Beyond the beyond
A
few months ago the water pipeline to our building broke somehow and the
water pressure was quite weak for a long time. One day, the water had
to be shut down for seven hours for the repair work to be possible.
Based on that experience, I don't think that I would ever want to live
in an environment where my daily water quota is two liters or so. No
matter how great the view is.
For all my technological optimism, I could hardly be more pessimistic about space travel. All kinds of satellites are of course already useful and we can expect to see them more in the future, but any kind of space travel to other heavenly bodies is an idea doomed to fail. The primary reason for this is very simple: we already know that there is absolutely nothing out there worth going for. Space is just a vast emptiness with a few atoms and rocks scattered over huge distances, and then there are a few massive flaming gasballs that illuminate the whole nothingness for us to see. Especially there are no sexy alien girls for Captain Kirk and Commander Riker and their horde of obese nerd followers to have sex with.
The private spaceship industry that one hears so much bandied about on the net will never even go to Moon let alone to any other planets, since there is nothing there to cover the cost of tens of billions of dollars that the risky trip would require. Perhaps the private spaceship builders should instead send a crew of space cadet libertarians to the middle of the Saharan desert or the Antarctic, and tell them to explore things there to their heart's content. Even those areas ara far friendlier habitats towards the human life than anything that you can find in space. Think about it this way: if humans had travelled in space for millenia Galactica-style, and then by an amazing stroke of luck found Earth, do you think that they would ever again leave? Even a beggar in Calcutta who by some stroke of luck became a multimillionare living in Beverly Hills would be more likely to voluntarily go back to his old life. So why on Earth (heh) would we leave?
Perhaps a more practical solution would be to take a small portion of the space research budget and use it to film a thousand new episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Firefly and other such shows. Doing this would at least have some real benefits to somebody, unlike pouring money to space travel research. (As a side note, it would be amusing to see a show that would realistically depict the interaction between alien cultures, considering the way we know people tend to behave towards aliens and alien cultures who are, in the end, not really that much different from them in the grand scheme of things. At best, the encounter would consist of strained smiles and a token exchange of gifts, after which both parties would go their own ways relieved that that is over.)
I am doubtful that humans will even go to the Moon ever again, at least during my lifetime, despite all the current talk about it. There was absolutely nothing to do there once the first astronauts walked around and taken their vacation photos. I bet that the reader can't even name a single astronaut after Armstrong and Aldrin to walk on the moon, which shows you exactly how much they achieved. Nothing whatsoever justifies the cost of tens of billions of dollars, since even the national prestige is a pretty so-and-so as a reason. Hopefully the Chinese will come to their senses and engineer something useful instead.
If the humanity ever reaches the technological level that is needed for space travel, it doesn't really need to. Anything that they can possibly do up there will be thousand times easier and more productive down here. The only difference is the view, but it can already be simulated with the present technology.
If there is any reason to go to other heavenly bodies, there still is no need to send smelly meat sacks that constantly need oxygen and require very specific types of matter as their energy source which they have to take with them since none of it is available anywhere in space. As technology goes, sending humans to space is so 1800's, like using messenger boys to deliver telegrams or humans to calculate artillety trajectories. If space travel has any future whatsoever, it will be 100% robotic. But even this is not really a reason to advocate space travel, since all productive research on robotics can very well be done here on Earth, as the Japanese industry and the United States military have already made clear.
(As a side note, I am actually even more pessimistic about the future of robotics and artificial intelligence than I am of the space travel. As fun as it would be, neither has any real hope. I will change my opinion immediately when somebody creates a computer program that can read in a JPEG file that contains a clear photo of a pet and tell whether that photo contains a cat or a dog, with at least 98% accuracy. This is as impossible as measuring the temperature of distant stars, as they say.)
The possibility of sending out a self-sustaining generation ship is of course an interesting thought experiment. I once read an interesting article "The problems of building a habitat in space" by Steven Den Beste, in which he lists the problems involved. A society on board of a generation ship must necessarily be a totalitarianism in which there is no room for dissent, and everything that anyone does or even thinks must be carefully controlled. Imagine what would happen if some interstellar equivalent of Al Qaeda emerged among the travellers of such a ship. But then again, the society on such a ship would have be from the start quite a lot like the one that Al Qaeda wants to establish now.
But when you think about generation ships, isn't Earth already in a sense such a generation ship? Despite this, the harsh measures described above are not at all necessary here. This raises an interesting question about how large and abundant in resources the generation ship has to be for the rules of the game to change so entirely. The size and abundance of Earth clearly suffices, but where exactly is the transition point and what kind of transition takes place in there?
If I have understood correctly, some strands of libertarianism believe that universe is somehow "benevolent" and technological progress is somehow a manifest destiny, no resources will ever run out but will be in abundant supply, the human mind is in principle capable to knowing everything etc. I can't really say whether this belief is correct on Earth. But suppose the human race had evolved on a planet that is otherwise similar to Earth but in which there are no hydrocarbons to drill or metals to mine in quantities worth the effort. To make it even worse, let's say that meteorites constantly bombard that planet and randomly destroy whatever the man builds. I wonder what kind of worldview the inhabitants of that planet would have. Then imagine a paradise planet where all resources literally grow on trees in abundance, and under the top soil and a thin layer of rock, there is a creamy nougat core of oil, coal and all kinds of minerals. Again, where is the transition point and what kind of transition takes place in there?
For all my technological optimism, I could hardly be more pessimistic about space travel. All kinds of satellites are of course already useful and we can expect to see them more in the future, but any kind of space travel to other heavenly bodies is an idea doomed to fail. The primary reason for this is very simple: we already know that there is absolutely nothing out there worth going for. Space is just a vast emptiness with a few atoms and rocks scattered over huge distances, and then there are a few massive flaming gasballs that illuminate the whole nothingness for us to see. Especially there are no sexy alien girls for Captain Kirk and Commander Riker and their horde of obese nerd followers to have sex with.
The private spaceship industry that one hears so much bandied about on the net will never even go to Moon let alone to any other planets, since there is nothing there to cover the cost of tens of billions of dollars that the risky trip would require. Perhaps the private spaceship builders should instead send a crew of space cadet libertarians to the middle of the Saharan desert or the Antarctic, and tell them to explore things there to their heart's content. Even those areas ara far friendlier habitats towards the human life than anything that you can find in space. Think about it this way: if humans had travelled in space for millenia Galactica-style, and then by an amazing stroke of luck found Earth, do you think that they would ever again leave? Even a beggar in Calcutta who by some stroke of luck became a multimillionare living in Beverly Hills would be more likely to voluntarily go back to his old life. So why on Earth (heh) would we leave?
Perhaps a more practical solution would be to take a small portion of the space research budget and use it to film a thousand new episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Firefly and other such shows. Doing this would at least have some real benefits to somebody, unlike pouring money to space travel research. (As a side note, it would be amusing to see a show that would realistically depict the interaction between alien cultures, considering the way we know people tend to behave towards aliens and alien cultures who are, in the end, not really that much different from them in the grand scheme of things. At best, the encounter would consist of strained smiles and a token exchange of gifts, after which both parties would go their own ways relieved that that is over.)
I am doubtful that humans will even go to the Moon ever again, at least during my lifetime, despite all the current talk about it. There was absolutely nothing to do there once the first astronauts walked around and taken their vacation photos. I bet that the reader can't even name a single astronaut after Armstrong and Aldrin to walk on the moon, which shows you exactly how much they achieved. Nothing whatsoever justifies the cost of tens of billions of dollars, since even the national prestige is a pretty so-and-so as a reason. Hopefully the Chinese will come to their senses and engineer something useful instead.
If the humanity ever reaches the technological level that is needed for space travel, it doesn't really need to. Anything that they can possibly do up there will be thousand times easier and more productive down here. The only difference is the view, but it can already be simulated with the present technology.
If there is any reason to go to other heavenly bodies, there still is no need to send smelly meat sacks that constantly need oxygen and require very specific types of matter as their energy source which they have to take with them since none of it is available anywhere in space. As technology goes, sending humans to space is so 1800's, like using messenger boys to deliver telegrams or humans to calculate artillety trajectories. If space travel has any future whatsoever, it will be 100% robotic. But even this is not really a reason to advocate space travel, since all productive research on robotics can very well be done here on Earth, as the Japanese industry and the United States military have already made clear.
(As a side note, I am actually even more pessimistic about the future of robotics and artificial intelligence than I am of the space travel. As fun as it would be, neither has any real hope. I will change my opinion immediately when somebody creates a computer program that can read in a JPEG file that contains a clear photo of a pet and tell whether that photo contains a cat or a dog, with at least 98% accuracy. This is as impossible as measuring the temperature of distant stars, as they say.)
The possibility of sending out a self-sustaining generation ship is of course an interesting thought experiment. I once read an interesting article "The problems of building a habitat in space" by Steven Den Beste, in which he lists the problems involved. A society on board of a generation ship must necessarily be a totalitarianism in which there is no room for dissent, and everything that anyone does or even thinks must be carefully controlled. Imagine what would happen if some interstellar equivalent of Al Qaeda emerged among the travellers of such a ship. But then again, the society on such a ship would have be from the start quite a lot like the one that Al Qaeda wants to establish now.
But when you think about generation ships, isn't Earth already in a sense such a generation ship? Despite this, the harsh measures described above are not at all necessary here. This raises an interesting question about how large and abundant in resources the generation ship has to be for the rules of the game to change so entirely. The size and abundance of Earth clearly suffices, but where exactly is the transition point and what kind of transition takes place in there?
If I have understood correctly, some strands of libertarianism believe that universe is somehow "benevolent" and technological progress is somehow a manifest destiny, no resources will ever run out but will be in abundant supply, the human mind is in principle capable to knowing everything etc. I can't really say whether this belief is correct on Earth. But suppose the human race had evolved on a planet that is otherwise similar to Earth but in which there are no hydrocarbons to drill or metals to mine in quantities worth the effort. To make it even worse, let's say that meteorites constantly bombard that planet and randomly destroy whatever the man builds. I wonder what kind of worldview the inhabitants of that planet would have. Then imagine a paradise planet where all resources literally grow on trees in abundance, and under the top soil and a thin layer of rock, there is a creamy nougat core of oil, coal and all kinds of minerals. Again, where is the transition point and what kind of transition takes place in there?
this post immediately reminded me of the similar thoughts of blackbeltjones "Why Starfleet?"
http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/?p=818
Posted by Anonymous | 12:55 AM
Space (or, to be more precise, distance) is an ultimate protection from so many things that humanity will tremedously increase its probable lifespan once it manages to push some unluky ones (or lucky ones, once things go wrong) outside the planet. I have a feeling that Sun agrees with me.
Posted by Anonymous | 8:11 PM
That is maybe the best reason of them all, to expand out there. "All eggs in the same basket". If and when the big shit happends, what ever it may be, we - the humans - will vanish from existence if we still sit here on Earth at the time of devastation. And we know this shit will happend way before Sun dies. The event may be nuclear holocaust, asteroid, very angry pandemia, Yellowstone or something else, but it will come true in some point of future. Space colonization is only answer to avoid such extinction and it must be done if we have will to live as species. No matter the costs. In the end - with very long perspective - survival is the only thing that matters.
Posted by Sami | 3:00 PM
"This is as impossible as measuring the temperature of distant stars, as they say."
Well, it is possible, at least in a comparative way. You can discover the temperature of an object based on various criteria, infrared emissions or color temperature-red is warm, white is hotter than red, blue is hotter still, etc.
Otherwise, I agree with you about the dead endedness of manned space travel.
Posted by Peter L. Winkler | 7:46 PM