Graduation Address

"The Space Age" (14 May 1970). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

I am here today to speak to the graduating class, and to those others present who are not in mediaeval gowns I will simply say congratulations also to you – they made it!

It is to the graduating class, however, that I would like to address my remarks. I’d like to begin by saying something of the message which perhaps we can bring back to you from our space endeavors. Some words of cheer and encouragement and welcome to you, as you join those who march forward with the disciplines that you have acquired here at the University of New Brunswick.

The conquest of space is a very difficult, a very risky, and a very avant-garde sort of activity. Those of us who are privileged to work together on the NASA team have a great feeling of joy in our work. The hours are long, the pay in low, the working conditions are absolutely abominable, but we wouldn’t be doing anything else.

It is my great hope that as you leave this University, and join us and other people across this country, or wherever your careers may lead you, you can share some of the great feeling that we have in following careers that are being devoted to something in which you can personally believe.

It’s only about a month now since the first American satellite, Explorer I, re-entered the atmosphere over the South Pacific, and was consumed in the process. It had been in orbit for 12 years.

So I speak to you today one dozen years into the Space Age. In that short dozen years we have come a long way, indeed. At the time when Explorer I was put into orbit, we had a series of fiascos on the launch pad as we struggled, under the challenge of the Soviet Sputnik, to attempt to put the first small American pay-load in orbit.

We had found many weak spots in our systems, in our understanding of what it took to begin to enter the Space Age. We finally managed to get this small, 31 pound satellite into orbit. The satellite’s radiation detectors then proceeded to discover the vast radiation belts which surround the earth. Even with our first tiny satellite we were able to begin the exploration of the cosmos, of the true environment in which man, and indeed all life, exists.

Now, a dozen years later, we are able to send missions to the moon. Instead of 31 pounds in orbit, we regularly put 150 tons. Instead of the speed record which existed at the start of the Space Age of about 1900 miles an hour and super-sonic flight, we are regularly able to fly toward the moon at 25,000 miles an hour. The altitude record at that time was some 120,000 feet, and, of course, now we are able to sail out 240,000 miles, land on another body, conduct research and return.

Besides the new ability of human exploration that has been created in this short space of a dozen years, we have also been able to bring to man here on earth some new benefits. The world-wide satellite television communications system, which has allowed men all around the globe to participate with us in this bold new explorations, has all come about in this period.

The global satellite weather system allows us not only to improve the accuracy of our weather forecasts, but also to track the devastating storms, the hurricanes, the typhoons, and the prevent much loss of property and human life. These systems are not only used in North America; some 50 nations now regularly receive weather satellite pictures of the regional weather over their nations from our satellite systems. The vast TV communication satellite system is now being regularly used by 75 different nations in every part of the world.

As we look ahead to the future satellite systems, and particularly to the national TV and radio communication-satellite systems, as we look to the earth resource satellite systems which allow us to not only understand better all of the resources on this globe, but how better to manage their utilization to the benefit of man, we see many ways in which Canada and the United States can move together in the forefront of this new age of space. Indeed, we are now working with Canada on a TV-radio communication satellite which will be the first international satellite communication system.

Where are we going in the next few years as you begin to enter you careers?

The first decade of space exploration and discovery had certainly taken us a long way- from the tiny Explorer satellite to the probes that we have sent to the planets Venus and Mars, to the expeditions we have sent to the moon, and to the scientific satellites which have told us a great deal about the atmosphere and the environment above the earth. Ahead lie untold frontiers, endless frontiers which the Space Age has opened up to us and, indeed, to all future generations.

Within the decade of the 70s we will be sending our first planetary probes to swing by the planet Venus, and to move in to see for the first time the surface of the planet Mercury. At about the same time, in the 1972-73 period, we will be dispatching our first planetary probe towards the giant planet Jupiter. In the late 1970s we will be sending the planetary probes beyond Jupiter to Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. By the end of the decade of the 70’s man will have sent an automated unmanned space craft to send us back information about the conditions on the surface of every planet in the solar system. Beyond this, we will be making great strides in man’s ability to move back and forth from the surface of the earth, in to orbit and on to the moon.

The dramatic Apollo flights, which today require so much skill, so much advanced experimental equipment, will give way during the decade of the 1970s to a far more routine ability of men to operate in space. By the end of the 1970s we should be flying a new generation of rocket planes that will be able to take off vertically from the surface of the earth, fly men, equipment, and supplies up to earth orbit and return in much the same way that jet liners now routinely fly across this country and across the oceans and around the world.

Also in the decade of the 1970s we will be putting in earth orbit the first permanent space stations. These will be research laboratories in the heavens, which will make it possible for men and women of many nations to utilize the space shuttle rocket-plane capability to fly to laboratories in orbit. There we will be able to work, looking outward to the stars, and studying the activities that can be carried out in the weightless environment of space. We will also be able to look inward towards the surface of the earth, studying the fields and forests, the fisheries, the mineral resources, the weather patterns, and many things which can be done from earth orbit for the first time.

This is extremely important, because in the first 12 years of the Space Age some one billion babies have been born around the world, and as the earth’s population grows it is urgent that we bring to bear better ways of managing resources, better ways of increasing the abundance for people all over this planet, and at the same time conquer some of the problems of pollution and the lack of proper distribution of the wealth of this planet. We must move ahead technologically as we move ahead socially. Social advance and technical advance are inextricably inter-twined.

What then is the message that I can bring to you from the endeavors we are carrying out? I think on thing is very clear: the Space Age, being only a decade old, has not allowed us sufficient time to develop the university curricula, to hire the graduates in space and astronautical engineering that could have helped us so much, had only they been available as we moved forward into this new age. This, of course, parallels the experience we had with the solid state electronics era when we could not get the university graduates we required, but moved ahead, re-training people who already existed. It was so in the nuclear age when we went slam bang into this new area of technology, developing the nuclear power plants without the benefit of the young graduates that we should have had.

The message for you is that all of these programs have been successful because the disciplines that our university graduates learned in the university were sufficient. The primary discipline they learned was discipline itself. All of you have chosen a field of specialty, and as you receive your degrees today, they will be awarded in the field that you selected.

Much more important, however, is the fact that you have been through a rigorous period of learning to discipline yourself. You’ve learned about the scholarly method of approaching complex problems; you’ve learned how to use the intellectual resources which have been built up by previous generations in order to carry out the work that you’ve done in your particular field of discipline.

One of the things which the Space Age is going to guarantee is a continuing rapid period of change. Far from being a threat to you, this gives you your greatest opportunity. Those of us who have been called into areas like the space program, and who have had to re-train ourselves, look back to our own days in the university as having given us the foundation upon which we were able to build.

I would certainly hope that many of you will begin your careers in the discipline you have chosen. I hope you are not afraid to tackle other problems, not afraid to tackle, indeed, those areas of the avant-garde which will open before you in the decades to come. Discipline and competence and courage are all required in the prosecution of the careers that you will move into, as you, I hope, follow you star.

Those of us in the space program feel that we are fortunate among men in having endeavors which provide us with a continuous challenge, a continuous spur to find new knowledge. Many of you participated with us in the very difficult days that we went through during the Apollo 13 mission, when we discovered that some of our systems had flaws. Before we could begin the task of finding and correcting those flaws, we had to find new ways of utilizing the flexibility that we had built into our spacecraft to recover Captain Lovell and his crew from a perilous situation some 200,000 miles from earth.

This kind of experience is the kind of experience which, although we dread, we know we are going to have to experience, and all of you, as you move on into your chosen careers, are going to go through some very difficult times. This is the way it ought to be. This University was built by people whose temper was forged in a very difficult forge indeed: the World War II experience that Sir Max Aitken went through; the experience that his father had in the defence of Britain- providing the tools; the pioneers who came to New Brunswick – they may have differed politically from my ancestors and I’m sorry there was a bit of difficulty back in ’76; nevertheless, our two nations were built by people who dared to go into the unknown, to do the kinds of things required to wrest a living from a very hostile environment, indeed. The heritage of our nations ever since has been that each generation has had to renew that vow.

Now we move ahead into a new frontier – a new frontier of space. It will be a frontier that will make many demands on the people who move forward in it. Demands that are technical, demands that are in the personal courage area, primarily demands of discipline, demands of competence and demands of courage.

This message I bring to you today is one which I think should be very encouraging to you. I think of the generations we have seen go through the university system in this century, and I suggest that the class of 1970 will yet become known as one of the vintage years. You certainly have shown far more concern for the problems of our society and you have been put to more severe tests than many generations before you.

The times in which you live are indeed more tempestuous and there are fewer sign posts to guide you into the productive areas, than perhaps we had at the time of World War II when our duty was simple and clear before us. You must decide many things for yourselves which we more or less took for granted. You should be very pleased that you have this privilege. You should be very awed, I think, that you have this responsibility, because the net result of all of your choices, about what’s important, and how you are going to approach working on the things you regard as important, will, in the final analysis, determine where this nation and, indeed, where mankind goes.

Not only is the class of ’70 in the avant-garde of the young people of this country, it is in the avant-garde, really, of all the people around the world. You are on the top 100 of one per cent of the people on this globe, and they look to you to assume the responsibilities which go with this position.

I would hope that some of you will choose to join those of us who are pressing forward in space. I would hope that many of you would also choose to tackle the economic problems, the social problems, the medical problems, and many different areas in which our society today still has imperfections. No on is ever going to achieve Utopia, bit I think that the interest your generation is showing in the structure of our society, in the goals which our society has set before it, in the imperfect achievement of these goals, bodes very well for the future.

You will have to learn to bring to bear the discipline and the competence and the courage upon your own selected areas of endeavor which we have found to be necessary to press forward in space. I’m sure that you gave this in abundance. I’m sure that, as you select your own individual careers, you will be able to bring great honor and glory to this University, to the faculty, who have started you off in your career, and to those also here today who have supported you and brought you to the point where you now set forth into the new worlds which you will conquer. I welcome you aboard.