Living in the Realm of Impossibility

A blog post by JMM Executive Director Marvin Pinkert. You can read more posts by Marvin here.


Each morning at breakfast I stare at the words of a Chinese proverb inscribed into the back of a tea bottle – “Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those doing it.” It always serves as a reminder that from a historic perspective we live, for better and worse, in the realm of the impossible.

Two centennial events – 7,000 miles apart – give this expression additional meaning this January. The first is an editorial in the New York Times on January 13, 1920 and the second is the birth of a future author in a shtetl in Belarus on January 2, 1920.

Dr. Robert Goddard at a chalkboard at Clark University in 1924. Credit: NASA

The editorial was entitled “A Severe Strain on Credulity” and it mocked a young scientist named Robert Goddard for a recent publication which in part suggested that rockets might be used to make a journey to the moon. The Times criticism was based on the widely held belief that rockets would be totally ineffective in the vacuum of space.

That Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react–to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

But there are such things as intentional mistakes or oversights, and, as it happens, Jules Verne, who also knew a thing or two in assorted sciences–and had, besides, a surprising amount of prophetic power–deliberately seems to make the same mistake that Professor Goddard seems to make. For the Frenchman, having got his travelers to or toward the moon into the desperate fix riding a tiny satellite of the satellite, saved them from circling it forever by means of an explosion, rocket fashion, where an explosion would not have had in the slightest degree the effect of releasing them from their dreadful slavery. That was one of Verne’s few scientific slips, or else it was a deliberate step aside from scientific accuracy, pardonable enough of him in a romancer, but its like is not so easily explained when made by a savant who isn’t writing a novel of adventure.

All the same, if Professor Goddard’s rocket attains a sufficient speed before it passes out of our atmosphere–which is a thinkable possibility–and if its aiming takes into account all of the many deflective forces that will affect its flight, it may reach the moon. That the rocket could carry enough explosive to make on impact a flash large and bright enough to be seen from earth by the biggest of our telescope–that will be believed when it is done.

I should point out that the Times officially retracted this editorial… in 1969! The path towards success of Goddard’s concept was not easy… the history of advances in rocket science was forged in the cauldron of envy, fear, and hatred. It passed through the hell of V2 rockets, the dubious morality of cold war competition and as we witnessed this week still has a very dark side. Yet it is hard not to celebrate the most extraordinary human adventure which rockets enabled. It is the stuff (the right stuff) that dreams are made of.

Isaac Asimov, 1959 or earlier. Photo by Philip Leonian, New York World-Telegram & Sun, courtesy of the Library of Congress, via.

At about the same time, on the other side of the planet, a child is born whose dreams of future worlds will have a significant impact on our culture. The exact date on which Anna Azimov gave birth to her son Isaak is unknown, but Isaak (later Isaac Asimov) would celebrate his birthday on January 2. His parents were grain millers in the shtetl of Petrovichi near Smolensk. Born into an Orthodox family, Isaac would grow up to be a skeptic of all religious belief and a leader in the American Humanist Association. His family emigrated from Russia when he was three, settling in Brooklyn. He went on to write or edit more than 500 books, covering nearly every aspect of science and philosophy as well as some of the most important works of science fiction of the last century, including The Foundation series, I, Robot, and the novelette Nightfall.

When I was eighteen, I met Dr. Asimov at a lecture he gave at George Washington University. This was one of my first encounters with a genuine celebrity, so it was a memorable experience. I recall that part of his talk was a defense of the work of Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution in the third world. Borlaug had advocated the use of new technologies (including GMOs) to increase food production. He had come under increasing attack from early environmentalists and advocates of a “back-to-nature” approach to food production. Asimov pointed out to the audience that the green revolution had increased the Earth’s food production by as much as one third – “who in this room”, he asked, “is willing to be a part of the third of the planet that will need to die of starvation if we revert to earlier forms of agriculture?”  I thought then, as I do now, that this was a pretty profound question about privilege.

And yet, when I turn the bottle of tea – I can’t help noticing that on the other side of the Chinese proverb is a label that reads “organic” green tea. Another reminder that I live in the realm of the impossible.


Jews in Space

P.S. if you are interested in the history of space travel both real and imagined, mark your calendars for May 24, the opening of Jews in Space: Members of the Tribe in Orbit! Dr. Asimov will be included as will Jules Verne (in Yiddish, of course).


 

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