The Moon as backup drive for civilization
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Full Version: The Moon as backup drive for civilization
Whoa...heavy, man, heavy! 
Actually, I've had thoughts along the same lines...and, of course, Arthur C. Clarke beat us all to it with his classic story If I Forget Thee, O Earth... Such "space survivalism" seems quite prudent indeed, but how to sell it to the taxpayers?
Such selling is vital, and I admire the fact that developing a strategy for doing so is the central goal of Bloom's meeting next month...it's gonna be tough, though. For one thing, it's almost a foregone conclusion that there will be deep US Federal budget cuts across the board after the next Presidential election, no matter who wins. In fact, the DoD's already talking about headcount reductions, and I personally give the CEV less than a 50/50 chance of flying anytime before 2015 for this reason alone.
Actually, I've had thoughts along the same lines...and, of course, Arthur C. Clarke beat us all to it with his classic story If I Forget Thee, O Earth... Such "space survivalism" seems quite prudent indeed, but how to sell it to the taxpayers?
Such selling is vital, and I admire the fact that developing a strategy for doing so is the central goal of Bloom's meeting next month...it's gonna be tough, though. For one thing, it's almost a foregone conclusion that there will be deep US Federal budget cuts across the board after the next Presidential election, no matter who wins. In fact, the DoD's already talking about headcount reductions, and I personally give the CEV less than a 50/50 chance of flying anytime before 2015 for this reason alone.
I think it's interesting that Bloom is quoted as citing "Destination Moon" and "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" as having influenced a positive outlook on space exploration among Americans. (He might also have cited Wernher von Braun's collaborations with Collier's magazine and Walt Disney.) These excursions into science fiction to which Braun, Ley, Bonestell and others contributed had something in common which is foreign to most current science fiction; they focused on the exploration of the solar system, starting with the Moon, then going on to Mars and other planets.
This type of science fiction has now been out of fashion for almost fifty years. Part of it was that reality caught up; part that science fiction writers were much more comfortable in worlds of their own imagination than in worlds constrained by scientific facts and figures. Today's sf fan feels much more comfortable with, and indeed is likely to know more about, fictional planets like Tatooine, Dune, or Vulcan than he (or she) knows about Mars or Venus. To take examples from film and television sf (the currently most popular part of the genre): space adventures are set comfortably far in the future (Star Trek, Andromeda, Babylon 5), in distant parts of our galaxy (Farscape, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica), in fictional solar systems (Firefly) or in entirely fictional galaxies (Star Wars). The little matter of how one gets from here (current technologies and knowledge of the universe) to there (the fabulous world of the far future) is glossed over or totally ignored. It would be nice to have some inspiring fictional treatments of the near-future exploration of space and the planets, done in a quasi-realistic way. But such material isn't going to reach a wide audience on its own.
The effect of the more fantastic types of sf on the imagination is not necessarily bad, as it does continually remind one of the gap between humanity's current abilities and its aspirations; but it does contribute to a general dismissal of the exploration of near space as having little interest, and hence to general ignorance of the topic. This is not the fault of ordinary people, who could easily find space exploration as fascinating as movie stars, rock celebrities, football games and minor royalty. The problem is that the media-entertainment conglomerates who make a business of deciding what crazes people should follow today and tomorrow are bored with space travel of the non-fictional or even potentially non-fictional variety: hence space achievements are rarely covered or publicized, and then only in a non-enthusiastic way. The idealistic crusades for entrepreneurial space ventures to capture the attention of the American public, perhaps should be redirected; the attention will come only when a space company is owned by General Electric, Walt Disney, Viacom or some other entity that has the intention and the means of promoting it!
The claim that the decline of the space program is due to public apathy is, in my opinion, not quite right. Granted, the public was not watching Apollo 17 from start to finish with the same avidity that it watched Apollo 11. But why should it? Isn't the ultimate goal of a space program not to have a new adventure every week, but to make space travel as usual and normal as air travel, something that people don't think much about but would be shocked to have disappear? I think the public would have been perfectly contented to have moon landings every few months right through to the present; I've never seen any great public agitation to close down NASA. The pressure seems to come from politicians who view NASA, not perhaps so much as money wasted in space, as money thrown away on a bunch of engineers who are in the business for the money and the chance to play with shiny toys.
The notion of the Moon as a sort of repository of human historical memory is not a terrible one, though Antarctica would do just as well. But it sort of misses the point, as do many of the "reasons for space travel". There are various people who will be convinced by any of the reasons that can be advanced: national prestige, scientific curiosity, the "because it's there" romance of exploration, promoting international cooperation, the discovery of possible life, the discovery of economic resources. On the other hand, any one of these reasons can also be broken down as insufficient in itself. For space travel to be a successful going concern, rather than a tangential and conditional enterprise, it has to become its own justification. That is, a space economy has to be built up that is big enough that it is going to be continued just because abandoning it would put too many people out of work; space stations and settlements have to be constructed that will continue to be funded because abandoning them would be unthinkable; space transportation systems must be constructed in order to provide communications between the components of the space network, and the nodes of the network must be maintained so the transports have somewhere to go. When you create an economy that is sufficiently large and complex, every part of it becomes a reason for every other part to exist, and the abandonment of the whole is too radical a step to be envisioned. This may seem silly; but it's the principle that some of the largest expenditures of the federal government are based on. The only problem with the space economy is that it hasn't yet reached a sufficient size or complexity to put its existence beyond question.
This type of science fiction has now been out of fashion for almost fifty years. Part of it was that reality caught up; part that science fiction writers were much more comfortable in worlds of their own imagination than in worlds constrained by scientific facts and figures. Today's sf fan feels much more comfortable with, and indeed is likely to know more about, fictional planets like Tatooine, Dune, or Vulcan than he (or she) knows about Mars or Venus. To take examples from film and television sf (the currently most popular part of the genre): space adventures are set comfortably far in the future (Star Trek, Andromeda, Babylon 5), in distant parts of our galaxy (Farscape, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica), in fictional solar systems (Firefly) or in entirely fictional galaxies (Star Wars). The little matter of how one gets from here (current technologies and knowledge of the universe) to there (the fabulous world of the far future) is glossed over or totally ignored. It would be nice to have some inspiring fictional treatments of the near-future exploration of space and the planets, done in a quasi-realistic way. But such material isn't going to reach a wide audience on its own.
The effect of the more fantastic types of sf on the imagination is not necessarily bad, as it does continually remind one of the gap between humanity's current abilities and its aspirations; but it does contribute to a general dismissal of the exploration of near space as having little interest, and hence to general ignorance of the topic. This is not the fault of ordinary people, who could easily find space exploration as fascinating as movie stars, rock celebrities, football games and minor royalty. The problem is that the media-entertainment conglomerates who make a business of deciding what crazes people should follow today and tomorrow are bored with space travel of the non-fictional or even potentially non-fictional variety: hence space achievements are rarely covered or publicized, and then only in a non-enthusiastic way. The idealistic crusades for entrepreneurial space ventures to capture the attention of the American public, perhaps should be redirected; the attention will come only when a space company is owned by General Electric, Walt Disney, Viacom or some other entity that has the intention and the means of promoting it!
The claim that the decline of the space program is due to public apathy is, in my opinion, not quite right. Granted, the public was not watching Apollo 17 from start to finish with the same avidity that it watched Apollo 11. But why should it? Isn't the ultimate goal of a space program not to have a new adventure every week, but to make space travel as usual and normal as air travel, something that people don't think much about but would be shocked to have disappear? I think the public would have been perfectly contented to have moon landings every few months right through to the present; I've never seen any great public agitation to close down NASA. The pressure seems to come from politicians who view NASA, not perhaps so much as money wasted in space, as money thrown away on a bunch of engineers who are in the business for the money and the chance to play with shiny toys.
The notion of the Moon as a sort of repository of human historical memory is not a terrible one, though Antarctica would do just as well. But it sort of misses the point, as do many of the "reasons for space travel". There are various people who will be convinced by any of the reasons that can be advanced: national prestige, scientific curiosity, the "because it's there" romance of exploration, promoting international cooperation, the discovery of possible life, the discovery of economic resources. On the other hand, any one of these reasons can also be broken down as insufficient in itself. For space travel to be a successful going concern, rather than a tangential and conditional enterprise, it has to become its own justification. That is, a space economy has to be built up that is big enough that it is going to be continued just because abandoning it would put too many people out of work; space stations and settlements have to be constructed that will continue to be funded because abandoning them would be unthinkable; space transportation systems must be constructed in order to provide communications between the components of the space network, and the nodes of the network must be maintained so the transports have somewhere to go. When you create an economy that is sufficiently large and complex, every part of it becomes a reason for every other part to exist, and the abandonment of the whole is too radical a step to be envisioned. This may seem silly; but it's the principle that some of the largest expenditures of the federal government are based on. The only problem with the space economy is that it hasn't yet reached a sufficient size or complexity to put its existence beyond question.
QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Sep 25 2006, 06:52 PM) 
We already have a "backup drive" for civilisation. It's called America.
By settling the New World after 1492, Europeans ensured--albeit unwittingly--that if one day they ever blew themselves to kingdom come European civilisation would still be around on the other side of the Atlantic, ready to come back across and re-populate the Old World.
In a sense that has already happened. Not only was Europe saved from the scourge of the Nazis by having America as an outpost of European civilisation ready to send its armies across the ocean to rout the scourge, it also had the material wealth necessary to help with the rebuilding that followed.
The problem is that we now find we need another "backup drive" to back up the "backup drive"! Quite apart from the problem of large rocks coming in from space and ending civilisation globally, by settling America Europe made it inevitable that one day America might get involved in some European war and get itself blown up along with Europe.
Which raises the question of whether it would be wise to have the next "backup drive" for civilisation only three or four days away from Earth. That website listed above is looking at the upside. ("The Moon is three or four days away, not a year, so it makes logistical sense and is cheaper.")
The downside: the very fact that the Earth is only three or four days away from the Moon also means it will probably be easier and cheaper for Lunarians ("Lunatics"?) to import much of their needs from Earth rather than going to the trouble and expense of making them thrmselves. That suggests the Moon is unlikely to ever be fully self-sufficient. By contrast a place farther away would need to to be more self-sufficient simply because it would be a lot harder and more expensive to import things from Earth.
Moreover, being so close means that it will also be more likely one day to be caught up in Earth's politics and (maybe) Earth's wars than some place farther away.
======
Stephen
Hmm., Well, it may only be three or four days transit time, but it's a heckuva lot of delta-V from the Earth's surface to the Moon, which can rather directly be translated into cost. I'm sure that lunar colonists would find it highly desirable to locally manufacture as much as they can (as did the American colonies), which would provide a significant degree of cultural separation.
A good current example is Alaska. Although it's a US state, it's trying very hard to become self-sufficient in basic food production as well as local goods manufacture. I lived there for almost four years, and the grocery prices really make you blink from the added transport costs...in fact, during a shipping strike, most stores in Anchorage had empty shelves within just a few days, which was pretty scary. Additionally, there is a distinct sense of isolation from the rest of the country; many Alaskans somewhat disdainfully refer to "the lower 48" as "South America", which reinforces their sense of both physical and cultural separation.
On occasion, I'd even see graffitti around town advocating secession from the United States: "Get US out of Alaska" was the most frequent buzzphrase. Ironically, this is despite the fact that Alaska has more per capita military enlistments than any other state, and also one of the largest percentages of veterans and military retirees in its population. So, I'm sure that lunar colonists would adopt their own cultural identity rather quickly.
A good current example is Alaska. Although it's a US state, it's trying very hard to become self-sufficient in basic food production as well as local goods manufacture. I lived there for almost four years, and the grocery prices really make you blink from the added transport costs...in fact, during a shipping strike, most stores in Anchorage had empty shelves within just a few days, which was pretty scary. Additionally, there is a distinct sense of isolation from the rest of the country; many Alaskans somewhat disdainfully refer to "the lower 48" as "South America", which reinforces their sense of both physical and cultural separation.
On occasion, I'd even see graffitti around town advocating secession from the United States: "Get US out of Alaska" was the most frequent buzzphrase. Ironically, this is despite the fact that Alaska has more per capita military enlistments than any other state, and also one of the largest percentages of veterans and military retirees in its population. So, I'm sure that lunar colonists would adopt their own cultural identity rather quickly.
You haven't watched Dr. Strangelove? It's all about mineshafts.
Yesss....deep ones, with women selected for their libidinous characteristics in order to repopulate the planet as rapidly as possible... 
You can't argue in here! This is the WarRoom!
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ Sep 27 2006, 03:57 AM)
It's all about mineshafts.
Mr. President, we can not allow a mineshaft gap!
[quote name='ljk4-1' date='Sep 25 2006, 06:52 PM' post='69538']
The Moon as backup drive for civilization
Trying to 'back up' human knowledge on the Moon is a bit like being in Khatmandu and needing that first aid kit you left in Mt. Everest- when you really need it you won't be able to reach it.
The Moon as backup drive for civilization
Trying to 'back up' human knowledge on the Moon is a bit like being in Khatmandu and needing that first aid kit you left in Mt. Everest- when you really need it you won't be able to reach it.
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