A good futurist can come up with all kinds of outcomes for humanity, but for those of us consumed by space exploration, a recent article in The Economist sketches a particularly bleak possibility. Forget about the stars. For that matter, forget about Mars, even the Moon. The new reality is emerging in the symbolic end of the Space Shuttle program and the eventual de-orbiting of the International Space Station. It’s a reality based on a space program that fares no higher than geostationary orbit and the growing technosphere that encloses us like a planetary ring.
The End of the Space Age is a cautionary tale about an all too real possibility, one that dismisses those anxious to move into the Solar System as ‘space cadets,’ while invoking the space ideas of the 1950s and 60s as an almost surreal excursion that quickly gave way to the outright fantasy of ‘Star Trek.’ The Economist will have none of the old optimism, the vision of ever expanding humanity pushing out to build an infrastructure throughout the inner planets and beyond. The view is stark. Declaring that the Space Age is probably over, the article adds:
The future… looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past. Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.
I bring you this counterbalance to our usual explorations as a way of pointing out that missions to the stars — or even the outer planets — are by no means inevitable, even if people like myself operate with a conviction that they will happen. One of the things that confounds predictions about when and if a true interstellar mission will fly is that history does not always follow a straight path. Cultures can turn inward, technologies can be turned to frivolous ends or disappear altogether, learning can be all but lost as it was for a lengthy period in the European dark ages.
But what The Economist is talking about isn’t a new period of darkness as much as a coming era of content with our own planet. After all, what the Space Age has delivered so far is impressive, and not just in our far-flung robotic missions. Out there at 36,000 kilometers where the telecommunications satellites orbit and extending down to low Earth orbit, our satellites give us global positioning systems and finely tuned weather forecasts, not to mention spy capabilities that change the equations of war. What if the sheer cost of space and growing public indifference put an end to further explorations?
An exhausted world economy, thinks The Economist, will pull us back to Earth:
With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to the stamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, public interest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.
There are answers to all these ideas, but the point is that those of us who believe in a human future throughout the Solar System are going to find ourselves challenged at every turn to explain why such an outcome is even possible, much less desirable. We’re at that juncture where government space efforts are being supplanted by commercial ventures like those of Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, a time when we have to find something on which to hang the space program beyond expensive space tourism. Maybe Robert Zubrin has found one way forward through his suggestion of using a bevy of SpaceX heavy-lift vehicles to haul materials to Mars for an early human outpost there. But SpaceX has to succeed with that vehicle first.
As commercial space efforts move forward, a broader defense of a human future in space has to take the long-term view. Given the dangers that beset our planet, from ecological issues to economic turmoil and the potential for war, can we frame a solution that offers a rational backup plan for humanity? Planetary self-defense also involves the need for the tools to alter the trajectory of any object with the potential to strike the Earth with deadly force, and that means expanding, not contracting, our space-borne assets. Such work is not purely technical. It also teaches the invaluable lesson of multi-generational responsibility and holds out the promise of frontiers. Such challenges have enriched our early history and provide us a clear path off our planet.
We’re also a curious species, and it’s hard to see us pulling back from the challenge of answering the crucial question of whether we are alone in the galaxy. There is a huge gap, as The Economist points out, between where we stand with space technology today and where we fantasized being as we looked forward from the Apollo days. But a case can be made for steady and incremental research that gives us new propulsion options and broadens our knowledge of how life emerges even as it protects our future. A future that includes gradual expansion into space-based habitats and the exploitation of our system’s abundant resources is an alternative to The Economist‘s vision, and it’s one the public needs to hear. The infrastructure that it would build will demand the tools and the skills to move ever deeper into our system and beyond.
I take the Economists projections with the same skeptical view that I take the 100 year starship fantasies. One is based on extrapolation of a current flat or downward trend while the other postulates a continuing exponential. If anything, history shows that from most any time future events are chaotic over ‘short’ time scales.
Is the Space Age Over?
Any serious quick start of space exploration (solar system or interstellar) will require large amounts of hardware in orbit or on the Moon (such as mining equipment on asteroids for eg). Building large amounts of hardware on Earth isn’t the problem, getting the stuff into orbit is. As long as chemical rockets are needed to put hardware into orbit, space exploration will be expensive and progress slowly. In today’s state of affairs, nuclear rockets are out of the question. A space elevator isn’t viable if commercial lengths of carbon nanotube high strength fibres can’t be fabricated (still long way off). Other schemes put forward such as electromagnetic catapults and orbital transfer pendulum schemes also have serious problems.
What research is being done today to get large amounts of hardware into orbit without using chemical rockets?
Cheers, Paul.
Yes, the space age might be over in the world-view of the Economist, because no serious large scale space project can be started on a planet with 180+ states running “free market” economies and being at each others throats all the time. Planetary unification is the key and that is what will make the difference.
I’m repeatedly dismayed by the public’s lack of interest in anything beyond their immediate horizon. Sadly, I believe The Economist article speaks the thoughts of many, perhaps even a majority.
It is true that Space exploration is expensive. It’s also true that space exploration projects do not come with a guaranteed return on investment and that is precisely why government is the best place to carryout space science. We all want government to be efficient and not “squander” our money. But there are many endeavors that would not have ever come to be if risk taking is strictly bound by capitalist principals alone. Governments are the only entities free to invest in endeavors for the simple benefit of mankind. Pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge and sharing the discoveries with all is what makes government good and an asset to its populous.
Private industry has a role in space exploration and undoubtedly has the capability to make meaningful contributions. However corporations cannot be expected to invest the significant resources required for basic planetary exploration. It is up to us, “the people” to fund basic science and exploration and to also lay claim to the discoveries. Basic science research will point the way for private industry to follow.
Very bad article by The Economist. According to them the ISS was a waste, and apparently “every body of importance in the solar system has been visited”. Such ignorance in that statement..
A world ruled by The Economist would be back to the dark ages, in short and not too surprisingly.
This is not the case for every economist fortunately, despite their huge ignorance in the natural sciences and the technology that make the actual economy.
The Freakonomics blog has been talking about the question of space: http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/01/11/is-space-exploration-worth-the-cost-a-freakonomics-quorum/
and they had the humility to quote NASA scientists and other people who have a much less ignorant and dull view on space, rather than give their uninformed opinion.
Perhaps, if global warming runs out of control and a “quick fix” is required, some form of off-Earth geoengineering solution may be forced on us, such as the construction of a parasol at, or close to, the L1 point. Some form of space infrastructure and resource utilization would be required for this. Thus, maybe space settlement and a space faring future could be bootstrapped onto the back of saving the planet from climatic disaster.
The lack of interest in space exploration is a symptom of the apathy and limits of a failing culture. Western civilization has largely exhausted its energy with wars on one hand, excessive pursuit of materialism and personal comfort on the other. The key yardstick of how we’re doing in America is how confident consumers feel, not what new heights we’ve reached or things we’re developed.
All of existence is an up or out, a growing or a dying, sort of dichotomy. If we choose to turn inward, to be comfortable, we are not growing and are instead dying.
The bright side — which is heresy to many who still believe in some sort of American exceptionalism or Manifest Destiny — is that other cultures (that are not afraid to fail, lose lives, and to keep trying) will eventually take up where we left off, be it in ten, twenty, a hundred or two hundred years. The first language spoke at the first permanent Moon or Mars base isn’t going to be English, and the flag on the side of the first manned vessel to survey Jupiter won’t be the American flag.
If I may humbly submit this link, http://launchloop.com/, it’s another idea for launching hardware and supplies without needing chemical rockets.
And another one, http://server-sky.com, it’s another example of a space infrastructure plan that may be successful in not too distant time frame.
One question is whether there’s any particularly good economic rationale for going beyond geosynchronous orbit in the first place. If there’s no realistic prospect of getting a return on the investment it doesn’t seem likely that it will be done. As far as I can see, putting up satellites into Earth-orbit is pretty much the only part of space travel that has provided return on investment. Too bad, but it has been clear since 1965 when Mariner 4 flew past Mars that in space, there is nowhere to go.
@Paul Titze :
New Scientist had an article about cheap launching systems :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028102.500-beam-them-up-launching-spacecraft-on-a-photon-drive.html?full=true
They mention using a Earth based laser or microwave beam to power the missile. This apparently reduces costs substantially.
As you noted, cheap launching system is the key to change things and go beyond LEO.
If no inexpensive launching system is developed, I am firmly in the pessimists’ camp for the future of space exploration.
Personally, as I age, I like Earth more and more, its oceans, forests etc. etc. When I was younger I would have been very happy to travel to Mars, now I can’t think of anything worse than being locked up in a stinky vessel for a couple of years and then spend another six months in a rusty, dusty cold desert.
Space tourism will probably require the largest number of manned launches to LEO in the next decade. However, if the new SLS makes it simpler and more economical to access Earth-Lunar L1 then reusable shuttles utilizing lunar fuel could give humans easy access to the surface of the Moon from L1 and back. This could allow space tourism to quickly expand to the lunar surface, starting the beginning of the first extraterrestrial colony.
I do not believe at all that the space age is really over as long as humans remain curious and inventive, it may temporarily decline, though, depending on the economical and political situation of the moment.
What we need is leaders with real vision, more financial resources for science and technology and, maybe most importantly, public education.
As long as the general public thinks that ‘useful’ means you can eat, drink or wear it, there won’t be much support for space research indeed.
If the space age were ever really over, I fear that the human age would also be over soon.
Great Article, we will find it more difficult to have a great Space development like the past because progressive lefts and minimizing funding will put the essentials only first. Many people do not see the direct values in their face when it comes from their bank account. Creative ways to justify Returns On Investments will be required up front. Pursuing value systems like our communication satellites, the Space Based Solar Power System which can deliver over a Terawatt of energy per year to be delivered to localized storage rings or collector systems. For transporting from Low Earth Orbit to Higher Orbits we are pursuing Solar Electric Tugs for interstellar delivery vehicles. Time to Get Creative!
The thing that has always bothered me about projects such as Icarus, or plans for lunar and Martian colonies, is their plans always seem to exist in isolation. It’s a fascinating project to design a starship on the drawing board, but there seems little consideration for real life factors: can the 21st century economy support it? How will it benefit the economy in creating jobs and new revenue streams? Who will benefit from such a project? What new challenges will we face in the twenty-first century – terrorism, climate change, dwindling resources – that will interfere with our hopes for a starship programme? Will twenty-first century society be interested enough to support a continued space programme? A few weeks ago Kelvin Long wrote on Centauri Dreams about creating a starship institute. If you are going to create such an institute, then I feel a 100-year project will need to incorporate a wider outlook on aspects such as climate change, cultural change, politics, and future studies and so on, because they just as important to any long term space project as developing the necessary technology. These, as well as others that I’ve probably forgotten to mention or which don’t even exist yet, are the factors that are going to shape the future and, with it, any space programme. The question is, have we space advocates been able to show sufficiently how a manned space programme, leading eventually to a starship, is going to fit in with the needs of twenty-first century society (notwithstanding planetary defence, Earth-monitoring etc)? Because as much as we believe it is important to look to the horizon and not just the here and now, if we can’t justify it in the context of what is happening in the world today and in the coming years/decades, I fear the future the Economist predicts could become a reality. And if we back off from space flight now, it will be much harder to restart it again in the future. I so hope I am wrong!
There will be a Luna City, whether its inhabitants speak English, or not, is another matter entirely. Apologies to R.A.H.
@Paul Titze, Skylon does use chemical rockets, but concepts like this could surely bring down the cost to orbit substantially:
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon.html
Economists…hmmmm where shall we start. Point number one, world GDP per head grows year on year at compound interest. That should mean that nations can afford space programs at pocket money fractions of GDP in the future. Or have they been lying to us about economic growth all these years ???
This was discussed on Rand Simberg’s “Transterrestrial Musings” blog.
The only thing I have to say about this is that the Economist has declined significantly over the past 10 years. I had a subscription and used to read it religiously from the late 80’s to the mid 90’s. Today, the Economist is little better than the rest of the rubbish legacy print media.
Jim Bennett stated on Rand’s blog that he was interviewed by the Economist and found that what was published bore little resemblance to what he said. So much for journalist ethics. Take what the Economist says with a grain of salt.
It seems to me that these are political problems, more than technical ones. Our society lacks vision and the short term thinking tends to dominate over the long term problems. Our political system is a testament to that and barring reforms, will doom us as a species.
Either we go into space or we go extinct someday. That is a cruel reality. This planet has limited resources and we have exponentially growing needs (our population is growing exponentially as is our resource use per capita).
Carl Sagan once said that we would not have to worry about malevolent aliens attacking us because violent cultures would collapse upon themselves long before they could achieve space flight. Perhaps to this we should add stupid, short-sighted, selfish, and fearful societies as well.
Were space not so difficult and expensive to attain, we would already have multiple groups of people with various visions and reasons heading out to colonize the Sol system and beyond. This may still happen if we can find a few powerful individuals with the resources and vision.
I am not sure if a renewed Space Race, this time with the Chinese, is going to be enough to provoke the United States to revitalize NASA as it did back in the Cold War days with the Soviet Union.
I also cannot believe I have read in these very comments several people actually saying that the only thing we ever got back from space exploration monetary-wise is communications satellites. Have you not read any history of space? What are you even doing here?
The Economist article is rife with the assumption that spaceflight is government-run. Personally, I think this is one of Apollo’s unintended consequences- we all assume that spaceflight is government-run, massively expensive, and has the goal of placing two civil servants on a distant celestial body in order to plant a flag and pick up a rock.
Spaceflight is on the verge of becoming a civilian, non-governmental activity. The article fails to examine all but Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, whcih they cite in the same breath indicating a very shallow understanding of the field. These two companies are incomparable, and are but a small part of the ferocious nascent activity.
The article doesn’t even mention that Bigelow Aerospace plans to have a station operational by 2015, has MOUs lined up with several customers, and will require upwards of twelve crew flights a year (four rotations for each of the first station’s planned three modules). It also ignores Excalibur Almaz. The ISS is not the only game in town.
The article fails to understand the truly transformational consequences of the massive reductions in launch costs that are possible (although by no means guaranteed) from several up-and-coming players. SpaceX has price reduction plans, Blue Origin is going for a fully-reusable two-stage booster, XCOR is aiming for a horizontal-take-off fully re-usable orbital system, and of course Skylon may well succeed also. It seems unreasonable to expect all of these systems to fail, although certainly some will.
Lastly, the article ignores the fact that so many people _want_ to settle space. There is a pattern of well-heeled (mostly software) moguls turning their profits to space, not because they see a market, but because they dream of the stars. These people (Musk, Bigelow, Bezos, and I will also throw in Allen although his interest doesn’t seem to extend beyond sub-orbit at the moment) have very deep pockets, and will keep on spending. On the less wealthy side, XCOR is going about reaching orbit in a methodical self-sustaining way, earning contracts to develop their components (most recently partnering with ULA on a novel nozzle production technique, which is not only fun to say, but lucrative enough to enable them to make progress on their core mission).
By rich contrast, NASA, dragged by congressional parochialism, is spending itself into irrelevance by building the massively expensive and mission-challenged SLS launcher. Congress itself is stuck in the Apollo mode, both because of the monied interests that were spawned by Apollo, and because the policy-makers themselves have never seen any other model, and are therefore unable to consider the rapidly evolving civilian alternatives. One can understand how the Economist can draw its stagnant conclusion, if NASA is the only evidence it cares to examine.
Paradoxically, NASA has certainly played a role in the explosion of commercial/civilian space, since it offers seed money and the notion of anchor tenancy for the resultant capabilities. We should be grateful that the programs that did this (COTS, CCDev, CRS) were comparative chump change, and small enough to escape the avarice of their congressional overlords. It is a great pity that the anti-Apollo-boondoggle transformation of NASA offered by the Obama Administration was so soundly torpedoed by Congress. Perhaps the Age of Austerity will force NASA into something resembling this more agile, cost-conscious and long-term mode. I am not optimistic for such an outcome, but I hope that NASA’s support of the private sector will continue until it is soundly self-sufficient. We are *this* close.
Speaking of XCOR, its leader is the fabulously well-spoken Jeff Greason. Here are two of his speeches, either of which should leave you shaking your head at the tiny-minded world (decidedly in the singular)-view of the Economist author, and once again excited by the possibilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8PlzDgFQMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy2kIPLsUn0
As Heinlein said, the meek shall inherit the Earth, but the rest of us are going to the stars. And I’ll add that when we get there, we probably won’t be interested in reading amusingly meek articles such as this from the Economist.
“Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea and take care of our own problems at home?”
“No. We have to stay here and there’s a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you’ll get ten different answers, but there’s one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won’t just take us. It’ll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.”
— Mary Ann Cramer interviews Cmdr. Sinclair in Babylon 5:”Infection”
No. To the question stated at the to of the article.
Although, I have just also stated a prediction of a possible future, to the answer to the title of this article, it is very tricky to predict the future. My answer is as valid as theirs.
No one fore saw the present economic crisis or the one before that or the one before that. The tea leaves are just tooo vague… Yes, people will claim to have done so but no was absolutely sure and once the ducks had aligned, there was no evading the turmoil.
My thoughts on this subject may sound somewhat dark, but here they are. The demise of our space program is a symptom of our civilization; we have simply become timid, unambitious, visionless and weak. The conquering spirit and quasi-religious zeal that is needed for a venture of this magnitude is simply gone from the Western world. Something vital has been destroyed since the heady days of Apollo; the deconstruction of all great ideals and ambitions has run its course, and we are left with nothing but ruins.
Imagine the British Empire of Victorian times with our technology. Would they have hesitated for a moment to build nuclear rockets and go blasting into the solar system, though a few lives would have to be sacrificed? Of course not! But today in the Western world no one is willing to sacrifice anything for a larger cosmic vision. We want the universe so long as it costs nothing and offends no one. This ideology is totally inadequate for a cosmic civilization.
There is still hope however, but it is primarily in the East. The Russians, the Chinese, and perhaps the Indians may be able to muster the collective will and the vision to plant their flags on other worlds. We in the West simply need to become more “evil”, more ruthless, and more ambitious or we will be left in the dust by rising civilizations. My quasi-mystical belief is that we don’t live so much on “the shore of the cosmic ocean” where “the water seems inviting”, as Sagan put it, but “in the midst of black seas of infinity” as Lovecraft described them. To set sail on those dark seas requires a civilization that moves to very different currents than those which currently prevail in the declining West.
S., while I am glad you found this quote from Babylon 5 and anyone with any knowledge of astronomy, solar physics, and a real interest in space would agree with you, the sad truth is that most politicians and the general public barely care about what will happen just 5 years from now, to say nothing of FIVE BILLION years in the future. That’s our very distant descendants’ problem, of course.
The Economist article is just the latest of a trend I am noting with regards to anything space, including such fields as SETI. Sure there was a media flurry of “Oh Nos!” when the ATA ran out of money, but there were also articles just before this, some of which were commented on in Centauri Dreams, on how there probably are either no ETI or just a few and they are very far away, which is a good thing for our safety. Either that or there are hostile aliens out there and we better keep our heads down and our electromagnetic mouths shut so they don’t find us.
I hope this is just a kneejerk reaction from a bunch of s0-called reporters who are being told by their editors to make something sensational on a subject that normally does not have the clout or will to fight back. Let’s see how things are when the economy recovers if the space program and ETI are still the boogeymen or not.
We could launch a few robots with mining tools and 3-D printers to the moon or near-earth asteroids.
If they manage to send enough tons of metal and other resources back to earth the suits might be convinced that further space exploration is worthwhile.
Ok, I’ll bite. Please give me an example of something monetary-wise that has come out of space travel that still requires us to go into space to be useful, other than satellites. I know the space travel advocates keep citing a whole bunch of technologies that have been developed at places like NASA, but there’s no particular reason why the majority of them particularly require space travel.
Go on, I’m waiting…
Early exploration on Earth financed itself — only one of Magellan’s five ships made it back to Europe, but the cargo of spices it carried paid for the entire voyage. The transport problem is key. The solar system has essentially unlimited energy and resources, but we’re nowhere close to being able to utilize them. Maybe we should concentrate on something that will give a relatively quick return. Capture a mineral-bearing asteroid into Earth orbit, say.
Hi Folks;
It seems that the bulk of contemporary pop-culture is obsessed with the novelties of the lives of entertaineers and Hollywood stars. Perhaps we need to key into this social-psychodynamic.
We all enjoy the thought of meeting that someone special regardless of how we express such in our particular vocations. We all tend to dream of meeting sensitive, sophisticated, warm, affectionate, and in most cases romantic persons that approach one or more of our ideal images. I myself must confess to this as even though I am a 49 year old single and never married guy, I often will indulge in mental and emotional imagery of somehow, someday, somewhere, meeting a beautiful ETI humanoid woman, or perhaps a large number of them.
It seems to me that much of our populace is interested in human drama and interaction and so perhaps we can utilize this human interest to foster a sense of mystique about the possibility of finding ETI civilizations and actually traveling to their planets to meet them.
While no attempt is being made to promote religious belief systems here, but from a purely sociological perspective as a Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus, the idea of enabling untold additional numbers of human persons to be concieved on other worlds rings true not only to my personal religious sentiments, but perhaps also to those of untold millions of person like me who are often looking for a profound cause. In this regard, I have found onereasons but by no means not the only reason for my life’s choosen path to enable humanity to reach out ever further into the depths of the cosmos.
For those who are techies and toolies who might otherwise utilize their talents and psychological pre-dispositions to work on ever more badder scientific weapon systems, a re-direction of such perhaps somewhat primitive instincts to work on bigger and badder peace oriented intersellar propulsion methods might be an ideal and more enjoyable outlet. Again, I will be honest in this regard. As I was enrolled in the local university as a physics undergraduate student about 2 decades ago, I aspired to work in the nuclear weapons research and development industry. In fact, I wanted to do so to such an extent that my conscience got to me and I became aware that I wanted to do so way too intensely. Upon this realization, I had my first glimmers of a restokced interest in interstellar astronautics. I shortly thereafter turned away from talking with a NAVY recruiter and decided that enlisting to hopefully become a nuclear submariner was not for me.
Regardless of the spectrum of psychological profiles from amongst the various faith based belief systems, occupational status and aptitudes, social-economic status, gender, and the like, I am convinced that there are ways to turn the public attention back to manned space exploration in a big way. Just as people flocked to see the block buster movie ET, the Star Wars movies, Close Encounters, and the numerous Star Trek Movies, we can be assured that there is a strong latent interest in the public for manned space travel that just need the right touch and key to be unlocked.
Even young children disposed to enjoy family mountain vacations and who have a wonderlust to hike to the top of the next ridge behold the wondrous marvels of a late autumn night moonless clear sky and virtually who hasn’t.
I personally have made a definative choice and conclusion that I my life’s work is non-other than advocating for manned star travel. I cannot think of a better use for my university physics training.
Asteroid mining does not appear to be a viable option, once you figure in the costs of travelling to the asteroid and back, getting material safely down the Earth’s gravity well. Even then, many commercially-viable minerals are only commercially-viable because they have been concentrated by tectonic processes that do not operate on asteroids. It is cheaper to get the material from Earth.
S – thank you for the B5 quote. It eloquently sums up why we should go into space. And ljk, you’re quite right that the Sun dying isn’t our concern now, but substitute the Sun dying for an asteroid impact, or a disease epidemic, or nuclear war, or bioterrorism, or worst-case scenarios of climate change, and the sentiment holds.
There are other reasons to go into space – simple curiosity, and an urge to learn about the Universe and prosper and grow from that knowledge, and as we’re seeing with the beginnings of space tourism, there’s probably some money to be made up there as well. The trick is making those reasons relevant to today’s society so that the space programme can compete for both monetary resources and the support of both society and government. I just get the feeling that the space programme is currently struggling a little bit to find its place in today’s world.
Hopefully the situation will improve as the economy improves, but a long-term space programme lasting decades or even centuries needs to be able to ride over the bumps of an up and down economy and not be cancelled every time there’s a need to save money – just look at Congress threatening to cancel the JWST: http://www.aura-astronomy.org/news/news.asp?newsID=264. We can bury our head in the sands, but in the meantime the space programme is being whittled away a piece at a time.
NASA and politicians have all but killed the dream.
With the Shuttle program they’ve convinced us that space flight has to be hard and expensive,
With their hostility to paying passengers they’ve robbed space flight of its largest potential source of revenue,
and with their hostility to the competition of commercial space they’ve denied the opportunity for the marketplace to find the best ways to get into space.
NASA is the Aeroflot of space, maybe things are now changing, but those changes should have happened decades ago.
“Aleksandar July 6, 2011 at 10:29
Yes, the space age might be over in the world-view of the Economist, because no serious large scale space project can be started on a planet with 180+ states running “free market” economies and being at each others throats all the time. Planetary unification is the key and that is what will make the difference.”
Sigh. The most stimulating eras for space development were WWII and the Cold War. The problem now is that there are NOT 180+ sovereign nations. There is a single globalized financial corporate structure which controls the entire planet through puppet politicians, save for some ineffective partial dissents from a handful of semi-sovereign secondary states (North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and to a small extent Bolivia).
Brazil, Russia, India, and China are all part of the globalized system, with the same materialistic/financial culture as the west. They are not different, other than having cheap labour and resources to exploit.
Ok, all advanced societies have been grossly unequal and controlled by elites. But the illness that infects the entire planet, especially since the end of the Cold War, is that we have the worst sort of ruling elite, narcissist sociopathic acquisitors who care for nothing other than consolidating their wealth and power. Their souls do not stir when gazing at the stars. In fact they do not see the stars at all, only their own city lights.
The article is 40 years out of date. For the last 40 years geostationary orbit has been the limit, it seems odd to write these words now when a real effort to change this may, just, be in the works. And the article contains its own refutation: It admits that within GEO we may continue to ‘tame the wilderness’, and even leaves some small room for manned expansion into intra GEO space by space tourism. These things are not a dead end for space exploration, they are a much needed step to going further one day. If we do tame the GEO wilderness with people then one day we will be going further.
Claiming that expanding into near earth space in a bigger, manned, commercial fashion is the end for the space age is a bit daft.
All,
Many of you may not like this post since it may conflict with some of the idealism expressed above. Sad to say, the always thought provoking Economist has again “hit the nail squarely on the head” with one huge caveat on why they are going to turn out to be dead wrong over the next several decades. The reason why the next 50-75+ years looks even brighter for Space development then the past 50 years have been ,and despite todays Accountant and Lawyer driven “small thinking”, is for the same reasons that the U.S. engaged in a serious Space Program and Moon race 50 years ago. National Power and Military imperatives along with Space Commericalization for profit make the future very bright for us “Space Cadets”.
The Economist Article “hit the nail on the head” from a very pragmatic Economic perspective. The problem is that the Economist is measuring everything with an Economic yardstick, and there are other equally valid yardsticks such as good old fashion Military competition. For example, this could be between the U.S. and China or other potential rivals that may emerge over the next 50-75 years. In fact, the only way the Economist prediction on Space is likely to turn out to be valid is if there is some sort of general collapase of Global Civilization due to Climate change, War, Scarcity, or a Pandemic.
Of course we must not be complacent and wait for things to happen, but the future is very bright for extensive Space exploration and exploitation. The other thing that the Economist got right is that we are indeed at the end of an Era, but it is not the one that the Economist has in mind . Instead, the Era that is on its way out by 2020 at the latest and perhaps by as early as 2015 is the “Era of small thinking” that has been in place now for 40+ years. Much to the shock and surprise of most experts, and due to some major Technology breakthroughs not only will there be extensive Interplanetary Colonization within the 21 Century, but assuming we find a habitable planet within 12 lyrs of Earth the first manned Interstellar Missions will be conducted as well.
It’s customary for the media to run articles featuring this meme with every economic downturn. I remember the exact same article 30 years ago.
Meanwhile, more (robotic) space science is being done beyond Earth orbit than ever before.
Space is coming, folks. It won’t necessarily look like 1950s science fiction, but it’s coming.
What struck me was the screwy logic of the Economist article: spaceflight as a government exercise for prestige and science is in decline, spaceflight from economic motivations is rising, therefore spaceflight activity is coming to an end. This coming from a magazine calling itself “The Economist”! Crazy.
Great comment by Jeff Noyle above! But shame on those of you who winge about the lack of vision and the apathetic materialism of the supposedly declining West. It only takes a small minority to revolutionise society, and this has always been the case. There are plenty of visionaries around.
Keith Cooper: I understand your concern, but the antidote is to make it clear that starships will only happen as part of a broader Solar System civilisation. In particular you mention climate change and dwindling resources, when the whole point is that by the time substantial starships are possible (rather than kilogram sized concepts like Starwisp) the vast majority of humanity will be living in locations with artificial climates thanks to the vastly increased resources at our disposal. Our main focus has to be continued economic and technical growth, and starships then follow logically from that.
Stephen
Oxford, UK
I think there’s a cautious ear to be used with what the Economist is stating. Space travel has always been about the future and exploration. Usually about a civilization that is growing, looking to it’s next boundaries. What we need to wonder is this just n article or is this becoming a trend we see in society today? if it is the latter then we should be very concerned. Civilizations that are growing tend to be future oriented, those that are beginning to come to an end, or verge of collapse start turning inwards and are more concerned with survival than challenges that the future may have.
Bill Nye just sent out an email:
“Tomorrow, the subcommittee [within the U.S. Congress] charged with appropriating funds to NASA will mandate a draconian cut of almost $2 billion from the space agency’s proposed budget. How will NASA deal with the cut?
“Get this: Gone will be the James Webb Space Telescope. Commercial spaceflight to take crews to Earth orbit will be cut by more than half. Earth science will be hit hard, and if you hope to see NASA launch another flagship mission to the planets, it won’t happen – if this budget makes it into law.”
He gives us a call to action: http://www.capwiz.com/tps/callalert/index.tt?alertid=51130776&type=cu
This is a strong point worth considering. If I had lived during the Apollo days, I certainly would’ve been disappointed to see advances in space get pushed to the back burner. There is an overall apathy and lack of motivation from NASA and others to create a future in space. However, you can’t be too pessimistic. The Mars rover mission has been highly successful, the Mercury MESSENGER spacecraft is at work, and satellites and ISS have been busy.
I’ve always said that economics will be a major driver into space. Mining asteroids for minerals or gas giants for He3 is what will make it happen. Once we have launch loops or another reliable non-rocket launch method, it will open the floodgates, especially with the private sector already involved.
Kenneth,
Re: The “Era of small thinking” that has been in place now for 40+ years.
Great name for it! The big money and big power people have been small thinkers (from our POV anyway, they think of themselves differently). There have been big thinkers in astronomy (Geoff Marcy comes to mind, up all night in the early 90s at SF State U living on pizza and dreaming of radial velocity searches) and biology though.
Recently the naked mole rat (an ugly little animal with extreme cancer resistance and disproportionate longevity for a rodent) genome was sequenced. The goal is to data mine the genome for possible longevity and cancer resistance sequences to be used to try to engineer mice with cancer resistance and 7x longer lifespan.
Ultimate goal is to do the same for humans. Imagine, if some people born later this century could reasonably expect to live 500 healthy cancer free years … Among other things, human starflight becomes more thinkable.
Neither Tsiolkovsky nor Goddard were well funded or celebrated. Einstein was a patent office clerk. The big ideas come from the “little” people.
Another point is that we must avoid stagnation and withdrawing inwards. China took that path, and was eventually overtaken by Western colonization and science.
Being a pioneer is romantic, but also difficult and demanding. Settling the Wild West was no picnic, neither was building the trans-continental railroad. But these efforts took us far.
who has the money to be “space tourists”? wall street banksters who captured the world’s wealth. i say let them go on 100 year star ships and good riddance!
did any one read recently about the rare earth bonanza at the bottom of the pacific ocean? what do you think will be the environmental cost of removing those minerals? nothing short of the death of the pacific ocean.
yeah, build a 100 year star ship and send the greedy elite on their way.
and those left behind on a ravaged and raped earth? we apply ecology only to closed systems on 100 year star ships and destroy the one on planet earth.
i dont get it.
it dont matter if you make $100 per month in a foxcom factory in china or $300 per week in a “mom and pop” factory in new jersey, you aint doing too good. the future looks bleak. translate that techno lust optimism into higher wages all around and you will get an advanced space faring society.
Spaceflight has never been about the future – it has always been about present-day societal (including economic and political) needs. “Space cadets” need to keep this firmly in mind and not digress into cliches about new frontiers. Expansive visions that go nowhere breed only disdain.
THE ECONOMIST has it wrong, though not for the reasons most have given here. Space exploration is *not* ending. One need only look at the many robotic missions. And piloted spaceflight in the U.S. is not dead. The Shuttle and piloted spaceflight do not equate. The vision now – which many people seem not to understand – is that we need to develop the tools to go anywhere we want. Despite specious claims from the likes of Zubrin, we are *not* ready to fly off to Mars.
For 40 years advisory panels have called on NASA to develop new technologies, but these efforts are thwarted in favor of missions and grand visions. The Pathfinder technology development effort of the late 1980s, for example, fell victim to the Space Exploration Initiative.
To get a sense of what new technologies could mean for piloted spaceflight, one need only look at what the infusion of technologies developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative did for robotic missions. Prior to that infusion in the early 1990s, we saw the time between new robotic missions increasing rapidly. We launched only a handful of missions between 1979 and 1994. Now we not infrequently launch as many missions in a year as we did during that 15-year period. If we could do something similar for our piloted program – well, the possibilities are breathtaking.
David
Andy, I should have added something about the value of space exploration going beyond mere dollar signs and the prevalent “What’s in it for me right now?” attitude, but I doubt that is what matters to you and so many others in this current society.
Yes, you are right as you say a few posts later that it would be very expensive to bring mineral resources from the planetoids to Earth. But do that would make perfect sense for an interplanetary society. However, with such attitudes as yours it seems there will be no such society for a very long time.
If NASA and science budgets are slashed, it will be interesting to see how long before the masses catch on to the fact that getting rid of them did not put the financial resources elsewhere to “helping those on Earth first.” Space utilization and exploration have never been about the money. It has always had much higher goals. But I know what your answer will be to that little chestnut.
Oh well, the human race will either grow up – or it won’t grow at all.
Astronist, Jeff Noyle, and many others above have it right. There has always been plenty of small-mindedness, and it has never kept us from moving forward.
A very good point was brought up by Kenneth Harmon. Personally, I am not at all convinced about this “decline of the west” and “shame on america” nonsense that has been promulgated above, but there certainly is a chance that the US will be challenged as the world’s supreme power in the next 100 years. Should this happen, you can bet there is going to be a space race that will make Apollo look like a walk in the park.
Space is the modern “high ground”. Dominance on land depends on dominance on the seas and dominance in the air, and all of these now require dominance in space. The United States military will fight tooth and nail to retain the complete and absolute dominance it currently holds over the world. In the event that it is even remotely threatened, military budgets for space based operations will skyrocket. Congress-critters will turn over the nation’s purse and cheer from the sidelines as space is fortified and turned into a battlefield bristling with advanced weapons and observation platforms (all unmanned, of course). It will get us a vibrant space program, but is it a good thing? I am not sure….
Hopefully we will make it out there on private capital before such a situation develops, and watch it from the outside, from even higher ground.
Andy, I’ll take your word that asteroid mining is not viable. I was simply trying to postulate something that might give the kind of high profit that a cargo of spices from the Far East would have given 500 years ago. I’m all for the exploration of space anyway. It’s just that I expect the returns to be primarily scientific rather than economic. And sadly we live in a time (one that may persist for many decades to come) in which economic return seems to be the primary concern.
Dear all
Many of these points have been made in the discussion above, but it might be worth putting them together here:
A purely market based view on space exploration would lead to the conclusions given by the Economist. Any investment would need a clear return on capital. Whilst the larger scale impact of the space programme on the global economy hardly needs describing here the effect has been at a global level rather than as a return on capital for a specific organisation. A purely market based approach to space exploration will therefore be inevitably very limited.
Commentators are correct in making the point that human society also tends to be very short term in its thinking. Long term strategic threats to our society from environmental degradation or limited resources should provide a very clear rationale for a strategic, long term strategy for space development, but it will not as the costs fall on electorates or share holders today and the returns will be for our grandchildren or great grandchildren.
The point has been made that much of the space programme to date has been driven (certainly in the early period) by geo-policitical competition and, ultimately, military issues related to the cold war. The absence of a serious strategic threat (in the near term) to the western economic model may well therefore not be entirely unrelated to the loss of interest in serious development in space, rather than incremental technological applications. It is quite sad to observe that humanity tends to respond best in a crisis and often needs a crisis to overcome petty short term politics etc. and put in a serious co-ordinated response to the situation. When looking at the world at the moment as to where such crises may emerge (a risky guessing game, I admit) there seem to be few possibilities on the timescale of the next half century.
Islamic fundamentalism is an unlikely candidate. It intrinsically is destructive to a scientifically based technological society and may well never be more than a serious nuisance to the west (very serious if another major oil state should go that way, but…)
Alternative political and social models are few on the ground. China, would seem to be the only realistic possibility for a serious geo-political rival to the US in the longer term, and they do seem to be developing a coherent long term space strategy. Russia and India may in the very long term also become signficant economic powers (again, in the case of Russia).
Whilst I am a strong supporter of the European experiment (I am British), nationalistic identities are so strong still that I can’t see Europe getting its collective act together for a very long time, and Europe is hardly likely to pose a threat to the US
if we don’t get a serious threat emerging to the US then I’m we are likely to see continuing drift and short termist thinking until we run out of time on the environment…Sorry for the rather depressing post. Much exceptional science has been done in space and will continue to be so, but I’m afraid to say I largely agree, with sadness, with the Economists conclusion, although I do not support their opinion on the logic of this state of affairs, at least in terms of the current situation. History has not, however, ended, despite rumours to the contrary, and the future will bring change and surprises…
The way I see it, our race has to transform itself in the way it organizes its civilization. That is to say, societies have to change their functional model. For the first and most important push into the solar system and maybe interstellar space, we simply have to work together, all of us. East and west, north and south.
And I think that nothing short of a true altruistic cooperation, with a firm goal to go out there will suffice. No economic competition, no military posturing or profits can open space. It is too big and requires our cooperation, not competition. It may come later, when we have established presence and our culture again adapts itself to the new reality, which will mean that we did learn little from the experience.
I agree with Joy, that is why I put free market in quotes. His last sentence says it all.
Although being a strong space science and exploration proponent, I tend to agree with andy that, at this moment, there is very little that can be obtained from space in an economically attractive way.
In fact, the only material thing worthwhile that I can think of (but I am open to correction) is He3 from Uranus or maybe Saturn, once we manage to master complex He3 fusion.
The main reason not being that there is nothing valuable to find there, but the prohibitively high launch cost. As long as getting water for astronauts into nearby space is about as costly as gold or platinum, then obviously, it is not worthwhile to get almost anything from there to here.
The only other *economic* reasons for space exploration, that I can think of right now, would be:
1) obtaining valuable knowledge that can be applied here on earth (such as biomedical research under weightless conditions). But in my knowledge present (very expensive!) space stations have not yielded many valuable research results that could not have been obtained here on earth, and/or economically justifying the enormous investments;
2) settling new lands, which, if anywhere at all, would initially be limited to Mars and maybe the moon. But we are nowhere near terraforming and colonizing Mars and the humongous investments would not pay any economic returns for many, many centuries;
3) The much discussed space colonies (O’Neill style etc.), but regardless of the also much discussed technical risks, the huge investments required would simply be economically prohibitive (say something on the order of 100 billion to 1 trillion USD for a colony of about 10,000 people), it would be much cheaper to provide Palm Beach style villas for all those people in the middle of the Antarctic;
4) Tourism, but with high launch cost that also will be limited to nearby space and a happy few.
Europeans accepted the great risks and required large investments to go to the New World primarily for economic gain and to settle new lands, hardly ‘out of curiosity’, and things are not that different nowadays I think.
Therefore, as long as we lack some kind of technological breakthrough in launching and propulsion and/or a strong sudden need for some material or piece of knowledge from space, (deep) space science and exploration will remain uneconomic, pure science and curiosity driven, and hence dependent upon visionary political/governmental leadership and/or a few idealistic philanthopists.
But with SIM, TPF, and now possibly also JWST cancelled, the outlook doesn’t seem very promising right now.
I’m sorry to sound like such a extremist, but space exploration is what life is all about.
Firstly, as a species we find need adventure, and if we don’t find it in space we will find it in war. I’m not saying preventing war is a valid reason to go into space, I’m just saying space exploration is a more uplifting way of fulfilling this need.
Secondly, unlike its rival war substitute, international sport, we do not pay for this entertainment or try to commercialise it in any way. I always wondered how much merchandising, pay-per-view, commercial endorsement, and tv syndicated rerun revenue Apollo could have generated if that had been attached to it.
Thirdly, unlike its rivals the promise of a better future that it provides is real not delusion or fantasy.
In summary economic arguments against manned space travel don’t just make a subtle mistake, they misinterpret what it is to be human.