Haunting the Web Since 1999
By way of Dangerous Meta, did Dark Matter kill the dinosaurs? Extremely speculative here, but food for thought. “The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which launched last year, will map the gravitational field of the Galaxy and could rule out or confirm the presence of this darker disk.”
James Fallows speaks with Space Adventures co-founder Eric Anderson on the coming age of space colonization. “One key to making all this happen is that we need to use the resources of space to help us colonize space…The near-Earth asteroids, which are very, very close to the Earth, are filled with resources that would be useful for people wanting to go to Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system. They contain precious resources like water, rocket fuel, strategic metals.”
Along the same lines, and from last June, a Dutch company called Mars One has a very specific timetable in place for Mars colonization. “Lansdorp plans to send another couple of adventurous astronauts to join the colony every two years, but the idea is that no one gets a return journey. This is a permanent base, a Plymouth Rock in an entirely new world that will begin the long, slow and painstaking process of terraforming it.” The first four colonists, set to leave Earth in 2023, will be chosen this year.
Update: So far, it seems, the Mars One project has received 40,000 applications.
Consider this a wake-up call. This is one more reason why we need to invest in our space program — because, right now, we are playing chicken with the universe. That deadly asteroid might not hit tomorrow, or even in 2106. But the danger is real. As author Larry Niven put it, “the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!”
“Under the agency’s procedures, the box should not have been opened without knowledge of a NASA scientist who is responsible for guarding Mars against contamination from Earth. But Planetary Protection Officer Catharine Conley wasn’t consulted. ‘They shouldn’t have done it without telling me,’ she said. ‘It is not responsible for us not to follow our own rules.’“
It seems NASA’s Curiosity may have inadvertently brought Terran microbes along with it, which could become hugely significant if the robot encounters water, in which case they become either the potential seeds of new life on Mars and/or the 21st-century equivalent of the smallpox blanket. Er…oops.
Meanwhile, while we’re bringing life to Mars, Jupiter may have once again protected us from a Deep Impact/Melancholia-like disaster. “This is the third time since 2009 amateur astronomers have witnessed an impact flash on Jupiter. The massive gas giant, which exerts considerable gravitational pull, is something of a cosmic whipping boy in our solar system, regularly shielding inner planets like Earth from potential collisions.” So, if you’re keeping score at home, that’s Jupiter 3, Bruce Willis 1.
With the Space Shuttle nearing its end, NASA unveils the prototype for their new deep space exploration vehicle, Lockheed’s Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and, well, it’s a throwback alright. “As currently envisioned, the MPCV would support four astronauts on short-duration flights of less than 21 days. For longer missions to asteroids or even Mars, the capsules would dock with a larger spacecraft of some sort that would provide more room for the crew while in transit.” “Of some sort”? So far at least, I am underwhelmed.
“[W]e are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years, but if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space.“
Once again, Professor Stephen Hawking makes the case for manned exploration, sooner rather than later — as in living off-world within the next century. In other words, we need to get busy living, or get busy dying.
“Suppose the asteroid is traveling 60,000 miles per hour. You want to make it 60,001.” Concerned by the possible 2036 impact of 99942 Apophis, two clever NASA astronauts have developed a tractor beam of sorts to pull asteroids off a possible collision course. Namely, send a relatively small (20-ton) ion-powered spacecraft to intercept and hover near the offending asteroid, and then let gravity work its mojo. “Even as the spacecraft counters the asteroid’s gravity, he said, its own gravity will pull the asteroid out of orbit.”
With the foam debris explanation suffering in computer modeling, the fate of the Columbia has become a scientific mystery. I haven’t had the time to address the space question as eloquently as I would have liked this week, so I’ll quit stalling and just repost some of my (slightly-edited) e-mail conversation with Scully on the subject:
I’m actually very much in favor of space colonization, and I think the argument that money spent on space is a senseless waste falls apart on its own premises. Would the money spent on the space program be better spent on conquering disease or ending famine here on Earth? Ideally, of course, we’d spend money doing both – exploring space and alleviating misery. But I think the utilitarian argument being made in this case ultimately doesn’t work. If we’re talking greatest good for the greatest number, then the space program in fact makes more sense. Spending the money on food saves millions. Space colonization would save untold billions, if not more – the very survival of the species, and in fact all of Earth’s species. We know that the sun will wink out of existence one day in the future, and if humankind isn’t out of the solar system by then, it’s game over.
Of course such an event seems very, very far away, and there are people starving and dying in the here and now. It seems callous to weigh the very real suffering of the diseased and famine-stricken against such a farflung possibility. But, the fact is, a wayward asteroid could kill us all in ten years. Or we could burn out the polar caps in one hundred. That’s why, ultimately, space colonization is an imperative. Having all of our eggs in one basket (Earth) may possibly encourage humanity to treat that basket with care (although there’s been no evidence of this in the past.) But even if we were all environmental saints, some forces are beyond our control.
If that sounds like idealistic or theoretical gobbledy-gook, I’ll go realpolitik. Like the Olympics, the Space Race is one of the few ways that nations can indulge in healthy, non-lethal competition (or indeed, even more healthier collaboration.) I’d rather China, the US, Russia, Europe, etc., spent billions on trying to be the first nation on Mars rather than on finding new and horrible ways to kill each other.
Also, as Screenshot recently noted, there’s a strong argument to be made for R&D benefits of the space program. Yeah, we all know about Homer Simpson and the ants sorting small screws in space. But there have been plenty of offshoots of NASA missions that have been enormously useful. And, while I admit this line of reasoning could be used to prove almost anything, scientific research conducted in space may yet provide breakthroughs that would help solve many of our planet-wide problems, from famine and disease to energy resources and environmental degradation.
And, finally, it would take a long time to explain in detail my final reason for being behind the space program, which is on republican (small R) grounds. But the Cliff Notes is this: I believe democracies need large civic projects to bind them together (usually, they have taken on martial rhetoric – War on Poverty, War on Drugs). The space program advances knowledge and brings Americans together in a way that doesn’t necessarily involve any enemy but ignorance. As such, it should be pursued if no other reason than that it encourages us to dream together and inspires us to collective action.
So, to sum up, I am very much in favor of space exploration and the space program. But I do agree with you that NASA has become a bit bloated and inefficient, and that’s for all the reasons that government always gets fat – for one, there’s no bottom line. For another, short-term thinking and narrow, remunerative interests have grafted themselves onto the system. Hence, we have a rocket-based shuttle launch system that costs ridiculous amounts of money each time we use it because the check-cashing subcontractors have no real incentive to start working on cheaper, lighter space planes. In fact, I think that it is in this regard that the tragic deaths of the STS-107 crew may not be in vain. The fate of Columbia is going to cause some heads to roll, and hopefully some of NASA’s organizational priorities will be reconstituted from the bottom up.
So that’ s my piece on the space program. Sorry if it’s more inarticulate than I would have liked. To close, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention in passing at least one more reason I support the colonization of space. As Breaching the Web’s Wild West cartoon also suggests: Because it’s there. Strange and irrational as it might seem, it’s always been my dream to look back on Earth from the stars, and, for however infinitesimal and fleeting a moment, attempt to contemplate the striving of countless generations towards outer space. Call it a bias or a misplaced faith in progress, but I believe Humankind has a mission and a destiny to leave the cradle of Earth and to colonize other worlds, allowing all the weird, wild, and wonderful variations of human society to bloom and flourish across the cosmos.
Wildly idealistic and improbable as it might seem, this dream gives me hope. And when the Columbia splintered apart last Saturday, it wounded a portion of my idealism that even the unforgettable horrors of 9-11 couldn’t touch. Which is why I am moved to see in the wake of STS-107 that this dream is shared by many, many people, and that – despite the seven tragic deaths that day – the dream will continue.
The asteroid noted here last update will miss Earth in 2019, although it may be coming back circa 2060.