2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
created_at: '2016-03-28T22:38:18.000Z'
|
|
|
|
title: A Conversation with Arthur C. Clarke (1999)
|
|
|
|
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/26/science/conversation-with-arthur-c-clarke-author-s-space-odyssey-his-stay-chelsea.html?pagewanted=all
|
|
|
|
author: samclemens
|
|
|
|
points: 42
|
|
|
|
story_text:
|
|
|
|
comment_text:
|
|
|
|
num_comments: 13
|
|
|
|
story_id:
|
|
|
|
story_title:
|
|
|
|
story_url:
|
|
|
|
parent_id:
|
|
|
|
created_at_i: 1459204698
|
|
|
|
_tags:
|
|
|
|
- story
|
|
|
|
- author_samclemens
|
|
|
|
- story_11378019
|
|
|
|
objectID: '11378019'
|
2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
|
|
|
year: 1999
|
2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
They took a nerve biopsy. I have some obscure neuropathy. All of a
|
|
|
|
sudden, my legs get numb. Mainly, I have post-polio syndrome, which is
|
|
|
|
why I can't walk anymore. I was told I had Lou Gehrig's disease,
|
|
|
|
originally.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
As far as I know, Stephen Hawking is the only man who's survived that
|
|
|
|
for very long, so this (laughs) is a considerable improvement.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
Q. We heard that the astronaut Buzz Aldrin made a visit to you at
|
|
|
|
Hopkins.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
A. Yes, he dropped in to see me in the hospital and he kept making the
|
|
|
|
point: we've got to get NASA out of the space business. He believes it
|
|
|
|
should be private enterprise. There are a lot of people now who are
|
|
|
|
trying to develop relatively cheap nonbureaucratic access to space. How
|
|
|
|
successful they'll be, I don't know. I think the rocket will end up
|
|
|
|
doing for space travel what the balloon did for air travel: it got us
|
|
|
|
there, but soon was superseded by something better.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. Are you as critical of NASA as Buzz Aldrin is?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. I won't criticize NASA because it's the slave of Congress.
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
Actually, NASA has now set up an Institute for Advanced Concepts. It is
|
|
|
|
looking at all sorts of crazy ideas, including my favorite one, the
|
|
|
|
space elevator. It's such a delightfully simple idea: build an elevator
|
|
|
|
from the Equator to a geostationary satellite. You move payloads up and
|
|
|
|
down by electricity.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
When I wrote my book ''The Fountains of Paradise'' in 1979, about the
|
|
|
|
building of the space elevator from a country which is 90 percent Sri
|
|
|
|
Lanka, the only material that could be strong enough to build a space
|
|
|
|
elevator was diamond. And that, unfortunately was not available in the
|
|
|
|
megaton qualities needed for such a project.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
Interestingly, when I later recorded a 12-inch L.P. of ''The Fountains
|
|
|
|
of Paradise,'' the cover notes and illustration were by Buckminster
|
|
|
|
Fuller.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-4)
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
And now, we have the material to make it: C-60 nanotubes, which are
|
|
|
|
hundreds of times stronger than steel.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
The Rice University scientists who were co-discoverers of C-60 have
|
|
|
|
named it Buckminsterfullerene. If C-60 can be mass produced, it will
|
|
|
|
revolutionize space travel, as well as everyday life. You could lift
|
|
|
|
your car with one hand.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
The point of the space elevator is that it makes space travel cost just
|
|
|
|
pennies. The cost in electricity of lifting you to space is about $200.
|
|
|
|
The cost for a round trip is about $40 because you get most of your
|
|
|
|
energy back on the downward trip. I've said many times that the main
|
|
|
|
cost of space travel in the future is going to be for catering and in
|
|
|
|
flight movies, not for fuel.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
And of course the considerable interest on the trillion or so that it
|
|
|
|
costs to build the thing.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. One reason you advocate space travel is fear of asteroids?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
## Newsletter Sign Up
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
[Continue reading the main story](#continues-post-newsletter)
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
###
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Invalid email address. Please re-enter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New
|
|
|
|
York Times's products and services.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
### Thank you for subscribing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
### An error has occurred. Please try again later.
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
[View all New York Times newsletters.](/newsletters)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. I'm always quoting the science fiction writer Larry Nivens that ''the
|
|
|
|
dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.''
|
|
|
|
Yes, I think a serious asteroid impact is inevitable. In any case, even
|
|
|
|
without them, we have all our eggs in one basket here. By the way, I'm
|
|
|
|
an absentee landlord of a hundred square miles of some rather rugged
|
|
|
|
territory near the orbit of Mars. I have an asteroid named after me.
|
|
|
|
Isaac Asimov's got one too. It's smaller and more eccentric.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. In the news is word that the world's population has hit six billion.
|
|
|
|
What do you feel when you see a headline like that?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Well, I feel rather depressed, but then there are so many times when
|
|
|
|
I'm an optimist. I think we have a 51 percent chance of survival. I
|
|
|
|
would say the next decade is perhaps one of the most crucial in human
|
|
|
|
history, though many people have felt that in the past. But it's real
|
|
|
|
now. There are so many things coming to a head simultaneously. The
|
|
|
|
population. The environment. The energy crunch. And, of course, the
|
|
|
|
dangers of nuclear warfare. I am often asked to predict things and I'm
|
|
|
|
described as a prophet, but I deny that. I'm just an extrapolator. I can
|
|
|
|
envision a whole spectrum of futures, very few of which are desirable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But I do feel that we science-fiction writers do serve as an early
|
|
|
|
warning system, by showing what may happen, what could happen, and
|
|
|
|
simply what should happen. I've often said one reason why I'm an
|
|
|
|
optimist is that then you have a chance of creating a self-fulfilling
|
|
|
|
prophesy -- and ditto if you're a pessimist -- it's more cheerful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. Can you think of something that you predicted might have happened
|
|
|
|
that doesn't look like it will?
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Well, there won't be a Hilton in orbit by 2001.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-5)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. Was it your idea or Kubrick's to make a computer, HAL, the villain of
|
|
|
|
film?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Villain? HAL's a nice guy. No, I cannot now say who did what. The
|
|
|
|
only thing I'm completely sure of is that the idea of HAL lip reading,
|
|
|
|
which I thought was rather unlikely, was Stanley's. Now, of course,
|
|
|
|
they've succeeded in getting a fair degree of accuracy with lip reading
|
|
|
|
in computers. The way we wrote it, we just brainstormed. We sat in this
|
|
|
|
apartment and brainstormed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stanley said, ''I want to do a good science-fiction film.'' So we went
|
|
|
|
through all my short stories to see what would make a good film. We had
|
|
|
|
about six. One by one, we threw away stories. Eventually, we just had
|
|
|
|
two of them. One was ''The Sentinel,'' and the other was ''Encounter in
|
|
|
|
the Dawn,'' in which a space ship lands before man existed and the
|
|
|
|
travelers meet man-apes. We were originally going to call the film,
|
|
|
|
''How The Solar System Was Won.''
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. One of the legends about you is that you came up with the idea for
|
|
|
|
Comsat in an article you wrote in 1945 and that you never patented the
|
|
|
|
idea.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Oh, so you want to ask me about how I lost a billion dollars in my
|
|
|
|
spare time? Well, you see when I wrote my ''comsat'' paper, it was 1945.
|
|
|
|
The war was still on. No one could even imagine what peace would be
|
|
|
|
like. And I didn't think that satellites could be launched until the end
|
|
|
|
of the century. So I didn't give the matter of a patent any thought at
|
|
|
|
all. I just wrote this article and sent it off and got $:15 for it.
|
|
|
|
Which was real money in 1945. I don't regret it because I think a patent
|
|
|
|
would have expired anyway before the first comsats were launched. Until
|
|
|
|
the technology reaches some level, you can't patent anything. Besides,
|
|
|
|
who was it that said, ''The patent is merely a license to be sued?''
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. Surely you must sometimes fantasize about what your life would have
|
|
|
|
been if you had?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. O.K., what I should have done is to try to copyright the word
|
|
|
|
''comsat.'' If I'd done that. . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. You've written somewhere near 100 books of science fact and fiction.
|
|
|
|
How fast do you write, and think?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Not as fast as I used to. I have difficulty remembering names. But I
|
|
|
|
feel as long as I can spell ''Alzheimer,'' I'm in good shape. I don't
|
|
|
|
know if I've ever written more than 3,000 words a day. Isaac Asimov
|
|
|
|
could do that in a minute and a half. And mostly on a manual typewriter,
|
|
|
|
too.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q. There are plaques mounted in front of the Chelsea Hotel dedicated to
|
|
|
|
deceased artists who once lived here: Thomas Wolfe, Brendan Behan,
|
|
|
|
Virgil Thomson. Will there be one for you one day?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. Oh, I hope so, but not for a long time. However, I don't mind if they
|
|
|
|
put one up right now.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Continue reading the main story](#whats-next)
|