Magnificent Desolation (27 page)

Interestingly, as Segdev showed me around some of the Soviet space facilities, I noticed numerous posters touting the various Soviet space achievements since Sputnik. They had indeed accomplished quite a bit. Strangely, it was almost impossible to find any reference to Apollo 11 or the fact that human beings had ever landed on the moon. The Soviets exhibited posters showing their lunar rovers, vehicles that were far more comprehensive than anything we had used. Their official position was, “It’s so expensive to send people to the moon; we can send
rovers there and get the same thing done.” That was their public line, anyhow. The truth was that the Soviets had tried desperately to beat us to the moon, and to land one cosmonaut, but they just couldn’t get their big rocket, the N1, into orbit. They tried three times that we know of, and they failed all three times—the first one less than a month before Neil and I walked on the moon, followed by two more attempts in 1971 and 1972.

In Moscow, we had an appointment with the head of the Soviet space program, who assigned one of their cosmonauts to be our guide, and for a while I thought that we might be able to finagle a tour of Star City, where the cosmonauts trained. As sort of a trade-off, the Soviets wanted me to participate in a future space meeting in Austria that turned out to be motivated by Soviet propaganda. When I realized their intentions, I declined the invitation, and that, of course, ended any possibility of an excursion to Star City. That was simply the Soviet way.

I had several purposes for going on the trip, not the least of which was an opportunity to meet with an Alcoholics Anonymous group in Poland and to encourage them in their work. We also enjoyed a whirlwind detour to Sweden to visit our relatives, and we stopped over in Budapest, Hungary, and Nuremberg, Germany.

I did a few interviews, and once again attempted to answer the inevitable question of how my life had changed after traveling to the moon. There was no sharp edge to my answer, as there might have been ten or fifteen years earlier. No doubt, the German reporters were not prepared for my more subdued yet poignant answers.

Unquestionably, the highlight of the trip for me came when we stopped in Feucht, Germany, in the vicinity of Nuremberg, where we visited Hermann Oberth, one of the four early rocketry and space-travel pioneers: the Soviets had Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; America had the brilliant Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun; and the Germans had the Austrian, Hermann Oberth. Of the four, Oberth was in many ways the most important pioneer of space technology, with his focus on both the theoretical and practical aspects of rocketry. What a thrill it was for me to meet this man who not only believed early in the 1920s that we could travel to outer space, but designed the methodology
to do so. I enjoyed sharing with him some of my space concepts, such as my approach for missions to Mars, and the elderly gentleman nodded knowingly. I think it pleased Herr Oberth to know that someone in the next generation was carrying on his work. We walked and talked, and I held the elderly professor’s hand to steady him as we walked in the garden pathway in front of his house, and then on our way to the Hermann Oberth Raumfahrt Museum named in his honor. Just as the efforts of the rocketry pioneers made it possible for me to plant America’s flag on the moon, their examples have inspired me to work for the next generation, to enable them to plant our flag on Mars.

To that end, I returned home more inspired than ever to find a way to see my Mars Cycler get into the hands of people who could combine their technological expertise with the political and economic capital to make the cycler a reality. I also had another brainstorm that had been stirring in my mind for some time.

T
HE COSTS OF
putting people into space were skyrocketing, so to speak, and with the shuttle grounded, we were losing more time every day in our attempts to take ordinary people into space. But what if cost was not an issue? What if we didn’t have to depend on Congress to vote the money into the budget? What if we could finance space travel some other way? How could that be done? My mind was teeming with ideas, and the one that I settled on seemed like a plausible approach.

I envisioned a nonprofit venture called ShareSpace, intended to help get ordinary people into space. My initial plan was to sell “shares” at ten or twenty dollars each, with the proceeds going to fund long-term exploration and tourism studies of space travel. Then, every so often, there would be a drawing to award winners with space-related prizes. Initially the drawings could involve more of the public by offering all sorts of prizes including space camps for kids, suborbital jaunts into space, and perhaps, one day, trips into Earth orbit to visit space stations, space hotels and space resorts, and ultimately even trips to fly around the moon. I was convinced, and still am, that by getting more
people into space, and giving them that direct experience, the public’s involvement, rather than government’s, will spur the major advances in space exploration.

Much of my plan was still ruminating in my mind, and I was sitting in yet another mundane meeting discussing these matters, trying to convince another group of skeptics, when somebody said, “Why don’t you have a lottery?”

The notion struck me like a lightning bolt. Yes! A lottery is a great idea. Have a lottery in which millions of people contribute money for a chance to win the big prize: a trip into space! We could have other, minor prizes to keep the interest up for those who didn’t win the main trip, so I talked with adventure travel groups about providing prizes such as a trip to the North Pole and other exotic prizes. Everyone seemed interested—cautious, but interested.

I attended several national lottery “conferences” in Washington, D.C., gatherings in which people who knew how a legal lottery could be run shared their expertise and advice. Almost immediately, as my mind raced ahead to the possibilities, the obstacles and potential landmines seemed to pop up. I discovered that lotteries came under the jurisdiction of the attorney general in each individual state, so it would be difficult to have a national lottery. The most significant problem to overcome was that the lottery could not appear to be gambling.

A few years later I went to Las Vegas and talked with Sig Rogich, a casino mogul, and other people who had money and influence; a number of them seemed interested in the ShareSpace lottery. The power brokers in Las Vegas suggested that we come up with a game show in which a person could win a trip into space. That got me thinking about the possibility of a television show similar to modern-day “reality” shows, in which a group of people could compete to win an opportunity to take a short trip into space, traveling as passengers, similar to those wealthy individuals who, as of 2001, started purchasing such trips with the Russians for fees of $20 million and more!

G
RANTED, WITH THE
nation still reeling from the horror of the
Challenger
tragedy, and Christa McAuliffe’s schoolteacher-astronaut image firmly embedded in our minds, convincing the public of the possibility and the rationale for everyday folks going into space was no easy sell. Persuading Congress to pass legislation in favor of a national space lottery to be administrated by ShareSpace would be challenging. But I knew a time would come, and when it did, I would be ready. The notion stirred me then, and still does today.

Through a series of connections, I had become a visiting adjunct professor of space studies at the University of North Dakota (UND) in Grand Forks. UND wanted to develop an astronautical curriculum, and I was willing to help structure it with the goal of preparing future astronauts, engineers, and scientists to contribute to the ongoing development of next-generation spaceflight alternatives. John Odegard, a good friend of mine, was the head of the aerospace sciences department, and I was thrilled to help him set up this new program.

At the same time, Jack Anderson, communications director for President Reagan, was announcing in Washington the formation of the Young Astronauts Program, an exciting new venture intended to inspire elementary school-aged children, arouse their spirit of adventure, and help prepare them for the challenges and opportunities in space. I gladly attended the first meeting and took the idea back to John Odegard at UND, and we helped create the first chapter of the Young Astronauts at the Viking Elementary School in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I enjoyed teaching young people about space, but after the first frigid winter in North Dakota, I quickly decided that California was a better location for me. I recruited another fellow from Tom Paine’s National Commission on Space to take my place, and that ended my college teaching career. I guess some of the students were listening in my courses; just recently I received an e-mail out of the blue from a former student, who married his sweetheart, also a fellow student in the program, and now they are both Continental Airlines pilots. Perhaps soon they’ll be flying Continental Spacelines!

Shortly after I returned from the Soviet Union, I received a call
from David Duclon, one of the creators of a popular NBC sitcom,
Punky Brewster.
As he had watched the news coverage of the
Challenger
accident, David wondered how children might be affected who had witnessed the tragedy. Then he heard the next day that his real-life star, Soleil Moon Frye, who played Punky, had dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but, because of the tragedy, had decided to rule out that possibility. That got Duclon thinking about an episode that might help kids all over the country work through similar fears.

Would I be willing to come on the show, Duclon wondered, and help Punky resolve some of her anxiety, and thus hopefully restore an interest in space for some of America’s kids? It was an offer I could not possibly turn down.

Working with the advice of several child psychologists, Duclon carefully crafted a story that began with Punky writing in her diary about what she had learned from the space-shuttle accident. Then, through flashbacks, the audience discovers how she came to that understanding—starting several days before the liftoff and then skipping ahead to that afternoon, when Punky comes home from school to talk about the tragedy with Henry (George Gaynes), her foster father. My role was simple: I just had to be myself, as I explained to Punky that all great explorers take risks, but the rewards are worth it. We talked about her desire to be an astronaut, and I encouraged her to pursue her goals. The episode also gave me a chance to get in a plug for the Young Astronauts program, which I had strongly supported since its inception. The show was one of the most widely watched in the short-lived sitcom’s run, but it did not prevent NBC from canceling the series the following season. I’m sure it can still be found in reruns around the world.