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5/9/89
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The Gift of Apollo
by Carl Sagan

It's a sultry night in July. You've fallen asleep in the

armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The
television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to
understand what you are seeing. Two ghostly white figures in
coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch black
sky. They make strange little skipping motions, which propel
them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But
something is wrong. They take too long to come down.
Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying — a little.
You rub your eyes, but the strange tableau persists.
Of all the events surrounding Apollo 11's landing on the
Moon on July 20, 1969, my most vivid recollection is its
dreamlike quality. Yes, it was an astonishing technological
achievement and a triumph for the United States. Yes, the
astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins
(the 1stLILIJS —«Lii^ solitary vigil in lunar orbit) — displayed
death-defying courage. Yes, as Armstrong said as he first
alighted, this was an historic step for the human species.
But if you turned off the sound with itsA mundane and routine

Carl Sagan of Cornell University briefed the Apollo crews

before their missions to the Moon, and in 1969 received NASA's
Apollo Achievement Award. He is President of the Pasadena-
based Planetary Society, the largest space interest group in
the world.
chatter, and stared into that black-and-white television
monitor, you could glimpse that we humans had once again
entered the realm of myth and legend.
We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when
our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs,
when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone
tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture
SU lo& w. €_
and built cities and set out to dominate the Earth. The
Noon's waning and waxing symbolized death and rebirth. Its
phases correspond so closely to the reproductive cycling of
women that it is hard not to fehink there was once some causal
connection — as the word "menstruation" reminds us^ Folklore
4+ H »f
and popular songs still attest to a connection between the
Moon and love. The month and the second day of the week are
both named after the Moon. Especially when we lived out-of-
doors, it was a major — if oddly intangible — presence in
our lives.
The Moon was a metaphor for the unattainable: "You might as
well ask for the Moon," they used to say. For most of our
history we had no idea what it was. Was it a spirit? A god?
A thing? It didn't look like something big far away, but more
like something small nearby — something the size of a plate,
maybe, hanging in the sky a mile above our heads. Walking on
the Moon would then have seemed a screwball idea; it makes
much more sense to imagine somehow climbing up into the sky on
a ladder, or on the back of a giant bird, grabbing the Moon
and bringing it down to Earth. But nobody ever did.
It was not until three centuries ago that the idea of the
Moon as a place, a quarter of a million miles away, gained
wide currency. We're new at figuring out what worlds are or
how they work. In that brief flicker of time, we've gone from
the earliest steps in understanding the Moon's nature to
actually walking on its surface. We calculated how objects
move in space^diotilled and comproGsed. oxygen ¿rom the air;
-4-« ItHli ry
invented big rockets, -radio, reliable electronics, inertial
guidance, and much else. Then we sailed out into the sky.
The Moon is no longer unattainable. A dozen humans, all
Americans, made those skipping motions they called "moonwalks"
on the crunchy, cratered, ancient gray lava — beginning on
that July day in 1969. But since 197$ yiOUT*] no one from any
nation has ventured there. The Soviet manned lunar program
ended as soon as it became clear the Americans would get there
first. Indeed, none of us has gone anywhere since the glory
days of Apollo, except into low Earth orbit — like a toddler
who takes a few tentative steps outward and then, breathless,
retreats to the safety of his mother's skirts.
Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system. For a
few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What
was Apollo really about? *^* %»** *,. J. AS J i A* * ».,i
The scope and audacity of John Kennedy's .{dato and placa?]
1P61 cpooch announcing the Apollo program dazzled me. We
would use rockets that had not yet been designed and alloys
not yet conceived, navigation and docking schemes not yet
devised, in order to send a man to a world not yet explored —
even in a preliminary way, even with robots — and we would
bring him back, and we would do it before the decade was over.
a.i\y s4***+>'c art l\éj>
This confident pronouncement was made before feho United Ofcatas
had -eeiiL anyone oven Lliiiby miles up.
As a newly minted Ph.D., I actually thought all this had
something centrally to do with science. But President Kennedy
did not talk about discovering the origin of the Moon, for
example, or even about bringing samples of its surface back
for study. All he seemed interested in was sending someone
there and bringing him back safely. Kennedy's Science
Adviser, Jerome Wiesner, later told me he had a deal with the
President: If Konnody did not claim that Apollo was about
science, then he, Wiesner, su
ar, would support it. sSo if nnfr
science, ^fchen what? / M
-**-n • '- ■

A?here were arguments about "spinoff,"/which boiled down to

something like this: "Give us $25 billion to put people on
the Moon, and we'll throw in Tang, a free cardiac pacemaker,
and a stickless frying pan." But anybody could see that if we
were after orange juice substitutes, or pacemakers or frying
pans^ we could invent them directly; we didn't have to spend
$25 billion and send people to the Moon in the process. So it
wasn't spinoff either.
 / -^_ C."«<»», ^,^ .-^ ^.^ *4—^ *f*C* ** "k^/,^^/'

—Ï—kept asking. The Apollo program is really about politics,

I was told. This sounded more promising. Nonaligned nations
would be tempted to drift towards the Soviet Union, if it was
;■£ 4-W US. JsS *.+ sA.u, s-^Ç.-c;^ »n*1-.'.«+l w0«r."
ahead in space exploration, I didn't follow. Here was the
United States ahead of the Soviet Union in virtually every
area of technology, and Indonesia would go communist because
Yuri Gagarin beat John Glenn to Earth orbit? What's so
special about space technology? Suddenly I understood.
Sending people to orbit the Earth or robots to orbit the Sun
reguires rockets — big, reliable, powerful rockets. Those
same rockets can be used for nuclear war. The same technology
that transports a ocientifio payload to the Moon can transport
a nuclear warhead halfway around the Earth. WhaL Lut; Apul-lo
inn H<Jf>ml i:n»||ili'/ii«.i fff !" ■"m.r.t.Jn
1
m/i'.«.J "■ m ¿ m V I*JIVJ&< r* il ■!■..). ¡«ikc,»^
ff-rogram was mainly about wcto the nmleai- armo raoojj—q^he-
«rf. ( m—fguiL.rt.nP in am»7»<nii'j >nj & uic.k us
united Otateo and. tho Soviet Union weiu itcning toll f" "''J"
-demonstrate, to each uLhui and to the root of tho would, their- -*
3±. 9
A Heaving a ballistic missile
with a dummy warhead Ato a target zone in the middle of the
* i/) ,iPacifÍSí.0cean d0®?11^ buy,much^glory. -ButSending,people into
r V*-*
7^~-aQ ^ spacejcaptures the imagination of the worldV^ghe Soviet
leadership unrlprr.fnnd this,-and Lhe-American 1
understood it*—People all over the woria understoodit.
*h ^Pocpibly, I wao ono of the last ueuule un EalLU Lu lamluistand.
/it
"—Per the longest Lime,---I-kept thinking that somehow *fc-all
had—te-du With Science.

^ IF <-«¥Vi »«.t^, 4-W^4^ >4,,//, ^ r-t*\ (~~A-i«. \LA <ZI »xs"^-l ^«-tc^r
Vw* k,U ï4- U* 4.+» Í.H.CM- W /«U ,'+<. Wi'# rv* l/^y^ B / l ,'4- /<=.*.(
r ^T"%
X
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 There were six more miss
which successfully landed on
the first to carry a scient
^~" t C « «t CM (I tL-ei

they caneei^ed the program^J^ApoJrie/had already served its

purposez/jTrhe. first scientist and the last human to land on
the Moon were the same person 1*1 (* I IT ■> l|{.
ly -A .+■ "3U
VAt^fehe »•* l
LIIJM, LUu imuienhc and ¿elijbm h^f.um v b limu f.
Apor^os 18, 19 and 20 had come off the assembly line and^were
ready rtf
<r If we weren't headed to the Moon anymore, at
least the Saturn V•s could have carried giant^payloads into
space. All three together could have lotted [CHK] motrio tons
into low Earth orb^t. If we didn*>^have elaborate scientific
packages to put into^Sarth orb*€, the Saturn V's could at
least have lifted the partsr for future constructions —
girders, aluminum tubing^ habitation modules. If they had, we
would today be engaging in few debates about constructing a
space station.yMost of the building\blocks would be there
already, and/ear principal task would be\to bolt and weld them
together./ [They could have stayed there indefinitely, waiting
until wfe were ready.] But we chose to make the\remaining
CaUiiu V'b lntu-iuusetMn pieces*—And wo m~\ nr.nñ -dn^n f h? ^
assembly-! inr.
Apolipwas not mainly about science; it was not even mainly
oi-*3,c*' CtvCr ««(.¿■>t
about space^x^jollo^ was. about politics and nuclear war~a«d-
the Cueruion and -intíntri^íatioTr-t5f--^Ta*ixms-:—Therë~~wêre~~these
who-envi sinned—ether—goals for Apnll^-^=-^fy{^ñ7^g--5m^

"smJ fk JU a* " £ &+M.*-rs L

 exploration,ta£ example — and I was one
no^-wfcy $25 billign^fnpgrado te current^ <

dio o J r*>a e-e

Nevertheless, oftoelleik science was done. We now know much
more about the composition, age and history of the Moon, and
the origin of the lunar landforms. We have made progress in
understanding where the Moon came from. (The most
fashionable current idea is that it was produced in the /
collision of a giant asteroid or comet with the Earth around 4.5"
billion years ago [CHK daeej.) More important, Apollo
provided an aegis, an umbrella under which exguisitely
engineered robotic spacecraft were dispatched throughout the
solar system, making a preliminary reconnaissance of dozens of
worlds. The last of thono opaccoraft, Voyager 2, will
encounter the Neptune system this August. The offspring of
Apollo are now reaching the solar system frontiers. If not
for Apollo ~ and, therefore,if not for the political purpose
it served ~ I doubt whether the historic American efforts in
planetary exploration would have occurred. Something similar
is true for the pioneering Soviet efforts in solar system
»"Ç r«i»«~f" *>«c-*Cr»"pT"
exploration, including the first landingsAon another planet.
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Apollo engaged a confidence, energy and breadth of vision
V r\» f\ t~*_£
that.,capture* the imagination of the world. lt e^fw^yad *án
optimism about technology, an enthusiasm for the future. If
we could go to the Moon, what else was now possible? Even
those who were not admirers of the United States readily
 <$fáU^Z*¿^^

acknowledged that — whatever the underlying reason for the

program ~ the nation had^ with Apollo, achieved greatness. x
(~U 'ill 'I

Since the end of Apollo, the American space program„has been

in decline, it has been given no long-term coherent purpose.
Like all bureaucracies without real direction from above, NASA
has attempted to make do ~ to maintain existing programs and
field centers, to go by slow steps. Predictably, budgets were
cut. Morale deteriorated. Other claimants arose for the NASA
budget. Other government agencies attempted to expropriate
parts of NASA. Shuttle was developed, although exactly why we
needed humans in low Earth orbit — when robots are so
capable, so much cheaper, and do not risk human life ~ was
never made clear. People whose parents witnessed humans
walking on the Moon now thrilled that we were able to launch a
shuttle to 200 miles altitude without mishap. An American
space station was announced as "the next logical step" but
we heard nothing about where it was a logical step £fi. what
exactly was the space station for? Could we perform those
functions without a space station? No one was saying.
The United States, after launching dozens of trailblazing
interplanetary missions in the I960's and the 1970's, had not
launched a single spacecraft to the Moon or the planets in the
last 11 years. This drought has now ended with the successful
launch of Magellan, an orbiter for radar mapping the hidden
surface of Venus. There is another long-delayed mission just
coming out of the pipeline ~ Galileo to Jupiter — which (my
 finger, are croeeed) i. scheduled te be launched this'October!" D
congress has befor. it a critical proposal to reinvigorate the
plan<,t
...""fïKS <«y Progra,, CRAF/Cassini - two spacecraft,
.designed end paid for jointly with the European Space Agency,
to rendezvous with a coat, fly by asteroids, orbit Saturn,
and send a probe into Titan, a moon covered with the building
blocks of life. M1 thi, for y,. prle»jaf_MJ^^^* ^-■.rCcmV
1
-bombers, sounds like a bargain to me i" "*'* *•'[•**>'1,'lMy I,'*, -ÇuH&utyfiJ-*
Still, something ^seriously «W '¿£toZtt\ïï^£Z&
hard to see what it is: **$££&"£. way. /MASA lacks V''"'''"4*-
compelling political purpose of the sort that Apollo provided.
NASA needs a presidentially-mandated long-term goal.
I've learned my lesson. Governments do not spend these vast
sums just for science, or merely to explore. They need
another purpose, and it has to make real political sense. The
United states and the Soviet Onion have by now amply
demonstrated their ability to deliver nuclear weapons over
ion, distances with ballistic missiles. There is no longer
any politically coherent purpose for competition in space.
What's left? I think the answer is clear: Cooperation.
I proposed in these pages lSsIssás, date,, a long.te„

program for the exploration of Mars, a program that would

culminate in a manned and womanned mission to that planet
spearheaded by the United States and the Soviet Union - but
including participation by Europe, Jepan and other nations. I
believe it would consolidate the disparate constituencies of
( ("nov^ rvwcV. ff.'wi'lft''* K-eJ- J )
10

NASA, be technologically a-aueh smaller step than Apollo was €#-*

in 1961, and represent aTrolatively smalífannual increment to

the NASA budgetA \t would provide the kind of aegis and
justification for a wide range of other NASA activities,
including robotic exploration of Mars and other worlds, long
duration human spaceflight, and construction in Earth orbit.
It would provide a reason for the space station. But most of
all, such an objective could serve an urgent political task:
binding up the united States and the Soviet Union in a shared
endeavor of historic proportions on behalf of the human
species. It can be done in slow steps with adeguate
protection by each side against political change of heart by
the other, and without dangerous technology transfer.
Since then, President Gorbachev has repeatedly invited the
united States to join the USSR in just such an endeavor. The
House of Representatives voted (in the 1989 NASA authorization
bill) ts initiate thio mioaiow.. „ NASA's new Office of
Exploration has called for human exploration of Mars as a
major NASA goal, as has the 1988 Republican Party Platform.
Democratic presidential aspirants, including Sen. Albert Gore
and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have endorsed joint U.S./U.S.S.R.
Mars exploration. And the Planetary Society's Mars
Declaration has been signed by a strikingly ecumenical group
of Americans, including leaders of peace groups and retired
Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine general and flag officers;
religious leaders and astronauts, including the full crew of
 11
Apollo 11; labor and industry executives; politicians and
poets; Nobel laureates, sports figures, ambassadors,
university presidents and Presidential advisers; former
cabinet members; and every former NASA administrator since the
agency's founding but one. All human exploration of Mars
needs — as did Apollo — is a Presidential commitment.
But why Mars? Why not return to the Moon? It's much closer
and we've proved we know how to send people there. Yes, but
I'm concerned that the Moon is a long detour, if not a dead
end. We've been there. We've even brought some of it back.
People have seen the Moon rocks, and for reasons that I
believe are fundamentally sound, they are bored by the Moon.
It is a static, airless, waterless, dead world. Mars by
contrast has weather, dust storms, seasonal changes\ moons,
immense volcanoes, seasonally varying polar ice caps,
enigmatic landforms, and ancient river valleys indicating that
massive climatic change has occurred on a once Earthlike
world. Mars also holds out some prospect of past or possibly
even present life. None of this is true for the Moon. Nor is
the Moon an especially desirable test bed or way station for
Mars. The Martian and lunar environments ar« very different,
and the Moon is as distant from Mars as the Earth is. The
machinery for Martian exploration can better be tested in
Earth orbit or on the Earth itself. A"t *,l,L ^J^ 4 ,,,L A
\ui •L .WA*1—»'< no a: tr
•>&.*<+.,*
^ "* ^ «--^
I believe that a healthy and successful NASA must broaden
its constituency. For one thing, it needs to make a major
 l ▼*•»■ r^y p l»r o* e .tf
d
^tFTft, ^py n«~ £^ej^

international effort to monitor the Earth fronTspace in order

to help preserve our small world. It needs to make a much
more serious effort at robotic exploration of other worlds.
This is not just a matter of catering to a well-demonstrated
and widespread passion for exploration and discovery; if we
didn't have an ounce of adventuresome spirit in us, it would
still be prudent and cost-effective to explore the planets
[see box]. But most of all, NASA needs to make the connection
of spaceflight with international understanding and world
-peace. Protecting the environment, forging common purpose
with other nations — especially former adversaries — and
<"€■ exciting the imaginations of people all over the world
constitutes a sufficient political payoff to justify a major,
consistently funded American space program. I do not see any
other activities, such as^appeals to national prestige or
promises of technological spinoff, that provide a political
justification suitable for the 1990's. And Star Wars, SDI —
in addition to its manifold technological and fiscal
problems — would lead us to a time in which the space around
the Earth is filled with thousands of "kill vehicles," space
mines, laser battle stations, and interceptors; it is easy bo
roo that such a future is inconsistent with free scientific
inquiry, with international cooperation, and with protecting
rather than attacking the Earth.
5f The Apollo astronauts on their way to and from the Moon
photographed their home planet. It was a natural thing to do,
 13
but it had consequences that few foresaw. For the first time,
the inhabitants of Earth could see our world from above, the
whole Earth, the Earth in color, the Earth as a lovol-y white
and blue world set against the vast darkness of space. Those
images have awakened our slumbering planetary consciousness;
they provide incontestable evidence that we all share the same
•fragile planet — our only home in all the solar system. They
remind us of what is important and what is not. The Saudi
Arabian astronaut, tt?i*ee Sultan ¿in Salman al-Saud, after his
observations of the Earth from the Discovery {^shuttle, m n*_£V»iO
J

recalled: "The first day or so, we all pointed to our

countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our
continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one
Earth."
We may have found that perspective just in time, just as our
technology threatens the habitability of our worldA Whatever
the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mi red
in *he Cold War it» was, the inescapable roaliaTttion of the
unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous
dividend, the unexpected gift of Apollo. /What began in deadly
competition hàsishewn us that global cooperation is^in-waye-
we had'not glimpsed> the essential prerequisite for our
Survival. T*** v^-e / ts BK'*/<AI'O, XV ls "/-iWr 4» Ki'4- ^k/* -Tp-t-^

Thuhe phuLuyi'dpha show a lush planet-Jarilliant in the

s-) sunlight-afloat in blacJt-và^uumTthe wopldon which we
learned We can look up tonight and see that silver
 14
world, the Moon, and know with a chill of recognition that we
walked there once. And in^a few months, when the Earth
catches up to it (it>s now on the far/Side of the Sup?
will be able to^recognize a steady^ beckoning, unflickering
point of repKlight in the night sky, the planet Mars — and
know that we can walk there one day. Our transition to
becoming a multiplanet
,j species could begin early in the new
y
cehtury.
// /
It Up, only a matter of deciding.
 BOX 1
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Voyager 2 will encounter Neptune on August 25, 1989. it

will obtain pictures and many other kinds ef scientific data
about this giant gas planet; its strange ring arcs; and its
two moons (there may be more), one of which has an atmosphere
(and perhaps an ocean of liquid nitrogen} This is the final
■4~ o^- c» II
r4-
v¿z£ep» on Voyager's grand tour of the solar system. There are
no more worlds on its itinerary. But before it passes the
planetary frontiers, it is scheduled [CHK] to take one last
picture — over its shoulder, of the inner solar system . The
et
planets will appear asAfew points of light. One of them, a
tiny blue dot set against the spangle of the Milky Way, will
be the Earth. From the distance of Neptune, it will seem no
more than a faint star. This picture could have an influence
on now we view ourselves ovon mora powerful than the Apollo
images of our planetary home.
 Box 2

Mars Declaration

[to come]

I-f A./.*"1*»* U T~U •"!*►, V*J-^i.tl .</-

C 1<»T- * Vi, X
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'00 "5 .'■/> *»/ ~.J? .7 ^ ^r^U C+Mcts/).^*1 fl

if <H* V-». -, - ¿W- ^t*,(.

Box 3

PHOBOS

Photograph of Phobos, the innermost moon of Mars, taken by

the Soviet spacecraft Phobos 2 shortly before the vehicle lost
lock on Earth and tumbled out of control. Much information
was obtained, but the mission terminated before two sub-
spacecraft wore to land on Phobos^ Thi™ Mwvfifto^«nrm-^5-?c
rich in organic matter and i» a likely base for the future
human exploration of Mars. The Soviets have recently
announced their continuing commitment to an ambitious program
of Martian exploration by robotic spacecraft — including a
1994 dual mission with landers, penetrators and exploratory
balloons, and a rover/return sample mission toward the end of
the decade.
 Box 4

WHY EXPLORE THE PLANETS?

THE EARTHBOUND, PRACTICAL REASON

"For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved

line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light —
our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the 'ocean' of air I
had been told it was so many times in my life. I was
terrified by its fragile appearance."

— Ulf Merbold, West German

astronaut aboard [name of
shuttle]

There are three unexpected, potentially disastrous threats

K
' jy to feho Earth's
EC atmosphere and therefore to the global
environment nt.
ciivj-iuiuuem.. A All navg
n±± Lamí widely Ai
have ueemnaeiy aiscussecK
ocuooed-:
Co,
f*1 iV-ï » 1

(1) The assault on the protective ozone layer by CFC's used

in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosol spray cans, and

insulating containers for fast foods; it threatens greatly

increased skin cancer and the destruction of microorganisms at

the base of the great food chain on which our lives depend
(Paradef date).

(2) The increasing greenhouse effect caused by CFC's and

the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and gasoline; it

threatens catastrophic global warming, destruction of

farmland, and coastal flooding all over the planet (Parade,

date).
 (3) Nuclear winter, through the explosion of even a small
fraction of the nearly 60,000 nuclear weapons in the world; it
threatens precipitous cold and dark, agricultural collapse and
• II ,^*v- lie E»»¿1
the possible death by starvation of billions of people
(Parade, date).
Studying the planets has played a major role in the
discovery and assessment of each of these doleful prospects.
Fundamental contributions were made by scientists who had cut
their teeth in investigating other worlds. Some of the
earliest calculations of ozone depletion relied on studies of
the upper atmosphere of Venus, afidThe antiseptic surface
layer of Mars is believed due to the near absence of ozone in
its atmosphere. The clearest demonstration that a greenhouse
effect can work a planetary catastrophe is Venus with its
900*F surface temperature. And the first step towards
discovery of nuclear winter came from the study of Martian
dust storms. What new insights about how to avoid these
catastrophes will come from planetary exploration? What new
catastrophes, brought about by our technological prowess, will
planetary exploration help uncover?
There is a case for sending spacecraft to other worlds for
reasons of the most practical and urgent utility here on
Earth. Even if we were focussed exclusively on our Earthbound
problems, planetary exploration would be a superb and
essential investment.