The Fed

Space Exploration is for Sissys!

We spent the last 1,000 years destroying the Earth: Let's not spend the next 1,000 years destroying the moon

Jacqueline Hidalgo

As we stand (a little over a year shy) of entering another millenium on the Western Christian calendar, I would like to enter a plea that the human race survive to celebrate another 1000 years after this one. However, I also plead that in so doing during the next 1000 years we do not become known as the leeches of the galaxy. A recent article in New York Times Magazine by Timothy Ferris outlines some of the possible plans for future exploration of the universe including a resort hotel in orbit, a mining station on the moon, and a colony on Mars.

I thought the idea of space development beyond scientific missions right now (when we still haven't quite learned to live on earth) was a delusion no one really believed in. When I first heard them in my astronomy class, I mocked them as part of the same underground dreams one associates with Mr. Spock and a galaxy far, far away. I gave those pursuing the possibilities of space industrialization or outright colonization no credibility as legitimate thinkers until I saw them displayed in New York Times Magazine as legitimate, and then I really had to think about a few things. How serious are the members of the industrialized, world about taking our factories to the stars?

The video I saw in my astronomy class depicted one particular Japanese construction firm that planned to have the monopoly on moon construction - once we get there that is. They actually tested out simulated lunar dirt to see if it could be combined into strong building concrete. The plan laid out by Ferris in his article consists of a lunar base designed to mine Helium-3 for fusion reactors we haven't quite invented yet.

I personally have fewer issues with the orbiting resort hotel than with mining the moon. Still, it's kind of a grotesque concept that we could be able to look up at the night sky and see an orbiting hotel. Can't you just see all the neon signs on display in the night sky now, forever obliterating the simplicity of starry nights? One need only be lazily looking at the sky to be bombarded by Starbucks. Still, we are depleting our own resources, something we have come to be professionals at doing.

But who are we to take our petty squabbles and our destructive industries to the moon and other planets and destroy them as we have destroyed the earth? What kind of unforeseen economic and environmental consequences lurk among the stars?

Just in case you forgot, the unforeseen consequences of industrialization on earth have been rapid deforestation, an increase in the greenhouse effect as well as the depletion of ozone, not to mention the rapid depletion of natural resources we rely on to survive and the differences that separate the "industrialized" and "developing" world.

So, of course, our solution is to take our squandering ways to other worlds. Just listen to the language with which space exploration is described. Both Ferris and Star Trek see space exploration as "the final frontier." As my astronomy professor intelligently pointed out, a specific language pervades throughout: these discussions, the language of settlement of spaced as analogous to "settlement" of the American "frontier, in both the 16th century and then the later 19th century "settlement" of Western America. Of course, have we forgotten that there was life already here when the Europeans arrived to exhaust the resources and the people of this continent for themselves? Is it not possible that there are unforeseen life forms out there that we could destroy? If history has taught me anything, it is that we have yet to behave well towards that which is "foreign" to us. I could see us deciding that life we discover on the moon or Mars is not really life because it doesn't fit our definitions as applied to earth. How long would it be before we decide that since it isn't really "life," it deserved to be enslaved or destroyed? Yeah, I am just sure seeing space as "frontier" to be settled is a totally harmless metaphor.

As we enter the next Western Christian millenium, we need to face many of the issues of poverty, racism, and our tendency toward self-destruction, not worry about the best ways to expand industry into space. I believe that space exploration could be a useful way of finding cures for diseases and perhaps even finding new ways to repair the damage we have done to our home planet. But I think that research to serve mankind is where our priorities should be in space exploration, not in looking for new ways to exploit the environment just because we have the ability to do so, and just because it is easier than trying to save our home planet from our appetite for destruction.

December 1, 1999