Having a "Good" Evening

I was a member of a joint working group with the Russians, in which every year we would get together: about 10 U.S. members and about 10 Russians. One year we would meet in Russia, and the next year we would meet in the U.S. I was a part of that group that met in Leningrad in 1978. The Russians, out of the blue, came to me and said, "We'd like to move our program from plants, cells, tissues and rats to non-human primates." They had never flown a monkey in space. "These biomedical problems that exist with humans in long-term spaceflight are very serious: bone wasting, muscle loss, etc. The only way we're really going to get more insight is to utilize a primate species like the Rhesus monkey, and we'd like you to be involved." When the offer came to me, it was my job to analyze the offer and if I thought it as good for the US, I was to put a set of arguments together that I could take to the head of the U.S. delegation, and convince him that this was the right thing to do for NASA and our overall Space Biology and Medicine Program. I had to do all of it overnight, and it was about 8 p.m. when the offer came to us. Of course, the banquets that existed every night didn't give me a lot of time to do other things. At that time, we didn't have computers to allow us to bang out a few things in our hotel room.

So I remember going back to my room between 10 and 11 p.m., after the dinner broke up, and trying to put some things together by hand. I do remember writing it all out. It was about 4 a.m. when I finally finished. At 8 a.m., the head of the delegation met with me and I showed him the pros and cons, risks, and rough cost estimates, all of which I had come up with the previous night. After he thought about the issues for awhile, and asked other people in the delegation for their opinions, we were given the go-ahead to proceed down this new path. That meant that at the end of the meeting, we entered into a protocol basically stating that we accepted the offer and would go forward and work with the Russians in the new program. This would be in addition to a budget commitment from the head of the delegation, who was the director of NASA Life Sciences.

That put us on a path that we are still on, called the BION series. The first BION mission with monkeys was to have flown in 1981, but did not fly until 1983. But since that time, we have flown the missions every two years. It has been extremely productive and has enhanced our understanding of biomedical problems, as well as expanded what we have been able to glean from the use of rodents.

That was very exciting to realize that I was at that crossroads. Had I had a bad evening and not presented the case well enough, today we may not have the benefit of the joint venture with the Russians.