So work it out for yourself. The original Gray Lensman left us quite suddenly - urgent business a long way off, no time to spare to tell us more stories.
SPINOFF
On 2 July 1979 I received a letter calling me to testify July 19th before a joint session of the House Select Committee on Aging (Honorable Claude Pepper, M.C., Chairman) and the House Committee on Science and Technology (Honorable Don Fuqua, M.C., Chairman) - subject: Applications of Space Technology for the Elderly and the Handicapped.
I stared at that letter with all the enthusiasm of a bridegroom handed a summons for jury duty. Space technology? Yeah, sure, I was gung - ho for space technology, space travel, spaceships, space exploration, space colonies - anything about space, always have been.
But "applications of space technology for the elderly and the handicapped"? Why not bee culture? Or Estonian folk dancing? Or the three - toed salamander? Tantric Yoga?
I faced up to the problem the way any married man does: "Honey? How do I get out of this?"
"Come clean," she advised me. "Tell them bluntly that you know nothing about the subject. Shall I write a letter for you to sign?"
"It's not that simple."
"Certainly it is. We don't want to go to Washington. In July? Let's not be silly."
"You don't have to go."
"You don't think I'd let you go alone, do you? After the time and trouble I've spent keeping you alive? Then let you drop dead on a Washington sidewalk? Hmmph! You go - I go."
Some hours later I said, "Let's sum it up. We both know that any Congressional committee hearing, no matter how the call reads, has as its real subject 'Money' - who gets it and how much. And we know that the space program is in bad trouble. This joint session may not help - it looks as if it would take a miracle to save the space program - but it might help. Some, maybe. The only trouble is that I don't know anything about the subject I'm supposed to discuss."
"So you've said, about twenty times."
"I don't know anything about it today. But on July 19th I'm going to be a fully - qualified Expert Witness."
"So I told you, two hours ago."
Ginny and I have our own Baker Street Irregulars. Whether the subject be Chaucer or chalk, pulsars or poisons, we either know the man who knows the most about it, or we know a man who knows the man who knows the most. Within twenty - four hours we had a couple of dozen 1f 1ft% f {$// public - spirited citizens helping us. Seventy - two hours, and information started to trickle in - within a week it was a flood and I was starting to draft my written testimony.
I completed my draft and immediately discarded it; galley proofs had arrived of TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE HANDICAPPED AND THE AGED by Trudy E. Bell, NASA July 1979. This brochure was to be submitted by Dr. Frosch, Administrator of NASA, as his testimony at the same hearing. Trudy Bell had done a beautiful job - one that made 95% of what I had written totally unnecessary.
So I started over.
What follows is condensed and abridged from both my written presentation and my oral testimony:
"Honorable Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen - "Happy New Year!
"Indeed a happy New Year beginning the 11th year in the Age of Space, greatest era of our race - the greatest! - despite gasoline shortages, pollution, overpopulation, inflation, wars and threats of war. 'These too shall pass' - but the stars abide.
"Our race will spread out through space - unlimited room, unlimited energy, unlimited wealth. This is certain.
"But I am not certain that the working language will be English. The people of the United States seem to have suffered a loss of nerve. However, I am limited by the call to a discussion of 'spin-offs' from our space program useful to the aged and the handicapped.
"In all scientific research, the researcher may or may not find what he is looking for - indeed, his hypothesis may be demolished - but he is certain to learn something new... which may be and often is more important than what he had hoped to learn.
"This is the Principle of Serendipity. It is so invariant that it can be considered an empirically established natural law.
"In space research we always try to do more with less, because today the pay load is tightly limited in size and in weight. This means endless research and development to make everything smaller, lighter, foolproof, and fail - proof. It works out that almost everything developed for space can be used in therapy
and thereby benefits both the elderly and the handicapped, the two groups requiring the most therapy of all sorts.
"When you reach old age - say 70 and up - it approaches certainty that you will be in some way handicapped. Not necessarily a wheelchair or crutches or a white cane - most handicaps do not show. So all of us are customers for space spin-offs - if not today, then soon.
Witness holds up NASA brochure. "There is no need for me to discuss applications that NASA has already described. But this I must say: NASA's presentation is extremely modest; it cites only 46 applications - whereas there are hundreds. Often one bit of research results in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generations; each generation usually has multiple applications - spin-offs have spin-offs, branching out like a tree. To get a feeling for this, think of the endless applications of Lee DeForest's vacuum tube, Dr. Shockley's transistor.
"Here is a way to spot space - research spin-offs: If it involves microminiaturization of any sort, minicomputers, miniaturized long - life power sources, highly reliable micro switches, remotely - controlled manipulators, image enhancers, small and sophisticated robotics or cybernetics, then, no matter where you find the item, at a critical point in its development it was part of our space program.
"Examples:
"Image enhancer: This magic gadget runs an x - ray or fluoroscope picture through a special computer, does things to it, then puts it back onto the screen. Or stores it for replay. Or both. It can sharpen the contrast, take out 'noise,' remove part of the picture that gets in the way of what you need to see, and do other Wizard - of - Oz stunts.
"This is the wonder toy that took extremely weak digital code signals and turned them into those beautiful, sharp, true - color photographs from the surface of Mars in the Viking program and also brought us the Voyager photographs of Jupiter and its moons.
"I first saw one in 1977 at the Medical School of the University of Arizona - saw them put a long catheter up through a dog's body in order to inject an x - ray opaque dye into its brain. This does not hurt the dog. More about this later - "I did not know what an image enhancer was until
I saw one demonstrated and did not learn until this year that it came from our space program. Possibly the doctor did not know. M.D.'s can use instruments with no notion that they derive from space research and a patient usually knows as little about it as did that dog.
"The most ironical thing about our space program is that there are thousands of people alive today who would be dead were it not for some item derived from space research - but are blissfully unaware of the fact - and complain about 'wasting all that money on stupid, useless space stunts when we have so many really important problems to solve right here on Earth.'
"' - all that money - '!
"That sort of thinking would have kept Columbus at home.
"NASA's annual budget wouldn't carry H.E.W. ten days. The entire 10 years of the Moon program works out to slightly less than five cents per citizen per day.
"Would you like to be a wheelchair case caught by a hurricane such as that one that failed to swing east and instead hit the Texas and Louisiana coast? That storm was tracked by weather satellite; there was ample warning for anyone who would heed it - plenty of time to evacuate not only wheelchair cases but bed patients.