- #1
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For several years now, Elon Musk, and many of his fans and fellow-travellers have been making much of the need for humans to establish colonies in space, and become an “interplanetary species”.
I do want to be clear that I am not completely opposed to spaceflight per se. The use of space technologies has given us things of tremendous value. Advances like satellite navigation, search and rescue beacons, weather and environmental monitoring are of undoubted benefit, and particular developments like GPS/Galileo/Glonass and COSPAS-SARSAT can genuinely be things that can be said to be truly for the good of all and be rightly regarded as one of the things we can and should be proud of as a species. That said, I’d like to see what the thoughts of others are here at the Tree of Souls, on this quest by these self-proclaimed geniuses? I personally don’t feel comfortable with it, from several perspectives.
Most importantly to me is that the idea of space colonization, i.e. a human society living permanently in space (be it on another world or in a floating metal box) is clear cultural failure that has allowed a total disconnect of ourselves from the environment we belong to, originate from, and have been shaped to live within. We cannot survive in the airless, weightlessness of space, nor the frozen, toxic environment of Mars. We are meant to survive and live on Earth, and to deny that tie to our home forever condemns the descendent of those people to an eternity of misery eeking out an existence on processed air and survival rations in a closed, airtight metal box surrendered by an alien environment hostile to life itself.
Secondly, this concept seems to rely on the assumption that Earth is doomed. This concerns me on two levels, and both come down to the issue of responsibility. In the first instance, we are part of Earth – one of the innumerable species that make up this ball of life and beauty. As part of this whole, we are responsible for the well-being of it. We can’t but also must not avoid our responsibility in trying to heal the problems of this world, especially as (second point), we are the ones responsible for it in the first place. We caused this destruction and it is on us to fix it. This is our obligation to all life on Earth, down to and including ourselves. As an additional point in this theme, until we learn to take responsibility for our actions here, on the world we belong to, how can we realistically expect to take responsibility for an alien world that is no relation of ours?
Thidly, while national space agencies have traditionally focused on scientific and academic study of space, these are private ventures led by explicitly for-profit companies that seek private gain. While contracting has long been a part of space exploration and is part and parcel of any self-respecting industrial late-capitalist dystopia, the desire of private, for-profit corporates to specifically get into space colonization is profoundly disturbing. This opens up a slew of questions over the rights and wellbeing of the colony inhabitants, especially given the vast resources and costs needed to keep even a single individual alive out there. What of the world the colony is on? Despite the dubious viability of such ventures, if they are even possible (more below on that!), the only remotely feasible source of profit would be strip mining for resources that are rare and unknown on Earth but have potentially valuable uses in industry (such as Tritium) – an activity that even on Earth, where oversight is somewhat possible, doesn’t have an enviable reputation of respecting either it’s workers or the world in general. Putting gilded age robber-baron company towns in space doesn’t magcially make their horrific flaws disappear, it just makes them worse. When Elon Musk said he wants to be the “Imperator of Mars”, it is quite possibly the only honest thing he’s ever said.
Fourth, the countless financial, mental and physcial resources being wasted by this insane quest are draining expertise, focus, finance and real resources away from where they are needed. Much as this is a private, for-profit venture by Musk, Bezos and co., they are, in best capitalist style, doing it with giant wads of public bailouts, grants, contracts and concessions. These resources as desperately needed on Earth to tackle the problems of our own making, rather than expanding the scope of our destruction to new worlds.
Finally, all this might well be for naught. One of the big issues, especially with Musk, but with many other grifters of the techbro variety, is grossly overestimating the technology humans posess, and the scale of the issues of space colonisation. Humans don’t handle exponential mathematics well, and space colonisation is full of such issues. Mars is, of course, not “the next step” after Luna. The sheer difference in distance involved is hard to grasp and frequently ignored . The difference between shipping half a dozen highly trained, professional, disciplined astronauts to low earth orbit for a six month stint in a science outpost is a tad different to sending one million fare-paying civilians to Mars for the rest of their lives (along with all the belongings fare-paying passengers expect to take). And again, the difference is trivialised. The threat of radiation is trivialised. Same with microgravity. Same with shelter, food, mental health, reproductive health… and so on. And if Earth is "doomed" because of our mistakes, then these "interplantary species" humans will only outlast their mother world by a few months. Once the last supply ship is gone and it's cargo finished, the "interplantary species" will too be finished.
My feelings are that the governments and space agencies of the world should come together to give a clear message that space colonization is neither possible or practical with current or near-mature technology, nor is it a desirable project. It should be made clear that no private colonization effort will have any legality or legitimacy. We should work toward a system similar to the Antarctic Treaty System to be applied to all celestial bodies – limiting human activity to scientific/academic research and conservation only, as well as setting up clear standards for non-contamination of these worlds, and of absolute protection for any life identified.
I do want to be clear that I am not completely opposed to spaceflight per se. The use of space technologies has given us things of tremendous value. Advances like satellite navigation, search and rescue beacons, weather and environmental monitoring are of undoubted benefit, and particular developments like GPS/Galileo/Glonass and COSPAS-SARSAT can genuinely be things that can be said to be truly for the good of all and be rightly regarded as one of the things we can and should be proud of as a species. That said, I’d like to see what the thoughts of others are here at the Tree of Souls, on this quest by these self-proclaimed geniuses? I personally don’t feel comfortable with it, from several perspectives.
Most importantly to me is that the idea of space colonization, i.e. a human society living permanently in space (be it on another world or in a floating metal box) is clear cultural failure that has allowed a total disconnect of ourselves from the environment we belong to, originate from, and have been shaped to live within. We cannot survive in the airless, weightlessness of space, nor the frozen, toxic environment of Mars. We are meant to survive and live on Earth, and to deny that tie to our home forever condemns the descendent of those people to an eternity of misery eeking out an existence on processed air and survival rations in a closed, airtight metal box surrendered by an alien environment hostile to life itself.
Secondly, this concept seems to rely on the assumption that Earth is doomed. This concerns me on two levels, and both come down to the issue of responsibility. In the first instance, we are part of Earth – one of the innumerable species that make up this ball of life and beauty. As part of this whole, we are responsible for the well-being of it. We can’t but also must not avoid our responsibility in trying to heal the problems of this world, especially as (second point), we are the ones responsible for it in the first place. We caused this destruction and it is on us to fix it. This is our obligation to all life on Earth, down to and including ourselves. As an additional point in this theme, until we learn to take responsibility for our actions here, on the world we belong to, how can we realistically expect to take responsibility for an alien world that is no relation of ours?
Thidly, while national space agencies have traditionally focused on scientific and academic study of space, these are private ventures led by explicitly for-profit companies that seek private gain. While contracting has long been a part of space exploration and is part and parcel of any self-respecting industrial late-capitalist dystopia, the desire of private, for-profit corporates to specifically get into space colonization is profoundly disturbing. This opens up a slew of questions over the rights and wellbeing of the colony inhabitants, especially given the vast resources and costs needed to keep even a single individual alive out there. What of the world the colony is on? Despite the dubious viability of such ventures, if they are even possible (more below on that!), the only remotely feasible source of profit would be strip mining for resources that are rare and unknown on Earth but have potentially valuable uses in industry (such as Tritium) – an activity that even on Earth, where oversight is somewhat possible, doesn’t have an enviable reputation of respecting either it’s workers or the world in general. Putting gilded age robber-baron company towns in space doesn’t magcially make their horrific flaws disappear, it just makes them worse. When Elon Musk said he wants to be the “Imperator of Mars”, it is quite possibly the only honest thing he’s ever said.
Fourth, the countless financial, mental and physcial resources being wasted by this insane quest are draining expertise, focus, finance and real resources away from where they are needed. Much as this is a private, for-profit venture by Musk, Bezos and co., they are, in best capitalist style, doing it with giant wads of public bailouts, grants, contracts and concessions. These resources as desperately needed on Earth to tackle the problems of our own making, rather than expanding the scope of our destruction to new worlds.
Finally, all this might well be for naught. One of the big issues, especially with Musk, but with many other grifters of the techbro variety, is grossly overestimating the technology humans posess, and the scale of the issues of space colonisation. Humans don’t handle exponential mathematics well, and space colonisation is full of such issues. Mars is, of course, not “the next step” after Luna. The sheer difference in distance involved is hard to grasp and frequently ignored . The difference between shipping half a dozen highly trained, professional, disciplined astronauts to low earth orbit for a six month stint in a science outpost is a tad different to sending one million fare-paying civilians to Mars for the rest of their lives (along with all the belongings fare-paying passengers expect to take). And again, the difference is trivialised. The threat of radiation is trivialised. Same with microgravity. Same with shelter, food, mental health, reproductive health… and so on. And if Earth is "doomed" because of our mistakes, then these "interplantary species" humans will only outlast their mother world by a few months. Once the last supply ship is gone and it's cargo finished, the "interplantary species" will too be finished.
My feelings are that the governments and space agencies of the world should come together to give a clear message that space colonization is neither possible or practical with current or near-mature technology, nor is it a desirable project. It should be made clear that no private colonization effort will have any legality or legitimacy. We should work toward a system similar to the Antarctic Treaty System to be applied to all celestial bodies – limiting human activity to scientific/academic research and conservation only, as well as setting up clear standards for non-contamination of these worlds, and of absolute protection for any life identified.
. Call me an Earth-destroying-capitalist, but I believe there is no turning back for humanity. We can't just go back to being a pre-industrial society. It just doesn't work that way because humans have always strived to outdo eachother and make their own lives better. That is our nature. So why shouldn't we embrace that?
(does that need Initial Capital Letters or not? 