Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, April 19, 2010 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Robert Zimmerman
"Predicting the Future of Space Travel, Based on the Past"
ABSTRACT -- What shall the future of space exploration be like? Will the United States continue to dominate? Or will other nations move to the forefront and eclipse the present generation of American and Russian pioneers? Moreover, will the next travelers to other worlds go to the Moon or the asteroids? Or will they head straight to Mars, as some passionately advocate?
Predicting the precise chronology of these future events, ALL of which are inevitable, is certainly impossible. However, human history does repeat itself, and a close and objective look at history can give us a fairly good idea of what will happen in the future. This is especially important in understanding how the Obama administration's efforts to reshape the entire space industry will influence future events.
In his lecture, Robert Zimmerman will outline a few examples of past exploration -- both famous as well as obscure -- and use these stories to show that the path we are on today is actually heading in a direction that few expected or predicted only a few years ago.
SPEAKER -- Robert Zimmerman is an award-winning science journalist and historian who has written four books and more than a hundred articles on science, engineering, and the history of space exploration and technology. His newest book, The Universe In A Mirror: The Saga Of The Hubble Space Telescope And The Visionaries Who Built It (Princeton University Press), tells the story of the people who conceived, built, and saved the Hubble Space Telescope. His previous book, Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, And The Quest For Interplanetary Travel (Joseph Henry Press), was awarded the American Astronautical Society's Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award in 2003 as the best space history for the general public. His other books include Genesis, The Story Of Apollo 8 (Four Walls Eight Windows), which describes the family and political tale behind the first manned mission to another world, and The Chronological Encyclopedia Of Discoveries In Space (Oryx Press), a detailed reference book describing what was accomplished on every single space mission, from October 1957 with Sputnik through December 1999.
His magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in Astronomy, Air & Space, Sky & Telescope, Natural History, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Wired, Invention & Technology, and a host of other publications. In 2000 he was co-winner of the David N. Schramm Award, given by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for Science Journalism, for his essay in The Sciences, "There She Blows," on the 35-year-old astronomical mystery of gamma ray bursts. Recently, his profile of Frank Cepollina appeared in the May 2010 issue of Air & Space.
In addition to his writing, Mr. Zimmerman is also a cave explorer and cartographer, and has participated in numerous projects exploring and mapping previously unknown caves across the eastern United States. It is this activity that has allowed him to actually "go where no one has gone before," thus providing him a better understanding of the perspective of engineers and scientists as they struggle to push the limits of human knowledge.