MOBILIZING THE HUMAN WILL TO LIVE
We now face multiple threats to our very existence. Rapid climate change, sudden pandemics of disease, asteroid and comet impacts, space warfare leading to auto nuclear annihilation, biodiversity decline, scarcity of fresh water, super volcanoes and gamma-ray bursts from within our galaxy all have the potential to end global civilization. History demands that we do our duty. We must attack the assorted threats in unison. Six billion together cannot fail.
All global threats can be defeated by an expanded human presence in space, if for no other reason than evacuation followed by back-populating Earth. Continued medical experimentation aboard the International Space Station (ISS) could yield breakthrough defenses against SARS, the Ebola virus and AIDS, each of which potentially threatens global civilization as we know it. Surveillance satellites, in addition to monitoring Earths natural systems can aid various intelligence agencies around the world to prevent nuclear terrorist attacks against our global civilization. Chapter four of this work examines how harnessing solar power in space can help fight rapid climate change on the renewable energy front, without damaging our interdependent economies by over-reducing global carbon emission.
There are many natural disasters that inflict death around our world. However, at our current level of understanding, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes and tsunamis do not pose planetary threats, nor are they preventable. Their effects on human life and property can only be mitigated. Asteroid and comet impacts are potentially catastrophic planetary threats as well as being the only preventable natural disaster. There is simply no excuse for inadequate planetary defense. There is extensive evidence on Earth, Earths moon, Mercury and Mars of major asteroid and/or comet impacts. There have been many recent observations of minor impacts and near impacts between Earths orbit and the orbits of asteroids and comets of various sizes, velocities and masses. In 1994 we even witnessed multiple comet impacts into Jupiter, each of which would have obliterated Earth.1
Given the overwhelming evidence available to our policy makers of this reoccurring natural disaster, I can only conclude that the lack of urgency in planning countermeasures is due to natural psychological defense mechanisms of the human mind. After many discussions with genuinely good people, I see that there exists, in many quarters for different reasons a self-loathing of the human spirit. This contributes heavily to our lack of homeplanet defense against all global threats.
Rationale people would agree that failure of continued human existence on Earth and beyond is an unacceptable option. What is a shame is that even with our relatively advanced level of technology, lack of focus still endangers us to being wiped out, the way the dinosaurs became extinct from an asteroid impact. Part of this looming tragedy that needs to be avoided is to not let our technology become nipped in the bud before we ourselves can expand and evolve in cooperation with each other throughout our solar system. Prospects for this peaceful cooperation exist on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, on our own moon, on captured asteroids and in space stations.2
Willful ignorance and inaction are very real threats to human existence. Astronomers note that the science of studying Earth cannot progress much further because it is a study of only one case in an infinite universe. For example, by sending unmanned probes to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, meteorologists now have a better understanding of earthly problems such as the interactions of pollution and acid rain within Earths atmosphere.3 If there is evidence that Mars once had a northern ocean and perhaps life, what made Mars die and what implications, if any, does this have for Earth? Only as we explore the climates, atmospheres and geologic records of worlds in our own solar system, will we understand how Earth really works.
All too often, debates within public policy and international affairs ignore the centrality of space science and exploration in our daily lives. All too often, debates within space policy, including the debate over the weaponization of space, ignore the critical element of the human spirit to create new capabilities in space. Within these same debates, too often the distinction between space exploration and space science are not made, not that these two terms are mutually exclusive.4 A good way to reconcile these two competing forces in policy would be for the International Space Station to be primarily dedicated to researching the long term effects of the space environment on human physiology and psychology in preparation for missions to Mars and eventually beyond.
Nations of the world, large and small need to actively explore space together to solve our global problems; just as adolescents need to challenge themselves through sports in outdoor air to develop mind, body, spirit and the critical balance between individual initiative and team accomplishment. Nation-states are more than capable of coordinating the human response to multiple threats to our existence, but only if they abandon the suicidal 19th century notion of maintaining balance of power. The powerful agencies of space are at our disposal and they are not being fully used to meet our common global threats.
While it is not necessarily their fault, the leaders of our nations are now failing their primary duty to protect their people. They are failing because they are too busy preparing their citizenries to oppose each other on Earth, economically, socially, politically and in too many cases, still militarily. These are old and inappropriate duties for our time. Leaders of our nation-states are not only failing future generations of human beings but every generation that has preceded our own, whose noble efforts have thus far advanced the human endeavor.
1 Collisions and Impacts: The Role of Meteors and Craters in Our Solar System, Meteor Crater Enterprises, 2001, videocassette. See also Asteroids: Deadly Impact, National Geographic Video, 1997, videocassette. See also NASA Ames Research Center, Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards. http://impact.arc.nasa.gov. See also Study to Determine the Feasibility of Extending the Search for Near-Earth Objects to Smaller Limiting Diameters. Report of the Near-Earth Object Science Definition Team. Prepared at the Request of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division, 22 August 2003. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/report.html. See also Hal Povenmire, The Encyclopedia of Cosmic Close Encounters (Hal Povenmire, 2003).
2 See also Robert Zubrin, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (Penguin Putnam Inc, 1999). See also Robert Zubrin with Richard Wagner, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (Simon and Schuster, 1996).
3 Nathan Goldman, American Space Law: International and Domestic
(Iowa State University Press, 1988), 6.
4 See also Orbital Space Plane, a National Space Society event held on Capitol Hill, question and answer period, CSPAN, 21 July 2003.