Transterrestrial Musings

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Has anyone told the guy about asteroids in the near term and the eventual death sequence of our sun in the long term?

At some point in time, someone's gotta launch off this rock and head for redder pastures.

Posted by Paul at February 6, 2003 01:15 PM

Yah, he was impolite, but there's still good reason to respond. Let me ask the same question as him, but in a more polite fashion.

In your NRO piece, as well as on your blog, you have said "... it all starts by asking the right questions". You also list some things that can only be done with manned space flights, and then say "if we decide that any or all of those are national goals"

It good that you've clarified what the right question is -- but what I would really want it to hear your answer. Do you think that "mining asteroids", "orbital biotechnological or nano-research", "space leisure", or "martian colonies" are goals which the US government should finance?

Rand, I think that is you start asking the question -- "what is the goal", you might get people thinking that there is no goal out there worth paying for, and that maned space flight is best left to rich adventurists (like ballooning and Steve Fosset, or Mountaineering and a ton of people).

I think you think that public money ought to be put in a manned space program (correct me if I'm wrong). Now that you've identified the right question, tell us the answer that leads you to your preferred conclusion.

Posted by Ikram Saeed at February 6, 2003 01:23 PM

Why is it that whenever "manned spaceflight" is mentioned, people, both pro-and-con reflexively think it takes lots of "government money?" Especially in the context of the gov't running things as they run the post office or a public broadcasting network?

To start listing various "benefits" is to miss the point-- it's the intangibles that matter. In the same way that the government encouraged exploration and settlement of "The Great American Desert" without specifing, in advance, what benefits there would be.

The gov't role should be similiar-- to fund prizes to solve the problems of the day (like Longitude), and have dedicated, singleminded people like Harrison solve them. To fund and provide a US Geological Survey to figure out what's there, filling in the blank spots on the maps, but let private parties recover the resources. Like the land grants to the transcontinental railroads, specify the goal, and reward the private parties upon completion. Like the Homestead Act, give people ownership once they get there. Like the US Cavalry, US Marshalls and the territorial gov't, provide a framework for the rule of law. (And best of all, there won't be any indians/indigious peoples to displace.) Sure, some of those things didn't work out as well as they could have, but then again, that's human.

Then again, I can understand people making the argument that we don't want or need a fontier and a place for real adventure and how we need to improve things at home first. The people who believe shuch things should not be allowed to assume their case is, by default, the only rational , and correct one.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at February 6, 2003 02:31 PM

This is why I think public money will never be spent on actually putting large numbers of people in to space on general principal. And thus why I've given up on it. Mr. Drum isn't alone. For some reason a majority of people view space travel for the general person as having an extremely high giggle factor.

Something happened in the American psyche that views things like Star Trek and science fiction in general as the same as fantasy: its fiction that will never happen. I suspect Mr. Drum views those of us who want to be in space with the same condescension that he would view someone dressing up as a wizard standing in line outside the latest LotR flick. Just the same as 'wizards, elves and fairies' do not and will never exist, a general space fairing civilization cannot and will not exist.

We will all enjoy proving people like him wrong.

Posted by at February 6, 2003 02:50 PM

Raoul: I understand that it is not necessary for the government to operate a manned (or unmanned) space flight business, any more than a government needs to operate a railroad. You sugest the government could establish what it's goals are, and pay private contracters to achieve them.

But that still leaves open the main question-- what are reasonable governmental goals in space? What ought the taxpayer fund?

You suggest an analogy with the settlement of the American west. But there is no obvious place to settle in space that is profitable, nor is the "manifest destinty" sentiment as widespread among modern Americans. Mapmaking is a good government goal, but does not require manned spaceflight (consider our maps of Venus).

I am certainly open to the idea that there may be good reasons to spend government money on manned space flight. But I just appraoched he problem last week, and haven't thought of any. Rand, Raoul, you may have spent good chunks of your lives thinking about this. What do you think, in your opinion, are good reasons?

Posted by Ikram Saeed at February 6, 2003 03:00 PM

I know my lifetime Libertarian Party membership may be in jeopardy when I say this but so far the only strong case I've seen where government money and effort would be good in aerospace is in a renewed X Projects program. Jerry Pournelle has spent more time thinking about this stuff than most and his point of view seems the most efficient, productive and tax payer friendly.

About the only other thing besides that would be some legal frameworks around space property rights and the full repudiation of the Space and Moon Treaties.

Beyond that, the rest should belong to XCOR, Armadillo, and the other X Prize Teams.

Posted by Michael Mealling at February 6, 2003 03:37 PM

If I may return us briefly to the original topic -- here is an analogy which I hereby release into the public domain, to be propagated at will:

Monarch butterflies migrate to and from a small area in Mexico, I believe a single mountainside, to stay the winter. They clump together in great masses on trees and bushes. If the mountainside gets hit by a blizzard, their numbers are (temporarily) drastically reduced. One can certainly imagine other incidents -- fires, volcanic eruptions, etc -- or even singularly unfortunate combinations thereof, wiping them out altogether.

Our mountainside is Earth. Our blizzard? Take your pick:

There can be no reasonable doubt that we are in the final millennium of an interglacial period. Imagine walls of ice thousands of feet high, down to the line of the Missouri River, covering most of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Volcanic eruption? The explosion of Toba nearly annihilated our ancestors 74,000 years BP; only a few thousand proto-humans survived that one. Someday Yellowstone is going to do the same thing, except even bigger, and (temporarily) wipe out nearly all life in North America and the great majority of life elsewhere in the world -- thousands or even millions of species.

Speaking of mass extinctions, there is no doubt whatsoever that absent drastic human intervention, a "dinosaur-killer" comet will eventually hit Earth and eliminate most of its lifeforms. Possibly nearly all of them, as happened at the Permian/Triassic boundary. Hale-Bopp was easily big enough to have done us in.

On similar timescales, nearby supernovae douse this planet with enough hard radiation to cause a good deal of unpleasantness (and also nudge numerous comets just enough to drop them into the inner Solar System, causing nearly simultaneous mass extinctions from impacts).

Add magnetic field reversals, possible solar fluctuations, and (not to overlook the obvious) nasty dictators with nanotechnological weapons, and it becomes abundantly clear that huddling together on our mountainside forever is not a great idea.

If anything, Heinlein's fragile-basket metaphor understated the case. Diversity of habitat means survival. We got this far by settling every remotely habitable environment on Earth. Now we know that Earth itself is vulnerable. Time to get moving.

Posted by Jay Manifold at February 6, 2003 03:40 PM

Why do we need gov'mnt money ? Was the airplane, automobile or internet developed with gov'mnt money ? Government should get out of space exploration - and stand by for a facilitating frame work.

And we don't need a big, official and approved answer to the question: what are the goals?

Leave space exploration to free enterprise. Let anyone formulate his goals, and go and try to acheive them. Will space exploration happen under free enterprise ? Maybe. But space exploration is not hapening now, under NASA.

Posted by Jacob at February 6, 2003 03:40 PM

> Leave space exploration to free enterprise. Let
> anyone formulate his goals, and go and try to
> acheive them.

Being a member of an organization that has been attempting to figure out how to do just that I've struggled to figure out what is compelling enough from a business standpoint that anyone can make money on. Here's the problem:

In order to make money in space you have to have customers willing to part with their cash. Tourism will probably be successful because the customers have disposable income. But what about other markets? Is there anything you are willing to actually pay for right now that actually deals with space that requires either you or other humans in space to provide it? For all the talk about free enterprise in space I don't see any of its advocates actually willing to part with cold cash to buy any products...

Posted by Michael Mealling at February 6, 2003 04:50 PM

I think people have a high "giggle factor" at the idea of travelling in space for a few easy-to-understand reasons.

One is the whole approach taken by NASA et al. They make "space" out to be some sort of supra-magical place that only the chosen few can enter. It's a place, just like Mars is a place, or California or the top of a high mountain is a place. Anybody can live in space or on Mars (or even in California), given sufficient equipment and knowledge. But NASA has done an excellent job of spreading the magical myth, starting with their whole goofy astronaut selection process back in the 60s, and it'll be insanely hard to turn it around now.

Shows like "Star Trek" and the "Star Wars" movies don't help either. People get strange, unrealistic ideas from seeing them... their expectations are a lot higher than the reality. (On the other pied, NASA's expectations seem to be unrealistically low sometimes.)

I often wonder if we as a society haven't lost the gumption to explore new horizons. Heck, I'd like to go. I'd even be stupid enough to take my chances on the Space Shuttle. But of course going around the world a few dozen times won't actually get us anywhere, nor will maintaining a space station capable of holding three whole people. (Wow! Three whole people! What next, four small children?)

Going into space is a little different than some Viking dudette hopping in a boat and sailing for America--and I'm sure most of the readers here know that but I'll say it anyway. It didn't cost 3 quadrillion dollars to build the boat, he/she didn't have to engage the cooperation or permission of umpteen governmental agencies, and there was air, food, and water at their destination. The main difference is that it takes a lot of cooperation from a lot of people to make a "real" spaceship work. "Private enterprise" is suffering from a real chicken-and-egg problem right now, ignoring all the other multitude of issues.

I think right now we, the US, are in a "defensive mode"-- and we have been for a while. Too many of our citizens would prefer that we wastefully dump yet more money into stuff like Social Security and other welfare programs than into projects to open up new frontiers. Which is better? I think focusing on immedate needs will never succeed if we also don't spend an equal amount of effort on long-term goals.

Going into space needs to be a long-term goal--we'll never survive as a race unless we can. We're not the only intelligent beings in the universe, and we need to start thinking about what it'll take to remain competitive. Finally, human overpopulation will destroy this planet sooner or later, probably sooner.

Posted by Sanitation Engineer #6 at February 6, 2003 05:36 PM

genetic and nano research in space is a really good idea, and just might be viable in a few years (depending on the legal climate down here...)

one of the problems we have right now is the gravity well... we already know what the asteroid belt is good for (building space habs, ships, etc) but no real ideas on what to put back down the grav well... kind of like knowing that building a big port allows you to colonize territory, build ships, etc.. but not having figured out that the port will enable you to fish, so you don't do it...

sdi was the thing that would have done it... would have given us lots of experience and materiel... now its back to the drawing board

Posted by libertarian uber alles at February 6, 2003 09:58 PM

OK, I was impolite. I apologize for that.

But: if your point was that there is research too dangerous to be done on earth, why didn't you say that? And give some examples?

And as for the "eggs in one basket" thing, I hardly know what to say. Seriously, don't you think it's up to you to present a cogent argument for that since you're the one who brought it up? But just so you know my objection, it's this: what would happen to a colony on, say, Mars, that was cut off from resupply from earth? We are not even remotely close to technology that would allow such a colony to be self sustaining over the long run, let alone actually rebuild an industrial civilization.

I was sincere when I wrote that I'd really like to be convinced about this. I grew up reading Heinlein and watching Walter Cronkite cover Apollo launches. But the arguments need to be something really credible, and it seems like all I can find are the same ones I heard 30 years ago, none of which have come to pass.

Posted by Kevin Drum at February 6, 2003 10:21 PM

BTW, I certainly have no objection to commercial exploitation of space, as long as it's funded by industry. But after 40+ years, it seems like it's time for the government to stop subsidizing it if the reasons are mostly commercial.

And I'm sorry, but I just can't get excited about the sun burning out or a supernova going off. I hate to say it, but it's arguments like that that make people laugh at space enthusiasts.

Posted by Kevin Drum at February 6, 2003 10:26 PM

I have some comments on the litany of disasters that people mention here. First, despite the odds, we'll probably not get wasted by an errant asteroid. Though losing a city to one might make people more interested in space. The eventual death of the solar system is far in the future. I don't think it'll convince people now.

Our mountainside is Earth. Our blizzard? Take your pick:

Actually we're near the start of an interglacial period. In fact, temperatures are still climbing and water levels are still rising from the effects of the melting ice.

Yellowstone isn't going to be that nasty. It'll nail the US and Canadian Midwest breadbasket with meters of ash and effect the climate for a decade or two, but the human race's surivival won't be at stake from that. It might be from our reactions, but that's a different story.

A more significant type of eruption are basalt floods. The worst of them cover a third or so of Siberian to a depth of as much as a kilometer or two. It's thought to have caused the extinction event just prior to the rise of dinosaurs where around 70-90%of all animal (maybe not just animal) species disappeared.

The Permian/Triassic boundary is thought to be due to the basalt flood above. You're probably thinking of the more famous extinction event at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago. Looking through a databook I have, I see several Terran craters that have diameters in excess of 50km. In particular, there is a 100 km wide crater at Popigai, USSR that supposedly dates from 38 million years ago. It is apparently associated with a minor peak in extinctions.

Well, space-based civilizations will have a vastly harder time with nearby supernovas than planet-based ones. This is going to be a long term problem. Ie, you don't want an unusually strong gamma burst to wipe out your space civilization.

There's no sign that magnetic field reversals or solar fluctuations are very significant. And of course, solar fluctuations are going to hit a space-based civilization harder.

According to this page, around 4,100 million (don't know what the margin of error is here) people died in the 20th century. 180 million or so (the numbers have a great deal of error) died in war or by democide. Hence, we have crudely that 4% of everyone who died in the 20th century was killed either in war or in some democide atrocity.

Compare that to estimated deaths from other causes mentioned on this list (like large asteroid strikes), then you see that you have a common cause of death that kills as many people over a century as some of the doom's day scenarios. That gets me to my primary point. The disasters that are likely to set back or destroy civilization are likely to be man-made. Further, the number above indicate that this likelihood is probably pretty high. So in particular, someone who says that survival of the human race isn't sufficiently imperiled to justify space travel is ignoring the proven lethality of modern conflict and people's willingness to kill other people.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at February 6, 2003 10:52 PM

> Was the airplane, automobile or internet developed with gov'mnt money ?

Well, we could argue about aircraft development what governments did or didn't do. But as I recall the backbone of the Internet was government, and while CERN where Tim Berens Lee(?) worked is hardly a private concern.

Government mnoney correctly applied can be essential to the development of new frontiers, be that the USA, Australia or others. Incorrectly applied, I agree, it can be a nightmare.

Posted by Dave at February 7, 2003 01:45 AM

No, Kevin, we do not currently have the means to build a self-sustaining off-world colony.

And if we make no efforts in that direction we never will. Technologies aren't developed without intent. They may be driven by scientific discoveries that have no immediate understood application but those applications don't occur without human intent.

Some technologies are an easy path because they exploit things that already exist. Others required great commitment of effort and fund because there are no immediate paying customers in sight, although lucrative alternative apps can often appear after the product has been developed.

This is why some things merit doing without a definite ROI to be had. Because some things only matter in the long term and may not pay off in your lifetime but may in your children or grandchildren's time if the effort isn't perpetually put off on future generations. THese future persons will be no more motivated than you today without some results on hand to show this is leading somewhere.

True, we haven't had a planetary scale disaster in the time since humans could serious consider ways to evade such but then if we had this conversation couldn't be taking place, could it? It would feel pretty stupid decades from now to see a headline saying something like, "Everybody Dies In Global Diaster Tomorrow. Nothing To Be Done" and think back on when we turned our backs on gaining more control of our survival.

Posted by Eric Pobirs at February 7, 2003 03:48 AM

Kevin, that column was a broad-brush treatment of the general subject, and it's unreasonable to think that the NRO editor would have allowed me the thousands of words necessary to expand on each of those scenarios to explain why they might be good ideas. Each of them is a column in itself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 7, 2003 07:36 AM

And Ikram, I'm not necessarily proposing that the taxpayer fund anything. Policy doesn't always involve the expenditure of taxpayer funds. It may be possible to raise private funding for many of these things, with intelligent policy changes from the government.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 7, 2003 07:40 AM

Not to overlook the obvious, Karl Hallowell is correct about the immediate hazard from man-made disasters being far greater than those of natural disasters. This meme will have to be handled delicately -- telling people that we've only got a few decades to get out of here because of the likes of Kim Jong Il and the House of Saud is not going to go over well.

Posted by Jay Manifold at February 7, 2003 09:12 AM

Well, Rand, you've certainly convinced me that there is no presumption of government funding. If manned space flight needs tax dollars, it should make a case for funding like every other program.

From the comments here, it seems that the only good reason for the government to fund manned space flight is the preservation of the human race, in the case of a world-destroying event.

It's not immediately apparent that the development of a self-sustaining human settlement on another planet is the most cost-effective way of ensuring this, but it's a contender.

Rand, you say It may be possible to raise private funding for many of these things, with intelligent policy changes from the government. What changes do you have in mind? What profit making opportunities would space-entrepreneurs be interested in putting their money in?

Posted by Ikram Saeed at February 7, 2003 09:21 AM

Primarily providing transportation and life support to the millions of people who claim in surveys that they would like to visit space, if they could afford it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 7, 2003 10:50 AM

Ikram, think of it in terms of the gold rushes that have in the past caused large numbers of people to swarm into previously uninhabited places -- California's Mother Lode country, or various places throughout Alaska.

The prospectors went for their own reasons, but it was the people who catered to the prospectors who got rich. As Rand says, the money to be made is in meeting the needs of other people when those other people get there.

Posted by Kevin McGehee at February 7, 2003 06:45 PM

The surest way to get rich in a gold rush is to be the man selling the shovels.

Posted by Shawn at February 7, 2003 09:33 PM

A few 100 years will probably not make any difference in most scenario's regarding survivability of the human race as a justification for going into space and certainly can be made to look pretty silly by anyone advocating them (no matter how true they might turn out to be tomorrow.)

The better argument in my view is that exploring space is something that a significant part of humanity wants to do. The economic justification can easily be shown to follow. Once you have a colony anyplace, they become a trading partner. The more successful they are the more justification you have. It is a chicken & egg problem.

My favorite is the Mars land rush idea. I'll never get to go as much as I'd like to, but I would like to live long enough to see it start for others. I'm 43, even if I live another 100 years I wouldn't get to go, but my son is twelve and I'd like to see his kids have the option.

An industrialized Mars (a little gravity is a good thing) could be the preferred launch platform for exploring the rest of the solar system (I consider the solar system to be the launch platform for exploring everything else.)

So how many people does it take for Mars to start to become self sufficient (and the hourly wages will make the US look like a third world country!)

What's the first product they could sell Earth that we'd be willing to pay for?

Posted by Ken Anthony at February 8, 2003 08:31 AM

That's a question the dedicated Marsologists have probably already begun to find answers for. The answer begins, of course, with "What's there?", or more to the point, "What's there that is rare enough on earth and/or plentiful enough on Mars to make the difference?"

One good answer might be, "Better proximity to the Belt."

Posted by Kevin McGehee at February 8, 2003 08:51 AM

My thought is that with the lower gravity it has better proximity to everywhere, without the need to spill your drink! Although drinking globules is kinda cool.

Posted by ken anthony at February 8, 2003 06:16 PM

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