Free Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan Page B

counterpoint, the Apollo 8 astronauts read from lunar orbit the Babylonian cosmogony enshrined in Genesis, Chapter 1, as if to reassure their American audience that the exploration of the Moon was not really in contradiction to anyone’s religious beliefs. But it is striking how space exploration leads directly to religious and philosophical questions.
    I believe that military control of manned space flight–in practice in the Soviet Union and a subject of current debate in the United States–is a step that supporters of peace should back. The military establishments of the United States and the Soviet Union are, I am afraid, establishments with vested interests in war. They are meticulously trained for war; in time of war, there are rapid promotions, increases in pay, and opportunities for valor that are absent in peacetime. Where eager readiness for warfare exists, the likelihood of intentional or accidental warfare becomes much greater. By virtue of their training and temperament, military men are often not interested in other sorts of gainful employment. There are few other ways of life with the perquisites of power of the military officer. If peace broke out, the officer corps, their services no longer as necessary, would be profoundly discomfited. Premier Khrushchev once attempted to cashier a large number of senior officers in the Red Army, putting them in charge of hydroelectric power stations and the like. This was not to their liking, and in something like a year most of them were back in their old jobs. In fact, the military establishments in the United States and the Soviet Union owe their jobs to each other, and there is a very real sense in which they form a natural alliance against the rest of us.
    At the same time, there are enormous labor forces and huge electronics, missile, and chemical industries that have an equally strong vested interest in and maintain equally strong lobbies for the maintenance of the warfare state. Barring some awesomely atypical epidemic of reason, is there not some way that this powerful collection of vested interests could be moved toward more peaceful activities? Space exploration requires exactly this combination of talents and capabilities. It requires a large technical base in such areas as electronics, computer technology, precision machinery, and aerospace frames. It requires something very close to military organization to keep a large number of geographically dispersed enterprises moving in phase toward a common goal.
    The history of the exploration of the Earth’s surface has largely been a military history, in part because it is an appropriate application of military traditions of organization and personal valor. It is the other military traditions that pose a danger to us today. Perhaps the exploration of the Solar System is an alternative and honorable employment for the military and industrial vested interests. I can imagine a transition to an arrangement where a significant fraction of the career officer corps of both the United States and the U.S.S.R. is transferred to space exploration. At least in part because of their considerable abilities, a fair number of military officers are employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in activities with little or no military significance. And of course the vast majority of astronauts and cosmonauts have been military officers. This is surely all to the good: The more of them engaged up there, the less of them engaged down here.
    Despite many NASA press releases, much of the space program and almost all of its space science and applications program are in the long run not gimmicky or parochial in perspective. Indeed, they share a community of philosophical, exploratory, and human interest with many segments of American society–even segments that are in strong mutual disagreement on many issues. The cost of space exploration seems very modest compared with its potential returns.



9. Space Exploration as