Filters Old And New

     One of the perennial questions about the differences in economic and military status among the nations of the world is Why is the United States so far ahead of everyone else? Asking frequently evokes a lot of contention about “American exceptionalism.” While Americans are exceptional in certain ways, it constitutes a partial answer at best.

     If we exclude the U.S. and look exclusively at all the other countries, there remain differences to be considered. Europe and Japan are considerably better off economically than the rest of the world. Russia is “getting there,” as is South America. Asia and Africa bring up the rear. Yet the differences among them are less dramatic than the difference between America and the “second-place finishers” of Europe.

     The influence most frequently invoked is that of the oceans. For a long time, to elect to migrate to the U.S. from anywhere else was difficult and hazardous. That’s no longer the case, though it is still expensive. In that regard, migration constituted a filter that favored the more courageous and enterprising. But surely, with nearly a century of reasonably convenient air and sea travel behind us, you’d think that filter would have weakened.

     Maybe not. While America is generous toward newcomers, uprooting oneself to find a new home among strangers is never an easy decision. There remain matters of law, language, and customs, economic requirements, and a willingness to adapt to be faced. So the filter still operates, albeit at reduced strength.

     As usual, the late Robert A. Heinlein had an opinion to express:

     "It's the bell curve again," I said to Ishtar. "If – as Lazarus thinks, and statistics back him up – every migration comes primarily from the right-hand end of the normal-incidence curve of human ability, then this acts as a sorting device whereby the new planet will show a bell curve with a much higher intelligence norm than the population it came from...and the old planet will average almost imperceptibly stupider."
     "Imperceptible except for one thing!" Lazarus objected.
     "That tiny fraction that hardly shows statistically is the brain. I recall a country that lost a key war by chasing out a mere half dozen geniuses. Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion – in the long run these are the only people who count and they are the very ones who migrate when it is physically possible to do so."

     [From Time Enough For Love.]

     If Heinlein was correct, and there’s evidence to suggest that he was, then the reduction of migration difficulties from impossible to risky “chops the head off” an old society. The older a society grows, the more rigid it becomes. There’s less room in which to innovate, to take risks, and to introduce alternatives to existing ways. That incentivizes the pinnacle of its population to pull stakes… but then, the question of where to go arises. Other variations among the nations rise to the top of the list.

     I could produce a long disquisition on this subject, but really, it reduces to a single question: Where will what I want to do be least hampered?

     That question is rarely voiced aloud, yet the answer appears to be the decisive factor in the would-be migrant’s choice of destinations.

     The realization brings many implications. American society is now 250 years old, and has been growing more rigid all the while. Yet it remains less restrictive, in nearly every way, than the societies that provide most of our (legal) immigrants. Those other societies have rigidified even further than the U.S. Innovators in Europe face great legal and social obstacles. Our own disincentives to creativity and entrepreneurship remain considerably weaker.

     There’s information there for policy makers throughout the First World. It will be ignored, of course; they who deem themselves fit to rule the rest of us have priorities other than how to keep their nations healthy and growing. Yet it underscores the potential of space travel to unsettle the whole world.

     Elon Musk’s SpaceX has given us hope that Mankind may yet be able to spread beyond its ancestral home. There’s no question that many problems remain to be solved. The difficulties involved in migrating off-Earth will be stiff for decades to come. But the possibility beckons.

     We who will remain behind will miss those who will rise to the occasion.

The Aliens Are Coming To Your Church

     This business about the Pentagon making its “UFO files” public has a lot of Christians in a lather. What will become of our Faith? What will it imply for the Nicene Creed? If there really are sentient aliens, will they have their own tentacled pentapodal Redeemers, or will they demand to share ours? If the latter, will depictions of Him as a standard human upset them or exalt them?

     I don’t get it. I especially don’t get the fears that the discovery of sentient aliens might invalidate Christian doctrine. But there appear to be a lot of people who fear exactly that.

     Some of the more militant atheists are strutting around, preening themselves over Christians’ fears and doubts. Never mind that as far as I’ve seen, nothing in the “UFO files” can be taken as strong evidence of alien visitations. Still, I must admit that I get a little amusement out of the panic over it, myself.

     Why the jitters? Why wouldn’t sentient aliens just be more of God’s children? And why insist that the existence of such aliens would throw the core story of Christianity, the ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, into dispute?

     I don’t get it, but I must admit that there’s a lot I don’t get, these days.

     Look, my brothers and sisters in Christ: God’s ways are not ours. In particular, He can do a lot of things we can’t. He created our universe: every scrap of matter-energy in it. In doing so, He created time itself. For time will only exist and have relevance in a matter-filled cosmos.

     It’s possible that we are His only sentient children. But it’s also possible that we’re not. We’re fallen, and needed to be Redeemed, so maybe other, nonhuman civilizations needed – or need – that too. But maybe, as in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, those other civilizations are un-fallen. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the head to learn that humans are the “black sheep” among God’s children?

     If our contemporary understanding of physics remains as it is, we’re unlikely ever to encounter another sentient race. Science-fictional speculations aside, we’re about as unlikely ever to be sure we’ve heard from one. Those speculations can be fun, but unless and until the highly improbable happens and we receive a delegation from Ophiuchus or Aldebaran, we shouldn’t trouble ourselves over them.

     But you know what would be maximally disturbing, something that would floor even your humble Curmudgeon? Being visited or contacted by humans in another solar system. Humans exactly like ourselves, who could interbreed with us. Add this to the pot: They already know about the Passion and Resurrection. No, Christ didn’t come to their world as He did to ours. We of Terra revolving around Sol are the lucky ones who had Him visit in human flesh. But it was the greatest Event of all history, and all sentients everywhere know about it.

     Which implication would weigh heavier: that only Terra was privileged to have the Son of God walk among us, or that of all the humans in the universe, only we of Terra fell so far from grace that we needed Him and His Sacrifice of Himself?

     In this connection, there’s a delightful novel: Space Princess, by Jon Mollison. Give it a look. Among other things, it establishes beyond doubt that I’m not the only crazy Catholic writing fiction today.

     Well, as much fun as such imaginings are, what ought to matter to a Christian, alive here and now on Terra, is the state of his own soul. We can confidently leave the souls and salvations of sentients elsewhere in the cosmos to God, don’t you think?

The Pressure

     The technophiles and space-travel enthusiasts are moderately agog that Elon Musk has shifted his focus from colonizing Mars to colonizing the Moon. For my part, I’m pleased. It was always the more sensible first step, if less glamorous. It’s also a necessary one: the Moon is the low-gravity resource base from which to continue on to the rest of the Solar System.

     But questions have arisen, with this one front and center: Why would anyone want to live on Mars / the Moon? A lot of people appear to be entertaining it, which suggests that there’s been a fall-off in Americans’ imagination and drive.

     I can think of two reasons to remove my elderly carcass from this ball of mud:

• The sheer adventure of the thing;
• To live in freedom.

     While I’m no longer of an age or fitness to go adventuring in the classical sense, neither were a lot of the European migrants who populated North America. They went anyway, often entire clans at a stroke. Some of them believed that the choice was between migration and extinction. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, for some of them that was demonstrably the case.

     But is that the case for anyone today? Are there subpopulations for whom the hardship of Lunar living would be preferable to remaining in the grip of an implacable fist that’s threatening to squeeze them to death? Perhaps we should ask the dwindling Christian populations of the Islam-dominated hellholes of the Middle East.

     We of the Western nations have begun to sense similar threats. Hostility to freedom is the central forward pressure of the Left. The elimination of all resistance is its aim. And it will never relax or relent.

     Eight years ago, I wrote:

     For a while I was cheered by the rapid development of privately owned and operated orbital transport. It seemed that free enterprise had at last accepted the challenge of taking Man to the ultimate frontier from which the U.S. government had retreated. And indeed, companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made considerable strides toward more economical (albeit still too expensive for a holiday weekend) access to Earth orbit. Perhaps, in another decade or two, we’d see construction begin on space habitats, and perhaps on some persistent human-occupied installations on the Moon.
     Maybe...but more likely not. The principal customers for orbital access are national governments. It would be in those governments’ interest to squash any private effort to colonize space or any of the other bodies in the Solar System. They could do so rather easily, either by terminating all contracts with the company that tries it or by invoking “national security” laws to forbid the effort altogether. Of those two paths, the latter is the more likely. Any government with a “national security” statute could claim that its “security” depends on not being bombed from orbit – and never mind that the owners of a privately-operated space station would have neither a reason nor an incentive to do so.

     The political dynamic continues to operate in its time-honored fashion. Power still attracts the worst members of our species. Governments are still inherently totalitarian: “Oh no, there’s no law against it. You just have to get our permission. It’s just that there’s a little red tape to get through. Please be patient.” They don’t like competition, and they don’t like for anyone to get beyond their reach:

     On the morning of the fourth day, also, a delegation of high-ranking government officials, including a three-star general from the Pentagon and a gentleman from the President’s office, called on [Spacecraft CEO Theodor] Deane.
     The gentleman from the President s office was brief and to the point. Deane was forbidden to undertake any venture whatsoever in space without the permission and control of the Federal Government. To do so would be a violation of national security equivalent to treason. Injunctions would be issued at once if Deane so much as lifted a finger to put an unauthorized satellite into orbit.
     “Do I understand,” Deane demanded, “that a law has just been passed to that specific effect?”
     “Don’t talk foolish, boy,” the general said. “We can make the existing security laws fit you like a straitjacket. Try us and see!”

     [J. W. Schutz, “The Bubble”]

     SpaceX is now racing the clock. Colonizing the Moon is far more feasible in the near term than colonizing Mars. You can bet the rent money that the cleverer folks in Washington know that too. Unless SpaceX establishes a proprietary Lunar colony before the power-mongers in D.C. can get their forces mobilized, the federal government will make such a thing impossible.

     The same pressure that propelled the Puritans to board wind-powered wooden vessels to reach the New World is at work today. The possibility of colonizing other worlds is the last remaining hope for human freedom. Many of us, young and old, would risk all that we have for the chance to be free. The States of Earth will not be pleased should the Moon become a place where we can go to escape them.

Space Cases

Rand Simberg’s article of today brings a fresh perspective to those of us who’ve fretted over the seeming decline of America’s space technologies. Please read the whole thing, as the facts it presents are likely to diverge quite a distance from your current preconceptions.

But along with providing a pleasant attitudinal contrast with the common malaise about “America’s retreat from space,” it got me thinking about the challenges of space travel once again, for the first time in several years. Despite the inevitable association with government (ugh), it makes for a pleasant change of subject from politics.

---

The first question is always the most important one: What is our purpose in developing technologies for the exploration of space? What actual ends do we seek?

The least disagreeable aim would be to increase our knowledge: of the other bodies in our solar system, and of the laws that govern the universe. Virtually everyone would accept that those are desirable ends, though there would be some dispute over whether space travel is the best way to pursue them. Granted that you can’t prove that the Moon isn’t made of cheese except by going there, still there are other ways to probe the nature of our satellite than by sending men to have a personal look. However, there are aspects of nature that can only be tested in conditions that cannot be maintained on Earth’s surface.

Other purposes elicit much more controversy: to gain a purchase on the strategic “high ground;” to establish off-Earth outposts for experimentation and colonization; to exploit the resources available elsewhere in the Solar System; to safeguard Mankind against extinction; to “build a bridge to the stars;” and so forth. Each of these things is at least one step removed from the bedrock desideratum it’s founded on...and that desideratum could be even more controversial than space exploration itself.

The degree of disagreement over both the ends in view and space exploration as a means toward them guarantees that there will be no end to the political wrangles over whether the federal government should fund or otherwise encourage the development of space technologies, much less operate a space-exploration R&D organ such as NASA. However, what governments can do, private persons and voluntary associations thereof can do – and typically, can do it better. Moreover, they’re doing it, as SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Virgin Galactic are demonstrating even now.

---

Once a primary purpose has been selected, other questions, such as the question of the best means, must be addressed. But what about secondary purposes, and how they might be combined with the primary one?

Have a little wisdom from Herbert Spencer:

A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would in all probability exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant-school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill and teach the children ill. -- Herbert Spencer, "Over-Legislation"

Spencer was, of course, principally concerned with the aggressiveness of government (and its boosters) in taking up an endless series of purposes to the detriment of the ones for which it was founded. But the same observations hold true for any sort of organization: to serve two purposes is to serve neither one as well as we might. The risks inherent in assigning many purposes to a single organization are great – particularly so when one or more of those purposes involves manned travel through space.

It’s always most effective to have a single aim, and to refuse to compromise it for any other end. But that hasn’t been the history of space technologies development. The proliferation of space-oriented companies reduces the probability that any one of them will be tempted to take the whole gamut of space-oriented purposes as its mission...but there’s no guarantee that it will be so, especially once the government gets involved.

---

A brief digression onto a related subject of importance: Certain possible objectives for space travel inherently demand exclusivity. For example, if our aim is orbital hegemony, then preventing other powers from acquiring a foothold in low Earth orbit is as important as getting there ourselves. Similarly, if our aim is to annex the Moon to the United States, it’s necessary not merely to get there, but to garrison it against incursions by other powers.

In such cases, politics, especially geopolitics, is the dominant consideration to be served. As long as space technology remains an involvement of the State, such considerations will remain “on the table.” Yet while the State possesses a de facto monopoly, the degree of conflict over such ends will remain low. It would rise as private competition with the State’s space travel organ rises...which suggests that such companies had better be aware of the ugly possibilities involved.

---

Finally for this brief screed, past experiences must be mined for the lessons inherent in them. The two Space Shuttle disasters ought to have taught us the folly of using delicate, thermally sensitive solid-fuel rockets to achieve orbital velocity, and of using bodily friction against the Earth’s atmosphere as the preferred way of shedding that velocity for re-entry. The Shuttle development program itself was a case study in technological hubris. (Look into the history of its “success by design” philosophy and the major fires that resulted.) Ponder the compromises that resulted from using the same vehicle both for manned missions and for missions that need no human component, thus serving neither aim with maximum effectiveness. To perpetuate the attitudes and approaches that led to those results would be inexcusable.

I’m a space junkie of long standing. I’m passionate about the importance of the space technologies. I’m an advocate for getting Man firmly established, not merely as a space traveler, but as a space dweller. For those reasons and others, the recent semi-privatization of American efforts in space cheers me greatly: privatization leads to competition, which leads to greater breadth of experimentation and, ultimately, to greater knowledge. But there are clouds on the horizon, in particular, the prospect of a renationalization of space exploration and technology, which grows more likely as Washington becomes more aware of the unpleasant possibilities inherent in unfriendly nations’ advances into space.

All the same, for those of us with one eye on the sky, the best is yet to come.