The sun was low in the sky when I finally reached Kitt Peak National Observatory. The sprawling research center was situated high above the Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Reservation. The facility was home to more than twenty optical and radio telescopes and represented eight astronomical research institutions.
I was light headed all the way from Barbara Everheart’s. I wished there had been more time to digest her words before meeting the next, and last, Endowment representative, Terry Li. When I asked Ms. Everheart about the Protector Endowment, she only said that he probably wouldn’t be what I might expect.
I followed the signs to the visitors' parking area. Getting out of the car, I felt a stiff wind. Up on the mountain, the temperature was at least twenty degrees colder than it was at Everheart’s place.
Standing at the main entrance of the administration building was Terry Li, the principal investigator of Spaceguard, a program to identify and catalog near-earth orbiting objects. Terry was short and very thin with straight black hair that fell over his ears.
“Welcome. Welcome, John. It’s so good you could make it all this way.” Terry spoke with a slight Asian accent and exuded an enthusiasm that made him seem perpetually on the verge of all-out laughter.
We had dinner in the cafeteria with two other scientists from his team who casually joined us. I thought briefly about my lunch with Dr. Falk in the JPL cafeteria just a few days earlier, which felt like weeks. Over a corned beef platter and hot minestrone soup, Terry mentioned nothing about the Endowments, but gave me an excellent overview of Kitt Peak and its many telescopes and areas of research.
After the meal, Terry asked if I’d like a driving tour of the center. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains, and the last vestiges of its light provided just enough illumination to make the tour worthwhile. Terry described the focus of research of each observatory as they passed by my window. He stopped the car at an unusual building that looked like the bottom half of a giant letter “K.” It was the Solar Observatory, he explained, and thought I would be interested in having a closer look. The angled portion of the structure, at two hundred feet in length, was the above ground section of the telescope. The telescope shaft extended another three hundred feet down into the mountain. Scientists used the telescope to measure the sun’s magnetic fields and chemical composition.
Our next and final stop was a domed observatory of modest size. It was the Steward Observatory, the oldest at Kitt Peak. The observatory was a plain white structure with the base footprint not exceeding the circumference of the dome, which was about fifty feet in diameter. We entered the building and went up a flight of stairs, and made our way to a spacious control room where one of Terry’s team members, Bill Powell, was working at a computer station. The office area was a modest space whose purpose was to take scientific measurements of the sky and little else.
“Hi Terry. I was just about to do the pour.”
“Super.” Then to me, “You’ll be interested in this.” We left the control room and went up another flight of stairs to the main observatory level. The retractable door of the dome was open wide, letting in the cold mountain air and stars from the cloudless sky. In the dimly lit space, the 36-inch telescope loomed overhead, reaching up to the opening in the dome. Curious about the mechanics of the telescope, I asked Terry where the eyepiece was located. “You expect to see an eyepiece like the telescopes you had as a kid?” He chuckled. “With this kind of instrument we use a charged-coupled device, or CCD, that allows us to record the image digitally. Then we look at it in the control room. With CCDs there’s no more need for film.” He waited until I was good with his response, and then turned my attention to Bill who was standing on a small platform next to the telescope. With heavy work gloves, Bill held what looked like a large thermos. He pressed a button on the rail of the platform and with a slight jolt it began to rise slowly.
“Bill is going to pour liquid nitrogen into the apparatus. We’re dealing with electrons that prefer to be super cold for the best images, and the heat of the CCD itself can really screw up the quality.” Bill elevated himself ten feet to the top of the telescope. He removed the cap of the canister and, with a funnel, he poured the super cooled liquid into an opening. Ice cold nitrogen vapor billowed all around him.
“We’ll see everything we want to see downstairs.” Back in the control room, I finally got a good look at the array of computer screens that guided, monitored and recorded the observations. The room was dark with most of the light coming from the screens. Bill explained that they kept the lights low so their eyes didn’t have to adjust when making frequent trips up to the dome.
“Now we wait, and every twenty minutes we take a picture of the same part of the sky. The computer compares each new picture with the previous one, and if it finds anything different it lets us know. Any change is an indication that an asteroid or comet has come into the field of observation.” He went over the one of the computer screens and began typing on a keyboard.
“Here, let me show you what I mean.” A star field blinked onto the screen. It was interesting enough. Then he pressed the enter key and the field changed slightly. I noticed a new star appeared near the center of the field. He press the key again, and then I realized the second star had disappeared and a new one had appeared in the lower left part of the monitor. He kept tapping the enter key, and I saw a repeated pattern of three images of an object in the upper right, then center, then lower left. The pictures depicted the path of an object moving through the star field.
“We recorded that a few days ago. That’s an asteroid heading for Earth. If it hits us at the right place, it could completely destroy a city the size of New York.”
He waited for my look of surprise, and then added, “Of course, it will miss the Earth by three-and-a-half million kilometers, or about nine times the distance between the Earth and the moon. In celestial terms, however, that’s a hair’s breadth. We will be lucky this time. But the truth is asteroids of significant size come close to Earth quite often. So, the question is not if a city destroying asteroid will hit the Earth, but when.”
I knew that Terry Li was the principal investigator of the Spaceguard Project, a program partially funded by NASA. I asked him about it. “It all started very modestly in the early 1980’s, with just one observatory looking for NEO’s--Near-Earth Objects. Interest has grown. Other observatories have joined the search, but we are a long way from what is needed to identify potential blockbuster asteroids, never mind coming up with ways to mitigate the catastrophic effect if and when we do identify a really nasty one heading straight for us.”
Noticing that Bill had moved to the other side of the room, out of ear shot, I took the opportunity to ask. “Is this work related to the Protector Endowment?”
He gave me a searching look that quickly morphed into a broad smile. “Yes, of course it does. But, first…coffee.” He led the way to a kitchen area, with a refrigerator, microwave, and coffee pot. He poured two large mugs and handed me one. Nothing could have been more welcome in that moment, as I was feeling the effect of a long day that had begun very early in Riverside, California. The coffee was a strong gourmet blend.
I expressed appreciation. “We take our coffee very seriously around here,” Terry proclaimed. “Let’s go back upstairs. Here, put this on.” He handed me a parka, which I appreciated almost as much as the coffee.
On the dark observation level, Terry went over to a panel on the wall and pressed a button. With a shudder, the dome began to rotate. Over the sound of the motor that turned the dome, Terry said, “I need to adjust the opening to face the part of the sky we’ll be viewing tonight.” Watching the rectangle of stars slide past the dome opening against the black interior was disorienting.
We sat at a console next to the telescope and Terry spoke briefly to Bill via intercom to ensure the rotation was correct.
Without my prompting he began speaking about the Protector Endowment. “We are finally coming to some appreciation that the planet we live on exists in a galaxy that in many ways is perpetually threatening humankind’s very existence. NEOs are just one threat that could spell doom for Earth. We know the sun eventually will become a red giant and turn our planet into a cinder. But the sun is somewhat unpredictable and could at any time erupt in powerful flares that could do serious damage. It’s happened before in fact. A solar event in 1859 caused telegraph lines to heat up and catch fire. A similar event today could destroy much of our electronic infrastructure and send us back into the nineteenth century.”
He seemed to change his tone and cadence in a way similar to that of the others, once it was time to talk about the Endowments. There was information that needed to be conveyed in a certain way with a certain amount of detail. It was not that the Endowment representatives became different people, but that there was a deliberateness with regard to how they spoke about the topic.
“The point is there are risks on many levels that could bring an end of our species or to all life on Earth. This is what the Sixth Endowment is about. The Protector Endowment is the capacity in some people to assess broad environmental risks, and search for ways to avoid those risks. Like the Visionary, The Protector has enormous capacity to envision all possible futures, but in the case of the Protector the visioning is oriented toward protection and preservation of a particular population or even the species as a whole.
“The Protector realizes that we must take decisive action to be ready to deal with catastrophic events that are likely to occur. As we become ever more aware of the dangers that threaten human existence, as we’ve started to discuss, we sense the survival imperative to do something before it's too late.
“The Protector is a feminine or complexity trait, right. I think you know by now what I mean by that.” I nodded. “So, it has similarities to the Settler and Builder Endowments. The Settler and Builder Endowments are also about protection, aren’t they? They are intent on removing from our environment the dangers of the wild, or from each other, so that we are safe and protected. The Protector is the one looking ahead now, looking for what dangers might threaten us in the grandest and perhaps most improbable of ways. These are folks who look up at the mountain and think rock slide, who look out into the ocean and see tidal waves, and look up into space and see falling asteroids. He may be the chicken little of our society, but the Protector is essential to our survival and development. In one sense this is no different from the smallest animal in the jungle that is ever vigilant of some imminent danger.
“The Protector creates all forms of emergency preparedness programs: earthquake monitoring, weather watch, construction of levees. He wants to guard against natural disasters. In medicine, it is the quest to protect the population against infectious diseases. Then there is protection against the threat of our neighbors. In ancient times it took the Protector to envision great walls to protect castles from invading armies, design moats and boiling oil to pour on the enemy. There are many gruesome examples of military protectors, not the least being the maintenance of standing armies. The Great Wall of China, in my home country, was built to protect the ancient Chinese empire from the northern hordes. A Protector envisioned a fortification that stretched thousands of miles, that took hundreds of years and millions of workers to complete.
“We now live in a world of ‘safety first,’ don’t we? Cars are safer, because of seatbelts, airbags and drunk driving laws. There are safety regulations governing air and sea travel. The world in many ways is much safer than it was even fifty years ago. The Protector is ever at work to systemically reduce the risk of bodily injury or death. Sometimes, or quite often, the Protector has been ignored leading to horrendous consequences.
“The Protector has thrived with the rise of democracy. Once the people had a voice in politics and could sway public policy with their vote, the Protector was hugely empowered. Child labor laws, occupational-safety and health laws, environmental protection, food safety laws. Right?
“Diplomacy, to negotiate peace terms and avoid war, is the Protector at work as well. He always wants to keep things nice and predictable and everybody happy and safe.
“In the last part of the twentieth century, however, the Protector found himself face to face with his biggest challenge ever. Our knowledge of the Earth and the solar system has progressed to the point where we can now conclude without a doubt that the ancient prophets were right all along: life on Earth will most certainly come to an end.”
He paused for emphasis.
“We live in a hostile and unforgiving universe. The only thing more amazing than the fact that our existence hangs by a celestial thread, is that life on this speck of a planet was not extinguished long ago, or that it even came into being in the first place. That we are still here is as much a testament to the resilience of life to endure as it is to sheer luck.
He laughed. He had taken on a more somber tone, but the humor was still intact.
“This is a tough situation for the Protector. How is he going to save the world from certain death? It seems that the list of existential threats to human life keeps getting longer and more imminent every year. The risk to civilization by asteroids is real. We’ve done a good job of identifying the big rocks out there, but there are many thousands yet that we have not found. You know about the asteroid that sent the dinosaurs to oblivion sixty-five million years ago—at least that’s what most paleontologists believe. There’s a ride at Disney World that does a good job of reenacting that last moment before the asteroid impact.” I had actually been on that ride. Park goers pile into time traveling jeeps to visit the dinosaur age. A slip of the time dial places riders at the very moments of the asteroid impact. The jeep narrowly dodges dinosaurs and asteroid fragments exploding at every turn. Just as the big one hits, the jeep jumps back through the time portal, delivering passengers safely to the Disney World Park ride attendants. The ride was more fun than most, but any thought that such a fate might actually be repeated in my lifetime had never occurred to me.
“That asteroid that took out the dinosaurs was seven-and-a-half miles wide. But if you want a more recent example of the damage a near-earth object—a NEO—can do, you just have to look back to 1908 when a comet a mere forty feet in diameter destroyed over eight hundred square miles of forest with a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.” He paused, looking for my reaction to that frightening statistic. “That’s an impressive amount of destruction for a rock about the size of an average house. And if that asteroid had been delayed by just three hours, Moscow would have been the impact site, wiping out the city and its population, instead of just a few million trees.”
Terry wanted this to sink in. The LCD lights of the instruments reflecting off his eyes gave them an otherworldly glow.
“We know these NEOs are whizzing by us all the time, and sooner or later another major impact is going to happen, and next time we may not be so lucky. We’re starting to look for and catalog NEOs, but we have only begun this process and we have a very long way to go. Many of the biggest objects are missed by our monitoring until they’ve already gone past the planet. This blind spot is caused by the light of the sun, which overwhelms the dimmer light of anything coming from its direction. Not to cause you alarm, but the next big one, a city buster or bigger, could be on its way here tomorrow, and we’d have no idea it’s coming.”
Again his penetrating stare focused on my eyes for emphasis. “The point I’m making is that there is no way we can guard against asteroid danger completely. Not now, anyway. And asteroids are just one of the many dangers that threaten our civilization’s survival. I probably don’t need to tell you that. We can tick some of these off: the risk of new plague or biological weapons, creating a runaway virus that is both highly contagious and beyond limits of medical science to respond; nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists, or rogue governments could trigger an exchange of warheads that could bring about Armageddon.
“I guess you can include some of the extreme predictions made about global warming,” I offered this, as I had heard sensational claims about how global warming might cause extreme climate shifts that could bring down civilization.
“That’s right. We have to appreciate the fact that to a large extent, we really don’t know what affect Global Warming will have on the world and our ability to survive the changes that are coming with rising ocean levels and more severe weather patterns.
“Volcanic outgassing is another unknown. There is much we don’t know about the volatility of the magma deep below us. Have you ever heard of a supervolcano?” It sounded familiar. “A supervolcano eruption is thousands of times greater than any volcano we’ve experienced in known human history. By comparison, Mount Saint Helen’s was just a hiccup. There are six known supervolcano sites, including one at Yellowstone National Park.”
That jogged my memory. “I remember seeing a Discovery Channel program about that.”
“That was a terrible documentary. But the damage a Supervolcano can do is global, interrupting food production, affecting air quality, perhaps pushing the human race toward extinction. A supervolcano eruption in Indonesia almost took out the human race seventy-five-thousand years ago.
He took a deep breath and leaned back. “But hey, we don’t want everyone to sit around worrying about this stuff. At the same time, some of us should be taking it all very seriously. We live in a world that is perpetually at risk from extinction-level events.”
Terry paused, and I felt I needed to summarize the characteristics of the Protector. “What I’m getting from you is that the Protector has the ability to recognize large population threatening risks and do his best to communicate those risks in order to stimulate the responses necessary to remove or reduce them. So, with the NEOs, for example, if we know that a big asteroid is heading to Earth, perhaps we can take some action to divert the rock’s course. Right? And, I guess the same goes for other global risks. Bring enough attention to the potential global hazard so that the people in charge will do something about it. So, to bring this all back around to the space program, I guess you’re saying that we need a strong space program now in order to eventually develop the capability to divert asteroids out of Earth’s path when the time comes.”
“Well, yes. We do need to create such a capability. Diverting asteroids is one strategy we’ll have to pursue. But, there is one other response to possible global extinction that is much more relevant to you and your travels to understand the Endowments. The Protector recognizes the need to diversify our population beyond this planet as an insurance policy against the worst case scenario that might befall us. Ultimately, to safeguard human life against existential risk is a powerful reason to build colonies on the moon and Mars and to eventually send space arks to other star systems where perhaps we can find planets like our own to call home.
“This house—our planet—may be perfectly safe for us for millions of years to come, but because we now know that it might not be, and we have the capability and the means to spread civilization outward, the Protector impulse demands that we act on that capability and colonize space as soon as possible. I like to think that our knowledge of the many threats to our existence is God’s way of telling us that it’s time to build a new ark.”
“An ark,” I repeated.
This thought had already been forming in my mind. A space settlement was like the biblical ark in that it potentially held all that made up our civilization and, in theory anyway, might be able to repopulate the world if necessary in the aftermath of some cataclysm. A space ark could even house many animal species as a guard against their extinction as well.
“As we come to think of the entire globe as a single-point failure, it makes sense to think in terms of moving some small portion of our population to other parts of the solar system as a safeguard against annihilation. What ship would set sail without adequate defenses, insurance and lifeboats? None. But here we are, fully conscious of the risks both man-made and natural, from on this planet and from space, and yet we are doing nothing to protect ourselves against a total system failure. One of the best strategies to mitigate a potential risk is to simply be out of harm’s way if something should go wrong. We can’t move everyone to a space colony, nor would we want to, but we can ensure that at least some of us can stay safely out of the way, just in case.”
My coffee was cold as I tipped the mug for the last swallow. It still tasted good. Barbara was right. The Protector was not quite what I expected. It was too practical, especially compared to the Visionary.
Terry assured me that he had told me as much as there was to say about the Protector Endowment for the time being. I thanked him and said my goodbyes to him and Bill, who still had long hours of work ahead of them on such a pristine cloudless night. On my way to my car I stopped to take in the night sky which was thick with the stars of our galaxy.