QUESTION: There is a gas
that destroys matter of certain levels in the atmosphere. How then can man go
to other planets?
ANSWER: This question goes
back to some things that evidently hinge on this matter of space travel which
we talked a little about this week. There are many conditions we know about
that seemingly will make it difficult for space travel. I do not know very much
about this subject. I am trying to keep up the best I can. We do have a
Department of Space Medicine in the Air Force. I have a book in my office entitled
Space Medicine. I have not read the whole book, but I have gained the
following meager understanding.
It is my understanding that so
far as we know now any plans for space travel are going to depend upon man taking
his own environmental conditions with him, shielding himself from these things,
putting himself into a kind of conveyance that will shut out meteorites, shield
him from cosmic rays, etc. he will also carry with him his own oxygen. Any of
these problems, so far that we know with us. One thing that we will not take
with us is gravity, evidently. The second thing we evidently are not going to
take with us is the feeling of weight that we have. We already know from
experiments and flights that have been made that the person who gets up into
the upper atmosphere of the air begins to move into the area where you have a
feeling of weightlessness which is quite a psychological problem to those who
are performing the experiments. I had better not go further than that, or I
will get into a subject I know nothing about. (James R. Clark, “Prophets and
Problems of the Pearl of Great Price,” 33rd Annual Leadership Week,
BYU Extension Division, 1956, p. 71)
This is interesting as this was, of course, 13 years before
Apollo 11 and the moon landing, and Clark was open to such space travel in
spite of Joseph Fielding Smith’s own reservations about such (although he
would admit he was in error on this [see here,
here,
and here]).
