Chariots of the Gods (16 page)

Revelations take place hourly and daily all over the world. Our modern means of communication and transport spread discoveries all round the globe. Scholars of all disciplines should inquire into the reports from the past with the same creative enthusiasm that they bring to contemporary research. The adventure of the discovery of our past has finished its first phase. Now the second fascinating adventure in human history begins with man's moving into the cosmos.

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The question whether space travel has any point has not yet been silenced in discussion. The partial or total meaninglessness of space research is supposed to be proved by the banal assertion that people should not poke around in the universe so long as there arc still so many unsolved problems on earth.

As I am anxious not to enter into the realm of scientific argument unintelligible to the laymen, I shall only give a few obvious and valid reasons for the absolute necessity of space research.

From time immemorial curiosity and the thirst for knowledge have always been the driving force for continuing research on the part of man. The two questions, WHY did something happen and HOW did it happen, have always been the spur to development and progress. We owe our present-day standard of living to the permanent unrest that they created. Comfortable modern means of transport have removed the hardships of journeys which our grandfathers still had to suffer; many of the rigours of manual labour have been noticeably alleviated by machines; new sources of energy, chemical preparations, refrigerators, various household appliances, etc., have completely liberated us from many activities that formerly could only be done by human hands. The creations of science have become not the curse, but the blessing of mankind. Even its most terrifying offspring, the atom bomb, will turn out to be for the benefit of mankind.

Today science reaches many of its goals with seven- leagued boots. It took 112 years for photography to develop to the stage of a clear picture. The telephone was ready for use in 56 years and only 35 years of scientific research were needed to develop radio to the point of perfect reception. But the perfecting of radar took only 15 years. The stages of epoch-making discoveries and developments are getting shorter and shorter; black and white television was on view after 12 years' research and the construction of the first atom bomb took a mere 6 years. These are a few examples from 50 years of technical progress—magnificent and even a little frightening. Development will continue to reach its targets faster and faster. The next hundred years will realise the majority of mankind's eternal dreams.

The human spirit has made its way in the face of opposition and warnings. In the face of the archaic writing on the wall saying that water was the fishes' element and air the birds' element, man has conquered the regions which were not apparently intended for him. Man flies, against all the so-called laws of nature, and he lives under water for months in nuclear-powered submarines. Using his intelligence he has made himself wings and gills which his creator had not intended for him.

When Charles Lindbergh began his legendary flight, his goal was Paris; obviously he was not really concerned with getting to Paris; he wanted to demonstrate that man could fly the Atlantic alone and unharmed. The first goal of space travel is the moon. But what this new scientific-cum-technical project really wants to prove is that man can also master space.

So why space travel?

In only a few centuries our globe will be hopelessly and irremediably overpopulated. Statistics already calculate a world population of 8.7 milliards for the year 2050 Barely 200 years later it will be 50 milliards and then 335 men will have to live on one square kilometre. It doesn't bear thinking about! The tranquilliser-like theories of food from the sea or even cities on the floor of the sea will prove inefficient remedies against the population explosion sooner than their optimistic supporters would like to think. In the first six months of 1966 more than 10,000 people, who had tried in desperation to keep themselves alive by eating snails and plants, starved to death on the Indonesian island of Lombok. U Thant, Secretary-General of the UN, estimates the number of children in danger of dying of hunger in India at 20 millions, a figure which backs up Professor Mohler of Zurich's claim that hunger is reaching for world domination.

It has been proved that world food production does not keep pace with the growth of the population, in spite of the most modern technical aids and the large-scale use of chemical fertilisers. Thanks to chemistry, the present age also has birth control products at its disposal. But what use are they if the women in underdeveloped countries do not use them? For food production could only draw level with the population increase if it were possible to halve the birth rate in ten years, i.e. by 1980. Unfortunately I cannot believe in this rational solution, because the 'sound barrier' of prejudice, ostensibly due to ethical motives and religious laws, cannot be broken through as quickly as the calamity of overpopulation grows Is it more human or even divine to let millions of people die of hunger year after year than to save the poor creatures from being born?

Yet even if birth control were to win through one fine day, even if cultivable areas were enlarged and harvests multiplied by aids as yet unknown, even if fishing supplied much more food and fields of algae on the ocean bed provided nourishment, if all this and a lot more were to happen, it would all be only a postponement, a putting off of the evil day for about 100 years.

I am convinced that one day men will settle on Mars and cope with the climatic conditions just as the Eskimos would do if they were transplanted to Egypt. Planets, reached by gigantic spaceships, will be populated by our children's children; they will colonise new worlds, just as America and Australia were colonised in the comparative recent past That is why we must press on with space research.

We must bequeath our grandchildren a chance to survive. Every generation which neglects this duty is condemning the whole of mankind to death by starvation some time in the future.

It is no longer a question of abstract research which is only of interest to the scientist. And let me impress on anyone who does not feel that he is responsible for the future that the results of space research have already protected us from a third world war. Has not the threat of total annihilation prevented the great powers from settling opinions, challenges and conflicts with a major war? It is not necessary now for a Russian soldier to set foot on American soil in order to transform the USA into a desert, and no American soldier need ever die in Russia, because an atom bomb attack makes a country uninhabitable and barren owing to radioactivity. It may sound absurd, but the first intercontinental missiles guaranteed us comparative peace.

The view is occasionally put forward that the billions invested in space research would be better spent on assisting development. This view is wrong; the industrial nations do not give aid to underdeveloped countries purely on charitable or political grounds; they also give it, understandably enough, to open up new markets for their own industries. The aid that the underdeveloped countries require is irrelevant from a long-term point of view.

Approximately 1-6 milliard rats, each of which destroyed about 10 lb of food a year, were living in India in 1966. Yet the state dare not exterminate this plague, because the devout Indian protects rats. India also has a population of 80 million cows, which give no milk, cannot be harnessed as draught animals, or even be slaughtered. In a backward country whose development is hindered by so many religious taboos and laws, it will take many generations to sweep away all the life-endangering rites, customs and superstitions.

Here, too, the means of communication of the age of space travel—newspapers, radio, television—serve progress and enlightenment. The world has become smaller. We know and learn more about each other. But to arrive at the ultimate insight that national frontiers are a thing of the past, space travel was needed. The resulting increase in technology will spread the realisation that the insignificance of peoples and continents in the dimensions of the universe can only be a stimulus and incentive to co-operative work on space research. In every epoch mankind has needed an inspiriting watchword that enabled it to rise beyond the obvious problems to the apparently unattainable reality.

A quite considerable factor which provides an important argument for space research in the industrial age is the appearance of new branches of industry, in which hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs through rationalisation now earn their living. The 'space industry' has already outstripped the automobile and steel industries as a pace-setter in the market More than 4,000 new articles owe their existence to space research; they are virtually byproducts of research for a higher goal. These by-products have become an accepted part of everyday life without anyone giving a thought about their origin. Electronic calculating machines, mini-transmitters and mini receivers, transistors in radio and television sets, were discovered on the periphery of research, and so were the frying pans in which food does not stick, even without fat. Precision instruments in all aircraft, fully automatic ground control systems and automatic pilots, and last but not least the rapidly developed computer are parts of the space research that has so many persecutors, parts of a development programme, that also have an effect on the private lives of individuals. The things of which the layman has no idea are legion: new welding and lubricating processes in an absolute vacuum, photo-electric cells and new tiny sources of energy conquering infinite distances.

Out of the flood of taxes which is poured into space research, the returns on the vast investment flow back to the tax-payer in a steady stream. Nations that do not participate in space research in any way will be overwhelmed by the virulent technical revolution. Names and concepts such as Telstar, Echo, Relay, Trios, Mariner, Ranger and Syncom are signposts on the road of irresistible research.

Since terrestrial supplies of energy are not inexhaustible, the space travel programme will also become vital one day, because we shall have to obtain fissionable matter from Mars or some other planet in order to be able to illuminate our cities and heat our houses. As atomic power-stations provide the cheapest form of energy already today, industrial mass production will only be fully dependent on these stations when the earth no longer yields fissionable matter. Fresh consequences of research overwhelm us daily. The leisurely transmission of acquired knowledge from father to son is over for ever. A technician who repairs a radio set that works by simply pressing a button must know all about the technology of transistors and complicated circuits that are often printed on sheets of plastic. It will not be long before he also has to deal with the tiny new components of micro-electronics. What the apprentice is taught today, the journeyman will have to fill out with new knowledge. And even if the man who was master of his craft in the days of our grandfathers had knowledge to last his whole life, the master of the present and future will constantly have to keep on adding new skills to old. What was valid yesterday is obsolete tomorrow.

Even though it will take millions of years, our sun will burn out and die one day. It does not even need that terrible moment when a statesman loses his nerve and sets the atomic annihilation apparatus in motion to cause a catastrophe. An unascertainable and unpredictable cosmic event could bring about the earth's downfall. Man has never yet accepted the idea of such a possibility, and it may be for that reason that he devoutly sought the hope of an after-life of the spirit and soul in one of the many thousand religions.

So I suggest that space research is not the product of his free choice, but that he is following a strong inner compulsion when he examines the prospects of his future in the universe. Just as I proclaim the hypothesis that we received visits from space in the dim and distant past, I also assume that we are not the only intelligence in the cosmos—indeed I suspect that there are older, more advanced intelligences in the universe. If I now also assert that all the intelligences are carrying on space research on their own initiative, I am really moving into the world of science-fiction for a moment, knowing full well that I am putting my head into a hornets' nest!

'Flying saucers' have been cropping up on and off for at least twenty years; in the literature on the subject they are known as UFO's, the abbreviation of their American name—Unidentified Flying Objects. But before I deal with the exciting subject of the mysterious UFO's, I should just like to mention an important argument used when the justification for space travel is under discussion.

It is said that research into space travel is unprofitable; no country, however rich, can raise the enormous amounts of money needed without risking national bankruptcy. True, research per se has never been profitable; it is the products of research that make the investment profitable. It is unreasonable to expect profitableness and the amortisation of research into space travel at its present stage. No balance has been struck to show the return from the 4,000 'by-products' of space research. To me there is absolutely no doubt that it will give a return such as has seldom been given by any other kind of research. When it reaches its goal, not only will it be profitable, it will also bring the salvation of mankind from downfall in the literal sense of the word. Incidentally I may mention that a whole series of COS-MAT satellites are already sound commercial propositions. In November 1967 Der Stern said:

'The majority of medical life-saving machines come from America. They are the product of the systematic evaluation of the results of atomic research, space travel and military technology. And they are the product of a novel collaboration between industrial giants and hospitals in America which is leading medicine to new triumphs almost daily.