Sunday is Father's Day, a day to honor all fathers. But why should we honor just traditional fathers? Why not honor untraditional fathers such as those known as the "Father of... (Something)?" We could start with the father of the American space dream, the person most responsible for instilling in the American public the dream of traveling into space and paying to explore worlds beyond the earth. And who would that be? I have my opinion. Do you have yours?

I would expect most people to nominate Werner von Braun, President John F. Kennedy or Robert Goddard as the father of the American space dream. Von Braun developed the powerful rockets needed to fulfill the dream. President Kennedy set the national goal that lead to the "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" landing on the moon. And Robert Goddard patented the first American rocket powered aircraft design. Only von Braun didn't eventually have a Space Center named in his honor. But none of the three get my vote.

I believe the father of the American space dream should be Percival Lowell. Lowell devoted his life and financial resources to two projects. First, he continued the aging Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli's observations of the canals of Mars after Schiaparelli's eyesight began to fail. And secondly, he led the search for a suspected planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. His lack of experience and education denied him access to the telescopes of a major observatory, so Lowell used his own money to build a professional observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. The planet Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in 1930.

Lowell's observations of changing Martian surface features and his imagination created an intelligent Martian civilization living on a dying planet. It was a thirsty civilization that built irrigation canals to take advantage of the red planet's seasonal melting of its polar caps.

History has proven the canals of Mars to be fictitious. Mars proved to be a deserted, windswept sphere of pink skies, empty red plains, tall mountains, deep canyons, extinct volcanoes and carbon dioxide polar caps.

Mars proved to be a planet with nobody at home. But one has only to read Lowell's best selling, popularly written books to see why his ideas about life on Mars became so accepted during the early twentieth century.

So why would this qualify Percival Lowell as the father of the American space dream? He qualifies not because of what he did, but what he inspired others to do, and in particular Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Science fiction writers have always had a stronger influence than science writers on the public's perception of space and space travel.

Scientists are always limited by science. Science fiction writers are only limited by their imaginations.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (the father of Tarzan) gave the martians names and forms in his pulp novels. He created the world of Barsoom and populated it with violent creatures of red and green with six and eight limbs.

The success of Burroughs' space adventurer, John Cartier, was followed by other space heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in newspaper "funny pages," on movie screens and finally on TV screens.

When Sputnik was launched on Oct. 4, 1957 and the "Space Age" arrived, the American public was ready. And all because of Percival Lowell, the father of the American space dream.



Dr. George Reed is a professor emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. His book, How Many Pieces Of Toilet Paper Do I Need To Get From Here To The Nearest Star?, is available at Village Hallmark and Books and Raley's Market.