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Solar system colonization and interstellar migration
S O L A R S Y S T E M C O L O N I Z A T I O N AND I N T E R S T E L L A R MIGRATION
Ben R. Finney Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii, Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A.
2424
A b s t r a c t - - - S o l a r system colonization is an essential prelude to interstellar migration. Through the incremental settlement of the solar system we can develop the infrastructure necessary to support costly interstellar flight, new spacefaring technologies needed to cover the great distances and to nurture human life during the long flights, and new forms of social organization to enable humans to flourish in exotic environments. Furthermore, as suggested by the history of the colonization of oceanic islands, the successful settlement of the solar system and the exploitation of its resources will "cosmicize" people, encouraging them to look beyond our Sun to other stars and to the prospects for transplanting human life around them.
Playing
with
Spaceships
Advocates of interstellar migration are adept at "playing with spaceships," to use Arthur C. Clarke's apt phrase [1]. Their eyes are firmly fixed upon the stars, and on solving the tremendous technical problems of sending interstellar probes, fast ships, arks and world ships to other planetary systems. While they may assume a degree of solar system infrastructure in order to provide the financial and resource base for launching interstellar ventures, they typically do not focus on the developments that would necessarily precede the dispatch of interstellar colonizing missions. In this paper I would like to complement their technical discussions of interstellar flight with some thoughts about what might have to occur within our solar system so that our descendants would one day be willing and able to launch expeditions to the stars. As an anthropologist who sees space expansion as a logical continuation of the spread of humanity over the globe [2], I tend to look back to prior migrational experience to help me think ahead to our extraterrestrial future. I am not alone in this. In one of the first books to discuss space colonies, The World. The Flesh and the Devil, J. D. Bernal wrote that he looked to history to tell us "how things have changed and how by inference they will change in the future" [3]. Although he admited that history has not yet "found its laws," Bernal maintained that it can be "used as a storehouse o f illustrative facts," and that "one might say loosely that everything that will happen must conform with the spirit of history." With these thoughts of Bernal in mind, I propose to employ the history of the settlement of oceanic islands to help me speculate about expansion into the solar system and beyond.
Islands
and
Autocatalysis
The exploration of the sea and the discovery and settlement of the oceanic islands is perhaps the one phase of humanity's spread over Earth that is most evocative of our future expansion into space. The adventure of exploring the unknown, the struggle to develop 225
226 new technology to go where no human had ever been before, and the establishment of colonies on uninhabited shores are the obvious features of oceanic migration that make it relevant to the one about to unfold in space [4]. Here I wish to explore another feature that relates to space migration: how the distribution of islands in the sea has either encouraged or discouraged exploration and settlement. Let me begin with a series of apparent paradoxes [5]. Europeans did not colonize the mid-Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores until the 15th century, 3,000 years after stone age voyagers reached the mid-Pacific archipelagoes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Easter Island, one of the world's most out-of-the-way specks of land, was colonized before comparatively huge and and easy-toreach Iceland. Hawaii and Madagascar were settled by voyagers stemming ultimately from far off Southeast Asia, and not from the comparatively nearby continents of North America and Africa, respectively. These paradoxes would seem to violate such common sense ideas as: that technologically advanced peoples should be the first to settle oceanic islands, or at least to settle the most distant ones; and that islands should be settled by the continental peoples closest to them. They can be resolved, however, if we consider that it is the patterning of oceanic islands that is crucial to island colonization, and not the absolute proximity of islands to continents or the technological level of the people living along adjacent continental shores. For example, the distribution of Pacific islands, from the perspective of a migration starting in Southeast Asia, was ideal for promoting island colonization. The extended arc of islands immediately offshore the Southeast Asian mainland promoted the development of a maritime way of life, while the rich collection of continental fragments and volcanic islands that extends eastwards from island Southeast Asia three-fourths of the way across the Pacific beckoned people to sail farther and farther out into this great ocean in search of new island homes, and gave them a proving ground where they could incrementally develop their seafaring and colonizing capabilities. (To a lesser extent the patterning of the islands in the Carribbean, Mediteranean, and the North Atlantic domain of the Vikings also promoted settlement.) In contrast, the lack of a stepping stone pattern in the sparse, uneven distribution of islands in the middle latitudes of the Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, and in the eastern Pacific as seen from the Americas, provided little in the way of encouragement and experience for people to attempt to seek out distant island homes. Hence, migrants stemming ultimately from Southeast Asia spread far out into the Pacific, and even across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, while people from Africa, the Americas and Europe either did not venture far out to sea, or did so after all the Pacific Islands had been found and settled. Biologist Jared Diamond and archaeologist William Keegan label the process whereby the patterning of islands encourages migrants to seek islands far out to sea as one of "autocatalysis" in that successful colonization catalyses further movement in search of new lands. [5,6]. This autocatalytic process involves technological adaptation as well as motivation, as the saga of Polynesian migration illustrates. [4]. The old idea that the Polynesians originated somewhere in Asia and then migrated, en masse, into the Pacific, has been discredited by the last quarter-century of archaeological and linguistic work. Now we see the Polynesians as a unique people who evolved--culturally and, in a micro-evolutionary sense, physically---in the
227 mid-Pacific. Although their ultimate roots are in Southeast Asia, as a distinct people they are a product of their Pacific environment. While the waters of Southeast Asia, and the rich island environment created there by rising waters after the last glaciation, gave birth to a great seafaring tradition based on ocean-going canoes, it was in the islands of the open Pacific where this tradition reached its highest development. Seafarers from Southeast Asia moved east along the northern coast of New Guinea where, on offshore islands, archaeologists have found their living sites dating back almost 5,000 years ago. Around 1500 B.C., their descendants, the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians, started moving east along a series of island chains that brought them to the archipelagoes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa in the middle of the Pacific. Once they reached these rich, mid-ocean archipelagoes, they were alone, for only these voyagers had the technology to sail so far out to sea. There they paused for a thousand years or so, during which time the basic Polynesian cultural pattern took recognizable form. Around 200 B.C., some of their descendants---now distinguishably Polynesian in language, culture and physical type--started moving east again. They show up in the archaeological record first in the far off Marquesas Islands, and then on Tahiti and other neighboring islands. From these central Eastern Polynesian islands, canoes sailed north across the equator to distant Hawaii, southeast to tiny Easter Island off the coast of Chile, and back southwest to the great islands of New Zealand---to complete, by about 750 A.D., the settlement of Polynesia, an island realm spread over an area almost as large as Europe and Asia combined. This oceanic odyssey was characterised by incrementally greater challenges to the seafaring abilities of these people, who responded over the centuries by evolving an increasingly sophisticated adaptation to long distance voyaging and colonization. Whereas in much of the Southeast Asian island world, one island could be seen from another, as the succeeding generations of seafarers moved farther and farther into the Pacific the inter-island gaps grew from tens of kilometers until, in the far reaches of Polynesia, it reached the 3,000 kilometer range. As the distances increased, the winds became less favorable. The regular monsoonal westerlies of the western Pacific which had facilitated movement out to the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa area, fade after these mid-Pacific archipelagoes, and voyagers seeking to sail farther east were often faced with contrary winds and currents. In addition, the task of transplanting viable communities became more difficult in that the farther they sailed into the Pacific and away from the rich biotic centers of Southeast Asia, fewer and fewer edible plants and animal species were to be found on the islands they discovered. The response to this challenge included the development of large, double-hull canoes capable of sailing long distances carrying groups of men, women and children, and all the food and supplies needed to stay alive at sea and to start new colonies on the islands they found. Along with larger and more sophisticated sailing canoes, the Polynesians and their ancestors developed a precise, noninstrument navigation system, as well as skill in using periodic wind shifts to sail against the direction of the prevailing winds and currents. To make life possible on the fertile, but biotically impoverished islands they found in mid-ocean, they also became adept at carrying plants and animals in order to transplant their entire agricultural complex. In addition, a case can be made that their social organization similarly evolved, for it combined a firm authority structure needed for undertaking hazardous voyages and
228 colonizing efforts, with a degree of social flexibility to cope with the hardships and disasters that can befall small and vulnerable colonizing groups. Crucial to this adaptation was the incremental way in which the gaps between islands, and the other obstacles they faced, grew as these seafarers moved ever farther into the ocean. If there had been no island stepping stones along the way, it is unlikely that canoe voyagers could ever have reached such distant islands as the Marquesas, Hawaii or Easter Island. They needed the intervening islands both to stage their movement, and also to learn how to adapt to oceanic conditions, and, in so doing, to be encouraged to sail even further into the ocean. If God wanted m a n to become a s p a c e f a r i n g species . . . . But, what does all this have to do with space migration? To begin to answer that, let me quote the late Krafft Ehricke, a veteran of both the German and American space programs, and a proponent of what he called the "extraterrestrial imperative" [7]. In a memorable address at the close of the first NASA lunar settlement conference held in late 1984, shortly before his death, Ehricke proclaimed that, "If God wanted man to become a spacefaring species, he would have given man a moon" [8] He then went on to detail a scenario of lunar industrialization and colonization that would put humanity firmly in space, and he even declared that those who learned how to live permanently on the moon would become tomorrow's "Cosmopolynesians" poised on the lunar shore of the cosmos, ready and willing to embark on voyages to other worlds. I would add to Ehricke's words by saying that, "If God wanted humans to migrate to other stars he would have given us a moon, a Mars, asteroids, the outer planets and their varied satellites, and the Oort Cloud of comets." Co-orbiting with us around the Sun, we have a marvellous collection of dirty snowballs, gas giants, and carbonaceous fragments, as well as rocky, metal-rich planets like our own, whose resources beckon would be space colonists [9]. Like those canoe voyagers from Southeast Asia, we are blest with a series of new worlds to draw us from our own. By seizing the opportunities offered, our descendants will not just be expanding the realm of humanity throughout the solar system. By learning how to adapt to space environments and to tap extraterrestrial resources, they will be both encouraged and prepared to go beyond the pale of our Sun to settle in other planetary systems. Solar system colonization is an essential prelude to interstellar migration. Unlike, however, the early oceanic voyagers, we can see far ahead at what lies in the ocean of space, and are constantly tempted by ever more distant targets. Yet, however attractive such targets may be, we should not ignore the autocatalytic advantages of following a step-by-step, evolutionary approach to space settlement. To take a case in point, there are good reasons for following Ehricke's advice to start by establishing a permanent outpost on the moon, rather than heading directly for Mars, as many now propose. While going to Mars may seem more exciting than returning to the moon, the idea of rushing to send manned expeditions there is too reminiscent of the Apollo program for comfort. Once the essentially political and symbolic goal of reaching the moon was attained, the Americans withdrew from the moon---and virtually from space itself, for in hurrying to reach the moon before the end of the decade of the 1960s they chose to make direct flights to lunar orbit, ignoring an evolutionary approach which would have left them with a permanent space station in orbit around Earth. Channeling all
229 efforts towards reaching Mars in a "one-shot spectacular," or even, as in the case of Apollo, a series of missions, might well lead to a similar discontinuity in the evolution of our ability to expand into space. In contrast, a return to the moon holds out the prospect of being the first step in an evolutionary approach to space colonization. In her recent report to the Administrator of NASA, Sally Ride states the argument succinctly [10]: The establishment of a lunar outpost would be a significant step outward from Earth---a step that combines adventure, science, technology and perhaps the seeds of enterprize. Exploring and prospecting the moon, learning to use lunar resources and work within lunar constraints, would provide the experience and the expertise necessary for further human exploration of the solar system . . . . This initiative would push back frontiers, not to achieve a blaze of glory, but to explore, to understand, to learn and to develop . . . . And it fits beautifully into a natural progression of human expansion that leads 'from the highlands of the moon to the plains of Mars.' " I leave it to others to develop specific scenarios of solar system development, and to answer such questions as how best to use asteroidal resources, and what role orbiting space colonies may play in the process of expansion. For the purposes of preparing humanity for interstellar migration, the colonization of the solar system should result in the development of an infrastructure large enough to support interstellar ventures, the development of new technologies necessary to deliver people to distant planetary systems and to enable them to live in exotic environments, and the development of ways of organizing communities so that their members may survive unimpaired during long space flights and flourish on new worlds. In addition, there is one more potential outcome of expansion into the solar system which could be crucial to the drive for interstellar migration. Let me introduce it by again referring to the colonization of the Pacific islands.
Cosmicization The first European voyagers to reach Polynesia were amazed that islands so distant from land were already inhabited. If we, the European navigators reasoned, have only recently developed the ability to sail so far from land, how could such primitive people have preceded us. Accordingly, they hypothesized land bridges, sunken continents, and even separate creation to explain how people without ships, charts or compasses could have found and settled all these islands. In addition to underestimating the voyaging technology and seamanship of the Polynesians, these Europeans were guilty of projecting upon them the worldview of continental people. To the Europeans the world was composed of land masses inconveniently interrupted by dangerous stretches of water. What the Polynesians and their ancestors had learned in their long migration was that the world was an ocean strewn here and there with bits of land, and that if they kept sailing in any direction they would eventually find land. They did not regard the ocean as an alien environment, but one which was utterly natural---and essential to the spread of human life. Soviet space philosophers employ the term "cosmicization" to denote a change in human consciousness that is developing through
230 the exploration and utilization of space [11]. As our descendants progressively colonize the solar system we can expect that at least some of them will become more and more "cosmicized." They will undergo a change in consciousness analogous to that experienced by those seafarers who colonized the Pacific islands, but one of infinitely greater import for the future of humanity. As they learn to live in a variety of space environments, and to travel freely within the solar system, they will regard space, not the Earth, as their natural habitat, and look forward to voyaging to other planetary systems where they and their descendants might flourish. This "cosmicization" of humanity may be the final, cultural, product o f solar system colonization necessary for migration into interstellar space.
References 1. A. C. Clarke, The Challenge of the Spaceship, J. Br. Intol. So¢., 6 (3), 66-81 (1945). 2. B.R. Finney and E. M. Jones, The Exploring Animal. In Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience, (Edited by B. R. Finney and E. M. Jones), pp. 15-25. University of California Press, Berkeley (1985). 3. J. D. Bernal, The World. The Flesh and the Devil. 2rid Edition., Jonathan Cape, London (1970). 4. B. R. Finney, Voyagers into Ocean Space. In Interstellar Migration and the Human Exoerience. (Edited by B. R. Finney and E. M. Jones), pp. 164-179. University of California Press, Berkeley 0985). 5. W. F. Keegan and J. M. Diamond, Colonization of Islands by Humans: A Biogeographical Perspective. In Advanee~ in Archaeological Method and Theory. 10, (Edited by M. B. Schiffer), Academic Press, New York, in press. 6. J. M. Diamond and W. F. Keegan, Supertramps at Sea, Nature 311, 704 (1984). 7. K. A. Ehricke, Extraterrestrial Imperative, Bull. Atomic Scienti~t~. 27 (9), 18-26 (1971). 8. K. A. Ehricke, Lunar Industrialization and Settlement---Birth of Polyglobal Civilization, In Lunar Bases and Soace Activities of the 21st Centurv. (Edited by W. Mendell), pp. 827-855. Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston (1985). 9. W. K. Hartmann, The Resource Base in Our Solar System, In Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. (Edited by B. R. Finney and E. M. Jones), pp. 26-41, University of California Press, Berkeley (1985). 10. S. K. Ride, Leadership and America's Future in SpaCe. NASA, Washington (1987). 11. V. Savastyanov, A. D. Ursul and Yu. Shkolenko, The Universe and Civilization. (Trans. from Russian) Progress, Moscow (1981).
Ben R. Finney Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii, Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A.
2424
A b s t r a c t - - - S o l a r system colonization is an essential prelude to interstellar migration. Through the incremental settlement of the solar system we can develop the infrastructure necessary to support costly interstellar flight, new spacefaring technologies needed to cover the great distances and to nurture human life during the long flights, and new forms of social organization to enable humans to flourish in exotic environments. Furthermore, as suggested by the history of the colonization of oceanic islands, the successful settlement of the solar system and the exploitation of its resources will "cosmicize" people, encouraging them to look beyond our Sun to other stars and to the prospects for transplanting human life around them.
Playing
with
Spaceships
Advocates of interstellar migration are adept at "playing with spaceships," to use Arthur C. Clarke's apt phrase [1]. Their eyes are firmly fixed upon the stars, and on solving the tremendous technical problems of sending interstellar probes, fast ships, arks and world ships to other planetary systems. While they may assume a degree of solar system infrastructure in order to provide the financial and resource base for launching interstellar ventures, they typically do not focus on the developments that would necessarily precede the dispatch of interstellar colonizing missions. In this paper I would like to complement their technical discussions of interstellar flight with some thoughts about what might have to occur within our solar system so that our descendants would one day be willing and able to launch expeditions to the stars. As an anthropologist who sees space expansion as a logical continuation of the spread of humanity over the globe [2], I tend to look back to prior migrational experience to help me think ahead to our extraterrestrial future. I am not alone in this. In one of the first books to discuss space colonies, The World. The Flesh and the Devil, J. D. Bernal wrote that he looked to history to tell us "how things have changed and how by inference they will change in the future" [3]. Although he admited that history has not yet "found its laws," Bernal maintained that it can be "used as a storehouse o f illustrative facts," and that "one might say loosely that everything that will happen must conform with the spirit of history." With these thoughts of Bernal in mind, I propose to employ the history of the settlement of oceanic islands to help me speculate about expansion into the solar system and beyond.
Islands
and
Autocatalysis
The exploration of the sea and the discovery and settlement of the oceanic islands is perhaps the one phase of humanity's spread over Earth that is most evocative of our future expansion into space. The adventure of exploring the unknown, the struggle to develop 225
226 new technology to go where no human had ever been before, and the establishment of colonies on uninhabited shores are the obvious features of oceanic migration that make it relevant to the one about to unfold in space [4]. Here I wish to explore another feature that relates to space migration: how the distribution of islands in the sea has either encouraged or discouraged exploration and settlement. Let me begin with a series of apparent paradoxes [5]. Europeans did not colonize the mid-Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores until the 15th century, 3,000 years after stone age voyagers reached the mid-Pacific archipelagoes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Easter Island, one of the world's most out-of-the-way specks of land, was colonized before comparatively huge and and easy-toreach Iceland. Hawaii and Madagascar were settled by voyagers stemming ultimately from far off Southeast Asia, and not from the comparatively nearby continents of North America and Africa, respectively. These paradoxes would seem to violate such common sense ideas as: that technologically advanced peoples should be the first to settle oceanic islands, or at least to settle the most distant ones; and that islands should be settled by the continental peoples closest to them. They can be resolved, however, if we consider that it is the patterning of oceanic islands that is crucial to island colonization, and not the absolute proximity of islands to continents or the technological level of the people living along adjacent continental shores. For example, the distribution of Pacific islands, from the perspective of a migration starting in Southeast Asia, was ideal for promoting island colonization. The extended arc of islands immediately offshore the Southeast Asian mainland promoted the development of a maritime way of life, while the rich collection of continental fragments and volcanic islands that extends eastwards from island Southeast Asia three-fourths of the way across the Pacific beckoned people to sail farther and farther out into this great ocean in search of new island homes, and gave them a proving ground where they could incrementally develop their seafaring and colonizing capabilities. (To a lesser extent the patterning of the islands in the Carribbean, Mediteranean, and the North Atlantic domain of the Vikings also promoted settlement.) In contrast, the lack of a stepping stone pattern in the sparse, uneven distribution of islands in the middle latitudes of the Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, and in the eastern Pacific as seen from the Americas, provided little in the way of encouragement and experience for people to attempt to seek out distant island homes. Hence, migrants stemming ultimately from Southeast Asia spread far out into the Pacific, and even across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, while people from Africa, the Americas and Europe either did not venture far out to sea, or did so after all the Pacific Islands had been found and settled. Biologist Jared Diamond and archaeologist William Keegan label the process whereby the patterning of islands encourages migrants to seek islands far out to sea as one of "autocatalysis" in that successful colonization catalyses further movement in search of new lands. [5,6]. This autocatalytic process involves technological adaptation as well as motivation, as the saga of Polynesian migration illustrates. [4]. The old idea that the Polynesians originated somewhere in Asia and then migrated, en masse, into the Pacific, has been discredited by the last quarter-century of archaeological and linguistic work. Now we see the Polynesians as a unique people who evolved--culturally and, in a micro-evolutionary sense, physically---in the
227 mid-Pacific. Although their ultimate roots are in Southeast Asia, as a distinct people they are a product of their Pacific environment. While the waters of Southeast Asia, and the rich island environment created there by rising waters after the last glaciation, gave birth to a great seafaring tradition based on ocean-going canoes, it was in the islands of the open Pacific where this tradition reached its highest development. Seafarers from Southeast Asia moved east along the northern coast of New Guinea where, on offshore islands, archaeologists have found their living sites dating back almost 5,000 years ago. Around 1500 B.C., their descendants, the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians, started moving east along a series of island chains that brought them to the archipelagoes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa in the middle of the Pacific. Once they reached these rich, mid-ocean archipelagoes, they were alone, for only these voyagers had the technology to sail so far out to sea. There they paused for a thousand years or so, during which time the basic Polynesian cultural pattern took recognizable form. Around 200 B.C., some of their descendants---now distinguishably Polynesian in language, culture and physical type--started moving east again. They show up in the archaeological record first in the far off Marquesas Islands, and then on Tahiti and other neighboring islands. From these central Eastern Polynesian islands, canoes sailed north across the equator to distant Hawaii, southeast to tiny Easter Island off the coast of Chile, and back southwest to the great islands of New Zealand---to complete, by about 750 A.D., the settlement of Polynesia, an island realm spread over an area almost as large as Europe and Asia combined. This oceanic odyssey was characterised by incrementally greater challenges to the seafaring abilities of these people, who responded over the centuries by evolving an increasingly sophisticated adaptation to long distance voyaging and colonization. Whereas in much of the Southeast Asian island world, one island could be seen from another, as the succeeding generations of seafarers moved farther and farther into the Pacific the inter-island gaps grew from tens of kilometers until, in the far reaches of Polynesia, it reached the 3,000 kilometer range. As the distances increased, the winds became less favorable. The regular monsoonal westerlies of the western Pacific which had facilitated movement out to the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa area, fade after these mid-Pacific archipelagoes, and voyagers seeking to sail farther east were often faced with contrary winds and currents. In addition, the task of transplanting viable communities became more difficult in that the farther they sailed into the Pacific and away from the rich biotic centers of Southeast Asia, fewer and fewer edible plants and animal species were to be found on the islands they discovered. The response to this challenge included the development of large, double-hull canoes capable of sailing long distances carrying groups of men, women and children, and all the food and supplies needed to stay alive at sea and to start new colonies on the islands they found. Along with larger and more sophisticated sailing canoes, the Polynesians and their ancestors developed a precise, noninstrument navigation system, as well as skill in using periodic wind shifts to sail against the direction of the prevailing winds and currents. To make life possible on the fertile, but biotically impoverished islands they found in mid-ocean, they also became adept at carrying plants and animals in order to transplant their entire agricultural complex. In addition, a case can be made that their social organization similarly evolved, for it combined a firm authority structure needed for undertaking hazardous voyages and
228 colonizing efforts, with a degree of social flexibility to cope with the hardships and disasters that can befall small and vulnerable colonizing groups. Crucial to this adaptation was the incremental way in which the gaps between islands, and the other obstacles they faced, grew as these seafarers moved ever farther into the ocean. If there had been no island stepping stones along the way, it is unlikely that canoe voyagers could ever have reached such distant islands as the Marquesas, Hawaii or Easter Island. They needed the intervening islands both to stage their movement, and also to learn how to adapt to oceanic conditions, and, in so doing, to be encouraged to sail even further into the ocean. If God wanted m a n to become a s p a c e f a r i n g species . . . . But, what does all this have to do with space migration? To begin to answer that, let me quote the late Krafft Ehricke, a veteran of both the German and American space programs, and a proponent of what he called the "extraterrestrial imperative" [7]. In a memorable address at the close of the first NASA lunar settlement conference held in late 1984, shortly before his death, Ehricke proclaimed that, "If God wanted man to become a spacefaring species, he would have given man a moon" [8] He then went on to detail a scenario of lunar industrialization and colonization that would put humanity firmly in space, and he even declared that those who learned how to live permanently on the moon would become tomorrow's "Cosmopolynesians" poised on the lunar shore of the cosmos, ready and willing to embark on voyages to other worlds. I would add to Ehricke's words by saying that, "If God wanted humans to migrate to other stars he would have given us a moon, a Mars, asteroids, the outer planets and their varied satellites, and the Oort Cloud of comets." Co-orbiting with us around the Sun, we have a marvellous collection of dirty snowballs, gas giants, and carbonaceous fragments, as well as rocky, metal-rich planets like our own, whose resources beckon would be space colonists [9]. Like those canoe voyagers from Southeast Asia, we are blest with a series of new worlds to draw us from our own. By seizing the opportunities offered, our descendants will not just be expanding the realm of humanity throughout the solar system. By learning how to adapt to space environments and to tap extraterrestrial resources, they will be both encouraged and prepared to go beyond the pale of our Sun to settle in other planetary systems. Solar system colonization is an essential prelude to interstellar migration. Unlike, however, the early oceanic voyagers, we can see far ahead at what lies in the ocean of space, and are constantly tempted by ever more distant targets. Yet, however attractive such targets may be, we should not ignore the autocatalytic advantages of following a step-by-step, evolutionary approach to space settlement. To take a case in point, there are good reasons for following Ehricke's advice to start by establishing a permanent outpost on the moon, rather than heading directly for Mars, as many now propose. While going to Mars may seem more exciting than returning to the moon, the idea of rushing to send manned expeditions there is too reminiscent of the Apollo program for comfort. Once the essentially political and symbolic goal of reaching the moon was attained, the Americans withdrew from the moon---and virtually from space itself, for in hurrying to reach the moon before the end of the decade of the 1960s they chose to make direct flights to lunar orbit, ignoring an evolutionary approach which would have left them with a permanent space station in orbit around Earth. Channeling all
229 efforts towards reaching Mars in a "one-shot spectacular," or even, as in the case of Apollo, a series of missions, might well lead to a similar discontinuity in the evolution of our ability to expand into space. In contrast, a return to the moon holds out the prospect of being the first step in an evolutionary approach to space colonization. In her recent report to the Administrator of NASA, Sally Ride states the argument succinctly [10]: The establishment of a lunar outpost would be a significant step outward from Earth---a step that combines adventure, science, technology and perhaps the seeds of enterprize. Exploring and prospecting the moon, learning to use lunar resources and work within lunar constraints, would provide the experience and the expertise necessary for further human exploration of the solar system . . . . This initiative would push back frontiers, not to achieve a blaze of glory, but to explore, to understand, to learn and to develop . . . . And it fits beautifully into a natural progression of human expansion that leads 'from the highlands of the moon to the plains of Mars.' " I leave it to others to develop specific scenarios of solar system development, and to answer such questions as how best to use asteroidal resources, and what role orbiting space colonies may play in the process of expansion. For the purposes of preparing humanity for interstellar migration, the colonization of the solar system should result in the development of an infrastructure large enough to support interstellar ventures, the development of new technologies necessary to deliver people to distant planetary systems and to enable them to live in exotic environments, and the development of ways of organizing communities so that their members may survive unimpaired during long space flights and flourish on new worlds. In addition, there is one more potential outcome of expansion into the solar system which could be crucial to the drive for interstellar migration. Let me introduce it by again referring to the colonization of the Pacific islands.
Cosmicization The first European voyagers to reach Polynesia were amazed that islands so distant from land were already inhabited. If we, the European navigators reasoned, have only recently developed the ability to sail so far from land, how could such primitive people have preceded us. Accordingly, they hypothesized land bridges, sunken continents, and even separate creation to explain how people without ships, charts or compasses could have found and settled all these islands. In addition to underestimating the voyaging technology and seamanship of the Polynesians, these Europeans were guilty of projecting upon them the worldview of continental people. To the Europeans the world was composed of land masses inconveniently interrupted by dangerous stretches of water. What the Polynesians and their ancestors had learned in their long migration was that the world was an ocean strewn here and there with bits of land, and that if they kept sailing in any direction they would eventually find land. They did not regard the ocean as an alien environment, but one which was utterly natural---and essential to the spread of human life. Soviet space philosophers employ the term "cosmicization" to denote a change in human consciousness that is developing through
230 the exploration and utilization of space [11]. As our descendants progressively colonize the solar system we can expect that at least some of them will become more and more "cosmicized." They will undergo a change in consciousness analogous to that experienced by those seafarers who colonized the Pacific islands, but one of infinitely greater import for the future of humanity. As they learn to live in a variety of space environments, and to travel freely within the solar system, they will regard space, not the Earth, as their natural habitat, and look forward to voyaging to other planetary systems where they and their descendants might flourish. This "cosmicization" of humanity may be the final, cultural, product o f solar system colonization necessary for migration into interstellar space.
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