Ventures Into Space

Ventures Into Space

The cost of major ventures into space –permanent bases on the Moon or human exploration of Mars, say – is so large that they will not be mustered in the very near future unless we make dramatic progress in nuclear and “conventional” disarmament.  Even then there are probably more pressing needs here on Earth. But we have no doubt that, if we avoid self-destruction, we will sooner or later perform such missions. It is almost impossible to maintain a static society. There is a kind of psychological compound interest: even a small tendency toward retrenchment, a turning away from the Cosmos, adds up over many generations to a significant decline. And conversely, even a slight commitment to ventures beyond the Earth – to what we might call, after Colombus, “the enterprise of the stars” – builds over many generations to a significant human presence on other worlds, a rejoicing in our participation in the Cosmos.

Some 3,6 million years ago, in what is now northern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found in that ash footprints – the footprints of en early hominid, perhaps an ancestor of all the people on the Earth today. And 380,000 kilometers away, in a flat dray plain that humans have in a moment of optimism called the Sea of Tranquility, there is another footprint, left by the first human to walk another world. We have come far in 3,6 million years, and in 4,6 billion and in 15 billion.

Galaxy is cultivated. Illustration: Elena

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast, from which we spring.

If we survive we’ll perform major missions in Space. Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

No One May Travel Faster Than Light

No One May Travel Faster Than Light

If the world is to be understood, if we are to avoid many logical paradoxes when traveling at high speeds, there are some rules, commandments of Nature, that must be obeyed. Einstein codified these rules in the special theory of relativity. Light (reflected or emitted) from an object travels at the same velocity whether the object is moving or stationary: Thou shalt not add thy speed to the speed of light.

Also, no material object may move faster than light: Thou shalt not travel at or beyond the speed of light. Nothing in physics prevents you from traveling as close to the speed of light as you like; 99, 9% percent of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain that last decimal point. For the world to be logically consistent, there must be a cosmic speed limit. Otherwise, you could get to any speed you wanted by adding velocities on a moving platform.

Thou shalt not add thy speed to the speed of light. Image: © Megan Jorgesen (Elena)

The social and political application of the ideas of Aristarchus and Copernicus was rejected or ignored around the turn of the XIXth Century. The young Einstein rebelled against the notion of privileged frames of reference in physics as much as he did in politics. In a universe filled with stars rushing helter-skelter in all directions, there was no place that was “at rest”, no framework from which to view the universe that was superior to any other framework.

This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its magical trapping: in viewing the universe, every place is as good as every other place.

The laws of Nature must be identical no matter who is describing the, If this is to be true – and it would be stunning if there if there were something special about our significant location in the Cosmos – then it follows that no one may travel faster than light.

Particular Lifeform

Particular Lifeform

The pulses had been journeying for years through the great dark between the stars. Occasionally, they would intercept an irregular cloud of gas and dust, and a little of the energy would be absorbed or scattered. Ahead of them was a faint yellow glow, slowly increasing in brightness among the other unvarying lights. Now, although to human eyes it would still be a point, it was by far the brightest object in the black sky. The pulses were encountering a horde of giant snowballs.

The cold black vacuum had been left behind. The pulses were now approaching an ordinary yellow dwarf star, and had already begun spilling over the retinue of worlds in this obscure system. They had fluttered by planets of hydrogen gas, penetrated into moons of ice, breached the organic clouds of a frigid world on which the precursors of life were stirring, and swept across a planet a billion years past its prime. Now the pulses were washing against a warm world, blue and white, spinning against the backdrop of the stars.

There was life on this world, extravagant in its numbers and variety. There were jumping spiders at the chilly tops of the highest mountains and sulfur-eating worms in hot vents gushing up through ridges on the ocean floors. There were beings that could live only in concentrated sulfuric acid; organisms that were poisoned by oxygen, and organisms that could survive only in oxygen, that actually breathed the stuff.

The night sky is interesting and there are patterns there. Without even trying, you can imagine pictures. Photo by Elena

A particular lifeform, with a modicum of intelligence, had recently spread across the planet. They had outposts on the ocean floors and in low-altitude orbit. They had swarmed to every nook and cranny of their small world. The boundary that marked the transition of night into day was sweeping westward, and following its motion millions of these beings ritually performed their morning ablutions. They donned greatcoats and dhotis; drank brews of coffee, tea or dandelion; drove bicycle, automobiles, or oxen; and briefly contemplated school assignments, prospects for spring planting, and the fate of the world.

The first pulses in the train or radio waves insinuated themselves through the atmosphere and clouds, struck the landscape and were partially reflected back to space. As the Earth turned beneath them, successive pulses arrived, engulfing not just this one planet but the entire system. Very little of the energy was intercepted by any of the worlds. Most of it passed effortlessly onward – as the yellow star and its attendant worlds plunged, in an altogether different direction, into the inky dark.

(By Carl Sagan, Contact)

Human History

Human History

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as superpowers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural background working in some sense together – surely a humanizing and character-building experience.If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power.

We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nations will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.A reasonable – even an ambitious – program of unmanned exploration of the planets is inexpensive. The budget for space sciences is not very expensive. Comparable expenditures in many countries are more or less the same.

Remembering Human History. Photo by Elena

Together these sums represent the equivalent of two or three nuclear submarines per decade, or the cost overruns on one of the many weapon systems in a single year. In the last quarter of 1979, the program cost of the U.S. F/A-18 aircraft increased by $5,1 billion, and the F-16 by $3,4 billion. Since their inceptions, significantly less has been spent on the unmanned planetary programs of both the United States and the Soviet Union than has been wasted shamefully – for example, between 1970 and 1975, in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, an application of national policy that cost $7 billion. The total cost of a mission such as Viking to Mars, or Voyager to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Through technical employment and the stimulation of high technology, money spent on space exploration has an economic multiplier effect. One study suggests that for every dollar spent on the planets, seven dollars are returned to the national economy. And yet there are many important and entirely feasible missions that have not been attempted because of lack of funds – including roving vehicles to wander across the surface of Mars, a comet rendezvous, Titan entry probes and a full-scale research for radio signals from other civilizations in space.

Epic Myth

Epic Myth

Congealing and warming, the Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans. After a time the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth.

As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self-replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self-replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun.

The Epic Myth of Creation. Photo by Elena

Single-celled plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celled organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born life instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early oceans coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They become upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At en ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic evolution as revealed by the science of our time. We are difficult to come by and a danger to ourselves. But any account of cosmic evolution makes it clear that all the creatures of the Earth, the latest manufactures of the galactic hydrogen industry, are beings to be cherished. Elsewhere there may be other equally astonishing transmutations of matter, so wistfully we listen for a humming in the sky.