May 1973
From The Space Library
ERTS 1 Earth Resources Technology Satellite-launched by NASA July 23, 1972-had completed more than 4200 orbits, or 16 18-day whole-earth coverage cycles, and acquired 190 scenes per day for a 57 893 total. System performance had exceeded expectations; registration of multispectral scanner images in different spectral bands was within 55 m (180 ft), or one third, of prelaunch prediction. ERTS 1 had produced high-quality images of every major land mass; North America had been covered 10 times. Pictures had been made available to all citizens of the world. (NASA prog off; Goddard News, 6/73, 2)
M/G Vernon R. Turner, Director of Aircraft and Missiles in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Installations and Logistics), had been named Chief of Staff for the Air Force Systems Command, AFSC Newsreview reported. He would succeed M/G Lew Allen, Jr., who had been assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency. (AFSc Newsreview, 5/73, 2)
Soviet Academicians Valery L. Popkov and Valentin A. Shteinberg visited the U.S. as the first Soviet participants in an exchange agreement between the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and its Soviet counterpart, All Union Znaniye [Knowledge] Society. The first U.S. scientist had visited the U.S.S.R. under the agreement during April. (AAAS Bulletin, 6/73, 1)
Abandonment of technology, a "source of man's strength," would be a senseless alternative to its further development and use, Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President, warned in a Technology Review article. Man's exploitation of and dependency on the environment could not be changed through greater understanding of science and its application. Even a relevant technology alone would not suffice. Man needed "to develop the ability to estimate rationally and to choose among alternate courses of action, particularly when new technology is concerned. Above all, we need the humility to admit that we will not find any absolute answers or permanent solutions." But the fallacy of the approaching doomsday argument was "that it ignores the considerable evidence we already have that man can in fact modify his behavior fast enough to avoid the catastrophic disasters predicted by the doomsday-sayers." The evidence included the fact that scarcely a decade after Rachel Carson's warning against pesticides (in her book Silent Spring) "those chemicals are severely controlled-possibly too much so-and biodegradable equivalents are on the verge of being introduced." Lake Michigan's marine life was nearing extinction 10 yrs ago; "by vigorous ecological controls it has been restored."
Development and control of the rapidly changing synthetic environment had become as important as contending with nature. Those who saw only evil in technology "fail to recognize that our situation would be much worse if the search for new technological solutions was stopped." The challenge was "to move on from where we are to technologies and ways of employing them that will avoid uncontrollable effects in the future. Stopping science will shut off new knowledge and weaken our efforts to reverse the present situation. Technology alone is not the answer, but without technological developments few answers are likely to be found." More than 30 yrs ago Dr. Vannevar Bush had called science the endless frontier; "it remains that today. The range of exciting research now exceeds that which was imaginable when Dr. Bush coined the title." (Tech Rev, 5/73, 10-13)
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