The Space Community and Increasing Ecocentrism

While I was reading the paper I reviewed in the last edition of Sunday Paper Club, I realized we might have to deal with another obstacle to space habitation. This obstacle is so big that I can say without any doubt that engineering development is not a substantial obstacle to space habitation when in comparison to the following two.

Thinkers like Gerard O'Neill, Ted Taylor, G. Harry Stine, Edward Gilfillan and many others have warned that a space faring society can destroy themselves. This idea is presented as a solution to the Fermi paradox. But, such a society will be presented with challenges like war, disease and pollution long before they are tested on their ability not to hit the big red button.

Before the nukes go flying, humanity will be increasing spiteful of technology and of engineering. People will become more and more ecocentric, longing to rid themselves of the technology that seems to have caused so much suffering. So, as a society becomes more and more spacefaring, becomes more and more capably of destroy its self, its people will fight against technological advance. Consequently, the closer we get to pulling off space settlement, the hard it will be to convince people to move to the next step and the more likely we are to blow ourselves up. We may just be too tired for the victory party.

 

In Case You Skimmed

-As the environment decays in the future, people will be come more opposed to technological progress, including space habitation.

Reactions

-Will ecocentric feelings disappear after a society develops green energy that can meet the demands of that civilization?

-I assumed that a spacefaring society has to pollute, is it possible to become space faring without any pollutions (If we could start over, could we inhabit Mars without the use of hydrocarbons?)

Resources

Martyn J. Fogg, The ethical dimensions of space settlement, Space Policy, Volume 16,  Issue 3, 16 July 2000, Pages 205 -211, ISSN 0265-9646, DOI: 10.1016/S0265-9646(00)00024-2. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V52-40VT2MT-7/2/3b691cbe46c19740b6b7f3501a51eb51)

Photo Credit

Joe in DC

Waiting and Space

The problem is that the public will not get excited and sacrifice for space that is not well defined; solid timeline defined.

Seth Godin, in his blog post titled Achievable Avalanche Opportunities, points out how people are willing to work on massive projects if they will bring a avalanche of rewards, but this reward and the path to that reward must be certain. This is where space programs and a space habitation project will run into a massive brick wall (of pain, death and humiliation). Right now, we are waiting until lightning strikes. For too often our arguments take the form of “when X happens we will have a space based economy”. The two critical points of the argument that provides the financial feasibility of manned space flight are lowering of the cost to access space and opening of a Maslow Windows. Yes, there is active work on launch costs and the Maslow Window opens soon, but, to the public, it is a waiting game.

Personally, a waiting game has never really gotten me to jump up and down with excitement. I think I’m safe in generalizing this.

Reactions

-Is space really a waiting game?

-If it is true that the people working on space activity can deal with the wait because of their passion, how can we make the public passionate about space?

Resources

Godin, Seth. "Achievable Avalanche Opportunities” 
     Seth Godin’s Blog. 8 September 2009.  Web. 8 September 2009.

     <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/achievable-avalanche-opportunities.html>.

In Case You Skimmed

-There is a lot of waiting involved with space habitation, thus the public will loss interest in space habitation.