Opportunities and dangers in Space! (If we are even allowed to get out there.)

Another space posting! We'll start with some news items:

Here's a great summary of the coming year's super endeavors in space exploration: the biggest rocket launches and missions for 2018 - including the launch of NASA's InSight Mars Lander and the Parker Solar Probe.

NASA has started planning a mission that would send a spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri system in... 2069. Yes, that's 52 years away, and timed around the 100th anniversary of Apollo 11's trip to the Moon.

Compare government’s ability to at least make small investments aimed at payoff on a century timescale… to the recent reduction of industrial R&D, eliminating nearly all the “R” and reducing Return on Investment (ROI) horizons from ten to five years… and now most companies' ROI horizon is more like five weeks. There was an architect to this calamity to western capitalism – his name was Milton Friedman – but an entire caste of vampires financed the architect. And we'll get back to that another time.

Oh, here's an interesting glimmer. What sort of atmosphere could surround each of the seven rocky, Earth-sized planets that orbit a star known as TRAPPIST-1? Several calculate as likely to retain theirs.  

== Politics of Space ==

Among the most puzzling aspects of our current phase of civil war has been the sheer number of issues that should be decided via rational negotiation over facts and evidence, that instead have become political dogma footballs and unnecessarily partisan. This plague of partisanship has even crippled decision-making over space science. I’ve earlier spoken of how Democrats and Republicans now differ diametrically over whether our near-term emphasis in human spaceflight should be on asteroids or a return to leaving dusty footprints on the surface of the Moon. 

More about that in a minute. 

Only now see how Breitbart and the far-right pundit-sphere is raging against SpaceX, the one rocket company that brought competition back into space launch systems, making costs plummet, saving the taxpayers hundreds of millions, and re-taking the lion’s share of commercial launches for America, while making all its parts and components in the USA. (The ULA’s Atlas uses Russian engines.)

Read how the Breitbart complaints actually have nothing whatsoever to do with Elon Musk’s company, and in fact prove the diametric opposite. But Elon is part of that Pacific coast tech-elite who earned their wealth through market innovation in new goods and services, instead of inheritance, Wall Street jiggering, gambling or sweetheart resource extraction. Hence, he is a hated member of the fact-using community. Automatically The Enemy.

Seriously read this! You’ll learn a lot about the tech and politics of rocketry. 

== What we must prevent – being “filtered” out of the galaxy ==

Ah, but can doom be prevented?

The latest fad among bright intellectuals? “Great Filter” fetishism. Based on the Fermi Paradox (the riddle over the apparent absence of extraterrestrial civilizations) and a few logical incantations, they conclude that such a filter must winnow out all tool-using species, before they can spread into the cosmos.  

And the most ‘popular’ failure mode they’ve largely glommed-onto?  The notion that “technology democratizes the means of destruction, until even small groups or individual lunatics will have it in their power to slay billions, or topple civilization.”

Now, to be clear, as one who catalogued the largest number of “fermi” theories for the longest time, I do rank a Technological Self-Destruction Filter as one of my top ten plausibles. But five or six others rank much higher, in my estimation. 

Sure, we should, as a society, innovate and invest to ensure that our odds improve!  And I argue elsewhere – in both fiction and nonfiction - that we’ll do this best by moving forward with technology transparently, so every dangerous loony knows that he is seen – not by an all-powerful state but by peers and neighbors who welcome positive-sum innovations, but quickly denounce negative-sum actions.  

I type all this with the Las Vegas mass-shooting fresh in memory. Citing the Fermi Paradox, "filterists" claim that technology is empowering individuals & small groups to wreak havoc. Thus, other species out there either clamp down, forbidding technology and democracy… or else some lone tech-empowered maniac makes them extinct. Either way, no one goes out to the stars. 

It’s a tenable hypothesis and worry. And sure, let’s start taking vigorous precautions. Still... those who claim it is the underlying Fermi explanation are leaping to an absurd conclusion. We – not Homo sapiens, per se, but this quirky-creative-accountable offshoot civilization -- are the counter-example! An open transparent society, empowers millions of citizens to spot each others’ stupidities and cancel many of them.

Elsewhere (and at several Washington alphabet agencies) I’ve described how the ratio of sane to insane practitioners of a dangerous, dual-use technology can converge toward overall safety. But demonstrably this can only happen in an open, and not a tightly controlled society.

And that (I believe) is a paramount answer to the Fermi Paradox. There is a way to skirt the filter of tech-driven self-destruction, but few species or societies ever try it. Instead of clamping with fierce, top-down control (the method prescribed in 99% of past/feudal human nations) we should stay true to the opposite approach that gave us everything. 

Including - for the first time - hope.

== Alas, the nuts are shouting on our "behalf" yet again ==

More on METI: I am cited briefly in this short essay arguing against any rush to make contact.

Which brings us to the latest METI-stunt. “The San Francisco-based METI Institute sent its message toward the red dwarf star GJ 273 (also known as Luyten's Star), 12 light-years away from Earth. The message was sent in October from the Eiscat transmitter in Tromsø.” 

Now to be clear, I like Doug Vakoch, the METI-head. A nice fellow… and now a cultist, who has declared his intention to perform sneak attacks like this one, avoiding all proper scientific vetting, discussion or process, gambling our future based on questionable assumptions and assertions, some of which he repeats, despite knowing them to be utterly disproved. When Frank Drake sent the “Arecibo Message” in 1974 — a brief blip to the Hercules Cluster, he chose an objective 24,000 light years away, in order not to commit humanity to a fait accompli it might regret. But these fellows insist on praying for salvation from above, on our behalf, without ever consulting us.

In a Newsweek interview, Vakoch said: "Everyone engaged in SETI is already endorsing transmissions to extraterrestrials through their actions." Alas, he knows that is an utter lie. 

Ah, but are “they” already here? The latest – secret – Pentagon UFO sighting investigation team has been shut down.

To be clear, as I point out in my short story “Those Eyes,” the very logic of UFOs comes down as weird and suspect, especially in a world where the number of cameras doubles roughly every year.

My classic 1983 paper on SETI and “The Great Silence” – still the only full review article of nearly all the field’s basic concepts – has been laboriously translated into Turkish!

See the original. Surprisingly, there have been almost no new ideas since then, though plenty of heated opinion! Quarterly Journal of  Royal Astronomical Society, fall1983, v.24, pp 283-309.  

This site that links to many articles and speculations by David Brin about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

== The Moon, redux ==

I'm on the science fiction advisory panel for Peter Diamandis's X Prize Foundation, that has done such spectacular work using prize incentives to get teams working on difficult problems. Example, the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize stimulated advanced in portable diagnostic tools that soon will be available to latch onto your cell phone! 

Alas though, one of the most ambitious of these contests has (for now) gone bust. The Google X Prize -- luring teams to send their own lunar landers to traipse across the Moon without government subsidy -- has passed its deadline. 

I am sure it will be renewed and eventually win great success. Private efforts... and some continuing national science... aimed at the Moon is fine. Heck, I might be proved wrong!

Still, as many of you know, I do not approve of the fixation I referred to, above, of the Republican Party to spend nearly all our NASA budget on a "return to the Moon." There are no defensible reasons for such a boondoggle and zero foreseeable benefits to the United States joining a pack of Apollo wannabes chasing the ego-satisfaction of planting footprints on that dusty and (for now) useless ball.  

Even Andy Weir, author of THE MARTIAN and his way cool sequel ARTEMIS, avows that the only industry with any clear profit potential, down that lunar gravity well, is tourism.  Hence, small surprise that a hotel magnate wants to set up shop, down there!

As I've explained elsewhere, all the scientists and tech entrepreneurs and people who can sniff trillions in wealth want to go mine asteroids!  An eventuality that legacy Earthly mining interests are desperate to prevent. Think about how that might have influenced this GOP-loony obsession for the Moon.

Ah well... this was how I put it in a snarky FB posting:

"One of dozens of actions taken by the villain in the still-suppressed novel THE SIBERIAN CANDIDATE, to undermine the US and the West. We're living in a 2075 simulacrum holo-sim dramatization of that best-seller. I won't spoil it for you. But civilization eventually prevails. The moon is left to dullard Apollo-imitators while America gets stunningly rich on asteroids and Phobos and Mars."

It's a trap. Like every single thing done and said by the confederate forces that took Washington.

Space: big plans and misplaced schemes!

I'm preparing to head east for a meeting of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC)... and a couple of other DC area events: one for the White House (OSTP), one for the Caltech Alumni Assn, and an AIAA panel on future military aircraft... followed by an appearance at the Ideacity idea festival in Toronto. 

Busy trip. Busy topics. Busy times for a civilization that deserves far-seeing citizens and leaders.

== Thinking big about space ==

If you are anywhere near the Washington DC - Baltimore area July 1-3, consider attending the Escape Velocity convention - a micro futuristic world's fair focusing on Science Fiction and STEAM education, sponsored by the new DC area Museum of Science Fiction.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced an ambitious new plan to land an unmanned spacecraft on Mars as soon as 2018 with NASA providing technical support -- "an extraordinary collaboration between the public and private sectors in an effort to eventually get humans to the Red Planet."

As no doubt all of you know, in another success for Elon: SpaceX launched a communications satellite into orbit and for the fourth time they were able to recover the rocket, again on a drone ship at sea. This was another really tough geosynchronous launch like the previous one and hence may not be re-usable except for spares. But that just makes it double impressive! And... onboard cameras covered the rocket's descent.

Amazon and Blue Origins CEO Jeff Bezos wants to build giant factories in space... to save the Earth, proclaiming a vision of "millions of people living and working in space."

After an initial failure, NASA  inflated the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, an essential tech for human-crewed spaceflight. And we are on our way to 2016 being as terrific a year for our outward progress as fantastic as 2015 was.

Canadian firm Thoth Technology Inc. has been granted both U.S. and U.K. patents for an inflatable tower designed to take astronauts up into the stratosphere, so they can then be propelled into space. A freestanding structure complete with an electrical elevator up to a 20km (12.5 miles) high launch platform.  In other words in all ways precisely the design that I described in my novel Sundiver (1980). Anyone remember the Vanilla Needle? One difference.  Mine was big enough that balloons could use buoyancy in the high pressure space to lift cargoes most of the way.

Yuri Milner, the Russian philanthropist and Internet entrepreneur, announced a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of robots no bigger than iPhones to Alpha Centauri. “Once in orbit, the probes would unfold thin sails and then, propelled by powerful laser beams from Earth,” say reports The $10 billion project aims to accelerate the mini-probes to a fifth of the speed of light… perhaps a bit of an ambitious goal for Earth-based lasers just a decade or two from now.  See also “Instead of starships, try StarChips.”

A more extensive exploration of Milner’s many Breakthrough Institute projects, in collaboration with Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and former NASA Ames head Pete Worden -- including a vast expansion of SETI, can be found in The Atlantic, and a detailed technical description of the plans will appear on the project’s website.

A final note on this, for now.  Those of you who have purchased Insistence of Vision know that one story - “The Avalon Probes” – offers up an ironic commentary on exactly this approach. And of course… it’s an early version of exactly the scenario that I mapped out – more seriously detailed - in Existence. With one exception.  I proposed that before going interstellar we aim for an earlier, intermediate goal of the solar gravitational lens focal zone, just 550 astronomical units out.  Seriously, the Breakthrough Institute could probably use one more advisory board member….

== Forcing a return to the (useless) moon, instead of getting rich out there ==

Space politicized? The current U.S. House of Representatives, already the laziest and most dogmatically useless national legislative body in American history, has now altered NASA’s budget, forcing the space agency to return to a Bush Era priority: “no funds are included in this bill for NASA to continue planning efforts to conduct either robotic or crewed missions to an asteroid. Instead, NASA is encouraged to develop plans to return to the Moon.”

To be clear, there should be nothing political about these priorities. I serve on neutral commissions to evaluate missions based on their likely scientific and other outcomes. Nearly all scientists agree that there is little or nothing to be gained from any near term manned return to the sterile lunar surface, which offers humanity nothing of any near future value. Though the region called 'cis-lunar space' - the orbit just above the moon - is seen as extremely valuable.

In contrast, both scientific and commercial interest in asteroids is intense, with several nations and companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries eagerly investing in what could be the 21st Century’s giga-Gold Rush.

The Obama Administration’s and NASA’s goal for manned flight - ramping up operations in lunar orbit, learning to both study asteroidal resources and work on extended missions - is exactly right and supported by the best expert advice.  

Expertise that the current House leadership banished from Congress when they disbanded their own Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) for the crime of presenting them with fact-based analyses. Instead, leaders like Dennis Hastert, Thomas DeLay, John Boehner and Paul Ryan chose to rely on majority members’ gut instincts.

Those guts have made this matter - which should be nonpartisan and scientific - part of culture war, with one party praising Return To The Moon for no other reason, certainly not science or potential profit. Their sole rationalization? “The Europeans and Chinese are talking about moon trips!”

Yeah, so? Let the Chinese and Europeans and billionaire tourists have that sterile ball. We have lifted our gaze to more interesting and likely far more rewarding vistas. Vistas that only the United States can take on, instead of being copycats.  (Hint for U.S. voters: let's get rid of those twits?)

There's more. When the Obama Administration canceled the Bush boondoggle Constellation Programs, it seemed that money might be spent on actual missions to explore the cosmos.  Instead, Congress in 2010 imposed a restoration of core elements of Constellation, called the Space Launch System (SLS), resurrecting many Space Shuttle components for a system without any mission on the near or intermediate horizons.  And now the GOP-run House and Senate have since imposed increases in the SLS budget, mostly at the expense of science missions.  All of this against a backdrop of success in the Obama endeavor to spin off and commercialize orbital launch services to private companies, which are developing capabilities at a vastly quicker rate.  (Example: most of the expensive SLS systems will be rendered redundant by - for example - the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Dragon capsule.)

“Unfortunately, once the rocket is built, the expenses don't end. Ground crews must be kept ready, supply lines kept open, and contractors taken care of. These fixed costs can be enormous. For the space shuttle, those costs amounted to about $2.5 billion annually—whether the vehicle flew or not…”  So much for the  party that opposes government boondoggles.  Of course part of it is pure pork: Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), wants SLS because it is managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. And MSFC has been Instrumental for 30 years in systematically preventing humans from getting into space.  

See my earlier posting: Does the moon beckon us back?

Asteroids seem a more promising target in the near future....