Implementing The Space Option

Elaboration & Dissemination of a New Rationale for Space

Part 2: The Space Option

Marco C. Bernasconi & Arthur R. Woods*

Paper IAA.8.1-93-764 a & b presented at the
44th International Astronautical Congress, Graz, Austria. October 16-22

See Part 1

Abstract

During the last few years, space activities have entered a phase of strong decline. It has been argued that this lapse is linked to a divorce between space programs and national agendas, and that the Space Option – the use of the capabilities and resources of space to the fullest for providing to humanity what it needs to survive and prosper – is the most logical and only ethical justification for a continued, and expanded, space program. This paper discusses the history and the evolution of the Space Option and summarizes current work on the subject. The multiple connections between Space Option and societal fabric are analyzed. The activities of the OURS Foundation in this field are outlined, and some first ‘lessons learned’ are reported.

1.  Introduction

Events during the last few years have clearly shown that space activities have entered a phase of strong decline: the question to be asked is: Why? In a previous paper (Bernasconi & Woods, 1993 – referred to as Part I), the current status of the astronautical enterprise was analyzed and a plan for improving it was outlined. Furthermore, as a first step, a comprehensive, and non- exclusive, rationale for astronautics was presented.

Krafft Ehricke, with the prescience that was part of his vision, repeatedly addressed the issue of the future of space development. At least as early as 1970, he stated: “While civilization is more than a high material living standard, it is nevertheless based on material abundance. It does not thrive on abject poverty or in an atmosphere of resignation and hopelessness. It needs vigor as well as vision. […] Therefore, the end objectives of solar system exploration are […] social objectives in the sense that they relate to, or are dictated by, present and future human needs.” (Ehricke, 1970).

However, in the intervening years the astronautical community has largely ignored such basic advice. It is our conclusion – drawn after many years of observation and analysis of, as well as work in, the space field – that the current decline in space activities is directly correlated to this fact. It was therefore concluded that, currently, the theme which can best justify continued and increased space development is the Space Option, i.e. a program aimed at using space to the fullest for contributing to the  solution of the problems confronting our civilization, in total compliance with the Ehricke’s recommendation.

In the present paper (Part II), the Space Option concept is defined in greater detail, and its historical origins and evolution are traced. It is pointed out that this concept is a multi- dimensional theme, that anchors the astronautical endeavour to numerous points within the societal fabric. A last Section introduces the Space Option related activities of the OURS Foundation, recapitulates the work to date, and reviews some lessons learned in the process.

Steps to follow are, e.g., the discussion of the economic feasibility of the Space Option, and of the cultural changes needed to reduce the costs of space operations.

Probably the most innovative aspect of our program is the recourse to an interdisciplinary framework for its implementation which, if it fits naturally with the philosophy of the initiative, it has never before been exploited to such a degree. The OURS Foundation has been established as a cultural and astronautical entity; its art projects can therefore be integrated with the Space Option program and their public attractiveness will provide a vehicle for the dissemination of the relevant facts.

2.  Concept Evolution

The Space Option concept has never been far from the reflections of the major astronautical leaders, from the earliest pioneers on. However, it possesses a specificity which has caused it to be discussed by only a small group of researchers. Because of this ambiguous relationship between it and the mainstream astronautical thought, its evolution has to be first considered within the historical development of the philosophy and the objectives of astronautics.

The initial astronautical objective and rationale was one: acquiring the capability to leave Earth; philosophical background was provided, if at all, by what has been referred to above as the ‘evolutionary perspective’. The first target was a flight to the Moon, an enterprise with an already long literary tradition, to be then followed by the flight to Mars and to other planets; interstellar flight (migration, even, as already exemplified by Goddard, 1918) was the final objective.

It may well be argued that it was the mechanization analysis which led to the concept of orbital bases as opportune, even necessary, way stations to the planets (see, e.g., Oberth, 1923); further consideration of such orbiting stations, of their functions and possible applications, as well as of their support needs and growth potential, led on to the free-space colony idea (Tsiolkovsky, 1903; Bernal, 1929; Romick, 1956; Cole, 1960; later, O’Neill, 1974; Ehricke, 1975). On the other hand, lunar – and, to an even greater degree, planetary – landings could hardly be visualized as just short hops: long staying times were thought mandatory to obtain a reasonable return from the project. From such perspective, the evolutionary step from surface base to colony is even smaller. It can further be observed that these thoughts are so basic to both astronautical pioneers and to their contemporary science-fiction writers, that it seems somewhat artificial to attempt to establish precedence: all one could do would be to quote papers in the journals of the interplanetary societies, or trace ideas offered in books published by scientists of the time. Yet, at such an early conceptual stage, hard science-fiction seems just as legitimate a means for the diffusion of ideas as publication in more technical (but, at the time, hardly more respected) journals.

Similarly logical is the thought of using local resources. Again, the first space resource to be used in-situ is solar energy; and, as already  noted, just as old is the idea to transmit it to Earth for utilitarian purposes. But utilization of extraterrestrial assets extends beyond energy and the, just as logical, use of soil for thermal and radiation insulation functions: the planetology of the day allowed speculations of directing, e.g., Martian atmospheric oxygen to breathing aggregates. Again, the use of lunar resources in the literature is so prominent as to make moot any dispute on the ‘invention’ of extraterrestrial materials for base/ colony support, and even for export, purposes (see, e.g., Campbell’s “The Moon is Hell”, 1951, or Clarke’s “Earthlight”, 1955).

Therefore, before the actual launch of any artificial Earth satellite, we have in place not only the concept of the exploratory flights to solar and extrasolar planets, but also of orbital and surface bases and colonies (up to the size of world-ships), exploiting local space resources for their survival, and growth, as well as for ‘exports’ (at least in a very generic sense) to the mother planet. Colonies are of course seen as having an economic function (at the very least, to be economically self- supporting); hence, from today’s perspective, they can be said to incorporate that function which will later be called space industrialization, and which is symptomatic for the Space Option. Figure 1 summarizes the link between the major historical themes – as they relate to the hardware developments – of the astronautical thought and the Space Option.

3.  Space Option History

3.1   The Intellectual Ground

A fair number of authors has contributed to the Space Option. Obviously, numerous are those who have studied the feasibility, the technical methods, and the positive economic impact, of in- situ exploitation of extraterrestrial resources. However, the list of those authors who have reflected on the Space Option properly speaking, i.e. placing its relation to society in the foreground, is substantially shorter. It must further be noted that the following discussion of the various authors’ contributions to the concept is perforce limited to what has been discussed in their publications: any of them may have thought about the Space Option concept earlier than reported but, of course, we have no way to know their thoughts.

We have already seen how the space colony idea is derived from the concept of orbital bases, and itself provides the ground for reflections on the economic utilization of resources from outside the Earth (see also Salkeld, 1975).

Hale (1869) conceived the use of an artificial Earth satellite for navigation purposes, and presented it in the story ‘The Brick Moon’; the satellite is large, to ensure its visibility from the ground, and ‘accidentally’ carries with it into orbit 37 persons involved in its manufacturing. Nicolaides, Macomber, and Kaula (1963) have pointed out that the story covered following “Modern-day satellite functions: geodesy, mapping, reconnaissance, communications, manned space operations, sea surveillance, bioscience research, meteorological research, orbital rendezvous demonstration, subliming heat transfer demonstration, and manned space laboratory.” Tsiolkovsky (1903) gives a more technical discussion to these ‘islands of the ether’, including artificial gravity and a ‘greenhouse’ for recycling air and providing food.

Figure 1: The Space Option Concept Evolution

With the progress of the astronautical studies, work focused on ‘higher-priority’ issues, i.e. on the space stations (e.g., Oberth, 1923; Ross, 1949; von Braun, 1952). Furthermore, the role of fiction stories for the discussion of novel concepts remained very strong, with a continuity stretching from Hale and Tsiolkovsky to Heinlein (1941) and Clarke (1952). The re-introduction of space colonies seems due to Romick (1956), with a design of a 1-km spacecraft supporting 20,000 people. This was followed by the more detailed treatment given by Cole (1960), and by the Dyson (1960) hypothesis on the ultimate consequences  of the growth of a civilization within a solar system. In the mid-1960s, Ehricke moves beyond the then-current discussions of techno-scientific space stations, and begins an evaluation of Earth- oriented opportunities and benefits from orbital applications. From an initial concept as an orbital hospital (Ehricke & Newsom, 1966), the space habitat evolves through a design for a tourist facility (Ehricke, 1967) into Astropolis, the ‘space city’ (Ehricke, 1971). With the publication of the paper by O’Neill (1974), the space-colony discourse enters the contemporary age, with a growing involvement by numerous other researchers.

The early authors who considered space colonization also fully recognized the value of extraterrestrial resources to astronautical operations, and for commerce between the colonies: export from the colonies to Earth, however, was rather seen as the exception even by forward-looking researchers as Dandridge Cole or Fritz Zwicky. Cole (1960) mentioned “rare minerals, pharmaceuticals, electronic equipment, etc.” as areas in which “Moon- or Mars-based industries […] could compete for Earth markets”. Zwicky (1968), while explicitly making reference to “materials extracted on the Moon […] to be used on the Earth”, limits his attention to geological samples for further study,(1) and  to “very pure elements, perfect crystals, etc.”, again invoked mainly for research purposes. Then, Peter Glaser (1968) introduced the concept for satellite power station: energy is to be collected in space and made available to Earth users through its transmission in the form of a microwave beam. This is a forceful affirmation of the potential economic significance of extraterrestrial resources.

Thus, by the time the Apollo spacecraft began to fly to the Moon, astronautical pioneers, visionaries, technologists, planners, artists had generated a comprehensive vision of the relevance of our astronautical future. All the concepts, however, remained of rather academic interest, and subjected to the political whims that were beginning to break havoc in the space program planning process at the end of the 1960s. The time scale for implementation of any astronautical theme was beginning to stretch, fast and faster.

1.) This limited viewpoint is definitely not due to ‘academic restraint’, since only about a page earlier, Zwicky (1968) had mentioned ‘laboratory production of foodstuffs directly of indirectly with the use of solar energy’ as a possible solution to world hunger,  and had mused whether ‘man can conceivably use solar radiation to produce food in his body.’

3.2 Space Option on Scene: 1970-1984

As Stine (1985) has observed: “The most influential photograph of the Apollo […] program […] was the one showing the Planet Earth hanging against the empty blackness of space. […] It led to the concept of ‘spaceship Earth’ […]. But people didn’t realize that the photograph also showed the finite Earth as part of a Universe without limits, a Universe in which mankind had already started to sail the star sea.”

The rationale for space was about to receive a boost because of the emergence of a movement which Bova (1981) called of the “new Luddites”. That the Earth – as a planet – is finite and that, therefore, there must be a limit to the number of people it can support; that (some) resources may one day be exhausted and that – more significantly – wastes tend to accumulate, are issues a teenager can identify. However, in 1972 a group of people purported to demonstrate with ‘mathematical’ accuracy that (i) this was indeed the case, and (ii) we therefore were running to catastrophe unless (iii) we accepted a substantial change in our way of living. Jones (1981) has observed that an “increase in living standards [leads] to the feeling in certain quarters that there is something sinful about all this.” For sure, ideology and psychology were much the stronger forces at work behind the “limits to growth” recommendations.

It must be remembered that the environmental movement had begun a few years earlier, based on real issues; however, it soon became an ideological movement, whose leaders swiftly grew impenetrable to facts and commonsense. Central to the ecologist argument is the finiteness of Earth, but obviously sunlight comes from outside the planet, and thereto also flows the re- radiated thermal energy; it would thus seem but an easy step to the acknowledgement that, while Earth may be geometrically finite, it is part of a much larger system. One of us (MCB) can, however, bear witness to the fact that this is not so for a true ecologist after trying to explain this fallacy to a university lecturer: for him, space was just a location for the Sun and a sink for ‘natural’ heat radiation.

The early-to-mid 1970s, then, saw the a flourishing of arguments aimed at countering the bleak future of “decreasing expectations.” The most recognized forecasters largely denied the actuality of the crises and invoked ‘normal technological progress’ as perfectly able to take care of whichever issues might be real. A few ‘voices calling in the desert’ pointed out that even the finite solar system provided enough settings and enough resources to allow, at worst, time to sort out all the impending crises and work on suitable solutions. Almost nobody took notice.

In the present context – twenty years later! – it is important to make clear that the whole issue is no longer a merely technical one, to determine which of the different models is the correct one: such a finding is by now socially completely irrelevant. The kind of ‘progress’ obtained to the proponents of the ‘technological fixes’ is evident to anybody, just by scanning the daily news – at least from a middle-European perspective. Environmentalism is having a field day, and the damage to the sociopolitical fabric is mounting, but you still don’t need one single byte to list the issues or crises solved by this approach. Forrester’s original model (WORLD-2) predicted rapid decay of both standard of living and global population as we move into the 21st century (see, e.g., Martin, 1985): surely not all those people will succumb to illness and famine. Predicting resources and environmental wars, as well as civil bloodshed, is a ‘safer bet’ than predicting a peaceful future in harmony with nature.

Confronting the problems facing humanity, Estrade (1974) came “to the conclusion that space can play a decisive role in satisfying the energy needs of man today and in the future.” Stine (1974) spoke of a ‘third industrial revolution’. Berry (1974) rejected the limits to growth on conventional economic terms, but coupled it with future expansion into space. O’Neill (1975) proceeded from space colonization as a technical and intellectual exercise to developing a societal justification for it; later, Brand (1977) introduced O’Neill’s concept to ‘spaceship Earth’ enthusiasts, with mixed results, at best.

Michaud (1975, 1977) forcefully argued for space flight and extraterrestrial colonization as “the means for unlimited human growth” (our emphasis), pointing out that “scarcity and freedom can never be fully reconciled”, since it “forces authorities to allocate resources, goods, opportunities, and roles, and encourages a hierarchical organization of society hostile to liberty.” Finally, he raised the fundamental, but still largely ignored question, of the comparative costs of non-space approaches to survival and growth. The study of the potential role of space resources for the human future on Earth received increasing attention by a growing number of authors (e.g., Arnold & Duke, 1978; Hassall, 1979; Bova, 1981; Hartmann, 1984), with several of them concentrating on the energy issue (e.g., Glaser, 1978; Vajk, 1980; Criswell, 1984).

All the above contributions, in what can only be a incomplete list, are significant. But without doubt, the giant in this field is Krafft A. Ehricke, who wrote on the subject of the rationale for the astronautical endeavour and, in particular, of the Space Option for more than 25 years – from 1957 until his death in 1984. His 1957 discussion of the rationale for astronautics is placed on a rather philosophical level (Ehricke, 1957). But, after 1965, the practical benefits of space for a ground- based society begin to upstage conventional scientific arguments, since “… exploration constitutes nascent utilization” (Ehricke, 1969).

The programmatic paper, the ‘manifesto’ of the Space Option is, in our opinion, to be found in another presentation to the New York Academy of Sciences (Ehricke, 1970). In the introductory sections of that paper, the rationale for astronautics is reviewed again: the theme of the meeting being “solar system exploration”, this is the label used, but clearly all the arguments apply

• even more cogently – to astronautics in general. The discussion opens with the basic affirmation of relevance:

“Most justifications are based essentially on scientific considerations. But there is more to [solar system exploration]. A causal relationship can be developed between solar system exploration and its importance to the future of our planet as we know it & thereby of all the people on it. […]”

What Ehricke will later call the extraterrestrial imperative must be at the core of any sincere and rational environmental concern:

“The problem of maintaining the present terrestrial environment as much as possible can be attacked along three lines: […] last, but not least [of which is] to work for a gradual removal of environment burdens from Earth’s surface as far as practicable. [… This] third, and space technologically most advanced, line of attack is based on the growing world need for electric energy and for minerals. […] In addition, it can reduce the burdens resulting from associated manufacturing processes. […]”

Hence, an appeal for farsightedness and sanity is formulated, an appeal that, by now, has been accessible – but not heeded – for twenty-three years:

“Current justifications for exploring other  worlds should perhaps give added recognition to these fundamental aspects. […] The end objectives  of solar system exploration are […] social objectives in the sense that they relate to, or are dictated by, present or future human needs. […] Thus, the payoff of solar system exploration involves both full understanding of our own planet’s dynamics & the utilization of extraterrestrial resources. Scientific objectives are fundamental and important. But there is really no logical reason why solar system exploration should not be related to this greater perspective from the start.”

And, as a premonitory advice to those who might have thought good science and vicarious adventure would be enough to justify a sound solar system exploration program, comes the reminder:

“Fifty years of inspirational & visionary justifications of space flight produced nothing more in America than Vanguard – and even that most reluctantly – in spite of material wealth & an abundance of technological capability.”

There is, there cannot be, any turning back for a sensible humanist who has ‘discovered’ the space option concept. During the last fourteen years of his life, Ehricke will return to, and expand on, these basic theses for the social relevance of astronautics. We count at least twenty papers over that period, dedicated to discussing the hope of the ‘extraterrestrial imperative’ for an ‘open world’.

3.2   Current Work: 1985 to Date

An important point is that, by 1979 at the latest, the arguments for space utilization had been published and presented to the major Western  space agencies and industrial organizations, and that the concepts had been made available on a fairly wide scale: the political response was a devastating silence. Many of us understood then than the fight was essentially hopeless and, while continuing to repeat the message at every opportunity, concentrated on making a living and implicitly joined the ranks of the ‘problems will solve themselves’ party.

Martin (1985) took a fresh approach. Grant (1984) had written a version of Forrester’s WORLD-2 model to analyse the evolution of a worldship’s society: Martin now used it to, first, review the impact of the delay of implementing Forrester’s original recommendations only in the year 2000; then, to evaluate the consequences of following solutions:

• substitution, leading to a reduction of natural resources usage rate to 10% in 2050;
• low pollution, as above, but with an additional reduction of the pollution rate to 10% in 2100;
• space

All models but the last one lead to declining world population and standard of living, this parameter decaying to a (small) fraction of the current level. Even the Space Option version of the model cannot avoid a dip in the values of those two parameters, but the loss is relatively small and is followed by substantial recovery. A further result was obtained, and covered the consequence of delaying implementation of the Space Option (originally foreseen for 2050) by 50 years: the results were found to be only marginally better that for the standard run. These data led to following conclusions: “There is a gateway to the Solar System through which mankind must pass, but the time when the gate is open is very short. […] a high technology approach provides a way out of the Malthusian jungles of Forrester and Meadows, using their model. As a prediction it has no more validity, of course, than their work does. It does show, however, that there is another way.” (Martin, 1985).

Schultz (1988) extended Martin’s work by modifying the WORLD-2 model with the inclusion of a number of economic variables which provide “a rudimentary ‘duplicate’ extraterrestrial system.” The conclusions of this work are given mainly in term of the ‘system reversal time’, i.e. the time between the peak in the population curve and any minimum successively occurring in the population trend. The system reversal times thus obtained are quite large – between 100 and 400 years – and depend from the fraction of capital invested in space and on the durability of this investment. Surprisingly, the increase in system reversal time is essentially a linear function of the implementation’s start year. (2) It must be noted that, in the model runs presented by Schultz (1988), the standard of living – while falling – seem to be recovering faster than population, and in any case remains a substantial fraction of the current value, for large fractions of capital investment in space. This seems to be the driving parameter, and it was found that at least 30% of the non-agricultural capital ought to be invested in space.

Yamagiwa and Nagatomo (1992) have also used a modified WORLD-2 model to analyze the effect of what is considered the Space Option centerpiece – power from space – on the Earth’s environment and societal evolution. Under the worst-case assumption that SPS units are manufactured on ground and launched (using chemical rockets) into geostationary orbit, their model has added parameters for the energy investment in SPS and the consequent extraterrestrial sector. They discuss the energy and mass requirements for the production of a space photovoltaic power unit of given power rating – and they are led to observe on the rapid progress incurred in this field since the early SPS studies. The energy losses on the Earth side include the manufacturing energy for the photovoltaic plant, the (expendable) transportation vehicle, and of the propellants for it, as well as the chemical energy of said propellants. The gains are, of course, the power produced by the SPS once on station. Following operational assumptions have been used by Yamagiwa and Nagatomo (1992):

• start of the energy investment into SPS in 2000
• availability of improved basic technology in 2100 – whereby the production energy for solar cells is halved (from 15 to 7 GJ/kW) and the plant mass-specific power tripled (from 100 to 300 W/kg).

It was found that, for an SPS energy investment of 1% of the natural resources usage rate (expressed in MJ/a) there is no population catastrophe! The standard of living, however, is decreased to about 9/16 of the peak value, and seems to recover only very slowly: this is probably due to the fact that there is a, roughly linear, continuation of the population growth. For the SPS capital discard rate (SCIDN, a measure of the durability of the capital investment), the yearly degradation rate of solar cells was used; a parametric analysis showed that for SCIDN = 0.03, the minimum energy investment required to avoid catastrophe is 2.1% of the overall resources usage.

These results lead to the question of how much should be invested in space, in real-world units (dollars of GNP fraction). There is, however, no simple answer. Examination of statistical figures for about 75% of the world’s GNP producers, suggests that the capital investment fraction may be of some 22%: thus, at least about 7% of the world GNP ought to be invested in space, beginning in the year 2000. This is a factor 50 – 100 times greater than what is currently spent for space exploration and for the limited applications of current astronautical technology. Since the ‘optimum’ start date identified by Schultz (1988) is by now only 7 years away, the needed yearly growth rates would have to be as high as 75-93%: this seems hardly possible, even after having given due consideration to the fact that the investments will not all go to the established space industry but, rather, that all engineering field (mining, chemical, civil engineering, machinery, etc.) will have to be involved. Delaying until 2010, brings the growth rates down to 26 – 31%. It must be noted that this does not need to be all ‘new’ investment, but can rather come out of a progressive shift from Earth- based activities into the space arena.

2.) Schultz seems to give excessive significance on the existence of ‘actual minima’ for some values of the start year; it would appear to us as essentially  irrelevant that one might theoretically shave 10 years off the system reversal time by beginning implementation of the Space Option in 2000 instead of 1990. Given the fact that nothing is being done, it is by far more relevant that more than ten years will be added if implementation is delayed from 2000 until 2010!

4.  A Current Definition

Today, we can define the Space Option concept as the only identified option that can sustain the human civilization in the long term. The Space Option is based on the use of extraterrestrial resources but obviously not for in-situ utilization, in support of either science or exploration purposes. Rather, it is fundamental for the Space Option concept its association with the idea to apply said resources, or products thereof, for Earth use, i.e. with the imports of space products to Earth, whereas these occur on a significant, not sporadic, basis to provide for a conspicuous fraction of the needs of primary functions for ground-based societies. It is also recognized that it is urgent to begin with the implementation of the Space Option, because there seems to be a limited window of opportunity during which humanity can choose “between a Space Age and a Stone Age” (Hempsell, 1989), and begin in earnest the work for securing its future.

5.  The Space Option’s Multidimensionality

5.1   Toward Which Future?

Which will be our future? We see three possibilities.

The first is the zero-growth advocated by the greens. The fundamental thing to remember about it are neither green meadows nor happy birds but, literally, billions and billions of suffering humans. The 25%-decrease in world population foreseen by the standard Forrester model (Martin, 1985) to occur during the next century will not be just the consequence of birth control measures, it will require ‘active’ help!

A second option is located, roughly, at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. In this case, one assumes that humans have accepted the fact that theirs is the ‘strongest species’ and that survival is the ‘most natural behaviour;’ they have rejected all ‘prejudices of the past’ and they have undertaken to transform Earth as indeed no other species ever did before. They have penetrated and exploited every corner and resource the planet can possibly offer. Everything is used to provide space for human habitations, and for power, industrial, or food production. This transformed Earth, would bear no resemblance with Trantor: rather, it is the planet described by Robert Silverberg (1970) in the novel “The World Inside”. In such a world too, dictatorship is unavoidable, be it that imposed by the management needs (“This is your cubicle: either take it or jump into the waste chute”), that of some form of religious adaption to the novel environment, or the – just as totalitarian and oppressive – one of inescapable conformism. While the society built on such an option would not be destitute (nor, for that matter, equalitarian), it quite probably would lack the resources for reaching for the stars – even in the improbable case that any such project could be approved: such a construct, however solid and even florid as it may appear, could not tolerate any ripple through its societal fabric.

The third option is the one we have chosen to name the Space Option: acknowledge, at long last, that Earth is not the whole Universe, and use non-Earth parts of this Universe to provide humans with space for living, for industrial and even food production, and with all the resources necessary therefor. But above all, to grant humanity new horizons and a hopeful future!

The first two futures are attempts at mere survival, however they might be packaged. The third future, the Space Option, is of an unspecialized sort, one offering many avenues, varied possibilities, room for different kinds of hope – and the material assets to at least attempt to realize them. The Space Option is not single- minded: its many facets make it not only attractive, but also resilient. In the following subsections, we will try to sketch some of those multiple aspects.

5.2   Economic Growth

Georgescu-Roegen (1980) has called for a new ‘Promethean innovation’ – i.e. one which he has characterized as introducing a (i) qualitative and (ii) self- sustaining change – as the prerequisite for a solution to the present crisis. The Space Option is definitely such a process, in that (i) it provides for the qualitative change from an Earth-limited perspective to the unbounded economic arena of space, and in that (ii) out of a small quantity of Earth-derived resources, it makes accessible those of the whole Solar System – and even that may be only a beginning.

Economic development and, even more, economic growth are modern concepts: before the 17th century, the idea of societal change and the notion that a country might grow richer within the span of single lifetime were unthought of. There seems to be a logical chain from the the intellectual acceptance of changes in the model of the world (begun in the Renaissance) to the birth of the scientific thought, and on to the Illuminism, to the philosophy of government, to democracy, to economic growth, leading eventually to the steep improvement in the standard of living witnessed, however unevenly, during this century. This rapid and, according to the rather scant data available over historical periods, unprecedented growth rate has led some writers to challenge the social and economic value of (fast?) economic growth in an advanced industrial society. They have pointed to such negative occurrences such as traffic congestion, increasing pollution of air and water, despoiling of the landscape, etc. Such thinking has clearly informed, upstream of any mathematical results, the ‘limits to growth’ advocates, who have called for “slower rates of growth in per capita consumption” as the recipe for betterment of the environment. [The] western world is presently experiencing zero growth – fortunately for purely economic reasons, not yet out of political direction (3) – and we all are witnesses to the almost incredible amount of grief this small-scale “real life experiment” is already causing. Furthermore, it must be noted that the above only addresses the situation in the industrialized countries: the plight elsewhere is much more severe, and is the subject of the next section.

Some economists have argued that growth is a transformation whereby certain industries experience a rise in importance followed by an eventual decline, as the market for their output becomes saturated. Therefore – the trendy reasoning goes – growth can be maintained by displacing current industries with enterprises adept at forging ‘ecological’ commodities. However, if the above theory may hold for specific products, e.g., for those which are displaced by new articles, one should not forget

(i) that ‘saturation’ was made possible in the first place by a growth in productivity and an ensuing more general welfare, and (ii) that the replacing articles will still be required. In other words, even if the economists avoid using the term, and like to refer to ‘supply’ and ‘consumption,’ there are basic needs that have to be satisfied if a society is to  be  kept  functioning.  Again,  for  an example, replacing horse carriages with automobiles would have caused but little growth, had there been no increase in the overall, or even relative, number of vehicles. But the productivity increases and the investment multiplier made the new means of conveyance so much more accessible that the old one, that a substantial increment became possible across the board.

Even if one were to assume that the car market is now fully saturated, and that a given population will remain stable, the car industry can only be displaced, if at all, by others providing equivalent services: these may include communication systems, robotic servants, nuclear buggies, or many other contraptions; they will not include tramways of any form to any significant extent, at least not in a free society. And all these future car surrogates will come with a price sticker and will require resources for their manufacture and energy for their operations. Thus, prosperity, energy, and materials will still be needed: obtaining the last two in an acceptable way out of the Earth environment is the main problem.

Furthermore, new tasks can be successfully tackled only after the available wealth has increased correspondingly. Environmental remediation on the scale envisaged is a qualitatively new task, a justified and a logical one brought about by the successful increase in human population and the associated progress in the depletion of high-grade resources. Any attempt at implementing such remedial actions in absence of an adequately expanded substance is a straight recipe for widespread conflicts (economic, political, military, social). To avoid such massive turmoils, the only solution can be to obtain the needed wealth from more conventionally oriented industries, in parallel – at least – with the implementation of environmental programs.

One last point may be given by the conclusion, reached by some investigators, that the U.S. entered the 1840s with a higher per-capita economic base than its European counterparts, and that this may have been the result of its superior natural resources. This historical example may be used to buttress the commonsense observation that it pays to access and exploit plentiful resources, whenever these are available. Of course, it is the Space Option that accesses a store of resources, which not only is immense, but can also be exploited in an benign way for the Earth biosphere. It follows that the Space Option does not simply represent a long-term alternative to other possible forms of obtaining the necessary economic growth, but is indeed the only realistic path even in the short term.

3.) Even if this is not due to lack of willingness within the body politic. Indeed, a space official initially  argued with one of the authors against the Space Option just because it would allow further population growth.

5.3   Economic Development

The above-mentioned criticism of economic growth as an important societal goal could deserve to be taken somewhat more seriously, if the whole terrestrial globe were already enjoying the benefits, as well as the damages, of advanced industrial economy. As we all know this is not the case, by far. Thus, the problems of finding new resources, identifying new economic growth areas, and generating the substance for supporting the environmental conservation and restoration measures are compounded by orders of magnitude. Similarly increased is the probability of active conflicts for the control of remaining resources. Justifiably, Mayur (1981) has observed that, for the Third World, there isn’t an energy crisis, there is an energy catastrophe.

The ecologists’ recommendations for more efficiency in the uses of, e.g., energy could be worth a sober assessment at its face value were it not for the fact that the worldwide population cannot be promised even such a more efficient level of energy consumption by any ground- based generation method (Criswell, 1984). Therefore, it is an interesting – but hardly surprising – fact that space leaders in the Third World have manifested a far greater readiness to acknowledge the significance of (subsets of) the Space Option for the economic development of their countries (see, e.g., Rao, 1989) than have their colleagues in the industrialized world.

It is neither ‘interesting’ nor ‘ironic,’ but simply tragic that the governments of the industrialized countries largely follow the ecologist philosophy on their home front, and assume the role of technological optimists in their relation with Third World countries. The first approach is, of course, greatly beneficial for them: liberticide policies are always the shorter way to greater power. But asserting to believe in a rosy future – one where to all problems conventional-wisdom (i.e., Earth-based) solutions will be found: population will stabilize, materials will be recycled, energy sources will be found, energy use will be more efficient – is even doubly beneficial. Since, in the assumption, the solutions will be found as a matter of course, nothing really needs to be done! And since, in reality, the solutions will not be so easily forthcoming, more liberticide policies will just have to be passed, with even greater power ensuing! It then can hardly come as a surprise that knowledgeable Third-World representatives take strong exception to the business-as-usual (BAU) attitude and, with vehemence, point out that their countries cannot accept such conducts, which go to the core of their survival.

There are many ways to succor suffering people across the globe. Only taking the Space Option, however, allows a honest promise for a sustainable and adequate economic development.

5.4  Environmental Protection

It is an often repeated aphorism that Astronauts are the best allies for all those persons who sincerely want to protect our planet’s environment. Space flight scholars know the importance of respecting life, its forms and its upholding elements; they also know how unique a habitat, and Earth in particular, can be. But they are just as well able to analyse issues quantitatively, and to distinguish essential from non-essential actions. The vision of an astronautical future imposes the acquisition of all the knowledge necessary to build maintain and operate autonomous ecosystems (an expression, by the way, known to astronauts in its correct meaning much before it became an abused news catchword) outside the terrestrial biosphere. Astronautical technology further provides the means to collect data on the morphology, driving processes, condition, and history of planetary bodies, including Earth. In short, astronautics is both an intellectual and a technical prerequisite for the proper understanding of, and for the search of solution to, the ‘predicament of mankind’.

There is only one path leading away from the dilemma between the necessary economic development and the conservation of the biosphere: it is that form of the Space Option, which Ehricke has defined as a division of labor between Earth and space. For some human purposes, Earth is absolutely necessary; for other, useful activities, it isn’t, and such activities can therefore be removed to extraterrestrial space, with associated environmental benefits. The basic example of the thermal burden associated with power generation is discussed in the next Section.

If any mitigation measures become necessary to conserve the environment, as the growing needs of an increasing population may well make imperative, orbital space is the best location for the requisite apparatus: such elements being outside the biosphere, they can be more easily controlled, or removed, or their function altered, as the case may be, than it would be the case with any factors – inert or living – introduced, e.g., into the atmosphere. Examples in this area are the concept of a screen to reduce the incoming solar heat flux to obviate any temperature increase induced by a greenhouse effect, or the SPACE concept (Singer, 1991). In this context, one can note that the Space Option is not a response to any specific fashionable ‘catastrophe scenario’, such as, e.g., the greenhouse effect. It addresses all such scenari in a flexible way, i.e. by providing responses to basic needs of the world’s inhabitants.

For twenty years, ecologist doctrine has been penetrating society: it ought to be evident by now to well-intentioned and open-minded people that said doctrine is an utter failure. It has not stopped environmental degradation. It has not provided development for the needy. It has not obtained the essential democratic support, not even in the smug European societies. Instead it has generated unproductive political conflicts and stimulated reactions of hopelessness. And it is highly ironic that Earth-lovers are increasingly resorting to liberticide measures to impose a regime they originally described as preferable to the ‘hard technology’ approach for the conservation of the citizens’ freedom. Rather, today it is clear that it is the ecologist approach that leads straight to dictatorship: the risk of the ‘atomic state’ – a misnomer originally but by now apter than you think – is infinitely greater when centralized management of all resources is allowed to become a necessity, to confront a generalized scarcity (Michaud, 1977).

The gardens of Earth can be tended only by a prosperous society: the society which has taken the Space Option.

5.5   Resources

The basic requirement for any life form is energy: energy to do the efforts which are its characteristic and to maintain the order which is needed for its workings. There can be no abrogation of the Second Law of thermodynamics, and energy has to expended just to maintain the cycles of matter within the biosphere. Cycling matter within an industrial economy is no different: and indeed, the more perfect the recycling process, the harder the fight with entropy, and the more energy must be expended in it. Even a hypothetical static society with a perfect recycling machinery (an improbable proposition) would require a very substantial supply of energy.

This is one reason why space-based energy supply systems have been central to the discussion of the Space Option in various forms. But there are four fundamental reasons for this dominance, out of four different domains, which can be summarized as follows:

• energy is of fundamental significance for any human, indeed for any life form’s, activity;
• the thermal burden on the terrestrial environment due to ground-based generation of power at any level compatible with the needs for a human future is
  • so significant (since the needs are large),
  • unavoidable (because of the Second Law),
  • unquestionable (it is not hypothetical), and
  • near-term

as to call for corrective actions, with an implementation beginning in the near- term but not limited in time;

• in any morphological survey, energy appears as the “product” most easily transported, first in the form of information but then, almost as easily, at power levels;
• current ground power system projects are already large-scale enterprise, and indeed reach a scale quite comparable to that of space-based systems.

Indeed, power generation has so much dominated the discussion, that this fact has been identified as a weakness in the design of the astronautical endeavour (Johnson & Holbrow, 1987). To this critique, three replies can be outlined. First, space energy plants will have to be manufactured in space, to fully reap the advantages of the Space Option: given the probable scale of such activities, it appears probable that at least some of the space manufacturing plants will reach a level where they can supply similar components to Earth at competitive conditions. This would be part of the multiplier effect of space investments, in particular as it regards the improvement of the Earth’s environment. Second, both considerations

• competitiveness of production and positive environmental impact – apply to the mining and extraction of metals (particularly nickel of asteroidal origin – see e.g. Gaffey & McCord, 1977) formed into shapes that could be glided down to the Earth’s surface. Transportation to any point on the Earth should cost approximately the same and could provide a secure, non- intrusive supply of materials to terrestrial industry. As Ehricke (1971a) has noted, the environmental impact of the manufactures of metallic products is substantially smaller that that of the mining and smelting industries. Third, there will be an (early) class of space products under the label of rare, or valuable, materials and artifacts. An assessment of the acquisition of asteroidal precious metals (platinum, rhodium, palladium) was given by Kuck (1981).

In any case, the Space Option contribution to the solution of the energy problem can take seven forms:

1. the provision of beamed (solar) power through space power stations;
2. mining or breeding of low- enthalpy fuels, which can then be imported Earthside (e.g., helium-3, antimatter);
3. use of orbital solar reflectors,
4. safe disposal of nuclear wastes;
5. decrease of the energy pay-back time for ground-based power facilities, through the use of extraterrestrial materials and manufacture;
6. decrease of the energy consumption needs within the biosphere through removal to space of further mining and industrial activities;
7. exploitation of space environmental characteristics (vacuum, remoteness) to advance power generation and associated technologies (e.g., fusion reactors, high-energy physics).

Space limitations forbid even a cursory summary of the very extensive literature on energy and space projects. The fundamental contributions of Glaser (1968) and O’Neill (1974) for the Solar Power Station (SPS) concept have already been mentioned. The power for an SPS can be derived from a nuclear source (Williams, 1973) or from the Sun, using then photovoltaic arrays – with or without concentration – or thermal cycles for the the conversion into electrical power. Between 1977 and 1980, NASA and the Department of Energy conducted an SPS assessment under the Concept Development and Evaluation Program (CDEP – Koomanoff, 1980) and concluded that there were no major technical, environmental, or economic obstacle to the operation of such a system – which was conceived to be built completely out of Earth materials! It has been shown, however, that it is possible to design an SPS containing less than 1% of non- lunar materials (DuBose, 1986). Finally, Waldron & Criswell (1985) have introduced the concept of using directly the Moon as a platform for the generation and beaming of power.

The issues of power transmission and siting of the Earth-side receiving stations have been addressed in paticular through European studies (Henderson & Stark, 1980; Collins, 1980).  A model to assess the economics of a global SPS system, including the use of lunar materials, has developed by Koelle (1987), while Collins and Tomkins (1991) have introduced the concept of ‘microwave fuel’ to help assess the economy of early space power plants. Finally, ESA has supported a study on power beaming spacecraft, which has defined a small-scale demonstration mission (Hannigan, 1992).

But already in 1983, a sounding rocket experiment was conducted by Japan to investigate nonlinear interactions of a strong microwave beam with the ionosphere (Kaya et al., 1986). This has been led to the discussion of a 10- MW SPS orbital test bed (Nagatomo, 1985), and  to the ‘SPS 2000’ concept for a demonstrator able to supply power to a number of rectennas located within an equatorial band, i.e. mostly to Third World countries which are more seriously affected by the high costs of conventional electrical power generation approaches (Nagatomo & Kiyohiko, 1991; Collins, 1991).

The positive impact of space power systems, both on economic development and on environmental issues, has received significant attention during the last 20 years. On the development aspects, it may suffice to mention the work by Criswell and colleagues (1980), Jasentuliyana and Ludwig (1983), and Leonard (1991a). Potentially negative environmental consequences of SPS have been abundantly analysed from the CDEP (with a strong negative bias because of the assumption of Earth origin) onwards; Leonard (1991b) has provided one more contemporary perspective.

As Ehricke (1971b) has remarked, the major – and unavoidable – problem with respect to successfully supplying sufficient amounts of power to a mid-21st century world resides in the thermal burden, i.e. in the introduction into the biosphere of energy in addition to the ‘natural’ flow. All practical sources of energy contribute to this phenomenon, with the possible exception of hydropower: even ground photovoltaic plants are not without impact, since they cause significant albedo changes over what would be very large areas, were they to be used for large-scale power production. Using the data of Criswell (1991), it can be calculated that a sudden switch to space power stations could supply the world population with the amount of power per capita available in the industrialized countries, without increasing the thermal burden! Of course, such a switch would also eliminate the production of pollutants and ‘greenhouse gases’ associated with energy production and power generation, would reduce deforestation associated with fuel collection, as well as the other related environmental damages. And of course, the growth of population – optimistically expected to more than double during the next century – would multiply the energy needs, and hence induce a larger thermal burden. However, the rise in consumption could then fairly easily be moderated by a combination of efficiency increases, exploitation of renewable energies (wind, biomass, etc.) at a reasonable rate (not in an exasperate, or desperate, fashion as currently often advocated), and finally by the decrease of demand due to the successive removal of industrial production to the space environment. Under what seem very conservatives assumptions, then, the population-due thermal burden increase could be reduced from 130% to 45%. All other environmental benefits would continue to accrue. Under the same assumptions, as applicable, the business-as- usual attitude would call for a thermal burden larger by 350% than the current level. On absolute terms, such a bau thermal burden corresponds to 0.13% of the total solar flux absorbed by the Earth: it also corresponds, however, to some 25% of the power flow through the biosphere!

Low-enthalpy fuels condense within a small mass and volume a high amount of exploitable energy. Microwave fuel is very good in terms of mass, but it cannot be stored: nuclear fuels are much better in this respect. The case has been made for a space-derived fusion fuel, helium-3. Already in 1978, the BIS Daedalus team examined three possibilities for obtaining this helium isotope, to be used as thermonuclear propellant (Parkinson, 1978):

• breeding of tritium in a fusion reactor and obtain helium-3 from its decay;
• collecting helium-3 from the solar wind;
• mining the isotope from the atmospheres of the Jovian planets.

The first scheme was later suggested by Ehricke (1982) as an element of his lunar industrialization program, basing on the rationale that, while the deuterium-tritium (D-T) is the ‘easiest’ realizable fusion reaction, it has serious drawbacks in terms of associated radioactivity. Not only some 80% of the reaction energy is released in high-energy neutron, but the reaction calls for a short-lived radionuclide as fuel (tritium, with a 12.3-year half-life). The concept therefore envisages breeding an excess of tritium in D-T reactors on the Moon, and let it decay there to helium-3, which then can be exported towards the Earth and used in reactors designed for the appropriate cycle. Thus, not only the lunar economy would obtain the concentrated power sources needed for its development, but Earth would have access to a rare isotope with a minimized radiation risk.

The second approach has been advocated since 1986 by a team at the University of Wisconsin (Kulcinski & Schmitt, 1987), whereby the Moon is to be used, in effect, as the solar wind collector. As a consequence, very large amounts of regolith

• into which the helium-3 has been implanted with concentrations up to 18 ppb by weight – have to be processed. The very large scale of such operations has led to a critique by Lewis (1991), who has shown that – on a pure energy cost consideration – it would be more convenient to adopt the third option, i.e. mining the atmosphere of Uranus. The Daedalus team had also concluded in favor of such an approach, even if they had selected Jupiter as the

It is well known that Oberth (1923) mentioned the realization of orbital solar mirrors, not only for illumination purposes but also for higher- power applications, e.g. for weather control. Large orbiting reflectors – in different size ranges and for various purposes – were studied sporadically during the 1960s. It was, however, again left largely to Ehricke (1976, 1979, 1980a, b) to give a comprehensive treatment to this facet of the astronautical contribution to the world’s energy supply. NASA sponsored research on the Solares concept (Billman & Gilbreath, 1978), utilizing constellations of orbiting mirrors to provide continuous, and slightly concentrated insolation to ground-based photovoltaic ‘solar farms’.

5.6   External Security

If one analyzes the future scenari outlined above, one can rapidly draw conclusions about the type of political responses that will be suscitated by each one of them. It ought to be obvious that selecting, willingly or by default, a type of future which negates any hope of substantial betterment for the condition of the poorer nations does not appear as the best recipe for a stable and peaceful arrangement between the different states.

Rather, the lack of development opportunities will originate emigration currents, and international tensions. Indeed, this is already happening today. As a consequence, the wrong choice of the future as a political decision can be seen as the determinant for increased measures of polemic posturings, risks of warfare, and fighting actions, world- wide. Later resource-related and environmental wars can be expected (indeed, according to Homer-Dixon and colleagues, 1993, they are already occurring).

Of course, many people have taken the stand that the best approach to avoid the occasion for such conflicts is to provide economic development – even if most of them hasten to add: “by redistribution”. Development without resources? And ‘voluntary’, peaceful impoverishment? Are these stones fit to be built upon?

If one believes that development is a necessary precondition for peace, then one ought also to arrive at the insight the resources are necessary (i) to fuel said development, and (ii) to reduce the tensions. But also one ought to acknowledge that only the Space Option can provide the new, and sufficiently abundant resources to sustain such development: this tension-reducing potential is its greatest contribution to peace and security.

The Space Option will not contribute to world peace by forcing or even stimulating a movement toward a world government: quite to the contrary, the Space Option will help avoid such moves, which can only bring catastrophic consequences for the freedom of all human beings. On the contrary, such mad dreams could be hastened by the pitiful state toward which the BAU policy is leading us (see, e.g., Michaud, 1977).

5.7   Internal Security

Every community has to confront the issue of ‘deviant social behaviour’ – persons who refuse to conform, or whose plans have failed but can still represent a menace for the normal working of the tribe, or of the state. It won’t be any different in the future: utopia does not exist, nor exist lands in ‘noble savages’ “live in perfect harmony with nature and one another”. Recent anthropological research has confirmed this (Konner, 1987): “people… have by sheer biological necessity been highly social throughout their evolution. In social groups, the possibilities of mutual aid arises, but so does the reality of conflicting interests. And once interests clash, paradise is lost.”

This insight can also help us understand some of the critical aspects of the internal security in today’s developed countries. No society ever has rejected violence more strongly, nor invoked social responsibility more fervently than ours. And yet: never before has so much raw violence been manifest within a society: unjustified, wanton, and blind violence. In a crowded world, where daily the future is announced as worse than the present, where many menaces are felt but all are diffuse, and none can serve as a rally point, the potential for conflicting interests is multiplied beyond any previously known measure. And so is, therefore, the violence.

The business-as-usual strategy of sustainable development bases on the assumption that the people in the industrialized countries will acquiesce to their impoverishment by redistribution – under the effect of an appropriate indoctrination campaign. On the basis of all kind of precedents, it appears doubtful that such a campaign can ever be successful, not even in its initial stages. If we were to assume its technical success, then the problem would be to keep the people quiet – and again there is hope this will not happen: even if misery is not the best ally for conquering the world, yet destitute people can still have enough force to wrest their freedom from an oppressive society. Because in any case,  the ‘successful’ state would have to be an abusive totalitarian regime.

In the past, a number of recipes have been adopted to take care of abnormal social behaviour. De Camp & de Camp (1964) have related how a defeated Polynesian chief was eaten – if he refused the alternative of taking to the sea on the chance of finding a new island to settle. Misfits, political adversaries, and outright criminal could be physically eliminated – or deported to some faraway place. Unruly young people, and deviant prophets, could “go west” until not so long ago. Already now, however, we have run out of new islands, faraway places are all settled, colonies no longer exist, and there is no more West. And, as for tomorrow, one should keep well in mind that, the more difficult the living conditions, the stronger the urge to find and kill the green monkey.

The contribution of the Space Option to the internal security resides in the fact that it carries a hope, a challenge, and a potential which may be able to compensate for the confusion, the despair, and the misery of the philosophy of the finite world. Space gives us the hope that the future can be better than the present, better than the past, for everybody. For those who feel themselves spoiling away in a uniform and dull society it offers an intellectual provocation, and a challenge of freedom, of risk, and of new environments, which is not only intellectual but physical. It provides the resources for reducing the opportunities for conflicts of interests. Finally, it it opens up a potential for economic wealth which will make it possible to keep the Earth a suitable place for living.

For sure, any dilemma has two horns. Here, one is the ecologist solution of no-growth and redistribution. The Space Option is the second horn: neither easy, nor comfortable, but full of hope: the choice for the end of the end, and the beginning of infinity.

5.8   Space Research

Scientists have always largely opposed the astronautical endeavour (Michael, 1961). They have interpreted the state funding mechanisms as a zero-sum game, so that any money given over to manned flight has to be somebody else’s loss. With the Space Option as the immediate rationale for space, the situation ought to change, since its activities would range well beyond the mere R&D aspects, and the role of government funding has to become a minor one.

Space scientists might worry that preparatory work for the Space Option could compete with their projects in traditional budgeting processes. Further, many of them suspect that large-scale industrial activities in space would spoil their ‘laboratory’. Three points can be made to address these concerns. First, unless the overall, direct relevance of astronautics is increased – and this can only happen through the Space Option – there will be preciously little space research in the coming years. The funding curves will continue to drop, and keep dropping as the world sinks deeper into the BAU mess.

Second, science has amply profited from the pulling force of the astronautical endeavour: there would be no space science disciplines as known today but for the astronauts’ dream of flying to the Moon. Inversely, when astronautics suffered – either in terms of funding or of perceived significance – so did space science.

Finally, and more notably, one has to consider the hazards and the rewards of the future, and these are closely linked with a decision for the Space Option. Or can anybody seriously think that a blooded, starving humanity will still find interest and treasury for supporting basic science on a scale anywhere near the past levels? Scientific inquiry, however beneficial in the long term, must be paid for out of the contemporary surplus, which is strictly correlated with the standard of living: where the standard of living to plummet (see, e.g., Martin, 1985), where would the money come from? And, if worse comes to worse, how about the ethics of putting the ‘quality of the laboratory’ before the survival of the civilization?

On the other hand, science can amply profit from the development of the Space Option: therefore, scientists should not concentrate their attention only upon potential losses, but also acknowledge the benefits accompanying such course of action. Indeed, specific analyses already exist which have shown that, e.g., the attainment of science goals increases by more than an order of magnitude as one changes a lunar strategy from the concept of a modest scientific outpost to one of utilization (Koelle and co-workers, 1986).

6. The OURS Foundation & the Space Option

The OURS Foundation is a non-profit international cultural and astronautical institution created for introducing, nurturing, and expanding a cultural dimension into the astronautical endeavour. It pursues this primary aim through the identification, investigation, support, and realization of related cultural, astronautical, and educational activities, which may take place either on or off planet Earth, and which are deemed by the Foundation as beneficial to the advancement of our civilization into the space environment.

The OURS Foundation believes that the novelty of the Space Option concept as introduced here is given by its interdisciplinary approach, which has been fully reflected into the OURS Space Society, established last year to support the work of the Foundation, and which currently is publishing a “Space Option” newsletter. In the past, the link between art and astronautics has been strong – actually, nothing else was to be expected, if the inspirational arguments (see Part I) have any truth in them – and it will be again so in the future – if astronautics, and humanity, manage to have one.

The ‘art in space’ concept and projects (see, e.g., Woods, 1986, Woods & Bernasconi, 1990; 1993) are seen first of all as a legitimate artistic means, but they can also be seen as an opportunity for controversy, stimulating the discussion of the background message of the significance of space (Woods, 1992). Indeed, the authors’ have returned to, and expounded the Space Option concept as an outgrowth of their space art ventures (Woods & Bernasconi, 1992).

The OURS Foundation intends to continue the studies on the Space Option, as well as the task of its dissemination. We offer to become a focal point for analyses, deliberations, and advice in connection with the Space Option. An international, at least European, network on the subject can be a fruitful and exemplary case of bottom-up cooperation. Among our plans is the idea of a interdisciplinary workshop on the theme, to be held 12-15 months downstream. The authors would appreciate receiving further thoughts on the significance and on the implementation of the Space Option, as well as material on historical work on the subject.

7.  Lessons Learned

To Mankind – And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all.”

Isaac Asimov, 1972

The discussion given in Chapter 6 can obviously be but a first sketch: the multiple dimensions of the Space Option have to be explored further as well as in greater detail, and new societal interfaces are expected to appear. However, some first inferences can be drawn from the experience to date.

First, space remains anecdotal. It has been remarked in Part I how most persons utterly discount the relevance of the Universe for human affairs: notwithstanding all declarations to the contrary, for most Earth inhabitants, their planet could just as well be flat – given their awareness for the cosmos as it is, not as a mythological entity. Dictionaries still include among the meanings of “Universe”: “the world of human experience: this Earth that is the seat of mankind” (our emphasis – Gove, 1961)!

Such dismal remark leads quite naturally to a second one: it may already be too late! It may be too late on two counts: to inject some sanity into the policy debate on our future, as well as to actually implement the Space Option in time for making a difference. This view might be biased by the authors’ middle European perspective, but on the other hand were Europe to refuse the Space Option, this argument could hardly avoid becoming a fulfilled prophecy.

A particular cause for worry is that the astronautical community, far from being united to support the Space Option, is often a hindrance to its progress, e.g.:

• an excessive emphasis of pecuniary economics – in strong association with the expectations engendered by past, and outdated, historical constellation – not only has congealed space development during twenty years, but is has also led to a reinforcement of negative expectations;
• scientists often have no more vision than other people: they see space as their laboratory, to be kept clean of base contests and of vile uses;
• many persons, being very dedicated to their specialty, resent the need to obtain societal support for their enterprise;  therefore, once they got hold of one justification (e.g., “spin-offs”), they became ‘married’ to this idea; this can make it very difficult to obtain their support for a “new” rationale, a process which they would consider both as a loss of time and a potential loss of face;
• other, having established a successful sponsoring relationship (e.g., cozily embedded in the science-government- industry loop), become blind to menaces to the relationship as well as to wider social needs; newcomers are looked upon as intruders, even more dangerous if they do not ‘simply’ compete for funding but are perceived as ‘rocking the boat’ – no matter the boat is sinking already;
• anthropocentric masochism is more widespread than one thinks: too many persons share the anti-ethical views that “over the centuries here on Earth, plans devised ‘for the good of humanity’ have driven to extinction plant and animal species by the thousand; almost the whole land surface of the planet has been changed… Must we repeat our mistakes on another planet? Having spoiled our own, are we just going to walk away from it and go and spoil another?” Vincent (1993);
• space law – written with the best of intentions but under a different historical setting – has created a monumental obstacle to space development; furthermore, the political opportunity to attempt to introduce the indispensable modifications may have been

A final comment on ‘world dynamics’ models. Most of the current decisions are based on purely financial analyses. This fact introduces a single- minded perspective and leads to policies which cannot consider issues in an integrated way. On top of this, long-term problems – already ‘orphaned’ because of the near-term electoral interests of the political actors – are literally discounted away in the search for optimum returns on the investments.

All these factors have worked against the Space Option. Therefore, novel quantitative analytical methods must be identified, with the additional requirement that such new methods (i) be rational, and (ii) avoid liberticide. World dynamic models, which have given the largest boost to the philosophy behind the current swarm of liberticide policies, can also help provide a more balanced perspective of the impact of different courses of action, including in particular the Space Option. Thus, for all their many imperfections, world dynamics models appear as an attractive complement to the Space Option advocate bag of tools.

8.  Conclusions

There no longer is a space program, today. Nor will an integrated space program re-emerge unless the Ehricke’s admonition, quoted at the beginning of the paper, is heeded. Space is not a marginal element of the human environment: it is the whole Universe; therefore, astronautics cannot be an anecdote in human history. We need space now, its resources, its freedom, its challenge, its potential, as never before.

To turn the tide, the astronautical community has to spread a comprehensive rationale for expansion into space, under the proviso that no justification can be convincing unless it affirms the relevance of space for the societal priorities. The community ought to be determined, and demand a commitment of the public powers to pursue the Space Option.

New, independent actors on the astronautical scene can assume a critical significance in spreading the rationale and the arguments for the Space Option, because of their superior credibility. Artistic events in space ought to be supported as factors apt to focus the popular attention on the space potential. Cultural changes are necessary to increase the effectiveness of space operations, and must include an opening of the space community to competences and industries outside the aerospace core.

The OURS group will continue its supporting activities for astronautics and the Space Option: but it is now time for the whole community to get into the act and operate for a set of development policies that bring back space to the astronauts – and hope to the world.

Acknowledgements

The work of many authors, some of them quoted in the body of the paper, as been particularly inspiring and deserves additional credit: so special thanks go to David Criswell,  Michael Michaud, Bob Salkeld and to the spirits of Isaac Asimov, Krafft Ehricke, and Robert Heinlein.

This paper presents the results of independent work done by the authors for the OURS Foundation.

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*The OURS Foundation © 1993
1 Vice-President, Member IAA, Member AIAA, Fellow BIS
2 President, Member IAA, ISAST