MARSBUGS:  The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter 
Volume 3, Number 7, 6 August, 1996.

Co-editors:

David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of 
Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu.

Julian Hiscox, Microbiology Department, BBRB 17, Room 361, 
University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-2170, 
USA, Julian_hiscox@micro.microbio.uab.edu.

MARSBUGS is published on a weekly to quarterly basis as warranted 
by the number of articles and announcements.  Copyright exists 
with the co-editors, except for specific articles, in which 
instance copyright exists with the author/authors.  E-mail 
subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting either 
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include a short biographical statement about the author(s) along 
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advised to make appropriate inquiries before joining societies, 
ordering goods etc.  Back issues may be obtained via anonymous 
FTP at:  ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs.
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INDEX

1)	NASA BRIEFING WEDNESDAY ON DISCOVERY OF POSSIBLE EARLY 
MARTIAN LIFE

2)	STATEMENT FROM DANIEL S.  GOLDIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR 
[concerning the previous article]

3)	TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF VIKING MISSION TO MARS
	Roger D. Launius

4)	VIKING'S JOURNEY TO MARS, VIA NASA LANGLEY
	Catherine E. Watson

5)	MARINER 4 ANNIVERSARY MARKS 30 YEARS OF MARS EXPLORATION
	JPL release

6)	THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MARTIAN FRONTIER
	Robert Zubrin

7)	EUROPE AND ITS PARTNERS ANOTHER STEP CLOSER TO THE 
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
	ESA press release
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NASA BRIEFING WEDNESDAY ON DISCOVERY OF POSSIBLE EARLY MARTIAN 
LIFE

A team of NASA and Stanford scientists will discuss its findings 
showing strong circumstantial evidence of possible early Martian 
life, including microfossil remains found in a Martian meteorite, 
at a news conference scheduled for 1:00 p.m. EDT, August 7, at 
NASA Headquarters, 300 E. St. SW, Washington, DC.  The team's 
findings will be published in the August 16 issue of Science 
magazine.

Panelists will be:

-Dr. Wesley Huntress, Jr., NASA Assoc. Administrator for Space 
Science, Washington, DC
-Dr. David McKay, principal author, NASA Johnson Space Center 
(JSC), Houston, TX
-Dr. Everett Gibson, NASA JSC, Houston, TX
-Dr. Richard N. Zare, Professor of Chemistry, Stanford 
University, CA 
-Kathy Thomas-Keprta, Lockheed-Martin, JSC, Houston, TX
-Dr. William Schopf, Professor, Department of Earth and Space 
Sciences, Univ. of California, Los Angeles

The briefing will be carried live on NASA TV with two-way 
question-and-answer capability for reporters covering the event 
from participating NASA centers.  Audio of the broadcast will be 
available on voice circuit at the Kennedy Space Center by calling 
407/867-1260.

NASA Television is broadcast on Spacenet 2, transponder 5, 
channel 9, C-Band, located at 69 degrees West longitude, with 
horizontal polarization.  Frequency will be on 3880.0 megahertz, 
with audio on 6.8 megahertz.
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STATEMENT FROM DANIEL S.  GOLDIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR

NASA has made a startling discovery that points to the 
possibility that a primitive form of microscopic life may have 
existed on Mars more than three billion years ago.  The research 
is based on a sophisticated examination of an ancient Martian 
meteorite that landed on Earth some 13,000 years ago.

The evidence is exciting, even compelling, but not conclusive.  
It is a discovery that demands further scientific investigation.  
NASA is ready to assist the process of rigorous scientific 
investigation and lively scientific debate that will follow this 
discovery.

I want everyone to understand that we are not talking about 
'little green men.' These are extremely small, single-cell 
structures that somewhat resemble bacteria on Earth.  There is no 
evidence or suggestion that any higher life form ever existed on 
Mars.

The NASA scientists and researchers who made this discovery will 
be available at a news conference tomorrow to discuss their 
findings.  They will outline the step-by-step "detective story" 
that explains how the meteorite arrived here from Mars, and how 
they set about looking for evidence of long-ago life in this 
ancient rock.  They will also release some fascinating images 
documenting their research.
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TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF VIKING MISSION TO MARS
by Roger D. Launius, NASA Chief Historian
 
The twentieth of July marks the twentieth anniversary of Viking 
1's touch down on Mars after a voyage of nearly one year, 
followed within two months by Viking 2.  The landings represented 
the culmination of a series of missions to explore the planet 
Mars that had begun in 1964 with Mariner 4, and continued with 
the Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 flybys in 1969 and the Mariner 9 
orbital mission in 1971 and 1972.

After failing to obtain approval for a more ambitious and 
expensive program to explore Mars in the late 1960s, NASA came 
forward with a somewhat more modest $1 billion budget for the 
Viking expedition to the Red Planet.  This purchased tandem 
spacecraft designed to orbit Mars and to land and operate on the 
planet's surface.  Two identical spacecraft, each consisting of a 
lander and an orbiter, were built.  Launched on 20 August 1975 
from the Kennedy Space Center, Viking 1 spent nearly a year 
cruising to Mars, placed an orbiter in operation around the 
planet, and landed on 20 July 1976 on the Chryse Planitia (Golden 
Plains).  Viking 2 was launched on 9 September 1975 and landed on 
3 September 1976.  The Viking project's primary mission ended on 
15 November 1976, 11 days before Mars' superior conjunction (its 
passage behind the Sun), although the Viking spacecraft continued 
to operate for six years after first reaching Mars.  Its last 
transmission reached Earth on 11 November 1982.  Controllers at 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tried unsuccessfully for another 
six and one-half months to regain contact with the lander, but 
finally closed down the overall mission on 21 May 1983.

With a single exception--the seismic instruments--the scientific 
return from the expedition was spectacular.  Unfortunately, the 
seismometer on Viking 1 did not work after landing, and the 
seismometer on Viking 2 detected only one event that may have 
been seismic.  On the other hand, the two landers continuously 
monitored weather at the landing sites and found both exciting 
cyclical variations and an exceptionally harsh climate.  
Atmospheric temperatures at the more southern Viking 1 landing 
site, for instance, were only as high as +7 degrees Fahrenheit at 
midday, but the predawn summer temperature was -107 degree 
Fahrenheit.  And the lowest predawn temperature was -184 degrees 
Fahrenheit, about the frost point of carbon dioxide.  The project 
also observed the Martian winds, finding that they generally blew 
more slowly than expected.

One of the important scientific activities of this project was 
the attempt to determine whether there was life on Mars, since 
the planet had long been thought of as having sufficient 
similarity to the Earth that life might exist there.  While the 
three biology experiments discovered unexpected and enigmatic 
chemical activity in the Martian soil, they provided no clear 
evidence for the presence of living microorganisms in soil near 
the landing sites.  According to mission biologists, Mars was 
self-sterilizing.  They concluded that the combination of solar 
ultraviolet radiation that saturates the surface, the extreme 
dryness of the soil, and the oxidizing nature of the soil 
chemistry had prevented the formation of living organisms in the 
Martian soil.  The question of life on Mars at some time in the 
distant past, however, remains open.

For more information on the Viking project to Mars see:  Edward 
Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, On Mars:  Exploration of 
the Red Planet, 1958-1978 (Washington, DC:  NASA SP-4212, 1984).  
The Viking homepage on the World Wide Web also has significant 
information and images from the project.  The URL is:  
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/viking.htm
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VIKING'S JOURNEY TO MARS, VIA NASA LANGLEY
By Catherine E. Watson

Twenty years ago, on July 20, 1976, the first Viking lander 
touched down onto the surface of Mars.  The successful flight to 
Mars of the Viking spacecraft, and the subsequent perfect entry 
and landing sequence of the Viking Lander, were the culmination 
of nearly a decade of work by NASA employees and contractors -- 
and the beginning of new chapter in human exploration of the Red 
Planet.

NASA gave Langley overall responsibility for managing Project 
Viking in December 1968.  Langley had recently proven her mettle 
with the successful management of the Lunar Orbiter project, 
which had provided the Apollo project with detailed maps of the 
lunar surface.  Landing sites were chosen using this information.

James Martin, who had been the assistant manager for the Lunar 
Orbiter project, was chosen by then-Center Director Edgar 
Cortright to lead the Viking Project.  Martin had come to Langley 
from Republic Aviation in September 1964.

Langley Rises to the Challenge

In addition to overall project management, Dr. Gerald Soffen, a 
Langley scientist, would chair the Viking Science Steering Group, 
and Dr.  William Michael Jr., also of Langley, would lead the 
Viking Radio Science Team.  By 1970, more than 250 Langley 
employees were committed to the Viking project.  Fred Staggs, a 
test engineer, now in Langley's Research and Technology Group, 
took his family from one coast to another in support of the 
Viking project.

"The work was hard but very rewarding," Staggs said.  "My family 
still talks about it today, all the things we saw and did."

Staggs, now a contract manager, remembers working 13 hours a day, 
seven days a week with contractors in Denver to build and test 
the Viking landers.  After living in Denver for 14 months, Staggs 
took his family to "the Cape," where they lived for 10 months as 
Staggs helped prepare the Viking spacecraft for its launch to 
Mars.  After the launch, Staggs and his family went to the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for 14 months.  There, 
Staggs helped monitor Viking on its journey to Mars, as well as 
data from the landers after their touchdowns.

"We were pushing the envelop of technology," he said, since the 
computers aboard Viking each contained only 64k of memory.  "It 
would take a month sometimes to prepare a command [to send to one 
of the orbiters or landers]."  And there was no room for error 
once a command was sent.

Paul Prillaman, now in the Office of Safety, Environment and 
Mission Assurance, also worked at the Martin plant in Denver 
doing quality assurance work for all mechanical parts during the 
building of the landers.  Like Staggs, Prillaman eventually found 
himself at the Cape where he worked on quality assurance for 
Lander II.

"We approved every change that was made on the flight hardware," 
Prillaman recalled.  "[Those were] exciting times -- [we] really 
accomplished something.  The most memorable time I had worked at 
Langley Field was [during] Project Viking."

Project Viking Results

Project Viking's mission was to obtain detailed scientific 
information about the structure, atmosphere and surface of Mars-- 
including the possible existence of past or present life forms-- 
thereby increasing understanding of the solar system's origin and 
evolution.  In the end, neither Viking lander found any signs of 
life on Mars.  The lander provided extensive data, however, on 
the composition of the Martian atmosphere and soil, including 
several years of data on Martian weather.  The Langley-led radio 
team used radio signals from the Viking spacecraft to measure the 
amount of delay in the radio signals caused by the sun's 
gravitational field, confirming Albert Einstein's prediction to 
an estimated accuracy of 0.1 percent.

Project Viking was turned over to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
on April 1, 1978.  Viking Lander I transmitted data from July 20, 
1976, until Nov.  11, 1982; Viking Lander II transmitted from 
Sept.  3, 1976 until April 11, 1980.  The Viking Orbiter I mapped 
the surface of Mars until Aug.  7, 1980, and Orbiter II until 
July 25, 1978, providing more than 52,000 high-quality photos.

The Viking mission was terminated on May 21, 1983, after 
controllers had tried unsuccessfully for more than six months to 
regain contact with Lander I.  The original contract called for 
the landers to last for only 90 days--but both exceeded that time 
frame by several years.

Today, many Project Viking veterans remain at Langley, scattered 
throughout divisions that didn't exist 20 years ago, working with 
computers and other equipment they could only dream about then.  
But their continuing commitment to understanding our planet and 
universe has remained constant in an ever-changing research 
environment.
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MARINER 4 ANNIVERSARY MARKS 30 YEARS OF MARS EXPLORATION
JPL release

Three decades after Mariner 4's flyby of Mars on July 14, 1965--
the first spacecraft ever to reach the planet and take close-up 
photographs of the Martian surface -- NASA is preparing a whole 
new decade of Mars missions that will rely on revolutionary new 
technologies and smaller, cheaper, faster spacecraft to continue 
robotic exploration of the Red Planet.

Kicking off this new decade of discovery are two missions 
scheduled for launch in the fall of 1996:  Mars Global Surveyor, 
an orbiter to map the surface and atmosphere of the planet; and 
Mars Pathfinder, a Discovery program mission designed to deliver 
a lander, camera and instrumented rover to the Martian surface on 
July 4, 1997.  As NASA prepares for these missions, the community 
is also celebrating the roots of Mars exploration, which reach 
back 30 years to one tense day in the summer of 1965 at the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

It was on July 14, 1965, that scientists and engineers waited 
anxiously for radio signals from NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft, 
near Mars, to tell them that the spacecraft was successfully 
photographing the Red Planet close up for the very first time.  
With a round-trip communication time of 24 minutes, they could 
not remotely control the spacecraft.  Mariner 4 was following a 
primitive onboard computer program and a sequence that engineers 
had started earlier that morning.

The signal arrived at the communication site at Goldstone, 
Calif., right on schedule at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time.  After 26 
minutes of television recording, slightly more than 21 pictures 
filled the recording tape.  The camera was switched off and 
Mariner's other instruments came on again to monitor the space 
environment around Mars.  A few minutes later, the spacecraft 
flew within 10,000 kilometers (more than 6,000 miles) of Mars, 
then continued on its course to become one more object orbiting 
the Sun.

Mariner 4's flight past Mars was just the second successful 
interplanetary mission in history for the U.S.  space program, 
preceded by Mariner 2's flight to Venus in 1962.  The Mariner 4 
mission had been developed, built and tested at the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory in just two years time.  The Mariner team 
had to be ready for launch in November 1964 in order to reach 
Mars in July 1965, and the spacecraft could only weigh about 260 
kilograms (575 pounds) in order to achieve the velocity needed to 
get to Mars.

With very little experience in interplanetary space travel, 
engineers did not have much of an idea about the space 
environment that Mariner 4 would encounter during its eight-month 
trip to Mars.  The ability of the spacecraft and its parts to 
survive eight months in space was an open question--one that only 
the mission itself would answer.  The sheer distance alone--
nearly three times the range of the first interplanetary flight--
challenged the telecommunication system.  Even the precise 
location of Mars and the lighting conditions on its surface were 
unclear.

Mariner 4's sister ship, Mariner 3, was launched three weeks 
earlier, but was doomed when the launch rocket's nose fairing 
failed to jettison properly.  This trapped the spacecraft and 
forced NASA, JPL and the contractor for the upper-stage rocket, 
Lockheed Corp., into a race to design and build a new fairing in 
time to launch the second spacecraft while the Earth and Mars 
were still in proper alignment with each other.  They won the 
race.  Mariner 4 lifted off Earth on an Atlas/Agena rocket on 
November 27, 1964.  After about a week of radio tracking on the 
way to Mars, the spacecraft was commanded to perform a rocket-
thrust maneuver, refining its course toward Mars.  Then it 
coasted the rest of the way.

Throughout its flight the spacecraft kept its four solar panels 
oriented toward the Sun to generate electric power to run its 
equipment and keep the battery charged.  It kept up a constant 
two-way communication link with the Earth, providing for radar- 
based navigation and the receipt of commands from the ground, as 
well as sending science data to six teams of scientists and 
engineering health and performance measurements to engineers.

Between February and June 1965, Mariner 4 detected the effects of 
five separate solar flares, significant increases in the solar 
wind and its spiral flow of charged particles from the Sun.  
These events showed up in the magnetometer, several charged- 
particle sensors and the cosmic-ray telescope.  During the flight 
to Mars, the cosmic dust detector indicated an irregular increase 
in the number of micrometeorites, counting a total of about 200 
particles.

Seven and a half months after launch the spacecraft approached 
Mars.  On command it switched from "cruise science," carried out 
during the flight, to "encounter science," the observations of 
Mars.  Another command aimed the camera and seven hours later a 
Mars detector started the camera shutter clicking.  After 
recording its pictures, the spacecraft passed behind Mars and its 
radio signal faded into silence for nearly an hour.  Scientists 
measuring the fadeout and return of the radio signal were able to 
measure the ionosphere and atmospheric density of Mars, similar 
to the way astronomers measure planetary atmospheres through the 
fading of starlight.

The next day, Mariner 4 began more than a week of playback of the 
recorded pictures of Mars.  Very slowly the cratered, cold, 
hostile new world crept into view.  Interpreting the dim gray of 
the Martian images was made far easier by a new photographic 
tool:  the computer.

Taken for granted today, digital imaging and image processing 
were the state of the art in the early 1960's.  In fact, 
scientists developed image processing to help solve the 
anticipated difficulties in reproducing pictures of Mars taken by 
spacecraft, though the technique was first tested on spacecraft 
pictures of the Moon.  Removing "noise" on the image from 
spacecraft circuits and the space environment, and smoothly 
improving the contrast of the dim Martian scenes were just the 
beginning of an art that now pervades medical, forensic, 
scientific and commercial images.

Looking at the densely packed craters in the image of the small 
swatch of the Martian plains, the Mariner scientists could hardly 
believe that almost no Earth-based astronomers had predicted that 
Mars might resemble Earth's Moon.  But the impact craters were 
the dominant features of the scenery.  Small craters lay on the 
rims of large ones and scientists judged that the topography was 
very old and little changed in contrast to Earth.

No mountains, valleys, ocean basins or canals were visible.  The 
first picture revealed the edge or limb of the planet.  Image 
processing brought out an atmospheric haze above the horizon.  
The last few pictures were dark, showing the night side of Mars, 
but just before the edge of night, what appeared to be frost 
glistened on crater rims.


The Mariner 4 atmospheric team estimated the Martian surface 
pressure to be 4 millibars to 7 millibars, compared to about 
1,000 millibars on Earth.  That made the air on Mars about 150 to 
200 times thinner than on Earth.  They concluded that it was 
mostly carbon dioxide.  Other instruments searched in vain for 
indications of an Earth-like magnetic field or radiation belts.

After the Mars encounter and playback were finished, the 
spacecraft resumed its observations of the interplanetary 
environment.  However, Mariner 4 and Earth soon moved in their 
orbits so that telemetry could no longer be detected.  In 1967 
the spacecraft returned to the vicinity of Earth, approaching as 
close as 29 million miles, and sent back data from a few months 
of solar wind and solar flare measurements.  On December 20, 
1967, after three years in flight, Mariner 4 finally ran out of 
the propellant used to turn and orient it, thereby ending the 
first mission to Mars in U.S.  space exploration history.
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MARTIAN FRONTIER
by Robert Zubrin [reprinted with permission of the author]

It was 100 years ago, 1893, at the annual conference of the 
American Historical Association, that a young professor of 
history from the then relatively obscure University of Wisconsin 
got up to speak.  Frederick Jackson Turner's talk was scheduled 
as the last one in the evening session, preceded by a series of 
excruciatingly boring papers on topics so obscure that kindness 
forbids even the reprinting of their titles.  Nevertheless, for 
some unexplained reason, the majority of the conference 
participants stayed up to hear him.  Perhaps somehow a rumor had 
gotten afoot that something important was about to be said, if so 
it was correct, for in one bold sweep of brilliant insight Turner 
laid bare the source of the American soul.  It was not legal 
theories, precedents, traditions, national or racial stock that 
was the source of the egalitarian democracy, individualism, and 
spirit of innovation that characterize America, it was the 
existence of the Frontier.

"...to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking 
characteristics.  That coarseness of strength combined with 
acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of 
mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material 
things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great 
ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, 
working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and 
exuberance that comes from freedom - these are the traits of the 
frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence 
of the frontier.  Since the days when the fleets of Columbus 
sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another 
name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have 
taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only 
been open but has even been forced upon them.  He would be a rash 
prophet who should assert that the expansive character of 
American life has now entirely ceased.  Movement has been its 
dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a 
people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field 
for its exercise.  But never again will such gifts of free lands 
offer themselves.  For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of 
custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant.  There is not 
tabula rasa.  The stubborn American environment is there with its 
imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of 
doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of the 
environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed 
furnish a new opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of 
the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older 
society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and 
indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier.  What 
the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bonds of 
custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions 
and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has 
been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe 
more remotely.  And now, four centuries from the discovery of 
America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the 
Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has 
closed the first period of American history."

Turner was unstoppable.  America's greatest leaders were all men 
of the frontier - Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, he 
said, and the great struggles of American history have all hinged 
ultimately upon the fate of frontier The attempt by the British 
crown to close the frontier drove the revolution.  The Civil War 
began in the frontier territories and it was the fight for the 
future of the frontier, not abstract issues of State's Rights or 
morality, that sent tens of thousands marching into battle at 
Shiloh and Gettysburg.  Most importantly, Turner showed how the 
very character of Americans, their philosophical outlook, and 
their society are all based upon the frontier.  The frontier 
creates a perpetual labor shortage in the settled areas, which 
drives up wages and thus technological innovation.  With people 
in short supply, each one is valued more preciously, putting a 
premium on popular education and elevating the general estimate 
of the human dignity of the common man.  So long as the frontier 
exists, the factory worker back East always has another option in 
the West, and even if he does not choose to exercise it, he has 
to be treated with the respect due to someone who can quit - who 
works by choice, not duress.  So long as the frontier is open and 
new fortunes can be made the establishment of a closed 
aristocracy is impossible.  

The Turner thesis was a bombshell, which within a few years 
created an entire school of historians who proceeded to 
demonstrate that not only American culture, but the entire 
worldwide western progressive humanist civilization that American 
has generally represented in its most distilled form was the 
result of the Great Frontier of global settlement opened to 
Europe by the Age of Exploration.  It was the Great Frontier that 
shattered the static, stultifying, irrational, dogmatic, and 
completely stratified world of medieval Christendom, unchaining 
thought, hope, and imagination to revolutionize the world.

The then question arises, with the end of the frontier, what 
happens to America and all it has stood for? Can a free, 
egalitarian, democratic, innovating society with a can-do spirit 
be preserved in the absence of room to grow? Maybe the question 
was premature in Turner's time, after all, even with the 
vanishing of the line of settlement, most of the country was 
still empty.  In any case, a popular culture based on 400 years 
of frontier individualism does not die instantly, and the 
children of America's last generation of pioneers could take 
America through World War II and on to the Moon.  But what of 
now? What do we see around us now but an ever more apparent loss 
of vigor of American society, increasing fixity of the power 
structure and bureaucratization of all levels of society, 
impotence of political institutions to carry off great projects, 
the cancerous proliferation of regulations affecting all aspects 
of public, private and commercial life, the spread of 
irrationalism, the banalization of popular culture, the loss of 
willingness by individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves 
or think for themselves, economic stagnation and decline, the 
deceleration of the rate of technological innovation and a loss 
of belief in the idea of progress itself.  Everywhere you look, 
the writing is on the wall.  Without a frontier from which to 
breathe life, the spirit that gave rise to the progressive 
humanistic culture that America for the past several centuries 
has offered to the world is fading.  Once again, the issue is not 
just one of national loss.  Human progress needs a vanguard, and 
no replacement is in sight.

The creation of a new frontier thus presents itself as America's 
and humanity's greatest social need.  Nothing is more important, 
because apply what palliatives you will, without a frontier to 
grow in, not only American society, but the entire global 
civilization based upon Western enlightenment values of humanism, 
reason, science, and progress will ultimately die.  

I believe that humanity's new frontier can only be on Mars.  Why 
is this the case? Why for example can it not be on Earth, on or 
under the oceans, or perhaps in such remote regions as 
Antarctica? And if it must be in space, why on Mars? Why not on 
the Moon or in artificial satellites in orbit about the Earth?

It is true that settlements on or under the sea or in Antarctica 
are entirely possible, and their establishment and access would 
be much easier than that of Martian colonies.  Nevertheless, the 
fact of the matter is that at this point in history such 
terrestrial developments cannot meet an  essential requirement 
for a frontier, to wit, they are insufficiently remote to allow 
for the free development of a new society.  Put simply, in this 
day and age, with modern terrestrial communication and 
transportation systems, anywhere on Earth the cops are too close.  
If people are to have the dignity that comes with making their 
own world, they must be free of the old.

Why then, not the Moon? The answer is because there's not enough 
there.  True, the Moon has a copious supply of most metals and 
oxygen, in the form of oxidized rock, and a fair supply of solar 
energy, but that's about it.  For all intents and purposes, the 
Moon has no hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon (They're present in the 
Lunar soil in parts per million quantities, somewhat like gold in 
sea water.  If there were concrete on the Moon, Lunar colonists 
would mine it to get its water out.), and these are three of the 
four elements most necessary for life.  You could bring seeds to 
the Moon and grow plants in enclosed greenhouses there, but 
nearly every atom of carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen that goes 
into making those plants would have to be imported from another 
planet.  While sustaining a lunar scientific base under such 
conditions is relatively straightforward, growing a civilization 
there would be impossible.  The difficulties supporting 
significant populations in artificial orbiting space colonies 
would be even greater.  

Mars has what it takes.  It's far enough away to free its 
colonists from intellectual, legal, or cultural domination by the 
old world, and rich enough in resources to give birth to a new.  
The Red Planet may appear at first glance to be a desert, but 
beneath its sands are oceans of water in the form of permafrost, 
enough in fact, if it were melted and Mars' terrain were smoothed 
out, to cover the entire planet with an ocean several hundred 
meters deep.  Mars' atmosphere is mostly carbon-dioxide, 
providing enormous supplies of the two most important biological 
elements in a chemical form from which they can be directly taken 
up and incorporated into plant life.  Mars has nitrogen too, both 
as a minority constituent (3%) in its atmosphere and probably as 
nitrate beds in its soil as well.  For the rest, all the metals, 
silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, inert gases, and other raw materials 
needed to create not only life but an advanced technological 
civilization, can readily be found on Mars.  

The United States has, today, all the technology needed to send 
humans to Mars.  If a "travel light and live off the land" 
strategy like the Mars Direct plan were adopted, then the first 
human exploration mission could be launched within ten years at a 
cost less than 20% of NASA's existing budget.  Once humans have 
reached Mars, bases could rapidly be established to support not 
only exploration, but experimentation to develop the broad range 
of civil, agricultural, chemical and industrial engineering 
techniques required to turn the raw materials of Mars into food, 
propellant, ceramics, plastics, metals, wires, structures, 
habitats, etc.  As these techniques are mastered, Mars will 
become capable of supporting an ever increasing population, with 
an expanding division of labor, capable of mounting engineering 
efforts on an exponentially increasing scale.  Once the 
production infrastructure is in place, populating Mars will not 
be a problem - under current medical conditions an immigration 
rate of 100 people per year would produce population growth on 
Mars in the 21st Century comparable to that which occurred in 
colonial America in the 17th Century.  Within a century, an 
engineering capability could be created on Mars with the 
capability to literally transform the planet, if not to a fully 
Earth-like environment at least to the warm, wet conditions of 
Mars' primitive past, making a desert world into a new home for a 
new spectrum of descendants of terrestrial life.

Mars can be settled, and the fact that Mars can be thus settled 
and altered defines it as the New World that can create the basis 
for a  positive future for terrestrial humanity for the next 
several centuries.

Why Humanity Needs Mars

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are 
created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain 
inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness..."
--Declaration of Independence, 1776

"Everything has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode 
of living, a new social system; here they are become men."

--Jean de Crevecoeur, "Letters from an American Farmer,"  1782

To see best why 21st Century humanity will desperately need an 
open frontier on Mars, we need to look at modern Western humanist 
culture and see what in it makes it so much more desirable a mode 
of society than anything that has ever existed before.  Then we 
need to see how everything we hold dear will be wiped out if the 
frontier remains closed.

The essence of humanist society is that in it human beings are 
valued, that human life and human rights are held precious beyond 
price.  Such notions have been for several thousand years the 
core philosophical values of Western civilization, dating back to 
the Greeks and the Judeo-Christian  ideas of the divine nature of 
the human spirit.  Yet they could never be implemented as a 
practical basis for the organization of society until the great 
explorers of the age of discovery threw open a New World in which 
the dormant seed of medieval Christendom could grow and blossom  
forth into something the likes of which the world had never seen 
before; something so wonderful that for 400 years millions of men 
and women all over the world have abandoned everything they had, 
traveled thousands of miles, braving incredible dangers and 
hardships to make themselves parts of it, and millions of others 
have conspired and fought, often against tremendous odds, to 
bring it to their homelands.

The problem with Christendom was that it was fixed, it was a play 
for which the script had been written and the leading roles both 
chosen and assigned.  The problem was not that there were 
insufficient natural resources to go around - medieval Europe was 
not heavily populated, there were plenty of forests and other 
wild areas - the problem was that all the resources were owned.  
A ruling class had been selected and a set of ruling 
institutions, ideas and customs had been selected, and by the law 
of "Survival of the Firstest," none of these could be displaced.  
Furthermore, not only the leading roles had been chosen, but also 
those of the supporting cast and chorus, and there were only so 
many such parts to go around.  If you wanted to keep your part, 
you had to keep your place, and there was no place for someone 
without a place.

The New World changed all that by supplying a place in which 
there were no established ruling institutions, an improvisational 
theater big enough to welcome all comers with no parts assigned.  
On such a stage, the players are not limited to the conventional 
role of actors, they become playwrights and directors as well.  
The unleashing of creative talent that such a novel situation 
allows is not only a great deal of fun for those lucky enough to 
be involved, it changes the view of the spectators as to the 
capabilities of actors in general.  people who had no role in the 
old society could define their role in the new.  People who did 
not "fit in" in the old world could discover and demonstrate that 
far from being worthless, they were invaluable in the new, 
whether they went there or not.

The New World destroyed the basis of aristocracy and created the 
basis of democracy, it allowed the development of diversity by 
allowing escape from those institutions that were imposing 
uniformity, it destroyed a closed intellectual world by importing 
unsanctioned data and experience, it allowed progress by escaping 
the hold of those institutions whose continued rule required 
continued stagnation, and it drove progress by defining a 
situation in which innovation to maximize the capabilities of  
the limited population available was desperately needed.  It 
raised the dignity of man by raising the price of labor and by 
demonstrating for all to see that human beings can be the 
creators of their world, and not just its inhabitants.

Now consider the probable fate of humanity in the 21st Century 
under two conditions, with a Martian Frontier and without it.  

In the 21st Century, without a Martian Frontier, there is no 
question that human diversity will decline severely.  Already, in 
the late 20th Century, advanced communication and transportation 
technologies have been eroding the healthy diversity of human 
cultures on Earth, and this tendency can only accelerate in the 
21st.  On the other hand, if the Martian Frontier is opened, then 
this same process of technological advance will also enable us to 
establish a new branch of human culture on Mars and eventually 
worlds beyond.  The precious diversity of humanity can thus be 
preserved on a broader  field, but only on a broader field.  One 
world will be just too small a domain to allow the preservation 
of the diversity that is needed not just to keep life 
interesting, but  to assure the survival of the human race.  

Without the opening of a new frontier on Mars, continued Western 
civilization faces the risk of technological stagnation.  To some 
this may appear to be an outrageous statement, as the present age 
is frequently cited as one of technological wonders.  In fact, 
however, the rate of progress within our society has been 
decreasing, and at an alarming rate.  To see this, it is only 
necessary to step back and compare the changes which have 
occurred in the past 30 years with those that occurred in the 30 
years preceding and the 30 years before that.  Between 1903 and 
1933 the world was revolutionized; cities were electrified, 
telephones and broadcast radio became common, talking motion 
pictures appeared, automobiles became practical, and aviation 
progressed from the Wright Flyer to the DC-3 and Hawker 
Hurricane.  Between 1933 and 1963 the world changed again, with 
the introduction of color television, communication satellites 
and interplanetary spacecraft, computers, antibiotics, SCUBA 
gear, nuclear power, Atlas, Titan, and Saturn rockets, Boeing 
727's and SR-71's.  Compared to these changes, the technological  
innovations from 1963 to the present are insignificant.  Immense 
changes should have occurred during this period, but did not.  
Had we been following the previous 60 years technological 
trajectory, we today would have videotelephones, solar powered 
cars, maglev trains, fusion reactors, hypersonic intercontinental 
travel and regular passenger transportation to orbit, undersea 
cities, open-sea mariculture, and human settlements on the Moon 
and Mars.  Even more indicative of technological decadence than 
the nonappearance of these innovations, is the fact that a 
fundamental advance in technology in an area basic to the total 
process of production that was already emerging in 1963, namely 
nuclear power, has been blocked in its implementation by 
political forces dedicated to preserving the technological status 
quo, in the process raising technophobia to the status of a 
fashionable political and philosophical creed.

It is important to understand this.  The widespread introduction 
of commercial nuclear power in the Western world was not stopped 
by the small groups that duel with the industry in public 
hearings and courtrooms.  Whatever one might think of the pluses 
and minuses of nuclear power, the fact remains that the anti-
nuclear activists have only been allowed to have their way with 
commercial nuclear industry because the world's dominant 
financial institutions currently hold the mortgages on literally 
trillions of dollars worth of coal, oil and gas reserves, all of 
which would be severely devalued should a replacement source of 
energy come on line.  Such investments have caused these 
financial institutions and their governmental allies to develop a 
preference for stagnation in energy technology that is extremely 
difficult to overcome.  Indeed, nuclear technology is only 
supported by the powerful in the Western world today for the 
decisive military applications of nuclear weapons and nuclear 
submarines - in the case of deployment of such instruments no 
advice from Sierra Club is requested.  Analogous paradigms hold 
true in other important areas of the economy, so that practically 
the only areas where notable technological progress is occurring 
currently is in products such as home computers that do not 
compete directly with previously well established industries.  As 
the interlocking of terrestrial institutions of political and 
economic power becomes ever more intimate and incestuous in the 
21st Century, this trend towards technological stagnation can 
only deepen.

Unless of course, there is an alternative uncontrolled domain 
that drives progress from the outside, and this is what the 
Martian Frontier will provide.  Consider a nascent Martian 
civilization:  its future will depend critically upon the 
progress of science and technology to which the colonists will 
therefore enthusiastically contribute.  Thus just as the 
inventions of produced by the "Yankee Ingenuity" of frontier 
America were a powerful driving force on world-wide human 
progress in the 19th Century, so the "Martian Ingenuity" born in 
a culture that puts the utmost premium on intelligence, practical 
education, and the determination required to make real 
contributions will make much more than its fair share of the 
scientific and technological breakthroughs that will dramatically 
advance the human condition in the 21st.  A prime example of 
where this is likely to occur is energy production.  Mars does 
have one major energy resource that we do currently know about; 
deuterium, which can be used as the fuel in nearly waste-free 
thermonuclear fusion reactors.  Earth has large amounts of 
deuterium too, but with all of its existing investments in other, 
more polluting, forms of energy production, the research that 
would make possible practical fusion power reactors has been 
allowed to stagnate.  The Martian colonists are certain to be 
much more determined to get fusion on-line, and in doing so will 
massively benefit the mother planet as well.  Fusion power will 
also lead to fusion propulsion, making possible spaceships that 
will carry hundreds of passengers and thousands of tons of 
payload rapidly back and forth between Earth and Mars, thus 
accelerating the rate of colonization and opening up the 
possibility of emigration to Mars to more and more people.  Not 
only would such technology cause travel times between Earth and 
Mars to shrink from months to weeks, but travel times to the 
outer solar system would be reduced from years to months, and 
even voyages to the stars could become possible on a time scale 
of decades instead of millennia.  Thus by acting as a driver on 
technology, the Martian Frontier can become a gateway to the 
practically infinite hinterland that lies beyond.

The parallel between the Martian frontier and that of 19th 
century America as technology drivers is, if anything, vastly 
understated.  America drove technological progress in the last 
century because its western frontier created a perpetual labor 
shortage in the east, thus forcing the development of labor 
saving machinery and providing a strong incentive for improvement 
of public education so that the skills of the limited labor force 
available could be maximized.  This condition no longer holds 
true in America, in fact far from prizing each additional 
citizen, immigrants are no longer welcome here and a vast 
"service sector" of bureaucrats and menials has been created to 
absorb the energies of the majority of the population which is 
excluded from the productive parts of the economy.  Thus in the 
late 20th Century, and increasingly in the 21st, each additional 
citizen is and will be regarded as a burden.  On 21st Century 
Mars, on the other hand, conditions of labor shortage will apply 
with a vengeance.  Indeed, it can be safely said that no 
commodity on 21st Century Mars will be more precious, more highly 
valued, and more dearly paid for than human labor time.  Pay 
rates will be higher on Mars, workers will be treated better, and 
public education will be driven much harder than ever was the 
case on Earth.  Just as the example of 19th Century America 
changed the way the common man was regarded and treated in 
Europe, so the impact of progressive Martian social conditions 
will not only be felt on Mars.  Put simply, a new standard will 
be set for a higher form of humanist civilization on Mars, and 
viewing it from afar the citizens of Earth will rightly demand 
nothing less for themselves.

The frontier drove the development of democracy in America by 
creating a self-reliant population which insisted on the right to 
self-government.  It is doubtful that democracy can persist 
without such people.  True, the trappings of democracy exist in 
abundance in America today, but meaningful public participation 
in the process has all but disappeared.  No representative of a 
new political party has been elected president of the U.S.  since 
1860, neighborhood political clubs and ward structures that 
allowed citizen participation in party deliberations are gone, as 
are the camp meetings and torchlight election parades.  With a 
re-election rate of 95%, the U.S.  Congress is about as 
susceptible to the people's will as the British House of Lords, 
and regardless of the will of Congress, the real laws, covering 
ever broader areas of economic and social life, are increasingly 
being made by a plethora of regulatory agencies whose officials 
do not even pretend to have been elected by anyone.  Judges are 
still elected in many places, but the elections generally feature 
little public involvement, so that rather than representing any 
concept of justice as understood by the public, the judicial 
system has come to function largely as an autonomous legal caste.  
Clearly, if it is not to continue its ongoing degeneration into 
sham, democracy in America and elsewhere in western civilization 
needs a shot in the arm.  That boost can only come from the 
example of a frontier people whose civilization incorporates the 
ethos that breathed the spirit into democracy in America in the 
first place.  As Americans showed Europe in the last century, so 
in the next the Martians can show us the way away from oligarchy.

There are greater threats that a humanist society faces in a 
closed world than the return of oligarchy, and if the frontier 
remains closed in the 21st Century we are certain to face them.  
These threats are the spread of various sorts of anti-human 
ideologies and the development of political institutions that 
incorporate the notions that spring from them as a basis of 
operation.  At the top of the list of such pathological ideas 
which tend to spread naturally in a closed society is the Malthus 
theory, which holds that since the world's resources are more or 
less fixed, population growth must be restricted or all of us 
will descend into bottomless misery.  Malthusianism is 
scientifically bankrupt and all predictions made upon it have 
been wrong, because human beings are not mere consumers of 
resources.  Rather we create resources by the development of new 
technologies that find use for them.  The more people, the faster 
the rate of innovation, and this is why contrary to Malthus, as 
the world's population has increased, the standard of living has 
increased, and at an accelerating rate.  Nevertheless, in a 
closed society Malthusianism has the appearance of self-evident 
truth, and herein lies the danger.  Because if the idea is 
accepted that the world's resources are fixed, then each person 
is ultimately the enemy of every other person, and each race or 
nation is the enemy of every other race or nation.  The 
inevitable result is the creation of tyrannical regimes to 
restrict population growth, such as that now prevailing in China, 
or worse, the development of Nazi style genocidal governments as 
various populations become convinced that their vital self 
interest requires the elimination of those other races that are 
allegedly competing with them for the world's finite resources.  
Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be 
brothers.

It is not enough to argue against Malthusianism in the abstract, 
such debates are not settled in academic journals.  Unless people 
can see broad vistas of unused resources in front of them, the 
belief in limited resources tends to follow as a matter of 
course.  Unless the frontier is re-opened, the probability is 
high that humanity will create hell for itself in the 21st 
Century.

Is the world that humans live in changeable are is it fixed? Are 
we the makers of our world or just its inhabitants? In a society 
that is growing into a frontier the creative role of humans is 
self-evident, and the dignity of man is raised accordingly.  
Nineteenth century Americans, building cities, draining swamps, 
and digging canals could have no doubt as to humanities role as 
improvers of creation.  Today much of what they saw as progress 
is cited by many as environmental destruction.  Despite abundant 
scientific evidence that evolution is intrinsic to nature, a 
belief is spreading that nature as it is at the moment is 
sacrosanct, and that humans should not have the right to change 
it.  An open frontier on Mars would not merely restore the 19th 
Century American humanist views in such matters, it would raise 
it to unprecedented heights, because in the process of 
terraforming Mars we will not merely be taming a wild world, but 
bringing a dead one to life.  What greater affirmation of the 
positive nature of the human creative spirit could there be?

The Never Ending Renaissance

"We have come recently to boast of a global economy without 
thinking of its implications, of how unfortunate we are in 
finding it.  It would be more cheering if news should come that 
by some freak of the solar system another world had swung gently 
into our orbit and moved so close that a bridge could be built 
over which people could pass to new continents untenanted and new 
seas uncharted.  Would those eager immigrants repeat the process 
they followed when they had that opportunity, or would they 
redress the grievances of the old Earth by a new bill of 
rights...? The availability of such a new planet, at any rate, 
would prolong, if it did not save, a civilization based on 
dynamism, and in the prolongation the individual would again 
enjoy a spell of freedom....

"It would be very interesting to speculate on what the human 
imagination is going to do with a frontierless world where it 
must seek its inspiration in uniformity rather than variety, in 
sameness rather than contrast, in safety rather than peril, in 
probing the harmless nuances of the known rather than the 
thundering uncertainties of unknown seas or continents.  The 
dreamers, the poets, and the philosophers are after all but 
instruments which make vocal and articulate the hopes and 
aspirations and the fears of a people.

"The people are going to miss the frontier more than words can 
express.  For four centuries they heard its call, listened to its 
promises, and bet their lives and fortunes on its outcome.  It 
calls no more...."
				Walter Prescott Webb, "The Great Frontier," 
1951.

Western humanist civilization as we know and value it today was 
born in expansion, grew in expansion, and can only exist in a 
dynamic expanding state.  While some form of human society might 
persist in a non-expanding world, that society will not feature 
freedom, creativity, individuality, or progress, and placing no 
value on those aspects of humanity that differentiate us from 
animals it will place no value on human rights or human life as 
well.  Such a dismal future might seem an outrageous prediction, 
except for the fact that for nearly all of its history most of 
humanity has been forced to endure static modes of social 
organization, and the experience has not been a happy one.  Free 
societies are the exception in human history, they have only 
existed during the four centuries of frontier expansion of the 
West.  That history is now over, the frontier that was opened by 
the voyage of Christopher Columbus is now closed.  If the era of 
western humanist society is not to be seen by future historians 
as some kind of transitory golden age, a brief shining moment in 
an otherwise endless chronicle of human misery, then a new 
frontier must be opened.  Mars beckons.

But Mars is only one planet, and with humanity's power over 
nature rising exponentially as they would in an age of progress 
that an open Martian frontier portends, the job of transforming 
and settling it is unlikely to occupy our energies for more than 
three or four centuries.  Does the settling of Mars then simply 
represent an opportunity to "prolong but not save a civilization 
based upon dynamism?"  Isn't it the case that humanist 
civilization is ultimately doomed anyway? I think not.  The 
universe is vast; its resources, if we can access them, are truly 
infinite.  During the four centuries of the open frontier on 
Earth, science and technology have advanced at an astonishing 
pace.  The technological capabilities achieved during the 20th 
century would dwarf the expectations of any observer from the 
19th, the dreams of one from the 18th, and seem outright magical 
to someone from the 17th.  The nearest stars are incredibly 
distant, about 100,000 times as far away as Mars; yet Mars itself 
is about 100,000 times as far from Earth as America is from 
Europe.  If the past four centuries of progress have multiplied 
our reach by so great a ratio, might not four more centuries of 
freedom do the same again? There is ample reason to believe that 
they would.  Terraforming Mars will drive the development of new 
and more powerful sources of energy; settling the Red Planet will 
drive the development of ever faster modes of space 
transportation.  Both of these capabilities in turn will open up 
new frontiers ever deeper into the outer solar system, and the 
harder challenges posed by these new environments will drive the 
two key technologies of power and propulsion ever more 
forcefully.  The key thing is not to let the process stop, for if 
it is allowed to stop for any length of time society will 
crystallize into a static form that is inimical to the resumption 
of progress.  That is what defines the present age as one of 
crisis.  Our old frontier is closed, the first signs of social 
crystallization are clearly visible.  Yet, progress, while 
slowing, is still extant; our people still believe in it and our 
ruling institutions are not yet incompatible with it.  We still 
possess the greatest gift of the inheritance of a four hundred 
year long Renaissance, to wit, the capacity to initiate another 
by opening the Martian frontier.  If we fail to do so, our 
culture will not have that capacity long.  Mars is harsh, the 
people who settle it will need not only technology, but the 
scientific outlook, creativity, and free-thinking individualistic 
inventiveness that stand behind it.  Mars will not allow itself 
to be settled by people from a static society; those people won't 
have what it takes.  We still do.  Mars today waits for the 
children of the old frontier, but Mars will not wait forever.

Like an aircraft moving down a runway, western civilization used 
the freedom afforded by the open frontier to accelerate itself to 
takeoff speed.  The end of the runway has now been reached.  If 
our journey is to continue, we must now take courage and fly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

EUROPE AND ITS PARTNERS ANOTHER STEP CLOSER TO THE INTERNATIONAL 
SPACE STATION
ESA press release

The successful flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia with the 
European-built Spacelab in its cargo bay, which landed at Kennedy 
Space Center in Florida on 7 July, was not only the longest 
Shuttle mission - 17 days - to date but also brought the USA, 
Europe and Canada another important step closer to scientific 
utilization of the International Space Station.

The beginning of in-orbit assembly of the International Space 
Station is only about 500 days away:  the first element, the 
Russian-built Functional Payload Block (FGB transliterated from 
the Russian), will be launched into low Earth orbit in November 
1997.

The STS-78 mission was launched on 20 June, carrying the Life and 
Microgravity Spacelab.  One of its main purposes was to study the 
effects that the near-weightlessness or microgravity that space 
provides has on fundamental physical processes, such as 
crystallization, solidification, evaporation and condensation.  
The other part of the scientific mission was devoted to gaining a 
better understanding of the effects of long-term spaceflight on 
astronauts' physical and mental condition.

Gravity is one of the four basic physical forces (the others are 
the electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak nuclear 
binding forces) and influences nearly all physical, chemical and 
biological processes.  The influence of gravity often masks our 
view of other forces and phenomena, or even acts as a disturbing 
force.  This is true in particular of processes which take place 
in very unstable and sensitive areas between two different states 
of matter, such as liquid/solid or liquid/vapor.  The study of 
such processes, which play a key role in many energy-conversion 
and industrial processes on Earth, in weightlessness, or "under 
microgravity conditions" as the specialists say, brings new 
insights that are applicable on Earth.

The European Space Agency provided four of the research 
facilities on board and over half the 41 experiments.  The 
facilities are:

* the Advanced Gradient Heating Facility, a furnace which 
generates a well-defined heat profile of up to 1115 C in the 
experiment samples, and was used for metallurgical experiments 
and for the growth of semiconductor crystals,

* the Advanced Protein Crystallization Facility, which uses three 
different methods of growing protein crystals and applies 
interferometric means to determine concentration differences,

* the Bubble, Drop and Particle Unit to study how bubbles, drops 
and particles react and interact during melting and 
solidification, and investigate convection, evaporation and 
condensation phenomena,

* the Torque Velocity Dynamometer, which looks rather like a 
piece of exercise equipment that would be found in a fitness 
center, used to perform precise investigations of the effects of 
spaceflight on astronauts' muscles.

In addition, ESA provided a set of very sensitive sensors, called 
the Microgravity Measurement Assembly, which were placed at 
various locations in the Spacelab and measured the level of 
microgravity and the impact of various disturbances caused, for 
example, by atmospheric drag or even the astronauts' movements.  
The measurements were relayed in real time to scientists working 
on the ground.

ESA financed the four facilities, which were developed and 
manufactured by various European industrial companies.  Under a 
cooperation agreement with NASA, ESA provides and supports 
facilities and in exchange makes half of their utilization 
available to NASA-selected researchers and their experiments.  
The same type of exchange arrangement is envisaged for the early 
utilization phase of the International Space Station.

This flight also saw another first, the most extensive use of 
"telescience" to date.  Applying a technique that ESA is 
developing for the International Space Station, scientists can 
monitor and control their on-board experiments from their own 
laboratories, where they are able to make use of expertise, 
processing capabilities and reference facilities.  Such a 
capability is particularly important during long missions.  In 
addition to several remote sites across the USA, there were five 
sites in Europe:  in Toulouse (F), Aachen (D) Brussels (B), 
Naples and Turin (I).

This method of work will be widely used for the International 
Space Station which will remain in orbit for over 10 years, 
providing scientists with an ongoing, long-term opportunity for 
scientific research in space.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
End Marsbugs Vol.  3, No.  7.


