Moral Argument for Space Development

[alonzofyfe]

After the Discovery shuttle mission, and the decision to postpone future launches for 6 months to do additional repairs, a friend of mine -- who works in the IT field -- asked, "Why send people into space anyway?"<br /><br />I wrote an answer, in the form of a fictional dialogue, to his question in terms I think would be easy for him to understand.<br /><br />In case anybody here may be able to make use of this, I have posted it.<br /><br />HumanRace, Inc.

 

[halman]

AlonzoFyfe,<br /><br />Interesting. Did you find it easier to use analagy? Was the dialog your way of bringing up some of the less obvious arguments?<br /><br />Have you considered the load on Earth's resources which improving the standard of living for the entire population would cause? How do you illustrate the fact that the Earth is an open system, receiving energy from the Sun? This is an important aspect of developing resources off-planet, because limiting ourselves to planetary resources is going to drive the cost of the resourcses up significantly, which will further limit the number of people able to improve their standard of living. Developing off-planet resources will help to keep prices down, and eventully will result in lower overall prices, as techniques for extraction are perfected.<br /><br />For instance, steel is going to continue to increase in price, because it requires an abundant amount of iron to be mined, as well as coal. Steel requires a lot of energy to produce, which is becoming harder to manage because of the pollution regulations preventing the burning of coal without particulate controls. Steel production has moved to third world countries which do not yet have environmental regulations, but the reduction of quality in the living environment tends to force the indroduction of regulations.<br /><br />On the other hand, energy in space is free, it just has to be collected. Nickel-iron asteroids apparently are common, judging from the number which have fallen to Earth. Smelting down steel in space does not adversely affect the environment of anybody, so environmental regulations are not likely to be imposed. As the technique of making steel in space is perfected, the cost per unit will come down. Eventually, space steel will be cheaper than dirtside steel, because the environmental regulations everywhere will be very harsh. Maknig steel on Earth without messing up the environment will cost more than making steel in space. Practically un <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[alonzofyfe]

In this case, I selected the analogy because I wanted to place the argument in terms that people who are not space enthusiasts can actually understand -- by relating the argument to something that happens in their daily lives.<br /><br />Such as, for example, backing up a server or saving a document.<br /><br />I agree with your additional reasons for entering space. In fact, I have written in the past of the need to go into space because it is better to get additional resources from the dead of space than by carving deeper and deeper scars into the living earth.<br /><br />I had once thought of creating a poster, with a picture of a mining operation on the sea floor with animals and plants being torn up on one side, and a similar operation on an asteroid on the other side, and a caption that said, "For the sake of the earth, support space."<br /><br />(I actually had a series of these posters in mind, including one with a picture of a kid floating at a large window in a space station, looking down on the Earth, with an empty wheelchair on the floor of the observation room, and a caption that says, "For freedom's sake, support space."<br /><br />Anyway . . . I digress.

 

[quasar2]

excellent poster idea. many times this is covered in SciFi. the idea of space as hospice or easier for some disabled to get around. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[trailrider]

There is something to your approach. But the problem is that we humans tend to be terribly short-sighted, and feel "it can't happen to me." The terrible tragedy in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area is a perfect example of how we can let "economics" get in the way of P^5, and how such thinking and lack of Prior Planning, can jump up to bite us! (One of the reasons for NOT making the levess around New Orleans resistant to a Catagory 5 hurricane, was said to be the environmental damage the Army Corps of Engineers would do to "the environment". So funding for such an improvement was not forthcoming by whatever governmental agencies were involved. NOW how much cost is there? (I would hesitate to make light or make use of such a tragedy as this, but one could say such a disaster could never happen on the Moon or Mars...unless we start terra-forming Mars!)<br /><br />They are now flying people out of New Orleans, and they are going all over the country, simply because no one place can handle them all. But evacuating a large population to other places in the solar system is just not feasible given current technology. But we have to start someplace. <br /><br />I wish (hope) your arguement can be used to convince "civilians" to support the space program. But I'm just praying the disaster in N.O. isn't used to justify transferring funds from NASA's budget to the disaster relief! With Michaud down, and a lot of the workers missing, it is going to be touch-and-go to simply convert the KSC VAB facility to revamp the ET that is there. <br /><br />NOT disagreeing with your concept. I just don't know if it (or much of anything) will work right now... <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" /><br /><br />Ad Luna! Ad Aries! Ad Astra!<br />Trailrider

 

[alonzofyfe]

I agree on America's short-sightedness.<br /><br />The events in New Orleans make clear that people can report over and over again that there is a danger and still be ignored.<br /><br />And, yet, in spite of this, there can be no virtue in not saying what needs to be said, and warning of the danger, in spite of humanity's tendency not to listen.<br /><br />The fact that the New-Orleans newspaper <i>Times=Picyune</i> ran a 5-part series 2 years ago where they described exactly what will happen in New Orleans if the levys broke apparently did no good. And, yet, no argument can be made that they ought not to have run the story.<br /><br />As to whether my dialogue about the value of human space development, whether it "works" or not right now depends on how it is presented. Perhaps, if it is shown to people in the context of, "New Orleans has shown us that we sometimes ignore the obvious until it is too late. Will that be the case with <i>this</i> issue as well?"<br /><br />Perhaps, then, they will think, "Okay, I get it."<br /><br />As I wrote it, one of the thoughts I had in my head is, "Why are you wasting your time giving a warning that too many people will listen to?" The answer I gave myself was simple.<br /><br />If I do not give the warning, then it is my fault for not warning others. If I give the warning and nobody listens, it is their fault for not listening.

 

[spayss]

Your Montana analogy is not valid. We have huge deposits of copper left unmined in Montana because the profit margin is questionable. There are no shortages of metals on Earth...only deposits that are unprofitable to extract at this particular time for economic reasons.<br /><br /> Metals on the moon, asteroids, etc, may one day be used in space but won't be needed on Earth.<br /><br /> As for the environment we should all be concerned and mining today in our state is very much under EPA scrutiny. <br /><br /> Space keeners are like ostriches with their heads in the sand if they don't think environmnetal issuers are not going to impact spaceflight. Already passenger airplanes are getting slower and not faster because of fuel and emission issues. There will be tremendous pressure on governments not to allow billionaires to go for joyrides in Space if Granny is expected to turn down the temperature on her heating pad not just to save energy but to reduce the impact on the atmosphere of energy use. <br /><br /> The moral arguments for Space seems ok until other moral arguments are stacked next to them. It's just not going to get the ball roling. Space exploration will 'take off' when a generation of kids get out of school with the science bee in their bonnet. Manned space exploration will be undertaken for the thrill of the challenge not a lot different from climbing a mountain. Space exploration helps keep the scientific edge of society sharpened.<br /><br />

 

[alonzofyfe]

spayss<br /><br />The original post had to do with promoting human space development as a way of reducing the possibility of human extinction if something catestrophic should happen to earth.<br /><br />I have also defended the "challenge not a lit different from climbing a mountain" as another legitimate reason. Those who climb mountains are never required to provide some other reason to do so.<br /><br />Ultimately, we also have to look at the fact that getting resources for the people of Earth will require cutting deeper and deeper scars into the living planet unless and until those resources can be retrieved from the dead of space.<br /><br />"Sustainability", ultimately, means global poverty if we are seeking to sustain ourselves solely on the ever-dwinding resources of one planet. Sustainability means a lot more if we are sustaining ourselves on the resources of an entire planet, including energy released from the sun that is not heading towards Earth.<br /><br />Environmental issues can and should, affect space flight. It is certainly not an activity that justifies poisoning those people on Earth who do not wish to participate.<br /><br />However, the issue of granny turning down her heating blanket is only relevant if fewer space flights means that she gets to turn her heating blanket up. Space flight is not that wasteful of energy on Earth that could have other uses. We can identify a number of other, less-useful activities that consume orders of magnitudes more energy.<br /><br />Once in space, most of the fuel actually used up there will come from space itself -- asteroids, the moon, and 24/7 solar power (without clouds).<br /><br />Some of that energy can be beamed to Earth. (NASA has recently announced that it is setting aside $400,000 prizes for, among other things, demonstrations in technology for this.)

 

[spayss]

People wading through the muck in Mississppi aren't concerned about human extinction. Soldiers needing body armor in Iraq aren't concerned about human extinction. The mother waiting for heart surgery on her baby isn't concerned with human extinction.<br /><br /> Morality isn't about the preservation of the human race but the dignity of today's individual. The moral argument for space is ironically often an immoral argument. It falsely seeks out and hypes the value of space exploration to use as an argument for incresed use of resources for manned flight. Otherwise 'feed my interest'.<br /><br /> Morality is about honesty. I'm quite willing to admit that Darwin, Einstein,von Braun and others were not motivated by any great desire to advance the already flourishing homo sapiens specioes on Earth but were motivated by a curiosity and chomping at the bit to get at the unknowns of science or to push technology.<br /><br />People go into teaching and nursing and similar noble fields for moral advancement of mankind. I became a chemical engineer and my brother a mining engineer in part because we liked to fiddle with our chemistry set, set off blockbuster firecrackers and and work on junkers and race them around the farm.

 

[spacester]

Hi spayss, (responding to your previous post)<br /><br />It seemed to me that halman was merely stating a fact, not making an analogy. The fact is, the easiest copper has been mined, therefore it gets harder as time goes on. This is a logical development with finite resources and we can only expect that it will get harder. The resource has not been totally depleted by any means, but it's getting harder.<br /><br />Whereas with space mining, the resource very well might prove to be so vast that we can indeed treat it as an infinite resource for the time being. The expectation is that the cost of space mining will continually decrease as we get better at it.<br /><br />Myself, I would be shocked if space mined steel ever became cheaper than planetary steel, when purchased on the planet. Off-planet is a whole different story.<br /><br />(You are correct about the perils of ignoring environmental effects of space flight, and I've posted on that before. But frankly this thread is not the place IMO.)<br /><br />When we talk about going out and exploiting the resources of space, we need to be honest with the folks we're trying to convince. It may well be that not a lot of those resources will actually come down to the surface of the Earth. But that isn't the main point behind harvesting off-planet resources.<br /><br />Resources from space must be utilized in order to bring down the cost of space development. It is simply too selfish for us space advocates to ask that the rest of society buy and ship all the equipment and supplies we need to do our space development thingies, if we can't be bothered to make do for ourselves as best we can.<br /><br />It is also unreasonable for society to demand that space advocates go it alone and make all their stuff out of regolith and rock.<br /><br />Near term space development does at least two great things for society.<br /><br />A. It begins the creation of a backup system intended to confer immortality upon homo sapiens.<br /><br />B. It gives us a h <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[spacester]

<font color="yellow">It falsely seeks out and hypes the value of space exploration to use as an argument for increased use of resources for manned flight. </font><br /><br />NASA has been guilty of that and it really pisses me off too. There is no need for false hype if the program is doing useful things, so we can reasonably hope that behavior is a thing of the past.<br /><br />Morality is about a lot of things. Honoring the struggle of the people wading through the muck in Mississippi by lowering the cost of launching storm-watching satellites might be one of them. Everything ties together, we're all in this together.<br /><br />The advancement of the dignity of today's individual and the preservation of the human race are not mutually exclusive endeavors.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alonzofyfe]

spayss<br /><br />Your argument would make sense if I had said that "The only thing humans should worry about is to prevent its extinction as a species, and nothing else is important."<br /><br />However, I did not say that.<br /><br />And, in fact, if somebody had written that we should put all of our resources into space development and forget about everything else, I would recommend that he seek the aid of a competent psychiatric professional.<br /><br />Clearly, I made no such argument.<br /><br />If your complaint is that certain money is being wasted that could go to alleviate human suffering, I would agree with you.<br /><br />I look at the billions of dollars that are spent on sports each year. If we abolished that industry, it would free up nearly 100 billion dollars to spend on solving all sorts of problems.<br /><br />Dining out (eating in restaurants) -- or even eating at home where the meal involves more than one literally needs to survive -- what a waste! How many hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted here? Imagine if those resources were freed up to reduce human suffering.<br /><br />Almost everything that shows up on television. Not only is it mind-rot, but people spent hundreds of billions of dollars making this mind-rot, and spend hundreds of billions of potential labor-hours each year sitting on the couch allowing their minds actually rot.<br /><br />Hollywood movies -- same thing.<br /><br />A waste of time and money -- every one of them. (Almost.)<br /><br />The cosmetic industry. Can you imagine anything more senseless than all of these people wasting billions of dollars just to remove wrinkles and age spots?<br /><br />Billions of dollars are being spent on pet grooming each year.<br /><br />However, it seems your position is that we should not waste one dime preventing the extinction of the human species. That is just too trivial to think about.<br /><br />Survival of the human species is very much a moral issue.<br /><br />Let us assume that I have a button on

 

[paleo]

I'm a paleontologist and am confident that in the last 600 million years there hasn't been any cosmological or Earth-based event that, if it happened today, would even mildly threaten the existence of the human race. Billions might die (if an event like Deccan eruptions or large asteroid impact happened) but there would be millions of humans left in hundreds of pockets. More humans than existed just a couple thousand years ago. Many times the amount of any space-based population. <br /> The only human-extinction type event prior to the rise of multi-cellular life might be a nearby gamma burst but if that happened and all macro life on Earth was destroyed then it would equally kill all macro life in oursolar system and nearby stars.<br /> Back to the moral argument. If you 'really' believe humans face some extinction then every cent spent on space, sports, entertainmnet and so on should be spent here on Earth preparing for that eventuality. It would be a lot cheaper and easier to prepare for such an event on Earth than not on Earth.<br /> Mining asteroids and similar activities? Never is a long time but the infrastructure needed to extract, process and create manufactured goods is quite involved even on Earth with all the support available.

 

[alonzofyfe]

paleo<br /><br />The possibility remains of such an event, however slight. And, I feel quite confident that, in the history of the universe, there will be at least one species that will assume as you do, that will take the chance, and be wrong.<br /><br />However, more importantly, never before in the Earth's history has there been a species that has so much potential to bring about its own extinction; intentionally, or not.<br /><br />As I have said elsewhere; this could be some religious fanatic who thinks that his action will clean the planet of infidels and leave the world for God's chosen people.<br /><br />Or, perhaps, somebody who has gotten it into his head that the world will be better off without humans; that we are an infestation on the universe to be wiped out.<br /><br />Or, it could simply be ignorance -- some action we are taking that has dire consequences that we either fail to see or refuse to see.<br /><br />One of the things that I have learned from events this last week is the human potential to sit in a situation where they face the most dire risks and do nothing about them -- taunting the fates.<br /><br />Doing nothing because, for the present, it is not convenient.<br /><br />I no longer trust my fellow humans to see to their own welfare. I think that it is best to scatter the human race into several, smaller, independent groups, so that the folly of one group will not bring the whole human race to an end.<br /><br />In addition, New Orleans, as well as the Indian Ocean Basin, were made substantially better off by the fact that there were others who were not directly impacted by the disaster. As the human race spreads out, any specific disaster becomes that much easier to handle. One that strikes the whole earth, even if it leaves survivors, is better handled if a large spacefaring civilization can provide emergency assistance.<br /><br />There are many more dangers in this universe than those you have accounted for, paleo. Probably more than I have accounted fo

 

[paleo]

"As I have said elsewhere; this could be some religious fanatic who thinks that his action will clean the planet of infidels and leave the world for God's chosen people." <br /><br />Could you provide a realistic means to do this? How the heck would some nutcase kill every human on Earth from reemote islands of Melanesia to the jungle hills of Borneo to deep forest in the Amazon to a field station in Antarctica and a field station at the other end of the Earth on Ellesmere Island?

 

[spacester]

<font color="yellow">. . . threaten the existence of the human race. </font><br /><br />You have a point, paleo. But I submit that the existence of western civilization it worth worrying about. It is worth of our concern, is it not? Has our cynicism gotten to the point of an actual preference for a post-apocolyptic future over a true space age? <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />I'll do a rare crosspost from this thread: <br /><br />The moral imperitive to become a space-faring society is this: <br /><br />To not develop space is to risk starting down a road of inevitable decline of our civilization. <br /><br />If we, as the first generation of humans in position to fulfill the dreams of the ages, decline to pursue those dreams, we fail to advance our civilization at a critical juncture. It is entirely possible that such a decision will turn out to be the turning point beyond which the USA went into irreversible decline. <br /><br />That logic may peg your doom and gloom meter, but we're talking about moral imperitives and prudently protecting our future, so that's to be expected. <br /><br />Happily, the same actions that can ensure we don't go down the road of decline can also assure that the USA and its allies are the world leaders in advanced technology for the next century or so. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>