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The Spacefaring Web
Scottsdale - Nov 2, 2001 In this space, a growing number of writers have clamored for a future in which we go exploring again, unleashing the inventive power of the human imagination. Some of us, those Children of Apollo, remember that future; but a younger generation is left feeling cheated of it. We want it. Perhaps we need it, to rise above the conflict and hopelessness that mar our times. But how do we build it? We cannot build a spacefaring future using the tools of the past era, any more than Humpty Dumpty could be glued back to life. The Cold War and its sideshow, the space race, gave rise to unique methods suited to unique times. The governmental crash project has gone the way of the Ford with fins. That era has ended, not because of a lack of Presidential vision or civic gumption. Rathar, market-driven technological development has reached warp speed as the military-space-industrial complex labors for decades to produce obsolescent items at extreme cost: Witness the International Space Station or almost any major weapons system. In some ways, though, we have changed as a nation. The builders of Apollo were a generation in lockstep: they spent their childhoods exposed to the breadlines and work projects of the Great Depression, then donned uniforms in early adulthood. Their whole lives had been organized by the government in a way unimaginable to the world today, outside Cuba and North Korea. Apollo was simply one more directive in their commanded lives. We're not that "Greatest Generation." We can't be united. Even the moment of coalescence through the civilized world after September 11 is passing, fading back to normal. We certainly can't be united around an action of the American government, with its complex web of enmities, nor around a technological initiative in an era when Luddite forces are on the rise. How can we build a spacefaring future, then? By critical small actions undertaken by us all: government agencies, universities, businesses, nonprofit associations, fans and advocates alike. By building an expanding network of technologies, discoveries and relationships. By commercializing Earth orbit, building resorts and telescopes on the Moon, exploring and settling Mars, sending probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system and beyond. Not by lockstep obedience to government directive but by desire and independent initiative; not by crash project but through networked cooperation, what I call the Spacefaring Web. The value of the Spacefaring Web comes from its ability to build a future rather than only a legacy. A crash project, to be at all effective, must have a sole deliverable: a nuclear bomb, a superconducting supercollider, "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." Once done, it's done. Lacking breadth, lacking roots in the rest of society, it cannot be a living, growing thing. We are left with flags and footprints. The limits of the crash project are shown by the thinking in the recent article "The Lure of Mars." Revisiting an ancient debate, the author calls for an Apollo-like focus on Mars and the neglect of the Moon. Government efforts are zero-sum: we can go to Mars but not the Moon; a dollar for space is a dollar taken from veterans' programs. The Spacefaring Web shatters these limitations. Just as computer chip development proceeded alongside that of software, as PowerPoint and EverQuest can both proliferate in an open market, an evolving, decentralized network of space-related initiatives can and must develop along many lines at once. I can invest in space hotels; you can put your money into asteroid mining. I can devote my life to researching Martian hydrology; you can explore the prospect of life on Europa. The Spacefaring Web is our spacefaring future, starting here and now and reaching endlessly outwards. If we want the world of 2001: A Space Odyssey, if we want the flying cars, we need the Spacefaring Web. We need to take responsibility for building the future - through working at JPL on robot probes, through building an entrepreneurial space business, through teaching a love of space to kids, through joining a space advocacy group. We cannot bemoan the fact that the government hasn't handed us our dream. If we do not build it, we cannot live it. By taking action ourselves, we can have the Moon - and Mars, and flying cars, and much more. Future or legacy: the choice is up to us. "John Carter McKnight is a former corporate finance attorney and member of the Board of Directors of the Space Frontier Foundation. His weekly column, MarsNow, builds on the themes of this article and is available by email by contacting [email protected]" Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Space Analysis and Space OpEds
Walker's World: Blair's Only Opposition
Perigueux, France (UPI) Aug 02, 2005The places where the British political classes like to take their summer vacations, the manor houses of Tuscany and Perigord, the fishing inns of Scotland and the quintas of Spain and the cottages of Cape Cod, have been agog over the weekend at the gossip among the Blairites. |
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