Thoughts on space, on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing

image

It is that time of the year when we look at the sky and think about space. 40 years ago, we watched Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon. And many people are once again asking the question, why did we give up space, and when do we go back? Yes, yes, we have telecom and Earth watching satellites, robotic planetary missions that produce a lot of good science and all that. But… I want to see people in space. Do you?

The IEET blog has a post and a poll on Should off-Earth expansion be a high priority for humanity?. The options given in the poll are: No, we should devote all our resources to solving current problems. - We need to expand, but with biologically modified transhumans. - Yes, to protect our species from extinction in all-out war. - No, because humans will never survive long in space. - Yes, in order to preserve Earth from further ecological damage. - Expansion, yes, but with robots first and humans later. - Other: (enter another option). I voted Other: YES!!

In some sense I tend to agree with the option “We need to expand, but with biologically modified transhumans”. I am sure our ultimate destiny in space will be, in the beautiful words of Sir Arthur:

“And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.

In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.”

One may think that it makes much more sense to wait for the development of some transhumanist technologies, and then resume our (post-)human adventure in space. There are a lot of valid points in support of this position, but I think they miss a very important point:

We need space. We need it now. We need it for our mental health as a species.

Watching the Moon knowing that other people are living and working there would be a powerful pointer to future, even more daring cosmic journeys, that could contribute to the mental health of the zeitgeist and give us a renewed confidence in the relevance of our lives on this little planet. Not everyone can be a space explorer, but we are all partners and stakeholders in the cosmic future of our species and its “manifest destiny” among the stars. This is a powerful meme that could result not only in much more support for space, but also in a more positive and proactive attitude on other pressing issues, at a moment of our history where we need positive thinking, confidence and optimism.

The last paragraph is from my paper on A Virtual World Space Agency to be published by Futures (Futures 41 (2009) pp. 569-571) (link). I cannot post the full text here, but I wish to post some excerpts:

We need new initiatives able to ignite the imagination of people, especially young people, al over the planet. I have worked for many years in public space agencies, for example in ESA in the eighties and nineties. I used to say that, despite the scientific value of robotic planetary missions, the practical value of communication, earth observation and navigation satellites, and the pragmatism of a cautious approach to crewed space missions based on the shuttle and the space station, their impact on the public at large was nil. In order to support spending money in space, people need to see other people in space taking risks to do momentous things. This is the simple truth that every marketing or advertising professional knows, but paper pushers in government and industry have forgotten.

For the same reason, aseptic orbital or planetary missions do not sufficiently stimulate young people to study science and pursue careers in technology and space, hence also decreasing the available expertise in terms of both quantity and quality. I used to say that the emphasis on cost-effective pragmatic mission with only a scientific return and no PR value would kill both public and political support for space, and the facts have given me reason.

To my knowledge, nobody said this better than William Sims Bainbridge: “To become fully interplanetary, let alone interstellar, our society would need another leap—and it needs that leap very soon before world culture ossifies into secure uniformity. We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society”. We need grand cosmic visions and daring exploration projects to muster the drive, energy and commitment to steadily give our best contribution in our chosen fields. Marshall T. Savage published a tentative space exploration and settlement plan, fully compatible with this memetic engineering program and based on current (at the time of writing) science and technology. Savage appreciated that space exploration cannot be disentangled from other industrial and social concerns, and that space settlement will be more a political issue than an engineering problem, and dedicated considerable space to analyzing the best organizational structures and strong criticism to the “standard model” based on national space agencies and big corporations.

Are national space agencies going to take us to space? Are international space agencies going to take us to space? Is industry going to take up to space? In short, no, no, and no.

Who should take the lead?... Why not forming a global P2P space agency of the people, by the people, and for the people? Such a World Space Agency, whose members are not nation-states but individual citizens acting as a focused P2P laser, could act in the best long-term interest of our species and prepare the way for its, our, journey to the stars.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/18 at 07:36 AM

  1. One thing many people don’t realize is the amount of new science and technology that got developed when we had the space race.  Some people view sending people to the moon as a giant photo-op, but don’t realize the priceless innovations along the way.

    This happens whenever we push the limits of science to never before seen realms.  For example, while constructing particle accelerators at CERN we had to have a way to transfer information around the world quickly.  This led to the development of the World Wide Web, another free gift of science to the world.

    Posted by Joseph Smidt  on  07/18  at  01:46 PM

  2. True, but the space race was based on an artificial competition typical of the cold war era, so decision makers and the public quickly forgot space once the cold war was over. A race to space should be memetically engineered on more solid grounds: a race against the sky, and against our confinement in this little blue planet. It should be built on the certainty that something wonderful is waiting out there.

    CERN is probably a better example, but it also has become a sleeping beauty in the last decade due to budget cuts. Let’s hope research at CERN will be boosted by the first wave of results from LHC.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/18  at  03:00 PM

  3. Impact crater on Vastitas Borealis, Mars. Great permafrost burial ground for people who can afford a chemical conservation for suspended animation millions of Kilometers away: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Water_Ice_In_Crater_At_Martian_North_Pole.html - Water Ice In Crater At Martian North Pole. By Staff Writers; Paris, France (ESA) July 29, 2005. Huge natural dewar containing a circular patch of bright material; perspective view obtained on February 2, 2005, by ESA’s Mars Express.

    Posted by robomoon  on  07/20  at  09:54 PM

  4. Wow nice. One place to go if nanny-state bureaucrats decide to outlaw cryo on Earth.

    Better idea: let’s send _them_ in Martian permafrost!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/21  at  11:48 AM

  5. OK, there are some millionaires who support cryonics. But nobody has a trillion dollars to finance a free travel to Mars for some of the bureaucrats who outlaw cryo. Those bureaucrats are probably middle-class people who can barely collect a few million dollars for private space travel.

    Bureaucrats who outlaw cryo are already a big problem in some countries where people need local cryonics providers yet. Think about Germany where I live; I have not even signed up at a cryonics provider, partially because of that. But if you give such bureaucrats a few millions, they will do whatever you want. That will be even cheaper than a manned mission to the Moon and does the trick too.

    Posted by robomoon  on  07/21  at  02:18 PM

  6. Don’t underestimate bureaucrats, they are even more resistant and annoying that mosquitos.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/24  at  12:53 PM

  7. It would be a verbal abuse to tell people sitting at the office desks in NASA or ESA that bureaucrats are even more resistant and annoying than mosquitos. We have seen a great progress in space programs. There were many failures too, crash-landing space probes, space craft burning and exploding, astronauts were burning and dying, etc., just because these “bureaucrats” were willing to tolerate risks. This does not speak for people who are more resistant and annoying than mosquitos.

    Why is it that nearly all entrepreneurs in private space organizations want to make some impractical design of space craft successful? Nearly all of them have failed which makes clear that they were not ready to replace the bureaucrats in national space agencies and their economic alliances. So what has happened to change this? Well, I have published the report Vertical Growth http://shintoist.com/vertical.htm and made occasional improvements to give people who are interested in private space ventures like JP Aerospace http://www.search.com/reference/JP_Aerospace a chance for cost-effective outsourcing of various tasks within manned space missions. So far, nobody has made any offer to help making improvements of this report, but I am still waiting.

    If people are interested in a space agency of the people, by the people, and for the people, they should be more dedicated to improvements on Vertical Growth.

    Posted by robomoon  on  07/25  at  08:38 AM

  8. Robomoon: NASA was not run and staffed by bureaucrats in the 60s. Go take a look now.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/25  at  02:51 PM

  9. What do the 60s mean to me? What people want in the 21st Century are national space organizations where they can have a good job, sit comfortably in an office room, get a proper salary, and listen to the radio while they are doing the files. There are not even enough jobs like these for the people, by the people, and of the people in this world. If they wished for something more inventive, they would jump for the opportunity of sending requests for the editing of a report like Vertical Growth http://shintoist.com/vertical.htm to my email address.

    Posted by robomoon  on  07/26  at  01:55 PM

  10. Yes, this is exactly what I mean. National space agencies are (over)staffed with bureaucrats who do all the things you say (believe me, I know what I am talking about: I have been one of them).

    Don’t let the lack of enthusiasm for your work demotivate you: kickstarting an ambitious project is VERY hard and takes a lot of committment, energy and drive, even with modern communications.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/26  at  02:20 PM

  11. So good it sounds to create a global P2P space agency, so wrong is the time to form it today. We would rather want the International Space Agency getting involved - http://internationalspaceagency.yuku.com/directory - in civil technologies to bring many countries together for a new manned space program. They do not seem to me overstaffed with bureaucrats.

    It is no good when I am not working hard for the project of editing Vertical Growth, since I am its initiator and only contributor until now. But my limited abilities keep me away from doing so. So I wished that somebody who is good in grammar of the written English would keep on editing it.

    The project of editing Vertical Growth is open to anyone and in the public domain. It is a project for the people, by the people, and of the people.

    Posted by robomoon  on  07/28  at  09:19 AM

  12. Guilio, you need to fix your RSS feed.  It doesn’t show your posts in paragraphs.  I would suggest using Feedburner.  Cheers!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/29  at  06:49 PM

  13. Thanks Michael, I will give feedburner a try.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  08/06  at  11:22 AM
    14. Page 1 of 1 pages

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: No More Hate Mundi

Previous entry: IEET's Treder singing the singularity

<< Back to main