The Case for Space
Occasionally I hear someone trying to resurrect the old Either/Or. Why space? they ask. Why are American taxpayers asked to spend money on space exploration when we could be making things better at home? After all, the argument goes, with enough money, we could end poverty, eradicate the causes of world hunger, heal the injured earth. Why set our sights on darkness, when our battered blue jewel so desperately needs our help?
There was a time when the question made sense. Fifty years ago, America was locked in a dangerous and expensive battle for space supremacy with the Soviet Union. Its central competition was a race to “conquer” the barren surface of the moon, which turned out to be a little like conquering Antarctica, or the Gobi Desert. Getting there was great. We raised the flag, and dunked on the commies. But we weren’t really clear on what should come next. It took us years to figure out that the moon has resources — water, for example — that could actually be harvested. In the meantime, MLK was assassinated. Watts burned. We fought a vicious and possibly unwinnable war in Southeast Asia, the bald eagle flirted with extinction, and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.
Things have changed. The United States still suffers from simmering racial resentments, to be sure. But the notion of space exploration as white privilege’s pet project makes less sense in an age when Barack Obama, an avowed Star Trek fan, advocated for missions to asteroids, and his African-American NASA Administrator, Charlie Bolden, was just one of many people of color to fly on the Space Shuttle or visit the International Space Station.
And yes, the world is in big environmental trouble — bigger in fact than when we faced localized problems like smoldering rivers and LA smog. But spending on space isn’t making that problem worse. In fact, data and imagery from space have been huge factors in generating assessments of terrestrial environmental problems and interest in solving them. Even during the darkest anti-science days of the Trump Administration, NASA maintained its website warning of the dangers of climate change due to our over-use of fossil fuels. Space technology isn’t detracting from conservation efforts. It’s making the case for them. NASA continues to ring the alarm bell. Whether enough of us will act on such warnings is another issue altogether.
Most importantly, though, the reason why the whole space vs. social spending issue no longer makes sense is that space is no longer a hypothetical. We’re no longer trying to get to space. We’re in it. It’s happening now, not at some point in the future. America’s satellite-based global positioning system, perhaps the most important byproduct of our early years of space exploration, provides hundreds of millions of people with geographical and atmospheric data on a daily basis. Communications satellites enable us to talk to each other, wherever we are in the world. Private companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are on the cusp of offering “space tourism” flights similar in spirit to the rides that biplane-driving barnstormers sold to eager farm boys a hundred years ago. And if 81-year-old Wally Funk can enjoy a jaunt above the Karman line, why can’t we? (Well, cost, for one thing — but that will change.)
America’s need to continue and even increase our spending on space exploration is increasingly clear. First, we need to preserve our international lead in promoting scientific understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe. The prestige associated with innovations like GPS, available to everyone, and use of the Hubble Space Telescope, available to researchers all over the world, are invaluable. Despite our internecine squabbles about climate change and vaccinations, we are still seen as a country of science and technology pioneers — Jonas Salk and Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk and Gladys West. To squander this leadership position would be a huge waste of time, resources, and international good will. Influence can be exerted through the barrel of a gun. Inspiration arises more subtly — and sometimes through the lens of a telescope.
Second, space is increasingly seen as a huge, practically infinite, set of resources to be harvested, from solar energy in low-earth orbit to tritium on the moon to gold, nickel, and lithium on any number of asteroids in our solar system. The United States and Japan have already started sampling asteroids. Mining operations on the moon, Mars, and various smaller solar system objects are not a matter of if, but when. Losing out on acquisition of these resources would be a huge mistake.
And losing out is a possibility. Not only will mining in space be technologically challenging; there will also be competition. From difficult beginnings in the sixties, China has emerged as a power in space second only to the United States — and closing fast. China has started building its own space station, visited the far side of the moon, and announced plans for manned lunar and Mars missions. Japan, meanwhile, has visited two asteroids. India plans to send astronauts to the moon. The Russians and the European Space Agency are capable players in the accelerating space race, limited more by a lack of money than any want of expertise. And finally, private interests will eventually figure out ways to acquire and profit from space resources. If we want to retain any measure of supervision and control of such efforts, we need to be a spacefaring nation — and, ideally, the preeminent spacefaring nation, as Great Britain was the preeminent seafaring nation of the nineteenth century.
A final reason for maintaining competence in space gets to the heart of the Earth v. Space argument. The fact is, we need space in order to protect the Earth and humanity. We need to plan, for example, for the possible appearance of the sort of killer asteroid that slammed into the planet 65 million years ago, wiping out what were then the world’s reigning animal kings — the dinosaurs. The odds of such an event happening again are small, but less cataclysmic collisions happen on a fairly regular basis. We need to know how to prevent them. And if worse comes to worst, and Earth is no longer a viable habitat, we need to have what some call a “Plan B” for preservation of humanity itself — whether it’s a single crewed base on Mars or a robust system of off-world space stations, lunar installations, and mining operations all through the solar system.
Space remains a stunningly hostile environment. Though the search is young, we know of no other habitable planets or moons in our galaxy. Wherever we go in our solar system, we’re going to have to create our own environment. In doing so, we’ll need to contend with not only the usual human needs — oxygen, water, food, and shelter — but also with the constant threat of radiation on any celestial body that lacks the protective atmosphere possessed by Earth. And that’s just once we get there. The distances involved in traveling to celestial destinations are staggering. With current technology, even a voyage to Mars would take three months, in close quarters, with limited protection from radiation exposure. The next logical step, a trip to one of Jupiter’s apparently water-rich moons, would take more like three years, with little chance for support or rescue along the way and even less once there.
Humanity’s relationship with the cosmos might end up like our interaction with the oceans. Science fiction hasn’t always looked up at the stars. As far back as Jules Verne, it has also peered into the seas. No one is clamoring for a new Atlantis these days, and no one lives in an underwater city, though the residents of New Orleans are getting close. There are underwater hotels and restaurants, to be sure, but these are tourist magnets rather than permanent or productive habitats. Nevertheless, we traverse the oceans all the time. We take huge amounts of food and energy from the seas in ways and at scales that would have been unimaginable 500 years ago — and underwater mining, for better or, almost certainly, worse, is just getting started. Men go down to the sea in ships. They work for a period in or on this hostile environment, and then they return. Maybe this is how we will deal with space — only in much longer time frames.
Will space be like the sea, exploited but not inhabited? Or will we find some way to make it a home, at least for some portion of our species? We’re going to find out sooner than we think. It’s no longer Earth vs. Space. Low-Earth Orbit, almost unimaginable only a hundred years ago, already seems more like a part of the planet than of the great expanse beyond. And the rest of the solar system is getting closer, year by year. The choice is clear. Either America retains its lead in exploring the cosmos, or other nations will seize the torch.
There was a time when the question made sense. Fifty years ago, America was locked in a dangerous and expensive battle for space supremacy with the Soviet Union. Its central competition was a race to “conquer” the barren surface of the moon, which turned out to be a little like conquering Antarctica, or the Gobi Desert. Getting there was great. We raised the flag, and dunked on the commies. But we weren’t really clear on what should come next. It took us years to figure out that the moon has resources — water, for example — that could actually be harvested. In the meantime, MLK was assassinated. Watts burned. We fought a vicious and possibly unwinnable war in Southeast Asia, the bald eagle flirted with extinction, and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.
Things have changed. The United States still suffers from simmering racial resentments, to be sure. But the notion of space exploration as white privilege’s pet project makes less sense in an age when Barack Obama, an avowed Star Trek fan, advocated for missions to asteroids, and his African-American NASA Administrator, Charlie Bolden, was just one of many people of color to fly on the Space Shuttle or visit the International Space Station.
And yes, the world is in big environmental trouble — bigger in fact than when we faced localized problems like smoldering rivers and LA smog. But spending on space isn’t making that problem worse. In fact, data and imagery from space have been huge factors in generating assessments of terrestrial environmental problems and interest in solving them. Even during the darkest anti-science days of the Trump Administration, NASA maintained its website warning of the dangers of climate change due to our over-use of fossil fuels. Space technology isn’t detracting from conservation efforts. It’s making the case for them. NASA continues to ring the alarm bell. Whether enough of us will act on such warnings is another issue altogether.
Most importantly, though, the reason why the whole space vs. social spending issue no longer makes sense is that space is no longer a hypothetical. We’re no longer trying to get to space. We’re in it. It’s happening now, not at some point in the future. America’s satellite-based global positioning system, perhaps the most important byproduct of our early years of space exploration, provides hundreds of millions of people with geographical and atmospheric data on a daily basis. Communications satellites enable us to talk to each other, wherever we are in the world. Private companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are on the cusp of offering “space tourism” flights similar in spirit to the rides that biplane-driving barnstormers sold to eager farm boys a hundred years ago. And if 81-year-old Wally Funk can enjoy a jaunt above the Karman line, why can’t we? (Well, cost, for one thing — but that will change.)
America’s need to continue and even increase our spending on space exploration is increasingly clear. First, we need to preserve our international lead in promoting scientific understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe. The prestige associated with innovations like GPS, available to everyone, and use of the Hubble Space Telescope, available to researchers all over the world, are invaluable. Despite our internecine squabbles about climate change and vaccinations, we are still seen as a country of science and technology pioneers — Jonas Salk and Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk and Gladys West. To squander this leadership position would be a huge waste of time, resources, and international good will. Influence can be exerted through the barrel of a gun. Inspiration arises more subtly — and sometimes through the lens of a telescope.
Second, space is increasingly seen as a huge, practically infinite, set of resources to be harvested, from solar energy in low-earth orbit to tritium on the moon to gold, nickel, and lithium on any number of asteroids in our solar system. The United States and Japan have already started sampling asteroids. Mining operations on the moon, Mars, and various smaller solar system objects are not a matter of if, but when. Losing out on acquisition of these resources would be a huge mistake.
And losing out is a possibility. Not only will mining in space be technologically challenging; there will also be competition. From difficult beginnings in the sixties, China has emerged as a power in space second only to the United States — and closing fast. China has started building its own space station, visited the far side of the moon, and announced plans for manned lunar and Mars missions. Japan, meanwhile, has visited two asteroids. India plans to send astronauts to the moon. The Russians and the European Space Agency are capable players in the accelerating space race, limited more by a lack of money than any want of expertise. And finally, private interests will eventually figure out ways to acquire and profit from space resources. If we want to retain any measure of supervision and control of such efforts, we need to be a spacefaring nation — and, ideally, the preeminent spacefaring nation, as Great Britain was the preeminent seafaring nation of the nineteenth century.
A final reason for maintaining competence in space gets to the heart of the Earth v. Space argument. The fact is, we need space in order to protect the Earth and humanity. We need to plan, for example, for the possible appearance of the sort of killer asteroid that slammed into the planet 65 million years ago, wiping out what were then the world’s reigning animal kings — the dinosaurs. The odds of such an event happening again are small, but less cataclysmic collisions happen on a fairly regular basis. We need to know how to prevent them. And if worse comes to worst, and Earth is no longer a viable habitat, we need to have what some call a “Plan B” for preservation of humanity itself — whether it’s a single crewed base on Mars or a robust system of off-world space stations, lunar installations, and mining operations all through the solar system.
Space remains a stunningly hostile environment. Though the search is young, we know of no other habitable planets or moons in our galaxy. Wherever we go in our solar system, we’re going to have to create our own environment. In doing so, we’ll need to contend with not only the usual human needs — oxygen, water, food, and shelter — but also with the constant threat of radiation on any celestial body that lacks the protective atmosphere possessed by Earth. And that’s just once we get there. The distances involved in traveling to celestial destinations are staggering. With current technology, even a voyage to Mars would take three months, in close quarters, with limited protection from radiation exposure. The next logical step, a trip to one of Jupiter’s apparently water-rich moons, would take more like three years, with little chance for support or rescue along the way and even less once there.
Humanity’s relationship with the cosmos might end up like our interaction with the oceans. Science fiction hasn’t always looked up at the stars. As far back as Jules Verne, it has also peered into the seas. No one is clamoring for a new Atlantis these days, and no one lives in an underwater city, though the residents of New Orleans are getting close. There are underwater hotels and restaurants, to be sure, but these are tourist magnets rather than permanent or productive habitats. Nevertheless, we traverse the oceans all the time. We take huge amounts of food and energy from the seas in ways and at scales that would have been unimaginable 500 years ago — and underwater mining, for better or, almost certainly, worse, is just getting started. Men go down to the sea in ships. They work for a period in or on this hostile environment, and then they return. Maybe this is how we will deal with space — only in much longer time frames.
Will space be like the sea, exploited but not inhabited? Or will we find some way to make it a home, at least for some portion of our species? We’re going to find out sooner than we think. It’s no longer Earth vs. Space. Low-Earth Orbit, almost unimaginable only a hundred years ago, already seems more like a part of the planet than of the great expanse beyond. And the rest of the solar system is getting closer, year by year. The choice is clear. Either America retains its lead in exploring the cosmos, or other nations will seize the torch.
Published on September 08, 2021 14:07
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From Here to Infirmity
Thoughts, drafts, reviews, and opinions from Bruce McCandless, poet, amateur historian, bicyclist and attorney. I'm partial to Beowulf, Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Leonard Cohen, Walt Whitman, Hillary Man
Thoughts, drafts, reviews, and opinions from Bruce McCandless, poet, amateur historian, bicyclist and attorney. I'm partial to Beowulf, Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Leonard Cohen, Walt Whitman, Hillary Mantel, Wilco, and Steve Earle, chocolate, coffee, Colorado rivers and college football. I'd like it if you'd read a couple of my posts, and I'd love it if you'd comment. We all care about the written word. Let me read a few of yours.
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