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Space Topics: Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceThe Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Short HistoryPart 11: NASA Steps In While most SETI searches were modest, local affairs, this was not always the case. The most ambitious of all SETI searches was conducted by NASA, which had access to funding and resources on a completely different scale than any of the other searches. Indeed - NASA involvement in SETI was decisive, both in gaining mainstream respectability for the extraterrestrial search and in advancing the search technology to levels undreamt of by the Ozma pioneers. At the same time, the NASA search also demonstrated the risks of dependence on government funding: during times of budget cuts in Washington, the SETI project turned out to be extremely vulnerable to changing political winds.
In 1970 John Billingham of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, convinced Ames director Henry Mark to start a small study of SETI strategies and the likelihood of contacting an alien civilization. The result was "Project Cyclops," a 1971 summer faculty fellowship program sponsored by Stanford University and NASA Ames. The moving spirit behind the study was Bernard M. Oliver, the Hewlett Packard VP who we've already met at the 1961 Green Bank conference. The proposal that emerged from the study, under Bernard's leadership, was ambitious indeed. It envisioned a forest of about one thousand 100-meter (about 300 ft) dishes, occupying an area of about 10 kilometers in diameter. If we remember that ten years earlier project Ozma was conducted with a single 85 ft telescope, we might get an idea of the scale of the project Oliver and his colleagues were proposing. Ozma cost $2000; Cyclops called for an investment of $10 billion! The scale of the project was well beyond anything NASA would or could sanction. Its primary mission was launching spacecraft, and a SETI search would always be a sideshow for NASA. But even a small NASA program could command resources far in excess of anything available for SETI previously.
Over the next ten years, NASA continued to sponsor workshops and studies on the feasibility of SETI. Gradually, two main search strategies emerged. One approach, sponsored by NASA Ames, favored the traditional, "targeted" search. As with most (though not all) previous searches, the idea was to select certain stars, which were similar to our sun and relatively nearby, and listen carefully to any signals emanating from them. These stars, the argument went, offered the best chance of establishing contact with an alien civilization. The other approach advocated a "full sky survey," and it was championed by Bruce Murray, director of the Jet Propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. According to Murray it was futile to speculate where alien civilizations would be found. It was also useless to make any assumptions as to what frequency they would be transmitting in. The fact is, Murray insisted, that we just don't know. The only reasonable route is to systematically search the entire sky for a signal on the widest band of frequencies possible. Such a search would not be as sensitive as a targeted search, but it would make up for that by its breadth and scope. By 1979 NASA had in place the outlines of a coherent SETI plan. Instead of choosing between the competing approaches, NASA decided to pursue them both. A targeted search would be based at NASA Ames, while an all-sky survey would be headquartered at JPL. An official NASA project named the "Microwave Observing Program" (MOP) was established to conduct the search, following a period of research and development.
--Amir Alexander |
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