Searching

This was what Viking was all about, at least that was the message NASA had communicated to the public: the search for life. The core of the scientific team for exobiology consisted of six biologists. Lederberg was one. The leader was Harold “Chuck” Klein of Ames. Sagan was not officially on the biology team. His role was in the site-selection group. However, he was deeply involved with the exobiologists and was unquestionably Viking’s public face. Never had a NASA robotic mission been conducted in such a fishbowl environment. The media were present in force, hanging on to every word the scientists and Martin said.

Sagan had continually fanned the flames of public expectation by his com­ments. His book The Cosmic Connection had appeared in 1973 and became a best seller. He was a regular on the late-night television program the Tonight Show, hosted by Johnny Carson. While other exobiologists speculated about finding microbial life, Sagan spoke of “macrobes.” These would be organisms large enough to be seen by Viking’s camera. “For all we know,” he said, “there is a thriving population of large organisms on the planet. Nothing in our present understanding ofMars excludes this possibility.”63 Talking about Viking, Sagan’s rhetoric could soar. “Viking will be remembered, if it works, the rest of human history. It deals with the deepest question that human beings have asked as long as they have been human beings.”64 He was correct, of course, but Sagan’s parenthetical “if it works” tended to be de-emphasized in the translation from scientist to media to public. Hinners kept trying to control him to some degree, without success.65

The scientists on the biology team varied in their assessments of the pros­pects. When asked, Klein declared that “among the biologists on the team, the odds go all the way from one chance in ten down to maybe one chance in a mil­lion. Depends on which one of the biologists you talk to. Mine are one chance in 50, which I think are not bad [odds].” The key, he said, was the “payoff,” if life were found.66

Klein was worried, however, about the downside of failure. Most of the prominent scientists involved in Viking were academics. He was a government scientist and could feel the pressures of nonsuccess after such a public relations buildup (and $1 billion investment). He confided that NASA was putting too much emphasis “on the question of life.” He worried about what would happen if Viking failed to find life.67 No one knew more than he that the selection of experiments represented something of a “shotgun” approach. Were these shots in the dark despite the careful efforts of NASA and distinguished scientists? He would rather have followed the incremental approach that Murray had ex­pounded, particularly since so little was known about the surface chemistry of Mars.68 But NASA as an institution had gone for the “great leap” strategy, and he was now fully part of that effort.