SPACED OUT: Tuesday’s New York Times had a good article (by Dennis Overbye) that summed up the biggest question about space exploration. We’ve been shooting stuff up into space for almost 50 years, and a lot of people are now asking themselves, “why?” The answer was easy back in the Cold War days: cause the damn Ruskies are doin\u2019 it, and we can\u2019t let them take the high frontier, dammit! But now that the military imperative is generally behind us, the reasons for our space adventures aren\u2019t quite as clear.<\/p>\n
The space people still have lots of justifications to offer, but basically they break down into two camps: CAMP ONE: scientific exploration; CAMP TWO: human colonization. OK, these two camps aren’t mutually exclusive. But it has become clear that if scientific discovery is what you’re after, the best way to do it is by sending machines and not humans out there. Space is not a nice place for people to be, and it takes a lot of money and fuel and other resources to get them up safely and bring them home safely. You could send out a lot of robots like the ones now crawling around on Mars for the price of a few Shuttle flights. And the orbiting space station? The price of finishing and keeping that thing up in orbit could support some really good unmanned science missions out to Jupiter, Pluto, where ever.<\/p>\n
You might say that I’m being shortsighted here. OK, you say, perhaps right now having humans up in space doesn\u2019t add much to the annals of human progress. But we need to stay in practice so that we can someday colonize the Moon, Mars, and maybe other solar systems \u2026 as in Star Trek. We\u2019re wearing out our own world pretty fast, and eventually we\u2019re gonna have to find someplace else to be if we\u2019re gonna give every human being a shot at a good, comfortable life.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, here on this planet, our level of science — and more importantly our level of economics — still aren’t anywhere close to what would be needed for a real version of the Enterprise, with its warp drive, di-lithium crystals and antimatter fuel and comfortable lounges and restaurants. For now, all we can do is to send people up in cramped tin cans where things aren’t very comfortable. Yea, we might have the technology to set up colonies on the Moon and Mars before long, but they aren’t going to be such nice places to stay. Most people would get tired of them pretty fast, and not many would want to spend their lives out there and start a family (Elton John was quite right when he sang \u201cMars ain\u2019t the kind of place to raise your kids\u201d in Rocket Man).<\/p>\n
The pro-space colonization people talk about the spirit of the New World explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries, e.g. Columbus, Drake, Vespucchi, Erikson, DaGama, etc. But there’s a big difference here. The European crews that first landed on the shores of the West Indies and Florida still had plenty of oxygen, sunshine, water, blue skies, edible fruit, and other recognizable stuff about them when they arrived. The New World wasn’t really all that new. It was still the kind of place where you could unwind, the kind of place that more or less makes sense to you and your body. To live on the Moon or Mars or the Starship Enterprise, you\u2019re going to have to put up with a cramped, high-tech environment where food, water and air supplies are highly rationed. If you hate big government here on Earth, well, don’t think that Mars is going to be your paradise. There would be all sorts of restrictions on what you can or can’t do in everyday life. Break the rules and everyone could die very quickly given the harsh surrounding environment.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we will eventually be able to build large-scale artificial environments that are comfortable and self-sustaining for a community of humans, and which allow degrees of freedom and self-expression similar to what we are used to. But our first experiments in artificial human-inhabited environments didn’t go so well — recall the failed Biosphere 2 experiments in Arizona back in the early 90s. “Basically, we suffocated, starved and went mad,” said Jane Poynter, one of the participants. We really don\u2019t know all that much about building a sustainable human environment in a vacuum. The first thing that would be needed would be a reliable energy source. OK, there would be plenty of sunshine, at least until we get past Jupiter. But even with huge solar panels generating electricity, would there be enough to sustain a big comfortable human bubble in the midst of radiation, asteroids, vacuum, and extreme cold?<\/p>\n
I say we\u2019re wasting our time and our money putting people up there right now. For the next 50 or 100 years, let\u2019s figure on doing the science and research the best way possible, with robots. Maybe once we learn more about the heavens and about our own Earth and about ourselves, we can figure out how to live happily in the great beyond. For now \u2026 well, sure, we can get back to the Moon and get out to Mars in a decade or two. But we\u2019re just gonna hate it once we get there.<\/p>\n
ALSO IN THE NEWS: The Janet Jackson flash at the Super Bowl? Oh come on, what a joke (yes, I did see it). That\u2019s what makes the front-page news around here? I got a lot more interested in a small item in the back pages, an article about some guys from Cuba who were tired of Castro so they converted a 1959 Buick sedan into a boat! They actually almost made it to Florida, but the Coast Guard got them. The executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation said \u201con ingenuity alone, they should be allowed to stay\u201d. I can\u2019t completely disagree with him!<\/p>\n
Well, next time you hear guys talking about their old Buicks, it will make more sense when they say \u201cman, that car was a boat\u201d.
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