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priate t hat we again call upon
_Divine Providence for guidance and
protecti on in our q uest of space and
those endless horizons in all the cen–
tu ries to come."
More than 10.000 people have
worked on the now successfu l Vi–
king project - a whole town's worth
of scientists, engineers. and tech–
nicians - many of them since long
befo re it even had a name. A bi ll ion
dollars. a hundred majo r tech–
nological advances - the numbers
are more like those of a moon land–
ing than an unmanned visit to a
distant speck in lh e sky.
On lhc eve before the historie Vi–
king landing,
r
was a gues t of the Jet
Propulsion Labo ratory in Pasadena,
where the mission 's four spacecraft
( lwo o rbiters. two la nde rs) are con–
trolled. The team in charge of day–
to-day scientific and eng ineering de–
cisions numbers 750 people, three
times the compleme nt for typica l
previous in terplanetary programs.
Like other visitors, 1 was highly im–
pressed by the intricale and sophis–
tica led ha rdwa re. the gia nt space
s imu la lion chamber in which the
Viking was tested. a nd the Space
Flighl Operations Facility. from
which the mission is conlro lled.
As usual. the q uestion of cost
arose. " I figure it cost me $4.63 to
find out what Mars is likc." said one
obse rver. "That's about the cosl of a
movie. and
1
think it's well worth
it. " (The $4.63 figure was derived by
dividing the cost of the Viking mis–
sion by the popu lation of the U.S.)
Others have discussed the Viking
8
miss io n in more phil os ophica l
terms. "The Viking mission to Mars
is not primarily a scientific evenl,"
says science fiction author Ray
Bradbury. "It's a spiritua l experi–
ence. lt's man reaching for the
unknown."
"By the exploration of the solar
system we find O]Jt ... who we are,"
says Bruce C. Murray, director .of
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"Viking costs about as much as a
fortnight of the Vietnam war.' ' con–
tinues Murray. "[ find these com–
parisons particularly poignant: life
verses d eath , hope versus fear.
Space explo ration and the highly
mechanized destruction of people
use similar technology ... and sim–
ilar huma n qua lities of orga niza tion
and da ring. Can we not make the
tra nsili on from automatic aerospace
killing lO a utomated aerospace ex–
ploration ofthe solar system?"
Murray's question i yel lobean–
swe red , bul a lready. the Viking
probes have provided scores of de–
tailed photos of lhe Martia n surface
a nd yielded ex tensive a nalyses of
the planet's atmosphere, soil, a nd
environment.
"This is tru ly a voyage of explora–
tion ,'' says Viki ng project manager
James S. Martin Jr.
The Big Question
But the big question slill remains:
Will any hard evidence of li fe ever
be f'ound on Mars? And if so, whal
would be the implica lions for man
and his perception of bis place in
the universe?
Even before Viking la nded on the
Red planet. scientists acknowledged
the vanishingly small odds of find–
ing any thing but microscopic traces
of life, if indeed, any life exists - or
ever existed - on Mars . The pre–
vious Mariner 9 space probe had
portrayed a bleak picture of an arid.
dust-deluged, cratered planet, with
a mere
111000
t he atmospheric
pressure of the earth.
Even before the Viking mission,
experts knew that Mars had no liq–
uid water. had wild variations in
temperature, and had no protective
ozone !ayer lo shield any organisms
rrom deadly ullravio let rad ia tion.
Uniqueness of the Earth
All of this. of course, is in sharp
contrast lo the earth, which seems
ta ilor-made for life. Th e Apollo astro–
nauts reporled that the earlh 's blue
skies a nd white clouds. as viewed
from space, made it by far lhe most
inviting object they cou ld see. And
th e growing info rmation about other
planetary bodies in th e solar system
tends to confirm that view.
Mercury a nd the moon are harsh.
airless. desola te places, and Mars is
scarcely less so. Venus, once consid–
ered the earth 's sister planel, is so
incredibly hot and inhospita ble,
with its massive atmosphere and
acid clouds, that it a pproximates de–
scriptions of hell. (If you 'd like to
know where hell really is, write for
our free booklet,
Is There a Real
He// Fire?)
The . huge outer p la nets, consti–
tuted large ly of fluids and having
The
PLAIN TRUTH October 1976