Dec 8 1973

From The Space Library

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Current revision

The risk to future development of man's life outside the earth was "that the public will come to denigrate what Skylab has done and rate it below the achievements" of Pioneer 10, an Economist article said. Pioneer 10's pictures, "passable photographs" of Jupiter, were "better than no pictures at all, but if the evidence of the first space shots past Mars are anything to go by, useful results require the cameras to go in much closer than Pioneer was able to do, and to stay in orbit round the planet for long enough to take . . . a set of controlled mapping pictures. Pioneer 10 has shown that it is going to be technically possible to do this; the next stage is to build the space probe that will do it. When it comes to this sort of detailed work, the instruments on board tend to need the fine adjustments that only men can give them." The U.S. should be planning "another Skylab with instruments calibrated to look further into space than the present ones. The results could be even better than Pioneer 10's." (Economist, 12/8/73, 20)

A Detroit News editorial commented on Pioneer 10's Dec. 3 rendezvous with Jupiter: "Jupiter is lucky. It appears to radiate three times as much energy as it receives from the sun. When all the knowledge Pioneer has transmitted has been absorbed and categorized by NASA scientists, it should provide clues to new energy sources for earth, particularly solar energy and the sun's rays. All these possibilities are beyond the comprehension of an energy-conscious nation that in four years has grown blase about man walking on the moon. But they open the door for the scientists to apply on earth the potential resources of the solar system." (D News, 12/5/73)

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