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Keeping an eye on outer space |
Artist's view of shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope |
When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit in 1990, the pictures it sent home were out of focus. There were "spherical aberrations" in its mirrors, and the reflected images were of little use to astronomers. One of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in history appeared to be a failure of cosmic proportions.
Back on earth all hell broke loose. Newsweek ran a cover story entitled "Star Crossed: NASA's $1.5 billion blunder."
A Los Angeles Times cartoon featured the telescope pointed at God, who implored with outstretched hand, "no pictures please." And in a heated debate on Capital Hill, one senator waved a copy of Dr. Robert Smith's book, The Space Telescope, at the head of NASA demanding an explanation.
Because he had chronicled every step of the Hubble project, Smith fast became the undisputed authority on the growing pains of the most complex spacecraft ever built. "That's a bit unusual for a historian, I suspect, to get that kind of quick reflex," says Smith, the new head of the history and classics department, fresh from the space history chair at the Smithsonian Institute.
The Space Telescope has seen two editions and several printings since its release in 1989, and has sold between 12,000 and 15,000 copies. In the academic world, those are runaway best-seller numbers, a reflection of the Hubble's grip on the popular imagination.
After the notorious mirrors were repaired in 1993, the telescope finally showed astronomers, and everyone else, the glossy images they'd been expecting to see. Good news for Smith, since he's planning a second volume on the Hubble's life in orbit, outlining the social impact of its findings back on terra firma.
Smith's interest as a historian of 19th and 20th century science and technology is not so much in the hard science as in how such projects come about, sometimes called "the new techno-politics." In other words, what political forces propel such hugely expensive spacecraft into orbit? How does the need to lobby politicians and sell space exploration to the public influence the pursuit of scientific knowledge? And why does one project, such as the Hubble, appear to deliver more bang for the buck than another?
"Politics plays a very large part in this," Smith says. "[The Hubble] was very attractive for a number of reasons in the 1970s. At that point the U.S. government was looking to boost spending on basic scientific research." The Space Shuttle was also in the planning stages and "it made no sense to build a shuttle unless you were going to put things in it."
But perhaps most important, he says, the telescope was an easy sell for one reason - it came with pictures.
"If taxpayers have provided all this money for this project, they want to see the payoff. The Hubble in the end has been exceptionally successful at that. Lots of its images have ended up on the front pages of newspapers, news magazines, scientific magazines-some of them are probably the most famous images of the late 20th century."
Of course, in the age of mass media, when television has become the ultimate instrument of political power, selling your research is much easier if you can package it in a sound bite. Explaining projects such as the Superconducting Supercollider (a high-energy particle accelerator in Texas cancelled after siphoning more than $2.5 billion from American coffers) is virtually impossible in less than two minutes. Not so with the Hubble, says Smith.
"When people in the 1970s were talking about the Hubble telescope, they were talking in terms that were almost immediately obvious to people, even if they were advisors to the president."
President Gerald Ford in fact became a huge fan of the telescope, says Smith, because "they were able to explain it to him in short order. He didn't need a three hour briefing to understand why it was worthwhile."
Smith has spent a good 15 years watching space history unfold from his front row seat at the Smithsonian. So why has he make the Canadian west his new home?
"It's the opportunity to work with students more than I'd been able to at the Smithsonian," he says. "I really enjoy the interaction with both undergraduate and graduate students."
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