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En 1969, à l'instigation de
la NASA, de jeunes chercheurs et ingénieurs américains et européens, la
plupart âgés de moins de 40 ans, futurs acteurs des plus belles pages de
la recherche spatiale, se sont réunis à Williamstown pour discuter de
leurs projets. Voici un extrait de leurs conclusions visant à
mettre l'outil spatial au service de l'environnement
At the exponentially
increasing rate at which we are plundering the earth of its ressources and
befouling the environment in which we live, it is extremely difficult to
predict what life will be like ine the 21st century. However, there are a
few things of which we can be absolutely sure:
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The planet earth is the
only home for the human race for at least several centuries to come.
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If the quality of life is
not to decline drastically within 100 yr, then we must either limit
the population or attain a much more thorough understanding of this
earth on which we must live. It is imperative for us to understand
the circulation system of the oceans, on which we will depend much
more for our food, and the processes in the formation of earth crust,
from which we tear the materials to build our evermore complex
technology.
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The attainment of this
improved understanding will be long and difficult task, with some
trends we can now predict, but also with many twits and turns we
cannot forsee. But, we do know that we now have at hand several tools
to help mightily in this task: an increasingly accurate and elaborate
technology, a ferment of ecxiting ideas in several related areas of
geophysical research that are attracting brillinat young people, and a
management capability in NASA that could well be turned to matters of
social benefit.
It is difficult to see why
anyone who cares two cents about his own great-grandchildren (let alone
the rest of the world) does not agree we should get on with the job now.
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