Another op-ed, this one from Tad Daley, suggesting Mars as the destination for the post-Columbia space program.

It starts out as a decent recounting of the familiar reasons for choosing Mars, but I think he starts to shoot himself in the foot with a quote from Shelley:

We should go to Mars because we want to do something magnificent and awe-inspiring, something that will belong to the ages, something our descendants will call a Great Thing. "My name is Ozymandias," thundered Shelley's great pharaoh, speaking to the rulers of distant places and distant times. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

The full passage from "Ozymandias" goes thus:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

The poem is meant (in my reading) as an indictment of hubris and self-importance, a reminder of the impermanence of even those things which seem mighty and immortal. Which is the exact opposite of the point he was trying to make by citing it. Ouch.

He then makes the same mistake that the Mars Society itself often makes: he assumes that the first mission should be about scientific exploration, of as wide an area as possible.

The first mission to Mars will differ from Apollo in many important ways. Serious science can't take place in just a few days, and the first astronauts on Mars will probably stay for several months. A robust rover will be essential, so the explorers can travel hundreds of miles from their landing site. While only one of the 12 men who walked on the moon was actually a scientist, most of the Mars crew will likely be professionally trained in disciplines like geology, meteorology, and biochemistry.

Why should the first mission be about science? Why not send -- in place of geologists, meteorologists, and biochemists -- civil engineers and construction workers to build a base camp, which can be used to support wide-ranging and much more capable long-term surface operations on follow-on missions, and which will serve as the nucleus for a permanent presence on the planet?

Not to mention that thirty years of piously pursuing science for its own sake has gotten us nowhere with respect to settling space. Science is not the reason for sending humans into space. Daley himself lays out the reasons why earlier in his own article, so it's surprising to see the "space is for science" meme resurface here.

While the article showed promise at the beginning, it all goes downhill from there -- it's a descent into the naive realms of One Worldism, with the usual platitudes about seeing us all as One People and a few swipes at the military tossed in for kicks. It ultimately veers into the full-fledged transnationalism and cliched politcal-correctness espoused by the space movements and science fiction of the 1970s.

Why does this sort of collectivist tripe always seem to seep into the discussion of colonizing space? It strikes me that there is a dangerous undercurrent in this sort of philosophizing, a notion that whatever is done in space has to be done for the benefit of all of humanity. While it may seem a noble premise, it suffers from the same problem as the notion of equality: the unintended consequences of inexact language. What constitutes a benefit to all of humanity? Who makes that decision? Pursuing such an ideal carries the very real risk that all of humanity will benefit "equally" by not being allowed to benefit at all.

A real-world demonstration of this inversion of the Tragedy of the Commons can be found here.

Posted by T.L. James on March 14, 2003 08:23 PM