TABLE OF CONTENTS
This material is provided as a public
service to support the student Space
Settlement Contest. The views expressed herein are not
necessarily those of NASA or any other government body.
THE DEBATE
SHARPENS Wendell Berry Angry *
"Spaceship
Earth" comes home to roost * Driving or driven
to Space? *
Satellite
surveillance * Other
Voices *
THE DEBATE SHARPENS
Wendell Berry Angry
April 27, 1976
Dear Stewart,
Your promotion of the space colony idea is getting more and more
irresponsible. Like O'Neill and Vajk, you begin with an air of
critical reasonableness, and promptly resort to the glib logic of a
salesman. None of you has yet foreseen a problem without at the
same time foreseeing a more than adequate answer; indeed, as you
represent it, a space colony will be nothing less than a magic
machine that will automatically transmute little problems into big
solutions. Like utopians before, you envision a clean break with
all human precedent: history, heredity, character. Thanks to a
grandiose technological scheme, nothing is going to happen from now
on that is not going to improve everything; as you say, even if it
fails, we will be much better off. You people are operating at
about the cultural depth of an oil company public relations expert.
All this prophetic-ethical computer-mysticism! What is wrong with
it is that it is simply failing to make sense - unless, of course,
one is looking at it as a sycophant of science, or from the point
of view of a government agency or a corporation. That is exactly
what worries me: that your coverage of this issue, whatever you
mean it to do, will serve to recruit and train a company of
intellectual yahoos to justify the next power-grab by the
corporations and the government.
Your dismissal, out of hand, of so many people's objections and
doubts - solicited by you - is an alarming display of smugness. It
is also insulting. I thought I was being asked to take part in a
debate on an issue that you felt to be debatable. I now sense, from
the substance and tone of your various remarks in the spring issue,
that I was asked to say something that you expected to be
inconsiderable in support of what you had already determined would
be the losing side.
As you might have expected, I hold this treatment in something
less than esteem. Perhaps, I have said to myself, I should just
leave my statement in the spring issue as my final words to The
CoEvolution Quarterly, and say no more. The trouble is that
those were not meant as parting words, and I think parting words
should be offered and understood as such. Here, then, are some
parting words. First, some objections to various statements in your
editorial.
1. "Either knowledge," you say, meaning either the success or
the failure of space colonization, "is a kind of growing up." This
assumes that all knowledge is good - which, of course, is not true.
It is especially not true of knowledge that depends on practical
proof or demonstration. Most people, one hopes, would not consider
themselves improved by having killed someone, though, having done
so, they would know more about it than before. There is no culture
I know of that has not held that good people must refuse to know
some things.
2. "If we can learn to successfully manage large complex
ecosystems in the Space Colonies, that sophistication could help
reverse our destructive practices on Earth." Sophistication, like
knowledge, is a subject power, is good or bad according to the use
that is made of it. Generally speaking, the more technological
sophistication we have attained, the more destructive we have
become. I do not think you recognize any of the doubts that now
must surround the argument that still more of such sophistication
will make us less destructive. It is not sophistication that makes
people behave responsibly, but generous purpose and moral restrain.
Peasants in Japan 4,000 years ago had these competences of
character - and had a technology appropriate to them. This was a
kind of sophistication, I think, though very different from the
kind you are talking about. It was not inherent in their technical
expertise, but in their willingness to live within strict
moral-ecological limits. They did not waste anything. There have
been other cultures that have had something of this sophistication.
Some people in our own culture have something of it now. If such
undestructiveness is so clearly possible on earth, by what logic
shall we look for it in outer space? How can we expect to discover
it by extravagance when its first principle is thrift?
3. You say that what the space colonists consume or destroy
outside Earth's atmosphere will be "taken from no one else. They
are out of the Earthly 'zero sum game' where one group's gain is
another's loss." But do we not live in a universe? Is there no
ecology of the heavens? You sound like Columbus taking "possession"
of the Indies. I think you are only serving up again in
space-jargon the ancient fallacy that we are somehow licensed to
misbehave when we are away from home.
4. "The experiment of space colonies endangers only the
experimenters." Not so. This continues your deliberate evasion of
the fact that this project calls for more government and more
government spending. Who do you think is going to pay the bill? And
do you think people become more free by having their taxes
increased? And what is the military potential of a space
colony?
5. "People want to go not because it may be nicer than they have
on Earth but because it will be harder." This is essentially a
warmed-over Marine Corps recruitment advertisment - the same
irresponsible promise, appealing to the sad fantasy: "If I could
just get out of this nowhere place I could be a real man. I could
show em." Let me point out to you, Stewart, that we have not yet,
in this country, faced the hardship of the earth. As a people we
lack the disciplines either of character or method to live here
without destruction. If some of your would-be space recruits want
to be sure-enough heroes, let them encapsulate themselves on a
strip mine bench and try to make it fit for life by 1990. Let them
"extend the biosphere" to the man-made deserts.
6. Space colonization, you say "employs the same nations, the
same engineers, manufacturers, contractors, etc." as the arms race.
Exactly. And this makes it certain that the worst characteristics
of this society will survive in space colonization. The assumption
I am arguing from is that you cannot escape character; you can only
change it by changing its understanding of its limits. The arms
race mentality is exactly the sort that would most like to
re-enfranchise itself by opening "infinite" sources of energy and
materials in space. That supposed infinity will be a perfect
greenhouse for bad character; look at what mere abundance has
already produced. Good character requires the disciplines of
finitude.
7. "The Arms Race is a big bore." I have no understanding at all
of your willingness to be responsible for this statement. Is space
colonization, then, to be a kind of governmental entertainment for
those who are bored with war? "To us," said D. H. Lawrence, "heaven
switches on daylight, or turns on the shower-bath. We little gods
are gods of the machine only. It is our highest. Our cosmos is a
great engine. And we die of ennui. A subtle dragon stings us in the
midst of plenty."
8. "I guess I expect that there will be much more public
participation in Space Colonies than there has been in the Space
Program so far. Debate such as in this issue." Why has there not
been more public participation so far? What reason is there to
expect an increase? And what is the force of public debate in the
face of the economic and political power of the engineers,
manufacturers, and contractors you were talking about? As you may
remember, we carried on a protracted debate with those people
during the Vietnam War. They stopped somewhat short of having us
over for supper.
9. "Now is the time for NASA to encourage people besides
engineers to get into the act. The program needs administrators who
are not afraid of excellent artists . . ." The fundamental
totalitarian impulse is to officialize excellence. We already have
far too little free science because most scientists are busy
"applying" science for the corporations or the government, which
are therefore not afraid of excellent scientists. Almost any
conservation fight will reveal very quickly whose hand most of the
excellent scientists are eating out of. Now you would like to see
excellent artists applying art for NASA. I hope the excellent
artists will have the decency to remain a little hungry. Excellence
in art, and in science too, requires enough independence so that
one can afford to tell the truth. Economic dependence makes
excellence servile. The government's prophet is always a liar.
I think you have wandered into a trap - one that is crowded with
so many glamorous captives that you think it is some kind of
escape. The trap is that a technological "solution" on the scale of
this one is bound to create a whole set of new problems, ramifying
ahead of foresight. Here is a pertinent quote from Mr. Vajk, whose
essay you offer with evident approval:
"The popular wisdom currently holds that purely technological
fixes are 'bad' because each technological 'solution' creates five
new and different problems. But the reverse side of the coin is
surely just as valid: purely societal fixes are also 'bad' because
each societal 'solutions creates five new and different
problems!
"What it is important to recognize here is that it is not
relevant whether a 'fix' is societal or technological; what matters
is whether or not the consequences of any proposed program have
been carefully thought out, and that steps be taken to forestall or
minimize any adverse effects on the system and its parts."
Mr. Vajk apparently does not recognize that he is talking about
a condemnation peculiar to his kind of "scientific" mind. It is a
condemnation in two ways: (1) It would commit us to a policy of
technological "progress" as a perpetual bargaining against "adverse
effects." (2) It would make us perpetually dependent on the
"scientific" foretelling and control of such effects - something
that never has worked adequately, and that there is no good reason
to believe ever will work adequately. The fact is that when you
overthrow the healthful balance of the relationships within a
system - biological, political, or otherwise - you start a
ramifying sequence of problems (Mr. Vajk's "five" is a figure of
speech) that is not subject to prediction, and that can be
controlled only by the restoration of balance. If we elect to live
by such disruptions then we must resign ourselves to a life of
desperate (and risky) solutions: the alternation of crisis and
"breakthrough" described by E. F. Schumacher.
To say that we can only choose between purely technological
solutions and purely societal solutions is a gross
oversimplification, and probably a gross deception as well. To
begin with, the distinction itself is counterfeit: it is impossible
to differentiate between a society and its technology; there is a
mutuality of causation and influence that I do not believe can be
convincingly picked apart. All that can be served by this
distinction is the self-esteem of a specialist who, for moral
convenience, wishes to ignore the social consequences of mechanical
"solutions."
Solutions that are only technological or only social or only
both are necessarily accompanied by adverse effects because even
both together fail to provide an adequate context or standard of
behavior. Mr. Vaik's false distinction between technology and
society rests upon another, implicit distinction that is equally
false: he supposes that the human considerations of technology and
society can somehow be separated from all of creation that is not
human: plants, animals, soils, waters, climates, regions,
continents, the world, the universe. The universe of systems within
systems survives because it is healthy, it is in balance. Humans
survive within it because - only because - they are, so far, more
healthy than not. When the whole is considered, then it becomes
possible to conceive of solutions of which the standard is not
technological and/or social (wealth, power, comfort) but ecological
or organic (health). When health or wholeness (not cure) is the
standard, then solutions do not create problems.
CARTOON
I doubt that either of those terms (ecological or organic) is
definitive; I use them for want of a better term. I can better
define what I mean by an example: The flush toilet is a
social-technological solution to a problem: How to get rid of
excrement inoffensively. This solution immediately creates two
problems (soil depletion and water pollution) which call for
solutions (agricultural chemicals and sewage treatment plants)
which create many other problems which call for more solutions
which create even more problems, and so on and on. I doubt
seriously that Mr. Vajk, if he had the national budget at his
disposal, could accurately trace out and forestall or minimize the
adverse effects of the flush toilet, much less those of space
colonization.
By contrast, we have here on our farm an outdoor toilet with a
concrete-block chamber underneath, in which, by the addition of
sawdust and some effort and care, we compost the excrement of our
household and make it fit to return to the soil. We do not do this,
the Lord knows, because we want to be wealthy, powerful, and
comfortable, but because we want to be healthy, and we know that we
cannot be healthy if our soil is unhealthy. It is an ecological or
organic solution. It was not prescribed to us by technology or
society, but by a need more comprehensive than both. It is less
dependent upon a device than upon an understanding and a
discipline. And it does not cause a ramifying series of problems -
or of problems and solutions madly leapfrogging over the top of
each other. It is a solution that causes a ramifying series of
solutions. It withholds contaminants from the water, it enriches
the ground, it calls for forethought, moral responsibility,
physical exertion - and from those solutions other solutions
follow. It begins a process of healing, and healing does not cause
a problem; it only incidentally causes a "cure." Healing can
properly end only when we are whole, when health joins us to the
universe. The whole is a great concordance of solutions.
Such solutions, I think, come from the understanding and
acceptance of limits. I do not think they can come from dependence
on any kind of quantity to which there is "no perceptible or
theoretical end."
But that is enough of picking at details. Let me see if I can
give you a more concise statement of my objection. It is this: your
thinking (and that of O'Neill, Vajk and Co.) on this matter is
demonstrably superficial, and its superficiality slides over a
political alignment that I find both morally repugnant and
personally threatening. The fact is that you cannot advocate space
colonization without implicitly advocating an enlargement of
governmental power and the enlargement and enrichment of the
corporations. As you are bound to be aware, this project will not
be carried out in place of or at the expense of any other
government project. It will be added to a budget that is already
oppressive. The people will have to pay for it - which is to say
that the people of moderate and low income will have to pay for
it.
To point the issue more exactly, you are proposing to increase
the tax burdens of those of your readers who are struggling to
implement in craft shops, in communes, and on small farms ideas and
hopes that you have supported. These are marginal enterprises,
already threatened with being taxed and priced out of existence. In
practical terms, your advocacy of space colonization amounts to a
betrayal of these modest settlements of the earth. That is why I
intend these to be parting words.
That, and disappointment. Since 1968 I have followed what you
did with what, to me, has been a satisfying interest and
friendliness - not to mention a steadily growing sense of
indebtedness and gratitude. But now you have set yourself up as
what I can only look on as a political enemy - not because we do
not agree, but because you have now made it plain that you are
willing to coerce my support of an undertaking with which I
disagree: though you offer me room in your magazine to object, you
are nevertheless willing to turn my tax money and my citizenship
against me. I cannot be tolerant of that. I am not going to
associate myself or my work with coercion.
Wendell
P.S. I shall consider this an open letter. You can publish it or
not, as you wish. But I intend to send copies to interested
persons. And I will probably publish it in some form - whole or in
part - somewhere, sooner or later.
1 May, 1976
Dear Wendell,
You know of the admiration and affection I have for you. That is
not diminished by your remarks about Space Colonies, but increased.
Of all the 76 pages on the subject in the Spring '76 CQ the
statement I most often quote is your, "Humans are destructive in
proportion to their supposition of abundance; if they are faced
with an infinite abundance, then they will become infinitely
destructive." I said it last week to the Deputy Administrator of
NASA along with other misgivings having to do with satellite
surveillance.
I'm no astronaut, Wendell, I'm an editor. My function is to
raise questions, and shortly after I lucked onto the subject of
Space Colonies I realized that they raise a tangle of questions so
fundamental as to leave no one uncleaned. They raise doubts,
enthusiasms, and passions the like of which I have not seen since I
gave $20,000 to an audience of 1500 people to argue over.
Irresponsible? I did not put money or Space technology into this
world. They push us around to the exact degree that we ignore them
(rise above them). For me responsibility requires that we wade in
and see what we really want. Governor Brown has convinced me that
there is such a thing as "political truth'' and that it is arrived
at only by a sustained (trusting) personal dialectic until everyone
involved realizes they share a common humanity and participation
with life, in whose perspective lives resolution.
I cannot anticipate that resolution, Wendell, ever. Evolution
(especially co-evolution) defies prediction. Or control. Or even
categorical understanding.
Recently I heard Space Colonies scolded by Elise Boulding as a
typical male project. My notion of responsibility required that I
mention to her Margaret Mead's 25-year support of Space Colonies,
my mother's early and undiminished enthusiasm, and someone you know
who probably had more influence on me than any one on this subject.
That was Lois Jennings, Ottawa Indian and my wife for six years.
When we were courting in the Nation's Capitol she expressed
disappointment over one of the early Vanguard satellite misfirings.
"I didn't know you were interested in that," I said. What she
replied was, ''Every one of those shots gets us closer to
home."
Home to the tribe? To Washington, D.C.? To a certain star. Or
the stars? She never said.
To reply to your main concern (Gary Snyder shares it; so do I,
less fervently): as near as I can tell, a large centralized
government has been sufficient for a Space program, but it is not
necessary. The next big project, Spacelab, is being designed and
constructed wholly outside the U.S. by a consortium of European
nations. Would you favor a world of proliferating smaller
governments and occasional major collaborative enterprises such as
ocean farming and Space exploration? I would.
I think that nuclear energy can be stopped, Wendell, and should
be. I don't think Space exploration can be stopped, but it might be
made wiser. I may be wrong about that I agree with you that a
society can loot or it can learn, but not both. I would like to see
us learn in Space, as well as here. If we find they're mutually
exclusive, then preferably here Let us carefully watch the
incremental steps in to Space. It is a new natural history, and
natural history, says Bateson, is the correction for piety -
including yours, mine and NASA's.
I believe that The CoEvolution Quarterly is useful to the
extent that it is impious and acutely observing and a forum. That's
why I value your voice in the magazine. Please don't withdraw
it.
I value you, in any case.
Stewart
P.S. For what it's worth, the mail and personal communication
indicate that the Spring CQ raised far more misgivings than
faiths among the readership about Space Colonies. (I'm glad about
that) Don't quit while you're ahead. Besides, we've other fish to
fry.
May 8, 1976
Dear Stewart,
I have felt your friendship, and valued it, and returned it. For
me, that greatly increases the burden of this argument. I fear, as
I fear nothing else, these great projects - all of them - with
their accompanying shifts of continental blocks of wealth and their
millions of little coercions and oppressions (It doesn't make any
difference who does them; they can't be done without extremely
dangerous concentrations of wealth and power.) I have feared them,
I think, as long as I have been conscious of them, and in the last
ten or twelve years I have spent a lot of energy opposing some of
them. The Space Colony proposal, unlike the others, involves a very
complicating personal difficulty: it comes wearing the face of a
friend. My response to the public issues involved has been
constantly troubled by the question of what such an undertaking
will do to friendship. For what we are disagreeing about is not how
we will run our own lives, but how much power some people may be
permitted to have over other people.
This is not an argument that I can enjoy very much, because the
personal stakes are too high. I don't want to be unfriendly to you
or to be estranged from The CoEvolution Quarterly. But I
called my previous letter "parting words" because I wanted you to
make no mistake about the intensity of my opposition. This is no
academic debate. It's not the sort of disagreement that the two
sides can resolve in a handshake and "still be friends." I can see
it as nothing less than the most audacious scheme so far in the
struggle to abolish all small solutions.
But I'm grateful for your letter. I can't overlook its
generosity, and I respect your willingness to speak directly to a
critic. I therefore venture these further words:
1. I agree that your "function is to raise questions." My
complaint is that you have not been raising enough of them, or
respecting enough the questions raised by others. I think you have
been functioning more as an advocate than as an editor. If you want
to be convincing as a question-raiser you will have to quit giving
so many one-sided answers.
2. For me, responsibility does not require "that we wade in and
see." It requires that we see very clearly before we wade in.
3. To say that "Evolution (especially co-evolution) defies . . .
control" is to abandon the whole issue of responsibility. It is to
say that anything we can do we must do. I wonder if you really mean
this. Again, you have bewildered me.
4. It has never occurred to me that I should be against space
colonization only if it can be stopped. I shall be against it even
if it can't be stopped.
If The CoEvolution Quarterly can be run as a forum for
this debate rather than as a mouth-piece for the "winning" side,
then this parting can be mended. I hope very much that you and I
will have other fish to fry. But it's hard to have an appetite for
fish when you've already got a bone stuck in your throat.
Wendell!
P.S. if you want to reply to this, feel free.
11 May, 1976
Dear Wendell,
Thanks to your response I do feel free. And I invite you to help
me inspect the question of freedom and control. I am feeling and
thinking and learning increasingly two ways about it as I hear the
messages of geographer Carl Sauer and even the most environmentally
beneficial activities of NASA. The more we know the more we
control. According to Sauer no acre of Earth is unaffected by "the
agency of man" - especially the places we have tried to protect.
Cultural now and increasingly dominates biological. Recendy
something has been added to cultural which is the product of
intellect-technology in its full range of exquisite to brutal.
Maybe our function is to help maintain the best of biological
wisdom and the best of cultural wisdom, and continually sort the
exquisite from the brutal technology. The major criterion, I
suppose, is balance. Where does freedom enter in all those
controlling choices? Maybe through Heinz Von Foerster's guideline -
choose the path that leaves the most choices open.
Does that include paths that open new choices - like Space?
Stewart
"Spaceship Earth" comes home to roost
The U.S. Space Program is rapidly headed for moral and ethical
problems it may not be equipped to handle. With the advent of the
Space Shuttle in the early 1980's and the ability to construct very
large antennas in near-Earth orbit, the resolution of visibility of
the Earth from Space will jump several orders of magnitude. The
traffic of communications via satellite will do the same. But
what's important is, the kind of visibility and communications will
change.
I think I'd best tell this story in the order it came to me from
Jesco Von Puttkamer, the person at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration responsible for
long-range planning. I had just completed the interview with
Jacques Cousteau and NASA Deputy Administrator George Low which
appears on p. 98 when astronaut Rusty Schweickart said he had
another appointment for me, with Jesco. The nature of planning at
NASA was improving, he said, and Jesco was in the middle of that
change.
Sure enough, in quick outline Von Puttkamer showed me how the
customary ''extrapolative'' planning - figuring your future needs
from your present and recent capabilities - was being expanded to
include "normative" planning - where you envision distant future
goals and then work backward to see what is needed to get
there.
The problem with normative planning, he explained, is that you
need consensus on which distant goals everybody wants. And that's
usually impossible to get. So what Jesco did was put down a list of
all the interesting distant visions and then see what intermediate
steps they all have in common. That's a bright move, because now
you can work toward the intermediate projects without having to
decide yet about the long-range stuff. Posterity can work that out
as it goes, its freedom to choose preserved.
Also you can see your way around some potential blind alleys
that extrapolative planning (he also called it "evolutionary") can
get you into. NASA administrators had been planning to build Space
Tugs following the Shuttle. After a searching look at Jesco's
"relevance tree" they agreed that Space
Stations - orbiting construction camps - are the real primary need
to get to any of the interesting projects, since they all have to
be assembled in orbit.
Von Puttkamer's normative planning working backward from all the
possible early 21st century space projects. For any of them a space
station (construction camp) is needed soon.
The correct term for that next step, Jesco felt, is ''space
industrialization."
I asked how NASA's long-range planning relates to science
fiction. Jesco said that he used to write science fiction to pay
his way through school. So did Werner Von Braun. "Arthur Clarke was
here just the other day. He drops in maybe twice a year. He gets
new ideas from here, and we try out our ideas on him. After all he
was the inventor of the communications satellite, the synchronous
satellite.
"He was interested in some of the new communication initiatives
we have in mind - large antennas from 150 feet up to a mile in
length. It turns out that with an antenna of that size - taking all
the complicated and expensive machinery and technology and putting
it in space only once, and relegating the low-cost terminals to
Earth use - you can build person-to-person communication. You end
up with something like Dick Tracy wristwatches. Just one 150 ft antenna could have 25,000 channels and
could serve millions of people.
"The same would apply to navigation. If you have a two-mile
cross antenna in Space, you can have two wide beams going over the
United States regularly. If you are down on the ground with a
little wrist band receiver all you need to do is push a button and
as the beams come over you, at the intersection the radio shows you
exactly where you are. It can even tell you in what direction and
how fast you're moving. You can measure your location to an
accuracy of 100 feet, and the whole little system doesn't cost more
than $10.
"We have even looked at building large structures to illuminate
parts of the Earth with light from space. You can get ten times the
intensity of the full moon by having maybe 50 mirrors floating out
there. You can save electricity on the ground. You can reduce crime
in certain areas by making it bright enough. You could facilitate
around-the-clock construction. There are even now investigations
going on whether crop-growth can be increased by having
illumination from Space.
"If you want to find out how many people are getting across a
frontier - maybe between the United States and Mexico, or some
other country - you can put a million or so low-cost
vibration-sensors into the ground. One big satellite receives the
output from these sensors, and a central control station can then
immediately see whether anyone has been moving around. So you can
have better security. ''Or package location. Using one two-mile
cross antenna you can locate packages all across the United States
on a central control board. Ten billion packages tracked, each
located to 100 feet every hour.''
He went on. Vastly improved air traffic control. Sophisticated
radar imaging available to every boat near a coast. The complete
replacement of the post office by instant hard copy transmission
via satellite. The tagging and tracking of all nuclear fuel, to
prevent theft and blackmail.
FUTURE NEEDS REQUIRING LARGE STRUCTURES IN SPACE
| BORDER SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM |
5000 ft. X 10 ft. Antenna |
| COASTAL PASSIVE RADAR |
10 N MI. Crossed Antenna |
| ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPE |
800 ft. Cross |
| ATMOSPHERIC TEMP. PROFILE SOUNDER |
10 ft. dia.Antenna |
| VOTING/POLLING SYSTEM |
150 ft. dia.Antenna |
| NATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM |
150 ft. dia. Antenna |
| PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS |
150 ft. dia. Antenna |
| NUCLEAR ENERGY PLANT IN SPACE |
3600 ft. Antenna |
| ENERGY GENRATION PLANT (RTG) |
To Be Determined |
| ENERGY GENERATION-SOLAR/MICROWAVE |
7.3 X 2.6 N. Mi. |
| AIRCRAFT BEAM POWERING |
15 ft. dia. Mirrors (169 total) |
| CITY NIGHT ILLUMINATION |
300 ft. dia. Mirrors (100 total) |
| NIGHT SEARCHLIGHT-LASER |
(To Be Determined) |
| VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL |
120 ft. dia. Antenna |
| ELECTRONIC MAIL TRANSMISSION |
150 ft. dia. Antenna |
| URBAN POLICE WRIST RADIO (2 WAY) |
150 ft. dia. Antenna |
A NASA list of uses of large near-Earth-orbit
antennas.
Listening to the lengthening list I found myself dealing with a
case of the horrors. My outlaw nomad was yelling from his hill -
no, no fair, too much power to the cops! If there is no place to
hide, there is no place to really invent. The Earth one big
hydroponic garden? Let me out of here.
I had to flee anyway, to get back to a scheduled lunch with Low,
Cousteau, and Schweickart. Over my potato chips and jello I voiced
my fears to them. All of that satellite monitoring, I said. With
that much information goes too much control. Who is worried about
that, who is thinking about limiting it? Who is concerned about
protecting privacy or freedom?
Jacques Cousteau said, "If you are doing something that will
hurt your neighbor, it should be known. If you have syphilis I
think you should wear a sign, I have syphilis " I said [sentence
deleted]. It was against the law. Are you telling me I should have
worn a sign? A lot of inventiveness would have been stopped by
that. Too much information, too much control, too much order stops
inventiveness. Anything that's newly right starts out by being
'wrong'. "
While Schweickart took my side and Low tried to mediate, I
privately tried on Cousteau's view. Maybe we do have to become that
intimate. God knows the present system I was defending seems
hell-bent for disaster. How would it feel knowing everything going
on and making new moves only by agreement? Might be a comfort and a
wisdom.
The argument was not resolved then. Or, yet for me. I condone to
admire Cousteau and support NASA. I read with pleasure in National
Fisherman that the new 200 mile limit will be policed by satellite
- at last better protection for the fish and fairplay on the
seas.
But who polices the policemen? If technology can have normative
planning, how about ethical philosophy? We know what's coming. We
don't have to wait for the excesses to occur, such as they already
have in the trespasses of computer records Retroactive regulation
is harder. Robots aren't here yet, but Isaac Asimov admirably
anticipated them years ago with the now-famous Three Laws of
Robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law
- A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Wait, robots are here. The damned "smart'' bombs of Vietnam
violate the First Law. It is time to legislate the devices of
war.
The Congressional vote against the SST, the public vote in
California about nuclear energy, the agitation about computer
records, the self curtailment of chromosome surgery-effective
debate has come to technology to stay. NASA is no exception.
But I'm not sure exactly what it is must be preserved from NASA,
and what are the specific threats. Marshall McLuhan observed,
''Since Sputnik there is no Nature. Nature is an item contained in
a man-made environment of satellites and information.'' (Culture
is Our Business, 1970). And, as reader Ferguson Johnson
reminded us, William Burroughs wrote in 1959 (Naked Lunch),
"Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting
things happen in their own way without interference. [Sentence
deleted]
Wild freedom, trees falling in the wilderness unheard, the
unimpeded health of ecosystems - that's our banner. But I wonder if
it's already long gone, like the Earth-centered solar system or the
seven days of creation.
Maybe the image of wild freedom is true even if the fact no
longer is, and wisdom can still be based upon it.
Nightime illumination of crops from Space? Filterproof policing
of borders? I thought that the end of our last issue on Space
Colonies that our involvement in debate about NASA was over for a
while. It's just begun. Address your comments to CQ Box 428,
Sausalito, CA 94965.
-SB
Driving or driven to Space?
Dear Stewart,
The Space Station. An orbiting construction site using the
"Strong back" principle.
Glad to see your fair interview with me in the Summer CQ.
I particularly value your concern about moral and ethical problems
as may be introduced by the new initiatives offered by space, made
possible by economic transportation to and from Earth orbit and our
emerging capability to emplace and service large and complex
facilities (tools) in the unique space environment. Those new
"Public Service Systems" which I touched upon in the interview are
no more than unconstrained ideas at this time; undoubtedly there
would have to be regulatory control on what their capabilities are
used for, but on the other hand their potential benefits to mankind
appear truly immense.
I share your concern, and I welcome a debate in CQ, of
the rather unprecedented humanistic aspects of what promises to
become a most fascinating new frontier, a new era in space. You
would contribute a good deal to what I feel is the most urgent
need: the "humanizing" of the Space Program. In reading Wendell
Berry's anguished letter against space colonies, I cannot help
getting the feeling that some misunderstanding regarding NASA's
proposals for the next steps in space may be involved here. A Space
Colony Program is not proposed. I would probably share at least
some of his concerns if indeed the advocacy of space colonies were
that solidly founded and unquestioned as some of the advocates want
us to believe. There are snake-oil salesmen at this new frontier
just as they were in the old West. Space colonies may indeed be in
our future - let coming generations decide on that - but so may
many other "visions" people are dreaming about. Let us keep our
options open at this time where we are but at the threshold of new
frontiers, and let us plan our next steps to be responsive to
mankind's near-term needs and wants while building a solid
foundation of ethical responsibility and technological capability
from which an open, choiceful long-term future (or futures) becomes
accessible. That alone, in my opinion, provides validity to the
Space Program.
By doing this one step at a time where each stepping-stone is of
practical benefit to man's contemporary needs, the Space Program
will pay its own way over and over again. It is a fact that the
pursuit of space goals generates innovations in virtually all
fields of science and technology, and therefore helps stimulate
progress in areas not even remotely connected to the original
program. Such high-technology endeavors are strongly
anti-inflationary; they result in significant rates of social
return out of all proportions to their cost. From secondary
applications of space technology alone, each new dollar invested
annually on space research and development would presently return
$23 over a 10-year period, - that's more than 40%
return-on-investment annually over 10 years. How much more can we
gain by actually designing the "stepping-stones" to the long-range
dreams primarily for near-term Earth-benefitting use! This is what,
in your interview, I called "Space Industrialization," a
progressive program to provide permanent, practical and commercial
utilization tools of space through products and services that
create - in the long run - new values, jobs, and better quality of
life for all mankind instead of just for a measly 10,000 living in
some space colony. Its funding would gradually shift from the
public to the private sector as risks are lowered enough to become
acceptable to private industrial entrepreneurs. This does not
preclude, but in fact validates, the option that Space Industrialization may grow by natural force
into Space Colonization.
What do I mean with "natural force"? Let me speculate.
When some life form stands at the limit of its further
development, it receives "instinctive" properties from nature that
enable it to surpass these limits. Eternities ago certain types of
fish gained the ability to go up on the land and turn into life
forms capable of spreading out over the continents. Long, long
afterward man came and in time gained the ability to build ships
and emigrate to new land areas. Life is something that grows
constantly, expands in all directions, wants to fill voids and
bring order to chaos. The pressure of life forces life forms
further. We are experiencing this today on a different scale. Today
we are building space ships And we have made the first journeys to
another world. Will there then be large-scale emigration from Earth
in the distant future?
Yes, undoubtedly. Pressure in that direction will increase, and
our capabilities for emigration will also increase. The only risk
would be that nature's experiment with man might not succeed.
Nature has made mistakes before, created forms that have been
unable to survive. The dinosaurs may be an example. Man with his
desire for knowledge, with his critical brain, with his
self-awareness, is also an experiment that might be a dead end.
Things could go downhill if we begin to doubt ourselves, if we
allow developments that are basically instinctive to come to a halt
because we do not find any meaning in them. Our civilization could
begin to rot from within. In that case nature will make new
experiments with other forms, but probably not on Earth, it may be
too late for that. But we can hope that we will fulfill nature's
demands.
Are we driving - or driven?
Many years ago, when I entered the space program with tremendous
idealism, I used to see this power of nature to spread life as
something of a religion-a matter of faith rather than provable
evidence. Since it is a driving force upward toward higher goals
and higher meaning, some people call this power God but that is an
expression which came into existence because of the deficiencies of
other explanations. I used to be unable to comprehend that anyone
would question the validity of our thrust into the unknown. Today,
I'm still no closer to a better understanding. All I see is the
experts warning us of population explosion, resources depletion and
"limits to growth," and at virtually the same instant in eternity,
we have begun to venture into space . . . confound it! That can't
be just coincidence!
I appreciate your concern about the questions of moral and
ethics, Stewart, but I'm confident that our maturity will be
commensurate to their challenges by the time we're there. I
appreciate Wendell Berry's outcry, but I submit that the finitude
he sees as basic requirements for a good character is a matter of
individual viewpoint. It is relative. Man will always carry the
disciplines of finitude with him/her, even into the far reaches of
space, for it is precisely in the confrontation with the infinity
of space that the realization of his own finitude will be thrust
upon him.
With warmest regards,
Jesco von Puttkamer
Advanced Programs, office of Space Flight
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Satellite surveillance
The vast communications network that ticks off the passage of
one person or coyote across a border, that can spot a field of
marijuana in a Mexican mountain valley from 40 miles up that can
pick up a conversation whispered 10 blocks away - this network is a
police construct. The information, after all, does not come back to
you and me. It goes to Authority Central, where it is processed to
make sure all movement is in conformance with The Law, which the
police powers are authorized to uphold.
The question becomes: How much effort and money are we, as a
society, willing to put into the perfection of the police function?
Do we really want a border patrol that nabs every desperate farm
hand, coke runner and laetrile dealer? Is such perfection
desirable? Will it be worth the effort? . . .
If we assume that the earth is in the middle of a process of
self-discovery, using the human consciousness (among others) to
understand that it is a planet hanging in curved space then this
desire to know "every sparrow that falls" via electronic CNS
extensions becomes natural. To take an evolutionary, deep-seated
desire for knowing, which can deliver to the earth's total
consciousness a sense of place and meaning, and give it over in its
full power to police mentalities and authorities of whatever
stripe, is to abuse it woefully. In other words, telemetry used to
monitor manifestations of biological change (". . . emergence of
daphnia in stagnant water in Quebec Province within the past two
weeks has resulted in the largest sunfish fry count in history. .
.") can lead to earth's improved self-understanding, or used to
enforce some dimwit law can lead to increased authoritarianism.
Humans are, finally, the bits of earth that leap up from the
planet's surface, look around, tell what they see to each other,
and die. The sum total of all this seeing and telling is the story
of one planet waking up to itself....
The voices of those who would give our best telemetry to the bug
scientists and big-dreamers are crushed under the magnitude of
police communications. This is a cop world (as any evening of
network television demonstrates so convincingly). But it won't be a
cop world for long.
I personally am going to stop it. Cops are going back to
loitering on streetcorners waiting to see a crime happen. Our
ability to monitor everything is going to be given to scientists
who have learned to use intuition, and so have developed a heart
that feels for the earth. We will listen, not for the outlaw (who
is only wresting himself or herself free) but for the cougar, so we
will know how better to avoid it and leave it to its hunting. I
personally will bring this about. I don't know how.
Jeff Cox organic
Organic Gardening
Emmanus, Pennsylvannia
Other Voices
. . . As to cities in space - I recant. Earlier on, I sent you a
note stating my enthusiasm for O'Neill's space colonies. Since then
I've read just about everything on the subject, and have been on
O'Neill's newsletter list. I no longer think they are such a great
idea.... I feel that the colonies will come out looking like the
image in Slater's Earthwalk. [sentence deleted]
Bud Spurgeon
Austin. Texas
. . . On a space colony we can start nice and clean and fresh
and engineer it right. How nice to "build in" recycling from the
start, and not have room to accumulate crappy consumer junk. How
nice to emphasize elegance and esthetics and bring about a
resurgence in craftsmanship, personal creativity fulfillment, and a
true change in consciousness. I almost hate to point out that me
and most of my neighbors are doing our damndest to live like that
right now on this planet, and succeeding pretty well. Doesn't cost
the taxpayers 100 billion either....
Gerald E. Myers
Briceland, CA
. . . For me, Life's purpose is to become increasingly aware of
itself and to evolve into increasingly hostile environments
(sea->land->air->space)....
Roger C. Girouard
Tallahassee, Florida
. . . Imagine the artistic and intellectual implications of
living in an architectural space where "down" can be seen to be in
three different directions at once! . . .
Thomas S. Cooper
Albany, New York
. . . the whole idea of space colonies is making my brain itch .
.
Linda Sherwood
Brooklyn, New York
. . The industries most likely to be used - metallurgy,
electronics, etc. - are high capital, high technology, they don't
employ many people. So why. build a large expense colony? Cheaper
to rotate your work crew every 3 - 6 months. That's what they do
down here in places like Antartica. Nobody I know has proposed a
self-contained colony there....
B. Gold
Hope, British Columbia, Canada
. . while Earth (Gaia) can still teach us much about meaning and
purpose and rhythm, I think geocentric life ultimately will pale in
comparison to the life among the stars. It's a gut feeling. And
perhaps, there in the spaces between galaxies, will come the purest
wisdom.
jon alexandr
Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania
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