Manned Space Exploration Is Bullshit
Posted in Tech
on April 21st, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Science Fiction,
Science,
Energy,
Space
What made me think about this was seeing Elon Musk interviewed on the Colbert Report the other week. He said that he wanted to get into "important problems", as he said later, "One was the Internet, one was clean energy, and one was space," to quote Wikipedia, which is just about a direct quote of his comments on the show. Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, a private space exploration company, as well as Tesla Motors, makers of what is considered the world's first modern, commercially viable electric car. He made his fortune from PayPal. So he succeeded in having a foot in all three camps, but in choosing space exploration as the next place to focus his energy, I feel like he chose a vanity project over doing something really important. Space exploration is just not important to the future of humanity, and manned space exploration is just a gigantic waste.
Don't get me wrong, I think manned space travel is really cool. I spent a lot of years as a science fiction fan, particularly reading my father's Analog magazines. Ultimately, I think that is part of what helped turn me against it, though.
I feel like manned space travel, especially travel to other planets, is a kind of revenge-of-the-nerds wish fulfillment for many of its proponents. Don't worry if those ignorant yobs destroy the Earth. They deserve what they get. We will build a new society elsewhere that will be better without their ignorance.
The less negative type of argument is that life on Earth is finite. Since life on Earth will come to an end, humanity will come to an end unless we colonize other worlds. I'm slightly sympathetic to that argument over the very long term, say on a scale of millennia, but over a timescale that matters to any of us, this argument is meaningless.
Note that I am at pains to say manned space flight. I think scientific curiosity is a good enough reason to continue to send unmanned probes into space.
Here are the problems I have with space colonization as a priority.
First of all, it is incredibly expensive. Trillions of dollars expensive for major colonization projects. This will represent a significant diversion of resources away from other priorities - it's not trivial.
Secondly, everywhere in space is very hostile. To put it in perspective, the Antarctic ice cap is a friendly environment compared to anywhere off-Earth in the solar system. Antarctica has water and oxygen, considered major problems to be solved in other settlement schemes, so it already has a leg up. Build thriving cities in Antarctica before you talk to me about the moon.
Thirdly, I am happy to go out on a limb and say that I predict the central speed limit problem of space travel will never go away, i.e., nothing can travel faster than light and we will never find a way around that. So in terms of other solar systems, we would have to put together a mission on a wing and a prayer based on data from automated probes sent to random-ish star systems, with a cycle time of years.
Finally, due to the expense and technical challenges, space travel will never be a mass activity, and any escape hatch into space will be so for only a tiny and privileged few.
No corporation is ever likely to have the resources to do all this, SpaceX notwithstanding, without significant public help. So what, the take-home message is that taxpayers should fund this giant technological whack-off fantasy to the tune of trillions of dollars that will never help most of them in any way out of a nebulous sense of ideological accomplishment in getting some human genes into space? Personally, this is not something I can support.
The reality is that Earth is the only home that humanity has. There is a credible hypothesis with the implication that Earth is the only significant home we will ever have, regardless of our ingenuity. Certainly this is true for the vast majority of the billions of humans who are alive now or ever will live.
The Earth is mortal. That means we are mortal, as a species, no matter how we manage to claw at life. This is something we have to face up to. That notwithstanding, we owe it to ourselves to make life on this planet as pleasant as possible in the meantime.
A fundamental reason why space travel will soon be off the table is that space travel is a pure luxury item and point of national pride. With the exception of satellites, it serves little or no useful purpose.
Space travel was a product of the era of cheap and plentiful energy, which is drawing to a close. Luxuries like space depend on cheap energy, and so to does the ability to feed seven billion people. I think that that latter problem is just slightly more urgent.
Cheap, clean and renewable energy is an absolute prerequisite for humans to have a future more than a generation or two into the future with anything remotely like the lifestyle we want to enjoy and with anything like our present population (i.e., without a massive die-off). Being a humanitarian rather than an environmentalist, this is a vision that I have to endorse. If this problem is solved, then stupid fripperies like space are on the table, but otherwise, space is a waste of valuable time and energy.
If Elon Musk really wanted to make a difference, this is what he should have been doing, not building rockets. Building rockets is cool, but it makes no earthly difference to anything truly important. What the world actually needs is great scientific minds to tackle the significant problem of finding a truly viable replacement for fossil fuels, and someone brave enough and with adequate resources to take on the huge vested interests which will resist change in our energy regime to the last ditch. I'm sure Musk can fiddle with rockets to his heart's content - fundamentally, that's not threatening anyone.
Comments:
There are 2 comments on this item.
On April 30th, 2012
Stephen DeGrace
wrote:
That's a good point and a very reasonable position to take. I would take the position that we can still afford some luxuries, and that pure scientific curiosity, including over things with very little application like unmanned space exploration, is not exorbitantly expensive and still within our means, but that manned space exploration multiplies the cost many times with little or no added value in terms of scientific discovery, and that the more ideological reasons for manned space exploration, e.g., making new homes for humanity in space, are entirely specious. It is tragic to me to see some of our most ingenious entrepreneurs with money to burn on pet projects wasting time on this big nothing when energy is the crucial problem on which our whole future hinges.
I think you could very reasonably argue that less money, or no money, should go to any space exploration, though - it's a legitimate point of public policy debate.
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On April 21st, 2012 Andrew Barton
wrote:
"I think scientific curiosity is a good enough reason to continue to send unmanned probes into space."
Could you elaborate on why scientific curiosity is a good enough reason to continue an unmanned space program, given the high cost of space launch currently and the assured continued high cost if there is never any motivation to bring it down? If problems on Earth are that bad, wouldn't it be more prudent to pull back from space completely, robotic or no?