Sky and Telescope - August 2016 - 6

Letters

As a follow-up to Frank Ridolfo's reminder
that we've had a telescope on the Moon
since the early 1970s (S&T: Apr. 2016, p. 6),
let me extol its builder: George R. Carruthers, then at the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Carruthers dedicated himself not only
to such astronomical ventures but also to
stimulating interest in science and technology among young African Americans.
An early supporter of Project SMART
(Science, Mathematics, Aerospace,
Research, and Technology) in the District
of Columbia, he once told me during
an interview that the "overall objective
of SMART is to get African Americans
involved in science and technology
careers and also to become technologically literate, even if they don't choose
careers in science and technology."
Among his many mentoring ventures,
Carruthers brought local students to his
NRL laboratory. One of their projects
in the 1990s was to restore the backup
engineering model of Apollo 16's farultraviolet telescope/camera. We'd had it
in our collection for a decade and wanted
to bring it up to display-worthy condition.
Carruthers and his students obliged -
even adding one of the ﬁlm cassettes that
the Apollo 16 crew had brought back to
Earth. Their eﬀort has been on display
ever since at the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, D.C., where
visitors from all walks of life can view it
and appreciate its origins.
David DeVorkin
Division of Space History
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution

Funding Human Space Travel
Once again, David Grinspoon contrasts
hard science and shrinking government

U.S. NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

George Carruthers' Lunar Scope

George Carruthers (at right) stands
with the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/
spectrograph that he invented and which
Apollo 16 astronauts placed on the Moon
in April 1972. Project engineer William
Conway is at left.

support with our passion for space travel
(S&T: May 2016, p. 16). I too grumble about
the budget for the International Space Station compared with those for all our robot
probes, which send back so much data at
much less risk and lower cost.
But there's change in the air - more
private spacecraft are going up, and highrollers are even contemplating tiny probes
that could be sent all the way to the star
closest to ours [see page 11]. Somehow,
some way, we are going to link up with
possible life in our solar system and then
to the nearest stars.
I'm 76 now, and I hope to live long
enough to share in such news. Then all
I'll need will be my Chicago Cubs winning their ﬁrst World Series since 1908.
Earl Finkler
Medford, Wisconsin

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August 2016 sky & telescope

Contrary to Jim Bell's opinion (S&T:
June 2016, p. 84), I certainly hope it is
not "inevitable" that we send humans to
Mars. Perhaps such missions will become
technically feasible within the near future,
but would they be the best use of our
resources - and the wisest focus of our
aspirations, ingenuity, and collective will?
Almost all of the payload of a human
Mars mission would need to be devoted
to life support, and, at least initially, the
crews would need to return to Earth.
With the same investment of money and
human capital, how many robots could
we send to Mars and leave there permanently? As space-faring machines become
ever more sophisticated and autonomous,
what scientiﬁc purpose would justify the
tremendously greater expense and risk of
sending human astronauts to Mars?
I fear the romantic frontier fantasy
of colonizing other planets could seduce
us into ignoring the urgent problems of
climate disruption, species extinction,
and environmental devastation we have
created here on Earth. Preserving this
planet is the best possible focus of a global
initiative that draws on the best we all
have to oﬀer.
So, by all means, let's explore the universe - with telescopes and robots!
Anthony Barreiro
San Francisco, California

Finding Peace in the Stars
After reading Peter Tyson's recent Spectrum, "Escape to the Stars" (S&T: Mar.
2016, p. 4), I recalled the following words
of Pavel Florensky, a Russian Orthodox
priest, philosopher, and mathematician executed in 1937 after several years
of imprisonment in a Soviet gulag. He
wrote this in one of the last letters to his
children: "Look more often at the stars.
When you have a weight on your soul,
look at the stars or the blue of the sky.
When you feel sad, when they oﬀend you
- stop yourselves . . . with the heavens.
Then your soul will ﬁnd peace."
Alessandro Maitan
Forlì, Italy

Sky and Telescope - August 2016

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