Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Carl Sagan wasn�t ashamed to ask big questions. �How did life begin on Earth?� �Can we duplicate those conditions in the laboratory?� �Does life exist on other worlds?� �Is there intelligent life in the universe?� �If so, how can we communicate with them?� Carl Sagan asked a lot of big questions for a scientist. Most scientists concentrate on small, highly specialized questions and use reductionist techniques to make progress. But Sagan was a generalist. He knew as much about biochemistry as he did astronomy� and he yearned to be a rocket scientist too. As a boy he loved science fi ction. As a scientist he was prolifi c. (For two fascinating accounts, see Carl Sagan, A Life by Keay Davidson and Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone.) Sagan also wrote the popular science fi ction novel Contact. In 1980, Sagan became the showman of science when he broadcast his Cosmos series. I was amazed to see the reactions of my friends and colleagues at JPL to his show. The secretaries, administrative staff, and the technicians loved Sagan�s program. �Now I understand what we�re doing here!� one of the staff exclaimed with glee. But the scientists and engineers took a dim view of Cosmos. �Bad acting, bad writing, bad science!� they�d say. I found it perplexing. I couldn�t understand why they were so angry with Sagan. What was wrong with popularizing science? Were they jealous that he had become so famous for appearing in a TV series? There was a clear dichotomy. Nontechnical people thought Sagan was great: scientists thought he was terrible. He wasn�t quite an abomination�just an embarrassment. Sagan paid for his generalist tendencies. He was denied tenure at Harvard; his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences was rejected. Scientists and engineers laughed at him behind his back. Although he published more than four hundred scientifi c and popular articles�more than the average Nobel prize winner�he was not considered a true scientist by the academy. Asking big questions is the mark of a Synthesist�one who puts disparate concepts like biology and astronomy together. Most scientists are Analysts�who believe there is one, right way to do science. Asking big questions�out loud�is something akin to asking an astronaut about the �Right Stuff.� It just isn�t something you talk about. (All of this is explained by Tom Wolfe in his extraordinary book The Right Stuff, which was also made into a great movie.) This theme of �who are you to ask?� is nicely played out in the �Galaxy Being,� the fi rst episode of the original television series The Outer Limits. A scientist, Alan (brilliantly portrayed by Cliff Robertson), is draining power from his commercial radio station to explore space. His wife, Carol, wants to know why. And how they are going to explain to their sponsors that their radio commercials have disappeared into a feeble beep. After an enigmatic pause, Alan says, �Because it�s interesting.� Carol becomes frustrated and asks, �What makes you think that you can discover anything? Who are you?� �Nobody,� answers Alan. �But the secrets of the universe don�t mind�they reveal themselves to nobodies who care.� �But now they have big laboratories that work on all those things,� says Carol. �The big laboratories spend millions of dollars, Carol, and they work slowly and surely and may get results, but not the big steps, not the breakthroughs�they come from the human mind�not the laboratory.� Carl Sagan would probably have enjoyed that Outer Limits episode. Regrettably, Sagan died prematurely of pneumonia (after a two-year battle with a preleukemic bone marrow disease) in 1996. His contributions to science are yet to be fully appreciated. Sagan gave dignity to those big questions he liked to ask. New generations of scientists are not afraid or embarrassed to ask them anymore. Sagan�s legacy is built into the current NASA mandate for exploration, which now includes: to understand the origins of life, to search for life, and to seek evidence of intelligent life in the universe. Thanks, Carl!