As Venus slowly turns, there may be snow on the night side. A water-table will develop. Deserts that may be a billion years old will turn to mud.
By now the surface will be tolerable to humans with protective equipment, and the seeding can begin. Scientists will want to move very carefully, introducing only the right plants and insects, fearful lest an unbalanced ecology result. Against this there will be pressure from colonists who want the job over and done with.
Some will demand that we dump a little of everything we can think of onto Venus and let competition lake its course; an ecology will result inevitably, although we may not be able to predict what it will be.
There will also be tailored organisms. Microbiologists are already to the stage of switching genes from one species to another, and it shouldn't be long before this is done with higher plants and animals.
After all, Venus will have special conditions. That long rotation period means severe winters, like the Arctic tundra or worse. Much of Venus may resemble Siberia or the North Slopes of Alaska, which, if you haven't seen them, are second only to Antarctica as candidates for the most desolate spots on Earth. On the other hand, Venus will still have a thick atmosphere, and she's closer to the Sun. We don't know what the final temperature will be, or how much heat-pumping the atmosphere can do.
It may not be the most pleasant world imaginable. Some writers have speculated that Venetian colonists will be nomads, staying on the move to live in perpetual sunshine. Others have described a world of paired cities connected by rails: as sunset approaches, the inhabitants escape the winter night by travel to their city's twin at the antipodes, somewhat as the Martian colonists migrated yearly in RED PLANET.
Much of this scheme was described by Carl Sagan in a 1961 article in Science. Poul Anderson amplified it in "To Build A World," Galaxy, 1964 (June). In Poul's story there was fierce competition for the better parts of Venus, resulting in a clan structure social system and innumerable limited wars between clans. It's a reasonable projection: the first settlements will be small, probably dominated by one man, and intermarriage may well result in clans.
We haven't yet mapped the face of Venus, so we don't know where or how large the seas will be. We don't know a lot (really, almost nothing) about the sub-structure of Venerian soil. How much water will be absorbed? At what level will a water-table form?
For that matter, will it be enough to introduce our algae to get everything started, or will we also have to provide fertilizers: phosphorus, trace elements, that sort of thing?
Our massive tampering with atmospheric energies and surface temperatures may trigger tectonic activities. Venus may erupt in a number of places, and spew out even more CO2, water vapor, methane, and such like.
Project Morning Star won't be all smooth sailing. There will undoubtedly be unforeseen problems. For all that, the terraforming of Venus is no pipe dream. We could do it. We can do it right now, if we want to pay for it. We can create a new frontier, larger than ever was the New World.
In other words, there's room here for more stories than we had about the "old" Venus with her swamps and dinosaurs. True, we won't have any intelligent Venerians to contend with. It's unlikely that there's any life on Venus at all.
Unlikely but not impossible. There are, after all, Earth-like conditions of temperature and pressure in the Venerian atmosphere, and this is about the only planet—other than Earth—in the Solar System that can make that statement. Moreover, it may be that there have always been spots with Terrestrial conditions on Venus.
True, life isn't likely to have evolved under present Venerian conditions, but some planetary scientists now believe that Venus was once much more like Earth. Then, for reasons not completely understood, the planet began to heat up and dry out.
If by that time life had evolved, it may have taken to the air, and be hanging around there yet.
It isn't likely, of course. If Venus had really active bugs they should be busily tearing off the CO2 cover that keeps Venus hot, and we wouldn't need to infect the Queen of Heaven with blue-green algae.
If there are any native Venerian bugs, Project Morning Star will probably doom them to extinction.
* * *
We have the technology to make Venus a place where we can live. Have we the right to do it? Should we, granted that we can?
After all, this is "pollution" on a grand scale. True it's not pollution to our way of thinking; but what's good clean air to us is certainly un-natural to Venus.
I suppose that we can and probably will debate this question for a long time to come, and when the debate is finished I suspect that no one will have changed opinion by one jot. Those who feel it monstrous to go about interfering with "nature," and see the terraforming of Venus as blasphemy (they will probably use the term "obscene") are not likely to change their minds.
Those who see Project Morning Star as the most glorious opportunity that has yet faced man are unlikely to be concerned about Venerian gas-bags or other hypothetical Venerian critters (beyond building them a zoo to live in).
Meanwhile, one thing is certain: it is possible that within my lifetime I could dateline this column "Venusberg." We can do it, and some of you could live there. Just after the Big Rain.
* * *
In the years since the above was written we have gained considerably more knowledge of Venus. Conditions there are even more frightful than we thought, and the terraforming of Venus appears now- to be more difficult than I knew.
It is still not impossible—and our capabilities have increased as well.
We could bring about the Big Rain if we wanted to.
Flying Saucers
Science fiction people, fan and professional alike, tend to avoid the subject of "flying saucers." After all, we're much more scientific than that!
I recall the first SF club meeting I ever attended. It was in Seattle, and the group was called The Nameless Ones. (They had a nasty habit of electing newcomers President at their first meeting; but that's another story.) For some reason a reporter showed up, and the first question she asked was about "flying saucers." The Nameless rather gruffly told her we weren't interested and never would be.
The reaction was probably justified. After all, we were those nutty people who wanted to go to the Moon, and in the 50's that was far out enough. How could we claim space travel was respectable if we were also saddled with flying saucers?
SF people have always tended to shy away from UFO's, and I've been no exception; but now the staid and stolid American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics includes panels on UFO's in their annual Aerospace Sciences meetings. If the inheritors of the professional American Rocket Society can discuss UFO's in the normal language of dull science, maybe we SF dreamers ought at least to think about them.
What really got me onto the subject, though, was the publisher of the newspaper chain I write science columns for. He wanted a feature on UFO's. I took the assignment with a certain degree of fear.
In my previous experiences, UFO enthusiasts were invariably wild-eyed, generally insisted that I look at smudgy photos, and often revealed that the US Air Force was engaged in a conspiracy to suppress all knowledge about UFO's. They told horror stories about Project Blue Book They solemnly related that the US Government had constructed a secret laboratory in the Mojave, and seduced a famous UFO investigator into thinking it was an extra-terrestrial space ship so that later they could embarrass him.
I had been told of hundreds of excellent photographs seized by the USAF Blue Book officers, taken away and never to be returned despite vigorous legal efforts to recover them—but somehow had never been given the name of the lawyer who filed the suit, the court in which it had been filed, or the judge who heard it.
I also remembered a couple of USAF captains I'd worked closely with when I was in the space program, and their stories about Blue Book. Blue Book was a "George" job (there's nobody to do it? Give it to George.) which everyone started off conscientiously and soon beg
an to hate as the silly and inconsistent stories poured in.
However, an assignment is an assignment, and I dutifully looked up and interviewed as many UFO experts as I could find.
The field turns out to be more interesting, and far more respectable, than I would have thought.
* * *
Interest in and study of Unidentified Flying Objects—UFO's—is no longer confined to fanatics and eccentrics, if indeed it ever was. I don't mean to imply contempt for all the early investigators, or for the amateur outfits like MUFON and NICAP who collect the bulk of the data on the subject. However, the professional scientists have also moved into the field.
The Dean of UFO scientists is Dr. J. Alien Hynek, Chairman of the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern, and Director of the Center for UFO Studies (Box 11, Northfield, Illinois, 60093).
The consultant list for the Center includes such notables as Dr. Claude Poher, one of the Directors of the French equivalent of NASA, at least one Nobel Laureate, and any number of random PhD's in various sciences. Dr. Hynek himself looks like a very conservative astronomer, which in fact he is. He was originally hired by USAF as a UFO consultant, and began with the opinion that UFO reports were nonsense to be explained away. Unlike some others, notably the late Dr. Edmund Condon of Colorado U., Hynek didn't keep that view.
He now hopes that some progress on UFO research may be made during his lifetime, and views his Center as his scientific legacy. His book, THE UFO EXPERIENCE , is still the best general work on the subject. One sign of the increasing respectability of UFO studies is that Hynek's book was favorably reviewed by planetologist Bruce Murray in the AAAS journal, Science. (Not that Murray is a UFO enthusiast; far from it; but he took the trouble to examine the subject before writing a review. Alas, such courtesy seems even more rare in the scientific professions than among writers.)
Hynek's Center is now tied in with many law enforcement agencies and maintains a toll-free number available to police. Officers across the country can report UFO sightings and get advice on disposition of UFO cases.
This came about largely because the FBI published a long article on UFO's in the February 1975 issue of the FBI Bulletin. As Hynek says, that's practically "the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
* * *
All right UFO research is respectable, if not orthodox. Now what the devil are UFO's?
No one knows. There are plenty of speculations, but very little evidence. We'll go into some speculations in a moment, but first let's see what we're discussing.
First, we can say what UFO's probably are not: namely, they are not misinterpretations of "usual" or "ordinary" phenomena. There are plenty of such, of course, but by definition if we can identify the cause, we don't have a UFO.
Incidentally, this is the major failure of the Air Force financed Condon Report. Condon never investigated a single case, and chose to concentrate nearly all his efforts on known mistakes and misidentifications.
In fact, Condon even sought out people like the "man from Galaxy Three" who wanted $100,000 "to build runways on orders from Galaxy Control." Condon's administrator put out a memo stating that the purpose of the study was to explain away UFO's, but to make it appear that a scientific investigation had been carried out. There was great concern that the staff would be laughed at by orthodox scientists, and efforts made to show that no one in the study really took it seriously.
Thus the Condon study never did do what the taxpayers put up their money for, namely, investigate unidentified flying objects. It does a pretty good job of showing the kinds of mistakes that have been made, but as a scientific study it is valueless. On the other hand, it probably served its major purpose, to get UFO's out of the Air Force's hair. (USAF had for years tried to give UFO studies to someone: NSF, the Weather Bureau, Air Defense Command [Army], National Academy of Sciences, anyone who'd take it, budget and all.)
Yet when we've got rid of the kooks and cranks, mercenaries and swamp gas and meteorological balloons, the planet Venus, helicopters, and hoaxes, there remain cases that we cannot explain. Hundreds of them, with nearly a hundred reported by multiple witnesses of presumed good honesty and integrity.
The USAF Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, said back in 1947 that "credible observers are reporting incredible things." Nearly 30 years later that's a good summary. The observers are credible by any test. The reports defy belief.
I want to emphasize something: we have convicted people of murder on far less evidence than we have for the existence of "incredible" UFO's. Our legal system routinely tries to sort out fact from fancy, and to examine such intangibles as "honesty and integrity." However well it works or doesn't work, courts regularly try cases on flimsier evidence than we have in the UFO reports, and hear witnesses far less credible than those Hynek has singled out for his studies.
If you were on a jury you'd be likely to believe the people Hynek has interviewed. He excludes almost all of the famous UFO "investigators" who grow wealthy from their UFO tales.
Hynek's classification scheme is as good as any. He sorts UFO reports into the following categories: Daylight Discs, Nocturnal Lights, Radar-Visual, and Close Encounters of the First, Second, and Third Kinds.
The first two are simple enough. They also exhibit a number of similarities: rapid to enormous velocities and accelerations, no sonic boom despite high velocity, etc. Radar-Visuals are those reported by both kinds of observation on the same phenomenon, usually by highly professional personnel such as USAF radarmen, professional air traffic controllers, etc.
So far so good. Were these three the whole of it, we could comfort ourselves with the thought that there's probably an explanation well within the limits of present-day science.
Unfortunately they are not the whole of it.
The Close Encounters are disturbing, but there's a lot of reliable evidence for them: reliable, that is, in that the observers would be believed if they told nearly any other story. Close Encounters of the First Kind involve observations at ranges of 20 to 500 feet, close enough to see details.
Close Encounters of the Second Kind involve some physical effect on the observers or their surroundings: interference with auto ignition (a common report); movement of trees, as was photographed in the famous Oregon disc; or, sometimes, thermal and physiological effects.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind involve inhabitants, generally humanoid. If we have trouble swallowing the first two encounters, this one really makes us want to gag; yet, again, the reports are about as good as those given in criminal courts, or sent out by war correspondents, or indeed, for most of us, for the existence of any other complex phenomena we haven't ourselves seen.
Beyond this point Hynek and most UFO scientists draw the line. There are reports of actual communication with UFO's, many given by people who seem to be telling the truth, but first there are few such, and secondly, those making them nearly always manifest some kind of psychological aberration. We can note that the experience itself might be enough to unhinge most of us, and still confine our work to the three kinds of close encounters, the discs, the night lights, and the radar-visuals.
* * *
OK. That's the subject matter. Reports, sometimes accompanied by photographs, sometimes not. There aren't a lot of photographs, and of those not many have been or can be checked and pronounced unmistakably genuine; but there are some. There are others which may be genuine, but can't be proved to be; but those unmistakably genuine are disturbing enough.
Now what do we mean by genuine? Well, among other things, that the negative exists, so that photo experts can be certain this isn't either a double exposure or some kind of fakery from the printing lab; that there's a real object recorded on the film.
Next, they want to see other objects besides the UFO: trees, houses, wheat fields, etc., so that the distance to the UFO, and thus its size, can be established. This generally takes care of thrown objects and the like. The experts are even happier with a series of photographs, because the
y can take the sun angle off each one, and again eliminate a lot of thrown or suspended objects.
I won't go into all the tests because I'm not a photo expert. I did conduct a long interview with Adrian Vance of Popular Photography magazine, and also with some USAF professionals, and I'm now convinced: there exist several photographs of genuine objects, taken at distances of some 50 to 500 feet. The objects are in flight. They tend to be circular, and of dimension about 30 feet diameter by 7 feet at the thickest point. At least one (the Oregon "saucer") had a photographable effect on very large trees.
I find it hard to believe that's a thrown or suspended object. Moreover, in several unrelated cases of photographed discs there were multiple observers with no obvious connections with each other and no discoverable reason for making up the story. (As is usual in most cases, the observers do not want their names in the paper, do not want to be paid for their information, and are not interested in going on lecture tours.)
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