Our dreams of space aren't help by hallucinations

== An actual adult at NASA? ==

Dang. Glimmers of hope. This Trump appointment, though initially unqualified, has proved intelligent, curious and a good listener/questioner. It is way too soon to be optimistic, but NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is starting to sound kind of like a sapient person: 

"The first Gateway is about the moon, but I think the second Gateway, being a deep-space transport, again using commercial and international partners, enables us to get to Mars," Bridenstine said. "What we don't want to do is go to the surface of the moon, prove that we can do it again, and then be done.

"We want to go to stay. And the Gateway, in my view — I've been convinced — enables us to take advantage of commercial and international partners in a more robust way so we are there to stay, it enables us to get to more parts of the moon than ever before, and it enables us to get to Mars," he said. "There is no other architecture that I have been presented with, given the current budgets that we have, that enable all of that."

The Gateway is an overlap between all the goals that are under debate:

China, Russia, India, Europe, billionaires are all desperate for their symbolic rite of passage - (“Look at us, we’re grownups now with moon footprints too!”) - then let them rush to that dusty-useless plain, while we sell them tourist services via the Gateway. ("Welcome to our old Moon. Now you kids be safe down there.”)

Meanwhile, the Gateway can be a lab to study asteroid riches and to learn methods we’ll need, to get to Mars. A win-win.

Let our “commercial and international partners” do all the stuff they can do, and let NASA & the U.S. do things that only America can do. 

Footprint fetishism is for adolescents.

Alas, there's an even worse adolescent fetishism that's eating away at the space-advocacy community. But I'll get to it only after making a small side trip into human psychology.

== Space is not immune to culture – and psychological – war ==

Brain studies show that we make many decisions for unconscious reasons that we then skillfully rationalize. Ain't it funny how often we decide to support a position that just happens to conclude "people just like me are righteous and right and those who oppose me are either stupid or evil"?  

Now add propaganda. I've polled audiences for decades. Nearly everyone nods when asked: "are your neighbors influenced by propaganda?"  But they give sullen headshakes when asked: "were you?"  

All past cultures preached conformity, but not ours. Nearly every movie you ever enjoyed preached Suspicion of Authority (SoA) and the admirability of impudent eccentricity. Look over the previous sentence again and compare it to every Hollywood film. Americans especially suckled those values from an early age, yet they nearly always claim to have invented SoA.  They (and you) resent being told they were taught SoA, in a relentless drumbeat of propaganda.

"I'm the brave rebel against stupid, conventional beliefs held by sheep and pushed by dark elites."   Of course your adversaries think the same thing about you! But that can be safely shrugged aside. 

Taken even farther, this egocentric manifesto manifests as a roar we have all seen from bright fanatics out there: "I'll proclaim the very OPPOSITE to what's blatantly true! That will make me look daring and cool and imply I possess direct insights and information that you sheep cannot see!!!"  

What does all that have to do with our current arguments over where and how to build a mighty, spacefaring civilization?

Space is a screen against which we project many of our hopes and ambitions. Some zillionaires are investing pragmatically in potentially gaining access to quadrillions of dollars worth of asteroidal resources. Others seek colonies on Mars, and I say terrific! A sanely satiable human may ‘need’ his or her first few billion dollars, but beyond that, priorities shift to finding cool things to do with it.

Alas though, there are also insatiable billionaires of the more classic variety, who see space resources as a threat to their sunk-cost, sweetheart investments in Earthly mines and wells. 

Their efforts to stymie serious advance in space capabilities began with elimination of funding for Earth studies at NASA and NOAA, satellites and research that might sear away the Climate Denialist Cult. Now, it’s “Back to the Moon!” which has justified zeroing out NASA efforts to study asteroidal riches.

But let’s circle back to the topic of polemical psychology. Because some in the space zealot community – following the patterns I described above -- have dived into Conspiracy LaLaLand. 

One eminent Mars Proponent has produced a book proclaiming that all forward progress toward technological paradise and space cities is being blocked by a conspiracy by “anti-human” cultists, who want humanity to go extinct, or at least for us to be culled in numbers below a billion, for the sake of the planet.  Oh, for sure, in my novel EARTH I portray 'anti-human' fanatics getting their hands – dangerously – on disproportionate and deadly power.  I’m open-eyed to their existence and mania and to the harm they might do, if given a chance. 

I am also aware that such cultists are presently insignificant, in power and influence, compared to far worse dangers like a looming (and recurring) oligarchic putsch to restore feudalism. 

Still, it struck me how, in raging against this “anti-human” cult, the tech-loving Mars Proponent cites anecdotes but never statistics. Ironically, he thus emulates – and even makes many of the same points as -- the tech-hating Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, in his book The Anti-Tech Revolution. Though preaching diametrically opposite utopias, their logical methodologies and levels of smugly confident paranoia seem similar. Both offer roars against standard, conventional wisdom, held by sheep who happen to be in the modern intelligencia.  

== If you want progress, look at what brought it, till now ==

Let’s recap: Suspicion of Authority (SoA) does provide a luscious way to get that sanctimony-high. SoA means you must aim ire at some elite, but which ones? 

Liberals see dark conspiracies and lies by conniving oligarchs and faceless corporations. Conservatives see conspiracy by snooty academics and faceless government bureaucrats.  It is the same reflex, aimed at different "authorities".  (It happens that all facts right now support the liberal view, and today's conservative view is hallucinatory. But history reveals plenty of times when it was the opposite.)

While it can be effective at generating an excellent, self-righteousness drug high, and it can help to recruit a small, fanatical following, the scream "I can see what all you blind fools can't!" hobbles your effectiveness at pragmatically affecting the majority, or gaining support among the fact-professions, or swaying the allocation of society's investment resources in your desired directions. Demolished effectiveness is reason to suspect that an error has been made. Yet we do the same things, over and over again.

Earlier I compared the teensy-pathetic “anti-human” movement to the vastly more destructive force called feudalism. Feudalist-hierarchic rule by inherited elites was the dominant government -- and failure mode -- for 99% of the last 6000 years. The inherent interests of oligarchs -- to prevent new competitors, to prevent destabilizing innovation, to give unearned advantages to their sons, and to protect the sunk costs of their own investments -- prevented human progress across the ages.

Such men are certainly the greatest force that will keep impudent innovators from accessing the resources of space. And they spend lavishly on propaganda. To veer SoA reflexes against the “elites” who stand between them an total dominance. Like the millions of fact-using professionals who push civilization forward.

Suppose you want to get out there into space. Then concocting strawman enemies -- e.g. denouncing those who want to make human civilization sustainable and efficient -- is astonishingly counterproductive.  Especially given that breakthroughs in efficiency and sustainability will be vastly, vastly more important for living and working in space, than they are down here, on Earth! 

Almost a definition of Sapience would be the ability to notice your own counterproductive cycles... when what you are doing may feel great, but is undermining achievement of your legitimate goals.  We all see examples of this in our enemies, but are often blind at recognizing them in the mirror, where realization would do us the most pragmatic good. 

When it comes to space activism, the driving away of potential allies and negotiating partners is particularly glaring and unnecessary.

It is the end result of all the forces I've described here, from SoA propaganda to "I can see and you can't!" self-flattery... to lickspittle obeisance toward the New Oligarchy Lords.  None of these things makes for lucid discussion of actual tradeoffs.

None of it helps to convince our neighbors to calmly allocate new investments in a risky but promising frontier.