Houston, we have a problem.
In 1970, when the Apollo 13 astronauts discovered they might not make it back to Earth, Pescadero resident Dr. Bruce Webbon and the rest of NASA's Mission Control Center engineers snatched salvation from the jaws of death and gave the space agency one of its finest moments.
"A bunch of people said, `Hey, we can do that,' " Webbon recalled of the attitude among NASA scientists and engineers in those heady days. "We were audacious enough to not know we couldn't do that."
From the race for the moon in the 1960s to the unmanned Viking probe to Mars in 1976 to reusable space shuttles and talk of space stations in the 1980s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was the embodiment of limitless imagination and an awed public hung on its every launch. Even in the sobering aftermath of the Challenger explosion 13 years ago, American ingenuity was directed at subduing the inherent dangers of space exploration instead of packing up and calling it quits.
But today, NASA, once an object of worldwide wonder, floats adrift in a bureaucratic void like a cast-off booster rocket, Webbon says. While the comet Hale-Bopp and Sunday's lunar eclipse briefly reignited the flame of outer space wonderment and became the talk of the neighborhood coffee shop, NASA has been unable to rekindle the bubbling enthusiasm of bygone years. Politicians are scrutinizing its budget, threatening to drag the U.S. space program down to the same stratosphere as the Office of Management and Budget, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development and every other mundane, earthbound government bureaucracy whose first order of business is to find funding to stay in business.
According to Webbon, NASA has become "a mature bureaucracy," meaning it now places a higher priority on spending tax dollars wisely and ensuring safety, which usually comes at the cost of the public relations bonanza of an all-out assault on the galaxy.
For 11 years, until last year, Webbon was chief of the Extravehicular Systems Branch (space suits) at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. His job was to design space suits that could withstand the rigors of extended use on a permanent lunar colony or space station.
Feeling the budget crunch, however, NASA eliminated Webbon's program last year. Rather than cutting his tether, NASA reassigned Webbon, who has worked with and for NASA off and on since 1968, to its Commercial Technology Office.
He now heads NASA Ames' attempts to find commercial uses for the technological advances that can accompany space travel research. In the past, scientists stumbled upon such discoveries serendipitously. NASA now aggressively seeks them out. Webbon's research was not always so grounded in down-to-earth applications.
As a graduate engineering student at the University of Florida in 1968, Webbon was hired to evaluate the explosive potential of a Saturn 5 booster rocket. The rockets contained enough fuel to level the Johnson Space Center and a large area around it, leading to concern by area residents.
In September 1969, two months after Apollo 11's historic trip to the moon, Webbon took a trip of his own, landing in Houston where he went to work for an aerospace company. He subsequently worked on the Apollo 12, 13 and 14 missions.
During the Apollo 13 mission, fabled in the true-to-life 1995 Ron Howard movie of the same name, Webbon was one of many engineers called in when the mission went haywire. He is quick to qualify he was low in the chain of command, but as a thermal analysis coordinator, he was responsible for crucial analysis of the spacecraft's life-support system and the strength of its heat shields.
"It was a pretty high priority," Webbon recalled. "We had the feeling we were doing something important."
Webbon received his doctorate in 1974, conducting his dissertation on zero-gravity boiling, and was hired by Ames as a research assistant.
His research has taken him inside the "vomit comet" and Lear jets to test zero gravity forces, which he discovered have much in common with his hobby of underwater diving, but little in common with his other hobby of motorcycle riding.
During a five-year stint away from NASA from 1981-86, he worked at Stanford Research Institute studying equipment used for human experiments on shuttle flights. The expertise he had built up in life-support systems was also put to the test in designing protective defensive systems for chemical warfare.
But he returned to NASA Ames in 1986 to head its Extravehicular Systems Branch because the agency had revitalized development of a long-term-use space suit. The space suits worn by the Apollo astronauts on the moon were basically worn out after three days, he said, which would never do on a lunar colony.
Since Ames was given the task of going where no space suit had gone before, Webbon said he and other researchers necessarily tried a lot of experiments that went nowhere.
"It was far-out research," he said. "As many as half of the ideas wouldn't work out."
With the future of the Ames Research Center already uncertain because of the Navy's pull-out from accompanying Moffett Field, and NASA administrators in the belt-tightening mood, the Extravehicular Systems Branch was doomed. Visiting his former office last week to show off six space suit prototypes that now sit forgotten in a storage laboratory, Webbon said it still saddens him.
But he also looks to the future with optimism. Although his new position will not take his inventions to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, it will allow him to develop medical applications for NASA technology that will improve life here on earth.
Some NASA technology has already made the leap from government development to the commercial world. In the 1970s, race car driver Richard Petty was the first to test an experimental helmet cooling system now worn by virtually all racers.
"Petty claimed it added years to his career," Webbon said.
The benefits of NASA's cooling systems to multiple sclerosis patients, who fatigue easily in heat, was recognized as long ago as 1978. The use of cooling suits has filtered out since then and by 1993 an estimated 5,000 MS patients were using some kind of cooling suit.
Webbon's job is to help fast-track these types of projects into the commercial world by working jointly with the private sector. In so doing, NASA hopes to redefine part of its reason for existence.
According to Webbon, the cooling system applications for MS patients is just the beginning of exploiting NASA technology. He points to the possible use of cooling systems for spinal cord injury victims. An improvement in their quality of life by just 10 or 15 percent, Webbon marveled, could translate to the difference between bladder control and no bladder control, a major lifestyle improvement.
Next month, 50 colleagues from across the country will join Webbon at the Half Moon Bay Lodge when he hosts a two-day brainstorming conference.
"The good news is the (Ames) center director is truly outstanding and believes in these sorts of technology transfer programs," Webbon said. "It's the kind of stuff that makes you feel good because NASA right now is going nowhere."