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LIFEBOAT FOUNDATION SPECIAL REPORT
LIFEBOAT FOUNDATION SPECIAL REPORT
DIPPING A TOE INTO THE SEA OF SPACE:
ARE WE COLUMBUS OR
ERIKSON?
By Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Gregory
Benford.
Print report!
Text of a speech given at the Advanced Space Propulsion Conference,
Aosta, Italy, June 2005.
There are three forms of chimpanzees: the common chimp, the bonobo, and
us. We are the only chimp who got out of Africa. That experience
reflects and probably laid down the deep human urge — indeed, our
signature: the urge to restlessly move on, explore, exploit. Natural
selection gives us a gut imperative that plays out physically and
culturally, our goal: the expansion of human horizons.
Three
forms of chimpanzees: the common chimp, the bonobo, and
man.
Human history has favored both the spatial and cultural
expansion. Fresh prospects yield new perspectives. Life springing from
the sea to land was similarly favored. We now stand on a beach, our
world, timidly dipping a toe into the sea of space.
We stare into this ocean of night and imagine we are the Columbus
generation. I fear we may be the Leif Eriksons.
Leif Erikson reached North America five centuries before
Columbus.
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Curiosity drives us at this early stage. This is proper and
intrinsic. The grandest question we can solve in our generation is to
find whether life began and survives on Mars. With a mass the tenth of
ours, it cooled off first and did not suffer the impact by a Mars-sized
object that Earth did, forming our uniquely large moon. We know it had
early wet days and much liquid erosion. Did life arise and migrate
beneath the soil, perhaps persisting still?
Meteor impacts transferred matter from Mars to Earth far more
often than the reverse. Microbial life could survive the trip and seed
our early seas. We may be Martians.
Even more exciting, Mars may harbor a different type of life,
not even DNA based. If so, life is probably common in our galaxy,
because it arose twice in a single solar system, a powerful argument.
I know no biologist who thinks we can settle this point without
smart exploration — by humans. Robots are just not up to it. A
manned
expedition to Mars would be one of the great defining events of this
century, as Apollo's moon landing was in the last. It would be
thrilling, dangerous, and witnessed by all humanity, with daily fresh
vistas. We would come to know the small crew better than our neighbors.
Unlike Apollo, their scientific curiosity would be crucial to their
character.
This strong link between exploration and science suggests the
next phase of our ventures into space — finding resources and
living
there. Leif Erikson did not live off the land, but the later Europeans
did. This was critical to their persistence.
We do not now live in space; we camp there. The space station never
addresses the two crucial elements needed to explore the planets
— a
closed, renewable biosphere, and centrifugally made gravity. Without
those, we will go nowhere beyond our moon.
NASA plans to return to the moon in twice the seven years it took us
before. Mars comes a decade later, so no astronaut now working can hope
to go. This is a plan for failure. By 2015 the US Federal budget comes
under severe strain from the retirement and medical plans in place.
Agencies which spend money in jobs programs producing "luxuries" like a
space program will suffer. Meanwhile, new global problems will
loom.
Very probably, climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions will
worsen. Currently, carbon dioxide levels rise along a curve predicted
by economists decades ago. China, India and other ambitious countries
pay no heed to nations that, in their view, never gave up easy energy
sources when it hurt them economically. This pattern will
persist.
To solve global problems, think globally. The easiest and cheapest way
to cool our world is by reflecting more sunlight back into space.
Clouds do this best. Producing them over the tropical oceans, which
absorb most of the sun's bounty, is cheap, using technologies developed
many years ago. We can do more, too, in our own lives. Our own
habitation covers about 1% of North America and 3% of Europe. We can
reflect sunlight from them at little cost. Lightening roof colors,
mixing sand and glass into asphalt, and similar measures can also lower
the cooling costs in summer, saving fossil fuels and paying for
themselves. A US Department of Energy study showed this a decade ago,
but was ignored.
We need a global perspective.
To monitor all this takes a global perspective, seen from space. So
will gathering resources from beyond our moon. In the second half of
this century, metals will become harder to find in the Earth's crust,
and more costly and damaging to extract. There are plenty of metals in
the asteroid belt. Inevitably, we will need them. Bringing them to
Earth, smelting them in high orbits — all this could help fuel an
expansion of the global economy.
We certainly need such expansion, while minimizing the impact of our
growing numbers. Indeed, the greatest agenda of this century will be
the expansion of human horizons by uplifting the bulk of humanity to a
standard of living enjoyed by the advanced nations. That would complete
the promise begun 500 years ago by the first European expansion,
following on Leif Erikson without knowing his role in their own
history.
We will need those informed minds. We forget that most of humanity
still labors in routine manual labor, walking behind a plow or
assembling in a factory. What Einsteins or Beethovens are doing that
now, dreaming of a better life?
Only by expanding their conceptual horizons through a modicum of
prosperity can we liberate our species from drudgery.
Frontiers breed liberty. They make possible freedom of movement and
ideas. A fundamental revolution in human destiny began half a
millennium ago with the European breakout onto the oceans of Earth.
That opened new cultural vistas after centuries of little progress and
few freedoms. Room to breathe and think anew is not sufficient to
ensure progress, but it is essential.
Meanwhile, my friends jump off bridges on giant bungee cords and run
hundreds of miles in desert heat — for fun. Around us in the
extreme
entertainment culture there are ample signs of a society with far too
much spare time on its hands, and no sense of new
horizons.
Space is, as the cliché goes, the final frontier — because
it is
infinite.
But it takes courage, bravery and imagination. We cannot have a future
that we do not first imagine. That is why we must explore and then open
to our use the beckoning lands beyond our sky. They are the horizons
our species needs and was born to win.
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