To Moon or Not to Moon

In its excited reaction to Major Gordon Cooper's orbital achievement, the U S public left little doubt that it is completely sold on NASA's race to get a U.S citizen onto the moon. But in political and scientific circles, an acrid debate about the value of the man-in-space program continues. The men who make up NASA's budget fear that many a Congressman agrees with the dictum of ex-President Eisenhower: "I have never believed that a spectacular dash to the moon is worth the added tax burden that it will eventually impose on our citizens."

America's Money. When scientists discuss NASA's requested $5.7 billion budget, they show themselves deeply divided. A large and influential faction believes that the cost of man-on-the-moon could be better spent in other ways. In the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mathematician Warren Weaver, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, estimates that the $30 billion to be spent before 1970 would do all of the following:

>Give every teacher in the U.S. a 10% raise each year for ten years.

>Endow 200 small colleges with $10 million each.

> Finance the education through college and graduate school of 50,000 scientists at $4,000 per year.

> Build ten new medical schools at $200 million each.

> Build and endow complete universities for 53 countries added to the United Nations since its foundation.

> Create three new Rockefeller Foundations worth $500 million each.

But the money price, Weaver thinks, is secondary. Much more costly for the U.S., he says, will be the diversion into moon technology of a whole generation of young scientists and engineers who could be better employed in more practical fields.

A few scientists are frankly skeptical of the moon project on technical grounds. Says famed British Astronomer Fred Hoyle: "It's America's money. If it were mine, I wouldn't spend it on anything as stupid as trying to get to the moon. Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. will get there. Neither side has thought it out. If you are talking of 50 years' time, there may be a possibility, but at the moment it is just too hard. It will be anti-prestige; so many disasters will ensue if they go" on with this project."

Ballet in Orbit. Another scientific faction, typified by Lloyd Berkner, former chairman of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences, deplores the race-with-Russia aspect of the space program but yearns for the moon just the same. "Human society," says Berkner, "rises out of its lethargy to new levels of productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly appreciated goals. In the conquest of space, men, ideas and materials are pushed beyond previous limits and capabilities. The seemingly impossible is brought within the range of daily employment."

President Lee A. DuBridge of Caltech is a qualified enthusiast. He believes that merely "getting a couple of guys to the moon and bringing them back" is hardly worth doing. But space exploration to gain more knowledge of the universe can be "one of the great scientific achievements or enterprises of all time. Its impact on the world and mankind is simply beyond calculation."

Other spacemen look beyond the purely scientific aspects of their effort. The U.S., they say, is in urgent competition with the U.S.S.R., but not in thermonuclear war. Such a war may be easier to avoid if the rivals compete in space feats rather than an all-out armaments race. And as long as the competition stays on a peaceful level, NASA will continue to get the money it needs. "The secret hope of the space agency," says Daniel S. Greenberg in Science, "is that the U.S. Congress will awaken one day to find the Soviets have placed the Bolshoi Ballet in orbit."

Even without the element of international competition, the man-in-space program would win the ardent support of many high-ranking scientists. This week eight headliners-flew to its defense. "We believe." they said in a joint statement, "that the support given to the enlarged space program by the people and the Congress was based on a conviction that this program will, for many reasons, make an important contribution to the future welfare and security of the U.S. The momentum and significance of the lunar program are derived from its place in long-range U.S. plans for exploration of the solar system. The heart of those plans is man-in-space."

*Maurice Ewing, director of Columbia's Lamont Geological Observatory; Robert Jastrow, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Joshua Lederberg, Nobel prizewinning geneticist, Stanford; Willard F. Libby, Nobel prizewinning director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, U.C.L.A.; Gordon J. F. MacDonald, associate director of the same institute; Lyman Spitzer, director of Princeton University Observatory; Harold Urey, Nobel prizewinning professor of chemistry. University of California; James Van Allen, discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belt, State University of Iowa.

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