Space Development And Earth's Future

apsmith writes "In the New York Times' Sunday Book Review Dennis Overbye reviews British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees' new book: Our Final Hour - A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century--On Earth and Beyond. The book paints an exceedingly grim picture of our future - Reese gives humanity only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century, with all the potential for calamity we have unleashed (and that nature may have in store for us too). But the book isn't just doom and gloom - we CAN do something, and the answer lies in space. But NASA has been doing it all wrong. Interestingly enough, this coming weekend is the International Space Development Conference in San Jose, where you can find out the latest ideas on how we really should be settling space."

Comments

Conflict is human in nature

[egoff]

We can't assume that just because we go live somewhere else, everything will be okay. Granted, that's a simplistic argument, but humans will tend to carry conflict with them, or create new conflict elsewhere.

Re:Conflict is human in nature

[BrynM]

Ahhh, but in space there is more room to blow stuff up without exterminating humanity as collateral damage (no, orbit doesn't count - we can do a LOT of damage in orbit).

Re:Conflict is human in nature

[Strange Ranger]

It's not about living somewhere else. It's about living in lots of somewhere elses. Such that if one somewhere else were destroyed there would still be humans left in the universe/galaxy.

You're statement seems to miss the point. Of course you're right that any other place will likely eventually have huge problems similar to those we now have here on earth. The point is that earth is a single point of failure. We should work to fix that. AKA, we shouldn't keep all our ova in one basket.

Re:Conflict is human in nature

[barawn]

The only serious concern left is an astronomical disaster, such as a meteor strike. It seems that the reasonable thing to do would be to focus resources on a defense system for that.

No matter what you do, you are never going to develop a defense system against resource depletion. While many people constantly say that there's plenty of X on Earth for humans to use (where X is anything consumable), they're crazy. Helium, for instance, is a decidedly depletable resource, and one that is being used up quite rapidly. It's doubtful that the Earth's helium supply will last much past the end of the 21st century - and yes, this is true, even with people using helium to lift balloons.

There are plenty of other resources that're being heavily depleted as well. Yes, there are more sources for them, but it will not be economically feasible to recover them. Which, of course, means that they might as well not exist.

Plus there are other disasters to be concerned about: a magnetic pole reversal, an Ice Age, a sudden rise of the sea levels, etc. - none of which you can reasonably protect against. Earth is fragile, and it will always be fragile. It's also not permanent. It will die. It has a finite lifespan in the neighborhood of a few hundred million years left before the oceans boil off. The reasonable thing to do is get the hell off the planet.

Once people migrated to North America, suddenly oceanbound travel started to explode. And likewise, ship technology increased dramatically. There's no reason to believe that the same thing wouldn't happen here.

There's also no reason to believe that colonization wouldn't provide the same benefits it did in the 1600s-1700s: a fresh view of the world from a different perspective.

There've been many people that have said that the reason the Internet boomed so well in the US was due to free local phone access, because the phone infrastructure in the US is so good. This is because the US is a large country with lots of open land - certain technological advances started here because it was best suited for them. There's no reason to believe that a Martian colony wouldn't be subject to the same pressures.

The point is that human beings do best in adversity - "necessity is the mother of invention." There are surely people working on radiation treatments, space health issue, space transport mechanisms, etc., but there's no real need for them now. If there IS a need, then those sectors of science will literally explode, and the secondary benefits will be very hard to imagine.

It's important to realize that one can -never- estimate the benefit of a colony to the home country, virtually by design - a colony is a new settlement, with new needs, and new ideas. And nothing - nothing - is more valuable to the human race than new ideas.

So maybe you're right. Maybe off-planet colonization isn't the answer to all of our problems. But it might be the answer to a whole, whole lot of them. You simply don't know until you go there, and find out.

Just another alarmist wacko

[Roto-Rooter Man]

"This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse." - Julian Simon

Re:Just another alarmist wacko

[g4dget]

"it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now."

Quite silly, indeed. And the solution to that is to fix the social and environmental problems, not to have unrealistic dreams of escaping into space.

Re:Just another alarmist wacko

[arpad1]

I'm a bit surprised that the late Julian Simon, professor and "Cornucopian," didn't predict he would never die.

Why? Would that have made the job of misrepresenting his views easier?

I suppose that sort of name-calling is necessary though when you want to divert attention from the uniform record of failure of the alarmists and the uniform record of success of the "Cornucopians". Does the name "Paul Ehrlich" ring a bell?

While it is true that a lot of doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialize, most famously the "Club of Rome" report in the seventies which predicted running out of oil ludicrously soon, it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now.

And there's the whole issue wrapped up in one sentence. Oh sure, sayeth the alarmist, we've been wrong about everything up until now but is that any reason not to believe us this time? After all, any minute now our losing streak might break and then you'll be sorry.

Re:Just another alarmist wacko

[Roto-Rooter Man]

Their life expectancy is also 30 years.

Re:A solution to many problems

[Igor47]

The problem is, where do we go and how do we get there? The planets around us are mostly uninhabitable. We need some place with water and an atmosphere, and even mars, the topic of much speculation, doesn't really have much water on it. The closest system is light-years away. Our technology is still barely able to get is into orbit and back. And it doesn't look like anyone is taking any of this seriously - we'd much rather spend billions on weapons research then on the space elevator (which is think is the first step to utilizing the resources of space). I think we had better stick to more realistic measures here on earth then wistfully dream of a life in space.

Re:A solution to many problems

[BrynM]

"The problem is, where do we go and how do we get there?"... "we'd much rather spend billions on weapons research then on the space elevator (which is think is the first step to utilizing the resources of space)."

You've just answered your own question. We need to inch our way off the planet. We've gotten used to orbit, now let's get used to being on the moon (I know, some of us are quite used to being "on the moon" ;) ). Then we pick a planet in our solar system, or build some type of solar orbiting station. Right now, we've been so wishy-washy about the international space station. Why? Because there's no public pressure to make it work. The knee-jerk public just wants it to work or get scrapped. They have no idea that it's a step among many.

space escapism

[g4dget]

People like Rees better get used to the fact that we aren't going to get off this planet in significant numbers any time soon and that colonization of space is a pipe dream for now.

So far, there is not a shred of evidence that we can travel faster than light or even get close? But, more importantly, if we can't control population growth and pollution on earth, how is that going to work in space, where just going a little bit over the limits can mean death for everybody? Even Antarctica is very forgiving compared to space--at least you can breathe there and dig into the snow.

Eventually, we may be able to transform asteroids into habitats, but even that is far off, and it will probably not give rise to societies that are self-sustaining.

Rees's kind of "space escapism" is dangerous because it distracts us from the fact that we do have a choice: we can control population growth, we can control military spending, we can control pollution. For the next couple of centuries, we either make it work here, or we become extinct.

Re:space escapism

[Anonymous Coward]

What's far more dangerous than "space escapism" is "we-can-fix-it-ism" because that distracts us from making progress during the small window we have available (between technological ability and environmental meltdown).

The only way to achieve the mandatory objectives you have detailed (controlling population growth, military spending, and pollution) is a global totalitarian government forever.

This would be required because you are talking about requires changing human nature which won't happen without the use of force. China is the only country to have made significant progress in controlling birthrates and that's because they are a totalitarian government. Reduced military spending is only possible if there is no chance of a Napoleon or Hitler (i.e., a global government prevents local politics). Pollution control of the sort required to make a real difference (assuming a population of the same order of magnitude as the current population) isn't going to happen as it is not technically feasible in time without untenable economic destruction (which would lead directly to wars).

On the other hand, while the Earth may be condemned to a Blade Runner like future where the gifted migrate off world, at least some of humanity would survive if not actually flourish.

Is the colonization of space apparently unreasonable? Perhaps but:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"

Re:space escapism

[g4dget]

What's far more dangerous than "space escapism" is "we-can-fix-it-ism" because that distracts us from making progress during the small window we have available (between technological ability and environmental meltdown).

I am pretty pessimistic about being able to fix it. But I'm even more pessimistic about space travel.

The only way to achieve the mandatory objectives you have detailed (controlling population growth, military spending, and pollution) is a global totalitarian government forever.

No, that's not "the only way". Many of our pollution problems could be taken care of with recycling laws, energy conservation laws, and similar laws. Free markets and free societies then come up with efficient ways to service those needs. And we have a really powerful marketing and PR machinery that can get people to kill themselves with unhealthy food and cigarettes and spend far more than they can afford; affecting reproductive choices would be an easy task in comparison.

Democracies, market economies, and capitalism can be stable, environmentally friendly, and sustainable. What will kill us, however, is leaving setting the goals and regulations under which democracies, market economies, and capitalism operate to chance.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

That platitude can be used to justify anything from mass murder to perpetual motion machines

Is the colonization of space apparently unreasonable?

Well, I'm all for research in new propulsion systems, basic physics, and many other aspects of science relevant to space travel. What I'm against is wasting money on futile projects like the space station or manned exploration of the planets. We can fly around the solar system for the next thousand years with current technology and we would still be unable to achieve colonization. Unless and until we achieve fundamental breakthroughs, space colonization is a pipe dream, and those breakthroughs depend on science to be done here on earth.

Re:There is no human nature

[egoff]

A frontier brings out the best and the worst of people. Again, to draw from American history, e the settlers' "pioneering spirit" to create great works and the Sand Creek massacre (in addition to numerous other outrages).

In addition, a very strong case can be made for a specific human nature, and has been made by Steven Pinker in his excellent book, How The Mind Works.

Re:you are naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed my point, which is that self-sufficiency is centuries off. Until then, we might as well not waste trillions of dollars on manned space travel; that money is much better spent on space-related research: propulsion, energy, etc.