Turning point

■ WHEN I was about 5 years old

I asked my mother “What’s an

astronaut?” “Don’t worry,” she told

me, “you’re not going to be one.”

This convinced me I was inadequate in

some way – probably not smart enough.

I felt stupid and to make matters

worse a favourite expression in my

family was “Behind every cloud is a

black lining.” Hardly a boost to self-

esteem. The world was portrayed as

a dangerous, untrustworthy place.

I worked hard, nevertheless, and in

1981 received a PhD in mathematics

from New York University’s Courant

Institute. Yet the feelings of

inadequacy were still there.

My field is celestial mechanics,

the way things move in space, and I

specialised in studying unstable,

chaotic kinds of motion. I had always

been drawn to outer space, and this

was a way to study it. Another interest

of mine is oil painting, and since

I was 7 years old I have painted scenes

of distant alien worlds – landscapes

of serene majesty and beauty.

In some sense, I felt I never really

belonged here.

After a spell as a mathematician

at Boston University I went to work at

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

Pasadena, California, designing

trajectories from Earth to Jupiter for

the Galileo spacecraft. How cool!

Working at JPL was exciting and I

became interested in applying chaos

theory to the design of spacecraft

trajectories. I wanted to find a way for

vehicles to go from Earth to the moon

without using rocket engines to

achieve lunar orbit. This would save

lots of fuel – and money – and had

never been shown to be possible.

In early 1986 I found such a route,

which I called “lunar get away

special”. The journey would take two

years, however, and my colleagues

thought it was all a waste of time.

My breakthrough was ignored.

Then in January 1990 I got fired.

The feeling, said my boss, when he

called me into his office, was that my

ideas would never be useful. Without a

job I thought my world would come

to an end. The clouds really did seem

to have a black lining.

The turnaround came when I was

clearing out my office. I realised that to

get my life back on track I needed to

let go of the notion that I was stupid.

I had nothing to prove to anyone.

To my amazement it worked.

The stress just suddenly went away.

Then a miracle happened.

There was a knock on the door.

It was an engineer telling me about a

Japanese lunar spacecraft that was

stuck in Earth orbit with little fuel,

and he asked if I could save it.

By next day we had devised a new

route to the moon based on my ideas.

The craft was called Hiten, after a

Buddhist angel who plays music in

heaven. A year later it started out on

our plotted path, and in October 1991

it arrived at the moon , a mission that

had been considered impossible a

few months earlier.

I never got my job back at JPL,

but some years later the importance of

my work was formally acknowledged

by NASA. Thanks to the Buddhist angel,

my career has flourished in spite of all

I have been through. ●

Ed Belbruno is a mathematician at Princeton University. His book Fly Me to the Moon (Princeton University Press, £12.95, ISBN 9780691128221) is published in March

THE ANGEL THAT FLEW TO THE MOONWhen a Japanese spacecraft became stranded, Ed Belbruno got the chance to redeem a career that seemed to have hit the rocks

If brute force won’t get you there, try something more subtle

TOD

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RB

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EnigmaPatienceNo. 1431 Bob Walker

PENNY easily solved this puzzle of Joe’s.

It consists of 36 cards lettered on the back

and laid out as shown. On the faces of

the cards is one of the letters U for up,

D for down, L for left and R for right.

Start with any card, turn it over and

move in the direction shown to an

immediately adjacent card and turn it over.

Continuing in this way, it is possible to turn

over all the cards.

On the Gs are the directions D D D L R &

R, on the Es are D D L L R & R, on the Ms are U

U U U D & L and on the Is there are no Ds.

What directions appear on E N I G M A?

£15 will be awarded to the sender of the first

correct answer opened on Tuesday 27 March.

The Editor’s decision is final. Send entries to

Enigma 1431, New Scientist, Lacon House,

84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to

enigma@newscientist.com (please include

your postal address). The winner of Enigma

1425 is Ken Guiseley of Hope, Maine, US.

Answer to 1425 Spell check

The RIGHT number is 45798

www.newscientist.com 24 February 2007 | NewScientist | 51

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