George Kerevan: End of space travel would be loss of pioneer spirit

Published on Wednesday 13 July 2011 15:11

It may make economic sense to give up on the dream of travelling to the Moon, but at what cost to human endeavour?

IMAGINE driving from Dundee to Newcastle, a distance of 189 miles. Not far, as the crow flies, unless you've a hoard of bored children in the back seat. Now consider: from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station is only 173 miles straight up, a shorter distance. Space - at least the bit mankind regularly visits - is so close you can actually see the Space Station sparkling on a clear night.

As I write, the 135th and last ever Shuttle mission (to re-supply the Space Station) is half way through. All being well, Shuttle Atlantis will land back at the Kennedy Space Center on July 20, the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 11's touchdown on the Moon. One piece of nostalgia will be laid on another.

After a career of 30 years, mankind's only proper, reusable space ship will be heading for the museum, with no prospect of a replacement. Add to this that it has been nearly 40 years since a human last stood on the Moon, and one of President Obama's first decisions was to cancel NASA's latest attempt to go back there. Above all, note that the International Space Station itself is due to be "de-orbited" in 2020; i.e. broken up and dropped in fiery chunks into the Pacific.

On this the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first manned flight into orbit, the human race is abandoning space travel. The dream of space flight will be over in a mere 60 years. Captain Kirk, Dan Dare, Han Solo, Impey Barbicane, Joseph Cavor, Jet Morgan and a thousand science fiction space heroes will be relegated to the same historically quaint category as pirates.

Does it matter? Self-styled pragmatists will argue - very plausibly - that spending circa $200 billion on the Shuttle for a mere 135 journeys the equivalent of Dundee to Newcastle was economically insane. Never mind the equivalent sum spent on the totally pointless International Space Station - much of that cash coming from Europe. When, in a decade's time, you see the pretty television pictures of the Space Station burning up on re-entry, think of it as your tax going up in smoke - literally.

True, the space dream has wasted untold public monies for little practical return. Yet there is something about abandoning the high frontier beyond the Van Allen radiation belt to robots that disturbs an old baby-boomer such as me. I was brought up on post-war optimism, and a diet of science fiction that predicted mankind would go to the stars, and there meet his betters. For my generation, conquering space wasn't about being able to phone Aunty Mary from the beach on Ibiza. It was about a new frontier and the ultimate destiny of the human race.

There's the rub.When Shuttle Atlantis lands next week, I fear this beckoning frontier will have closed forever and we will all be marooned on a closed world with finite resources, a burgeoning population and myriad simmering hatreds. (The degeneration of science fiction - the literature of ideas - into Harry Potter whimsy parallels this retreat from outer space and opportunity.)

Of course, the threat of a 50 per cent increase in population by 2050, plus nuclear proliferation and rampant food and energy inflation, might sober mankind. The UN could turn into a benign world government and sort these problems. And pigs might fly to the International Space Station.

Without the challenge of a "frontier" - be it space, the American West, or the first humans fleeing drought-laden Africa - we are destined to remain conservative and parochial as a species. And doomed. For all the best things in our society - innovation, democracy, egalitarianism - come from breaking with custom and the past in order to explore a new frontier. That, after all, is why we refer to our culture as "western".

This idea is hardly new. Back in 1893, the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that American democracy and entrepreneurship stemmed directly from the pioneer spirit of the old Western Frontier. (Turner also worried the frontier had closed.)

Before readers start blogging, I accept that there is a dark side to this frontier thesis. When the Scots and English created the British Empire, and when Americans colonised the Wild West, they signally failed to notice that both "frontiers" were already populated by other people. Conquering the frontier soon translated into "manifest destiny" and enslaving others (who usually were of a different skin colour).

However, criticising manifest destiny does not mean we should ignore the positive side of the frontier spirit: self-reliance, individual freedom, entrepreneurship, and equality. It is no accident that it was the frontier states of America - Wyoming, Colorado and Utah - that first gave women the vote.

Recovering the dream of sending human beings to the Moon, Mars and beyond, is about more than big boy's toys or sublimating national rivalries (though it helps). On the contrary, believing that humans are part of a larger universe, and that someday we should go there and meet the neighbours, is the best way of ensuring we don't murder each other at home, and that we remain open to economic and cultural challenges.

Fortunately, not everyone has given up on boldly going with Captain Kirk to the "final frontier". Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Nevada (funded by hotel billionaire Robert Bigelow) is already preparing to launch - privately - the first module of an orbiting hotel, in 2015. Bigelow is using private rockets built by SpaceX, a company owned by space enthusiast Elon Musk, founder of PayPal.

Back in 1949, the year I was born, the doyen of science fiction writers, Robert A.Heinlein, wrote The Man Who Sold the Moon. In this wonderful novel, Heinlein (a libertarian with a social conscience) predicts that it will be private entrepreneurs who finally get mankind into space - largely to avoid the state bureaucracy and corruption below. My hunch, along with Heinlein, is that the final frontier still beckons and we will do it without governments. Forget Dundee to Newcastle. Mars is only 46 million miles away.