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A second giant leap
Views Aperture Spare a thought for the snowy travails of the spotted nutcrackers of Bulgaria p36
Culture Enjoy an exclusive: the first English translation of a new short story from sci-fi author Cixin Liu p38
Letters Failure can be glorious, so let’s teach children to embrace it p42
Comment essay
A second giant leap Humanity is about to reach for deep space once more and this time the implications are huge, argues astronomer royal Martin Rees Cosmologist Martin Rees, at the University of Cambridge, is the UK’s Astronomer Royal and the author of On The Future: Prospects for humanity
JOSIE FORD
T
HIS year marked the 50th anniversary of the most iconic moment of the space race: Neil Armstrong’s “small step” onto the moon on 21 July 1969. Many of us who viewed those grainy TV images live expected it to be just a beginning, and that there would have been footprints on Mars long before now. But the heroics of the Apollo missions are ancient history to young people today. After the US had beaten the Soviet Union to the moon, there was no call to sustain the huge outlay on the space race, which at its peak consumed 4 per cent of the US federal budget. Since 1972, no one has got beyond the International Space Station’s orbit, just 400 kilometres up.
Yet a half century on, the next instalment of the space race is beginning. China, which landed the first probe on the lunar far side in January this year, plans to send people to the moon. India, which sent a rocket there this year, dreams of doing likewise. The Trump administration in the US proposes creating a lunar base as a step towards sending humans to Mars. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are developing rockets to take people to deep space through their ventures SpaceX and Blue Origin. If any of these plans come off, the 2020s could be when Apollo’s promise is finally fulfilled, and humanity establishes its first permanent presence beyond Earth orbit. That raises wider questions
about the motives and goals of space exploration – and what the ultimate destiny of our species might be, here on Earth and perhaps far beyond.
“The next decade could be when Apollo’s promise is fulfilled and we establish a presence beyond Earth” Space exploration never really went away, of course. We routinely use satellites for communication, navigation and environmental monitoring. Rovers have been sent to the surface of Mars, while the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission put a lander on a comet. NASA’s Cassini probe spent 13 years
exploring Saturn and its moons. NASA’s New Horizons mission gave us our first glimpse of Pluto, having travelled 13,000 times the distance to the moon. These craft were designed and built in the 1990s. The Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionised our knowledge of the cosmos, dates back further. Advances in microelectronics, computing, communication and robotics have accelerated in the past 20 years, so there is now huge scope for more sophisticated craft. The James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, will be surveying the universe from far beyond the moon by mid-decade. Further ahead, we can expect flotillas of miniaturised robotic probes to swarm through our solar system, communicating with each other like a flock of birds. How soon such projects are implemented will depend on the motivation and incentives. Apart from national prestige, the main reason for deep space exploration so far has been scientific discovery. Future space exploits are likely to have a more commercial bent. Robotic fabricators will be able to assemble vast lightweight structures in space, such as mirrors for huge telescopes, or solar-energy collectors. Rather than being lifted from Earth, the materials could be mined from > 21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 33
Views the moon or from asteroids. Some people believe we could recover precious metals from asteroids and bring them back to Earth. There are clear ethical and regulatory questions to be asked about what the boundaries of such activities should be. On a small scale, they may be acceptable. But it has been proposed, for example by the former Apollo astronaut and US senator Harrison Schmitt, that the helium-3 isotope, a fuel for futuristic fusion reactors thought to be abundant on the moon, could be recovered by large‑scale strip mining there. In 2015, the US Congress passed legislation informally known as the SPACE Act, which promotes the right of US citizens (and by extension corporations) to engage in the “commercial recovery of space resources free from harmful interference… subject to authorization and continuing supervision by the Federal Government”. Such supervision may not be enough. Earth’s nations together preserve the Antarctic; the case for global regulation of efforts to alter the landscape of other celestial objects in a commercially motivated space era becomes ever greater. These issues will become more acute if humans venture not just back to the moon, but onwards to Mars. Just how likely is this really? Continuing advances will erode the practical case for crewed space flight. There will soon be few tasks for humans in space that robots can’t do better. Today, a trained geologist on Mars could achieve far more than NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been trundling for a decade across a giant Martian crater. But future geological investigations of other worlds lie with rovers elaborately equipped with sensors, tools and a memory superior to that of any human. Given the risks inherent in space flight, we might think humanity is better off directing affairs from the ground. Yet I hope that some humans will follow the robots – if only to inspire a new generation, as the first 34 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019
moon landings did 50 years ago. But we need to be honest about the risks. NASA’s Space Shuttle, which first launched in 1981, was unwisely promoted by some as “safe”. It failed catastrophically twice in 135 missions – a level of
“Leaving our planet may be the first step towards a new species that will evolve faster than ever” risk that some thrill seekers would willingly accept – but unrealistic expectations meant that each failure was a national trauma, and led to costly delays and increased risk aversion. Private ventures such as SpaceX and Blue Origin can tolerate higher risks than governments can impose on publicly funded astronauts. It is they who can and should front future crewed missions. But these missions should be sold honestly. That means
not as “space tourism”, with its connotations of a routine, low-risk activity, nor as serious scientific activity, but as dangerous sport or intrepid exploration that panders to the human desire to fly higher and further. Some will be content with one‑way tickets. Musk himself says he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. Such risk takers may well establish bases independent from Earth. But don’t expect mass emigration. Here I disagree with Musk, and with my late colleague Stephen Hawking, who often said that humanity must seek its future in space to avoid inevitable disaster on Earth. It is a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. We must solve them here. Coping with climate change is a doddle compared with terraforming Mars; there is no environment in our solar system as clement as even the Antarctic or Everest’s summit. There is no “Planet B”
for ordinary risk-averse people. But those few who do dare leave Earth will surely be starting a new, very different future for humanity. They will find themselves illadapted to conditions there, so will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on Earth to redesign themselves using powerful genetic-engineering and cybernetic technologies. These techniques will, I hope, be restrained on Earth, on prudential and ethical grounds; but those on Mars will be freer to experiment. We should surely wish them luck in modifying their progeny to adapt to alien worlds. This may be the first step towards divergence into a new species – an evolution via “secular intelligent design” that proceeds on timescales of technological advance, perhaps thousands of times faster than Darwinian selection. If these post-humans one day make the transition from flesh and blood to fully inorganic intelligences, they won’t need an atmosphere. And they may prefer zero-gravity environments, especially for constructing massive artefacts. So it is in deep space, not on Earth, nor even on Mars, that non-biological “brains” may develop powers that humans can’t even imagine. Earth, we can surmise, would no longer seem an alluring environment to them, a reassuring thought, as they would be likely to leave our descendants undisturbed. Humanity is an outcome of 4 billion years of Darwinian evolution. Our sun will survive 6 billion more years before its fuel runs out. The universe will continue far longer still. So even if intelligent life originated only on Earth, it needn’t remain a trivial feature of the cosmos: the next stage of the space race could ultimately spark a diaspora whereby ever more complex intelligence spreads through the galaxy, perhaps via selfreproducing machines or suchlike. Interstellar voyages would hold no terrors for such near-immortals. There’s plenty of time ahead. ❚
Culture Enjoy an exclusive: the first English translation of a new short story from sci-fi author Cixin Liu p38
Letters Failure can be glorious, so let’s teach children to embrace it p42
Comment essay
A second giant leap Humanity is about to reach for deep space once more and this time the implications are huge, argues astronomer royal Martin Rees Cosmologist Martin Rees, at the University of Cambridge, is the UK’s Astronomer Royal and the author of On The Future: Prospects for humanity
JOSIE FORD
T
HIS year marked the 50th anniversary of the most iconic moment of the space race: Neil Armstrong’s “small step” onto the moon on 21 July 1969. Many of us who viewed those grainy TV images live expected it to be just a beginning, and that there would have been footprints on Mars long before now. But the heroics of the Apollo missions are ancient history to young people today. After the US had beaten the Soviet Union to the moon, there was no call to sustain the huge outlay on the space race, which at its peak consumed 4 per cent of the US federal budget. Since 1972, no one has got beyond the International Space Station’s orbit, just 400 kilometres up.
Yet a half century on, the next instalment of the space race is beginning. China, which landed the first probe on the lunar far side in January this year, plans to send people to the moon. India, which sent a rocket there this year, dreams of doing likewise. The Trump administration in the US proposes creating a lunar base as a step towards sending humans to Mars. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are developing rockets to take people to deep space through their ventures SpaceX and Blue Origin. If any of these plans come off, the 2020s could be when Apollo’s promise is finally fulfilled, and humanity establishes its first permanent presence beyond Earth orbit. That raises wider questions
about the motives and goals of space exploration – and what the ultimate destiny of our species might be, here on Earth and perhaps far beyond.
“The next decade could be when Apollo’s promise is fulfilled and we establish a presence beyond Earth” Space exploration never really went away, of course. We routinely use satellites for communication, navigation and environmental monitoring. Rovers have been sent to the surface of Mars, while the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission put a lander on a comet. NASA’s Cassini probe spent 13 years
exploring Saturn and its moons. NASA’s New Horizons mission gave us our first glimpse of Pluto, having travelled 13,000 times the distance to the moon. These craft were designed and built in the 1990s. The Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionised our knowledge of the cosmos, dates back further. Advances in microelectronics, computing, communication and robotics have accelerated in the past 20 years, so there is now huge scope for more sophisticated craft. The James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, will be surveying the universe from far beyond the moon by mid-decade. Further ahead, we can expect flotillas of miniaturised robotic probes to swarm through our solar system, communicating with each other like a flock of birds. How soon such projects are implemented will depend on the motivation and incentives. Apart from national prestige, the main reason for deep space exploration so far has been scientific discovery. Future space exploits are likely to have a more commercial bent. Robotic fabricators will be able to assemble vast lightweight structures in space, such as mirrors for huge telescopes, or solar-energy collectors. Rather than being lifted from Earth, the materials could be mined from > 21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 33
Views the moon or from asteroids. Some people believe we could recover precious metals from asteroids and bring them back to Earth. There are clear ethical and regulatory questions to be asked about what the boundaries of such activities should be. On a small scale, they may be acceptable. But it has been proposed, for example by the former Apollo astronaut and US senator Harrison Schmitt, that the helium-3 isotope, a fuel for futuristic fusion reactors thought to be abundant on the moon, could be recovered by large‑scale strip mining there. In 2015, the US Congress passed legislation informally known as the SPACE Act, which promotes the right of US citizens (and by extension corporations) to engage in the “commercial recovery of space resources free from harmful interference… subject to authorization and continuing supervision by the Federal Government”. Such supervision may not be enough. Earth’s nations together preserve the Antarctic; the case for global regulation of efforts to alter the landscape of other celestial objects in a commercially motivated space era becomes ever greater. These issues will become more acute if humans venture not just back to the moon, but onwards to Mars. Just how likely is this really? Continuing advances will erode the practical case for crewed space flight. There will soon be few tasks for humans in space that robots can’t do better. Today, a trained geologist on Mars could achieve far more than NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been trundling for a decade across a giant Martian crater. But future geological investigations of other worlds lie with rovers elaborately equipped with sensors, tools and a memory superior to that of any human. Given the risks inherent in space flight, we might think humanity is better off directing affairs from the ground. Yet I hope that some humans will follow the robots – if only to inspire a new generation, as the first 34 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019
moon landings did 50 years ago. But we need to be honest about the risks. NASA’s Space Shuttle, which first launched in 1981, was unwisely promoted by some as “safe”. It failed catastrophically twice in 135 missions – a level of
“Leaving our planet may be the first step towards a new species that will evolve faster than ever” risk that some thrill seekers would willingly accept – but unrealistic expectations meant that each failure was a national trauma, and led to costly delays and increased risk aversion. Private ventures such as SpaceX and Blue Origin can tolerate higher risks than governments can impose on publicly funded astronauts. It is they who can and should front future crewed missions. But these missions should be sold honestly. That means
not as “space tourism”, with its connotations of a routine, low-risk activity, nor as serious scientific activity, but as dangerous sport or intrepid exploration that panders to the human desire to fly higher and further. Some will be content with one‑way tickets. Musk himself says he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. Such risk takers may well establish bases independent from Earth. But don’t expect mass emigration. Here I disagree with Musk, and with my late colleague Stephen Hawking, who often said that humanity must seek its future in space to avoid inevitable disaster on Earth. It is a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. We must solve them here. Coping with climate change is a doddle compared with terraforming Mars; there is no environment in our solar system as clement as even the Antarctic or Everest’s summit. There is no “Planet B”
for ordinary risk-averse people. But those few who do dare leave Earth will surely be starting a new, very different future for humanity. They will find themselves illadapted to conditions there, so will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on Earth to redesign themselves using powerful genetic-engineering and cybernetic technologies. These techniques will, I hope, be restrained on Earth, on prudential and ethical grounds; but those on Mars will be freer to experiment. We should surely wish them luck in modifying their progeny to adapt to alien worlds. This may be the first step towards divergence into a new species – an evolution via “secular intelligent design” that proceeds on timescales of technological advance, perhaps thousands of times faster than Darwinian selection. If these post-humans one day make the transition from flesh and blood to fully inorganic intelligences, they won’t need an atmosphere. And they may prefer zero-gravity environments, especially for constructing massive artefacts. So it is in deep space, not on Earth, nor even on Mars, that non-biological “brains” may develop powers that humans can’t even imagine. Earth, we can surmise, would no longer seem an alluring environment to them, a reassuring thought, as they would be likely to leave our descendants undisturbed. Humanity is an outcome of 4 billion years of Darwinian evolution. Our sun will survive 6 billion more years before its fuel runs out. The universe will continue far longer still. So even if intelligent life originated only on Earth, it needn’t remain a trivial feature of the cosmos: the next stage of the space race could ultimately spark a diaspora whereby ever more complex intelligence spreads through the galaxy, perhaps via selfreproducing machines or suchlike. Interstellar voyages would hold no terrors for such near-immortals. There’s plenty of time ahead. ❚