Can-do spirit

Natural History, Dec, 2004 by Peter Brown

As we go to press, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has just swooped in for the closest-ever look at Titan, Saturn's largest moon and one of the most enigmatic bodies in the solar system. Until now thick clouds have kept the surface tantalizingly hidden, despite all our attempts to steal a view. The pictures in this issue--most spectacularly, the photograph on our cover--begin to draw back the veil.

But it the mission unfolds as John C. Zarnecki describes it in "Destination: Titan" (page 26), Saturn's moon will soon yield many of its most closely guarded secrets. This Christmas Eve Cassini and Huygens, actually two spacecraft that have been joined at the hip for their voyage to Saturn, will separate for the first time since leaving Earth. Huygens will aim for a bull's eye with Titan on January 14. Cassini, meanwhile, will fly close by, to transmit Huygens's data to Earth.

Cassini-Huygens has always been a big gamble. It cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 billion; the European and Italian space agencies tossed in an additional $660 million. People like Zarnecki have bet much of their professional careers on making the mission work. Even the maneuvers that Huygens must conduct to parachute into the Titanian atmosphere are daring and complex. Yet for all the risk taking, the mission's goal has no obvious practical benefit. Talented, knowledgeable people have pooled their energies and resources for the past sixteen years simply to advance human understanding of our place in the solar system.

Elsewhere in this issue comes a report about people who take even greater risks than the people who build and run robotic spacecraft. James A. Zingeser ("Sight for Sore Eyes," page 34), until recently an epidemiologist with the Atlanta-based Carter Center, describes ongoing health care efforts amidst the chaos and genocide in Sudan, as well as in other countries all across sub-Saharan Africa. There, public health workers and volunteers are risking their own lives to treat the millions suffering from the blinding disease known as trachoma.

Will either project achieve its goals? For Cassini-Huygens, the question will be settled unequivocally by January 14; by that date, the whole world will know whether the Huygens probe has accomplished its mission. For the Carter Center and its partners, success will come more slowly--though with every new face washed, every new latrine built; with every drug treatment given, or corrective surgery done, the relief from suffering is advanced by one more step.

There is, to cite the phrase of the moment, "moral value" to all this activity. It is almost trite to say so, but when people of good will put aside their differences and join in common goals, great visions can be realized. As we cheer the pictures returning from space, and celebrate the efforts to spare innocents from lives of crippling misery, it's appropriate to note that informed, pragmatic, cooperative problem solving--the can-do spirit--is, among many other things, an American gift to the world, Democrats, Republicans, churchgoers, and atheists can unite in taking pride in that.