SPACE-TRIPS AND DEATH RAYS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

A few years ago James B. Conant found himself criticized severely for his lack of faith in the economic potentialities of unclear energy. It was then held in congressional circles that a scientist so gloomy as to envisage the abandonment of all unclear power station experiments by 1970, was probably unfit to help shape the policies of the AEC.

Likewise, in the case of Oppenheimer, it is apparently not the bulk of somewhat shop-worn charges of leftism which prompts the present suspension, but rather the one sensational fact that Oppenheimer misjudged the importance of the H-bomb project.

A definite cleavage seems to be taking place between the mentality of a public, and a Congress, which was nursed on tales of Columbus, Edison, the Wright brothers, etc., and the mentality of the scientists themselves, who can hardly lose sight of the enormous preponderance of unpublicized pipe-dreams. Since all the more romantic advance of science are found in retrospect to have been impeded by forces of malice and darkness, it is perhaps not surprising to see some present-day pessimists accused as traitors or, at best, as imbeciles. One consequence may well be a trend towards blind sponsorship of space-trips and death ray machines on the part of job-conscious government scientists. Harold P. Furth '51   Research Assistant, Cyclotron Laboratory