Working In Planetary Science
How did you get involved in the search for extraterrestrial life?
I was just lucky. I happened to be available at the time somebody wanted somebody with the skills I had from my research degree to work on the analysis of the Apollo lunar samples. In fact, the job had been offered to someone else who had decided that there weren't many career prospects in it, so he turned it down, it was advertised and I got it. Apollo could have been over in a few days almost for us because our role was to actually look for evidence of life on the moon, and that might sound funny now, but in those days people believed that what we saw and called merry seas were in fact dried up sea beds. So, we were going to look for sedimentary rocks, and in sedimentary rocks you find evidence of organisms that live in the water, and that's what we did. Within a few days it was apparent to us that there was nothing of any significance in the moon for that kind of research. However, we had also found out that the sun was constantly bombarding the moon with particles, of which carbon was the fourth most abundant element, so we thought there must be some carbon chemistry even if there isn't any life chemistry. So, we started doing that, and that led on to a lot of other things; analysing meteorites and developing techniques (because it's very difficult to make some of these measurements on extraterrestrial samples because you don't get very much). So, in order to get the information you want, you have to develop instruments that can get data from smaller samples than anybody else because that's the name of the game; you want to be the first to discover something. It was the fact that we developed instruments for the moon that allowed us to work on small samples of meteorites and things like diamonds. People have said that you can't destroy a diamond to get scientific evidence. So, we said "Oh well," and we destroyed a little bit, so we worked on trying to get data from tiny amounts of diamond.
Is it your life ambition to find life on other planets?
I am an organic chemist, and organic chemists actually analyse lots and lots of molecules, which are important and significant in biology, and so I have basic skills in organic chemistry. All I've done is simply take my basic skills in organic chemistry into the solar system. One thing to look at is whether there is life on other planets. This is a very fundamental question. There can't be many people who haven't stood outside their backdoor at nighttime, gazed at that wondrous night sky, all of those stars, and thought to themselves, “Wonder if there is somebody standing out there looking back wondering if I am here.” People want to know where they came from, so if we could have advanced knowledge in that area by one step - i.e. finding life on a body other than Earth, showing that the Earth's life wasn't unique - we'd be an awful long way along the route to deciding whether we're alone in the universe. I think whether or not there is life on other planets is pretty fundamental. I just happen to have the skills to make the instruments that can do this kind of work.
Who inspired you to search for extraterrestrial life?
I was inspired to search for extraterrestrial life by John Kennedy standing up and saying, "We're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, not because it's easy but because it's hard." That was the project that I was thrown into. Once you're thrown into a project, there's definitely an aura that you possess: "e did this, we can do anything, we can be anything." That was a phenomenal achievement and it was just the same for the scientists, because none of them had ever seen a sample of the moon and they didn't know what to do with it. They all knew what they wanted to do with it but they didn't know what to expect or how to handle it. We were able to come up with things and get data, and we now know a great deal about the moon. There isn't a really hard scientific reason for wanting to go back to the moon. There are things that we can do that we haven't done before, and there are things that we can do better now than we could do thirty years ago. We know a lot of the basic stuff.
What type of person can work in space exploration?
There are so many people who can be involved in space who don't necessarily know that they can be involved in space. The number of skills you need are enormous. No one person has all these skills. I'm an analytical scientist. I wanted to make analytical measurements to find out things, but in order to make those measurements, somebody had to get me to Mars. I could make those measurements in the lab, but I don't get all the answers I want. If you want to make those measurements, you have to recruit or work with people who can achieve and put you in a place where you want to be. You could, for example, in Antarctica, be somebody who studies penguins, but if there's not a helicopter pilot or a ship that takes you there, all you can do is look at the penguins in the zoo. This is the analogy: somebody has to facilitate your work in space.
What does your average space scientist do in an average day?
A lot of space scientist work isn't as exciting as you imagine. Space scientists are just ordinary people, we just try to address problems of engineering science. When it comes to making spacecraft, it requires real teamwork, and there is a lot of going over things, because it's such high risk. We need to test whether it survives the rigorous of going on a space mission. You have to prove that this is going to survive before you fly, because the last thing you want is to fly something that doesn't work. Space scientists do our damnedest to make sure spacecraft work; we test everything on. What we can't test - and the only way we can truly test a spacecraft - is by going on there and doing it. You can't simulate some of these things. For example, when you're bouncing around in the gasbags, you can simulate the first one because you know exactly how it orients, but after that the number of ways of which it's oriented is infinite. You could spend your life as a space scientist testing it, and still not get anywhere, so all you can do is calculate what the probability is.
What do you gain most satisfaction from?
If you're trying to discover something, the satisfaction obviously comes from being first. You can't be the second person to discover anything. When it comes to discovering life, if you're the person that discovers life, that would be pretty timeless. You'd be remembered forever, so that would bring a lot of satisfaction. I think that would bring a lot of satisfaction for the 500 to 600 people that probably touched, or came in contact with people, too closely. It probably would be satisfying for the population as a whole. If we win the World Cup, everyone says, "We won the World Cup," they don't say anything about the money. Or, "There's a lot of times when we won it," so everyone's going to benefit.
Why should someone study science?
If you study science then you're qualified to do just about anything. I've always said that if you actually study science you can be anything from a barrister to a bricklayer. There is science in all those things. As a scientist you have to argue your case, like a barrister. Perhaps you're even more important than barristers because they only argue one side of the case, they're only trying to think of what the other guy might try to say. As scientists we look at both sides and make a decision between them as to what is right, not what we can win. What is right has to be right. If you want to build a wall, you have to use science to make sure it's perpendicular, doesn't bend and doesn't fall down. There's plenty to do with a scientific background. If you don't have a scientific background, you're limited. If you're only trained in one way, it's very hard to step outside these subjects. I think being a scientist just qualifies you for everything you possibly want to do, and you can get some of these other skills afterwards. If you want to learn a language, as a scientist you can learn the language in order to do the science, work with the European Space Agency. You could easily learn French, German, Italian - whatever you want to do. In fact, French scientists all learned to speak English because the language of science is English.
What is the best thing about being a scientist?
The best thing about being a scientist, and the thing that appeals to scientists about science, is that it is venturing into the unknown. When you set up an experiment, you do so because you are trying to get some answer; you're trying to test. The most fun thing about science is that 90% of the answer you get will be what you haven't anticipated, and the surprise is that the things that you learn that you didn't anticipate are what allows you to make further advances. People are always saying "What did you get for your results?" I've got more questions than answers. For a scientist, that's just brilliant. More questions; I'm in business forever! It's surprises all the way. If you're going to do things which are not surprising, you're not going to get something out that you didn't know, so what's the point? If you already all know all this, there's no challenge to it. So, I'm repeating, "Sorry, I'm not a cook, I don't have recipes" Cooks actually develop recipes, obviously, so they adventure out in their field, but I don't want do things that somebody's already given you the recipe for. I want to do something that is new so that at the end of the day you find out maybe how you do it better; you find out something that nobody ever knew before, and that is really fun!
Will you ever stop experimenting?
I've not stopped so far. I've managed to I've not ran of thing to experiment with yet and I don't mind experimenting, I don't want to venture in to other people's fields. Other people quite often, you know, if you get to close to a field you get quite often blink or blank. You need somebody else to come along and say "wait, why don't we do it this way? They say, "oh yeah. You move over to other way," and there's all that. That makes it fun. Yeah, venturing into clinical medicine How did these people work? How would we do it--put the two things together? The only thing that increase in value if you share it is knowledge.
Do you read science fiction?
I sometimes read a bit of science fiction, but only the really well-known things. I'm not into the really heavy stuff. I like science fiction which is near enough to fact for me to be able to say, "well, that is possible." You know, the really... We've reached such and such a... Yeah, Star Trek. We've reached such and such a galaxy, and we're fine, then whatever's... that doesn't really appeal to me that much. But things that you're, you know, there have been books written about missions to Mars, and there've been books written about missions to the moon before we've done it. Those things are fun or interesting because it's nice to see what predictions they made and how they've come true.
