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astronomers, Carl Sagan, scientists

Carl Sagan: 1934-1996

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Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan

I think it’s safe to say that if Carl Sagan hadn’t put together the “Cosmos” series for Public Television, I might not have become a science writer when I did. He burst on the scene at a time when public fascination with space and astronomer was in need of a jump-start. When “Cosmos” first came out, I had just written my first planetarium documentary script and was working part-time at a newspaper. I screwed up the courage to ask my editor if I could go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to cover the upcoming Voyager 2 flyby of Saturn (this was in 1981, about a year after PBS first aired the 13-part series).
Fortunately, my editor said “yes” and I found myself out at JPL, surrounded by scientists and writers, all focused on the excitement of discoveries at Saturn.

During that time, I met (or rather, re-met) Carl Sagan. (It turned out the first time I met him, at a meeting during my second year at the University of Colorado in 1974, he wasn’t nearly as well-known as in later years, and I was pretty much wet behind the ears.)

While at JPL for the Voyager 2-Saturn encounter, I remember feeling pretty fan-girl-ish about Sagan. I also remember screwing up the courage to tell him how much his work meant to me. But, he put up with it and pushed me to continue my work as a science writer. “We need more good science writers,” I remember him telling me.

Fast-forward to 1992, when I was in graduate school, working as a graduate researcher in an astrophysics research lab. My mentor and advisor was a fellow who’d gone to graduate school with Carl. It felt like a pretty small world to me. He told me a few stories about Carl from those grad school days, and (as Carl did) also encouraged me to continue my science writing.

More than three decades have passed since I first met Carl Sagan for the first time. We met several more times in the intervening years, the last time just a year before he died. He remained, even at his most ill, an encourager, a mentor, and a visionary who knew to his core that humanity’s eyes turn to the stars for more than inspiration and knowledge. We look to the sky because, as he put it in “Cosmos,” we are all star stuff. And thus, we are looking at the place from where we came.

It has been ten years since Carl died, but his ideas and visions of the cosmos have not. A whole legion of us are traveling along the same way he did, bringing a love of the stars, planets, galaxies, and cosmos to anyone who cares to read our books, see our shows, listen to us talk. Thanks for the push, Carl. I haven’t forgotten you and the encouragement you gave me on the several occasions we had a chance to talk.

For more about Carl Sagan, visit the web site built in his name:The Carl Sagan Portal.

If you don’t have a copy of “Cosmos” (either the book or the DVD), or his wonderful book on science and superstition, called The Demon-Haunted World, please consider them for a spot on your reading/viewing list. It would be the best tribute to one of the world’s best-known science popularizers, a man who, like Patrick Moore and many others, have brought their love of the stars to billions of people.

scientists

Astro Folks: Dr. Al Hibbs

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Back when I was a wet-behind-the-ears science writer covering my first big “space event” I found myself out at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory covering the Voyager 2 encounter of the planet Saturn. This was in 1981, a couple of years after the landmark Cosmos television series came out. I was all excited about meeting and greeting the scientists who were Carl Sagan’s colleagues in planetary science, and also jazzed about finally getting to see how these farflung spacecraft were controlled.

One of the people I met during Encounter week was a fellow named Al Hibbs. He was the “Voice of JPL” — and that week was acting as the mission “explainer” during the NASA TV broadcasts.

It was a crazy week. Along with all the fabulous images streaming back from Voyager 2, mission team members had to deal with a cranky spacecraft. Among other things, it developed problems with its camera and photopolarimeter scan platform and we (along with the rest of the world) watched as the scientists and engineers fiddled with a fix in real time. One day I got to talking to Al and he offered to take me on a tour of the “mission control” area and watch as he did a broadcast. I jumped at the chance and I’m glad I did. Not just because of the behind-the-scenes look at how a big spacecraft mission was controlled, but because I got a chance to meet one of NASA’s scientists up close and personal.

Al had worked as a research engineer at NASA beginning in 1950. He was (at various times) chief of the Research and Analysis Section, the Space Sciences Division, and manager of the Transportation Technology Office. He was also the system designer of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I.

He told me about all the missions where he’d served as the Lab’s “voice” — the Surveyor lunar missions, the Mariner flybys of Mars and Venus: the famous Viking landings on Mars, and the one I was covering — the Voyager mission to the outer planets. He was really good at explaining the complex maneuvers the spacecraft was undergoing, and the ricochet orbital path it was taking from planet to planet.

After his broadcast we went over to the JPL cafeteria to get a soft drink. As we sat there watching people come and go, I asked Al what he did for relaxation. He said that he liked to go scuba diving and he launched off on a story about how he learned to dive and where his favorite spots were. He told me that when he retired he was going to go diving in some really remote spots and search for a species of sea life called the tunicates.

I knew what they were, vaguely, and asked him what the most unusual was that he’d seen. He told me that it didn’t matter — he just loved to look at all of them. With a twinkle in his eye, he leaned across the table and said in a sort of laughing and dramatic half-whisper, “You see Carolyn, you could say that I palpitate for tunicates.”

I’ve always remembered that line, coming from a man who had played such a pivotal role in the space community, and whose work had been so helpful in my understanding of planetary exploration. He’d given me a glimpse of “undersea” space, too.

Al Hibbs died on February 24, 2003 at the age of 78. He was a kind and thoughtful man and a veritable font of wisdom. To me he symbolized the can-do attitude that characterized NASA in the days when I was growing up watching Moon launches and Apollo missions on TV. More and more men and women of Al’s generation are passing on — leaving the rest of us somehow poorer for their loss, but richer for having known them.

RIP Al Hibbs.