Posted on 06/23/2002 8:51:55 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
After humans first set foot on the moon in 1969, most people assumed we had begun a sustained move outward. They were wrong.
Or perhaps they were just early.
No longer. With spaceports planned in Oklahoma and Tonga, a commercial space station in development by Mir Corp., and privately financed trips to the International Space Station a reality -- perhaps it is time to take a step back and ask whether humans should be in space at all.
Patrick Collins, a British economist working in Japan, is certain that space commerce, driven by tourism, would bring the world unparalleled prosperity.
"The commercial investment of perhaps half a trillion dollars [over the next 30 years] would create several hundred billion dollars per year turnover of new commercial space activities, providing the basis for a well-founded, world-wide economic boom, and opening access to the limitless resources of space," says Collins.
A half-trillion dollars is less than the $750 billion governments will spend on civilian space activities in the next generation and half the amount taxpayers around the world have coughed up for the same purposes over the last fifty years. Government efforts to date have yielded an annual return of only a few tens of millions of dollars, Collins explains.
Invested in commercial space, a half-trillion dollars could create jobs for 15 million workers, rather than the half million currently employed in the space industry, he reasons, and make a net difference to the world economy of nearly $1 trillion by 2030.
To many, such potential benefits are too far off and come at the expense of our lives today. In their eyes, space is too expensive, and most money aimed in that direction could be better spent at home.
According to Rene Schaad, a Swiss scientist who supports the idea of humans in space, the associated costs are mind-boggling for most Europeans, who have their own earthly problems to battle, particularly unemployment and the environment.
Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the popular novel Red Mars, believes that by exploring space -- Mars in particular -- we can help save Earth from environmental disaster.
"We are going to have to get involved in climate control and global planetary management," Robinson says, "but we don't know how to do that well enough. Going to Mars will help us understand it better."
Already, the study of another planet has helped us on Earth, Robinson contends.
"You can say that the ozone layer was discovered in part because people were studying the chemistry of the atmosphere of Venus," Robinson says. "Thousands upon thousands of cases of melanoma and premature death have been avoided because [of that]."
One of the ways we might be able to save Earth from ecological disaster, the thinking goes, is to search for life in outer space. Should there be life on other planets, we might be able to learn something about ourselves and our universe by studying it.
"The ecological crisis we face here on Earth is a life crisis; if we found life on Mars, it might abash us, make us more survival oriented, and more respectful of life in general," he says.
Closely allied with the search for life is the search for knowledge. This is the "because it's there" reason, science for science's sake, humanity at its best, says Robinson. This approach resonates around the world and underlies widespread support for robotic exploration missions.
And then there is the frontier theory.
Advocated fiercely by the likes of Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars, and Rick Tumlinson, president of the libertarian-leaning Space Frontier Foundation, this argument declares that without frontiers (read "challenges"), humans stagnate and lose the will to take risks and fend and think for ourselves. In other words, without the frontier, our culture will die.
Frontier advocates cite the work of 19th century American historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who argued that the American frontier shaped our collective personality, which is individualistic, resourceful and democratic.
However, for many, the idea of the frontier leaves a sour taste. Egocentric and with a historical dark side, the concept implies that American culture and experience are superior to others and conjures up images of slaughtered Indians and buffalo.
If stagnation fails to worry you, then perhaps another disaster scenario -- a catastrophic event like an asteroid collision or nuclear war -- does.
This fear underlies the "let's not keep all our eggs in one basket" proposition. Opponents argue that in such an event, only the elite would get to escape, not you and I.
A variation on this justification is, "We're running out of resources and outgrowing Earth."
Detractors say that moving out will not ease population pressures on Earth -- there's simply not enough capacity off the planet. Therefore, we should learn to live within our means.
Citing the way development on Earth has decimated the planet, Richard G. Steiner, an ecologist at the University of Alaska, says, "Humanity in space is wonderful, but we need a rational, legitimate process for deciding what goes on off-Earth."
Steiner has asked the United Nations to establish an Outer Space Environmental Commission that would review and either approve, reject, or conditionally approve environmental impact statements submitted to it by those proposing space activities.
While he is particularly concerned about the health of celestial bodies, Steiner concedes, "The impact of orbital hotels could be much more benign, possibly even exerting a positive influence if they cause us to contemplate Earth's fragility and don't interfere with other orbital traffic."
There are also those who worry that space development will be co-opted by the military.
The United States has repeatedly proposed putting weapons in space. The Bush administration is touting a space-based missile defense system despite the fact that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, USSR, and 89 other nations, directs that space shall be reserved for peaceful purposes.
Opponents of the project argue that it will lead to an arms race in space and that military debris could interfere with astronomy and communications satellites.
It is easy to assume that, if we do go into space, our lives will change profoundly. However, whether deep transformation indeed occurs will depend on how we go and what we find when we get there. We have orbited the Earth, been to the moon several times, and lived on space stations (Skylab, Salyut, Mir, ISS). Space telescopes and communications satellites notwithstanding, the real effect of our having set foot in space has been psychological. It is the knowledge that we can leave Earth that has changed us rather than the doing of it.
Stay or go, that may be the legacy of space for a long time to come.
Paula Berinstein's book "Making Space Happen: Private Space Ventures and the Visionaries Behind Them" will be published in July by Plexus Publishing.
too late Steiner, we're already sending junk into orbit!
Obviously not Muslims, because they decry technology.
Definitely has a polished brain cavity. Look at Earth. It is a royal mess and getting worse. It's a shame the aliens don't keep us out of their space. Then we would only have earth to worry about, just maybe we could get a half assed idea of what to do down here to stop the destruction.
It's got to go. There is a withdrawal clause; exercise it.
I am looking at Earth and it's not getting worse. Photos of Earth taken by astronauts in the 1960s look indistinguishable from photos taken today. The air in my city is cleaner than it was in the sixties, and so is the water. The 'dead' oceans predicted by Rachel Carson and the Enviro-hysterionics of the 1960s are teeming with fish and dolphin and look fine to me. The Amazon rain forest is still there.
The environmentalist whackos have learned from the failed doomsday prophecies of Rachel Dead-Oceans Carson and Paul Population-Explosion-Causes-Worldwide-Famine Erlich, and realizes now that they can't discuss real environmental catastrophes in our lifetimes without eventually seeming to be morons. So instead, they resort to obscure scientific 'projections' -- the 'risk' of global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and other abstract arguments whose dangers are decades hence, and therefore will be proven one way or another long after we are all dead. In this way, the enviro-whacks can pose as prophets of doom ready to save our planet, while at the same time safely avoiding the dangers of anyone calling their bluff.
Which is why we can have one of the coldest winters on record this year, a fact known to everyone who endured it, and yet the Liberal-Establishment 'scientific data' reports that we had one of the mildest.
It's a shame the aliens don't keep us out of their space.
Whoever the aliens are, they don't 'own' space. Earth is already part of space, and we have just as much right to it as they do.
I've often thought that it would make an interesting science fiction novel to have aliens infiltrating our society and preaching population control and environmentalist controls on technology and foisting shame on the human race -- so as to further their own interests in seizing nearby star systems without having to contend with rival claims from human space colonists. Of course, this would presume that there is some kind of intergalactic court which recognizes that humanity has a claim on nearby star systems because of our proximity, and therefore the only way the hostile aliens could take over these systems is to get humanity to openly declare that it is not interested in interstellar colonization.
Whether there are indeed hostile space aliens intent on jumping our interstellar real estate claims, posts like yours demonstrate that there is no question that traitors to the human species are among us, and doing their best to keep mankind down. If this Fifth Column is indeed all too human in its origin, then our own defeatism and self-loathing will in the end be the most effective and final argument that humans do not deserve the stars.
You know, Earthling...hence you must die!
Just kidding, really. Honest.
--Boris
A. American culture is superior.
B. I'm sure we'll take good care of any Martian natives or Martian buffaloes we find.
BTW-Lay off the stupid pills, they've already proven devastatingly effective.
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