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The Planetary Society Weblog

By Emily Lakdawalla


In memory of Carl Sagan

Dec. 19, 2006 | 19:38 PST | Dec. 20 03:38 UTC

Carl Sagan passed away 10 years ago December 20. He was, of course, one of the three founders of The Planetary Society, and his legacy looms large in our organization. I only knew him through the Cosmos series on public TV, which I've talked about before.

In Sagan's memory, another blogger has created a memorial "blog-a-thon" among his fans throughout the blogosphere. We figured that the best person to blog about him would be Society cofounder Lou Friedman. -- ESL

Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman
Click to enlarge >
Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman
The founders of The Planetary Society.
Lou Friedman writes:

December 20 is the 10th anniversary of the day we lost Carl Sagan. From its founding in 1980 until the day he died in 1996, Carl served as Chairman of the Board of The Planetary Society. The organization lost a brilliant and charismatic leader. I lost an inspirational boss and a good friend.

The idea for The Planetary Society was conceived in 1979, while Carl was in Hollywood working on Cosmos, and Bruce Murray was leading JPL during the Viking mission to Mars and the Voyager tour of the outer planets. Public interest in exploring other worlds had never been so high. And yet, the political leadership in Washington was withdrawing support for such pioneering missions of discovery. Carl and Bruce decided that part of the solution was to demonstrate that the public did support these missions, and the means to do that was to build an active constituency to influence political decisions. They asked me to serve as Executive Director and a new public membership organization was born.

Those were heady times. The Planetary Society became the fastest-growing membership organization of the 1980s, proving that the politicians were out of step with the public, and helping to reverse some amazingly short-sighted decisions. Do you remember the threat to shut down Voyager 2 before it reached Uranus? We face a similar fight today, as NASA's science budget is raided to provide money to keep the space shuttle flying. I am pretty sure that Carl, were he to assess the current situation, would feel a distinct sense of déjà vu.

I remember one meeting in The Planetary Society early days, when Carl wondered if someday we might reach the point we could sponsor clever research or path-breaking ideas for planetary exploration. Within 18 months, he had us funding the innovative work of Harvard University's Paul Horowitz in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and soon thereafter we were sponsoring work to detect extra-solar planets, testing in-situ propellant production for Mars, and discovering near-Earth asteroids. With Carl's leadership, we were always ahead of our time. We strive to continue in that tradition.

Carl could be really annoying -– nit-picking like some college professor, precise like some laboratory scientist, fussing about language like some prize-winning author, hard-to-get-to like a celebrity, and demanding like a father. Of course, he was all of those things. He also was challenging. I remember one scientist introducing him at a national meeting to an overflow audience as someone who works at the edge of reality, but always just on the right side of it. He often angered his colleagues when he speculated about life on Mars (ahead of the recent discoveries about flowing water); or drew attention to pyramids on Mars (natural formations, not artifacts); expounded on the possibilities for extraterrestrial life and intelligent civilizations; and in later years, campaigned about nuclear winter and global climate change. But, except for extraterrestrial life, time validated him.

Surprising to some, his scientific work was often marked by conservatism. He helped prove that the scorching surface of Venus was absolutely inhospitable to life, and he was part of the team that revealed the toxicity of the Martian soil. His review of the scientific work suggesting there were traces of Martian life in the ALH84001 meteorite was cautious. He praised the work, while urging deeper study.

For me, I valued Carl's insight the most. And frankly, I miss it now. As we struggled with the niggling little decisions necessary to running an organization like The Planetary Society, Carl would provide the broad perspective that would allow us to chart the right course. He was unsurpassed at evaluating public reaction -- one reason why he became so extraordinarily popular. I can't help wondering how he would have navigated this new world of cable and satellite TV and the Internet. At the time Cosmos aired, there were only three major broadcast networks and one public network on TV. Information was precious. Now, it seems, there are billions and billions of information outlets. How would Carl have coped? Would his distinctive voice be lost in the noise? No, his signal would still be coming in loud and clear.