Where no nonagenarian has gone before
Triumph of the human spirit, or waste of cash?
William Shatner has gone to space. This is either a triumph of the human spirit, or, it's a gigantic waste of money, and a hunk of burned carbon fuel, as well. There don't seem to be many people in the undecided category on this one, and if anyone is open to having their mind changed, this columnist has yet to meet one.
The problem, of course, is that both arguments have merit. And the actual truth about the mission falls somewhere between the extremes of the boosters and the haters.
The Blue Origin capsule that carried the Canadian actor, best known as Capt. James T. Kirk from Star Trek, into space also carried three other passengers. But it wasn't, per se, a scientific mission. It wasn't quite as useless as those rolling their eyes at the whole venture would suggest: the Blue Origin ships are very new, and every launch is a further validation of the technologies and concepts. That's not nothing. But “further validating technologies and concepts” doesn't exactly stir the passion for exploration. It's more satisfying to describe the entire affair in soaring words about pushing the final frontier than it is to admit that Shatner, 90, caught a ride on a test flight, or just trash the whole thing as a marketing gimmick amid a billionaire's vanity project.
The critiques of the flight are comparably overheated. Yes, it's true that Blue Origin (and Spacex, Elon Musk's competitor company, which is further ahead than Blue Origin in capability, by some margin) is simply recreating capabilities that the superpowers developed 60 years ago, during the Cold War. But they're recreating them in better, cheaper, more useful form, and at vastly less cost. The space race of the early Cold War was gigantically expensive, so much so that it could only be justified as part of that great geopolitical competition, and then only briefly. Commercial space flight and utilization is still a nascent industry, but the fact that it's accessible at all is important. You don't need a Manhattan Project-style commitment of public resources to fire a dude into suborbital space for a few minutes. Companies can do it now, and do it better, more safely (we think), and cheaper, while carrying more people and equipment. As we get better at this, it opens up potentially enormous opportunities.
The spectrum of possibilities runs from “nothing of real value will ever come of this” to “Earth becomes an idyllic garden at the centre of a multi-planetary human civilization living lives of plenty.” No one knows which outcome will prove true, and anyone telling you they do isn't making a prediction about their future, simply revealing their mood in the present. The possibilities are endless, and that includes endless variations of fizzle and failure. It also includes marginal betterment of the human condition and even materially significant help in addressing Earth-bound challenges.
It's hard to advocate for anything from the middle these days, with the obvious and widespread desire among seemingly everyone to either defend or attack everything in sight from the most entrenched, lopsided position possible. But when Shatner flew into space on Wednesday, three purposes were served: the man himself was given an incredible experience that left him obviously deeply moved, Blue Origin accumulated reams of data to analyze and apply to future missions, and Jeff Bezos pulled off a pretty incredible publicity stunt by sending a nonagenarian 105 kilometres above the dirt of Texas. None of these things is a game-changer for humanity. None of them is a waste, either. Why must we pretend it has to fit into either of those boxes? What are you all trying to prove by applying the same old culture-war battles to literally everything? Is this making you happier or helping anyone?
I've long been of the view that sooner or later, humanity will become multi-planetary, if something catastrophic doesn't come along and crush us first. The growing competencies of the private sector in mastering the most fundamental of space flight capabilities is a necessary step in that direction. To some, the entire effort is a diversion from more urgent priorities here on Earth, which is a valid view, but also an eternal one. There would never be a moment in human history where we'll have so few problems and challenges that people won't think trying to develop something new, of unproven value, is a gigantic waste of time, even an immoral diversion of resources. I'm not one of those people, and particularly as regards climate change, the development of industry in space, as well as the possibility of space-based power systems, offer up tantalizing ways that space travel could make healing our planet easier.
But hey, who knows. That's off in the future. We are one valve leak during a celebrity-laden flight away from rethinking the whole venture and a whole heap of insurance payouts. All we can do is focus on making incremental progress. So on Wednesday, a billionaire pulled off a stunt that made his company marginally more competent at doing a fantastically complicated thing, and an actor got one hell of a ride that seemed to leave him very grateful. A lot of people will mix a lot of other emotions and arguments into this. Personally, I just wish Blue Origin well, and hope it continues developing competencies that might one day revolutionize how we live.
As for Shatner, it's great that he enjoyed the ride.