ve gone on to climb more. I’m on a quest to climb the 14 8,000-meter 

peaks in the world without supplemental oxygen. And over the last 15 years, I’ve 

managed to climb 13 of them. I have one more to go, which is called Annapurna, 

the mountain that got me into all of this. So maybe it’s poetic that it happens to 

be the last mountain on the list. ■

ED VIESTURS HIGH-ALTITUDE MOUNTAINEERING

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Exploring the Deep Underground

Penelope J. Boston

Director of Cave and Karst Studies, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

I’ve been trying to get to Mars ever since I was a little kid. And 

my solution to this over the last decade or so is, really, to go down instead of go out. And 

that may be as close to going to another planet as I ever get. After we published a paper with 

Chris McKay suggesting that life on Mars would be underground, we were looking for ways 

to study the sub-surface. And, of course, the most immediate and obvious thing was the 

new information we were getting from drill holes. People were beginning to drill, through 

the Department of Energy project, and trying to look at deep subsurface microbiology. We 

discovered that caves were there and that maybe they would be cheaper to get into. And so, 

after the early part of my career working in extreme environments on the surface, I decided 

to try caving. The fi rst cave I ever caved was Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, which is a 

notoriously diffi cult cave. And all I thought at the time was, “Am I going to live to get out of 

this? I just have to live to get out of this cave.” 

But after the pain sort of faded, I realized that it was an amazing environment, that I’d 

never done anything in any place that was so potentially fascinating for the kinds of exotic 

microbiology that I was interested in as an astrobiologist. And so I realized that I could do 

Penelope Boston’s areas of research include cave geomicrobiology, microbial life in highly mineralized 

environments, and unique or characteristic biominerals and biosignature detection. In addition, she 

is involved in astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth. At New Mexico Tech she is creating a 

new program, Cave and Karst Studies, in conjunction with the founding of the National Cave and Karst 

Research Institute. She is extensively involved in educational outreach about caves and karst issues, 

space exploration, and general science for school children, older students, and the general public. 
56

two things. One is, I could learn how to cave safely and I could go to these places. 

And I could then refocus my work to essentially tap into an entire area of biology 

and mineralogy, and the way they overlap on our planet, that had not been studied 

before. This is a new fi eld, really, in terms of what we’ve been doing on Earth. And 

then it was immediately applicable, of course, to the situation of life beyond the 

planet. 

And, so, most of my research now is focused in one type of cave or another. 

We tend to pick them for their specifi c chemical properties, so we’re looking for 

caves that have poisonous atmospheres, that are very hot, that are very cold, that 

are very extreme in some sense, so that we can look at the limits to life on this 

planet and learn from that what may be adaptive strategies of life for other bodies 

in the solar system and, perhaps, someday beyond. So really, to write a fi eld guide 

to unknown organisms is part of our mandate. 

I’m studying the caves that we are looking at as I’m building on the work of 

other cave scientists in the world. There are a number of really clear lessons that 

we’re learning. These amazing environments show us that caves are really not 

rare. If you have only ever been in caves as an occasional tourist in a show cave, 

you may think that caves are a rare phenomena, but really, there are a tremendous 

number of sub-surface voids on Earth of all different kinds. They aren’t just in 

calcium carbonate-type environments, which are the ones that we often come 

in contact with, but they really occur in every major rock type. And this is an 

important lesson for trying to apply our knowledge of Earth caves to other bodies 

in the solar system. 

There are many, many ways to make caves. And, so, one of the areas of active 

research that we’re engaged in is, really, a set of thought experiments about how 

you can look at the basic physics and chemistry of environments and try to imagine 

ways that subsurface voids on other bodies could be formed. And, so, we’re working 

that end of the theoretical spectrum of imagining caves on other planets. 

The type of cave that we absolutely know exists elsewhere in the solar 

system are what are known as lava tubes, and these are a natural outgrowth of 

fl ood-basalt type, quiet, fl owing lava eruptions. And these things are essentially 

rivulets that freeze on the outside. The rock on the outside freezes. It’s a very good 

insulator, and then it allows the interior to remain molten and lava continues to 

fl ow through. Eventually, when the eruption stops, these empty out and you have 

these beautiful tubes, and so that’s a very different class of cave from the kinds of 

dissolution-dominated caves that we often think of.

Certainly, it was known and recognized by Ron Greeley and other colleagues, 

even in the Apollo era, that a lot of structures that they were seeing on the moon 

were lava tubes, or unroofed sinuous rills, which is like a lava tube without its 

top. As we get ever better imaging of the planet Mars, we have seen that there are 

lava tubes scattered widely over the planet, and these are quite easy to pick out. 

Olympus Mons has this little pit crater or little pit collapse feature, a string-ofbeads kind of appearance. This is a direct analogue to the way we fi nd these sorts 

of things on Earth. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Penny Boston prepares to rappel into 

the entrance of the immense Lechuguilla 

Cave, New Mexico. 

(Image copyright Val Hildreth-Werker)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
57

One of the interesting things that’s been attributed to the fact that the 

gravity on Mars is much lower is the fact that the lava tubes scale accordingly. 

So not only does Mars have enormous examples of volcanism, but it has big lava 

tubes. The biggest lava tube on Earth is about 90 kilometers long, in Hawaii. 

That’s the record-holder on Earth. But, typically, when you look at these features 

on Mars, they’re hundreds of kilometers long. And the diameters are equally 

great, so they’re on average 3 to 10 times the size of the average diameter of a 

tube on Earth. So these things are truly enormous.

Not only those places, but when we look at the radar imaging data from the 

Venus missions, you can see that there are tube-like structures associated even 

with those weird-looking types of volcanic features that you fi nd on Venus. And, 

then, even Io, which is such a cooking little moon out there with its tremendous 

sulfur component, seems to have what is clear evidence of lava tubes. And my 

dream is that somebody will get a really good image of one that’s made out of 

entirely molten sulfur. 

So these are fabulous features. These are places—at least on the Moon and 

Mars, although I wouldn’t recommend astronauts going directly to Io or Venus—

that can actually be exploited as human habitat. We just fi nished a Phase 1 and 

Phase 2 study over the last four years for NIAC, which is the NASA Institute 

for Advanced Concepts, looking at the far-future conceptual development, and 

looking at ways to discover the likely enabling technologies that we would need 

to make these actually useable for structures for astronauts and bases on the 

Moon and Mars in the future.

So, I’m not going to talk about all the different kinds of caves because 

that would be a several-hour lecture in and of itself. But one of the points 

that I think I want to really press home is that cave environments are typically 

radically different from the surface. Pictures taken in Saudi Arabia by the very 

well-known caving team of John and Suzy Pinch have shown that, even in these 

very hot, blasted sand deserts, when you get into very large bell-shaped caves, 

there are divable pools. And the air in these caves is near saturated humidity. So 

it’s a complete change from the overlying environment, even in caves that are 

not sealed. And, so, it’s just the barrier of above and below that provides this 

radically different environment. And this is a big message for astrobiology, that 

just what might be dominating on the surface of a planet is not necessarily the 

key to where you actually have to go to look for the life. 

“

”

IN A LOT OF THESE SUBTERRANEAN WORLDS, WE REALLY ARE THE 

ALIENS, AND THIS IS AN IMAGINATION-STRETCHING EXPERIENCE.

PENELOPE J. BOSTON EXPLORING THE DEEP UNDERGROUND
58

Cave environments obviously have no sunlight, so this means that any 

organisms living within them have to make their living elsewhere, either by 

detrital organic material washing in or, in the case of a lot of the organisms we’re 

studying, they’re essentially rock eaters. These guys are disaggregating the parent 

rock using things like the metabolic product, the organic acids that they give off, 

and, then, other organisms come along within these little microcommunities, 

and they oxidize the metals in the rock. And this is how they get the energy to 

run their entire ecosystem. 

They’re very high-humidity environments. In contrast to the surface, 

they’re very thermally stable, so even a cave with a big, gaping, open entrance still 

remains very, very thermally consistent on the interior. New transfer is usually 

very, very low, with some exceptions. They’re very rich mineral environments. 

And then there’s no conventional weather, so it very much is a very different 

planet in the near-crustal caves than it is on the surface.

And the result of all these tremendously different conditions is that 

caves are unique mineral factories. There are vast numbers of unique mineral 

formations that are found in caves. Huge catalogues of them have been seen and 

the explanations for the occurrence of these is very much in its infancy. One of 

the things that we are working on extensively is which of these types of mineral 

formation processes are actually biogenic, and it turns out that there are a lot of 

them—perhaps even most of them in caves have a biogenic component.

So the organisms that are actually contributing to what’s going on in 

caves are not simply passive observers or users of the environment. They are 

mineralogically interactive. They are changing the caves. They are actually 

interacting with the bedrock and they are guiding, and in some cases controlling, 

the kinds of mineral deposits that are left. A lot of these organisms are novel, and 

I would venture to say that the bulk of the organisms that we fi nd are actually 

Small white patches are actinomycete bacterial colonies growing on cave walls and precipitating 

the mineral calcite in Ft. Stanton Cave, New Mexico. (Image copyright Kevin Glover)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
59

novel. They’re not known to science. And, so, from one little cave puddle to the 

next, perhaps we have 80 percent novel organisms that we look at by molecular 

phylogenetic techniques. So these are truly evolutionarily, self-contained 

environments, and many of them are actually physically isolated from the surface, 

and, in that sense, they really are miniature planetary systems within our own 

crustal environment.

Not only do the caves house this amazing array of organisms that we’re 

just beginning to understand and study, but also they’re wonderful preservation 

environments. So if you are looking for biosignatures, then the subsurface in 

caves is the place to look. Not only do the organisms live there, but they very often 

self-lithify. They’re engaged in self-fossilization while they’re actually alive. Socalled U-loops from Lechugia Cave look very organic. They are entirely rock now, 

but we have been studying their living counterparts in modern caves, and these 

are clearly the fossilized remains of microbial mats that were inhabiting this cave 

probably on the order of four to six million years ago when this cave was actively 

forming. We can also expose the fossils in this kind of material by acid etching.

In a lot of these subterranean worlds, we really are the aliens, and this is 

an imagination-stretching experience. It’s the kind of thing where it would be 

lovely if we could take a lot of program managers into this kind of environment, 

because, really, it’s the kind of thing where just reading about it doesn’t make as 

much of an impact as if you were actually doing it. 

Cueva de Villa Luz is one of the most amazing caves that we’re studying. It’s 

a sulfuric acid-saturated cave in Tabasco, Mexico. Gases from the nearby volcano, 

El Chico, now actually come into this cave and make it an extremely poisonous 

environment within which to work—tremendous amounts of hydrogen sulfi de, 

carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, even aldehydes, and various other noxious 

things. And so we require complete protection from that environment.

The message here is that this cave is the most biologically-rich cave of any 

that we’ve ever seen, and it’s because of these poisonous gases. These poisonous 

gases are not poisonous to the organisms that are living there; it’s home sweet 

home. And this is the message. We’re not looking at extreme environments just 

to look at extremes where organisms are just barely hanging on. We’re looking 

at them to look for organisms for which that is the comfortable environment, 

because those are representative of what we may fi nd as the average conditions 

on other bodies.

So we’re trying to write the fi eld guide to unknown life, and this is a really 

tough thing to do. But the place that I’ve been in my career where this makes the 

most sense to me is in these kinds of protected and evolutionarily-sequestered 

environments. A lot of the material we look at doesn’t even look alive. We’ve 

seen white muddy-looking stuff on the walls—that’s living mud. That material 

is made out of cells and fi laments that coat themselves with calcite mineral. And 

they’re actively producing this material in caves all over the world. Tiny white 

dots on the walls are organisms that are busy dissolving the salt in a lava tube 

and making their living there. So, even though something may not look alive, 

PENELOPE J. BOSTON EXPLORING THE DEEP UNDERGROUND
60

and although sometimes we have to work very hard to show that it’s alive, all of 

these environments contain amazing life forms that are busy also leaving traces 

of themselves. 

One of the other aspects of doing the kind of cave work that we do is also 

giving us operational experience that is very valuable to future life detection 

missions, whether they be robotic or, ultimately, crewed teams in the future. And 

that is that we are operating in extreme environments that are hazardous, with 

an indigenous, sensitive, alien biology. In this case, the alien biology is on our 

own planet, but, nevertheless, it’s very different from our surface environment, 

and we have to take all the precautions that one would imagine in order to avoid 

contaminating it while, at the same time, managing not to kill ourselves off while 

working in very diffi cult conditions. And so, it is an analogue for operating with 

life-detection constraints, including even the aspect of working with various 

collaborators at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and JPL [Jet 

Propulsion Laboratory] and NASA-Langley on robotics that can get us into some 

of these kinds of environments. 

So the caves are out there. I know that as time goes on and we explore 

the rest of the planets in the solar system, we’ll fi nd better and better ways of 

actually detecting caves besides the lava tubes. We’ll fi nd ways to get into them. 

We’ll fi nd ways to drill into them—which will be a lot easier than just sinking a 

core right down into solid rock—and they will have amazing structures, amazing 

minerals, and, perhaps, even amazing life as we explore them. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page 
Exploring the World’s 

Highest Lakes

Nathalie Cabrol is a planetary geologist at NASA Ames Research Center, since 1994, and a SETI Institute 

principal investigator, since 1998. Her research focuses on aqueous environments favorable to life on 

Mars, exploration (robotic and human), and the study of terrestrial analogues. Her education includes a 

master and doctorate degree in planetary geology (1986 and 1991 respectively), both obtained at the 

Sorbonne University in Paris.

Nathalie enjoys climbing and hiking. She also practices free diving (diving without oxygen tanks). She 

holds an (unoffi cial) women’s world record for the highest free dive, performed in 2003 in the Licancabur 

summit lake. Both her passion for mountaineering and diving are combined in her scientifi c research for 

the limits of life on Earth.

Nathalie Cabrol

Planetary Geologist, NASA Ames Research Center, SETI Institute 

I am a planetary geologist, so I am revolving between Earth and 

heaven, and part of heaven is Mars. As such, I am very privileged and, also very proud, to be 

part of Mars Exploration Rover science team, which is proving a lot in terms of exploration. 

And, as a member of the science team, with my colleagues, we are taking intellectual risks. 

We have been working for several years to select landing sites, and we tried to match the 

landing sites to the objectives of the Mars Exploration Rover mission. We were very happy 

to see that, indeed, in many cases we have been able to reach our objectives. 

But, although it’s an intellectual risk, it’s also a risk for the assets and for the time 

that has been put into preparing these missions. There is no human life involved in that part 

of it, but still, you want to make sure that you are doing your job properly. And to do that, 

you have to do your homework. I would volunteer right away to go to Mars. People here, like 

Mr. Lovell and [Harrison] Jack Schmitt and others, made me dream as a little girl, and I knew 

that whatever I was doing with my life, it would involve NASA, planets, and exploration. But 

still, you have to make sure that the concept you are pushing forward is as close as possible 

to reality. And to do that, we had to do a lot of planetary geology here on Earth and to try to 

fi nd the best analogue we can. 
62

I am interested in lakes. I am interested in past aqueous environments on 

Mars and their habitability potential—whether those are the best place for life, 

whether life ever appeared on Mars—these are my drivers as a scientist. And 

to try to understand that, I am exploring high lakes. Why explore high lakes? 

Because the higher you go on Earth, the earlier you go back in time. On Mars, 

basically, you will be going into a core environment temperature that is really low 

and you are going into a thinner atmosphere and you try to understand what is 

happening over there. And, so, we are exploring those high lakes. We have been 

starting in the Andes with volcanic lakes. 

And our goal is astrobiology, but as we were going, our exploration kind of 

caught up with us, and we discovered a brand new avenue of research. And this 

involved physiology and medicine—and I’ll talk a little bit more about that—and, 

of course, education and public outreach. 

Well, why go high? As I said, these are the best analogues to Martian lakes 

and we want to understand the limits of life. And why do we want to do that? 

Because right now, the Mars exploration rover mission has proven beyond doubt 

that Mars was a habitable planet for the type of life we know here on Earth. But 

that does not mean that there was life there; habitability and actual life being two 

different things. 

So, going back to these high lakes is for us to understand: Is life possible 

in analogous conditions to those on Mars? So we are going up there, and we are 

trying to start with crater lakes in the Andes, and we’ll try to move on to the 

Himalayas, because as the lakes in the Andes are slowly receding now because 

of the climate change, by the same token, on the other side of the planet in the 

Himalayas, large glaciers are now melting and they are creating new lakes that are 

probably higher than those of the Andes. This is, for us, a place to really stop and 

witness the ecosystems forming: How life gets there and develops, et cetera. So 

this is really something that’s fascinating. 

And we started with the Andes and, well, you have to imagine, about two 

years ago, myself entering the offi ce of my branch chief at Ames and saying, “Hi, 

Chief. I think I have this very bright idea. I would like to climb a 20,000-foot 

volcano, named Licancabur, at the boundary of Chile and Bolivia. By the way, 

it’s not extinct. And there is a lake on top, and I want to dive on that lake. Of 

course, it’s almost freezing temperature, but I forgot to tell you something, I am 

a free diver. I am not using oxygen. Can you help me with Code Q [NASA Safety 

Offi ce]. He actually did, and this is how we started the Licancabur adventure. 

We were talking this morning about risk and payoff. It has been the most 

rewarding experience of my entire life so far. We were blessed by the fact that 

nobody in our crew was hurt, nobody was really in signifi cant trouble. You will 

wake up lousy at that altitude, because this is the kind of thing that happens, but 

nobody got actually sick from mountain sickness. But we had to work with Code 

Q for six months. And among the people who advised us on this trip was Peter 

Hackett, and Peter was one of the other guys climbing Everest without oxygen. 

So we took this very seriously. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Setting up camp for the Licancabur 

expedition. (Copyright: 2003 Licancabur 

Expedition, NASA ARC/SETI Institute.

Image by Gregory Kovacs.) 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
63

But, in the meantime, as is part of exploration, you open one door and many, 

many others open as you are walking. And so we started climbing Licancabur, 

trying to determine if there was life up there, and as the title of our project was 

“Exploring the Limits of Life in the Highest Lakes on Earth,” I had never imagined 

that that could be testing our own limits. And not only were we writing the 

experiment, but we became part of the experiment. And this became fascinating. 

We know how analogous these places are to ancient Mars. The pressure is 

the same. The temperature is the same. UV radiation—well, according to models, 

we shouldn’t be very far off on this one. It’s a very arid environment, yet the 

caldera is right next to it. We’re in a volcanic environment with variable thermal 

input, and if we have questions about life on Mars, when we go to these lakes, we 

discover that life is thriving over there. 

And so, to us, that was very, very encouraging. Because this opens doors 

and potential for the study and the search for life on Mars. And going up there 

normally would help us to understand better from the standpoint of the biology, 

but it helps us, also, to prepare for a future mission on Mars, because we have a 

better idea of the type of instruments, of the type of exploration strategy, what 

we would be able to prepare, and giving heads up to management. And this is 

very important, too. 

Our summit camp was around 19,500 feet, and we could look down to 

two evaporation lakes, Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca. These two lagunas are 

lakes which were really perennial lakes 15,000 years ago during the last glacial 

maximum. And since then, because of climate change, they have been evaporating. 

And we used those two lakes, which are at 14,000 feet, as an acclimatization area. 

And we are studying them. 

Once again, we stumbled into the unexpected, which is the sense of 

exploration. And as we were just hoping to spend a little time there, to prepare 

for the ascent, then we started discovering that we had more analogy with Mars 

than we had bargained for. Everyday at about eleven o’clock, because this is a thin 

atmosphere and because you have big gradients of temperature due to the high 

volcano, you will have huge dust devils roaming around those lakes, and they will 

engulf your tents and your refuge. And you better not be in the middle of it. So that 

also tells us about human exploration, that there are things you must be aware of. 

“

”

AND WITNESSING MY FATHER’S LAST DAYS IN THE CONDITION HE WAS IN, AND 

THE DIFFICULTY HE HAD BREATHING, I SAID THAT THE ONLY RISK I COULD TAKE 

WOULD BE TO HAVE ONE MORE PERSON TO SUFFER THAT THING.

NATHALIE CABROL EXPLORING THE WORLD’S HIGHEST LAKES
64

But what we also stumbled into were stromatolites [fossilized algae 

colonies, some of the oldest and continually surviving life forms on Earth]. And 

the fi eld we stumbled into is 150 square kilometers. And these are on the paleo 

shore of this larger lake I talked about, Laguna Verde, Laguna Blanca—15,000 

years ago this was one lake. And these are fed by hydrothermal springs. And 

we discovered those stromatolites. When we examined those structures, we 

discovered that they were biogenic. This means that we had blue and green algae 

forming then, and we know that these microorganisms are the ones that existed 

on planet Earth. And you have to go back to archaea [single-celled organisms, 

among the earliest forms of life on Earth] to see this kind of creature. 

So we were on the shores of lakes that are very much analogous to what 

we are seeing on Mars, and, all of a sudden, we fi nd those primitive terrestrial 

organisms just colonizing everywhere they can. So that’s the cherry on top of 

the cake. We were not expecting that. We are hoping to develop this aspect, 

because, obviously, this is going to tell us a lot about the potential of these kinds 

of lakes. 

Laguna Verde is three times saltier than seawater. I learned this the hard 

way when I tried to dive in it. Eleven pounds of lead would take me to the bottom 

without any problem. It was an interesting experience, an interesting dive. So 

they are stromatolite-like colonies. Because what I didn’t mention is that we 

have all these fossil stromatolites that colonized the paleo shore of this lake. But, 

even better, there are still stromatolites forming today. And this is a very rare 

occurrence on Earth these days. We are walking on them—literally on the fl oor, 

and there is better news than that. I just received three weeks ago some analysis 

from the lab, and this is a dead ringer for [an existing species], the chemistry is 

the same exactly. 

Our goal was the top of the volcano. And not only do you want to dive on 

top of this volcano, but you have to get there. We have to make sure that nobody 

is suffering from hypoxia, from any type of problem. We don’t want to climb 

too fast, because we don’t want to be anoxic at the summit. And, so, what we do 

is that we stop at night at 18,000 feet, at the only fl at place we can fi nd on that 

volcano. Basically, this is a 12 meter by 4 meter kind of fl at, and we are jamming 

our four or fi ve tents on that, with an 800-meter drop nearby. I didn’t mention 

that to Code Q before we went there. But the slope is about a 40–45 degree 

slope, on very unstable material. We can’t stabilize it, and the only thing we can 

hope for is that there will not be an earthquake that night. 

So once we are there, we spend one night there for acclimatization, and 

once we are on top, the scenery is quite something. The lake itself is a receding 

lake now, about the size of a football fi eld. And the paleo shore marks the level of 

the lake in the ’50s. That also tells us something: those lakes are disappearing. 

It is really time for us to understand what is going on there, because they will be 

lost forever in a few years. 

So when we went there, of course, we wanted to dive. We have several 

objectives when we are doing this. The fi rst one is to characterize the habitat and 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
65

microorganisms and ecosystem that are there. And most of the summit lake, like 

Laguna Blanca or Laguna Verde, is a very shallow lake, which means that also the 

UV radiation—the microorganisms are going to be affected by that. 

The other thing that we are doing is to do physiological research. At Ames, 

we have the astrobionics group, which is developing the “sea pods”. These are 

monitors that keep track of the team. You are monitoring your blood oxygen 

saturation, you are monitoring your heart beat and apnea during sleep, because 

this is happening when you are in the mountains. But the thing we wanted to do 

here was a little different. 

I am a free diver. I never dive with oxygen tanks, because I fi nd them heavy 

and cumbersome. At 20,000 feet I had to convince many people that it was a 

good idea to hold my breath. But, basically, people in good health at this altitude 

will be at about 65 percent oxygen saturation in their blood. And their heart is 

pumping at around 135 beats per minute. 

We wanted to understand what was going on with the oxygen saturation 

by doing the free diving. There are things we cannot do at sea level, because your 

blood is always saturated in oxygen at sea level. And if something happens to this 

saturation and heart beat system, you will see it at this altitude. 

I also had another motivation—the very overarching objective is that, as 

an organism, your body is going to produce, one way or another, more oxygen, 

and we need to understand that. Because we have many people in this world who 

are dying from lung and heart diseases. And helping those people breathe better, 

or maybe fi nd a solution that will help them, that is something that is really 

important to us. I took this point home because my father passed away from 

massive heart failure a few months before the expedition. And witnessing my 

father’s last days in the condition he was in, and the diffi culty he had breathing, 

Camp near one of the highest lakes on Earth. (Copyright: 2003 Licancabur Expedition, NASA 

ARC/SETI Institute. Image by Gregory Kovacs.)

NATHALIE CABROL EXPLORING THE WORLD’S HIGHEST LAKES
66

I said that the only risk I could take would be to have one more person to suffer 

that thing. 

So, this is where, in my mind, there is no question about the risk entailed. If 

some people wonder why we are exploring, I tell you I know why I’m exploring. 

So, we actually monitored the free dive. And we realized that people can 

be very well with a heart beat of 39 beats per minute—this is how low my heart 

went when I was diving there—and getting out at 20,000 feet of that kind of 

water, which is at 40 degrees, with a blood oxygen saturation at 93 percent. 

Something is producing oxygen in our body. Something remembers that we are 

aquatic mammals. We need to understand what it is. Nature gave me two good 

lungs (actually, Stanford is looking for the third one) and a good heart, and I want 

to take advantage of that to help make headway, to fi nd solutions for one of the 

most horrendous killers in our society. 

So, this is one of the aspects of why it is worth taking risks. On the other 

hand, on the NASA-related objective, these physiological monitors tell you 

everything that you want to know about a crew’s health status. It was really 

important for us to show that this was working, and we actually did some live 

transmission of our vitals directly to Ames and Stanford while we were there. 

That was the fi rst time this was done. That was one of the co-aspects. The other 

aspect, going back to astrobiology and microorganisms, is that we are actually 

now in a position to know those microenvironments a lot better. 

In the past two years, we have also been involved in pinpointing some 

interesting effects of the UV radiation. For example, diatoms are experiencing 

mutation and malformation due to UV radiation. We want to understand this 

because it tells us something. There are, apparently, mutations that we need to 

understand better, if it is a mutation toward extinction or if it is a mutation 

toward evolution. It is really important in a world where you have high UV 

impact, such as Mars would have been in the past. The other aspect of it is that 

we are living in a world where UV impact is becoming more and more of an issue. 

We have trouble with the ozone layer, and if these little creatures over there are 

developing sunscreen and a UV-resistance strategy, we need to learn about it, 

because that will help the general public. 

“

”

IT IS HARD TO THINK THAT EXPLORATION CAN BE DONE WITHOUT TAKING RISK . . . 

THAT, ULTIMATELY, EXPLORATION CAN BE DONE WITHOUT LOSING PEOPLE ONE WAY 

OR ANOTHER. EVEN IF THIS HAPPENS, WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE DONE 

EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO MITIGATE THE RISK AND TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
67

Sometimes we have interesting encounters. One of a diatoms [planktonic 

unicellular algae] we found was thought to be extinct a long time ago. Well, it’s 

thriving in Laguna Verde, thank you. It is having lots of success. It is still there. 

In another case, we found a diatom that was known to exist only in the Baltic 

Sea. Don’t ask me how it ended up here, but it is there and thriving. Maybe the 

conditions of salinity and cold are very close to the Baltic Sea. 

So we are learning a lot. Stromatolites were the fi rst creatures on Earth, 

and they are still there. They are evolving and they are telling us about our past. 

If we are able to decipher what they are telling us, we will know better about our 

origins and, maybe, possible origins of life on other planets, because those lakes 

are very similar to that of Mars. 

To go back to what many of the previous speakers talked about, managing 

risk and people, there is, obviously, a physical responsibility. You have catastrophic 

risk, of course. There is nothing we can do about the volcano exploding on us if 

we are there when this happens. Everything else we can manage. 

I would say that the state of mind I would go with when I leave the U.S. 

and go to Bolivia would be to say that, as much as I can prevent it, nobody will 

get hurt on my watch. I am always working on this, and I have to manage a very 

diverse group of people. This group of people ranges from young people, students, 

to people who are senior scientists to people who speak different languages. 

Last year in my team I had Hungarians. I had Chileans and Bolivians. I am 

French. I had American people and Spaniards. That makes for good jokes when 

we are trying to translate one thing to another. We have to make sure that the 

safety things will get through all the time. My personal standpoint here is that 

risk is defi nitely inherent to exploration, and it is necessary for discovery. And I 

will go a step farther. I say this is also the essence of survival. If we want to do it, 

we need to explore. We need to explore new ground. 

I guess we have to share an ultimate responsibility, as Dale and Penny were 

mentioning. You have a team with you. You are responsible for them, and you 

have to have answers. The main thing is that you have to be accountable and 

responsible for all that. It is hard to think that exploration can be done without 

taking risk. It is hard for me to think that, ultimately, exploration can be done 

without losing people one way or another. Even if this happens, we have to make 

sure that we have done everything possible to mitigate the risk and to prevent it 

from happening, as much as possible. ■

NATHALIE CABROL EXPLORING THE WORLD’S HIGHEST LAKES

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Deep/Underwater 

Cave Environments

I’ve come from a rather unusual background in that I 

came up through engineering school wanting to be an astronaut, but had the good fortune of 

discovering that there were remaining places to be explored here on Earth in the meantime. 

As a teenager, I watched a couple of these guys who talked here this morning walk on the 

Moon. They were my heroes, and it was the U.S. space program that was directly responsible 

for my going out and getting a Ph.D. in engineering and wanting to work in space. In the 

process of trying to get into the Astronaut Corps at various times, I have also had the 

privilege of being involved with a large number of expeditionary projects dealing with things 

that go down into the Earth as opposed to things that go up. I added it up a little while ago. 

Over the last 26 years, I’ve spent 7 1⁄2 years in the fi eld on expeditions, of which 353 days 

were below 1,000 meters deep underground, based from subterranean camps. So, I’m either 

a troglodyte or somebody who’s looking for planetary exploration and hasn’t been able to 

get off this pile of rock yet. 

What I am going to do here this afternoon is to rapidly take you to three of the most 

remote places that humans have ever reached inside this planet. This is serious business. 

It is more serious, in my opinion, than high altitude mountaineering, because of the 

William Stone led the exploration of Sistema Cheve (-1484 meters), (-1475 meters), and Cueva Charco 

(-1286 meters), among many other deep caves around the world. These Mexican caves represent the 

three deepest systems in the Western Hemisphere and currently the 8th, 9th, and 21st deepest natural 

abysses in the world respectively. During the past 33 years, Bill has organized and led 47 expeditions 

and has spent seven years in the fi eld on exploration projects. He holds 11 patents and patents-pending 

and is the inventor of numerous other exploration-related tools. He is presently leading the three-year 

DEPTHX project for NASA to develop and fi eld-test a prototype robot for the postulated Europa lander 

third stage, the “hydrobot” that autonomously maps the subsurface ocean of Europa.

William C. Stone 

Engineer/Deep Cave Explorer and President, Stone Aerospace
70

multidisciplinary nature and the remoteness. I don’t consider expeditionary deep 

caving as something you do for excitement. You do it because it’s an opportunity 

to explore one of the last true frontiers on this planet. The classic distinction on 

this subject came from arctic explorer Vilhjalmar Steffanson, who once spent 

fi ve years working solo north of the Arctic Circle. Interviewed about this one 

time, the reporter asked [Steffanson], “Well, you’re an adventurer, aren’t you?” 

He said, “Son, adventure is what happens when exploration goes wrong.” 

I have had that motto emblazoned upon my heart in letters of gold ever 

since. You do not get Brownie points for having your name on a tombstone. You 

have to come back. With that in mind, I have actually taken a lot of cues from 

how NASA trains its astronauts when preparing for, and staffi ng, expeditions. In 

the subterranean world, where we are about to go, it is a gloves-off environment. 

The exploration front is now getting to the stage where it is so remote and so 

diffi cult to reach that no matter what technology we have at our disposal, and 

no matter how Olympically-trained and fi t the people are who are involved with 

it, we still get stopped. Every time you go for four or fi ve months in the fi eld, if 

you’re lucky, you’re a kilometer or two deeper into the planet. I am going to try 

to give you an idea here just what this world is like. I’m going to show here what 

would be the equivalent of summitting Everest and K2, but it’s all going to be in 

one continuous trip proceeding down, in order to give you a sequential feel for 

the logistics and remoteness. 

Rising out of the southeastern area of southern Mexico is the Huautla 

plateau. It jumps straight up about 2,100 meters. The top of it is cratered with 

gigantic sinkholes. The water that rains on this area for 500 square kilometers 

all goes internally and, in the process of doing that, it creates some pretty 

substantially-sized voids. 

About 50 kilometers away to the south and a kilometer higher in elevation 

is Cueva Cheve. This was only discovered in 1986. This underscores the still 

unknown extent of this last frontier: Cueva Cheve was not even known to the 

modern world until 1986—just 18 years ago. The endeavors we’re talking about 

require a lot of technology, starting off with the fact that you’re going down. You 

don’t just walk down that depth. There are three kilometers of specialized rope 

that are used to rig over 107 drops and traverses going down into this cave. 

“

”

INTERVIEWED ABOUT THIS ONE TIME, THE REPORTER ASKED [STEFFANSON], 

“WELL, YOU’RE AN ADVENTURER, AREN’T YOU?” HE SAID, “SON, ADVENTURE IS 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EXPLORATION GOES WRONG.”

OPENING PHOTO: 

An artist’s rendering of the hydrobot, 

a self-propelled submersible that could 

be used to explore beneath the surface 

of the ice-covered ocean on Europa, 

one of Jupiter’s moons.

(Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

technology/images_videos/iv_pages/

p48326.html.)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
71

Typical vertical drops on some of these things can reach distances of 160 

meters straight down. That would be about one and a half times the height of the 

Vehicle Assembly Building, for those who are here from Kennedy Space Center. 

A lot of times they’re a little bit shorter, but they almost always have water 

accompanying them. The deeper you go, the more water you collect. The tributaries 

each add a little bit in until, fi nally, you’re dealing with quite a serious fl ow. You’re 

rigging lines on the walls to keep out of that, usually. This is life on rope. You’re 

usually carrying around a 25-kilogram pack, which has the supplies that you’re 

bringing. This is very much an inverse variant to the siege tactics that you see 

used on high altitude mountains where you’re building Camp 1, Camp 2, Camp 

3, and you start off with a pyramid of 50 people. Sometimes, we’ve had as many 

as 150, but 50 is a typical number for a trip for four to fi ve months. That works 

out to be a good number to work with—you have depth of personnel to handle 

emergencies in situ. We’ve generally considered that a team of 12 to 18 is about the 

minimum you would want for safety and skill redundancy. And the further down 

you go, you’re adding more tributaries until, fi nally, you’re into rivers by the time 

you get to about the −800-meter level. This would be a little over a half a mile 

deep in English units. I know nobody around here works in English units . . . except 

when you’re designing planetary craft going to Mars. [Laughter] 

One of the things that we’ve had to deal with is the fact that we are constantly 

running up against the limits of human endurance. Typically, if you go on a marathon 

exploration trip, you can stay up for 24, 28, maybe 30 hours, and, after that, if 

you come back to base camp on the surface, you’re out of commission for two to 

three days while you’re recovering. You can’t do that underground, because even 

when you are resting—say at an underground camp—you are consuming supplies, 

which are fi nite and paid for at great price of effort. If you want to move effi ciently, 

your people have to be roughly 16 hours from anywhere that they have to go. And, 

so, we begin to establish a series of camps. I want to dispel the notion that a lot 

of people have that these places are claustrophobic. In reality, many chambers and 

tunnels in southern Mexico—owing to the signifi cant tropical yearly rainfall—are 

so big you can’t even see the ceilings or the walls. It really is like being on the dark 

side of the Moon. These are team endeavors. None of your specialized personnel—

divers, climbers, surveyors—get to the “front” without riding on the sweat of a 

substantial support team. Like high altitude mountaineers, cavers frequently refer 

to such support crew staff as “sherpas.”

Again, when I think of an expedition—and this is a sticking point with me 

and it may be with others—there are a couple of holy words in the vocabulary 

of true explorers. And one of those is the term “expedition.” To me, this is an 

endeavor of 20 or more people being out in the fi eld for four-plus months. That’s 

a serious distinction. Anything short of that is what I would refer to as a recon 

mission. And, so, in the case I’m discussing here, you’re on site for four or fi ve 

months, and people are working daily. It is not uncommon during the early stages 

of an expedition for the lead rigging team to get caught between known camps, 

and, so, setting a bivouac is something you plan for as you move in. Generally, it 

WILLIAM C. STONE DEEP/UNDERWATER CAVE ENVIRONMENTS
72

is for logistics reasons that you don’t get as far as you would like—for example, 

you might not have been able to carry enough rope to continue rigging. 

Well, the reinforcement crew comes in the next day with another 

kilometer of rope and off you go. And then that support crew retreats to the 

previous camp behind them and the rigging team presses onward. And so it 

goes on down, until you are now roughly four days traveling distance from the 

nearest entrance. So, when you get to a place like this, you begin to think about 

the fact that you’re pretty remote, and there really isn’t going to be any rescue, 

except from the people who are with you, particularly if it’s something that 

requires urgent response. If you can get a person back to a camp and stabilize 

a broken leg or something like that, you can always send out for assistance. 

But there are places where even that is not possible, particularly when working 

beyond fl ooded, underwater tunnels.

The most remote place that we’ve been so far is at the current limit of 

exploration in Cueva Cheve. When you get down to a distance of approximately 

8 1/2kilometers inside and at a depth of −1,360 meters, you’re moving through river 

canyons, and you keep thinking that, well, this is just going to keep going down 

like this. But the problem is that caves are always quirky in terms of geology. All it 

takes is a slight counterfold in the limestone strata, and that river that was boiling 

is now static, placid, and leading you into tunnels that are completely waterfi lled 

to the roof for substantial distances, before they usually rise back up into air-fi lled 

sections of cave. They used to refer to these places as terminal siphons. In fact, 

that’s the name of a rock band I’m in, so you’ll hear us touring someday.

So, you get down to a place like this and here you are, you’re roughly 1,360 

meters vertically down and 8 kilometers in. Everything down here is paid for 

preciously by the people who transported this down. You’re living on ropes for 

days to get this here, so you have to be very careful about what you bring. At this 

point, those in the lead—in this case, trained cave divers—have this enormous 

pressure on them to perform. And I’m sure that everybody who’s fl own on a 

rocket knows this same feeling. Here’s 50 or 100 people who have given of their 

time, of their lives, of their sweat for four months. That’s not counting, by 

the way, in the case of many of these, that we have spent two to four months 

rehearsing with those same teams over the preceding one or two years. When 

you get to these places where the tunnels are full of water, now you’re into 

another level of discipline where you have to be aware of the fact that, number 

one, you’re going to be using portable life equipment—what astronauts refer to 

as PLSS [Portable Life Support System] units for EVA [extravehicular activity]. 

And that’s the way I think of this. I think of this as EVA. And when you do that, 

you have to be thinking a couple of things. Number one is that anything can go 

wrong at any time, and so the best way to deal with this is to believe that this 

place is actively out to get you. When you think that way, you start making 

checklists ahead of time. In fact, we have them all laminated on waterproof 

paper. Not only before you go in, but after you come back out. It’s the equivalent 

of pre-fl ight and postfl ight checklists. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
73

But there’s more to this. I’m going to say one thing here, and then I’ll 

come back to another side of it. We’ve been talking about issues for reducing 

risk, one of them being making our equipment “bombproof.” That’s a bit tough 

when you look at the places that you have to go through to get these items 

or the equipment that these people have down here. And the other issue is 

redundancy. But before I get to that, there’s this whole issue of peer pressure 

that is on you. You have to be ready at any second on one of these things that, 

if you get 50 feet inside this underwater tunnel and you don’t like how you feel, 

you abort. That’s a cardinal rule. 

Somebody was asking me recently how many people do I know on 

expeditions that have died? And I really never thought much about it until I 

started adding it up. Over the last 18 years, I’ve lost 16 good friends. People that 

I’ve climbed with, worked with on expeditions, people who were very qualifi ed. 

The reason they’re not here right now is because they went a little too far—they 

didn’t abort when they should have, they didn’t stop and say, "Wait a minute. 

There’s a stack of things that are going wrong here." Nothing ever happens in 

one blow. Jim Lovell pointed that out this morning. But a string of little events 

occurs—you start going down there and you get tired. You get tired and you 

say, “Ah, I don’t need to have this extra little piece of safety line here.” And, “Oh, 

well, I don’t need to check this other piece of equipment I have for descending 

a rope.” Pretty soon, things start to add up, and you don’t have that safety 

on there and when you sit down, one of those carabiners is unlocked and it 

comes unclipped, and there you are with 25 kilos hanging below you, and you’re 

hanging on the rope by one hand. You know, that kind of stuff happens. So, you 

have to get religious in your discipline about how you deal with the technology. 

This is high technology exploration that’s going on down here. More serious 

than a typical EVA mission outside the Shuttle. 

The Portable Life Support System we use is all fully-closed-cycle equipment. 

There is no air in this system. It’s all helium-oxygen running at about 6,000-psi 

in carbon-carbon tanks. The range on this particular rig is about eight hours and 

“

”

SOMETIMES WHEN YOU GET TO THESE LOCATIONS, THERE IS NO DRY LAND, 

AND SO YOU’RE LIVING IN HAMMOCKS STRUNG FROM ROCK BOLTS ABOVE THE 

WATER AND HOPING THAT YOU’RE HIGH ENOUGH THAT, IN CASE THERE’S A 

FLOOD, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET WASHED AWAY. THAT’S THE WORLD YOU 

LIVE IN WHEN YOU’RE DOWN THERE.

WILLIAM C. STONE DEEP/UNDERWATER CAVE ENVIRONMENTS
74

depth-independent. We developed this particular PLSS because we didn’t know 

how far we were going to have to explore underwater. Sometimes when you get 

to these locations, there is no dry land, and so you’re living in hammocks strung 

from rock bolts above the water and hoping that you’re high enough that, in case 

there’s a fl ood, you’re not going to get washed away. That’s the world you live in 

when you’re down there. 

In the bottom of this system you’re doing 600 meters—that’s roughly a 

half a mile—of diving, starting at the −1360 meter level. When we got to the 

other side, we established a camp. We were over there for a week and explored 

another three-and-a-half kilometers beyond the underwater section. These 

places represent the frontier right now. No one has been able to organize an 

expedition since to go further. In the case of Huautla, it has been 10 years since 

anyone visited that location; in Cheve, it was 2003, and it’s unlikely that a return 

there will be fi elded before 2007, although we do have that one in the planning 

stages already. Neither of these places are fi nished. They are beckoning. They 

are wide open. And, yet, we can’t get the tactical logistics together or the team, 

because those people all have to be not only vertical trained, they have to be 

comfortable with where they are in a remote environment, and they have to be 

able to dive at the same time as well as climb. You start putting all these things 

together, all these various task loadings, and, pretty soon, the fi lters get pretty 

serious. There are not many people in the world who have all these skills.

This is the kind of thing that we are going to have to think about. Who 

are you going to put on the Moon? What kind of expeditionary-qualifi ed people 

are you going to put on the Moon? Are you going to live together for a year up 

there? I mean, the psychological aspects are one thing, but the multidisciplinary 

training is going to be phenomenal. 

If you get away from this logistical problem that we have of getting stuff 

down to −1,500 meters underground, and you can bring things in on tractor trailers, 

the whole ball game changes. One of the great natural wonders of the world, just 

south of Tallahassee, Florida, is a place called Wakulla Springs. Up until 1987, it 

was basically unexplored. You could look at the entrance from glass-bottomed 

boats, but nobody had seen much more than 100 meters inside on scuba. And 

we had an opportunity to go there with National Geographic in ’87. But it was 

in ’99 that things really got high tech. This project was a good example of how 

exploration need drove equipment development. Many pieces of technology we 

used did not exist prior to 1999. We built all this–a fl oating, saturation diving, 

recovery system; 20-kilometer-range propulsion vehicles; dual-redundant, 

closed-cycle PLSS backpacks; and 3-D, automated mapping systems—on a twoyear schedule, once we got the go-ahead from National Geographic and corporate 

patrons. We had a dual closed-cycle PLSS; six onboard computers running this 

thing; twin head-up displays; 18-hours range. There is no EVA system in use by 

NASA that would meet this standard, and I’ll tell you why. When we get down 

there, we’re going to be doing missions to distances of about 4 1/2 kilometers 

from the entrance at 100 meters underwater depth. When you’re out there, you 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
75

are two and a half hours one-way travel time from the nearest egress point. By 

comparison, if you’re on a Shuttle mission or a station mission right now, and 

you have a problem with your suit, whether it’s an Orlan or an ILC Dover suit, 

you’ve got roughly 10 to 15 minutes, maybe 30 minutes in open circuit mode at 

best, to get back to the hatch. Here you don’t have that luxury. You are two and a 

half hours out, and you’ve got to fi gure out how you can do it. 

It’s important to point out that everybody here was in a situation where, 

no matter where they were on that trajectory, they had an abort scenario. The 

maximum mission duration by pre-agreement among the teams was 10 kilometers 

penetration. And you had a factor of four to one safety margin to get yourself 

back. Everybody who was doing these would rehearse each mission beforehand 

for upwards of 12 hours (in the spring basin), and have people come in and tell 

them, for example, that all of their vehicles were dead, they had to transfer and 

get towed out by one of their partners. And then you’d tell them, for example, 

that half of their life support system was gone and they’d have to continue out 

on that. So you’re continuously rehearsing all the various abort scenarios. In that 

sense, it’s no different than training for a space mission. But here, we explicitly 

included abort capability for every phase of the mission. That isn’t true of space 

fl ight currently.

A typical mission is all about collection of information about what the 

frontier is. If you’re an explorer, you should be out there trying to collect that 

data, just like Steffanson said, and get back safely with it. 

We built for this project a gadget—known as the “Digital Wall Mapper”—

with a very high-grade, inertial guidance unit, phased array sonar, and about 

eight computers. And it’s imaging the wall as you drive through, to build a 

three-dimensional map of the aquifer. The person in back is the safety diver. 

Their job is to make sure that when this person is driving this monstrosity, that 

if they do something wrong, they’re going to come up and help them out. 

Typically, we would have a support crew follow people in to a depth of 

about 80 meters. Perhaps 150 meters into the cave the crew is running on heliumoxygen, and they’ll have 18 hours supply down there. The people on top have got 

the biggest sport diving cylinders in the business, and they’re dumping out about 

a thousand dollars worth of helium-oxygen on that support mission just because 

of the fact that they’re wasting it away, breathing it into the water column. 

And then off you go for approximately the next fi ve and a half hours, with a 

typical run down here to 100 meters depth, and then you’re back. Now you can’t 

come straight out, as somebody like Mike Gernhardt or anybody will tell you who 

has done EVA. You have a decompression issue, a very serious one. In fact when 

you’re fi ve hours down at 100 meters, you’re almost saturated. At 60 meters 

down, we had a string of closed circuit cameras following people out. They had 

fl ashcards so they could tell if everything was OK, or they needed supplies from 

down there. 

When they reached a certain stage—the completion of their 30-meter 

decompression stop—six support divers would drop out of the sky, like something 

WILLIAM C. STONE DEEP/UNDERWATER CAVE ENVIRONMENTS
76

out of a James Bond movie, and come down and take away their closed-cycle unit, 

give them a regulator, and let them switch up into a pressurized, personnel transfer 

capsule. They would then be transferred up to the top and into what we call a 

mini-saturation system, where they would spend the next 12 hours. Total mission 

duration, about 22 to 24 hours. We did this everyday for three days, took a day 

off for maintenance, and then did it again, for three months while we were down 

there. No issues with safety on that entire project with any of the mission crews. 

Ten million data points were gathered on this trip to build the world’s fi rst 

three-dimensional cave map. So, in our case it’s not only a desire to be out on the 

frontier, but it’s also about bringing the data back home. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page 
I’ve been freelance writing for 25 years, mostly about adventure, 

exploration, spinoffs to archeology and history. But before that, I was a serious climber for 

about 20 years, from age 17 to 37. I didn’t climb high altitude peaks like Ed, but specialized 

in technically diffi cult peaks in Alaska. And I still climb, although pretty pitifully. 

But for me, the most critical question of my life had to do with the fact that by the 

age of 22, I had been a fi rsthand witness to three fatal accidents to partners. It began with 

my fi rst partner in high school, Dave Lee, who, only four months after we started climbing, 

was killed on the fi rst Flatiron above Boulder. It was not a very hard route, but when we got 

a rope snagged and had to unrope, he climbed down solo to retrieve it. He slipped and fell 

700 feet, with me watching. 

Three years later, I was the fi rst person on the scene when two guys fell out of Pinnacle 

Gully in Mt. Washington, one of whom was actually in training to be an astronaut. We 

tried to resuscitate them to no avail, and then had to haul their bodies down to Pinkham 

Notch. And then, just three months after that, on my hardest Alaskan expedition to Mt. 

Huntington, after all four of us had reached the summit, on the descent, Ed Burns, the 

youngest of the four of us, a 20-year-old sophomore in college, inexplicably fell, had a 

David Roberts is a freelance writer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who specializes in adventure, 

archaeology, and history. He has co-led 13 mountaineering expeditions to Alaska and the Yukon, making 

many fi rst ascents, including the direct north face of Denali, the west face of Mount Huntington, and 

the southeast face of Mount Dickey. He is the author of 16 books, most recently The Pueblo Revolt: 

The Secret Rebellion That Drove the Spanish Out of the Southwest, published this month by Simon & 

Schuster in October 2004.

David Roberts

Writer

A Writer/Climber Perspective
78

rappel come loose. And we were descending in the middle of the night, we could 

just barely see in the Alaska twilight. And without my knowing, even today, what 

happened, the rappel fell, and he simply fell away from me 4,000 feet, and we 

never could even look for his body. 

The question to me now is, why did I keep climbing after these terrible 

experiences? At the time, I didn’t even really examine it. I mean, I came close to 

quitting, but I didn’t really examine why I kept climbing. I think if somebody had 

asked me, I would have said, “Well, wouldn’t their deaths be even more pointless 

if I quit climbing?” 

So, when I tailed off climbing and got interested in writing about other 

climbers, including Ed, I got much more interested in this whole question of risk, 

motivation, and the risk-reward payoff. And, in 1980, I wrote an essay called 

“Moments of Doubt,” an apologia for doing something as crazy and risky and 

useless as climbing. 

My favorite climbing autobiography is Lionel Terray’s Conquistadors of the 

Useless, because it is an awkward, but telling, phrase. And just this year, I’ve 

fi nished a memoir about my climbing in which I actually come to the opposite 

conclusion, that maybe it wasn’t worth the risk. And what changed my thinking 

about this was that I had always thought about risk in terms of the question, 

basically sort of a solipsistic, selfi sh question, does the reward I get for making a 

fi rst ascent make up for the risk and the tragedy of someone dying? And it took 

me 35 years to realize that that was just a completely self-centered and, therefore, 

sort of stupid question. 

And one of the things I did a few years ago was to go back and recontact 

Dave’s brother and sister, the only surviving members of his family. Forty years 

after the accident, and I had never communicated with 

them. And I found that his sister, in particular, was still in 

a rage with me over that accident, and that she lived with 

it every day of her life. We spent the most intense seven 

hours straight in Seattle on a park bench talking about it, 

and trying to untangle her feelings about it. And I fi nally 

realized that the question of, is it worth the risk, is not one 

you can really just apply to yourself. It really does involve 

family, the larger society, and humankind, ultimately. 

I guess if I still had to come up with a rationale for 

climbing mountains, it would not be anything to do with 

the thrill of it versus the penalties, but, rather, whether the 

very endeavor has something inspirational about it that 

lasts. And I think by analogy with Scott and Shackleton and 

Amundsen in the Antarctic, they justifi ed their expeditions 

in the name of science, just as I think NASA is continually 

doing. And Scott, when he died, had 30 pounds of rocks 

on his fl esh, geological samples. He tossed away everything extraneous, but he 

somehow thought the 30 pounds of rocks were worth bringing back. Apsley 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Left to right: NASA’s John Grunsfeld, 

David Schuman, and Eric Darcy on the 

summit of Denali (Mt. McKinley), 

May 2004. 

(Photography by Will Reno)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

The Fram under sail. (Amundsen, Roald. The South Pole, 

Volume I, p. 170.) 
79

Cherry-Gerrard’s worst journey in the world was to gather penguin eggs in the 

middle of winter from Cape Crozier, and under the misapprehension of the now 

exploded theory that ontology recapitulates phylogeny, penguins being the most 

primitive birds in the world, their embryos would tell us all about early human 

evolution. It’s complete bunk. He performed the worst journey in the world 

to gather three penguin eggs. But we don’t remember Scott, Shackleton, and 

Amundsen for their science, we remember for their example of daring adventure 

and exploration and going where no one else had ever been. To me that was the 

fi rst, and is still the most exciting, part of exploration, to go where no one else 

had ever been. The only rationale for it is if it inspires other people. Ed Viesturs 

clearly inspires other people. I have been at talks he has given where the groupies 

have just gathered all around him. They want more than autographs. Is he a rock 

star celebrity? No, but there clearly is something that touches the human spirit 

and, as corny as Bush’s line is, “the desire written in the human heart” really does 

have to do with risk and exploration.

One last note, a curiosity from the Renaissance. We’re taught, on and off, 

about the Renaissance, but someone calculated that on a typical Renaissance 

voyage to the New World, sailors stood a one in three chance of not surviving. 

And that makes Everest look like a piece of cake. It makes Bill Stone’s stuff even 

look safer. And the collectors of the narrative of the voyages write often about 

the adventurers, but the adventurers were not the sailors, they were the guys that 

put up the money. The real adventure was taken by the fi nanciers who backed the 

expedition. The sailors were just expendable work hands. All of this needs to be 

put in a historical and multicultural perspective. ■

“

”

I GUESS IF I STILL HAD TO COME UP WITH A RATIONALE FOR CLIMBING 

MOUNTAINS, IT WOULD NOT BE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE THRILL OF IT 

VERSUS THE PENALTIES, BUT, RATHER, WHETHER THE VERY ENDEAVOR HAS 

SOMETHING INSPIRATIONAL ABOUT IT THAT LASTS. 

DAVID ROBERTS A WRITER/CLIMBER PERSPECTIVE 

Back to Contents page 

Discussion

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay, what I’d like to do now is to go to open discussion. Keep in mind 

what you heard, and keep in mind the questions that would be relevant to NASA, in terms 

of sending humans to explore. Points that David made—is it pointless to send humans, 

especially now with technology advancing and, people argue, we could send machines. 

And it ties to these questions that David raised. And what I would like to do is have some 

audience participation and discussion. You can ask questions of anyone you want, or you 

can make a short statement. 

QUESTION: Darlene Lim, NASA Ames Research Center, and my question is for Bill Stone. 

I wanted to fi nd out what some of the advantages were that you presented, to say it would 

be more advantageous to send humans into the aquifer and do the mapping that you outline 

versus sending in submersibles? 

BILL STONE: That’s a fantastic setup. There might be one or two others in this audience 

with similar background, but I think I’ve found myself in a unique position in having spent 

about a decade of my life designing spacecraft and another decade designing robots, and 

now robotic spacecraft. During “CFT,” or “copious free time,” we do some work underground. 

The answer to your question goes like this, and I’ll try to put it to you as succinctly as I can. 

There are places where robots are entirely logical to be used fi rst, and I classify those in two 

situations. First, places that are lethal to humans, and second, places which are currently 

too remote to get to send people to with our primitive propulsion technology systems. So 

you send robots in those situations. 

Everything else, in my opinion, is best done with people. Now, at some point, you 

do have to draw the line in the sand to say this is too risky. As I said when I was looking 

over that list of departed friends—no different from Jim Lovell citing off a list of test 

pilots he has known—these are dangerous environments. The reason we are still here 

is because we knew where to draw the line in the sand. Even if we do that, there is still 

unquantifi able risk, so the game is to say, all right, you want to be out there in person. 

Probably everybody in this room wants to be out there in person. Do I want to be here today? 

To be honest, I’d rather be at Shackleton Crater on the Moon right now, for a couple of 
82

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

years with a dozen good, qualifi ed people. I’d be happier there than I am here 

or at work. Being on the frontier is what I live for. That’s where people like 

Ed Viesturs live. If you don’t understand that, you need to go on an expedition 

somewhere remote. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t, but among the people I 

work with, you can tell right off the ones that are concerned about where they are 

. . . you see it in their eyes when they get to someplace like Camp 3 or Camp 4.

In fact, people that I’ve worked with for years on expeditions have a name 

for it. They stole it from Jacques Cousteau: it’s called “rapture of the deep.” You 

can tell because their eyes are getting wider, and they’re sitting there at those 

camps going, “I need to be concerned about getting out of here,” rather than 

focusing on the job at hand, which is pushing the exploration frontier. The people 

you fi nd that have a bigger smile on their face the deeper you go, those are the 

people you want, those are the ones you want out there with you at the frontier. 

Now, to go back to your question directly, why do this in person? Because it is the 

most stimulating thing that you will ever experience in your life. I have had the 

privilege of being where no one has been before many times. It is diffi cult to put 

into words to those who have not experienced it just how moving that feeling is. 

If I had to capture a 20-second image on fi lm that depicted that event and 

what its importance is personally to anybody who does it, it would be [from] 

the fi lm Apollo 13 that Jim Lovell made with Ron Howard, where they show the 

image of fl ying by the Moon and the astronauts thinking, “I could be down there, 

lifting that rock up and looking at it in my hand.” That’s what drives us on. If you 

look at what we do in our normal lives, it pales in comparison.

CHRIS MCKAY: Bill just made a very good case for human exploration. I think 

we want to hear a countercase, so somebody in the audience think of a good case 

for why the space program should just be robotic, why we shouldn’t risk human 

life. If there’s no one in the audience who can state that case, we don’t have a 

well-selected audience. Somebody come up with the counterpoint, the argument 

(so we can pillory them) why robots are suffi cient. With that enticement, we’ll 

go to the question here.

STEVE COOK: Steve Cook, NASA Marshall. I won’t take that question, but I will 

say, fi rst off, I think there’s a gold mine of analogies here that are applicable to 

exploration that we need to capitalize upon as a country, to sell and sustain a 

vision that I don’t think we’re doing as well as we could today. With all of the 

experiences you’ve been having, a lot of these are fi rsts with me and I’ve been 

with NASA for several years. Question now with risk, with respect to Ed Viesturs 

and to Bill Stone. Ed, you talked about making the decision to hold back—you had 

the camera crew, this would have been a perfect time to go; your friends did not. 

I’d like you to talk a little bit about the criteria you used versus what you think or 

know that they used. Why did they go forward versus why did you stay?

ED VIESTURS: When we go to Everest, we spend six or eight weeks preparing 

for that fi nal day. That’s carrying loads, building camps, acclimatizing. And then 

the idea is that sometime in May, historically, we know that there’s going to be 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Charles Conrad, Jr., Apollo 12 Commander, 

examines the unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft during Apollo 12’s second extravehicular activity (EVA-2). The Lunar Module 

Intrepid is at right in the background. 

(NASA Image # AS12-48-7136)
83

DISCUSSION

a window of favorable weather that would allow us to do that fi nal 3,000-foot 

climb. So the whole preparation leads to that. Once you’re ready, then you have to 

take into account everything that you see around you. The weather patterns—now 

we can get good weather forecasting. In those days, it was just kind of starting to 

work, but we would have to base our judgment and what we were thinking about 

doing on what we were seeing, what we were feeling; our gut instinct has a big 

role in how I make my decision—you know, what am I seeing and how has that 

played a role in what I’ve done in the past. And we made a group decision—David 

Breashears, who’d climbed Everest twice, I’d climbed it four times by then—

as a group, we all felt that the weather patterns that we were seeing were not 

historically what we were waiting to go to the summit with. So we made the 

call based on that and, also, just the fact that it didn’t feel right. And I think Bill 

mentioned that, I think the reason a lot of us are alive today is because we know 

when those red fl ags are popping up, that we have to listen to our instincts. If we 

discover later that we made the wrong decision and the weather was good, well, 

big deal. We erred on the side of safety and being conservative. 

Our friends, they had this date in their mind, and that was May 10th. And, 

a lot of times, climbers do that. Come hell or high water, they will just go for 

the summit on that particular date—because it’s auspicious or whatever. And 

I’ve always said, ultimately, the mountain decides when you can go up, and you 

have to listen to what the mountain is telling you. There are signals, and you 

can’t blindly, stubbornly go up, because we all know that Mother Nature is much 

stronger than we are. They did start on a good day—it was perfect. And had they 

turned around in enough time, they would have escaped the storm, which came 

late in the day, which is something that we saw developing every single day the 

past two weeks previously. But, again, they got so close to the top, they pushed 

further and further and further away. That umbilical cord of safety got stretched 

and fi nally broke. And I can’t second-guess the decisions that they made. I 

wasn’t up there. I can evaluate what they did. I can say that I wouldn’t have 

made decisions the way they made them, but, again, as Bill said, there wasn’t one 

decision that was wrong, it was a multitude of little problems, and then the straw 

that broke the camel’s back was the storm, and then people died.

CHRIS MCKAY: Ed, I’d like to ask you a question. Do you have a personal short 

answer to the question of why you climb mountains?

ED VIESTURS: I’m a stubborn person, I like challenging projects and, for me, 

climbing is the most diffi cult physical and mental thing I can think of doing—

especially without oxygen. And I know I have to train, prepare, think about what 

I’m doing, to be successful at it. And there’s a huge struggle to get to those 

altitudes without oxygen. And so many things can go wrong, and when you 

succeed, and when you fi nally are standing on the summit of Everest, it’s an 

amazing feeling. And it’s something I can’t fi nd anywhere else, and, so, I’ve 

become addicted to it.

CHRIS MCKAY: Would you classify what you do as exploration?
84

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

ED VIESTURS: I explore myself. And I think that’s the interesting part. I think, 

also, you can be in the middle of the desert, you can be down in the ocean, if you 

get in trouble, somebody can come and get you. Up there, you’re on your own. If 

you make a mistake, you have to get yourself out of it. And it’s a very rare feeling. 

As normal, sea-level, landlubbing people, we don’t get that feeling of isolation 

where we think about every single step and every single move that we make, 

[that] there can be consequences because of those. And that’s an interesting 

thing that I feel up there.

CHRIS MCKAY: Thanks. We have a question here.

QUESTION: Dennis Wingo, Skycorp, Incorporated. And this is for Neil, Ed, and 

you, Chris. I see a commonality between what you do on the mountain, what 

you do underground, and what you do in the Arctic. And the commonality is a 

staged approach, abort modes—you don’t do everything in one big, fell swoop. 

And it seems that in the space arena that we try to do that, whether it’s a manned 

system or whether it’s un-manned. But especially in the manned, because there’s 

a religious argument (I call it) going on now at NASA: Do we build a heavy lift 

launch vehicle, or do we use the assets that we have to go back to the Moon and 

on to Mars? It seems that with the assets that we have now, and that we [will] 

have in the near term, we could use your staged approach to go to the Moon and 

go to Mars.

ED VIESTURS: Yeah, for us staging is critical, because we have to not only 

put supplies at various camps, but it’s also the process of acclimatization. So, 

you need to take the time to go at various altitudes, and then come down to 

recuperate, and then, slowly, work to a higher altitude. It’s kind of a necessity 

in both aspects, acclimatizing and, also, then, getting your gear in place. Once 

acclimatized, though, I’ve developed a system now where we’ll go very quickly 

and—like you said, in that big launch vehicle we’ll carry everything that we 

need, and, in three days we’ll do what normally takes two months. We’ll climb, 

moving everything with us, and then go to the summit. That’s riskier, but it’s 

also faster, because you’re spending less time in a dangerous environment. So, 

I think the trade-off is worth it. I’d rather climb faster, without the series of 

camps behind me, but I need to do that initially to acclimatize.

CHRIS MCKAY: Bill, you want to give us the downward view of the same thing?

BILL STONE: It’s no more risky than being a test pilot, in my opinion.

CHRIS MCKAY: And your point?

BILL STONE: No, I mean, you can control the risks. There’s one thing that you 

can’t control, but you can prepare for, and that’s the weather. And we’re going to 

have that kind of phenomenology wherever we go, whether it’s a big storm that 

comes in on Everest or whether it’s a hurricane that dumps ten inches of rain 

over the plateau and you get a 10-meter-high rise in the water wherever you’re 
85

DISCUSSION

at. I have friends who have bolted their way 30 meters up a canyon wall in New 

Guinea as the water rose behind them. They hung from rock bolts for 32 hours 

waiting for it to go down. They were prepared, you know. Yes, they were in a 

dangerous place, but they had their act together. 

Let me extend this to space, because I have actually put a lot of thought 

into this. I’ve designed space systems. I’ve designed reaction control thrusters. 

Things like that. One of the things that apparently has been misunderstood here 

is that we did have complete control over the situations where we were—even 

the weather. All of our camps were selected to be above the water. The way 

the ropes were rigged—all of that stuff was of very high reliability. Further, we 

trained everyone on the team to know when to replace things, if they discovered 

that a line was fraying, for example. And there were depots of spare rigging tackle 

situated at various locations along the way for just such emergencies. We even 

had ways to get out if a rope broke—equipment for scaling overhung domes. We 

had all these things covered. 

Now, if you switch to trying to think about what are you going to do if 

you’re trying to get to the Moon—which is the next logical target for us to get 

back to here, and prove that we can live off this planet—the fi rst thing you’ve got 

to say is, all right, how are you going to get to low earth orbit (LEO)? And there 

are only so many ways that we can do that right now. 

You’ve now seen what I do. If you were to say to me, “Would you fl y the 

Shuttle?” or something like that, then I’d have to say, “I have to think very carefully 

about that,” because it does not meet my criteria for having an abort mode at any 

point in the trajectory. You didn’t pay me to come out here to give you sweet talk, 

so I’m going to talk to you straight. The last time we had a launch vehicle that met 

those criteria is when these [Apollo] gentlemen were fl ying. Why on Earth have 

we not done that now? That’s just my personal impression. If I was going to try to 

put something up there, we’d probably be using ELVs with abort modes to get us 

out to LEO. Beyond that, you’re into the issue of how survivable are your vehicles? 

You need to be thinking in terms of propulsion, life support, and everything else. 

You guys are great at this. NASA is a technological gem on this planet. But, 

unfortunately, you don’t have any true “expedicionarios” here, as we say down 

in Mexico—true expeditionary people who think, “Two years from now we’re 

going to run an expedition to the Moon.” And then go do it. The way NASA 

thinks these days is, “We can develop these technologies and, maybe, 15 to 20 

years from now we’ll be back on the Moon.” That’s too late. That’s too late. You’ve 

got to get there now and learn from the frontier, just the way we’ve been doing 

underground here on Earth. Those places you’ve seen today were unexplored 12 

years ago—completely unknown. We built the technology to go there. Given the 

enormous resources at NASA, there is no reason that we can’t be back on the 

Moon within fi ve to seven years, max. 

QUESTIONER: If the Moon is where you want to go.

BILL STONE: There you go!
86

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

DALE ANDERSEN: I want to go back to your question about staging, which was 

doing things in steps. I think a lot of the issue there is knowing what the stages 

ought to be. I remember once getting a lot of fl ack—we were going to the Antarctic 

to do diving under the ice. I put in travel orders to go to Key West—that was our 

staging spot. We were going to do training for ice diving in Key West. 

Now, maybe you could argue that was a good place to go to stage the 

Antarctic, or maybe you could argue that it wasn’t necessary. So, when we plan 

anything, any expedition, I like to think: What is our goal? What are we really 

trying to do? What’s the driver at the long end? And, then, what do we have to 

do to get there? If you look at the way Apollo worked, as I understand it, it was 

very much that way—as we heard this morning. You want to go to the Moon, 

so you need to develop docking, you need to demonstrate that you can stay in 

a spacecraft, and so on. Take something like Gemini—it was a requirementsdriven program: If you want to go to the Moon, you’re going to have to do 

this fi rst. It wasn’t: Let’s do Gemini and see where it leads, or some nebulous 

concept that, somehow, if we develop these things, a mission to the Moon will 

miraculously appear from the pieces. 

And, I think, as we think ahead to an exploration program, we have to do 

the same thing: Where do we really want to go, and, then, what are the pieces that 

lead us there? And I think that’s also what Bill was saying. So your question is a 

very good one, and I think exploration on Earth, and people that plan expeditions 

on Earth—the logic that they approach can be applied, but the answer is not so 

easy to come by.

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay. Maybe someone can address my challenge to pick up the 

case for robots, but probably not you!

QUESTION: Well, maybe I will! I’m from Goddard Space Flight Center, a scientisttype as opposed to a program manager, which seems to have been commented 

upon today. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Derisively, I might add!

QUESTION: It seems to me that over the years NASA has been very ambivalent 

about people in space and science. Back in the ’60s, getting people up there seemed 

to be something done for its own sake. Putting somebody on the Moon was done 

for its own sake. Then, in the ’70s and up to maybe the ’90s, we started getting 

into a mode where we were trying to be sold on the fact that people had to be there 

to do the science better. And it never appeared to me that that was the case—that 

it was a selling job to justify getting people in space, for the most part. 

And I guess my question now is: do you think that the public, Congress, 

and the media are ready to do real people in space as opposed to trying to do the 

science with robotics? My personal feeling is much of the science could be done 

better with robotics, but we’re not going in that direction right now. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay. That’s a good start to the case for robots. And I think we 

need to put that case out there as part of the complete discussion, because one 
87

DISCUSSION

answer to the risks is, don’t send people. You avoid the risks. If we go back to 

Dale’s categorization of risks—mission risk, personal risk, and team risk—what 

you eliminate is the personal risk and team risk by not sending people. Certainly, 

when Steve Squyres did the MER mission, there was risk. But no one’s life was 

at stake on Mars—it was just a programmatic risk, a science risk. The worst case 

that could happen was that Steve would have wasted seven years of his life and 

no publications would have come out of it. Steve might have felt that that was a 

disaster, but no one would have gotten killed over it. 

So, I think the case where we think about risk—we can’t just assume that 

means that humans are in the loop by defi nition and, therefore, we fi gure out 

how to deal with the risk with humans. We have to step back once and say: are 

humans even an essential part of the program, of the loop, or do we try to do 

science by robotics?

So, now we’ve made the case for robots. Let’s let the panel and the audience 

react to that case. David is going to add to that. We’ve got a momentum going here!

DAVID ROBERTS: No, I actually would strongly believe that robots are the answer. 

And I think it’s probably my father’s infl uence, because he told me years ago, as an 

astronomer, that there’s no way we’re ever going to get very far in human terms 

in space, so the future is going to be robotic. And I found the Mars rover landings 

more gripping than the original Moon landings, human-equipped Moon landings. 

And I would say that the Hubble Telescope was far more important and exciting 

to me than any manned travel in space. 

And I think that, for the fi rst time in history, maybe we can actually make the 

emotional and psychological investment in machine discovery—as we’re also doing 

in the deep sea—in lieu of the conquistador going out there and doing it himself. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay. Penny, I’m hoping you’ll take the contrary view!

PENNY BOSTON: You know I am!

CHRIS MCKAY: What a surprise! 

PENNY BOSTON: I think that there is no dichotomy between robotic and 

human exploration. I think much ado is made out of that. They’re obviously contextdependent. There are strong reasons why we’re interested in human exploration 

beyond simply the scientifi c function. And I disagree that now, or any time in the 

near future, or even the mid-term future, we can design a robotic instrument that can 

have the capabilities of the tremendous fl exibility that a fi eld scientist can have.

However, that being said, I am a great fan of robotics missions. I love robots—

I wish I had whole fl eets of them myself. I’m trying to get MIT [Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology] and JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] to build whole fl eets 

of them—because they’re a tool. They’re not a viable life form at this point. At 

this point, it’s not as if we’re going to send robots or people. They are obviously 

complementary to the whole scientifi c process. But science is, fundamentally, a 

human enterprise, and the value of science is, fundamentally, to us as humans. 
88

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

And, so, therefore, cutting us entirely out of the loop, I think, is inexcusable.

And, so, wherever in the solar system we can send people, where it makes 

sense and where people can signifi cantly contribute—and one of the things 

that they have to contribute is that perception of the human experience of 

exploration—then I think that we should endeavor to do that, and save the 

robots to be our helpers and to go places where we can’t go, to go fi rst. And 

even on Earth, where we’re exploring certain caves where we have tiny channels 

that we can’t get into, even microrobotic devices there would greatly enrich our 

scientifi c exploration.

CHRIS MCKAY: Well said. Dale, and then Nathalie, can respond to the same 

question, and then we’ll take a question here from the woman in black, and then 

Jim Garvin. Dale?

DALE ANDERSEN: Briefl y, I was just going to actually completely agree. I think 

it’s a mix; it’s not an either/or case. When robotics are required they should do 

the job, and when people have the capability to go to those places, people should 

be in the loop.

I’ve used both robotics and going there myself, and I have to admit, I’ve 

been underwater with robotics, for example, while people at Ames have been 

diving with me virtually via that robotic device. That’s a great way to share your 

experience in a remote location with a greater population. But it’s not an either/

or thing; it’s just the right tool for the right place at the right time.

CHRIS MCKAY: Nathalie, could you add a little to that? And then we’ll go back 

to general questions.

NATHALIE CABROL: I’m supporting both Dale’s and Penny’s views, because I’ve 

been putting together in the fi eld an astronaut and a robot. And neither are always 

best, but they complement each other. And for exploring a planet, the human 

being will bring in his immediate background and an understanding of what’s 

around him, which a robot cannot do now and will not be able to do in a long time. 

But, by the same token, the robot does not care too much about the environment. 

Is it cold, is it hot, is there lots of UV radiation? If there is an opportunity, they 

just don’t care, they can last a long time at the surface. Together, they are almost 

an invincible team, but I would go a little step farther than that. I would say 

that, no matter what we think about it, exploration is within our genes. This is 

where part of evolution is right there in us. We wouldn’t be here if we wouldn’t 

have been taking risks and going from one place to another and exploring diverse 

habitats. And another planet is just the next frontier for us; there will be farther 

frontiers than that. 

QUESTION: I’m Becky Ramsey, I’m from NASA Headquarters, and I have to say 

that regarding human versus robot, I have to come down on the human side, 

because I want to go. Yeah, and that actually leads into an issue I want to raise. I 

want to touch on something that we talked about earlier this morning, and that’s 

individual versus government exploration. To bring up the example from this 
89

DISCUSSION

morning, Burt Rutan is ready to launch in just a couple of days here. What he’s 

done is private fi nancing, small group, hand-picked people. And that seems to be 

very similar to what you all do, whether it’s individual or privately fi nanced or 

government fi nanced, even if it’s a direct NASA project. What you do seems to 

be very small—one person, fi ve people, even a hundred and fi fty people—when 

you compare that to my colleague and I who work in the same building and have 

not met before today. That’s very different. You know everybody on your team, 

and you’re getting a lot further out there than we are. Is there something to be 

said for that—can we do this? Can government do this, can an agency like NASA 

do, in space, what you have managed to do here on Earth? Or do we need to fi nd a 

different way and look at smaller, more team-focused models to do this? 

CHRIS MCKAY: That’s a really good question, and when we look beyond Earth 

orbit to distant destinations like Mars, the question becomes more pressing, 

because those teams have to be, by light-travel time requirements, more and 

more autonomous, and less dependent on remote control from Mission Control. 

Anybody want to address that, comment on that? Penny and Bill, think of an 

answer, too. 

PENNY BOSTON: Okay, I’m thinking real hard, that’s a really serious question 

people are wrestling with. The kinds of expeditionary things that we do are very 

small compared to a full-on mission to another planet. Therefore, the sheer 

number of people involved is so large in order to pull off a mission like that. In 

some ways, I’m not entirely sure that a lot of our experience in these smaller units 

is directly applicable. Because, by force, you have to involve so many more people, 

and the level of planning complexity far exceeds anything that any of us do. 

So, the question is, can you do that in a governmental environment? Well, 

I think NASA is doing it in a governmental environment. And I don’t see why, 

fundamentally, that transition from the kinds of missions that we’re doing now 

can’t be applied to also incorporate serious, meaningful, human exploration, plus 

an ongoing program. I don’t see that it’s not possible, with the caveat that, for 

certain applications, perhaps small companies are better, for certain limited things. 

Burt Rutan is also not doing NASA. He is not doing NASA in a can, basically. He 

is doing a very different scale of things than NASA has to worry about.

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay, I’m going to skip Bill’s answer, because I think Penny hit the 

nail on the head, so we’re going on to the next question, which is Jim Garvin.

QUESTION: Well, thanks Chris. I’m Jim Garvin, NASA Headquarters, MoonMars. I wanted to comment, and then address, an issue to the panel and everyone 

about the robot/human dichotomy, because I don’t think it is one, and I think 

we have to pay attention to the great observations you all made. Because, in our 

history of space exploration, it was the robots that did the reconnaissance, the 

advance planning, and let the humans, like the great courageous heroes today, 

do the work. And I would submit to you that it was the humans back on Earth, 

and Apollo 17 and the others, continuing the work of the robotic spacecraft. So 
90

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

it’s that partnership that’s important. And in many of the cases you’ve talked 

about, robotic reconnaissance wasn’t needed to open the frontier. The humans 

could do that on the fl y. 

I would dare say I wouldn’t want any of you brave people to go to the 

surface of Venus for the fi rst time. It’s probably better for our robot friends to 

do that. And today, as we think about Mars, I would submit that we’re learning 

through the rovers that Steve [Squyres] will talk about. And what we’re planning 

in the future is the reconnaissance necessary to go to those sweet spots on 

Mars. So then the humans become important onsite to do that kind of work. 

And I always marvel, if we think about this dichotomy, humans and robotics 

work together when we look at the samples brought back from the Moon from 

the Apollo mission. These multikilograms, each one itself a mini-universe for 

robotics and people to work together with here, to understand that world on the 

Moon. Imagine that anywhere we go, whether it be on Earth or beyond. 

So, I look at it as the reconnaissance that’s important, and today, a lot of 

that reconnaissance is better done on Mars, on the Moon, on Venus, way out 

where the origins of the universe are, by the machine. The question is, here 

on Earth, how can we amplify your experiences in these unique environments 

to better train us to use that reconnaissance to make the tactical decision to 

put humans on site, because we need to because it’s in our gene pool, or it’s 

necessary; it makes us better samplers. That’s the question that I think this risk 

conference is treating, and I think, at times, that unfortunately comes down to 

the ugly words “programmatic cost.” Where is the timing of that benefi t?

CHRIS MCKAY: Okay, good comment. Let’s go to Keith for another comment or 

a question.

QUESTION: Keith Cowing, NASA Watch.com: Okay, you were trying to pick a 

food fi ght a few minutes ago, and I love a food fi ght.

An artist’s rendering of crewmembers setting up equipment during a Mars polar exploration. 

(NASA Image # JSC-2004-E-18861)
91

DISCUSSION

CHRIS MCKAY: I’m trying to claim my role as moderator to stir the conversation.

KEITH COWING: Well, in that case, I’ll take that on.

CHRIS MCKAY: You can always fi re the moderator, you know.

KEITH COWING: Whether it’s robots or humans, in essence, it comes down to us 

going out there, whether we do it fi rst or second or in tandem, and I guess one 

observation to make, to throw a little raw meat into this argument, is it’s all about 

what we as a culture are looking to do. When is the last time somebody threw a 

ticker tape parade for a robot for doing something in space? When’s the last time 

we all cried at a national funeral when a robot didn’t work? Just an observation. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Let’s go to Donna Roberts, since I skipped her in the sequence. 

Sorry, Donna, you had your hand up a while ago, and then we’ll come back to 

you, Steve.

QUESTION: I’m Donna Roberts, of the University of California San Francisco 

Medical Center, and my question is, with humans and extreme environments, 

where safety is utmost, and pushing physical capabilities, what is necessary for 

medicine? Should it be a fi rst aid kit, should it be medicine, should doctors be 

there, what kind of diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities should we have?

CHRIS MCKAY: Can we get some quick answer? Penny, Bill, we’ll let you answer 

this one. 

BILL STONE: You just got me fi red up. If you asked me to go plan an expedition 

to Shackleton Crater or something, who would you take? And I’ve thought about 

this, the answer is, number one, you bet, you’re going to have a physician. He/she 

also would probably be cotrained in dentistry. You may have to have a back-up to 

that person, as well, who is perhaps cotrained in something else. We try to have a 

physician on every project that I have ever run. It’s just too good a capability to have 

at base camp, whether they’re out in front or not. It’s one of those contingency 

things you have to think about when you’re talking about long-duration projects. 

OK, if you’re at a place where you’re only an hour and a half away in orbit before 

you can drop back in—like you are right now at the space station—it’s not such a 

critical thing, provided you have on-demand reentry. You’re not going to have that 

on the Moon. So, yeah, you will have to have physicians out there, no question 

about it. The question is, what other skills should they have? And if I had to pick 

two, I would say emergency room experience and dentistry. The other surgical 

disciplines can be actually done through telesupport from the ground, as long 

as the individual on the expedition has basic surgery skills, as most ER types 

have. You can go on from there with all the other skills as well. My estimates for 

a sustainable lunar base exploratory mission run from 12 to 18 individuals, not 

unlike the minimum critical mass we currently use on deep caving expeditions.

CHRIS MCKAY: Isn’t that something—you go to Mars so you can visit the 

dentist. That’s why we need to send humans. Robots don’t need dentists. We 
92

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

have a question here, and then we’ll get to Steve. If you can pass the mike to Steve 

Squyres. A question here?

QUESTION: This is for Doctor Stone. Scott McGuinness, submariner, a student 

here [at the Naval Postgraduate School]. Doctor Stone, as a diver, I was looking 

at your videos, and you go deep into these caves, and you dive. U.S. Navy tables 

and the Haldanean model don’t take that into consideration. So, my question 

is, how did you mitigate the risk of decompression illness (DCI), and how can 

that compare to the risk of radiation and all that for astronauts going to Mars? 

It seems like one of NASA’s larger problems is how do we mitigate the radiation 

hazards of deep space. 

BILL STONE: Decompression is not a big issue for lunar and Mars missions, at 

least from my standpoint. Mike Gernhardt and I could probably debate this for 

another 8 to 10 hours. The answer to your question is, those life support devices 

that you saw there had triple parallel redundant decompression engines running 

in real time—that is, the algorithms were running in parallel on three separate 

processors at the same time, such that you were guaranteed a valid tissue tension 

even if two of the three processors shut down during a mission. The algorithms 

were written in accordance with what we had known to be conservative, and we 

drew a line that was about 15 percent more conservative above that. It took into 

account real-time oxygen concentration and then fed that through a head-up 

display. What that meant in terms of an operational situation is that when a 

yellow light would come on while you were in the middle of a dive, it would mean 

that you had to be considering what your decompression scenario was going to 

be like when you started to come back up. When we got to those stages, we would 

automatically boost the oxygen concentration, such that we were far in excess 

of what would be required for a conservative decompression, yet below central 

nervous system (CNS) toxicity limits. We have never had a bends hit on any of 

those deep caving projects, even though we’re diving at altitude. All of those 

PLSS units have triplex digital depth sensors that are also sensing atmospheric 

pressure at the altitude at which we were diving. That was all really taken care of 

pretty conservatively. 

As far as I understand it, and I don’t profess to be an expert at this, the 

issue of space radiation is really one of shielding and stochastic analysis of what 

the radiation environments are. You don’t want to be out there on the 11-year 

cycle at solar max. If I remember correctly, there were some analyses of deep space 

radiation loading that were done in the ’70s that indicate—and I can’t remember a 

specifi c citation, maybe Jim knows—that between two of the Apollo fl ights there 

was a solar anomaly of suffi cient magnitude that if you had been fl ying to the 

Moon during that time, there may have been some serious exposure issues. To 

me, dealing with deep space radiation exposure is actually something you can 

mitigate through a series of water barriers and things like that. I believe it’s 10 

centimeters of water that is suffi cient to stop most of that. If you check through 

the right areas and within NASA, and probably JSC [Johnson Space Center] has 
93

DISCUSSION

people in this, you’ll fi nd the answers to those questions. They’ve been looked at 

thoroughly. I don’t consider that anything more than an engineering problem. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Steve Squyres. Introduce yourself. 

QUESTION: Steve Squyres, Cornell University. I want to return briefl y to an 

issue that was raised earlier about how small organizations seem to be able to 

sometimes accomplish more. If you look at what somebody like Ed Viesturs does 

or what Bill Stone does, or if you look at a group like Burt Rutan and what they 

are accomplishing there, it’s easy to look at an organization like that and say, “Boy, 

they’re lean, they’re compact, they’re able to get the job done.” You then look at 

larger government agencies and you sense a diffi culty there. But I think there is 

a wonderful counterexample. The wonderful counterexample was what Jim Lovell 

talked about this morning. It was Apollo. 

You look at Apollo, and you look at Gemini, and you look at Mercury, 

you look at what was accomplished in those days, and it [NASA] was a huge 

organization. It was in some ways bigger than the NASA of today. Yet, they got 

things done. 

When I look at that, what strikes me is that there was a common thread 

through those organizations, and that is that they knew exactly what it was 

they were trying to do. The level-one requirement for Apollo was stated in one 

sentence by the President. When Ed goes up a mountain, he knows what his 

level-one requirements are. It is very, very clearly stated. If you have a common 

goal that is clearly understood by everybody in your organization, I don’t think it 

matters how big the organization is. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Good point, Steve. We have fi ve minutes left. We have time for 

two questions.

EUGENE RODDENBERRY: Hi. My name is Eugene Roddenberry. My father 

actually created Star Trek and, working in the industry, I have met a lot of 

people who have been inspired by the show. It’s completely different to work 

in entertainment, but the people who have been inspired have inspired me to 

look around the world and meet individuals like yourselves. I think you guys 

have shown that humanity is able to overcome adversities. And the fact that that 

inspires other scientists and other people in the fi eld to reach for the stars or 

down to the depths of the ocean—I think it goes beyond that. You guys inspire 

fans who have disabilities to overcome those disabilities, people who are in 

relationships, people who have everyday risks that they need to take. I think 

the fact that they see that humanity can take these huge leaps—these steps 

beyond—is important. It is very impressive. I just wanted to say thank you to 

everyone. It’s very exciting. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Thanks for your comments. The next time you send a message 

to your Dad, thank him for me. I was one of those Trekkies that got inspired 

to seek out new worlds and all that stuff from watching the show. It’s the only 

television I watched. Larry?
94

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

LARRY LEMKE: Larry Lemke, NASA Ames. I would like to actually follow up 

on Steve’s comment, and some others on this whole question of how do you 

take the lesson from small-scale exploration and put it into a bigger context. 

I agree with Steve. I actually don’t think that size of the organization per se is 

the issue. If you look at the participants on the panel, one of the sort of obvious 

characteristics that they share is that, not only do they plan the expeditions, 

they do the expeditions. I am reminded of that comment that there’s nothing 

like the prospect of being hanged in the morning to concentrate your efforts. If 

you look at the way NASA typically plans a large human exploration project, it is 

sort of notable that the people who are making the decisions very often do not 

really have to experience the personal consequences of those decisions. I think if 

that were to change, then the results might change as well. 

CHRIS MCKAY: So, you’re saying we should send a NASA administrator to Mars? 

Is that a way of interpreting what you said? 

LARRY LEMKE: Or have the NASA administrator to actually design the vehicle. 

Get the opportunity to fl y in what you design. 

CHRIS MCKAY: We actually have a few more minutes. 

QUESTION: Bruce McCandless, two Shuttle fl ights [astronaut]. We get back to 

the human versus robot trade-off. Currently, when you are looking at a Mars 

mission, you’re looking at speed of light transit times, round trip up to 40 minutes. 

So, obviously, it’s gonna be hours when you get out to the vicinity of Jupiter 

and Saturn. The thing that seems to be missing is the refi ned decision-making 

ability, the ability to adapt to unforeseen situations, to recognize something that 

you haven’t been programmed to recognize. I assume that, eventually, computer 

science will advance to the point where we can send androids. I wonder if anyone 

would like to comment on the speed of light transit time as a factor in trading 

off between humans and robots. 

CHRIS MCKAY: That’s a good point. Maybe I ought to add to that question, how 

will that infl uence the autonomy of an expedition on Mars versus the autonomy 

of, say, a Shuttle or a station where there is virtually no delay—see them as being 

more autonomous or not. Does anybody want to approach that? Penny? Dale? 

PENNY BOSTON: Yes. I think that it’s a return to some of this historical 

stuff that Jack Stuster was talking about this morning: the fact that those 

expeditions, before there was the kind of instantaneous communication that 

we all have, were able to operate and do what they needed to do. We seem to 

somehow believe now that we cannot do that any more. I think that a different 

kind of planning within NASA perhaps will be necessary to take us back to 

some elements of that kind of self-contained expedition. ■

Back to Contents page Open next section
S E S S I O N T W O

sea
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
John Chatterton spent more than twenty years working as a commercial diver and as a boat captain. 

His passion, however, has been researching and diving shipwrecks. In 1991, his discovery, and then 

subsequent identifi cation of the German submarine U-869, in 230 feet of salt water (fsw) off the coast of 

New Jersey has been the subject of several television documentaries and now a bestselling book by Robert 

Kurson, Shadow Divers. His diving credits include more than 150 dives to the passenger liner Andrea 

Doria (250 fsw), the fi rst trimix-breathing expedition to the RMS Lusitania in Ireland (300 fsw), and the fi rst 

rebreather dive to the HMHS Britannic in Greece (400 fsw). John has worked on numerous projects for 

television and is currently hosting the television series, Deep Sea Detectives, on the History Channel.

John Chatterton

Professional Diver

I have a fantastic job working for the History Channel. I travel around 

the world, I get to talk to some very interesting people, I get to talk about history, and I get 

to dive shipwrecks. This winter, I think I am going to be in France, Scotland, Croatia, the 

Dominican Republic, and the South Pacifi c. And when I’m not addressing an audience full 

of astronauts, I say I have the best job in the world. 

Prior to my working for television, I spent more than 20 years working as a commercial 

diver, largely in and around New York City, where I worked on everything from nuclear 

reactors to bridges to pipelines—wherever the work was. That was my day job. Before I even 

got involved in commercial diving, I was diving shipwrecks for recreation. I was attracted by 

the history, and I was attracted by the challenge that wreck diving afforded me. 

There is a big difference between commercial diving and scuba diving. In commercial 

diving, the diver is a cog in the machine. He is part of a bigger team. When it comes to 

scuba diving, you are everything. You are your own dive planner and your own dive support. 

You are your own dive rescue. There is a certain freedom, and, of course, that’s linked with 

responsibility. Eventually, as I acquired more and more experience, I started diving deeper and 

Diving Shipwrecks
98

more challenging wrecks. I found myself going deep inside wrecks like the Andrea 

Doria. The goal of these dives was just to go where other men had not yet been. 

In 1991, Captain Bill Nagle got a set of coordinates from a fi sherman 60 

miles off the New Jersey coast in what we were told was about 200 feet of water. 

We put together a trip to the site, we went out there, and what we found was a 

wreck in 230 feet of water. It was a submarine, later identifi ed as the German 

U-boat U-869. It was a submarine that no one was aware of, where it was, or 

that it existed. No government, no navy, no historian, no expert could tell us 

which submarine this was. What an irresistible mystery. It afforded the divers 

who discovered it the opportunity to rewrite a page of history. We thought at the 

time that it was going to be a matter of a day or two—on the next dive we would 

be identifying this submarine. Of course, that didn’t happen. It took six years to 

positively identify it. 

In retrospect, looking at our plan, we broke it down into three divisions: 

economics, operations, and psychology. Economically, we had no fi nancial 

assistance. We had no support. We had no budget. Essentially, I was going to 

have to do it on my lunch money. That meant that we were going to dive the 

wreck to try and identify it the way we had been diving it—as scuba divers. It’s a 

minimalist approach, and it is extremely risky. It’s dangerous. Operationally, what 

was our plan? Well, there were certain legalities that needed to be addressed, 

dealing with the German government. We then had to do research. Of course, 

research is what fueled our dive plan. What was there on the wreck site that we 

could recover that would positively identify the wreck? 

The teamwork that we used was indirect. In other words, we would work 

with one another on research, we would work with one another on planning and 

coordinating, and that kind of thing. However, you can see that in an environment 

like this one, to put two or three divers in there is counterproductive to making 

the dive safer. Because of the silt, because of the very tight spaces in there, and 

because of the entanglements, you couldn’t get in there with more than one 

person at a time. Specifi cally, the risks that we were facing relative to the diving 

were decompression sickness, the possibility of oxygen toxicity, and equipment 

malfunctions or failures. When we started diving the wreck, we were diving it on 

air, and we quickly converted to tri-mix with nitrox and oxygen decompression. 

We had to use redundant systems for primary systems. We also had to be very 

conscious of health problems. If you faint out in front of this building, they are 

going to call an ambulance, and they are going to come and get you and take you 

over to the hospital. If you have a medical problem deep on a wreck, you’re going 

to have a diffi cult time surviving. 

On the wreck itself, it’s dark. There are entanglements everywhere. You can 

see there are hanging wires and that sort of thing. There are fi shing nets. There 

is also the possibility of entrapment, of a loose piece of wreckage collapsing onto 

the diver. That happened to at least two divers, me being one of them. I’m the only 

one that survived. You can get lost, either inside the wreck or outside the wreck. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Inside the Aquarius research habitat, 

a curious astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, 

smiles as he is greeted by an equally 

curious school of marine fi sh peering 

through the habitat viewing port in waters 

off the Florida Keys. 

(NASA Image # JSC-2003-E-45587)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
99

And, then, there’s the possibility of panic. The thing that panic does in a 

very stressful situation is, all of a sudden, your decisions and your actions are not 

logical. They are not in your own best interest. My goal in this dive was to fi nd 

a small pad on those hatches at 12 o’clock, which we knew existed. The problem 

was [that] it was made from white metal that completely [had] corroded away. 

Psychologically, this is an extremely intimidating environment. Aside from 

the fact that 58 German sailors lost their lives inside this submarine, a total of 

three divers lost their lives diving the wreck while I was working there. 

So, you have changing conditions. You are diving by yourself. You also have 

to consider how obsessed you are, how driven you are. Is this affecting your good 

judgment? We talked about this yesterday on the panel: when do you abort the 

mission? You have to be able to do that while you still can. 

Six years later, I brought out a tag that positively identifi ed the wreck as U869. The CBS program NOVA did a two-hour documentary on it. The people that 

I worked with on that documentary later introduced me to the History Channel 

where I now work. Robert Kurson saw the documentary and wrote the book 

Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to 

Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II. Now Twentieth Century Fox has 

bought the rights to the book, and Bill Boyles, the man who wrote the screenplay 

for Apollo 13, is working on the screenplay as we speak. 

Why go through all this? My ex-wife used to ask me that all the time. And 

I didn’t have a snappy answer like George Mallory. It has to do with challenge. It 

has to do with perseverance. It has to do with who we are, not just as individuals, 

but, really, as a culture. Exploration is very much who we are, and we really have 

two choices. We either continue on a path of exploration, or we just quit. Not 

everybody is comfortable with quitting. Certainly explorers aren’t. As an added 

benefi t, I am going to close with this letter. I get letters like this occasionally. This 

one came last Friday. 

“My name is Anka Hartung. My grandfather was Mr. Eric Poltey. He was 

the machinist [obergefreiter] on the submarine U-boat 869. As fate might have 

it, my family and I saw by chance your fi lm about the submarine U-869. We are 

totally moved that we now fi nally know where our grandfather lies. You and your 

“

”

WHY GO THROUGH ALL THIS? MY EX-WIFE USED TO ASK ME THAT ALL THE 

TIME. AND I DIDN’T HAVE A SNAPPY ANSWER LIKE GEORGE MALLORY. IT HAS 

TO DO WITH CHALLENGE. IT HAS TO DO WITH PERSEVERANCE. IT HAS TO DO 

WITH WHO WE ARE, NOT JUST AS INDIVIDUALS, BUT, REALLY, AS A CULTURE. 

JOHN CHATTERTON DIVING SHIPWRECKS
100

team have done an awful lot for the families of the lost men. Three people died 

and you yourself have often risked your life in order to bring certainty and peace 

into our lives. My grandmother is unfortunately no longer alive to share these 

feelings with us. You and your team have done so very much for Eric Poltey’s 

relatives, and we sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts.” ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Thanks to all you explorers out there for coming to talk 

about the wet part of the universe. This conference, of course, is dedicated to the concept 

of risk. And maybe there’s an underlying message about why expose real live human beings 

to certain obvious dangers when you could—and maybe should—send a machine? Well, 

I love machines. I mean, I have had a hand in building quite a lot of them, developing and 

using hundreds of variations on the theme of little machines that operate remotely, as well 

as those that take a few real, live people inside. And when a job is right, I do believe that it’s 

obvious—you know, pick up a robot, send it, and enjoy it, such as when you’re exploring 

deep under the ice in the Antarctic or in the high Arctic. Send a robot fi rst to check out 

what’s down there, before you go look for yourself up close and personal. I whole-heartedly 

endorse the concept of using whatever tool does the job, but I think I share with maybe 

everybody in this room the belief that there’s nothing like being there, right? If you can 

actually get there, why not? 

But what about the risk? I’m asked about that quite a lot. You know, why do you do the 

things that you do? Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you concerned? I mean, you have a family; don’t 

Deep Ocean Exploration

Sylvia Earle is an oceanographer, marine botanist, ecologist, and writer. A pioneering aquanaut and 

marine explorer, Earle made her fi rst scuba dive at age 17. She has since set the women’s depth record 

for solo diving (1,000 meters/3,281 feet) and logged more than 6,000 diving hours—feats that garnered 

her the moniker “Her Deepness.” The author of fi ve books and numerous scientifi c and popular articles, 

Earle tirelessly calls for the preservation and exploration of the world’s marine ecosystems.

Sylvia Earle

Founder and Chair, Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, Inc.
102

 they object to the idea of you going down underwater? It’s dangerous! My answer 

is usually the same. The most dangerous thing I do almost every day of my life is to 

get into an automobile, get on the highway, and move along at reasonably moderate 

speed, and I face traffi c coming the other direction, and the only thing that keeps 

me from banging into that traffi c is a painted line down the middle of the road and 

a mutual desire—I hope it’s mutual—to live. That’s really dangerous. 

I think about explorers of the past and what they would think of this 

conference. I mean, we are so obsessed with safety these days, so obsessed with 

risk. Can you imagine what OSHA would say about Christopher Columbus, 

or about the Challenger [oceanographic] expedition in 1872 as they made their 

preparations to go for four years around the world, going places where nobody 

had been, exploring deep parts of the ocean? Imagine what they would say about 

William Beebe with his little bathysphere and Otis Barton, the engineer [who 

created the bathysphere]. And if you’ve seen any of the fi lms—and I have—of 

their operations, anybody associated with OSHA would have heart attacks just 

watching. No hardhats! No hard shoes, running around barefoot on the deck with 

this heavy equipment being slung around. Who would have insured Beebe or 

his machine back in the 1930s? There’s something that’s happening to us as a 

species as we become risk-averse. 

But I share with Anne Morrow Lindbergh some thoughts about risk. She 

and her husband Charles paved the way for the fi rst fl ights across the North Pole, 

looking for ways to establish new commercial air fl ight routes back in the 1930s. 

And when asked by a reporter as they set off for their fi rst fl ight across the North 

Pole—north to the Orient—the reporter asked her, “Can’t you even say that you 

think it’s an especially dangerous trip?” And she said, “I’m sorry, I really don’t 

have anything to say. After all, we want to go. What more is there to say?” And 

that’s it. You know, as explorers, like little kids, we want to know what’s around 

the next corner, what’s under the next rock, what’s over the next horizon, what’s 

in the deep, what’s beyond the next star—or starfi sh. 

Danger is the silent partner of exploration, no doubt about it. But just try 

to avoid risk in everything you do. I have a home in Florida—that’s risky! I have a 

home here in California—think of the earthquakes—that’s pretty risky. I live in this 

day and age. I walk in the streets of Washington, DC at night! That’s really risky. 

When it comes to the ocean, I want to go. I want to have access, not just 

to the highest reaches of this planet. In fact, since the fi rst ascent to the top of 

Mount Everest half a century ago, more than 2,000 people have been to the top of 

Mount Everest—literally the top of the world. It will soon be half a century since 

the fi rst successful trip to the deepest part of the ocean. That was the Everest of 

the ocean, 11 kilometers down—7 miles—the bottom of the Marianas Trench, 

not too far from the coast of the Philippines. That was nine years before the fi rst 

footprints were on the Moon—1960 when that took place—13 years after Thor 

Heyerdahl’s expedition across the Pacifi c with a balsa wood raft. Again, OSHA 

would not have approved. At a depth of seven miles, two men looked out of the 

port of the little machine, the bathyscaphe Trieste, at a depth of seven miles and 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Dr. Sylvia Earle prepares to dive in a JIM 

suit. (Image ID: nur07563, OAR/National 

Undersea Research Program (NURP))

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
103

a pressure of 16,000 pounds per square inch, in that eternal darkness of the deep 

sea, except for bioluminescent creatures, which are virtually everywhere in the 

ocean. They saw eyes looking back. It was a fl ounder-like fi sh. And everybody 

joked, of course, it had to be a fl ounder-like fi sh, a fl at fi sh, with 16,000 pounds 

of pressure per square inch. 

But there you are. For about half an hour, almost half a century ago, they 

had a glimpse of the deepest part of the ocean. Nobody’s been back since. How 

can this be? Presently there are four vehicles that exist that can take people to 

just over half the ocean’s depth—the two Russian Mir subs, the French Nautile, 

the Japanese Shinkai 6500. The Japanese tethered robot Kaiko did get some 

observations a few times in the deepest part of the sea in the last decade, but it 

was lost at sea last year. They confi rmed, however, the existence of abundant and 

diverse life at the deepest part of the sea, and soon, Woods Hole Oceanographic 

Institution will have, with support from our taxpayer funds, a tethered robot that 

will, again, go to the deepest sea. But it will take a few years. China is building 

a 7,000-meter manned sub, and the United States is getting back into the deep 

sub game when that workhorse of all subs, the Alvin, will be replaced in the next 

few years with a 6,500-meter sub. 

Well, I say, why only 6,500, why 7,000 meters when we’re looking at an 

ocean that is 11,000 meters deep? I want to go to the deepest part of the ocean. I 

mean, who doesn’t? Why wouldn’t you want to go? But I’m told, you know, we’ve 

got access with a 6,500-meter or even a 7,000-meter sub to about 98 percent of 

the ocean. So, it’s only 2 percent, why worry about that? Well, it’s 2 percent—it’s 

an area about the size of the United States and an area about the size of Australia 

or China, and we’ll just write that off. And it’s a unique high-pressure realm. 

Remember, 16,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Where else on the planet 

are you going to fi nd forms of life that can survive in a realm like that? It’s a place 

where basic ocean processes are taking place as well, the bottom of the deep 

trenches where the crust of the ocean is diving under the continental plates. 

Well, I’ve conveyed my concerns about the powers that be that are stopping 

at 6,500 to 7,000 meters. I say, “Lewis and Clark didn’t stop at the Rockies and 

say, ‘That’s good enough. Why bother going all the way to the coast?’ Sir Edmund 

“

”

YOU KNOW, AS EXPLORERS, LIKE LITTLE KIDS, WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S 

AROUND THE NEXT CORNER, WHAT’S UNDER THE NEXT ROCK, WHAT’S OVER 

THE NEXT HORIZON, WHAT’S IN THE DEEP, WHAT’S BEYOND THE NEXT STAR—OR 

STARFISH. DANGER IS THE SILENT PARTNER OF EXPLORATION . . .

SYLVIA EARLE DEEP OCEAN EXPLORATION
104

Hillary and Norgay Tenzing didn’t stop 98 percent of the way up to the top of 

Mount Everest, and we didn’t travel 98 percent of the way to the Moon and turn 

around and say, “That’s good enough.” Or to Mars. You know, we actually have 

sent probes and landed on Mars, and someday we will get back to the deepest 

part of the sea. And, frankly, I don’t know what’s stopping us. Unless there’s a 

certain resistance called risk. 

I, like Anne Lindbergh, like many of you here, I suppose, really do want 

to go. And here’s the thing. I’m far more concerned about not taking the risks 

involved with exploration than risks that are involved with doing what we are 

doing. I mean, suppose we just get ultrasafe and stay in bed—that’s risky too. 

As an ocean scientist, as chief scientist of NOAA back in the early ’90s, they 

started calling me the “Sturgeon General” because I expressed concern about 

what was happening to the planet. This is, after all, our life support system. 

And, as any astronaut will tell you, you learn everything you can about your 

life support system, and then you do everything you can to take care of your 

life support system. And we haven’t learned a great deal yet about our own life 

support system. This blue planet—less than 5 percent of the ocean has been 

seen, let alone explored. And I don’t think the risks are really worth talking about 

when you consider the gains and the risks of not taking whatever modest risks 

there are out there. 

I am concerned about the health of this planet—our life support system—

starting with the Earth’s blue heart, the ocean. I think of the ocean as the engine 

that drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, generates most of the 

oxygen, and absorbs much of the carbon dioxide. 

It’s home for 97 percent of life on Earth, and 

that’s not surprising considering that that’s where 

97 percent of the water on Earth is. As Chris 

McKay—one of my great heroes—says, “Water is 

the single non-negotiable thing that life requires.” 

Huh! There it is. 

In the past half century, we’ve learned more 

about the ocean than during all preceding human 

history, but it’s not good enough—there’s so much 

more that we need to know. And, at the same time 

that we’ve learned more, we’ve lost more. In the 

last half century—the last half century!—90 

percent of the big fi sh in the ocean have been 

extracted. Ninety percent! Think of it. Half the 

coral reefs are either gone or they’re in really a 

sharp state of decline. Kelp forests from Tasmania 

to Alaska are not in the same good health that 

they were 50 years ago. They, too, are in a state of decline. I hope you enjoyed 

that tasty bit of halibut that you had last night—those of you who consumed 

Exploring in the deep with a JIM suit. (Image ID: nur07562, National Undersearch Research Program (NURP) Collection Photographer: W. Busch)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
105

it—because they’re among the big fi sh—along with tuna, sharks, swordfi sh, 

grouper, snapper, California rockfi sh—that have plummeted in my lifetime, in 

your lifetime, because we are so good at extracting things from our life support 

system before we even understand how it works. 

So think about what the risks will be of not taking the relatively small risks 

involved in exploration today. The chemistry of the planet is changing. What does 

that mean to the little critters that are out there? Especially the microbes that 

really dominate the way this planet works? Won’t take much to set off a whole 

new suite of events based on the changes in chemistry that are taking place now. 

Our security as a species is at risk for our reluctance at not taking the relatively 

small risks involved with what some regard as cutting-edge exploration. As never 

before, we really do have a chance to get out there and make a difference—and 

maybe as never again. I want to show you now something to cause you to dream 

with me about what the potential is. Why aren’t we out there in the ocean? Why 

aren’t there fl eets of little submarines like there are fl eets of aircraft up in the 

sky? There is a little one-person sub called “Deep Worker”, built up in Canada. 

There are, I think, about fi fteen or sixteen of them in operation now around 

the world. For fi ve years as the explorer-in-residence—what a cool title!—at the 

National Geographic Society, I had the chance to engage more than a hundred 

people—scientists, teachers, administrators, paper-pushers, economists—to 

learn how to drive those little subs. They’re so simple to learn how to drive that 

even a scientist can do it.

And we did it, looking at the coastline of the United States, focusing on the 

small but promising counterpart to the national parks on land—marine sanctuaries. 

There are a few. It amounts to less than one percent of our coastal waters, but, 

nonetheless, we’ve made a start toward protecting our life support system 

around this country. By getting into one of these little subs—one atmosphere, no 

decompression—we could go as much as two thousand feet. It’s a start toward the 

ultimate 35,800 feet—the deepest part of the ocean, 7 miles. Why shouldn’t we 

invest in fl eets of little subs that can take anybody who wants to go for whatever 

reason? Whether you want to write poetry or whether you want to write a business 

plan or whether you’re an explorer interested in science, this is the major part of 

our planet. It’s blue! It’s water. And it’s largely still inaccessible. 

“

”

THIS BLUE PLANET—LESS THAN 5 PERCENT OF THE OCEAN HAS BEEN SEEN, 

LET ALONE EXPLORED. AND I DON’T THINK THE RISKS ARE REALLY WORTH 

TALKING ABOUT WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE GAINS AND THE RISKS OF NOT 

TAKING WHATEVER MODEST RISKS THERE ARE OUT THERE.

SYLVIA EARLE DEEP OCEAN EXPLORATION
106

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

I was among the fi rst in this country, back in the early 1950s, to enjoy 

using one of the fi rst aqualungs that fi rst came into the country. I salute Jacques 

Cousteau almost every day for giving me a passport into the ocean, and I love 

the concept of being able to fl y freely in the sea as a diver. And that’s what these 

little subs do, too. As a diver, all by yourself, people say, “Aren’t you afraid all 

by yourself?” Well, again, what else do we do all by ourselves? I love subs of all 

sorts: 1 person, 2 person, 6 person, 30 person, or passenger subs that take people 

out into the sea at least down to 50 meters or so these days. What is stopping 

us from gaining access to anywhere in the ocean we want to go? Anytime we 

want to go? We need to understand what’s out there, what’s down there. This is 

a moment in time—a crossroads in time—when we know that our life support 

system is in trouble. This part of the solar system is changing, this blue planet, 

this Earth. With all due respect to our goal of going elsewhere in the solar system 

to set up housekeeping—and I love the idea of going to Mars, I’d love to be able 

to go myself and come back—the fact is that, look as far as we might, the Earth is 

the place that, for the foreseeable future, we have got to come to grips with and 

take care of it. That’s really what is at risk: our future. ■ 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Ocean Futures

Jean-Michel Cousteau

President, Ocean Futures Society

As an explorer, environmentalist, educator, and fi lm producer for more than four decades, Jean-Michel 

Cousteau has used his vast experiences to communicate to people of all nations and generations his 

love and concern for our water planet. The son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel 

spent much of his life with his family exploring the world’s oceans aboard Calypso and Alcyone. After 

his parents’ deaths in the 1990s, Jean-Michel founded Ocean Futures Society in 1999 to carry on this 

pioneering work. Responding to his father’s call to “carry forward the fl ame of his faith,” Jean-Michel’s 

Ocean Futures Society, a nonprofi t marine conservation and education organization, serves as a “voice 

for the ocean” by fostering a conservation ethic, conducting research, and developing marine education 

programs. Jean-Michel has produced over 70 fi lms and been awarded the Emmy, the Peabody Award, 

the 7 d’Or—the French equivalent of the Emmy, and the Cable Ace Award. 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great privilege and honor to be here, and very 

humbling, knowing who is here in this audience. And many of you I’ve had the opportunity 

to meet, and I have a lot of respect for what you do. 

The symposium’s invitation states that NASA was created to pioneer the future. I 

will always remember the diffi cult times of trying to sell television programs with some of 

the networks in the United States. The people who were putting up millions of dollars were 

asking my father, “So, Captain, what do you expect to fi nd?” And his answer to those people 

who were about to make major commitments was, “If I knew, I wouldn’t go.” 

This extraordinary desire to see what’s on the other side of the hill is what has animated 

all of us. This cannot be done if we do not have a commitment to preserve and protect the 

resources of the present. It is a dream as old as consciousness to explore the stars, so we 

must continue to explore, but with an equal commitment to protect the quality of life on 

Earth, which we are not doing. It will do no good to send people into space or underwater if 

it becomes an escape from intolerable conditions here at home. That being said, as famous 

a pioneer underwater as my father was, and his team, they took risks they didn’t even know 
108

existed, compelled by the adventure of what they were seeing for the fi rst time. 

They took those risks because they were inspired by the importance of the 

realm they had entered, just as space explorers were, are now, and will always 

continue to be. Having seen the world underwater, my father then dedicated his 

life to protecting it. He also came to appreciate that everything is connected, and, 

thus, he became concerned about the water systems of the planet, the land, the 

atmosphere, and the quality of life for people. 

I think NASA is in the same position relative to its view of life on Earth 

from space. When my father pushed me overboard at the age of seven, I had a 

tank on my back and, in those days, children did not argue with their parents, 

so I’ve been a scuba diver ever since. Some of my earliest views were formed in 

the middle of the night, when my father would wake me and my brother out of a 

sound sleep to stand on the terrace in our south-of-France home to look at the 

sky, full of stars, planets, and the Moon. We were learning about nature fi rsthand. 

Jacques Cousteau was a dreamer, full of excitement to explore outer space when 

it was only the subject of science fi ction at the time. Fifty-nine years ago, he 

pushed me overboard. 

I think my father and his team were willing to take great risks, risks they 

realized they couldn’t even describe or predict, because fi rst, looking up at the 

stars and then into the oceanic abyss, they knew the greater risk was ignorance. 

This is as true today. Our invitation also asks, “Why are sacrifi ces made in the 

name of exploration more notable than the losses incurred in the course of 

everyday life?” I think it is the nature of our species to focus on drama. We don’t 

accept short-term, immediate, dramatic risks, but long-term, slow, less dramatic 

yet more important risks we ignore—i.e., species lost, pollution, and reducing 

the habitability of the planet for life. We get excited about lives lost from shortterm, dramatic events, but are oblivious to thousands of people losing lives from 

the demise of the environmental system that provides them with income, food, 

and a quality of life. 

For example, in the U.S., it is estimated that the amount of oil runoff fl owing 

from urban pavements into the oceans creates the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez

every eight months, as reported by the Pew Ocean Commission. Yet, not a word 

reaches the masses, and even if it did, there would be little outcry. Even the fact 

that six thousand children die every day from lack of access to clear water creates 

OPENING PHOTO: 

The Bahamas viewed from space. 

(NASA Image Number ISS007-E-8916)

“

”

THE PEOPLE WHO WERE PUTTING UP MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WERE ASKING MY FATHER, 

“SO, CAPTAIN, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO FIND?” AND HIS ANSWER TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO 

WERE ABOUT TO MAKE MAJOR COMMITMENTS WAS, “IF I KNEW, I WOULDN’T GO.”

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
109

no outrage. We seem to accept, even ignore, these pernicious risks. I think it is 

the duty of those of us privileged with the ability to explore to point out both the 

dramatic and the mundane, but certainly more signifi cant, events. 

So, how can we look with vision and commitment into the future of space 

travel? I think we have to do it by mounting rearview mirrors on our spacecraft. 

By that, I mean that, while moving farther into space, we simultaneously take 

the opportunity to include equipment that will continue to monitor with greater 

sophistication the state of the Earth. Basically, we cannot fulfi ll our dream of 

exploration in outer space or inner space if home base is unlivable. NASA is 

powerfully positioned to create what I call the Global Ocean Network, which at 

our Ocean Futures Society we have started working on in a conceptual phase, 

whereby it would be a way to constantly monitor from space with an array of 

vessel buoys, habited buoys, drifting buoys, whatnot, both bringing the dramatic 

events and long-term trends in the planet’s water system. As Sylvia just said, it 

is our life support system. 

This is nothing new. I have a report right here, given to me a 

few days ago, from a 1971 meeting of my father at NASA Headquarters 

with Dr. Wernher von Braun and NASA offi cials. My father presented 

the case for a global monitoring system “to monitor the primary 

production of life in the ocean and to monitor the deterioration of life 

in the ocean resulting from human activities and from natural forces...” 

His dream was for NASA to launch satellites to monitor sophisticated 

ocean sensors. Much has been done in this direction, but now it needs 

to be part of every endeavor. We need to take an aggressive marketing 

and public relations approach to selling the future and the risk to the 

public, something we’ve not done well. We need to engage them in 

realistically assessing risk and prioritizing issues. We need to motivate 

and mobilize them to take personal action and political action to 

ensure we have an acceptable future for our children. The future based 

on the direction we are [currently] headed is unacceptable. 

NASA is in an unprecedented position to participate in necessary 

new directions. Infusing future space exploration with stewardship 

of our planet, we will accomplish two things that have to do with 

risk: We will have upped the ante in terms of what we can gain by 

risking human life to further our knowledge, and we will have shown 

our regard for that human life by protecting it in the only place we 

know it to exist. There will always be brave men and women willing 

to risk their lives for exploration in outer space and underwater. We 

need to dignify their courage, and possibly deaths, by making sure we are doing 

everything to protect not only their lives, but the life-giving system of the planet 

through their work as well. 

I’d like to tell you why we take risks. This incredible planet of ours, the 

only one with suffi cient quantities of water that we know of to have the kind of 

sophisticated life like we have, has inspired a lot of people like my dad to pioneer. 

Jacques Cousteau, the French sea researcher, 

in 1973, addressing members of the press on his 

experiences during an Antarctic expedition with 

the oceanographic ship, Calypso. 

(NASA Image # 73-H-164)

JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU OCEAN FUTURES
110

They didn’t know what they really were doing. They were very cautious. And most 

of them, anyway, stayed alive. But it was touch and feel. It was this unbelievable 

curiosity that animated them and opened the ocean world to millions of people. 

In South Africa, I was taught to dive and hang on to the back of the dorsal 

fi n of a 14-foot great white shark. Was I taking risks? Very calculated risks, much 

less than when I cross Fifth Avenue in New York. But in the process, we’re making 

people understand that these animals are part of our system. 

Was I taking risks when I wanted for the fi rst time to go down with a 

ship, sink with a ship, a Russian frigate that was made into a dive site? I always 

wondered, what happened in the minds of those people as they sank with 

their ships, the captains, the people in charge? A few months ago we were in 

the middle of the Pacifi c working on an island, Laysan, where nobody lives, and 

fi nding all our refuse. Fifty-two countries were represented there with probably 

tens of thousands of tons [of refuse] just lying there with fi shing nets and debris. 

We are using our ocean, we’re using our own home, as a garbage can, a universal 

sewer. At some point nature will say, I can’t handle it anymore, and we are getting 

signs of that today. 

I believe that exploration and taking risks is what is going to change 

the face of the planet today. We have new equipment, free breathers, new fi ns 

designed by imitating the fl ip of an Orca, new lights, new submersibles, new 

communication systems which, as Sylvia just rightfully said, will allow us to 

explore not just the fi ve percent we’ve explored, but a hundred percent. And 

that’s what’s going to make us do the right thing. Because how can we protect 

what we don’t understand? 

So this risk we’re taking is for the bettering of the quality of life for the 

human species on the planet. Those sharks we were diving with at 200 feet of 

depth, they don’t care. We do. We want them to stay there just like anything else. 

I will never forget the comparison that my dad made one day when he told 

me, “You know, the planet is like an airplane with wings. Every time you remove 

a rivet you are removing a species. At some point, it may just collapse.” We don’t 

want to go there. 

And the decisions that our brains, that our industries, and political 

representatives anywhere in the world will make will allow us to fulfi ll our dream 

and take calculated risks. And that, I believe, is what animates every one of us here. 

I have no job, I have a passion, and I will not retire until I’m switched off. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Exploration and the 

Risk-Reward Equation

Michael L. Gernhardt, Ph.D.

NASA Astronaut

Defi ning and controlling risk in exploration operations is a 

tough and continuous challenge that requires the application of a range of methods from 

the qualitative to the quantitative, and, ultimately, to be successful, requires consistent 

application of informed good judgment. 

We’ve already heard a lot of very insightful themes from the previous speakers, and you’re 

going to hear some of them again from me, but possibly from a slightly different perspective. 

For my entire adult life I’ve been in relatively risky professions, starting out as a scuba diving 

instructor and boat captain in the Caribbean, where your job is basically to keep people from 

killing themselves, and you see it all, from people who sit on sea urchins and scream and spit 

out their regulator and their false teeth, and then go shooting to the surface, to people who go 

chasing after aggressive tiger sharks. So you learn to expect that anything can happen. 

After that, I worked as a commercial deep-sea diver doing subsea construction in the 

offshore oilfi eld, and then, later, as vice president of the world’s largest subsea contractor. 

Currently, I’m an astronaut, and involved in doing high-risk human research for space 

decompression procedures. 

NASA selected Michael Gernhardt as an astronaut in March 1992. His technical assignments have 

included development of nitrox diving to support training for the Hubble Space Telescope repair and a 

variety of Space Station extravehicular activity (EVA) developments; spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) 

at Mission Control Center, Houston, during various Shuttle missions; and leading an international 

research team in developing a new exercise prebreathe protocol that improved the safety and effi ciency 

of space walks from the International Space Station. Gernhardt presently serves as a member of 

the astronaut offi ce EVA branch and as principle investigator of the Prebreath Reduction Program 

and manager of Johnson Space Center’s Environmental Physiology Laboratory. A four fl ight veteran, 

Gernhardt has logged over 43 days in space, including 4 spacewalks totaling 23 hours and 16 minutes. 

He was a mission specialist on STS-69 in 1995, STS-83 in 1997, STS-94 in 1997, and STS-104 in 2001. 

Gernhardt is assigned to the crew of STS-119. 
112

As a professional, it’s important that you address the risk-reward equation. 

Basically, that equation states that the utility, or the degree of success, is equal 

to the probability of success times the reward, minus the probability of failure 

times the cost. As a professional, if you don’t balance this equation properly and 

end up most of the time with a really large, positive number, you’re either not 

going to live very long, or, if you’re in business and you’re killing your people, 

you’re not going to stay in business very long. 

Commercial diving is potentially a very dangerous business, but, in fact, 

it’s actually safer than many forms of nonprofessional scuba diving, because we 

understand that it’s risky and we plan for those risks. Some of the nonprofessionals 

tend to focus more on the reward component of this equation. It would be really 

neat to dive on this wreck or really great to go in this cave. And, unfortunately, 

they don’t understand the risk side until it’s too late. 

As individuals involved in these operations, it’s vitally important that you 

understand and accept the risks that you’re getting into. And it’s also important 

that the individuals have direct control of the risks through their own actions. 

Commercial deep-sea diving is potentially very dangerous. Some of the 

work that we do includes very complicated construction tasks that would 

be dangerous on dry land. An example is a hyperbaric welding job, where, in 

order to do code-quality structural repairs of offshore platforms, we actually 

have to weld in a dry environment, because in wet welding, the water quenches 

the weld so fast you get hydrogen embrittlement. So we have to design these 

multipiece habitats that we have to install around the tubular truss structure of 

the platform, install seals, dewater the habitat, and then go inside and weld in a 

dry environment. 

These are challenging operations at very high forces. A lot of time you’re 

working in current conditions, at close to maximum aerobic capacity. These 

operations would be dangerous on dry land, but we do them at depths of up to 

1,000 feet, under extreme physiological stresses, working in a dynamic, harsh 

environment that is capable of radical changes over short time periods. And 

many times, you’re working in limited or zero visibility on the muddy bottom. 

And, so, you’ve got to realize that that’s risky, and plan and address those risks. 

In my mind, I divide risk into two categories. There’s what I would call the 

corporate or programmatically controlled risk, and these risks relate primarily to 

the design of the equipment, the degrees of redundancy, the reliability, things of 

that nature. An example is a saturation, helium-oxygen saturation, diving system. 

And if you’re not familiar with saturation diving, we use this method to increase the 

effi ciency of the amount of bottom time we get for the amount of decompression 

time. If we were to work at 500 feet for 30 minutes, it would take over 24 hours to 

decompress. Once you stay on the bottom 24 hours or longer, the partial pressure 

of inert gas in your inspired breathing mixture comes to equilibrium with the 

tension of gas dissolved in your blood and tissues. Then your blood and tissues 

will not uptake any more inert gas, and it will take 5 days to decompress, whether 

you stay on the bottom for another minute or another month.

OPENING PHOTO: 

Equipped with SCUBA gear in waters 

off the Florida Keys, the NEEMO 5 crew 

members congregate near the viewing 

port of the Aquarius research habitat. 

(NASA Image # JSC-2003-E-45591)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
113

So, we actually live in these pressurized habitats on the deck of the vessel, 

breathing a helium-oxygen mixture. At 1,000 feet it’s less than one percent 

oxygen. Then we transfer under pressure into a diving bell, we make a seal on 

the bell, the bell is deployed overboard, and acts as an elevator to transport the 

diver to the subsea worksite. Then we lock out of the bell, do eight hours work, 

reenter the bell, and make a seal-return to the surface under pressure where we 

transfer into the living chamber on the deck of the vessel or platform. With a 

six-person crew, we do 24-hour-a-day operations. That results in about 20 hours 

of working bottom time per 24 hour-day. We spend a month under pressure, so 

the working-time to decompression-time ratio is about fi ve, compared to the 

surface diving position where you’re less than point one. 

This is a very effi cient form of diving; it’s very challenging with respect 

to the life support systems. Minor changes in the oxygen percentage can mean 

the difference between hypoxia and acute oxygen toxicity. Same kinds of limits 

on the carbon dioxide. Temperature and humidity are very sensitive at these 

extreme pressures and gas densities. A temperature swing of a few degrees, a few 

percentage points of relative humidity change, is the difference between comfort 

and discomfort. And larger swings than that are life and death. 

On top of that, we’re locking out, we’re working in an oilfi eld environment, 

where you can bring trace contaminants back into the habitat. So all this has 

to be accounted for ahead of time, and controlled, and if you do a good job at 

the corporate level, the equipment and procedures are safe, and you’re happy 

to go use it. On one of our diving support vessels, we actually have a 16-person 

saturation habitat built in below decks. It’s very much like a space station, with 

living quarters and node. There’s a thing called a moon pool, we deploy the 

bell through the bottom of the vessel. So we do all kinds of very challenging 

operations, including some very unique decompression procedures. 

I had the opportunity to work with a man named C. J. Lambertsen, who 

actually invented the oxygen rebreather, and is considered the founder of the 

Underwater Demolition Team (UDT). He actually worked for the OSS in World 

War II, and he was the medical director of the company I worked for, and I 

worked closely with him for almost 25 years now. Very wise guy, very smart, very 

intellectual, very good operator. And his attitude was always, what do we have to 

do? Now, how do we do it safely? And that’s the right question to ask. 

The other question is, what can we do safely? And if you ask that question, 

you don’t have the focus. I mean, there are a lot of things you can do safely. You 

can watch television, you can go bowling. Oops, no, you might hurt your back. So 

you see where that’s going. So it’s important to defi ne what you want to do. Then 

you have clear focus, and you can address the risk and do it safely. If you don’t 

have a clear vision of what you are attempting to do, then its diffi cult to analyze 

and control the risks, and, ultimately, you can end up being less safe, even though 

you start with a more conservative attitude.

The other form of risk that I categorize is what I call the individual or 

team-controlled risk. And even though the company might provide you with 

MICHAEL GERNHARDT EXPLORATION AND THE RISK-REWARD EQUATION
114

safe diving equipment and methods, we’re doing heavy-duty construction in a 

dynamic environment, and there are all sorts of risks that are directly in the 

control of the diver on the end of the hose and the topside team supporting 

him. One example is a platform repair we did off Peru. The platform was falling 

down, and we had to burn off the old parts of the platform, and then install 

these clamps and braces and, basically, rebuild the entire platform underwater. 

A lot of times, we’re working in two or three knot currents with heavy surge 

conditions. In order to rig the repair braces and install them underwater, you’ve 

got, sometimes, two crane lines and four air tugger lines that you have to direct 

in order to transfer the multiton brace into position at the underwater worksite. 

You’re down there in these heavy currents and surge with limited visibility and 

your life support umbilical [is] potentially in the middle of all of these crane and 

air tugger lines, and if don’t have good situational awareness, you can get your 

umbilical hose, hand, or arm in the middle of the trajectory of these swinging 

fl anges and lose your arm, or your fi ngers, or cut your umbilical hose. And, so, 

you have direct control over these risks. 

I don’t know how NASA’s safety would quantify this kind of operation. We 

typically approve things by testing or analysis. I don’t know what you test here, 

because every circumstance is different, impossible to quantify, and, generally, 

unrepeatable. And, so, these risks are very much in your control, and your skill, 

and the supervisor’s assessment of your capabilities, is the only level of control 

of these risks, along with very good planning and teamwork.

One of the observations that I’ve made is that to do this kind of stuff 

safely, you have to have the right attitude, you have to plan it, and you have to 

work with your team, your topside team, and the people controlling all these 

crane lines, and you have to go in with a good plan, and you have to be confi dent 

and aggressive. 

And the people that I saw getting hurt were the people who had checked 

out a little bit. Their heart really wasn’t into it, and they wouldn’t attack the predive planning, and then they’d get in and they’d hesitate at the wrong moment, 

or something like that, and they would have the accident. 

And I think the same observation would be true for an organization. If 

you become so risk-averse that you indiscriminately apply your resources 

“

”

SO IT’S IMPORTANT TO KEEP FOCUSED ON WHAT YOU’RE DOING, 

AND BE CONFIDENT AND AGGRESSIVE, AND UNDERSTAND THE 

RISKS AS BEST YOU CAN AND THEN GO DO IT. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
115

to controlling trivial risk, then you don’t have those resources to apply to the 

important risks, and you lose your focus, and you really don’t accomplish that 

much, and, frankly, you’re probably not that much safer. So it’s important to keep 

focused on what you’re doing, and be confi dent and aggressive, and understand 

the risks as best you can and then go do it. 

We heard a lot of interesting and eloquent quotes from explorers, and I 

have to tell you one of my favorite quotes was from my fi rst Shuttle commander, 

a guy named Dave Walker. Dave is no longer with us, but he was a remarkable 

human being and a great team builder. He actually christened our crew as the 

“Dog Crew,” and he gave everybody a dog name. The only condition was you 

couldn’t like your dog name. So, being a rookie and a diver, I was Underdog. His 

call sign was Red Dog. Dave said to me, “You know, Underdog, it’s a fi ne line 

between bleep and bleep hot.” I can’t say it exactly the way he said it. The bleep 

starts with an “S.” Dave had probably known both sides of that line, so he really 

understood that. It is a fi ne line. It is a fi ne line between being a cowboy and 

taking too many risks, and then, on the other side, being so risk averse that you 

don’t get anything done and you’re not as safe as you should be. 

Now, as far as the risk-reward equation and the commercial diving 

industry, we have to be safe or we don’t have a business. It is the right thing to 

do. You don’t calculate that we’re willing to lose this many people or anything 

like that. You do the very best you can to make things safe. You also make them 

cost effective and effi cient. What we have done over the years is, we started out 

with the divers in a hands-on environment. We have slowly evolved the human 

back from the direct operational environment. Instead of divers having to go into 

saturation and incur all these physiological stresses, we had one-atmosphere 

dive suits. That was one step. We then stepped further back from that with the 

introduction of remote operated vehicles [ROVs]. I was in commercial diving in 

the late ’70s and early ’80s when these became widely used. It was pretty comical 

at fi rst, because they were way oversold. The salesman would promise the oil 

companies that you could do all kinds of things. We actually ended up making 

a lot of money as divers rescuing these things when they failed or got fouled up 

on a structure. One of the key things that we learned is that it’s not so much 

the capabilities of the human or the robot; it’s both sides of the interface, which 

includes how you design the tasks to be compatible with the diver or the robot. 

The integration of both sides of this equation results in a work system versus 

just a diving suit or a robot. What we did was work with the oil companies to 

reengineer the subsea equipment so that we could work on it easily with ROVs. 

We ended up actually being able to produce as effi cient work with these ROVs 

today as we could with divers in previous years. An example is what we call 

the bucket. We actually made the task so simple that the only task was to dock 

the ROV into this conical interface. We had different tooling packages inside 

that would do different things, ranging from small and large valve actuations 

to mating electrical and hydraulic connectors, but to the operator, the task was 

always the same, dock the ROV into the bucket. So you try to keep it simple. 

MICHAEL GERNHARDT EXPLORATION AND THE RISK-REWARD EQUATION
116

When you keep things simple, it actually gives you more brain cells to apply to 

situation awareness to know how to stay out of trouble. We have actually evolved 

some of these concepts up to the Space Station, with the microconical interface. 

So, the message here is to keep the task and operation as simple as you can and, 

ultimately, that makes it safer, because you have more reserve capabilities and 

situational awareness to deal with the unexpected. When you plan an operation 

right at the limits of your capabilities, your safety margins go down.

People always ask me, “Was it more dangerous in commercial diving or the 

astronaut business?” I think the answer to that is that in the space business, 

getting to the work site is a lot more dangerous than riding the boat out and 

coming back. But in commercial diving, once you’re at the work site and dealing 

with all these dynamic forces and physiologic stresses, it is probably riskier than 

doing a spacewalk. 

One of the things I think will happen, though, as we evolve to planetary 

exploration is that instead of training for a whole year to do a spacewalk and having 

a whole ground team behind you, we’re going to be doing EVA [Extravehicular 

Activity] every day, with a plan that has been developed, at best, the day before and 

one that is likely to change many times during the course of the EVA. The balance 

of risk is going to shift between the corporately controlled risk on the redundancy 

of the vehicle to the personally controlled risk when you’re doing these EVA 

operations. We need to have people who can make good judgments and good 

decisions in a relatively unstructured and dynamic operational environment. 

I participated in one of the fi rst NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment 

Mission Operations), which is a program we have going with NOAA [National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]. The underwater habitat they have off 

the Keys is a great analogue. We actually lock out, do coral reef science, and spend 

nine hours a day in the water. They have remote way stations where you refi ll 

your tanks. I have proposed that this is a great analogue to use to parameterize 

that operational space. How far away from the habitat are you? What are your 

consumables? How long will it take you to get back to the habitat, and how much 

air will you consume? You have to make all these real time decisions about when 

to refi ll tanks, when to start and stop working, when to head back to the habitat, 

et cetera. The NOAA team has really tight fl ight rules. If you come back to the 

habitat with less than 500 psi or one second beyond your fl ight plan, you’re 

busted. You’re not going to dive anymore. It really builds good decision-making. 

They have done over 27,000 excursion dives with a perfect safety record. 

The notion would be to parameterize this operational space, and then ask 

yourself the question: If we’re going to work on the Moon and we want to explore 

a 200 kilometer radius, then what life support do we need? How fast do our 

transport vehicles need to go? Where should the way stations be? There is a lot 

that we can learn from land and subsea analogues that we should be applying to 

our mission design well before we set foot on the Moon or Mars.

I am going to transition quickly from subsea to space on the topic of 

decompression. I will also talk about the difference between qualitative and 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
117

quantitative risk control. We have to decompress in space because we work in 

low-pressure space suits, and we want the pressure to be as low as possible so 

that we have minimal forces and torques across the suits so we can work. We 

actually have to get rid of nitrogen much the same way a diver does. 

On the trials of the Shuttle decompression procedures that we have all used, 

we had 25 percent decompression sickness. You ask yourself, is that acceptable 

or not? It turns out there are some things about altitude DCS (decompression 

sickness) that are much different than diving. If you talk to the divers here, they 

will say you’ve got to have way less than fi ve percent. In commercial diving, we had 

about 0.01 percent. Altitude decompression sickness 

is different, primarily because you pre-breathe the 

oxygen and undersaturate your brain and spinal cord, 

so we don’t [have] nearly as many serious symptoms 

of DCS that we see in diving. 

When they did the Shuttle ground trials, 

they came up with 25 percent DCS, and they had a 

committee come in and they said, “Well, what do you 

think? Is this safe or not?” You can fi nd anybody to say 

it’s safe or it’s unsafe. It turns out that we have not 

had any decompression sickness in fl ight, probably 

because the ground model was not that accurate. I 

don’t have time to go into all those details, but the 

point is that it was the assessment of acceptable risk 

was very subjective.

When I started the pre-breathing production 

development for the procedure we are now using on 

the Space Station, I took a whole year with a large 

team to defi ne what acceptable risk was. I pulled in 

the Navy and the Air Force, the fl ight directors, who 

are great guys, who are really great at analyzing data 

and making decisions, the fl ight surgeons, and the 

astronaut offi ce. When we had the fi rst meeting, I said, “Everybody in this room 

has an opinion about what acceptable DCS risk is. Recognize it is only your 

opinion.” We proceeded over the course of a year to pull in all the data we could, 

analyze the data, and when we extracted the last little bit of information out of 

that, we fi nally made the decisions. 

There was a lot of talk yesterday about staging things. We actually staged 

into this. You couldn’t get a consensus right off the bat as to what acceptable 

DCS risk was, but I took the tack of saying, what’s the highest risk we could have 

and still build the Space Station? We had a policy that if you had Type I DCS on 

an EVA and it resolved, you could go EVA again in 72 hours. This was consistent 

with Navy and Air Force procedures. If you have the second Type I hit on this 

same mission, then you were out. If you had Type II, serious DCS, you were also 

out of the rotation. 

Astronaut Michael L. Gernhardt, mission specialist, is pictured 

during the 16 September 1995 extravehicular activity (EVA) which 

was conducted in and around Space Shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay. 

(NASA Image # STS69-714-046)

MICHAEL GERNHARDT EXPLORATION AND THE RISK-REWARD EQUATION
118

We then did a Monte Carlo simulation of the entire Space Station assembly 

and maintenance model, applying this policy and subjecting it to the constraint 

that we be 95 percent confi dent that we would always have two crew members to 

do an EVA. That defi ned the uppermost risk we could have. We then looked at 

other factors and actually ended up picking a level of DCS risk of 15 percent at 

upper 95 percent confi dence level, which, [as it] turns out, is below a threshold 

where there has ever been a report of Type II DCS in our database. We do these 

trials with human subjects. Subject safety is our number one priority. We have 

defi ned very explicitly what the accept conditions are. Even though the research is 

diffi cult, it is pretty easy to make a decision, because we have prospectively defi ned 

the acceptable risk criteria. You design the experiment, you do the trial, and, if it 

meets it, you’re great. If it doesn’t, you reject it and test the next protocol.

Some of these quantitative risk defi nitions and control techniques would 

be applicable to other aspects of vehicle and mission safety design. Statistics 

are a good tool, to be used in conjunction with informed good judgment, not a 

replacement for it. It’s a fi ne line that we will have to walk as we move forward 

with the next generation of exploration missions. We will need to understand and 

accept that they are risky, defi ne clearly what we want to do, defi ne and control 

the risks as well as we possibly can, and then go do the mission recognizing that 

we have done everything practical to control the risks, but that we will never 

totally eliminate them. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Titanic and Other Reflections

Born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, James Cameron grew up near Niagra Falls. In 1971, he moved 

to Brea, California, where he studied physics at Fullerton College while working as a machinist and, 

later, a truck driver. The1984 sleeper hit, The Terminator, launched his directorial career. Since that time, 

Cameron has served as writer, producer, director, and/or editor on such fi lms as Rambo: First Blood 

Part II, Aliens, The Abyss, Point Break, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, and Titanic. Cameron’s 

fi lms have also earned numerous nominations and awards from a variety of organizations, culminating 

in Titanic’s 11 Academy Awards, including Cameron’s three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, and 

Best Editing. In 1995, Cameron made 12 dives to the Titanic in preparation for his feature fi lm. Cameron 

has made a total of 38 dives in the Mir submersibles. His most recent expedition to the hydrothermal 

vents is the subject of the IMAX fi lm, Aliens of the Deep. 

James Cameron 

Writer/Director, Undersea Explorer

I am also honored to be part of this august panel, which includes 

two of my heroes from the undersea world, and some of the people I’m just meeting today. 

We live in an age when the land area of our planet has been explored, mapped, imaged, 

settled, and exploited for whatever it has to offer. It’s defi nitional that what remains to be 

explored are the most remote, inaccessible, and inhospitable parts of our world, or places 

that are not a part of our world at all. This basically means that the easy stuff has been done, 

if you want to consider polar exploration and all the great pioneering work in the ocean the 

easy stuff. The hard stuff is in front of us, and it means we are now confronting even more 

hostile and extreme conditions and requiring more sophisticated technology and support 

systems in order to do our exploration. Correspondingly, we are facing more complex and 

subtle forms of risk than ever before. 

I have lived with risk for my entire professional career as an action fi lm director. I 

regularly asked people, with a completely straight face, to set themselves on fi re, to fl ip their 

car over, to leap out of an exploding building, to ride on top of a tractor-trailer truck that’s 

on its side skidding, to fl y a helicopter underneath an overpass with two feet of clearance on 

either side of the rotor tip, and even to ride a sinking ship down underwater. 
120

In twenty years of directing stunts and action and pyrotechnic effects, I’ve 

never actually had a serious injury on the set. That is because of application of 

a fairly rigorous and disciplined process. It is not as institutionalized as it is 

with NASA, but it has its own special rigor. Before any major stunt, or gag as 

we call them, I would walk the set myself, looking at every piece of rigging and 

turning over every possibility in my head. At that moment on a shoot when all 

the lights and the cameras are set up, it is the culmination of months of planning, 

engineering, testing, and rigging. The industry’s leading experts up to that point 

have done it all. (I would just like to point out that the failure of the Genesis 

spacecraft was not due to the Hollywood stunt pilot. Of course, now we know 

that the science has been recovered, so it’s all good.) 

These experts have decades and decades of experience doing stunts, 

explosions, car gags, fi re, and whatever it is that we might be doing. But still, 

even after every single one of these people has signed off, I walk the set. I just 

call a complete hold. I walk the set. I look at the rigging. I ask questions. I think 

about it: What if this happens? What if that happens? Even though we have been 

over it and over it, I call that last minute hold, and I walk the set. I’m looking for 

something which is something that I’ve over the years come to call the x-factor, 

some previously unseen detail or some exotic combination of variables which 

could cause the stunt to go horribly wrong. 

I guess my point here is that the personal touch is critical, and taking 

individual responsibility is critical, for everybody in the chain. Systems protocols 

and institutional checks and balances are important, and they add great robustness 

to risky operations. However, those very checks and balances can often inhibit 

individuals from speaking up or taking action because they make the assumption 

that someone else has approved it. Someone else is going to catch it. Someone 

else has responsibility, and they don’t catch it before it’s too late. 

[When] we made the movie Titanic, we began that production in a very 

unusual way. We actually dove to the wreck site of Titanic twelve times. It’s 

in 12,500 feet of water in the North Atlantic. We set ourselves some pretty 

ambitious goals. We were going to build a new camera system so that we could 

operate a 35mm movie camera outside the submersible, seeing ambient pressure 

at 5,500 psi. We were going to build new lighting equipment. We were even going 

to build our own remotely-operated vehicles so we could explore the Titanic

wreck internally. I had some experience as a project manager developing new 

technology for underwater fi lming on the movie The Abyss, and that prepared me, 

to a certain extent, for the diffi culty of engineering this new equipment. Nothing 

prepared me for the chaos introduced when we took that whole circus to sea on 

a research ship. We weathered three hurricanes and multiple equipment failures, 

but we managed to prevail and get the images of the wreck. In that process, I got 

bitten by the deep ocean exploration bug. 

After the success of Titanic, the movie, I found myself less interested 

in Hollywood fi lmmaking and more interested in the challenges of ocean 

photography and exploration. So, over the next few years, we developed new 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Part of the railing from the bow section of 

the Titanic. Courtesy of James Cameron.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
121

images and robotic exploration technology. Then I had to go out and raise the 

money by making fi lms, in order to pay for it. So we wound up returning to the 

Titanic wreck site in 2001, because I fi gured if I couldn’t raise money to go to the 

Titanic wreck I couldn’t raise money to do anything. We took our spanking new 

3-D digital imaging system to capture the coolest stereo images of the wreck that 

we could before it disintegrates, and we made a fi lm called Ghosts of the Abyss, 

which was for the IMAX 3-D theaters. 

We also created two very tiny and advanced ROVs [Remotely Operated 

Vehicles] which could fl y untethered inside the wreck. They were untethered in 

terms of a power umbilical, but they had a data tether, which was a spool of fi ber 

optic, kind of like a wire-guided torpedo. We were able to explore the wreck, 

room by room and deck by deck. These were launched from the submersibles 

after we landed on the Titanic wreck, and they were fl own inside the wreck by 

myself and two other pilots. With these bots, we were able to capture some pretty 

amazing images inside the wreck in spaces which could never have been seen by 

human eyes and which probably will never be seen directly by human eyes. We 

were able to reveal in the lights and video cameras of these tiny robots a kind of 

lost grandeur of Titanic, which still exists deep inside that wreck. 

For me, that was the greatest adventure imaginable. If I wasn’t hooked 

before, I was certainly hooked then. Of course, all the time I was very cognizant 

of the risks and, as the person heading the team, the expedition leader, so to 

speak, it was my responsibility. The buck stopped with me, so I was continuing 

to apply my lessons learned from my underwater motion picture fi lmmaking 

experience, to this new realm. Of course, we had a lot of problems, and we 

had equipment failures, and we got hit by another three hurricanes. Then the 

September 11th attacks cut short our expedition. It was certainly a bizarre and 

ironic experience to be, literally, down at the bottom of the ocean, at the site 

of the defi ning disaster of the fi rst part of the 20th century, while probably the 

defi ning disaster of the fi rst part of the 21st century was taking place over our 

heads without our knowledge. 

Having made 24 dives at this point by the end of the second expedition 

to explore the Titanic, I am now pretty continuously mindful of the lessons of 

Titanic as I continue with other exploration projects and any projects involving 

“

”

TITANIC HAS A VALUE AS A KIND OF PARABLE. THE LESSONS 

LEARNED ARE STILL VALUABLE FOR US IN OUR CONTINUING 

EXPLORATION OF THE SEA AND OF SPACE. 

JAMES CAMERON TITANIC AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
122

risk of any kind. The lessons learned from the sinking of Titanic caused sweeping 

reform of the maritime safety code in its time. But in the abstract, Titanic has 

a value as a kind of parable. The lessons learned are still valuable for us in our 

continuing exploration of the sea and of space. 

Titanic was sunk primarily by institutional momentum. Just as the inertia 

of the ship was too great for the crew to be able to turn it in time to avoid hitting 

the iceberg, the inertia of their methodology was at least equally responsible for 

the collision. It was the policy of sea captains at that time to maintain full speed 

until they’d spotted the ice and then slow down only when it became absolutely 

necessary. This was for economic reasons, reasons of straight commerce. This 

was simply how it was done. 

The Titanic’s captain was due to retire after this one last prestigious 

voyage, after a long and unblemished career. He was captaining on the maiden 

voyage of the largest vessel ever created. His lifetime of experience taught him 

that on a crystal clear night, in a fl at calm ocean, he was safe maintaining full 

speed, despite the Marconi-gram sitting in his pocket warning of a huge ice fi eld 

ahead. With a warning to the offi cer of the watch to be extra vigilant, he went to 

sleep as the ship barreled on toward its fate. Now, was this arrogance or hubris, 

as many have said? I don’t think so, not really. It was simply business as usual. 

These new ships didn’t handle like the previous ones. They took longer to stop 

or to turn. So, everything he knew was actually wrong in that exact circumstance. 

The old operating methods didn’t really apply. The conditions had changed, but 

the methods hadn’t kept up. It also required an unlikely combination of elements 

to create the disaster. It was a typical cascade failure where you had a number of 

things in series, all of which had to happen in that unique combination. The fl at 

calm of the ocean meant that no swells were breaking against the icebergs, which 

reduced the ability of the lookouts to see the icebergs in the dark. The general 

mistake made by the crew was to underestimate the perversity of the ocean, even 

when it seemed at its most benign. 

There are a few interesting parallels between the sinking of the Titanic and the 

loss of the Columbia Space Shuttle and her crew. In both cases, there were unheeded 

“

”

THERE ARE A FEW INTERESTING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC AND 

THE LOSS OF THE COLUMBIA SPACE SHUTTLE AND HER CREW. IN BOTH CASES, THERE 

WERE UNHEEDED WARNINGS. IN BOTH CASES, THE WARNINGS WERE DISMISSED, NOT OUT 

OF NEGLIGENCE, BUT FOR REASONS THAT MADE SENSE BASED ON THE EXPERIENCE AND 

INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY AT THAT MOMENT.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
123

warnings. In both cases, the warnings were dismissed, not out of negligence, but 

for reasons that made sense based on the experience and institutional memory at 

that moment. In the case of Titanic, the crew was well aware, because of wireless 

messages, that the ice lay ahead, but it was because it was the way it was always 

done that they proceeded at full speed toward the ice fi eld. 

With Columbia it was known from many past missions that the foam 

could separate from the external tank and possibly strike the orbiter, but that 

problem had been analyzed twenty years earlier and dismissed as a serious threat 

to mission safety. When foam was observed possibly striking Columbia during 

the launch, some engineers were concerned. But because this was the way we’ve 

always done it, the warnings didn’t propagate up the chain of command with 

enough force to change the outcome. So cultural momentum and institutional 

memory had worked against Columbia just as they had worked against Titanic. 

Another parallel is that in both accidents an unlikely series of events were 

required to cause catastrophe. With Titanic, it was the unlikely event of the very 

fi rst iceberg that they spotted, the very fi rst one out of a huge fi eld of ice, happening 

to be exactly in the track of the ship. This was occurring on a night without the 

slightest swell activity to assist in spotting the berg in time. And all of this was 

happening to a new, large class of ship whose crew was inexperienced in managing 

it in fast turns and sudden stops. With Columbia, it took the foam strike incident, 

but then compounded it by the fact that this was one of the very few missions in 

recent years that did not go to the ISS [International Space Station]. Had it been a 

mission to the Space Station, it is likely that the Station crew would have seen the 

large hole in the leading edge of the wing during the operations. Then the station 

could have provided safe haven for the Columbia crew while everybody scrambled 

to launch a second orbiter to bring them all home safely. 

So the vanishingly small possibility of a foam strike event actually damaging 

a fl ight-critical component was coupled with the statistically low probability of 

a non-ISS mission to create a disastrous outcome. These low-probability, highconsequence events are the hardest to plan for and prevent, especially when it 

requires a number of low-probability events in combination in order to create 

a threatening scenario. Titanic teaches us to be constantly vigilant, to assume 

nothing about our methodology, to constantly ask the question “What are we 

doing wrong right now?” 

I’ve lived with the lessons of Titanic and they’ve informed my judgment on 

subsequent expedition projects. After our second expedition to Titanic, we looked for 

other projects with more and greater challenges, of course. The following spring we 

imaged the wreck of the Bismarck, which is 16,000 feet down in the North Atlantic. 

Then, we followed that up with stereo imaging at fi ve hydrothermal vent sites along 

the mid-Atlantic ridge. We were pretty excited by the imaging results from that, 

and I decided to make a second IMAX 3-D fi lm about the life surrounding that 

hydrothermal vents. It was my intention with this fi lm to draw a kind of sea/space 

connection, on the basis of a kind of ocean analogue, where we would bring NASA 

experts in analogue missions and let them draw the parallels between undersea 

JAMES CAMERON TITANIC AND OTHER REFLECTIONS 
124

operations with multiple vehicles deploying robotics. The submersibles would be 

like a Mars surface rover on a traverse being deployed from a habitat or a base camp 

for which the support ships or the surface ships were the analogues for that. But 

we were also drawing a connection between the types of life that existed in these 

chemosynthesis-based environments down at these hydrothermal vents with the 

kind of life that we might encounter in extraterrestrial hydrospheres; if we were to 

fi nd subsurface water on Mars, if we were to fi nd evidence of ancient life on Mars, 

it might have originated in hydrothermal communities. If Mars was once covered 

with water or had a lot more water, that water may very well have been under ice, it 

may have been denied the ability to photosynthesize, it may have had to live within 

a chemosynthesis-based environment. 

When we go to Europa, we may fi nd evidence of life there, again, probably 

subsisting on a nonphotosynthesis basis. So we draw the sea/space connection 

in that fi lm. I just thought I’d point that out since 

it’s a room full of space buffs and we’re an ocean 

panel—that there’s a message there. 

In the process of making this fi lm, I’ve 

formed a partnership to buy and operate two deep 

rover submersibles, which are actually codesigned 

by Sylvia Earle. They have a depth rating of 1,000 

meters. They are wonderful subs. You sit inside an 

acrylic sphere and you feel like you’re in a kind of 

vacuole within the ocean where you have unlimited 

visibility. You feel much better contact with the 

environment than you do looking through the 

small port windows of a typical deep submersible. 

Now, previously, we’d been working with 

the Russian Academy of Sciences and with their 

Mir submersible operation, which is a two-sub 

operation. I had a pretty good understanding of 

the working systems of those subs and of how the 

submersibles were operated and how two subs are 

operated in tandem with each other in diving ops. But I was certainly in for a 

very rude awakening by just how diffi cult it is to operate a manned submersible 

system when you’re starting from scratch and when you’re the one in front of 

whom the buck stops. 

Now, we began by assembling a new team to operate and maintain the 

rovers and these were gathered from established submersible operations around 

the U.S. and Canada. The fi rst task was to tear the subs down to their frames for 

ABS [American Bureau of Shipping] certifi cation. Then we had to make all the 

modifi cations to adapt our 3-D digital technology with the [pan and fi ll] systems 

and our special lighting and all of that to the submersibles. That was certainly a 

daunting task. It took about six months, and we were barely re-certifi ed in time 

for our fi lming operations. 

DEEP ROVER, Deep Ocean Engineering’s one person sub, dives to 300 meters. 

(Image ID: nur07547, National Undersearch Research Program (NURP) Collection. 

Photographer: T. Kerby. Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP), 

University of Hawaii)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
125

So, we took our beautiful new subs to sea and met with the Russians out 

in the middle of the ocean, literally rendezvoused two ships in the middle of 

the ocean at the mid-Atlantic ridge. We dove them together in a joint diving 

operation with the Mir submersibles. This culminated with one dive where we 

actually had four subs rendezvous at the bottom in 870 meters of water at a site 

called “Lost City,” which is a low temperature hydrothermal vent structure, a very 

interesting place. 

This operation was very complex logistically because it involved the 

creation of new operational protocols for the launch and recovery of four subs 

in the same theater of operations at the same time. Tracking, communications, 

surface ship operations, the number of submersibles in the water made all these 

signifi cantly more complicated. This had ramifi cations through every kind of 

contingency you could imagine. It wasn’t just twice as complicated as operating 

two submersibles—it was some multiple. There was some square law at work 

there. Also, we were dealing with underwater communications, which, if any of 

you have done this, you know that such communications can be spotty at best, 

and we were dealing with them in Russian and English between four vehicles at 

the same time on the same frequency. 

So, we had to go through a pretty rigorous process of defi ning our comms 

protocols before the fact. It was only because we had a good, long, healthy working 

relationship with the Russians that made that possible. I found that the principles 

of risk management and safety assurance that I learned as a fi lm director were 

actually transferable to these new situations, at least at an abstract level, and 

certainly at a motivational level for myself, in terms of applying the same kind 

of energy and passion to the safety of the operation as to the aesthetic results 

of the fi lm making. Now, obviously there’s a very extensive body of established 

procedure for submersible operations, and we studied that pretty rigorously, and 

we selected our team members accordingly on the basis of their experience with 

manned submersible ops. But it seemed like almost everything that we were 

doing was unprecedented, and it was often diffi cult to fi nd any kind of existing 

guidelines in the literature. Often, we were making up our own protocols in terms 

of what the safe procedures were for the launch of multiple subs or the manner in 

which we could descend them together for imaging purposes—sometimes only 

a couple of meters apart, how we could operate them on the bottom (proximity 

operations), how our acoustic comms would work during the dive, how we would 

work on the bottom with four subs together and a deployed ROV in the same 

area—a tethered vehicle. 

We were able to pull on our experience from past dives, and we were able 

to anticipate and talk through in advance most of the contingencies that might 

arise on the dive. Because of the complexity of our dive ops, we always preceded 

each dive with a joint dive ops meeting between the Russian group and the 

American group. I call it the American group, but it was really a mixed group of 

people from Australia, Canada, and everything else. The Russians called us the 

“American group.” 

JAMES CAMERON TITANIC AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
126

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

We used models of the submersibles to talk through the maneuvers. The 

process there was very simple. Here is a model of your sub. You are the pilot of the 

sub. You move it. I will give you a voice command. You move that model the way 

you think what I am telling you to do should result in action. This worked very 

well. So, literally, it would be, “Hands off. Okay, I want you to do this. I want you 

to do that.” If they couldn’t visualize it on dry land where we could hear each other 

perfectly, then it certainly wasn’t going to be any better down at the bottom. Until 

we fi gured out what message for voice communications was going to foul us up on 

the bottom, we wouldn’t go into the water. That was one technique. 

We had perfected that in doing our wreck dives where we had the wreck 

as the central focusing element for what we were doing. It got more complicated 

when we went to these vent sites, and we were unable to physically model the 

vent sites. We had, in some cases, good microbathymetry, and, at the very least, 

we had some decent site maps. We would use those as guides, and people would 

fl y their models. We always knew in advance what we were trying to accomplish. 

This briefi ng would then get synthesized into a dive plan document, which was 

distributed to all of the various crew members. You have to appreciate that we had 

two observers and a pilot in each Mir, so that’s six. We would have an observer 

and a pilot in each of the deep rovers, so an additional four. Ten people were 

all going in[to] the water, all having to know exactly what they were doing on a 

daily basis. An interesting lesson here was that the task loading from a planning 

standpoint became greater than the task load on the actual dive. In fact, I wound 

up getting most of my sleep during descent and ascent because I was spending 

the night working through the documentation for the dive the following day. The 

pace of operations was inappropriate to the scale of the logistics of what we were 

doing. That was the thing that emerged. 

Each crew member got a dive plan which was individually tailored to their 

vehicle in terms of the timeline and their activities—the individual objectives 

for each crew and the science activities as well. The science activities required a 

separate pre-dive meeting by the science group who would bring us their requests 

and recommendations for modifi cations to the sampling equipment on the front 

of the subs. 

One of the things I would like to express here today is the idea that, regardless 

of how much you plan, you have to be willing to accept the idea of failure. I think 

that we are enthusiastic fans of exploration, probably everybody in the room, but 

failure is a part of exploration. It is absolutely woven into the fabric of the act of 

exploration. By defi nition, exploration means you’re doing something that has 

never been done before. It is absurd to assume that activities without precedent 

can be done in complete safety. If only the remote and hostile environments are 

yet to be explored, then we are inherently pushing the limits of human endurance 

and technical adaptation every time we advance the boundary of what is known. 

It is absolutely important to use all of our accumulated knowledge to be 

as safe as possible. However, safety is not the most important thing. I know 

this sounds like heresy, but it is a truth that must be embraced in order to do 
127

“

”

. . . SAFETY IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. I KNOW THIS SOUNDS 

LIKE HERESY, BUT IT IS A TRUTH THAT MUST BE EMBRACED IN ORDER TO 

DO EXPLORATION. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO ACTUALLY GO. 

exploration. The most important thing is to actually go. Because if safety were 

the most important criterion, we would not go to Mars for 10,000 years, because 

only then could we assure absolute, 100 percent success. Historically the success 

of cultures and nations has been the result of their ability to balance risk and 

reward—to put it another way, caution and boldness. 

The problem with exploration is not the individual’s perception of risk; 

it’s the institutional, national, and political perception of risk. Astronauts are 

smart people—I know a few of them. Most of them are Ph.D.s in one thing or 

another—engineering, physics, medicine. They know that riding a pointy end of 

a metal object that is screaming through the atmosphere at 20 times the speed of 

a rifl e bullet, being propelled by one long continuous explosion is not quite the 

same as sitting at home in your Barcalounger. 

They understand the dangers. They get it. They have assessed the risk. 

But their personal dream, their vision—not for themselves, but for the entire 

human race—dwarfs that risk. They know the importance of what they are doing, 

because in their souls they are explorers. It’s not the astronauts who are going 

to hold up the progress of exploration. It’s the government that funds them, and 

the people that empower that government to act, who will set the limitations. 

Institutions gravitate inexorably toward a value system in which any risk becomes 

unacceptable, at which point exploration ceases. 

Now, we are lucky right now to be on a cusp with history where a 

presidential mandate has put NASA back on track with a renewed vision for 

exploration. NASA has reorganized around the guiding principle of exploration 

beyond Earth’s orbit. This is all very exciting, it is all very new, and it is defi nitely 

happening. I believe it is a wise plan, and an affordable and achievable plan. 

But there is one huge challenge that still needs to be overcome, even if we 

deal with all of these short-term reorganization issues. We must overcome the 

fear of failure that may inhibit future leaders from allowing these missions to 

proceed. The challenge will be this: the only way to fail in landing humans on 

Mars is to actually go. If we study the problem, we build tools and systems and 

so on for the next 50 years, we can kind of jolly ourselves along that we are really, 

honest-to-God going to do it someday, that we’re still those clever Americans 

who put a man on the Moon back—when was that again?

That way we don’t put our self-image at risk. But the second the button 

gets pushed and we are really going, then we enter a much higher realm of risk. 

JAMES CAMERON TITANIC AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
128

“Failure is not an option” was a good credo for getting the Apollo 13 astronauts 

back home safely, but as a driving principle, it doesn’t really work. Failure must 

always be an option, or we stop being an exploring species. 

When I started our most recent expedition project, I called a big summit 

meeting of all the department heads. I stood in front of a white board and put up 

on the white board three slogans. The slogans were there: “Luck is not a factor,” 

“Hope is not a strategy,” “Fear is not an option.” Now, the fi rst two were meant 

to convey my philosophy that to succeed in any complex task, it is essential to 

leave nothing to chance. You need to make your own luck by rigorous application 

of a robust process. You test everything in a very disciplined fashion, you don’t 

guess, you know the answer, you anticipate every negative condition that might 

possibly prevail. You assume it is going to happen. You have an A plan, a B plan, 

a C plan, and you assume that you’re going to be on the C plan by your second 

cup on coffee on morning one of the expedition, because that’s how it goes when 

you’re at sea. 

I wanted to scare them, and I wanted them to respect their adversary—not 

the ocean, but the real adversary: entropy, which, as you know, is the tendency of 

things to go from a state of organization to a state of chaos. 

The third slogan, “Fear is not an option,” was meant to inspire the boldness 

that actually sees you through these endeavors. It was the yin and the yang of the 

healthy paranoia which the fi rst two slogans represented, because without a kind 

of faith, which is not in luck and not in passive hope, but in yourself and your 

team and in the greater meaning of what you’re setting out to do, you won’t fi nd 

the strength to go through with it. 

So my message is, in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into 

the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, 

risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment 

takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition or a space mission, 

without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope 

is not a strategy. Fear is not an option. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

Back to Contents page 
Over the Edge of the World

Ferdinand Magellan took almost three years to circumnavigate 

the globe. In fact, he didn’t make it. He was killed in the middle. Jules Verne wrote about 

going around the world in 80 days. I am going to take you around the world in Magellan’s 

tracks in about 10 minutes, much more safely than Magellan did. In terms of risk and reward 

evaluation, keep in mind that, of the approximately 260 sailors in fi ve very small ships that 

he took, leaving from Seville, Spain in 1519, only one ship with 18 sailors made it back three 

years later to Seville. One ship mutinied in the Strait of Magellan and returned early. Over 200 

hundred sailors died in this attempt to circumnavigate the globe. That was not exceptional.

In this era of exploration, in the 16th century, it was a different mind-set. The very 

rational and logical and useful tools for evaluating risks and rewards didn’t exist. The 

mind-set was closer to the medieval mind-set, even though this was the quintessential 

Renaissance exploration mission more than anything else. We can see, despite that mindset, modern tools and paradigms and approaches emerging. Nevertheless, people went with 

an expectation that if they succeeded, it would be God’s will, and if they failed, that was 

God’s will. That was Magellan’s inspiration for going, and that turned out to be, as you’ll 

Laurence Bergreen is a prize-winning nonfi ction writer. His new book, Over the Edge of the World: 

Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published to great acclaim by William Morrow/

HarperCollins in October 2004. His last book was Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth, 

a narrative of NASA’s exploration of Mars and the search for extraterrestrial life, published in 2000 by 

Penguin Putnam. He has written for Esquire, Newsweek, TV Guide, Details, Prologue, and Military History 

Quarterly, and many other publications. A graduate of Harvard, he has taught at the New School for 

Social Research and served as assistant to the president of the Museum of Television and Radio in New 

York. In 1995 he served as a nonfi ction judge for the National Book Awards and in 1991 as a judge for the 

PEN/Albrand Nonfi ction Award. He also serves as a featured historian for the History Channel and is a 

member of PEN American Center and the Authors Guild.

Laurence Bergreen

Author 
130

see when I get to the part about Magellan’s death, his undoing as well, despite his 

many crew members urging him to ignore what he felt was God’s will. 

His mission to circumnavigate the globe for the fi rst time ever was not 

meant to be a scientifi c one. That concept really didn’t exist. He was going for 

two reasons, and they were pretty basic reasons. One was for greed, and one was 

for glory. 

There were two superpowers in those days, one of the important analogies 

to the recent present, during the Cold War. Those superpowers were Spain and 

Portugal, and they were vying for control of the ocean. They were doing that 

because they were vying for control of the world economy, or the global economy, 

such as it was. The key to that economy in those days wasn’t oil, the way it is now; 

it was spices. We all say, “What’s the big deal about spices—cloves, cinnamon, 

nutmeg? Who cares? You can buy them in the supermarket.” In those days, cloves 

were the most valuable commodity on the face of the Earth. They were more 

precious, pound for pound, than gold. 

On his voyage, Magellan refused a number of opportunities to trade iron 

for gold on a pound for pound basis, because he wanted to save space on his ship 

for the cloves, which were more valuable. That one surviving small ship, less than 

90 feet in length, Victoria, that made it back to Seville laden with cloves, made 

enough money for the bankers who fi nanced it and for King Charles, the Spanish 

banker, to make the whole expedition—which was, in human terms, a tremendous 

disaster—a huge commercial success. This inspired Spain to follow up fi ve times, 

each time unsuccessfully, on Magellan’s vision of circumnavigating the globe. 

For me, researching this book, there are two approaches. One is the library. 

People often say, “Well, where did you go to research this book?” And I usually 

quickly defl ate the balloon by saying, “To the library,” because that was the most 

important place. However, the library really isn’t enough. You really have to get 

out into the fi eld. It always reminds me of when I was a kid and dropping those 

little paper Japanese fl owers into water—just add water and they come to life. 

When you go to the Strait of Magellan or you go to Sanlucar de Barrameda, 

the port city in Spain from which Magellan’s ships left, you begin to see the scale 

and the scope of what it was like. When you walk across a life-size replica of one 

of Magellan’s ships and see how tiny it was and how primitive it was, you realize 

that what they were taking looks to us, on a temporary risk-reward evaluation 

basis, to be doomed to failure. But they didn’t think that in those days. They 

thought that God was going to be on their side. And I’ll try and explain a little 

bit to you why. 

So for me, this was mostly tourism, to go in Magellan’s tracks. Someday, to 

go in the tracks of Neil Armstrong or Jim Lovell will be mostly tourism. Not yet. 

And it [would have] seemed inconceivable 500 years ago that tourists would go 

through the Strait of Magellan the way I did, with a couple of friends with our 

cameras, walking over glaciers that [had] imperiled Magellan’s life and the lives 

of all his sailors. And the glory part of this was that they were going to bring 

Christianity and the glory of King Charles—who was all of 18 years old when 

OPENING PHOTO: 

The Strait of Magellan in winter viewed 

from NASA’s SeaWiFS satellite. 

(Source: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov.

Search for 9251.)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
131

he commissioned Magellan to go on this voyage—around the world and spread 

those two goals far and wide as they went to claim the Spice Islands, which are 

in Indonesia, for Spain. Nobody really knew exactly where they were, and part 

of the expedition would be to fi nd a shortcut, a fabled route somewhere through 

the South American landmasses to the Spice Islands. The exact size and shape of 

South America was not really known. Something was known about the eastern 

coast and that was all. They would cross what was known as the Pacifi c Gulf, 

considered to be a very small body of water. 

My book on Magellan actually began on Mars with my previous book, 

Voyage to Mars, which was about NASA’s robotic exploration of the red planet 

through four missions, from Pathfi nder through the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander. 

During that time, NASA scientists at Goddard and JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] 

kept talking about precedents for their exploration of the universe. They kept 

talking about Columbus; we all know a lot about Columbus. They talked about 

Balboa. They talked about Vasco da Gama and they talked about Magellan. And, 

after about the tenth or maybe the twentieth time, the name Ferdinand Magellan 

was mentioned to me, a dim light bulb eventually illuminated in my mind, and I 

thought that might be a very interesting idea for a book. It might have a lot to say 

about our own current age of exploration of the solar system and the universe. 

Because after all, at the time that this man, Ferdinand Magellan, went around 

the world, the world was as mysterious to Europeans as the solar system and the 

universe is to us. 

Who was Magellan? First of all, he was a misfi t. If he was on this panel 

today, he probably would be the least popular member. He would be the one that 

everybody would be looking at and saying, “He looks like a fanatic. He looks 

like a weirdo.” He wouldn’t have that genial, easy-going manner and that selfdeprecatory humor that we admire in pilots and captains who are undertaking 

high-risk missions. From the little bit that we know from contemporary 

observation, he had a knack for being abrasive and for offending people. He 

defected from Portugal, because he couldn’t get backing from the king of Portugal, 

who personally disliked him, to Spain, where he really wasn’t a known quantity. 

He was preceded by a reputation as a daredevil, Portuguese soldier and a mariner, 

but he was an unknown quantity. And he quickly managed, through some sleight 

of hand, to get backing from the king of Spain and his backers, who were older 

and wiser, because they were desperate to beat Portugal to the Spice Islands, 

“

”

SO FOR ME, THIS WAS MOSTLY TOURISM, TO GO IN MAGELLAN’S TRACKS. SOMEDAY, TO 

GO IN THE TRACKS OF NEIL ARMSTRONG OR JIM LOVELL WILL BE MOSTLY TOURISM.

LAURENCE BERGREEN OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
132

much as this country was desperate to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon during 

the height of the space race. 

Magellan was limited by his communication skills—he never learned 

Spanish well. He was very embarrassed by his heavy Portuguese accent. He 

usually communicated through very stiff documents. If he ever cracked a joke in 

his life, there was no record of it. 

But he was an obsessive personality and two things obsessed him. [One 

thing was] navigation, and he was a perfectionist in navigation. And as a 

Portuguese, he was aware of what was then the state-of-the-art of navigation 

and cartography in the world. Portuguese were like the Soviets in the space 

race, obsessively secretive about their cartography. If you published a book in 

Portugal that contained any map or information about Portuguese voyages, you 

were thrown into prison. And, of course, the book was destroyed. This was, of 

course, after the age of Gutenberg and [the publication of] Columbus’s books had 

been a very important way of disseminating information. In fact, Columbus was 

Magellan’s boyhood hero, and when Magellan read Columbus’ account of his fi rst 

voyage to the new world, that inspired him to go even further than Columbus, the 

way some astronauts today are inspired by their childhood memories of watching 

John Glenn and other astronauts, and their exploits, on television. 

So Magellan, putting it mildly, was not a people person, but he was a 

brilliant navigator. He was also obsessed with one other element of his fl eet 

of fi ve ships, which were all leased and were all in bad condition: food. Most of 

the records that we have of that time—and they are voluminous—show that he 

was exceedingly careful about provisions and feeding the men what he thought 

would be the most effective diet. And tremendous thought and care was given 

to the kind of food, even though it was all horrible food, it was all salty. It was 

salt beef, it was salt cod, it was salt pork, there were olives. The only sweet thing 

was honey, which was taken along, and there was a tremendous amount of wine, 

which was the staple beverage. It was mixed with water, so it probably wasn’t 

very tasty. And the other staple element was hardtack, that was basically stale 

biscuits. It was a month old by the time it even got on the ships, and it gradually 

became wormy and rotten and soggy as the voyage went on. And even when it 

was soaked with the feces and urine of the rats which infested the ships, the 

sailors continued to eat it because there was nothing else to eat beyond their 

rations, except for the leather wrapping the masts of some of the ships. 

You may wonder why anybody would want to go on a voyage like this. In 

fact, most of the sailors came from the convict or semiconvict class and had no 

other hope for their survival in Spain but this voyage of escape from whatever 

their current problem was. Perhaps it was marital problems, perhaps it was debts, 

perhaps it was some crime that they had been accused of and this was their one 

escape. The offi cers were motivated often by greed because, after all, if they could 

bring or smuggle back some of these cloves, they would be set for life. Even a 

sack full would be enough for them to purchase a small house in the sailor’s 

suburb of Seville and live there comfortably for the rest of their lives. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
133

Magellan went because he believed that he was going to discover a new world. 

He really was impelled by what we would call idealistic motives. Now, the king of 

Spain gave him tremendous latitude. He was given the ability to name continents 

and islands after himself, none of which he did; in fact, he turned out to be very 

self-effacing. The Strait of Magellan, for example, he named the Cape of the Feast 

of the 11,000 Virgins, which doesn’t really roll off the tongue that well, because that 

was the feast day on which he discovered it. So he was giving primarily religious 

names to places he discovered because he was a very devout individual.

His crewmembers came from at least ten countries. They spoke at least ten 

languages, and they didn’t get along. They consisted of a number of cabals, and 

the Spaniards didn’t talk to the Portuguese, who didn’t talk to the English, who 

didn’t talk to the Germans, who didn’t talk to the Norwegians, who didn’t talk to 

the Greeks. You may wonder how they communicated just to get ordinary sailing 

and nautical tasks done. They used an argot that was a Catalan slang that they all 

understood. But there was no easy rapport among these crewmembers, who would 

just as soon get into fi ghts with each other as cooperate on their missions. 

I think it’s fair to say that Magellan, with his lack of so-called “people 

skills,” faced much greater obstacles from the individuals on board the ship 

and the people he encountered in their travels around the world than he did 

from natural obstacles. In fact, he learned to master most of the incredibly 

overwhelming natural obstacles, including terrible storms in traversing the Strait 

of Magellan, which is a nautical nightmare. But he never really knew how to 

handle people, except with the most brutal means imaginable, such as torture, in 

order to inspire and put dread in the men to follow him. 

The major player at that time was King Charles the V, the king of Spain and 

the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The king of Spain was a Hapsburg king; 

you can tell that by that famous Hapsburg jaw in the portrait of him by Titian. 

And it was in the name of King Charles that Magellan went. Keep in mind King 

Charles was an 18-year-old boy; he was trying to grow a beard when he sent 

Magellan on this mission, and even when the survivors came back three years 

later, he was only 21 years old and widely mistrusted by everyone around him. 

The other major player in that era was Pope Leo X, who, as refl ected in the 

portrait by Rafael, was a worried man. And if those Cardinals that are around 

him look like they are menacing him, it’s because, in those days, the Cardinals 

were routinely plotting to kill and poison and strangle each other, and there were 

constant plots against the life of the Pope. Nevertheless, Magellan went around 

the world constantly pledging his loyalty and his entire expedition to the greater 

glory of the Roman Catholic Church and bringing the Church enlightenment to 

people around the world. 

Magellan did not bring slaves or try to enslave people, which was a big 

difference between him and his boyhood hero Columbus. He did bring one 

personal slave with him, but when he found the so-called heathen in places, his 

fi rst thought was not like Columbus’s, “Aha! There are so many people here we 

can enslave!” His fi rst thought was, “Aha! There are so many people here that we 

LAURENCE BERGREEN OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
134

can baptize.” Also, the group aboard included men, women, and children. So this 

already marked a very important shift from the previous era of exploration. 

The maps they used at that time were worse than useless. The so-called 

“T&O map,” based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, shows the ocean circling 

the world, only three continents, Jerusalem at the top—it was absolutely useless 

for anything. And this was the way most people—although not scholars—looked 

at the world at the time [of] Magellan[’s travels]. This would be circa 1515. 

There was a state-of-the-art map that was based on the calculations of 

Ptolemy, the famous Greek-Egyptian mathematician whose mathematical 

compilations were rediscovered and published during the Renaissance. The map 

is a projection of the world as a sphere, based on his calculations. The one dramatic 

omission is the Pacifi c Ocean—9,000 miles! Had Magellan known that after he 

accomplished his greatest feat of navigating the Strait of Magellan, which is at 

the southernmost tip of South America, that he still had to cross the Pacifi c, he 

probably wouldn’t have gone and he probably wouldn’t have gotten backing from 

the Spanish crown or from the fi nanciers who were expecting—like businessmen 

everywhere—a reward, a return on their investment. They were hoping for about 

14 percent, incidentally. So his maps were mostly useless. In fact, when he got 

to the Pacifi c Ocean, he was so exasperated with these kinds of maps and charts 

that he threw them overboard in a temper tantrum and said, “These maps are not 

to be trusted.” And from then on, he relied solely on his own charts. 

A map of his actual route gives you an idea of how it looked in the 

world as it actually was. And you can see his route as he leaves Seville and goes 

to the coast of South America following a well-worn path by that point, until he 

begins to work his way down to near the southernmost tip, looking for the Strait 

of Magellan, which he had promised his backers and the king of Spain he’d fi nd 

or else. And, fi nally, he did manage to fi nd it. But from then on, for most of his 

route and for most of those three years, he was sailing through waters that were 

uncharted by European cartographers and so were unknown to him. 

We don’t have an image of his actual vessel. But we know it rides very high 

in the water. It’s dark brown or black because of the pitch, the tar covering the 

sides to keep it seaworthy. Depictions of ships of the time are shown surrounded 

by fl ying fi sh, which were a constant fact of life of some of the earlier parts of the 

voyage, and by some sort of sea monsters, which were believed to exist.

Some of the hazards that they believed to exist at that time were mermaids, 

considered to be a fact. Another was a magnetic island; if the ship sailed too 

close, the island would pull all the nails out of the ship, the planks would come 

apart, end of story. That was also considered to be scientifi c, factual. Then there 

was the mythical continent of Terra Australis. Not until the 19th century was the 

existence of this continent, thought to somehow counterbalance the continents 

of the Northern Hemisphere, disproved. And, also, the water was thought to boil 

at the equator, because it would be so hot.

So, there were all sorts of imaginary hazards that Magellan and his sailors 

thought they were facing, which turned out not to be the case. However, they 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
135

were also facing real hazards that were in some ways even more dangerous. For 

example, scurvy. Scurvy was the radiation poisoning of its era. There was no 

known cure for scurvy. We now know that a teaspoon or less of Vitamin C taken 

a day, in orange juice, or many herbs, or even beer, or malt, is the magic bullet 

cure for scurvy. But Europeans didn’t know about that until 200 years after 

Magellan’s voyage, which was a complicated, fascinating medical story in itself. 

At that time, scurvy was a dread disease. It caused loosening of the teeth and 

mottled skin, and then, literally, the hard parts of your body, your bones, your 

teeth, your tendons, would come apart—your body literally falling apart. And 

over thirty sailors on Magellan’s crew succumbed to the deprivations of scurvy 

and a horrible death at sea because of this disease, which we now know is so 

simple to prevent. 

So, danger was everywhere, and again, prayer and a belief in the divine will 

was about the only protection that the men felt they had against it. 

One of the great false leads of the voyage was the Rio de la Plata, South 

America, which many of the men insisted was actually the Strait of Magellan. Of 

course, it’s many hundreds of miles north. When Magellan saw it was shallow 

and covered with silt, he fi gured, just based on sheer instinct, that it wasn’t deep 

enough to somehow cut through the South American land mass, and come out 

the other side in the Pacifi c Ocean. And so he sailed around the bay, and kept 

going, and said, “This is not it.” The men didn’t agree, and they mutinied, and he 

responded to the mutiny by drawing and quartering some of the leaders, which 

Ferdinand Magellan’s route around the world (1519–22). (©1996 MAGELLAN GeographixTM)

LAURENCE BERGREEN OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
was a brutal procedure that involved removing their intestines while they were 

alive, burning them in front of them, and, eventually, decapitating them, putting 

their heads on a stake, and putting those stakes in the harbor where the ships were 

moored in order to enforce discipline. And that was how Magellan kept his men in 

line. It was a very, very different era from today, as I was saying at the outset. 

One of his chief discoveries, which was truly accidental, was the Magellanic 

Clouds. Now, as I mentioned before, this was not a scientifi c mission. Not until the 

Age of Enlightenment and Captain Cook in the 18th century was the concept of a 

science mission really popular or prevalent. Nevertheless, Magellan brought with 

him a chronicler who had never been to sea named, Antonio Pigafetta, a funny name. 

But Pigafetta was a rather intelligent, very ambitious young Venetian diplomat who 

heard about Magellan’s voyage when he had gone to Seville, and he signed up for 

this mission. And most of the important things we know about it comes from the 

diary that Pigafetta kept on the voyage. He survived, and Magellan didn’t. 

These Magellanic Clouds, which were until about 10 years ago thought to be 

the galaxies closest to the earth, were simply described by Pigafetta as two “clouds 

of mist.” Period. They had really very little idea of what they were looking at, but 

he noticed everything. He also wrote down 30 different languages that Europeans 

didn’t know about, spoken by various preliterate tribes around the world, giving 

us our fi rst lexicographies of all these languages. So he was an astronomer, an 

ethnographer, and an anthropologist. He also became, because he learned these 

languages, translator for this mission. Pigafetta turned out to be one of Magellan’s 

best hires, let’s put it that way. Especially because he survived. 

The Strait of Magellan itself is unchanged from 500 years ago. It’s basically 

a fjord. The water is very cold. If any of the sailors had fallen overboard, they 

would have survived six minutes at most. By the way, most of the sailors then 

didn’t know how to swim, and they had a terrible phobia about the water. 

Five hundred years later we walked across what our guides like to call a 

“cold beach.” There were Magellanic penguins, which were ubiquitous [and] 

which bailed Magellan’s sailors out of starvation time and again when they went 

through 500 years ago.

The way Magellan managed to navigate what was really a maritime maze—

not a straight watery path—was to have his men climb mountains, and look ahead 

and see, well, which way to go. What was a dead end, and what was going to take 

them to the Pacifi c during this 300-mile crossing? He also tasted the seawater. 

When it was salty, he knew he was near the Atlantic. When it got to be fresher, 

he fi gured he must be getting to the middle of the strait. And when it turned salty 

again, he fi gured he must be coming out to the Pacifi c, which was a misnomer, 

because the water there was even rougher than it had been in the Atlantic, where 

he had faced some terrible storms. 

Glaciers were noted by Pigafetta, and looked at by all the men, but they 

couldn’t fi gure out why they were blue. Of course, they’re blue for the same reason 

that water is blue, because of the way the eye selectively absorbs scattered light. 

Magellan’s fl eet was very lucky not to have been crushed in one of the glaciers. 

136

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
137

Magellan very unwisely immersed himself in a tribal war when he reached 

the Philippine Islands. When he reached that archipelago, he was actually 

worshipped, literally, by the islanders there, whom he converted to Christianity 

in mass baptism, including men, women, and the children. Pigafetta calculated 

several thousand conversions. And Magellan got so caught up in this that he 

wanted to keep on doing it. Meanwhile, all his offi cers who had survived to this 

point said, basically, “You know, we’re on a commercial mission here. We have to 

get to the Spice Islands. You don’t know where they are. We’ve got to get there.” 

But Magellan said he wanted to stay.

There was one island leader we know by the name of Lapu-Lapu, who was 

in a war with all the other islands in the Philippines. He was the ruler of the 

island of Mactan. And he decided that since all the others were converting to 

this new and strange deity who was brought from afar in these gigantic black 

ships, he was going to do the opposite. So, he challenged Magellan to a battle. 

Magellan, as you might gather, was never one to back down from a fi ght. And 

he said “Fine, we’ll undertake this battle.” He fi gured he had gunpowder and 

weapons, guns on his side, which were very primitive and as likely to blow up 

as to fi re correctly. But they did have crossbows, which were far more lethal, and 

they also had armor. Magellan fi gured that armor would be impervious to blows 

from bamboo swords and that one of his soldiers would be able to defeat 50 or 

even 100 island warriors.

So Lapu-Lapu challenged him to a battle. Magellan decided that 60 men 

would be enough for him to handle whatever Lapu-Lapu threw at him. He waved 

off assistance from a local sultan who offered all of his soldiers and troops to 

Magellan in favor of Magellan’s support. He waved off offers of support from all 

his men. He told his ships to stay way back—he didn’t need to be covered by fi re 

because God was going to protect him.

So, he undertook this amphibious landing early in the day on April 27, 

1521. His 60 men were met by 1,500 enraged soldiers with fi re-hardened, poisontipped swords and with bamboo shields who charged into the water and eventually 

overwhelmed Magellan, once they fi gured out who Magellan was—and he was 

rather conspicuous because of his plumed conquistador’s helmet. (Note to other 

explorers, don’t wear a conquistador’s helmet while fi ghting the enemy!) They 

managed to throw spears at the exposed parts of his body, at his arms and his 

legs. Finally, they managed to knock his sword out of his right hand. When he 

stooped to pick it up from the water, he took another spear in his arm, disabling 

it. And then Lapu-Lapu’s soldiers closed in for the kill. And, essentially, they 

hacked Magellan to pieces right there in Mactan harbor, and there was nothing 

large enough left for even a proper burial. And that was the death, the very, very 

unnecessary death of perhaps the greatest explorer of the entire Renaissance era. 

His crew had seen this coming, because they had been aware of his growing 

recklessness, and they quickly elected two captains, Portuguese and Spanish, 

to continue the expedition all the way to the Spice Islands. And then, fi nally, 

overcoming one disaster after another, one ship made it back. 

LAURENCE BERGREEN OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
By the way, the one ship that made it back was captained by a Basque 

mariner, Juan Sebastián Elcano. And in Spain this is known as the Elcano 

mission, rather than the Magellan mission, out of a nationalistic feeling, because 

Magellan was Portuguese and was viewed with so much suspicion by the Spanish 

authorities. 

So, as you can see, the idea of what exploring was like in those days was 

almost incomprehensible compared to what we’re used to today. And so our 

exploration of the solar system continues in that spirit, but with a tremendously 

different approach from what it was like then. ■

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Discussion

DAVID LONGNECKER: My name is David Longnecker, from the University of Pennsylvania, 

and I’m addressing my question to Mike Gernhardt. I was intrigued by your calculation of 

acceptable risk for DCS (decompression sickness). As you know, the concept of acceptable 

risk is one that’s getting considerable play throughout NASA, as we look towards future 

exploration. Do you think it’s possible to apply such techniques and such mathematical 

approaches to broader risk categories, as we look for broader missions?

MICHAEL GERNHARDT: That’s a great question, and the answer is: absolutely, you can. 

There are limitations, obviously, to the data and to the statistics, and, ultimately, you will 

have to make judgments. I found that running this process, I started out with an uninformed 

group and my own notions of what acceptable risk were. And we ended up with an educated 

group and a specifi c defi nition and a consensus to move forward. So, I think the answer to 

that question is yes, a similar process could be run with return to fl ight, using models that are 

out there for [foam-shedding] and MMOD (Micrometeoroid/Orbital Debris) prospectively 

defi ning what acceptable risk is for reentry. The only danger is that that should not be a 

substitute for good judgments. And I think if you look at that as one tool, a decision support 

tool, it could be very valuable in that regard. 

EUGENE RODDENBERRY: Hello. Eugene Roddenberry. Actually, I’ve got a question for Mr. 

Cousteau. I wonder if you could tell us about what your son is doing today and if he’s okay. 

From what I hear, speaking about risk, he’s taking some risk right now.

JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU: Well, I think he’s taking a very calculated risk. He, and some 

of the Hollywood people have helped him, built—that was a dream of his for a long time—a 

life-size great white shark in which he’s hiding. The structure of the great white, which can 

move on its own, is such that anything can attack it and he’s completely safe. What can go 

wrong is his life support system if he doesn’t do the right thing. So, it comes back to him. 

It’s not nature that’s the problem, it’s human.

His objective is to fi nd himself in the middle of other great white sharks, perfectly 

protected, a lot better than I was when I was in South Africa. And he, from the inside, can 

see through the eyes of the shark, as can the cameras which are looking out through the 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

eyes, at what’s going on around it, and can kind of study the behavior of these 

sharks, which we know so very little about. So, from a scientifi c point of view, 

hopefully, they will make some new discoveries as to the behavior of great whites 

by including less risk than if we were in cages or even scuba diving. So, I don’t 

think he’s taking a lot of risk, personally. Much less than other people have, and, 

hopefully, we will learn something. And that’s what he’s doing at the moment, 

as we speak. 

DAVID LAWRENCE: David Lawrence for Laurence Bergreen. Was going around 

the world the great challenge in 1519 that Magellan hoped to meet, or was it just 

to get the cloves and get home, and it was just accidental that his expedition 

continued to make the fi rst circumnavigation?

LAURENCE BERGREEN: Yes, that’s a good question. The latter. It was almost 

incidental. He fi gured that was the fastest way to get to the Spice Islands to bring 

home the spices and to avoid the time-honored overland route, which was much 

slower, far more expensive, and controlled by the Arabs. So, it was really what he 

felt was the expedient way to do it. The effi cient way to do it.

GORDON OSINSKI: Gordon Osinski, from the University of Arizona and 

soon moving to the Canadian Space Agency. We’ve talked so much, so far, 

about the risk of exploration, and the title of the symposium, but until this 

morning, nothing about the risk of not exploring. I think John Chatterton said, 

“Exploration is who we are. We should continue on the path of exploration or 

quit.” And Sylvia Earle said, “Something is happening to us as a species.” There 

are people yesterday who thought, to continue evolving as a species we should 

explore, we have to explore.

I was moved by the reasons why we should explore the sea, and we’re looking 

to the stars. I was born a few years after man last walked on the Moon. I’ve been 

doing some teaching recently and I’m shocked, aghast, at how many people think 

we have not walked on the Moon, or actually, how many people think we have 

walked on Mars. So my question is: Is there a greater risk of not exploring than 

exploring? And maybe pose that to the whole panel and to everyone. 

JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU: I would just like to jump in by saying that we’ve 

done a very, very poor job of communicating the results of our exploration to the 

public. I mean, you’d be amazed to go in parts of the country and fi nd out that 

people don’t know anything about what’s going on at NASA. And we have to see 

a communication resolution, that we are leaving at the moment and taking for 

granted. We have to fi nd a way to get, particularly, young people to know what’s 

going on. And by doing so, we’re going to revive the excitement of exploration 

and stop, once and for all, this concept that everything has been done, and 

everything has been discovered, and there is nothing to do, and let’s go and have 

a drink. It’s very, very sad, and I see this more and more. But there are people 

who are starting to make a difference in that sense. So, we need to really tackle 

young people in schools.

OPENING PHOTO: 

Backdropped against the blue and white 

Earth 130 nautical miles below, astronaut 

Mark C. Lee tests the new Simplifi ed Aid 

for EVA Rescue (SAFER) system. 

(NASA Image Number STS064-217-008).
141

DISCUSSION

SYLVIA EARLE: If I could jump in on this. I was so dismayed by this cover story 

on a new magazine, I think it was U.S. News and World Report last spring, about 

the great age of exploration being over. That the great frontiers were during the 

time of Magellan and Columbus and all that. And yes, there’s much to be done 

out in space, but this planet is largely explored. I actually sat in an Explorer’s 

Club banquet one evening and listened to a spokesperson for space exploration 

talk about how the only frontiers left were up in the sky, until Kathy Sullivan 

kicked the speaker from under the table, and I got up and gave him a laser look 

from across the room. We’re talking Carl Sagan here. 

And he backtracked and said, “Oh, yes, most of the ocean has yet to really be 

explored.” And that’s the point, you know? If I were in charge, the administrator 

of an agency with the objective of looking at the solar system and surveying all 

the planets and all the things and even beyond, I’d say, “That blue one! That one 

there with all the water. That’s the one we really need to concentrate on because 

that’s where the action is!” If you’re looking for life, fi nd the water. And we’ve 

got it. It’s here.

And my greatest fear is that we, with all of our technology and knowledge 

about how dependent we are on the natural systems that support us, we’re 

going to let the system degrade to the point where our species is going to be in 

trouble. We are in trouble! The thing is, we don’t appreciate it. I’m all for looking 

skyward and in every direction of exploration, but it baffl es me why we aren’t 

really motivated to look inwards. To look at the ocean, to explore it, and to fi nd a 

place for ourselves here within the natural systems that sustain us. And to apply 

this great technology that we have to really understand the magnitude of what we 

don’t know about the ocean, and put it to work for us, for our survival, for our 

well-being. This is the time.

In the next ten years, if we don’t really take action, we’re going to lose the 

chance with many of the species that we have taken for granted all our lives—

tuna, swordfi sh, and the like. It’s going to be gone! Coral reefs and all these other 

systems that are at risk right now. We have the capacity to turn things around. 

The real question is, are we going to use our knowledge in the spirit of exploration 

to do it? I mean, Goethe said, “It’s not enough just to know. You must act.” Well, 

we know. Do we have the capacity now to act? 

JOHN CHATTERTON: The spirit of exploration is certainly one thing. But 

exploring requires resources. It requires money. And right now, we’re very much 

satisfi ed with spending money on weapons of war, on SUVs, on things that are 

really counterproductive to our best interests. And, certainly, one of those things 

would be exploration. 

JAMES CAMERON: Well, I think that’s an excellent point, you know. I guess I 

tried to make it—probably crudely—that the type of exploration that remains 

to be done on our planet requires more advanced technology than previously. 

You could do a lot and put your names in the history books with a small ship—

which was state-of-the-art at the time—or some sled dogs and some true grit 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

and some luck. These days, none of those things are suffi cient. You need large 

organizations like NASA or NOAA, Wood’s Hole [Oceanographic Institution] or 

MBARI [Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute] or some body like that to 

provide technology and support staff and engineering and so on, so it does boil 

down to a budget issue. 

Go back to Mike’s formula, you know? Cost is a factor, the likelihood of 

success is a factor. You run that equation. That applies to the fi nancing [of] a 

movie, the funding of a deep-ocean expedition, or an entire research program that 

might deal with the deep. People look at it and say, “What’s the reward? What’s 

in it for me?” But there are new and interesting ways to fi nance explorations 

that didn’t exist before. The deep ocean is revealing such vast biodiversity that 

whole new genomes are being revealed, and there are pharmaceutical companies 

that are interested in bioprospecting the deep ocean, which will allow them to 

create new drugs, new treatments, and so on. So there’s renewed interest in pure 

exploration, in a sense, and biosampling in realms that previously were being 

overlooked as not economically viable. 

So it’s just a question of being creative about how we create the funding 

paradigms. I’ve tried to do something a little bit unusual. In the past, fi lmmakers 

have piggybacked on scientifi c expeditions that were going anyway for reasons 

of the goals of their various parent institutions. We fl ipped it around on our 

last fi lm and got the money from the media sources, then went to the scientifi c 

community and said, “Hey, we’re going out with submersibles to the hydrothermal 

vents in the East Pacifi c Rise and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Who wants to come 

along and take advantage of these assets that we’re marshaling out there for 

imaging purposes?” 

And interestingly, our best response was from the astrobiology community. 

We wound up taking researchers from Ames and Johnson Space Center and from 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory with us out there to—not to do analogue research, but 

to look at the biology of the deep vents and relate it to what they might fi nd in 

the fossil record on Mars or other places in the solar system and beyond. So we 

were actually using media and entertainment funding to help with science and 

exploration. There are different ways to skin the cat, but I think the important 

thing is for everyone collectively to try to engender the passion for exploration 

in the next generation. 

And part of that is reminding them of the heroes of the past and keeping 

that image alive, and part of that is reminding them that there is so much of the 

world and of the universe that has yet to be explored. It is within our grasp, and 

it’s a real adventure that we can really have and really enjoy in our lifetimes, if we 

put our will toward doing that. 

SYLVIA EARLE: What is the cost of not exploring? That’s the real factor. 

ANDY PRESBY: My name is Andy Presby. I’m a student here at the school. When 

a person of my meager accomplishments attempts to suggest something that may 

be new to a group such as this, he must do so with a certain degree of humility. 
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DISCUSSION

I hope you will recognize the respect that I have for everyone in this room and 

everyone, particularly, at that table. I think you guys are missing the point. 

I’ve heard a lot of talk over the last couple of days, and I’ve been a space nut 

since I was three years old and my daddy took me to see one of Mr. Roddenberry’s 

movies. However, we talk a lot about the scientifi c benefi t. We talk a lot about the 

personal exploratory benefi t. For example, exploring Mount Everest. You then go 

and talk about the need to inspire the next generation of explorers, and I completely 

agree with you, Mr. Cameron, that that is absolutely required. You’ve talked about 

the cost. We talked yesterday about a goal, and typically, when I hear somebody in 

the space community talk about a goal, they mean a planet. They mean a body. I 

don’t think that’s the goal that will inspire that [next] generation of explorers. 

We have for the fi rst time in human history come to recognize that, as you 

say, Mr. Lovell, we are living on a spacecraft, a giant spacecraft that we didn’t 

design and we don’t know how it works. Now we’re screwing around with the life 

support mechanisms. I work in submarines. I understand and fully appreciate the 

need to keep life support gear running, but I also understand the need to explore 

the environment around me and, perhaps, fi nd alternative means through which 

the needs of—what is it now?—six and a half billion people who all want the 

American standard of living, which, if I am not mistaken, involves approximately 

two personal slaves worth of energy per year per person.

We live in an environment that’s fl ooded with energy. Space is full of it. 

I hear folks talking about very narrow goals, and we’re talking about scientifi c 

goals. We’re talking about exploratory goals and personal goals, and those are all 

important. Those are all immediate short-term goals, but I argue that, to inspire 

the next generation of explorers, you need to speak about long-term goals such as 

fi nding ways to relieve the pressure that we place on our environment by looking 

at, and yes, it’s going to be expensive, sir, ways of moving resource production 

and other systems such as that off planet. 

I have a tremendous interest, and everyone sitting here in this row has a 

tremendous interest, in the sources of human confl ict. The two sources of human 

confl ict, as my friends have said, are the misunderstood “other,” close proximity 

to same, and lack of resources. Why don’t we speak about that?

DAVID HALPERN: Very well said by the next generation. 

JAMES CAMERON: I wholeheartedly agree that energy is probably going to be the 

source of confl ict. It is currently the source of confl ict. It is going to continue to be 

the source of confl ict, and there may be energy sources revealed, whether it is mining 

helium-3 on the Moon, doing off-planet fusion production, creating antimatter on 

the back side of the Moon where the earth is shielded, or whatever you want to do. 

I think these are good ideas. I think that the issue of solving the problems with our 

life support system here—which is something I personally am passionate about 

but didn’t speak about today because, frankly, I knew my colleagues here would 

do it because I know them well—is a separate issue from exploration. I think that 

there are aspects of exploration that are survival requirements. 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

When Sylvia talks about the risk of not exploring, it’s really the risk of 

not having the technical capability to explore. We build our muscles slowly to 

go out and do these things. We are still on an indefi nite hold in low Earth orbit, 

building up the muscle to learn how to support human beings for long duration 

in order to be able to go further. We are relying on our robots now to be our 

precursors out there. We have to build up this capability, and, personally, I believe 

you do have to have goals to do that. You have to have a focusing element. It can’t 

just be an abstract thing: Let’s go out and solve our energy problems out in the 

universe. We won’t solve them at the Moon. We’ll solve them here, generating 

the technology that enables that exploration. 

In my mind, I uncouple the abstract goal of exploration, which is to satisfy 

the human soul—yearning, understanding, all those things—from the hard core 

nuts and bolts activity of exploration, which has always spawned so much in 

the way of economic enhancement of this country and of the other developed 

countries, because we put so much energy into the technology required to do 

these diffi cult and exotic things. We will develop an improved nuclear power 

system. We will develop fusion power. We will develop some of these things, and 

the control systems for same, in the course of trying to get to Mars or do these 

high energy things that we have to do in order to explore the solar system. Our 

understanding of distant stars from orbiting next-generation space telescopes 

and so on may be the key turning the latch of fi guring out how to have an 

unlimited power supply here on Earth that will replace oil, and give us another 

different excuse in the future for going to war. Right now, our excuse is oil. 

SYLVIA EARLE: While we do look for alternatives to our current energy 

sources—and we should defi nitely do that—meanwhile, we can make better use 

of what we’ve already got: more effi cient use of our current energy resources. 

It is not just in terms of oil, gas, and things of this nature; I mean in terms of 

food resources, too. Twenty million tons of wildlife extracted out of the ocean 

is simply thrown-away bycatch. More than 300 thousand marine mammals 

every year are destroyed in the process of catching fi sh. We are seeing the fi sh 

that we are taking just collapsing. You know we are too good at catching these 

things. We are hunter-gatherers, but we’re armed with new technologies that 

our predecessors could not imagine. So, we need to put on the brakes and think 

about more effective use of the resources that are here. We couldn’t support six 

billion people with wildlife from the land. Ed Wilson, Harvard biologist, says 

we’ve seen consumed “the large, the slow and the tasty from North America over 

10 thousand years”. It’s only taken us 50 years with our new technologies to do 

the same thing with the ocean. We are very close to losing some of the creatures 

that we have thought infi nitely able to rebound no matter [how many] we 

extracted from the ocean. Exploration, in terms of fi nding solutions to the very 

problem you have posed—how do we fi nd the place for ourselves that is going 

to last, knowing that our numbers have increased three times in my lifetime, 

but the planet stays the same size? Our capacity to support us is currently being 

stretched. It’s not just oil and gas. It’s oxygen in the atmosphere. What are we 
145

DISCUSSION

doing to that part of the world, the ocean, that is generating most of the oxygen, 

absorbing much of the carbon dioxide? We’re messing around with it. We need 

to know how it works. That means explore it, and then, take heed. Not just, yeah, 

we’ve got all this new information, but acting on what we are learning and doing 

it in a way that secures a place for ourselves so we can continue to explore as long 

as humankind survives. 

ANDY PRESBY: I don’t know if anybody else wants to comment, but I didn’t 

mean to focus specifi cally on energy. It was an example, and one that we can all 

relate to. I don’t know if that helps anybody respond to my question. 

JIM GARVIN: Jim Garvin, NASA, Moon and Mars Chief Scientist. They’re our 

resources. I think the tenet I’m hearing in response to this great question is that 

we have to separate exploration, as a catalytic tool to make things better, from the 

applied end game of exploration that we can document in history, from Magellan’s 

search for cloves and in fi nding fi rst orbit of Earth. How do we measure that? One 

of [the] things we are asked all the time is, what is the yield from these catalytic 

things? Whether they be to inspire, what are they? We use lots of terms, and 

I think this audience would be wonderful to try come up with those metrics. 

This young man says inspiration isn’t enough. Okay. As we catalyze, what is? The 

one I always fi nd easy, maybe because I’m simpleminded and not yet quantumcomputing, is IT. Information technology. Why are we doing it better in some 

places? Many reasons. Smart people. Maybe that’s an area we ought to look at as 

part of exploration to extend ourselves to think better and to use our resources 

better to better inspire. Anyway, that’s my comment for the group.

JAMES CAMERON: I think there is an inspirational dividend to exploration. I 

think this is one of the primary reasons to do it. I think you have to ask yourself, 

why are the Chinese doing a space program that basically mirrors what we were 

doing thirty years ago? Why is it important to them now, as the fastest growing 

economy on the planet, to be doing it, to simply be reproducing an accomplishment 

that is already done? Because they know that the inspirational dividend within 

their own borders is going to be signifi cant in inspiring kids to go into technical 

careers in math, engineering, and science. So, the value that they are getting out 

of it is much greater than what they are putting into it. They’ve done the math. 

They can’t win that race any more. 

I think we should ask ourselves, what are we losing by not exploring, in 

terms of the inspirational dividend to a younger generation? One of the biggest 

problems this country is going to be facing is the lack of “fresh outs” in engineering, 

math, and sciences in the next ten years or so. We’ve got some big problems to 

solve, and we’re too far down the path as a technological species to go back to the 

garden and try to pretend none of this ever happened. We’ve got to get ourselves 

out. We’ve got to think ourselves out of it as a technological species. We have to 

continue to build those tools and that capability. 

Certainly, with the vast amounts available for military procurement, you’ve 

got people working in math and science and so on making pretty good livings there. 
146

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Wouldn’t you rather have an alternative to that, though, in space exploration 

where we can focus our minds, improve our IT capability, improve our control 

over energy systems, and, by the way, understand long-term regenerative life 

support systems? If we’re going to go to Mars, the point is to stay there, not 

simply touch base and run back. We’re going to have to learn how to live there 

with very, very fi nite resources. 

The more we learn about closed loop ecosystems, the more we need to 

know about the big, closed loop ecosystem that we live in, and vice versa. One 

body of knowledge will feed the other. I think there is an awful lot to be gained 

societally for the investment that we are making in space exploration, and I would 

certainly like to see a proportionate amount spent on ocean exploration. I know 

Sylvia is enlightened in that she is one of the few people in the ocean community 

that doesn’t constantly complain about those billions that NASA gets. 

When they’re fi ghting for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousand of 

dollars, she is enlightened enough to know that all knowledge improves us all and 

that exploration should be constantly going in both directions. I agree with that 

as well. I could talk for hours about the value of analogues, of ocean exploration, 

of space exploration . . . And how you could build muscle in both places . . .

JOHN CHATTERTON: The other thing is that exploration should not just inspire 

more exploration. Exploration should inspire additional exploration, but it should 

inspire us to think big, to work on problems like energy, to work on problems like 

the environment, to work on problems like population. Everything that we’ve got 

on our to do list as a species, we need to apply ourselves, if we’re going to fi nd 

solutions. We don’t really have that much in the way of a choice. 

JIM PAWELCZYK: My name is Jim Pawelczyk and I’m at Penn State University. 

James Cameron, you mentioned in your talk that we’ve already picked the lowhanging fruit with regard to exploration. All of you have spoken about inspiring 

the next generation of explorers. Do we need a different educational paradigm in 

order to make those things mesh? And if so, what do you think it looks like?

SYLVIA EARLE: I have three children and four grandsons. It disturbs me that 

we aren’t getting this generation coming along—the kids—actually out doing 

things in good, wild places. In fact, our safety mechanisms in schools dictate 

against it. You go to Hawaii, kids aren’t allowed to go get in the water as a part 

of their school activity—not above their ankles, anyway—because, you know, 

it’s not safe. So whatever it takes, whether it’s museums, aquariums, moms and 

dads, whoever, we need to take the responsibility for getting kids connected with 

the real world, the living world, the wild world. We’re missing it in the rather 

structured form of education as it is currently being conducted, not just in this 

country, but most of the rest of the world where education systems are—really, I 

mean, it’s important to learn the ABCs and the 1-2-3s, but we’ve also got to learn 

that we’re a part of this greater system, and that’s missing.
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DISCUSSION

PAUL SPUDIS: Yes, Paul Spudis, Applied Physics Lab. I want to thank Andy for 

stimulating a really good conversation here, because I think he’s nibbling around 

the edges of something. I’ve been listening to this for the last couple of days and 

I’ve heard a lot of interesting things. But I have two comments. First, in regard 

to this argument of spending money on weapons versus exploration, they’re 

actually complimentary and, in fact, historically, the exploration is something 

we let the military do during peacetime. And all the great explorations of the 

Pacifi c weren’t undertaken because they were interested in the natural history of 

Polynesia, they actually wanted good maps that they could use to retain British 

control of the seaways. 

The second point I want to make is that I think that we’ve nibbled around the 

edges of the issue of why we do exploration. And I think there’s three motivations 

to it, of which we’ve only discussed two. The fi rst motivation was discussed 

yesterday, and that’s sort of the personal gratifi cation. You know, because it’s 

there, I want to go, I’m curious, I want to know. The second motivation is societal 

and collective. It’s, we explore to get strategic information, to inform ourselves 

so that we can make better guesses on how to do something else, whether it’s to 

identify other resources or to develop a technology or something like that. But 

no one’s talked about the third motivation. And that is exploration as a prelude 

to settlement. We explore because we want to go live there. And one of the really 

interesting things that we got out of Apollo is an appreciation for the fact that, 

sooner or later, life on this planet is doomed. We know this because we know 

that impacts occur, and we know that in the past they’ve come darned close 

to nearly completely sterilizing the Earth—wiping out almost 95 percent of all 

living species. So, ultimately, someday, somehow, that’s going to happen here. 

And one of the big motivations, I think, for exploring space, is to create 

additional reservoirs of human culture, so that if Earth is destroyed, or the 

biosphere is destroyed, there will be, the human race will survive. Now, that’s 

a long-term thing, certainly isn’t a part of going to the Moon or going to Mars. 

But doing that by going to these places, we’re going to learn the skills we need to 

develop the ability to live off-planet. Does anyone have any comment on that?

PENNY BOSTON: Penny Boston, from New Mexico Tech. I’ve been thinking 

about another type of risk that we really haven’t addressed yesterday and today. 

And it’s really a risk to exploration. When I look at everybody here who’s doing 

exploration, we’re all relying more and more on ever greater degrees of technology. 

So that the point at which one can participate in this, the number of people 

becomes narrower and narrower. You have to be well-educated and you have to 

have access to resources. And I think back to the famous essay by C.P. Snow, in 

the middle of the last century, the two cultures where you see this increasing 

dichotomy between those who know and those who have, and those who do not 

know and do not have. And it seems that, unless we attend to that growing bridge 

in society, that ultimately threatens our future in terms of exploration. I see 

symptoms of that in these sort of vacuous reality shows that are on TV. As much 
148

as we may denigrate them [the reality TV shows], what it seems to me to indicate 

is that the vast majority of people are feeling more and more uncomfortable with 

their excessively cloistered and safe lives, and that, perhaps, this need to acquire 

risk is general throughout the population, even though people like us manifest 

it maybe more obviously. And so, this potential danger to all of our enterprise, 

whether it be ocean or land or space, seems to me a festering element that we 

need to address.

JAMES CAMERON: I think that’s an excellent point. And my answer would relate 

to the previous question about education. You suggested that the problem is that 

the technology narrows the band of people that can actually participate. But, 

in fact, technology can also be an enabler for people everywhere to participate, 

through improvements in information technology. And, you know, theoretically, 

we’re all wired up to one big human nervous system. So, if we have an avatar, 

whether it’s robotic or human, out there somewhere at the bottom of the ocean or 

in space doing something that’s interesting, there’s no reason why we can’t all look 

over its shoulder and participate. But it requires a will on the part of the people 

budgeting that operation to make sure that they put in as a line item, not just 

outreach in the sense of, “We’re going to tell people what we’re doing and show 

them some images,” but participatory outreach in the sense that, “We’re going to 

let you look over their shoulders. We’re going to spend that extra two or three 

percent on a major mission to let people actually participate.” And I know that the 

recent activities on Mars have done an absolutely stellar job in doing that, if it can 

be judged by the number of hits to the NASA Web site—I think it’s up to 11 billion 

now or something like that. People are looking over the shoulder of those little 

rovers. And if we had human beings there right now doing microbiology—I know 

that’s your fi eld—or whatever, if we should get so lucky as to fi nd some evidence 

of that on Mars, people would be able to participate in that. So I think the solution 

is always going to be there as a technical solution. It’s a question of imagining it 

before the fact and incorporating it into what we’re doing.

SYLVIA EARLE: Just endorsing your observation about the need to have risk. It’s 

a kind of spice. Probably more valuable than cloves. 

DAVID HALPERN: With that parting comment, I think it seems appropriate to 

bring this session to an end. I’d like to thank Administrator Sean O’Keefe and 

Ames Director Scott Hubbard for the wonderful facilities that we’re in now. And 

I especially want to thank each of the panelists for their dedication and their 

wonderful comments and their inspiration for what we’ve been doing. And I’d 

like to thank, fi nally, the audience for the wonderful questions and wonderful 

attentiveness. And with that, I have one more thing. Those of you who are from 

the East Coast probably have never lived through an earthquake, but you just had 

a 5.9 earthquake about 120 miles off the coast. So this here session is memorable 

in many ways. Thank you again. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page Open next section
S E S S I O N T H R E E

stars

151

Introduction

In this symposium, we’ve heard from women and men exploring the earth, the seas, and 

the limits of human capability. We’ve discussed personal risk, programmatic risk, technical 

risk, survival of the species risk, and the most important of all, the risk of not exploring 

at all. We are compelled by some ancient instinct to push the limits, to go where humans 

can’t survive except for brief periods of time or with signifi cant technical support. 

My name is John Grunsfeld. I’m the chief scientist of NASA. I’m an astronaut; I’ve 

had the privilege to fl y four times in space. I’ve done fi ve space walks, so in fact—along 

the lines of going to places where people can’t survive—I do, in fact, work in a vacuum, 

along with many of the others in this room. And it’s truly a privilege to have been able to 

be involved at the infancy of space exploration. In this session, we do turn to that ultimate 

challenge, our fi rst steps off the home planet. We live in a truly remarkable time. 

As we speak here, as we’re comfortably sitting in this environment, Gennady 

Padalka, the commander on the International Space Station, and Mike Fincke, the chief 

science offi cer, are spending their 163rd day in space. (I may be off by a day.) For over three 

years, we’ve had 24/7–365 occupation of the International Space Station. The ultimate 

service, if you will. And I think that’s pretty remarkable. 

Spirit and opportunity are still alive on Mars; we’ll hear more about that. Cassini 

is at Saturn taking unbelievable images, things that we’ve never seen before, things 

that we certainly don’t understand. We have the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer 

Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory astronomy facility—three of the four 

great observatories, all exploring space and discovering things that we couldn’t even 

imagine when these instruments were conceived. 

We now know that there are over a 100 planets around nearby stars, when a decade 

ago, we only knew about our own solar system. And, in spite of this tremendous growth 

of our knowledge of our home planet, the solar system, and the universe, it turns out 

from recent observations that we only know a tiny bit about what makes up our universe. 

Ninety-six percent of the universe is fi lled with stuff and we don’t have a clue what it is. 

But I have to say, we’re a little bit arrogant. Because when I was a graduate student 

and a postdoc and a faculty member at Caltech, it was believed that we knew about most 

of the universe, the history of the universe, the Big Bang and infl ation and expansion of 

the universe. And I thought that most of the great frontiers in physics had been solved and 

we were cleaning up the details. And, as you heard this morning on the sea, we talk about 

having explored to the ends of the Earth, but 96 percent is still unexplored. For most of the 

universe, we still don’t have a clue what makes it tick. We are really in the infancy in space 

exploration. Only 12 people have walked on the Moon, our closest planetary surface, and it’s 

time to leave the cradle. 

In all the preceding talks, the central theme has been risk—that’s what we’re here 

to talk about. One element that has been discussed, peripherally or centrally, is what I 

consider to be one of the central issues, which is teamwork. Space exploration sets a new 

extreme as a team activity. I think we can draw a parallel to Jim Lovell on Apollo 13, the 
152

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

ultimate team of folks 200,000 miles from planet Earth with a pretty terrible problem. 

And Mike Foale, as he described last night, on the Mir space station, an international 

team also with really tough times. And how the team in space and on planet Earth came 

together to solve those problems that led to the ultimate success of those missions, the 

safe return of the crew. 

For this session, we’ve assembled a team to continue this great discussion on 

risk. And I dare say we have, indeed, put together a team of stars. 

John Grunsfeld, NASA Chief Scientist and Astronaut
Harrison “Jack” Schmitt is a geologist, astronaut, and U.S. senator. He received a bachelor of science 

degree in science from the California Institute of Technology in 1957 and a doctorate of philosophy 

in geology from Harvard University in 1964. He was a member of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and, 

thereby, the fi rst and only geologist to land on the Moon. Schmitt served from 1977 to 1983 as a United 

States Senator (Republican) representing New Mexico. Harrison is a founder and chairman of InterluneIntermars Initiative, Inc., an organization that advocates the private sector’s role in lunar exploration and 

developing lunar resources. He is chair emeritus of The Annapolis Center (risk assessment evaluation) 

and an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaching “Resources from Space.” 

Harrison consults, speaks, and writes on policy issues of space and the science of the Moon.

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt

Former NASA Astronaut

One of the things that occurred to me that might be worth 

emphasizing, relative to other discussions that have already occurred, is a brief summary of 

the reward that came with whatever risk that was run—personal as well as national—with 

respect to the Apollo program. Certainly it was conceived in the context of the Cold War, 

and it succeeded spectacularly. And even some of the émigrés that I’ve had an opportunity to 

talk with say that it had a tremendous infl uence on the confi dence of the Soviet leadership 

relative to President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, in that they believed—maybe 

more so than many of the people in this country—that we would succeed, because we 

succeeded in Apollo where they had not. 

Secondly, the technology base that Apollo enhanced—I think you’re hard put to 

fi nd any specifi c item that it created, but it certainly enhanced the technology base. That 

technology base is available to us still today and has accelerated human progress in so many 

different ways and in so many different fi elds. 

The cultural and societal legacy is often, I think, forgotten. It was a tremendous 

confi dence-builder among the American people at the time. And, really, as we traveled the 

Risk and Reward in Apollo
154

world as ambassadors during the Apollo 17 postfl ight tour, it was a confi dence 

builder for people all over the world. Now, whether we’ve lived up to the legacy 

of that confi dence or not is another discussion, but nevertheless, these kinds of 

projects do have that kind of effect, in that, if we can go to the Moon, then we 

surely can do some other things. And the answer is that you can if you motivate 

young men and women to believe it’s the most important thing they’re going to 

do with their lives. If you can create that kind of motivation, indeed, you can do 

just about anything. 

And, fi nally, from my perspective of actually having been on the Apollo 17 

mission, the scientifi c legacy is just unfathomable. It is absolutely a magnifi cent 

legacy of Apollo and its precursors that they created our modern understanding 

of the origin and evolution of the Moon, a foundation that’s been built upon by 

some of you with the Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions. It’s something 

that now relates directly to further understanding of the terrestrial planets, not 

the least of which are the Earth and Mars. Imagine, once in a while, what it would 

be if we did not have that legacy of information about the Moon—what kind 

of thoughts you would be having on Mars based on the information currently 

coming in? So this, in a very brief way, I think 

illustrates why the reward was so fantastically 

important and so much worth the risk that a 

few people, and the Nation and managers and 

families, took in pursuit of that goal. 

What I would like to spend a little 

more time on today is thinking about the 

probability of success, which is the inverse 

handmaiden, if you will, as a measure of 

risk. A few years ago, in a paper that I’m sure 

nobody saw that I gave at one of the space 

conferences in Albuquerque, I tried to deal 

with the evaluation, in a semiquantitative way, 

of the various approaches that one might take 

to return to deep space, and, specifi cally, to the 

Moon. As you might expect from my biases, the 

private sector approach won in that evaluation, 

but it was on the assumption that there are 

commercially viable lunar resources—namely, 

as was mentioned by James Cameron and 

stimulated by the young man here to my right, 

the possibility of lunar helium-3 fusion power 

as one of several potential sources of electrical 

power that we’re going to need over the next 

50 years and beyond. If you want the latest lay analysis of what the envelope of 

fi nancial and technical success is for a lunar helium-3 initiative, I will recommend 

to you the October [2004] Popular Mechanics.

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan (left) and 

scientist-astronaut Harrison H. “Jack” 

Schmitt aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft 

during the Apollo program’s last lunar 

landing mission. 

(NASA Image # AS17-134-20426)

Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt collects lunar rake 

samples at Station 1 during the fi rst Apollo 17 extravehicular activity 

(EVA-1) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. 

(NASA Image # AS-17-163-24148)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
155

But, nonetheless, clean, low-cost energy is one way that we can solve 

many of the problems discussed this morning. It is clearly the challenge of this 

generation and subsequent generations as well. My own estimate is that in order 

to just provide four-fi fths of the world’s population with the level of standard of 

living that we enjoy today, we’re looking at 10 to 11 times the amount of energy 

by 2050 that we consume today per capita. I’m not going to go into that any more 

deeply, but if someone is interested, I’m sure I could fi nd the paper that would 

go into it more deeply. 

Well, ladies and gentlemen, risk is always with us, as has been made very 

clear by this outstanding symposium. And there are always going to be people 

around us, many of them in this room, that are willing to take the risks, whatever 

they might be, because we can conceive of the rewards. We’re human beings, and 

one of the great advantages we have as a species is we conceive of these kinds of 

things. In major technological-based endeavors, I have come to the conclusion, 

studying this over the last 20 or 30 years to some degree, that there really are 

three dominant, interrelated determinants for success. 

We were talking about the probability of success here, which is the inverse 

of risk. One is the size of the management reserve funding; second is the 

management experience and fl exibility to carry out this great project; and third 

is a cadre, a reservoir, of motivated young men and women. 

Now, fi rst let me address the size of the management reserve of funding. 

In Apollo, you all know the story—true or not, but it certainly worked out that 

way—of Jim Webb getting an estimate of what it was going to take to accomplish 

Apollo and then doubling it and doubling it again, and that was our management 

reserve. And we used all of it. We didn’t go over it, but we used all of it. And the 

reason a management reserve [is] so important is [that] it enables management, 

then, to deal with the unknown unknowns and with erroneous initial assumptions 

that might have been made about the approach to the problem. 

Apollo is a good example of where an adequate management reserve brought 

success. The Shuttle is an example, particularly in the early days, of where an 

inadequate management reserve caused signifi cant problems. I happened to be 

in the Senate when Shuttle was headed for its fi rst fl ight, and in 1978 it was 

clear that Shuttle was not going to get to fi rst fl ight without a major infl ux of 

funds. The Carter administration, at the time, was not willing to fi ght for that 

“

”

. . . OUR EXPERIENCE WITH APOLLO AND SUBSEQUENT ACTIVITIES INDICATE 

THAT YOU NEED TO HAVE MOTIVATING OBJECTIVES THAT ARE ABOUT 10 YEARS 

APART, PLUS OR MINUS A COUPLE OF YEARS. 

HARRISON SCHMITT RISK AND REWARD IN APOLLO
156

supplemental budget. I think it was the fi scal ’79 budget, if I remember correctly, 

that needed the supplemental. Until a good friend of ours named Hans Mark 

was able to push and persuade President Carter that the Shuttle was required for 

verifi cation of the SALT II treaty, which Carter was very interested in, we were 

not going to get that supplemental. 

But, fortunately, Hans did persuade the President to do that and we suddenly 

had the White House helping us get the supplemental through a Democratic 

Congress. I might say that Hans had set that one up a little bit, because the payloads 

had been designed for the Shuttle and not for ELV [Expendable Launch Vehicle], 

so he had a pretty good argument. That does present, though, an ethical dilemma, 

and I don’t have an answer for this dilemma. It depends on what you believe the 

ultimate value and reward of the project in hand will be, in that, if you, in a legitimate 

analysis, know that you have inadequate funding and continue with inadequate 

management reserve to take on a new project, should you take it on? Maybe the 

Postgraduate school here could have a seminar or something on that subject and 

try to come up with an answer, but I really don’t have it. Because I think you can 

argue that the managers of NASA at the time felt that even if they realized they had 

an inadequate management reserve of funding, that if they didn’t go ahead with 

the Space Shuttle under the constraints that the Nixon administration established, 

that we would not have a manned space fl ight program. So I’ll leave that dilemma 

with you, and maybe you can debate it over the next beer. 

Now the second thing, the management experience and fl exibility, was 

certainly epitomized by the NASA management team in place between 1967 and, 

in particular, in 1968–72, when it really did crystallize and became a team that 

is to be envied, I think, by all of us. And it was critical to have that kind of team, 

based initially from the heritage of the NACA, the National Advisory Committee 

on Aeronautics, and added to by people like Sam Phillips and Bob Seamans and 

others, who came in and provided that really remarkable team that led us through 

to success, not only for the fi rst landing, but, also, the success for Apollo as a 

whole. And, indeed, that team of managers, in particular Bob Gilruth, George Low, 

and Sam Phillips, made decisions well prior to Apollo 11 in order to optimize the 

Apollo system so that it could be used for scientifi c exploration of the Moon. 

All you’d have to do is look at the decisions that were made. The lunar rover, the 

Block II Lunar Module, the advanced ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments 

Package] and, strangely enough, the agreement that we should begin to fully train 

the Apollo crew, beginning with Jim Lovell’s crew, in exploration geology. And the 

combination of all of that meant that we got that legacy I mentioned earlier of a 

remarkable scientifi c return from Apollo. 

The third and maybe most important determinant for success is to have 

that reservoir of young men and women available to apply their stamina and their 

imagination to the project at hand. Jim Lovell did not mention it yesterday, but Gene 

Kranz, after the Apollo 13 crisis had been resolved, did an analysis of the average 

age of people in the Mission Control Center and it was 26 years old. And most of 

them had already been there for several years. And there was just no question that 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
157

you’ve got to have that kind of stamina, that kind of imagination and fl exibility and 

willingness to work as teams, or you probably are not going to be successful. 

Now, having said that, I also feel that our experience with Apollo and 

subsequent activities indicate that you need to have motivating objectives that 

are about 10 years apart, plus or minus a couple of years. But that’s about what I 

think human evolution has given us in terms of our ability to concentrate for 16-

hour days, 8-day weeks for a long period of time in order to make sure that which 

is to be done happens. So, as we look to establishing a long-term capability for 

indefi nite exploration of our solar system and, eventually beyond, I think we have 

to still think in terms of how we quantize that period into specifi c objectives 

that each generation can identify with and accomplish. Now, with respect to 

public support and political support, I don’t think there’s any question that we 

in the United States believe and will continue to believe—and certainly NASA 

believes—that visibility and transparency are absolutely essential. 

If you’re going to have active and sustained political and explanatory 

support for efforts like we are about, you also need to have a White House 

deeply committed and involved at basically all levels. There is no substitute in 

the Congress for an active interest and activity from the White House. Whether 

it’s a Democratic or Republican-controlled Congress, you still have to have that. 

Otherwise, you just don’t get their attention very well. 

Now, on the private sector side of things, you need to have investor 

support. And to have investor support, the most important thing, of course, is to 

have competitive returns on investment. That is, competitive with other uses of 

capital. If you can do that, if you can show a path for that return on investment 

in a relatively short period of time, you have a predictable path for success. In 

fact, it’s more predictable than the government, and that’s why we’re going to 

concentrate on that right now. I know what the criteria for success are in a private 

initiative. I know what they are in a government initiative. But the ones in the 

private sector are much more predictable. Or you just need to have an angel out 

there with irrational exuberance. And we’re hoping to fi nd one of those one of 

these days, and we’ll be on our way. ■

HARRISON SCHMITT RISK AND REWARD IN APOLLO

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
John asked me to be on the panel and talk a little bit about 

personal risk. How do you decide, from a very personal standpoint, what risks you’re willing 

to take? Specifi cally, to talk about the thoughts that went through my head, when I agreed to 

be a crew member on Mir, in connection with personal risk. It’s a fact that a person is born 

and from the time you are born, you are taking risks. Every single person, every day of their 

life, is taking risks in one form or the other, and, as you go through life, you are learning 

to mitigate the risk. What risks you are willing to accept, what risks you are not willing to 

accept in such and such a case. Well, I’m not going to go back to the day I was born to talk 

about how I think I learned to accept risk, but I will go back to 1962 when I was 20 years 

old. I just had graduated from college, I was 20 years old, I had a passion to fl y, and I had no 

job. As you can see, that didn’t correlate very well, but I knew that what I wanted more than 

anything in the world was an airplane that I could fl y. 

So my father asked me what I was planning on doing, and I said I was going to buy an 

airplane. And he looked at me and he said, “You’ve never even bought a car yet! How do you 

even know how to buy an airplane?” And I said, “Father, don’t you worry! It’s airplanes we’re 

Mir Adventures

Shannon Lucid was born in Shanghai, China, but considers Bethany, Oklahoma, to be her hometown. 

She graduated from Bethany High School in 1960, received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry 

from the University of Oklahoma in 1963, and a master of science and doctor of philosophy degrees 

in biochemistry from the university in 1970 and 1973, respectively. Shannon Lucid was selected as 

an astronaut in 1978, after spending time as a teacher and researcher. She has fl own as a mission 

specialist in the Space Shuttle on fi ve missions, deploying satellites, conducting scientifi c observations 

and experiments, some in a special laboratory built into the orbiter’s cargo bay, and spending 188 days 

working on board the Russian Space Station, Mir. From February 2002 through September 2003, Lucid 

served as NASA’s chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Lucid remains an active 

astronaut at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Shannon Lucid

NASA Astronaut
160

 talking about. Aviation.” And I said, “Everybody in aviation is absolutely honest, 

so don’t you worry. Nobody will sell me a bad airplane!” 

So I didn’t have to worry about how to go about buying an airplane or 

what to look for, et cetera. Well, I went out searching, and I found an airplane. 

Not a pretty airplane, but it was the only thing that I could get in the panhandle 

of Oklahoma, and, trust me, this is really true, it was sold to me by an aviation 

salesman with a glass eye. And he told me it was absolutely perfect and he would 

show me the logbook he had. It just had a brand new fabric job and so on. I 

bought the airplane, and the next month the airworthiness certifi cate was taken 

away from it, so I was grounded. I thought my life was over. 

But life went on. And I did get a very, very valuable lesson. And the lesson 

I learned was that when you are involved in an activity, just because someone is 

involved in the same activity and maybe they’re using the same words, it doesn’t 

necessarily mean they have the same value system. And when you are working 

with a team, in the activities that you’re in, it’s very important to know that the 

people that you’re investing with have the same value system, and that when 

you’re talking about something, you’re talking about the same thing. 

The other lesson that I learned over the next few years, before I came to 

work at NASA, was I fl ew that airplane and I fl ew other airplanes for several 

thousand hours. I fl ew from Alaska down to Central America, and there were 

always concerns about whether or not you’re going to have an accident. If you 

read aviation reports, it seems that most of the accidents were due, in one way or 

the other, to pilot error. And the biggest concern that I had was, okay, it’s okay if 

you crash, but I didn’t want it to ever be pilot error. 

So I didn’t want the obituaries to read, “Shannon was so stupid. Can you 

believe that she took off in that thunderstorm?” And, so, that sort of tempered 

the decisions that I made. And they are all hard decisions that you make while 

you’re fl ying. Mainly, the hardest decision is not to fl y. And I found that I had 

a very diffi cult time doing that, to say no, when I really wanted to go. But, like I 

said, over the years I learned how to do that. 

So I went to work for NASA. And I was very fortunate in working for NASA, 

because with the Shuttle fl ights that I was fortunate to fl y on, I found that there 

was a team that had the same values system. And one of the great benefi ts of 

fl ying and working for NASA was working with the people in Mission Control, 

working with the people at the Cape, because we were all part of a team, we were 

all working together for the same objective. 

So, then the day came when I was asked if I would like to be a crew member 

on Mir. And, of course, I would have said, you didn’t need to ask because I’ve 

been volunteering for years. But I said yes, and then a friend of mine went up to 

Mir before I did, on a fl ight to bring Norm Thagard back. And my friend had not 

been back on earth more than two hours when the phone rang, and my friend said, 

“Shannon, don’t go.” And I said, “Oh? Don’t go where?” She said, “To Mir.” And I 

said, “But why?” And she said, “Because you will be living in a mine shaft for several 

months, and I just can’t picture you living there. So, take my advice, and don’t go.” 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut Shannon W. Lucid onboard 

the Space Shuttle Atlantis as she returns 

home from her six-month mission on Mir, 

the Russian space station. 

(NASA Image # S79-E-5388)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
161

“

. . . THE WAY I NEGATED THAT RISK WAS, I CHANGED THE PURPOSE OF 

THE FLIGHT IN MY HEAD . . . I TOOK WHAT WAS A PERCEIVED RISK AND 

I CHANGED IT INTO WHAT I COULD HANDLE.” I CHANGED IT INTO WHAT I COULD HANDLE.

” I CHANGED IT INTO WHAT I COULD HANDLE. I CHANGED IT INTO WHAT I COULD HANDLE.” I CHANGED IT INTO WHAT I COULD HANDLE.

And so that was one input. Another input was, we trained in Star City in 

Russia, and the week before I was to go back to the United States for three weeks 

before I got on the Shuttle to go up to Mir, I was leaving a movie theater in Moscow 

which doubled as a church on Sunday morning. As I was leaving there, a lady came 

up to me who I didn’t know, and she said, “Are you the American woman that is 

going to go up on that tin can?” And I said, “What?” And she said, “I saw on the 

news. Are you really going to go up and be locked up in a tin can for months with 

two Russians?” And I thought, well, now, that’s a novel way of looking at it. It 

wasn’t quite the way I had been looking at it, and [it] made me think why did I 

really want to do this, because I really wanted to do it in the worst way. 

And there were several reasons. One reason was, because I had had several 

Shuttle fl ights, and I enjoyed them very much. I really enjoyed fl ying in space. 

And if you have a small piece of cake, a big one would be even better. So I fi gured 

that, since I had enjoyed the short Shuttle fl ights I had been on, I would really 

enjoy a longer duration space fl ight. 

And the other reason why I really wanted to go was because I was curious. I 

was very curious to fi nd out what it would be like to live and work in space for a 

long period of time. I was curious to see how the body would adapt. And I really 

wanted to experience that. 

And the other reason was, as a child I’d always wanted to be part of an 

expedition. I mean, I read all the books about expeditions and going off and 

exploring the different places on the Earth. And, in my mind, going for a period of 

time on a long duration spacefl ight on the space station would be the equivalent 

of going on an expedition. Because I had written to National Geographic, I 

had written to everyone I could think of, to fi nd out how you could get on an 

expedition. And it turns out that, basically, you had to know somebody who had 

some money. And since I didn’t know anyone, that option was closed. But this 

was a chance that I had to experience that. So, those were the reasons why I was 

so anxious and so eager to go and fl y on the space station Mir. 

Now, while I was on Mir, there were other risk factors that came in. One 

of them came when I was talking to my daughter on the ham radio one day. 

Anything that I found out of any importance about the program always came 

to me via friends or family members or the ham radio or whatever. And then we 

heard from the program. And my daughter said, “Hey, Mom, guess what? You’re 

SHANNON LUCID MIR ADVENTURES
162

not going to come home when you think you are. You’re going to be stuck up 

there for months.” And I said, “What? What are you talking about?” My daughter 

worked for a contractor that worked for NASA, so she was tied into the chain of 

gossip. And she said, “They’re having some kind of a problem, so don’t pack your 

bags yet, because you’re not coming home.” 

And the fi rst time, as soon as I heard that, I thought, oh my goodness. Because 

I remembered back to meetings that we had had at JSC [Johnson Space Center], and 

we had had them for years before, talking about space station. They were the life 

science meetings about how you should plan a mission. And the gist of it was that 

you could only go in small increments. We had been in Skylab 90 days, 100 days, 

but we had to be very careful. We couldn’t exceed that. We had to have something 

like 10 to 20 missions before we could go beyond 90 days. And then we were going 

to go up to 100 days, and then we were going to go up more. One of these very small 

increments, getting up to where we could spend a longer period of time. 

So my fi rst thought when my daughter told me that was [of] those 

meetings. And I thought, oh my goodness, in one fell swoop we’re going way 

beyond anything they discussed in those meetings. My second thought was, get 

real, Shannon, let’s use a little common sense here. Because there in Star City 

you’ve seen all these people walking around that have been in space for a lot 

longer than you’re going to be up there. And there is nothing wrong with them. 

And, so, common sense negated 

what might have been thought of as 

a perceived risk at that time. 

Now, another risk that I felt 

before I launched was that I wasn’t 

really sure what I was going to be doing 

when I got up on Mir. And I say that 

because we had the U.S. experiments 

that were coming up, the science. But 

we didn’t know when it was going to 

be there, because it was delayed. And 

no one was just real sure when it was 

going to get there. 

And the other thing [perceived 

risk] was due to the complexity of 

the program. I had never been able 

to go through the experiment that 

I was going to be doing end to end. 

So, thinking about it just before we 

launched, I thought, you know, I could be really being set up here, because if you 

go and you weren’t able to do the experiments, you look, professionally, sort of 

bad because you weren’t able to get your work done. 

But, then, the way I negated that risk was, I changed the purpose of the fl ight 

in my head. I was not going up to do the science. I mean, that would have been nice, 

Backdropped against the waters of Cook Strait near New Zealand’s South Island, Russia’s Mir

Space Station is seen from the aft fl ight deck window of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. 

(NASA Image # STS76-713-036)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
163

but that wasn’t my personal primary purpose. I thought, the reason I’m going to go, 

and the reason I’m doing this fl ight, is because I want to see what it’s like to have a 

long duration fl ight, and I want to make sure that my crew mates and I get along and 

that we have a great fl ight. And I thought, that I can handle. That’s not dependent 

on any payload coming up, or it’s not depending on having any procedures. 

So I took what was a perceived risk and I changed it into what I could 

handle. Now the next risk that I thought of was, well, people always ask, “Were 

you comfortable living up there on Mir? How did you sleep?” And the reason 

why I was comfortable living on Mir and went to sleep every night without 

any problem was because Soyuz was always attached. It gave you a great deal of 

comfort in your heart knowing that if a problem arose, if there was a fi re, a rapid 

depressurization or anything, you had a way home. You had a lifeboat. You could 

get in the Soyuz and go home. And that you had an automatic abort mode and 

that gave you a tremendous feeling of comfort. 

Now, there was one other risk that arose, and that was, once we got in orbit, 

it turns out—and I didn’t know this ahead of time—the Russian cosmonauts 

were going to do EVAs [Extravehicular Activity]. I thought, that’s fi ne, they’re 

going to go out and do EVAs, and I’m going to sit and watch them. 

Well, about a couple of hours before they went out to do their EVAs, and 

actually, they were already in their EVA underwear, the commander called me 

over and said, “Shannon, quick, come here, I’ve got to train you, because this is 

what you’re going to do while we’re out”. And I said, “What? I am going to be 

doing something?” And then he started rattling off in Russian these long lists of 

commands that I’m supposed to be putting into the solar panels to get them to 

move so the station will work properly. So, I’m losing my mind, so I say, “Whoa, 

whoa, wait, wait, wait a minute! You can’t have me doing this, because I haven’t 

been trained and I don’t know how to do this”. And he said, “Oh it’s easy.” And 

then he was rattling it off again. Then I said “Look, it may be easy for you, but 

I’m just an older American woman. So I need a little bit of help.” And I said “I 

need a procedure”. And he said, “Procedure? We don’t have any procedures.” And 

that was true, they didn’t work off procedures very much. And I said, “I repeat, 

I’m an American. We work off procedures. I have to have a procedure.” And then, 

because it was close to the EVA, he was getting a little tense, he sort of gave up. 

But then the engineer said, “Okay, I’ll help you.” So we sat there and we wrote out 

a list of the commands and procedures that I was to follow. And then we wrote 

out how I was supposed to know when it was time for me to do this. 

And I mention this because I did feel under a little bit of pressure, because 

I wanted to do the right thing. And I knew I was under pressure because I had a 

lot of sweat on the back of my neck about that time. But I took the perceived risk, 

or took what I felt was a risk, and changed it into something I thought I could 

handle. I changed it into a procedure. I forced the system into accommodating 

what I could handle. And so that’s how I handled those risks. 

So, from a personal standpoint, that’s how I looked at Mir and handled the 

risks that I saw. Then the big question that people always ask is, “Well, okay, 

SHANNON LUCID MIR ADVENTURES
164

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

why do you want to fl y in space? You have these risks, so why do you want to fl y 

in space?” I know exactly why I want to fl y in space. It’s sort of hard to put into 

words. That’s why I put this picture up there, because instead of a metaphor, it’s 

sort of like a “picturephor,” except it doesn’t really say it all. It’s a sunset. And you 

say, “Okay, you want to fl y in space because you want to see a sunset?” Yeah. It’s 

because you can look at the world in a new and a different way. You grow, and it’s 

a huge challenge. And one of the aspects that I really enjoyed about spacefl ight is 

because you’re working with a team, you’re working with a marvelous team. 

Now, being actually in space, being the person that actually goes to fl y, 

you’re the person that people see, and sort of the tip of the iceberg that sticks up. 

But it’s this huge team effort that does it, and being part of a team, it enlarges 

yourself, so that you’re bigger than yourself. And it’s all of that put together that 

is the reason why I want to fl y in space. 

And a further reason is sort of the same reason why I really enjoyed working 

in a lab, back in the days when I used to be a scientist. You’d work in the lab and 

you’d work all hours, and then, fi nally, one day it would happen where you had an 

idea; you had done the experiment, and then you looked at the data, you saw the 

data, and you thought, wow! This is something new. You had found a new way 

of looking at the universe. Then you write your paper, and no one else thinks it’s 

as marvelous as you thought. But, still, you had the feeling that you were able to 

fi nd something new that hadn’t been seen before. You’d seen the world in a new 

way, and it’s sort of the same way when you can express in words in such a way 

that someone else can understand what you’re saying, because you put the word 

combination in a certain way so that you’d gotten the message across. 

And that is all part of the same reason of why you want to go into space, 

and why you want to explore. It’s because you are part of something that’s bigger 

than yourself, and you can get a feel for what it’s like to be really creative, and 

really see the world and experience the world in a new and marvelous way. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Mars Exploration

James B. Garvin

NASA Chief Scientist for Mars and the Moon

In his position (since 2000) as chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and the newly initiated 

lunar exploration initiative, James Garvin is responsible for formulation of scientifi c requirements for the 

exploration of Mars and the Moon and overall leadership of the scientifi c trajectory of the programs. He 

began his NASA career in 1984 in the Geodynamics Branch of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, 

Greenbelt, Maryland. He has served as chief scientist for the Shuttle Laser Altimeter experiment (SLA), 

which fl ew in Earth orbit twice, and as principal investigator on 12 airborne laser altimeter missions 

to such remote locales as Iceland and the Azores. He is a co-investigator on the Mars Orbital Laser 

Altimeter (MOLA) on board NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and the NEAR Shoemaker laser 

rangefi nder experiment. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed research articles and thousands of 

extended abstracts. Most recently (January 2004), he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman

as NASA’s Mars expert. 

I’d like to share with you a very personal set of connected anecdotes to 

talk about the risk of exploration, in particular of Mars. We all explore in different ways and 

sometimes we don’t know that we’re exploring. I think in spirit we explore. In the 1960s, 

I didn’t know the risks I was taking as black disks were hurled at me at 100 miles an hour, 

and as, in the cacophony of the hockey game, I weighed those risks. And as a young child, 

I experienced those as well. But I think the message in all of exploration is learning, as one 

explores, to accommodate the risks, to recognize them, and to react. And, of course, being a 

hockey goaltender was good training for learning the heartbreaks of exploring Mars. 

So, I’d like to try to take you forward a number of years, and the exact date we can’t 

say. But the time when people and machines, women and men and machines, are able to 

explore Mars. And, in this case, I think the question is really not one of ifs, but really one of 

when the time is right, when those benefi ts can be matched against the exploration risks. So 

I’m going to take you through some history to try to talk about that. 

I think we all learn to explore in different ways. Shannon gave us a wonderful story 

of exploring in space. My beginnings in this regard came trying to look for Mars on Earth 
166

through the eyes of the Viking mission that I was lucky enough to be an intern for. 

And in doing so, I recognized that there are a lot of diffi cult-to-measure things 

that, in fact, pose risks to the science and understanding we’re trying to build. 

Earth as a training ground was one of the ways in my educational experience that 

I tried to accommodate risk. But I realized in doing so that there were things I 

couldn’t measure. I didn’t have the technology or the tools. Just as many of the 

explorers taught, I needed more tools to get more data. One way to obtain these 

data is to benefi t from human spacefl ight to make robotic measurements. 

I realized that the landscapes that we want to understand on Mars and on 

Earth needed to be measured with new scales, robotic scales rather than human. 

I was fortunate to benefi t from human spacefl ight carrying my experiment, the 

Shuttle Laser Altimeter (SLA), for the fi rst time in the mid-1990s, to measure 

part of the Earth. This gave me the benefi t of human exploration, the Shuttle 

program, carrying a robotic instrument. The fi rst landfall that instrument made, 

so to speak, was, rather ironically the path right over Mauna Kea, the truly largest 

mountain on planet Earth considering the depths from which it rises from the 

ocean fl oor. We were rather shocked, in fact, to realize that our fl ight path allowed 

us to measure this 4,000-meter place that I had visited as a graduate student 

some ten years before to learn how to measure Mars. 

Now, in viewing human spacefl ight to enable robotic experimentation, 

the same sort of reducing risk routine is important. The advantage of human 

spacefl ight was that it was more akin to fl ying an aircraft experiment than many 

of us in the remote sensory arena are experienced with. We had people on site 

to fi x the problems. On our particular fl ight, in one case, the switch that enabled 

the high-energy laser to make the measurements was, in fact, wired incorrectly. 

Human error, part of risk. So we had to command our crews, in this case, to fl ip 

the switch off to turn the laser on, and we had a very simple procedure, one step. 

We were extremely good at it and had we not had that capability, we would not 

have been able to fl y the experiment. 

Now, what did we learn? Well, we learned, as we did on Mars, that one 

of the big side benefi ts of exploration in the face of risks is the serendipity of 

discovery from making new measurements. Yes, we measured the shape of the 

Earth at scales of a few feet from the Shuttle orbit. We told the Shuttle command 

we were actually giving them orbits within a few feet during fl ight, which was 

quite compelling to them. But, we also managed to measure the heights of the 

vegetation, part of the dynamic carbon cycle of Earth. We had the capability to 

make measurements of Earth, which we’re now making from the ISAT satellite 

as part of the Earth Observing System, that would help tell us about the carbon 

cycle on our own planet as we got ready to carry this kind of instrument to Mars 

to help prepare for landings of vehicles like the rovers. 

So, my dream, as I became an explorer off the planet, was to map Mars 

in 3-D at the scales that humans and others would want to build. The science, 

of course, was to understand the history of the crust from the evolution of the 

planet, but also to bring Mars into closer focus, to allow us to make some of the 

OPENING PHOTO:

An artist’s vision of future exploration 

missions: Two kilometers above the lava 

fl ows of Mars’s Tharsis Bulge region, a 

geologist collects samples from the 

eastern cliff at the base of Olympus Mons, 

the solar system’s largest known shield 

volcano. (NASA Image # S95-01566, courtesy of John Frassanito and Associates)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
”

167

WILL THE RISKS BE ACCOMMODATED TO SEND HUMAN BEINGS? TODAY 

OUR ROVERS HAVE DRIVEN SPECTACULAR DISTANCES ON MARS AGAINST 

ALL ODDS. AND YET, IN 20 HOURS WE DROVE MANY TIMES FURTHER WITH A 

HUMAN SYSTEM. THOSE CHOICES ARE VERY IMPORTANT.

views that allow us to imagine going to places that are very complicated and 

unique. Without the topographic perspective, learning how to fl y into that kind of 

environment, with robots and then with humans, would have been impossible. 

We’ve learned from the legacy of our forerunners, as we always do in 

exploration. I think it’s important to go back to the Moon, as we are. But it’s also 

important to go back in history to the Moon. Because the Surveyor Program, one 

of those antecedents built into Apollo, told us many things about the planet, and 

it was originally conceived as a risk mitigation step, not as a science mission. In 

the case of Surveyor, they were able to get to new places. 

Surveyor 7 took the only picture from the rim of a gigantic fresh crater 

on the Moon—Tycho. It gave us a new vantage point on the Moon. It helped us 

look to places we might like to send human beings and understand that great 

world. These robotic forerunners were the steps that allowed us to get the fi rst 

successful landings on another world, in this case, on Mars. 

Viking collected 10,000 images from the surface, hundreds of spectra, 14 

experiments of the most grandiose nature in the 1970s. Viking’s fi rst pictures 

were not beautiful vistas and landscapes; they were pictures of the feet of the 

vehicle. They were taken as part of a science contingency plan, the same kind of 

plan that we, in fact, asked Steve Squyres to implement in sending out his prize 

rover, Spirit, to Mars. And these pictures actually gave us science, the fi rst views 

of the sort of fi ngernail scale or hand scale of Mars. And they showed the fact 

that Mars dust was kicked up and ended about an hour after landing. So this was 

science. Viking took science to new extremes in searching for the fi rst chemical 

antecedents of life and doing other experiments. It also took great pictures. And 

exploration is about mapping ourselves into a new vantage point. 

Now, some of these pictures were high risk. I remember vividly Jim Martin, 

the project manager, saying, “You’re not taking any sunrise pictures. It’s too cold. 

You’re not going to do that.” Well, we did. Scientists prevailed against all odds. 

We took that sunrise picture in an attempt to make Mars look the way our eyes 

would see it. Now, this was very controversial, but it’s the way science works. We 

were trying to understand the Mars that we would see if we were there. That’s 

part of exploration. 

WILL THE RISKS BE ACCOMMODATED TO SEND HUMAN BEINGS? TODAY

“

WILL THE RISKS BE ACCOMMODATED TO SEND HUMAN BEINGS? TODAY

“

WILL THE RISKS BE ACCOMMODATED TO SEND HUMAN BEINGS? TODAY

JAMES B. GARVIN MARS EXPLORATION
168

Mars has not always been easy. I could go on and on and talk about the 

graveyard of vehicles on Mars, from our great colleagues in the Soviet Union 

and our own Mars Observer, the great reconnaissance that we hung our program 

on in the 1980s. The failed Mars Polar Lander, a wonderful mission. The Beagle, 

that had the hopes of many to get to Mars. But out of these failures have come 

lessons—lessons that are the tough lessons of exploration; in this case, with 

robots before the people. 

One of the lessons is that the polar regions on Mars are important. So we’ve 

selected a mission called Phoenix, after a year and a half long Olympic-class 

competition, to go back to recover that science. Likewise, our Mars Global Surveyor, 

from the ashes of the Mars Observer, has been monitoring Mars and mapping it, 

enabling landings of vehicles like our rovers. It’s important to look at the legacy. 

We built the system for Global Surveyor to operate for one Mars year. That would 

have been about 9,000 orbits. Today we are over 26,000 orbits. So we were able to 

mitigate the risk and continue the exploration—just as the rovers are. 

So, I think it’s important to understand that we mitigate risks by 

trying new vantage points, to know better, to be more informed. Today, we’re 

building, constructing, innovating, and testing, at Lockheed Martin, the Mars 

Reconnaissance Orbiter—the ultimate reconnaissance step that will help pave 

the way for [the] future of Mars exploration. This is a complicated system; it’s 

the largest reconnaissance orbiter to go to Mars in our history. We launch it next 

summer. It’s the team of people that will help us mitigate those risks. 

Now, for a minute, I would like to get off Mars. And, yeah, I may be a 

Martian here, but I think it’s important to look at how exploration evolves. As 

we thought about the planet Venus in the late seventies, we had a vision for a 

complicated mission to map the planet and its atmosphere. Fifteen years later, 

that mission is realized in a different way. Thanks to technology, computer 

science, and information technology, the Magellan mission gave us higher 

resolution than we had imagined in the ’70s, done in a different way. It allowed 

us to couple what we were seeing from the surface of this hellish world where 

our Soviet colleagues had landed 12 times [1969–81], to the big picture. This is 

sort of inverse exploration. 

Now, the approach taken by our Soviet colleagues for their brief foray to 

the surface of the planet Venus, 450 degrees centigrade, was to use an approach 

”

THE LADDER TO THE MOON WAS BUILT. WE WENT MULTIPLE TIMES, 

LANDING SIX TIMES. THE SOVIETS WENT AND RETURNED WITH SAMPLES. 

MAYBE THAT SAME LADDER IS NEEDED FOR MARS. 

THE LADDER TO THE MOON WAS BUILT. WE WENT MULTIPLE TIMES,

 “LANDING SIX TIMES. THE SOVIETS WENT AND RETURNED WITH SAMPLES. “LANDING SIX TIMES. THE SOVIETS WENT AND RETURNED WITH SAMPLES. 

MAYBE THAT SAME LADDER IS NEEDED FOR MARS.

 “MAYBE THAT SAME LADDER IS NEEDED FOR MARS. 

THE LADDER TO THE MOON WAS BUILT. WE WENT MULTIPLE TIMES,

 “THE LADDER TO THE MOON WAS BUILT. WE WENT MULTIPLE TIMES,

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
169

that was overdesigned to handle any environment. Overdesign the system to 

mitigate the risks of the unknown there. Surprisingly, they have not been back 

since their tremendous successes, which culminated with the Vega landings in 

1986. But Venus still offers us a lesson in exploration. 

I think the lessons from Mars are several. One is from our own proving 

ground here on Earth. Here and now, NASA is investing in programs to use Earth 

analogies, chemical process, laboratory scale analogies, to do science. Likewise 

with the Moon. The legacy of Harrison Schmitt and Jim Lovell and all those guys 

that went to the Moon and got those data, is that it is important to move ahead 

with the Moon as we start to learn about Mars. 

Now, I thought it would be instructive to talk for a minute about the 

differences between the cooperative robotic and human exploration. It’s 

important to remind you of a few facts. Facts are always good when we look at 

risk. One fact is what we did with the Apollo missions, which I would maintain 

were at least science enabling, however you choose to look at that. What we did 

was, we were able to interrogate the surface of another planet, even on foot with 

minimal tools, in an extremely short period of time. In two days, eight hours of 

being out on the lunar environment, we traveled two and a half kilometers. That’s 

a human scale of interrogation of another planet. We touched and collected 50 

pounds of rocks on the Apollo 12 mission to the Surveyor site. On Apollo 17, we 

upped the ante. In 20 hours of EVA we drove 36 kilometers.

Today, the pace of exploration is different. It’s not different in its yield; 

it’s different in its pace. The question of the timing is one of the important 

ones as we look at when will the time be right. Will 

the risks be accommodated to send human beings? 

Today our rovers have driven spectacular distances 

on Mars against all odds. And yet, in 20 hours we 

drove many times further with a human system. 

Those choices are very important. 

Today on Mars we’ve experienced many 

things. We’ve looked at small craters in new ways, 

with robotic assets. We’ve driven in and are living 

inside one and yet, we hunger for more. Some craters 

at the scale of large football fi elds on Mars actually 

present tremendous exploration risk challenges. So 

big that during the Apollo era, the fl ight rules did 

not allow the crew to venture into the fresh impact 

craters of the Moon. Yet today, we have roving capabilities on Mars that could 

enable that. So it’s that cooperative robotic and human exploration that’s so 

important. In my own case, I think visiting impact sites has helped train me 

intellectually to understand some of those on Mars. 

So, as we look at places to go, as we focus our attention on where the 

people and the machines need to go on Mars, we also need to learn from our 

experiences. One of the lessons of exploration is the risk of not exploring. Here 

JAMES B. GARVIN MARS EXPLORATION

Artist’s drawing of astronauts setting up weather instruments 

on Mars. (Courtesy of John Frassanito and Associates)
170

on planet Earth we have a template for understanding the record of cosmic 

collisions, but the Moon and Mars offer a better template. It’s the template of 

our history, and yet the opportunities for learning come both here and there. 

This is one of the learning factors in exploration. The risk of getting there—the 

trip, going to the places where the action is—can be mitigated by learning about 

places on Earth that can train us. Training is important. We’ve heard that again 

and again. Training with robots here on Earth, people, and then both on Mars. 

Finally, I want to relate a story that I think is part of what makes science 

and exploration exciting. Some of the things we are going for, whether they be 

supernovae or understanding Mars or aspects of our Earth, are ephemeral. They will 

be gone. The atmosphere of Pluto is an example we talk about often in science. 

I have been fortunate enough to visit a small volcanic island named Surtsey, 

born 40 years ago. It is already 25 percent gone. It may not survive this coming 

century, and, yet, it is a little microcosm of how the Earth responds to all the 

dynamic forces that shape landscapes on Earth. But it’s a training ground, too. 

On this little island operates one of the types of processes that may make the 

ubiquitous gullies and hillsides on Mars, and we can go visit the island in the 

same chemical environment as those rocks on Mars. The time-lapse photography 

has been sped up. Instead of at Mars scale, this is at Earth scale. We can go visit, 

and, in a period of years, we can watch it evolve, measure [it], and understand 

how to explore it. We can also learn from new vantage points. 

At NASA, it’s important to empower the community to competitively seek 

ways to see Mars in new ways. This last couple of years we had a competition 

for the fi rst Mars scout. One of the missions proposed by Joel Levine and his 

team was to look at Mars from air, to get around more, to do the recon closer to 

the ground of the Martian system, including the trace gases, that would help us 

be better informed. Being better informed thanks to reconnaissance has always 

made a difference in exploration. 

So I think there is a set of converging pathways. The timing of the 

convergence will tell us when the risk can be accommodated to put people on 

site on Mars for the good of science. There are many pieces, and you can see 

them. We’re doing some of them now: reconnaissance, sample selection with 

our rovers, understanding the things we see on Earth. Just this summer, I should 

say austral summer, a fi eld team collected a new Martian meteorite in the middle 

of the range of Antarctica: a piece of Mars sent by Mother Nature to inform us 

”

. . . IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO NOT WAIT TO WONDER. THAT’S WHAT EXPLORATION 

IS ABOUT. DON’T WAIT, BECAUSE IT’S IN THE GOING THAT YOU HAVE TO GO.”

. . . IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO NOT WAIT TO WONDER. THAT’S WHAT EXPLORATION

“

. . . IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO NOT WAIT TO WONDER. THAT’S WHAT EXPLORATION

“

. . . IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO NOT WAIT TO WONDER. THAT’S WHAT EXPLORATION

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
171

about what we need to learn about. This collective approach is a way to reduce 

risk, and, by having a program that does so, we can learn. Where are we going with 

humans? Well, I hope it’s exploring at least, in part, in the name of science. 

I will fi nish with two minor quick thoughts. One is that sometimes 

exploring is better captured in the eyes of the artists. Georgia O’Keefe, at the 

dawn of the space age, painted a great picture, The Ladder to the Moon, from her 

vantage point in New Mexico. I think it was Taos. It was kind of an interesting 

fl ight approach to getting to the Moon that only a modernist could do. But, I 

think it is the epitome of the inspiration that allowed us to actually achieve that 

vision. The ladder to the Moon was built. We went multiple times, landing six 

times. The Soviets went and returned with samples. Maybe that same ladder is 

needed for Mars. 

So, as we have all said during this conference, it’s inspiring and, in fact, 

more than inspiring, catalyzing the youth to tell us how to go that’s important. I 

think perhaps all the vision we talk about is a powerful risk mitigation tool.

I will leave you with one last thought as best I can. I was giving a 

commencement address to Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia this last 

June. The students were really empowered. They wanted to do space exploration. 

They cheered when they saw a NASA person show up. I was stunned. I thought 

there was a rock star somewhere, and I couldn’t imagine they were cheering for 

NASA. I thought, Wow! Here are fi ve hundred of our best and brightest boys and 

girls wanting to do this. I stared at them, and, rarely for me, I was brought to a 

lack of words. I stopped a moment, then said, “You know, it’s really important to 

not wait to wonder. That’s what exploration is about. Don’t wait, because it’s in 

the going that you have to go.” So we mitigate the risks by going and not waiting 

intelligently, and that’s what we’re doing now in our Mars program. ■

JAMES B. GARVIN MARS EXPLORATION

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Mars Exploration Rovers

Steve Squyres

Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University and 

Scientific Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission

I’m here today to talk about the Mars Exploration Rover 

(MER) mission, the mission of Spirit and Opportunity, and the risks that we took with 

that mission. I think by any standard, MER has to be looked at as one of the riskiest and 

one of the most complex robotic missions that NASA has ever undertaken, but it has been 

successful. We talked yesterday about mountaineering. Well, Spirit is now the fi rst Martian 

robotic mountaineer, ascending the Columbia Hills. We talked this morning about oceans, 

and Opportunity is now exploring the remains of an ancient salty sea on Mars. Penny, 

I’m sorry, we haven’t found any caves yet. Caves are kind of scary places if you’re a solarpowered rover. So, we’re probably going to stay away from those. 

I’m going to talk about the risks that we took to make that success happen. There 

is one point I have to make from the very outset. It is so obvious that I almost don’t need 

to say it, but it’s also so fundamental that I have to say it. That is, there is a very, very 

fundamental difference between our mission and most new missions we are talking about 

here. When our rockets lifted off from Cape Canaveral last summer, our lives were not on 

the line. Now, there were a few meetings at NASA Headquarters where I wasn’t quite so sure 

Steve Squyres is the scientifi c principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project. He 

received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1981 and spent fi ve years working for NASA at their Ames 

Research Center before returning to Cornell, where he is now a professor of astronomy. Scientifi c 

research for which he is best known includes study of water on Mars and of a possible ocean on Jupiter’s 

moon Europa. He has participated in many missions of planetary exploration, including the Voyager 

mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the Magellan mission to Venus, the Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and 

MRO missions to Mars, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, and the Cassini mission to Saturn. 

Squyres has served as the Chairman of NASA’s Space Science Advisory Committee and as a member of 

the NASA Advisory Council.
174

about that, preceding launch! I almost feel like I don’t belong up here with people 

like Shannon and with [Harrison] Jack Schmitt, but I think that our experiences 

do have much to say about how one takes risks in spacefl ight, including human 

spacefl ight. There were many aspects of our mission that are in common with 

what goes on in human spacefl ight. We had a very challenging schedule. We had 

a very daunting technical task. We had an enormously large and complicated 

team to pull it all off. Addressing and aggressively mitigating the risks that come 

with all of those things is something on which we spent an enormous amount of 

time, and I think some of our lessons there do carry over to the very demanding 

realm of human spacefl ight. 

As Jim alluded to, our mission arose out of catastrophe. In 1998, NASA 

launched two missions to Mars. The Mars Polar Lander began its entry and 

descent sequence and was never heard from again. The most likely cause was 

determined to have been a single line of code that was missing that resulted, 

ultimately, probably, in the vehicle shutting off its motors about 40 meters above 

the ground and hitting the surface at about 50 miles per hour. Then, in reverse, 

the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost when a mix-up over English and metric units 

resulted in fl ying the spacecraft into the atmosphere and burning it up. 

So, we were put in a position, which we all embraced from the start, of 

being involved in a mission that had to succeed. The credibility of a substantial 

portion of the Nation’s space program and some of the institutions involved was 

very much riding on our success or on our failure. We had to come up with ways 

to address that risk that were commensurate with the expectations that had been 

forced upon us by circumstances. 

As with any program, we addressed, and had to face, a wide variety of 

different kinds of risks. There was cost risk. There was programmatic risk. 

There were technology risks and environmental risks. There were operational 

and scheduling risks. I am going to address each of these briefl y in turn. There 

were many things we did individually to mitigate each of those risks, but I 

think, almost above all, there was one thing we did from the start that addressed 

every single one of those risks. I alluded to this briefl y in some remarks that I 

OPENING PHOTO: 

NASA dedicates Mars landmarks 

to Columbia crew.

(NASA Image # PIA05200)

This stunning image features the heat shield impact site of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. 

(Source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07327.)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
175

made yesterday. We knew what we were trying to do. We had a set of level-one 

requirements. They were negotiated with NASA Headquarters. They fi t on a 

single piece of paper—two sides. They stated succinctly and clearly what the 

MER mission was expected to do. From the day that NASA said “go” to the day 

that we had a date on Pad 17A at Cape Canaveral was 34 months. We would not 

have made it had we not all had a clear, unambiguous, common understanding 

of what it was we were trying to accomplish. Those level-one requirements were 

our guide star. 

I lost a lot of sleep wondering whether or not we were going to make it, but 

I never once questioned what it was we were trying to accomplish. We never had 

an ounce of uncertainty in our minds. That was tremendously enabling, because 

every time we faced a decision we turned to those requirements Do we do this 

test? Do we not? Do we include this component? Do we not? Does it help us 

meet the level-one requirements? If so, yes. If no, it’s expendable. And it was that 

simple. I don’t care how big or how small the organization, how complex or how 

simple your task, I cannot overstate the importance of clear, unambiguous goal 

setting. It gives a crystalline clarity of purpose to your organization from top to 

bottom if everybody knows, with no ambiguity, what you are trying to achieve. 

That was fundamental to our success. 

I am going to go through those risks that I listed. 

Cost risks: When you get right down to it, our fundamental approach 

to cost risk was that, when we needed more money, NASA gave it to us. We 

originally costed the mission out at $688 million. We overran that by more than 

100 million bucks. The reasons for those overruns are interesting, and I will be 

glad to tell any of you about them. They fundamentally had to do with some 

in-going assumptions that turned out to be fl awed. Twice over the course of 

the development, Firouz Naderi, the program manager at JPL [Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory], and Pete Theisinger, our very able project manager, and I had to get 

on a plane and go back east and tell them we needed 50 million dollars more. 

The fi rst time we did it, we were fl ogged. We then got our 50 million, and we 

promised never to come back again. 

How long was it, Jim? About six months later, we were on your doorstep 

again. We were really fl ogged on that one. When it came right down to it, with 

so much on the line and so much at stake, the Agency was able to look at their 

priorities and say, “We have to make this work.” Never once over the entire 

course of the MER development did we not do something important, something 

”

SO, WE WERE PUT IN A POSITION, WHICH WE ALL EMBRACED FROM 

THE START, OF BEING INVOLVED IN A MISSION THAT HAD TO SUCCEED.

SO, WE WERE PUT IN A POSITION, WHICH WE ALL EMBRACED FROM

“

SO, WE WERE PUT IN A POSITION, WHICH WE ALL EMBRACED FROM

“

SO, WE WERE PUT IN A POSITION, WHICH WE ALL EMBRACED FROM

STEVE SQUYRES MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS
176

that was enabling of meeting our level-one requirements, because we didn’t 

have the money. It never happened, and that was because the Agency made the 

commitment to make sure it never happened. 

Programmatic risk: Programmatic risk means a lot of different things to 

a lot of people. I will defi ne it rather narrowly to mean the way in which you 

interact with other programs over issues like personnel, facilities, and so forth. 

Our approach there, to be honest, was very much like our approach to cost risk. 

What we needed, we got. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is an immensely talented, 

immensely capable organization, but their resources are not infi nite. Whenever it 

came down to something critical—if we needed the right people, we got them. If 

we needed certain facilities, we got them. There just weren’t any questions asked. 

The team that was put together under Pete’s leadership at JPL was the best 

that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had to offer. Lab management always gave us 

everything that we needed. You can’t do that for every project, obviously, but it 

is a matter of having your priorities straight. Your priorities were that MER had 

what MER needed, and what MER needed, MER got. There was a phrase around 

JPL that I heard about. Somebody would say, “I got MER’d”. That meant that their 

facility or their engineer or somebody had been stolen away by MER to go off and 

make sure we got to Mars okay. 

Technology risk: Our approach to technology risk is, basically, don’t take 

any. Our mission was assembled almost entirely from existing, tested, proven 

technology. Air bags have been used on Mars, parachutes have been used on Mars, 

aerogel had been used on Mars. The payload was ready to go. The entire mission 

was put together from existing, qualifi ed, capable hardware. Our computer was a 

smoking hot machine in 1985, okay, but it was good enough to meet the job that 

was laid out in the level-one requirements, and so that was what we used. You 

can sometimes accomplish extraordinarily innovative things by taking all the 

existing technologies and combining them together in novel ways. And I think 

there may be a lesson there; I don’t think MER is the only opportunity out there 

for taking existing, proven, safe technologies and combining them together in 

ways that haven’t quite been attempted before. 

Environmental risks: This is a big one. There were many environments over 

the course of our fl ight over which we had little or no control and for which we 

had to do our best to prepare ourselves. Launch was an environment that was, as 

a spacecraft team, outside of our control. That was risky. Landing was certainly 

risky. Unless you have a fully deterministic landing system when you land on 

Mars, I don’t care how much testing you do—you cannot build a perfectly safe 

Mars lander. You can build the best system you can, but you can always have one 

sharp pointy rock or one gust of wind that does you in, if you got unlucky that 

day at the landing site. 

And so our approach to environmental risk was absolutely the best one that 

you can take: we built two of everything. Two rockets, two landers, two rovers, 

two payloads, identical up and down the line, but we built two of everything. This 

is a risk mitigation technique that does not carry over, obviously, into the realm 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
177

of human spacefl ight—you can’t say, well, let’s send two crews and maybe one 

of them will survive. 

But if you have a robotic mission that must succeed, if you don’t send two, 

you’re crazy, in my personal opinion. It worked very well for us. And I’ll also 

point out that it worked very well for the people who were involved in Mariner 

3 and 4—Mariner 4 being the fi rst successful Mars fl yby, Mariner 3 going in the 

drink. The same is true for Mariner 8 and 9—the fi rst successful Mars orbiter, 

when Mariner 8 went in the drink. 

There’s another aspect of environmental risk, which I think was not 

adequately appreciated by most people, and that had to do with risk to the 

science. We were going into a fundamentally unknown scientifi c environment. 

We did the best we could to select good landing sites, but we didn’t really know 

what to expect. And one of my greatest fears when we actually fi rst proposed 

MER to NASA as a single rover mission was that we would choose badly, that 

Mars would fake us out, and we’d get down on the surface and the science that 

we were seeking just simply wouldn’t be there. If you had two rovers, and if you 

had a very diverse planet, as Mars is, you could send them to two very different 

sites, and maybe one of them is going to turn out to be the miracle site. 

Mars did fake us out, by the way. If you had told me ahead of time, “Steve, 

one of the rovers is going to land on volcanic rocks and one’s going to land on 

sedimentary rocks,” and you’d said, “ Gusev, Meridani” I would have said, “Yeah, 

sure. It’s got to be volcanic rocks at Meridani and sedimentary rock at Gusev.” 

It was the other way around. Mars completely faked us out. And the beauty 

of having that redundancy to mitigate that science risk is that if it really pays 

off and both vehicles get on the surface, you take advantage of that diversity 

to essentially double your science return, because you’re in two completely 

different environments. 

Operational risk: The chance that, when you try to do it, it’s not going to 

work. There’s no magic formula here, this one’s really straightforward. You do it 

with margin and testing. Now, it’s just down to block and tackling on this one. 

You build a lot of margin into your design and then you test and you test and you 

test and you test. And like I always say, you test it like you’re going to fl y it, and 

you fl y it just the way you tested it. And we did a hell of a lot of testing on MER. 

Our schedule was all about testing. Everything that we did was about testing. 

And in the end, those operational risks that we personally took paid off, 

and the margin in particular was very important. We put a lot of margin in the 

design—there’s margin tucked away in so many nooks and crannies in that design 

you can’t believe it. And it was that margin that made us comfortable signing up 

to a set of level-one requirements that says this vehicle will last for 90 Martian 

days on the surface. But if you’ve got that much margin in your pocket and a few 

things break your way, you might still be driving around on SOL 265, which is, I 

think, what today is. So margin pays off in big ways. 

Finally, schedule risk: This was the worst risk that we faced, by far. In a 

very real sense, the entire story of the development of the Mars Exploration 

STEVE SQUYRES MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS
178

Rover program—the development of Spirit and Opportunity—is the story of an 

extraordinary group of people facing schedule risk. Like I said, NASA said, “Go, 

and you’ve got to be there on the pad in 34 months.” That was not enough time. 

It was not enough time. There were many things that we did to mitigate schedule 

risk—I cannot discuss them all. I will only mention two of them. 

One of them—this will sound paradoxical, but it is not, and if you take 

anything away from what I have to say today, please get this point. Our schedule 

risk was mitigated to a great extent by the fact that we were fl ying two vehicles. 

That doesn’t sound like it makes sense. It should be easier to build one than to 

build two. Well, under certain circumstances, if you’re starved for people, starved 

for facilities, starved for money, then, yeah, that’s true. But if you’ve got the 

people, if you’ve got the facilities, and you’ve got the money, then it helps to 

be hardware rich. You have more pieces on your chessboard and it puts you in a 

stronger position. Just as one trivially simple example, there are many tests that 

you run on vehicles like this that only have to be run on one of your two vehicles. 

And if you’ve got the facilities and you’ve got the people, you run those two 

tests—not in series, but in parallel, and you take up schedule. And we did that 

again and again and again and again. 

And Matt Wallace, who was the manager of our ATLO—assembly test and 

launch operations—was a master. He was a hero of this mission and he played 

that game with those chess pieces with such intricacy and such skill that we 

made it, and I don’t think we would have made it to the pad if he’d had only one 

vehicle. I think we had to do it with two. 

The other way in which, I am somewhat ashamed to say, that we mitigated 

schedule risks is that we pushed an extraordinary group of people too hard. We 

pushed them beyond reasonable limits. It damaged people’s health. It damaged 

people’s relationships with their loved ones. We got away with it because we had 

an extraordinary group of people under an extraordinary group of circumstances, 

but that is not a sustainable approach to Mars exploration. You cannot go back to 

that well again and again. I do not believe that 34, 36, 38 months is enough time 

to do a robotic mission of that kind of complexity. I think you need 48, and I hope 

that lesson is one that is taken away from the MER mission. 

I’d like to fi nish this on a slightly lighter note by telling you a story. We had 

a lot of discussion yesterday about humans versus robots. And as the robot guy 

here, I want to tell a story about the experience that I had that really taught me a 

lot about that particular topic. We were at fi rst trying to fi gure out how to use a 

set of rovers on Mars to really do scientifi c exploration. The technology folks at 

JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] built a wonderful little vehicle called FIDO. And 

FIDO was a great test rover—you could take it out in the fi eld and you didn’t 

worry about getting a few scratches in the paint. 

We took it out to a place called Silver Lake in the Mojave Desert about 

1997. And we went out there and it was the fi rst time I had ever been out in the 

fi eld. So I went out there with my team—a bunch of really high-priced geologic 

talent—some serious fi eld geologists. And we got the rover out there and, of 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
179

course, the rover breaks down. First time I’ve ever been out in the fi eld, it’s dusty, 

it’s dirty, you know, the rover’s not working. So okay, what am I going to do with 

all these bored geologists I’ve got on my hands? So I said, “Look, let’s go on a 

geology walk. Let’s go on a little fi eld trip.” So everybody got their boots and their 

rock hammers and their hand lenses and everything. And I picked up a notebook 

and a stopwatch. And we walked out to a nearby ridge where I knew there was 

some interesting geology exposed and we sat down—or rather I sat down—and 

they went off and they started geologizing. 

And I started timing them. You know, how long does it take for Andy Knoll 

to walk over to that rock? How long does it take Ray Albertson to pick that thing 

up and break it open with his rock hammer and look at it with a hand lens? And 

they were doing a lot of things that our rovers couldn’t do, but I focused on 

the things they were doing that our rovers could do. And, you know, I did it as 

quantitatively as I could—this was hardly a controlled experiment. And when I 

looked at the numbers afterwards, what I found was that what our magnifi cent 

robotic vehicles can do in an entire day on Mars, these guys could do in about 

30–45 seconds. 

We are very far away from being able to build robots—I’m not going to 

see it in my lifetime—that have anything like the capabilities that humans will 

have to explore, let alone to inspire. And when I hear people point to Spirit and 

Opportunity and say that these are examples of why we don’t need to send 

humans to Mars, I get very upset. Because that’s not even the right discussion to 

be having. We must send humans to Mars. We can’t do it soon enough for me. 

You know, I’m a robot guy. I mean, I love Spirit and Opportunity—and I use a 

word like “love” very advisedly when talking about a hunk of metal. 

But I love those machines. I miss them. I do. But they will never, ever have 

the capabilities that humans will have and I sure hope you send people soon. ■

”

. . . WHEN I HEAR PEOPLE POINT TO SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY AND SAY THAT THESE 

ARE EXAMPLES OF WHY WE DON’T NEED TO SEND HUMANS TO MARS, I GET VERY 

UPSET. BECAUSE THAT’S NOT EVEN THE RIGHT DISCUSSION TO BE HAVING. WE 

MUST SEND HUMANS TO MARS. WE CAN’T DO IT SOON ENOUGH FOR ME.

. . . WHEN I HEAR PEOPLE POINT TO SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY AND SAY THAT THESE

“

. . . WHEN I HEAR PEOPLE POINT TO SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY AND SAY THAT THESE

“

. . . WHEN I HEAR PEOPLE POINT TO SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY AND SAY THAT THESE

STEVE SQUYRES MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS

Back to Contents page 
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
COBE and the James Webb 

Space Telescope

John C. Mather is a senior astrophysicist in the Infrared Astrophysics Branch at NASA/Goddard Space 

Flight Center. His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology. As an National Research 

Council postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (New York City), he led the proposal 

efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer (1974–76), and came to Goddard Space Flight Center to 

be the study scientist (1976–88), project scientist (1988–present), and also the principal investigator for 

the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE. He showed that the cosmic microwave 

background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50 parts per million. As study scientist (1995–99) 

and project scientist (1999–present) for the James Webb Space Telescope, he coleads the science team 

with Peter Stockman (STScI) and represents scientifi c interests within the project management. 

John Mather

James Webb Space Telescope Senior Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 

I want to talk to you about the Cosmic Background Explorer 

(COBE) satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to give you examples of two 

extraordinarily risky visions that I have worked on. One of them hasn’t been launched yet 

and one was launched some time ago. So the concentration is on the James Webb Telescope, 

which used to be called the Next Generation Space Telescope. We had a lot of Trekkies at 

Headquarters and they were very proud to name it the Next Generation Space Telescope. 

It was renamed after NASA Administrator James Webb. I didn’t know much about James 

Webb until I read a biography of him and he was in fact a remarkable person and it’s a 

tremendous honor for the telescope to have his name attached to it. If you want to know 

more about it, there’s a book called Powering Apollo. It is really very inspiring to read and 

also points out that he was really very interested in reducing risk by adopting and learning 

about new methods of management. 

And management, I think, is our biggest risk in many areas. Many people have spoken 

before about losing concentration on the risks that we face and panicking in the dive or 

whatever it might be. We have to sort of keep the same focus all the way up to top of the 

management chain, otherwise we get in trouble. 
182

So, what do I think risks are? There are a lot of things that people call 

risks that aren’t, to my way of thinking. Some things are intrinsically chancy, 

you couldn’t possibly predict whether they would or would not happen. And we 

have done a lot of things to reduce those risks by working harder and harder on 

what you can control and predict. But, also, there are a lot of things that depend 

on who’s working on it, who’s thinking about it, who’s paying. And if you’re the 

management paying to reduce risks and you have another person breathing down 

on you saying, “If you spend any more money on that project, you’re out,” there 

are a lot of kinds of risk that people feel and take. 

So why should we take risks? Well, exploration and science are always about 

the unknown, and that’s intrinsically the nature of it. So that’s why we’re here. 

The fi rst project that I did was a mission to measure the primordial cosmic 

microwave background radiation in a couple of different ways, and to look for the 

accumulated light of the fi rst galaxies. And we did actually succeed in all of these 

objectives with the COBE satellite. This project was 

remarkably risky, considering when it was proposed and 

what it was like at the time. This was proposed in 1974. 

I organized a team six months out of graduate school to 

propose this mission, and when NASA decided to take 

us on as a serious study, they were taking a risk on us. 

But we did actually get associated with a truly wonderful 

engineering team at Goddard Space Flight Center and 

they produced this whole thing. It was an in-house 

project, which is not one of the more common ways that 

we do projects at NASA. But it was a wonderful thing for 

this project.

In 1974 people did not have computers on every 

desk. We did our fi rst engineering drawings with pencils. 

And our calculators, our computers, were HP35s, and it 

was a miracle to have one. So people thought differently 

about risk because there was just too much you could 

never fi gure out or calculate. You did not have a fi niteelement model of everything you wanted. You just 

said, “Well, I think that’ll probably work.” And sometimes you were right and 

sometimes you weren’t. 

So then there was testing. This went through two metamorphoses. COBE 

was proposed fi rst as payload for a Delta rocket. Then NASA went and put all of 

its eggs in one basket with a lot of kick from Congress and said, “We’re killing all 

the expendable launch vehicles. We’re going to send everything up on Shuttles.” 

So this was redesigned to go on a Shuttle and it was a 10,000-pound spacecraft 

that had to go up from California. As far as I know, it was the only scientifi c 

payload that was to have the Shuttle launch from California. 

Then the Challenger happened when we had more or less completed our 

design and were putting our spacecraft together. And it became pretty clear that 

OPENING PHOTO: 

An artist’s impression of the selected 

design for the JWST spacecraft. 

(Image copyright European Space 

Agency)

A map depicting the distribution of cosmic background radiation, as 

detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft. 

(NASA Image # 90-HC-640)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
183

there was not going to be a Shuttle launch from California ever again, and it 

wasn’t just because the Shuttles were dangerous—there wasn’t enough traffi c 

for the purpose.

So we had to rebuild it all. We had also about a 30-month schedule we had 

to meet to rebuild everything. Fortunately, we did have the instruments that were 

more or less complete. And the business end did not really have to change much. 

But everything below that did have to change, and it was all new mechanical and 

thermal structures. 

So our Deputy Project Manager took a risk. He started hunting around in 

the rest of the world for a foreign launch vehicle, and Headquarters informed him 

that he would lose some body parts if he kept on doing that, and that was a risk. 

Headquarters did, however, recognize that potentially this mission could be the 

fi rst new science mission to go up after the Challenger. And so they said, “Well, 

if we could get you a Delta, could you fi t?” So the answer was: “Yeah, just barely.” 

And so the Delta was found. It had to be brought together from the spare parts 

left around in hangars elsewhere and pigeon droppings had eaten holes through 

the tanks in a few places. They were welded closed. So some of the stuff was a 

little bit of a risk.

But that was not the hard part. There were quite a few other kinds of 

risks in here. Of the business end, the scientifi c instruments, two of them were 

located inside a helium cryostat, and we had almost no experience with operating 

anything at very low temperatures. Certainly, our space engineering team did not 

know much about it. We all learned a lot going through this project. 

Another really tough challenge that affl icted us seriously in the early days 

was that our budget was always limited. We didn’t enjoy the virtue of being a toppriority project. So there were quite a lot of things that we did that were probably 

wrong, but we just knew we couldn’t get the money to do the thing right. 

However, that did change after the Challenger. And, so, the management 

approach changed. Charlie Pellerin came around and said, “If there’s anybody on 

this project who knows any reason why this isn’t right, tell us now.” And he was 

pretty serious that we would have to tell him. He wanted to know the bad news, 

if there was any, because he needed to make sure this was going to turn out. So, 

I think this was an example that management attitude and our ability to raise 

funds to do the right thing were critically important to success. 

Anyway, the whole story as best I could tell it is recorded in a book called 

The Very First Light. It’s about ten years ago now, and it was written for a general 

“

”

. . . MY FIRST THING IS, IF IT’S NOT TESTED, IT WILL FAIL, AND 

THAT YOU PROBABLY WON’T BE ABLE TO FIX IT EITHER. 

JOHN MATHER COBE AND THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
184

audience. People told me afterwards they were out of breath from reading it 

because there were so many hazards that we faced and recovered from; and I 

think that’s not unusual in the space business. 

But it was worth it. We showed the spectrum of the universe is a perfect 

blackbody spectrum for a temperature of 2.725 plus or minus .001 Kelvin, which 

in its earlier incarnation brought us a standing ovation when we showed it to the 

American Astronomical Society. The question of whether the Big Bang theory 

was correct at all was still a somewhat open issue when this was reported. And 

to produce such a perfect measurement was tremendous cause for a celebration. 

And all the critics fi nally had to give up and agree that, well, maybe the Big Bang 

was really right. A map of the brightness of that background radiation over the 

entire sky was used to not only confi rm the Big Bang story, but also to start in on 

the question of what’s the rest of the universe like? The map and the details tell 

us basically that it’s true—we’re only 4 percent of the total universe, the matter 

that we know about. There’s something like 20 percent more dark matter that 

still has attractive gravity. And we weren’t quite sure then, but we were beginning 

to get onto it, that there’s also a repulsion force that causes the acceleration of 

the universe. The universe is going faster and faster, and danged if I know what 

that’s about! A lot of people have guesses, none of which we can confi rm as yet. 

So this is a very open subject. 

So these two results basically started up immense industries. There has 

already been a successor spacecraft for the measurement of the map and it’s 

done far better. There’s another one planned, and another one is hoped for after 

that. So we have made tremendous results out of this project, which seemed 

extremely risky technically.

Now, I want to go on to something that’s perhaps easier in a sense, but 

much more diffi cult in another, the James Webb Space Telescope. This mission 

is the scientifi c successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and it was conceived a 

long time ago, back in 1995, as the successor. And it’s a scientifi c successor, but 

not a replacement. A lot of people are very concerned about what the future of 

Hubble is, and for anyone who cares, this is not a replacement. 

This is not doing what Hubble does. This is looking farther away into 

the very distant universe and looking deeper into the places where stars and 

planets are being made, and it’s much more challenging in a different way. To 

accomplish the objectives we need a much bigger telescope than Hubble. Well, 

how are you going to do that? Well, I’ll show you. It also needs to be very, very 

cold because we need to see infrared light. The most distant universe is redshifted, as it appears to us. The ultraviolet light that was emitted by those most 

distant things we want to see comes out in the infrared. And the visible light and 

other things come out in much longer infrared wavelengths. So we have to have a 

full telescope, and we are driven to a solution that happens in deep space. So we 

couldn’t fi nd any way around it. We sure knew that it would be great if we could 

service this mission as the Hubble had been serviced. We could not fi nd a design 

that would allow that.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
So we did negotiate a deal with the European and Canadian Space Agency 

and we did get the blessing of the National Academy of Sciences that this was the 

next big thing. It is a vision which strikes fear and trembling into the hearts of 

engineers, because the payload escapes from the Earth. It’s going to go a million 

miles away from the Earth and when it gets partway out there it’s going to deploy. 

And deployment in mechanical devices also terrifi ed many engineers. We’ve had 

a lot of trouble with mechanical things and they’re plenty right to be worried 

about it. It’s got its solar arrays to deploy, then a solar baffl e, a heat shield, then 

graphite fi ber poles, a little bit stouter than fi shing poles but not a whole lot. The 

shield pops open and becomes fi ve layers. The fi ve-layer shield is a much better 

thermal shield. Then a support tower is erected and the secondary mirror comes 

out and deploys on its linkages. The gold-coated primary mirror there is made 

out of beryllium hexagons, but it’s coated with gold. And it deploys one wing of 

the hexagon, and now the other wing.

It’s a million miles away. It’s a million miles in the opposite direction from 

the Sun. There’s a point called the Lagrange point L2 where it’s a semi-stable 

orbit. And if you hovered around that spot, you could stay there with only a small 

nudge and move around the Sun with the Earth all year long. 

So that’s where we’re going. This is the thing that’s supposed to go there. 

And if you had asked us ten years ago if this was going to work, people would 

laugh at you and say, “Nah, you couldn’t do anything like that.” The company 

that’s building this for us is Northrop Grumman. It’s next to L.A. airport. And 

they tell us that they’ve actually deployed many, many things in space for other 

government agencies which they can’t tell us about! But there is a reason why 

this technology was much more mature than astronomers ever imagined.

So, anyway, there’s an awful lot of engineering risk in that thing. We 

had altogether twelve contracts to learn how to build the ultra-lightweight 

mirror that we need. The mirror is a chunk of beryllium, which is polished to 

the required accuracy. And we’ve proven that it will stay the right shape when 

it cools down. So this is a truly remarkable accomplishment. And, jeepers, it 

looks just like a mirror, doesn’t it? But it took years and years of cooperative 

technology and competition. 

Now, I want to show you the result as a formal tool that we use for analyzing 

risk. If we didn’t have a formal tool I’m convinced we could never get there, 

because the way that we did risk analysis for the COBE project was: “Well, I 

think it’ll work or I think it won’t.” Now we have a very formal process. We 

have a giant risk database. Our risk manager is here if you want to ask her more 

questions about it. 

But we have engineers that fi ll out forms and we have weekly meetings, 

and we keep track of every single thing that we’re worried about. And sometimes 

we retire it and sometimes we say, “Oh, it’s getting worse,” and we have to do 

something more vigorous about it. At least three of the top issues for us were 

questions about people—you know, can the agencies agree on something? So 

this is an example that’s very typical, that some of the hardest problems are 

185

JOHN MATHER COBE AND THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
186

negotiations. And I just wanted to emphasize that we have a method for doing 

this, and never to forget what the problems are.

I wanted to share some of my observations of physical things with you. 

And this, I have to admit, started with my learning experiences in school. I had a 

thesis project which failed on its fi rst fl ight, and I learned a lot from that failure. 

And I know how we got into that mind-set that said, “Well, let’s fl y it anyway.” 

We were tired, and we didn’t have any more money. However, this thing did not 

work for three different reasons and so I learned something.

So, my fi rst thing is, if it’s not tested, it will fail, and that you probably 

won’t be able to fi x it either. And sometimes if it is tested, it will fail anyway, but 

at least you’ll have a chance to fi x it. But it will cost you. If you don’t have a spare 

part or a backup plan, it will defi nitely fail. And if you only test it a little bit to see 

if it will do what it’s supposed to do, then it’ll do something else. So I’ve come 

to a similar conclusion to what Steve Squyres was recommending: You need lots 

of hardware around to work with, because things are going to go wrong and you 

need to be able to test out your idea on one thing while you’re fi xing the other 

one. So you need to have a lot of smart people thinking a lot about really terrible 

things, things that could go wrong and might just go wrong, and not being too 

limited to thinking about the things that you only know you can fi x. Things that 

have the highest consequence will often be things that you missed because, you 

know, “Oh, I can’t fi x that.” So you need lots of external review and we do have 

lots of external review. And so that’s the number one thing. 

There’s another issue, about individual people. I don’t think that human 

beings as a group are particularly good at balancing lots of likelihood and 

consequence. I know a lot of people [who] have fallen off of things and hurt 

themselves badly, including one of our senior managers on the COBE project—

after he retired, fortunately for the project. So we’re not really good at this. We 

need a formal tool. And we have a formal tool, but if you don’t use it, you will 

defi nitely be in trouble! That’s a conclusion from this. 

So I think our greatest risk is lack of imagination. A lot of imaginary things 

you just have to explore. Once you’ve decided where you’re going to go with what 

you get from your imagination, then you have to imagine all the things that could 

go wrong. You have to rehearse all that. If you were a performer, as my wife is, then 

you rehearse before you go out on stage. And people who are successful in our 

business rehearse and rehearse and rehearse, too. But I know that, at least in my 

history, we have been very easily blinded by thinking about what we have to work 

with rather than is it actually required? Nature doesn’t really care whether we have 

enough resources to think about this problem. Either we did it right, or we didn’t. 

If you didn’t build it right and you think of this fact, then you better tell people 

and get the resources. Otherwise, you might as well not have started. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
From the Earth to the Moon

I’m just a Hollywood screenwriter, and when I look at the 

people on this panel, I think I’m the answer to: “What’s wrong with this picture?” The other 

thing that comes to mind is my Mission to Mars credit. There’s a thing in Hollywood where 

you fi ght hard to get credit on something, because you’ll usually get some money when the 

DVD sells. And you have to weigh the value of that money versus being humiliated in front 

of people at NASA for having been involved in a movie as bad as Mission to Mars. So—I 

really don’t know if it was worth it. But anyway . . .

In 1996 I got a call from my agent and she said that Tom Hanks was doing a history 

of the Apollo program for HBO and did I want to be involved, and I said, “Sign me up.” 

I read the outlines that they had prepared and I read Andy Chaikin’s book. The episode 

that jumped out at me for dramatic purposes was the episode that, at that point, was then 

called “The Fire.” It was later re-titled, for good reason, “Apollo I.” They said, “Sorry, that’s 

already taken by another writer.” And the next day, I got a call that the writer had dropped 

out, so I got a chance to write that episode. In a very personally selfi sh way, that changed 

my career. Up until that point, I’d been an action writer. I did Speed and Broken Arrow and 

Graham Yost is a writer/director from Toronto, Canada. His work includes the television series 

From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Mission to Mars (2000), and the 1994 box offi ce hit Speed, 

starring Keanu Reeves.

Graham Yost

Writer/Director
188

those were fun movies, but this was the fi rst time I got to write real people 

and really interesting and real dramatic situations. And I remember the highest 

compliment that I got was, at one point, Frank Darabont was going to direct the 

episode—Frank Darabont has directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green 

Mile. He said while he was reading it, he kept on fl ipping back to the title page 

and saying, “This is the bus guy?” 

As a little Canadian boy, I watched the Moon program from Canada and 

just loved it, which is why I said I wanted to be on board—but it made me a true 

space geek. The term on Earth to the Moon was “you’ve become a helmet-sniffer,” 

if anyone knows the term from sports. That’s why I’m here. And we would follow 

around Dave Scott, our astronaut adviser, and I remember telling my wife, “I just 

keep looking at his feet,” because those feet were on the Moon. 

In the writing of this episode, “Apollo 1,” I decided very early on that I 

wanted to focus on Frank Borman, who was part of the Apollo 1—it was actually, 

technically, called the Apollo 204 Review Board. We’re going to show a clip from 

the episode. So this is Frank Borman. It’s later on in the episode and it’s Frank 

Borman, played by David Andrews, who’s testifying in front of a Senate committee. 

And I made Walter Mondale the bad guy, but that’s a whole other story. 

[Dialogue from video clip is indented.]

Senator Mondale: Colonel Borman, would you have entered the 

spacecraft on the morning of the accident if your turn had been 

called?

Frank Borman: Yes, sir.

Senator Mondale: Would you have had any hesitancy? 

Frank Borman: No, sir. 

Senator Mondale: Were there defects in workmanship?

Frank Borman: There were.

Senator Mondale: And did these defects go beyond workmanship?

Frank Borman: Yes, sir, there were defects in design. 

Senator Mondale: If you had entered that spacecraft on that morning, 

would you have been motivated by a desire to take risks? 

Frank Borman: No, sir. Sometimes there are romantic, silk-scarf 

notions attributed to this business, but we’re professionals. We will 

accept it, certainly, but not undue risks. 

Senator Mondale: Let me rephrase the question. Knowing what you 

know now, would you have entered that spacecraft? 

Frank Borman: No, sir.

Senator Mondale: Colonel Borman, how did Commander Grissom 

and his crew feel about the readiness of the vehicle? 

Frank Borman: I talked to Ed White shortly before the accident. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut James A. Lovell, Jr., 

commander of the Apollo 13, testifying 

before members of the Senate Space 

Committee about the problems of the 

Apollo 13 mission. 

(NASA Image # 70-H-515)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
189

He thought they were over most of their problems and were on 

their way . . .

Senator Mondale: Didn’t Commander Grissom once hang a lemon on 

the simulator? 

Frank Borman: You had to know Gus.

Senator Mondale: Did Commander Grissom 

hang a lemon on the simulator? 

Frank Borman: Yes, sir. 

Second Senator: [interrupts Mondale] Tell us 

about him, Colonel. Sorry, Senator, I just have a 

couple of quick questions. Would you yield for 

a minute or two? 

Senator Mondale: Actually, Mr. Chairman, I—

Second Senator: Thanks. Colonel Borman, 

you just said, “You had to know Gus.” And I 

think that that’s been missing in here the past 

few days. I’d like the record to contain just a 

little about the men who perished in that fi re. 

Colonel, could you do that for us? 

Frank Borman: Gus Grissom was the fi rst 

astronaut to be asked to fl y three times. 

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. He loved being 

an astronaut, except for the publicity and 

display that comes with the job. There are no 

front windows on the house he built for Betty 

in Timber Cove because he didn’t want people 

looking in. If that gives you the impression that 

Gus was a cranky SOB, well, he was, at times. 

But I would have trusted him with my life. 

Ed White was a big man for an astronaut, a 

shade under six feet. As you well know, Ed was 

the fi rst American to walk in space. There’s a 

story going around that when he was on his 

spacewalk, he stayed out after he had been ordered in because he was 

having such a good time. Funny story, but it would have meant Ed 

White disobeyed an order. Not going to happen. Ed was a West Point 

man. Duty, honor, country were not just words to him. He was one 

of my closest friends. 

Roger Chaffee, I didn’t know that well. He was one of the new guys, 

very energetic, very excited. I heard a story about him, though. He 

was out on Long Island visiting the Grumman facility where they 

were building the descent stage of the lunar module. He saw a group 

GRAHAM YOST FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

This photograph shows the crew in training for the ill-fated 

Apollo/Saturn 204 mission, more commonly known as Apollo 1. On 

27 January 1967, a sudden fi re broke out in the command module 

during a launchpad test. All three of the primary crew—astronauts 

Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Edward Higgins White II, and Roger 

Bruce Chaffee—perished. 

(NASA Image # 66-HC-1834)
190

of men standing in the corner. He found out these were the fellows 

that make the tools that make the machines. None of the big wigs 

that were escorted through there ever talked to these guys. But Roger 

went over and made them feel like they were the most important 

part of the program. 

Second Senator: Colonel, this isn’t a court of law, so I can ask you 

something that’s completely hypothetical. If you could somehow 

reach beyond the wall of death and talk to Grissom, White, and 

Chaffee, what do you imagine they would say about the fi re?

Frank Borman: I was—I was hoping that someone would ask that. 

I don’t know what Roger or Ed would say, but I can let Gus speak 

for himself. Back in January, he talked to a group of reporters. They 

asked him about the dangers involved in going to the Moon.

[Additional indentation to set off reminiscence of Grissom 

speaking.]

Gus Grissom: We’re in a risky business, and we hope if anything 

happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of 

space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will 

force us to go there ourselves, because in the fi nal analysis, 

only man can fully evaluate the Moon in terms understandable 

to other men.

Second Senator: Colonel, at the risk of being gruesome, we’ve heard 

about the fi re from everyone who was there, everyone except the 

astronauts themselves, of course. Can you tell me what they went 

through? What it was like for them?

Frank Borman: I can only tell you what we know or, at least, what we 

think we know. When it happened, they were just waiting for the test 

to resume. 

[Additional indentation to set off fl ashbacks to astronauts caught in 

Apollo I fi re.]

Gus Grissom: How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t 

talk between three buildings? I can’t hear a thing you’re saying. 

Jesus Christ, I said, how are we going to get to the Moon if we 

can’t talk between two or three buildings? 

Frank Borman: They didn’t see the spark that caused the fi re because 

it was behind the panel door, down below Gus’s feet. Because of the 

oxygen, the spark was able to jump out into the netting under the 

seats. Gus probably saw it fi rst because it was closest to him. 

Astronaut: Fire! We have fi re!

Frank Borman: Procedure would have had Gus push down Ed’s 

headrest so that Ed could have started turning the latches. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
191

Astronaut: We have a bad fi re! [pause] Hurry up!

Frank Borman: Now, it just took me a minute or more to tell you all 

that. In actuality, from the fi rst mention of the fi re to the rupture of 

the hull only 15 seconds went by. 

Second Senator: Colonel, what caused the fi re? I’m not talking about 

wires and oxygen. It seems that some people think that NASA 

pressured North American to meet unrealistic and arbitrary deadlines 

and that in turn North American allowed safety to be compromised. 

Frank Borman: I won’t deny that there’s been pressure to meet 

deadlines but safety has never been intentionally compromised. 

Second Senator: Then what caused the fi re? 

Frank Borman: A failure of imagination. We’ve always known there 

was the possibility of a fi re in a spacecraft. But the fear was always 

that it would happen in space when you were 180 miles from terra 

fi rma and the nearest fi re station. That was the worry. No one ever 

imagined that it would happen on the ground. If anyone had thought 

of it, the test would have been classifi ed as hazardous. But it wasn’t. 

We just didn’t think of it. Now whose fault is that? Well, it’s North 

American’s fault. It’s NASA’s fault. It’s the fault of every person 

who ever worked on Apollo. It’s my fault. I didn’t think the test was 

hazardous. No one did. I wish to God we had. 

Second Senator: Now before we all go home, is there any statement 

you personally would like to make? 

Frank Borman: I think I’m safe in speaking for all the astronauts when 

I say that we are confi dent in our management. We’re confi dent in 

our training, in our engineering, and in ourselves. The real question 

is, are you confi dent in us? 

Second Senator: What do you think we should do Colonel? 

Frank Borman: I think you should stop this witch-hunt and let us go 

to the Moon. [Applause] 

Second Senator: Senator Mondale, back to you. 

Senator Mondale: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have nothing further. 

Second Senator: Thank you, Colonel. 

[End of video clip]

John Grunsfeld: I’m going to exercise my executive privilege here for just 

a minute, and I’ll let Graham continue, but, Graham, this is why we invited you. 

I can’t help watching that without getting a little tear in my eye. I’ve been up 

at NASA Headquarters for a little over a year. When I came to Headquarters 

after the loss of Columbia it was because of the pain that I felt for the crew and 

my friends and this kind of circumstance. When I started watching this video 

GRAHAM YOST FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
192

I thought, welcome to Mr. O’Keefe’s world. And Bill Readdy’s world. And all of 

us here from NASA who had to suffer through the loss of Columbia and crew. 

This really does address the central issue that we’re here to discuss, which is 

how do we decide, when do we decide to go on, given the loss of our friends, for 

something we all believe is crucially important personally, professionally, for the 

planet, and for our friends. 

I know Mr. O’Keefe has to leave in just a little bit, but I’d like to take this 

opportunity just to thank you as, hopefully, folks thank James Webb for the 

perseverance, the energy. For those of you who [don’t] know me, I am an intense 

workaholic. I can look to a few members in the audience who are shaking their 

heads in agreement and Mr. O’Keefe, you’re the fi rst person that I have been 

unable to keep up with. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for helping 

sponsor this risk symposium. 

I think in a nutshell that things like that video clip show the key to 

communicating this risk to the public effectively. So, back to you. 

Graham Yost: Thank you very much. After working on Earth to the Moon, 

I was looked at in Hollywood as the guy who, if NASA ever had a problem, would 

write the thing about it. So I became the disaster guy. This was also incredibly 

tough. I wrote a screenplay in ’99 on Challenger. That has never been produced. 

Partly because, I think—it was for 20th Century Fox—and they were looking for 

white hats and black hats, and what I found was human beings. 

Then, I got to work for HBO on a thing on Mir and looked at Jerry Linenger’s 

experiences up there and the fi re that they had. Also Mike Foale and the docking 

incident. At any rate, though, Earth to the Moon was the focus for me in risk. 

We shot it mostly in Florida. We did the lunar surface stuff outside of L.A., but 

we shot the rest of it in Florida. Our joke at the time was, just like the Moon 

program, we’re thousands of miles from home, we’re spending way too much 

money, and it’s taking too long. The difference was, and it’s been mentioned 

about the robotic missions, there were risks to career, risks to family, but there 

really, ultimately, was no risking of life in doing a miniseries for HBO and hanging 

out with Tom Hanks. That’s not a hard thing. 

But when I think about risk as I’ve heard over the past couple of days, 

I’m reminded of George Carlin’s famous line—judging risk is very subjective. 

“

”

THIS REALLY DOES ADDRESS THE CENTRAL ISSUE THAT WE’RE HERE TO DISCUSS, 

WHICH IS HOW DO WE DECIDE, WHEN DO WE DECIDE TO GO ON, GIVEN THE LOSS 

OF OUR FRIENDS, FOR SOMETHING WE ALL BELIEVE IS CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT 

PERSONALLY, PROFESSIONALLY, FOR THE PLANET, AND FOR OUR FRIENDS. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
193

George Carlin’s line about driving was, “Have you ever noticed, anyone driving 

slower than you is an idiot and anyone who’s driving faster is a maniac?” In 

hearing some of the things, we feel like we can somehow judge our own risk 

level. We know what we can handle. The classic subjective thing is fl ying versus 

driving. We know statistically fl ying is lot safer, and, yet, somehow, we feel that 

if we’re in charge, we can handle that risk. I remember when I was living in New 

York and some crime had happened to a stranger. That was the thing we were 

always concerned with, stranger on stranger crime. You would fi nd out when it 

happened and where it happened and you’d say, “Oh, I never would have been 

there.” So, it’s not risky. 

In terms of Apollo, as I said, one of the great honors of doing Earth to the 

Moon was meeting the astronauts and spending a lot of time with Dave Scott. I 

got to direct the episode about Apollo 9. So I spent a lot of time with him talking 

about that. I also worked with him getting the script ready for the episode covering 

the Apollo 15 mission. He told me that there was a big discussion about what 

the rover walk-back limit on it would be, how far the rover could go before, if it 

broke down, they would have to walk back to the LEM. The proposal was that they 

should have—I forget the term—it was like a double walk-back limit or something. 

Because, what if the rover failed and one of the Portable Life Support System (PLSS) 

backpacks failed, that they should be able to go back on one PLSS backpack. Dave 

said, “No. That’s just going to hamper us too much. That’s going to hamstring us. 

We need to go as far as the single walk-back limit.” I said, “Well, what would have 

happened if you had a PLSS failure and a rover failure?” He said, “Well, we would 

have had a bad day.” That was his perspective, and that was his choice. 

Thinking about risk and NASA and space exploration, you have to realize 

that people like Shannon Lucid and people like [Harrison] Jack Schmitt and the 

other astronauts, they’re perfectly capable of judging whether or not something 

is safe. Just like David Andrews, Borman is saying: We know what we’re willing 

to take. The reality is that space exploration, unlike the Magellan voyages, has 

been a volunteer thing. There’s been no torturing of astronauts and telling them 

that they have to go into space. Which again, may not be a bad idea. [Laughter] 

It’s important not to rule anything out. 

This does bring up the other project I worked on in which that was always 

one of the questions. Judy Resnik and Dick Scobee and Elison Onizuka knew what 

they were dealing with in spacefl ight but did Christa McAuliffe really know? Did 

Greg Jarvis really know? The thing is, they were told. They were told as well 

as anyone can communicate to them. It’s not about statistics. Dick Scobee told 

Christa McAuliffe the classic line, “When you launch the Shuttle, everyone is at 

least three miles away except for us. We’re going to be sitting on top.” For me, in 

researching Challenger—and again it’s probably one of the reasons it didn’t get 

produced—was that the problem with Challenger wasn’t that NASA somehow 

got lax with risk. There are all these theories, by the way. I don’t know if any 

of you have read these books, but that NASA was pressured to make the launch 

in order to meet up with Reagan’s State of the Union address that night and all 

GRAHAM YOST FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
194

this stuff. The future of space was in Reagan’s hands, that there was pressure, 

pressure, pressure. I think that’s absurd, when you look into it, and that’s what 

Dave Scott would call an “outside the culture” view of it. When you get inside, 

you realize it was just people doing the job they had and the best job they could. 

Everyone working on the program knew the astronauts or met them at some 

time. There was no laxity in NASA on risk. 

To me, in looking at it, the problem was with public perception of risk. 

This has come up again and again over the past couple of days, but because I’m 

last I get to say it again anyway. What can the public tolerate? What are they 

expecting? I think that when Challenger happened, NASA was a victim of its 

own success. If you consider Apollo 13 was a close call. We’ve heard that term 

mentioned, but other than that, it was just a string of successes with manned 

missions. The expectation in the public rose. There was also media pressure—

the media fed into that. There was a classic tape of Peter Jennings on the 26th of 

January—the night before Challenger—saying another on-time departure is too 

much of a challenge for Challenger, because there was a socket wrench that they 

couldn’t work. 

But, the truth be told, NASA at that time was part of the problem, because 

NASA had promised that the Shuttle was going to be a routine access to space. 

As anyone who I’ve talked to involved with spacefl ight knows, there’s no such 

thing. It’s not routine. It’s not—as Mike Foale said last night—it’s not fl ying a 

big aircraft. It’s something far more complicated and far more risky than that. 

During the Presidential Commission on Challenger a fi gure came up and I don’t 

know the source of it so, if it’s not true, forgive me, but it has been said that the 

Shuttle stood only a 1 in 100,000 chance of having a disaster. It was Richard 

Feynman, who was on the commission, who worked out the simple math that 

that means the Shuttle would launch once a day for three hundred years before 

something happened. That was an unreal expectation, an unreal offer to the 

public, that it’s going to be that good, that sure. 

The thing is that we have public accountability. We have a transparent 

program. There are problems with that, but I still think the good outweighs the 

bad. In researching the NASA stuff, we also, at one point for Earth to the Moon, 

we were going to do a special two-hour episode about the Soviet program. It just 

became too expensive. One of the things that we found out is that there were 

horrifi c accidents. The testing of an N1 with over 1,000 people killed in one 

explosion. No one ever heard about it. No one in North America ever heard about 

it. No one in Russia heard about it. 

In fact, I would say that culture of secrecy is something that, as Mike Foale 

said last night talking about the docking crash on Mir, contributed to that: The 

idea that we don’t have to share everything. We don’t have to tell you everything. 

It’s all okay. 

My closing thoughts have to do with the question of humans versus robots. 

A lot of people have said it’s kind of an absurd question. They have to go hand 

in hand. To me, humans versus robots is, frankly, not about risk. Ultimately, 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
195

it’s about money. My feeling in having written about space exploration is that 

the notion of risk is almost secondary to whether or not we move forward into 

space. I think the public will bear whatever the risk is because they know that 

the people involved will bear it. Because the astronauts sign up, because it is 

voluntary. The question becomes, is the public going to get behind it? The public 

is important because they’re paying for it. 

Even though I’m Canadian, I pay American tax dollars. So, it becomes 

a public concern. If something happened back in the 1960s to Lockheed or 

Grumman or a North American test, well, that was private enterprise. That’s 

okay. That’s their deal. That’s their pilot. But when it’s our pilots, when it’s our 

astronauts, then it becomes something that people have to get behind. 

Dave Scott told me that Neil Armstrong once gave a presentation saying—

and this is sort of a gloomy note to end on—but going to the Moon was really 

the convergence of several important things. The technology was available, the 

money, and there was the public will. And I think the big question is going to be 

to get the public will to go back to the Moon and on to Mars. And I don’t know 

if it’s just a matter of communicating it. I think it is also a matter of, somehow, 

in the zeitgeist, the public has to get behind it. Beating the Soviets was worth it. 

People just signed up and said, it’s worth it. I think that if we found out that a 

Mars base was crucial to protecting us from an asteroid storm or alien invasion, 

we would be there in 10 years. 

So what I believe that NASA has to do is to embark on a massive campaign of 

disinformation and lies. [Loud laughter.] And I pledge to do whatever I can. ■ 

“

”

MY FEELING IN HAVING WRITTEN ABOUT SPACE EXPLORATION IS THAT THE NOTION 

OF RISK IS ALMOST SECONDARY TO WHETHER OR NOT WE MOVE FORWARD INTO 

SPACE. I THINK THE PUBLIC WILL BEAR WHATEVER THE RISK IS BECAUSE THEY 

KNOW THAT THE PEOPLE INVOLVED WILL BEAR IT.

GRAHAM YOST FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

Back to Contents page 

Discussion

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Welcome back to “Risk and Exploration.” Our panelists are eager and 

ready to answer and discuss all of your questions and concerns. I imagine that the audience 

has plenty to offer, so I think what we will do is start. If you do ask a question or make a 

comment, please make sure and stand up, give your name and affi liation, and wait just a 

moment for them to cue up your microphone. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don’t quite know how to phrase my question. It’s been bothering 

me for the last day and a half. It was illustrated very nicely in the fi lm clip we saw. There’s 

an old set of characteristics of projects that has been going around for years, the last two 

of which involved praise and honor for the nonparticipants, and the last one is search for 

the guilty. The search for the guilty was illustrated there with the cross-examination of the 

astronaut for causing a failure. I guess I have been bothered for years by the fact that there 

always seems to be a need for institutional witch hunting. Somebody has to be guilty. This 

has got to be an inhibiting factor for managers and the people who have to make the tough 

decisions. I wonder how people feel about that. Is it really an inhibiting factor, or do you 

not think about it? 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: That’s a great question. I guess you missed the Barcelona Times in 

1522 when Magellan didn’t return, and they started the witch-hunt there. It’s an interplay 

between Congress, the media, and the transparency that Graham discussed. We want to 

have a transparent space administration. That’s part of our process. 

JIM GARVIN: Sometimes the side effect of that mind-set is stimulated reexamination of 

programs. It has been said, and I’ve heard it said here, that we have programs in NASA. The 

one I speak for here, the Mars exploration program, continuously reinvents itself, precipitated 

by different types of catalysts. Sometimes they are the big setbacks. We did that after Mars 

Observer—the big witch-hunt of the early ’90s. We did it after, as Steve said, the Climate 

Orbiter/Polar Lander issue, and we built a better program. So, that transparency and these 

effects you rarely see sometimes have positive consequences. How to live in the risk world 

without them in a highly visible public program is the debate we should all have. In the case 

of Mars, I can say that the level of incisiveness and the view that we took to do the rover, to 
198

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

do Mars Odyssey, which is still operating, and that we are applying to the Mars 

Reconnaissance Orbiter has been, perhaps, catalyzed by this mind-set. 

GRAHAM YOST: In researching From Earth to the Moon, the feeling after the fi re in 

Apollo I and the death of the crew was one of recommitment. The whole program 

just came together stronger and better than before out of that. I remember 

researching Challenger. There certainly was a witch-hunt, and Larry Malloy at 

Marshall became the fall guy. He once said that he understood that, as the middle 

manager in a corporation, his neck would be the one to go and his head would be 

the one to roll. I would say, and everyone here is in NASA after Challenger and 

you will see NASA after Columbia as well, that there is sort of a recommitment. I 

think, from the outside point of view, it’s sort of a program that gets stronger. 

STEVE SQUYRES: I think it serves no useful purpose nor is it in any way 

appropriate to have a search for the guilty parties. It just doesn’t do anybody any 

good and should be avoided. At the same time, you cannot let your desire to avoid 

that scare you off from a ruthlessly self-critical evaluation of what went wrong. 

T. K. Mattingly last night said that every great success is preceded by failure. 

Certainly that was the case in the case of our mission, and I can tell you right now 

that the MER [Mars Exploration Rover] mission, as one simple example, would not 

have succeeded had it not been for the ruthlessly critical self-evaluation that NASA 

undertook of its Mars program, as Gene said, after the loss of MPL [Mars Polar 

Lander] and MCO [Mars Climate Orbiter]. I think the CAIB, the Columbia Accident 

Investigation Board, that Scott Hubbard was a part of, was a very necessary process. 

It was ruthlessly critical of the Agency in ways that were necessary and ways that 

will save lives in the future. We shouldn’t have a witch-hunt, but you can’t let it 

scare you off from doing a job you have to do when something goes wrong. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I would like to add that I do picture myself sitting in 

Frank Borman’s chair down here answering the questions. Now, you’ve said it 

was a good idea. You just gave up because you couldn’t get the resources? Well, 

what kind of man are you, you know? It gives a person a little more courage to go 

tell the uncomfortable truth that you might have to tell sometimes. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think one of the questions that comes up as far as 

testing is the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope is 

a big telescope. That’s why it has all that deployment, and it is still too small to 

do certain types of work that we know we would want to do at the end of the next 

decade: look for earth-type planets around nearby stars. I fi nd that a compelling 

goal, and we need a bigger telescope. It will almost certainly be too big to test 

on planet Earth, and that gets back into the humans and robotic partnership. At 

what point are our goals important enough, our objectives well known, that the 

scale is such that we cannot test it on planet Earth? In the integrated test such 

that we might want to employ robots and/or humans as we do in the Hubble 

Space Telescope to check it out, how do you make that call? I know that this is 

something you’ve thought about, John. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt, lunar 

module pilot, stands near the United States 

fl ag on the lunar surface during NASA’s fi nal 

lunar landing mission in the Apollo series 

(1972). (NASA Image # AS17-134-20382)
199

DISCUSSION

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I would think that we have to do everything that 

we can with robots because they are probably quicker in most areas, and there 

will be some things they cannot do alone. When it comes to our dreams of big 

telescopes to fi nd planets around other stars, I think we have to be really diligent 

in searching for ways to test them on the ground also. We just shouldn’t give up 

on testing them on the ground, because I despair of convincing Congress that 

they have to fund us when we can’t test it before we fl y it. So, I think we have to 

be very, very imaginative about fi nding ways to test on the ground. We then still 

have to fi gure out that it’s maybe not going to work. 

There are some things we cannot adjust in the fi nal stage and we cannot 

confi rm on the ground. We have in mind fl ying constellations of telescopes that 

collect light from several different places and funnel it through a single combiner 

in the middle in an interferometer confi guration, and with this method, you 

can build up the image sharpness that you would have from a telescope that is 

hundreds of meters, maybe kilometers or hundreds of kilometers across. You 

might want to do that to fi nd out about those planets around other stars, but 

we just have no hope of testing that on the ground. Still, we must prove that it’s 

going to work when you get there, so what are you going to use? Imagination? I 

couldn’t tell you the answer today. 

JIM GARVIN: We actually did experiments on the Moon with Apollo that you 

couldn’t have tested on the Earth. The human beings, the crew set up some of 

the impressive arrays that we used to study the interior of the Moon and then 

experienced the collision of leftover space vehicles to generate a pulse; [that] was 

a novel, imaginative experiment that we did. I think there’s an example of that. 

But there was something that we call Robotic Sample Return to bring back pieces 

of Mars to Earth. Some of us call it “Apollo without the astronauts” because of 

the complexity. The reason for that mission is because there are some things we 

think can only be done, at least until we reach projected technology state, with 

people in the loop. We either move a lot of people to Mars, and some of us would 

like to go, or we bring stuff back from Mars so the people here can work on it. 

Because of the testing limitations, you’re there. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: One important point that I think is just good to get 

on tape is that there is no such thing as pure robotic exploration. The stuff comes 

back to the people who want to understand the science, so people are always 

involved. It’s just a question of where are the people in proximity to the context. 

That’s the evidence. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you, David Roberts. Problem for Jim Garvin 

and Steve Squyres and the panel. Besides Mars and Europa, what would be the 

likely planets or satellites for the next landers? Why? If possible, when?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: First, you left out the Moon. Going back to the Moon, 

it’s a planet in its own right. While we visited tremendously with the humans, 

getting back there is a scientifi c and human operation proving ground. Mars is 
200

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

central to our vision, our implementation plan. So the Moon is a place. In fact, 

contrary to common belief, although not contrary to the science community, 

the Moon offers an interesting context for astrobiology. There’s the question of 

early planetary crusts in which there may be aspects of our own history in the 

origins of life from which you gain context. Other than that, I would submit that 

it’s a reconnaissance that will help answer that question. You named Europa. 

In January [2005], we will have the descent of the Huygens probe as part of 

the mission to Titan, unquestionably one of the most interesting objects in 

our solar system, certainly from the standpoint of planetary atmospheres and 

environments. Landing on that surface and sustaining landed experiments 

beyond the scope of Huygens is a wonderful step. We have a mission called Dawn 

that will visit two of the main belt asteroids, which are really planetary objects 

in their own right, Vesta and Ceres in this case, and landing on them, by virtue 

of what we fi nd from the fi rst nonlanded experiments that we’ll be doing, I think 

is important. But I don’t want to leave out Venus. Twelve impressive landings 

by our Soviet colleagues have left many questions that are so fundamental to 

understanding how big, rocky planets work, and their atmospheres, that we have 

no clue about. And, yet, that poses a risk challenge to sustain operations there 

robotically. I don’t know whether the crews want to go yet, John, a little bit hard 

to get back in the gravity wall. There are a lot of places where landed experiments 

as a forerunner to sample returns and, ultimately, human landings, in my view, 

are important parts of our strategy. 

STEVE SQUYRES: I think you answered it well. Actually, I’m glad you 

mentioned Venus because, you know, we have Venus, Earth, and Mars, and it 

brings us back to comments that Jean-Michel Cousteau and Sylvia Earle made 

this morning, which are, we like this planet, this is a nice planet we live on. 

And we also know we don’t want to end up like Venus or Mars, and we don’t 

understand any of them, including the Earth, all that well. 

DAVID HALPERN: I’m happy somebody just mentioned Venus and Mars and the 

Earth. The point that was being made in the morning is not so much we don’t 

want to end up like Venus with the hot house or the greenhouse gas—that’s a 

separate issue. The simplest fact is that we know the topography—the ups and 

downs and the curves of Venus and Mars—to a much, much greater extent than 

we know the bottom of the ocean. That was one of the points that we were trying 

to make in the morning. 

When it comes to exploration, if you want to explore, like Lewis and Clark, 

a continental area, what do you do? You fi rst go there and you see what the height 

is and what the elevation is and where the streams are and where the gullies are. 

But we don’t know that in the ocean. And the point that was being made—and 

then I think there was another comment made this afternoon—about 96 percent 

of the universe we don’t know. Well, we don’t even know 95 percent of the ocean. 

So, I just want to reiterate the point from this morning. 
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DISCUSSION

JOE FULLER: Joe Fuller, Futron Corporation. Right now, we’re spending a lot of 

time, energy, resources, imaginations to reduce the risk associated with return 

to fl ight. And even though I’m sure everybody’s going to do everything they can, 

there will still be risks. And if we think the unthinkable, what if there’s another 

accident, you know, on the very next mission? It would have a devastating 

consequence. How do we get ahead of the curve in mitigating the risk of, you 

know, such a situation? I guess I’ll refer to Graham Yost—he got very close to it 

in talking about, you know, dealing with the public.

GRAHAM YOST: Again, I think it comes back to the victim of success. The 

manned spacefl ight in America has not been like test fl ight in America, where 

they had accidents all the time back in the ’50s and people just kind of got used 

to that. God forbid, you know, that manned spacefl ight had been like that. But 

it’s hard to say what the public appetite is. Someone was asking me at the break 

about that, and I do maintain that the public is in many ways more concerned—I 

believe and I may be totally wrong in this—they’re more concerned about the 

cost of things, because it’s a pocketbook issue, than they are about the human 

risk. They’re concerned about the human risk, but I think that they do feel that 

everyone is doing absolutely everything they can to make sure these people get 

back safely. I think that’s just the tradition of the American spacefl ight. And, so, 

I don’t know what would happen to the Shuttle program. And, God forbid, you 

know, it took a long time, relatively, between Challenger and Columbia. That was 

a lot of fl ights, and it doesn’t excuse it or make it okay, it’s such an incredibly 

complicated machine—you all know. And the public doesn’t know. But I think 

that the public accepts just the basic notion that it’s risky.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I don’t know how Shannon feels, but I know for myself 

I’m more amazed each time we launch a Shuttle when you think of the tens of 

thousands of pieces, you know, that are checked out in the few seconds just prior 

to launch that all have to pass those checks before we actually leave. And the tens 

of thousands of people that all have to do their job just right before that Shuttle 

will leave the ground. It’s always amazing to me that we do leave. I’m always a 

little surprised, when I’m in the vehicle, that we actually leave. I sort of prepare 

myself for that, you know, late countdown shutdown for some parameter out of 

limits, which many of us have experienced. 

At the same time, Shannon, how do you compartmentalize? I know I do 

that. When I’m in the Shuttle thinking about the mission, I put the risk part of it, 

the scary part, in a little compartment, and it never really occurs to me when we’re 

sitting out on the launch pad on four-and-a-half million pounds of explosives. 

SHANNON LUCID: Well, you’ve made the decision that’s what you’re going to 

do and you’ve worked with the people that are doing everything. You’ve worked 

with the fl ight control team, you’ve worked with the Cape people, you know. 

And you know that they’re doing the very best that they can. You know that 

they’re only human; you know that mistakes can be made. And you’ve made your 
202

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

decision and that’s what you’re going to do. You don’t sit there and analyze it and 

say, “What if?” at that time.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: That’s right. In specifi c, we talk about the team aspects. And, 

as risk takers, regardless of whether it’s earth, sea, or the stars, when you get into 

the vehicle or into the environment, ultimately, you have to trust those people 

who are making the decisions, and management, that they’ve done everything 

that they can. And often we talk about “as low as reasonably achievable” as a 

method of risk mitigation. For return to fl ight after Columbia, we have a very 

extensive guide, and the Space Operations Directorate has a very detailed returnto-fl ight plan. So, I think we’re doing everything we can. 

DAVID LONGNECKER: Hi, David Longnecker from the University of Pennsylvania. 

And my question is probably addressed to you, John. And that is, following up on 

what we just heard about mitigating risk, one risk we haven’t really talked about 

so far—at least [to] any signifi cant degree here—is the risk associated with a 

very large organization with multiple components, each doing their job to an 

optimal level, but, yet, creating a series of stovepipes that are not linked together 

across the organization. I’d be curious to know what NASA’s doing to deal with 

that sort of linkage of risk across a huge organization.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: David, that’s a great question. Thank you for asking that, 

and I think you saw on August 1st that NASA engaged in a rather large-scale 

transformation of its organization. The study of organizational risk in high-risk 

endeavors is a very mature study, but not very well understood. And you talked 

about stovepipes. The function of the transformation was to get NASA aligned 

behind a central goal. And you’ve heard that a lot. You have to have a clear goal. 

Everybody has to understand that goal, and everybody has to work together for 

that goal. In the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, they talked about 

integration functions. And, so, one of the things that we’ve done is to strengthen, 

through consolidation and through this transformation, our ability to integrate. 

We have a Science Missions Directorate that now contains all of our science 

and has close ties with exploration systems, space operations, aeronautics; and 

we have an associate deputy administrator for integration who is the corporate 

conscience. And we develop our processes and policies to make sure that we 

have close integration between all these endeavors, whether it’s the expendable 

launch vehicles in the science arena or human spacefl ight and the exploration 

development. And part of that—and, I think, a key part of that—is so that we 

can incorporate lessons learned across the Agency into programs where those 

lessons may apply. 

So, you know, that’s not a full answer to your question, because it’s only 

been a couple of months, but we’re on the road towards trying to get that kind of 

integration and breaking down the stovepipes. 

MITCH BARNEY: Mitch Barney, Goddard Space Flight Center. Ever since I was a 

college student, I’ve done my explorations in a bunny suit and clean-room booties. 
203

DISCUSSION

I’m in the engineering side, developing new instrument-measurement techniques 

and technologies where failure is an option and the challenge is the risk—that’s 

what brings you back day to day. Recently, the NASA environment for us has 

become a more competitive environment. We’re competing and collaborating both 

internally and externally with private industry and with academia. And I wonder 

what the panel’s response [is] to a question about the impact of a competitive 

environment on the risk that NASA’s taking now. Dr. Mather and Dr. Garvin, you 

both mentioned the competitive aspects. So I wonder what you thought about 

competition and what it does—what’s the impact on risk.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I’d like to start this, if I could, with Steve Squyres. I came to 

NASA as a principal investigator in science programs and considered that process 

to be like swimming with sharks. Yeah, Steve?

STEVE SQUYRES: It is. I think that the competitive process that we go 

through—if exercised appropriately, if the selection process is done in an 

appropriate fashion—is one of the best risk mitigators that we have. My team, 

in various, different permutations and combinations, wrote three unsuccessful 

proposals—each of them, at the time, the best we could do, each of them with 

serious fl aws—to agencies. We sent in the proposals. It was highly competitive. 

We lost. It was painful. We went back and we sharpened our pencils and we did 

a better job. And each proposal got better and better and, fi nally, on the fourth 

try, we managed to convince the Agency that something like MER was a good 

thing to do. I think that competitive process and the intensity of it—the pain 

and humiliation of losing a competition like that—drove us, and it drove us very 

hard to get better; and not just to write better proposals, but build safer, better, 

more-likely-to-succeed hardware. 

And so, it’s very important to have that competition. And I think the more 

broadly the net is cast—opening up the competition to industry, to universities 

large and small, across the Agency—to try to level the playing fi eld so that 

everybody’s competing on roughly equivalent terms, is a very, very valuable 

thing. And I dislike the competitive process intensely, but it’s part of what has 

led to success of many programs doing that.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think the key for us at NASA is to make sure we 

provide you the tools and the ability to be able to compete head-to-head.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If I may as well. I’ve seen the good and the bad of 

the competitive process for, in particular, science-driven experiments. And we 

haven’t always gotten it right. I mean, Steve tells a good story, but we just spent 

the last couple of years going through that competitive process for 25 wonderful 

contests for missions to go to Mars, robotic missions, at this stage. And I think 

we’ve actually achieved a risk-based lesson learned from honing of that process. 

And I fi rst saw that process as a loser, often, in the ’90s, proposing instruments, 

but I later saw it from the standpoint of implementation, and I saw elegant things 

we want to do in space—both at Earth and on planets—get through the process 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

with great imagination and excitement, and then fail to sustain the cost envelope, 

the research envelope. 

And I saw the community get smarter, that is, the integrated aerospace, 

university, NASA center, you know, community. And in this last Mars scout 

go-round—my one knothole in this—we had dozens of brilliant missions to 

Mars. And in the end, the fi nal four—I’m not a basketball player—emerged 

after withering reviews by hundreds of individuals in which we spent more time 

worrying about being attentive to understanding risk. In fact, the most withering 

review is the risk of implementation review we do. And I think, you know, to some 

extent, it’s the setbacks that have honed that. So that I’m much more confi dent 

from all these analyses that we can do these things. Now, the question is, I think, 

how do we maintain continuous improvement of that process when we reach a 

certain level of performance—success from MER, success from COBE?

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I’m thinking that there are a lot of rules of the game that 

govern how it all plays out and that at NASA Headquarters, when we set up the 

rules of engagement, we basically determine the outcome—in a way that we may 

not anticipate—of how organizations grow or die. And the ability of organizations 

to grow or die as a response to the competitive process is part of capitalism, and 

it’s part of the sort of basic religion of America, practically. But it does have some 

unintended consequences. Creative destruction is sort of [a] motto that people 

carry, and a lot of us may lose. So, well, that’s just part of the deal. And I think that 

we need those competitive forces and, certainly, I’ve had a lot of losing proposals 

as well, so they know that and they deserve to lose, but maybe next time. 

STEVE SQUYRES: There’s one other aspect that we’ve mostly been doing with 

the science side, because we’re a science-heavy panel, but Jim brought up the 

metrics by which you decide who wins the proposal. In the science case, we want 

projects that are viable, scientifi cally top-notch, and so on. One of the duties of 

the commander on a Space Shuttle fl ight—and I presume it was true of a Saturn 

V fl ight as well—is to remind the new fl iers of the group that they’re launching 

on the lowest bidder’s successful project. So sometimes those measures of 

effectiveness may be at odds with low risk. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: It must be getting late. Well, Jim, let me pick on you for a 

minute and ask you something. You’ve fl own a Shuttle experiment, and I’ve 

thought about this. My Ph.D. thesis was on a Space Shuttle. It was on the Space 

Shuttle Challenger, the fl ight before the fateful one, and I didn’t think about the risk 

element to the crew at all. When you fl ew your laser experiment, did you think at 

all about the risk the crew was taking to get science for you and your colleagues? 

JIM GARVIN: Well, in fact, John, we did, and for two reasons: One was the risk 

that we were afraid we were imposing on them. We had 45 millijoules, the number 

in laser metrics, a non-eye-safe, infrared laser transmitter. The light could have 

blinded the crew looking out the back window. And so we developed fl ight rules 

and procedures with the crew so that they would be sleeping, often, when we 
205

DISCUSSION

operated. For two reasons: We didn’t want them moving around, because we were 

trying to measure little things on there, and, second, we didn’t want that risk. 

But I remember vividly the launch of STS-72, which was in January of ’96, and 

the biggest snowstorm in a decade in Washington[, DC].

And I remember thinking that the crew were launching, you know, not 

really thinking about the weather or getting to the payload operation control 

center at Goddard where they were running the experiment, which was causing 

me great stress, but I thought, they were riding these seven million pounds of 

thrust to carry our team’s hundred kilos of stuff to try out an idea. And I thought 

how lucky we were. Because we had all the infrastructure that got them there into 

orbit successfully—in this case, it was a recovery mission for the Japanese—but 

also, to let us have this window on the world with this fl ight. We went with 

checked and set parameters, so I thought, if our straw is the one that breaks the 

back for the crew and, also for the mission and the Shuttle, that would be, you 

know, a tremendous setback. 

We were scheduled to have an experiment like this on the fi rst Shuttle 

launch for science out of Vandenberg. So, we were to go into polar orbit with 

the Shuttle to do experiments looking over the polar ice, being a big thing we 

wanted to measure. But, at any rate, it took us nine years to get back to our 

experiment on Endeavour when we fl ew. I just think those are the challenges of 

human spacefl ight. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I know, from the risk-taker’s side, that the decision to 

go is very easy when it’s making great science or great exploration. That makes it a 

much easier discussion to think about the risks versus the rewards. There are folks 

I’ve fl own with out here in the audience and we’ve done tremendous science. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Any more? Going once, twice. Very good. Well, I want to 

thank all of the speakers. Let’s give them all a great big hand. I also want to 

take the time, once again, to thank the Naval Postgraduate School. It’s been a 

tremendous venue for us and a great environment to have these discussions 

today for “Sea and Stars.” Also for Ames, which has helped facilitate this. Don’t 

forget, tonight is dinner and a movie. We’ll be watching the Endurance. And for 

those out in the listening world, thanks for watching NASA TV. ■

Open next section Back to Contents page 

S E S S I O N F O U R

why we explore
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Astronaut, astrophysicist, and mountaineer, John M. Grunsfeld served as NASA’s chief scientist from 

2003–2004. Grunsfeld is a veteran of four Space Shuttle fl ights. In 1999 and 2002 he took part in a total 

of fi ve successful spacewalks to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. 

A native of Chicago, Grunsfeld received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology in 1980. He earned a masters degree and a doctorate in physics from the University of 

Chicago in 1984 and 1988, respectively. Grunsfeld was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1992. His fi rst 

fl ight assignment came in 1995 on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-67. In 1997, Grunsfeld 

served as fl ight engineer for the Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-81 and a 10-day mission to Russia’s 

Mir space station. He has logged over 45 days in space, including 37 hours and 32 minutes working 

outside the Space Shuttle.

John Grunsfeld

NASA Chief Scientist and Astronaut 

Welcome to “Risk and Exploration—Earth, Sea, and the 

Stars.” Today’s session is entitled “Why We Explore,” but I’m hoping that, mostly, we can 

make it a dialogue, up close and personal. I’m John Grunsfeld. I’m the NASA chief scientist 

and an astronaut. 

I think we have started getting into the discussions on risk and exploration, into some 

of the thorny questions about how do we make decisions. How do we use our judgment? 

How do we, as institutional managers of a public institution, make decisions on behalf of 

the American people, and with oversight of the Congress, that can stand the test of time, 

without being so risk averse that we don’t do anything interesting? 

There’s a couple of things I’d like to show this morning that are personal, that are 

professional as chief scientist, and then, representing the Agency, and then, looking forward. 

I think we’d be remiss in all of this discussion if we avoided the topic of why we’re not 

sending a Space Shuttle back to the Hubble to service it. So I’ll address that in a second. 

One of our favorite cartoons shows a Conestoga wagon heading across the Great 

Plains. And the title reads “Alarmed by the many dangers, the pioneers abandoned westward 

Why We Explore
210

exploration except for a series of unmanned prairie-probe vehicles.” You know, 

I think many people have summed up succinctly why humans explore. Because 

we want to go. In the face of danger, but managed risk. I am absolutely positive 

that our outward expansion from the cradle that planet Earth is, will not be one 

of strictly unmanned probes, but we will be heading out across the prairies. Why 

[do] we explore? Right now, Spirit at Columbia Hills [Mars] is poised to look over 

those hills and see what’s beyond. 

I’m an explorer who is trained by a group called the National Outdoor 

Leadership School, and we’re privileged to have John Gans, the director of the 

National Outdoor Leadership School, here. I went there in high school and it was 

to learn to be a better risk manager, a better leader in the outdoors and, hopefully, 

not to be reckless like most teenagers. 

But my interest in exploration was largely driven through the pages of 

National Geographic, through the movies of Jacques Cousteau, while growing up 

on the south side of Chicago, that I was able to explore vicariously. But I wanted to 

go. I have a passion for exploration, and I have a weakness. When I see something 

like Columbia Hills, I have a need to look over that hill. And it’s a real challenge. 

It’s a real challenge because you set limits for yourself. And as mountaineers, 

we set limits for ourselves. We have to summit by a certain time so we can make 

it back safely. And I’m constantly torn, wanting to go further, especially when I’m 

on professional travel and I take a day off to go hike. I say, “Well, I only have one 

day and I’ll go this far.” And I get that far and I look forward and I say, “Boy, I’ve 

got to go a little further.” 

So, that’s what we’re doing with Spirit and Opportunity on Mars now. We 

have the opportunity to go further because the rovers are still running, they’re 

still doing great. You know, we had a 90- or a 120-day mission and we’re well 

beyond that now, and we have hope they can go much further. 

This May and June, I had the opportunity to try and climb a little hill in 

Alaska called Denali—Mt. McKinley. It’s 6,157 meters, 20,320 feet tall. This is a 

serious expedition. It’s not quite the kind of thing that Ed Viesturs does, but it’s, 

I think, comparable in many ways. 

It’s at 63 degrees north latitude. That makes it perhaps the coldest mountain 

on planet Earth. You start out already basically in the Arctic. Its conditions on the 

summit are comparable to Everest in winter. The Alaska Range is a large landmass 

that extends up out of plains, basically, a few hundred feet in altitude. It sees the 

full brunt of arctic weather. And, so, it seemed like an appropriate challenge. 

Now, in order to do this as an astronaut—and I see Colonel Cabana in the 

audience—this was my third try. The fi rst time I tried, as an astronaut, I felt 

compelled to write a mission statement and a risk-mitigation statement that I 

submitted to my boss, Colonel Cabana, then chief of the astronaut offi ce, so that 

I could get permission to go, so to speak. Even though it was personal leave. 

That’s the way I view risk management on this climb: you have my crew 

notebook with checklists. And I think I’m the only mountaineer I know who 

goes up with checklists and says, “Okay.” And part of that was, I recognized that 

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, mission 

specialist, looks over a fl ight plan on 

Space Shuttle Discovery’s fl ight deck 

while communicating with ground 

controllers. 

(NASA Image # S103-E-5016)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
211

at high altitude I will be hypoxic, I will make mistakes. And this was one of 

my mechanisms to prevent myself from making mistakes. I still made lots of 

mistakes. I think back now and I think, “It’s in the checklist; how could I have 

missed it?” 

But it’s one mechanism of risk mitigation that we use very often in the space 

business, because the line between life and death is so fi ne. We heard in this talk 

something that I think is very characteristic: the farther you go from base camp, 

if the smiles get bigger, you have the right team. And we lived, basically, on a 

glacier for 23 days. All of our water came from melting snow. 

Just a great experience. No cell phones, no beepers, no Blackberrys, really 

just existing in a very primal way, but with the aid of high technology, and that’s 

something I think is part of the real spirit of exploration, that trying to go to the 

next hill. And I got up to the top and I looked back and I waved at Dave Schuman, 

who is another NASA Headquarters employee. I said, “Dave,” and I had to yell. 

I said, “Dave, I have bad news.” And he was thinking “Oh, no.” We thought we 

were close to the summit—we’d been on the summit ridge for about two hours 

climbing up from something called the “Football Field.” And it’s tedious. What 

Ed Viesturs said is right. You take a step, you breathe a bunch of times, and you 

take a step. And every time you stop to breathe, you look forward to see how 

much longer it is. And, very often, you don’t see the top, you know, [you have 

to] climb another ridge. And I said, “I have bad news. There’s no place else to go 

but down.” 

I was actually worried about sort of an anticlimactic feeling. This was 

my third try, and I just couldn’t believe I was actually standing on the highest 

point in North America—just an unbelievable feeling. I was half laughing— my 

climbing buddies say hysterically—and half crying. I just couldn’t believe it. So 

we had three NASA employees on the summit of North America on June 7th of 

this year, 91 years after the fi rst ascent. 

A lot of people have climbed to the top of this mountain—about 12,000. 

About one out of a hundred perish in this. My risk management plan was to 

go through a book called Accidents in North American Mountaineering. It’s 

published every year. Just the fact that a book like this is published means that 

mountaineers are very sensitive to this issue of risk and that we try and learn 

from others’ mistakes. 

“

”

I HAVE A PASSION FOR EXPLORATION, AND I HAVE A WEAKNESS. 

WHEN I SEE SOMETHING LIKE COLUMBIA HILLS, I HAVE A NEED TO 

LOOK OVER THAT HILL. AND IT’S A REAL CHALLENGE. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD WHY WE EXPLORE
212

I went through basically every mountaineering accident on Mt. McKinley 

and in the Alaska Range from 1969 to about 1992 and came up with common 

causes, behaviors that led to those accidents, and then asked myself, how can 

I avoid those behaviors? And, so, that was also in my little notebook. And I’d 

review that every night and then review it with the team. “Okay, we’re not going 

to do this. We’re always going to stay roped, no matter where we are. We’re 

always going to carry an ice axe.” 

We pretty much beat it away so that if you do the statistics, it became more 

like 1 in 10,000. And one of the things that people think about mountaineering is 

that it’s high-risk behavior. In fact, a mountaineer who climbs recreationally, as I 

do, is about three times more likely to die from heart disease in the United States 

than from a mountaineering accident. But, 

of course, when there is a mountaineering 

accident, and a rescue, that short-term drama 

that we discussed here is what plays big, and 

not the many, many safe expeditions. 

The other thing that we will talk about 

in the discussion is the Hubble decision. 

On January 16th [2004], Sean O’Keefe, the 

Administrator of NASA, Ed Weiler, and I 

went out to the Goddard Space Flight Center 

to announce to the Hubbard Space Telescope 

servicing team that Mr. O’Keefe had made the 

hard decision that we were not going to return 

to the Hubble Space Telescope for a fi fth 

servicing mission with the Space Shuttle. 

This hit me extremely hard. I am 

literally a “Hubble Hugger,” as I think many 

of you know. I’ve had the privilege of visiting 

the Hubble Space Telescope twice. I’m a 

professional astronomer. I know Bob Parker 

is here somewhere, he’s another astronomer 

astronaut, and I’m sure he can appreciate 

how tough this was. But Mr. O’Keefe looked 

at all the elements post-Columbia, and, in 

fact, our last mission was on Columbia up to 

the Hubble in March of 2002. And he looked 

at the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. 

Hubble has a clock, an internal clock. And that clock is driven by gyroscopes 

and batteries. And sometime in the next two to three years, the gyroscopes that 

are on Hubble will wear out, and Hubble won’t be able to do science anymore. 

Not too much longer after that, the batteries will run out of juice, their ability 

to charge and recharge, and at that point, the telescope will go cold and won’t be 

able to be recovered. 

Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, positioned on a foot restraint on the end of Discovery’s

remote manipulator system (RMS), prepares to replace a radio transmitter in one of 

the Hubble Space Telescope’s electronics bay. 

(NASA Image # STS103-713-048)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
213

So we have to get to Hubble before the batteries die. And if you look at the 

recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, and if you say 

we’re going to satisfy every single recommendation before we go to fl ight and you 

say that we’re not going to succumb to schedule pressure again, then when you look 

at the risk-to-benefi t of using a Space Shuttle, you put yourself in a real box. 

One of the boxes goes like the following: Imagine that we press forward with 

a Hubble servicing mission with the Shuttle. We have the crew trained, we have 

the big team trained, and we’re on the pad. You know, maybe even we have liquid 

oxygen boiling off and the hissing and the moaning. And, in the launch count, we 

fi nd out that something’s not working right. A computer is down, a multiplexer 

isn’t working, some communication link on the ground isn’t working. Our fl ight 

rules would say, “Don’t launch.” 

But whoever is in the hot seat that day will feel enormous schedule 

pressure to launch that mission anyway, because Hubble won’t wait. We’re all 

success-oriented, that’s what we drive to. And Mr. O’Keefe didn’t want to put 

any manager in that position. 

Worse, when we go to the Hubble orbit, we launch due east. And, so, the only 

self-rescue capability we have—and that’s another very important element in 

mountaineering or any outdoor adventure or going down in caves and, certainly, 

in the Antarctic—is limited to what you really have on the Shuttle. And, so, early 

in his analysis, he said if we’re going to go to Hubble, we want to have a second 

Space Shuttle available on the pad so that you could launch within less than 30 

days, which is probably the maximum you could keep a Shuttle crew going in 

orbit, in case of a Columbia-like accident. Well, imagine the enormous pressure 

if you had to execute that—of the second Shuttle to go rescue the crew. 

Would we do it? Of course we would. If we put ourselves in that position, 

we would do everything we could to mount that rescue mission. And the same 

thing if the weather’s not good, if something’s wrong with that second Shuttle. 

And, I think, about half the time, there’s some issue that delays us. We’re getting 

better and better. I know two of my four missions have been delayed by a number 

of months. Many other missions have been delayed even as close to a few seconds 

prior to launch, when an engine will shut down for good reason, and we then 

recycle to two or three months later. 

That’s not acceptable if we’re doing a rescue mission, even if it is a best-effort 

rescue mission. So I think the managers would feel that extreme schedule pressure 

that would put another crew at risk. So Mr. O’Keefe just felt that, as the top banana 

risk manager for the Agency, he didn’t want to put us in that position. 

That’s a tough call. We all love Hubble. Hubble does extremely important 

science and is, perhaps, the most important scientifi c instrument ever created 

by humans. So this hit many of us hard, and it’s that emotional side that makes 

risk-analysis and decision-making so hard. Someone said that the decisions we 

don’t have control over are the ones that we worry the most about, and the ones 

we do have control over, we worry the least about. Well, this is one that I know 

Mr. O’Keefe has worried the most about. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD WHY WE EXPLORE
214

And it really is compliance with all of the recommendations of the Columbia 

Accident Investigation Board and where we have raised the bar to make sure that 

we fl y safely with the Shuttle—as safely as we can. 

What we also heard in this conference [is] that the only limit is our 

imagination. Absolutely true. So the question you have to ask—and I did ask the 

Administrator—”Okay, if we can’t go back with the Shuttle to service Hubble, how 

can we service Hubble?” I didn’t quite put it that way, but I came back and said, “If 

we can service Hubble without the Shuttle, can we go forward with that?” 

And I explained to him that it might be possible to use a robot to service 

Hubble. Now, keep in mind that I’m proposing something that puts me, as a 

spacewalking astronaut, out of business. But that’s exactly what we want to do. 

We want to take routine operations of servicing—things that we can do with 

robots, things that we pioneered using humans that now robotics can do—and 

replace humans in hazardous situations. 

EVA, Extravehicular Activity, is a very hazardous activity. We’ve been very 

fortunate in our spacewalks and there have been some close calls. That being said, 

servicing Hubble robotically will be a true, high-performance challenge. So, it’s 

not clear that we can do it yet. But Mr. O’Keefe said we can go investigate that. 

This was an idea that came out of the extremely talented team at the Goddard 

Space Flight Center led by Frank Cepollina, one of our top inventors and outof-the-box thinkers, a true explorer, one of the people responsible for the fi rst 

servicing mission. 

Remember, Hubble was a “space turkey,” a “dog in space,” “space junk.” All 

of those things that we heard after it was launched, just because the mirror was 

ground to the wrong shape. Now, it was actually the best mirror ever created, but 

it was the wrong shape. Well, we went up and put contact lenses on it, corrective 

optics, on the fi rst servicing mission. And for three years, people [had] said, “You 

can’t do it. People can’t service it. It won’t work. It will be too hard. You’ll end up 

destroying the telescope.” But we did it. 

It was that same team that came forward and said, “We think we might be 

able to send robots to the rescue.” Well, that alone wasn’t quite enough to put 

us collectively over the edge to suggest that we actually should proceed with the 

robotic mission, until we started listing the key technologies that we would have 

to prove to be able to service Hubble. And those technologies were: autonomous 

robotic rendezvous with a spacecraft, proximity operations close to the telescope, 

reaching out and grabbing the telescope, effectively a docking; doing an assembly, 

putting a new spacecraft underneath the Hubble—robotic assembly, and then, 

having dexterous robotics, agile robotics that can feel, to be able to service the 

telescope the way humans do, new tool development. 

We looked at that list and I said, “Boy, that list looks exactly like our top list 

of things we need to learn how to do to explore—to go to the Moon, Mars, and 

beyond.” And so the idea came up of using Hubble to be a catalyst for exploration. 

Because, after all, what is Hubble? Hubble is out exploring the universe. It’s 

our eyes for exploring the universe. It already is doing our exploration mission. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
215

And what a great part of the Hubble story that it can continue to do science and 

be that spark that allows us to go further on. 

Hubble is very hard to work on. This is going to be pushing what we’ve 

done in space, you know, maybe one or two generations. But people perform at 

their highest when we give them high-performance challenges. 

If you ask people the easy things, they’ll do it, but when you ask people 

who are passionate to do something hard, they’ll do it well, and they’ll pull out 

all the stops. And we’ve heard that in all of our panelists and in contributions 

from the audience. 

Once we installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys in the telescope, 

there are a lot of very delicate operations. One of the good things about a robot 

is once its done the operation once, it can repeat it over and over again. And 

we have a greater knowledge of the metrology—of all of the measurements of 

Hubble—than any spacecraft ever, due to four servicing missions and all of the 

metrology we did on the ground—all of the measurements we made. So that we 

could build instruments on the ground while Hubble’s in space and know that 

they’ll fi t. So this is the best setup we’re probably going to have to try some of 

these hard things. 

The proposed robotic servicing mission will launch on an expendable 

vehicle. We’ve got to get it up there sometime around late 2007 or 2008, so 

those of you who’ve heard about the MER, you know, 34 months wasn’t long 

enough; well, we have about the same amount of time. It’ll have two parts. It’ll 

have a part that’s going to stay with the telescope and one that will leave. Once 

it’s on orbit, a robotic arm, much like the Space Shuttle, will be deployed. And 

there’ll be people involved—this is not a push a button and it goes. Folks on the 

ground will be monitoring this and, maybe, controlling it. 

We’re going to grab Hubble in exactly the same way we did with the Shuttle. 

We’ll have the same end effector—a very similar arm, a similar approach—and 

we’ll use the same spots on the Hubble that we grab with the Shuttle. So, we’re 

still in known territory, we’re just using a robot. The robot will then put itself 

on the bottom. And that’s exactly what we do with the Shuttle—we grab Hubble 

and we put the Shuttle underneath. And we latch with these exact same latches. 

Well, now the robot’s doing it. 

Once we let go, now we have to get the arms and the hands. To do that, 

we’re going to use this special-purpose dexterous manipulator. It’s already 

fl ight-ready. It’s a Canadian arm called “Dextre”—that’s the call sign. And it was 

built to service electronics on the International Space Station. 

Well, we’re going to steal that fi rst and use it on Hubble. It’ll deploy some 

cables to hook up the new spacecraft into the Hubble. This is something we 

feel comfortable doing, except for the part with the connectors. The connectors 

are always tricky—they’re tricky for people with hands, especially when you’re 

wearing these big space gloves. In two weeks, we built prototype tools that were 

able to take these connectors on the ground-based version on and off. And so 

we’re reasonably confi dent we’ll be able to do this. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD WHY WE EXPLORE
216

But of course, we have to expect the unexpected, and Hubble always 

provides unexpected surprises. So we’re going to involve all of the spacewalking 

astronauts and folks who have controlled robots on Hubble to go through all of 

these and think what could go wrong, and make sure we have the robot designed 

to do that. 

Next, we’re going to take out the wide-fi eld camera. There’s just two bolts 

and a ground strap and it pulls out externally. And we’re going to stow the old 

one and put a new one in. The nice thing is, once we’ve taken it out, the robot 

now knows every motion it takes to put the new one back in. And we’ll have extra 

cameras. One of the things about this robot is it can actually feel force. We’ll have 

monitoring so that if it hits something, we see the force on that particular joint 

rising, and we can back off a little bit and change the attitude. 

We also have to hook the new spacecraft into the brains of Hubble. That’ll 

be another connector. It will be on the computer that Mike Foale put in. There’s a 

connector on the top, fortunately, not on the side, that’s just a shorting plug. So, 

take it off and put a cable on and then close the door on the cable. 

Now we get into the really hard stuff, which is to take the corrective optics 

out. They are not needed anymore. All new instruments have the corrective 

optics built in. These are the sides of the refrigerator, so this is doing the job 

of Jim Newman, who had that advance camera and put in the Cosmic Origins 

Spectrograph. Once that’s done, the servicing part goes away. Hubble, hopefully, 

will get between three and eight years of extended life, and then, at the end of 

life, we have to safely deorbit Hubble. Again, it’s a safety and a risk issue. There 

is about a 1:250 chance that some large part of Hubble will survive to the ground 

in a populated area, and that risk is just too high. 

So that little package on the bottom that has the new batteries in it also has 

deorbit engines. So Hubble will deploy all of its booms, start charging up the new 

batteries, do its science, and then sometime, perhaps as late as 2015, we’ll feather 

the arrays, much like Mike Melvill feathered the wings on SpaceShipOne, and fi re 

the deorbit module. 

I’m hoping to be on a cruise ship somewhere in the Pacifi c to watch Hubble 

fl y over and reenter. I think we’ll all have to have a big party and really celebrate 

an incredible voyage. It will be this voyage that will have helped stimulate and 

advance us, probably by fi ve or six years, in the exploration effort. 

So that’s the plan for the robotics. We actually have some contracts in place 

now. I think it was last Friday we announced that Lockheed Martin had won 

the contract to build part of the spacecraft. It is going to be assembled at the 

Goddard Space Flight Center as an in-house project. People say three years is 

impossible. But the really good news is that we have a tremendous amount of 

hardware already built, because we were on the road to a Servicing Mission 4. 

Hubble has produced great images. How many people have seen the Hubble 

Deep Field? Or the Ultra Deep Field? An amazing picture. A thousand galaxies. It 

took 11 days staring into a blank part of space. If you hold a soda straw up to the 

sky at night and look through it, that’s about the area of the picture. If you look at 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
217

what’s in the background in this relatively short exposure with this new camera, 

you see a lot of things. If you add up all of the spots, each of which is another 

galaxy, there are six thousand galaxies. Remember, that’s just a little soda straw 

with a relatively short exposure. Each one of those galaxies has 100 to 200 billion 

stars. You heard me say yesterday, 10 years ago we didn’t know about any other 

planets outside of our own solar system. Now we know, in just the nearby stars, 

of over 125. There are about twice that many that are being investigated to be 

confi rmed. We now think planetary systems are common. So you can add it up 

just in this picture alone: 6 thousand times 200 billion times a couple of planets 

per star. There are a lot of planets out there. It’s pretty mind-boggling. 

That’s where we’re going on Hubble. Where are we going next with the 

Space Shuttle? Well, we’re going back to the Space Station. In the President’s 

vision for space exploration, our fi rst task is to return the Shuttle safely to fl ight. 

The team is working through that. They are working through it with a passion as 

well. It is also hard. 

We are fi nding a lot of challenges, not the least of which is we don’t really 

have a Shuttle we can launch to test the new foam changes. So, we have our best 

and brightest engineers working on it. We have Admiral Cantrell helping us with 

the safety issues. We have really pulled out all the stops. 

The crew that is going to go is led by Eileen Collins and piloted by Jim Kelly, 

both very experienced. I fl ew with Wendy Lawrence on my fi rst mission. She’s 

an incredibly hard worker, intense and talented, from the United States Navy. 

Charlie Camarda, Andy Thomas, Steve Robinson, Soichi Noguchi from JAXA, 

the Japanese Space Agency. A really exciting crew. We are going to dock with the 

Space Station. We are going to evaluate our techniques for inspecting the orbiter 

and for repairing the orbiter with some EVA fl ight tests. 

The crew patch [referencing presentation slide] has the crew names around 

the outside and on the orbit. It has this swoosh and the STS-107 outline from 

their crew patch in recognition of that crew. 

Before you leave today, we have STS-114 pins for every one of you. I want 

you to wear those as a reminder of this conference and the work we have ahead of 

us. There are going to be hundreds of risk decisions, reward considerations, and 

judgments that we are going to make before we return to fl ight. 

I hope today is the start of a dialogue that you all have with us and that 

we have with you, and that you will take with you to the groups with whom 

you work, whether it’s within NASA or outside of NASA. To continue this 

“

”

I HOPE TODAY IS THE START OF A DIALOGUE THAT YOU ALL HAVE 

WITH US AND THAT WE HAVE WITH YOU, . . . 

JOHN GRUNSFELD WHY WE EXPLORE
218

discussion, either as organizations or as smaller groups or as individuals, we can 

come back and keep this an ongoing dialogue. I think this continuing dialogue 

is very important if we are going to minimize the risk and maximize the return 

in our endeavors. STS-114 is part of that dialogue, and you will all be part of it 

now—those of you within NASA, by defi nition, and those outside—because of 

your participation here. We thank you for that. 

As [NASA] Chief Scientist, I get to spend a little time in the House Science 

Committee room in Congress, probably more than I’d like. There are some things 

written on the wall that I think are really fantastic, and every time I sit there, 

thinking, What am I gonna say? or What are they gonna ask me?, I look up on the 

wall and read, “For I dipped into the Future, far as human eye could see; saw the 

vision of [new] worlds, and all the wonder that would be.” That’s from Tennyson. 

Again, this is something that I think drives us all. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page
Discussion

JOHN GRUNSFELD: With that, I would like to really open the fl oor completely to any 

discussion we might have, to talk about some of the overarching themes that came out of 

this meeting, anything we haven’t covered. I want this to be very personal, and if folks don’t 

ask questions, and even if they do, I’m going to ask folks that haven’t participated yet to 

volunteer. In fact, let me try and stimulate that a little bit. 

Why don’t I ask our moderators if I can put them on the spot: Dave Halpern, Chris 

McKay, and our dinner speaker, Mike Foale, put you on the spot. We’ll just start talking a 

little bit. 

I think it was clear to me that there was general agreement that the greatest risk is not 

to explore at all. I think that is something that we have to communicate to folks. That we 

should not get so risk-averse that we just don’t go out and explore. I have covered this one, 

but also the greatest risk is the lack of imagination. There are a lot of “greatest risks.” They 

are all up there as the pinnacle of greatest risks. I had written down in my notes: Always 

expect the unexpected. Just like being asked to come down and talk. The other one, which I 

really liked, was Miles O’Brien saying, “The public is not as wimpy as we think.” I can see no 

greater example of the public fl ying a new space ship than SpaceShipOne this morning. 

Last year in the United States, about 40,000 people died in car accidents, of which 

22,000 were not wearing seatbelts. I call that stupid. Folks who do that aren’t thinking 

about the risk and consequence. In exploration, it is harder than that. Mike Melvill, on his 

fi rst fl ight, and, as far as I know, on this fl ight, had no pressure suit. When you get above 

50,000 feet, the remaining atmospheric pressure is such that the partial pressure of carbon 

dioxide and water vapor in your lungs dominates, and oxygen cannot get into your blood. 

Water at body temperature at low pressures will start spontaneously boiling if you expose 

it to a vacuum. 

Mike Melvill had no pressure suit. That’s hanging it out. Why? Why wasn’t he wearing 

a seatbelt and a pressure suit? Well, performance. They are at the edge of the performance 

of what we can do with a vehicle like that, and that’s the decision they made to take that 

risk. It paid off. 
220

OPENING PHOTO: 

Commander Yuri Usachev (left) from 

Russia and U.S. astronauts Susan Helms 

and Jim Voss participate in Soyuz winter 

survival training in March 1998 near Star 

City, Russia. The three became members 

of the second crew to live aboard the 

International Space Station. 

(NASA Image # S98-04118)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

They have a very, very good safety program. They look at all of the considerations, and they consider their pressure vessel to be one that can’t fail, at least given 

the risks that they are willing to take at this stage. So they are true pioneers. 

In aviation, so many pilots died early on. As a result of that, we developed 

lots of the safety mechanisms that test pilots like Mike Melvill use to fl y in 

SpaceShipOne. This risk-judgment-benefi t is really tough stuff, and I think it’s 

great when it succeeds. We need to keep pushing. 

Miles also said, “Exploration is driven by fear, greed and curiosity.” I like to 

stay on the curiosity end of things. Focus on the target. Get the right target. Have 

an overarching shared goal. It is just wonderful now that NASA has that in the 

vision for space exploration. We need to keep focusing on that. The other thing 

that I thought was interesting is that 96 percent of the energy content of the 

universe is in stuff that we have absolutely no clue what it is. I think that’s great. 

What I didn’t know is 96 percent of the undersea environment has not 

been explored. Folks say the easy targets have been explored, and it gets much 

harder from here. Largely, that’s true. Technology is no substitute for experience 

and leadership. 

I am going to put Mike Foale on the spot right away, because I’ve talked 

a little bit about NOLS [National Outdoor Leadership School], and technology 

is no substitute for experience and leadership. Mike, in the Astronaut Corps 

now we are doing some things to try and enhance our expedition leadership. 

Maybe you can talk about just a couple of those things, like the NOLS, like the 

NEEMO [NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations], and let folks know 

what we’re doing.

MICHAEL FOALE: Well, John, I covered a bit of that in my dinner talk. To carry 

out any technologically advanced exploration mission which involves complicated 

techniques and new equipment, you have to be trained. You have to know how to 

use your equipment. If you take really fancy gear with you and you don’t know 

how to use it and you waste time on it in a blizzard or on top of a mountain, you 

may actually end up risking more by messing with it than leaving it behind. 

When we train, we are basically putting aside that risk. We are mitigating the 

risk of carrying out the mission when we actually, fi nally, get to space. With 

astronaut training, just as the training we heard about going under the sea or 

into the deep caves, certainly you train for mountain climbing, we try and train 

so that we will perform better once we are there. 

However, the training is not necessarily without risk. The training is not 

necessarily in the simulator, where I think you’re pretty safe, unless a brown 

recluse bites you, which happened with Joe Engle once. Some of our training 

involves going outdoors. Some of it involves fl ying in aircraft that could have a 

malfunction, in particular, as we look toward exploration beyond Earth orbit, and 

in particular, when we can’t turn around. Think of the Apollo 13 example, when 

your problem occurs on the way out to your destination, or where you are forced 

to go a long way out before you get to come back, then you are in a situation of 

survival or making the best of all the materials and resources at hand. 
221

DISCUSSION

We have started to develop training that will take astronauts in small 

groups, crew size roughly. Six is what we’ve been choosing. We are then 

working with the National Outdoor Leadership School for one, the Canadian 

government for another, and the NEEMO group in Key Largo, Florida, to explore 

and develop leadership, followership, and self-management skills in our crews. 

That is one task. 

Second, we are starting to get a feel for what we need to do when we are 

isolated and when we are dependent only on each other and the things we have 

at hand. That training we are still in the process of discussing and inventing. 

I showed you three cases. One is the National Outdoor Leadership School, 

where we go out either into the Canyon lands or into a mountain environment. 

Another one has been exercises. We have taken part actually starting off in Cold 

Lake, Canada, where basically we are given a scenario more of “expeditioning” 

from one point to another. It is kind of a fancy series of walking through the snow, 

managing yourselves, looking after your team, and managing the equipment that 

you have with you. It is led by instructors who already have a plan on what the 

exercise is going to be, and it is covered in terms of risk, because we also have 

the full resources of the Canadian Armed Forces to get us out of there if we 

actually got seriously hurt. 

Another analogue that we have been exploring and using is the Aquarius 

Laboratory in Key Largo, Florida. There we’ve put together crews that are three 

astronauts with three nonastronauts. We have actually included our Mission 

Control fl ight leads, who would normally be in the Control Center controlling 

a mission, to take part in those dives and those missions. And there we have 

actually solved another issue which is the classic problem of “What on Earth is 

ground control thinking!” when you get these strange instructions. Especially 

if you actually have people who have a stake in your activities. Scientists who 

are not in the team but [are] back at home in safe conditions will be asking 

things of you that might be rather diffi cult or seem rather strange or irrelevant 

at that point in your diffi culties. And we’re trying to bring together the Mission 

Control teams with the astronaut teams that would be deployed so that they 

would see each other’s problems. And we’ve done that two or three times now.

Looking to the future, as we plan for moving to the Moon fi rst and then Mars, 

we need to develop further the idea of being able to maintain our equipment, look 

after those resources that we have, even if they break and are a long, long time 

away from any kind of refurbishment back on Earth. To that extent, we want to 

actually follow-up on some of the Apollo lessons that we saw to teach geology at 

fi rst. And these were in the deserts, I think always in the United States. Because 

of the Martian meteorite interest now, it’s very exciting. We have thought about 

attempting expeditions, taking part with other scientifi c expeditions where there 

is a scientifi c goal that we, the astronaut offi ce, do not have a stake in but they 

have a stake in our performance. So, that would be realistic and an analogue to a 

real mission on Mars or the Moon, where we have to carry out some of the grunt 

work—the deployed work—that would be required.
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

We are also looking at going to hot deserts, where meteorites also occur. 

This would combine the expedition training with acquiring fi eld geology skills 

that would also be required of a small group going to the Moon or Mars. I think 

that summarizes it.

I should just add, once we get to these deployed situations, there are risks. 

And I myself was a little perplexed a number of years ago, when I was asked to come 

up with the whole safety/risk mitigation plan. And I had to have a safety review of 

what we were talking about and planning. At that time, we were sending roughly six 

astronauts at a time for survival training in Russia. And at that time, I talked about 

needing to have some insight into the other partner’s processes. The same would go 

for the Canadians. The same would go if we hire another group, such as NOLS, for 

example. NASA has to know what you do when we use your services.

With Russia, they had had a number of helicopter accidents, and the 

training we were proposing was to do some of those search and rescue exercises 

with the Russian helicopters. And in the end, people were so just alarmed by the 

stories coming out of Russia we had to turn that off. I didn’t know how to fi ll out 

a kind of safety/risk plan or matrix on that. Sometimes, you just have to use good 

judgment. You use your intuition. You ask all the questions that you can. We heard 

how James Cameron manages his fi lm set. That was interesting to me, because he 

doesn’t have the formal process that NASA has in its bureaucracy, forced on as a 

result of many, many mishaps over many, many years of experience. Sometimes, 

in smaller groups, you have to use judgment. And I think we are going to be in a 

position of having to use our judgment as we assess some of these new activities, 

not only just processes and safety reviews.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: One of the things that you brought up was working with our 

international partners. That, I’m sure, is going to be a major issue with pushing 

out beyond lower Earth orbit to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. And it happens on 

Earth frequently, the issue of different international cultures. And we heard a little 

bit of that. I think that’s one we’re really going to have to grapple with. Not just the 

day-to-day living types of things, but how different cultures deal with the safety 

issue. Whether it’s documented or whether it’s trusting people’s good judgment.

MIKE FOALE: I know Chris, and certainly others from Ames who have been doing 

research, they’ve had to work, in particular, with Russians. And I know James 

Cameron did. I’d love to know what their opinions are and how they manage 

insight into systems that they don’t know all about.

CHRIS MCKAY: It’s diffi cult, and in Russia, in particular helicopters fl ights—fl ying 

with the U.S. Navy in Antarctica is very different than fl ying with Aerofl ot in 

Siberia. And we’d like to take you on both trips, Mike. Actually, we would like to 

get you into the ice-covered lakes. I think you and Dale and I ought to talk after.

But, actually, what I would like to do is come back to this conference and just 

think about it a little bit. It’s been an incredibly fun and interesting conference. 

I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed one as much. My question to the audience 

is, how do we make it a useful conference? How do we take what we stated here 
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DISCUSSION

and make it something that could be useful—and I would say, useful to whom? 

Useful to three parts of NASA. The robotics program, which, after we heard Steve 

Squyres talk, I think is clearly in need of a better risk assessment strategy. The 

near-term human program, which we’re hearing about. I think John, Mike, and 

others are well involved in that, and I think that’s been in the impetus for this 

conference. And I applaud them for their efforts. And I think that’s the light that 

makes a way of doing something useful possible, [your] attention to this. And, 

then, third is, [as] Mike was just saying, long-term human exploration of distant 

planets—which is going to be a completely different category of risk and danger. 

So, how do we make this conference useful to the robotic program, to the nearterm human program, and to the long-term exploration program?

And I know that there are a lot of people in the audience with a lot of good 

ideas about this, because I would hear them, as I was scarfi ng down my dessert 

at the dinners and lunches. And I think it would be good to get a dialogue going. 

How do we make this conference useful, rather than just all going home and 

having had a fun and interesting time?

QUESTION: Andy Presby. I’m student here at the school. I’m glad you asked . . . 

The sign on the wall there behind you says, why do we explore? And I think I’ve 

heard a lot of very inspiring and interesting stories over the last couple of days 

about why individual people—panelists and people in the room—have chosen 

to explore. And a lot of them are the same reasons that NASA has inspired me 

pretty much since I was born, since I can remember. But I think an important 

thing for you guys to realize is that the fi rst thing that struck me is [that] not all 

of you explore for the same reasons. And when you’re looking at NASA from the 

outside in—and I think some of the folks from Hollywood and the media have 

identifi ed it correctly—the public is not as concerned about risk maybe as the 

explorers are. The public seems to have sort of understood that you guys accept 

the risk and you do it because you love it, for whatever reasons. 

What the public is worried about is, why are we going? And why should 

I pay for what you love to do? Why is it helpful to me to pay for what you love 

to do? And I think that if you guys walk out of here with anything, perhaps a 

useful thing would be an internal dialogue amongst yourself culminating in an 

intensifi ed outreach program to explain to the public, in terms that they can 

understand clearly, why they should pay for what we all in this room, I think, 

would agree is one of the most important things our government does for us in 

this country.

MICHAEL FOALE: I think we heard very eloquent expressions over the last 

three days as to why we explore. I’m actually more worried about the public not 

perceiving when it’s dangerous. I don’t believe people expected the Columbia

accident. Astronauts do expect the Columbia accident. And I think there are 

misconceptions out there. Someone referred to it. It’s the repetition of anything 

that makes us numb to the risks. And because we’ve seen Space Shuttles launch 

and land successfully a number of times, it was a surprise. 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

The risk has not been well communicated. What SpaceShipOne did today 

was extraordinary. And you saw, if you were watching, how something very 

unexpected happened during the ascent. The Space Shuttle goes—there’s 25 

times more energy in that whole business. I mean it’s 100 tons, is it? Take the 

speed, divide by 25, and square it, you’re going to get the answer. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: It’s 25 squared over 3 squared. [laughter] We’re two 

physicists. We’ll have this in a moment. 

MICHAEL FOALE: So if it’s Mach 3, and we go Mach 25 in a Space Shuttle, divide 

3 by 25 and you get about 8. And then you square it, and it’s 64. But it’s huge. 

The difference is that their heating on entry is just going above boiling—if that. 

It’s not anywhere near risking a metal hull. If it’s a composite hull, it’s going to 

start risking it pretty soon. 

A space vehicle gets up to 2,000–3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. So these issues 

are engineering issues, they’re mundane, they’re arcane to the public, who don’t 

really care to hear the details. But the fi nal answer is that it’s dangerous. It’s risky 

if any of these things fail. 

John brought up an interesting comment about the risk of this launch 

today, which I would like to get to, to tell you that there is risk here even in 

SpaceShipOne. He talked about the lack of a pressure suit. He talked about the 

need for closing the hatch and living only in shirtsleeves there. We don’t do much 

different on the Space Shuttle. We have pressure suits, and we have parachutes. 

They didn’t do the Columbia crew any good. I don’t know they would have done 

the Challenger crew any good. 

So the situation really isn’t so different. And, yet, John pointed to the risk 

this morning for Mike Melvill as he did that climb. The risk is still there for 

every Shuttle astronaut that will be fl ying on the Space Shuttle henceforth. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I was trying to use the seatbelt analogy. It doesn’t guarantee 

it. But it reduces the risk. Good point. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Why does the public think then, that NASA is going to make it 

risk free? There is the perception that if we were disciplined, if we followed the 

Columbia accident report rules, and if we had a culture of safety, we would be risk 

free. Somehow the message that you guys are saying, which is that it is inherently 

risky, people are going to die, crashes are going to occur, is not being conveyed by 

NASA. We’re not getting across the message that you’re articulating. 

And that’s what I’m saying is, how do we turn this conference into something 

useful? Well, maybe we need to start fi guring out how to get that message across, 

and stop giving the impression that we can make perfect systems. 

QUESTION: Tom Krause, BST. We’re involved in assisting with the culture 

change effort at NASA. It seems to me that the issue is not so much that the 

public doesn’t recognize the risk, but rather that the public fi nds unacceptable 

the possibility that something could have gone wrong organizationally that led to 

the accident. So, when the investigation fi nds that errors and mistakes were made 
225

DISCUSSION

that could have been prevented, then it seems to me the public says, something 

about this just isn’t right. 

CHRIS MCKAY: Can I react to that for just a bit? If you take just about any 

accident and trace it back, you can fi nd a step or a place where it could have been 

prevented. That’s just the nature of these complex systems. And I don’t think 

that you’ll ever be able to come up with an institution, a large group or even 

a small group, where your accidents due to human factors or human error are 

gone. I think that’s unrealistic. And maybe Scott, who is on the Board, we might 

put him on the spot here, since I think he works at the same Center I do, could 

comment on it. 

SCOTT HUBBARD: Yeah, let me see if I can parse a little bit from where you’re 

coming from, and what he’s saying. It took a long time to be sure we had the 

physical part [about the Columbia accident], in the end we got that with no 

equivocation. Everybody absolutely knew that. The organizational part took a 

lot longer, or took a different approach, and was in many ways more complex to 

understand. And, I think, having people come in and talk to us, having members 

of the community as well as experts in behavior and complex systems and human 

factors talk to us, the distinction was that we had, perhaps, led the public to 

believe that we had done everything we could reasonably do. And, in fact, as we 

peel the onion on the accident, we found that there were cases where, because 

of repetition of something that started off as an infl ight anomaly and became 

a turn around issue, because of other situations where people had fallen into 

poor habits of engineering analysis and so forth, we really did make some human 

errors that, with a different type of approach to it possibly, could be addressed. 

And, in fact, that’s the result of the culture change.

So, now what we have to do, I think, is to tell the public that there is a 

level of risk. That we are doing everything we can to mitigate that risk, but it is 

not going to go away past a certain point, there aren’t perfect systems. We are 

going to address the culture issues as much as possible, but there is going to be 

an irreducible residue in there that you’re going to have to deal with. I think the 

danger is that, with the talented people in this room, and the Astronaut Corps 

in particular, you make it look so easy. All the thousands of people that support, 

with all the things that are done, the impression comes across—whether it’s 

in the robotic program, with the perfect landings of Spirit and Opportunity, or 

whether it’s with the Shuttle program with, by all accounts, a perfect takeoff and 

landing—that we’ve got it down. 

The fact is that anybody who has participated in a launch, particularly if 

you’ve been in the position of being the last person to say go, and you hear in the 

background, through your earphones, all the thousands of things that have to be 

right, all the systems that have to be polled, you know that there is an irreducible 

risk of something catastrophic happening. 

We do not tell the public that story. I think if the public just had the 

earphones on of the guy in the polling chain as you’re getting ready to launch 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

and was aware of all the people at all of the systems and all of the things that have 

to happen, they would immediately realize, gee, what we have to go through to 

make this happen, it’s truly extraordinary. So, I think that that’s part of what we 

need to communicate, and part of what this business is all about. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Let me put John Gans on the spot. He’s the director of 

the National Outdoor Leadership School. They have thousands of students every 

year who go out into the wilderness, go out into risky situations. I imagine 

occasionally a parent will call and say, my son or daughter is going to go out and 

do this rock climbing, is it safe? And how do you communicate to them the risk 

element as an institutional risk manager? 

JOHN GANS: Well, fi rst off, we try and be as clear as possible that we can’t 

guarantee anyone’s safety, and we’re up front about that. I think every time I 

get on United Airlines and I hear, you know, “Safety is our number one priority,” 

it runs through my mind that, no, getting us there is the number one priority. 

Safety may be number two. But say safety is number one, we wouldn’t take off. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: It’s clear that profi tability is not number one. 

JOHN GANS: So we try and be as clear as possible. And you mentioned the 

parent-child thing. I’m going to switch the question some, because Dr. Sylvia 

Earle talked about the role of education as it relates to exploration and risk 

management and getting people outside and other things. And I think the 

interesting thing that I have been thinking about in this conference is that my 

daughter, this summer, started climbing in a more aggressive way. Safely, but in 

a more aggressive way. My daughter was 10 this summer, and she wanted to get 

ready to climb Devil’s Tower with me this fall. 

I adore my daughter, you can probably tell. And it really hit me that, suddenly, 

I’m on the other end of this, and I’m hesitant about what she was going to do. 

Now, climbing has been one of my passions in life. That’s where I’ve felt most 

alive. It’s where I’ve had some of my best relationships with people around me, 

with the world around me, and the environment around me. And, suddenly, was 

it okay for my daughter to do it when it moved beyond the walk-up situation into 

something that was more serious? And I came to terms with it. We are going up 

to Devil’s Tower in October. 

But there is something about generational passing as it relates to risk 

management. And we certainly run into it with parents making decisions for their 

children. It certainly is tied into the educational issue. But it’s something that goes 

to each individual family, and it’s something that I’ve thought a lot about over 

the last few days. It’s something that goes to the space program, the generational 

difference between the people that grew up with Apollo, the generational difference 

now. Look at the number of parents now that won’t let kids go off and ride a bike 

alone, wander out of their neighborhood alone, whatever else is the case. 

I realize I’m broadening the issue far beyond NASA here, but it goes so far 

beyond what we’re talking about here, and, somehow, I think there is a role to play 
227

DISCUSSION

for our society in making the parent-child relationship understand risk better. And 

there is a role there for our schools. So, now that I blew up your question totally 

into something else, I’ll pass off the mike and not go on further. But the long and 

short of it is, we try and be very clear with parents that we can’t guarantee any 

safety out there, but we manage it very well, and then we convey the benefi ts. And 

we know the benefi ts right down the list, and we rock at all those benefi ts, and are 

clear about them, much the same conversation that’s gone on here. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: That’s great, and it brings up another point, that you 

brought out, which is, if you think about the early part of the space program, 

prior to the fi rst American going into space, rockets generally blew up. Most 

rockets blew up while we were trying this. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: They still do, John.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: They still do. Not most. Some. Let me just take this a little 

further, which is, when Michael and I were growing up, that’s what we saw. We 

saw the struggles, there was no question that it was risky. And as we started 

fl ying more, and then we built a spaceship that looks like an airplane, it brought 

it into everybody’s daily experience. Then, people who are growing up now, like 

my children, space is part of their culture. It’s become the norm. And so people 

don’t really notice the space program now until we don’t have one. And I think 

that’s an indication that it is part of our culture, and that the education can help. 

Go on, Mike.

MICHAEL FOALE: I just want to add that people in this room are probably aware 

that . . . I don’t know of any rocket system that can launch 1,000 times and not 

have an accident. Most rocket systems launch 100 times and have an accident. 

So if that is the only way, if you’re on the rocket on the 100th time, and you do 

a lot of trials, and you do the statistics, that’s [it], you die on that rocket. So the 

way you get better than one in a hundred on any rocket system is to have a way 

of surviving that explosion that 100th time. And the Russians have done quite a 

good job with the Soyuz escape system, it’s worked twice in all of their launches, 

hundreds of launches. Apollo was a good system never used. I think Gemini has 

an interesting case. It’s a story as to why they didn’t have an escape system quite 

like the Mercury before it. 

But that is the way we get away from those—the fact today is that rockets 

do still blow up, and we can’t do anything about it right now. We don’t have a 

strange, wonderful, anti-gravity technology that will get us away from that. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: And one in a hundred is the best of the best. Most are not 

nearly that good. 

QUESTION: Joe Fuller. I’m sitting here very anxious, because I don’t think we’re 

getting down to business. It’s been a wonderful conference, you know, over the 

last two and a half days, and I think we’ve learned a lot. The problem is, how do 

we capture the knowledge that’s been just fl owing out here? 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

At some level there’s a connection with the way we do business, and we 

need to search for that. So what I would suggest is that, the fi rst thing, we 

capture the proceedings of this, and the second thing is, we form some kind of 

organization, you know, ad hoc or whatever, to pursue this information and make 

the connections that are so obviously there. 

[In] some kind of way, the institutions have got to get involved in this. 

I think that, as someone said, every individual has a value calculation that 

they have to make, and they have to make that trade. We can’t determine the 

perception of risks for the individuals. We can’t determine the value for them. 

But what we have to do, and what we do in business is, the value proposition has 

got to be so large that the risk is acceptable. 

So what I would suggest is that you’ve got to go farther than this. You 

can’t stop here today. You’ve got to put some organization in place to carry 

this forward, and mine this knowledge for the value and the benefi ts that are 

obviously inherent in it. 

I’m involved in risk management professionally. I haven’t seen too many 

other people here that are. I did hear Mike Gernhardt talk about how he’s using 

quantitative risk analysis. So I would volunteer to be a part of that group, to 

determine a strategy for extracting the knowledge and information so that it 

would be more useful and of value as we go forward and explore. 

CHRIS MCKAY: I have a suggestion. I think that’s a good suggestion, how do we 

connect to the institution of NASA, in particular, the results of this conference? It 

seems to me [that] to do that you need someone who is close to the Administrator. 

He clearly wants to get advice on this topic. Someone who is passionate with 

experience in this area. Somebody like the Chief Scientist, John Grunsfeld. I 

think we should add to his responsibilities this area. I think this would be a 

perfect opportunity. You’ve seen the conference. You were obviously one of the 

ones who put it together and organized it. I really think that the mantle falls on 

you to carry this forward within NASA as an institution, not just the near-term 

fl ight program, the return to fl ight. But also thinking long down the road.

Also, I think the robotic program is in need of a clear-headed assessment 

of risk. Now there the risks aren’t to lives, but they are to resources. And I think 

that that program also needs a clear risk assessment. And I think the Offi ce of 

the Chief Scientist right now is a good place to do it. So, all voting for John as the 

representative of this? 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Thank you, Chris, for your kind comment. But, seriously, I 

think we have Tom Krause here from BST working on our culture. This is something 

that the Offi ce of the Chief Engineer, that my offi ce, the Offi ce of the Chief Scientist, 

Bill Readdy, Offi ce of Space Operations, Space Operations Mission Directorate—

this is a dialogue we have everyday. And we wanted to broaden that from NASA 

management to you folks, and, as I said up front, the start of a dialogue. 

But the other point was capturing this and you were just captured. You were 

captured on videotape. We’re going to convert that. We’ve been talking, prior to 
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DISCUSSION

the conference, about how are we going to put all this together. A number of folks 

have been chronicling this individually, but we’re going to do it institutionally as 

well. And I know, Keith, you’ve thought about that a little bit. Do you want to say 

anything? Let me put Keith on the spot, and then back to you.

KEITH COWING: I think we are quadruply redundant here. I am recording this 

on my iPod, so I can be listening to it as the transcripts arrive in my e-mail box 

in about an hour up at Ames. We hope to have this online in a very short period 

of time, just the raw verbatim transcripts, with the “ums” and the “ahs” and the 

spelling errors taken care of. I’d have to talk to Bob Jacobs and some of the Ames 

folks to get the specifi cs on what the follow-ons are, but there is talk of putting 

some of this on a DVD, of putting a more comprehensive document together. 

Steve Dick and I have talked about something more comprehensive, in terms of 

a history monograph. So the initial concept here, John saw the fi rst e-mail that 

started this, was capture everything in as many ways as possible, so Joe, you’re 

psychic, you knew what we were doing when we were fi rst doing it. 

QUESTION: Scott McGinnis: I’m a student here. What we do in the military, and 

I’m sure a lot of you are military, but if you assume this conference is like a sixmonth deployment, every time before you leave the ship you have to give your 

lessons learned. You get one line, everybody. Then the XO, I think, Dr. Grunsfeld, 

that’s you in this case, forces everyone to read it prior to going on [to] their next 

deployment. 

So that built a database, and as the XO you are required to make sure that 

they all sign and verify that they have done this, proving that they have read it. 

Then, when they make the mistake again, the responsibility then lies with the 

responsible individual, the person making the mistake. Therefore, you have a 

traceability and a responsibility for each individual action, and also, it shortens 

the amount of data; instead of having to watch our three days of deliberation, 

being able to shorten that and pull out the small pieces. 

So that’s part of the military structure, and you’ve got a little more 

discipline—I think we talked about the fl ogging and all that kind of stuff. 

[Laughter] We have a little more coercive nature in the military to be able to do 

that. But I’m sure NASA can muster that up. And second, you’re talking about 

the [pressure] suit of SpaceShipOne, the risk that they’re taking. And I think it 

all goes back to the benefi t that we haven’t discussed, we’ve tapped around it. Dr. 

Spudis brought up the three reasons why we explore. 

I think the fourth, and Magellan showed it with his cloves, is money. And 

SpaceShipOne is doing it, one, to explore. But come on, we’ve got a $4.5 billion 

market in the tourist industry. And they are exploring not because they want to 

prove science or prove humanity. We’ve proved we can do it with the money. But 

can we make it profi table? And I think if you saw the big “Virgin” on the side, and 

you saw the big Sprite advertisement going on, and the M&Ms fl oating around, 

I think we have found one of the keys to space exploration, and that is the good 

old American greenback. 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

I think NASA also needs to fi nd a way to maybe encourage that, like we did 

in the early ’20s with the prizes. I think we’ve tapped around cost as a benefi t, 

or money as a benefi t. I know NASA can’t get benefi t monetarily that way. But 

it’s defi nitely a point we haven’t brought up. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: No, we’ll be offering prizes. We’ve got Congressional 

authority to do that for similar challenges. But it’s clear that for Rutan, this is 

about his passion, about pushing new envelopes. The X prize is $10 million [he 

blew off] quite a bit more than that. And I think it’s great that he’s been able to 

leverage the commercial sponsorship there to help offset his cost of developing 

this Because it is opening a new frontier. 

Eventually, folks who want to actually sell services will have to start 

incorporating more of the safety rigor. You probably wouldn’t go out on a cruise 

ship today if you knew that one out of every four or fi ve times you weren’t 

going to come back. So that’s, again, that comes down to the profi tability. And 

what Mike Gernhardt said is, you have to have a successful dive operation to 

have a commercial operation be successful. And so, safety is a critical part of 

that greenback. 

QUESTION: David Liskowsky from NASA Headquarters. I’d like to perhaps 

comment on some of the discussion that’s been going on. We’re at a point in 

time at the Agency where we’ve just gone through a large transformation to 

hopefully meet the exploration vision. I think we’re all behind that, and that’s 

what we’ll be going forward with. 

Maybe we can take this opportunity at this time to use these changes that 

are going on in the Agency to change our message. Change our message to the 

decision-makers, mainly Congress and the public, about what the nature of this 

business is, that it is risky business. Everyone talks about that, that NASA has 

been a victim of its own success. 

But maybe it’s time that, as we go forward with this new exploration vision, 

and this is something that can be done through John as Chief Scientist, we have 

the PAO [Public Affairs Offi ce] folks who shape the NASA message let folks 

know, truly, what the nature of the business is, and to let them know that, as we 

go forward with this new vision, it is going to be risky. And without abdicating 

our responsibilities to meet the requirements of the CAIB [Columbia Accident 

Investigation Board] report, there is going to be that element of risk. And it’s 

part of us shaping the Agency’s message and how we convey it to the public. 

Maybe this symposium can be the fi rst step in trying to do that, in shaping 

what that new message should be for the exploration vision, and making, 

perhaps, a little more realistic vision than the Agency has had in the past. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Good comment. Well, last comment, and we’ll go to 

“Moose” Cobb—Robert Cobb—he’s been dying to say something. Then we’ll 

stay around for comments afterwards. In the packet, we gave everybody a pad of 

paper and a pen. And so, before you’re allowed to leave, you’ll have to write down 

at least one lesson learned, and provide that. You don’t have to have a name on 
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DISCUSSION

there, but if you have any ideas, sketch that out and put it in the bin before you 

take your STS-114 pin, which I really want you all to have. 

ROBERT COBB: I’m the NASA Inspector General. I’ve been with the Agency for 

two and a half years, with no exploration or science background coming into the 

Agency. It’s my perception that NASA works hard to dispel the notion that what 

it does is inherently risky, and the reason it does that is because there is a fear 

that the public won’t fund it if NASA tells the truth about the risk. 

That’s something that I think that this conference goes a long way towards—

I think people recognize that the public is willing to accept risk. And that the 

idea is, the object is, that it’s important for NASA to have a transparency into 

the risks that it is accepting and to allow the public to share in understanding of 

those risks. 

QUESTION: I’m Sandra Cauffman. I’m from Goddard. I think we’re missing some 

basic thing here. The question is, why we explore, and we are not really answering 

that question. We’re talking about the risks and, yes, that is very important, but 

the people out there need to understand why it is that we’re doing what we’re 

doing and what they are getting in return. They like to understand why we are 

risking the people, but what are they getting back?

In the DOD world they understand why we are risking our soldiers and why 

we are sending people to war and whatever, but in the NASA world they do not 

understand why are we sending astronauts. And they see pretty pictures of the 

stars and stuff, but what is it that they are getting back in return as taxpayers? 

And we need to really send a clear message to them. And it’s not PAO [Public 

Affairs Offi ce] stuff. It depends on each and every one of us to do that. 

Just a little story. I was in National Night Out in my neighborhood a couple 

of years ago and I was talking to my neighbor, a nice little old lady. And I am the 

Deputy Project Manager for the GOES-R Satellite. And she was asking me what I 

did for a living and I told her about the weather satellites and all this and all that. 

And she just looked at me with this puzzled look on her face and she said, “Why 

do we need weather satellites when we have the Weather Channel?” You know, 

that’s what we have to deal with, the perceptions out there. Yes, the risks are 

there, but they need to understand, okay, we are risking, but what are we getting 

back? So, I just wanted to say that.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: That’s a great comment. Natalie, why don’t you take that?

NATHALIE CABROL: Actually, I would like to add on that comment because this 

is probably translating better, what these guys were saying yesterday. What is 

the gold? Not the goal, but the gold, you know? Five hundred years ago, Magellan 

leaves, and he brings back cloves and he brings back riches. What are the riches 

that we can show to the people today? And there are many. And we are good at it 

at NASA, but we are not good at telling people. You know, from the Moonwalks 

people today are going to ski better. They have good Moon boots, medication, 

things that we do in space better the health of people, the expeditions in the sky, 
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in the sea, or on the land are bringing [generating important discoveries]. We 

have that, but we are not translating enough to the public. And I think this is 

where we need an effort.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Steve?

STEVE DICK: Following up on that—I’m Steve Dick, the NASA historian. On 

Friday we’re launching a series of essays on the nasa.gov Web site called “Why 

We Explore.” And I think this will address some of the questions just raised. And 

it’s not Public Affairs, it’s historically nuanced and historically based. (And, by 

the way, this is the 46th anniversary of NASA, on Friday, October 1st.) The fi rst 

essay will deal with why we explore in the sense that exploration is necessary 

for a creative society. And I’ll talk about Ming China, which was mentioned by 

Jack Stuster the other day. That’s on the NASA Web site at http://www.nasa.gov/

missions/solarsystem/explore_main.html. And it’ll be a once-a-month, “Why We 

Explore” series, a different essay each month.

NATHALIE CABROL: I will wrap up quickly. But, you know, why do we explore? 

I think within us it’s just because we think that somewhere on the other side of 

the hills, as you were putting it, it must be better or something is better than 

what we have now. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it. And it’s true that maybe 

the other side of the hill has nothing particular, but what we learn along the way 

is bringing a lot of good to society, et cetera. So we need to emphasize this really, 

really hard.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: And again, it comes down to both personal and institutional, 

as well as national. In the President’s vision [for space exploration] he said, “The 

purpose of this is to advance U.S. scientifi c, economic, and security interests.” 

And it’s through a broad range of things. As you say, along the journey you learn 

a lot of things that improve our life here on planet Earth. 

But it’s also the higher purpose. You know, we’re trying to understand where 

we came from. Why is there a universe? And in the process of very basic research 

like that is where we learn the really valuable things—like quantum mechanics 

that leads to lasers—that it would be a long time before you’d do that with just 

subsistence farming. So, these types of things are very important. 

I also have something that often ends up resulting in controversial 

discussions, but I have a statement that I think is true. I can’t prove it, but it’s 

“Single-planet species don’t survive.” 

QUESTION: Dave Leckrone, Hubble Space Telescope and NASA Engineering and 

Safety Center. I guess we’re all ganging up on you because several of us must 

have made the same comment to you. So, I want to start out by thanking you 

for stimulating this conference, which has been absolutely fascinating. What 

fascinated me most in hearing all the speakers and the discussion and seeing the 

fi lm last night about Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance expedition was this 

business of what compels us to explore and take these risks in the fi rst place, 

instead of just adopting the fetal position in our lives.
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DISCUSSION

And I have my own ideas. I actually wrote it all down and I’m going to 

exchange this for my pin later. But it sort of goes to what was said just a moment 

ago, and I think Scott Hubbard mentioned this on the fi rst day. We explore because 

we have no choice. It’s an evolutionary imperative. Our species became what it 

became because it explored. What was over the next hill was either a threat or a 

source of sustenance. And if there wasn’t anything there, then you had to go to 

the next hill yet to check that one out. And I think this is built into our DNA. 

Poor Ernest Shackleton was so obsessed with exploring he couldn’t even 

really articulate why he kept going back to the Antarctic. He just had to do it. 

And I think at least some of us, if not all of us, within the species have it built 

into our DNA. And I think corollaries to this are all having to do with survival—

acquisition of knowledge, commerce, education, creating a national identity, 

fi nding not only individual self-fulfi llment but group fulfi llment. And I think 

every one of those relates, going way back perhaps, to our need to survive as a 

species. And maybe we can’t survive as a one-planet species.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I agree with that absolutely. You know, we try and raise it 

to a higher plane but, ultimately, it is, I believe, hardwired into us to do this. But, 

as well, our evolution has taken us to be a species which is a thinking species, 

sometimes rational species. And, so, it’s also provided us the ability to question 

what we do. And that’s where this becomes a little bit messy, because we say, 

“Well, is it worth the risk?” And that comes back to where we are.

And if anybody doubts that we have a survival imperative to explore, 

just look at the situation we’re in with science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics in this country and where that may lead to eventually—because 

technology is the key to economic prosperity, which is the key to security, which 

is the key to freedom. And I believe that exploration is linked to our ability to 

stimulate people to, directly and indirectly, get a good education and make use 

of that productively.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’m just going to build on some of these other things 

that people have been commenting on. And, in particular, I want to play devil’s 

advocate to some of the spinoff comments that have been made. 

I agree that this is very important, and some of the discoveries have 

been fantastic. But really—and this builds on your comment earlier—I think 

that there’s one question that NASA needs to be accountable to, or one big 

question, and that’s quite simply, are we pushing the frontier? Are we pushing 

the frontiers of science, technology, and exploration in a way that no one else 

can—no individual, no company, no university—in a way that only NASA can? 

And that’s the thing that we constantly have to be asking ourselves. And I think 

this conference is part of getting at that issue. 

JIM GARVIN: Well, thanks, John. I think there’s one comment notwithstanding 

the spinoffs and everything. I mean, we can all play the game as, Dave, you said so 

well about, this is an investment choice. It’s part of our DNA. But I think it also 

bears witness to trying to generate metrics and look at what the impacts have 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

been. And we do that perhaps ineffectively, as you’ve said, Nathalie. But they are 

not transparent, they are major. And if you ask some of the technology leaders, 

exploration has begotten these catalytic effects. 

So without it, the question that you raised, John, is the one I think this 

group needs to raise. How fast would we have progressed in different areas? I 

mean, maybe Darwinian progression—you know, seeking optimization whenever 

we can—is not the game afoot, and natural selection in technology doesn’t work. 

I don’t know. That’s a great thing to debate. You know, maybe Steve Dick’s group 

in history can study that.

But I’m still struck by questions that when we ask people in other sectors of 

society—IT [information technology] being a good example—in remote sensing 

of this planet, the benefi ts, while maybe not tangible in terms of dollars in your 

pocket, are there. We would not have microcomputing with fault tolerance, ever. 

There would have been no imperative, except perhaps a very narrowly-defi ned 

security interest area—which is important, of course—without this exploration 

imperative. And we demonstrated that.

So I think we need to do better at defi ning those metrics. I mean, yes, the 

textbook metric, I think, is an important one that most people seem to forget. 

I like to think that all the textbooks have been rewritten in the last 20 years in 

many of the areas of astronomy, physics, planetary science, and even this place 

of our own planet.

But anyway, I think that’s the amplifi er on technology progress in areas 

that aren’t the ones that have instant economic gain. That’s what we should be 

doing, and that follows on what you said so well. That’s NASA’s unique role as a 

government agency. Otherwise, it would be private. Thanks.

QUESTION: I’m Becky Ramsey, NASA Headquarters. Recently we had someone 

do a study for us. And while it was a very interesting study, I won’t go into the 

whole thing. But one of the stats that struck me is that a majority of the people 

we talked to said that they like NASA. They don’t have a clue what we’re doing, 

but they like us. And I think we cannot lose sight of the fact that we’re not the 

only ones who want to go. It’s not confi ned to the people in this room or the 

people who attended this conference. 

I walked over to the little lobby bar last night. I was sitting there watching 

the baseball game, and I got into a conversation with the bartender and some of 

the servers. They said, “Are you with the NASA group?” “Yeah.” “That’s so cool!” 

You know, they don’t know what we do, but they like us! And we have to build on 

that personal connection. We are their representatives. Until Burt Rutan starts 

charging fi ve bucks for a trip into space, most of the people out there are not 

going to get to go. We have a responsibility to be their representatives and to do 

what they can’t do yet. I mean, we talk about the spinoffs. They don’t really care 

about the spinoffs. Yes, they’re important. Yes, the benefi ts that we [generate] 

make everybody’s lives better. But they don’t know about that, you know? We 

tell them, but they don’t read our cool little magazine. They don’t know the 

weather satellites from the Weather Channel. They don’t care that much about 
235

DISCUSSION

that. They like it because it’s cool, because they want to go. And I think we can’t 

lose sight of the fact that that’s why exploration is important to everyone else.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I absolutely agree. In fact, in other studies we’ve found 

that the NASA logo—the meatball—is likely the number one brand recognition. 

There may be a couple others that are close. The other thing we found out is that, 

when we were working on our renewed vision of discovery, we found out that 

most people assumed we were already doing all these things. You know, when 

we’d say, “Well, what do you think about having a renewed trip to go beyond 

low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars?” folks would say, “Well, isn’t that what 

you’re doing?” And we’d say, “Yes, that’s what we’re doing!” And we have to 

communicate that a lot better.

MEL AVERNER: That’s not true. We’re not going to Mars and Moon. We are 

attempting to do that, but it’s not our mission yet. And if we say, “Yes, we’re 

going,” people will go away saying, “Great! Great! You’re going!” Okay, you got 

my drift.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I wish Steve Squyres were here right now. I think he would 

argue with you. He has two of his children on Mars right now. I don’t know. Jim, 

do you want to comment just a little bit about our program, what some of the 

next steps are that are already in place?

JIM GARVIN: Yeah. Well, I think maybe Steve would do it better but if you 

don’t think we’re exploring now, maybe we don’t communicate that well. But I 

think—two rovers 270 days on another world wandering at 300 percent beyond 

expected lifetime is a new demonstration of that. Cassini alone is exploring at 

the highest order. 

MEL AVERNER: I’d like to respond.

JIM GARVIN: But, let me fi nish. I mean, I can go on and on with the legacy of 

how we explore. It’s just that, right now, a lot of people, perhaps in the public 

sector—and I can’t speak for them because I’m a geek and work for NASA—but 

when I talk to them at hockey games and things where they don’t always care 

what we do, they’re stunned by what we’re doing and how we’re exploring. And 

how we’ve learned to go from people on the surface of the Moon as our agents 

of exploration, being our representatives, to machines being those agents. And 

we’re doing that so many different ways. We’re so diversifi ed. In fact, if you ask 

corporate America and many of my colleagues there, they’re stunned. “You’re 

doing all that, with that portfolio? You’re nuts!”

MEL AVERNER: I’d like to get back to the bar last night. Becky, was that your 

name, doing what I would have done—drinking at the bar? Suppose you were to 

go back to the bar and talk to those people and say, “Well, we are exploring. We 

have two robots on Mars doing terrifi c scientifi c things.” Would they say, “Wow, 

that is great, but when are we going?”
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JOHN GRUNSFELD: Absolutely, I agree. But just to give you the counterargument—

and I don’t know what the current number is, but there have been 13 billion hits 

on the NASA Web site of which three-quarters . . .

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That’s a false number. It’s not 13 billion people.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: No, no. I didn’t say it was 13 billion people.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I know, but that’s the impression that it leaves.

JIM GARVIN: But there are well over 100 million unique IP addresses, maybe 250 

million total. It’s all around the world, predominantly the U.S., but all around 

the world. And, you know, you could argue about the numbers, but it is so much 

greater than any other Web site that it’s phenomenal. There is interest there, and 

there’s interest specifi cally because, I believe, that what we’ve done is we’ve put 

two human eyeballs on the surface of Mars. So people see what the rovers see and 

they think, “This is kind of what I would see when I get to go.” Or, “When we send 

people, this is what they will see.” And we want to do that.

QUESTION: I’m Nancy Ann Budden, Naval Postgraduate School and Lunar 

Planetary Institute in Houston. I want to build on some comments that were made 

by Joe Fuller and others about getting the word out and on some communications 

issues that Jim brought up. I joined Johnson Space Center’s Exploration Offi ce in 

’88 and I worked with a lot of you, Chris and Dale, on human exploration issues, 

and this was about the time that Bush ’41 came out with his announcement that 

we were going back to the Moon and on to Mars.

One of the things that we neglected to do over the next 12 years, really, was 

put into place a communications plan. We all had great ideas. We had a lot of 

meetings. And now we have another opportunity with Bush ’43 coming out with 

a much more reasonable, cost-rational plan and vision. And one thing I think we 

really need to do is put together a communications strategic plan, like a mission, 

and have a schedule and a budget and have somebody own that. Whether it’s PAO 

[Public Affairs Offi ce] through NASA Headquarters or whether it’s an industry/

NASA/university team. But we need to have a plan for that, that actually has 

someone own it, someone that’s going to pay for it, and understand who are the 

advocates that we need to build. Obviously, there are communities we need to get 

to within NASA, of course. We need to get to the [Capitol] Hill. But we need to 

do it in an integrated, planned way with someone thinking about, okay—who are 

the fi rst people we need to get to, and when and why, and how do we integrate this 

message? I nominate Keith Cowing to put together the message [laughter]. And, 

John, I think everyone would love for you to run the communications strategy 

idea since you’re getting asked to do a lot of other things this morning and since 

you have a lot of spare time! 

Anyway, I would like to see someone own that and put together a message that 

people agree with and actually stand behind, and make sure that it is consistent 

with our Commander in Chief’s vision of the future for space exploration. 
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DISCUSSION

JOHN GRUNSFELD: That is absolutely a great comment. We’ve received that 

comment quite a lot, so we’ve actually heard that message and we’ve acted on 

it. Part of the transformation was to create a communications group, and we’ve 

linked the legislative and the public affairs and our external relations into one 

team so that we can help craft it. We were at the bar as well last night, talking 

about a budget, specifi cally, or an increased budget, line items, and management 

for public affairs as well. That’s crucial, that we have to treat that as something 

that’s very high-priority. But in the transformation, we’ve combined all of those 

for exactly the reason that you mentioned. Thank you. 

QUESTION: David Gast. I’m the other student here for the school. The thing that 

I think everyone here is touching on, and building on some of the things that 

have just been said, is it is about communicating to the public. I think everyone 

in this room and most of the people watching NASA TV already know, kind of, 

the reasons that we want to go out there, what we hope to accomplish, where we 

hope to go, and understand the risks that are inherent to doing that. With this 

communication message, what we have to do is say to everyone else, the people 

that aren’t in this room and aren’t watching NASA TV, “This is where we want to 

go and this is why we want to go there. And, you know what? It’s dangerous. Very 

likely, things are going to crash. Maybe people are going to die. But the people 

that are putting themselves on the line for that understand that and accept those 

risks for themselves and believe that the goal of what we’re trying to accomplish 

is worth that risk.” So, I think it’s all these things.

We have to communicate the risk, yes, coupled with why we think the risks 

are worth taking. We can’t just say, “We’re going to do these great things, we’re 

going to go to Mars, go to the Moon, and it will all be safe and happy and fun.” 

Neither can we say, “It’s dangerous to travel through space.” We have to say all 

these things at the same time.

We talk about [that] the American people won’t accept that something 

went wrong that we could have avoided. There’s always one more thing we could 

have avoided had someone happened to think of it, had someone happened to see 

it. And I think they’re willing to accept that if we’re doing the best we can with 

what we have, there are always dangers there. And they’re willing to accept that, 

again, if we communicate that to them in advance. Like I said, the people here all 

understand that. We need to take what we’ve talked about here and present that 

to American people.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I think it’s T. K. Mattingly who told us, “Success always has 

failure as its predecessor.” He was more eloquent.

QUESTION: Keith Cowing. Thank you, Nancy, for the nomination. When you 

hear what I have to say, you may withdraw it. To the point of Web traffi c—and 

you’re right, I do Web sites for a living—citing Web numbers is so 1997, so 

Pathfi nder. [laughter] Google does that traffi c before lunch on Sunday. It’s great 

to hear these numbers, but I could go write something in my room right now. 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Drudge Report would pick it up and have a million hits by tonight. Big deal. The 

Web hit numbers are important. A lot of people are looking at NASA’s Web sites. 

But we need to move on to other metrics. When a nine-year-old girl raises her 

hand at a Presidential visit and asks about space—things like that—then you 

know. When the late-night shows make different jokes about space—Jim Garvin 

has done yeoman’s duty, going on Letterman and so forth. When you start to see 

this consciousness of space percolating up in other places . . . These numbers can 

be very deceiving. Anybody can generate hits. You’ve just got to look for other 

metrics. You’ve got to have a new metric every month. Just some advice from 

somebody who does this for a living.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This sort of follows your point, Keith. But when the 

NASA crews come into the small town of Lander, Wyoming, to go on [National 

Outdoor Leadership School] courses, they often stay after and talk to the kids 

attending courses. And when those kids leave the room, they’re changed. And 

following on your point, I believe, it’s not about communicating to the public, 

it’s about changing the public. 

KEITH COWING: As the Administrator of NASA loves to say—it is this Jesuit 

thing he has—“one conversion at a time.” It works. [laughter] It’s self-propagating 

if you do it right.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I should say that every time an astronaut leaves the school, 

they’re changed as well. 

QUESTION: Bill Clancy at NASA Ames. One concept that we haven’t talked a lot 

about here that I found very useful as it relates to the public, and also inside, is 

the word sustainability. To me that’s the most important word, I think, that’s in 

our current vision. And I found it very useful to the shift from thinking about 

particular missions to the program. So, rather than just talking about mission 

risk, we have program risk. And we’re talking about building competence and the 

ability to go places and so on.

I fi rst understood this, I think, with Mars Polar Lander, where we didn’t 

have the telemetry that we needed to give us the information for building 

the redesign that we needed. I think your example this morning is a beautiful 

example as well, of the investment that one can make to build tools that will give 

us a competence that we know we want to have [as] part of our tool kit. So, I 

think when we’re articulating to ourselves what’s our priority and our objective, 

it’s the clear objective, maybe dates, and the sense of challenge. But it’s all about 

sustainability, and we make decisions because we need to be here tomorrow. 

We’re not going to climb Everest today, because just getting to Everest today is 

not our goal. We want to be able to climb again tomorrow. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Anyone else? David.

DAVID HALPERN: Thank you, John. And one of the things we’ve learned—some 

of us knew before, but some others learned—that 96 percent of space needs to be 
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DISCUSSION

explored and 96 percent of the ocean needs to be explored. One [space] has zero 

pressure and one [the ocean] has a very large pressure on the bottom. And then 

the question comes that the ocean defi nitely is a place to explore, for two reasons. 

One is [for] the creation of new knowledge, which is the same as what you’re 

talking about for outer space. But inner space also has a well-recognized aspect 

of creation of wealth. I mean, a number of [benefi cial] activities have always gone 

on in the ocean—and I don’t mean just transportation, but subsurface as well—

and new ones are coming along, like genomics, oceanography, things like that.

So, then comes the question. In the new, transformed NASA, the challenge, 

now, would be to make use of the fact that oceans—or inner space—require the 

same type of dedication and the same type of methodologies as are being used in 

exploration of outer space, and it’s something that the new NASA might want to 

consider. And it’s actually well-poised for that because all of the science now is 

in the Science Mission Directorate. Rather than in two different stovepipes, it’s 

all in one. It’s a comment, not a question. 

JIM GARVIN: I’m really grateful for you for saying that because my new job at 

NASA, with the many hats, is, in fact, to try to integrate the inner and outer 

space exploration in this new vision. So I’m looking, as is Ghassem Asrar 

[NASA’s Science Deputy Associate Administrator] and John, we’re all looking for 

the connections. Because I think the point with a vision, with an objective, with 

some of these good points about program-thinking, which we’ve had in EOS for 

Earth science, we’ve had in the Mars program, we hope to have throughout our 

program—the Shuttle program—is an aspect of risk that I think is the one that 

right now strangleholds a lot of us. And that is risk of our own interpersonal 

management structures to get the job done.

And that, perhaps, is the genesis of the transformation, to get around 

some of those things. But, you know, when organizations grow old they become 

well-rooted in certain directions. And breaking roots, it’s like taking a root off a 

redwood out there. I mean, it’s going to stay three hundred feet tall, so you don’t 

want to have it fall over. You want to have it move. And other than slime molds, 

most large plants don’t move. 

But I think that’s the challenge. The ocean is an exploration frontier that 

will teach us about high-pressure environments and knowledge and all that, 

and some shared technologies could be trialed there in the name of science and 

exploration to good end. And, you know, it’s rather ironic to me that a large 

fraction of the ocean exists at 100-bar pressure, which is the average surface 

pressure of the planet Venus. And, you know, lots of living stuff there. Interesting 

to think about. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Thanks, Jim. We’ll take one more. 

QUESTION: George Tahue from NASA Headquarters. Listening to some of the 

comments here, an analogy is coming to my mind. If you’re familiar with the 

paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and his description of evolution as punctuated 

evolution, I think NASA is, as a government agency, going through an evolution, 
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RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

and we will continue to do so. Where we’re going with this is going to take a 

very long time, but there are certain points where there will be punctuations 

that make great changes in very short amounts of time. And I think Apollo, that 

era, was one of those points. We may go through slower periods of time where 

we go through those changes. But here we’re at another point where we may be 

at another one of those punctuations. And this new transformation that we’re 

looking at isn’t just rearranging the deck chairs. And it’s something that we have 

to take internally and not just focus only on, why didn’t the public understand 

what we’re doing and how can we make them understand? It’s something that we 

have to do over this long period of time, even internally.

When we had our transformation and the Offi ce of Earth Science and 

the Offi ce of Space Science came together, I was listening to some of the Earth 

science guys and saying, “Wow, you do that? That’s cool!” Same reaction [as] at 

the bar. So, I’d like to charge all of us to try to take a lot of this internally and 

focus on those goals. 

Another key thing we’ve heard here is to focus on the target. Stay on target. 

Protect and understand our planet. Search for life. Understand the limits of it, 

and recognize that humans and robots are the tools to do those goals. It’s not just, 

“Get us there.” It’s not just, “Get the robots there.” Focus on those [larger] goals. 

We’ll have these punctuated evolutions where we have a grand target that we’re 

looking for. And, in between, we’ll have this balance that we keep going forward 

in trying to get that message to the public to understand that we, as an agency, 

have a role as a public function in our society. So, those are my thoughts. 

QUESTION: I’m John Gaff from the Glenn Research Center. I think the Agency, 

while it does wonderful things—and I’ve been in it a long time, is not recognized 

by our society as critical to the survival of society. Nobody questions why you’ve 

got the State Department, nobody questions why you’ve got the Treasury, and 

nobody questions why you’ve got the Defense Department, or Agriculture, 

even. But for some reason, we have been unable, in my opinion, to transfer the 

knowledge that we are able to acquire for the future to being something critical 

for the survival of the economic success of the Nation. And for the long-term 

viability of the Nation.

Somehow, we need to start some mechanism—and maybe it’s in the 

education programs, these outreach things—where we get more institutionalized 

as a recognized, long-term investment. Until that happens, we’re always going to 

be at the margin, we’re going to be at less than half a percent of the budget, and 

we’re not going to be able to compete for the other critical needs of, “What’s in 

it for me?” with the society. Thank you.

JOHN GRUNSFELD: I think that’s a very good comment. I would like to point 

out that we’re in relatively tough economic times right now, yet NASA is the only 

agency that’s basically gotten an increase in its budget. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Did it get one?
241

DISCUSSION

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Well, in the request, in the request. And even in the 

appropriations meetings, we’ve fared better than virtually all discretionary 

agencies. I think the issue is: We’re still a discretionary agency. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’d like to kind of second that and say two things. You 

guys are in a really tough position, almost a harder position than you were in the 

Apollo era, because Apollo was something we all thought we needed to do. You 

guys are in the very, very hard position of deciding what we should do. We don’t 

necessarily need to do anything, it doesn’t look like. There’s not an immediate 

and obvious need. But you guys can do lots of different things. I’d like to tack onto 

Dr. Halpern and Dr. Garvin’s comments. I think you guys recognized this, but I’m 

not sure that the rest of the population does—one of the amazing things about 

the way NASA is exploring the new frontiers in space, and the way that ocean 

science explores our frontiers here on Earth, is that for the fi rst time, I think, in 

human history, you’ve got the conservationist, the naturalist, the scientist, and 

the greedy capitalist wound up, in many cases, in one mind, in one human being. 

And you’ve got an organization that’s already looking to protect resources that 

we can’t even exploit yet or use yet.

I mean, does that seem strange to anybody else? That’s new, folks! I mean, 

I think even more so than technologies, you guys can share lessons learned and 

organizational experiences based on how do we commercialize this thing, and 

how do we get benefi t out of it as a people without destroying it for ourselves and 

our posterity? And perhaps that could be part of your public outreach program, 

because, for instance, look at the market for the Toyota Prius cars. It’s huge! 

They’re back-ordered, I don’t know how long. Eight months back-ordered on the 

cars! You know? The public gives a darn about that kind of thing and you guys 

do it [balance benefi ts and conservation] every day. It’s innate. It’s part of your 

nature. That’s important. 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Coupled with that and, again, talking about expanding 

the vision and explaining the risk, is that the vision we want to put out there is 

not just [that] we want to go back to the Moon and learn how to go to Mars. But 

I think it’s a bigger vision than that. It’s partially this and partially the thing that 

he’s talking about. It’s [that] we need to present both, this is the next step on 

which we are currently embarking, but also, this is a vision for the future that we 

hope to achieve by taking these steps. And that vision doesn’t have to be perfect. 

It doesn’t have to be exactly what we’re going to arrive at. But it has to be a goal 

beyond just, you know, as great as the goal was to put a man on the Moon and 

bring him back to Earth. Why? Now why are we doing that?

And we’ve talked a lot about that, but I think that needs to be part of what 

would go out to the public, and what NASA thinks about internally, and each of 

us thinks about internally, in ourselves, as what is our long-term pictured goal 

that all these things are steps toward? And that goes for exploring the seas as 

well. You know, all these explorations are not just, I want to go to the bottom 
242

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

of the Marianas Trench. It’s, I want to fi nd out more about the Earth. I want to 

discover more about us as a species. I want to maybe discover things that will 

save our species or our Nation or whatever at some point in the future. So that 

needs to be a part under consideration as well. 

JOHN GRUNSFELD: Okay, well, I think we’re up to the end here. I just want to 

give all of you a big “thank you very much” for participating in this. I know I’ve 

learned a lot. I think we’ve all had a lot of good dialogue. I got a few too many 

action items, but they’re very important ones and we will take that forward, back 

to NASA, and for those of us here from NASA, I hope you take that all out. I really 

want to encourage you again, though, as you leave here, to regard this as the start 

of a dialogue. There’s no question that this is one we’ll talk about sustaining. I 

think this dialogue will be sustained probably for all of human history as we push 

our frontiers, as we move out.

I’d like to bring Scott Hubbard, the Director of the Ames Research Center, 

to give us some closing comments. ■

Back to Contents page Open next section
A P P E N D I X

in closing
NASA Image/Renee Bouchard
Scott Hubbard serves as director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, in the heart of California’s Silicon 

Valley. Hubbard’s tenure at Ames began in 1987 and has included a variety of management roles. From 

1997 to 1999, he served as the deputy director of the Space Directorate at Ames Research Center. Prior 

to his current appointment, Hubbard was deputy director for research at Ames. In March 2000, Hubbard 

was called to NASA Headquarters where he successfully redefi ned all robotic Mars missions in response 

to the Mars failures in 1999.

Scott Hubbard 

Director, NASA Ames Research Center

My job mainly right now is to roll the credits and thank a whole bunch 

of people who made this all happen. Before I do that though, I’d like to take the prerogative 

of the chair here and just make a few additional comments from things that I’d written 

down in the last couple of days as well as some prethinking. One is the incredible speed 

with which we are moving ahead in space exploration. Now that sounds perhaps silly on the 

surface of it, but think for a moment. In the fi rst 50 years of aviation, a million aircraft were 

built, most of them used multiple times. In the fi rst 50 years of space exploration, there 

have been exactly 4500 launches total worldwide.

The difference, the gap, between where we are in commercial aviation today and 

where we are in space exploration is huge. The fact that Burt Rutan and his group can be 

so successful today is built on investments that were made, in some cases decades ago, by 

the government. Now where does this lead us? This leads us to establishing a viable space 

exploration industry eventually, such that there will be a trailing edge of people who can 

make a business case and make money out of not only communication satellites, but types 

of space travel.

Closing Comments
246

The two analogies that are already there are the railroads, and, as I said, 

commercial aviation. The railroads that got the right of way, Union Pacifi c, 

Southern Pacifi c, came together and drove that nail out there in Utah [joining the 

two railroads]. In aviation, the government invested in mail routes. And, eventually, 

this form of investment and technology and subsidies led to multibillion dollar 

industries. I think we are just on the verge of being able to see something like this 

come out in space exploration, beyond something like the commercial satellite 

industry. And I think it’s going to be an absolutely fascinating journey over the 

next 10 years or so—maybe it’s 5 years, we’ll see—as this plays out.

The second major point is to underscore the false dichotomy of human 

versus robots. The only thing that will happen is the ratio will change over time. 

And, at some point, a human being, I’m looking at Chris McKay here, will be the 

tool of choice for exploring the Moon, and, particularly, exploring Mars. If we 

could put him in a little box, I’m sure he would go with the MSL (Mars Science 

Laboratory) in ’09.

So where do we go with this dialogue? I agree completely with what John 

said, with what many of you said. This can’t be a one-of-a-kind. I think the 

public will come along if we tell our story well, but we need professional help. 

Some people say we’re beyond help; we need treatment.

But if we can talk about the risk of not exploring, the risk of losing our 

imagination, and maybe, ultimately, a second home for humanity, I think that 

we have some compelling things in addition to the kind of spinoffs that may 

come from what Nathalie Cabrol found by exploring these lakes, that your blood 

oxygenation goes up, your heartbeat goes down. What does that mean? What 

does that mean for the biomedical community?

There are a lot of things in there, but telling the big future story, I think, 

is something we haven’t done and we need to do. And we saw some storytellers 

here in the last few days who just grabbed us. In giving a lot of talks, there’s 

the pin-drop moment, and we hit the pin-drop moment in those places were 

everybody was just absolutely transfi xed by the story.

So, where can we go with this dialogue? One thing is that taking risks can 

prepare you for the future—often in ways you didn’t even think of. I’m going to 

give you one or two examples from my own experience, which has been largely 

taking programmatic and technical risks. 

In 1975 very little was known about repairing neutron damage in gamma 

ray detectors. So I conducted, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a bunch of 

experiments with a 72-curie plutonium-beryllium source. Now, if you consider 

that your smoke detector is picocuries, you get some idea of how hot this was.

So, we went through the safety procedures. I signed up to the risks. Twentyfi ve years later, at the age of 50 or so, I had dual cataracts in both eyes, which 

was a possible outcome of doing that. But today, Bill Boynton with that same 

detector orbiting Mars, fi guring out where all the water-ice is, is able to repair 

his detector, because of what we learned doing those experiments, almost 30 

years ago, about how you heat the detector and get rid of the neutron damage. 

OPENING PHOTO: 

The Space Shuttle orbiter Endeavour and 

its crew of six glide in to Runway 15 at 

Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing 

Facility after spending nine days in space 

on the STS-72 mission, the fi rst Shuttle 

fl ight of 1996. 

(NASA Image # 96PC-0155)

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
247

You never know what kind of a risk, and what kind of information, is going to 

prepare you for the future.

In a similar fashion, in April of 1990, I went in front of the Headquarters 

folks and proposed the ridiculous mission of using a Delta-2 and a single probe 

and a cruise stage going to Mars and landing, of all things, using an airbag. 

The risk there was ridicule and being laughed out of the room, which almost 

happened. Fortunately, Jim Martin, the legendary leader of the Viking mission, 

thought there was something to it. And 14 years later, we have now used that 

technology three times successfully.

So, what I’m building up to is the analogy of setting up the Astrobiology 

Institute in 1998. We took a risk—and Keith Cowing was part of this—in bringing 

together an interdisciplinary group of physicists, biologists, mathematicians, 

astronomers, who never talk to each other. Or if they do, the intersection is only 

at one point. And saying, let’s all think from our disparate points of view about 

a much broader series of questions, like where do we come from, are we alone in 

the universe, where are we going?

Out of that came a fi eld today, and you’ve heard references to it, of more 

than 1,000 scientists worldwide who are engaged in this in everyday research 

and view this interdisciplinary work, the interaction—the action is at the 

intersections—as being where we’re headed for research in the future. So I 

would say today, the group that has participated the last two and a half days at 

this has been at a seminal, similar event of bringing together communities that 

have perhaps not communicated as much as they should—robotic, human, riskevaluators, decision-makers. And, so, what we need to do to keep this moving is 

have the dialogue; perhaps we have a road map, we certainly need a distillation 

of lessons learned from this, and I would be willing to bet that we’re going to 

ultimately have, if John takes his action items here, thousands of people, maybe 

tens of thousands of people, who are engaged in doing the kind of work that we 

got started here over the last two days.

So with that, let me roll the credits and, fi rst of all, thank the idea men—

John Grunsfeld, Keith Cowing, the people that had some of the initial concepts 

for this. Let me thank the Naval Postgraduate School, Admiral Dunne, and, 

“

”

IN AVIATION, THE GOVERNMENT INVESTED IN MAIL ROUTES. AND, EVENTUALLY, THIS 

FORM OF INVESTMENT AND TECHNOLOGY AND SUBSIDIES LED TO MULTIBILLION 

DOLLAR INDUSTRIES. I THINK WE ARE JUST ON THE VERGE OF BEING ABLE TO SEE 

SOMETHING LIKE THIS COME OUT IN SPACE EXPLORATION, BEYOND SOMETHING 

LIKE THE COMMERCIAL SATELLITE INDUSTRY. 

SCOTT HUBBARD CLOSING COMMENTS
248

particularly, Chris Walla for hosting us in this incredible venue. It’s just been 

delightful being here. At NASA Headquarters, Bob Jacobs was the lead for pulling 

this together. Trish Pengra, Al Feinberg, and the inestimable Tony Stewart of 

NASA TV, thanks to you all.

The group from Ames, from my own Center, Rho Christensen, Danny 

Thompson, event coordinators. Victoria Steiner and Ed Schilling, public affairs. 

The video crew—I won’t go through all the names. There are many, many people 

staffi ng the cameras here, but I do want to mention Jim Taylor and the planners 

collaborative, Mark Shaddock and Spotlight Productions, Donovan Gates, 

Donovan Gates Production, and Michael Ditertay and his staff on this 30-person 

television crew. And out of this will come, I’m sure, an outstanding DVD.

Then there are a couple of other people from Ames that I want to mention—

Mike Mewhinney and Kathleen Burton of public affairs, who were part of the 

advance group getting all this together. Then, fi nally, a contributor, I’m looking 

at him right now—one of the real concept, idea, content contributors to this, 

who through some personal adversity, has managed to stay focused on making 

this entire thing very successful, Mel Averner. Mel, thank you. Then fi nally, our 

moderators—Miles O’Brien of CNN, Chris McKay, Dave Halpern, and again, 

John Grunsfeld, NASA Headquarters.

So, fi nally, to wrap it up completely, we want to thank all of you who have 

spent the last two and a half days with us, and, of course, the honorable Sean 

O’Keefe, the NASA Administrator. ■

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Remarks

I had to rearrange my thoughts after going through the day. I had 

given some time to thoughts about risk and the way we use it and the way we misuse it 

and all of those things. Well, as the morning went on, the fi rst speaker ticked off the fi rst 

three or four of my items, and the next speaker came along and fi xed them all up. And, so, 

most of the things that I thought I would like to comment on were gone. Then, just to put 

the crowning blow on it all, we go in this afternoon and I listen to the most amazing set of 

people that I could ever imagine. And I’m sitting here listening to this and saying, “Every 

one of these people, individually, has done more than me and all my friends.” Now, how in 

the world do you get up and talk after that? 

Well, I decided that the fi rst thing I had to do was to talk about something different. 

So, what I would like to do tonight is perhaps a little deviation, but I hope my thoughts are 

in the context of what you are discussing. 

We have a nomenclature issue when we talk about exploration and the word explore: to 

some people, that means visit planets. To some people, it means do great science. To some 

T. K. Mattingly is one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as a member of 

the astronaut support crews for the Apollo 8 and 11 missions and was the astronaut representative in 

development and testing of the Apollo spacesuit and backpack (EMU). He was designated command 

module pilot for the Apollo 13 fl ight but was removed from fl ight status 72 hours prior to the scheduled 

launch due to exposure to the German measles. He has logged 7,200 hours of fl ight time—5,000 hours in 

jet aircraft. A veteran of three space fl ights, Mattingly has logged 504 hours in space, including 1 hour and 

13 minutes of extravehicular activity (EVA) during his Apollo 16 fl ight. He was the command module pilot on 

Apollo 16 (16–27 April 1972), was the spacecraft commander on STS-4 (26 June to 4 July 1982) and STS 

51-C (24–27 January 1985). After retiring from NASA in 1989, Mattingly continued his work in space science 

in the private sector, focusing on developing low-cost and reusable launch systems for commercial use. 

Thomas “T.K.” Mattingly II 

Former NASA Astronaut
250

OPENING PHOTO: 

Astronaut Thomas K. Mattingly II, 

Apollo 16 Command Module pilot. 

(NASA Image # S71-51295) 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

of us—I like to call ourselves explorers—but I tell you what, the ride is one hell 

of a good show. So I think we have different perspectives on what exploring is. 

But once you get away from this community of ours, you fi nd that the word 

takes on a different connotation. We use the expression “to explore business 

opportunities” and the expression “explore new kinds of things.” And, in my 

mind, this “explore” means to do or to learn something new. It doesn’t matter 

whether it’s science or how to manage an organization or how to go places. It’s 

when you do something new. And, in my mind, that can take on something of a 

different connotation. And so, if you look at it that way, then there are a lot of 

people in the world that take risks. In our business, we talk about risk and the 

fi rst thing we think of is some poor kids’ young bodies laying there in the ashes. 

Well, there are a lot of other risks, and they’re very, very real and they’re 

very important. And for those of you that have tried to start a business or have 

tried to run one with your own money, you understand what the word risk means. 

And it is just as overpowering as anything else. 

When I had an opportunity to launch the Atlas rockets—which, by the 

way, I consider to be one of the highlights of my career opportunities—I can tell 

you, it’s infi nitely easier to sit on top of one of the things that NASA launches, 

because you are absolutely in the best hands you could ever be and you will never 

fi nd a lower level of risk. When you go launch it and it’s your decision—it’s not 

a committee—you’ve got investors that you’ve just assured it’s going to fl y. But 

it’s the same old rocket hardware and it’s just as interesting. And that really gets 

your attention. 

I know that the docs like to record the heart rate—they want to know what 

Jim’s heart rate is at launch and at entry and when he steps around. I tell you 

what—any of those statistics they collected on us won’t compare with making 

the decision to launch something that’s got your money riding on it. That’s a 

different ball game. And it is just as interesting as people. 

So, my point is not to belittle people. My point is to say risk is a different 

thing to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. And, so, when we 

say we’re taking an acceptable risk or whatever we’re going to do, you have to put 

yourself in the place of “risk to whom and for what?” One of the speakers this 

morning reiterated that we all think of risk of life. Okay, that’s pretty easy. There 

is a property risk, but, actually, I think we can take almost all physical property 

and lump it together under fi nancial arrangement of some sort, except in those 

rare cases when we’re going to use or deplete a natural resource that doesn’t get 

refurbished. I remember one time in the Shuttle program, we just woke up one 

day and discovered that our demands—if we met the fl ight schedule—would have 

depleted the Earth’s supply of helium the fi rst year. So we kind of had to do some 

more engineering. So there is an example of another kind of property that you 

put at risk. But you also put at risk opportunities, and that’s opportunities for 

you to do something else with your time. The investor could invest in something 

that’s going to come out better—there’s a million things that could happen. So 

the connotation of risk is something that you have to stop and think about. 
251

John Young (left) and T. K. Mattingly in the recovery raft after 

the splashdown of the Apollo 16 capsule. 

(NASA Image S72-36510)

It seems to me that in a democratic world one of the principles we have is 

that there are human rights that belong to everybody and we go to great lengths 

to take care of those. And as school kids we were taught that our rights would 

end when yours start. Okay? That was an easy principle. 

That same thing applies to third parties. When we do our trick and we 

launch things over people and around them, or when you run nuclear power 

plants, or when you do all kinds of things, there are innocent parties who did not 

get to vote on taking a risk. And one has to think very seriously about who it is 

that has the authority to put in jeopardy somebody who didn’t even participate 

in the decision. One of the nice things about the discussion this afternoon was 

everybody that I listened to was in activities that did not put 

third parties at risk. They were responsible for other people, 

they were responsible for a lot of things, but the innocent 

bystander was generally immune to their activities. And so 

that [responsibility to innocent parties] puts an obligation on 

all spacefl ight from the beginning. 

When we go out of the atmosphere on those missions 

and come back in, we’re going through something that’s 

very traumatic and irreversible. Spacefl ight is complex by its 

nature. It’s large in scope and it has a whole range of critical, 

irreversible decisions in a harsh and unforgiving environment. 

Other than that, it’s a wonderful place. [Laughter] 

That fi rst step has got to be right, and with that comes 

an obligation to all those kids out there in the world that 

aren’t part of our club and aren’t having fun doing things that 

we enjoy. It’s easy for us to decide, “Hey, this is good stuff,” 

whether it’s good science or just a ball to go do, that’s one 

thing. That’s different than saying, “I’m going to fl y over your cow pasture and 

maybe drop something on your house.” People tend to get irritated at that. 

So, what I wanted to do is step back for just a second and talk about some of 

the perceptions so that it can help frame the question. Now, I’m not a visionary. 

I don’t know what the world should do—I don’t have any idea about whether we 

should explore Timbuktu or Saturn or whatever. But in my opportunities in life, 

I’ve had a chance to do a lot of really neat things where you could have a vision 

about how to get it done. And so I guess I’m one of those people you call an 

implementer instead of a visionary. That’s what I enjoy doing, and I think that’s 

the kind of things that have just worked out in my favor. 

So while not a visionary, I have watched some. What I’d like to do is share 

with you some thoughts about groups that I have watched and the characteristics 

of them. Because I’m going to make two assumptions—and these are not 

debatable, because they’re assumptions. I’m going to assume that you either 

go forward or you die. Civilizations do that. So if you aren’t making progress, 

you’re in deep trouble. Maybe it’ll take time to play out, but that’s the end. And 

I can’t prove that, but, boy, do I believe it. 

THOMAS “T.K.” MATTINGLY II REMARKS
252

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Somebody gave me the analogy that it’s like riding a bicycle. If you try to 

sit still and not move, it’s a very diffi cult job. And if you can get up a little speed, 

you can do a lot of things. That’s one assumption. 

The other I’m going to assume is that there is no way we will not explore 

the universe. I have no idea what the timeframe is, but one of my investor friends 

gave me a piece of counsel one day when we were having trouble and couldn’t 

fi gure out how we were going to make the next step. And he said, “Just don’t get 

in the way of success.” 

Going back to Jim Lovell’s [Apollo 13] mission, there’s one lesson that I 

gathered from our ground risk management and getting a chance to watch the 

real pros go do that. When we started, within an hour of Jim telling the world 

he’s got a problem, we didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have oxygen, we’re on a 

trajectory that’s not coming home, and we don’t have any ideas. And those cats 

on the ground solved these problems one at a time. The only rule was, you’ve got 

a problem to solve, you’ve got one to solve, and you’ve got one to solve, and we 

do have a cutoff date when we need to have all this fi nished—it was later than Jim 

wanted it, but it beat the deadline. 

But the principle was, don’t get in the way of success. Assume that your 

buddy is going to do his job and you don’t want to be the one that’s holding up 

the show. With that, we went through a series of really challenging resolutions to 

problems. Where folks really didn’t know, but they said, “Boy, if they can fi gure 

out how to get the water to last, we’ll fi gure out how to get the electricity over 

there.” And it all came together, as you know. 

So I’m going to assume that we’re going to go do these things and that 

we’re mature enough we recognize that, I think, every success is preceded by 

a failure. At least in my experience, it’s not real clear you can have a success 

without preceding it with something that’s humbling or threatening. Certainly 

my career has gone through that sort of cycle. 

The things we learn, we learn most easily from things that don’t work. 

You’ve got to be objective, you’ve got to be honest with yourself, but the things 

that fail are the things that teach us. I have known a few people who could learn 

from success, but you know, when you’re feeling good, it’s really hard to be selfcritical. And so you miss a lot of lessons that you could have had. So don’t ever 

be afraid of failure. 

So, if that’s the case, if my premise is right—we’re going to make progress 

and we’re going to go explore—then our job is don’t get in the way of success. 

We don’t know from the government side what the funding profi les will be, what 

the timing is, but we need to be prepared to do whatever opportunity presents. 

So how do you do that? I don’t know. And I certainly wouldn’t tell you anything 

other than sea stories about places I’ve been. But we’re not in those places. We’re 

going forward. And that’s a new game and a new set of challenges and new places 

to go. That means rethink. 

So, in that vein, let me just summarize my observations from spending 

20 years in government programs and then a few years working as a contractor 
253

NUMBER ONE, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CLEAR, QUANTIFIABLE, SIMPLE-TOUNDERSTAND OBJECTIVE. STEP ONE. IF YOU DON’T FILL THAT SQUARE IN, 

DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON’T MATTER. 

NUMBER ONE, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CLEAR, QUANTIFIABLE, SIMPLE-TO-

“

NUMBER ONE, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CLEAR, QUANTIFIABLE, SIMPLE-TO-

“

NUMBER ONE, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A CLEAR, QUANTIFIABLE, SIMPLE-TO-

” DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON’T MATTER.” DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON’T MATTER. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON’T MATTER.” DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON’T MATTER.

on government programs and then the last ten years working on commercial 

ventures. I’ve been in large corporations—government certainly is a large 

organization, DOD’s a large organization—and I’ve been in some small startups 

and entrepreneurial ventures. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve had some successes. 

So I’ve tried to catalog for you the signatures that have shown up in every success. 

And some were hinted at today and I just wanted to reiterate them. 

Number one, you have to have a clear, quantifi able, simple-to-understand 

objective. Step one. If you don’t fi ll that square in, don’t worry about the rest of 

them, because they don’t matter. 

Once you’ve got that, you have some more challenges. And it takes creating 

an environment where getting it right is more important than who’s right. You 

have to have a group—and big things can’t be done by small groups and by 

individuals, only by large organizations. The trick in leadership is to create the 

environment where getting it right is all that counts, because the job’s too hard 

to do anything else. 

So if you’ve got that, then you have to have competent practitioners. 

Without that, you won’t go anywhere. Now, back in the Apollo days, that was one 

thing no one had to worry about. Because if you just said, “Job opening—work 

on Apollo,” you know, the line went all the way around the county, because it was 

something every one of the young kids wanted to do. 

Today we have to compete for opportunities and people, especially. They 

will come to an electric environment. The kinds of things that you folks do will 

draw people. They are there—and they’re the people who want to be there, people 

who want to be personally accountable. 

So in this group, this constellation of things that I have observed as uniform 

qualities, you have got to have a good objective, you have got to have personal 

accountability—eyeball to eyeball, participant to participant. That’s not an org 

chart with lines on it, that’s real-world accountability based on human relations 

that we have with each other. You have to be competent in your job. 

I would caution that one place we’ve gotten trapped is the resume trap 

or the logo trap. I’m the world’s worst in reading a resume and knowing what 

somebody can do. I feel pretty good after working with them for a couple of days, 

and then I know what kind of people I’m around. But I have a real hard time with 

a resume; they can look really good or really bad. 

The logo trap is the other side of that. How many times have we worked in an 

industry that’s maturing, where the logo of the company is on the wall and it has a 

THOMAS “T.K.” MATTINGLY II REMARKS
254

NASA Image/Renee Bouchard

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

record of miraculous accomplishments—year after year they’ve done spectacular 

things. All of us, including the employees, believe that we are part of that logo. 

And it happens at NASA, it happens at any large organization with a history. We 

identify with that logo, that’s a symbol of things that have happened. 

Maybe, after a period of time, the people that do those things aren’t there 

anymore. And unless somebody has been very, very careful to be prescient 

enough to create an honest-to-goodness succession plan, you’ll fi nd people who 

know the language, who look good, but do not have that personal, gut feeling for 

what it’s about that’s necessary to do these things that push the envelope. When 

you fi nd that situation, the places that succeed recognize it, and then they take 

steps to fi x that. 

There’s nothing magic about this except to face up to the fact that you know 

what you know and you know what you don’t. And with that, those signatures 

have shown up at every one of these little organizations that I’ve had a chance to 

be exposed to. 

So, while I can’t tell the answers to the next job and the next challenge, 

because each one’s unique, I would commend to you that these observations, 

that I think I picked up primarily from working at NASA; they have been 

uniform signatures. We even applied the much-maligned aerospace management 

process to turning around a very nonglamorous company, where we did a really 

excellent job of turnaround, coming out of bankruptcy to create some almost 

embarrassingly good results—done with people in a nonglamorous fi eld and a 

group that two years ago was absolutely demoralized and hopeless. 

It all came from just getting them all on the same page with the right orders. 

So these are techniques that are not just peculiar to the high-tech business, they 

work everywhere in life. So that’s my observation. 

I do have one question I’d like to ask of you. When I was a kid, I lived in 

Miami, and I used to go down to the beach, like all high school kids, and look up at 

the sky and see the Moon, and you kind of wondered, “Gee,” you know, beer talk, 

“Hmm, wonder what the Earth would look like [from] up there?” Well, that was 

too preposterous for even high school kids to talk about. Strange things happen. 

I had a chance to go and serve what I thought would be a couple-year tour 

with NASA, and they were doing this program called Apollo and space-centered 

life. I knew that when I got there, I wasn’t going to the Moon. But, you know, I 

might be getting in at the right time to go to Mars. [Laughter] Well, that schedule 

has been modifi ed a couple of times and I said, “Well, okay. I did get to go to the 

Moon, I hope that doesn’t blow my trip to Mars.” [Laughter] 

Then I woke up and said, “Maybe I could be the program manager to send 

somebody to Mars.” So tonight, I would plead with all of you in the exploration 

world. Before I turn the lights out, I want to see pictures of people bouncing on 

Mars. And that’s your job. Thank you. ■

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Back to Contents page 
Michael Foale

NASA Astronaut

Remarks

This morning, we heard an awful lot of eye-opening stories 

about how we are exploring the planet today. I’m awed to be in the presence of so many 

notable people here in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Actually, this aquarium has fi gured 

inspirationally in motivational movies such as Star Trek and other grand works of science 

fi ction. I should tell you I have been motivated by Star Trek, I think we heard that this 

afternoon from Chris McKay. 

Preparing for this talk, I continually asked myself why I, of all people, have been asked 

to speak to you this evening. And I kind of went through the thoughts. Maybe because 

I most recently returned from space—that seems an obvious one. Or because I’ve been 

fortunate enough to survive six fl ights to space. Or worse, because somebody sees me as 

prone to avoiding near disasters throughout my life. I know someone in my management 

chain believes that. 

I do not feel I’m a particular specialist in risk-taking or taking risks personally. Rather, 

I see myself as rather conservative about mitigating risks that I see ahead of myself and 

my family.

Michael Foale was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in June 1987. He served as a mission 

specialist on STS-45, STS-56, STS-63, and STS-103. He was fl ight engineer 2 on Mir 23 and Mir 24 

(ascent on STS-84 and return on STS-86). On his last fl ight, 18 October 2003 to 29 April 2004, Foale 

served as International Space Station (ISS) Expedition-8 Commander. The Expedition-8 crew launched 

from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard Soyuz TMA-3 and docked with the ISS on 20 October 

2003. His six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station included a 3 hour, 55 minute 

extravehicular activity (EVA). Mission duration was 194 days, 18 hours, and 35 minutes and, at its 

conclusion, Foale became the U.S. record holder for most cumulative time in space, having logged 374 

days, 11 hours, and 19 minutes.

Michael Foale 

NASA Astronaut
256

OPENING PHOTO: 

Equipped with a bungee harness, 

astronaut Michael Foale, Expedition 8 

commander and NASA’s science offi cer 

on the International Space Station (ISS), 

performs squat exercises on the Treadmill 

Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) in the 

Zvezda Service Module, the ISS living 

quarters. (Zvezda is Russian for “star.”) 

(NASA Image # ISS007-E-17762)

There are many guests amongst us who do not work at NASA, but have very 

relevant experience in exploration. Please believe that I see risk perception and 

its mitigation as a rather subjective issue—I think we’ve heard that a number 

of times today.

I, and NASA, do not know all the answers. In fact, I feel we may have strayed 

off course concerning our approach to risk in some areas. We, NASA, need to 

hear more than anything else not Mike Foale’s point of view on risk, but those of 

people outside of NASA looking in. I feel my job today is to sort of set the scene 

and issue provocative opinions to you—I mean, I’m opinionated—and you are 

obliged to dispute them in the coming days. 

That said, I’m going to give you my personal view of America’s space 

exploration and the risk that comes with it. But fi rst, I’d like to set the scene for 

space exploration in the future, inspired by the President’s vision for exploration, 

by showing the fi rst part of a video made within the astronaut offi ce by astronauts 

and narrated by astronauts—one of whom is myself. 

[Narration from video is indented.]

Female speaker: We are, by nature, explorers. Look at the centuries of 

histories where people were committed to fi nding new worlds and 

establishing them. And now I think it’s time for us to go beyond low 

Earth orbit and do the very same thing.

Female Speaker: Human beings are insatiably curious. We want to 

know what’s out there in the stars. It’s part of who we are; it’s part of 

what we are.

Male Speaker: Being outside on a spacewalk is the coolest thing you 

can imagine—beyond belief. You’re doing this important thing, 

you’re building a spaceship and the world is rolling by. It’s absolutely 

breathtaking.

Male Speaker: The Space Station is teaching us how to explore. Before 

we can go to the Moon or to Mars, we have to learn a lot about the 

human body. What happens when you put yourself inside a spaceship 

for weeks and even months? What food are we going to eat? Are we 

going to bring it all in cans or are we going to grow some food on 

board? What sort of spaceships do we have to build?

Michael Foale: When we look back 50 years to this time, we won’t 

remember the experiments that were performed, we won’t remember 

the assembly that was done. What we will know was that countries 

came together to do the fi rst joint international project, and we will 

know that that was the seed that started us off to the Moon and Mars.

Male Speaker: I think you have to learn to live and work on the Moon 

fi rst, so you can make mistakes when you’re only two and a half days 

away from a can of beans. 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
257

Male Speaker: Human beings can do things that robots will never be able 

to do. They can anticipate, and they can handle, unexpected problems.

Male Speaker: On the Moon, we ran into about 97 problems that 

nobody thought we’d run into, and we fi xed every one.

Male Speaker: We are going to continue to explore. We can confront the 

majority of the problems by going to the Moon. And then, building on 

that will give us the confi dence and the technical ability to be able to 

step further into the solar system and turn our sights towards Mars.

Male Speaker: We go to places where human beings typically can’t 

live because these environments offer discoveries that defy our 

imagination. We’re going to say, “Wow!”

Male Speaker: We want to know where we should land; we want to 

know where the water is. The robots blaze the trail—provide us with 

a path to get there. They’re fi nding out whether we could stand on 

the surface of Mars. Those robots have raised their electronic eyes 

and given us those fi rst glimpses of the horizon of Mars. To be able to 

stand on the surface of Mars and feel the wind blowing of Mars’s thin 

atmosphere is going to be a tremendous achievement.

Female Speaker: Can we use some of these resources? Can we prosper 

here? Can humans live here?

Male Speaker: So far, we have only sent people as far as the Moon, 

and sent our robots just as far as the edge of our solar system. We are 

just starting to understand our place in the universe, the perspective 

that the universe gives us, and the tremendous, infi nite variety that 

the rest of the universe holds. That’s where we are headed, and that’s 

where we’ll go after Mars.

[Video segment ends]

After watching that video, or others just like it, I fi nd myself kind of 

naturally responding with enthusiasm and excitement. I kind of go, “Wow!” It 

makes me feel that we humans can do anything if we agree on a common purpose 

and simply put our minds to it. 

However, evocative and inspirational as my astronaut colleagues can be, 

we are leaving out of the message something terribly important—risk. Why is 

that? It’s because we feel instinctively, maybe—especially in this year—it will 

spoil the mood of our message. That it will conjure up very painful and recent 

memories of lost friends and failed missions. 

My theme to you this evening is that we must always talk about risk when 

we enthuse about exploration. The two are inevitably connected. And I think that 

message is coming home today. 

Risk—what is it? It’s obvious when disaster strikes, such as when Shackleton’s 

ship, Endurance, was forestalled in his second attempt to reach the South Pole, 

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS
258

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

crushed by the ice while trapped far from his goal. We consider an activity to 

have risk if a foreseeable outcome has undesirable or dangerous consequences. 

Everybody knows what risk is, but it’s according to their own subjective standards. 

Risk today, in Western society, might be perceived to be—as T. K. Mattingly 

referred to—a fi nancial activity or the stock market, allowing your children to take 

the bus to school, not evacuating in advance of a hurricane warning, or not wearing 

a seatbelt. And these examples are seen as risks because the consequences can 

signifi cantly change our lives through fi nancial ruin or loss of life. 

So this evening when I speak of risk, I mean the risk of people being killed. 

Historically, or even today in underdeveloped countries, loss of life was an 

unfortunate, but commonplace, occurrence within families and all other types 

of social units. Every child experienced soon in their childhood somebody dying 

or they saw a dead person. This might have included the ravages of marauding 

neighbors, war, starvation, and disease. 

Before Christopher Columbus, if a proposal of exploration was made—be it 

to scout the far hills and tribes at a distance, or to utilize substantial resources 

of the community to send ships on marauding or exploring adventures—the risk 

entailed would appear to carry consequences not worse, and possibly better than, 

the risk of inaction. 

Inaction might simply mean waiting for unknown peoples to fi nd and attack 

the community or running out of food or tradable goods. So the imperative to 

explore then and to take risks then was strong, because the risk was understood 

widely to be a means to survival and the reduction of future risk. 

When a ship that had carried away a large fraction of the able-bodied 

community did not return or became known to be lost, the news would be just as 

painful then as it is today, but I think the shock should have been less. 

How do exploration and risk play a part on Earth now? I see exploration 

taking place under the sea, such as underwater archaeology, or on land, such as 

the search for Mars meteorites in deserts or Antarctica, or in mountaineering—

and in space, as we develop human and robotic space missions beyond the realm 

of Earth. I do not see these combined exploration activities consuming anything 

but a small fraction of the world’s economic and human production. 

I do not know how today’s activity should be compared to that [of] more 

than a hundred years ago, but my feeling is that outlays for exploration today 

represent a smaller fraction of our output than in the past. So, in risk terms, 

nowadays activities are just as dangerous for participants as any exploration 

undertaken in history—dying is dying. There has been no change in the fact that 

people can be injured today and lose their lives while exploring. 

What has changed is the public expectation for success, and the public 

shock when risk and danger show themselves as injury and loss of life. We’re 

not often exposed to death and severe illnesses or injury in our personal lives, 

unless we’re in a group that we could label as thrill-seekers—and we’ve been 

avoiding that term here today—or work in medical or emergency services, or in 

a war zone. 
259

I’m going to show you slides of a series of missions that I did not take part 

in. I was too young. I was just an enthusiastic, dreamy watcher of these events 

that took place in the ’60s. I’m going to show you astronauts walking out to their 

vehicle and then the vehicle launching. And I want to tell you to think about how 

you, the manager sending that astronaut out to the launch pad, might feel—or 

the family. And then I think about how you, as the astronaut or the risktaker 

walking out to that launch, might feel about your risk. 

[slide] This is Alan Shepherd getting into his Mercury capsule in 1961, May 

5th. After the Soviet Union had orbited Yuri Gagarin, April 12th of that year, 

President Kennedy stated in a press conference, “No one is more tired that I am 

in seeing the U.S. second to Russia in the space fi eld.” And he went on to say, 

“We are, I hope, going to be able to carry out our efforts with due regard to the 

problem of the life of the men involved this year.” 

So he did not say it directly, but he was referring to the high risk of putting a 

human into space. James Webb, the then NASA Administrator, issued a statement 

no more optimistic. “NASA has not attempted to encourage press coverage of 

the fi rst Mercury Redstone manned fl ight.” I think that’s incredible in today’s 

environment. “We must keep the perspective that each fl ight is but one of many 

milestones we must pass. Some will completely succeed in every respect. Some 

partially, and some will fail. From all of them will come mastery of the vast new 

space environment on which so much of our future depends.” 

 [slide] This is Alan Shepherd’s lift off on a Redstone rocket, fl ying for no 

more than 15 minutes until splashdown. The fl ight was a success. Afterwards, 

the risk perceived by the public may have been assuaged a touch. But my point 

to you is, because this was a fi rst fl ight of a new nature carrying a human, it had 

great risk. So, like a test pilot, I believe any fi rst fl ight with a human being carries 

increased risk, especially in recently designed, new space vehicles. 

I’m going to show you a series of slides of space missions, as I mentioned, 

that I believe carried a particularly high and increased risk. Initially, these 

missions are ones I did not take part in, and so your opinion is as strong as mine. 

I think you should hold your opinion and see if it corresponds with that which 

I’m going to express to you. 

In some cases, this risk may have been well understood by the public, such 

as this fi rst fl ight of Al Shepherd. Other slides I will show, the public was much 

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS

WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THE PUBLIC EXPECTATION FOR SUCCESS, AND THE PUBLIC 

SHOCK WHEN RISK AND DANGER SHOW THEMSELVES AS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE.

WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THE PUBLIC EXPECTATION FOR SUCCESS, AND THE PUBLIC

“

WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THE PUBLIC EXPECTATION FOR SUCCESS, AND THE PUBLIC

“

WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THE PUBLIC EXPECTATION FOR SUCCESS, AND THE PUBLIC

” SHOCK WHEN RISK AND DANGER SHOW THEMSELVES AS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE.” SHOCK WHEN RISK AND DANGER SHOW THEMSELVES AS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE. SHOCK WHEN RISK AND DANGER SHOW THEMSELVES AS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE.” SHOCK WHEN RISK AND DANGER SHOW THEMSELVES AS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE.
260

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

less aware of how great the risk was and found themselves surprised. [slide] 

Here’s John Glenn, 20 February 1962, walking out to the fi rst human fl ight of the 

Mercury-Atlas vehicle. John Glenn walked out to a much more risky launch than 

the one before him by Gus Grissom, which had also been on a Redstone rocket. 

Why? In my opinion, it’s pretty clear. Because the vehicle had been changed. 

The mission was very different. Launched to orbit with 3 times the speed of the 

Redstone, 10 times the energy to gain getting into orbit, and 10 times the energy 

to dissipate in excess heat reentering from orbit. 

This is the basic fact of the physics of spacefl ight into orbit and away from 

the Earth. The energies needed to be acquired or dissipated are huge, roughly 300 

times the kinetic energy of airliners, 290 that of supersonic jets, 25 times that of 

SpaceShipOne this week, on which I, personally, pin much hope, and I think the 

rest of you do, also. 

Was this huge difference compared to Alan Shepherd’s fl ight understood 

by the public? Kennedy did say only later that year, in September, “We choose to 

go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, 

but because they are hard.” 

[slide] When Gus Grissom and John Young walked out, in March 1965, to 

Gemini 3, the risks were again increased, in my opinion. It was a new human 

launch vehicle, a fi rst fl ight for humans, and it was a new, larger spacecraft, 

the Gemini capsule. On the previous rockets, there was an escape tower. The 

crew escape system was reduced in this case—ejection seats—diminishing its 

capability compared to Mercury. It was a big, risky step for our nation’s space 

program, but probably not perceived [as so] by the public. 

[slide] This is Ed White on the fi rst U.S. spacewalk—defi nitely a new risk 

in our space program, adding to others as a fi rst-time test. 

[slide] Here’s Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott docking with the Agena upper 

stage, only to experience high rotation rates when they docked. They undocked 

and experienced even worse rotation rates, tumbling. They saved themselves 

by switching to a different attitude control jet system and made an emergency 

splashdown thousands of miles from the planned recovery area. 

So the risk of human space exploration then, in this program up to that 

point, had been successful. Shows itself as a real hazard, but in NASA parlance, 

we call that a close call. It’s where we go, “Whew! That was dangerous,” breathe a 

sigh of relief, but nobody lost their life. 

[slide] The death of the Apollo 1 crew—Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger 

Chaffee—in January 1967, in a fi re inside the command module while on the 

launch pad, pulled NASA and the Nation up short. But the tragedy brought the 

best out in NASA and the Nation at that time, with new public resolve and tough 

lessons learned. 

[slide] Two years later, an incredibly bold and risky decision was made 

by George [Mueller] and others to send Apollo 8 to the Moon after only one 

manned Apollo fl ight. Jim Lovell talked about that this morning. I think it is an 

incredible fl ight, especially risky because they did not take a lunar module with 
261

them, which, because of its independent systems as a spacecraft in its own right, 

mitigated for future Apollo missions the risk of command-module failure. 

[slide] Apollo 11 was well-perceived by the public to be risky. I think failure 

would have been tragic, in their minds, and awful, but not a shock. There was the 

unknown risk of landing on the lunar surface, plus the high risk of the Apollo 

system as a whole, but, so far, successfully fl own. I remember as a young boy of 

about 12 or 13, the success made me sigh with relief, as if the risk had somehow 

gone away at that point. 

The reward for the United States, for the Nation, when we are willing to 

take risks and to explore, is really so obvious in lunar rendezvous; the liftoff 

from the lunar surface with just one engine—only one engine to get you into 

orbit—carried a whole other set of risks with it. 

And then we come to Jim Lovell’s fl ight with Apollo 13. Its emergency was 

more of a type—in my mind, Jim—that NASA actually expects and tries to plan 

for. Risk again showed itself as real. I’ve wondered how I might have felt leaving 

the Earth when the accident happened. 

As he pointed out, it was a fortuitous place—200,000 miles from the 

Moon—from his point of view. But, in my case, I think of not being able to turn 

around as the power systems of their command module failed. I think of what 

the cold, dead spacecraft may have seemed like when I was on Mir, when we lost 

energy, lost power, without a single sound and no power and the cold of space 

sucking the heat out of the spacecraft and yourself and your crewmates. It’s a 

very, very hard task dealing with a dying spacecraft because it gets so cold and so 

wet. For Apollo 13, the risk was seen to be a close call. I don’t mean to diminish 

that, Jim Lovell, but it was a close call because we pulled it off—you pulled it 

off—no one died, thanks to thousands of people on Earth and your crew. 

[slide] STS-1, with John Young and Bob Crippen. This was the fi rst powered 

fl ight of a Space Shuttle. I feel this was the boldest, riskiest fl ight in NASA’s history. 

But if you mention that to John, he just seems to mutter some understatement 

characteristic of only John Young. The launch involved three characteristically 

different components to work perfectly and all together for the fi rst time in 

a manned test. These were the external tank, the solid rocket boosters, and the 

orbiter. And within these, the main components—engines, hydraulic power units, 

fuel cells—all had to work reliably, but at least these had been tested in an integrated 

fashion before powered fl ight. This was not true of all three components together. 

No unmanned fl ight of the STS had been conducted. And the buildup to STS-1 was 

slow and diffi cult for NASA, so the public heard about its risk in the press as much 

because it had been so long since the last manned launch of Apollo to Skylab. For all 

that risk, the crew escape system—ejection seats—was especially limited compared 

to that of Apollo, adding even greater risk to the crew for this fi rst fl ight. 

But STS-1 was a success, as were subsequent fl ights up to the 25th, 

Challenger. The ejection seats were removed. Our public and NASA seemed to 

expect space exploration to be like that of airline operations. And to be fair to the 

public, this is an understandable misconception. 

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS
262

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

Only recently—just two weeks ago when I was climbing Mt. Baker—we 

were discussing the loss of Columbia with people who do not work in the space 

program. And the genuine question goes, “After all, the Shuttle lands like an 

airliner, right? So it must be as risk-free as an airliner. You spent all that money on 

it.” I’ve heard this from generally well-informed people in different professions. 

So the public is especially shocked when the Shuttle is destroyed. 

Okay, so why do astronaut applications to NASA actually increase after 

we’ve had a disaster, including me in 1981, watching STS-1 from Cambridge, 

England, driven to become an astronaut. Would-be astronauts do risky things to 

acquire the skills of explorers—I think Bill Stone overdid it this morning—such 

as fl y gliders or scuba dive on expeditions in Greece; this is something I thought 

was really captivating and interesting. Or excavating human remains in the low 

visibility and cold conditions on the Mary Rose in the English Channel. There 

was risk in these exploration activities for me and the two people who preceded 

me. Two people had died in the course of many dives on the Mary Rose [before I 

joined the] project. But the excitement of discovering new things was compelling 

and it pushed me to do more. 

[slide] Becoming an astronaut in Group 15 in 1987, after Challenger. Yeah, 

you’ll recognize some characters here, it’s an in-crowd, but it was a result of my 

desire not to take risk, but to experience space exploration. My desire outweighed 

the risk I perceived, a risk greater than I probably realized at the time. 

[slide] This is astronaut spacefl ight readiness training, and it carries risk. 

We may have to eject out of a T-38 or be picked up by helicopter in search-andrescue exercises. Or—this is not hazardous—overeat during a survival exercise. 

But these training activities to prepare astronauts are undertaken to reduce our 

future risks during space missions. 

So our training carries risk also, and this is to be balanced carefully with the 

higher risks that we are trying to mitigate in the conduct of our space missions. Our 

remote outdoor expedition training is a key to preparing crew members to make use 

of local resources, solve technical and mechanical failures in diffi cult conditions. 

[slide] Here John Young and Charlie Duke are being trained in geology to 

increase the science return of Apollo 16, which was highly successful. I believe 

we need to place future exploration astronauts into geology fi eld work, in a longduration expedition context, as part of scientifi c expeditions where scientists 

have a stake in these activities of the astronauts. So the astronauts feel the 

pressure that stake has on them, [as] for example, searching for and recognizing 

Martian meteorites in the deserts or in Antarctica. 

Post-Challenger, my fi rst fl ight was on STS-45 in 1992. And my family 

took the risk very seriously, as the families of all astronauts do, as did my fi rst 

commander—Charlie Bolden. And he was already a three-time fl yer, I think, at 

that point. And he strongly encouraged me—and I was a bit surprised by this—

to write a will. It was honest advice for a risk-taker from a risk-taker. 

NASA managers work to the very best of their ability to manage our risk 

when we fl y, but they are limited to the tools at hand, the architecture of the 
263

Space Shuttle system, and the inherent risk in all launch systems attempting 

orbital speeds. 

In the late 1990s, NASA was directed to work with the Russian Space Agency 

to build the International Space Station (ISS), providing sustaining fi nancial 

support to, at that time, a Russian space industry in severe diffi culty. And it 

jump-started the redesign of the ISS and initiated a series of joint Shuttle-Mir

missions throughout which a NASA astronaut would be left aboard the Mir to 

gain experience in the conduct of long-duration space fl ight. 

[slide] So here a few of us and our Russian support staff are gathered in front 

of Yuri Gagarin’s statue in Star City. As Charlie Precourt and our crew brought me 

towards Mir in 1997, I was anxious actually not about the risk, not for my safety, 

but my ability simply to interact well with my Russian hosts, my cosmonaut crew. 

The launch was behind me, and I reckoned the on-orbit phase should be less risky. 

Lloyd’s of London must have thought the same, because they charged me the 

same $1,500 for mission life insurance, just as they had for my shorter Shuttle 

missions. They would have been horrifi ed as that mission unfolded, I think. 

The risk of the U.S. working with Russia in the conduct of these expeditions 

was that the two sides did not, and could not reasonably, know everything about 

each other’s decisions and processes. I certainly did not know or understand that 

well at the time. A lesson learned during this program was that we are obliged to 

know as much as possible about each other’s operations that carry risks. 

Jerry Linenger, who I was replacing, happened to tell me in the handover a 

hairy story about a manual Progress docking attempt, which Vasili Tsibliev had 

been instructed to carry out earlier and which, in the end, failed, fi nishing in a 

close call, a fl y by of the station. I listened attentively, but did not know how to 

calibrate it as a risk. At any rate, I considered the presence of an independent 

space vehicle—the Soyuz—to be suffi cient to insure our lives in the event of 

bad events on the space station. And, as it would turn out, we came very close to 

testing my supposition.

I’m going to show you, very briefl y, a clip of a collision of a Progress vehicle 

that took place while I was on board the space station Mir in 1997. Before the 

actual collision takes place in this video, I will show you the way this docking 

attempt should have taken place. There you will see a Progress vehicle coming 

in towards the space station, towards the docking axis. And it will dock in a 

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS

LLOYD’S OF LONDON MUST HAVE THOUGHT THE SAME, BECAUSE THEY CHARGED ME THE 

SAME $1,500 FOR MISSION LIFE INSURANCE, JUST AS THEY HAD FOR MY SHORTER SHUTTLE 

MISSIONS. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED AS THAT MISSION UNFOLDED, I THINK. 

LLOYD’S OF LONDON MUST HAVE THOUGHT THE SAME, BECAUSE THEY CHARGED ME THE

“

LLOYD’S OF LONDON MUST HAVE THOUGHT THE SAME, BECAUSE THEY CHARGED ME THE

“

LLOYD’S OF LONDON MUST HAVE THOUGHT THE SAME, BECAUSE THEY CHARGED ME THE

” MISSIONS. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED AS THAT MISSION UNFOLDED, I THINK.” MISSIONS. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED AS THAT MISSION UNFOLDED, I THINK. MISSIONS. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED AS THAT MISSION UNFOLDED, I THINK.” MISSIONS. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED AS THAT MISSION UNFOLDED, I THINK.
264

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

nominal fashion, stopping at about 100 meters, and then the crew takes over, 

using manual controls.

In this successful attempt, carried out by Anatoly Soloviev and Pavel 

Vinogradov, that I witnessed actually later on in that year, they were using all of 

the full capabilities of the Progress docking system—the range and range rate, 

the radar system—that allow a normal automatic docking to take place. Vasili 

Tsibliev, my commander in Mir 23, had been asked to turn off that equipment—

not use it. Why? Because the program in Russia wanted to cut the cost of buying 

a $2 million electronic box in the Ukraine. That was the rationale for this test. As 

it unfolded, and as I learned about it, I realized this was a gross miscalculation of 

what we were ready to do that day, and it was very improperly thought through 

[about] how to carry out this docking test.

 [video] The sound you hear is in the Soyuz as I was fl ying around in 

there looking at the damage, actually. This is the docking module that we’re 

talking about—the docking core. Here’s Anatoly monitoring the TORU docking 

equipment. And he sees the Mir in his sights as he fl ies the Progress manually, 

looking through a camera from the Progress towards the Mir. 

This now is the scene as Vasili saw it. We’d already gotten too high above 

the Mir. You can see the solar arrays of the Mir here, this is the long axis. I snuck 

this video, by the way, which is why it’s such poor quality. They didn’t know I 

took it. And the docking was along this axis, it was meant to be. You can see 

we’re high above the Mir. Vasili is not really saying anything in this audio yet. I’m 

just watching over his shoulder. Sasha is nearby. We should be docking on this 

axis, but we’re now moving this way. 

Sasha is saying, “You should move out.” Sasha is saying, “Break out! Break 

out!” He says to me, “Get to the spacecraft.” This is my feet coming by the scene 

here. And then, that’s the crash as the Progress hits. At this point, I’m fl oating 

into the space towards the Soyuz and the pressure’s already falling, I can feel the 

pressure, in my ears falling. 

This is the classic klaxon that you hear when you have a loss of pressure. 

Afterwards, when we did the survey, fl ying around in the Soyuz spacecraft, we 

looked at the damage and we saw that the solar array had been badly crashed. 

After big events—after risk—you relax. And I wanted to show you what the 

handover’s mood looked like as we fi nished up. After that pretty terrible day for 

Vasili Tsibliev and the rest of us, but particularly bad for the commander who 

suffered the stigma of this collision, every day we would look out of the window 

at this scene. 

The damage to the Spektr module was serious, and it broke the foundation 

of that solar array that comes in here towards the Spektr module—so much [so] 

that I feel that the bearing was the location of the breach in the hull or [the] 

leaks. And Anatoly Soloviev and I did a space walk in Russian suits to survey the 

damage and try to fi nd a hole, but we were not successful. 

More serious and risky were the successive—and this takes me back to Jim 

Lovell’s experience—times when we would lose complete attitude control of the 
265

space station and tumble slowly. When we had isolated that module—the Spektr 

module, Sasha and I—after the collision, we had cut off 30 percent of the Mir’s 

power supply in so doing. And so now, the Mir was in a very critical energy state. 

Actually, orienting the Mir using the Soyuz, which was the way we did this 

to overcome the loss of attitude control, always made me nervous that we would 

have inadvertently stabilized it in a spin, so stable that we would forever be stuck 

in it and direct the arrays away from the Sun and then, therefore, kill the station. 

[slide] This is for John Grunsfeld. To put risk on Mir in perspective, I have to 

add that the risk of a Space Shuttle fl ight, for me, after the Mir, was just as real to 

me. It was while participating in a Hubble repair mission—with John Grunsfeld, 

by the way, over here—on STS-103 in 1999, commanded by Kurt Brown, that 

I felt the most anxious about what we’re planning to do. And the task simply 

was performance anxiety for me. To change out the brain, the 

main computer, of the telescope—that made me more nervous 

that day, about my own performance and the risk of my actions, 

than anything I have ever experienced in all of six space missions. 

To leave Hubble worse off than we had found it, now that was a 

nightmare I did not ever want to contemplate. 

Coming back to Russia again, NASA’s experience on Mir, 

I believe, went a long way to reducing risk in working with the 

Russians on the International Space Station. We gained insight 

into their commissions and launch decision-making processes. 

[slide] So here you see me. I want to show you, this is 

the management point of view, and it’s a serious one of launch 

readiness. Ten days before launch on that Soyuz TMA-3 in October 

of last year, I am being presented as kind of an item—Exhibit 

A—to the Russian commission. Not only as a risk-taker, but as a 

form of risk mitigation. The argument was presented, in front of 

me and my crew, by Star City that our training was complete and 

suffi cient and so, therefore, our performance did not represent a 

risk to the completion of Expedition 8. It was kind of a unique 

situation to be in for me. 

As we approached the time of departure from Star City to 

the launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, my family—Rhonda, Ian, 

and Jenna, and those are my crewmates, Aleksandr Kaleri and 

Pedro Duque—were toasted very seriously by the Russians and 

thoughtfully, acknowledging the unspoken risks in front of us as we embarked on 

Expedition 8. At this point, no one talks about risk. 

[slide] I’m going to show you the walk out from the suit-up building in 

Kazakhstan out to our designated squares, and then the salute, and then on 

to the launch pad for a Soyuz launch. On the way out to a Shuttle launch, you 

become introspective, somewhat, as you notice all the other vehicles for a Shuttle 

launch are leaving. On the way out to a Russian launch, I’m always amazed that 

in Kazakhstan, when you get to the base of the rocket, you’re surrounded by 

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS

Astronaut Michael Foale, Expedition 8 

commander and NASA’s science offi cer on 

the International Space Station, gives thumbs 

up after he and his crewmates successfully 

landed in north central Kazakhstan on 

30 April 2004 in their Soyuz TMA-3 capsule. 

(NASA Image # JSC2004-E-21242)
266

hundreds of senior fi gures and VIPs, and they’re all clamoring to be there, right 

next to a steaming, hissing, breathing rocket. I guess they want to take part in the 

same risk as we three have to at that point in the launch sequence. 

At this point, though, they’ve moved everybody away. The ride is incredible. 

I don’t know how to describe it. There’s a lot of rumbling noise, vibration. Very 

abrupt cutoffs as we go through staging, and then there’s peace and quiet when you 

get to orbit. And all the hoopla you went through getting to the launch pad is kind 

of behind you. 

You think about, if you have a refl ective moment, your family back at the 

launch pad, thousands of miles away already.

If you were to watch the faces of launch teams at Cape Canaveral, and the 

managers, you would fi nd expressions of concern and nervousness and prayer 

and hope written all over their faces. At this moment, if people have forgotten 

the risk of the launch, then they remember it. 

On board, it’s more simple. Crew members have to only perform reliably and 

carefully. In my mind, once embarked on a risky phase, be it crossing a crevice 

fi eld on a glacier or carrying out procedures using dynamic operations in a space 

vehicle, at that point, you have to stop worrying and move on to minimize the 

risk of your own failure. That’s the risk-taker’s point of view. 

Of course, there’s time to relax sometimes, such as New Year. A longduration mission is very much an act of endurance and perseverance. The risk 

I take most seriously is being part of a crew that cannot shift out of relaxation 

from routine to operational readiness for dynamic operations. An example of 

that would be shifting to operational readiness for reentry in a space vehicle after 

you’ve spent 194 days in space. 

This transition for our crew, including a long-time unseen fl ight engineer, 

was probably the greatest risk we were exposed to during this otherwise pretty 

nominal expedition. The ride is incredible. From four hours ago, [when] we 

were enjoying chocolate and drinks, and then, after a deorbit burn, pyro belts 

fi ring, tumbling, the shock of parachute opening, rapid depressurization of the 

spacecraft, and then the smell of cordite coming in through the vents of the 

spacecraft into the cabin; fi nally, you touch down onto the Kazakhstan plain. 

[video] He’s saying, “I congratulate you.” This is the hole made by a thruster 

made on the Soyuz spacecraft as it did the braking burn. 

After the risk is past, crew members, family, space managers, all of us are 

relieved, and we celebrate how we have cheated death once more. It shows in our 

faces that the risk of spacefl ight and space exploration is always present, and 

we must always be honest about it, explain it, and do our utmost to reduce it, 

without hiding it. That way, when we risk-takers are back with our families and 

we talk about committing to new space exploration—she says, “Don’t you dare 

fl y again!” [joking] No, you talk about it. Nobody should ever, ever be shocked if, 

in taking those steps, we should falter and not return home. 

Exploration today carries risk just as dangerous as it did in history. I believe 

we must honestly explain that risk, just as we move forward to carry out the 

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
267

President’s space exploration vision. Americans can suffer discomfort, hardship, 

and overcome the greatest diffi culties when the goals and risks are laid out plainly 

side by side. We must take on these most challenging adventures, while looking 

into the face of risk. In that way, we will achieve some incredible things in space. 

You’ve listened this evening to me and the excellent discussion today. 

Please continue to let me and us know what you, the public, and our 

Congress, think about risk-taking in space exploration. Thank you for being here 

this evening. ■

MICHAEL FOALE REMARKS

Back to Contents page 

269

About the Editors

Steven J. Dick is the chief historian for NASA. He has a B.S. in astrophysics 

(1971), and an M.A. and Ph.D. (1977) in history and philosophy of science from Indiana 

University. Dick worked as an astronomer and historian of science at the U. S. Naval 

Observatory in Washington, D.C. for 24 years before coming to NASA Headquarters 

in 2003. Among his books are Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life 

Debate from Democritus to Kant (1982), The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century 

Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (1996), and Life on Other Worlds

(1998), the latter translated into Chinese, Italian, Czech, and Polish. His most recent 

books are The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (2004) and 

a comprehensive history of the U. S. Naval Observatory, Sky and Ocean Joined: The U. S.

Naval Observatory, 1830–2000 (2003). The latter received the Pendleton Prize of the 

Society for History in the Federal Government. He is also editor of Many Worlds: 

The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and the Theological Implications (2000). Dick is 

the recipient of the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal and the NASA Group 

Achievement Award for his role in NASA’s multidisciplinary program in astrobiology. 

He has served as chairman of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American 

Astronomical Society, as president of the History of Astronomy Commission of 

the International Astronomical Union, and is the immediate past president of the 

Philosophical Society of Washington. 

Keith L. Cowing is the editor of the online publications NASA Watch and 

SpaceRef.com. He received both a B.A. (1984) and M.A. (1987) in biology from Central 

Connecticut State University. Cowing is the coauthor (with Frank Sietzen, Jr.) of 

New Moon Rising (2004) which examines the events leading up to the formulation of 

the Vision for Space Exploration as put forth by President Bush. Cowing has served 

as guest editor of Ad Astra Magazine, written for United Press International, and 

Air&Space Magazine (among others), and appeared on all major U.S. television and 

radio networks as a commentator on space policy and technology. Prior to being 

an online journalist, Cowing was a NASA civil servant and served as manager of 

Pressurized Payload Accommodations at the NASA Space Station Freedom Program 

Offi ce. Prior to, and immediately after, working for NASA, Cowing was employed 

by the American Institute of Biological Sciences where he managed a series of large 

biomedical peer review activities for NASA and the U.S. Army. Cowing has been a 

participant in the NASA Haughton Mars Project located on Devon Island, Nunavut, 

Canada. Together with his business partner Marc Boucher, SpaceRef Interactive 

donated and constructed the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse, now in operating on 

Devon Island. Cowing was also part of the early organizational meetings that led 

to the establishment of NASA’s astrobiology program and the NASA Astrobiology 

Institute. Cowing helped to organize the symposium and donated his services in the 

preparation of these proceedings.

Back to Contents page 

271

Index

A

Accidents in North American Mountaineering, 211

Agena, 260

Advance Base, 31

Advanced Camera for Surveys, 215 

Albertson, Ray, 179

Allen, Paul, 38

Alvin (American submersible), 103

Ames Research Center, 24, 46, 65, 81, 229, 238, 242

Amundsen, Roald, 22–23, 28, 29–30, 37, 49

Annapurna, 49

Andersen, Dale, 43–48, 67, 86, 88, 236

Andrea Doria, 98

Andrews, David, 188, 193

Antarctica, 23, 25, 33, 43–47, 101, 170, 222, 258, 262; dry valleys, 44–46

Apollo program, 56, 93, 147, 153, 154, 155, 157, 167, 169, 189, 193, 199, 221, 226, 227, 

240, 253, 260, 261

Apollo 1 (Apollo 204), 39, 187, 188; fi re, 188–191, 260

Apollo 7, 13, 18

Apollo 8, 12–13, 17, 18, 36

Apollo 9, 18, 193

Apollo 10, 18, 19

Apollo 11, 14, 18, 260

Apollo 12, 14–15, 18

Apollo 13, 15–20, 36, 82, 99, 128, 151, 156, 194, 220, 252, 261; lessons learned, 19

Apollo 14, 36

Apollo 15, 193

Apollo 16, 262

Apollo 17, 154

Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), 156

Aquarius Laboratory, 221

Arctic, 47, 101, 210

Armstrong, Neil, 130, 195, 260

Asrar, Ghassem, 239

Assembly Test and Launch Operations (ATLO), 178

Asteroids, 200

Astrobiology, 46, 55, 61–64, 124, 247 

Atlas launch vehicle, 250, 260

Australasian-Antarctic Expedition, 29

Averner, Mel, 235, 248
272

B

Bachelard, Claude, 35

Balboa, Vasco Núñez de, 131

Barney, Mitch, 202

Barton, Otis, 102

Bathyscaphe, 102–103

Beagle, voyage of, 28

Beagle II (mission), 168

Beebe, William, 102

Belgian Antarctic Expedition, 28–29

Belgica, 28

Bergreen, Laurence, 129–138

Big Bang, 184

Bismarck (ship), 123

Bolden, Charles, 262

Borman, Frank, 12, 188–191, 198

Boston, Penny, 55–60, 67, 87–88, 94, 147, 173

Bowersox, Ken, 26

Boynton, Bill, 246

Breashears, David, 83

British trans-Antarctic Expedition, 30

Brown, Kurt, 265

Budden, Nancy Ann, 236

Bunger Hills, Antarctica, 46–47

Burns, Ed, 77

Burton, Kathleen, 248

Bush, President George W., 10, 236

Bush, President George H.W., 236

Byrd, Richard, 31

C

C-141 Starlifter, 46

Cabana, Robert, 210

Cabrol, Nathalie, 61–68, 88, 231, 232, 234, 246

Calypso (ship), 7 

Cameron, James, 119–128, 140, 143, 145, 148, 154; Ghosts of the Abyss, 121

Cantrell, Walter, 217

Cape of the Feast of the 11,000 Virgins, 133

Cape Canaveral, 160, 173, 175, 266

Cape Crozier, 79

Carlin, George, 192–193

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
273

Carter, Jimmy, 155, 156 

Cartography, 134

Cassini (mission), 151, 235

Cauffman, Sandra, 231

Caves, 55–60; organisms in, 58–59; underwater, 69–75

Cepollina, Frank, 214

Ceres, 200

Chafee, Roger, 189, 190, 260

Chaikin, Andrew, 187

Challenger (ship), 102

Challenger Space Shuttle, 39, 183, 204; accident, 182, 192, 193, 194, 198, 200, 224, 

261, 262; TV movie, 198

Chandra X-ray Observatory, 151

Chatterton, John, 97–100, 140, 146; Shadow Divers, 99

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, 23, 78–79

China: and exploration in 15th century, 7, 34, 232

China: space program, 145

Christensen, Rho, 248

Clancy, Bill, 238

Clarke, Arthur C., 34

Clementine (lunar mission), 154

Closed loop ecosystems, 146

COBE—Cosmic Background Explorer, 181–186, 204

Collins, Eileen, 217

Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), 2, 7, 198, 202, 212–213, 214, 230

Columbia Space Shuttle accident, ix, 7–8, 39, 191, 198, 200, 213, 214, 225, 262; 

compared to Titanic disaster, 122–123

Columbia Hills, 173, 210

Columbus, Christopher, 22, 24–25, 102, 131, 132, 133, 141, 258

Command Service Module (Apollo), 12, 13, 15, 17, 19

Communications, 36

Congress: United States, 86, 157, 209, 218, 230

Cook, Frederick, 28

Cook, Captain James, 136

Cook, Steve, 82

Corps of Discovery, 26–27

Cortez, Hernando, 37

Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, 216

Cousteau, Jacques, 7, 106, 108, 109, 210

Cousteau, Jean-Michel, 107–110, 139, 140, 210

Cowing, Keith, 3, 90, 91, 229, 236, 237, 238, 247

Cueva Cheve, 70–76

Cueva de Villa Luz, 59

INDEX
274

D

da Gama, Vasco, 3, 131

Darabont, Frank, 188

Darwin, Charles, 28

Dawn (mission), 200

Decompression illness/sickness (DCI/DCS), 92, 98, 111–114, 116–118, 139

Deep rover submersible, 124

Deepworker submersible, 105

Delta launch vehicle, 182, 183, 247

Denali (Mt. McKinley), 210, 212

Department of Defense, 231, 240, 253

Department of State, 240

Department of the Treasury, 240

Devil’s Tower, 226

Dick, Steven, 229, 232, 234

Ditertay, Michael, 248

Diving, caves, 69–76; commercial, 111–118; fi lming, 119–128; and spacefl ight, 116

Duke, Charles, 262

Dumont d’Urville, Jules-Sébastian-César, 25

Dumont d’Urville Station, Antarctica, 33

Dunne, Patrick, 247

E

Earle, Sylvia, 101–106, 124, 141, 142, 144, 146, 148, 200, 226

Earth Observing System, 166; EOS, 239

East Pacifi c Rise, 142

Elcano, Juan Sebastián, 138

Elephant Island, 30

Endeavour (shuttle), 205

Endurance (fi lm) 205

Endurance (book), 49

Endurance (ship), 35, 232

Europa, 199

European Space Agency, 185

Error, human, 17

Exobiology (see Astrobiology)

Expedition: 21–34; Beagle, 28; Australasian-Antarctic, 29; Belgian Antarctic, 

28–29; idea of, 27, 71, 85; Lewis and Clark, 26–28; Norwegian polar, 31–32; 

Shackleton, 31–32

Expedition 8 (ISS), 265

Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV), 156

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
275

Exploration: consequences of forsaking, 7, 104; disease, 135; education/

inspiration, 146; government vs. individual, 38, 88–89, 93, 94; nature of, 

83–84; reasons for, 5, 21–22, 130, 144–145, 147; robotic vs. human, 82–83, 

86–91, 94, 101, 121, 165–171, 194; staged approach, 84, 86, 117; urge to, 

232–233. See also caves, lakes, mountains, oceans, risk, space.

Extravehicular Activity (EVA), 72–75, 116, 163, 169, 217, 260

Extrasolar planets, 198–199

F

Failure, acceptance of, 126–128

Feinberg, Al, 248

Feynman, Richard, 194

FIDO (rover), 178

Fincke, Mike, 151 

Fisher, Scott, 51

Fitzroy, Robert, 28

Flatirons, 77

Foale, Michael, 26, 29, 151, 192, 216, 219, 220–222, 223, 227, 255–267

Fram, 32–33

From Earth to the Moon, 187–193, 198

Fuller, Joe, 201

G

Gaff, John, 240

Gagarin, Yuri, 259, 263

Gans, John, 210, 226

Garvin, Jim, 89, 145, 165–171, 197, 199, 203, 204, 233, 235, 236, 238, 241

Gast, David, 237

Gates, Donovan, 248

Gemini program, 86, 93, 189, 227, 260

Gemini 3, 12, 260

Gemini 4, 12

Gemini 5, 12

Gemini 7, 12, 86

Genesis spacecraft, 120

Gernhardt, Michael, 75, 92, 111–118, 139, 228, 230

Gilruth, Robert, 156

Glenn, John, 40, 132, 260

Glenn Research Center, 240

Goddard Space Flight Center, 86, 182, 202, 205, 212, 214, 216, 231

Gould, Stephen Jay, 239

INDEX
276

Greeley, Ron, 56

Great white shark, 110, 139–140

Grissom, Betty, 189

Grissom, Gus, 189–190, 260

Grumman Corporation, 12, 189, 195

Grunsfeld, John, 3, 151, 191, 197, 200, 201, 204, 209–218, 219, 222, 224, 226, 227, 

228, 229, 230, 231, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 248, 265

Gusev crater, 177

H

Hackett, Peter, 62

Hagglund track vehicles, 45

Hall, Rob, 52

Halpern, David, 143, 148, 200, 219, 238, 241, 248

Hanks, Tom, 187

Hazards: see Decompression illness; radiation

Helium-3, 143, 154

Heyerdahl, Thor, 102

Hillary, Edmund, 7, 104

Howard, Ron, 82

Hubbard, Scott, 1–2, 148, 198, 225, 233, 242, 245–248

Hubble Space Telescope, 87, 151, 184, 232, 265; servicing mission 37, 209, 212, 213, 

214, 215, 216; deep fi eld/ultra deep fi eld, 216–217

Hydrothermal vents, 123–124, 142

I

ILC-Dover spacesuit, 75

Intelligent Mechanisms Group, NASA, 46

International Space Station, 24, 29, 34, 36, 118, 123, 151, 215, 217, 263

Io, caves on, 57

Isolation, effects of, 23–24, 25–26, 28–29

ISAT satellite, 166

J

Jacobs, Robert, 229, 248

James Webb Space Telescope, 181–186, 198

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), 217

Jarvis, Greg, 193

Jefferson, President Thomas, 26

Johansen, Hjalmar, 32–33

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
277

Johnson Space Center, 24, 27, 142, 162

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 60, 87, 142, 175, 176, 178

K

K2, 51, 52, 70

Kaiko (robot), 103

Kangchenunga, 51

Kelly, Jim, 217

Kennedy, James, 6

Kennedy, President John F., 259, 260

Kennedy Space Center, 6, 17, 71

King Charles V of Spain, 130, 131

Knoll, Andrew, 179

Kranz, Gene, 19, 20, 156

Krause, Tom, 224, 228

L

Lagrange point L2, 185

Lakes: Antarctic, 43–47; highest, 61–67 

Laguna Blanca, 63–67

Laguna Verde, 63–67

Lake Hoare, 45

Lambertsen, C. J., 113

Langley Research Center, 60

Lapu-Lapu, 136–137

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 246

Lawrence, David, 140

Lawrence, Wendy, 217

Lechuguilla Cave, 55, 59

Leckrone, David, 232–233

Lee, Dave, 77

Lemke, Larry, 94

Leonov, Alexi, 13

Lessons learned: 21–34; from Apollo 13, 19; from Lewis and Clark expedition, 

26–28; from Mir, 24; from polar expeditions, 24; from Skylab, 24

Levine, Joel, 170

Lewis and Clark expedition, 26–28, 103

Lhotse, 52

Licancabur, 62–67

Lim, Darlene, 81

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 102, 104

INDEX
278

Linenger, Jerry, 192, 263

Liskowsky, David, 230

Lloyds of London, 263

Lockheed-Martin, 168, 195, 216

Long-duration missions, 24

Longnecker, David, 139

Lovell, James, 11–20, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 61, 81, 82, 93, 130

Low, George, 156

Lucid, Shannon, 159–164, 193, 200

Lunar and Planetary Institute, 236

Lunar Prospector, 1, 154

Lunar rover (Apollo), 156, 193

Lunar (Excursion) Module, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 189, 193, 260; Block II, 156

M

McAuliffe, Christa, 193

McCandless, Bruce, 94

McGuinness, Scott, 92, 229–230

McKay, Chris, 55, 81, 81–94, 104, 219, 222–223, 224, 225, 228, 236, 246, 248, 255

McMurdo Sound, 43, 46, 47

Mactan, 137

Magellan, Ferdinand, 3, 129–137, 139, 141, 144, 197, 229, 231

Magellan (Venus mission), 168

Magellanic Clouds, 135, 136

Mallory, George, 99

Malloy, Larry, 198

Makarov, Oleg , 13

Marianas Trench, 102

Mariner 3 and 4, 177

Mariner 8 and 9, 177

Mark, Hans, 156

Mars, 154, 166, 168, 200, 221: analogues, 47, 55, 62–67, 124; caves, 56–57, 173; 

fossil record, 142; geology, 170; human missions, 140, 144, 169, 195, 222, 

241, 254; meteorites, 258, 262; program, 1–2, 23, 24; robotic probes, 167. 

See also Pathfi nder. 

Mars Climate Orbiter, 174, 197, 198

Mars Exploration Rovers, 61, 62, 87, 90, 198, 203, 204, 215

Mars Global Surveyor, 168

Mars Observer, 168, 197

Mars Odyssey, 198

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
279

Mars Pathfi nder, 46, 131, 237

Mars Polar Lander, 131, 168, 173, 197, 198, 238

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, 168, 198

Mars sample return, 199

Mars Science Laboratory, 246 

Mars Scout, 170, 204

Marshall Spacefl ight Center, 82

Mary Rose, 262

Martin, James, 167

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 60, 87

Mattingly, T.K., 198, 249–254, 258

Mauna Kea, 166

Mawson, Douglas, 29

Melvill, Mike, 217, 219, 220

Mewhinney, Michael, 248

Mercury Program, 189, 259, 260

Meridiani, 177

Microbial communities: in Antarctica lakes, 46; in caves, 58–59

Microgravity, 11, 35, countermeasures, 40

Micrometeroid/Orbital Debris (MMOD), 139

Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 123, 125, 142

Mir (Russian submersible), 103, 124–126

Mir (Soviet/Russian space station), 24, 152, 160–164, 192, 194, 263; Progress 

collision, 263–265

Mir 23 mission, 264

Mission Control, 15, 19, 23–24, 35, 36, 156, 160, 221

Mission to Mars, 187

Mojave Desert, 178

Mondale, Walter, 188–191

Monterey, California, 3

Monterey Bay Aquarium, 255

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), 142

Moon, circumnavigation, 13; human missions, 140, 151, 154, 169, 195, 199–200, 

221, 222, 241, 254; lava tubes, 56; mining, 143; mission to, 116; robotic 

missions, 167

Mountaineering, 49–53, 72–79, 82–84

Mt. Baker, 262

Mt. Everest, 7, 50–53, 62, 70, 79, 82–84, 210

Mt. Huntington, 77

Mt. Ranier, 50

Mt. Washington, 77

Mueller, George, 260

INDEX
280

N

N-1 rocket, 13

Naderi, Firouz, 175

Nagle, Bill, 98

Nansen, Fridtjof, 22, 31–33

NASA, name recognition, 234–235; public affairs, 230, 231, 236, 237; website, 148, 

236, 238

NASA Engineering and Safety Center, 232

NASA Inspector General, 230–231

NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), 57

NASA Safety Offi ce, 62, 64

National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), 156

National Geographic Society, 74, 105, 161, 210

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 104, 116

National Outdoor Leadership School, 210, 220, 221, 222, 226

Natural resources conservation, 144

Nautile (French submersible), 103

Naval Postgraduate School, 209, 247

Navigation, 132

NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), 116

Newman, Jim, 216

Next Generation Space Telescope (see James Webb Space Telescope) 

Nixon, President Richard, 156

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), 116

Nobile, Umberto, 29

Noguchi, Soichi, 217

Norgay, Tenzing, 7

Northrop Grumman, 185

North American Aviation, 191, 195

North Pole, 31–33

Norwegian Polar Expedition, 32–33

O

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 102

Oceans: deep sea exploration, 101–106, 239, 241

Ocean Futures Society, 109

O’Brien, Miles, 35–40, 219, 220, 248

O’Keefe, Georgia, 171

O’Keefe, Sean, ix, 3–10, 148, 192, 212, 213, 214, 248

Olympus Mons, 56–57

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
281

Opportunity Mars Rover, 151, 173, 178, 179, 225

Orlan spacesuit, 75

Osinski, Gordon, 140

Oxygen toxicity, 98 P

Padalka, Gennady, 151

Parker, Bob, 212

Pathfi nder (mission), 2, 46

Pawelczyk, Jim, 146

Pellerin, Charles, 183

Pew Ocean Commission, 108

Pengra, Trish, 248

Phillips, Sam, 156

Phoenix (mission), 168

Pigafetta, Antonio, 136

Pinch, John and Susan, 57

Pinta (ship), 24

Pinzon, Martin Alonzo, 24–25

Pizzaro, Francisco, 37

Pope Leo X, 133

Port Hueneme, 23

Portable Life Support System (PLSS), 72–75, 92, 193

Powering Apollo, 181

Precourt, Charles, 263

Presby, Andy, 142, 145, 223

Primordial cosmic background radiation, 182, 184

Progress (spacecraft), 263, 264

Proton rocket, 13

Ptolemy, 134 R

Radiation, 92–93

Ramsey, Becky, 88, 234

Readdy, William, 6

Reagan, President Ronald, 153

Redstone rocket, 259, 260

Remotely operated vehicle (ROV), 46, 115, 121, 124

Resnik, Judy, 193

Rice, Jim, 46

Rio de la Plata, 135

INDEX
282

Risk: acceptance of, ix, 1, 9, 20, 101–102, 117–118, 194, 225; in Age of Discovery, 

129; as agent of change, 110; in Apollo program, 11–20; automotive, ix, 1, 

21; controlling, 84–85, 116–117; early human missions, 259–261; escape 

systems, 15; families and, 262, 266; government vs. individual, 38, 88–89, 93; 

and group thinking, 52; ignorance as, 108; individual responsibility for, 120; 

and luck, 18; and Lunar Prospector, 1; and Mars program, 1–2; mitigation, 

73; in mountaineering, 50–51; to oceans, 107–110; overestimating, 12, 14, 

21; perceptions of, 1, 45, 127; with polar explorers, 37; mission, 250–251, 

266; reasons for taking, 2, 4, 65–66, 78, 102, 109–110; and redundancy, 14, 

25, 36; and reliability, 36; and reward, 36, 39, 78; and simplifi cation, 14; in 

Soviet space program, 13; underestimating, 21. See also Apollo; exploration; 

failure, acceptance of; risk, types of; risk aversion

Risk, types of, 174–178, 182–183; assigned, 44–45; catastrophic, 67; cost, 174–176; 

daily life, 13, 21, 102; environmental, 176–177; personal (human), 1, 2, 43, 87, 

113–114, 119–120; mission, 43; monetary, 11; operational, 177; programmatic, 

1, 87, 112, 176; schedule, 177–178; technology, 176; transportation, 45. See 

also decompression illness; radiation; oxygen toxicity

Risk aversion, 20, 102, 114–115, 126–128

Risk-reward equation, 111–118

Roberts, David, 77–80, 199

Roberts, Donna, 91

Robinson, Steve, 217

Robotics: see exploration, robotic vs. human

Roddenberry, Eugene, 93, 139, 143

Rogers Commission (Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger

Accident), 194

Ross, Jerry, 4

Russian Space Agency, 263

Rutan, Burt, 38, 89, 93, 230, 234, 245

S

Sagan, Carl, 141

Santa Maria (ship), 25

Sanlucar de Barrameda, 130

Saturn, 151

Saturn V, 204

SALT II Treaty, 156

Schilling, Ed, 248

Schmitt, Harrison (Jack), 61, 153–157, 169, 174, 193

Schuman, David, 211

Scobee, Richard, 193

Scott, David, 188, 193, 194, 195, 260

Scott, Robert Falcon, 23, 39, 49, 78, 79

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
283

Scurvy, 135

Seamans, Robert (Bob), 156

Shackleton, Ernest, 30–31, 35, 37, 78, 79, 232, 233

Shackleton Crater, 81

Shaddock, Mark, 248

Shepard, Alan, 38, 259, 260

Shinkai (Japanese submersible), 103

Shipwrecks, diving, 97–100

Shuttle Laser Altimeter (SLA), 166

Shuttle-Mir program, 263

Silver Lake, 178

Simonson, Eric, 50

Skylab, 24, 162

Snow, C.P., 147

Soloviev, Anatoly, 264

Soviet space program, 13, 36

Soyuz, 163, 264, 265, 266

Soyuz TMA-3, 265

Space Exploration Vision: see Vision for Space Exploration

Space Shuttle, 73, 85, 117, 155, 182, 194, 204, 209, 215, 217, 224, 261, 262, 263, 265; 

see also Challenger, Columbia, Endeavour, STS missions

Space Station, 117–118

SpaceShipOne, 216, 219, 220, 224, 229, 260

Spelunking, 55–60

Spice trade, 130

Spice Islands, 131, 136

Spektr module, 264, 265

Spirit Mars Rover, 151, 173, 178, 179

Spitzer Telescope, 151

Spudis, Paul, 147

Squyres, Steve, 2, 87, 90, 93, 167, 173–179, 186, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 235

Star City, 161, 162, 263, 265

Star Trek, 93, 255

Steffanson, Vilhjalmar, 70

Stone, Bill, 69–76, 79, 81–85, 91, 262

Strait of Magellan, 130, 133, 136

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 153

Stromatolotes, 64

STS-1, 261, 262

STS-45, 262

STS-69 “Dog Crew II,” 115

STS-72, 205

STS-103, 265

STS-107, 217

INDEX
284

STS-114, 217, 218

Stuster, Jack, 21–40, 232

Sullivan, Kathy, 141

Surveyor Program, 167, 169

Surveyor 7, 167

Survival training, 222

T

2001: A Space Odyssey, 34

T-38, 262

Tahue, George, 239

Taylor, Jim, 248

Tenzing, Norgay, 104

Terra Australis, 134

Terray, Lionel, Conquistators of the Useless, 78

Thagard, Norman, 160

The Ladder to the Moon, 171

Theisinger, Peter, 175–176

Thomas, Andrew, 217

Thomas Jefferson High School, 171

Thompson, Danny, 248

Titan, 200

Titanic, 119–128; lessons learned, 122; see also Columbia Space Shuttle

TORU docking equipment, 264

Trieste, 102

Tsibliev, Vasili, 263, 264

Twain, Mark, 34

Twin Otter (airplane), 43, 47

Tycho (crater), 167

U

U-boat-869, 96–98

Ultraviolet radiation, 66

V

V-2 rocket, 11–12

Vandenberg Air Force Base, 205

Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), 6, 71

Venus, 200; caves on, 57; Soviet missions, 168–169

Verne, Jules, 130

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
285

Very First Light, The, 183

Vespucci, Amerigo, 3

Vesta, 200

Victoria (ship), 130

Viesturs, Ed, 49–54, 79, 82–84

Viesturs, Paula, 52

Viking (missions), 166, 167

Vinogradov, Pavel, 264

Vision for Space Exploration, 8, 9, 19, 20, 127, 230, 232, 241, 267

von Braun, Wernher, 11, 109

W

Wakulla Springs, 74

Walker, David, 115

Wallace, Matt, 178

Webb, James, 155, 181, 259

weightlessness (see microgravity)

Weiler, Edward, 212

White, Edward, 189, 190, 260

White House, 157

White Sands, 11

Wilson, Edward, 144

Wingo, Dennis, 84

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 103, 142

X

X-Prize, 230

Y

Yost, Graham, 187–195, 197, 198, 200

Young, John, 260, 261, 262

Z

Zero gravity (see microgravity)

Zheng He, Admiral, 34

Zond spacecraft, 13

INDEX

287

The NASA 

History Series

REFERENCE WORKS, NASA SP-4000:

Grimwood, James M. Project Mercury: A Chronology. NASA SP-4001, 1963.

Grimwood, James M., and C. Barton Hacker, with Peter J. Vorzimmer. Project 

Gemini Technology and Operations: A Chronology. NASA SP-4002, 1969.

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Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1963: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

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Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1964: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4005, 1965.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4006, 1966. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1966: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4007, 1967.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1967: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

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Ertel, Ivan D., and Mary Louise Morse. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, 

Volume I, Through November 7, 1962. NASA SP-4009, 1969.

Morse, Mary Louise, and Jean Kernahan Bays. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume II, November 8, 1962–September 30, 1964. NASA SP-4009, 1973.

Brooks, Courtney G., and Ivan D. Ertel. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, 

Volume III, October 1, 1964–January 20, 1966. NASA SP-4009, 1973.

Ertel, Ivan D., and Roland W. Newkirk, with Courtney G. Brooks. The Apollo 

Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume IV, January 21, 1966–July 13, 1974. NASA SP4009, 1978.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1968: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4010, 1969.

Newkirk, Roland W., and Ivan D. Ertel, with Courtney G. Brooks. Skylab: A Chronology. NASA SP-4011, 1977.

Van Nimmen, Jane, and Leonard C. Bruno, with Robert L. Rosholt. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume I: NASA Resources, 1958–1968. NASA SP-4012, 1976, rep. 

ed. 1988.

Ezell, Linda Neuman. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume II: Programs and Projects, 

1958–1968. NASA SP-4012, 1988.
288

Ezell, Linda Neuman. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume III: Programs and 

Projects, 1969–1978. NASA SP-4012, 1988.

Gawdiak, Ihor Y., with Helen Fedor, compilers. NASA Historical Data Book, 

Volume IV: NASA Resources, 1969–1978. NASA SP-4012, 1994.

Rumerman, Judy A., compiler. NASA Historical Data Book, 1979–1988: Volume V, NASA Launch Systems, Space Transportation, Human Spacefl ight, and Space

Science. NASA SP-4012, 1999.

Rumerman, Judy A., compiler. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume VI: NASA Space 

Applications, Aeronautics and Space Research and Technology, Tracking and Data Acquisition/Space Operations, Commercial Programs, and Resources, 1979–1988. NASA 

SP-2000-4012, 2000.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1969: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4014, 1970.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1970: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy. 

NASA SP-4015, 1972.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1971: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4016, 1972.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1972: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4017, 1974.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1973: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy. 

NASA SP-4018, 1975.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1974: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4019, 1977.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1975: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy. 

NASA SP-4020, 1979.

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NASA SP-4021, 1984.

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NASA SP-4022, 1986.

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NASA SP-4023, 1986.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1979–1984: Chronology of Science, Technology, and 

Policy. NASA SP-4024, 1988.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1985: Chronology of Science, Technology, and Policy.

NASA SP-4025, 1990.

Noordung, Hermann. The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor. Edited by Ernst 

Stuhlinger and J. D. Hunley, with Jennifer Garland. NASA SP-4026, 1995.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1986–1990: A Chronology. NASA SP-4027, 1997.

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1990–1995: A Chronology. NASA SP-2000-4028, 2000.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
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MANAGEMENT HISTORIES, 

NASA SP-4100:

Rosholt, Robert L. An Administrative History of NASA, 1958–1963. NASA SP-4101, 

1966.

Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. NASA SP-4102, 1982.

Roland, Alex. Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 

1915–1958. NASA SP-4103, 1985.

Fries, Sylvia D. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. NASA SP-4104, 1992.

Glennan, T. Keith. The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan. J. D. Hunley, 

editor. NASA SP-4105, 1993.

Seamans, Robert C., Jr. Aiming at Targets: The Autobiography of Robert C. Seamans, 

Jr. NASA SP-4106, 1996.

Garber, Stephen J., editor. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S. 

Human Spacefl ight Symposium. NASA SP-2002-4107, 2002. 

Chertok, Boris. Rockets and People, Volume I. NASA-SP-2005-4110, 2005.

Laufer, Dr. Alexander, Todd Post, and Dr. Edward J. Hoffman. Shared Voyage: Learning

and Unlearning from Remarkable Projects. NASA-SP-2005-4111, 2005.

PROJECT HISTORIES, NASA SP-4200:

Swenson, Loyd S., Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander. This New 

Ocean: A History of Project Mercury. NASA SP-4201, 1966; rep. ed. 1998.

Green, Constance McLaughlin, and Milton Lomask. Vanguard: A History. NASA SP4202, 1970; rep. ed. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.

Hacker, Barton C., and James M. Grimwood. On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of 

Project Gemini. NASA SP-4203, 1977.

Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. Moonport: A History of Apollo 

Launch Facilities and Operations. NASA SP-4204, 1978.

Brooks, Courtney G., James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr. Chariots for 

Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. NASA SP-4205, 1979. 

Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn 

Launch Vehicles. NASA SP-4206, 1980, rep. ed. 1997.

SP-4207 not published.

Compton, W. David, and Charles D. Benson. Living and Working in Space: A History 

of Skylab. NASA SP-4208, 1983.

THE NASA HISTORY SERIES
290

Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Linda Neuman Ezell. The Partnership: A History of the 

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. NASA SP-4209, 1978.

Hall, R. Cargill. Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger. NASA SP-4210, 1977.

Newell, Homer E. Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science. NASA SP4211, 1980.

Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Linda Neuman Ezell. On Mars: Exploration of the Red 

Planet, 1958–1978. NASA SP-4212, 1984.

Pitts, John A. The Human Factor: Biomedicine in the Manned Space Program to 1980. 

NASA SP-4213, 1985.

Compton, W. David. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar 

Exploration Missions. NASA SP-4214, 1989.

Naugle, John E. First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments. NASA SP-4215, 1991.

Wallace, Lane E. Airborne Trailblazer: Two Decades with NASA Langley’s Boeing 737 

Flying Laboratory. NASA SP-4216, 1994.

Butrica, Andrew J., editor. Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication. NASA SP-4217, 1997.

Butrica, Andrew J. To See the Unseen: A History of Planetary Radar Astronomy.

NASA SP-4218, 1996.

Mack, Pamela E., editor. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and 

NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners. NASA SP-4219, 1998.

Reed, R. Dale, with Darlene Lister. Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story. NASA 

SP-4220, 1997.

Heppenheimer, T. A. The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA’s Search for a Reusable 

Space Vehicle. NASA SP-4221, 1999.

Hunley, J. D., editor. Toward Mach 2: The Douglas D-558 Program. NASA SP4222, 1999.

Swanson, Glen E., editor. “Before this Decade Is Out . . .”: Personal Refl ections on the 

Apollo Program. NASA SP-4223, 1999.

Tomayko, James E. Computers Take Flight: A History of NASA’s Pioneering Digital 

Fly-by-Wire Project. NASA SP-2000-4224, 2000.

Morgan, Clay. Shuttle-Mir: The U.S. and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage. NASA 

SP-2001-4225, 2001.

Leary, William M. “We Freeze to Please”: A History of NASA’s Icing Research Tunnel 

and the Quest for Flight Safety. NASA SP-2002-4226, 2002.

Mudgway, Douglas J. Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network 1957–

1997. NASA SP-2001-4227, 2001.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
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CENTER HISTORIES, NASA SP-4300:

Rosenthal, Alfred. Venture into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA SP-4301, 1985.

Hartman, Edwin P. Adventures in Research: A History of Ames Research Center, 

1940–1965. NASA SP-4302, 1970.

Hallion, Richard P. On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 1946–1981. NASA 

SP-4303, 1984.

Muenger, Elizabeth A. Searching the Horizon: A History of Ames Research Center, 

1940–1976. NASA SP-4304, 1985.

Hansen, James R. Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917–1958. NASA SP-4305, 1987.

Dawson, Virginia P. Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American Propulsion Technology. NASA SP-4306, 1991.

Dethloff, Henry C. “Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .”: A History of the Johnson Space 

Center. NASA SP-4307, 1993.

Hansen, James R. Spacefl ight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo. NASA SP-4308, 1995.

Wallace, Lane E. Flights of Discovery: 50 Years at the NASA Dryden Flight Research 

Center. NASA SP-4309, 1996.

Herring, Mack R. Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space 

Center. NASA SP-4310, 1997.

Wallace, Harold D., Jr. Wallops Station and the Creation of the American Space 

Program. NASA SP-4311, 1997.

Wallace, Lane E. Dreams, Hopes, Realities: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, The 

First Forty Years. NASA SP-4312, 1999.

Dunar, Andrew J., and Stephen P. Waring. Power to Explore: A History of the Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA SP-4313, 1999.

Bugos, Glenn E. Atmosphere of Freedom: Sixty Years at the NASA Ames Research 

Center. NASA SP-2000-4314, 2000.

GENERAL HISTORIES, NASA SP-4400:

Corliss, William R. NASA Sounding Rockets, 1958–1968: A Historical Summary. 

NASA SP-4401, 1971.

Wells, Helen T., Susan H. Whiteley, and Carrie Karegeannes. Origins of NASA 

Names. NASA SP-4402, 1976.

THE NASA HISTORY SERIES 
292

Anderson, Frank W., Jr. Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and NASA, 1915–

1980. NASA SP-4403, 1981.

Sloop, John L. Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945–1959. NASA SP-4404, 

1978.

Roland, Alex. A Spacefaring People: Perspectives on Early Spacefl ight. NASA SP4405, 1985.

Bilstein, Roger E. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915–

1990. NASA SP-4406, 1989.

Logsdon, John M., editor, with Linda J. Lear, Jannelle Warren-Findley, Ray A. 

Williamson, and Dwayne A. Day. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in 

the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume I, Organizing for Exploration. 

NASA SP-4407, 1995.

Logsdon, John M., editor, with Dwayne A. Day and Roger D. Launius. Exploring 

the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, 

Volume II, Relations with Other Organizations. NASA SP-4407, 1996.

Logsdon, John M., editor, with Roger D. Launius, David H. Onkst, and Stephen J. 

Garber. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil 

Space Program, Volume III, Using Space. NASA SP-4407, 1998.

Logsdon, John M., general editor, with Ray A. Williamson, Roger D. Launius, 

Russell J. Acker, Stephen J. Garber, and Jonathan L. Friedman. Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume 

IV, Accessing Space. NASA SP-4407, 1999.

Logsdon, John M., general editor, with Amy Paige Snyder, Roger D. Launius, 

Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the Unknown: Selected 

Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the 

Cosmos. NASA SP-2001-4407, 2001.

Siddiqi, Asif A. Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–

1974. NASA SP-2000-4408, 2000.

MONOGRAPHS IN AEROSPACE HISTORY, 

NASA SP-4500:

Launius, Roger D. and Aaron K. Gillette, compilers, Toward a History of the Space 

Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 1, 1992.

Launius, Roger D., and J. D. Hunley, compilers, An Annotated Bibliography of the 

Apollo Program. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 2, 1994.

Launius, Roger D. Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 3, 1994.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 
293

Hansen, James R. Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the 

Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 4, 1995.

Gorn, Michael H. Hugh L. Dryden’s Career in Aviation and Space. Monograph in 

Aerospace History, No. 5, 1996.

Powers, Sheryll Goecke. Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight Research 

Center, from 1946 to 1995. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 6, 1997. 

Portree, David S. F. and Robert C. Trevino. Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 7, 1997.

Logsdon, John M., moderator. Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and 

Space Act of 1958: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 8, 1998.

Rumerman, Judy A., compiler, U.S. Human Spacefl ight, A Record of Achievement 

1961–1998. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 9, 1998.

Portree, David S. F. NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age. Monograph in 

Aerospace History, No. 10, 1998.

Logsdon, John M. Together in Orbit: The Origins of International Cooperation in the 

Space Station. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 11, 1998. 

Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey in Aeronautical Research: A Career at NASA Langley 

Research Center. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 12, 1998. 

Braslow, Albert L. A History of Suction-Type Laminar-Flow Control with Emphasis 

on Flight Research. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 13, 1999.

Logsdon, John M., moderator. Managing the Moon Program: Lessons Learned From 

Apollo. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 14, 1999. 

Perminov, V. G. The Diffi cult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in 

the Soviet Union. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 15, 1999. 

Tucker, Tom. Touchdown: The Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft at 

NASA Dryden. Monograph in Aerospace History, No. 16, 1999.

Maisel, Martin D., Demo J. Giulianetti, and Daniel C. Dugan. The History of the 

XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft: From Concept to Flight. NASA SP-2000-4517, 

2000.

Jenkins, Dennis R. Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 

Research Airplane. NASA SP-2000-4518, 2000. 

Chambers, Joseph R. Partners in Freedom: Contributions of the Langley Research 

Center to U.S. Military Aircraft in the 1990s. NASA SP-2000-4519, 2000.

Waltman, Gene L. Black Magic and Gremlins: Analog Flight Simulations at NASA’s 

Flight Research Center. NASA SP-2000-4520, 2000.

Portree, David S. F. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–2000. 

NASA SP-2001-4521, 2001.

THE NASA HISTORY SERIES
294

Thompson, Milton O., with J. D. Hunley. Flight Research: Problems Encountered 

and What They Should Teach Us. NASA SP-2000-4522, 2000.

Tucker, Tom. The Eclipse Project. NASA SP-2000-4523, 2000.

Siddiqi, Asif A. Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary 

Probes, 1958–2000. NASA SP-2002-4524, 2002. 

Merlin, Peter W. Mach 3+: NASA/USAF YF-12 Flight Research, 1969–1979. NASA 

SP-2001-4525, 2001. 

Anderson, Seth B. Memoirs of an Aeronautical Engineer—Flight Tests at Ames 

Research Center: 1940–1970. NASA SP-2002-4526, 2002.

Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Bibliography Commemorating

the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered Flight on December 17, 1903.

NASA SP-2002-4527, 2002.

No monograph 28.

Chambers, Joseph R. Concept to Reality: Contributions of the NASA Langley Research

Center to U.S. Civil Aircraft of the 1990s. SP-2003-4529, 2003. 

Peebles, Curtis, editor. The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History, The Early 

Years. SP-2003-4530, 2003.

Jenkins, Dennis R., Tony Landis, and Jay Miller. American X-Vehicles: An Inventory—X-1 to X-50. SP-2003-4531, 2003.

Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright Chronology. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 32, 2003. NASA SP-2003-4532.

Bowles, Mark D., and Robert S. Arrighi. NASA’s Nuclear Frontier: The Plum Brook 

Reactor Facility, 1941–2002. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 33, 2004. 

NASA SP-2004-4533.

McCurdy, Howard E. Low-Cost Innovation in Spacefl ight. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 36, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4536.

Seamans, Robert C. Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 37, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4537.

Lambright, Henry W. NASA and the Environment. The Case of Ozone Depletion.

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 38, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4538.

RISK AND EXPLORATION: EARTH, SEA AND THE STARS 

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