A dumb leap for mankind
JUVENAL, that biting pundit of the Roman Empire, complained of weak leaders distracting the people with panem et circenses – bread and circuses. In our day, it’s moon bases and missions to Mars.
Europe is splintering. North Korea has gone full Dr Strangelove. Disaster in Puerto Rico. Massacre in Las Vegas. Crickets chirping on Capitol Hill, where Republican promises go to die. With so much to be done and few plans for doing it, the people need to be distracted. So Vice President Mike Pence was trotted out last week to revive a long-dormant presidential commission and get American astronauts back into space.
Perhaps you thought our astronauts never left space. Haven’t they been space walking, repairing telescopes, performing experiments and making music videos up there for years? Turns out those missions take place in “low Earth orbit”, less than
560 kilometres from home. Millions of kids have ventured farther to attend college than our astronauts have travelled from Earth these past 45 years.
Though Pence’s commission is unlikely to tell you, there are very good reasons Americans, and other humans, abruptly stopped going deep into space. It’s deadly. It’s unnecessary. And to borrow from Gertrude Stein, there’s no there there.
Doubtless, Americans could return to the moon, and even stay there for a while. It would cost vast sums, but we have good credit and high tolerance for debt. The question is why. The moon is still the same dead, dusty desert we left in 1972. Ice-covered Antarctica and the Sarahan sands are both far more hospitable to human life.
A moon base makes zero sense on its own terms, so it’s pitched as a trampoline to Mars. Face it: The Red Planet has the best PR in the solar system. What Scientology is to creepy movie stars, Mars travel is to swashbuckling billionaires. Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos (owner of the Washington Post) have all set their sights on the fourth rock from the sun.
Boosterish scientists report that midday temperatures may reach a balmy 15-plus degrees Celsius on the Mars version of St Tropez, but Musk better pack a heavy snowsuit to go with his Speedo. Having vir- tually zero atmosphere to hold the warmth, the planet cools off overnight to around 68 degrees below zero at the equator. The average temperature, according to NASA, is 63 below.
Still, a human traveller to Mars should make the most of its monotony, because there is no coming back. The long passage through the vacuum of space will expose astronauts to intense and prolonged bombardment by cosmic rays and unimpeded solar radiation – a death sentence for which NASA has no solution. At the Hotel Mars, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
What’s more, Mars is a dead end. As fatally desolate and brutal as Mars is, our neighbour planet is the most habitable destination for many, many light years in any direction.
Science fiction can be seductive. Of course we want to boldly go where no one has gone before. But space exploration is a job for robots. Nature has adapted humans exquisitely and precisely for life in one particular ecosystem in one remote corner of an incomprehensibly vast universe.
But here’s the good news: It’s a really nice ecosystem! Earth is blanketed with a breathable atmosphere, and the gravity’s just right to hold us in place. There is snow for skiing, beaches for tanning. Land and seas teem with food – so much that the ever-growing human population has never been better nourished than today. There are wondrous things to see, such as Yellowstone, the Louvre and Willie Nelson.
The vice president touted the commercial prospects for humans in space, but that, too, is a distraction. There is no economic enterprise (apart from space tourism) that can be done more efficiently by humans in space than by space robots or humans on the ground. It’s all pie in the sky.
Other promoters of moon bases and Mars colonies are doomsday theorists, grimly labouring under the belief that humans are going to destroy the Earth and need to have a lifeboat ready. This is dangerous thinking. For all the troubles in our current home, they are small compared with the problems of living in a terrarium on a frozen rock under skies composed of 95 percent carbon dioxide. If we have money and energy and brainpower enough to build settlements on distant wastelands, we are better off deploying those resources to preserve the bountiful planet we already have.
The vast and murderous universe has conspired to maroon the human race – but what a wonderful island we’re on. Rather than go in search of dust bowls to die in, let us send our robot eyes and ears to explore the lifeless seas of space, marvelling at their findings while giving thanks that we’re not with them.