In the summer of 1968 he headed an operation under the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey to retrace the route of Major John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado River. The purpose of the 1968 survey was to reoccupy the photographic stations that Powell made on his second expedition.

BACKGROUND BEFORE THE INTERVIEW:

Eugene Shoemaker was born in Los Angeles, California, and did his Bachelors and Master of Science studies at California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1960.

He explored the uranium deposits of Colorado and Utah along with regional investigations of the geo-chemistry, volcanology, and structure of the Colorado Plateau. He, along with his coworker, E. C. T. Choa, discovered coesite at Meteor Crater, Arizona. The discovery of this pure form of silica became a major factor in locating meteoritic sites on the earth.

His studies in meteorites were not his only interest in outer space. In 1961 he organized the Branch of Astrogeology within the U.S. Geological Survey. From this evolved the Center of Astrogeology in Flagstaff, Arizona. Here his interest turned to the development of lunar geological time scale and methods of geological mapping of the moon.

This interview, arranged and photographed by K. C. DenDooven and conducted by his editor, Gaylord Staveley, appeared in Western Gateways Magazine - Colorado River Issue -- March 1969.

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WESTERN GATEWAYS: Why is Astrogeology and moon research interested in the John Wesley Powell Centennial of his exploration of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon? It seems a bit paradoxical to see lunar scientists studying a terrestrial river gorge.

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Well, it's not Astrogeology per se.

The question should be why is the Geological Survey interested in the John Wesley Powell Centennial.

This center is simply one of the many branches or arms of the Geological Survey. While our effort is centered at this branch on lunar studies, our long-range goals are on the earth. So our objectives here are in line with the objectives of the Geological Survey itself.

What we hope to get out of the lunar studies are things that apply to the earth--new techniques of exploration on the earth, new understanding of some of the large problems of the earth, and applying this to the long-range goals as set out in the Organic Act, established by Congress, which is a study of the mineral resources of the nation. To develop data and information and ideas concerning these would aid in their development and utilization. That's what the Survey's about. Of course, John Wesley Powell was pretty close to the Survey because he was one of the key men who worked hard to bring it into existence.

He and Clarence King are the two men who really did the pushing behind the scenes to bring the U.S. Geological Survey into being. It was an amalgamation of the pre-existing three surveys--The King Survey, the Powell Survey, and the Hayden Survey.

So Powell, if not the granddaddy was the great-uncle of the Geological Survey.

King became the first Director, but John Powell also worked very hard with the National Academy of Sciences Committee and made the recommendations to Congress to establish the Survey. Then after two years King stepped out and Powell became the second Director of the Survey. He was the one who really made the Survey into the kind of organization that it became. He not only was the direct father of the Powell Survey, but also he was one of the key men who worked behind the scenes to bring the larger organization together. So Powell, above all other men, is really the man who made the Survey what it is as a pre-eminent scientific bureau in the government. It was the first big scientific enterprise of the U.S. Government, so he was two generations ahead of his time.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: What impact did Powell's trip through the Grand Canyon have on the Survey?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: His trip through the Grand Canyon was one of several things that transpired in the decade from about 1867 to 1877 that all led up to the founding of the Survey, which came into being in 1879. All this footwork and whatnot went on in 1878.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Didn't Powell instigate other projects and organizations, many of which stemmed from his early exploration?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Powell was one of those incredible guys that started many things most of which are still going on today. He contributed to the founding of the Geological Survey, the Bureau of Ethnology in the Smithsonian Institution, the Cosmos Club in Washington, and to the National Geographic Society. So all of these things were happening at the time.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Besides acting as the coordination center for the Centennial, is the Survey filling any other capacities?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: There is a Powell Centennial Committee chaired by a Survey man by the name of Charles Denny. He is trying to keep track of all the efforts that originated independently and coordinate the timing with other local and state people. In addition, the Committee is sponsoring a number of individual efforts, primarily the Geological Survey but also one Smithsonian project.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: The Survey has already started on its project, hasn't it?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Yes, we have several projects going, of which the work we did on the River this summer is only one. Edwin McKee (a Survey man for 15 years) is working up a movie on the Grand Canyon highlighting those things which Powell saw and wrote about and from which he derived some of his major ideas.

There are a number of individual efforts leading to reports evaluating Powell and his contributions. One of them is an up-to-date review with the geology of the Uinta Mountains which was Powell's main scientific report that came out of his work on the Colorado Plateau. A number of these things will be brought together in professional paper form, one of which will be the album that we're working on with the Beaman & Hillers photographs.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: There has been some criticism of Powell, most of it concerning the way he kept his diaries. Do you think this criticism is warranted?

GENE SHOEMAKER: Powell's come in for a lot of criticism about fudging his data, and I really don't think he did. I think that other people read into it much more than is actually there. Now, he did combine some incidents that took place on the second expedition with the first, and in fact he used words out of his notebook directly in the Smithsonian report. But they were the kinds of things that would have been equally appropriate I think. "The good people of Green River (Wyoming) gathered on the shore to see us off" etc. He wrote those words the second time down. What the heck difference does it make? And the fact is that he kept a rather meager journal the first time.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: What about his journal the second time down the Colorado River?

GENE SHOEMAKER: He didn't have a very extensive journal then either. So he relied upon Sumnner's journal afterward, and his material was somewhat limited. The main body of his report is really an account of the first trip but he utilized his late knowledge of the region. All the line drawings in Powell's report are based on the photographs of the second expedition. Well, why not? I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. It's the same canyon, same kind of boats basically, so I don't see that this does any injustice.

So people have been prone to say, "Oh, he took an incident from the second expedition" when it's not at all clear that that's the case. Read the published journal and the commentary on the members of the second expedition as published in the Utah Historical Quarterly. The editor makes a footnote about the fact that the members of the second expedition talk about naming Cliff of the Harp in Lodore Canyon.

They were lying on the beach looking up--it was a nice starry night--and this looming cliff on the opposite side of the river and they look up and over comes the Corona or the constellation of the Harp over the cliff.

The editor's footnote says that it would be unlikely that you would get a duplication of this same incident on two different trips. The hell it is! We were under the same damn cliff essentially, and over the cliff at the same time of the year comes the Corona... As a matter of fact, we saw the same thing half a dozen different times.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: When Powell organized his trips, did he plan to keep a diary and write a popular account for public interest?

GENE SHOEMAKER: He hadn't really intended to write a diary account of either expedition. As far as he was concerned, it was one of the western surveys and a scientific operation. In a later book he tells how he went before the congressional committee and one of the congressmen said, "Why don't you write up the account of your trip?" Powell answered that he didn't think that that was important. It was a scientific expedition and the science was important. The congressman persisted and said that it would be of great interest to everybody and we would like you to do it, and so he did.

As far as the account of original exploration, there's no question that the first one was the one with the drama in it; you only explore something for the first time once. The second expedition from Powell's standpoint was no different than all the remaining years of the Powell Survey. From there on they were engaged in systematic exploration of the canyons.

As far as the style of the report was concerned, the first stuff he used was what he was interested in. He didn't consider that the other part particularly added to the format he was using in the report. Now I think that he had a chance to do it otherwise, he would have put more in.

He would have done this as a matter of personal relationship between the people because he was a magnanimous man. I mean there was never any concern about giving credit or anything of that sort.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: When you went down on your trip, did you occupy any of the same stations that Powell did? You mentioned being under the same Corona and camping under the same cliffs.

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Our intent was to relocate the actual camera station for every photograph for which we still have some record that was taken on the second expedition. Now we had a total of over 200 of these stations that we are confident were taken on this second expedition. Incidentally, we haven't finished the work--we still have stations from Lake Powell we're planning to get and stations from the rim of the canyon. The only ones we've reoccupied are on the river and on the part that's not under Lake Powell.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: How long did it take you to actually float the Colorado River as compared with John Wesley Powell?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: We stated on the 5th of July and we came out a Pierce Ferry on October 1st or 2nd. I'll have to check the date. So we were on the float part of the trip not quite 3 months.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Did you use power or was this trip by float and oars?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: The first part from Green River, Wyoming, coming down to Flaming Gorge Dam wasn't exactly a float trip all the way. We came down just by oars with one boat to the head of Flaming Gorge Reservoir. We had parked Hal Stephen's cabin cruiser at a boat landing and were going to row in. Hell of a wind came up, so we quit a couple of miles up the Reservoir and towed it on in from there. For a week we were on the reservoir. Then we put in below Flaming Gorge. We did bypass one section, about 40 miles of the river between the Dinosaur Quarry area at the mouth of Split Mountain Canyon and Ouray, Utah, which was just where the river winds around in an open flat area of the valley. There were no photographic stations in there and it's just a slow stretch of river with nothing to be seen but the banks and hordes of mosquitoes. So there was no particular purpose in running that section.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: How many boats did you have total?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Well, we used two boats starting at Flaming Gorge. We took two of the 10-man rubber boats and ran those down to the Dinosaur Quarry area. We took one boat up around the Yampa and ran from Mantle's Ranch back down to Echo Park. We hiked up the Yampa and picked up several camera stations but then it was just too far to go, so it made more sense to pull one boat out and float down. Then we put the boats back in at Ouray and ran them on down to Green River, Utah.

We did leave the river for about two days. We came back out to get the park permit to run some of the other parts of the river. We pulled the boats out of the water and just stored them right there near the boat landing at Green River, and then put them back in and ran down to the head of Lake Powell.

Tad Nichols picked us up with his power boat there and pulled those two boats out and portaged them around Lake Powell and put them in again at Lee's Ferry. At that point, we had three more boats, so we ran five instead of two. We didn't actually have that many more people; with the two boats we'd been averaging about 8 people. Then we went to 10 people at Lee's Ferry.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Did they all have specific jobs?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Yes, in fact, we were running several projects simultaneously. George Simmons was our head boatman. Legally, he had to be the head boatman because I hadn't run the Grand Canyon. It's the only section I hadn't run personally.

George also had a project that we were carrying all the way down the river. This was to prepare a geologic river log which will also be published as a Survey Bulletin. It will be by the old river mileages and describe the geology and points of interest along the way. It will talk about what Powell did here and there and other particular archeological points of interest.

Simmons himself was specifically responsible for the river log in the section from Lee's Ferry to Pierce Ferry; he's in charge of the overall project which there were other members at various stages joining us. David Gaskill worked with Simmons on the river log. He also served as boatman.

Leon Silver, a professor at Cal Tech and a colleague of mine, is a man who's specifically interested in the Pre-Cambrian and particularly the crystalline rocks. He's worked on the Pre-Cambrian of the Southwestern United States for many years, but he was also sort of the inheritor of the work that was carried out by the joint Cal Tech-Carnegie Institution Expedition in the Grand Canyon in the 30's, in which there were two men who worked closely on the Pre-Cambrian rock. Leon Campbell was the petrologist primarily working on that then and these collections have resided at Cal Tech ever since.

Well, Silver had been trying to use this material in his own research, but he never had a chance to see the Grand Canyon himself from the Colorado River. The reason I invited him along was to continue his own research on the crystalline rocks.

We just saw all kinds of new things that have never been described before.

Some things he was particularly looking for have been found, like whole new sections of granite gorges with important sections of metamorphal rhyolites. These are the rocks that Silver can date. It's a technique that he's the world expert on using zircon as extracted from these rocks and analyzing the uranium and thorium-lead content in the zircons isotopically. He can get a very accurate date not only on the original formation of rock but also on its subsequent metamorphic history. So he was collecting large quantities of rock.

Hank Toll you may know. He's led several small groups down the Grand Canyon. He's a pathologist in Denver; his function was boatman, but also as a physician, he added a margin of safety to the party. As a matter of fact, we had two physicians. The other one joined us at Bright Angel. Joan Anderman's specific job was all the commissary for the rip and the camp cook. As a matter of fact, she's written a cookbook on camping and boating, too.

Our photographer was Hal Stephens Bruce Julian, a graduate student at Cal Tech, was our fifth boatman. I was a boatman. I needed one other experienced boatman for the five boats, and Julian had just been down a month before and knew the rapids very very well. So that was his job. He's a geophysicist but he has a good eye for rocks in the Grand Canyon. He helped me a great deal in pre-selecting where the camera stations were likely to be. Since this was one section of the river I had not seen, I asked him to review all the pictures and evaluate where they were to be. It turns out that he did a very shrewd job of it and was a very considerable help.

Tad Nichols is a long-time photographer in the Southwest. He's the one who's working with McKee on the film of the Grand Canyon. What he needed was additional footage to fill in some holes in their planned script. So he was with us only for the first segment.

Erling Jensen is Tad's son-in-law. He helped Tad in carrying the photographic equipment and was just a general help around the camp. As a matter of fact, he went with Simmons so that in the less trickier parts of the river Jensen actually ran the boat--enabling Simmons to do his note-taking for the river log.

So, that's the way the parties were composed. Everyone did have very specific reasons for being there, and we had so many boatmen as we did because we wanted to run light. We didn't want to overload the boats.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Picking up all those rocks, I can see why you wanted to go light.

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Well, <laughter> let me tell you about one incident. Out of this whole group -- Hank Toll was the best boatman, I'll just say that. In fact, he was the only one who didn't have trouble at least at one place. He's a very conservative and careful boatman, and was worrying and stewing--"You know I'm getting old and don't know how many I can carry," etc. He didn't want to get his boat overloaded, but he was the strongest boatman we had. Of course, he was carrying Silver, who meanwhile was collecting rocks. The weight was tipping them, and Hank was getting concerned.

We were camped above Tapeates Creek and the load of rock samples was getting a little heavy in that boat; we were talking about splitting them up and so on, and lo and behold two parties came down the river. One of them was Ron Smith with Barry Goldwater's family and I've forgotten the other one. They camped just down below us. Hank Toll has known Ron Smith for many years. Silver had his Cal Tech vehicle parked at Diamond Creek where he potentially was going to come out. We thought, well, maybe we can get Ron Smith to take these rocks, probably about 50 pounds, and just leave them at the vehicle at Diamond Creek.

So early the next morning before the Smith-Goldwater party could get off, Toll and Silver go up early, grabbed a cup of coffee, and loaded up the boat with rocks, and took off to run down to Tapeates Creek. They were going to catch them before they got away. Here's the one place that Towle kind of boo-booed a little bit in the water. He went right over one rock into a hole - - nothing serious - - there was no danger to the boat - - but he just misjudged where the current was going to go with this load, and he couldn't pull around it as he thought.

He changed his mind at the last minute, which is disastrous.

So he took a drop into that hole suddenly.

Old Lee Silver was sitting on the back end and just tumbled end-over-appetite into the water. He scrambled back on again. But he came out of the boat dripping wet, you see, and it was evident that he'd had a dunking in the water. Barry's comment was, "Well, I like to see a man who washes before he does business in the morning." At any rate Ron agreed to take the rocks which meant that we didn't have to run them through Lava Falls.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: The rocks weren't lost, were they?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: No, there were no loss, but Silver got his dunking. At least it made it possible for him to collect some hundreds of pounds more rocks.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: We've talked about the Powell Centennial. Let's go on to Astrogeology. Where did this branch get its start?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Well, we started the program actually headquartered in Menlo Park, California, one of the regional centers of the Survey. That's where I was located at the time, and we had people working in the program both in Washington and in Menlo Park.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Was it called Astrogeology at that time?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Yes. We called it Astrogeologic Studies the first year in 1960 and then it was formally established as a branch the following year.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Did you work for the Geological Survey before working for Astrogeology?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: I've been working for the Survey since 1948. I had been with the Survey for 12 years at that time. So this was something I had been leaning toward for some time, that is, to start research on the moon. When the opportunity availed itself to develop a research effort on the moon, the Astrogeology program emerged. We were a very small group when we stated, but we expanded fairly rapidly, particularly in the area of lunar mapping.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Were there any particular factors that precipitated Astrogeology's coming to Flagstaff?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: We were here in Flagstaff one time on a trip. During the day we were working a Meteor Crater, at nighttime we were up here at Lowell Observatory on the telescope. I had been working on Meteor Crater before the establishment of the program, and in addition I had also done extensive work on the volcanoes in the Hopi Buttes country, both of which are immediately related to our present interest in the moon. Dan Milton, who was with me at that time, said, "Why don't you move the branch out to here?" and it made sense.

What really precipitated our move to Flagstaff was when we secured the funding to build our telescope needed for the lunar mapping. We actually reviewed several possible areas in California, other sites in Arizona and even in Hawaii. The requirement was to have a very stable atmosphere a significant part of the time, in order to get the high resolution that we needed at the telescope.

Flagstaff is the only place in the country where you can get the required seeing conditions - - astronomical seeing conditions - - and at the same time, be in an established community.

All of the other sites are remote mountaintop locations. It was just a perfect natural outdoor laboratory both for studies of geological processes and also as a test bed for trying the various kinds of experiments that we were interested in on the moon.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: I can see how the physical setting adds importance to your program. What is it you try to learn from mapping the geology of the earth or some other body like the earth.

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: What you're trying to do is to work out in detail the geologic structure of that body. What we learn from that structure fundamentally is the sequence of events. That's the clue to what makes geology as distinct from just being a specialized field of physics or chemistry or something else.

Geology is a historical science. We actually go back and look at a physical record. From this, given enough effort and time to work on the problem, we can work out the sequence of geologic events. If you want to look synoptically, we're studying the actual evolution of a given part of a planetary surface of the whole surface.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Let's talk about the connection between earth-bound research and that being carried on in outer space and the moon.

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Now then, what we're trying to do is to work out the geological history of the moon. What that amounts to is determining the sequence of events in the evolution of the moon, going as far back as we can read from the geology of it's surface. That's what lunar mapping is about, not to put lines on a map. The lines and pretty colors are important in themselves as the documentary record, but the map by itself is simply one form of notes, a condensed form of the information from which we then try to develop this intimate picture of the evolution of the lunar surface.

Our real goal is to develop this understanding of the historical evolution of the moon with all the implications of understanding Genesis. How did each piece of the moon actually get made, what are the events that occurred, and in what sequence? The reason we're interested in the earth is because it is from the earth that you derive the natural resources, mineral fuel, ore deposits, etc., that this modern 20th century civilization requires.

The geologists are interested in the moon, some of them at any rate, because there are some questions we can answer either only by looking at the moon or by comparing the earth with the moon.

For example, there's a debate that's been raging in geology for some decades now . . . . I'll give you the two extreme positions.

 

One position holds that the crust of the earth has been formed mainly by erosion and sedimentation in reworking and sorting of materials on the earth's surface by running water. The crust has just been built up that way because it gets remelted from time to time. But the sorting of elements to make the crust occurred by the surface processes that have to do with erosion and sedimentation.

The other extreme view says, no, primarily the crust is formed by melting inside. This process is what we call igneous differentiation, the lighter and incidentally the lower melting constituents coming off and forming this crust floating to the surface.

When you look at the moon, it doesn't have, at least now, erosion and sedimentation of the kind that is taking place on the earth's surface. If we find a crust on the moon like that on the earth, then we've developed very important evidence on one side of this particular controversy.

Now we would like to inquire into how fast did the earth heat up. Enter the earth, the moon, and the other terrestrial planets. There are two possible views. One is that it heated up very rapidly, and they've gone through this partial melting process very early. The other view is that it was rather cool to start with and has heated up very rapidly, and they've gone through this partial melting process very early. The other view is that it was rather cool to start with and has heated up slowly with time. We look at the moon and can answer that question.

And of course we have to get samples back from the moon and date them. We think we know what some of the dates are now, or we can estimate the ages by estimating the rates in which craters are formed on the moon. But the real clincher will come when we get pieces back in our hands and date them by the very same techniques that Leon Silver is using to date the old rocks in the crystalline Pre-Cambrian of the Southwest. Again this has to do with the evolution of the earth and how parts of it came into being. What are some of the fundamental evolutionary events in the earth? Well, we can get clues to this by looking at the moon.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Are you saying then that some of the things we'll learn about the moon are going to give us answers on earth that can have not only scientific value but perhaps commercial value? Could this data tell us where to look for ore bodies of valuable metals that are buried deep and don't have surface outcroppings?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: Yes, I think they will in the very long run. Not immediately. I don't expect that any of the data we get from the moon, or any area of our increased knowledge about the earth based on what we learn from the moon, will pay off in the next few years. But in the long run, nothing is so practical as a sound theory.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: How do you go about looking for this information on the moon when you're down here on earth?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: What you're asking is how do we map the geology of the moon remotely. But you do only a part of it remotely. You do that part which is equivalent to a part of geologic mapping, for example, that you could do from aerial photographs. The modern geologist seldom goes to the field without aerial photographs of the area he's working on. In fact, he derives a great deal of his information about the earth from these pictures. Now he field-checks it. But a lot of information that you need to distinguish one formation from another, one area of given rock type from another, is contained in a picture--not just ordinary pictures, but infra-red images. In fact we can distinguish different geologic formations on the moon just from the information you can get both from pictures and from physical measurements made at the telescope.

You can measure things physically. You can measure optical properties, thermal properties interestingly enough, and the other electromagnetic properties remotely. These properties are related to other physical properties, and in the long run probably correlated with mineralogical properties of the lunar surface. So we can distinguish, from the remotely acquired information, different kinds of geologic units and we can map their boundaries.

In order for us to say exactly what that material is, you have to do what the geologist does on earth - -field check it. You need to go to at least a few places and collect samples, etc. That part of the mapping is in progress right now. We actually have had landings three different places where an instrument gave us a chemical analysis--a crude one, but a chemical analysis of the lunar surface.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Is there much difference between the three analyses?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: There is a significant difference between the analysis obtained on the flank of Tycho and the two analyses obtained in the Maria. The difference is in the iron content, reflected most in mineralogy or the rocks of the two areas. But we can now say--we could have guessed, in fact many people did -- that the rocks on Maria are basalts. But that was just a guess until we actually got a measurement. So this is the way you combine to understand the extensive relationships on the moon as well as to get very specific information in a few places.

WESTERN GATEWAYS: Are you having a say in where the first American who steps foot on the moon is going to land?

EUGENE SHOEMAKER: The very first landing site selection is not determined at all by scientific considerations. Rather it is governed by engineering considerations of where is the best place to put a man down on the moon--best in the sense that it's the most suitable place for the particular spacecraft that's been built and the technique and approach of landing, etc. Our people are supporting that selection work by intensively studying areas in terms of the detailed features of the surface, producing geologic maps, etc., but that in itself is related only indirectly to the selection of a landing site.

Our people under Harold Masursky participate in the lunar orbiter flights from which information is obtained for a final selection. They did a lot of work saying, O.K., these sites look good or don't look good, and the next mission ought to go here, this sort of thing. This is a process involving many different people, NASA people, with our people simply contributing to it.

Later on is when you get to the science part. The first time you land a man on the moon is only to prove you can do it. Then there's only one reason to go back, and that's to learn something about the moon. The reason you want to go to a rugged part of the moon is that's where you have the complex geology. That's where you have a chance to observe different rock types and their relationship to one another. Landing out in the middle of the Maria is like landing out in the middle of a very extensive volcanic flow. You can learn something about the flow, but after you've done that once, you'd like to go somewhere else.

It looks like men will step out of the earth-made space vehicle onto the surface of the moon exactly a hundred years after Powell went down the river into an unknown.

I think the exploration of the moon, particularly Project Apollo, is today's analog of Powell's trip down the river. When you look at it closely, there are some surprisingly striking parallels between the two - - man into an unknown . . .

But more than that, there's a certain period of evolution of science that goes on associated with exploration. Geology really came into it's teenage years, if you want to call it that, with the opening of the West, and now we have a whole new renaissance of the earth's science associated with exploration of space.

What came out of the exploration of the West was the U.S. Geological Survey; what's coming out of the space exploration is the organization that came out of NASA. The two bear very similar relationship to the actual exploration program, so it's interesting to look at these two things almost a hundred years apart and compare what happens to people and organizations. You might even, if you want to be bold, look at the history of the Survey and its relationship to the science of geology as a means of predicting the history of NASA and its relationship to the space sciences.