Dear Mike
2nd April 2001

Supporters of space exploration have too often tried to make their case with carrots, when they should have been waving sticks. Spaceniks, such as myself, believe humanity should claim the moon, Mars, and beyond for the usual "manifest-destiny" Arthur C Clarke/John F Kennedy type reasons. Alas, most people do not share that enthusiasm, which explains the lack of progress in the three decades since Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969.

But those with no interest in the romance of exploration should be goaded by an interest in their own survival. If earth itself is endangered--as I think it is--then the self-preservation of our species requires humanity to diversify its risk, to put its eggs in more than one basket.

Fifty years ago, the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi looked up at the sky and saw all those zillions of stars, many of which surely had planets, some of which surely could support intelligent life. But if the makings of life were everywhere, he wondered, where is everybody? Why haven't we heard from them?

A variety of possible answers to what is known as Fermi's Paradox present themselves. It could be that ETs are so far beyond us that we can't detect them. And maybe they have chosen to ignore us so as not to interfere with our development (such is the Prime Directive on Star Trek, though the crew of the Starship Enterprise don't always obey it).

Or perhaps we are simply alone. Why is that? We could be alone because earth is evolutionarily unique. Or--and this is the scary argument--we could be alone because technology is inherently self-liquidating: as a civilisation evolves to the point where it can communicate, it also evolves to the point where it can destroy itself. That answer to Fermi was in keeping with the gloomy 1950s, when few people imagined that nuclear war could be avoided. It was Fermi's colleague on the Manhattan Project, mathematician John Von Neumann, who said that the question of nuclear war is not whether, but when.

It is now 56 years after Hiroshima, and although an American-Russian exchange (or even an American-Chinese one) is unlikely, the threat of the atomic bomb hasn't really receded; the danger of a "loose nuke" going off somewhere, as part of some other national rivalry, or as part of a terrorist attack, is as great as ever. And as the events of 1914 remind us, little disasters can metastasize into big disasters. Von Neumann can not yet be pronounced wrong.

Similar forebodings obtain for other weapons of mass destruction, such as those used in chemical and biological warfare. The world community has struggled to ban such weapons, but outlaws remain. Indeed, weapons of mass destruction may no longer be the province of rogue nations; it's possible to imagine that rogue bands, even rogue individuals, might soon possess a degree of destructive capacity once reserved for the nation state.

New dangers are emerging from even newer technology. Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, argued last year in Wired magazine that in addition to the "abc" threats of atomic, biological and chemical weapons, we also face the "gnr" threats of genetic mutation, nanotechnology, and robotics. Joy's point is that as Moore's Law continues to radiate throughout the whole of society, the computer-power-doubles-every-18-months phenomenon will apply to destructive power, too. And so in the not-so-distant future, some particularly clever hacker, unabomber, or Dr Frankenstein could become a world historic figure. As Joy wrote, "We are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation states." Joy's solution is a clampdown on such research. That is implausible--at least until such time as there's a calamity which vindicates Joy's doomstering. At which point, of course, we might be too deep into Fermi's Paradox to escape.

In addition, there's the danger of death from above. We now know that twice in the history of the world, 280m years ago--goodbye, trilobites--and then again, 65m years ago--goodbye, dinosaurs--life as we might have known it came to an end, thanks to a deep impact. And while nobody should lose sleep tonight over such a Goetterdaemmerung, it's still true that, once a century or so, the earth receives a hit; the last such collision flattened about 500,000 acres of Siberia in 1908. Had the asteroid collided with the earth just five hours later, the planet's rotation would have caused St Petersburg to be right at its epicentre.

To be sure, it's possible to imagine technological solutions to all these dangers, from regulatory regimes to space-shield defenses. What's harder to imagine is that all these systems will always work, every time.

Am I being too pessimistic about our capacity to get along? Maybe; but history suggests that a pessimistic, even tragic awareness about what can go wrong is the key to building a structure--be it a political system, a military alliance or, now, a space programme--to preserve that which is worth preserving.

And so carrot-happy optimists should join with stick-waving pessimists in a common space cause. Just as we create lifeboats, escape hatches, and computer backup, so we should create an off-world option for humanity, just in case. With existing technology, we could build human bases on the moon and Mars; eventually these colonies would thicken and brighten with commercial activity.

Can we afford the initial effort? Of course we can. The annual GDP of the US is more than $10 trillion, and yet the annual budget for Nasa is a mere $14.5 billion--just a smidgen of the more than $300 billion per year spent by the Pentagon. If the creation of a space-refuge option comes to be seen as an urgent priority for the human species, then the money for such a grand venture could be financed out of the world's GDP of some $33 trillion.

Best
Jim

Dear Jim
3rd April 2001

I agree that the survival of humanity is at least as legitimate a subject of public debate as other matters of cosmic importance--such as the outcome of the next election and the spikes in the stock market. For even if we don't destroy ourselves in warfare or planet-wide industrial accidents, nature is certain to destroy us, unless we undertake expensive protective measures. Long before the sun enters its red-giant phase four or five billion years from now and either bakes or evaporates the earth, our planetary home is scheduled to be pounded every 100m years or so by cometary or asteroid impacts of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs. If Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which struck the planet Jupiter in 1994, had hit the earth, we wouldn't be here to debate the danger of cosmic threats. To the list we must add other exotic dangers, such as earth-freezing cosmic dust clouds or deadly showers of radiation from nearby supernovas and "magnetars" (neutron stars) of the kind which forced the shut down of several satellites in 1998 (that particular magnetar was 20,000 light years away, but its gamma rays and X-rays penetrated to within 30 miles of the earth's surface).

Most of these threats, however, affect the entire solar system, so that colonists on the moon or Mars would share the peril of the earthbound majority. What would be the point of "terraforming" Mars (the subject of a science-fiction epic by the poet Frederick Turner) if "green Mars" were then devastated by a comet or asteroid impact? Similarly, a nearby supernova explosion would zap all the solar system's planets. Of course, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, but it's not much of an improvement to put all your eggs in two or three baskets--and then to leave them all in the middle of the same highway.

If our descendants have the technology to protect Mars from impacts, they would also be able to protect the earth from the same threats--so that colonising Mars would not be necessary, at least if human survival is the goal. The same objection could be raised to a proposal that, in the interests of survival, human colonies be planted beyond the solar system itself--a civilisation advanced enough to do that would be sufficiently advanced to protect itself from almost any imaginable cosmic or ecological disaster.

Let's be clear about something--the danger is not that the earth will be literally destroyed. Even the eventual expansion of the sun might not do that (it might just burn off a few outer layers). Nothing short of a collision with another planet-sized body could smash the earth into rubble. During the early life of the solar system, such collisions happened (the moon is now thought to have been formed from the debris of a collision between the earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet). But today, the largest comets and asteroids are far too small to do more than pock the surface of the inner planets. The main danger to civilisation, from plague and war as well as cosmic catastrophes, involves the disruption of the ecosystem: the thin layer of air, water and photosynthesizing vegetation atop the earth's crust; in particular, the disruption of the agricultural basis of the world's food supply. To counteract this danger, it would make more sense to stockpile food, or even to switch permanently to artificial food synthesis, and to build underground bunkers where many if not most of us could weather a temporary or permanent catastrophe affecting just the surface of the earth. You can vote for Mars colonies if you want. My vote goes to mineshafts.

Yours
Mike

Dear Mike
4th April 2001

Digging downward, as opposed to going outward, strikes me as an eccentric solution. But then burrowing into the earth is part of the culture these days. You wrote once that Bill Gates' decision to build his house in a hole in the ground was evidence of a "Hobbit-like" mentality among the educated eco-minded elites. I thought you were poking fun. Now I realise that you are one of Them.

It's OK to nuzzle down into Gaia's chthonic recesses, if that's what sinks your noodle. But the problem with your "mineshaft" approach is that it can't be tested in advance. You could build all your human-warrens, planning for all the air, food, and water your charges might require; you can even attempt planet-wide civil-defence drills, in which everybody goes below for a time. And when the Big One comes, you might even receive enough warning to get everybody below deck. But once the survivors are below ground, you won't know for sure that your system will work in a time of planetary distress. With perhaps billions of lives at stake, you'll be muddling up your learning curve as you confront unexpected earthquakes, say, not to mention accidents or even sabotage. Then, depending on how long the galactic storm, or whatever, rages topside, you'll be hoping that all your life-support systems work for the next year, or century, or millennium.

Needless to say, even if you could Murphy's Law-proof your people-pits, you might also wonder what would happen to the human spirit during the time people spend buried alive. Throughout most of human history--the last three decades were, I think, a lamentable and temporary aberration--people have wanted to go places. So my idea of planning to survive by spreading our wings is much more appealing than your idea of wielding picks and shovels.

Ah, you are saying, the same galactic calamity which could wipe out the earth could also wipe out the moon or Mars. Admittedly, in the cosmic scheme of things, the moon and Mars are practically adjacent. But the cosmos is also relatively empty--not that many colossal objects go barreling about. The bolide that killed off the dinosaurs, for example, is estimated to have been no more than nine miles wide. Meanwhile the moon, with a diameter of barely more than 2,000 miles, is never closer than 221,000 miles to earth; Mars, 4,200 miles across, is a not much bigger target, and it's always at least 35m miles from earth, sometimes as distant as 248m miles. In other words, somebody out there would really have aim at us to get all these spread-out targets with the same shower of death rocks. And while you're right to suggest it's conceivable that the whole solar system could be engulfed in some sort of radiation cloud, presumably multiple radiation shields wouldn't be too hard to build. But if that particular danger were unmanageable, I'd be happy to see us shove off to other star-systems.

So, for your "Plan Mole," you won't know in advance if it will work, and it wouldn't be very satisfactory if it did. We need a "Plan Space." It would guarantee the survival of the human species, and it would be good for us to get back in the habit of exploring and discovering things. That will not only keep us alive, but also make us glad to be alive.

Best
Jim

Dear Jim
5th April 2001

Just as you would not oppose planetary civil defence, so I would not oppose the colonisation of space on principle. I just can't imagine how it would come about in practice.

If your only argument in favour of space colonisation is the prospect of a catastrophe which could wipe out even an advanced civilisation, complete with planet-circling defences and back-up bunkers, I doubt that you'll win many converts to your cause. If the colonisation of space does come about, I suspect that it will be as a result of the pursuit of other, more immediate goals by governments or perhaps by corporations. After all, the Americas were settled as an afterthought by European empires focused on more immediate problems, such as fighting the Muslims in the case of Spain or, in Britain's case, competing with the Spanish and French.

But here's the problem. If by "colonisation" you mean the creation of multigenerational human communities permanently independent of the earth and its resources, it's really hard to imagine the founding of full-scale settlements as a "spin-off" of any practical efforts in space.

I don't doubt that near-earth orbit will become more important to civilisation than the Persian Gulf oil lanes in this century. Thanks to communications satellites, space is already commercialised; orbiting hotels may be only decades away. Sooner or later near-earth orbit will be militarised as well, if only because the great powers will be determined to protect their satellites. But anything still requiring a human touch can be done by civilian or military personnel on short jaunts from the earth's surface. And most deep-space exploration can be best and most efficiently performed by robots.

Space aficionados seem to think that there is a deep popular hunger for adventure. I wonder, though, whether the very nations and blocs which can best afford to invest in space exploration have evolved into what Edward Luttwak calls "post-heroic" societies--that is, rich societies whose citizens, because they have small families, are hypersensitive to loss of life. Consider how the Challenger disaster shut down Nasa's manned space programme for years, or the paroxysms of national agony we experience when we lose even one professional soldier in our miniature, postmodern wars. Robots, by contrast, do not have grieving relatives, and they are unlikely to sue their governments for exposing them to unforeseen hazards in the course of their duties.

If there really was an irrepressible human urge to settle new environments, we'd have colonies at the North and South Poles and on the sea floor by now--as the futurists were predicting in the 1960s, when you and I were kids. Antarctica is the Garden of Eden compared to the Moon or Mars, but nobody ever goes there except a few brave scientists--and even they don't stay long.

For all these reasons, I can't imagine the founding of populous, permanent, self-sustaining extraterrestrial colonies (as distinct from temporary scientific or military colonies) ever being approved by a democratic legislature--even by Tennyson's "Parliament of Man" and "Federation of the World." It's just as difficult to see the profit motive driving corporations to establish settlements of families in space rather than sending machines. Only a dictator, motivated by megalomania (say, the desire to populate the universe with clones of himself) or by religious or ideological passion (for example, a religious imperative to be fruitful and multiply throughout the Milky Way) would be able to muster the necessary combination of vast resources, long-term planning, collective mobilisation and disregard for budgetary constraints. The legacy such colonists would take with them would probably be the edited version of history found in the typical Orwellian regime.

Which leads me to the melancholy conclusion that, if human beings do one day bask in the light of Tau Ceti, they might well be disciples of some unborn Ayatollah, if not nth-generation replicas of Dr Evil's Mini-Me.

Best
Mike

Dear Mike
6th April 2001

Sadly, you're probably right about the complacent, post-heroic, anti-exploratory nature of contemporary society. I support going to space for the idealist-adventurist reasons expressed in Locksley Hall and Ulysses, but those sentiments may be as dead as Tennyson himself. That is why I began with Fermi's Paradox: if present trends continue, we'll be sitting here smugly until the moment we all get blown away.

What we need is a wake-up call-- which is why it was unfortunate that the Iranians were unable to buy Mir from the Russians and keep it in orbit. In case you missed it, Agence France Presse reported last month that President Mohammad Khatami had offered to buy the space station during a recent visit to Moscow, but the offer came too late to save the orbiter from meeting its fiery fate.

Am I really sorry that a country which held Americans hostage for 444 days, which labels us "the Great Satan"--and might soon have nuclear weapons--won't be flying over Washington DC right now? Yeah--I am kind of sorry, because if the Ayatollahs were active in space, so Americans would be. Consider: in 1957, the Soviet Union put up Sputnik and the US scrambled to catch up. Just a dozen years later, an energised Nasa put Apollo 11 on the moon. Yet because the Soviets had abandoned the race by 1969, the manned space programme was doomed at its moment of triumph. The US had no one to compete with, so it no longer wanted to play.

The result has been three decades of stagnation. Having reached the moon in a frenzy of nationalistic fervour, Nasa tried to preserve its momentum through a soggy internationalism. The Apollo-Soyuz orbital linkup of 1975, for example, was an expression of US-Soviet detente; it had nothing to do with America's space purpose or patriotic pride. The US public yawned.

Europeans and Japanese have flown aboard the space shuttle; such passenger ships, obviously, have no effect on Nasa's monopoly. But China could stoke a new space race; Beijing has talked about putting its own man in space this year; given recent events at Hainan Island such a space mission would probably provoke a US space reaction. Good.

The Pentagon may not share Captain Kirk's dream of going boldly across the universe, but it does seem eager to fill the military vacuum of circumterrestrial space. Good for it. And if other countries want to keep the US from monopolising this new theatre of operations--better and better; we'll have another space race masquerading as an arms race.

Yes but, you may be thinking now, such a rivalry-inspired space effort wouldn't necessarily lead to mass movements of the population to the moon and beyond. Military bases would be "temporary," or perhaps completely robotic.

I don't agree. History suggests that soldiers bring with them camp-followers, plunderers, and then settlers; think how many cities in the US have "Fort" for a first name. Yes, the military is more automated now, but not completely, if only because pilots and sailors still want the fun and glory of steering their own craft. So I'm confident that if the Chinese or the Iranians or anyone else poses a threat to US space hegemony, Americans will get back into space in a hurry--and stay there. Then more people will follow, from the US and elsewhere, and the threat of Fermi's Paradox will be averted.

Yours
Jim

Dear Jim
6th April 2001

I agree that the military is likely to play a leading role in any response to the disasters we have been debating. Or rather militaries, if humanity continues to be divided among sovereign states (be they nation-states, blocs like the EU, or other political entities yet to be invented).

We often assume that the existence of a cosmic threat to the earth (or a global threat, such as natural or artificial epidemics or robots running amok) would inspire the nations of the world to join together in a common cause. But small countries are often wary of great powers offering aid after natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, for fear that a big country may have an ulterior motive in sending uniformed personnel. The great powers themselves may be unwilling to share earth-protecting technology which might give rivals an advantage in arms races. Indeed, when the conservative physicist Edward Teller suggested a crash programme to develop nuclear weapons which could divert asteroids, many liberals accused him of finding a disingenuous excuse for bolstering America's arsenal. The late Carl Sagan once warned that a government with the power to deflect an asteroid away from the earth might also possess the power to deflect the big rock to the homeland of its enemies. If they can blast a comet to smithereens, just think what they can do to you...

On the other hand, a prolonged period of global peace might prove fatal to civilisation, if the result was a worldwide lack of interest in civil defence, inadequate funding for early warning systems and the dismantling of the only weapons capable of destroying asteroids and comets. It would be ironic, indeed, if we could only save ourselves from a global mass extinction inflicted by nature by clinging to the human rivalries which have stimulated the arms race.

Yours
Mike