To Long for the Endless Immensity of Space

April 25th, 2012

In light of yesterday’s positive post about “I can” and shedding limitting beliefs, let me propose that we can go back to the moon, on to Mars, the asteroids, and any other destinations in space that we want to. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s expensive. But also yes, we can be the first species to intentionally move beyond our cradle and colonize the solar system. If we want to. It should be obvious that we can do it, I hope, and that not wanting to or it being hard and expensive is not the same thing as saying “we can’t.”

Let me amplify that with some comments about recent news stories. First, North Korea and their “failure to launch.” I’m not a fan of North Korea, but I do know how hard it was for the USA and the USSR to get rockets into space without blowing up. It was very hard. And you learn something from every effort, and that new knowledge is not failure. It’s only failure when you give up.

Now, I recently read an article NASA Scientist to Star Trek: You’re Not Helping. Shades of Buzz Aldrin here from a few years ago when he blamed science fiction for lack of public support for the space program. They contend that Star Trek and other science fiction makes it look easy to go to space, when in reality it’s very, very hard to do. They think that lack of support comes from this mismatch.

I disagree strongly.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Star Trek and science fiction teach us to long for the endless immensity of space. Without that longing, we’ll never go.

Now, maybe we do need more economic (asteroid mining) or political incentives (space race vs. China) to get broader public support, or something startling like finding Earth 2.0 among Kepler exoplanets, or detecting alien signals with SETI, or life on Mars. The government is only out of money and will because it’s been hijacked by too many interests that want it to be small and not supporting of science or NASA. I’m happy if commerical efforts open space, but commercial efforts are unlikely to do great things without a clear profit waiting, and that may not materialize any time soon, or ever, beyond low-earth orbit. Still, the leaders of some commercial efforts are talking like they’re in it for more than the money as well.

One of the goals of SpaceX is to save humanity from extinction. I’d say that’s right up with there with longing for the immensity of space as a good reason to go.

“I think it’s important that humanity become a multiplanet species,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an interview that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month. “I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That’s really why I started SpaceX.”

And apparently a bunch of billionaires does intend to mine asteroids. Why, when it will take billions and decades to perhaps someday to return billions? Phil Plait asked and was answered:

I asked Lewicki specifically about how this will make money. Some asteroids may be rich in precious metals — some may hold tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in platinum-group metals — but it will cost billions and take many years, most likely, to mine them before any samples can be returned. Why not just do it here on Earth? In other words, what’s the incentive for profit for the investors? This is probably the idea over which most people are skeptical, including several people I know active in the asteroid science community.

I have to admit, Lewicki’s answer surprised me. “The investors aren’t making decisions based on a business plan or a return on investment,” he told me. “They’re basing their decisions on our vision.”

On further reflection, I realized this made sense. Not every wealthy investor pumps money into a project in order to make more… at least right away. Elon Musk, for example, has spent hundreds of millions of his own fortune on his company Space X. Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is doing likewise for his own space company, Blue Origin. Examples abound. And it’ll be years before either turns a respectable profit, but that’s not what motivates Musk and Bezos to do this. They want to explore space.

The vision of Planetary Resources is in their name: they want to make sure there are available resources in place to ensure a permanent future in space. And it’s not just physical resources with which they’re concerned. Their missions will support not just mining asteroids for volatiles and metals, but also to extend our understanding of asteroids and hopefully increase our ability to deflect one should it be headed our way.

NASA or private companies, space is big enough for everyone.

Anyway, let me conclude with another quote from someone who supported space exploration and who understood that it was not easy:

“We choose to go…not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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