T-minus 1 Evolutionary Shift
On November 1, 2010, one of the greatest endeavors in United States history will see the beginning of the end – weather permitting.
The space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to make its 39th and final flight on 11/1 (originally scheduled for August 19). Not only will it be Discovery’s last hurrah, but it will most likely mark the end of the U.S. shuttle program. The U.S. “…will have no capability to launch people into space on American rockets for many years to come.”
How soon will those “years to come” arrive? On April 15, President Barack Obama said “By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space. So, we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow.” Deeper manned space exploration than ever before within 15-20 years sounds promising, if it happens.
And it’s not as though the U.S. has a monopoly on space flight: Russia continues its work, and China’s space program is flourishing. Space exploration isn’t dead. But knowing those miraculous behemoths are flying for the last time can still wrench in the hearts of anyone who’s dreamed of visiting the stars.
Just how important is it that we continue to explore space, though? Thus far, we’ve learned that outer space is a harsh environment that we’re not suited to live in. Microgravity will cause bone loss and may impair birth, and of course space radiation could kill us without heavy protection. Why do we care so much about leaving our own planet? “Because it’s there”?
There are plenty of reasons. In the short term – the next few hundred years – we have to consider what overpopulation and overuse of Earth’s resources will do. There may come a point where Earth can’t sustain all of us – or we’ve used her too hard, and she can’t sustain any of us. We may need to colonize off-earth simply to perpetuate the species.
That’s another interesting and relevant question: How long do we expect (or want) our species to live? Most people would say that we want to perpetuate as long as possible… how long is that? The sun will most likely survive another 5 billion years, but no life more advanced than microbes has survived on Earth for that long. And any life that did survive for that long… well, it wouldn’t be the same. Evolution would naturally alter any life over that much time, quite possibly into something completely unrecognizable from its originator. By the time the sun dies, “humans” as we know them will no longer exist. (Not that that invalidates the desire to perpetuate ourselves.)
For that matter, our changing as a species may actually be the key to our long-term survival. Eventually the earth will no longer be habitable for life as we know it, and we will have to be something different to live here. Such changes could also better prepare us for life in space.
Also to consider is that short-term and long-term are intertwined. There’s strong reason to believe that seeking solutions to long-term problems will lead to solutions to short-term problems. For example, the search for ways to produce viable food sources in space could easily lead to food science applicable here on Earth, helping to solve worldwide hunger. And genetically engineering ourselves for safer, healthier space travel may create “self-designing beings” more capable of surviving harsher climates on Earth.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so sad about the end of the shuttle program. It may be that within a few decades, we’ll have changed ourselves so dramatically that something much simpler will do. What would a simpler ship to launch ourselves into space look like? Would it be lighter and therefore require less fuel? What if we reduced the amount of food we need to consume, thereby minimizing waste and lessening the amount of food the ship would need to carry?
What is there that we’ve been assuming we’d require for traveling in space that we can eliminate the need for by changing ourselves?
Just how important is it that we continue to explore space, though?
I’m going to go pedantic here and point out that exploration of space is not directly coupled to the shuttle or to the space station or human space flight in general. In terms of pure knowledge, we learn a lot more through robotic probes and telescopes, both ground-based and orbital, than from human space flight. Very little science goes on aboard the space station, or aboard the shuttle. There is some, and the shuttle has had numerous repair missions to Hubble, so I won’t dismiss it entirely. And human space flight, a kind of national “flag in space,” keeps politicians funding NASA and space exploration both human and, er, inhuman. I will point out, however, the old canard that one needs human space flight to keep the public interested is false; the public response to Hubble discoveries, and especially to the robotic missions to Mars, was enormous.
But human space flight is also enormously expensive and sometimes it seems that pursuing human space flight actually takes away, in terms of funding, from our ability to do real science. It’s not a zero-sum game, of course, and as I’ve indicated above the two are far more interwoven.
Certainly the romantic in me is sad to see the shuttle retired, though I am anxious for something better to come along. It’s also possible that, freed from the distractions of human space flight, we might actually be able to focus on real discovery.
And–to make clear I did actually read the post–there is a difference between pure scientific discovery and learning how to push our boundaries as human, to live and work in hostile environments. About that, Bart wrote very eloquently and movingly.
You guys make me wish I could have stayed in school and majored in science instead of theater.
The current focus is on encouraging the private sector in space. Unfortunately private investors are mostly concerned with making money off their investments and the only economic benefits of space travel so far are satellites and technologies that most people don’t even realize were developed by NASA. If someone had started mining the moon or a near-earth asteroid when the technology first became possible there’d be a dozen private corporations developing manned spacecraft for Mars missions.
I agree that people generally are oblivious to the origins of a lot of the beneficial technologies they enjoy. Just another sign that our education system is broken – not only do we not teach science well, history is neglected, too.
This issue is ever on my mind.
I discussed the going-in-circles of the space station and the shuttle in my Crossed Genres interview. I agree with Calvin: robotic missions have returned troves of new knowledge. Too, humans are not made for space, because we evolved as earth land animals. The inherent limitations of our configuration become visible if we contemplate that we still cannot inhabit the oceans, which in many ways parallel space.
But I also agree with Bart: we will eventually run out of resources even if we restrain ourselves — and all species have a finite lifespan. It will be better for us if we address the issue of crewed space exploration early, while we still have leeway to experiment and are not strapped for resources.
I discuss this more extensively in my six-part series, Making Aliens, which starts
here. A briefer take is here: Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!
Hey, I’m working on a collection of short stories set in the far future and populated by people specifically engineered to live in space (as a result, they don’t have an easy time planetside…). I may ping you with questions in the coming months!