The Danger of Space Monday, Mar 30 2009
space 6:19 pm
Lots of people are into the idea of space travel, but as I’ve remarked before, space is relatively boring and dangerous. Many have an irrational emotional attachment to space, due to Star Trek and other fictional material which many have over-consumed. A glance at the Lifeboat Foundation’s website makes it look like the organization’s primary goal is to create space arks, but this would cost billions of dollars, which I can fairly say our organization will never raise. Instead, the LF’s primary value consists in networking together scientists and thought leaders concerned about extinction risk and occasionally getting them to publish reports.
I was reminded of the great danger of space yesterday when I read about Charles Simonyi, that creepy software developer who recently married someone 32 years younger than him (my age) after his 15-year relationship with Martha Stewart disintegrated, and his latest exploits visiting the International Space Station. What happened?
Officials said the crew, a US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut, had overridden the spacecraft’s automatic pilots to dock manually after a glitch in an engine caused the Soyuz’s computer to stop the process.
“One of the engines had a fault which the computer considered was serious and it began to move the Soyuz away from the ISS at a rate of one metre per second,” mission control official Vladimir Sovlov told RIA-Novosti news agency.
“We decided not to allow that and asked the crew to intervene. The commander judged the engine was working normally and we authorised him to approach in manual mode, which was carried out successfully.”
The crew checked to ensure there were no leaks in the airlock between the capsule and the space station before the crews of the two vessels joined up, spokesman Valery Lyndin told Interfax news agency.
Um, yeah. This “little issue” reminds me of the sad death of the entire crew of Soyuz 11 in 1971. Looking back at the history of space exploration, 5% of people to launch into space have died from the experience.
I’m not saying that space colonization is a bad idea in general, just that we need radically better safety technology. Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) could offer this, but there are tens of thousands of people wasting their time working on incrementally better space technology instead of working on basic research for MNT that would make space colonization actually viable. That incrementally better space technology they’re working on will still have high error rates that cause our husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters to perish when they try to launch into orbit.
It is important to remember that space colonization will not solve the “problem” of overpopulation (which isn’t a problem of too many people so much as lack of vertical farming, nuclear fusion, and clean manufacturing processes combined with an observer selection effect of most people living in crowded cities), nor will it solve the problem of extinction risk — deadly microbes could spread into space stations through aid of launches, and superintelligence could easily reach up into space to kill any unwanted challengers. Much of the glamor of space colonization is entirely unwarranted, because the Earth (and our virtual realities) have much room for hundreds of billions more people before things genuinely get overcrowded. (We will carve out sunny worlds underground, for one thing.)
Another appeal of space, I think, is the libertarian fantasy that people would be able to escape the politics and governments of Earth if they went to the Moon. This is silly — the influence of Earth will still extend there, probably more there than to obscure places on the Earth — space will always get tons of media coverage, which attracts political attention in large amounts. Obscurity is achieved through blending in with the environment, which is nigh impossible in space, where the ambient background temperature is extremely low and humans stand out like nuclear explosions on an Antarctic ice sheet.
I predict there will be 3 negative knee-jerk comments to my criticism of juvenile space fantasies based on non-MNT technology. (Adult space fantasies involve sophisticated MNT.) No more, no less.
hm. Hadn’t looked up Simonyi since his last space adventure (before that his Intentional Programming thing which seems to have fizzled).
To be catty, that lady certainly doesn’t look our age, I would have put her in her mid-to-late thirties, at least. Maybe investment banking ages a person? I don’t get the pedo vibe from pictures of them.
Canned apes do not belong in dangerous, high-radiation environments like interplanetary space. Stross is right: there’s no future for organic humanity in space. All the billions we’re wasting on that pathetic space station and pie-in-the-sky projects like putting a monkey on Mars could be better spent on AI-development programmes and/or mind-uploading research.
I suspect, but lack evidence or calculation, that space-based activity can shed more waste heat by radiation than could a planet-based civilization. It would not greatly surprise me to learn otherwise. Initial assumptions will probably make all the difference.
I’d also like to agree with the “libertarian fantasy” and primitve technology criticisms. I think our efforts in space to-date more resemble the Polynesian settlement of the Pacific than European settlement of the Americas.
The argument M.A. makes has two weaknesses. First, research effort is not perfectly fungible. Some things attract more attention and effort than others. Space development has a history of visible results and naturally attracts more effort than other, more ephemeral, endeavours. Second, on a basically semantic note, last time I looked we were in space. Earth is an orbiting body, you know.
Jay Dugger, semantic geek and token libertarian.
The biggest hurdle to space exploration (assuming that the space elevator is found to be impractical, impossible or too expensive) is the cost of lauching a pound of anything into near earth orbit. After that, space travel is easy. As Heinlein pointed out, once you are in NEO you are half way (in terms of energy expenditure) to anywhere in the solar system.
The expensive cost per pound is really a function of econmics, not technology. Space exploration, with its handfull of launches has never achieved economies of scale. It’s as if each rocket launch is the equivalent of a hand crafted luxury automobile. Technologically sexy, but way too costly.
If space launches occured as often as airline flights, the cost per launch would drop to acceptable levels and we’d be comparing rockets to Fords instead of Lamborghinis. However, if there is no demand for multiple rocket launches each day we have a Catch 22.
We can’t lower individual launch costs without greatly increasing their numbers to take advantage of econmies of scale, and we can can’t increase the number of launches without greatly reducing their cost.
“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”
Dr. Leonard McCoy
(from a trailer to the upcoming film)
Hi Michael,
Just a question: Are you more concerned with the expenditure of blood and treasure in the private sector or with federal funded agencies (NASA, DOD, etc)?
You didn’t mention the risks of MNT in this post. We should not try to pump money into MNT research before we have solved the problem of making it safe. A self-sustainable space civilization in Mars can be started with the cost of around Iraq war (or two) with luck, and that is not much. If space is not militarized, then that solves a couple of existential risks. Not bad for that money. Sure, the most amount of prevention of existential risks might involve another strategy for the use of that money, but atleast it is conceivable to get funding for a Mars civilization project.
“If space is not militarized, then that solves a couple of existential risks.”
Unfortunately the militarization of space during the Cold War would have been the one justification and motivation for a large scale, permanent manned presence in space.
Prior to treaties banning the explosion of nukes in space and the basing of warheads in orbit, both the US and USSR seriously considered the launching of orbital nuclear weapons platforms. However, instead of the half hour warning an ICBM attack would give, orbiting nukes could hit their targets with less than 5 minutes notice. This made the politicans on both sides very nervous since neither the President or the Chairman would have the time to get to their underground bunkers. So they were banned by treaty.
If they had been allowed, each station would have to be manned. The USAF looked at fully automating our ICBM silos (no human launch officers) and found that a system without a human in the loop was too likely to accidently fail – with horrible consequences. For the same resaon, each orbiting nuke weapons platform would have to be a manned space station with command and control systems, life support, extensive launch capabilites, supply rockets, crews cycled in and out, etc.
An arms race in space would have meant 1,000s of astronauts and cosmonauts permanantly in orbit and on the moon.
yet, there are submarines with nuclear missiles and those can be parked offshore have have nuclear missiles on target a few minutes. New York, DC etc…
20,000 jet planes move 100 million people every year between continents and countries every day. Columbus had 2000 people on his second expedition to North America. Those are the level of space vehicles we would need for serious colonization efforts. Thousands of tons of stuff and thousands of people in fleets of ships.
Nuclear fusion spaceplanes could do it. (IEC/Bussard Fusion) or the nuclear pulse propulsion rocket/cannon (Project Orion). Molecular nanotech (nanofactory scale) would work too. Various other technology combos.
Cheap and efficient laser arrays for launch. Some better materials (lots of cheap bulk carbon nanotubes for rotovator tethers) combined with space fuel depots. Some of lots better than now but not slam dunk tech could lower costs 10-100 times, but they are dependent on things going up in volume for cost amortization.
When the right tech and other combination becomes available there are a few million space motivated people who will go and make it happen.
Gregory, in general I’m in favor of the private sector, like most capitalists.
Anon, yes, MNT is actually quite non-safe, but I wanted to focus on one issue at a time in this post.
Brian, I agree that it will happen, but notice how you mention fusion and MNT as requisite technologies. You also mention more advanced launch techniques, which also need to be developed to colonize space. The problem is that many doing research and engineering work on rockets think that by building rockets they are working towards colonization of space when they should actually be working on much more advanced launch strategies.
“when I read about Charles Simonyi, that creepy software developer who recently married someone 32 years younger than him (my age) after his 15-year relationship with Martha Stewart disintegrated”
Wow, you’re a real class act, Michael, calling people “creepy” because they have a younger partner. I say good for Mr. Simonyi, a young woman is what most men desire no matter how much PC bullshit is put out. I think that comment reallyshowed that your free-thinking attitude is only skin-deep.
Your comments on space development are not worth another response, just wanted to point out the above.
You guys are assuming that MNT is possible, which is still an open question. Richard Jones, a molecular biologist who thinks the future of nano is “wet”, has presented six technical hurtles that must be overcome for MNT is possible.
http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=175
As far as I know, these challenges have not been met.
I don’t think is boring
Expedia is “offering” Mars Activities
http://www.expedia.com/daily/mars/mars-activities/default.asp?mcicid=Mars_us
“yet, there are submarines with nuclear missiles and those can be parked offshore have have nuclear missiles on target a few minutes. New York, DC etc…”
Boomers that close to shore are easily tracked (and continuously shadowed by air and naval forces) and quickly destroyed in a wartime scenario. Ballistic missile submarine prefer the deep oceans for concealment. Though the flight times of a typical SLBM are less than the half hour for an ICBM, they still provide suficient time for protection of command assets.
Kurt, you’re right to point to those objections — Freitas and Merkle have a much larger list available at their site — but the fact of the matter is that it is possible to make an appraisal at our current state of knowledge about the plausibility of MNT. For instance, once those challenges that Dr. Jones lists have been met, one might be able to move along to another list of challenges, and say, “MNT will not be feasible until these are met”. Well, of course, but this can be kept up indefinitely until the technology is actually developed, so it has limited use in making an estimate of its technical feasibility beforehand.
Seppel, I support people’s right to do whatever they want within the boundaries of the law, but that doesn’t mean I won’t socially ostracize certain actions that are completely legal. Older men that date women young enough to be their daughters are pretty sad to me, end of story. In the same way that such couples are free to marry, I am free to laugh at them. In some (rare) cases they may be a true match, but 99% of the time the maturity and cultural gap is so large that it is obvious the marriage is mostly a business arrangement (sex for money) rather than for genuine love, or even casual sex on equal terms. There is a continuum of quality of couples, and this type is usually way down at the bottom.
Again, there’s a huge difference here between upholding someone’s legal right to do something and ostracizing them on a social level.
Hi Michael,
It’s been too long. I only noticed your post this afternoon after clicking on your twitter profile. I get so many tweets these days it’s easy to miss.
I agree with you, space is dangerous place, just as the old west was. However the desire to explore and expand is built in to all species including human beings, evidence by it’s absolute diversity and abundance in every nook and cranny on Earth. And certainly MNT and SAI also have substantial risks. The difference though is space exploration is voluntary where as MNT and SAI could pose substantial existential risk to millions of the unwilling.
All those who lost their lives in space related accidents, including ground control people and engineers, did so knowing the risks ahead of time and proceeding anyway. Traveling to space does not pose existential risks to humanity like SAI and MNT do. The risks are on only those who *choose* to go. Having compared the two, as you have, actually makes space an even more appealing option.
Since I was a kid in the 1970′s there have been numerous polls on people’s willingness to
go to space given the risks. The results remain the same, millions of people still want to
go. Even when the risks of death were as high as 25% during the Mercury days, a great many people still wanted the chance to go. Again it’s one of choice.
The next argument is one of cost/benefit. I definitely agree with you about the waste of millions of dollars and thousands of talented people all making incremental changes to space technology. It is exactly the same as thousands continuing to eek out minor improvements in horsepower and fuel efficiency on combustion engines, which is what they’ve been doing now for decades. The problem isn’t space technology, but the bureaucracy in which it is financed and developed. As Brian Wang pointed out there are tons of radical improvements in launch costs just waiting to made. IF you read your history (I’d recommend Robert Zubrin in this regard), it all started with the Moon Treaty, and then a few years later a bureaucratic cap (set up by the Nixon Administration I believe) on contractor profits set at 10% of total costs of development and ongoing maintenance.
Obviously if the space technology companies can only make 10% profit, then it is in
*their* best interest to make both the development and operational costs as expensive as possible. And this is precisely what’s been happening for the last 37 years… a total stagnation in any significant improvement in launch costs or truly advanced space technology. I will never forget when 12-14 years ago Al Gore proposed a new launch system to replace the aging shuttle. Anyone was allowed to compete for design grants, after which there were over a dozen entries. I was elated to discover some very advanced proposals floated in the late 1970′s coming back to life, including a McDonell-Doouglas re-design of Boeing’s Heavy Lift Launcher (HLL). Boeing’s HLL would lower launch costs to orbit below $10/kg. It relied on heavy scaling of rocket technology, and more load capacity at launch. And it was 100% re-usable. A single large whale like structure without any disposable parts. When you look at the graphs of rocket size to launch capacity, the price per KG goes noticeable down the more payload that goes up. So the bigger the better. What was even more exciting was McDonnell-Douglas actually built a 1/20 scale prototype that launched successfully all 6 times. They were the only entry to actually have a *working* prototype, while the others required significant development of untested technology such as hypersonic scramjets.
After all the designs came in I spent weeks pouring over the characteristics of each proposal. Guess what? After all was said and done, the Clinton Administration, through Al Gore’s office, chose THE most expensive one – one requiring the most research to develop the most basic working technology. McDonell-Douglas’ design worked with off-the-shelf parts and it actually launched! This disgusting decision resulted in the entire program being canceled just a few short years later. Now NASA’s next-generation delivery system does almost nothing to reduced launch costs. Nearly every advocate in the space community, including Buzz Aldrin, has roundly criticized it. Not to mention NASA’s continued emphasis on a return to the Moon and Mars – gravity wells, the last place you want to go to reduce operating costs or develop any meaningful spacefaring enterprise. This is why recently a broadly signed report from Buzz Aldrin advocates a long-standing philosophy, which is to pursue near-earth approaching asteroids, the golden-nuggets of space materials just waiting to be extracted and used for space development. The cost of going to these asteroids would be orders of magnitude cheaper that going to the moon and mars in acquiring the same amount of base material for space construction, because small <1km diameter asteroids have negligible gravity.
Concerning sustainable earth civilization, with the burgeoning population exceeding 9 Billion over the next few decades, energy generation has never been the long-term problem more than limited resource extraction. It has been convincingly argued that we are already past the point of any sustainable resource extraction. At the rate much of the world is attaining middle class status, the earth cannot support that lifestyle for so many. Vertical farms will not be enough. I believe you know as well as I that unless a radically advanced MNT capable of regenerating our waste back into usable materials is developed, a planet-bound high-energy/high technology civilization doesn’t stand a chance at it’s current population levels.
Regarding potential political freedom, I think you’re mistaken. There would be only two things making a space settlement prone to Earth interference – degree of dependence and proximity. One a settlement has achieved 100% energy and material independence the absolute need for Earth vanishes. Like the Old West, the distances of several weeks to months meant that pioneers had considerable freedom to make and live their own way. This continued even into a good part of the 20th century, especially in the more remote places of California, Arizona and New Mexico. As recently as the 1970′s I fondly remember spending time in small hippie towns in remote parts of Arizona, with the almost total absence of law enforcement or societal intrusion. The same would hold for more distance space settlements. The difference is space is infinite, and the old west finite.
Cheers,
Paul Hughes
http://www.astranaut.org/
P.H.: “There would be only two things making a space settlement prone to Earth interference – degree of dependence and proximity. One a settlement has achieved 100% energy and material independence the absolute need for Earth vanishes.”
What about disaster relief?
M.A.: “I’m not saying that space colonization is a bad idea in general, just that we need radically better safety technology.”
Agreed. And also agreed with the need for better vehicles/launch types.
M.A.: “Many have an irrational emotional attachment to space.”
It does seem like an infatuation with hints of rationality. Though humans have a powerful desire to explore. If humans are going to endure all sorts of extreme conditions to make colonization a reality, why not try colonizing a city on the seafloor first? I bet we could make significant strides very quickly. It would allow for some time for those with the ability to create and test out some of the technologies listed above. Plus, if people lived in those cities, combined with the use of new technologies, maybe they could make the oceans healthy again. And maybe some ideas about food harvesting would change as well (not to mention diet). I’m sure that there are/will be plenty of resources that could be used to fertilize land, maybe help with new growth forests, and the list goes on.. Anyway, it seems bizarre that we’ve explored a greater volume of space than we have the oceans.
“Deep ecologists claim that before knowing what we ought to do, we must understand who we really are.”
-Michael Zimmerman
D.C.F.P.: “Stross is right: there’s no future for organic humanity in space.”
Who knows, maybe he is hinting at the fact that there are a lot of different hurdles to leap before making the biggest leap?
If humans are going to endure all sorts of extreme conditions to make colonization a reality, why not try colonizing a city on the seafloor first?
Well, there are the seasteading people (www.seasteading.org). Given current launch costs, it would certainly be cheaper to build something on or in the ocean than in space.
Hi Michael,
I guess the question I’m really trying to get at is for whom your article is targeted? Is it private corporations who are spending good money and time on ‘wasted’ projects (my emphasis, not necessarily yours) when they could be working on MNT oriented goals? Or are you directing this at persons in the general public who might dually interested in MNT and space exploration and could act upon there concerns and call up there senators and reps to impress upon them the need to shift NASA/DOD funds from space-themed exploration to MNT research?
Greg L.
I guess I could infer from your response that most of your concern is with the private sector’s allocation of resources. The reason I’m asking is to lead to my further question of what means does one have in making this case to the people that matter: CEOs and/or Government Funding agencies and to which would your articles (or others) be better directed? In my opinion your concerns might be better directed towards your government:
I see the great potential for development towards MNT technologies through directed funding at government orgs like NASA by billing them as “projects of opportunity” to help further NASA’s overall scienctific goals. This is part of what, I believe, brought about the development of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts, now sadly defunct (http://www.niac.usra.edu/). The major issue with the government is bureaucracy, but it has the advantage of established resources and manpower.
Just a thought.
Gregory, all of the above… when I don’t make a qualification in the post you should assume I’m directing it towards everyone.
I don’t actually want them to shift all funds to MNT (I think the safety issues are inadequately addressed), I’m just saying that something like MNT is absolutely required to make space livable, and if they don’t realize that, they’re missing something.
Hi Michael,
I forgot one thing. I agree with you about MNT’s necessity in really kick-starting any serious space development course. Have you considered that, given the inherent risks with MNT development, that it would be best to experiment with it’s potential in a free-floating (i.e. isolated/quarantined) facility? I think this would both mitigate the risks of something catastrophic happening on Earth, while simultaneously developing in tandem the very space-based MNT technologies necessary to go forward.
“Zwicky also considered the possibility of rearranging the universe to our own liking. In a lecture in 1948[23] he spoke of changing planets, or relocating them within the solar system. In the 1960s he even considered how the whole solar system might be moved like a giant spaceship to travel to other stars. He considered this might be achieved by firing pellets into the Sun to produce asymmetrical fusion explosions, and by this means he thought that the star Alpha Centauri might be reached within 2500 years[24].”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky
Another fun fantasy
Why even send meatbags into space? If we can create AI or upload human minds, then it would make more sense to send AI and upload controlled robots into space. Life support systems are a huge burden to any space mission, and with robots that burden is lifted.
If we’re going to discuss space travel in the context of accelerating technology, we should consider all the variables. Turing AI will come a lot sooner than safe MNT. In fact we’re already sending nearly self sufficient robots into space. As AI advances these spacecraft will become increasingly independent.
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