Roger Launius has an essay on the decline of significance of the metaphor with regard to space:
The image of the frontier, however, has been a less and less acceptable and effective metaphor as the twentieth century became the twenty-first century. Progressives have come to view the space program from a quite different perspective. To the extent that space represents a new frontier, it conjures up images of commercial exploitation and the subjugation of oppressed peoples. Implemented through a large aerospace industry, in their view, it appears to create the sort of governmental-corporate complexes of which liberals are increasingly wary.
Despite the promise that the Space Shuttle, like jet aircraft, would make space flight accessible to the “common man,” space travel remains the province of a favored few, perpetuating inequalities rather than leveling differences. They also assert that space exploration has also remained largely a male frontier, with room for few minorities.
In the eyes of progressives, space perpetuates the inequities that they have increasingly sought to abolish on Earth. As a consequence, it is not viewed favorably by those caught up in what political scientist Aaron Wildavsky has characterized as “the rise of radical egalitarianism.” The advent of this liberal philosophy coincides with the shift in ideological positions on the U.S. space program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn what regressives think about space any more than I do about their thoughts on any other subject. Dr. Launius does attempt to defend the metaphor, though, at the end:
I would like to suggest that the frontier myth is an incomplete but uniquely understandable way of looking at the space program. From the beginning of the space age the U.S. effort has been motivated by essentially three priorities. The first was Cold War rivalries with the Soviet Union and the desire to demonstrate the technological superiority of a democratic state over a communist dictatorship. The second was the lure of discovery of the unknown. The third was adventure. The first priority, oriented toward national security, has ceased to be important in this post-Cold War era. But the second and third priorities lie at the heart of the frontier myth and are still just as attractive as they were more than 40 years ago at the creation of NASA.
He misses a key priority, though, that is quintessentially American: liberty.
… exploitation and the subjugation of oppressed peoples…
Bah. If I had a dime for every time I hear this crap, usually associated with colonization, I would be rich by now. The Spanish conquered the bloodthirsty Aztec Empire which regularly conducted public human sacrifices. In fact their capital was taken with the help of a neighboring tribe which was chaffing under Aztec rule. Most of the deaths during the settling of the Americas were due to sickness and disease not actual conflict. Some American diseases were also brought back to Europe it was just that the fatality rates in Europe happened to be lower. It could easily have turned out the other way around.
The US needs to stop reflecting on past space glories and actually look at how to move forward. Sounds like a lot of people there are getting the loss of empire sickness which is common here in Europe.
It is a shame a lot of people have stopped trusting technological and economic development i.e. progress and seem to think that anything which pushes the envelope should be sanitized and censored. The progressives are anything but and the conservatives just want to keep the status quo of the empire even if keeping up the status quo will actually result in the eventual demise of the empire due to failing finances from the many costly military engagements abroad.
The only reason that space as a frontier is considered a myth is because colonization hasn’t started. That myth will evaporate with the first hundred colonists (a few dozen needed to make it real.)
This is why mars rather than the moon. The moon is a backyard camping trip even with a permanent base. Mars is independence by necessity.
IMO the colonization of the Moon serves as a useful stepping stone for the colonization of other places in the inner solar system. Instead of trying to colonize Mars in a decade or two we could be trying to colonize the Moon right now.
Why not both? This is why commercial space is so exciting. We don’t have to lobby for one destination over another.
We can’t colonize the moon right now. Not because we lack the technical ability. We can’t because colonization without property rights is meaningless. We can’t settle property rights on the moon because that will take decades of bickering. Longer than actually making settlements.
Instead, we colonize mars, with some or all groups of colonists realizing they have the right to make reasonable claims. That sets the standard that will later be followed on the moon and other rocks. You can’t resolve it with an argument on earth. You resolve it by doing it far enough away that any other jurisdiction is meaningless. The moon, at three days, is not far enough away.
Nope, not even Mars. Talk to me after the Belter War.
IMO, we don’t know enough about the medical factors to begin colonization but we are unlikely to learn what we need to without significant and sustained human presence in space.
It is too bad that the pioneer/frontier analogy is a major turn off to some people who would otherwise support human activities in space. IIRC, the Space Show even had an episode about this a while back.
Of course there are no native populations that will be displaced by our expansion in the solar system and as Rand notes, liberty is or should be a driving factor. What if Native Americans took the money they make through casinos and turned it into a space program that would allow them to have self determination. The same could be said for any group that finds themselves chaffing under their current governments.
A line of argument like this might be more persuasive to people who dislike the pioneer/frontier analogy.
We have had people live in a space station for over a year. Valeri Polyakov was in Mir for 437 days. That is long enough to make a base. A military tour of duty often takes less time than that.
The key difference between a “base” and colony is the latter has the objective of becoming self supporting. A colony should have a shot at survival if all support from the motherland is cut off.
We have had people in orbit for long periods of time; long enough to know there are some pretty serious medical problems associated with it. The next step would seem to be putting up rotating space stations so we can see the limits of what people can adapt to.
Given the cost of government procurement, it might cost as much to build a new rotating space station as it would to establish a minimalistic research outpost on the moon. If that’s the case, go for the moon. Start with month long crew rotations and learn about how the body adapts to 1/6th G. Lather, rinse and repeat with longer durations to expand the body of knowledge. If the body can adapt to 1/6th G without serious ill effects, then living on Mars wouldn’t be a problem.
Daver,
There is a much much simpler solution if Elon Musk ever gets around to moving beyond NASA and gets his DragonLab flying.
Just take a DeagonLab with mice on board and link it with a tether to the upper stage from the Falcon 9. Spin if at 1/6 G for 4-6 months, several mice generations. and see how they reproduce. If its normal then the odds humans will be able to reproduce on the Moon, and higher gravity worlds, are very very good. If not, then do a second mission with simulated 1 G to see if it is the gravity or some other factor. The cost of both missions will be a fraction of building a rotating station.
“He misses a key priority, though, that is quintessentially American: liberty.”
Which is precisely why ATK should have won the entire CCiCap award.
What?…
I am sick and tired of hearing about all the medical reasons we can’t colonize.
Why? Because I live every day with medical problems. Guess what? I’m not living in a colony. I’m living right here on earth with the rest of ya.
These aren’t reasons not to go. These are excuses.
You mitigate after you decide. Otherwise it’s just another example of paralysis by analysis. This doesn’t mean you don’t try to be ready before you go. It just means you don’t use it for an excuse.
Fair enough and there are people who are willing to take the risks. But there are a lot of medical problems that we don’t even know about. How long does it take for the kidneys to stop working in zero-g? Will Moon gravity be enough to hold off the problems associated with weightlessness? We just don’t know.
That shouldn’t mean that we don’t go to the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else because we will never learn the answers to these questions until we experience the problems first hand. What it does mean, is that we are not yet ready for colonization.
I like Daver’s comment above.
We just don’t know.
Very true, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore what we do know. People have successfully lived off the earth for over 50 years now. You know, from Wright brothers to 747s. Colonization will risk lives. If we aren’t willing to take those risks we will never see the benefits. Those benefits are huge. Magnitudes huge.
Send me to mars. I’m willing to die there or even on the way if it means moving humanity forward. Rockets explode. We got to the moon because men were willing to strap their asses into those controlled explosions.
Metrosexuals need not apply.
I’ll go to the Belt, even if I’m just shoveling out Big Macs at a Mickey D’s on Ceres. That *Is* a job someone will have to do, eventually. And I’ll do it really good.
Reminds me of an email I sent to Norm Nixon, of Freedom Ship fame. ‘Beyond all your plans for fleecing the passengers, who’s going to flip the *%*(()&^ burgers? Where will they live, how much you going to pay them? Where can I apply because I seriously couldn’t afford your stupid idea unless I worked for the boat.’
Never got an answer, quelle surprise.
You are absolutely right. For some reason, we live in an age where people think working with your hands is somehow demeaning.
Getting an industrial ecology and farming on mars is all about working with your hands. Give the transportation company land (a thousand sq. km. for every colonists single one sq. km. claim) so anyone, ANYONE that can make the limited cut and is willing to risk their lives today instead of waiting for some future that may never arrive, can go to mars regardless of their personal lack of wealth (every martian becomes a potential millionaire land owner when they sign on.)
Some of those millionaires will flip burgers while their wealth is being realized through hard work and development. That’s what a frontier means.
One difference between the space frontier and all the others before it is that the people who go will have to be a lot more disciplined and probably better educated. I’m fully aware that the Old West in the USA was nothing like as lawless (for the most part!) as depicted in the movies, but that sort of behaviour will be impossible in any realistic space colony (whether on a planet or not) for a very long time to come. In the Old West, if social order broke down at least people kept breathing.
One more thing. IMHO, there is one group that should NEVER be allowed to get into space. Not even one individual. Guess which one that is?
If commercial space efforts eventually lead to large numbers of people leaving the planet, then there will be at least one individual in whatever group you don’t like with enough cash to go to space. There will be no way of putting the genie back in the bottle.
True, but “accidents” will always happen. People in a colony will be more inter-dependent for survival. Piss off too many people and you might fight yourself with a “stuck” airlock and a leaky spacesuit. This is known as “bad luck.”
“Guess which one that is?”
“____ Studies” majors?
One more thing. IMHO, there is one group that should NEVER be allowed to get into space. Not even one individual. Guess which one that is?
The ones that won’t pull their own weight.
You’re quite right, but the group I have in mind is that group who think bending down and sticking their arses in the air five times per day while facing in one particular direction is a productive use of their time – and some of whom favour high explosives as a fashion item.
A benefit of more people in space, especially in a colony type situation, is specialization. You wont need people that can do all the jobs on their own. Every person wont have to be an expert on all the systems.
This is what kills me about the focus of mars scientists being the search for life. That is not the number one priority (although it is a BFD.)
The focus of a colony should be survival and to borrow a phrase from Pournelle, survival in style. This means a group of people trained to extract resources from mars (industrial chemists and geologists.) Then a second group for turning those raw materials into the colonists necessities (mechanics, machinists and industrial engineers.) They need power, water and food all in abundance. They should focus on an inter-related industrial ecology so they can quickly become independent (building tractors, etc. out of dirt.)
Most important, they need an ideology based on individual liberty and ownership.
Once they have these fundamentals down they can have all the scientists they like searching for what-ever answer to what-ever riddles.
Even if Mars or the Moon don’t produce enough gravity to support life in the long term (I’d be especially concerned about reproduction), that doesn’t mean Space can’t be a frontier. Venus has 0.9g, which hopefully would be enough, and its upper atmosphere is downright pleasant compared to the Moon. And spinning up an asteroid to 1g is always an option. There’s unlimited solar power and physical materials in space to work with.
Further, the Moon and Mars can still be major parts of our economies. No one lives full-time on deep sea oil platforms either, but they’re still important to our economy and people go there for stints. With automated machines and factories and onsite robotics, plus a few operators, the Moon could have many times the manufacturing capacity of the Earth itself – launching materials to make O’Neil stations or whatever.
I think within a few centuries more people will live off Earth than on it, simply because that’s where the real estate and resources are. It didn’t take America long to eclipse England in population and industrial capacity for the same reason. The Moon alone has enough solar power, surface area, and physical material to create “infinite” space stations for people to live in.
That reminds me of a SF story I’d read where a single space station a bit smaller than the moon had the living space for thousands of times the earth’s population.
Life adapts. We never have lived under exactly one g.
“We never have lived under exactly one g.”
It’s been a fairly tight range though. It’s like breathing CO2; there’s no fixed amount in any given chunk of Terran air, but it only really varies between 0.036% and 0.039%. Anything over 1% starts getting problematic. So that’s the range. We don’t know what the g range is, due to lack of data.
Which isn’t a reason to not go. In fact, it’s a reason to go – and take some mice populations with us. If they can produce 10 – 20 healthy generations on the Moon I’d be willing to move on to to dogs and monkeys.
Ideally I’d want to see a very long laboratory on a tether spinning around a counterweight; and each level of the laboratory (maybe a “string of pearls” formation) experiencing a different amount of g. And have breeding populations of mice on g levels from “Ceres” to “Venus” (I think we can rule out colonizing Jupiter). See what happens.
“That reminds me of a SF story I’d read where a single space station a bit smaller than the moon had the living space for thousands of times the earth’s population.”
Do you happen to remember the name? Just curious. Personally I’d be nervous about that many people living on one space station. One accident, and boom, there goes 90% of the human race. From a species survival point of view, I’d much prefer thousands of space stations in the 10 – 100 million range. And once we have fully automated factories on the Moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t just scale up production until we spit out as many space stations as necessary.
Do you happen to remember the name?
No. My swiss cheese brain is full of trivia. I used to read like other people breath. Can’t do that anymore either.
Spinning up an asteroid to anything implies that you’ll be living in excavations such that you’ll be in what on earth would be considered upside down, within the surface of said asteroid. Not saying that that’s a bad thing, after all, my granddaughter loves the Upside Down Show guys’ ‘action fingers’. I’ve heard rumours that they’re actually aussies, and not * really* upside down but hey, she’s four, and I love her.
The next step for off-planet civilization is robotic aTBMs, aka autonomous Tunnel Boring Machines. Put one of those on Mars and you’ll have your first permanent colony, tout-suite.
Or the moon, for that matter. Haven’t seen any evidence that either one’s geologically *interesting*, aka, deadly. Gimme a place to start up the first, evah, inter-galactic Wattaburger and I’ll clean up. 😉
There are already a number of pre-existing caves on the Moon, or Mars. Or if you like the idea of a big, underground dome to live in, just take a nuclear bomb. Set it off underground, et viola!, big cave with an air-tight fused glass ceiling.
Tapping into America’s frontier tradition is useful for propaganda purposes if you are trying to build political support for government funding of space activities.
President Kennedy, a smart street wise politician, recognized this which is why the frontier analogy was the theme of several of his most memorable speeches when he was pushing Apollo. And why you still see it’s legacy in advocate groups like the SFF who main focus is to keep the myth that Space is the new Wild West alive in their endless pursuit of NASA money for New Space.
But what is worst, the frontier as an analogy tends to contaminate business plans which often end up being heavy on “vision” and light on financials, the core of any good business plan, because many space entrepreneurs seem to be more driven by the allure of space as a frontier and not as a place to make money. I suspect in their hearts many New Spacers see making money as a necessary evil to fund their frontier fantasies which is why their focus is so heavy on HSF ventures like space tourism with poor ROI potential but fit the frontier myth instead of more mundane ones which might actually have the necessary ROI to attract investors.
What they fail to realize is that although space as a frontier might be good for pursuing government money it only serves to increase the risk perception among investors. It should be noteworthy that you find little talk about frontiers in the most successful space industry, Comsats. Instead the focus in on markets and ROI which is the only thing capital markets are interested in.
Light on financials. That would describe ‘Freedom Ship’ to a *T*. Much to my sorrow. I really *really* hope Bigelow can do a more believable job.
You’re not wrong Thomas. Colonization will take billions of dollars and is a tough nut to crack. I’d rather the government were not involved. Private investors do want to reduce risk as they should.
But eventually people will realize how much wealth is out there and will do what has to be done. We are now at the point where a single company, not an entire nation, is all that is needed to get it started. The good news is that hundreds of companies are involved.