joint session of the House Select Committee on Aging (Honorable Claude Pepper, M.C.,
Chairman) and the House Committee on Science and Technology (Honorable Don Fuqua,
M.C., Chairman)- subject: Applications of Space Technology for the Elderly and the
Handicapped.
I stared at that letter with all the enthusiasm of a bridegroom handed a
summons for jury duty. Space technology? Yeah, sure, I was gung-ho for space
technology, space travel, spaceships, space exploration, space colonies-anything
about space, always have been.
But “applications of space technology for the elderly and the handicapped”?
Why not bee culture? Or Estonian folk dancing? Or the three-toed salamander? Tantric
Yoga?
I faced up to the problem the way any married man does: “Honey? How do I get
out of this?”
“Come clean,” she advised me. “Tell them bluntly that you know nothing about
the subject. Shall I write a letter for you to sign?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Certainly it is. We don’t want to go to Washington. In July? Let’s not be
silly.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“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
Washington 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 space program is in
bad trouble. This joint session may not help-it looks as if it would take a miracle
to save the space 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 Space,
greatest era of our race-the greatest!-despite gasoline shortages, pollution,
overpopulation, inflation, wars and threats of war. ‘These too shall pass’-but the
stars abide.
“Our race will spread out through space-unlimited room, unlimited energy,
unlimited wealth. This is certain.
“But I am not certain that the working language will be English. The people
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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 space 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 space 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