Interviewer at astronaut interview: Dr. O’Leary, would you submit to a hazardous two-year journey to Mars? O’Leary: Whew. A two-year trip to Mars. I … - Brian O'Leary

This situation is intensified by the fact that, in spite of the appearance of polluted cities of the Third World, the United States continues to lead the way in exploiting the environment. With only five percent of the world’s population, we Americans consume one-fourth of the world’s energy and one-third of its raw materials. I am not proud of this. My own sense of grief is especially heightened by the fact that I am a citizen of the leading polluter nation, as well as being an individual member of a supposedly sentient species which is causing the greatest mass extinction since that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Most of us are complacent, distracted or conveniently ignorant, in part because of the overwhelming depth of the situation. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!”

Can we really accomplish a program like Mars 1999? The sad truth is, we won’t be able to do it in today’s climate. Today’s paralysis will be tomorrow’s paralysis unless the workings of the institutions and the attitudes of individuals at the helm change toward the positive. The prerequisite to a successful Mars 1999 program is not engineering feasibility. It is people. And there is hope.<p> Meanwhile, as the dust settles from Challenger, NASA continues to search its soul. In the wake of the accident, it becomes all the more evident that the U.S. civilian space program has been suffering from conflicting interests and goals, intercenter rivalries, uneconomical operations, and an apparent inability to make the sweeping changes that are required. Management of the space station program suffers from this confusion. The space agency’s technical achievements have been, and continue to be, extraordinary. Nowhere can more intelligent and competent engineers and scientists be found. But there appears to be a bureaucratic inertia that inhibits the innovative thinking and risk taking required to blaze new trails.

My mind doubted that there was any meaning to this exercise. I had not been educated to believe that there could be anything real about telepathy. The demonstration of such powers was all idle speculation to me. Nevertheless, I stayed with the exercise, once again going into a deep trance.
An image came up. I saw myself seeing a man, dark-haired and in his forties, walking along a beach on the west coast of Maui in Hawaii. He was without a woman and somewhat sad about it, as he walked into an idyllic make-believe house that I had made for him. I showed him globes and maps. He asked questions and we had a strong rapport. We looked up at billowing clouds, wafting above palm trees which were blowing in the wind. In this imaginative mock-up we shared, he was teaching me about the climate and physical geography of the Hawaiian Islands. I knew I wasn’t guessing. I was either “channeling” some truth or imagining something vivid. My female partner broke into my reverie to inform me that the man had lost his wife by death, was a meteorologist and journalist by profession, and had spent much time on Maui. She said my description fit him to a T.