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Projects: Messages from Earth

Afterword To Visions of Mars

by Louis Friedman,
Executive Director, The Planetary Society

Click to enlarge > Louis Friedman Credit: Donna Stevens, The Planetary Society

Among the earliest supporters of The Planetary Society were three science fiction writers who were devoted to our goals of the explorations of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life:  Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke (or ABC, as I began to call them).  They were true believers in the human process of exploration and discovery of new worlds.  They didn’t just write about it, they worked for it—and the help they gave The Planetary Society involved a real intellectual and emotional commitment.  They also shared another outlook in common with us—one that was more controversial and not in vogue during the Society’s formative years in the 1980s:  They shared a global outlook, that it was the people of planet Earth who were exploring the planets, not just the United States, the Soviet Union, or some space agency; but the entire population of the planet.

I called Isaac one day on a trivial matter relating to some article of his.  His response to my cursory “How are you?” told me (not in words, just in his voice) that he was dying.  The realization hit me that he, and others who had inspired many of us to work in the field of space exploration, would not live to see humanity become a multi-planet species.  I believed that somehow we ought to seek a tangible legacy for them on other worlds—and that is when I thought of trying to get works of A, B, and C taken to Mars.  This was 1991, and the next planned vehicle going to the martian surface was that called the “small station,” on the Russian Mars 94 mission.  We were already working closely with the Russian team on that mission, and that would be an opportunity to send the stories to Mars.

First, however, I had to discuss the idea with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, co-founders and leaders of The Planetary Society.  They were enthusiastic, and offered to develop the idea with the three principals.  All three of them endorsed the idea and pledged their cooperation.

Sagan and Murray also helped develop the idea beyond my simple notion of microfilming  to recording a few stories on a compact disc.  Sagan offered many ideas of what such a disc might contain, and what it might signify, not just to your generation of future explorers, but to ours, grappling with the questions of the political rationale for the human exploration of the solar system.

Dr. Sagan’s direction about the disc’s content, and technical interfaces with the Russian Mars lander team under the direction of Dr. Viacheslav Linkin,  made me realize there was much more to be done if the simple idea were to be realized.  We engaged Jon Lomberg as project manager to provide the creative direction to select and organize the content and at the same time deal with the scientific and technical world and Walker E. (Gene) Giberson as technical director to manage the production for the disc and its interface to the space hardware for the flight to Mars.

The disc was produced, with much more on it than I ever imagined and placed on the Mars 94 lander, together with a micro-chip with scientific experiments and an electron beam lithograph containing the names of all The Planetary Society members world-wide.  It was launched, but the Mars 94 mission was lost when the rocket fourth stage failed.   The payload lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.  The micro-chip and members' names were later sent on the U.S. Mars Pathfinder mission (to what is now appropriately named, the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on Mars) in 1997.   Now we are realizing our initial idea and sending the inspirational works of Mars exploration to form the first library for future explorers there.

I believe this project is beautiful testimony about the basic tenet of The Planetary Society— to inspire the people of Earth (and someday of other planets) to explore new worlds and seek other life.  Whether life on Mars, or on any extraterrestrial world, exists now or existed in the past we do not know, but we are certain that it will exist in the future.   To that future life we dedicate our effort.