Out with the old world, in with the new
* Race for space
* Spend, spend, spend
* Explore new territories
* Get outa here
Some questions are bigger than others. And somewhere, locked within the crust of the moon, scientists believe, lies the answer to one of the largest – the origins of life on earth. Interest in manned space travel has not been greater since the height of the Cold War. Nations everywhere are jostling to prove their worth by unlocking the secrets of the stars above. The second space race has begun.
This new-found fascination with distant galaxies arrives with impeccable timing. Think of the opportunity cost. Ensure that a fantastically ludicrous amount of cash and scientific brain power is committed to studying the dead disc of the moon, and any opportunity to contend with the inexorable countdown to catastrophe on this earth is blown off with the force of a launching fuselage. Hurling man into space is charmingly consumptive of cash. Billions of pounds are frittered away examining the lifeless orb above. For what? A net benefit to humankind approximating, oooh, zilch. There is always the off-chance that someone might find an odd fungus trapped in a spot of ice on a planet 150,000 miles away. Yum, yet another delicacy to import, shrink-wrap and stick on supermarket shelves – and food miles would be off the scale! And in addition to this…no, we can’t think of anything. Advocates believe that valuable lessons can be learned Out There that will help us to preserve our own planet’s future. Such altruistic nonsense can be disregarded. Very soon there will be no future.
So why spend time and money on your own planet when you can find a shiny new one to play with? Meanwhile, the rest of us watch as famine, degradation and pestilence encroach across our ever-sweltering planet. As critical resources are diverted from finding solutions to thwart the ecological crisis unfolding on earth, some of our keenest minds have their heads stuck in the stars. There might be more use in shoving them up their arses.
His footprints have long gone, submerged beneath a tide of lunar dust and cosmic debris. Thirty-five years have passed since man last trod on the moon. Yet, when Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan left the Sea of Serenity in December 1972, humanity could be excused for assuming that space colonization was just around the corner.
But that was it. The space race faltered. As the moon settled back to its 4.5 billion years of solitude, hopes faded as to when man would return. Humans, it seemed, were destined for little more than to faff about in low orbit aboard planes and the less than entirely reliable Space Shuttle. And that suited Britain just fine. In the decades since Cernan’s voyage, Whitehall has rarely concealed its distrust of manned space flight. Too expensive, for starters. So much hassle for such little reward. What could chucking an astronaut in space ever truly achieve? Thank your lucky stars for the USA and NASA. They believed.
And how times have changed. Reports can be confirmed of a dramatic volte-face in the British government’s reticence in hurling men into outer space. Suddenly it wants in on the colonization of the cosmos. When NASA unveiled plans for a permanent settlement on the moon by 2020, Europe couldn’t contain itself. Britain swooned. Days later, Britain’s then science minister Malcolm Wicks hailed interplanetary space travel as ‘one of the marks of a great nation’. But while contemplating the void above, Wicks seems to have suffered his own personal brain drain.
As energy minister, the father of three had for the previous three years been privy to the most sensitive data chronicling the threat from climate change. A seemingly endless list of sensitive data told him that his grandchildren might live in a very different world. Had he forgotten? Maybe not. By promoting a space colony in the heavens above, had not the career politician dug the ultimate escape tunnel? Suddenly, the travails of pesky little earth didn’t matter. Getting the hell out did. In his own words, ‘For anyone to say British men and women will never explore space in the future is just a nonsense,’ or, to cut the hi-fallutin’ science talk, ‘That’s it, I’m off.’ The tunnel may not be for any Tom, Dick and Harry just yet but, in theory, once world leaders have galloped off into the galaxy, you will be free to render your own planet null and void.
Governments are preparing to give up on saving earth. Which, of course, is good news. A tangible shift in focus from the earth to the solar system offers a once-in-a-generation political symbolism that should be exploited by all those inspired by the concept of widespread environmental destruction.
It is important that major corporations and politicians echo the minister’s message; space exploration has never been cheaper and, in fact, might provide tremendous value for money. Your air miles will rocket! In reality, ruined budgets and overblown expectations are anticipated. It is no secret that most money allocated to space exploration is enchantingly squandered by bods twiddling around with hyper-tech gadgetry in laboratories fixed firmly to the ground. And let’s not ignore the fact that the worthiest scientific discoveries in space have emanated from unmanned missions.
Estimates cite the cost of creating a permanent new settlement on the moon at almost £500,000 billion. The government’s latest analysis claims that cashing in on the space race is worth £7 billion, and that its most recent position is that space will become an ‘increasingly important’ asset to the economy. NASA has already upped its cash for space exploration to $18 billion a year. The Royal Astronomical Society wants £3 billion over the next two decades to finance moon landings. Well, we all want £3 billion over the next two decades…But (yawn), where’s the money to come from? Opportunity knocks. We look forward to a significant if opaque budgetary increase. The omens are positive for a complete waste of money and subsequent ‘brain-drain’ from finding environmental solutions.
Wicks’ enthusiasm for space presumably earned him a one-way ticket to lunar colony number one, and Ian Pearson replaced him as energy minister. During Pearson’s watch, things heated up quite considerably. Trying to drum up support for sending his chums into space, he explained that space could help us understand the ‘changing climate’. Really, Pearson? Or understand how to escape the changing climate? He also said, ‘Space technology is a vital part of our everyday life.’ Oh yes? Which bit exactly? Was his lunch heated by rocket boosters from Apollo 11?
Early signs suggest that scientific spending to protect earth may already be falling. At the same time as the new-found space obsession began, cuts were in fact proposed to the UK’s pioneering Meteorological Office, home to the giant supercomputers that plot the world’s future weather. These offices first alerted politicians to the hazards of global warming and, for that reason alone, they deserve to shut. They never get the forecast right anyway.
And the good news just keeps rolling in. One of Britain’s pioneering climate-change research centres, the Tyndall Research Centre in East Anglia, recently had its government funding almost halved. Its then head Sir John Schellnhuber, one of the most vociferous exponents of what climate change might mean to society, was forced to return to his native Germany. Schnell! Numerous projects designed to protect Britain from global warming have been abandoned. As the climate-change believers were sent packing and the government shared its lust for all things lunar, a £335 million British proposal was unveiled to study the effect of tremors on the planet’s crust. Yet its focus was not on the impact of fresh tectonic shifts on earth but rather the history of ‘moonquakes’. Incidentally, £335 million is seventy times the amount the government contributed to an early tsunami warning system after the deaths of 260,000 people on Boxing Day 2004.
The government’s real reason for all things spacey is more existential. They are simply looking beyond earth to ensure the survival of the species. Great minds agree. Professor Stephen Hawking believes it’s time for a back-up, saying ‘the survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet’. In discussions between the UK and US concerning space, no attempt is made to disguise the real reason behind their proposed moon-based colony, from where they hope to launch a £304 billion manned journey to Mars. Their autonomous colony is a simple test of whether leading politicians can survive on another planet by ‘living off the land’. As long as their best minds are focused on space rather than global warming, we wish them luck.
As earth deteriorates, we are quietly confident that more and more money will be allocated to the colonization of space as the only option. Within a decade we anticipate no need to lobby for greater investment on interplanetary space travel. Expenditure will be driven by political necessity rather than any pretence of scientific advancement. NASA’s proposals depict a fully functioning space colony by 2024. By then, the scale of earth’s environmental crisis will be clear, and we’ll need that cosmic colony.
* Public outcry over planned lunar colony as condition of earth deteriorates over the next two decades. Highly likely.
* Initial technological failures cause space projects to be abandoned prematurely. Possible.
* Change in governments sees space funding programmes slashed in favour of earth-bound science. Unlikely.
* Increased militarization of space forces nervous politicians to rethink suitability of spending billions on lunar exploration. Not a chance.
* Moon declared unexpectedly uninhabitable by findings of early unmanned probe. Extremely unlikely.
Likelihood that space travel consumes more and more of science budget: 80%