PART 2 : BEYOND THE SUNSET: JOURNEY ACROSS THE SOLAR SYSTEM
CHAPTER 6. NEW MOON
1 On Voyager malfunctions, I rely on several accounts: J. E. Davies, “A Brief History of the Voyager Project: Part 2,” Spaceflight 23, no. 5 (May 1981): 71-72; Bruce Murray, Journey into Space: The First Thirty Years of Space Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), pp. 143-47. A good summary exists in Miner, Uranus, pp. 108-12. For Voyager 2, see Swift, Voyager Tales, especially John Casani, pp. 119-20; “Anxiety attack” and “Superautonomous” in Murray, Journey into Space, pp. 146-47.
2 Miner, Uranus, pp. 108-12. A good journalistic account of Voyager woes, beginning with the faulty Centaur rocket, is available in Joel Davis, Flyby: The Interplanetary Odyssey of Voyager 2 (New York: Atheneum, 1987), pp. 42-46. For detailed accounts of malfunctions, see Davies, “Brief History,” and Heacock, “The Voyager Spacecraft.”
3 Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668 (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 15-16; Donald Rayfield, The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky: Explorer of Central Asia (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1976), p. 69.
4 Best summary is in Goetzmann, New Lands, New Men, chapter 6; number of expeditions, p. 266.
5 Quote from Fergus Fleming, Barrow’s Boys (New York: Grove Press, 1998), p. 1.
6 See Lisle A. Rose, Assault Against Eternity: Richard E. Byrd and the Exploration of Antarctica, 1946-47 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1980).
7 An excellent institutional history that addresses this issue directly is Peter J. Westwick, Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program 1976- 2004 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007); a distilled synopsis is available on pp. 309-13.
8 Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 154-55.
CHAPTER 7. CRUISE
9 Sieur de Champlain, “Treatise on Seamanship and the Duty of a Good Seaman,” Appendix II, in Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1972).
10 Ibid.
11 My analysis follows the criticisms summarized in NASA’s review of JPL oversight of Voyager, reproduced in Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 141-42. The fullest account of the April 1978 communications breakdown is in Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 76-77.
12 Quote from Clayton R. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), p. ix. My analysis follows closely this excellent study.
13 Again, I follow Koppes, JPL, closely, pp. ix-x.
14 Craig B. Watt, “The Road to the Deep Space Network,” IEEE Spectrum (April 1993): 50. Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 17. Other JPL quotes from Koppes, JPL, pp. 90-95.
15 Pickering quoted in Koppes, JPL, p. 112.
16 This is a primary theme of two outstanding institutional histories: Koppes, JPL, op. cit., and Peter J. Westwick, Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program 1976-2004 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007). It is present in all of the published accounts of Voyager, although the liveliest and most informative is Murray, Journey into Space.
17 There are several accounts of the Great Surveys. I follow Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, chapters 12-16. The other prime contenders are Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), which hedges into Powell hagiography, and Richard A. Bartlett, Great Surveys of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962).
18 Quote from Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, p. 589.
CHAPTER 8. MISSING MARS
19 See Carl O. Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 46, 138; and Morison, The Great Explorers, pp. 390-91.
20 Camões, The Lusíads, 9:44 and 8:98. Díaz in Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. by J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 274.
21 Richard Hakluyt, Voyages and Discoveries: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. and abridged by Jack Beeching (New York: Penguin, 1973), p. 60.
22 Columbus quote from Cecil Jane, trans. and ed., The Four Voyages of Columbus: A History in Eight Documents (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), p. 12. The Spanish phrasing reads: “esta es para desear, e, v [ista], es para nunca dexar.”
23 Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 131; for a better take on Henry’s career overall, see Peter Russell, Prince Henry “The Navigator”: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). Morison, The Great Explorers, pp. 390-91.
24 Columbus, in Morison, The Great Explorers, pp. 390-91, and quotes from p. xvi. Fernández-Armesto, The Pathfinders, p. 145-47; Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, p. 37.
25 Fernández-Armesto, The Pathfinders, p. 145.
26 Orders quoted in Newby, The Rand McNally World Atlas of Exploration, p. 134.
27 Best summary of purposes and practices of the American exploration throughout the century is Goeztmann, Exploration and Empire; Ashley quote, p. 105; King Survey quote from p. 437.
28 Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913 (New York: Penguin Books, 1970, reprint), pp. 642-43.
29 Ibid., p. 643.
30 John Parker, Books to Build an Empire (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1965), p. 39.
31 Ibid., p. 102.
32 Hakluyt, Voyages and Discoveries, p. 31.
33 Ibid., p. 38.
34 Morison, The Great Explorers, p. 127. See Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 249.
35 This paragraph is a close paraphrase and partial quote from Goetzmann, New Lands, New Men, pp. 229-30.
36 For a distillation of his thoughts, see “Which Way Is Up?” pp. 124-33, in Arthur C. Clarke, The Challenge of the Spaceship (New York: Ballantine, 1961).
37 Clarke, Exploration of Space (1951), pp. 183-85.
38 Ibid., pp. 186-87, 194-95.
39 Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan (New York: Dell, 1959), p. 30.
40 Lusíads, 1:27, 2:45.
41 Ibid., 4:94-95.
42 The Old Man’s soliloquy runs from 4:94 to 4:104.
43 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), pp. 2, 4, 368.
44 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, pp. 359-60.
45 Bertrand H. Bronson, ed., Samuel Johnson: Rasselas, Poems, Selected Prose (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958), p. 511.
46 “Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew that none could be obtained”: Bronson, ed., Samuel Johnson, p. 612.
47 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1946), p. 355.
48 Amitai Etzioni, The Moon-Doggle (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1964), pp. ix, 111.
49 The statistic comes from an outstanding general survey of motives in Roger Launius, “Compelling Rationales for Space Flight: History and the Search for Relevance,” pp. 37-71, in Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius, eds., Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight. NASA SP-2006- 4702 (Washington, D.C.: 2006). Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders, p. 399. Two other useful articles on popular support (and funding) are Roger D. Launius, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of U.S. Human Spaceflight,” SpacePolicy 19 (2003): 163-75, and Howard E. McCurdy, “The Cost of Space Flight,” Space Policy 10, no. 4 (1994): 277-89.
50 The weight of literature on Mars could sink the International Space Station. A concise summary of the major events, at least for the American program, is Thor Hogan, Mars Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative, NASA SP-2007-4410 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2007), pp. 1-21. “Algorithm” quote from Thomas O. Paine, in foreword of Wernher von Braun, The Mars Project (Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 1991; reprint of 1953 edition), p. vii.
51 Ray Bradbury et al., Mars and
the Mind of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
52 The Saturn and Jupiter events were recorded and are available in poor-quality DVDs from JPL.
53 Roger D. Bourke et al., “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977: The Mission Frame,” Astronautics and Aeronautics (Nov. 1972): 42-49.
CHAPTER 9. CRUISE
54 Miner, Uranus, pp. 110-11. A complete account of the episode is also available in Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 76-77.
55 For a succinct summary of what Voyager navigation involved, see Robert Cesarone interview, in Swift, Voyager Tales, pp. 262-73. A good account of adjustments is available in J. K. Davies, “A Brief History of the Voyager Project,” Spaceflight 23, no. 5 (May 1981): 72-73.
56 Major sources: Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (New York: Dover Publications, 1977); Parry, The Discovery of the Sea, and The Age of Reconnaissance; and for a concise distillation, Samuel Eliot Morison, The Great Explorers, pp. 26-32.
57 The description follows Parry, Discovery of the Sea, pp. 147-50.
58 Morison, Champlain, pp. 256, 267.
59 For the specific makeup of the NAV group and its techniques, see Miner, Uranus, pp. 117-18. The best general accounts of navigation in principle and as practiced for Voyager are Robert John Cesarone, pp. 261-73, and Charles E. Kohlhase, pp. 83-100, in Swift, Voyager Tales; and Nicks, Far Travelers, esp. pp. 22-24, 29-30, 41, 56.
60 I found Nicks’s explanation in Far Travelers the most enlightening, and have followed his accounts, although most deal with earlier spacecraft and handle Voyager especially for the complicated maneuvers around Saturn.
CHAPTER 10. ENCOUNTER: ASTEROID BELT
61 The Pioneer bibliography is appropriately long. A good summary is Mark Wolverton, The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2004). Two overlapping but lively surveys by some of the principal participants and the project’s best-known journalist are available in Richard O. Fimmel, William Swindell, and Eric Burgess, Pioneer Odyssey, NASA SP-396 (NASA, 1977), and an updated version, in Fimmel, et al., Pioneer, op. cit.
62 Quote by John Naugle, in Wolverton, Depths of Space, p. 140, which also distills Pioneer’s achievements on p. 4.
63 See Fimmel et al., Pioneer, pp. 84-85, with a more detailed explanation of the imaging system on pp. 251-52.
64 The story of the choice of routes is told in all the Pioneer accounts. The most elaborate is in Wolverton, Depths of Space, pp. 140-49. But see also, Robert S. Kraemer, Beyond the Moon: A Golden Age of Planetary Exploration 1971-1978 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2000), pp. 77-78.
65 See Fimmel et al., Pioneer, pp. 248-50. Burgess offers a more detailed account in Eric Burgess, Far Encounter: The Neptune System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 57-58. Wolverton, Depths of Space, pp. 184-85.
66 Wolverton gives an eloquent eulogy in Depths of Space, pp. 199-209 and 224-25.
67 Kraemer, Beyond the Moon, pp. 71-72; Wolverton, The Depths of Space, pp. 95, 98. A good description of the asteroid belt problems, anticipated and real, is in Richard O. Fimmel, James Van Allen, and Eric Burgess, Pioneer: First to Jupiter, Saturn, and Beyond. NASA SP-446 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980), pp. 91-92.
68 Wolverton, Depths of Space, pp. 97-98.
69 Kraemer, Beyond the Moon, pp. 73-74; Wolverton, Depths of Space, pp. 112-15.
CHAPTER 11. CRUISE
70 Quoted in Bruce Mazlish, ed., The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), p. 4.
71 Ibid.
CHAPTER 12. ENCOUNTER: JUPITER
72 By far the best account for encounter is David Morrison and Jane Samz, Voyage to Jupiter, NASA-SP-439 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980); for above details, see p. 56. I have followed this text closely, largely doing what any collage does, namely, deface the original to make a new whole.
73 Ibid., pp. 58, 60.
74 Ibid., pp. 60, 63.
75 Ibid., pp. 74-86; Stone quote on p. 86.
76 Ibid., pp. 74-86; Callisto quote quote on p. 86.
77 Ibid., p. 75.
78 Ibid., Soderblom quote on p. 67.
79 Ibid., pp. 86-91.
80 Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, abridged and translated by Jason Wilson (London: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 26. Darwin quoted in Jason Wilson, introduction to Humboldt, Personal Narrative, p. xxxvi. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, ed. Leonard Engel (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 2-3.
81 I again follow, in this entire section, Morrison and Samz, Voyage to Jupiter , pp. 97-99.
82 Ibid., pp. 101-2.
83 Soderblom quote from ibid., p. 106; Mutch quote, ibid., p. 108.
84 Cited in ibid., pp. 114-15.
85 Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Canary Islands After the Conquest: The Making of a Colonial Society in the Early Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 205, fn 6. For a general consideration of the Canaries within early European expansion, see Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders, pp. 122-51.
86 Fernández-Armesto, The Canary Islands After the Conquest, p. 15; on Sancho Panza: from Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders, p. 145.
87 See Columbus, Four Voyages, p. 12.
88 For an introduction to the tropic island as Eden and the role of traveling naturalists generally, see Grove, Green Imperialism.
89 Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Paul Turner (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 38, 42.
90 An excellent survey of space-based utopias is available in DeWitt Douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), which includes an insightful chapter on O’Neill. I have also found very useful the excellent summary in Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), chapter 2.
CHAPTER 13. CRUISE
91 Sources: Morison, The Great Explorers, pp. 353-54; Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders, pp. 174-78; and for an especially lively account, Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 113-19.
92 Charles Kohlhase, ed., The Voyager Neptune Travel Guide. JPL Publication 89-24 (Pasadena, Calif.: JPL, 1989), pp. 103-4.
93 I rely on several accounts, listed in these notes. Of particular value is Tony Reichhardt, “Gravity’s Overdrive,” Air and Space/Smithsonian 8, no. 6 (1994): 72-78. Details of Minovitch’s work are difficult to extract from JPL sources, ostensibly because they are covered by privacy guidelines governing personnel disputes, but likely because of threatened lawsuits. Some of the major documents are posted on Minovitch’s Web site (www.gravityassist.com). The responses of his JPL supervisors are unavailable. On JPL’s inability to furnish details, I quote Julie Cooper, archivist, who helped as much as she could: “The correspondence about Minovitch was denied clearance on the grounds that it is personnel related—like correspondence about any dispute between an employer and employee. Our clearance procedures at JPL have changed since the documents were processed back in the early 1990s, so they weren’t separated from the rest of the collection, as discreet records should be. So, the correspondence won’t be available to any other researchers, and you won’t be able to use those documents again.” E-mail to author, Oct. 6, 2008.
94 M. A. Minovitch, “A Method for Determining Interplanetary Free-Fall Reconnaissance Trajectories,” JPL Technical Memo no. 312-130 (August 23, 1961). Earlier memos that summer had inquired into conic trajectories of various kinds.
95 Figures from Reichhardt, “Gravity’s Overdrive,” p. 76. Inner versus outer planet contributions from G. A. Flandro, “Fast Reconnaissance Missions to the Outer Solar System Utilizing Energy Derived from the Gravitational Field of Jupiter,” Astronautica Acta 12, no. 4 (1966): 334.
96 For the evolution of publications, see M. A. Min
ovitch, “The Determination and Characteristics of Ballistic Interplanetary Trajectories Under the Influence of Multiple Planetary Attractions,” JPL Technical Report no. 32-464 (1963); M. A. Minovitch, “Utilizing Large Planetary Perturbations for the Design of Deep-Space, Solar-Probe, and Out-of-Ecliptic Trajectories,” JPL Technical Memo no. 312-514 (1965). For a general survey of efforts, see Richard L. Dowling et al., “The Origin of Gravity-Propelled Interplanetary Space Travel,” 41st Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, IAA-90-630 (1990), pp. 1-19. For a parallel project, outside JPL, see Maxwell W. Hunter II, “Unmanned Scientific Exploration Throughout the Solar System,” Space Science Reviews 6 (1967): 601.
97 Cutting quote: Joe Cutting to Mike Minovitch, interoffice memo, Jan. 21, 1964, JPL, p. 2 (accessible at www.gravityassist.com).
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