Part 45 (1/2)
”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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.p.a.ce program is in bad trouble. This joint session may not help-it looks as if it would take a miracle to save the s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce, greatest era of our race-the greatest!-despite gasoline shortages, pollution, overpopulation, inflation, wars and threats of war. 'These too shall pa.s.s'-but the stars abide.
”Our race will spread out through s.p.a.ce-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 'spinoffs' from our s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce spinoffs-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-spinoffs have spinoffs, 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 s.p.a.ce-research spinoffs: If it involves microminiaturization of any sort, minicomputers, miniaturized long-life power sources, highly reliable microswitches, 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 s.p.a.ce 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-rayopaque 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 s.p.a.ce program. Possibly the doctor did not know. M.D.'s can use instruments with no notion that they derive from s.p.a.ce research and a patient usually knows as little about it as did that dog.
”The most ironical thing about our s.p.a.ce program is that there are thousands of people alive today who would be dead were it not for some item derived from s.p.a.ce research-but are blissfully unaware of the fact-and complain about 'wasting all that money on stupid, useless s.p.a.ce 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.
”A similar storm hit Bangladesh a while back; it too was tracked by satellite. But Bangladesh lacks means to warn its people; many thousands were killed. Here in the United States it would take real effort to miss a hurricane warning; even houses with no plumbing have television.
”Weather satellites are not spinoff; they are s.p.a.ce program. But they must be listed because bad weather of any sort is much rougher on the aged and the handicapped than it is on the young and able-bodied.
”Portable kidney machine: If a person's kidneys fail, he must 'go on the machine' or die. 'The machine'
is a fate so grim that the suicide rate is high. Miniaturization has made it possible to build portable kidney machines. This not only lets the patient lead a fairly normal life, travel and so forth, but also his blood is cleaned steadily as with a normal kidney; he is no longer c.u.mulatively poisoned by his own toxins between his a.s.signed days or nights 'on the machine.'
”This is new. A few have already made the switch but all kidney victims can expect it soon. The suicide rate has dropped markedly-life is again worth living; hope has been restored.
”Computerized-A,cial Tomography, or CAT, or 'brain scan': They strap you to a table, fasten your skull firmly, duck behind a barrier, and punch a b.u.t.ton- then an automatic x-ray machine takes endless pictures, a tiny slice at a time. A special computer synthesizes each series of slices into a picture; a couple of dozen such pictures show the brain in three-dimensional, fine detail, a layer at a time.
”Doppler Ultrasound Stethoscope: another microminiaturization spinoff. This instrument is to an ordinary stethoscope as a Rolls Royce is to a Model-T Ford.”
Witness stands up, turns from side to side. ”Look at me, please! I'll never be Mr. America; I'll never take part in the Olympics. I've climbed my last mountain.
”But I'm here, I'm alive, I'm functioning.
”Fourteen months ago my brain was dull-normal and getting worse, slipping toward 'human vegetable.' I slept 16 hours a day and wasn't worth a hoot the other 8 hours.
”Were it not for the skill of Dr. Norman Chater, plus certain spinoffs from the s.p.a.ce program, today I would either be a human vegetable or, if lucky, dead of cerebral stroke.
”My father was not lucky; from a similar disorder it took him years to die-miserable years. He died before the operation that saved me had been invented, long before there was medical spinoff from s.p.a.ce technology.
”Am I elderly? I'm 72.1 suffered from a disorder typical of old age, almost never found in the young.
”Am I handicapped? Yes, but my handicaps do not interfere with my work-or my joy in life. Over forty years ago the Navy handed me a piece of paper that p.r.o.nounced me totally and permanently disabled. I never believed it. That piece of paper wore out; I did not.
”Mrs. Heinlein and I spent 1976 and -77 on blood drives all over this nation. We crisscrossed the country so many times we lost track. It was worthwhile; we recruited several thousand new blood donors-but it was very strenuous. By the end of '77 we badly needed a rest, so we took a sea voyage.
She and I were walking the beach on Moorea, Tahiti, when I turned my head to look at a mountain peak-and something happened.
”I balanced on my left leg and said, 'Darling, I'm terribly sorry but I think I've had a stroke.
Something happened inside my head and now I'm seeing double and my right side feels paralyzed.'